Website aesthetics vs. Usefulness: What matters the most?

Design goes a long way in sending the right message across to your website visitors, but overdoing it might end up spelling disaster. Often, in the quest to create the most visually stunning masterpiece, the essence of the website is forgotten. In this article, we’ll explore how a few Web Design elements can create a negative impact instead of the desired effect. Remember, usefulness is more important than aesthetics, and we’re here to tell you why:

1) Elements should serve a function

Any form/shape/element should serve a function. However, these days, designers design the form and hope that the function will be served on its own. That’s not the case. While designing, identify the core functionality of the site and build your design around it instead of the other way around.

2) If it’s too beautiful, it’s also distractive

Beauty is distractive - and while it’s not wrong to make your website beautiful, if it’s too much it would end up distracting your customers from the real purpose of your site. Blend beauty and functionality and ensure that your site works as great as it looks.

3) Poor usefulness may result in high bounce rates

At the end of the day, you want to make users stay, read, or buy something from you - which might not happen if they’re unable to use your website properly in the first place. High bounce rates due to lack of a useful design might affect your SEO and lower your rankings

4) Fast is better

Incorporating too many visual elements might look great, but will slow down your site. With users’ patience waning thin, no one would hang around for more than 3 seconds on your site. Keep the flashiness to a minimum and focus more on optimizing the site’s performance.

5) Simple is elegant

Going overboard with the design and adding too much might end up confusing your visitors at the end of the day. Users like it simple and simplicity, in turn, makes your website more functional.

Getting these elements right and striking a balance between both might seem like a daunting task – but not to us! Hire skilled web developers and designers from Openwave Singapore today.

4 Secret Strategies to Increase Sales and Grow your Business

We live in a hyper-competitive world, and almost every industry out there - from electronics to health care to retail and food - is dominated by big brands with a loyal consumer base. It's very hard for businesses to gain a foothold in this environment, especially with limited marketing budgets. The number one problem many SMBs have is finding more customers for the firm. So how do you get to generate more leads without blowing a tonne of money?

Here are four secret strategies to help you grow your business and increase sales:

Work on your conversion rate

The conversion rate refers to the number of visitors to your website that successful transition into paying customers. How do you improve your conversions? By making a beautiful website with great content that is appealing to both desktop and mobile users.

Build long-term relationships with customers

Research tells us that recurring customers are the backbone of every business. Also, it costs almost six times as much to find a new customer than to engage with an existing one. By building a long-term relationship with existing customers - with an excellent customer service and loyalty programs – you will secure the future of your company.

Social promotions can work wonders

Don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth social advertising. If customers love your business, they won’t hesitate to recommend you to their friends and family. Leverage social media, use customer reviews, and testimonials to improve social advertising.

Search engine optimization is crucial 

 With good SEO, you will be able to generate a lot of incoming traffic – both in your locality and worldwide - to your pages. Keep up-to-date with latest trends and, if you aren’t tech savvy, consider hiring someone to do your SEO for you. 

It’s also important that you use analytics tools like Google Analytics to test how effective your current strategy is and make improvements to your campaign. The success of your business in the digital age depends on your online presence. It’s important that your website is top notch and effective at converting customers into visitors. You can hire an experienced team of web developers to make you a great website or upgrade your existing one.

What makes Drupal the Perfect Web Development platform for Business?

Choosing the right content management system (CMS) for your website from the very beginning is important. If you pick the wrong CMS, you may have to spend a lot of time and money later transferring to a new one. Also, not all platforms will showcase your business in the best possible light. Drupal is a very popular and perhaps the most powerful content management system in the world, at the moment. 

Drupal is ideal for big Websites 

Platforms like WordPress and Joomla slow down when they are loaded with too many software extensions, or if the website has too many pages. Drupal, on the other hand, is perfect for large internet sites. It is based on a PHP framework which, if the developer is experienced enough, allows you to make pages that load in as little as 2 seconds on both desktops and mobiles.

Big benefits of using Drupal

Here are some of the top benefits of using the platform:

• Use for Free: Being open source, you can use and modify it as you please. There are thousands of free modules available that you can integrate into your site for free.
• Fully Customizable: It's possible to build themes or web pages from scratch, which is ideal for businesses that want unique branding.
• Very Secure: Drupal is much more secure than WordPress. The developers release regular updates that patch known vulnerabilities (there usually aren’t many).
• Fast Development: Drupal is module based. A good developer can quickly build up an excellent website by stitching together various modules.
• SEO Friendly: A website built on the platform will be well-optimized and easy to navigate. Google bots can crawl through it quickly, which gives you high search rankings out-of-the-box.
• Mobile-Friendly: The platform supports responsive and mobile friendly design. You can make pages that load lightning-quick on small devices and look good at the same time.

Drupal isn’t a platform suitable for programming beginners, but it is very effective in the hand of experienced developers. If you want an outstanding website made on the platform, you can hire Drupal CMS Developer in Singapore to a competent web development team.

It’s Crucial for Your Business to Own an Official Website: Know why

So you don’t own a website yet, in 2016? We're in the midst of a digital revolution, with billions of people accessing the internet daily and using it as their primary information resource. People use the internet for shopping, to find local business services, and to compare products being offered by competing companies. By not having a website, it's almost as if your business doesn't exist!

Here are some undeniable reasons why you need an official website right now:

Make yourself more accessible to clients

You will be able to provide useful, relevant information in a single location. That will make it easy for customers to tell what you have to offer and make it more likely they'll work with you.

Find more customers than ever before

The internet has no boundaries. Organisations these days have a chance of doing business with clients from around the world. A website makes it easy to find customers globally that are interested in what you have to offer. 

Keep your business up-and-running 24/7

Unlike your real-world office, a website doesn’t need downtime. It can stay up-and-running 24/7. Consequently, you can sell your products or services all day, every day.

Credibility

Every entrepreneur knows that a business' reputation is as important as - if not more important than - the product they are selling. Having an official site tells your customers you are serious and you are running a successful business. 

Reduce marketing costs

It doesn’t cost a lot of money to market online. You can advertise for free by creating a blog or by offering newsletters to customers or clients. 

Save on upkeep

Customers will no longer have to visit you in the real world for some of your products or services (if you’re offering them online). Consequently, you will get less foot-traffic and can save on some operating expenses.  

There are over a billion websites on the internet at the moment. Your official site, if you decide to get one, will have to compete with them. To create a professional-looking website that can convert efficiently and stand the test of time, hire an experienced web development team.