Categories
Web Design and Development

The Importance of SMART Goals for Your Website’s Success

Planning to have a website for your business or redesigning your current site? Make sure you set S.M.A.R.T. goals for the website to be a success and give an additional boost to your business. A HubSpot research shows that 72% of business websites fail when they are made without a clear business objective for it.

Failing to plan, is planning for failure. Now, if you’re wondering what exactly are S.M.A.R.T. goals for a website, the marketing brains from Flora Fountain, the leading website design and development company in Ahmedabad have summed it up for you to make your lives a bit easier.

S.M.A.R.T. stands for setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely goals for anything you work on. And this applies even when you’re getting your website designed and developed by the best web design company in Ahmedabad or anywhere in the world.

So, what should your S.M.A.R.T. Goals for website success look like?

What do you want to achieve? (Being SPECIFIC)

Set a quantifiable business goal for your website and make sure it has some value attached to it. For instance, it could be increasing the number of leads for your business by 20%, or improving the sales conversion rate by 15%, etc.

How do you measure this growth?

How do you measure this growth? (Make it MEASURABLE)

Create concrete criteria and methods for tracking progress toward each goal. Tracking qualified leads through CRM, tracking conversion rates through Google Analytics, and surveying customers before and after the website redesign, these are some of the activities you must do regularly.

How do you set realistically achieve them (Making it ATTAINABLE)

Compare your goals to your current numbers and determine whether they are realistically achievable. Plan on how you intend to achieve these objectives. It could be by engaging the target audience through more effective calls-to-action, driving traffic to the website through paid advertising and SEO services, providing more value through higher-quality product photos, videos, or website UX improvements to increase customer satisfaction.

Are they matching the needs of your business? (Making it RELEVANT)

Ask yourself why this goal is important for your company and how it will help you achieve your mission while meeting the needs of your stakeholders. It could be something like generating 20% more leads than last year in order to increase gross income, or increasing sales through the website in order to achieve your goal of increasing revenue by 10%, etc.

Are they matching the needs of your business?

When do you wish to get started and completed? (Being on TIME)

Set a timeframe for the goal. Establishing an end point gives you a clear target. The timeframe must also be attainable and realistic. How much time does it take for the design and development of the website to be completed and made live. The time taken by the SEO activity to bring the website up in the ranks and the turnaround time in converting the leads generated from the website.

Here are some tips from the experts from one of India’s top web development company

Involve every stakeholder early on

A successful website can turn your company around. It can boost sales, build awareness, enhance customer experience, reduce costs, improve workflow and help grow your company. Before setting website goals, it is important to get all the stakeholders in your business in a room, to learn more about their needs and how the website can aid them. These stakeholders could be your investors, department heads and even employees too.

At Flora Fountain, the leading website design and development company in Ahmedabad, every team members’ input is taken into consideration while designing and developing the website and while writing the website’s content too.

Learning from past successes and mistakes

If you are considering a redesign, you should first assess the performance of your current website. You can’t set realistic goals for the new website unless you know what your current website metrics are. Before you begin your website redesign project, you should assess how well your current website is performing in comparison to where you want to be. See if the downtime of your website is high or low, the quality of leads received were good or bad, if the content in it is SEO-rich or not, etc.

What makes Flora Fountain rank as the best web design company in Ahmedabad, is that we regularly run a quality analysis from every aspect on our website and our client’s website, to ensure no potential client turns away or worse, doesn’t find us on the search engine results pages.

Learning from past successes and mistakes

Make achievable goals

Another common mistake is to set irrelevant or unattainable goals for the website. Increasing website traffic is generally regarded as a positive trend, but does this traffic translate into more leads? It is determined by whether you are attracting and engaging the appropriate audience. More leads may not be worth anything if they are not qualified or do not represent potential customers. More page views and longer visits are usually a good thing, but what if your visitors are having difficulty finding the information they are looking for? What appears to be high engagement may indicate issues with your website’s navigation or content. Every situation is unique, but it is critical to select goals that directly lead to business success.

Set your website objectives today and you’ll be on your way towards success with a digital platform for your business that meets your expectations to the T. Or get the experts at Flora Fountain to get cracking by helping you build your S.M.A.R.T. goals for a great website. To get started, explore our digital agency’s services or just give us a call on +91 95580 79502.

Categories
Web Design and Development

Building the perfect website is a collaboration between design and development

A website is a great tool for digital marketing, selling online and for building credibility for a business. But an average user spends hardly 15 seconds on a website. In order to make them stay longer and engage with the website, the website must be visually pleasing and easy to interact with.

It is a collaboration between great design and robust development that creates a smashing website. Here’s a look at how Flora Fountain, the best website development and design agency in Ahmedabad works to create the perfect website for its brands and businesses

But first, let’s understand what web design and web development is.

Web Design

Website Design or Web Design refers to designing everything from the user experience to the user interface, basically all the visual elements of the website and their usability from the perspective of a user. Web designers focus on designing the front-end of the website, the part which the users get to see on the internet and interact with.

They recreate the visual ideas by creating the 1. wireframes showing the layout of the website 2. creating styleguides detailing the details of the visual elements such as fonts, buttons, text treatment for different sections and so on 3. defining the interactive elements that might need to be animated. For responsive design, designers end up creating separate layout for mobile and desktop.  Once done, they work with developers to get their vision executed and tested in code.

Web Development

As a web design agency in Ahmedabad, design is at the forefront of every website we create, after all, a website is the face of every brand on digital.

Web Development

Web development or website development team usually consists of front-end and backend developers who write code that brings the wireframes to life as a working website. The front-end team code in browser-based client-side technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript to creating what the visitors will see when they open the website in a browser, while the backend team works in server-side programming languages like PHP, Nodejs, Python, Ruby to ensure that the business logic and the functionality of any features being planned for the website are fully incorporated.

So, how does design & development work together?

1. Getting the Requirements

Information gathering is the first and foremost activity that takes place to build a website from scratch. The product owner (or manager) with the help of design, content and technology teams defines the purpose of the website, the target audience, the requirements from the client and the users for this website, and the kind of content and functionality that will be made available to the end user.

2. Creating an Information Architecture or Sitemap

With the requirements in place, now it’s time to decide what goes where and how. This exercise is ideally done by the product owner in tandem with the content team. Together they flesh out the pages required on the website and the information hierarchy or flow required to show all the information required as per the original brief.

3. Creating the Wireframe & Styleguide

website wireframe

A website wireframe comprises of the skeletal framework required for each page of the website. Together with the styleguide, this is the blueprint of the website. Creating the wireframes can be as simple as sketching on paper, or they can be created professionally using tools like Sketch, InVision, Adobe XD or Figma

For getting your websites wireframe made professionally, you can always contact us.

4. Building the first mocks

A mock is the working, visual replica or prototype of the website created keeping in mind the user interface of the site. While usually having a wireframe and style guide is enough, for more complicated designs, a detailed mock with each element, pictures and sample content is sometimes required. This mock gives an idea on how all the elements will come together on a page, and is useful for getting feedback from the client, before beginning coding. For responsive websites, separated mockups for desktop, mobile and even tablets might be required.

Custom website design through mockups is one of Flora Fountain’s core strengths as a website development agency.

One of the most traditionally common tools for creating website mocks is Adobe Photoshop. Nowadays, Sketch and Adobe XD are also used.

5. Building the Front End

Once the mockup is made, the wireframes and styleguide defined, the Frontend developers now take charge of the project, where they bring all the concepts to life through coding. They implement the design ideas through HTML, CSS and JavaScript in a manner that the site looks aesthetically pleasing on all kinds of devices, also known as a responsive website. This ensures that the visitors can easily interact with the page and get exactly what they are looking for.

Frontend developers

6. Meanwhile, building that strong base for everything to stand

It’s the backend development team that’s responsible for preparing all the information and coding the business logic and functionality that needs to be sent over to the client side, or the front end. The backend development takes place in server side languages. While their end of the work remains concealed to the world, it forms a strong base to create a high-performing responsive website that loads quickly. These teams further work on ensuring that database and database requests are optimized, the code is high-performance and the servers adequate to support the website functionality. The technologies used in backend are usually languages like Python, PHP, or Ruby, or frameworks made using these languages such as WordPress, Magento or Shopify.

But what if it is Theme-based Website?

The process is usually the same, with step 1 and 2 being followed diligently. But, instead of designing or developing the website from scratch, a theme which suits the brand or business well is picked. Website themes can be purchased online from sites like Themeforest by Envato.

website wireframe

These themes are design and development-ready, with the designer and development teams only making cosmetic changes and adding additional plugins to suit the requirements of the website. Followed by step 5 and 6, where all the customisation required to suit the brand comes to life on the website.

Did you know that some of the most beautiful website made by us at Flora Fountain are actually themes modified to suit the brand’s design language. Curios to see these theme-based websites designed by Flora Fountain? Drop us a message.

The Confluence of Design & Development at Flora Fountain

With such effective collaboration between web development and web design, the websites we create at Flora Fountain are nothing short of being a masterpiece. With well-thought wireframes and aesthetic design elements brought together by our skilled web designers, and robust code by our web developers, they complement each other in building beautiful, responsive and multi-functional websites, which our brands love to call their digital home.

Looking to create a stunning home for your brand or set up a shop online? Get in touch with the best web development agency in India.

Categories
Social Media

Digital Crisis Management During Corona [COVID-19] | 10 Steps To Maintain Your Business’ Digital Health

As the world fights a pandemic, it becomes all the bit more essential for a business person to innovate different ways to educate their customers. While everyone is focusing on cost control and reducing marketing activities, here’s how a smart business person can make a huge difference while being at home during the Corona [COVID-19] lockdown by following these 10 simple steps.

1. Website Health:

Check whether you website is working as it should be. Remember your website is your digital store and it is now more important to maintain an A-game. Hence check all the pages, specially your contact us or any other enquiry form.

2. Branding & Reputation:

Once you are through with website checklist, ask yourself, “Why did I build this website?” I am sure like most of us the answer is, to market your product and services. But during the CO-VID 19 lockdown 90% businesses can not sell because of logistical challenges. At this point we can focus on proper branding and reputation management.

social media platform

3. Which Platform to target?

To do proper branding or marketing you must be visible to the world out there on social media platforms and hence it is important to play to your strengths and identify which platforms to target. For example, jewellers’ best bet is to be on a visual social media platform like Instagram or Pinterest. Those in the counselling sector should focus on creating engagement through Instagram and blogs. While, those in the B2B segments should focus on disseminating information via blogs on website, LinkedIn and newsletters.

4. Ask yourself where is my audience?

It is important to understand and create audience profiling. Age, sex, interest, geography and income are some important factors to consider. Instagram is for younger millenials, Facebook is a community based application and has a mixed audience of slightly older people, YouTube is a video based application which focuses on awareness & education, Twitter is ideal for user engagement and feedback, LinkedIn is perfect for B2B, Pinterest is for portfolio building and for ideas, while Tiktok is used to target small-town and suburban audiences through video.

5. Optimize the profile/page

If you are a small business then creating an id or a profile is advisable versus creating a page on Facebook. If you are a comparatively established brand then create a page on Facebook and a profile on other platforms such as Instagram. Optimize your profile by mentioning all the details about the company, such a bio, contact details, Google Map location etc.

Facebook profile page

6. Follow the right influencers

In order to create a strategy for your brand you need to remain up-to-date with the latest trends of the industry and to what actually attracts people. Following the right influencers (people who know the industry and influence buying decisions) can sometime lead to collaborations, when the opportunity is right.

Content share

7. Share content regularly

Content is king everywhere, including social media. Content is what we put out and what gets shared on social media platforms. This can be a combination of Image, Text or Video. Remember, don’t get too technical and don’t try to sell immediately. Educate your followers about your product, the industry, the benefits of using the product or service etc.

8. Use proper hashtags

In order to grow followers on Instagram and Twitter you need to reach the maximum audience and that can be done by using proper hashtags in your post caption. In Instagram, you can use any number of hashtags between 3 to 30 in your copy as well as comment section. To get familiar with trending hashtags related to your business visit www.all-hashtag.com

9. Interact with your followers

All successful brands must care about their followers. This care can be shown in many ways. Sometimes a simple “thank you” can convert a commenter into a follower into a fan and eventually a future buyer. Communication is an essential tool once your page or profile is up and running.

10. Be patient

Remind yourself that you are here to educate and spread awareness about your product/services. Don’t be impatient by pressurising yourself to generate leads or business in initial months. If you follow the above 9 points diligently then slowly, but surely, business is bound to happen.

To know more about Flora Fountain and our social media marketing services, begin your journey here www.florafountain.com