Monthly Archives: July 2022

Last Updated on July 27, 2022 by Yasmin Estupinian

The design of any online project is the face we show online so the web designer should be an expert in the field. In other words, he/she will be the master on the project knowing everything about the same. This implies that he/she knows the terminology of the project to subject matter.

Even though there are many web designers around the world it is not as simple as hiring someone because there are some points, we should take into consideration to succeed. This should be not only beautiful but also it must stick to what we want to show about who we are.

Depending on the business type we should start doing our investigations about who will design our online project, so who we will trust to design our online face.

There are some characteristics that will allow us to recognize a good prospect, such as: industry experience, knowledge about the topic, an attractive portfolio so we can have an idea about his/her work done. Once we have clarity about this, we will also need to follow some steps, so we don’t get lost in our search.

Set realistic target

We should understand yourself what we really need, and what we want to show/demonstrate in your online project: how many products or services you would like to offer, etc. Also, we must take into consideration if in this project you will need to have any specific features on mind. If so, we also need to be open to suggestions or alternatives that other give us. Also consider if for this project you will have someone else who writes down the content or would you like this person to help you also with the SEO and other online marketing efforts.

Company or freelance

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Considering if you would like to work with a company or freelance for the project is a great point to consider. There are pros and cons to work either of options: the most important is that we consider as mentioned before the portfolio, hands experience in the project we need to develop. If we decide to go with a company, we have the backup that if something happened a company will respond, and the project will continue moving forward and we will have it as agreed or at least the closest date agreed.

See portfolio

Seeing the portfolio either for the company or freelance is a great good option so we have an idea about how the work looks. However, this doesn’t mean that we will have exactly the same: for instance, we will provide our own requirements, our own features, etc., so they understand our needs and the functionality of our project.

Meeting of completed steps

Agreed since day 1 those meetings of completed scopes, so both the company/freelance and you can be on the same page and follow the process of the project, so you don’t have to complain about something that wasn’t done or completed. Also note they have to be able to go beyond your expectation, you may require something but if in the scope completed you are more than happy and excited with the result you get.

Master on design

To have someone that can be able to design our project, write the content with SEO, it great however we must take into consideration that not all the people are very good in many things. If we were looking first for the best/right designer, we can consider someone else that can give us amazing content. Unless this person or company has experience of both and has success at the same, we could go in having one person or company for the same purpose. If not, we will have to consider someone else to master the thing, he/she is missing. This means we should clarify what exactly we will be getting at the end of the project.

Updated with the latest technology

Technologies are evolving every second, so we must consider if this company/freelancer is updated with the latest changes. If not, we will have to reconsider the prospect because we want someone that can give us solutions, not more issues soon.

Fair budget

We have the right to ask for the project as we wish it should be, however we must also be willing to pay for that. We cannot ask to help us reach the start if our budget only goes to the cloud.

Understand what the background will be

There are persons that after the project is finished, they do not have idea what system they use, so now they want to do future changes, future request, or additional features to be added they do not have clarity what expert is required. So, by knowing the system and platform it will be easier to know what type of assistance and support you may require.

Conclusion

Softsys Hosting offers different CMS options such WordPress, Joomla, and Umbraco Hosting to get started with your online project. There are plans that can fit your needs or we can also offer a custom solution.

Last Updated on July 25, 2022 by Yasmin Estupinian

When talking about HTTPs now, it is the same as talking about security on the web. The first thing we need is to have security all the way around. Also, we have to understand that we need to use HTTPs via SSL/TLS encryption to guarantee that we will secure the information properly.

Owning a website is a big responsibility, and when developing and deploying the website, security must have to guarantee protection of our data, our customers and partners.

To clarify, HTTPs tend to be like SSL or TLS, however those are different but must go together to work the right way.

HTTPs initials mean Hypertext Transfer Protocol and SSL Secure Sockets Layer or TLS Transport Layer Security. Thus HTTPs is just the protocol that needs to be used to provide a certificate signed by a third party.

The main question is whether it is imperative for our website? What we risk not having the one? To answer those questions there are some obvious and hidden reasons that will give us the insight.

We will check the most common reason so we can understand and be aware about every single website we visit next time.

First, we must understand what HTTP initials means, Hypertext Transfer Protocol. However, this has evolved and now the HTTPs protocol includes letter S, which gives us the guideline that is secure so the initials stated HTTPs Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure meaning for us that we can share data and the information will be 100% protected.

In other words, this is the guarantee that the website is encrypted, and your data will not be stolen. Also we can do the comparison with the most precious thing we have, which is our home. Let’s imagine that we leave the door open and decide to go on vacation. Our home will be exposed to any intruder who can enter and do whatever he wants. It may be a crude comparison, but if we have our business on the internet, what we wish is to take care of it and make it successful.

Even though it is obvious that everybody will secure their website because they really need to take care of, the reality is that there are still people who believe that even though it is important, this is not something obligatory.

We can see different scenarios which will show us why it is imperative to have HTTPs up on any website. First let’s see some obvious reasons why websites need protection.

Most of online businesses collect sensitive customers’ data and this should be stored securely to avoid any leakage.

When legit customers are on our website, there could be 2 types of pop ups

1. Secure https://ourwebsite.com

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Also, if we click on those icons, we could see a message “Connection is secure”

As you can see the green padlock gives us the peace that we are browsing secure hence you can enter any information without any issues.

2. Not secure http://ourwebsite.com

As in the image above you can see this is shown in red or with a warning icon inside which leads us to ask what’s going wrong with this site?

Also, this includes messages like:

“Your connection is not secure” or “Your connection is not private” or “Your connection to this site is not secure”.

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For sure we don’t want any of those messages pop up.

This topic of having HTTPs up and running is more crucial for banks, e-commerce projects and some other websites because they are gathering payments and legit information that may be leaked.

After seeing some obvious reasons for using HTTPs via SSL/TLS we can now talk about the hidden reasons that we must consider.

SEO success: Businesses invest a fortune in their marketing strategies: ads, traffic gains, etc. Many rely on Google, so a few years ago Google announced that those with HTTPs will have a better ranking. With this information in mind businesses started using HTTPs via SSL to ensure that the money invested won’t be the waste of resources and time.

Data/Information Integrity: Ensuring that the information will not be manipulated contributes to the success of our business.

Security to sensitive data: Everybody not only needs the information to be protected but also expects it to be protected in this way, the right to privacy is respected and no intruder is able to manipulate sensitive data.

Considering both obvious and hidden reasons we will conclude that we need to have HTTPs up and running no matter if we gather or save sensitive data or not.

Conclusion

Apply smartly all the best practices that make your website successful in the long run. Even though it requires initial investments in SSL certificate purchase, it will be worth it because we are not only protecting our customers’ data but also ensuring 100% trust in our business.

Last Updated on July 4, 2022 by Yasmin Estupinian

Having a website is a responsibility not only because this benefits our business but also for our customers who are willing to see our products and services online. This implies a set of actions to be taken for this to work properly.

How can we know our website has the right speed? This is quite simple: we do not need specific knowledge to validate. First, we must answer some questions ourselves to see if our website has the proper speed.

Allow one of our friends/family members to open our website and simulate they are customers, depending on their usage experience this will give us some insight on customer experience. We need to test objectively, since our love for our business may case issues.

The following question will give us more insight on our website speed:

⦁ Are we able to open the website and stay on it?  
⦁ How long?  
⦁ The pages we try to click open properly without waiting time?  
⦁ Have we changed browsers to get a better experience? 

Once you have answered those questions above, you will take appropriate actions with an expert developer so he/she can help us to improve overall speed and user experience.

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Optimization

We have to know everything about the images, text and scripts allowed to use and run on our website, because depending on plugins, data, images, videos, etc., we will have a better idea what to improve and what is causing us performance issues.  

Cache storage

Many people accessing the website at the very first time will cause slowness on the server, so it is recommended to include cache storage at least for general information from our website to create files that will allow it to load faster next time these people open the website. 

Minify files

In case you have a plugin installed it is important to check that those are compressed enough, with the useless information removed. By doing so that will help because even though this is unnoticed information, these unimportant things will give you impressive results. 

People will stay longer

Once people visit your website, the first impression will be how fast the pages load, it is recommended it should have a maximum of 4 seconds to load. Otherwise, people get frustrated and opt to run away. 

Conversion rate

Conversion is a key for our business success because we can measure one of the most important metrics. So, these metrics are linked to the first one because if people are running away from our website, there is no possibility of getting leads or closing sales.  

Google rank

SEO ranking is also imperative because this generates decent amount of our web traffic, hence not having web traffic or targeted visits, we will be far away from closing sales or getting leads. So having a poorly ranked website is not profitable. 

Hosting provider

The main idea of business is to make it grow so the hosting provider also matters because it should be able to scale as per your business needs without affecting online performance.  

Conclusion 

Taking into consideration all mentioned points we can conclude that every single point is important, and a web hosting provider is a key in our website performance. Because even though we improve a website in all the ways possible if our hosting provider does not offer us an eligible service all the improvements will be in vain. SoftSys Hosting offers real speed and top-notch performance for small to corporate business projects alike.