Your new sales contract needs to be signed today. You could ask the signer to print it, sign it, scan it, and send it back. Or you could simply request an e-signature.
When you need a signature for an important document, using an electronic signature app is often the most convenient option. An e-signature is as legally binding as a traditional signature but doesn’t include the hassle of printing or scanning.
Today there are dozens of electronic signature apps available. With so many options, you may be wondering which app is right for you. In this article, we’ll break down six of the top apps based on popularity and user satisfaction.
As the market leader in electronic signatures, DocuSign has become a household name. DocuSign’s intuitive platform guides users through the entire e-signature process. The platform has over 350 built-in integrations, including Salesforce, Box, and Google Suite.
For complete, end-to-end management of the agreement process, DocuSign offers the Agreement Cloud. This suite of applications is designed to handle all your document needs. DocuSign also has a range of APIs, making it a strong option for those looking to integrate with other programs.
Adobe is another industry leader in PDFs and electronic signatures. They focus on ease of use and streamlining digital workflows. This allows users to accomplish tasks faster and more efficiently. Adobe Sign integrates with a variety of third-party apps, like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Dropbox.
Adobe Sign meets all legal requirements for e-signatures. Also, any finalized documents you create are stored automatically. Like DocuSign, Adobe offers an end-to-end document management solution called Adobe Document Cloud. Adobe Document Cloud enables you to create, edit, sign, and review documents on any device.
Formerly known as eSignLive, OneSpan Sign places a heavy emphasis on security. For this reason, major financial institutions, such as Wells Fargo, US Bank, and Royal Bank of Canada, use it. OneSpan Sign provides audit trails and advanced security technology. These features can prevent fraud, compliance issues, and legal disputes.
While the price point is higher, so is the user satisfaction rating. Given this high rating, OneSpan Sign is a strong option for security-focused organizations.
PDFfiller is a feature-rich PDF editor and e-signature management tool. Its capabilities include adding text, drawing shapes, highlighting/blacking out text, adding logos, and searching for text within a PDF. When collecting e-signatures, you can send multiple documents, specify a signing order, and create custom editing permissions.
PDFfiller is compatible with both Android and iOS. It also integrates with many popular apps including Salesforce, Google Docs, Dropbox, MS Office, and Slack. Intended for smaller teams, the premium version supports up to five users.
PandaDoc is a popular document management software that focuses on sales documents. The platform is suitable for collecting any type of e-signature. However, PandaDoc’s value proposition is largely centered on empowering sales teams. Their library of templates includes high-quality sales proposals, quotes, and contracts. These can help facilitate a more successful sales cycle.
PandaDoc’s platform is designed to be an all-in-one document solution. It can create, edit, track, and e-sign digital documents. Other features include premium templates, workflow automation, and content management.
While other vendors are positioned as full document management suites, SignNow is primarily focused on the e-signature aspect of the document process. They strive to be the easiest and most intuitive e-signature app on the market. SignNow has won numerous awards.
If you’re looking for a simple tool to get e-signatures done quickly and efficiently, SignNow is a safe bet. In addition to e-signatures, SignNow offers templates, PDF editing, and third-party integrations, such as Salesforce, Oracle, Dropbox, and Box.
Choosing an e-signature app
E-signature applications have completely transformed the document signing process. The signer no longer needs access to a printer and scanner. You can use the above apps to quickly and conveniently collect e-signatures for almost any purpose.
Ultimately, deciding which app to use will depend on your specific needs. If you just need a basic e-signature tool and would like to save money, PDFfiller or SignNow could be great options. Larger organizations that need comprehensive document management may be interested in the cloud suites offered by Adobe and DocuSign.
Pro Tip
JotForm allows you to add e-signature fields to your forms. Try JotForm’s online form signature fields today.
Regardless of which application you choose, one thing is clear: All six of the apps on this list will provide significant benefits over traditional signatures. Signing documents will be faster, more efficient, and more organized.
Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.
The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.
Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.
MacOS Catalina: 5 Things Web Developers & Designers Should Know
Improve your CSS with these 5 Principles
8 Things to Stop Doing with Typography (Right Now!)
Google’s Free Coding Tool for Beginners Lands on Desktop
Natural Color Palettes from Random Beautiful Images
CSS Grid Garden
When Brand Identity Goes Wrong: 5 Embarrassing Mistakes
CSS Link with Rainbow Underline
Figma Introduces Smart Animate and Advanced Transitions
Spacing, Grids and Layouts
Dear Designer, It’s Time to Rediscover your Whiteboard
Feeling Sassy Again
Revenge of the Small Business Website
Moz Launches Domain Analysis, Free Tool for SEO Metrics
Optimizing Images for the Web – An In-depth Guide
Disney is Using AI to Correct Gender Bias in its Movies
Building Websites with the Future in Mind
Your Brand Needs a Social Media Design System-here’s How to Create One
Product Personas are a Waste of Time
UX Frameworks – Make Sense of Mess and Get that Spark, Faster
How to Increase Adoption of Branding Guidelines
The Obvious UI is Often the Best UI
How to Think like a Programmer
Dear Ueno: What’s your Design Process Like?
The 3 Stages of Empathy
Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.
I work with a travel software company called CarTrawler on the engineering team, and I recently undertook a project a revamp our car images library that we use to display car rental search results. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce dynamically colored cars.
We may sometimes load up to 200 different cars at the same time, so speed and performance are key requirements. We also have five different products throughout unique code bases, so avoiding over-engineering is vital to success.
I wanted to be able to dynamically change the color of each of these cars without needing additional front-end changes to the code.
Step 1: The Base Layer
I’m using car photos here, but this technique could be applied to any product. First we need a base layer. This is the default layer we would display without any color and it should look good on its own.
I recently found a solution to dynamically update the color of any product image. So with just one of a product, we can colorize it in different ways to show different color options. We don’t even need any fancy SVG or CSS to get it done!
We’ll be using an image editor (e.g. Photoshop or Sketch) and the image transformation service imgix. (This isn’t a sponsored post and there is no affiliation here — it’s just a technique I want to share.)
I work with a travel software company called CarTrawler on the engineering team, and I recently undertook a project a revamp our car images library that we use to display car rental search results. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce dynamically colored cars.
We may sometimes load up to 200 different cars at the same time, so speed and performance are key requirements. We also have five different products throughout unique code bases, so avoiding over-engineering is vital to success.
I wanted to be able to dynamically change the color of each of these cars without needing additional front-end changes to the code.
Step 1: The Base Layer
I’m using car photos here, but this technique could be applied to any product. First we need a base layer. This is the default layer we would display without any color and it should look good on its own.
Step 2: The Paint Layer
Next we create a paint layer that is the same dimensions as the base layer, but only contains the areas where the colors should change dynamically.
A light color is key for the paint layer. Using white or a light shade of gray gives us a great advantage because we are ultimately “blending” this image with color. Anything darker or in a different hue would make it hard to mix this base color with other colors.
Step 3: Using the imgix API
This is where things get interesting. I’m going to leverage multiple parameters from the imgixAPI. Let’s apply a black to our paint layer.
If you noticed the URL of the image above, you might be wondering: What the heck are all those parameters? The imgix API docs have a lot of great information, so no need to go into greater detail here. But I will explain the parameters I used.
w. The width I want the image to be
bri. Adjusts the brightness level
con. Adjusts the amount of contrast
monochrome. The dynamic hex color
Because we are going to stack our layers via imgix we will need to encode our paint layer. That means replacing some of the characters in the URL with encoded values — like we’d do if we were using inline SVG as a background image in CSS.
That’s it! There are certainly other ways to accomplish the same thing, but this seems so straightforward that it’s worth sharing. There was no need code a bunch of additional functionality. No complex libraries to manage or wrangle. All we need is a couple of images that an online tool will stack and blend for us. Seems like a pretty reasonable solution!
I say "was" because it's deprecated. It may still "work" (like everybody's favorite in some browsers), but it could stop working anytime, they say. The whole purpose of it was to display text in a monospace font, like the way Teletype machines used to.
Dave used it jokingly the other day.
Per recent events: As you can see by this official transcript, Dave Rupert LLC has done nothing wrong...
Client: This is the greatest call I've ever been on. Dave Rupert LLC: Definitely and we didn't even do anything illegal or quid pro quo'y.
Right here on CSS-Tricks. See, in my early days, I learned about that element and how its job is to set text as monospace. I thought, oh! like code! and then for years that's how I marked up code on this site. I had never heard of the element! When I did, I switched over to that. But I still haven't updated every single article from to It lingers in articles like this:
I bring this up just because it's a funny little example of not knowing what you don't know. It's worth having a little sympathy for people early in their journey and just doing things that get the job done because that's all they know. We've all been there... and are always still there to some degree.
With advancing technology and the zeal to do something on your own, the world is seeing marked growth in entrepreneurship ventures and self-employed businesses in the last few years.
Being a successful entrepreneur has no shortcuts and for sure there is no well-defined path to achieve those enviable profits and returns on investments. Having said that, some people start to chart the success graph from the word ‘go’ while for the majority of people the initial success is either short-lived or they never really get to celebrate the triumphs and achievements. Being a self-starter takes lots of courage and positivity, people who venture out to become entrepreneurs and tread the thorny path need to ensure that they plan well and be consistent to reach their goals. Since not many of us have the nerve to embrace the challenges of entrepreneurship, we mention here today 5 smart ways that can convert dreams into practical achievements and a profitable future.
1. Networking smartly
Networking has always worked – be it today in the digital world or before. This is one aspect of entrepreneurship that often gets neglected because socializing and networking needs a person to be extremely confident of his/her social skills and the inclination to move out of one’s comfort zone. An entrepreneur may be a very believable inventor, a technical super-guru, a result-oriented designer and engineer but when it comes to interacting with others and creating relationships with his co-entrepreneurial and the business community, employees and potential customers, building connections with people who matter – most people take the backward step because most of us are comfortable in our own zones and cocoons. Networking is a key aspect of entrepreneurship because it forms a base for future marketing and sales activities.
Solution – The tried and tested ways of networking include attending industry conventions and trade shows and being part of informal get-togethers. But this still proves to be a major issue with many self-starters, especially the ones who have just started. While it is a challenge overcoming the initial hesitation and reaching out to people, many entrepreneurs today take help from social media and other digital platforms to stay connected with human entities who can make a difference to his/her business.
There are many online sites today that help foster networks in the virtual world like LinkedIn and Twitter. Presence on sites like these have a rippling effect that helps open the door to a world full of like-minded people – people who share similar passions and interests and can fuel each other’s professional linkups and ties. One of the smartest things for a businessman to do today is to embrace new-age technology in building professional associations and relationships.
2. Ensure viable investment for the business
All businesses – small or big – need investment and start-up capital. Self-financing is undoubtedly one of the best methods but staking all your money into a single venture can be risky and stretching yourself way too much. However much impressive your business plan is and ideas look good on the paper, the practicality of it comes to the forefront only when you step into the shoes of an entrepreneur. One has to be smart here to arrange for reliable start-up capital and financing your business. There are many avenues and ways to do so and all you need to do is to go about the task in the best possible manner.
Solution – look around to discover newer methods of financing. With every economy today encouraging start-ups, there are many financing methods that were unheard of in the past but now work really well. Incubators and accelerators today are predominantly working in the industry-specific genre and they are more than just financers. They are mentors helping nurture the business during the initial phase when it is the most difficult to survive and sustain.
Look out if there are government programs that not only fund business at lower interest rates, they also come with lots of value add-ons that help a start-up during its teething years. Crowdfunding is a concept that is new and gaining popularity. It uses the digital medium to reach out to consumers and investors where the entrepreneur details his business and product ideas and requests people to either buy the product in advance or donate money. If you are able to impress people with your ideas, you can expect handsome funding direct from end customers.
3. Using Information Technology
Gone are the days when businesses could run productively for years through manual and physical processes. Today automation is a must and no doubt the smartest way to minimize costs. Using computerization techniques, software products and solutions that are custom-made for your industry or niche helps your business start on the right note. In fact, with technological advancements today, the concept of operating out of physical office space has also started to be discarded by new entrepreneurs. Technology makes all processes fast and result-oriented. IT makes things easy to track, with guaranteed accuracy and precision. While the initial cost involved in getting all systems digitized does involve financial resources, the investment is worth every dime for it helps the deliver results and performances that are close to targets and budgets.
4. Take chances more often but only when it is worth-taking
Smart entrepreneurs are trend-setters. They are people who are either leading by example today or will in the near future. Hence, they need to behave responsibly – they are accountable not only to their own self, their internal stakeholders but also their customers and the society, at large. Leonard C. Green had once told his students that,” entrepreneurs are not risk-takers. They are calculated risk-takers.” The statement says a lot. In modern times, there are ample sources of information and various means available with a businessman to take sensible decisions and he/she needs to use these means intelligently. He/she not only needs to take well-informed decisions, but also look at ways and means to mitigate the associated risks.
5. Hire the right team
Successful and smart entrepreneurs are as passionate about their work or business, as he/she is enthusiastic about getting the right people on-board as his team.
Today, modern business owners look at their employees not as simply people who are being paid to do a particular job but as equal partners. It is important to realize that human resource is the most important asset in your hands. When employees are treated fairly, equally and respected for their knowledge, the entrepreneur-employee combination is unbeatable. Often self-starters think that they are self-sufficient and can achieve their goals on their own.
This concept is far from the truth though and entrepreneurs need to work proactively to get teams that are ready to engage and connect so that the overall business goals are achieved more fruitfully.
Being a successful entrepreneur takes a lot of grit and determination. What is required is that the businessman just doesn’t stop at having a vision but goes all out, smartly and judiciously to build his dream
There’s nothing nice about asking the question “How old is too old to …?” So, I’m going to start by getting the answer out of the way, right now:
You’re never too old to…
…become a web designer…
…transition from web designer to UX designer…
…become a full-stack designer-developer powerhouse…
…or do whatever the heck it is you want to do.
Whatever your goal might be, age isn’t going to hold you back. The only thing that’s going to do that is you.
Are You Too Old to Discover New Skills?
For every time you’ve heard someone blame age for a negative outcome — You’re forgetful? It must be old age! — you’ve likely heard a story about someone who didn’t let age hold them back from learning something new. Like the grade school dropout who not only earned their high school diploma but a university degree decades later. Or the immigrant who had little knowledge of the native tongue, only to launch a successful enterprise in their new home.
The brain is an incredibly powerful muscle. You just need to know how to make the most of it. Here’s how:
Tip 1: Lean into Your Confidence
Many times, one’s ability to learn a new skill is contingent upon how confident they feel in it. For instance:
If you tell yourself, “I’m too old to learn something new at this stage in my life”, where’s the motivation to make the effort? In this case, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein, if you fail, you can brush it off as a matter of age.
When, really, you should be thinking, “If I do X, Y, and Z, I can master the skills necessary to get to the next level.” By thinking through what’s needed and systematically tackling it as you would any other process, you’re more likely to taste success in the end.
Tip 2: Broaden Your Horizons
There was a paper published in 2016 on the matter of cognitive functioning as we age. It suggests that the real reason our cognitive abilities decline as we get older is because of the way we learn. Specifically, the paper contrasts the methods by which we learned as children to how we learn as adults.
As kids, we’re encouraged to learn as much as we can about as many different things: languages; sciences; history; math; art; etc.
As adults, we’re encouraged to become specialists: doctors; lawyers; writers; web designers; accountants; etc.
It’s when we close our brains off and narrowly focus our attention on one career, or area of interest that we harm our ability to learn something new. So, don’t be afraid to dabble in various hobbies or to read up on new topics. It’ll keep your cognitive functioning strong and allow you to learn new skills with ease.
Essentially, the study revealed that our brains — more specifically, the hippocampus — are able to acquire and retain knowledge much more effectively when it’s new. What’s more, if a concept or skill we’re already familiar with is placed in a novel context, it becomes easier for us to memorize and retain it, too.
In other words, it’s a good thing to look beyond your current skill set. By learning new things, you’ll give your brain the ability to absorb new skills and knowledge more effectively.
When you exercise, you engage your muscles to help improve overall health. The same concept applies to the brain. You need to exercise it with new challenges to keep it healthy.
In a field like web design that’s constantly in flux, with new tools and techniques entering the picture, it’s actually easy to get into the habit of “working out” your brain.
Sign up for the occasional online course to brush up on your JavaScript skills. Attend a local web design or development meetup and trade tips. Challenge yourself with projects that allow you to test out new skills and refine old ones. Just find something that lights a fire under you, and pushes you to do more, not less, with your web design career.
Wrap-Up
There are two big takeaways here. The first is this:
Don’t let fear hold you back.
you’re going to have to work for it…that’s true of anyone who enters this industry, regardless of age
If you’re nervous that the web design space is a young person’s game and there’s no place for you in it, you’re looking at it the wrong way.
Think about it: whether you’re 40, 50, 60, or beyond, you have decades more experience than your youthful counterparts. They may have abundant amounts of energy and an innate tech-savviness, but many of them can’t compete with your business-savviness, time management skills, and professionalism.
The second thing to take away from this post is this:
Never stop learning.
If you want to switch gears and become a web designer, you’re going to have to work for it. And keep working at it. But, in all honesty, that’s true of anyone who enters this industry, regardless of age.
The web is an ever-changing space that none of us should take for granted. If we don’t stay up on the latest trends and continually work on refining our skills within it, we won’t do very well.
So, stop wondering if you’re too old to learn a new skill and start working on acquiring it!
Last week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) celebrated its 25th anniversary and invited folks to share why the open web platform matters to them via the hashtag #WebStories. As I’m both a member of the CSS Working Group at W3C and the representative for Fronteers, I think it’s a good time to explain a bit more about the role of the W3C in the work that we all do.
What Exactly Is The W3C?
On the W3C website, the About page describes the W3C as:
“… an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor and Director Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C’s mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.”
There are links on that page to details of the mission and vision of the W3C, however, the key motivation of the organization is to ensure that the web is for everybody — and on everything.
A W3C Member is an organization who pays a membership fee to be part of the W3C. At the time of writing, there are 449 members, and you can see the full list here. If you read through this list, you will find that the majority of members are very large companies. Some are names that we as web developers readily recognize: browser vendors such as Google and Mozilla, large internet companies such as Airbnb and Facebook. However, there are members from many different industries. The web touches pretty much every area of life and business, and there are companies doing interesting things in the space that we might not think of as web companies. For example, people working in traditional publishing (a lot of books are formatted using web technologies) and the automotive industry.
What all the members have in common is that the web impacts the work that they do, and they are keen to have a say in the direction things move, and even to play a part in creating and specifying web technologies.
I represent Fronteers (the Dutch organization of web developers) in the W3C. This year, Fronteers took the unusual* step of becoming a W3C Member Organization.
* “Unusual” because they are a voluntary organization representing web developers, rather than a big company representing the interests of a big company.
The Advisory Committee (AC)
Member organizations take part in the business of the W3C by having a vote on various matters. This is organized by the organization’s AC representative whose job it is to ferry information from the W3C to the organization, and also bring the point of view of the organization to relevant topics being discussed at the W3C.
I’m the rep for Fronteers and so I attend two AC meetings a year — and get a lot of emails! On voting matters, I have to find out from Fronteers how they want to vote and then cast the Fronteers vote. In the last year, one important voting matter was the election of Advisory Board (AB) members; Fronteers held an internal vote, and I took the results back to make the official vote at the W3C.
W3C Groups
Most web developers are probably more aware of the W3C working groups than the rest of the organization, as it is through these groups that most of the work we care about goes on. Any member organization can opt people from their organization onto a working group. In addition, the groups may invite certain people (known as Invited Experts) to participate in that group. I was an Invited Expert on the CSS Working Group, and now am part of the group as the representative for Fronteers. In practical terms, my interaction with the CSS Working Group remains the same, however, I now have a role to play in the W3C as a whole as the W3C rep for Fronteers.
There are a large number of working groups, covering a whole range of technologies. These groups typically work on some kind of deliverable, such as the specifications produced by the CSS Working Group. There are also a number of Interest Groups, which allow for the exchange of ideas around particular topics which may also fall partly into the remit of some of the working groups.
The above groups require a significant time commitment and either a W3C membership or Invited Expert status, however, there are a number of Community and Business Groups that are open to any interested person and do not impose a particular time commitment. The Web Platform Incubator Community Group is one such group and has a Discourse forum for the discussion of new web features, and also various proposals on GitHub. Many of these features ultimately become CSS or other language specifications and therefore part of the platform.
Getting Involved And Following Along
In addition to joining a community group, it is worth noting that anyone can become involved in the work of the W3C, i.e. you don’t need to be an Invited Expert, part of a member organization, or have any special qualifications. For example, if you want to know what is happening at the CSS Working Group, you can take a look at our Issues on GitHub. Anyone can comment on these issues to offer new use cases for a feature and can even raise an issue for a feature they feel should be part of a CSS specification.
As with most W3C groups, the CSS WG uses IRC to minute meetings; any discussion on an issue will be posted back to the issue afterward so anyone who is interested can follow along.
An example of a message that was auto-generated regarding an issue that had been discussed in a meeting.
If you are keen to know what the wider W3C is doing, then the strategic highlights document is a good place to look. The latest document was produced in September, and exposes some of the key work recently achieved by W3C groups. Scrolling through that document demonstrates the wide range of activities that the W3C is involved with. It is so important for the web community to engage with standards, as we’ve already seen examples in the past of what happens when vendors control the direction of the web.
“Without the Web Standards community, browser makers would be the ones making decisions on what should and shouldn’t be features of the world wide web. This could lead to the web becoming a monopolized commodity, where only the largest players would have a say in what the future holds.”
My #WebStory
Why does all of this matter to me? One of the reasons I care so much about the web platform remaining open and accessible to new people who want to publish on and build things for the web is because of the route I took to get here.
As mentioned earlier, the W3C is celebrating their anniversary by inviting people to share stories of how they became involved in the web.* In that spirit (and perhaps to encourage Smashing readers to share their stories), here is mine.
* So many folks have already shared their journey on the W3C Blog of how they were first amazed by the web and continue to be in awe of its potential. Join in and share your story!
I had never intended to work with computers. I intended to become a dancer and singer, and I left school at 16 to go to dance college. My father is a programmer, however, so we were fairly unusual at the time as we had a computer in the house by 1985 when I was 10.
As a child, I liked typing in the code of “choose your own adventure” games, which appeared in books and magazines. I liked spotting the strings of text which would then show up in the game I would later play (usually, once my dad had fixed it up) on our Amstrad CPC464. I liked to visit the computer lab at Newcastle University, see the huge computers, and talk to the women who worked on them. Perhaps most importantly (and despite my arty interests), I never grew up thinking I couldn’t use computers. I just wasn’t especially interested.
The books I copied games out of as a child.
At school, I learned to type on an electronic typewriter, and the only computer in evidence was in the art room that was used for basic drawing applications. As we did have computers at home, I had used them for schoolwork, despite some teachers not being happy about printed essays.
I ultimately left dance and went backstage, working in the West-End of London. Moving lights, automated sets, and show control systems were about to make huge changes to an industry that had seen little change in years. We were seeing the beginnings of that change when I was in the West End; I remember laughing with the crew as we heard news about some show with a “fancy computer system” which had lots of problems that our traditional production didn’t have. None of us could have imagined the changes that were coming.
Then I became pregnant with my daughter and had to leave the theatre. I was good at crewing and loved the theatre, but it was heavy and sometimes dangerous work with unsociable hours — not really a job for someone with a baby. I didn’t know what I would do, but I could type so I thought that perhaps I could type up essays for people. I was upsold to a computer — having gone into PC World looking for a wordprocessor. It was a Packard Bell 486 with a built-in 640×480 screen — a terrible machine that would allow me to either get the sound card working or the modem, but not both at once. I chose the modem and this is where my web story really begins. Even getting this modem working and getting the computer onto the Internet was something of a challenge and, once I did, I went looking for information about… babies.
I didn’t know anything about babies. All my friends were men who worked backstage in theatre. I had no support network, no family around me to help, and so I logged onto ParentsPlace and found people who didn’t mind my questions and were happy to help. At the time, there obviously was no Facebook. This meant that if you wanted to share photos and stories, you built a website. So among the forums about childbirth and toddler tantrums, there were people teaching each other HTML and sharing sets of graphics along with the code to place them. It was like typing out those “choose your own adventure” books again. I was amazed that I didn’t need anyone to fix my code — it just worked!
Pulled out from the Internet Archive, this was a website named ‘ParentsPlace’ that existed around the time I was pregnant with my daughter. archive.org link
Before long, people would pay me to build them a website, and I felt that I should repay at least in some way for all of the questions I had asked. So, I started to answer questions in the forums. That was how it seemed to work. People would learn and move one step up the ladder, the new people would come in with the same questions and the people a step ahead would answer — all the while asking their own questions of those further along. I loved this. I could never have afforded lessons, but I had time. I could help others, and in return, people helped me. I discovered through this that I was quite good at explaining technical things in a straightforward way — an ability I have always accredited to the fact that I struggled to learn these new things myself. It was never easy. I was willing to spend the time, however, and found it interesting.
With my daughter on my knee, I started to teach myself Perl because I didn’t like any of the off-the-shelf guestbooks and wanted to write my own. I installed Linux on a second-hand Compaq, and learned the basics of systems administration, how to compile Apache, wrapped my head round file permissions, and so by the time my daughter was three years old, I got a job heading up a technical team in a property “dot com” company.
I became interested in web standards essentially because it made no sense to me that we would have to build the same website twice — in order that it would work in both browsers. At the time, Dreamweaver was the tool of choice for many web developers, as it made dealing with the mess of nested tables we had to battle with much easier. So, influenced by the work of The Web Standards Project, I (along with my then-boyfriend, now-husband Drew McLellan) began sharing tips and Dreamweaver extensions with the Dreamweaver Usenet group, while all along explaining why web standards were important and showing how to make Dreamweaver support standards.
My bio on the WaSP site in 2002 — there wasn’t much to say! (archive.org link)
Ultimately, we both ended up on the Macromedia Beta, helping to make Dreamweaver itself more standards-compliant. We were also invited to join the Web Standards Project — specifically to be part of the Dreamweaver Task Force. I couldn’t believe that Jeffrey Zeldman emailed me, asking me to join WaSP! These were the people I looked up to and had learned so much from. The fact that they wanted me to be part of the organization was amazing and gave me so much confidence to continue with the work I was already doing.
That involvement became the bedrock of my career; I realized that my ability to explain technical things could help other web developers learn these new technologies and understand the need for standards. I also discovered that being able to explain things clearly was useful in raising bug reports, and writing up use cases for new software features (in browsers or tools such as Dreamweaver). Two decades after discovering web standards, I am still doing this work. It continues to interest me, and I think it is more important than ever.
The open nature of the web, the relative simplicity of the technologies, and the helpful, sharing attitude of the community is why I am here at all. One of the biggest reasons why I have stayed after all these years is because of Web standards and the continued fight for the open web. That’s why I think that the W3C and the standards process is vitally important, and why I think it so important that web developers get involved in the process, too.
I want to help ensure that the voice of the web developer working on small projects is heard, and that the direction of the web isn’t dictated by a few giant companies. The web is where we have made our careers, and often even our social lives; it is the way that we communicate with each other. I want it to stay a place where I want to be. I want it to remain open enough that the next person without a technical background can pitch up and start publishing and creating, and find it a place they want to establish a career, too.
What’s Your Web Story?
Whether you have been working on the web for over 20 years or only one, please share your stories on the W3C blog, on your own site, or perhaps write up something in the comments section here below. I’d love to hear your journey!
Any website’s success and it’s brand image depend entirely on how its web design is, whether or not the designers took the utmost care in developing it.
The success, not the visual design, is determined by your beautifully designed site that includes usability and utility because your website is the image of your business and most prospective customers will visit your site online before they ever look into your company, it becomes inevitable that your website should be carefully designed. Failure to do anything could ultimately demolish the impression of your brand.
Website owners are judged not website users to be effective in designing the website. There are many factors affecting a website’s usability, and it’s not just about the style (how good it looks), but also about the function (how easy is it to use). Usability and usefulness, not the visual design, determines the brand’s success or failure. Since the page visitor is the only person who clicks the mouse and thus decides everything, the user-centered design has been established as a standard approach to successful and profitable web design. After all, if users are unable to use a feature, it may not exist as well.
When you create a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks— the user’s decisions need to be made consciously, taking into account the pros, cons, and alternatives. If the navigation and design of the site are not intuitive, the number of question marks will increase, making it more difficult for users to understand how the system works and how to get from point B to point C. A clear structure moderates visual clues and other easily recognizable connections can help users find their way to their goal. Even though the design itself is simple and intuitive, it is necessary for the user to search for the answer to understand what the page is about. This is what constitutes an unnecessary question mark. The task of the designer is to make sure the Making sure the number of question marks is close to 0.
Below let’s explore and understand some fundamental website design principles that are required for creating an effective brand.
Aim and Motive: – Good web design always addresses the user’s needs. Are your web visitors in search of information, entertainment, some kind of interaction, or a business transaction? Each section of your website must have a definite objective that can satisfy as much as possible a particular need for your website’s customers.
Communicate with the user: – people online tend to find data rapidly, so it’s essential to interact obviously and create it in such a way that it becomes simple to read and digest the data. Some efficient internet layout strategies include: organizing data with titles and sub-headlines, using bullet points instead of lengthy windy phrases. Try to keep your user requirements maximum in every project when you offer some service or tool to your visitors. The fewer customers need intervention to test a service, the more probable it is to be tried by a random customer. First-time visitors may be willing to pay for the service, not to fill out long web forms for an account that they may never use in the future. Let the customers visit the location and find out about your facilities without requiring them to share private data. Forcing people to register an email address in order to check the function is not sensible. Ideally, remove all obstacles, do not first involve subscriptions or registrations. To reduce incoming traffic, a user registration alone is enough of an impediment to customer navigation. All these help in improving your brand perception in the industry.
Manage to attract the Users’ Attention: – Since blogs provide both static and dynamic content; some user interface elements draw more attention than others do. Obviously, pictures are more appealing than the text — just as the phrases labeled as daring are more appealing than simple text. The only element that is directly visible to users is the word “free” that works attractively and perfectly, but still calm and purely informative. Subtle clues provide sufficient data for consumers to find out more about the “free” item. Focusing on particular regions of the site with mild use of graphic components can assist your clients to get from point A to point B without thinking about how it should effectively be accomplished. The fewer question marks prospective clients have, the more direction they have and the more confidence they can evolve towards the company’s brand. In other words: the less thought behind the scenes need to happen, the better is the user experience, which is first and foremost the goal of usability.
Make your features appeal:– Usually, modern web designs are criticized as guiding users with visually appealing simple done steps, large buttons with visual effects, etc. But from the point of view of the design, these components are not really a poor thing. Such instructions, on the upside, are highly efficient as they guide prospective clients in a very easy and user-friendly manner through the web material. It is a basic principle of effective user interface design to allow the customer to see obviously what features are accessible. How this is done does not really matter. What counts is that the material is well understood and the manner in which tourists communicate with the scheme is convenient which will then eventually increase your Brands awareness in the industry.
Make it Mobile-friendly: – Accessing websites from various phones with various screen sizes is now very popular, so whether your website is mobile-friendly is essential to remember. If your website is not mobile-friendly, either you can restore it in a responsive design (this implies that your website will adapt to distinct display widths) or you can create a devoted mobile site (a distinct website specifically optimized for portable customers Creating a lovely and functional website is simple, merely by maintaining these aspects of layout in mind. You should have a website design that requires it to be reviewed or optimized or maybe you might be planning a blog and you’re trying to get the layout from the top. Either way, these basics of efficient web design can be more engaging, helpful, and enjoyable for the clients on your website.
Keep it simple – Users are seldom on a website to enjoy the design; in addition, despite the design, they look for the information in most cases. Aim for simplicity rather than complexity for convenience. From the point of view of the visitors, the best web design is a pure text, with no advertisements or other content blocks exactly matching the visitors to the query or the content they were looking for. This is one of the factors why it is vital for excellent user experience to have a user-friendly print-version of web pages. Always remember that the first impression is the last impression of your brand image in the industry so make it count!
The testing process is iterative. That means you’re designing something, testing it, fixing it and testing it again. There may have been issues that were not found during the first round as users were virtually blocked by other issues.
Tests of usability always yield useful results. Either you will be pointed out the problems you have or you will be pointed out that there are no major design flaws that are useful for your project in both cases.
You can easily develop an aesthetic and functional website in accordance with the aforementioned principles of good web design. Without this base, traveling a long path would be hard. You can only think of success and a strong brand image with a clean and user-friendly design.
The usability of the website plays a vital role in a website’s success. Good usability helps provide visitors with a seamless experience and enhances their chances of success. It is one of the factors that distinguish a professional website from the rest. These are the usability characteristics that must be displayed by each website. It can help make your website and your brand a success.
In this week’s roundup, Lighthouse sheds light on third-party scripts, insecure resources will get blocked on secure sites, and many country connection speeds are still trying to catch up to others… literally.
Measure the impact of third-party code during page load
Lighthouse, Chrome’s built-in auditing tool, now shows a warning when the impact of third-party code on page load performance is too high. The pre-existing “Third-party usage” diagnostic audit will now fail if the total main-thread blocking time caused by third-parties is larger than 250ms during page load.
Note: This feature was added in Lighthouse version 5.3.0, which is currently available in Chrome Canary.
Currently, browsers still allow web pages loaded over a secure connection (HTTPS) to load images, videos, and audio over an insecure connection. Such insecurely-loaded resources on securely-loaded pages are known as “passive mixed content,” and they represent a security and privacy risk.
An insecurely-loaded image can allow an attacker to communicate incorrect information to the user (e.g., a fabricated stock chart), mutate client-side state (e.g., set a cookie), or induce the user to take an unintended action (e.g., changing the label on a button).
Starting next February, Chrome will auto-upgrade all passive mixed content to https:, and resources that fail to load over https: will be blocked. According to data from Chrome Beta, auto-upgrade currently fails for about 30% of image loads.
Fast connections are still not common in many countries
Data from Chrome UX Report shows that there are still many countries and territories in the world where most people access the Internet over a 3G or slower connection. (This includes a number of small island nations that are not visible on this map.)
Social media & psychology! Do they sound relevant to each other?
Well, the answer lies within this article where we will try to flash some light on “How psychology can be useful in social media marketing!”
Understanding the way your audience reacts on social media platforms through their psychology is a very interesting method to boost your results! What it is that makes them like, comment, share, or buy through such platforms?
Although, marketers are not psychologists, but to understand your user, a smart marketer can use psychology. You can leverage great results using psychology to deliver top-notch strategic digital marketing services.
Here are some very impact-generating psychological facts that every social media marketing head must consider while planning their strategies:
1. Telling stories
Everything has its story, origin, & cause, & this is always helpful in engaging the audience. Telling a story to your users about your work & agenda is an art, which will resonate through their minds.
If users like your story, they will definitely respond to it. Stories can allow the business perspective to transform into an understandable format. Just keep it simple & easy, they will definitely enjoy it!
2. Reciprocity
Giving before receiving it!
This mantra is a true key to success. Reciprocity can help you in earning the user’s trust. A good social media marketing strategy must offer something remarkable to the users, which will plant a positive idea in their minds towards you. This can be achieved in many-many ways, such as:
Offer them small gifts.
Give them discounts.
Give them free trials & free resource guide.
Drive engagement using special offers.
Offer them to invite more users to your brand by giving them free gifts & schemes.
Build their brand trust by keeping them happy & active on social media.
So, learn to give before you receive and you will surely achieve a positive response!
3. Emotions As A Useful Tool
Emotions can play a powerful role in social media according to a study by psychological science. Evoking strong emotions can increase the possibility of something being shared.
According to the University of Pennsylvania, positive content on social media leads to great results. So, it is more likely to spread positive vibes & happiness through social media platforms.
This psychological, powerful tool is very contagious, especially on social media. If it is used accurately on social media, it can leverage positive results in return.
This can be best done by:
Posting positive content.
Using humor in the content.
Spreading love & happiness to your users.
Feeding them knowledge with factual conceptions.
Posting gifs & emojis in your content.
4. Visualization And Color Effect
We learn more quickly through the images/visuals. So, by adding visuals in your content, you can leave a good impact on the user’s mind.
You should show them your content through images rather than telling them through text. According to a study by Microsoft, users tend to lose their focus after reading for just 8 seconds. Thus, images can be a better replacement to squeeze information while keeping your users concentrated & active towards your content.
Color theme or text color can also play a creative role in context to social media marketing.
If you are writing or posting about sustainability, then by choosing the green color for your content, you can add more persona to your audience.
5. Partners With Trusted Brands/Authorities
This factor can simply help you in earning the credibility of your audience. Start by collaborating & associating with the people by whom your target audience is already influenced.
Social media influencers rule the social sphere these days. Get them to trust you and you’ll win their followers’ trust automatically.
For example – YouTubers promote several beauty products through their channels.
6. FOMO & Foot In The Door
FOMO stands for the Fear of Missing Out. Users are highly active on social media & they don’t want to miss anything.
You can trigger them towards your brand by making them feel like they are missing something. Or you can use triggers like ‘be the first one’ or ‘only a few left’.
Such psychological triggers always work on social media platforms.
Besides, foot-in-the-door is a scientific term, which means to get someone agreed with something. This is a very helpful theory for social media marketing purposes.
The more frequently a user visits, likes or comments on your page on social media, the more likely he is ready to share or invite others to your page if he is requested to do so.
7. Share Widely Through Social Media Platforms
People are motivated to share content, based on their relationshipswith people in their online network. As marketers, we should really be focusing on creating and sharing content with our audience that will enhance their relationship as a result of sharing it.
Around 94% of online users wanted to better the lives of others.
Around 68% of users want the content to reflect their online identity.
Nearly 80% of people want to grow and nourish relationships.
Almost 81% of people share because they like the feeling of having others comment on it and it engages them.
About 84% of users want to spread the word about something that they believe in.
So it can turn out to be a good psychological strategy whereby sharing more content, more often, and from more sources, you can encourage your users for more engagement.
These psychological strategies are some advanced form of social media marketing for delivering effective strategic digital marketing services & introducing the neuromarketing in the industry.
What is Neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is the result of combining marketing efforts and neuroscience concepts. This strategy involves the use of technology, such as brain imaging and brain scanning.
Though the buzz is on for years, Neuromarketing is still a fresh and effective term in the marketing industry where neuro marketers can determine the responses of their subjects on particular marketing elements like packaging and advertising.
Now you have many psychological tools to enhance your social media marketing. Just use two or three, and you will be able to obtain a healthy output for your brand.SoftProdigy is the top social media marketing agency! With years of experience and industry know-how, we serve our best marketing strategies to you. Get in touch with us today!
