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Website Maintenance : Concept and Importance

The concept 

Your website is reflection of your business online, it represents what your brand stands for! Being a part of global platform, users’ perception for your brand would majorly get resonated from your website. Therefore, maintaining a website holds a lot of importance for it is going to offer real time service to the users. It will let user comprehend what your brand actually stand for at the very moment. Maintaining your website would help you attract and retain consumers for your brand. It further facilitates in wielding the scope of your website that can help you in preserving your search engine rankings.

• Key to Progress for An Online Business

  

The world of web is ever changing and the technological practices are evolving every second hour. In order to let people find you on web or to stay in the top searches of the search engines it is important that you always  remain updated. Website maintenance can help in progressing businesses through bringing in the latest state of technology, managing the website and making it more user friendly. 

A well maintained website for being relevant to user seeks major user attention, being updated with all the latest features increases the site’s credibility and decreases the risk of technical failures. All these benefits instigates positive effect on search engines and thus promotes profits in business. 

Importance of Maintaining a Website 

Improved User Experience – Success don’t come easy, it takes a lot of patience, consistency in efforts and lot of hard work. Your website could have been the best version when launched and could even be getting you the right amount of business but a simple update say a plugin can add more kink in the process. Sometimes, there are additions that are not made in the initial phase can now be added for better performance. 

Secure Your Website – Cyber crime is common these days and many a times we see websites getting hacked or facing a lot of other security issues. In such a scenario, maintaining the website provide you an upper hand and protects your website from online thefts. Be it themes to plugins, updates are often executed to patch security loopholes. If a website is not timely updated it becomes vulnerable to web thefts including website hacking, malware and to the viruses. 

Saves The Cost – Maintaining website is like getting timely service for your car in order to prevent any major fallout that causes to repair the part from scratch or engine in future. Timely maintaining your website would help you provides browser support, review your tags, upgrades the technical aspects and even works on bug fixing. Additionally, it helps in keeping your site running smoothly so you can make money without any unwanted interruptions.

The Bottom Line 

Website maintenance is requisite for a smooth functioning and profit generating website. The great benefits of the maintenance process often outweigh the little money it takes as the same is going to make breaking affect on profit margin.

Significance of UX Design for a Website

Earlier, designing the website was all about getting an appealing design, smooth accessibility and an easy to use format. However, today designers focus on providing memorable user experience through the websites involving UX designs, in other words User Experience Designs. UX design is crucial for a great user experience involving access to latest technology features and the design that invites user over and over again. 

Frank Chimero explained it right through a quote that says – “People ignore designs that ignore people”! Therefore, it is important to consider users’ need in order to achieve success for your website.

UX Design – The Definition

UX is basically how a person feels when interfacing the website or any other web application, software etc. The interaction that human does 

with a system is what we call a user experience(UX). A good UX design is about making technology more user friendly and accessible to enhance users’ experience with the design. UX is crucial to a website as it helps in engaging consumers towards the platform. Keeping the data memorable would help you grab loyal customers for your brand and products.

The major reason to include UX features to an online application is to simplify user journey getting rid of all the necessary elements.

UX Design – The Significance

Modern technological scenario have become so competitive and elusive  that even the most creative and intuitive designs don’t make an impact. UX design plays rather major role in success of a web application as it helps in making the first positive impression on the online users. In other words ‘The better the interaction of a website with the user, the more trust user will have on the brand’. 

UX design is not just about aesthetics, its about usability. Its about lasting human interaction, and if a website is not fulfilling the purpose, then it still needs work. 

What Makes a great UX Design : The Components

Getting the perfect UX oriented design for a website is a task in itself. It requires better understanding of the users on web, technological aspects and the designing patterns that are followed on web. Sometimes, designers find it hard to translate into user centric design even after being aware of all the UX elements. Thus, to put it simple, here are the things you should do to achieve a successful UX design –

• Design keeping in mind users’ feedback and specification collected over web.
• Avoid cognitive load, add more personal touch for the design
• Make sure that the design is easy to access for the users
• The design should have scope for users 

Summing Up

UX design plays an important role in success of any business online. However, its the user’s reaction and satisfaction that make UX design a winner. It is important that a website is easy to navigate and is accessible in anyway to be able to grab user attention for a business. If a user goes through your website and find a number of hitches or witness any usability issues with the design then the chances are that you will lose a probable consumer for your brand. Hence, UX design is an essential element for the development of any website.

Parallax Scrolling vs Infinite Scrolling

For a website, its the design that holds the foremost importance followed by coding and other functional aspects. An appealing website design can help you grab maximum user attention and make them stay long enough to draw its benefits for the business. While there are a lot of website designing aspects that constitutes for an impressive interface, a delightful scrolling experience certainly improves the user experience with the website. Talking about the website scrolling patterns, the two major types that are in trend these days includes – parallax scrolling and infinite scrolling. In this blog we are going to discuss about the two most trending scrolling techniques for a website and fathom the purpose they serve.

Parallax Scrolling

Parallax is more structured scrolling technique with the content being  prearranged is applied in most of the website these days. As the users scroll up and down through the website the content of the background moves independently at different speed than the content on the foreground. Parallax effect creates the illusion of depth and immersion into the content just like the three dimensional effect while the user scrolls through the website.

Noticeable Features

Parallax scrolling helps makes any website more dynamic and interactive. However, the scrolling type goes well with websites with finite amount of content that although integrated in a simple way would turn into something more persuasive. It can be used with a variety of content including texts, images, graphics and even animations. Also, the type of scrolling solution does not allows you to disperse content. Once the parallax scrolling is implement to the website, it is difficult to modify it. There is no or little SEO value with parallax and user behavior is difficult to track via website analytics software. 

Additionally, the parallax effect is more creative when it comes to scrolling, especially when crafted with animations provides the most memorable experience. The style lends the most confirming storytelling experience attracting user attention and stimulating with better visuals.

Infinite Scrolling

Running successfully on social media sites such as twitter, infinite scrolling technique suits the websites with large content that enable users to conduct quick search. As the user scrolls from up to down the content loads continuously eliminating the need to mark different pages. Although, the scrolling technique is quite engaging for users, it does not suit every website.  It works great for single page website with the content worth few turns, like in case of image galleries. With infinite scrolling technique user can scroll till reached to the relevant piece of content. 

Noticeable Features 

The endless scrolling feature in infinite scrolling would work best for E-commerce websites for that would make it easier to find the type of food user is looking for more quickly, however it is not recommended for goal oriented website where users visit while looking for specific tasks. Moreover,  it is very difficult to get back to the earlier found item on an extremely long page once you scroll down the long segment. 

While infinite scrolling may sound exciting for being able to reduce the need for clicking while browsing content, it is important to keep in mind that not every user has the same outlook. Some of them might feel too overwhelmed with the amount of never ending choices or simply because of not being able to click anything, especially people who need specific information and expect the content to be classified as per their relevance. 

Conclusion

While infinite scrolling serves the purpose of users who are there with the mindset of having little exploration and discovery, parallax scrolling offer user more synchronized and formatted experience with the content. Both of them have their specific usage depending upon the type of website it is and the kind of users it target. There are equal opportunities and limitations attached with each one of them, its just the matter of choice and work!

Mastering The Art of Web Development

In the age of world wide web, web development is one of the major professions to profess. Web developers are responsible for building, designing and implementing internet websites. From aesthetic properties to technical considerations everything related to the website is looked after by a web developer. One of the most challenging part of the job is to stay updated with the constantly emerging technology and the functional aspects of a website. Web developers are required to be equipped with the variety of programming languages and web technologies in order to provide best of their efforts. However, the urge to stay updated with the constantly evolving aspects of web development is what this blog is all about. Given below are some of the ways of how one can master the art of web development. The step would also help an amateur who wants to learns on how to inhibit the web development art as a newbie.

Developing a Specialization – Developing a website is complex job, While it certainly requires you to learn coding languages independently, web development is more than usual set of codes. One needs to be proficient with software programs which includes java script frameworks, version control CSS. Before starting with the web development process it is wise to get an understanding of web development process on the whole and the type that will work for you for better understanding. These include interface design, mobile application development or front-end development etc.

Learning and Training – While there is no specific career path or degree required to become a web developer, it certainly requires you to get formal education that can get you the perspective on which a web developer work. Web development is definitely more than just coding. It is important to get exposed to the situations in a project that encourages critical thinking and require problem solving. There are various short-term, intensive training options available for students to gain professional coding skills improving the chances of having successful career. 

Time to Acquire Technical Skills – Although having an organized eduction skills can get you some of the great job opportunities, it is important to have concrete skills for a successful web developer. Companies want professional web development agency who can build websites with their creative and intuitive skills and not someone who just learned it theoretically. They want to work with someone who can do the job practically, how and where are secondary if you are capable of doing it effectively. There are three core components in programming -HTML, CSS and JavaScript. CSS and CSS frameworks such as Backbone, Bootstrap and Foundation are the pother major requirements for an efficient web developer. Lastly, there are back end languages such as Ruby, Java, PHP and tools including Oracle and SQL Server that a must know to be a proficient developer. 

Practice Coding – Web development is not just a profession it is a skill that gets better through practicing. Practice coding and demonstrate your body of work through GitHub account. Git help prepare developers for managing complicated site and applications. Not just that, it can also help you to get the attention of employers who can work for their esteemed projects.  

Time to Set Your Online Project – Employers are not just looking for professionals, they are looking for professionals who can get them results!   Learning and training in any professional field is crucial and so is launching your own project. After all, that is what going to help you build your resume and being liked by the employers.  

Digital Marketing 2019: A Year Full Of noticeable Discoveries

Digital Marketing is undisputedly the most powerful means of advancing success to any online business. Certainly, its the quality of your products and services which is actually going to speak for your brand, digital marketing lends you the way to initially introduce your brand into consumers life for being able to speak for itself over the time. Besides, with the increasing competition in market, there is even more need to advertise  or market in order to grab required attention for the brand. 

Seeking the importance of internet marketing for online business, a lot of technological advancement are introduced every year. Last year was full of some of major innovations in digital marketing, 2019 seems to be even more promising. Let us check out some of the major discoveries in the world of internet marketing for the year 2019.

1. Omni-Channel Marketing – Even though Multi-Channel marketing was doing good, it didn’t serve the entire purpose that led to the development of Omni-channel marketing. Omni-channel marketing is more systematic approach with the intent of creating more unified communication system. The form of marketing offers to have consistent communication process to prospects and customers across all channels including social media, through emails, chats, mobile phones or even through the store. The same will helps you keep a track of the prospect’s interactions via different channels. The same would make consumers feel that you care for them and eventually it turn them into sales qualified lead.
2. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence – Artificial intelligence is another major initiation making its way in the marketing world working through customer segmentation, retargeting, push notifications, click tracking and through a lot of possible combinations. Using AI and machine learning when personalized and equipped in business can help you achieve your business goals and increase the sales lead.
3. Chatbots – Interaction with consumers or communicating about the brand in public is a major part of any business.

   Going by the famous quote “ you are what you share” clearly conveys the importance of communication in business with the view to market your product and services. While social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram are the leading platforms for advertising these days, they alone are not enough. This is what led to the introduction of chatbots on the websites. Chatbots helps in interacting with the website visitors and serve to their queries in the best way possible. Additionally, the introduction of artificial intelligence have further improved these chatbots through adding the advance customer support system representing the business just like a human. 

4. Personalization – Personalized marketing is another essential apart of modern marketing techniques. While consumers are flooded with countless brand messages everyday from companies trying to win over each other, personalization can help you cut through the noise. Personalizing is a process of tailoring your marketing messages to make it more specific for an individual or a group. For example, you can send personalized emails to your target audience in order to grab their interest for your brand. 
5. Video Marketing – The increasing usage of smart phones and the online platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, Facebook Live have made videos the leading trend among consumers. Utilizing the trend for advertising your business would help you target your audience in a better way. Live videos are very popular among online users can help you draw maximum attention for your brand. You can make live videos while launching your new product or for any industry related event in order to grab and hold the consumers attention and in the process you can interest them for your brand. 

The closure

2019 is definitely the year for the evolution of some major digital marketing trends. All these evolutions are the clear example of the transforming and expanding algorithms in online marketing. Although the above mentioned innovations are the big winners of the changing algorithms in digital marketing, there is definitely more to look forward in this year.

5 Future Empowering Trends in E-commerce Industry

World wide web has revolutionized the way E-commerce businesses operate these days. The traditional process of buying and selling of products and services is now processed through websites. These websites act as online stores that offers a lot of convenience to shop. These can be accessed 24*7 without having to make much effort. Not just that, there are a lot of online shopping trends that are being introduced over the last decade to make the whole E-commerce concept even more effective. 

These includes increase in online marketplaces, intervention of mobile phone for online shopping, target consumers via digital marketing, and the use of computing technology to improve consumer shopping experiences. Apart from that, there are a lot more trends that are invented everyday with the view to transform the future of E-commerce industry. Let us explore some of them.

Personalized Approach – Online shopping lacks the personal assistance that we get to experience while shopping from retail centers in terms of making recommendations based on your previous purchases, tastes and preferences. To facilitate the service, online stores utilize customer’s search queries, page visits and purchase history to serve best to customers’ needs and interests. Studies have shown that consumer would like to visit online shopping site and stay long when able to personalize. Probably, this is the reason why we witness personalized emails from online shopping websites meaning to improve consumers’ overall shopping experience.

Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence – Chatbots or AI (Artificial Intelligence)  are further some of the great features introduced with the view to improve consumer’s experience over online shopping websites. Artificial intelligence helps in handling a lot of tasks including handling inquiries or manging stock. This will save the manual time that can be equipped for some other work. Similarly, chatbots heps in understanding the user behavior, having consumer conversations to evolve and serve better shopping experience. 

Expanding B2B E-commerce Avenues – E-commerce is not just limited to making B2C transactions but offers equal seamlessness for B2B transactions. Not just that, about 50 percent of of b2b businesses desire to have personalization to be able to build relationships while searching online suppliers. 

Engagement Through Videos – Today, more and more consumers are spending their time online and are also willing to make online purchases, however lack of interaction with product is what stops them to make the purchase. Although there are reviews and the product details mentioned on the website, there still remains doubts that prohibits consumers to make final purchases. This is where Interactive product visualization technology offers great support. The kind of presentation provides real life in-store shopping experience to consumers, thus alleviating all the doubts regarding purchase.

Customized Retail and E-commerce Experience – Even though features like personalization, interaction and chatbots have made consumers turn towards E-commerce websites, there is still nothing like shopping on retail stores. Keeping it in mind, a lot of brands are trying to offer retail experiences to consumers in order to drive further sales. Companies are creating E-commerce experiences within a retail store via digital kiosks. These retail store are small with lesser employees but are conceptualized to provide more personalized and interactive in-store experience. 

Concluding Note –

E-commerce industry is clearly on a mission on finding new growth ideas, implementing latest technology features and improving consumer experience with these trends. However, these are just few of them making some impact, the future definitely holds a lot more.

Planning to Redesign Your Website for 2019 – Tips and Tricks

The success of any online business is directly related to the design of its website. This is probably the biggest reason why every year designers have to put in extra efforts to redesign a website in order to keep users interested in it. With the progressing advancements in the field of technology, there are new styles that are pushing the boundaries when you opt for  website designing. These improvements are fundamental to have stronger focus on documentation, making the platform more consistent and accessible for the users.

This year too there are lot of developments that one can consider if planning on redesigning a website. Lets explore the new developments in website designing for the year 2019.

Mobile Responsive Design

“If your plans don’t include mobile, your plans are not finished” – Wendy Clark, coca cola. Today, mobile phones are used for almost everything. Users find it easier and faster to access web facilities over their mobile phone. Therefore, if your website is not designed for mobile browsing then you might lose half of your visitors. And that will ultimately affect your profits in business. Thus, when you redesign your website make sure that the design can also be accessed on mobile device.

Improve Communication Through Website

Earlier, there were not many options for users to contact the owner through business websites. For a lot of users that created a barrier and even affected the overall sales of the brand. therefore, if you are planning to redesign your website makes sure that the new design provides the facility to converse with the owner through live chat boxes or add a chat bot to your website. 

Think About An Effective SEO Plan 

Search engine optimization is a major marketing consideration for any website. keep your website engaging enough to make more users visit it. The more the users will visit your website the better will be your ranking. Therefore, while redesigning your website in 2019 try and add features that will improve users experience on your website and that they will be able to find what they are looking for. 

Page Load speed

One of the major reasons why people like to use their mobile phone for getting online is for the faster upload. Therefore ensure that your website loads faster while redesigning it, for the same affect in users engagement for your website. Some of the common ways to make your website work faster is through thinning the website file, optimizing images, reducing java scripts etc. 

Implement SSL

Going by recent upgrades, google has decided that non SSL websites are not secure and so they will not be ranked. Therefore, in order to get your website in top ranks on google, ask your designer to implement SSL on your website. You can also use free SSL provider using the encryptions that will turn your website to an “https” instead of “http” in front of your URL.

Abide by GDPR

According to general data protection regulation (GDPR) the personal data and privacy of individual users are meant to be protect the owner of the website. Therefore, make sure that your website design comply with GDPR if you are willing to receive more traffic or business in European union. 

A good website design can get you business even while you seep. It can help you generate lead, establish your brand and even make huge profits. Therefore, this time approach an experienced web design professional to help you design your website and make a successful one.

Target Audience Online – 5 Reasons to Use Instagram

Marketing is important for any business as it allows businesses to establish long lasting relationship with the audience and improve their sales. It is an ongoing strategy that helps business to grow and flourish. While there are lot of effective ways to market your brand and products, social media channels are making a lot of hype these days. Facebook, twitter and instagram are the social networking sites that can help in providing massive presence and visibility to your products. Out of all, instagram specifically is one channel which is currently blooming and is used by millions of users online. Therefore, it serves to be most effective advertising and marketing platform for any business.

Given below are 5 major reasons why business should target audience online using Instagram.

Users’ Favorite Social Networking Platform

Any business would want to advertise its products on a platform that caters maximum user visibility. And what can be better than instagram, that has been recorded for having the presence of 800 million people. Out of which 500 million people visits the platform every day, sometimes multiple times in a day. Having such a massive and dedicated viewership, any business would get to meet the ultimate success without even making much efforts.

Platform for All Size Business

With a huge user base, Instagram can turn out to be an ideal marketing platform for any size business be it large and a well established brand or a small home shop which is just getting started. Of course, success is not something that can be achieved overnight, it is something that takes consistent efforts, has to be in the public eye to make an impact. Maintaining one post a day on instagram and working towards making your brand better and better would help your business thrive in a very less time.

Help in Making Direct Money

Instagram lends great help to the startups allowing them to add shopping posts. It allows businesses to add products posts with links including product description, price and the facility to shop it now. This will help you establish your online store and would enable you make actual sales directly using instagram.

Facilitate Influencers Marketing

Instagram allows you to market your brand and its related products using influencer marketing. Influencers are basically individuals who have established their name on social media are often seen promoting brands or products via instagram. Having a well-known influencer on board will help you spread word for your company or product to the millions of followers, improving sales to the whole unexpected level.  

Allows Promotion through Hashtags

In today’s competitive era, it is hard to grab users’ attention for one particular brand even on a platform like instagram that promotes a number of businesses everyday. This is where Hashtags can help companies separate themselves from the rest of the crowd. Popular instagram Hashtags includes #LetsDoLunch by Domino’s and #ThrowMeBack by Expedia. These Hashtags often get these companies more recognition and make the desired impact.  

The Concluding Note

Every company need social media to communicate with their audience and to establish themselves as a brand. Instagram is an essential part of marketing, providing boost to your SEO, increasing leads and sales. However, it is important to choose the influencers correctly if you are willing to make the desired impact on your selected audiences.

Don’t Just Market, Be An Influencer!

Modern consumers are apprehensive and skeptical when it comes to relying on a brand and making purchases. And why not, there are hundreds of brands currently available in the market trying to built their consumership based on their USP’s(unique selling points). These brands market their products creating content including ads etc with the view to persuade consumers, however when it comes to the users it takes a lot to win there trust. This is when influencer marketing can turn out to be your ultimate rescue. 

Today, around 63% of brand marketing is executed through influencer marketing. This is because influencers can help you connect with your audience with a lot of trust and their opinion, knowledge and authenticity can help you persuade audience to try your brand.

Who are these influencers?

Today, there are a lot of people on web who are creating engaging digital content, have already established their niche among web users. These are basically socially savvy individuals, having a lot of followers, being listening and searched for what they do and thus seems a great option for choose for marketing. The influencers come with built in audience who trust them and will be more than happy to buy things that they would recommend.

How to find right influencer for your brand?

Know Your Audience

One of the major aspect in deciding who your influencer would be knowing your audience. To reap desired benefits from your marketing efforts it is very important that your audiences are same as to that of your influencer’s. Finding the right influencer ensures that your products are been promoted to the relevant audience who can actually be interested in buying your products.

Know Your Influencer

If you have decided to go for influencer marketing then it is important that you know the influencer you are selecting to market your brand with. You can choose your influencer on the basis of following given points.

• Exposure is one of the major concerns for any business to reach out to these influencers to market their product. “The more followers of an influencer, the more exposure the business will get”! Therefore, make sure you choose an influencer who has decent number of followers on social media.  
• What is even more important is to know how influential is the influencer you are choosing to help you promote your brand. It is important because this will let you know that how many people are really interested in their content, trusts and follow them. This will get you the idea of how much the influencer will be able to influence their purchases. 
• Look for the influencers whose personality and style aligns with your brand value and the message it conveys. This will help audience connect with your brand and will find it even more appealing.
• Find influencer of the same niche as that of your product and industry. Like if you deal in technical gadgets, look for an influencer with tech niche.

Conclusion

Lastly, Influencer marketing is the most personalized way of connecting with the audiences and to make them buy your products. Therefore, it is advised to combine it with the rest of your marketing strategies, providing content consistently from the influencer persuading audiences for an elevated ROI.

7 Impactful Website Designing Trends for 2019

Seeking the dynamic nature of world wide web, a lot of business websites acquire certain changes in terms of its design every year. The process involves elimination of the old trends and implementation of newer tools with the view to provide users improved experience and to lead an increase in client’s ROI. 

Conforming with new tools, programs and softwares every now and then is major part of a web designer’s job profile. This means that the designer stay updated with almost every latest trend that arrives in the industry. Thus, web designing is one field that keeps on evolving and it does not seem to slow down anytime soon. Lets take a look on some of the major web designing trends that are going to get followed in 2019. 

Mobile Optimization 

Most of the people these days are seen accessing internet facilities over smart phones, probably this is the major reason why more and more business organizations are trying to implement a mobile-first approach to their web design.

A lot of websites do not adapt well to mobile devices and that often ends up frustrating users making them leave it for better competitor. This affect the search engine ranking of the site and even hampers the over all ROI.
Therefore, it is best to have a website optimized for mobile devices and traditional computer screens. This will help you improve search engine rankings and receive more web traffic for your website.

Eye-Catching Color Schemes 

If you are willing to make desired impact on the visitors to your page then pay attention to the color schemes for your website. After all, if the website is capable of holding attention for long then it means the ship has successfully sailed. 

Gradient color scheme is the current web designing feature that is been followed by designers to grab users attention towards the website. We see gradients on the header, background and on logos in 2019.

Increased White Space

There was time when leaving more white space on your website was no where appreciated. However, today it is very much trending and seems to be providing better user experience. White space basically refers to the empty space in the corners where there is no text and images. It basically give readers a clear, simple look to the website that allow users to read and navigate easily. The white space balances the content on a website and makes it more presentable. 

Interactive Websites

Users on web are always on lookout for something new and interesting that has something to learn for them. Therefore, companies started using more of interactive tools on the website that can hold user attention long enough to be able to interest them. The increase in consumer interest to your website can also be seen as your way to grab more leads and conversion.

So this year find the best interactive tools and make users stay long on your website.

Bold Titles and large Headers

Users on web don’t have much time. There are least chances that a user will sit long to read and study the details on your website, therefore the page should be designed in a way that it communicates the message even in short glance. Large heading and bold titles helps engaging audience faster and conveys the message in less time. A lot of websites are utilizing the benefits of using bold informative headlines to put across the message quickly. This way the users can retain message through just visiting a website and not reading the entire body.