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Special Deals and Web Tools for Designers and Developers

November 29, 2019 By Erica

The internet is filled with tens of thousands of web tools and services, being extremely complicated to know which solutions are effective and worth the money. In this article we wrote about 30+ web tools and services, covering all the niches a web designers, developer, and freelancer, can be interested in: WordPress themes and plugins, website builders, logo and brand identity creators, invoicing, dedicated tools for freelancers, and more.

[Read more…] about Special Deals and Web Tools for Designers and Developers

Filed Under: CSS tips Tagged With: plugins, web builders, web tools and services, web tools for designers, web tools for developers, WordPress themes

What Designing for SEO in 2019 Really Means

June 14, 2019 By Erica

It is not a secret that bad web design can significantly hurt your site’s SEO performance. With search engines being the primary sources of traffic, designing your site without thinking about search engine optimisation is no longer a mistake you can afford to make.

On the other hand, taking the necessary steps to optimise your web design for SEO purposes can result in a significant boost in SEO performance. You’ll start noticing better consistency in search engine rankings as well as more traffic coming from search engines almost immediately.

So, what does it really mean to design a website for SEO in 2019? There are a few principles and trends you can follow, and we are going to discuss them in this article.

Mobile as a Priority

A usable and user-friendly mobile interface is now a necessity rather than optional. Over 60% of internet users rely on their mobile devices to access the internet, so not having a usable mobile interface will hurt your site.

It goes beyond inconveniencing the visitors too. Sites without proper mobile UI rank much, much lower than those with fluid mobile user experience. Google and other search engines also prioritise mobile-friendly websites in mobile search results.

A mobile-first design approach doesn’t always work, especially when you have a complex website. That said, you can always make mobile UI or responsive design a priority when designing websites. Make sure mobile content – including images and scripts – are optimised for performance too.

Performance First

Speaking about optimising content for performance, the design of your website affects performance as much as the content you display. Taking into account SEO-related metrics such as page speed and the number of requests or queries needed to open a page is important.

Optimising for performance can also be done by optimising the design itself. Instead of using multiple PNGs for areas of the site, for instance, you can rely on CSS properties like border-radius and transform to create shapes using no external asset.

You can even use pseudo-elements like :before and :after to create complex shapes such as a hexagon or a diamond. The combination of CSS properties, written with just a few lines of CSS3 code, is a lot lighter than PNG images with transparency.

Local Elements

It is also an option to go deep into your SEO strategy and adjust the design of the site accordingly. WSI Digital Web, the leading web design Belfast agency, revealed how a carefully-placed set of location information, integrated into the design of the site, can be very good for local SEO.

In many of its case studies and past projects, WSI was also able to boost SEO using good design practices such as adding an ALT tag to images and making sure that text is displayed using a readable font and in the correct size for the users’ devices.

These are simple web design approaches you can implement almost immediately, but they bring a substantial improvement to your website’s SEO performance. Designing for SEO doesn’t mean forgetting about good layout altogether. It simply means delivering a better, more consistent user experience to the audience.

Filed Under: Web Tagged With: designing for SEO, SEO performance, web design

7 Best Places to Learn CSS Online

March 25, 2019 By Erica

Are you looking to learn more about CSS? If that’s a resounding YES, you will definitely love this post. We understand CSS can throw you a curveball since there is just too much to learn and a lot of wrong information out there.

But this needn’t be the case anymore because in today’s post, we point you towards 7 best places to learn CSS on the web. By the end of the article, you will have all you need to start writing remarkable CSS like the pros.

[Read more…] about 7 Best Places to Learn CSS Online

Filed Under: CSS tips Tagged With: best places to learn CSS online, CSS online tips, LinkedIn Learning, udemy, W3Schools

Using Animated Gifs to Build Your Brand

July 5, 2018 By Erica

Animated GIFs are the perfect tool to help build your brand. They make people smile, and that feel-good factor transfers to your brand. People love to share animations on their social media accounts because they want to make their friends laugh.

Principles of Great GIF Design

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) was invented way back in 1987 by a CompuServe developer as the best format for low detail compressed graphics. GIF images may be color-limited and lack the detail of a JPG photo, but their small file size has helped them last over 30 years, a millennium in Internet terms. [Read more…] about Using Animated Gifs to Build Your Brand

Filed Under: Apps, Web Tagged With: building your brand using animated GIFs, GIF animations, GIF creator, website animated GIFs

How Load Testing Improves the User Experience

January 18, 2018 By Erica

One of the most common impediments to the user experience on websites is an issue many people don’t think of as directly relating to UX. The ability of a site to stand up to the stress of a number of users logging on and going through the site can pose a surprising array of problems. A common method for trying to identify these types of challenges is load testing. By seeing how a site holds up to large amounts of stress, it may be possible to actually improve the experience for users.

Why Load Matters

The more trouble a site has handling the incoming load of requests and outgoing load of responses, the less likely it will be to work properly and quickly. Users strongly prefer websites that load rapidly. Most estimates indicate that users begin abandoning a site that hasn’t fully loaded after 9 seconds. Even committed users who enjoy a particular site and stick around past that point are apt to have a diminished experience, according to WebHostingBuddy.com. [Read more…] about How Load Testing Improves the User Experience

Filed Under: Web Tagged With: identifying loading issues, loading performance, website performance, why load matters

How to Choose a Web Hosting Provider

May 10, 2017 By Erica

Even if you are just hosting a typical blog, any type of downtime or lag can mean that you lose a good number of visitors. This doesn’t even compare to what can happen if you have an eCommerce business. The thing is, when people make the decision to trust you to handle their money, they have a tendency to be quite cautious. If they notice a lag, they might be afraid that their order might not be accepted even as their money is taken right from their account regardless.

As for any downtime, they can always find the item they are looking for somewhere else. These are just a couple of the reasons that your web hosting provider needs to be up to the job and completely reliable. [Read more…] about How to Choose a Web Hosting Provider

Filed Under: Web Tagged With: free hosting service, how to choose a web hosting provider, web hosting, web hosting provider

3 Important Business Tools To Transform A Business

April 25, 2017 By Erica

Many company owners might not know about business software tools that could quickly help put an end to many of their recurring business problems. Knowing about and using these tools could make a world of difference to a company’s bottom line.

If they knew about what was available when it comes to advanced software, they would probably be astonished at how advanced software apps available in today’s software market can get rid of some of their biggest profit-draining problems. [Read more…] about 3 Important Business Tools To Transform A Business

Filed Under: Web Tagged With: business intelligence software, business tools, general marketing, human resource management software, marketing automation, mobile marketing

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