Have you ever wondered what your profession will be like after finalizing studies? The content may seem to be same during the introductory stages but passes, you realize the exact expectations try to change. However, the level at which they differ will be minimal as both web designers and web programmers are meant to complement each other’s activity. Sometimes people argue that they can be as independent as possible since the have the most basic .the web designer is involved in the front end web design while the web programmer focuses on the back end development.

Front End Developer (web designer) focuses on markup languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and light back-end work. They involve other disciplines of design as the art and graphic designers, visual designers and the designers, and the web developer to realize the best website. Their main job is to make sure thy design a quality UI and UX purposely to make good visuals. This will lead to creative productions of the website to keep the competitiveness of the web market on check.it also supports one of web design principles such as resource management.

A good design should be the one that take all the following things into account; web specification, purpose and objective statement, web elements-audience information and then combine them so as to produce a web implementing plan. These web design and specifications are used to create a working web by the web implementer.

Web designers make many choices about how to best achieve the effects called for by the web planning process, objective statement, audience information, and the purpose. Web designers also draw their knowledge on a repertoire of techniques for linking, packaging, and cueing information using one or more design methodologies.

Ordinarily, developers are talented in programming dialects, for example, PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, Python, HTML, CSS and all the more relying upon what they represent considerable authority in and their experience level. The nice thing about being a good developer is that since their skills are in such a high demand then any programmer with a good portfolio can easily get a coding job.

The web developers (back-end developers) are concerned with launching websites, updates, and maintenance, among other things. All of that works to support the front-end of the website. The back-end has three parts to it: server, application, and database.

After the designer has finished working on the visual and layout of the web, the back end developer takes the design and involves it with a lot of technical aspects of the website. Good looking website depends on the design, but the designer depends on the developer to realize his/her good job. Besides, he/she requires security setups for the website that are laid down by the developers.

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One of the most commonly used web development tools today is a content management system (a.k.a. CMS). This is a web application that allows you to update your website quickly. Typically, there’s an admin area that’s referred to as the back-end where these updates and any changes occur. Once published, these things are then displayed on your website’s front end.

Reasons to Use a CMS

There are many reasons why you should use a CMS, but the most important reason is that it offers a user-friendly interface with which you can easily add and edit your website’s content. You’ll also discover many plugins that you can use.

Most of the plugins are easy to search down and install too. It’s important to know which of these you’ll need before deciding upon a CMS to use. Doing this in the beginning ensures that you’re as productive as possible because the correct tools are right at your fingertips. While this will require you to spend some time doing research, it will save you a lot of money in the future.

Once you’ve decided whether you’re building a blog, eCommerce site, or website and have started in on your research, you should reach out to some CMS online communities for help. Therein you’ll find folks that know both the advantages and disadvantages of the various options available.

One of the main disadvantages that you’ll oftentimes hear about when discussing a “free” open source CMS is the lack of technical support, which is why many of these CMS communities have sprung up in the first place. They are there to offer help with technical problems, as well as support when necessary. The most popular open source CMS communities are quite large. Therein you’ll find people who will help you regardless of how much experience you may or may not have.

Reviewing the Most Popular CMS Available Today

There’s a growing demand for these CMS today. As such, it should come as no surprise that there are dozens of them available for you to choose from. Since this can make your choices seem a bit overwhelming, here is a brief overview of the most popular systems:

• WordPress is the most commonly used CMS today. First released in May 2003, now more than 14.7% of Alexa’s “Top 1 Million” websites are using it. There are a lot of plugins and extensions available that you can easily integrate from your Admin panel. Many of WordPress’ users have joined together in active communities throughout the worldwide web.
• Drupal is also quite popular because it’s so powerful. First released in 2001, today about 2.1% of all websites are using it. There are a lot of free extensions and modules that you can use with Drupal. Many of these you’ll learn about in the large online community that has formed to discuss technical issues and support one another in the use of this CMS.
• Magento is also very powerful. Their free version is known as “the Magento Community Edition.” It was first released in 2008 and since then it’s quickly become one of the most popular choices for eCommerce websites. Over the years, there’ve been a lot of extensions created to add more functionality and features to this CMS. Of course, it too has a large open community that’s actually full of both certified and uncertified developers alike.
• OpenCart is newer in the marketplace, but it’s quickly becoming popular. It’s a simple CMS whose Admin panel is easy to use, and for which there are a lot of extensions that give you more website functionality. There’s also a large online support community available.

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When you are ready to take your company online, you will need to construct a high-quality, detailed website that will let your potential customers know who you are and what you represent. There are several characteristics that every eCommerce website should have in order to be successful. If you want to make a good first impression with your customers and clients, while also building up your company’s online reputation, you will want to pay attention to these seven important factors.

1. Offer a Newsletter Subscription

Customers love to stay informed on all the latest items for sale, promotions and special upcoming events. By offering an online newsletter, you can choose to contact all your customers in a single click by sending out a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly message filled with everything your valued customers need to know. Just be sure not to send out too many newsletters as this may cause some subscribers to start placing the emails in their junk folder.

2. Provide Thorough Return Policy Information

No matter how nice your products may be, there will always be a reason for returns. Make sure that your online customers completely understand the terms and conditions for returning items by having a section on your website dedicated to this information. Also, you may want to provide information on how to report shipping issues and delays in this section as well.

3. Allow Customers to Create an Online Account

By allowing your customers to create their own online account on your website, you are providing them with more control and convenience. By logging on, your customers can review past orders, track shipping for recent orders, change payment details and update their shipping information all without contacting customer service.

4. Make your Website Trustworthy and Safe

It is important that your customers feel safe while they are placing an order on your website. Even those who frequently order products online may be hesitant to provide you with their bank account or credit card information if your website does not appear safe. That is why you should display your Privacy Policy clearly on your site, on every page at the footer, to ensure that every customer feels confident about placing an order with your company.

5. Offer Deals, Freebies and Promotions Regularly

Let your customers know you are happy to do business with them by offering special deals and promotions. Money-saving opportunities such as promo codes and free shipping offers will help encourage frequent customers to buy from you often, and entice potential buyers to make their initial purchase. This is the ideal way to increase sales as you also display gratitude and respect at the same time.

6. Have a Latest News Section and Update it often

No one wants to visit a website that hasn’t been updated in ages. While you do not have to give your ecommerce site a complete overhaul each month, it is a good idea to provide customers with a brief news and update section so that they will know what new products are available and what upcoming promotions to look out for. This section can appear on your website or separately on a blog.

7. Accept a Variety of Payment Options

Placing your business online can mean many more customers, who may or may not be able to pay using your current payment methods. Look into accepting a variety of payment options including PayPal, E-Checks and accepting international payments. Be sure to display all the payment options you accept in several areas on your website so that your customers will know how to pay long before they even begin to add items to their cart.

This is just a sample of the characteristics that make up a great eCommerce website. However, if you start out with these 7 tips, you are sure to see your online business grow with more customers coming back time and again for their online shopping needs.

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There are many factors that come to mind if you want to build a website. The elements, design, layout and even content will all be guided by the purpose for which the site exists. Every aspect of the site must work towards furthering this goal, so that the synergy between different aspects results in a site that is worth displaying to potential clients in your target market.

Below, we offer three pointers to guide you through the planning phase before embarking on any actual design work. If you get the plan right the first time, everything will seamlessly flow from there.

1.       The goal

Even before identifying the design team or mapping out elements and choosing colors, you must have a clear picture for what you want the site to accomplish for your business. By accurately defining what your website must do, the work of design will become much easier – choosing what the site will have, how it will look, where it will go, how it will be marketed – all these find their meaning in the purpose or goal.

More importantly, the purpose will determine the kind of content to be served up to your audience and how it should be presented. For example, if you run professional consultancy services, then you know you audience would be better served by a blog instead of a portal. If you are looking to sell your products online then what you need is a full-fledged online store with all the information to complete a purchase readily available.

2.       The marketing strategy

There are billions of pages and sites on the Internet today. A good fraction of these have great content and are very well built. But the reason you may never see some of them is that they lack a proper marketing strategy. There are two major angles to pursue in marketing: online and offline marketing.

Online marketing refers to the collection of techniques employed over the Internet to improve online visibility – social media marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, content marketing  among others. Your strategy must have a healthy balance with all these techniques for maximum efficacy.

Offline marketing involves efforts away from the Internet and includes most of the conventional advertising schemes. Other useful methods include exhibitions and promotions, ads in periodicals and posters, road shows, positive referrals, discounts and offers among others.

3.       The cost

Many website owners start here and never get any further. While important, cost should not be the paramount consideration when building your website. There are many ways to get what you want within the budget that you have to work with. Cost also has two components: the one-time fee charged by your design and development team to build the site, and the recurring costs of web-hosting, registration of the domain name, maintenance, optimization, link-building and other administrative duties.

Where you need specialized software to help in the design and/or maintenance phases, you may have to incur additional charges to acquire this software. Depending on your budget, you can decide how much of the work to outsource. For instance, you can outsource the main tasks and train yourself or a member in your staff to handle the day-to-day administration of the site where you have a limited budget.

Conclusion

Bear these in mind also as you go about selection of a website designer to ensure that you get the highest value for money. Remember, the best designer is not necessarily the biggest, most experienced or most expensive on the list. Rather, you are looking for a person or team that demonstrates an understanding of your goals and strategies and has a solid plan of action to help you move closer to their achievement through your website.

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Why are you revamping? Are you bored with your current site already? Or do you think it could look better?

Whatever you have in mind, the bottom line is: You want to revamp your website and you are certain it will work. But it cannot work if you don’t carry out the renovation correctly. Below are steps that will help you to ensure a successful website revamp:

• Set Clear Goals

Your website is naturally the determinant of how many leads you generate. Therefore, as you think about redesigning your website, generating as many leads as possible should be at the top of your mind.

Think about the business goals and then what you aim to achieve by redesigning your website. Set clear and SMART goals concerning the new site.

2. Take the Stock of Existing Site

Up until now, you have been building assets each day with the best intentions. These assets include blogs, inbound links and the content. You don’t want all that to go to waste. In fact, you want to use those assets to build a better and more functional website.

To protect these assets, take a stock of them and ensure that they link into the redesigned website.

3. Develop the Buyer Personas

Before you can create content that engages with the reader and finally makes them consumers, you will need to have buyer personas. The content should always speak to these personas.

To create these personas, start with interviewing people closest to you. These are people inside the company or family members. Then interview those customers you want to keep – your favourite. After that go to social media and study your competitors concerning what they are discussing with their customers. Most importantly find your potential customers’ problems and ensure that the redesigned website will help you solve their problems. Gather all this information and it’s time to create your buyer personas.

4. Research

After giving the necessary focus to your customer, site assets and business goals, it’s time you learn about the competitor. What are they doing?

Visit their website and blogs, read their content, understand their content offers, keywords and watch their videos.  This is important if you are to make good decisions regarding your website revamp.

5. Put Down a Plan

After researching, bring together the information and create the website revamp plan. This is the blueprint you will follow in the redesign project.

6. Map the Navigation

Just like in house renovation where you design each room by itself, create a flow and bring in the furniture, design each page of your website the same way. Focus on each page as a single element then the navigation between the different pages and fill each of them with necessary content. Remember the content assets you took stock of? Keep them in mind at this stage.

7. Site Wireframes

After mapping out the navigation in the website, you will need to mock-up every page. Essentially, your site wireframes are your new site’s blueprint.

Mock-up every page and show where header images, content, CTAs and navigation will go. This is very important.

8. Create Content Early Enough

Most people leave this step until they are “done with everything else.” But this is not wise. In fact, you should create content for the redesigned site as early as the planning process. This is important as you can test the new content alongside the design.

9. Scoping

The last step is where you get to know what everyone else thinks about the new site. Make sure to get consensus with other decision makers before you start redesigning.

In Conclusion

Redesigning a website is a great idea to help your brand remain fresh and competitive online. However, doing it without a laid out plan makes the whole process pointless and even worse than keeping your current website. If you have to do it, make sure you do it right.

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