27 Mar

Do i need all new functions for my website?

do i need all new functions for my website

It is not uncommon from our future customers to be asked to put lots of new features for their next website. What the competition uses as ideas and functions in their website, is not necessarily the line to follow.

This is not the cool features  pushed to the extreme that will make your website excellent, a top closer one or an interesting one.

The flashy functions do not necessarily increase the user experience and can in many cases, cause the opposite.

 

What are the important aspects?

The most important aspect: The site must be oriented for customers and target customers. Know your product, service and the target customer that could navigate your website.

This may seem basic, but how many webmasters simply forget this step and focuses more on what the competition offers than to promote correctly their products or website? A huge percentage!

 

Mobile friendly / Responsive website

We say and repeat, your site must be absolutely capable to adapt itself on mobile phones and tablets. Your customers use them, it is no longer the future is almost the past! Your customers and users are on their mobile 80% of the time.

 

Mobile Application

If you are considering a mobile app to push higher your producs and services, it is not an emergency! It all depends on what products or services you want to promote, but it is not so helpful as it might seem.

First, the creation of a professional mobile application, is very expensive. Then you must promote it and ensure that the client will download your app to see what you have to offer …

The traditional site of your competitor will steal your customers, without having to dip his hands in his wallet as deeply as you!

Do not create a low-end application with ads because the app creation process was free or almost free. This is very annoying for customers to get external advertisements while enquiring for your products or services.

 

Contact form

I advised a client recently who wanted a contact form like a financial institution. No one will want to register for your website, your newsletter or mailing list if he has to return lots of information.

A contact form is not an online purchase! you lose 50% of potential customers after 3 required fields in your form. If the visitor sees 6-7 fields and an anti-spam verification one, it is very likely that it go away!

The use of having a contact form is to have inscriptions, although it is a beautiful and “flashy” form, if there are too many fields to fill, you’re missing your goal.

Make sure that there will be a quick response to your customer. If you are overloaded and you respond manually and lately, the customer will not have your confidence. In those situations, use an automated service like MailChimp and make sure confirmations are sent out.

 

A search bar

When a site is complex and involves a lot of data, such as an online business with multiple products or an informative site with dozens or hundreds of items, a good search bar that offers as AJAX functionality will certainly appeal to your users .

I know this is not an original or special function, but when a site is overloaded with useless widgets but has not a good search engine, I find this ridiculous. Best example of mising the target.

 

Last words

Keep it simple, be yourself and properly serve your customers. The efficiency is a quality that a user will search and this will give him a good experience on your site. Do not overload of useless functions, if the basic work on the Website is not done.

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18 Mar

Image compression for your website!

BEFORE

image avant compression web

74 KB

AFTER

image apres une compression d'image web

20 KB

Do you see a difference? If there is one, it is not noticeable except for the server that will process the request to show the image on the screen.

There are small things that make all the difference when creating a website. Images are an important part of any design and it should not be forgotten that more the server must process large files over the network, longer it  will take. Let’s add a bad internet connection for a moment or a basic mobile service provider , and you have lost your professionalism!

It is proved that if the visitor waits too long, he will leave your website to another. You lose a potential customer, all its possible future references and sales. Amazon studies show that for every second of waiting, they lose up to 40% of sales. So the speed of a website is essential for the customer but also for your reputation, SEO etc.

 

Image compression

No need to be an expert to compress all images of its website and no need either to buy expensive software like Photoshop. In fact, we will share with you how to compress your photos to make your website up to 30% faster.

There is a superb freeware (free software). which is called PNGOO. This software is available in the client area of our website as a free download! (Simply register…, this is alsofree!). The software is available on the web too, you must search for it in Google. The advantage to download the files from us, it is the absence of viruses or malicious software in the package.

Now… This software allows you to easily set a folder containing all the compressed photos. Simple and effective, you select the photo files to be compressed and they are reduced up to 70% without loss of sharpness or rendering.

Obviously, make sure that initially your photo files are not 4000 pixels x 6000 pixels. This kind of resolution offered by digital cameras is not suitable to a Web Site.

We suggest for normal pictures a resolution of 600 x 600 for products in an online store, 800 x 600 for normal photos into pages, 1200 x 1980 for banners. Rarely you will need images of more than 2000 pixels on your site, unless you are a professional photographer or use a particular concept.

Every tenth of a second that you can save to your visitor by performing image compression or any adjustment worthwhile. We win sprints by less than that!

So when you create your website or you modify it, you must compress all of your photos before uploading them. Your customers will appreciate!

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