Thought Boat

Website - A Talk on Types

Read

Google says that as many as 380 new websites are created every minute. That’s over six websites every single second! Every day we pass through a lot of websites but have you ever wondered how many different types of websites are there. There isn’t one solid list that states the different types. This means that if you were to ask an editor to name ‘the different types of website’, he would give you a completely different answer to a web developer or a casual shopper. We have almost effectively made a list that broadly covers a majority of them.

Business

These are websites that showcases a business online. It, mostly serves the purpose of web presence of a business in the digital world. This enhances a business’s credibility and portrays them as professional. They may not sell directly through the site but it provides all details and information about the business. It is one of the most effective ways to get yourself present on the web.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce websites are one in which you can directly sell products services and get payments for it. Most popular ones include Flipkart and amazon. Ecommerce sites are not to be confused with business or corporate websites. A website that is purely corporate with no ecommerce functionality is still indirectly encouraging users to buy a product or service, but the difference is that they are unable to do this through the site itself.

Personal

Personal websites are taking a huge form now. They are not blogs but more like a digital CV where your creativity can be showcased. These sites can serve a major part in personal branding. It has a huge impact on how people value you.

Educational

Have you heard of Udemy and Course era? These are one of the many educational websites out there in the internet. Educational websites use articles, videos, images, games structured as courses to educate their audience. These might be geared towards fun learning for children, or offer courses to adults.

Media and entertainment

This category websites gets your day started off. Media websites are regularly updated for content on current affairs, weather, sports and entertainment. News sites like CNN and entertainment sites like MSN fall into this category. The content on media sites is dynamic, meaning it’s updated regularly. Big media sites will publish multiple articles and videos every single day.

Blog

Blogs became popular a little before social media profiles took the center stage. A blog is a website that’s regularly updated, run by one person or a small group. Blogs are normally written in a laid-back style. Even if sites are way above blogs, it’s still a handy extra feature to add interest and authority to your site if you’re committed to keeping it fresh and updated! Professional blogging has developed massively. When personal stories get their places in social media, professional stories get placed on blog.

Forums

Anyone who wants to talk with their friends, make their own community, or create a community themselves may want to setup their own forum. Forums are a great tool to have discussions with other readers through the internet about any particular topic. Heard of Quora and CCI? They are types of general forums where pretty much anything can be discussed. But there are technical forums and a lot more where only specific industry related queries are discussed.

Brochure

If a website could be as simple as a business card then a brochure is exactly that. It is like an online business card. Brochure websites typically only have a few pages like a homepage displaying contact information, an ‘about us’ page and perhaps a couple of photos of their work. The content on these websites is generally pretty ‘static’.

Portal

Portal websites, bring together information from lots of different sites and present them in one place.Early examples include Aol and Yahoo, who offer emails, forums, search engines and news all through their homepage. Portals can also be for internal use in a school, university or company, allowing students or employees to access their emails, alerts and files all in one place. It’s a centralized place to share news, training and updates, and for students or employees to access their emails and files.

If you have been thinking for a while now about getting yourself a website or even if you haven’t thought about it yet, start thinking as it is high time now. Building your dream blog or your dream website is now a breeze. At ThoughtBoat we offer great functional sites at competent prices because we understand how important a website is to you and your business.

Read More Add comment

Web Content - Making Recipe

By ThoughtBoat

Read

0 Comments

Did you know that on an average a person surfing through the internet has an alarming attention span of just 8 seconds? That means if the web content you have put up is not convincing within 8 seconds, the reader just simply goes onto the next tab. Though not pleasant this is the hard truth. Good web content is your best employee — in fact consumers consider trust in a company based on the web content they put up also bad content negatively affects their trust in a brand. Our content and SEO experts share with you some tips and tricks to nail down perfect web content that get the right attention among thousand others.

1. Stick to your goals
Do not beat round the bush with fancy statements and mere promises. Keep in mind what is to be communicated across and stick to it however tempting fancy statements are.

2. Get inspired
If you do not have the crux needed for great content or even if you have, it is always wise to check out industry trends and what other people are up to. Getting inspired does a huge lot of magic in crafting perfect web content because at Thought Boat we always believe Inspiration is where creativity starts. After tip: Inspiration is fine but plagiarism is not. So please keep your copy paste instinct under control.

3. Calls-To-Action (CTAs)
A CTA is an inviting button, link, image, or some other sort of graphic that encourages a site visitor to become a participant or customer. If you write great content but don’t have a call-to-action, your content will be far less effective at converting visitors to consumers.

4. Follow ‘Being Human’
Do you like reading a dictionary or your friend’s travel story on FB? Got the point? Be down to earth and friendly in your language. No one likes content that sounds like it was narrated by a robot. Your site visitors will appreciate the personal connection with you and be more likely to engage with your calls-to-action.

5. Outline
Outline your message or at least have a strong, organized idea as to what to write on each web page else your content will be one among thousands of other web contents that struggles to retain a reader till the end of the article.

6. Answer market needs
Provide ample justifications on why anybody should choose you or your products. No one knows your product better than you do so go ahead be assertive and explain how your product can help people.

7. One message - One paragraph Rule
Each reader’s time is important so keep things organized. Don’t fit in more than one idea in a paragraph else it will look clumsy.

8. Bullet points, numbered lists, headers, etc.
These will help break up the text and make it look more interesting and readable. Highlighting is important. This will ensure the content on your web pages can be scanned quickly, while still getting the message across. Display important information first and prominently. Most site visitors only take a few seconds before leaving a page, so you want to make sure they see what they’re looking for without feeling like they have to read everything.

9. Don’t use images that you don’t have a legal right to use
Finding random images on the internet and sticking them up on your site without permission or purchase can result in you getting sued. So unless getting hit with a lawsuit sounds fun to you, don’t use images that aren’t yours.

10. Review your work
You have spent hours on researching and drafting an article, what harm does it do to read it once and check for spelling or omission errors? This will in fact enable you to assess if your article has come up the way you had wanted it.

After knowing these tips you are ready to get started. Now that you can come up with a great piece of work it might not get the results you had wanted it to fetch. Ok that is because what is great is not actually great if it does not pop up in the first page of the google search engine. This is where SEO comes up. SEO is basically pushing your web content to the top links of search engine. Don’t worry we can help you with that. If you face any difficulty in writing effective content or have trouble with putting your message across any media we can offer our expertise to help you reap benefits.

Read More Add comment

Web App - Is it different from Website

By ThoughtBoat

Read

0 Comments

Every day we use google, facebook, Wikipedia, youtube and a lot more but we have never stopped to think if they are web sites or web apps. Are they similar or do they mean two different things? Confusing right? Yes it is until you read this article. ‘Do I even need to know this?’ You might ask. To be honest, it shouldn’t bother you until and unless you are planning to hire a web development company to develop your own. But if you are, then having the knowledge about the websites and web application can be handy to define the scope and requirements of the project, skills and expertise required and even the technology to be used.

Websites

Web sites are a way of showcasing a business online. It basically portrays online presence and gives access to information. Nowadays websites are basic needs for a business and more like a visiting card. Even more if you want your website to impress better then it serves as a marketing tool and captures visitor’s attention.

Websites previously were just static pages with content and media that anyone could access by visiting the URL address. The reason these websites are called static is that the content remains the same each and every time a visitor accesses it. And any changes in the page could be made by adding the content in the HTML.

On the contrary modern websites use more than just HTML. Languages like CSS and JavaScript are prominently used and even there is a heaven-high and hell-deep of difference in the designs. But purpose largely remains the same, mostly websites are for information.

Web Apps

Traditionally software was installed on personal computers. With internet and web technology came a new concept of catering software through the internet. These software are called web applications.

The term “Web Application” itself makes the things clear – it is just like any other software or mobile application which is catered over the internet and used in the browser. But unlike websites, they provide more functionalities and features. Every day we use numerous web applications such as Gmail, Google Drive, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

A web application can be as simple as a calculator but can also get as complex as data analytic software like Google Analytics. Some of the core benefits that have made web applications so popular are:

No installation Web apps run in a browser; no need of installing to the device.
Can run across different OS Device segregated in different OS systems is a barrier for the software.
Web Applications can be accessed from any device from anywhere.

Read More Add comment

Web Layout - Fixed or Fluid or Responsive?

By ThoughtBoat

Read

0 Comments

In the web world, three words can mean or can take the form of an entire day’s discussion. Want to know what’s the big deal?

Static or Fixed layout

This kind of layout does not change based on browser width. That is how it got its name. It uses a preset page size. This is how web pages were traditionally built for many years until modern influences like media queries and responsive design were introduced around the start of the 2010.

Different devices will treat a static page layout in various ways, so the rendered page could be slightly unpredictable. For example, on a desktop browser, if the window is too small horizontally, then the page will be cut off and horizontal scroll bars will be displayed. On a mobile device like an iPhone, the page will be scaled automatically, allowing the user to zoom in on points of interest (provided that no metatags override this default behavior).

Nowadays no website is built in this layout, because it means that the mobile experience will require a separate website.

Fluid or Liquid layout

Fluid is in between static and responsive. The proportion remains fixed but the layout changes according to the size of the screen. Typically a liquid layout will use percentages instead of pixels, but any relative unit of measurement will work, such as ems.

A liquid layout often will fill the width of the page, no matter what the width of the browser might be. Liquid layouts don’t require as much thought as a responsive design, but there are some major drawbacks at very large or very small browser widths. If the browser is very wide, some content might be stretched too far. On large screens, a single paragraph might run across the page on a single line. Conversely, a multi-column layout on a small screen could be too crowded for the content.

Responsive layout

This is the queen of all, yes this is what is in trend now and all layouts are developed with responsive design in mind. A responsive page layout uses both relative units and media queries, ostensibly combining the ideas of a liquid layout and an adaptive layout.

As the browser increases or decreases in width, a responsive layout will flex just like a liquid layout. However, if the browser goes beyond certain widths defined by media query breakpoints, then the layout will change more dramatically to accommodate a wide or narrow width.

Typically, responsive designs are built using a mobile-first approach. That means the mobile layout is designed first, and then as the browser becomes wider on tablets and desktops, the designer will find ways to expand the mobile layout. This tends to create better experiences overall, because it’s easier to expand a design than to try and simplify a large layout for mobile screens.

So what is the conclusion, like quoted earlier responsive layout out shines the competition. There are few more layouts that are remote and not popular like elastic layouts. Whatever be the layout, all that web designers need is a beautiful and effective design that can impress people on all screen sizes.

Read More Add comment

Subscribe to: Comments ( Atom )

Latest Posts

Website - A Talk on Types

Web Content - Making Recipe

Web App - Is it different from Website

Web Layout - Fixed or Fluid or Responsive?

Recent Posts

Facebook