Inbound Marketing Blog

Scrolling animations and effects are all of the rage in web design these days, and sometimes using basic parallax just isn’t enough. Fortunately there’s ScrollMagic, a free JavaScript library for creating dynamic, interactive scroll effects.

Parallax scrolling is one of the latest buzzwords in web design, but what is it, exactly? In this article, you’ll learn about parallax, its pros and cons, and how you can maximize its potential for your web site.

JavaScript is a programming language that is used to create interactive elements and online programs that can be incorporated into webpages and desktop applications. Along with HTML and CSS, JavaScript is one of the three core technologies that are used in web development to build pages and sites across the internet.

If you’ve been working to drive traffic to your website but aren’t seeing many conversions from that traffic, your bounce rate may be too high. A high bounce rate means that the people coming to your website are not staying long; they simply “bounce” before exploring your content or filling out a contact form.

Your homepage is expected to tell visitors everything they should know about your business as well as do the heavy lifting when it comes to SEO. Sounds like a tall order, huh? There is a lot of pressure on your homepage to attract visitors and convince them to delve deeper into your website. So, how can you develop a homepage that accomplishes all you need it to? We’re breaking it down.

If you need a website built for your business or your old site redesigned to keep up with the changing online world, the first thing you need to do is find a skilled, reliable developer. To help you weed out the hacks and find someone who can help your business succeed, ask these five questions.

One of the biggest problems that can plague a website is poor user experience, or "UX," design. Poor UX can range from minimal design issues like complicated menus or poorly mapped content on a page to bigger issues such as potential customers not understanding a website's navigation. Even the smallest of design issues can start to have large repercussions, as you have about 7 seconds to hook potential customers that are viewing your site for the first time.

Quality control and testing is an imperative part of the web development process. An important phase of testing is responsive testing, or mobile testing. This ensures that a website is responsive and functions properly across various devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Another important phase, which may be less obvious to the average user, is cross-browser testing.

Many people do not really understand the differences between web development and web design. Web development involves building the framework that tells a website how to function and how it should look to the user. Code is written and created that determines what users will see on the front end. Web design focuses on the UI/UX (user interaction/user experience) of a website—what the user actually sees and how they interact with and move around your website. 

Web developers are sort of like scientists who build, create, and experiment with the building blocks of the website, while web designers are the artists who figure out where things should go and how they should look to captivate users.

The Rise of Messaging Apps

I’m willing to bet that even if you don’t use them yourself, you have probably have heard or seen something concerning the current messaging app craze. Apple iPhones have iMessage and Google has SMS Messenger for Android devices. However, even these two companies are evolving their messaging apps in an effort to keep up with consumer demands. Apple has kept up with the use of stickers and games and will soon offer an option for paying friends who bought you lunch, all within a single app. As for Google, the Android SMS Messenger recently added the option to merge with Facebook’s Messenger app to allow a singular experience for users, so you don't have to go back and forth between different screens to send texts or messages.