What Is AResponsive Web Design

What Is a Responsive Web Design: Understanding the Basics

Today, as users, we’re constantly on-the-go. The majority of website visits start on mobile devices, and according to eMarketer, Mcommerce sales for US retail will be increasing with each coming year. As a result, optimizing website accessibility and user experience on tablets, smartphones, and every device imaginable is becoming increasingly important in order for all businesses to stay relevant. To accommodate users, websites that are designed responsively are typically the best option available.

Responsive design is an approach to web development by which a website is planned, designed, and developed to appear optimally in a range of devices. The phrase “appear optimally” refers to a page being readable, easy-to-navigate, and usable with minimal panning and scrolling. Responsive Design is not just a method or technique - it is a fundamental ideology about how a site is designed and built.

What Is A Responsive Web Design?

Responsive design is a front-end development process intended for molding website design and user experience to the user’s device, whether desktop, tablet, or mobile.

In responsive, a cascading style sheet (CSS)—essentially what defines the format and layout of a web page, is leveraged to permit a website to scale to the width of a browser, independent of device type. 

Javascript and js libraries such as JQuery and Modernizr are also used to accompany this behavior for resizing more dynamic objects like masonry galleries as well as converting mouse activities to touch activities.

Unlike adaptive design or mobile detection, responsive design does not leverage device detection, so rather than querying the device with backend logic, CSS media queries are used to determine things like the width and orientation of the device screen—your browser.

Basics of Responsive Design

Two basic principles exist in responsive design, the use of breakpoints and fluid scaling:

Breakpoints

CSS3 media queries create conditional boundaries at which the width of a specific device type’s browser will then trigger alternate styles. Here at Blue Fountain Media, we generally use maximum-width breakpoint, to create a desktop-first (scale down) build versus a minimum-width boundary, for a mobile-first (scale up) build. Queries can also be used to determine height and even device orientation.

Breakpoint sizes (we’ll use widths from here on out) can be set in px or em. The differentiation in modern browsers is negligible, though, compared to a few years back. Breakpoints can be set at any size but they tend to align with the most common dimensions of each Desktop, Tablet Portrait, Mobile Landscape, and Mobile Portrait. Generally speaking, these tend to be 1200/960px, 768px, 480px, and 320px, wide respectively, though industry standards are constantly changing as new devices are released.

Fluidity

Fluid scaling can be achieved in a few different ways, but it will always involve percentage or em values to permit a container to scale within the bounds of its parent elements, and ultimately the browser. Fluid scaling is necessary to achieve responsiveness between breakpoints, to maximize your real estate, as well as to maintain the flow of columns in a responsive grid.

A simple example of a fluidly scaling object would be an HTML page consisting of one block with width of 100% and a height of “auto”. As the browser changes width, the block scales with it, proportionally. Where you choose to apply this scaling at the granular level is up to you but fluidity should always exist at the top level of any responsive container.

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Conduct an online search

Online Reputation Management (ORM) deals with everything about your company’s brand in the online community. This community includes the entire web – search engines, forums, blogs, news sites, social networking sites, etc…

Online Reputation Management is first being mindful of your company’s online brand then building on that brand in the search engines (chances are this is where you are sought for the most) through social media and other websites that produce and disseminate content.

As you’re vetting ORM firms, there are key questions to ask as well as red flags to look out for. In this post, I’ll guide you through them so you can go forth confidently as you do your independent research, communicate with ORM firms, read sales materials and review contracts. Here’s what you need to know.

Conduct an online search.

If you’re looking for an ORM firm, chances are you’re going to search online to see what’s out there. My suggestion? Stay away from the companies that spend a lot of money on advertising.

The term online reputation management gets searched in Google 8,100 times each month. That’s a valuable keyword to rank for so it’s no surprise that ORM firms will want to advertise there.

Communicate with ORM firms.

After you’ve done your research, you'll choose a few firms to reach out to. Here are several warning signs of a bad firm.

Beware of any guarantees about fixing search results.

Some firms out there make absurd claims - bragging that they have been around longer than Google, as if this gives them some special super power. If the firm boasts a quick fix - under six months -- guarantees it can achieve certain search results for you, or claims to have some sort of proprietary software that works against Google, you should run in the opposite direction.

Beware of black-hat SEOs.

Look out for terms, like keyword stuffing and link farming, or any other shady technique that is meant to try to trick Google.

In short, if the firm’s reps feels confident that they’re going to outsmart Google, it’s not going to happen. When’s the last time you did a Google search and saw something spammy on the first page? It rarely happens anymore because Google is extremely sophisticated today, and it continues to penalize those who try to outsmart it with black-hat SEO techniques.

Pay attention to whether the firm boasts quantity over quality.

If they try to impress you with the number of websites and social properties they build for clients - rather than the quality of the work they do on those web properties -- you should be skeptical. Remember: Google wants value, so you need to provide value in an ORM campaign - not links to hundreds of social media and bookmarking sites.

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An Article or A Press Release

It’s important to make the distinction between articles used in article marketing and press releases intended for news media, because they each involve very different styles of writing.

Let's start with the similarities…

Article Marketing and Online Press Releases do have a few things in common:

•             They both involve writing (duh, right?  )

•             They both involve building backlinks to a website

•             They both have SEO benefits (they can increase your search engine rankings for your keywords if done properly)

•             They have a submission process–articles used in article marketing and press releases both have channels of distribution that allow them to reach publishers.

Here's how articles used in Article Marketing and Online Press Releases are different:

Time Sensitive vs. Evergreen

With press releases, usually the information is time sensitive and makes some sort of announcement, whereas the content provided in an article should be timeless (ideally) and educational.

Journalist vs. Teacher

You may talk about your own business in a press release, but only in a way that sounds like news (you cannot submit a hyped-up sales letter as a press release). If you write about your own business it should be in a style that sounds like you are writing as a third-party, sort of like a journalist in a newspaper.

With article marketing, you will not write about yourself or your business in the article body, and you can't quote yourself or refer to your business products or website in the article body, even if it's in a 3rd person style.

With your articles, the appropriate place to reference your business and website is your resource box, which sits below your article.

Part of the difference between a press release and an article used in article marketing is the difference between a journalist and a teacher. Usually a journalist will focus on news items and time sensitive material, while a teacher will be instructing students (readers) how to do something, or explaining some concept that is timeless.

Speed vs. Endurance

Article marketing is a long term marketing strategy that results in an increase of links over time (after submitting an article the number of publishers who re-publish the article multiplies and the article popularity tends to go up over time, which results in an increase in traffic), whereas the time-sensitive material conveyed in a press release usually limits the burst of traffic or links generated by a press release to a short span of time.

The upside of press releases is that they receive a different type of exposure than articles. Press releases are published on networks of news syndication websites, news portals and sometimes they even reach large news websites. Also, Google seems to value what it considers to be “news”, as it’s fresh and up-to-the-minute information, and therefore content appearing on news syndication sites may rank higher faster in results pages than content published on an article directory or website.

The other side of the coin is that content considered to be news is time sensitive, which means that a high ranking for a press release can be brief – when fresh news is published, the rank of older press releases falls.

So, while a press release with its time sensitive information can make a strong start and become less relevant very quickly, articles tend to increase the traffic they drive to websites the longer that they are published.

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Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO

The difference between black hat SEO and white hat SEO has to do with the techniques used when trying to improve a website’s search engine ranking.

Black hat SEO refers to techniques and strategies used to get higher search rankings, and breaking search engine rules. Black hat SEO focuses on only search engines and not so much a human audience. Black hat SEO is typically used by those who are looking for a quick return on their site, rather than a long-term investment on their site. Some techniques used in black hat SEO include: keyword stuffing, link farming, hidden texts and links, and blog content spamming. Consequences of black hat SEO can possibly result in your site being banned from a search engine and de-indexed as a penalization for using unethical techniques.

White hat SEO refers to the use of techniques and strategies that target a human audience opposed to a search engine. Techniques that are typically used in white hat SEO include using keywords, and keyword analysis, doing research, rewriting meta tags in order for them to be more relevant, backlinking, link building as well as writing content for human readers. Those who use white hat SEO expect to make a long-term investment on their website, as the results last a long time.

White hat SEO techniques:

Creating quality content is important because it shows the search engines that your site is unique and appropriate to display. Researching keywords that are both short and long tail and are relevant to your site is necessary to do as well. Be sure to include keywords naturally in headings, link anchor texts and page titles. Furthermore, it is important to add new relevant content regularly. The more content-rich your site is, the better as it will appear to be more valuable to the search engines, human visitors and webmasters who would most likely link to your site. Although creating quality content may be time consuming, it will be well worth it in the long run.

Black hat SEO refers to attempts to improve rankings in ways that are not approved by search engines and involve deception. They go against current search engine guidelines. White hat SEO refers to use of good practice methods to achieve high search engine rankings. They comply with search engine guidelines.

Major Differences

•             Compliance: Black Hat SEO involves techniques which are considered unethical by search engines, while White Hat SEO techniques conform to regulations and include no deception.

•             Approval: White Hat SEO is approved by all search engines, while Black Hat is not.

•             Consequence: The result of engaging in Black Hat SEO is that the website may get penalized with lower rankings, de-indexed, and might even be banned, and these penalties last for a long time.

•             Methods: Where White Hat SEO includes techniques such as research, quality content, analysis, web design, and relevant meta tags. Black Hat SEO methods comprise of blog comment spam, link farming, keyword stuffing, hidden links, and cloaked pages.

One has to wonder why people continue to insist upon using Black Hat SEO when the penalties imposed are so severe.

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Get High Rankings With White Hat SEO Methods

Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical tricks and techniques to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a website. This dilutes the quality of search results and the accuracy of search results becomes questionable.

For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to trace the spam techniques which webmasters might be using and penalize or ban them. They continue to reconstruct their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with irrelevant or low quality content.

Ethical search engine optimization is about everyone winning.

Ethical search engine optimization leads to a symbiotic relationship:

             Search engines: They win as they are provided with pages that are easy to understand and that contain the quality information that their visitors search for.

             Searchers: They win as they are getting what they ask for from the search engines. They search for "green widgets" and get a page about green widgets.

             Website owners: They win as they are getting quality visitors who are interested in what their website has to offer.

You should use only ethical search engine optimization methods. The techniques that produce lasting results and methods that are within the search engine rules.

Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM. For that reason, you should only use the techniques that are safe for your website:

             made for AdSense websites that consist of scraped content

             cloaking and false redirects (Google gets other pages than real web surfers)

             keyword stuffing and pages loaded with irrelevant words

             hidden text or hidden links

             misspellings of well-known websites

             fully automated, unrelated and centralized link farms

             other methods that try to trick search engines

You might get short term results with these techniques but it’s very likely that your site will be banned from search engines if you use one of these techniques. You’ll put your web business at severe risk if you use one of these methods.

We use only ethical search engine optimization techniques that produce lasting results:

             optimization of existing web pages, HTML code and web page contents

             organic link building to get high quality inbound links

             building a win-win-win relationship between webmasters, web surfers and search engines

If you use spammy SEO methods, you will quickly get high rankings on search engines. Unfortunately, Google will completely remove your website from the search results as soon as they find out that you use bad methods.

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SEO Ethics

The search marketing industry, providing search engine ranking or search engine marketing type services to website owners, is, give or take a year or two, about 15 years old now.

There are several ways to define SEO Ethics, and it really depends on what your end goal is. Are we trying to define what is ethical SEO and what is not ethical SEO? Because let's just take one look at that:

•             Automatically generated content

•             Participating in link schemes

•             Creating pages with little or no original content

•             Cloaking

•             Sneaky redirects

•             Hidden text or links

•             Doorway pages

•             Scraped content

•             Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value

•             Loading pages with irrelevant keywords

•             Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware

•             Abusing rich snippets markup

But lately, let's say in the last five years or so, there have been lots of SEO companies who have taken their clients' money and participated in link schemes in an effort to get the client higher search engine rankings. Link schemes like this:

•             Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

•             Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking

•             Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links

•             Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

•             Text advertisements that pass PageRank

•             Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass PageRank

•             Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites. Low-quality directory or bookmark site links

•             Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites,

•             Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites

•             Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature

As an SEO company or someone providing SEO services for hire, one needs to make sure that they are not deceiving the client or website owner. Deceiving a client or website owner could mean something along the lines of:

•             Not guaranteeing search engine rankings

•             Being transparent on the SEO methods used for higher search engine rankings

•             Taking the time to educate the client about SEO best practices

•             Not deceiving the client

Is it the basic "SEO Ethics" of performing search engine optimization for a website that we're after when defining "SEO Ethics"? Because if that's the case, then we need to look as far as the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Or is it much greater than that? Do "SEO Ethics" need to actually define the search marketing industry as a whole? Do we really need to put a "code of SEO ethics" in place so that search marketers (or SEOs, for that matter), get rid of the stigma that I despise: "SEOs are just selling snake oil"?

We absolutely do not need the SEO Police. If we were to define an SEO Code of Ethics, then frankly that code is only as good as the enforcement of those ethics. We all know what happens in a town when speed limit signs are put up: but as soon as word gets out that the police never pull people over for speeding, then what's the point? People ignore those speed limits.

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Indian Online Marketing Company Part - III

Web Design Tips

Web design trends are changing with time. However, the basic tips that you need to follow to make your website a success still remains the same. Let’s take a look at some the best web design tips:

•             Simple and clean: Keep your website clean and clutter-free. Try to avoid excess ads, banners, icons, badges, signs, pop-ups, buttons, etc. This could be a distracting feature for the visitors.

•             Research: Study the different websites relevant to your field and comprehend the message that you would like to convey on your website based on the best practices.

•             Visual hierarchy: Prioritise and optimise the items or images that are likely to get more attention to your website.

•             Easy access: Make your text consistent in terms of font, font-size and alignment of colours.

Web Design tips for beginners

Mastering the art of web design is not an uphill task. As a beginner, it is just a process of continuous learning for you. Once you learn the tips and tricks to meet your deadlines, address the challenges and gain proficiency over the technical skills, you are all set to make your career as a professional web designer. Here’s a list of key web design tips that will help you become a successful web designer.

•             For any profession, the key to success is practice. Keep practicing till you perfect the skill.

•             Make simple and clean designs.

•             Start your web design practice with moderate graphics or images.

•             Try and interact with the visitors through communicative graphics.

•             To make your website attractive, create your own clip-art, use a standardised theme and add a responsive design.

•             Facilitate easy navigation and browser compatibility.

e-Commerce web design tips

e-Commerce web design is focused towards the overall customer journey from the point of first contact till the final checkout. The primary responsibility of an ecommerce web designer is to make this journey as quick and easy as possible. Here’s a list of some expert tips to build such e-Commerce websites that customers will love.

•             Maintain simple and clear system of filters by different parameters.

•             Keep a dominating search bar on the main website page.

•             Remove the out-of-stock products from the website.

•             Make sure to highlight the product images along with the description.

•             Place your shopping cart at a convenient location for the customer to spot it.

•             Use an efficient navigating tool like bread crumbs.

•             Flaunt a huge fly-out menu with categories and sub-categories list.

•             Display the final cost on the product page or shopping cart page.

•             Make your website SEO friendly.

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Indian Online Marketing Company Part - II

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE WEB DESIGN

Websites that are not well designed tend to perform poorly and have sub-optimal Google Analytics metrics (e.g. high bounce rates, low time on site, low pages per visit and low conversions). So what makes good web design? Below we explore the top 10 web design principles that will make your website aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, engaging, and effective.

1. PURPOSE

Good web design always caters to the needs of the user. Are your web visitors looking for information, entertainment, some type of interaction, or to transact with your business? Each page of your website needs to have a clear purpose, and to fulfill a specific need for your website users in the most effective way possible.

2. COMMUNICATION

People on the web tend to want information quickly, so it is important to communicate clearly, and make your information easy to read and digest. Some effective tactics to include in your web design include: organising information using headlines and sub headlines, using bullet points instead of long windy sentences, and cutting the waffle.

3. TYPEFACES

In general, Sans Serif fonts such as Arial and Verdana are easier to read online (Sans Serif fonts are contemporary looking fonts without decorative finishes). The ideal font size for reading easily online is 16px and stick to a maximum of 3 typefaces in a maximum of 3 point sizes to keep your design streamlined.

4. COLOURS

A well thought out colour palette can go a long way to enhance the user experience. Complementary colours create balance and harmony. Using contrasting colours for the text and background will make reading easier on the eye. Vibrant colours create emotion and should be used sparingly (e.g. for buttons and call to actions). Last but not least, white space/ negative space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look.

5. IMAGES

A picture can speak a thousand words, and choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience. If you don’t have high quality professional photos on hand, consider purchasing stock photos to lift the look of your website. Also consider using infographics, videos and graphics as these can be much more effective at communicating than even the most well written piece of text.

6. NAVIGATION

Navigation is about how easy it is for people to take action and move around your website. Some tactics for effective navigation include a logical page hierarchy, using bread crumbs, designing clickable buttons, and following the ‘three click rule’ which means users will be able to find the information they are looking for within three clicks.

7. GRID BASED LAYOUTS

Placing content randomly on your web page can end up with a haphazard appearance that is messy. Grid based layouts arrange content into sections, columns and boxes that line up and feel balanced, which leads to a better looking website design.

8. “F” PATTERN DESIGN

Eye tracking studies have identified that people scan computer screens in an “F” pattern. Most of what people see is in the top and left of the screen and the right side of the screen is rarely seen. Rather than trying to force the viewer’s visual flow, effectively designed websites will work with a reader’s natural behavior and display information in order of importance (left to right, and top to bottom).

9. LOAD TIME

Everybody hates a website that takes ages to load.  Tips to make page load times more effective include optimizing image sizes (size and scale), combining code into a central CSS or JavaScript file (this reduces HTTP requests) and minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript (compressed to speed up their load time).

10: MOBILE FRIENDLY

It is now commonplace to access websites from multiple devices with multiple screen sizes, so it is important to consider if your website is mobile friendly. If your website is not mobile friendly, you can either rebuild it in a responsive layout (this means your website will adjust to different screen widths) or you can build a dedicated mobile site (a separate website optimised specifically for mobile users).

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Indian Online Marketing Company Part - I

Internet marketing, these are two simple words but when put together, it covers a lot of subject matters that needs considerable amount of attention. The basics of internet marketing includes researching the market, search engines, advertising (email), marketing, promotion (local) and marketing offline.

Let’s start with researching the market.

You have to identify first your market, and think of ways on how to reach those markets. You should be able to convey a message with value, for your prospects and clients to get a better understanding of what you are trying to advertise.

The two most important words in market research are target and hit. An effective marketing research should be able to hit the identified target. Your target will depend largely on what your business can provide to clients.

Marketing research further involves primary and secondary research, combined research, quantitative and qualitative.

The next internet marketing basic is the search engine.

This has two types, namely: directories search engine and the PPC (pay per click) engines. If you are to engage in internet marketing, the presence of a search engine is quite important. Although it can be quite expensive, most business can’t possibly do without it because it is the most effective way to advertise the business.

Directories require a huge amount of patience for effective marketing. You have to wait for a couple of weeks before you actually appear on the site. Your site position can also change without further notice because this engines change their indexes and ranking rules every now and then.

PPC engines are more expensive but easier to utilize. You can obtain a much higher listing and fast and steady results.

Advertising is the next basic on the list.

After you identify the desires and general wants of your target, you can also identify their interests. There are different publications which take up advertising; you can also make use of newsletter list advertising. It has three types: solo advertisement, classified ads, and top line ads.

Marketing through email usually leads to several problems, but despite this situation, it is quite effective because you can actually generate a response from three targets. You can make use of opt-in, newsletter, and UCE.

The second to the last internet marketing basic is promotion.

Make sure that you also promote in your local area, besides your first real clients will surely come from somewhere near your place. Since many businesses focus their attention to web audiences, they often forget to advertise locally. You can make use of press releases, magazines, newspapers, business guides, and many more.

Conclusion

Without advertisement, any business will fail. It is therefore imperative to have a good team that could handle all your business advertising, offline or online. Internet marketing requires a lot of thought, effort, and time. If you devote all these aspects towards proper advertising, all your efforts will be worthy once you see the business’ success.

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