Website Design Company

According to the latest statistics, 40 percent of web users across the globe have bought goods and services online via tablets, mobile phones, desktop computers or other devices. That amount equates to over 1 billion digital buyers and counting. For those who sell online, or want to take advantage of the rapidly growing market, there is no better time to venture into internet retailing than today.

Choosing the right platform to build your shopping site can be hard. You have to understand that your choice can have as huge of an impact on the success of your business as selecting the location of a physical store. With countless Ecommerce platforms available on the market, this post outlines why it is that Zyber chooses Shopify for our clients.

Easy to Use Platform

It can be easy to be overwhelmed by the coding, security, and web-hosting issues involved with building an ecommerce site. The good news is that Shopify takes care of the technicalities for you. There is no longer a need to fuss over servers and files because Shopify offers hassle-free hosting. Because their CMS admin interface is uncluttered with a streamlined dashboard, you can monitor referrals, traffic sources, visitors, sales, and other statistics in real-time. You are also able to manage your inventory, prices, and images with ease.

The easy-to-use dashboard makes updating and managing your store a breeze.

Engaging Store Designs

The success of your store relies heavily on its visual appeal, especially in the early stages. This is when your target market will be familiarising itself with your brand so you’ll want to build trust and credibility from the onset before any money changes hand. Shopify makes it easy for you to make good first impressions through their Theme Store where you can choose from a handful of professionally designed themes. To get a truly customised storefront, best representing your unique business, Shopify partners with agencies such as Zyber to leverage our design expertise and technical know-how.

View Zybers Design Portfolio

Adding Value with Apps and Integrations

Whether you’re looking for a complete solution or are building your own, getting all of the pieces of a web store together can be pretty daunting. You might get the basics down of displaying products and handling payments, but to do things right, you will have to extend the functionality of your storefront. Shopify enables you to do just that with their App Store. There you can find all sorts of tools for automating your processes, marketing your brand, and even boosting your search engine optimisation efforts. With their apps, you are able to get the exact package and functionality that you need.

Reliable Technical Support

When running an online operation, it is vital to have responsive customer support that’s available at any time. Should a payment gateway stop working or a server become problematic, you will want to get in touch with someone as soon as possible. Shopify offers that kind of 24/7 support. You can reach their representatives through email, live chat, or telephone. For answers to commonly asked questions, you may refer to their Knowledge Base or FAQ no matter the time or day. For even more hands on Shopify support, Zyber offers a range of effective support packages to continually improve and optimise the performance of your online store.

Selling online, made easy

Creating an amazing online shop need not be a complicated matter when you work with Shopify and Zyber. We are New Zealand Shopify Experts so we can guarantee that you will be able to take advantage of all this web platform has to offer your business.

If you haven't already, give Shopify a go with their 14 day free trial, or talk to one of our Shopify Experts to learn more.

Web standards and expectations change continuously. We are in an age where visitors want to socialise, be entertained, and find information all on a personal level. The key to effectively answering this need is the use of engaging media. Audio, videos, graphics – these can all help you improve user experience, but perhaps the most effective, while being the most accessible, is website imagery.

 

Whether categorising content, or promoting a product, quality images help convey your website’s message better.
Homepage of Queens Arcade.

 

The Brain Loves Visuals

According to a number of studies, as much as 65% of the general population learn by seeing. This means that most people can better retain and retrieve information through visual cues. The results make total sense when you consider that much of the sensory cortex is dedicated to vision. In fact, the human brain is proven to be able to identify images seen for as short as 13 milliseconds. You could say that makes the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ true.

Thanks to the brain’s rapid processing speed, you are given only a short amount of time to impress visitors. Adding to that is the fact that many organisations are already making the shift to using a wide range of digital media to boost their online presence. This is evidenced by how 63% of the average web page today is comprised of images. All of these mean that you really need to start ramping up your efforts to appeal to users visually.

 

 

Stock Photo Usage Should Be Limited

You won't achieve the ideal results by settling for the first free stock photo you find however. Even if a certain illustration may fit the context or theme of the page where it will be inserted, it might not compel people enough to browse through your products or stay longer on your site. If there is one design rule you should remember, it is to choose pictures wisely.

“What should I look for in an image?” you might be wondering. Well, that would depend on the kind of emotion or reaction you want to incite. If you want customers to feel more empathetic towards staff, put photographs of your employees on your company profile page. It seems oddly simple but it actually works, as made clear by the Radiological Society of North America in their research of patient photos.

 

Which looks more authentic and reliable? 'The Overly Excited Business People' stock photo on the left or the real team on the right?

Images Boost Trust in Consumers

If you are interested in enhancing trust, create product mock-ups especially when you are dealing with digital goods. Studies have found that people are more likely to accept something as truth when it is accompanied by a picture, even an uninformative one. For increasing response rate in general, focus more on women, babies, and attractive individuals. When uploading product images, use high resolution close-up pictures of the items from different perspectives.

No matter what kind of images you might need for your site, just make sure you get those that are of good quality. A survey held by an Oracle e-tailing group has found that 75% of shoppers mark quality as a top factor before making a purchase. A National Retail Federation study supports this same idea with results that show 94% of consumers stating image resolution as ‘somewhat to very important’ in their shopping experience.

 

Not only do high quality images appeal more to customers, but they are more likely to get picked up by other blogs, or shared by visitors in social mediums - improving your sites ability to bring in new traffic!

Images courtesy of Page and Daley Builders.

On the whole, there are several things to look into when you want to get your website images right – subjects, colours, sizes, etc. But the main point is, pictures are great for prompting people to browse through your pages. Quality and well-thought out images play a great role in convincing online visitors to purchase your products or avail of your services.

Last week we noticed an interesting new ad extension pop up in some of our AdWords campaigns.

 

Whose noticed the new #StructuredSnippets in their @adwords campaigns? Great way to expand that ad real estate! pic.twitter.com/Y4RAI5rR6C

— Zyber Limited (@zyberwebdesign) September 4, 2015

 

Now that we’ve had a couple days to play around with the extension, here’s what you need to know.

Structured snippets are a variation of the dynamic snippets that Google rolled out earlier in the year, now giving advertisers more control and flexibility with the information they present.
Google provides 12 categories, some broad and some strangely specific, within which you can add your values - as google describes “highlight a specific aspect of the products or services you offer.”

 

 

 

We found that Service Catalog was a nice general category that could apply to most businesses, while Brands, Courses and Styles would be great depending on business industry.
The extension allows you to add up to 10 values, with a minimum of 3. Our recommendation is to stick to 3 if the values are long, and up to 4 if they are a bit shorter. That way you retain more control over exactly what will display, while avoiding truncated descriptions.

It’s great to see Google continuing to improve the effectiveness of search ads, ensuring that businesses are able to communicate more relevant information to searchers, and creating more efficient results for those doing the searching!