Five things to avoid on your website

The way things look affects the way they are perceived — no two ways about it. When you are trying to build a successful business — that is a thing you should reckon with. Overall aesthetics of the company define how it is perceived by its customers and it is important to make the first impression as good as possible. There is no place where it is more obvious than on an official website.

Here’s the thing — website is a front window of your company. It represents what your company is all about. If it is overstuffed and clumsy — people think your company is the same. While there is no direct link, people tend to connect the dots that way. And so you have to deal with it. Good design is not only a bright sight for an eye — it is also a smooth and gentle user experience that motivates to proceed.

But good website design is not an easy thing to pull off. In fact — it is better to leave it to professionals. In such cases — web calculator helps to know the price of the package.

Here are 5 things to avoid while designing your website.

Clumsy navigation kills site dead

The first thing that falls into an eye of beholder upon entering a website is its layout. It is extremely important to make navigation as easy as possible. If your customer is missing in action in the winding menus and tangled interlinking — you are doing it wrong and it is hurting your business.

You don’t need to invent a steam engine in order to do that. There is one key rule for website navigation — it must be instinctive. People expect to see a certain thing at certain places and there is no reason not to use it.

Lack of Breathing Space

One of the main principles of good design is a balance of elements. If you put as much information on the page as possible — the sheer amount of it will render it utterly meaningless. Use “Less is more” principle instead. There must be no visual overload for the user. Nothing should be crammed in for whatever reasons. Only things that mattered should be left in.

Instead, you must keep things simple and divided by spaces so that every element will be distinct and easily recognizable.

Not only breathing space enables better navigation on the page — it also allows highlighting elements that matter without danger of them getting lost in the candy-colored overstuffed mess.

Bad Content causes Customer Existence Failure

If you are not into conceptual writing — then chances are you really don’t spam. One of the most common mistakes made by companies posting too much stuff that is eerily irrelevant to their customers.

Clickbait articles are great for traffic but not much for quality leads and business opportunities. This leads to increasingly diminishing returns in a form of shrinking audience and bad word of mouth. And you don’t want that.

Instead of trying to surf on trends — focus on quality content that will help your customers solve their causes (preferably with a little help from your company).

Gated content abuse

Gated content is bread and butter of gathering leads. In a way, it is a contact mining database building operation that runs through your site and makes your business thrive. However, you should keep it reasonable and limited to something really valuable.

The logical solution is to leave so-called teaser content publicly available. That will give a taste of what can be opened by sharing an e-mail.

Overstuffed Contact Form

The contact form is one of the keys to the customer. It is a gateway to opportunities. Because of that, it needs to be as fulfilling as possible. With that being said — it doesn’t mean you need to overstuff the contact form with some trash. You need to come up with as many questions as possible regarding further cooperation.

It is important to keep it relatively easy to follow but not simplistic. You need to provide a customer with an interface to write his cause to some extent. Some guiding questions may be used to expand upon the general terms.

In conclusion

One can’t just make a website the way he wants without caring about those who will use it. That is simply irresponsible and utterly counter-productive. By following simple rules you will make the pleasant user experience of your customer that ultimately will result in your fruitful cooperation.

5 elements of a Successful E-Commerce Website

If there is one type of internet entrepreneurship that is exactly what it says on the tin - then it is definitely e-commerce. It is the weirdest type of business all over the Internet because there are no particular secrets of the craft. It is just that.

You can read as many tips and tricks as you want but they all boil down to some general principles. All you really need is to do is follow the rules and collect cream of the crop. Sounds too simple? But that is the reality. It is baffling and unbelievable to some.

E-Commerce is the realm where “work hard” means you are missing the point. The name of the game in E-Commerce is “work smart”. It is reasonable to use web calculator to exact price tag for the whole affair. You need to cover all bases and take into account all possibilities - before you start doing.

Here are ten things that make a successful e-commerce website.

Establish your Brand

First things first - you need to make sure that people know your marketplace well enough and had developed a strong sense of trust in its service and customer support. In order to achieve that you need to establish your brand identity and present it to the customers in an engaging way.  You need to come up with really snappy memorable logo. It serves a role of reassuring symbol - a trustworthy, recognizable sign. The rest is made through ad campaigns.

This is a gradual process of planting into the customer’s mind a notion of credibility and mutual respect. This creates a link between the concept of commodities in the customers head and your brand.

Over time this can be expanded into brand products. Usually, such things are not in competition with other products and displayed in separate sections. Basically, it is glorified souvenirs. In cases of a solid audience - that is an additional source of revenue.

2. Marks of trust

In order to boost the credibility of your service - you need to find approval from the various related services - such as payment and security services. Not only that is guaranteed that everything is nice and clean - it serves as a reassuring element for the customers. It might e-commerce usual suspects, such as PayPal, McAfee, BBB, and Verisign.

3. Design is the law

Another important element of building trust is user experience. Design scheme of your website must be functional. Think about it this way - the website must be understood without looking into help page.

The most important elements of an e-Commerce website is the holy trinity of Login, Cart, and Search. They must be designed to a tee.

Website design must be understood on a level of instinct without second guessing where is what. In order to secure the maximum effectiveness of website design - you need to test it from a user’s standpoint. There are three major elements:

• Menu needs to be convenient.
• Product descriptions must be detailed and not ambiguous.
• User reviews must be real.

Aside from that, you need to make the whole payment process easy to understand. The icons of available payment systems must be visible and payment menu scheme must be clear-cut.

All this adds up to your reputation and builds real trust between service and customer.

4. Giveaways

There is one tricky thing in human consciousness - it is always nice to get something for free once in a while. Even if it is just a trifle - it is still very very nice. In terms of e-commerce - that is the weapon of mass engagement, no less.

Such things as free shipping, brand loyalty merchandise or discount deals - work miracles if delivered correctly. It must be positioned as a reward for using a service or helping to improve it.

The most common way of presenting such things is through banners and occasional (not overbearing) pop-up or push notifications. The message is “We’ve got something special for you!”

5. News and lists

Once you have captured customer’s attention - you need to keep yourself relevant in the zone. You can do it by adding informative features to your website. Selections of news articles, lists of popular products for certain categories and press-releases on upcoming events.

Lists are particularly important as they help customers to navigate through the database. News can be used as a place to inform customers about the exclusive deal, giveaways or hot prices.

General newsfeed can be secured with a little help of affiliated resources. Lists of popular products can be composed based on collected data on the customer’s activity.

Conclusion

These are essential elements of your website’s success. Keep them in minds upon making an e-Commerce website. They may seem basic and simple - but that is the nature of the business. There are really no secrets - just very strict principles you need to follow in order to get through.

Challenges of chatbots for business

Back in the day – chatbots were nothing more than a fancy toys. They were extremely limited and there was somewhat perverted pleasure in making them uncomfortably baffled by asking something way beyond their reach. All these “Sorry, but I don’t understand” were fun to read. However, with the addition of Internet to the mix – things have changed. Numerous projects one upped each other one after another.

And then machine learning was fully implemented and truly majestic thing happened – chatbots became capable of maintaining more or less adequate conversations based of expansive dictionary, context and specifics of syntax. Sure, there is still an uncanny valley element in play, but no one really strives for make-believe anymore.

Because of such improvements chatbots quickly found and solidified their place in the market. Benefits of chatbots are easy to understand. Over time their involvement started to change the way the business is handled. They took over such mundane and overbearing things as casual customer support and turned it into powerful intelligence tools.

However, no matter how mighty and reaching chatbots are – they are just sets of ones and zeroes which need to be taken care off. And there are more than one challenge that come in a way. They are rather big and they need to be taken serious. If not – be prepared to utter “mistakes were made” while going through a door.

Here are some of the most common.

Message Interpreting

One of the biggest challenges with using chatbots in customer support comes with interpreting the messages and understanding the user intention. Programming flexible algorithms of interpreting the intention of the message is top priority upon making a chatbot. Unlike machines who know one and only possible way of saying things – people do it in a variety of ways. Some write short sentences. Some write long. Some write with colloquials, some write with bitter err’s. And customer don’t really care if that is inappropriate for the machine to understand and they will take no “sorry, I can’t stand it” for an answer.

There are several solutions. Most simple is cautioning the user that he needs to express his cause in general terms so that it will ease the processing of the request. That works for some segment of the customers. But not everybody’s so generous. Because of that there must be an algorithm to piece together the message from an existing customer’s request and compare it with possible variants based off context. You can go as far as setup a separate reaction with chatbot doing the second guessing if the term is beyond the database or if there several possible variants.

Machine-to-human transition

There is also another important thing. There must be a switch algorithm for seamless transition from  chatbot to human in certain instances. The solution is based on analyzing the nature of responses with predetermined patterned in order to decide whether or not human advice is needed. Sometimes it can go with direct asking “are satisfied with an answer?”.

Personalization

When chatbot is capable of understanding the user and making more or less adequate replies – next logical step is to use gained context to your advantage. In terms of user experience that means personalization. The simplest way is keeping user history intact. Bot must be able to save and access it according. That really helps to engage the user and keep him happy with the whole affair.

Personalization also eases the whole “you might also like” thing that often puzzles some. Based off already existing requests and tendencies among multiple users – bot will be able to calculate more feasible offer to the user.

The challenge comes with calculating the most appropriate ways of adapting to the user. But it is solved solely through series of tries and fails in every particular instance.

Chatbot style

Another thing that needs to be considered is the style of chatbot. User don’t really like to deal with answering machine (which chatbot basically is). They want a little bit more affecting interaction. That means chatbots needs to have some attitude. It can go as far as selecting gender of a bot. But the most common is selecting several manners of conversing – more formal, informal or flowery or excessively minimalist.

Data Gathering

Chatbots serve as a double-edged sword. On one side – they help users to sort out the causes. On the other – they provide your with vital information on said user.

While this information is only a fracture of what you are gathering with Ad Tech toolset – it provides vital insights into audience behavior and preferences. And that is the thing you would like to take into consideration.

You need to see the big picture in order to assess the effectiveness of the chatbot. In order to do that it must be integrated into management system with a certain set of metrics so that the incoming information will sorted out and utilized. This also helps to understand what engages and what scares off the audience in a particular episodes. That helps to adjust behavior of the bot and the manner of the replies. It also helps to expose weak points in presentation of the products.

Natural Language Processing

Another big challenge that comes with customizing and adjusting chatbots behavior is understanding the limits of Natural Language Processing (NLP). While it is the backbone of any chatbot – if gone too far it may be as good as dreaming out an elephant in a gulp of a cloud looking exasperated upside down. In other words – it may end up being as incomprehensible as any cat sitting on a keyboard sessions. But that is an extreme example – it doesn’t really happen that way.

What happens is miscommunication. For example, you have user request to explain how to perform registration on a website. If not programmed properly, chatbot can churn instead incomprehensive set of commands based off keywords found in the coding that de-facto represent a reply to the bot but are essentially useless for a user. (Even though it is considered to be a legitimate literary style by some scholars.)

Such things are solved with studying most requested and frequently asked questions. Around this information sets of replies (AKA decision trees) are constructed. In order to make cohesive messages – linking sentences are composed. Note that this thing is perfected in the process on an incoming data thus every good chatbots is unique in its own way.

Machine learning is another solution but it needs very defined set of rules in order to be effective. If not – it will be a mess. However, it makes the process of personalization much easier and significantly improves finding proper answers for user requests.

In conclusion

Every mentioned challenge can be solved easily if professional development team is involved and there is strong feeling of trust between project owner and the team.

Chatbots became more than just gimmicky automated responders – they became valuable sources of information. In many ways they helped to improve already existing methods of interaction with the customers.  On the other hand - they opened up whole new perspectives on a concept. It may be a Pandora’s Box in the end but at the moment it looks more than intriguing.

Essential Things to Consider Before You Start Creating an App for Your Business

In this day and age creating your own application seems like no big deal with marbles signing maples elsewhere while hornets “do the do”. According to the recent stats in 2017 only — 42% of small businesses had developed their own apps and around 25% had ones underway by the end of the year. In other words — the competition is big.

The reality of the application development is far removed from that blissfully cheerful idyll described in numerous blog posts and guides. Creating an app is nowhere near as simple as it is described. It is a serious affair and it takes a lot of time and effort in order to make it.

There are lots of rather peculiar things you need to think over before starting. The purpose of this article is to sort things out and make crystal clear what things you need to consider before embarking on developing an application for your business venture.

Benefits of developing your own app

It might seem obvious but it should be stated — developing your own application can substantially improve your business operation from the management standpoint. The reasoning for that is simple.

Third-party apps are fine and have plenty cool things to offer, but they have one major disadvantage — they can’t cover all your needs. They have a bit of this and a bit of that and whole lotta something-something in-between. On the contrary, your own app is made exactly with your requirement at front and center. Custom app can be tailored according to your working style with features you need the most without excessive fat. Because of that user experience can be adjusted accordingly and overall interaction will be smoother and more effective.

On the other hand — your own application is a perfect tool for building brand recognition, keeping it visible and subsequently forming brand loyalty. It opens up possibilities of more close interaction with the customers which makes better and more controlled user engagement. This allows gathering lots of viable information from their activities through the application. In turn — this helps to specify ad campaigns and monitor customer behavior. Also, your application can direct marketing channel. Not only it can represent the product or service itself — it can also host advertisements of affiliate products. And this is additional source of revenue.

But all this is cream of the crop. In order to get there — you need to take into consideration few things.

1. Is it worth it?

Before you make fateful decision to develop your own application — you must ask yourself one simple question “Is it worth it?”.

You need to understand whether it is necessary to develop your own application or is it possible to use third-party applications instead. Estimating pros and cons of it is a must. If there is the slightest doubt about it — just stop and choose something already existing.

This is important from two points of view.

First is budgetary. Developing an app is rather costly thing. In case if there is only tangential need in one — the decision will be utter opposite of cost-effective.

Second is time management. In the current time — you can’t waste your time and effort on something that ultimately can’t work out.

2. What are the opportunities?

If you moved on with developing your own app — next comes examination of possible benefits it might bring. You can’t just make an app and sit on it — that is eerily irresponsible. Every action must mean something or you will end up in the rut. Keep that in mind.

Your application must have clear and distinct role in your business operation. For example, promoting special offers or improving customer support. Its functions must bring something new to the table and improve already existing elements. This part needs to be thought-through in extreme detail because otherwise app may contradict other and overlap other parts of your business and thus will make it less effective. It doesn’t need to be everything all at once — it needs to make one or two things well enough.

Another thing you need to think over is the presentation of an app to the user. Not only you need to come up with effective and engaging user experience — you need to make it unique. It can’t be just another version of your website. Your custom app needs to be an experience of its own. Keep in mind that it must be functional.

Aside from that you need to think through the maintenance issues. Your app can’t be just one thing. It needs to evolve — change, expand, try something new. This all must be mapped out.

3. Price estimation

The biggest issue to deal with upon developing an application is the price of work. It should be noted that the bottom line of the project is highly dependent on the market climate — the way it is assessed remains the same all the time. In order to correctly estimate the price of the project you need to define functional priorities of what you need in your application. Then you need to choose the way it will be developed. There are two most common methods — agile and waterfall.

Waterfall method isn’t really effective in small business segment. You need to figure out the whole thing from start to finish and then get the result. You pay for the whole thing at once.

Agile method is far more cost effective. It is based on iteration development. That approach allows creating minimum viable product that can be tested in the market on the go. Based on its reception the whole project can be adjusted. Because of that you can clearly define based off actual data what your project needs and pay only for that.

4 In-house or Outsource

One of the major stumbling blocks in the entire custom app affair is choosing better executors for the job. There are two option — in-house or outsource. Both are equal. It all depends on a situation.

On the one hand — you can keep the thing in-house and trust the expertise of your developers. That is rather cost-effective option but it needs big management maneuvers in order to keep the team from exhausting. Another problem may come with the team lacking the experience and insight or simply suffering from overload. That significantly bugs the development process. In result — your app may lack in quality and “it” factor.

On the other hand — you can outsource the team who will deliver the goods. The upside is that you can find the best experts in the field who will make state-of-the-art application. The downside is that it can be rather expensive thing.

5 Knowledge is power!

Next step in making your application effective is extensive market research. Consider this to be deep dive.

Not only you need to understand your audience and its behavior well enough — you also need to figure out the ways of engaging your audience and attracting new untapped segments of it. You need to see through preferences of the target audience, their typical behavior and primary needs. In its heart lies two-headed beast of “satisfying product” and “affecting service”.

Another important thing is insight into the state of the competition in the market segment. Your further strategy depends on whether the competition is inert or actively aggressive. By studying competitors and knowing what they can offer you will calculate the exact countering strategy. With it you will be ready for any changes in the market and will stay ahead of a competition.

6 Platforms

Choice of platform is another important thing. Essentially it boils down to sacramental “iOS or Android”. Both platform has distinct audiences with their own peculiar ticks and turbulence. Pricing policy is very dependent on the platform of choice. IOS users are usually more ready to pay more for better service while Android users tend to move on for cheap or free options.

On the technical side of things — iOS offers more stable operating space. It is unified and highly secure. But it is not as flexible as Android. But while Android allows more sophisticated and risky programming — it is highly sensitive in terms of security. It should be noted that chances of getting hacked anyway are rather low especially if you don’t play dirty or mess with wrong people.

In conclusion

These are all major things you need to consider before starting development of your own app. Sure, you may ignore them completely or consider on the go but the downside of this careless approach is plain simple waste of resources (mostly money and time) for something that could have been avoided if thought over beforehand.

Five things that make free apps profitable

These days – it takes no time to master software development realm. All you need is already lying within a click or two and a couple of search queries and there is literally no point in inventing another bicycle with your brilliant mind. You just need to do the thing that works well
enough and in the same time looks attractive. And so the spice will flow.

But ever since the internet became a thing - the very perception of consuming had changed. Users have the choice to pay or not to pay and more often than not they are choosing the latter option. Obviously, because it is free.

And there is not much that developer can do about it - just accept it as a fact. You can’t go against the mighty currents of market. All users care of is an effective solution for their cause and if they can’t use your app for that they will find another.

How to deal with? The answer my friend is the same as the title of Frank Zappa’s second album – AKA absolutely free. Exactly – if you want to profit from your app you must make it absolutely free. That is called being flexible and capable of adapting to situation in order to turn into beneficial.

Here is ultra-condensed version of how free apps make money – they make users pay for their service. “How?” is another story and I’m about to tell you about it.

Here are five things that make free apps profitable.

Knowledge of the Market

Software development industry is extremely competitive game of death. You either act smart or you get busted and ripped apart. The first and foremost thing you to do with your application is to study your potential market. You don’t even need an app to do that – just a little bit of caution, curiosity and lots and lots of tenacity. Remember – knowledge of the market is the half of the battle won.

Basically you need to find answers for the following questions:

• What your app can bring to table?
• what your competitors can offer? How you can counter it?
• Is there is space for maneuvers and contingencies?
• who might be your potential users? This one includes demographics, language, location;
• what are their needs and demands?
• what attracts and motivates them?

Inciting presentation

Precise targeting to the audience is the gateway to success. If you gain trust and respect of your target audience – you can expect they are ready for more. But before that you need to lay the foundation and it lies in the initial presentation of your product at app store. You need to grab the attention of the consumer from the very start .

Your App Store page must be a stellar introduction to the product. It must accurate and in the same intriguing. And it is quite easy to pull off. There is rather simple formula to it: the name, description and visual supplements. Here’s how it goes:

• Catchy, snappy name that easily sticks;
• Engaging description of the product with easy-to-follow benefits and advantages over the others products. May be laced with verbose twists and turns that gives imagination a ride;
• Fulfilling screenshot or video demonstation of the products operation and breakdown of its set of features.

In-app adverts / Sponsorship

You may ask – “but what about money?” Here’s what. The easiest way of getting revenue from your free app is to put some adverts on it. How to do it? First you need to build some reputation for the users - you need their trust and respect. Then you can sell your ad space.

In-app adverts are closely tied with sponsorship deals. But there is a trap. Ads need to be smooth and almost continuation of user experience. They must come natural. It can be a banner in the corner or a pop-up ad or push notification that splashes all over the screen. It should be noted that this must not be overbearing if otherwise it can scare off the audience.

This way monetization comes through:

• ad appearances;
• Clicks;
• installations of the advertised products.

In-app purchases

With your audience engaged and your product being used – you can start teasing that there is more. How to pull this off? You need to make slight limitations to your product – just the basic set of functions and the rest under the paywall. Usually it is either innuendo of functional
expansion or full-on showcase of new features.

In-app purchases are tricky business. You need to build solid and trusty relationship with the user in order to pull this off. It is always something beneficial and expanding for the user experience. For example, you can allow buying new set of filters or customized interface or just turn off advertisements.

Freemium model

Purchases can be expanded into more elaborate freemium model. Generally speaking – it makes your free app something of a fully-functional sample of the “real thing” that is “real deal”. In this case you need to think through ways for improvement and expansion that will motivate user to switch to a bigger version.