The Benefits of Magento
Magento offers the best solution for e-commerce applications and is far ahead of competitors for a variety of reasons. Magento has become the platform for e-commerce developers and businesses similarly.
Partially, business choose magento as it is a very friendly platform and allows for easy and fast set up. Both the front and back end of magento sites are easily added to and easily customised.
The software’s wide range of plug-in’s, interested and growing community and robustness make it the e-commerce solution for both small and medium-sized business alike. magento provides both a powerful and very flexible piece of software for business that also threads a fine line between function and attractive design.
Users get the mix of frontline design and layout as well as back-end additions that make billing, tax and shipping all the easier. It is also possible to control a number of e-commerce sites from one back-end administration panel.
Magento’s plug-ins mean that monitoring and keeping abreast of your sites performance is easily achieved. The addition of SEO features allows for easy tweaking of the sites and ensures your magento e-commerce site can grow and change suitably. This also allows the search engines to easily rank your sites and create greater visibility.
The plug-ins also allow you to offer a number of themes and designs and also a better experience to customers than with many other open source e-commerce solutions. The size of the magento community and the increasing range of plug-ins on offer means this is something will continue to grow – making this system all the stronger for the future.
It’s intuitive CMS also gives it an advantage over most other solutions for e-commerce and users can easily add and edit content and products. This also allows for seasonal additions to be made and for business to attract greater numbers of shoppers and conversions.
Magento comes with the features you would expect for a large business, including plug-ins for call centre features, order tracking, new payment gateways that are created to increase security among other additions.
And just like all sites with high coding standards, magento is scalable – so you have no worry about your website breaking. You can add and add to it and adhere to coding standards. This of course is of significant benefit for online companies who see themselves going places in the future, though worry about having to increasingly patch up wearing websites.
Using a good web design company to create your magento site means that you have professionals who can add all the aforementioned at a phone call.
The Benefits of Flash
We often hear Flash mentioned quite commonly in the Internet and web design sphere, so what are its benefits?
Cost
Flash is essentially free, there are some very minuscule costs to worry about, such as a small cost for Flash IDE, though it nearly costs nothing to distribute. It also comes complete with license for royalties and any decoders used, which lessens the cost.
Attractive
Flash can be used to make a website look aesthetically attractive, as well as making it appear more interactive and dynamic. This allows the website to show whole pieces of information in an engaging manner, over a short period of time.
Downloads
Flash files are generally very small and so can be stored in very small sizes and so are great for downloading and especially useful for browsers with slow Internet speeds.
Macromedia
As all Flash is displayed on Macromedia Plug-ins, Flash will be rendered in a similar manner on all browsers and platforms. This allows those who design to be less limited than they would be with XHTML interfaces.
Community
As Flash is so popular, there are thousands of websites and tutorials to support its use. This means there are lots of add-ons, pieces of advice and tips to make the most of Flash. There’re also a large number of developers and artists working with Flash. This is also a specialty of ours!
Copy and Paste
Flash allows you to copy and paste things, so they can be tested out. You can also use drag and drop techniques from one Flash to another. This will move dependent objects from the library of one Flash to another. This means it is very simple to change things around quickly and try things outside of the main game. It should be remembered that in such a scenario, a debugger may come in useful.
Games
Flash allows for easy conversion from a full game to a web version of the game. This is also great, as it works the other way, and you can turn a web version into a game which can be downloaded.
Flash is also brilliantly suited for making games, and an entire game can be prototyped within a short space of time. It also works really well on all formats, as well as through the web and is royalty free.
The hierarchical visual object model in Flash makes it great for fast creation of prototypes. The well laid-out toolbar based on the proximity of the mouse aids development.
All complex results can be created with only the smallest amount of visual programming, making Flash very easy to use.
In conclusion, Flash is a very useful tool and one that is relatively simple to use. The complexities of Flash are minuscule and the benefits large for those wishing to use this program.
Here at Code23 we specialise in bespoke, rich media Flash Web Design and Development. We can design highly creative web sites and multimedia using Adobe Flash, the professional standard for web and multimedia animation. We can produce everything from an attractive banner slideshow which tells the story of your business to a complete interactive web site using Flash.
Blog writers block
Finding something interesting to say for your blog isn’t always as easy as it seems. Though, good blogs require great writing ability, it is often the content and not the wording that lets them down. We all run dry of ideas every now and then, and such a problem can really affect our confidence – something good writing thrives on. So, where are the best places to look and what is the best way to find inspiration – we look at some ideas to drive you?
Statistics
Looking through your metrics and the number of people who visit you can aid your quest for a blogging idea. Firstly, you see the numbers that still visit you, even during writers block. While, secondly, using your most visited and popular blog stats may show you what interests people the most and gives you ideas for a new blog.
Remember It’s Your Blog.
If you seem to be having problems thinking up ideas for your blog, perhaps you should remember that it’s your blog and your voice and so should be written accordingly. Voice your opinions write about what irks you and let your own beliefs flow.
Read and Write
Reading other people’s work and blogs can be a great way to find inspiration. Look into how others write, evaluate their opinions and form strong opinions on their thoughts. This may motivate you to write something for, or against, or even completely different. By reading blogs about everything from local allotments, to the plight of Africans, you may find something that stirs you to blog.
Even if you can’t keep writing. All great writers suffer from writers block and just as with a plunger and a drain, they will tell you to keep going and eventually things will become unstuck.
Lists and Guides
Lists of the best books, ideas, or people in your field, or how to guides on certain areas give you the limitations to push yourself to write. Writing a couple of these more prescribed pieces can really give you the push to get back in the zone.
Comments and Social Media
Looking through your social media sites, or comments on your blog posts can also offer you an area to write about. Perhaps someone has said something topical, or engaged in a divisive issue. Have a think and then write about it. This may create further debate and even more blogs.
Events
Every month has some form of an event that relates to you and your readers. Whether this is an industry based happening, or a national even such as Valentines, summer holidays, or Christmas. Write about these issues and you’ll have a blog past as quickly as it takes to say Happy Easter.
Digg and Stumble Upon
What better way to get a random idea for a blog post, then searching one of these sites of plenty and finding something that interests you. It might not be relevant, but it’s all about writing.
Use the above for inspiration and just keep writing to get those posts flowing again. Code23 to the rescue again.
How can a blog improve SEO? Does your website need a blog?
One of the best ways, if not the best way to optimise your blog for SEO is to create a blog. Many of us try a number of other means and fail to realise the SEO prowess of a blog.
For many with social media interests, there is only so much posting to new products, or news stories on your site your subscribers and fans are interested in. Blogs, however, offer you the opportunity to do more than this and produce interesting content that readers will like to look through. This interest obviously is a very positive move for a number of reasons, and SEO is certainly the pivotal one.
Every time, you create a blog; you are creating a link directly to your site. These brand-new URLs are used in a very positive manner by your SEO provider. These back links, are looked upon favourably by search engines and count as a vote for your site.
Include deep links to products and relevant stuff on your site to get even more from your new blog.
New Content
One of the other favourable things about onsite blogs is that they are creating new content for the site. This new content is seen as a very positive force by Google (increasingly so) and shows the search engine that the site is alive and being updated regularly. This will push it up the SEO rankings and aid your SEO. By adding in keywords to the blog, as well as anchor text you are aiding your blog.
Of course if the content on your blog site is deemed as quality, you will find it becomes more popular again. Through the aid of social media and video sites such as YouTube, it is very easy to get content seen. By posting interesting pieces, or videos, you can hope to increase the number of visitors, who wish to read your blog and then share it with others. These increases in traffic workswonders for SEO. In the case of Google +, the Plus 1 button also feeds directly into the site and aids SEO. So encourage, plusing, liking, or re-tweeting for some positive SEO.
Of course if you manage to produce content that is extremely intriguing, you may even go viral across the Internet, which means significant SEO benefits.
Customer Information
Blogs are also great for a process called; harvesting’. Harvesting is where you encourage readers and customers to leave their thoughts at the end of a piece. This in turn can then be used for your own purposes. Perhaps someone leaves a complaint; you can use it to make things better, or perhaps someone gives you some useful advice in the comment’s box – all the greaterning these boxes, with feedback from social media and also customer service and you can really improve the customer experience.
All of these pieces of advice aid you with SEO and are definite reasons why you require a blog.
How to Use Metrics
Understanding the popularity of your site is fundamentally based on your metrics. Metrics provide the information on how your website is doing and go a lot deeper than merely page views.
Though there are some simple metrics, such as PPC and SEO, there are also another number of metrics that tell the tale of the tape and give you a better understanding of how your site is performing.
By understanding this performance it is possible to tweak your site to suit the metrics in such a way to make it more successful and get more from your site.
Conversions – these are a great way to gauge the success of a site, and though they are limited a little, they do offer a good idea. Conversions are the ration of people who click onto your site and are converted to purchase, or filling out the necessary request. They don’t include those who contact you via other means, such as phone, or email, but as most people will use online facilities, they do offer a decent reflection.
Visitors – Site visitors is the most basic of all the metrics and is just a showing of the amount of people who click on your site. This is the basic reason for metrics and is fundamental to success. It is a mixture of all marketing efforts and the more eyes you have onsite the better you can do.
Bounce Rate – This shows the amount that come to your site and leave immediately. This metric is a telltale for website design and layout. People who look on your site and can’t find a service on offer, don’t trust your site, or leave immediately for any one of a myriad of other reasons will increase this rate.
Time on Site – The longer people stay on your site the more likely it is they are reading through it and will have a high level of interest. Though, this may not always be true as people maybe can’t find the information they want – it is generally a case of the former and if not interested web users will click off. Longer times on site for web metrics, usually mean more success.
Top Content – This metric will show you the top web content people are clicking on and what they are interested in. This shows the characteristics of your audience and what interests them – something you can cater for in the future and increase page views.
Keywords – This in-depth report is a great way to see the keywords people are searching for online. This gives you a better insight into your web visitors and allows you see the phrases they look for and so cater for them. This metric also allows you to filter out the company name from the keyword list and shows a list of the terms people search for without your name and so show the amount of people who found you without knowing who you are. It is also possible to filter between paid for and no paid for keywords.
Comparing these metrics each month offers you a great insight into the difference and what areas need help. Making a positive decision on what metrics to look at is the first step here, then comparing them each month can really help you improve your site.
Perfect Text for your website
Perfect Text for your website.
With Google’s continuing orientation towards content ever increasing and Google training its bots to check article quality, content has never been as important to the web. This factor alongside the book like handiness of tablets and smart-phones has led to the perfect text being a powerful and effective part of sites.
So how do we get the perfect paragraph?
Set out to wow the reader. Ensure the paragraph has the content to wow and the typography to gather on invisibility. Unassuming, crafted text is a thing of beauty and harder to do than is thought, at its best it provides a vague beautiful distraction, though should ideally allow for comfortable, flowing reading.
Arranging type is an old art and one lost by many as they battle with frameworks and protocol. Though, typesetting is an age-old discipline and should be adhered to.
The Typeface
Conventional wisdom states that only sans-serif fonts are to be used for body text during a web design. Though these fonts may seem a little less effective in smaller sizes, they do offer a number of advantages. Small x heights impair readability, though not all serif fonts impair readability. Georgia is a fine example of a font that offers great body text if set properly.
Look to see if the font has all the bold and italics and even the semi bolds and italics necessary. Headings need one style, but paragraphs need variation. Using the variation can make the style of a font more attractive, readable and clearer.
Rendering is also important. Some fonts are great for heading and some for bodies; it depends on the size most suited to the specific area.
Font and Measure
Below 16 pixels for text, and readability is compromised. This is because browsers render text at this size. If you wish for it to be larger, change in inclines of whole pixels.
The measure of text is the number of characters in the line of text. Comfortable measures are important for usability. This is because lines that are too long are awkward to scan. A good measure is between 45-75 characters per line, which is much less than most sites. The average in some studies is put at 88.74.
Leading and Vertical Rhythm
Leading is the space in between lines and is similar in terms of creating readability to measure. Leading divides letters and words, but should be judged to do so to prevent making letters and words appear fragmented.
Line height is the vertical measure of the space between lines. Line height should be set by equal font sizes. This is because these lines will be increased by 1.5 times when all is taken into account so a font of size 18 allows for size 9 of empty space and an overall size of 27; Whereas an uneven number won’t result in a whole number and causes issues.
Word Spacing
Paragraph text on web pages is set ragged right on HTML. The issue with hyphenation is also significant in HTML5. This is because to insert a hyphen in text (¬)must be included. This means ¬ must be included between words, which is also an irritation. Though Firefox and Safari support CSS3′s text justify properties, which give more control over text align: justify, which eases problems such as this with characters.
Finishing touches
Having considered the aforementioned factors, there are also other factors such as indentation, punctuation – which are both parts of rhythm. These and other factors make documents flow and create an attractive style making text more powerful and effective.
Common Mistakes in SEO Strategy
Common Mistakes in SEO Strategy
SEO strategies fail all the time and there are increasingly hundreds of things to do to optimise a page for SEO. However, of those dozens of things, there are some things more common and easier dealt with than most, which allow you to increase page rankings.
Keywords
Of course optimising your pages for the wrong keywords means you end up failing miserably. Using very generic keywords, or ones that don’t describe the exact page can lead to SEO failure. Each page should have a set of its own keywords for the best effect. To get the most from this write text around keywords, not the other way around.
Furthermore, ensure you try and rank competitive for broad keywords means you won’t really. So use targeted keywords that bring targeted traffic.
Low Optimisation
Optimising your page for loads of keywords will result in a lot of issues as regards SEO. Make sure keywords are closely related to each other and key the keywords low, using only the important ones.
Avoid stuffing with keywords as this will not only have no effect, but maybe even a negative one. Using a keyword analyser, or keeping them within certain limits will mean you have a significantly better chance of succeeding.
MetaTags and HTML Tags
Without these tags and poor usage of these tags, you will suffer SEO issues. Wrong use of the meta robot values can lead to noindex and nofollow and a disaster. Make sure landing pages can be optimised, and links are followed to make sure you get the best SEO.
Furthermore, ensure your SEO rankings and HTML code is proper as this will have effects on SEO. Ensuing all pages can be parsed by search engines is a good practice that wields positive results.
Duplicate Copy
Duplicate pages don’t come available to search engines and aren’t returned in searches. They are indexed but consume Page Rank juice, which can be used elsewhere.
Using 301 redirections you can reorganise and sort out your link’s structure. Though remember that some parts of pages are meant to be the same – menus, footer, header. This structure should be maintained across your site. However, do avoid news and other text across your site as it will hit the similarity percentage and should be avoided. Using duplicate content tools will prevent this and show you how much similarity there is. 30-35 per cent is okay, though it is best to keep it well below this for safety’s sake.
Multiple Pages with the same keywords
If you have this problem, you will have internal competition in your site for the same keywords among different pages. This affects your overall site ranking. Avoid this from happening by optimising for a small number of keywords on each page. This should help you avoid any such situations, which will bring down your search engine optimisation ranking.
Following these rules should go a long way to sorting out the larger problems in SEO and increasing page ranking.
How to know when your website needs a redesign?
How to Know When your Website Needs Redesign
Redesign of a website is often dreaded by many; however, there are generally a number of signs that show you when such a reshape is necessary.
Metrics
If it looks like your metrics (also known as web analytics) are down, then a redesign may be part of your rethink of where everything is going. Now, of course this could also be a product issue, but websites are often to blame. Reducing trends in conversions, sales and participation can be something to do with your sites current design aging. It is essentially your audience getting tired with your current design. The biggest factor if this happens to be understanding what went wrong and where it’s gone wrong. Just adjusting your page, or the conversion flow can have significant effects, and you can save time by doing so.
Users
Contact your users, send them out surveys and ask them what’s wrong, this can often result in you getting to the core of the problem. Usability tests are especially important and conversations on a person-to-person basis allow you to delve deeper than a survey ever could. These can allow you to see undertones, you wouldn’t with surveys. If your brand is considered in a negative light, then look for a redesign – this can all be seen in depth by talking to customers directly.
Tech/ UX Debt
Over a lifetime of a website, you accrue tech/UX debt. This is created during shortcuts around the site, from the initial build over a lifetime of short cuts and corner cutting. Over time these all add up to create a Tech /UX Debt that is a greater cost than the size of continuing to upgrade the site, and you are better off starting from scratch and building a new, clean site. Fixing all the elements can cost more than a new site, and so a rebuild is necessary.
Old Looking
Some sites just age with time and they need a rethink every so often. Sites date. Aesthetics changed, and politicians were honourable when you were young. Keep with the times with a new and updated site. This will aid declining metrics and ensure you are up to date with the competition. Look at brands who are performing well and then assess your site in relation to them. Make sure to look objectively, but also fairly as looking at your own site day in day out can make you feel it is older before its time. Do a cross-section of options to get an accurate reflection, before making rapid changes.
12 Month Rule
More than 12 months can make a significant difference in your site and should be looked at. This refreshes the experience for customers and also breathes fresh air into the site. This will impress customers, the press, other design companies and others and ensure your site looks fresh and attractive.
Following these factors ensures that your site is up to date, but isn’t exhaustive in its width. Access each factor and try and maintain a fresh face to the world.
Understanding SEO to improve your Website rankings
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of undertaking a number of measures to ensure that your web pages offers you the best, or most optimised chance of getting as high of Google ranking as possible.
With business’s increasingly going online, SEO offers websites, the chance to get as high of ranking as possible. A high ranking will significantly increase visibility and so views and clicks on your page. This in turn creates the chance for more revenue, conversions and is overall better for your business. Read more »
The Difference between Web Designers and Web Developers
Though often confused, there are as many disparities between the work of a web designer and a web developer as there is between a policeman and a traffic warden.
Both work on websites, and the two jobs are often considered as interchangeable by many without a deeper grasp of website creation. Essentially, web designers are the artists of the site; whose main job is to make the website look attractive.
Designers
They use a number of tools to create the visual aspects of the site, including Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Talking to them about Base64 encoding, Soap requests and other development, or programming lingo may generally draw a blank face. Many of these designers are trained in typefaces, layouts and usability and try and get inside the companies head and understand their vision and what they require.
Developers
Unlike designers, who is generally a stylish bunch, web developers work on the site mechanics. They design everything from the backend to the way the site works.
They use a number of programming languages, including Java, CSS, HTML and SQL. They will also use a text editor or IDE, a number of browsers and development plug ins.
The Site
Without developed the site may look beautiful, but won’t function well. Badly developed sites are slow, break quite often and are a general hindrance to your business. On the opposite side of the coin, badly designed sites also mean a number of issues.
Website design not only makes sites more attractive, but also means more engagement with customers, better placement of aspects of the site that encourage selling and higher conversion rates. Good designers know where to place items for maximum effect and so are equally worth their weight in gold.
However, due to lack of knowledge of the industry, monetary problems and a range of other issues it is all too common to find one or the other of these people doing both jobs. This is often the reason why web projects fail miserably. Unattractive looking, or feeling pages mean people feel confused, bored, or wary and so avoid them and go to other sites.
How to Get the Best
Defining a clear boundary between both is the best way to get the most from both individuals in these positions and get the top site you can afford.
The best way to choose one or the other is defining what you require for the job. Some of these professionals will have picked up some of the other’s skills along the way. If you’re looking for someone to do a job that is a vast percentage development, with a tiny amount of design you may be able to get away with a developer only, and vice-versa for a designer. However, it is recommended to choose both for any job that involves a reasonable amount of both.
