Articles

Exciting New Tools for Designers, October 2022

,

We write this guide to the best new tools for designers and developers each month. For October, we’ve sought out tools to make you a better website builder, some handy utilities to make you more productive, and a spooky font for the end of the month. Enjoy!

Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer is a brand-new app for creating images from text prompts. You can create social media posts, blog images, and any other assets you need with its step-by-step guided process.

Remix

Remix is a full-stack web framework for React that lets you focus on designing your UI. Remix is geared towards web standards and delivers a resilient user experience so you can build better sites.

Ultra

Ultra is a super-fast package manager that uses hardlinks to install packages. It’s up to ten times faster than NPM and Yarn, and the project is open-source.

AskEdith

AskEdith is an AI-powered app that translates English into SQL so you can query your database without writing custom SQL. Just type a description of what you want to know, and the app creates the query for you.

Wide Angle Analytics

Wide Angle Analytics is a GDPR-compliant Google Analytics alternative that puts privacy first. Track actions across multiple sites and discover insights about your site without exposing yourself to privacy violations.

story.to.design

Imagine being able to import a whole webpage straight into Figma. You can, with story.to.design, a fantastic app that imports code into Figma for updating UI elements or speeding up redesigns.

Metlo

Metlo is a testing platform for securing APIs. By running comprehensive tests against your API, you can uncover issues like unidentified endpoints, before they become a security threat.

StockAI

Nothing is more frustrating than searching for the right stock image when one doesn’t exist. StockAI is a day-saver that searches for stock images, and if the sought-after image doesn’t exist, it will generate one for you.

Growthfyi

If ad-blockers are playing havoc with your Google Analytics, check out this script from Growthfyi. It’s an invaluable service that doubles the speed of GA while ensuring ad-blockers don’t catch it.

Sourcery

Sourcery is an excellent tool for developers that continually reviews your code and suggests improvements automatically. Write better code, and catch errors before it goes to review.

Cyber Security Icons

This set of Cyber Security Icons contains 20 illustration-style icons. In addition, there are some great interpretations of complex ideas like retina scans, crypto vaults, and end-to-end encryption.

Blinqo

Blinqo is a handy little Chrome extension for anyone that needs to share their screen. It allows you to blur parts of your screen when sharing or recording, so your private details remain private.

Instaprice

Instaprice is a helpful new service that shows you what other freelancers charge for the job you’re quoting on. Earn the actual market rates and never get caught out undercharging again!

Leta

Leta is a great app that allows you to design your own keyboard layout. You can redesign the key positions for macOS, Linux, or Windows and download them for free.

Blogic

Build blogs powered by the Notion API with Blogic, a no-code blog builder that can create fast, SEO-friendly blogs in under a minute. Custom domains and third-party scripts are supported.

Digital Maker Toolkit

The Digital Maker Toolkit is a collection of resources for anyone releasing digital products. It includes guides on process, a handy step-by-step checklist, a list of further resources, and a guide to the available tools.

Slides

Slides is a static website generator you can use to create beautiful, animated websites in minutes. Select layouts from a collection of templates and publish with clean code that downloads fast.

AXplorer

AXplorer is a privacy-focused browser with a built-in VPN. Created by the Axia blockchain network, it generates free crypto in the form of AXIA coins when using it to browse the web.

Font Engine

Can’t decide on a font for your latest side project? Font Engine is a handy little app that will suggest fonts for you. Just tell it your brand values and hit the ‘Suggest’ button.

Deliciozo

Deliciozo is an excellent display font with irregular strokes and styling, making it feel like a paper cut-out. It’s perfect for magazines, cookbooks, and even logos.

Kayino

If you’re looking for a font to convey the hippy era, look no further than the psychedelic stylings of Kayino, a groovy display font with crazy details.

Noganas

Noganas is a spooktacular font for the upcoming Halloween festivities. Use it to add some gruesome frivolity to your seasonal designs.

Source

The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, October 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

15 Best New Fonts, October 2022

,

Each month we publish this roundup of the best new fonts for designers to help you find new ways of packing personality into your designs.

In October’s edition, you’ll find a number of revivals and a ton of vintage inspiration, all wrapped up with a modern twist. After years of geometric sans-serifs, a few decorative flourishes are more than welcome. Enjoy!

The Future

The Future and its accompanying monospace The Future Mono is a homage to the classic Futura. The Future is a great revision of classic forms, and The Future Mono is a blend of Western Modernism and Japanese typographic styles.

Rapidissima

Rapida and Rapidissima began as part of a master’s course at the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag. While Rapida is a careful, usable serif with lots of thoughtful details, Rapidissima is a visually exciting exploration of speed.

Aiglon

Aiglon is a pseudo-geometrics sans-serif with beautiful proportions. It draws inspiration from 20th-century architectural lettering. It’s a tremendous alternative to Gotham for those looking for a more European aesthetic.

Raskal Oner Write

Raskal Oner Write is a script font for designers that don’t want a script font. All of the classic feel of handwritten letters is here, but the construction is entirely original. Contextual alternatives combine to create the visual look of lettering.

Grostino

Grostino is an elegant display typeface. The enormous contrast in width between its rounded glyphs and its square glyphs adds enormous personality. It’s ideal for branding projects that need to evoke classicism.

Figtree

Figtree is a highly usable sans-serif packed with practical features, including fractions, monospaced numbers, and scientific inferiors. It’s both minimal and friendly, making it an ideal choice for corporate design systems. It’s free to download.

Gills & Co

Gills & Co is a modern serif that draws inspiration from Art Nouveau to create beautiful finials and ligatures. It works really well as a logotype and for packaging.

Catalog

Catalog is a sturdy, easy-to-use serif with thick slab serifs. It has a simplified shape and is easily readable on lower-resolution screens. It features an unusual lowercase g, which adds visual interest to passages of text.

Kreol Display

Kreol Display is a didone typeface with some interesting details that raise it above similar designs. The lowercase ‘a’ and the uppercase ‘R’ are particularly pleasing.

Gwen

Gwen is a typeface family that includes a highly characteristic display face and a more subtle text face. There are seven different weights, and it is available as a variable font.

Benogi

Benogi is a display font run through with wave-like forms. The ’70s aesthetic is continued in the proportion of the glyphs. It’s a great option for health and beauty product branding.

Marcin Antique

Marcin Antique is inspired by early French grotesque typefaces. It has just been reissued with new widths, additional weights, and redrawn italics, making it an even more usable sans-serif.

VVDS The Dickens Tale

It’s horrifying to say it, but yes, the holiday season is just weeks away. If you’re preparing marketing material with a heritage feel, then check out The Dickens Tale, it’s as classic as candy canes and Peanuts reruns.

Povetarac Sans

Povetarac Sans is a workhorse of a sans-serif that performs well as both display and running text. Inspired by vintage designs, it comes with six weights and supports fractions.

Blothe

Blothe is a fabulously chunky display face that is drawn wide, thick, and rounded. Use it at huge sizes to make the most of its weighty presence.

Source

The post 15 Best New Fonts, October 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)

,

Jakob Nielsen’s How Users Read on the Web is 25 years old this week, and one glance at an eye-tracking study will tell you its key observations are still relevant today.

Simply put, users don’t read a web page; they scan it for individual words and sentences.

A typical pattern shown in eye-tracking reports is that users will rapidly scan a page, scrolling down to do so. Then either hit the back button and pump your bounce rate, or scroll to the top and re-engage with the content.

Even when content, volume, and quality tick all the user’s boxes, and they choose to stay on your site, they still don’t read; they scan; a slightly deeper scan, but still a scan.

As a result, it’s vital to design websites to be easily scannable, both in a split-second scan to decide if your page is worth the reader’s time and on a second or third pass.

Clarify the Page’s Purpose Immediately

Every page should have a primary goal. The majority of the time, that goal is embodied in a CTA (Call to Action).

The good news is, if your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has gone to plan, your goal (i.e., to sell something) and your user’s goal (i.e., to buy something) will align. By clarifying the page’s purpose, you can show the user that your goals align.

You can be experimental if you’re an established company and the user knows what to expect. But if you’re new to the market or have a lower profile, you need to conform to established design patterns. This means that a SaaS should look like a SaaS, a store should look like a store, and a blog should look like a blog.

Including your CTA above the fold — which in the context of the web, means the user doesn’t have to interact to see it. Doing so makes it easier for the user to progress and clearly tells the user what you are offering.

The landing page for next month’s Webflow Conf 2022 clarifies the page’s content, with a clear CTA above the fold.

Employ a Visual Hierarchy

The Von Restorff effect states that the more something stands out, the more likely we are to notice and remember it.

Visual hierarchies are excellent for guiding a user through content. HTML has the h1–h7 heading levels — although, in reality, only h1–h4 are much use — which gives you several levels of heading that can be scanned by different readers scanning at different rates.

For example, we know that subheadings have little impact if a user diligently reads the page from top to bottom, but they are excellent for catching the eye of skim readers.

Amnesty uses very a very simple hierarchy, the only change for its subheading being increased weight. But it is enough to catch the user’s eye.

You can also create visual hierarchies with other forms of contrast; weight and color are often employed in addition to size. For accessibility and inclusive design, it’s wise to combine visual indicators when creating a hierarchy; for example, headings are usually larger, bolder, and colored.

Use Negative Space

Imagine a person standing in a crowd. Let’s say they’re wearing a red and white striped jumper and a red and white bobble hat — pretty distinctive. But if there are hundreds of other characters around them, they might be hard to spot.

Now imagine the same person dressed the same, standing on their own. How long will it take you to spot them? Even without the stripy outfit, it’s not much of a challenge.

Elements in isolation are not only easier to spot, but they pull the eye because the negative space (sometimes referred to as white space) around them creates contrast.

When using negative space, the key is to give elements enough room to breathe and attract the eye without giving them so much room that they are disassociated from the rest of your content.

Across its site, Moheim uses negative space to highlight UI elements while grouping associated content.

Use F Patterns

Users scan a page using either an F-pattern or a Z-pattern.

Because users scan your page in predictable ways, we can employ layouts that cater to this tendency.

Designers have been aware of F and Z patterns for some time, and because they’ve been used for so long, they may be self-fulfilling, with users being trained to scan a page in this fashion. However, both patterns are similar to how eyes travel from line to line in horizontal writing systems.

Whatever the cause, by placing key content along these paths, you increase the chance of capturing a user’s attention.

Kamil Barczentewicz uses a beautiful, natural layout that also conforms to a classic F pattern.

Include Images with Faces

Images are a great way of conveying brand values and making a site engaging. But when it comes to catching the eye of a user scanning your design, the best images include faces.

For example, a testimonial with an image of the customer will catch the eye more than a text-only testimonial.

The Awwwards Conference uses an animated computer with a face to capture attention. And large images of speakers making eye contact.

This is almost certainly due to social conditioning; we see a face, and we engage with it to see if it is a threat or not. Most of us naturally look to expressions of emotion to understand situations, and the distinction between a real-life person and an image hasn’t made its way into our mental programming yet.

You don’t need to use photos. Illustrations are fine. The key is to ensure there is a face in the image. That’s why illustrations of characters perform so well.

Copy Print Design

Print design is centuries older than the web, and many print applications, from newspapers to advertising, developed design elements to catch the eye of readers scanning the design.

Subheadings, lists, blockquotes, and pull quotes all catch the eye. Introductory paragraphs in a larger size or even italics draw users into the text. Shorter paragraphs encourage users to keep reading.

Horizontal rules used to delineate sections of text act as a break on eyes traveling over content with momentum. They are a good way of catching a scan-reader who is losing interest.

You can use a horizontal rule or break up your layout with bands of color that divide content sections.

Omono uses horizontal bands to highlight different sections of content.

Mass, Not Weight

We often discuss design elements as having weight; font-weight is the thickness of strokes.

But it is more helpful to think of design elements as having mass; mass creates gravity, pulling a user’s eye towards them.

The trick is to design elements with enough mass to attract the user‘s eye when scanning at speed without forcing the user to change how they engage with your content.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

Source

The post How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should) first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

5 Ways That UX Developers Influence SEO 

, ,

User Experience is a crucial consideration for any web developer or designer; the only way to ensure that you’re delivering a successful website is to ensure that the end-user or customer will feel comfortable using it. 

A strong user experience increases your client’s chances of successful audience engagement and conversions.

What you might not realize, however, is that the strategies you use to enhance UX as a web developer or designer can also influence how the search engines respond to a website. 

Though many designers assume that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the work of a copywriter or content producer, there are design elements to consider too. 

After all, the definition of optimization is “the action of making the best version of a resource.”

So, how are UX and SEO connected?

Adding UX to a Successful SEO Strategy

SEO used to be easy. To stand out on the search results, you just needed to stuff a page full of as many keywords and phrases as possible. Now, it’s a little more complicated. 

Leaders in search engine development, like Google and Bing, know that they need to offer their customers excellent experiences to keep them. In this new experience-focused landscape, SEO and UX share common goals. 

Search engines don’t just want to provide customers with any answers to their questions. Instead, Google and its competitors are using everything from artificial intelligence to machine learning algorithms to ensure that search results are accurate, relevant, and engaging. 

In the same way, user experience is about providing users with easy access to the information and resources they want. 

Now that SEO is a multi-disciplined approach, UX is just one of the essential tools that makes it possible for developers to optimize their websites properly. 

Where UX Developers Influence SEO 

There are plenty of connections between UX and site indexability. 

We all know that since 2018, site speed has become a crucial ranking factor for companies in search of better search results. As a developer, it’s up to you to ensure that there aren’t too many elements weighing a website down that would prevent it from delivering fast results. 

Bounce rate is another critical factor in search engine ranking algorithms. When customers click on a website, Google wants to see that they get the answers they want. If your navigation is difficult to understand, or the correct information isn’t easy to see on a page, end-users will just hit the back button. 

Let’s take a closer look at how developers can influence SEO with their UX strategies. 

1. Site Navigation and Ease of Use

It’s no secret that today’s digital consumers crave easy-to-use sites.

A complex website with pages ranking for different terms might seem like an excellent idea for SEO. However, from a UX perspective, the easier it is to navigate your website, the more your end-users will benefit. 

According to a study from Ahrefs, well-optimized pages that rank for several keywords can be more beneficial than dozens of pages ranking for similar terms. At the same time, if the search engines have difficulty crawling all your pages due to a poor site navigation strategy, then some pages won’t get indexed. 

So, how do you improve navigation and SEO at once? Follow the proper structure for your site first, categories and subcategories on the retail page help customers find exactly what they need. A solid internal linking structure allows the crawlers to examine your website and index each essential page individually.

Keep navigation simple when designing a website for both UX and SEO potential. 

2. User-Friendly Page Layouts

There are countless cases where poor layout design and formatting disrupts SEO potential. For example, cluttering a page with too much information makes it tougher to read and index. At the same time, if your pages aren’t attractive and easy to navigate, customers are more likely to hit the back button. 

If customers come to a website and immediately leave it again, this tells the search engines that they’re not finding what they need on those pages. That means Google will bump you to a lower position on the SERPs. 

So, how do you make your layouts more UX and SEO-friendly?

  • Get your category pages right: Say you’re creating a blog page for your client. They want to list all of their blogs on one main page while linking to separate locations for each article. A design that puts a large chunk of content from each blog on the main page can be problematic for UX and SEO. It means your customers have to scroll further to find what they need. At the same time, the search engines never know which words to rank that main page for. On the other hand, listing blogs on smaller cards, as Fabrik does in this example, makes sorting through content easier. 
  • Leverage headers and tags: Your customers and the search engines habitually “scan” your pages. When trying to improve UX and SEO simultaneously, you must ensure that it’s easy to find crucial information quickly. Header 1 or H1 tags can help by showing your audience your website’s critical sections. Title tags also give search engines more information on the term you want to rank for. Organizing your content into a structure that draws the eye down the page also means your customers are more likely to stay on your website for longer. That shows the search engines that you have quality, relevant content. 
  • Make the most of images and videos: Visual media isn’t just an excellent way to engage your audience. With videos and pictures, you can convey more vital information in a quick and convenient format. This leads to greater satisfaction from your audience from a UX perspective. However, visual content is also great for SEO. You can optimize every image with alt text and meta descriptions. That means you have a higher chance of ranking both in the main search results and the image searches on Google. 

3. Using Search Data to Inform Site Architecture

Today, SEO is less about building hundreds of landing pages for individual queries. Now, it’s more important to take a simple, de-cluttered approach with your website. SEO can determine what kind of architecture you need to create for a successful website. 

For instance, say you wanted to rank for eCommerce SEO. There are tons of related words that connect to that primary search term. Rather than making dozens of different pages that try to rank for distinct phrases, you can cover a lot of other ideas at once with a larger, more detailed piece of content. 

If a topic is too big to cover everything on a single page, then you might decide to create something called “pillar” content out of your main terms. This involves using one main page where you discuss all of the topics you will cover. Then, you design several smaller sub-pages that link back to that central pillar. 

Once again, this helps the search engines to navigate your website and index your pages while assisting the customers in finding the correct information. At the same time, you combine more pages on a website and remove anything that might be detracting from your site’s authority or not offering enough value. 

4. Improving Website SERP Listings

It’s easy to forget as a developer that a customer’s first experience with a website won’t always happen on that site’s homepage. Usually, when your customers are looking for solutions to a problem, they’ll find your website on the search engine results instead. 

This means that you need to ensure that you make the right impression here:

There are a few ways that developers can ensure the search engine listings they create for their clients are up to scratch. For instance, a reasonable title tag for each page that includes appropriate keywords is excellent for SEO and UX. A title tag lets your customers know they’re in the right place and helps them find the information they need. 

Remember, around eight out of ten users on search engines say that they’ll click a title if it’s compelling. 

Another component you have control over as a developer or designer is the “rich snippet.” Rich snippets are the informative chunks of content that Google adds to a search listing to help it stand out. You can use rich snippet plugins on a website to tell Google what kind of extra information you want to include on a page. 

For instance, you might want a company’s ratings to show up on your search results, so customers can see how trustworthy they are:

5. Local Business Rankings

When you’re creating a website for a company, it’s easy to forget about local rankings. We see the digital world as a way of reaching countless people worldwide. Local orders are easier to overlook when you have a global scope to work with. 

However, as a developer, you can boost a company’s chances of attracting the right local audience and boosting its credibility. For instance, you can start by ensuring that the correct directory information appears on your client’s website and social media profiles.

Another option is to create dedicated location pages for each area the company serves. This will make it easier for clients to find the contact details they need for their specific location. 

At the same time, pages that have been carefully optimized to rank for specific locations will earn more attention, specifically from search engines. The more of the search engine landscape your client can cover, the more chances they have to attract new customers and leads. 

Combing SEO and UX

In a world where experience is crucial for every business, it’s no wonder that UX and SEO are blending more closely together. There are a lot of areas where SEO and UX work in harmony together if you know where to find them. Improving your client’s SEO ranking with UX doesn’t just mean ensuring that their pages load quickly anymore. 

Simple strategies, like making sure a call-to-action button is clickable on a mobile page, can simultaneously boost a website’s UX potential and SEO performance. At the same time, adding images and alt text to a website provides search engines with more information while adding context to your content. 

The key to success is understanding how SEO and UX work together. If you look at SEO and UX as part of the same comprehensive strategy to give end-users a better online experience, achieving the right design goals is much easier. 

Of course, just like any strategy, it’s also worth making sure that you take the time to track the results of your UX and SEO campaigns. Examine which systems help you, and examine customers from an SEO perspective with design and development strategies.

 

Features image by gstudioimagen on Freepik

Source

The post 5 Ways That UX Developers Influence SEO  first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

Exciting New Tools for Designers, September 2022

,

The Summer’s over, and we’re back at our desks to discover that the web’s best app builders, font designers, asset creators, and developers have been hard at work to deliver this bumper collection of exciting new tools for designers and developers.

Below you’ll find productivity apps, icons, gradients, AI, and some awesome new fonts. Enjoy!

CSS Scan

Forget right-clicking on a website to see how it’s coded. CSS Scan is a browser extension that lets you view the CSS styles of any element and copy them to your clipboard.

Slicons

Create stand-out UI designs with Slicons, a set of 300+ pixel-perfect icons. Light, regular, and bold versions match your typography and work with Figma, Sketch, XD, and Iconjar.

Codex

Codex is an IDE extension that lets you comment on your code like a pro. Anyone on your team can add comments, questions, or notes to any lines of code.

Gradientify

You too can leap aboard the gradient design trend using Gradientify, a collection of 100+ beautiful, human-designed gradients. Copy the CSS, or download PNGs for free.

90 Bitmap Shapes

Create unique logos, social media assets, apparel, and abstract icons using this editable set of 90 Bitmap Shapes in vector form for Photoshop, Sketch, and Figma.

BlockBee

Get paid in crypto using BlockBee. The Web 3.0 payments infrastructure integrates with the best ecommerce carts, including PrestaShop, Opencart, Magento, and WooCommerce.

Flatfile

Banish the woes of importing CSV data with Flatfile, a CSV importer that formats human-edited data files to eliminate errors and speed up B2B onboarding.

ClipDrop

Effortlessly clip the backgrounds from images in Figma with the ClipDrop plugin. One-click removes backgrounds, objects, people, text, or defects.

Craiyon

Craiyon is an AI drawing tool based on a stripped-down version of DALL-E. You can generate any image you like using a simple text prompt.

Google Headline Tool

Use Poll the People’s powerful Google Headline Tool to optimize your headlines for more effective search ads and clickable blog post titles.

Retro Postcard Effect

Embrace the trend for retro images using this Retro Postcard Effect for Adobe Photoshop. Easily drop your custom images into the placeholder layer for an instant vintage style.

Hugo

Hugo is an admin suite for freelancers that takes care of business with intelligent contracts, audit trails, and an integrated wallet, so you can focus on being creative.

CTA Examples

CTA Examples is a database of call-to-action examples for every possible scenario. So no matter what you want to persuade your users to do, you’ll find the best prompt here.

Superhuman

Create unique 3D characters to wow your customers using Superhuman. You can customize clothes, hair, and poses using 1500+ elements or choose from 500 pre-made characters.

PostHog

PostHog is an extensive set of tools built on a modern data stack. You can do more with your data by creating your own app or using one of the 50+ that are included for free.

Radix UI

There’s no need to reinvent UI components for React when you can use Radix UI. The high-quality, accessible components are perfect for web apps and dashboards.

KB Clip

Now you can create a searchable wiki for your business with a fraction of the effort thanks to KB Clip. Just highlight a Slack conversation, and transform it into an article in one click.

DropBlok

A great way to monetize your followers is with a custom app. DropBlok is a no-code tool that will build the app for you.

Blofishing Font

Blofishing is a gorgeous handwriting font that adds personality to your layouts. It’s ideal for wedding stationery, social media marketing, and anything that needs a personal touch.

Haratte Font

Haratte is an elegant font with graceful curves and a modern aesthetic. It’s perfect for logos, magazine design, social media assets, and more.

Source

The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, September 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

How Is 5G Technology Transforming App Development?

,

Technology is constantly evolving, and that too at a rapid pace. The need for better Internet speed, improved connectivity, and easier accessibility has been the driving force behind the constant technological advancements.

5G or fifth-generation wireless cellular network is the most recent technology built to deliver high-speed performance. The technology is expected to significantly improve network connectivity. It is also believed that the introduction of 5G will make it easier and more convenient to connect devices to obtain and share information due to its unified connectivity fabric.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

/par

Quiz: The Super-Difficult Website Speed Quiz

,

Users expect websites to load quickly. As a result, companies like Amazon and Target spend millions of dollars optimizing their sites to make them load as fast as possible because there is a direct correlation between site speed and conversions.

Websites typically don’t have load bars, so a user waiting for a site to load cannot know that it will be one more second or even that the site will load at all.

The best load time for a website is 0 seconds, an instantaneous load. However, that’s not possible with current technology. So how fast is fast enough? What will users really accept? Take our website speed quiz and see if you know…

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

The post Quiz: The Super-Difficult Website Speed Quiz first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools 

,

An unreliable, semi-broken and unresponsive website is an excellent way to lose leads and visitors — regardless of how aesthetically pleasing or well-designed, the visual elements are.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen more initiative to deliver faster internet to regions of the world that were previously devoid of it. With online communities expanding and more people becoming receptive to online shopping, ensuring your site’s dependability is now more important than ever. 

One way to achieve this is by employing uptime and downtime monitoring tools. This guide will examine the best ways to get alerts when something goes wrong and your website falters.

Why Is Website Uptime Monitoring Important?

Downtime is bound to occur occasionally. Nonetheless, the goal is to minimize it. The longer the downtime occurs, the more traffic and potential clients you lose. A dysfunctional website is also detrimental to your credibility and reputation. People may associate your website’s unreliability with your real-world products or services.

With web developers charging an average of $200 per hour, high-quality websites can be expensive to build and maintain. Nevertheless, it’s often worth the investment. However, an unreliable website can backfire on you. Instead of attracting more customers, it could potentially repel them. This can result in lost revenue.

An uptime monitoring solution can help you prevent or reduce these losses. It verifies if your website is up and functional and notifies you if it’s not. This allows you to troubleshoot the issue and get your website back up and running as soon as you’re alerted. The most common issues behind your website’s downtime include: 

  • Server faults;
  • Network outages;
  • Power outage;
  • Traffic spikes;
  • Cyberattacks;
  • Domain name issues;
  • An erroneous web application deployment;
  • Increased server loads;
  • DNS Resolve issues;
  • Human error.

Thus, you must employ a dependable tool that detects downtime or any interruptions related to your website as soon as they occur. They are must-have tools for web designers, developers, and network administrators. However, not all of them are built the same. So how do you identify the best uptime monitoring tools?

Essential Features of Uptime Monitoring Tools

Uptime monitoring tools typically detect interruptions by running network tests such as pings and trace routes. You could practically monitor your website’s uptime by constantly running these tests yourself. 

However, this isn’t an efficient way to monitor your website’s uptime. A comprehensive uptime monitoring tool will automatically monitor your website’s uptime in the background. It will then alert you through various channels as soon as it senses that your website may be down. 

Furthermore, high-quality uptime monitoring solutions tend to offer additional information regarding your website’s uptime/downtime and its performance. These tools commonly feature dashboards, status pages, badges, exportable records, etc., to help you keep track of your site’s overall health.

9 Best Features of an Uptime Monitoring Solution

The ideal uptime monitoring tool or service should feature: 

  1. Website security features that notify of and repel potential cyber attacks;
  2. 24/7 uninterrupted background website monitoring;
  3. Multi-channel alerts (email, SMS, push notifications, instant messages, social media, etc.);
  4. Report generation;
  5. 24/7 customer support available through different channels (email, phone, chat, etc.);
  6. Be capable of monitoring multiple websites and proxies at the same time;
  7. Offer insights and suggestions to improve your website’s performance;
  8. Be affordable;
  9. High customizability should allow you to choose which features to enable and disable.

Another optional feature to look out for is public status pages that your clients can access to determine if all your services are up and running. GetWeave is an excellent example of this. The website features a well-organized systems status page where customers can check if all of Weave’s services are functional. 

Nevertheless, you can use the above information as a buying guide when assessing potential uptime monitoring tools. The rest of this guide will supply a few suggestions as to which tools you should use for your website.

3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools 

Some of the best uptime monitoring tools for website downtime alerts include:

1. Uptrends

Uptrends isn’t just a downtime detection tool; it’s a complete web performance monitoring solution. It will notify you as soon as it detects any disturbance in your website’s performance. It features highly customizable checks. For instance, you can set performance check limits for load times. Uptrends will notify you instantly if your website takes too long to load.

You can also configure from which locations you want it to monitor your website. Uptrends will then point you to where your website usually suffers performance dips in the real world. 

The service uses multiple communication channels to send users notifications: email, phone calls, and SMS. Alternatively, you can download one of Uptrend’s mobile applications and receive push notifications. Additionally, you can integrate Uptrends with messaging and communication applications such as PagerDuty, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.   

Another impressive Uptrend feature is its ability to emulate your website’s performance on different browsers. It runs Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge on its servers. Thus, you can compare how your website runs on these web browsers without installing them on your servers or computer. 

Uptrends supplies users with various charts, reports, and graphs to help identify sudden spikes or dips. Waterfall reports display the complete page-load from the initial request to the last download. This allows you to compare the history of your website’s performance element by element. It comes with three price plans whose costs depend on the number of monitors you would like. Starting at $16.21 (at the time of writing) the Starter Plan is the most affordable.

2. Oh Dear

Oh Dear is a slightly cheaper option than Uptrends, with the most affordable plan starting at $12 per month (at the time of writing). However, while Uptrends offers a 30-day free trial, Oh Dear only provides a 12-day trial period. Nevertheless, Oh Dear’s interface is a lot cleaner and more minimal. 

Since Oh Dear runs servers in different locations across the globe, it can track how your website performs in various regions. Oh Dear will scan through your website and index all the pages. If it detects any issues, it will alert you immediately. 

Oh Dear also features a continuous certificate monitoring function. Site owners who are concerned with their website’s security may find this feature to be especially useful. It will verify your SSL certificate expiration dates and alert you of any changes.  

Oh Dear’s public status page enables your clients to keep track of your website’s availability.

Oh Dear uses email and SMS text messages to alert site owners of any issues. It also features integrations with communications and social media applications such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. Oh Dear ensures that messages are as detailed and user-friendly. This makes it easier to troubleshoot and find the origin of your problem. Oh Dear is more than a worthy alternative to Uptrends. 

3. WP Umbrella

WP Umbrella is a little different from the previous entries. It’s intended to help users manage and monitor multiple WordPress sites. Thus, it is far more particularized in its approach to website uptime monitoring. Again, as is the primary function of the uptime monitoring tool, it offers a real-time alert system that will contact you through email, SMS, Slack, etc. 

WP Umbrella employs a simple minimal UI. Its main screen consists of a dashboard that allows you to view all your WordPress websites. By default, this dashboard features four columns: Site, Uptime, Speed, and Issues.

WP Umbrella will alert you of any outdated or erroneous plugins or themes. While it doesn’t offer dedicated public status pages, it does have a client report generation feature. You can automatically send these reports to your various subscribers or clients when your website is down. 

WP Umbrella is the most affordable option on this list. Users are charged $1.99 per month (at the time of writing) for each website monitored. In addition, WP Umbrella offers a 14-day trial and does not require your credit card details. It’s an excellent option for anyone running a WordPress website or two.

Conclusion

This guide has only explored three possible uptime monitoring solutions. They won’t only assist you in detecting downtimes, they can also help you find the reason your site may be slow.

These solutions are an excellent place to start. But there are many other options coming to market all the time. You may find that this is the first step to converting more leads and reducing your bounce rate. 

Source

The post 3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools  first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par