The headline above is a lie. Recent studies have shown that given the increasing speed of the Internet, websites now have less than 0.03 seconds to impress a visitor. Less than a split second to invite someone to stay and make themselves at home. Less than a second to have them take a look at your company, your service or your products.

With this limitation in mind, do you think your current website design will keep your customers or will they leave your site and never return again? Once on your website, there is no guarantee that your one time visitor will become a permanent customer. Before you launch that site, check the following:

Check Your Loading Times
If your site is too heavy to load in a few seconds, chances are your customers do not even wait to see it. They look at the little icon and close the window. Of all web design functionalities, loading times are the most critical. People are no longer patient. They no longer have to deal with dial-up modems or slow Internet service. They do not need your slow site in their lives, unless you are their bank or a service they desperately need.

Many countries, even those classified as underdeveloped countries, enjoy high-speed Broadband internet, Wi-Fi and even LTE (Long Term Evolution or 4G) mobile Wi-Fi. And you cannot be bothered to fix your site so it loads just a fifth of a second faster.

Improve Your Color Scheme
Attractive design never fails to attract visitors. Humans are drawn to color and have many different psychological reactions to different hues. A fresh palette attracts visitors and gives them a subliminal impression about the website, what it is for and what to expect from it.

Color schemes also affect readability, so make sure to test your color schemes on your target market.

A Well-Designed Header
Does your header have impact? Does it tell your visitors what your website is about? Headers are important because they typically load first, even in the 1/10 of a second. They often contain the site's title and images that embody the website's personality. Headers or the top half of the site design (usually referred to as the part above the fold) should contain your company logo, navigation tools or search tools and other important features.

Do You Feel Familiar? 
Avant-garde is good, but some people will recoil if they encounter a website with a layout so revolutionary they have no idea where to click. Clean, simple architecture is key to a great first impression and gives your visitor a concrete idea of what your website is for the moment the front page loads.

Keep in mind that this does not mean that your website has to be boring -- really. A great web design company can help you stick to convention but give the user a great user experience by playing with different design elements.

Are You Recognizable?
Is your marketing campaign cohesive? Is your customer able to identify your website offhand? Do they recognize what you are immediately or are you asking them to figure it out first? Or do you disguise your website as a blog when in reality you are an ecommerce site?

Recognizing the type of website they are on is key to a better user experience. Some companies and some websites like to make their customers guess by including strange navigation elements or vague copy on the front page. Confusing your customer will not do you any good.

Are You Appealing?
Visiting a website for the first time is like going on the first date -- first impressions last. Is your website's look and feel something that will keep users engaged? Often, a complex layout with multiple ads, too much content, small fonts and ugly design is the number one reason customers do not stay.

Poor design is a sign of laziness and is a sign that companies have given more thought to what they want instead of what the customer wants. Visual appeal is rated higher than content, but only for first impressions. Later on, what matters is what is on the website.

First impressions last, this is true for all humans who meet face to face and for all websites. Make sure you give the best first impression you can by appealing to your customer's visual sense and making it easy to be recognized.

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‘Coding is dead, automation the real deal’

If you’ve been spending years learning a programming language such as Java or .Net, there’s a message for you from your potential employers: “Coding is dead”.

Yes, coding as we know it, may not longer be relevant in the world taken over by machine learning and automation. “Coding is dead. I don’t need to do any native development anymore,” Nitin Rakesh, newly appointed CEO of IT services firm Mphasis, told BusinessLine.

‘Cloud first’

“Large public platforms such as AWS, Salesforce.com etc, are the ones where the future of all the development will be. If you talk to a bank, they are doing code writing on native Java, sitting on a Unix machine anymore. The simple view is to be cloud first, mobile first,” he said.

Billions of lines of open source codes are freely available for programmers, which can be reused the way we put Lego blocks together to create a building model.

Akhilesh Tuteja, Partner and National Head (Technology and BPM), at KPMG, says: “It is true the way we program today may not exist in the near future, as there’ll be more of reusable code that’ll be in play. However, you will require some level of programming knowledge to understand how to put these blocks together and make sense of them.”

Application platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and IBM’s Watson, make it easy for engineers to build code in a rapid way by simply using existing pieces of code or simply a combination of multiple tools. Automation simplifies the task further by testing your code with the click of a button, which would’ve otherwise taken days to test.

“That’s why platforms become more important. Whether it is Java or .Net, it will be more configuration than coding. If you look at Node.JS, it is a script of Java. With that you’re not doing native coding but just using existing routines and put it together,” Rakesh said.

IT firms following suit

Mphasis is not the only company trying to change the way it trains its employees and see automation more important than native programming skills. Larger IT services companies such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro are also embarking on re-skilling lakhs of employees on digital technologies that train them on how to use agile methodologies, using more of reusable code to achieve the goals faster.

“If you look at delivery in digital, it is about design thinking, agile, rapid prototyping and everything that is fast and furious. The way we have designed our delivery so far is not fast and furious,” Patrick Nicolet, Group Executive Board member, Capgemini, had earlier told BusinessLine. Nicolet highlighted the importance of automation in order to survive in the current environment.

However, a world without the need of native coding skills does not mean we’ll not need programmers. The reuse of code will further help in reducing dependency on programming skills of individuals.

“The native coding capability will be required but people will need to understand how to reuse code rather than build it. That’s how you reduce your time to market by using existing code.

Our training would also have to align with the platform approach,” Rakesh said.

(This article was published on February 17, 2017)

The Best Super Bowl 2017 Commercials Already Released

Oh, the drama! Oh, the excitement! Oh, the household names! No, I’m not talking about football, I’m talking about the commercials that are sprinkled throughout the football. Whether you are into the actual game taking place on the field on Super Bowl Sunday, or whether you are more into the Puppy Bowl, everybody loves a good Super Bowl commercial–which are often filled with surprises, new products, and delightful cameos. At a sticker-shocking price tag of $5.02 million per 30-second spot, they better be good.

While some companies save their Super Bowl ads for the big game, others release their commercials early. Below, we’ve collected some of the most exciting spots released so far.

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Web Design Trends for 2017

Is Your Site Employing Any of These Trends?

It's quite common among designers to believe that following trends is a crucial part of their job. Being constantly up-to-date is seen as mandatory. Many designers evaluate the work of others through a prism of trends - tagging something as #old can be seen as an insult, as if not fitting the most recent style would automatically make the whole project less valuable.

However, there are reasons to follow the trends. Visiting such websites as Awwwards, FWA or CSS design awards may inspire you and as a result, help you to venture outside of your design habits. You can learn about the new visual worlds, which you can then (consciously or not) integrate with your graphic language. Watching the work of others helps you to keep on improving your skills while being up-to-date when it comes to the latest technologies.

In the last year or two, it has become noticeable that many designers are trying to move away from simple and closed compositions. More and more open-styled, seemingly chaotic, “broken” and cut compositions are being created. The previously worshiped grid lost its importance and its rules were deliberately and consciously bent. Content started to be shifted, seemingly moved, its parts sometimes overlapped and intermingled.

A great role in this process is played by the evolution of Canvas and WebGL. Modern projects are often a bit confusing, less intuitive than the minimalist ones, but they make a really strong, lasting impression on users.

What else is waiting for us in web design in 2017? Check out the rest of the predictions.

Hot Trend in Web Design

1. The Proliferation of UI Patterns

One of the side effects of responsive design has meant that a lot of sites look similar. However, responsive design isn’t solely to blame. The rise of WordPress sites and the booming theme market also have a hand in it.

And some folks, such as Matthew Monbre, have copped to being guilty of following everyone else’s look with his company’s site.

But having a similar look isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That’s because we’ve changed the way we consume the web, which has resulted in a lot of common UI design patterns. Design patterns have matured and as such, there’s little in the way of innovation when it comes to UI patterns.

In other words, a checkout will still be a checkout and should function as such. Same with a login model. There’s no real reason to reinvent the wheel. UI patterns must guide users through a smooth experience.