What does it Take to be a Successful Web Developer? The Must Knows

What does it take to be a successful web developer, according to you? Skill set, knowledge of the platform and coding language! Is it all? Not really! Being a truly successful web developer requires a set of characteristics and personality trait. Rather than considering it a knowledge that can be mugged up, it should be considered a skill that should be developed with time. Other than the technical experience, there are a lot of things that you need to learn with time. Are you a website builder? Do you aspire to be a trail blazer in this field? The blog has complied some of the skills and traits that are a must for becoming a successful web developer. Have a look.

Analyze the customer requirement

　

The entire designing and development phase depends on the requirement of the user. In fact, the web development starts and ends with the user requirement. So, a developer who understands the needs of the end user will turn out to be a good developer. Analyzing the user need doesn't mean that you need to observe what attracts the user more. The visitors may initially be attracted to the visual graphics, but they may exit from the site if they don't find any value. Get an insight of what actually the users are looking for instead of what they are using.

Plan before you code

　　

No matter how good a coder you are, an efficient strategy is a must. Gone are the days when every department of the website building right from graphic designing to the marketing worked separately. In the competitive scenario, you need to plan everything ahead of time. Nothing should be kept as a reserve for the future. A developer should have be a good strategist as well. Planning ahead of designing is the first aspect of the same otherwise everything can get messy. The idea is to create a solution for the client and not just a website. Things like optimizing the load time, and creating a friendly interface should be considered first.

Keep yourself updated with the latest technology

Having the basic knowledge of the HTML, Javascript and CSS is the building blocks of all web development. However, the technology keeps changing and you need to keep yourself updated accordingly. A single person just can't master each and everything, but being aware of the progression of the industry is important. For instance, if you are looking to build an eCommerce store, you need to have an idea about the various platforms and factors such as responsive website and others. Whether you are a builder yourself or you are planning to hire an eCommerce web development company, this basic information will help you get the heart's desire.

Be a market researcher

The market research is a must, regardless of the purpose. Whether you are designing your own site or that of your client, doing an in-depth study of the market forces is essentials. Along with a high-quality code, an efficient user interface and user experience are essential. So, once you take the requirement of your client, check out the competitor's site. Analyze the good and the bad reviews of the users of the similar type of websites. Take the Heatmap analysis of these sites. This will give you an idea of the items on the site that are getting more attention from the visitors and the things that are being ignored.

Work as a team 

As mentioned above, the entire process of web development should be planned and executed simultaneously. An ideal developer should work as a team along with the designers, testers as well as the marketing personnel. The designers should be aware of the functionality of the pages that they are designing. The marketing team should be aware of each and every function of the site. The testers should know the goal you are working for. This will help them find the gap between what was required and what has been developed. A good team player means understanding the role on a larger scale. Haste brings waste, so instead of going ahead of others, try to take every aspect together and move steadily. 

Have a business sense

The design and development in the real world are all about a good business sense. Regardless of the fact that you are a freelancer or a salaried employee, you need to take the charge. Right from taking the note of the requirement of the client to balancing cost, everything needs to be considered efficiently.  As mentioned above, it is not just about designing the site for the client, it is all about creating a business solution.

Summing up

Wrapping it up in few words, I would say that web development is a fun-filled, but challenging field. It is all about coping up with the ever-changing market scenario and brushing up the skill set with the technological advancements. So, whether you are hiring a PHP developer or aspiring to become one, keep yourself in sync with the changes and be an ideal developer.

Http Status Codes To Know From SEO And Development Perspective

HTTP status code or call them HTTP response status codes, they are returned to the browser to inform it about a web page or resource it requested from the server. When a browser or a search engine makes a request to the server, it responds to the request with a status code. Now the code it returns depends on the status of the resource or request.

If the request is served successfully by the server, the response status code will return 200. Similarly, there are other response codes as well. All these codes play a great role in both the website design & development and SEO of your website.

Knowing these status codes is very important for the website developers and designers. Skills to read these code will help them identify an error on the page and do the needful to fix it. Moreover, even the SEO professionals should also be familiar with the response code, as some of these are really crucial from the SEO point of view.

So, it’s undoubtedly an important thing to know about your website. So, let just understand them and improve the knowledge base. At least, next time when you see any such code, you can easily identify that error and ask the website development team to look into it.

HTTP Response Status Code Groups

The HTTP status codes are formally divided into 5 groups

100s: Progress- Request received and in process

200s: Successful- Request received and processed successfully.

300s: Redirects- Request received but a redirection required to serve the resource.

400s: Browser errors- Also referred as client errors. The request made by the client, but the page is not valid.

500s: Server errors- Server failed to complete the request

HTTP Response Status Codes- SEO perspective

While there are many more codes in these groups, there are abundant that are important from the SEO point of view. Let’s understand these codes in detail.

200 OK response code

This HTTP response code means the request has been served successfully by the server. Generally, it means no error in the request or from the server side.

301 Moved Permanently

This HTTP response status code is often used by the webmasters from the SEO perspective. It means that the requested resource is not available on current URL. The user must use one of the returned URLs to get the desired resource. In Simple terms, the page your are visiting have been permanently shifted to a new URL, Please use this new URL to visit the particular page from now onwards.

PS: When you move to a new URL and apply 302 redirects on it, It carries forward the SEO of your old URL to the new URL. That is, it does not kill your SEO. 301 redirect is often used in the creation of SEO-friendly URLs.

Read: How To Enable Seo Friendly URLs On Opencart 2.x?

302 Found/ Moved Temporarily

 

This response status code is returned in a similar condition as of 301 but on a temporary basis. It means the page you are requesting for has been moved to a different URL, but you need not use the new URL for future requests as this is just a temporary redirection.

PS: 302 redirection is not a recommended approach. Unlike 301 redirects, it does not carry forward your SEO to the new URL. Pages redirected with 302 codes are not ranked well on the search engines.

404 File Not Found

This is an error code which means that the requested resource was not found on the server. This can happen anytime when the server fails to find a requested page on the site.

A site with too many 404 errors is always seen by the search engines with that doubtful look. This affects the SEO as well. To handle this, webmasters often create a separate page with text written 404 error on it and redirect all the 404 pages to this particular page. In this way, the actual response code received will be now 200 OK but it will show as 404 on the page.

There are some nice solutions given here on this stack overflow discussion thread for Redirecting 404 error with .htaccess via 301 for SEO.

410 Gone

This HTTP response status code means that the requested resource in no longer there on the URL you are looking at and there is no redirection to any new URL to find the resource.

This code is a bit similar to 404. When server knows that the resource is no more available and it's not going to be available in the future as well on this URL, then it gives the 410 Gone response code.

However, when the server does not know if the missing resource will ever be available on this requested URL, then it gives the 404 response.

500 Internal Server Error

When something goes wrong on the server. It's a server side error that has to be fixed on the server. This could be temporary or even permanent till it is fixed.

502 Bad Gateway

When a server communicates with another server, and if the other server fails to respond successfully, then the first server sends this 502 error code to the client/browser.

503 Service Unavailable

When this response code shows on your browser, it means that the server is currently unable to serve the request due to a temporary failure. Generally due to overloading. It generally means that server has gone unresponsive for a temporary period of time.  For example, when the server has to be put down for a short time for maintenance purposes, it's a 503 condition.

Over to you

So, these are some HTTP response status codes which you generally see while browsing the internet or diagnosing your website. Now that you have an understanding of what these error codes mean, you should run the HTTP Response Status Codes Check for your website and find out if there are any error codes. If there is any, ask your web developer to look into it. You should also ask your SEO service provider to keep a track of such error codes, and also check if the redirection has been used correctly.

5 Reasons why should you hire a Professional eCommerce Website Development Company

An eCommerce Website Development Company is all you need for a solution to various problems.

An eCommerce business that seeks success in the online shopping world must be a professional website in all the aspects. The Internet has become so accessible that anyone with a decent idea can launch his own website and showcase what he is offering to the market. However, to become a successful eCommerce website you need a professional approach right from the phase of the eCommerce website development.

An eCommerce website that does not have a professional eCommerce website development company by its side is vulnerable to various risks and challenges. These risks and challenges will ultimately result in losing customers ion the storefront. Consumers today have gone very smart and they will never trust an eCommerce website that does not seem to be professional and secure to them. As a result, you will often loose the customers and your rivals will win them with their professional presentations.

The following five explanations will help you to understand the importance of a professional eCommerce website development company for your online business:

1. Customized Website Designing- 

Wen you hire a professional eCommerce website development company you have the liberty to ask them to create a website design that suits your online business. The look and feel of an eCommerce website play a great role in the usability of the website for the visitors. The eCommerce website development company deploys is website designers to work on the design of the website strictly according to your goal with the online business.

Which kind of products do you intend to sell? How many products will be there? How you want your home page to look? How many landing pages you want to create? After answering the question like these, the website designer will analyze the requirements and prepare a customized website design to suit your business needs.

2. Visual presentation of the site- 

After the website structure next, comes the look and feel of the site. As explained earlier, look and feel of the eCommerce website is very important and it should suit the kind of products you want to sell. The conversion optimization is another important factor that should be always in mind while designing the look and feel. Website template and theme design is the process we are talking about here.

You will find millions of themes and templates available for purchase and download on various websites. However, it is not essential that all of them will suit your business activity. For that reason, an eCommerce website development company can be handy here. The company's webs designers will design personalized theme for your website which will fulfill your business requirement and will be strictly according to the CRO standards for better conversion rates with the eCommerce site.

3. Updated technologies- 

The internet is extremely volatile, it is changing on daily basis. What is in trend today, will become outdated tomorrow. In addition to this eCommerce, segment is the most volatile part of the internet. As an eCommerce website owner, you will always need to stay updated with the latest technologies that you can leverage to improve your conversion and sales. However, as an eCommerce website owner do not have just these duties, yo have several other aspects that you need to handle so that your business can grow. So, it might be a real tough job to look on all these aspects just by yourself.

It is where the eCommerce website development company comes to the picture. It will take over the tension of keeping your website always updated with the latest happenings. You will not have to worry about any technical aspect, the eCommerce website development company will keep all intact by updating your website with the latest techs and optimizations.

4. SEO aspects of development-  

SEO is a technique used by webmasters to make your website visible among the SERPs of different search engines. An eCommerce website with no visibility on search engines is no different than not having a website at all. The benefit of hiring a professional eCommerce website development company here is that it will take care of the SEO aspects right from the development phase and will provide everything that needs to be done to develop an SEO friendly website.

5. SEO and webmaster services- 

Some of the professional eCommerce website development companies like Velocity provide SEO services too. The SEO services are used by the website owners to make their website visible among the top search results in the SERPs. An SEO service is a different segment of service which is not part of the website development. However, it can be provided by stand-alone SEO companies or even the professional eCommerce website development companies.

The webmaster services can also be provided the same website development company which will take care of the maintenance of your website and will make sure that the website never goes down. In case if any issue is the, the company will work them out and fix them as soon as possible.

It is not necessary that every eCommerce website development company will provide all these services in a single package, but is a fact that you need a company by your side always. Each company has its own way of providing these services, you must always clarify all the aspects before hiring them. Having an eCommerce website development company by your side will make sure your website is professional right from the beginning and provides an uninterrupted service to the customers.