7 Essential Technical Skills You Will Need If You Want To Become A Web Designer

7 Essential Technical Skills You Will Need If You Want To Become A Web Designer

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

For anyone contemplating a career in web design, we trust you are aware that there are several technical skills that all successful web designers must possess. Without these skills, not only will you be compromising your ability to create websites, but we would go as far as to say that you will unlikely be able to create a website worthy of being published.

These technical skills can all be learned, first by studying and understanding the specific theories and details of them and then using that foundational learning to start using them practically. This is likely to be done by practising with them first before using them to build a portfolio of completed websites. As for what these seven main technical skills for web designers are, they are all outlined below.

Website Coding (HTML, CSS): It should come as no surprise that website coding languages such as HTML and CSS are first on the list. Not that modern websites are built by writing line after line of code as they once were, however, knowing how these codes work and being able to alter website pages by editing their HTML and CSS code will be invaluable to your web design career.

Programming Languages: In addition to HTML and CSS, there are other programming languages that web designers should have a decent working knowledge of. These include Python, JavaScript, C++, and Swift and they are used to create much of the functionality that a website’s design calls for. Of the four mentioned, Java is the one used most often.

Content Management Systems (CMS): Content is an essential part of any website, or at least it is if the website has any chance of ranking or converting. A CMS is what allows web designers to initially include content, and subsequently, the website owners to add content. Examples of CMS include WordPress, Joomla, HubSpot, Drupal, and Wix.

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eCommerce Sales

3 Ways to Increase eCommerce Sales

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

When it comes to the ecommerce industry, websites like Shopify have been making it awfully easy for people to start up their own businesses in the field of ecommerce web design. Maybe you are also thinking about starting your own ecommerce company as well. It only makes sense if you want to make money through the power of the internet. An ecommerce store makes the most sense.

The thing is that just setting yourself up an ecommerce store is not going to cut it. If you want to make some real money off of it, you need to generate some significant sales. To do that, you need to know how you can market your ecommerce store so that you can sell your wares to become successful.

We’re going to look at x ways to increase your ecommerce business sales in this post to help you foster a successful business. Let’s get started.

  1. Paid Traffic Generation

One of the best ways to boost the sales you can make through your ecommerce business is to get some good traffic flowing to your website. How will you do that? Through paid traffic, of course. If you are thinking that getting paid traffic to your website is going to require you to spend more money than you will make from it, you would be so wrong. There have been cases where people invested in paid traffic but couldn’t break even on their investment. There is a reason for that.

If you utilize paid traffic properly and avoid newbie mistakes, you’re pretty much golden. You need to approach paid traffic by pacing yourself. Spend small amounts to test the waters before you jump in. Experiment with multiple campaigns on a small scale to see which one gives you better results. Once you’ve found your pick, tweak it to make improvements and voila. You will not only get back what you’ve invested, you will make more on top of that.

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Website Isn’t Ranking

My Website Isn’t Ranking: What am I Doing Wrong?

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

If you own or manage a website, then you need to be directing at least a portion of your marketing budget to SEO (search engine optimisation) with a marketing services company. Although SEO is difficult, getting on top of it will help your website continue to do well in its search engine rankings.

Luckily, there are plenty of SEO agencies out there who can help you solve problems that might be causing your website to rank poorly. I’d generally recommend paying an SEO professional to do things for you, because they will know exactly what they’re doing.

However, you still might like to know why your website isn’t performing well on the search engine results pages. There are a few reasons why this could be the case, including:

Your Website Hasn’t Been Indexed

If your website isn’t indexed, it won’t show up in the search engine results, no matter how well-optimised it is. Unfortunately, this happens more often than you might think.

Sometimes, Google and other search engines will index or crawl your site without them telling you to. But, sometimes, they won’t, which means that you need to log into your Google Search Console and submit your website.

This isn’t too hard, and there are plenty of resources online that will tell you what you should be doing. Alternatively, speak to a professional and ask them to help you get started.

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Digital Marketing

Brief History of Digital Marketing

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

The history of digital marketing can be traced back to the 80s which saw computer technology advancing just enough to be able to sore large amounts of information about customers. The increasing sophistication in technology led to the mindset about marketing take a shift from being about pushing the product to making a connection with the customers. Marketers started to move on from their offline marketing strategies to database marketing which did not have as many limitations as list brokering.

The 1990s

Along with the 90s came the advent of CRM software. A system that could track interactions with current and potential customers and it blew up into something huge at that time. The massive overhaul that CRM saw in the 90s resulted in vendors expanding the services they offer to companies. They were now offering sales, service applications and marketing as well by that time.

The birth of the internet took it along to allow marketers to prioritize the experience of customers and update their customer understanding. The challenge was that they had a lot of data but not a lot of information. 1999 saw the birth of SaaS (software as a service) come forth in the form of Salesforce. It was the first company to actually deliver business applications from a website. We know it as cloud computing. This laid the foundations of future digital marketing technology.

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Website Design Ideas: Testing

Website Design Ideas: Testing

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

Most things that are complicated in business require testing. That may be as simple as the local supermarket testing different promotional offers during different weeks to see what cuts through. Or it may be as complex as a commercial electrician performing circuit board testing on a highly specialised pieces of equipment that controls the signals on a busy freeway.

In the digital world, testing is just as important. Enormous companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon all employ thousands of engineers and other staff to do constant testing on their websites, apps and services to squeeze out every bit of efficiency that can.

A/B Testing

But there is another, less commonly understood form of testing that these businesses undertake. It’s called A/B testing. And it is an incredibly powerful tool. Without testing, businesses are just guessing what website layout, offers and landing pages work best or will appeal the most. So the process of designing a website is less scientific and more driven by gut feel and experience.

There is a better way. And that way is A/B testing. A/B testing is very simple. It basically involves having two different versions of the same web page. That allows a small change to be made to one (the tested page) and one to be left as the original (the control page). That way, the effect of a particular change can be observed and measured as different users interact with the page.

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SEO Optimised Blog Posts

How Do I Write SEO Optimised Blog Posts For My Law Firm?

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

Blogging and content creation is a major part of search engine optimisation (SEO) for lawyers. If you run or manage marketing and SEO for your law firm, then you need to know exactly how to craft the perfect blog post.

The perfect SEO blog post has a number of features. Some of these are obvious, but others aren’t at all. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t understand exactly what writing SEO optimised blog posts involves, which is why I’ve put together this list of some of the major features of SEO optimised content. These include:

  1. Making Sure To Use Keywords

Before you start writing, do some keyword research. Identify one primary keywords (or keyword phrase) and a few secondary keywords for your article. Try and include the primary keyword in your title, in the first paragraph of your content, and about once per 100-150 words after that. Try and use your secondary keywords a couple of times through the piece.

It’s important to note that keyword stuffing is a big no when it comes to SEO content. Make sure that your keywords are worked into your content in a natural manner, otherwise Google might penalise you.

  1. Choose Your Topics Carefully

If you really want your blog post to rank high on the search engine results pages, then you need to make sure that you’re choosing topics that don’t have too much competition. A good place to start is with writing blogs that answer question that a potential client might ask.

For example, if you run a law firm specialising in criminal law, you need to look for niche blog titles related to this. For a criminal lawyer, blogs like ‘what to expect at an assault hearing’ or ‘average punishment for burglary’ could be a good place to start.

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Spending Money on SEO

Is it Worth Spending Money on SEO?

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

In short, yes, SEO remains the most profitable digital marketing stream in the world, especially if you have a decent budget to use on it. As digital marketing specialists slinky.digital will tell you, it doesn’t return immediate results like other digital marketing streams usually do, which means that you need to think of your SEO spending as a long-term investment above all else.

With this in mind, I decided to take a closer look at the things that are worth spending money on when it comes to SEO and the things that you should be careful of.

What Should I Spend My SEO Budget On?

Ultimately, the answer to this question will largely be dictated by the size of your budget, the type of website that you have, and your own SEO experience. Some of the most effective ways to spend your SEO budget include:

On an experienced SEO professional – In reality, I’d almost always recommend spending your SEO budget on a professional with experience and training. They will be able to identify gaps in your SEO strategy, work on solutions to these gaps, and help you maximise your long term return on investment.

On guest posting – If you’re a good writer, then I’d recommend thinking about spending a bit of money on guest posting. In general, guest posts include a link back to your website, helping build your backlink profile. If you pay to place guest posts on high-quality websites, you will find that these backlinks help improve your SEO rank a lot.

On website optimisation – A lot of people forget about this part of SEO. If you’re not already working to optimise your website’s code and back-end infrastructure, then you should at least think about it. Ultimately, the better your website is written and the faster it loads, the better the user experience will be, and in turn the better your SEO rank will be.

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Top SEO Trends

Top SEO Trends in 2019

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

If you’re in any way familiar with the world of SEO, you will know that it’s a constantly changing field. Every time one of the major search engines update their algorithms or makes changes to their search engine ranking process, search engine optimisation best practices also change.

It’s therefore important to stay up to date with the latest best practices so that you can keep your website at the top of the results pages for relevant keywords. With this in mind, I’ve put together a short list of the top SEO trends in 2019 which you can use to inform future optimization decisions. They include:

Understanding User Intent

Google’s search engine algorithms are becoming increasingly advanced, and they have reached a point where they are able to understand what sort of things someone is searching for when they use a specific keyword.

With this in mind, you need to make sure that your content for specific focus keywords and phrases is inline with the things that people are actually searching for.

For example, if you’re trying to rank for a key phrase like “How to get to the top of the search engine rankings”, you need to make sure that your article explains this clearly.

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Email Marketing

Email Marketing is Still Worth Taking Seriously

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

Email marketing is one of the oldest digital marketing channels and it still is one of the most effective means for marketers to reach out to their consumers. In fact, among all the channels available in digital marketing, email marketing has remained in the top 3 despite social media marketing and content marketing making a lot of head way into the marketing landscape. This is why it is important to examine and utilise the latest email marketing strategies if you want to enjoy long term success in whichever industry you operate in.

Analyze the data that you have and come to grips with everything that you and your team will need to refine in order to make sure that your approach to email marketing more effective this year than the last.

Powerful Marketing Tool

If you have the right approach to your email marketing strategy, it can be one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. Email marketing can completely change the relationships that a brand can build with its consumers. The aspect of personalised and customised recommendations and promotional offerings through emails can make it very enticing for consumers to interact with businesses.

Email marketing has been one of the most effective ways to get through to the customers and even for re-targeting existing consumers to kick off long term buying and selling relationships with brands. The technology we have now allows marketers to actively predict the buying patterns for individual customers and let it influence their approach to marketing products to their customers.

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Choosing The Best Comment Plugin For Your WordPress Blog

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

When it comes to creating the perfect WordPress website or blog, there are two key things that you have to master if you want to be successful. The first of these is content. You need to have high-quality content which interests people, otherwise there won’t be any reason for people to visit your website.

The second thing that you have to master is audience engagement. If you can somehow build a little community of people who regularly comment on your posts and articles, and who are likely to share your content on social media, then you will be well on the way towards website success. With this in mind, there are a number of different comment plugins that you can add to your WordPress website. Most of these are free, and can be set up very easily. Consider the pros and cons of the following, and add at least one to your own website:

Disqus:
Disqus is one of the most widely used comment plugins in the world. One of the best things about it is that it isn’t limited to WordPress. It runs on its own platform, which is a little like a social media platform, and lets people connect and engage with each other across a range of websites and blogs, especially if they have a few in common.

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Personal Branding Tips

4 Personal Branding Tips That Will Drive the Success of Your Business

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

Presenting yourself to people on the internet is something that makes up an important part of personal branding. It plays an important role in establishing you as an industry expert, and making you become an influencer. By making proper use of personal branding, you can get on the path that will get you worldwide recognition and increase the chances of success for your business. Here are 4 personal branding tips that will drive the success of your business.

Authenticity

Personal branding requires you to be completely authentic. Everyone has their own personal traits that help people determine who they are. You might have a strange way of dressing, maybe you like singing in the shower, or maybe you just have these very strange gestures you make when you’re talking because you’re so excited. Whatever it is that makes you ‘You’, embrace it and let it help you stand out from the rest.

Consistency

One crucial element of branding of any kind is consistency. It does not mean that you just have to be consistent about your posting schedule. It means you have to make sure there’s a consistency in everything that you do which will essentially define the branding of yourself with the branding of your business. While many people might suggest having a lot of versatility in the content you portray is good, you will find much better results when you stick to being consistent. When you are branding yourself, people come to expect certain things when they see social media posts by you. Fulfill those expectations and make your audience fall in love with the content you provide on a consistent basis.

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Maintenance WordPress Site

5 Tips For Building A Low Maintenance WordPress Site

Posted on by Kalenet Webdesign

WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder, with over a quarter of the internet’s websites currently using it. It is simple, requires no coding or developer experience to use, and allows websites to be built with minimal costs.

However, WordPress site maintenance can take up a lot of your time, especially if you aren’t an experienced developer. Maintenance is very important to make sure that your site remains in optimal condition for search engine crawler bots, to prevent broken links from popping up too often, and to make sure that your page load speeds stay fast.

If you don’t have a lot of time to spend on maintenance, then you need to design a low maintenance site. Below are our top five tips for building a low maintenance WordPress website:

  1. Find a decent host:

Different hosting providers work differently. In general, you should stay away from cheap ones with a poor reputation, as they can cause your website to load slowly, can lead to data loss, and can have a lot of downtime. Try and find a low maintenance hosting provider who offers instant restores, one-click backups, and other features.

  1. Don’t use too many plugins:

Things like plugins and toolkits can stop working or work differently with different updates, which means that you should choose your plugins carefully. Only use those which are essential, and do your research before choosing which ones to use.

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