Within five seconds of landing on your website, can your visitors determine what your company does? Could users easily navigate to the blog if they need to? Is the layout of your pricing easy to understand? Does your website have a low bounce rate? 

If you’re finding yourself answering ‘no’ to these questions, it might be time to take a hard look at the way you’ve been designing and optimizing your website.

A website truly excels when it has a design that feeds into your website’s user experience, functionality, and appropriately complements your content.

It can be super easy to neglect these things, thinking these updates are the lowest thing to worry about on your totem pole of website priorities, but a successful website has both high performing content and an exceptional user experience needs to have balance. 

The last thing you want is to be spending time writing some amazing content on your blog or service pages, only for it to go unnoticed due to design flaws, navigation issues, or confusing layouts, or missed conversion opportunities. 

But the umbrella of website user experience has a lot under it, and it can be challenging to understand all that’s under it while figuring out the most important things to tackle.

So, what do you need to know to start improving your web design?

To answer that, here are 12 website tips to ensure that you’re going in the right direction in your redesign and are assuring you aren’t turning visitors away.

1. Have a plan

Now that you’ve acknowledged that your site likely needs some improvements, it’s time to work your way backward and create a plan detailing how you’ll tackle them. 

Start by mapping out your customer journey from the first time someone visits your website to the moment they become a customer.

When doing this, think about which pages are they going to view, what content are they going to read, and what offers are they going to convert on. Understanding this will help you design a site that actually helps nurture leads through the sales funnel.

I’ve always liked Leadfeeder’s customer journey map as a great example. You don’t need to make it as graphical as they did, but it gets the point across. It illustrates what users do when visiting their website and what commonalities occur between those who do and do not become customers. 

If you are struggling to compile this data, or, lack a CRM that would make researching this easier, you can always interview your customers. Ask if you could have 15-30 minutes of their time to ask them a few questions (you can even compensate them with a $10 Starbucks or Amazon gift card). Interview as many people as you can, but no need to go overboard. 

Then, use this data to map out your strategy. This will help you identify the key touch points of your website or the areas your users interact with. 

Throughout these touch points, you should be able to map out the emotion, thoughts, goals, pain points, and opportunities each touchpoint needs to evoke.

Answering these questions will help you direct your design. Is their imagery that will help best address these areas in the way you want? What about a particular color palette? Getting started on your customer journey map will help create answers to these questions and better reinforce your design. 

2. Remove distractions and reduce friction

Certain elements on your website are going to detract from the value and message you’re trying to convey. Complicated animations, content that’s too long, and “stocky” website images are just a few examples. 

With an audience that only has an attention span of eight seconds, you need to make it abundantly clear what your user will learn on the page they’re viewing and your design must not detract from this. 

This starts with making sure you have consistent brand guidelines you can work off of. 

This should detail your font styles, colors, imagery, iconography, and logo usage. Without this, it’s easy for brands to struggle when designing pages. You’ll likely start to see arbitrary colors and varying font styles and sizes used, which in turn, can distract from your message or create visual confusion for people trying to convert. 

It’s also important to avoid too many on-page animations or interactions. If you’re scrolling through a page and see every button pulsing or a section of icons each with their own animation, it can  feel overwhelming and distract them from reading what’s on the page.

Let’s take a look at the website below as an example. Note, since I’m treating this as more of a critique, I’m removing the brand’s logo from the image so they can remain more anonymous.

When looking at this site, the first thing I noticed was the colors. 

For one thing, the way they are used makes it hard for the user to decide where their eye is supposed to go. Should it be one of the two red buttons? What about the hello bar? Or maybe the top of the navigation? 

You need to figure out where you want users’ attention to go when they arrive on the page and what order it needs to flow naturally. This current color arrangement creates friction in accomplishing this.

Second, there are some areas of inconsistent spacing. The hanger in …

So what does psychology have to do with it? When it comes to user experience, almost everything.

With so many device types and sizes and so many different ways to design websites for those devices, the user experience a designer creates is what determines overall success of the site and whether a user will return.

What is user psychology?

User psychology is the science behind what people want and need when they visit a website or mobile app. Psychology is rooted in everything from whether a user trusts your brand to how they feel about the message you are trying to convey.

And design is a big part of that. Everything from color to images to patterns to how the site works can impact those feelings and emotional connections.

Each of these elements should ultimately lead to an action from the user. Most psychology textbooks reference triggers that cause people to act and react. Those triggers also apply to web design, and even more particularly to mobile design, where a user almost always has to physically interact with a website to make something happen, such as the swipe or tap fingers on the screen.

• Reciprocation: if you do something for users, they will do something for you. (They sign up for a newsletter, you give them a freebie.)
• Framing: users will make comparisons between things. (Do I want this or that? Most users fall somewhere in the middle of all options.)
• Salience: users want what matters now. (That’s why e-commerce websites add related items to the screen during the shopping experience.)
• Social proof: users look to others to see what to do. (The influence of social media.)
• Scarcity: users want what they can’t have. (Limited number of items.)
• Contrast: What stands out in the user’s mind. (Design theory 101.)

Two different user experiences

While the triggers are the same regardless of the device, the user experience is not. Users overwhelmingly want the content to be the same regardless of device, but have different ideas of how to use and interact with that content.

Desktop websites are for reading and perusing. The reading and information gathering process may result in an action, but users often have a distinct reason for going to a website, such as work. Not all of these experiences are based on entertainment or pleasure and most of them may not be.

Desktop users are relatively still in their online interactions as well. Every action is done with a keyboard or mouse. There’s just not a lot of actual physical interaction with the device. (Few users will ever touch the screen.)

The user experience for mobile is significantly different. Users constantly touch the device – casing and screen. So the size of these elements and how they feel are quite important. This use of physical touch makes designing elements on the screen especially important, because they must be easy to touch, unlike desktop versions where the mouse click is always the same size.

Mobile device users often access websites with different intents. Entertainment or task completion activities are more common than reading and research actions. (Just think of how often you pull out your phone to play a game in line at the grocery store or respond to a text message.)

Physical differences also impact the psychology of mobile design. You have to consider lighting conditions, device size and touch options. How will these elements come together for an actual user?

User expectations

It all comes down to a central question: What does the mobile user want and expect?

Unlike with desktop websites, where users expect a visually dynamic and engaging experience that is relatively two-dimensional, mobile users want everything to feel real and live in the three-dimensional space.

Mobile users have come to expect certain things from the interface:

• Every action needs to be tappable. (And easy to see and tap.)
• Graphics and images should load fast, and might not be part of the mobile experience at all.
• Options need to be contextual. Users want to know what’s next and where they can go from here; they don’t need to know every possible option.
• Websites need to integrate with all mobile device functionality, such as mapping, calling and integration with other apps.
• Interactions have to be easy and follow generally accepted patterns. Mobile users have almost zero attention span. If elements don’t work the first time – and without a lot of thought or explanation – the user is lost.

How to design it

The actual secret is combining triggers and user expectations; then design for them. Let’s break down a few examples of sites that do this well and how they combine triggers and mobile expectations for an excellent user experience.

MINT

Mint uses a card-style interface where every box is a clickable element in its mobile app design, whereas the desktop version features more click-style links. Bright color and plenty of white space contribute to the streamlined mobile version as well.

Triggers: Framing and salience are the key triggers here, because as a free service mint is asking you to sign up for limited time offers based on things you likely are thinking about or need, from credit card to insurance offers. 

Mobile expectations: Mint loads exceptionally fast with up-to-date user data. The mobile app drops many of the heavier images that appear in the desktop site and uses a simple vertical pattern for the user to …

​Facts surround us. It comes from everywhere, irrespective of whether we are on the web or offline. Our sensory system receives inputs and transmits them to the brain. The process of recognizing and interpreting the inputs is named perception. Among all kinds of perception (sound, touch, taste, smell, etc.), visual perception is primary, considering that 90% of information that comes to our brains is visual. Based on this, each marketer and graphic designer in Rockford recognize the significance of employing visual materials in advertising methods.

Visuals in Social Media Marketing and Advertising

When it comes to social media promotion (SMM), graphic style is a decisive part of an overall content method. Regardless of how fantastic the text is, nobody will notice it unless accompanied by good visuals to grab people’s attention within the middle of browsing. Running a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) organization, owners can get clients via social media because their leads reach the final stage on the sales funnel without even leaving social media networks. B2B (Business-to-Business) firms are more focused on directing possible leads to their websites to introduce those results in the firm and demonstrate its experience. That’s why designers should really perform out visual materials primarily based on the business enterprise model and marketing and advertising strategy.

Not only marketing and advertising objectives but also social media networks affect visual design. If the firm communicates to its Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn audience in an official way rather than within a friendly way, the design should support the tone with suitable colors and typography. Whereas visual material styles for Instagram and Snapchat could be a lot more casual and relaxed.

Wonderful Design and Style Boosts Social Media Engagement

You could use your graphic design and style expertise to send engagement on any social media platform employing the roof. Social media managers work on engagement, virality, and score for every post. There are actually all kinds of ways to go about achieving these points with a simple graphic style. As a graphic designer in Rockford, you’d almost definitely do several items to improve this post. Initially, you’d add an image one individual could not resist sharing. Second, you’d shave down the text and incorporate it onto the image, so the whole factor is quick and sweet and has immediate influence. Fantastic news: by improving the post from a graphic style standpoint, you’d strengthen be able to increase the engagement and almost surely get a much better shot at virality.

As a graphic designer in Rockford, you may build visual concepts to convey information through photographs and art. You’ll also develop posters, bus wraps, billboards, packaging, logos, and advertising supplies, based on the industry-graphic designer in Rockford operates at magazines, advertising and marketing, advertising agencies, and much more. Picking pictures and typefaces and building layouts for ads, annual reports, brochures, magazines, and other projects are also part of the gig.…

Whether you’re starting out online or having an existing website updated, choosing the right web designer for the job can put you on the right track to online success. But what makes a web designer great? We’ve put together our top 5 tips for choosing a web designer that you can effectively use to narrow down your selection.

1. Decide on a budget

When deciding on a web design budget it really is (or should be) a case of “the more you pay the more you get”.

The vast majority of web designers and developers work on a time basis. They will look at your requirements and decide how much time is needed from themselves or their team to complete the job and then multiply that figure by a daily or hourly rate. So, if one designer quotes much less than the others you’ve approached ask them all what daily or hourly rate they are charging. If their rate is similar but the overall cost is less you can be sure that they will spend less time understanding your business, researching what is required to make the website a success and finishing the website to a high standard. As a reference point the industry average is probably around £300 per day (or £50 per hour).

Before you go spending it’s crucial to decide how important your website is to you, are you simply looking for an online presence because it’s the done thing or could it be a truly significant source of revenue for you?

If you don’t see your website as a valuable asset could you be underestimating the number of people who look for your products or services online? Google provides a keyword planner tool which can show you the number of people that search for a particular keyword or phrase. This can be a good start when trying to understand the potential exposure a good website can bring.

2. Can they provide ongoing support?

You will no doubt get a better daily or hourly rate from smaller businesses with lower overheads but you are also likely to get poorer ongoing support from a smaller pool of resources and skills. Are you looking at a one-man-band that could leave you in the lurch when they go on holiday? Could this be an issue for you if there is a problem with your website and you need support urgently? Is your website so important that you may need out-of-hours or 24-hour support?

If you are still in doubt why not try testing their support? Just pick up the phone and give them a call! Maybe even ask them a technical question to see if you can actually speak to someone with the required skills.

3. Look at their portfolio

Any web designer worth their salt should have a good number of websites in their portfolio. If you can’t find something from your own or a related industry then look for websites with similar functionality, for example an online booking or payment system.

You can also search for designs that you particularly like the look of but don’t forget that the best designers produce whatever is required to appeal to the target audience – so just because the sites in the portfolio aren’t your style don’t be put off.

Try to think objectively, look at the websites and consider whether you would enjoy using them if you were in their target audience. Would you be impressed enough by the company being promoted to get in touch? Is it easy enough to get in touch with them?

4. Get testimonials

What better way to get a testimonial than to speak directly to someone the designer has worked with. Why not try calling a some of the companies your potential web designer has launched websites for, maybe a selection of the best from their portfolio? You only need a minute of their time to ask:

• were easy to collaborate with?
• did they finish the project on time and on budget?
• did they do everything they promised?
• are they providing good long-term support?

Some designers will use third party online review systems to collect genuine feedback from their customers too. Look out for these and perhaps try searching online for feedback and reviews for the designer.

5. Don’t discount your previous web designer

It’s a common misconception that web design is an art-form and if you go back to your original designer it will result in something similar to your existing website being developed.

In fact a good graphic designer or web designer should be able to produce hugely varied designs depending on the requirements of the project. Their own natural style shouldn’t be a significant factor. In this line of work we are lucky to be in an industry where technologies are moving forward at a stunning pace so within months of developing a website your designer, providing they move with the times, should have a whole new set of tools available to them to produce something that exceeds their previous work.

Hopefully you’ll be able to use these tips to select the best web designer for the job, if you can think of any other handy tips we’d love to hear from you!…

With the advent of new technology, it is quite easy to miss out on esteemed opportunities available. This situation is even worse when one does not have the expertise to tap on these changes. Well, this is the scenario for businesses which have limited knowledge of website development and design.

Let’s face it, website development agency services have tremendously changed how the business industry works. So, for serious entrepreneurs or companies wishing to know the importance of websites this article provides just that.

Below are the major benefits of website development and web design.

Makes navigation easy

When it comes to having a successful online platform, the user must enjoy easy navigation. Essentially, information provided on the website should be easy to access. For this reason, it is expected that the pages have fast loading speeds.

Subsequently, the website like online auto parts store is required to offer options to further aid in navigation. This encompasses the inclusion of a search box. Here, the users get to type on the search tool and quickly be directed to the section. It is through exemplary web design that a developer’s website achieves this.

Aside from developing the website, the developer is advised to regularly test the pages for ease of navigation. This is to eliminate or resolve bugs that may hamper the ease of loading web pages. Remember, if a website has good navigation capabilities then it is guaranteed of more organic traffic.

Get to win with SEO

Search engine optimization has become a fundamental aspect to observe when it comes to the website. With millions of websites contesting to top in search engine results pages (SERPs), search engines had to introduce a way to list sites.

Well, it is through web development and design that one gets to attain a higher ranking. Here, parameters such as; title tags, use of keywords, image optimization, linking among others are considered. This implies that the website meets all the standards required by be ranked top.

Subsequently, it is through optimization that the website becomes user-friendly. Aside from having the website, the webmasters get to retain the much-needed users. Under this, the web developer is required to include features such as “call-to-action”.

This further entails the need to have simplistic designs on the pages. Subsequently, you get to learn on the expected loading speeds. It is through this optimization that the website appears when different queries are made. So the website gets more clicks on search results.

Provide visual content on the website

Truth be said, selling abstract product and services can be cumbersome. This is further complicated when a company only provides tons of text about their specialty. It is here that website development spices things up.

By contacting a professional web designer, the business owner gets to choose the images to use. Additionally, the enterprise has the freedom to choose the number of promo videos and images. This will be guided by the optimization on search engines.

The merit of using visual contents is that provides the users with a clear picture of what the product looks like. Apparently, not all customers understand the services or products offered through text. So the inclusion of images makes it simple to drive the message home.

Besides this, use of images on the site easily captures the attention of the readers. Before reading through the text, users are often keen on the image. This improves the chances of having more users to the website.

Nevertheless, webmasters are advised to avoid stuffing the visual data. This is because it makes it difficult for the user to interpret. It also lowers the ranking of the website of search engine optimization. So it is important to moderate the use of imagery.

Increase the sales

Business prosperity is highly anchored on the number of sales made. Well, creating a website can effectively aid a business venture to attract more sales. According to Statista, e-commerce activities are anticipated to grow by 21.3% by the year 2019. This indicates that sales on websites are attracting more users.

Nowadays, more business owners are rushing to conduct their transactions online. This is because they have spotted the great opportunity to capitalize on online sales. The increase in sales goes hand in hand with the growing number of customers.

To further promote the sales, webmasters are encouraged to include updates. It is through updates and upgrades that the website functions are smoothened. Moreover, it shows the clients that the brand is dedicated to offering exemplary services and information.

Another way to improve the sales is by including promotions. Here, you get to create the much-needed fuzz among users. This replicates into more sales. Additionally, this gives users the impression that they can acquire affordable products from the company. So, all activities on the website add value to the business in one way or another.

Attract lifetime clients to your business

As the company aspires to spread its wings and expand, it is fundamental to have loyal customers. Nevertheless, this can be a daunting task especially when the entrepreneur uses poor tactics to achieve this. It is at this point that development and designing of the website help out.

The metrics retrieved from the site enable webmasters to monitor the activity of users. Here, it is possible to highlight the customers that have continuously supported the brand. After pinpointing them, the business owner ought to …

With the growth of technology, it’s crucial that you have an effective Internet marketing plan in place. Internet marketing helps you continue to grow your business. Here are seven reasons why marketing is so important.

1. Your customers are online

Internet marketing is so important because your customers are online. Considering that over 4.2 billion people are on the Internet, it’s a great opportunity for you to reach leads that are looking for your business. There are billions of people online just waiting to find your company.

People use the Internet to find all types of information. They’re constantly conducting searches to find relevant information about businesses, products, and services. By investing in Internet marketing, you’re helping your company reach those interested leads.

As a marketer, you want to reach potential customers where they live, work, shop, get information, and seek entertainment. All of this is wrapped up in one place: The Internet.

Even if you operate locally, your audience is online. That’s why organizations in the healthcare sector, like hospitals, orthopedic surgeons, and more use Internet marketing to promote their services and expand their care.

Internet marketing online is valuable to your business because it helps you connect with leads that are the most interested in your business.

2. It create two-way communication

With traditional advertising, the communication is one-way. You create a TV ad or print ad in a newspaper, and that’s it. You wait and hope that your audience will see your ad and visit your business.

So, what happens if your audience has questions or concerns? What if they want to learn more about your business, product, or service? It’s a hard task to complete when you don’t have a two-way conversation.

The importance of Internet marketing lies in the ability to create two-way communication.

You provide clients with a way to contact your business. Whenever you create a social media post, run a pay-per-click (PPC) ad, or create any form of marketing material, you create the opportunity for people to contact your business.

You can reach customers through several digital marketing channels. If someone sees your PPC ad and has questions, they can find your contact information and reach out to you. They can call, chat, or email your business with questions.

This helps you build a relationship with your audience. You get to know them and open the door of communication for them. It makes them feel more welcomed by your team and company.

This is valuable to your audience because they want to be seen as more than just a number. Customers want to be valued and know that their business matters to you. They choose companies that value them as an individual.

For example, if a consumer or a business is purchasing a brand-new HVAC system, which is a substantial investment, it’s important that they feel comfortable asking questions because it could make or break the sale.

An HVAC marketing strategy could make buyers more at ease by using social media to engage users casually and professionally. Social media would also provide consumers a convenient platform for asking questions, which could then lead to a quote request or one-on-one meeting with a salesperson.

When you have two-way communication, your audience doesn’t view it as you trying to sell them things. Instead, they will see you as a valuable source of information that helps them in the purchasing process.

By building a relationship and opening communication with your audience, you increase their likelihood of becoming customers. It also increases the chances that they will become repeat customers.

Internet marketing is important because it helps you communicate better with your audience.

3. It personalizes your audience’s experience

As we stated previously, your audience wants to feel like they matter to your business. They don’t want to just be another number. Effective Internet marketing creates a custom experience for each member in the audience.

Personalized marketing enables you to customize your audience’s experience. You can create a tailored experience that fits their interests best.

When people find your business, they’re going to come to your company for different reasons.

Some people are interested in one type of product, while others are interested in another type. Personalizing these customers’ experiences to their interests creates a better experience for them.

It’s best to create multiple, personalized marketing pieces than one, general marketing piece.

The ability to personalize your marketing strategy is why Internet marketing is so important to your business. It helps you deliver a better experience for your leads, which turns them into customers.

4. It allows you to drive quality traffic

One of the biggest hurdles with traditional advertising is obtaining interested leads.

When you use traditional advertising, you don’t know how many valuable leads you will reach. Your advertisements appear in front of interested and uninterested leads, which makes it difficult to drive an abundance of quality traffic.

Internet marketing is important because it helps you drive more qualified traffic. You reach more leads that are interested in your business. The ability to target specific leads helps you drive traffic that takes interest in your company.

You can target leads specifically by different characteristics.

Internet marketing allows you to target by demographic information, socioeconomic status, hobbies, interests, or spending habits. You can get very precise with your targeting to ensure that you’re only reaching leads you know will be interested in …

An effective website design should fulfill its intended function by conveying its particular message whilst simultaneously engaging the visitor. Several factors such as consistency, colours, typography, imagery, simplicity and functionality all contribute to good website design.

When designing a website there are many key factors that will contribute to how it is perceived. A well designed website can help build trust and guide visitors to take action. Creating a great user experience involves making sure your website design is optimised for usability (form and aesthetics) and how it easy is it to use (functionality).

Below are some guidelines that will help you when considering your next web project.

1. WEBSITE PURPOSE

Your website needs to accommodate the needs of the user. Having a simple clear intention on all pages will help the user interact with what you have to offer. What is the purpose of your website? Are you imparting practical information like a ‘How to guide’? Is it an entertainment website like sports coverage or are you selling a product to the user? There are many different purposes that websites may have but there are core purposes common to all websites;

1. Describing Expertise
2. Building Your Reputation
3. Generating Leads
4. Sales and After Care

2. SIMPLICITY

Simplicity is the best way to go when considering the user experience and the usability of your website. Below are ways to achieve simplicity through design.

Colour

Colour has the power to communicate messages and evoke emotional responses. Finding a colour palette that fits your brand will allow you to influence your customer’s behaviour towards your brand. Keep the colour selection limited to less than 5 colours. Complementary colours work very well. Pleasing colour combinations increase customer engagement and make the user feel good.

Type

Typography has an important role to play on your website. It commands attention and works as the visual interpretation of the brands voice. Typefaces should be legible and only use a maximum of 3 different fonts on the website.

Imagery

Imagery is every visual aspect used within communications. This includes still photography, illustration, video and all forms of graphics. All imagery should be expressive and capture the spirit of the company and act as the embodiment of their brand personality. Most of the initial information we consume on websites is visual and as a first impression it is important that high quality images are used to form an impression of professionalism and credibility in the visitors mind.

3. NAVIGATION

Navigation is the way finding system used on websites where visitors interact and find what they are looking for. Website navigation is key to retaining visitors. If the websites navigation is confusing visitors will give up and find what they need elsewhere. Keeping navigation simple, intuitive and consistent on every page is key.

4. F-SHAPED PATTERN READING

The F- based pattern is the most common way visitors scan text on a website. Eye tracking studies have found that most of what people see is in the top and left area of the screen. The F’ shaped layout mimics our natural pattern of reading in the West (left to right and top to bottom). An effective designed website will work with a readers natural pattern of scanning the page.

5. VISUAL HIERARCHY

Visual hierarchy is the arrangement of elements is order of importance. This is done either by size, colour, imagery, contrast, typographically, whitespace, texture and style. One of the most important functions of visual hierarchy is to establish a focal point; this shows visitors where the most important information is.

6. CONTENT

An effective web design has both great design and great content. Using compelling language great content can attract and influence visitors by converting them into customers.

7. GRID BASED LAYOUT

Grids help to structure your design and keep your content organised. The grid helps to align elements on the page and keep it clean. The grid based layout arranges content into a clean rigid grid structure with columns, sections that line up and feel balanced and impose order and results in an aesthetically pleasing website.

8. LOAD TIME

Waiting for a website to load will lose visitors. Nearly half of web visitors expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less and they will potentially leave a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. Optimising image sizes will help load your site faster.

9. MOBILE FRIENDLY

More people are using their phones or other devices to browse the web. It is important to consider building your website with a responsive layout where your website can adjust to different screens.

Our team will breathe life into your website and tell your story We are a ‘family’ team of creative practitioners in the areas of design, marcoms and technology. Get in touch to find out more.

Results driven web design services

Ensure your next website is growth orientated – Driving increased visitors and increased conversions…

Many articles on web development technologies are geared towards developers. They often stray too far into technical talk to be digestible or useful to people in other areas of the business, especially business owners and marketers.

But it’s valuable for people in these roles to understand some of the technical aspects of web design and development services if only so they can have informed discussions with their development teams or vendors. It can give them a conceptual understanding of how a project will be built technically-speaking. That’s what this article is all about.

Web development technologies refer to the multitude of programming languages and tools that are used to produce dynamic and fully-featured websites and applications.

Throughout this article, we’ll talk about front-end and back-end technologies.

Let’s first define each of these terms.

Front-end (client-side) technologies.

Front-end technologies are for the “client side” of your website or application. They’re used to develop the interactive components of your website, and produce the elements that users see and interact with. This includes text colours and styles, images, buttons, and navigation menus.

Back-end (server-side) technologies.

Back-end technologies are for the “server side” of your website or application. They’re for developing the technical foundation. They store and arrange data and make sure everything on the front-end works. For example, when a user provides login credentials to a social media application, back-end technologies are used to check if those credentials are accurate. Once the credentials are verified, the server will send back the profile name, picture, and other associated information.

Back-end technologies are also used to streamline core business processes. In cases where you have lots of data that needs to be processed, you could run a script in the back-end to generate a meaningful report on the front-end. You can also send automatic emails to groups of users. Emails can be triggered by certain dates, such as the expiration of a user’s free website trial.

The first two technologies we’ll discuss are front-end technologies.

1. HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It’s one of the fundamental technologies required for web development. It provides the base structure for a web page. HTML code ensures that all the content on a website is properly formatted. This is so your Internet browser can display the content as intended. Without HTML, a browser couldn’t display text or load images and other elements.

HTML5, the most current version of HTML, specifies a large number of Application Programming Interfaces (API integration services) that can be used with JavaScript for a more interactive and dynamic website:

• Canvas: Canvas is an HTML5 element used to draw images and shapes and manipulate them. It can also be used for more complex cases such as game graphics and animations.
• Web Storage: Web Storage is used to store information right in the browser. Some examples of this would be storing user login information and saving user preferences for a website.
• Service workers: Service workers enable a script that keeps running in the background when a web page is opened and is mainly used in websites with offline capabilities. It makes pages available offline and allows for the use of web push notifications. It can send these notifications even when your browser isn’t open.
• WebSockets: WebSockets allows for persistent two-way connection between the user and the server. The most common use cases include chats and notifications in web apps.

2. CSS

Cascading Style Sheets, abbreviated as CSS, define the style and aesthetics of a web page. While HTML is used to structure a web page, CSS specifies the appearance of that structure. This includes page layouts, colours, fonts and element positioning. If HTML is the bones of the web page, CSS is the skin. It makes the Internet, and your website, look good.

3. Programming languages

Programming languages are ways to communicate with computers and tell them what to do. They provide a vocabulary and set of grammatical rules to instruct a computer to perform specific functions.

There are lots of different programming languages just as there are lots of human languages. Developers typically specialize in a few languages.

Below are a few examples of different languages:

JavaScript

JavaScript is the most used language by startups for a few reasons. It can be used as both a front-end and back-end programming language. Compared to other languages, JavaScript is comparatively easy-to-learn (although all languages come with some difficulties), and it’s used everywhere in custom web application development. It’s also constantly being updated and expanded with new features.

All the following are back-end languages that make a website or application work:

PHP

PHP is the most common language in web development. WordPress, a content management system (CMS) that powers 34% of the Internet, is built on PHP. Finding a good developer can be difficult regardless of language, but choosing a popular one like PHP will give you a larger pool of developers to choose from and work with. PHP also comes with extensive online documentation and tutorials for troubleshooting and support.

Python

Python is another popular programming language. It’s relatively simple and uses a unique syntax that focuses on readability. Python is good for artificial intelligence (AI) applications and projects, statistics, data science work, and machine learning. It can also be used to create web applications.

Java

Java is a language that’s popular in enterprise companies. It can be run on multiple platforms, …