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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Benefits of Mobile Friendly Websites

Your website is the most important marketing tool. Technology changes quickly. It is important to make the website up to date with these changes.
Your website may not be Mobile friendly:
Mobile internet use is increasing rapidly and optimising your website for a Smartphone or tablet is critical to your website being seen. A mobile website can be accessed anywhere, any time. This level of constant connectivity provides an exceptional opportunity to connect with your customers.

To improve usability for customers and to keep it up to date
Keeping it up to date with the technology and making the website user friendly, so your visitors don’t opt out of the website.
If the content management system or a particular functionality implemented on the website may not be that easy to use for the customers . If the website is redesigned regularly, the customer experience will be good and this inturn increases your visitors and potential customers

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 : Benefits of Responsive Website Design

As we are all aware, the amount of people using their mobile devices and tablets to browse the internet is increasing daily. From checking their emails, browsing social media to shopping, Smartphone and Tablet have taken over laptops or desktops. Statistics reveal that 60% of the internet usage is mostly Mobile.

Responsive design websites will be optimised for different types of devices, screens and resolutions. On any device, the website navigation is simple and easy.

Google Recommends Responsive Websites
A responsive website allows search engines such as Google to crawl and index content on one URL. Instead of optimizing the desktop and mobile website for SEO, and driving traffic for both, SEO can be performed effectively on one URL for responsive sites.

User Experience
Responsive web design is more about creating the best possible experience for users irrespective of the device being used to access internet. The website will have a lower bounce rate.
Content plays a vital role for a successful SEO strategy. Sharing information/content on website through social media is very easy if it is a responsive design. This in turn increases traffic and online visibility.

Increases Sales
Responsive website makes it easier for users to navigate across the website. Due to the improved experience, the conversion rate will be good and thus the sales.

It is definitely beneficial to have a responsive website as this increases the online visibility, saves time and money and most importantly increases sales.