Tag Archives: Web development

Minimalism in Web Design: 10 Principles for Success

Leave a reply

“Less is more” is the way of the world right now. So why should the realm of web design be left behind in that?

However, despite being a raging trend in the world of digital marketing, implementation of minimalism in web designing is not the most straightforward task to pull off. It is not only coming up with a simple design and create clean-cut graphics, but much more than that. It requires the skill and experience to be able to speak as much needed about the company and its brand with as little as possible, making no compromises whatsoever.

Here are ten principles of minimal web design, which are crucial to striking a balance between underdoing or overdoing a particular project.

1. Inclusion of white space

Using white space adequately and intelligently is one of the foremost skills to master if one wishes to create attractive websites. Also known as negative space, it means the total blank area in a page that is devoid of any text, images, buttons, or any other element. Appropriate inclusion of white space helps to direct the viewer’s attention to the necessary parts and bring about a soothing, balanced effect on the eyes.

2. Investment in simple textures

Textures in web designing refer to the usage of different additional formattings such as shadows, highlights, embossing, glossing, gradients, and 3D effects. While some of it is needed depending on the content of the website, going overboard with textures can backfire if you are hoping for a minimalistic website.

3. Experiment with fonts

Since minimalism leaves minimal scope to indulge in much experimentation, one can try it out with the fonts. The style and size of fonts are an excellent opportunity to go creative with the design. The font style will most certainly depend on the nature of the brand, although Sans Serif fonts are the most widely used ones for minimal effects. When it comes to font size, it can be used to draw attention to the right words and establish hierarchy, as well as contribute towards mobile optimization of the website.

4. Usage of color blocking

Putting too many shades together wholly defeats the purpose of minimalism. The best way to infuse hue to the webpages is by color blocking. In this, instead of going for too much spectrum, only two or three contrasting shades are chosen and used in solid blocks of overlapping monotone to be extraordinarily straightforward and in-your-face.

5. Specific labeling of menus

The users need to have a concise idea of which button will lead them to where and for that, naming the menus and links only yet appropriately is very important. It would be unfortunate if the website loses out on traffic simply because the user could not decipher the purpose of the different drop downs and lists.

6. Using the right images

Images are an essential part of any webpage. Starting from the head banner right down to product or service demonstrations, the pictures present on the website can make or break its reputation. If you are going for minimalistic designing, the images must be in line and consistent with the idea. They need to be bright and deliver the message of your brand, but devoid of too many elements or crowding of colors.

7. Focus on a single point

This is especially applicable to the home page of a website, which is the front door for the business. In minimalism, it is highly recommended to avoid cramming the introductory page with information and keep it focused on a sole, simple focal point. It can be the brand logo or tagline, or it can be any other piece of element relevant to the website.

8. Put in creative elements

Staying within the limits that minimalism allows, creativity and aesthetics can be infused into the graphics in the form of geometrical shapes, abstract elements, quirky objects – the options are endless.

9. Leave out all extra details

The cornerstone of minimalism is to know which elements a website can do without and show the courage to leave them out. There will be a lot of great content suitable for inclusion, but not all of them need to be up there for the sake of drawing the user’s attention.

10. Proper alignment of content

Last but not least, placing the right element in the right place adds tremendously to the idea of minimalistic web design. The best offerings should be on top in the biggest and brightest fonts, images and texts should complement each other perfectly, and there are many more such simple aspects of aligning the content correctly which can do wonder for a website.

The concept of minimalism is essential in any excellent contemporary designing of a website. The idea is to emphasize on a simplistic yet practical look, the visual appeal of which to the users depend on the usage of subtlety and nuance. At the very core of the minimalist web, designing is making the content on the webpages easily consumable to the viewers.

10 Critical SEO Checklist Items for Website Design & Development

Leave a reply
SEO

The website developer may not be as knowledgeable as an SEO expert when it comes to creating a website that does well in the search engine. Although website development needs a set of technical skills, many different factors should be implemented to make your website SEO friendly. The only way you can ensure that you have incorporated the best SEO practices for your website is to follow a standard checklist. These points are essential SEO recommendations that a newly developed website must have from an SEO perspective.

Mentioned below are the 10 critical SEO checklist items for website design & development.

Checklist #1: Am I Building a Mobile Friendly Website?

The first thing the developers should keep in mind is that the site should perform well in all mobile devices. When it comes to design a mobile-friendly website, developers mainly consider following standard development techniques by using a responsive CSS stylesheet. However, some developers prefer to build a separate mobile subdomain. Although there is nothing wrong in creating a subdomain for the mobile version of your website, it is undoubtedly going to make your SEO difficult. This is because Google will consider the mobile subdomain as a separate web property, which will make specific SEO tasks more difficult.

Checklist #2: Is My Robots.txt File Correct?

There are times when the developer feels it necessary to block a specific part of the website or even the entire domain before it goes online. Usually, this is done by using a disallow command in the robots.txt file. This is normal, but the problem arrives when the developers forget to remove the disallow command even after when the site becomes live. It is essential to upload a correct robot.txt file once the site is live. The developer should always make sure that there is no disallow directive in the robots.txt site unless the client purposively asks the same. Using a Disallow: / command in the robots.txt means you are telling search engines not to crawl your website, which can be a significant mistake in SEO.

Checklist #3: Am I Using Correct HTML?

Sometimes, common HTML errors can become a significant problem regarding the site’s average loading speed and result in the poor rendering of the website on various platforms. Since Google now considers site loading speed as one of the most common ranking factors, having a slow site causes issues with site performance regarding keyword ranking. It is recommended that your website uses only W3C valid code. Although W3C validation is not mandatory for classification, it can indirectly affect your keyword ranking. Better coding can also help Google understand your website structure better and improves user experience.

Checklist #4: Am I Optimizing the Images Correctly?

Image optimization is one of the most common factors when it comes to improving your site’s average loading speed and is an important SEO parameter. You may use a high-quality massive image to give a stunning look to your website, but it increases the load time of the website. There is no harm in using a high-quality image on your site if the image is compressed correctly. Image compression guarantees that the quality of the image remains the same, but the image becomes lighter.

Checklist#5: Do the Images Contain Alt Attributes?

Image alt attribution is another essential part of image optimization. Alt attribution is used to tell the search engines about the context of the image. It is necessary to use the best keywords as image Alt tags to get the most of SEO benefits.

Checklist#6: Is the Analytic Code Implemented?

Analytic tracking code is another important factor regarding website SEO. It is also essential that the developer adds properly search console and Google Analytic code to check the health and track the traffic of the website. Apart from the Google search console and Analytic tool, you can use many other tools that are available online.

Checklist #7: Is the Server Using GZip Compression?

GZip compression is an essential element that lets the server compress files for faster network transfers. This type of compression makes sure that your web server provides smaller file sizes, which load faster for your website users. Enabling GZip compression is standard practice and can be considered an important SEO Checklist Item for Website Design & Development.

Checklist #8: Did I Upload a Sitemap.xml?

A sitemap is important for SEO as it tells search boats how to crawl a website easily. Sitemap file contains all the URLs of the website, and this is the most important thing that search engine crawler first sees in the website. The website crawling process becomes more comfortable when you if you put all your website links in one destination i.e., XML sitemap.

Checklist #9: Have I Fixed the Redirection Issue?

If overlooked by the site developer, there could be lots of redirection errors on a website. Some of the common redirection errors are 301, 302, 404, and many more. The best you can do in this regard is to review these issues by using an online tool and ask the developer to fix the same on a priority basis.

Checklist #10: Am I using Meta Title and Description?

Perhaps, the most important tags that affect your site’s SEO directly are the Meta Title and Meta Description tags. Title tags are important as it tells the search engine what your site is about. The Meta Title and Meta Description also appear in the search engine result page, so it’s very much important to optimize the same.

How choosing PHP can be advantageous than other languages

Leave a reply
PHP

At present, the developers have a lot of options to create applications or various scripting languages for building websites and applications like ASP, CGI, Perl and PHP. Scrutinizing various websites we can see the popularity of PHP and is preferred by most of the developers as a scripting language. While some of the famous social websites like Facebook used PHP.

Let’s check out some of the reasons for the wide popularity of PHP.

Uncomplicated & Easy to Grab
PHP is simple and you can learn it easily. New developers also find it easy to grasp it and the reason is its similarity with C and Java to some extent. Moreover, developers are generally made acquainted with PHP as the primary scripting language. The simplicity of the scripting language makes it the most used for various website and app creation.

Better support
For newbies, PHP is easy to learn. It is easy to consult the experts for guidance and even find the reference online if required. It is an open source and extensive use makes use of it in several blogs, forums and PDFs that have vital discussions on the issues that can be experienced while working with PHP coding. Just going through the discussions can give the solutions to the problems.

Flexibility & Freedom
The open source enables to implement any text editor for coding including Emacs, jEdit, Notebook++ and more. It even facilitates you better to create a unique or new app. The exclusive scripting language is suitable with multiple platforms; it is not only limited to OS while you can use it on Linux, OSX, Windows and many more.

Integration
PHP can be implemented in multiple websites and web applications. It can be easily integrated with Memcache, MongoDB and Pusher. Various companies like IT, Banking, healthcare and hospitality sectors use PHP application for making the app or website simple to understand.

Scalability
In the digital or IT world the scalability is a primary requisite. The way “PHP” has been programmed it enables you to increase or enhance the cluster size by adding servers. It facilitates the platform to grow more.

Customized Development
Customization is an indispensable requirement and a PHP developed websites can be easily customized to a greater extent than the sites created by using other scripting languages. Getting the desired look and feel for your website while developing it using PHP. It offers high flexibility to customization of the website.

Web development – steps to follow for improving online sales

2 Replies
web development

Some of the entrepreneurs don’t realize that for an online shop the design and development part has eminence. Starting from the landing page, home page, the CTA or the shopping cart impacts the sales director. The smallest aspect in the designing or development part can increase or decrease the conversion rates. Specially, for e-commerce websites, you have to always mind the buyers perspective while building it. It’s understood that you want an unhindered shopping process but a lot of the online shop fail to follow this process what they preach.

The points that can help the viewers to turn to customers which can remarkably improve the sales through web design and web development techniques.:

Clarity of the shopping cart
When a customer adds an item in the cart it must actually get registered. So, on the page near the cart, it must show the number of items added to it which will help the customer to keep a check on the list of buying and proceeding and the other information like check-out should also be clearly visible. You can, of course, make it pop or scroll with the bright color tone from rest of the page which will make the cart clear.

Keep the product page clutter free
The design of your product page is most essential and the product name, a description must be mentioned properly. Have you thought how important is the testimonial is? Where should it be placed on the page? The product reviews are of utmost importance as it influences the visitors, they have the right to know what are they investing their money. Keeping the review, product description at the end of the page can be useful.

Proper navigation
A long drop down or hidden menu can simply confuse the customer or frustrate the shopper. Clear navigation without any hidden elements is much more liked by the visitors. Use hover or fly out menu which is much makes it easy for them to understand. No need to show much of artistry in this section. Employ bread crumbs so that they can come back to the previous page smoothly. The continue shopping button is also helpful.

Avoid putting extra elements on the checking-out page
Provide proper checking-out process and specifically, it should give the clear path to it. Avoid the sidebar and shop more elements in this part. Single-page check-out processed always leads to more conversion it’s a crucial place in deciding whether the sale is happening or not. This can also interest the customers to long time customers.

Some factors to consider for effective web development

1 Reply
web development

At present web is getting more and more prominence in our regular lives. For every smaller or big work we use or take the help of it. Like for shopping, paying bills, banking needs, knowing movie review, booking tickets and so on. The need for advanced web development is increasing and developers have a wide scope to make the website user-friendly.

Every website has its own requirements according to the business type and audience preference. As its the audience who will make your online presence successful. So you have to design and develop a website as per the trends. Even if you have a well-performing site it needs to be updated as the newly emerging ones have the latest suiting features that can surpass your website business.

Let have a glance on the recent factors that can help your web development to be among the preferred websites.:

Artificial intelligence:
While you think of the recent most techniques in the field of technology it’s AI artificial intelligence that is getting significant. Moreover, it actually serves the purpose too. A Huge betterment has been done in this aspect. AlphaGo the program created by Google beat the popular and appropriate Go player. Various famous companies like Microsoft, Google has become familiar with the use of this technical by the people. AI is already being used in many of the bigger applications to better the search engines. For example Google.

Virtual reality:
The next factor worth mentioning while taking about the future techniques or technology is Virtual Reality (VR). This advancing trend has even started swiping the gaming industry. The most popular companies like Mozilla, Google are already working on their APIs to support the VR technique in the transition period in the web. We can expect more use of VR technology as it advanced for being more convenient for use.

Yarn package manager:
Package managers are unbelievably favorite tools, specifically for the users who use frontend JavaScript. These effective tools make convenient for the developers to manage all the application like installing updates, configure along with uninstalling code modules with the applications. This is done by communicating to the registry of code modules and decide the other depending code modules they are there generally.

The professional web development companies are all aware of the advanced trends and offer you the best design and development for gaining more popularity.

The upcoming Web development trends for 2017

1 Reply
Web Development

Similar to any other growing sector where aesthetics have a decisive part in the completion of the project, the trends in the domain of web development keeps on updating for the betterment. As the present year coming to an end let us try to have a wide look on the trends that will be continuing in 2017.

The predictable changes and that techniques in the web development world that claim to prevail through the coming also.

Use of one div as blocks:
If Different blocks are used, it can either be symmetrical or lopsided. And as per the size is concerned it is set according to the importance or the impact it has in marketing. These modules can also be used in other pages than homepage. Responsive design is of utter importance while choosing the appropriate layout.

Single Screen design: A single screen design that looks simple look and somewhat reciprocates the display of a television on in a style of a magazine is in great demand. Like the use of her images that bid in size and can be said to be used as the backdrop of the website. When teamed with fascinating images creates a stunning result. Minimalism keeps on drawing the attention of viewers and the web developers as it has the substance of modernity. And the clarity it provides to the website serves as a signature.

Multiple synchronous screens design:
Employing a vertical divide that differentiates the screen in halves is the preferred style for 2017. This implies that the website contains two different things of same significance and the split enables you to have selection from the two. On the contrary your business may require to its products to be advertised on a side and display relevant images for it, or may be some text and media file on the other section of the split.

Material design:
Bigger backgrounds give a defined look to the selected theme for the website. As minimalism is the trend using those components with an interactive background in the center can be interesting for the viewers. The whole result should be a great amalgamation of different and engaging effects that can be paired with relevance.

Single Scrolling Sites:
Creating a good mobile friendly website can be most impactful with the story-line approach. So most of the designer resort to long and single page long scrolling websites in place of creating links with other pages in the navigation. It is being accepted by most of the viewers and it is adapted by the designers in long scrolling for homepages mostly to give the website an elegant display. This also creates room for addition of smart animations and other visually attractive elements for a best scrolling effectively.

Use of bigger fonts:
Implementing large fonts stresses your point. Moreover, it was significantly used factor in the last years and we can see on many websites have less words but in large fonts for emphasizing the significance.