Creative way to Kick-Start your Holiday Marketing Campaign

Christmas holidays are here again! There is obviously no better time to engage with your customers, than right now! There are plenty of things you can do towards attaining maximum fan engagement and ‘Rock the holidays together’! So here we go.

Contests in Social media

You can have great promotions via Facebook and email; it could be as simple as completing a sentence!

For E.g. 1) “I love this particular holiday season because ……………………………….” - Complete this sentence and win a prize .

E.g. 2) It could even be a Santa Claus photo contest where fans can send their Santa’s costume photos in a befitting background. The best photo wins!

Wish Lists

Some websites have the option for users to create their own wish lists. The wish list along with trending items can be emailed to customers. These products can even be clubbed with an irresistible Christmas offer! For E.g. 'Buy this and you get this FREE' ! People love that magic word in all caps!

Have an Auto Reply from Santa

Your loyal customers, who have purchased from your online store, need to be thanked. After all, without customers a business would never exist in the first place! You may send them a unique “Thank You” message from Santa. It could even be in the form of an animation displaying their name picked-up from the customer database.

Targeting Customers based on Location

You may geo-target your customers according to the weather conditions. For example, customers living in places with cold weather can be targeted with an exciting winter campaign. Similarly, customers in some other part of the world which is having summer can be targeted with HOT summer offers!

Sending out Post Purchase email

Post purchase email can be sent to the clients along with the billing details. This email will also contain the link back to your web page. You may ask ‘Why?’ That is just in case they want to come back to purchase more and need the URL after all!

Use Social Media

You may also use social media to promote these holiday campaigns. Your media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and others can be used to get the word out to prospective customers. Remember, social media is an effective, economical and great way to advertise your business!

Fresh Email Content

When you send out emails regarding upcoming campaigns, make sure that you are not sending out the ‘stale’ wordings from the older campaigns. Change the promotional email content periodically.

Update your Website with these LIVE Offers

Last but not the least; you need to update your website with these LIVE offers. This will reach a wider audience. After all you want to ROCK this Christmas don’t you? So make sure that you are firing on all cylinders and are leaving NO stone unturned!

Results will follow. So, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Keep Rocking! For more information on email marketing and mobile friendly and responsive web design, contact WebCanny.

Tips for Building Mobile Friendly Websites

The number of smart phone users around the world will cross the 2 billion mark by 2016. People will make use of their smart phones not only for calling and texting, but also for browsing the web for news, information, and even shopping. It is imperative that businesses must make their websites mobile-friendly or they may lose out on potential customers.

Use Good Framework for Responsive Site

You can use bootstrap for the same. Here the website’s elements are arranged in the form of a grid. The grid shifts and adjusts itself according to the display device like tab or smartphone. Thus the website elements are spaced appropriately to look good on a desktops, laptops, tabs as well as smart phones.

One more advantage of bootstrap is that it is free, open source and properly documented. It also applies a unified approach to web development and you have the same user experience, whether you access the site from a mobile or desktop; and what’s more is that you don’t require a separate URL for the mobile website.

Navigation must be Easy

When the website design is optimized for mobile usage, it must be navigable by the thumb. One shouldn’t feel the need pinch it to make things readable. Even if the site is mobile friendly, sometimes we find that the navigation buttons are very small and the wrong button will get pressed. The average width of a finger is 15mm or 45 pixels and therefore, the button’s selection area must be created accordingly.

Simplicity in Design

When you are optimizing a website for mobile usage, you must make sure that it loads fast. The website must not contain high quality video or images. The images must be optimized to facilitate faster loading time and a better user experience. Replace the heavy Java Script libraries like mobile jQuery with standalone JavaScript.

Content must be Concise

The user may be accessing the site via a mobile phone and obviously the mobile screen is much smaller. He may not have the time to scroll down and keep reading your website content forever. So keep it short and sweet.

Use Icons

Instead of explaining it in a dozen words, say it by mobile icons. The user will find it easier to just tap the call or email icon, rather than mentioning the same in words in your contact page.

Limit the JavaScript

Do not use excess JavaScript as mobiles may behave differently. It doesn’t mean that one mustn’t use it, but utilize it cleverly enough so that the speed of the mobile site doesn’t get affected.

Access to Basic Information

Make the basic information available to the user. For E.g. if you are a restaurant chain, people will be looking for your nearest branch address, map, contact and home delivery number. So, place your information accordingly.

User Friendly Forms

The forms must not ask for extensive information. They must just ask for a person’s basic information like name and email; the rest can be obtained in future correspondences.

Extensive Testing

The website must be tested extensively on different devices and browsers for making sure that the user experience is good. SolidifyApp, delight.io are some useful tools.

For affordable website design services,  contact WebCanny.

What kind of Websites are ideal for Business?

It is a well established fact that a business needs a website to surge ahead of competition. However one must decide which kind of website is required to cater to one need.

Some people may need a static website and some may need a dynamic one! It all depends on the nature of your business and nothing else. A dynamic website may be more expensive compared to static site. In this changing world of web design, one may need to keep pace with the latest web technologies and adapt accordingly.

Fixed or static Website: This website had a fixed width and doesn’t resize when it is viewed on mobiles and tablets. This could be quite irritating. In this fast changing world, where everything is at your fingertips or in your smart phone, a static website may not be in order. We may even have to pinch and zoom out, in order to view a simple website which can get even annoying at times. Apart from that

Liquid Design: This website layout is made using columns of data which are governed by percentages; these change according to the physical dimensions of the output device. As a result, the content of this website is fluid in nature; it takes shape of the output device – therefore the name ‘liquid’.

Responsive Web Design: The responsive web design is easy to view and can be accessed in a variety of devices! Thus the user doesn’t have scroll up or down in order to view the website. Navigation is easier and the flow of information appears smooth.

How do Responsive websites work?

The websites using responsive content are designed to take the pre determined shape of a browser. In fact the content is also set accordingly. For e.g., if the content is set in three columns, then if the browser resizes, the website content will be re-adjusted to display in two columns.

The quality of images and videos uploaded into the site depends on the internet connection speed. In case of slower connections, low resolution images and video are substituted in place of the heavy files.

Which Website to choose

Companies, who want to go for a new website, or design change, must consider a few points. They must be aware of the type of phones, their target audience is using. If they are using basic phones, then a fixed website will do the job. However, if the target audience is tech savvy and owns smart phones, then you might like to go for a responsive, website.  For more information contact WebCanny.

Tools to Create Web Design Faster

Websites are very essential for companies to advertise online. Without a website, a company may miss out on a lot of business opportunities. Whether it is a small or big company, website will definitely work magic on your overall sales. You can opt for an affordable web design; many companies offer such services and the rates are very competitive.

More and more companies are coming online, and in fact the web designers are getting busier by the day. However, there are some tools designed just for the purpose. These make the job of designing a website much easier.

Adobe Kuler: This is used to find color palettes for your images. This tool helps one identify complimentary colors, by using various color rules. We can thus choose a palette we find appropriate for the project.

Mocking Bird: This tool helps us create website mockups and share them with other online users.

Oto255 : This helps us to choose different variations of a single colour. It is used for graphic and web designing.

CSS Background Maker: This is used to create gradient backgrounds in CSS. It works on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 10.

Closure Compiler Service: This helps you compile a bundle of java script files, which go together – at a single go. This also reduces the size of the code and may help enhance page load time.

Know Em Social Media Optimizer: This tool gives one an idea about how their website will look on social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

Tweak your Biz Title Generator: This is a very useful tool, given that people pay a lot of attention to a page title. A good title can in fact generate 50% more interest in your website. One just needs to enter the content in order to get appropriate title suggestions.

Photovisi : This helps us create beautiful collages and cute looking shapes. This is helpful when we may feel the need for a side-bar, or perhaps a new website background.

Is my Blog working: This tool helps you to check your server’ status. You can check if your blog is working or not. This is a very useful tool and one may no longer need to be notified by a second person regarding the same.

Yahoo! Smush.it

This is a very useful tool which cuts down the extra file size of a picture. It is a loss less tool and therefore very helpful in optimizing the picture without compromising on the quality.

Initializr

This is a very useful tool; it produces a clean HTML5 template, fully ready for customization. Thus we don’t have to worry about writing the code to start with.

Responsive Test Environment

This helps us in testing purposes; the advantage is that we can choose our own break points.

There are many tools for making low cost web design;  the ones listed above are just the tip of an iceberg. The point we are trying to make is this; creating a website is a must for improving your sales and get more clients. Get one today! For more information contact WebCanny.

WebCanny Video Launched :Leading Web Design and Development Company

By Choosing WebCanny, you are opting to partner with one of Australia's and New Zealand’s leading Web Design and Development Company. Since beginning operations in May 2009, we’ve had explosive growth in New Zealand, with over 3000 small to mid size businesses on board for their web design, hosting and emails with proven expertise and reliability.

Is your Website “Mobile Friendly”?

As per Google’s new algorithm change on 21st April 2015, nicknamed Mobilegeddon, if your website is not mobile friendly, your search results will be severely affected. Google will rank you higher if your website is mobile friendly, or responsive. A recent study from Google shows over 50% of searches are now done from mobile devices, and visitors expect to see a mobile friendly site.
A Responsive Website re-sizes your desktop website for mobiles of any screen resolution. Google recommends Responsive Design as best practice for mobile-optimised websites.

Advantages of Responsive Design:

1.It will work on any device – Laptop, Smartphone, Tablet or Desktop
2.Easy Maintenance
3.Higher Conversion
4.Cost-effective
5.Enhanced User Experience
6.SEO Friendly