Going Mobile!

by JJ on October 1, 2011

According to a recent Ofcom report the UK is seeing one of the fastest growth in smart phone take up. With the increase in smart phones the use of the Internet on mobile phones has mirrored this rise.  This is unsurprising when nearly all smart-phones have good quality browsers to access the web. Accessing the Internet through your mobile phone is becoming common practice these days.

Many website owners, are missing out on this growth in potential customers. By not offering a mobile friendly version to their visitors. Something that many customer focused companies have already seen the potential of this growing market and have already started offering mobile friendly alternatives for their websites. Any business owner, will tell you one of the key rules of a successful business is being ahead of the competition.

Small businesses should be on top of this trend. Creating a mobile version of your website doesn’t need to be time consuming or expensive. There are many tools out there that will help you create an effective mobile website without much technical knowledge.

We’ve created a list of tools top help you get the job done, without too much technical know knowledge needed. Most have easy to use graphical user interfaces (GUI) to make creating your mobile website as simple as possible.

1. Hostpapa goMobi

Hostpapa’s GoMobi service is a cost effective solution that has been designed by dotMobi to help businesses quickly and easily create & publish quality mobile websites in minutes. Hostpapa’s goMobi service offers quick and easy setup. Automatic device detection, so visitors will automatically be redirected to a mobile friendly version of your website.  As well as multiple design options to let you customise the look and feel of your site. Hostpapa’s goMobi service is £3.59/month.

2. Onbile

Onbile is a free platform for creating and maintaing your mobile presence. In what they claim can be done in just 5 minutes with their 5 step process. You have the option of choosing from around 15 templates which are all customiseable to your liking.

3. Mobify

Mobify Studio is a self-serve solution that makes designing and managing a mobile website easy. All you have to do is select content blocks from your existing site, style the mobile version, and launch. The mobile site is live instantly and automatically reflects content updates to the desktop site, without a separate CMS. Mobify service is $249/month however they do offer a smaller free service in return of a link back to their site.

We’ve only managed to scratch the serfice on some of services out there are many other services out there. The most important part is finding a service thats right for your website and you visitor’s needs.

 

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Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

by JJ on December 4, 2009

Any serious ecommerce website will either know or want to know their shopping cart abandonment rate. This is percentage of site visitors that add products to the shopping cart then abandon it before entering the checkout stage :

In a online survey carried out by leading online consumer research company. The top 5 reasons given for customers for abandoning their shopping cart at the online checkout stage were :

1. Postage and Packing costs were too high
2. The Customer was not ready to purchase
3. Wanting to compare prices on other websites
4. Product Price was higher than the custom was willing to pay
5. They wanted to save the cart for later consideration

eRetailers, looking to reduce their shopping cart abandonment rates may could consider displaying their postage charges clearly before the checkout stage or look at reducing postage costs if the sale is over a certain value.

Its important to remember an abandoned sale doesn’t necessarily mean a lost sale either, the second and fifth most popular reasons for abandoning their cart was the customer wasn’t ready to purchase or wanted to take the purchase into consideration. So many visitors will return 1 day, 3 days or even a week later to make the purchase. Giving a visitor the ability to store or save a cart will greatly increase your chances of converting that visitor into a customer at a later date.

The key to any successful ecommerce website it dialogue, speak to your customers and ask for their reasons for buying from you. The same goes for potential customers, communicate with them to see why they haven’t brought from you.

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Ecommerce Transparency

December 4, 2009

Around this time of year you like millions of other internet users around the world are looking to do your Christmas shopping online. However you could be driving potentially hundreds or even thousands of your site visitors to a competitor’s website without even realising it. Hows this? You may be thinking. Well the answer is [...]

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Read the Terms and Conditions!

January 10, 2009

Lets face it, we are all guilty of doing it. Skimming over or just clicking agree when signing up to a online service. However, I cannot stress how important it is to read these terms properly. I’ve lost count the number of reviews that are submitted to this site where the reviewer complains that they [...]

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Swithing web hosts with Zero Downtime

November 23, 2008

Honestly, switching web hosts doesn’t have to be a nightmare process. Quite often many people tolerate a poor service from their web hosting provider simply because it they think it will be a real pain to move their site. Switching to a new web hosting provider can be easily accomplished with zero downtime. Like moving [...]

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Getting to Grips with cPanel 11

February 17, 2008

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing a series of tutorials for cPanel 11.  The series will include all the basics of cPanel, including setting up email accounts, mySQL databases, parking a domain as well as some helpfull tips on running your website through cPanel.

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