As smartphones are becoming ubiquitous, it’s no wonder that new businesses strive to create a mobile app. Avoid going haywire by having a solid reference to the steps that are involved in successful mobile app development.
There are two basic approaches in regards to creating a mobile app. You can either club a few lines of code in a virtual studio, run a quick test, and submit an application to the app store; Or, take the long road, invest time and resources in design, usability testing, and deployment through multiple sources.
Either way, if you don’t invest in extensive planning, or lack a cohesive strategy, the mobile app is likely to be clamored with thousands of apps already available on the market.
With that said, in this article, we’re to break the mobile app lifecycle- briefing different stages and their significance in mobile app development.
But before we get to that, it’s important to state the difference between two commonly used, yet interchangeable terms in context to app development: SDLC and ADLC.
The process of software development is called the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). The stages, though, are similar to the Application Development lifecycle (ADLC), which explains how an app comes into existence: Inception, Wireframe Design, Development, App Release, and Maintenance.
Inception
Any mobile application starts with the discovery of an idea. The idea is then refined into a solid application plan.
Design
This phase is all about the app’s design- defining the layout, navigation, features, or anything else pertaining to UI/UX.
Prototype
You can’t comprehend the user experience unless you experience it first-hand. Prototyping is all about creating such a similar app experience.
Development
This stage pertains to the development aspect of an application. Usually, the most resource-intensive, this is where the real development, i.e, programming takes place.
App Deployment
At this point, the IT professional is ready to launch the app to the desired store(s).
Maintenance
Once the app is live, the developers continue to polish the experience by fixing any bugs, introducing new and better features, and more.
Let’s have a closer look at these stages, and know, how they can translate to the mobile app success for your business.
Six Stages of Mobile App Development Lifecycle
Often times, these stages are running simultaneously, for example, it’s common for developers to start coding whilst the UI is still being finalized.
The point being, these stages work in conjunction and are essential for a digital project to come to fruition.
1. Inception
An app comes into inception with an idea, but the same idea has to be translated into technical documentation. Here are a few key pointers that could help with the discovery/inception phase:
Engage in competitor analysis to check for any similar apps,
Check for how do these apps translate value to the end-customer,
And check for the technicalities in context to your mobile application. Would it be a hybrid app? How can it be integrated into the existing infrastructure? and more.
2. Design
Once the technicalities are identified, the next stage is to shape your idea, i.e, designing a unique look for your mobile application that offers an intuitive and engaging user experience. This stage has two main parts:
User Experience
User experience is set and established through sketches and wireframes, using a myriad of designing toolkits available online.
Though, it’s important that the UX design must comply with the interface guidelines established by different mobile app platforms. Have a look at official guidelines here: Apple, Android, and UWP.
Post determining the user experience, the designers work on the user interface. This is the phase where stencils and mockups are brought to life by adding colors, graphics, typography, and more.
Spending a great deal of time and resources on designing the best User interface is important, and quite necessary.
3. Prototyping
Technically, a prototype is the last phase of the designing stage. The idea is to create a clickable version of your mobile app, barred of added functionality.
Prototyping is essential for it helps with comprehending the touch experience, app intuitiveness, and deduce if things are moving forward in the right direction.
4. Development
Establishing a good design equates to the half part of the mobile app development process. The other half includes taking that design and turning it into a fully-functioning project.
The development stage can also be broken down into two parts:
Front-end Development
This deals with everything that a user sees and engages. The objective of any front-end developer is to create a flawless, engaging, and lag-free experience for the end-user.
Back-end Development
This deals with all the processes responsible for the functioning of the entire system- the app, its functionality, communication with the servers and back, and more.
5. App Deployment
This step is often the final stage in the mobile app development lifecycle, but if you’re aiming for a successful app, your journey doesn’t end here.
Once everything is in place, its time to register the app on the targetted platforms. Or, make it available online and target it to businesses to implement and benefit of it, in their specified operations.
6. Maintenance
To increase an app’s lifespan, and keep it relevant for extended periods of time, regular maintenance is quintessential.
Call it an additional step, but studying the backlogs of the mobile app and offering the bug fixes, with advanced features, increases the success rate of a mobile application.
Conclusion
Developing an app is one thing, but creating a successful app that stays relevant is an entirely different ball game. Mobile application development needs to follow the laid step-by-step process, for it promises an outcome that actually translates benefits and values to an organization.
Visual content, especially images, is an immensely important aspect of your website. They make your content easier to read and more engaging. Images also trigger emotions and entice your visitors to convert faster.
However, just because you are uploading a photo you previously downloaded from a stock photography site and filling in your alt tag doesn’t mean you will accomplish any of the goals mentioned above.
To get the most out of your images, you need to optimize them for search engines.
Now, you are probably asking yourself: “Why should I invest in image SEO when Google’s machine learning algorithms can now recognize images themselves?”
In this guide, I will briefly explain the importance of image SEO and provide a few tips that may serve as your solid starting point.
Let’s dive in.
1. Choose the Right Name for your Images
The filename tells Google what your image is about. For example, white-leather-shoes.jpg provides more information about the image than IMG00154.jpg. No matter how smart Google is, you should help it understand your images faster and more efficiently.
For starters, you should focus on your main keyword. If your image shows red apples, then your main keyword would be “red apples,” as they are the subject of the photo. Sure, this doesn’t mean you should stuff your filenames with a bunch of keywords. Instead, make sure your image names are clear, informative, and descriptive.
2. Write Descriptive Alt Text
Alternative text, or alt text, has the same purpose as your filename – to describe an image both to search engines and users. Parallel with the page content, filenames, and computer vision algorithms, Google uses alt text to understand the subject matter of your visual content. These elements also appear when there is something wrong with the photo and a user cannot see it. This way, they will know what the image is about.
Precisely because of that, your alt tags need to be helpful and straightforward. Avoid packing them with keywords, as this may trigger negative user experiences. Say you want to upload a photo of a white chihuahua playing fetch. Your alt text would be something like .
3. Optimize your Captions
This is the text that accompanies your image on your website. It is usually placed below the photo. The reason why captions are important to your image SEO strategy lies in the fact that Google uses them to learn more about the subject matter of the image. They can also improve user experiences, given that many searchers use headings and captions when scanning online content.
Similar to image names and alt tags, you need to avoid over-optimization. Instead, rely on white label SEO practices and use your keywords carefully to make your captions organic and useful.
4. Pick the Right File Type
There is no perfect image file type. Its choice depends on the images you create and your needs. The most popular image file formats are JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
Each of these file types has certain advantages and disadvantages. JPEG offers the smallest file size and yet, ensures a high image quality. It is the best format for large photos and illustrations. PNG is a logical choice for any fine drawings, logos, illustrations, and text, as it helps you maintain background transparency. GIF is used by marketers creating moving images and animations.
5. Resize your Images
Choosing the right image file type may directly impact the performance of your visual content. Page load time is a significant ranking factor both on mobile and desktop devices. Therefore, you need to choose the right file type that will help you reduce the size of an image, without compromising its quality.
There is a wide range of simple image compression tools you could use, such as ImageOptim, Kraken.io, TinyPNG, Imagify.io, Compressor.io, Shortpixel, and so forth.
Once you optimize your images, you can test your page speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest.org, Lighthouse, or Pingdom.
6. Use Schema Markup
Using structured data on your pages help Google display your image as rich results. While structured data is not a ranking factor, it can still boost your SEO efforts in multiple ways.
For starters, it provides users with relevant information and encourages them to click on your link to find out more. It also increases your exposure in the SERPs. Above all, using structured data on your website gives relevant users to find your content faster and, in this way, sends more targeted traffic to your site.
Google provides support for 4 types of structured data – products, recipes, videos, and GIFs. They say that using the right structured data on your pages helps users find relevant content faster
7. Make Sure your Images are Responsive
In the past, we talked about creating and optimizing content for desktop and mobile devices. Today, we talk about mobile responsiveness. Instead of creating separate visual content for desktop and mobile versions of your website, you should make sure your images adapt to different screen resolutions. And, this is where srcset shines.
This is a piece of HTML code that tells the browser what version of your image to load, based on users’ screen resolution. Sure, this does not mean you should upload different sizes for each image. From its 4.4 version, WordPress will do that for you. For each image you post, it will automatically make a few versions – thumbnail (150×150), medium (up to 300 px wide or high), medium- large (768 px wide), large (1024 px wide or high), full (original image). Moreover, WP adds srcset automatically.
8. Build an Image Sitemap
Apart from adding alt text and captions to your images, you can also provide additional details about them, as well as image URLs. By creating an XML sitemap, you are helping search engines find your images more efficiently. Google explains that by emphasizing the following:
“Additionally, you can use Google image extensions for sitemaps to give Google more information about the images available on your pages. Image sitemap information helps Google discover images that we might not otherwise find (such as images your site reaches with JavaScript code), and allows you to indicate images on your site that you want Google to crawl and index.”
The good thing is that, if you are using WordPress or Yoast, images are added to your sitemap automatically.
Over to You
Before you upload an image to your site, make sure it is optimized well for search engines. For starters, write an informative and spam-free image name, alt text, and caption. Then, choose the right image size and compress your images to boost your page load speed. Next, build an XML sitemap and invest in the structured data on your site to boost the exposure of your image and help it appear in Google’s rich results. Finally, make sure your images are responsive and user-friendly.
By following the tips mentioned above, you will increase your performance in the SERPs. Above all, you will increase user satisfaction, engage them, and encourage them to convert faster.
You are a smart, well-informed person. After all, you are reading Smashing Magazine so you must be. That means you are probably already convinced that you should avoid dark patterns. Maybe you have even read the Ethical Design Handbook that drives the point home.
However, just because we understand that we should avoid dark patterns, doesn’t mean our clients and colleagues do. No doubt you have been asked more than once to implement these questionable techniques by an ill-informed stakeholder.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to convince them that dark patterns are a terrible idea. Talking about ethics often isn’t enough.
The problem is that a lot of our colleagues and clients are under tremendous pressure to deliver. Business owners need to pay the bills, while many marketing executives in larger organizations are under immense pressure to deliver results.
In that kind of environment, people can convince themselves of anything. The ethical argument becomes muddied as people persuade themselves that they aren’t forcing anybody to do anything.
So in this post, we will put together a compelling argument you can present to stakeholders to help them understand why dark patterns are a bad idea.
However, before we do that, let’s agree on a definition of dark patterns.
“User interface elements that have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, often utilizing psychological manipulation.”
We need to be clear on our definition because increasingly, I am seeing people refer to anything that is annoying on the web as a dark pattern. For example, an overlay may be very annoying, but it does not necessarily trick users into doing something they might not otherwise do.
This page is designed to trick people into adding insurance to their order by making the button green and having it point onwards. (Large preview)
I point this out, not to say those people are wrong in their definition, but rather because the arguments I lay out here would not all apply to a broader definition of what a dark pattern is.
So what exactly is that argument?
The Business Case Against Dark Patterns
If you want to convince stakeholders that dark patterns are a terrible idea, there is little point talking about their negative impact on the user experience. That is typically too abstract for most people. Instead, we need to frame things in terms they will understand — the negative impact of dark patterns for them personally and for the entire business.
Aside from the ethical considerations of using dark patterns, three factors make them a wrong choice for any business concerned about long-term revenue, and by extension, anybody in that business considering adopting them. These are:
The fact that consumers are cynical, savvy and spoilt for choice.
That the web has empowered consumers.
The hidden costs of dark patterns.
These are the arguments that you can bring to clients and management so let’s explore them in more depth.
Consumers Are Cynical, Savvy And Spoilt For Choice
You only need to watch an episode of Mad Men to know that manipulation in sales and marketing has been around much longer than the web.
Brands always used to be able to get away with manipulation because consumers were mostly unaware of being manipulated. Even if they did realize, the choice was limited, and so there was very little they could do. That is no longer true. The web has changed that.
We need to help management realize the fact that consumers have changed. That in every consumer’s pocket is instant access to every other company on the planet that offers the same thing as you. It is so easy to find your competitors and so simple to swap that one small annoyance is enough to make people switch.
Of course, management might take the cynical attitude that if people are unaware that they are manipulating them, then they won’t be annoyed and so won’t swap to a competitor.
In truth, the assumption that people are unaware of manipulation is incorrect.
There is a tendency to think that because dark patterns work (and let’s be clear they do) that people are unaware of them. However, that isn’t necessarily so.
A case in point is a usability test I ran on a hotel booking site which employed dark patterns. As the user was looking at hotel rooms, he commented on how he hated all the manipulative techniques the website used. I asked him why he used the site, and he said: “I just ignore all of that stuff.”
In reality, he probably didn’t. It would still impact his buying decision on a sub-conscious level. Yes, he was unaware the manipulation was working. However, he was aware the site was employing it, and so it created that adverse reaction in him.
Users are much savvier than we give them credit for. Don’t forget they have the whole of human knowledge in their pockets, and they read articles about Facebook’s psychological manipulations or BBC stories about Government intervention over the techniques hotel booking sites were employing. They know that websites are attempting to manipulate them, and that makes it likely they will at least consider going elsewhere.
The media is ensuring that consumers are increasingly aware of dark patterns. (Large preview)
However, there is an even more significant danger in them knowing that a site is attempting to manipulate them.
The Power Of The Consumer
The web hasn’t just made consumers savvier and given them more access to choice. It has also provided them with a platform to complain, and companies continue to underestimate that.
Even one disgruntled customer can have a significant negative impact on a brand. I often talk to clients about the story of Hasan Syed, who was unhappy with British Airways. He decided to take out a promoted tweet that read:
“Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous.”
The fallout of this one action was enormous for British Airways with the story featuring on the BBC, Guardian, Fox News, the Express and Telegraph, to name just a few.
One disgruntled company can undermine a brand. (Large preview)
Things get even more dangerous when users start coming together to express their dissatisfaction, such as when Facebook was found to have carried out psychological experiments on their users.
The voice of users has become so powerful now that it motivates government into action such as with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) here in the UK. They recently announced:
“The CMA has taken enforcement action to bring to an end misleading sales tactics, hidden charges and other practices in the online hotel booking market. These have been wholly unacceptable.”
Worst of all, the web means these negative comments from users never go away. They are always only a search away and easily accessible thanks to sites like Check a Trade or Trip Advisor.
Sites like Trustpilot provide a platform for consumers to express their feelings about an online experience. (Large preview)
In business terms, this leads to lost long-term revenue, less repeat orders, and harder customer acquisition. However, these are not the only costs of manipulation.
The Hidden Cost Of Manipulation
At face value, dark patterns work. If you use them on your website, you will see an increase in users taking action. However, that does not tell the whole story because for every dollar of additional revenue earned; dark patterns could well be costing you more. The problem is that you cannot easily see the costs.
Take, for example, a company I worked with who sold kettles. They decided to automatically add their kettle filters to people’s carts when they went to buy a kettle. That is a classic dark pattern people don’t always notice that the company has added the filter.
Sure enough, the sales of filters skyrocketed, and the e-commerce team was pleased because they were one step closer to meeting their targets.
Unfortunately what they were not aware of was what was happening elsewhere in the company.
The marketing team who ran the companies social media channels found themselves having to spend time addressing complaints on Twitter and Facebook.
The customer support team received an increase in calls asking for refunds or complaining. Each call was costing the company £3.21, more than the profit margin on the filters.
Then there was the cost of processing the returns. Filters had to be assessed and then restocked, costing yet more money.
In short, dark patterns are rarely as profitable as they first appear and could be costing the company money, even outside of the online backlash.
Without a doubt, there is a solid business case against the use of dark patterns. However, an academic argument may not be enough to sway clients or colleagues. You might need something more tangible.
Gather Your Evidence
If your company has yet to start using dark patterns, the above argument should help. However, if they are already using them, getting people to change their minds will be tougher. You will probably need some evidence to support your case.
Gathering this evidence will need a bit of detective work on your part, but it could make all of the difference in making your case. With that in mind, where are some places to look?
Search Out Negative Comments
The first place to look is online. Search out every negative comment you can find about dark patterns and your website. If you don’t see any that doesn’t mean people are unhappy, it just means they haven’t shared it publicly yet. However, if you do find comments, they probably represent the feelings of many, many other people.
A simple search on social media will uncover lots of examples of people annoyed by dark patterns. (Large preview)
Talk To Other Teams In Your Company
Speak to those in customer services, returns, marketing or any other department that might have been impacted by the use of dark patterns. Ask them if they have noticed any changes since the company has implemented them. As with the kettle company, you might find some hidden costs.
Run Usability Testing
Ask some people to use your site and see how they react to the dark patterns. I would advise against leading the testers by asking directly about the dark patterns. However, you can ask whether there is anything about the website they dislike or find annoying.
Make sure you record these sessions too, as nothing is more potent than seeing just how frustrated and irritated people get with these kinds of techniques.
Run A Survey
Another approach is to run a survey asking people about their impressions of the website. Did they find it trustworthy? Do they feel the company is putting their interests first?
One particular survey I favor is one that shows on exit-intent if the user decides not to take action. The one question survey asks them why they chose not to take action and offers them a list of alternatives.
A simple survey can help assertion how dark patterns are influencing people’s attitude towards your website. (Large preview)
One of the options could be that the site felt manipulative or untrustworthy. That would give you an indication of if users are aware of the dark patterns and whether they are influencing the buying decision negatively.
That works even better if you can compare answers between users who have seen the dark patterns and those who haven’t.
Of course, the best evidence of all is where you can tie dark patterns to financial loss for the company. That is not always easy to do, but with some educated guessing, we can often estimate.
Let’s imagine one in ten people who completed the exit-intent survey said that they didn’t act because the site felt manipulative. That would mean that by dropping dark patterns, the site could see 10% more people taking action. If you know the number of visitors to the website, you can work out how many extra orders that would be. You can then also work out the average value of each order, and that provides a financial cost of dark patterns.
Would that number be 100% accurate? Absolutely not. However, it would be enough to make stakeholders stop and think. At least it will if you present it in the right way.
Pick Your Moment And Method
In my experience, one of the significant reasons that our appeals to drop dark patterns fall on deaf ears is that we approach it in a confrontational manner. We argue passionately for the removal of dark patterns in a meeting, often with the person who introduced them in the first place. That is never going to end well.
When we confront people in this way, they become defensive, especially when you are criticizing them in front of colleagues.
My recommendation is that once you have formed your argument and gathered your evidence that you speak to each of the critical stakeholders individually.
Not only does this approach avoid people feeling attacked in a public forum, but it also allows you to tailor the argument you present for whoever you are talking to.
For example, if you are talking to a marketing person, you could talk about the damage dark patterns have on a brand. However, if you are talking to a finance person, you can discuss the hidden costs of dark patterns.
Most of all, we need to make these arguments with sensitivity. We should not imply that stakeholders were wrong to suggest or try dark patterns. That is simply too confrontational.
You will see better results if you talk about the evidence that you have uncovered and the research into the subject that you have done online. Talk about it being a nuanced issue and a delicate balance to achieve. In short, be conciliatory, rather than confrontational.
I am not claiming that if you adopt the approach outlined in this article, you will see success every time. However, I do believe you will see more progress than lecturing colleagues about ethics and applying that they are unethical in their approach.
For those of you working from home right now (willingly or unwillingly), you can’t allow your surroundings to have an effect on your work and, more importantly, your client relationships. Clients don’t care where you are. They just want you to get the job done, and get it done it well.
By that same token, you can’t allow your interactions with clients to have a trickle-down effect on your home life. There needs to be a clear separation between work and home when working with remote clients.
Below are some tips for web designers and other freelancers trying to get a better handle on client management and relationships when they work from home.
1. Power Up Your Internet Speeds
When working from an office, you have the luxury of milking your employer’s or cowork space’s Internet as much as possible. But at home? You’re probably not too excited about paying for super-high-speed Internet when it comes with a hefty monthly cost and it’s only needed for eight or so hours a day.
Look at it this way:
The faster your Internet is, the more quickly you’ll be able to get work done. Plus, healthy Internet speeds are essential for streaming — and I’m not talking about streaming a funny YouTube video. I’m referring to those Zoom meetings you’re going to have with your clients (more on that below).
Keep in mind that Internet costs can be deducted on your taxes. Specifically, you can write off the amount you actually use each day for work purposes. So, some of that money will go back into your pocket come tax time.
2. Dedicate Specific Hours to Client Communication
It’s really important to avoid interruptions when you’re working. And clients present a huge opportunity for interruption and distraction if you let them.
When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of working faster… to compensate for the time they know they will lose by being interrupted. Yet working faster with interruptions has its cost: people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort.
By dedicating an hour or two to client communication every day — and communicating this policy to clients — you can keep those distractions to a minimum.
Oh, and make sure anyone at home with you is aware of this.
It might’ve been funny when this BBC News interview was interrupted by kids in the background, but clients won’t be happy if you’ve given them a small timeframe to communicate, only for it to be interrupted.
3. Empower Clients to Schedule Meetings
Even if it’s only you running the show, you want to give off the impression that everything is being handled as well as it would if you had a team behind you. So, this is where your choice of software and your system of automations comes into play.
For starters, your website needs to have a meeting schedule link to empower prospective clients to schedule meetings with you. That’s going to save you time trying to coordinate schedules, setting up meeting details, collecting pertinent details, and so on.
Here’s how I’ve done it on my website:
I first ask prospects to fill in a short questionnaire. This allows me to gather important details to prepare for our meeting.
I then ask them to schedule a call through Calendly:
My Calendly scheduler is connected to my Gmail calendar and Zoom. Once a request has been submitted, the software sets everything up without my having to do a single thing.
By setting the stage with self-scheduling, prospects who become clients already know how they can get in touch with me when they want to chat. To make it even easier for them and myself, I have a separate calendar that allows them to schedule meetings with me during my dedicated client hours.
Of course, you still want to control the flow of your project, so make sure your process includes meetings at key milestones — like the client kickoff, reviewing design mockups, and website handoff. That’ll lessen the likelihood that clients need to meet unexpectedly.
4. Use a Client-friendly Video Conferencing Tool
When you’re working from home, it’s important to have face-to-face conversations with clients. It’s not like every call requires a face-to-face meetup, but it’s nice to do it every once in a while, especially if you’re going to be sharing your screen anyway (like for a website walk-through).
There are a number of video conferencing tools you can use. Zoom is a popular video conferencing solution that you can use for free. If you’re a paying G Suite user, you can opt for Google Meet.
Either of these tools would work well for these purposes as they’re well-known and easy for clients to get the hang of (i.e. they don’t require them to download or install anything). Zoom is the one I would recommend though.
As I mentioned before, it integrates with Calendly (and other online schedulers), which makes setting up meetings a breeze. Also, you can change up your background. This is helpful if:
a) You don’t want clients seeing into your home like software engineer Andrew Eckel who used a luxury apartment photo as a backdrop.
b) You want to have a little fun with your clients like video producer Dan Crowd did when he created this joke background:
Today I made a Zoom background of myself accidentally walking in on myself in a Zoom meeting. pic.twitter.com/Rl2AsjfZ7V
5. Choose the Right Channel to Communicate Through
There are many different ways you can communicate with clients these days. Email. A phone call. Text. Slack message. Zoom video. Asana message feeds. Google Doc comments.
But you need to be careful with this. There’s a time and a place to use each of these channels, so make sure you get it right. If you use them the right way, then your clients will be less likely to abuse or misuse these channels. You know how it goes. First, they email you with a question. Then panic-call you hours later when they haven’t heard back. And then, as a last resort, bombard you with texts until they hear back.
Here are some suggestions for picking the right communication channels:
Email:
Confirmation emails;
Templated messages;
Short responses that aren’t time sensitive;
Moving Google Doc questions or comments out into a larger space to answer.
Phone or Zoom calls:
Client kickoff;
Milestone check-ins;
Website handoff;
Any time you have to share your screen;
Whenever there is an issue or disagreement.
Text:
Unless you have a dedicated phone for business, don’t do it.
Slack messages or Asana (task manager) messages:
Progress check-ins;
Milestone delivery notifications;
Light brainstorming.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult Working with Remote Clients
No matter how long you’ve worked from home, it’s always a good idea to reassess and strengthen your client management strategy. Even if you only tweak things a little bit, you might find it easier to get work done as well as to keep clients happy.
One could easily put together a list of good reasons for choosing a multipurpose WordPress theme. Reasons that apply to web designers and website owners alike.
The approach we’ve taken is to present you with this list of 8 top-tier multipurpose themes. We give you the opportunity to let any one of them speak for itself. These themes are well-established best-sellers with each one. Also having its unique base of highly satisfied customers.
Browse the list, check into one or more of these themes and you’ll quickly discover the theme in question can not only do a wide variety of things, but do them exceptionally well.
The adage “Jack of all trades, master of none” does not apply.
Quite the opposite. Any of these themes is more than capable of taking your business or web design proficiency to the next level.
The list of BeTheme’s core features is long. There are 40+ of them in fact. Individually and in combination they enable first time users to not only get a project off to a quick start, but to successfully complete it in a relatively short time.
BeTheme will also prove to be a blessing for the website builder who dreads starting from scratch or is simply in need of a helping hand or a little inspiration to get started.
A BeTheme highlight is its selection of 500+ professionally-designed pre-built websites.
They cover 30+ industry sectors, all website types, and a wide range of small business niches and creative endeavors
They are responsive, highly-customizable, and have built-in UX functionality
These core features give users virtually limitless design flexibility; while eliminating any need for coding.
They include:
The Muffin Builder editor/page builder, Options Panel, and Shortcode Generator
Layout Generator plus a variety of grid, header, and footer options
Powerful, versatile, and flexible are three must-have multipurpose theme characteristics. Add ease of use and responsiveness and you’ve struck gold as not too many themes can claim to satisfy all 5 attributes. Total does, and with respect to ease of use, it does so with a vengeance.
Users can edit from the frontend and the backend
Total’s building block approach featuring 80+ builder modules makes website design especially easy
Building blocks supporting Revolution Slider, LayerSlider, Templatera, and WooCommerce are included
The package also features 40+ pre-made demos and more than 500 styling options
You’ll find unlimited colors, header styles, a mega menu, and custom fonts and icons as well
Total is 100% developer friendly thanks to selections of custom hooks, filters, and snippets
Avada is the #1 selling theme of all time. It’s super-fast and fully responsive and the intuitive front-end editing makes it ever so easy to use. Avada’s superb selections of pre-built websites, design elements, demos, and partial demos gives you the flexibility to build anything you want.
Fusion Code, the “heart” of this theme, gives you access to the tools that enable you to take full advantage of Avada’s flexibility and capabilities.
Avada’s Theme Options allows you to build even the most complex websites without coding.
To get a project off to a fast start simply pick a demo, import it, and customize it to your needs and specifications.
Custom settings put you in the driver’s seat by giving you full control over every page in your website.
There’s much more of course. Click on the banner to explore Adava’s many features.
If you’re a creative type this multipurpose theme is certainly worth a good, hard look. Uncode’s pixel-perfect concepts and easy front end editing are key selling points along with other features that are too many to list here.
The best way to see what Uncode is capable of is to click on the banner, visit the site, and browse Uncode’s impressive and inspiring showcase of user-built website.
Kalium is another all-time best-seller. This creative multiuse theme is especially well suited for portfolios.
Kalium’s full eCommerce support also makes it an ideal theme for online shopping experiences.
Kalium is responsive and GDPR compliant.
All the better-known WordPress plugins are supported and some of the most popular plugins like Elementor, WooCommerce, and WPBakery Page Builder are included.
Click to learn more about what Kalium’s 30,000 clients like about this theme.
Aptly called the Swiss Army Knife of website-building tools, TheGem is a beautiful and customizable WordPress theme with 400+ pre-built websites that is chock-full of design tools, elements, and aids.
Unique feature TheGem Blocks contains more than 300 pre-designed section templates to speed up your workflow
Multi-purpose WooCommerce templates are included for creating online shops
The WPBakery page builder allows easy and intuitive front-page editing
A 45,000 strong customer base attests to TheGem’s excellent performance and five-star support.
Hongo is a modern, multipurpose eCommerce oriented theme. This highly flexible and customizable theme is also well suited for creating company websites and blogs.
Out-of-the-box eCommerce features include:
Product search, compare, quick view, and videos
Wishlist and catalog mode
Filters for product categories, pricing, and other attributes
The package includes 11 ready store demos together with a host of creative design elements and templates. Hongo is well documented and offers top-notch support.
Click to learn more.
*****
Multipurpose themes are designed to enable you to create any type of website you have in mind.
Not all multipurpose themes can deliver on that promise however. That is why you should search extra hard for a theme that is guaranteed to deliver.
To make your search easier, we compiled this list of top-tier multipurpose WordPress themes; themes that will never let you down.
… it is the first time React components are being expressed in a single file format with explicit conventions.
Which is the RedwoodJS idea of Cells. To me, it feels like a slightly cleaner version of how Apollo wants you to do it with useQuery. Shawn makes that same connection and I know RedwoodJS uses Apollo, so I’m thinking it’s some nice semantic sugar.
There is a lot of cool stuff going on in RedwoodJS. “A highly opinionated stack” if its helpful to think of it that way, but Tom made clear in our last episode of ShopTalk that it’s not like Rails. Not that Rails is bad (it isn’t), but that this new world can do things in new and better ways that make for long-term healthy software.
I was working on a project that had this neat jagged edge along the bottom of a banner image.
Looking sharp… in more ways than one.
It’s something that made me think for a second and I learned something in the process! I thought I’d write up how I approached it so you can use it on your own projects.
I started out with a good old fashioned HTML image in a wrapper element:
While that certainly works, geez, that’s a lot of hassle. It’s difficult to read SVG markup in CSS like that. Plus, it’s annoying to have to remember to quote them (e.g. url('data:image/svg+xml'...)). Sure, we can base64 encode the SVG to avoid that, but that’s even more annoying. Plus, the SVG needs to be filled with the same background color as the image (or wherever it is used), or else it won’t work.
Wait, isn’t this what masking is for? Yes! Yes, this is what masking is for.
That led me to a new approach: use an image like the one above as a CSS mask so that the “missing” bits of the banner image would actually be missing. Rather than drawing triangles of the background color on top of the banner, we should instead mask away those triangles from the banner entirely and let the real background show through. That way, it works on any background!
Masking is pretty much supported everywhere — at least in the simple way I’m talking about here. We’re also talking about something that can be implemented with progressive enhancement; if masks aren’t supported in a given browser, then you just don’t get the sawtooth effect. Definitely not the end of the world.
This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up.
Desktop
Chrome
Firefox
IE
Edge
Safari
85*
53
No
81*
TP*
Mobile / Tablet
Android Chrome
Android Firefox
Android
iOS Safari
81*
68
81*
13.4*
One way a CSS mask works is to provide an image with an alpha channel as a mask-image. The underlying element — the one that’s being masked — becomes (semi-)transparent to the degree that the alpha channel of the mask-image dictates. So if your mask image is a white teapot on a transparent background, then the masked element will be cut to the shape of the teapot and everything outside that will be hidden.
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Masking can be a tricky concept to grok. Sarah Drasner has an article that takes a deep-dive on masking, including how it is different from clipping. There’s much more that masks can do than what we’re covering here. Check the specs, caniuse, and MDN for even more information.
What we need is a single “sawtooth”-like image similar to the SVG above, where the top-left half is filled white and the bottom-left is left semi-transparent. And, ideally that image wouldn’t be an actual SVG, since that would land us back into the ugly data URI mess we were in before.
At this point you might be thinking: “Hey, just embed the SVG in the CSS directly, define a mask in it, then point the CSS at the mask ID in the SVG!”
Nice idea! And it’s certainly doable, if you can edit the HTML. For my specific project, however, I was working in WordPress and I really wanted to confine my changes to pure CSS rather than injecting extra parts into the HTML. That would have been a lot more work. I don’t think this is uncommon; for a presentational change like this, not having to edit the HTML is useful. We’re mostly on board with the idea of avoiding semantically worthless wrapper elements just to provide styling hooks, but I feel that also applies to adding entire SVG markup to the document… or even a WordPress template.
.el {
linear-gradient(
to bottom right,
white,
white 50%,
transparent 50%,
transparent
);
}
Here that is on a radial background, so you can see it’s really transparent:
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Great! We can just use that as a mask-image on our banner, right? We need to set mask-size, which is like background-size, and mask-repeat, like background-repeat, and we’re good?
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Unfortunately, no. Not so good.
The first reason is that, unless you’re using Firefox, you’ll likely see no masking at all on that example above. This is because Blink and WebKit still only support masking with a vendor prefix at the time of writing. That means we need -webkit- prefixed versions of everything.
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Vendor prefixing aside, what we’re doing is also conceptually wrong. If we confine the mask to just the bottom stripe of the image with mask-size, then the rest of the image has no mask-image at all, which masks it out entirely. As a result, we can’t use the sawtooth alone as a mask. What we need is a mask-image that is a rectangle the size of the image with just a sawtooth at the bottom.
Something like this:
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We do that with two gradient images. The first image is the same sawtooth triangle as above, which is set to repeat-x and positioned at the bottom so that it repeats only along the bottom edge of the image. The second image is another gradient that is transparent for the bottom 30px (so as to not interfere with the sawtooth), opaque above that (which is shown going from black to white in the demo), and takes up the whole size of the element.
So we now have this wedge-shaped piece, with a single triangle sawtooth at the bottom, and it occupies the entire height of our banner image in two separate pieces. Finally, we can use these pieces with mask-image by repeating them horizontally across our image, and it should have the effect we want:
There is a super cool new Podcast block for WordPress Gutenberg you use Jetpack (released in 8.5). I wanted to try it out, so below you’ll see recent episodes from ShopTalk Show. I’d tell you all about the recent episodes, except then this blog post wouldn’t age very well, because the point of this blog is showing recent episodes, not specific episodes, so it will change as we publish new shows.
Talk to anyone who has an active blog and I bet they’ll tell you it’s been valuable to them. Maybe it’s opened doors. Maybe it’s got them a job. Maybe it’s got them a conference invite. Maybe they just like the thrill of knowing people have read and responded to it. Maybe they learned a lot through its creation and maintenance.
In remote work, we communicate primarily through writing. We send messages in Slack. We document projects in Notion. We send meeting invites with a written description of the purpose. We’re writing all the time.
It’s just so damn important for team work of any kind, particularly when you aren’t next to each other physically.
While writing forces people to think clearly, writing also forces teams to think clearly. In my experience, having a clearly written thing makes it easy for folks to collaborate with me. This is because people naturally enjoy poking holes in arguments, adding points that were missed, or mentioning any risks that weren’t taken into account. I’ve found it helpful to use this human tendency to my advantage. Extra opinions and poked holes are hard to surface if you didn’t write something in the first place.
I’m a fan of building websites with the least amount of technical debt and things you have to be responsible for as possible for what you wanna do. Sometimes you take on this debt on purpose because you have to, but when you don’t, please don’t ;).
Let’s say you need to build a site that can take money from customers, but on a recurring basis. WordPress.com can do that now, and it’s a fantastic choice because it’s all of the power and control and none of the debt.
Here’s my thinking…
1) WordPress.com is the fastest way to spin up a WordPress site.
Not only is it fast, but you don’t have to worry about anything. Servers, SSL, security, performance, accessibility… that’s all handled for you and you can focus on what you do best. Even if you’re a seasoned developer, I’m sure you can understand how this is compelling. Automating work is what the best developers do.
2) WordPress.com sites can be eCommerce sites.
Not only sell-a-product style sites, but also recurring payments sites. Meaning you can very easily set up a subscription service, membership site, or site for monthly donations.
The pricing is like this:
WordPress.com Plan
Jetpack plan
Related Fees
WordPress.com eCommerce
—
None
WordPress.com Business
Jetpack Professional
2%
WordPress.com Premium
Jetpack Premium
4%
WordPress.com Personal
Jetpack Personal
8%
So you do the math and figure out the most economical plan for you. That eCommerce plan on WordPress.com is only $45/month and means zero additional fees, so I imagine once you’re up and running and making sales, that plan becomes the obvious choice.
Ideas!
You build custom weekly meal plans for families and charge monthly for that.
You have a membership site for physical training videos where people have to be a member to see the videos.
Your site is has a bunch of completely free great content, and you offer a way to give yearly donations to support it.
Why roll your own eCommerce when you don’t have to?
3) It used to be that your WordPress site was a bit limited on WordPress.com, but those days are over.
eCommerce is one aspect of that, but I’m talking full SFTP and database access. You can build custom themes, use your own plugins, just like any other WordPress site. So if you’re thinking that you’re giving up too much control by going with WordPress.com, make sure to re-evaluate that.
So knowing all that, I’d say you really should give WordPress.com a hard look when you’re about to spin up an eCommerce site. I’ve seen far too much over-engineering and mountains of technical debt in my life, I’d rather see people use simpler tools and get started doing their actual business, especially to start.
.
