Abipo Web Design Northern Ireland Blog

Improve your E-Commerce store’s credibility

2014/12/23/in eCommerce /by admin

Paying for items online these days needs to be fast, efficient and trust worthy. There are various elements that need to make the customer want to consider buying your product or services therefore it is important to get the basics right for everything to work together and make your business successful. To increase your ecommerce rates you need these various elements to keep the customers happy.

online shopping

Images

If you are selling a product you need to ensure that the image you provide of the product is only of the best quality that you can produce. People need to have an idea of what they are getting it is important that the product is shown in all its various angles; this helps you encourage the consumer to buy your product or service that will be provided.

Description

A description that will entice the customer to buy the product or service is essential. This will basically help you sell the product faster. One needs to provide enough information so the customer will not have any doubts or queries about the product. You should offer a long version describing the product in detail and a shorter version for those who are less interested but still interested. The shorter version needs to be more intriguing than the long version in order to get the possible customer to want to know more.

Allow Your Customers to Customise

The game ‘The Sims’ is arguably popular as you get to customise people and houses to your own liking. Customising is like a game for people; they feel as if they made it by choosing matching colours etc. By allowing people to customise it will end up costing them more money. If you want to make money I suggest you allow people to customise on your online store.

Offer Free Shipping

It is obviously going to make you product less appealing if a shipping cost is involved it is just a fact. People will do anything to save money as it is in human nature of course! It is crucial that you offer free shipping or at least include it in the price in order to allow your product to look more pleasing at attractive to the eye. If you do decide to rather charge for shipping, make sure the customer is aware of this as they might not want to use your services again if you are not an honest sales person.

Sales and More Sales

Naturally most people are drawn to sales, like I said before; any opportunity to save money is what any normal human will want. Many people actually look for sales and specials when visiting online stores. This may increase the amount of produce you sold. Be sure to work with your product and maybe when you have left over stock when you have new stock have a sale or special with new stock items.

Use a trusted e-commerce platform

People often tend to ignore using e-commerce platforms and instead opt for traditional PHP based store. This is a big mistake, e-commerce stores are different from your regular sites/blogs and need specific elements to ensure strong user engagement. Your store should have a seamless order flow which is not something smoothly accomplished via PHP. Reputed Ecommerce platforms like Shopify or Prestashop are specially designed to make your e-commerce store perfect. Browse Shopify themes online and select the one that best suits your need.

Improve your ecommerce with some of these simple steps and allow your business to slowly begin blossom.

6 steps to take when designing your logo

2014/10/27/in Web Design /by admin

The importance of a professional logo for a company, organisation, or product, cannot be overemphasised. Without a professional logo your brand may not get the recognition it deserves, as it will become difficult for your audience to visually harmonise facets of your business.

Here are 6 steps to take when designing your logo. Follow these and you will be more likely to create a logo that suits your brand.

Start with a sketch first

For most people new to logo design the most common first step is to jump straight onto the computer and start designing. This is generally a wrong approach, as this often leads to wasted time on special effects and filters, without getting to grips with the essence of the design.

The best thing to do is to get a sheet of paper and draw various logo design examples, keeping in mind what you want the logo to communicate to your audience.

Use vector-specific drawing software

Photoshop, paint shop pro and pixelmator, and painter, are all great tools used by people working with images, but, according to Steve, digital marketing manager at Print-print.co.uk, “while these tools are very good for photo editing, they won’t do the best job when it comes to logo design”. Steve suggests that you “use vector-specific drawing software like Adobe Illustrator, free hand and line form for the best results. Whether enlarging for print posters or shrinking for web content vectors ensure the clarity of the logo is maintained”.

Choosing the right colour scheme

When you get to the point where you are using fill and stroke colours, you will need to use colour combinations that are sensible for your business. If you run an investment firm for instance, it won’t be wise for you to use bright red and pink as the colour scheme. Think about colour psychology and ensure you create the right feeling with the colours that you choose.

Consider the black and white version

After you have settled for a colour scheme for your logo, the next step you have to take is to have a look at what the logo will look like when it goes through a fax or copier machine, or is put in a black and white newspaper ad. There are some really nice black and white logo examples here on Pinterest

You can print and copy the logo to see how it looks. If it doesn’t look coherent, get back on your computer and rework the original version, or develop a second version. You may need to convert hollow shapes to solid shapes, and vice versa. The logo may have to be tweaked a bit, but make sure you don’t deviate too much from your original design.

Consider your target audience

As you develop a logo, you need to keep in mind your target audience. If the logo is purely for a website, you are free to use special effects, colour fades etc. If the logo is, however, meant for commercial printing, the complexity of the logo must be considered, bearing in mind the printing challenges and expenses that comes with lots of colours and effects.

A good idea may be to create a web based version and print version of your logo. Steve at Print Print has this to say on the subject. “In the printing world, colours are referred to as “spot” colour and the more colours used, the more expensive it will be to do the printing”.

Take a look at the typography

A logo isn’t all about images; the typography is very important. The words of the logo are just as important as any graphics you may come up with. Many new logo designers pay far too little attention to the fonts, jumping straight in with a font they know and love. Your lettering style, fonts and case in a logo can have big impact on the quality of your logo. You should also think about how your font choices here impact on your overall typographical strategy.

An important tip here is to convert letters to shapes and outlines if your logo uses a font. This will ensure that when you send the vector file to someone, there won’t need to have your font installed on their computers to view it properly.

To create a professional logo you should take a process approach to the design. If you go about it the right way you will be far more likely to get an outcome that works, and that you love.

Start a New Blog to Promote Your Business

2014/10/21/in Blogging /by admin

These days, it seems like everybody has a blog where they write about something. Whatever your hobby, interest or favourite sports team, you can find countless people investing time in writing about it to share with the world. Of course, writing a blog isn’t just about having a forum to discuss things you like, it is also a powerful medium for getting people’s attention. If you run a business and would like to harness the power of blogging to get more traffic, publicise what you are doing, engage with potential new customers and create shareable content that can be used in your social media marketing, it is probably easier than you think. Here, we take a look at the basics of how to start a new blog for your business.

blog

The Technical Stuff

While what makes a blog a success or a failure mostly comes down to the content it has on it, you do need a good basic website to put that content on. One of the first things to do is choose a web host. This will be the company you use to host the site and deal with all the server side management. You can get free hosting from sites like WordPress, but this is not really a good choice for business or commercial sites. Instead, choose a reputable host that gives you good options for managing your site, such as Umbeehosting.net or an equivalent – this will give you a professional look and take all of the hassle out of keeping your site up and running.

Content

Planning your blog makes coming up with good content much easier. If you keep a rolling list of ideas for posts, some of which should be easy things like lists you could write that would be relevant to your field, then you won’t feel as much under pressure when the time comes to write something. There are lots of apps and services to help making your blogging easier, and to help you share your content when it is live. It is a good idea to have a business Twitter account and Facebook page too, to help you do this. Other social networks like LinkedIn can also be an asset.

Your content needs to be of a very high standard, because it helps reinforce your brand. You need very good written English (or the language you are working in), and you need to have well thought out topics, and accurate facts. If you don’t have the time to do this or don’t have the writing skills, it is usually better to hire a freelance writer to create content for you. This is not that expensive, and can make all the difference because it takes the stress out of creating content and ensures everything you post is of a high enough standard to properly represent your brand.

Starting a blog can take very little time, and can have great rewards in terms of the visibility of your company. It is fast becoming something that no small business should do without!

Archive for year: 2014

The Technical Stuff

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