Why should you focus on mobile-friendliness ?

‘Mobile-friendly websites’ The most repeated word in the industry today. With Google’s new update making it very clear to all stakeholders that mobile-friendliness would rank on top of their priority list when they index websites, organizations are scurrying to make their websites more responsive and hassle-free in a bid to fit them into mobile devices.

The past few years many businesses have emerged that meet the daily demands of the people, according to statistics. Mobile friendly websites don't mean that the websites should be clearly viewed on the mobile devices; it means that the designs, user interfaces, resolution, etc. are set keeping in the mind the number of users and mobile devices they use. A simple calculation tells us that the total number of mobile devices far exceeds the total number of mobile users.

It can be said that the usage of mobiles has certainly raised the size of mobile market and most of the mobile owners and consumers prefer shopping in stores from mobiles only. Proper product information, related catalogs, discounted rates, services offered, etc. of our business can be 50% more fruitful in its growth if websites support mobile devices, as more than 70% people access internet through their mobile phones. It has been pre-assumed that by the Fiscal Year 2017, more than 85% users will access internet for any of the business related matters through their mobiles.

Growing business with the greater impact of mobile friendliness websites reflect that the customers are satisfied with what they expect from the website. Through the surveys completed, it has been noticed that consumers buy the product on the websites that is mobile friendly. The phenomenal mobile experience encourages the users to grow as the business partners with the organization to carry on the future proceedings.

Here are some interesting facts and figures

-> More than 4.8 billion people use mobile phones across the globe.

-> 75% of the total people are connected to their business through the mobiles.

-> Business is set-up for more than 500 million users on Facebook, thus making usage of Facebook mobile.

-> More than 50% of the people are fond of only using mobiles for local searches rather than desktops/laptops.

The mobile friendliness of the website can also be checked through Google’s testing tool, mobile friendly. If you intend to take your website beyond its current target market, you better focus on the mobile segment.  

How joomla can increase your website performance

Joomla is hardly a CMS that requires introduction. One of the top Content management systems, Joomla enables small businesses create websites at very affordable rates. Joomla boasts great features such as Open Source, flexibility, etc. But, how exactly does Joomla better the performance of your website? This article looks at the performance aspect of Joomla websites and how it increases website speed.

Firstly, performance depends on a number of parameters like type and size of content, number of plugins and extensions used, code issues etc. So, how do you wade through this minefield on a Joomla site

?

1. Remove what you don't require

Often times, it happens that you have lots of plugins and extensions that you never use clogging up your website. This includes third party extensions too. Deleting these unwanted functionalities is the first step towards speeding up your website. 

2. Play with CSS and Javascript

You need to take into account the size of CSS and Javascript needed for the design of the website. You would do well to use some readymade tools to reduce the size as it could be a cumbersome process to do it manually.

3. Create copy of the visited pages

When the user requests a page, it is fetched from the database and displayed to him in the form of HTML. This would take some time as the requested page has to be searched for, fetched and displayed. Consequently, your site speed would go down. Creating page copies will help you get around this problem.

4. Apart from the above, you can keep in mind a few other tips to increase site performance listed below:

- Go for minimum sized files as far as possible

- Use animation only where necessary

- Use a coding style that optimizes performance across your site

- Clean up your database at regular intervals

7 things to know before you develop a website

You want to develop a website that will help your business get visibility, attract visitors and convert those visitors into customers. You need to design your website in such a manner that it reflects your business objective and gives customers precisely what they want. This means that you need to do some serious planning and homework before you really start your website. We look at some of the basic stuff that you need to know to ensure your website succeeds, in this article.

1. Purpose of your website

Remember you can’t change plea in the middle of an argument. You should have started out with a clear purpose in your mind and also the contours of how you are going to implement that. This is extremely important as many firms start out with some objective and end up doing something else altogether.

2. Domain and hosting

This is the first thing to do to get visibility. You need to choose a name that people can remember well and choose wisely and appropriately, as to whether you will use .com or .net or something else. As for hosting, choose a reliable looking at how much capacity you will need.

3. Technology

Discuss and finalise the technology that you want to use. This could depend on a number of factors and it finally boils down to what you want. The options are HTML5, CSS3, PHP, Jquery, Javascript etc.

4. Layout and colour

Colour affects the feel of your site. Neat layout is always preferred. Don’t forget about the footer too. A good website required equal focus on all aspects.

5. Content

Before the content, first create a sitemap and flowchart. As to the content, remember that your website needs to provide good and informative content to the users. Target certain keywords to rank high in search engines. The type of content like language, picture, video, etc has influence of how fast or how slow the website will load.

6. Ads and pop ups

Do not include too many advertisements in your website. If an advertisement is not necessary, just don’t put it there. As for pop ups, prevent them from appearing. It is the most annoying type of advertising because of slow loading and sometimes you can’t close it.

7. Cross browser capability

A good website has to be able to be viewed properly in all types of modern browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari.

Top tips for web designers and developers

The first thing you should know as a budding internet professional is the difference between web design and web development. A web designer is a bit like the window dresser of a web site. As a web designer your job is to grab the attention of window shoppers, in other words, people surfing the net.

In contrast your job as a web developer is behind the scenes. You are at the helm for the smooth opening of the site on various browsers. The web developer makes sure that all the apportionment of the web site operate flawlessly in the minimum of time.

Of course the exemplary person for the assigned task is someone who has both the attributes of a web designer and a web developer. A lot of free software is available on the internet today. Many people have learned simple web designing and developing by using templates and image libraries. One cool tip for budding artists of the cyberspace is that you need a deeper knowledge of web design and web development software to become successful. It is necessary for you to get professional training.

In the role of a web designer you must strive to create a home page that holds the interest of your visitor. This can only be adventurous if your web development has been efficient. The images should download immediately and the content should be in easily readable fonts. Try to keep it simple.

Trial runs of your website are very necessary before you put it on the World Wide Web. There are many prominent websites which grant you to assay your site on their software which simulates the most popular browsers. This will grant you to make sure that your web pages open on all genus's of screens and on all the popular search engines. This is where your technical adroitness as a web developer will be tested most.

The constituents of the web site have to be written by a professional. You might be great at web design or web development but it is a specialist's job to write the text. Remember to place the text on a background which makes it easily readable.

In the antiquity a lot of technical knowledge was required to be successful in web design and web development. Modern software has made it easy for you to design and develop without having to know all the technical stuff. Still it is necessary that you learn the ropes of HTML and CSS coding as you progress along your chosen profession.  

How to find a good web design company

Looking for a web design company? This article looks at how exactly you identify a good we design company from its portfolio page.

1. Presence of portfolio

It’s pretty obvious that web design company must have its own web site with a neat portfolio of its previous works. But don't be taken away by the site alone. Portfolio is like a "face" of a web design company. It tells you about what the company did and how well they did it. But this is not all.

2. Total number of works

Though this provides a lot of indications, there is no standard number that can guarantee that you’re going to deal with web design guru. It is true that 50 projects is better than 5, but quality is equally important. Check out on that. And while you do that, do remember that an average website design takes 2 to 4 weeks to be finished.

But what can this information then give you? Firstly, you can see whether the company has enough expertise. Also, it can tell you if it has a stable employee base, a well-oiled development process, and enough staff to enable round-the-clock performance, so as to ensure that when you commit your site design to the said company you can be sure that it won’t be new work for them.

3. Type of work done

Look carefully at each project in the portfolio page. How many of them are similar to the one you need? Analyse this by industry, site, technology used, and look and feel?

2-3? Good!

> 5? Excellent!!

None? There could be reasons for this too – such as the owner not wanting publish it, or web site not being live anymore - so if the company has passed all these tests, you must then ask the company if they have ever done the task that you now need.

4. Quality

Look at all the sites the company has designed/developed. See how long it takes for the home page to load

A few seconds? Fine, the web designer knows how to optimize images.
A few minutes? This is okay for a Flash site since the whole site is loaded at once in case of Flash and can also take longer because of sound and visual effects.

But if a simple HTML web site takes more than 2-3 minutes to load you know something’s wrong. Check other HTML sites from the portfolio - if they too take ages to load, it's better you search for another web development company.

Web Design Trends for 2015

Designers and developers across the world are looking to capitalize on the web boom and leap to higher returns on investment. In this article, we look at the dominant web design trends that will define the year 2015.

1. Material design

We’ll see design inspired from Google’s Material design language. It’s a richer approach to flat interfaces using touches from the physical world be leaving it open to what’s possible with digital interfaces.

Designers will build more layered interfaces and utilize animation as affordance. We will witness purposeful movements, flexible design components, and a graphical approach to design that is user action-based.

2. Typography

3D effects and typography is one area which could see lot of action. This would include gradients, shadows, and colour overlays. Subtle gradients, various forms of shadows added to create a sense of depth and multiple colours in illustrations makes the whole work more dimensional and designers are breaking new ground in it.

3. Mobile optimization

Mobile optimization must be accompanied by a better understanding of user needs and performances. This is a trend that could continue long after 2015. Its detractors say that it’s bad for performances, but that’s mostly when it’s poorly done, like when people try to fit a 1900px 10MB site into a 320 mobile phone.

4. Full-screen media

People love websites with big, full-screen displays of images, type and video- it is simply more engaging. 2015 will see an even greater use of large background images and full screen video as a means to connect with visitors and communicate with brands personally.

This approach to web design might kill the traditional brochure as a means of selling a service.

5. Bigger text and bigger image driven websites

With the increased use of retina and HD screens, it’s now essential for designers to serve large copy-driven text and high resolution images that will resize and optimize for both server load and screen sizes.

6. Cards, Cards, Cards

Cards are contained pieces of information that are visually delimited by their card-like appearance. Borders around or a drop shadow, usually with a white background, hit right in the spot of users who want small information bites before digging through the real and possibly lengthy, content.

7. Long scroll

This really caught on in the 2013-2014, and we expect it to continue in 2015 as well. This means companies will have to simplify their content, not to forget the parallax!