Day: August 14, 2018

Categories
Web Hosting

Core Web Design Principles Every Small Business Needs to Know

Small businesses are competing on the web every day. They’re not just up against UK businesses, but the global marketplace with competitors looking to eat their lunch. One of their primary sales avenues is their own website.

Observing core web design principals ensures that a website does what it’s supposed to do. It’s easy to view, loads fast, reads well, and is presented in a way that helps the visitors achieve their goals.

Here are a few suggested things to bear in mind when it comes to website design, structure, and hosting.

Content Structure & Formatting is Your Friend

An article on the web is not the same as one published in a tech or lifestyle magazine. There you’ll find longer paragraphs, few bullet-point lists, and people who need patience to read every word on the page. With web content, visitors scan down the page and don’t read the article in its entirety.

As the world speeds up, time becomes more finite with each ‘experience.’ Attention spans have gotten much shorter in the last few years. Blame social media! What does this mean for web content? It has to be structured and formatted in different ways to print media.

Consider using lists to make strong points. Like with structure and formatting, be sure to include:

  • Headings and subheadings
  • Bullet lists
  • Images or a Slideshow
  • Video embeds
  • Infographics or diagrams

Lists make the content more scannable and that’s key to keep people on the site for longer. Longer dwell time is good for higher Google rankings too.

Focus on Clean Themes/Designs

When designing a new website template, or creating/modifying a WordPress theme, focus on making it look clean and accessible. Include plenty of white space between sections and make sure it is not cluttered in any way.

An overly fussy design that a web designer has spent months perfectly is a wonderful thing – for them. However, for the visitor, a cluttered or overly busy design is confusing. When they cannot figure out the navigation or spot what they want on the page quickly because there’s too much going on, then they hit the ‘Back’ button real fast.

Two Column Designs vs Single Column Designs

Consider the choice between different design layouts. The main two are:

  1. Two-column design (left column for content and a slim, right-side column for a sidebar)
  2. Single column design

The two-column design is used frequently because it makes it easy to add widgets with extra content in a content management system like WordPress or Joomla. But the second column does get pushed to the bottom of the page – becoming a single column design – for mobile users. Therefore, most two-column designs are only good for desktop usage and occasionally a tablet in a landscape orientation.

The single column design can look modern and fresh. It lacks options to place advertisements and opt-in boxes in the sidebar, but these can be floated over the right side of a page. Alternatively, positioning within the page allows many of these elements to be right-aligned so they are not lost entirely.

Design Choices May Affect Adverting Revenue Models

Bear in mind that when choosing a single column design, blogs may find it difficult to get approved for advertising networks like MediaVine or AdThrive which often require a sidebar for ad placement. These networks support Google Ads, but also include ads from other networks such as Media.net, which often results in higher earnings. It’s a good idea to verify whether a two-column design must be retained for this purpose before creating (or selecting) a single column design for a client’s site.

Mobile-ready Websites

For the typical website, over 50{b96076133fe2223c8d05470fe9428b3312879515b4c32f98bade61cbd4879fe1} of visitors access the site on a smartphone or tablet. While they may also open the site on their desktop PC at work or a laptop at home, sites must be optimized to display well on virtually any display size. To do that, a template or theme must be responsive.

A responsive design adjusts its appearance and features based on the size of the screen. Previously, web design was based on an adaptive design that stretched columns or condensed them as needed. But this solution breaks down when using a small-screen device where columns and copy become too small to be legible.

Responsive design creates a different layout entirely for smaller screen sizes even when the display resolution is high. This accounts for Full HD 1080p and 4K Ultra HD smartphones that have high-resolution screens, but they still fit into the palm of your hand. A different layout is needed to handle smaller displays, even higher resolution ones. Everything is mobile these days.

Speed Matters

The time for a website to load matters enormously to retain website visitors and not have then click away. When a page takes longer than 2-3 seconds to load, you’re in trouble. Don’t overload a site with graphically-heavy images or video, and make sure that they’re set to load after the main content. You can do this in WordPress by using a lazy loading plugin to prevent images and video from loading until after the content.

When using the JavaScript programming language, use asynchronous JavaScript to have it load scripts later as this can slow down the display of the first content on the page. Google Analytics and other elements can be delayed until the end to improve the speed that the page shows in the browser window.

Use a speed testing service like GT Metrix to test loading times for your template or theme. It will give you tips on how to optimize the website or page to speed it up. Once that’s done, you should also consider what web hosting meets your needs.

Is All Web Hosting Identical?

Web hosting is not identical. Some hosts are so cheap that they cannot survive and disappear for a month or two later. It’s best to go with a respectable web host such as HostPresto.com that charges a sensible amount. This way, they can afford quality web servers, qualified network engineers, and support personnel to manage them.

Also, consider what type of web hosting your site requires. The typical hosting packages are:

  • Shared hosting
  • VPS hosting
  • Cloud hosting
  • Dedicated hosting

Shared hosting supports hundreds of websites on a single web server. VPS hosting offers better speed because fewer sites are hosted on the server. Cloud hosting can scale up depending on traffic demand. Dedicated servers are single servers just for your rental and only your sites host on them; they are for serious demands, but the server must stay up otherwise all your sites will go down.

Choosing the right web hosting is often the difference between a fast-loading site and one that is lagging behind, all other factors being equal.

When you want your website to do the best, adhering to good web design principals helps to avoid common issues. Web design now incorporates many different aspects to get the results required. However, when following sensible guidelines, it’s possible to get a great outcome for visitors and the site owner alike.

Categories
Web Hosting

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Pros and Cons

When you are building a website it is quite the undertaking. You are building a new piece of the online real estate. This can be very exciting but sometimes people also find it scary. If you are worried about which platform you should use for your website, we are going to go over the pros and cons of Squarespace and WordPress.

How Flexible Is It?

If you are a web developer that wants to have a lot of options, you’ve probably looked into WordPress and noticed that there are thousands of plugins available for you to install on your site for just about any need that you have. Some of them are free and some of them are paid. Anyone is able to create plugins for WordPress since it is a free and open source software so this allows you to have a great deal of flexibility which many would consider a pro. On the other hand, the ability for anyone to create plugins is a con since there is no one to check to make sure that these plugins are of a high caliber.

When you look at Squarespace, it is not an open source software and it is not free. You will have to work with what is within their space and only their team of in-house developers is able to add features to their platform. You may not like the lack of flexibility, but you can be sure that everything has been properly tested before it comes out to the end user.

Is It Easy to Use?

Whether you are a beginner or you are an expert, it is still nice when a platform is easy to use. WordPress can be easy to use, but there are still some technical parts to it and a learning curve. There are a lot of great tutorials that are available and with the amazing community support, you may find you want to switch from squarespace to WordPress.

If you need to make things easy on yourself with WordPress, you can get a WordPress page builder plugin. There are different ones that will allow you to have the drag and drop frontend editing mode much like what you would see on Squarespace. On Squarespace that is something that is included. It is easy to use but still, there is a lot of flexibility that has been lost.

Do You Have Good Support?

If you are using WordPress, you are unlikely to get a lot of support from WordPress, but there are many different forums, videos, and community members that are more than happy to help each other out through the various challenges that happen. The chances are that whatever problem you are facing, you can go to Google and find a list of answers that will allow you to get what you need to fix the site and continue on about your day.

Squarespace, on the other hand, has vowed to give you customer support within one hour after you’ve requested it. If you feel like you are going to need a lot of handholding, you might want to go with Squarespace.

What Kind of Maintenance Is Required?

If you are worried that you aren’t going to be able to take care of maintenance with your sites, you should know that there isn’t a lot to do with either one of these platforms. The WordPress platform is being updated regularly whenever a fix is needed which is good, but it also could be a problem for some of the plugins or the theme that you have installed. Make sure to keep a check if you are using WordPress.

Squarespace is updated only through the development team and you won’t have to do the updates yourself so there is nothing to worry about. Complete newbies might find Squarespace to be a safer place to play, but if you want to be able to create a website that is SEO friendly and easy to customize, you are likely to want to go with the WordPress CMS.

What’s This Going to Cost?

While the WordPress software is free, you still have to pay for the hosting for your site so that you can have the site up. Depending on what your hosting package is, that could be anywhere from $3, $149 and up.

When you use Squarespace, you are able to have options to look into anywhere from $16 to $46. Their customer support is very good so if having access to their 24/7 support is helpful when you are building your website.

In the long run, you are going to have to pay around the same amount for WordPress as you are for Squarespace, it is just going to come out in different ways. You have to figure out which of the platforms is the best for you and go for it.

Conclusion

If you want to have more control over your site and be able to build out what you want without having to worry about someone looking in on you then WordPress might be the ideal option for you. On the other hand, if you need someone looking in on you and you to want 24/7 support then Squarespace might be the option that you want to go with. Weigh the pros and cons and decide which one helps you get to your goals fastest.

Was this article helpful and informative? Leave us a comment with your thoughts in the section below.

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Web Hosting

How to Start a Website for Under $200 in 2018

With websites and website builders being much more common these days, the cost to start a website isn’t as steep as it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, if you go and hire a web designer and web developers, you could be paying out thousands of dollars, but if you do it on your own and follow the advice in this article, you can get a website up and running for less than $200.

Making Sure Your Budget & Expectations Line-Up

Before you run out and purchase access to a website builder, you need to make sure that your budget and your expectations line up. If you want a $5,000 website for $200, unless you learn to code and are able to customize your site like a pro, that might not happen. Instead, you should shoot for having a website that is attractive and provides a good user experience for the money you’ve put out.

If you aren’t tech savvy, being able to use drag and drop editors is one of the ways that you can even the playing field. Even if you don’t know how to code, that won’t keep you from having an awesome website these days. There are some website designers that only use drag and drop and use no code so you’re in good company and they get paid to build sites. WordPress developers are the ones that use code most but other people are moving away from it with these drags and drop abilities.

Before you move on to how you can start your site, you need to think about why your budget is where it is and if you are going to have more money to put into your site at a later date. It is important to know where you are starting, but you should also figure out where you are going to progress to as well.

Options for Creating Your Site for Less Than $200

When you are on a shoestring budget, every penny counts and when you are trying to market on a shoestring budget, that can be even more challenging. Marketing with your website can be one of the best ways to get your message out without spending a fortune.

There are plenty of websites that will allow you to build your website on their platform without much of an investment and some even allow you to operate at the free level for as long as you want. Some of those options are Wix, Weebly, Jimdo, GoDaddy, and WordPress.

While all of those are good options, we like WordPress the most since it has more capabilities and allows you to be able to customize your site, add plugins and anything else that you see fit. Some of the other platforms are more limited. If you don’t plan on growing and building a bigger site, they will work fine but if you plan on expanding and needing more customization, WordPress.org is the best way to go.

Domain & Hosting

If you decide that you want to go with WordPress.org for your CMS, you are able to use it for free but you do need to get your domain and hosting.

Your domain is how you get to your website and your hosting is where your website lives on the internet. You can get a service that will both register a domain for you and serve your website or you can use different services to do each of these things separately.

Some popular domain and hosting options are GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Hostgator. You can get a domain around $15 a year and hosting for around $10 a month.

Themes & Customization

When you have a WordPress site, you are able to customize the look of your site with themes. Themes are like skins for your website and allow it to take on different looks and functions. There are thousands of free themes available online (about 40,000) for free and even more paid themes available for you.

Many people wonder if it is worth it to pay for a WordPress theme or how much money they should put out for a theme. If you see a theme that you want and would fit your site, you have to make a decision whether you think it is valuable enough to you or if it is going to eat up too much of your $200 budget.

Creating the Best User Experience

Having a great website is all about creating a great user experience. When people come to your website, you want them to enjoy their time there, learn and convert to whatever goal that you have whether that be opt-ins, sales or another action that you have set.

Even when you are building a website for under $200 you can make sure that your visitor has a great experience on your site. If you have money left over after you’ve bought the essentials, you can look for other plugins that are going to help your site operate better and give you more function for what you need. The sky is the limit with WordPress.

Conclusion

Creating a website for your business is necessary and with a great website being within your reach for less than $200, the only thing that is holding you back is not taking action. Building your website might seem a little scary, but if you get started, you are going to see that your site starts to take shape right in front of your eyes.

Was this article helpful and informative? Leave us a comment with your thoughts in the section below.

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Application

Challenges regarding Web Application Development

The emergence of the internet and information technology has changed human life. An individual’s day is incomplete without using any website or mobile application. There are many web application that provides support to human life and help in communication and improvement of knowledge.

Every company is trying to enlarge their market by offering on various online services which are possible only through web development or web application development. The number of web application development companies has also multiplied significantly as most of the firms outsource the task of professional web developers. But there are many challenges that these organizations face while initiating the process of web application development.

1. Maintaining Simplicity:

All the companies are trying to produce the application that attracts more and more customers, therefore more emphasis is given to the design and layout of the web page. But there is cut-throat competition in the market and if one’s web page is attractive but the people visiting the site face specific problems while accessing it like the web page then may affect the client firm adversely. Hence, keeping the web interface simply is crucial, which allows people to access the website from any given device or platform.

2. Security:

An individual always hesitates to provide personal information on the internet as data can be misused. But certain websites require unique identification of their customers which can only be obtained with the help of personal information. Therefore, the top web application developers focus mainly on the safety of their customers’ data from hackers and different malware websites, so that the customer feel protected while entering specific data.

3. Performance:

There are billions of people over the internet, and every one of them is using a specific website or application. This is where the issue of trafficking can be experienced. Trafficking is a phenomenon where multiple users access a website at the same time to execute a similar task. Programmers have to mainly deal with this problem as it affects the performance of the website. It slows down the server, in turn, making people wait while a page is being loaded. This factor may adversely affect the reputation and profit returns of the concerned organization drastically.

4. Team Management:

A single individual cannot perform web development. It requires a large number of people working together with coordination and harmony. Managing a team as a leader is one of the most significant challenges as a team includes different types of people belonging to different fields of study and environment with different needs. Retaining the same people in the tech team is quite essential as they are the only one who knows the complete structure of the web design and how the application responds to the different situation.

There are many web developers engaged in overcoming these situations and helping companies to design a flawless web application that can spread their reach and boost their sales in the long run.