HTML 5 is being described as the future of the Web but naturally, unless you understand what benefits it holds for your website or online business, you may not be sure if you really want to look into it.

A website is powered by a special coding language, called the markup language – Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML. A markup language, as the name suggests provides structure to the information on the page, indicating what block of text is the heading, what forms a paragraph, a hypertext link, a list and so on. The most commonly used markup languages today are HTML 4 and to some extent xHTML. Both these markup languages contain a set of elements, which when applied correctly to the information in your website documents will give them the correct semantics and more importantly have a better chance at being understood by a wide variety of user agents.

What do we mean by semantics? Semantics, for website documents, simply means giving meaning to a structure. While designing webpages, HTML elements should be used to give proper meaning to the content. For e.g. <title> is used to indicate the title of the document, (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>) are used to indicate various headings, <a> a hyperlink, <abbr> an abbreviation and so on. However, the problem for web standard experts so far has been the very limited set of elements available for HTML 4. This has made it difficult to semantically describe all the content of the pages effectively. HTML 5 provides a much larger set of markup elements that experts hope will help provide better semantics to a webpage.

At this stage, you might still not be convinced about how HTML 5 is going to benefit your website. Let us consider two examples to explain why HTML 5 is superior to the previous markup language.

• If you use HTML 5 to markup the content of your website, there may not be any visible changes in the external appearance of your website. Your visitors will only see the design of your website. However, they are going to use a wide variety of devices and methods to view your site. This may include technology that groups information for them based on the semantic indicators that you have provided on the webpages, a mobile browser that re-organizes content using the semantic information so that it can be viewed easily on the small screen or search engines that are able to index and rank your site better because of better semantics. In other words, you are bound to benefit from the use of HTML 5.
• Another major advantage of HTML 5 is its ease of use. Currently, media such as video cannot be handled by HTML 4 and a user has to download third-party plug-ins such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight to play videos. On the other hand, if a site is using HTML 5 and a compatible browser is being used to view the site, no third-party plug-ins are necessary and the browser can display the video as naturally as it can images at present. Thus site designers can make websites as media-rich as they want by using video, audio and other interactive media.

HTML 5 can thus provide for a smoother, richer user experience across a range of devices, once it is fully supported by all major browsers.

If you are reviewing ecommerce solutions before starting on your web portal, you are already way ahead of many other business owners who start an online store. Many of these owners spend precious time and resources in starting an ecommerce website, only to realize that they lack a good accounting package, their web hosting solution does not support the databases they need or that they have to pay extra for Web analytics software. In fact, many end up redoing their entire site. You can learn from their mistakes and understand at the very beginning, the most essential development solutions your ecommerce web portal is going to need.

• Website Development Solution: The first step is going to be designing the front-end of your web portal. Obviously an ecommerce website is going to differ from ordinary website even in appearance since there has to be more focus on the products and customers should be able to easily shop and navigate through the site. More importantly, your business is looking for tools that will help not just build the website but also make it easy to maintain. A qualified ecommerce web designer will help you design the front-end so that it has the professional look to attract customers and help you make decisions about other back-end solutions that are needed to keep the content on your site up-to-date and the site functioning smoothly.
• Ecommerce Solution: This is the main solution that will drive your web portal, from displaying products, providing a shopping cart, managing inventory to checkout. There is a wide range of ecommerce solutions available in the market today and you should take your time to do adequate research on all of them before deciding on one for your business. Unless your needs are very complicated, you should be able to find a complete ecommerce package that offers everything from inventory management to online marketing, at very reasonable prices.
• Payment Processing Solution: While a shopping cart may be included in your ecommerce package, you will need a payment gateway that will enable online payments to be transferred to your bank account. You could use third-party payment processors such as PayPal or sign up for a merchant account.
• Web Analytics Solution: In recent times, a good Web Analytics solution has decided how successful an ecommerce venture is going to be. Having a comprehensive Web Analytics solution will help you analyze what your customers are looking for and how to serve them better.
• Back-End Integration Solution: If you already have an offline business, you will be able to streamline many of the online operations by simply feeding the data from the website into your existing inventory, customer and accounting database.
• Web Hosting Solutions: A large number of web hosting companies today provide small and medium businesses with many of the development solutions listed above in addition to hosting the site. A good hosting solution will provide security for online transactions through SSL, take regular backups of your website and its data, provide sufficient bandwidth and have minimum downtime. By selecting the right web hosting solution, even a small business can establish an online presence very quickly.

The advantages of taking your business online were always clear to you; after all, the Internet is the one place that provides you with a 24 X 7 market presence and can attract potential customers from all over the world. It is possible that your website even attracts a regular stream of visitors and you make a few sales through your website. So, when someone mentions the importance of Search Engine Optimization or SEO for your website, you are not quite convinced. After all, you have spent a few hundred dollars in designing a beautiful site, your website appears on your visiting card and in all your advertising campaigns – that you believe, is enough for people to find your site. However, are you sure that your advertisements have reached the right customers – ones who are actually looking for your products or services?

Every website owner who is not sure of how important SEO is for their website needs to study the following figures carefully – nearly 60 percent of shoppers today use the Internet to search for information on just about everything, including products and services available in their local area. Instead of going through the Yellow Pages as they would have done a few years back, today people surf the Web for every requirement – from a plumber to a sign shop and from clothes to Christmas gifts. Therefore, it is not just enough to have an online presence, even if you offer one of the best services or sell one of the best products on the Internet. What is needed is strong visibility in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process by which your website is optimized and then promoted over the Internet so that it appears in the top search results of major search engines. The higher the rank of a website in the search results of a search engine like Google, the greater the chances of visitors finding your website amongst millions of others. In fact, these visitors are also most likely to buy the product or take up the services that you are offering since they have specifically searched for that information.

By optimizing your website for search engines, you will generate the kind of visibility that inspires consumer confidence, both locally and internationally, helping drive targeted traffic to your website. There is no doubt that SEO is far more cost-effective than other online advertising options such as pay-per-click ads. More importantly, you will find that the kind of traffic a top rank in the search results of a major search engine like Google can generate is far more than what expensive banner ads can do.

So what exactly does SEO do to your website? Individual web pages will be analyzed and then reconstructed so that the content of the web pages are more relevant and can be read more easily by search engines and their indexing software.

By understanding and implementing SEO for your website, you can help your business become and stay competitive online.

The revolution that smartphones and smartphone applications have brought about is evident to almost every organization today. However, many businesses are still not convinced that developing a mobile application will deliver clear returns on investment for them or that it will help them engage better with customers. You might, for example, want to know why you should spend your limited financial resources developing mobile applications for your business, when the current system is working fine?

Mobile applications can make your current business systems work more quickly and efficiently, and deliver advantages that were not very apparent when you first employed them.

• Improved Customer Satisfaction – Customers always appreciate a quick and well-informed answer to their question. Mobile applications will help your employees respond more quickly to customers’ concerns, even if they are not in the office. Mobile applications are also used to deliver personalized content and services to customers. This helps increase customer satisfaction and build better relationships with the people who matter most to your business.
• Increased Visibility Amongst Potential Customers – There is not doubt that a company that is at the forefront of technology is likely to be noticed more, not just by potential customers but also potential employees. When announcements are made using a mobile application over smartphones, it certainly grabs a lot of attention than a traditional media release. Many customers also feel they can trust a company that is comfortable with the latest technologies and uses it reach out to them.
• Richer User Experience – If a customer makes an enquiry about a product with one of your field personnel, what do you think the customer would prefer – A hurriedly written summary about your product or service? Or digital pictures that show every angle of the product? Or perhaps even video with your employee explaining how it works? All delivered through your mobile application.
• Reduced Operational Costs – If your business employs sales and marketing people and field personnel, it is likely that they constantly refer to printed reference materials that unfortunately get outdated very quickly. By delivering these manuals or sales documentation through a mobile application, you can ensure that your employees can always access the very latest and most accurate information, and save on the printing costs.
• Increased Productivity – Employees in your business may already be using smartphones in their personal lives and may be very savvy about how to use the various functions and features of the device. By encouraging them and other employees to use their mobile devices to synchronize with corporate systems and data, you can help them perform their tasks much faster, reducing business costs. Further, sharing relevant information across the business results in fewer repeated tasks making the business more productive and more profitable.

As you can see, you should no longer be asking yourself if you should develop a mobile application for your business. Instead, you should be looking at what kind of mobile application will help you deliver your business goals and provide you the returns on your investment. Only by allowing the right people in your business to use the right mobile applications in the right way, will you be able to realize all the benefits that a mobile application can provide to a business.

Pros and Cons of Hiring An Individual Programmer vs. Hiring A Programming Company

Every business needs a website to inform their customers and leads about the products or services they offer and to offer present customers timely assistance through their website. A website also serves as a powerful marketing tool helping a business maintain its competitive advantage in an ever-expanding market.

If your organization is not in the business of web development and programming, you are more likely to hire a vendor for your programming needs while you focus on your core competencies. The key question facing small and often medium sized businesses is whether you are better off hiring an individual programmer or a programming company.

Let us review some of the pros and cons of both these options.

One of the main advantages of hiring a programming company is that you can take advantage of the many skilled professionals that the company already has on its staff. With a programming company you can assign multiple projects to the company and expect to get them completed within a reasonably short period of time. For example, your business website may have many components – the front-end design, the back-end coding, online marketing and so on.

Each aspect of the website requires a different skill set and a programming company will often be able to provide you with all services under one roof. Further, even after the website becomes operational, you may want regular changes to it so that your website stays updated and your business is ahead of the competition.

While you may not be able to communicate with each individual programmer working on your project, you may be assigned an on-site representative or account manager whose primary job is to understand your requirements or concerns and convey these back to the programming team.

Finally, a programming company may find it easier to quickly replace a team member who is proving inefficient or is no longer with the company, thereby ensuing that your project is delivered on time. Hiring a programming company protects you from turnover risk – to an extent.

The biggest advantage you can get from hiring an individual programmer is that of complete personal attention to your project. If you hire an experienced professional with the right expertise to work on your project, even though the person may be a little limited in terms of the skills that you want, you can be sure that your project will receive the person’s full attention.

Unlike in a company, where a programming team works on many simultaneous projects, an individual programmer usually works on just one or two projects at a time.

This ensures that quality is not compromised.

You can stay in constant touch with the programmer and provide feedback on the parts completed, which the programmer can immediately act upon. While there is a certain element of uncertainty involved when you hire an individual programmer, you will find that most professional programmers are more than willing to put in extra hours if needed so that the project is completed on schedule or even ahead, if your business demands it.

Finally, you are always likely to find the payment terms for an individual programmer to be more flexible reasonable compared to what a company charges. An individual programmer may also turn out to be cost effective depending on the demand of the skill sets and experience of the programmer you have hired.

A quick guideline for hiring managers to the Pros and Cons of hiring a Programmer or a Company for your business’ IT needs:

Face it. If you are serious about your business, it is highly likely your business has a website or uses software in some form or shape. Often, your website is the public side of your business and drives prospective and current customers to know more about your business or to perform business using your website.

Welcome to our weekly updates. Here, you will find tips and guidelines on how to hire a new programmer, programming team or anyone you plan to hire for your programming needs.

This makes your website a critical component of your business. Just like you would judge the store from the storefront, most of your customers judge the maturity of your business through your website.

This makes the decision of hiring an individual programmer or a team of programmers for your programming needs.

We hope, that by following some of the tips posted on this blog, you will be able to take the steps in the right direction.

Some of the topics we will cover are:

1. Pros and Cons of hiring an individual programmer vs hiring a programming company

2. To offshore or not to offshore

3. Tips on hiring a good programmer (or team)

4. Where to start, where to find them, how to weed out the gems

5. The Process – What works what does not

6. Help! We got hacked and my programmer is vacationing in Machupichu