SAFI Dot Tech Portal

What is Web Development and Web Designing? | SAFI Dot Tech Portal

noreply@blogger.com (AZEEM SAFI) — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:49:00 +0000

What Does Web Development Mean?

Web development refers in general to the tasks associated with developing websites for hosting via intranet or internet. The web development process includes web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting and network security configuration, among other tasks.

In a broader sense, web development encompasses all the actions, updates, and operations required to build, maintain and manage a website to ensure its performance, user experience, and speed are optimal.

It might also, but not necessarily, include all those strategic actions needed to ensure its proper ranking on search engine results. Usually, those tasks pertain to a different specialization, namely search engine optimization (SEO)

Web development is also known as website development, while the professionals that maintain a website are called web developers or (more commonly) web devs.

Techopedia Explains Web Development

Web development is the coding or programming that enables website functionality, per the owner's requirements. It mainly deals with the non-design aspect of building websites, which includes coding and writing markup.

Web development ranges from creating plain text pages to complex web-based applications, social network applications and electronic business applications.

The web development hierarchy is as follows:

Client-side coding.
Server-side coding.
Database technology.

Most web devs use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript to develop websites.

HTML defines the basic framework of a website – the foundation upon which everything else is built upon. It forms the blocks that define a page’s layout, format, and critical components. Although it is theoretically possible to code a website on HTML only, it will be just a barebone site with no functions unless it’s enriched with CSS and JavaScript. Also, even simple style modifications such as changing the color of a button require a lot of coding to be executed using HTML only.

CSS is used to style the content of a website using a small set of files that are kept across the entire site. This way, whenever a change must be applied to say, consistently change the color of all the buttons found in every page of the website, a web dev needs to edit only a single file in CSS.

The JavaScript programming language is used to take care of the interactivity of many unique website elements. It can be used to create effects that alter the appearance of icons and drop-down menus, add animations, games, and other interactive elements.

Web developers are usually divided into front-end devs, back-end devs, and full-stack devs. A front-end dev takes care of all the visual aspects of the website (layout, navigation bar, etc.), its interactivity, and binds together all its elements.

Back-end devs take care of less visible tasks that ensure the website runs smoothly, such as managing the website’s hosting services, database, and applications. Back-end devs might need to engineer solution to server issues by using additional server-side languages such as Python, Ruby, Java, and PHP.

Full-stack devs are developers able to do both front-end and back-end tasks at the same time.

Web development is the building and maintenance of websites; it’s the work that happens behind the scenes to make a website look great, work fast and perform well with a seamless user experience.

Web developers, or ‘devs’, do this by using a variety of coding languages. The languages they use depends on the types of tasks they are preforming and the platforms on which they are working.

Web development skills are in high demand worldwide and well paid too – making development a great career option. It is one of the easiest accessible higher paid fields as you do not need a traditional university degree to become qualified.

The field of web development is generally broken down into front-end (the user-facing side) and back-end (the server side). Let’s delve into the details.

Comparing Front-End and Back-End Development

A front-end dev takes care of layout, design and interactivity using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. They take an idea from the drawing board and turn it into reality.

What you see and what you use, such as the visual aspect of the website, the drop down menus and the text, are all brought together by the front-end dev, who writes a series of programmes to bind and structure the elements, make them look good and add interactivity. These programmes are run through a browser.

The backend developer engineers what is going on behind the scenes. This is where the data is stored, and without this data, there would be no frontend. The backend of the web consists of the server that hosts the website, an application for running it and a database to contain the data.

The backend dev uses computer programmes to ensure that the server, the application and the database run smoothly together. This type of dev need to analyse what a company’s needs are and provide efficient programming solutions. To do all this amazing stuff they use a variety of server-side languages, like PHP, Ruby, Python and Java.

What about Full-Stack Development?

If both Frontend and Backend development appeal to you, you could consider becoming a Full-Stack Developer.

Full-stackers take care of both the front-end and the back-end, and need to know how the web works on all levels, in order to determine how the client- and server-sides will relate. Naturally working up to this level of expertise will take longer, as there is more to learn.

Getting Started in Web Development

All this may sound daunting at first, but you don’t need to know everything at once. You will grow your knowledge progressively. And things will begin to click.

The great news is, learning to become a developer is easily accessible and affordable. This is especially true with OpenClassrooms. Emily Reese, Web developer and Teacher at OpenClassrooms explains,

Whatever aspect of web development attracts you, we have programs that can help you reach your goals.

No matter your background, you can learn web development. Emily told us,

In undergrad, I studied art history and architecture and then decided to become a developer whilst I was working at Kickstarter because I saw how the web could complement creativity in the arts. The same is probably true for any field.

Becoming a web professional allows you to participate in absolutely any field, because the web has become universally present in our professional lives. You can be a web developer and specialize in anything from the art world to the automobile industry.

The first step is to decide which aspect of web development interests you and then start out with one programming language.

For example, if you are interested in front end you can start by learning some HTML and CSS, then start working on projects as soon as you are comfortable with the basics. Our Web Developer Program is a perfect fit for this route. But others may suite you as well.

It also helps to join a discussion group or community of other web developers, so that you can troubleshoot, discuss ideas and get inspiration. That’s why you become part of the OpenClassrooms community when you enroll in a program on the site.

What is Web Designing?

Web design refers to the design of websites that are displayed on the internet. It usually refers to the user experience aspects of website development rather than software development. Web design used to be focused on designing websites for desktop browsers; however, since the mid-2010s, design for mobile and tablet browsers has become ever-increasingly important.
A web designer works on the appearance, layout, and, in some cases, content of a website. Appearance, for instance, relates to the colors, font, and images used. Layout refers to how information is structured and categorized. A good web design is easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and suits the user group and brand of the website. Many webpages are designed with a focus on simplicity, so that no extraneous information and functionality that might distract or confuse users appears. As the keystone of a web designer’s output is a site that wins and fosters the trust of the target audience, removing as many potential points of user frustration as possible is a critical consideration.
Two of the most common methods for designing websites that work well both on desktop and mobile are responsive and adaptive design. In responsive design, content moves dynamically depending on screen size; in adaptive design, the website content is fixed in layout sizes that match common screen sizes. Preserving a layout that is as consistent as possible between devices is crucial to maintaining user trust and engagement. As responsive design can present difficulties in this regard, designers must be careful in relinquishing control of how their work will appear. If they are responsible for the content as well, while they may need to broaden their skillset, they will enjoy having the advantage of full control of the finished product.
Take a deep dive into Web Design with our course Gestalt Psychology and Web Design: The Ultimate Guide .
One of the key ingredients to a successful product is the creation of effective, efficient and visually pleasing displays. In order to produce such high-quality displays, whether they are graphical (e.g., websites) or tangible (e.g., remote controls), an understanding of human vision is required, along with the knowledge of visual perception. By observing, researching, and identifying examples of our perceptual abilities, we can design products according to these unifying qualities. In order to spread such skills within the world of interaction design, we have developed “Gestalt Psychology and Web Design: The Ultimate Guide.”
Gestalt psychology is a theory of mind which has been applied to a number of different aspects of human thought, action, and perception. In particular, Gestalt theorists and researchers attempt to understand visual perception in terms of the way in which underlying processes are organized and how they help us make sense of the world. The organization of these cognitive processes is important to our understanding of how we interpret the constant stream of visual information entering our eyes and how it becomes a cohesive, meaningful and usable representation of the world. Over the last twenty years, the work of Gestalt psychologists has been adopted by interaction designers and other professionals involved in the development of products for human users.
Within this course, we have compiled and consolidated some of the best resources currently available on the subject of Gestalt psychology and visual perception. To help you appreciate how you can apply Gestalt psychology to web design, we have provided many different examples from existing designs. These draw attention to the exact qualities, quirks, and features of visual perception. Moreover, they discuss how these have been accommodated and, on a number of occasions, exploited so as to support either the user's intentions or those of the designer or client.
The application of Gestalt thinking to design provides us with insights and new ways of approaching problems and challenges. By cementing in our own minds the many ways we organize visual information, we can improve our designs for all users.

What is WordPress? | SAFI Dot Tech Portal

noreply@blogger.com (AZEEM SAFI) — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:39:00 +0000

What is WordPress?

At its core, WordPress is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 40.0% of all the websites on the Internet. Yes – more than one in four websites that you visit are likely powered by WordPress.

Try a free demo

On a slightly more technical level, WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system is basically a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website – like content – without needing to know anything about programming.

The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone – even people who aren’t developers.

What is #WordPress? Simply put, it's the best way to build a website. 😉CLICK TO TWEET

What Kinds Of Websites Can WordPress Make?

Many years ago, WordPress was primarily a tool to create a blog, rather than more traditional websites. That hasn’t been true for a long time, though. Nowadays, thanks to changes to the core code, as well as WordPress’ massive ecosystem of plugins and themes, you can create any type of website with WordPress.

For example, not only does WordPress power a huge number of business sites and blogs, it’s also the most popular way to create an eCommerce store as well! With WordPress, you can create:

Business websites
eCommerce stores
Blogs
Portfolios
Resumes
Forums
Social networks
Membership sites
…pretty much anything else you can dream up.

Here’s how to install a WordPress theme.

What’s The Difference Between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

We’ve covered the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com in a lot more detail, but here’s the short version:

WordPress.org, often called self-hosted WordPress, is the free, open-source WordPress software that you can install on your own web host to create a website that’s 100% your own.
WordPress.com is a for-profit, paid service that is powered by the WordPress.org software. It’s simple to use, but you lose much of the flexibility of the self-hosted WordPress.

Most of the time, when people say “WordPress”, they mean the self-hosted WordPress available at WordPress.org. If you want to truly own your website, self-hosted WordPress.org is almost always the best option.

All you need to do to get started with self-hosted WordPress is purchase web hosting and a domain name.

Need a blazing-fast, secure, and developer-friendly hosting for your client sites? Kinsta is built with WordPress developers in mind and provides plenty of tools and a powerful dashboard. Check out our plans

Who Made WordPress And How Long Has It Been Around?

WordPress was created as a standalone project all the way back in 2003, originating as an offshoot of a previous project called b2/cafelog.

WordPress is open-source software, so nowadays it’s made by a huge community of contributors. But if we were to trace WordPress’ origins back to its roots, its original creation was a collaboration between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

Since then, Matt Mullenweg has largely become the face of WordPress. And he’s also the founder of Automattic, which is the company behind the for-profit WordPress.com service.

The history of WordPress between its founding as a blog platform back in 2003 and today is a long one…

But suffice it to say, WordPress has pushed forward and, thanks to its contributors and huge community, developed into the most popular solution to create any type of website.

Who Uses WordPress?

WordPress is used by individuals, big businesses, and everyone in between! On an immediate note, we use WordPress! So the very site that you’re looking at right now is powered by WordPress. Lots of other well-known entities use WordPress as well. Here are some of our favorite examples:

Whitehouse.gov

The official Whitehouse.gov website is powered by WordPress:

Microsoft

Microsoft uses WordPress to power its official blog. It also uses WordPress to power blogs for specific products like Windows and Skype:

The Rolling Stones

Even famous bands love WordPress! The Rolling Stones’ website is powered entirely by WordPress:

Why Should You Use WordPress?

Ok, so over 40.0% of all the websites on the Internet are using WordPress, including well-known entities like the White House and Microsoft.

But what about you? Why should you use WordPress?

Well, no matter what type of website you want to create, there are plenty of reasons to use WordPress. Here are some of the biggest:

WordPress Is Free And Open Source

One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is that it’s free, open-source software. While you will need to pay a little bit for hosting, you will never have to pay just to use the WordPress software, which isn’t the case with alternatives like Squarespace.

Beyond that, you can also find lots of open-source plugins and themes to change how your website looks and functions. Speaking of….

WordPress Is Extensible

Even if you aren’t a developer, you can easily modify your website thanks to WordPress’ huge ecosystem of themes and plugins:

Themes – these primarily change how your website looks.
Plugins – these primarily change how your website functions. Plugins can be something small, like a contact form, or huge, like creating an eCommerce store.

Currently, there are over 50,000 free WordPress plugins and 5,000 free WordPress themes, as well as tons of premium options. That to say – you have plenty of choices! Here is a hand-picked list of the best WordPress plugins.

WordPress Is Easy To Install

Think you need to be a tech genius to create your own website? Think again! If you can click a few buttons, you can install WordPress on your site.

Nowadays, most web hosts either:

Offer to preinstall WordPress for you so that your site is ready to go right away.
Give you dedicated tools that make the install process very beginner-friendly.

Can I Install WordPress On My Personal Computer?

Absolutely! There are several good reasons why you might want to install WordPress on a local computer. You are building a new site from scratch, install a new theme or plugin or you just want a safe space to experiment with your existing website, without fear of breaking it.
In this case, we recommend a free tool called DevKinsta that allows you to install WordPress on your Mac or PC.

WordPress Is Flexible

We’ve touched on this already, but WordPress is great because it lets you create pretty much any type of website. Better yet, your website can also evolve with you.

Want to add a forum to your existing WordPress site? No problem – just install the bbPress plugin! Want to add a social network? No worries! Just use the BuddyPress plugin.

You’re never locked into a specific set of functions – you can always adapt and evolve.

We’ve taken our knowledge of effective website management at scale, and turned it into an ebook and video course. Click here to download the The 2020 Guide to Managing 40+ WordPress Sites!

It’s Easy To Find WordPress Help

Because WordPress is so popular, it’s easy to find help if you ever run into any issues. There are heaps of…

Blogs
Tutorials
Forums
Facebook Groups
Developers

…that you can turn to for free and paid help if needed.

Need More Convincing?

Still not convinced that WordPress is the best way to build a website? Read this post for a deeper look at ten of the best reasons to use WordPress.

So What Is WordPress? It’s The Best Way To Build A Website

WordPress is the most popular way to build a website for a reason. If you want to build any type of website, from a blog to an eCommerce store, WordPress is a great option.

Just remember that self-hosted WordPress.org and WordPress.com are not the same thing. And, in most situations, self-hosted WordPress.org is what you want to build a website. Self-hosted WordPress.org gives you more ownership as well as access to all the perks and benefits of the WordPress community.

So how will you use WordPress? We can’t wait to find out!

Save time, costs and maximize site performance with:

Instant help from WordPress hosting experts, 24/7.
Cloudflare Enterprise integration.
Global audience reach with 28 data centers worldwide.
Optimization with our built-in Application Performance Monitoring.

All of that and much more, in one plan with no long-term contracts, assisted migrations, and a 30-day-money-back-guarantee. Check out our plans or talk to sales to find the plan that’s right for you.

What is digital marketing? | SAFI Dot Tech Portal

noreply@blogger.com (AZEEM SAFI) — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:32:00 +0000

What is digital marketing?

At a high level, digital marketing refers to advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps. Using these online media channels, digital marketing is the method by which companies endorse goods, services, and brands. Consumers heavily rely on digital means to research products. For example, Think with Google marketing insights found that 48% of consumers start their inquiries on search engines, while 33% look to brand websites and 26% search within mobile applications.

While modern day digital marketing is an enormous system of channels to which marketers simply must onboard their brands, advertising online is much more complex than the channels alone. In order to achieve the true potential of digital marketing, marketers have to dig deep into today’s vast and intricate cross-channel world to discover strategies that make an impact through engagement marketing. Engagement marketing is the method of forming meaningful interactions with potential and returning customers based on the data you collect over time. By engaging customers in a digital landscape, you build brand awareness, set yourself as an industry thought leader, and place your business at the forefront when the customer is ready to buy.

By implementing an omnichannel digital marketing strategy, marketers can collect valuable insights into target audience behaviors while opening the door to new methods of customer engagement. Additionally, companies can expect to see an increase in retention. According to a report by Invesp, companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers compared to companies with weak omnichannel programs that have a retention rate of just 33%.

As for the future of digital marketing, we can expect to see a continued increase in the variety of wearable devices available to consumers. Forbes also forecasts that social media will become increasingly conversational in the B2B space, video content will be refined for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, and email marketing will become even more personalized.

“Digital is at the core of everything in marketing today—it has gone from ‘one of the things marketing does’ to ‘THE thing that marketing does.’”

– AZEEM SAFI, Former Chief Marketing Officer, SAFI Dot Tech Portal

Common problems that digital marketing can solve

To optimize your marketing strategies, digital is mandatory. Digital marketing can help you to get to know your audience, learn important data about them, and provide metrics that will give your marketing team credibility.

Problem: I don’t know my audience well enough to get started. Getting to know your audience takes time, and while your marketing team may have developed audience personas that can be of use, consumers actively spending time online may not behave in the way you’d expect. You’ll need to test different language with different targets, keeping in mind that certain descriptors will appeal to different people and their place in the buying cycle. Attune yourself to your audience and you’ll build credibility that will set you apart from the competition.
Problem: I haven’t optimized my channels for SEO. Regardless of your position in the marketing process, it’s important to have an understanding of SEO best practices. In addition to improving search engine ranking, SEO can reinforce and support your campaign testing and optimization to ensure you’re delivering high quality, valuable content that your potential customers want.
Problem: I don’t have a social media strategy. Regardless of whether you want to develop an organic social media strategy, a paid social media strategy, or a blend of the two, it’s important to have some form of social marketing in place. While social media is excellent for branding and engagement, it can also be a useful channel for digital marketing advertisement. Find a niche and a consistent voice, be patient, and as your following increases, the impact of your ads will increase as well.
Problem: My marketing teams are siloed. It’s important to break out of silos to create nimble, fluid structures. Your customers aren’t sequestered in one channel waiting for ads, so your marketing efforts must deploy cross-channel functionality with teams that bring multiple skill sets to the table to engage customers where they are. Each social network and channel includes different audiences and expectations, so marketing efforts may look completely different for each. This includes tone, imagery, offers, and even the time of day you post.
Problem: I’m under pressure from my CMO to report on metrics that support the bottom line. Digital marketing supports a vast universe of metrics that can be utilized to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, but these metrics should be chosen with care. Each case will depend upon your audience makeup and focus on each channel. Keeping this in mind, start by determining your goals for each channel and set metrics your CMO will want to see the most.

Components of digital marketing

Digital marketing spans across a massive network of digital touchpoints that customers interact with many times a day. To properly utilize these channels, you need to have an understanding of each.

· Paid search. Paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, typically refers to the sponsored result on the top or side of a search engine results page (SERP). These ads charge you for every click and they can be tailored to appear when certain search terms are entered, so your ads are being targeted to audiences seeking something in particular. These ads can be extremely effective, as they rely on data gleaned from individuals’ online behavior and are used to boost website traffic by delivering relevant ads to the right people at the right time. These ads also involve retargeting, meaning that depending on the customers’ actions, marketing automation tools can craft unique, personal cross-platform ads.

· Search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of optimizing the content, technical setup, and reach of your website, so that your pages appear at the top of a search engine result for a specific set of keyword terms. Using SEO can drive visitors to your site when they display behavior implying that they’re searching for relevant products, which can be a game changer considering that 90% of people searching haven’t formed an opinion about a brand yet (Status Labs, 2018). While PPC and retargeting have their place, organic online traffic earned through search engine optimization has enormous influence on search rankings and, by extension, organic site traffic. By using keywords and phrases, you can use SEO to massively increase visibility and begin a lasting customer relationship. SEO is defined as increasing a website’s rank in online search results, and thus its organic site traffic, by using popular keywords and phrases. Strong SEO strategies are hugely influential in digital marketing campaigns since visibility is the first step to a lasting customer relationship.

· Content marketing. Effective content marketing is not outwardly promotional in nature, but rather serves to educate and inspire consumers who are seeking information. When you offer content that is relevant to your audience, it can secure you as a thought leader and a trustworthy source of information, making it less likely that your other marketing efforts will be lost in the static. In the age of the self-directed buyer, content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising, so it’s well worth the additional effort.

· Social media marketing. The key to effective social media marketing goes far beyond simply having active social media accounts. You must also be weaving social elements into every aspect of your marketing efforts to create as many peer-to-peer sharing opportunities as possible. The more your audience is inspired to engage with your content, the more likely they are to share it, potentially inspiring their peers to become customers as well.

· Email marketing. After more than two decades, email is still the quickest and most direct way to reach customers with critical information. Today, successful email campaigns must be incredibly engaging, relevant, informative, and entertaining to not get buried in your customer’s inbox. To succeed, your marketing emails should satisfy five core attributes. They must be trustworthy, relevant, conversational, coordinated across channels, and strategic.

· Mobile marketing. Mobile devices are kept in our pockets, sit next to our beds, and are checked constantly throughout the day. This makes marketing on mobile incredibly important—two-thirds of consumers can recall a specific brand they have seen advertised on mobile in the last week—but mobile is also very nuanced considering its intimate nature. SMS, MMS, and in-app marketing are all options to reach your customers on their devices, but beyond that, you must consider the coordination of your marketing efforts across your other digital marketing channels.

· Marketing automation. Marketing automation is an integral platform that ties all of your digital marketing together. In fact, companies that automate lead management see a 10% or more bump in revenue in six to nine months’ time. Without it, your campaigns will look like an unfinished puzzle with a crucial missing piece. Marketing automation software streamlines and automates marketing tasks and workflow, measures results, and calculates the return on investment (ROI) of your digital campaigns, helping you to grow revenue faster. Marketing automation can help you gain valuable insight into which programs are working and which aren’t, and it will provide metrics to allow you to speak to digital marketing’s efforts on your company’s bottom line.

ROI of a successful digital marketing program

Digital marketing ROI involves much more than the up-front payback of standard banner ads, organic content marketing is also a major player in the digital marketing space.

· Digital marketing reaches customers beyond advertisements. Seventy percent of internet users want to learn about products through content versus traditional advertisements (MDG, 2014).

· Digital marketing drives content marketing. The top five B2B content marketing tactics are social media content (92%), e-newsletters (83%), articles on your website (81%), blogs (80%), and in-person events (77%) (source).

· Digital marketing is vital for SEO. The first organic search results on Google account for 32.5% of traffic share for a search term (Chitka)

Planning, implementing, and optimizing your digital marketing program

Begin the launch of your digital marketing program by first determining your audience and goals, and then putting in place metrics to ensure you’re always improving.

Step 1: Identify and segment your audiences. Today buyers expect a personalized experience across every touchpoint. To do this, you must understand their demographic, firmographic, and technographic attributes as well as how to address their questions and pain points.

Step 2: Establish goals and measurement strategy. Use audience information to determine personas and get a clear view of their sales journey to establish your goals and measurement strategy. Important metrics include impressions, reach, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), engagement rate, conversions, cost per lead (CPL), effective cost per thousand (eCPM), as well as back-end metrics like return on investment (ROI), return on ad spend (ROAS), first- and multi-touch attribution, and lifetime  customer value (LCV). 

Step 3: Set up your adtech and channels. Ad technology can take some time to navigate, so make sure you have the right data management platforms (DMPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPS), and ad exchanges in place before you get started. Align your team, communicate everyone’s objectives, and show how their channels fit into the big picture of digital marketing.

Step 4: Launch and optimize. Digital marketing can be used for acquisition, nurturing, building customer loyalty, and branding. Review metrics regularly, so you can know where you are excelling and where you need work to become a leader in this high-impact, high-demand space. 

Learn more about how to get digital marketing working for you in our co-authored white paper with Harvard Business Review (HBR), Designing a Marketing Organization for the Digital Age.