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Looking for UX Design Checklist?

UX, short for User Experience, is the interaction with the product/content/service by the customer. As the name suggests, the entire thing resolves around users aka consumers, viewers, and/or audiences.

How the targeted service looks, how the information influences consumption, how products trigger feelings, how users take actions – everything concerns UX. The ultimate objective of integrating a good UX design is to provide intuitive, efficient, relevant surfing of your website/app content.

It’s no simple task as lots of interesting, varying, and evolving factors are directly/indirectly associated with the process. Nearly everyone has to consult and hire professionals to accomplish perfection.

User Experience (UX) Design Checklist

All the factors are broadly outlined into specific categories to sort out the entire lineup. The priority, complexity, and planning are different from one another. But these concerning approaches will definitely hit the implementation.

It takes a considerable time to put everything in order before starting the implementation. Still, you must remain focused on the fundamental prerequisites. And here goes the top checklist you must imply while considering a proper UX.

Information Architecture (IA)

It’s a key aspect of UX to organize information by structuring the website and/or app. IA puts the web contents exactly where they should be on the site. Designers implement information architecture to let the users find the necessary info by navigating screens with minimal effort.

A steadfast IA implementing strategy, concerning UX design, includes:

1. Understanding the users properly
2. Defining the business objectives
3. Looking into competitors for analysis
4. Defining and categorizing contents
5. Prioritizing and labeling contents
6. Creating a sitemap for navigation
7. Designing and prototyping user flow
8. Defining metrics before user testing

Laying out a successful IA requires research, planning, and testing at greater scales. Crafting sitemaps, thinking navigations, deciding hierarchies, considering categories – all are essential IA parts. It provides the foundation or skeleton before implementing the actual functionality.

Navigation

Complex, vague, or cluttered arrangements of contents across the website prohibit users from enjoying an engaged navigation. Viewers don’t like to struggle while trying to find the content they’re looking for. You’ll keep losing potential and/or prospective audiences as they’ll instantly switch to alternate websites.

A well-laid navigational design primarily requires the following:

1. Absolute arrangement of contents.
2. Listing many clicks per webpage.
3. Increasing the organic web traffic.
4. Giving the site/app more credibility.

There are many distinctive categories of navigation to keep up with the UX requirements. Don’t forget to optimize the design for smartphone users. It’s crucial for you to find an average between the simple and complex approaches. A good design will make users choose to stay on your site longer than alternatives.

Content

All the texts, images, labels, messages must appear concise, engaging, and understandable for all users. It often concerns ‘content strategy’ for the website to help the audience go through useful content. And the approach is directly associated with the creation, publication, and governance of such usability.

The primary objectives of ‘content strategy’ are to define the following:

1. Key messages
2. Content purposes
3. Recommended topics
4. Metadata framework
5. Content gap analysis
6. Key themes

Though these measures of the production line may seem easy, the breakdown features many tall orders. Conducting a detailed audit alongside the assessment of existing content is a vital part of UX-based content. Everything must coincide with the structure, tone, style with all info being fully trustworthy.

Usability

A must-have feature of UX requires easy, fast, and deliverable use of your product/service. And usability measures how well the audience can achieve their desired objective from a specified context. A site’s usability is evaluated throughout the entire development process to enable optimum user satisfaction.

A UX design’s overall usability should contain the following basic elements:

1. Precise completion of tasks or actions.
2. Pleasant reading for the users/viewers.
3. Faster completion of actions or tasks.
4. Exact error tolerance in genuine errors.
5. Achieving goals by users rather easily.

Familiarity, consistency, flexibility, clarity are directly involved with a site’s/app’s usability metrics. And the viewers must encounter and handle the experience without any external or expert assistance. A UX with high usability enables the audience to navigate content through the easiest and simplest route.

Accessibility

Simply put, this key criterion makes your content suitable for all kinds of people. Though accessibility often concerns disabled people, the topic is rather vast. Designers must retain all contents’ usability for every possible condition. It mustn’t present a challenge regarding their situations, abilities, or contexts.

Obligatory guidelines as recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) features:

1. Content Structure
2. Device-Based Design
3. Touch Navigation
4. Keyboard Navigation
5. Advanced Notice
6. Layout and Media
7. Animated Content

Each category accommodates multiple internal factors to make things work accurately for the design. Also, there are settings you must keep in mind to make the best of such actions prior to final testing. An accessible site helps reach more audience, enable additional engagement, incorporate further usability.

Visual Design

Whether your content is appealing or amiss gets decided by the visual design, laid out by graphics. But verbally explaining the first impression to be created by visuals isn’t exactly possible. Complex graphics play a large part here, having the capability of making or breaking the engagement and usability.

There are five (5) exclusive design principles to achieve an impactful UX, naming:

1. Scales for relative size of signs
2. Visual hierarchy for importance
3. Equal distribution of signals
4. Contrast for dissimilar visuals
5. Gestalt to perceive the whole

Emotion and delight also come with an aesthetically pleasing visual in terms of UX. Not to mention, the design of UX is closely associated with visuals since other elements are highly dependent on it. So, many elements, as well as systems, are available to help designers accomplish a subtle and satisfying outlook.

Wrapping Up

No matter what goals you’re trying to achieve, driving more people to the website/app has been the key. And it’s impossible to gain such momentum without a perfect UX to motivate the feelings. Once you’ve a convincing perfection, the UX itself can make users come back to your content for more.

Contact Tectera a web development company in Toronto to develop website.

Looking for UI Design Checklist?

UI, short for User Interface, is a critical consideration regarding relevance, aesthetics, and functionality. It establishes the contact point between digital devices and human users through various components.

An interface consists of multiple elements, broadly outlined in four categories –

1. Input Controls (example – buttons, text fields, checkboxes)
2. Navigational Elements (example – slide bar, back arrow, search field)
3. Informative Components (example – progress bar under visuals)
4. Content Containers (example – accordion menu)

Invisibility is the ultimate staple of a perfectly designed and implemented UI for websites and/or apps. Users can completely ignore or notice nothing unusual about the UI because everything works perfectly.

And that’s what a good UI is all about. Despite UI being the first thing to encounter, nobody cares when there’s nothing to complain about. Instead, the user feels seamlessly engaged to act based on content.

The checklist for a proper User Interface design isn’t very long, given the fundamental features. However, there are many concerns involved in every basic fact. Knowing these facts will help you get a head start.

Visual Consistency

Maintaining a uniform pattern of all elements across the entire web/app interface delivers consistency. Design consistency or more accurately, visual consistency establishes control, familiarity, and reliability. It involves using a standard set of elements to provide a seamlessly engaging experience for the users.

Achieving the perfect consistency for the visuals often concerns the following best practices:

1. Defining a detailed set of guidelines for all the involved elements.
2. Using standardized components equally to create a familiar interface.
3. Implying a proper color palette with primary and secondary colors.
4. Creating a responsive layout for multiple screen sizes and resolutions.

Elements to control consistency primarily revolve around iconography, layout, typography, and color. A great advantage of using standard elements saves time, cost, and effort during product development. It also promotes an intuitive experience with outweighing benefits against all the challenges involved.

Usability

Above everything else, a web/app must be useful for the target audience by meeting the user\’s needs. Usability is all about ‘easy to use, navigate, and understand’ from the viewpoint of every individual user. It not only involves providing usable content but also faster completion of user actions on any device.

Some of the basic heuristics (aid or assistant) to comply with web/app usability involves:

1. Recognition over Recalling
2. Flexibility with Efficiency
3. Minimalist yet Aesthetic Design
4. Control and Freedom
5. Documentation and Help
6. Standardization and Consistency
7. Optimal Error Prevention
8. System Status Visibility

Since psychology is a crucial part of these factors, detailed research on the target audience is obligatory. Otherwise, you may find it difficult to adjust to the actual requirements of viewers. It’s also important to justify the acceptance of your product or service. Good usability eventually results in good feedback.

Responsiveness

It’s the process to turn the website adaptive to any device or more specifically, any screen size. Nearly everyone owns a smartphone through which the majority of people access the internet. A responsive website obviously ranks higher on Google’s mobile-first indexing, pushing your overall SEO.

Two must-consider responsive design elements are:

1. Breakpoints: It concerns three viewports – desktop/laptop, tablet, and mobile/smartphone.
2. Visual Content: It revolves around size, loading time, and quality of images, videos, and GIFs.

Flexibility, Graphics, Minimalism, Prioritization, Buttons – are vital facts to achieve responsiveness. You can’t expect to reach a large audience by sticking to one version of your website only. Allowing the site to switch devices while adopting the screen is what makes the website more reachable to users.

Color

A meaningful color pattern instantly creates an impression that impacts engagement and interaction. The color palette and color system are the two hand-in-hand concerns while gearing up for web colors. A palette comes with specific colors whereas a system organizes the chosen colors in the visual range.

Applying proper color combos to represent and trigger emotional/psychological responses includes:

1. Understanding Color Variations
2. Choosing from the Color Variations
3. Implementing the 60-30-10 Rule
4. Adopting Photos to Create Palette
5. Applying the Contrast Effectively
6. Using Steadfast Naming Convention

There are primary, secondary, and supplementary/accent colors in terms of available variations. And you better look into the potential audience to achieve an engaging visual experience for everyone. Although coloring a website seems an interestingly easy task, developers have to use UI tools for custom colors.

Typography

It’s all about using fonts in distinctive styles and structures to convey messages and trigger emotions. Don’t confine typography to choosing a nice font to represent the writings for audiences. It extends well beyond that, starting with a neat typeface. It instantly allows users to scan the webpage upon entering.

And the compulsory design element always consists of the following basic components:

1. Font
2. Typeface
3. Alignment
4. Hierarchy
5. White Space
6. Contrast

Readability and Scalability are the two prime metrics directly associated with typography. Likewise, you are free to choose from the infinite font options. But it’s a must to ensure the font’s compatibility with search engines. Adopting scalable, vector, or outlier fonts enables users to enlarge and reduce the size.

Testing

The checking mechanism for any software upon initial development makes UI testing a crucial segment. It’s necessary to ensure that all the desired requirements are met accordingly. There are several testing types – GUI (Graphical User Interface), CLI (Command Line Interface), and VUI (Voice User Interface).

UI Test for a developed but not launched site is more like a complete suite, fundamentally featuring:

1. Functionality
2. Visual Aspects
3. Response
4. Performance
5. Usability
6. Accessibility
7. Compliance

It also concerns multiple test scopes, measuring the justification of a simple yet essential process. You can go for manual testing when the features are rather simple. On the contrary, opting for automatic testing comes with obvious benefits. Any issues detected during testing must be fixed before launch.

Wrapping Up

Everything mentioned is connected to one another, making UI a complex hierarchy of aesthetic features. It takes more effort, time, and investment to put all facts in order. Otherwise, users will start noticing the disruption while browsing your app/site. And the interface design will require a costly alteration.

Contact Tectera a web development agency in Toronto to design website.

Looking for web design assessment checklist?

Creating the perfect website to draw traffic, attention, feedback is an overwhelming task. You can’t just finish and launch the newly developed site for public response. Instead, it’s a steadfast tradition to asses the web design prior to its final launch.

The checklist can be explained in various ways since all the facts are more or less interconnected here. You can’t ignore all the obvious features to determine the potential acceptance. The must-look checklist includes three fundamental points for design.

User Experience (UX)

It’s the feeling a user, customer, or viewer experiences while going through a website product, content, and service. It ranges from the direct interaction of your site with audiences to the entire process of completing the actions or tasks.

The perception of every user ultimately paves the way to success or failure in web design. Your users will go through your offers to evaluate the usability, differentiated values, and pleasure. And UX happens to be the determining website structure to accommodate such features.

A high-level UX adds effective value to deliver a relevant experience for your clients. It directly prompts the viewers to find, check, return to your website. In turn, the customers will tend to become loyal to your services, information, and/or products.

Therefore, UX considers the following:

1. Provoked feelings and triggered emotions.
2. Represented context from user perspectives.
3. Evolution of UX with time to impact users.

Meantime, the checklist for UX design related to the assessment of a developed website concerns:

1. Attractive Visual: Keeping every element on each webpage organized can instantly hit the user’s mind. It further helps the audiences to conduct or take actions based on the designed progress.
2. Relevant Content: It covers the most crucial part where the users will easily find what they need. Also, keeping the focus on this part is rather important while incorporating objective content.
3. Faster Loading: It’s the silent metric to determine the overall efficiency of your website. Nobody likes to wait for clicks, requiring the website to become and remain faster to load every page.
4. Scannable Content: It allows the user to go through your site in the proposed or developed order. Alternatively, viewers can choose to read highlighted titles alongside their preferred info.
5. Responsiveness: Developing a website for desktop or laptop use can no longer cut it. You must ensure that each electronic device to support internet browsing can access the site comfortably.

Assessing the UX design for your website through these parameters will lay the foundation to launch and keep going towards success.

Design Functionality

Precise functionality of the designed website involves many major as well as minor factors. It’s possible to categorize the must-consider fundamentals with many embedded concerns.

1. Cross-Browser Compatibility: The site must work equally well on all available or leading browsers. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge – must be prioritized above all others. Always focus on the coding, features, animations, and interactions. You can get assistance from tools like BrowserStacks, SauceLabs, LambaTest here.
2. Navigational Components: Check every button, menu, and dropdown while looking into an intuitive interface. It also concerns how easily a user, regardless of limitations on abilities, can reach and read the content. Don’t forget all the external as well as internal links since you can’t expect a good impression with faulty clicks.
3. Accessibility Standards: Maintaining and confirming all the web elements according to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards. Specifically, look into the alternative texts, keyboard navigation, and color contrast. Everything must remain equally pleasing and perfectly understandable for all kinds of audiences.
4. Tracking and Analytics: Proper setting and retrieval of crucial viewer data through a reliable analytics tool is utterly important. So, feel free to place a tracking system or code on individual webpage without reservation. Don’t miss out on the setup of conversion tracking for e-commerce websites for a better assessment of data.
5. Confronting Errors: every mistake conducted by the user shouldn’t lead to error messages or web pages. Handling grave errors and minor errors separately can certainly boost user engagement. You should come up with something constructive on minor errors. Remain helpful information and/or guidance to correct the mistakes.
6. Visual Contents: All visuals like images, videos, GIFs must come compressed, optimized, and clear. And it also concerns the minimization of unnecessary spaces and characters from the code. Loading speed or efficiency of this content is highly important. Keep removing unnecessary scripts to retain desired performance there.

User testing on every feature prior to final launching or release has been a key part of website design assessment. Compromised functionality can’t or won’t help your website shine in the competition.

SEO and Marketing

You’ll have to start by reaching out to the audience to convince the viewers to look into your website. And motivating the customers to make purchases sums up the motto of online marketing strategy. It comprises of specific number of actions, not necessarily confined to limited boundaries.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It’s the ultimate method to pump up your presence and reach amidst other competitors. Bring up all the standard as well as local keywords in the writing without pushing hard. The same goes for meta descriptions, titles/headings, and meta tags on individual articles.
2. Social Media Marketing: Integrate and check whether all the sharing buttons for different social media platforms work perfectly. You should even remain active on leading social media pages or groups to provide updates. Integrations like content embedment and feed must remain activated.
3. Promoting Brands or Content: Develop catchy, impressive, and meaningful content to keep up with the required usability. Adopting a catchphrase or instantly hitting a motto, logo, campaign should aid every webpage. Hiring professionals is the best way to accomplish the perfect momentum here.

A well-organized system can give you a better chance of appearing first on search results (SERPs). It should help your website trend well on online platforms satisfactorily to get loyal users.

Wrapping Up

Assessment of a website’s design involves many checking and rechecking to get, fix, test the entire structure. And don’t let the simple list of evaluations fool you, since many embedded concerns are lurking on every corner. The web design is only considered successful when all the facts coincide altogether.

Contact Tectera a web design company in Toronto to design a website.

Looking for businesses to start in Toronto?

Toronto is an economic powerhouse within Canada. The city holds the most population of all Canadian cities, ranking 4^th in all of North America. Whether you’re looking for professional growth or extra cash, opening up the right business can surely provide a long-term income stream.

The authority of Toronto even featured a 9-step plan for new startups. Entrepreneurs can benefit, settle, and establish a business under the law to make substantial profits from the investments. No wonder why people continue to contribute to the hub’s economy through different ventures.

Let’s review the top five business ideas you should consider in Toronto to make your living better.

01. Cleaning Services

Canadians love to maintain clean and healthy surroundings, presenting endless opportunities in the cleaning sector. Every Toronto home, vehicle, or business requires routine cleaning where you can step forward to take the mundane responsibility.

It’s more a self-employment option for many, requiring literally no great skill, equipment, or timeframe. All it takes you the willingness to handle dirt, basic cleaning supplies, and insurance. The versatile field, however, is rather wide with many embedded segments:

• Maid Cleaning Service
• Window Cleaning Service
• Automobile Cleaning Service
• Carpet Cleaning Service
• Janitorial Cleaning Service

All except automobile cleaning won’t cost you much. Some customers will even provide their preferred supplies to get the job done. It’s something to start small, gradually building of reputation through the connected customers, and enjoy substantial growth.

02. E-Commerce Business

Canada, situated right next to the USA, has almost all leading e-commerce sites in operation. However, the courier system or product delivery management has yet to reach the top level. That’s where you can grab the opportunity to make high profits on limited capital.

Everybody needs personalized hand delivery services now and then, without requiring costly equipment. It’s easy to base the business at your home, establish communication with the involved parties, and set booking appointment schedules. A steady backpack with a bicycle, car, or pickup should do the job.

A lot of Toronto residents have a knack for current, available, established e-commerce. So, you can even start your own site/app based on the local needs. Treating clients respectfully and making deliveries on time can surely help you progress rather quickly in the locality.

03. Home-Based Service Business

Lots of different options are available for you to consider when it comes to home-based business. They mostly require minimum capital, leisure time, and relevant skills. The skills needed are often the ones you already possess. You can also opt for online/offline courses to upgrade your skills.

The best home-based business options to try in Toronto are:

• Online Tutoring
• It’s a rather straightforward approach to share your certain educative skills with others online. The tendency of online teaching still remains popular, following the emergence of Covid-19. You can cast a wide net of your tutoring ventures through many leading online services. It includes – Kijiji, Craigslist, UniversityTutor, Social Media, Libraries, and/or Billboards.

• Affiliate Marketing
• The art of reaching more audiences to increase sales has kept the demand for affiliate marketing high. You’ll need to craft a strong, engaging, informative base platform to refer other website/app products. Building such a website is easy and cheap when you are an expert on the technical as well as marketing side. Otherwise, you’ll have to hire professionals to do things.

• Business Blogging
• Writing informative, suggestive, collaborative online articles are more like an alternative to affiliates. Instead of referrals, you’ll have to create content based on the target audience of a specific business niche. Enticing and quality blogs are simple forms of such work to drive more traffic to sites. And it’s directly associated with search engine optimization (SEO).

Graphic designing, online consultancy, web/software/app development, etc. are some of the top tech-oriented home services you can afford in Toronto. The skills related to these tasks can apply to any place, condition, and time; making them a personalized solution.

04. Food Truck or Catering Business

Everybody loves a tasty treat at celebrations like parties, get-togethers, festivals, etc. It’s a solid idea to serve people looking for healthy, delicious, and easy meals. And the range of available entities in Toronto is endless, featuring convenience stores, roadside food stands, farm/flea markets, and niche sites/apps.

Operating a food vending truck is another alternative to selling meals on roadways and parking lots. You can even set your truck 30 meters away from a restaurant with proper paperwork. However, food courts are not included for such leverage, requiring you to remain cautious.

The initial investment will cost about $5K up to $50K for catering, depending on your initiatives. And it’ll take about $35K to $75K with food trucks. The latter requires extra permissions and paperwork, hence the extra cost. Despite being costly, the regulations for operating a food truck are rather strict in Toronto.

05. Sustainable Product Business

Sustainable business ideas put environmental concerns at the forefront of the operation, profitability, goodwill. It’s a relatively new yet notably popular portfolio to get the attention of general public. But the landscape is rather wide as it’s possible to produce, sell, market sustainable products.

Organic foods and urban agriculture are directly related to green farming. Biodegradable packaging, less paper usage, waste management are associated with recycling. Handmade, second-hand, or homemade clothing are popular options to keep the initial investment within your reach.

Not many works are conducted to reveal the feasibility of sustainable businesses in Toronto. It means you’ll have to figure out the what, how, where of the opportunities closely. Consider investing in projects like renewable energy, ecotourism, green building, etc. with money to spare in hand.

Wrapping Up

Toronto is one of the most diverse cities on the planet with over 200 distinctive cultural communities. The city’s economic growth is more than that of Canada itself, featuring impressive growth opportunities for entrepreneurs.

You better start looking into the overall economic landscape of Toronto to find your ultimate source of income. Launching and keeping up with the venture can provide you with the desired breakthrough in the financial state.

Contact Tectera a web design company in Toronto do design a website.

Looking for Mobile App Vs Web App guide?

Apps, short for applications, are a readily used term among general users. And they’re often found confused with mobile app and web app. Developers to create apps know the disparities rather well. It’s important to resolve this common misconception to make the most of each one.

Knowing whether they’re similar, dependent, opposite can help you choose the right option. Let’s explore the basic differentiating details between web apps and mobile apps in brief.

What is a Mobile App?

Mobile apps are software programs, specifically designed to run on mobiles. These are primarily built for touchscreen devices like – smartphones, tablets, consoles. Most apps are launched and installed via two leading sources – App Store (iOS) and Play Store (Android). Android covers 71% of the total app users whereas iOS holds 28% share in the global market.

You can classify mobile apps into two broad categories based on the platform/system compatibility –

1. Native: Apps are created for a niche platform (iOS or Android), often requiring hardware access for full functionality. Most apps are native apps, developed for a specific platform.
2. Hybrid: A single code base allows the app to become compatible with all available operating systems (OSs). Popular Hybrid apps used by SME/Startup are Flutter, React Native, Ionic.

Apps are developed using specific programming languages and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), depending on the platform.

• iOS app mostly uses Objective-C/Swift (program language) with Xcode IDE.
• Android app uses Java (program language) with Android Studio/Eclipse IDE.

Google and Apple also have proprietary development tools, software development kits (SDKs), interface elements. Developers primarily use these features to create, test, launch native mobile apps.

Mobile App: Positives and Limitations

The general advantages of modern mobile apps can be broadly outlined as follows –

• Rich, smooth, engaging user experience through device-specific features.
• Further access to hardware and even other software for enhanced performance.
• Utilization of device resources to become more responsive and/or speedy.
• Multiple monetization possibilities are included to get direct money from users.
• Offline capabilities enable access to features or contents without internet.
• Real-time communication with users is established via notifications or reminders.
• Easy addition and functioning of new and/or complex features with tools.

However, you’ll have to address some drawbacks while choosing mobile apps for sure –

• Developing an app mostly starts from scratch, requiring extensive workload.
• Costing is high; tends to increase with more features, advancement, complexity.
• Regular/Periodic update is a must for safety and security of data/information.
• Consistent maintenance is necessary to keep up with Store Terms & Conditions.
• Initial approval from the App/Play Store is challenging with many regulations.

What is a Web App?

Web apps are self-sustaining software with no downloading or installing requirements. The software fully runs on web browser, remaining highly adaptive to any device. Its program is stored in a remote server, allowing access to users via Internet when requested. A web app is different from website as web apps display intended content for user interactions.

Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s GSuite are the two best web app examples. Web apps utilize HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python without any standard SDK (software development kit). Instead, developers often have access to custom templates to craft the required features. However, OS compatibility and/or support may be limited for some web apps.

Web App: Positives and Limitations

The standard benefits offered to the users/developers by a web app include –

• Less cost, effort, time requirement in development without any special features.
• In-browser access means no involvement in downloading/installing issues.
• A somewhat steady codebase to remain compatible with all operating systems.
• Automated, direct, instant updates applied to the app without notifications.
• Simple, easy, quick development using many custom templates available online.
• Instant launching for user attention without going through approval process.
• Fast discovery/analysis by search engines for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Likewise, some associated problems of using web apps to be dealt with –

• Working offline and/or under poor internet connectivity isn’t possible.
• Difficult to discover independently or through SERPs with no database listing.
• Unapproved app quality and/or security means safety isn’t guaranteed.
• Limited to no access to specific hardware or software features on the device.
• Variances in versions and updates may cause some compatibility issues.

Difference Between the Two – Mobile App vs Web App

Both apps are considerably similar in terms of appearance, response, and functionality from the user’s perspective. That’s where the confusion arises where people start to treat the two app types alternately.

Let’s consider the YouTube mobile app against the YouTube web app to differentiate between the two. You can access the mobile app instantly where the app features a particular interface. Now accessing YouTube through a web browser on the same mobile will come up with the same interface.

Similarly, YouTube exhibits the same features, interface, and functionality as other compatible devices. You can access the YouTube web app from a desktop where YouTube’s native mobile app doesn’t work. Instead, you’ll be asked to download and install ‘YouTube’ software to run the platform.

Which One to Choose – Web App vs Mobile App

Developing an app has become a crucial action required to succeed in online marketing/presence. You may have to develop both, depending on potential audiences, growth, and expansions. Nonetheless, you should go for mobile apps when you expect direct purchases from customers.

Meanwhile, web apps are particularly good when you’re trying to reach more audiences. Anyone with internet access can browse, find, explore, choose your services/products. It’s indeed a viable choice for enterprises, businesses, startups with limited resources, reputation, futuristic ventures.

Contact Tectera a mobile app development company in Toronto to develop web app and mobile app.

Looking for web design accessibility checklist?

Access isn’t necessarily confined to whether users can find, view, enjoy content anytime. In the web design community, the term implies equal accessibility, understanding, and interaction for everyone.

This everyone primarily focuses on disabled users as 15% of the world population makes up this group. It features physical issues related to vision, hearing, mobility, speech, and cognition. That’s why all your content must be aligned accordingly to let these users understand your services and/or products.

Three Compliance Levels of WCAG

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set the international standards to make web content appropriately accessible for the disabled. It features a distinctive three-level hierarchy for the prioritized support:

• A: Must-Have
• AA: Ideal Condition
• AAA: Exclusive

The long, detailed, technical guidelines are difficult to digest even for developers, let alone general people. However, certain standards are more or less common sense to comply with WCAG.

Keeping the technical aspects aside, let’s take a look at the features to make your resources accessible. A simple yet rather obligatory checklist for web design accessibility includes the following.

1. Structure and Semantics

• Headings: Different headings (H1, H2, H3, …) break down a webpage content into multiple segments of information. They particularly help users with vision impairment. Always start your page with a single H1, followed by H2 subheadings as well as H3 subheadings within H2.

Accessibility strategies associated with headings involve:

1. Bypassing of Content Blocks
2. Accurate, Relevant, Catchy Texts
3. Hierarchy or Outline of Page

Title tags slightly differ from H1 in terms of on-page SEO. H1 specifies the primary content heading/title. But the title tag defines the webpage to show up on search engine results.

• Language: Setting a standard language for all the contents is essential to support assistive technology (from conventional to trending). Tools can easily render the rules on captions, pronunciations, texts more precisely.

Go for plain language where possible to keep things simple yet engaging. Hemingway can surely help tighten the words for conciseness. Don’t miss out on the explanation for unusual abbreviations or complex words.

• Lists: Listing several items on a webpage effortlessly reveals how things are related, how many are there, and/or the sequence of sorted items. Don’t list manually to get rid of unwanted issues related to device compatibility.

• Tables: Relevant information of different types is put in tables in terms of a potential relationship. The grid of data should have a header as well as a title. However, it’s recommended to avoid layout tables for visuals.

2. Links and Navigation

• Links: A descriptive, identifiable, creative link text with its intention can offer more accessibility. Readily used ‘click here’ or ‘read more’ isn’t helpful in this context. It’s because the user doesn’t know his/her destination from those words.

Keeping the link text distinctive from the surrounding ones is important. It particularly aids users with low vision or color blindness. Whether clicking on the link will open the requested page in existing/new tabs should be prioritized.

• Focus Order: You can’t expect a webpage to rank higher in SEO with a random order of contents. So, setting the right focus order is a must for every webpage. The primary requisite of focus order involves logic, intuitiveness, sorting.

Links, buttons, controls, form inputs are some of the foremost focusable elements. Custom elements may present difficulty in implementation and markup. So, sticking to native ones (all the mentioned elements) is an ideal practice.

• Site Navigation: Sites/Pages with simple yet catchy navigation have a different taste altogether. It may start with multiple ways to access a webpage. Site maps as well as site search are the most widely used navigational approach here.

A consistent navigation pattern should feature the same functionality for headings, labels, and texts. Having a list can also help the accessibility. You should try the visible or non-visible ‘you are here’ indicator for the users’ information.

3. Images and Visual Design

• Alt Text: It stands for alternative text displayed instead of webpage pictures. Every image must feature a text to describe the content, meaning, intention of the image. It’s essential as slow internet connectivity often prohibits images from loading properly.

Alt texts allow the users to feature a semantic meaning, readable for search engines. The same goes for icons specifically used in the webpage to hold a meaning. Additionally, using alt text is mandatory for images or icons having visual text.

• Color Contrast: Relying on colors alone for distinguished texts may present issues for colorblind people. Instead, non-color indicators like bold, italics, underlines seem like better alternatives. You should enable such features as keyboard focus as well as mouse hover.

Contrast plays a crucial part in attraction by adding visual interest to colors. Testing the color combo is a must to discover and resolve potential vision deficiencies related to appearance. A 4.5:1 contrast ratio is good for regular texts whereas it’s 3:1 for large texts.

• Text Resizing: It involves zooming, fonts, and styles integrated for the readers. Sufficient spacing is necessary to eliminate cognitive webpage overload. It concerns line, paragraph, and even word spacing alongside line height.

Visual styling with the font and format must allow effortless reading for all users. No need to utilize uncommon fonts, unless specified for decoration. Keep at least 200% zooming since smartphone users frequently use the feature.

4. Multimedia, Animations, and Motion

• Audio and Video: Prerecorded items must come with a description, especially a transcript. The transcript should contain meaningful narration, dialog, sounds. A synchronized caption per multimedia content on each webpage is also recommended.

Every integrated video, audio, gif, reel, etc. requires to have general control settings (stop, resume, mute, adjustments). You better use appropriate or standard markups for settings to avoid confusion.  Autoplay of those contents can’t take place either.

• Alternatives: Users with visual or hearing impairments may not get the message from dynamic content. So, providing a sufficient description for every multimedia content is another prerequisite. You may skip the unnecessary ones, but it’s obligatory for the must-check contents.

You can provide a reasonable explanation right below for certain audiences for further clarity. Controls, flashing, captions, media players are also part of the alternative texts. It slightly differs from that of pics as multimedia features need somewhat longer descriptions/explanations.

• Seizures: Some dynamic content can cause the users to blink more than usual. Eye strain becomes an issue with a webpage full of such content. That’s where seizure, a potential negative effect, takes place to restrict the design’s overall functionality and performance.

Neither of the contents should cause seizures, calling in a triggered physical reaction, resulting from photosensitivity. Avoid multimedia, animation, in-motion content to have 3 or more flashes in a second. There’s a general flash/red flash threshold to maintain as well.

5. User Input, Forms, and Dynamic Content

• Keyboard Accessibility: Precise clicking or hovering via a mouse isn’t applicable for all kinds of users. Instead, they have to rely on advanced assistive technology for navigation. It all starts with allowing your entire website to be navigated through a keyboard.

Buttons like ‘tab’, ‘shift’, ‘enter’, and arrow keys should take the lead. Keyboard inputs must facilitate a visible focus order (highlight/border) for all the interactive elements, matching the layout. It further concerns the immediate removal of all focusable elements.

• Form Labels: Forms require users to enter information through radio buttons, checkboxes, text fields, dropdowns. The required input must feature a proper label, letting users know what info to be entered. People with special needs can particularly benefit from such label-form collaboration.

All the form labels better come in a logical layout while keeping things keyboard accessible. Reasonable formats for numeric data should be available. Additional instructions for specific text fields are to be maintained. Also, don’t forget to put asterisks (*) on any side of mandatory form fields.

• Error Handling: Everybody makes mistakes; some are negligible whereas a few ones are grave. And it particularly concerns a wide range of errors to happen. Error messages must become visible upon faulty user action in texts with/without a cautionary icon.

The internal error lying within the source code presents the actual challenge in terms of handling. All the crucial parts must be tested, revised, implemented to avoid large-scale changes. Don’t forget to inform users about your ongoing actions to resolve the errors.

• Dynamic Content: Web elements to update/change in real-time without any reload/refresh are dynamic contents. All the changes are based on selections, inputs, newsfeeds regarding user interaction. Techs like JavaScript, API, Ajax have made these quite easy and popular.

Avoiding silence can break your webpage views in no time, requiring you to help users find the changes. Proper focus, reasonable timeout, independent input are integral parts of such a feature. A multifaceted approach must be implemented throughout for technical solutions.

Wrapping Up

Making your website accessible for all is a somewhat challenging task. The outcome is quite satisfactory nonetheless. There are several tools available to help you audit, detect, resolve accessibility issues rather quickly.

Contact Tectera a web development company in Toronto to create a website.