How to plan a perfect pop-up for your website?
Pop-up advertisements are back in a big way. In the past, the pop-ups were seen as annoying and intrusive way of advertising, and logically the visitors hated them. The furore against pop-ups was so high that many browsers went ahead and integrated the pop-up blockers as a part of their service. But the pop-ups have made a dramatic comeback in the last few years. But this time they have adorned a new and user friendly avatar.
For example, IIHM Kolkata website has a pop up mentioning the "best hotel management college in Kolkata".
Pop-ups are a great way of increasing conversion, traffic (to specific pages) and even raising awareness about a recent service, product or offer. And it is logical for you to be contemplating about the usage of pop-up ads at your website. But before you lunge ahead, you need to know: the old world of pop-up ads has vanished. There is a whole new list of things to keep in mind while planning for a website pop-up ad today. So, what are the basics of coming up with a perfect pop-up? That is what we are here to discuss.
- Timely Appearance: This is the era when brands are more concerned about user experience than they ever were. With a stiff competition, no matter which niche business you belong, every website has to cater a neat browsing experience. And pop-ups, when not planned well, can be a big deterrent to this logic. In the past, pop-ups were hated because they impeded the browsing experience of the visitors. They would come up any time and any where. So, the planning of a pop-up ad should take into consideration their placement and timing. Today's successful pop-up website ads are allowing the visitors to look through the desirable service or product before cropping up on a timely manner.
- Easy to Close: Going through the pop-up ads was a compulsion for the surfers in the prior years, as they were so difficult to minimize or close. As a result most visitors would leave the website out of frustration. Now, this would impact the conversion and user experience levels. This is why, websites of the times are providing the visitors easy and readily viewable options to close the ads they do not find interesting.
- An Offer Visitors like: Pop-ups ads can be successful when they carry forward a worthwhile offer. There is no point in having a pop-up up there just for the sake of it. Such ad spaces should be reserved for the most well thought out and luring ads. Your ad offer should be such that it attracts attention and the visitors find it useful.
- Having an Action Driven Call to action: Rather than forcing the visitors to click on the ad and reach the landing page, today's websites are rather focusing on dishing out attractive offerings. Limited time offers or offers that are valid for the first 50 clicks are good ways to not only arouse interest but get the desired hits on the landing page. This is why, thinking hard about the call to action is the secret to success behind the modern day pop-up ads.
Once you have taken into account the above mentioned factors and planned a pop-up ad for your website, leave the rest to Keyline. Our website design and development service can provide the perfect ad and landing pages for your campaign.
How often should a website be redesigned?
The decision to redesign your corporate website is not a simple one. It has many management and monetary facets to it. This is why, there are many website owners who are caught up in a fix: “when should I redesign my website?” Well, there is a popular saying "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." But, this saying was not created keeping the web in mind. There are many websites which are completely functional from the apparent view (it ain’t broke) and still they are crying out for a redesign (fix). As web redesigning is a big decision, so we can understand the indecision you are suffering from. But, if your website is looking rather stale, outdated and far moved from other modern websites of the niche, then it is the perfect time to start searching for a reputed web design service.
But what is the real shelf life of a website?
There is no definitive answer to this question. The shelf life of a website can be 3 years, 3 months, 3 hours or even 3 minutes. It all depends on a range of business factors. But, we understand that this answer would hardly meet your curiosity. So, let us throw in some numbers. A study by the Orbit Media, on the average shelf life of websites, found that a website needs to be redesigned every 2 years and 6 months! But that is a generalized answer and might not fit your industry requirements.
Does the shelf life vary from one industry to the next?
Yes, definitely. There are some industries which go hand in hand with modern technologies. While there are others which might not mind much about what is happening around in the technology domain. If your website is into selling utility items (such as AC, electronic parts and industrial machinery, as examples) you do not need to care about the technology innovations out there. Customers care more for the quality of the items, rather than your websites looks. While if you are more into dealing with trendy things (such as interior decor, travel, new technologies, etc.) than the customers expect your website to have a modern look. Whether you need to redesign your website within two and a half years or after ten years depends on the expectations from your industry.
What can be an immediate trigger for website redesigning?
Standing at the present times, your website definitely needs to be mobile friendly. If it is not, then there is not a single moment to waste. You need to get in touch with a reliable web designing service and make your website mobile friendly. Even five years ago you could count the mobile visitors out of the equation. But no more, as Google officially states that mobile traffic in 2017 exceeded the desktop traffic. You could be losing a lots of customers and revenue if your website is not mobile friendly. This then is the immediate trigger for website redesigning.
What are the other considerations before thinking about website redesigning?
It all comes down to awareness. You need to understand the demands of the market. Finding answers to some of the below mentioned questions would help you make up the mind.
- Is my website looking modern and updated?
- Have my business offerings remained the same, since I last got my website designed?
- Is my website appearing perfectly on all types of browsers, devices and screen sizes?
- Is my website in the same league or better than my competitors?
- Am I witnessing a steady growth in traffic and revenue through the website?
- Is the website aligning with my present business goals?
- Are customers giving compliments for my website design?
- Do I really like the look and feel of my website?
If you find that all the answers are pointing towards a website redesigning need, then waste no time in contacting us at Keyline. We have helped many clients give a new look to their existing website with our web design services.
Why and How to Track the Website Uptime?
Why and How to Track the Website Uptime?
While searching for a reliable web host you would definitely come across the term "uptime" and all types of guarantees surrounding it. But to tell you more about the ways to track this essential component, we have to first of tell you about this term.
What is Uptime and Downtime?
In the web hosting world Uptime refers to the amount of time that the website is running and available to the visitors. When the website is unaccessible, due to back-end issues, it suffers Downtime. Downtimes can be frustrating for you as a website owner, as the surfers are not able to reach your website. This could lead to loss of traffic and revenue. Additionally, statistics suggest that surfers who are not able to access a website first time around tend not to return back ever again! So, any web host you contact would assure a maximum uptime for the website (often a 99.9% uptime guarantee), which means your website will be accessible for most time of a day.
Why you need to track for uptime?
There are many practical reasons for constantly monitoring your website's uptime. First of all, tracking of the uptime helps you measure the performance of the web host. Secondly, you are the first to know when the website is down. You can quickly contact the web host and get the website back live without losing too much of traffic in the meanwhile. Fast response is critical
when your website is suffering a downtime! Thirdly, no matter how much trust you have upon the web host, you need to take a proactive stance about your online presence. The web host might be handling multiple clients, but for you the website is your sole discretion. Fourthly, tracking for uptime helps you make a good decision when your web hosting plan comes up for renewal.
How Frequently do you need to monitor the uptime?
Being proactive does not mean you have to monitor the uptime of your website after every 5 minutes or so. There are many web tools to auto-check your website's uptime. You just need to know about them and more importantly use them.
What are the options?
There are dozens of server monitoring tools available online. While some are free, others would cost you. Some simple tools cost you a small amount while the other sophisticated versions can cost you a fair deal. While simpler tools run HTTP check to ensure whether the website is running or down, there are others which perform more complex back-end jobs. Yes, the sophisticated tools can monitor more than 50 server side checkpoints simultaneously. Some of the free monitoring tools would include Pingdom, Uptime Robot and Uptime Checker among many others. While the costly and sophisticated monitoring tools include Cacti, Naios, etc. No matter which monitoring tool you choose they will perform one of the four types of server monitoring: HTTP monitor, Ping monitor, DNS Server Monitor and TCP port monitor.
If you are in search for a reliable web hosting partner who offers best uptime for your website, then OptraHost's web hosting services is the right match for your requirements.
When do you need to scale up hosting plans for online dating website?
This is the era of e-communications. The modern advances in technology have removed the need for physical meetings in many a scenario. None more so, than for dating. Online dating websites are the new avenues to meet your soul mates and get to know them better. It is no wonder than that in the last few years dating websites have become a valuable property on the world wide web. More and more enthusiastic entrepreneurs are taking this safe business option to launch their business career. If the figures are to be believed than, online dating websites had a 17% increase in their popularity in 2017. And predictions for 2018 claim a bigger popularity for the online dating websites. So, time is ripe to start your online dating website!
The first major decision that you will confront before launching an online dating website is the type of web hosting you should opt for. So, here are our suggestions.
Shared Hosting for Small Traffic
As your website takes baby steps into the online realm, it would need a fair bit of time to establish itself. Though, online dating is a popular business domain, but there are many big and well established players already present. To thwart them or even pull users from those sites would be a stiff challenge for you. So, in the early days you have to eek out each and every user. Definitely your user base would remain low in the first couple of years (though the time may vary based on your marketing tactics). It is also the stage when you have to provide free services, as a means to build the user base. So, you are not earning any profit from the venture yet. All the factors should guide you to choose the shared hosting plans. Based on your current traffic trends, the shared web hosting plans are more than adequate to support your needs. A word of caution should be sounded here: do not fall for the lure of free web hosting, it would damage your business future. Again, while choosing the shared hosting plans only look through a reputed list of providers. Reputed web hosts make sure that the hosted websites have a secured environment.
Dedicated Hosting for Increasing Traffic
Once you have been able to penetrate into the market and the week-by-week statistics show an overwhelming increase in your traffic, it is time to scale up the hosting plans. By this time you must have already started to think or even might have implemented the Paid service model. When you ask for payment from the users, their expectations will also rise. They will anticipate best listings, best services, ease of use, quick loading pages, etc. The shared hosting plan you were so long using might not be competent enough to meet these requirements. So, you have to start searching for the most affordable dedicated web hosting plans. Again choosing a web host with proven track record is the trick here. Now, data security is more essential than ever and no goof ups can be expected.
At OptraHost we have affordable web hosting plans that can fit ideally with your web hosting requirements. Please take a look through.
5 Major Mobile App Development Trends for 2018
Standing in the last days of 2017, we can safely say that mobile app eco-system is the biggest marketplace. According to a data by Statista, more than 197 billion apps were downloaded in 2017. The mobile App store is presently populated with 6.6 million apps. Businesses, of whatever stature they may be, have realized that developing a mobile app for their brand is no longer an investment rather it is essential for their survival in the changing market. Brands, large and small, are utilizing their mobile apps for direct marketing, brand awareness and increasing sales.
With the app development scopes emerging from every corner, the onus is on the mobile developers to come up with deliveries that make their clients happy. Adoption of the below given anticipated trends would be a good way to earn accolades from your clients.
Trend #1: Growth of IoT and Wearable apps
IoT and wearables ushered in a new era of convenience for the users and 2018 will see a further growth in their popularity. More players are emerging into the IoT and wearable development arena with a focus on developing scalable and mature deliverables. It is estimated that the investment in IoT would increase to around 120 billion by 2020! 2018 will see the extensive adoption of wearable technologies in mobile app development. The healthcare and manufacturing sectors would be the front-runners in the adoption of wearable technologies.
Trend #2: Increased adoption of Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP)
AMP is a great new way to improve the page load time on mobile apps. This Google technology helps businesses boost their conversion, improve the bounce rates and CTR. It is also highly important for retaining visitors and catering good user experience to them. Furthermore, AMP helps an app gain more visibility on mobile search engine searches. Adopting this technology in the mobile development cycle would be crucial for application developers in 2018.
Trend #3: Planning for Android Instant App
This is a whole new way in the app discovery process. With the Android Instant app, the Android users can now view the content and features of any app without actually installing it on their devices. The Android Instant app is available for Android versions 5.0 to 8.0. There are tools in the Android Studio that allows the developers to create a partial version of their app that can be accessed by the users with a click on deep link. It should be stated in this respect that Vimeo has enhanced their session durations by 130% in 2017 with the aid of this new feature.
Trend #4: Stress on Mobile app security
As smartphones are being used widely for transactions online, the need for stringent security measures is more than it was ever before. The developers should focus more on building a secure environment for their end users. Security measures should be tightened right at the development stage with secure back-end, code encryption and API. The integration of a reputed payment gateway goes a long way in making an app secure for transactions. Mobile developers have to spend more time in testing the security of their app from every possible scenario.
Trend #5: Growth of on-demand mobile app development
2017 saw a widespread popularity for on-demand mobile app development. Such apps made the lives of the users much simpler. They could use this app to meet their requirements from anywhere and anytime. Most of the popular on-demand apps in 2017 belonged to the car cleaning, food ordering, laundry, taxi service and renting sectors. The year 2018 would see the adoption of on-demand apps into other realms as well.
If you want to develop the trendiest mobile application that is delivered to you within the shortest span, then you have got to check out Keyline's mobile application development service.
5 Web Design Trends to watch out for in 2018
As a digital medium, web design services see most changes each year. While their print cousins have remained constant, the web design realm undergoes many trend shifts with every passing year. The year 2017 posed many technology challenges for the web designers, but it was amazing to see the web design world cut through the challenges and design websites that were user friendly, innovative and adaptable with the corporate style.
One of the major paradigm shifts in 2017 saw mobile searches finally overtake the desktop searches. This means, 2018 would be a year when the web designers have to care for mobile functionality while evolving with the desktop designs. Keeping all this in mind, let us try to find some of the major web design trends to care for in 2018.
Trend #1: Move towards Vibrant Color Schemes
2018 is definitely the year when the color palette preferences of the web designers would change. So long the designers and brands only worked with the web safe colors. But even in the last quarter of 2017, web designers had shifted from this norm. Web designers were seen experimenting and getting courageous with their selection of colors. Vibrant shades along with non-horizontal headers found a liking among the web surfers. The adoption of vibrant shades has been aided by technology too. With new technological advances, the monitors and devices of the present era can reproduce a diversity of rich colors.
Trend #2: Use of Drop Shadows and Depth
Shadows have been an integral part of web designing for many years now. But in light of the new advancements in web browsers, they have become more appealing then they ever were. In 2018, the web designers have the luxury of playing with grids and parallax layouts to create depth in designs and an illusion of a world beyond the screen. Drop shadows can increase the aesthetics and alleviate the User Experience (UX) of a website.
Trend #3: Focus on Mobile Surfing
As mentioned before, it is now official that surfers are using their smartphones to surf through websites, more than their desktops. Everyone today is using the smartphone to shop, place order and look for information on the web. A couple of years ago, the biggest dilemma for the web designers was: how to adopt their designs into the small mobile screen. But the mobile technology has matured significantly enough to solve their problem. Latest mobile technology enables the web designers to create menus, sub-menus and buttons without taking up much space. Yes, you might have to shun all those beautiful yet big photos and illustrations from your design, but the rest of the design can be easily accommodated within the mobile screen.
Trend #4: Use of Particle Backgrounds
This is the solution web designers have come up with to solve performance issues of their websites. With a video running in the background, many sites suffered from slow loading time. The animations done using the particle backgrounds are lightweight and they do the tasks a video is targeted to achieve. If an image is worth thousand words, then a moving image is much more than that. So, with the adoption of particle backgrounds one can immediately attract user's attention and create a favorable first impression. Such motion graphics have already gained popularity on social media and campaign landing pages. It is now time to implement them on the web pages.
Trend #5: Bigger and Bolder Typography
Every web designer knows that typography is the most powerful visual tool that they can dish out for the surfers. With the right selection of typefaces you can set the right tone, evoke emotions and reflect the brand personality. As the resolutions of the device monitors are getting sharper, it is making fonts easier to read. With the exception of Internet Explorer, all the other browsers are today supporting the hand-made and innovative typefaces. The typeface trend of Sans Serif with Serif headings will be explored widely even in 2018. This year will be an year of invention in terms of typography.
If you are looking for a web design service that uses the latest technologies and trends in servicing the clients, then you have to Contact us at Keyline.