We worked with attorney Lora Holman to put together a great site that would work for her law office. The site includes a large list of services she offers, with a detail page to increase specific SEO on the site for those particular services and keyword phrases. We also created a back end of the site for easy editing, addition, and removal of posts, pages, and other content.
cms
7 Web Development Trends CTOs Should Be Aware of in 2021
Development trends change pretty fast. For tech specialists, it’s essential to stay informed for sharpening the knowledge, while for decision-makers being up-to-date means withstanding a competition.
To help you grasp the web development trends for 2021, we’ve analyzed the market demands across different industries and the latest web development trends.
Here’s a quick list of what we’ve got:
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Intelligent chatbots
- Responsive websites
- Optimization for voice search
- API-first design
- Web push notifications
Progressive Web Apps or PWA
It’s probably one of the most meaningful trends of recent years. It’s aimed to make the experience that users get from browsing a website closer to native mobile applications. Therefore, more user-friendly and intuitive.
In simple words, PWA is a website offering features that usually accessible on mobile natives apps. Push notifications, offline mode, access to a camera are among those features.
A plethora of case studies shows that companies get an increase in revenue, conversion rates, and user engagements after adopting the PWA. The launch of the PWA resulted in two times more daily active users for Starbucks, while Trivago saw an increase of 150% for users who add its PWA to the home screen.
PWA let developers improve aspects that users hate about websites: slow load, no hardware support, poor user experience.
Companies Using the PWA
You can find the following companies among those who are already making use of PWA:
- Alaska Airlines
- Starbucks
- Trivago
- Uber
- Spotify
Tech Aspect
You may want to use one of the following technologies to build a PWA:
- Polymer
- Angular
- React
- Vue
One more thing that makes PWA a worthy investment is that they take up to four times less time to develop than native apps for iOS and Android.
Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages is the technology that Google first presented to the public in 2015. It has been keeping the position of the hotly debated web development trends since then.
In short, the AMP helps to build web pages that load insanely fast and work smoothly across a variety of mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages load for about 2 seconds in comparison to up to 22 seconds for regular ones.
Google pays a lot of attention to the load speed when deciding how to rank them in SERP. It means that the AMP technology is also remarkably useful for building a healthy SEO.
Tech Aspect
To get started with accelerated pages, you should learn more about an open-source HTML framework built for this purpose on the official website. There, you’ll find documentation and everything else you may need to get started.
Intelligent Chat Bots
For those businesses working across multiple time zones and having a presence in different countries and continents, it’s essential to provide customers with timely support.
Human customer services are often costly and don’t provide the necessary 24/7 support, unlike chatbots. That’s why entrepreneurs wonder how to build a chatbot that’d cover their needs making it another web development trend for 2021.
The chatbots powered with machine learning has been a worthy replacement for humans in many customer support tasks. Chatbots can give answers to frequently asked questions, redirect users to the right customer support specialist, and even take an order.
What’s more, a recent study shows that 65% of customers feel comfortable handling an issue without a customer support specialist.
Tech Aspect
There are several open-source solutions that can help you build an intelligent chatbot faster:
Responsive Websites
Responsiveness is no longer a nice-to-have feature. It’s now a must-to-have feature for every website on the Internet. It has been a trend for many years and 2021 isn’t an exception.
Taking into account that an overwhelming number of users prefers mobile devices over desktops and regarding Google’s recent mobile-first indexing policies, there’s no other way to succeed on the Internet except for being responsive.
Optimization for Voice Search
The voice search has an ever-rising potential that businesses simply can’t ignore. The last year’s report shows that more than half of all smartphone users were using the voice search in 2020. This number is going to grow exponentially.
Bearing in mind the current state of voice search and its perspectives, it’s definitely a web development trend for this year. Companies will start losing money without adding voice search to their SEO strategy and providing the IT budget for it.
Tech Aspect
The Web Speech API from Mozilla can help you with this task. The API helps to recognize the voice context, respond to queries, and read text content.
API-First Design
With the rise of digital services and their connectivity with one another, API-first design has become a widespread web dev elopement approach. And it’s still a trend.
With the traditional development approach, teams rather focus on delivering a smoothly working app and pay little attention to an API. APIs are often perceived as side projects and might not be designed and tested properly.
The API-first development, unlike the traditional one, goes simultaneously so that one part of the team doesn’t have to wait until colleagues finish their part of work.
Tech Aspects
Here are some popular tools for developing a high-level API:
Web Push Notifications
Push notifications used to be a privilege of mobile apps for a long time. However, web apps with push notifications gain momentum. Push notifications on websites can be used for informing about a new blog post, telling that a thing you were interested in is back in stock, and many other situations.
Tech Aspects
There are plenty of tools on the market that can help you integrate push notifications:
Wrapping Up
So, we have the following web development trends for 2021:
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Intelligent chatbots
- Responsive websites
- Optimization for voice search
- API-first design
- Web push notifications
If you’re building a new product or going to update the old one, it may be a good idea to identify what trends are right for you to start preparations.
Author’s bio
Vitaly Kuprenko is a writer for Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company with headquarters in Ukraine. He enjoys writing about technology and digital marketing.
E-commerce Franchise Website Design
The team at Design Web put together an ecommerce website for Waste Brothers to allow people to rent dumpsters for their residential, industrial, or commercial construction projects. This involved many different moving parts since this wasn’t your typical e-commerce site. Instead of buy it once and ship it, we had to set up the site to account for rental of the products, incorporating different rental periods and other aspects of dumpster rental. We put together a bright and modern design for Waste Brothers that incorporated their existing branding.
The other side of the site was to incorporate franchise opportunities for those who were interested in setting up franchises in other cities besides Louisville, KY. We were able to incorporate mapping and individual franchisee information so that the site would default to certain franchise locations depending on GPS location of the client. This was an exciting and fun project to work on!!
Pro Bono Website Design Services for Non-Profit Organization
Design Web teamed with New Beginnings Family Services(NBFS) to rebrand their 3 websites (Viacolori.com, kentuckyfostercare.com, and newbeginningsky.org). NBFS is a foster care placement organization for children who may have been the victims of abuse and/or neglect. We provided the design and development of these websites at no cost in order to promote this amazing organization and help get more foster children placed in loving homes. Design Web made it easier for NBFS to update and promote through the website, as well as easier for visitors to navigate, find information, answer questions, and sign up to become a foster family. The redesign of the website has increased potential foster family sign-ups. We absolutely loved working with Dusty and the rest of the gang at New Beginnings Family Services.
International Finance Website Design
ClipperData is an international company that has been featured in Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and CNBC. They provide data to traders and investors, so we had to make sure the site was functional and looked fantastic. We were able to put together a great looking website that provided easy navigation to the data. We did a lot of research and design work to improve user satisfaction and increase conversions and leads. We are very proud of this website and all the time and work that went into it.
Niche Lifestyle Retailer Website Design
Samantha Heavrin came to us with her business idea – creating a website that could sell fly fishing gear to women, as well as being a resource for women who fish and love outdoor adventures. We were able to put together a great design that not only told her story, but sold her products.
Samantha put together a fantastic brand with Reel Fly Girls showing women who love adventure and recognize that being the best student, wife, mom or boss means taking time to care for themselves. The focus of the site was for selling fly fishing apparel, but the gear can be used for any outdoor activity, or even for a night on the town after the sporting fun.
Automation Company Website Design
Nationwide Services, LLC works with moving large machinery and entire factories, as well as dealing in scrap and other industrial services. We put together a website that would help boost their search presence and increase their reach to clients. Not only did we help Nationwide Services with a website, but we also helped conduct an SEO campaign that increased search ranking and their business online.
Our campaign is helping to increase the search ranking of the website, as well as increasing the position zero, metadata positions, and other business information for the business.
Attorney Law Firm Website Design
We worked with Brian Dettman of Dettman Law to put together a great site that would work for his law firm. The site includes a large list of services he offers, each with its own landing page to increase specific SEO on the site for that particular keyword and/or keyword phrase. We also created a back end of the site for easy editing, addition and removal of posts, pages, and other content.
Review from Brian Dettman –
“From start to finish Jael and Sean were great. I hired them to create a new website for my law Firm. They were prompt, available, and responsive when I had questions or input. They didn’t try to tell me what I wanted, but instead helped game plan what I was looking for. I highly recommend them.”
How To Set Up Your Website Using GreenGeeks And Softaculous Via cPanel
Setting up your website using GreenGeeks
Having a website is one of the most important things in today’s virtual world. With the developments that has taken place in the dynamics of today’s world, creating your website has become far easier than it was before the new century started. A person who doesn’t even have the slightest knowledge about developing code like PHP or HTML can easily construct their own website. Although, knowing these languages will help you develop your website further in the future, but even without them, you can easily develop a simple website with spectacular results. This article will elaborate on the step by step process that you need to implement in order to build a great website using our favorite hosting company, GreenGeeks.
Picking the platform to build your website on
The times have changed when you needed to be technically sound and have ample developer’s knowledge in order to create a website. These days, you can create a website without having to enter even one code line. Different platforms are available which does this job for you, therefore it is very important to choose the right platform to build your website. The simplest of websites can be created with the help of this brilliant platform known as WordPress. While creating a website you also need to consider that the platform you have chosen provides you options of creating smartphone compatible websites. Since most of the internet users of the world are on mobile, creating a smartphone compatible website is a must in order to guarantee maximum success of your venture. The level of code knowledge that you have is also important while choosing a platform, since some are perfect for beginners, while others demand advanced knowledge of coding. The support system provided by the platform is another thing that you need to consider. Some platforms have brilliant assistance, while others not so much.
The types of platforms available
There are a number of different platforms that are available for website creation, and some of them have been named below. They include:
- WordPress
- Joomla
- Drupal
- CubeCart
- Pretashop
If you are using GreenGeeks, a number of different platforms are available with the Softaculous installer, that can load various types of website builders with simple clicks of a mouse.
Using WordPress
WordPress is probably the most versatile software that allows you to build your website. You can probably achieve anything on WordPress even if you have beginner’s knowledge, or are a pro coder. WordPress has interesting features like adjusting itself automatically depending on the resolution of the visitor. A lot of free themes makes customization easy. It is optimized for smartphones and several plugins help you develop the website of your dreams. Being hugely popular, WordPress forums and assistance is also easy to come by, and the most exciting aspect of this app is that it is completely free to use.
Decide your domain name and provider for web hosting services
The next step involves selecting the domain name for your website and it should be unique and indicative of the content that you are going to post. You also need to take care that your domain name is short, does not have hard spellings, and has the right extension in order to eliminate chances of confusion and provide convenience of use from anywhere around the world.
Choosing your web hosting plan
The correct web hosting plan will enable you to use your funds wisely and also maintain your blog without suffering a loss. A simple plan to host blogs, to higher plans that are suited for big corporate firms are available in the market. Depending on your needs you should choose the correct choice. GreenGeeks is probably the best site that is available in this category, owing to their huge variety of plans.
Why use GreenGeeks?
Have you ever considered your effect on the nature for just using the internet? It might seem like a distant thought, but in reality, a huge amount of energy is used to keep the internet up and running, all around the world. The amount of energy that is consumed as a result of this is only next to the level consumed by the industry of aviation. The amount of greenhouse gases as a result of this is enormous. However, webhosting services like GreenGeeks are kind of saviors in this department. For every unit of energy that is consumed by GreenGeeks for their webhosting services, they purchase 3 times the same amount of credits in wind energy. As a result, GreenGeeks is 300% powered by green energy, leaving a carbon footprint that is negative. Therefore, it is an eco-friendly choice to use GreenGeeks, not to mention the huge ease of use and varied options that this web hosting service provides. You can get your web hosting services from GreenGeeks by simply clicking on the hyperlink.
Install WordPress and Configure it
Once your domain name and web hosting service has been properly set up, the next part is installing WordPress and configuring it. You can either install WordPress automatically or use the manual method. The automatic method is the easiest and is highly recommended. When using GreenGeeks, this process is done with the use of Softaculous, which completes the process by doing databases of its own and providing you with the access and passwords to the admin accounts. You can access Softaculous using the dashboard of cPanel in GreenGeeks.
Installing a theme on WordPress
The next part of the process involves you selecting the theme for your website. Consideration of your preferences, niche of your website and whether you want paid or free themes must be done before installing it. You need to be careful while selecting these as it is this very facet that decides the overall look of your website. Installing a theme can be easily done through the admin panel with the help of a few mouse clicks. In case you do not like the theme, you can change it instantly to get a better result.
Some important plugins for WordPress
Plugins are important aspects of websites as they provide it with functionality. For example, installing a FAQ section on your website will give it a professional touch. Some of the most popular plugins on WordPress and ones your website will definitely benefit from include:
- TinyMCE
- YoastSEO
- Wordfence Security
- Jetpack
- Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress
Proper addition of content on your website
After having installed WordPress and configuring it, the next part involves providing the proper content for your website. Your visitors need to have solid information to read when they visit your website. Three important parts of a website’s content includes posts, pages and menus. It is important how these three functions and how to write each.
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Pages- Pages include the content of your website that does not change over time. These hold the static information of your website and examples include ‘Contact’ page or ‘About Us’ page. Pages usually feature on the navigation bar of websites.
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Posts- Posts are the reason that people visit your website. These are content that you update on a daily basis in order to generate traffic for your website. You need to create informative, interesting and SEO optimized posts to keep your website faring well.
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Menu- The menu is the part of your website which makes it interactive and helps the users be able to make use of the different features and content of your website. It also helps them navigate your website. In WordPress, you can use simple drag and drop methods to move different items of the menu around in your website and place them at your desired location. It is important to remember that the navigation menu should be clean and easy to operate. Confusing navigation menus, often avert visitors.
Extras
There are some extras that you need to take care of in order to ensure highest profitability of your website. Some of these extras include:
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Adjusting the settings- The settings area in your WordPress contains useful tools which can be utilized to better your website. Things like time zone, handling of comments, format of dates, themes etc. are handled by these settings tools, and can help you achieve the desired results to make your website perfect. You should go through every single tool available in the settings and tweak them according to your needs. They are all user-friendly and easy to understand. If you find a tool too confusing to use, you can always come back to it at a later date.
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Making money from your website- The next step that you need to achieve is to find out ways to make money from your website. WordPress allows you to achieve this with ease. You can always use methods like affiliate links and AdSense to monetize your website and pull visitors. The more traffic you experience the greater money you make. Another brilliant way to start making money from your website is by turning your website into an online commerce store. Plugins like Woo Commerce, available on WordPress are perfect for this.
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Marketing your website- The next step is marketing your website. Digital marketing has evolved brilliantly in today’s world with options like social media marketing and email marketing. Your content can only bring as many people. The real way to bring visitors to your website is through marketing and you need to take care of this important requirement.
Setting up cPanel using Softaculous
What is Softaculous?
Softaculous is an installer that functions automatically and is used to install different scripts and control panels like Direct Admin and cPanel. It is a very fast installer and is capable of reaching its goal in just a single step. A number of different applications is available with Softaculous which include forums, content management systems and blogs. You can also avail the brilliant anytime backup installation feature present in Softaculous for easy and instant backup. It is also easy to uninstall the applications that you have installed with Softaculous. It is important to have this tool properly set up in order to enable you to build your website efficiently.
What is cPanel?
cPanel is a control panel that operates on Linux based platform and is used for accounts in web hosting services. It is a control panel that allows you to efficiently manage all of the services in a single place. Using cPanel is a must in today’s developed world and almost every web developer makes use of this tool. This tool is intuitive and fairly easy to make use of. With the help of cPanel, you would be able to manage your web hosting account very efficiently. Different uses of cPanel include creation of new email addresses and FTP users, monitor different resources, installing software and creating sub domains.
Installing cPanel using Softaculous
Before you start installing cPanel with the use of Softaculous, you need to make sure that your server has the requisite features. These include:
- WHM/cPanel needs to be already installed.
- ionCube Loader needs to be enabled.
In order for WHM/cPanel to work, you need to install CentOS as the operating system of your VPS. After the VPS is set and ready, and WHM/cPanel has been enabled, the next step involves enabling the ionCube Loader. In order to do so, you need to log into your WHM in the root mode and go to the option Server Configuration>Tweak Settings>PHP. Over here you will see a box beside the option ionCube as cPanel PHP. All you need to do is check on that button and click on the button that displays save. After this step, you can proceed towards installing the Softaculous installer on the VPS that you are using. However, you need to log in to the VPS that you are using via the SSH and then proceed towards executing the commands mentioned below, one after the other. They include:
- wget -N https://files.softaculous.com/install.sh
- chmod 755 install.sh
- ./install.sh
Post this the installation will start and once that is done, Softaculous will get enabled and you can start using it on your WHM. You also need to log inside your WHM and proceed to the location Plugins>Softaculous- Instant Installs. You will be able to see that the Softaculous has been enabled and cPanel clients of yours can start using it. All they need to do is log inside their accounts in cPanel and start using this wonderful installer to start installing the application that they want. Softaculous is available in both premium and trial versions and you would need to pay in order to use the premium version. Otherwise the trial will expire after a limited period and you can no longer use the features of this brilliant auto installer. Using the premium version is most recommended in order to avail maximum benefits.
With the help of the information on this article, you would be able to build the perfect website for yourself and take on the virtual world with a strong and optimized website.
You can also check out “green” webhosting services here.
IT Services Website Design
Jeff Disney with JML Infotech came to us with a need to start up his new small business doing IT services for Louisville, KY and surrounding areas. We were able to put together a website that displayed all of his information in a way that led users to call, email, and connect with him to get managed IT services, data backups, and networking needs.
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