Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Web Development UK
Users Favour Web Site Speed Over Functionality
Sep 17th
A recent report indicates that, despite the importance people place on internet business website offerings and functionality (such as ease of navigation, streaming video, etc.), users put a premium on website speed. All of which means that the time it takes a web site to load is still critical, and that speed must still be a primary consideration for developers when it comes to web development and building, launching and modifying web sites.
Revealing Facts
Here are some of the interesting facts the report uncovered:
- More than a third of users rate speed over functionality, with only about 20 percent favouring functionality over speed
- 84 percent of users give up on poorly performing sites after only a few tries
- A site that is slow will be abandoned within 5 seconds by one third of users
Faster Mobile Access
Mobile speed’s an important consideration also:
- Mobile users accessing mobile sites account for a third of web users
- Mobile users’ expectations are high regarding internet access on their mobile device, with over half looking to web sites to load just as fast, almost as fast or faster on their mobile devices than their computers
Poor Performance Won’t Do
Surprisingly, slow load times and poor performance are not unusual, leaving users feeling frustrated:
- Over a third of users stated they would avoid a slow web site in future, with more than a quarter being likely to switch to a competitor’s site
- Two thirds come across a poorly performing web site several times a week
- When it comes to mobile internet usage, the top 2 issues are formatting, which oftentimes does not translate well to mobile devices, and very slow loading
Tasks Left Incomplete
Many users complain about the fact they’re unable to complete certain tasks on some web sites:
- Over the preceding 3 months, almost half of users had given up on sites where they were left hanging
- Over 80 percent weren’t able to complete specific tasks, such as a purchase or a registration, when visiting a particular web site at least once
What Does All This Mean?
It appears that users’ loyalty and patience evaporate pretty quickly where poor performing web sites are concerned. And the sad fact is that a lot of companies are either unaware of or choose to ignore the fact that, when it comes to users’ time spent online, seconds really do count. Spoiled by the lightning-fast speeds of the best-on-the-web sites such as Yahoo, Facebook and Google, users expect all sites to at least come close to that type of speed.
So, what does this mean for your internet business site? According to this report, it means that users are obviously demanding and expecting their web experience to be as seamless as possible, so, when considering web development and designing your web site, or looking at the performance of your current site, you need to bear in mind that seconds on the web are the equivalent of hours in real life, and that whether a visitor becomes a customer or just another lost prospect can be decided in only a few seconds.
So, try making your landing page as simple as possible so that it loads quickly and encourages visitors to stick around and delve deeper into your site, where more complex functionality can be added that may be slower to load. But, by that time, your visitor may be intrigued enough to not be put off, as long as we’re only talking about a few more seconds load time and not minutes. If it’s minutes, we got problems!
And then there’s the challenge of getting a site to perform adequately in the mobile world. The internet experience on a mobile device will, by nature, be slower than on a computer due mainly to the relative processing power of a mobile device, which means you’ve already got your back to the wall where mobile’s concerned. As mentioned earlier, mobile users expect web pages to load at least as quickly as on their computers.
So, a major consideration in designing your web site and its pages should be mobile users. Many companies are now providing a completely separate web site for their mobile users to take advantage of mobile marketing, a site specifically designed and built to load quickly and efficiently on a mobile device with functionality stripped to a minimum in the interests of user satisfaction.
The number of users turning to their mobile devices for all their online tasks is increasing rapidly and shows no signs of abating, so the sooner you take a serious look at your internet business and web development with a view to optimal mobile performance, the better. Consider yourself warned.
Professional Web Development – Finding The Right Company
Sep 4th
Having made the decision to get your business online and take advantage of the power of the internet the next step is to get your web site designed and developed. If you have the skill and the knowledge in house to do this, all well and good. But, with most companies trying to keep costs down the trend is to hire a professional web development company or individual to complete the task.
Of course, there’s much more to being successful online than having a good, high performing web site, but, without that, your chances of success are greatly reduced. So, let’s take the first step and look into finding and hiring the right web development company to get your online presence off to a flying start.
Finding The Right Company
The first step is to make sure you check several companies carefully before deciding on the one you’ll use to perform your web development. There are many factors to consider before making your decision, but these are the most important traits of a good professional web development company:
- They can provide an in-depth analysis of business need, and, if appropriate, of current internet presence
- Determine your marketing goals and set objectives to meet the goals by understanding your company’s target segment, developing a profile of your company and establishing your product or services competitive edge as compared to your online competitors
- Help your company stands out from the competition by creating a plan that details target audience, search engine optimization and customer retention
- Provide honest, candid advice as to what works and what doesn’t as far as web site design and development are concerned, and what’s appropriate for your particular company and business, even at the risk of losing the project
- Be prepared to work with you until you’re satisfied with the results provided, regardless of how long it takes. Your satisfaction should be their main concern rather than just turning out a web site as quickly as possible
- Be a full service provider, offering not only web design and development services but also search engine optimisation, assistance with understanding web analytics, etc.
Hiring The Right Company
Now that you’re armed with what you need to know to make the right decision as far as selecting the right web development company for your project, the question then becomes “How do I find the right development company for my project?”.
Here are some tips to follow in finding the company that’s right for you:
- Check with friends and business partners who have established web sites as to their satisfaction with their sites and how they’re performing
- Check search engine results (search for “web development companies”, “website design” and it is always best to add your location i.e. web development company UK or a region like London if you want to be more specific) and research the first 20 or so results, examining the ones that make a good first impression more deeply for the quality of their own site and reviewing testimonials, portfolio, etc.
- Verify the companies short-listed meet the requirements noted above
- Contact them for a quote and note how much information they request upfront and whether or not they request a consultation in order to gain greater insight into your goals and requirements
- Note the speed and detail of the response; a good company knows they’re not the only one in town and will do their utmost to respond fully and rapidly to any request for a quote and/or service submitted to them
- Ask for and check references and verify the quality of the projects they’ve worked on previously
Finding and hiring the right professional web development company is not an easy task, but it is a vital one that should not be taken lightly or entered into without thorough investigation, since the right company can mean the difference between online success and failure for your company.
Optimising Your Site For Even Higher Conversions
Sep 3rd
It is important for every internet business website to get the maximum amount of traffic that it can in order to boost rank and also generate sales. Yesterday we discussed the importance of the call to action function so that visitors will perform some meaningful action, however ongoing testing is needed to ensure you get the maximum conversions you can.
Development and Site Testing Cycle
So today we look at some of the additional things you can do to optimise your site so that it has an even higher conversion rate and also increases traffic flow to help your Internet Business flourish.
If you want a better performing website then it is important that you must optimise it in all respects. Technically, the backend code of a website must be simple and free from extraneous code. Basic Search Engine Optimisation can be utilised through use of meta-tags, header tags, alt tags as well as in the overall content which consists of texts, images or videos.
If you are unsure how to do some of this yourself, try reading up on it or get an internet marketing service or web developer to help you. when you have done all you think is possible with your page the next thing you need to do is use a site optimiser like ‘Google website optimiser’.
In essense what it does is allow you to test between variations of your site to see which is the best for conversions, for example if you had two possible headlines for your homepage you could run an A/B split test in which half of the visitors to your site would be shown Headline A and the other half would see Headline B. You could then see clearly which headline brought you the most orders.
Google Website Optimizer lets you carry out tests like this, the only downside is proper testing can take several weeks before you could see what works and what does not. The real power here though is that it allows you to carry out loads of these tests at the same time.
An example of this muliple testing phase could be the ability to test a headline, a page element/s – such as images, text, prices and even offers, which can all be tested at the same time. Each time someone visits your site they will see a different combination of these elements. Google’s Website Optimizer will then take an average of which of the elements performed the best, you can then use this information to produce a highly converted traffic magnet page.
Many people do use Google Adwords to run split tests, basically they will create two identical ads with different destination URL’s and see which ad does better, however this is really not the same as testing onsite features so really should not be used to optimise your site, however Google Adwords can and should be used for ad optimisation to help drive traffic.
Google Website Optimizer
The biggest problem any site owner has is not knowing what caused a person who has visited your site to exit and testing can help you solve some of the issues but not all. Having other features may help you to see if you can combat some of these loses. Features like Live Chat or a help type pop up may allow you to connect with that person before you lose them, so it is worth considering adding such a feature.
Web analytics package are great tools to help you see what is being clicked on your site. At the most basic level, the ‘site overlay’ function tells you where people click, where they don’t and also where they are leave your site from. This can help you improve the pages not being clicked or remove them and add to or improve those that are.
Usability testing is probably the easiest testing you can perform and can really be virtually free as you can ask anyone you know to go to your site and test it to see how easy, it is to navigate, find information etc and feedback that information to you so you can improve those features. Make sure when doing your usability tests that you look at fixing all the things that are ‘broken’ do this first as these are probabily the fastest improvements to do and quickly seen.
Marketing strategies is always an issue and can always be improved, to do this start by identify from your usabilty tests where your marketing tatics on and off page are weakest. Look at everything from initial marketing of your site right through to closing a sale, make sure you look closely at your ads, homepage, product or services pages and the all important checkout page and confirmation of order page.
If your usabilty testing has shown any issues on these pages fix those first before testing your marketing and retest the usabilty of your site with a new group of people once changes have been implemented.
Running a successful website is not a one-off time/ effort deal you need a lot of creativity and constant monitoring if any success is to be had in generating an income. Being able to anaylse traffic on your internet business website goes a long way in developing more targetted high volume traffic and gaining new customers.
Professional Web Development – What Is It?
Aug 27th
You’ve decided to take the plunge and get your company or business on the internet, so now what? Well, “now what” is getting a web site designed and developed, preferably by a professional web development company. But, we’re not talking about just any old web site here; we’re talking about a web site that looks and feels professional and that is designed and built to achieve your short and long term marketing and business goals.
Laying The Foundation
Professional web development, when conducted and executed correctly, is a process, not a one-off event. To that end, the first thing that needs to be done is to determine the goals and objectives, both short-term and long-term, of your business, whether that be in the area of e-commerce, online lead generation, etc. Knowing and understanding your business goals combined with a professional approach are the key ingredients needed to help establish a strategy to ensure online success.
Once a strategy has been established, the rest of the pieces of the web development puzzle (systems, applications, marketing, content and technologies) can be put together to reach the previously established goals. Having no goals makes the whole process much less professional (how do you know where you’re going if you’ve got no target to aim for?), and makes such things as feasibility, ROI (return on investment) and Cost-benefit analysis pretty much pointless.
It’s essential to know the goals of any internet business endeavour in order to be able to map out a web development plan from start to finish, from the online marketing means and methods to the applications essential to the project’s success.
Web Development Cycle
The primary goal of any web development project, however, is to get traffic to the site, since, without visitors, nothing else really matters. You can have the greatest, snazziest web site imaginable, but, without traffic, it may as well be a blank screen. Therefore, a major component of any web development project must be a marketing methodology, which is, sadly, ignored in the launching of many online ventures, but should be tightly intertwined with web development to ensure the success of your online business.
Begin With The End In Mind
The one who ultimately determines the success, or otherwise, of your investment in professional web development and, more importantly, your online business success, is the end user, or customer. So, knowing who your customer is and what their needs are is vital, which necessitates extensive research and analysis, so that your web site is set up to anticipate your customer’s needs and, crucially, to speak the language they understand, making them feel comfortable and maintaining their interest.
Establishing and maintaining relationships with your customers is essential to your long-term online success, and this can only be achieved by reaching the highest visibility possible and providing your customers with the most powerful and user-friendly site available in your particular niche or industry. Having content on your site that keeps visitors coming back for more has always been and continues to be one of the basic essentials of web site success.
Applications Specific To Your Business Needs
That having been said, while content is still king on the internet, the function of a business web site has evolved into more than just an information delivery platform to include web based services specific to their customer base. A good internet business web site should, as a bare minimum, provide services commonly used in that particular industry. But, in order to stand out from the crowd, a truly superior web site should go one step further and offer new and innovative services to make the site the most useful in that field.
Which applications are applicable to your site will depend on the type of business involved and the needs of your customers. The applications needed can vary widely, but their functionality should be driven by your customers’ expectations and should integrate seamlessly with the overall web development strategy established previously.
Content Is Still King
A web site with many high quality pages of relevant content is still looked on very favourably by search engines, so constantly updating a web site with quality, relevant content is vital to maintaining visibility with the search engines. However, the source of such content has changed from the company to the end user, with most web sites now providing the capability for their customers to not only add to, but, in many cases, dictate the direction of new content being added to a web site through the use of a content management system (CMS).
Expandability And Flexibility
As mentioned earlier, professional web development is an on-going process and not a static event, so any company providing such services should not only actively seek the input and contributions of the major stakeholders in the project, but allow enough flexibility in the web development plans and strategy to ensure that the system is expandable to permit ease of addition to and modification of the web site not only in the near term but in the long term.
Business needs and requirements are a constantly moving target, so any web presence established should be flexible enough to be altered, revised or modified as the needs of the business and customer change, whether this is performed by the web development, or in-house by members of staff of the business enterprise itself, an option which should be made available to your business.
Professional web development is an essential part of any serious online business endeavour, and, as such, should be regarded as a major investment in both time and money. It’s an ever-evolving, on-going process that, if done correctly, can mean the difference between success and failure for your online enterprise, so making the right decisions in this area is vital to your future success. Hopefully, armed with the information presented here, you’ll be in a position to select the right company to take your business to the levels of success you desire.
Good luck and Happy Web Developing!
