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Web Design

5 Indications Shouting “You Must Redesign Your Website”

Website Redesign

Things change with a drop of a hat and the only thing that remains constant is change itself. Tune back your mind 10 years ago and try to compare today’s digital world and the Digi world back then. You would probably be smiling, noticing the changes and developments in the world of technology over the last decade. The world of technology changes at a much swift pace as compared to any other thing across the planet. With every morning marking the dawn of a new technological advancement, it becomes essential for businesses to mold their business strategies. This process might require a change in the marketing techniques, brand makeover or even a website revamp. Now, the question arises, how would you now that it’s time to redesign your website? Here are a few common indications that you should look for and decide whether your website needs a revamp or not.

1. Your Website Takes Ages To Load

Every user on the web is super impatient; to a level as if he is sitting on a hot pan. If your web page takes ages to load, you are calling for trouble. The user is not going to wait for ages and within a few seconds will look for other available options. The margin of error in this situation is extremely low. Also, Google doesn’t particularly like web pages who take an eternity to load. Page loading time is an important criterion while deciding a page’s ranking.

So, if your web page takes a lot of time to load, you are bound to lose potential clients and also will slide down the Google ranking list. It’s best you revamp your website by analyzing the factors squeezing the time and eliminating them.

2. Your Website Still Has a 90’s Structure

Believe me, there are tons of websites that still look like they are time stuck in 90’s. Back in the 90’s, web pages were a lot more static and they just displayed information about services and contact details. There was no option to administer the web site to change text and images. Those days are well gone by. The world today is so dynamic that the content on your web pages may require a constant change. Inability to change the content is a serious threat to your website today and thus you must revamp your website by implementing latest tools and techniques.

3. You Don’t Have A Responsive Web Design

A responsive web design enables the web page to be displayed with consistency across all screen sizes on various devices. Websites were designed originally with a vision that they will be viewed only on desktops or laptops. However, times have changed and the majority of people access your website through other devices like tablets, mobiles etc. Therefore, it is pivotal that your web design must be responsive so the user doesn’t face any problem while viewing it on any kind of a device.

4. Your Website Has A Low Conversion Ratio

What is the ultimate goal of a website? To attract users and convert them. A conversion is the ultimate goal of the business. A conversion can be shopping, downloading a file, watching a video, sharing content, leaving a comment, contacting the company etc. If there is no conversion or a very low conversion rate for a website, it’s no good to the business.

If you notice that the conversion ratio of your website is very low, it’s certainly the right time for you to redesign your website. Analyse the causes for the low conversion ratio through web page analytics and work on the new design.

5. Your Website Has A Negative User Experience

User Experience (UX) is the key factor in deciding the success of your business and high conversion ratio. If a user doesn’t find your website user-friendly and gets bugged while using your website, it seriously creates a bad impression. You’re bound to get a blow on your brand’s reputation as well as sales. No matter how catchy the content of your website may be, it’s important for a user to find a proper way to follow and complete the ultimate task (the goal of your business). At no point in time, he should feel lost and must be clearly guided by the web design and structure at all places.

Analyse the flow and structure of your web site. Identify the flow challenges, ambiguous directions, roadblocks etc. and revise your web design overcoming these challenges to create a smooth and delightful user experience.

To conclude, every business owner must understand the ultimate fact that change is constant and they must swim with the tide. Sticking to an old web design can seriously hamper your business and brand in the long run. So keep yourself abreast with the latest trends in the web design world and be proactive to ride on the changes. Talk to our experts and analyze whether your website needs a revamp or not?

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Blog

Role Of Color Psychology In An App Design

Color Psychology

It’s tough for even great psychologists to really understand the human brain. It never fails to amuse and pops unanswered questions every now and then. Sometimes there is simply no reason or logic for a particular human behavior triggered through the brain. Talk about the color psychology. Interestingly, the human brain is more capable of noticing and remembering not so pleasant sights as compared to beautiful things. Let’s connect this attribute with visuals (basically app visuals). It basically means that the human brain will surely notice an ugly design or color scheme over a decent one and will most probably remember it. Colors used in an app form the basis of its visual appeal. If you get your color scheme correct, well and good. However, if you screw it up, then it can ruin even the most functional app.

Why Are Colors So Important?

Believe it or not, colors play a vital role in driving your emotions while using an app. Whenever we use any application there is a motive behind using it. It may be for financial transactions, entertainment, making reservations, checking scores etc. All these motives have a string of emotions attached to them. The color scheme of your app can either fuse with these emotions or may cause a negative impact towards these emotions.

Picking up an ideal color palette can be the game changer for your app. The color scheme, if picked up correctly can soothe down human anxiety, help them to relax, evoke happiness, calm down senses and can result in many other positives. On the other hand, if you mess up with the color scheme it can even provoke your user to bang the phone on the wall.

Here are a few colors and the emotions attached to each one of them:

White – Pure and simple, clean.
Black – Blunt and powerful, minimalist.
Red – Intense and important, focused.
Yellow – Energetic and positive, optimistic.
Blue – Calm and relaxed, trusted.
Green – Profitable and natural, earthy.
Purple – Luxurious and regal, trendy.
Orange – Bright and cheerful, childish.
Pink – Romantic and loving, feminine.

The Theory of Colors

The subject of colors does not top the charts of complexity but still demands a basic understanding. The basics of color scheme can be best understood through a color wheel. There are 3 primary colors – Red, Yellow, and Blue which can be mixed to bring out secondary colors – Green, Purple, and orange. White (in various proportions) is used to create tints and Black is used in various proportions to create shades.

theory of color

There are certain pre-defined standard color schemes which are most commonly used.

1. Monochromatic

As the name suggests, monochromatic color scheme refers to the use of a single base color. Monochromatic colors work well in creating a soothing and calming effect. It also portrays a neat, simple and clean design.

qatarairwaysImage:Qatar Airways

2. Analogous

Analogous color schemes are created from related colors that are not completely opposite to each other. One of the colors is used as a dominant color while others are used to enhance the scheme. This scheme is quite easy to pull off as compared to other schemes. The only trick is in deciding which vibrancy of color to use, as it will be exaggerated.

analogou

3. Complimentary

This color scheme uses opposite colors to complement each other in a design. The opposite colors contrast each other very strongly and that grabs eyeballs instantly. When using a complementary scheme, it is important to choose a dominant color and use its complementary color for accents. For example, when the human eye sees an object full of different hues of greens, a bit of red stands out very well.

4. Custom Color Scheme

It’s not really mandatory to stick to one of the aforementioned color schemes. There is every possibility that the nature of your app and the persona of your brand may demand a different color scheme altogether. Customizing your own color scheme is not rocket science and can easily be adapted. Adding a bright accent color to an otherwise neutral palette is one of the easiest color schemes to create. Having said that, it’s also one of the most visually impressive.

Adobe Color CC, previously known as Kuler is your savior while deciding color schemes. It makes color selection extremely easy. Each and every color on the palette can be individually modified or selected as the base color with a few clicks only.

Your Color Scheme Must Reflect Your Brand’s Image

The standard color schemes act only as a guide while choosing the color scheme for your application. The most important thing to remember during this process is that the colors should speak the language of your brand. Your brand name, goal, objective, and persona must all be reflected through the colors. Every academic study conducted on this topic supports the argument that it’s very important for the brand’s color to support and co-relate to the brand’s personality. The focus must be purely on the brand image and the selection of colors must run primarily around it.

Colors have a decisive impact on user behavior and their emotions. If your design philosophy isn’t taking this into account, you are making a big mistake. You may not need to be strictly abiding by the common color scheme standards, but you cannot neglect the importance of colors in the overall user experience process. Be brave, play around with different shades, tints, and color combos. Never stick with one combination and try different combinations. You can perform an A-B testing using different combinations. Talk to our team and get enlightened about how you can improve the user experience by implementing the perfect color scheme in your app design.

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Technology

Your Next App Should Ride On The 12-Factor App Methodology

12-Factor App Methodology

Often when the development of an app starts there is a particular approach towards development which is followed. The actions taken during the development process and the entire architecture revolves around this methodology. There are many  app methodology available for a developer to choose from. However, a new methodology has surfaced in order to develop apps that have a great structure and scalability. We are talking about the 12-Factor methodology and it will completely change the way your advancement towards the architecture of your next app.

First things first! What is the 12-Factor app methodology?

In simple terms, 12-Factor app methodology is a methodology for building software-as-a-service apps that has a clear connect with the basic operating system. It enables continuous deployment with maximum pace increasing the scalability significantly. It provides independency to the app over programming languages and backend services. The 12-Factor App Methodology was derived from Heroku (a Sales Force Paas platform).

Why do we need the 12-Factor app methodology?

If you don’t have a process and good platform, even the greatest of the codes is bound to tumble down. The complexity increases furthermore if you have diverse programming environments. The 12-Factor app methodology helps you to apply some constraints so that you can easily track, use and share applications.

The 12 factors

1. Codebase – One codebase tracked in revision control, many deploys

The first and the foremost factor is your codebase. Maintain all your code in one single repository. Just put it on Github right at the beginning only. Once you grow up substantially, you may have a distributed system with multiple apps talking to each other. At this point you can treat them as separate apps with their own code repositories However, it should still be in source control. The critical point to note here is that your application must be tracked with revision control, and that it sits in a central repository that is accessible to your developers.

2. Dependencies – Explicitly declare and isolate dependencies

All the environments within which your code runs has some dependencies. It may be a database, or an image processing library, or a command-line tool. At no given point in time your application must assume that all of these things will be in place on a given machine. Back the dependencies into your software system. Anything your applications rely on to run should be controlled and managed to minimize conflicts. Most languages and frameworks provide a natural way to do this. You list out all the versions of all the libraries you want to have in one place, and when the code is deployed, a command is run that downloads all the correct versions and stack them in place.

3. Configuration – Store configuration in the environment

Configuration should never be hardcoded. The reason behind this is because it relates to services, API keys, and database credentials. Not hard coding your application eliminates the risk of both production errors and production data leaks. You must rely on environment variables to handle this sensitive information rather than hardcoding the configuration.

4. Backing Services – Treat backing services as attached resources

A backing service is one that requires a network connection to run. This is a very popular example found in modern application development. The 12-Factor App methodology advises developers that the changes or modifications should occur without making any changes in the code. This factor is best handled by calling each backing service through an API, with credentials stored in a configuration file that lives in your runtime environment.

5. Build, release, run — Strictly separate build and run stages

Build, release, and run stages should be treated as completely different from one another. Automation and tooling will help to make this principle simpler.
This can be accomplished by using existing tools to fully automate your build. The idea here is that the build stage does a lot of heavy lifting, and developers manage it.

6. Processes — Execute the app as one or more stateless processes

It’s likely you will have your application running on many servers, because that makes it more fault tolerant, and because you can support more traffic. As a rule, you want each of those instances of running code to be stateless. In other words, the state of your system is completely defined by your databases and shared storage, and not by each individual running application instance. Stateless applications are designed to degrade gracefully. That means if a dependency fails, the app itself does not become a failure.

7. Port binding – Export services via port binding

All application services should be accessible via a URL. It happens automatically for web applications. This enables 12-Factor Apps to be fully self-contained, avoiding the need to rely on various methods of runtime injection in order to create web facing services.

8. Concurrency – Scale out via the process model

It basically means that when you scale up your applications or deploy applications to the cloud, the process must be very simple. It means you create new instances of the same app concurrently. Each process should be able to scale, restart, or clone itself when needed. This approach will improve the sustainability and scalability of your application as a whole.

9. Disposability – Maximize robustness with fast startup and graceful shutdown

Whenever you app starts or shuts down, the process must be very swift. Let’s say if the system shuts down automatically with an error, so it should clean up all the resources which it was using so that it can gracefully shut down. It should not maintain any state or take any data and burn in itself.

10. Dev/prod Parity – Keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible

It’s crucial to strike consistency in any process. This factor is solely based on consistency. When your environments are similar, testing and developing gets much simpler.
With this approach, fewer bugs will find their way into your production environment, since your test cases can be applied on production-level data.

11. Logs – Treat logs as event streams

Log files keep track of a variety of things, from the basic to the critical aspects. Logging is important for debugging and checking up on the general health of your application. At the same time, your application shouldn’t concern itself with the storage of this information. You should be capturing errors and sending them to an error reporting service.

12. Admin processes — Run admin/management tasks as one-off processes

Once you have a live app you will wish to do a lot of administrative tasks like data cleanup, running analytics for a presentation etc. When a developer does these tasks he should do it from a machine in the production environment that’s running the latest version of the production code. In other words, run one-off admin tasks from an identical environment as production. Don’t run updates directly against a database, don’t run them from a local terminal window.

Some of these elements hold a mystery while some looks very promising. The whole idea is that a robust and reliable architecture is the key to a happily running system. The 12-Factor methodology helps you to create that architecture which surprises you the least and functions very smoothly. Talk to our experts and get more info on how we use great development methodologies to create amazing apps.

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Technology

How To Develop An Amazing Hotel Mobile App?

Amazing Hotel Mobile App

So you are all set to take a leap forward and develop a hotel mobile app for your hospitality brand or group in order to take advantage of the many benefits of mobile guest engagement. So what should be your next step? The next step is to figure out the way to develop the best hotel app not only for your organization but for your guests as well. Here are a few tips that will help you to create an awesome mobile app for a hotel or hospitality business.

1. Join Hands With A Right App Development Agency

It’s really critical to identify an appropriate app development agency which can cater to your development needs. This is a very crucial decision and thus must be executed with utter caution. Most hoteliers are not app developers and have limited knowledge of the requirements. Therefore, it’s important to surround yourself with experts who know what they’re doing, and who have hopefully gone through the steps before. There is a huge difference between developing a mobile app for the hospitality sector as compared to creating an app for any other industry. Find a third-party hotel app developer that can address your specific needs and answer your questions to boost your confidence.

2. Gather And Use Inputs From Multiple Departments

All the players need to contribute in order to make a team successful. Every department needs to contribute: Sales & Marketing, Hotel IT, Operations, etc. The best hotel apps serve multiple purposes for every aspect of a hospitality business. You aren’t investing money in your app to end up with something that will just sit in the app stores with your logo on it. Set meetings with department heads to discuss the app development.

Collect feedback, set goals and define roles. Who will be responsible for managing what aspects of the development process? Discuss and get answers for questions like who will gather all of the images necessary? Who will upload digital menu content? Who will proofread the copy? Everything must be fully organized in order to ensure maximum engagement with all members of hotel management and staff.

3. Keep A Margin To Grow

When you have a thought of launching your mobile app, you tend to read a lot about the same. You would learn about all the latest features of mobile apps and will dream to utilize it in your app as well. But you need to think logically about the scope of the project. Outline your immediate needs, your overall timeline, and your available resources. Talk about your requirements and get the feedback from the development agency.

Certain hotel app features take a lot more time to develop than you would expect. Features such as hotel mobile key to allow guests to use smartphones to open hotel room doors can be time-consuming because of the necessity to coordinate activity between multiple third-party hospitality technology vendors.
Understand the fact that you will not be able to launch your app with all the features that you wish. However, you’ll be able to scale up as time goes on. It’s best in your interest that you keep a scope of growth. You want an app that you can update and expand in the future as you come to learn and understand mobile technology for hotels more completely.

4. Think About Revenue

Mobile hotel apps can be a great source of additional revenue. Generating revenue through hotel technology is of great interest to most hoteliers, and it’s obvious you’d like to think you’ll be able to generate ROI from a hotel app.
But how do you generate revenue through a hotel app?
There are numerous ways actually, and you have to decide which is best for your hospitality business. Here are a few of them:

  • Hotel reservation booking
  • Direct marketing and advertising via mobile
  • Allowing mobile in-room dining orders
  • Enabling reservation booking at spas and restaurants

If you are looking to get an app for your hotel/ restaurant or any hospitality venture, get in touch with us. Our industry experts will love to know your requirements and will shape up the best app for you.

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Technology

5 Amazing Ways To Create Fascinating Push Notifications

Push Notifications

Marketers have left no stone unturned in a quest to increase the user engagement with their brands. They take all possible efforts in connecting to the masses and increase their brand reach every day. Amongst all the arsenal possessed by the marketing spearheads, push notifications act as a supremo of the overall engagement strategy. This is especially due to the personalisation and targeting features available with push notifications. It’s a highly effective tool to blossom a close bonding between a brand and its customers.

However, the use of this strategy has grown multiple folds during the last few years which has led to a slump in the opt-in rates. Marketers have started using push notifications blindly without even understanding the core dynamics of this technique. Here’s how you can create effective push notifications and use them effectively to boost your opt-in rates.

1. Create An Alluring Welcome Message

Creating a strong first impression is very essential. Make your users feel welcomed and show them a friendly gesture. This gesture will ensure if the customer will return to your app the second time or not. It’s a proven fact that if a new user doesn’t return to your app within a week, then it’s very unlikely that he will return at all. Another important factor here is to select a tone, as there isn’t looking back. You will need to stick to your tone within all your communications. Your tone can be informal, witty, classy, sarcastic etc. , matching your brand persona.

Also, provide some initial freebies or offers so that the customer immediately feels valued. You can provide certain new joining bonus, rewards or provide refer a friend offers.

2. Remind Them With A Pleasant Message

For a majority of times, customers will not finish their last action and exit your app. It may be a purchase, a game, an unfinished video or anything else that your app offers. It’s critical to remind the customer about his last unfinished action so that he can take a step towards it. It is basically pushing the customer towards finishing the action cycle and thus increasing the conversion ratio. Also, more and more relevant content can be pushed towards the customer by monitoring their in-app behavior.

3. Awake The Inactive Users

It’s far too easy to re-engage an existing customer rather than creating a brand new user. Use of push notifications is an effective way to re-engage the inactive users. It’s a common trend that customers use an app heavily during the initial few weeks or 1 month. However, the usage slowly dries down and eventually results in an uninstall over a course of time. Thus, it’s better to take an action up front. Lure your inactive customers by providing them enticing offers which will push them to use your app again. Add a personal touch to these push notifications to make them feel more valued.

4. Implement Location Based Geo-Targeted Messages

Targeting is one of the strongest feature of push notifications and thus must not be neglected. It helps mobile marketers to bridge the gap between their marketing efforts and the real time customers. Having said that, these notifications must not be used for all the customers. Long time customers and most active users are the best-suited audiences for these messages as they have already created a trust factor with your brand. It can be a little uneasy for new users to share their location data with your brand and they even might feel some insecurity knowing that you are tracking their locations.

5. Acknowledgment Of Customer Loyalty Through A Reward Message

Creating an engagement is a very important aspect of marketing strategy. However, the real game is retaining the existing customers and ensuring that they are satisfied. It’s important that the customers are reminded time and again that they are valuable to your company and the company really appreciates their business. This acknowledgment can be made by certain reward notifications for the customers. An example – “Thank you for placing your order with us. Enjoy 20% off on your next order with Promo Code: 20XYZ”

Push notifications are an incredible marketing tool when used properly. But in order to best use push notifications, we need to understand the basics of when to send pushes, and how to create enticing push notifications. Your campaign goals are bound to be achieved within no time if you will follow some of the best practices related to push notifications. Talk to our experts today to know how to effectively plan your app marketing efforts.

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Blog Technology

Myths We Need To Break About Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

The news about Facebook shutting down its Artificial Intelligence program spread like wild fire recently. The news was shocking to most of the people but there were some faces carrying an “as expected” grin. Artificial Intelligence was not in good books of many tech heads and industry experts. Even though this technology was considered revolutionary, it had its share of opposition. The term Artificial Intelligence is known to almost everyone that has a touch base with technology. However, only a handful really understand the concept and use of Artificial Intelligence. This has sprouted a lot of myths around the newly developed concept. Let’s try to break a few of the common myths about Artificial Intelligence.

Myth 1: Artificial Intelligence Will Replace Humans

The biggest myth about AI is that it is a superior option as against human labor. With a misconception that AI can do everything that humans can do, people are panicking about human labor being replaced by cheap robots. People carry a misconception that robots powered by AI can replicate human skill sets and capabilities. However, Artificial Intelligence has far fewer skill sets as compared to humans and is designed only to complete certain specific tasks.

Another misconception regarding AI is that all the jobs that require low skill set will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Whereas, AI is designed to perform more complicated tasks such as monitoring, planning, repairing machines etc. rather than performing manual jobs that require a low skill set. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence lacks emotions and instinct which are cutting edge weapons for humans while performing any task.

Myth 2: A Conscious Machine Is Just A snap Away

The tech heads behind the development of AI are highly enthusiastic about one feature that is consciousness. The advancements in technology and rapid innovations in the field of Artificial Intelligence paint a very rosy picture for AI enthusiasts. Based on the current scenario, people believe that a machine that can think independently, showcase emotions & creativity on free will with a high level of consciousness is just around the corner.

But the fact is that we are still fancying our chances in understanding the neuroscience of consciousness. There has not been any remarkable breakthrough in this field and thus the aforementioned myth holds no ground. We might have scaled new heights in technology but our ability to render consciousness electronically is virtually nil. We still have an upper hand in the battle against robots.

Myth 3: Artificial Intelligence Is Growing At A Lightning Pace

Another myth related to Artificial Intelligence is that it’s growing at a rapid pace and soon will blow out the role of humans in performing daily tasks. The concept of AI originated nearly 60 years ago, and it’s only in recent years that we have cracked reasonable accomplishments. So you see the growth process was very tedious and took a long time.

There is still a lot more to achieve especially in understanding the neuroscience and collaborating it effectively with AI. So, there is still a good load of time before you see a robot booking a flight for your business trip rather than a personal assistant.

Myth 4: Artificial Intelligence Will Make Humans Stupid

People strongly believe that AI will make humans more dependant on machines for their day-to-day tasks. The dependency will escalate to a level where people will forget to perform these mundane tasks on their own. This will only make humans less smart or rather foolish. However, this is completely baseless. It’s not the first time that humans have relied on machines to perform some of their daily tasks.

We use calculators for long calculations, word processors instead of pen and paper, automobiles instead of manual commute etc. These have only eased our lives and has not impacted the intellect of human beings at any level. By relying on machines for these low-value tasks, we save time and energy that can be devoted to other higher value and complex tasks.

Myth 5: Artificial Intelligence Is The Soul Cause Of Job Cuts

AI is often blamed to be the only cause for the slump in job openings as well as layoffs. People believe that companies nowadays rely more on machines rather than humans for performing tasks which previously required human efforts. Well, let’s understand one fact; ‘AI is not all the technology’.
Over the decades, technology as a whole has seen major advancements which have resulted in the development of machines which can perform human tasks more effectively and efficiently. Also, the job scenario in any nation or the entire world is dependant on global as well as the domestic economy. So to blame the poor AI as the sole culprit is a bit harsh.

To Conclude

In no way, I’m rescuing Artificial Intelligence or supporting it. The motive behind highlighting these points is to clear the air a bit so that people can take a sigh of relief. One can not deny the fact that the recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence are significant. But on the same hand, the foreseen future of AI has a lot of challenges and unanswered questions. A lot of tech pundits are skeptical about the effective use of Artificial Intelligence. A machine surpassing human beings at all levels is still only a good Hollywood movie plot.

Talk to our experts to know more about Artificial Intelligence and other technological advancements that can aid your business.

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Web Design

How To Effectively Implement Long Scrolling While Designing Lengthy Web Pages?

Long Scrolling
Long Scrolling

A lengthy web page or infinite scrolling was considered bad from a design perspective and even from a user experience perspective. However, lengthy web pages have gained a good amount of popularity over the years. The exponential increase in the use of mobiles is the key propeller of long scrolling design. Smaller screens support long scrolling and thus an infinite scrolling design best suits for users on these devices.

Long scrolling helps in creating more engagement amongst users. The content appears more engaging when the user needn’t focus on navigation options on the page. Here are a few important rules which should be followed to effectively implement long scrolling while designing lengthy web pages:

1. Introductory Content Must Be Strong And Compelling

The common saying “First impression is the last impression” holds full value in case of a web page as well. The natural tendency of users makes them scroll down the page right when they land on a page. However, it’s very important that the most engaging and compelling content is always placed at the top of the page. If the content at the top is good, it increases chances of a user to scroll down the page. Use attractive images along with strong content to create interest among users.

2. Use A Sticky Menu

Even when you are creating a long scrolling web page it is important to provide the location and directions to the users. With no proper directions or lead to navigate around the page, they will most likely bounce off the page. Long scrolling becomes troublesome when the top navigation menu disappears on scrolling down the page. The user shouldn’t be scrolling all the way up to find navigation options. Use a Sticky Menu which will show the current location and will sit at a convenient location all the time.

3. URL Must Change Based On Scroll Position

One of the biggest challenges of long scrolling is the constant URL. The user’s scroll position is not reflected in the URL which makes it impossible for them to switch between devices and continue browsing from the same spot.
However, starting from HTML 5 it’s possible to change the URL without reloading the page. The history.pushState() function allows the change in the URL which enhances the user experience in terms of scrolling.

4. Provide Jump -To Options

It’s common for a user to get disoriented in a long scrolling design pattern. The amount of content is huge and is often broken down into chunks. It creates a problem when all the chunks contain equally important content. It’s possible that a user might have seen something important previously on the page and wants to go back to that content. However, he might not get a proper direction to reach back there. A “Jump To Option” is the solution to this problem. A Jump Down and a Jump Up option would solve the navigation problems for users.

5. Optimize The Page Loading Time

Another challenge with long scrolling pages is slow loading time. It’s very critical for any website to manage a decent or rather quick page load time else it can be fatal for their website. According to a research, 57% of the users exit from a web page if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds. Page-loading time should be optimized for long scrolling web pages using certain effective sequential loading techniques. Lazy loading is one such technique that enables users to access the most basic content swiftly. It loads only the basic content at the first go and while a user browses through the basic content, rest of the content on the web page is loaded.

In short, if the user’s browsing experience is delightful, then they won’t really mind scrolling down a long web page. Start thinking from a user’s perspective and design for their utter comfort. Talk to our design experts today and get the best advice on design aspects.

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Technology

How To Improve Your Mobile App Performance In Play store?

Everyone wants to climb up the ladder of search engines and wants to sit at the top of search results. Businesses spend a good fortune on SEO to better their Google rankings every day. Internet is literally the magic Genie which provides answers to all of our queries. Be it finding a nice fine dine restaurant, booking a flight, online shopping, checking match results, or something as basic as booking a cab. With time and growth of mobile usage, web applications have quickly found their better substitutes in mobile applications. Everything you ever wished and did through a web application can now be done through a mobile app.

There are more than 2.8 million apps available for users on Play Store. That’s a huge number. Literally HUGE! Imagine the level of competition amongst applications on Play Store. Web applications rely on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to better their rankings in Google search and similarly mobile apps rely on ASO (App Store Optimization) to make mobile app content rank high in Play store. Let’s find out the key factors that influence the Mobile App performance in Play store and how you can better your play store search ranking.

1. Mobile App Optimization

It’s a basic necessity to optimize your mobile app in order to get discovered by users. Using relevant content for your mobile app plays a vital role here. Title keyword and app description are the two pillars of your app content. Always use the primary keyword in app title. If your app title has the appropriate keyword related to your app, it increases your chances of getting discovered. However, if you use a very generic keyword which is used by thousands of other apps, Google will automatically direct or suggest the name of the most popular app instead of your app.

Secondly, use a very crisp yet strong description for your app. Your primary keyword must be used at least 3-4 times in the description but don’t try to stuff in keywords. The first 167 characters are counted as meta description for search engines and thus must be utilized wisely.

Use a tool to analyze keyword performances and popular keyword suggestions. App Annie is one such tool which proves to be really helpful in tracking the performances of your keywords. You can easily implement changes based on the results shown by App Annie. This will help in increasing organic downloads.

Mobile App Performance

2. Multimedia Plays A leading Role

We have mentioned this time and again that visuals are the best way of representation and are also the most attractive form of representation. When users land on your app install screen, greet them with attractive visuals in form of screenshots, pictures, videos etc. A video about the app is a good option to introduce users to your app. Screenshots can convince users about the mobile app design, flow, and structure.

Mobile App Performance

3. Use Social Media To Increase App Visibility

Social media platforms are tremendous launchpads to share and popularize your app. Share your content within Facebook and Linkedin groups so that it reaches to a maximum audience. Linkedin is more of a professional portal whereas FB is very informal. Thus, the content type and tone must match accordingly. Instagram has recently gained a lot of popularity and is bound to grow by leaps and bounds in terms of popularity. Instagram should also be focused when it comes to sharing your app content.

Mobile App Performance - Social Share

4. Responsive App Design

People will access your app through various devices like tablets, mobiles etc. that have different screen sizes and resolutions. It’s critical that your app is 100 percent responsive so that it provides flawless viewing and usability experience to users on all sorts of devices. Providing compatibility with all the devices will reduce chances of uninstallation and will increase app popularity.

Mobile App - Responsive Design

5. App Size

Another important factor influencing mobile app performance is the size of an app. Although space on a device is not an alarming concern for users these days, it still matters a lot that the app size is appropriate. If your app is too big, chances are that a user may become hesitant in downloading the app and will look for an alternative. There will also be situations wherein the install is abruptly canceled in the middle due to a long downloading time. The size must be kept just enough to provide a swift & smooth downloading and installing experience.

6. Reviews And Ratings

The most influential factor determining the popularity of your app is the Feedback & Ratings provided by the users. Your app will always rank high in the search bar if you have a high number of 5 ratings. The ratings of your app show how good your product is and will always encourage other users to install and use the app. Users rely heavily on ratings and feedback to know the real picture.
Exceptional ratings along with good reviews will boost their conviction for your app. As a company, the user reviews will help you to determine the flaws in your product. Use the reviews in fixing bugs, fine tuning the performance, and preparing the upcoming version of your app.

Mobile App Performance

The aforementioned factors can prove to be a game changer for your mobile app. In an app market that is full of similar applications, it becomes extremely difficult to attain high rankings in searches. Optimizing your app through ASO and following good practices of app optimization can be very helpful in this case. Reach out to our experts and discuss your requirements with them today.

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Blog

5 Content Marketing Hacks To Boost Traffic On Your Website

Content Marketing

If there is one thing that has the magnetic power to attract people towards your website, it has to be the content of your website. Content is literally the king of online marketing. If your website has strong, attractive, and engaging content, you are bound to get amazing web traffic leading to an increased conversion ratio. Having said that, it’s not that easy to create fascinating content as it is an art. So what differentiates between good marketing content and fantastic marketing content? In this article, we will discuss 5 content marketing hacks that will boost engagement and inflate your web traffic.

1. Define Precise Goals:

Setting specific goals is imperative and needs to be done right at the start. You must have a clear mindset regarding your target audience and what are your short term and long term goals. Narrow down your selection of channels for marketing the content. Zero down on a particular channel. So if you are focusing on Facebook then set targets regarding reach, likes, shares, followers etc. Also, set time-based targets like weekly, monthly, quarterly and so on.

2. Share Your Content Multiple Times:

Never restrict to sharing your content only once a day. It makes no sense to share your content one time a day as it reduces the chances of reaching the maximum audience. Recirculating your content ensures you reach to your followers. Decide specific times of a day to post content. You can pre-schedule your posts easily. Following a particular schedule makes it easy for your followers to follow your posts and helps to generate high engagement.

3. Use Attractive Info-graphics:

Time and again we have heard that visuals create a better impact than any other mode of communication and this is a scientific fact. A good infographic will always be a visual treat for your visitors. People will always choose a fine infographic as a medium of communication rather than a long paragraph of written content. People don’t really read everything on the internet. Rather, they glide through the web pages quickly scanning the information. This makes infographics a much more practical approach to impart information and communicate with visitors.

4. Create Evergreen Content:

It is always a bright idea to create content which seems fresh throughout the year or even after that. But, unless you are a news website, it’s hard to find such content. Such type of content helps in generating constant web traffic. It’s an important aspect of online content marketing which often gets overlooked. Play smart with your content and don’t use words which restrict the freshness of your content. For example: Suppose you are creating a blog post for your travel website. You choose the title of your post as “ 5 awesome places to visit in 2017”. This post will lose its charm when the clock ticks into 2018. However, a title like “5 awesome places to visit this year” removes restriction and keeps the content fresh for any point in time.

5. Content Optimization

The core objective of your content creation is to get more web traffic and increase engagement. This requires a lot of content optimization so that you can reach out to as many web users as you can. Implement SEO basics in your content to make your web pages search engine friendly. Add relevant meta tags, titles, descriptions etc. in the content. Use effective and common keywords to increase your page rankings through content. One of the other important tasks related to page optimization is to conduct a page analysis. Ensure that your content has good readability score and enough internal links.

Online marketing efforts revolve around a sites’ content. If there is no proper focus on constantly improving the quality of your content, it may lead to low levels of engagement and web traffic. This will eventually be drastic to your business goals. Try implementing these simple hacks and monitor the changes. For expert advice and advanced level online marketing strategies reach out to our experts.

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UX

5 Mobile UX Fails Hampering Your Ecommerce Store

Ecommerce Store
Ecommerce Store

Optimizing your ecommerce store for mobile isn’t a choice anymore instead it is a requisite now. If you have not done it yet, then do it now. A recent study by the search engine giant, Google reveals that users are likely to turn into customers if they are treated with a good mobile user interface. And the reverse effect is also on the cards if a glitchy UX is at their disposal.
This is a serious issue to address for the business owner like you who surely don’t want to lose the potential buyers because of a faulty user experience. Or can you afford it?
Here, I throw another statement depicting the growth and the use of mobile-optimized websites that’ll make you do efforts in restoring the hampered performance of your mobile ecommerce store- 78% of the total searches done on mobile for local business convert into purchases.
Convinced? Surely you are.
While you optimize your ecommerce store for mobile, there is a high probability of you ending up with these UX fails. Gain insights and try to avoid them.

1. Confusing Layout

The things in mobile don’t work the same way as they do in the case of a website. Presenting the information to the users on a small mobile screen isn’t easy. Ecommerce websites may have hundreds of pages, which ask for a well-thought navigation and search. Knowing what users want is very important. For an ecommerce store, it goes like this,
Find a product > Details > Shipping information > Buy now > Checkout
If you could provide these details in a clean format to your mobile device users then it is job done. Else, be prepared for quick abandoning. It is advisable to keep things as simple as possible with mobile-friendly navigation options and smart search bar.

2. Bad Placements

You can’t just carry forward the feel of a desktop version of a website to its mobile counterpart. Both of them have their own characteristics and trying to mix them up can mess it up completely. The elements as placed on desktop version can’t go directly to a mobile optimized website. There is a difference between a mouse click and a finger tap.
The size and space around the tap targets should follow the standards because fingers aren’t as precise as mouse pointers. It is quite annoying when you end up tapping something that’s unintended on multiple occasions- leading to frustration that can drive your users away.

3. Replicating The Desktop Forms To Mobile

It’s understandable that you need user as well as shipping information, but filling those long forms that work on desktops is such a pain when we talk about mobile device users. You can’t just replicate the desktop forms for mobile device users. They need to be modified with only the necessary fields.
You could also include an option of social login for quick information gathering and registration. This can play in your favour as you get the desired set of information while the users don’t have to go through the typing phase for filling up the entire form.

4. Checkout Optimization Failure

For customers to be happy you need to take care of mobile checkout. With a limited display, you need to play it smartly. Display the information on the checkout page that really matters. Delivery and shipping information should be pronounced and if you ship internationally then your checkout should detect the right locale and show the currency in the right format.
Without too much fuss, the checkout should be distraction-free, no ads and no related products. It should just review the items bagged by the user, cost to be paid and payment options. Additionally, guest checkout option can help you steal the show.

5. Cluttered UI

The price paid for a good mobile interface won’t go in vain instead it will only help in providing an excellent experience to the users. However, it doesn’t help every time but it certainly matters. You need to look out for typography, font size, color combination, white space, headings and more when you design the mobile UI. Plus, the placements of elements like buttons, links, product images and other graphics should be thoughtful ensuring that they don’t muddle up the entire UI.

To Conclude

Mobile has its own feel, which can’t be compared to that of a website. Think about offering a seamless experience to the users and not getting hung up with the less important aesthetic appeal. A good UX helps users trust your website that eventually results in a purchase. In the end, that’s what is desired. Reach out to our experts today and get all your mobile UX requirements addressed.