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Posts Tagged ‘Web Design Services’

How to Tell if Your Website Needs Redesigning

September 10th, 2018

Every business needs an effective website since it not only serves as a hub for all your online marketing activities but without it, you won’t see any significant results for any online marketing campaigns. The fact is websites, like everything else, wears down with time, that’s why they need an upgrade every few years, just like your cell phone.

But unlike your cell phone, upgrading a professional website goes way beyond than just a ‘digital facelift’ in order to make it look more attractive online. The thing is, how to determine yourself if your website actually needs a complete overhaul or just some minor twerks or falls somewhere in between. Let’s find out-

You are running a visually outdated website

If you are among those who’ve been using the same site since 90’s or even 00’s, then its time you should seriously reconsider website redesign. A visually outdated website not only shows you are not in touch with the current trends but more importantly, you don’t care either.

And a visually appealing one? Besides being much more click-friendly, it actually appears to be a higher quality resource. An updated and modern design isn’t just for show either, it plays a critical role in your customer’s purchasing decision.

The purpose of your site has changed

Web design may be an important part of your brand but it isn’t everything, your brand matters just as much. It goes way beyond adding a new logo and updating your colors. Your website needs to reflect your brand messaging along with its core values.

And it should be done with such a precision that every visitor who visits your website should be able to tell exactly what you do and how your business can help them. Redesigning your website at this point can help you provide an accurate reflection of your brand messaging.

Your site loading takes forever

It might be that your website runs slow on certain browsers or devices, or it is simply slow. In general, it takes around 8 sec to capture the attention span of any human brain, just about enough time to convince him/her on a special offer or a clear CTA.

Slow loading time is nothing but toxic for a great user experience. Most probably, an outdated theme or template is the reason behind the slow loading. if this is so, your website needs a serious software update and quickly, as Google too penalizes slow loading sites.

Users cannot find your website

Think, if users cannot discover your website, how do you expect the new clients to find you? Today, you cannot simply rely on word-of-mouth for publicity because people as soon as they hear about you will want to Google your business.

So, if your site hasn’t been set up for SEO, it means you aren’t showing up on the first page of search engine results either, in short, you are losing out on all the important traffic. Just remember your website’s design and performance directly affect these rankings.

Your website isn’t optimized for mobile

If your site isn’t responding well on mobiles, then it’s definitely time to consider redesigning. Over the past few years, a mobile responsive site has become more of a necessity than a luxury. More and more searches are being conducted on mobiles now more than ever.

 And a huge number of these searches result in a purchase. So, if your website isn’t responsive to different screen sizes, how can you expect your site to have any kind of success among consumers. With mobile responsive design, you won’t ever sell yourself short on any traffic.

Your website no longer converts

Whether you operate a blogging site where you promote visitors to sign up to receive your exclusive content, or you run an e-commerce site where you work hard to get consumers to make a purchase, conversion has always been your primary goal.

So, if your conversion rate is low, it either means users are coming to your website but unable to find what they are looking for, they bounce back, or your website being completely outdated is a huge turn off for them. Another reason your site needs redesigning.

Closing Thoughts:

Identifying with one of the above-mentioned scenarios shouldn’t be much of a cause to worry, but if you realize a few hits close to home, then it definitely means its time to get cracking on a new design. You can redesign either to improve functionality or to update tools or to simply (as most businesses do) stay fresh and give your clients something new.

It’s also important to note here that redesigning your website doesn’t always require you to change every single one of your graphic design elements. Sometimes, making small functional modifications here and there are enough to do the trick.

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Categories: Web Design

Responsive Web Design to Increase Traffic and Conversions

June 16th, 2018

In today’s digital age, the importance of user experience can never be undermined, not when more and more searches are being performed on mobile phones and other hand-held devices as compared to desktop or laptops. The need for a mobile-friendly site these days has skyrocketed like never before which also plays a crucial role in a business’s overall success.

This has further led to the migration from the basic design to a more responsive one, the only change the retailers need to make in order to improve the customer journey and ultimately increase conversion rates. So, what does it mean to have a mobile-friendly site? Basically, becoming mobile-friendly means choosing a responsive web design over a dedicated mobile site.

What is a responsive web design?

For those of you who do not know, a responsive web design is a development technique that aims at creating a website that can easily adjust itself to the size of the user’s screen. It will enhance the user’s browsing experience tenfold through flexible and responsive web pages that can fit into any device accessing it.

What is the strategy behind a responsive web design?

As we know, our web design strategy can have a huge impact on our site’s overall ability to rank in search engines also known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Therefore, the key here lies in developing a web design strategy keeping SEO in mind. What it basically means is ensuring that your web design doesn’t, in any way, have a negative impact on your site’s search rankings.

What are Google’s thoughts on responsive design?

Often times in the past Google has hinted at building responsive sites that work fine on all the devices but in 2015, it started penalizing websites that were not responsive enough along with rewarding those that were created with a responsivity for search engine result pages. Not only this, Google also updated its algorithm that automatically makes mobile-friendly sites rank high in the SERPs. In other words, sites that are non-responsive will eventually see their rankings drop.

Moving on, let’s have a look at how upgrading your website to a mobile responsive design will help you reap the many rewards SEO has to offer.

How can responsive web design help increase traffic and conversions?

  • Encourage Social Sharing

This is a lesser known fact about responsive design that it was created to make social sharing easy especially for mobile users. Its also important to know that unlike social media that has a direct impact on SEO ranking, social sharing doesn’t so much in that aspect but it has something better it can easily help you grow an audience, which is another, more indirect way of increasing the search rankings.

  • Lowering Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is something that is related to spending time on a particular site, or to speak more frankly, how quickly the visitors leave the site or backtrack. Maybe it won’t matter to you but Google does keep a track of user behavior in relation to entry and exit point for a website and interpret these short dwellings as the information that you provided wasn’t relevant to the user’s needs. On the contrary, a responsive web design not only enables you to put relevant content but also display it in a mobile-friendly manner.

  • Offering Better UX

When it comes to spending a considerable amount of time on site (an offspring of improved user experience) or repeat customers or increased conversions, responsive design easily wins on all fronts. Thanks to its user-friendly design that makes reading and navigating the site that much easier. We have to understand here that the design elements of a website play a crucial role when it comes to providing a great customer experience which, in turn, is the result of positive reviews, traffic and a rise in branded searches.

  • Fighting Off Piracy

This point is for those who have decided to follow down the path to a separate mobile site which may seem like a good option at the time. However, the problem comes when the Google crawl bots mark it as a duplicate content which almost always leads to lower rankings in search results. This happens because of the similar content on the desktop and mobile site even though the URL is different. But one doesn’t have to deal with duplicate content issues while using a responsive web design due to a single URL regardless of the device being used.

  • Reduced Downloading Time

We all know how page loading times are an established and known factor. Therefore, every site should be optimized to load faster in order to rank it well in search engine results. And that’s why Google always recommend using mobile responsive sites. So, if your website is a responsive one, it will ordinarily load faster and, as a result, provide more positive user experience and a boost in conversions.

Summing Up:

An important part of the user experience comes from the way you present your website to your visitors. So, if your website is, by any chance, unresponsive, outdated or just unsuited for mobile use, you are missing some great opportunities to convert visits into sales. And remember this, if you don’t provide a responsive website to your users, someone else will.

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Categories: Responsive web design, Web Design

Best Practices for Exercising Mobile Web Design in 2018

May 21st, 2018

After the launch of the iPhone, the demand for building separate websites for separate devices increased tenfold. Though there was nothing complicated (in fact, it was comparatively easier) if you see this from the development perspective, it doesn’t come with its own set of drawbacks.

For e.g. having to promote and maintain separate sites for SEO rankings was a lot of work, not to mention the maintenance costs that come with it. Also, since mobile phones and tablets come in all screen sizes, creating websites for each and every one of them was next to impossible. So, there has to be a better way to deal with the situation, right?

Thankfully, web designer Ethan Marcotte came up with a brilliant concept of ‘responsive design’ back in 2010, a concept which calls for building fluid and flexible layouts that can adapt to almost any screen size. Since then, the mobile device ownerships have exploded as compared to the traditional PCs and a major part of the credit goes to the responsive web design which ensures users have a great viewing experience regardless of the screen size.

Nowadays, creating a website is nothing more than a child’s play, however, assuming that optimization for mobile browsing happens automatically after you finish creating your website is actually childish (pssst, avoid it at all costs). So, if you have made up your mind to go mobile, at least do it correctly. For starters, understand these facts well enough,

  • The site visitors will always access your site in all situations (even if in a hurry).
  • Small screen size greatly alters the way users interact with your web content, no matter how mobile-friendly site you make, it won’t be convenient enough when compared to full-screen

The key here is to keep the mobile content clear and succinct but not at the cost of its quality. Moving on, I have presented 6 of the best mobile web design practices in this article for you to follow if providing an appealing and enjoyable content is your top priority as a site owner.

  1. Homepage and navigation

There are a few points to keep in mind while considering homepage and navigation for your ‘mobile-friendly’ site such as-

  • Keeping calls to action above the fold.
  • Making it easier for users to get back at the main page.
  • Keep your menus short and easily accessible.
  • Avoid unnecessary promotions as much as possible.
  1. Create ‘responsive’ content

Space is always at a premium when it comes to viewing content on smaller screen sizes. However, some common mistake rookies make at this point is trying to squish all the content to the mobile screen that was originally meant for the desktop.

But you can avoid this by keeping in mind the different screen sizes from the very start and re-evaluating the existing content (based on their usefulness) accordingly. Next step involves narrowing down the essential content to the point where it becomes easily digestible and crafting concise and to-the-point content out of it.

  1. Visible site search

Never ever try to hide the search box in a menu as this is one of the first things users’ lookout for when they want information. While searching too, users generally lack the patience to scan through multiple pages for their desired info, so make browsing easy for your users by including misspelling corrections, suggesting related queries, auto-completing queries etc. You can further ease their browsing journey by placing filters above search results.

  1. Fluid images and video

One of the biggest benefits of using fluid images and videos for your mobile-friendly website is that they are non-negotiable for responsive design, not only in terms of design but cropping as well. Some such ways are –

  • Rendering images based on room availability in HTML container.
  • Crop images on smaller screens to retain their impact.
  • Use Scalar Vector Graphics to change resolution based on image paths rather than pixels.
  1. Declutter your site

If clutter is bad for your desktop then it is worse for your mobile where you don’t even have much screen space, to begin with. Every button, image, icon that you add makes the screen that much complicated and in turn, clutter your interface while overloading your users with too much information.

When designing your website for mobile, try to get rid of anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. In this way, by reducing clutter you will significantly improve comprehension.

  1. ‘Touch-friendly’ design

Though featuring concise content and scaling down your website for different screen sizes is important, it isn’t enough for implementing a ‘touch-friendly’ design which requires the design to be navigated with person’s (clumsy) fingers.

  • Provide large and descriptive buttons for easy click and bump up the font sizes accordingly (at least 16 px).
  • Completely avoid pop-up boxes and certain effects that cannot be translated easily to mobile devices.

 Closing Thoughts:

Responsive web design isn’t just a matter of choice anymore since Google has recently prioritized the mobile-viewing experience of any site into its SEO algorithm but has become an essential element to include if you wish to see your site in search results.

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Categories: Mobile Design, Web Design
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