2021 - TILL IT CLICKS

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Why Now Is The Best Time For Investing in OTT Ads?

Does this sound familiar – You have been contemplating taking a holiday and randomly see an ad for a cheap flight ticket while playing a game or you see great deals for a holiday resort while playing your favourite videos. These are all called OTT Ads that stand for Over The Top Advertisements.

These ads are displayed specifically on streaming platforms and are shown directly to the viewers thus eliminating all the middle points such as distributors between the advertiser and the end customer. Unlike traditional TV advertising that comes with a few limitations such as predetermined broadcast schedules, geographies etc, OTT ads provide a lot of flexibility. Any device that streams videos can be used for OTT ads including mobiles, computers, laptops, gaming consoles and streaming devices such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, etc.

The ads are distributed according to the requirements of the brand. The advertising industry is seeing a steady shift where brands prefer investing in OTT ads compared to traditional TV ads. They are adopting advanced digital strategies that help them plan their digital marketing in a much more efficient manner.

OTT ads are designed and distributed in a strategic way. These kinds of ads will reach a smaller but more data-driven and targeted audience group. The targeting precision reduces resource wastage significantly. Not only can the OTT videos be completely leveraged as a complete funnel performance channel, but it has the capacity of engaging the customers and influencing consumer behaviour too by ensuring ad relevance.

One of the features is that most ads on OTT aren’t skippable thus almost forcing the viewer to watch the entire ad so it remains at ‘Top Of The Mind’ recall.

Tick These Boxes While Investing in OTT Ads

Platform adaptation: Remember that OTT ads will be viewed by your target audience across several platforms on various devices such as the laptop, TV, mobile phone, tabs etc. You will want to make sure that the ad doesn’t seem disproportionate on any device and is adapted for the best quality of viewership across all platforms.

Source: Appsflyer

Keeping it short and simple: It’s best to keep the ads short and straightforward. This practice is best when we have an ad that is not skippable. It’s important not to annoy our audience with really long ads. We risk losing the attention of the viewers. It’s ideal to wrap up the message of our video in a span of a maximum of 30 seconds.

Source: Balcom Agency

Relatability in ads: The overall feel and vibe of the video should resonate with your brand. A person whilst seeing the ad should be able to easily comprehend the message and be easily able to identify with the brand. Loss of interest is very common if the ads aren’t relatable to the target audience. At the end of the day, the audience should be able to link the ad to the brand.

Source: BankBound

Understand the audience demographics: Having knowledge about who your ideal target audience should be and all their details such as location, behaviour etc help narrow down on targeting options thus increasing the possibility of generating leads. Understanding the interest-based behaviour of people will also help you position your offerings in a way that will resonate with the audience.

Source: Neil Patel

Clear call to action: After watching an ad, there needs to be a clear direction for the audience with instructions on how they can engage with the ad. A button should be extremely visible with either a – Buy Now or Know More or any other message with reference to your offerings. If there is no clarity on what to do next after watching the ad, the audience is likely to forget to engage with the brand.

Source: ClearVoice

In conclusion, the OTT industry has erupted into the field of advertising and by the look of it, it is here to say. More people by the day are switching from traditional TV media and spending a lot of time exploring various streaming platforms. Successful execution of OTT ads can give you an added advantage over competitors and help target new audiences. This new phase of advertising can also assist you to work smarter and be impactful. OTT ads are transforming the paid media landscape and now is the best time to jump on the bandwagon.

Things To Consider When Choosing The Right Digital Marketing Agency

It’s safe to say that the world we live in today has become a fairly digitalised world. Searching for and validating things on Google and understanding an organisation through its social media and website has become second to nature. Businesses of all sizes look forward to having a strong digital presence to increase brand awareness, gather leads and ultimately boost revenue generation. But as doing this in-house can be a costly and time-consuming affair, it has become economically wise to outsource the responsibilities to a professional digital marketing agency.

Given that there are so many aspects to digital marketing, it’s important to understand and have absolute clarity on your desired outcome. Every agency may not have expertise across all the verticals of digital marketing. Some are stronger in creating websites but may not be adept with SEO while the others will have a niche expertise in pay per click (PPC) advertising and social media strategies. The clarity in objective will help you narrow down to the perfect agency with the required expertise that will help you reach your goal.

Here are some of top attributes to look for while choosing a digital marketing agency:

Agency’s Approach to Digital Marketing

Source: PNGITEM

One of the first things to look for is how the agency perceives digital marketing as a concept. Spend some time having discussions with the agency and understand how much they have explored in the digital universe. Question the agency’s methodology and if they are able to present a rationale backed by legitimate resources and reports, you know you will be in good hands. It proves that they assess data before making decisions instead of blindly following trends. It is also important for the digital marketing agency to be well-versed with the technical side of things and stay up to date with the latest industry trends.

Estimated and Promised Results

Source: 3C Software

The kind of results that the agency estimates is a reflection of how well they understand the digital industry. Any agency offering instant results and promising immediate revenue generation and brand awareness is a major red flag since all forms of digital marketing are long term strategies. Realistically estimated outcomes may not be as attractive but you can be assured that they will be achieved via transparent methods that will always keep you in the loop. Too many variables impact the end result and not even the best digital marketing agency in the world can guarantee good and quick results.

Digital Presence Evaluation

Source: VH

One of the first things to do while deciding on a digital marketing agency is study the digital presence of the agency. Experts know the value of clear communication, good design and a great UI experience. If you visit the website of an agency and find yourself confused as to where to proceed next and how to navigate, it’s probably not a good sign. If you are satisfied with the prima facie visit and have had a good experience on the website, check out if they have an active and attractive social media presence. If you like their digital presence, it is most likely that the quality of their work for your brand will also impress you.

Pricing Packages

Source: UpLabs

While budget plays a major role in selecting the right agency, it is important that it isn’t the only deciding factor. There are quite a few agencies that offer attractive packages at a very low price range. But it is important as an organisation for you to understand the way they function and if they will be able to offer qualitative service while keeping their cost low. Have a discussion with your agencies about the kind of time they will be investing and the resources that they will be utilising to reach a better understanding. Agencies quoting a premium pricing plan are bound to direct more resources towards your brand and churn out quality work.

References and Reviews

Source: Experis

When selecting the right digital marketing agency, always make sure to go through all the testimonials, reviews on Google and other platforms. Unlike their website and social media platforms, where only the positive reviews are displayed, make sure you check their Google reviews. This can give you access to the negative reviews, if any, and help you understand what challenges the agency faces and where they struggle. One of the key aspects to watch out for is the complete absence of reviews altogether. It’s best to avoid an agency exhibiting no reviews as it shows a gap in understanding the field of digital marketing.

In conclusion, it is vital to have many conversations with a potential agency to understand their style of functioning and build a certain level of trust and comfort. A digital presence is pivotal in driving sales today and an absence can cause you to lose out on a substantial amount of leads. Digital Marketing is an ever evolving game that takes a considerable amount of time and effort to show significant results. So choose your digital marketing partner wisely.

7 Reasons Why Your B2C Business is Plagued by Poor Customer Engagement

Having a long-lasting, loyal customer base in today’s hyper-competitive environment can be extremely difficult for businesses. Also, with brand loyalty fleeting, the cost of customer acquisition is shooting up at a staggering rate. Taking proactive measures to enhance customer engagement is the only viable solution for brands to overcome this challenge.

But to take customer engagement to the next level and deliver better experiences, it is necessary to first understand the existing problems. This blog sheds light on the critical problems affecting customer engagement and ultimately taking a toll on your business’ conversions, profits, and customer retention.

Following are the top 7 reasons why your brand might be failing to keep customers engaged.

1. Poor Website UI/UX

Source: Codism

Your website is your business’ digital storefront. If the design and user experience are not attractive and user-friendly, customers will not stay on your website long enough. Outdated designs and a sluggish user experience can easily drive away potential customers and affect your business.

2. Oblivious to Customer Problems

Source: WiredPlus

Enhancing customer engagement can be very tricky, especially when you are not aware of the problems customers are facing. Setting up an effective customer feedback system is necessary. This can help you gain crucial insights into the key improvement areas of your product/ service. As a result, you can make required changes and enhance customer engagement significantly.

3. Reliance On a Reactive Engagement Model

Source: JFG

Gone are the days when customer engagement and service followed the reactive route. Engagement today is the outcome of your marketing outreach efforts. You can’t expect customers to easily get attracted to your brand. Instead, you have to strive hard and proactively create brand stickiness to keep your customers engaged.

4. Absence of Personalised, Targeted Strategies

Source: Froggy

Customised and targeted marketing strategies are beneficial for brands to deliver personalised and relevant experiences to their customers. The more customers relate to your product/ service, the more it helps in keeping them hooked to your brand for a longer duration. However, if you fail to incorporate the personalisation element, your brand is very likely to create a bad first impression and fail to engage the potential customers.

5. Not Having an Omnichannel Presence

Source: Packaging Strategies

Interactions across different channels and mediums help in reinforcing customers’ trust in your brand. Omnichannel presence also enables brands to be consistently visible and accessible to potential customers. This also plays a huge role in boosting customer engagement levels.

6. Low Bandwidth and Inadequate Resources

Source: OnlineBusiness

Time and resources are imperative when bringing effective customer engagement strategies to fruition. However, most brands fail to recognise the value of these factors. As a result, they do not have the time or resources to focus on customer engagement strategies and end up struggling to connect with their customers.

7. Lack of Powerful Customer Communication

Source: REVE Chat

Communication is at the heart of your business growth. It has the power to make or break your business. Establishing and maintaining seamless customer communication across both online and offline channels is a vital necessity. It can drive high customer engagement, and thus deliver substantial outcomes for your business.

Customer engagement can be a hard row to hoe for every business, irrespective of its size and type. Get rid of the above mentioned 7 problems to successfully step up customer engagement and boost your business growth. Craft meaningful strategies and improve your brand’s customer engagement metrics with TIC. Contact us to know more about how our seasoned marketers can help you drive up customer engagement for your business.

Marketing: Your Business’ Engine That Requires Regular Maintenance

For any business today, having a well-thought marketing strategy is essential to achieve its desired growth goals on a regular basis. Without one, it can be difficult to stay on top of the ever-changing media landscape. However, a meaningful marketing strategy is not just about great ideas and practices but also about being consistent with marketing efforts.

Marketing is like your business’ engine. It needs constant checkups and servicing to keep running. In absence of these maintenance activities, the whole system can grind to a halt! Hence, marketing cannot be treated as a standalone, one-off activity. It should be an ongoing process that requires commitment and discipline over an extended period of time.

The key thing here though isn’t just making sure everything falls into place, it also needs strategic optimisations on top of this careful planning. This is because there will always be changes happening within today’s dynamic market environment. And when not managed properly, this could lead to severe disruptions in the marketing processes, and ultimately, in the business outcomes.

Short-termism in Marketing is Affecting Businesses

Source: Smart Insights

When it comes to marketing strategies, a large number of businesses today are focusing too much on metrics and expecting quick gains. Whether it be social media marketing, paid advertising, SEO, or any other aspect, organisations are expecting great returns within the first few months. However, this does not happen as marketing campaigns take time to drive desired results.

While this approach of marketing may signal growth in terms of numbers, it fails to persist in the long run. Ultimately, this can hamper your brand-building efforts and can also take a toll on your long-term business objectives. Hence, it is always advisable to rely on long-term marketing activities to achieve strong and sustainable growth for your business.

‘The Perfect Marketing Strategy’ is a Myth

Source: Zoho

When implementing a marketing plan for your business, it is important to understand that no strategy is ever suited to drive positive outcomes repeatedly. Every marketing plan requires regular adjustments and tweaks in order to consistently meet business objectives for a long period. Relying on a single strategy can never create stability or a sense of predictability within the marketing department.

With this short-term oriented approach, businesses and marketers concentrate their budgets only on on-demand generation and bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns. As a result, they fail to address one of the major marketing objectives of every business – customer retention. However, keeping your marketing strategy flexible and making constant optimisations could significantly outweigh the benefits of short-term tactics.

Why Marketing is Not a One-time Affair?

Time – It is important to follow a single digital marketing strategy for at least a year before you start to see positive results.
Connections – Creating genuine connections and relationships with customers requires time. Trust cannot be built within just a few months.
Expansion – Short-termism compels you to target only your most likely buyers. This prevents you from extending the reach of your brand.
Customer Retention – While short-term strategies only focus on customer acquisition, employing the long-term approach can also help you to significantly improve customer retention rates.

To give your business the best chance of growing, it is thus important to stick with a single but flexible digital marketing strategy for an extended period of time. Only then can you start expecting returns from your marketing efforts. Instead of running behind quick gains with short-term tactics, focusing on long-term strategies can be useful for your business to get the best outcomes at every touchpoint.

Sonic Branding: A ‘Sound’ Strategy to Build Strong Brand Identity

Remember Airtel’s classic promotional jingle…
Britannia’s Ting Ting Ti Ting…
Ponds’s Googly woogly woosh…

These are not only just nostalgic melodies by brands but perfect examples of sonic signature, demonstrating the excellent use of sonic branding.

Branding plays an important role in today’s complex market for businesses, ideas and products. Your brand identity needs to be cohesive and consistent. A sonic branding strategy can help you achieve this goal. Sonic branding involves the use of music, sounds, or any audio to create a memorable brand identity. It’s an effective way to promote your business and establish a strong connection with your target audience.

Why is Sonic Branding Significant?

As audio becomes more important than brand content, it is crucial to keep an eye on the entire audience. Building an audio element to your brand is often an afterthought or even something that people don’t think about at all. I am sure you all are aware of how audio content is taking flight with the podcast marketing these days, and Spotify is of course leading the sector. There are many ways to strengthen your audience’s association with your brand. From marketing to Instagram/TikTok reels, your audio selection plays an important role in shaping your brand identity. So make sure you learn the basics before starting.

Sonic branding is still a relatively new concept and people are just starting to think about using music for the purpose of marketing. But for music to be recognized as a commodity, to be bought, it must be quite appealing. Music that doesn’t adhere to existing music business marketing frameworks and definitions isn’t marketable in the short term. Sounds like a marketing speak? That’s because it is! It’s marketing speak for you to be part of a dialogue and to be aware of how your sonic branding choices can change the perception of your business, positively or negatively.

What is Sonic Branding?

Sonic branding is a collection of audio touchpoints that convey the values and personality of your brands. With Sonic branding, your company’s unique soundscape can be used in various elements like the sonic logo, interactive voice messages (IVR), commercials, digital ads, videos and podcasts, and the sounds customers use when using your apps and websites. Sonic branding has three major components: music, voice and sound effects wherein music is the most demanding element because of its distinctiveness.

For example, the sound you hear when you turn on your computer, phone or Amazon’s Alexa that follows your commands in an acoustic signature. Sonic branding communicates emotions and feelings as opposed to images and texts. It conveys factual information through sound but is less sustainable than visual images. Think, for example, of the sound generated when you switch from Netflix to your TV, or when you receive a text.

How to Use Sonic Branding for Your Business?

When people get to know your brand through a specific sound or song, they associate those distinctive sounds with your organisation, product, or service. If played well, this strategy can make customers immediately think of the song or jingle when they think of your brand–or think of your brand when they hear the specific song or sound.

Music is directly related to emotions. Different types of sound represent different emotions. For example – drum rolls and trumpets usually denote heroism, tabla and sitar denote something Indian, djembe denotes something African, birds chirping denotes nature or morning time, strings can be used to represent both happiness and sadness.

The use of the right sound for your brand can help you communicate your brand message in a better and creative way.

As you all know, visual logos and branding programs are really iconic today. But audio brands are the future, they are likely to become iconic very soon. The shift has already begun. If you do not have an audio brand, now is the perfect time to get started. When done right, your efforts can provide rewards for years to come.

Here is a small fun activity for you –

CAN YOU MATCH THESE SONIC LOGOS TO THEIR BRANDS?

Take our quiz to find out whether you can recognize the brand based on its sonic logo.

By Kamlesh Biswas

5 Sureshot Strategies for a Successful E-Commerce Website

With the growing number of internet users, worldwide e-commerce sales are expected to grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars by 2022, according to a report by Statista. The rising preference of people to buy products online is boosting profits for many e-commerce businesses. These online stores initially catered mostly to Gen Z and millennials with personal care, electronics, wellness, etc products. However, e-commerce businesses have soon expanded their customer base by becoming the backbone for supplying essential items as well.

To successfully sell products online, it is important for your store to have an effective digital presence. A strong online presence gives your brand the perfect platform to communicate with your target consumers and compel them to buy your products. Here are 5 simple yet highly effective tactics that you can implement to build and manage a successful e-commerce website.

1. Keep Your Website Design Clean and Simple

Image Source: Usability Geek

Design is an important element of your online store’s website. Without a clean and clear design, visitors are likely to lose interest in your e-commerce website. On the other hand, a smartly designed website with a simplistic colour scheme and elegant fonts can compel visitors to stay longer on your online store.

Your e-commerce website can also prevent the use of heavy elements such as extra-large images, files, and too many ads to ensure faster load times. Besides, simple web design also makes sure that visitors are not distracted but are fully engaged while exploring the range of products you are offering. A fast-loading website not only appeals to your website visitors by reducing bounce rates but also increases your conversions.

2. Make Navigation Easy for Visitors

Image Source: Convertcart

Everyone loves online stores that are seamless and easily navigable. It is thus important for the navigation of your e-commerce website to be clear. You need to make sure that various sections, categories, sub-categories on your website are properly described and visually defined. This enables website visitors and shoppers to find their preferred goods quickly and without any hassles.

You can include your online store’s main navigation menu at the top of the page or on the left-hand side of the page. Further, you can organize product listings using meaningful categories, subcategories, and labels. Most importantly, your e-commerce website should also have an in-search feature that not just helps users find the products they are looking for but also shows relevant items.

3. Use High-quality Product Images and Graphics

Image Source: Imagekit.io

Adding good-quality images to your e-commerce website is a simple and effective way to improve your site’s user experience. It is therefore recommended to always use professionally clicked product images in your e-commerce website. Such high-quality images let visitors have a closer look at the product and strengthen their purchasing decision.

Ensure that the product images that you use on your online store are not too small or pixelated. Use of high-resolution images can also help in driving longer visit times and reduce bounce rates, thereby boosting your site’s SEO. This helps in improving the credibility of your brands and increases the chances of visitors willing to buy products from your online store.

4. Ensure Your Site is SEO-friendly

Image Source: Serp Wizard

You have spent a great deal of time setting up your e-commerce site. Yet your website fails to rank higher on the search engines and witness increased traffic? How can you overcome this obstacle? Search Engine Optimisation. Having a strong SEO strategy in place is a must so as to witness higher brand impressions and clicks and thus, better sales.

While optimising your e-commerce website for search engines, it is important to take into account relevancy as well as ranking difficulty. Using internal links can be a great way to enable search engines to crawl and index your pages. Faster load times and a responsive design can also help your website appeal to both, searchers and search engines, and thus, improve your website traffic significantly

Establishing and maintaining a website for your e-commerce business can be a daunting task. But it is possible to achieve your desired web traffic goals and boost your sales with the help of above mentioned simple steps. By following these tactics, your e-commerce website will not only witness increased visitors but will also convert like crazy. So, what are you waiting for? Implement these strategies and give your online store the sales it deserves.

Website Design and Development Trends | Till It Clicks

6 Web Design And Development Trends Dominating the Industry In 2021

Design and development have become the most important aspects of building a website today. The reason being, most brands across the globe have now realised the necessity of building an online presence that is attractive and which delivers a seamless user experience. However, to achieve this, it is important to always stay on top of the latest website design and development trends.

The pandemic outbreak in 2020 has highlighted the significance of strengthening online presence for better reach. As a result, brands and businesses are focusing on making their websites more appealing and user-friendly. To make this easier for businesses, we’ve put together a list of the biggest and most effective web design and development trends in 2021.

1. Progressive Web App Development

Image Source: Railsware

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that combine the best of both – mobile applications as well as web-based applications. These websites are intended to deliver a high level of performance regardless of device or network condition. PWAs are comparatively more interactive and responsive than conventional responsive websites. They are built in a manner that enables them to behave like native apps.

The advent of PWAs has been beneficial for global brands like Amazon, Twitter, Forbes, etc in order to improve the loading times for their users. Features such as push notifications are helping brands in making their websites more interactive, thereby increasing conversions and decreasing bounce rates. PWAs are also proving to be a great asset for businesses by boosting their time on-site and significantly improving re-engagement rates.

2. Dark-Themed UI

Image Source: Prototypr.io

For a long time, a white background was considered to be the only option to create empty spaces on a website or an app. However, a few years ago, mobile applications started offering dark-themed UI options which garnered a lot of appreciation. Owing to its popularity, website designers have also started creating dark-themed user interfaces and we believe that this trend will continue to rise throughout 2021.

As far as user experience is concerned, dark themes are extremely useful for users as they help in minimising digital eye strain. The dark mode utilises minimal device energy and saves a lot of your device’s battery time. By increasing contrast, the dark theme UI makes design elements more visible, which is crucial in making your website look more appealing.

3. AI-Powered Chatbots

Image Source: Mesheble

Artificial intelligence based chatbot is a software that is designed to understand and simulate human conversations. These chatbots help businesses in speeding up their operations through voice or text chats and also improving the customer experience. By collecting data, answering frequently asked questions, and providing solutions for various other customer concerns, AI-powered chatbots are useful in reducing customer drop off rates.

Powered with speech recognition techniques and cognitive intelligence, AI-driven chatbots are capable of replicating human conversations with precision. The interactive feature of AI-powered chatbots makes the users feel valued and enhances customer satisfaction rates. As a result, prominent B2C businesses have started adding AI-powered chatbots to their websites and we believe many more companies will continue embracing this trend in 2021.

4. Single-Page Websites

Image Source: Skenix

Long and extensive web structures no longer attract users. Brands today are compelled to build single-page websites as they are much easier to navigate and utilise less time of site visitors. Visitors of single-page websites can find everything – right from the brand’s offerings to contact details, on the same page. With no new URL to navigate to on the website, these websites consume less space on servers.

The simple and creative design layouts used in single-page websites deliver faster and seamless user experiences. These websites enjoy a simpler deployment process and are also extremely cost-effective. Moreover, designers also get to try their hands on minimalistic yet responsive designs that offer user-friendly interfaces and are also more attractive.

5. Voice Search Optimisation

Image Source: Techwyse

From Siri and Alexa to Cortana, voice-controlled digital assistants are one of the easiest ways to make internet searches today. Owing to this technology’s user-friendliness as well as accuracy, more and more people are making voice-based searches. This has highlighted the need for websites to optimise their websites for voice searches, so as to not miss out on valuable traffic and leads.

Users these days show a great interest in voice recognition technology and so, businesses have started adopting this feature to ensure higher customer satisfaction. This will also prove to be quite beneficial when it comes to serving multilingual customers. Big organisations such as Apple, Google, and Android have already incorporated voice search into their UI/ UX design process and many more global enterprises are likely to follow suit.

6. Motion UI

Image Source: Tech9logy Creators

Customers today don’t only expect websites to be faster and mobile-friendly but also want their digital experiences to be visually rich and interactive. As a result, Motion UI is quickly gaining prominence as a great tool to deliver a more engaging user experience. Motion UI is a front-end framework that is useful in developing fully responsive websites as well as mobile applications.

With Motion UI, businesses are able to add complex animations, dynamic transitions or even interactive elements such as slide, spin, bounce, etc on their website. The apt use of such effects and elements can be a great way to draw visitors’ attention to an important position on the page, such as the call-to-action button. Motion UI is compatible with all web technologies and can be used anywhere on a web page – header, footer, or menus.

Staying abreast of the latest web design and development trends, even amid a constantly changing landscape, is indispensable today. The above mentioned design and development trends are dominating the industry in 2021 and are likely to continue doing so in the future as well. Incorporating these trends into websites can help brands attract more audiences and stand out in the market.

Dos-and-Donts_WordPress_Website | Till It Clicks

7 Do’s and Don’ts to Streamline Your WordPress Website Development

When it comes to building a website, marketers are no longer dependent on IT professionals. The advent of content marketing systems (CMS) has simplified and made it possible for anyone to develop attractive and effective websites. The most widely used and beneficial CMS platform that can serve businesses in creating compelling websites today is WordPress

WordPress.org is one of the most user-friendly CMS platforms with numerous features on offer. By choosing to use WordPress for your website development, you’ve taken the first step towards building a great website. However, there are still many challenges that you need to counter, plentiful lessons that you need to learn.

To help you through this website development phase, here’s a comprehensive list of 7 do’s and don’ts necessary for the successful creation of your website with WordPress.org.

Do’s of WordPress Website Development:

1. Purchase a High-Quality WordPress Hosting

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

Always choose quality over cheap hosting. They might charge you more but are certain to match your website requirements. High-quality WordPress hosting can ensure speed, scalability and security with increased uptime. With these and many more dependable features, top-notch WordPress hosting allows you to focus on your business effectively.

2. Go Premium, Explore More

Image Source: Codup

The premium plugins of WordPress can provide a host of benefits to users. For a small licensing fee, users get access to better features, dedicated support and regular updates with premium plugins. This can be beneficial for users in having a high-quality and well-performing WordPress website.

3. Setup a Permalink Structure

Image Source: Shout me Loud

Permalink structure is one of the most important parts of your WordPress website, mainly delivering excellent SEO benefits. Using keywords in your permalinks and keeping it concise can reap great returns for your website in terms of search engine rankings. WordPress auto-generates a URL for your website by using the post ID number. It looks like this –

https://mynewwebsite.com/?p=123

But adding relevant keywords can help search engines and visitors identify your page’s content easily. The ideal permalink structure will look like this –

https://mynewwebsite.com/services

4. Choose the Right WordPress Theme

Image Source: Sitesaga

Make sure that the theme you pick for your website is compatible with all the web browsers. It is also important to check if the theme supports various plugins, which can be useful to add new features to your website. You must also ensure that the theme comes with support services so that you get professional solutions quickly when there are any problems with your website.

5. Carry Out Regular Backups

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

Your WordPress website might encounter catastrophic situations like sudden crashes or even data breaches. Creating regular backups of your WordPress website is the best thing that you can do to save your hard work. There are many free and paid WordPress plugins available that are pretty easy to use and can play a key role in keeping your website secure.

6. Utilise SEO Plugins

Image Source: ThemeGrill

WordPress offers many plugins specially designed for search engine optimization. These plugins can be useful in augmenting your site’s loading speed, improving content and boosting overall performance. Using the right WordPress SEO plugins can provide you with information related to the number of backlinks, keyword rankings, organic traffic, etc.

7. Use the Right Taxonomy Terms

Image Source: Sktthemes

Taxonomy is a useful way to group similar posts and other content elements together. Taxonomies are helpful because they provide some context to your content and make it easier for readers to find related content. You can also index and make them available for search engines.

Don’ts of WordPress Website Development:

1. Crowd Your Website With Unused Widgets

Image Source: Uplabs

WordPress comes with some default widgets. These widgets help you perform basic actions like adding videos, text and images to your website. But a few of them are of no use and they often make it difficult for you to find the necessary ones. Hence, you can get rid of such widgets so that only useful widgets are visible on the widgets page.

2. Stick With the Default Title and Tagline

Image Source: 10Web Blog

WordPress provides a default title and tagline for every website. While building a new website for your brand, make sure that you change them according to your website needs. If you forget to change the default title and tagline, they would appear in search results and make our website look unprofessional.

3. Let Your Website Become Outdated

Image Source: Design Point

WordPress does wonders for your website, but it also needs timely updates. WordPress constantly upgrades its tools and services. It is important for your website to also evolve by incorporating these updates. Using the latest WordPress features can play a pivotal role in helping your website grow.

4. Compromise On Website Security

Image Source: PBHS

There are several ways in which your website can be exploited. To protect your website from data breaches or cyberattacks, it is essential to take efficient precautionary measures. Update regularly, keep strong passwords, guard against attacks and install security and backup plugins to save your website from the hands of hackers.

5. Install Questionable Themes or Plugins

Image Source: Devrix

WordPress offers an endless amount of free themes and plugins for its users. However, some of these plugins and themes may be developed with the intent of exploiting websites. Outdated plugins are also one of the common causes of WordPress website security breaches. Hence, it is important to always read reviews and only download themes or plugins from reliable sources.

6. Add Too Many Tags

Image Source: Fixrunner

For a WordPress.org website, too many tags can lead to duplication issues. Search engines may assume some of your tags are the duplicates of categories and may not consider your content relevant while displaying results. This can ultimately have a disastrous impact on your site’s performance.

7. Ignore Slugs

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A post slug or page slug is the part of your website’s uniform resource locator (URL) that can be edited. The slug is always auto-generated based on the title of the post. A good slug has the potential to positively impact your site’s SEO efforts. Being editable, slug enables you to include the exact keyword that you want to rank for, in your URL.

The journey of developing a website can be full of obstacles and hurdles. But the right strategies can carve the way out of these roadblocks towards success. Mentioned above are some of the most important do’s and don’ts that you must consider while building your WordPress website. Following these methods will be helpful in developing your dream website without getting bogged down by any problems or concerns.

Website Design and Development | Till It Clicks

9 Signs Your Website Design And Development is in Need of a Revamp

Your website is the online face of your business. It should have all the elements necessary to convey your brand’s message appropriately and make visitors stay longer on your website. Attractive design, responsive UI, up-to-date content, seamless site performance, etc are some of the features that appeal to site visitors as well as help your website rank higher on search engines.

However, if your website is facing issues such as increased bounce rates, lesser conversions, slow load times, decrease in sales, etc then it is a clear sign that you need to update it. It is important to assess your website regularly in order to identify the areas that need to be revamped. We’ve compiled a list of 9 signs which indicate that your website’s design and development needs to be updated. Read more to find out.

1. Poor Navigation

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Higher bounce rates or single-page visits are generally caused due to poor website navigation. When Google learns about your website and its increased bounce rate, your website drops down in the search engine rankings. A better navigation menu allows your website visitors to quickly access the information they are looking for. Thus, if your site lacks user-friendly navigation then it needs to be revamped.

2. Reduced sales

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Businesses, especially e-commerce companies, are most likely to experience reduced sales due to issues in website design and development. In order to compel customers to purchase your products/ services, it is important to first have high-quality graphics and relevant content so that visitors spend more time on your website. Even if you have a great range of products to offer, your website must portray them in an attractive manner so as to convince visitors to make a purchase.

3. Slow Load Times

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In his blog on ‘how loading time affects bottom line’, Neil Patel has stated that even a 1-second delay in page response can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. Slow-loading web pages increase bounce rates considerably and affect the overall performance of your website. Hence, it is important to test your website speeds regularly and make necessary changes if your page load times are higher.

4. Non-responsive Web Design

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A majority of search queries today are made through mobile devices. Hence, it is important for businesses to build mobile-friendly websites with responsive designs so that visitors are not forced to abandon your website. If your website content including font sizes, image dimensions, and element widths do not automatically “respond” to different screen sizes, it is a sign that you need to work on your website. This requires you to make changes to design and development so that your website can easily adapt to different devices.

5. Site is Not SEO-friendly

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While businesses strive to rank higher in search engine rankings, they often miss out on ensuring SEO-friendly web design. An SEO-friendly website lets search engines efficiently crawl each page on the website, interpret the content, and index it in their database. Once they index your website content, it becomes easier for your website to rank higher and reach maximum prospects easily. Thus, an SEO-friendly web design is imperative.

6. Inconsistent Branding

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Your online marketing strategy might go in vain if your website lacks consistent messaging throughout your website. Moreover, inconsistent branding may also make it difficult for your business to attract the right prospects and improve your conversions. This makes it essential for you to revamp your website to have a matching voice, colour palette, and visual style across all the web pages.

7. Security Concerns

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Website security is one of the most prominent concerns among businesses today. Many websites contain valuable information about their business as well as their clients and customers. This makes it extremely important to ensure that your website is always protected against data breaches. If your website is not updated as per the latest coding standards and security patches, then it can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This makes it necessary to redesign your website to protect it against cybersecurity threats.

8. Low conversion rates

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With an SEO-friendly website, businesses are enabled to attract target audiences to their websites. However, if these visitors are not converting into customers, it is very likely that there is a problem with your website design or development. An outdated and unattractive website results in very fewer conversion rates. Make sure that your website consists of updated content, captivating graphics and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons. If your website lacks any of these aspects, then it means that the look and feel of your website must undergo modifications.

9. You Don’t Use a CMS

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Constant website updates are necessary to display accurate information and stay in line with the latest design trends. A content management system (CMS) can help you to easily update websites without requiring any coding skills. A good CMS lets you create, manage, modify and add necessary content to your website in a hassle-free manner. It also allows you to customize the design and functionality of your website with numerous templates on offer. This makes it quite essential for you to redesign and redevelop your website using a CMS.

Do you see any of these signs on your website? If yes, then it’s a clear indication that your website design and development needs modifications. Start analysing the different areas of your website from time to time so that you can take better steps to rebuild your website. Regular website revamps can help your website to deliver the best user experience, attract more prospects, and rank higher on the search engines.

If you need any help with updating your website design and development, please feel free to get in touch with us. Our expert designers and developers can weave their magic and take your website to new heights.

Build Standout Websites | Till It Clicks

5 Exceptional CMS Platforms to Build Standout Websites Seamlessly

Most businesses believe that they need a certified coder or a web developer to build a website. But the truth is, websites can be built without hiring a web developer. This is possible with the help of a Content Management System platform. Content Management System (CMS) is a software that helps marketers create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialized coding knowledge.

A CMS allows you to add, update, delete web pages and other website content without having to know HTML, CSS or other programming languages. It isn’t limited to a backend management interface but also helps you deliver the best user experience. CMS stores all your web content in one place and supports collaboration across teams, offers templates to simplify website building, and also enables customisation. With numerous tools, plugins, templates, etc on offer, a CMS saves a lot of your time and money.

What Makes CMS a Go-to Tool for Building and Managing Websites?

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CMS is easy to navigate and use without the need for any training.
A CMS lets marketers customise their website including elements like design, look, and layout.
Users with limited technical knowledge can also build a compelling website in a short period.
CMS provides effective tools and plugins that are designed specifically to strengthen your website’s security.
Updating a website becomes much faster and easier with the pre-designed templates and user-friendly dashboards of a CMS.

Before choosing a CMS to build your website, you must consider a few things including – What features are you looking for? Do you want to spend time on development or go ahead with a ready-to-use template? What are the plugins that you are looking for? Apart from this, it is important to assess if you will require a blog section, photo gallery, online store (eCommerce), contact form, SEO and social media features, etc.

Depending on all these factors, you can start hunting for a CMS that best suits your website requirements. Here are the 5 of the best CMS platforms that can assist you in your website building efforts.

5. Drupal: Helping You Deliver Excellent Digital Experiences

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Drupal is a customisable content management system that can help users by effectively providing multichannel, personalised experiences to connect with their customers. With its flexible taxonomy system, Drupal users can easily manage websites stuffed with large amounts of content. It also comes with a built-in user access system that gives users plenty of control over their website.

With Drupal’s scalability, you can be sure of delivering a great user experience even during extreme traffic bursts. Drupal also enables users to build complex multilingual websites easily and much quickly. It also consists of specialised tools for content management, workflow and publishing to streamline the job of content creators. However, in comparison with most other CMS platforms, Drupal has a limited number of third-party modules, which can be detrimental to website performance.

4. Squarespace: Reliable CMS to Build Feature-rich Websites

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Establish and maintain an excellent digital presence by building your website with Squarespace. With numerous templates on offer, Squarespace makes it possible for users to create a customised website that is in line with their style and business needs. It has had an additional e-commerce plan which allows you to add an online store to your website.

Squarespace offers limited integrations with third-party services which might act as a hurdle in growing your business. With Squarespace, you can use the drag and drop feature to perfectly create your desired layouts on the website. The payment gateway options available with Squarespace are also quite limited – such as Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal.

3. Shopify: Creating Customised E-commerce Websites is Now Easier

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Shopify is an extremely useful CMS platform that is exclusively used to build online stores and eCommerce websites. Comprising a wide range of features, Shopify enables you to have complete control over your website’s navigation. It is one of the most preferred website building platforms as it offers an integrated payment solution called Shopify Payments.

You can add your creativity personalised creative elements to your e-commerce website as Shopify comes with numerous editable themes and design layouts to choose from. But, when it comes to pricing, Shopify is a bit more expensive than most other website building platforms. Also, Shopify users face troubles when trying to transfer their website to another domain or hosting.

2. Joomla: Offering Unparalleled Solutions to Build Your Dream Website

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Consisting of thousands of templates and extensions, Joomla is an open-source CMS that makes sure that the power of your website is always in your hands. This efficient CMS platform comes with a powerful admin interface that is user-friendly and easy to customize. It can manage a large number of articles and also help you monetise your website with ads.

With the Joomla platform, migrating to any other platform requires minimum time and effort. It also supports more than 70 translation packs for multilingual content management. However, when it comes to setting up an attractive website without a lot of development costs and hours, it is always better to choose WordPress over Joomla. This is because even though Joomla offers great flexibility, most users, especially non-developers, prefer going with the more user-friendly CMS platform.

1. WordPress: The Most Powerful and Popular CMS Platform

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WordPress is the most used open-source content management system that powers 30% of all websites across the world. With highly effective features and ease of use, it is the perfect CMS platform to develop websites of any scale. Right from a simple landing page to an eCommerce store, WordPress.org can help you build any website without any hassles.

With numerous themes on offer and pricing plans suitable for every budget range, building a top-notch website with WordPress is extremely easy. The thousands of WordPress plugins also help you add effective functionalities to your website such as an online store, contact forms, shopping cart, social media tools, etc. WordPress also provides a drag and drop page builder feature that enables users to streamline their website creation process.

With powerful SEO tools, online store integration, user-friendly interface, and many more functionalities, these CMS platforms can be quite useful in building amazing websites. However, after comparing the features and offerings, we feel that WordPress.org is far more superior to all other CMS platforms. Being a user-friendly, customisable and open-source platform consisting of thousands of plugins and themes, WordPress is the most used platform across the world. Hence, when it comes to choosing a CMS platform to build your website, we would highly recommend using WordPress.org so that your website development process is seamless and stress-free.