Archive for year: 2020

Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2020/12/search-engine-optimization-checklist/

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential part of a website’s design, and one all too often overlooked. The most beautiful, spectacular site in the world won’t do anyone much good if people can’t find it on Google (or Bing, or DuckDuckGo).

Implementing SEO best practice doesn’t just give you the best chance possible of ranking well in search engines; it makes your websites better by scrutinizing quality, design, accessibility, and speed, among other things. It’s a daunting world for those who aren’t familiar with it (and even those who are at times), so this checklist breaks down key factors to consider when undertaking an audit.

For an overview of the SEO community — publications, thought leaders, podcasts, documentation, forums, things like that — I humbly point you towards the Smashing Guide To The World of Search Engine Optimization.

If you’re ready to get stuck in, read on.

Table Of Contents

Get Ready: A Healthy Mindset
Setting Realistic Goals
Defining The Environment
On-page
Off-page
Testing And Monitoring
Quick Wins

Note: You can also just download the checklist (PDF, 158 KB). Happy optimizing, everyone!

Get Ready: A Healthy Mindset

Establishing A Shared SEO Culture
Done properly SEO is not something you implement once then walk away from never to think about again. It’s something that ought to be carefully maintained over years. One of the reasons audits can feel so overwhelming is because long-neglected SEO piles up into a big problem. Well maintained SEO runs like a dream, and is better placed to adapt to the turbulence of algorithm updates. Communicate the value of SEO, and don’t do it by lecturing. Following best practice usually means a better website, more organic traffic, and happier visitors. Win, win, win.
Quality, Not ‘Quality’
There is sometimes more talk about quality than there is commitment to it. Behind all the stats, tools, and quick wins there sits one simple SEO truth: it is your job to make the site as good as it possibly can be. Only then can you hope to be better than all the other sites you’re competing with for search queries. From UX design to copywriting, quality content takes commitment, passion, and time. Be ready to face your site’s limitations and work to improve them — for your sake as much as anyone else’s. Great content is so, so much easier to optimize than bad content is.
A Holistic Approach
Strong SEO is the sum total of a website, it’s not something to saddle one department (or person) with. It can be bolted on to an extent, but that’s never as good as when it’s woven into the site’s DNA. Implementing SEO well means open communication between different members of the team — from SEO execs to writers to developers. Before you even start, understand everyone likely has a role to play.

“Where Does SEO Belong In Your Web Design Process?” by Suzanne Scacca

Join The Community
Guides like this cover as much as they can but there’s no getting away from the fact that SEO is constantly evolving. It is a huge industry, with its own publications, thought leaders, podcasts, video series, and more. Take advantage of those resources, plug into the SEO world. Just following a handful of reputable Twitter accounts and listening to a podcast or two a month will go a long way.

A Smashing Guide To The World Of Search Engine Optimization

Setting Realistic Goals

Prioritizing Metrics
Online metrics are almost limitless. Like, literally. They just won’t stop. Numbers are useful, but if you’re not careful they’ll be the ones calling the shots rather than you. Don’t let KPIs be the tail that wags the dog. Work out what your priorities are, how you can measure progress, and the limitations of the available data. The answers to these questions vary from site to site.

Lighthouse for automated web page audits
Go Auditor

Timeframes
Goals border on meaningless if you don’t have a time frame for them. It doesn’t have to be the be all and end all (SEO never stops, after all) but by giving yourself a date to work towards gives you a target, and a ready made opportunity to reassess what you’re doing. Have a schedule and stick to it as best you can. This also means having a plan for tracking and analysing search data. Putting a few minutes aside each week adds up nicely over six months.
Keyword Research
This is absolutely essential to targeted SEO. If you don’t know what keywords you’re hoping to rank for how can you possibly target them? What are popular search terms in your field? What are your competitors ranking for? What is your website already ranking well for and why? With Google Search Console you can see exactly where your pages are (or aren’t) ranking for different keywords.

Google Keyword Planner
Google Trends
Moz Keyword Explorer
Ahref Keyword Generator
Keyword Overview by SEMrush

Size Up The Competition
The internet is a big place. Odds are you’re not the only one trying to rank for certain searches. Competition is fierce, and that’s good. It forces websites to improve themselves. Analyse rival websites and note what they’re doing well, as well as what you do or can do better. Remember, search engines just want to connect searchers with the best results for their queries. Being the best means being better than everyone else.

Ahref Site Explorer
Topics by SEOmonitor

Involve Colleagues In Setting Goals
SEO is a deceptively big topic that affects all aspects of a site, so it’s only reasonable to involve your colleagues when setting ambitious yet achievable goals. Everyone knows something you don’t, and you might be surprised by how much smoother SEO implementation can be when everyone’s on board with it.

Defining The Environment

Mobile-First
A lot of SEO revolves around how you organize content, and more than anything else you need to organize content well for mobile devices. More people browse on mobile devices than on desktops. In acknowledgement of this trend, Google went fully mobile-first in early 2020. This means the mobile version of your website is what crawlers look at and index. Fabulous desktop layouts are great, but SEO, like the web, is now a mobile-first world.

Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Bulk Mobile Friendly Test by Experte
Resizer by Material Design (view websites on different devices side by side)

Google’s Monopoly
For better or worse, search is currently monopolised by one company — Google. It continues to dominate the space, handling more than 90% of global mobile searches, and 70% of desktop. There are others of course — Bing, Waibu, DuckDuckGo, and more — but for the time being SEO gravitates around Google. Tick their boxes while keeping an eye on the wider terrain, which isn’t as static as you might think.

On-Page

Quality Content
That’s right, folks. All the SEO in the world will only get you so far if a website’s content is rubbish. There’s no question that there exist bad websites that perform well, but more and more are weeded out with each update. What does quality content look like? There are countless articles on the topic, but here are a few things to be aiming for — clear, original, properly sourced, well written, accessible, and honest. Search engines (generally) want to connect searchers with high-quality results.

What Is Great Content? by Search Engine Journal
Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines

Meta Titles And Descriptions
Eat your sprouts, cross your i’s and dot your t’s, and use descriptive meta titles. Every web page should have a meta title and meta description. The title should tell people and web crawlers alike what the page is about. Meta descriptions are purely for browsers’ benefit — crawlers don’t look at them. Think of them as little blurbs for when that page pops up in search results. Entice the reader.

Metatags.io

Image Alt Text
A depressing number of websites don’t do this properly. It’s so easy, and so helpful. Every image on your website should have alt text describing what the image shows. This helps crawlers understand your visual content, and allows screen readers to describe what visually impaired web browsers cannot see. Alt text also improves your chances of appearing in image search results.
Internal Links
A few years back scientists discovered that ancient Roman concrete gets stronger over time. Internal links are a prime example of a similar phenomenon in SEO. When you create a new website, linking to other, relevant parts of your site makes for a solid foundation. Continuing to do it over time makes it even stronger. Not only do internal links make websites easier to browse, but they also provide crucial context for search engine crawlers. Each one makes a site’s SEO that little bit stronger.
External Links
Some SEO types get a bit precious about ‘link juice’, loath to directing people away from their own site. While this is great for shoving people down funnels, it’s pretty slimy behavior. It’s bad for readers and it’s bad for SEO. If you cite something, link to it. If you quote someone, link to the source. Citing one’s sources is writing 101, and again, it provides context to your own content. It helps search engines to understand the type of website you are, and what sort of company you keep. Scour through your copy and make sure the appropriate external links are there.

Linkbuilding: The Citizen’s Field Guide
How To Help Your Clients Get More Backlinks Through Design

Clear Structure Markup
This is so simple and so, so important. Just like meta titles and descriptions show what a page is about, following best practice for HTML makes page structure clear and easy to understand. Use the right tags in the right places, make sure headings are arranged logically. A great way to do this is to strip away CSS and look at pages in pure HTML. If the structure isn’t obvious there then there’s work still to do. Google’s free Lighthouse assessment is good at spotting problems of this kind.
Structured Data
Semantic markup is becoming increasingly important to SEO, and web design in general. It makes your website’s content machine readable, which in turn makes it easier to crawl, understand, index, and return as sophisticated search results. There are plenty of plugins to help with this, or if you’re feeling daring the markup is simpler than you might think to add yourself. Schema has emerged as the language of choice for search engines, with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others all collaborating on its development. Our guide on structured data is a good place to start.

Google Rich Result Tester

Sitemaps
Every website should have a site map. It’s the ultimate reference point for web crawlers on how pages are organized and where to find all the content you want to be found. What would a metro system be without a map? Or a library without clearly marked sections? Take the time to do this properly as doing so will save you a lot of time in the long run. A badly organized, unmapped website is typically unpleasant for both people and crawlers to browse.
Descriptive, Logical URL Structure
This is a little one, but well worth standardising early. Use clear, succinct URL structures. This denotes both site structure and page content.
E.g. www.mywebsite.com/book-reviews/catch-22-joseph-heller/ is infinitely clearer than www.mywebsite.com/js7gw788. One is clear to people and algorithms alike; the other is a random jumble of letters. Take the time to establish formats for different post types then stick to them.
Multimedia Content
Search engines like to see variety on pages — provided it loads quickly. A blog post with relevant images, audio clips, and an embedded video is likely to be more engaging than a plain text blog post. Never add these things just for the sake of adding them, but don’t be shy about getting creative. This is the internet; you can do just about anything.
Assets Optimization
Whatever media assets you have on-site, for goodness sake optimize them. Compressing image files is the most obvious example here, and often overlooked. That 2GB photograph from your family vacation might look sharp as the banner image on your photography portfolio — too bad nobody will stick around long enough for it to load. In a mobile-first world, super-high-resolution images are seldom necessary. Compress your images. Stagger CSS rollout. Your website has to be quick.

Responsive Image Breakpoint Generator by Cloudinary
Unused CSS Finder by JitBit

Off-Page

HTTPs
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) improves the connection security between users and a website. Google and other search engines punish websites that don’t have it. Have HTTPS. Most web hosting providers throw it in for free. If they don’t, get it, or change providers.

HTTP/2 Test Tool by Geekflare

Backlinks
Credibility plays a huge part in SEO, and backlinks are a major indicator of trust. If reputable, relevant sites are linking to your site, that makes you more credible in your field. Doing this properly takes time and dedication. Nobody owes you backlinks — you have to earn them. Earn. Not buy. Black hat approaches to backlinks (spamming comment sections, paying for them, etc.) will get you nowhere. If anything search engines will catch on and punish the offending site.

Backlink Gap by SEMrush

Testing And Monitoring

Site Speed
You can’t really be sure of site speed until it’s live. Run your site through speed testing tools like PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. Search engines like fast websites and dislike slow ones. So do people. Keep an eye on this over time. Just because a site was fast six months ago doesn’t mean it’s fast now, since you’ve been unloading uncompressed images again. Tut tut.

PageSpeed Insights
Wattspeed
Bulk Mobile Friendly Test by Experte
TTFB (Time to First Byte) Test by Geekflare
WebPageTest

Analytics
In the long term SEO is as much about monitoring as it is about on-site changes. There are numerous free tools available for tracking search analytics. Google has Search Console (GDPR friendly) and Analytics (not always so GDPR friendly). Microsoft has the Bing panel. Then there are third party outfits like Moz, SEMRush, and Screaming Frog. As mentioned at the start of this checklist, don’t drown in numbers. Ease yourself in with essential tools and explore from there as your priorities become clearer.
Reports
Boiling down your SEO performance into regular reports makes progress more manageable. Be it weekly, monthly, or quarterly, these are vital for staying focused on your goals… and achieving them! Keeping tabs on your performance over time means you can nip problems in the bud, and make proactive adjustments to your approach.

How to Create Relevant and Engaging SEO Reports by Moz

Quick Wins

Not everyone has the time or resources to go through a full audit of their website’s SEO. That’s ok, and it doesn’t mean you have to fall behind. The following tips are particularly easy to implement, can return quick results, and allow you to keep an eye on your search performance long term.

Basic Analytics
If you’re completely new to SEO there are few better ways to get started than getting basic analytics up and running. By this, we mean Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Both are free and easy to add to a site. Having these up and running will immediately give you a better sense of your SEO situation.

Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Bing Webmaster Tools

Purge Low Quality Content
Producing great content takes time and a lot of work. Deleting rubbish content takes seconds. Your website is the sum total of its pages. If a site has a lot of ‘thin’ content, that’s going to weigh down the good stuff. Go through your existing content and honestly assess whether it’s worthy of the standard you want to live up to. If the answer’s no, maybe you should delete it. Doing this can give your SEO an immediate bounce. Depending on the site, purging low quality content can be like removing a ball and chain.
Optimize Images
A great way to speed up your website is to properly compress your images. If this isn’t something you’ve thought about before you may be slightly mortified by how big some of the files are. It can be tedious, but it has to be done and is an immediate way to speed up your site speed. And make sure they’ve all got alt text, while you’re at it.

Measure tool at web.dev
TinyJPG.com
Kraken.io

Please note that this cheat sheet will be updated occasionally, so if you think anything is missing and should be added, feel free to let us know! We’ll consider it for inclusion the next time we update the list.

Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2020/12/websites-consumer-health-issues/

Have any of you watched The Social Dilemma yet? For those of you who haven’t see it, here’s a summary of what it’s about:

People who were instrumental in building the world’s leading social media platforms explain what’s really going on behind the scenes.
Essentially, social media companies are in the business of selling their users to advertisers and partners.
So, the social algorithms are programmed to do whatever’s necessary to gather as much user data as possible.
This often leads to unethical means of grabbing users’ attention and keeping them addicted to scrolling, reading, clicking and so on.

All this has led to an increase in depression, anxiety, lower life satisfaction, distorted realities, compromised relationships and poor health on the part of the consumer.

But let’s be honest. It’s not just social media that sacrifices its users’ wellbeing for its own profitability.

Certain kinds of mobile apps capitalize on users’ addictive tendencies, FOMO and other negative behaviors. But what about websites? Are they responsible, in part, for the deterioration of consumers’ mental and physical wellbeing?

Today, I’m going to show you five ways in which websites are making visitors and customers feel worse and what you can do to help reverse this trend.

Is Your Website Making Its Visitors Feel Sick?

There’s so much toxicity, hate and divisiveness in the world already. The last thing we need is to give people more reason to feel negatively about themselves or towards others.

We are well aware of how dark patterns as well as misuse of visitor data can impact the way people respond to our websites (and later feel about the experience). It’s the whole reason why ethical design is such a critical matter these days.

But what else could your websites be doing that leads users to feel poorly? Let’s have a look:

1. Playing Into Alert Panic with Fake Notifications

Have you ever been watching something on TV or been in a crowded space and heard the all-too-familiar text message chime and reached for your phone?

Of course, you quickly realize the message isn’t for you as the person on the screen or in the crowd does the same thing as you, except they have someone they need to respond to. And you don’t.

We’ve been conditioned to feel disappointed when that notification isn’t for us. Or when it’s not from the person we wanted it to be.

Worse, because we’ve grown so accustomed to that dopamine hit, we’re often overwhelmed with notification alerts — sounds and visual signals — that we’ve activated on nearly every app we use. Facebook. Text. Email. Food delivery apps. Mobile games. Heck, even my meditation app wants to ping me once a day.

Larry Rosen, a psychology professor emeritus at California State University, explains why this is so bad for us:

We’ve trained ourselves, almost like Pavlov’s dogs, to figuratively salivate over what that vibration might mean. If you don’t address the vibrating phone or the beeping text, the signals in your brain that cause anxiety are going to continue to dominate and you’re going to continue feeling uncomfortable until you take care of them.

As a consumer, you’re well aware of the effect that notifications have on people. As web designers, though, what should you do with this information?

Unfortunately, some designers have chosen to add these anxiety-inducing triggers into their websites. Here’s an example from Mobile Monkey:

Mobile Monkey’s chat widget looks like someone is typing. (Source: Mobile Monkey) (Large preview)

There are actually two panic triggers in the chat widget:

The first are the three bouncing dots that look like someone is typing a message. The second is the red “1” that appears on the corner of the widget afterwards, resembling the marker you’d see if you had an unread text or email.

Considering I’ve never had a conversation with the chatbot on this site before, this alert does nothing but confuse and annoy me. I came to the site to read about CRO tools, not get interrupted by a chatbot I don’t need.

Another example of this can actually be found on The Social Dilemma’s website:

The Social Dilemma website uses a notification trigger in the header. (Source: The Social Dilemma) (Large preview)

At first, my thought was, “Hypocrites!”. But then I read the entire pop-up and realized it’s actually a brilliant move as it makes their audience hyper aware of how hooked they are to notifications.

Here’s what the grey section beneath the email signup form says:

“WE KNEW YOU’D CLICK THIS!
Notifications like these offer an enticing loop of pleasure that can create an unconscious attachment to our devices.”

This is no different than an actor breaking the fourth wall and looking at the camera to address the audience. While it works for the film’s website — since its whole message is for consumers to break free from this kind of digital dependence — it’s just going to cause harm when used on other sites.

2. Deceiving Customers With Dishonest Photos

Have you ever noticed that social media has become a sort of “second life” for some people?

The most obvious example of this are influencers. They take pictures of their fancy homes, luxurious vacations and expensive clothes. But we’re learning more and more that this isn’t the reality of their day-to-day lives and that the highly staged photos are designed to manipulate fans into buying the products they promote.

But it’s not just influencers who lie on social media. Many of the people we know fall prey to this — only putting out the idealized photos of themselves, their families and their lives.

An article written by Dr. Cortney S. Warren for Psychology Today recaps the results of a number of studies on the correlation between social media and lying:

67% of daters have lied about their weight.
43% of men have made up facts about themselves and/or their lives.
32% of people only shared non-boring aspects of their lives on social media.
14% said they make themselves appear more physically active on social.
Only 18% of men and 19% of women said their Facebook pages were completely accurate.

Warren explains how these lies — while they make the liar feel better about themselves — actually do a lot of harm for everyone exposed to them:

To make matters more complicated, when we internally believe that what we see in social media is true and relevant to us, we are more likely to compare ourselves to it in an internal effort to evaluate ourselves against those around us (e.g., regarding our looks, wealth, significant other, family, etc.). As we do this against the idealized images and unreasonably positive life accounts that tend to permeate social media, we are likely to feel more poorly about ourselves and our lives.

Unfortunately, this is something that brands do, too, when they use inauthentic, idealized and doctored photos on their websites. Take, for instance, the example of McDonald’s. This is how its famous McRib is portrayed on its website:

Have any of you ever gotten a sandwich from McDonald’s or any fast food joint that looked that impeccable? Don’t get me wrong. I eat fast food more often than I’d like to admit. But I don’t lie to myself about what I’m about to find in my takeout bag. And that photo right there is definitely not what I’m expecting.

It’s irresponsible of any business to set such unrealistic expectations from the start. This can happen with all kinds of brands, too. For instance, travel companies that make their properties look fancier than they really are or medical facilities that look well-organized and clean when they’re not.

And what about retail and fashion companies that use super-skinny girls to show off their clothing? Not only do those photos lead to frustration when a customer can’t fit into something they bought, they’re likely to blame themselves for being too “fat” or “ugly” or whatever kind of self-hate they decide to inflict on themselves.

If you can’t be honest in your photos, then what your website sells is a lie. And you have to expect the deception to come at a price.

3. Bombarding Visitors with Addictive Content

Social media platforms and their algorithms are designed to keep users logged in and engaged.

If a user were to slow down while scrolling through their feed, for example, the algorithm would run a calculation to determine what might suck them back in. It could be:

A “Suggested for You” post featuring puppies playing in snow,
A notification that a close friend just posted something for the first time in awhile,
An ad for a product the user was looking at on Amazon a few days back.

We’re living in a time of information overload and social media platforms are very good at taking advantage of it. By constantly throwing something new into our field of vision, it becomes harder and harder to pull ourselves away. What’s more, when we’re feeling unmotivated or unproductive, we know exactly where to go to drown ourselves in distractions.

It’s gotten worse during the pandemic, too. As research scientist Mesfin Bekalu explains:

As humans we have a ‘natural’ tendency to pay more attention to negative news.

Addictions specialist Dr. Paul L. Hokemeyer elaborates:

A person who doomscrolls found at some point in the trajectory of their disorder that searching online for information on disturbing events gave them comfort. It gave them a sense of control over their lives and re-engaged their intellect. But while they thought they were being soothed by facts, what they were really doing was hyperactivating their emotional reactivity.

It’s not just scientists and health professionals who are aware of this. Social media algorithms are, too. And because they’re programmed to manipulate users with content that’ll make them want to keep reading and engaging, guess what people’s feeds are full of?

One of the benefits of building a website for brands is to get consumers away from the chatter, distractions and negativity that thrive on social media platforms. That doesn’t mean you’re free to bombard your visitors with content that exploits their addictive tendencies though.

And, yet, it happens. This, for instance, is what I saw when I clicked on a link to an article on the Small Business Trends website:

In just my first second on the site, I saw:

A pop-up reminding me about the pandemic and recession,
An ad for Similar Web sitting on top of the area of the pop-up where I could say “No Thank You”,
A newsletter subscription form on the right,
Ads for Capital One in the header and sidebar.

I see zero content (the title isn’t even fully visible) and I’m overwhelmed with ads — one of which hooks into the anxiety I’m already feeling about the pandemic. I’m sure I’m not the only person who’d feel the same way looking at this site.

It’s not just an overwhelming amount of ads that make visitors feel uneasy or, worse, compel them to explore each of the distractions before actually getting to the content.

For example, there are websites that display promotional videos, but then don’t allow visitors to escape them, as Fast Company does in its sidebar:

Fast Company’s video ad follows readers as they move down the page. (Source: Fast Company) (Large preview)

There’s no sound unless the visitor triggers it, but it doesn’t matter. The fact that the video is glued to the sidebar, auto-plays and shows the captions makes it an inescapable distraction.

Sites that use an endless scroll are another example of brands exploiting consumers’ addictive tendencies. Entrepreneur has an endless scroll that ensures that visitors will find more content to read… if only they keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling:

Entrepreneur’s internal pages include a never-ending scroll. (Source: Entrepreneur) (Large preview)

Endless scrolling pages are a lot like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet or somewhere that offers “bottomless bowls” or “never-ending refills”. You know your customers are going to gorge themselves. And while they might enjoy it at the time, they’re going to walk away from the experience feeling mighty ill and probably a little ashamed with themselves for throwing away all that time, too.

Another thing this site does that’s worrisome is that it displays tracking banner ads.

You can barely see it in the video above, but the top of the page has a big ad for Flatfile, which is something I’ve been writing about for the last few weeks. So, before I could even focus on the content, I started stressing out about the state of my current projects.

While that exact response isn’t what the ad was meant to elicit, it’s supposed to stir up some type of anxiety or FOMO for a purchase not completed. For consumers that are struggling with a shopping addiction or outlandish debt, your website could realistically become a vehicle that feeds into it.

Wrap-Up

I know it’s your job to build websites that attract visitors, encourage those visitors to engage with the sites and eventually turn the engagement into conversions.

But if you want to do your part in designing more humane digital experiences, then it’s time to stop exploiting your audience’s vulnerabilities.

You can still take what you know about human psychology and use it to design attractive, friction-free and user-first experiences without manipulation and deceit.

Trust me. With the backlash social media platforms face (like after the Cambridge Analytica scandal), the number of people who quit them every year and now a high profile movie like The Social Dilemma, consumers are waking up. And it’s not just going to be Facebook they abandon when they realize how their thoughts and actions were controlled by a piece of technology and the people who built it.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2020/12/2-smartest-ways-to-structure-sass/

Sass – the extended arm of CSS; the power factor that brings elegance to your code.

With Sass, it is all about variables, nesting, mixins, functions, partials, imports, inheritance, and control directives. Sass makes your code more maintainable and reusable.

And now, I will show you how to make your code more structured and organized.

The organization of files and folders is crucial when projects expand. Modularizing the directory is necessary as the file structure increases significantly. This means structuring is in order. Here is a way to do it.

Divide the stylesheets into separate files by using Partials
Import the partials into the master stylesheet – which is typically the main.sass file.
Create a layout folder for the layout specific files

Types of Sass Structures

There are a few different structures you can use. I prefer using two structures — a simple one and a more complex one. Let’s have a look.

Simple Structure

The simple structure is convenient for a small project like a single web page. For that purpose, you need to create a very minimal structure. Here is an example:

_base.sass — contains all the resets, variables, mixins, and utility classes
_layout.sass — all the Sass code handling the layout, which is the container and grid systems
_components.sass — everything that is reusable – buttons, navbars, cards, and so on
_main.sass — the main partial should contain only the imports of the already mentioned files

Another example of the same simple structure is the following:

_core.sass — contains variables, resets, mixins, and other similar styles
_layout.sass — there are the styles for the header, footer, the grid system, etc
_components.sass — styles for every component necessary for that project, including buttons, modals, etc.
_app.sass — imports

This is the one I usually use for smaller projects. And when it comes to making a decision of what kind of structure to be used, the size of the project is often the deciding factor.

Why Use This Structure?

There are several advantages why you should use this organisational structure. First of all, the CSS files cache and in doing so, the need to download a new file for every new page visit is decreased. In this way, the HTTP requests decrease as well.

Secondly, this structure is much easier to maintain since there is only one file.

Thirdly, the CSS files can be compressed and thus decrease their size. For a better outcome, it is recommended to use Sass/Less and then do concatenation and minification of the files.

In case files become disorganized, you would need to expand the structure. In such a case, you can add a folder for the components and break it further into individual files. If the project broadens and there is a need for restructuring the whole Sass structure, consider the next, more complex pattern.

The 7-1 Patterned Structure

The name of this structure comes from 7 folders, 1 file. This structure is used by many, as it is considered to be a good basis for projects of larger sizes. All you need to do is organize the partials in 7 different folders, and one single file (app.sass) should sit at the root level handling the imports. Here is an example:

sass/
|
|- abstracts/
| |- _mixins // Sass Mixins Folder
| |- _variables.scss // Sass Variables
|
|- core/
| |- _reset.scss // Reset
| |- _typography.scss // Typography Rules
|
|- components/
| |- _buttons.scss // Buttons
| |- _carousel.scss // Carousel
| |- _slider.scss // Slider
|
|- layout/
| |- _navigation.scss // Navigation
| |- _header.scss // Header
| |- _footer.scss // Footer
| |- _sidebar.scss // Sidebar
| |- _grid.scss // Grid
|
|- pages/
| |- _home.scss // Home styles
| |- _about.scss // About styles
|
|- sections/ (or blocks/)
| |- _hero.scss // Hero section
| |- _cta.scss // CTA section
|
|- vendors/ (if needed)
| |- _bootstrap.scss // Bootstrap
|
– app.scss // Main Sass file

In the Abstract partial, there is a file with all the variables, mixins, and similar components.

The Core partial contains files like typography, resets, and boilerplate code, used across the whole website. Once you write this code, there is no further overwriting.

The Components partial contains styles for all components that are to be created for one website, including buttons, carousels, tabs, modals, and the like.

The Layout partial has all styles necessary for the layout of the site, i.e., header, footer.

The Pages partial contains the styles for every individual page. Almost every page needs to have specific styles that are to be used only for that particular page.

For every section to be reusable and the sass code to be easily accessible, there is the Section/Blocks partial. Also, it is important to have this partial so that you don’t need to search whether particular code is in the home.sass or about.sass files in the Pages partial.

It is a good idea to put each section in a separate .sass file. Thus, if you have two different hero sections, put the code in the same file to know that there you can find the code for the two sections. And if you follow this pattern, you will have the majority of files in this folder.

The Vendors partial is intended for bootstrap frameworks so, if you use one in your project, create this partial.

I recommend you use app.sass as the main folder. Here is how it should look:

// Abstract files
@import “abscracts/all”;

// Vendor Files
@import “vendor/bootstrap.scss”;

// Core files
@import “core/all”;

// Components
@import “components/all”;

// Layout
@import “layout/all”;

// Sections
@import “sections/all”;

// Pages
@import “pages/all”;

Instead of having a lot of imports in the file, create an all.sass file in every folder. Each all.sass file should contain all the imports for that folder — and to make it more visible and understandable, create a main file.

Organisation

The biggest benefit of this structure is organisation.You always know where to check if you need to change something specific. For example, if you want to change the spacing on a Section/Block you go directly to the Sections/Blocks folder. That way, you don’t need to search in the folder to find the class in a file.

Facilitation

When the code is structured, the processes are promptly facilitated. They are streamlined and every segment of the code has their own place.

Final Words

Organizing code is essential for developers and together with all other skills, it is the most effective way to improve the functioning of the site. And even though there are multiple ways of organisation and different strategies, opting for simplicity helps you avoid the dangerous pitfalls. And finally, there is no right or wrong choice since everything depends on the developer’s work strategies.

Featured image via Reshot.

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2020/12/making-websites-accessible/

A website without a screen doesn’t sound right does it. Like a book without pages, or a car without a steering wheel. Yet there are audiobooks, hand-free vehicles. And increasingly websites are being used without even being looked at — at least by humans.

Phone assistants and home speakers are a growing part of the Internet ecosystem. In the article, I will try to break down what that means for websites going forward, what designers can do about it, and why this might finally be a leap forward to accessibility. More than two thirds of the web is inaccessible to those with visual impairments, after all. It’s time to make websites easy to talk to.

Invasion Of The Home Speakers

Global smart speaker sales topped 147 million in 2019 and pandemic or no pandemic the trend is going up. Talking is faster than typing, after all. From Google Home to Alexa to smartphone assistants, cars, and even fridges, more and more people are using programmes to search the web on their behalf.

Putting aside the rather ominous Big Brother Inc undertones of this trend, it’s safe to say hundreds of millions of people are already exploring the web each day without actually looking at it. Screens are no longer essential to browsing the web and sites ought to adapt to this new reality. Those that don’t are cutting themselves off from hundreds of millions of people.

Developers, designers and writers alike should be prepared for the possibility that their work will not be seen or clicked at all — it will be heard and spoken to.

Designing Invisibility

There are two main prongs to the topic of website talkiness — tech and language. Let’s start with tech, which runs the gauntlet all the way from basic content structure to semantic markup and beyond. I’m as keen on good writing as anyone, but it’s not the place to start. You could have website copy worthy of a Daniel Day-Lewis performance, but if it isn’t arranged and marked up properly it won’t be worth much to anyone.

Age Old Foundations

The idea of websites being understood without being seen is not a new one. Screen readers have been around for decades, with two-thirds of users choosing speech as their output, with the final third choosing braille.

The focus of this article goes further than this, but making websites screen reader friendly provides a rock solid foundation for the fancier stuff below. I won’t linger on this too long as others have written extensively on the topic (links below) but below are things you should always be thinking about:

Clear navigation in-page and across the site.
Align DOM structure with visual design.
Alt text, no longer than 16 words or so, if an image does not need alt text (if it’s a background for example) have empty alt text, not no alt text.
Descriptive hyperlinks.
‘Skip to content links’.

Visual thinking actually blinds us to many design failings. Users can and often do put the pieces together themselves, but that doesn’t do much for machine-readable websites. Making websites easy to talk to starts with making them text-to-speech (TTS) friendly. It’s good practice and it massively improves accessibility. Win win.

Further Reading On TTS Design And Accessibility

Text to Speech by W3C
Front End North Pt 2: Léonie Watson blew my mind
Text-To-Speech With AWS (Part 1)
Text-To-Speech And Back Again With AWS (Part 2)
Notes On Client-Rendered Accessibility
Labelling Controls by the W3C
Using the aria-label attribute by Mozilla
I Used The Web For A Day Using A Screen Reader
From The Experts: Global Digital Accessibility Developments During COVID-19

Fancier Stuff

As well as laying a strong foundation, designing for screen readers and accessibility is good for its own sake. That’s reason enough to mention it first. However, it doesn’t quite provide for the uptick of ‘hands-free’ browsing I spoke about at the start of this piece. Voice user interfaces, or VUIs. For that we have to dig into semantic markup.

Making websites easy to talk to means labelling content at a much more granular level. When people ask their home assistant for the latest news, or a recipe, or whether that restaurant is open on Tuesday night, they don’t want to navigate a website using their voice. They want the information. Now. For that to happen information on websites needs to be clearly labelled.

I’ve rather tumbled down the Semantic Web rabbit hole this year, and I don’t intend to repeat myself here. The web can and should aspire to be machine readable, and that includes talkiness.

Semantic markup already exists for this. One is called ‘speakable’, a Schema.org property currently in beta which highlights the parts of a web page which are ‘especially appropriate for text-to-speech conversion.’

For example, I and two friends review an album a week as a hobby. We recently redesigned the website with semantic markup integrated. Below is a portion of a page’s structured data showing speakable in action:

{
“@context”: “http://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Review”,
“reviewBody”: “It’s breathless, explosive music, the kind of stuff that compels listeners to pick up an instrument or start a band. Origin of Symmetry listens like a spectacular jam — with all the unpolished, patchy, brazen energy that entails — and all in all it’s pretty rad, man.”,
“datePublished”: “2015-05-23”,
“author”: [
{
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “André Dack”
},
{
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Frederick O’Brien”
},
{
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Andrew Bridge”
}
],
“itemReviewed”: {
“@type”: “MusicAlbum”,
“name”: “Origin of Symmetry”,
“@id”: “https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/ef03fe86-b54c-3667-8768-029833e7e1cd”,
“image”: “https://alpha.audioxide.com/api/images/album-artwork/origin-of-symmetry-muse-medium-square.jpg”,
“albumReleaseType”: “http://schema.org/AlbumRelease”,
“byArtist”: {
“@type”: “MusicGroup”,
“name”: “Muse”,
“@id”: “https://musicbrainz.org/artist/9c9f1380-2516-4fc9-a3e6-f9f61941d090”
}
},
“reviewRating”: {
“@type”: “Rating”,
“ratingValue”: 26,
“worstRating”: 0,
“bestRating”: 30
},
“speakable”: {
“@type”: “SpeakableSpecification”,
“cssSelector”: [
“.review-header__album”,
“.review-header__artist”,
“.review-sidebar__summary”
]
}
}

So, if someone asks their home speaker assistant what Audioxide thought of Origin of Symmetry by Muse, speakable should direct it to the album name, the artist, and the bite-sized summary of the review. Convenient and to the point. (And spares people the ordeal of listening to our full summaries.) Nothing’s there that wasn’t there before; it’s just labelled properly. You’ll notice as well that choosing a CSS class is enough. Easy.

This kind of functionality lends itself better so certain types of sites than others, but possibilities are vast. Recipes, news stories, ticket availability, contact information, grocery shopping… all these things and more can be made better if only we get into the habit of making websites easier to talk to, every page packed with clearly structured and labelled information ready and waiting to answer queries when they come their way.

Beyond that the big brains at places like Google and Mozilla are hard at work on dedicated web speech APIs, allowing for more sophisticated user interactions with things like forms and controls. It’s early days for tech like this but absolutely something to keep an eye on.

The rise of home speakers means old and new worlds are colliding. Providing for one provides for the other. Let’s not forget websites are supposed to have been designed for screen readers for decades.

Further Reading

Web apps that talk — Introduction to the Speech Synthesis API
Web Speech Concepts and Usage by Mozilla
What are Voice User Interfaces? By the Interaction Design Foundation

Writing For Speaking

You’ve taken steps to make your website better understood by screen readers, search engines, and all that good stuff. Congratulations. Now we get to the fuzzier topics of tone and personality.

Designing a website to speak is different to designing it to be read. The nature of user interactions is different. A major point to keep in mind is that where voice queries are concerned websites are almost always responsive — answering questions, giving recipes, confirming orders.

An Open NYT study found that for household users ‘interacting with their smart speakers sometimes results in frustrating, or even funny, exchanges, but that feels like a better experience than being tethered to a phone that pushes out notifications.’

In other words, you can’t and shouldn’t force the issue. The look-at-me ethos of pop ups and ads and endless engagement has no place here. Your task is having a good site that gives information on command as clearly and succinctly as possible. A virtual butler, if you will.

What this means in linguistic terms is:

Succinct sentences,
Plain, simple language,
Front-loaded information (think inverted pyramid)),
Phrasing answers as complete sentences.

Say what you write out loud, have free text-to-speech systems like TTSReacher say it back to you. Words can sound very different out loud than they do written down, and visa versa. I have my reservations about readability algorithms, but they’re useful tools for gauging clarity.

Further Reading

‘Readability Testing for Voice Content’ on A List Apart
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.

HAL, Without The Bad Bits

Talking with websites is part of a broader shift towards channel-agnostic web experiences. The nature of websites is changing. From desktop to mobile, and from mobile to smart home systems, they are becoming more fluid. We all know about ‘mobile-first’ indexing. How long until it’s ‘voice-first’?

Moving away from rigid constraints is daunting, but it is liberating too. We look at websites, we listen to them, we talk to them. Each one is like a little HAL, with as much or little personality and/or murderous intent as we see fit to design into it.

Here are steps we can take to make websites easier to talk to, whether building from scratch or updating old projects:

Navigate your site using screen readers.
Try vocal queries via phone/home assistants.
Use semantic markup.
Implement speakable markup.

Designing websites for screenless situations improves their accessibility, but it also sharpens their personality, their purpose, and their usefulness. As Preston So writes for A List Apart, ‘it’s an effective way to analyze and stress-test just how channel-agnostic your content truly is.’

Making your websites easy to talk to prepares them for the channel-agnostic web, which is fast becoming a reality. Rather than text and visuals on a screen, sites must be abstract and flexible, ready to interact with an ever growing range of devices.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/christmas-experiment-codepen/

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