Month: October 2016

The Economics of Websites: Is Your Website A Profitable Affair?

Posted on by bold-knuth

Website design and development calls for a tug of war between quality and cost. Which side should you support?

 

While keeping a tab on your expenses is important, focusing on quality features and tools gets you the real ROI.

 

Gone are the days when a website served as a “Good to Have” decorative value for business with basic functionality and boring interface. Switch to present and the website has transformed into a “Mean Marketing Machine” to generate traffic, leads and ultimately customers. It has to create lasting impressions with stunning outlooks and interactive features.

 

 

When would you call your website a profitable investment?

 

Choose your answer:

 

A) When you generate a decent looking low-cost version with basic functionality without the aesthetic frills. Less expenditure, less risk approach.

 

B) When you generate a website that is high on user experience and social integration. Upfront high cost for quality benefits later approach.

 

There are many individuals, start-ups and small businesses that easily opt for answer “A” as they are on bootstrapped budgets and have other business priorities to attend.

 

But the option that makes sense if you are there for the long run, is definitely “B” as it is not only a good strategy but also covers up the investment cost sooner or later with steady flow of business and client nurturing.

 

What affects the cost of Website?

 

The Website Costing is dependent on multiple factors that should be accounted for in your budget-planning phase. Apart from the approximate ballpark figure that you have in mind for website design, consider the following inputs that add up to your existing budget:

 

  • Need for features and components
    This includes the number of pages, videos, events,     slide show or photo gallery with content categorization along with the stress on overall look and feel of the website. The more demanding you are as a client with the website specifics, the more it translates into costing as it demands revisions and designers’ time and resources

 

  • Need for bells and whistles
    In today’s digitally social times, websites need to be highly responsive and customizable with content management system, blogs, social links, feeds, SEO, online strategy, lead engagement, maintenance, backup services and many other peripheral services that add to the overall user experience of your customers

 

  • Expertise level of Web Designer
    This particular factor has a massive impact on the websites that click and the ones that totally trash.
    The designers, who have a reputed name in your location or offer exceptional support service over Skype and other platforms, should make to your shortlist. It is better to pay hefty sum to an experienced designer who understands his craft and your industry rather than one who charges peanuts and puts you doldrums.

 

  • Your business size
    The magnitude of your business has a direct impact on the total costs for your website design with     different price range for startups, non-profits, SMEs, Mom & Pop shops and large multinational corporations.

 

This difference is due to the ability of each of these businesses to spare budgets as well as the purpose they need to serve through their website. Of course, the features and content requirement also vary, leading to very individualistic costing methods for different business segments.

 

Addressing the “Elephant in the Room” – Why you need to spend more for a Website?

 

A website for any business is the ideal platform to attract new customers, engage the existing ones and give a glimpse as to how the products/services offered are superior over other players. With such an important task to be accomplished, Websites better be made by experts to lend it professional touch and productive worth.

 

Here are few critical reasons that defend the case for better (and sometimes “over”) budget for effective website design:

 

  • Generates ‘meaningful’ ROI
    There is     distinct difference in the earnings that you can expect from a novice looking site and the one that has many ways to capture leads and generate sales.A basic website might get you $2-$3 (or probably nothing, if it’s too basic) for every $1 invested, while a well designed and interactive site through its content and features like landing page may reap $9-$10 for every $1 invested. This makes it a strong premise to forgo short-term gains in form of cheap websites in lieu of long-term steady ROI.

 

  • Allows integrations and customizations
    One of the biggest advantages of shelling out extra money on your website is the ability to have integrations with 3rd party apps, social media, in-house/cloud software like CRM and tons of content and format customizations. This flexibility makes way for solid relationship building with target audience both old and new, with insightful and     real time information captured through website features

 

  • Improves the credibility quotient of business
    Making right first impression is always important. As per a survey report from Kinesis, 75% of users judge your business’ credibility from your website’s design.    A sophisticated looking yet easy to navigate interface, winning user experience and clear answers/solutions for queries/problems of qualified leads and prospects helps to set your website apart from the rest. All this for some well-spent monies that you will never regret parting with.

 

  • Gets you noticed
    A website with SEO optimized content and options to add relevant, industry specific content from time to time with social presence helps to climb up the ranks in Google and Bing Search engine ranking.
    This makes you easily accessible to the audience that matters. A good website also gets talked about among customer circles both online as well as off it. So make most of the opportunity to nail the website design.

 

The key to successful website design is to know and distinguish between things that are:

 

  • Critical viz. a. viz nice to have and,
  • Those that need to be implemented right away viz. a viz. those that can be built-in later.

 

Are you ready to earn lucrative returns from your business website? Allow Flynaut to helm this dynamic task with latest tools and insights in website design/redesign.

 

 

Website Redesign! How and when do I know if it’s due?

Posted on by bold-knuth

There are multiple telltale signs that make website redesign a pressing priority. Redesign without any delay to boost your website’s traffic and sales

 

We have seen several skin product commercials that discuss the perils of ageing, signs to spot it and miraculous means to rectify it. Digital medium is no different. Websites age too. The same website that addressed your needs perfectly at one point in time, may seem to fall short in justifying your business growth and perspective.

 

Heads Up: Website Redesign is continuous evolving process. So if you were looking for magical one-time touch up for your site, pause right there and reboot. Customer expectations change and your website needs to keep pace every time.

 

We trust numbers. Don’t we? So, consider these figures.

 

  • 46.1% of users/customers judge a company’s credibility and trustworthiness based on their website’s design (Source: Study by Stanford’s Persuasive Tech Lab)
  • Online retail sales are expected to reach $370 billion by 2017  (Source: www.techcrunch.com)
  • 25% of shoppers leave websites that are too difficult to navigate (Source: Huffington Post)

 

The overarching objective of any business is to foster strong engagement with the customer and generate sales. Website redesign helps to smoothen the rough creases that come in the way of this engagement by creating great first impressions and at the same time sustaining visitor interest/attention for longer duration.

 

Right Time to Redesign Your Website – Know and Act

 

If you feel that you are missing out on opportunities to convert visitors into loyal clients, there is something not right with your website. A half-baked website with bare minimum features or lackluster results scream of mediocrity and careless attitude of business owners.

 

Do you happen to ask any of the following questions with respect to your website? If the answer is a YES (hesitant or emphatic notwithstanding) to even one of these listed questions, It is surely the time to revamp your website. Are your ready for the litmus test? Count the number of times you say “YES” to the queries.

 

 

Why do visitors just come, view and leave my website without any action?

For action, the site needs to be interactive, interesting and appealing to the target customers. If there is nothing that can hold attention of your audience, they are sure to click away from your website, immediately after viewing only one page.

Redesigning will help to introduce new ways for your site to engage with visitors and decrease the bounce rate.

 

 

Why doesn’t my website feature on the Page 1 of Google Search Result?

As per Search Engine Journal, 75% of search engine users never scroll past the first page. This means your website should reflect your brand identity to the hilt. Your site should have the optimized content, internal links and responsive design that scores over your competition and lets more prospects find you.

 

Redesigning prevents the loss of customers by climbing up the search-ranking ladder with up-to-date and impactful content that is SEO savvy

 

 

Why my website is painfully slow?

Load time of websites is critical to keep visitors hooked on for greater duration and build more user traffic. Faster load times also mean fewer bounce rates and more conversions. As per Kissmetrics, 40% of the visitors leave website if the load time is more than 3 seconds

 

Redesigning helps you to make your websites faster to suit the attention span and patience levels of your customers

 

 

Does my website needs to be social?

It is a fact that in todays’ age, social media dictates lot of our day-to-day aspects including our buying decision. So if your website doesn’t leverage this power of social media integration, it is already miles behind. Blogs and social media linkage is the best online “word of mouth” vehicle to generate leads.

 

Redesigning helps to increase customer trust and interest by showcasing your social media followers and enabling “add this/share this” feature on your website

 

 

Why is it so difficult to upgrade and add content on my website?

A robust content management system can help your site to rise up on the web search. A design that integrates blogging and simple upgrades that allow you to add/edit/delete content without tech support dependency, can win your both – traffic and bottom line.

 

Redesigning helps to push out irrelevant and outdated content out of your website

 

 

Why doesn’t my site display properly on phone/tablet?

In 2015, Google admitted to give higher search engine ranking to mobile optimized sites. Isn’t this a good enough reason for your website to be optimized for smartphones?

 

 

Redesigning helps customers access on-demand information from your website that responsively accommodates to the screen resolution, size and processing ability of their devices  

 

Other most commonly identified signs that make website redesign utterly necessary include:

 

  • Business that has undergone changes in product/services, target customers, or overall vision/objective
  • Analytics showing low traffic,
  • Dated look and feel
  • Non-intuitive and confusing site navigation
  • Company Branding has undergone change
  • Business story needs to be told differently
  • Websites still using Flash
  • Too many words with less or nil visual engagement (including videos)
  • Website is 2-3 years old and not keeping up with tech changes

 

 

Identify the real trouble area and aim to address it through website redesign. Do it for the right reason to save on money and not because the marketing team/CEO wants to do it. Post redesign monitoring is equally important to tackle user traffic drops, sudden 404 spikes, lower rank on Google indexing, keyword rank losses and other issues.

 

Want to rely on Industry expert for smooth sailing during website redesign? Flynaut has worked on interesting website revamp assignments for global clientele with unmatched creativity and handholding.  Explore more at www.Flynaut.com

 

You can start discussion and questions using @flynaut

 

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