What’s new in Laravel 5.7.13

When we first looked at Laravel earlier this year we focused on the security features it possessed and why it was such a popular framework that top web design and development companies in Pune, like CodePlateau, use it. Laravel has just recently been updated to version 5.7.13. It’s the constant updates that Laravel receives that make it such a popular framework for web developers and web development companies to work with. In this blog, we’ll be looking at the whole host of changes that have been introduced with the latest update.

But before we do that let’s take a small look at the update cycle of Laravel

Laravel Update Cycle

Not many companies provide an update cyclefor their applications. You have to keep guessing and this is important todevelopers to understand how they’re going to move forward with their plans. Asper the release cycle updates provided by the company Laravel will receive 2major updates every year.

The first major update will be in June and the other normally by the end of the year. While the framework has been updated the previous versions will still be supported for up to 6 months and provided while the newer version receives bug fixes and minor updates.

It’s important for web development companies to know when they need to perform updates and when new versions will be available so they can plan around it. However, if you want to stay to developers the latest release information you could visit the following link:

Here are the changes that have been added to the new release of Laravel:

  1. Messaging Ability
    You can now add a variety of messages to your custom validation rule. Something that the previous versions or Laravel were surely missing.
  2. Empty
    The collection methods now have the ability to pick between whenEmpty /whenNotEmpty/unlessEmpty/unlessNotEmpty method
  3. Added Illuminate\Support\Collection::some method
  4. Added Illuminate\Cache\Repository::missing method
  5. Added Macroable trait to Illuminate\View\Factory
  6. Added support for UNION aggregate queries

Changed

  1. Updated AbstractPaginator::appends to handle null
  2. Added “guzzlehttp/guzzle”:“^6.3”, to composer.json
  3. Showed exception message on 403 error page when message is available
  4. Don’t run TransformsRequesttwice on ?query= parameters
  5. Added missing logging options to slack log driver
  6. Use cascade when truncating table in PostgreSQL
  7. Allowed pass absolute parameter in has valid signature request macro

Changed realization

Used Request::validate macro in Auth traits

Apart from the above changes Laravel version 5.7 known as project Nova has also introduced the following features

  • Authentication scaffolding now also contains an optional email verification process
  • Authorization gates and policies now have support for guest users to log on
  • Testing improvement for various consoles
  • Notifications that are localizable
  • Dump-server integration with Symfony

Laravel continues to be an outsider’s choice when it comes to web development framework; however, it is quickly building up a steady reputation for itself. Here are some startling statistics about Laravel use in India and abroad.

  • Laravel is the most popular framework for developing web application in India: This should come as no surprise since the PHP Framework itself is solidly built. It allows you to develop a whole lot of applications with simple coding. Along with India, Laravel is also a top contender in the USA, China, Spain and the UK among others.
  • Laravel is slowly but steadily taking customers away from its competitors. For instance It’s leaving behind competitors like RealTime and Web2py. However, it is still facing stiff competition from the likes of WebMatrix and Lasso. Webmatrix is one of the most popular PHP frameworks in use currently. Of a hundred websites in use, application for 46 of them have been built by WebMatrix while only 11 have been built using Laravel so there is still a lot of catching up to do.
  •  Business and Industry category use Laravel the most frequently because of the high level of security it offers and the simplicity in the build.
  • Arts and Entertainment make up the next largest category with 6% of all Laravel web apps used in the arts and entertainment industry.
  • While USA leads the race in the top usage statistics for Laravel, India is in the top 10 list ahead of Turkey, Indonesia, and the Netherlands

CodePlateau is one of the top web development companies in Pune India that uses Laravel to develop top notch web applications for our customers. We have some amazing work to show in our Portfolio section which highlights the great work we can and have achieved using Laravel. If you are interested in knowing more about Laravel or would like a web App developed for your website, get in touch with us today.

All You Need To Know About AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

Since we’re living in a world of short attention spans your consumers are looking for the fastest smoothest web browsing experience. With the advent of the smartphone more and more of the users browsing experience has moved to smartphones. Google recognized this and in 2015 made speed a ranking factor and again in December 2015 hinted at making mobile website loading speeds a ranking factor too. Web developers in Pune and around the world began experimenting with mobile-friendly versions of their website but it wasn’t good enough.
Kissmetrics data shows that pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load are more likely to be abandoned by up to 40% of the users. To battle, this problem Accelerated Mobile pages were introduced, and it was found that websites that were AMP-optimized showed a significant improvement in their rankings. In this blog, we’ll look at what AMP Pages are and how you can use CodePlateau’s world-renowned web development services to take advantage of them on your own website.

What Are Accelerated Mobile Pages?
It began when Google and Twitter joined forces to bring about a faster online experience to their users. It is an open source experience that helps design your web pages to make them faster and provide a better user experience. It’s a plugin that can help reduce your web page to the absolute essential basics to make it load quicker.

How To Optimize Your Web pages For AMP?

  • This is what most of your readers are here to find out. The solution, simple, download the AMP plugin from right within the WordPress plugins search or from the Github downloads. You will need to change a bit of code however and that’s where the excellent team of web developers from CodePlateau in Pune come in handy.
  • What we also suggest is that you create two different versions of your content pages. One can simply be a mobile-friendly version where you can have all your features and customizations while the AMP pages will be bare bones but provide a better online experience to the user. You don’t have to be worried about Google considering the pages as duplicate as they take into account the AMP version as long as your page has been validated online.
  • Use AMP URL’s to distinguish between the two.

So How Does The AMP Plugin Work?

Like we’ve mentioned before the AMP plugin strips your webpage to the absolute basic code required by smartphones to run smoothly. There are three parts to the AMP structure:
1) AMP HTML
2) AMP JS
3) AMP CDN

AMP pages don’t load regular Javascript, there is an AMP Javascript subset that you need to use. There are several other factors that you need to consider before using the AMP plugin on your page –

– Before you can roll out your AMP pages they need to be validated
– It is best to avoid custom fonts on your AMP pages as this may delay load time as these fonts have to be specially loaded every time
– You have to specify height and width for every image you share on your page if you want them to load correctly
– Videos need specially approved extensions to run on your AMP pages

You also need to be aware of the fact that AMP pages are built for quickness and readability. You might not even be able to enable the social sharing icons on your AMP pages as these are built using Javascript. CodePlateau’s web development team in Pune have found a workaround for this issue, get in touch with us for additional details.

5 Benefits Of Using AMP Pages For Your Website
While there are numerous benefits of using AMP pages for your website, we’ll be looking at the top 5. These are the factors that can really help enhance your site’s ranking and help you convert more sales.

1) Quicker Loading Speeds – The whole purpose of building AMP pages is to get an edge over your competition when it comes to the speed with which the content on your pages load. Users love a faster browsing experience as can be ascertained by the KissMetrics numbers.

Here are some more statistics to help convince you that you need AMP pages for your website

  • Every second your page delays in loading you are losing 9.4% of your pageviews
  • Conversion rate drops by 3.5% with every second added to your page load time
  • Bounce rate can go up by 8.3% for pages that take more than 3 seconds to load

In commercial terms, depending on your monthly traffic this could amount to a serious loss of site visitors, sales and more

2) Highlighted Results In Search – When it comes to SEO every advantage you can find is worth the time you spend getting it. Websites that rely heavily on their content for marketing were thrilled when AMP pages were introduced as it provided them with a green lightning symbol to display them as AMP pages. They also showed up higher in the search results. AMP pages have a higher click-through rate than their non-AMP counterparts.

3) Higher Listing In Search – Since speed is now one of the ranking factors on Google pages that load quicker tend to have a higher listing in search. This is especially true for AMP pages as not only do they have faster loading times as compared to non-AMP pages, they also have a better click-through rate. While Google may not necessarily be focusing on earning money using AMP pages it has helped them generate more revenue. A better user experience has led to more users pushing to use Google as their default browser. More clicks mean more money for Google.

4) Better Ad Support – Speaking of Google making money using AMP pages it has also helped content creators streamline the Ad’s on their sites. Since only custom AMP approved HTML works along with streamlined CSS code and almost no Javascript there are fewer distractions on your web page. Users can focus on the content and there is plenty of space for Ads. While you don’t want to clutter your pages with Ad’s less clutter makes it more convenient for people to click on Ad’s when they’re truly interested in them. AMP pages make the Ad’s stand out more effectively than the rest of the content on the page.

5) Simpler User Tracking – It’s not just that AMP pages provide the user with a better experience they also provide the content creator with more data to work with. Using Tag manager on their AMP pages provides Google webmasters with more information about their users. All the metrics you can find on Google Analytics are provided separately for AMP pages.

Conclusion
India is still in a very nascent stage when it comes to adopting AMP pages. If you want to get a head start on your competition you should start working on converting your pages to AMP as soon as possible. While setting up AMP pages on your website might seem easy there is some web development knowledge that you would need. Who better to help you out with your problem than Pune’s best Web Development company CodePlateau. If you’d like to get started on your project or need more information on the subject, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch today!

Points That A Website Developer Shouldn’t Miss Out

There is a long checklist which has to be followed as a website developer while developing a website like its functionality, internal linking, placements etc. Following the checklist is surely going to reduce the errors after delivering the website to the client. Below are some points which are essential points which should not be missed out.Website Inter LinkingEvery website is built up with specific idea and logic. This logic is very important and should be clear and simple enough for the easy flow of internal navigation from one web page to another. Every new topic within a specific subject on the website should have an individual subpage. Due to this, the flow of the user does not get distracted and which leads to increasing dwelling time on the website, as the user finds the relevant topic which he was looking for or interested in. Also, do not make more than 3 to 4 layers of subpage from the index page. Many internal linking within the pages may lead diversion of users as well as the crawlers.Continue reading

Need A Modern Web Design? Follow These Tips

Since you first completed work on your website you’ve pretty much left it alone. Your customers were coming in non-stop and you couldn’t be happier. Until now. Lately, with the competition blossoming you’ve had to step up your game as well and what better place to start than with your website. Your primary source of leads to generate new business. You want to go from stale and outdated, to new and fresh for your website. You want to get with the modern web design tips to completely overhaul your website and this list will help you do exactly that.

Best Modern Web Design Tips

1. Mix and Match Layout

Recent studies have shown that when online, customers are more prone to paying attention to your website when the layout is slightly off-track. Online shoppers and your website visitors are so used to seeing the same layout on every website that most of the time if you’re not doing something different, the site visitor has already tuned out half the website.

If your website layout forces them to pay attention by providing something interesting and inviting for their eyes you’ll be in a much better position to hold their attention. Your layout forms the cornerstone of the modern web design element of your website.

2. Custom Graphics and Icons

Welcome to the 21st century where everything needs to be snazzy and highly individualistic. Your website needs an identity and it’s your graphics and icons that lead the way in providing a sense of individuality to your website. How many websites have you seen lately that use the same tired icons to represent their business? Everyone has the same icons and graphics on their website which can actually work to your advantage.

By providing your customers with something different you’ll be way ahead of your competition when it comes to attracting new customers and keep your current customers happy.

3. Colours

Bright is best. We don’t mean your background, which in our opinion should remain white. We mean your header, footer, links and other elements on your website. Choose bright colours like light yellow, darker shades of pink, leaf green. All these are apparent favourites with the consumers online today.

4. Typography

Calibri and Cambria seem to be the official font of the internet. Almost 7/10 site probably use the same two fonts for their website when there are literally thousands of others to choose from. Why should you choose differently? Because people pay more attention to what they’re reading when they need to focus a bit harder to read the text. Our eyes have gotten so used to reading the Calibri and Cambria fonts that our minds tend to drift while we’re reading.

It’s a scientific fact that hard to read fonts promote better recall.

Choose your website font carefully. Especially if you’re providing in-depth, text-filled content which your users rely on. Using a different but pleasing typography will actually help your customer’s and they’ll keep coming back for more.

5. Transitioning Text and Animations

Another fascinating aspect of the modern web design methodology is to use exciting animations and transitions to captivate your audience. Video is one of the fastest growing formats of content delivery. You should link to some useful YouTube videos in your content, but the next best thing is to provide a healthy dose of animations and transitions to your website.

Conclusion

While it may seem easy, you’ll probably need professional assistance to guide you through revamping your website. That’s where CodePlateau comes in. CodePlateau is one of Pune’s best web design and development companies. Having worked for several large national and international clients, CodePlateau is in a perfect position to help transition your business into the new era. Get in touch with us today to find out more about how we can help each other prosper. Remember, your consultation is on us.

Five Common Mistakes That Designers Must Avoid

Graphic design, web design or any design requires a lot of groundwork, extensive research and a constant understanding of the client’s requirements. As a professional web design and web development company, we would like to document some common mistakes that designers make:

Hazy Idea of Client Requirements   

The root cause for the problems that follow later is clearly the lack of understanding. The client requires one design pattern. The designer adds his own core ideas to the design. The communication gap is more than evident in most cases.

Avoid project disruption by noting down client requirements specifically. In an email write down all the details of the discussion and get it confirmed with the client. That requirement document is now the reference point for all design related matters. You will be surprised at how smoothly things go after you clarify.

Font Choices

Font plays a critical role in web design. Often a bad font choice ruins all the good work. If you go for distinctly different fonts for the headings, subheadings, and text, even neat design can look chaotic. Ask yourself the following questions. Is the font legible and complimenting the UI and UX design? Is the font just the right size? Do your eyes strain when you read the font?

Counter Unrealistic Expectations

Certain clients can end up with unreasonable expectations for the project.  When you know that a particular requirement is not viable, convey that communication immediately. For example, if the client is expecting a huge volume of work within a ridiculous, limited timeframe, have further client discussions. Delivering high-quality design will require a reasonable amount of time. You need to clearly convey the deadline parameters for a smoother design project execution.

Don’t Blindly Follow Trends

To be aware of the latest design trends is one thing. But to apply a popular and trending design element to a project on a whim can be disastrous. Once a new trend takes over, the design can look quite outdated. What works for a different audience and sensibility, may not work with another set of users. Understanding your target audience is thus of paramount importance. Let your creativity speak for itself but within the framework of project requirements.

A Final Check

Spell check? Done! Don’t stop there. The client will also be looking at the design. So make sure you have a definitive checklist of the client requirements before you pass on the website copy to them. Have you worked out a consistent structure and spacing? What about white space? Is the right communication going out as intended? Working on a project for long hours can make you less objective at times. Get potential users to have a good look at the website and tell you what they like and don’t like. You will end up finding more problems from a user perspective.

These are some of the common mistakes that designers make. What are the other mistakes that you have observed designers make? Do share your thoughts as comments.

Does Your Website Need a Mobile Makeover?

When is the right time for your website to get a mobile makeover? As a professional web development company, here are some things we suggest you look for:

Responsive Website Design, What’s That?

For starters, a responsive website fits into any device used to access it. Smartphone users are set to touch 2.5 billion in 2019. Upgrading to responsive website design is no longer an option. Remember that your website markets your product or service 24/7. You will lose out on both loyal and new website visitors if you don’t upgrade.

“Mobile First” is a fast-growing and business-viable website design approach. Google already ranks responsive, mobile-friendly websites higher. This one factor should be enough reason for you to make the switch to responsive mobile-friendly website design.

Mobile Website Navigation Made Easy  

We have established that no website can do without a mobile makeover. Let’s consider the little but important details now. The smaller mobile screen size can cause major website navigability issues. Enhanced website design can help you counter this problem. Your mobile website would be better off with crisp, precise, prioritized content. Everything has to look accessible, organized and clean in a mobile website. A dynamic search text box, for example, is best used in a complex website mobile makeover.

Faster Customer Connect

Your website gets multiple hits every day. Why aren’t they converting into business then? It is highly probable that your website needs to be a mobile-friendly website to be visited by more people. Mobile search is used by most customers now, compared to using laptops or other devices.

Mobile customers are looking for an immediate response. Upgrading your website and optimizing it for conversions is more likely to generate a larger customer base.  The customer also forms an opinion of your website within the first ten seconds. That is where a well-designed and structured mobile website makes a difference.

Easy Website Maintenance

The mobile version of your website will always be easier to maintain. You need not update both the desktop and mobile version. A responsive website requires only one update. A mobile-friendly website is both present and future-ready. With the right approach, it is easier to engage the customer on a mobile device. The experience is more exclusive and personal here.

We have shared here only some of the many reasons as to why you must switch to a mobile-friendly website. Do let us know your views on the article.

How to Ensure Successful Web Design for a Target Audience

To create a truly amazing website design, knowing your target audience is half the battle won. You may impress a client with an attractive layout and graphics. But to exert a major influence on the website user, you need to understand them first. Here are the things you can do:

Highlight the Customer Problem You are Solving

How does your product or service make your customer’s life easier or better? What is the USP of your business? List down the points, create a shortlist and highlight them on your website content and design. The problem and the solution that you are offering must be among the first things your target audience must notice on your website.

Know More about your Customers and Competition

Make a list of your current audience. Find out what demographic (age, gender, profession, income) do they belong to, what are their characteristics and buying habits. Once you know your audience, refining the web design to suit their changing needs is a constant process.

If you new to the market, see how your competitors have used their web design to attract more target customers. How are they positioning and pricing their business? What are their customers talking about on social media? You may choose a different design approach, as a contrast to your competitors.

Set Up Web Design for Catchy Text

Many web design companies don’t realize that the web design must compliment the website content. You can’t have a furniture website have the design elements for women’s attire, right? Explore and shortlist specific audience-appealing words, phrases and punch lines. Use these words sparingly, but effectively. Allow the design to blend with the words adding emphasis to the intended communication.

Color, Layout, Fonts & Images

Most of you know that color psychology and correlation plays an important part in web design. The trick is to match colors with your target audience’s preferences. Beyond generally known color response theory, the more important thing is the effective use of the right color.

For example, see how women-centric websites use green, blue and purple (women’s favorite colors according to a survey) to a white background to convey friendliness and trust. See how Facebook uses blue for trust, while Dell uses green for conversion buttons like “View Details” or “Buy Online.”

As per our experience in working with clients, older audiences prefer a fixed-width layout, while a young audience looks for trendier, stylish design with a strong use of color. If required, take a survey of most preferred websites among your target audience for a deeper understanding.

How to choose fonts to fit your brand is one thing. Maintain consistency by using a style guide. The guide need not be complex. But define a clear set of font attributes that the target audience will like. This will make it easier for the web design team. They will know which fonts to try out and which to avoid.

Depending on your audience’s preferences, use either images or illustrations. The image shouldn’t merely be attractive, but add to a focused user experience. Don’t undermine navigation, functionality, icons and interface controls for accommodating images. It’s better to follow convention in functionality design than to confuse the target audience.

Conclusion

Update your target audience data every 6-12 months. This will help you deliver the best in audience-oriented web design on a consistent basis. Ensure successful web design for you and your clients by making use the information mentioned above.

How to Get the Best from Your Web Designer

You have hired the right web designers. The real test now is to get the best output from your web designer for your ongoing projects and website design solutions. Having worked on over 150 global projects as a professional web development company, here are some tips to ensure that your web designer delivers at an optimum level.

Never Rush the Design Process

Always set a reasonable deadline for the web designer. The client will love to have a brand new website ready in a week or a fortnight. But rushing your web designer to speed up things will adversely affect the design quality. Quality work will always take a certain amount of hours.

Evaluate and outline the work process in advance to accommodate both the designer and the client. Plan the workflow efficiently, ensuring that your web designer is never hurrying through things.

Encourage an Initiative-Driven Culture

When a web designer approaches you with a problem, don’t be too eager to lead them to a ready solution. Instead, encourage them to come up with innovative solutions to the problem. Unless you don’t get them used to confront problems, their experience and knowledge are bound to suffer. The long-term results could be your web designer’s gradual loss of interest and general lack of confidence in their work.

The Website Analysis Exercise

Here’s an exercise your web designers can practice once a week. Let the designers select a bunch of their favorite and successful websites with good web design. Now, direct them to make a list of 15 things that they think is cool about the design. The reasons for selecting each of these 15 things must also be documented.

You and the web designer can now discuss the common points they like across all the analyzed websites. This practice enables the designer to learn and practice design aspects. The design aspects picked up from the exercise can be included in the web designer’s approach, style or work process for better website design solutions.

Random Practice

As an ongoing practice exercise, along with the project work, let your designer create a random website based on the set of requirements you provide them with.

Treat this exercise seriously. Provide the web designer with specific design requirements. Set a deadline for the design and arrange a dummy client call between you and the designer. Discuss the design from the client point of view. This exercise will get your designer ample practice to interact with the client, understand specific requirements and execute the design accordingly.

Summary

These are four of the many practices we adhere to at our web development company in Pune. Implementing these practices ensure that our web designers are independent, constantly learning and assured about their work. Job satisfaction is another positive outcome of these practices.

Five Things You Need to Change on your Website

Creating an engaging website is imperative for any business.  As many readers must have discovered, maintaining a great website is no easy task. Here is a list of things that reveal why your website is not popular with your users. We also share some tips to optimize your website:

Loading Time

Loading…Loading…Loading…

Your website can’t take too much time to load! Millions of other websites are competing for user attention. Don’t make your users wait. Unless the users want to visit your website nobody is going to wait that long.

You lose 20% of your conversions to every extra second your mobile website takes to load. About 50% users expect your website to load in 2 seconds. The same user percentage will leave the website in the third second. (Google Statistics)

So start working on speeding up that loading time now!

Home Page Clutter

A cluttered homepage will turn off users. Our suggestion? Start again with a fresh perspective. Segregate the core elements you want on the website.

Consider why your target audience should visit your website. Restructure the content, website design, UI, and UX. Use image sliders to showcase your prime content. Attractive and creative image sliders can encourage users to further explore the website.

Zero Interaction

If there is no interactivity, why have a website? Encourage your visitors to explore the website with clear calls to action. Have more groovy elements to entice your users. Short videos, animation, online polls, exclusive comments section, contests and other interactive elements. You get the drift.

Grammar Errors & Typos

Typos and poor grammar are bound to put off your website visitors. Get your website content checked and corrected by content and language experts. Don’t rely on online grammar checking software to check your website content. Most software is not reliable. Each software uses a varied set of grammar rules to auto correct. The results are usually inconsistent.

Using Images Effectively

If your website images are too dull and unappealing, traffic is bound to suffer. Captivating images attract a larger percentage of users. Apart from blogging, images are the most important form of business content. Statistics don’t lie.

Visual elements dominate 74% of social media marketing, way ahead of videos and blogs. An audience provided with text content along with an image retains 65% of the information.

Conclusion

What do you make of the five things listed above to improve your website traffic? How can we ensure constant user engagement? How do we generate business leads through the website? Please do share your comments.

How to Choose Fonts that Fit your Brand?

Fonts play a big role in creating a brand perception among customers. Selecting fonts that go with your brand can be a tedious task. How do you narrow down your choices and select fonts that are good for your brand? The following are some creative benchmarks you can apply to make your font choices:

Know What Your Customer Wants

Approach this like a date you are going to. You wouldn’t wear your night pajamas and flowery slippers to your date, would you? So, similarly know who your potential customers are, what kind of lifestyles do they lead and therefore what kind of font will appeal to them. At the same time, retain your brand’s personality through the fonts.

Beyond Serif and Sans-Serif

Times New Roman, Georgia, Freight Text, Garamond, Caluna are popular Serif fonts. They add edge and class to the brand. Helvetica, Verdana, Dejavu Pro, Avant Garde, Arial, and Optima are popular Sans-Serif fonts. Serif fonts are said to be easier to read as individual letters are more clearly lettered in comparison to sans-serif fonts. There is also decorative and script fonts that can add uniqueness to your brand. You can also combine fonts, to get a brand new font as a combination of all required font features. Which one would you go for?

The font must match the design and business purpose. Before you buy or download a font, list out the personality traits of your brand to make your search more concentrated. This way, you already have a fair idea of what your font choice will look like. Bold, serious, cheerful, robust or rebellious? Mirror your brand qualities on the fonts and you should have made a shortlist of your font selections.

Readability & Versatility Check

Apart from your brand design, your font must be clear and legible when you have to convey something of importance or otherwise. Check which font size fits and whether the font is web optimized. Also, check the spacing between two words, the lowercase, and uppercase heights. Sometimes a font can look less readable in italics. Also, try the “I and L” test, ensure that “i” and “l” in lowercase do not look identical.

Avoid Familiar Fonts

Your customers may look through your brand if the font is all too familiar. Look out for fonts that convey what you want to, yet are stylish in their own way. Try combinations of fonts in body text and bold, you never know what can surprise you. Sometimes an ordinary looking serif font lights up in bold. The key then is to experiment but try out fonts methodically.

We hope the suggestions shared in this article will help you select the right fonts for your brand. If you have any other suggestions with regard to font selection, do share!