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A Complete Guide to Mobile App Development Services in 2025
In 2025, mobile apps are no longer just a luxury—they are a business imperative. With billions of smartphone users worldwide and increasing demand for digital convenience, businesses across every industry are investing in mobile app development services to stay competitive, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth.
In this comprehensive guide, we explore everything you need to know about mobile app development services in 2025—from types and technologies to trends and how to choose the right development partner.
Why Mobile App Development Matters in 2025
Today’s consumers expect seamless, fast, and intuitive digital experiences. Whether it’s shopping, banking, booking appointments, or engaging with content—everything happens on mobile. Businesses that fail to meet these expectations risk falling behind.
Mobile apps provide:
24/7 accessibility for customers
Increased brand engagement
Streamlined operations and processes
Competitive advantage in your industry
Key Types of Mobile App Development
1. Native App Development
Apps built specifically for a single platform—iOS or Android—using platform-specific languages like Swift (iOS) or Kotlin (Android). Native apps offer optimal performance and a superior user experience.
2. Cross-Platform App Development
Using frameworks like Flutter or React Native, developers can create a single codebase that works across both iOS and Android. This approach reduces development time and cost while maintaining good performance.
3. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
PWAs combine the best of web and mobile apps. They run in browsers but behave like native apps, providing offline access, push notifications, and fast loading.
Essential Mobile App Development Services
When partnering with a development company like Taction Software, here are the core services you can expect:
Consulting & Strategy: Defining the app vision, goals, and user journey
UI/UX Design: Crafting engaging and intuitive user interfaces
iOS & Android Development: Building apps for Apple and Android ecosystems
Cross-Platform Development: Creating cost-effective apps for multiple platforms
API & Backend Development: Ensuring seamless data integration and backend support
Quality Assurance & Testing: Verifying performance, security, and usability
App Deployment & Launch: Publishing to App Store and Google Play
Maintenance & Support: Ongoing updates, bug fixes, and performance monitoring
Top Mobile App Development Trends in 2025
Staying ahead means embracing innovation. Here are the top trends shaping mobile app development this year:
AI & Machine Learning Integration: Personalized recommendations, smart search, and predictive analytics
5G-Optimized Applications: Enhanced speed, video streaming, and real-time connectivity
Voice & Chatbot Interfaces: Conversational UIs powered by NLP and AI
Augmented Reality (AR): Enhanced shopping, gaming, and educational experiences
Blockchain: Improved data security and decentralized app (dApp) development
Wearable Integration: Apps for smartwatches, fitness trackers, and healthcare wearables
Choosing the Right Mobile App Development Partner
The success of your mobile app depends heavily on the expertise of your development team. Here’s what to look for:
Proven Portfolio: Look for a company with a track record of delivering diverse, high-quality apps.
Technical Expertise: They should be proficient in the latest frameworks, platforms, and technologies.
Clear Communication: Transparency, timely updates, and active collaboration are key.
Post-Launch Support: Choose a partner who offers maintenance, updates, and scalability options.
Why Taction Software?
At Taction Software, we offer end-to-end mobile app development services tailored to your business needs. From strategy and design to development and support, we build high-performing apps that delight users and drive results.
We combine deep industry experience, agile methodologies, and cutting-edge technologies to create apps that are secure, scalable, and future-ready.
Ready to Build Your Next Mobile App?
If you're planning to develop a mobile app in 2025, now is the perfect time to partner with a trusted development company. Let Taction Software help you bring your vision to life with powerful, user-centric mobile applications.
Taction Software
Contact Us
Usa and India
visit : https://tactionsoftware.com/mobile-application-development/
Mobile :- +1 302-219-0001, +91-7827150289
Email :- [email protected]
Add- Suite D800 25420 Kyukendahl Rd
Tomball Texas USA 77375
Address :- A-83, Sector-63,Noida, India
(UP) -201301
#mobile app development services#mobile app development company#mobile app development agency#Custom Mobile App Development Services
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When Should You Use Progressive Web Apps?
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When Should You Use Progressive Web Apps?
The age of the smartphone opened up a whole new window for businesses to connect with their customers in an interactive way
using apps
.
Because apps allow customers to interact with businesses from anywhere at any time, apps quickly became popular.
Unfortunately, apps are not as exciting to consumers as they were in their early days. This has resulted in app retention rates declining rapidly and, for some brands, their revenue has declined with them.
That’s why progressive web apps are becoming increasingly popular.
What Are Progressive Web Apps?
Progressive web apps (PWAs) are regular web applications/pages designed to look and function like native mobile applications. PWAs use features of web browsers and advanced enhancement strategies to give users a native app-like experience on any device.
In short, a progressive web app fuses the look, feel, and ease of use of an app but with the easy coding of a website.
The Difference Between Native, Hybrid, and Progressive Apps
What’s the difference between native, hybrid, and progressive web apps?
Native Apps
coded to run on a specific platform
require separate codebases and related overhead
can use a device’s native capabilities and hardware to the fullest
Hybrid Apps
rely on frameworks (like Ionic, Cordova, React Native, etc.) instead of programming in the platform’s programming language
can share (at least partially) codebase in most scenarios
can use most of a device’s native capabilities and hardware
Progressive Web Apps
a hybrid between websites and apps
designed to run a single codebase for all platforms (web, mobile, desktop)
limited access to a device’s native capabilities, but enough for most use cases
Advantages of Progressive Web Apps
Despite being limited in tapping into a device’s native capabilities, are there any advantages of using progressive web apps?
There certainly are. Here are some of the most prominent:
Reliability : They can be used offline and provide a stable experience despite network conditions.
Security : User information is secure on PWAs as every progressive web app must have SSL certificates.
Speed : Thanks to caching through
service workers
and tapping into a device’s resources, progressive web apps offer a fast and seamless experience.
Engagement : PWAs integrate well with the web and devices, making them easy to interact with.
Another significant advantage of PWAs is users can save them on their home screens without the hassle of downloading. This allows the PWA to load faster the next time it’s used.
Why Should I Use Progressive Web Apps?
One reason users love apps is they generally offer better experiences than web applications. However, developing and maintaining native apps is a lot of work, not to mention the expenses involved.
If your users use different platforms (Android, iOS, etc.), you have to code your app for each platform.
PWAs, however, don’t require you to code for each platform. They were designed with the philosophy of “code once, use everywhere.” Once you code your PWA, it can be used in-browser (as a website or web app), on desktops, and on mobile devices.
This often results in better performance, improved retention rates, and, ultimately, an affordable application offering your users a positive user experience (UX).
When Should You Use a Progressive Web App?
One reason brands develop native apps is to cater to users who return to their websites to perform specific actions frequently. Apps make it easier for these functions to be performed without going to the brand’s website. They also have characteristics that make them fun to use.
You can use progressive apps in the same situations native apps are used—for applications you expect your visitors to visit frequently.
Other times you should consider using a progressive web app are when:
You don’t have the budget for a full-fledged app.
You need to get to market fast.
Proper indexing on search engines is crucial.
Cross-platform compatibility is essential to your business.
You need to reach a wider audience.
If you meet any of the criteria above, chances are you need a progressive app.
Progressive Web App Examples
Now that you know what a progressive web app is, let’s look at some examples.
Uber
Uber, the ride-hailing company, saw an opportunity to expand their customer base by creating a progressive web app to make it easier and faster to request rides. The PWA works well regardless of location, network speed, or device.
Flipboard
For people who love keeping abreast of news and trends across the globe, Flipboard is a must-have. To increase their reach and enable users to have access to their favorite online magazine, Flipboard developed a PWA.
Reduced data usage enables users to enjoy a fast, sleek experience even in places with poor network coverage.
Starbucks
In a bid to drive more online orders, Starbucks invested in a progressive web app. Even when offline, customers can browse the menu and add items to their carts. Once back online, they can then place their orders.
Any industry can use progressive web apps. If you can serve your customers via a website or an app, you can also serve them using a PWA.
9 Reasons to Use a Progressive Web App
Thanks to the many advantages that PWAs offer, there are myriad reasons why you should use one. Let’s look at nine of the most common ones.
1. You Don’t Have a Developed App Yet
Because progressive web apps are easy and cheaper to develop than typical apps, you could have yours running in no time. If you’re starting from scratch, you’re probably better off starting with a progressive web app as it will get to market faster.
Since it has most of your website’s core functionalities, you’ll still be able to offer your customers good service and a positive user experience.
2. Reduce Bounce Rates
One of the main reasons for high bounce rates is a sluggish website or app. Users don’t want to wait long for a page to load.
That’s another great reason to use progressive web apps.
Progressive web apps help
reduce bounce rates
as they offer users a fast and seamless experience. Take, for example, Superbalist. By implementing a progressive web app, they reduced their bounce rate by
a whopping 21 percent
.
3. Increase Time Spent on Pages
If you want to increase the time users spend on your pages, a progressive web app is one way you can do that.
Users will often abandon your page if it loads slowly. Because a progressive web app is lightweight and doesn’t put a lot of demand on a device’s resources, it loads pages fast.
Transitioning to another page is also seamless.
This can result in users spending more time on your pages. For example, Pinterest invested in a progressive web app for mobile experiences, which resulted in time spent on page
increasing by 40 percent
.
4. Increase Speed and Reliability
Because of the lack of heavy coding and service workers’ use, progressive web apps can load information faster than traditional websites. Since fast loading times can be the difference between a conversion and a drop-off, offering users a quick way to interact with your brand is essential.
Apart from speed, PWAs are generally more reliable than both traditional websites and apps. By design, there are fewer things that could go wrong. Because they’re network-independent and platform agnostic, they should work every time on any platform.
5. Increase Conversions
One of the main drivers of conversions in today’s highly competitive landscape is UX. Progressive web apps rank highly among platforms that offer the best UX.
If
increasing conversions
is important to you, take a cue from AliExpress, who increased their conversion rate for first-time users
by 104 percent
.
6. You Want to Optimize for Search Engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the main pillars of digital marketing. Every marketer is always looking for strategies to make their brand more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive organic traffic to their website.
This is one area in which progressive web apps outshine native apps.
Native apps, because they’re hosted on the users’ devices, aren’t discoverable online. However, because progressive apps are essentially websites, they’re seen by search engines.
But discoverability is not the only advantage PWAs have over native apps. Other advantages include that progressive web apps are:
indexable
fast
linkable
designed with UX in mind
If you want to boost your SEO while giving your users a native app-like experience, a progressive web app may be the solution.
7. You Want to Focus on Mobile Users
Research shows that
mobile devices drive 65 percent
of all e-commerce traffic. If you’re in an industry that relies heavily on mobile traffic, you’ll undoubtedly want to leverage progressive web apps.
Because your users don’t have to download an app, you could enjoy better retention and engagement rates.
While progressive web apps work on any platform, they’re notably useful on mobile devices. Mobile devices have less ability to load large websites or heavy apps, which results in slow load speeds and poor UX.
Progressive web apps solve this problem by offering users the same experience without demanding their device’s resources.
8. Improve Client Retention
There are close to
three million apps
on Google’s Play store. Unfortunately, for most of the apps downloaded, only
25 percent of users
use any given app after the day they downloaded it.
App abandonment results in a huge waste of time and resources for the developers and businesses sponsoring those apps’ development.
Again, this is where progressive web apps can save the day.
A few reasons why progressive web apps help retain users more are:
Easy onboarding: You can simply add the progressive web app to your home screen. No registration is required.
No need to download: Because there’s no need to download a PWA, users don’t have to worry about storage space on their devices. Many
apps get uninstalled
because of this.
Push notifications: Like those from native apps, these keep users informed of any updates in your business.
Progressive web apps are an excellent way of keeping your customers engaged with your brand.
9. No Monetization Limitations
One of the most significant limitations of native apps is that Google or Apple must process all in-app financial transactions. No third parties are allowed. For some businesses, this arrangement can be limiting.
With progressive web apps, on the other hand, you’re not bound by such regulations. You can choose any payment processor of your choice, just as you would on your website. You’re also able to monetize your PWA in any way you wish.
Conclusion
Progressive web apps are the future of web browsing. More than that, they could be the future of
customer experience
in the e-commerce world.
That’s why you must invest in developing one for your businesses.
With many advantages ranging from ease of development to improved SEO to creating
exceptional user experiences
, investing in a progressive web app may be worth the time.
Have you developed a progressive web app for your business?
See How My Agency Can Drive Massive Amounts of Traffic to Your Website
SEO – unlock massive amounts of SEO traffic. See real results.
Content Marketing – our team creates epic content that will get shared, get links, and attract traffic.
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Go to Source Author: Neil Patel
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Architecting a Progressive Web App using React Native: Step by Step Guidance!

A Progressive Web Application (PWA) is a disruptive innovation that integrates the functionality of a native mobile app and the usability of a responsive website. Several business brands have harnessed the goodies of PWAs to reach unprecedented heights of success.
Take a look at the success stories of the following brands on account of PWA adoption, as published by the online research portal “Cloud Four”.
‘Flipkart’ experienced a 40% increase in the re-engagement rate.
‘5miles’ were able to reduce the bounce rate by 50% and boost the conversion rate by 30%.
With their new PWA, ‘Tinder’s’ load times decreased from 11.91 sec to 4.69 sec and also, the engagement rate shot up. Besides, the PWA is 90% smaller as compared to their native Android app.
‘Twitter’ witnessed a 65% spike in the pages per session, a 75% increase in Tweets, and a 20% decrease in the bounce rate.
‘Forbes’ experienced a 43% increase in the sessions per user, a 20% boost in the ad viewability, and a 100% spike in the engagement rate.
Thus, it is evident that progressive web app development is successfully fulfilling the demanding user expectations and challenging business requirements of modern times.
So, if you too are one of those planning to build a PWA, the obvious question that will crop up in your mind is, “Which framework is best suited for PWA development?” Many, businesses and corporates prefer React Native for end-to-end PWA development and hire efficient React Native developers for the same.
This blog guides you through crafting a PWA using the React Native Framework. But before we commence, let me enlighten you on some crucial facts about PWAs and the reasons to choose React Native Development.
Progressive Web App (PWA): Unique Strengths
The usual websites can be conveniently accessed from any device or browser, but they fail to leverage the platform-specific hardware that ensures high-performance. Native apps, on the other hand, can completely utilize the platform-specific hardware and software capacities to optimize performance but are available only for the particular platform for which they are designed. But, progressive web applications combine the best of both worlds and are known for delivering a native app-like experience in the browser. The distinct capabilities of this futuristic software solution are as follows.
Delivers a native-like experience.
Loads instantly and promptly respond to user inputs.
Integrates push notifications for maximizing user engagement.
Offers a highly responsive UI and consistent UX across mobile phones, tablets, and PCs.
Integrates with users’ devices and utilizes the device capabilities to the fullest for delivering improved performance.
Employs cached data from earlier interactions to provide offline access to content and certain features.
Are easily discoverable and can be installed by simply clicking a pop-up without having to visit the app store.
Possesses cross-platform compatibility and involves a cost-efficient developmental cycle.
Is reliable and secure.
Takes up less storage memory.
Why choose React Native Development for PWA Creation?
React Native is considered to be an apt progressive web app framework as it proves immensely advantageous for developers. Let’s peek into the reasons:
It is a JavaScript library containing multiple in-built packages and ready-to-use plugins.
The ‘create-react-app’ package helps in configuring the app with ready-to-use features. This speeds up development and makes it possible to create a PWA in real-time.
The SW-Precache-Webpack-plugin enables the creation of highly functional PWAs decked up with rich features. Besides, the fact that this plugin is integrated with create-react-app, eases out things further.
Thus, if a PWA is built using React Native, the end-product becomes more progressive with lesser efforts.
Key Steps on Creating a PWA with React Native

Check out the key requirements for PWA creation.
Adoption of a Secure Network Connection
Adopting a secure network connection for PWA creation ensures security and helps you to gain users’ trust. Sometime back, the Google team had declared HTTP web pages as not safe and secure and had advised going for an HTTPS connection that is more secure. So, it is essential that mobile app companies opt for HTTPS connection while developing PWA. For using HTTPS, one can employ service workers, thus, activating home screen installations.
Implementing the “Add to Home Screen” Option
After you serve the web on HTTPS, do not forget to implement the “Add to Home Screen” option for your users. This move is sure to improve the user experience and as such, expedite the conversion rate for your brand. To execute this task you need to add a Web App Manifest or manifest.json file to the PWA.
Employing Web App Manifest
Adding the manifest.json file to the app’s root directory allows the users to install the app on their smartphones effortlessly. It should contain details such as name, icons, description as well as a splash screen for the application. The manifest.json file can either be written by your React Native Developers or created employing a tool. This file consists of metadata in a public folder that controls the app’s visual appearance on the home screen of users.
So, given below are key terms used while coding manifest.json. (Let’s assume that your app’s name is Dizon)
Short_name: The name of the app (Dizon) is displayed when you add it to the users’ home screen.
Name: Browser uses this name when users add the application to their home screen. It is displayed as “Add Dizon to Home Screen.”
Icons: The icon of your app is visible on the users’ home screens.
Start_url: It is the URL that specifies the starting point of the PWA.
Theme_color: It regulates the toolbar color of the users’ browser.
Background color: When the app is launched, the background color of the splash screen can be changed.
Display: This feature enables one to tweak the browser view and you may run the app on a separate window or a full screen.
Implementing Custom Splash Screen
Whenever users launch a PWA on their Android devices, a white screen is displayed till the app is ready for use. This white blank screen is visible for a longer time, hence implementing a custom splash screen is important to get a better user experience. Custom splash screen enables you to employ an icon displaying your brand and a custom background for the PWA, imparting a native-like look and feel.
Usage of Pusher to add Real-time Functionalities
A React Native App Development Company should employ Pusher to add Real-time functionalities in their PWA. This is so because Pusher simplifies the task of binding the UI interactions to the events which are triggered by the server or the client. The setup process involves:
Logging in to the dashboard and building a new app
Copying the app_id, secret, key, cluster and then store these for future usage.
Setting up a server in node.js which will assist in triggering events using Pusher.
Creating a file called ‘server.js’ in the project’s root directory with the required content. Further details can be viewed in this linked content by Pusher
Integrating a Service Worker
A PWA development company needs to integrate a service worker - a script running in the background that does not interact with the actual app. Its function is to regulate installations, push notifications, caching, etc. Service Workers play a vital role by intercepting the network requests in the background and caching information to facilitate offline usage.
Auditing the Code with Lighthouse
Auditing the code with Google’s automated open-source tool called Lighthouse will help a Web App Development Company in monitoring the performance of a web application. This tool runs multiple tests for examining the performance, accessibility, etc. of a web app and generates a report for the same. These reports prove useful in fixing the weak aspects of the PWA like performance, best practices, accessibility, etc. Additionally, the Lighthouse plugin guides on resolving the issues and thus, improving performance.
Final Verdict:
React Progressive Web Applications help businesses across diverse domains establish their digital footprints successfully. In today’s smartphone dominated world, PWAs have become an absolute necessity for businesses to gain loyal and happy customers. Therefore, if you are planning to develop a web app or a website, it is advisable to deploy the same as a PWA as it adds convenience to the users and hence improves the user engagement and experience.
I hope this blog was beneficial.
Do share your opinions and experiences on PWAs in the comments section.
#React Native App Development Company#React Native Developers#react native development#progressive web app development#PWA development company#Web App Development Company
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Cross Platform Mobile Apps – Advantages & Tools In 2020
Cross-platform mobile software improvement is the technique of growing mobile app development companies in Singapore that may be posted or deployed on multiple platforms using a single code base without the need to build an application on different platforms using native technology. At first, the complexity of growing mobile packages made it hard to construct a backend that works on more than one platform. Although it's far highly-priced and time-consuming, growing local programs for every mobile running system (OS) is easy and easy.
Read more-
Upcoming Mobile App Development Trends In 2020 & Beyond
Benefits from the development of cross-platform apps:
Some of the main advantages of cross-platform development are:
Re-usable code: Cross-platform building tools enable the development of your own code base and allow multiple platforms and operating systems to use the same code base, without developing a different code for each platform.
Effectiveness of Cost: Cross-platform allows you to reduce costs, like working on various versions of your application and replacing it with one team with multiple teams. Most cross-platform tools create free of charge and provide more features with paid subscriptions.
Convenience: Cross-platform tool development ensures that you have to learn several programming languages while offering an alternative to all the different technologies.
Maintainable Code: whenever you update or modify your application, the code will be synchronised and reflected on all applications across various platforms after you update your application.
Market Reach: When you publish your application on multiple platforms like Android and iOS, a broader network will be broadcast and the chance of a larger user base will improve, and hence higher incomes and ROIs.
Now we're going to discuss some of the most important and popular tools to develop cross-platform applications.
Building Mobile Apps Popular Cross-Platform Tools in 2020:
Xamarin
Xamarin is one of the best platforms to build applications for different mobile devices such as Windows, iOS It includes native API access, platform-wide native user interface and native performance. Renowned brands such as UPS and Fox Sports Channel have used them to build mobile applications.
Appcelerator
Accelerator is a cross-platform platform for development that provides developers with the opportunity to write JavaScript with its composite MVC framework. The use of JavaScript helps because this is known to most software developers.
This tool also provides customers with a virtual private cloud system that is wonderful when working with sensitive data from a company. In addition, the organisation has devoted infrastructure, overall performance control and monitoring, and product analytics.
Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap is well known in the software development industry as a platform development tool. The Adobe-owned tool currently depends on Apache Cardova's open source project and is easy to use, free of charge and that is why it’s popular. This framework allows you to access the PhoneGap Toolset, so you can quickly enter the global market.
CSS, HTML and JavaScript are utilised by PhoneGap to develop cross-platform apps using a single code base. When app development is complete, no local SDKs must be managed. Only your entire work on the cloud will the PhoneGap Build service take responsibility for everything.
React Native
React Native platform tool allows the native or hybrid application to develop, using the programming language JavaScript. The best thing with React Native is that with other API frameworks we can perform video and photo editing, and developers can also create modules in programming languages like C, Java and Swift. This tool describes your source c
Sencha
For the implementation of cross-platforms like Sencha Animator, Sencha Architect, etc., Sencha offers a range of tools. Exit JS5 is a key business product that allows the developers team to develop applications for HTML5 that can also be converted into native PhoneGap applications. This allows its applications to function on both tactile devices and browsers to provide great user experiences.
The focused HTML5 approach enables applications to operate both on browsers and on modern, touch-based devices. Some of the MNC companies that have used the Sencha tool include Samsung, Google, and CNN.ode and will modify it in a short span to native elements. Instagram and Facebook popular social media platforms used this tool to create native applications.
RedHat
The company purchased a Red Hat platform for € 5 63,5 million, formerly known as FeedHenry. RedHat provides a mobile backend that enables users to build and run mobile apps in Google Plays and in iOS app stores as a cross-app development platform and service
The company also cooperated with several technology giants, including Rackspace and AWS, with major customers such as Airline Aer Lingus.
Koni Quantum
Koni Quantum is one of the easiest ways for multiplatform mobile application development companies in Singapore to be built. The best way to select from many is to have a visual canvas with integrated components. Koni can also be used in the improvement and development of existing apps.
Koni Quantum is great for developers with less knowledge. They provide cloud structures with a single click and guided tours during the entire development process. It is easy to consolidate and, lastly, to improve productivity, it will be placed on a visual data map.
Ionic
Ionic is a powerful cross-platform tool with HTML5 SDKs that allows you to mainly develop mobile and web based, native feel applications with trendy technologies such as CSS, JavaScript and HTML. This SDK mainly focuses on the appliance 's appearance and interaction between UI components. This framework provides typography, interactive paradigms, preconceived components and great topics.
You will use several APIs, including Async, Virtual DOM, JSX, and TypeScript, the right match for the PWA (The progressive web app). This tool is easily accessible and easy to use. Some of Ionic 's famous applications are Nationwide, Nationwide, Pacific, etc.
Conclusion
Yes, to reach a large number of people, your business application should be available on as many platforms as possible. But it is really time-consuming and costly to create attractive and innovative applications for every platform.
Don't think much, don't think! Don't think much! Just use the top cross-platform tools mentioned above to build Window, iOS and Android mobile apps. The cross-platform application development tools are ideal, as I stated earlier, to save time, costs and undue effort.
Cross-platform developers of top mobile app development companies in Singapore such as DxMinds Technologies Inc offer popular mobile apps on Android, iOS, Windows and other trending platforms.
Contact us today! please feel free to contact! We are ready to transform your idea into a revolutionary mobile application.
Source page-Cross Platform Mobile Apps – Advantages & Tools In 2020
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How Massively Does Google’s AMP Impacts Your Online Marketing?
Google’s AMP has been a hot topic amongst digital marketers across the globe. It has created ripples across news biggies, web owners and SEO experts and Google seem to be in no mood to tone down its pressure on websites to adopt it.
What Is Google AMP?
Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) is a method developed by Google that helps search content load up to 10 times faster than the traditional model. It has a specific type of HTML called AMP HTML which strips down the content. Due to this, the users will see articles that contain only basic text and images with respect to their searches. AMP enabled content is indicated by a lightning symbol against it.
AMP’s Importance For SEO
Google has always been clear on the aspects which decide the placing of content in its search engine rankings pages (SERPs). Page speed and mobile readiness are the most important aspects among others which impact the ranking of a page. With faster page load speed and mobile friendly content, you are bound to get more traction on your web pages.
Google is not merely a search engine that directs users to different websites. Google has moulded itself to be the company that provides answers to user queries. “Featured Snippets” has been the method of providing answers to questions. However, it works well only with simple questions. Like it will give an answer to the question Who won the 2016 U.S. presidential election? But, if you ask Why did Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential elections? Then, it will look into the depth of articles and a new page will load which may be slow on mobile devices. Google’s AMP project is an effort in this direction to provide you links that quickly load straight away in SERPs.
Positive Impact of AMP on Online Marketing
1. Higher Ranking for AMP Enabled Articles
AMP enabled articles are displayed at the top of a Google search. This differentiates them from the clutter. Currently, they are displayed as a swipeable horizontal merry-go-round. The paid option is not available as of now but you can expect it in the future.
2. Google’s AMP is for Everyone
Facebook has a restriction which allows only a handful of publishers to participate in its Instant Articles section. But, Google has no such restriction. Anyone with a little knowledge can format his/her content to be accessed by a huge number of readers and that too at a lightning speed.
3. AMP Is Open Source
Google’s brightest and best developers are not the only people who can contribute to AMP. It’s open source and anyone with a bright idea can contribute to it. The publishing world is constantly changing and Google plans to adapt to this world more readily.
4. Paid Impressions Will Increase
The common tendency of users after seeing AMP enabled content is to click back on the SERP to see what all is on offer. This will have a positive impact on the paid search impressions in coming times.
5. AMP Analytics Are Coming Up
A lot of analytics giants like Adobe Analytics, ComScore, Chartbeat, Parse.ly etc. have already started developing analytical services to provide performance analysis to publishers. This will help publishers to understand how well their AMP enabled content is doing and using this analysis they can implement necessary changes.
If your website is already receiving a great deal of mobile traffic, then Google’s AMP is something you should seriously consider. It’s a must for a blog, a news site and a recipe website. For an ecommerce website it will be an exciting experiment with Google’s AMP. They can test it out on one of its product category. However, the real strategic choice of an ecommerce website should always be PWA (Progressive Web Apps).
Get in touch with our experts here at Web Designing Services in Aurora, CO to know more about Google’s AMP and how you can use it to boost up your website performance.
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How to make separate Work and Personal Profiles with the New Microsoft Edge on Beyonce's Internet
I'm a long time Chrome user but have been slowly finding myself using the new Edge (Edgium?) and am now basically living in it full time.
Why?
My work use O365/M365 logins and it is great with a "Work profile" and "Personal profile" that keeps EVERYTHING separate.
It even has a "open link as Work/Personal" right click menu that I use WAY more often than I would have thought.
It'll auto switch you to Work or Personal logins when you end up getting a OneDrive link or are logging into Azure.
Runs on my last Windows 7 machine through my Windows 10 machines, and <GASP> since it syncs everything AND has work/personal profiles I use it on my iPhone 11 Max.
But the main reason? I really like the way it deals with PWAs - Progressive Web Apps. Basically "make this website an app." I'll pretend if you pretend. You can use Outlook, Twitter, Gmail, Teams, TONS of websites as apps that are no-install. They all still run in Edge (with the Chromium heart) but they are pinned to your taskbar and/or start menu. A bunch of folks on my team legit don't install Office or Teams anymore. They use all of Office.com as a PWA. I was surprised but it works.
Here's some of my installed PWAs/apps:
If I visit Twitter.com for example and click the Circle with the Plus inside it in the URL bar, I'll see this.
Once it's "installed" I can pin it and run it and it looks like this in the taskbar. Four of these apps are PWAs with Edge. Gmail's icon is lame and old looking. They should fix that for their PWA.
Lovely.
Making custom Pinned Edge icons with Profiles
I mentioned profiles before. Here's mine. I have no idea why I bothered to hide the emails.
The picker is nice, but I actually wanted TWO DIFFERENT EDGES pinned to my Taskbar. A Work and a Personal Edge. I find it easier to compartmentalize and easier than switching.
UPDATE: It seems as of a recent version of Edge you can just open Edge the usual way, switch to the Profile you want, then right click the running Edge in your Taskbar and "Pin to Taskbar" and you'll get your custom Edge with the Profile Directory switch correctly configured! Super convenient. That means the manual steps below are not needed unless you want to understand the internals, add a custom switch (which can also be done from Properties), or apply a custom icon.
Right click your Desktop and say New Shortcut from the right click menu.
Put this in the location box above but change USERNAME to the right one for YOUR folder structure. And note --profile-directory. You can find your Profile folders in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge SxS\User Data. Mine are Profile 1 and 2, where 1 is my first Personal one and 2 is Work. Check yours and do the right thing. Note also the msGuidedSwitchAllowed switch that is optional. That tells you if you want Edge to suggest another profile if you visit a website that you really need your Work (or anotherr profile) logged in for.
"C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge SxS\Application\msedge.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 2" --enable-features=msGuidedSwitchAllowed
Paste this in and hit Next, then Name the shortcut. If you like, use an Icon Editor and make a custom icon overlay for your work or personal Edge so you can tell the difference! I like Liquid Icon for simple editing or Greenfish Icon Editor.
I thought about using the Microsoft logo as an overlay for work but instead chose Beyoncé, so it's Edge for Werk.
Since it's a custom profile it can have a custom icon. Edge will make one for you you can use with YOUR face in your Profile X folder as mentioned above. Now my Desktop has two Edge icons, just like I like it.
I can also have the Canary (early builds), Dev version, or Stable Edge pinned. Lots of choices.
This makes it easy for me to run and keep track of what context I'm running in when I'm using a personal machine for Work.
Also note if you go to edge://settings/profiles/multiProfileSettings you can decide which profile a new URL external link will open with! You can also turn off Auto profile switching if you like.
All this, plus PWAs has made my browsing on Beyoncé's Internet quite nice lately.
Sponsor: Have you tried developing in Rider yet? This fast and feature-rich cross-platform IDE improves your code for .NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core, Xamarin, and Unity applications on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
© 2020 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.
How to make separate Work and Personal Profiles with the New Microsoft Edge on Beyonce's Internet published first on http://7elementswd.tumblr.com/
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PWA vs. Native App: a Side-by-Side Comparison
Have you noticed an “Add To Home Screen” notification while you were browsing websites on your smartphone?
If you clicked on it, you would see a shortcut on your device’s home screen just like a native app does. Yet the site sits bookmarked alongside all other apps. The only oddity is that you haven’t downloaded anything from app stores. This is how PWAs work.
In this article, we will dig into application development software Progressive Web Apps and native apps, bump their heads together, and draw comparisons to determine which technology is the winner of the contest: tried-and-true native applications or brand new progressive ones.
Without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Native Apps: A Quick Overview
A native app is a software program coded in a particular programming language that is created for use on a specific device or platform (Android, Windows, or iOS).
On the tech side, in order to build a native app, developers make use of dedicated frameworks and programming languages. For instance, they employ the combination of Kotlin and Java for creating Android apps, while React native and Swift are commonly used for iOS development. Thus, a native app is developed at least twice: once for iOS and the other time for Android so that a user has access to the app regardless of what their mobile OS is.
Once built, the app should be submitted to Google Play or/and AppStore to ensure that it is set up to each store’s standards. This process can take several months.
Progressive Web Apps: A Quick Overview
Progressive Apps that are built with modern frameworks such as React.js or Angular, give websites the look and feel of regular smartphone apps when accessing them on a mobile web browser with no need to be downloaded from stores.
This makes Progressive Apps:
● fast ● reliable ● responsive ● secure ● easy to install ● discoverable for search engines ● accessible without the Internet ● able to send push notifications ● able to provide access to hardware and software within a user’s device such as a camera, mic, or GPS.
Kindly note that a PWA has a single database for all platforms. The app basically works as a responsive site on desktops or as a native app on mobile devices. Because it doesn’t require a download, users may have no idea that they are using a progressive app.
The solution was introduced by Google in 2015. Right off the bat, the biggest brands such as Lancome, Adidas, END Clothing, Flipkart jumped on the bandwagon and now this relatively new tech is becoming incredibly popular.
But do progressive web apps compare to native ones?
What is the Difference?
In order to choose between a progressive and native app for your company’s mobile presence, it is essential to know the difference between them as far as each development methodology has both its pros and cons. We are going to break out the core differentiators:
● Installation ● Offline Usage ● Push Notification ● Device features ● Updates ● UX/UI ● Cost
1. Installation process
Native apps can be found and installed through either Google Play or App Store. End users can find them by typing popular keywords or a brand name in a store’s search bar. It should be mentioned that native apps are massive. For example, the average Android app file size is 11 MB, while the weight of the average iOS app is 34 MB. Needless to say that in this scenario the installation process can take a lot of time. Besides, most mobile users open the native app once or twice a month. At other times, it remains unused “collecting dust” and taking effective disk space.
A PWA is a different story. Since they are downloaded and run on a mobile browser, they take a little space. Thus, the average PWA file size is just 350 KB so the installation process takes a few seconds and can be done in a click without visiting an app store (as you can see at the screenshot). So, progressive applications are the clear winners in this category.
2. Offline Usage
Some time ago, the ability to access the content users want without an Internet connection remained the prerogative of native apps. But things have changed. The uprise of PWAs can boast the same capabilities. They utilize cached data to provide offline use.
But here is the thing. A progressive app can serve only certain parts of the content to users when their device is disconnected. As such, anything that is not part of the page’s caching system will be unavailable until connectivity is restored. For example, if a user wants to submit a request through the contact form or make a reservation, they will be unable to do so.
In this scenario, native apps win when it comes to offline usage. Even though the PWA technology is caching up some content and allowing users to access it, it is still kiss up to native apps in providing offline functionality.
3. Push Notifications
Push notifications are robust re-engagement tools and the key reasons why many e-commerce website owners are building an app. A successful push notification strategy will result in better engagement with your content.
With native apps, you can build the required functionality from the ground up or integrate it into an app with the help of third-party services such as PushBots or OneSignal.
With PWAs, the push notification functionality can be implemented thanks to service workers. However, the truth is that at this point, this functionality is still limited to Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Mozilla browsers and practically is not available on iOS devices. Of course, you can use push-notification with a PWA to re-engage your Android customers, but you can’t do the same for your iOS users for a while. Native apps are the clear winners in this category as far as they support push-notifications on both Android and iOS devices.
4. Device features
When we say that an app is “native”, that means it is developed to run in a specific software environment. As such, a native iOS app is tailored to Apple’s hardware, as well as incorporates Apple-specific features, say, its Face ID. The same goes for Android and Windows apps.
Thus, native apps can use the:
● GPS ● camera ● fingerprint scanner ● accelerometer ● compass ● contact list ● alarm ● calendar ● mobile payments, and so on.
Progressive apps use HTML, JS, and CSS to build out many of the same features contained in a native app. However, PWAs can’t take advantage of these features to its full extent. Of course, you can make some connections through APIs to improve the UX, but still limitations exist. As such, progressive apps can use the device’s hardware, say, mic or camera, but they can’t take advantage of low-level hardware features like a fingerprint scanner, GPS, or 3D graphics rendering.
5. Updates
The updating process is automated for both native and progressive apps and users can hardly detect that an update occurs. So it is nothing to do for users when it comes to updating web and progressive apps as for the most part, this process will go unnoticed. As such, there are no winners in this category.
6. UX/UI
Native apps are designed taking into account hardware’s specific capacities so that they can make use of a device to its full extent. Thanks to the fact that the interface is smoothly combined with a smartphone, this creates a perfect UX. However, in order to develop an interface for at least two platforms from the ground up, solid knowledge of native mobile languages, for example, Swift or React Native is required.
As far as PWAs are concerned, their code can be reused for different platforms. You are free to use the same functionality and UI template for Android, iOS, desktops. All in all, progressive web apps provide an app-like experience to their users: they look and feel exactly like native apps but the development cost is less.
Full Article is originally published at Allaboutapps Blog
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5 Trending WordPress Development Tools

WordPress is the King of Content Management Systems (CMS's) with in excess of a 61% market share of all online CMS's. One of the many reasons WordPress is a preferred platform is that it’s constantly evolving to incorporate new technologies. However, with so much innovation, keeping up with the latest changes can take some effort. To do the best for your clients it helps to look ahead to understand what web design and development trends are expected to dominate the market. Doing this will make it easier to adapt and gain an advantage over competitors. In this post, I’ll take a look at five WordPress (or ClassicPress) development trends you can expect to see in the upcoming year and explore some examples of how they can be used.
1. Chatbot Integration
Automation and assistive technologies are cropping up in many different forms on websites these days. One of the increasingly popular uses for this technology is chatbots:
These web-based messengers streamline a wide range of administrative and customer support tasks. Chatbots aren’t necessarily anything new. They’ve been around for a while now. However, thanks to the progressive nature of Artificial Intelligence (AI), chatbots are becoming more ‘human-like’ every day. Take a look at this spoof demo I built for Sally Illngworth of Illingworth Media, and hit no in the dialogue for a chuckle. Spoof Illingworth Media Bot As such, businesses are able to use them in many different environments and applications, and will likely continue to do so in the future. In fact, at least 85 percent of businesses are expected to use chatbots by 2022. If you’re interested in exploring chatbots for your client’s sites, we recommend using a tool with easy WordPress integration. For example, you might try using Botsify. You can create a chatbot through its website, and then quickly add it to WordPress sites via a plugin or code. Another option you might consider is the IBM Watson plugin. This tool uses IBM Watson Assistant (previously Watson Conversation) on the IBM Cloud. It has a steeper learning curve but offers nearly unlimited customization potential.
2. Voice Search Optimization
Speaking of AI, voice search is quickly gaining traction as a staple technology for both business and personal purposes. Voice-activated search assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, are becoming more common as well. According to research, by 2020 about half of searches are expected to be voice-activated ones. Moreover, one-third of browsing sessions will happen without a screen at all. Voice shopping, in particular, is expected to disrupt the retail industry over the next few years. The use of smart home speakers is expected to increase from 13 percent to 55 percent. Voice search is also expected to influence and improve SEO. People tend to use more natural language when they are conducting a search query verbally, rather than typing it. As voice search becomes more prevalent, it’s likely that we’re going to see search engines producing results that are more aligned with user intent. To get started with voice search optimization, you might consider trying a voice search plugin. For example, WP Fastest Site Search lets you add voice capabilities to your site:
This plugin replaces the default search widget in WordPress. You can use it to create and customize your own WordPress search user interface, with no custom coding needed.
3. Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology, thanks to its adoption of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, is becoming particularly prevalent in financial sectors. However, we can also expect to see it influence plugin development and content monetization for WordPress sites. It can be particularly useful for enhancing on-site security and improving the speed of payment transactions for e-commerce sites. This year, WordPress launched a new platform with blockchain features called Newspack. The primary purpose of this product is to improve the reliability and security of publishing outlets. It should alleviate many of the challenges that come with back-end site maintenance and development. Additionally, there are plenty of WordPress cryptocurrency themes and plugins you can use. For example, to create a cryptocurrency website you can use a theme such as Cryptic:
As for blockchain plugins, you can use Site Reviews to verify reviews. WordProof Timestamp is also worth checking out, as it enables you to timestamp your WordPress content on any EOSIO blockchain.
4. Augmented and Virtual Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technology have made strides in giving businesses the ability to offer interactive experiences. Both take a person’s physical environment and superimpose it with layers of digital information to mimic real-world scenarios. The IKEA Place app is just one of many examples of how AR and VR can be used to create better experiences for consumers. It lets users place pieces of furniture within a room in their homes via smartphone camera, in order to preview how they will look. Another use is being able to ‘virtually visit’ a location and take a tour without actually being there. For example, realtors can provide clients with 3D VR tours on their websites. WordPress now authorizes VR content with 360-degree images and videos. If you’re interested in adding AR and VR features to your client sites, there are a variety of ways to go about it. You might also consider using the Ozisti Theme:
This theme is one of the easiest ways you can integrate AR functionality with WordPress sites. It was built specifically for e-commerce, but can be used for a wide range of projects.
5. Progressive Web Apps
Last but not least, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) provide an app-like experience to mobile users without actually requiring users to install anything. They work within mobile browsers, and function largely as native apps would. Among the many benefits include: Increased security Faster loading times More flexibility Better user experience PWAs have been around for a while. However, with more people relying on mobile devices, they’re becoming increasingly popular for WordPress applications. Aside from building your own PWA from scratch, you can also use WordPress plugins to turn a site into a PWA. For example, you can check out Super Progressive Web Apps:
Once you install this plugin, users who visit the site from a mobile device can add it to their home screens. Then, each page they visit will be locally stored and available to access offline.
Conclusion
WordPress is constantly adding new features and functionalities. Of course, it’s important to keep up with the latest changes. However, to really enhance your offerings and better serve your clients, it helps to familiarize yourself with the most anticipated trends. In this article, we taken a look at five WordPress development trends you can expect to see grow in popularity in 2020: Chatbot integration Voice search optimization Blockchain technology Augmented and virtual reality technology Progressive web apps If you have questions about any of these WordPress development trends let me know in the comments section below and nif you enjoyed this post, why not check out this related article on otherWordpress Build Trends! Post by Xhostcom Wordpress & Digital Services, subscribe to newsletter for more! Read the full article
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How to make separate Work and Personal Profiles with the New Microsoft Edge on Beyonce's Internet
I'm a long time Chrome user but have been slowly finding myself using the new Edge (Edgium?) and am now basically living in it full time.
Why?
My work use O365/M365 logins and it is great with a "Work profile" and "Personal profile" that keeps EVERYTHING separate.
It even has a "open link as Work/Personal" right click menu that I use WAY more often than I would have thought.
It'll auto switch you to Work or Personal logins when you end up getting a OneDrive link or are logging into Azure.
Runs on my last Windows 7 machine through my Windows 10 machines, and <GASP> since it syncs everything AND has work/personal profiles I use it on my iPhone 11 Max.
But the main reason? I really like the way it deals with PWAs - Progressive Web Apps. Basically "make this website an app." I'll pretend if you pretend. You can use Outlook, Twitter, Gmail, Teams, TONS of websites as apps that are no-install. They all still run in Edge (with the Chromium heart) but they are pinned to your taskbar and/or start menu. A bunch of folks on my team legit don't install Office or Teams anymore. They use all of Office.com as a PWA. I was surprised but it works.
Here's some of my installed PWAs/apps:
If I visit Twitter.com for example and click the Circle with the Plus inside it in the URL bar, I'll see this.
Once it's "installed" I can pin it and run it and it looks like this in the taskbar. Four of these apps are PWAs with Edge. Gmail's icon is lame and old looking. They should fix that for their PWA.
Lovely.
Making custom Pinned Edge icons with Profiles
I mentioned profiles before. Here's mine. I have no idea why I bothered to hide the emails.
The picker is nice, but I actually wanted TWO DIFFERENT EDGES pinned to my Taskbar. A Work and a Personal Edge. I find it easier to compartmentalize and easier than switching.
UPDATE: It seems as of a recent version of Edge you can just open Edge the usual way, switch to the Profile you want, then right click the running Edge in your Taskbar and "Pin to Taskbar" and you'll get your custom Edge with the Profile Directory switch correctly configured! Super convenient. That means the manual steps below are not needed unless you want to understand the internals, add a custom switch (which can also be done from Properties), or apply a custom icon.
Right click your Desktop and say New Shortcut from the right click menu.
Put this in the location box above but change USERNAME to the right one for YOUR folder structure. And note --profile-directory. You can find your Profile folders in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge SxS\User Data. Mine are Profile 1 and 2, where 1 is my first Personal one and 2 is Work. Check yours and do the right thing. Note also the msGuidedSwitchAllowed switch that is optional. That tells you if you want Edge to suggest another profile if you visit a website that you really need your Work (or anotherr profile) logged in for.
"C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge SxS\Application\msedge.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 2" --enable-features=msGuidedSwitchAllowed
Paste this in and hit Next, then Name the shortcut. If you like, use an Icon Editor and make a custom icon overlay for your work or personal Edge so you can tell the difference! I like Liquid Icon for simple editing or Greenfish Icon Editor.
I thought about using the Microsoft logo as an overlay for work but instead chose Beyoncé, so it's Edge for Werk.
Since it's a custom profile it can have a custom icon. Edge will make one for you you can use with YOUR face in your Profile X folder as mentioned above. Now my Desktop has two Edge icons, just like I like it.
I can also have the Canary (early builds), Dev version, or Stable Edge pinned. Lots of choices.
This makes it easy for me to run and keep track of what context I'm running in when I'm using a personal machine for Work.
Also note if you go to edge://settings/profiles/multiProfileSettings you can decide which profile a new URL external link will open with! You can also turn off Auto profile switching if you like.
All this, plus PWAs has made my browsing on Beyoncé's Internet quite nice lately.
Sponsor: Have you tried developing in Rider yet? This fast and feature-rich cross-platform IDE improves your code for .NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core, Xamarin, and Unity applications on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
© 2020 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.
How to make separate Work and Personal Profiles with the New Microsoft Edge on Beyonce's Internet published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/
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Rewriting the Beginner's Guide to SEO
Posted by BritneyMuller
(function($) { // code using $ as alias to jQuery $(function() { // Hide the hypotext content. $('.hypotext-content').hide(); // When a hypotext link is clicked. $('a.hypotext.closed').click(function (e) { // custom handling here e.preventDefault(); // Create the class reference from the rel value. var id = '.' + $(this).attr('rel'); // If the content is hidden, show it now. if ( $(id).css('display') == 'none' ) { $(id).show('slow'); if (jQuery.ui) { // UI loaded $(id).effect("highlight", {}, 1000); } } // If the content is shown, hide it now. else { $(id).hide('slow'); } }); // If we have a hash value in the url. if (window.location.hash) { // If the anchor is within a hypotext block, expand it, by clicking the // relevant link. console.log(window.location.hash); var anchor = $(window.location.hash); var hypotextLink = $('#' + anchor.parents('.hypotext-content').attr('rel')); console.log(hypotextLink); hypotextLink.click(); // Wait until the content has expanded before jumping to anchor. //$.delay(1000); setTimeout(function(){ scrollToAnchor(window.location.hash); }, 1000); } }); function scrollToAnchor(id) { var anchor = $(id); $('html,body').animate({scrollTop: anchor.offset().top},'slow'); } })(jQuery); .hypotext-content { position: relative; padding: 10px; margin: 10px 0; border-right: 5px solid; } a.hypotext { border-bottom: 1px solid; } .hypotext-content .close:before { content: "close"; font-size: 0.7em; margin-right: 5px; border-bottom: 1px solid; } a.hypotext.close { display: block; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; line-height: 1em; border: none; }
Many of you reading likely cut your teeth on Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Since it was launched, it's easily been our top-performing piece of content:
Most months see 100k+ views (the reverse plateau in 2013 is when we changed domains).
While Moz’s Beginner's Guide to SEO still gets well over 100k views a month, the current guide itself is fairly outdated. This big update has been on my personal to-do list since I started at Moz, and we need to get it right because — let’s get real — you all deserve a bad-ass SEO 101 resource!
However, updating the guide is no easy feat. Thankfully, I have the help of my fellow Mozzers. Our content team has been a collective voice of reason, wisdom, and organization throughout this process and has kept this train on its tracks.
Despite the effort we've put into this already, it felt like something was missing: your input! We're writing this guide to be a go-to resource for all of you (and everyone who follows in your footsteps), and want to make sure that we're including everything that today's SEOs need to know. You all have a better sense of that than anyone else.
So, in order to deliver the best possible update, I'm seeking your help.
This is similar to the way Rand did it back in 2007. And upon re-reading your many "more examples" requests, we’ve continued to integrate more examples throughout.
The plan:
Over the next 6–8 weeks, I’ll be updating sections of the Beginner's Guide and posting them, one by one, on the blog.
I'll solicit feedback from you incredible people and implement top suggestions.
The guide will be reformatted/redesigned, and I'll 301 all of the blog entries that will be created over the next few weeks to the final version.
It's going to remain 100% free to everyone — no registration required, no premium membership necessary.
To kick things off, here’s the revised outline for the Beginner’s Guide to SEO:
Click each chapter's description to expand the section for more detail.
Chapter 1: SEO 101
What is it, and why is it important? ↓
What is SEO?
Why invest in SEO?
Do I really need SEO?
Should I hire an SEO professional, consultant, or agency?
Search engine basics:
Google Webmaster Guidelines basic principles
Bing Webmaster Guidelines basic principles
Guidelines for representing your business on Google
Fulfilling user intent
Know your SEO goals
Chapter 2: Crawlers & Indexing
First, you need to show up. ↓
How do search engines work?
Crawling & indexing
Determining relevance
Links
Personalization
How search engines make an index
Googlebot
Indexable content
Crawlable link structure
Links
Alt text
Types of media that Google crawls
Local business listings
Common crawling and indexing problems
Online forms
Blocking crawlers
Search forms
Duplicate content
Non-text content
Tools to ensure proper crawl & indexing
Google Search Console
Moz Pro Site Crawl
Screaming Frog
Deep Crawl
How search engines order results
200+ ranking factors
RankBrain
Inbound links
On-page content: Fulfilling a searcher’s query
PageRank
Domain Authority
Structured markup: Schema
Engagement
Domain, subdomain, & page-level signals
Content relevance
Searcher proximity
Reviews
Business citation spread and consistency
SERP features
Rich snippets
Paid results
Universal results
Featured snippets
People Also Ask boxes
Knowledge Graph
Local Pack
Carousels
Chapter 3: Keyword Research
Next, know what to say and how to say it. ↓
How to judge the value of a keyword
The search demand curve
Fat head
Chunky middle
Long tail
Four types of searches:
Transactional queries
Informational queries
Navigational queries
Commercial investigation
Fulfilling user intent
Keyword research tools:
Google Keyword Planner
Moz Keyword Explorer
Google Trends
AnswerThePublic
SpyFu
SEMRush
Keyword difficulty
Keyword abuse
Content strategy {link to the Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing}
Chapter 4: On-Page SEO
Next, structure your message to resonate and get it published. ↓
Keyword usage and targeting
Keyword stuffing
Page titles:
Unique to each page
Accurate
Be mindful of length
Naturally include keywords
Include branding
Meta data/Head section:
Meta title
Meta description
Meta keywords tag
No longer a ranking signal
Meta robots
Meta descriptions:
Unique to each page
Accurate
Compelling
Naturally include keywords
Heading tags:
Subtitles
Summary
Accurate
Use in order
Call-to-action (CTA)
Clear CTAs on all primary pages
Help guide visitors through your conversion funnels
Image optimization
Compress file size
File names
Alt attribute
Image titles
Captioning
Avoid text in an image
Video optimization
Transcription
Thumbnail
Length
"~3mo to YouTube" method
Anchor text
Descriptive
Succinct
Helps readers
URL best practices
Shorter is better
Unique and accurate
Naturally include keywords
Go static
Use hyphens
Avoid unsafe characters
Structured data
Microdata
RFDa
JSON-LD
Schema
Social markup
Twitter Cards markup
Facebook Open Graph tags
Pinterest Rich Pins
Structured data types
Breadcrumbs
Reviews
Events
Business information
People
Mobile apps
Recipes
Media content
Contact data
Email markup
Mobile usability
Beyond responsive design
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Google mobile-friendly test
Bing mobile-friendly test
Local SEO
Business citations
Entity authority
Local relevance
Complete NAP on primary pages
Low-value pages
Chapter 5: Technical SEO
Next, translate your site into Google's language. ↓
Internal linking
Link positioning
Anchor links
Common search engine protocols
Sitemaps
Mobile
News
Image
Video
XML
RSS
TXT
Robots
Robots.txt
Disallow
Sitemap
Crawl Delay
X-robots
Meta robots
Index/noindex
Follow/nofollow
Noimageindex
None
Noarchive
Nocache
No archive
No snippet
Noodp/noydir
Log file analysis
Site speed
HTTP/2
Crawl errors
Duplicate content
Canonicalization
Pagination
What is the DOM?
Critical rendering path
Help robots find the most important code first
Hreflang/Targeting multiple languages
Chrome DevTools
Technical site audit checklist
Chapter 6: Establishing Authority
Finally, turn up the volume. ↓
Link signals
Global popularity
Local/topic-specific popularity
Freshness
Social sharing
Anchor text
Trustworthiness
Trust Rank
Number of links on a page
Domain Authority
Page Authority
MozRank
Competitive backlinks
Backlink analysis
The power of social sharing
Tapping into influencers
Expanding your reach
Types of link building
Natural link building
Manual link building
Self-created
Six popular link building strategies
Create content that inspires sharing and natural links
Ego-bait influencers
Broken link building
Refurbish valuable content on external platforms
Get your customers/partners to link to you
Local community involvement
Manipulative link building
Reciprocal link exchanges
Link schemes
Paid links
Low-quality directory links
Tiered link building
Negative SEO
Disavow
Reviews
Establishing trust
Asking for reviews
Managing reviews
Avoiding spam practices
Chapter 7: Measuring and Tracking SEO
Pivot based on what's working. ↓
KPIs
Conversions
Event goals
Signups
Engagement
GMB Insights:
Click-to-call
Click-for-directions
Beacons
Which pages have the highest exit percentage? Why?
Which referrals are sending you the most qualified traffic?
Pivot!
Search engine tools:
Google Search Console
Bing Webmaster Tools
GMB Insights
Appendix A: Glossary of Terms
Appendix B: List of Additional Resources
Appendix C: Contributors & Credits
What did you struggle with most when you were first learning about SEO? What would you have benefited from understanding from the get-go?
Are we missing anything? Any section you wish wouldn't be included in the updated Beginner's Guide?
Thanks in advance for contributing.
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2020 VISIONS Twenty Mobile trends for 2020

What does 2020 have in store for mobile and retail?
As the new year – nay, a new decade – hoves into view, we continue our look at what the future holds for mobile with these 20 predictions from Thomas Husson, VP Principal Analyst at Forrester
I have just published a post sharing some of our marketing predictions for 2020. It made me realise that Forrester no longer publishes dedicated “mobile” predictions. Why? Because mobile has simply become a key driver and enabler of business transformation.
Mobile is embedded everywhere. However, many brands wrongly think they have ticked the mobile box and move on to new and more disrupting technologies. In a nutshell, they want to move from mobile-first to AI-first.
A couple of months ago, I published a report claiming that the concept of “mobile-first” was failing CMOs, that most brands were still not mature when it comes to mobile, and that they needed to reimagine mobile to activate the total brand experience.
As a board member of the Mobile Marketing Association France (MMA) and an independent analyst, I was honored to give a keynote this week at the MMA Forum in Paris and share my perspective on what will happen in 2020 in the mobile space. In fact, I decided to share several mobile mega trends, some mobile media and advertising trends that I expect to happen or to accelerate, and some trends that will not happen!
Mobile will be the catalyst for business transformation.The mobile revolution primarily consisted of changing customer expectations to be served in their moments of need and in their context. The age of the customer (the shift of power from institutions to customers) was accelerated because of mobile. To answer these growing expectations and make their own mobile mind shift, organizations had (and still have) to evolve their culture, organizations, and processes (think agile, DevOps, cross-functional pizza teams, etc.). This transition toward more adaptive enterprises is still a work in progress. This is not new but will accelerate next year.
Mobile becomes the glue that connects new technologies at scale.Let’s not forget voice-based assistants (such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant) are primarily used on smartphones, not on smart home speakers. Augmented reality (AR) will start really taking off next year (think Google Maps’ AR experience or Snapchat’s augmented experiences) because it has become a platform play at scale: Developers can tap into more than 1 billion compatible smartphones to build new integrated experiences.
Mobile will act as the personalization experience hub.It is not a channel but a way to deliver an integrated offline/online experience in real time. Some brands (think Starbucks, McDonald’s, Nike, Argos, John Lewis, and Schibsted, to name a few) get it and execute pretty well the integration of mobile into their marketing strategy. But most struggle and still need to fix their mobile foundation.
Mobile becomes a key enabler of societal engagement for values-based customers.Think apps for good (e.g., Yuka), mobile accessibility (e.g., vocal commands for blind people), and green IT (including dark mode), even though the key issue here is when Gen Z will realize the largely negative impact of smartphone and digital on climate change.
Leading CMOs will leverage mobile to optimize the marketing mix.MMA has proven through numerous cross marketing effectiveness research that many brands underinvest in mobile. We expect leaders to define the role of mobile in achieving growth objectives and to start measuring offline media impact in (almost) real time. For example, for retailers, to put it shortly, this is less about mCommerce and more about how mobile drives traffic to the store and generates total incremental revenue. Mobile contextual data and transactional point-of-service data are thus central to improving media attribution across every channel, not just mobile!
Moment automation will require you to assemble your own (mobile) martech stack.Once you have defined key mobile moments across your customer journey, you must identify the right trigger points and automate content and messaging. Think push notifications and in-app messages on steroids. To do this right, it often means you need to assemble your own martech stack with leading mobile point solutions and integrate them with many other marketing systems. At the minimum, you need ASO (app store optimization), mobile CRM (customer relationship management), analytics, and attribution.
Mobile data privacy becomes a strategic differentiator to establish trust.A lot of the hidden harvesting of consumer data happens through mobile. To establish trust and enable personalization (or lack thereof, if consumers precisely do not want to share data), it is key to integrate mobile into your privacy-by-design approach.
App platforms will continue to get traction.The rise of super apps is not just happening with the likes of Tencent, Alibaba, and messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. This trend is accelerating in other regions, too, such as in South America. See this TechCrunch article here.
Expect more rationalization of mobile interfaces.Many brands I have spoken to recently told me they suffer a lot from hybrid development that’s supposed to work across different platforms (think Flutter, React, or Kotlin) and that they prefer to focus on native apps and/or mobile web-first experiences. Forrester has claimed for years that PWA (progressive web apps) are a key way to deliver applike experiences. According to Forrester’s Q2 2019 Global Emerging Technology Executive Online Survey, 18% of digital executives plan to pilot PWA in the next 12 months.
Leaders will integrate meaningful mobile metrics into their dashboards.Marketers measure too many vanity KPIs when it comes to mobile. Let’s measure less pure digital KPIs and more meaningful metrics: customer experience, incremental revenue,DAU/MAU (daily/monthly active users), CLV (customer lifetime value), etc.
Mobile will drive more than 80% of digital ad growth next year.Looking at the top five EU countries, we expect PC advertising spending to remain flat, while mobile advertising will grow from €22.9 billion at the end of 2019 to €26.1 billion by the end of 2020 (representing 64% of total digital advertising spend).
Retail media is set to explode.Mobile is only a component of the retail media opportunity but will play a key role, when it comes to “drive-to-store” offerings, for example. More specifically, Amazon generated $10 billion of ad revenue last year, and next year it is likely that it will represent more than 5% of its total revenue, increasingly challenging Google/Facebook’s duopoly. For more information, see my colleague Collin Colburn’s report here.
Streaming fatigue will lead to new offerings.Again, far from being just a mobile play, but the war between Disney+, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, and low-cost Apple TV+ to compete with Netflix and Prime Video will exhaust consumers and lead to new content subscription models.
Audio advertising will continue to grow fast, driven by podcasts as the next $1 billion ad format.Podcasts are massively listened to via mobile, and they will drive audio advertising more than voice-based assistants will.
Visual search will take off for fashion and home decoration brands.Despite Pinterest’s initiatives, it is still early days for visual search. For selected brands, however, visual recommendations, and to a lesser extent, visual search will become key ways to engage consumers.
And here are five trends of what will not happen…
5G will not matter to CMOs.Unless you’re a CMO at a telecom equipment company or a telco, you should not spend time thinking about 5G in the consumer space. Yes, it will matter for industrial players, but to consumers, 5G in 2020 will feel like 3G in 2004 or 4G in 2010; even urban areas in early-5G-rollout countries such as Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland will get an undifferentiated experience. And Apple’s launch of its 5G smartphone in Q3 of 2020 won’t change the game.
Virtual reality (VR) marketing will remain niche.Despite more affordable VR headsets (Oculus Quest) and the success of the Beat Saber game, VR will mostly matter for B2B and industrial players or play a role in employee training. Marketing opportunities in the consumer space will grow but remain limited.
More than 80% of AI conversations will not pass the Turing test.The vast majority of chatbot experiences will not leverage true NLG (natural language generation). Don’t get me wrong: Some chatbots will deliver value, but let’s not call them AI conversations.
TikTok will not sell, and its IPO will be delayed until 2021.Explosion of mobile social videos will continue. TikTok would be an ideal target for the likes of Meredith, Snap, or Facebook but is not for sale and too costly anyway.
RCS will not become a standard.Google and some telcos will roll out more rich communication service (think of it as the next generation of SMS), but they won’t truly scale in 2020. For more information about RCS, see Julie Ask’s report here.
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Cross-platform mobile software improvement is the technique of growing mobile app development companies in Singapore that may be posted or deployed on multiple platforms using a single code base without the need to build an application on different platforms using native technology. At first, the complexity of growing mobile packages made it hard to construct a backend that works on more than one platform. Although it's far highly-priced and time-consuming, growing local programs for every mobile running system (OS) is easy and easy.
Read more-
Upcoming Mobile App Development Trends In 2020 & Beyond
Benefits from the development of cross-platform apps:

Some of the main advantages of cross-platform development are:
Re-usable code: Cross-platform building tools enable the development of your own code base and allow multiple platforms and operating systems to use the same code base, without developing a different code for each platform.
Effectiveness of Cost: Cross-platform allows you to reduce costs, like working on various versions of your application and replacing it with one team with multiple teams. Most cross-platform tools create free of charge and provide more features with paid subscriptions.
Convenience: Cross-platform tool development ensures that you have to learn several programming languages while offering an alternative to all the different technologies.
Maintainable Code: whenever you update or modify your application, the code will be synchronised and reflected on all applications across various platforms after you update your application.
Market Reach: When you publish your application on multiple platforms like Android and iOS, a broader network will be broadcast and the chance of a larger user base will improve, and hence higher incomes and ROIs.
Now we're going to discuss some of the most important and popular tools to develop cross-platform applications.
Building Mobile Apps Popular Cross-Platform Tools in 2020:
Xamarin
Xamarin is one of the best platforms to build applications for different mobile devices such as Windows, iOS It includes native API access, platform-wide native user interface and native performance. Renowned brands such as UPS and Fox Sports Channel have used them to build mobile applications.
Appcelerator
Accelerator is a cross-platform platform for development that provides developers with the opportunity to write JavaScript with its composite MVC framework. The use of JavaScript helps because this is known to most software developers.
This tool also provides customers with a virtual private cloud system that is wonderful when working with sensitive data from a company. In addition, the organisation has devoted infrastructure, overall performance control and monitoring, and product analytics.
Adobe PhoneGap
PhoneGap is well known in the software development industry as a platform development tool. The Adobe-owned tool currently depends on Apache Cardova's open source project and is easy to use, free of charge and that is why it’s popular. This framework allows you to access the PhoneGap Toolset, so you can quickly enter the global market.
CSS, HTML and JavaScript are utilised by PhoneGap to develop cross-platform apps using a single code base. When app development is complete, no local SDKs must be managed. Only your entire work on the cloud will the PhoneGap Build service take responsibility for everything.
React Native
React Native platform tool allows the native or hybrid application to develop, using the programming language JavaScript. The best thing with React Native is that with other API frameworks we can perform video and photo editing, and developers can also create modules in programming languages like C, Java and Swift. This tool describes your source c
Sencha
For the implementation of cross-platforms like Sencha Animator, Sencha Architect, etc., Sencha offers a range of tools. Exit JS5 is a key business product that allows the developers team to develop applications for HTML5 that can also be converted into native PhoneGap applications. This allows its applications to function on both tactile devices and browsers to provide great user experiences.
The focused HTML5 approach enables applications to operate both on browsers and on modern, touch-based devices. Some of the MNC companies that have used the Sencha tool include Samsung, Google, and CNN.ode and will modify it in a short span to native elements. Instagram and Facebook popular social media platforms used this tool to create native applications.
RedHat
The company purchased a Red Hat platform for € 5 63,5 million, formerly known as FeedHenry. RedHat provides a mobile backend that enables users to build and run mobile apps in Google Plays and in iOS app stores as a cross-app development platform and service
The company also cooperated with several technology giants, including Rackspace and AWS, with major customers such as Airline Aer Lingus.
Koni Quantum
Koni Quantum is one of the easiest ways for multiplatform mobile application development companies in Singapore to be built. The best way to select from many is to have a visual canvas with integrated components. Koni can also be used in the improvement and development of existing apps.
Koni Quantum is great for developers with less knowledge. They provide cloud structures with a single click and guided tours during the entire development process. It is easy to consolidate and, lastly, to improve productivity, it will be placed on a visual data map.
Ionic
Ionic is a powerful cross-platform tool with HTML5 SDKs that allows you to mainly develop mobile and web based, native feel applications with trendy technologies such as CSS, JavaScript and HTML. This SDK mainly focuses on the appliance 's appearance and interaction between UI components. This framework provides typography, interactive paradigms, preconceived components and great topics.
You will use several APIs, including Async, Virtual DOM, JSX, and TypeScript, the right match for the PWA (The progressive web app). This tool is easily accessible and easy to use. Some of Ionic 's famous applications are Nationwide, Nationwide, Pacific, etc.
Conclusion
Yes, to reach a large number of people, your business application should be available on as many platforms as possible. But it is really time-consuming and costly to create attractive and innovative applications for every platform.
Don't think much, don't think! Don't think much! Just use the top cross-platform tools mentioned above to build Window, iOS and Android mobile apps. The cross-platform application development tools are ideal, as I stated earlier, to save time, costs and undue effort.
Cross-platform developers of top mobile app development companies in Singapore such as DxMinds Technologies Inc offer popular mobile apps on Android, iOS, Windows and other trending platforms.
Contact us today! please feel free to contact! We are ready to transform your idea into a revolutionary mobile application.
Source page-Cross Platform Mobile Apps – Advantages & Tools In 2020
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HTML tags are 28 years old this week
#415 — October 30, 2019
Read on the Web
Frontend Focus
The Current State of Styling <select> in 2019 — If you’ve ever tried styling form controls with CSS, you’ve probably had a bad time (at least initially). Drop-down select elements are particularly thorny. Here’s a look at the basics and what developers really want.
Chris Coyier
In October 1991, Tim Berners-Lee Published a Document Called 'HTML Tags' — It’s been 28 years (and one day) since Tim Berners-Lee wrote a document outlining descriptions of the first 18 HTML tags. Bonus points if you can name them all before clicking through. 😉
Web Design Museum
Design for Developers ✨ New Course by Sarah Drasner — Become more self-sufficient for the entire process for execution, from concept to design to implementation. Understand the rules for designing and learn to create complex and beautiful front-end experiences.
Frontend Masters sponsor
Google to Stop Indexing Flash Content — ...by the end of this year. This ties in with Adobe's (and others') plans to stop supporting it by the end of 2020. With this, another interesting era of the Web passes into history.
Google
Are There Random Numbers in CSS? — Certainly an interesting trick for generating pseudo-random outcomes in CSS alone. The randomness is questionable, but usable for casual situations.
Alvaro Montoro
Auditing For Accessibility Problems With Firefox Developer Tools — An overview of the Accessibility Inspector in Firefox 70’s dev tools, explaining how this auditing facility helps identify/fix common mistakes and practices that reduce site accessibility.
Mozilla Hacks
HTMHell - A Collection of Bad Practices in HTML, Copied From Real Websites — This site seems relatively new, but is a growing collection of real-world examples of things you may not want to do. Submissions are being taken.
Manuel Matuzović
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📙 Articles, Tutorials & Opinion
▶ Inner & Outer Values of the Display Property — Last week’s issue made mention of the fact that Firefox now supports the use of multiple values in the display property. Here’s a look at how.
Mozilla Developer
What's New In DevTools In Chrome 79 — Including new cookie debugging, color scheme simulation options, code coverage updates, and more.
Google Developers
Speed Up Your Website With WebP — A thorough overview of Google’s WebP image format, highlighting its advantages, how it works and how to use it. (I was surprised to learn it has been nearly a decade since the format was first introduced.)
Suzanne Scacca
Why Parcel Has Become My Go-To Bundler for Development — A run-down on what the popular web application bundler can offer, plus how you might start to using it in your own projects.
Maks Akymenko
Why Are Accessible Websites so Hard to Build? — Robin Rendle asks why seemingly so many companies struggle at making accessible websites (looking at you Domino’s), and offers up an idea on how text editors could help by way of included accessibility checkers. Stefan Judis expands on this proposing that browser dev consoles could do similar checks.
Robin Rendle
The React Hooks Guide: In-depth Tutorial with Examples. Start Learning
Progress KendoReact sponsor
Bidirectional Horizontal Rules in CSS — A straightforward tutorial looking at how to use CSS’s logical properties to support both LTR and RTL layouts.
Hussein Al Hammad
CSS Utility Classes: Your Library of Extendable Styles — What CSS utility classes are and why you should be using them.
Russell Bishop
Making a PWA out of the Classic 1996 'Space Jam' Site — A fun recreation of the seemingly everlasting Space Jam website. See the end result here.
Zach Leatherman
The Problem with Dropdown Fields (..and What You Should Use Instead)
Design Smarts
🔧 Code, Tools & Resources
Sal: Lightweight Scroll Animation Library — Coming in at just 2.8KB, this vanilla JS library is performance focused with no dependencies. GitHub repo.
Mirosław Ciastek
FitText in CSS — Remember the old jQuery plugin called FitText? Well, here it is recreated in (very modern — Chrome 79+ needed) CSS. Perhaps not quite ready for prime time but a cute idea.
Dave Rupert codepen
Looking to Build Leading Search Experiences with Ease? — Elastic App Search brings the power and scalability of Elasticsearch to ecommerce sites, mobile apps and more. Try free.
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GRID: A Simple Visual Cheatsheet for CSS Grid Layout — A list of visually displayed properties available in CSS Grid Layout. Tap or click to copy to keyboard.
Malven Co.
JAMstack Themes — A list of themes and starters for JAMstack sites filterable by the supported generator and/or CMS.
Stackbit
Minimal Wim — An experiment in minimal typography based on the work of Dutch designer Wim Crouwel.
Booreiland
🗓 Upcoming Events
VueConfTO 2019, November 11-12 — Toronto, Canada — The first ever Vue Conference in Canada.
Chrome Dev Summit, November 11-12 — San Francisco, USA — A two-day summit to learn about the latest from Chrome, plus techniques for building the modern Web. Note: Registrations are now closed, but the event can be joined remotely.
Performance Now, November 21-22 — Amsterdam, Netherlands — A single track conference with fourteen speakers, covering the most important web perf insights.
HalfStack Conf, November 22 — London, UK — A single day event focused on UI-centric JavaScript and web development.
Frontend Con, November 26-27 — Warsaw, Poland — Brings together 30+ experts with over 500 experienced frontend pros from all over the world.
dotCSS, December 4 — Paris, France — The largest CSS conference in Europe.
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Smashing TV Interviews: The Mozilla View Source Line-Up
Smashing TV Interviews: The Mozilla View Source Line-Up
Rachel Andrew
2019-08-14T10:30:59+02:002019-08-14T09:00:25+00:00
Smashing TV has been working with our friends over at Mozilla to bring you content from their upcoming View Source conference in Amsterdam. We’re really excited about the event that they are putting together.
Here on Smashing Magazine, we often feature articles that explain a little bit about how web technologies are created. I’m a CSS Working Group member, and I enjoy sharing the things that we’ve been discussing in our meetings, such as my post on “Designing An Aspect Ratio Unit For CSS”. Earlier this year, we published an article by Amy Dickens, “Web Standards: The What, The Why, And The How” in which Amy explained what we mean by web standards and how standards groups work. We’ve also shared with you how browser vendors such as Mozilla are making web platform features easier for us to use in our work, such as this post by Chen Hui Jing, “Debugging CSS Grid Layouts With Firefox Grid Inspector”.
If you enjoy articles like these, then you will love View Source, and the chance to spend two days with people who are involved with specifying the web, and implementing it in our browsers. It’s a very special View Source because friends from Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and the W3C are joining Mozilla to bring the best of the web to developers and designers this year. I’ll be there too, wearing my CSS Working Group hat, as part of a discussion corner on how CSS gets into browsers.
Our own Vitaly Friedman has been interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming event, and you can watch the first of those interviews now.
Enjoy this conversation with Kenji Baheux, a Product Manager at Google, working on Chrome/Web Platform, about the web in different parts of the world, differences between usage of the web, and what we need to be aware of when expanding to an unfamiliar market in India or Southeast Asia.
Mozilla’s View Source Amsterdam event is happening on Monday and Tuesday, Sept 30th and October 1st at Theater Amsterdam. Get your tickets here. You can save 25% with the code Smashing_VS, or use a direct link to check out. I look forward to meeting you there!
An Interview With Kenji Baheux
Vitaly: Hello and welcome to one of those interviews on view source speakers, live sessions with a few behind-the-scenes about the speakers and the sessions and the talks and the interesting topics. And I’m very happy and honored to have Kenji Baheux with us today, from Google, currently living in Tokyo, Japan. How’re you doing today, Kenji?
Kenji Baheux: I’m doing pretty good, thank you.
Vitaly: Fantastic. I have questions. You know, I always do, I have too many questions I believe, but I’m really curious because you know, I know that you’ve spent quite a bit of time and you know, the session you’re going to present today, you’re going to present that in view source which is all about multicultural web thing, right? It’s like the web beyond the scope of what we’re used to, and very often when we think about designing a building for the web, we’re thinking about designing and building for our web. You know, for wonderful screens and wonderful devices and wonderful connections and powerful devices, and all of that. But when we think about designing for Indonesia, when you think about designing for Southeast Asia or India or kind of all places where we’re are not familiar with, we have stereotypes, right? We tend to believe slow devices, unreliable connections, bad screens, you know, horrible, horrible conditions. Almost the opposite of what we’re used to, is it the true web outside of the comfortable bubble that we live in? Tell us.
Kenji Baheux: So, unfortunately, there is some truth to that, and the interesting thing is that the market in India and Indonesia they have like a common aspect, but there are differences — especially around connectivity, for instance. It used to be the case that connectivity in India was very expensive, and so people like wanted to save like data and so they, you know, they didn’t want to use the web too much. For instance, today, it has become a lot more affordable and so people are not concerned too much about data consumption. It is still true that maybe in the newer kind of like user segment, it might still be quite expensive, but it’s getting better quite fast. So I think like in term of like data usage, it’s not so much a concern anymore, but at the same time like 4G is available over there, but if you look at the speed and the like readability of the collection, it’s more kind of like a 3G connection than a 4G connection.
Kenji Baheux: And so you need to be careful about like your assumption about, “Oh, 4G is affordable and therefore the connectivity is going to be the same than what I experience in my own country.” Like there are some stats but like, for instance, I think India is actually at the bottom in terms of speed for 4G and it’s about a 10x slower than what it should be compared to like the top one, for instance. So there is some nuance there and also because there are a lot of users in India depending on the time of the day, the speed will like fluctuate and also sometimes like depending on the bandwidth the [inaudible] will keep up.
Kenji Baheux: And so you might lose connection. You might be on the go. There are a lot of dot points, like not enough antennas and things like that. So you need to be careful about speed and also like this idea that not always on connectivity is not always what user experience is over there. And if you contrast that with Indonesia, Indonesia is doing a bit better in terms of speed, like 4G over there is more kind of like 4G, and there are some reasons to that. The country is much smaller, urbanization is much higher, and so it does help, right? The user, they can reach out in Indonesia tend to have better infrastructure. So that’s one aspect. You mentioned also the devices, so on that, like it’s still very true that the devices tend to be on the lower end of the spectrum. And so like iPhone for instance, are a very tiny market share mostly because those devices are too expensive. And so most of the people can’t afford like high-premium devices.
Kenji Baheux: It used to be the case also that the memory that devices have was very low and this has become better, but it doesn’t mean that the device is cracked, right. I think the OEMs understood what the user cares about. Like does it have a great camera, does it have enough RAM, what about the storage? But then they want to keep the price low and so they are going to find ways to make the device cheap, right? And so it means like slow CPU, slow storage, and things like that. So you need to be careful about the connectivity, but also how much JavaScript you send because it’s going to make your page go slow, right?
Vitaly: It’s, you know, you spend quite a bit of time thinking about performance and also now because you’re working at the Chrome team and you kind of want to work on the instant loading team — if I’m correct, right? It means for me, personally, it means that you have very different challenges at times as well because probably now living in Japan or living in Indonesia kind of have to really look into the types of devices people are using, the habits that they have, the cultural ways of how the web is different. You know, if you look into Africa, for example, I’m sure as you probably know, of course, many people that Africa will be using kind of totally bypassing credit cards altogether, sending money by SMS and having a different kind of web applications, right? So that makes me think as well, when it comes to performance, obviously we want to make things fast and all that, would you say that progressive web apps as a model has become or is becoming more and more established just because it’s kind of an easier way in to get to better performance in India, in Southeast Asian, and so on?
Kenji Baheux: Yeah, we’ve seen a trend of success with PWA in those markets, for the reasons that I’ve outlined, right? If you build a PWA right, it’s going to minimize the amount of data that you fetch, right? You can use the storage and API to make sure that you don’t over-fetch. You can also deliver a very fast-like experience by showing at least a bit of like a piece of UX and then fetching the new content, right? You can minimize the amount of content you need to fetch in order to show the letters like data. So it’s, I think it’s a great fit. It does help a lot of like partners over there.
Vitaly: Many companies that they kind of work with and some of my colleagues are working with, they have a very difficult time moving kind of exploring new markets, moving their architecture, their application, the the way they built up their app or the website really on these markets kind of trying to gather that market share. And it’s very often not very clear why is that? Is it just because the architecture that we’re used to with this mountain of JavaScript that we are pushing with, you know, the Western World that say it’s just totally unacceptable for Southeast Asia? And again, I don’t know, China’s a difficult story anyway, and India. So in many ways, many of these companies see as one of the paths to get to those markets is just built something entirely different. So when you see, if you see, let’s say somebody who had maybe watching this session later trying to get through those markets, would you recommend to adapt the existing architecture, try to kind of make it work for those markets, or would you say it’s better to start from scratch and use something like an assistant ecosystem that’s already there?
Kenji Baheux: Yeah, I think it’s usually better to start from scratch because you might be tempted to try to keep around different features because maybe you’ve seen them doing well in your market and so you, you think those will be like super important to have. And so it’s going to be hard to make some trade off. And so it might be better to start from scratch and like really find, okay, what are the keys— what is the goal of this product? What are we trying to achieve? And keep it to the essential and start from there and see if you really like your product too, it’s bare minimum, like how fast can it float on the connectivity that you can find in markets like that? Like, try to get a low-end device, it’s not too hard to get something that could feel relevant for the market that you are trying to target and just play with it.
Kenji Baheux: I think trying to create a product on your desktop computer or even looking at it like on an iPhone or like a high-end Android device is not going to give you a good idea of like what your experience is going to be. And so you need to really like put yourself in the the shoes of your customers and really like confirm for yourself that what you have is going to work. So yeah, start from something very simple like the bare minimum that your product is about, and see how far you can take it from there.
Vitaly:It’s interesting to also be talking about people, but also… most of the time when we have these conversations about performance, we think about devices. You know, when you start thinking about internationalization and localization and all those things that are actually just going to those markets, I start wondering about the habits of people. Maybe they use the web very differently. So this is exactly what you’re saying, right? We need to do some research to understand how people are used to certain things. What would work? Maybe a feature you spent two years on here in Germany somewhere is just not going to work at all in India, right? So because, I mean, I just have to ask you because I’m so curious, it’s maybe not on the technical side, but I’m just curious. So if you compare the web, how people use the web, but say in the Western World, and again, let’s say in Japan where you spent the last 20 years, I believe, how is it different? I mean, I’m sure that there are certain things that are just, just totally confusing for somebody who experiences, let’s say, the way people are using the web in Japan coming from very different culture, did you have any kind of cultural shocks or anything of that kind or do you see things differently?
Kenji Baheux: That’s an interesting one. I think one of the most surprising thing for me when I arrived in Japan, like 20 years ago, was the fact that the website were like very visual, to the point of like being very noisy. Like from a European viewpoint, it’s kind of like, oh, this is way too much in your face. Like, there was so much going on on that page, how can you even understand how to use it? But actually this is what like most users are actually here, like when it comes to user experience, they want to know more upfront about the product, and so you end up with this like long page detailing all the things about why this project is like the most amazing thing in the world. And then at the bottom of it, there is like finally a way to purchase that product, so that’s one typical user experience that I’ve seen a couple of times already.
Kenji Baheux: So yeah, so that’s very visual: Trying to put as much information upfront about what the product is about. So that’s for Japan. And then for countries like Indonesia and India, especially in India, there are a lot of difficulties around language. As you probably know, India has a lot of official languages and so you really need to understand which users you are trying to reach. Because if you don’t have the content in their language, it’s going to be very hard for them to understand how to use the website, and so on. For most, it’s the first time that they are getting online and there are still a lot like new users getting online every day, and so they don’t have any like notion of like what a tab is like background tab, all of these things that we take for granted, like a lot of users actually that’s the first time that they are online, and so it’s very hard for them to just know about the things we take for granted. And so be very careful about making sure that your product is like self-explaining, and that there is nothing that people need to know in advance, for instance.
Vitaly: I’m also wondering, very often when we’re building products or when we’re designing products, we tend to think that we are building this technology that’s almost neutral, but in the end, whenever we’re building something, we always reflect our identity somehow in the little snippets of JavaScript and CSS we’re writing, and so I think that, in many ways, as designers and developers, we also have certain stereotypes when it comes to designing for those markets or kind of adapting for those markets. So what do you see, I mean, I mentioned one of them in the very beginning, like everything is slow, everything is horrible, totally unreliable and all of that — what do you see maybe as other common misconceptions or myths surrounding global web from people who are designing and building in a Western World Web?
Kenji Baheux: Yeah, that’s an interesting one. I think one particular aspect is the local players tend to be much more successful for various reasons, but one of them is that, especially in Indonesia, they know that the population is very young in general, and so they opt for a more casual tone which is something that I guess most websites in the US and EU don’t tend to do a lot. And so if you’re in e-commerce, you might be tempted to be very serious because you want to present yourself as the company that people can trust, but it might actually be the [inaudible] to your brand image if you go to a market like Indonesia where people want to have a more fun experience maybe.
Vitaly: Right, and also if you look forward into how things are evolving or how they’ve changed, I mean, you’ve seen tremendous change on the web over the last 20 years, I’m sure, but I’m wondering also when we look forward, let’s say five years from now, and look into connectivity, it seems like there is this gap that we used to have. It’s kind of bridging, we have pretty much stable connectivity that’s coming, at least worldwide, it’s still a long way to go, but it’s, you know, it’s coming. How do you see the web — the World Wide Web as we intended it to be from the very first place — evolving? Will we breach all these gaps between the Western world and non-Western world, at least in terms of the web? Or are there going to be significant cultural differences still?
Kenji Baheux: Obviously, eventually, things will get in a similar place in terms of conductivity and, like, maybe even like devices. But I think it’s going to take a while because as I said, there is still a lot of like new users getting online for the first time, and for them it’s like the price of data and devices are getting in the affordable realm, and you see, especially in markets like India for instance, there is still a lot of like feature phone and it’s not the like the old-side feature phone. It’s kind of like a more fully-fledged feature phone. I believe that KaiOS is getting a lot of attraction — people should be aware of that brand. Go check it online, google for KaiOS devices, and you will see that it’s actually bringing the modern web into a feature phone from factor.
Kenji Baheux: And so the idea is that the lowest end of the smartphone is still too expensive for a lot of users, and so by bringing something that people can use and get connected to on a feature phone from factor, like carriers can lower the price points where a lot more users can get online. So I think this is still going to be the case for a long time, and so having to be mindful about low-end devices and slow connectivity because as more people get online, the infrastructure should keep up but it’s going to be very hard. All of these programs are still going to be a thing for a long time, I think.
Vitaly: When I was in Indonesia, by the way, I was surprised about one thing because it’s the first time when I experienced it, and it was the fact that I would go online and we’d get a SIM card and then there would be a Facebook Internet and everything else. Essentially, whenever I go through the gates of Facebook and I try to, you know, going to click on the links and all that, it’s free. But then as long as I want to type in anything else in my URL bar, I have to pay. So this is where I actually got to be hit almost by the role that net neutrality has and how it’s actually not respected really in those countries where you have to pay more for access in certain parts of the web. In terms of net neutrality, how do you see things there? Because I’ve only been to Indonesia where it happened to me. Is that a common thing that we have a Facebook Internet in many places around the world?
Kenji Baheux: So I believe this is part of something that was called Facebook Basics. I don’t know if it’s still the same name, but I’ve seen different countries where you can get online for free but you only have access to a few websites. And I’m just guessing that it’s a deal between those websites and the carrier. The stats that we have indicate that it only gets, like, a lot of people would just move away from that very soon, like quickly because as they get to hear from their friends and family about all the different things that they are able to do, they quickly realize that what they have is like very limited. And so as the purchasing power like grows, they do like pay a few additional like quota, not maybe for the full month, and eventually at some point they will be able to do so, but there is an appetite for getting beyond this like few websites sites that are available for free.
Vitaly: Yeah. And then maybe the final one, Kenji, and I will let you go, and free… So, if you look forward, let’s say in a few years from now, and maybe if you look back into that interview when I asked that question, what would you like to see changed in the next two years? Is there anything on the web that you desperately want to fix or something that kind of bothers you for quite a bit of time where you are spending all your time and efforts and you know, you’re in the nighttime when you can’t sleep, and just to solve that thing… If you had to, if you could solve just one thing for good on the web, what would it be?
Kenji Baheux: That’s a tough one. I feel that the web in general is still, like, we say that web is like very low friction and it is in a sense because everything is just like one link away. And so, and also there’s like no new install phase, it’s very safe and secure, right? But at the same time, on mobile, a lot of time it’s very frustrating because you have to wait and the pages load very slowly, the UX is not always great… So I hope that the work we do will eventually get us in a place where the web feels like instant, seamless, and delightful. And I’m wondering if there is something that is missing, which is some of the, like the native apps are on, you know, like do provide a better user experience cause I feel they have the incentive to do so to like things like ratings and reviews, right? There is a way to know where you are falling off the path, like what is wrong about my app? How can I fix it? And also you have the incentive to do it because there is like rankings and people can see what other people think about your app, and so I’m wondering if there is something on the web that is missing there where we could get more signals from users and help the web get better based on that, and so I would like to, to get some feedback on that and what people think about this idea.
Vitaly: Oh, that sounds exciting. So I guess that maybe that’s something you’ll bring up in your session on October 1st at View Source in Amsterdam, and I can’t wait to hear more insights about the web in different parts of the world because the web is much bigger than just us sitting here in fancy offices in front of wonderful displays. Alright, Kenji, thank you so much for being with us today, and thanks to everyone for watching as well. I’m looking forward to the next one and I’m looking forward to seeing you in Amsterdam.
Vitaly: Thank you, Kenji. Bye!
Kenji Baheux: Thank you, bye!
Watch the Smashing YouTube and Smashing Vimeo channels for more interviews with the View Source speakers.
(vf, mc, il)
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Do Progressive Web Apps (PWA) 📳 Improve SEO? 🔎 [Analysis]

Last Updated - 2019-04-18
Progressive web applications are popular with the search engine optimization crowd because they offer great promise for online marketing.
But how are PWAs good for SEO?
I and my business are firmly planted in developing progressive web apps and helping business succeed online through organic search marketing.
This gives me unique advantages sharing how the two relate and don't relate.
Like anything in web development there are a lot of misconceptions floating around that cause confusion for developers and stakeholders. I want this article to set the record straight, so no one makes mistakes that cost their business customers.
Much of the confusion focuses on the assumption that progressive web apps are single page apps (SPAs) or rendered in the browser using heavy JavaScript frameworks.. This is not true and you should read my article if you want more details about how they differ.
SPAs can technically be PWAs, any site can be a PWA. The requirements to be a progressive web application boil down to 3 ingredients.
That's it!
Well sort of.
They are the 3 core requirements to be a progressive web app. Of course, there are other 'expected' PWA features, like loading fast, working offline, being platform integrated, etc.
I think many in the SEO and development worlds have confused progressive web applications with single page applications because Google published an article about PWA SEO. What they were really addressing was single page apps and SEO.
The messaging in that article has scaled across both the online marketing and development worlds. So generally when I read, watch or listen to anything related to PWAs and SEO the message quickly changes from that topic to the topic of JavaScript and SEO.
They are not the same thing!
In that article the Google Search team really talked a lot about web page best practices and addressed many issues single page applications have as it relates to search.
Historically, websites would always generate or render their HTML on the server which is the simplest way to ensure your content is directly linkable. Web applications popularized the concept of client-side rendering in which content is updated dynamically on the page as the users navigates without requiring the page to be reloaded.
See, the Google Webmaster blog starts off assuming you will render your pages on the client, not the server. Nothing about a PWA requires client-side rendering.
In fact I recommend websites render as much on the server, ahead of time, as a static web page. Then either rendering on demand server-side as much as possible and leave the last bit for client-side rendering.
Unless you are developing a business application there is little to no reason you should need heavy JavaScript to render content in the browser.
When it comes to pages that need to be indexed and ranked by Google this means almost 100% of the page should be pre-rendered on the server. Google likes this because it can consume the content and score the page for search results.
Too much JavaScript and they put the page on a queue and will get around to it if they have time, later. Sort of like a teenager doing their homework.
Progressive Web Applications And SEO
So back to how PWAs relate to search engine optimization. Can a progressive web app improve SEO?
Well they don't really.
Google's John Mueller has publicly stated this is the case.
PWAs currently don't have any advantage in Google Search (and as far as I know, there are no plans to change this).
Before you give up and stop your service worker development, lets see why. Plus I promise there is a reward at the end.
The hope is when you go to the trouble of creating a progressive web application you take the care to craft your website using best practices.
This is the core essence of what a progressive web application really is.
You know, the attention to detail that makes your website stand out against the competition and really makes the web a better place.
To me a progressive web application applies SEO best practices by design. They are naturally better websites that consumers want to visit.
These are just places to start. Read my SEO Tips article for more best practices. You can also use automated tools to audit your pages for PWA compatibility and other web best practices.
When they visit your site and appreciate the user experience visitors will trust your brand and be more inclined to add the PWA to their homescreen.
But launching a PWA from the homescreen has little to do with organic search, in fact it is traffic that comes from the customer relationship, not search.
Don't get me wrong that traffic is the goal, so go get it. And you should not discount the effect direct traffic can have for your SEO.
Set your goal to leverage progressive web applications to engage your organic visitors and push through your sales funnel to a more engaging point.
Nurture that relationship so you get more and more traffic directly and a good progressive web application is the best way to do that.
You just have to do it right.
Now that I have defined PWAs let me take a moment to clarify what search engine optimization is and is not.
Defining Search Engine Optimization
SEO is about optimizing your website and web pages for better human and search engine consumption. This means you take the time to make sure site is technical sound and your on-page copy and content communicates well to your visitors.
The goal is two fold, earning better search rankings and engaging visitors.
Some will tell you it is about link building, and while that is important it is not SEO per se. Linking building is important if you want your pages to rank well in Google, Bing and other search engines. But the technical health and the content on your site are what really set you apart.
I see lots of sites on page 2-10 in the search results that have more links than the page 1 results. I also see pages with fewer links out rank others on page 1. Over time the pages with the best content for the user's search intent bubble to top of the rankings.
Progressive web applications won’t help you write better copy or use better photos, but a proper PWA has a strong technical SEO profile.
SEO Technical Best Practices for a Progressive Web App
Let me circle back to the Google Webmaster article on building indexable PWAs. The article highlights a series of do's and don'ts. Let me summarize some of the important points.
Search Engine Optimization Experts Like PWAs
SapientRazorfish's Ryan Jones says that progressive web apps are still young and offer to offer lots of opportunities for online marketing. In particular he cites them as being a mobile first approach, which matches up with Google's mobile first initiative.
Mobile! Things like AMP and PWAs are still very young and offer lots of opportunity...
Cindy Krum the CEO of MobileMoxie was real excited about progressive web applications. She recognizes that progressive web apps operate just like regular native applications and highlights the fact that both android and Microsoft are elevating progressive web apps to equal level of native applications.
Mobile SEO in 2018 is going to be all about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). Google has begun to treat PWAs just like normal apps in their Android OS...
She also notes that fewer and fewer people are searching for native applications in the app store's. And just like I recently posted, she also acknowledged the fact that Apple is starting to reject more apps and cleaning their app store while recommending that many businesses ship progressive web applications instead of native apps.
Cindy's observations are right on point, because progressive web applications offer great opportunities for businesses to have great search engine exposure by implementing web development and performance best practices. When websites implement these best practices to create the best user experiences, which is what Google Google is looking for when ranking search results.
If you missed it, in 2017 Apple made it clear that Safari would soon support the ServiceWorker files that make PWAs so fast, so it seems like they have flipped, and really see the benefits.
The great thing about progressive web apps is that the web is naturally great at reaching your target audiences. And when it comes down to marketing and search engine ranking it's about being able to reach the right people as efficiently as possible.
As mentioned before fewer people are seeking out native apps on mobile devices. This is because app stores have never been good at discoverability. Searching for new apps is difficult. Then the app install process has multiple steps a user must go through for they can even get to the content you are trying to promote.
Studies have shown that the average cost to acquire a new app download user ranges between 2 1/2 to $15 per app install. It becomes even worse when you consider that one in 10 app installs are never used more than once. This means acquiring a true customer can cost at least 25 $250 each.
The web is great at reaching customers quickly and efficiently. Search engines like Google and being highly optimized to provide the right answers to the questions potential customers are asking. Is still up to you to create the content and the experience that resonates the best with those potential customers. Progressive web applications give you the platform to accomplish that efficiently and effectively.
The cost to acquire a visitor to a particular webpage can be as little as a half cent and often cost no more than a nickel. Of course in some cases it could cost more and some competitive niches but generally it's only a few pennies to drive targeted traffic to your content. This gives you that initial engagement point to earn that customers respect.
If you do this well enough, that customer might then add your progressive web application to the home screen and had your brand on their desktop or mobile device all the time. This gives you a very unique opportunity to engage with them at a very deep level.
If you're trying to plan your 2018 search engine marketing strategy I hope you seriously consider upgrading your web presence to a progressive web application. Doing so should increase your ability to rank your content on the keywords you want most.
Why a Progressive Web Application Won't Help Your SEO
As a PWA practitioner I probably should not be sharing they don't affect your SEO. But from a purely technical perspective they don't help SEO. The magic is in making a great web user experience.
What many don't understand is how service workers work. They think they magically make web pages faster, they don't, especially the first time someone visits the site.
That's because a service worker has to be registered and is not active by default the first time a page is loaded. And while service workers can cache web pages and the resources required to render pages there is no benefit if they are not already cached.
When the page assets are cached before someone loads the page it does not mean the page renders fast. Too much JavaScript is too much JavaScript afterall. And time to first byte is not the main page speed factor, it is the time after the HTML document loads that really matters.
Organic search traffic is often traffic that has not visited your site yet. And if they have not already visited the target page, they most likely don't have that content cached. They may have the CSS, some images and JavaScript files cached, but they all need to be loaded, parsed, executed, etc before the page reaches the time to first interaction.
How Progressive Web Apps Help SEO
Don't give up hope yet. PWAs will improve your organic search profile.
How?
By making your user experience better than your competition. Well at least better than it was before you upgrade to a progressive web app.
Look past the three core technical requirements to be a progressive web application and focus on the intent of the movement, to deliver great user experiences.
When you deliver a great user experience people want to visit your site over competing options. When they see your brand in the results they will recall you gave them what they wanted and the experience was positive.
SEOs know click through rate influences search position. More clicks or votes by searchers for a result and over time it moves up.
But that is just one metric you can measure. All the little things you do to make your site the best create the experience that rises above the information.
This will indirectly and directly influence your serps and typically in the positive direction.
Wrapping it Up
Progressive web applications are great for SEO because they are meant to deliver the best web experiences. But like anything else, developers and marketers can mess things up.
Follow the web's best practices and you will reap the benefits of great organic search traffic. This means make your site mobile first, fast on mobile, usable on all screen sizes and has sound on page SEO.
PWAs help you build long lasting relationships with customers. That is a great reward, but you will also experience a universal lift, like organic search, because your site puts user experience first.
If you follow all these best practices then you will be successful, even if you are not targeting organic search traffic.
This content was originally published here.
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UX Design for the next billion. Accessible. Affordable. Awe-inspiring.
User Experience Design for the next billion. Accessible. Affordable. Awe-inspiring.
The human race has always been fascinated by design. While most people believed that design was all about making a product look more appealing to the eye, they couldn’t be farther from the truth. Design, in simple words, is all about user experience. A well-designed product appeals to the users visually, takes their comfort into consideration and creates a feeling of happiness.
Although user experience design has been present in the society for centuries, it was only after the psychologist Don Norman coined the term ‘user experience’ or ‘UX’ in the 1990s that people started looking at UX in a more structured manner.

A PEEK INTO THE PAST
Let’s travel back in time and look at how people understood and related to design. Have you ever heard of Feng Shui — the Chinese philosophy of harmonizing an individual with the surroundings? Known to have originated over 6000 years ago, Feng Shui is all about arranging the same furniture keeping the flow of energy or chi in mind. It encompasses, the structure, materials used, and colors among other things.
Why do you think we are talking about Feng Shui in a UX design article? Well, a UX designer creates harmony by using similar principles to ensure an intuitive and user-friendly product.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
In the last decade, users have experienced phenomenal growth in the accessibility to products and services. The credit goes to the exponentially increasing reach of technology and the digital transformation of the world as a whole. According to a study conducted by Zenith, 66% of individuals in 52 countries (which includes India) will own a smartphone in 2018. The report also predicts that India, with around 530 million smartphone users will be the second-highest in the world after China (estimated at 1.3 billion users).
Now, these are some numbers that most businesses can’t ignore. Add to it the reducing costs of internet service, and you have a huge market waiting to be tapped — the next billion.
WHY ARE BUSINESSES FOCUSING ON THE NEXT BILLION?
Most businesses have already targeted the current users by tapping into them on social media platforms, websites and mobile applications. The question that these businesses face is, what factors do they need to take into consideration when they try to prepare themselves for the next billion users?
Since the developed markets have reached a plateau of growth, many experts believe that this set of next billion users is likely to come from emerging markets. So, on a global scale, you can think about countries like India, China, Russia, etc. and domestically, you can look at tier II and III cities along with the rural population.
A quick analysis of these markets highlights the following aspects:
Costs This includes the cost of mobile devices used, data costs, etc. Hence, the websites and apps developed by businesses should be light in weight (fewer KBs). Also, the design must take into consideration different devices being used by the next billion.
Connectivity Research suggests that around 40% of mobile internet users in India are still connected to the 2G network. Also, these users are known to have an unsteady supply of power. With the user experience perspective, this means a few things:
Your product should be offline-friendly (if possible)
You should focus on progressive web apps (PWAs)
Develop keeping users with unstable internet connections in mind
In other words, the key to making your business ready for the next billion lies in the intuitive and emotionally empathetic user experience design.
USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN FOR THE NEXT BILLION- A CASE STUDY
In September 2017, Twitter launched a Twitter Lite app specifically designed for the emerging markets. It was launched in the Philippines and in a few months made its way to other countries as well. Among the other factors, Twitter focused on consumers with slow internet connections, using smartphones for the first time, and owning low-end phones with around 1GB of RAM.
Here are the changes they incorporated to align themselves with the needs of the next billion:
The Twitter Lite app weighs around 500–600 KB as opposed to the regular app which weighs around 25MB.
Similar user interface as the regular app with minor changes that do not affect the user experience to a great extent like:
Floating tweet button on all screens
No swipe gestures
No navigation drawer
Night mode unavailable
No support for multiple accounts
No drafts
Faster as compared to the regular app
It offers data saver mode to allow users to download only those images/videos that they want to see.
Users can read loaded content even if the network is unavailable.
The app loads progressively allowing the visible screen to load in a few seconds even on 2G networks.
The Lite app has crossed 1 million downloads within 8 months of being launched and is available across 46 countries identified as emerging markets by the company.
SUMMING UP
The next billion is growing, and growing at a steady pace. Businesses need to step up their development efforts to focus on these emerging markets to truly be the brands of the future.
User Experience Design is a technique that can help companies approach the next billion with the ‘precision of a bat’. Thence (WinkTales), a user experience design company, understands the importance of design in being the driver of digital and technology accessibility. Ranked as India’s number 2 UX agency, Thence (WinkTales) is dedicated to helping companies work towards the future — the next billion.
Originally published at https://www.thence.co on September 22, 2018.
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