HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; Why they should be part of your e-marketing skills.
Hello there!
In this article, you will find out why it is important to understand the basics of HTML, CCS, and JavaScript for digital marketing. You are about to learn easy to understand definitions of these concepts and the relation between them. Furthermore, you will read about how to explore these concepts for your advantage in internet marketing. Finally, you will find out what are some of the best online resources to start learning more about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
What are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?
What is HTML?
HTML is an acronym that stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is a markup language that is used to structure webpages, web applications, and content.
JavaTpoint says, “ HyperText simply means "Text within Text." A text has a link within it, is a hypertext. Whenever you click on a link that brings you to a new webpage, you have clicked on a hypertext. HyperText is a way to link two or more web pages (HTML documents) with each other”.
They continue to say, “A markup language is a computer language that is used to apply layout and formatting conventions to a text document. Markup language makes the text more interactive and dynamic. It can turn text into images, tables, links, etc”.
What is CSS?
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is a style sheet language that describes how HTML elements are to be displayed.
In their article, W3Schools says, “CSS is used to define styles for your web pages, including the design, layout, and variations in display for different devices and screen sizes”.
What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is a programming language that allows you to implement complex features on web pages.
In their blog, HubSpot refers to JavaScript as “a logic-based programming language that can be used to modify website content and make it behave in different ways in response to a user's actions. Common uses for JavaScript include confirmation boxes, calls-to-action, and adding new identities to existing information”.
Note: “It’s important to note that HTML and CSS are not considered to be programming languages. HTML is a markup language and CSS is a styling language. JavaScript, however, is a programming language. Hence, they are all web languages, but they perform different jobs”. -ITOnlineLearning
How are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript related?
HyperText Markup Language, Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript are front-end computer languages, making up the three cornerstones technologies of the World Wide Web.
HTML creates the basic structure and elements of the HTML document (aka website).
CSS helps to style this content so it appears to the user the way it was intended to be seen.
Finally, JavaScript is used on almost every site on the web for more powerful and complex functionality making the website dynamic instead of simple static pages.
Put in other words, HTML uses tags to identify different types of content and the purposes they each serve on the webpage. CSS dictates how the HTML elements of a website should appear on the frontend of the page (aka users see). Lastly, JavaScript lets web developers design interactive sites with call-to-actions, forms, and more.
In order to better understand the three of these computer languages, I like to relate it with the analogy of a car. In this case, HTML is the parts of the car, CSS is the disposition of those parts; the color, and other external features, while JavaScript is the energy or fuel systems, that allow the car to move and be interactive with its driver.
Why should marketers understand the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?
For most businesses, websites are an essential part of their online marketing. As time passes and businesses evolve, the website must also evolve.
Sooner than later, your company’s website is going to need frequent updating, upgrading, and maintenance. Not to mention, the changes that need to be done in order to keep up with the marketing campaigns (discounts, landing pages, forms, tracking numbers, tags, etc).
The first reason you, as a digital marketer, must understand the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavasCript is that websites, blogs, analytic tools, and other cloud-based marketing software are a huge part of online marketing. All of these tools use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to some degree.
Secondly, understanding the basics of these website language cornerstones is budget-friendly. Outsourcing, certain relatively easy tasks, can cost you a lot of money that if you would have known how to do it, it would have saved you an important amount of cash, that you could have put towards more advanced programming projects.
Likewise, understanding HTML, CSS, and Javascript will increase your flexibility and will make your work more agile and productive. Simple coding tasks will be quickly solved by yourself, instead of issuing IT tickets of outsourcing and waiting for others.
Knowing your source code is also very important for SEO. Google’s bot, for example, crawls your website code and uses this information to index your website. The information you provide in your source code is very important in determining what the search engines interpret out of your website. Subtle changes can have drastically different results. Within the code, you can tell Google what not to index and what is indeed important. Among the things you can optimize when using coding are the title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags (H1, H2, etc), Internal links and anchor text, no follow links, image alt tags, and canonical tags.
Another reason for understanding HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is that by doing so, you will also understand the way websites work, and the things that are possible to get done (either you do it or you request it).
For those using CMS platforms or pre-built website templates with drag and drop elements like WordPress CMS, Drupal, Squarespace, Shopify and similars, understanding HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will give you the ability to override your CMS and make web updates yourself (plug-ins, theme updates, security updates and much more).
As an online marketer, you don’t necessarily have to become an expert in these languages. Front End Developers and other professionals are specialists in it. However, having a fundamental knowledge of these website cornerstone languages will set you apart from your peers.
“Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.” —Bill Gates
Wrapping up.
I personally have learned basic HTML, CSS, and even more basic JavaScript when trying to make one of my websites look and act the way I wanted it. Link Expeditions and Learn Digital Marketing With Alberto are two examples of websites I have built without having to pay for other than the domain names and hosting services, and all thanks to basic Front-end language knowledge.
Certainly, having a problem and learning how to solve it is one of the more logical and practical ways to start learning code.
If you don’t know where to begin, there are many resources that will guide you from the very basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge, to more advanced programming information.
Among the websites, I suggest, to start learning the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are:
Code Academy (https://www.codecademy.com/)
Free Code Camp (https://www.freecodecamp.org/)
The Odin Project (https://www.theodinproject.com/tracks/front-end-only)
Channel 9 (https://channel9.msdn.com/)
MIT Open CourseWare (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/intro-programming/)
Web Fundamentals by Google (https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/web-components)
W3Schools (https://www.w3schools.com/)
Code org (https://code.org/)
Codewars (https://www.codewars.com/)
Code Conquest (https://www.codeconquest.com/)
Envato Tuts+ (https://tutsplus.com/courses)
Bento (https://bento.io/)
SoloLearn (https://www.sololearn.com/)
Most of the resources I mentioned above are for free.
I highly suggest you explore all of them and join the two that best match your learning style. Keep in mind that there are many computer languages, and as a digital marketer you don’t need to understand them all. Not even as a developer. In fact, there are more than 245 programming languages, and some even list more than 700 programming languages, including esoteric coding languages.
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the basic building blocks of the Web, hence those are the computer languages that, as a digital marketer, you should focus on.
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If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please, let me know down below. Every opinion on how to improve the content of this blog will allow me to make adjustments on the go, with the objective of providing quality information for you, my dear readers.
If you would like to read my previous post about “The importance of Content Creation in Digital Marketing” click here.
Sincerely,
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