There are plenty of form building services, plugins, and frameworks in the wild that make the tedious task of form design and development much easier. We’re going to look at some of those in this post.

Why not do it yourself?

Building a form is one of those tasks in front-end development that I forget how hard it is until I’m asked to do it. It’s no big deal if we’re talking about a couple of text inputs and a submit button, but we’re often looking at something much more complex. Radio buttons, numeric inputs, Ajax validation and submission—oh my! That’s before we even start discussing browser inconsistencies, input states, payment integration, and accessibility.

Nothing is as cross-disciplinary as form building. Forms are designed. Forms are front-end developed. Forms are back-end developed. Form are the concern of server and database people as well. New forms and changes to existing forms can be a difficult-to-coordinate cross-disciplinary effort.

It’s totally cool to build forms from scratch, but there’s no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants who have already done the heavy lifting. Doing so can minimize the cost and time for a client and lead to a better end-user experience.

Hosted Form Services

One option is to use a hosted service for your forms. This way, you’re offloading most of the form-related work your team would otherwise be in for. I tend to use hosted form services when there are many complex considerations to a form, such as conditional logic, pagination and reporting. These companies have figured all that out for us and, considering time, for a lower price than developing it ourselves.

Wufoo / SurveyMonkey

These services are under the same umbrella these days. You may know that Chris worked for Wufoo before it was acquired by Survey Monkey. Wufoo is an advertiser here on CSS-Tricks but has not paid for inclusion to this post. We included these services because they just plain work. Wufoo is for any type of web form while SurveyMonkey is likely a better tool specifically for web form surveys.

We use Wufoo to power the contact form here on CSS-Tricks and have for many years without a need to change it out for anything else. Because Wufoo offers easy payment integration, we’ve also used it for selling products a number of times. They don’t even take a cut, it’s just comes with a paid plan!

My personal favorite thing about Wufoo is the amount of customization it offers. There are several ways to embed a form on a website and options to customize the appearance using their themes, or custom CSS. In this way, its extensible in addition to working right out of the box. I wrote a post way back when on how I used Wufoo as a tool for getting customer service feedback.

Polldaddy

Polldaddy is from Automattic, the force behind WordPress. Like Wufoo, it’s a hosted service and is suited for complex forms, such as surveys. One thing I personally like about (aside from it’s clean interface) is that is offers a nice iOS app for collecting form data in other places than a website. That’s perfect something like a conference, book signing or some other live event where collecting information in person would be a benefit.

Google Forms

Google Forms is unique in this group as it’s entirely free. It’s part of the Google Docs world along with Slides and Sheets (you can export form data to Sheets). Being a part of that world means inviting collaborators to the forms you build there.

It’s a pretty nice form builder, and compelling because of the no cost, but also quite limited. No payments, no logic, very limited design control, the iframe embeds can be a little weird (require scrolling), etc.

Typeform

Typeform builds forms with a unique interface: each question is asked one at at time, more like a real life conversation.

Formstack

Formstack is a totally hosted form service as well, with some pretty unique features that may be of particular interest to heavy business and marketing needs. For example, they track partial submissions, so you’re collecting information even if the user didn’t quite finish the form. They allow for A/B testing and track where people left off, for identifying bottlenecks and increasing conversions.

Online Form Builders

Is a hosted platform a bit much for your project? Another option is to use an online form builder.

It’s kind of a fine line between a hosted form service and an form builder. Where a SaaS provides everything you could possibly need and hosts it for you, a form builder provides the actions you need to receive data and notifications. You host the form on your site and the form builder’s server will process the submissions for you.

Simple Form

Simple Form is a perfect example of an online form builder. It provides you with an API token, which can then be added to the form’s markup on a site to send and receive data from Simple Form’s servers. No sign up or sign in required; just an API token. That’s pretty cool.

FormKeep

FormKeep is another viable online form builder. The primary difference here is that a sign in is required to get started and, once you do, you have the option to upgrade your your forms to collect more data. Otherwise, there are low limits to how many submissions can be accepted in a given form.

A very cool thing about FormKeep: it has a ton of Zapier webhooks that can integrate your form with other services, such as MailChimp, Trello, Salesforce and many of Google’s web apps.

Formspree

Formspree is sort of a happy-medium between the other two online form builders we’ve looked at. No signup or account is needed to get form actions, but there is a limit of 1,000 submissions per form before an account and upgrade would be needed.

My favorite thing about Formspree is that it provides a slew of advanced options to customize a form’s behavior using name values in the markup.

WordPress Plugins

Running a WordPress site means you have access to many, many plugins that make forms a lot more manageable than starting from scratch. These are a few of my favorites, each for different reasons.

Gravity Forms

This is a premium plugin (i.e. costs money) that puts a real form builder in the admin of your site. Gravity Forms allows you to create an unlimited number of forms directly from the WordPress dashboard, includes a slick drag-and-drop interface, and offers all the advanced options you might expect to see in something like Wufoo, such as conditional logic, style customizations and integrations with popular services.

You have full control over submission notifications, email triggers and design. My favorite feature is the level of control Gravity Forms at every level. For example, every input has a set of advanced settings that can be used to customize everything from the appearance and behavior of the input to its accessibility and ability to pull data from other fields in the same form.

Then, like Wufoo, the form is embedded into any page of post using a unique shortcode.

Ninja Forms

I’ve been growing more attached to this plugin. It’s completely free in the sense that the basic (but also awesome) form functions are included, then a whole bunch of add-ons available for a cost.

At the moment, I think Ninja Forms is a solid comparison to Gravity Forms from the interface to the features that are offered. I do know, however, that the team is working on a hefty revamp in version 3 that will shake things up quite a bit in a very awesome way and further distinguish it from Gravity Forms.

Contact Form 7

This is the OG of WordPress form plugins. This is the first one I remember ever using on a WordPress site. It’s far from the advanced features of Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms, but is completely free and still does some pretty slick things, from notification settings to Ajax loads on the front end. Plus, there’s a community behind it that has contributed extensions and add-ons to tailor the experience even further.

I often turn to Contact Form 7 on smaller WordPress projects with baseline-level form input needs. It might take a little more instruction when handing a project back to the client, but is more than ample for many use cases.

Form Frameworks

Let’s say you’re the DIY type that doesn’t need any help with form processing. You can still benefit from the work of others who have poured effort into making frameworks for forms that are not only attractive, but handle often troublesome aspects of forms like accessibility and browser compatibility. There’s really no need to highlight these tools since they’re already well-used and documented, but we can at least link ’em up.

• Bootstrap
• Foundation
• Bourbon
• Formalize
• Mosto

Wrapping Up

I choose form solutions based on what I think will best suit a particular project. In most cases, I use some kind of form solution, because building forms is so dang tough given all the permutations or what can be required.

Zapier has put together a list of their own with some options. I put this post together based on personal experiences with various services, but what others have you found? Let me know in the comments.

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Options for Building Web Forms is a post from CSS-Tricks

For many designers, developers and agencies, customer service can be a burden, slowing down the day, stifling the creative process. It doesn’t have to be – here are five things to try today to turn support from your enemy to an ally.

1. Make Support Flow

If support is frustrating, consider the perspective of the customer. They’re in touch because something has gone wrong and can’t find the answer to their query. Ensure you have the steps in place to handle this and avoid cranky customer support.

Like your sales funnel, channelling customers to a make a purchase, support needs to be thought of as a funnel, directing customers to the right place to find relevant answers to their queries. For example, if you’re fielding support queries from email, Twitter, Facebook, contact forms… STOP. Direct all queries to a central support location, a single contact point that customers can find answers or reach out directly if needed.

Sketch out your support process flow, identify key pinch points – where customers are getting lost. Place as much documentation online as you can, ideally before any email or ticketing systems, and help customers to help themselves.

2. Choose the Right Tools

Email is great for one-to-one communication, but how good is at tracking persistent queries, analyzing time spent on support and delegating issues to the appropriate personnel? Ticketing systems tackle these points, but introduce their own nuances – who wants to log into a separate ticketing system just to see the status of their support request or post a reply?

Some try using a forum to offer support, but experience dictates otherwise. While it can be great for a community project, for a paid-for product, customers will have little tolerance for the digressions and thread hijacks that appear to be par-for-the-course with forums. Managing the community and keeping discussion on topic is not conducive for good support.

Tools such as HelpScout offer the best of both worlds – support tickets can be created from emails or a web form. They can then be handled like any other tickets – delegated, tagged, notes added. Crucially however, it’s all transparent to the customer, the response is sent directly to their inbox and they can just hit reply to follow up on a query.

To minimize support queries hitting your ticketing system in the first place try using a dedicated support center such as our WordPress Knowledge Base products, which centralises documentation and support topics, acting as a gatekeeper to your support request form or email. We use it ourselves and it has helped customers resolve issues themselves without needing to wait for a response from our support team.

Useful support tools to check out today:

• HelpScout ticketing software.
• KnowAll knowledge base theme for WordPress, documentation and support hub.
• Trello for making notes on ongoing issues, project planning and delegation.
• Bitbucket for tracking issues and effective software version control with git.
• Slack for the day-to-day discussions, replace instant messenger apps, incredibly useful integrations for keeping the finger on the pulse of support and sales.

3. Listen to Feedback

Though the customer may not always be right, they usually have a point. When tickets are closed, a follow up is great way to find out what went well and what could have gone better. This can be used to improve the support process flow.

Documentation feedback is great for gauging how well a guide or walkthrough is hitting the mark. At the end of the articles in our knowledge base we have voting buttons for visitors to rate article usefulness. Once they’ve voted they can submit comments which are reviewed by the support team to help refine the article and improve the helpfulness metric.

Feedback should be quick and easy for the customer. Review feedback on an aggregate basis, one irate customer may be an exception, but persistent similar comments are a sign that further action should be taken and regular review of customer feedback is a good starting point for refining the overall support process.

Write down your top ten comments from customer support and devise an action plan for each, the plan could be to do nothing, but by being aware of issues and tracking them effectively can help you better manage support in the long run.

4. Use Support as Your Brand

Great support is what we offer at HeroThemes, both by selling the products which help our customers deliver it and leading by example. It’s an ongoing process, but support can become the cornerstone of your brand by inspiring confidence and allowing potential customers to discover your products and services with SEO rich, accessible documentation, testimonials from well serviced customers and clear guides explaining your products.

This approach justifies the time and cost spent on support – no longer a time sink, support can be a marketing tool and a customer acquisition strategy in itself. Good and bad, people will talk about the experiences they have with your support team, so a proactive attitude is more crucial than ever. Invest in the right tools and people for the job, good documentation can not only reduce repetitive support emails but lead to increased sales.

Each aspect of the support process can be tailored to match your branding, the right balance of friendly and professional is key. Set expectations in the documentation to help reduce over-demanding requests, demonstrating any limitations of your products and pre-empting questions that could arise. Link to relevant third party documentation or further reading material to create jump off points if visitors get stuck.

Create a support branding document for your business that outlines standard responses and policies, try to avoid canned responses, instead use it as a framework for providing consistently great support.

5. Don’t Take it Personally

Support is like any relationship that can have good and bad days. The key is not to take it personally and understand that support is a process that is there to be crafted, worked on, improved, and with the right tools and people, should become an asset.

You need to remember that customers are reaching out for support from a position of confusion or frustration, something has gone wrong- see the opportunity to turn that customer into an advocate. For whatever reason, this may not always go right, but the learning potential from each interaction is there to build better support processes and flows. Don’t take issues to heart, but do take the time to understand what went wrong and where things can be improved.

Conclusions

Support is seen as a dreaded demon, a drain on resources. But it need not be, try the suggestions from each of these five tips to see how they can improve your business today.

Focus on building support that flows, with the right tools to match your customer base and service expectations. Listen to feedback from your customers and leverage support contact points to enhance your brand. Finally, don’t take it personally, treat it as any other process in your business, to be nurtured over time.

P.S. If you’re looking for an all-in-one knowledge base solution, consider the HeroThemes KnowAll theme, quickly create a brand-able and customizable support site that works with a range of ticketing and email systems.

What support hacks do you use to get through the day? Let us know in the comments below.

Read More at 5 Customer Support Hacks to Try Today

What started just as a blogging platform is now globally reckoned as a full-fledged web design and development platform. Yes! We are referring to WordPress- the ultimate blogging platform cum CMS that initiated the idea of developing futuristic web solutions. WordPress has always been known for its simplicity and versatility which is why it is highly used and recommended by the global developers.

The extensive plugin support of this platform is highly appreciated for building seamless websites and applications. However, it is not that easy to build a demand-specific website that is high on visibility factor. You need exquisite designs to make your site look appealing and approachable and to materialize this, there are hundreds of themes & templates available. But sometime all this is not enough, you still need an expert assistance of some professional PSD to WordPress service providers.

Why PSD to WordPress Conversion Is So High In Demand?

Undoubtedly, Photoshop is one such powerful tool that has made photo editing more interesting and simple. This is why it is mostly utilized by global artists and web designers to create impressive designs and templates. Since Photoshop is easy and multi-purpose, it is therefore introduced in web design and development industry to build creative WordPress blog or website.

Evidently the files saved using this software are called PhotoShop Documents or simply PSD files. And these professional PSD to WordPress service providers can proficiently convert these PSD files into functional WordPress Themes/Templates.

Here is a list of top 7 PSD to WordPress conversion service providers that have proven their metal in this realm. Choose the one that best suits your business requisites and finances.

CSSChopper

CSSChopper promotes dexterity and innovation which is why it is one of the majorly sought-after PSD to WordPress conversion service providers in India. The proficiency of 228 professionals happily working in this company has pillared its strong foothold in the industry. With over 7 years of experience, CSSChopper is getting synonymous to reliability and affordability globally. From creating WordPress themes from scratch to customizing templates and designing modules, this company is capable of doing them all effectively and efficiently. Delivering projects on time has always been their forte whilst all these projects are hand-coded, W3C Validated and 100% unique. The company keeps coming up with new and exciting offers that are highly awaited by the clients globally.

PSDtoWordPressExpert

PSDtoWordPressExpert is a pioneered name in the realm of WordPress conversion service providers holding an immense experience of years. The company has successfully serviced more than 1085 clients across the world by delivering pixel-perfect PSD designs for their WordPress files. Dedicated developers of this company strive hard to deliver W3C compliant, table-less, and pixel-perfect PSD to WordPress conversion services. The shortened turnaround time and quality services make it a perfect choice among newbie as well as established clients.

Sparx IT Solutions

Pillared with an objective of proffering matchless web design and development industry, the company Sparx IT Solutions is well-known for delivering reliable, futuristic and inexpensive PSD to WordPress conversion services. Serving across 90+ countries globally, the company has proven its metal in delivering matchless and demand specific services to its clients. From seamless CMS development to WordPress theme/template customization and module development, the dexterous professionals of this company can do them all efficiently.

PHPDevelopmentServices

PHPDevelopmentServices is a leading mainstay delivering quintessential PSD to WordPress conversion services. This renowned web development company offers a wide range of WordPress web development services to its clients. The company employs a team of professional WordPress developers who ardently strive to deliver inexpensive, futuristic, and reliable PSD to WordPress conversion services. The dexterity of this company can be seen with the help of its increasing clientele.

HireWebDeveloper

HireWebDeveloper is one such creative head that has managed to impress the global online trading businessmen by proffering them high-quality WordPress solutions. Holding a commendable experience in working with WordPress, this client-oriented company builds qualitative PSD to WordPress conversion services. The team of dedicated developers of this company dedicatedly strives to deliver standardized and dynamic WordPress development services.

themeforest

The perfect place for those seeking to find that exquisite, impeccable, and multi-purpose WordPress themes and templates. themeforest offers globally recognized themes and templates that have successfully helped various business websites to make mark with their visibility on the web. You can choose the themes/ templates out of the hundreds distributed in specific categories that best suit your business requisites. Get benefited with the offers available on themeforest on timely basis to have at par excellence services at minimum prices.

theem’on

theem’on has emerged as a competent marketplace offering wide array of WordPress themes/templates. These customized themes/ templates are highly capable of enhancing the visibility of your site and thus, decreasing its bounce rates. Browse through the different categories of WordPress themes and templates offered by theem’on. For an added support, there are hundreds of WordPress plugins available that can be used to enhance the functionality of your WordPress site.

Conclusion

Now its all on you which company you choose for your next business venture with WordPress. WordPress has largely benefited small and large scale businesses by giving them options to leverage the functionality of their running online system. The glory of this amazing web design and development platform is irreplaceable; hence, the early you realize its potential and make use of it, the better will be the prospects for future development of your business.

Read More at 7 Top-notch PSD to WordPress Conversion/Theme Service Providers

The NBA playoffs are here and everyone is buzzing about their favorite NBA teams. So… we’ve taken it upon ourselves to entertain you with what your favorite team’s logo could look like. Some talented designers put their special touch on these iconic logos redesigned and mastered. Let us know which one is your favorite at the bottom of the article.

Boston Celtics

Brooklyn Nets

New York Knicks

Philadelphia 76ers

Toronto Raptors

Dallas Mavericks

Houston Rockets

Memphis Grizzlies

New Orleans Pelicans

San Antonio Spurs

Chicago Bulls

Cleveland Cavaliers

Detroit Pistons

Milwaukee Bucks

Indiana Pacers

Denver Nuggets

Minnesota Timberwolves

Oklahoma City Thunder

Portland Trail Blazers

Utah Jazz

Atlanta Hawks

Charlotte Hornets

Miami Heat

Orlando Magic

Washington Wizards

Golden State Warriors

Los Angeles Lakers

Los Angeles Clippers

Phoenix Suns

Sacramento Kings

Take Our Poll

Read More at Your Favorite NBA Logos Redesigned

Zurb, makers of Foundation, have a reputation for building robust tools that web developers love. They craft effective solutions because they start out to solve problems they encounter themselves.

Now they’re back with a brand new, open-source, ES6 JavaScript @mention engine called Tribute.js.

@mention is a user interface technique for addressing someone directly. When you @mention someone, they are tagged into a conversation. The @mention was first popularized by social media sites like Twitter, but you’ll find it making its way into all manner of applications thanks to adoption by startups like Slack.

Back in 2014 Zurb began merging several of their design apps into a single new platform called Notable. They needed an @mention system, but failing to find a reliable 3rd party option, they decided to build their own. The result is Tribute.js.

Tribute.js is a native JavaScript solution, meaning that it avoids relying on 3rd party plugins or scripts. By avoiding libraries like jQuery, Angular, and so forth, Zurb decreased the chances of conflicts arising between Tribute.js and scripts that run in conjunction with it; which makes Tribute.js a highly usable tool that can be implemented consistently across a multitude of different applications, regardless of the other dependencies you might choose to use.

How tribute.js works

Tribute.js is really simple to implement. First, import Tribute.js’ CSS and JS:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="tribute.css" />
<script src="tribute.js"></script>

Next, you need an element in your markup that will display a @mention:

<input id="commentField" placeholder="Type your comment">

Lastly, initialize Tribute with an array of objects that represent your users and then attach Tribute to the page element:

<script>
var tribute = new Tribute({
    
    values:[
        {key:"John Doe", value="johndoe"},
        {key:"Jane Doe", value="janedoe"}
    ]
    
});

tribute.attach(document.getElementById("commentField"));
</script>

When a user types an @ symbol, they’ll be presented with a list of usernames based on the key property, when they select one, the corresponding value property will be inserted.

You can download Tribute for free from Github, or install via npm, and you’ll find a full list of options in the documentation.

Featured image, Conversations via Steve McClanahan.

Mega Bundle of 48 Vintage, Grunge Fonts – only $19!

Source

If you’ve ever written an iOS app beyond a trivial “Hello world” app with just one screen and a few views, then you might have noticed that a lot of code seems to “naturally” go into view controllers.

Because view controllers in iOS carry many responsibilities and are closely related to the app screens, a lot of code ends up being written in them because it’s just easier and faster that way.

The post A Better Architecture For iOS Apps: A Deep Look At The Model-View-Controller Pattern appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Vintage design is an endless source of inspiration. Seeing how fellow designers tackled their job decades ago, with a limited set of tools, and how timeless, even classic, some of the pieces are still today, is fascinating.

With this Quick Tip, we want to leave behind current trends and indulge in the aesthetic of past times. We’ll dive into wanderlust-awaking travel posters, design manuals that wrote history, and, last but not least, we’ll bridge the gap to today by looking at how a mid-century design movement still influences designers. Buckle up… and off we are to a journey through pre-Photoshop, pre-Sketch and -Illustrator times!

The post Delightful Bits Of Vintage Graphic Design Inspiration appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

When it comes to search engine optimization, nothing is as constant as change. This fact can cause desperation amongst page operators. A single update from Google can destroy the work of the past weeks or months. This causes a painful breakdown in visitor count that, in the case of commercial websites, comes alongside heavy sales losses. In some cases, the necessity of constantly keeping an eye on Google development, and permanently optimizing your own page has the potential to take up so much time, that running the website can come close to unprofitable. This is the point when searchmetrics comes to save the day, as it’s a very potent SEO tool that documents a website’s traits in detail, even over longer periods of time. Here, amongst other things, Google updates and their effects are displayed in a graphic, and details on recent algorithm changes are available in the searchmetrics blog.

What Does Google Actually Want?

In the early days of the internet, search engine optimization meant understanding Google’s latest features and adjusting a page accordingly (think of keyword stuffing). Early successes in the SEO area were thus often related to a short-term profit from existing imperfections of the search engine: those that knew how to abuse Google’s partial blindness had a significant advantage over their competition, independent from their website’s content, often at the cost of frustrated internet users. In the course of technological evolution, Google’s goal started leaning towards user friendliness more and more. The core of the business model always was leading the user to the website that actually suits his desires, not just the letters he typed.

Thus, the mission of searchmetrics is not to support website owners to manipulate the SERPs, but helping them by showing tangible facts that help with the work that is necessary to improve their ranking. The fact that the removal of weaknesses comes with an according increase in the Google rank is not really the purpose, but the logical consequence of the done work.

How searchmetrics Works

searchmetrics accumulates the data of different influences within its own database and automatically creates a meaningful analysis for the respective website. The basis for this are the ranking factors, updated yearly by searchmetrics, and calculated from the first three search results of the 300.000 most popular search keywords. This established database allows you to understand the way Google works, to learn about some of the Google algorithm’s secrets, and to directly apply the new knowledge to your website using the searchmetrics suite.

To gain specific recommendations on the optimization of your own page via searchmetrics, the first step should be to set up the domain as a new project in the searchmetrics suite (image 1). Once done we can define some of the keywords that are the most relevant for the page.

For the analysis, searchmetrics uses its own research cloud, a pool of 250 billion recent files. Optionally, external data sources like Google Analytics or the Google Webmaster Tools can be connected to your searchmetrics account. It is recommended to make use of this option to provide the widest possible range of information for searchmetrics to use.

An Analysis Highlights Strengths and Weaknesses

The first analysis already sheds light on the SEO visibility: a graphic highlights how the website’s visibility has developed over a longer period (image 2). Especially interesting: searchmetrics also enables you to directly compare your site to those of relevant competitors, and this way, it shows the remaining potential of your domain.

The section SEO Research offers a lot of detailed information that help you gain an overview. Which direct competitors does your website have? How do your keywords develop over time? What about the visibility of potential subdomains or indices on the page? How much sense does the internal and external link structure make, and how popular is the page on social networks? (In both of these aspects, it is recommended to include further tools for a more exact analysis, like the LinkResearchTools, for example).

searchmetrics answers all of these, and many other questions, and not just for the organic web search: the visibility of paid ads (Google AdWords) can also be analyzed using the tool, as well as improved via the adjustment of commandments per click. However, in this regard, expansions to searchmetrics would be desirable. Currently, the strengths definitely are the ranking and development information from the SEO area.

Worthwhile Work

The list of errors, warnings, and information that contains suggestions for improvement from searchmetrics, can be rather frustrating: It looks like a whole lot of work (image 3)! However, working down the list over time is worth it to achieve a long-term increase in your ranking. To soon achieve the first successes, it makes sense to observe the index of the respective potential for improvement, which searchmetrics displays in the right column. Those that want to go deeper into optimization, starting with the list, should also go in-depth on the areas “Keyword Optimization” and “Content Optimization” (the latter is only available via paid license).

It is not advisable to blindly trust the displayed data, as, for example, the information “many external links” (view image 3), can be misleading as those links are necessary and rarely ever pose a problem.

For the further expansion of the website, a proper keyword research is recommendable. searchmetrics can also help with that: the keyword finder does not only show you fitting suggestions for search keywords but also creates SEO-friendly URLs for future subpages.

Conclusion

searchmetrics gives a deep insight into all of a website’s connections that are relevant to search engines. Using the tool does take some time. However, this is a worthwhile investment, as a page owner can save many frustrating detours this way. The frequent updates of the information make first successes visible very fast, assuring that no motivation is lost.

The searchmetrics community has recent information and solutions for many problems. Their Youtube channel also supports the users with plenty of useful information.

(dpe)

Engaging in E-commerce is very challenging, but there are lots of considerations to think about. Online business continues to rise steeply giving more opportunity to business owners to make huge amount of money. Being a lucrative investment is the main reason why E-commerce is very attractive to criminals. This industry is one of the main target for cybercrime and the most common is the Magento hack.

The transaction or processing in eCommerce websites are vulnerable to cybercriminals. Likewise, there’s also great chance of identity theft since every transaction made can generate the customer’s data, thus frauds and scams is done easier.

1. Encrypt the data used for communication

Data encryption is the key to prevent cyber hacks. It’s important that all the data transferred between the company’s web server and customer’s website must have encryption to avoid phishing attack. Using SSL authentication works best for both small and large retailers. It protects the sensitive data at the same time encrypting sensitive information including the passwords and other details of a credit card. Through the SSL certificate, no one can read the important data except the intended recipient.

2. Select the best security software

There’s a wide array of security software and eCommerce platform available making it daunting to choose the best one. When selecting security software, you should pay attention on safety. Check if they offer tough plan in protecting not only your website but also your customers. Aside from the lead capture and social integration features, the software should also allow add-ons or external solutions. This way, customer retention and engagement is improved. Additionally, the software should discourage password guessing, thus using CAPTCHA for security purposes.

3. Use strong and lengthy passwords to avoid password breaking

Using strong password is a must not only to individual internet users but most of all to online retailer. It’s also necessary to require your customers to create strong passwords when setting up accounts. This will reduce the possibility of site breaches and protect the sensitive information of your e-commerce website. A strong password should be a combination of letters, numbers and symbols.

4. Wisely choose the hosting service provider

As you engage in online business, it’s a must to have web hosting provider. Select a host that provides both security and reliability. Avoid choosing provider that is always down otherwise your customer will go away and your site will be vulnerable to hackers. The web host provider should provide security features like SSL certificates as well as competent and reliable round the clock technical support.

5. Go for a penetration testing

Ethical hacking or penetration hacking plays significant role in ensuring the security of an E-commerce website. You can hire the services of companies providing penetration testing services so that your website will be protected and customer privacy is guaranteed. This test will determine the weakness of your website from security threats. Through the reports, it will be easier to rule out necessary security upgrade.

The incidence of data breaches increases day by day. That’s why it’s necessary for E-commerce owner to be informed about the best practices in online retailing industry. You can check the Protectmyid Review and learn more information on how to protect your website from any unscrupulous activities of cybercriminals.

Read More at Key Factors for your eCommerce Website Security Against Cyber Hacks

I love me some speed. I can’t drive slowly unless I really have to. I try my best to eat slowly among friends because that is the socially acceptable thing to do, but I fail all the time because nothing gets between me and my food. And as a guy who frequents WordPress theme shop after another, I always have a problem with themes that take forever to load.

Let’s just say patience isn’t my strong suit. I know that patience is a virtue and all that, but tell that to a reader who has to wait an eternity for your site to load. Slow loading websites are an instant deal breaker.

A slow website screams to the entire universe you don’t give a hoot about your web visitors. Guess how they return the favor? They stop caring about you and move on to your immediate competitor. You don’t want that to happen, now do you? You need more people to hang around your site for longer if want to make any moolah.

Running your WordPress website with the best WordPress hosting favors great speeds, but you can get a little more adrenaline rush with a WordPress theme built for supersonic speeds. Keep in mind that fast speeds are great for user experience (UX) as well as your SEO efforts. You can easily get a great WordPress host, but what about a super-fast WordPress theme? – Brandon, OnBlastBlog

In today’s post, I compare a couple of WordPress themes from various theme shops in a bid to score you the best in terms of speed. I will use a tool known as GTmetrix to check two themes from each WordPress theme shop I list.

Still, I will look at the pros and cons of each WordPress theme shop, so you can have an easier time choosing the perfect fit for your business. Towards the end, I will list a couple of tips on how to improve the page load speeds of your WordPress site even further.

Ready? Well, let’s put this baby in fifth gear already.

MyThemeShop

With over 300K happy customers including the likes of ShoeMoney, Matthew Woodward, PackandClick and StudentsFitness among others, MyThemeShop is a revered company in the premium WordPress theme market.

Rated 4.5/5.0 by Athemes, yet another fantastic WordPress theme shop, MyThemeShop is best known for easy-to-manage and responsive WordPress themes suitable for bloggers, magazines, ecommerce and business in general.

Some of their themes, such as TruePixel and SociallyViral have been used by recognizable brands such as ViralNova among others, meaning you are in safe hands with these guys.

They offer 120+ hand-crafted WordPress themes & plugins, some of which are free to download and use. This is definitely great news for those among us on a tight budget but want professionally coded themes that don’t disappoint.

Apart from being fully responsive, all MyThemeShop’s themes are built using the latest HTML5 and CSS3 techniques, which makes each theme future proof. Other than that, all the themes you get from this WordPress theme shop are optimized for amazing speeds, the best SEO, and social media integration.

On top of that, each theme comes with a million and one options allowing you to customize your site to your unique tastes, no matter how diverse the needs. All this you do easily from the an easy-to-use options panel that offers a wide array of interesting options. You also get an advanced options panel that lets you turn your website whichever way using shortcodes.

Additionally, they follow up each WordPress update with theme updates ensuring you are always up to date in terms of functionality and security. That, and every month MyThemeShop releases a new theme, which means they have your back covered should you be bored with your current theme.

In terms of support, MyThemeShop offers adequate customer care depending on the amount of money you spend. If you go for the free WordPress themes, you’re allowed access to the knowledge base, free forum support, FAQ section and video tutorials. With paid membership, you get access to the aforementioned resources plus robust premium video tutorials for most of the themes, customization services, and personalized support. The support reps are ever friendly and quite helpful.

In the pricing department, MyThemeShop doesn’t disappoint either. They offer a rather straightforward tier-based pricing scheme. While you don’t have to pay a dime to access a great deal of free WordPress themes and plugins, you have to shell out just a few bucks to enjoy their premium counterparts.

You can get a top-level premium WordPress theme for as little as $59 bucks, or join the MyThemeShop community and gain access to over 120 themes and plugins for only $167 bucks per year. With all these great features, amazing design concepts, and a supportive team that know and love their job, the price is worth every penny.

On the matters of speed, MyThemeShop understands the place of fast-loading pages in the online landscape of today and tomorrow. Unlike many wordPress themes that use bloated code and what not, the guys at MyThemeShop “…don’t sacrifice code quality for good design that bogs down your site and destroys your search rankings.”

Instead, their themes are designed to load light scripts asynchronously, meaning they are less resource intensive than what the competitors offer. If that isn’t enough, the developers at MyThemeShop don’t overload the themes with useless features and design elements that get in the way and slow down your site. Each line of code that goes into every theme is absolutely necessary.

I tested SociallyViral and Schema using GTmetrix and here are the results:

From the screen grab above, we can establish that SociallyViral has an impressive page load time of 0.8 seconds with 42 server requests. This theme has a PageSpeed score of 89% and a YSlow score of 84%. It has a total page size of 508 KB, which is great. How did Schema fair?

As you can see, Schema scores highly as well with a PageSpeed score of 94% (A), which is a cool A. It has a page load time of 1.3 seconds and a YSlow score of 85% with 36 server requests. Schema has a total page size of 346 KB which is simply awesome! To improve the speeds further, GTmetrix recommends using a CDN and optimizing WordPress.

MyThemeShop Pros & Cons

Pros

• Affordable and convenient pricing scheme
• Great team support
• All themes are beautiful and fully responsive
• A great and easy to use options panel
• SEO-ready WordPress themes
• Extra useful plugins

Cons

• They don’t have a multipurpose WordPress theme
• Almost all their themes have a similar look and feel about them (But that’s because they use the same super-fast foundational framework )

Templatic WordPress Theme Shop

Enters Templatic and you have WordPress theme developers who think out of the box as far as design goes. R. Bhavesh, the founder, established Templatic in March 2008 but officially launched the company in December 2009. This WordPress theme shop specializes in building top of the range WordPress themes for a wide variety of businesses big and small.

Templatic themes boast of typical everyday features such SEO-ready architecture, beautiful and varied designs, social media integration, responsive grids, and plenty of real estate for your advertising endeavors. However, their WordPress themes often come with hard to follow code, which is a stumbling block for beginners and developers alike. For this very reason, you can’t customize the themes easily, which is just sad.

The themes might be plain looking in terms of graphics, but that is because they are designed for professional (read formal) websites. A good example is Directory, their leading WordPress theme. But don’t take my word for it, you might want to check out their other themes for some design inspiration.

Other than that, Templatic serves over 130K customers meaning you will hardly go wrong with these guys. They offer 80+ WordPress themes and 40+ plugins, which is quite impressive. The company offers a Premium Themes club package that costs $399. There is an optional monthly fee of about $20 bucks. You get access to all themes, updates and installation guides among other goodies.

I took two of Templatic’s themes through GTmetrix. Here are my findings:

As you can see from the image above, Villa Rental – a premium WordPress theme by Templatic – has page load time of 3.6 seconds with a total page size of 2.45MB and 93 requests made to the server. Obviously, Bhavesh & Co. need to work on reducing the page size and the number of requests the theme makes to the server. That might reduce the page load time significantly.

Here’s how their flagship theme, Directory, performed:

Well, the page load time sucks big time at a little over 10 seconds! The theme makes 94 requests to the server, and has a total page size of 880 KB, which is a little on the higher side since it’s only 120KB shy of the 1MB mark. Directory has a PageSpeed score of B (88%) and YSlow score of C (73%).

Templatic Pros & Cons

Pros

• Amazing personal support
• Great professional designs
• Feature-rich themes
• Regular updates

Cons

• Membership has become less valuable since some themes require multiple add-ons
• Compatibility issues with other WordPress plugins noted by some users
• There’s a learning curve with some of the themes

ElegantThemes

Brought to us by renowned WordPress developer Nick Roach, and serving over 300K satisfied customers, Elegant Themes has etched a lucrative niche in the premium WordPress theme market, what with flagship products such as the popular DIVI theme.

They offer a wide range of amazing WordPress themes each featuring stellar design, unparalleled support, and advanced features the like of which you have never seen. And at a small price of just $69 bucks per year, you can have over 85 top-of-the-range WordPress themes to use as you will. Whenever it’s appropriate, they also offer generous discounts that save you money.

ElegantThemes’ WordPress themes are built to make you a true winner in whichever niche you choose. The themes are SEO-ready from the ground up and come with lots of customization tools and options. Without breaking a sweat, you can set up your site, manage adverts, and generally have it all with ElegantThemes’ themes.

Every month, the developers at ElegantThemes keep things fresh by releasing one or two WordPress themes. Their premium WordPress themes are stylish and come in so many forms allowing you to excel without trying hard. Most of the themes are fully responsive meaning your site adapts to variable screen sizes without a hassle.

But how does this WordPress theme shop fair in terms of speed? I put two of their themes; DIVI and Nexus, to the test. Here’s what I found out:

As you can tell from the image above, DIVI has a PageSpeed score of 91% (A) with a total page size of 4.05 MB. The theme made 71 requests to the server resulting in a page load time of 2.2 seconds. The theme has a YSlow score of 83%. Nick Roach and team need to do something about that page size, ’cause that’s just not attractive.

And here is how Nexus performed:

What’s the total page size again? A freaking 7.31MB! The theme makes 130 requests to the server earning a lackluster 50% PageSpeed score. It has a page load time of 4.1 seconds, which is above 4 seconds – the average time a user is willing to wait before giving up on your site. It has a YSlow score of 82%.

ElegantThemes Pros & Cons

Pros

• You get 85+ themes for the price of one ($69)
• Awesome and knowledgeable support
• Brand new and unique theme designs
• A couple of interesting plugins

Cons

• Some themes are definitely not user friendly. There’s a learning curve especially if you’re the perfect beginner
• Themes send many requests to the server, which causes slow speeds
• Acute problems with support have been noted by a few customers
• WooThemes WordPress Theme Shop

WooThemes

I don’t want to be a hater but let’s just be honest and call a spade a spade. WooThemes WordPress themes are a tad boring compared to what I have seen from other theme vendors. They are ideal for simple websites that can do without beautiful design and some pizzazz.

In other words, you will find a home at WooThemes if you’re after powerful functionality but don’t care as much about aesthetics. The designs are clean, alright, but they are not beautiful for the beginner looking to start right away without spending hours on fixing appearance.

And if that’s not bad enough, this WordPress theme shop offers about 30 WordPress themes, all of which are built upon the WooFramework. This, however, doesn’t disguise the fact that they have over 50 retired themes that are no longer supported or updated. A single theme costs $39 bucks, and the All Themes Bundle goes for $399.

WooThemes was founded by Adii Pienaar, Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester back in 2008. Today, the company employs more than 25 employees, which is surprising considering the small number of themes available. This WordPress theme shop is, however, better known for it’s popular and free eCommerce plugin; WooCommerce. They offer five other plugins as well as plenty of extensions for WooCommerce.

On matters support, WooThemes suck big time if the reviews I came across are anything to go by. Here’s one disgruntled customer, for instance:

As David says in the post below this one, support from WooThemes has totally disappeared. They talk a good game on their web site about having responsive customer service, but actions speak louder than words. And of course, like so many of today’s companies, they totally isolate themselves from their customers by not providing a phone number or email method of contact. – RPM, WooThemes Review – Is it Good or Bad?

The above review was posted on ThemeGrade on January 14th, 2016.

But how does this WordPress theme shop perform in terms of speed? I gave two of their themes; Canvas and HomeStore, a test run. This is what I found:

From the image above, we can establish that Canvas by WooThemes is a fast theme, which is probably why it’s their most popular theme. It has, however, 97 requests to the server, which is odd but acceptable. It has a YSlow score of 73% and a PageSpeed score of 90%.

HomeStore’s total page size is 2.53 MB and the number of requests from the server is 118! All the same, this WordPress theme by WooThemes has page load time of 2.6 seconds. GTmetrix recommends using a CDN to accelerate content if you must serve heavy content. The developers need to thin down the page size and reduce the number of server requests to realize faster speeds. In terms of performance, HomeStore has a PageSpeed score of 87% and a YSlow score of 72%.

WooThemes Pros & Cons

Pros

• Themes are easily customizable and feature-rich
• They have community forums where users can interact and help each other out
• Simple and clean design which is great for designers and developers looking to build custom sites using WooThemes themes as foundation

Cons

• A large number of over 50 retired WordPress themes that are no longer supported or updated (why oh why WooThemes?)
• The designs are boring for lack of a better word. They aren’t exciting and don’t use modern design trends
• Themes can be fiddly for new users

Themify

You can feel the energy and vitality as soon as you land on Themify’s homepage. Without a doubt, theirs is a state of the art operation that has served more than 54K souls since inception. Did I just say souls? Ok, moving on swiftly.

Right off the bat, you will notice that their WordPress themes are full of color, cool imagery and great typography. In fact, you don’t need trying hard to see why this WordPress theme shop made this list today.

Their themes use the latest design trend including parallax, varied backgrounds, flat design and CSS3 among others. And since the themes ship packing a lot of features, there is no limit to just how much you can achieve with Themify.

Themify’s support is way above average. You get access to a support forum, automatic updates (whoa), and extensive documentation that help you to hit the ground running.

For just $79 bucks, you get your hands on over 40 beautiful WordPress themes. They are responsive and retina-ready to boot. On top of that, they are currently offering a bonus that gets you an extra theme of your choice for free when you buy any one theme. Buy one get one free per se.

The goodies don’t stop there. If you can tweet a message to @themify, you get an instant 15% coupon. If you would like an extra 10% discount on your first purchase, free feel to subscribe to their newsletter.

If you ask me, these guys are incredibly generous and as equally talented. If you feel the deal is too good to be true, let’s put two of their best themes to the test, and determine if Themify are really worth their salt in terms of speed. Here we go.

First off, we have the Ultra theme:

The PageSpeed score is a weak 64%. Ultra has YSlow score of 76%, page load time of 3.1 seconds, a total page size of 1.87 MB and 38 server requests. The deal was too good to be true, don’t you think? Perhaps it’s just this one theme.

I speed tested yet another theme, the popular Infinite theme, and here are the results:

The scores don’t look good either. The Infinite theme by Themify has a total page size of 1.56 MB and takes 2.8 seconds to load in full. It makes a total of 58 requests to the server. It has a PageSpeed score of 65% and a YSlow score of 68%. What a bummer. Could this be the reason they have many discounts?

Themify Pros & Cons

Pros

• Great support
• Wide variety of themes
• Beautiful theme designs
• Lots of discounts

Cons

• Too many options can confuse beginners
• In terms of speeds, you’re better off with another WordPress theme shop
• No search box on sight (site)
• Marketese galore but their themes don’t live up to the hype. Sorry guys

Bonus: Quick Tips on Increasing Your WordPress Page Speeds

You can buy themes from the fastest WordPress theme shop, but with time, your site might become slow due to multiple reasons. Here are a few quick tips on how to score lightning fast page speeds at any given time:

• First of all, choose the best WordPress hosting. If your web host provides dross service, you will have a slow website even with a fast-loading theme. I recommend managed WordPress hosts such as SiteGround , WPEngine and Kinsta among others.
• Be careful where from you source your WordPress themes and plugins. Some themes and plugins come with useless and bloated code that will only slow down your site. Some of these themes and plugins contain malicious code which is just trouble. Go for reputable vendors only.
• Optimize your images and set image dimensions. I noticed this problem with most WordPress theme shops that scored poorly. If you need a 200 x 300 px image, don’t resize a 400 x 600 px image using HTML or CSS. Use instead a 200 x 300 px and not a pixel more.

• Reduce HTTP requests to the server. It’s pretty obvious the more files you need to create your homepage, the more time it will take to load said files. Minimize the number of files you need to build your website.

• Use a content delivery network (CDN). GTmetrix offered this suggestion for nearly every WordPress theme shop. Popular content delivery networks include MaxCDN and CloudFlare among others. This shouldn’t be a concern though if you use a managed WordPress host as the CDN is more often than not integrated with the hosting service.

• Consider using a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache among others. Again, a managed WordPress host takes care of this for you.

• Take advantage of browser level caching
• Turn on GZip compression. It’s easy peasy work to implement. Just navigate to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/options.php, and change the value of the gzipcompression from 0 to 1. Remember to replace yourdomain.com with your own domain name. Additionally, you must be logged in to your WordPress Admin dashboard for this to work.
• Limit usage of external scripts including adverts
• Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
• Disable Jetpack features that you don’t use (I reduced my page load time by 3 seconds by deactivating all features but comments and social sharing)
• Delete plugins and themes that you don’t use
• Empty your trash regularly
• Check your PageSpeed scores using GTMetrix, Pingdom Tools or Google PageSpeed Insights
• Google: Learn more about increasing page speeds

At the end of the road…

You only need to go for WordPress themes that guarantee fast page speeds from the start, seeing nobody has the time or the patience to wait around. Attention spans on the Internet are short as it is, and with so many alternatives and distractions out there, you cannot afford the snail’s pace. Your readers will thank you for it, and you will notice an increase in your conversion rates.

I hope you have everything you need to choose the fastest WordPress theme shop from my list here today. Which is your favorite WordPress theme shop? Did I miss it, and why would you recommend them to a friend? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below. I cannot wait to hear from you. Cheers to faster speeds.

To the stars!

Read More at Using Lean WordPress Themes To Make a Fast Loading Website