Web Development Archives

What Is Web Accessibility and Why It Is Essential for Your Business

February 15, 2023Web Development

Online presence is important for any business that wants to sell more and grow. As a business, your aim is to cater to everyone who wants to use your products and services regardless of their physical limitations. In addition to being an integral part of user experience, accessibility is also a legal requirement in most countries in the world.

Making your website accessible to all users, including the ones with disabilities, can help businesses cater to a wider audience, enhance their reputation, and avoid any legal troubles.

Is your business accessible to everyone? If not, here is everything you need to know about it.

Also, you will learn how you can work with an agency offering web accessibility services to make it work.

What is web accessibility?

In its simplest, web accessibility is ensuring that every user is able to access a website regardless of their disabilities. Businesses are urged to develop their websites, content, and web technologies in such a way that it is easy to access using assistive technologies.

These technologies include screen readers, voice recognition tools, and keyboard-only navigation.

Importance of web accessibility

One of the most crucial aspects of website accessibility is that it makes the world of the internet accessible to everyone. This makes it easier for people with disabilities to take advantage of the internet, from which they have been disconnected for a long time.

As more websites become accessible, people with disabilities can have better and more opportunities to work, learn, and connect with the world.

Thanks to its importance, web accessibility has also been a legal requirement for businesses. Hence, you just need to stay clear of the legal requirement to avoid any tussle with a lawsuit.

Further, web accessibility is also a great option for businesses to serve more customers and elevate their experiences on websites. The advantages of the same are immense—from increased traffic to sales and a better online reputation.

How to make your website accessible

Many businesses have trouble understanding how they can make their website comply with those website disability standards. Here are a few ways that you can make sure that your website is accessible to everyone.

Organize and structure your website correctly

One of the first things you need to ensure that your website is accessible to everyone is by following a defined structure. This can help you move further down the line to make your website more reachable and accessible.

Use alt text for images and videos on the website

All websites use images and videos in their website to make them appealing and engaging for users. While doing so, ensure that it has got alt text for them to help people with disabilities understand them better.

Use captions for videos

Speaking of videos, you need to caption your videos for people who have hearing impairment so that they understand what the video is talking about. Captioning videos have been widely adopted by businesses to attract more customers.

Make sure to use accessible PDF

Another way you can make your website more accessible to people is to create and use accessible PDFs on your website. Accessible PDFs are documents that can be interacted with by people with disabilities.

Use adequate color contrast

Taking advantage of contrast while designing your website is another thing that you can do to make your website more accessible. You can talk to your web design company in York, PA, to make use of color contrast in your website.

Describe links

Links are another element that all websites use extensively. However, one challenge that people with disabilities face with links is that most of them do not have enough descriptions of the same. Describing the links can be a great way to make your website more accessible to everyone.

Make the website accessible with a keyboard

Making it easier for people to navigate your website using a keyboard is another way to ensure that your website is accessible to everyone. Enabling keyboard navigation and avoiding keyboard traps are the best ways to do it. You can also alternatively make the interactive elements on your website keyboard-friendly.

How accessibility helps your business

While making your website accessible is definitely great to serve a section of society that is historically side-lined from the internet, what are the benefits your business can enjoy?

Here are a few ways making your website accessible can benefit your business:

Improves the perception of the brand

Everyone loves a brand that is inclusive and looks out for people with disabilities. This positive word of mouth can translate to an excellent image for your brand, which in turn can help you in a range of ways.

Reach a wider audience

When your website is accessible to people with disabilities, it opens up new business opportunities for your business. It would be easier for them to buy from you, and you will naturally improve your revenue and profitability.

Avoid legal complications

There were instances of businesses getting legally challenged when they failed to make their website accessible to everyone. Hence, it is important that you make your website accessible and comply with the legal requirements to avoid any lawsuits.

Improve the site’s usability

Making your website accessible for everyone also renders it more usable for everyone. The little changes that you make on your website can be helpful for all your users with and without disabilities. This can spell better user experience, which will result in more traffic and sales.

Helps enhance user experience

User experience is at the center of every website. The better the user experience, the more likely businesses will be able to impress visitors and convert them into paying customers. Hence, web accessibility is another way to improve your business prospects.

Boost your website SEO

SEO is an important part of your website’s performance. If your website has a better SEO score, it will naturally show up higher in search engine result pages, and traffic will flow to your website. With higher traffic, sales can also go high.

Conclusion

Web accessibility has become an important requirement for businesses around the world. Some businesses have already taken steps to be more inclusive with their web accessibility strategies. If you are a business in the US, it is imperative that you comply with the accessibility requirement as it is a legal need in most states in the US.

As you are looking to make your websites more accessible for everyone, you must work with a web development company in York that can help you with all the ADA compliance services you need.

Having offered a range of web accessibility services for numerous businesses, we can help you too. Our team of accessibility experts will ensure that your website has everything it needs to be as inclusive as possible.

Work with us, the best agency for Web Design in York, PA. Contact us to learn more.

Trending Ecommerce Snippets to Use on Your Website in 2023

November 9, 2022Web Development

In an ideal world, your eCommerce website would be error-free. Your customers would be able to find what they’re looking for without a problem, and the purchase process would be quick and easy.

But in the real world, mistakes happen. That’s why it’s important to have e-commerce snippets on hand to help you out when things go wrong. Snippets can do anything from fixing broken links to displaying special messages to customers.

Let’s explore a few important eCommerce snippets to use on your website. Before that, let’s see what rich snippets are.

What are rich snippets?

E-commerce snippets are small pieces of code that can be inserted into your website to fix common problems. These small bits of information help search engines understand specific details about your products and services and display them in an organized way.

These snippets can be added when you are developing your eCommerce website or at a later period. Also, remember that Google is a great fan of rich snippets and displays snippets for the price, rating, review, availability, author details, etc.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to creating snippets, there are certain elements that all successful snippets share. First, they are concise and easy to read. They also make use of strong keywords that accurately reflect the content of the page they link to. Finally, they are attention-grabbing and persuasive, encouraging users to click through.

Keep these elements in mind to make your snippets worth your and your users’ time.

Essential rich snippets your eCommerce website must have. When speaking to your web development company to integrate rich snippets into your eCommerce website, keep in mind that they have no direct influence on search rankings. But having a thorough strategy can help you in the long term.

When developing your eCommerce website, always ensure that it has the following:

Product snippets

As you might already know, a schema is a set of codes used to display certain information about the product on the search engine. When a particular search phrase is entered into a search engine, if the product schema is enabled, it would show snippets with the price, rating, availability, etc.

It helps the searchers understand more details about the product without having to go into each eCommerce website and waste time.

Here is an example:

Rating and review snippets

When a customer enters a search query to buy a product on a search engine, a number of results show up. Even if they go to a website, one of the most important things that people look for is product reviews from customers who have already bought it.

It helps them realize the product is good and how people like it.

A rating and review snippet helps searchers understand this right from the search engine page itself.

Here is an example:

Price snippet

As indicated by the name, this snippet shows the price of the product that the customer is looking for. Most of the time, customers need to get into an eCommerce website to get the price details of the product they are searching for.

However, when your website uses a price schema, it helps display the product price right on the SERP itself.

This works extremely well to improve the user experience on search engines. And Google loves it.

Here is an example of it:

Product availability snippet

There are times when a customer visits a website after searching for a product only to find that the same is out of stock. This is a rather disappointing thing to experience. However, you can easily address this issue with the product availability snippet.

You can show the product’s availability right on the SERP and encourage customers to visit your website to order the product.

Here is an example:

Video snippets

Video is a key component of any eCommerce website. It helps to sell products, create an engaging user experience, and promote your brand. While it may not be beneficial for all types of products or queries, it works best with how-to queries.

Here is an example:

Why should an eCommerce business use rich snippets?

The competition in the eCommerce sector is stiffer than it ever was. Every business is doing everything it can to stand out from the rest. And that’s exactly why you need to use rich snippets in your eCommerce website.

Here are a few important reasons to use rich snippets in your eCommerce service or product website:

Help improve traffic

While Google says that rich snippets do not directly influence ranking, websites using rich snippets tend to get better footfall. Further, rich snippets bring a certain level of engagement. Since Google likes engagement, this can influence your position on the SERP.

Use multimedia to impress users

Rich snippets help capture the attention of the searchers with excellent images and information. This can make the users click on your website’s snippet, and better traffic is the result.

It improves your click-through-rate

One of the challenging metrics of eCommerce websites is the CTR. Using excellent snippets as needed for particular searches can improve the CTR of your website. With improved CTR comes better conversions.

It sets you apart from your competition

Not every eCommerce business uses rich snippets despite its advantages for a variety of reasons. Therefore, using rich snippets can help you stand apart from the rest and encourage users to click on the rich snippets on your website.

Multiple product listings on the SERP page

Generally, your website ranks only once on the search engine page. However, when you have rich snippets for a product on your website, similar products from your website may be displayed more than once. That’s hugely beneficial to your website.

Conclusion

As an eCommerce website owner, you must use snippets to help improve your website’s traffic and conversions. By creating informative and keyword-rich snippets, you can give potential customers a taste of what your website has to offer and encourage them to click through to learn more.

In addition, by optimizing your snippets for search engines, you can attract more organic traffic to your site. If you have not already done it, speak to your eCommerce development company and get it done.

Eco York can help you with the same as we have helped hundreds of businesses with their eCommerce development needs and goals.

How to Build an Effective Business Website

September 29, 2022Web Development

In today’s era of digital business transactions and growth, having a user-friendly website is more than a necessity for businesses to grow.

A website is the online storefront of a business, and it must be impeccable in every way possible.

But is that possible?

Can we truly make a website exceptional, focusing on the users?

Yes, we can. And we know you may be wondering how!

This post will explain in simple terms how you can make a business website that works for you and your users.

What is a business website?

In a nutshell, one can say that a business website is a space or destination on the internet where a user can go to get public information about a company, its services, and its products.

It is a marketing tool for businesses to attract users and sell their products and services.

The website usually has every piece of information that users would want to know before they make.

Importance of business website

A business site is important for the growth of your business because;

It ensures constant brand awareness
It helps improve your credibility
It supports generating leads and sales
It aids in improving customer experience
It helps make strategic business decisions
It helps collect data and make data-backed strategies

Tips for building an effective business website

We know that you are wondering how you can build a successful business website that performs well.

While there is no short-cut to that, here are a few elements that you can request your web design service provider to focus on;

Focus on user-experience

The first thing that you must focus on when developing a website is user experience. Any website is developed for users to come and interact with.

It can be accessed on any device seamlessly, and the design and development elements must consider this.

With a range of technologies and design philosophies to follow, an established web design agency would surely be able to help you.

Use a simple, yet effective design

Another fact to keep in mind is to use a simple but effective design. Having extensive and strong design elements might not be suitable for all businesses.

And some users may be turned off by heavy transitions and design elements.

As your website must appeal to every user that visits your website, the middle ground is to use a simple design that will appeal to everyone.

Make the website mobile-friendly

Gone are the days when people open their desktops and laptops to visit your website. Thanks to the advent of smartphones, people access the internet on their mobile phones.

Therefore, your business has to be mobile-friendly.

The layout must fit the size of the screen, and the content must be displayed in such a way that users can interact with it easily.

Without making your website mobile-friendly, it would be hard to rank for your keywords. It would, in turn, make it hard to grow your business.

Use SEO to make it findable

Even if you have an exceptionally designed website, without optimizing it for search engines and keywords that users search online, it will be hard to see any considerable traffic.

Although some website design companies offer SEO services, you must work with an established agency to get it right.

The efforts must also follow your content strategy to keep improving your business website’s value and authority in the eyes of various search engines.

You can assure yourself that with better SEO, higher traffic is guaranteed.

Make the website easier to navigate

Another element you must keep in mind when developing your website is to make it easier to navigate. Meaning there must be enough navigational elements to help the users move through the website.

There must be buttons or menu items that users can see to take them back and forth on the website.

Similarly, you can also use breadcrumbs to help the users navigate, as well. This is a crucial element as this directly influences the users’ experiences on the site.

Ensure that the website loads faster

The loading speed of a website is important for many reasons.

Firstly, users are not going to wait on your website to take all 10 seconds and load. If your website takes more than 4 seconds to load, it can certainly affect your conversion rate.

Secondly, search engines rank faster-loading websites higher on their search rankings. As search engines want to deliver the best experiences to their users, they want to favor websites that load faster.

Hence, you must use those technologies and design and development elements that make the website lighter so that it can load faster.

Hire an expert website developer

Your website is going to be your online identity. It must be professional and as perfect as you can get.

It must be able to let the users have a unique experience so that they will continue to use your website. Hiring an expert web design agency is key to ensuring this.

Before you go with any particular developer, conduct extensive research, interact with businesses, and get quotes.

The selection must come after enough research and valuation to find the best one to work with.

Conclusion

Developing a professional or business website has become necessary if a brand wants to succeed. Even if you do not have an eCommerce site, you need to have a website as people search for local businesses online and review them before deciding to walk in.

Further, developing a website must be done with the help of an expert website development company that knows how to make a perfect website that your business needs and your customers love.

Making a website that works for you and your customers is key to growing your business online. And if you are looking for a professional web design company that can help you, speak to the Eco York client support team.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Designing and Building Your Website by Eco York (8 Easy Steps)

August 9, 2022Web Development

Over 250K websites are created every day. And the number is only going to get higher and higher. From a business point of view, having a website is a prerequisite for a business to succeed in today’s internet-driven world. Hence, every entrepreneur is mulling the idea of designing the best website for their brand.

But, how to develop a high-performing, user-friendly, and business-generating website has always been a challenge for most brands.

That’s why we bring you an insightful but crisp guide on designing and developing a website for everyone looking for an easy-to-understand guide.

At the end of the post, you will know what you need to do to make an impressive website that can help you serve users better and grow your business.

Steps to Building Your Website

The most common steps you must follow when building a website are below. Let’s try to understand each of them a little more:

1. Get a good domain registered

The first thing your business needs before a website is a domain name. Ideally, it has to be your brand’s name.

This is what the user will have to enter on a search engine/browser to get to your website. It is important that you get a good domain, preferably with your brand’s unique name.

You must also ensure that the domain is short and easy to type and remember.

2. Purchase a good hosting service

Another important aspect of developing a website is to have a strong and reliable web hosting service. When you choose a hosting service, keep in mind the following:

Choose the service as per your site’s needs
The uptime offered by the hosting service
The ability to scale your needs as needed
Understand the signup and renewal prices
Ability to take up backup for your websites
How reliable and quick is the technical help
Speed and responsiveness of the server

All these elements need to be in your favor. Compromising on any of these elements might be a pitfall in the making—sooner or later.

3. Get a user-friendly interface

The most obvious element of any website is its design. No website can engage its users without an aesthetically appealing and impressive design.

Creating, therefore, an impeccable website with a user-focused and intuitive user interface is integral. The design must put the functionality of the website first than its aesthetics.

Never include any element that will lower the user engagement with your website. Even if that’s a banner, a moving widget, or a contact form, you need to take that down.

After all, you need your website to have longer sessions with your visitors.

4. Create original, unique content

Another major aspect of creating a website is its content. In a way, the website is a framework to host and present the content you have on your website.

The content may be text, images, videos, or all of them.

After the website is designed and developed, ensure that you have the best, optimized, and user-centered content on your website.

The users usually come looking for your services via the content on your website. Therefore, hiring an experienced writer who can make flawless content to entice users is necessary.

5. Never forget Search Engine Optimization

Once you have the website ready and the content updated, the next step is to optimize the website for search engines.

Use relevant keywords and search phrases in the content. Also, optimize your website’s title tags, meta description, URL, navigation, and diverse aspects of the site. It will make your website easily discoverable by search engine bots and crawlers.

Optimizing your website for search engines is also imperative to attain high rankings for diverse search phrases related to your products and services. The searchers use these keywords and phrases to find what they need online.

6. Optimize the website for mobile

It was reported that mobile search in 2022 amounts for more than 70% of the total web traffic on the internet. It is obvious that you need to optimize the website for mobile phones as well.

Otherwise, you are missing a majority of traffic.

There are a few things that you can do to make your website mobile-friendly, such as:

Make your website load faster
Use a responsive website layout
Use a clutter-free, simple web design
Test the website on devices before going live
Keep the mobile users in mind when updating content

7. Add tools you need for management

You also need to manage the website once it is live. Therefore, you need to integrate these tools to ensure that you can manage your website effortlessly.

To make your website perform well, you must keep a tab on diverse metrics, elements, and factors. The tools must help you take care of these elements without fail.

Ensure all these tools are seamlessly installed, updated, and integrated into your website.

8. Hire a web design and development company

Thanks to advances in technology and the internet, there are many applications and platforms that let you do your own website designs, like Wix, HubSpot, WordPress, etc.

While they are fit for smaller and beginner websites, you need to hire a web design and development company to develop and design a large website that will help you grow.

The major aim of every website ever created is to deliver the best user experience and bring customers. If you need your website to do that, the only way is to seek help from an established and experienced website development agency.

They would know what your business needs, what the website must entail, and how each functionality needs to be developed to create the best experience for your users.

Doing this will help you make a website that you are proud of and users are willing to come back to over and over again.

Conclusion

Although website development and designing has become extremely easier than it was before, hiring a reliable agency with demonstrated experience in the field is a must as your website will be your online identity.

Therefore, when looking to hire a website design and development agency, look into their portfolio, previous clients, their design philosophy, and the technologies that they are adept at. You also need to mind how they support the client after the project is executed.

Proceed if you have found a satisfying business that positively ticks all these elements.

If you are looking for such a web development and design agency, Eco York is a recognized brand in the field. We can help you with all your website design and development needs.

You may contact our client support team for more details.

Poorly Designed Website Impacts Your Business

Business Lacking: It Could Be The Result of Bad Website

June 20, 2022Web Development

Website design is an important step in business development. A responsive website is essential if you want to see your business grow. A Bad website design can be disastrous for your business and web development.

Such websites can cause more damage than good to your brand. They can turn off potential leads, make it difficult to convert them, and create a negative impression of your brand. Your business will suffer if your website isn’t designed for users.

Because websites are often confusing or distracting due to their information, you must keep the website quite attractive and user-friendly. Websites are designed to appeal to more people and increase their popularity.

Here’s how a bad website hurts your online business

Online businesses should offer a one-stop station for everything that people expect. The website must be responsive, easy to use, attractive, user-friendly, and have valuable content. While your site should look professional, it should also be attractive.

Check out below how your bad website can hurt your online business:

Lack of trust

Your website’s appearance is a significant factor in gaining customers’ trust. It is basically the first impression on the viewer. Your business will lack if it fails to attract customers to its website. Grammatical errors, poorly written content, and other issues can be a big turnoff for many. They’ll look elsewhere if they can’t find the information they need. The site should be simple to navigate. Therefore, it is important to hire web development services to make your website look professional. A bad website with a poor design will cause customers to abandon your company and look for another one.

Poor User Experience

Bad UX can lead to lost conversions, ultimately detrimental to your business. Every page on your website should clearly state its purpose. You should ensure that your website directs users in the right order if your goal is to offer digital services to potential customers. Bad UX means that users cannot find the information they need. Thus, focus that your website must provide the information the users seek when they visit your page. They may leave your site and go to another one in seconds. Avoid taking such risks and hire a website design and development services for better assistance.

Don’t Let Online Inaccuracy Hurt Your Credibility.

Customers will never be impressed by a poorly designed website full of ads, pop-ups, and errors. At worse, customers will lose confidence in your business if they don’t like the website. Your website will lose customers quickly if it doesn’t have a strong call-to-action, is difficult to navigate, or takes too long to load. They will leave your website if they find it challenging to find what they need. People today lack patience and can’t wait for what they want. Keeping such things in mind, always focus on building confidence among your customers by providing them with what they want on your website.

Poor Brand Image

Your website is your online business’s face. All your marketing efforts, such as banner marketing, pay-per-click, email marketing, and SEO, will come together at one point – your website. Website design is not only about providing information to customers. It’s also about the “wow!” factor. Many websites incorporate videos with looped clips in the background to grab people’s attention instantly. Visitors will not associate with your brand if your website seems uninteresting.

Makes You Look Outdated

Many business owners mistakenly believe that a website can be a business expense. While this may have been true in the old days, it is better to keep things current these days. Make sure to update your website regularly to reflect any recent changes. These include contact information regarding price lists and any new or modified products or services.

Missing such a thing damages your SEO and shows that you aren’t up to date with technological advances. People might believe you don’t care enough about your product to update your website.

This is a standard for online presence. It will increase your chances of customers engaging with your site and spending more time there.

Missing Out on Leads

Anyone visiting your website is actively looking for information about your products. You want to capture not only their attention but also their contact information. You’re missing out if your website doesn’t achieve this. Your contact information should be prominently displayed on every page of your website. It is also smart to keep in touch with customers continuously. Ask people to sign up on your website for your mailing list. Or like your Facebook Page. You will get more signups if you offer something valuable, like access to discounts or an e-book full of useful information.

What Can You Do? Hire Website Development Services

To make your website more appealing to customers, use striking layout designs, attractive graphics, fonts, and colors. The success of your business depends on the website. You need a website development company that meets your requirements, including satisfied content development, publishing and developing productions, and a website information section and management process.

Your website design requires a lot of attention. You can feel professionalism by contacting the company and interacting with them about your development. This will allow you to see their approach to any client projects and give you a better idea of their abilities.

The most trustworthy, reliable, and creative website development agency can help you achieve great heights in any field. The team includes highly skilled developers with extensive experience who can finish your projects on time.

Conclusion

These are just a few ways bad website design can damage your business. You should not be focusing on how to lower the cost of your website. It is not all about price. It is more about your brand, online visibility, and reputation. Bad website design can ruin all your efforts, whereas an attractive and user-friendly website will make you reach great heights.

What Should Content Writers Keep In Mind When Using WordPress

April 6, 2022Web Development

WordPress has established its worth in the digital content creation arena as one of the leading content management systems (CMS). The statistics speak for themselves: WordPress powers 14.7% of the world’s most popular websites. No other platform offers the breadth and depth of functionality that WordPress does.

What makes WordPress so well-suited for creating and managing corporate content? WordPress gives you a variety of options for enhancing your content’s resale value and creating new revenue streams. In this post, we’ll go through the greatest WordPress features for businesses and how to incorporate them into your web content strategy to meet your company’s objectives.

Some of the Most Useful WordPress Features for Enterprise Content Developers

1. Block Options

Gutenberg, a block editor in WordPress, is one of the most groundbreaking WordPress tools for website & wordpress development. No prior knowledge of HTML or CSS is required to use Gutenberg blocks to create pages. Using this block feature, you can simply set global styles for the entire website without having to alter any code. You don’t need any HTML/CSS coding knowledge to make changes to the styles at any moment. If your visitors’ preferences or requirements change, you may easily make updates to your theme.

When it comes to creating compelling content, how might WordPress’s block features benefit businesses? Over 55% of consumers believe that the aesthetic of a website is an important factor in determining whether or not they will buy something from a company. Incorporating block variations makes it simple for businesses to retain their brand norms while also giving content producers the freedom they need to come up with compelling and original ideas.

Gutenberg blocks make customizing the site a breeze. It is possible to make global stylistic changes, such as customizing the core blocks in the theme settings and applying them to the entire website. Moreover, you may ask the WordPress web development company to tailor the look of individual blocks. As a bonus, using the Gutenberg blocks can improve the performance of your site. Each block created its own stylesheets and scripts assigned to it, so you won’t have to worry about unnecessary loading code.

2. Backward Compatibility

Businesses might lose a lot of money if they have to rebuild their websites in the case of a hosting failure. That’s why it is vital to have an updated structure that is both consistent and productive. Fortunately, WordPress has a very efficient updating structure: each new version adds functionality without affecting everything introduced by prior upgrades.

This functionality strengthens the reliability of your WordPress-powered corporate website and enables you to publish content in a secure and assured manner. As a result, you won’t have to enter “maintenance mode” every time a new version is released, giving your audience a better overall experience. There is no need to worry about losing your website theme or any of the plugins that you have meticulously installed.

3. Plugin Ecosystem

The vast plugin ecosystem of WordPress allows wordpress development services to add helpful features to websites. The WordPress marketplace has more than 59,000 free plugins! The chances of finding a plugin that does exactly what you want on your website are really high. The WordPress marketplace has a wide range of plugins, from those for SEO and project planning to those for site-building.

Moreover, there are several resources and documentation that complement the plugins so that may be easily accessed. This simplifies implementation and makes the plugins an extremely cost-effective option. Even if you have no prior experience with WordPress or web programming, you can pick up the various plugins and get started developing for them in no time.

SEO plugins, for example, have the potential to significantly increase profitability. Despite the fact that SEO can be intimidating to those without a strong background in the field, there are numerous tools available to assist in keyword research, topic generation, content optimization (such as headings and subheadings), outline creation, and other aspects of content creation powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

4. Scalable Design

WordPress’ scalability makes it easy for businesses to add new items and services to their websites. It is feasible to have numerous websites that are designed to function on many devices with the smoothest possible web experience and are ready to adapt to any changes as your business expands. Making drastic design changes on your company website is made easier by plugins that allow for custom coding.

WordPress’s multisite functionality enables content producers to scale websites to build several websites in a single WordPress instance and to handle all of these websites at once. If you manage many domains and assign various individuals to manage different websites and their sensitive data, you can quickly alter user rights across multiple platforms.

Having a stable backend may also help your business since it makes corporate websites work efficiently and give a smooth experience for visitors and consumers. WordPress guarantees that even large-scale corporate websites load quickly and are easy to use for visitors.

5. Enhancements to APIs

The importance of APIs may have slipped your mind if you haven’t worked with them previously. If you want to use a 3rd party tool on your website, APIs are what you need. The WordPress REST API makes it possible to use WordPress as a headless CMS. Flexibility and improved performance are two advantages of this approach, and it is also more future-proof.

The open-source nature of the WordPress platform and its ease of customization enable you to add third-party APIs to enhance the functionality of the site. For instance, you may route all emails to a custom email address using a third-party email sending provider, resulting in significantly improved reliability.

Conclusion

WordPress is a fantastic platform for enterprise content creators because of its ease of use, unlimited scalability, and vast selection of tools and functionality tailored to varied company needs. It is possible to strengthen your brand’s online visibility and boost your marketing efforts by becoming an expert in this platform’s capabilities.

Progressive Web Apps: Turn The Website Into A PWA

March 21, 2022Web Development

A great user experience may be prioritized after your product has gained popularity, but receiving early input from users is more important than anything else. An MVP is an effective technique for establishing a virtuous cycle between value generation and data collecting, which we will discuss in this blog.

As a strategic entrepreneur, keep in mind that your best chance is to choose the most practical approach while optimizing for limited resources. But wait, there is more; let’s first understand PWA!

What are Progressive web apps?

Mobile devices may now access websites and online applications even when they are not connected to the internet, courtesy of a Google-developed feature.

Add a home screen icon, web application manifest, and service worker to transform a conventional web app into a progressive web app (PWA).

This will enable the site to run offline, load quicker and deliver push alerts. Using the browser on your mobile phone, you may add a progressive web app on your home screen. At the moment, iOS devices do not fully support progressive web applications, although this is expected to change shortly.

How to make a PWA out of an existing website?

Our website may finally be transformed into a PWA, thanks to the last piece of the puzzle. However, you must first have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, and JavaScript (beginning to advanced level). There is no need for you to be comfortable with service personnel, but that is a plus if you are.

If you want to learn how to transform a website into a PWA, you’ll need a text editor. Use a browser like Google Chrome, which supports service workers, to avoid issues. For the last step, you must develop an app manifest.

You’ll need a web app, service workers, and an app manifest for PWA. Ready? Let’s get this started!

Move to secure HTTPS structure

Switching from HTTP to HTTPS is the first and most crucial step in converting a website to a progressive web app. Why?

If you want to turn your website into a progressive web app, you’ll need to switch from HTTP to HTTPS first. Service employees use only secure connections. As a result, adding TLS (transport layer security) and migrating to HTTPS is critical if you want to turn your website into a progressive web app. How?

All illegal access is prevented by using the TLS protocol, which guarantees security. To use HTTPS, you must purchase an SSL certificate. Make sure you have a backup of all the data before doing this. All internal links should be updated to HTTPS when this is completed.

Add service workers

Offline functionality is one of the most crucial progressive web app development features. Service workers are an absolute must if you want to transform a website into a progressive web app.

You could be asking yourself, “Who are these service workers?” Service worker refers to any JavaScript file that serves as a network proxy for the browser for the uninitiated.

This allows the website to become a progressive web app, which prompts the caching mechanism to provide visitors with an immersive error-free offline experience, allowing them to access the website.

Activation, installation, and registration are the first three phases of adding new service personnel.

Activation

It is necessary to activate the PWA when all PWA’s pages are closed to avoid conflicts between the updated and older versions.

Install

Install is used when the browser already has an initial service worker installed, but that work has to be updated.

Registration

To install the service worker, the browser has to know the location of the service worker. This is done via the registration procedure.

Using service workers when you convert your website design to a PWA allows you to experience real-time updates, reduced storage, faster speeds, and improved performance in the PWA’s performance.

Create JSON file- PWA Manifest

A JSON file is what it sounds like. In essence, it’s a manifest for web applications that gives web app developers a single location to enter the application’s information.

To begin with, the app’s name, URLs to the graphics and icons, and the application’s configuration data (such as the app start URL, the default orientation, and theme color), are included in the metadata.

The manifest (JSON file) for a web app contains all the information the browser needs to show the app correctly. It should be put to the HTML template of the application.

Included in your PWA manifest should be

The website’s official name
The abbreviated form of that name (for icons)
For OS integration, the website’s theme color
To better integrate with operating systems, the website’s background-color
Restrictions on the ability to change direction

Testing

Testing is an essential part of any process. Having completed the transition to HTTPS, service workers, and the web application manifest, it is time to begin testing and ensuring that your website’s conversion to a web app goes as smoothly as possible.

The developer tools must be registered with the service worker. Remember that service workers must be included in the application panel under the service worker tab if they have been successfully deployed on a page currently open. Observe that new services are enabled instantly whenever a new page is loaded.

Remember to examine the offline capabilities as well. Your web app’s homepage must load even if your user is not connected to the internet. The cache must also include “index.html” and “images/.”

Conclusion

The era has passed, and so has the state of technology with it. Websites may be transformed into progressive web apps as the future of software development, and this is an intelligent approach. Even if you already have a website, you can quickly turn it into a progressive web app.

Consider using all of the information presented in this post to build your progressive web application.
If you need help with web development, you may contact Ecoyork. Any size business may benefit from Eco York’s Website Design and Website Development services. You can expect a one-of-a-kind design tailored to your company’s specific demands.

What Exactly is A Web Portal & Why Is It Beneficial To A Company?

March 4, 2022Web Design, Web Development

“What is a web portal?” is a reasonable question to ponder. Similar phrases like the corporate portal, business portal, digital portal, and others are used often. At first, it might be challenging to understand all of the different words.

However, all of these names speak to the same thing: a single gateway for exchanging information and accomplishing business activities by workers, partners, and consumers.

So, what exactly is a web portal?

A well-designed web portal serves as a doorway to the internet that users may connect with. Search, email, chat, play, and buy are just a few of the features available via a single point of entry that is meant to be quick and convenient for users.

Companies employ portals as part of their marketing strategy to fulfill customer demand in today’s business environment. The advantages of utilizing a web portal, rather than merely having a website development online, will be discussed in this article.

What are the advantages of company web portals?

Improved customization

Most online portals have systems that enable users to alter the material to suit their tastes and requirements. By doing so, you’re making it easier to keep track of all of your essential data.

Opportunities to Learn

If you’re a B2B or B2C company, portal platforms may help you educate your prospective customers/users. This is a new trend in online development that presents new marketing prospects. Thanks to these tools, even if things go wrong unexpectedly, you’ll never be left behind again while attempting new approaches or improving on existing ones.

Get the word out to a larger audience

Businesses may connect with their consumers and business partners using web portals. Businesses may benefit from this by increasing their consumer base and establishing a favorable internet reputation for their company.

Accessible from any location

For organizations, web portal development may be a boon since it gives a user-friendly interface for their employees, partners, and customers, allowing them to access the information from wherever they are and on whatever device they have. Because of this, individuals may more easily make adjustments and update information as needed, which leads to increased productivity.

User-friendly, centralized, and efficient

It’s all about making the user’s experience as pleasant as possible. Centralizing essential pages into a single location allows for a solid organic link structure. Because of this, all of the company’s material can be accessed using a single URL, login, and password.

Boosted Communication

We all understand how important it is to provide accurate information to our customers and business partners. You have the option of customizing information that may be of benefit to your team, business associates, or customers. Using web portals to communicate with clients and coworkers is a smart move, and they open the door to additional commercial ideas by making communication easier.

Promotes a sense of community between clients

Your consumers will appreciate having a second means of contacting and communicating with your company if you use client portals. Customer retention is boosted when they get timely updates on the progress of their orders, questions they have answered, or other connected topics.

Analytical tools for obtaining reliable data

It’s a great approach to monitoring the overall health of your business. In a single window, you can see where you need to improve or where you can develop without having to bother with data analysis since it all flows right into the system!

An increase in efficiency

Everything you need to keep track of your project or sale is at your fingertips. There’s no need to go through many emails to see what you and your coworkers or customers agreed on since they’re all in one convenient location.

Improved interaction with clients

Client portals allow clients to handle issues independently, which saves them time and effort during website design services. Because service providers do not want to waste time and money dealing with difficulties that a computer program can address, it’s a no-brainer victory for them!

Source of reliable information

Incorrect material on your client portal is far less likely with excellent content management. Only the most recent copies of papers, including the correct branding and signatures, may be shared thanks to the consolidation of firm information.

Conclusion

The advantages of using a web portal are many: from collaboration to customer service to brand identification. Because most businesses encounter the same difficulties, well-designed enterprise portals typically provide high ROI.

Web portals are a fantastic approach to increasing your company’s visibility. To take the next step in your organization, consider creating a web portal that will enable customers and partners to access vital information from any location and time while also boosting customer service.

Making a bespoke web portal is not a simple task, but it is achievable with the help of EcoYork’s team of web developers with extensive expertise!

How Website Maintenance and Support Can Help Your Online Business?

November 11, 2021Web Development

You don’t only need a website to advertise the products and services you are offering, but you also need it to build your brand image and get customer feedback. Many business owners often consider website development as a one-time investment, but here is the catch! Website development is never a tap-and-play game, instead, it is a continuous process that keeps going on and on.

You must need to update and maintain your website regularly to ensure your website works seamlessly without any glitches. If you do not consider regular monitoring and maintenance of the website, it would be difficult to ensure your online business achieves optimum visibility. Routing website maintenance support is an excellent opportunity to fine-tune your website content, keep your website updated with the latest security patches, and help you make your website bug-free.

Website maintenance is not a daunting task if carried out with the help of a professional website maintenance company. In fact, it is beneficial for many reasons. In this blog post, we are going to take a look at the significance of website maintenance services and how they can help businesses increase online traffic for their website.

Significance of Website Maintenance and Support

Enhance website security and protection

Believe it or not, hackers are continuously on the lookout to find out the security loopholes in your website. Opting for website maintenance services can help you discover problems on your site at a very early stage and you can easily address them to prevent cybersecurity attacks. With the help of regular updates on passwords, removing outmoded programs, and timely backups, you can easily enhance website security and protection.

Bring exceptional customer experience

One of the major reasons for WordPress website maintenance is to keep the themes updated. Otherwise, your website may not load faster on the newer browser versions. Regular website maintenance and support will ensure your themes are updated and bring an exceptional customer experience for the visitors.

Reliable backup of your website data

With the help of website maintenance services, you can always have a reliable backup of your website data. This could be useful when your website crashes or you are facing some challenges keeping your website up and running. You can hire a professional website maintenance company to help you take backup of the source code after each update and website content (including text, images, or videos files). It helps you prevent the loss of files, content, or plugins on your site.

Helps you make your site compatible with the latest technology

Website development technologies are evolving rapidly these days to deliver a better user experience. Therefore, it is required for the companies having an online presence to keep an eye on the latest technologies and trends and update their site to be compatible with them. It will help you make your site run smoothly on all devices.

Enhance search engine rankings

One of the major benefits of website maintenance and support is that it helps you enhance your website’s search engine rankings. It ensures that your website adheres to the latest SEO best practices. With the help of website maintenance services, you can make suitable changes to the website by conducting technical SEO audits on a regular basis. You can also get rid of redirection errors, broken links, or Meta descriptions.

Helps you save huge in terms of costs

Website development is a costly venture to deal with. Not just development, but once your website is live, you may have to spend some money keeping it running smoothly and securely. Any outage could cost you a lot and affect your Brand image. With proper website maintenance services, you can easily avoid such outages or unforeseen circumstances that may affect your website.

Some handy tips to improve website traffic

Above, we have seen how website maintenance and support could help your business improve online traffic. Here are a few handy ways you can increase your website traffic:

Opt for a robust SEO strategy

From analyzing Google’s first page, relevant and quality links, listing keywords, defining the target audience, and user-friendly site structure to leveraging various social media platforms, you must have a properly planned SEO strategy to ensure your website ranks higher in the search engines and brings maximum traffic.

Leverage paid to advertise

Another great way to boost your website traffic while maintaining your website is to set up paid advertising campaigns. With the help of online traffic ads using engaging content, you can easily grab the attention of the customers and bring them to your site. However, you may have to spend more money to set up and run such paid campaigns.

Go for video marketing

Search engines love engaging content and there is nothing better than video content. 93% of marketers consider video content marketing as an integral part of their marketing strategy.

Managing high traffic requires a lot of effort involving keeping your site up-to-date and functioning smoothly. And that’s where you will need a professional website maintenance company. A professional website maintenance services provider like us ensures your website is secure, backed up properly, and optimized for search engines.

Want to know how we can help you with website maintenance and support? Let’s talk about how to fine-tune your site.

7 Web Development Trends That Will Rule 2021

July 5, 2021Web Development

The emergence of new technologies in recent years has fuelled the progress of web development. Starting from dynamic websites to web app solutions, standards of web design and development changed faster than they can be implemented.

Every year web development trends change to a greater or lesser extent, crafting new directions for businesses and web development companies. We are already in the middle of 2021, and technological advancements such as progressive web applications, artificial intelligence, IoT, and more have already been implemented by tech giants like Google, Forbes, or Amazon.

To stay in the market, it has become imperative for businesses to analyze the web development trends shaping up around and try not to ignore them. Want to know what are the key web development trends you should keep an eye on? Here’s the list of trends that will shape the future of web design and development ahead.

Accelerated Mobile Pages will lead the market.

Tech giant Google paid a lot of attention to the user experience and introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages a long time back. However, it got noticed a few years back and is in huge demand these days due to its nature to help organizations build websites that load instantly and work seamlessly across all kinds of mobile devices. Many organizations already started leveraging this technology since it will help to increase the website’s visibility in the Google search engines.

Progressive Web Apps are booming.

It is considered to be one of the hottest trends of 2021 when it comes to custom web development. Unlike any other technology, this technology pushes the boundaries of web design and development to bring a native mobile app-like experience for website users. Whether you want push notifications, offline access, or hardware access, you can get all the traditional functionalities available in the native apps. Alibaba, Forbes, and Virgin America are a few of the leading brands that have implemented PWA for their business.

Voice Search Optimization would have a great impact on the web.

Voice search is yet another trend that you can’t afford to ignore in the future. Gartner predicted that approximately 30% of all searches would be done without using a traditional screen by 2021. On the other hand, voice commerce sales are reaching sky high. Considering multiple pieces of research and studies, voice search will be a highly demanding technology when it comes to web design and development services in the future.

Push Notifications will be at the core of the user experience.

When it comes to user experience, push notifications are a powerful tool. It provides momentum to the web applications by delivering different information to the end-users. And that too without any hassle of managing credentials like conventional communication tools. This will enable organizations to interact with their target audience in the best possible way.

Artificial Intelligence-based Chatbots is the next big thing.

Good customer service is something that can make or break your business. The recent trend of web design and development to automate various things to enable instant customer support will fuel the need for AI-powered chatbots soon. It will help organizations to bring self-learning chatbots to provide a human-like experience when it comes to resolving customer queries.

Single Page Applications will see a great rise.

Starting from Uber, Facebook, and Google, many technology giants have started adopting single-page applications. Such applications work within a browser without requiring page reloads, which leads to a better user experience. It is possible to change the content within an application, but the page will remain the same. This empowers uninterrupted browsing to the end-users, even when the user is having poor internet connectivity.

Motion UI will bring outstanding user engagement.

Every organization tries to engage users using a variety of UI elements with the help of custom web development. Motion UI library is a perfect way to enable engaging and attractive web applications using stunning animations. It empowers website development services providers to animate UI elements with grace while allowing them to play with them the way they want.

Also Read – Factors You Must Consider While Selecting a Web Development Company

The bottom line

The web design and development industry is transforming quickly, and you need to align your business objectives keeping in mind the latest web development trends to outrun your competitors. Starting from progressive web applications, AI-based chatbots, and motion UI to single-page applications, these are the new web development trends that will dominate 2021. Each of these trends promises extraordinary web development progress in the year ahead.

If you’ve planned to update your existing website, it is important to have a look at these trends in web development and think of which can be the best fit for you! In case you need experts to do this for you, hire website developers from us or get in touch with our web design and development team.