Year: 2019

5 Challenges Startups Face While Launching their Online Business

Being an entrepreneur is not an easy job. There are a lot of challenges that one faces while starting a business that further gets intensified when you choose to go online with it. Digital entrepreneurship involves a lot of pressure in the form of establishing an online business platform (website) for consumers to visit and explore your services, attracting traffic towards it and also marketing it.

With more and more users getting inclined towards online medium, it is beneficial for a business to establish itself on web platform. However, your journey towards launching online business would be quite challenging.  Lets discuss in detail the challenges startups will face while taking business online.

Launching a Website

The first and the most important step towards establishing your online business is to have a website where consumer will visit and follow your services. Building a website involves a lot of things from choosing the right technology UI/UX, to the navigation facility and the page load speed etc. All these factors contributes towards having a successful website which is capable of attracting and holding consumers towards your business. If anything goes wrong then the chances are that your business will fail badly.

Just like in a physical environment, its the ambiance that matters for an organization to make the client feel confident about the brand. In the same way, it is the feel and look of website that can help you grab more consumer interest.

The online user reads content will look at the design & interpret everything about your brand through the website. Therefore, it is advised to get your business website designed from a professional web designing agency, especially when you are a startup.

Marketing Your Business

Once the website is prepared and launched, its time to market it. Digital marketing is easy to track in terms of its success and so it is worth every penny considering the startup factor. It helps you create awareness for your brand, make users consider and purchase its services/products and ends up becoming loyal customers for your brand. Digital marketing helps in creating your brand name and will market among users on web. However, targeting the right channel is the major challenge for it should be aligned with the business objective to reap its maximum benefits.

Grabbing More Customers

The amount of customer acquisition depends on your effectiveness with digital marketing efforts. Every online channel has its own market and set of users. Marketing using the right set of keywords over search engines or using the right Hashtags over social media is a challenge that affects the success of your online business. There are different marketing channels for finding B2B and B2C customers. Since every customer is different so are the mediums to target them. For creating awareness you need to market your brand over wide variety of channels.

Customer Service

One of the major challenges for any business would be to satisfy its customers. Businesses with satisfied customers speaks for their great performance. It helps you create goodwill for your brand and customers will find you more reliable. Not just that, giving importance to the customer service or after sales service would further intensify your performance and would spread good word for your brand.

Grow Your Business 

Last but not the least in the list of challenges for startups to launch their online business is advancing the business or to grow it. Every business is established with the view to grow its scale with time in near future, however that is not as easy as it sounds. You need to make the special efforts for the same, like sending special messages to your customer through mails or a personalized message when they visit your website. You can also offer loyalty programs to your customer to make them come again. Such efforts would help create a stir among your consumers and they will further market your brand through spreading good words about it among their family and friends. The same will ultimately help you advance your business.

Conclusion

Although taking your business online would offer limitless scalability and opportunities to gather success for your business, the road that leads to it is quite challenging. However, once you tackle these challenges finding success for your online business will be a cake walk.

How is Social Media Benefiting Online Businesses?

Social media platforms are gaining popularity at warp speed with the increasing competition in the market. It has created a flourishing way to extent brand’s message to the right people at the right time with the desire  to stick to the ones who gets interested and remain loyal throughout the brand’s journey.

Businesses are leveraging social media for its vast user base with the view to make entire marketing program more fast, effective and inexpensive. The platform connects you with the audience all around the world and enables you to serve them on higher level. With its grand base and stronger impact, social media has certainly proven its worth in last two decades.

There are a lot of benefits businesses are drawing over social media. Here are some ways it is benefiting businesses in their growth.

Global Reach

Social media for its incredible reach and strength holds a great potential to offer any business a wider market to reach out to its consumers. It helps in establishing identity to the brand and offer to serve to the wider crowd. Also, the more the crowd you have to offer, the more are the chances of grabbing customer for your brand and its products. Thus, social benefits through making communication faster and easier in a lot of ways through its global reach.

Improves Networking Potential

In addition to the simplified communication facility, social media serves as the valuable source of networking, to be able to reach out to the like minded people for exchanging ideas and improving the way you are doing business.

Social media networking makes it easier to build relationships and earn the required value for your brand. The same will helps you in creating potential business opportunities, increase brand awareness and increase traffic on your website.

Establishing Brand

Social media can help you present your brand’s personality and want it stands for to the wider audience. It helps you represent your brand’s ideologies and traits that makes it different from other to be able to attract your consumers and further improve your business. Social media helps you develop your brand and give your business a life to suffice.

Increases Traffic

Social media channels work as substitute for a business websites is a great way to market your brand and reach out to multiple audience in the most personalized and captivating manner. This will provide you the chance to reach out to those potential consumers who you would not be able to engage if social media would not have been there. Thus, social media helps you increase more traffic towards your business website in the most engaging and inexpensive manner. 

Gather Feedback

Providing valuable customer services is very important in the world of business regardless of what is your industry. Success is achieved only after understanding and satisfying your custo

mer with the best possible service with your company. Social media helps you understand your consumer better through directly getting their feedback over the platform. It means you will get the customers feedback directly over some social media platform that can help you building your customer base in future.

Conclusion

Every business has its goals and targets to achieve to be able draw success with it. Social media can help you reach those goals or attain success in your business through marketing your brand and its related products and services among its wider platforms. All you nee to do is approach the medium in more strategic and focused way, give it some time to work in itself and the rewards will be amazing.

UX Design Hot Trends for 2019

In today’s rapidly growing business environment, UX design plays a very important role. UX basically denotes user experience over a website or a system on web. UX is important as it helps satisfy users visiting your website through providing them a memorable experience. Leaving an impact on users mind through a memorable UX design can help gain consumers loyalty. The aim is to keep people engaged in your brand and make them pursue your products and services. A great UX design makes your website/system pleasant to use and thus increases the chance of consumer satisfaction.

Understanding the importance of users interface for a website, there are various UX design trends that gets introduced or evolved every year. Here, lets take a peek at some of the most striking UX trends for the year 2019 .

Voice User Interface

One of the major development in terms of UX designs has happened in the form of voice user interface, the one that allows users to interact through voice or speech commands. For example, Alexa and Siri are the two most common examples of VUIs working these days. User interaction with voice is different than the one over graphics hence it is difficult to create user experience for VUIs. The designer needs to go through the intricate details of the medium and make sure that the type of UX meets user expectation.

UX Storytelling

In current explorative scenario, UX design is not just a requirement for  website but is now an expectation. Therefore, UX needs to be something which is capable of grabbing users’ attention and meet their expectations. Seeking human natural inclination towards stories and create empathy with the users, the designers led to the development of storytelling UX that will help your brand stand out in crowd and thus gain more success. However, it is very important to learn how to incorporate the story while designing the  UX as it serves the huge purpose of gaining success to the business.

AI for Personalized Experience

With the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence, businesses can now invest in making UX designs that provides more personalized experience for the users. Using AI, UX designer can work on inventing something that will grab users attention for good. It about collecting information regarding user behavior and collaborating it with the designer’s effort to provide users what they want in order to make them like and invest in your brand.

UX to Drive Business

Although the above discussed trends will render great support in driving success for your business, a lot of companies are designing UX based on  discovering high return on investment. The kind of UX design is capable of driving massive growth and is clearly great for any business.

Conclusion

In an increasingly digitalized world, where humans are seen spending more time with gadgets than with each other, UX design pays a way to a system or a website to connect with its audience. It benefits businesses with increases customer retention and even with a profitable market share. If you are willing to seek success for your business then the above UX trends 2019 will serve you a great way for the same!

Advantages of IoT Solutions in Business

The internet of things (IoT) is probably one of the most promising technological inventions of our time. The concept of connecting devices and gadgets with each other collecting, transmitting and storing data is benefiting mankind in a number of ways. IoT is embraced by number of devices including smartphone, thermostats, cars etc. It enable users to remotely control multiple devices at home or office through real time data exchange. IoT has changed the way we live and work today and it seems to be making great changes in the coming future as the technological inventions are taking place with each passing day. Businesses specifically would be in great benefits as they could leverage the IoT technology for collecting data, driving innovation and to stay ahead in the competition. Other than that, there are various other benefits that Internet of Things has got for the businesses. Some of them are given below.

Generates Newer Opportunities

IoT being a smart invention has the potential to transform the way world approach towards businesses. It has opened doors for newer opportunities. The enterprises today are developing advance business models and services that can help them in improving the quality of projects and generate more revenue. Business are trying to leverage IoT as a system and is looking for utilizing its scope beyond connectivity.  

Better Utilization of Resources

IoT helps business maintain a good connectivity between equipments, tools and machinery through sensors in order to keep a proper track of their assets and to utilize them the better way. The same would also help businesses locate any problematic issue with the asset before hand and thus utilize asset the better way.

Real Time Operations

IoT offers the most insightful operational experience to the businesses through connecting the maximum number of devices to the internet. The same would help business save a huge sum on operational and marketing cost. It also reduces the downtime required for the maintenance of an organization.

Adds More Safety

IoT services offers exceptional connectivity between the devices which includes cameras and video cameras that helps in further monitoring workplace and improving safety for the labors and workers. It also helps you protect threats that can cause physical harm at the workplace through coordinating team to resolve the issue over IoT connectivity. 

Increases Productivity

Profits in business are evaluated through increase in productivity.

IoT helps in improving labor efficiency, avoid skills getting wasted while improving productivity in business.

Cost Effective

IoT solutions being smart systems that can help you monitor and control unnecessary usage in the manufacturing and industrial business environment including electrical costs and on other day to day operations. IoT can also be equipped to predict failures and the misalignments on part of production minimizing downtime and saving big on operating cost.

Conclusion

The above points are some mere examples of how IoT seems to be making a positive impact on businesses. However, the concept has much broader scope. When strategized and executed properly, IoT solutions can make a deeper impact and hence will be extremely beneficial for your business.  

Why Should Startups Invest in Website Designing?

One might have a lot of concerns while getting stated with the online business like acquiring website, grabbing clients, gaining profits, managing staff and resources etc. While having so much on the plate, one tends to miss out on realizing the importance of designing their business website. Yes, you are right, having a website is important to business but its the design that can help grab major benefits.

With so many websites getting launched everyday, it is its design that provides it an exclusive identity. Your website design conveys a lot about your brand, therefore it is important that you get it designed from a professional designer. It adds the aesthetic value to your website and can help you stand out in the competition. A beautiful and functional website design can benefit you with an effective and wider recognition for your brand, especially when you are a startup! 

Given below are the reasons why startups should acquire professional web designing services –

Brand Consistency – Every business has a motive to succeed behind creating a website. Therefore, it is advised to seek professional web design services. It will help you add more uniformity across your website in the form of font style, size and color schemes. The type of consistency in a website helps creating an impact and identity for a business on web. It will also help you grab more user attention and thus lends the opportunity to gain more profits.

Flawless Navigation – Another major advantage of getting your website designed from a skilled designer is to enjoy better navigation for it. Navigation basically means smooth transition between different pages on the menu bar of your website. Getting proper navigation will help visitors on your website to better understand your business and   its services.  

Mobile Compatibility – With the increasing digitalization, the importance of getting yourself available on mobile platform has all more increased. It can help you fetch more customer and profits for your brand. However, for a website to be mobile friendly requires a designs that dynamically adjust images and other content according to different screen sizes. Only a professional web designer can help you develop a responsive website that exhibits navigation credibility.

Attention Grabbing – A website is said to be successful if it is capable of grabbing maximum users attention. Therefore, it is important for a website to be aesthetically pleasing. It should be provided with an exceptional layout and is capable of engaging users on web. The need for having an appealing outlook for a website is probably the most indispensable factor for hiring services from a professional web designer.

Brand Recognition – Designing your website helps in vitalizing your brand. It helps you mark an identity for your business and ensures proficiency for your brand. Like for example, your website bears the logo of your brand, then it needs to be unique and eye catching for it exhibits your identity. A well qualified web designer can help you get a logo that reflect your brand’s efficiency that directly or indirectly will help you generate revenue.

Summing Up

With more and more businesses starting to develop their online identity, the importance for having an effective website design has all more increased. It will make your customers believe on your business leading them to engage more in your services. The same will increase your conversion rate and improve overall ROI. Hence, getting your website designed is not an expense but rather a lucrative investment!!

6 Ways to Generate Leads Through Your Website

The soaring competition in the world of websites has increased the importance of promotion and marketing for online businesses in order to achieve the desired success for their brands. However, marketing your business can be a costly affair if your website is not developed effectively. Your website can actually help you in generating leads and driving more traffic rendering the perfect way to promote your brand. This blog is dedicated to the different techniques that can be utilized by a business website with the view to generate leads.

1. Access to Quick Micro Landing Page

Owing to the vast grandeur of internet as the platform, online users has significantly reduced the amount of time they spend on a website. This means you just have few seconds to grab users attention, make them spend some time on your website and probably convert them into your consumer.

Including a micro landing page to your website will be a great idea for the purpose. It is basically a full page pop up that appear in response to some action conducted by the users like an attempt to click of your website or hovering over the text there. Adding the special feature can help you increase the conversion rate by a good margin.

2. Give Your Address And Location Access

For any online business to grab leads it is important that the users find it credible enough to make any further move. According to the google, visitors have a pattern of searching business through their local information which includes the address and the location. A lot of users even make in person visit to the place for the complete assurance of the company that leads in making purchases the same day. Hence, providing address for your business would help you add more credibility to your brand, helps in increasing leads and even drive sales.

3. Provide Your Phone Number

Another major source of adding credibility to your website would be through providing the contact details for your business to let the users reach out in case they want to. Not providing any details regarding your address or a call would make it difficult for the users to trust your website or the brand.  Such websites are usually categorized as scam and hence does not involve any user interest.

4. Add Live Chat Option

Live chat boxes tend to serve as the great source of generating lead for any business type. These helps in making direct communication with your consumers with the view solve their doubts or any query they might have related to your website or business. The same will help users develop more trust on your brand which will further boost their confidence to make further purchases.

5. Add Photos and Videos On User Testimonial Pages

Testimonials in any form be it a revie with pictures or videos are the great tool to increase credibility to your online business. Also, statements from happy and satisfied customers will convince your audience on how credible is your brand and that they can also trust you and your services. The same will help you drive more leads and ultimately increases your sales.

6. Make It Mobile Friendly

After the advent of mobile technology, more and more users are switching on to the mobile as their primary source to connect with the world wide web. Also, mobile being the most compatible and remote gadgets can be accessed from anywhere even when on the go offer your audience to visit your website more often. Thus, if you are willing to get more user attention or generate more leads for your website then it would be recommended that you should make your website mobile friendly.

The Conclusion

Every business depends on lead for generating sales in business. If you want to enjoy the same for your business then take advantage of the above mentioned tips and avoid letting visitors slip away unsatisfied from your website.

Are Mobile Apps Changing Business Landscapes?

These days, the mobile innovation is on the rise and it seems to have made a great impact on business systems. The technological shift have replaced the websites with mobile apps providing businesses an ease of connecting with the audience even on the go. Along with that, there is not much investment in conducting your business through the mobile app and hence it is quite accessible for even a small business type. 

Mobile apps adds more innovation to an organization in the form of technology. Once the consumer downloads the app, it will always be logged in which allows companies to assess user’s information including their purchases, browsing duration and preferred platform etc. Based on the collected information it will easier for a brand to serve their customers in a better way. Apart from that, there are various other ways mobile technology is making its impact on business industry. Some of them are given below –

Offers Faster Access

Mobile apps retrieve data three times faster than the computer websites that makes the medium a lot more accessible. This is because applications usually store data locally on the device whereas websites has to fetch data from web servers, that basically depends on the speed of the network and packet size.

Also, unlike websites that utilizes back end procedure to perform user actions like java script and other functions, mobile apps employs front end data and hence provide users the seamless experience.

Quick Switch from Online to Offline

Moble apps offers quick access with just a tap. Unlike websites, apps just needs internet connection for making payments and sending notifications, but they still can offer simple functionalities even when they are offline.

The apps diligently stores users’ data that allows them to access it quickly even when they are offline. There are a lot of apps that allow users to access their services even when they are out of internet connection like a gaming app or a news one!

Push Notifications and On-Time Updates

Unlike websites, mobile app serves as the continuous source of promotion for your business through sending push notification to the users irrespective of them being online or offline. In-App notifications on the other hand are the ones that user receive only while using the app, whereas push notifications are the ones that the user receives irrespective of the fact that the app is open or closed. 

Moreover, with mobile apps you can keep the users updated with all the latest features and facilities you have to offer them. Update them on all the latest offers and the price listings of your products. The feature will not just promote your brand but will also increase your sales.

Increased User Engagement

People these days are living their life on edge and has no time to type and open your app in order to shop. Mobile apps on the other hand offers more spontaneity and can be accessed with just a tap. The ease of medium and quick access to the source would increase user interest in your business and engage more users.

Additionally, mobile apps these days are providing facilities including sharing the stuff you purchased with your friends and making purchases in just a click.

Impressive Synchronization of IOT Network

IOT has completely changed the corporate world. Today, companies are operating everything from manufacturing, retail, utility and other sectors through integrating an effective IOT network. In case of mobile apps it facilitate the companies to operate their IOT network on their fingertips from wherever they are. Being mobile also provide companies the flexibility to add or remove the devices from the IOT network as per their requirement with utmost ease. 

High Productivity and Low Investment

One of the major benefits of having a mobile app for your business is that it increases the communication between employees, vendors and consumers. It eases the job of making orders, giving replies to the consumer queries and identifying the user behavior. Communicating directly with your employees and consumers would not just increase your productivity but will also save the huge amount that usually get spend on advertising. Not just that your can also integrate the social network through connecting your consumers over social media, thus increasing your profit margins.  

Conclusion

Technology has lend a great help in the form of mobile apps with the way businesses are conducting these days. It has broken the geographical barriers and has improved the communication between brand and its consumers. From making workplace more interesting to providing consumer a high level on convenience mobile apps have definitely made a huge impact on business system and is a positive one!

Essential Components for an E-Commerce Website

E-commerce websites or the online shopping platforms facilitating consumers in-home shopping experience are getting more popular day by day! So much so that now these have started to become obsessions for many. People are getting dependent on these sites for their daily needs of food and clothes. There are tremendous benefits of e-commerce websites, like for starters you do not have to move out of the house, that eases the whole lot of pressure. Along with that, you can compare quality and prices of the products with multiple stores, don’t have to worry about visiting stores in bad weather or shop being open/closed, is it the right time to visit the store or not ? etc etc. Also, these websites provide free deliveries and easy returns on their products, thus making it highly engaging for consumers.

However, the increasing number of e-commerce platforms is what creating the hitch in success for many! The competition seems to be roaring and the same is affecting online businesses. However, do you know the reason why some e-commerce websites are not as successful as others? Or that why some e-commerce/shopping websites fail to grab required public attention?

Lets discover the answer to the big question –

An online shop is more than just a shopping junction. Its not just about the variety of products it has to offer but the experience it provides to the visitors. It is a consumer space that require some essential components to be a success. These components include –

Clear and Appealing Product Pictures – It goes without saying but to sell product you need to present the product in clear pictures so that the users would get to know what it actually looks like. Therefore, make sure that the product images you provide on your website should be clear and captured in good lighting to be able to understood and comprehend properly by the visitors.

Simple Design and Smooth Navigation – Be clear on how you want your online shop to be structured or the categories you want to have on your website. Discuss with the designer on how to make it more accessible with the design type. The purpose is to offer the ease of navigation to the visitors and provide an experience impressive enough to persuade them to visit again and again.

Offer Product Description – For an E-commerce website it is important that it does provides the information of the products it is selling. Making the website more descriptive would add more ease for consumers while making purchases. This will enable them to make purchases more confidently and would ascend more credibility to the website

Shipping Information – Most of the time it is advised that you clearly state all the shipping details on the top the website so that the users stay informed with the shipping policy beforehand. Provide full information on the different shipping costs depending on factors like geological locations etc.

Simple Returns – Just like shipping policy, there is return policy which is definitely a must to state for an E-commerce website. A customer might want to return product in case of some defect or due to dissatisfaction with the product received. In such a scenario it will be great if you have already have a return policy before hand. Make sure to provide all the details on the returns with your policy in order to avoid any confusion later on.

Contact Information – For an E-commerce website it comes in a best practice to provide one’s contact details on the website. Consumers would trust the platform more knowing that they have an option to reach out if they want. Such practices help you sustain longer relationship with consumers on your website and even gain more business.

5 Common Misconceptions About Web Development

With increasing users on web, businesses are trying to take hold of a prominent space on web. They are looking for having a website that not just speaks for the brand but helps grabbing major user attention.

However, what fails them is their lack of understanding towards developing a website. They try to put in self decerned efforts towards developing the website and are unable to recognise the importance of getting the website developed from a professional developer owing to some major misconceptions. Some of them are discussed below in this blog –

Website Development is a No Skill Job – One of the major misconceptions about regarding web development is that it is a “piece of cake”! And that it does not need any professional knowledge. However, this is not the case. Some websites do appear simple in design and seems like it does not involve much of the work but it requires a lot of programming efforts and time to develope even a simple looking website. 

It’s a Unified Affair – Some organizations think it requires everyone to be on same page and stay updated with everything involved in web development process. However, that is just sheer waste of time. Instead of calling everyone in the meeting and keeping them updated with the efforts, it is better to call for only the people who are initially involved in the process to brainstorm and find better solutions.  

Website is a Product – The introduction of templates required for the designing of website have made the business people think that website is like a commodity. One can take advantage of the already created templates for their business, but those does not survive for a very long time. Hence, web development is a process that’s best get recognised by the professional web developers. 

Web Development is One time Business – Web development is definitely not a one time business as it requires maintenance for continuously making profits. People often hire web development companies to keep monitoring the performance of their website and ensure that it keeps working in favor of business without any glitches. To be able to make continuous profits in your business via website, it is important to keep updating it with fresh content and make sure that it functions properly.

Anyone Can Create a Great User Experience – Building a website is a process that needs learning and a lot of understanding of the technical aspects of website development. One can not make it with just basic information on web design. There are a lot of integral system that are integrated to get one successful platform. Hence, only a professional developer can get you best experience with your website.

Conclusion

From designing to development there needs to be the required professional approach for making an effective and impressive online presence. There are some technical codes that only a professional web developer would know best and can get you the desired website for your brand. Web developers will help you achieve your business goals through understanding your vision and objective with the website. They’re knowledgeable and experienced personnel who can help you convert visitors into loyal consumers for your brand. 

Website Maintenance : Concept and Importance

The concept 

Your website is reflection of your business online, it represents what your brand stands for! Being a part of global platform, users’ perception for your brand would majorly get resonated from your website. Therefore, maintaining a website holds a lot of importance for it is going to offer real time service to the users. It will let user comprehend what your brand actually stand for at the very moment. Maintaining your website would help you attract and retain consumers for your brand. It further facilitates in wielding the scope of your website that can help you in preserving your search engine rankings.

• Key to Progress for An Online Business

  

The world of web is ever changing and the technological practices are evolving every second hour. In order to let people find you on web or to stay in the top searches of the search engines it is important that you always  remain updated. Website maintenance can help in progressing businesses through bringing in the latest state of technology, managing the website and making it more user friendly. 

A well maintained website for being relevant to user seeks major user attention, being updated with all the latest features increases the site’s credibility and decreases the risk of technical failures. All these benefits instigates positive effect on search engines and thus promotes profits in business. 

Importance of Maintaining a Website 

Improved User Experience – Success don’t come easy, it takes a lot of patience, consistency in efforts and lot of hard work. Your website could have been the best version when launched and could even be getting you the right amount of business but a simple update say a plugin can add more kink in the process. Sometimes, there are additions that are not made in the initial phase can now be added for better performance. 

Secure Your Website – Cyber crime is common these days and many a times we see websites getting hacked or facing a lot of other security issues. In such a scenario, maintaining the website provide you an upper hand and protects your website from online thefts. Be it themes to plugins, updates are often executed to patch security loopholes. If a website is not timely updated it becomes vulnerable to web thefts including website hacking, malware and to the viruses. 

Saves The Cost – Maintaining website is like getting timely service for your car in order to prevent any major fallout that causes to repair the part from scratch or engine in future. Timely maintaining your website would help you provides browser support, review your tags, upgrades the technical aspects and even works on bug fixing. Additionally, it helps in keeping your site running smoothly so you can make money without any unwanted interruptions.

The Bottom Line 

Website maintenance is requisite for a smooth functioning and profit generating website. The great benefits of the maintenance process often outweigh the little money it takes as the same is going to make breaking affect on profit margin.