Category: Website Development

Creating a Mobile App that Gives Value to Your Customers

You are constantly told that your business needs a mobile app to gain and keep customers and stay competitive, but how do you actually achieve this?

How can you develop an application that will prove to be a profitable tool for your business?

Let’s take a look at what you should focus on when creating user experience for ensuring high engagement and returns on investment.

App Doesn’t Equal Website
One of the biggest mistakes which businesses make is to think about a mobile app as an alternative to or a continuation of their website. What is the point of having both if they offer pretty much the same features, experience and value in general? Before you make any plans for app development, you should first get a clear idea of how this new tool is different from your website.

The typical business website is primarily about presenting the company and its products and communicating with customers. It is easy for anyone to visit it and use it regardless of their relationship with your company. A mobile app, on the other hand, is more than just a source of information. In order to deserve a permanent place on the smartphones and tablets of users, it has to offer more. The reality is that people perceive applications as personalised tools that help them in their daily lives. For this, you need to give them value by providing the following:

  • Solving a problem – Think about the goals which your customers want to achieve with buying your products and help them get even more in an even faster way. If you sell sports equipment, for instance, your app could offer personalised training plans with gym session reminders, calorie calculator and more. This is just a simple example, but mobile has lots of potential for adding value to practically all kinds of products.
  • Enhancing the customer’s experience with the brand – This is where you can win big time and really stand out among competitors. You can make it easier for customers to find you and to reach you with features like a map and a store locator. You can offer faster servicing to mobile app users both online and at your store. It is also possible to provide unique services like the creation of personalised wish lists for special occasions.
  • Unique offerings – This is all about giving your customers an incentive to download your mobile app. You can reward them for this by giving them special offers first plus some exclusive bargains too. You can also run entire loyalty programs solely via your app.

Taking Advantage of Mobile Technology
The unique features which smartphones and tablets offer aren’t simply “cool”, but can be invaluable for businesses, especially when it comes to marketing and sales. Localisation, for example, allows you to target your mobile app users given where they are, the time of day and their proximity to your physical location. Another one of the coolest trends is digitalising your loyalty cards and gift cards and integrating them with apps enabling payment via NFC. The sky’s the limit, literally.

What kind of mobile app do you need for your business? Contact me to receive professional consultation.

How Responsive Website Design Can Take Your Business Forward

It is easy to understand this concept even if you don’t have special technical knowledge. The idea behind responsive design is to make the website usable across all connected devices. It responds to the environment created by the hardware to make viewing and interaction comfortable, pleasant and productive.
Simply put, the website is equally easy to view and to use on desktop computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets. What value can it bring to a business? Let me answer this question from the point of view of an experienced web development consultant.

Cost Efficiency
With global mobile web traffic already surpassing desktop traffic, it has become perfectly clear that there is no way back – mobile is here to stay. If businesses want to keep up with the trends and stay competitive, their website has to be optimised for mobile. It is possible to have a mobile website in addition to your existing one. This option typically requires a smaller initial investment. However, it is not cost-efficient as you will have to invest in the search engine optimisation, marketing, maintenance and future development of two different platforms. Furthermore, content duplication issues may occur and you can be severely penalised for this by Google.
With responsive website design, you will be able to focus your effort and investment on a single platform. You can expect higher return since the platform will continue to work effectively for all of your marketing and other business purposes in the long term.

Improved Visibility
Since April 2015, Google has been giving priority to websites which are optimised for mobile devices. This means that responsive website design has now become fundamental for SEO and digital marketing in general. If you want your optimisation efforts from content creation to link building to pay off, you will need to have a website which is equally functional on all mobile devices. With higher search engine rankings, your website will have more qualified leads and this will help for increasing the rate of conversion.

Higher Conversion
Eventually, it all boils down to sales and revenue and responsive design can help to improve both. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, mobile is becoming an ever more important channel for generating information and social sharing. With a website optimised for smartphones and tablets, you and your products and services will get found more easily and quickly not only via the search engines, but via the social networks too.
Around half of all online shoppers use multiple devices to make a transaction. For instance, they may find a cool product on their tablet and then buy it later on via their desktop computer. Additionally, one in four e-commerce sales is now made via a smartphone. These statistics come to prove that responsive design is necessary not only for gaining new customers, but for keeping existing ones.
As mentioned in the beginning, the core purpose of this design is to improve user experience. When the user enjoys satisfactory experience, the chance of sale increases by two thirds. You will not have to worry about missing to capture a prospect customer because your website is difficult to navigate with gestures or slow to load on mobile devices.

Become even more competitive with responsive design for your business website.

You already have a vision for your business’s responsive website? Share it with me.

5 Website Design Tricks for Increasing Conversion

The purpose of a business website is not simply to present the company, but to convert interested visitors into customers. Let’s say you invest £100 in digital marketing and gain 100 visitors to your site. However, only 50 of them become your customers. What has made the other 50 go away? Maybe they haven’t been convinced about the quality of your product or service or they have found it challenging to take a specific action. As a web development consultant with a decade of experience, let me give you useful advice for achieving a higher conversion rate through design.

1. Arranging Elements to Follow the Eye Movement
You naturally look from left to right not only when you read. That is why it makes sense to put the most important elements on the left-hand side of a webpage. When you use a ribbon to present a product how do you arrange the different boxes on it? Given the natural eye movement, the top left and right sections should offer a picture of the item and a short description. Ideally, the bottom left section will have the “hook” which stimulates the customer to take action such as a discounted price, special offer, testimonial or positive review. The last section which the visitor will look at (the bottom right one) should have the call to action.

2. Gaining Credibility
If you have a new business, adding seals of approval from national, local and possibly international professional associations and quality assurance and consumer organisations will help you to convert more visitors into customers. When these have attractive shape, bright colour and simple font, they will be even more influential. For new products that you try to push in, you can use seals to place emphasis on the guarantee, a testimonial or the promotional offer that comes along with the item.

3. Letting Headlines Shine
The first text that people see on a web page has to have large enough font and to be clutter-free. It is a mistake to add embellishments or to have lots of components surrounding it. If you use push ads, make sure that they don’t show up to block the page’s content before the user has had the time to read the title.

4. Leading Consumers by the Hand
It should be easy for visitors to follow the path to taking action. Simple card design is fundamental, but it is also helpful to add visual cues such as arrows. You should never leave the prospect guessing what to do next. The ideal CTA button is not only big and brightly coloured. Giving it a lining will make it stand out. Adding a visual element such as a shopping cart icon will literally show the customer what to do.

5. Fast Page Loading Speed
Yes, if your website is slow, you will lose prospect customers. A study by Amazon has revealed that every extra 100 milliseconds of load time lead to 1% drop in sales. A recent survey among online shoppers has shown that two thirds of the participants changed their mind about purchasing a product due to slow work of the e-commerce website. Don’t let your conversion rate fall victim to technical matters. My team and I are readily available to give you a website with improved design and performance. Make full use of all five tricks for higher conversion.

If you want a modern and functional mobile-friendly website, send me an email or message me. If you get in touch with my office just ask for Philip Philipov.

What Design Features Will Make Websites Successful

Just a decade ago, only big companies had websites and many of them were not particularly functional. Now even the smallest businesses are represented online. In this competitive environment, how do you grab and keep the attention of consumers and how can you achieve a higher conversion rate? There are a lot of factors for success, but I suggest that we start with the fundamental ones and namely website design.

As a web development consultant, I keep up with the latest trends in this dynamic field. This allows me and my team of talented designers and developers to give our clients effectively working modern platforms with long-term potential. Here, I will share the hottest trends.

Responsive Design
If you want your business website to be used from any type of device connected to the internet conveniently, you have to opt for responsive design. While it was viewed as highly desirable just a few years ago, now it has become mandatory. The primary reason for this is that more and more people now use their smartphones and tablets to browse the web, to shop and to share things with friends. In the group of adults aged 16 to 24, 96% access the web via their portable connected devices. Surprisingly or not, the share of mobile internet users in the group of adults aged over 65 is also considerable – 29%. Nearly half of ecommerce traffic comes from smartphones and tablets.
Source: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access—households-and-individuals/2015/stb-ia-2015.html

Another reason why responsive design rules the scene and is here to stay is the change in the Google algorithms designed to give higher ranking to websites designed for mobile devices as well as for PCs and laptops. If you want to be found by prospects, you have to go mobile. Otherwise, all of your search engine optimisation efforts may be ruined.

Card Layout
This type of layout came into fashion with flat design and now it has evolved to meet the needs of internet users even better. The basic concept is quite simple. The web page contains clickable cards taking the user to other sections of the website. Each card has unique graphics and/or colour. It can also hold a short text presenting the section. This layout makes it really easy and convenient for visitors to find their way around and to reach the information or product that they are looking for. As the clutter is eliminated and the user enjoys flawless experience, the rate of conversion is bound to increase.

Custom Graphics
One of the main questions that I am asked as a digital consultant is how my team of web designers will make the website stand out among competitors. Unique images have been the norm for quite some time. Now the major focus is on custom graphics. Each feature from the logo to the enquiry button has to be visually impressive and aesthetically appealing. This is an effective way for building a strong brand image in the minds of users. It is possible for unique illustrations to be created for enhancing pages and sections. Infographics can be used for presenting information in a more interesting way.

Finally, no matter what the trends are, the business website has to be unique and to reflect the concept of the brand. Count on me and my team to give you this.

Get in touch via email, Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp or Viber or just call my office and ask for Philip Philipov.

The Road to Website Project Success

What makes a business website loved by users and profitable for its owner?

Many people assume that the secret lies with the appearance of the website while others believe that it has to do with its ease of use. Both are true to an extent, but the reality is that a website is successful only when it is based on a strategy for reaching precise business goals and achieving the highest level of user and customer satisfaction. Let me take you through the process of creating the blueprint for the future website and a plan for its development. As a digital consultant, I always explain to managers what I do together with my team of web developers.

Market Research
Each business website has one major purpose: to attract consumers using the internet and to turn them into customers. This makes it a marketing project as well as a technical one. For this reason, preliminary market research is paramount. This research is detailed and focuses on consumer behaviour and preferences and on the strategies, actions and achievement of competitors. Data is collected and carefully analysed. This analysis makes it possible for the new website to be positioned in the most effective way to attract consumers and to stand out from the competition.

Concept Development
The market analysis serves as the basis for creating the concept for the new website. This concept is developed in great detail with the use of mind mapping techniques and software especially designed for the purpose. The result is the website wireframe. This is the screen blueprint of every page. Every section is designed with the needs of the users in mind. Its position is carefully chosen to achieve clear logical flow and high aesthetic appeal. Both technical skills and creativity are used for developing perfect website functionality – easy navigation and orientation, compatibility with all browsers, responsive web design and fast loading. The concept is focused on achieving the best possible user experience. It is presented with the use of a prototype. All specifics are precisely defined.

The blueprints and prototype include not only visual and functional representation of the ideas of the team of web designers and developers. They feature thorough description of every component. This makes it even easier for the customer to get a clear idea of what their website will be like. The software-generated blueprint allows for modifications to be made easily and quickly. This gives us maximum flexibility and allows for higher productive efficiency.

Detailed Content Planning
Once the design and functionality concept is determined, the content of the website is planned in great detail. Simply put, the elements are filled with specific content. There are several major requirements for good website content. It has to attract the user’s attention. It must bring valuable information. It has to be easy to find and to use. It is our job to ensure that these requirements will be met.

The final step involves the setup of a schedule for the execution of the website project. Throughout the whole process there is constant communication between me and the client. As a consultant, I am always available to answer questions. The exchange of ideas and opinions is of immense importance for achieving the best end result.

If you have a website project in mind, let’s discuss it. If you call my office at Whiz, just ask the person to speak to Philip Philipov. I’ll be more than happy to hear from you.