What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular website builder and content management system on the internet, powering more than 40% of all websites. It is a free and open-source software that anyone can use to create blogging platforms, business websites, online stores, and more. A domain name and a web hosting account are required to launch a WordPress website. There are numerous excellent WordPress hosting providers that provide 1-click WordPress installation and super simple setup, such as A2 Hosting’s  Managed WordPress service.

What is Webflow?

Webflow is a drag-and-drop website builder that allows you to create professional-looking, responsive websites without the need for coding. You have the option of starting from scratch or selecting from the built-in templates or compatible templates from other sources. Webflow is a hosted software and hosting service, and feature upgrades and all services are charged according to the subscription plan.

WordPress vs Webflow Snapshot

Before delving into the specific features of each, here’s a quick comparison of WordPress vs. Webflow:

WordPress Key Features

The following are WordPress’s important feature descriptions:

• Simple and responsive: WordPress enables you to quickly publish content for any type of website, including blogs, business websites, professional portfolios, and even community websites.
• Straightforward publishing tools: WordPress allows you to create, review, and publish pages or posts, as well as easily format and publish them with the click of a button.
• Design and template customization: WordPress not only comes with three default themes, but it also allows you to upload free or paid themes from various repositories.
• SEO friendly (search engines): WordPress is search engine optimized, and users can further optimize the site for SEO by using various SEO plugins.
• Extend with Plugins: The official plugin directory contains over 54000 plugins that allow users to customize their website without any technical knowledge.
• Massive WordPress Community: WordPress is an open-source content management system with a large supportive and active community to assist with any problems at any level.
• Mobile-friendly: WordPress allows you to optimize the size for mobile users by using appropriate plugins and themes.

WebFlow Key Features

Here is a description of Webflow key features to go along with the items listed in the comparison summary snapshot in the introduction section: 

• Webflow’s designer platform is powered by CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, allowing you to create a professional website using the visual designer without writing any code.
• Dynamic content authoring tools: Webflow comes with simple content publishing tools that allow users to create and publish content with the click of a button.
• Templates that can be customized: Webflow offers over 500 paid and free HTML5 responsive templates.
• SEO optimization: Webflow allows users to change page names, meta descriptions, and photo descriptions for SEO purposes. It generates sitemaps automatically for search engines to understand the structure of the new site, and it handles redirects, which is an important part of SEO.
• Plugins: Webflow includes plugins and integrations to extend the functionality of the business or personal website.
• Mobile-Friendly: In the Webflow editor, users can toggle between desktop and mobile views, allowing them to customize each page for different resolutions. A header used for a website version, for example, will not be suitable for a mobile preview; however, Webflow allows you to open the page in a mobile preview and replace the image and font to make the website mobile-friendly.

Conclusion

Obviously, in most cases, WordPress features are still preferred, but Webflow is a good alternative especially for web designers. Managed WordPress Hosting from A2 Hosting is built on Cloud Container Technology and optimized for WordPress sites. This optimized hosting environment allows you to deploy WordPress websites faster and with less configuration. 

A2 Managed WordPress Web Hosting account comes loaded with innovative features like:

• Auto WordPress installation and pre-configuration (based on best practices on over 100,000 WordPress sites)
• Easy-To-Use Staging – quickly and easily deploy a development copy of your site to test on
• A2 Optimized – performance caching on both server-side and on the WordPress application level
• Easy WordPress Backups – automated and provides daily backup protection for ultimate peace of mind
• Automatic WordPress core updates & patches – Stay focused on building your site. Our team of WordPress experts will ensure you have the best WordPress version and patches.
• Enhanced security both at the WordPress application side and server-side
• Free SSL certificate
• Developer-friendly features include WP-CLI, SSH, GIT, and more!

The post Webflow vs WordPress: What’s the Difference? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Backend & Technical Improvements

As all eCommerce business owners begin to buckle down and get ready for the upcoming holiday season many are focused on bringing new traffic to their sites to take advantage of the increased spending during Q4. But what happens when your site isn’t ready for the traffic and crashes in the middle of your biggest Black Friday Sale of the year? We want to make sure your website is fast and ready to receive all the new visitors coming your way. Here are some of our team’s top technical tips to make sure your site is ready this season.

Stay Up to Date with Updates

Keeping your website up-to-date is one of the most important maintenance techniques for your eCommerce site. Before the holiday traffic starts, be sure to have all the latest updates installed – both for the CMS itself and any plugins/ modules/add-ons that you already have installed. Luckily for all the website owners out there, it is easy to automate this process by signing up for automatic updates for major and minor releases of WordPress core and plugins. You also have the option to receive email notifications anytime there is a new release available. These updates will provide additional functionality, performance boosts, and patches for known security vulnerabilities. It’s important to verify these updates for compatibility with your combination of plugins and server configuration before updating your production site. This makes sure you don’t update and accidentally break your site.

Identify Your Resource Weaknesses

One of the secret tips to keeping your eCommerce website functioning smoothly is making sure you’re not approaching your resource limits. You should ask yourself…Have you looked at your traffic from last year? Did you run into any issues during your big sales? If so it may be important to check to see if you should move to a plan with more resources to help support a smoother customer experience. Not sure what resources to look at? Here are four important ones to check:

• Disk Space: This refers to the amount of room on your account to store files, including all of your text, code, and images.
• Memory Usage (RAM): RAM stores working data and is a vital part of a computer’s performance. A2 Hosting’s RAM options on our VPS and Dedicated plans range anywhere from 4GB to 128 GB DDR4 ECC, so we have options for any sized website!
• CPU Usage: This is the central processing unit that processes and runs instructions. We offer the choice of AMD and Intel CPUs on our Dedicated hosting plans!
• Inode Usage: This correlates with how many files you can store on your website. If you’re an eCommerce company with lots of files it may be important to get a plan with access to more inodes. Read our knowledge base articles to learn more about how to manage your inode count.

If you’re nearing the maximum usage afforded to your current plan we encourage you to upgrade! Interested in going even faster? Check out A2 Turbo, available on most plans! Confused about what all the web hosting resources are? Check out this blog on four web hosting resources to consider when choosing your hosting plan.

Try a CDN

That’s right, that CDN you’ve been debating? Now is the time to go for it. But what is a CDN? A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, works by utilizing dispersed servers. They use a global network of servers to store static assets for your web page, such as images, at multiple locations closer to the visitor to your site. Not only does this reduce load time as the assets are being delivered from a closer physical location to the customer, but this also reduces the load on your server as it does not need to service that portion of the request. This way visitors from around the world can access your site and all of its information from a server that is closer to them. Here’s a list of the benefits of using a CDN:

• Faster loading speed
• Boost in reliability and response time
• Better global reach
• Increased number of users at one time
• DDoS protection

A2 Hosting offers Cloudflare, a popular CDN, for our customers’ use.

Cache, Cache, Cache

Caching is a great way to speed up your site! Caching stores your web pages in memory, so the server can serve them very quickly, instead of fetching them from the disk each time. This is a way for your site to generate static html versions of dynamic pages that are frequently requested. Caching significantly reduces the load placed on the server to deliver that page as well as speeding up response times. Most web frameworks offer this as an option either directly integrated in the framework or as an additional plugin. Ensuring caching is enabled can make an enormous difference on the amount of traffic and number of concurrent users your site can handle. Our A2 Turbo plans come with Litespeed caching preinstalled! Read our knowledge base article to learn how to use Litespeed on your site.

Improve Your Database Indexing

A frequently disregarded aspect of website performance and scaling is the database itself. Databases include many options to make performance better and one of the most critical is ensuring you have good indexes in your databases.

A lack of indexes, or poorly designed indexes, can increase the time it takes to execute a database query by an order of magnitude. Creating basic indexes is relatively simple and optimizing indexes for your specific use case is something your web developer can typically do for you.

Similarly, it is important to make sure any database queries you are running are well written. It is very easy to write a poor database query during testing or development just to get things working and it is vital to go back later and ensure the query is written as tightly as possible to eliminate unnecessary operations to get the data you actually need.

Traffic Control

How many visitors can view your site? Only as many as your server will handle. This is why it is imperative to ensure that you have fast and reliable hosting. If you frequently experience drops in connection or other general server issues, now is the time to switch to a fast, reliable server. If you’re looking for 99.9% uptime, turbo speeds, and 24/7 guru crew support check out our plans available at A2 Hosting.

Upgrade Your Hardware Stack

You can upgrade the hardware stack powering your website to provide additional resources. A2 Hosting provides an extensive array of packages designed to meet your hosting needs. Our turbo packages are perfect for handling holiday traffic surges. These servers include NVME SSD drives for lightning-fast disk operations, Litespeed web server for dramatically improved page load times, and AMD EPYC CPUs for very high concurrency to handle the flood of holiday visitors. We also have VPS and dedicated server options for those extremely busy websites to ensure your server is not the limiting factor to your business growth during this holiday season.

Security

Security is a must if you don’t want your site becoming unresponsive, or worse, displaying undesirable content. Aside from running updates on the CMS and plugins, removing unused plugins and themes from your site will help reduce potential vulnerabilities.

Install an SSL

All traffic that provides users a way to send any type of information to your site should be secured over HTTPS with a valid SSL. A2 Hosting offers both free and paid versions of different SSLs. To learn the pros and cons of each read this blog. Using an SSL Certificate will help protect your users’ information. The presence of this certificate will help verify your identity to any potential customers and let them know that there’s an encrypted connection when transmitting their information. The great part about paying for an upgraded SSL with A2 Hosting is added security and the benefits of displaying a trust badge. These are symbols you can add to your site that will assure customers that their information is secure and your site is trustworthy (it also avoids the nasty “Unsecured” message that browsers display that makes users worried).

Check Your Authorized Users

You’ll also want to check on your list of authorized administrators/content editors. If you’ve had turnover at the company or previous contractors who have completed work on your site, double-check that their permissions have been removed by reducing their permissions, or deactivating their accounts (this applies to the CMS, as well as any server access that you may have given them). If the system provides for 2-Factor authentication, be sure you update your staff about these settings. Make sure they are aware of the new requirement, that they have their authentication setup, and that each user account is configured to require 2FA.

Increase Your Payment Security

Online security has always been important but in 2021 it’s absolutely essential. You want your information and your customer’s information to be safe and secure to help build consumer trust. Make sure you implement these strategies to help secure your site before the holiday sales:

Implement an Address Verification Service (AVS)

Don’t let those suspicious credit card transactions get by you! An AVS is a fraud prevention system that will help your eCommerce store limit its fraud and chargebacks.

Require Card Verification Value (CVV)

The CVV is the little number on the back of debit cards. By requiring customers to enter this information when trying to check out, you can add an extra level of security to every transaction.

Check Your Payments Processor

It’s also a  good idea to check the fine print on your payment processing system. Make sure you have the right setup so those sales don’t go down the drain when your customers can’t pay!

Make Sure Everything Works As Expected

Testing your key systems to make sure everything you are relying on to go right is a critical point. If you’re in eCommerce, double-check your payment processing is running smoothly.

You most likely have email notifications from your site either to customers (sending out updates, responding to contact submissions, order confirmations, etc) or to your staff (notifications of contact submissions, orders received, etc) – you’ll want to make sure these are being received by their intended target. Just because your site says it’s sending the message, doesn’t necessarily mean the customers are receiving the messages.

All notifications should have some way of retrieving the same information (contact submissions should be stored in the CMS as well as the staff email notification). Here’s our Knowledge Base section on web testing and development to help you get started!

Code Freeze

Your site should be well developed ahead of time to accommodate any changes you want to see during the holidays. By implementing a code freeze, you increase the reliability of your site by reducing the impact of your changes to the underlying system. This will require some advanced planning regarding what you will want from your website.

Have a Disaster Recovery Plan

Having a disaster recovery plan in place before you need it is critical in recovering from any unseen website disasters that may occur. At the very minimum, you’ll want local backups of your database and the site files. If you’re able to get offsite backups too that’s even better!

The second half of your recovery plan is knowing how to restore the backups. It’s just as important to know how to restore your backups as it is to make sure you have them.

Front End Website Optimizations

Getting ready for the holiday shopping season and looking to make some changes to your site? Well look no further, we have a list of great optimizations to help you thrive during Q4. Read more to learn about how we recommend you tweak your online store for success!

Choose the Right Hosting Company and Hosting Plan

Choosing the right host for your site is an essential part of speeding up your website. Our turbo plans at A2 Hosting are 20x faster with 99.9% uptime! Once you’ve found the right host make sure you’re on the right sized plan for your needs. Don’t run your large eCommerce site with heavy traffic on a shared server because it may not be able to handle the number of resources you’ll need, especially on heavy traffic days like Black Friday. We recommend a VPS or Dedicated plan if possible.

Use A2 Optimized

These days 47% of customers expect a website to load in two seconds or less. The internet is full of opportunities to shop around and if users have to wait, they may abandon your site for another one with similar products. Website speed is affected by many different factors. One big thing that could be affecting yours is your resource usage is too high for your current plan. Some factors that could be affecting this are images, JavaScript, and CSS files. Images should be compressed, and JavaScript and CSS files should be minified and combined if possible.

Image Optimization

Another area to consider is optimizing your images for web delivery. Modern cameras and even cell phones take very high-resolution images. These images can be very large resulting in slow page load times. We recommend either getting rid of them or compressing them so they take less time to load. Most web frameworks include tools to generate efficient thumbnail images as well as render high-resolution images at a lower resolution better suited to web delivery.

Go for Mobile

Many years ago – designs of websites changed to be designed mobile-first because of the shift to mobile devices so this one is likely already covered…but if not, you’ll want to work on this. If your site is not accessible from a mobile device, you will be missing out on potential users. Mobile-friendly sites do not need to replicate 100% of the desktop content or features, however, mobile users should not be missing out on anything critical. All the same, information should be able to be gathered and should be able to do so just as easily. Navigation around the site should be smooth for mobile users without having to do complicated gestures. Here’s a blog to help you through the steps of testing if your site is mobile-friendly.

Informative Website Content

If you have good information all over your store this will help your customers find their answers before they resort to your online chat boxes. Here are some elements to make sure you include or edit for clarity:

• FAQ sections
• Contact us page
• Ways for customers to reach your team (live chat, phone number, email, ticket system ,etc.)
• Social platform links for customers to check out or reach you there

Importance of Call/Chat/Ticket Functionality

Users come to your site for one thing – they are looking to get something from you – that is either information or a product. Your job is to make that as easy as possible. Hopefully, by now, your site is fast, reliable, mobile- friendly, and you’ve checked to make sure everything is working as planned – but sometimes you just can’t predict what your users are going to need. Adding a Support/Chat/Ticket feature to your website gives you an easy way of allowing users to contact you and receive a timely response. Users don’t have too much patience when it comes to getting feedback and this option gives them a way to contact you on their own terms.

Many times when a user is extremely frustrated they may want someone to walk them through a fix. That’s when having a calling system comes into play. There’s nothing like having someone fix a problem step by step over the phone, especially when you’ve tried everything and are very frustrated. Adding this functionality to your business gives users a chance to connect with the people behind a brand, which can be vital when building brand loyalty.

Give Some Love to Your Sales Team and Instructional Content

A lot of the time the people behind your phone and chat lines are having the most frequent interactions with your customers. That’s why it’s important to ensure they have a lot of training not only on your product but also on who may want to buy it and why. Taking extra time to address your clients’ questions now can go a long way when it comes to building a relationship and creating a repeat customer. Investing in interaction now with a potential client could lead to a fruitful relationship for you both in the future.

Adding a human element to a website can help potential clients feel more comfortable and be more willing to make a purchase. Creating an open line of communication with your potential clients for further discussion is very important during the customer buying process. Once that line of communication is opened, it’s time to start thinking about conversations with potential clients. When discussing options with clients, take the time to get to know them and their situation. The reasons they’re shopping with you will vary, and each individual interaction should be given the proper attention and assistance to help find the right solution. The goal here isn’t just to answer generic questions about a product or sell the most expensive option available. Instead, try to find out:

• why the client is looking to make a purchase
• if they have any particular pain points
• what is the reason they’re interested in your product

By investing the time to properly understand the client, it’ll help set up future interactions and hopefully create a long-term relationship. In the days of internet selling and fast purchases, the human element can be the difference between a client purchasing from you or another retailer. While these tips may be simple, the fundamentals of human interaction can often have the largest impact.

Write More Effective Product Descriptions

Determine Your Target Customer

Before you can begin writing the perfect product descriptions for your customers you need to identify who they are and empathize with them. If you don’t know who your target customer is, you won’t be able to write proper descriptions and your efforts will fall short of the mark.

You can do this by using the 80/20 rule. On average, 80% of sales come from 20% of your customers. If you’re trying to narrow down and find your target audience it would make sense to start by examining the top 20% of those who purchase from you already. To begin, use past purchasing data and gather customer profiles of your top 20% of customers. Now examine these profiles and look for patterns in their demographics and psychographics. Use these patterns to create personas. Personas are fictional customers that you can give a name, sex, age, career etc. By visualizing your customers in this way it is easier to write directly to them and create product descriptions that they would find appealing.

Show and Not Tell

When writing product descriptions, it’s important to remember to use clear
and descriptive language. You need to show your customers the benefits of your products rather than just telling them what they are. For example, for a service product don’t just tell your customer, “Our _______ service is reliable.” Instead, show them how reliable it is in your description: “Our ____ service is backed by an uncompromising Service Level Agreement that guarantees 99.9% uptime, a support staff with expert admins availability 24/7/365, and a 30-day hassle-free 100% money-back guarantee.”

Improve Your SEO

While high-quality images are important, search engines can’t see images – or not yet anyway. Images of your products may speak 1,000 words to your target customers and convey the emotion you’re trying to share, but they do little for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To get your site to rank and become visible to potential customers, you must include product descriptions that are loaded with potential keywords. That way your site will begin to rank for related words to your products and your site will show up in more relevant google searches.

Make Your Descriptions Uniquely Yours

The bottom line is, your brand needs to be authentically itself and your product descriptions should embody this. To get noticed, your description copy needs to break through any commoditization noise that may surround your product. Don’t just look at your competition and try to write a description that’s 10% better, add something unique in your product’s description copy that directly taps into your brand’s authentic self.

Optimize Your Checkout Process

The holidays are the best time to get quick conversions but that can be made more complicated when you have a confusing checkout process. Now is the best time to take a look at what you have and try and spruce it up. Here are a few tips we recommend to make it as effective as possible:

• Add some urgency by including a count-down clock at the top that specifies how soon your sale is ending.
• Avoid adding in surprise costs at the end like large shipping fees. Extra costs are an issue for 60% of cart abandoners according to Optinmonster.
• Include multiple payment options. BigCommerce found that this can triple the conversion rate of your store.
• Highlight your security with a trust seal. You can purchase this with a paid SSL Certificate with A2 Hosting!
• Ask for your customers’ payment information last. You want to give them some time to make sure they trust your site and have all the details of their purchase in order before they start giving you their private payment information.
• Ideally use a single-page checkout process. You want it to be relatively straightforward with as few steps as possible. The worst thing is to have so many extraneous steps that you lose a potential conversion midway through the process.
• If you’re currently running a single- page checkout, declutter your form and only have your customers fill out the most necessary information.
• If you’re running a multi-page checkout try adding a progress indicator at the top of it! That way your customers can count down their progress rather than guessing how long it’s going to take to actually be able to buy from your store.
• Include areas that resolve frequently asked questions. If your support team notices they’re being asked the same questions all the time, include some answers. You can insert FAQ sections or flyouts with critical information that will inform your customers.

At the end of the day, you’re always going to lose some of your customers during the payment process no matter how well your cart is optimized. To try and convert this lost traffic follow up with those potential customers by sending abandonment emails with special discounts. This will serve as a great reminder of your store while also giving them some incentive to purchase from it.

Digital Marketing Strategy

The holidays are right around the corner so it’s a great time for eCommerce companies to capitalize on the opportunities that come with an increase in traffic. With proper preparation, online stores can gain brand recognition and increased conversions as they sail into the new year. Read more to learn about how to crush your digital marketing strategy this upcoming holiday season.

Pricing and Promotional Techniques

Effective pricing is a science and it’s never too late to start leveling up your pricing strategy game. The holidays are a great time to dive deeper into what makes pricing work and how you can use it to your advantage to increase conversions through promotions and deals. But before you begin to decide on your promotional pricing strategy, it’s important to first understand some basic pricing techniques:

• Price Skimming: To price skim, start your prices high and then lower them as you become more competitive in the market.
  Marketing Penetration Pricing: When your company is first starting out, set your prices low so you are more competitive than your competition.
  Premium Pricing: If you have a more wealthy target audience and are selling high-quality products you can start your prices high to signal quality and luxury appeal.
  Economy Pricing: This is when you set lower prices and target customers who are looking to make larger savings overall.

While these are good long-term pricing strategies, you may want to implement short-term pricing and promotions for the holiday months. Here are some examples of different promotional strategies to use to encourage quick conversions.

Refer-a-Friend: Tap into your clientele’s social networks and use social proof to your advantage! Give your customers some type of reward if they refer their friends to your products.

• Buy One Get One Free: This is a great way to entice your customers to try out multiple items from your store.
• Free Shipping: It’s always difficult to get to the checkout and see that shipping costs are going to add $10 or more to your purchase. By swallowing this cost you may raise your overall conversion rate.
• Free Item with Purchase of $X or More: Some customers may be buying holidays gifts in bulk. This is a great way to encourage customers to buy more of your products.
• Loss Leader: A loss leader is when you discount a product or service lower than its production cost. Some companies use this strategy to try and attract new customers or to sell more expensive products. It can also be a smart tactic if you’re trying to penetrate a new target market.

Plan Out Your Target Audience and Social Media Advertising Strategy

To ensure your promotions are a success it’s important to put a lot of thought into your advertising strategy and approach it with a target audience in mind. That way it’s easier to decide how you want to strategically choose the products you are featuring. When determining your product choice and targeting within your marketing campaigns, each social network has different options to choose from. Here’s a list of the different types of audience segments on some of the most popular social platforms:

Facebook/Instagram:

• Location: You can choose by city, community, and country.
• Behavior: Base your ads on behavioral attributes like prior purchases or device usage.
• Demographics: Choose from different demographics like gender, age, education levels, job titles, and more.
• Interests: You can segment your audience by hobbies or traits like the type of movies they like to watch or their dietary preferences.
• Connections: This allows you to decide if your audience is currently already connected to your business or unfamiliar with your products. This can be important if you’re trying to target an audience that is currently already interested in your business for an easier conversion rate.
• You can also use lookalike audiences which are created from source audiences of people that already interact with your ads! This connects you to people that are very similar to people that already follow your page.

LinkedIn:

• Job Experience: This includes job titles, seniority, job functions, member skills, and years of experience.
• Education: You can target based on degrees, subjects studied, schools attended.
• Demographics: Unlike Facebook and Instagram this is only split by age and gender.
• Company: You have access to target audiences based on industry, company names, company followers on LinkedIn, the growth rate and company size, and company category.
• Interests and Traits: Segment your audience by your potential customer’s interests, the groups they are a part of, and their traits.

Twitter:

• Demographics: You can filter by location, language, device (like phone type), platform (like phone carrier), Wifi (like internet provider), age, and gender.
• Targeting Types:
  • Conversation: This is based on the content of people’s tweets and conversations.
  • Event: Target people who attended various online and offline events.
  • Tweet Engager: Market to people that have organically engaged with your previous tweets.
  • Keyword: This allows you to search based on words your target audience used in previous tweets.
  • Movie and TV: If people mentioned any tv or movies this is how you would interact with them.
  • Interests: Twitter offers over 350+ present interests to choose from.
  • Look-Alikes: Like Facebook, Twitter lets you target people who behave similarly to accounts that already follow you.

YouTube:

• Audience targeting: Find people based on their interests, who they are, their daily habits, what they’re looking up, and their interactions with your business. This is split up based on google analytics.
• Affinity: Reach people based on their lifestyles, passions, and habits.
• Life Events: This narrows your audiences based on milestones like graduations or getting married.
• In-Market This allows you to target people who are looking up products and businesses similar to yours.
• Custom: Craft this audience based on keyword research, URLs, and apps.
• Remarketing: This helps you reach people that have already had some sort of historical engagement with your videos.
• Detailed Demographics: This is more like the other platforms and helps you create target audiences based on shared traits like their hobbies, occupations, or ages.
• Similar Audiences: This is like the lookalike audiences from above and allows you to find people that are similar to consumers that already follow you.

Publicize Your Sales with PPC and Google Ads

Now that you have a well-thought- out marketing strategy in place it’s important to promote and publicize it! PPC and Google Ads are a great way to increase the traffic to your site. Get that keyword strategy together and start bidding on the words that are most relevant to your business. It’s amazing what a good PPC strategy can do to garner traffic and conversions. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Make sure the landing page you’re linking to is relevant and optimized for conversions.
• Optimize your negative keywords so your ads aren’t showing up on searches that don’t align with your strategy.
• Research and understand the basics of keyword matches:
  • Broad: match searches with any words or synonyms of your target words
  • Broad Match Modified: match only with searches that include all of your keywords within the query
  • Phrase Match: match only when searches use the exact phrase you are targeting plus searches that include the meaning of your keyword
  • Exact Match: match searches that have an exact keyword match and order (searches must contain all keywords in the exact order you list them plus close spelling errors)
• Adjust your bids for geotargeting. If your products are weather dependent or popular in certain areas you can adjust geotargeting spending so your ads show up to people in the most appropriate locations.
• Run mobile-centric campaigns. We recommend checking your campaign conversions by device so you can see which ones to shift to target certain users’ search preferences.

Capitalize on Heavy Traffic and Grow Your Email List with Lead Gen Tactics

Lead gen, lead gen, lead gen. It’s always important to keep building your mailing list with potential customers. With all the traffic you’re bringing in from the holidays, now is a perfect time to implement some new tactics! Here are some ideas:

• Add a place on the homepage where they can enter their email to gain access to special mailing lists (like a newsletter).
• Implement pop-ups with places for them to submit their emails in return for different deals or discounts.
• Create an interactive quiz or tool that requires them to enter their email to get the answers.
• Create special contests where you can only enter by giving you their information.
• Provide gated offers or informative content that require an email to access.
• Offer free trials so you can collect more than just their emails.

Be Strategic About Your Email Marketing Tactics

It’s important to tap into your established leads list with a well- thought-out email drip campaign. You want to make sure you’re touching your pool of potential holiday shoppers more than once to remind them about your upcoming sale and create some urgency. This is a great opportunity to use some advanced email tactics like last-chance opportunities and special offers catered to certain mailing lists. Here are a few rules of thumb to follow:

• Split your email lists into segments and groups so you can specialize the copy, graphics, and promotions displayed.
• Use perfect timing setting options when sending your emails so it lands in your customers’ inbox at the time they are most likely to open it.
• Use A/B testing on your sales emails to see which strategies worked the best so you can utilize them for your next sale.
• Optimize your emails for mobile. Around 47% of emails are opened on people’s phones according to email marketing firm Litmus. Here are some quick optimizations you can use:
  • Use one-column templates.
  • Increase your font size.
  • Make your call to action easy to identify, in the middle of the page, and easy to tap.
• Measure your performance as you go by looking at open rates, click rates, and eCommerce data through UTM tracking and your email marketing providers’ tools.
• Implement a last chance email list. Look at your email results a few days before the end of the sale and send a last chance email offer to some of the mailing lists with the highest open rates.
• Remind loyal customers why they subscribe: If your brand has a mission that’s months in the making, the holiday season may be a great time to remind your customers of their goals outside of the products you offer. This mission may be the reason why your customers stuck around in the first place.

Some email marketing plans have begun to change since Covid-19. Read our blog to see how it may impact your strategies this year!

Create Holiday Content Converts By Adding Retargeting Pixels to Your Ads

Did you know that 96% percent of customers will leave a website without actually purchasing anything? Utilizing retargeting pixels in your ads is a great way to bring customers back to your website! But what is a retargeting pixel and how does it work?

By attaching a small piece of code to your site you can track potential customers that leave your eCommerce stores and display more advertisements on Facebook and Google to remind them of your sale! This is a very effective marketing strategy because it helps you turn some of your bounced traffic into conversions down the line.

Check out our blog that describes how to implement retargeting pixels into your marketing campaign!

Ready, Set, Sell!

Now that you’ve worked on the back end of your website, the front end of your website, your digital marketing strategy, and everything in between, you are prepared and ready to capitalize on all of the positive things that come with the holiday season. If you have any further questions or want to ask our team about anything stated above feel free to contact our sales and support teams! We are available 24/7/365 and love talking with you!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready with A2 Hosting appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Running a corporate wiki site is a smart way to solve this information storage and organization problem. In general, a wiki is a collaboratively edited website that lets multiple users add to and modify it. Your company can easily use one to store all your content in a central place and consistently update it.

In this article, we’ll go into detail about what a wiki website is, how it works, and how your company can benefit from using one. Let’s get to it!

An Introduction to Wiki Websites

A wiki website is any type of website or software tool that enables collaborative editing by its users. In other words, if you can read it, you can also edit it. The most common example is Wikipedia:

This domain is simply a public encyclopedia that allows site visitors to add all sorts of information covering virtually every sphere of knowledge. Another example you may be familiar with is the infamous WikiLeaks. However, your business wiki will need to be a little different.

You can consider your business wiki website as a private Wikipedia that serves your company and its employees. Typically, it will be targeted at growing a knowledge base in a particular field.

Although wiki websites are open to collaboration, they normally have to be moderated. As a business, you can also choose to regulate which members of your company can contribute. You could make it accessible to all registered users. Or, you could limit it to members of a certain department or with a certain level of clearance.

Diplopedia, for example, is a United States government-run wiki website that allows all its users to add just about any information associated with international relations and diplomacy.

However, it’s run on an intranet open only to authorized government officials. There are lots of other examples to consider in order to understand how wikis work and how you can incorporate one into your business. However, let’s consider practical ways in which having one can benefit your company.

How Your Company Can Benefit from a Wiki Website (5 Key Ways)

The original implementation of a wiki website was done by Ward Cunningham (popularly known as the father of the wiki). Ward described the idea as a “composition system”, “discussion medium”, “repository”, and “tool for collaboration”. Although the form has changed over the years, its function has remained virtually the same. Here are some of the benefits you stand to enjoy using a wiki website for your company.

1. A Wiki Site Helps to Effectively Document and Organize All Your Information

To maximize efficiency, you must organize your information in a manner that makes it easily accessible and editable by your team. A wiki website can help you do that.

The ideal wiki website uses a clear hierarchical structure to make it easy for employees to find and apply useful information when necessary. If your business processes require a more flexible structure, you can customize the wiki website based on your unique needs as well.

For example, Airtable collaborates with Guru to deliver its users an integrated wiki service. This is not only useful for collaboration, but it also gathers information in a highly organized structure:

Furthermore, employees can still use the search feature to find what they’re looking for. This will significantly benefit your business in terms of efficiency as knowledge workers typically spend 19 percent of their time looking for the information they need to do their jobs.

Likewise, a wiki website is an ideal solution for documenting the history of your company. As every successful organization is bound to change all the time, a wiki presents an opportunity for every member to make note of this in a simplified way.

2. You Can Manage Internal Team Collaboration Better

If you’re looking to improve the efficiency of your collaboration, then you may want to consider using a wiki website. When working on projects, your team will find a workplace wiki really handy.

You can also use a wiki website to:

• Organize troubleshooting solutions to common problems.
• Document meeting proceedures or deadlines.
• Enhance new team member onboarding.

Also, most corporate wikis integrate seamlessly with a lot of document and project management tools you may already use. For example, Google Drive is an important platform wikis can integrate.

Other video tools and software development platforms such as Vimeo and GitHub are not left out either. In the end, what you have is a central all-in-one business solution.

3. Using a Wiki Drives Your Team Members to Learn and Produce More Results

A wiki website often provides an opportunity for your employees to take ownership of their learning curves. With the much-simplified system of finding information, your team members will generally feel more motivated not only to embark on their duties but also to seek to expand their expertise. This often arises from a desire to contribute to your company’s knowledge base.

When using a wiki, you can easily delegate research tasks to members of your team. The entire company can then benefit from their input. This inherently pushes your employees to improve their skills and offer more value to the organization.

By simplifying your workflow and making it easy to locate information, a wiki makes it possible for your employees to build on the previous work of other users, too. When they come across outdated information on the wiki, they can easily revise the content of your business website.

In general, wikis help to engage your team members more productively and increase their level of expertise. They can collect more information in a shorter period of time and deliver better results.

4. A Wiki Site Can Be Used for Content Marketing

When it comes to digital marketing, content authority is crucial. A collaborative wiki helps you to regularly put together enough information in one place to build credibility as an authority in your industry.

This will also impact your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) positively. Search rankings rely heavily on internal and external link building. You can use a wiki website to link to highly relevant content on your website. This way, your brand becomes even more visible to customers looking for information about your products or services.

Basecamp’s public handbook, which is hosted on GitHub, is an excellent example:

Slite is another wiki worthy of note:

It consists of three different sections aimed at providing information about the team, marketing strategy, and the product.

5. Running a Wiki Website is Cost-Effective

A study by Glassdoor puts the average US employer’s expenditure on hiring a new worker at $4,000. The entire process lasts approximately 24 days. However, as we’ve noted, a well-developed wiki website can significantly ease up these costs in productivity.

Plus, we also mentioned that a wiki can help employees find required information faster, boosting efficiency further. When you consider all the factors involved, it becomes clear that a wiki website makes perfect sense from a financial standpoint.

By simplifying your organizational processes and improving your staff expertise, a wiki website often has a direct impact on your company’s profitability. Since you’re now able to achieve better productivity within your team and also offer more value to the general public, wikis deliver an excellent Return on Investment (ROI).

Conclusion

A wiki website is all about gathering information, organizing it properly, and making continuous changes. If you want to better your team’s collaborative efforts and deliver more value, then you may want to consider creating one yourself.

For a quick recap, here are some of the practical ways your company can benefit from a wiki site:

1. A wiki site helps to effectively document and organize all your information.
2. You can manage internal team collaboration better.
3. Using a wiki drives your team members to learn and produce more results.
4. A wiki site can be used for content marketing.
5. Running a wiki website is cost-effective.

Are you thinking about launching a wiki website for your business? Check out our services and learn how A2 Hosting can help!

Featured Image Credit: Unsplash.

The post How Your Company Can Benefit from a Wiki Website appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Frontity is a free and open-source framework that helps you build WordPress applications using React JS. Although React development offers a lot of benefits, you would normally have to follow a complex setup process that includes bundling, server rendering, etc. Fortunately, Frontity eliminates all of these procedures, and gets you to the development stage in no time.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of building a web application with Frontity. Before that, let’s consider why Frontity is a great option for your WordPress project. Let’s get started!

What Frontity Is and Why It’s Great for Building Web Applications

Frontity is a framework that enables you to build a React-based front-end for a headless WordPress website. Once Frontity is set up, your WordPress website will serve its data via the REST API. Frontity will then consume this data, and render it in the web browser as a Single Page Application (SPA).

Instead of the visitor browsing from one page to the next, a SPA dynamically rewrites the same page with new data that it retrieves from the server. You can host Frontity on either a regular Node.js server or in a serverless environment.

Although it’s possible to build a headless website without using tools such as Frontity, this usually requires you to manage a list of tasks. These tasks include transpiling, routing, server rendering, retrieving data from WordPress, and much more.

While you could reduce the workload using a framework such as Next.js or Gatsby.js, these solutions aren’t designed specifically for WordPress. To use them with WordPress, you would need to perform a significant amount of configuration. You might also have to install some additional tools.

By contrast, Frontity was designed with WordPress firmly in mind. Every part of the Frontity framework has been simplified and optimized specifically for the platform. Frontity also includes everything you need to develop for WordPress, including React, TypeScript, CSS-in-JS and Babel. Since you don’t have to set up additional tooling, you’re free to concentrate on what really matters: building your website.

Frontity can also improve your website’s performance, resulting in fast loading times with no extra assets or round-trips required. It responds to requests with a fully-populated HTML file generated with React, which reduces the time required for the first contentful paint. Once React has loaded, Frontity’s router prefetches other routes and data automatically.

In other words, your visitors should never have to wait while navigating your site. Since page speed is a ranking factor for Google searches, using an optimized solution such as Frontity can also deliver a significant SEO boost.

Last but not least, Frontity is designed to be extensible, with its team already working on extensions for Yoast SEO, AdSense, SmartAds, and Google Analytics. These extensions aren’t currently available, but Frontity has created a GitHub page where the finished extensions will be posted. Frontity’s themes are also compatible with the React packages that are currently available via the Node Package Manager (NPM).

How to Build a Web Application Using Frontity (In 5 Steps)

To build a web application using Frontity, you’ll need a WordPress installation. It can be hosted on a web server or locally.

We’ll also be using Node.js to run Frontity commands. To see whether you already have Node.JS installed, you can open a Terminal on your computer and run the following command:

node -v

If the Terminal returns a version number, then Node.js is already installed. If not, you can install Node.js from the official site.

Step 1: Launch a New Frontity Project

The first step is creating a local Frontity project, and then connecting this project to your WordPress installation. To do this, open a Terminal and run the following command:

npx frontity create my-project

You’ll need to replace my-project with the name of your project. Frontity will then ask you to select either the Mars or the TwentyTwenty theme. If you’re new to Frontity, then it’s recommended that you select Mars.

Once you’ve made your selection, Frontity will clone your chosen theme, create all the necessary files, and install any required dependencies. You can also specify whether you want to receive Frontity updates via email.

After a few moments, you should see a Frontity project created message. Frontity has now created a directory on your local machine, with the project name you specified. By default, Frontity projects are stored in your users directory:

This directory contains the following important Frontity files and folders:

• Frontity.settings.js. This is where you’ll define your project’s settings and any packages it requires.
  Node_modules. This is where all of your dependencies are stored. You shouldn’t need to modify any of the files contained within this folder.
  Package.json. This is used to configure your Node.js project, and is also where you’ll store the dependencies required by your application.
  Packages. This folder contains all your local packages, including your theme.

Next, change directory (cd) so that the Terminal is pointing at the project’s root directory, for example:

cd /users/my-project

You can now start development by running the following command:

npx frontity dev

Once you run this command, a new page should open automatically in your default web browser. Initially, Frontity will connect to a test blog that displays demo content:

You can connect Frontity to your own WordPress website by editing the frontity.settings.js file inside your project directory.

You should be able to open this file using any text editor. The contents should look something like this:

const settings = {
  "name": "my-project",
  "state": {
    "frontity": {
      "url": "https://test.frontity.org",
      "title": "Test Frontity Blog",
       description": "WordPress installation for Frontity development"
    }
  },
  "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
         "menu": [
            [
              "Home",
              "/"
            ],
            [
              "Nature",
              "/category/nature/"
            ],
            [
              "Travel",
              "/category/travel/"
            ],
            [
              "Japan",
              "/tag/japan/"
            ],
            [
              "About Us",
              "/about-us/"
            ]
            ],
          "featured": {
            "showOnList": false,
            "showOnPost": false
          }
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "@frontity/wp-source",
      "state": {
        "source": {
          "api": "https://test.frontity.org/wp-json"
        }
      }
    },
    "@frontity/tiny-router",
    "@frontity/html2react"
  ]
};

In this file, find the api property. By default, this property is set to https://test.frontity.org/wp-json. You’ll need to change this to the address of your own website, with the wp-json extension. For example, if your website is https://example.com, then you should enter https://example.com/wp-json:

     "name": "@frontity/wp-source",
      "state": {
        "source": {
          "api": "https://example.com/wp-json"
        }
      }
    },

Save your changes, and refresh the Frontity tab in your web browser. This page should update to display content pulled directly from your own blog.

Step 2: Add Pages to Your App

Frontity is now connected to your website, but the menu still contains links to Frontity’s demo content (Nature, Travel, Japan, and About Us). If visitors click on any of these links, then they’ll encounter a 404 error:

You need to replace these placeholder pages with your own content. In your local project directory, open the frontity.settings.js file, and find the packages section. It should look something like this:

 "packages": [
     {
       "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
       "state": {
         "theme": {
           "menu": [
             [
               "Home",
               "/"
             ],
             [
               "Nature",
               "/category/nature/"
             ],
             [
               "Travel",
               "/category/travel/"
             ],
             [
               "Japan",
               "/tag/japan/"
             ],
             [
               "About Us",
               "/about-us/"
             ]
           ],

You can now replace these placeholders with your own pages. For example, if you wanted to link to your website’s Store page, located at https://example.com/store, then you’d use the following:

 "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
       "state": {
         "theme": {
           "menu": [
             [
               "Store",
                  "/store/"
            ],
....
....
….
            ]
          ],

If you wanted to link to your hat product, located at https://example.com/store/hat, then you’d add the following:

 "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
          "menu": [
            [
              "Hat",
                 "/store/hat/"
            ],
...
...
...
            ]
         ],

As an example, we’re going to add the following pages to the Frontity menu: Home, Store, About Us, and Contact Us:

  "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/mars-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
          "menu": [
           [
             "Home",
              "/"
           ],
           [
              "Store",
              "/store/"
           ],
           [
              "About Us",
               "/about-us/"
           ],
           [
              "Contact Us",
              "/contact-us/"
           ]
           ],

You can now save these changes. Refresh your website, and the menu should update with links to all of your pages.

Step 3: Customize Your Theme

When you set up Frontity, you selected either the Mars or the TwentyTwenty theme. This theme controls your site’s appearance, but you can modify the default look by editing it at the code level.

By customizing the various files that make up your chosen theme, you can add new User Interface (UI) elements, remove elements, add padding and margins, and make countless other stylistic changes.

To make these customizations, you’ll need to edit the contents of your project’s packages/theme-name folder. For example, if you’re using the Mars theme, then the packages folder contains a mars-theme directory:

In this directory, you can change various onscreen elements. To illustrate the general process, we’ll be changing the color of our website’s title text using HTML.

In HTML, colors are defined using Red-Green-Blue (RGB) values, Hexadecimal (HEX) values, Hue-Saturation-Lightness (HSL) values, Red-Green-Blue-Alpha (RGBA) values, or Hue-Saturation-Lightness-and-Alpha (HSLA) values. You can quickly and easily generate a code using a color picker such as HTML Color Codes.

To make this change, navigate to packages/mars-theme/src/components. Open the header.js file in your text editor, and then find the following section:

const Container = styled.div`
  width: 848px;
  max-width: 100%;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  padding: 24px;
  color: #fff;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: space-around;
`;

The #fff attribute is the code for white:

You can change the color of this text by replacing color #fff with a different HTML color code. In the following snippet, we’re styling this text so that it appears black:

const Container = styled.div`
  width: 848px;
  max-width: 100%;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  padding: 24px;

//Change the following line//

  color: #000000;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: space-around;
`;

When we save our changes, the new color is immediately applied to the header text:

It’s well worth spending some time exploring the various theme files and folders, to see what changes you can make. With a few code-level tweaks, you can put a unique spin on any theme, and help your website stand out from the crowd.

Step 4: Add Extra Features to Your App

Disqus is a blog comment hosting service. WordPress may support comments out-of-the-box, but Disqus can provide some additional benefits, including social network integration, advanced administrative and moderation options, and native ads that you can place around your comments section:

Once you’ve installed and imported Disqus into your local project, you can add a related comments section to any part of your site. We’ll show you how to add one to every single post that appears across your website.

To start, you’ll need to install Disqus. You can do this by running a command in your Terminal:

npm install disqus-react

Next, you need to implement Disqus as a component. We’d recommend creating a standard Frontity component directory structure.

In the comments.js file, add the following:

import React from "react";
import { connect } from "frontity";
import Disqus from 'disqus-react';

const Comments = ({ state }) => {
    const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);
    const post = state.source[data.type][data.id];

    const disqusShortname = “blog-name”;

     const threadConfig = {
          url: `https://${disqusShortname}.com${state.router.link}`,
          identifier: post.id,
          title: post.title.rendered,
   };

    return (
      <Disqus.DiscussionEmbed shortname={disqusShortname} config={threadConfig} />
    )
}
export default connect(Comments);

Next, you’ll need to implement Disqus through namespaces. In your index.js file, add the following:

import Comment from "./comment";

export default {
    libraries: {
        comments: {
            Comment
         }
    }
};

Since we want comments to appear on all posts, we’ll need to open Frontity’s post.js file. If you’re using the Mars theme, this is located in packages/mars-theme/src/components.

Open this file for editing, and find the following section:

      {/* Render the content using the Html2React component so the HTML is processedby the processors we included in the libraries.html2react.processors array. */}
      <Content>
        <Html2React html={post.content.rendered} />
      </Content>
    </Container>
  ) : null;
};

You should update this section to reference the comments package you just created:

       {/* Render the content using the Html2React component so the HTML is processedby the processors we included in the libraries.html2react.processors array. */}
        <Content>
            <Html2React html={post.content.rendered} />
  <libraries.comments.Comments />
       </Content>
     </Container>
  ) : null;
};

Save your changes, and refresh your blog in the web browser. If you open any post and scroll to the bottom, it should now feature a Disqus comment section.

Step 5: Publish Your App

Once you’re happy with your Frontity web application, you can deploy it to production. To create a production-ready bundle, run the following command from the root of your project:

npx frontity build

This will create a build folder containing your React application and Frontity (Node.js) server. You’ll find this folder in your project’s root directory:

You can deploy this folder to any hosting that’s capable of serving a Node.js application. For example, you can use npx frontity serve to run your project like a standard Node.js application, or upload it to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and serverless service.

Frontity recommends Vercel as a serverless solution, although you could also use AWS Lambda, Netlify or Google Functions. To deploy your Frontity app using Vercel, you need to create a Vercel account. In your Terminal, run the following command:

npx vercel login

When prompted, enter your email address. Vercel will now send a Verification email to your account; open this email and give the Verify button a click.

On your computer, open your Frontity app’s root directory. Then create a vercel.json file containing the following:

{
  "version": 2,
  "builds": [
     {
       "src": "package.json",
       "use": "@frontity/now"
     }
  ]
}

Save this file, and run the following Terminal command:

npx vercel

After a few moments, the Terminal should ask whether you want to set up and deploy your project. To deploy, press the y key, followed by Enter .

You can now choose the scope that you want to deploy to, and whether you’re deploying to an existing project. If you deploy to a new project, then you can give that project a name. Note that Vercel only supports hyphens, lowercase letters, and numbers. You’ll also need to specify the local directory where your project is located.

Once you’ve entered this information, Vercel will assign your project a live URL, in the format https://example.vercel.app. Vercel also generates a project settings URL, in the format https://vercel.com/vercel-username/my-frontity-project/settings. This URL opens your project’s settings in the Vercel console.

Here, you can make various changes to your project, including assigning new domains to your deployment, and integrating Vercel with Git so that changes are pushed to your Git repositories automatically.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Frontity makes WordPress-React development easier. This framework helps you to create apps that are SEO-friendly, possess great designs, and perform well. By creating a web application using Frontity, you can reduce the workload and configuration typically required to create a headless WordPress website.

Here’s a quick recap of the steps involved in building a web application using Frontity:

1. Launch a new Frontity project.
2. Add pages to your app.
3. Customize your theme.
4. Add extra features to your app.
5. Publish your app.

Once you’re happy with your web application, you can host it in a serverless environment or opt for developer-friendly web hosting that’s optimized for Node.js!

Image credit: FeeLoona.

The post How to Build WordPress Apps With Frontity (In 5 Steps) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

In essence, React is a library that simplifies the process of building a User Interface (UI) by making use of ‘components.’ React relies mainly on the JavaScript language and has grown to become one of the most popular solutions for front-end web development.

In this article, we’ll examine what React is, its origins, and how it compares with similar options in the web development ecosystem.

An Introduction to the React Framework (And Why You Need It)

JavaScript is one of the major scripting languages used as a core technology in web development. Though HTML and CSS are also major stakeholders, JavaScript has risen to the very top of the ranks, given that it helps to create and control dynamic web content. In fact, a Web Technology Surveys (Web3Techs) report reveals that a whopping 95% of all websites use JavaScript.

On a much wider scale, Statista also found out that JavaScript is the most prevalent programming language worldwide as of early 2020. About 68% of software developers use it.

However, notwithstanding its wide acceptance and popularity, JavaScript doesn’t include everything a developer needs. As such, we’ve seen the recent rise in various front-end frameworks such as Angular and Vue.js.

In simple terms, the React framework is a Javascript library developers use to build user interfaces for single-page web and mobile applications. The major aim of developing React was to improve JavaScript’s User Interface (UI) development. Facebook deployed it for the first time on its News Feed in 2011 and later on Instagram in 2012.

At the core of every React app are components. A React component is a self-contained module that you can use to render a UI output. A typical component can include several other components in its output. In other words, React apps are created by writing components that correspond to different interface elements. An application structure is then defined by organizing the components within other higher-level components.

Why The React Framework Is So Popular

The major advantage React introduced over its predecessors was the introduction of a virtual Document Object Model (DOM). Though not particular to React, a virtual DOM lets the developer implement changes to the document’s data outside the browser. In other words, you can manipulate the document on a DOM built and run entirely in local memory.

Once you’re done with your changes, React intelligently inputs changes from the virtual DOM to the actual browser’s DOM. This in theory offers much better performance.

For a clearer picture, let’s list some reasons why millions of developers around the world choose React.

• React is simple and easy to learn. React’s approach of breaking UI elements down into components makes it attractive to many new developers. React uses a well-defined application structure and a special syntax called JavaScript XML (JSX). JSX makes it possible for developers to mix HTML with JavaScript which makes it much easier to use. In other words, anyone with a basic knowledge of programming can easily learn React unlike ‘domain-specific languages’ such as Angular and Ember.
• React performs better. Over time, React has become very famous for its speed and performance. Thanks to its support for a virtual DOM, performance is significantly better and the applications’ workload is also well-optimized. Likewise, data flows only in one direction in React letting you control the project (and test components) easily.
• There’s a great supportive community. Thanks to the fact that it is open-source and widely adopted, React is backed by a great community. Apart from the availability of React Developer Tools, you can easily find help from other developers if you run into trouble as a newbie.
• React is great for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Unlike many other JavaScript frameworks, React works very well with SEO. Therefore, your applications will be more accessible to search engines.

However, React would be nothing without its connectivity to the wider development community. Let’s find out more about how React achieves this.

How React Fits into the Web Development Ecosystem

Though originally launched for use with Facebook, React is now enjoying a great rate of adoption across several industries. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as the majority of modern apps rely on reliable UI elements. Many also have a lot of dynamic components.

All these factors make a very good case for the incorporation of React. Let’s quickly take a look at some of the typical projects where you may employ React:

• Social networks. Other social apps such as Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and more now depend on React. With the help of Server-Side Rendering (SSR), social sharing and SEO takes on a completely new dynamic. React uses SSR to retrieve relevant information such as the title and author when you’re sharing a post. Being able to have a proper preview is an effective way of rendering your web app. React also offers a lot of benefits when it comes to SEO – a plus for virtually any industry.
• Ecommerce and retail. The reusability of React components makes it an ideal fit for web apps based in e-commerce. Once a developer builds a component on your site, they can reuse the component on a site-wide basis. This saves both time and money on your project. This also positively impacts code maintenance, as the reusability of components helps to avoid code duplicity.
• Cross-platform mobile apps. If you want to build mobile apps for use across different platforms such as Android and iOS, React Native offers a great opportunity. Mobile apps using React Native behave like any other native iOS or Android app. Upgrading a React-based web app to the mobile version is also very easy.

There are several other project types where the adoption of React has proven ideal. Sharing economy apps (Airbnb, Uber, Lyft), video platforms (Netflix), and SaaS tools (Zapier) all incorporate React.

Of course, WordPress has also adopted React through other frameworks such as Frontity, and Matt Mullenweg’s initial insistence to “Learn JavaScript deeply” should also include a React-based approach to creating WordPress products too.

Conclusion

If you’re looking forward to working as a front-end web developer, learning React is definitely a great idea. There are a lot of benefits to using the library, and it enjoys immense popularity only a few years after its release.

React’s dependence on JavaScript and the idea behind components make it very easy to adapt. There are also other features like the virtual Document Object Model (DOM) and renderers that make React deliver great runtime performance.

Image credit: React Plus.

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