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:
Social Rocket – A new dimension to Social Media sharing
Data explosion was inevitable with the advent of the internet and it became more pervasive with the emergence of different social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. It truly revolutionised the way people consumed content. This was also aided by the increased adoption of the smartphone for personal use. It became so ubiquitous such that people started browsing and sharing more on the smartphone than the desktop. For clients who want to hire a WordPress developer to get their website up and running, they may also want to incorporate an easy way of sharing content. There are many plugins that cater to this need and in today’s blogpost, we will take a look at Social Rocket and how it seeks to refine social media sharing.
A Space Prelude
Social Rocket has quite an intriguing prelude to its sharing plugin. With a material design space art welcoming clients on its site, it proclaims that sharing content to audience is not rocket science and done in a befitting manner, as per the geography and time.Right off the bat, clients can choose their positioning of social media sharing buttons – inline above/below posts or floating buttons that move as users read content. The free version supports all the major social media platforms. Even the number of shares can be displayed on top of the buttons. Clients can even configure what to display when content is shared – thumbnail images and in-box description.
Social Rocket offers numerous options to customise sharing. For instance, there is a click-to-tweet option that can be used in a custom manner to match the client’s website theme. This can bring consistency to the site’s interface. There is also provision for Bitly link shortening that can be set depending on the network. You can also hire a dedicated WordPress developer from us who can do this for you.
Getting Hands-On
Right after plugin activation, it gets reflected in the WordPress dashboard. A host of settings can be found here – inline buttons, floating buttons, click to tweet, extras and licenses. With respect to inline buttons, sky is the limit – clients can tweak and control on different aspects for both desktop and mobile. The simple drag and drop mechanism allows clients to choose from different social networks and position the same after customising more on text, icon and colour. Number of shares can be further tweaked to display rounded numbers and above a limit.
The same kind of settings hold true for floating buttons also, the only difference being the placement of the buttons – left, right, bottom, top. For instance, providing share buttons on the bottom page while browsing on mobile can be extremely convenient for customers. The click-to-tweet similarly has plenty of customisable options from text colour and accent to call to action text. Perhaps, the highlight of Social Rocket is the provision for clients to design sharing buttons for individual pages or posts. Dedicated images can be added, thereby making it a site-specific sharing.
In all these settings, there is an explainer for each component thereby assisting clients to design their sharing widgets. The basic features of Social Rocket are available for free. However, clients can go for Pro version based on the number of sites they own – starting from $29 for one site to $249 for unlimited sites.
How do you think Social Rocket can enhance your website browsing experience? Leave us your feedback. Contact our developer team for hiring our services.
How to Deal with Inherited Code
As experienced programmers we would have undertaken several web development projects. It might be on any domain –WordPress, PHP Development or even mobile app development. Most times clients approach and hire developers for new projects. Developers and coders would have to sit with the client and discuss about the exact requirements and then proceed with the development. However, sometimes clients may also hire programmers to carry on with a prior project – be it for improvement or expansion. It could also be that the client may have been at odds with previous developers and wanted to reach out to a new developer. In such a scenario, programmers are handed a completed project – perfect or not perfect – and asked to continue with development for the aforementioned reasons. Having been used to executing web development projects from scratch, this sure might prove to be a serious nightmare for programmers. This is because of the fact that each coder has a unique style of coding and will most certainly differ from yours. One wrong deviation and the entire website could become buggy, to say the least.
We at HireIndianProgrammers, consist of teams of dedicated programmers and developers. Having gained significant experience from handling an array of web development services for more than a decade, we seek to give you insights on how to deal with inherited code from a prior project, through this blogpost.
Documentation is key
While being handed over a website or any mobile app project, programmers would do well to request for the documentation for the same. A programming expert would more than make do with just documentation.
Patience is a virtue
It is true and trust us, it will reward you hugely in the near future. There are no shortcuts. Clients hiring new developers would surely expect better results than earlier. So, programmers will have to commit time and efforts in going through the entire documentation, understand the code – including structures, naming conventions, CMS, syntax and so on, add/ modify your own documentation. This stage of reading (not glancing) and understanding is crucial as it will help you in understanding the website (or mobile app), thereby allowing you to accurately carry out updates. Programmers can also familiarise themselves with all the webpages in the website.
Look out for anomalies and fix them
The very task of going through the documentation will enable coders to spot anomalies such as unused Javascript libraries, complex API etc; Clients hiring fresh programmers will, in all probability, give the entire story of the software development cycle including the possible issues with earlier versions or developers. Also, whenever programmers are fixing unknown functionalities, it is simply a good practice to add comments on it. This would greatly aid the next developer.
Adapt and be consistent
While tackling inherited code, the main objective of programmers must be to deliver a readable project having longevity. The best way to accomplish this is for programmers to adapt themselves to the system and tweak their coding habits a bit. Adding your own methods will only complicate matters for the next web development team.
Dig deeper into the system
Clients hiring dedicated programmers trust that their new website would perform better than earlier on a sustainable basis. To deliver optimal results, programmers would have to dig deeper and get their hands on more relevant data such as the kind of devices end users are using. These kind of data will help developers anticipate possible failure scenarios in testing stage of software development.Coders can make use of any speed test and design responsiveness tools to check for performance issues.
Finally, apart from these, there are always other challenges associated with inherited code. It might be tighter deadlines or scope creep. Whatever it may be, programmers would do well to focus on the work at hand, make room for improvement, display a positive attitude rather than indulging in a futile blame game.
Looking for programming experts to execute your next web development project?
You can now hire our programmers at HireIndianProgrammers. Contact us here.
Top Payment Gateways for your E-Commerce Website
The work of developers can turn out to be quite challenging for normal projects itself. Add to it, an E-Commerce project, the number of project variables spiral out of way. Talking about E-Commerce, one of the most important components of E-Commerce websites are payment gateways. The mere presence of payment gateways and their design and implementation directly affects the end sales of the clients.
In this blogpost, as experienced Magento and OpenCart developers, we show you some of the options with regard to Payment Gateways.
We are sure that you are already familiar with some of the existing payment gateways such as – Stripe, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Authorize.net and so on. In your task to hire an OpenCart or Magento developer or any other website developer, you need to be aware of the fact that the choice of payment gateways changes with the website builder solutions.
The leading E-Commerce platforms are WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento and OpenCart. Let us go through them one by one.
WooCommerce
You must already know that WooCommerce requires WordPress to run on and therefore there are a large number of third party payment gateways to choose from.
Among them, we would recommend PayPal because – firstly, it is PayPal and if you are starting out new in the online business then PayPal would be apt as it brings about trust in your customers. Secondly, an E-Commerce site is clunky as it is and so adding a third party payment gateway through a plugin, this could negatively impact loading times. No customer wants that!
PayPal also has low processing fees, fraud protection and available to transact in a number of currencies.
Shopify
Shopify, a hosted website builder, is impressive and popular as well. While it is extremely easy to use, it is perfect for those clients who want to just start a store ONLY excluding other features like blog, social media feeds etc;
Like WooCommerce, Shopify is also equipped with an inbuilt payment gateway called Shopify which is actually powered by a leading platform called Stripe.
If you really want to use an alternative, please think again. This is because, in using an alternative, Shopify charges you for the third party payment gateway in addition to the processing fees. Apart from that, Stripe offers you fraud protections, quicker funds transfer and partnerships.
Magento
Magento is the third most popular E-Commerce site builder followed by OpenCart. Due to its close association with Adobe and other interactive platforms, it can be said that Magento focuses on complete business website variables like design, CRM, marketing and so on.
Magento development services is most suitable for big clients who want to develop large E-Commerce websites. Coming to payment gateways, Magento provides support for three different payment gateways namely – PayPal, Braintree and Authorise.net.
While Braintree is more apt for clients targeting customers in North America alone, both PayPal and Authorise.net are good options. However, Authorise.net has a slight edge over PayPal when it comes to huge quantity of sales. And it is much more simplified than PayPal.
Having gone through the list, we must let you know that our developers at HireIndianProgrammers offer both OpenCart development services and Magento development services.
Have any further doubts? Contact us here.
WordPress and October CMS – A Comparison
Recently, WordPress launched its React powered Gutenberg to provide a revamped content management system (CMS) experience. But this has gone too well with much of the users and has rather garnered a lukewarm response. Are you one of those people, looking to shift to another platform? Then this post might be for you.
So, in this blogpost we will look at the next best alternative – October CMS and also see how it stacks up with our beloved WordPress. If you are looking for any developer out there, you can now hire a WordPress developer at HireIndianProgrammers, who will make your transition into website development for your business a smooth process.
October CMS is a free, open source, relatively new and dynamic content generator that is based on the Laravel framework. Having a sizeable community, one key difference between WordPress developmentand October CMS is that while the former has basis on procedural programming the latter has basis on object oriented programming.
Both WordPress development and October CMS run on the LAMP stack i.e Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. You must also know that they both have the same language basis – HTML, CSS, Javascript.
Content Creation and Plugins
With the launch of Gutenberg, there are two new features for WordPress developers – Introduction of the usage of components over the earlier coding blobs of HTML and another feature known as the block. Blocks are supposedly introduced to provide a way to insert content into the site.
What does it entail for users?It ensures a simpler user experience. It is in stark contrast to the earlier version of WordPress that added content through shortcodes, buttons, menus etc; Installing many blocks isn’t a hassle either. What this essentially achieves is that it provides users with a modular approach. However, as with anything new, the learning curve for React is rather steep, thereby testing your patience.
For October CMS, knowing just HTML is enough to build sites. The pages are written using twig templates. With respect to design, it allows users to select the appropriate layout including header, footer, placeholders and so on. So customisation is a breeze. If at all, you are not satisfied with only HTML, you can always add PHP functions to produce a dynamic code.
While anyone can use a WordPress site, October CMS is rather developer-friendly.That means dedicated programmers may have no problems to use, but the layman like marketers may not find it helpful.
With regard to plugins, both platforms offer an advanced yet simplified mechanism that allows users to search, install new plugins and update existing plugins to their latest version. This can be achieved from the backend itself.
Documentation
We are all very much familiar with the documentation in WordPress. While in-site documentation doesn’t cover everything, there are several external sources and general sites such as CSS Tricks and online courses sealing with every WordPress topic under the sun.
On the other hand, the documentation provided by the founders of October CMS, though doesn’t enjoy widespread recognition, does the job pretty well for a new entrant. It’s more than enough for people looking to start coding. What’s more? The founders regularly add new content to the documentation. However, you must know that it is not 100% perfect and it is a work in progress.
Security
Due to its immense popularity, WordPress is riddled with large amount of negative externalities. Users therefore have to constantly update all of their plugins and related software to prevent any major hacks.
Meanwhile, October CMS being a fairly new entrant in this space and owing to its size, doesn’t have that problem. Moreover, during the wizard installation process itself, it allows users to input the CMS backend URL (changeable). This makes it almost impossible for hackers to attack.
Community Support
The sheer vastness of the community forums of WordPress programmers, both online and offline doesn’t need introduction. Not only in size, but also from a diversity point of view. It brings together people from different countries, backgrounds, professions – developers and users alike. So, it is very likely that whatever challenge you may be facing, there is always someone out there to help you out in these forums. In addition to that you could also make use of the WordCamps held in various cities to learn how to use the platform.
October CMS is not bad either, especially for one that recently came into picture. Though it doesn’t match the level of WordPress development support forums, it is steadily gaining popularity. Even the platform’s owners join the discussion forum from time to time. This is good news for those who are starting out, in need of tips and tricks. The only con is that these forums are more oriented towards the developer.
So what do you think would be a better choice for you? Both WordPress and October CMS have their own set of pros and cons. While WordPress is favourable for both the developer and the user, October CMS is geared towards developers.
However, your choice may differ according to the project or team or company. What are your requirements? Make a note of it and decide on THE CMS for you.
Choosing the Right Framework for your Website
One of the key things you need to get your business started, especially if you are going to do business on the internet is a GREAT website. There are a number of frameworks around to develop a rich, enriching website promising a satisfying experience for customers like – Angular, PHP, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, Magento, Open Cart and so on. However, with more choices, it might be hard to select the right framework, given that there would be several factors in play.
Fret not, for in this blog post, we will look at simplifying your decision in opting the right framework.
What’s more?!
You can also Hire a Programmer from HireIndianProgrammers to develop the PERFECT website for you – as per your needs, no strings attached.
Requirements
Have a clear idea about your business website, who it caters to, what you want your website to exactly address etc; You might want to check on the extent of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations involved in your website. Whether you want to cater exclusively only on the desktop or even mobile users. Serving in mobile calls for optimisation and being SEO friendly. Determine the size of your project (mid-sized or large or specialised) and that will have a bearing on the kind of framework.
Resources
By resources, we mean both human and monetary. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you may need to prioritise. If you feel that your business requires a new technology, outsourcing that piece of work can save you money. If your business caters to a small local neighbourhood market, you can opt from many open source frameworks that have the benefit of constant updating and of being license free.
Timeline
Sometimes it is crucial that you get your business started early and have an edge over competitors. In such a scenario, Time-To-Market (TTM) matters a lot. Frameworks like Ruby on Rails allows to reduce the TTM significantly. It will also save time in finding the person with the right expertise. Documentation is yet another aspect to keep in mind.
Goals
Finally, you also need to select a framework that allows you to scale in the future, provides an easy maintenance and assures decent security for your website. As your business grows, your website must be able to handle a lot of traffic – good and bad. Therefore, you need to take into consideration the above factors while selecting a framework.
At HireIndianProgrammers, we have coders having expertise in a range of frameworks. You can Hire from PHP, MAGENTO, OPEN CART, RUBY ON RAILS, WORDPRESS and even OPEN SOURCE.
Feel free to have a look at some of our projects.
For any queries, contact us here.