This week I finally upgraded my Internet Explorer for test purposes and it prompted me to look into the web market share. The last time I did so was about two years ago and I reckon it might be interesting to investigate the latest browser war statistics, as it seems to me that more and more people are switching over to Chrome and Firefox (with the increase of Mac users – and subsequently Safari – also playing a role). SAbest also asked the following question on our Facebook page this week: “Browser wars! What’s your favourite browser – Firefox, Chrome, or Explorer?”. We should perhaps have added Safari, but no biggie. The overwhelming majority of people voted for Chrome (including me – I will briefly discuss at the end of this article what my reasons are).

So let’s take a look at the latest (February 2012) stats from W3Counter. (http://www.w3counter.com)

These stats reflect a different picture than the one that was prevalent about two or three years ago. I think it is safe to say that, unless Microsoft comes out with a totally fresh and usable product, both Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox will surpass it in the near future. Chrome is by far the fastest growing browser, having gone from nearly non-existent in early 2008 to the browser with the second biggest share in 2012. In that same time period Internet Explorer’s usage has nearly halved. It should be noted that these statistics represent all the versions of a given browser as a collective whole. For example: Internet Explorer 8 usage is at 14.71%, Chrome 17 at 14.4% and so on – with the total for all Internet Explorer versions making up 30.7%, Chrome 25.1%, Firefox 24.4% etc.

I am sure many web developers and designers would smile when looking at the latest Web Browser Market share statistics. It seems as if the days of endless struggle with older versions of Internet Explorer might be a thing of the past very soon.

Personally, I use and prefer Google Chrome. What first drew me towards it back in 2008 was the screen real estate. The bottom bar disappeared and the top and navigational bar minimalistic, allowing for an overall clean and visually pleasing browser. Secondly, I loved Chrome’s speed.

In the end however, the important thing is that the game has changed. Microsoft no longer has monopoly, competition is healthy.  Who knows – Microsoft might still come back and surprise, but at the moment the picture is different. The browser war has been fought again and again and it seems there just might be a new winner soon.

Every website needs to undergo a “facelift” at one point or another. The 1999 website look will not help you generate more clients or leads for your business. Your website needs to undergo a facelift whether it’s due to the changing nature of your business, or purely for aesthetic reasons.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is “why your website needs to be redesigned”? Is it to generate more leads, higher search engine rankings or a better modern look and feel? Secondly you need to think of what needs to be redesigned. For example, maybe the content on your website is outdated or some element needs to be replaced such as the coding of your website. Invest time to go through your website to identify which elements are working and which ones are not.

It is very important to analyse and keep in mind how users are currently interacting with your site as well as the latest market trends. This will also enable you to identify great content and problem areas. If you implement Google Analytics, you can have access to statistics such as how many visitors your website gets sales conversions and search engine keywords mostly used for your products/services. You can also have a look at your screen resolution and browser usage; make sure your website loads quickly and correctly on all browsers.

In Today’s fast paced, ever changing world, companies change their Corporate Identity (CI) to tap into the right market, just remember that if you change your company’s corporate identity then ensure the changes are reflected on your website too, as your website is the face of your company. User make a decision about your company based on your website, so make sure it’s incredible enough to make a lasting impression.

Happy designing!

In this technological age, we interact with objects daily and it is important that our interactions elicit positive user experiences. These interactions can be with any object or product, from a hair dryer to a washing machine.  Because of this, Usability has become extremely important.

Usability refers to the ease of use and learnability with which a human interacts with an object. Usability in the context of Information Technology generally falls within the academic field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).. In the field of web design, usability and interaction design is just as important as the visual design itself. Your website can be aesthetically beautiful, but if users find it difficult to interact with, you have a big problem.

There are a number of components that tie in with usability and I shall briefly discuss a few of them here. Interaction with any device should be a designed process. The interface for interaction should be easy to use and user friendly. An interface should also be designed to be intuitive. Users should be able to know what to do automatically, without having to think about it. The user should therefore not feel frustrated.

If new actions have to be learnt, these should be easy to remember. This brings us to another point, learnability. A highly learnable interface is one in which users automatically know what to do after they have performed the required actions a few times.

Ultimately, the user should be considered during every single phase of design and implementation. The target audience, user cognition, and affective aspects play an extremely important role. The affective aspects involved when a user interacts with any type of interface includes the user’s emotional reactions, biases and other psychological traits.

A couple of ways in which to improve the usability of your site (or device, software or anything else you can think of that humans will interact with) are the following:

- Follow standards and conventions. These conventions are in some cases quite obvious (don’t put light text on a light background or make sure buttons look like buttons), however there are certain conventions that have just sort of evolved over time. They are “tried and tested” ways of doing this and are there for a reason. The point is that these standards are known by users and users will look for them.  It might be tempting to explore radically new ideas, but if you are not sure your idea will work, it might be better not to implement it.

- Conduct Usability tests. If you want your website to be usable, learnable and user friendly it is crucial that you conduct usability tests. These tests can be done with a small amount of people and with limited equipment. The important thing is that you do this continuously at various stages of development ( and pre development). Get a couple of people to use your website and monitor them, record their screen actions and listen to their feedback. You will most certainly pick up errors. And because you are conducting usability tests early on in the process, you will have time for improvement.

- Analyse the data. Analyse and interpret the data obtained from the usability test. See where improvement is necessary and share the results with your staff.

The field of HCI is quite large and it would benefit any individual who is involved with the design, implementation and planning of any interface to read a book or two on the subject. I can recommend Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, this is an excellent book which covers almost everything you need to know. If you want to save a bit of time though, pick up the book ‘Don’t make me think’ by Steve Krug.

If you are looking for a quick efficient solution to get a website up and running – Wordpress is most definitely the way to go. Wordpress is an Open Source website publishing software that was first released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg. In this article I’ll discuss in short what type of hosting you will need to host a Wordpress website, how to download it and upload it to a domain, how to change the look by downloading a free theme and how to install it, how to implement some cool functionality (plugins) and how to use the basic Wordpress features.

Hosting your WordPress website

First of all – you need to find a company to host your Wordpress website on a server. Wordpress requires PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) and MySQL (a relational database management system) to work. You’ll also need to choose a domain name e.g. www.example-site.com. The hosting company should be able to register a domain name (the one you chose and if it is available) on your behalf. Ask them to send you the MySQL and FTP login information because you’ll need it to set up a working Wordpress website.

Interexcel Hosting

Downloading Wordpress & Uploading it to your website

After you have organised hosting (that will be able to run Wordpress) and got a domain name you will need to download Wordpress CMS. Download Wordpress.

You will also need to download an FTP client such as FileZilla to be able to connect to the server with the above mentioned FTP details. After downloading the FTP client open it enter the Host name (or IP address), username and password (FTP details) and then click QuickConnect (in FileZilla). Then you should be connected to the server. If you struggle with this, phone your hosting company they will be able to help you with this. Download FileZilla

Unzip the Wordpress zip file on your local machine then upload the contents of it to the www folder (usually www or public_html).

Installing Wordpress

If you have uploaded the Wordpress files – go to your domain name e.g. http://www.example-site.com where an installation wizard will be prompted. Fill in all the information you need to e.g. database connectivity login information (usually given by the hosting company) and website name. Continue until you have completed the setup wizard. You can edit the database variables in the configuration file found in the root of your Wordpress installation.

Now that your Wordpress website has been successfully installed you can go to the administrator panel by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin where you can then login with the information you supplied in the setup wizard.

Downloading a Theme and installing it

Now with your website hopefully successfully running, it’s time to customize it a bit with templates / themes.

There are plenty of themes out there you can use. To download themes go to the Wordpress website: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ where you can search for themes (many of which are customizable in your administration panel) and download it.

You can also search for themes within the WordPress administration by clicking on Add new themes link on the left hand side (a sub menu of the Appearance link).

If you downloaded it to your local upload it to your wp-content/themes/ folder and if you search for it via the administration it can be automatically installed. Just make sure your themes folder is set to writable (chmod 777). Then go to your administration and enable your new theme.

Extend WordPress even more

Now with your website looking great you can extend the functionality of it. It is easy to extend Wordpress with existing plugins. You can search plugins again from your administration by clicking on the plugins tab on your left hand side and then click on the sub menu “Add new” where you can search for plugins which is installable similar to that of the themes. (Again make sure your plugins folder is writeable (chmod 777)

Basic Use of a Wordpress website

Creating a new post entry

Click on the Posts tab (found on your left hand side) then you will see sub items underneath the Posts tab then click on “Add new “. Fill in the title of your entry, the body, the category the post should appear in and other fields. You can then click on Preview to view the page (before publishing) or just click Publish to make it live.

Creating a category

One uses categories to organise your postings. To create a category you can either create a new post then where you choose a category click on “Add new category” or you can go to the categories section (under Posts tab) and there you will find a create new category form. Fill in fields and click on “Add Category”.

It is virtually impossible to explain all of Wordpress within one blog entry but I am sure this article will help you to set up a basic website in a very short period of time. Wordpress is by far the best most affordable solution to set up a well functioning website.

Today – websites play a vital role in attracting potential customers, building your brand and promoting interaction between your businesses and existing clients. Though you still get businesses that either do not want to invest or invest very little in obtaining a website. This leads to businesses using internal resources to quickly set up a website and in turn update their website intermittently.

This usually leaves a business with a website that looks unprofessional that cannot be found organically via search engines because the website has not been constructed correctly. A website needs to be constructed in such a manner that robots (web bots) can make sense of it so that it can be indexed and finally be found by potential clients.

Visitors to your website want a great user experience. A professionally designed website that is relevant to your product/service improves user experience. Images used in designs should be optimized for websites to improve loading speed. Nothing increases the bounce rate of websites as much as long page loading times.

User experience is improved by implementing functionality like search, quote forms, booking systems to mention just a few. Visitors don’t like to struggle using websites they want to find what they need as easily and quickly as possible.

Maintenance on a website should also be done regularly and if not done correctly it can easily break your website. Building your website in to a CMS (Content Management System) can help with this especially in decreasing the time spent on updating your website.

One should use a professional to construct and maintain a website as Aa professionals has the ability to construct a website according to W3 standards using the latest proven technologies to optimize websites for search engines and to improved user experience.