Source: Statista.

Developers can create a successful online store using any of these eCommerce platforms. With a skilled eCommerce website developer in the Philippines, you can work with your choice. 

We’ll focus on the top two platforms!

Shopify and WooCommerce: An eCommerce Platform Comparison

Pricing and Cost

Shopify

Firstly, Shopify allows you to try it out for free for three days (no credit card details needed!) You can pay for its three plans (Basic, Shopify, and Advanced) monthly or annually. Here’s a breakdown of prices:

Source: Shopify.

WooCommerce 

Next, WooCommerce is free to download as a plugin on WordPress. In fact, updates are also free. Users can manage online stores from their WordPress websites, add short product details or descriptions, and create coupon codes!

However, it also offers Woo Express, giving you access to everything your eCommerce business needs for success. For the Essential and Performance WooCommerce plans, you can pay as little as $1 for the first three months. But for the former, which provides essential features for your online store, you pay $39 a month or $25 monthly if billed annually. 

If you need higher-level features, consider the Performance plan, where you’ll pay $70 a month or $45 a month if billed annually. Lastly, there’s an Enterprise plan.

Source: WooCommerce.

Conclusion: Shopify wins in this category.

Popularity and Market Share

It’s always good to learn what your competitors are using so your eCommerce developers in the Philippines can build the right online store for you. In fact, a fair number of other eCommerce platforms are active today. In an estimate, there are 4,806,002 live websites using Shopify while a staggering 6,195,313 live websites are WooCommerce users.

Source: BuiltWith.

However, based on recent statistics for market usage distribution in the top million websites, Shopify tops the list. Next up is WooCommerce.

Conclusion: Shopify wins this category with a 21% distribution.

User Experience

Shopify

Shopify doesn’t require significant technical knowledge to use. Skilled eCommerce website developers in the Philippines can use it to configure an online shop for you. Thus, the process of setting up a store is straightforward! 

Business owners can easily manage products, orders, and customers through the centralized admin panel.

Additionally, Shopify has an app store that allows users and eCommerce developers to extend functionality and add features. It handles server management, security, and updates as a fully hosted solution.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is integrated with WordPress sites. Thus, you can count on an expert WordPress developer to handle website setup for your eCommerce business!

In fact, WordPress and WooCommerce interfaces are similar, so developers don’t need to contend with a learning curve. Also, WooCommerce benefits from the vast WordPress plugin ecosystem and users can easily add various functionalities. That said, WooCommerce users have control over hosting costs so that it can be more cost-effective, especially for smaller businesses. 

Conclusion: Shopify easily wins this category.

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SEO Features

Beyond what these three top platforms can offer, the main drivers of an eCommerce website are marketability and searchability. Around 93% of all internet activity starts with a browser search. Thus, you’ll need help running an online store if customers can’t find your website on search results.

There are a staggering 200 ranking factors for Search Engine Optimization. But the top eight are as follows:

1. Quality Content
2. Backlinks
3. Technical SEO
4. Keyword Optimization
5. User Experience
6. Schema Markup
7. Social Signals
8. Brand Signals

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Here’s how SEO-Friendly each eCommerce platform is:

Shopify 

Shopify has multiple advantages for SEO. It has built-in mobile responsiveness. You can edit page titles and descriptions and create 301 redirects. But most of all, this platform is built for blogging. You can use the right content strategies to get the attention of readers and search engines!

Here’s a quick rundown of Shopify’s crucial SEO features:

• Customizable SEO-friendly URLs for your online eCommerce store;
• Customizable titles and meta descriptions;
• Supports header tags and image alt text;
• Automatic XML sitemap generation;
• Mobile-friendly themes;
• Fast page load speeds;
• Secure Sockets Layer encryption;
• Blogging capabilities, and
• Supports product reviews.

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WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an SEO-friendly WordPress plugin rather than a standalone platform. As a result, its SEO-friendliness is tied to the WordPress website itself. It offers the following advantages:

• Access to SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, etc. 
• Control over product and category descriptions, meta tags, alt text, etc.;
• Custom URLs for your eCommerce website;
• Structured data markup;
• XML sitemap support;
• 301 redirects, and
• Support for customer reviews and ratings.

Conclusion: Shopify and WooCommerce are tied.

Community and Support

Shopify offers reliable 24/7 support for customers and eCommerce developers. It is available through live chat, email, and phone.

An extensive Shopify help center has documentation, guides, and tutorials. Thus, it has an active community for exchanging ideas and sharing experiences.

Automattic, the developer behind WooCommerce, provides limited customer support. However, they enable you to submit a support ticket to WooCommerce.com for any plugin-related issues. WooCommerce benefits, first and foremost, come from the vast WordPress community. 

Users can find support for WooCommerce store setup and management through the following:

• Forums;
• Community discussions;
• Extensive documentation;
• Guides;
• Tutorials, etc.

With WooCommerce, users seek support from third-party eCommerce developers or agencies familiar with the WordPress ecosystem.

Conclusion: Shopify wins this category.

Conclusion

Shopify and WooCommerce are great tools. Both provide similar features for building the perfect online shop. Thus, the best choice just depends on what you’re looking for that suits your eCommerce website.

If you feel like you need more guidance and a dedicated team to help build your eCommerce website, you can always contact an eCommerce website developer in the Philippines. We are always here to assist you in your website needs and goals!

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Adaptive Design vs Responsive Design

When building mobile-friendly websites, you will encounter adaptive design and responsive design. Sometimes, other people may use these terms interchangeably. However, these two terms are different. So, how do these two terms differ?

Adaptive Design

First, the adaptive design uses static layouts based on breakpoints that no longer respond once the web page has fully loaded. This type of design first detects the screen size and then loads the appropriate web layout. So, you create multiple layouts that adapt according to specific screen resolutions. According to StatCounter, as of December 2021, these are the common screen resolutions worldwide:

All devices: 

Desktop:

Tablet:

Mobile:

Thus, if you decide to create mobile-friendly website layouts through adaptive design, you have to make individual designs for at least six specific screen widths. 

Responsive Design

Responsive design, on the other hand, is fluid. It uses CSS media queries to adjust the layout according to the target device’s display type, width, height, and more. In addition, the responsive design utilizes breakpoints that allows the web page to adapt to the screen size no matter the device used.

Browserstack defines a breakpoint as “the ‘point’ at which a website’s content and design will adapt in a certain way to provide the best possible user experience.” These breakpoints are pixel values that a web designer or a web developer can define in CSS. However, the term varies in definition among designers and developers. For web developers, a breakpoint is a media query. On the other hand, web designers define a breakpoint as the “juncture at which a change is made to the way the website content or design appears to the viewer”.

Let us take the website of Adobe as an example. When viewed on a desktop or laptop, the site visitor will see the navigation bar on the upper left corner of the screen (shown below).

Image Source: Adobe

However, when users visit the site using their smartphone, they will see the same navigation bar collapsed into a hamburger menu button (shown below).

Image Source: Adobe

Image Source: Adobe

Thus, if you use responsive design, you have to create one fluid layout that automatically reconfigures all of the elements in your design according to the user’s device.

Why Should You Use Adaptive Design?

You can use adaptive design to retrofit an already existing website. You can do so, especially if you want it to become a mobile-friendly website. Through adaptive design, you have the power over the design, which you can develop for different viewports or screens.

You will want to begin by creating a design for a low-resolution viewport. Then, you can make other designs as you go higher. Doing it this way ensures that the design will not become constrained by the content. 

However, isn’t it too much of a hassle to design for all types of screen resolutions? Know that you do not have to do that, as long as you know your audience—specifically the devices they are using. So, figure out what types of devices your clients are using so that you can narrow down their most commonly used screen sizes.

Why Should You Use Responsive Design?

Now, you should know that most websites today use responsive design. Even less experienced web designers and web developers can create responsive designs through the help of open-source content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

Responsive designs take less work to create and manage in comparison to adaptive design. However, it also provides less control over your designs. Moreover, because it is fluid, as previously mentioned, it may cause design elements on the page to “jump” whenever a user resizes the window.

Furthermore, you will have to keep all layouts in mind when building mobile-friendly websites through responsive design. So, you will also have to create a viewport for mid-resolution screen sizes. After that, you can use media queries to make the necessary adjustments for low and high resolutions.

Build Your Mobile-Friendly Website Today!

You can learn more about the differences between responsive and adaptive web designs at CSS-Tricks. 

Then, if you need help building your mobile-friendly website, let our professional web designers and web developers assist you. We have a great web design and development team just for you!

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Comparing Facebook Pages and Personalized Websites

For businesses, whether they are still starting or are already esteemed in their respective niches and industries, Facebook pages and personalized websites serve different roles in helping build and market their brands. However, they also have certain similarities in achieving said goals.

Check out below how Facebook pages and personalized websites compare and contrast in the following items:

1. Ownership and Control

   When you use a Facebook Page, you will be subject to Facebook’s Terms of Service. These terms govern the types of products and services that you can offer on your pages. On the other hand, when you have your personalized website, you have complete control over the products and services that you present to promote and grow your brand. You also have the freedom to present them how you want to, especially when you want to establish a particular branding to make it more unique.

2. Design and Layout

   When you have a Facebook page, you do not have that much freedom in customizing the page’s design and layout. You can only choose to change your profile picture and cover photo. This can become problematic, especially when you want to achieve a look that showcases your brand’s colors. Fortunately, with a personalized website, you can design and build a website depending on the goals you are targeting and your brand’s colors. As such, you can change the theme, appearance, functionality, and feel of your website as much as you want.

3. Information Delivery

   In websites, information flows following an “audience-content” basis. This means that your audience (or site visitors) will have to search for your website among the thousands of other websites available on search engines to locate and reach your content. On the other hand, with Facebook pages being part of a global social media network, your information flows following a “content-audience” basis. Therefore, your audience (Facebook followers) can receive your latest updates directly, whether they asked for them or not.

4. Updates and Notifications

   With a personalized website, you can encourage your site visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Through this, you can inform them through email of your latest product offerings and services. You can also tell them if you have promos and discounts. Similarly, your Facebook followers can receive notifications about your latest postings and content on your page. As long as they follow your Facebook page, your existing customers and even potential clients will see your posts on their Facebook feeds.

5. Ad Revenues

   You can display advertisements on your personalized website. Doing so helps you generate revenue by setting your rates and managing your inventory. So, while running a business website, you can also display ads and use the revenue to pay for your domain, hosting, and other bills. In the same way, you can advertise from your Facebook page to help reach more people and introduce them to your business. Facebook also allows you to boost a post, get leads, or promote an event. So, if you learned how to analyze Facebook ads, you can optimize them so that you can get more people to visit and shop on your business website.

6. Performance and Analytics

   When you have a Facebook page, you can use the Page Insights feature to get information as to the performance of your page, including audience demographic (age, gender, location, etc.) and how people respond to your posts. As such, you can determine which content engages your audience better. Similarly, if you are running a personalized website, you can use a web analytics tool such as Google Analytics, which allows you to track your site performance. You can then know which pages or content needs improvement for a better user experience.

7. Comment Policies

   When using a Facebook page, you cannot review comments before they are posted. As a result, you have to keep a close eye on possible hateful or spiteful remarks from individuals who may only want to discourage your customers. On the other hand, when you have your personalized website, you can formulate your own policies concerning comments. However, the process of moderating comments may be time-consuming. But you also have to remember that your comment collection may be as good as what builds you.

8. Engagement and Interaction

   On your website, you and your site visitors have limited opportunities to interact with each other. As such, even if people have posted their comments on your web page, the others will not receive a notification about said posting of comment. On the other hand, when you have a Facebook page, your followers can like, comment, save, and share your posts. In doing so, your followers’ friends can also see your content. When this happens, you also increase the chances of getting more Facebook followers and, in the end, increasing your ROI.

Make the Most with Facebook Pages and Personalized Websites

Suppose you decide to design and build a personalized website for your business. In that case, you can consult a professional web design and development company in the Philippines to help you out. On the other hand, if you choose to create a Facebook page for your business, you can also approach experts in social media marketing to give you a hand! With that being said, good luck on your marketing journey!

Have we missed any other similarities or differences between using Facebook pages and personalized websites for one’s business? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Why is Web Design Important?

Let us now look into why web design is vital in pushing the success of your online business.

1. Sets First Impression

   As they commonly say, “first impressions last,” which is why you need to be meticulous in your web design. What a site visitor would see when they click and get directed to your landing page would give them an idea of your business. It also tells them what you are capable of as a service provider. For this reason, professional web designing companies make sure that their web designs positively impact site visitors within the first few seconds. As such, make sure that your web design is updated; otherwise, it may leave a negative impression on your business.

2. Helps SEO Efforts

   A professional web design also contributes to your overall search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Aside from your web design, optimizing what you publish on your website would also help search engine spiders easily crawl and index your site. With this, your site gets more chances of ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). As such, your web elements must be SEO-friendly. For this, you may need to seek a professional web designing company to help you increase search engine visibility.

3. Creates Consistency Across Pages

   To establish trust with your audience, you need them to get familiar with your business. You can achieve that through your web design by making sure that your site remains consistent. With that, you need to use the same sets of fonts, styles, and layouts across all of your web pages. Consistency also helps build brand recognition, which is why you also need to integrate your branding into your web designs. Your market would easily remember and support your products and services once they can associate colors, logos, or icons with your brand.

4. Develops Trust with Audience

   A functional and aesthetically appealing website would encourage visitors to continue browsing your site. With a poorly designed and outdated appearance, people would hesitate to get to know your site more. Then, you would have a more difficult time encouraging them to convert. This would then make it even harder for you to establish trust with your market. Because of this, you need a professional web designing team to help you create a website that can build and develop confidence with your audience.

5. Keeps You Up to Par with Competitors

   You should know that your competitors are implementing the web design on their sites. For that reason alone, you should also employ web design on your site if you want to stay in the competition. Take this opportunity to set your business apart from your competitors. Determine that one feature that makes you unique, and highlight that on your site. With a professional web designing team at your side, your website can stand out from the rest. With a professional web design, you attract more leads, drive more traffic, encourage more conversions, and increase your revenue.

Why Should You Hire a Professional Web Designing Team?

The best way to achieve a professional and dynamic web design is to hire a professional web designing company that is skilled and well experienced in the field. These people know how to address your web designing needs to build a website that would significantly impact your target market.

A professional web designing team would help create graphic elements for your websites, such as images, icons, buttons, infographics, and more. They would achieve a web design that would heavily contribute to your marketing efforts. They will provide you with a web design that depicts and conveys your brand’s message, products, and services.

Moreover, a professional web designing team would be knowledgeable and updated on the latest trends and strategies in web designing. These strategies would help you and your site users navigate through your website with ease. In doing so, your site will achieve a positive user page experience.

All in all, with the help of a professional web designing team, you can create a website that will not only encourage visitors to stay longer but will also keep their interest long enough for them to convert.

Outsource a Professional Web Designing Company Now!

Outsourcing services catered to your professional web designing needs is a common practice nowadays. For instance, web design in the Philippines offers you the convenience of receiving quality and cost-effective web designing results. Their team of professional web designers and web developers know that professional web designing, content presentation, and visual engagement are paramount to the success of your online business.

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After you primarily dictate the number of experts you want to employ, the development company will pick the dedicated team for you. The expertise and skill level you require will be their basis to assure that these professionals are the perfect fit.

Benefits of Getting a Dedicated Team

Once your web development project has an assigned dedicated team, they will adapt to your business’ working conditions and preferences. They will also incorporate their dedicated team model with what you previously do to achieve successful web projects. They will steadily operate following your vision, mission, and values.

Since they are designated to work on a single project, dedicated team members will exclusively concentrate their brainpower, expertise, time and materials, and lessons gained from working on previous similar projects on yours until all your objectives are met. Because of that, their input becomes more and more suited for you. Naturally, all of these will come after they develop a feel for your business’ direction, engagement model, and overall outlook.

Another added benefit to hiring a dedicated development team is that you can decide when the team will work on specific tasks. They have full control of their schedules, thereby allowing them to adjust to yours and any scope changes you may want to apply. However, it is worth noting that, while you have absolute freedom to micromanage your team, it does not necessarily mean that you should.

Projects are Like Jigsaw Puzzles

Sometimes, leading a successful web project can be complex. Think of development projects like upgraded versions of your typical jigsaw puzzle with each piece corresponding to a different component. The more pieces there are, the more work is needed to complete the picture. Nevertheless, while the number of components varies for each development project, the benefits when you hire a dedicated team remain consistent.

As part of the dedicated team, a Project Manager helps the communication process be more straightforward between and among clients and dedicated team members. Therefore, you can direct all your questions and concerns regarding your project to your dedicated project manager. In turn, you can assign a central point-person to channel your house team’s responses or concerns.

Furthermore, when you assign a project manager with experience and technical skills to handle and oversee your project full time and exclusively, you can expect them to master it like the back of their hand much faster than they would if they held multiple long-term projects. As such, having a dedicated project manager would mean having a team leader who can delegate tasks. They will also assure you that said tasks are efficiently done and accomplished on time. In the end, you worry less and free up your schedule so that you can focus on higher-level tasks that require your utmost attention – like growing your business.

Designing Puzzles

Recall a puzzle’s appearance. Its corners and sides outline the image in a way that shows us where it starts and where it ends. You know that, by putting these pieces together, you can create a beautiful image. Similar to puzzles, when you put all of your web page’s elements together, you would expect a visually appealing output.

Some sites are back-end heavy, while others lean more towards the front-end. However, you can easily break down both of these into multiple sub-components. Furthermore, end-users do not experience each component individually. Instead, when they navigate your website from page to page, they experience the site as a whole. Thus, to maximize user satisfaction, you can task your dedicated team’s UX/UI Designers to create intuitive layouts that will unify your system.

If we go back to the basics, we know that a good design would naturally feel invisible. On the other hand, a lack thereof would be most noticeable. Good designers utilize specific principles to make your product or service more delightful to use, strengthening your brand. Similarly, dedicated web designers do this as well. However, these web designers do it with a better and more thorough understanding of your artistic style. They can do this as a result of repeatedly brainstorming materials around your official branding. They are equipped with the latest web design trends. As a result, they know which aspects of your current design captures and retains your target market’s attention. They also know which of these are areas for improvement. After all, the design process is a cycle of revisions.

Developing and Assuring Pieces Fit Together

After accomplishing the previous stages, Dedicated Developers and Quality Assurance Specialists will ensure that your approved design will be fully functional before closing a successful web project.

Employing Dedicated Developers yield multiple benefits. They are experts in using the programming languages of your choice. Moreover, they can provide you with trusted solutions during moments when there are issues. Lastly, they allow you to closely monitor them (and the sensitive intellectual property given to them).

On top of those, they complete development projects in a shorter amount of time. When you hire a dedicated team of developers, they can get familiar with their teammates’ strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, they are confident of having completed full-cycle projects together beforehand. Unlike hiring multiple freelancers, a dedicated team of developers would work together smoothly, following an efficient development process.

Moreover, there is no problem if you have not already hired individuals to test your final outputs. In line with staff as little or as many individuals as possible, you can staff Quality Assurance Specialists as you need. These specialists can spot and report bugs to software developers with keen eyes for details before the final product launches. Because they are a dedicated team, they know what matters most for your business. Thus, enabling them to prioritize which bugs to look out for.

For example, a combination of good design and development will shine through when the headers and footers are consistent. Next, thumbnails and other pieces of content’s frames follow their divisions. Lastly, the end-user can perform actions without unnecessary details breaking their focus. They assure you that one sometimes seemingly insignificant detail will not devalue your team’s efforts.

Hire a Dedicated Team for a Successful Project

 Don’t miss out on investing in the most beneficial component of successful web projects. Hire a dedicated team from the Philippines with a project manager, quality assurance specialist, web developers, and designers to create successful web development projects!

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How Website Personalization Helps Increase Conversion

With more online businesses competing in your niche or industry, it has become crucial to craft and personalize your website design and content to make its overall user experience particularly appealing, functional, and effective for your target market. You can do this through the use of search engine optimization (SEO) and website personalization. However, for this article, let us focus more on how website personalization would increase conversion.

Building a website that presents visitors with unique experiences based on their needs will enable even small businesses to attract raw visitors and motivate them to take action. It will also help encourage them to come back again. Thus, it would be best if you remembered that neglecting to acknowledge the importance of website personalization would mean losing out on great opportunities for your business.

Here are seven tips on how you can increase conversion through website personalization:

1. Segment Visitor Data

   The first thing you may do is divide your site visitors into several groups according to their particular characteristics. Perhaps, you can group them according to their gender, age, location, and more. You can use online tracking and analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Facebook Audience Insights to help you collect said data. The data you will be collecting can help you craft your personalized online marketing efforts. Say you determined that more women frequently visit your site. Then, you can personalize your website design to show products and offers that they are more likely to purchase or avail of.

2. Analyze Visitor Frequency

   Consumers purchase more from retailers who personalize their website shopping experience across channels. Additionally, first-time visitors often look for brand information, offered products and services, and reviews. On the other hand, returning customers navigate through your site with specific things in mind. Hence, experts suggest utilizing a cookie to track returning visitors and direct them to the most appropriate and relevant page. To increase conversion rates of first-time visitors, consider including your phone number, business address, and a contact form on your eCommerce website. You can also include video tutorials explaining your brand’s products or services. Then, you can add an option for them to sign up for a mailing list for your returning visitors. Doing so will also help increase customer retention.

3. Modify Content Accordingly

   You have to give attention to every possible area you can maximize on your business website. However, there will be times when you overlook seasons and their respective trends. The day, week, or season should guide your content and even parts of your website design and experience. For example, your business can still cater to customer inquiries long after closing hours by replacing a phone number with a contact form. Let’s say your business deals with retail clothing. You can create ads that market swimsuits during the summer and jackets and parkas during the winter. Being timely and regularly updating your website according to trends and seasons is known to attract more visitors. With a personalized website like this, you also help your business website increase conversions.

4. Consider Geolocation Feature

   The geolocation feature is one of the best tips that we can share to increase conversion for your personalized business website, especially for local businesses. Geolocation helps in accurately showing where a particular device and the device user are located. With this feature, you can increase your marketing efforts’ effectiveness even more, especially when using location targeting. With the use of Google My Business, for instance, you will know which site visitors are near your store’s physical location. As such, with location targeting, you can create a more tailored and effective internet marketing tactic for your business. You can entice nearby potential customers using ads, rewards, and coupons. Tell them that your products and services are only a few blocks away from where they currently are. With location targeting, you can increase the likeliness of potential customers dropping by your store.

5. Personalize Website on Holidays and Other Special Events

   Brands that prioritize their website design, page experience, and user experience with content relating to particular holidays and special events get more visitor attention, improve lead generation, and increase conversion. Especially for existing or returning customers, being dynamic with your personalized website design removes the sense of monotony for users. Thus, you can make use of bats and cobweb designs during the Halloween season. You can also place fireworks and confetti elements on New Year’s Eve. By applying website personalization for specific days and holidays of the year, you also help encourage better customer engagement. Then, getting more customers increases conversions and, consequently, grows your business.

6. Determine Visitor Source

   If you can capture the original destination source that a visitor has entered your website from, you can easily display the type of content on the landing page that they see first. Thus, it would be best if you adjusted the page content they will land on based on the previous page that they have been on. Doing so will create a free-flowing experience for customers, especially for first-time visitors. If this step is too technical for you, you can seek help from a web design company to move you along the process. They can build you a user-friendly personalized website equipped with a responsive design, especially for customers who use mobile devices.

7. Vary Calls to Action

   Rather than showing the same call-to-action (CTA) to all of your web visitors, it would be a better idea for you to vary them to increase conversion. For example, say you have a site visitor who takes a particular action. Let’s say they just signed up for a newsletter or registered for an account. You should make sure that the next call-to-action they see is a different one. Place another CTA that would encourage them to take the next step. For instance, you can place a CTA that motivates them to purchase a product or avail of a service. As part of your referral marketing strategy, you can also make a personalized CTA asking existing customers to share your brand with their friends or acquaintances online. Varying your CTAs could also help potentially increase click-through rates and return of investment (ROI), which is one of your business goals.

Increase Customer Conversion with a Web Design Agency

In this era of on-demand customized everything, fortunately, you have an abundance of online tools, products, and services accessible to make your personalization efforts more rewarding for both your business and your customers. With these tips, you can develop a personalized website tailored for your business and your prospective clients’ needs. If you need further guidance, especially with the technical aspects of the process, you can hire a web design and development company from the Philippines. With them leading you to the right path, you can design websites that increase conversions!

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The Origin of the Parallax Website

The term “parallax” was first known from the visual effect of a 2D side-scrolling video game. It is a scrolling technique that uses different background images that move to create the illusion of depth during the gameplay. The illusion is done by making the background move slower than the foreground. Doing so makes the images look farther in the back.

Designed by Be Theme

As such, in parallax website design, the background of the site seems to move at a different speed to create that impressive visual effect. Thus, websites that use the parallax scrolling technique have taken hold as one of the top web designs. It provides an excellent user experience in terms of aesthetics and functionality. Check out some of the best parallax website designs here.

Parallax Web Design Strategies for Improved Loading Speeds

A website that uses the parallax scrolling technique has one long page with one set of meta-information, excellent H1 tag, and effective URL, which may negatively impact your SEO marketing. Also, it may significantly take longer to completely load because of the text, images, and other web design elements incorporated in that one page, which may also cause a bad user experience.

Check out some of the strategies which can help improve the loading speed performance of your parallax website:

1. Image Compression

   When you have images that are larger than needed for web viewing, they carry extraneous metadata. You can compress these data without reducing the viewing quality of your images. To do this, you can make use of cloud image services such as  Tiny PNG, JPEG Optimizer, Optimizilla, and more.

2. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

   By using a nearby CDN server, you can distribute content (especially images) closer to your site visitor. Subsequently, this increases your parallax website’s page loading speeds. Also, with CDN, you can reduce your site’s bounce rate and increase your site visitor’s stay on your pages.

3. Responsive Image Sizes

   Through the use of srcset, you can optimize images to increase web page load speed and to be responsive towards any type of screen resolution and size of the device your site visitors use when viewing your parallax website. With responsive images, you especially ease the loading time of your site on devices with smaller screens.

Tips When Building a Parallax Website

To maximize your use of the parallax scrolling technique, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Use only a parallax website to tell a visual story to your visitors.
• Make it fun and engaging to let your visitors stay on your website longer.
• Emphasize any call-to-action button on your site to direct your visitors to wherever you want them to go.
• Think about how your site will look on mobile devices. Do not leave those mobile visitors hanging by creating a parallax website that they cannot navigate. You may have more mobile traffic today than you realize. Ask a designer and developer to help you plan how to handle mobile visitors through your parallax website. You can also ask them to create a mobile-specific website that offers an entirely different user experience from its desktop version.

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Enrich the Loading Speed of Your Parallax Website

In sum, choosing to build a website that uses the parallax scrolling technique will depend on what you need and what you find more appropriate. A parallax website allows your users to know your products and services in a fun and engaging way. So, if you wish to incorporate the strategies and tips mentioned above to build you a parallax website that engages users, you can hire a web design company in the Philippines to lead you the way.

 What can you say about parallax websites? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Mobile Website’s Competitive Edge

The number of mobile web users in the world grows by the day. However, apart from that, there are many advantages to why you should optimize websites for smartphone display. As such, several dedicated web developers continue to sharpen their skills in mobile website development.

Mobile website development help create mobile websites that put your business in a position where you can stand out among your many competitors. It helps ensure that your business captures the attention of a significant number of mobile web users. Moreover, users are less likely to continue browsing websites that are not mobile-friendly. Thus, if you have an existing business website, you should take advantage of this growing number of mobile web users and build a mobile version of your website.

Benefits of Having a Mobile Website

A mobile website may employ responsive web design. With this mobile website development technique, your website can adapt or resize to the type of screen or monitor that a visitor uses to view your website. Through this, mobile web users can easily read and scroll through your website without zooming in on its content. Having a responsive design also helps you achieve an improved CLS score, which helps you rank higher on SERPs.

However, a mobile user interface should differ from desktop sites because of many factors. These factors include the interaction techniques, mobile web design, how people read, the use of context, and the amount of information that users can grasp at a glance. Thus, it is essential to provide users with simplified content. Doing so encourages them to read the details and what your business has to offer.

Check out some of the benefits of building a mobile version of your website:

1. Increased Brand Visibility

   With a mobile-friendly website, you can reach your target market whenever and wherever they are. Whether they are using their desktop, laptop, or smartphone, they can see your promos, product offers, and other marketing campaigns. Moreover, with a mobile website, you provide your customers with a more convenient way to access and purchase your products and services. As a result, you improve page experience and increase your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. Streamlined Content and Messaging

   People today use their mobile devices to connect with their friends, play games, stream music or videos, or purchase products, goods, etc. Thus, a mobile website would be one great way to reach online users quickly. So, make sure that you create compelling web content that is relevant, professional-looking, and easy to digest. You can inform them about your brand, and you can tell them about your products and services. Moreover, your mobile website can also be an excellent way for them to reach you. You can do this by installing a chatbot, such as the FB Messenger chatbot, on your business website.

3. Improved User Experience

   Mobile websites are designed for hand-held devices. For this reason, you can access mobile websites through your smartphone or other mobile devices. A mobile website’s ability to serve your customers through such a tiny device improves user experience and increases customer satisfaction. Also, because your customers may already have browsed through your website using their desktop, they would already be familiar with its mobile version. Thus, ensuring that they can navigate through the site with ease.

4. Excellent Advertising Opportunities

   Mobile advertising is growing at a fast pace. It brings about countless opportunities for businesses to reach their target audience and achieve their business goals and objectives. You can advertise through Google Ads to help guarantee that your mobile website appears on mobile listings. Moreover, make sure that your ads lead to mobile-optimized landing pages for optimal results and maximum ROI.

5. Optimized for Search Engines

   As mentioned above, if you optimize your website for mobile users, you help increase your rank on SERPs. When your website ranks higher on SERPs, your website gets more traffic, too. Also, compared to your website’s desktop version, a mobile website will have fewer steps for users to take and finish a transaction. Thus, with a streamlined and easy-to-navigate website, your users will keep browsing on your site, reduce your bounce rate, and improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

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Build Your Mobile Website Today

The mobile internet continues to grow and improve and will only set to surge up in the succeeding years. If you do not have plans to have a mobile version of your website, you are risking your site and your business’s future success.

Should you require assistance in mobile website development, consider employing web design and development services in the Philippines!

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The Concept of Conversion Centered Design

A Conversion Centered Design (CCD) uses psychological triggers to convert a site visitor into a paying customer subtly. Through CCD, business website owners can guide the people visiting their site to purchase or finish a transaction. In this way, they turn a mere visitor into one of their customers.

You can best apply a conversion centered design on your website’s landing page. We consider the landing page as our target market’s entry points. The landing page is what our audience sees first upon opening our site. Thus, digital marketers create conversion-optimized landing pages and products pages and employ call-to-action (CTA) buttons to address customer goals and improve their SEO.

The Principles of Conversion Centered Design

Through conversion centered design, you can help drive customer conversion rates and guarantee your digital marketing success. Below, we will discuss the principles of conversion centered design. Moreover, we will talk about how they create a web design that helps improve customer conversion.

1. Encapsulation

   We can also refer to this as the “tunnel vision effect”. When looking into a tunnel or a framed subject, our eyes tend to look right at the end of it or into its center. Our eyes do not usually wander anywhere else unless another element catches our attention. As such, you can apply this principle of conversion centered design to make your CTAs the center of your site visitor’s attention. You can use strong colors and dynamic shapes to do this.

2. Contrast and Color

   Colors bring out various emotions from a person. There are color groups associated with warm, cool, and neutral emotions. Thus, if we want certain parts of our website to stand out, we have to use contrasting colors. So, study the color wheel and identify the colors that contrast with each other. Using this principle of conversion centered design will help you emphasize a specific part of your page.

3. Directional Cues

   You should also provide your site visitors with directional cues. These cues will guide them when they are lost and do not know where to go next. On your part, you can use such directional cues to lead them where you want them to be. Directional cues also help encourage them to take action. Thus, you can employ this principle of conversion centered design using simple shapes, animation, and other elements that direct attention to a particular part of your website.

4. White Space

   Others also call this “blank space”. This principle of conversion centered design uses empty space to lead a site visitor’s attention to what is essential on that web page. In this technique, everything else is white or blank except for one thing, which can be your CTA. With the proper use of white space, you help lead your customers and other site viewers to take action, such as purchase your products, book an appointment, or avail of your services.

5. Urgency and Scarcity

   You can employ this principle of conversion centered design by using CTAs such as “Limited seats,” “order before…,” “offer only lasts until…,” and other phrases that sound urgent and make one feel that they are running out of time. It is a compelling psychological motivator and works great for websites that use CCD. You may think these catchphrases may sound cliché, but they work! The sense of urgency and scarcity helps make people take your desired action.

6. Try Before You Buy

   When promoting your products and services, you should not hide anything about it. Be as transparent as possible. Employ this principle of conversion centered design. Then, your customers will think that your website and your business are relevant and credible providers of their needs. For instance, if you are selling software, you can offer your site visitors a free trial version. Doing so will help them evaluate your product properly before they purchase or subscribe to the full version.

7. Social Proof

   Let your target audience experience the feeling that something important is happening on your website that they should not miss. You can magnify this sense of excitement through the social media marketing and SEO combination, where you can showcase your brand and expand your audience reach. You can also show your market how many times your site, products, and services, have been liked, shared, tweeted, etc.

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Increase Conversion Rates with Conversion Centered Design

Through these principles of conversion centered design, you can create a business website that not only looks good but also helps drive traffic, increases conversion, and provides excellent customer satisfaction. As such, if you need help building and maintaining your business website, you can seek help from a web design company in the Philippines to guide you along the way.

Did you find this article on conversion centered design useful? Please send us a message or let us know in the comments section below!

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What is Image Optimization?

For some people, viewing online content without images can be quite dull. Some are even discouraged from browsing a site because it has no pictures. For this reason, you should create websites using images. More importantly, you should optimize images for better SEO results.

We define image optimization as the process of slicing an image and reducing its resolution to make its file size smaller. We do this to make the image load faster whenever someone is opening or accessing your website. If you have web pages with images that are not optimized, these pages will eat up a lot of website speed, making a website’s loading speed slow. Today, people would instead browse through a website that loads faster. As a result, your slow website loading speed will eventually lead to a decrease in website traffic.

Among the popular choices for image formats that people online use include JPEG and PNG. When you use JPEG, you get an image with a small size, but you may lose some of its quality in the process. However, you can make adjustments to get the right balance to achieve the image quality you need. On the other hand, the PNG format produces better quality images, but they come in larger file sizes.

Benefits of Image Optimization in SEO

Here is a summary of some of the benefits that you can get when you implement image optimization in your SEO efforts:

1. Image optimization helps improve your page loading speed. With a web page that takes too long to load, you risk losing site visitors to your competitors.
2. Image optimization helps your website rank higher on search results. These search engines will crawl and index your images. So, if your image has a large size, it will slow down your website. When search engines see this, they will rank you lower on SERPs.
3. Images with smaller sizes will use less bandwidth.
4. Images with smaller sizes require less storage on your server.

How to Optimize Images for Better SEO

A lot of people are fond of searching for images online. For this reason, images gather so much web traffic, which is why image optimization is important for SEO.

As such, here are some of the ways on how you can optimize images on your website:

1. Provide a Title

   First, you need to think of an excellent title to give to your image. The image title can be the keyword that your particular web page is trying to rank for on search engine results pages (SERPs). Because of this, you need to give relevant titles to your image. It will also help if you use common or trending words or phrases that your target market or potential customers may type in on search engines for them to find your business website online.

2. Use Alt Tags

   In this step, you need to make the search engine understand what your image is all about. You can do this by adding alt tags to your images. An alt tag allows search engines to locate your image and have them displayed on SERPs. The alt tag in an image helps a site user find your image and your website online. An alt tag may look like this: < img src=“kittens-and-puppies.jpg” alt=“Kittens And Puppies” />.

3. Reduce Image Size

   Today, you are provided with various online tools which can help reduce the size of your images. Kinsta lists down some of the online tools or programs you can use for image optimization, including Adobe Photoshop, Gimp, NET, GIFsicle, JPEGtran, JPEG Mini, OptiPNG, pngquant, FileOptimizer, ImageOptim, Trimage, and ImageResize.org.

4. Place a Caption

   Here, it would be best if you wrote a caption about what your image is all about. Make sure that your caption should not only capture a site visitor’s attention. Your caption should also keep your visitors longer on your site to reduce the bounce rate. Search engines measure a website’s bounce rate by determining how long a user stays on the site before heading back to the search engine because they did not find what they were looking for. Thus, an increase in bounce rate negatively impacts your SEO, which means bad news for your website.

5. Save Using Relevant Filename

   Lastly, you should save your image using a filename that is relevant to your business or industry. Like the alt tag, the image filename should include keywords or phrases that people most commonly search for online. Moreover, the filename can also include your brand’s products or services. The ultimate goal of image optimization is to get your image displayed on the first page of SERPs.

Check out more image optimization tips from Search Engine Journal.

Image Source: Freepik

Image Optimization Promotes Better SEO

Optimizing your images might sound like extra work, but the benefits that come from doing so can be quite rewarding. It is essential if you want your website to load faster and generate more traffic. Also, with image optimization, photo sharing on social media networks becomes easier, which helps in your marketing campaigns.

Overall, if you optimize your images, your website is more likely to rise high on search engine rankings. So, feel free to add a little more interest and color to your website by including images. If you need help with image optimization, you can hire a web design and development company from the Philippines and improve your SEO campaigns!

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