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Web Development Tools Essentials for any Web Developer
Tips

Web Development Tools Essentials for any Web Developer

by Adrian Ababei on May 04 2016

Web development can be a real hassle without any help from tools, friends or services. That’s why we’ve set up a list of web development tools that can save you many hours of work.

Shrinktheweb

Shrinktheweb.com helps web developers take automatic screenshots from the server they’re working on through server-side languages and complete plugin integration. With as little as 10 bucks a month you’ll get custom size captures, full length captures and the private label service which lets you add your own logo as the placeholder – you’ll be able to use the image for marketing purposes.

Muffingroup

The BeTheme is a Muffin theme that gets your WordPress website up and going in a matter of minutes, thanks to its lightning fast drag and drop builder which offers plenty of possibilities. The theme also offers a layouts generator which can provide you with unlimited layouts for customizable pages – you can pick between different skins, grids, layouts, headers and logos. Muffingroup is one of the best web development tools out there – it offers over 200 shortcodes which you can use for your pages, a custom font uploader and plenty of template pages for help pages, gallery pages, about us pages and features pages.

 

Simbla, One of the Must-Have Web Development Tools

Simbla is a powerful site-building platform with plenty of features. It’s one of the simplest web development tools available on the market today – it features a drag and drop system which can help you build code free websites in just a couple of minutes. Thanks to Bootstrap3, all websites built in Simbla are mobile responsive.

Flyzoo.co

Flyzoo is another interesting web development tool – you’ll be able to create embeddable group chats which you can use for different pages or layouts. All you have to do is log in to Flyzoo, click on setup, group chats and then get embedding code – you’re ready to go! Just copy the code into your page and adjust its height and width accordingly. Group chats are a great way for web developers to improve user engagement.

Iconfinder for web developers

Brand icons can be difficult to create but even so, icons are an important aspect of marketing as well as web development. Iconfinder can help you get in touch with a professional icon creator. Fill out a design brief, some specific details, target audience and other data about your brand or website and you’ll soon start receiving price quotes from designers.

Themify

Themify is another quick web development tool. You’ll start by importing a layout, replacing images and text and that’s it! Themify only works for WordPress though, for other more complex projects you’ll need to use other tools.

Pidoco.com for web development

Pidoco is an online prototyping tool and a real time saver any web developer. You’ll have over 400 elements in the library to play with and plenty of communication features such as sharing, commenting and so on. With Pidoco just about anyone can participate in critical design decisions by seeing the prototype in action.

Optinmonster

Optinmonster is an essential lead generation tool which you can use for your projects. Over 275.000 websites use Optinmonster with its built-in analytics, page level targeting, A/B testing, exit intent technology and the drag and drop builder. Building mobile responsive forms takes just a couple of minutes with Optinmonster, making it one of the most useful web development tools.

actiTIME

ActiTIME is a great time tracking solution for a small web development team. Users are able to track the time spent on various tasks, record business trips and days off. Team leaders can create projects, assign them and keep track of the project’s costs and deadlines.

Thesquid.ink

Squid Ink is another web development tool worth mentioning – it offers a huge library of over 2000 icons, divided into three types: solid, line and flat. There are many different formats and categories so you’re sure you’ll find the right icons for your web development project.

 

Bowtie

Database driven websites can have security risks and require constant maintenance to boot. Bowtie offers a faster and cleaner solution which includes all the features required to share and publish content with ease. Web developers can also have access to version control through git.

 

48hourslogo.com

One of the most popular web development tools is the 48hourslogo platform – you’ll get a beautiful looking logo for a reasonable price and in just two days.

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Why do they behave the way they do and how might they behave once you've taken follow-up action? In short: a UX audit provides you with those metrics which, once turned into updates to your website, help you boost conversions. Step 1: Run Stakeholder Interviews and User Surveys Start off by talking to your: development team, the one in charge with all the UX improvements on your website; ask them about their development challenges, future plans with the company website, and specific requirements for achieving those plans marketing team and salespeople, who might already have their own user survey results collected along the years Then, run your own updated user surveys and categorize results by: task severity findings per screen  Tip! Run usability tests to filter through the qualitative data collected on these interviews and surveys. For instance, users might report a discouragingly complex checkout process. A usability test will confirm or disprove this claim. Step 2: Create Your User Persona- A Key Point in the Website UX Audit Checklist Who are you improving your website UX for? And there are different types of users visiting your website and each user type stands for a unique way that you could improve the user experience delivered there. To narrow down your options, you need to figure out who's the most representative user for your website.  Remember to add these 3 key attributes to your user persona as you're building its profile: user goals: do they align with your business goals? needs: what does he/she try to accomplish when visiting your website? frustrations: things to avoid when designing this user persona's experience on your website Tip! Bring your business goals (that we'll be focusing on at Step 3) into the picture, as they'll help you determine who your user persona is. 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Adriana Cacoveanu / Jul 01'2020
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How to Improve Internal Site Search and Boost Your Conversion Rate in 12 Easy Steps

How to Improve Internal Site Search and Boost Your Conversion Rate in 12 Easy Steps

They're not there for the looks, you know. Users come to your website to search for... something — a product, a service, information. Its role is to make it easy for them to find that "something" via its search engine. But how to improve internal site search and "shorten the time between query to conversion"? What are some best practices when adding search functionality to your website so that: it serves up the most relevant search results? it reduces user-friction? it provides the best search experience? it helps users to convert faster? Here's your 13-step checklist to an effective on-site search: Why Site Search Is Important?   "Adding on-site search to your website increases conversions by 480%!" (Neil Patel).  Just think about it: The user's found your website (your SEO efforts have paid off). It's something specific that he's looking. Or he at least has some idea of the type of products/services that he's there for. 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Take H&M's example here: they're using faceted search options to help me narrow down my options when I type a generic query like "shirt". Step 7: Tailor the Search Experience As Per the User's Location "How to improve internal site search?" Localize your website content. Or, in plain English: add regional dialect and idioms to your copy. And you'd also want to include "popular searches in your... (name of the region)". The whole idea is to: personalize the search experience, making it more user-friendly help the user find what he's searching for faster (and to convert faster, as well) Even if he's using a dialect-specific word or phrase as a search query. So, start building a list of synonyms for your search queries and use them to improve the search functionality on your website. Step 8: Implement In-Search Filtering Go beyond autocomplete if you want to provide the best search experience to your potential customers. 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Maybe you do want to increase the conversion rate on your website, but without having to: optimize heavy of loads content for long-tail keywords get tangled up in user data to track down all the regional words variations  write metadata for... hundreds of different product pages We get you. And we've got your back. Just drop us a line and let's improve your on-site search so that you stop leaving conversions on the table. ... Read more
Adriana Cacoveanu / Jun 26'2020
DrupalDrupal 8Tips
Drupal Performance Optimization: 17 Drupal Caching Best Practices To Speed Up Your Page Load Time- Part 2

Drupal Performance Optimization: 17 Drupal Caching Best Practices To Speed Up Your Page Load Time- Part 2

"How can I make my Drupal 8 website faster?" Are you still struggling with this? Still striving to figure out which are the best (and most straightforward) Drupal performance optimization techniques for your website? Well, here I am today with a handful of 9 more ways that you can speed up your Drupal site. In addition to the 8 ones that I covered in the first part of this post. And yes: it's another round of Drupal caching best practices that'll help you boost your page load time. So, let's dive right into it: Tip #9: Use the Dynamic Page Cache Module  ... to cache for both authenticated and anonymous users. Unlike the Internal Page Cache module, that I mentioned in Part 1, which only caches pages for anonymous users. Tip #10: Use Distributed Cache, A Highly Effective Drupal Performance Optimization Technique But how does it work, more precisely? Once you've installed a distributed cache, it'll store your database's cache tables (Drupal's "cache_" tables) either in: file or memory Tip #11: Enable Drupal Cache for Anonymous Users Another one of those quick, yet powerful Drupal performance tuning steps that you can take. Tip #12: Use Squid to Cache Images and Static Content on Your Website "How to optimize Drupal for better performance?" You could go for Squid, an open-source caching proxy server. Now, since Drupal's already famed for its particularly dynamic content, the only cases where Squid does make a great performance booster are those where you need to cache static content. Tip #13: Add a Front-End Cache (i.e.Varnish Cache) Here's another handy Drupal performance optimization method for you: Use Varnish Cache to reduce the load on your server. How does it do it? It stores the HTML response, so that next time that the same page is requested, it serves it from memory. The result? Bypassed PHP and web server and... improved page load time. Tip #14: Use the Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation Module to Improve the Front-End Performance of Your Website  Combining your assets together is one of the most straightforward and effective ways to address those Drupal performance issues on your website. From: file grouping to caching to compressing ... the AdvAgg module handles all the steps that you need to take to aggregate your CSS and JS files. Tip #15: Install Memcache to Reduce Your Database Load You know how you're often struggling with keeping your database load to a minimum by caching database objects in RAM? In this respect, Memcache makes a great Drupal 8 performance optimization technique. It helps you reduce that load on the database and boost your page loading time. How? By taking standard caches out of the database. And by caching the results of resource-intensive database operations... Tip #16: Use the Entity Cache Module to Cache... Entities   Another caching best practice to boost Drupal 8 with is installing the Entity Cache module.  And its name says it all: it helps you cache entities. Tip #17: Cache Views  Here's the situation: Page requests made by registered users on your website lead to loads of queries to your database. Which impact the page load time. Now, to query the database, views are being used. And this is where this views caching module comes in handy to... boost things in there.   The END! These are our 17 recommendations for you on the best Drupal performance optimization methods for boosting your page load time. Not thrilled about the idea of having to go through the... Memcache installation process or to configure Varnish for Drupal? Or to put your current projects on hold so that your team can set up a... distributed cache? Maybe you don't have a professional Drupal maintenance team that could handle all these caching settings? We're here to help! Just drop us a line and let's figure out which of these 17 techniques are best suited for your website and the specific performance issues that it's struggling with. Let's speed things up in there! Image by Izwar Muis from Pixabay   ... Read more
Silviu Serdaru / Jun 23'2020

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