Website Development Archives - Page 3 of 4

Tips for Consultancy Firms on Developing a Website

Posted on 26/04/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

There are consultancy firms in all sectors but the one thing they have in common is that they are experts in their field. Indeed, as a consultancy firm, your expertise is your product. When it comes to landing new contracts, it’s vital that potential customers can find out everything they need about your business, the expertise within it and the different services you offer. In the digital age, not only do you need a website; you also need to make sure it does the right things. Here, we’ll offer some tips designed to improve consultants’ websites.

Promote your uniqueness

You know better than anyone what makes your company unique and why that uniqueness makes you the best choice for your customers. With many consultancies offering similar services, this uniqueness is your key value proposition and something you need to communicate quickly and clearly as soon as a visitor arrives on your homepage.

To improve how well your website works for you, your USP should be clearly shown, above the fold, on the homepage. It should encapsulate, succinctly, what your company does, who you provide services for and why your business is the right choice.

Doing this right at the start of a visitor’s journey drives potential customers to other parts of your website where you can convince them you are the best company for their needs.

Think carefully about website design

When thinking about how to design or redesign your consultancy website, don’t start with the premise ‘what do we need?’; instead, think about what the customer needs? Putting yourself in the position of a potential customer can help you create a site that has the right design and organisation to help you generate more new business.

It will end up being more user-friendly, mobile-friendly and useful. Not only will its design be better suited to the needs of the user, so will the way information is organised across the site and how it is presented. The more user-friendly it is, the better experience customers will have and this will give them an indication of the quality of the service you offer in your consultancy, too.

The benefits of a blog

Not all businesses need a blog, but for consultancies, they can be invaluable. A blog, essentially, is soft-sell content marketing. Each post should be created to solve a problem that your customers may face. In doing so, you can showcase the unique expertise within your company and subtly mention and link to the services you offer that solve these problems.

Such blogs also have other very useful benefits. Firstly, the use of specialist content can be very helpful for SEO, enabling your website to rank much higher in search engine results so that it attracts even more visitors. What’s more, as each blog post is searchable on the internet, potential customers who may never have heard of your company before might get introduced to your expertise and choose to partner with you as a result.

Of course, blogs can contain a variety of different content: written text, images, infographics, video, etc. – a mix that makes it more engaging and which appeals to different audiences. Blog posts on your website can also be published on social media so that anyone who wishes to read them is brought straight back to your website.

Simple interaction and communication

The easier you make it for website visitors to interact and get in touch, the more likely they are to do it. At the top of the list here, is getting in touch. You need to provide clear and obvious calls to action that anyone will find simple to follow. If there is a ‘call us now’ CTA, for example, use a link that immediately dials your number on mobile phones, saving the user the trouble of having to type it. You can do the same with email links or provide an easy to fill in contact form conveniently located in the footer of every page. Increasingly, businesses are making use of online chat to answer queries in real-time and advanced chatbots are being used to offer this service 24/7.

When it comes to engagement, make it easy for users to bookmark pages and share information with colleagues or on social media. Also, make it easy for them to like your content by providing social media buttons – especially on those blog posts.

A reliable and trustworthy website

If you want your website to be taken seriously, it has to be reliable and trustworthy. Partnering with the right web host and selecting the most appropriate hosting type for your needs ensures your site will always be available, load quickly and respond effortlessly to customer interactions. This all boosts the confidence that customers have in your business.

Also important is choosing a web host that can provide the web security you need to protect you and your customers. You’ll need an SSL certificate to have your site labelled as secure on browsers and which encrypts user data; spam filters to prevent malware and phishing; email certificates to verify your emails are genuine and to encrypt content and attachments; a robust firewall, together with intrusion and malware protection, to keep your server secure; and a backup solution that enables your site to recover quickly from cyberattacks and data loss.

Conclusion

As you can see, your website can play a vital role in promoting your consultancy firm and in generating new business. Hopefully, the tips provided here will show you where you can make improvements to your site and your web hosting .

How Google’s New Ranking Factors Will Affect Your Website Page Experience

Posted on 25/04/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

Changes in the way consumers behave mean customer experience (CX) is now the major battleground over which businesses compete. While this will affect your company directly, in the sense that you’ll need to improve CX to stay competitive, from May 2021, you’ll also need to improve the CX of your website to rank well with Google. Under pressure to improve their own CX, Google has now decided to add ‘page experience’ as one of its ranking criteria. Here, we’ll look at what this will mean for your website and individual web pages.

1. Largest Contentful Paint

How will Google measure loading times going forward? One of the main ways will be the ‘Largest Contentful Paint’ metric. Basically, rather than looking at the loading time of a whole page, it will look specifically at the loading time of the largest element of that page, usually the largest block of text or image. With Google expecting these to load in less than 2.5 seconds, it means you will need to optimise images and break large sections of text into smaller chunks.

2. First Input Delay

While Largest Contentful Paint looks at loading times, First Input Delay focuses on response times, in other words, the time it takes your website to respond to any user interaction, such as carrying out a search, clicking a link or inputting information. The response time is a measure of how long it takes the user’s browser to start processing your website’s response to those interactions. With Google expecting this to be less than 100 milliseconds, not only is the speed of your hosting important, so too is the location of your server. To overcome latency, having servers located nearer the user will speed things up. For customers further away, websites might need to make increasing use of content delivery networks (CDNs).

3. Cumulative Layout Shift

As websites load the elements of a page in stages, it can cause the layout to shift slightly. A common problem is when a user sees a menu, goes to click on it and by the time they have done so, the menu has been pushed down by an advert or privacy banner and they click on this by accident.

Cumulative Layout Shift is a metric that measures the visual stability of a page, looking at how it changes layout during loading and how this impacts the experience of a user. In future, website owners will need to minimise this as much as possible, especially in the ‘above the fold’ layout.

4. The mobile experience

The mobile experience is the area where Google has to put most of its effort. Today, we carry out the majority of our internet searches and spend most of our online time on smartphones. The key difference between desktop and mobile for Google is that with a desktop, we predominantly use Google to find things; on mobiles, much more time is spent on apps. Google needs to claw back some of its lost ground by making its mobile search just as smooth and seamless as using an app.

While Google has got things working effectively at its end, the Achille’s heel in its mobile customer experience is the websites it displays in its search results. What’s the point of having the world’s most advanced search engine if half of the websites that users visit don’t work well on mobile devices? The solution is simple, it will stop ranking websites that are not mobile-friendly, at least on searches carried out on mobile devices – which is most of them!

The solution is a mobile-first website design. Instead of creating a website for computers and then using a responsive theme to convert it for mobile devices, work the other way around. Create the site specifically for mobiles first (the biggest audience). This will improve the way a site looks and responds on mobile devices and prevent common issues that can occur with responsive themes such as text being too small and links or buttons being so close together that users frequently tap the wrong one.

Loading speed also has to be improved on mobiles. While laptops generally connect only to broadband, smartphones are taken everywhere, often where connections, both network and wi-fi, vary in strength and stability. Regardless of connection strength, a good website should still load quickly.

5. SSL, safe browsing and intrusive interstitials

Other key ranking factors to be aware of are the installation of SSL certificates to provide secure HTTPS connections and encrypt the sending and receiving of payment data; ensuring your website is free from malware and links to malicious websites; and the removal of ‘intrusive interstitials’, the jargon term for popups and other intrusions that affect the users’ browsing experience.

Conclusion

From May 2021, Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift will become ‘core web vitals’ in Google’s algorithm. At the same time, there will be increased importance on mobile-friendliness and security and far less tolerance of intrusive features, like popups.

Why Every Builder Should Have A Website

Posted on 17/04/202015/06/2021 by Tushar

Look down any road, these days, and you’ll see some form of building work going on. It’s a busy industry, but one where competition is fierce. Having a website doesn’t only improve your chances of landing more work, it can also lead to customers being willing to pay more for your services. And if the only thing stopping you from getting a website is because you think it’s too difficult or too expensive, read on and we’ll bust that myth once and for all. Here are six reasons every builder needs a website.

1. Stop being so hard to find

Not getting enough enquiries or the right kind of jobs? Most people looking for a builder today will begin their search online. More specifically, they’ll type ‘builder’ and the name of their town in Google and look at the companies that appear in the results. If you’re not on the list, you won’t get the enquiry. The good news, of course, is that if you have a website, you’re likely to get many more enquiries than you currently do.

2. Give customers information immediately

The internet has made the world a faster place. Not only do customers expect things to be done quickly and conveniently; they are no longer prepared to wait for things that are slow or which are a hassle. Why does this matter? Well, if detailed information about your services isn’t available on a website, they’ll see it as a long-winded hassle to ring you up, especially when your competitors’ websites put that information on their screens in a matter of seconds.

This is why simply putting a few details on a listings website is never enough. Even people who find you on there are still expecting a link to your website where they can find out more.

3. Provide information that sells

As an experienced builder, you’ll know better than anyone the type of questions your customers want to know before they decide to choose your business. For example, they’ll want to know the different types of building work you offer and your qualifications, accreditations, skills and experience. A website enables you to answer all these questions in detail and in writing so that customers can be better persuaded to contact you for a quote.

What’s more, put once in writing on your website, it will save you hours having to explain it again and again over the phone or in emails.

4. Show customers how good you are

There’s nothing like a great photo for showing how fantastic a building looks after you’ve finished working on it – and this can be the clincher when it comes to landing a new contract. On a website, you can create a portfolio page with pictures of your best work and can keep adding to it as the years go by. This will let potential customers not just see the quality of your work but help them visualise how the final project will look.

5. Up your prices

While pricing is important, how much you cost isn’t the most important factor in landing a job. Today, 82% of customers are willing to pay more for services that deliver better customer experiences. As a builder, you’ll know what those important customer experiences are, for example, starting projects as agreed, meeting deadlines, arriving on-site on time, staying within budget, leaving premises clean and tidy, finishing the project to specification, etc.

While delivering those experiences is essential, letting customers know about them on your website changes perceptions of the kind of company you are and this can stop relying purely on price to get contracts. You can quote what you are worth because of the quality of the experiences you deliver and customers will be willing to pay for it.

6. Look more professional

Most people expect every business to have a website. When there isn’t one, potential customers will ask why – and this can lead to concerns about whether you are a professional builder or a legitimate company. While you certainly don’t need a website to be professional or legitimate, having one can reassure people that you are, especially when it contains information that establishes trustworthiness.

Simple information, such as a physical address, telephone number and professional website and email addresses, give your business legitimacy. As does a company registration number and VAT number if you have them. A website that contains terms and conditions, testimonials from past customers, photos of previous work, an about us page, etc., all help to convince customers that you are a business they can trust.

With customers spending significant sums of money on a building project, it is important to let them know that you are a professional company and doing this on your website is key to building that trust.

How easy is it to build a website?

It has never been easier or more affordable to build and run a website. Website building software, like WordPress, is free, easy to use, requires no coding skills and comes with thousands of themes and add-ons to give your site the look and functionality you need. Used on 41% of all websites, this professional tool can be installed with a single click here at Anteelo, enabling you to start working on your site in minutes. What’s more, you can host your website with us for less than £1 a week and take advantage of the wide range of services included in the plan, such as 24/7 technical support, daily website backups, professional email, robust security, guaranteed 99.9% uptime and more.

4 Essential Features a Website Must Have in 2020

Posted on 12/04/202012/06/2021 by Tushar

When it comes to running a website, you can’t afford to keep still while your competitors are making those all-important improvements. Advancements in hosting and web design, changing customer expectations and shifts in search engine algorithms are just some of the challenges that webmasters have to tackle to keep their sites fit for today’s marketplace. Here, we’ll look at what we consider to be the essential features of a website in 2020.

1. First-class hosting

Your choice of hosting package underpins every aspect of your website’s performance on the internet. A modern solution, like VPS hosting, for example, can ensure your site is always online, loads quicker on users’ devices and that it can handle spikes in demand without performance being affected. At the same time, a good web host can also provide you with exceptional security and backup solutions, improved compliance with regulations, reliable business email and 24/7 technical support to help you quickly tackle any problems which may arise. It can also make it easier to manage your website and your business with the use of advanced control panels like cPanel or Plesk.

With a first-class host and hosting package in place, a website can rank better in search engine results and reduce the number of visitors abandoning the site, while improving its reputation for being a reliable and secure place for people to visit and shop.

2. Mobile first design

Smartphones have become the most popular way to search the internet, with people browsing on them for twice as long as they do on laptops. Improved public wi-fi and 4G and 5G networks mean they are increasingly used when out and about to find local businesses or to search for information. At the same time, many more people are using mobiles to shop. According to analysts, GlobalData, mobile shopping is the fastest growing area in UK retail and will account for 40% of all UK online spending by 2024, with a value of over £33 billion.

With smartphones becoming such a key technology for consumers, website owners have little choice but to adapt. While responsive websites have been around for years, many earlier themes were geared up to create a desktop site and then simply repurposed this for display on mobile. This way of working, however, doesn’t always provide the mobile user with ease of use or best display. Today, it is important to develop a website where mobile use takes precedence; what Google calls the mobile first approach.

3. Personalisation

Personalisation has become one of the most important features of contemporary websites and provides benefits for both the user and the business. The process begins when a user signs in and, once done, the website transforms into one which is unique for that person. What they are presented with are the products, offers and information they most likely want to see. This improves their user experience, makes them feel valued, encourages engagement and generally makes them more interested in what’s on offer.

For the company, not only does this mean you are far more likely to make a sale; it also gets customers coming back over and over. It’s a technique that Amazon has mastered and which virtually every other online business wants to emulate.

While major companies invest heavily in advanced technologies, such as AI and product recommendation engines, to implement personalisation, it is possible to do it on virtually any website. There are numerous WordPress plugins, for example, that can personalise the website’s content and product recommendations, many using AI recommendation engines that analyse users browsing histories, etc., to ensure that those recommendations are highly relevant.

4. Ease of use

Customers expect every aspect of a website to be easy to use. This includes the fast-loading, mobile-friendliness and personalisation mentioned above, as well as a raft of other important features. Key here are simple navigation, so that whatever the user wants to find, they can do so quickly, and advanced product search, so that results can be filtered by size, colour, price or brand, etc. The checkout process should also be simple, without the need to fill in lots of information and with payment options to suit the user’s preferred payment methods.

Customers also expect finding information to be easy. This means providing FAQs or knowledgebases, while making it simple to get in touch and get speedy replies. Today, many websites feature chatbots, which have replaced live chat to customer service reps with interactions with AI-enabled software. Although the AI takes time to train, unlike a human, it can work around the clock and chat to multiple consumers simultaneously, answering the vast majority of queries that they ask of it. Importantly for generating sales, it can also initiate conversations and make product recommendations.

Conclusion

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of all the features a website should have, what we have included here are those four which we think are essential to help websites perform well in the modern marketplace. First-class hosting, mobile first design, personalisation and ease of use are vital to ensure your website meets modern user expectations and can compete with other sites.

Tools and Frameworks To Build Progressive Web Apps

Posted on 01/03/202015/06/2021 by Tushar

Connecting the power of the web with mobile has always been one of the most challenging tasks for the development community. While the purpose saw a number of tools and frameworks trying out to develop the perfect blend of performance and wide reachability, the result had always been sub-par. But in 2015, everything changed. Designer Frances Berriman and a Google Chrome Engineer, Alex Russell denoted the term Progressive Web Apps.

Although it took some years for the concept to come into the mainstream, but the moment Google started popularizing PWAs, the industry noticed.

And it was not just the developers who were now looking for tutorials to migrate websites in PWAs.

Both SMEs and industry’s hot-shots like Facebook and Twitter now started singing the tune of the many benefits that the concept came packaged with. All leading to a very high popularity rate of the concept when it comes to combining the best of convenience and mass reach.

The popularity graph that the mobile app type is on has given birth to a number of PWA frameworks and tools that are being prepared to strengthen the debate of Native vs PWA in favor of the latter.

The rise in PWA frameworks and tools list, however, has made it all the more difficult for businesses to choose the best frameworks for PWA development.

But let us make it easy for you today.

Here’s the list of tools and frameworks for PWA that businesses can choose from. These PWA development frameworks have been chosen by our team of PWA builders on the basis of the ease of development and scope of mass adoption.

Without further delay, here’s the list. The one we rely on in our role as the Leading PWA Development Company.

Top PWA Tools and Frameworks

Ionic

Established in 2013 as an open-source SDK, Ionic is based on Apache Cordova and Angular framework. And since then, it has been a part of over 5 million hybrid app development. What makes Ionic ideal for PWA development is that it comes with a massive library of components for both Android and iOS, which are used by developers to develop web pages which run inside the device browser with the help of WebView.

There are quite a few benefits that come tagged with using Ionic, making it one of the best PWA framework of 2019 such as –

Reduces the cost of app development for its open-source and free
One of the tools to develop PWA that come with the shortest learning curve
Easy maintenance with the help of a built-in browser instrument
Large plug-in library for accessing APIs

Polymer

It is an open-source progressive web app framework developed in-house by Google.

It consists of a wide range of templates, Progressive Web App tools, and web components which simplifies the whole PWA development process. It makes use of HTML/JSS/JS making it a complete PWA framework on its own.

The pros that Polymer comes with include –

A full web app stack support which includes routing, data tier, and responsive layouts
Great documentation
It is one of those PWA development tools that come with easily understandable APIs
The range of wide base of components across browsers

AngularJS

The third most used PWA frameworks and tools are the set of AngularJS offerings

Introduced first by Google in 2009, AngularJS is one of the most popular methods of PWA development. It makes use of the JavaScript ecosystem to build responsive applications which are both reliable and robust.

The benefits that AngularJS come attached with include –

Large community support
Well-defined method for implementation
MVC framework
Presence of IntelliSense and Typescript
Newer versions being launched with minimal learnability curve

Vue.js

Vue is presently one of the fastest evolving libraries because of its ease in coding and high-speed rendering. It allows for scaling of the project with an added advantage of extra packages.

The pros of Vue.js which makes it one of the most reliable frameworks to build PWA includes –

Supported by Laravel and Alibaba
The simplicity of code lowers the learnability curve
Simple structures and features inspired by Angular1 and React
Fast rendering with Virtual DOM
Flexible to set up with the help of TypeScript and JSX

React

Supported by Facebook, React is often one of the top choices of Progressive Web App builders because of its wide JavaScript library and a large community.

Although Pure JavaScript lies in the base of React, it makes use of JSX to employ render functions for connecting HTML structures. This gives developers ease which in return makes React one of the top PWA frameworks and tools.

The pros list of React looks something like this –

Large community support
An extensive ecosystem
A greater degree of scalability and flexibility
Speedy rendering with Virtual-DOM.

Lighthouse

Developed by Google to improve the quality of web apps, the tool measures your website in multiple criteria and enlists the factors that you have to keep into consideration to ensure your site is ready to become a PWA.

It analyzes your digital offerings and gives you the areas to implement in your PWA development process.

So here were the six frameworks and Progressive Web App tools that have been relied upon by the industry and by our team of in-house PWA builders for converting your idea into an app that merges the best of mobile and web.

FAQs About PWA Development and Frameworks to build PWA

Q. How does a Progressive Web App work?

A PWA is a web application that is installed on a system.

It works on an offline network state, making use of the data cached during the users’ last interaction with the application.

Q. How do you know if a website is PWA?

To check if a website is working as PWA, you will have to make use of Chrome’s Lighthouse extension. It will tell you if the site is PWA in addition to giving you ways to convert it into one.

Q. How do you create a PWA?

There is very extensive documentation prepared by Google devs explaining the process of creating a PWA to the t. Here’s the link – https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/your-first-pwapp/#0. You can visit the page if you are planning to fly solo and if not, you can get in touch with our team of PWA developers who will hand-hold you through the entire process.

Q. What are the PWA frameworks and tools?

There are a number of PWA frameworks and tools presently operating in the market. But the ones that we rely on most are –

Ionic
Polymer
AngularJS
Vue.js
React
Lighthouse

Convert a Website to Progressive Web App (PWA):Guide

Posted on 06/01/202012/06/2021 by Tushar

In a very short span of time, Progressive Web Apps have made a very prominent mark in the mobile app industry.

The concept, which Google wants you know to know about, is a respite for the industry that continuously has been making the same complaints time and again –

With respect to Websites: Slow loading speed and Low Resonance Rate

With respect to Mobile Apps: Apps taking a lot of memory space, It is dependent on the network connection, and The long steps users will have to take from finding an app to starting to use it.

Since Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are downloaded straight from a website and runs as a website as well, users get benefitted in three ways –

They get to save on the time that goes into first finding an app on the store, installing it and then feeding in information to get it started
Since Progressive Web Apps work as a website, they take up minimal device storage space, and
Because they work primarily as a website, the concept of cache holds true, which enables the app to run even where there is no network connection.

Benefits of PWAs: Reasons to Convert Your Existing Website to PWA

Besides giving these obvious benefits to the users, Progressive Web Apps – the ideal combination of websites and mobile apps – have emerged as the cost-effective formula of business success as well.

The benefits that PWAs bring to businesses by being easily discoverable, by taking up less memory space, by coming with low cost of development, and lastly by running offline on a great speed can be gauged by seeing the change in growth numbers of these famous brands –

Success stories like these and a lot of them in the industry are enough to make every modern day mobile business look for the best progressive web app development company and look for ways on how to convert their website to PWA.

If you too are planning to convert the site to PWA and avail all the low investment cost benefit that the concept has to offer, you are the right place.

Here are the exact steps to How to convert your WordPress/PHP website to Progressive Web App (PWA), as shared by Google to our Team of Progressive Web App Developers (one of the perks of being one of the official Google Developer Agencies) –

But first thing first. Know the elements you would need to create PWA from a website.

What You Need Before Looking into How to Turn a Website into PWA

To convert a website into PWA, here are the three things required –

An attached Android device running Chrome 52 or above,
A basic understanding of Git and Chrome DevTools,
The sample code, and
A Text Editor

Once you have these ready, get your HTTPS website out for migration.

Step 1: Load the URL

Clone GitHub repository from command line:

$ git clone https://github.com/googlecodelabs/migrate-to-progressive-web-apps.git

Doing this will help develop a Migrate to PWA directory with the completed code for every step. For this specific codelab, upload the work file and then make the changes there.

Once your code has been checked out, use the ‘Simple HTTP Server Application’ for serving work file on the port 8887.

After this, you will be able to load the URL.

Step 2: View the Site on your Mobile

In case you have Android device plugged in with your desktop, type in this in your URL – chrome://inspect. This will let you set a port forward with the help of port that you wrote before to the same port on the device.

Press Enter for this to save.

Now you will be able to access the basic version of your website at – http://localhost:8887/ on the connected Android phone.

Step 3: Add the Modern Head Tags

The first thing that you will have to do is make the website mobile friendly and secondly you will have to add Web App Manifest. The manifest will describe the meta information of the site in a way that it would appear on user’s’ home screen.

If you don’t have a templating system in place, add these lines –

<head>

</head>

Viewport – The first line consists of a meta tag which specifies the viewport. This element will help you with responsiveness. After writing the line of code once you reload the site, you will find the site fitting your device precisely.
Manifest – In the second line of your code you have referenced the file – a movement that is needed to control how the site gets added to the home screens.

Once done, open a text editor. It’s time to write JSON. In the short_name section, specify what will show on the home screen and try to keep it within 15 characters.

Next, save your file as the manifest.json nomenclature and reload the page on Android device and go to the top right menu and opt for ‘Add to Home Screen’. Now you will be able to see your icon on the home screen!

Step 4: Add a Service Worker

Service Worker is the background script which the browser can run while the user is not on the page. It is the element that gives the offline support and gets active when the notification is pushed.

Create a Service Worker

Copy this code in a new file and then save it as sw.js.

/** An empty service worker! */

self.addEventListener (‘fetch’, function(event)

{

/** An empty fetch handler! */

});

And that’s it.

Register the Service Worker

You will have to register the code in your website’s code, for that, open up your site.js file and paste this –

navigator.serviceWorker && navigator.serviceWorker.register(‘./sw.js’).then(function(registration) { console.log(‘Excellent, registered with scope: ‘, registration.scope);});

Now, the code will get executed on every single page load. Check if its working properly by reloading the page and then checking – chrome://serviceworker-internals/

Now your website will be able to prompt users to install it on their home screens and secondly, you will be able to make your site able to support push notifications and even work offline.

Step 5: Make the Site Work Offline

First step would be to open sw.js script and get hold of caches object. Once you have that, update the code and app the entire website to cache.

Try out how it’s working now. Uninstall the present app and load it on Chrome. Next, refresh the page and select ‘Add to Home Screen’ in the right corner menu.

For abiding by the rule that when Service Worker changes, the page should reload and reinstall it, all you will have to do is add a component which has the ‘version’ of the service worker. When that changes, the install movement happens again, caching the resources that would have changed.

Congratulations, you now know how to convert a Web to PWA and if you followed the steps side-by-side, you have now even migrated your website into a Progressive Web App!

*Disclaimer*: While these steps will give you, the developer, an exact idea of how you will have to fill in the blanks and move from Point A in the process to Point C, if you are reading this as an enthusiastic entrepreneur who wishes to take charge of the migration, I would say, don’t do it without having support of an experienced progressive web app development services provider.

While these steps are explanatory, there are a number of elements that come up as part of the process when you sit with the actual development process. So, instead of trying your hands with the steps and finding a different result because you weren’t sure of the between the line elements, give the job to a PWA development company who has specialization in the domain.

Website Loading Times: 4 Ways They Affect Your Business

Posted on 28/03/201922/06/2021 by Tushar

Hereâ€™s a question for you: whatâ€™s the first thing any visitor notices on your website ? Your header? Your logo? Your headline? The answer is none of these; itâ€™s your loading time. Before a visitor sees any of your content, theyâ€™ll watch your website load. The expectation is that this will happen almost instantaneously. If it doesnâ€™t, theyâ€™ll start to leave and this will impact on your conversion rates. But there are other reasons why a slow loading site causes problems: it increases your bounce rate, it makes your site harder to crawl, it gives a poorer experience for your visitor and, perhaps most crucially, it lowers your ranking on search engines. In this post, weâ€™ll look at the importance of site speed for your website.

1. Google uses site speed as a ranking factor

Googleâ€™s mission to provide users with the best possible search results means it is actively demoting slow loading websites. It doesnâ€™t consider it good business to send visitors to websites that take too long to load as it reflects badly on itself. So, even if your content is great, your ranking in search results can still suffer. And this means less traffic and fewer sales.

Whatâ€™s more, this applies to searches done on mobiles as well as on computers, so if your desktop site runs fine but your mobile site is sluggish, youâ€™re still going to rank lower.

2. Site speed affects search engine crawling

If you want all your content to be searchable on the internet, search engines have to discover whatâ€™s there. This is done through what is known as site crawling, where a search bot will go to your homepage and follow all the links until it has made an inventory of every page it can find. These pages and their content are then indexed so they can be searched for.

When undertaking a crawl, a search engine needs to send requests to your server to receive information about your content. However, as each request uses up a part of your serverâ€™s resources, search engines are reluctant to send too many in case they slow your website down for genuine visitors. If your loading times are slow or you have a poor server response time, then, to prevent overburdening your website, search engines will crawl fewer pages. As a result, not all your pages may get indexed or updates to existing pages may not get noticed.

This should not be a big problem for small websites, however, if you have a large website that is constantly adding new content or if you have a significant amount of older content, it could be an issue. One way to improve crawling efficiency is to improve your site structure. Delete outdated content, eradicate any broken links, put in redirects where necessary and tidy up your menus and categories.Â This will cut down on the amount of unnecessary crawling a search engine has to do, so it can focus on the content that counts.

3. Faster sites have higher conversion rates

While studies into the effects of site speed have come up with different figures, they all agree on one thing: the faster a website, the higher its conversion rates. HubSpot looked at 12 different case studies and showed that a 1 second delay in loading times reduces conversion and revenue by 7% and page views by 11%. Similar results were shown for bounce rates: the faster the loading times, the lower the rate. A page that loaded in 9.9 seconds had a 58% bounce rate, compared to 12.8% for a page that loaded in 2.4 seconds.

This goes to show that even the smallest delay can impact your bottom line. Quite simply, the longer people have to wait, the fewer of them are going to stick around all the way to the checkout. To grab those sales and remain competitive, you have to have a website that loads faster than your competitors.

4. A faster website equals happier users

If you want visitors to stick around until they purchase something, you have to provide them with a great experience. This is especially so if you want to retain those customers over the long term. Studies have shown that site speed is an integral part of creating a good user experience â€“ this is why Google places so much importance on it when ranking sites. The statistics for conversion rates and bounce rates back this up.

If you want to improve your brand reputation and increase customer loyalty, making your website faster should be one of the things that you consistently try to achieve.

How to improve your site speed

The first stage for anyone wanting to make their site faster is to discover its current desktop and mobile loading times and to find out where improvements need to be made. You can find this out easily by using the free Google PageSpeed Insights Tool. Just type in your URL and it will give your site marks out of 100 for its desktop and mobile loading times. The higher the mark, the better. Of more value, it will also identify the issues which are causing your loading times to be slow and provide you with a list of modifications that can make it load even quicker. These will include things such as caching, compression and image optimisation.

Another issue which can affect your loading times is the performance of your web server. This can be due to your host using slower hardware or not configuring the server for optimum speed. For those on a shared hosting plan, it can also be due to other users hogging all the server resources and your host not dealing with the matter.

Conclusion

As you can see, slow loading speeds can affect your site in all kinds of ways: lowing search engine ranking, preventing pages from being indexed, reducing conversion rates and revenue, and negatively impacting the user experience. Hopefully, the information provided here will help you check your own site speed and put measures in place to make it load faster.

Before registering a domain name, think about these six things.

Posted on 22/03/201922/06/2021 by Tushar

Choosing the best domain name for your business is a critical but often challenging decision. Get it right and it can attract lots of visitors to your website and improve your online presence. However, before you make a final choice there are a number of things you need to consider and, in this post, we’ll look at what they are and explain why they are important.

1. Getting the basics right

Before coming up with ideas for a domain name, you first need to consider how visitors will use them. If someone is looking for your website, they’ll need to remember what it is called and then type it into the search bar. A good name, therefore, is one which is easy to remember and easy to spell. Keeping it short and simple and doing away with over quirky spellings make for a good starting point.

2. Keyword names versus brand names

There’s lots of debate about whether your domain name should contain keywords, e.g. cambridgecleaners.com or brand names, e.g. hargreaves.com. In reality, there is no right or wrong, however, the choice you make should decide upon the market you are in and the long-term goals of your business.

A brand name is unique and once your business is established can have a status that attracts customers because of your reputation. If you are in a market where brand is important, then that option might be best for you.

Keyword-based domains help people associate you with the products or services you sell and/or the location where your business operates. Cambridgecleaners.com would be helpful to anyone in Cambridge looking for a cleaner because the name says it all. A potential issue, however, is if your company diversifies or specialises in the future and the keywords in the domain name don’t accurately indicate what you do.

3. Finding your ideal domain name is already taken

This is a common problem and not simply because there are other organisations with the same name. Some companies register thousands of unused domain names just so they can sell them at a profit when someone else wants them.

If you find that the domain name is already taken, the first step is to visit the site and see if the website is live and being used. If it is and the site looks successful, there’s little chance of you being able to purchase it and you may need to seek an alternative domain name. If there is no live site, there is a much better chance that it can be purchased. You should check the Whois database to find out the site’s owner so you can make an offer. There are, however, no guarantees the owner will sell and they can charge what they like.

4. Finding your ideal domain name is being used on social media

While your ideal domain name might be free, it is also a good idea to see if someone else is using that name on social media. If you want to create a brand called GameU and register the GameU.com website thinking you’re good to go, it can be disconcerting to find out immediately afterwards that there’s a massively successful GameU YouTube channel with 10 million subscribers. Chances are, everyone who visits your website would be looking for the YouTuber, not for you. It’s the same with influencers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

5. Choosing the right domain extension

Domain names come in two parts, the part before the dot and the part that follows it. While the first part is important for your branding and for helping people find you, the second part plays a number of important roles and shouldn’t be overlooked.

The second part of the name is known as the Top Level Domain (TLD) and this is used to categorise your website so that users and search engines have a better understanding of what its purpose is. We all know, for example, that .gov is for government websites, .co.uk is for UK companies and .org for non-profit organisations.

Not so long ago, choosing the right TLD was a fairly simple affair as there were few to choose from. Today, however, there is a far greater number and more are being added all the time. The good news is that many of these are keyword-based and this means that there is less need to use keywords in the first part of the domain name. Some examples of new TLDs include .London, .restaurant and .finance.

One of the advantages of these new TDLs is that it gives people more chance to get the domain name they want. If hargreaves.com has been taken by a builder in Macclesfield, the chances are that hargreaves.london or hargreaves.cafe is still available.

6. Registering multiple extensions

It is common practice for companies to register multiple TDLs associated with their brand name in order to protect their reputation.

If you ran a successful eCommerce store called abcfashions.com and only registered that one domain, it wouldn’t take long for others to register an abcfashions.co.uk or abcfashions.co website and pretend to be your company. They may sell counterfeit versions of your products to unsuspecting customers or just plain steal from them. All of this can have a devastating effect on your reputation. This is why registering multiple TLDs became so common.

This may be something you want to consider. However, with so many TLDs available today it would cost you thousands of pounds a year to register them all. Instead, it might be worth registering the ones you think most useful. If you have a .co.uk TLD, for example, it might be wise to consider registering the .co, .com and the .uk versions at the same time.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are quite a few things you need to consider before choosing a domain name for your business. You need a memorable and easy to spell name, to consider the use of keywords or brand names, to check whether it is already registered or being used on social media, to pick the most appropriate TLD and to consider whether to register multiple TLDs. If you are looking for a domain name for your website, you can search for and register them on our Domain page.

6 Signs That Your Website Is In Need Of An Upgrade

Posted on 19/03/201922/06/2021 by Tushar

Nothing stands still in business and that includes a website. Trends change, new technologies are developed, search engines modify their ranking criteria and customers have ever-increasing expectations. A website that was the best thing since sliced bread when you launched it several years ago may now be due for an upgrade. Here, we’ll look at some of the signs to look out for.

1. Your site doesn’t rank well

One of the first clues that you need a website upgrade is if your site is performing less well than it did in search engine results. Search engines are forever moving the goalposts when it comes to how they rank websites and older sites often come out badly as a result. This can be because many of your earlier pages were created using now outdated SEO techniques which no longer carry much weight or, even worse, are penalised for contravening the latest webmaster guidelines.

While it is important to keep abreast of SEO trends and to update your optimisation accordingly, sometimes a complete overhaul may be what’s needed to bring your site up-to-date and to ensure all your content is fresh and relevant.

2. Your website is chaotic

One of the issues that all websites face is how to manage growth. As the years go by, you’ll make lots of changes to your site, adding pages, posts, products and other features, while removing others.

Sometimes it can be difficult to keep tabs on these changes and they can lead to a number of problems. You may end up publishing duplicate content, have links to content which is no longer there or, perhaps worst of all, having two versions of the same page but with different details, such as pricing, which can cause issues with customers. You may also have features which no longer work properly or which don’t comply with the latest legislation, such as GDPR.

If your site is getting into such a chaotic state, then it can often be better to start from scratch and create one which is better organised and where everything works as it should.

3. Outdated styling

Design trends are continually changing and although you can’t update your website every time a new fashion appears, there comes a time when it begins to look out of date. This isn’t a good thing on the internet where visual impact is so important, so, if your website is still wearing flares and sporting a kaftan, it’s probably time for a makeover.

Typical things to look out for are dated images that no longer depict the modern-day and tired looking layouts, fonts and backgrounds. Updating to something more modern will give visitors the impression that your company is forward-thinking and on point.

4. Not mobile-friendly

Google wants website owners to have a ‘mobile-first’ approach to web design, where the focus is on building the mobile site first and then adding other features for devices like tablets and computers. The reason for this is that although we do most of our browsing, around 60%, on mobile phones, many websites do not function well enough on smartphone screens.

This requires website owners to go beyond using responsive themes as even these don’t always put the needs of the mobile user first. They may render the website in a way that is readable, but often some of the functions don’t work effectively and some of the navigational features are not user-friendly for the thumb-operated screens.

With increasing numbers of people browsing and buying on smartphones, any website that doesn’t provide for these users is going to lose out and find their search engine rankings getting worse.

5. Poor user experience

Where, once, customers simply wanted the cheapest prices, today, many of them will purchase from the website that offers them the best user-experience – even if the price is a little higher. This is great news for those working with small margins but means you will need to upgrade your game when it comes to your website.

Providing a great customer experience covers all aspects of a website. It needs to be easily navigable, have detailed information (i.e. text, images, video and other content) that directly answers the questions customers have. It needs to offer users the opportunity to get quick responses, such as those offered by live chat. It will provide personalised shopping experiences and offers, swift delivery, customer reviews and additional services like wish lists or gift wrapping. It may also offer expert advice in the form of blog posts, engaging content (such as competitions) and even reward schemes for loyal customers. Importantly, a simple and quick checkout process is also needed.

6. Slow loading

Customers expect websites to load instantly, so if yours takes its time to render on their device, you may lose a lot of business. Even a one-second delay has been shown to drop conversions by 7% and up to 40% of visitors abandon a website when the landing page takes more than a couple of seconds to load. Few people are ever going to make it to the checkout if this happens on every page.

If that doesn’t encourage you to upgrade to a faster website, you also need to remember that search engines use loading times as a ranking factor. Speeding up means you’ll rank higher and get more organic traffic, whereas being slow will have the opposite effect. You should also consider moving to a faster hosting package as this, too, can dramatically speed up your site.

Conclusion

Websites are like cars. When we first get them, they are shiny, new and have all the latest features. However, after a few years, they have been superseded by shinier and newer models that have even smarter features. If the signs mentioned in this post apply to your website, then it may be time to upgrade to one which is better suited for today’s internet.

7 Steps to Creating a Secure Website

Posted on 15/03/201922/06/2021 by Tushar

The sheer number of data breaches and cyberattacks that take place means that when developing a website, companies need to adopt a security mindset. Failure to do so can have disastrous consequences, including substantial fines, loss of business and reputational damage. Ensuring your website is secure means grappling with a wide range of security issues and in this post, we’ll look at ways you can overcome many of the vulnerabilities that pose a threat.

1. A comprehensive security approach

Right at the outset of the development process, there should be a disciplined approach to building a site that is end-to-end secure. This is particularly important when the site is being developed by different teams, each working on separate areas. Even if each team is working with security in mind, doing so without an understanding of what other teams are doing can result in data becoming vulnerable. To prevent this, there needs to be someone with oversight of security so that, once all the separate elements are put together, the final website remains comprehensively secure.

2. Validate all data

Not validating the data inputted by your users puts your website at risk from various, havoc-wreaking, forms of attack. These include SQL injection, cross-site scripting, command injection and other similar threats. Data validation, therefore, should be built-in to ensure all information inputted is not going to cause harm.

3. Scan your website from the outset

Scanning is fundamental to ensure your website is secure. It enables you to find previously undiscovered vulnerabilities and security holes so that you can fix them. You should scan regularly during the development process and, once launched, you should continue scanning on a daily basis and after each time you make an update to your website or system. Some web hosts will provide a website scanning service for you.

4. Update apps immediately and use clean code

Hackers send out millions of bots a day looking for websites using outdated, vulnerable applications they know they can break into. Updating your software to the latest version or applying a security patch removes these vulnerabilities and makes your site safer. Importantly, the sooner you update, the quicker you become secure. Auto-updates are the safest and most hassle-free way to do this.

To reduce the number of vulnerabilities overall, it is always good practice to delete unnecessary data, databases and software from your server.

Website developers should also make sure they do not use applications with known vulnerabilities. Older platform versions, themes, plugins, etc., should be replaced with the latest clean versions prior to being installed.

5. Use strong passwords

Everyone knows that the sophisticated software used by today’s cybercriminals makes it easy to crack weak passwords. Enabling users to keep default passwords or use weak passwords puts your company at risk of attack. For this reason, there’s no excuse not to enforce strong passwords on your site. Indeed, implementing two-factor authentication where, for example, a code is sent to the user’s phone, can make security significantly tighter. And as virtually everyone has a mobile phone these days, such methods of authentication shouldn’t be too much of a burden on your users.

6. Rigorous permissions management

The issue with weak passwords is exacerbated when administrator permissions and privileges are not well managed. If these are given to non-essential users and third-parties, the website becomes increasingly vulnerable to attack. Organisations need to have a clear policy in place about how permissions are managed and this should include precautions which ensure that the higher the level of privilege a user has, the stronger their authentication process needs to be.

7. Encrypt your data

If you store personal data about your users, the best way to keep it secure is to encrypt it. This way, even if your database is breached and the information stolen, the hackers won’t be able to access it. If you sell directly from your website, you should also encrypt the user’s financial data while it is in transit from their browser to your site. This prevents it from being stolen on-route. You can do this by installing an SSL certificate.

Conclusion

Security is essential for all websites in order to protect your company and your users from today’s sophisticated cybercriminals. To make your website secure, you need to put things in place during its development, rather than bolting them on at the end of the process. Hopefully, the points raised in this post will help you develop a secure site of your own.

Promote your uniqueness

Think carefully about website design

The benefits of a blog

Simple interaction and communication

A reliable and trustworthy website

Conclusion

1. Largest Contentful Paint

2. First Input Delay

3. Cumulative Layout Shift

4. The mobile experience

5. SSL, safe browsing and intrusive interstitials

Conclusion

1. Stop being so hard to find

2. Give customers information immediately

3. Provide information that sells

4. Show customers how good you are

5. Up your prices

6. Look more professional

How easy is it to build a website?

1. First-class hosting

2. Mobile first design

3. Personalisation

4. Ease of use

Conclusion

Top PWA Tools and Frameworks

Ionic

Polymer

AngularJS

Vue.js

React

Lighthouse

FAQs About PWA Development and Frameworks to build PWA

Q. How does a Progressive Web App work?

Q. How do you know if a website is PWA?

Q. How do you create a PWA?

Q. What are the PWA frameworks and tools?

Benefits of PWAs: Reasons to Convert Your Existing Website to PWA

What You Need Before Looking into How to Turn a Website into PWA

Step 1: Load the URL

Step 2: View the Site on your Mobile

Step 3: Add the Modern Head Tags

Step 4: Add a Service Worker

Create a Service Worker

Register the Service Worker

Step 5: Make the Site Work Offline

1. Google uses site speed as a ranking factor

2. Site speed affects search engine crawling

3. Faster sites have higher conversion rates

4. A faster website equals happier users

How to improve your site speed

Conclusion

1. Getting the basics right

2. Keyword names versus brand names

3. Finding your ideal domain name is already taken

4. Finding your ideal domain name is being used on social media

5. Choosing the right domain extension

6. Registering multiple extensions

Conclusion

1. Your site doesn’t rank well

2. Your website is chaotic

3. Outdated styling

4. Not mobile-friendly

5. Poor user experience

6. Slow loading

Conclusion

1. A comprehensive security approach

2. Validate all data

3. Scan your website from the outset

4. Update apps immediately and use clean code

5. Use strong passwords

6. Rigorous permissions management

7. Encrypt your data

Conclusion

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Contact

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