Do's and Don'ts of Website Design

Everyone owns a site or a blog these days. It's the next thing that one owns after a smartphone. So when there is so much competition out there in the digital world, how will you survive and rise up to be one of those really popular sites that people keep coming back to? There are some very simple things that one ought to follow, in order to create an elegant yet stylish website that is not just user-friendly, but also speaks volumes about your brand or yourself (in case of a personal blog). I have compiled a humble comparison between some good and bad elements of website design that you may incorporate in your layout. 

1. It's either high-res or useless!

Your site is the link between you and your customer. It is your brand's identity. Make sure that the images that you use on your site are high resolution ones that are taken from legitimate sources. You could use Pexels for this purpose.

2. Minimalistic is the new fantastic!

Simple and elegant designs are many day more appealing than a jarring website filled with unnecessary content and images.

3. Are you socially visible?

If your social media buttons aren't positioned strategically, you are bound to lose your customers who could be potential influencers for your brand. Place your social media icons in such a way that they are in the first fold of your homepage and pretty prominent for users to click and follow your profiles.

4. Less is always more!

It is a myth that your site must be loaded with content. All you need to ensure is that your content is of good quality and relevant. Keep minimum text on all your pages, so that viewers landing on your site are not stressed out to read huge volumes of random words.

5. KISS - Keep It Simple Silly!

Always adhere to this golden rule while designing your homepage. If your homepage is simple and easy to follow, you have higher probability of visitors navigating deeper into other pages on your site. 

6. Clear Call-to-Action is the key to Increased Conversion!

CTA buttons are an integral part of your revenue system. Make sure that there is high clarity in the suggestions, positions and meanings of each of these buttons used on your site.

7. Move the coins smartly

Navigate your users very wisely when they land on your website. Ask them the correct questions that makes them view the most relevant and intended pages on your site.

Hope these tips help you in designing a really kick-ass website for yourself! In case you are stuck and need further help regarding this, click here to get in touch with some really great website designers.

Google redefines Brilliance with its latest inventions!

OMG has been recently reassigned as OH MY GOOGLE! In my opinion, this suits the acronym much more! Google has been inventing a lot of wonders in the past and has come up with two latest additions to the family. Google Home and GBoard are the newest babies on the block that redefine ingenuity. So, today I wish to talk about these products and how it promises to deliver to its best ability.

1. Google Home:

The most recent invention of Google that adds great value to your humble abode and makes it super intelligent with just a simple tiny device called Google Home. This product promises to redefine Music & Entertainment, Google Search and your basic needs that include almost everything. This indigenous invention personifies your home by making it super smart! Simply watch this video to be startled.

2. GBoard:

Say you’re texting with a friend about tomorrow’s lunch plans. They ask you for the address. Until now it’s worked like this: You leave your texting app. Open Search. Find the restaurant. Copy the address. Switch back to your texts. Paste the address into a message. And finally, hit send.

Searching and sending stuff on your phone shouldn’t be that difficult. With Gboard, you can search and send all kinds of things—restaurant info, flight times, news articles—right from your keyboard. Anything you’d search on Google, you can search with Gboard. Results appear as cards with the key information front and center, such as the phone number, ratings and hours. With one tap, you can send it to your friend and you keep the conversation going.

This is just a documentation of my awe of these products and I am really excited to get my hands on these beauties. Hope this enlightens you guys as well on the awesomeness of my favorite brand in the world!

Trending tips to design an awesome website!

I am sure all of us have done this at least once. You hear about some new product and immediately check on your phones for the website of the company that sells the product. If its nice and appealing, you may choose to buy the product. If the website doesn't entice you, I am sure you wouldn't prefer to stay on it even for a minute and decide that the product is not great (while in reality, it may be an amazing product). It is imperative for any company, small or big, to have a really alluring and self-explanatory website. So what are the key elements to creating a great website? Ask the following questions and see if you are able to answer each one with utmost clarity and precision.

1. Is there clarity in the purpose of your website?
Who are you? What do you do? What can your audience find on your site? Do you cater to specific need of the society? All of these questions must be clearly answered in your website with simple yet powerful words that highlight your product/service.

2. Does your website strike the correct chord with your target audience?
Stick to simple and effective communication in the language that they prefer. Give them what they exactly need in their style.

3. Is your site capable enough to create a compelling need for your audience to stay longer on it?
Your website must have a good, wait..great value proposition that forces your customers to keep reading through the various elements of your site. Don't let your audience move away from your domain easily.

4. Is your site simple, creative and user-friendly?
Always follow the golden rule of KISS - Keep It Simple Silly. Simplicity is often more appealing than complexity. Add creative and effective elements to your website that navigates the user in a very easy and seamless manner. Avoid broken links, unpleasant color schemes and too many unnecessary links. Align the design with the tone of your business and taste of your audience.

5. Are there enough Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons on each page of your site?
This does not mean that you load each page with CTA buttons, but have apt and effective ones that let your users find what they want at the correct time and place. Incorporate intelligent elements in your design that capture intricacies of user behavior and work favorably for you.

6. Is your website optimized for multi-device usability?
Ensure that your website works equally well across all devices including desktop, tablet and mobile. Additionally, make sure that you test your site on multiple browsers and fix any kind of bugs that you may notice.

7. Is the content on your site static or dynamic?
Keep dynamic content that has the potential to refresh your site frequently. This enables search engine crawlers to automatically find you and list you in their result pages.

8. How long does it take for your site to load on any device?
Page speed is an important aspect that not may developers pay heed to. Your site should load quickly so that viewers don't migrate away from your site due to extended waiting period. Avoid too many heavy components, and if at all those components are necessary, optimize and compress them for optimum user experience.

9. Are you aware of the F-Layout?
User behavior states that a normal human being always reads from left to right and top to bottom. Use this to your advantage and work towards placing your best elements in correct positions that catch your users' attention.

So, have you been able to answer all of the above questions? Go ahead and tick them all off the list!

Website design is an integral part of your business and never should you neglect this aspect. All the best in designing the best website for your business. In case you need to hire a really good website developer, you could look for great options here.

SAPnish for Starters

Today's IT professional often comes across acronym-packed jargon that may be scary to many. I worked in an IT giant for a couple of years at the beginning of my career and trust me it was crazy to the core to remember the full forms of innumerable acronyms. I would curse all those people who invented these terms saying they were poor with their alphabets so forced it upon us as well. Although I hated it, I had no choice but to memorize all those terms that were relevant to my project as I had to communicate with my clients and colleagues in the preferred language. Frankly speaking, it's really not that tough to remember them if you learn it in a fun way and understand what the term actually stands for rather than blindly memorizing the terminologies. So here's a quick guide for all those SAPiens who find it difficult to keep in mind important terms related to SAP.

ABAP: pronounced “ah-bawp,” is SAP’s foundation and stands for Advanced Business Application Programming language

BOBJ: pronounced “bob-jay,” is not a type of rarely seen North American bird. It’s actually a the short form of SAP BusinessObjects, the business intelligence vendor SAP acquired in 2007. SAP is totally banking on BOBJ for its future success

Business ByDesign (ByD): SAP Business ByDesign is a suite of on-demand ERP applications. (Note: SAP also uses the ByD technology to build its OnDemand business applications.) At the close of 2011, SAP had signed up approximately 1,000 customers.

Cloud: SAP was a late comer to the cloud-computing arena, embracing it with all the enthusiasm that a five-year-old has for eating his vegetables. Which is to say, not so much. That’s changed as of late, however.

Colgate-Palmolive and Valero: two SAP reference customers (the former in consumer product goods, the latter in energy services) who you are most likely to hear from at an SAP conference. They put the “early” in “early SAP adopter.”

“Drinking Our Own Champagne”: SAP’s take on the classic “eating our own dog food” vendor euphemism. (Too many cynical comparisons have been made to the price of champagne, relative to dog food, and the price of SAP software. Woof!)

Ecosystem: as in “SAP Ecosystem.” Ecosystem makes one think of the symbiotic relationship among mammals and the Earth’s plants, oceans and land; in this case, think of the occasionally dysfunctional relationship among SAP, its customers, consultants and IT integrators.

ERP: a catch-all acronym (enterprise resource planning) for critical back-end business software, for which SAP is best known. Typically includes financial/accounting, operations/supply chain, HR (or human capital management), and project/portfolio management. The “sex appeal” of SAP ERP apps is very low, but see how “hot” your CFO gets if any of those financial apps don’t work properly.

“Game changing”: SAP executives, in 2011, began working this phrase into their presentation lexicons to describe SAP’s “innovative” portfolio of technologies and software.

Go to Market: if you meet an SAP employee with “Go to Market” in his or her title, know that it’s either someone tasked with getting SAP products delivered to customers or a “rain making” sales honcho (the Brooks Brothers suit, nice watch and iPad are also a dead giveaway)

Hasso: the first name of legendary SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner. Like Madonna, Michelangelo and Lindsay, you will rarely hear someone refer to him by including his surname, because there’s only one Hasso. (Which is probably why his interview of himself actually makes sense.)

HANA: unlike Hasso, HANA is not the name of a famous SAP executive. It is, however, Hasso’s pet project: HANA stands for High-Performance Analytic Appliance and is based on SAP’s in-memory technology initiative. In layman’s terms: HANA allows your company to process a ton of data really fast.

In-Memory: you’ll hear this term often when the discussion involves SAP HANA, which uses in-memory computing principles (not invented by SAP, by the way) to analyze massive amounts of data “up to 3,600 times faster” than on SAP Business Suite with traditional disk-based databases, according to SAP.

“Innovation without Disruption”: a significant marketing push by SAP, though you don’t hear that much about it anymore. One guess: SAP ditched the negative “disruption” part and prefers to talk about the positive “innovation” piece all by itself.

OnDemand: SAP’s (slow) growing line of on-demand business applications—a.k.a. “The SAP Cloud.” As of early 2012, the OnDemand portfolio includes: Business ByDesign, Sales, Sourcing, Carbon Impact, BI and StreamWork. (Planned for later 2012 are OnDemand apps for: Career; Environment, Health and Safety; Sales and Operations Planning; Service; and Travel.)

On premise. On demand. On device: as Brad Hamilton said to a bewildered Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: “Learn it. Know it. Live it.” This is the three-pronged strategy that SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe have laid out for the vendor’s future.

Optimize: you are forewarned: You will hear this word a lot and may be tempted to use it in SAP discussions yourself: We need to optimize our customized SAP solutions. Don’t get sucked into the “Optimize” vortex!

Orchestration: a new entry into the SAPnish lexicon, you’ll be hearing more and more about this topic from SAP execs: an ability to manage your company’s data across IT environments and applications, via on-premise, in the cloud or on mobile devices. Easier said than done, by the way.

“Our Next Largest Competitor”: rarer than a week passing in which Oracle doesn’t buy another company is SAP actually referring to the “Stack Attack” by name.

Run Better: SAP’s 2011 marketing campaigns were anchored by the “Run Better” slogan, multiple tour stops and a hip video showing cool SAP customers such as Burton and Skullcandy

@sapcio: the Twitter handle for SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann, whose stock has risen right alongside his company’s. Gartner’s Thomas Otter once tweeted about him: “IMHO @sapcio has done more for SAP’s brand than a 100,000 airport posters.”

SAP Acronym-o-Rama: PI? SRM? FI? GRC? There are too many to include here, so click on this SAP glossary page to figure out that SAP product acronym that’s got you thinking WTH (what the heck?).

SolMan: though it is pronounced like the zany 1980s movie Soul Man, it has absolutely nothing to do with C. Thomas Howell, applying to Harvard or “bronzing pills.” It’s short for SAP Solution Manager, the oft-derided and chronically underused technical and application support and management tool set. Ask your CIO how the company is using SolMan to lower TCO of your company’s SAP investment, and see what happens.

Solution(s): this is a word that every SAP employee (from co-CEO down to janitor) is contractually bound to use in at least every other sentence they utter. (OK, that’s not entirely true, but you get the point.) If you abhor this word and all who freely use it, then don’t buy SAP software.

StreamWork: this is SAP’s collaboration platform, and SAP wants us all to love it like it was Facebook. Or even Myspace circa the late 1990s.

SuccessFactors: a cloud-based HCM vendor SAP purchased in early 2012 for $3.4 billion. Its CEO, Lars Daalgard, is slated to become SAP’s cloud chief and figure out SAP’s all-important cloud strategy. (No pressure there.)

Sybase / SUP / Afaria: SAP acquired Sybase in 2010, and that deal included the Sybase Unwired Platform (a.k.a. SUP) for managing enterprise applications and Afaria for device and security management. (And, FYI, Sybase people don’t think “Wass ‘Sup?” jokes are funny or clever.)

TomorrowNow: Just. Don’t. Talk. About. It. Ever.

Walldorf: SAP’s headquarters in Germany. Don’t confuse it with the famous NYC hotel and salad, which is spelled Waldorf

Hope you enjoyed learning Spanish..oops..SAPnish as much as I did writing it! In case you are interested in teaching or learning some modules of SAP online, then go through this site for more details. If you think you have more terms that are not mentioned here, please add them in the comments below.

How to use technology to build your startup?

Startups are totally trending these days but every small business is not a successful one. Did you know that the success rate of startups is just 5%? Well what is it that this 5% of businesses is doing right and the rest aren't? Let us take a look at how technology, without much expenditure, can lead to a good start for entrepreneurs.

1. Time tracking tools must be put to good use to manage your time wisely and allocate appropriate amount of time to tasks with varying priorities. 1Time and Chrometa are a couple of good tools available in the market.

2. Use an efficient project management tool like Basecamp or Asana to maintain a record of all accounts that you are handling. It is ideal for a small team to communicate and share files and other related data.

3. Create a systematic email management system to not miss out on any important message and also to keep every single detail of your team documented in one place. You never know what will actually be of use to you at a later stage.

4. Use a methodical online invoicing system to bill your customers and avoid any kind of hassle with respect to funds. You could make use of Google Checkout or PayPal for this as they are authentic and very user-friendly.

5. Maintain your finances well with a productive online budget planner. You ought to plan your spends wisely when you are starting off with almost nothing or very little. Mint or GNUCash could assist you in this task.

6. Explore the possibility of creating an alternative source of income like selling your products online or getting associated with a complimentary product that would mutually benefit both the businesses.

7. Exploit social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others that are free and at the same time super effective to popularize your business and connect with your targeted audience.

8. Start writing a blog that you can use as a rich source of content marketing. Gather as many readers as you can in your domain and educate them about the need of your product and how they can benefit out of that.

9. Use video marketing to create short yet engaging videos about your product. You can introduce your business, talk about features of your products that stand out in the industry, and create various videos that are worthy of going viral in the digital space.

10. Last but definitely not the least is going mobile. Create an interactive and fully functional app that aligns with your website design and interface. We all know that the world is going mobile and if you are not, then you are losing a lot.

Hope this helps you in elevating your business further and scaling greater heights with simple and cost-effective ideas. In case you have a few more ideas in your kitty, share them with our readers in the comments below.