Why Small Businesses in Australia need an Ecommerce Website

In the recent past, ‘Shopping’ meant going out to the store or supermarket, picking the things we need, get them billed at the counter and driving back. However, things are changing fast, due to the introduction of internet and ecommerce.

Thanks to the advances in technology it is now possible to go on a shopping spree, sitting right in one’s living room. The necessity for physical travel is totally eliminated. You can sit in the convenience of your home and buy anything you want. If you don’t find what you are looking for in a particular website you can always search and find the site where you get it and order it the same day without any hassles.

Business need Online Visibility

Many of the customers want to purchase online rather than be bothered with the inconvenience of physical travel. It is the right time for small businesses to capitalize on the benefits of responsive web design and get linked with the rest of the world. There is a definite advantage to being accessible in 196 countries, rather than just your city or neighborhood.

Ecommerce Websites

The selling of products and services via the internet is termed as Ecommerce. Many companies have realized the positive impact of ecommerce on their business and accordingly set up their online stores.

What Sells Online?

While you decide to get on the bandwagon, here is a list of top-selling products.

1. Hard cover and E-Books: Books are one of the most popular products sold online. They are either downloaded as softcopy or PDF, or ordered online in Hardcopy format.

2. Computers, Tablets and Laptops: Due to the internet boom, there has been an increase in demand for laptops, tablets and desktops. Thanks to the various programs and applications, our conveniences are increasing by the day and so is the demand for the related computer hardware.

3. Software: As all our office applications are getting automated, there is a demand for Enterprise Resource Management (ERM), designing, web development, billing, virtual office and other software. Thus, many web development companies are responding well to meet the demand and selling software to suit their customers’ various requirements.

4. Consumer Electronics: There is a lot of demand for consumer electronic products like, phones, cameras, TVs projectors etc. The craze for consumer electronics is like no other; people are on the constant lookout for the latest products!

 5. Men’s and Women’s Apparel: Clothing is another product which will never go out of fashion, or rather is the sole ingredient of thereof.

6. Movie, Music, Self Help DVDs: Music albums and movies are one of the all time popular products and also are in great demand online.

7. Beauty Products: Beauty products are conveniently ordered online without the hazzle of visiting the stores again and again.

8. Jewelry:  Jewelry can be purchased online, as per our specifications. There is a wide range of choice and we can find the perfect product as per our requirements.

This clearly shows us the relevance of Ecommerce Web Design and why businesses must have their ecommerce websites to maximize their earning potential. If you like to have information about affordable ecommerce websites, contact click here.

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.

How to use RSS & Feedburner

Why to use Feeedburner

Feedburner is a google product that is used by blogs and websites to keep tracks of people who subscribe to your blog using RSS, from which browser and country they came, and it has many tools and functionalities to help you share your blog content like email subscribe option.

What is RSS Feeds

 Before learning about Feedburner one has learn about RSS feed. It means really simple site syndication, it really simplifies the web experience it extracts news from your favourite sites and puts then together in a feed reader, so that user can access in one application. Let me explain it to you, there are many news websites on the internet, but people might not be interested in reading all the news in different categories, some might be interested in sports news, some in politics while some in entertainment news. This is where RSS comes into play, in it people can only subscribe to those categories which interests them, suppose I like technology blogs, so in this case I visit the news site and subscribe to technology news and then I start getting technology related news in my feed reader. So in this way I save a lot of time as you don’t have to visit each website regularly and only receive relevant news in our news feed related to  our interests. In RSS users can subscribe to your blog and read content via email or by using any web application like feed readers.   You know Feedburner has lots of great features that every blogger should be using in order to optimize and track their blog posts.

The presence of an orange symbol indicates that a site uses a feed reader and you can subscribe it using any feed reader like Feedly.

How to Use Feedburner for Blogs

Step1- Go to feedburner.google.com  and sign up with a gmail account

Step2- Paste your blog URL in window and click next

Step3- In next page put your title and the address URL where people can find your news feed.

Step4- Click next button and its all done you have now created a Feedburner for your blog.

Many Ecommerce website design company also have blogs which can be used with RRS and Feedburner to help you reach more people.

How to Choose a Good Domian Name

Choosing the right domain name often may seem an easy task, but it should be chosen very carefully after a watchful thought. Below are few points to be considered before domian purchase.

1) Choose a short domain name which is easy to remember by the audience.

2) Don’t use numbers and hyphens in your domain name, it is a bad practice. Hyphens and numbers related domains are not easy to remember and it sounds bizarre. 

3) Choose a unique, brandable domain name which is easy to read, spell and remember by people. 

4) If your company, shop or organization is local and serves only in a particular location, then you can choose to include your city or town name in your domain name example of it would look something like this www.webtrainingauckland.com  

5) Always try to go for a .Com domain name as it covers all countries and is widely used since the inception of the internet. But if you are providing services in only in in one country, then it is best to choose country related domains like.com.au, .co.nz, co.uk etc . These countries related domains are a good choice as it ranks well in the targeted local country.

6) Alternatively, you can also make use of online free web tools like namemesh.com . This tool is very helpful in suggesting some good domain name.

7) You can also include a service based keyword in your domain name. For this you have to identify your main service and use it in your domain name. Example a Java training company can include the keyword Java or training or both Java training in its domain name or any other meaningful and related variation pertaining to these keywords.

8) Be careful when buying a domain for your company, and research whether that name is copyrighted or not. Sometimes brands, names are copyright and unknowingly it can get you in trouble, one can use tool like www.copyright.gov for checking copyrighted names. 

8 Vital Reasons to go for a Website Re-design for your Business

Good design- Your old website might not have a good design or old fashioned look, a good design attracts eyeballs and builds trust with the visitors.

User experience – One can go for a website redesign in order to provide good user experience to visitors and customers. There are various factors like pop-ups, color combination, quality and relevant content, use of images, frustrating 404 error pages etc that account for user experience. If the sites user experience is not good then bounce rate will increase which is not good.

Purpose & services- Sometimes the services that the company is providing changes or the products which the company is selling might change then in that case a website re-design might be required.

Switch to Online Business – A restaurant, hotel or a popular store shop might be having a basic website for information, but to increase presence and sales they might want to add Online services like ordering food online, booking a room online or opening an online store then in such cases a re-design will come handy.

Responsive- After the recent Google update you might want to make a mobile-friendly website. A responsive site is very important as it opens up on screens of different sizes; it enhances user experience and site usability.

Rebranding- Sometimes companies change their brand names due to reputation related issues or for better marketing goals, then in such cases a new makeover of the site may be required.

Site Speed – Website speed and page load time is a crucial factor as far as user experience is concerned nobody likes to visit a slow site that takes minutes to load. Slow speed may be due to multiple factors like large images, http requests, uncompressed code, videos, flash used, Iframes, lengthy coding etc so to overcome all these change in design may be required.

Traffic – More traffic means more leads and sales, doesn’t that sound good to ears. Well if a site is getting a low traffic then also a re-design may be considered as a suitable option.

How to find good topics for blogging?

Are you confused about finding a good topic for your blog post? Finding a good topic for blogging is very essential; below I have enlisted techniques to find a suitable topic for blogging.

Finding Niche

Finding a niche for your blog is the first step to blogging. Identify the industry and the Domian for your blog and also the audience that you are going to target. For instance it could be a blog related to WebDesign, Finance, Travelling etc. Try your level best to focus on one industry like if I choose Travelling then I will write blogs only relevant to travelling and touring and not about finance and marketing.

Keyword Research

Identify your main keywords that are relevant to your blog. For this I use keyword research tool by Google and select suitable keywords having high search volumes. Keyword Research is very important because it is useless to focus on keywords which users are not searching at all. So try to select long tailed keywords with high search volumes and less competition.

Choosing Topics

Choose topics that will entice your targeted audience. Don’t choose generic topics, target specific topics, ideas and target long meaningful keywords rather than short and generic ones. Don’t just choose topics related only to your niche blog, also choose topics that have some co-relation with your niche eg- your niche could be web design but you can also write about SEO, Digital marketing as they are related terms indirectly.

Use Suggestion Tools

 There are many keyword suggestion tool to give you new ideas like Hubspot Tool. It extracts various relevant blogging topics directly from various search engines and presents us with some really useful topics.

Another excellent tools is Buzz Sumo, this one is my favorites tool, as it has a of customization options and gives a lot of information and insights about backlink associated with the post, social media presence in the form of like and shares, and tweets. It gives a list of trending topics of the past and present based upon your searched keyword. For example I typed the keyword “real estate advice” in the Buzz Sumo tool and threw the following list of ideas as seen below. The below ideas can be used to find a good blogging topic to write on.

Google Trends

This is a free tool from Google which give ideas about latest trending topics and phrases  in the fields such as Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Web development, Health Business etc.  It gives you details about search query terms for which these topics are trending, and based upon these keywords one can decide a suitable and viral Blog topic. The best part about this tool is its visualized data based upon region and time shown in form of maps and graphs.

Quora Questions

Quora is the most popular question/ answer site, where all its questions as well as answers are created by readers themselves. Sometimes questions are very engaging, humorous and controversial which are worth reading. It has thousands of questions on hundreds of topics, most of them with well written answers. Based on these questions one can get a fair bit of idea about starting a new Blog topic.

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.

Digital Marketing Strategies

Digital Marketing is an essential marketing strategy for any business to stay ahead of competition. With increasing mobile internet users, the potential customers are constantly online. Having said this, digital marketing gives you an edge over your competitors to grow your business online.

Here is a list of digital marketing strategies that a business owner can implement to help their business grow.

Digital Marketing Strategy #1: Every Business should have Website

“Website Requirement Analysis” is a process that assists in analyzing challenges and opportunities with respect to the business model of the website.

Digital marketing Strategy #2: Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process to improve the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engines in "organic" results.

Digital marketing Strategy #3: Search Engine Advertising

Search Advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries

Digital marketing Strategy #4: Social Media Networking

Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of social media outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, brand or event.

Digital marketing Strategy #5: Email Marketing

Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

Digital Marketing Strategy #6: Blogging

A blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web. Blogging is an interactive form of publishing content on the web.

These strategies when implemented on your website will definitely make a difference. Try this and see your business grow!

How to Globalise a Website and Business?

Website globalisation is trying to reach company’s global efficiency by making the website in multilingual. This is also known as website translation. In today’s world website globalisation is a requirement. This will help your products to reach to most of the countries across the world and this helps in business expansion.
Market Analysis – First a thorough study about the market or the target customer is required, as per the geographic, culture, economy and attitude of the visitors for targeting the exact market :
Keyword Research – Research Structure of the website- Use the best structure for easy and stress free navigation and access of the website.
Effective Content- Use the relevant content for the website by analysing visitor’s behavior.
Translate the content as per the requirement- Use tools for translating the text content as per the visitor’s requirement. This will increase the traffic and usability of the particular website.
Optimise the content – We can optimise the content and images by applying the key words in the way of search engine guidelines

One of the main benefits of having an eCommerce Website is the fact that your products and services are available worldwide.
However to make sure that you can turn this multinational traffic into conversions you will need to accommodate them. i.e, your website should operate on a operating on a multi-channel level. This means your website has to be localized. What we mean by localizing is, translating the content on the website to local language. It’s just not about the language, it is about the target audience, the culture and the market comparision.
Last but definitely not the least, to go about Global Expansion, you require a good Customer service and a team that speaks native language.

WebCanny, Australia and New Zealand's Leading Web Design and Development Company offers the best value, professionally designed, SEO friendly websites.

WebCanny, you are opting to partner with one of Australia’s leading Web Design and Development Companies. Since beginning operations in May 2009, we’ve had explosive growth in Australia, with over 3000 small to mid size businesses on board for their web design, hosting and emails with proven expertise and reliability.
We help our clients to expand their business and online presence using SEO friendly websites and an easy-to-use CMS. However don’t just take our word for it, please take a look around our website and see for yourself. You’ll find everything you need to quickly and efficiently, and most importantly, economically design a visually stunning website that will get results for your business. Most people start on the testimonials page: www.webcanny.com.au/testimonials

WebCanny : Benefit of .NZ Top level domain

The New Zealand Domain Name Commission, a subsidiary of InternetNZ, has announced about a new top level domain ".NZ".

The advantage of .nz domain is that people have more ways to reach to the Brand. Anyone typing .nz or .co.nz will come to same website. That will help to
increase traffic to the website and improve overall search rankings. So It is advisable to reserve .nz domain for your domain before any of competitors started doing.

Ecommerce and its Advantages for Business Growth

Ecommerce leads the 50% of the total retails in the country. E-commerce website is the most cost effective way of marketing your services and goods online and managing your business.
The advantages of ecommerce system are listed below
• Searching/Selling/Buying 24x7
• Easy and faster searching/selling/buying of products
• Affordable operational costs and best services
• Operations beyond geographic limitations
• Can choose any products without wandering around physically
• No need of stock, sales man, physical company set-ups
• Easy to establish and manage ecommerce business.
• Enable Deals, Bargains, Coupons, and Group Buying
• Productivity gain
• Enabling discounts and offers

WebCanny:Professionally Designed Website

WebCanny is a leading website design company offering complete end-to-end services ranging from website design, website development, web applications, website domain registration, hosting and website maintenance. One of the best elements of WebCanny is that our prices are competitive and affordable. Though the prices are affordable, we do not compromise on quality. With a highly creative and dedicated design team, we design and develop websites catering to every need of our clients. We provide best in class services that is essential for the Web Development and Web Hosting. Over the years, we have proved ourselves in other associated fields, like E-Commerce Solutions, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Smartphone and Facebook Websites and provide advanced features like Content Management System (CMS), Flash Animation etc. All our work has an innovative edge to it while keeping it affordable for our clients. Customer satisfaction is our priority and we measure our success by their success. We design and develop websites that are innovative and user friendly. We work closely with our customers in each and every step from conceptualisation to website content development to the launch of the website, to maintaining your website. We are committed to provide quality web development services and solutions within your budget meeting the deadlines. We focus on your goals and ways at every step to achieve them, by using apt technology, effective website design and marketing effort.

Why WebCanny is better from other web design companies.....

At WebCanny, we thoroughly understand the necessities of online presence and this helps in optimizing the websites effectively. While potential customers are on the web page, they will get an idea about the offers, product features and so on. The loading speed, information provided about the products/services offered, the design layout will either make the visitors stay on the webpage or leave.

At WebCanny, procedures are upgraded constantly to ensure that the websites designed are effectively enabled to an altered plan. Tailored SEO techniques are applied.

While designing a website, we keep in mind the features required for the customers to acknowledge the service/product to be offered on the website and integrate this with the business methods.

The website design should draw the visitors and make sure they stay. The website design structure should be eye catchy. The graphics, the colours used, the consistency should be kept in mind while designing the website.

WebCanny: Offer's Affordable Web Design Services

Internet is an effective medium which helps to boost growth in visibility, brand building and revenue. This makes it absolutely essential for small and large businesses to have a web presence.

Our web designers and developers can create anything from a standard website to e-commerce website and content management system. With our defined standards, we are able to deliver flexible and secure solutions and make every effort to meet our client requirements.

WebCanny offers its customers one stop solution from web designing, web application development to web hosting and SEO.

Our services include:

• Website Design and Development
• Website Hosting
• Smartphone Website
• Search Engine Optimisation

 Web Design

At WebCanny, pool of talented and efficient web designers and developers make a difference by creating smart and eye-catching websites. All our work has an innovative edge by keeping it affordable for our customers.

Web Hosting

A company's website is only as good as its hosting. We believe in hosting that performs well and that keeps your business online 24/7.

Search Engine Optimisation

We will require access to your website to perform the necessary Search Engine Optimisation. From there on, we do the rest. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a continuously evolving skill. WebCanny is specialised in this area and code all our websites with SEO in mind. All our websites are coded for the optimisation of keywords. Many of our clients enjoy top ten results on the various popular search engines. SEO work that we do ensures that your website appears on upper ranks of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

 Smartphone Website

Accessing internet through mobile phones is increasing rapidly.  It has therefore become necessary that your website is properly formatted to facilitate quick and easy browsing over Smartphones and we pride ourselves to be among the top-notch companies providing mobile application development services.

We offer professional Mobile Website Development services for platforms:

• Apple iOS
• Google Android
• Blackberry
• Windows