Often times you come across a symbol just beside your search results whenever you run a cursory search on your mobile phone. Ever wondered what that is or should your site even have it? Well, that my friend is an AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, AMP is an open-source project from Google that helps facilitate the creation of really fast-loading mobile pages. Though this program was initiated by Google, it is not owned by Google but share a wide range of supporters such as Bing, Pinterest, Twitter etc.
AMP usually works by stripping away a large portion of the webpage’s original content (that is being searched by the user) in order to optimize the page for mobile viewing. As a result, there is literally no time gap between jumping from the search page to the webpage. It is because of these similarities in the working process that some even claim that AMP is a direct response to Facebook’s instant articles from Google for providing its followers a platform to read articles quickly without leaving the Facebook page.
Have you ever tried loading your site on mobile? What a silly question, of course, you have but are you really happy with the loading speed? My guess is, you aren’t. And why would you? Loading a site on desktop takes an ample amount of time even with a fast internet connection but loading a site in mobile on simple data plans? I know, it drives me crazy too.
So, now you know why AMP is important for your business website, still not sure? Maybe this will help you convince.
Since we are talking about AMPs in general, it would be wrong to mention only its benefits without referring to its drawbacks, however few they may be.
AMP-lifying your website will require you to develop a new mobile theme for that site, if not, at least make your existing theme AMP-compatible.
There’s another major drawback to integrating an AMP strategy, as you know it requires you to strip down the HTML, further affecting the styling and the webmaster’s ability to incorporate branding into the web pages and as a result, can make your AMP pages look ugly, I mean really ugly.
But the important thing is, if you possess the time and resources to properly implement AMP strategy (including setting up attribution and customizing it correctly), then there is simply no reason left not to go on with it.
As we move further into 2018, Google too has been slowly and steadily furthering and expanding the reach of AMP. Where earlier, it was only restricted to recipe articles, news, how-to content, posts etc., nowadays, apart from superfast loading speed, lighter and faster versions of ads are available (all thanks to the integration of AMP into ad formats). But that’s not all, let’s see what 2018 has brought for us-
Ok, that was everything you need to know about AMP and whether or not its suitable for your site. But remember what I said earlier, if you have the time and resources, then there’s simply no reason left not to do it. Also, it may not be around forever but as long as it is, it only makes perfect sense to reap the benefits it has to offer while you still can.
In today’s digital age, the importance of user experience can never be undermined, not when more and more searches are being performed on mobile phones and other hand-held devices as compared to desktop or laptops. The need for a mobile-friendly site these days has skyrocketed like never before which also plays a crucial role in a business’s overall success.
This has further led to the migration from the basic design to a more responsive one, the only change the retailers need to make in order to improve the customer journey and ultimately increase conversion rates. So, what does it mean to have a mobile-friendly site? Basically, becoming mobile-friendly means choosing a responsive web design over a dedicated mobile site.
For those of you who do not know, a responsive web design is a development technique that aims at creating a website that can easily adjust itself to the size of the user’s screen. It will enhance the user’s browsing experience tenfold through flexible and responsive web pages that can fit into any device accessing it.
As we know, our web design strategy can have a huge impact on our site’s overall ability to rank in search engines also known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Therefore, the key here lies in developing a web design strategy keeping SEO in mind. What it basically means is ensuring that your web design doesn’t, in any way, have a negative impact on your site’s search rankings.
Often times in the past Google has hinted at building responsive sites that work fine on all the devices but in 2015, it started penalizing websites that were not responsive enough along with rewarding those that were created with a responsivity for search engine result pages. Not only this, Google also updated its algorithm that automatically makes mobile-friendly sites rank high in the SERPs. In other words, sites that are non-responsive will eventually see their rankings drop.
Moving on, let’s have a look at how upgrading your website to a mobile responsive design will help you reap the many rewards SEO has to offer.
This is a lesser known fact about responsive design that it was created to make social sharing easy especially for mobile users. Its also important to know that unlike social media that has a direct impact on SEO ranking, social sharing doesn’t so much in that aspect but it has something better it can easily help you grow an audience, which is another, more indirect way of increasing the search rankings.
Bounce rate is something that is related to spending time on a particular site, or to speak more frankly, how quickly the visitors leave the site or backtrack. Maybe it won’t matter to you but Google does keep a track of user behavior in relation to entry and exit point for a website and interpret these short dwellings as the information that you provided wasn’t relevant to the user’s needs. On the contrary, a responsive web design not only enables you to put relevant content but also display it in a mobile-friendly manner.
When it comes to spending a considerable amount of time on site (an offspring of improved user experience) or repeat customers or increased conversions, responsive design easily wins on all fronts. Thanks to its user-friendly design that makes reading and navigating the site that much easier. We have to understand here that the design elements of a website play a crucial role when it comes to providing a great customer experience which, in turn, is the result of positive reviews, traffic and a rise in branded searches.
This point is for those who have decided to follow down the path to a separate mobile site which may seem like a good option at the time. However, the problem comes when the Google crawl bots mark it as a duplicate content which almost always leads to lower rankings in search results. This happens because of the similar content on the desktop and mobile site even though the URL is different. But one doesn’t have to deal with duplicate content issues while using a responsive web design due to a single URL regardless of the device being used.
We all know how page loading times are an established and known factor. Therefore, every site should be optimized to load faster in order to rank it well in search engine results. And that’s why Google always recommend using mobile responsive sites. So, if your website is a responsive one, it will ordinarily load faster and, as a result, provide more positive user experience and a boost in conversions.
An important part of the user experience comes from the way you present your website to your visitors. So, if your website is, by any chance, unresponsive, outdated or just unsuited for mobile use, you are missing some great opportunities to convert visits into sales. And remember this, if you don’t provide a responsive website to your users, someone else will.
Clutch recently named us as one of the top web design companies in the LA metro area. This is the second year in a row that Clap Creative has received such an award from Clutch.
Clutch is a DC-based research company that evaluates and publishes reports on the leading IT and marketing companies across dozens of US cities and countries. Analysts at Clutch do an internal assessment of these companies by looking at their previous experience, service offerings and industry awards, among other criteria. The biggest differentiator of their research process is that they interview a handful of each company’s clients and publish their comments on their site for business buyers to see.
In their official press release announcing the top LA web design companies, Clutch Senior Analyst Eleonora Israele stated:
“A company’s website is often a buyer’s introduction to a product or service. The leading companies in our research have proven their ability to create websites that truly reflect their clients’ companies and make them stand out from their competitors.”
We worked with Outcome Tutoring, a college tutoring company, to build a website for their business with an online booking tool that allows students to see each tutors’ availability and schedule a session. Once the project was completed, their founder said the following:
“The website that Clap Creative developed automatically made us into a more sophisticated company. We were initially just completely bare bones, all hustle, and all grind. Now we have a complete, functioning website. Because of that level of sophistication, we also have a lot more viewership of our site and more bookings. With bare bones, people won’t trust your company as much. Now that we have a way to let people know that we have a good, functioning company, they trust they can spend their money with us. Our client return rate is much higher now.”
We’re thrilled to have made the list for the second time, and can’t wait for a third one next year!
When it comes to conversions, the design of your website plays a far more crucial role than you think. You can utilize any strategy in the world to boost conversions, but if your website design looks like crap, all your efforts will go wasted.
Design is not just art. It is also marketing. Here are the secrets of creating an award-winning website design.
Visual hierarchy is the order in which the eye perceives what it sees and is very important for creating a great web design.
Some parts of your website – calls to actions, forms, etc – hold more importance than others and you want these parts to get more attention than less important ones.
Are all the 10 items in your website menu equally important? Where do you want your site visitors to click? Put the important links under spotlight.
Your business objective decides how the elements will rank on your website. Without a specific goal, it’s hard to know what to prioritize.
Hick’s law says that as the choices increase, so does the time it takes to make a decision.
The more choices you give to your website user, the more difficult it will be to choose one, or worse choose anything at all. So in order to deliver a more enjoyable user experience, we need to first remove choices.
To create an award-winning web design, the process of removing distracting options has to remain consistent throughout the entire design process.
In the era of countless choices, consumers need better filters. If you sell a wide variety of products, add better filters to allow easier decision making.
Fitt’s law says that the time required to reach a target area (for instance, call to action) depends on the distance to the target and the size of the target.
Meaning, it is easy to reach an object which is bigger and closer to us.
But it doesn’t mean that a button should be designed so big that it takes half the screen. It will become much easier to click a tiny button when it is given a 20% size increase.
The size of a button should depend on its expected use. You can analyze your stats to find out the buttons people use the most, and make such buttons bigger (easier to click).
For instance, there’s a form on your website you want visitors to fill. At the bottom of the form, there are two buttons: “Submit” and “Reset.” Most users will hit ‘submit’. Hence, this button should be kept bigger than ‘reset’.
White space is the portion of a web page left “blank”. It’s the space between graphics, visuals or margins.
This “empty” space is an important element of website design. It allows the elements in it to exist at all. White space defines the implementation of hierarchy. The hierarchy of color, images and information.
A web page without white space, stuffed with graphics or text, is at the risk of appearing cluttered, and is typically hard to read.
Adequate white space makes a website look ‘neat’. While simple and neat design is important for sending across a clear message, it doesn’t mean fewer content.
A neat website design makes the best use of the white space in it.
It is important to design a website for the user and have clear business objective in mind. Using these web design secrets you can achieve award-winning results.
Responsive design has become the latest trend-setter in the web development industry. With the dominance of HTML5 and a new level of Cascading Style Sheets – CSS3, website developers emphasize on making a responsive website using the ‘Media Queries’. However, sending files in for PSD to HTML conversion can have a big impact on how accurately the designs will be converted without any bugs.
In the PSD to HTML conversion industry, there are numerous Photoshop designs. Some of them are very easy to work with but some have increased the standard PSD to HTML production time. Not every Photoshop designer is worth the money.
Here are some Photoshop tips that every front end developer needs to know for time and cost-effective project completion.
In order to keep the file size smaller, many designers merge the layers. This technique works well in print design, but in PSD to HTML conversion, the developer needs to have all ”the effects” such as graphics, textual or adjustment layers intact. This is crucial because all these attributes carry important information for the whole website development, such as font families, font sizes, colors, line heights, text transformations, etc.
Tip: Make sure, while delivering the design files, you leave your layers intact, in order to preserve all the vital information for developers.
Well-structured and organized PSD files can be easily converted to HTML. Wondering Why? Because, nicely organized PSD files are highly beneficial for both a coder and layout designer’s perspective. Productivity increases leaps and bounds if files are structured coherently.
Tip: Always keep the PSD files neat, tidy and highly organized with relevant names. It will surely keep productivity high and expenses low.
Always try to keep design elements consistent across the layouts of your website, including your buttons, both header and footer, rounded boxes etc. Any exceptions will undoubtedly lead to extra time to convert the HTML or CSS code, and will eventually increase the development time.
Tip: Keep your designs consistent to make them look professional and reduce the development time.
Design grid is a vertical set of guidelines that makes your further job much easier. Utilizing the grid allows the designers to place the much desired website elements in proportional and balanced space and get the proper feel of design. Off grid element placement establishes extra steps in PSD to HTML conversion.
Tip: If you use grid for design, make sure you keep the elements inside the grid and aligned (even if you aren’t working in the explicit grid).
When preparing your design, you must focus on the functionality of links and all call to action elements. It has become a part of the standard practice to add rollover states to the elements such as buttons and images, in order to distinguish them among the action states.
Tip: Make sure you don’t forget to design the rollovers and define time, if you don’t want to spend more time creating them later when you start working with live templates – this will increase your production time.
The hands-off documents like: PSD, fonts, JPG previews and even PDF specification write-ups, which are delivered to PSD to HTML conversion team, should contain final versions of the designer work.
Tip: Make sure you keep all hands-off assets consistent, including font sizes, font families and design elements.
When using modern fonts, consider the differences from browser to browser. Font anti-aliasing and tracking may be displayed differently in Photoshop and in the browsers.
Tip: If you are concerned about how your font may seem on live website, check it out in various browsers before you opt for one specific.
Remember, blend modes used in Photoshop are nearly impossible to recreate in CSS. They are meant to produce amazing effects and shorten the time of image processing. However, eventually they don’t get the desired results. Thus, they are good to use for preview, not for PSD to HTML conversion.
Tip: Your PSD files should be and use just normal blending mode.
Some designs allow only a fixed amount of text space which doesn’t allow adding more text. Sometimes it might work, but in most cases you need to add more text on the live website. So, always think about content flexibility.
Tip: Always keep content flexibility factor in mind and assume the possibility of increasing or decreasing the amount of text.
Common browser resolution is a very specific subject, however, with responsive approach the screen resolution becomes less important. But, if your design isn’t responsive than the most common screen resolution is 1366 x 768px.
Tip: If your design is not responsive, make sure you pay additional attention to the screen resolution and do not make it wider than 1300px.
You must follow all the above mentioned PSD to HTML conversion tips to build as a great HTML developer.