Research & Analysis of Today’s Internet

How to Make a Business Website

“I need a website. How do I get one?” This is a common question we get. Back in 2001, this was a much simpler question: the answer was, “Hire a web designer.” Today, it’s more complicated because of the wide range of solutions available. If you don’t know anything about building a website, it’s overwhelming. This is a step-by-step guide to figure out what you need to do.

Scenario 1: You just need an online brochure and you are not picky about design.

This is the most common scenario. You don’t need to sell anything online. You don’t need to blog. In fact, you don’t need anyone interacting…

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Too Many Apps at Work?

According to a recent study, the average number of apps used by the modern worker is 9. No wonder people are feeling “app fatigue” or “app overload” at work. Many tech-savvy businesses use project management systems (Basecamp, Asana, Trello, Zoho), customer relationship management systems (Salesforce, SugarCRM, CiviCRM), marketing and sales management systems (HubSpot, MailChimp), and e-commerce systems (Magento, Shopify). But each of these apps lives in its own universe. Each requires its own username and password, so you are constantly logging in and out of different applications. They…

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Why Progressive Web Apps?

There is now a lot of chatter about “progressive web apps.” What is it? It’s a way to build an app using the tools of website development. The two most popular frameworks for creating progressive web apps are Ionic and React. (Ionic is built on AngularJS which is backed by Google. React is backed by Facebook.) The most obvious reason why this approach is attractive for anyone considering creating an app is the cost. These frameworks allow you to write once and deploy it to both iOS and Android, which means you would not have to hire and manage two separate teams. But the more important…

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Why Use WordPress?

You’ve been hearing a lot of negative things about WordPress from your computer-savvy friends but then everyone around you is using it. What should you do? True, most programmers hate WordPress, especially those who are highly educated in computer science. Well, there are both good and bad reasons why you should use WordPress. So, let me start with listing some of the problems associated with WordPress.

What’s so bad about WordPress?

WordPress has been around for a long time (about 13 years) and it has always kept its backward compatibility (or upgrade-ability), which means it carries over…

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How to Choose a Web Development Framework

Choosing the right web development framework to build an application is one of the most challenging tasks as a CTO. It requires you to have a wide range of experience in managing application development. Many years of experience pay off here.

One of the key questions you have to ask yourself is how conventional your application is, because one of the key concepts that differentiates these frameworks is “convention over configuration” (CoC), which determines how opinionated the framework is. CoC frameworks assume certain ways of developing applications are better than the others. A good…

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What Is Online Presence?

How We Exist Online Today

Less than ten years ago, the Web dominated our online experience. This is no longer the case. The medium through which content is delivered to us is becoming increasingly fragmented. Managing this fragmentation has become the biggest pain point for businesses with limited resources. Most business owners are told that they need to have presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but beyond creating profiles on these platforms, they do not know what to do. They are also told that they need to be mobile-friendly, that they need videos, and that they still can’t…

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17 Elements of Successful Website

A modern website has a lot going on under the hood. Here are all the aspects of a website that need to be carefully considered.

User-Interface Design

Knowing How People Behave on Website

How people interact with screens evolve over time. As new devices are introduced to the market, new ways of interacting become possible. As people master a certain level of complexity, they become ready for the next level. In this way, UI design is a moving target. Each site or app should choose a specific psycho-demographic segment in the technology adoption curve (i.e. early adopter, early majority, late…

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Why We Can’t Make a Living As Writers

The graph above shows why we can no longer make a living as writers. Let me go over it in detail.

The horizontal line represents the spectrum between readers’ desire to read and writers’ desire to be read.

On the far left side of this spectrum A) is a small number of writers who are so desperate for attention that they would pay anyone willing to read their writings.

B is where writers spend their own money on online advertising to get readers’ attention. Even if they do not spend money, if we were to take into account the cost of their own labor to promote their writings, overall, they…

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Social Optimizer

noun: a person who waits until the last minute to cancel social plans in order to choose the best possible plan for oneself at the expense of others.

Usage

My friend is the worst social optimizer; he canceled our dinner plan after I did all the shopping and cooking, and now I see him partying on Instagram.

Derivative Usage

I have an extra ticket for this show. Do you wanna go? I’ve been optimized by Kathryn. Her boyfriend just invited her to his place.
What?! You are not coming to my party? Are you trying to optimize me?

Analysis

This problem has become prevalent because most of us…

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Life Now Imitates Social Media—Not the Other Way Around

Today, one in three marriage is initiated online. It is inevitable that this ratio will keep growing. A few decades ago, television was the most influential medium and the most popular target of criticism for corrupting our brains. Now, social media have unseated television from the top spot. Between the two mediums, the most obvious difference is that television is a one-way mass medium whereas social media like Facebook is two-way. Another difference: Television is highly centered whereas social media is highly fragmented. By “centered,” I mean a large number of people share a small number…

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