All posts in Website Design Practices

Returning customers spend more than new and one-off customers. If someone who bought from you buys a second time, you can usually count on them to buy a third. This is important: repeat customers become more valuable over their lifetime.

But how do you get repeat customers? It’s all about customer retention. Read this short guide to learn four tips for increasing customer retention from Web design vs web development experts Huemor.

1. Create offers for returning customers. Don’t just advertise “new customer” discounts; returning customer promotions can be even more lucrative. This could mean a seasonal discount, a special comeback offer, or a sale event for returning customers. Your repeat customers are the bulk of your earnings: every once in a while, make them feel valued.
2. Reward loyal customers with a brand VIP program, so they know you care about their business and are keen on rewarding them for staying with you. Setting up an email marketing system paired with a personalized account page will not only give you valuable data about the customer, but also give them a series of perks for signing up to be a VIP member. Some ideas for what to include are birthday discounts, exclusive first-looks at new products, and early-bird discounts.

Read more: Web Design vs Web Development Experts, Huemor, Shares Four Tips for Increasing Customer Retention

Web development is a broad field, bringing with it an enticing array of different challenges. Indeed, I think my peers would agree that one of the role’s many appealing qualities is its inherent variety. On any day a developer might be tasked with: building the layout of a new web page, requesting and manipulating data from a server, coding interactions and animations, or one of any number of other interesting challenges. That mix of responsibilities requires a developer to understand and implement a range of different mark-up, scripting and programming languages.

For the uninitiated, a quick primer:

First of all, and essential to the web, is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) which provides the semantic structure and content of each page. HTML is the heart of a web page, allowing us to inform the browser that we intend to display a paragraph, a list, an image, or one of a number of other content elements. Moreover, the HTML contains the specific content that each of these elements should show to the visitor.

Following on closely behind are Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which allow us to style the aforementioned content. Using CSS we can make the paragraph a different colour, adjust the spacing of the list, or increase the size of the image, amongst myriad other possibilities. Background colours, rounded borders, shadows, spacing between elements; all these things and more are specified with CSS. HTML tells the browser *what* the content is, and CSS tells it *how* it should look.

Furthermore, as websites increase in size and complexity, we typically make use of a database to store content and other useful data. This is where “back-end” or “server-side” languages enter the picture, so named because they run on the server rather than in the visitor’s browser. For this there are a range of choices — including Perl, Ruby and ASP — though we do the majority of our work in PHP, which powers platforms such as WordPress, Laravel and Drupal.

With the aforementioned covered in brief, today I would like to focus on Javascript (JS), a very useful and increasingly flexible language. Like HTML and CSS, JS typically runs in the browser and, traditionally, has been used somewhat sparingly to enhance the functionality of a page. This might mean powering a carousel of images or displaying an interactive calendar. However, more recently the development landscape has exploded with front-end JS frameworks such as Angular, Vue and React whose purpose is to provide a more convenient and structured way of implementing JS in the browser. Practically speaking, this means a smoother, more interactive experience for the visitor and, in theory at least, a neater, more logical approach for the web developer.

As if that wasn’t enough, JS has been broadening its horizons and, like PHP or Ruby, it can also be used as a server-side language via applications such as Node.js. These developments have opened up the potential to have entire web applications written in JS. This rapid growth has seen a surge in demand for developers with deeper and broader JS knowledge. With many of the web’s biggest players (such as Facebook and Netflix) using frameworks like React, it has become clear that JS is here to stay.

Read more: The Role of JavaScript in Web Development

IoT is undoubtably a big tech-wave in the web development landscape. It clearly defines the smart and well-connected devices. Whenever any new technology is introduced, it definitely impacts the tech world. Similarly, IoT has profoundly impacted every sector – be it web design, development, or mobile app creation. All of these sectors are affected by this latest technology.

Understanding the impact of IoT on web development

It is entirely the responsibility of web development services to ensure that the complex architecture of IoT functions smoothly without a glitch.

Web developers are required to have an in-depth knowledge of programming and database management. They’ve to stay abreast with the modern tools and technologies by bidding farewell to the traditional web development services. This contributes towards the overall growth of dedicated programmers.

IoT projects have higher turnaround time owing to its complex multi-layered architecture. With the help of competent web and IoT solution development teams, things will be done at a fast pace. You need to adopt a hybrid approach of development for the completion of IoT projects in a timely manner.

Hybrid development teams appear to be a reasonable option compared to the static exclusive teams. They can create clean and user-friendly interfaces so that robust code and hyper-connectivity with multiple operating systems, devices, networks can operate seamlessly in cooperation.

Friendly user-interface: When it is about developing an intuitive web-based UI for an IoT app, it has to be clean, interactive, and fast. Apart from that, designers should deploy the latest web designing practices. One more thing, you should make sure that your IoT based design is mobile compatible, so that smart device users can make the most out of it.

Solid backend: With the help of the robust backend design architecture, the communication between users and IoT devices can be enhanced. Every device has a different set of capabilities, commands, and data that works just the way users want. A good backend transmits and receives information and facilitates clear communication for the users.

Power management: The first thing that comes to mind when you hear about IoT devices is wireless operation or battery-powered devices. This demands an effective power management for them. When heavy programs are running in the backend, they consume maximum battery that leads to less user communication. So, the new layout should have a design that reduces power usage.

With the increasing popularity of IoT in our daily lives, web development has now become the most demanding field in which companies invest in-depth research and development.

Read more: Revolutionizing the web development sector