Workflow & Automation

Bugs happen. Even the smartest web development teams can’t avoid them entirely. That’s because bugs can occur for various reasons — operating system changes, browser incompatibilities, and small errors, to name a few. 

The best way to prepare for these different issues is to implement a comprehensive bug-tracking system for capturing, tracking, and resolving them as you detect them.

Thankfully, bug reporting software is a well-established industry with many options on the market. Products called bug-tracking tools or defect trackers help your team develop a robust system to keep your operation running smoothly when pesky bugs skitter into your workflow.

Why do you need a bug-tracking system?

Any development team can encounter the many forms of website bugs, such as dead links, missing pages, and broken navigation. As you discover such glitches, it’s essential to have a system for intake, execution, and tracking. Without a methodical troubleshooting approach, your team will lose vital time and effort addressing repetitive issues. A proper bug-tracking system addresses the complex, time-sensitive nature of identifying problems and diagnosing causes before implementing an action plan. 

Here are the primary benefits you’ll gain from a robust bug-tracking plan.

Reduced disruption

Bugs are not easy to anticipate, and managing them disrupts your team’s workflow by adding extra labor and taking time away from normal operations. Even with a tracking system in place, malfunctions will still cause disturbance, but their overall impact lessens when you have a plan to combine and prioritize issues as they arise. 

Improved product results

To promote overall site performance, your development team must view bugs on the whole, rather than as isolated incidents. A bug-tracking system provides product managers and developers with a high-level view, identifying connections between issues, such as shared CSS classes or similarly-broken interactions. Spotting these connections may reveal solutions that address multiple problems at once.

Increased customer satisfaction

Customers tend to forgive even the most egregious malfunction when they feel the developers are working to fix it. A properly updated bug-tracking system gives community managers the information they need to share progress updates with your user base via announcements and newsletters. This transparency creates a culture of camaraderie and trust, discouraging users from fleeing en masse when your product faces a glitch.

4 elements of bug and issue tracking

Bugs can easily slip through the cracks without critical tracking components working together as a well-oiled machine. As you develop your bug-tracking project plan, map out these steps so your tool is ready to usher bugs through each resolution stage.

1. Detect

The most crucial part of a sound bug-tracking system is finding and capturing the bug. Reports come from many sources, such as support calls and user reviews. You might also detect problems when you measure your site’s performance regularly. Your team must be capable of detecting issues as soon as they appear so they can act on them swiftly.

After detecting a bug, determine its urgency. Typically, the more the bug negatively impacts the user experience, the more immediately you should treat it. This information determines which priority to assign the problem, informing how and when to solve it in your development cycle.

2. Track

Some bugs can resolve during a single development cycle, while others require more effort to identify and get rid of. Either way, your bug-tracking system must maintain a steady cadence of checking progress toward resolution. This information is vital for your community managers, who need to report progress to their audience regularly. 

3. Resolve

Your tracking approach should use a system of assignees, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and messages so developers and managers can resolve issues according to an optimized plan. This formal process makes it clear who’s doing the work and when. 

Here’s an example of how a team may approach a website bug:

• A user leaves a review pointing out slow load times.
• Your community manager notices this review and files a ticket in your bug-tracking software. They fill out a template that prompts them to provide relevant information about the issue.
• Your product manager assigns the ticket to a developer and adds a message to suggest a timeline for fixing it.
• The developer implements performance optimizations that improve loading times and assigns the bug back to the product manager for validation.
• The product manager validates that the fix worked and then closes the bug.

4. Monitor

Even after you’ve resolved a bug, it’s best practice to keep monitoring the problem. The resolution might only work temporarily, which you’ll never know if you immediately stop assessing your fix. If you need help, there are monitoring tools like Pingdom and Site24x7 that can surface issues or keep an eye on problem areas. 

How to choose the right bug-tracking tool

To select the right system for your team, consider the essential elements that make an optimal bug-tracking solution. Some features may be more or less critical to your team, so weigh them carefully when selecting a tool.

Functionality

Some tracking tools are comprehensive task-monitoring apps with a wide variety of features. Others are specialized, offering a select suite of functions to serve a particular need. Consider which capabilities your team needs before selecting a bug-tracking tool.

Here are some standard features you might want from a tracking resource: 

• Kanban board
• Assignees
• Customizable workflows
• Issue templates
• Access control

Interface

With all those features vying for importance, it’s easy for a bug-tracking tool’s interface to get messy. The best solutions use a combination of color coding, intuitive design, and careful simplification, resulting in a straightforward product. It’s best practice to try demos for many different products before selecting one to use long-term.

Integrations

Many bug-tracking tools have APIs enabling other software to share information. This feature allows for convenient functions like generating reports from email or advancing the troubleshooting workflow from within a collaborative tool like Slack or Microsoft Teams. These features might seem small, but the time they save adds up quickly.

8 excellent bug-tracking tools in 2024

Now that you know what goes into a smart bug-tracking tool, it’s time to explore the leading solutions in 2024. The following products earn high marks for their interfaces, functionality, and integration support.

1. ClickUp

ClickUp is relatively new to the scene, but they’ve quickly garnered widespread respect for developing a comprehensive yet easy-to-use task-tracking app. Enjoy the features you need to track glitches, like a Kanban board, assignees, and customizable workflows — all with an intuitive interface. It also supports integrations with Slack, Teams, and Google Drive.

2. Trello

Trello is a powerful task management tool that tracks issues visually via intuitive cards and boards. The board layouts are infinitely customizable, and the access control, time tracking, and assignee features are as robust as they come. 

Trello’s free version offers plenty of basic features, but you’ll need to upgrade to its premium plan ($10/month/user) if you need complete admin control and access to key features like calendars and dashboards.

3. Bugzilla

Bugzilla has been around since 1998, offering its service for free and updating regularly. It doesn’t provide as many features as its competitors, like Kanban boards or assignees, but it does offer an intelligent time-tracking tool and duplicate bug detection. For the price tag, Bugzilla delivers a valuable experience that can serve your team’s basic needs.

4. Zoho

Zoho has a massive library of products, many of which integrate well with one another. Zoho’s Bug Tracker is a comprehensive, feature-complete tool that supports assignees, custom workflows, and Kanban boards. It’s relatively easy to use with its intuitive design. But if you need to track many issues, you’ll want the premium subscription ($7/month/user) for up to 120GB of storage.

5. Asana

Asana is a streamlined task management tool that offers assignees, custom fields, and a Kanban board. Its custom workflow builder is impressively powerful and easy to use. It even tracks the time your teams take to move through each stage and delivers a report regularly.

6. Redmine

Redmine is a free, open-source bug-tracking tool with a pared-down but useful feature set. It includes access control, a shareable calendar, and custom workflows. But it relies on its few supported integrations to offer other features. For example, integrating with Orangutan enables time-tracking features, and implementing a webhook in Zabbix allows for automatic ticket generation.

7. Jira

Jira is an industry leader in project management and defect-tracking software. It offers all the features of its competitors, like custom workflows, templates, and access control. That said, Jira has a steep learning curve. Its search function requires a proprietary query language (JQL), access control is complex, and UI is less intuitive. It’s an incredible tool, but you’ll need to invest significant time into learning and introducing it.

8. Bird Eats Bug

Bird Eats Bug offers a revolutionary way to catch and report bugs. While it’s less effective than its competitors in tracking bugs, it stands out with its ability to harness them. This tool offers an intuitive browser extension that enables QA testers to capture bugs and report detailed logs with minimal button clicks. These reports can then transfer to tracking tools like Jira and Trello to automate task creation. With Bird Eats Bug, you can record your session and play it back to detect bugs without opening the developer console.

Move beyond the glitch with Webflow

Bug tracking relies on accurate, timely information. With Webflow, you can see a comprehensive log of site changes, helping you diagnose and resolve website issues as soon as they arise. If you encounter a particularly challenging bug, check out Webflow University for troubleshooting tips from our team of qualified experts.

AI excels at digesting and extracting critical insights from massive datasets. Pre-AI, data professionals performed this work, spending immense amounts of time collecting, refining, and interpreting information. But with AI’s advancing capabilities, you can automate data analysis processes that would require dozens or hundreds of hours to complete manually. 

That’s what makes AI and data analytics such a potent combination. AI helps analysts bypass tedious data collection and interpretation, skipping directly to managing, validating, and using data to craft accurate reports for businesses.

An overview of AI in data analytics

Applying AI to data analysis is a powerful way to quickly and accurately sift through massive datasets. This approach leans into what AI does best: detecting patterns and using them to predict outcomes.

AI-powered analytics tools combine machine learning (ML) and data analytics for faster processing than humans can perform. They excel at drawing straightforward connections and interesting conclusions humans might miss, such as trends with unintuitive correlations or extremely long-term cycles. And they can even help write SEO content that drives more traffic to your website.

When you pair an AI learning algorithm with your data analysis efforts, you can expect the following benefits.

Speed and efficiency

Analysts can feed an AI analysis system their data and turn to other tasks while it processes. This efficiency offers new freedom to data professionals — it assumes tedious tasks and lets employees focus on more meaningful work: interpreting data to discover insights.

Validation

Data validation is critical to finalizing an analysis, and AI supports this crucial step. After discovering a combination of data points to include in a report, analysts can use AI to instantly call up those points for review. This automation dramatically reduces the time it takes to write SQL queries and search through reports.

Ease of use

Most AI analysis tools offer natural language processing (NLP), which lets analysts use natural language to interact with their data. For example, you might write, “Search this dataset for the five most purchased products,” or “How have in-person and online sales changed over the last two years?”

This simplicity offers your team more freedom in how you interact with your database. It also lowers the barrier to entry for new analysts by fast-tracking much of the learning curve.

3 types of AI used in data analytics

You can distinguish different AI types by their relative complexity. The more sophisticated an AI tool is, the more capable it is of finding subtle correlations. 

Here are three types of AI commonly used in data analysis.

1. Machine learning

ML algorithms are trained, meaning developers feed them vast amounts of data and instruct them to extract conclusions. From this process, the algorithms “learn” what to look for in new datasets. 

When you feed information to a trained ML algorithm, you don’t need to provide it with any instruction. The algorithm uses what it’s learned to search your data and create conclusions. Along the way, it continues to refine that knowledge base for improved data analysis capabilities.

2. Neural networks

More advanced than ML’s system of overlapping processes, neural networks aim to simulate the human brain. They do so using interconnected processes representing nodes that pass information back and forth for analysis. This process enables them to discover connections an ML algorithm’s more straightforward process might miss.

3. Deep learning

The most advanced of these AI types, deep learning involves training a neural network with a massive dataset, teaching it to recognize things and interpret patterns. This technology is what self-driving cars use to identify other vehicles on the road and evaluate changing conditions. It’s equally effective at discovering patterns in data that a human might overlook.

How AI can improve your data analytics process

AI makes handling and interpreting data easier than ever because it seamlessly fits into many analytics processes. Here are a few suggestions for where to integrate AI into business data strategies.

Data cleaning

The first step in analyzing a database is checking it for errors. Analysts spend significant time scanning through hundreds of lines in a spreadsheet or writing detailed SQL queries to surface such mistakes. Thankfully, AI can perform this task much faster. You simply feed the AI your database and use NLP to form a query, such as “Check this database for missing information and errors.”

Data analysis

AI eases the burden of analysis for data professionals without replacing the need for a human eye. You can use AI to search the data, but it’s up to you to determine what’s important. For example, if you feed your data to a deep learning algorithm, it’ll churn out dozens of trends, predictions, and correlations you might never have found. But it’s up to you to sift through these results and surface the most relevant, informative bits for your business.

Data visualization

Another common task is creating visuals for the information you analyze. You might use tools like Zoho and Tableau to do this, which increasingly feature AI-generated visualizations to quicken the process. For example, Tableau Pulse uses AI to generate customizable data visualizations based on predefined KPIs.

Predictive analysis

AI excels at discovering intricate trends in data and mapping them out over a timeline — which requires simple math to plot hundreds or thousands of points over time. AI can process these trends significantly faster than a human can, and it can identify correlations to generate intricate forecasts. 

One example of AI predictive analysis is Life2Vec, a powerful tool that uses basic information about your age, weight, and exercise habits to predict your potential lifespan.

Industry use cases of AI data analytics

AI has quickly permeated every industry thanks to its uniquely versatile capabilities. Here are some examples of how AI supports industry processes, from basic data collection to complex analysis.

Healthcare

The healthcare industry generates enormous datasets every day, from X-ray and MRI images to BMI and blood test measurements. AI algorithms consume this data to find connections between data points sooner than a medical professional might. These advancements help with early detection of cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, improving healthcare outcomes and potentially saving lives.

Finance

With its convoluted regulations and mind-boggling complexity, the financial industry benefits from any advancement in AI technology that simplifies data analysis. AI is an incredible tool financiers can use to advance their portfolios through speculating on stock prices and analyzing economic conditions. For example, the financial platform OneStream uses ML to find signals in the economic landscape that indicate a financial strategy’s potential success or failure. 

Marketing and customer insights

Interpreting critical user data helps businesses optimize products, services, and marketing campaigns for certain goals, such as increasing conversions or driving engagement. AI tools that integrate with website platforms make this information significantly easier to access.

For example, Webflow supports a HubSpot integration that tracks website traffic. You can then use HubSpot’s AI-powered data analysis tools to extract actionable insights that’ll help you improve your site.

Upgrade your data analytics with Webflow

Webflow supports integrations and solutions that leverage AI to assist with analyzing data, writing content, and more. The platform has all the tools you need to create visually stunning, data-rich websites without writing a single line of code. 

Explore Webflow’s marketing automation and analytics integrations today and get the most from your AI tools.

The rapid flow of sensitive information is at an all-time high — especially in healthcare, finance, and law.

Most private chat apps require phone numbers and emails during registration, and users often overlook the terms and conditions. Using these conventional platforms puts your business’s privacy and security at risk by leaving room for potential breaches and legal ramifications.

But secure messaging applications provide robust encryption capabilities and other security features that safeguard your communication. Read on to discover eight of the best security-focused communication apps for businesses.

What are secure messaging applications?

A secure or encrypted messaging application is a communication tool that protects the confidentiality of messages and multimedia exchanged between users. These apps use verification techniques, like two-factor authentication (2FA), to ensure the rightful user accesses messages after providing proof of two or more identification forms.

Most importantly, they deploy end-to-end encryption, which ensures only the intended recipient receives the message. iMessage and Google Messages are popular apps that use end-to-end encryption, with secure browsers using HTTPS over HTTP for added safety.

How secure messaging apps work

Secure messaging apps combine advanced technology and stringent privacy protocols to ensure security. This includes:

• Encryption. When a user sends a message, voice note, image, video, or document, the secure messaging app encrypts the content using cryptographic algorithms that transform it into an unreadable format called ciphertext. Even if a hacker intercepts a message in transit, encryption ensures it remains indecipherable to anyone without the corresponding decryption key.
• Open-source code. Many secure messaging apps use open-source code, so their underlying source code is freely and publicly available. Open-source code encourages transparency and trust among users and allows independent developers and security experts to inspect apps and conduct audits to identify potential loopholes, flaws, or backdoors for intrusion.
• Privacy policies. Secure messaging apps typically have clear and transparent privacy policies that outline data collection, storage, and processing methods. These policies outline steps taken to safeguard sensitive information.
• Rich media support. Despite the name, secure private messaging apps support many multimedia types, including images and videos, voice messages, and files. Encryption and privacy protocols apply to each media type and ensure users can safely exchange content.

The importance of secure messaging apps

Secure messaging apps combine end-to-end encryption with open-source code, privacy measures, and multimedia support for these essential reasons:

• Data protection and compliance. Industries like finance, legal, and healthcare must follow strict privacy regulations from governing bodies, like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and HIPAA in the U.S. Secure messaging apps comply with these regulations by ensuring sensitive data, like banking information and medical records, remain protected from unwanted access.
• Cybersecurity risk mitigation. With looming online threats like phishing attacks, data breaches, and malware, it’s essential for secure messaging apps to prioritize cybersecurity. Adding an extra layer of protection through encryption and two-factor or multifactor authentication reduces security-related incidents and potential financial losses.
• Secure collaboration. Secure business messaging apps allow team members, whether in-office or remote, to communicate safely. Employees with internet-enabled devices can share files, chat in groups, and make voice and video calls for meetings and training sessions.
• Brand reputation. Data breaches and security incidents can damage a company’s reputation and undermine customer trust. By securing messaging apps, you demonstrate your commitment to protecting user data, enhancing your credibility as a trustworthy and reliable organization.

8 secure and encrypted messaging apps for your business

Choose a secure messaging app that best aligns with your organization’s needs while ensuring confidentiality. Here are eight encrypted messaging applications with diverse feature sets to suit different businesses.

1. WhatsApp

WhatsApp boasts end-to-end encryption for messages, calls, and multimedia. It also has 2FA with passkeys for further protection.

The Meta-owned messaging app is ideal for individuals and businesses who want a widely known and user-friendly encrypted platform with messaging, calling, and file-sharing capabilities. But it’s worth noting that, as a Meta-owned application, WhatsApp’s encryption doesn’t extend to metadata — which may raise privacy concerns for some users.

Price: Free

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and web browsers

2. Telegram

Telegram offers secure messaging with optional end-to-end encryption through Secret Chats — a feature where specific chats have a lock icon that only the recipient can access. Secret Chats also self-destruct and don’t support message forwarding.

With a group chat capacity of up to 200,000 members, Telegram suits large organizations seeking a feature-rich platform with file-sharing, channel, and voice call functionalities.

Price: Free

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, and web browsers

3. Signal

Signal is well-known for its strong emphasis on privacy and security. The app offers end-to-end encryption for messages, calls, and video chats. Its open-source Signal Protocol also supports messaging for groups of up to 1,000 members, with secure file sharing and disappearing messages for added protection.

Typically favored by privacy advocates, journalists, and professionals requiring secure communication channels, Signal is ideal for companies dealing with sensitive or large datasets.

Price: Free

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux

4. Threema

Threema offers standard features like text messaging, voice calling, and polls. But what separates Threema’s privacy-preserving protocol from the rest is that it doesn’t ask for a phone number or email during registration, providing increased user anonymity.

The company also favors local information storage over server-based data management. If you have capable local storage and work in healthcare, finance, and legal services, Threema is a great fit.

Price: Varies for individuals and businesses

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, and web browsers

5. Wire

Wire fully complies with GDPR and only requires an email address to sign up. It also works on Signal’s robust security protocol. Since its inception, Wire has maintained an open-source philosophy, claiming that the company has no intention of selling user data to third parties.

With its always-on encryption, Wire keeps group conversations and file sharing reliably under lock. It also offers collaborative features like guest rooms and screen sharing, making it suitable for anyone in remote teams, creative fields, or large organizations looking for secure communication channels.

Price: Free

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux

6. Rocket.Chat

Rocket.Chat’s open-source functionality has the backing of thousands of GitHub members to ensure its security stays up to date. Its on-premises hosting lets you keep all data in-house to reduce online threats while providing full ownership over messaging infrastructure.

This is the best secure messaging app for government, financial, and legal sectors. It’s especially valuable to technically experienced users looking for a customizable messaging solution with third-party app integration.

Price: Free for small teams of up to 25 members, with custom quotes for enterprises

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux

7. Troop Messenger

Like Rocket.Chat, Troop Messenger is an end-to-end encryption app that supports on-premises server hosting for complete control over in-house data. With productivity features like file and screen sharing, this platform is often touted as a more security-oriented Slack (which doesn’t have end-to-end encryption).

Troop Messenger targets businesses and enterprises seeking a secure, collaborative messaging platform with total autonomy. It focuses on productivity and communication, and it’s suitable for teams of all sizes.

Price: Varies depending on the nature of the business and industry

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux

8. NetSfere

NetSfere is a secure, enterprise-level communication platform designed to meet the regulatory compliance requirements of the healthcare, government, and finance industries. It focuses on four pillars: security, control, compliance, and collaboration.

With end-to-end, 256-bit encryption (a significantly robust cipher with a 256-bit key, superior to 128-bit and 192-bit keys), NetSfere is best for large organizations operating in highly regulated sectors.

Price: Free for the Professional plan and $7 per user for the Enterprise plan, with custom quotes for the Enterprise Plus plan

Compatibility: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and web browsers

Enhance your site security with Webflow

Secure messaging apps protect sensitive information, minimize enterprise cybersecurity risks, and foster trust among employees and customers. By integrating secure applications with a high-quality web platform, you can ensure safety for all your website users.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or running a thriving business, learn how Webflow builds security into your website. Create powerful platforms using Webflow Enterprise, secure them with our all-in-one security checklist, and explore our resources to learn how to scale your online presence.

Web accessibility refers to your site’s accommodation and availability to users — regardless of their abilities or challenges. The goal of accessible design and development practices is to eliminate barriers that prevent people from navigating, interacting with, and accessing your site’s content.

By ensuring your in-house design and development teams prioritize web accessibility and integrate accessibility into their design process, you can build a better website for your business while contributing to a more inclusive digital environment.

The benefits of web accessibility

For the end user, an accessible site means a more seamless and equitable online experience. This positive user experience (UX) empowers your target audience to access information, products, and services without extensive aid.

But accessibility isn’t only for your users. On the business side, web accessibility fulfills compliance requirements and extends your digital presence’s reach and engagement. A website that’s inclusive by design is available to more users, which enforces a positive brand reputation and fosters lasting relationships with customers.

Accessible website designs offer a bounty of benefits — here are some of the most advantageous ones.

Reach new audiences

Web accessibility makes your content available to people with varying abilities, so you can reach a wider audience. Newly accessible content might reach a fresh market segment you’d unintentionally neglected because you hadn’t catered to their abilities.

For instance, by optimizing your site for screen readers, you create a positive UX for people with visual impairments. This accessibility encourages these customers to engage with your site and increases the conversion potential as you meet your audience’s diverse needs.

By creating an inclusive UX, you broaden your demographic appeal, and this will likely cause a bump in your conversion rates. Inclusivity in web design is both a social responsibility and a strategic move to capture untapped markets and enhance your business performance.

Produce cleaner code

Accessible webpages possess more intentional designs and use a simpler code structure. This means they have cleaner code that loads faster with fewer errors. By improving your code hygiene, you enhance your site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

For example, when designing an accessible website, you must use semantic HTML and proper document structure. This makes your site accessible and also simplifies your code structure. And by using descriptive and meaningful HTML tags, you help other developers on your team navigate and update the codebase. As a result, accessibility makes your code cleaner, better for the end user, and easier to maintain due to its straightforward language structure.

Improve UX

Web accessibility initiatives tend to bring your site design closer to industry-standard web design best practices. This, in turn, creates a better experience for your site users.

Consider color contrast. Proper color contrast most immediately benefits users with visual impairments, but it also makes content on your site easier to read for users who aren’t visually impaired. Similarly, accessible design impacts navigation and information comprehension. By providing clear and concise headings, you help all users navigate your site — whether they’re browsing your page directly or interacting through a screen reader.

Prioritizing accessibility this way lets you create a better browsing experience for all users and encourages positive interactions, resulting in higher conversions and reduced bounce rates.

Boost SEO rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) and accessibility go hand in hand because search engine algorithms tend to reward highly accessible websites. So, accessibility’s principles often closely overlap with SEO’s.

These principles include:

For instance, providing descriptive alt text not only makes images accessible to screen readers but also helps search engines understand content. By helping search engine crawlers scroll your site architecture, you boost your search result visibility.

Accessibility also contributes to stronger UX. Enhanced engagement signals to search engines that your website has relevant, quality content, making them more likely to include your site in SERPs. Improved SEO rankings increase your online visibility and subsequently drive more organic traffic to your site.

Ensure compliance with legal and ethical obligations

Accessibility matters for reasons beyond boosting your site performance. Many countries and regions have established laws and regulations that mandate accessibility requirements for websites.

As an example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the United States, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in Canada, and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in the European Union are pivotal legislations that enforce the importance of making digital spaces accessible to all. ADA compliance helps your business avoid penalties and also reflects your commitment to promoting ethical business practices.

Build a positive brand reputation

Adopting accessible design practices helps build trust with your consumer base because it demonstrates your commitment to providing an accessible and welcoming digital space. This trust enhances your brand reputation and fosters positive relationships with your users — a factor that contributes to long-term success.

Consider showcasing accessibility initiatives in marketing materials and on your website to demonstrate how you’ve integrated web accessibility into your brand identity. As satisfied users share your positive brand reputation through word-of-mouth, you’ll see an influx of new visitors and an increase in your site’s organic reach. As such, building a positive brand reputation through accessibility initiatives is a strategic investment that pays dividends in customer trust, loyalty, and brand success.

How to improve web accessibility with the 7 Principles of Universal Design

The 7 Principles of Universal Design, developed by Ronald Mace at North Carolina State University in 1997, can be used to ensure that digital spaces are inclusive and user-friendly. When building or redesigning a website, consider integrating these principles into your process to create an inclusive online experience for all users.

Other standards you might consider include W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

1. Equitable use

Strive for designs that provide the same means of use for all users. This means your design should avoid stigmatization or separate accommodations. For example, when you design online forms, ensure that the same version is accessible for assistive technologies like screen readers as well as regular web browsers. This way, all your users can access the same form.

2. Flexible use

Offer varied ways for users to interact with your website to accommodate diverse preferences and abilities. This principle encourages web designers to consider a range of user needs. So you might provide both keyboard shortcuts and mouse-based navigation options to build in more interaction flexibility.

3. Simple and intuitive use

Design an interface that’s easy to understand, regardless of the user’s knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level. This principle aligns with the goal of creating user-friendly interfaces. You might consider using clear and concise language in navigation menus to accommodate users with varying language skills and cognitive abilities.

4. Perceptible information

Ensure you present information and interface components in a straightforward manner so users can perceive it regardless of abilities. You can incorporate alternative text for images that let users with visual challenges understand the graphics’ content. This way, visitors can still perceive your site, even if they can’t view visual elements.

5. Tolerance for error

Build your website to recognize inevitable user errors. This means you should provide clear error messages and suggestions to correct user actions and support visitors through their navigation. These directions minimize hazards and reduce user frustration. For instance, if users need to create a password, provide hints as to what the password requires, like a capital letter and a special symbol. Instructive information helps users self-correct and continue on their user journey.

6. Low physical effort

Aim for designs that reduce user fatigue. As an example, you could implement a clear and concise checkout process with the minimal number of steps and clicks required. This makes the user journey more efficient and less demanding — and keeps visitors from dropping out.

7. Size and space for approach and use

This final principle focuses on your site’s physical accessibility. Design a website with responsive layouts to ensure users with varying device sizes and motor abilities can interact comfortably. This promotes an inclusive approach to size and space considerations.

Outstanding website accessibility and experiences with Webflow

Accessibility is crucial not only for your end users but also for your business — and Webflow’s here to help you achieve it. Our visual web development platform empowers teams to adhere to accessible design standards so concerns like color contrast, text size, and alt text are at the forefront of design.

Learn more about how Webflow helped Greenhouse create their accessible website. Or see our resources on how content can improve your accessibility, tips for visual design, and design accessibility guidelines. 

Businesses constantly generate massive volumes of data, like internal workflows on enterprise applications and interactions on customer-facing websites. With data requests piling up, your back-end systems require scalable databases to handle surges in traffic.

Depending on your needs and resources, you can scale up or out by adding hardware to existing architecture. From there, you can create a system that manages current loads and accommodates future growth.

Read on to learn about different database scaling approaches and how to choose the best route for your organization.

What’s database scaling for enterprise websites?

Database scaling is the process of boosting a database system’s capacity to handle increasing information and a growing number of users without compromising performance, responsiveness, and reliability. As businesses and online platforms expand, building scalable databases is an effective solution to maintain smooth user experiences.

There are two approaches to database scaling:

• Vertical scaling (or scaling up) increases a server’s capacity to handle greater loads by adding more storage, RAM, and CPUs. While vertical scaling offers a quick solution for improved performance, it can become costly, making it more suitable for smaller or less demanding databases.
• Horizontal scaling (or scaling out) adds more servers to the existing system’s infrastructure, and each server operates independently to share the overall workload. Distributing the data and workload across multiple servers gives you greater flexibility for handling more requests and traffic, making it cost-effective for organizations with large databases and high-speed processing requirements.

Vertical scaling offers a quick and straightforward solution for improving individual server performance. In contrast, horizontal database scaling provides flexibility and is optimal for handling significant data and traffic growth. Choosing one depends on the nature of your enterprise application, expected growth, and specific performance requirements.

Why your enterprise should have a scalable database

Scalability enables your organization to respond to evolving requirements and effectively handle information and user influxes. Here are three reasons having a scalable database is essential:

1. Supports multiple data sources. Large organizations integrate data from various channels, including customer records, third-party vendors, and cloud services. A scalable database lets you consolidate these sources and provides a unified and centralized information hub.

2. Improves collaboration. A centralized repository allows multiple teams and managers to securely access and use data for their projects, leading to improved decision-making and streamlined workflows. And enhanced communication among teams helps break down data silos and promotes a more cohesive organizational structure.

3. Enables hybrid environments. Database scaling supports both on-site and remote team members by combining on-premises data with cloud-based solutions. With scalable infrastructure, you can quickly switch between sources and maximize resources, which benefits businesses with dynamic workflows and changing computing demands.

Database scalability challenges

While vertical and horizontal scaling approaches provide short- and long-term benefits, here are several challenges to overcome when scaling:

• Consistency in horizontal scaling. ​​Ensuring consistent and up-to-date data across multiple servers in a horizontally scaled system can be challenging. With several nodes handling large information volumes, you may face synchronization issues and data inconsistencies, leading to errors, incorrect query results, and processing delays.
• Uneven data partition. Poorly designed partitioning strategies can lead to unevenly distributed workloads that overburden some servers and underutilize others.
• Poor query performance. As databases scale horizontally, coordinating queries across multiple servers or shards may introduce latency for complex queries involving aggregations and lengthy strings. Slower queries lead to poor user experiences, especially for high-traffic applications where visitors expect quick responses.
• Cost and resource allocation. Scaling a database involves adding more hardware resources — such as CPUs, servers, and storage — which increases infrastructure costs. When allocating resources, you must recognize your requirements and balance vertical and horizontal scaling. Misallocation may lead to insufficient capacity and overspending, affecting your scaling approach’s cost-effectiveness.

How does a scalable database work?

Before designing a scalable database, it’s essential to understand how it works. Apart from vertical and horizontal scaling, there are functional components to ensure proper organization, data integrity, and efficient storage — but the most fundamental element is tables.

A table is a basic scaling structure for organizing and storing data in rows and columns. Every row represents a distinct record, and every column represents a specific attribute or field associated with that record.

For example, each row in a customer database represents an individual with attributes like their name, address, and contact information. The associated columns could include customer ID, name, address, and email.

But these values aren’t limited to words — each column has a specific data type that defines the information it stores. The most common types include:

• Text
• Numbers
• Strings
• Dates
• Floating-point numbers (with a whole number and decimal points)

As the volume of data grows, designing tables to support efficient retrieval and updates is essential to scaling effectively.

How to scale a database: 5 tips and best practices

With the right database scalability techniques, you can create and grow a system to handle increasing demands without sacrificing performance. Here are five strategies to scale a database.

1. Index your data

Like a book’s index or contents page, data indexes help the database quickly locate specific rows in a table to find information faster. They speed up retrieval and search operations, keeping datasets organized for companywide access.

Suppose you have a database of third-party suppliers. You can create an index on the “Domestic suppliers” column to allow the database to find all local vendors in your region without scanning the entire table.

Avoid fragmented databases, which occur when you scatter data across the storage system. These increase pressure on the system’s hardware and degrade performance. You can defragment tables and indexes by reorganizing indexes regularly and tailoring queries to work in tandem with them.

2. Optimize query performance

A query is a request for information or an operation on a database, such as retrieving data, updating records, or adding and deleting items. You can enter queries as commands in structured query language (SQL), a web development syntax for communicating with a database.

Query performance refers to how quickly an SQL database system executes a request, which is optimized to fetch only the necessary data while minimizing response time and resource usage.

Writing well-structured queries is crucial for database performance — you can avoid unnecessary computations and steps to ensure your commands only collect the required information. For example, optimizing queries to retrieve transaction details from a specific date in a financial database is better than pulling all the records from the same month.

When you encounter performance issues, analyze queries, review system logs, and troubleshoot performance to identify database bottlenecks. If a specific query causes high CPU usage, for instance, consider adjusting the query or adding more indexes to solve the issue.

3. Use data partitions

Partitioning involves splitting large tables into smaller, more manageable sections based on logical criteria like date ranges and locations. Proper partitioning improves query performance and database management by helping the system find what it needs faster.

For example, your sales department can use this approach to organize the sales table by date, like the revenue during the first quarter or the annual customer retention rate. This way, each partition contains sales-related data for a specific period, allowing straightforward analysis and maintenance. And other departments like marketing, design, and web development can collaborate with the sales unit by using this data to improve their projects.

4. Use buffer cache

A buffer cache temporarily stores frequently accessed data in memory so browsers don’t have to retrieve it repeatedly from a server or built-in storage system. Caches facilitate hybrid environments by helping information move freely between physical and digital components, such as in-house files and cloud-stored databases.

When sending a large file, for instance, the system doesn’t transfer all the data in one go. Instead, it divides the file to fit into smaller, individual buffers. The database system reads the original file, processes it until each buffer fills, and sends it to the new location. At the same time, it receives additional data for the next empty buffer.

Buffer caching ensures the system handles large data volumes without experiencing delays. This is crucial for applications with high read-and-write workloads, such as content-heavy websites with responsive design and dynamic animations.

Increasing system memory can significantly improve performance by relying less on disk I/O (input/output) operations, where the system’s internal disk bears the burden of handling multiple data requests. With more memory, you can cache a larger portion of the database in memory, reducing the time taken to fetch information from the disk.

5. Distribute data through sharding

Sharding is a distribution technique that helps balance a heavy data load by spreading it across multiple servers or nodes called shards. Each shard handles a manageable portion of information. It’s a horizontal partitioning approach that prevents individual servers from becoming bottlenecks, ensuring optimal performance while accommodating growing data requests.

For example, a social media platform might categorize and distribute users according to their geographic regions. One server stores data from North American users, while European users are on another, to ensure each server manages a reasonable amount of data.

Scaling made simple with Webflow

Database scaling supports multiple sources and merges on-premises infrastructure with cloud-based solutions, keeping your website smooth and responsive without delays. But you need a robust content management system (CMS) to complement your database, ensuring information flows freely across a visually appealing and functional website. With Webflow, you can browse database templates created by users that you can duplicate and start using.

Webflow Enterprise allows you to create sites and improve content creation, product performance, and storage solutions at scale. Regardless of your company’s size, you can build and host secure digital ecosystems that grow with your business.