by facetadmin | Mar 22, 2018 | Facet News
It’s easy to assume that your website is performing optimally when you’re looking through from the other side. Truth is, your visitors may be encountering problems that aren’t so apparent to you. These are the top six ways to know if your website development has paid off, or if visitors are stumbling around in the dark.
1. Is Your Navigation Simple?
There’s nothing wrong with a simplistic approach to complex solutions. If your users can’t properly navigate your site via the built-in nav bar or drop-down menu, then there’s nothing stopping them from heading to a competitor site for the same information, and becoming a loyal viewer to their company instead of yours.
2. Is Your Website Responsive?
For the first time in the history of the internet, mobile usage has outranked stationary use. Essentially, laptops and home PCs are falling short of smartphones and tablets. Users enjoy being able to hold the world in their hands, and if your website doesn’t respond to their mobile browser, screen size and specifications, you’re losing out on more than half of the global market of visitors.
3. Are You Utilizing On-Page Advertisements?
This one is a slippery slope. If you’re trying to monetize your website, you could actually be hurting your viewership. People don’t mind small banner ads, but jutting advertisements or autoplay videos in the middle of your content (such as between two paragraphs) is a surefire way to not only kill your viewership, but lower your site speed (which is crucial for SEO and load times).
4. Is Your Content Simple?
Nobody wants to dodge a dozen different windows, between on-site pop-ups and refusing chat bot help. Make your content simple to reduce bounce rates, increase view times, and makes your website’s content easy to read by Google.
5. Is Your Contact Information Easy to Find?
If you’ve ever gotten excited about a brand or their services, but haven’t been able to find their contact page, you’re not alone. Businesses constantly lose out by not making their information readily available to their visitors.
6. Do You Have Integrated Site-Search?
As your website grows, content blooms alongside it. If you don’t have a way for your visitors to easily search for keywords and tags for related content, they’re very likely to just hop back to Google’s search results, and find another resource.
Website Development in Peoria, IL
Contact us today to transform your website into a functional, SEO-equipped and user-friendly experience for your visitors. In the digital age, your website is a direct reflection of your business, professionalism, and value – don’t leave it up to chance. Go with the top website development agency in Peoria, IL and reap the rewards sooner than you ever could have imagined. It takes a call, or a click, and you can revitalize your website today.
by facetadmin | Mar 22, 2018 | Facet News
We all understand that having excellent web design is crucial to your brand and overall website structure, but there’s an underlying aspect that requires balance. There’s such a thing as over-designing your site, and not truly focusing on the fundamentals of your website development.
Your Visitors Will Steer Away From a Lack of Navigation
Between site speed, individual page loading, design and navigation, there’s a great deal of balance that needs to be achieved to hold your visitors attentions. An expertly-designed website is critical for establishing your brand, but it won’t do you any good if your visitors can’t properly navigate it. They’re much more likely to leave, and head to the next result in their search.
Improper Navigation KIlls Your SEO Efforts
Apart from ever-changing ranking factors from Google, the last thing you want to do is pay for PPC advertisements, only to have your visitors leave, and your bounce rate increase. Navigation helps with your SEO efforts by allowing your visitors to jump from content to content with ease. We’ve all gotten lost on websites before – it’s exactly what you want your visitors to be doing, but you can’t expect them to have patience with a hard-to-navigate site. Increased visitor duration leads to increased average time spent on your page, which can funnel into more newsletter subscribers, ecommerce customers, and avid readers of your content.
Give the People What They Want
Visitors don’t want to stumble around on a website for ages, all while trying to get a single answer to their question. The public wants quick navigation and more to-the-point content. Balancing quality design and navigation doesn’t have to be a chore when you go with professional services to streamline and expedite the process for you. Every day that poor design and useless navigation exists on your site, you’re losing to competitors.
Quality Website Development in Peoria, IL
If you’re located in Peoria, IL and in need of website development, from design to function and everything in between, contact us today to get started on redesigning your website. Your business’ best efforts are showcased on your website – make it count with professional, simple to navigate design.
by facetadmin | Mar 22, 2018 | Facet News
There’s web design, then there’s responsive design—the ability to adapt to the device and browser that the viewer is using. In the ever-changing digital landscape, we’re seeing the tides turn on mobile internet use overtaking PC or laptop internet use, which begs the question—is your site properly responsive and optimized for mobile?
Keeping Up With The Billionaires
Website development isn’t just about being responsive, though—you have to keep up on trends within your industry. Fortune 500 companies simply throw money into design, and their experts take care of everything. They pay for what they believe the best to be, and they get a good end result out of it.
If you’re asking yourself, “How can I compete with that?” you’re not alone. Countless others wonder why they can do to replicate the effects of major corporations’ website development. Make it attractive to the eye, make it responsive on every device, and make it your own—you don’t need to replicate success, you need to strike out on your own path.
Keeping Customers Enveloped
If you’re not keeping customers on the page, there’s an issue. A lot of customers make their decision about staying on a page within the first few seconds. It’s based on design, if there’s too much content to read, and more, but the biggest issue is having your website respond and load quickly. When it doesn’t load fast enough, users are just going to tap or click the back button, and head through Google’s directory.
If you don’t keep your customers enveloped, you won’t be able to drive on through to the reason that everyone is visiting your website—whether that’s increasing traffic, driving ad revenue, or funneling them into become a customer, you need to get the point across. You can’t do that when the page doesn’t even load. It also affects your SEO and makes you less visible in search engines.
The Digital Landscape Needs Small Businesses
There’s a unique opportunity to get a corner on whatever your market is, and it’s due to one key factor: people are getting sick of big businesses being in their face all the time. As a small business, you have the opportunity to get before eager eyes, and prove yourself with proper design. Feel like a big business, but operate like a small one. That’s a huge part of it.
Get the head start on your new, responsive design with Facet Web Design and get customers where they need to be—in front of your brand, reading your message, entranced by your fantastic display.
by facetadmin | Mar 22, 2018 | Uncategorized
The latest craze (that you’ve probably seen everywhere) are chat bots integrated into web dev all across the internet. Some say these are getting out of hand, others say that they’re the most helpful things about visiting certain websites. In truth, it really depends on your industry.
When Chatbots Rock
It’s a fine line, but it’s one you have to draw in the sand and determine if it’s right for your business or not. There are certain businesses that just can’t answer every single question. You put up an FAQ, you write countless blog posts, articles, but there are still those out there that find new questions about your brand. The world’s expanding, and ideas never stop—this is normal. That’s where a chatbot comes into play.
This is especially helpful if you offer a service as opposed to just a certain type of product. When you offer unique services, you have people wondering how well they can contour to their current business or needs. You’re not always around to answer rapid-fire emails from countless prospects, but you don’t want them to turn to your competitor either. Chatbots to the rescue, 24/7, even when you’re on vacation.
When Chatbots Kind of Stink
It’s a fine line for a reason—people don’t want to be bothered. If you’re selling singular products, or all of your content is laid out on the pages to answer the questions of impending visitors, you’re pretty much covered. People don’t want to be bothered by the popup of a chatbot when they’re looking through your catalog of inventory, or trying to pick out one specific thing.
If you’re utilizing an initial popup for newsletter signups or anything else, that’s showing your customers that you’re proactive about getting signups. However, when they click off of that, see a chatbot popup, they may start to feel like you’re pushing yourselves on them. If you’re already taking an approach with popups, then it’s recommended to avoid using chatbots.
Your Industry Is Particular, Your Designers Should Be Too
Nobody has your specific business model; you’re putting a twist on your industry, but your website design isn’t matching up to the standards you set. Chatbots, no chatbots; either way, you need to engage potential customers, and get reactions from them. You need to excite, and that’s where Facet Web Design comes into play.
by facetadmin | Mar 22, 2018 | Facet News
Website design plays into a lot of things in today’s day and age: responsiveness per device, security, and staying away from the web vulnerability that scares us all just a bit. An SSL security certificate isn’t an option, really—not if you want to actually conduct business with anyone.
We are in an amazing time, but it’s also the most vulnerable time in terms of information sensitivity. It doesn’t take long for someone to get your information in their hands, which is why you need proper encryption.
Customers Look Out For It
Twenty years ago, we didn’t have half the security threats that we do nowadays. People have become extremely informed, and they know what to look for when they enter the proverbial gates of your webpage. Your SSL security certificate displays immediately in your visitors’ search engine atop their browser. They know, before your page even loads, if it’s a safe place to add in their sensitive information.
Credit Cards Are Everything Now
We don’t use cash. We don’t shop in-store nearly as much as we used to even a decade ago. More credit cards, more online transactions than ever before. It’s one of the key reasons that hackers target information like this because it’s being used so constantly that it makes activity difficult to track. With an SSL certificate, all of that information that you input on a website when you go to purchase a product becomes encrypted, and no longer falls subject to fraud.
If your site processes payment instead of solely using third-party vendors (think PayPal or Venom), then you’ll need an SSL certificate. In fact, even if you don’t use your own payment processing system, but you still sell products on your site, you should get an SSL certificate, and here’s why:
People are informed, but twice that number are misinformed. It’s the occupational hazard of subjecting ourselves to the information superhighway. Some people believe than an SSL certificate is used no matter what type of transaction is enacted on your website. Even if all your payments are through third-party gates, having an SSL certificate makes the ill-informed comfortable, and more likely to stay on your page.
Your Web Development Plays Into It
Your SSL is great, but if your customers can’t load your page fast enough, or they can’t navigate your site properly, it’s kind of a lost prospect. You have security, but nobody’s biting because they can’t get around, or move quickly enough. Facet Web Tech handles responsive designs, along with aesthetically pleasing layouts.
by facetadmin | Feb 2, 2018 | Facet News
We’re using more mobile internet than ever before, meaning we purchase, input sensitive information, and access our bank accounts all on mobile web apps and sites. It begs the question: How secure are these platforms? Let’s talk about that.
Website Security Relies on Many Factors
We would all like to imagine that our website host or service has the very best security in place for our site’s wellbeing. Your design needs to be bulletproof, data that you send or receive needs to be encrypted – it can be a headache to get started. Your website security is complex, but there are two main factors that you should have in place. They’ve become the prefix for any secure website, and unless you have these two (at the very least), Google could penalize your website.
1. SSL Security Certificate
You’ve seen these on desktop sites; the green security lock on the left side of the current URL you’re on. These should be part of your responsive design to apply to your mobile website, as well. When a user makes a purchase through your online store, they’re entrusting you with their credit card information and other critical data. Make sure your web host offers SSL, even if it’s an additional fee.
2. HTTPS (Not HTTP)
This is the flip side of the coin on SSL. HTTP send data without a secure connection, and in our day and age of information theft, that’s just not a viable option for websites. If one needs the other, then what’s the difference between HTTPS and SSL? In short, your SSL certificate is what changes your domain name into HTTPS, so your security is reliant upon it.
Does That Make My Mobile Website Secure?
Most of the work for your mobile website security is now complete. However, there’s one disadvantage to SSL that nobody really talks about; it constricts your bandwidth. This decreases load times, which has been proven to drive customers away. Encrypting that data between devices can be taxing on your website, so how do you get around that problem?
There is no way to speed up the SSL process, but you can speed up everything surrounding it. Good web design should load quickly, seamlessly transferring the viewer from one page to the other. The best way to get started with that is to get started with us and see what we can do for your mobile website today.
by facetadmin | Feb 2, 2018 | Facet News
In 2017, we saw a shift in power: Mobile internet users and desktop/laptops users both represented half of the statistics. Mobile web use has been increasing over the years, and now it’s aiming to surpass standard desktop use.
Consumers Use Mobile Internet More Often
We’re all hooked on our smartphones these days. Most desktop internet use comes from those utilizing it for work or work-related tasks. You have decision-makers using their desktops more often, but that isn’t to say that they don’t also utilize their mobile internet.
Consumers – the ones who are looking at your products, your services – are usually on a phone or a tablet. They’re on-the-go or at a remote location, but what does this mean for you?
You have two sides of the same coin to appeal to. If your website development hasn’t included responsive design, you’re missing out on the future of the internet.
Responsive Website Development is Critical
Responsive design means that your webpage is going to contour to the user’s device. That means that a laptop, desktop, smart TV, cell phone and tablet should each be able to view the same information from your website. The difference is that you obviously can’t mash down a webpage into a digestible read unless your design is responsive.
The Internet is Everywhere
With the explosion of IoT devices over the years, we’re more connected than ever before. Users can simply ask their Google Assistant to search for a set of keywords and select a website to pop-up on their television. Is your website ready for that?
Users will have more access from multiple points. They’re spending more time connected to the internet, giving them more opportunities to find you. Without proper website development, your site could fall behind the times and be left in the dust.
So, How Will it Affect Your Business?
All roads lead back to your website. Potential customers will review a website before they devote themselves to the purchase; your marketing attempts will lead back to your website; namely, it’s immensely valuable that you ensure proper website development to upkeep with the growing internet usage of consumers.
As the trend of mobile internet use continues, so does the need for mobile websites and fully responsive design. That’s where we come in: Your web design is just as important as its content, so don’t hesitate. Your competitors aren’t wasting any time.
by facetadmin | Feb 2, 2018 | Facet News
Marketing changes by the minute, but there are certain trends that pop up which show no indication of going away. Landing pages have become a crucial part of any marketing strategy, and here’s why:
They Combine Various Points of Marketing
Content marketing, product descriptions, technical information – they all come together in a marriage known as a landing page. It’s a culmination of one or more services, and a technical outlining of the components of those services. When you combine different marketing points, you make a hybrid approach to turn leads into conversions.
One of the biggest problems that businesses face is accruing conversions, but not turning those into leads. Landing pages (you should have more than one) turn into an immovable marketing representative that tells your audience what they want to hear, all without them investing too much of their time in reading a long piece that explains it.
They Incorporate Seamless Design
If you’re going to go all-out and hire a writer to learn your product and break it down into digestible, bite-sized pieces, you’ve done well. However, the essence of your business is wasted if it’s not properly presented. Web design is a crucial element to a functioning landing page. We make decisions based on what we can see, and if a business doesn’t have a dynamic landing page, it could very well bore customers, and turn them away.
The Home of Introductory Offers
If your business has certain deals to get new customers in the door, there’s no better place for those offers to live than the bottom of your landing page. When you reach the end of your expert explanation of your product or services, your viewer may be on the edge of their seat, ready to make a purchase. When they’re warmly greeted with an offer for a discount or additional services includes for free with their purchase, you’ve completed the lead funnel.
Marketing offers are fantastic, but most of the time, they’re placed in the wrong areas. This also gives you control over your offers, so you aren’t bugging an agency or your press release firm to remove an offer that’s no longer valid. You control your offer, and instead of using PPC ads for various pages of your site, you can minimize your spending: Turn them to that landing page, and they’re getting everything all at once.
If you’re ready to get started on your landing page, ensure that it has the very best design possible. Responsive, dynamic, and equipped to entice your viewers. We can help with that.
by facetadmin | Oct 9, 2017 | Facet News
Starting a business is difficult. You might have a great business idea, an excellent product, and even a team of hardworking employees, but it’s still extremely hard to get off the ground and actually start seeing some profit gain.
Because the business market is so competitive in 2017, it’s important to not give up if you’re serious about succeeding and growing your company. Here are a few secrets of successful businesses that you should attempt to apply to your own business model in order to see success for your company.
Pay attention to the market
Be sure to spend plenty of time researching your industry to find out as much as possible. Learn about the history of your industry, find out how the market is doing as a whole, and always be reading your trade magazines. Also, it’s essential that you pay attention to what your competitors are doing and find out exactly how they are doing it. Are they succeeding? Are they failing? That is important information, but it’s even more important that you determine why exactly they are failing or succeeding.
Work with an experienced website and software development company
Without working with professional computer software companies and experienced web designers, your business will likely have a poor digital presence. If your web-based app isn’t functional, your users will become frustrated quickly. If your website isn’t well-designed, it will be nearly impossible for you to acquire new customers and retain them. Online users form an opinion about a website within 50 milliseconds of the page loading, so you might want to make sure you’re focusing on professional website development. These experienced professionals can also help with website security, which is more important than ever nowadays.
Don’t do everything yourself
Although you’ll be doing the majority of your company’s work, especially in its infancy, you still need help. Asking for assistance from your staff is an essential part of success. If you attempt to do everything on your own, you are going to burn yourself out and your business will likely suffer as a result.
If your business is in need of assistance from computer software companies and web design professionals, contact Facet Web Tech today.
by facetadmin | Aug 31, 2017 | Facet News
It’s no secret that corporate America is becoming increasingly decentralized. In the matter of a few short decades, we have jettisoned the world of LAN lines for more agile cloud computing solutions.
While all this progress gives businesses new and innovative ways to store their data and interact with their clientele, many companies struggle to keep up with the explosion of progress.
In this blog, we’ll dive into one of the most vital and common new technologies in any software solutions company’s arsenal: Web-Based Applications.
What is a Web-Based Application?
An application is software designed to address a specific goal. Databases, word processors, or music players are all types of common applications. For more specific goals, an application can be created by a software solutions company.
While many software companies build both mobile applications and web applications, web-based apps are specifically designed to work on a web browser. The other major kind of applications, mobile and desktop apps, are designed to be downloaded onto your device’s hard drive and run from the device, rather than a web browser.
Advantages of Web-Based Applications
- Greater Accessibility
The primary advantage of a web-based application is that it can be easily accessed through your web browser. That means that users will have an easier time interacting with your application. That is valuable whether you are using your application on the back end, as a tool for your employees, or if you plan to use it to allow your customers to more easily interact with your business. Often, applications can be integrated with a business’s website, such as a live customer support app. So long as these applications do not slow down or clutter your site, they can be a great way to enhance your customer experience. Remember, the design of your site is important, with 38% of visitors reporting they will not engage with an unattractive site and layout. A software solutions company can build you an interactive application that can keep your site’s visitors satisfied.
- Better Integration
One of the key advantages of having a software solution company build you a web-based application is that it is significantly easier to integrate and coordinate between different applications this way. If you need to pull information or data from one app to another, software designers can ensure these API calls always run smoothly, reducing the amount of time you spend inputting and double checking information.
- Increased Adaptability
One of the best problems you will ever have with your application is too much traffic or use. This shows that your application is actually getting used, but the more pressure placed on your application, the more likely you are to experience glitches or other problems. A web-based app can more easily adjust to this problem, since you can add additional resources in one central location, rather than having to issue a major update to every user. Instead, a single call to your software company may be the only solution required.
Understanding what type of software is best for your business can be difficult. There are a number of computer software companies, all developing unique tools that may or may not be for you. Understanding the categories of tools and what they mean can help you narrow the field.
