Essentials for a Top Performing Website

If you want to make sure that your website performs well, there are a few essential basics that you have to get right. There is no point investing loads of time and effort into developing a website if nobody can find it through the search engines and that work is a continual effort, not just a one off piece of work at the start. So what we are saying really is that you can’t simply set up a website and expect it to continue to perform well, you need to keep updating content and using SEO methods.

Lets look at some of the key factors in having a site that performs well. One of the first things you need to think about is getting a good web host, so don’t be tempted to just opt for the cheapest deal that you come across. You need to make sure that the host will be able to support any future website requirements that you may have. It usually helps if you draw out a plan for your website strategy including usage targets and content updates etc. to help you keep on track.

When you get to actually building your website, you need the content to be of very good quality. If you compromise on the quality, your website will look unprofessional and people will form an opinion on your entire company based on this.

As well as getting the content right, you should also make sure that you think about the positioning of content. This is a really important factor and you can use this infographic 25 features every online business must have in 2017. This will help you to ensure that your content is in the best place for maximum effect for example, where to add your call to action to get the best response rate.

Getting a website up and running isn’t easy, anyone who has tried doing it can tell you that. Even for people who have been working with websites for years, there are still new concepts and trends that emerge or new and better ways of doing things. Whether it is a new web host package, the latest WordPress theme or the latest SEO algorithm, you really have to stay on your toes to keep up.

If you are building a website as a one-off and you don’t have much experience in this area then you will benefit from getting some information from top digital experts. You can follow the latest website news and trends through reputable websites and pick up some tips that way. Even the most experienced of website developers struggle with some of the basics, so there is no harm in getting a helping hand.

One of the most important factors in a successful website is the placement of content. Believe it or not but you could have a really professional looking website, with great content and attractive features but it could be flawed by ineffective content positioning. Getting your content placed in the right area has a huge influence on key measures like how make people click on your call to action.

If you want some useful information on how to place your content so that you drive more business through your website, take a look at this infographic. The 25 features every online business must have in 2017 will take the hard work out of deciding on your content layout. With key guidance on what to put in your header, what to sit below the fold and other crucial pointers, your website will soon start converting those visitors into customers.

40 Best Website Designing Tools

Website designing is not child’s play. It definitely helps to have a couple of smart tools to help you with the design process from time to time. You will especially feel the need of tools when you are designing a responsive website within a short period of time. Adding tools and plugins to your repository will make the designing process more precise and less time consuming.

That being said, here’s a list of the top 40 tools every designer must have to make the design process faster, smoother and error-free.

Atomic

This website design tool helps you create website designs on your browser. You can also create designs on your PC and Mac and then share them on multiple mobile devices including the Apple Watch. You can import pre-made designs from Adobe Photoshop and Sketch for creating high-end website designs and layouts within a jiffy.

Form

This free tool will keep you on top of the material design trend. You can create prototypes for various devices including iOS, and add animations to keep your websites lively and trendy.

Frontify

This is a neat style guide tool. Frontify gives you a direct glimpse of your font designs, colors and other elements of your website design. This one comes with a prototyping tool called Workspace that allows you and your team to share designs and changes on your website framework.

Marvel

The free basic version of this tool is ideal for prototyping and sharing website designs. You can use timers to handle transition effects between pages, photos and slides. The files are supported on Apple Watch as well.

Golden Grid System

This is made for responsive designs. It splits the screen into 18 columns. You can access 16 columns as the two extreme ones are reserved for outer margins of the website. This is ideal for making product-based website designs that involves multiple columns.

Origami

Origami is free for everyone. This tool was created by the Facebook team for design purposes. In fact, Instagram and Messenger were created with Origami. You can use this tool on Mac and iOS.

PowerMockup

This is an add-on for all PowerPoint users. It includes over 800 UI features made from PowerPoint shapes. This tool has free trial versions and this will help you create amazing, PowerPoint presentations for demonstrating your app and website prototypes.

Relay

If you have already been acquainted with Slack then you will find Relay quite interesting. You can run Relay along with Adobe CC web designer and Chrome. You can import design elements from Sketch and Mac OS X.

UXPin

This is your complete design tool that will guide you through planning into execution. You can choose from hundreds of templates or you can start your design from scratch. UXPin helps you create high-fidelity mockups for your websites.

Wire Flow

This helps you create wireframes on mobile devices. You can create a new UI from scratch using this Android-only tool.

Webflow

This is a simplistic approach to wireframe designs. You can create prototypes using drag-and-drop elements. This is part-CMS. You can use it for free.

Bootstrap

This is ubiquitous for all smart designers. Bootstrap is a smart and powerful front-end framework. It is maintained by Twitter.

Frameless

This is NOT an actual framework. It is used for building layouts for uncountable number of viewports. You can add columns whenever required.

320 and Up

This is a tool most professional website designers use for content first designs. You can see a wonderful example of such a design at US bases site on the inner post of Debt Company. This is both lightweight and extremely easy to use.

Wirefy

Wirefy is the go-to solution for all designers who build websites content first. This has a prime focus on layouts and base styles.

Gridless

This is a platform cum tool for creating mobile responsive website designs in a short notice. This uses HTML5 and CSS3 for creating websites.

Adobe Edge Inspect

If you want to inspect and browse website designs on the go, this is your tool. Adobe Edge Inspect also allows you to preview designs before publication.

Screenqueri.es

This is a Pixel Perfect tool that can test the responsive nature of your design. You can select from pre-defined screen resolutions for your website.

Browser Calories

When installed this tool places a small icon beside the address bar. The user can see the page weight and load time just in case they are on a poor Wi-Fi network.

Firebug

This comes from the developers of Firefox. Firebug helps you debug codes and monitor HTML, CSS live and JavaScript for your website.

–prefix-free

This is a wonderful tool that works behind the scenes. This allows you to add current browser’s prefix to all CSS codes and allows you to use unprefixed CSS codes.

Foundation

This is a prototyping tool. Foundation is a blueprint for all website design projects. This judges the responsive nature and works with SASS and CSS.

Fontello

This complete icon generator complies all icons into web fonts. You can edit and customize names and symbol codes on Fontello as well.

Cloud Comp

This tool helps designers present their comps to client parties. This provides a realistic device shell for the presentation.

BLOKK

This is a handy tool that replaces all demo texts with blocks inside the website layouts. This is amazing for “clients who don’t get Latin”.

Basecamp

Just like Relay this tool help designers collaborate on joint projects. You can share your progress and discuss changes on your website design to keep clients updated via Basecamp.

FavIcon Generator

This is an easy favicon generator for all kinds of websites. If you are a designer in need for creating “favorites icon” you need this one!

Load Impact

This is a cloud-based tool that tests your website loading speed and optimization strategies before you launch the website.

Lorem Ipsum Generator

This is a fun and must-have tool that can be used instead of BLOKK. It includes a random generator that replaces all demo with new text.

Typetester

This is a browser tool that helps you compare different kinds of fonts and typeface. You can choose text color, size and size from a piece of text before applying it globally.

Pingdom

If you want to track the uptime, downtime and the complete performance of your website, Pingdom is the tool for you. Test your website performance with this JavaScript, CSS and RSS ready tool.

CSS Sprite Generator

You can reduce the number of HTTP requests using this tool. This will speed up your website loading speed. This includes all codes and images to judge the speed of your website.

Font Flame

If you want your website fonts to be on fleek, this is the tool for you. You can see all chosen fonts at once so you don’t make any design mistakes when it comes to typography.

Codesign

This is a platform that will enable you to get visual feedback of your designs. This provides complete, comprehensive feedbacks from other designers, experts and clients. It connects people and ideas that inspire innovation.

Drop.js

This is a fast, dropdown library. You can create instant dropdowns and several floating elements for your websites using this tool. It saves tons of time and effort that would be otherwise required to create dropdowns from scratch. This is ideal for multiple grid-based designs like the one we see here at TopTenReviews. You can like compare plugins which has been used.

XposIt

This is a HTML editing tool. This makes your HTML files dynamic without including any actual code. It is also an open-source CMS platform.

CodeDoodle

CodeDoodle is one platform where you can find curated coding sketches. It includes awesome design elements and incredibly smooth animations for your website layout.

Wallop

This is a fun and must-have slider. This is just 4 Kb in size and it comes with a small library for hiding and showing design elements.

CrazyEgg

This is a web-based tool that you can use to analyze your website. You can log in to see website heat-maps or interest zones. You can see where your users are most likely to click and which areas will attract least attention using CrazyEgg before your website goes live.

Web-developer toolbar

This is a comprehensive plugin from Firefox that provides a collection of tools for website designers and developers. You can use it for inspecting your XHTML and HTTP header on a daily basis.

These 40 tools are amazing for making the entire website designing process rewarding. Most of these tools are either free or they come with free trial versions. You can easily use a combination of more than one tool to create a perfectly working, responsive website within a couple of hours.

Forget hours of debugging and optimizing HTML codes. A couple of these tools can cut your work hours down to a bare minimum, by eliminating errors.

Author bio: Isabella Rossellini is an experienced web designer and freelance writer. She has worked with various clients. In her spare time, She likes to update her blog with web design and finance related articles.

How to Add Push Notifications to a WordPress Blog

Blogging is all about readership, the process of getting content right into the eyes of your readers after you have finished writing and publishing.

Not everyone uses RSS readers, or checks your website on a daily basis, or gives you their email address for your list, and posting on social media can often be overlooked as the influx of content is at such a high rate.

Over the years, a new alternative has sprung open, something that some of us have known about since the inception of smartphones, but today push notifications have been brought to desktop browsers, and they’re easier than ever to set up.

With the right tools, you can start collecting push notification subscribers within a few minutes. First, let’s take a look at what they are.

What are push notifications?

Push notifications are specific messages that can be sent to the browser for those who have enabled notifications for your website. This is the same approach that you would see smartphones using (where an app would send you a push notification of an update, or important news), but the main difference with website push notifications is that they work virtually anywhere, on desktop computers, mobile devices, and tablets included.

In marketing terms, these work similarly to that of an email campaign, however the main difference is that you can notify users instantly on their devices as they are interacting with it.

There have been numerous case studies from leading tech brands, which have shown higher than average reader engagement rates using push notifications alone. At its core, push notifications is just like any other subscriber list, and you ought to treat it with custom goals and business targets based on the content that you’re providing.

So, having learned a little more about that, how do you set up push notifications on your WordPress blog?

Thankfully, there are numerous reliable services and plugins that can make all this possible within a few clicks.

#1: Push Notifications with Roost

There are a number of services out there that provide push notification services, but Roost stands out with its extensive list of features, and a fair pricing module that will be comfortable for beginner bloggers, too.

So, what makes Roost one of the better choices?

Here is a list of the most significant features,

AdBlock Protection — Roost can automatically detect visitors that are using any type of ad blocking software, and individually segment them. This doesn’t stop you from sending those users notifications, as Roost can bypass the ad blockers firewall.
Localization — Roost includes a filter that can detect the geolocation of a new subscriber, letting you tailor custom notifications and messages based on user location.
Comprehensive Segmentation — Being able to segment your site subscribers based on their interests and pages they signed up from can be crucial to increase engagement.
API for Developers — Those with development experience can tap into the Roost API to make even more meaningful alterations to the way that the system is built.

The reason for mentioning a premium service right out of the bat is simple, majority of free WordPress plugins for push notifications come only as Lite versions, meaning you eventually have to buy the premium version if you want to use more features.

With that in mind, Roost is a no-brainer for those who want to create a serious environment for using push notifications as a means to increase engagement, but also sales in the long run.

They’ve written a simple tutorial on how to get Roost working for your WordPress blog, read it here.

#2: Web Push Notifications by OneSignal

OneSignal provides a free service for getting push notifications up and running on your blog, and has a distinctly unique list of features, too.

With a lovely web interface, and a flexible set of features, OneSignal has helped hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs to get started with their push notification segments.

You can download the WordPress plugin here, and it only takes a few minutes to set it all up. Here’s a list of some of the best features,

High Performance — OneSignal caters to some brands that have millions of subscribers, and their service can easily scale for the needs of big brands.
Real-Time Analysis — Find out how well your push notifications are performing in real-time, likewise use your history data to understand which content works the best.
A/B Testing — Absolutely remarkable feature, which lets you test different styles of messages to different segments of users, letting you understand which types of notifications convert the best.
Personalization — Custom filters for creating user segments and sending specific messages to that particular group.

You can always check the Documentation page for OneSignal to better understand how the service works, and how you can make the most out of your push notification campaigns. Also Best Walkie Talkies for Kids

Closing words

While push notifications are not an entirely new concept, they’re swiftly gaining popularity amongst all niches, and can be a wonderful addition to your existing marketing efforts to promote your content, and ultimately the products and services that you provide.

Both of these recommended solutions have world-class developers behind them, ensuring that you’re getting a stellar result out of each push notification that you send out.

Alex Ivanovs is a freelance contract writer who specializes in web design, small business, web development, and WordPress subjects. Find more of his work on Colorlib, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Improve Page Views in WordPress

The true mojo of a great WordPress website lies in its visual appeal and the smooth functioning when it comes to a visitor’s choice of revisiting the website. Everything can be in its right place, yet the magic might fail. As a website owner, you would want a lot of people to visit your site again and again. And why not! You have shredded the last piece of your mental creativity to infuse all your efforts into your dream website.

You put up great content, and you update the old ones; not to forget that you have got your SEO game on point too. But, why is it so that in spite of the huge bounce rate, there are fewer conversions. We believe that the following reasons lead to lesser page views.Your website loading time is slow. To fix this issue, you must give thorough research before finalizing web hosting company.Your target audience has lost the enthusiasm to re-visit your site or for that matter, recommend it to other users. No matter, what factor could be playing the culprit here, you and your website are at the receiving end of this nightmare.You have failed to interlink the pages in your website with each-other and hence the users are not redirected towards the purpose.Displaying related posts at the end of your website posts is an important strategy. This will further redirect site visitors to more content on your site, giving the site an extended site visit time by every other site visitor.Page views tend to get lower when the social engagement of the website is not capable enough of internet exposure. You post content that isn’t binding enough and fails to entertain the visitor to lead them to stay.

Now that we are aware of the possible reasons for less page views, it’s time to get to the solution rundown as well. With so many tools and tips at your disposal, we hope that following these 7 ways will boost the page views of your WordPress site.

Give your website design a thought

If you are doing everything right, and the problem exists; chances are that your website designing and formatting need levelling up. They say that the first impression is the last one, too; and that goes for your WordPress site as well. The internet audience is a rude species, given the humongous amount of online content which is available for them to consume. If you fail to impress them on the first visit, they are gone.

So, if your site is experiencing fewer page views, you must consider getting a fresh formatting. Change the sidebars, or entirely change the theme. Give all the essential, trendy elements for your website so that it can drive in more and more audience. A functional and trendy UI will work just the right way to charm your visitors.

Load your website faster

This is the most important factor in this list that determines the whole game of page views. Online visitors are in haste and will wait for 2-3 seconds, on a maximum scale – in order to check out whatever you have to offer. If your website crawls like a snail, they will hardly stay to see what’s under the curtain even if it’s worth the wait.

Use tools like Pingdom to determine your website loading time along with identifying the critical issues that are slowing your website down.

Create compelling content

Ever gave a thought to the factors that make your website standout in the crowd? Does your website really standout? If the answer is in the negatives, your site endeavours are in deep sinking waters. Don’t just put up content for the sake of some words – they are what your website is all about. Make sure that the content you craft appeals to the masses that are relevant to your industry or sector.

Understand your audience expectations and then get to the action part. Present the information in a way which is less tedious to go through and in fact has a playful undertone. Infuse elements like infographics, short videos, and slideshows to hit the visual appeal nerve of your target audience. Do not overdo the length of your content.

Cleverly engage the audience

Now, this is a huge bird to catch because it comprises of several points that have to be taken care of. It gets imperative to hold your visitor for a while onto your website and prompt them to explore the maximum amount of sections and pages. These tips can help.Always keep your best posts as featured content on your site. If they have been hugely shared by users on social networking sites, they will leave a good impression on unique visitors.If you interlink the pages in the right manner, your task is half done. You can send them to your blog page or just some other relevant link from your own site.Make website navigation easier. If a new viewer visits your site and gets confused when they can’t find your sidebar (because you got too creative with the sidebar’s position), they will run away.So, you post two times a day and just get away with doing so, if you don’t find time. That is the worst thing that you can do to your website. Make sure that you engage your existing audience regularly to earn their loyal engagement and site visits.

Always use excerpts

If you haven’t, you must consider getting excerpts on the home page of your website or the blog site. In WordPress, each post has an excerpt section that can do wonders into driving the viewer to click the link to your page from the search results. If you handcraft the best excerpt, this can be huge help to your site’s page views.

SEO of the website

You can never get away with a bad SEO strategy for your precious WordPress site. Get Yoast SEO plugin for your site to help you optimize the content of your website pages. This plugin will take care of all the important post elements that will help the search engines to produce your site in the search results whenever someone is looking for related information.

Social engagement

After you have made all the right moves, it is important that you distribute the content of your site in a manner that it reaches the right audience. Using social networking platforms along with tried and tested social sharing plugins will help the users reach your website, thereby increasing the number of page views.

Conclusion

Employing the best user-oriented website strategies is the key to satisfying the site visitor to utmost content. If you succeed in impressing a few unique visitors for regular engagement, then you will definitely nail the high points that we have mentioned in the list above. Also, increased page views will mean a higher probability of increased website conversions. All you will need to do is identify your target audience and act in accordance with the list to achieve substantial user engagement for your wonderful WordPress site.

So, if you think these points were helpful for you, let us know in the comments below. Also, feel free to share any tips that we might have missed. We always appreciate your feedback.

Author Bio:

Catherrine Garcia is a passionate blogger and a freelance Web Developer. She along with her group of freelance developers, are experts of creating Websites on CMS.

Understanding the world of WordPress themes and WordPress plugins

You can be a blogger for years and yet go on without knowing the difference between a WordPress plugin and a theme. Well, we have met quite a few bloggers and WordPress users in real life, who have no clue about the differences between WordPress themes and plugins.

Let is read this account from a designer who learnt the existence of the two separate identities in the hard way –
“When my website gave up on me” – this is an account by Neil Winston, who started only a couple of years ago as a website designer. When he built his first website, he almost“built it by fluke”. He had no idea what the plugins were and how they could be used to complement his WordPress theme. Therefore, when he started off with a fashion designer’s website, he chose a theme that was around $40.99. He had found the perfect theme for a bargain price, or so he thought. It had drag-and-drop editors, built in revolution sliders and gallery options. It was perfect for a website designer.

He spent over 4 weeks fine-tuning each feature and then handed the site over to his clients. The clients were happy and left satisfied.

The problem arose when they returned after 4 months. They were rebranding their label and wantedto change in the old theme. Therefore, when Neil tried out new themes he found that the sliders had disappeared and the drag-and-drop editor morphed itself into a bunch of shortcodes. Even the gallery was all hotchpotch. He was in a fix! He had a deadline to meet and there was no way he could tell his clients that he knew nothing about WordPress. So he turned to BigDropInc.com.

What actually happened to Neil’s website?
Neil was not a hardcore developer so it took him some time to understand that themes and plugins are completely separate entities. His website theme was quite awesome at first, since it included quite a few functionalities including drag-and-drop editors and listing charts. The moment he shifted to a new theme that didn’t have the supporting codes, these features were not integrated and were merely represented as shortcodes.
What’s a theme?

If WordPress websites are like houses, then your theme is like the exterior. It controls the visual parts like color, layouts, and design. In a WordPress site, the theme controls the “display logic”. The theme takes care of information organization and representation in front of your visitors. It takes care of your pages, posts and sidebars.

If you are currently operating a blog page, your theme will control all aspects like the header, footer and post display. It will also control the images and the snippets of posts displayed on the sidebars. Even the author detail displayed on each post comes with these themes.

What’s a WordPress plugin?

Now, going back to the house metaphor – if themes are the exterior, the plugins are the interior upgrades. For example – modular kitchen, mahogany polished antique furniture and marble bath fittings are an upgrade to your home interiors. Similarly, the plugins upgrade the interior functions of your website.

Plugins can modify core codes of WordPress themes in quite a few ways. You can add, remove and change codes to modify website functionalities.
Why are some of us still confused?

Sometimes the line between plugins and themes is not as defined as we would want them to be. There are themes that help with SEO and then there are plugins that help with visual properties. There are quite a few themes that we see today, which lets users to add listings and pricing tables to their own websites.

We are not saying that it is unethical to use such themes and plugins that blur the line between the two entities. All we are saying is, if you use a theme that takes care of functionalities other than visual appearance, you may face the same problem as Neil. His website started acting crazy because his first theme of choice had added functionalities. The moment he made his shift to a newer theme, these features fell apart since the new theme did not have these built-in functionalities.

Therefore, using plugins that act on visual traits are all right. Since you can carry over your plugins to a new theme.Nevertheless, if you use a website theme that also modifies functionality, you may be calling for trouble. You should ideally look for a theme that concentrates on optimizing the visual aspects of your websites and leaves the functionalities to your plugins.

Do codes in themes perform better than plugins?

Well, we do not blame you if you believe this to be true from time to time. We keep hearing how plugins can cause performance issues and we end up thinking that maybe codes are better off with themes. The action of plugins should be as minimized as possible.

However, this belief is quite baseless. A plugin code is executed quite similar to a theme code. The only difference is the timing. They are executed at the same rate and none of them has any advantage over the other. So one thing can be said for sure, that themes are not better than plugins when it comes to executing codes.

Why are plugins better than themes?

You may think, this is like comparing apples to oranges. Or like comparing 0’s to 1’s. However, we say, it is quite possible in the binary world. So if you ask, “are plugins better than themes when it comes to functionality?” we will answer it with a “Yes”.
Here are the reasons why –

1. Your plugins will help you to convert your codes into chunks. This is necessary when you are working on a large project. Debugging and maintenance becomes a lot easier when you break your code down to small chunks. In fact, since you can maintain each plugin individually you can always track down the ones that are malfunctioning.

2. If your functionality is plugin based, you can simply remove or monitor it by modifying the plugin. If your plugin relation features are breaking down, you will not have to delve deep into the core code. You can simply open the plugins directory and deactivate and remove the concerned plugins. Plugins create a compartmentalization of labor that is necessary for efficient management of website.

3. Changing themes are challenging if your website functionality resides in the theme code. Most of your functionality should reside with the plugins. When you shift from one theme to another, you will be able to easily migrate all functionalities to your new themes. If you have all shortcodes inside your plugins, you can just upload a new theme and activate the plugins.

4. Have you ever seen a designer add customizations to functions.php and style.css? This is possible because they can add new improvements without having to migrate each and every change manually. It is ideally possible to update and enhance your plugins separately. You can add them to new themes, remove them from old ones and even update them without touching the theme. Storing your website shortcodes inside plugins can also mean, updating them from time to time without creating a butterfly effect on the theme core code.

5. You can run a 100 plugins on your website without any impact and we are not making this up! Plugins do not slow your website down. They do not perform queries on your website database and they do not load resources. Many active and super successful websites currently run over a 100 plugins all the time. Maintaining so many plugins is also possible since they can be accessed through the plugin directory. You can directly see their performance, database usage and functionalities from one platform.

So if you are still confused about plugins and themes, and would rather have a theme with all the shortcodes, think again! A plugin can only be evil when they are built incorrectly. If you are choosing a WordPress plugin from a reliable website/directory or WordPress plugins library, be sure to read the reviews thoroughly before adding it and activating it.

If you are looking for a theme for your website, we would suggest you stick to one that has minimum functionalities. Lots of shortcodes within the theme core code won’t do you any good when you have to change themes. There are plugins to take care of all functionalities including listings and inventories. So why burden your theme code with unnecessary frills? After all, you can add as many plugins as you want and your website will still run as smoothly (if not more) as it did before.

Author Bio: Evans Walsh is an author, blogger and designer. He started off as a freelance website designer is the late 90s. He has seen the rise and fall of many website design trends, including the minimalist design of the 90s and the glam trend of the 2000s. He has collaborated on several design optimization projects with BigDropInc.com over the last couple of years.

Should you Incorporate Visual Search on eCommerce Website?

Running an online business is like keeping an eye on every web design trend that put forth an ultimate level of comfort in searching for products. The common search method includes typing a word or phrase related to a product a user need. And, the website returns with a variety of search results, which may or may not match the users’ requirements. The visual search comes to rescue the users who are looking for their desired store items, but unable to find enter the right key term.

The online store often focuses the quality and presentation of its products, but forgets to each the users in finding an item they are craving for. To improve the user experience, the eCommerce websites clarify the call to actions, educate users, or simply add custom options for product personalization.

The addition of such a valuable feature either requires code modification or installation of an extension either you use WooCommerce, Magento, WordPress, or PrestaShop. The WooCommerce Product Addon is a recommended solution for adding consumer-centered options that allow them to personalize the end product. By adding custom options, you can define different product attributes to facilitate the visual search. For example, a user uploads image of white frock with tussles for 10-12 years old kids, the visual search will only return with an exact match if you have defined the attributes.

What is visual search and how it works?

Visual search is an amazing technology that allows a user to search an online store by an image or short video. Finding a product becomes difficult in an online store that rack hundreds of items and each varies in color, style, and design. A visual search takes an image and matches it with the product gallery to come up with the most matching results.

The excessive use of mobile technology and social media, the users are more attracted towards the visuals of a brand. And, they often remember a favorite product by its appearance. Defining such an appearance in words is difficult, which makes it hard to enter the query that lands them on their required product pages.

The visual search relieves the users in memorizing the name, style, model, make or additional features of a product. All they have to do is take a snap, upload it to an eCommerce website and find the available variety. You might agree to the fact that you come across a lovely shirt that is in use by one of your Facebook friends. It is not right to ask him, so you take the picture and visual search it at your favorite store. And, you find an exact match.

Should you incorporate visual search in your store?

The visual search technology is a step forward in enhancing the user experience. In general, a potential buyer is not aware of the product classification. It is often difficult to click the right category and find a list of relevant products. For the same reasons, the search option by word was introduced. It is quite successful to the extent of user understand. A user can enter a query as long as he has sound knowledge about a product. In contrast to this, the visual search seems to be quite rewarding.

The decision either you should incorporate the technology of visual search into your store depends on you. If you are dealing with a set of products that are attractive, catchy and frequently followed by users, then you need to consider it soon. For instance, a ladies purse shop must provide such an opportunity to allow the users to find a variety of purse that matches in style, color, and design with the one they are looking for. Following are some of the benefits that may help you decide the implementation of such a technology to your online shop. You can also try Shopify plus to open an online store.

It’s more natural

An online store lists products with relevant images. The users who directly reach a landing page may not face the difficult. But, a great majority visits the eCommerce websites to browse the categories or enter a word or phrase about the product. It could be a painstaking job for the person who neither knows the name nor any attribute of the product he needs.

Browsing products through images is a natural process. It gives the users the real understanding about the fabric, makes and manufacture of the product. By allowing them to search by images of their own, they can screen out all the irrelevant products and reach the items they need the most.

Increased accuracy in real time

If you want your users to find exactly what they are looking for, the visual search technology is here to relieve them. The eCommerce websites are optimized for a set of keywords, and common phrases. What if the user types something out of the context? What if a user is completely ignorant of the common words that are in practice for a specific product? He will input a self-coined phrase and get disappointed to the list of irrelevant products.

The user of keywords is quite successful to grab higher search engine rankings and reach a well-educated community. You might be busy in adjusting the common search terms in the product page title, description, and meta details, whereas a set of users might be struggling to enter a term relevant to the product.

It streamlines product images

We often populate landing pages with as much product images as we can, just to provide a better picture to the audience. By implementing the visual search technology, you can get rid of most of the similar images on product pages that are overburdening the store uselessly.

Remove the excessive images and provide one clear image that may match to the one a user is expected to upload. The user, most probably, will have an idea what the product, so showing a few images can do the game rather than creating an entire gallery. The creation and maintenance of product image galleries are among hectic jobs. It may cost you numerous valuable hours of your staff. To cut short the entire process, you can replace multiple similar images with a glorified one.

It is a modern day need

The online shopping is a multi-billion dollar industry and is expected to expand with the increased use of mobile technology. The ease of capturing images on smartphones and easily sends it to friends has resulted in a magnanimous growth in eCommerce. The visual search can be another sensation by allowing the users to capture their favorite items and find them without any hassle.

The mobile and smartphone users can avail the opportunity to easy and fast search. They can roam around their schools and college, and quickly take a snap of a dress, shoes, or anything they like. Upload the image and get matching products on the go.

Final Thoughts

We, the human beings, are always attracted to the visuals. A product that is defined in a text may not be as appealing as in a quality image. The same happens in real world. The eCommerce websites try to reach a concerned audience, but they get mesmerized by the products they see practically. With a visual search, you can allow them to grab that product in the picture and get a matching piece for themselves. It removes the hassle of asking the details. It is a way forward in taking care of your valuable customers. They will feel obliged by such an option and would like to revisit.

Author bio:

Paul Simmons is an eCommerce web development enthusiast. He has lots of themes and extensions to his credit that are developed for the prominent platforms, including WooCommerce, WordPress, Magento and Joomla. These days, he is overlooking the web development team at FMEAddon.

Simple Tips to Make your WordPress Blog Popular and Attract Visitors

WordPress is an awesome blogging platform, and a huge number of individuals begin their WordPress blog journey every day – whether it’s self-hosted on a web server or as a free WordPress.com blog. Blogging seems to be the trend that isn’t going away for at least the next decade.

Like an individual, blogs too have their own identity, which is visible as the content on your blog. It is very easy to find if a particular blog that you are reading is being run by a new blogger or an experienced one. You may be putting up the right content but bam! No success yet.

There are many things which we can do to make our blog appealing and in this post, we will discuss the best of the many tips that you can utilize for your blog’s success. To do blogging the right way, read on.

Craft attractive and appealing Content

Composing new and appealing content should be your priority as a blogger. This is your only sure shot attempt to pull the positively good activity towards your WordPress blog. If your content is not good, its purpose is half way defeated. Apart from good content, it is imperative for your blog to stay fresh and the old content be updated at regular intervals of time.

Apart from this, also make sure that your content has visual appeal. A great infographic, a presentation slide or just a simple video will work the deal for you.

Get your Blog noticed

In today’s competitive world, creating a trendy WordPress blog won’t be enough. You will need to do thorough research about your targeted blog audience. You must know what array of online audience will be interested in the type of content your blog sports. The demographics, the section of the online audience, and the purpose of their visit has to be monitored in prior.

The most fundamental and essential element to get your site noticed is to actually work on the distribution of its posts. There are countless online platforms available for sharing the published blogposts so that your blog gets all the fresh exposure.

Tune in with other bloggers

There are very strong probabilities that you aren’t the only one blogging about your topic on the Internet. So, find some bloggers and begin taking part and commenting on their web blogs. Most bloggers allow unanimous comments on their blog and if that isn’t the case, follow the blog by registering to their email newsletter. Also having best email marketing service providers for your blog can help here too to get you lot of leads. collecting leads from your blogs is always good.

You’ll get a few guests from their blog, as well as build an affinity with the creator to consider a link building relationship.

Another essential component to get your WordPress blog noticed is to get in touch with like-minded and relevant members of the blogging community. This community can comprise of the bloggers that write about the same niche as yours. They can provide you valuable inputs about how to improvise upon the blogging work.

Make share that you engage in their blogging platform as well. It will spread a decent informal exchange and bring more readers to your WordPress site when their readers learn about your blog through comments.

Seek Feedback

A decent blogger is the one who uses the feedback from its readers to make their WordPress blog engaging. It is important with a view to retaining loyal followers and readers.

Moreover, if you use the feedback of your clients and followers, you will get to understand what areas require more effort. This will help you to get experiences about your readers on how they think, feel about your blog. It will also help you learn more about new blog audience and to roll out improvements in an expected manner.

Take part in the Online Community

Participating in the online community helps you bring traffic to your blog or site. All you need to do is take part in discussions and online forums to promote your blog and to draw in clients and followers. Taking part in online discussions will help you make your site inventive and imaginative. Reddit is a great online community that can come to your use for such interactions.

Guest Posting

In today’s time, guest posting on other famous blogs is an effective and efficient promotional form for bloggers from around the globe. Popular websites keep looking for guest bloggers with an expectation of unearthing great content for their site along with gaining linkbacks.

All you will need to do is get in touch with sites that are seeking guest posts. Once they are up and ready, you can send them the content. This will bring a new-found recognition and new followers for your blog as well. Submitting your blog details and links to various websites is a good move to make as well.

Utilizing Email Signatures

To bring traffic to your WordPress blog, use your email signature with links to your blog. If you are using WordPress as a blogging platform, you are well aware that you can post awesome author bios at the end of the post. If not, consider getting a plugin to help your readers and guests to get in touch with you to give you feedback and remarks.

Using these email signatures gives the followers an approach to remain connected with the blog owner. It makes them feel that you esteem their proposals and their needs are more vital to you. By doing this you will draw the individuals from various areas which can make your blog well known.

Inspire your readers to comment

If a reader comments on your post, they clearly have something to state. This might just be a sudden flair but that is what needs to be tapped. Whenever you reply to a new comment on your blog, you leave an impression that the comment matters to you. By answering to your readers, you encourage a relationship that can be fruitful for the popularity of your blog.

Once the readers know your state of mind as a blog owner, they will begin sharing the post on their own social media accounts and feeds.

Social Sharing of the blogposts

Social sharing plugins on the Internet can do miracles to multiply your blog’s popularity. Basic social networking platform like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ communities, and Instagram are the easiest way to share your blog. You can also go the extra edge by using other great blog sharing platforms like StumbleUpon, Triberr,Blog engage etc.

Conclusion

One of the reasons as to why a successful blog is such a huge challenge is the fact that the Internet is over-crowded with millions of blogs on different blogging platforms. Many bloggers give up to this challenge after a couple of months because their blog isn’t that popular the way they expected it to be.

Being a blogger or site owner, it becomes imperative to make your blog prevalent and easy to use. If you need to drive heavy traffic to your blog, then you ought to take a look at these strategies specified above in this blog. You will get links eventually, and as your blog get older, it will gain more and more trust. After all, running a purposeful, popular and money-minting blog isn’t as easy a pie.

How Web Design Plays a Role in Your Marketing Efforts

Our world keeps changing every day, and with every daylight, comes new inventions. For that reason, it has become an upward task for many in the marketing sector to keep up with this trend. All over the world people are changing the way they do their businesses. Online marketing is having the biggest share in this field.

Websites are becoming the central tool for marketing with the help of the Web, which has compressed earth into a global village and allow instant communication from any part of the world. Astonishingly, even the sites themselves are ever-changing with new elements discovered daily. That means your website will require continuous redesigning to keep with the rest of the globe. As a result, you must engage in talks with a website designing company, which will deliver quality services as per your requirements and beyond.

Your company’s website design plays an important role in your marketing strategy. Below are 6 most essential elements of how website plays a role in your marketing efforts:

Brand Consistency

Brand consistency is yet another vital element to consider while designing a site for your company. One of the easiest ways to help people identify your content is by using the same logos, colors, and fonts everywhere. Go for a single font and color scheme for your site, and use them for your logos also. You must also use the same profile photo and, if applicable, header picture for all your social media accounts. This will help prospective customers to recognize any of your products quickly because they will have developed a relationship with your brand.

2. Authoritative design

Your website has to command some form of authority to users to enable them to trust it. For example, imagine you visited an ecommerce website where you want to order some items such as a phone. Then once on the website, you come across blurry images that have no order whatsoever and a million adverts. Would you feel at ease keying in your payment details on such a website? I bet your response is a big NO! Thus you must engage a company which will deliver a high-quality web design that entices customers. You can also take care of your email design, since email marketing might be the most important marketing channel for customer retention.

User Experience

The main purpose of any website is to catch the user’s attention that happens to be your customer, client or affiliate. They must have the perfect user experience while on your website and provide them with a reason to return to your website. It is possible to achieve this by making sure navigation of your website is very simple. According to Stephen Thompson, SEO manager at Vancouver SEO, the load speed must be as fast. If the pages load slowly, you are certain to lose some important clients who will look for services in other places. You can also employ the use of graphics like videos and images but DON’T overdo it. Or else, you may find yourself making your website unusable.

Raises Awareness

One of the leading goals for any marketing campaign is raising awareness. This awareness might be for your specific service or product. You should get prospects to trust you before they purchase a product or subscribe to a service. A poorly designed campaign that does not reflect what your brand represents might compromise this trust. On the other side, a website that is well-designed transmits professionalism and attention to detail. Consider what kind of image you would like to portray and carry through with it in each marketing campaign.

Social Media Integration

Social media is emerging as the number one marketing tool in the online businesses nowadays. You can design your website in a manner that enables easy integration with widely used social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and so on. Customers often depend on the testimonials and comments provided by other customers on your social media pages.

Sets a Company Apart From the Crowd

Having a well-designed marketing campaign can help you stay apart from your competitors. To achieve this, you must design websites that are engaging, unique, and specially designed to the audience you are targeting. There is no single web design strategy that will work for every company. For instance, your strategy with a campaign for a new children’s toy differs than the strategy for a designer handbag.

Conclusion

Your website design sends a message to anybody that clicks on your website. In case you have a poor design that is hard to navigate, it will deter users, and maybe send them to your competitors. A good web design will increase interest in your company and boost your online marketing strategy.

If you have a poor web design that appears amateurish; this is the way visitors will perceive your company. But if your design is easy to use and professional looking, it will leave a positive impression. The website design you select does play a significant role in your online marketing strategy that is why most companies choose a professional web designer to deal with the details.

Why You Should Embrace WordPress For Your Business

If you are like many business owners, you probably fall in one of the following categories. You know a business website is ideal for your enterprise but you have never had time or money to make it a reality. You have a business website you aren’t so proud of. You often give excuses for not making it better.

For anyone falling in the above categories, WordPress provides a great solution to your problems. For those who have used WordPress for long enough, you definitely have an idea of how great this platform can be. If you are yet to join the bandwagon, the following reasons might as well make you want to be part of it today.

Easy Setup and Management

Seeking the services of experts likeLasVegasWebDesignCo.com is a great option when you want a website. However, you do not need to be a coding guru or internet mogul to set up a WordPress site. You simply need internet connection and a web browser. For someone going through this article, you already have what it takes to get started. WordPress.com offers free websites. You will only need a small fee to host your domain name. For a small entity that is just picking up, WordPress.com provides an amazing platform that is easy to manage and update if need be.

Multiple Free Themes

WordPress themes give you the luxury of owning a professionally designed website without the additional cost of hiring a designer. With over two thousand free themes up for grabs, you have every reason to own an amazing site without spending a fortune on it. For advanced and more responsive themes, you can take advantage of commercial sites like Theme Forest at a small fee.

Out of the world Plugins

What makes sites unique is their additional functionality. Do you want to add extra functionality to your WordPress site? Relax because there is definitely a plugin for it. WordPress Plugins give you the opportunity to add sophisticated business features to your website without having to hire an experienced coder. The flexibility of WordPress Plugins provides extensions for any possible additional feature. It doesn’t matter whether you want a simple platform or a fully integrated e-commerce platform; WordPress has it all figured out!

SEO Friendly

Who doesn’t want his website to grace the first page of search engine results? Getting in front of your audience is the ultimate goal of every business. WordPress comes with easy solutions to tons of SEO problems. With additional plugins like Yoast SEO, the deal gets even sweeter. It is easy to optimise a WordPress site to be in tune with search engine demands and you can achieve this effortlessly. That is what makes the difference!

Everyone is using it!

WordPress is over a decade old and still counting. People trust it and that explains the extensive popularity it enjoys. For the many years that it has been in existence, WordPress has been tested, refined and configured to suit the rising needs of the existing clients. If you didn’t have any reason to embrace WordPress for your corporate site, you now have loads of them.

Bio

Issa is a content management expert based in California. She’s passionate about blogging and web development. You can view some of his contributions at LasVegasWebDesignCo.com.

What is E-business?

In the age of Internet and electronic communications, everything gets an “e” as prefix. The most popular words are e-business and e-commerce. Forecast by many well-known research companies on e-commerce gave staggering numbers on the growth of e-commerce:

What is E-business?

According to IBM who was one of the first to use the term e-business (in October 1997), e-business is:”The transformation of key business processes through the use of Internet technologies”.

Every organization has its own definition for e-business. E-business is less about technology than it is about business. It’s about doing business differently. As Cec Primeau from PriceWaterhouseCoopers explains: “E-business is a concept, not a product. It’s about using Web-enabled technologies to link your entire value chain.”

In the narrowest sense, e-business is the use of information and Internet technology to conduct business among buyers, sellers and other trading partners. In a broader sense, e-business goes beyond the technology that enables it. Think of it as any other business practice that improves performance, creates value and establishes customer relationships, only it is done electronically over the Internet.

E-commerce

Definitions of e-commerce given by various sources differ significantly. Some include all financial and commercial transactions that take place electronically, including electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic funds transfer (EFT), and all credit/debit card activity. Others limit e-commerce to retail sales to consumers for which the transaction and payment take place on open network like the Internet. The first type refers to forms of electronic commerce that have exist for decades and result in trillions of dollars worth of activity every day. The second type has existed for a few years.

The business or industry definition can be broader or narrower and the terms used are usually e-business for the former and e-commerce for the latter. Key to the narrower definition is the transactional aspect. A survey of business views on the definition of e-commerce conducted on behalf of Statistics Canada also distinguishes between e-business and e-commerce. According to the findings of the survey, “the notion of transaction, computer-mediation, channels and trigger events were found to be key concepts in defining e-commerce”. Also, industry perception of what are relevant computer-mediated channels or electronic commerce networks on which e-business or e-commerce takes place differs across sectors, hence a definition should clearly specify on what type of networks or applications e-commerce occur.

E-commerce can be classified by the nature of transaction. The following types are distinguished:

Business-to-business (B2B);
Business-to-consumer (B2C);
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C);
Consumer-to-business (C2B);
Nonbusiness e-commerce;
Intrabusiness (organizational) e-commerce.

E-commerce platforms

The Internet, intranet, and extranet are the most popular platforms for e-commerce. In Internet is the most common platform for B2C e-commerce; the intranet is most the common for platform for corporate internal management; and the extranet is the most common platform for B2B e-commerce.