Category: Web Development

With the many benefits that technology brings, it also drags along the dark cloud of climate change. This dark cloud hanging over all of us – which is mostly made up of CO₂ – is a deadly threat to our future. As a matter of fact, the rise in carbon emissions is largely attributable to the IT sector – the sector that defines the 21^st century and includes everyone from tech giants such as Microsoft or Google to UX designers. Connecting the entire globe, the whole sector requires an enormous amount of energy.

If you zoom into it a little, you’ll realize the internet alone is responsible for 300m tonnes of carbon emissions annually, higher than the collective annual output of the aviation sector. A study conducted by Mozilla revealed that data centers alone hold the same carbon footprint as global air travel.

Moreover, now when technologies like 5G come to rule the near future, using up more electricity to deliver data faster, it is a ridiculous idea to ignore the energy consumption linked to IT. The increasing electricity-intensive demands for IT translate into more coal burning.

Luckily, UX designers are playing a role to alleviate this trend of consuming without giving a thought about the repercussions that will follow. The goal is now to deliver a great experience to users while also managing to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. This is where Green UX aka Sustainable UX comes into play.

Sustainable UX design means smarter websites, a better UX, and a greener internet.

3 Ways Sustainable UX Can Help You Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

So designers, it’s time to bid farewell to dirty energy. Take a look into how you can fight back your carbon footprint through sustainable UX.

1. Leverage Remote Tools

It may be surprising, but the digital design can leave a humongous carbon footprint. Sharpies, iPads, business travels – all add up fast. Luckily, they are ripe for reduction.

Secondly, what you can do is minimize traveling. Although it is not as easy as cutting back on stationery, you’ll be astonished how much reducing travel can positively impact the climate. Yes, users have to be interviewed, conferences have to be attended, clients have to be met. But here’s the good news: remote tools are here to save the day. If you’re a typical designer or a web design company in Dallas or located anywhere else for that matter, there are several design-sharing tools like InVision that allow you to easily carry out reviews remotely without disruption. From remote research tools to workshop alternatives, you have various tools to fit your specific needs.

Say, for instance, 900,000 employed UX people around the globe save three tons of CO2 each year, collectively it’d be a saving of 2.7 million tons of CO2 compared to business as usual. That is tantamount to shutting down an entire coal-fired power-station.

2. Save Bytes, Reduce CO2

The next step is to trim down the amount of data your sites and services use to significantly reduce pollution. Just like you may swap a gas-guzzler for a hybrid to decrease your mileage.

Merely switching to green internet services doesn’t fix the issue of internet-derived CO2 emissions, and therefore doesn’t suffice. You may have the power to choose the data center you wish to use. However, once the bits and bytes leave the building, you still have to make your way through the internet – a mixture of CDNs, copper and fiber, home cable, network switches and of course Wi-Fi – while ensuring you have the energy to keep the data moving.

The average web page has mushroomed from a size of 500KB in 2011 to 4MB in 2019. A modern site typically uses multiple JavaScript libraries, high-resolution images, web fonts and video, all of which need to process large volumes of data.

Majority of the designers add these features into their designs without taking into consideration the impact it will have on page size or site speed. Usually, people don’t feel the weight of the web pages due to the fast internet connection. But people on slower connections feel the slowdown when web pages take ages to download.

There are multiple businesses recognizing the benefits of cutting back the data-intensity of their web presence. Basically, minimizing data use speeds up sites and improves the overall user experience. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean a low-data site will provide a poor user experience. A low-data site can still be attractive and interactive. Guess what you have?  Higher user satisfaction, better conversion and more sustainable UX. It is a win-win situation!

Let’s dig into some remedies that can help you reduce data use. Check your existing URLs through measuring tools like PageSpeed so as to seek suggestions on speeding up your website, cutting down data and thus, saving CO2. Another good trick is to optimize images through tools since images occupy the biggest portion of your site’s data footprint.

3.Use Green Hosting

Stopping to use the web is clearly not an option, but building and powering it the right way can not only make it planet-friendly but also user-friendly. Google, for example, is transitioning to green hosting, powering its server farms with renewable energy. Amazon Web Services (the largest cloud hosting provider) is also moving in that direction but is still relatively dirty.

So when it comes to choosing cloud solutions, look at their green index to know which video streaming platforms or social media we should be using to enhance our sites. You might want to check out GreenPeace’s report to get a better idea. Say when choosing a video provider, you might want to know that YouTube scores an A for sustainability. On the other hand, Vimeo gets a D. This will prove to be extremely helpful.

Wrapping It Up

In the wake of global warming, overlooking the environmental effects of our websites and internet use is a huge blunder. Green UX is an invitation for designers to realize the benefits of internet and identify what is required to keep it going. They need to incorporate Sustainable UX design to keep a tight rein on our energy consumption and move forward in this digitally connected world without harming the environment.

Author Bio :- Loius Martin is a Creative Marketing Manager at Invictus Studio. Along with managing the digital aspects of Theresaworthy.com – a motivational speaker in Atlanta, he does guest blogging for multiple websites.

Are you having a tough time dealing with a slow-loading web page? Did you just experience a downward client retention graph? It is probably due to the fact that there are major glitches in terms of website navigation.

Reportedly, Jonathan Jones, web development executive of the site hopinfirst.com is of the opinion, “A web page is supposed to be smart, active and fast like a falcon. If our visitors are spending more than two minutes to open a single tab or icon on the web page, then the chances are that they will eventually leave the site in a while. You got to be careful here.”

As a matter of fact:

• One second delay reduces web page views by 11%.
• One second delay eats away customer satisfaction by 16%.
• On yearly basis, one second delay in web page loading can actually lead to $2.5 million missed revenues if your business generates $100,000 per day

So, if we are to consider the aforementioned statistical revelations, it is evident that a slow loading web page can bring negative impacts on your trade. Now that you wish to know how to boost your web page speed in the most effective way, here’s everything you need to know. 

1. Prioritize file compression

File compression refers to the practice of packaging a file in order to use less disk space. Using compression software and similar applications will allow you to take multiple files and compress them into one file. This, as a result, will help your website load faster with lightweight files running in the background. Software application like Gzip can reduce the size of your HTML, CSS and JavaScript files that are heavier (larger than 150 bytes). However, one must refrain from using Gzip on image files. Instead, they can compress these in platforms such as Photoshop and the likes.

2. Work on improving the server response time

This is one crucial aspect to be met when it comes to improving your web page speed. Your server response time gets affected due to the amount of traffic you would receive. In addition to it, there are other factors as well, such as:

• The resources each web page use.
• The software used by your server.
• The hosting solution you are currently using for your website.

So, you need to take note of the following suggestions in order to improve the server response time of your page.

• If you are experiencing sluggish web page performance, then choose a reliable Web Hosting Provider to fix the issue at the earliest.
• Use caching plug-ins such as Cache Enabler in order to generate static HTML files instead of loading all of your website elements dynamically.
• You should also prioritize optimizing your database performance for enhanced web page performance.

The idea is to keep your web page light and responsive from every aspect. This will help you to attract more clients and prospective visitors to a site that is user-friendly and seamless.

3. Optimize web page images

You need to be sure that the images used in your web page are not more than they are supposed to be. Using heavyweight images for our web page will again affect its performance. Hence, here are a few actionable points you may like to consider.

• Name your image in plain language.
• Optimize the alt attributes of your image accordingly.
• Reduce the file size of your image.
• Optimize your image thumbnails and use image sitemaps.
• You should also choose your image dimensions and product angles carefully.

Once you know that each of the aforementioned aspects has been met with precision, you are good to go.

4. Invest in simpler website designs

You can increase your website speed by simplifying your website design. Simple website designs reduce the number of HTTP requests that a website needs to make in order to load.

Light website design reduces the number of additional elements on your page, thus increasing the load time.

An easy-to-navigate website will not only make a positive impact on your loading time, but it will also attract more visitors to your website.

5. Utilize the potential of AJAX to speed up your web page

AJAX is a collection of web development technicalities that harness the potential of several web technologies on the clients’ side. It fosters the creation of asynchronous web applications. Here are the potential benefits of using AJAX.

• It will help your mobile site fetch the required data from a web server without requiring the particular page to be refreshed.
• Additionally, the technique allows your site to load and fill in content faster while the viewer is still navigating our web page.

So, take note of the ideas shared above, get the benefits of AJAX and use it in order to speed up your page two times faster than your competitors’ page.

 6. It’s time to minify JavaScript and Style Sheets

Minifying JavaScript and Style Sheets will give you an advantage in terms of increasing web page speed. The minification process involves minimizing code and markup in your web pages and script files.

Here’s how you can carry out the minification process with precision.

• To minify JavaScript, try out the application UglifyJS. The package implements a general-purpose JavaScript beautifier and compressor toolkit.
• If you wish to minify Style Sheets, try using platforms such as CSSNano and csso.

Remember, you should always download the aforementioned software applications from reliable sites. Prefer utilizing tools that are licensed product of verified and reputable companies.

7. Trimming down JavaScript parsing is an ideal option as well

The Java trimming method removes whitespaces from both ends of the string. The process, as a result, will help you to:

• Optimize the web page load time of your site by eliminating the parsing of unnecessary <script tags>.
• Make the web page more interactive, less complex and user-friendly in terms of buffering time and potential lags during navigation.

8. Use a Content Delivery Network for your web page

Content Delivery Network refers to a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centres.  It is said that hosting your media files on a Content Delivery Network or CDN is one of the most effective ways to speed up your web page.

The process can save you up to 60% bandwith. For example, if a student from Singapore visits and SEO help website operated in Australia, he/she can download files from the server that is closest to them.

Wondering how? That’s because the bandwith is spread across different servers across the world. As a result, it reduces a huge chunk of load on a particular server, thus, enhancing the speed of the web page.

Wrapping It Up

I hope this blog will help you with the essentials one must embrace in order to increase their web page speed. Here’s a quick recap of the key pointers for you to take a look at.

• Focus on compressing files.
• Improve your server response.
• Optimise web page images and invest in simpler websites.
• Harness the potential of AJAX and trim down JavaScript parsing.
• Use a Content Delivery Network for your page.

Author Bio: Nathan William is an experienced assignment help expert, associated with the digital brand Myassignementhelp.com.

If you are someone who is getting their new website developed, you will come across the term content management system or CMS. CMS is one of the most important terms related to website development. Professionals in the development space need to explore this term and its usage. In this article, you are going to view what this content management system is and the stuff you need to maintain it efficiently.

Basics of Content Management System

Content is the main attraction on every website, and there is no denial in that. The CMS is a platform where people can edit their content, upload it, and add anything they want to it. The customer management system will help in handling all these tasks with the utmost care. It has a dashboard with all the articles and content one by one.

People have the option to edit and work on the content present there as they like. This Custom CMS Development will help with both website content management and enterprise content management.

Features of a Content Management System

The eCommerce CMS’s are incredibly different when compared to the standard CMS. The features will vary depending upon the CMS types. Here are ten characteristics that both kinds of CMS’s uphold.

• The search bar helps in searching for articles, products, and various other things
• The revision will help CMS users to edit the content even after publishing it
• Multilingual panel for administration
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Content creation and updates on the site
• Storing the content in the database
• Smooth workflow management by providing different roles for different users
• Easy to customize the templates
• A very minimal requirement from server

Pros and Cons of CMS

Pros

• Separate editing – The website design and content are not related to one another in CMS. So even though if you are not adept at the website designing and layout, you can still edit the content present in it with the help of CMS. CMS makes it easy to edit and work on the essential things. Anything you do to the content won’t affect the website design in any way.
• Fast updating – Your website will be updated with the content pretty fast when compared to the other sites without CMS. You will be able to update anything present on your website with ease.
• Selective access – There are different roles for the users present on your website. This way, you will be able to assign tasks for each one of them and then provide them with specific permissions only. This way, the website won’t go into the opposite person’s hand completely. As the owner or administrator of the website, you are the only one who will have complete access to the site. The authors, editors, and guests need your permission to make any edits.
• SEO friendly – If you want your website to get listed in the top ten of Google, the one thing that you have to rely on is SEO. This CMS will help you with SEO Management. Some plugins will help in providing tips to optimize the content.

Cons

• Security measures – CMS is used by so many people across the world, and this is the reason why it became the primary target for many hackers. The CMS is highly prone to hackers. You can overcome this problem with double factor authentication and various other plugins though.
• Not easy to design – CMS comes with preloaded designs already, and it is not easy for you to change the design. You have to keep working around the preloaded templates only. There is no other options present before you when it comes to the design of the website. If you have some imagination and ideas in your brain, you should spend extra bucks to get them to reflect on your website.
• Lag – In CMS, every aspect related to your web page are stored in one place. The CMS development services will offer you the page with everything loaded already. This page may delay the process and create lags in your website. But with time and training, you will be able to run the site in a robust way.
• Limitation on functionality – There are some limitations in functionality when it comes to CMS. So, you need to get a CMS whose feature matches your requirements. It is going to make a significant impact on the way you run the website.

Moving Forward

Prior to selecting any CMS, you require evaluating your business needs, objectives, and practices. You can initiate by collecting the challenges you may want to solve through your new website.

Author Bio:

Meshur Ahir is a young enthusiast who Loves Internet Marketing and is always eager to share useful and authentic content to help others. He believes in Learning, Sharing and keep growing together. A Computer Science Engineer By Chance and Working as a Digital Marketing Consultant in Pixlogix Infotech Pvt. Ltd. by Choice. Pixlogix is a Custom CMS Development Company.

Selling online can open up immense new markets for some organizations. At the point when your store can be open 24⁄7 and you can arrive at a worldwide market without the expenses of mailings and call centers, it very well may be a gigantic support to your business. In any case, there are a lot of interesting points when designing an ecommerce web development firm. It’s not as basic as hurling some shopping cart software and thudding products into a database.

There are huge amounts of missteps that online retailers make each day, every one of them can be avoided with a little cautious planning. while, regardless of whether you’re now committing some of these mistakes, the vast majority of them are simple enough to fix.

As we’ve just wandered into the year 2019, so are new sites along the sidelines, rising to the top at any moment. Yet, before ensuring that you are on the correct track, how about we experience some common mistakes in eCommerce design which we can amend so as to expand our odds in conveying extreme client experience and addition some business out of it. So we should find out about essential mistakes in eCommerce design and how to avoid it.

Mistakes to avoid in E-commerce Website UI/UX design

• Lack in providing detailed information about product

When you’re shopping in a physical store, you have the benefit of having the option to get a thing, you look at it from all aspects, feel it,and read any data on the labels or packaging. Shopping online evacuates that interaction. Ecommerce sites need to do as well as can be expected to enhance the in-store shopping experience.

Solution-

Sizes, dimensions, materials, weight, and some other relevant information relying upon what the product is. Utilizing descriptive words instead of essentially technical terms can greatly affect the customer.

• Difficult to find the contact information

Customers need to realize that they’re dealing with a genuine organization when they hand over the information of their credit card. They need to realize that in case of any issue they’ll have the option to contact with a genuine individual and get the assistance they need. If your site doesn’t give any contact data, or hides it so the customer can’t discover it effectively, they’re more averse to trust your site, and accordingly less interested to work with you.

Solution-

Put your contact data in a simple to find place on each page of your site. The most clear places to put your contact data are either in your header, the highest point of your sidebar, or in your footer. Give numerous methods for contact if it is possible. A contact form, phone number, email address, and information of mailing address all add to the degree of client trust.

• A long confusing checkout process

This is one of the most harming mistakes that an ecommerce site can make. You need to make it as simple as feasible for your clients to hand over their credit card data and complete their order. The more advances you put between them putting a thing in their cart and really paying for it, the more chances you offer them to leave your site without finishing their buy.

Solution-

Pursue the perfect model as intently as possible. If you need to incorporate different pages, attempt to make them as fast and simple to round out as possible. Join pages if you can, and utilize two-segment formats for specific areas (like putting shipping and billing data alongside one another) to cause pages to seem shorter.

• Need an account to order

This binds in legitimately to the past item. If you require a client to sign up for an account before they can put in an order, it’s another impediment you’ve set in their way. Which is progressively imperative to you: getting the request or getting client data? Keep in mind that the next option may mean losing a few clients.

Solution-

There’s a simple fix for this. Rather than requiring a client to sign up for an account before they request, offer them the alternative toward the finish of their ordering procedure. Give them the alternative to save their account data to make putting in future orders simpler or to follow the status of their present order. Numerous clients will pick to save their data, and you won’t drive away clients before they’ve finished their order.

• An appropriate the site search engine

If a client knows precisely what they’re searching for, some will pick to utilize a search engine as opposed to shifting through classifications and filters. You have to ensure that the search feature on your site functions admirably, and ideally has filters for giving clients a chance to refine their results.

Solution-

Ensure the ecommerce software you’re utilizing has a decent built in search engine, or search for plugins to expand its usefulness. In a perfect world, ecommerce search engine tool should give clients a chance to look by keyword and after that refine results dependent on the classes your website incorporates.

• Options of poor customer service

This is like to hide the contact data bit previously. You have to make it simple for clients to connect with you if they have an issue or question. Clarify what the most ideal approach to reach you is if they have a technical inquiry, a business question, or they need to return a product. Offering an assistance request form for clients to round out can impart more certainty than only an email address.

Solution-

Utilize a ticketing framework for client service request, particularly if you don’t have a phone number accessible. Ensure that you post a FAQ that spreads normal inquiries clients may have, similar to what your return policy is or what to do if they have to order parts or replace products..

• Small images of products

Since buyers can’t physically deal with the products you’re selling before putting in an order on your site, you have to do as much as you can to reproduce and enhance that experience. Small product images don’t adequately do this.

Solution-

Either give huge images directly on the product page or enable clients to click on a picture to zoom in. You need clients to have the option to see the picture as huge as is functional on a normal screen. This implies a picture that augments to 1024×768 pixels is a decent size to go for.

About The Author

Merry Waren is a Marketing Manager at AIS Technolabs which is Web design and Development Company, helping global businesses to grow by Node Js Development Services. I would love to share thoughts on ecommerce web development firm and Game Design Development etc.

Building a website, or web application using a content management system (CMS) has multiple benefits: little or no programming required, you have visibility of site’s content, timely update, and basic administrative tasks. But when it is about customizing a CMS-powered site, a developer’s skills can turn a basic, out-of-the-box site into a totally unique, powerful website. In this blog, we’ll compare two renowned CMS platforms, WordPress and Drupal, to help you make a decision.

Introduction to WordPress

WordPress slowly transforms itself from a blogging platform to a robust framework that’s powered by HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, AJAX, themes, and plenty of plugins. WordPress developer performs theme customization, installation, and migration to build an engaging website. They perform timely version & plugin updates. Renowned websites including TechCrunch, Walt Disney Co., and LinkedIn blog are all powered by WordPress.

Introduction to Drupal

Drupal is a powerful CMS, some consider it as a framework that lets users to launch, customize and scale websites and applications. It is the most recommended CMSs for enterprise-level projects. It’s powered by PHP and also requires little to no programming experience to implement a low-level functionality. Drupal’s extended functionality comes from the additional modules that build off of its Core package. To take benefit of all these functionalities, you’ll need help from Drupal experts. Websites that are powered by Drupal comprise of The Economist, Weather.com, and some US government sites.

Before discussing the differences, let’s talk about the similarities of both CMSs.

Free and open-source. With WordPress CMS, you will need to manage hosting and domain work, but the software is free to use. You have to pay for the Premium themes and plugins. Drupal is free, as well, with similar back-end configurations.

Require installation, setup, and hosting. Unlike Wix and Squarespace, both these CMSs require a download, installation, and set up of hosting and domain.

Mobile responsive themes. Drupal mobile websites perform better when running on a mobile platform while a WordPress site requires an additional step to run on a mobile platform.

Excellent SEO features. SEO features are not platform-specific; it’s more developer-specific. Drupal can be more complex, if not properly handled regarding SEO, on the other hand, WordPress makes a bit easier to do. Overall, WordPress’s technical SEO result is exceptional.

The point of differences between the two CMSs are:

Drupal is complex. It takes a bit of expertise to get used, but it’s definitely a better option that WordPress for larger projects and enterprise-level websites. WordPress is simple to learn and use and it has options to manage admin features if you need them.

Version updates are performed differently. WordPress code gets an upgrade, once the database updates happen in the background. Because WordPress updates are released on a regular basis, it is a great feature for beginners. Plugins do need to be updated regularly, though. Drupal updates need expert guidance and because they don’t comprise a code update, the process is time-consuming. In some cases, the whole website needs a redesign for an update.

Drupal is secure. Drupal is known for its advanced security and reporting, which makes it valuable for big enterprise websites having more animation elements. A few third-party services provide WordPress security elements but note it is more open to hacks if plugins are not updated on a regular basis.

Mobile responsive. Drupal mobile websites perform better when running on a mobile platform while a WordPress site requires an additional step to run on the mobile platform. WordPress has a native app for making the website mobile responsive. Drupal does not need that but has a responsive mobile admin dashboard.

Wide Range of functions. Both CMS offer a streamlined installation, can be specialized through additional extensions. While WordPress’ major focus is to offer services for the development and management of the blog articles, while Drupal is more concerned with community and social publishing applications. Drupal supports diverse multi-user functions right from the initial version. WordPress only supports settings for user roles and rights.

Who is the winner?

At the end of the day, the requirement of your business is the clear winner. And, in reality, the people who are exploring your website. When your team is implementing a CMS that suits your style and business needs, the results will be reflected in the user experience. Whether you like to deal with things from a high-level perspective, or if you are more interested in the creative domain, the choice is up to you. Taking serious consideration of what you need is how you’ll make the right choice. If we analyze the above points, Drupal is far superior to the WordPress CMS because it is more secure, advanced, mobile-friendly. Drupal needs more effort to get the best from it and make use of its amazing features.

Author Bio –

Aayushi Gill has great experience in Drupal Technology. She works with Drupal India – a renowned Drupal Development Company. She loves to share her knowledge with all about the latest tips, trends and best practices.