User experience in terms of a website, web application or a mobile application is all about usability. As a user, you need to feel comfortable when you use a certain application. The experience of using this application must be meaningful and engaging.

When developers build an application, irrespective of the development platform or OS, they need to cater to a user’s perception of the application’s efficiency, convenience and utility. As far as the user experience is concerned, it’s all about giving the right direction to the user’s feelings and thoughts about the system in question. The difficulty in ensuring an effective user experience lies in the fact that it’s subjective and changes from one user to another and it’s also circumstantial; it keeps changing over time and is dynamic.

But there are certain factors that definitely play a crucial role in ensuring a satisfactory user experience.

Let’s take a look at two of them.

Simplicity, but within the limits of logic

If you want to travel from Point A to Point B, do you take the longer route or the shorter route? It’s a given that, a person is always looking for a simpler solution. But, this is where, developers miss a trick. Simplicity is not only about reducing the clicks in an application. There is absolutely no doubt that design optimization plays a crucial role in offering an effective user experience, but the focus should always be on reducing the mental effort rather than the physical effort of using a system. In an attempt to make the application as simple as possible, some developers are guilty of making it harder to use. By reducing the number of steps to perform a given activity, they make users think more and do less.

In order to ensure the ideal psychological and physical response from the users, the system needs to be kept simple, but not overtly so. It’s important that a user does not struggle with a certain concept, just because you want to keep the design simple. It’s important that the simplicity is propped up by logic. Failure to do so, will only give rise to complexity.

One-Size-Doesn’t-fit All

An oft-repeated phrase, boring to quote and difficult to implement! But, to ensure satisfying user experience, you will need to ensure that the design is acceptable to the majority of people who are using the application/system.  The situation is definitely a little tricky, but like everything else, there is always a way out.

You need to aim to make the design as productive as possible. It’s simply not necessary that you offer a design that meets the expectations of a large section of users. If you can achieve this, pat yourself on the back, but if you can’t find a way out, it’s important that you make things easier for users. A case in point being options – numerous options thrown at the user can lead to confusion. But, by using a design that leads up to users choosing the option that you have presented to them, is a much simpler way of going about things.

The factors mentioned above might sound as if web developers are trying to dumb down the system. But, even if it looks that way, it’s still improving the user experience a long way, and it’s only this that is going to ensure a successful app. Nothing else! So, don’t shy away from dumbing the app system down.

Quite a number of companies are hiring the services of a web consultant. The reason for this can be found in the potential of the World Wide Web. As companies use various techniques, tools and strategies to harness the potential of the internet, it’s important to get them absolutely right.

A web consultant helps a business make use of the power of the web in many different ways. For starters, your consultant can help design websites, or make sure that the design is in line with your requirements. There are also web consultants that specialize in search engine optimization and make sure that your site is optimized in the best manner possible. All in all, a web consultant ensures that you optimize the use of the web.

So how can you be sure that the web consultant you have chosen is the best in the industry? Here are a few ways that help make this possible.

1. Importance of Experience
   
   You must check the experience of the web consultant you want to hire. He/she must have a body of work that not only gives you an idea about the experience factor but also their skill sets. More importantly, your consultant must be able to offer client references. You need to get in touch with these references and gather information about the kind of services offered by the web consultant and whether the clients were satisfied with them or not. This will also help you get an idea about what a working relationship with a particular web consultant is going to be like.
    
2. Must focus on Simplicity and Quality
   
   Let’s face it, over-the-top website design or even web applications don't work. It’s simplicity that counts and is appreciated by the end user. More importantly, simplicity also ensures a high degree of functionality. Take the example of a website. A simple website means it looks professional and has tremendous clarity. This is why you must hire a web consultant who gives due importance to 'simplicity'
   
   What is also important is the quality aspect. The web consultants ensure that only the latest web standards are used for the development of websites or applications. Adherence to the designated web standards ensures a high degree of functionality and efficiency.
    
3. The Right Attitude
   
   Your project is important for you, therefore you need to hire a web consultant who has the right attitude towards your project. So, what determines the "right" attitude? What you need to check for, is the enthusiasm shown by a web consultant for your project. Another determinant is passion. You need to make sure that the web consultant is passionate about what he/she is doing. Moreover, you also need know where the project stands with the web consultant in terms of importance. Will the consultant be able to offer your project the importance it deserves?

Keep these tips at the back of your mind while choosing a web consultant as they will definitely help you in choosing the best possible option. But, there are also other things such as the skill sets, communication etc that you will need to take note of. Take all factors into consideration before making your choice.

An enterprise portal is essentially a website that makes available to users an extensive collection of resources and services either pertinent to one domain and its sub-domains or multiple domains. The architecture of such enterprise portals is designed with an aim to facilitate collaboration between the various entities authorized to use the portal.

If the enterprise portal architecture is ineffective, it has a marked impact on the efficiency of the website. It’s important that certain features are incorporated into the architecture to ensure the success of the portal.

Note: These features have not been given in their order of importance.

1. Business Information Directory
   
   It all begins here. This directory is a storehouse of all information such as user information, workflows, and systems etc that are a part of the enterprise portal. It contains detailed information on each of these aspects including details such as user profiles, security details amongst a host of other diverse information.
    
2. An effective Decision Processing System
   
   One of the integral components of a decision processing system is the data warehouse. Its functions are maintained through three layers including staging, integration and access. While staging is store’s raw data that can be used by developers for analysis and support; the integration layer integrates all available data; and the access layer makes the data accessible to users. Taken together, their integration plays a very important role in web portal architecture.
    
3. Search Engine Capability
   
   A standard web portal offers a search engine to its users and such search engines primarily use Meta data crawlers. These crawl over the length and breadth of the data that has been imported from diverse databases including internal and external systems. This facilitates the access and processing of such information.
    
4. Integration of Front End/Back End systems
   
   An enterprise portal is a coming together of a front-end as well as a back end system. A successful portal architecture is one that ensures the efficient integration of the back-end systems with the front end systems. To ensure efficiency, the architecture needs to take into consideration the purpose of the portal. It can be said without any doubt whatsoever that the success of an enterprise is in large part dependent on how well the architecture integrates both these systems.
    
5. Integrates well, within the enterprise
   
   The architecture should be such that the enterprise portal can successfully be integrated within the enterprise itself. Many a times, the portal is the only gateway to the enterprise, which means that managers and staff are solely dependent on the information available through the portal. The identification of their needs is of paramount importance for success in the design of the web portal architecture.

Designing the perfect architecture for a web portal isn’t a cakewalk. You need to be able to think it through in its minutest detail, before you actually go about building it.

The strength of a corporate identity is in no small measure determined by its logo. A logo creates strong visual identity for the business and becomes an important part of the business’s promotional campaign. A logo needs to be well designed in order to be effective. Let’s just say your corporate logo has a job to do and it can only do its job well, if it has impeccable design. 

So, here is how a well developed logo lays the foundation of a strong corporate identity:

Facilitates Remembrance

It’s a scientifically proven fact; your brain remembers images more that it does words. A logo is like the visual identification of your company. Your target audience will be more inclined towards a visual association with your business.  It’s your logo that acts as a visual link between your customers and your business.

Expresses Credibility

An effective logo is a visual projection of the core values of your company. In doing so, it also sends out the message of credibility. A well developed logo enhances the reputation of a business. If you want to tell the world 'I stand for my Values', there is no better way to do this than through your corporate logo.

It differentiates you from the pack

Why would a client want to do business with your company? You might sell the best products and services money can buy, but your competitors might be generating more revenue. You might not want to believe it but the logo plays no small part in helping prospective clients choose a company to do business with.

An effective logo design helps you break the clutter and distinguish yourself from your competitors. Most business domains are becoming extremely saturated, and it helps immeasurably if your logo does some talking on your behalf. 

If they love all the thought that that has been put behind designing your logo, chances are that they will go for your products and services.

The essential branding tool

Most promotional campaigns will make use of your logo as an important element of persuasion. All marketing collateral, whether traditional or online, will give due prominence to your logo. The idea behind marketing campaigns is to strengthen your corporate identity. And the logo is like the adhesive that keeps it all together.

And all this won’t happen if you don’t work with an expert logo design company, who understand the various intricate facets of logo design. You need to choose the company that can offer you the kind of logo, which builds an enduring corporate identity. You could say that picking the right logo design company is a precursor to a strong corporate identity

Since studies have revealed higher rates of abandonment for the websites where a page takes more than 4 seconds to load, web developers have got a new benchmark to achieve in terms of page loading time. Online businesses or Ecommerce sites need to ensure a faster loading of website, or it will leave a significant number of visitors frustrated, which may include regular visitors or customers, and find their way to other websites that load faster. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners, especially small business entrepreneurs, opt for cheap website development with inexperienced professionals and lose a significant business to their competitors having faster-loading sites.

Today, it’s very important for the web development professionals to know the techniques of reducing the loading time and serving the web pages faster. Here are a few ways how they can make a site load in lesser time.

Image optimization and the use of thumbnails

Using appropriate graphic tools, it’s possible to optimize website images to best suit the online use. Web optimized images will have substantially reduced file size and hence will allow for a faster loading. These tools are capable to compress the images up to 80% without disturbing its quality. Also, if using a large image is not essential, one may consider using a thumbnail, which is a smaller representation of an image providing an option to the user to click on it and view the larger version. It’s to be understood, therefore, that if a page has thumbnails as a replacement of the full images it will load much faster.

More use of static images and reduced animation

In contrast to the animated videos or graphics, the use of static images will remarkably reduce the time a web page will take to load. The static images are lighter as compared to the Flash animation and hence can be loaded faster in the browser.

A wise use of tables

If you are using tables as the framework of your site, make sure that you use them wisely. As a web browser waits until all the items are loaded in a table before rendering the content, it will keep a user waiting too long if your entire page content is sitting between a table and a table tag. The web page content should be divided in smaller chunks of data by splitting up the content into header, middle, and footer tables. This will keep visitors interested as they will have at least something to read while the page is loading.

Even if tables are to be utilized, the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to format and style your web page content can greatly improve your website’s load time as it cuts down on the long drawn out tags and substitute them with smaller class styles.

Use of common image folder

This will eliminate the possibility of image duplication when it is such that the same image appears on a number of pages and in different sections. If a common image folder is used, the user’s browser will be able to find the images with minimum efforts, resulting into faster loading. Besides, a common file for images is also part of a good file base structure.

Have a practice of monitoring the site speed

Monitoring your website’s speed on a regular basis will help you observe if it’s happening too frequently that the server on which your website is hosted is running slow. This may give you a timely indication if it calls for upgrading the web hosting package or switching to a better host.

Set limits to the database queries

Assigning limits to the total number of queries to be allowed to a particular web page can keep the load on the hosting server in control. If the information on the index page is kept to the point with an easy navigation structure, it will help the index page to be accessed real fast.

A slow website can lead to losses in many ways. On the other hand, a faster-loading website will make better sales and conversions as visitors could access the information and services quite quickly. If the abovementioned techniques are taken into account, it’s not difficult to develop a website for better profits.