Obsolete Web-designs That Developers Must Phase Out
Web developers who have been in this field for more than a decade, like us, would have undertaken several software projects for their clients across platforms. In the course of this period, they might have taken a liking to some design elements and used it extensively in these web development projects. It could have even gone on to become their trademark or touch with every project. However, as with most things in life, design elements can also become obsolete. It is therefore important for developers to remember that they need to constantly reinvent themselves with the passage of time. In this blogpost, we will look at some of the obsolete trends in web design that developers would do well to phase out.
Image Sliders
These were quite popular among many clients hire a programmer to develop their first business websites. Having the ability to convey more visually in a limited screen real estate was considered a big deal back then. However, clients run the danger of suffering from sluggish page load times and bounce rates. Image sliders can be heavy and tend to distract users from browsing the other parts of the site. Moreover, in this era of information clutter, it would augur well for clients to develop a clean website.
Pop-Ups
One of the major irritants of website browsing for users are pop-ups. While pop-ups can be effectively used on a need basis, they can turn out to be disastrous for clients depending on the reason, frequency and time of appearance. We have all come across that website that repeatedly sends pop-ups on every return visit and end up getting frustrated. Better to phase it out than face the destructive ‘wrath’ of users.
Flash Support
While Adobe has already stated that it would stop support for flash, some websites still continue to use it. It has certainly gone out of fashion in 2019, given its many flaws that includes ease of use. It makes little sense to insist on using them because that would leave a big void literally and figuratively.
Scrolling
By scrolling, we really refer to the non-traditional means of scrolling like horizontal scrolling for instance. While many forms of user navigation may have developed, especially in smart handheld devices, it hasn’t really translated the same way on the desktop. While non-traditional scrolling can help in getting attention, it doesn’t make up for ease of use. When it comes to the regular users, ease of use is all that matters, isn’t?
Media Auto-play
We have seen this across many media websites like blogs, news, magazines and forums. For the average user looking to consume meaningful content, nothing frustrates as much as this media suddenly playing out of nowhere automatically. Some even consider it as a violation of consent, dampening their browsing experience.
These are some of the top design trends that developers need to make an effort to phase out. There are more such design elements that are either obsolete or make for an unpleasant browsing experience such as using stock photos that really don’t make an impact, not optimising website for speed and so on.
At HireIndianProgrammers, we have made it our mission to continuously elevate our software development services for our clients.After all, web development is indeed a constantly changing landscape. For further queries in hiring our services, contact our developer team today.
Making for ‘Missing Out’ digital experiences
The rise of social media has been an epic phenomenon by itself – both for the good and bad. While it has connected people in hitherto unthinkable ways, it has also resulted in a certain kind of anxiety and negative emotions. This has been witnessed across the world and cultures, an increasing trend particularly with the boom of photo sharing networks, online shopping and related trends. In fact, a term was even coined, going by the abbreviation – FOMO – standing for ‘Fear-Of-Missing-Out’.
Defining FOMO
Consumers, especially millennials, are prone to experience FOMO – a persistent anxiety mixed with negative feelings of jealousy because they are cut off from so called rewarding and gratifying experiences that others might be enjoying. Whenever one experiences FOMO, they do everything it takes to get/purchase that experience in order to stay connected with the ‘mainstream’. In the event of missing out, this fear can grow into something potentially dangerous such as depression.
In a bid to grow their sales, businesses think of different ways to market their products and services. Sometimes, they have the tendency to overdo it under a deceptive discount veil, in order to keep clear and replenish their inventories. For instance, some big clients that hire a programmer from us to maintain their e-commerce portal, organise massive sale days where dedicated products are sold at deep discounts on selected days with countdowns! It is a perfect recipe for making decisions under pressure or for FOMO. Many a time, those purchases may be irrational on the part of customer, who realises this later and regrets for the same, thereby adding a negative sentiment towards the business. Certainly, businesses do not want to get on the bad side of customers. In this blogpost, we will discuss on how to eliminate the fear factor in FOMO and instead foster and create gentle ‘missing out’ digital experiences.
Eliminating the fear factor
One of the simple ways to strike balance between generating sales and not contribute to FOMO in customers is by perfecting the art of nudging. What is a nudge? It is a gentle (or in this case professional) push to the customers that they have to purchase their compelling product/service. This can and should be done on a need basis – that is informing customers on the limited availability of that particular purchase which is strictly desirable. It makes for less stressful purchase decisions rather than a hasty, impulsive and later regretful decision. Ultimately, it also exhibits professionalism on the part of the business that cares for its customers. Even simple layout designs like separate pages for offers and wish-list can reduce tension as compared to laying it all out in the homepage itself.
Another positive way to induce just the ‘missing out’ factor is to build upon the rewards/points generated by users. These rewards when accumulated to a certain level, can be spent on future purchases within a cut-off date. Suppose a customer has earned a good number of points from her last vacation booked online and is planning for another upcoming tour. The customer can be reminded on this regard on a periodic basis so that she can encash it when the time comes. Couple this with an attractive deal, then clients got themselves a very satisfactory purchase by a very happy client.
But perhaps the best way to positively market a ‘missing out’ experience is through the referral program from friends, family and colleagues. Even at HireIndianProgrammers, when we take over existing product websites and expand its scope, we check for any referral mechanisms and implement the same, if absent. What do we mean by referral? Crudely put, it is marketing done by customer’s social circle – they recommend using the product through the invite feature (referral) by sharing their experiences. This proves to be beneficial for all stakeholders including the business – by virtue of more sales. Finally, clients can take care not to fall into the pitfall of displaying ‘mainstream’ or ‘gratifying’ media to induce customer purchase. It doesn’t bode well for a healthy customer relationship. Rather, clients can work on displaying natural and real environment images. This reduces the anxiety caused by mismatch of expectation and reality post purchase.
A Feasible Workaround to JavaScript
As a major player in the web development space and having an enviable record of undertaking diverse projects, we have had the fortune of using many programming languages. One of the most popular programming language which we have time and again used in most of our assignments is Javascript. Of course, like any other programming language it has both pros and cons but there is a reason why it is endorsed by a 12 million strong developer community – its wide scope for deploying applications from cloud to IoT along with its simple syntax. It is also the undisputed leader in front end web development and developers love using Javascript for developing applications for their clients.
Having said that, there are also some aspects of Javascript that developers are averse to such as differential execution in different browsers, single inheritance and lack of debugging functionalities. In a world of ample choices, the developer is ever on the lookout for any viable alternatives to Javascript. So, in today’s blogpost, we make an attempt to provide our insights on the different workarounds to Javascript available in the market. Now, we do acknowledge that these tools transpile another language to Javascript. Nevertheless, these are some noteworthy alternatives
Typescript
Typescript, developed by Microsoft, is an easy recommend for it not only improves upon Javascript but also adds a lot more features, making it an awesome alternative. It has support for static typing and Node.js, among other things. This open-source tool can be used in any browser with any host and any operating system. Clients hiring a programmer can especially use Typescript for developing large enterprise applications. It goes without saying that coding in this language requires a certain level of expertise.
Kaffeine
Kaffeine can be thought of as extensions to Javascript that enhances the latter’s functions in many aspects with a special focus on debugging. In fact, debugging has never been simpler. It adopts a practical approach, often doing away with over the top features of Javascript. The main pro of using this tool is its ease of use both for developers and end users, making the case for a smooth user experience.
Dart
‘Paint your UI to life’ is what this Google developed Dart VM proclaims and rightly so. Having support of type inference, Dart improves upon Javascript by removing some of its common irritants. It also comes with Google’s own kit, which enables Dart to go a step further and helps developers to design standalone web and mobile applications. At the same time, we also ask developers to tread cautiously, for there is not much of online resources in case of programming trouble.
Elm
Are you looking for advanced front end web development? Then Elm might be for you. It is not the typical general purpose language like Javascript. It proclaims itself as that friendly tool that seek to help in every which way – from displaying error messages and hints to eliminating runtime exceptions. However, given its capabilities, the learning curve is steep, thereby making it difficult for newbies to develop applications in a short period.
Coffeescript
Coffeescript is a decent attempt in bringing out the best of Javascript, especially improving on the latter’s readability. The execution is faster when compared to Javascript and having support for Node.Js is yet another advantage. However, the downside is that developers still need to be an expert in the original language and also has limited features. Moreover, the recent updates (ES6) of Javascript means that developers need not think twice about going back to Javascript itself.
No alternative in the above list is complete and has its share of pros and cons. For one, almost every tool requires some level of expertise to master it. At HireIndianProgrammers, we still believe that a true heir to Javascript is yet to arrive at the scene.
Upping your UX game
As experienced and committed developers, we are aware of and understand the importance of user experience in any web application including in mobile ecosystems. In fact, in many cases, UX becomes the compelling factor for users to access the web more in the context of smartphones. This is because of the increasing adoption of smartphones and tablets. A bad UX can break the business of the client and result in erosion of brand equity too. We have come across clients sharing their frustration of hiring a programmer for developing their business website only to end up with a not-so-elegant UX that in turn wasn’t able to take off in a meaningful way. In this blogpost, we will share our insights on how to upgrade your UX design skills. This assumes greater significance in the face of increased competition among UX designers and the need to stand out from the crowd.
Skilful Sourcing
One of the first and important things that UX designers need to remember is to gather as much inputs as possible, both from the client side and the user side. Getting multiple perspectives can help developers to design better in terms of both functionality and aesthetically. Gathering inputs in itself requires meticulous planning that includes asking the right questions to the right people through means like questionnaires, direct interviews etc. Secondly, developers must know that UX designing is a multi-stakeholder process involving agents like marketers, team leaders, testers, colleagues, clients etc. Having said that, they will need to deliberate on the various feedback given to/by them through different channels. Smart prioritising is of the essence. As you might have figured it out, communication plays a key role in both these stages.
Constant Reinventing
Next, developers would do well to stay abreast of the emerging trends and technologies like AI, AR/VR, IOT and so on. Why, you ask? Because, UX designing is strongly linked to business and we are seeing massive overhaul of businesses aided by these technologies. Therefore, developers would need to constantly upgrade themselves in order to stay relevant and be ahead of the competition. The advent of internet driven applications has another side to it – addiction. We have all seen the impact of social media and mobile games on teens and young working adults. More often than not, it can prove to be harmful for them, especially in the long term. This also needs to be taken into consideration while designing such intensive applications for the greater good.
Getting the message across
This in our opinion is crucial, given that there are many others who are working on your project – coders, testers, marketers, clients. Often, developers will need to don multiple hats effectively to get their message across. This also means putting efforts to understand others’ work. It will also give a complete picture of the business in its entirety. Ultimately, it goes a long way in producing great user experiences because of this one crucial factor and that is empathy. In fact, it would not be farfetched to conclude that empathy forms the basis for web development in general and UX designing in particular.
Now that you have gone through our post, what do you think is required for a great UX? Let us know your ideas below.
At HireIndianProgrammers, we strive for quality and consistency coupled with transparency without any messy contracts. For further queries related to hiring our services, contact our developer team today.
Why Developers May Want to Start Using Image CDNs
As an experienced developer team at HireIndianProgrammers, we have been taking up diverse web development assignments from clients for over a decade. Some of these clients even come back with more projects, a testimony to our service delivery and quality. For any website with the mandate of improving customer engagement and footfalls and thereby sales, performance and speed of the website are important driving forces. There are components of the website that affects performance like JavaScript and media – images, audio, video etc. Images, by far, are the critical affecting component of page load times. Of late, we have been receiving projects from niche start-ups particularly in the e-commerce sector and small business segment. This only furthers the cause for uploading more high quality images on the website.
Therefore, there arises a need to balance performance with content accessibility/quality.With the emergence of smartphones of varying sizes, there is also the need for content optimisation. Any website taking more than 3 seconds to load can frustrate users. So how can images be optimised? Well, there is the manual way – resizing all the images of the website. But more often than not, it is impractical to adopt such a mechanism, given the huge volume of images at the client’s disposal. They surely cannot compromise on the number or quality of images, given their business depends on it. This is the basis for Image CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). In this blogpost, we make a case for Image CDN – the what and when and how to use it.
So when can a developer use Image CDN?
- Client’s website suffers from sluggish performance (high load times)
- Client’s website is largely composed of images
- There is a need to regularly add images
- Client caters to multiple geographical markets
- Customers using low grade mobile networks
What is behind the working of Image CDN? Image CDNs contribute to website performance by working on the following – a) Detecting the customer device, b) automated image compression/ optimisation based on the device configuration, c) global integrated delivery network. When a user visits the client’s website, a request is sent to the nearby server where the device’s configuration and capabilities – OS version (Android or iOS), Pixel resolution, image format support – is assessed after which the requested image is searched from the server’s cache. Either the image is readily delivered or optimised for the device, based on availability.
Image Compression and optimisation are done using a specialised algorithm. However, clients may fret over loss of image quality. Fortunately, with Image CDN, only extraneous details are removed and the image qualifies well enough for the naked eye. Based on the software present on the device and browser used by the user, the Image CDN will select the most efficient image file format – jpeg, WebP, PNG and so on. If the customer is from another country, then Image CDNs get the cached image from the nearest server to the user and deliver the same, thereby ensuring speed at any place.
Clients catering to diverse customers in different locations may want to hire a PHP developer who understands the power of Image CDNs. For further queries with regard to hiring our developers, get in touch by writing to us. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Web Development under Artificial Intelligence
Lately, Artificial Intelligence has been making waves across fields ranging from automobiles to government services. Given the strides the technology has made, it is safe say that that AI is no more an emerging technology but very much on progress and growing. While it has virtually limitless applications for different industries, what does it mean for web development? Is AI in that stage where it can design applications and be a potential threat to developers? Currently, AI has restricted applications within which it can pretty much enhance the web development functions like basic facial recognition, keyword identification and so on. In this blogpost, we will see how and whether AI can make a significant impact in the web development world in the near future.
So, is it possible for Artificial Intelligence to ever don and execute the role of a web developer?
Clients hire a programmer to develop websites and interactive applications for their business. More often than not, this requires a stringent adherence to deadlines and satisfying key project requirements. In this kind of web development, web developers typically work on similar kind of projects, gather expertise in it and master the same over a period of time – the uncertainties and imagination levels are low. Within this context also, AI, at the best can enhance the work of the developer by bringing about efficiency and effectiveness, attributed to its machine level accuracy.
For example, consider the task of displaying media based on hashtags. AI can easily achieve this collating all the similar hashtags posted by users across the world and display the same for other people looking for such hashtags on multiple devices – efficiency and effectiveness on point.
However, this is far from the real and big picture. This is because Artificial Intelligence can never be used as a substitute for human beings, let alone design like them. Why? There is no machine in the world as adaptable and complex as the human brain. Human beings perceive their world in different ways, possess different attitudes and opinions and follow different norms. They differ not only between individuals but also across countries and cultures. In addition to that, people have emotions that shape their world views. Designing an AI web developer would need to take into consideration all the above factors which are just too many to even think of. Added to this complexity is the temporal factor – human beings change over time.
Long story short, there are just too many variables to account for, if a dedicated AI system to function as a web developer is to be designed. But perhaps, the biggest constraint in teaching AI is the unique human characteristic of empathy. Every client and project that a developer undertakes is unique, coming with their own scope, expectations, target market, industry scenario, economic viability, brand equity, channels and so on. Therefore, there arises a need to think imaginatively sometimes, which cannot be mimicked by AI, even after accumulating information over several projects. In fact, this becomes the need of the hour in this era of intense online competition and increased visibility and awareness among customers.
Consider the task of bringing maximum number of people to the checkout point in an e-commerce site. Engaging the customer to stay in a website is a challenging task as such. The AI would also need to equip itself to understand the whims and distractive mind of customers. Beyond this, it needs to implement optimal and humanistic solutions in the face of untoward crises. These are all outside the purview of Artificial Intelligence.
Do you think AI is as capable as a professional web developer? Share us your thoughts below. For further queries, contact our team at HireIndianProgrammers.