The Necessity of a Responsive UI

So important has Responsive design become today that the demand for responsive designers has surged. Any website today has to be responsive not only to attract the customer but also to compete with the rest in its category. The main reason why responsive design has grown is because of the increase in the use of mobile by young and old alike. In this article, we look at what other benefits are driving businesses towards responsive web design.

1. Better User Experience

Customers today access pages from different devices. This means that your web page should be highly adaptable so that the customer finds it convenient to use it the way he or she wants to irrespective of the device. Responsive websites fit the bill here as they have more call-to-action buttons with customized scrolls enabled for faster and better viewing.

2. Single URL

Your website can no more have one URL for your desktop and another for your mobile site. Responsive

web design works with a single URL. The content, images and video on your mobile and desktop will be the same, just that the whole of your website now adapts to the device that you’re using. This also means that you need to upload your content just once, and it gets automatically updated on all the channels.

3. Target Multiple Channels

With a responsive web design, you get to target multiple channels. Across different markets, you can target customers with not two or three, but a single website. This is a unique advantage that you get with a responsive website as it is mobile-friendly and multi-device compatible.

With a responsive website, you also get much higher revenues than you would normally get with a website that is not responsive. This obviously means responsive websites have higher conversion rates and in turn, attract more customers. Now this also means you get noticed by search engines and are ranked higher.

Building the Complete Payment Solution

If you are planning to build a payment solution for your business, then i need to make sure that it satisfies all the requirements of one. Building a payment solution is different from building an app or a solution for the entertainment or the travel industry. This is because to use a payment solution, a customer needs to trust it more than the established players out there.

This means that your website needs to have the right security credentials for it to be taken seriously by the user. This brings us to the first requirement, namely the PCI-DSS certificate. PCI-DSS is short for payment card industry - data security standard and is the security compliance that is accepted and recognized by almost all payment card users as a benchmark for security. It provides a framework for the prevention, detection and proper reaction to security incidents.

When you make a payment solution, you need to ensure that the user has multiple options to make his or her payment. Does your payment solution offer support for all debit, credit cards? Does it support Cash cards, netbanking and mWallets? Does it support email invoicing and IVR payments?

Your payment solution needs to provide the user with the ability to make fast and secure payments without a website. This is made possible with email payments where you can just send an email to your customers asking them to click and pay. Also make sure that your payment solution has mobile payments integrated with intelligent APIs that determine your handset and browsing in real time.

MPI Integration is another important feature that you need to enable if your online payment solution is to attract customers. The MPI feature enables your payment solution to run on any technology or platform. And once you incorporate validation functionality with the merchant web pages and make password authentication and cardholder verification integral to your payment process, you can well claim to have a complete payment solution.

For all us Ecommerce Experts! How do you Improve your Conversion Rate?

Ecommerce businesses differ only in the size of their stores, the priority remains the same: to convert new visitors into buyers. This might seem easy at first but is easier said than done. Even the best known ecommerce brands have a conversion rate of little above 4% and a shopping cart abandonment rate average of 67.4%, we are looking at how lesser known brands and SMBs can increase consumer trust and ensure better conversions.

Why do People Abandon Shopping Carts?

More than 50% of the respondents of a survey (Getelastic) said they were saving items for later when asked why they were window shopping. 55% said the shipping costs were too high and 40% said the shipping and handling costs were revealed too late. The well known axiom of consumer psychology is “higher the AOV (average order value), lower the product page effectiveness “. For those of you thinking what product page effectiveness may mean, it is the number of add to cart visitors to product pages.

The Most Common Reasons of losing Customers are:

1. Unclear navigation

2. Too many products on a page

3. Ads, pop us and other elements that distract the customer

Here are Some Effective Conversion Strategies:

1. Checkout Experience - The first thing to do is to ensure that your checkout experience is completely linear since 92.6% of the people say that visuals are the top influential factor affecting their purchase decision. This is because products are assessed within 2 minutes and a judgement is made whether to make a purchase or not.

2. Avoid Distractions - The next step would be to make sure that during the checkout, objects have not been made clickable, making the visitors to get distracted and leave. Other confusing things that confuse customers and therefore must be avoided are, ambiguous words such as ‘proceed’ , ‘continue’, ‘apply’ buttons that aren’t optional etc.

3. Clear Descriptions - To streamline the process for the customer, you could have descriptions for form field labels with clearly worded messages on the landing page to facilitate well defined choices for the user. Also, make sure that fields for expiry date, credit/debit card details etc have visually reinforcing design techniques.

4. Ensure Product Videos - 57% of the respondents said they were more confident when they watched a product video in advance and 52% said they were willing to stay on a website longer because the retailer made product videos available to them.

5. Product Reviews- 85% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase and an almost equal number trust the reviews to make a purchase according to them. So, make sure your product gets good reviews online.  

Grow your Business with Magento

If you are running a business in your city, then you must be knowing that the easiest way to popularise your business and take it to the next level is to make it accessible for everyone. But how is it done? Through ecommerce of course! Ecommerce makes it possible for your brand to be known just as well in Kuala lumpur as it is in Karachi. Just that you need the right platform for it, namely Magento. So what are the advantages that Magento gives you?

1. Magento Themes that Facilitate Responsive Design

If you want to develop an ecommerce website that attracts the attention of the consumer, you need to make sure that it has a design that is responsive and image-rich. But many ecommerce websites have designs that are full of images, do they sell? Well, visuals alone won’t do. They need to be aligned with your core business functionality.

2. Integration with Catalogs and Payments

Building an ecommerce website is more complex than building any other website for the simple reason that it needs to be integrated with a lot of associated modules that vary in their functions like catalog and inventory management, product pricing and payment integration.

The last part is particular important for you to be able to build trust with your customers. Magento over the years, has built a reputation for being reliable, secure and efficient in terms of payment integration. Social media integration is what enhanced the reach of your website and Magento does a fabulous job here too.

3. Easy Customization with Visibility

Now how do you ensure that your ecommerce website has more functionality and add-ons than the rest? This is made possible via customization options. Magento enables easier cloud and payment customization options giving you the ability to build the website that is perfectly aligned with your requirements.

As for visibility, you can heave a sigh of relief as SEO tools and features are fully integrated into the Magento framework to help you optimize your website and enhance the product and category pages as well. Well, with all this, why would you look for another platform?

The Essentials of Mobile App Success

If you are thinking of building a mobile app for your business, then you need to analyse your business and its competitors, see how a mobile app can build returns for you and then choose the right partner to build the mobile app. This article looks at what you need to ensure in order to cement your position in the league of top 10s in the app market.

Why is an App Recommended?

With more than two-thirds of the world accessing the internet via their mobiles, it has become imperative for businesses to target this market aggressively. Firstly, what is an app? It is an application that is downloaded and installed on a mobile, rather than being rendered by a browser.

  The advantage with an app is that it is user experience-oriented and your app gets identified exclusively with your brand. And when you build an app that really reflects your business and what it does, the reach is even more profound.

So, what are the essential’s for app success?

1. Get your Objective Right

What are you exactly looking for when you build an app? Is it sales, increasing brand value or opening a new advertisement front for your company? As a business, you are obviously targeting multiple points when you are building an app, but make sure that your app is firmly aligned with the core message of your business.

2. Integrate your App and Make it Feature-Rich

Every potential user is looking for an app that is rich in features and makes a seamless transition from one function to another. Integrate your mobile app with modules with functionality that is closely related with it. Social media plays a great role in widening your reach and you need to make full use of it in order to maximize your gains.

3. Build a Bond with the Customer

Incentivize the subscribers of your app by creating simple loyalty programs that are easy to use. This gives your users a reason to stay on your app and use it more often, This also creates an intimacy for your app from the user’s pt of view.

How you can Ensure the Best UX for your Mobile Website

Any business that wants to increase its sales or meet its ambitious sales targets looks at capitalising on the mobile market today. This has only increased with the surge in mobile usage across Asia and the developing economies. But not all websites that are released taste success. Even those that see increased customer traffic in the beginning are not able to maintain their numbers consistently.

The Way Out?

So, how does one beat the insane levels of competition that exists in the mobile website market, be it Android or iOS? This can be ensured only by focussing on developing the website that offers a wholesome experience. This is possible only if your website offers something noticeably different in terms of design, functionality and user experience.

So How do you Ensure a Better Experience?

Only websites that offer something radically different on terms of user experience can expect to gain traction in the market. So, how does one ensure a better user experience? A better UX and responsive design are closely intertwined.

When you ensure a responsive design for your mobile website, you’re automatically creating an experience that adapts itself according to the resolution and size of the device that the customer is using. Without a responsive grid, this would not be possible.

Tools and Developers Matters

To build a mobile website that is truly responsive and guarantees your users a better user experience, you need to focus on building your website with the right tools available in the market. For this, you need to make a thorough study of the UI design tools to build a mobile website.

The second thing is about the choice of your developer. Only a developer who has expertise and experience in building mobile websites across platforms can give you a user experience that is on par with or better than the best in the business.

What we’ve seen is but a small part of ensuring a neat UI/UX for your mobile website. For more, watch this space!

The Elements that make a Great Web Design Culture

The importance of a website to your company’s presence and brand appeal cannot be overstated. It would be apt to describe the website as the online face of your organization, albeit one that builds your brand name a thousand times more effectively than any advertising strategy, when done properly.

User Experience Matters

What experience the users get when they use your application determines the image that they will have of your company. This is why it is important to do something that creates an instant chord or an impact with the user, without hurting about the user’s common sense of course. This means that you’ve got to be as

responsive as possible, because only responsive design provides you with the environment that gives wings to your creativity.

Getting the Basics Right

Having a good web design is all about getting the basics right. And by basics here we mean

• Uncluttered front-page
• Neat layout
• Brevity in content and
• Clear and unobtrusive icons

Sometimes, the smaller things matter a great deal in web design. When you don't give them the attention they deserve, they can break the much valued customer-relationship which is the bedrock of your business. And concise content, neat layout and proper icons in their place, all fall under these basics that are so essential to ensuring customer ‘non-dissatisfaction’!

Is your web Design Self-Explanatory

Your site design and navigation should be intuitive. In other words, the user should not be in a dilemma as to what to choose or do. If the user automatically doesn't know where to go from point A to B, then that means your site is not structured properly.

This also holds true for content. It has to be absolutely clear as to what it implies. Make sure there are 0 question marks for the user.

Embrace White Spaces and Test as often as Possible!

White spaces are great for the eye. A neat visual experience is what you should aim at and white spaces serve this purpose like no other. When you have sufficient white space on your web page, the user is in a much better position to receive the information that is on the screen. It also reduces the cognitive load on the visitor.