Cornerstone Digital
It seems like everyone is online and has a website in this day and age. This means that people need to learn all they can about eCommerce web design so they can stand out from the crowd. Luckily for you, this is possible if you follow this article, so read on for more information. Just what does Web Design mean? Web design is basically everything that goes into building a website from the ground up. It means all of the programmings that must be done to get the site to work properly and even the content and graphics that go onto that site. It also has to do with how well you optimize your site so that it can be ranked well on search engines. This is why it’s important that you know your way around it before you start investing your time into it. Is Anyone Able to do Web Design? The only way for a person to really be able to do web design is if they’re able to dedicate a lot of time to learn it. This means that a lot of people are not going to be able to do well with it because they aren’t willing to do the work. There are, however, tools out there that can assist you if you don’t have a lot of time. The main point it is that if you work hard, you will be sure to see results. What are the Benefits of Hiring someone else to do Web Design for me? There will be times when you just don’t have the time to make a Website Design Company. This means that you’re going to have to hire someone else to help you. The main thing you have to keep in mind when you’re hiring someone is how much they charge, and what they’ve done before for others. Try to avoid hiring someone you don’t know if they don’t have a portfolio. Defiantly avoid paying them up front if they have nothing to show you either. There is nothing wrong with hiring someone else to help you if you just don’t have the time. How much should Web Design companies charge to build a website? This is something that has quite a few different answers depending on the need of the person getting the website done. Websites can be very cheap if they’re done by a small company, but if the site is fairly complicated, it can end up costing thousands. Generally, people charge per page and for the features that they have to place on the website. Keep in mind that there are also charges for the equipment people have to use, as well as the time it takes to get the site online.
eCommerce Web design is interesting as a pastime as well as a career. Whatever your reason is for doing web design, you are sure to find it a lot easier to manage by using the advice above. From here the only thing left to do is to just work, so give it your best shot!
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Did you know that once your web page takes 4 seconds to load, 25% of people will abandon your website? Or that 47% of online shoppers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less? Speed is a huge factor in increasing conversions on Ecommerce websites. So how do you make your Ecommerce site faster? Well first you need to know the loading speed of your web pages before you make any changes and there are several free tools you can use to discover this: Once you know your loading speeds, work through the following 5 hacks and then retest the speed of your pages – you should be happily surprised at the difference these few changes will make to the speed of your website. Browser Caching Every time a visitor opens a new page on your website or returns to your website, their computer accesses all of the files for your web page from the server. This takes time, so the idea is that information regarding static components of your website, such as headers, sidebars and images are saved to the visitor’s browser. Not having to access the server repeatedly for every component on your web page, speeds up the loading times. Check that your E-commerce site has caching enabled and if not you can use a plugin or a third party service such as Varnish. Hosting Not all web hosting companies are equal as some hosts specialize in providing the best environment for E-commerce websites. It is always best to ask a potential hosting company - Calgary Web Solution, how they have optimized their servers to suit E-commerce websites, before you sign on the dotted line. File Compression There are two points here – First, you can compress your website’s Javascript and CSS files, so they load from the server to the visitor’s browser faster, using GZip. However, you also need to compress your images, particularly on an Ecommerce site which can have hundreds of images, causing your loading speed to be considerably reduced. You can compress images using PhonePages.ca or check out CSS Sprites as an alternative. Compression can also be achieved by using plugins, such as WP Total Cache or WP Super Minify. Just be aware that these plugins can interfere with other plugins on your website. Reduce DNS lookups For every domain name there is an IP address. However, every external component on your web pages has their own IP address, for example YouTube, Facebook, Twitter feeds etc. So every time one of your web pages is loaded, the visitor’s browser has to retrieve all of the relevant IP addresses from the server. Reducing these ‘DNS’ lookups increases your loading time. One solution is to load items like YouTube videos to your server, rather than linking to them on your website. Another useful solution is to store these files (images, PDFs, Javascript, videos, CSS, etc.) in external environments, such as Amazon S3 or other content delivery networks. It is important however, to find a balance between the number of DNS lookups and the number of files that are stored external to your website.
Optimize for Mobile In this day and age with more and more people accessing the internet using their mobile devices, your Ecommerce site must be optimized for mobile devices. For this you have three choices – a native application, a separate mobile site and a responsive design. The best advice here is to discuss your requirements with your website developer who can design the best solution for your company. Lastly, updates and patches are regularly released for Ecommerce sites and many of them will help speed up your website’s loading times. So make sure to always keep your software up-to-date. For more information on increasing your Ecommerce site’s loading times or on Ecommerce design, contact us on (403) 688 5533, email: [email protected] or complete our online inquiry form. Digital technology has changed dramatically over the past ten to twenty years and the internet is now a permanent fixture in our lives. All you have to do is to think back to the early days and your very first website to know that the internet is an ever changing beast. There is however, one part of the internet that we see every single day that has not changed – the HTTP we see at the beginning of a website address. You might be surprised to know that this is going to change very soon. So what exactly is the HTTP? What does it do? Why do we need it and why does it need to be changed? More importantly, what will these changes mean to your business? The World of HTTP HTTP is short for HyperText Transfer Protocol. It is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and what is actually does is control the transfer of information and data from your web browser to the server of the website you want to visit. When you type the URL of a web page into your browser, this sends a HTTP message to the server commanding it to find the web page and to transmit it to your browser. In the early days of the internet, can you remember that we had to type HTTP into the browser? Now with the current generation of browsers, we no longer need to do this anymore, but it is still there even though we don’t need to actively type in HTTP. So why is HTTP Changing? In a nutshell, HTTP will change to HTTP/2 in about a year or two from now and its main focus will be to decrease page loading times. You might have noticed that loading times have increased over the past few years, but that is mainly due to the improvements in broadband connections. To speed loading times up even more, the underlying HTTP needs to be updated. You might be surprised to learn, that with all of the advances in digital technology and the way the internet has evolved over the years, HTTP has remained unchanged. It is way past time for an update, especially if we want to continue making use of the eCommerce web solution available for our websites. After all, there is no point in putting premier gas in your car if its top speed is only 50mph, so is there any point in trying to improve the internet with better broadband connections if the underlying protocol can’t cope with these changes? So to keep up, HTTP needs to change and become HTTP/2. What will HTTP/2 Mean to your Business? HTTP was created when websites were much simpler, so when you send a HTTP request for a web page to the server, every single part of that web page is requested individually. It’s like having a shopping list and instead of going to the market and purchasing everything on your list, instead you make separate trips to buy each item on your list. That doesn’t make any sense does it? In the early days of web development however, it made perfect sense. So in essence when you request a web page, a request is sent for each image, for example, to the server. Even worse, your browser has to wait for a response from the server for the first image, before it can request the second image, and so on. This is why your web pages can take so long to load. Every time another component is added to a web page that is another request that has to be made to the server. The newer browsers can have multiple connections to a server, but still, each connection is limited to one request at a time. That’s where HTTP/2 comes in, because it allows your browser to make multiple requests at one time. In essence, web pages will load much quicker because your browser doesn’t have to send individual requests and then wait for a response before sending the next request. Even with a fast internet connection, this issue with HTTP holds you back from achieving really fast loading times. HTTP/2 will help you to take more advantage of your fast internet connections, because it removes the blockage from the system. What do you have to do? Absolutely nothing. All you need do is to keep your browser up to date and if your website is compatible it will use this protocol. If it is not compatible, it will simply use the old HTTP which will still be available. For more information on website design, contact us on (403) 688 5533,
E-mail: [email protected] or complete our online inquiry form. |
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