Importance of Card Design in Web Design and Development

Mobile devices are the rage of the day. You look around you and see almost everyone using his or her mobile to access data from all kinds of sources through APIs and SDKs. The card-style interface is perfect in terms of usability, and offers an extremely personalized experience; one that allows for the optimal display of an aggregation of many individual pieces of content – on screens that come in all shapes and sizes. Card designs have gained prominence in website designing. These rectangles, containing images and text have proved so successful in web design and development, that they have become a default option in order to strike a balance between aesthetics and functionality.

In this article, we will highlight the pros and cons, and list some best practices to follow while using card-layouts in web design and development.

Pros and Cons of Using Cards

• The responsive nature of modern websites makes cards easy to use. The rectangular shape of cards smoothly resizes to fit both horizontal and vertical orientations of mobile devices. This pattern provides a consistent user experience across different devices.
• Cards provide a perfect view of content from different sources, aggregated to fit a website framework. Card-layouts provide information in easy to scan blocks, providing the viewer the freedom to view content immediately, and as they wish.
• Cards perfectly align with different design concepts, even flat and minimalist ones. This allows for the arrangement of content in an extremely structured manner, such as magazine-style format.
• In card design, equality means the world. Every card carries equal importance. As a result, there is no need to rank all the content.

Cons

• This type of design can come across as a replica of Pinterest. The concept is so common, that it could appear overused or lacking originality.
• Cards require plenty of interactions and usability. There is a risk of visual confusion, especially if the site contains lot of information, and is data heavy.
• Developing a card design layout requires careful attention to details and absolute mastery of designing for smaller spaces. Each card must contain the perfect visual balance between images, text, and subtle secondary actions.

Cards Layout: Best Practices to make it Work

Make use of White Space: It is important to avoid a ‘cluttered’ feel. Do not get intimidated by space, rather make optimum use of the white space or negative space wisely.

Get Creative: You would think that cards are structured, but that does not mean cards need to be mundane. You do not need to be afraid to add something in order to personalize. However, avoid using concepts that are heavily used, use interactive animation, subtle colors or unique fonts instead.

Millennial or Baby Boomers; Target your Audience: Your cards interface should be effortless and easy to navigate. Make designing a user experience that appeals to your audience, your priority. It is important to set context in a way that helps the target audience consume the content you wish to present.

Use simple typography: ‘Simplicity rules’ especially when applied to typography. Try sans-serif typeface with medium weight for the card headline.

Future of Cards and Material Design

Card style is the future of design and is here to stay, especially considering the influence of Google ‘Material Designs’ on Android app design. Cards are highly interactive and structured by nature and one of the most rapidly developing design disciplines. It is undoubtedly the future of web design and development.

Have you launched your ecommerce site, and wondering why your sales have not picked up? The online ecommerce industry is a highly competitive field. Selling online provides a host of new opportunities. However, online storeowners make several mistakes every day. Thankfully, with careful and strategic planning can help you avoid most mistakes and will help improve user experience.
Here is a list of the most common mistakes. Avoiding them can help you rest assured that the ecommerce shopping cart solution you use will yield results.
You Do Not Have a Mobile Friendly Site

Today’s millennial generation is constantly on the move, and obsessed with their mobile devices. In fact, statistics show that people check their mobile devices up to a whopping 150 times a day. Does this sound unbelievable? These days a majority of ecommerce purchases take place on smart phones and tablets. In order to capitalize on this growing market, an ecommerce website needs fine-tuning, so that it performs impeccably on mobile devices and tablets. The shopping process would need to be responsive, so that it adapt to different screens size.
Bad Or No Search Capability

Every customer who can use your site’s on-site search facility is more likely to find products and ultimately convert. Always ensure that your target audience gets relevant results quickly. Many systems fail miserably by neglecting the search feature. This makes it important that you interact with your ecommerce developer, to see how you can provide accurate and advanced search solutions for optimum results.
Lengthy Checkout Process 

The customer is always in a hurry and constantly on the move. Why bombard them with irrelevant questions during the checkout process? This could cause an increase in shopping cart abandonment rates and would adversely affect conversions. So remove any fields not necessary during the checkout process. Websites with a complicated questionnaire before the checkout process only succeed in giving customer more reason to abandon the transaction. After all, if they are ready to pay, and your site makes things complicated for them, then there is something seriously wrong with the entire process. Providing a one-page checkout - that allows going through account creation, shipping, billing and credit card information is important.
Lack of Social Sharing Buttons

Social sharing is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website. You can maximize your presence with providing social sharing buttons, like those for 'Pin it', Facebook's 'Like' or Twitter. You can make images on your website shareable by optimizing social sharing icons. This helps create a buzz around your site and increases awareness among your target audience.
Poor Visual Hierarchy

Never underestimate the power of visual hierarchy. This aspect ensures your site is easy-to-navigate. Draw your customer's eye. Making vital elements of your ecommerce site larger, so that they stand out from the rest of information on the page, makes them clickable.
Finally

Remember that there is no definite formula to success, and problems are bound to occur. When it comes to ecommerce sites and shopping cart solutions, it is important to iterate, test and improve your site so that it confirms to the requirements of each new day. Adapting to changes in customer behavior to ensure sure success is and always will be an ongoing process.

Search Engine Optimization Tips that will Shape Your Rankings in 2016

SEO techniques are changing at a rapid pace thanks to the updates that Google periodically makes to its search engine algorithm. This also means that the rankings of websites fluctuate rapidly. Although black hat search engines rankings are ‘a thing of the past’, SEO has evolved phenomenally and still works.

Here are few SEO tips that will help you stay ahead in 2016:

#1 Great Content

“Content is King!” You must have heard this phrase many times by now. However, this fact is not going to change. You do not have to worry about Google’s lethal algorithm. Develop a habit, and continue to write engaging content that entertains, informs, and entices the reader. Remember, your content is the key to attracting traffic and is very critical to achieving top rankings for competitive phrases. Inbound links are the biggest way to influence search engines. Creating incredible content that people will want to share is still the best way to earn links. Do not focus just on keyword research and stuffing keywords into text content on your website. The practice of sacrificing on creating truly engaging content will only cost you dearly in the end.

#2 Competitor Analysis

This is not a new concept, yet it continues to be one of the most overlooked aspects of SEO. Competitor analysis is the basis of SEO. Competitor analysis is nothing new, and companies have been researching their competitor’s links for years. However, by analyzing a competitor’s back-links and manually reviewing which links are high in value and noteworthy, you can perform a link outreach and try to get a link from the same site.

#3 Optimize for All Search Engines

It appears that search engines like Yahoo and Bing may slowly takeover Google’s market share in 2016. This may not happen overnight. Nevertheless, several other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing are working hard to become the default search engine on popular web browsers instead of Google. As a result, it makes sense to optimize for other search engines as well.

#4 Mobilegeddon 

By implementing mobile-friendly ranking algorithms like Mobilegeddon and the Google Mobile Friendly Update On April 21, 2015, Google has given a boost to mobile-friendly pages. Mobile SEO will continue to rise in popularity over the coming year making it important that your mobile marketing strategy is in place.

#5 Don’t just rely on Google

Google rankings may fluctuate. Although it may account for the majority of your traffic today, but what if future algorithm updates hit your website hard. What if your Google visibility, goes away tomorrow? Keep in mind that several other forms of Newsletters and subscriber-based content will help you hold on to traffic / customers no matter what search engines algorithms do. So reach out to your audience and continue to leverage content marketing by creating great content, focusing on blogs, using social media etc. — this will help you grow your audience and survive the whims and fancies of search engines.

Finally:

Search Engines have extremely powerful bots crawling the web. However, humans still do things like pick up phone and call you to get answers about your services, and they also sign up for your newsletters. Ensuring that the content on your sites is user centric and not keyword stuffed - is the best way to improve bottom-line results, and is one SEO technique that will never fail.

Custom Android App Development Trends for 2016

Custom Android App Development Trends for 2016 Google Play Store, the official app store for the Android operating system; is a highly competitive place from where millions of apps are available for download. Android devices are undoubtedly the new norm. Right from startups, small and medium sized businesses to enterprise level companies, literally everyone is going mobile. Creating an app is among the top priorities for businesses across the globe. If you are planning to launch your Android app, here are the few trends to watch out in 2016.

User experience will become the focus, influencing the app development strategy. 2016 will witness a paradigm shift in Android application development. Development teams will focus on apps that cater to as many – if not all of the user expectations, as possible. With several new apps launching on the Google’s Play Store daily, competition is at its peak as well, thus the focus on developing an improved in-app user experience is more critical than ever. Data from analytic tools will play a major role in helping app developers refine and provide a better user experience.

These trends will dominate the custom Android app development arena in 2016

Location based support

Information is getting exceedingly contextual and localized. Users are mainly interested in localized services. This takes personalization to the next level. Think about it - you can now get details about discounts or special events in your area, right on your mobile. Location-based services are gaining popularity. It will be a daunting task to build sophisticated location-based apps, that keep you upto date, and do not drain the battery of your Android device.
Beacon and location based Wi-Fi services have been getting a lot of attention and in the coming year more businesses will make use of such Beacon and location based Wi-Fi services in their apps.

Biometrics will Become Essential

Android Marshmallow saw the launch of fingerprint security. 2016 will see the use of more biometric security systems for Android smartphones. Large financial institutions will use apps that take thumb impressions and biometric security extensively to combat security threats. Alphanumeric passwords and pattern locks will soon become primitive options.

Internet of Things will Witness Huge Growth

The Internet of Things will allow connecting with multiple devices and controlling smart appliances, allowing users to use their Android devices to optimize the use of home appliances and other ‘smart’ equipment.
The Internet of Things movement is all about bridging the gap between the Android device and items embedded with electronics, software or sensors, allowing the user to control them.

Enterprise apps will steal the thunder in the market In the year 2016,
large enterprises will have their own apps for consumer services and data management. Prominent developers predict that enterprise apps will dominate the market. We will witness the launch of many more enterprises apps, designed to improve efficiency and productivity, as well as to streamline everyday processes.

Android devices will continue to provide a ubiquitous experience. So stay tuned to see how these trends add a new dimension to the Android app development industry.