website redesign - Ouriken Blogs

Application Development, Website Design and Development, Website Designing, Website Development Company, website optimization

Why and How to Optimize your Website for Mobile Devices?

In these modern times of technology, it is very important for websites to be accessible across a variety of devices. Mobile traffic has been seen a significant, steady, and rapid increase in the coming years and it finally overtook the traditional desktop and laptop computer users in 2015. And changing the algorithm of Google favors mobile-friendly sites. A change in the Google search engine in April 2015, giving priority to those websites that display well on smartphones and other mobile devices, nicknamed, Mobilegeddon has penalized those websites who were not providing an adequate experience for mobile users forcing their website owners to invest more in the mobile upgrades giving a helping hand to app development.

We found a significant drop in traffic for non-mobile-optimized websites while monitoring the websites of some users and customers, while mobile-enabled websites saw a slight increase in incoming traffic which we attributed to a higher search engine ranking.

Create your mobile-friendly website

Non-mobile-optimized try to cram a traditional website into small limits of a mobile device, making the content difficult if not impossible to read and much harder to navigate. On the contrary, mobile-friendly sites adapt to the screen resolution of the device. The text is large enough to read, images adjust to the screen frame size, and navigation buttons are accommodating to a touch.

Redesign of a website – Full

The first approach will always be to make a new remake of the website.

Older websites that did not have major changes for 5+ years, full redesign works best for such websites. Coding and Web Designs standards underwent some major changes over the last 5 years and it’s often more efficient to start work from scratch rather than to try an older version of existing code and design. Across both traditional and mobile screens, the new website will benefit from the modern look and accessibility.

Conversion of an existing website into responsive coding

The second approach would be to convert an existing website to responsive coding.

If there is a clear separation between HTML and CSS code the original website was built according to W3C standards. To support responsive design, the website could be converted. Screen elements automatically adjust to the resolution of the device and thus provide an optimal viewing experience in a responsive site. Content-rich websites that do not require excessive user interaction.

Building a Standalone Mobile Website

The third approach would be to leave your traditional website as-is and make a stand-alone mobile website.

Mobile websites can share the same data and CMS (Content Management System) as a desktop website, so both websites can be managed through a single place. The standalone mobile website gives the owner complete unconstrained freedom over the layout of the elements and functionality, so the mobile website may look and feel quite different from its desktop counterpart. For an e-commerce website, this approach works best where the user interaction is very different between stationary and mobile devices.

Converting WordPress website to mobile

Getting a responsive website is quite easy if you’re using WordPress as your content management system. You will need to install a responsive theme, whether it be free or premium. All content immediately becomes mobile-friendly.

We at Ouriken consolidate, optimize and standardize technology/products to bring technology simplification, cost reduction and then to overcome technology obsolescence/skill issues. Ouriken application development & maintenance services help you maintain your business-critical mainframe applications & replace legacy applications. Ouriken is a standalone web design and digital agency. We design and implements powerful solutions for small and medium businesses in technology, business, and operations.

Artificial Intelligence, Website Design and Development, Website Designing, Website Development Company

What is Web 1.0, 2.0, & 3.0?

Web 1.0

In the evolution of the World Wide Web, Web 1.0 refers to the first stage. With a huge majority of users who are content consumers, there were only a few content creators in Web 1.0. Personal web pages were normal, hosted on ISP-run web servers consisting mainly of static pages, or on web hosting services.

Advertisements on Web 1.0 were banned while surfing the internet. Web 1.0 enables to showcase of the piece of information on the websites which is known as Content Delivery Network (CDN) also can be used as personal websites. Cost formula is per page view and it has directories that enable users to retrieve a particular piece of information.

Design Essentials of web 1.0

Pages are static.
From the file-system of the server, the content is served.
Using Common Gateway Interface (CGI) or Server Side the page sare built.
To position and align the Elements, frames and tables are used on a page.

Web 2.0

User-generated content, usability, and interoperability for end-users are some of the highlights of Web 2.0 which is also known as a worldwide website and another name for it is a participative social web. It doesn’t refer to any modification to technical specification, but to recreate in a good way web pages are designed and used. When the changes have occurred the transitions are beneficial, but it doesn’t seem that way. Collaboration is allowed with each other by Web 2.0 in a social media dialogue as the creator of a user-generated cant in a virtual community. Web 1 is an enhanced version of 2.0. In web 2.0 development the browser technologies are used, and it includes ajax and JavaScript Frameworks.

Features of Web 2.0

It permits users to retrieve and classify the information collectively, and it also provides free sorting of information.
It provides dynamic content that is responsive to user input.
By means of evaluation and online commenting, information flows between site owners and site users.
APIs are developed to allow self-usage, such as by a software application.
Web access leads to an issue different from the traditional user base to a wider variety of users.

Use of Web 2.0

To share the perspectives, thoughts, opinions, and experiences the social web contains a number of online tools. Web 2.0 applications tend to have a conversation much more with the end-user. The end-user is also a participant of the 8 tools mentioned below:

Podcasting
Blogging
Tagging
Curating with RSS
Social Bookmarking
Social Networking
Social media
Web content voting

Web 3.0

The evolution and utilization of web interaction with the inclusion of alteration of the web into the database. After a long time of focus on the front-end, it enables the upgradation of the back-end of the web. To describe the evolutions of web usage and interaction among several paths web 3.0 is used. Instead of owning data, it is shared, where services show different views for the same data / same web. All the development process is done in Web 3.0, and all the Website Development Companies uses Web 3.0 for the website designing services.

Establishments of “the world’s information” is promised by the semantic web (3.0) in a responsible way than Google can ever attain with their existing engine schema. From the perspective of machine conception, this is particularly true as opposed to human understanding. It is necessary for the semantic web for the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and use it make new conclusions, and not simply match keywords.

Features of Web 3.0

Semantic Web

There is an involvement of the semantic web in succeeding in the evolution of the Web. In order to create, share and connect through search and analysis based on the capability to comprehend the meaning of words, instead of keywords or numbers, al this is used in the development of and improvement of the semantic web.

Artificial Intelligence

Mixing this capability with natural language processing, computers can distinguish information like humans in order to provide faster and more relevant results in web 3.0. to fulfill the requirements of the user it becomes more and more intelligent.

3D Graphics

In Web 3.0 the three-dimensional design is being used widely in websites and services. Computer games, museum guides, eCommerce, geospatial contexts, etc. are some of the examples that use 3D graphics.

Connectivity

Thanks to semantic metadata, the information is more connected to web 3.0. As a result, the UI evolves to another level of connectivity that leverages all the available information.

Ubiquity

The services can be used everywhere, content is accessible by multiple applications. Every device is connected to the web.

Ouriken is a standalone web design and digital agency. We design and implements powerful solutions for small and medium businesses in technology, business, and operations. Our standard web designing services include many features that contain home, blog, images, faq, contact us and many more. It is the best website designing firm.

Website Design and Development, Website Designing

Maintaining a Website’s SEO After a Redesign

Planning to redesign your website but afraid of the SEO rankings? There need is some need to considering the maintenance of SEO rankings and your website’s DA before, after and during the redesign process. The aesthetics of the site is not the only thing you need to worry about when you think of redesigning your website, but we also need to take some time to look into the maintenance of SEO for your website and ways to improve it as well.

Many companies, since maintaining SEO for a website is a big deal nowadays, fail to understand the importance of attention to SEO while the redesigning of their website, but it affects them a big-time after in time. You could wipe out all your previous SEO efforts if maintenance of SEO is not done carefully. With major Web Design and Development activities, there are both technical and non-technical areas to consider for. Specific steps must be taken care of to ensure that you don’t demolish your SEO quality when transitioning from old site to new one.

Core Areas to Consider

There are three main areas to look upon in order to maintain the SEO rankings when redesigning your website:

What is acceptable with your current SEO efforts
During a redesign, what might be the possible common challenges
Changes that will come with a new website

You will be able to find out your weakness in SEO by focusing on these areas so you can improve it later.

Monitoring your SEO

If you have campaigns in place and currently monitoring your SEO rankings regarding those keywords then you have a good amount of data to analyze. In that case, one must be really aware of the keywords they rank for, the mapping for each keyword, the exact placement in rankings and the pages that deliver the highest organic traffic.

Common Challenges to Face with SEO in Redesigning Process

There are a lot of issues that may pop up when you work on a site redesign, focus on rebranding, improving User Experience, and updating of backend. There is a list where one could face challenges:

Removed Content
Changed Content
Movable content based on the new site’s navigation or site map
URLs might change
Changes in Page-level optimization
Addition of new content, sections, technology, new features
New Technical difficulties
Internal Link structure edits
Changes in Domain or Sub-Domain
Changes in Protocol

These are the areas which may impact SEO in a redesign. It may be very hard to identify exactly what needs to be addressed with so many possible changes. Out of the above-mentioned challenges, changes in a domain are one of the biggest challenges as compared to other challenges, but each and every challenge must be overcome and the more challenges you have the more difficult it will be to maintain your SEO rankings.

How to not lose your SEO rankings checklist and redesign at the same time

Before starting the redesigning process it’s very important to undertint the best practices to preserve your SEO rankings. Some of the parameters are as follows:

An SEO audit must be run on your current website

Understanding all the keywords you are attempting to rank for and with what the pages are associated with. You should be concerned about pages and specific on-page optimization beyond redirects, which go from the Dev. to the live line state.

Setting up 301 and 302 redirects

First and foremost, you must redirect the old URLs to new ones. You’ll need to have a spreadsheet of all needed redirects if you’re making changes to permalink structure. Crawl the old list of URLs to ensure that everything redirects as it should once you have the new site live.

A permanent redirect from one link to another is called a 301 redirect. This redirection is used for website visitors and search engines, a 301 redirect is better for SEO over a temporary one because it transfers the internal link as well, approximately 90-99% of the time. This redirection method is the preferred method for new sites.

And a temporary redirection is called 302 redirects, redirecting users and search engines to the desired page for a short period of time until it’s removed. In order to give your users a seamless experience, you should use it during the update of a web page. What they say is right, excess 302 redirects will affect your SEO, so be careful when using it.

Multiple Tests

Assuming the live site will perform the same as a dev. site is kind of stupidity. A lot of time and resources are probably invested in testing, but in the real world, things can change. Usage of technical tools for site audits like Moz, Ahrefs, or DeepCrawl, these tools provide insights on technical issues. Also, running your domain through the mobile-friendly testing tool and the loading speed of the new website must be checked too. Last but not least, schema markup on the new website should be done and must not be forgotten.

How to Avoid Mistakes

We’ve covered almost everything that you should do, but how can we avoid mistakes that can cost you your SEO rankings.

Don’t start over on the content: If the content on your website is ranking, then you must not abandon it. If you do it will affect the rankings.
Redirects are your friends: when a 404 Page Not Found error is displayed to the user, which means the pages have dropped off Google’s index.
Internal linking is the key: Always remember to push this to the new website.
Outbound links must be added on need.
You can use Ahrefs to find these pages that have high rankings and multiple backlinks, try to preserve or transfer them.

Conclusion

As the brand evolves, redesigning a website is a move that most companies should make. In order to maintain the SEO rankings, you must follow these best practices from a website redesign. Never start over on the content like your old website never existed, it will affect the rankings so bad. Feel free to add your tips, tricks, and suggestions in the comments below.

Ouriken is a standalone web design and digital agency. We design and implements powerful solutions for small and medium businesses in technology, business, and operations.