Category Archives: Responsive Web Design

Why Kid’s Products websites need a cute Mascot?

Every business owner strives to attain that elusive goal – a high recall value. If you can not quite fathom what “recall value” means, let us explain. Recall value is the familiarity a brand creates in the minds of their customers (also end users, in this instance). A brand that has quick recall value does not have to spend exorbitantly in their marketing practices. Their brand has already built a tiny space within the minds of their target customers. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of burgers – MacDonald’s, right? That is due to the high recall value this brand has been able to build over the years. This is what a cute Mascot can bring to your business!

Bygone are the days when there were only a few websites dealing with the kid’s products and information. Today, the web world is flooded with such websites. And this is where a cute little mascot can be so effective to attain your marketing goals. A mascot can quickly help you stay ahead of the race and be seen in the crowd. When a mascot is well thought out and designed creatively, it can be the marketing push your business so dearly needed. Ever since their inception, in the early nineteenth century, mascots have always brought a high recall value (whether it is a sports team, a television character or a brand entity). And even today, their appeal has not gone down one little bit!

Why your kid’s related website needs a Mascot?

You are primarily catering to the kids and their parents. And both of them are either happily or reluctantly (often the case with parents!) exposed to a lot of cartoons filled with those lovable characters. Kids just cannot have enough of those cute little characters. And when a packaging comes with a new character (in the form of your well thought out Mascot) they are easily attached to it. As for the parents, they are exposed to so many lovable characters, that your cute little Mascot sticks on in a remote corner of their busy brain easily. So, whenever they need to order for kid’s products, they can quickly recall your brand. And if you can provide them the range of products they expect and at a price which fits their pocket then you earn revenues! In this regard, it has to be said that the animal characters work best as Mascots for kid’s websites.

Brand Values and the Mascot

Before you get into the mascot designing project, think about your brand. What does your brand symbolize? What are its characteristics? Which animal would you associate your brand with? If your answers take you away from the popular kid’s website characters (such as dogs, cats, frogs, teddy bears, etc.) so be it. Your foremost goal should be to have a mascot designed that defines your brand, its goals and philosophies.

As you can see, with a well designed Mascot your business can go places. This is why you need to choose a designing service that is both creative and skilled. At Keyline we have the apt Web Designing service to help you have the perfect mascot for your business.

5 Essential WordPress Plug-ins for Freelance Content Writers

5 Essential WordPress Plug-ins for Freelance Content Writers

Working as a freelance content writer can be a lucrative profession, when you plan out your moves the right way. When asked: most freelance content writers would opine that it is their writing that sees them land new projects. While this is partially correct, but a client sees many other things than just writing before entrusting you with writing responsibilities. A successful freelance content writer needs much more than grammar, diction and spelling accuracy to appease a client. You need to establish yourself as a brand, pursue new leads and meet the client deadlines. Caring for all these diverse facets can be a challenge for a budding freelance content writer. So, there are many great WordPress plug-ins that would help you shed some of the workload, and you can solely concentrate on the thing you do best – write!

Editorial Calendar

While handling multiple clients, often the freelance writers feel the pressure of deadlines. One of the keys to freelance writing success is to organize your priorities. This helps you create a smooth delivery mechanism. One of the best tools in this regard is the Editorial Calendar. You can put in the client work along with their deadlines into this plug-in and you will get an elaborate calendar in front of you. You can also tinker with the schedule as and when needed. Having this calendar in front of you, helps in planning the work and delivering content on a timely basis.

WP Links Page

No client would assign you a project before judging the proof of your competence. This is where the online portfolio pages with live links work wonders. Rather than going by the popular practice of having website with a bunch of live links, you can use the simpler way of WP Links Page. With the help of this WP plug-in you can create an online gallery with screenshots and live links. You can provide as much details about the samples, using the plug-in. There is also option to switch between grid and list views.

Testimonials Widget

Often you would come across meticulous clients who are not quite satisfied solely seeing your portfolio. What they are looking for is recommendations and positive feedback regarding your work. You could of course go about the traditional way of weaving Testimonials into every page. But the Testimonials Widget of WordPress offers a convenient and time saving way of displaying the feelings of your happy clients. With its minimalistic design, the Widget is simple to use. However, if you want video testimonials or testimonials with animation, then opt for the paid version of this plug-in.

Contact Form 7

Apart from showcasing your credibility, you have to also open channels for the clients to contact you easily. Contact Form 7 allows you to attain just this. The form allows you to include custom fields and show the form wherever you deem essential. Contact Form 7 comes with many handy features such as captcha, file uploads and custom notification messages.

Social Media Feather

Today, the social media is not limited to offering fun. It is a great medium to discuss and finalize projects. With the Social Media Feather plug-in, the freelance writers can allow their potential clients to get in touch with them through many social media channels. If a client wants to discuss the project requirements over LinkedIn (for example) and not fill up any form, then the Social Media Feather allows him to contact you on the channel of his choice.

At Keyline we have helped many freelance writers build a website that boosts their career. We can also offer effective Content Writing services to meet your brand’s requirements.

5 Tips to Secure Personal Blogging Data

5 Tips to Secure Personal Blogging Data

Blogging might be a passion for you, but hacking might be a passion for someone else! This is the era when Internet savvy people have taken to blogging, a big time. But often while creating and running their successful blogging adventure, they do not mind for security. For them, their blogging domain does not have the potential to inspire the hackers. You are wrong, hacking into your blogging site can give the hacker access to loads of personal information, which can be used in many ways. So, if you want to save yourself from the shock of having your access blocked one find day, then adhere to some of the below given tips.

Shun Low Costing or Free Web Hosting

Most bloggers, even today, make the cardinal sin of looking around for the free or least costly web hosting. When a web host is ready to offer you unbelievably low rates, there should be some other motives involved. There are many web hosts for whom cheap web hosting is all but a means to gather a lot of personal data, which may be sold to a third party when the time comes. Such web hosting services, have to cut corners to provide low rate for their services. This is why they sacrifice with the security of their users. Always choose a reputed web hosting, that may be a touch costly, for your blogging site.

Opt for Domain Privacy

Again in their bid to save costs, most bloggers around the country are today ready to opt out of the Domain Privacy feature from the web hosting package. This is an important feature to keep all your personal information safe. By paying a small annual fee, you make sure that your address and contact information is not available to anyone else.

Secured Backup for your Blogs

Staying prepared is very important for the bloggers. You have to stay prepared for crisis management. The best way to stay clear of the malicious intentions of hackers is to take regular backup of your website’s data. When a copy of all your website data is available on the server, it can foil the attempts of the hackers a big time. The hosting package you choose should come with regular data backups. This will help you restore the blog site in no time at all, in the event of an attack.

Unique Passwords for Each Blog Site

There are many of you who operate on more than one blog domain. And most of the time, you set the same password for each and every domain (just for the ease of your remembering). But this is a dangerous practice. What this means is: if one of your websites is hacked, the hacker will have no trouble at all in accessing rest of the others. This is why, we request you to think of unique passwords for each and every website.

Be Careful about Details in your Writing

There are many bloggers, who try to keep their content real. And in the process, they end up providing examples from their real life. While you want to enrich your content, there should also be a restrain at places. Sharing too many personal details in your blogs, might make the site easy to hack. Always change names, dates, places, addresses, etc. while you are writing.

Hope the above given tips would help in protecting your close to the heart blog domain from the hackers. If you want the most secured blog web hosting services, then turn to us at OptraHost

 

How to plan a perfect pop-up for your website?

Pop-up advertisements are back in a big way. In the past, the pop-ups were seen as annoying and intrusive way of advertising, and logically the visitors hated them. The furore against pop-ups was so high that many browsers went ahead and integrated the pop-up blockers as a part of their service. But the pop-ups have made a dramatic comeback in the last few years. But this time they have adorned a new and user friendly avatar.

For example, IIHM Kolkata website has a pop up mentioning the “best hotel management college in Kolkata“.

Pop-ups are a great way of increasing conversion, traffic (to specific pages) and even raising awareness about a recent service, product or offer. And it is logical for you to be contemplating about the usage of pop-up ads at your website. But before you lunge ahead, you need to know: the old world of pop-up ads has vanished. There is a whole new list of things to keep in mind while planning for a website pop-up ad today. So, what are the basics of coming up with a perfect pop-up? That is what we are here to discuss.

  • Timely Appearance: This is the era when brands are more concerned about user experience than they ever were. With a stiff competition, no matter which niche business you belong, every website has to cater a neat browsing experience. And pop-ups, when not planned well, can be a big deterrent to this logic. In the past, pop-ups were hated because they impeded the browsing experience of the visitors. They would come up any time and any where. So, the planning of a pop-up ad should take into consideration their placement and timing. Today’s successful pop-up website ads are allowing the visitors to look through the desirable service or product before cropping up on a timely manner.
  • Easy to Close: Going through the pop-up ads was a compulsion for the surfers in the prior years, as they were so difficult to minimize or close. As a result most visitors would leave the website out of frustration. Now, this would impact the conversion and user experience levels. This is why, websites of the times are providing the visitors easy and readily viewable options to close the ads they do not find interesting.
  • An Offer Visitors like: Pop-ups ads can be successful when they carry forward a worthwhile offer. There is no point in having a pop-up up there just for the sake of it. Such ad spaces should be reserved for the most well thought out and luring ads. Your ad offer should be such that it attracts attention and the visitors find it useful.
  • Having an Action Driven Call to action: Rather than forcing the visitors to click on the ad and reach the landing page, today’s websites are rather focusing on dishing out attractive offerings. Limited time offers or offers that are valid for the first 50 clicks are good ways to not only arouse interest but get the desired hits on the landing page. This is why, thinking hard about the call to action is the secret to success behind the modern day pop-up ads.

Once you have taken into account the above mentioned factors and planned a pop-up ad for your website, leave the rest to Keyline. Our website design and development service can provide the perfect ad and landing pages for your campaign.

How often should a website be redesigned?

The decision to redesign your corporate website is not a simple one. It has many management and monetary facets to it. This is why, there are many website owners who are caught up in a fix: “when should I redesign my website?” Well, there is a popular saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But, this saying was not created keeping the web in mind. There are many websites which are completely functional from the apparent view (it ain’t broke) and still they are crying out for a redesign (fix). As web redesigning is a big decision, so we can understand the indecision you are suffering from. But, if your website is looking rather stale, outdated and far moved from other modern websites of the niche, then it is the perfect time to start searching for a reputed web design service.

But what is the real shelf life of a website?

There is no definitive answer to this question. The shelf life of a website can be 3 years, 3 months, 3 hours or even 3 minutes. It all depends on a range of business factors. But, we understand that this answer would hardly meet your curiosity. So, let us throw in some numbers. A study by the Orbit Media, on the average shelf life of websites, found that a website needs to be redesigned every 2 years and 6 months! But that is a generalized answer and might not fit your industry requirements.

Does the shelf life vary from one industry to the next?

Yes, definitely. There are some industries which go hand in hand with modern technologies. While there are others which might not mind much about what is happening around in the technology domain. If your website is into selling utility items (such as AC, electronic parts and industrial machinery, as examples) you do not need to care about the technology innovations out there. Customers care more for the quality of the items, rather than your websites looks. While if you are more into dealing with trendy things (such as interior decor, travel, new technologies, etc.) than the customers expect your website to have a modern look. Whether you need to redesign your website within two and a half years or after ten years depends on the expectations from your industry.

What can be an immediate trigger for website redesigning?

Standing at the present times, your website definitely needs to be mobile friendly. If it is not, then there is not a single moment to waste. You need to get in touch with a reliable web designing service and make your website mobile friendly. Even five years ago you could count the mobile visitors out of the equation. But no more, as Google officially states that mobile traffic in 2017 exceeded the desktop traffic. You could be losing a lots of customers and revenue if your website is not mobile friendly. This then is the immediate trigger for website redesigning.

What are the other considerations before thinking about website redesigning?

It all comes down to awareness. You need to understand the demands of the market. Finding answers to some of the below mentioned questions would help you make up the mind.

  • Is my website looking modern and updated?
  • Have my business offerings remained the same, since I last got my website designed?
  • Is my website appearing perfectly on all types of browsers, devices and screen sizes?
  • Is my website in the same league or better than my competitors?
  • Am I witnessing a steady growth in traffic and revenue through the website?
  • Is the website aligning with my present business goals?
  • Are customers giving compliments for my website design?
  • Do I really like the look and feel of my website?

If you find that all the answers are pointing towards a website redesigning need, then waste no time in contacting us at Keyline. We have helped many clients give a new look to their existing website with our web design services.

Why and How to Track the Website Uptime?

Why and How to Track the Website Uptime?

While searching for a reliable web host you would definitely come across the term “uptime” and all types of guarantees surrounding it. But to tell you more about the ways to track this essential component, we have to first of tell you about this term.

What is Uptime and Downtime?

In the web hosting world Uptime refers to the amount of time that the website is running and available to the visitors. When the website is unaccessible, due to back-end issues, it suffers Downtime. Downtimes can be frustrating for you as a website owner, as the surfers are not able to reach your website. This could lead to loss of traffic and revenue. Additionally, statistics suggest that surfers who are not able to access a website first time around tend not to return back ever again! So, any web host you contact would assure a maximum uptime for the website (often a 99.9% uptime guarantee), which means your website will be accessible for most time of a day.

Why you need to track for uptime?

There are many practical reasons for constantly monitoring your website’s uptime. First of all, tracking of the uptime helps you measure the performance of the web host. Secondly, you are the first to know when the website is down. You can quickly contact the web host and get the website back live without losing too much of traffic in the meanwhile. Fast response is critical

 

when your website is suffering a downtime! Thirdly, no matter how much trust you have upon the web host, you need to take a proactive stance about your online presence. The web host might be handling multiple clients, but for you the website is your sole discretion. Fourthly, tracking for uptime helps you make a good decision when your web hosting plan comes up for renewal.

How Frequently do you need to monitor the uptime?

Being proactive does not mean you have to monitor the uptime of your website after every 5 minutes or so. There are many web tools to auto-check your website’s uptime. You just need to know about them and more importantly use them.

What are the options?

There are dozens of server monitoring tools available online. While some are free, others would cost you. Some simple tools cost you a small amount while the other sophisticated versions can cost you a fair deal. While simpler tools run HTTP check to ensure whether the website is running or down, there are others which perform more complex back-end jobs. Yes, the sophisticated tools can monitor more than 50 server side checkpoints simultaneously. Some of the free monitoring tools would include Pingdom, Uptime Robot and Uptime Checker among many others. While the costly and sophisticated monitoring tools include Cacti, Naios, etc. No matter which monitoring tool you choose they will perform one of the four types of server monitoring: HTTP monitor, Ping monitor, DNS Server Monitor and TCP port monitor.

If you are in search for a reliable web hosting partner who offers best uptime for your website, then OptraHost’s web hosting services is the right match for your requirements.

When do you need to scale up hosting plans for online dating website?

This is the era of e-communications. The modern advances in technology have removed the need for physical meetings in many a scenario. None more so, than for dating. Online dating websites are the new avenues to meet your soul mates and get to know them better. It is no wonder than that in the last few years dating websites have become a valuable property on the world wide web. More and more enthusiastic entrepreneurs are taking this safe business option to launch their business career. If the figures are to be believed than, online dating websites had a 17% increase in their popularity in 2017. And predictions for 2018 claim a bigger popularity for the online dating websites. So, time is ripe to start your online dating website!

The first major decision that you will confront before launching an online dating website is the type of web hosting you should opt for. So, here are our suggestions.

Shared Hosting for Small Traffic

As your website takes baby steps into the online realm, it would need a fair bit of time to establish itself. Though, online dating is a popular business domain, but there are many big and well established players already present. To thwart them or even pull users from those sites would be a stiff challenge for you. So, in the early days you have to eek out each and every user. Definitely your user base would remain low in the first couple of years (though the time may vary based on your marketing tactics). It is also the stage when you have to provide free services, as a means to build the user base. So, you are not earning any profit from the venture yet. All the factors should guide you to choose the shared hosting plans. Based on your current traffic trends, the shared web hosting plans are more than adequate to support your needs. A word of caution should be sounded here: do not fall for the lure of free web hosting, it would damage your business future. Again, while choosing the shared hosting plans only look through a reputed list of providers. Reputed web hosts make sure that the hosted websites have a secured environment.

Dedicated Hosting for Increasing Traffic

Once you have been able to penetrate into the market and the week-by-week statistics show an overwhelming increase in your traffic, it is time to scale up the hosting plans. By this time you must have already started to think or even might have implemented the Paid service model. When you ask for payment from the users, their expectations will also rise. They will anticipate best listings, best services, ease of use, quick loading pages, etc. The shared hosting plan you were so long using might not be competent enough to meet these requirements. So, you have to start searching for the most affordable dedicated web hosting plans. Again choosing a web host with proven track record is the trick here. Now, data security is more essential than ever and no goof ups can be expected.

At OptraHost we have affordable web hosting plans that can fit ideally with your web hosting requirements. Please take a look through.

5 Major Mobile App Development Trends for 2018

Standing in the last days of 2017, we can safely say that mobile app eco-system is the biggest marketplace. According to a data by Statista, more than 197 billion apps were downloaded in 2017. The mobile App store is presently populated with 6.6 million apps. Businesses, of whatever stature they may be, have realized that developing a mobile app for their brand is no longer an investment rather it is essential for their survival in the changing market. Brands, large and small, are utilizing their mobile apps for direct marketing, brand awareness and increasing sales.

With the app development scopes emerging from every corner, the onus is on the mobile developers to come up with deliveries that make their clients happy. Adoption of the below given anticipated trends would be a good way to earn accolades from your clients.

Trend #1: Growth of IoT and Wearable apps

IoT and wearables ushered in a new era of convenience for the users and 2018 will see a further growth in their popularity. More players are emerging into the IoT and wearable development arena with a focus on developing scalable and mature deliverables. It is estimated that the investment in IoT would increase to around 120 billion by 2020! 2018 will see the extensive adoption of wearable technologies in mobile app development. The healthcare and manufacturing sectors would be the front-runners in the adoption of wearable technologies.

Trend #2: Increased adoption of Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP)

AMP is a great new way to improve the page load time on mobile apps. This Google technology helps businesses boost their conversion, improve the bounce rates and CTR. It is also highly important for retaining visitors and catering good user experience to them. Furthermore, AMP helps an app gain more visibility on mobile search engine searches. Adopting this technology in the mobile development cycle would be crucial for application developers in 2018.

Trend #3: Planning for Android Instant App

This is a whole new way in the app discovery process. With the Android Instant app, the Android users can now view the content and features of any app without actually installing it on their devices. The Android Instant app is available for Android versions 5.0 to 8.0. There are tools in the Android Studio that allows the developers to create a partial version of their app that can be accessed by the users with a click on deep link. It should be stated in this respect that Vimeo has enhanced their session durations by 130% in 2017 with the aid of this new feature.

Trend #4: Stress on Mobile app security

As smartphones are being used widely for transactions online, the need for stringent security measures is more than it was ever before. The developers should focus more on building a secure environment for their end users. Security measures should be tightened right at the development stage with secure back-end, code encryption and API. The integration of a reputed payment gateway goes a long way in making an app secure for transactions. Mobile developers have to spend more time in testing the security of their app from every possible scenario.

Trend #5: Growth of on-demand mobile app development

2017 saw a widespread popularity for on-demand mobile app development. Such apps made the lives of the users much simpler. They could use this app to meet their requirements from anywhere and anytime. Most of the popular on-demand apps in 2017 belonged to the car cleaning, food ordering, laundry, taxi service and renting sectors. The year 2018 would see the adoption of on-demand apps into other realms as well.

If you want to develop the trendiest mobile application that is delivered to you within the shortest span, then you have got to check out Keyline’s mobile application development service.

5 Web Design Trends to watch out for in 2018

As a digital medium, web design services see most changes each year. While their print cousins have remained constant, the web design realm undergoes many trend shifts with every passing year. The year 2017 posed many technology challenges for the web designers, but it was amazing to see the web design world cut through the challenges and design websites that were user friendly, innovative and adaptable with the corporate style.

One of the major paradigm shifts in 2017 saw mobile searches finally overtake the desktop searches. This means, 2018 would be a year when the web designers have to care for mobile functionality while evolving with the desktop designs. Keeping all this in mind, let us try to find some of the major web design trends to care for in 2018.

Trend #1: Move towards Vibrant Color Schemes

2018 is definitely the year when the color palette preferences of the web designers would change. So long the designers and brands only worked with the web safe colors. But even in the last quarter of 2017, web designers had shifted from this norm. Web designers were seen experimenting and getting courageous with their selection of colors. Vibrant shades along with non-horizontal headers found a liking among the web surfers. The adoption of vibrant shades has been aided by technology too. With new technological advances, the monitors and devices of the present era can reproduce a diversity of rich colors.

Trend #2: Use of Drop Shadows and Depth

Shadows have been an integral part of web designing for many years now. But in light of the new advancements in web browsers, they have become more appealing then they ever were. In 2018, the web designers have the luxury of playing with grids and parallax layouts to create depth in designs and an illusion of a world beyond the screen. Drop shadows can increase the aesthetics and alleviate the User Experience (UX) of a website.

Trend #3: Focus on Mobile Surfing

As mentioned before, it is now official that surfers are using their smartphones to surf through websites, more than their desktops. Everyone today is using the smartphone to shop, place order and look for information on the web. A couple of years ago, the biggest dilemma for the web designers was: how to adopt their designs into the small mobile screen. But the mobile technology has matured significantly enough to solve their problem. Latest mobile technology enables the web designers to create menus, sub-menus and buttons without taking up much space. Yes, you might have to shun all those beautiful yet big photos and illustrations from your design, but the rest of the design can be easily accommodated within the mobile screen.

Trend #4: Use of Particle Backgrounds

This is the solution web designers have come up with to solve performance issues of their websites. With a video running in the background, many sites suffered from slow loading time. The animations done using the particle backgrounds are lightweight and they do the tasks a video is targeted to achieve. If an image is worth thousand words, then a moving image is much more than that. So, with the adoption of particle backgrounds one can immediately attract user’s attention and create a favorable first impression. Such motion graphics have already gained popularity on social media and campaign landing pages. It is now time to implement them on the web pages.

Trend #5: Bigger and Bolder Typography

Every web designer knows that typography is the most powerful visual tool that they can dish out for the surfers. With the right selection of typefaces you can set the right tone, evoke emotions and reflect the brand personality. As the resolutions of the device monitors are getting sharper, it is making fonts easier to read. With the exception of Internet Explorer, all the other browsers are today supporting the hand-made and innovative typefaces. The typeface trend of Sans Serif with Serif headings will be explored widely even in 2018. This year will be an year of invention in terms of typography.

If you are looking for a web design service that uses the latest technologies and trends in servicing the clients, then you have to Contact us at Keyline.

What should be the focus of your online gaming website?

Do you like playing online games? Have you fantasized for long about having a gaming website of your own? Well, then this is the perfect time to launch your gaming website. If the statistics are to be believed 44% of the world’s online population are gamers. More than 60% of Internet surfers have played at least one game online! It is no wonder then that online gaming is a multi million dollar industry and there are unlimited opportunities for newcomers in this domain! With the modern day tools and resources, developing a gaming website is not the issue. The real issue lies in deciding on your focus area. With multitudes of options, it becomes a daunting task for the newbies to decide their business focus. So, here we would like to elaborate on some of the options available.

Types of Online Gaming Websites

There are many types of online gaming websites, and each variety has its own merits. So, you have to first of all decide on what your website would be dealing with. This will help you in choosing the web hosting as well as aid in many web development and design decisions.

  • Flash and Demo Games: There are many websites which showcase and allow their registered users to play games online. Of course the demo games might only allow users to complete some levels, but its a popular concept all the same.
  • Gaming News: Having a website up there that provides the latest news and headlines from the online gaming world is good enough to attract lots of traffic. But getting such insights and scoops can be very difficult, so build channels first.
  • Gaming Reviews: Today’s gamers like to read feedbacks about a game before they start with it. This is the merit of the review websites. They can bring in high traffic, if done with the right information.
  • Website with Gaming Strategies & Cheats: These websites are popular searches on Google. Many gamers like to get the upper hand over their opponents with such insights. But the niche is highly competitive, and you can only stand out from the crowd with thorough knowledge.
  • Community: In this type of website you would not be making money. But have a website up there and you will get followers flowing in. And soon that can lead to other money earning opportunities.
  • Fan Site: This comes quite close to a Community, but there is a difference in its purpose. Here, the gamers get to read about personal experiences of other gamers and their recommendations. There should be interviews from leading gamers, where they share tips and experiences.

We hope the above information would help you in deciding on your choice of online gaming website type. For superior web hosting you can always turn to us at OptraHost.