by Nick Throlson | Nov 10, 2017 | Guest Post
Launched in 2010 and largely maintained by Google, AngularJS is a front-end web application framework that uses JavaScript to create stunningly beautiful and responsive web application interface. The frame is simple-to-use, efficient, fast and has virtually everything packed inside that a web developer would ever want. Here are some of the advantages that you can readily have if you deploy AngularJS for your next web app:
Mobile-driven
Since mobile users today vastly outnumber desktop users, it becomes essential for the web development procedure to take this fact into consideration and shape the applications such that they are equally, if not more, appealing on small devices. AngularJS offers ample features like memory management, touch support, among others that ensure your web app looks and perform as good as it does on desktops.
Performance
If your web application lacks in performance, no matter how many features you embed, users will find it frustrating to use. Keeping that in mind, AngularJS puts forward some very innovative techniques that make applications built on it exponentially faster than others. For instance, it offers server-side rendering to take the load off the browsers, thereby loading the application faster. It also allows the web pages to partially refresh the data to eliminate the need of refreshing the entire page even for small changes. Additionally, you can also implement other web standards that exclusively suit your application and in return, boost your performance.
Component-based
The component-based architecture of AngularJS enables developers to create highly modular web applications that?ll help them streamline the process and eliminate effort redundancy. Using such modules, any application can be rapidly developed with a wide set of features without even putting in major efforts. It also offers templates and metadata, through which each of those modules can be easily configured to tweak their functionality.
Animations
While performance satisfies users, it is the expressive interface that delights them. So, if you want your web application to be engaging, AngularJS offers ample animation options to portray different events through interface changes. While these subtle animations can be easily integrated through the framework itself, it also supports detailed and graphic-rich animations that you can create through CSS and JavaScript.
Mobile Apps
Though mobile apps and web applications traditionally use two entirely different set of technologies, AngularJS tries to bridge them as well. And the benefits you can have by employing the same platform for both web and mobile apps are manifold. But since it is a front-end development framework, it needs to integrate with other tools like NativeScript for back-end binding to create a full-scale and feature-rich mobile application.
Flexibility
As there is no one-size-fits-all, AngularJS development environment can be highly customized due to its compatibility with a wide array of tools and technologies. From browser extensions to IDE?s to testing and optimization tools, it is flexible enough to accommodate them all and offer you a one-stop-solution for all your web development needs.
Backward Compatibility
While new technologies do offer better features and performance, old ones can?t readily be abandoned. Especially when they are employed in some crucial system applications. With that consideration, AngularJS is built with extensive support for legacy tools and technologies and every new version that comes in is perfectly compatible with the old ones. That is one of the reasons why top web application development companies choose AngularJS for their web development projects because it not only is reliable and stable but also comes with a promise of long-term support.
by Nick Throlson | Oct 10, 2017 | Guest Post, Web Design
We all know that a professional and user-friendly website has the ability to boost brand exposure and sales for your business. In this day and age, your website is (or should be) your most qualified salesperson. If it fails to generate leads on a regular basis, then it isn?t doing its job.
When embarking on a web design (or redesign) project, there is a tendency to focus very much on the superficial ? how the website looks. Some business owners believe that a ?fresh lick of paint? is all that?s needed to attract more customers and improve conversions. But that really only scratches the surface.
Here are four reasons why your new web design might not generate the profitable results you were hoping for. It should come as no surprise that #1 on the list is:
You didn?t think about your users
Listen ? your web design can have all the image carousels, parallax scrolling, and Flash animated load screens you want. But these ?impressive? effects are the last thing you should be thinking about when designing or redesigning your website. First off, you should be thinking about the needs of your users.
Even if your website looks the part, your users will soon become tired of it if essential components, such as being able to find things easily, are overlooked. When people visit websites, rarely do they spend their time gushing over how beautiful it is. They?re not here to linger and admire, they?re here to a) find something, b) read something, c) buy something.
It may sound boring, but the truth is that people like familiarity. Your attempt to create something that deviates from the norm may actually put them off, particularly if it makes the website hard to navigate. So the take-home truth is this: don?t try to reinvent the wheel. Build a website that meets the needs of your users in a pleasant and efficient way.
You went for style over substance
We?re often led to believe that creativity is the holy grail of marketing. I?m certainly not here to dispute that. However, when it comes to designing a website, creativity actually isn?t the be-all-and-end-all. ?What an unfashionable thing to say,? I hear you cry. Stay with me.
Let?s consider the following statistics:
- Nearly 8 in 10 of consumers will stop engaging with content that doesn?t display well on their device (Adobe)
- 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won?t load or take too long to load (Adobe)
- 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience (Econsultancy)
In other words, we need to focus on usability if we want to please our customers. That means having a responsive website that displays well across devices, optimizing the website for speed so that pages load quickly, and ensuring that users have a good overall experience so they are more likely to come back.
A good web designer already knows all of this. What?s more, they also know the importance of having quality content. Whether you create the content yourself, bring a copywriter in-house, or hire a freelancer, you need to be thinking about your content alongside your web design.
Why? Because at the end of the day, content is what drives traffic. It?s the food of SEO. Search engines need ample information about the what, where, how, why and when of your business in order to determine your rank in SERPs. Content is the ideal way to position yourself as an expert worthy of the top spot.
You went ahead and made it yourself
Note: you may ignore the following point if you?re a web designer.
However, if you?re not a web designer and you have no experience in web design, then designing your website yourself is a big reason why it may not work out the way you plan. The truth is it takes years to perfect the art of making beautiful, functional websites. The same result is virtually impossible to achieve in a few hours using a DIY web design tool.
Nothing beats good old-fashioned experience, and while a website builder can give you something very passable for a reasonable budget, you may find it hard to recreate exactly what you?re after. By contrast, working with a professional gives you much more flexibility, not to mention saving you the headache of doing it yourself.
Web designers not only understand the principles of design, they also know how to create a website that will bring targeted traffic and high conversion rates. Everything from layout and hierarchy to color and iconography has a role to play.
Read more: Web Design Services That You Need.
Tips for ensuring a successful web design
It?s clear that design has the power to make or break your digital brand. Here are the elements that a good web designer will focus on to build a website that will benefit you and your business:
- Intuitive navigation ? making it easy for users to find what they?re looking for
- Responsiveness ? automatic adjustment to different screen sizes
- Considered presentation and placement of CTAs for maximum impact
- Simplicity over clutter ? everything needs to justify its presence
- Form and function over frivolity ? UX is paramount
- On-brand aesthetics ? optimal use of color, graphics, and copy
So whether you?re out to create a new website, update one or two key pages, or overhaul your existing design, remember that it pays to go pro. Cutting corners may save you money in the short-term, but could lose you business in the long-term. With the right professional on board, you have the best chance of building a web design that works out exactly the way you planned.
by Nick Throlson | Aug 18, 2017 | Guest Post, SEO, Web Design
While there are many factors that can affect the appeal of your website, its responsiveness always comes at the forefront. There is an interesting statistic claiming that after not responding for only 4 seconds, your website can drive away about 25 percent of all your audience. Aside from this, most visitors to your website expect it to load somewhere within first two seconds. However, this is only a tip of the iceberg of all the advantages that having a responsive website brings. For instance, there are several ways in which it can improve your SEO efforts. Here are few examples.
Reducing Bounce Rate
The first thing we mentioned in the introduction was the fact that people might leave your page if it takes too much to load. This rapid page abandonment is also known as a bounce rate and it is a factor that is closely monitored by Google. You see, there are only a few reasons why people would leave your page within a matter of seconds and most of them are various black hat techniques like click bait. Either way, it only goes to prove that a surprisingly large number of people found your page ?not worth their attention? which is something that Google is bound to penalize. On the other hand, by improving the responsiveness of your website, you are bound to reduce the bounce rate.
Taking the High Road
Another great thing about boosting the responsiveness of your website is the fact that it is one of the few ways to improve your website?s SEO rank without turning to a black hat or even grey-area methods. According to renowned digital marketing experts behind?Websitesthatsell, most black hat agencies use risky and spammy links that will give you short-term results. In other words, while the campaign is in its full swing, it will seem as if you have great results but these are bound to rapidly drop over the course of time. On the other hand, by taking the higher road and simply making your website more functional, you are giving your search engine rank a permanent boost.?1500+ Quality Blogs That Accept Guest Posts.
Friendlier for Mobile Users
The next major reason for boosting the speed of your website is to make it more mobile-friendly. You see, according to the survey we mentioned in the introduction, only 11 percent of mobile users stated that they expect the loading time to be much slower on their phone. This being said, failing to optimize the speed for mobile users shows potential to let a huge portion of your overall audience down. This is particularly true due to the fact that the majority of users currently browse the internet through mobile devices.
Avoiding Duplicate Content
Seeing how desktop and mobile devices often have different loading speed, some users tend to make two versions of their website. This, however, means using duplicate content, which is something Google is not so fond of. This being said, by focusing on making your website both mobile- and desktop-friendly, you can solve both of these problems with a single swing. An additional plus is the fact that this doesn?t take nearly as much effort as it may appear at first.
Cost-Effectiveness
Finally, we already mentioned the idea of building two separate websites for mobile and desktop users. Still, a lot of people decide to make an app for mobile users instead, which, although more effective, also costs significantly more. This being said, simply optimizing your already existent website to be slightly faster is much more cost- and labor-effective than either of these other solutions. Moreover, it doesn?t take more than several minutes of your time, which means that making a decision of your future course of action into an even greater no-brainer.
In Conclusion
As you can see, making your website more responsive might be one of the best investments of both your time and resources that you could possibly make. Not only does it improve your standing on search engines and your website?s overall credibility but it also gives your overall user-experience quite a boost. Outside of this, it is Google-friendly and even makes your link building efforts more efficient. Overall, a win-win scenario regardless of how you decide to look at it.
by Nick Throlson | Apr 15, 2017 | Guest Post
Investing in stocks or trading Forex can build your future in any direction in which you choose to go. Many investors have different ideas on how to truly get started, but the one piece of advice you should listen to is, learn all you can about the market.
Start out small and build your portfolio as you learn about stocks and the Forex market, and how to play the market to your advantage. You can start with as little as a few hundred dollars.
First of all, learn to put away some money each month. It can be as little as $10 a week. Put it in a shoebox or the bank, but do it faithfully each week. At the end of the year that would add up to 0 for the year which might be enough to start trading at a professional online discount brokerage.
You need to set your goals and learn what your risk tolerance is for the market. Know why you want to invest. Is it for retirement, a new home, or financial stability?
Analyze … and Then Analyze Some More!
Investing is just putting your money to work for you. It is not gambling. You will learn how to watch a stock and follow the trends of the market. Picking stocks to watch based on a certain set of criteria will be your first lesson. Your aim will be to pick stocks that will give you a greater return than the average stock on the market. This is especially important when trading with low capital.
There is no sure fire set of rules to follow for picking stocks to guarantee that the stock will go up. With knowledge and watching the stocks you like, you can see patterns of ups and downs for any stock. When you become a good stock picker, your wealth with grow.
Learning the fundamental analysis of a company is a good beginning. The whole theory is to learn as much about the company and how the stock is trading on the market. Intrinsic value of a company?s stock is what you or analysis think the stock is worth and not what it is selling for on the market.
If the stock is trading at a lower price than what the intrinsic value of the stock is, then it is a buy signal. The basis theory of intrinsic value is simple, it is the company?s revenue minus expenses. The value of the company is, what the company?s worth is, after all expenses, salaries and reinvestments.
Many investors do not look at the discounted cash flows to trade. Investors also work on what is called a technical analysis to help them find the trend of any given stock. Stocks all have charts that can be followed to see their ups and downs of the trading prices. These charts are followed by the technical analysis as well as those individuals who are trading with online brokers.
Fundamental trading is mostly thought of as long-term strategies and technical trading is thought of as short-term trading strategies.
Value Investing vs Growth Investing
One of the oldest and best known stock-picking strategies is the value investing method.
Value investing is finding companies that are trading well below their intrinsic worth. Investors would look for strong earning and fundamentals, book value, cash flow and earnings of the companies they are interested in buying.
These stocks usually are selling at a lower price than what their quality shows them to be trading. These are called undervalued stocks and have a great potential of moving upwards in their trading price.
Valued stocks are not to be confused with junk stocks. Junk stocks are stocks that have lost their value in trading. These stocks might have been trading at $20 at one time, but are now only trading at $5 on the market. The company may be having fundamental problems and the price of the stock must be compared to the intrinsic value and not the historic prices.
Growth investors look for the future trading price of a stock. These investors are not as concerned with today?s market trading price.
Growth investors are trading stocks of companies that are valued higher than their intrinsic worth. These investors strongly believe that the company will exceed their current values and their intrinsic worth will grow. Usually young or new companies are looked at for growth. These companies will grow faster than others and therefore grow in value. Their earnings and revenues will grow bringing the trading price of the stock upwards. Growth companies gain their profits through capital gains and usually do not pay out dividends. They reinvest their earnings.
Price/Earnings Ratio Matters
New investors should also learn about the price/earnings to growth about the stocks in which they are interested in investing. This ratio will give the investor a bigger picture of the valuation of their stock and is more in depth than just the price-earnings ratio. Past Earnings are compared by knowing the P/E ratio over a given time. Usually a 12 month period is used.
One of the largest factors that determines the growth and earnings of a company is the rate in which the company is growing. This growth will also have a lot to do with the intrinsic value of the company.
Learning the stock market can be fun and extremely interesting as you learn all the ways to make money. New investors should not invest with money they cannot afford to lose.
Invest wisely, learn all you can and build your future in the market. Start out by investing on paper first until you learn the volatility of the market and what stocks you have picked that came out to be winners.
by Nick Throlson | Mar 29, 2017 | Guest Post, Social Media
When it comes to social media marketing, it is really easy to get lost in this bottomless ocean of shares, likes, tweets, and news feeds. It seems like opportunities are everywhere, and young entrepreneurs try to get the most out of every single one of them. Facebook and Instagram are the first and the second most popular social network in the United States as of November 2016 (according to Statista). So, it's no wonder almost every brand plunges headlong into this Facebook/Instagram marketing battle for customers.
However, what is the difference between these two social networks and which one should you use for your business?
Facebook is clearly a winner here. It can boast almost 2 billion active users of any gender, age, and nationality, and it looks like this number is only going to grow with time. This is why chances are high that you already have a Facebook business page and are actively using it to promote your brand. This is, definitely, not a mistake. Whether you sell socks or provide accounting services, Facebook won't let you down when it comes to exposure. Instagram, on the other hand, is being used by 600 million users monthly, and its demographics is not so diverse.
Since Facebook is a place where people of all ages, professions, and income levels hang out, it is a universal platform with an extensive pool of potential customers for literary every business. However, according to Pixel Vulture, teenage use of Facebook decreased 45% in 2014. So, if you are trying to market your product to youngsters, better try Snapchat or YouTube. At the same time, Facebook is still effective when it comes to 30+ professionals, teachers, moms, entrepreneurs, etc.
Instagram, on the other hand, is a social network with the prevailing number of female users (38% vs 26% of male ones) aged under 34.
This makes Instagram a perfect place to market fashion, design, travel, entertainment, and other things that make up ?Instagram lifestyle?.
Surprisingly, Facebook with all its billions of users lost this battle to relatively tiny Instagram, with the latter giving you up to 10 times more engagement (according to Jenn Herman's study). She put one and same post on both Instagram and Facebook in order to see how many likes each of them will collect. The study proved that though Instagram's audience is smaller, it is more willing to engage with brands. The post on Instagram won with almost 10 times more likes and comments within the same period of time.
It happened because Facebook is perfect for private use, while we use Instagram mainly for following celebrities, getting inspired, and keeping up with the latest trends. It means that when we are on Instagram, we are subconsciously prepared to like or comment on posts (since that's pretty much all we can do on Instagram). When we are on Facebook, we simply want to text out friends or read the latest news on Donald Trump.
In essence, Instagram is a photo/video sharing platform with a?simple interface and a?limited number of sophisticated distracting options. It makes it really easy for businesses to bond with customers through sharing personalized, inviting?pictures that reflect the philosophy of the brand. Such an approach allows brands to appear?closer to customers. The lifespan of your Instagram post is short, however, so make sure to post regularly. Apart from that, choose only high-quality pictures in order to keep up with the competition.
If your products are more complex or highly specialized, Facebook is, undoubtedly, a better fit. You would probably want to write longer and more informative posts, join groups, create events, share valuable videos or blog articles. You should also focus on Facebook if you are doing content marketing, since, as we remember, Facebook is a place most turn to in order to satisfy their information hunger.
Facebook or Instagram?
Facebook and Instagram are two social media giants that are currently being owned by Mark Zuckerberg. They both allow targeting specific groups of people (e.g people of specific language or gender) and offer paid ads that can help to promote your business.
However, remember that if your customers would prefer?to see your product, not read about it, Instagram will do a better job getting your message across. Fashion, style, travel?and hospitality are industries that would definitely benefit from Instagram marketing.
If you target older audiences, however, or have very specific products and services that a picture cannot explain, then Facebook is your guy. It is also better for marketing more expensive products (since, again, the audience is more mature and solvent).
Author bio:
Jenna Brandon is a blogger, copywriter, and digital marketer at Writology.com.When she?s not busy writing articles and studying modern marketing trends, she cooks pizza or goes hiking with her friends. Jenna is also an avid traveler, and she is secretly Italian at heart.
by Nick Throlson | Sep 19, 2016 | Guest Post, Web Design
Having a blog is an essential tool for solopreneurs or small businesses to help propel their products and themselves to a higher profile. The cache attached to blogs on a small scale has many benefits, especially if there are people wanting to communicate their opinions, or to gather a small following. But, what about from the point of view of a medium or large size business? Is there any point in having one when a large company has the funds to have a flashy website or a marketing team to build a catchy campaign? Here are some ways in which a blog can give your business an edge.
Blogs can be used in two ways, internally and externally. Internal blogs serve to keep the company informed and updated on issues and is posted via the company?s intranet. External blogs are ones that are published and viewed online and so can be seen by the general public. There are pros and cons for both.
Externally, blogs work to give your company a personal touch. If you struggle to humanize your company, having a blog helps to keep readers informed on what is happening inside the company. It is a great way to convey an?understanding of your ethos, and your stance as a brand. The more personable your blog, the more warmth it gives you as a brand.
From a technical point of view, blogs are tailor-made for search engine algorithms. If your blog is on the same domain as your website, your blog will attract traffic that then can migrate to the rest of your site.
One of the best ways of using a blog is to get instant communication with is reading through posts that are critical of your current offerings, especially if other posters agree. Going through the posts for specifics and ask for clarification early will give you valuable information. But it will also show blog readers that you take complaints seriously.
If you deliver a complex technical product or service, a blog will be a great way for people who use your offerings to get quick solutions from each other.
If you need more tips to help with your blog, check out: http://www.blogherald.com/2016/08/19/art-perfect-listicle/.
Internally, the communication of a blog helps to form a united front across all departments. And by using one tool to communicate with every department reduces the standard newsletter as redundant. Blogs are also a way to share expertise on specific topics and are especially useful to employees involved in technical areas that require up to date information.
Another benefit of the internal blog is that blogs are incredibly simple. It is such a basic way in which it allows staff and team members to document a project and the progress. As well as its successes and challenges, and lessons learned.
With the pros of a blog for your business, it is common sense to get one up and running. Firstly to communicate your business with a human touch, and secondly, to get your business out there!
