As we all know the Cloud-based systems are becoming the most popular architecture in the software engineering world, and the most famous and beloved Cloud platform among developers is Spring Cloud.
Spring Cloud has some important features which are given in the following parts and the feature part does a specific job:
Looking to give your homepage a well-needed design update in late 2021 or 2022? Not a bad idea; first impressions are crucial when it comes to business websites. But, fixing your homepage and website design is no easy feat.
Web design trends are evolving faster. Blame the ever-decreasing user’s attention span. The average visitor now spends just 0.5 seconds scanning your homepage to form an opinion about your brand and decide whether to click through or bounce.
Increased user expectations and uncertainty in the user’s response, which is highly impacted by the site’s first impression, are other reasons to consider. This is why the designs which were trending in 2019 are no longer viable in 2021 or 2022.
We have curated the ten best examples of homepage designs to inspire your business in 2022, including a rundown of the best strategies and tips.
Let’s start by highlighting why homepage optimization is necessary for 2022:
Your website — especially your homepage — is your brand’s first chance to attract, build trust with, and connect with visitors.
According to recent statistics on why website design is important:
Think of it the same way as walking into a brick-and-mortar store. Visitors are more enticed by a carefully curated ambiance of neatly stocked shelves and welcoming employees than a store that’s dark, messy, or seemingly unfriendly.
Using this logic, your homepage’s above-the-fold section is where you’ll greet visitors and reel them in for more.
Homepage design has come a long way since 2019. In this section, you will explore how.
These homepage designs crush it above the fold. Take just a few of these tips to heart, and your website will be poised to attract leads and conversions — no matter which industry you’re in.
Most businesses make the mistake of adding a CTA button that first persuades the user to click on it and then asks for the visitor’s email address.
Netflix also did the same in its 2019 design.
However, Netflix combined both steps in its 2021 homepage design.
The new, improved 2021 homepage design asks for the user email address right up front along with the CTA button.
Here is a good comparison of both the designs:
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
The older 2019 Spotify homepage design used light pink and orange colors in its home page main area. The CTA color was green, but if you look closely, the CTA lacks visibility.
The new 2021 design uses blue and green colors with a much larger font size for the main heading. The colors are attractive, and the CTA is visible clearly.
Here is the comparison of the Spotify homepage 2019 design vs. 2020 design:
2019 homepage design
Vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
If you compare the Hulu 2019 vs. 2021 Hulu homepage, the brand name has been prioritized and shown as the main heading.
Moreover, the older homepage had pricing information everywhere, which has been reduced intelligently in the new design.
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
Nextiva realized the importance of reducing visual noise in its newly designed 2021 homepage. Visual noise happens when you use too many colors to attract user attention. Different colors compete with each other resulting in diluted customer observation.
In the old 2019 homepage, Nextiva used orange, blue, and green as the primary colors, while in the 2021 revamped design, they have used blue as the main color.
Here is a comparison of the two designs:
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Moreover, the older homepage didn’t have an image in the product menu, but the new 2021 homepage improves the UX further.
Below is a comparison:
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
GoToMeeting does a great job educating the users about their product by adding more content on the homepage that comprehensively explains their product features.
Moreover, they have replaced the older hero image with a new picture that portrays the changing needs of their audiences. Nowadays, there is a rise in work from home culture due to Covid-19. Hence, the photo and the heading text clearly target the needs of their users.
Here is a comparison of the 2019 vs. 2020 homepage of GoToMeeting:
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
Zillow does an impressive job of applying Hick’s Law in allowing visitors to make faster decisions. Hick’s law states that the more options you present to the users, the faster they will decide. Therefore, it is a major factor in improving website usability.
The old 2019 homepage design of Zillow offered too many options to the users, like they want to buy, rent, or sell a property. The users first select either one of the three options and then enter the zip code to start their search.
The new 2021 homepage design changed that. Now, Zillow offers users a single option. They only need to enter the zip code to get started.
By reducing the number of actions that users need to take to just one, the homepage design eases the overall decision-making process of the site visitors.
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
The CTA is a key element of every website. It helps the users decide on their next action and helps to convert the visitors into leads.
Plex lacked an optimized CTA placement in its 2019 home page design. Hence, the 2021 design received an uplift to better place the CTA for increased visitor engagement.
Take a look at the home page designs of Plex from two different years. If you compare the two home pages of 2019 vs. 2021, the primary difference that will grab your attention is the CTA.
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
Dropbox has significantly worked on its main content, which is clearly visible in the comparison homepage design images of 2019 vs. 2021.
The 2021 homepage is seen fixing faded, minimalistic, and less engaging content in the older homepage.
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways:
The homepage design of American technology company Cisco has seen a drastic change in 2021; it deserves to appear on this list. The company website smartly represents an appeal for future development through its killer homepage design.
Here is a comparison of the old 2019 homepage design vs. the new moving block design of 2021:
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways
Slack has made it easier for the users to understand the product well by using a video on the homepage.
The 2019 design has an image, while the 2021 design has a video that helps the visitors understand how the product works.
Here is a comparison of the 2019 design vs. 2021 design:
2019 homepage design
vs.
2021 homepage design
Key Takeaways
By making it to this point in our guide, you now have plenty of inspiration to run with when upgrading your homepage. You should also have a better understanding of how powerful this tool may become for your brand.
So now it’s time to brainstorm how to use these ideas for your own 2021 homepage design. First, jot down the key points from this guide and honestly assess how your website currently compares.
Accomplish this task, and your brand might see an uptick in website traffic and conversions. It may even earn a spot in a roundup of killer website designs just like this one.
The post 10 Homepage Design Comparisons to Inspire Your Business in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
People often like the things that work against their growth. . . . People like to use their strengths . . . to achieve quick, dramatic results, even if . . . they aren’t developing the new skills they will need later on. People like to believe they are as good as everyone says . . . and not take their weaknesses as seriously as they might. People don’t like to hear bad news or get criticism. . . . There is tremendous risk . . . in leaving what one does well to attempt to master something new.
As growth-minded leaders, they start with a belief in human potential and development — both their own and other people’s. Instead of using the company as a vehicle for their greatness, they use it as an engine of growth — for themselves, the employees, and the company as a whole.
– Carol Dweck
What happens when a leader refuses to confront the brutal facts? “The minute a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.
– Jim Collins
Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.
Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organisation. When that happens people feel centred and that gives their work meaning.
A comment on the Medium version of last week’s article got to me:
I wish they’d just leave Perl static. Then we wouldn’t have to waste money retesting legacy Perl apps on the newest version every couple of years, in case new features we don’t want breaks code that’s been unchanged for years. […] Sometimes things should just be left to die gracefully.
In the scope of human evolution, language is a relatively recent invention. But we’ve been interacting well before this through nonverbal modes of communication. As a result, nonverbal communication is hardwired into our brains, much deeper than the more recent language-processing abilities. This is why nonverbal communication has a far greater impact.
The way you carry yourself is a source of personal power — the kind of power that is the key to presence. It’s the key that allows you to unlock yourself—your abilities, your creativity, your courage, and even your generosity. It doesn’t give you skills or talents you don’t have; it helps you to share the ones you do have. It doesn’t make you smarter or better informed; it makes you more resilient and open. It doesn’t change who you are; it allows you to be who you are. — Amy Cuddy
Our body language expresses our mental state whether we like it or not. Our facial expressions, voice posture, and all the other components of body language reflect our mental and emotional condition every second. Because we don’t control this flow consciously, whatever is in our head will show up in our body language — Olivia Fox Cabane
How to Align Our Mind and Body:
You must commit to a conversation, even the brief ones, or walk away. If you’re too distracted, admit that to both yourself and the other person. Be present or be gone. — Celeste Headlee
Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story. We add meaning to the action we observed. We make a guess at the motive driving the behavior. Why were they doing that? We also add judgment — is that good or bad? And then, based on these thoughts or stories, our body responds with an emotion. — Kerry Patterson
If you were paying close attention to your IT department around the 8th of December, you might have heard some quiet sobbing and the occasional wail of, “Why? Why?! WHY?!” Now, it was the year 2020, so this might have seemed normal to you, but it’s actually something of a problem that could affect your business: CentOS is pretty much dead.
For the non-total-nerds among us, here’s the skinny: CentOS is a Linux-based operating system, typically used on servers. CentOS has been incredibly popular, and quite a few businesses run on it. But now, that’s changing.
CentOS is a Linux-based operating system, typically used on servers…But now, that’s changing
CentOS used to be released in thoroughly tested versions, the latest being CentOS 8. CentOS 8 was released in September of 2019 and was supposed to be supported for ten years. Now, it’s been decided that CentOS will no longer have versioned releases, opting for a rolling-release style of updates. That means there’ll be one version that constantly gets new software.
That’s cool in theory, but it means the operating system will be less stable overall. Essentially, it’s going to be used as a development branch of / testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is no longer its own OS. If you have CentOS-based servers, you should migrate to another OS sooner rather than later.
And I just got my own CentOS-based VPS set up the way I wanted it.
Here’s the short, short version of the history of CentOS: Red Hat (an OS developer) has two Linux distributions of its own and has had for a long time. There’s the free and community-focused Fedora and the business-focused highly expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux (AKA RHEL).
Funny story: RHEL, despite its expensive licenses, is still mostly made from open source code, which anyone can access and use. And it’s a good OS, particularly for people who like stability.
In 2004, some smart people took all the open-source parts of RHEL and made a brand new, nearly identical operating system with it: the Community Enterprise Operating System, or CentOS. Basically, people could download and use an enterprise-level server OS for free. All the documentation for RHEL was compatible, and you could get support from the community.
It was the perfect alternative for anyone who didn’t have the budget for expensive software licenses.
In 2014, Red Hat offered to partner with the CentOS community. The idea was basically this: “It’s pretty much the same software. If our company and your community work together, both our products will be better! We make our money from enterprise customers, anyway.”
Most importantly, with Red Hat doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of updates and support, the CentOS community could focus on growing in other ways.
Red Hat pinky swore [citation needed] that they were in this for the long haul, and CentOS did continue to flourish. You know, until 2020.
Red Hat must have eventually decided that having a popular free version of its own enterprise software and managing it themselves no less — wasn’t that good for business. So they all but shut the project down.
Well, technically, they just changed how it operated. Instead of producing tested, production-ready versions, CentOS is merely a testing ground for RHEL. It is no longer, in my opinion, a good option for anyone who wants to run a stable server.
So if you jumped on the CentOS 8 bandwagon, what should you put on your physical and virtual servers now? Well, you’ve got options.
For those who don’t mind going to a very different kind of Linux, Debian has been the picture of OS stability and sysadmin-friendliness for a long time. If you want more frequent software updates, the Debian-based Ubuntu Server is popular and pretty good.
Yes, that Oracle has a RHEL-compatible Linux distribution of its own. But it’s not a clone, exactly. I mean, this is Oracle. It’s set up to use their tools and ecosystem, so I hope you like Oracle products. But hey, the OS itself is free!
ClearOS is another RHEL-compatible OS that’s mostly doing its own thing, though I’m not entirely sure what that thing is. Does the company have some deal with Hewlett-Packard? Anyway, they do have a free community edition and paid editions for home and business use.
This is an upcoming release from the makers of CloudLinuxOS. It looks like they intend to load the new RHEL-based OS with some of their own tools, such as reboot-less server update tech. The first release is intended to be a more or less drop-in replacement for CentOS 8.
So the community that made and loved CentOS in the first place is, to say the least, ticked. They are so ticked that Greg Kurtzer (a co-founder of CentOS) has decided to do it all over again by making Rocky Linux and keep it in the community this time.
Again, the goal is to make a re-build of RHEL, a drop-in replacement for CentOS (at least for now). Eventually, the goal is to migrate from CentOS to Rocky Linux as easy as using a single, one-line command. The ETA for initial release isn’t quite set in stone, but I can personally vouch for how hard the community is working.
[See, full disclosure here… after writing this article, I joined the Rocky Linux documentation team.]
Some are out now, and others will be soon. Again, CentOS 8 will be supported until the end of 2021. CentOS 7, weirdly, will be supported until June 2024.
Migration shouldn’t be too complicated. Still, a pain in the rear that we have to do this at all, though.
The post How CentOS Became 2020’s Final Victim first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
The transitioning of power is fraught with difficulties. Different teams have different values, different experience, different expertise, different priorities, and that leads to different tooling, and different methodologies.
It’s tempting to think of web design as an end-to-end process, starting with research and concluding with metrics. The reality is that most designers and developers join projects part-way through an ongoing process.
That leaves us with a difficult choice: do we try and meet the client’s expectations with our own toolset, or adapt to the tools and processes that are already in place?
For anyone who’s taking over a web project from a different designer/developer/agency (D/D/A), here’s a practical guide to help you make a success of the transition.
99.99% of the time, something broke down in the previous client-D/D/A relationship.
In my experience it’s almost never about money. Most clients are willing to pay above the basic market rate if they believe they’re receiving a good return on their investment. A client that tells you the previous D/D/A is simply too expensive is anticipating negotiating your fees.
happy clients don’t shop around
Occasionally you’ll find that a freelance designer has been headhunted by an agency, and is no longer available. Occasionally the company outgrows a D/D/A, moving into areas that the D/D/A doesn’t support. But these situations are rare, happy clients — even moderately content clients — don’t shop around. If they’re speaking to you, something motivated them to do so.
It is alarmingly common that a D/D/A simply goes AWOL. It’s most common at the lower end of the market where the sums of money involved are less likely to prompt a legal dispute. Frequently, an unreputable D/D/A will ghost a client in favour of a better, newer opportunity.
Sometimes the client hires a new manager, and the new manager ushers in revised expectations that the previous D/D/A can’t meet.
Most commonly, the previous D/D/A has dropped the ball one too many times — mistakes happen, and reasonable clients will tolerate them provided they are rectified promptly, but everyone has their limits.
Most clients will be more than happy to explain what went wrong in the previous relationship; it will inevitably be a one-sided explanation, but it will help you to understand the client’s expectations.
Be extremely wary of a client who doesn’t know what went wrong. Be even more wary of a client who talks about “upgrading” their outsourcing — they’re trying to flatter you. In these cases the client may well be hiding something — like their failure to pay invoices.
Remember: at some point the previous D/D/A was new, and excited about having a new client, was optimistic about the project, and it didn’t end well. The best way to not repeat mistakes is to learn from them, and to do that you need to know what they were.
We’re often so eager to secure new work, that we rush to have the client sign on the dotted line, expecting to be able to tackle any problems later.
It is imperative that as a professional, you keep your promises. Before you make those promises, take your time to understand the project and related business. If a client is invested enough to sign a contract with you they won’t mind you doing due diligence first.
Clients rarely have a full picture of their project — they’re not web professionals, if they were they’d be building their own sites. Your best source of information is the previous D/D/A.
Before you contact the previous D/D/A check with your client; it’s possible they don’t know they’re being replaced yet. If your client is fine with it, then reach out.
When you speak to the previous D/D/A be sensitive to the fact that you’re taking money out of their pocket. Certainly the previous D/D/A may tell you where to go, they may ignore you altogether, but most will be pragmatic about handing over a project if only to ensure their final invoice to their now ex-client is paid promptly.
Every site has its idiosyncrasies, if you can establish a friendly rapport with the previous D/D/A then the transition will be considerably less bumpy.
In my opinion a company’s domain name(s) should always be held by the company; it’s such an essential business asset that it should be guarded as jealously as the company’s bank accounts.
Unfortunately there are businesses that outsource everything to do with the web. If the break with the previous D/D/A is acrimonious then securing the domain name could be problematic.
It’s not your job to secure the domain name — you have no leverage, the client does. It is your job to impress upon the client how mission-critical the domain name(s) is.
Hosting arrangements vary from project to project. It’s not uncommon, nor unreasonable, for the previous D/D/A to be hosting the client’s site on their own space. If that is the case, be prepared to migrate it quickly either to your own server, or a dedicated space.
If you’re migrating onto a new space pay particular attention to the email provision. Taking over a project usually means taking over a live project, and that usually means email accounts.
In any case, you need full access to the hosting space. You certainly need FTP access, you probably need SSH access.
In addition to hosting, check if your client’s site uses a CDN, and if it does, who has control of it.
Once you have FTP access to the hosting server you can probably grab all backend code from the server.
The benefit of grabbing the code from the server — as opposed to accepting files from the previous D/D/A — is that you can be absolutely certain you’re getting the current (working) code.
If the client has broken with the previous D/D/A because they were unable to deliver on a particular task, you do not want to be working with files that have been partially modified.
Fresh Installs
If you’re working with something like a CMS, it’s often a good idea to run a fresh install on your server, and then copy across any templates, plugins, and migrate the database.
When it comes to acquiring source code, frontend code is far more problematic than backend.
frontend code is far more problematic than backend
If the previous D/D/A is even part-way competent then the CSS and JavaScript on the web space is minified. Minified CSS is not too problematic and can be unminified fairly easily, but you do not want to be unpicking a minified JavaScript file — I once had a project in which a developer had minified his own code in the same file with all of his dependencies, including both Vue and jQuery [yes, I know].
Dealing with frontend source code can take on an additional dimension if you discover that the previous D/D/A used techniques you don’t — using Less instead of Sass, or writing scripts in TypeScript.
Unminifying CSS & JavaScript
Unminifying (or beautifying, or prettifying) code is reasonably easy. There are tools online that will help, including Unminify, Online CSS Unminifier, FreeFormatter, JS Minify Unminify, and more. You’ll also find plenty of extensions for code editors including HTML-CSS-JS Prettify for Sublime Text, and Atom-Beautify for Atom. You’ll find that some editors have the functionality built in.
A word of warning: code beautification does not restore comments, and in the case of JavaScript, does not unobfuscate variable names. Beautifying code is no substitute for a copy of the original, unminified source code.
Emergency Measures
If unminifying the source code isn’t possible for any reason, or more likely, the unminified JavaScript still looks like minified code — albeit nicely formatted minified code — then your last resort is to import the code and override it where necessary.
The first thing to do in this case is to explain the situation to your client. Make sure they understand this is a temporary patch that you’ll iron-out as you rebuild parts of the project.
Then, copy and paste the old minified code into a fresh project setup. For CSS that probably means creating a legacy.scss file, including the old CSS, and importing it into your own Sass. For JavaScript, create a legacy.js file, add all the old JS, and import that.
This will result in a much bigger set of files than necessary, you may end up using !important in your style declarations [yuck], and you’ll trigger lots of Lighthouse warnings about surplus code.
However, in the likely event that your client has a long list of changes they wanted live yesterday, this dirty hack will give you a working site that you can then rebuild piece by piece over time.
Assets normally means images, and images can normally be grabbed via FTP.
Occasionally — although less occasionally now image files rarely contain text — you’ll need the source files to make changes to images.
Whether or not the client has them, or if the previous D/D/A will hand them over, depends largely on the agreement between the client and the previous D/D/A.
Most businesses are reasonably aware of the importance of brand assets, so you’ll probably find they at least have a copy of their logo; whether it’s an SVG or a JPG is another matter entirely. Impress upon them the importance of locating those files for you.
It is rare to receive a project that doesn’t rely on third party code. That third party code is probably entwined in the custom source code, and unpicking it is a time-consuming job.
It is very likely the previous D/D/A used a library or framework, and given the increasing number of them, it’s even more likely that the library or framework they used is not the one you prefer.
Whether you choose to unpick the code and swap out the previous D/D/A’s dependencies for your own preferences (usually faster in the long term), or whether you choose to work with what you’re given (usually faster in the short term) is entirely up to you.
In my experience it’s no hardship to pick up another CSS library; switching from one JavaScript framework to another is a substantially bigger job involving not just syntax but core concepts.
Everyone has their own way of doing things. Some D/D/As embrace build environments, some do not. Some build environments are simple to use, some are not. Some build environments are adaptable to your process, some are not.
Unlike adopting a library, or even a framework, adopting a new build process is rarely a good idea
Build environments are numerous — Gulp, Grunt, and Webpack are all popular — and D/D/As are almost as opinionated about them as they are about CMS.
In lieu of raw files, it’s not uncommon for the previous D/D/A to tell you to “just run such-and-such CLI” command, to match up your local environment to theirs. Unlike adopting a library, or even a framework, adopting a new build process is rarely a good idea because you’re relegating yourself from expert to novice at a time when you’ve yet to earn your new client’s trust.
Stand your ground. Their approach failed, that’s why you’ve been brought in. You do you.
Any third part code that has been paid for is licensed. Always check who holds these licenses. As well as being legally required, valid licenses are normally required for updates, bug fixes, and in some cases support.
Common pitfalls include: font licenses (which may be licensed under the previous D/D/A’s Creative Cloud, Fontstand, Monotype, etc. account); stock image licenses (which may be licensed for use by the previous D/D/A alone); and plugins (which are frequently bulk-licensed to D/D/As in bundles).
It’s depressingly common to find clients using unlicensed assets. On more than one occasion I’ve had to explain to a client the potential consequences of using pirated fonts.
Fortunately it’s increasingly common for third party providers to attach a licence to a specified domain, which means you may be able to claim the licence on behalf of your client. Major suppliers like CMS and ecommerce solutions frequently have an option for the previous developer to release a licence and allow you to claim it.
In the case of licensing, if you’re unsure, do not be afraid to reach out to the third party provider and check with them if your client is licensed once they break ties with their previous D/D/A.
The only thing that sours a client relationship faster than telling them they need to buy a license they thought they’d already paid for, is telling them they’re being sued for copyright infringement.
Protect your client, and protect yourself, by making sure everything is licensed properly. If you can get something in writing to that effect from the previous D/D/A, do.
One of the major benefits of taking over a site, as opposed to building from scratch, is that you have a measurable set of site-specific data to guide your decision making.
This only applies if you have the data, so ask to be added to the client’s analytics account.
There’s a strong chance that the design research carried out by the previous D/D/A is considered an internal document, not a deliverable, by the previous D/D/A. Check with your client: if they paid for the research (is it specified on an invoice?) then they’re entitled to a copy.
Clients have a tendency to use the term “website” as a catch-all term for everything digital.
When you take responsibility for a website, you’re almost always expected to take responsibility for any digital service the client uses. That means, newsletter services like Mailchimp, customer service accounts like Intercom, and 227,000 page WordPress blogs that they forgot to mention in the initial brief.
Repeat the whole of Step 2 for every additional app, micro-site, blog, and anything else the client has, unless you are expressly told by the client not to.
Up until now, you haven’t asked the client to sign on the dotted line. This whole process is part of your due diligence.
By checking these things you can identify unforeseen problems, and potential costs. Are you tied to an obscure build process? Do you need to relicense the CMS? Do you need to recreate all of the site assets?
Some of these conversations are hard to have, but the time to have them is now
If there is any question of the project being more complex than anticipated, have an honest conversation with your client — they will appreciate your transparency, and they’ll appreciate being kept informed. Any client who doesn’t value a clear picture of what they’re paying you for, isn’t a client you want.
Some of these conversations are hard to have, but the time to have them is now, not three months down the line.
This is the point of no return. From this point on, any problems aren’t the previous D/D/A’s, they’re yours.
For every service you have, from the newsletter login, to the CMS login, to the FTP details, change the password. (Make sure you notify the client.)
You’re going to need a staging site so your new client can preview the work you’ve done for them.
Set the staging site up immediately, before you’ve made any changes to the code. In doing so you’ll discover early on if there are files missing, or issues with the files you do have.
When a client commissions a site from scratch they are filled with expectation. The fact that they are leaving their previous D/D/A and seeking you out demonstrates that their experience fell short of their hopes.
You now have a client with realistic — perhaps even pessimistic — expectations. You have a benchmark against which your work can be objectively measured.
When problems arise, as they invariably will, never try to blame the previous D/D/A; it was your job to assess the state of play before you started work. If there is an issue with legacy assets, you should have brought it to your client’s attention early on.
If you learn from the previous D/D/A’s mistakes, you won’t be handing the project on to someone else any time soon.
Featured image via Unsplash.
As a freelance web developer, how many clients do you get from your website? If you’re like most, you’re probably lucky to get one client every 2-3 months. Unfortunately, that’s very common.
These days it’s not enough just to be a web developer if you want to make really good money. You have to be able to differentiate yourself in the marketplace to get more opportunities. If you can do this successfully, I’m 100% sure that it will help you win more projects and charge higher rates.
So today I’d like to share with you a little bit of my own story. In the last 4 months, I was able to position myself as a specialist with my personal site that ultimately helped me win more projects and get better clients.
The first thing that I would invite you to do is to shift your thinking a little bit.
If you want to be a high-paid professional (especially if you’re a freelancer), you need to learn how to market and sell yourself. And the first rule of marketing is to identify your target audience and the result that you help them achieve.
I can’t over emphasize the importance of this.
You need to know exactly who you help and the outcome that you provide. That is ultimately what you get paid for. So you need to define your ideal client.
My suggestion is to pick a market segment that you would love to work with, that has the money to afford you and (ideally) those that have already done some projects for. Once you have identified your target market, you need to create your positioning statement. Your positioning statement should immediately tell who you help and what results you help them achieve.
Here is a formula that you can use to create your positioning statement:
I help __ (target audience) __ do (build/achieve/overcome) ___ (problem that you help them solve).
For example: I help startup SaaS companies build highly converting websites. You can go even narrower if you want, but this is already much better than just saying, “I’m a web developer.”
If your positioning statement is “I help startup SaaS companies build highly converting websites” it can still be narrowed down and improved. As you gain more experience and work with more clients, you can refine it to something like: “I help healthcare SaaS companies build highly converting websites.”
Now imagine if a SaaS startup founder from a healthcare niche came to your site and saw that positioning statement vs a very generic one like “I’m a web developer”. How much easier would it be for you to differentiate yourself and gain a huge advantage over your competitors in the marketplace?
“I am passionate about coding, I have 10+ years of experience, client satisfaction is my main goal…”
Have you ever seen statements like that on someone’s portfolio site? Or maybe it even says that on your own site. From my experience, statements like that don’t really help you convert site visitors into customers.
If you personally go to a company’s website, what would you like to see yourself as a visitor? Somebody saying how good they are, or to find out if they can be a good fit to solve your problem? I think that most of the time the latter is what you’re after. That’s what other people usually go to your website for; they want to know how you can help them solve their problems.
For instance, take a look at this section from Tom Hirst’s website:
As you can see, this immediately helps the visitors understand if Tom is a good fit for them or not. He doesn’t just boast about how good he is, but rather helps the client understand what problems he can solve for them. Another important part here is that Tom doesn’t use a lot of technical terms. Since a lot of his visitors may be not as tech-savvy as he is, there is no point in confusing them with technical jargon. The more you can speak their language – the easier it will be for you to build trust and connection that will later help you during the sales process.
Let me tell you a bit about the 4 parts of my site that I think have contributed significantly to having me win more projects. The 4 elements are problem, solution, proof, and call to action. Let me go over them 1 by 1 and explain why they’re important.
A good way to start your landing page sales letter is by identifying the problem of the client. If you know their pain points and you mention them, you should be able to hook them into reading your copy. And a well-written copy plays a significant role in persuading your visitors to take the next action.
Once you have mentioned their problem, you need to present them with a solution that you provide. You need to show them how working with you can solve their problems. Whatever their problems are, you have to show them that you understand them and can help solve them.
That’s what UX designer Matt Oplinski is doing on his website is doing. He knows that his clients might need help with 3 types of projects: Digital Products, Marketing Websites or Mobile Apps. For example, the clients who are seeking a redesign of their website may have an issue with their current conversion rates. And that’s exactly what Matthew lists in the middle section under “Custom Marketing Website” headline. I would even argue that he may have been a bit more specific with the solutions that he can offer.
The main takeaway here is that it’s important to be very specific with the result that you can help your clients achieve. The more accurate it is, the better it is going to convert.
Social proof plays an extremely important role in converting a lead into a customer. When someone comes to your site, they don’t know if they can trust you. If they were to spend one, two, five, ten or even more thousand dollars – they need to feel comfortable with you. They need to have at least some level of trust. That’s why they want to see as many signs as possible that you’re trustworthy.
Social proof obviously can come in many different forms. The most popular and important ones, in my opinion, are case studies with results that you’ve produced and testimonials. They will be absolutely crucial to persuade your clients and be able to differentiate yourself from others.
Here is a good example from Bill Erickson’s site:
Ideally, your testimonials should showcase a particular business goal that you’ve helped your client to achieve. But even if you don’t have those, you can use ordinary testimonials that your clients give you. That alone is better than no testimonials at all.
Last but not least you should have a single call to action on your site. Most likely it will be a button to contact you, or book a call with you.
In my opinion, it’s important to have a single call to action because if you give people too many options they will not be so focused on taking an action that you actually want them to take.
I also suggest that you have a call to action button at least 2-3 times on the page: one on the first screen where you have your positioning statement and/or your offer, and one at the very bottom of the page so that when they finish reading they don’t need to go back to the top to take action. Having another call to action in the middle of your page is also a good idea. My advice would be to add it after you’ve described the problem, your solution and presented yourself as someone who can help your leads with their problems.
I started niching down and created my own website four months ago. Being a member of multiple freelance platforms, I’ve been fortunate enough to get enough leads in my target market to test out my strategy. So far the results are pretty amazing.
It has become a lot easier for me to win projects, get clients that respect my knowledge, and my process. Besides that, I’ve been able to significantly increase my rates for my work. A great thing about working with similar projects every time is that you automate and streamline a lot of things, improve your delivery process and become much more efficient. You can even create a productized service. This is something that is very hard to achieve if you’re constantly working on custom projects that have different requirements and involve different technologies.
To be completely transparent, I’m still in the process of building my authority in the niche, polishing my offer and gaining experience. I still have a long way to go. What I can certainly say today is that it has been one of the best decisions in my professional career.
To become a high paying professional in your industry you have to do things differently. Today I tried to show you one of the ways that you can improve your career or freelancing business fast. It probably won’t happen overnight, but in a matter of a few months you can be so much ahead of your competition if you deploy some of the strategies that I’ve shared with you today.
I really hope that this article has helped you gain some perspective and you will start to consider doing a similar thing that I did to achieve amazing results.
Featured image via Unsplash.
In this article you will find the most appreciated web solutions of 2020.
To create this list we took into account the following considerations: The popularity of the product or the service; How many users it has; How many times it was downloaded or installed; The level of efficiency; What you get for your money.
You’ll find WordPress themes and plugins, an affordable logo design contest, logo creators, website builders, web development services, and even more. Let’s get started…
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, being used by all kind of merchants, both small and large companies.
WPcustomify is 100% focused on WooCommerce, having huge experience. They will help you with everything you need:
Get in touch with them and let the experts manage all the issues and errors of your WooCommerce. Make the best out of your store, and help it get more traffic and convert better, by using the experience of WPcustomify.
Design and development projects require a high degree of precision and organization. To meet desired goals on time and budget, teams should adhere to initial estimates and deadlines impeccably. Besides, to be efficient and productive, they need to manage tasks and monitor progress in a systematic way.
actiTIME can assist developers and their managers in attaining these objectives effortlessly. As a high-quality and user-friendly timesheet app, it allows users to keep a detailed record of hours spent on multiple tasks and, in this way, collect data for consequent client billing and invoicing, as well as performance and productivity analysis.
However, actiTIME is more than just another time tracker – it includes powerful project management functionality that can help you:
actiTIME’s flexibility makes it an excellent choice for both individuals and teams of any size. The tool can be configured to meet varying management needs and integrated with many other useful apps through Zapier or API. In addition, you can always use the actiTIME timer through the Chrome extension in Jira, Github and GitLab, which will allow you to track hours without any distractions from the primary work process. Sign up for a free actiTIME trial and bring your productivity to the next level.
Total is one of the most complete WordPress theme that you can buy in 2020, being filled with 80+ builder modules, 40+ premade demos that you can install with 1-click, and over 500+ styling options.
This theme has over 43k happy users and it is used by some of the best websites in the world.
This theme is developed and maintained by WordPress experts that have been a part of the WP community for over 10 years.
Webdesign Toolbox will become a web design tools encyclopedia, currently featuring 965 resources in 78 different categories. Everybody was waiting for such a place and now it is live and heavily updated each month.
I just found out about this place and I can say that it is super. Having all the tools and services in a single place, very well categorized is super helpful. Now you don’t have to lose time on search engines and on ads (who pays more will get in front), you have everything at your disposal, in front of you.
Using Webdesign Toolbox is super simple to find the right web tools and services, just browse the website.
Trusted by some of the most innovative companies in the world (Microsoft, Disney, FOX, Grammarly, and many others), and with over 8 year’s experience in this market, TestingBot is a super solution that you can use for automated and manual testing.
It supports cross browser testing, live testing, real device testing, and tons of other things.
Start a free trial and see TestingBot in action.
Codester is a huge marketplace where designers and developers will find tens of thousands of premium PHP scripts, websites templates, apps, plugins, and much more.
Always check the flash sale section where hugely discounted items are being sold.
Taskade is a super technologically advanced remote workspace (works from anywhere where there’s an internet connection) that you and your team can use for chatting, organizing, and getting things done.
You can build a workspace from scratch using the included editor, use a ready-made templates, or edit the one you want.
This collaboration platform is free to use for 10 projects.
Bonsai is a the best suite of software for freelancers, being the top choice of tens of thousands of freelancers from all over the world.
They help you with everything you need, and they even provide invoice templates for freelance professionals – designer, developer, writer, marketer, contractor, consultant, photographer, etc.
Mobirise is the most powerful offline website builder in 2020, being loaded with 3500+ awesome website templates, with sliders, galleries, forms, popups, icons, and even more.
Use it to create a unique website, no coding or design skills needed.
Goodie was created by a team of experts that have super experience in the web development world.
This service is used mostly by web designers that need a reliable web development partner, and by customers that need to amplify their online presence.
MailMunch helps you create eye-catching forms and landing pages in seconds – no coding or design skills required!
It is quick to set up, easy to learn, and packs a punch with built-in email marketing features and integrations with any email marketing service of your choice.
Boost conversions by up to 400% with this complete lead generation software.
You want to let your website visitors create awesome emails and pages directly on your website? With Unlayer it is possible and it is super simple to implement this feature on your website.
This plug and play email editor and page builder can be embedded it in 5 minutes on your website.
Every WordPress website needs a powerful SEO plugin to take care of it. There is a huge difference between these plugins, some being extremely efficient.
One such efficient SEO plugin is Rank Math. This free WordPress plugin will make your website rank higher and get more traffic from your existing content.
Get it now, after a basic configuration the plugin runs autonomously.
Schema markups will make your website rank higher and get more traffic. To quickly add them, use Schema Pro. You press 1 button, and you select all the pages on which you want the schema markups to be added. It is so simple.
Landingi is a brilliant landing page builder that will help you create awesome designs with no experience, no coding skills and no design ideas.
Create a landing page that converts and which is engaging, with Landingi is a simple task for everybody.
CollectiveRay is specialized in providing super in-depth tutorials and articles for WordPress, hosting, themes, tools, and all kind of platforms.
You should always browse it whenever you are looking for detailed and accurate information about all kinds of stuff.
ContentSnare is the smart way to collect content. Why is that? Because it is an automated service that will help you quickly gather content from your customers and partners, without losing time on this aspect of your business.
Configure it in a few minutes and right after ContentSnare will be on autopilot, collecting materials in your place.
XSTORE is the most complete WooCommerce theme that you can get in 2020. It has included over 90 shop designs, and it also includes several plugins that are worth $407.
Get it now and build a high converting store.
FixRunner is your personal WordPress support team that will take care of your website 24/7.
They offer several services:
Let the experts help you with everything you need so your WordPress website can get the best conversion rates.
Heroic Table of Contents is the easiest way to add a table of contents to your WordPress website.
Are you using tables of contents? Everybody loves them, in articles and on websites.
Get your website to the next level with Heroic Table Of Contents, it’s free.
WrapPixel is a popular name in the React templates world. They offer high-quality themes that look awesome and which are lightning fast.
Browse WrapPixel and pick what you need for your projects.
Pixpa is a professional website builder that people use to create all-in-one websites: a store, a blog, and a client gallery.
The editor is filled with tons of designs and elements, and it is super simple to use.
Astra is the fastest growing theme of all time, having almost 1 million users.
Why does everybody love Astra? Because it has pixel-perfect included designs, it is fast, SEO optimized, it is simple to use and configure, and it is optimized for conversions.
Meet a very affordable and convenient website builder uKit. It allows you to quickly kickstart your online presence. Prices start from 2.5 USD/month, you get a stable hosting, unlimited storage space, and a free technical domain. Lots of colorful up-to-date templates, responsive technical support, and the ability to connect your external domain. You can try it for free on a 14-day trial – no credit card required.
Fotor is an online photo editor that is used by tens of thousands of web designers, online entrepreneurs, marketers, and people that have an online presence. Creating graphics and pictures that are engaging and converting is simple with Fotor, no need to have any design skills.
The interface will guide you every moment.
You can use Fotor also as a background remover.
stepFORM is a first-class freemium service for building forms, quizzes, and various online surveys. The whole process becomes seamless and takes a few minutes because due to the visual intuitive interface no programming skills are needed. With stepFORM, you can add a calc to your website, enable online payments, manage your orders with built-in CRM, and more. Try it out today! Free!
OpinionStage is a brilliant quiz maker that you can use with zero experience and zero design skills to create high-engaging quizzes.
Use the included editor and the beautiful elements to start designing your own content.
SuperbWebsiteBuilders.com focuses on reviewing and comparing website builders that refer to various business niches and make it possible to cover a broad spectrum of web design tasks. This information will be of great help to users looking for a professional web building platform to adhere to their needs. The resource also contains ratings and examples of websites created with popular website builders.
pCloudy is the right service to use for mobile app testing from anywhere and anytime. It has over 100k happy users and it is used by top companies like Philips, Honeywell and Jio.
Start a free trial to see pCloudy in action.
Bonsai is offering contract templates that will help you save time and look like a huge corporation.
You will find tons of templates to choose from, you will have the possibility to e-sign the contracts, and use automated reminders. It is super simple to use Bonsai for generating the right contracts for your projects.
uSocial is an elegant, lightweight social media icon design tool. Don’t waste time on manual assembling of icons or ordering them from freelancers – now you can design them yourself with uSocial. Make them float, follow the user as they scroll, or simply make them bigger and/or styled in the theme of your website.
Controlio will help you monitor your employees’ PC activity from anywhere, being the first choice of both small companies and enterprises.
Improve your company security and productivity by using this technologically-advanced software.
Start a free 14-day trial to see Controlio in action.
Wix2WP.Pro is the all-in-one website migration platform that makes it possible to successfully transfer Wix-powered websites to WordPress. The service is a perfect solution for newbies as well as for web design pros, who lack time to handle the migration process independently. They employ qualified pros, who are ready to tackle all the special nuances of the website transfer procedure with precise attention to details.
WhatFontIs is the best font finder that you can use in 2020 to identify fonts for free, from any picture and from any website (or email).
This is the only software that has a huge database (over 620k indexed fonts) and which can identify both free and paid fonts, including Google Fonts.
Identify fonts like pros with WhatFontIs.
FoxMetrics is a super smart cloud-based web analytics platform that empowers businesses to collect, enrich, transform, and explore their mobile, web, and offline customer journey data.
It is much better than everything else.
Creative Tim creates some of the best React, Vuejs, Angular themes, UI Kits, and elements.
They offer both free and paid stuff, take a look on what they offer. Once you use a Creative Tim product, you never go elsewhere.
When it comes to moving your website from one website builder or CMS to another, hiring the best SiteBuilders.Pro specialists will surely be an advantage. The platform has rich experience in transferring websites between popular web design systems. What they offer is text and graphic content transfer, web store data import, manual design replication along with SEO, web design and copywriting services.
uCalc is a real catch for those who don’t want to splash out on a developer or web designer to build a calculator or form for their website. The service provides you a library of attractive thematic templates and basic elements that you can add, delete, modify, and duplicate. Plus, you can connect the form/calculator with CRM systems. Try it out for yourself!
UPQODE is an eCommerce development agency based in the US. The company offers cost-effective services for all types of businesses. They use Shopify, WordPress and Woocommerce platforms to design user-friendly websites.
In addition to this, the agency offers digital marketing services. These include Google Ads setup, social media advertising, conversion optimization, online store optimization and eCommerce SEO solutions.
UPQODE comprises a team of experts who offer support services for eCommerce platforms with complex functionalities.
Abstract is an online tool that will help you get the location of any IP with a word-class API serving city, region, country and lat/long data.
There are over 10,000 developers using Abstrat’s APIs because:
RumbleTalk will help you add a moderated chat on your website for free, in no time. The platform is filled with tons of features that you will love.
WordPressToWix.PRO focuses on ensuring easy, convenient and fast website transfer from WordPress to Wix. The platform also offers quality project promotion and preservation of search engine positions upon the completion of the task. The team of proficient web designers will gladly assist you with all the steps of the procedure, ensuring a top notch result.
Get your online presence started with uCoz – a time-tested website builder that already powers millions of websites worldwide. It gives you the complete control over the code, and yet simplicity of the visual editor and a solid pre-built base. It offers you full creative freedom. Create the website of your dreams now, and for free with uCoz!
When it comes to reliable, safe and professional HTML to WordPress website migration, it makes sense to contact HTMLtoWordPress.PRO experts. This is a team of professionals, who possess niche-specific knowledge and can boast years of expertise. This guarantees a safe and quick result that matches up to client requirements.
Downloading the Blabber WordPress theme, you get an all-inclusive pack of tools and designs apt for the launch of a blog, online magazine, newspaper, or any other content-rich online resource. This is an ever-growing WordPress theme. It features a collection of 20+ homepage demos, which a new design added to the collection every week. The theme is fully based on the Elementor page builder and features full compatibility with a variety of WordPress plugins. It’s easy to set up the Blabber theme even if you are not a design or coding expert. The theme offers a rich selection of ready-to-go page sand layout styles, which you may adjust according to your specific demands.
If you are looking for a ready-made WordPress theme that can become a rock-solid foundation for your sports-related website, then FC United will handle this job perfectly well. The theme is ready to be used for the launch of football and soccer clubs, as well as basketball and NFL web projects. The multi-functional layout of the theme includes all tools and features that you may need for the launch of a professional sports website. This includes match reports, league tables, team and player profiles with stats, outstanding galleries and shortcodes, and more. Whenever it’s needed, the theme can be enhanced with the eCommerce features owing to its full compatibility with WooCommerce.
If you are looking forward to launching handcraft services and goods websites, then Craftis WordPress theme will perfectly suit for this purpose. This is a multi-functional ready-made design featuring a collection of 10+ homepage demos under the hood. The theme is compatible with the Elementor page builder, which lets you apply all the necessary changes to the pre-built page in the intuitive visual mode. The theme also features a selection of ready-made pages that are suited for many different purposes. Using the Craftis theme, you may start selling online without any difficulties. The theme is also compatible with the Elegro Crypto Payment plugin that is perfectly suited for the launch of web stores.
There are lots of super-efficient and easy to use tools in this article. Make a schedule starting with today and start testing them.
Many times, simple solutions like this ai logo maker can make wonders for your website. Take your time to see these solutions in action.
[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Mekanism –]
Contentful; Webster’s Dictionary defines “contentful” as… not found. Clearly someone made up this word, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
The world of user experience metrics is moving quickly, so new terminology is needed. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is one of a number of metrics measuring the render time of content on a web page.
Google defines LCP as “the render time of the largest content element visible within the viewport.” For what we are talking about in this blog, we will consider “content” to be an image, typically a JPEG or PNG file. In most cases, “largest” points to a hero image that is “above the fold” and is one of the first images people will notice when loading the page. Applying optimization to this largest content is critical to improving LCP.
It is probably more instructive to view LCP relative to other metrics. For example, First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Visually Complete book end LCP.
Each metric has its pros and cons, but LCP is a happy medium. LCP marks when web page loading starts to have a substantial impact on user experience.
In Google’s opinion, to provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading. Poor values are anything greater than 4 seconds.
LCP is now part of several “Core Web Vitals” scores that Google will measure in its ranking algorithm. Each of the Core Web Vitals represents a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field, and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome.
In the case of the overall Google Lighthouse score, LCP represents 25% weighting on the performance score of Lighthouse version 6.0. This makes LCP the most important Core Web Vitals metric in determining the performance score.
While Google has indicated that content is still the most important factor in SEO ranking, a better user experience (as measured by Core Web Vitals) will generate higher rankings in a crowded field. If there are many websites competing for the top search engine spots, then Largest Contentful Paint will play a critical factor in rankings.
Now that you know that LCP is important, what can you do to improve it by making content load faster? Google provides a number of suggestions, but the most effective technique is to optimize content for the device requesting it.
For example, a website includes an 800kb JPEG image that is intended for high resolution desktops. On a smartphone, that would be optimized down to less than 100kb, with no perceptible impact on quality. LCP can improve by more than 60% — or several seconds — through this single optimization.
Image Speed Test is a great tool offered by ImageEngine.io that provides an analysis of LCP improvement opportunities. Just paste in the URL of the web page you are interested in optimizing, and the test will show you:
It also provides a video of the web page loading with and without optimizations. Finally, it analyses each image to provide an estimate of payload savings. In this case, the “largest content” on the page is this image. With optimizations, the image payload is reduced by 94%. That delivers a huge improvement in LCP.
ImageEngine is an image content delivery network (CDN) service that makes image optimization simple. Basically, for each image on the page, the image CDN will:
ImageEngine improves web performance for every image on the page, including the largest. You can learn more about ImageEngine here, and also sign up for a free trial.
In addition to using an image CDN like ImageEngine, a few other best practices can improve LCP. Using the resource hints to provide a preconnect for your content can streamline the download process.
For example, putting the following link statement in the HTML will accelerate the download process. The link statement will make the browser connect to the third party as early as possible so that download can start sooner. ImageEngine’s optimizations make each image download smaller and faster, but preconnect save time in the connection phase.
When JavaScript or CSS is “blocking” it means that the browser needs to parse and execute CSS and JavaScript in order to paint the final state of the page in the viewport.
Any website today relies heavily on both JavaScript and CSS, which means that it is almost impossible to avoid some render blocking resources. On a general note: be careful with what kind of CSS and JavaScript is referenced inside the <head> element. Make sure that only the strictly necessary resources are loaded in <head>. The rest can be deferred or loaded asynchronously.
When looking to improve the LCP specifically, there are some practices worth looking into more deeply.
It is not an easy task, but if the browser can avoid making a request to get the CSS needed to render the critical part of the page – usually the “above the fold” part – the LCP is likely to occur earlier. Also you will avoid content shifting around and maybe even a Flash of Unstyled Content (FOUC).
The critical CSS — the CSS needed by the browser to set up the structure and important styles of the part of the page shown above the fold — should in-inlined. This inlined CSS may also refer to background images, which of course should also be served by an Image CDN.
Many modern browsers natively support lazy loading, without the use of JavaScript. Because images usually are heavily involved in the performance of LCP, it is best practice to leave image loading to the browser and avoid adding JavaScript in order to lazy load images.
Lazy loading driven by JavaScript will add additional latency if the browser first has to load and parse JavaScript, then wait for it to execute, and then render images. This practice will also break the pre-parser in the browser.
If an image CDN is used to optimize images, then the benefits of lazy loading become much smaller. Especially large hero images that are above the fold have a large impact on LCP and will not benefit from being lazy loaded with JavaScript. It is best not to make JavaScript a blocking issue for rendering images, but rather rely on the browser’s own ability to select which images should be lazy loaded.
[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of ImageEngine –]
