Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Web Design Guide to Improve Conversion on eCommerce Websites

  April 26, 2017    

Nurturing higher conversion rate is an ultimate goal of all eCommerce site owners. Whether your business is small or big, you should always evolve your ideas to create a customer-centric online store for better engagement and increased sales. The most incredible way to engage web audience is to create a visually-appealing eCommerce store that can take care of visitor's shopping experience to a great extent. Apart from quality content, high-end functionality, and in-built features, you should also focus on the different aspects of web design, especially when it comes to creating an eCommerce site. A beautifully-designed online store can stimulate web visitor to visit your site and navigate through your product pages. This means you can assist your web customers by improving the design of your website.

If you want to convert the web visitors into potential customers and subscribers, then never overlook the visual appearance of your store. Make sure you revamp the overall look and feel of your e-store in order to generate quality leads and higher conversions.

Below are some of the impressive web design tips that will boost your CTR and give your web customers a top-notch shopping experience.

1. Responsive design is the key

Slowly and steadily the new-age mobile phones (Androids, iOS, Blackberry) have been dominating the entire eCommerce industry. In today's technological era, we can't imagine our life without smartphones. More and more people are shopping online via their smartphones.

This growing popularity is influencing web designers to create a responsive site that can work smoothly on different devices and screen sizes. So if you want to grab more targeted web visitors, make sure that you create a responsive site that can give rich shopping experience to both the desktop as well as mobile visitors.

You can even launch a mobile-friendly version of your online store to give rich scrolling, zooming and panning experience to your mobile web customers. This can help you get a lot of benefit in terms of higher conversions and improved sales.

2. Upgrade your search bar functionality

The search bar on an eCommerce site is considered as the beginning of the journey, but still, there are many web designers or e-store owners who overlook this functionality when it comes to improving conversion rates. It is one of the crucial aspects of your store that can help you convert your web visitors into potential customers. So, instead of creating messy and complicated search bar, make sure it is simple, accessible, and readable.

Below are some quick tips to help you upgrade your eCommerce search bar functionality on the fly:

● Tweak the color of your search icon to make it more appealing and grabbing.

● Add text inside the bar, such as “Enter Keyword”.

● Use relevant tags on all your products to render precise search results.

● Embedding filter functionality to the result page – based on color, size, brand, price, new, and popular.

● Add an auto-complete functionality to provide the desired results to the visitors.

● Instead of plain text, you can use semantic-based search results and a much more.

3. Use big and clear icons

Icons are incredible for grabbing the attention of web visitors. So, ensure that you use large and clear images if you want to boost the conversion rate of your eCommerce site. Bigger and clearer icons help visitors to see the zoomed picture of the products to get their detailed view – this encourages visitors to make a buying decision quickly and easily.

You can also use high-quality videos to represent your products in an engaging style. But make sure your visual content is of high quality and load quickly or else you could lose your potential web visitors.

4. Strive on quick products reviews

A quick product review can help visitors to make buying decision instantly. Usually, people look for the reviews before purchasing any product online. This means you can improve the conversion rate by creating a pop-up windows to showcase the detailed reviews on the same.

Quick reviews make it easy for the customers to get the key details of the product on the fly -this will save both the time and effort the customer, which turn, boosts their shopping experience and you will be able to generate higher conversions.

5. Create eye-catchy “Add to Cart” button

Convert your web visitors into potential customers by stimulating them to add their desired product(s) into the cart. But for that, you need to create engaging “Add to Cart” button that can easily be visible to the visitor. You can choose an eye-catching color combination that can go with your site's design.

Also, make sure that your visitors won't make extra efforts to find the button. It should be accessible so that visitors can go through the buying process without any distraction.

Conclusion

These are the five most compelling web design tips that will help your eCommerce site to get more web traffic, generate higher conversion rate and online sales. With these tips, you will be able to grow your customer's reach quickly and efficiently.

About the Contributor:

Linda Wester is a web development expert and has been associated with leading PSD to Magento company over 4 years. She is an avid blogger and something of a geek who shares her experience with others through her articles. Find out more interesting about her on twitter.

  

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12 Tips for Designing a Clean and Attractive Website

  April 26, 2017    

Being a successful web designer is no longer about simply having technical skills. You’ll need to have a keen visual eye and be up to date on trends. While keeping the pulse on emerging styles is key, incorporating analytics and testing will make you invaluable. Let’s discuss 12 keys elements to designing a website that will keep your viewers engaged. It’s time to make this your most successful design year ever. So let's get started with the tips that would help you design a cleaner and attractive looking website. You would also like to see some great examples of web design for your inspiration.

1. A Professional Logo

Your logo is a huge part of your company’s brand and should be in a prominent location on every page. Design your logo with a simple, timeless design and it will never look out of place throughout your website.

This is a great logo that is simple yet clear and will look great in both black and white. 

2. Use Mostly Neutral Colors

Use a neutral color palette to help your site look clean and elegant. If you want to create a dramatic effect, add splashes of vibrant color to emphasize elements you want to make pop. 

Using a white background allows you to emphasize your product and maintain a clean, modern feel.

3. Make Every Page as Interesting as Your Homepage

Often, designers focus most of their energy on the homepage and allow the rest of the pages look secondary. Every page should have the same attention to detail. 

4. Loud and Clear Fonts

Fonts on websites are getting bigger. Allow yourself space to use fewer words and bolder ideas. Use typography that’s easy to read over frilly or trendy fonts. 

5. Declutter

Get rid of sidebars, lengthy descriptions, and too many menu items. Simplify everything.

6. Leave Room to Breathe

Leave more room in between content and give your visitor a chance to breathe. Don’t be afraid of empty spaces and gaps after headlines and between paragraphs.

7. Professional Photography

Invest in high-quality photography that is unique to your business. Often clean, simple photography is the most powerful tool on a homepage. 

8. Logical Navigation

Nothing makes users click away faster than navigation that doesn’t make sense. Make sure to have a contact button, FAQs, and your social media icons in the footer of every single page as well.
Design can become repetitive when people overuse a template or resource. Use graphic design software like CorelDraw Graphics Suite that allows you to design websites not seen anywhere else on the web.

10. Clear Call to Action

Your website has a purpose - make sure it is clear. Have a call to action that is obvious but not obnoxious. Instead of making a “contact us” button in the upper right-hand corner, consider having the call to action be an entire section at the bottom of each page.

11. Responsive Design is a Must

Your website must look great on every device - desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones.

12. A/B Testing

If you aren’t already using A/B testing on your web designs, this is a skill you should incorporate immediately. A/B Testing with website design has earned some companies tremendous returns -- even for something as simple as changing the shade of blue.

  

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7 Easiest Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rate

  April 26, 2017    

Are you not getting proper conversion rate with your website traffic and visitors? Do you have a poor navigation
If your web design isn’t driving people to the right spot or isn’t converting – what are some of the things you can do to push people in that direction? Yes, you might know A/B testing entire new designs is possible, but perhaps you don’t have the time. Here are 10 things you can do right now to try to get that number of conversions up. You might also love to read a great web design guide on increasing conversions of eCommerce websites. So let's improve your conversion rate.


Testimonials are important


Add testimonials and pictures of happy customers around the site. People are much more likely to do business with you when they see real people have enjoyed working with you in the past, or have enjoyed your products. You may understand that your work is amazing – but people don’t have the same experiences as you, they aren’t going to psychically understand the value of your work, you need to spell it out for them with dead-simple testimonials. Check my own client reviews here.

Add Trust Badges


Add two or three trust badges around the site, particularly where you are wanting people to take a next action like contacting or going to the contact page – or placing an item in their cart.

HUMANIZE it

Take some time to HUMANIZE the key marketing messages you have and don’t let ‘corporate-ese’ take over and strangle the way your website is talking to potential customers.

Take Photography Seriously

Take some time and refresh your photography to be the closest thing to real, genuine people enjoying the benefits of your product or service as you possibly can. Consider the story of a successful interaction with your company and what that means for your customers. Consider the emotional impact you have on them, and try to demonstrate that through high quality and authentic photography. If you don’t currently have these photos – the next chunk of marketing money you spend should be on professional photography and it should be done under the careful creative direction of someone who understands your brand and what your brand means to customers.



Example from Oppsource - Sales Development

Have as many CTA as Possible

Add a full-width CTA (or call to action) section above the footer on every page. If you have a developer handy, have them develop it so it’s actually in the file for your footer so you don’t have to manually add it to every page. With WordPress or other CMS or a website using PHP, this will be relatively easy to a developer.

Simplify your contact form

Take away a couple fields from your contact form – if you have only 3 this would obviously not be practical, but if you have 10, consider that people might be too much in a hurry to give you every last detail of their lives just to be able to talk to you. It may make it easier on you if they give you all that info, but the current state of the world is such that if you need more leads / if you really want your conversion rate to improve, you’re going to need to ask for less out of the gate. Consider having a pre-made e-mail written and ready to send with the next 3 questions – there’s nothing wrong with a two-step approach.

Create Urgency

Create some kind of urgency with an indication that your product or service has a limited quantity or stoke the feeling of scarcity in some way. People use countdown timers, limited time pricing, or an indication that they only have 2 or 3 slots left in the next couple months if they are selling services to push people to make a decision NOW. 



Example from Shopify’s “Ways to Create Urgency”

Conclusion

I hope you these tips was helpful for you to improve your conversion rate. Do you have any tips that helped you achieve great conversion rate? Add your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Expert Tips on Becoming an SEO Expert (Eventually)

  April 26, 2017    

Billions and trillions of bytes have been spent on trying to explain SEO over the years of internet evolution. However, the concept of SEO remains strangely vague, and unexplainable as ever! It is an organic process, much like the feeling of working on an open source protocol, where evolution is the only keyword that matters. ‘Organic’ in SEO essentially refers to the natural participation of everyone using it. The internet is probably the most comprehensive synonym of total human consciousness, in an unending self-learning mode. 

A very basic idea

It all starts with understanding the fundamental concept of SEO. Once you get a basic idea, the rest follows. All the bits and bytes that go into making the web, the images, websites, texts, videos, and all other type of digital information, is in the process of constant scanning by search engines to decode the essence of best quality. Searching protocols such as Google and Bing employ automated software bots or scanners that constantly process online data (a few million scans every minute) by a set of flexible principles called algorithm. However, although flexible, yet any deviation from the defined algorithm results in a loss of relative rank of the website, over time. 

Webmasters must be able to interpret the nuances of how this scanning works and do best to be compatible for a positive rank. This total thing is called SEO, and it is also an essential self-learning process. There are diverse technical aspects and specializations associated. The following tips may be helpful to understand how to become an SEO expert eventually. There is no shortcut as one must allow the time with dedicated sincerity in decoding this great digital mystery. 

Choose your specialization

As search engine optimization is a vast field, one must start with selecting a particular area to specialize. Some of the most vital avenues of learning include content writing, digital graphics, animations, and website design. Other critical areas of SEO exclusivity include back links creation, social media management, copywriting, guest blog promotions, bookmarking, analytics, and project management. 

The Pay Per Click models of online promotion also presents a completely separate set of unique challenges that you must decide to succeed. Unless you have a few years of experience already, invest sufficient time in exploring the significance of above options. Decide which one is best for you. 

Allow constant improvement

If any two words can define SEO for the learner, then they should be ‘dynamic’ and ‘organic’. It is dynamic because it is constantly evolving, trying to be more accurate and fast in processing all the information passing through. It is a huge task as you must understand the huge volume of Big Data transiting through the net by a perspective of patters. An SEO expert should be very keen on using diverse analytic tools and common sense to understand trends on a long-term basis. (The organic aspect has been explained in the first section here.) 

If you really want to know how to become an SEO expert, devote sufficient time to reading articles like this one and trying out the tips in practice. Eventually, you automatically find a direction for self-learning. That is how this thing goes.

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3 Tips to Get Started and Learn Web Design More Effectively

  April 26, 2017    

Have you decided that you want to learn how to design websites? That’s great – but the very next thing you’re probably going to wonder about is how you can go about doing just that.
Nowadays there are many different ways to learn web design, and numerous approaches and skillsets that are involved. While there is no single ‘best’ way to get started, these tips will help put you on the right track and let you learn more effectively:

  • Start with the basics
While it may be tempting to immediately jump into a WYSIWYG editor (such as Dreamweaver or Photoshop) and start designing, it is often best to learn the basics first. Finding out more about HTML and CSS in particular will help you to understand how websites and web design work – even if you don’t go too in-depth when learning about it.

  • Play to your strengths
After you have a decent understanding of the basics, you should continue by playing to your strengths. If you have experience in graphic design or other art then WYSIWYG editors might help to jumpstart your experience. On the other hand if you have experience with code then learning CSS, JS, and other languages associated with web design might be an easier starting point.

  • Structure vs. free learning
The main decision you may have to make is whether to follow a structured web design course (paid or free), or simply research and learn from various resources as and when you need to. That is really a matter of preference, and it is solely up to you to decide which approach you’d prefer. If you like having a structure that you can follow then go with it, but if you prefer being able to learn what you need to by yourself then that’s fine too.


If you find that some of the video lessons and guides available online are an excellent resource you could record and save them on your PC with Movavi Screen Capture. It is an easy-to-use screen recorder that will let you record screen video.

Rest assured it isn’t difficult to set it up, and you can immediately launch Movavi Screen Capture and draw a frame over the video using the mouse cursor. After that you need only press the record button and then stop and save it when it is done.

With the features in Movavi Screen Capture you can set the recording parameters to suit any requirements. That includes setting the frame rate, capture frame, audio source, and even choosing whether or not to record keyboard and mouse actions. In fact there is even a scheduler that will let you automatically start and stop the recording at a particular time.

Suffice to say Movavi Screen Capture will give you all the flexibility you need to save helpful web design guides, presentations, or even webinars for easy reference. If you think that would help, why not launch it right now and get started.

  

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5 Smart Tactics to Acquire Leads for your Dental Practice Online

  April 26, 2017    

While referrals are still a driving force for attracting new dental patients, more and more people are turning to the internet to find a dentist. Dental practices that are serious about growing their patient base and keeping the schedule booked need to have a solid digital presence and marketing strategy.
If you are struggling to gain traction online, your practice could be focusing on the wrong areas. In this article, we’ll look at a few crucial bases that you need to cover to attract more new patients online.

Optimize Your Website for Conversions

Putting fashion before function is an extremely common mistake that dental practices make day after day. There’s nothing wrong with spending top dollar on an impeccable design, but don’t forget to make sure your website is optimized for conversions.
The first step in conversion optimization is making sure potential patients visiting your website know exactly what you want them to do. That means using a strong and immediate call to action as your main heading.
You’ll also want to make sure your phone number is prominently displayed and easy to read. A prominently placed form fill above the fold will appeal to visitors who would rather request information or schedule a visit online.

Claim Your Google and Bing Business Listings

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to claim your local business listings on both Google and Bing. This will literally put you on the map when people search for dental practices in your area. When someone in your practice area is searching for a new dental office, you’ll want your listing to show up.
Your business profile has an added benefit of allowing patients to leave reviews. Once you start getting those five-star reviews, the search engines will see that you are a trusted dental practice with a great reputation. That’s how you get on the fast track to better local search engine results.
Of course, more importantly, potential patients who find your listing on Google or Bing will be far more likely to visit your website and schedule an appointment if they see a bunch of five star reviews.

Do Some Local SEO


The vast majority of search engine users don’t venture past the first page of search results. If you’re not showing up on page one, you might as well not show up at all. While making sure your Google and Bing business pages are claimed is a great first step, there are things you can do on-site to help improve your rankings.
Google alone uses at least 200 ranking factors to determine where pages should show up and some factors hold more weight than others. Your primary focus should be making sure you have plenty of high-quality content that is useful and informative for readers.
Remember, search engines rank pages, not websites. That means each page should be themed around a specific service and specific keywords, such as cosmetic dentistry or teeth whitening. Whatever you do, don’t just try to cram a bunch of keywords into your content. That may have worked in 2002, but times have changed.
Search engine algorithms have become much more sophisticated, which means context and usefulness holds more weight than what keywords you use. Here’s a couple content hints.
  • Use focus keyword once or twice in body
  • Use focus keyword in main heading
  • Use name of the city you wish to target
  • Shoot for at least 700 words of great content
  • Use focus keyword in URL
  • Use focus keyword in meta description along with a strong call to action
When writing content, think about some of the most common questions patients have about a certain procedure and try to answer those questions.
The above mentioned SEO optimizations are only the first step. If you are serious about ranking higher, you may want to look into working with a digital marketing agency. A professional SEO strategist will implement on-site and off-site optimizations at a deeper level, right down to the coding of your website.
Results don’t happen overnight, but working with an agency can set you up for long term rankings.

Take Advantage of PPC Marketing

Organic rankings don’t come instantly, but paid search engine results do. Do a simple Google search of a term you want to rank for. You’ll notice that every result above the fold is a paid search result (assuming the keyword you choose is somewhat or very competitive).
You won’t even see the organic listings without scrolling down. A well-managed PPC campaign will drive new leads while you work to improve your organic rankings. It’s important to note that you are paying for every click so it’s vitally important to choose the right keywords and drive traffic to a page that is optimized for conversions.
Just like SEO, hiring a digital agency to manage your PPC ads can save you time and money. Getting highly relevant traffic, creating compelling ad copy and converting visitors to patients takes a serious time commitment and a good amount of technical skill.

Boost Your Social Media Presence with Effective Content Marketing

Don’t just use your social media page to promote yourself. Use it to spread interesting and shareable content. Maybe a new study just came out about oral health trends or a new development in dental technology.
That type of information would make a great infographic. Work with a designer to transform that data into an interesting and visually appealing infographic. Post it on your blog and share it on social media. Great content will be shared and garner valuable backlinks to your website. The result is more traffic, better search engine results and more authority in your niche.

Conclusion

There’s no magic bullet or secret sauce when it comes to good online marketing. If any marketer tries to tell you there is, run away. The path to solid, long term results is paved with hard work, time and quality. It’s important to remember that the above-mentioned tactics require diligence. There’s no “set and forget” button in the digital world. You need to constantly monitor, optimize and tweak as needed to fine tune your campaigns and get the ROI you are looking for.

  

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Is It Time for Your Business to Outsource?

  April 26, 2017    

In today’s marketplace, starting an online business is easier than ever before. But that doesn’t mean you won’t have to put in a great deal of hard work and effort to make sure everything gets off to a strong start. And you also have to remember that you are not Superman or Wonder Woman - you can’t do everything yourself! You are better off to focus your time and channel it into the areas of the business that you are best at. If you start running a web design agency, this is exactly what you want to be focusing on for a majority of the time.


The best way to free up some more time to focus on your business is by outsourcing. Not only are you giving yourself more time to grow your company, you are also making sure that that particular area is in expert hands. Outsourcing also works out a lot cheaper than actually employing someone in that field. The question remains: which area of my business should I outsource? It may not be the case that you can afford to do everything all at once, so use this guide as a way of getting your priorities in order.

Accounts/Financing

If you are not particularly well versed in this field, it makes sense to outsource your accounts and financing needs. As well as being a particularly complicated area of business, a good accountant can end up saving you a great deal of cash which is hugely important for businesses both large and small. If you try to do everything yourself, you could end up making mistakes that have major consequences. Nothing should be more important in your business than making sure the in goings and outgoings are well accounted for. This is also a very time consuming task so it ends up being a weight off your mind if you can transfer it onto someone else.

IT Services

Running an online business means that your technology is absolutely central to your success or failure. If things go wrong, it could leave you out of action for a great deal of time and you will end up missing out on valuable cash for your business. Finding a company that offers strong IT services will allow you to concentrate on the successful running of your business rather than being focused on constantly fixing issues with the technology.

Marketing

It is all well and good having a fantastic website and a first class business model, but if no one has heard of it then you won’t last for a long time. That is where the support of a good marketing agency comes in. If you are running an online business, it makes sense that this is where a great deal of your focus should be. Your complete strategy should involve a combination of search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), social media, advertising and email marketing. Your marketing agency should be able to provide you with a complete strategy and the difference they are making should be clearly measurable.

Public Relations

This is traditionally one of the areas of business that people understand the least but it can end up making a big difference. Rather than the overt methods of marketing and advertising, public relations (PR) involves getting credible third parties to review and cover businesses. As well as this, it is all about reputation building and making sure that you maintain a positive public perception. If your business should find itself in crisis, a good PR agency can steer you back on the path to success by protecting your reputation.

Human Resources

A part of business that gets sadly ignored by a lot of businesses, human resources (HR) is generally more important for companies that are larger. Many businesses choose to outsource this to outside specialists. Just some of the tasks that can be taken care of by an outsourced HR agency include managing the recruitment process, handling payroll, offering training courses, resolving disputes and making sure you keep up with changing employment practices, to name but a few.

Content Writing



Even though a lot of businesses are very visually based, written content is still very important for every type of company. For a start, it plays a big role in your brand image and how your consumers actually see your company. It also helps to create a dialogue, and keeps people engaged with issues that are affecting your particular industry. As well as this, blogging is a very important aspect of SEO as search engines tend to value fresh content that has been well written. That is why there is a growing demand for content writers who can produce articles on a regular basis and why you may choose to consider hiring one for your business.

Lead Generation and Customer Service

Sales calls tend to be a numbers game; the more calls you make, the higher the likelihood of you actually generating some useful leads. However, it is also a very time consuming and arduous task which is why businesses choose to outsource this particular area. Once the initial contact has been made, it is easier for you to actually make sure you close the sale yourself (or you transfer responsibility to a member of your team). If you are just starting off and don’t yet have regular clients, this could be the approach for you.

Legal Services

This may not be something that you need on a regular basis, but having the number of a good legal team to call in certain situations can be invaluable. Again, it is a very specialist area and the right advice can save your business a great deal of money, or even save it altogether if things have started to go wrong.

These are the most commonly outsourced services for businesses both large and small. This should have given you a better idea of your priorities when choosing which area of your company to outsource.

  

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