Month: June 2013

Your web site is your shop front to the world and for this reason it needs to clearly and quickly tell the world who you are and what you are selling. Your ecommerce website must therefore stand out amongst it’s competitors with striking graphics, simple navigation and seamless pathways that lead the buyer from the home page right through to the check out page.

Of course your ecommerce website design must be highly mobile and tablet friendly allowing trnsactions to take place on-the-go. At Hopping Mad Designs we now implement responsive programming and coding techniques to ensure that your ecommerce website displays perfectly on all: iphones, ipads, androids, and ipads.

One extremely important point to note is that with all ecommerce sites we build, our intention is to have it ranking on the search engines as well. From the outset, we plan the site structure, URL’s, content and interface so that it will be loved and in turn ranked on Google. This is a key point of difference when working with Hopping Mad Designs; we just don’t build sites, we build web solutions that not only look stunning, but will also drive online traffic to your website and convert these visitors into paying customers.

Hopping Mad Designs has been at the forefront of developing ecommerce sites in Australia for well over 17 years and feel that we are the right choice for your business when it comes to designing, developing and marketing your next ecommerce website.

WE MAKE SURE THAT CUSTOMERS KEEP COMING BACK WITH OUR ' MANAGE YOURSELF' PRODUCT DISPLAY SECTION.

1) Tell the world about your new product by uploading it online instantly. Our back end CMS platform will give the the freedom to add/delete/change price of products at your discretion. This offers a great solution for all businesses who need to be constantly changing their products online.

2) Shoppers love bargains and our ecommerce solutions gives you the ability to add a ‘sale sign’ and adjust prices accordingly.

3) Make your new products jump out with a ‘new products’ area.

4) See your products from different angles with our product rotation function.

5) Allow shoppers to become ‘fans’ by integrating a whole lot of social media on the site. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus, just to name a few.

6) Build a database of customers and market to them regularly with our newsletter management system. Collect the names and email addresses of all paying customers, and keep them up to speed on your product range. We can design you a newsletter template, and integrate it with third party software that will allow you to manage your entire email marketing. It’s so much easier than you think! Make sure you ask us about this fantastic marketing function.

7) We will create a unique looking website and never offer a template design solution. All our graphics are designed to make you look like a market leader. We want your website to have a point of difference and this can only be achieved by using a design agency like Hopping Mad Designs.
 
MANAGE ALL ASPECTS OF YOUR SHOPPING CART SUCH AS CREDIT CARD PAYMENTS, STOCK LEVELS, ORDER FULFILLMENT, ORDER TRACKING PLUS MORE…

– Allow your inventory to be showcased in a uniform, structured way, making the buying process a breeze. Our ecommerce solution allows you to categorise products in a logical format. Of course the amount of categories and products you can update is unlimited.

– Process all payments through our Eway Gateway or PayPal. We guide you through the whole process set up and offer advice on the best payment solutions for your bsuiness.

– Our CMS is set up in such a way that your product listing will be optimised for the search engines, through SEO friendly URL structures. We make sure that your product can be found, indexed and then ranked.

– You can allocate various shipping and freight charges to products and adjust these according to weight and size.

– You can export all your orders through to your MYOB accounting system eliminating a whole lot of manual work. Think about how much time and hassle this will save you.

– Give customers the option of evouchers that they can buy for their friends or even better; implement a full promo code system.

– Allow customers to rate, review, share and comment on your products. This is great for enhancing site participation.

– If you want to integrate your levels of stock with the website we can easily implement a system that tracks orders and alerts you when product levels are low. We can also adjust stock levels in real time based on online purchases through our CRM systems.

OUR ECOMMERCE WEB DESIGN SYSTEM ALLOWS YOU TO CREATE MULTIPLE PRICE GROUPS……WHOLESALE, TRADE AND VIPS’S.

So if you are looking at having the best possible ecommerce website designed, built and marketed for your business, then give us a call here at Hopping Mad Designs on 02 9360 8514. We can give you an cost estimate over the phone and you can have your new site up and running in a matter of weeks.

• The time you take to write a brief, explain it to another person and manage this from another time zone will be time consuming.
• Different time zones mean that answers take a long time, over night in some cases. Think about all those additional public holidays in India.
• Every time you need to make a change or amend it can take another day or two. This slows the whole web development process down to a crawl.
• How you look is a major when it comes to delivering web projects within scop and on budget. Delays can really tarnish your image and reputation
• Can the development team implement on site SEO techniques?
• Development coding that is full of bugs and issues.

Following are some issues when offshoring web development:

Communication problems

Unable to have a face to face meeting with your developer is a major problem. Communication with someone in another language, half way around the world is a recipe for disaster. It’s a numbers game with these developers and if you are not happy with them, they simply get another client. They have little regard for customer service and will be happy to NOT return your call or email in a timely manner. Work cultures are different to what we are used to in Australia. Here we want answers and want them fast. In India for example, this is not necessarily the case and you can be left hanging for an answer for days on end. Do not expect the same level of communication or customer service when your developers are offshore.  Even if they have a contact in Australia, this just won’t work. The communication issues will still remain no matter what light you try to paint this in.

Really Bad Code Quality

They just have little or no quality control. Projects are passed from one develop to the next, with no planning. The end result is rotten code, broken links, no SEO insight and bad content management solutions. I have seen the result first hand of projects being out sourced and what we have had to do to fix the issues. It’s JUST NOT WORTH THE HEADACHES. There is no one to talk to and responsibility and blame for poor programming is passed from one person to the next. It’s an absolute shambles.

Lack of Real Guidance or Team Leadership

Offshore developers will never offer creative solutions on web issues or try to offer alternatives or provide information about the latest technologies. Their concern is to get the job out the door and get paid as fast as possible. Here at Hopping Mad Designs are not order takers. Every project we work on, will be supervised by a team of web development experts to ensure that you get a real return on your development dollars.

One great example, is in regards to SEO which will be completely ignored. Not only will your site look bad but there will be no chance of it ever ranking on Google.

Payments in Advance.

These guys want your money upfront and won’t release files till payment is made. If there are any issues post web launch they slug you for more money to fix their mistakes. Believe me I have seen this before. Why this happens, is that they quote so low to get the work that any amends that need doing has to be charged. It’s a matter of costs. They want your business and will say and do anything to get it, but once there, you are stuck. Another thing is the falling dollar. The price of the development rises each time the value of our dollar slides. These guys are not silly. If our dollar goes up they will adjust development costs accordingly.

What Can You Do?

In not saying that it’s a complete nightmare. There are the one in a million companies that are probably OK. Even development companies here in Sydney are known for their shoddy work. The trick is to do your home work and meet with the developers. Get a sense of their work, commitment to your project and past experience. Even better why not give us a call here at Hopping Mad Designs on 02 9360 8514. If you think your website is in need of a revamp or a looking to get a new site please get in touch.

1. Make sure that the navigation and site layout is simple and very intuitive. That is, it’s really easy to use and get around.
2. Be certain to have the navigation at the top of your website so that users can navigate their way around in a simple manner.
3. Keep images down to a minimum and ensure that all pages are uncluttered and an easy read.
4. A good point to note here is font size. Make it legible and keep spacing between paragraphs.
5. Bullet points are a great way to make pages easy to read.
6. Having links site wide within you content allow the user the ability to jump between pages easily.
7. Are your Images Appealing? Use images that reflect your business. Avoid cheesy, cheap istock images that have nothing to do with your company. Those boardroom photos with people handshaking used to be the rage 10 years ago, but now will only harm your website.
8. Is there any flash on your website? If so, kill it. Flash animation or images that are moving on your site are a killer for search engine rankings and need to be either replaced with a much friendlier java script completely deleted. Flash may look cool, but will be invisible on iphones and ipads.
9. Can visitors get in touch with you? Don’t make it hard for people to contact you. Highly visible contact fields should be on each page as well as on the navigation menu.
10. Give visitors the option to call or online chat with you. Another good idea is to have a contact form similar to the one on the hopping mad site.
11. Make sure that the site is: visible on most web browsers including; safari, firefox, chrome and internet explorer.
12. Make certain that the site is mobile friendly and is responsive to all screen sizes. This is a new technology and should be taken up with your web developer.

Blogging on a corporate level initiates a conversation, it stimulates rapport with your audience and encourages more external interaction with your company. It’s almost like giving a personal insight into what your company is thinking, how it operates and it’s corporate culture. It gives your audience a wider view about who you really are, which is great for building business relationships.

If you’ve never blogged before, and would like to kick start your corporate blogging then here are some essential tips to get you on your way to creating awesome blogs, with great content.

1. Understand Blogger Relationships.

Anyone with a small understanding of the internet can set up a blog and start blogging away, but it takes a lot more to become a great corporate blogger. The first step in successful corporate blogging is knowing the relationship between yourself and other bloggers; also known as blogger relationships. This is the basis of blogging and is about communicating and getting to know who else is blogging in your industry and who is interacting with your blog. Maintaing and growing your blogging audience is fundamental to the success of your blog. The more you nurture and grow your readership, the more successful your blog becomes.

2. Provide Relevant Content

The best way to grow your audience is to provide them with compelling articles. Write something that’s interesting and relevant. Keep your readers entertained and never be boring. This may be hard to do, but I promise you that this is the best way to attract and keep readers on you blog.

3. Sustain your readers by providing real news

Try to interlace current industry news with your perspective and knowledge. It’s no good rehashing existing news stories that have been published already. Instead, use this news piece as a starting point and go from there. see how the news relates to your business and how it may affect or have an impact on other businesses. This is what truly matters and counts when it comes to engaging with other people online. They are concerned with news that affects them. Blogging is all about practice and once you have tried this a few times, it should become second nature.

4. Respond to blog comments.

Replying to other bloggers comments or feedback is almost as important to the actual blogging. If someone has taken the time, effort and energy to read your blog from all the other blogs out there and actually made a comment, then this needs to be addressed. Never mind the positive or negative nature of the comment. The main thing is that you respond. Open dialogue on the blog will foster online relationships and eventually, over time increase your readership and in turn your website traffic. Although people may not be commenting on your blog, they will read and follow your replies. This will provide an even greater opportunities for attracting more people to your blog.
A word of warning here. Comments can come in the form of spam, so be very careful who you reply to. Check their email address in the first instance, to see if it is of a legitimate nature.

5. Criticism, Who Cares.

Don’t be concerned when people have taken a side or criticise your blog. Think of it as an opportunity to discuss openly online issues and topics that surrounds your blog article. Unless, it is outright malicious content, criticism in most forms is a good way to start a conversation that will ultimately lead to a wider audience. You never know who is reading your blog, so anything that you do take on board should be handled in a professional manner. Remember, it’s not personal, it’s just corporate blogging.

6. Stuck for content and ideas

Ideas for blogs including content can be as hard to find as the actual writing itself. Here are a few good ways to get some creative ideas happening:
– speak to staff and see if they have any ideas about the industry
– talk to your clients and see if there are any issues involving their business and blog about these
– see what your competitors are blogging about and embellish on their content
– see whats current on the social media sites. You will find heaps of good topics, especially on LinkedIn.
– lastly, if completely out of ideas and have no where else to go, then speak to a professional blog writer. Yes, it may cost, but at least you will have fine tuned blog articles, written by experts.

7. Make Sure The Blog is SEO Friendly

Optimisie your blog for the search engines. OK, what does this mean? Optimisation or sEO is all about writing content that is keyword rich on your topic, with correct titles, tags and headers. If this is done in a ‘Google Compliant Manner’, then your blog page or article will be indexed and ranked by Google very quickly. If you are unclear about this extremely important point then why not get in touch with one of the blog specialists at Hopping Mad Designs.

Why is this point so important. The answer is simple. The higher your blog ranks, the more likelihood people will find you and read your blog. The bigger the readership, the larger the subscribers.

The more people read your blog the more people are likely to subscribe to it. Use keywords in the title, content and URL, and make sure your blog headers have the right tags so search engines can easily discover them.

8. Is the Blog Button Easy To Find on Your Website?

If people dont know where to find your blog, how are they going to read it. be certain to have your blog in the main navigation menu on your site.

9. Make the Blog Easy to Share

Your readers are going to do the promotion for you. make sure that if they like the blog, then they can share it with other people. This can be done by simply putting some social media links on your blog which will give readers the ability to share your article. Having highly visible social icons at the bottom of your blog is the way to go. Think about it for one minute. A great blog can go viral with thousands of visitors in a day, if the content is worth reading. That’s a powerful marketing tool!

10. A Last Thought.

Writing your corporate blog and getting people to become followers is a long term strategy. The tips above are only a starting point and some advice on what to do. By practicing your blog writing, you will, over say 3 to 6 months get the hang of it and start to get a real understanding of the huge potential that corporate blogging can bring your business.