Believe it or not! Keeping the old website for a longer period will not earn you profit instead, it will downline your user-engagement graph and no potential leads will be generated. Also, it will affect the Google ranking.

Website redesigning is crucial for your business. Hence, you need to consider the new trends for redesigning and bid goodbye to the old and obsolete design. Amidst web redesigning, the UI improves, web performance improves, Google ranking improves resulting in more traction and strong online presence. But, these things only take place when a proper strategy is planned and executed keeping users’ perspective in the centre.

Below are the features you need to consider before redesigning your website;

Mobile-Friendly: If you’ve not combined this to the list, please do. It is the principal criteria for website redesigning. It is a myth that mobile-friendly means developing another website for mobile. It is surely making your business content and design accessible in precision with both web and mobile. In this mobile era, 90% of the users time is consumed on mobile internet. Examining the user behaviour, Google introduced mobile-first index algorithm back in September 2015 which means that now mobile is also one of the major factors to uplift the google ranking of your business website.

Easy Navigation: After mobile-friendliness, it is website navigation. Pretending that while travelling to any favourite destination, you have a travel guide that assists you the significant places and indicates the directions making your journey easy and fun-filled. Similarly, you also need to ensure easy website navigation helping users easy touring and glance at your services. To achieve this, your website needs a navigation menu either at the top or as the navigation slide. Navigation slide aka hamburger menu is less useful compared to the menu displayed at the top. Users simply spare 10 secs in your website and in that duration they like to glance over all the major elements which the slide cannot show. Users must click on that button to slide the menu and select where to go which is not the case in the top menu. The top menu utterly lists all the major headers with a drop-down symbol to make users’ experience smooth and fast.

Optimize load time and improve web performance: While you think of website redesigning you look forward to speed and performance. That is one point you need to have a complete focus on. From the users’ viewpoint, an improvement in the website speed from 8 to 2 seconds can boost your conversion rate by 74%.To optimize the loading time, you initially ponder upon image compression. Images are one of the main reasons influencing website loading time. There are several image compression tools available around the web which won’t let you compromise on the quality. The secondary is unnecessary coding. Yes, this is another reason. Countless times due to unnecessary coding or unstructured coding your website stops working but do you know that it also affects the loading time. For example; the images you have uploaded on the website is in KBs still, it takes time to load. Why? Writing a lengthy or irrelevant coding lines takes time to iterate the entire function and response time increases. Attempt not to include unnecessary coding lines to avoid blunders and improve web performance.

Keep It Simple: The times are gone when a business website was flooded with loads of content and design. But now it’s about simplicity, elegance and communication- how well your site can interact with users. Web designers assure that they pick sober colours that reflect the company’s domain. For instance; Blue is the colour for corporates, bank and medical. That’s why the websites of several corporates, banking sectors, and hospitals are designed using a shade of blue. Moving to the forms or precisely contact forms, It turns out to be a tedious job for users when filling forms become an endless task. Therefore, it is really important for you to know which information you need from the users and eliminate the irrelevant one. Building a form with fewer UI components will not only save users’ paramount time but will also give them a space to tap and type. In plain words, the Keep It Simple principle teaches us to make the design easy and simple for users to understand and use.

Use Call-To-Action (CTA): CTA plays a significant role in uplifting business performance. CTAs can be in whatever form, any size and any context. For example; A submit button designed in the contact us page notifies the company via email about the message a client has dropped in. The foremost purpose of using CTA is to analyze users’ behaviour. Hence, placing it on different web pages help professionals to know their users better.

Social Media Plugins: It is important for you to include social media plugins on the website. If it’s not on the website redesign, do add it. While touring the site, users also go over your social media channels directly from the website to learn about your activities and marketing campaigns. To add social media plugins on your website, you can either place it at the top or at the bottom. But rather at the bottom because the upper section is covered with the company’s logo, contact information, and menu headers and thus, users may avoid a look at it. Attempt adding all the social media plugins you are active in with a catchy one-liner to grab users’ attention.

Contact Information is a Must: It is surprising to know that there are business sites which do not display the company’s contact information. If you don’t add the contact number or email id how will a user be able to reach you? It is seen that 44% of the total visitors leave the website if the contact information is not found. If you hadn’t added in your previous site don’t forget to add it during redesigning. You can either place it at the head of the homepage or display it in large fonts in the website footer. The choice is yours!

Add a Landing Page: You understand it well what your business matters to you. Don’t you? Adding a landing page is the following best element for you to generate good leads. Landing page attracts users to land on your website and glance over the services you provide. Therefore, it should be crisp, short, visually appealing with content highlighting the unique selling points of your business.

Personalization: Yes, it time to adopt the new component on your website which is called Personalization. Personalization enhances the user-engagement rate 2X. But that does not mean you design a separate page for each individual to give a different experience. Personalization means how you interpret your website knowing your users’ interest which certainly does not includes a highly technical or expensive approach. You can personalize your website per language, by country or region selected.

The points mentioned above for website designing are thoroughly analyzed from both business and users’ perspective. To incorporate it or not on the list entirely depends upon how your website is performing and your business domain. Although yes, website redesigning is a must to keep your website up-to-date with the latest trends. Nevertheless, Ouriken makes your it easier by providing you with the best website designs and is the technology partner that best fits your needs.

Know More

Progressive web apps

Are Progressive Web Apps the Future for Websites?

Progressive Web Apps have become quite the buzz phrase in the web development world over the past year. Because of this, many people keep asking, are Progressive Web Apps the future for websites? That is a good question and as a website design company, we wanted to give our insights on the topic.

What are Progressive Web Apps?

Progressive web apps are one of a kind in that they are similar to a standard mobile app but are based on modern web capabilities. Basically, they are a combination of the two technologies that was devised by an engineer at Google named Alex Russell. Consider it as a mobile app that is delivered via the web. They have been in use for around two years while so far, they have not been used in large numbers, progressive web apps have been adopted as a useful option for startups, smaller businesses, and recently a few bigger brands.

While a mobile app (or native app) runs as its own piece of software, a progressive web app is alike to a website that can support features such as a home screen icon, push notifications, geolocation, an offline mode, splash screen, background synchronization, and can even access media features on a device such as the camera, audio, and video.

As many businesses are now presently focusing on customers on mobile devices, the question becomes how best to do this? Basically, there are three alternatives: build a responsive website for both desktop and mobile users, build a mobile (native) app, or build a progressive web app (PWA).

Pro’s of Progressive Web Apps

Easy access – Native mobile apps require to be downloaded and installed. A PWA can be seen with a Google search bar and works on-demand without using up memory or data on the mobile device. Possible even more relevant is that a PWA works on all devices while a native app has to be designed for both iOS and Android operating systems.
Economical – Progressive web apps are faster to create and update, therefore the cost is less than a native app.
Offline content – You can reach content offline with a progressive web app. Native apps cannot reach data while offline.
Security – As most sites are now built using HTTPs, you can easily originate a PWA in this secure environment which is a big plus if you intend on having users information contact details, credit card data, or other sensitive data.
Easier to modify – When you update a standard mobile app and you make an adjustment you also must reach the app store and work with them about the update or modification. This process can take some days or a week. With a PWA you can just get a fix or update and then it is life.
Mobile-first approach – Another big advantage of a PWA is they are created on a mobile-first approach for connecting with customers. Twitter, Pinterest, and Starbucks have all transitioned to successful PWA’s in addition to the native apps and have seen improved ad revenues and engagement on the PWA’s.

Con’s of Progressive Web Apps

Speed – While there has been progressing with PWA’s as to how data is cached along with providing Java scripts and service workers to run independently from the main thread, if you have a very passive or weak connection then there can be difficulties. The Accelerate Mobile Pages Project that Google has been behind had certainly helped with PWAs, but they aren’t always going to be as quick as native apps. However, this is one perspective that could soon change.
Missing features – There are Some mobile device features that native apps can use but progressive web apps cannot like alarms, phonebook access, making improvements to system settings, and access to hardware sensors.
Cannot use platform features – Native apps are suitable to use specific benefits from either the iOS or Android platforms like Apple’s ARKit, native graphics API’s, or Google’s Visual Core.
The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that quite a few well-known brands are initiating a move from native apps to PWA’s and after seeing at the positive features versus the negative features it is easy to assume why. Are Progressive Web Apps the future for websites? We feel that websites will constantly have a place in the world as long as desktops are connected but PWA’s are surely making a case to replace some native apps on a business level because of lower costs and more advantages to the users.

Be sure to check back every week for great new Ouriken blog articles.

Know More

Email Marketing

Everything you need to know about Email Marketing!

You own an Email Address. Similarly, 4.4 BILLION people worldwide own an Email Address. That’s roughly 54% of the World’s Population using Emails

Email is considered to be one of the most preferred Channels for a business to personalize their communication with their Consumer or Potential Customer.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the act of conveying a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its widest sense, every email sent to a possible or current customer could be regarded email marketing. It ordinarily involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is intended to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Marketing emails can be sent to a purchased lead list or a current client database. The term ordinarily refers to sending email messages with the intention of improving a merchant’s relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, obtaining new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something instantly, and sharing third-party ads.

Email marketing is one of the most effective approaches to reach and engage your audience. In fact, the value of email marketing is so great that we suggest most businesses develop a strategy for implementation by 2020.

The importance of email marketing

01.Customization

Email marketing is essential for many reasons. For example, it is significant because it is extremely versatile. You can make the emails that you send to promote your business so that they suit whatever need that you might have. You can target many diverse social groups and modify the content accordingly. Since the business world is regularly changing, you have to be able to respond instantly to any changes that the marketing experts present.

02. Emails are Accessible on Mobile

Emails are Accessible on Mobile. There are 300+ Smartphone Users in India. This number is predicted to hit 440+ Million by the year 2022. The 3rd most frequently performed a task on a Smartphone is checking Emails. When people are waiting in line at a Coffee Shop, travelling, or just about to sleep they check their emails. Indians check their emails on their phone an average 3 times a day.

03. Emails are Cheap

Also, another reason why this kind of marketing is significant for any business and should not be overlooked and disregarded is that it is very inexpensive. You can consolidate it into any kind of marketing plan that your business might have, without possessing any additional costs. This way, if you get anything from email marketing, you will, fundamentally, get something for nothing. Generating profit, without spending any money, is something that every serious business will take into concern.

04. Smart and Automated

Let’s take an example

Suppose you own a Gym Setup. You have received a lead of Amit showing interest in signing up for your Gym Services. You decide to drop him an email with some details. After 48 Hours Amit has still not replied back. What would you do? Stop Mailing | Send Another Mail
You should follow-up by sending a second mail. This follow up mail can be sent out automatically. It’s called a Workflow or Drip Marketing.
Drip marketing is a communication approach that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to clients or prospects over time. These messages usually take the form of email marketing, although other media can also be utilised.

Brevo

Brevo empowers businesses to build and develop relationships with their customers.

Brevo was built for you! Their humble beginnings as a digital agency opened their eyes to the needs of growing businesses: marketers need tools that can efficiently scale as they mature. Most marketing suites are created for large corporations and come with an enterprise-level price tag.

That’s why Brevo was created. Serving small and medium-sized businesses is in their DNA and everything about their features, support, and pricing is designed with you in mind. Whether you need to maintain email campaigns, send text messages, or save time with automation, we can assist you to do it efficiently, on-budget, and in your language.

Brevo offers cloud-based digital marketing tools to over 50,000 growing organizations around the world. Which is Available in Six different languages and over 30 million plus Text Messages send per day.

Mail Jet

Mailjet is a cloud-based, all-in-one email service provider (ESP) that enables you to send both transactional and marketing email campaigns. Create your account in some clicks and send your first message in seconds!

Mailjet’s platform allows you to designs beautiful emails in their drag-and-drop editor, ensure reliable mailing on their safe and robust infrastructure hosted on Google Cloud Platform, and monitor & optimize key analytics like open rates, bounce rates, spam hits, and much more.

Why should you use Mailjet?

Mailjet is one of only email service providers allowing a centralized service that lets you send both transactional and marketing emails from the same account and platform. Their pricing depends only on emails sent, as they do not charge for simply sustaining a large contact list, and helps your business as it grows.

They have a large team devoted to improving your emails land in the inbox, including our Deliverability experts who can not only advise you on your methods but also have long-term relationships with ISPs like Gmail and Outlook. This helps assure that valid emails taking off through our servers always land in the inboxes, despite ISP.

From a developer perspective, Mailjet’s flexible API makes their platform really easy to integrate with to ensure your emails are integrated perfectly into your product or service.

MailChimp

With more than 15 million customers sending about 1 billion emails each day, MailChimp’s got to be doing something right. It’s the most successful email marketing service out there, perfect for beginners and more advanced users. For solopreneurs and small businesses with less than 2,000 subscribers, MailChimp grants a free option.

MailChimp takes their Freemium offering earnestly and provides exceptional service to all their customers, no matter what they’re paying—or not paying. You can chat with a representative online or get general questions answered by reading the content available on their website.

Also key to MailChimp’s success is how simple it is to use. It offers an intuitive dashboard that clearly displays all important features, a step-by-step guide that walks you through the email campaign-making process, and a drag-and-drop email template editor that makes it easy to dive into email marketing without any former knowledge or skills.

Ouriken Blogs

How to Make your Online Meetings more Engaging?

3 Steps to ensure that your Cloud Data is Secured

101 Guides to Cyber Security

The Most Important Things To Consider While Redesigning Your Website