Month: August 2021

Important Elements Of Web Design – What You Should Know And Why Does It Matter?

Web design has earned a pretty great reputation in the last decade. It might be one of the most important career choices in today’s digital world. Knowing what’s important in web design is necessary to make a website function and look flawlessly. This has compelled me to write an article about the same. Let’s see! In this article, I will focus on the five most basic, yet highly important web design elements that you should not ignore.

A Little about Web Design

‘Web Design’ or ‘Website Design’ – the term says it all. It is a set of practices and different skills to create and maintain a website on the internet. Different sectors of website design include, but are not limited to, user experience, visual aesthetics, functionality, readability, responsive web design, search engine optimisation etc. 

Web design has gotten simplified over the last decade. Even a single person without any technical knowledge and with the necessary tools can create a decent website. This is especially important for small and medium businesses. A high-quality, attractive, and well functional website design is now within their grasp.

Even if you cannot do it by yourself, they can still take advantage of affordable, high-quality Website Design Services in South Africa. The prices in this market are competitive and they vary, but you can get a decent website with an affordable budget. In the end, it all breaks down to the fact of whether you need the services a package offers. However, web design is highly competitive in the market. You should research and understand which web design agency can fulfil your needs within a reasonable budget. In South Africa, web designers would usually charge you between R1,000 to R30,000. The prices will depend on your requirements, the type of your business, and the variety of quality services an agency provides.

 Important Elements of Web Design

In this article, we are going to list down the top 5 important elements of web design. These elements are certainly crucial for your website and must not be ignored.

1. Search Engine Optimisation

This is probably the most important practice you will follow on your website. Primarily, SEO is a practice of optimising the content on your website around focus keywords so that it can appear on search engine results. However, there is more to that. SEO also greatly involves providing a quality user experience to your visitors.

To visualise how SEO works, just imagine a computer. You need the necessary components: RAM, processor, hard drive, motherboard etc. to work together, right? It takes research and experimentation to understand the best components for maximum performance output.  SEO is similar to that. It takes a long time to understand how your SEO practices will affect your website’s performance and traffic.

There are white hat SEO practices and black hat SEO practices. Anything that manipulates SEO strategies just to get more traffic in a short time is generally considered as black hat SEO practices. You really should consider staying away from them. Follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and keep your website penalty-free.

2. Responsiveness

Responsive web design is literally the ‘one design to rule them all‘. It is a practice of making your website easily accessible on mobile devices. In South Africa, 52.8{560972cb12bf88982ea35dafdb283615d250136babdbbc045f56c10ad44e5b57} of the population have accessed the internet via their mobiles in 2020. In fact, mobiles are getting so common to access the internet that even Google has adopted the ‘mobile-first’ policy. So, if you are browsing the internet on your smartphone, Google will prioritise showing you mobile-friendly websites. Given the statistics above, you must have understood how important responsive website design is.

Responsive web design reassigns and resizes the content and media elements based on the screen resolution and aspect ratio. Furthermore, it may also remove some unnecessary elements for optimisation and layout purposes. There are three major types of responsive web design.

There are two types of responsive web design: Adaptive Grid and Fluid Grid. In adaptive or responsive layouts, dimensions for resizing are manually defined. In fluid layouts, percentage mathematics are applied to resize and redistribute the content according to the screen resolution and browser/window’s size. And then there is the third, and most popular practice: Adaptive-Fluid grid design. It is just a hybrid of the previously mentioned practices.

3. Visual Aesthetics / Branding

Your website is going to be the front face of your business online, right? You will want it to look good and represent your brand well. This helps with improving user experience, which contributes to your website’s reputation. Apart from increasing user experience, this also promotes a user’s trust towards your website.

Visual aesthetics include typography on your website, colour palette (suitable for your logo), symbols, and animations. A proper combination of these will make your website look beautiful. The quality and amount of content also matter. Overcrowded content can confuse visitors. When you are designing a website, remember that you would want to increase the conversion rate, not the bounce rate. In modern times, users want to know more and more through minimal content. So, don’t stray off-topic with your content, keep it focused, use simple language, and keep it short but informative. At the end of the day, you should just remember that it should add some value to the user experience.

Flashy animations can be lucrative but take my word, overdoing it is only going to drive customers away. Besides, a lot of scammy/suspicious websites have such flashy banners. Avoid overcrowding your website with flashy banners, unnecessary animations, obscure and unevenly sized fonts. Define your logo well and establish guidelines for it. Not only this will make your website look legit but also optimise your website to load faster.

4. Navigation

Navigation is important. When you want to go somewhere, you would like to have some clear directions right? Same thing with your website as well. Users are visiting your website because they are looking for something. If your website has good navigation, they can find what they want rather easily. This contributes to a good user experience, which is good for your SEO.

But there’s more to that. Navigation is also important for indexing purposes. Whenever you make a new website, it takes time for Google to index it so that it can appear on search engine results. When Google’s crawl bots (or spiders) visit your website, they will visit each page and inform Google about it (unless it is following a ‘noindex’ tag). So, whenever someone searches about something relevant to your website, your website can appear on their results page.

Many things can affect the efficiency of your website’s navigation. At the heart lies your website’s theme. You don’t just choose a theme because it looks good. A good theme also has good, simplified website navigation. The navigation areas, such as the footer, menu bars, hamburger menus, and hyperlinks should be visible and easily accessible. Hyperlinks should have accurate anchor texts so the visitors can understand what lies behind that link. Your menu navigation should be clear and organised. Impress your users with how easily it can be to navigate your website. It will improve the user experience, and it will also contribute to your SEO.

5. Functionality

Yes, your website looks really good. But what if it just doesn’t function? What if there are broken links? It is not only going to turn the users away but also going to harm your SEO score. 

The functionality of your website depends on the page loading speed, active links, responsiveness of the website, and size of the visual media present. Various surveys have concluded that average loading times for a web page should be less than 3 seconds or else a user is going to turn away from your website. It also affects your SEO score. Linking is also a major part that plays a role in boosting your SEO. Broken links will harm your SEO score. Besides, it is also not a good navigation practice. Whenever you spot a broken link, please consider fixing it immediately.

Responsive website design, as explained previously, is a practice to make your website functional across all types of devices on all types of screens. It can be a bit tricky to get it right but it is important. Finally, the media. All the images, symbols, banners, videos on your website should be optimised to load faster without losing the necessary quality.

Conclusion

These are the five most important elements that you should get right on your website. Explore, experiment, and understand what works out the best for you. Whenever you make a website, remember that you are making it for your fans, readers, or customers. Put yourself in their shoes and understand how you feel about exploring your own website. It is always a good idea to get a second opinion, a small survey to understand how people are feeling about it. Lastly, if you need professional help, don’t hesitate. Explore around, see what suits your needs the best. Your investment will be worth it!

How To Comparing Chat Applications Encryption, Privacy and Safe Usage

Mobile instant messaging (IM) applications play a vital role in helping businesses cope with the increasing demands in the industry. Such software makes communication far more convenient and cost-saving.

The only trade here is the assurance of protecting the user’s data privacy while being transparent with them. Individuals don’t want external forces observing their activities. Besides, laws and regulations ask companies to secure their identity and prevent the disclosure of private details. So, if you’re anxious about WhatsApp call recording, calm down as it is a policy they should follow. 

It is necessary for users to know and understand the difference of available IM apps in the market to choose what suits them the best.

WhatsApp and Messenger are sister IM apps owned by Facebook. Contrary to WhatsApp default end-to-end encryption, users who wish to send and receive messages privately need to turn on the Secret Conversations setting. Both platforms see your transactions as they don’t encrypt your metadata. On top of their user data collection and undisclosed application code, they also provide transparency reports to answer your queries and worries.

Telegram, like Messenger, instructs users to switch on the Start Secret Chat feature to activate the end-to-end encryption messaging. The said IM app doesn’t encrypt metadata, collects user data, and keeps transparency reports and application code unavailable for people.

In compliance with the strict regulations of the Chinese government, WeChat can monitor your messages and overall activities as it doesn’t encrypt via end-to-end means, and your metadata isn’t encrypted also. Aside from their undisclosed app code, transparency reports aren’t open to the public. 

Signal Technology Foundation-developed Signal chat has top-notch security and transparency offers among its peers despite being the youngest. It secures your conversation and metadata through end-to-end encryption while releasing transparency reports and making their app code unveiled for users.

To more know more about chat apps, refer to this infographic by Telemessage.

comparing-privacy-and-encryption-of-polpular-chat-application

A Closer Look at Semrush Authority Score

If you have used Semrush in the past, chances are you’ve come across Authority Score. As you go about your marketing campaign, this article will help you understand what Authority Score is all about and how it can help you in your online marketing efforts.

What Is Authority Score?

Semrush Authority score is a compound metric designed to measure a website’s or domain’s SEO performance and overall quality. The score is based on multiple metrics (more on that later) that represent the authority and trustworthiness of a website. It utilizes both machine learning and a neural network to ascertain that the score is always fresh and accurate. This is something Leapfrog Internet Marketing use and compares this to see how they can benefit your company whilst getting you ahead of others.

You can find this score in multiple ways by using Backlink Audit, Backlink Analytics, Domain Overview, as well as the Link Building Tool found on Semrush.

How Is Semrush Authority Score Calculated?

As mentioned earlier, Authority Score is the result of calculations done by a neural network algorithm that utilizes machine learning in order to measure a domain or website’s authority based on several factors including backlink signals, popularity, and quality.

This calculation is done in 2 steps:

The machine learning algorithm leverages website traffic data, backlink data and organic search data to comprehend the rankings of the most popular and trusted websites on the internet.

The second algorithm utilizes backlink data to detect how a domain increases or reduces its authority by getting links. Some of the metrics utilized in this process are:

  • Number of referring domains going to the website
  • Authority of the referring domains
  • Outbound links or follow vs no-follow links pointing away from the website
  • Inbound links or follow vs no-follow links pointing to the website
  • Number of outbound links from every referring website
  • Total number of backlinks leading to the website
  • The number of subnets leading to the website
  • The total number of leading IPs pointing to the website

The final value is measured on a scale between 0 and 100, the latter being the strongest. There are just a few domains on the net with high scores, and these are used to compare your website’s final score, thus determining its level of authority.

What’s the Ideal Authority Score?

As mentioned above, Authority Score is a metric used to show the overall score of a website or domain. If you take a closer look at the following graph, you’ll notice the first website has more referring IPs, domains, and backlinks, but its core is lower compared to that of the second website. This implies that the referring IPs, domains, and backlinks of the second site are of a higher quality. This also means the website has a better search engine optimization campaign.

So, How Do You Utilise Authority Score for Seo Purposes?

Semrush Authority Score provides important data that can help improve your SEO strategy and link building when searching for quality domains. It can also help boost your site’s authority. A few ways to use Authority Score to your advantage include:

  • Tracking the performance of your SEO strategy
  • Watching our for undesirable SEO tactics
  • Judging the domains you wish to purchase
  • Competitor analysis

In all these cases, the Authority Score Trend feature can be of great help. You will be able to compare how much work a website needs in order to reach the level of your competitor and how much potential benefit a partnership or new investment on a website can bring.