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.

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!

WebCanny : Main factors to be checked before launching a website

WebCanny maintains professionalism in each and every step of web design process. Our specialists here will test the website design, functionalities and the outlined points mentioned below will be considered:

1. Web Analytics to Track Visitors
2. Testing Contact Forms
3. Removing Spell Check
4. Removing Broken Links
5. Meta Tags
6. Set up a 404 Page
7. Avoiding Code Error
8. Setting up 301 Redirect
9. Page Titles
10. URL Structure
11. Site Map
12. Social Media Icons
13. Robots.txt
14. Fav Icon
15. Copyright
16. Privacy Policy

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