I’ve bought a few things online over the last couple of weeks, including replacing broken wine glasses, finding a favourite and scratched album from the 70s that has been re-released on CD for the first time and tracking down replacement earphone foam covers. I’d have to say it’s been an interesting experience.
I had a conversation yesterday with a customer about a service offered by a another website, and it was a timely reminder of the copywriting rule to never make assumptions about your customers or their knowledge.
In any industry, there tends to be a base level of knowledge, and often a lot industry specific language that can be confusing or make no sense to customers (unless they’re in the same industry of course).
In my last blog, I mentioned how many websites don’t include their contact number or address on their website, and simply have a form for users to fill out if they need to contact the site owner.
Frequently, the impact of that on site visitors is that they don’t trust the site, and why would you buy from someone who doesn’t want to be contacted.
In ecommerce, trust is everything, if shoppers don’t trust a site, they won’t buy!
It might seem odd for a web design and development company to be writing a blog with tips on how to design a website. The reality though is that while we can develop concepts and recommend best practice implementation, while we have many years of experience in building effective websites, and in some cases have extensive experience in developing sites for a particular industry, for all that we still don’t know your business and your target market as well as you. So while a web developer can provide sound technical and commercial advice, ultimately we take our direction from our customers.
The purpose of this blog is not to provide tips on the technical aspects of creating and coding a site, but to give you as a business owner or manager an understanding of some elements that make an effective web page and to help you in your discussions with your website developer.
I’m a big fan of concise “how to” blogs and articles that provide good tips on how to achieve something without having to spend hours researching and reading. As the web gets ever more congested with competing sites, the need to stand out and be the site that converts to sales or inquiries is becoming evermore important, so I decided to start writing about how to achieve better conversions on your site.
SaaS Content Management Systems (CMS) vs Open Source Software such as Magento - Part 1
by Chris Sutton
A question we often get asked by potential clients is what is the difference between open source systems such as Magento, Wordpress etc., and proprietry SaaS CMS systems. At SiteSuite we've been developing our own SaaS online business suite for over 13 years, as well as having some experience in the use of Magento in particular. Over the course of a few blogs we'll share our knowledge and experience
If you’re a business owner researching for the pending development of a new website or ecommerce website, there’s a strong chance that you’ll come across the term ‘HTML5’. In fact, most business owners with an interest in their online presence will already be familiar with HTML, a mark-up coding language for presenting content on the Internet. So what is HTML5 and why is it so hotly discussed?
For many small businesses, social media is not the place for in-your-face sales pitches, rather, it’s the place where companies build their brand and connect with a new audience. Drop the notion that Twitter, Facebook et-al are going to open the floodgates to direct sales (or leads), and you’re likely to get a lot more from those channels.
Google website ranking and search engine optimisation are often seen as mysterious crafts that are impenetrable to all but the geekiest amongst us. However, I came across a resource from Google recently called “How Search Works” that explains in very easy to understand terms many of the important considerations in ensuring your website ranks well.
Predicting trends in technology, or just about anything else, is always fun. Sometimes predictions can be wildly off the mark, but often there are clear trends that give some certainty to prediction.
One such trend is the growing use of HTML5 to build effective web apps that will make many native apps redundant.
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