7 Key Steps to Website Branding Using WordPress
Many a time clients approach us to develop a website from scratch with the mandate of ultimately building a brand out of their business in the virtual world. A brand-building or website branding process is a meticulous process and requires an intelligent STP analysis of the market and communication of the same to the developer. This is done in an effort to enable customers to remember the brand and generate positive feelings about the client’s business.
Even simple things such as changes in styles, colors, and images can create negative disturbances. Therefore, it is crucial that hiring a dedicated WordPress developer will ensure that there is consistency between the website and the client’s brand.
What is a Branded Website?
Website branding includes both the visual and technical aspects of your website. Branding your website or your business involves creating a website that describes and promotes your products and services, creating advertisements to promote them, selecting corporate colors that will associate your company with them, creating logos, and featuring them on all your social media channels.
Many people think of a “branded” website as one with a logo, color, and typography. But if you want to make a true branded website then you should think beyond the limit of visual elements. There are so many different factors to consider such as the brand’s voice and purpose, unique benefits claims, and target audience and market.
Website Branding Examples:
If you are looking for some good examples of branded websites that can be your inspiration, then we are adding some great examples here. These examples of branded websites will help you to make a decision for creating a website for your business.
1. Reebok
(Deliver sleek & bold, elegant, and professional designs to their customers)
Reebok’s UX design is outstanding. It communicates two things with imagery and messaging
- They are a fresh, trendy company.
- They want to see you be trendy.
2. PayPal
(No fluff with simple, clean, and straightforward)
PayPal competes with many other apps including Venmo, Zelle, and the ability to use Apple Pay or Facebook to make payments. PayPal however is simple, easy to use, and efficient.
3. Baker
(Trust and authority are vital)
Baker is the most well-known CRM for the cannabis industry. It answers the question with strong statistics, social proof, and solid statistics.
4. Klientboost
(A story that uses imagery and messaging to engage the reader)
Klientboost improves PPC performance. They combine powerful copy and vibrant images to tell the brand’s story.
5. Qualio
(Focus on customer pain points)
Qualio is a quality management software that provides messaging that solves customers’ problems.
7 Key Steps to Website Branding Using WordPress
When it comes to branding in the online space, clients need to design their websites in a way that aligns with the business elsewhere. Any mismatch will lead to confusion among customers and push them towards rival brands. For instance, if Domino’s Pizza, a mass-market Pizza player, suddenly changes its communication targeted at high-income individuals, then they are bound to lose even the existing customers in the mass market who believe more in the value for money.
To fulfill the criteria and maintain the consistency of the website and the brand, they need to hire developers by considering the important factors for hiring WordPress developers. In this blog post, we will take a look at some of the website branding guidelines that clients can do to deploy their brands online with the help of WordPress plugins.
1. Set clear goals for your website
Websites can be created for many reasons. It is important to understand why you are creating a website in order to create a brand with maximum impact. Identifying your website’s goals will allow you to present yourself best to your audience.
Answer these questions to get started:
- Why build a website?
- What’s your goal?
- How do you value your proposition?
- How can you be different than your competitors?
Do not expect every attribute and feature from these questions, but they can help you define your values and set a framework to approach your branding.
2. Choosing a theme to design your brand’s website
One of the best ways to scale up the client’s brand presence is by putting the right WordPress themes in place. There are many theme plugins available for WordPress websites like Divi. Clients and developers should sit together and discuss the client’s business in order to clearly understand the brand.
This makes the developer accurately choose the right theme. The theme envisioned must also have extensive provisions for flexible customization. Some themes come with dedicated prebuilt pages and logos which the client can then customize further aligning with their vision.
A responsive website theme is essential. The theme must be able to adapt to different screen sizes.
- Lifestyle WordPress Theme
- WordPress Travel Blog Theme
3. Design a good logo for your brand
The logo is invariably linked strongly to the client’s brand, much more than anything else. Deliberation is needed before a further decision can be taken. The client can either choose to design a logo from scratch by herself or take cues from different tools like Inkscape, GIMP, and many more. These tools can provide inspiration as to how clients want their logo to be.
The process is simple – just enter the text, tweak it and deploy the same onto the site through the WordPress dashboard. Ensure that the logo is uncomplicated and distinct and memorable. Try to create a logo with a tagline that tells your visitors about your website and business.
4. Curating the pages of your website
Now we come to the contents of the website. What are the right pages and content to be placed? Again this question needs to be approached in a pragmatic manner. Perhaps a simple approach is to think about what the client’s story is or what the business aims to provide. Typically, they involve addressing a problem statement. This can be communicated in the About us and Products (or Services) offered section.
Surely customers coming to the website would want to contact the client in case of queries, thereby making the case for a dedicated contact us page. A unique way to establish and enhance relationships with customers is creating a blog – one that talks about the latest things in the client’s company or industry trends etc
5. Getting in touch with an engaged audience
On top of creating a dedicated contact us page, the client would need to provide ample provisions for the customer to get in touch with the business. Clients would need to think of ways to implement different means like call action buttons, contact forms at the right place. In this way, not only the business’ priorities are realized but also useful insights can be gauged with these metrics.
With the help of plugins like Contact form 7, clients can add these elements – live chat, email marketing, forms, buttons, social media shares, and more. These can be configured from the dashboard after installation with a simple drag, drop, and customize mechanism. Understanding where the “hot zones of vision and readability” are will help you to highlight certain aspects of your brand’s identity.
6. Search the right outlets for spreading your message
No matter what industry you are in, it is important to find ways to draw visitors to your site. There are many ways to promote your website. You should choose one that is consistent with your brand.
Find outlets (websites, social platforms, apps, etc.) that are in line with your brand’s values and style, and get involved. This will enable you to reach more people who are likely to interact on your site by building a better marketing funnel.
7. Content is king for website branding
We always iterate this to our clients because we recognize the power of meaningful and compelling content. The best way to bring traffic is through content. However, clients need to work on their content and not just as a means to spam customers’ feeds. That can prove to be disastrous. Compelling and relevant content is the order of the day.
The blog section of the website can serve as the mouthpiece of the client’s business. It builds and enhances and sustains the brand in the long term. Take the time to create a content strategy. Choose the topic that best fits your brand’s personality.
Brand your Website Now:
Branding your website is one of the best ways to attract leads and convert them. This applies to your website copy, blog posts, images, and videos. Ultimately a brand provides compelling reasons for customers to return for more products and services.
By following the above steps and going a step further, you will understand how to brand your website and the process of website branding and they can at least monitor the activities of dedicated developers whom they hired.
More Resources about WordPress Blogs:
Choosing the Best Frontend Frameworks for Web Development in 2022
The front end of a website plays an important role in attracting and retaining customers to buy client products and services. It is not only important from a brand perspective but also plays a functional role right from accessing content to payment checkout. In that respect, clients would need to hire a programmer that accords prime priority in choosing the right and most effective front-end development framework.
There are several best frontend frameworks in the market but there are only a few that really make a mark in terms of quality and reliability. After all, what more does a developer want? Some of the best front-end frameworks are used by many successful companies like Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, etc. according to the state of JS report, 2020.
What are Front end development and Frontend Frameworks?
Front end development is the development of what you first see in their browser and it can manage everything that users first see visually in the applications or browsers. It includes the design part, looks, and feel, of the site.
The front-end framework is the CSS framework to build interactive web apps with complex, unique, and scalable features. It helps to develop a web app with complex operations and seamless features for the pleasant look and feel and easy-to-use functions.
The best web front-end development frameworks are the software tool or product that serves as the basis to develop the front-end parts of the web solutions. Nowadays multiple frameworks are available and ruling the market that’s why it is quite difficult to choose the best frontend frameworks to use for web app development. To help you out, we come up with a list of the top 5 popular web front-end development frameworks in 2022 that help you to build and design seamless apps.
Top 5 Popular Front End Frameworks of 2022:
In this blog post, we will take a look at some of the better and more prominent best front-end frameworks to use for web app development that is also typically popular amongst developers. While every framework has its pros and cons, developers would do well to be informed of the client’s project requirements so as to select the most appropriate framework. Sometimes, it may be that the project may not be too complex which removes the need for using a sophisticated framework.
Let us start with the most widely used framework – Bootstrap.
1. Bootstrap Framework:
Most developers would be familiar with Bootstrap for it is known to help build superior websites for a long time. In fact, even some clients come back to us to use Bootstrap for their next website or allied websites, because they prefer it for the intuitive interface the framework promises and delivers. As per the Twitter Bootstrap statistics 2020, Bootstrap ran 18% of the top million sites.
Bootstrap is also a modular and mobile-first framework – meaning that selective components can be deployed and adapted to the mobile ecosystem. Perhaps, the greatest advantage of Bootstrap is its open-source credential, exhaustive resources, and the availability of powerful plugins that developers really need to develop a decent website.
Pros of Bootstrap:
- Bootstrap has a shallow learning curve
- Come up with many pre-style components
- Compatible with Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and other modern browsers
- The community support is excellent
- Comes with extensive built-in components (Sass, mixins)
Cons of Bootstrap:
- Similar looking elements are created.
- Results in buggy websites because of so many anti-patterns
- Manual deletion is required because of heavy file generation
Top-rated websites and apps built by Bootstrap
- BscScan
- PayPal
- Ahrefs
- Font Awesome
2. Foundation Framework:
Next, we have Foundation. Developed by ZURB, this enterprise-level mobile-friendly front-end framework delivers true to its name – builds a strong foundational best front-end framework. It enjoys patronage by many big websites like Facebook, eBay, National Geographic, and so on.
With good documentation, developers can get started easily with frontend development. Foundation proclaims to enable developers to design for any medium – be it mobile or desktop – and with a constantly increasing set of resources and templates, one can even build dedicated mobile-first websites.
Pros of Foundation:
- Can create responsive and lightweight websites
- Grids are more flexible
- Authenticated library is formed with HTML5
- Mobile friendly front end framework
- Come with GPU acceleration features
Cons of Foundation:
- Fewer support platforms and community
- Hard to learn for freshers
- Not good for contender framework (Twitter)
Top-rated websites built by Foundation
- ADIDAS
- Vans
- Fandango
- Kawasaki
- iStockphoto
3. Ulkit by Yootheme:
Third on our list is UIKit, a very light and modular fastest customizable front-end framework developed by YOOtheme. Having a set of ready-to-use and customizable components is for those developers that want to get into manual mode and develop fast, powerful websites.
Also advocating the mobile-first approach gives space for developers to create their own styles, taking inspiration from the framework’s community. Although not quite popular, developers can try this if they want to elaborate on a basic style and build upon it by innovative customization.
Pros of Ulkit
- Easy to use, and flexible
- Possible to customize manually
- Useful to create a powerful WordPress website
- Mobile-first and responsive framework
- It can be extendable with themes
- Off-canvas navigations by supporting RTL
Cons of Ulkit
- Sometimes Ulkit codes can break after article saving
- 2 versions are quite difficult to use simultaneously
Well-known websites built by UIKit
- Igg-games
- Uptime robot
- Extend office
- Webempresa
4. Semantic UI:
We have other front-end development frameworks like Semantic UI. This modern front-end development framework is invented by Jack Lukic, released in 2014. This is the best JavaScript front-end framework supported by jQuery and LESS and it is new in the market. While the former emphasizes human-friendly code using natural language principles the latter CSS framework advocates minimal footprint in terms of coding.
Ultimately, it all boils down to the preferences, compromises, needs and wants, can-do-away with and cannot-do-away-with features decided by both the developer and the client jointly. Of course, we do have some basic guidelines that developers can follow to make their decision easier.
Pros of Semantic UI:
- Easy coding to learn for novice
- It offers support for a wide range of 3rd party libraries
- Help to reduce the load times because of small size files
- Powerful, flexible, and quick customization is available
- Rich in receptiveness and UI modules
Cons of Semantic UI:
- Packages are quite larger
- Not easy for learners without Javascript knowledge
- Low popularity
Websites built using Semantic UI
- App Codility
- Readm
- Discudemy
- Arts P
- Oschina
5. Pure by Yahoo:
Pure CSS framework by Yahoo is an advanced base theme, responsive, HTML5, mobile-first framework developed by Dr. Radut. This framework is using a responsive powerful Yahoo Pure.CSS framework and includes fully-featured, 2 fine-tuned, end-user themes. You can choose this front-end CSS framework as the fastest and tiny one. This framework is compatible with cross-browser by HTML5 validating themes. This is the best frontend framework designed as per mobile and SEO compatibility.
Pros of Pure Framework:
- Ideal for small projects
- You can customize the responsive grid as per your need
- Standard and responsive grid systems
- CSS with a minimal footprint
- Multi-level drop-down menus
- Lightweight, easy to use
Cons of Pure Framework:
- Slow development
- Not suitable for beginners
- Messy code classes
Top-rated websites built by Pure Framework
- Knowledge.Autodesk
- Synology
- Flickr
- Testbook
Choose the best Frontend Frameworks for your Business:
As many of us might be aware, this is an era of disruption. Almost in every field, there is disruption and web development is no exception. There is huge competition among businesses and therefore there arises a need to be the best in a consistent way which means that they need to be able to quickly grasp any new trends or customer preferences and adapt or adapt accordingly.
Having said that, clients and developers would do well to choose that framework that is popular, evolving, and one that has an extensive documentation with some factors to consider while choosing your front-end framework. Because, in our opinion, documentation can speak volumes about a framework – it reflects the professionalism that guides developers to adopt their framework.
So which is the best front-end framework do you think would serve clients better? Contact us and leave us your thoughts with our developer team at Hire Indian Programmers.
Major Turn-Offs to Avoid When Designing a Website
Web-programmers and developers and the general public would agree to the fact that the internet has undergone a massive change. Traditional businesses that had not jumped on the internet bandwagon might have floundered for a while before deciding to make a transition. Now, with the emergence of the smartphone, the challenges have increased.
Many clients now want to hire a dedicated programmer to develop a rich website not only for the desktop but also for mobile devices. Our team of programmers and coders at HireIndianProgrammers, a leading firm providing a multitude of web development services, have successfully executed a range of web development projects. Using that experience, our developers seek to give you some crucial things that you must avoid at all costs. This is essential if clients hiring a developer want to provide a seamless user experience and stay on top of Google results.
Sluggish Performance
The biggest turn off that users browsing websites encounter is sluggish performance with bad loading times or anything that unnecessarily hinders user activity. They can take a variety of forms. One of the most common issues is slow loading times. It’s high time that programmers realise that there cannot be any compromises here. With the rise in internet speeds and emergence of powerful smartphones, visitors invariably expect to access information in seconds. Any delays here can cost the client business. Clients hiring a developer would do well to remember that responsiveness is of the highest order and take efforts in that direction.
Yet another issue related to performance is the rampant presence of animation. Animation, per se is cool and brings a sort of uniqueness and personality to the client’s website. However, clients hiring programmers who emphasise too much on animation can prove to be irritating for users who are subjected to the same animation over and over again. For instance, animation effects like fade in might make the website load slower. In other words, it hinders accessibility, which is the last thing programmers want.
Costly Distractions
The next common issue is the prevalence of distractions in websites. If a client is hiring a programmer to improve the website’s reach, this is certainly one of the focus areas. Distractions are of many kinds. They can be irrelevant pop-ups, permission forms, survey forms or even autoplay videos. These distractions can be costly if they are not rectified at the earliest. Programmers will have to do everything in their power to prevent visitors from switching over to another website.
Loud autoplay videos are a recipe for visitor frustration. It is here the client hiring the programmer will have to collaborate and decide on the right balance between conversion and promotion. Programmers can atleast aim at delivery consistency which is a positive thing. In the same way, pop-ups can really frustrate the visitor, especially if they are repetitive. Experienced developers will know that presenting too many pop-ups amounts to disrespecting the user’s wish to access content.
Finally, programmers and coders will have to make efforts in adapting to mobile web development – developing websites specifically for mobile. In fact, our developer team at HireIndianProgrammers have noticed the rise of mobile development projects. According to some studies, the number of users browsing websites on mobile are on the rise.
Are you looking for quality programmers for any web development projects? Check out the previous projects completed by HireIndianProgrammers for a number of clients over the years. If satisfied, you can now hire a programmer by getting in touch with us here.
How to Sell your Web Development services
While the advent of different website builders like Wix means that it is easier to design websites, it most certainly doesn’t mean you are equipped enough to design a full functional website for your business. A working business website has a lot more complexities that often requires the expertise and services of a dedicated web and mobile app development company.
In this blogpost, seasoned web programmers at HireIndianProgrammers give you insights on approaching and converting reluctant prospects. Clients can be of every kind and we programmers as part of a leading web and mobile app development company, have come across our share of different clients. It is a challenge in itself to get in fruitful conversation with them.
- Let’s start with the basics – The norms of communication between the client and salesperson mandate courtesy on the latter’s part at all situations and circumstances. The client is more likely to hire a programmer if he is a courteous person.
- When clients start off with an air of reluctance and impatience, rather than treating it as a difficult situation, your task becomes cut out. Be fully prepared with a concise explanation on what you plan to achieve with them – deliberate on the benefits rather than features.
- Having been in the programming field for a long time, you must obviously know the merits of developing and maintaining an in-house website over social media. Now you just have to convey in a language that can be understood by clients who might construe it differently. Focus on specifics of what the website can possibly do for their business
- Do your research before embarking on a conversation with the client – if at all the client already has a working website, identify real flaws with it that might affect the online business and work on feasible solutions to improve the same.
- If the client is hesitant to hire your services, engage in some sort of confidence building actions – for instance – demonstrating your workflow can result in winning immediate brownie points for you and further remove any remaining doubts in the client’s mind.
- As stated earlier, doing your research and trying to understand the client’s business is important. Since it must likely be your niche, go one step further and gather some similar projects that you successfully completed as a programmer and show it to the client.
- Now comes the pricing part. Here three possible cases can arise. If the client doesn’t have the required budget at the time, thank them and make sure to do a follow up at a later point of time. If the client still doesn’t see the value in your services, it is better to move on rather than arguing or worse, dropping your price. If you see the client to show signs of bargaining, it is crucial not to lose ground and reduce price but leave them be.
- Never make false promises for the sake of closing deals, instead make promises that you can actually deliver on.
- Devote time to prepare precise contracts and make the client agree to and sign the same. This projects professionalism.
Hope you found this post to be helpful. HireIndianProgrammers has been in the industry for more than a decade and our programmers have delivered several web and mobile app development projects successfully. Our clients, mostly from the US and also the UK, have continually hired the services of our programmers in a variety of projects, some of them lasting for years.
Contact us here to get in conversation with our programmers.
Frontend Checklist for Smooth Performance of Web Applications
In this age of digital media, businesses’ mission to establish a solid image, pull in customers and retain them for a long period have become more challenging. Especially so, if your business is just starting, it is imperative you gain solid ground by signing up new customers. This is where the Frontend experience comes into the picture. It plays an important role in the background – enabling a smooth experience for first time customers without hiccups that includes but not limited to data loading, optimisation and Background processing. That calls for a robust frontend development from an expert programmer.
Now that we have realised the importance of a good frontend experience, let us look into some of the items in the Frontend checklist to ensure a smooth performance of web applications. That includes mobile experiences also.
A Clean Document
A critical aspect of frontend development is loading speed. No one wants to wait for a sluggish site to proceed to the next page. For that, you need to write your HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code in a concise way. Referencing other resources within our HTML doc also matters. For instance, rather than placing CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) at the bottom, it is recommended to place it at the top to ensure a clean rendering. The same goes for the placement of Javascript. What it effectively does is saying goodbye to impatient visitors leaving the website after waiting in a blank page.
Minimal Click Events
Remember, the lesser clicks you ask from the visitor, the better likely he will end up staying in the site. This translates to successful signup conversions. Adding excessive buttons will frustrate the customer and prove that you are quite demanding! Minimal click events also mean that you have to reduce invalid click scenarios.
An Intuitive UI
By designing a UI to be intuitive, you keep the customer at the top with all the buttons at his disposal. Such should be the ease of use that includes navigation too. It can be as simple as setting contrasting colors for navigation buttons to as complex as designing the webpage to optimisation across all platforms (Web, mobile, browsers etc). Also, ensure that there is a natural flow in your website. Ultimately it will seek to guide the visitor flawlessly. This
Optimising the Images
Excessive megabyte sized images can be a potential UX killer, if you fail to optimise them. They can be optimised by removing the excess information related to the image like dates, locations, camera specifications and so on. This can massively improve loading times.
Going Minimalistic
At the end of the day, it is your business and only you know / can determine what features you want to add to your web application, thereby starting with a framework that is lightweight. No user would like a cluttered website that will only confuse them. Some minification techniques will help you eliminate unnecessary characters in the file.
If your business caters to a global market, you can opt for a CDN (Content Delivery Network) that will considerably increase the performance of your website. This will offload some of the traffic from a singular server and links to a network of servers.
You can now Hire an expert Programmer at HireIndianProgrammers, who, rest assured, can delve into your project needs and design a website with maximum performance and optimisation.
Essentials of Flawless Custom WordPress Design
The Website is the important thing to reflect your business. With the well-built website, you can create a positive impact on the customers which also help to improve the conversion rate of your business. Hire WordPress Programmer who understands your business requirement as well as the need of the users. The experienced professionals from HireIndianProgrammers know how to design an eye catcher website.
Choose the best Theme
When choosing the WordPress themes make sure the theme perfectly fits for the products and services which you offer to the customers. Hire a Coder who is familiar in working with latest web designing trends. Mobile friendliness is one of the important considerations because nowadays mobile users are mostly accessing the website.
Good Design
You can give the tempting user experience by implementing the website on various aspects of the customers. You should concentrate on three facts such as clear navigation, content present in the website and call to action buttons.