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Web Page Load Time

How to Speed Up Your Web Page Load Time and Convert More in 2020?

Web Development

Okay, let’s think about this:

You have got an idea to have a website for your business.

You have spent days crafting an appealing design and weeks preparing it for generating massive revenue.

But suddenly you observed a problem: A web page of your new and beautiful website is not as fast as you thought of! 

Unimpressive and slow website pages not only frustrate the visitors but also encourage them to find your alternative. If your web page is slower than the blink of an eye, just over half of your potential visitors will leave your website. This greatly affects your overall conversions and profit. In the world of the web, the current speed of the website will be a factor to measure the success, which means SPEED sells!

Do you know?

Even a delay of second in page load may result in:

  • Pageviews decreased by 11%
  • Customer satisfaction breaks down to 16%
  • Conversions reduced by 7% 

On the other hand, it is found that almost 47% of eCommerce consumers are expecting page load time of lesser than two seconds. Amazon discovered that even a second of delay in page load time costs them a loss of $1.6 billion sales every year.

As you can see, the page loads heavily affect consumer behavior. If you manage to speed up or improve the page load time of your website, it can bring a huge advantage for you over your competitors. Moreover, you won’t rank on the first page of the search engines! Therefore, it is crucial to focus on page speed to help your website converts. 

So, how do you make sure the page-load of your site is up to the mark?

  • Work on scaling down images

Of course, images are the backbone to make your website attractive. But very rare website owners know that images are one of the most common bandwidth consumers. Therefore, optimizing the images is the very first in a direction to improve the page loads of your website. All you have to do is to change the dimensions of the image and you are done! It will greatly decrease the file size. 

  • Cutdown CSS load time

The CSS of your website loads even before visitors view your website. The more time it takes to download the CSS, the longer they have to wait. By optimizing the CSS of your website, you can make sure the web page load faster and give your viewers quick access to the page they intended. 

Therefore, it is important to figure out how many CSS files being used and remove unwanted CSS from the backend. Also, it is advisable to reduce the CSS file size by removing additional space in the sheet. In case you are using an eCommerce platform, you can leverage free online tools or services to improve eCommerce site performance.

  • Optimize scripts

Today, the majority of the organizations put JavaScript before the contents, which cause them to load even before your website content. This will put your visitors on hold to view the content of your page until JavaScript loads successfully. Ideally, JavaScript files should load after the rest of the page of your website load, and thus, it is required to put all the external JavaScript files at the bottom of the web page. Moreover, you can leverage from defer or async attributes to decrease the page loads.

  • Make sure adding asynchronous pages

Usually, the browser loads pages in a synchronous manner. This means, it will load the page from the beginning to end, right from loading headers, stylesheet, texts, images, and so on, which consumers a lot of time. Therefore, it is recommended to use asynchronous pages to overcome the chain of loading elements in a sequence and instead, load the scripts simultaneously to improve the current speed of the website.

  • Cut-off unwanted redirects

Do you know how many redirects are available on the website? In case, you have recently performed website migration, the chances are higher your site may have multiple redirects. Such redirects affect the page load time. Instead of having multiple redirects, it is always beneficial to cut-down unwanted redirects, which will greatly improve eCommerce site performance.

  • Don’t forget to enable compression

If your website is having a size of CSS, JavaScript, or HTML higher than 150 bytes, it is time for you to enable compression. With the help of Gzip, you can easily reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. However, it is advisable not to use Gzip on image files.

  • Get rid of render-blocking JavaScript

In the backend, when any browser is loading your website page, it must build a DOM tree by parsing HTML to load the page. In between, if a browser discovers any script, it will stop and will have to execute the script before it continues with the parsing. This, in the end, affects the page load time, and thus, it is recommended by Google to reduce the usage of blocking JavaScript.

  • Think about browser caching

Right from stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and more, a browser cache lot of information about your website to avoid reloading the entire page of a website for the consecutive hits. This could be another factor affecting the page load times. Hence, it is important to set the expiry time for a cache. This can be a great way to improve the current speed of the website.

  • Content distribution network can be of great help

In case you are using a content management system like WordPress and wish for WordPress speed improvement, the Content Distribution Network can be a great way to help users with faster access to your website page.

  • External hosting platforms for larger files

Apart from hosting your website on the content distribution network, you can also leverage from the external hosting platforms to access some of the largest files of your website, specifically when you have videos available on the website.

Final Verdict…

Sometimes, it is hard to identify what is affecting the page load time of your website. The problem could be anything, right from the code written or large elements. However, following the guidelines discussed here can be a great way to initiate your journey to improve eCommerce site performance. Just remember, a little attention to your website can be a pathway for sustainable growth! 

Want to know how to improve the current speed of the website? Or looking for expert guidance on WordPress speed improvement? Get in touch with us to know more!

covid 19

COVID-19 Outbreak & Its Impact on On-Demand Delivery Business

Web Development

COVID-19 has jolted our lives in the past 6 months. The nations, across the world, are struggling to flatten the curve of coronavirus and start the journey of recovery and reinvention to boost their economy. 

According to the reports from the IMF, the global economy is expected to see a steep cut of 3% in the current year, which is the biggest one after the 1930s!

Coronavirus is not just a health and humanitarian crisis, but it is proven to be a death-toll for different industries all over the world. Be it retail, automobile, real estate, travel, and tourism, or manufacturing, no industry has managed to escape the disruption of COVID-19. 

While crisis flattens, the leaders from different industries are resetting for what is going to come ahead. And the on-demand delivery industry is not the exception in it. As per the reports from Zomato, the leading on-demand food delivery services provider, COVID-19 has affected the size of the business, but it has accelerated its profitability. The company has claimed that it will manage to recover its losses in the next three to six months. On the other hand, there is a great rise in the demand for on-demand maid service software observed during the crisis. 

Why On-Demand industry is the least affected as compared to other industries?

SOCIAL DISTANCE
The adoption of a NEW NORMAL where people or consumers are willing to keep SOCIAL DISTANCE.
stepping out of homes
The option of getting necessary items delivered without stepping out of homes.
budgets of the consumers
Variety of options available to cater to different needs and budgets of the consumers.

Understanding how the coronavirus outbreak has affected the on-demand delivery businesses

Many on-demand delivery businesses, such as on-demand food delivery services or on-demand maid services, have observed a quick recovery and increased demand thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. Since the governments have prohibited restaurants to open their doors for dine-in, the food delivery business sees bright days ahead in a couple of months. 

Impact on consumer behavior

The coronavirus outbreak has forced on-demand delivery service providers to reevaluate how to deliver customer experience during the crisis and beyond. Food delivery volumes have seen a great downfall of roughly 60% in the past couple of months since people are afraid to order due to the pandemic situation. 

The crisis has changed how and what consumers expect from on-demand food delivery services. People are doubtful to place orders for their favorite food. According to the recent survey from the Economic Times, there is very less demand for food and delivery requests, which has caused a drop of almost 50% in the prices.

This change in consumer behavior has encouraged the leading on-demand service providers to expand their existing offerings and invest in the new line of services like on-demand maid software applications.

Impact on Workforce/Employees

The core food delivery business has heavily impacted and will see a deep cut for the next couple of months, but it will start getting up quickly considering the existing trend. However, on-demand delivery businesses across the globe are experiencing a challenge to sustain the workforce. 

Recently, Swiggy, a leading food delivery app company in India, has announced to cut-down 1100 jobs across the country. On the other hand, Zomato has declared 13% lay off in its workforce. The steps are taken to reduce indirect costs incurred to manage the workforce.

Impact on Operations

With the change of consumer behavior, supply chain, and ways of marketing the on-demand delivery services, organizations are forced to reset the way of working and adopt the agile methodology to sustain in the market. Right from introducing zero contact delivery, hygiene habits, and minimal workforce to carry out the day-to-day operations, the on-demand delivery business will have to develop rapid response to address existing disruption.

Impact on Finance

While leading food delivery brands have decided to hold on money flow by reducing the workforce or limiting the operations, many new entrepreneurs decided to take some actions to address short-term liquidity problems and invested in new opportunities like on-demand maid software. On contrary, many leading on-demand food delivery brands like UberEats, WMT grocery, and other on-demand services have witnessed a sudden rise in the number of orders, which has boosted their revenue in FY’20.

Bottomline…

Believe it or not, the on-demand delivery landscape has changed. Amidst this uncertainty, on-demand food delivery services providers must connect with changing customer habits to sustain in this crisis. Of course, the lockdown might be easing in the next couple of months, customers will be still in dilemma to venturing out and relax. The pandemic is proven to be a nightmare across the globe, and it has become imperative for the on-demand business to begin their journey of recovery, reinvention, and RESTART with a positivity! 

Want to know how to fight back the coronavirus crisis and run your on-demand delivery business? Get in touch with our experts to know how we can help you out!

Web Frameworks

Top of the Line Web Frameworks to Consider for Building Sparkling Websites

Web Development

The days are gone when implementing a static website was enough to get the desired outcome. With the advent of web frameworks and APIs, the development of websites or online applications has become a lot easier and more advanced. It has become an integral part of web development to bring something innovative and set a benchmark for businesses. 

Do you know?

  • 13.68% of websites across the world are using the ASP.NET framework.
  • Ruby on Rails web framework is being used by approximately 63,384 (6.34%) websites out of the top 1 million websites evaluated.
  • Based on the survey conducted by GitHub and StackOverflow, React, ASP.NET, Angular, Ruby on Rails, and Angular JS web frameworks came out as the top 5 most popular web frameworks based on the scores.

The above statistics prove that almost every developer, whether associated with ASP.NET development, Laravel Development, jQuery development, or Ruby on Rails development, prefers to use frameworks and development tools to make their work easy and deliver faster. There are approximately 195+ web frameworks available. 

Since there are plenty of web frameworks available in the market, it has become a daunting task for the developers to get the right one. And therefore, we have analyzed a couple of surveys and researches conducted to find out which frameworks are the most popular among the developers these days. In this blog post, we are going to discuss the top 10 web frameworks that are in demand in 2020 and most preferred by web developers. 

  1. ReactJS 
ReactJS

React is the JavaScript library intended to help web developers developing interactive user interfaces with the help of its dynamic, declarative, and flexible nature. Today, the majority of the web developers make use of React.js development to avoid rewriting the entire code. 

Pros:

  • HTML compatible
  • Virtual DOM programming support
  • Updates consistently
  • SEO friendly

Cons:

  • Lack of support for the isomorphic approach
  • A huge library creates difficulties for the developers
  • Requires thorough knowledge of integration
  • Tedious manuals
  1. Angular 
Angular

It is a TypeScript-based open-source framework extensively popular for developing mobile and conventional web applications with the help of TypeScript and other languages. With the growing popularity of mobile-friendly applications, Angular development has gained a lot of attention recently.

Pros:

  • MVC architecture
  • Enhanced design architecture
  • Better tooling, clean code, and high scalability 

Cons:

  • Lack of SEO compatibility
  • Verbose and complex
  1. Ruby on Rails 
Ruby on Rails

Known for its impeccable support for MVC, Ruby on Rails is one of the most reliable web frameworks making web development easy and faster. Since it is allowing developers to write very less code as compared to any other frameworks, Ruby on Rails development is in demand these days.

Pros:

  • Ease of use
  • More tools, more features
  • Free of cost
  • Great for test automation 

Cons:

  • Slow runtime
  • Performance hiccups
  • Lack of support for multithreading
  • Lack of proper documentation
  1. AngularJS 
AngularJS

AngularJS is one of the most structural web frameworks used extensively by the developers to build dynamic applications. It is easy to write client-server applications and utilize HTML, which makes Angular.js development more extensible and flexible to work with other libraries as well.

Pros:

  • Out-of-the-box support for MVC
  • Ease of testing
  • Ease of customization
  • Lesser code

Cons:

  • Complex to learn for the beginners
  • Difficult to debug code
  • Restrictions in terms of routers
  1. Vue.JS 
Vue.JS

As compared to other web frameworks, this is one of the latest additions. Vue.js is a progressive framework, which makes vue.js development quite popular among the developers due to the ease of picking up the core library and integrating with other libraries. 

Pros:

  • Compact in size
  • Ease of learning and creating the application
  • Code flexibility 
  • Compatibility with TypeScript

Cons:

  • Poor community support
  • Hard to deal with larger projects
  • Language barriers since codes are written in Chinese
  1. Django 
Django

Django is a Python development framework, which is popular among the developers willing to work on the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) approach. Due to its capability to help developers utilize their existing code and helping them become more productive, it is very much popular among the developers. 

Pros:

  • Highly scalable and customizable
  • Boost rapid development
  • Robust community support
  • Model-View-Template support

Cons:

  • Monolithic structure
  • Detailed knowledge required
  • ORM creates hurdles for the developers
  1. Laravel 
Laravel

Written in PHP, Laravel is most sort-out frameworks enabling developers to build beautiful websites without sacrificing the core functionalities. With the help of a routing engine, powerful dependency injection container, real-time event broadcasting, and other feature, Laravel development is the most preferred among the developers.

Pros:

  • User-friendly 
  • Capability to reuse code
  • Capable to handle large website applications
  • Benefits from blade template engine

Cons:

  • Performance issues 
  • Not suitable for eCommerce sites
  • Lack of support for proper functionalities
  1. Spring 
Spring

Sprint is a well-known java framework for developing web applications. It is extensively used by the developers to write backend applications in Java as well as creating fast, simple, and flexible Java-based applications.

Pros:

  • Ease of using POJO
  • Ease of testing
  • Flexibility in terms of configurations
  • No need to use a web app or server

Cons:

  • An extensive list of classes and tools
  • Lack of clear guidelines
  • Complicated to use
  1. ASP.NET 
ASP.NET

ASP.NET is one of the oldest web frameworks available to help developers build web applications and services with the help of .NET and C#. It comprises of three different frameworks, i.e. Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Web Pages. ASP.NET development can help developers with native mobile apps, responsive websites, and more.

Pros:

  • Less coding for larger applications
  • Most secured
  • Ease of maintenance
  • Ease of maintaining and writing source code

Cons:

  • Costs more as compared to other frameworks
  • Difficult to customize
  • Restrictions in data access for sliver light
  1. Express 
Express

Due to the immense popularity of Node.js, Express has quickly become one of the most popular frameworks among the developers. Be it Accenture, IBM, or Uber, all are using Express for their business applications. Moreover, it is easily compatible with other frameworks like Sails, Loopback, and Kraken.

Pros:

  • Easily compatible with HTTP methods
  • Ease of creating robust APIs
  • High performance

Cons:

  • Tedious code structure
  • Lack of middleware 
  • Lack of library

Final Note…

Choosing the right kind of web framework is not a kid’s toy; it requires a lot more detailing in terms of application use case, technology stack being used, and so on. Hopefully, the web frameworks discussed in this post may help you simplify your choice! Want to get help for your vue.js development or ASP.NET development? Get in touch with our experts to know how we use the web frameworks effectively to build your dream application…

Wordpress

WordPress 5.5 Update – How It Has Become a Bottleneck for the Websites Across the Globe?

Web Development

WordPress 5.5 is out now! Start from the new block editor, native image lazy loading in WordPress core, and extensible core sitemaps to additional improvements for developers, it brings several features long-awaited by the WordPress development professionals. 

The version has also broken various records considering the contribution and its usage. 

  • There are 805 people, from 58 different countries and 215 different companies, contributed to WordPress 5.5, which is something we have never seen before. 
  • It is also found that there are approximately 38% new contributors in WordPress 5.5 source code. 
  • In terms of usage, roughly 1,636,068 websites are using WordPress 5.5 out of which 1,635,941 websites are live.

Of course, the statistics are impressive. But there are a couple of issues experienced by the website owners post-upgrade. 

If you have recently upgraded to WordPress 5.5 and are experiencing hiccups, you are not alone! While WordPress 5.5 brings a lot of changes that will greatly affect the way WordPress development was carried out earlier, it has affected thousands of old websites badly. 

So, what is wrong with the WordPress 5.5 update?

There are a couple of issues that have frustrated the website development professionals across the globe.

  • jQuery Migrate issues

With the recent update, WordPress has deprecated jQuery Migrate 1.x. Although WordPress has previously disclosed such a major update, the developers and site owners were not prepared for it. This has resulted in broken websites and left woo-commerce development teams with problems on their website.

  • Issues with plugins and themes

With the recent update from WordPress, they have introduced an update in the JavaScript library. This has introduced a lot of issues for the WordPress website development professionals who were using outdated plugins or themes. It is practically not possible for the developers to fix the issues since many plugins or themes are not functioning properly after the update.

  • Trouble with pagination

Though this issue is not observed on a large scale, it is still the major one since it has affected some websites. Since many old plugins and themes are using query param, pagination is some websites that are not working properly due to conflict in the use of the word “Page”.

  • Problems with classic editor

The WordPress has introduced the Classic Editor Plugin to overcome Gutenberg editor and leverage from the classic and old-styled WordPress editor. With more than 5 million active downloads, it has become the most popular plugin so far. However, after the WordPress 5.5 update, the editor is not working properly. 

Many professionals associated with woo-commerce development services have reported improper functioning of the visual editor. Since the visual editor is more suitable for the beginners, it might be a pain point for them to begin with content creation because it requires the knowledge of HTML. 

  • Sitemaps are not working properly

Additionally, some website owners have reported the issues in sitemaps. In case your website requires more than one XML sitemap, you probably get the error of non-existent sitemaps created on your website. However, this bug might be addressed by WordPress 5.5.1 release introduced in the September month.

Okay, but is there any way-out to overcome these issues?

Well, there are two ways to overcome the issues discussed:

  • Enable jQuery Migrate Helper Plugin 

More than 90,000 websites are experiencing issues after WordPress 5.5 update and installing the jQuery Migrate Helper plugin can be a great alternative for the professionals associated with the WordPress website development. This plugin will act as a bridge to allow the woocommerce development team to use the old or outdated plugins or themes with the new version.

All you have to do is to go to Plugins -> Add New -> Search for the Enable jQuery Migrate Helper and activate it.

Plugins
  • OR downgrade to an older and stable version of WordPress

This is a by default solution available for the woo-commerce development professionals to overcome the issues faced after WordPress 5.5 update. Of course, this is not a permanent solution for the problems experienced, but it will provide more time to wait for the stable version or fixes for the issues reported. 

You can take help from the woo-commerce development company to help you downgrade the version MANUALLY or you can use the WP downgrade plugin to do it on your own.

Plugins

With the help of these approaches, you can easily overcome the bugs or issues faced after WordPress 5.5 update. 

Apart from the issues discussed, some website owners often reported problems with lazy loading. The feature is designed to help WordPress development teams to save bandwidth, but some websites have reported that it is not helping with it. The possible reason behind this is because many plugins often have lazy loading implemented, which is conflicting with the lazy loading feature introduced in WordPress 5.5. In such a case, the possible solution to overcome the issue is to disable/deactivate the plugin or disable the WordPress 5.5 lazy loading functionality.

In a nutshell, it is highly recommended to keep your eyes on your website performance after WordPress 5.5 update to encounter the possible issues and fix it on time with the help of ways suggested in this post. Did the update hamper your website function? Do you feel you need technical assistance from the professional WordPress website development company? Or do you need help to upgrade? Get in touch with our WordPress development experts to work together with you!

SEO Service

8 reasons why SEO matters

SEO

Search Engine Optimization helps your business develop a focused, organic audience base, like no other. A concentrated SEO strategy designed to serve specific goals is a long term investment. And, even though SEO plays a pivotal role in the growth of revenue, most small businesses steer away from digital marketing, more importantly, search engine optimization. Business today, is heavily reliant on online visibility and sales, and businesses that don’t hop onto the digital wagon, stand to lose a lot.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the easiest and the most effective marketing hygiene practice recommended for small businesses. It has become a fundamental part of efficiently marketing your business. SEO helps businesses to create responsive, user-friendly, and robust websites that rank well on the search engine result pages (SERP), eventually leading to better conversion rates.

Not convinced yet? 

We have outlined the benefits of SEO that will help your businesses flourish and put your small business on the map.

SEO generates targeted traffic

SEO helps businesses refine and target specific audiences that are most willing to buy the products and services they are selling. Filtering out the weak leads who are just wasting your advertising money and time can be a smart business move. SEO helps in redirecting people who are looking for exactly what you are selling, to your website or e-commerce store. This ensures higher conversion, as the user’s search stops with you.

SEO finds you new customers

SEO uses a mix of keywords to increase your website’s rankings and visibility. Using the right set of keywords can help your website appear more often on the search results when users are searching for something relevant to your business. This definitely helps in generating a lot of traffic and finding you new customers, that weren’t aware of your brand before.

SEO is cost-effective

Paid marketing can be an expensive affair. On the contrary, investing in SEO can generate desired results, without hurting your marketing budgets.

Bigger companies have sufficient money to spend on pay per click digital campaigns, getting them massive visibility and audience. But as for small businesses, pay per clicks can be futile as you continue spending large sums of money, trying to generate leads that may or may not convert. SEO remains to be the only area for small businesses to compete big without quickly burning holes in their pockets.

SEO produces constant and long-lasting results

Investing in online paid ads will definitely reap good results for your business, but only for as long as you continue advertising and spending big bucks. Money spent on SEO is more effective as the effects of a job well done last longer, fetching you customers long after you have stopped investing in SEO.

SEO takes time to start generating results, as the goal of optimization is to eventually show up on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP) and stay up there for as long as you can.

SEO offers better conversion rates

Optimized search engine websites and stores load faster and offer a better user experience. If done correctly, they would also be optimized specifically for different gadgets, be it a laptop, a mobile, a tab, etc. This helps your website to reach your audience on any device they might choose to use.

Easy navigation and speed optimization are some of the major driving factors behind a customer’s purchasing decision and an optimized website, e-commerce store gives your business that edge.

SEO helps you to beat the competition

The bigger players in your sector too can be competed with. Optimization helps your website to rank well and increases traffic organically. A good optimization strategy might help your website climb up the rankings and on occasion, even surpass the bigger players. This unique opportunity helps your business garner a larger reach and brand awareness, which eventually leads to higher conversion rates.

SEO builds brand awareness

If your website or e-commerce store makes it to the top of the search engine result page (SERP), however small the business may be, it registers with the audiences. This helps the audiences recall your brand when they see it the next time or need something that you sell. Building brand awareness is one of the best ways to organically grow a loyal customer base.

SEO makes your website more responsive

Studies suggest that most users are willing to wait only for 3 seconds for a website to load. Anything beyond that results in a drastic drop amongst the users. Search engines assess user-friendly websites and reward’s optimized websites by ranking them higher. Improving your user experience can not only result in a higher ranking position but also generate positive feedback amongst your users.

The online market is constantly changing and businesses need to constantly revise their strategies and tools to compete in the game. While most other tools and processes can be intimidating to implement, SEO for the most part is really easy and cost-effective to implement. Hiring an agency to implement the best SEO practices for your business can be a long term marketing solution.

web development company

6 Web Development Trends to watch out for in 2020

Web Development

Website Development trends are ever-changing. What keeps things interesting for the sector essentially, is the speed of novel innovations and developments in technology. Staying informed can help your business stay ahead of the curve.

This makes trend spotting a salient task. So here’s a list of trends to watch out for in 2020. 

Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

Progressive Web Apps have effectively made web browsing user friendly and easy. PWAs are built from web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., but retain the functionalities and the feel of the native app. What makes PWAs great is its ability to offer features like offline support, push notifications, etc., mimicking the features of a native app.

PWAs are made desirable by their low cost, responsiveness, and adaptability across screens and its loading speed.

They tackle almost everything a  consumer dislikes about websites and brings the sufferable website experience closer to seamless app experience.

Some examples of popular and successful PWAs are Twitter, Forbes, Starbucks, Uber, Pinterest. These companies have experienced a decrease in users drop out.

You don’t have to be a massive business, to implement PWA, they work equally well for smaller businesses.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Just like the general consensus around optimization, Google algorithm supports optimized pages with quick loading speed. This makes Accelerated Mobile Pages a must-have solution for all web pages.

AMPs is an open-source project, developed to improve the speed and readability of content pages on mobile. Accelerated Mobile Pages essentially display only the content and static images, omitting other complex elements. The loading speed accentuates user experience, reducing the bounce rate caused by unresponsiveness. AMPs also rate better on search as Google rewards reduced bounce rate and increased onsite activity.

AMPs are a boon for content-heavy website design, blogs, articles, etc. If your website is information-heavy, this could be an essential function to consider.

Voice Search Optimization

Web Development trends are seeing a fast-paced shift towards voice-controlled applications. Aren’t we all acquainted with Alexa, Siri, or Google Home? However, this trend can be traced beyond Siri and Alexa, as more than half of all smartphones and IoT are capable of hearing voices and executing commands.

In no time, they shall be capable of recognizing the voices of different people and provide customized AI-based experience for individuals.

According to a Quoracreative study, Voice-based shopping is expected to amount to $ 40 billion by 2022.

Voice Search Optimization is easy, thus quickly changing behavioral patterns of the consumers, leaving developers perplexed about optimizing voice applications for their digital products.  

API-first development

Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows two or more applications to interact with each other efficiently. A primary example of a well functioning API would be Facebook and Messenger. Most of the delivery apps also use API to seamlessly integrate Google Maps with their interface.

The API-first development is more efficient than the traditional approach as the traditional approach is heavier on the cost and more time consuming. The introduction of multiple wearables and their integration with other traditional devices calls for a greater need for API-first development.

Motion UI

Motion UI is a library for creating quick eye-catching CSS animations and transitions. The seamless modern designs are good at capturing the user’s attention. Its flexibility makes it ideal for website design and development. Its compatibility with the JAVAScript framework makes it widely acceptable. Motion UI could help your web development if you are looking for easy, clean animations.

Cyber Security

Date security is one of the biggest priority and challenge for most mid to large-sized businesses. 

According to Global Market Insights Inc., the cybersecurity industry is expected to generate over $300 Billion in business, by 2024.

Technological advancement in AI has changed the face of cybersecurity. Malicious activities have become easier to detect with AI-based security systems. Companies are training AI to detect unusual behavioral patterns, by analyzing patterns within the network. This helps AI to react to any suspicious activity promptly.

As per the founders, 80% of telecom companies rely on AI for cybersecurity.

Blockchain database security decentralizes the data, making it difficult for hackers to locate it. Institutions like NASA protect their data by using Blockchain technology. If your business model accumulates user data, this could be an ideal solution for your company.

Which of these trends are best suited for your business?

Stay sharp and sustain yourself against the competition by analyzing these important, fast-paced, and exciting trends in time.

digital marketing service

How Artificial Intelligence Can Revolutionize the Digital Marketing Landscape?

Web Development

Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly a technological breakthrough of the 2010s, and it doesn’t look like the excitement is going to fade off in the upcoming years. The technology is not just promising for better business results, but it also uplifts the human experience as a whole. Starting from Healthcare, Retail & Ecommerce, Food, and Real Estate to the Manufacturing, AI’s role and significance is unprecedented in terms of industrial applications. 

While digital IQ, smart homes, AI-powered business process and hybrid workforce are a few of the key AI applications trending these days, using AI and machine learning in marketing has gained a lot of traction recently. Today, digital marketing is not limited to social media marketing or traditional digital marketing services or tools. In fact, majority of the digital marketing automation platforms today are leveraging from AI and machine learning algorithms to bring more intelligence analyzing data and automate the manual processes. Marketing and sales give more priority to AI and ML than any other department in the enterprise.

Do you know?

  • Netflix has managed to save approx. $1 billion in 2017 with the help of machine learning to enable personalized recommendation.
  • 61% of marketers believe that artificial intelligence is the most important aspect of their data strategy.
  • In survey conducted by Statista, AI was the second most effective digital marketing technique to the marketers worldwide.
  • According IDC, approximately $5.9 billion will be invested by the retailers in AI-based marketing and customer service offerings to enhance buyer’s experience.

And many more interesting statistics available that proves how AI can help marketers to understand sales cycle effectively and consumer behavior to get better sales results. Want to know how AI is benefiting the digital marketers to boost their digital marketing services or social media marketing strategy? Let’s explore how artificial intelligence can help digital marketers to craft their digital marketing plan and what are the possible applications of the technology in digital marketing.

How AI can reshape the digital marketing?

With the detailed insights and predicting capabilities, digital marketers and organizations are leveraging from AI to boost up their marketing efforts. It is not just about reducing the costs but utilizing the technology can greatly help in optimizing marketing efforts and improve the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. Apart from this, AI can also help digital marketers in the following ways:

  • Enable marketers to understand their target audience better. AI and machine learning algorithms can help marketers to predict user patterns, consumer behavior, and aid personalization to their marketing campaign. 
  • Bring an excellent user experience. Artificial Intelligence has the capability to analyze consumer behavior and predict they expect and need.
  • Boost up productivity. Marketing automation is the key advantage of AI. It helps you automate all the manual tasks, which in the end help saving time and resources carrying out the repetitive process.
  • Impactful marketing. With AI, you don’t have to worry about what is going to happen in the future since it brings an edge to predict the possible events and outcomes. This helps you design a more effective and meaningful marketing strategy.
  • Better ROI and outcomes. AI enables marketers to understand consumer behavior more effectively and helps in content creation and curation. This helps the businesses to reach the right audience with more personalized content and offers.

Such benefits have encouraged many digital marketing professionals and organizations to go for AI. In a survey from Salesforce, it is found that 51% of marketers have already started using AI by applying it in a variety of ways. Let’s explore what are the different ways AI and ML are revolutionizing the digital marketing landscape.

Content Creation and Curation

Yes, it is very much possible with the help of AI. Of course, it does have certain limitations, but there are a number of areas in which AI-based content creation can be of great help. Moreover, it can also curate the contents. With the help of tools like Wordsmith, Articoolo, and Quill, many popular organizations are creating content that can help them in lead generation for their own website. Associated Press, Forbes, Washington Post, BBC, CBS, The New York Times, and Reuters have already started implementing such AI-based content creation and curation techniques.

Email Marketing 

Personalization is the key parameter to achieve desired success in email marketing and AI can help personalize email marketing campaigns based on consumer behavior and preferences. With the help of machine learning, it is possible to analyze the consumer data and identify the best ways to connect with them.

Real-time Customer Support

With the help of AI-based chatbots, companies can greatly reduce the time to respond to customer queries and concerns. Today, human-like interactions are possible by using machine learning, deep learning, and neural language in a chatbot. This way the companies can provide real-time support and better user experience while improving brand loyalty.

Automated Ads

When it comes to digital advertisements, AI has changed the way it was carried out earlier. By combining machine learning and predictive analytics, digital marketing professionals can automatically optimize paid ads with AI, customize their advertisements based on consumer preferences and behavior captured. Moreover, it is possible for marketers to optimize ads based on the brand and business agenda.

Mixed Reality Integration

Another interesting application of the AI is mixed reality integration. With the help of augmented reality tools, it is possible for marketers to provide a more personalized experience to potential customers and drive more value.

Apart from the above-mentioned use-cases, digital marketers are often utilizing AI in semantic search, dynamic pricing, PPC ad campaign, predicting consumer behavior, design a website, and more.

Final Note

There is no denying that artificial intelligence is an incredible technology that can do wonder in digital marketing services. Using AI and machine learning in marketing can help marketers and businesses achieve better results and improved customer experience. Still, confused about how AI can help in digital marketing and social media marketing strategy? Get in touch with our digital marketing USA experts to know how we can reshape your digital marketing strategy using Artificial Intelligence.

Social Media Marketing

Can Social Media help your Business Grow?

Social Media Marketing

As per Statistica, the number of active monthly social media users worldwide is projected to reach 3.02 Billion by 2021. That is one-third of the world’s population, accessible from your screens.

With a drastically growing population on various social media platforms, brands need to maintain a strong digital presence. The digital presence today, is not limited to corroborating your existence and legitimacy as a business, but if used effectively, it can result in exponential business growth.

So here are some tips to help your business, reap the benefits of good social media marketing.

1) Engage with the Trends

Businesses are often rigid with their content and very scared to experiment. But the latest successful social media strategies teach us about the importance of engaging with the trends and significant, applicable current affairs. 

Content like this makes the consumer believe that the business is engaging in a meaningful conversation with them and not just trying to sell them products. Such content receives a lot of engagement organically and has the potential to get viral, giving your brand massive exposure at minimal to no cost.

2) Start selling online

Creating an online marketplace for prospective customers to easily browse through your products, services, and easily place an order with your company can be a game-changer in your business expansion plan. If you are a small business that does not want to invest in your own e-commerce website, consider selling your products, services on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, Amazon, Etsy, etc.

3) Integration and Cross-platform Marketing

Driving traffic from one social media profile/ page to another is a good way to grow your base organically. Link all your profiles to your website, emails, and other social media profiles. Try creating content that drives your followers from one platform, to interact with you on another platform.

Use the right keywords and hashtags to optimize your brand page and reach out to your clients and immediate circle to interact with your brand, when you start. Some word of mouth can give your brand an initial organic push that it needs.

4) Create content that drives engagement

One of the easiest ways to create and maintain a responsive base is by running engagement posts such as contests or polls. Contests can nudge participation from the followers if there is some gratification in the form of a discount, gift offered for the winner. Contests are a good opportunity to create user-generated content as well. The participants can be encouraged to provide reviews, feedback, pictures of them using the product, etc.

Another good way of ensuring a passerby follows you, is by offering some discount coupons or other offers.

5) Paid Marketing

Organic reach and engagement have drastically declined, as the new algorithms heavily support and promote paid engagements. All major social media platforms offer paid ad spaces. These platforms also allow one to carefully curate a target audience to reap maximum value for their money.

Audiences can be targeted based on general factors such as gender, age, geography, demography, etc. to more advanced factors such as preferences, hobbies, profession, institution, etc. A general or a bad target audience often results in generating less and bad leads. Every badly targeted campaign is a missed opportunity and wasted money. Do keep in mind that the more layers you add to your target audience, the more expensive the ad space. Thus it is important to strike a balance between a too generic vs a too targeted audience.

6) The importance of retargeting campaigns

Most brands concentrate on lead generation campaigns, once enough brand awareness is created. As fruitful as these campaigns might be, a large number of leads drop out and do not convert into customers. Consumer behavior studies suggest that most people are not ready to make a purchase when visiting your website for the first time. They might add things to their Wishlist/ Cart and leave the website, without making a purchase. This is where lead nurturing can be a good solution for regaining old cold leads and converting them into customers.

Retargeting involves tracking cookies that save a user’s activity on distinct web pages. If a lead clicks on your website through a Facebook ad, visits the product page, and then leaves, applications like Facebook Pixel can track this behavior. Facebook will then display targeted ads to that specific customer. The ads will likely be centered on the product of interest to the customer. This overtime nurturing can give them that extra nudge they need to finally make a purchase. 

7) Analyze, Learn and Apply

Invest in tools that help with tracking and analyzing your consumer behavior, providing valuable insights for your business. Most social media platforms do provide analytics at no additional cost. 

These insights can help you understand what kind of content your audience is and is not responding well to helping you to modify future content accordingly.

Social media plans cannot be uniform across companies and industries. No one solution fits all. However, more often than not, the application of these few tips has shown promising results in the past. 

Web development service

Is your website as smart as your business?

Web Development

The advent of Artificial Intelligence is commonly understood as a rather recent phenomenon. Contrary to the notion, AI has been around for the better part of the past century. However, the meteoric rise of developments in the sector, make it worth our while to understand the current accolades of AI and its future. The terms artificial intelligence imply artificially simulated intelligence. AI refers to intelligence exhibited by machines that are programmed to mimic human action, reasoning, problem-solving, rational thought, and other characteristics of human intelligence. Our society is experiencing a paradigm shift as AI continually grows, capturing a higher market share. Humanity has undertaken an exciting journey into the unknown, awaiting unique challenges, that shall bait us into rethinking not only our business models, but our social models as well.

The global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow up to almost $60 billion, by 2025.
(Source: Accenture)

Just like every industry across trades, AI has found itself applicable in the world of Web Designing. With the world swiftly transitioning towards digital, it has become more imperative than ever, for businesses to create a strong digital footprint, giving them authenticity and helping them drive their business efficiently. Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) challenges the traditional methods of web designing, eliminating the need for excessive cost, time, and labor. The advent of AI Web Designing is a rather recent phenomenon. One of the first consequential events in this sector was the launch of Grid. Far from perfect, Grid served as a gateway to innovation in the sector. Soon followed by the leaders of the industry like Adobe, Firedrop, Wix, Squarespace, Bookmark, B12, Tailor Brands.

Enhancing User Experience with Artificial Intelligence

Contrary to ancient wisdom, web designing has shifted focus from aesthetics to user experience. This shift has paved the path for concepts like AI-powered bots, conversational user interfaces, etc. AI essentially learns from computing and analyzing large sets of data, deriving solutions for otherwise complex tasks. In regards to website design, AI has the ability to scan the web and source content from existing websites, social media profiles, mentions. It can also learn what makes similar websites successful. And based on your goals for your website, it can create a basic draft in just a few minutes. Most websites and applications today are dependent on AI algorithms, partially if not completely, to increase performance. One of the widest spread AI functionality used by most websites and apps is chatbots. The integration of AI-based chatbots on websites has seen multifold growth in the past 5 years. The growth in the popularity of chatbots has paved the way for sophistication with the new chatbots applying natural language processor (NLP) systems to indulge in more meaningful conversations with the users. 

According to Gartner’s report, 85% of customer interactions by 2020 will be handled by AI chatbots, and a total of 2.3 billion hours of business and consumers will be saved through chatbots, by 2023. 

AI tools help in providing customized content to the user, by analyzing their consumption patterns. These tools help the businesses to better cater to visitors with personalized ads, blogs, offers, etc to drive up the conversion rate. UX is quickly moving towards a more mobile-friendly environment, making the application of voice search optimization through AI more appealing.

User Interface and Artificial Design Intelligence

Are we there yet?

AI helps in analyzing the visitor’s usage patterns, thus providing them with a UI subtly tweaked for them. These seemingly minor changes enhance user satisfaction on a macro level. As of today, human creativity and design triumphs over ADI, but with rapid growth in strides, this can change soon. 

AI today is capable of enhancing the website and its search capabilities, meanwhile also helping you manage and organize your inventory, and improving your customer outreach with personalized user experience. These are especially desirable qualities for businesses with e-commerce. Optimizing everyday conversations and queries with AI-powered algorithms and reaching out to your target customer base can be an element that makes your business successful. Since most website owners require new designs to supplement their product launches or upcoming events, an AI working in the background works as a perfect solution to stay updated and remain competitive in the market.

Giants like LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix are heavily dependent on AI for their digital operations. LinkedIn uses an advanced AI algorithm to complement its seamless navigation. Their recent algorithm has made job seeking and profile optimization easier and more accurate.

80% of Netflix streaming is a result of algorithm-based recommendations.

Recent political instances have made us more conscious about our digital privacy, and often, AI constantly analyzing our digital behavior can seem like a violation. Despite the growth of our digital consumption, we still crave human interaction. And however sophisticated the AI response management systems maybe, it’ll be a while until they completely replace the humans, by humanizing themselves.

The only way through singularization is to learn and adapt. AI is advancing at an unprecedented rate and shall continue to do so. We have to redesign our businesses and social structures to coexist and benefit from Artificial Intelligence. AI shall eventually replace the long labor chain involved in website development and maintenance, but as of now, we are not there yet.

8 productivity tools while working remotely

8 Online Tools You Can Use To Be More Productive While Working Remotely

Business Advice

The recent and sudden decision for many employers to direct their employees to work exclusively from home, along with the COVID-19 social distancing guidelines that are preventing in-person gatherings and meetings, have created some challenges for many employees and small business owners.  Here is a list of some online tools that may help businesses stay better connected to employees and clients and keep workflow moving.

  1. Communication tools such as Slack—This is an easy to download team chat app that helps team members stay connected, check in, brainstorm and can even act as the company’s virtual water cooler.  
  2. Video Conferencing and Audio tool such as Zoom—for one on one, group meetings and conference calls, Zoom is easy to download and install, very user friendly, and can be used for screen sharing presentations and audio only calls.  Meeting information and invitations is easily distributed.  
  3. Customer Support Collaboration tool such as Groove—Groove is a support ticket and project tracking app that allows team members to support clients, assign resources and update the status from anywhere.
  4. Business Productivity tools such as Trello and Asana—these project management boards allow team members to be assigned tasks and easily update the project status, moving it along in the project timeline in a very visually meaningful interface.  Remote work environments can create opportunities where important tasks slip through the cracks. These types of tools help mitigate this while keeping employees clearly directed and productive and supervised efficiently.
  5. Content Sharing and Document Management such as Google Drive—With the amount and variety of documents involved in running a business, (think emails, blog posts, policies and procedures, technical documentation, customer notices and marketing materials, presentations and reports) it makes sense to have a reliable, available and easy to access repository for your workers.  The days of scrolling through endless emails searching for attachments is over when all docs are filed, managed, updated from one location that can be accessed from anywhere.
  6. Custom Web apps specific to your industry such as Compass Wave—Many small business owners may need to do onsite estimating or assessment in order to win new business but are at a standstill with social distancing and shelter-in-place guidelines.  Automating those estimating tasks remotely can allow a small business to continue to reach for new bids and fill their work funnel for when business resumes as normal. An example is Compass Wave software created specifically for the residential cleaning services industry.  As a custom web app, Compass Wave collects input data via the business website and issues an automated accurate estimate. Web developers can create similar web-based tools for other industries to save time and in-person interface when either or both of those are not available.
  7. Digital Marketing, Social Media and Website Improvements such as Mail Chimp, Facebook, and automating Contact Pages or implementing a Blog—Many businesses have had to reprioritize projects and workflow because the changes that the COVID-19 presents, but using this time to reassess tools and your company website (a job that can be done without in person interaction) could be a perfect use of this redirected time.  Many customers and consumers are spending more time engaged online so why not ensure your online presence is at its optimum.
  8. Cloud based accounting software such as Quickbooks—Cash flow, payroll, bills and purchases still need to be made even though workers are not in the office.  Quickbooks is an accounting software package geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses that has a cloud-based version to accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and take care of payroll functions.

If, as a small business or remote employee, you need help implementing or creating the right tools, reach out to a digital agency that specializes in helping individuals and businesses leverage the power of the web for maintaining and growing their business, even during these challenging circumstances. The more we all can work together to keep businesses, especially small businesses, healthy, and thriving the better our economy will be able to bounce back when this crisis is over.  

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