DEV Community: Christa Elrod

Top WordPress Plugins to Pass the Google Core Web Vitals Test– 2021

Christa Elrod — Wed, 05 May 2021 11:06:38 +0000

This article discusses about Google Core Web Vitals and helps readers to understand how their websites can pass the Core Web Vitals test and get optimized for better performance. Core Web Vitals influences a website’s search engine ranking and so if your website fails to pass this test, it won’t get a higher rank in search engine results.

Most websites fail to abide by the standards set by the Core Web Vitals and the prime reasons for this are CSS issues, hosting problems, large-sized images, JavaScripts, and web fonts.

This article explains how you can pass Core Web Vitals test using popular WordPress Plugins. These plugins are available for free and they will help you boost your website’s rank in the search engine results.

Understanding Google Core Web Vitals

Google defines Core Web Vitals as a division of Web Vitals that remains relevant for all website pages and it should be taken into consideration by website owners. Every element of the Core Web Vitals stands for a separate user-experience aspect and it symbolizes realistic experience of a user-oriented outcome.

In simple terms, Core Web Vitals refers to an evaluation system that emphasizes on user experience, site performance, and on page loading time. If your website has a low speed, the performance will be undesirable and the site will lack user-friendliness. Visitors want to view the content as fast as they can and any delay might make your visitors to leave your website.

How to Improve Core Web Vitals

The Google makes use of 3 chief metrics to assign Core Web Vitals score:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This provides a measure of loading performance. To deliver an excellent user experience, LCP must appear within 2.5 seconds of the initial page loading time.
• First Input Delay (FID): This is a measure of interactivity. Web pages should ideally have less than 100 milliseconds of FID for delivering desired user experience.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is a measure of visual stability. To generate a positive user experience, the CLS for pages needs to be less than 0.1.

Tools that would help you evaluate compliance with Core Web Vitals would consider a web page to be qualifying if it fulfills 75 percent of the targets for the three abovementioned parameters.

Testing Core Web Vitals

So if you need to check if your website can pass the Google PageSpeed Insights test, you should test if your website adheres to the standards for Google speed Core Web Vitals and optimization.

Google PageSpeed Insights

You need not be concerned if you fail to get your website optimized or if you fail to qualify for the Google Pagespeed test. It is quite surprising to note that only a handful of websites are qualified to pass Google’s mobile and desktop Speed Test.

Boosting the performance of Your WordPress Site’s Core Web Vitals with Plugins

In case your website fails at the Google Core Web Vitals PageSpeed test, we have listed some really awesome WordPress plugins that would promote better website optimization. With Core Web Vitals being a critical SEO ranking factor, these plugins would help your website to rank high on search engine results.

Before discussing about optimization plugins for WordPress, one of the critical factors in qualifying for the Core Web Vitals is a dependable WordPress hosting provider. Reputed hosting service providers would ensure that your website optimized and managed to deliver the highest standard of performance.

Free WordPress plugins For Adhering to the Requirements of Google Core Web Vitals

We have listed some of the most efficient WordPress plugins that would help you to adhere to the requirements of the Core Web Vitals. You may consider installing this plugins to boost the speed of your WordPress site and to decrease the load time to just 2 seconds.

Autoptimize
With Autoptimize, you can optimize your WordPress site very easily. This tool can cache styles and scripts, puts in CSS at the head of the page, put off the aggregated CSS, minimizes HTML and moves the scripts to the footer. Images can be optimized using this tool and lazy-loading is possible too. It is compatible with AVIF and WebP formats and supports optimization of Google fonts. You can make use of the API to customize this tool to serve the specific needs of websites.
Jetpack Boost
This plugin facilitates single-click optimization that would boost your website’s performance while increasing the web vitals scores for better page ranking.
Hummingbird
You can optimize website speed, activate cache, and lessen CSS. By installing this plugin in your Wordpress site, you can increase page speed and get your website’s performance optimized. It provides ground-breaking caching abilities, promotes lazy load integration, and performs excellent file compression function.
Smush
This plugin allows for image optimization, resizing, and compression, which, in turn, boosts page speed. Developed by WPMU DEV, this tool is completely free to use and it can compress images without compromising on the image quality.
WP-Optimize
This is a cutting-edge plugin that boosts the performance of WordPress sites. You can use this tool for database-cleaning, image compression, and caching. The cache capability is based on the capabilities of the fastest cache engine of the world. This is a simple and easy-to-use tool that can make your website load fast and run optimally.
LiteSpeed Cache
The LiteSpeed Cache is an acceleration tool that comprises of a special server-specific cache and a host of optimization capabilities.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
ShortPixel is a very efficient image optimization tool that can compress old images and PDF documents with just a one-click approach. It can be used easily and it is a lightweight tool that can boost a website’s search engine ranking, website traffic, and consequently sales. This plugin allows new photos to be resized and optimized automatically when they are being uploaded on the website. This plugin works well with various sliders, galleries, and Ecommerce plugins.
AMP
The AMP plugin is a very effective tool which leads to the creation of secure, fast, accessible, and engaging websites. It would help your website to load fast and improve visitor engagement. Previously, AMP, which is the short-form of Accelerated Mobile Pages, was useful only for mobile websites. Today, AMP has evolved as a useful, responsive plugin for mobile as well as desktop systems.
WP-Rocket
WP Rocket is recognized as a very powerful caching plugin in the present-day market. It would boost your WordPress site’s speed while creating a positive impact on Google rankings and sales conversions. You do not need coding in order to be able to use it. This plugin operates on the basis of best practices on web performance. You do not require high level of technical knowledge in order to be able to use it optimally.

Google Core Web Vital is a crucial factor influencing SEO ranking to a great extent. You should ensure that your website is optimized to deliver excellent user experience and that it gets loaded fast on desktop as well as mobile devices. The free WordPress plugins that we discussed about would promote perfect optimization of your website, allowing your website to load and run faster. In case you still find your website to be slow, consider switching to a reliable hosting service provider that delivers cache optimization service as well.

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The Importance of Color in UX Design

Christa Elrod — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 11:09:51 +0000

Color is an integral element of any design because color influences the target audience’s thoughts and determines how they interact or use the design. Color also determines whether a design is able to deliver the right message to the audience and whether they are able to understand it. Color is not just a decorative element, but color is a key determinant of user experience. Say, for example, you have recently completed a website design project and other people in your team have appreciated the work. However, you find that your client does not like the look and feel of it, but he/ she is not able to explain why he/she can’t like the website that you have created.

If you analyze deeply, you may find that color may be the reason why your work is not getting approved. Different colors are associated with different emotions and they generate different types of reactions in people. The reactions that colors invoke are based on personal preferences, psychologies, and even social norms. When you make an attempt to understand user preferences, you actually take a step towards impacting user experience.

Here’s what you should take into account while choosing colors for UX:

Preferences and Expectations of the Users

What type of users is the website meant for? The users’ perception of your design may vary depending on their gender or the country/ region where they reside. It is quite interesting to note that gender is a critical consideration in deciding on the right set of colors for UX design. Research suggests that men and women demonstrate a preset pattern to like to dislike particular types of color. It has been observed that men have a tendency to prefer designs that are based on darker and more saturated colors whereas women love exploring websites that are based on subtle color palettes and lighter design themes. Some men would show strong reactions against websites that are based on feminine color schemes such as combinations of different shades of purple and pink. On the other hand, many women would dislike harsh color schemes that are based on dark backgrounds and saturated red accents. Men and women generally prefer mid-tone palettes.

Meanings that Colors Convey

Colors are associated with different emotional responses. Some colors invoke extreme reactions and such colors can be combined to create an overall theme. When an individual sees a color or a color combination, a certain type of response gets triggered in his mind.

Here’s what different colors convey:

*Red: Red symbolizes passion, danger, power, and love.
*Yellow: Yellow sends out a message of warmth, light, happiness, and approachability.
*Orange: Orange denotes encouragement, determination, creativity, and stimulation.
*Green: Green is symbolical of nature, freshness, growth, and harmony.
*Blue: Blue invokes feelings of calmness, serenity, trust, and confidence.
*Purple: Purple is associated with ambition, magic, royalty, and independence.

Color Establishes Brand Recognition

Colors become elements of identification for the brand. We always relate Coca Cola with the red color of its logo. The color is an instant identification for the brand and is often termed as “Coke Red”. If you change the color to something else, the brand would lose its identity. This would prevent Coca Cola’s fans from reacting in the expected manner. This might generate such a strong reaction that people might think the drink to be tasting different. In a nutshell, color can change people’s perceptions of a brand in both positive and negative ways. Color is an integral component of design because it establishes a distinct connection between the brand and its customers. Color gives an idea about the brand and tells users what they should expect from it. When you change the color of the brand or you use colors that do not resonate with the brand’s identity, you will end up generating negative user experience. Your website’s visitors would no longer be able to relate to the brand that they thought they felt connected with.

Color Associates with User Patterns

Color enhances user engagements. Did you ever get attracted to red or orange colored buttons on websites? As a matter of fact, bright colored buttons that are used against a lighter or darker background can generate immediate interest among the target audience. Brighter colored buttons invite clicks by allowing users to understand if they should engage with a certain visual element. A major part of ensuring satisfactory user experience is by providing users several opportunities to smoothly explore and interact with the website. For example, we would see a ghost-style button in Cruise’s website; the button features red hovering text over it. This is a different way how the button is designed, but it is this style that catches the attention of the visitors and makes them hit it. In simple terms, your website should feature Call-to-Action buttons that can invoke immediate, positive reactions in your target audience.

Color can Boost Sales Conversion

You should consider experimenting with different colors to find out the best possible color or color combinations for your website. You will be surprised to note that one color would bring higher sales conversion rate than the other colors. And interestingly, it may not be the color that you liked the most. You will improve your sales conversion rate when you have buttons that would prominently show up against the background. When you decide on your brand’s color palette, it is a good idea to go for contrast colors that can immediately invoke a positive response in your website’s visitors.

Color Ensures Smooth Accessibility

It is rather interesting to note that color does not produce only emotional or psychological impacts, but it has practical implications too. Color boosts a user’s experience by making a design appear more accessible and understandable. A design can promote customer engagement when customers are able to understand the design completely, interpret its meaning easily, and remember it for a long term. Your color choices should be in line with your website- visitors’ expectations and you should make sure that you are using appropriate color contrast ratios. You might consider making use of a color-bind filter to get an idea of what others might feel when they visit your website.

So what’s the final takeaway?

Color, in its core essence, is a vital tool to capture the attention of your target audience. With the use of the appropriate colors, you can make your target audience interact with your website in a more enthusiastic manner and engage with your content better. This would create a long lasting impact on their minds and promote brand awareness and recall. Appropriate color combinations impact users from both emotional and usability point of view. Make sure that you pay attention to details and experiment with colors to understand if your website’s color palette is producing the desired UX impact.

Comparison of front-end & back-end programming languages for web development

Christa Elrod — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 06:43:33 +0000

Software development essentially revolves around programming in which codes are written to drive the functions of the software. Developers need to be aware of various programming languages which can be used for the coding purpose.

For the purpose of creating a strong online presence, specific web design programming languages are used for coding site dynamics. The languages vary among themselves in terms of usage pattern, strengths, and drawbacks. Each language supports a set of functionalities which are accomplished through the use of tools carried in them. These tools of individual languages help in accomplishing various coding related tasks with agility. However, if you are a beginner in web development, you may have to learn different programming languages to be more proficient in creating dynamic webpages.

Popularly Used Web Languages

Some programming languages are meant for developing desktop oriented software whereas others are used for web development. The popularity is based on the ease with which requirements are met by languages, historical usage, and functionalities offered.

Programming languages can be broadly categorized into two types

a) Client side languages
The files that are scripted in these languages are forwarded to web browsers directly. Files are interpreted by browser and the content is displayed to site’s users. Interaction with site users occurs through the frontend or the visible part of the website. The visible section is known as the client side. All elements responsible for enhancing user experience are present over here. These include button colors, text, pictures, menus for navigation etc.

Prominent client side scripting languages include VBScript, JavaScript, Ajax, jQuery, HTML5 and CSS.

b) Server side languages
The back-end programming languages help in building of web applications. The codes are executed on the server. Server is the PC on which website is hosted; it is not the one on which we browse the website. The server side segment of the website is not visible to common users. Data is stored and organized for ensuring seamless functioning of the client side programs. Communication occurs between backend and frontend for exchange of information needed to display content on web pages correctly.

Prominent server side programming languages include C++, Python, Ruby on Rails, PHP, C#, ASP.Net, Visual Basic etc.

Frontend Scripting languages

a) HTML
Hypertext Markup Language is used for writing web pages and web documents. Semantic information is provided regarding the displayed content by the enclosing inter-linear tags.

b) CSS
Cascading Style Sheet is another front-end programing language which provides comprehensive information about HTML document’s content to web browser to facilitate proper display. Some of the details carried by CSS include information about fonts, font size, priority of layers, colors, placement on-page etc.

c) JavaScript
The richness of web interactions within the browser can be enhanced with the JavaScript programming language. JavaScript is not the same as Java which is completely a different programming language and least related to it. It is event-driven and responds to user triggered actions. When you click, hover the curser on a button, type and do other events, the reactions are controlled by JavaScript. The web page with which JavaScript is associated offers complete access of its documental structure to the language.

d) Angular.js
Google had launched and now maintains this frontend framework for web application development, Angular.js. Open source community members contribute to its development. The framework simplifies SPAs (single page applications) lifecycle development process particularly while testing and development are underway. The framework uses MVVW (Model View View Model) and MVC (Model View Controller). The launching of framework was initially done for addressing issues experienced during SPA development. SPA is a web site or application which undergoes dynamic rewriting depending on how user interacts with it. The page need not be reloaded with all its elements from the hosting server every time user interacts with it. The behavior of these web apps or pages resemble that of desktop apps.

Backend Programming Languages

PHP

It is a server side language. Originally utilized for scripting, PHP is now popular as a language that generally caters to all programming purposes. Different frameworks under PHP are CodeIgniter, Yii, Laravel, CakePHP, Zend etc.

a) CakePHP
This contemporary framework supports the scaffolding features like Ruby on Rails. The framework is inbuilt with different security features and testing mechanisms.

b) CodeIgniter
This is a lightweight framework which supports faster app development. CodeIgniter comes packed with different libraries, can be used easily, and has an active user community. There would be no shortage of resources when it comes to scripting with CodeIgniter.

c) Laravel
This PHP framework is among the most popular ones. Laravel is open source and free to use. It supports faster development of apps. The purpose of designing Laravel was to provide CodeIgniter with an equivalent alternative. October is a content management system which has been developed based on Laravel framework.

Model View Controller (MVC) architectural pattern is supported by Laravel. Unit testing functionality is embedded within Laravel. Many innovative features are also inbuilt in this framework. With the help of modular package manager, features can be added, communication with relational databases can be carried out using different methods and utilities can be managed for deploying and maintaining applications.

d) Symfony
This PHP framework is high performing, stable and advanced. The learning curve for this framework is steep. However, top-notch documentation along with other resources and support are readily available. Symfony comes with reusable components and libraries. For the purpose of speeding up building, deploying and maintaining the PHP web applications, reusable PHP libraries and components are used. The focus is on enterprise app building and as such developers can enjoy control over full configuration tools for better decision making. Symfony’s development is fueled by Spring Framework. This framework is used by developers using proprietary Java programming language.

e) Yii
This framework is also open source and delivers optimum performance. Web pages which have to be complex but must load faster are designed using Yii. Yii was developed using initial stages of PHP development but is still maintained. Its appeal lies in its ease of usage.

f) Zend
Zend is the best enterprise framework in PHP. However, rapid app development is not supported. But, security features are best. To improve performance, Zend can be extended as required. Due to enterprise build, many components such as forms, authentication etc. are supported.

Python

Another of feature richback-end programming languages is Python which has gained immense popularity these days due to application in data science domain. It is an object oriented, high level language used for programming multiple applications. Although less used for web development, many web apps are scripted in Python.

a) Django
Hailed for being the ‘web framework for perfectionists with deadlines’, Django enjoys high popularity as Python web framework. Its open source nature makes it free to use. The framework offers all-inclusive scripting experience by providing everything under one roof. Python developers can easily develop complex data driven web sites using Django. Components created can be reused with ease which makes quick developing of multiple web apps possible.

b) Flask
This micro web Python framework is flexible and easy to use. Flask does not need specific tools and libraries, and comes packed with third party libraries provided component functionalities. Flask extensions can be used for adding application features. Different extension types are available which gets updated frequently compared to Flask core. With the help of Flask, you can make decisions for controlling the behavior of different aspects of web application.

Java
Java is prominent among scripting languages used commonly in enterprise setups. Spring framework is an excellent option to work with. Java apps can generally use Spring; however, you can enjoy benefits offered by the available extensions for building web apps based on Java EE or Enterprise Edition. You are not required to adhere to specific programming paradigm for using Spring. If you are desirous of following the MVC pattern, then Spring MVC component is purpose built for you.

Java Server Pages (JSP)
With JSP, you can build web pages by placing Java codes into the HTML sections with the help of specialized JSP tags. JSP works in collaboration with HTML codes for using the dynamic scripting capability. The page logic is separated from the static components i.e. the web page’s particular design and display. This improves the functionality of HTML with dynamic database queries. JSPs are not bound to particular server or platform and were originally developed for serving as alternatives to Active Server Pages by Microsoft. Microsoft has also brought in a contemporary of JSP with its ASP.Net technology as part of .Net initiative.

Conclusion
After going through this post, you must have familiarized yourself with the features and functionalities of various front-end and back-end scripting languages. You can leverage their potential for supporting functionality rich web design and development. For expert help, you can always get in touch with professionals for the support in web design development.