Giving a kick-ass start to small business is not everyone’s cup of tea these days. The reason behind this is that there are several as well as huge challenges, which come into the existence while implementing any plan. Every person has his own business, thus competition has become quite complicated. This is the reason why people need to own new marketing strategies and as this aspect matters a lot. People are owning advanced technology to stay on the top list and get more and more customers to the services they are offering.These days web technologies are highly in demand because of their advanced features. These are less time taking, affordable as well as convenient. The best advantages of this are that it brings the desired level of traffic to the business.
These days we will hardly find the person that not have his business website. Most of the people try to get the website with eye catchy features and easy usability so that visitor gets attractive easily and understand the services features.
Here are some advantages of making a user-friendly website for business growth:
The Best Way of Marketing Branding: Web development present the business in front of most of the people very quickly as well as effectively. The visual display helps to clear all the concept and visitors get to know about the expertise of business easily. This strategy not only helps to make the customers in locality but world wide as well. This is the reason why people prefer to have the website with well-decorated aspects that attract most of the visitors easily.
The brand gets its name famous because of its presentation as well as outlook.
Enhance the Approachability: Everyday we see several new websites of same business online, but we choose the service of one that looks attractive, resolve our most of the queries and offer quick services. Even small businesses can get more popularity with the help of this website. All we need to do is hire the services of professional and best web developer. Its only functionality and design of the website that helps to get more number of visitors and quick resolving of the questions retain most of them in short time period. In this way, small business is making strong customer base with their online existence which is provided by web development technology.
A Quick Boost in The Ranking: Since there are several marketing strategies, which are in the trend for years. But these days web development performing well to gain the high rank in the market. This technology helps us presenting the business where most of the people search for it. If the development work has been done by the professional, it attracts a large number of traffic and gives chance to make the client base strong.
Web development is something unique and advanced. It is the latest technology that helps to build more clients and get the desired growth in business.
In little over a decade, Node.js has emerged as a top-developer choice for web application development. Its pros make it a superlative alternative for cross-platform development by integrating a 2-way client-server communication channel. Without plunging into the technicalities, let us know the top Node.js development statistics that substantiate its superiority over the competition:
Node.js is highly popular in the US, with 6.3 million websites using it.
It has found use cases in companies such as Amazon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Netflix, and PayPal.
85% of the developers that use Node.js, do so for web app development.
Research suggests that this open-source JavaScript runtime environment reduces development costs by 58%.
It gives programmers the leeway to use JavaScript to create command-line tools for server-side scripting. However, if you need further convincing, here are 12 reasons why Node.js development is at the peak of its powers and seemingly unshakable in the immediate future.
Reasons Why Node.js for Web Development is the Perfect Choice
The internal workings of this open-source runtime environment involve package management, unified APIs, native bindings, and threading. Below we elaborate on how such technicalities result in productive work.
Speed
The V8 engine, developed by Google, powers Node.js. It allows for JavaScript code to be converted to machine code and contributes to development time savings on program executions. Products for web app development with Node.js can handle a significantly higher number of parallel connections.
Thanks to Node.js app development, Paypal was able to reduce its app response time by 35%. With such an anomalous increase in application productivity, the company processed double the number of user requests.
Cost savings
As a web development company, Anteelo receives multiple inquiries from prospects to hire dedicated Node.js developers. But our product suite consists only of such services whose proof is in the pudding. Upon conducting a cost-benefit analysis, we found that Node.js’s development costs far less than anything else out there. Its memory footprint is smaller in comparison to PHP or Java servers. A server built on Node.js runs on an event-driven loop which saves a huge portion of the Random Access Memory (RAM) and in turn hardware/software resources.
Advance caching
Ask any Node.js developer and they would probably point to the caching capabilities as its greatest asset. It can cache single modules. But what difference does that make?
It eradicates the need to re-execute code as servers call for the first module. Caching allows websites to load faster and alleviate the user experience.
Real-time development
Real-time apps are such that provide dynamic, spontaneous engagement environments for users. Examples include gaming apps, messenger apps, etc. Their development involves a lot of event-based programming and communication with a non-blocking server. Developers can maximize their efforts towards real-time web application development using Node.js as it uses asynchronous operations to optimize the coordination with the CPU and the memory.
Event driven
The platform is event-driven i.e. all its developed APIs in the Node.js library are asynchronous. But what does this mean?
A server based on Node.js does not wait for the Application Programming Interface to return data. Instead, it calls the API, following which the built-in notification mechanism of Node.js aids the server to procure the return-call from the previous API.
Scalable
We are a Node.js web application development company and prescribe its use in areas like data streaming applications, JSON API-based applications, as well as single-page applications. We do so keeping in mind its scalability. Node.js web application development makes for ultra-high-speed computation speeds due to the V8 engines.
Node.js uses microservices with which it divides an application into finer processes. These processes can be allocated in parallel to multiple teams so that they can be developed in sync with the rising user requests. Faster background processes translate to low-lag operations and an increased footfall of user traffic.
That said, never use Node.js for CPU-intensive processes.
Data streaming
Product development is not as simple as people put it. As a Node.js development company, we learned it the hard way. Input-Output (I/O) handling is a key component of software engineering. With the tendency of web frameworks to classify HTTPO requests as whole data, I/O handling gets trickier to integrate.
But that is not the case with Node.js mobile app development which supports I/O bound applications. While using apps built on Node.js users can transcode multimedia files simultaneously as they are being uploaded onto the server.
What makes this a manageable procedure is a provision that writes data streams onto WebSockets.
No-rocket science
Most of the programmers these days are familiar with JavaScript. As Node.js app development is a JS-based runtime system, it is relatively easier for amateur coders to make the switch. They can achieve the same results as working with Django, PHP, or spring boot in much less time and devoting far less computational resources.
Well-rounded community
In a StackOverflow survey, Node.js was voted rank #1 for two years running in the miscellaneous technology category. This goes on to show how well-knit and widespread the developer community is on this tool. Constant upgrades keep people coming back for more, and access ready-to-use plugins and code-bytes accessible on GitHub.
Technical support
Another reason why professionals prefer Node.js for web development is that its parent team offers long-term support. As per convention, following the release of each version of Node.js, the code is maintained for the next 18 months. Instead of continuing to add new features, this period is utilized to fix bugs and collect user feedback for future releases.
It is reported that long-term platform support is prioritized by 62% of developers.
Microservices
On prior occasions, we’ve touched on the topic of microservices and monolithic architectures. Enterprise-grade projects have an inclination towards implementing the microservices-based architecture. This serverless approach pays dividends in the long run and is also supported by Node.js.
SEO-friendly
More often than not, developers adopt a backwards approach when it comes to SEO practices. They design a website and then re-design it to become pro-SEO. But that doesn’t have to be the case with Node.js. Its built-in features offer such pre-packed codes that are in tandem with search algorithms.
Another reason for using it is that it’s free!
Knowing and understanding the above mentioned points, as a Node.js development company in the USA we can say with authority that open source is the way ahead. In addition to being free, it offers state-of-the-art toolsets that include Redux and Flux. It is highly integrable with open source libraries.
Typical Projects to Start with Node.js
As a Node.js development company, we suggest the following projects to train your in-house team on the platform.
Single page apps
Present-day web applications bear an overloaded semblance partly due to the fact that they have to process client data. Working in this environment ensures faster response times between the server and client-side. This is a founding tenet that every single page app is based on.
Conventional web apps
An amateur Node.js developer could begin with writing conventional web applications. It allows streaming HTML data effortlessly.
Proxy development
While offering Node.js development services our experts have experimented with installing Node.js as a proxy server and it worked like a knife through butter. It helps in the case of apps that rely on external services to import/export data.
Final Thoughts
As a web development company, Anteelo has the firepower to kickstart Node.js-centric product development in full swing. With 600+ personnel joining forces from home virtually (till the pandemic lasts), we’ve handled cross-border projects and made a name for ourselves. But all that was possible only with the collective efforts of our growth hackers, who have what it takes to push through for technological superiority.
The demarcations between app and Web are shifting. Notice we didn’t specify mobile Web: that’s another sign that the paradigm of screen and display types isn’t as clearly structured as it might have seemed, say, last year. What this means is that Web and mobile Web shouldn’t be such different animals. In fact, they shouldn’t be different at all anymore.
A well designed website should be responsive — i.e., it should be visible on, and optimized for, both desktop and mobile screens of all sizes and resolutions. (We practice what we preach here at Fueled: try looking at our site on your laptop and your iPhone or Android.) Responsive design is an especially effective way to deal with the ever-increasing number of devices coming onto the market; it would be unrealistic — impossible, really — to create a version of your site for every phone and browser that might access it.
In the back-end, this is done using HTML/CSS and media queries, which can determine the conditions of certain media features, like width or height. This solution to the Web vs. mobile issue has been around for years, but it’s now essentially a requirement. Take a look at the newest themes and templates available for, for example, WordPress (a platform even the not-quite-programming-literate can use!), and you’ll see that most list “responsive” as a primary feature.
There’s no longer a real divide, then, between “Web” and “mobile Web,” as Say Daily notes in their recent piece on the “golden moment” of digital media (that moment is now, by the way, if you didn’t guess). “There’s only one Web,” as they say, and we should take advantage of its increased availability and flexibility.
Some of those new capabilities that make responsive websites so powerful are breaking down further barriers — namely, those between mobile app and mobile Web. This is due in large part to the rise of HTML5, which can handle interactive, rich-media features. Now, mobile websites, too, can have the kind of interactivity that previously was only available within apps.
ReadWriteWeb proposes that this might be the “death” of the app, or at least the return of the browser: some mobile apps, especially media apps like magazines, are choosing to discontinue their apps and instead build a responsive, HTML5 website that can be viewed with equal design quality — and high interactivity — on all devices.
Of course, for the time being, Fueled certainly feels that apps will always offer benefits that websites can’t — but we’re enthusiastic about the potential of HTML5 and of fully responsive sites. What do you think? Do you prefer interactive features on the Web, or in native apps? Let us know in the comments.
Having a website has emerged as the need of the hour. Every business wants to establish their online presence and there no solution better than having a website for the same. However, one of the most common queries that pops-up in the mid of anybody dreaming of having an impactful online presence by building a top-notch website is ”How long does it take to build a website?”., which is reasonable enough. Each company has its timeline and budget and therefore, an idea of how long would it take to bring their idea into a highly functional website is very crucial.
Be that as it may, the straight answer is that It will take longer than you would anticipate that it should. However, you ought not to surge it. Building a custom site without any preparation requires some serious energy. In case you’re contemplating a substantial undertaking with a real spending plan, you may be taking a gander at a course of events of weeks or months. That is ordinary, yet it is likewise conceivable to get an astounding site off the ground a lot quicker, contingent upon what you need.
There are three primary factors in a website’s development timeline that affect the duration of the project:
How soon do you start?
Top-notch designers are typically reserved, so can’t begin your work right away. Therefore, they might take some time to begin working on your project, which might cause a delay.
Time is taken for the review
Most web engineers have a reasonable procedure for building a site and can generally depict how long will take to get a site in your grasp.
How long does it take to launch?
This last factor is the most significant variable and relies to a great extent upon you, the customer. It includes investigating the site, making change demands, and concluding substance.
Let us assume that you plan to hire someone to build your website for you. Whether it’s an individual or an agency, the advice still applies, although lengths of time can vary depending on the scope of your website. Before knowing how long it takes, you should be thorough with the procedure that goes around while building a website.
1. Know your requirements: No matter what project you are working on, you know that knowing your needs is the first step towards beginning the venture. The same goes for building a website. You must discuss with your team and jot down the aspirations that you have from your website. Having a clear picture of your needs will enable you to explain what you are expecting from your website clearly and simplify your planning process. This process generally does not takes more than one week.
2. Drafting a plan: Realizing what you plan on doing with your site is a significant initial step since it will direct you on the best way to create it along the way. A well-thought plan will boost up the chances of you building a successful and efficient small business website. However, strategising and planning is easier said than done. A good website work-plan must comprise of finding your target userbase, the primary objective of your website, the functionality of it, its significance to the visitors, along with your web analytics to measure your success. This process generally does not takes more than one week.
3. Finalising the Design: From variable text styles to moderate formats, web design is very crucial, and it additionally requires some serious energy as well as time. Discuss with your web designers what you have in mind and ask them for suggestions. Experiment with your web composition, and test out which patterns work best for your website. Before putting anything on the web, think about all possible devices and screen resolutions. Having a webpage that isn’t streamlined for smartphones and other gadgets can drive away clients, hurt your SEO, and look amateurish. Therefore, you mustn’t rush through this process and give it a decent time of around 3-4 weeks.
4. Development Phase: This stage is the place where the foundation of your website is laid. Your engineer will take the data you’ve given them, and transform it into a completely working site that (ideally) resembles the prototypes that you have affirmed. This part may take some time, somewhat in light of the fact that there are consistently some inevitable errors in each undertaking. You might want to have some modifications a part of the website once you see it in real life, or in case of any other inevitable errors. In any case, it will take at approximately a month or two to build up an independent website for business ultimately. It’s imperative to keep in contact with your designers during this stage. Great engineers will keep you on top of it and let you know how things are advancing; however, you too, ought to be proactive about reaching them.
5. Final Review: Before you can say that your site is completed and ready to launch, it needs to experience rounds of reviews and testing. You would need to analyse how all aspects of the website look, work, and feel and decide whether or not does it meets the plan you and your developer followed out together at the underlying degree of the development procedure. There are consistently revisions that should be made, especially in the event that you are focusing on a fault-less and highly-functional site. In a perfect world, you’ll rectify all the major issues during modifications for the prior steps during the review and testing. Now, there should only be minor fixes left to be made; however, your mileage may shift. Regardless, if nothing significant is broken, anticipate that this procedure should take somewhere in the range of about 1-14 days.
CONCLUSION
Indeed, even sites that look minimal from the start can take a lot of effort to fabricate. Most websites nowadays offer a lot of cutting edge usefulness and that implies additional time must be spent on creating them. Likewise you can also have a brief idea about how long does it your website take to design out and structure. So since you have prior info of what variables go into the planning of a website, you might be asking yourself what you can do to guarantee your undertaking moves as fast as possible. Undoubtedly, time is one of the concealed expenses to value your site. With regards to completing your site rapidly, the most significant thing to concentrate on first is your sitemap. The sitemap is the engineering of the considerable number of pages of the site and how they relate together. Getting completely clear on the sitemap, characterizing the number of pages, which of them will be particularly planned and how they will all identify with one another will go far in adequately describing the extent of your site venture and guaranteeing that it is conveyed quickly.
Web application security is an all-encompassing term that covers the security of websites, web applications and web services. Web applications are one of the prime targets for cyber attackers due to the following reasons-
The complexity of their source code increases the chances of manipulation of the code with malicious intent and unseen vulnerabilities.
These attacks can be launched easily and target multiple targets at the same time.
The rewards reaped by the attackers are huge. They can get hold of the financial information or other private data that belongs to the users of the application.
Organizations need to be wary of such attacks on their web applications as it can result in the disruption of their relationships with their clients or can lead to legal action against them. According to a report published by Forrester in 2020, 35% of all external cyber attacks on organizations came in through a web application. In fact, Security Boulevard reported that as the first batch of COVID-19 vaccine vials was distributed, an increase of 51% web application attacks on healthcare targets was noticed.
Also, recently, a report by Business Standard revealed that a hacking group called ShinyHunters leaked 1.9 million user records stolen from an online photo editing application known as Pixlr. In another case, the same hacking group stole the data of users from an online dating website named MeetMindful.
All of this should be alarming for organizations, especially the ones dealing with sensitive user information. Web application security, an often ignored aspect of cyber security, should therefore be given priority in the cyber security policies of organizations.
Types of Web Application Vulnerabilities
Web application attacks can take various forms. This is done using different vectors mentioned below-
Cross-site Scripting (XSS) – It is a type of injection attack that targets users to access their accounts, modify the content of a page or activate trojans. Direct injection of a malicious code into an application results in Stored XSS. A Reflected XSS occurs when a malicious script is reflected off an application onto a user’s web browser.
SQL Injection – SQL Injection is a malicious SQL code used to manipulate a back-end database in order to reveal information. This can result in unauthorized access to the administrative control of the web application and unwarranted modification of data.
Remote File Inclusion – Injecting a file onto a web application server from a remote location is known as Remote File Inclusion. Hackers use this vector for the execution of malicious scripts within the application. It has also been seen that this vector is used for data manipulation and data theft.
Cross-site Request Forgery – This kind of attack takes place when a malicious web application makes a user’s browser perform an unwanted action on a site where the user is logged in to. This attack can result in an unsolicited transfer of funds, changed passwords or data theft.
Denial of Service (DoS) Attack – Denial of Service Attack (DoS) occurs when a server stops responding to the incoming requests of its legitimate users or starts responding very sluggishly due to its overloading with different types of attack traffic.
Misconfiguration of Security Settings – Attackers pounce upon the chance of exploiting misconfigured security settings or settings that are set at default, verbose error messages with sensitive information and misconfigured HTTP headers.
Insufficient Logging and Monitoring – This is one vulnerability that can help the attackers further attack systems or tamper, destroy and extract data. According to security experts, it takes 197 days on an average to detect a data breach.
Buffer Overflow – Buffer Overflow is the overflowing of the buffer’s capacity, which is a space in memory, resulting in the overwriting of the adjacent memory locations with data. This can be used to inject malicious code into the memory.
Measures for Risk Mitigation
Using a Web Application Firewall – A Web Application Firewall is a hardware and software solution designed to defend against any attack attempts. It is a good way to compensate for any code sanitization deficiency.
Gathering Information – Classify third-party hosted content and review the application manually to identify client-side codes and entry points.
Authorization – Test the application for missing authorization, insecure direct object references and horizontal and vertical access control issues.
Encryption – Encrypt the specific data and avoid the use of weak algorithms.
Bot Filtering – Mass-scale automated attacks are launched using malicious bots. This bot traffic can be detrimental for the web application and is therefore dealt with Bot Filtering tools.
Conducting VAPT– VAPT (Vulnerability and Penetration Testing) is an essential service for organizations in their quest for safer use of IT infrastructure. VAPT is like a self-assessment service that brings the vulnerabilities related to the APIs, technology, platform, etc to the fore, thereby shaping the cyber security policies of the organizations and helping them upgrade their systems. Web application security assessment, therefore, goes a long way in ensuring the smooth functioning of the web application.
Apart from this, web application security is also necessary for GDPR compliance. If an application processes personal data of EU residents, then the GDPR requires that organization to follow security “by design and by default” for data protection (Art 25). It is therefore recommended that organizations running web services or web applications put the requisite cyber security measures in place to tackle any kind of attack
The inability to identify vulnerabilities in a web application can leave it unprotected against potential attackers, resulting in the most severe consequences. Web application vulnerabilities include a system weakness or flaw in a web-based application that leaves you susceptible to security attacks, risking the loss of valuable company or customer data.The inherent complexity of a web application’s source code increases the possibility of malicious code manipulation and unattended vulnerabilities. High-value rewards such as sensitive private data obtained by successful source code manipulation have made web applications a high-priority target for attackers. This makes it essential to thoroughly understand web security vulnerabilities and how to prevent them.
Types of Web Application Vulnerabilities
Web application vulnerabilities are caused due to misconfigured web servers, application design flaws or not validating or sanitizing form inputs. They are prioritized based on their detectability, exploitability and impact on software. So, here is a list of some of the most critical web security risks according to the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP):
Injection: Injection flaws, including SQL, OS, LDAP and NoSQL injection, take place when a query or command with untrusted data is received by an interpreter. The hostile data by an attacker can trick the interpreter into accessing data without authorization or executing unintended commands. This can lead to the unauthorized viewing of lists, unauthorized administrative access and deletion of tables.
Broken Authentication: This occurs when application functions related to session and authentication management are implemented incorrectly. It allows attackers to not only easily compromise passwords, session tokens or keys but also assume the identities of other users temporarily or permanently.
Sensitive Data Exposure: Sensitive data can easily be compromised if special precautions are not taken when exchanged with the browser or some extra protection, like encryption at rest or in transit, is not implemented. Many web applications are unable to protect sensitive data properly, which allows attackers to steal or modify it, resulting in credit card fraud, identity theft and a number of other crimes.
XML External Entities: Attackers can exploit poorly configured XML processors to access confidential data, inject additional data, create remote tunnels and execute applications. This vulnerability can also lead to Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF), denial of service attacks and remote code execution.
Broken Access Control: With access control, you can manage the sections of a website and application data accessible to different visitors. If these restrictions are not enforced properly, attackers can easily take advantage of these flaws to get access to unauthorized data or functionality. This can enable these attackers to access the accounts of other users, view sensitive files, change access rights and modify the data of other users.
Security Misconfiguration: Counted amongst the most critical web application security vulnerabilities, it offers attackers an easy way into your website. Attackers can exploit unsecure default configurations, open cloud storage, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, verbose error messages with sensitive information and misconfigured HTTP headers. All operating systems, libraries, frameworks and applications can be susceptible to security misconfigurations.
Cross-Site Scripting: This vulnerability occurs when untrusted data is included in a web page without validation. It injects malicious code into the web application and executes it on the client-side. It helps attackers execute scripts in a user’s browser to hijack user sessions, redirect the user to malicious sites or deface websites.
Insecure Deserialization: Often resulting in remote code execution, deserialization flaws allow cybercriminals to perform a variety of attacks including injection attacks, privilege escalation attacks and replay attacks.
Use of Components with Known Vulnerabilities: Various components such as frameworks and libraries run with the same privileges as the web application. Even if a single vulnerable component is attacked, it can cause server takeover and serious data loss. For this reason, a web application that uses components with known vulnerabilities can seriously compromise its defences, leaving it open to attack.
Insufficient Monitoring and Logging: Insufficient logging and monitoring along with ineffective or missing integration of incident response can cause another major vulnerability. It can help attackers further attack systems, tamper, destroy or extract data and maintain persistence, pivot to more systems. According to security studies, it often takes more than 200 days to detect a breach. And it is usually detected by an external party instead of internal monitoring or processes.
How to Prevent Web Application Vulnerabilities?
Organizations that do not properly secure their web applications are more susceptible to malicious attacks, resulting in information theft, revoked licenses, damaged client relationships and legal proceedings. There are several measures that you can take for securing your web applications:
Web application firewalls (WAFs): WAFs are hardware and software solutions designed to examine and monitor incoming traffic for blocking any attack attempts. They offer the best way of compensating for any code sanitization deficiencies.
Information gathering: Classify third-party hosted content and review the application manually to identify client-side codes and entry points.
Authorization: Test your application thoroughly for path traversals, missing authorization, insecure, direct object references and horizontal and vertical access control issues.
Cryptography: Secure all data transmissions, encrypt specific data, check for randomness errors and avoid using weak algorithms.
Denial of service: Test for anti-automation, HTTP protocol DoS, account lockout and SQL wildcard DoS for improving your application’s resilience against denial of service threats. Use a combination of scalable resources and filtering solutions for protection against high-volume DDoS and DoS attacks.
Apart from the above measures, running a periodic Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing is essential too. VAPT looks for possible and common vulnerabilities related to the platform, technology framework APIs, etc., and runs exploits on the web application to evaluate its security loopholes. It provides the organizations with reports on discovered vulnerabilities, the nature of the vulnerability, threat level, its impact and measures to eliminate it.
Web Accessibility refers to websites, browsers, and web technologies that are designed and developed with a focus on inclusivity. The web was originally conceived for conventionally abled individuals, whereas Web Accessibility ensures that navigating and interacting with the web is not only viable for all, but comfortable for those who may be differently-abled.
As the World Health Organization (WHO) notes, however, “disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions, ” whereas the goal of web accessibility is primarily concerned with auditory and visual impairments.
While there are many ways to implement web accessibility solutions, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the global standards organization for today’s web. W3C has published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that sets the industry standard, acting as a guide to modern web accessibility.
WHY IS WEB ACCESSIBILITY IMPORTANT?
Bigger Addressable Market
The internet is the world’s primary source of information; it is of the utmost importance that everybody is able to access it. There are over 4.5 billion users on the web, while, according to WHO, about 15% of the world’s population live with some sort of disability. These numbers imply a plethora of users who may struggle with various aspects of internet use. Disabilities can be permanent (such as certain birth defects,) temporary (for example, a broken finger,) or situational (not hearing your phone ring in a crowded concert). Ignoring web accessibility could mean cutting access to many potential users and paying customers. If we pay attention to inclusive design and development for the web, we can bridge an important gap, making sure all potential users have access.
Legal Liability
Beyond being the right thing to do and increasing your addressable market, there’s a legal reason to have an accessible website. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law in 1990. While ADA did not specifically mention the internet, numerous legal interpretations and court rulings indicate at least some ADA requirements apply to the virtual world.
Title III of the ADA, for example, requires that public accommodation be provided to disabled persons in a manner that allows for the “full and equal enjoyment” of the privileges, goods, services, advantages and accommodations as those provided to able-bodied persons. Businesses are responsible for making sure those accommodations are made with “reasonable modification.” Any business not providing for that accommodation may committing a form of unlawful discrimination, as stated in 42 U.S.C. section 12182(b)(2)(A)(iii).
A recent example of a business being sued over an inaccessible website is Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, Inc.. The US 9th Circuit court reaffirmed a ruling that Domino’s could be held liable for violating the ADA by not having an accessible website.
THE CURB-CUT EFFECT
Accessibility-oriented enhancements frequently turn out to be useful for all users, whether or not the users are conventionally abled. The curb-cut effect describes this phenomenon. The phrase was popularized when designers noticed pedestrians using a sidewalk feature originally created for wheelchair bound pedestrians. In this instance, conventionally abled pedestrians opted to use sidewalk ramps (i.e. curb-cuts) when they had bikes, strollers, heavy grocery carts, or were otherwise encumbered.
In “The Best iOS Accessibility Features Everyone Should Use,” power-user Lifehacker blogs about multiple features Apple specifically developed in order to enhance iPhone usability for disabled individuals. Lifehacker shows how these features are helpful to all users, regardless of ability, outlining several digital examples of the curb-cut effect.
SEO Benefits
Improving your ranking in Google is yet another reason to focus on web accessibility. While Google’s ranking algorithm is often perceived as unknowable and complex, the primary factors that control search results are in fact simple: authority and relevance. Authority is mostly determined by how many popular, relevant sites link to the site in question. Relevance refers to queues Google uses to determine if site content would be meaningful as a search result for a given query. In judging relevance, Google needs to know what a site is about. While Google’s web crawlers can read a site’s text with relative accuracy, they can’t yet reliably understand the content of images. Accessibility features designed to help the visibly impaired are simultaneously very useful to Google’s crawlers, helping them better understand a page, which ensures the best possible ranking.
WHERE DO I BEGIN?
Web accessibility shouldn’t just be a priority for developers, but for designers, QA, backend engineers, and product managers as well. Since websites usually start with a wireframe design, it is most effective to lay the groundwork for an inclusive website at this initial design stage. This way, it is easier to catch early biases and immediately set up your website for inclusivity and success.
Microsoft offers a handy inclusiveness design portal with a variety of resources for those looking to expand their knowledge on accessible design. This Cards for Humanity tool is a great way to start thinking about various types of limitations you might want your site to account for.
STEPS FOR DEVELOPERS
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which set the industry standard for web accessibility, hold four main principles. These principles are referred to as POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.
Perceivable: How users process information on a website
e.g. Can those who are visually impaired perceive the content of an image?
Operable: How users navigate the website and its functionality
e.g. Can a user who struggles with a mouse pause a video with their keyboard?
Understandable: How simple it is for a user to operate the website and intuit the flow
e.g. Will a form easily indicate if the user missed filling out a field?
Robust: Can the user experience the website through a variety of mediums, including assistive technologies, without having to compromise?
e.g. Can a user with a screen reading Chrome add-on access the same content a conventional visitor can?
Other guidelines to take into account as a developer include keyboard controls, color contrast, semantic HTML for correctly intentional element tags, and ARIA labels for describing an element with no text.
Final Thoughts
Since the web is integral for accessing information, as well as heavily relied on for connection and community, Web Accessibility should take priority with each iteration of web development. Accessibility should be constantly reworked and improved to provide access to everyone who needs it. We believe that accessibility will soon be considered a must-have for every minimum viable product (MVP,) rather than seen as an optional upgrade.
Creating an accessible web is the right thing to do, and improves the cyberspace experience for all users.
Web should be accessible to a vast majority of people including those with different kind of disabilities. It is not only about those who can’t see or can’t hear or any other specific category of disability. We can make positive impact on the lives of people by making web accessible to them.
Primarily there are 4 main types of disabilities that highly affect the use of web.
1. Vision
People with low vision or those who are completely blind mostly rely on using the screen readers and keyboard. Specially designed keyboards are available in the market which blind users can easily use. In earlier days people with vision impairment had to use external bulky screen readers attached to their computers but these days browser extension like Chromevox and Fangs are available.
Websites should be designed and coded in a way that these should be easily recognizable for the screen readers. For example: putting appropriate alt tags in images help screen readers to read the image loud to blind users so that they get to know what that image is all about.
Also, there are huge number of people in the world who are color blind. This term may be confusing for some people. It doesn’t mean that the person is blind or can not see anything. Color blind people can see the colors but they see them differently. Green and red are the highly affected colors.
As per the survey results, 8% of men and 0.5% of women are color blind. You may wonder why this huge gender based difference. The reason why men are highly affected than woman by color blindness is: X-Chromosomes. These X-Chromosomes are responsible for sending color signals to the human brain. Men are born with one X-Chromosome whereas women are privileged to be born with two X-chromosomes and in case one is defective then the other one comes handy for women. Nature has offered extra privileges to women. :D.
Some of the famous celebrities to name with color blindness are- Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Clinton, Keanu Reeves, Prince William Windsor.
There are many ways in which we can make web accessible for color blind people. For example: include color names and show example, please see the image “Color Names”
Don’t rely on color coding only, instead try to use a combination of color texture or pattern. Please see the image “Colors and Patterns”.
You can also proof to color blindness in Photoshop and Illustrator while designing. Please see the image “Color Proof”.
2. Hearing
Making web accessible for deaf and hearing impaired people is relatively easy. The best solution at the moment is the use of closed captioning whenever a sound appears. This technique is widely used in television where a text is displayed whenever a sound appears.
Use of signs and symbols is also a very useful technique for this category of people. Captioning the videos on web pages also ensures that search engine will more accurately index them leading to more people finding your content. There are certain tools that can help create captioning to our videos like Overstream.net that allows to caption videos hosted on other sites like YouTube.
3. Motor
The requirement for motor impaired web users is generally overlooked or poorly implemented. The main reason for motor impairment is stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, a broken arm/wrist/palm. To help this category of people we should always ensure to increase the width and height of the clickable area. This can greatly help the motor impaired people who can use the mouse but with limited mobility.
Some of the other easier ways are to include images for text links. Clicking images is far more easier than to click text links. Assign CSS command display:block to each link in the vertical list. This way full width is clickable instead of just the link. Use of padding on left and right of the text links can also increase the clickable area. Assigning a background color to focused links is also a very useful technique we can do to help the keyboard-only user tabbing through the web.
4. Cognitive
This type covers the difficulty with understanding, inability to focus and distractibility. We should follow universal design principles to make websites accessible to individuals with cognitive disabilities therefore making it more accessible to everyone. Mainly there are 3 principles that come handy to design the web for cognitive disabled people as explained below:
Content of the website should be simple. We should refrain from using complicated language, technical terms, legal jargon, and professional buzzwords. If it is necessary to display complex information we must use a glossary of sections targeting different people.
Placement, styling and consistency of navigation links. We should make sure all the navigation links are at the same location and are not scattered on different places. It becomes very uneasy for cognitively impaired people to try to locate what they are looking for.
Using illustrations, icons and other visual cues to communicate the key idea. Images can be very effective in communicating the complex information otherwise this information may be lost in the middle of a long in-depth content.
There are also impairments that are directly not associated with the users. Environmental factors also have huge effect on how people use and interact with the web. Some of them are mentioned below:
Low bandwidth, intermittent internet connection
Bright light, rain or other weather conditions
Noisy environments
Only option to browse the web on mobile devices
There are different legal acts in effect in different countries to give equality right to disabled people and help them use the web without discrimination. Section 508 requires US federal agencies to ensure that employees and members of public with disabilities should have equal opportunity to access government information.
Target.com: In February 2006 a student of University of California-Berkley, Bruce Sexton in conjunction with “National Federation for Blind” sued Target.com because it’s website was inaccessible for the blind. This lawsuit was used as a spotlight to many corporate websites that don’t play well. Target.com had to settle the case with $6 million.
In today’s modern world, everything is instant to our hands with sophisticated technologies. As the adaptability of online space proliferates, web development technologies also get mature leading to developing more complex feature-rich web apps. The advancements in technology have also raised the bar of customers in terms of an elemental online presence. Each company looks forward to working with a service provider who is well-versed with the latest web development trends and is proficient in the work that they do.
Web development frameworks support the development of web apps, websites and web resources, web services as well as web APIs. Simply put, they are nothing but libraries that help you build your web app efficiently and effortlessly.
With the market flooding with new web development frameworks every day, it can be very challenging to choose which one would be the best fit for your project. The whole process can be made very easy if the developers are well-versed with the below-mentioned web development technologies and frameworks:
Spring is one of the most renowned frameworks enterprise-grade app development using Java. The primary intent of having this framework is to ease the process of making J2EE apps. It is a back-end development framework based on Java, which enables developers to create simple, fast, flexible Java Applications. Used by many big names like Wix and Ticket Master, Spring has a rigid architecture that provides the developers with a frame for their future projects.
One of the most adaptive frameworks, Vue, is an advanced framework used to build outstanding user-interfaces. With a central library emphasizing on the view layer, integrating it with other libraries and preexisting projects is a piece of cake. The integration of Vue in your projects is very similar to that of Jquery, and there is no necessity whatsoever of a build step. Created by Evan You, it is a framework that focuses on component composition and declarative rendering. Moreover, Vue is an excellent choice if you want to develop a powerful SPA (Single Page Application) as it is loaded with lots of supporting libraries and modern tools.
Yii is a powerful, practical, and flexible web development framework based on PHP. Yii is an acronym for Yes it is! Which stands quite an appropriate answer to the question, “Is it so amazing?”. It is a universal web-app development framework that can develop any web application. It is an excellent option for high-traffic apps and websites like E-commerce websites, portals, Content Management Systems, or any complicated web app because of its exceptional security features. Since it models the data as objects, there is no need to go on writing monotonous SQL queries and statements. It also provides many cache mechanisms like cFileCache, cDummyCache, cMemCache, thereby allowing an effortless cache app component integration. Yii is loaded with great features and comes with clear-documentation.
Symphony is a feature-rich, reusable, highly flexible full-stack web development framework. It provides the developers with a complete free-hand with working on a RAD environment by giving a vivid choice of 30 components. It is based on the Model View Controller (MVC) System, which allows session management, decoupled components, and error logging and is easily maintainable. It can be effortlessly clubbed with many renowned client-side frameworks like AngularJS along with other third-party apps. It is a collection of Web App Frameworks and PHP components and boasts the two most stellar benefits, Bundles, and Components.
Based on the comprehensive programming language- JavaScript, AngularJS is a multifaceted open-source front-end framework. With the growing fame of SPAs (Single Page Applications) Development, the popularity of AngularJS is also speeding up. Developed and maintained by Google, AngularJS helps you create dynamic web pages utilizing JavaScript and HTML. Additionally, Patterns are created in AngularJS with the help of the Declarative Paradigm to make the core easy to read and very light-weight. The need for additional getter and setter functions is eradicated by the presence of POJO, which allows object manipulation using` standard JavaScript Functionalities.
Ruby on Rails is a very proficient web development program developed by David Heinemeier Hansson in the year 2003. Considered as very developer-friendly, Rails is an opensource, object-oriented, general-purpose back-end development framework. Rails follow the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) and CoC (Convention over Configuration) approach, which facilitates the building of light-weight apps and boosts flexibility. It also ensures flawless interaction with third-party apps by allowing each object to possess unique attributes. The applications are maintained to be bug-free as the developers are provided with a detailed error-log. It also supports the development of SEO friendly URLs.
One of the most fantastic PHP web frameworks, Laravel, has an exquisite and expressive structure that backs out ordinary errands, for example, authentication, sessions, storing, and steering. The main aim of the Laravel Framework is to make the process of development easy and fun. Laravel emerges as the top choice of many developers as it offers excellent performance, scalability, and features. Its unique architecture enables the developers to build customized infrastructure for their apps. It also has an integrated cloud storage system like Amazon S3 and Rack Space, along with local storage.
It is a unique, open-source library for mathematical computation utilizing the data-flow graphs. Tensor Flow is exclusively used for Artificial Intelligence apps that involve a massive community with itself. Although it has a broad range of uses, it is preferred to be used in the domains of Deep Learning. With the boom in the AI and ML technologies, TensorFlow has also seen a rise in the number of users as it is the framework of the future. Artificial intelligence is perceived to takeover every field and every niche, which is a positive indication for the use of TensorFlow.
CakePHP is a revolutionary PHP framework that simplifies the developers’ job by eliminating the need for developing an app from scratch. Its various scaffolding features, along with the swift code generation, dramatically cut down the development cost. The ability to reuse the code in CakePHP makes the web development process very rapid. Not just that, but most of the essential elements for building an application are in-built in CakePHP, which saves a lot of developers’ precious time. The availability of vivid documentation and pragmatic guides along with colossal community support is a cherry on the top.
MeteorJS is, hands-down, the best choice if you are looking for speedy web development as it is a full-stack web development framework, which solves both your front-end and back-end needs. It is a JavaScript framework that has an in-built collection on libraries and packages that are linked and bound together. It is an isomorphic framework that can be utilized to create a cross-platform code. It is based on MEAN stack and comprises of many components like Cordova, Communication Line Tool, CLI, Browser, and Server.
Summary
With the exponential amplification of the tech world, new web development tools and frameworks are rising every day. The competition is the market is fierce, and you need to select nothing but the best for your project. The above list can help you choose the best web development framework that fits well with the requirements of your business and help you grow manifolds.
A website is the destination of your online business, and you should make sure your website is well-designed and compliant with the existing SEO guidelines. Year after year, new technologies, software, and ranking algorithms are introduced, which force website owners to make the necessary design changes.
Website Redesigning
If you are a website owner who is contemplating a website redesign, this article discusses five vital factors that you should consider for redesigning a website.
A Responsive Website Redesigning
A clunky, laggy, and unresponsive design can turn off the visitors in the blink of an eye. On the other hand, a beautiful looking website that responds to the touches and actions immediately hook in the visitors. Moreover, Google has made it clear that a responsive design that increases session time would be one of the significant ranking factors.
Good website redesigning includes a clutter-free interface with plenty of white spaces and small but visible navigation buttons. A website with symmetric and well-organized pages catch the eye of all users and make an excellent first impression. A responsive design Also includes different landing pages optimized according to various devices that can give your website a significant boost in traffic, average session time, and rankings.
Summarizing, your website needs to satisfy these parameters for attaining an excellent, responsive design that impresses your visitors and improves your Google rankings.
Beautiful design
A lot of white spaces with small navigation icons
Diverse landing pages
Mobile Optimization
Apart from responsive design, a website should be compatible with all small screen and large screen devices. Around 50 percent of the total internet traffic is mobile traffic, and Google, in one of its recent algorithm updates, has mentioned that mobile compatibility is going to be one of the significant ranking factors for websites.
Therefore, your website should be well-optimized for mobile, tablet, and other small-screen devices. A website can be optimized for mobile devices by several methods like:
Suppose you typed a search query on Google and clicked on one of the displayed search results. You’ve been waiting for ten seconds, but the page does not load. What will you do? Unless you are not a regular visitor to that website, you leave it in a flash. This behavior is standard and applied to all the users; therefore, a website must load fast.
The design of the website plays a vital role in determining its speed and performance. If a website has a dense, clumsy design with a lot of content, pictures, and videos on every page, it takes more time to load. On the other hand, if a website has a sleek and responsive design with minimal content and compressed images, it loads faster.
Luckily, you can access a lot of free tools like GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights that allow you to determine a website’s load speed and tips to improve it.
Some tips to improve your website’s load speed and performance are:
Design plays a vital role in determining your website’s load speed. Your website design should be minimal, with only necessary items and pieces of information on the page.
The presence of excessive multi-media elements like high-quality images and videos can significantly reduce the load speed of a website. Try reducing videos and pictures on your website, and compress the photos if they are relevant and provide the necessary information.
If your website does not have appropriate storage, bandwidth limit, or a right hosting provider, it affects its loading speed. Make sure to check these factors if your website takes time to load.
Check your website’s speed and performance regularly and act upon the recommended fixes and suggestions.
Accounts and Social Media Integration
Social media integration enables you to multiply the number of visitors visiting your website without putting in any extra effort. Adding share buttons on your website allows your visitors to instantly share your content with their friends and family, which improves your reach, traffic, and rankings.
Adding your social media handles on the website can help you connect better with your audience and allows you to share content on different platforms and in various forms. Providing an option to register and login on your website enables you to provide your users with personalized user experience, which is essential for building trust and improving brand reputation. You can further simplify the login process by providing the feature of logging in directly from social media accounts.
Social media and account integration can help you in the following ways.
It allows your visitors to share your content over different platforms.
It enables you to connect your visitors with your social media handles.
It enables you to provide your users with personalized user experience.
Analytics
Analytics tools allow you to analyze the performance of your website and make necessary improvements. Different websites have different visitors of varying age, gender, country, device, and more. Analytics tools like Google Analytics and Monster Insights allow you to access all the information about your visitors, enabling you to understand their behavior and requirements.
Analytics tools also allow you to track conversions, funnel performance, session time, bounce back rate, back off rate, and other necessary information that can be vital for improving your website’s performance.
Some advantages of using analytics tools are:
It provides in-depth information (demographics) about the visitors.
It identifies the underperforming areas of your website, helping you take targeted actions.
It enables you to analyze your conversions, backoffs, bounce back rate, and average session time.
It helps you optimize your campaigns and strategies according to the visitors.
Conclusion
Website design is a significant ranking factor for websites as a responsive website design that provides visitors with a better experience. Although a good website design includes other elements like logo design & positioning and widget optimization as well, the aspects discussed above play a key role in determining the overall design and performance of your website.
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