How Can a Professional Website Help Your Business?

Forgive my sarcastic tone, but when you lack a professional website for your business, it no longer matters how big or small your scale of operations are because then, there’s only one thing that does – the fact that your competitor has a site and is getting all the traffic and there isn’t a thing that can be done about it.

Now, if that’s compelling enough, let us move onto the perks of having a professional site. Even if it means to create a free website by yourself, you should never back down from the idea of arming your business with a homepage. Here are the perks.

Making a Name

This point is especially valid for small business owners. No one has to stay a small timer when with a website, he or she can shatter any glass ceiling. Forget about reaching the neighboring city, you can cross all borders by creating a free website.

Reduced Cost

It’s your website so you can advertise all day without having to pop a penny. This of course means reduced costs and thus more gold you can take home to. It really costs nothing compared to TVCs that cost thousands – sometimes even millions.

Best Way to Get Found

Yeah, even if you sell flowers right across the street, you’ll find your customers searching for solution over the web more than looking out the window. It’s probably time small and huge businesses alike start embracing digital media. Everything is on Google and if you want to be on the top of your local results, you will have to embrace the power of SEO. 

Unmatched Accessibility

Your potential customer just picked up her phone and is now browsing to locate the best e-store for shoes in her city. Are you there? Or should I presume she’ll buy it from some other store? A website is a place where you can not only showcase your products, but also sell them. Are you capitalizing on this thought?

A Sense of Innovativeness

We saw the world migrate from iPods to smartphones before we could say Walkman. So, how about finally dumping old methods and finally moving onto new ones. Having a website signals your users you are up to date with times and it also gives the same impression about your core product – truly a competitive you could use.

Well, why wait then? Create a free website today and get started.

The Checklist Of Business Website Features for 2016

A nice landing page, smooth navigation, crisp interface and readable font – yeah – all of them make a site better than others out there. But these aren’t the only business website features that, upon getting a fix, assure you of sudden rise in traffic and sales. Much as we all wish it did, it doesn’t work that way.

For a good site, it takes constant adaptation, improvisation and not to mention, an eye to pay attention to the tiny details so even minor issues can be noted and fixed.

Well, if you’re in the process of making your business website a great one, here are some important elements you need to put a check on.

1. A nice domain and catchy domain name representing your product, service or industry
2. Solid and smooth navigation on top along with breadcrumb and footers
3. All of the important information about your business including services and operation hours
4. Clear CTAs integrated in the banner and the footer that prompt the user to take action.
5. Unsurprisingly, content. Content that solves users’ queries and one with the right appeals and hooks is what gets conversions.
6. Never forget to include one of the most effective ways to get leads, email signups. Spread them across your website, wherever possible in the most effective way.
7. April 2015 has changed everything and search engines now prefer responsive sites over non-responsive ones so having one is a compulsion, not a bonus

Gist

It’s not a complete list, but it’s all a good business website needs to get started. With these elements taken care of, pretty much any business will feel a definite improvement in its traffic, reduction in bounce rate, which means more people are sticking to it, and thus, higher queries.

Try making your free website using glu7 or Square Space and try to incorporate these amazing business website features to see how your site suddenly feels richer and better. Please let me know how it worked out for you.

Unvieling Best Website Navigation Trends

In the past few decades web marketing has changed rapidly, that has also impacted on traditional website design and bought it to a whole new level.

These days, web marketers are more into easing usability of a website that can help enhance user experience, speed-up information search and digging deep to come up with more and more website menu styles and usable navigation solutions that aid users to browse through website and help in information search.

Innovation in website design is heating up website design trends and designers are experimenting ways to come-up with simple navigation systems for a better user experience.

So if you are creating a website, we’ve got you covered. There are number of some great website builders available online that offer just the right menus designs. Here are a few examples of some trendy website menu styles

Vertical side menus

What a clean nicely aligned example of vertical side menu Arbour has set on its homepage. With options running along the left side of the webpage that not only unclutter your website but also provides simple navigation to users.

Vertical menus are best in-trend menu style that won’t befuddle your viewers, often more popular for blogs the idea is now seen across the web to enhance user experience.

Horizontal menus

This menu is also the best option if you have a long list of submenus or dropdowns under each main menu category.

These default traditional choice menus are not yet outdated. Hanging-on-the-top website menu styles guide your visitors that don’t want to fiddle around.

Horizontal menus works best when you have long list of sub-menus for each main menu category.
Look how neatly B&O play has aligned the menu on top

So, if your website has more sub-menus, you can relentlessly go for horizontal navigation. There are many great online website builders that offer spectacular horizontal menu designs to choose from.

Bottom Navigational Menus

Are you into an out-of-the-box thinker and want to present audience with something they might not have thought of? Then these bottom page menus will work best for you because these navigation menus have bought sophistication in website design trends.

Look at this French art director Pauline Osmont’s website, she has created flattering, yet simple usable navigation on the bottom of her website.

To make this menu style stand out, add a pop of colors to it.

Floating Navigational Menus

Floating anchor menus are in fashion these days. Cyclemon has used floating anchor to best describe its product range according to customers taste and choices.

These menus provide simple navigation for the long-scroll sites, allowing users to jump to various sections on the website when they click on menu and yet the menu keeps floating throughout which save time to go to the top of the page if the visitor needs to select another option.

Many website builders now-a-days offer floating menu designs. So, if you are willing to carry this menu style, you can easily find usable navigation templates on WordPress, Wix, Glu7 etc.

Conclusion

Website design trends are changing with a rapid pace and these emerging navigational menu designs are only a part of the change. Either you are looking to build your website (hyperlink Glu7) or already own one; you must go with the flow to keep your web presence in the limelight.

7 STAND-OUT-FROM-THE-CROWD WEB DESIGNS FOR 2016

When we talk about website design, there can be two distinctive elements, innovation and following the trends. Since who don’t like to seize the opportunity that trending and people are loving it? And do you know the first quarter of the year is best time to implement these changes before everyone else does, and since it’s only February, we’ve still got plenty of time.

So don’t you want to know some of the website design trends that are going to hit the internet later this year?

Create Variety 

The first thing to consider here is that website cannot be fixed in a mold. Since responsive designs, WordPress templates are gaining popularity because of their responsiveness. You don’t want to be left behind. But this still doesn’t mean you should follow exactly the industry’s trend.

Don’t stress, there’s always space to stand out from the crowd and stay diversified.

This doesn’t mean at all that you need to swap and adjust different designs for creating differentiation. Perhaps, you can think out of the box and see what can be different yet effective for your user experience keeping in mind you don’t miss that spark.

Look at Alexbuga website and how exceptionally it offers unique navigation like a new design trend.

Fluid backgrounds with tinted overlay where the video is still playing in the background is another distinctive website design. Look at this MediaBoom website.

CSS3 animations, grids, distinctive layouts and unique fonts along with other design elements can create vast possibilities for web designers, yet not sacrifice usability.

2016 is the year where designers are going out of the parameters of traditional website design practices and coming up with design trends that are easier to navigate, distinctive and desirable by audience.

Handmade Illustrations

HD images and stock photography have been noticed much in 2015 and most website designs are now inclining towards their use. Web designers are looking positive over the idea of using extremely customized handmade illustrations, sketches and caricatures this year because a customized piece of art is more kind of speaking for itself. 

Look at these uniquely made paintings, sketches below

Boompa 

Mel Kadel

Esteban Muñoz

These days, website designers are also going for more of a trendy hand written typographies for navigational menus. 

Artificial Intelligence

A lot of websites offer an online chat for questions and queries. Still, it is really hard for the operators to respond to all messages on time and time is the most important factor in people’s lives today, because people want a prompt response as you never know where and when they might need assistance.

Have you heard about Microsoft’s’ Cortana, Gmail’s Smart Reply and Facebook’s M that UI designers have put on purpose for us, where they instantaneously respond, are timely and as helpful as your closest friend can be. 

Yes! These are not humans but sophisticated form of artificial intelligence that is taking over the web.

So now you have these AI bots that remember all the calendar events, remind you of important dates like anniversaries, birthdays, and sending email responses on your behalf during holidays when emails are coming at furious pace, help you find files on your PC, suggest holiday packages and even sending greetings to the one you care for.

These programs have totally eradicated to find any difference between man and machines. These AI assistants are changing people’s life and making a great impact in the way people interact online.

Similarly, you can also instill artificial intelligence in your website design to so that your audience can get answers/solutions/suggestions on-the-go and on time.

Microinteractions

Each time when you upload a status, hit like button, log-in or sync data there is a microinteraction involved.

These interactions are unnoticeable and require little unobtrusive effort from the users.

Animations

Animations are nowadays not only restricted to storytelling, but they are a source of audience engagement, interaction and creating user experience.

Look at this wonderful parallax scrolling in Cyclemon website

Avalaunch Media shows quick history of social media simply by hovering mouse on the specific date 

IRIS Digital has some interactive loading animations with a background sound

Try adding unobtrusive, simple and swift animations in your website design showing sync between all the elements and creating a unique user experience if your web design is based on storytelling focus on thematic consistency.

Conclusion

The above defined practices are the forecasted design trends for the year 2016. But one important thing to consider here is that your website design need to be mobile-friendly because people nowadays are navigating websites on the go.

So, no matter what mix of these design trends you adopt, you need to be focused for the mobile version as well since we cannot overlook the fact people are mobile savvy. There are a lot of website builders available online like WordPress, Wix, GoDaddy, Glu7 and others. But ask me and I would recommend GLU7 and WP personally.

5 Requirements of a Business Website

Every business wishes of having a business website for good credibility and successful business growth. In this digital era, nobody would recognize your business without a proper website. Many businesses have their own websites but they don’t focus much on basic elements of a business website which can help them get clients.

Here are five essential requirements for a good business website:

• About us page
• Contact information
• Mobile responsiveness 
• SEO friendliness
• Business blog

1. About us page

About us page holds importance for every website but it especially holds extreme importance for a business site because it needs to convey a complete and a detailed description about their company. It becomes easier for the customers to have a better knowledge about the company and convert into more loyal customers when a site features an ‘about-us’ page.

2. Contact information

It is a requirement to provide authentic physical address and contact information to clients in order to keep them in touch. Business phone number, email and contact forms are prerequisites for getting better business lead conversions.

3. Mobile responsiveness

Mobile responsiveness is one of the core requirements of a business website. A responsive website is now a necessity for better user engagement and traffic.

4. SEO friendliness

Every business website should be search engine friendly because without SEO no one would get to know about the site. Both local and global businesses need to align their sites with SEO. The site should provide meta information with catchy title and description and other necessary elements to get indexed and appear in search rankings.

5. Business blog

It is highly essential to have a proper business blog to provide resourceful information about the company. Blogging is the best way to interact with customers and it is utmost important for business to have a live blog to keep customers be updated with latest business information.

Like what you read? Check out these useful blogs as well.

http://www.glu7.com/blog/

http://www.wix.com/blog