7 ways web design impacts content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on creating, publishing and distributing different forms of content for targeting specific audiences online. This content can be anything like blogs, social media posts, articles or content for videos. The practice of publishing content may not advertise a brand directly but usually intends to simulate an interest in the product or services of a company. The right piece of content provides users with all the relevant information about a brand. It lets consumers learn about certain products or services, their features, and they would benefit an individual.

Blog posts, one of the several forms of content, are considered the top content marketing priority. According to 53% of marketers, blogging is an integral way to reach a greater number of individuals. An interesting blog can always generate interest in a particular product or service by providing consumers with relevant and helpful information.

So, how does web design influence content marketing?

Even if a brand publishes an in-depth, well-researched, informative piece of content, no good will come from it unless someone reads it. This is where web design is important. According to researchers in Canada, though we do not consciously realize it at the time, we tend to judge a website within the “first twentieth of a second”. Therefore, content marketing efforts can only be successful when the content is easy to access. The design of a website grasps the attention of the visitors and makes the content visually appealing, readable and engaging at the same time. The web design also has an impact on, how visitors perceive the brand, conversion rate and the time the visitors spend reading content. Certain web design factors that have an impact on content marketing are as follows –

Accessibility:

No matter how good the content may be, if it is not easy to access, then the content is of no use. Content-heavy websites can often suffer from accessibility issues. It is very difficult to go through large volumes of text. Therefore, multiple drop-down menus are gradually replacing traditional forms of navigation in web designing. This is done to make content easy to read. So, it is recommended to put only critical information on the page. If there is more information that you wish to provide, you can always add it to a blog post.

Appearance:

Your content marketing efforts will be in vain if your website is not visually appealing. An outdated website that is not impressive will cause a visitor to hesitate and not consider your brand as a trustworthy source. The design of your website should be inviting, engaging and able to generate trust. It should reflect your brand and inform people about you. Only then, will the content on your website be useful to visitors? In short, your website should be professional, up to date and designed to reflect your brand.

Readability:

Readability is described as the ease with which a reader can understand written text. It usually depends on the content and its presentation. High readability will ease the reading effort and speed for any reader. So, it is important that the content is consistent, visually appealing and easy to read. The font size, style or the spacing between the lines is an important part of web design. The color of the fonts is also an integral part of web design. A wrong font color or font size can prevent a visitor from reading the text. The readability score then usually becomes very poor. A web design with the right font, style, and color will have a major impact on content. The right web design can enrich a reader’s experience.

Understanding:

A brand’s content marketing efforts can only be successful when it has the right combination of content, graphics, and presentation. Many people think writing and explaining everything can motivate their consumers to opt for their brand or services. This is not true. The content should be understandable, easy to read and inviting at the same time. Web design ensures a perfect balance of visuals, info-graphics, flow charts, bullet points and other tools to make the content understandable.

Visual elements:

Web designers are able to introduce content along with interesting videos, gifs and other elements that are visually very appealing. Visual elements increase the urge in visitors to go through the content of the website. A web design company can add the right visual elements to make your content look interesting and engaging at the same time.

Website Speed:

Content marketing is of no use if the website takes too long to load or if it takes a lot of time to navigate from one page to another within the website. This distracts visitors and they will leave the site without even going through the content. A user-friendly website with a proper loading speed can motivate visitors to stay and have a look at the content on your site. A good web design company will always take care of the loading speed of your website to ensure that it is satisfied content marketing needs.

Responsive site:

Most people these days prefer to browse the internet using their smartphones or tablets. If the design of your website were not responsive, it would fail to capture the attention of smartphone or tablet users. A website that is not running properly on smartphones or tablets will go unnoticed by visitors. It is very likely that they will not put in additional efforts to go through the content of your website using a laptop or a desktop. A responsive web design can help readers to go through the content irrespective of the device the customer chooses to use.

Web design always has a major impact on the content marketing efforts of a brand. A good web design increases the accessibility and appearance of the content. It also makes the content readable and easy to understand at the same time. In addition, adding the right visual elements can make the content enriching and engaging, and can motivate readers to go through your content. The loading speed of a website should also be fast enough to retain visitors on your page. It is always easy for visitors to go through content when the site is responsive and runs properly on any electronic device.

Top Ways of optimizing an Ecommerce Store with Magento 2

Known for speed and performance, Magento is a popular fast-growing e-commerce platform integrated with a variety of features. Launching the platform is not enough to drive sales. Your Magento store should remain optimized for your visitors. It is important to ensure that the store is functioning properly as the speed of the store affects the SEO ranking, cart abandonment and also the sales. It is important to position your e-commerce portal above others to stay ahead in competition. Some of the ways through which you can optimize your store to maximize results are as follows-

Curate content appropriately:

To drive traffic to your site, it is important to add right kind of content. This would help you better to rank high in organic search engine results and eventually will lead to higher ROI. It is important to delete all those content that are irrelevant to your website. Sites are penalized for poor content, so delete all those content that are not appropriate with the products or the overall website. Instead update content that would describe your products and a lot about your website. Every time you change the name of the service or portfolio page, the link that is tied to it will also be updated. So, check your links every now and then to get rid of inconvenience caused from broken links. If you do not update the links, visitors will be redirected to 404 error page. Also make sure that the external links are leading you to proper sites. Make sure that the websites you are redirecting to must be of value of users.

Include share buttons:

Magento e-commerce stores need the perfect social exposure that can arrange seamlessly. Always allow readers to share the content with the help of social share buttons. Do not forget to optimize the content by including hashtags that can help you to get the perfect social visibility. This is very important to get the right brand attention that your store needs.

Go for powerful hosting plans:

Since Magento is all about hosting, never go for cheap hosting plans. This can largely affect the functionality of your resource heavy Magento store. Your large inventory of products may be at stake, if you do not make the wise decision of spending for the right hosting plan. So, spend a few more bucks and get the right hosting plan that can give the right boost to your business.

Merchandise for boosting average order value

Magento commerce offers an easy to use, product relation feature that will enable you to cross sell and upsell for maximining the value of the orders placed. Cross-selling becomes easy when you have interrelated products that can be used together. The visual merchandising tools that are present there are easy to sort categories and you can showcase your best products at the top of the web pages. You can also make use of the visual merchandising tools to create catalogs that meets your specific preferences and needs. You can also increase the order value with the help of Magento’s Elasticsearch feature to increase the average order value. However, you need to have a proper plan to work on it. Intelligent search platforms like Klevu or SLI Systems can help you as these have a proper focus on search, marketing navigation, SEO applications and recommendations.

Give importance on customer reviews:

Customer reviews are great as it requires very less work from your part. Everything us user generated, so all you have to do is request consumers to give product reviews and allow them to comment on Q&A pages. Magento commerce has already product reviews built in it, so take advantage of that to optimize your e-commerce store.

Include loyalty features to increase customer value

Brands need to grow the lifetime value of their consumers which can be possible by including proper loyalty features. This can be done in a number of ways. For existing consumers, you can give them some amount of store credits for every purchase they make. You can also go for a reward point system like a $10 coupon for every $150 that a consumer spends. You can also increase brand awareness by introducing a referral code system that would help you reach a lot of potential consumers. Offering rewards will make your consumers come back to you again and again. If you are looking for higher level of functionality for your Magento platform, you can check the rewards and loyalty extensions in the marketplace.

Say yes to high quality images and videos

For success of any online store, multimedia elements are a very important crucial element. Using high quality images and videos are always a great way of adding visually appealing elements to your store. This can also enhance the SERP rankings of the stores. The size of the image has also a direct impact on the page load speed of the store. An ideal way to deal with it is to use CDN that speeds the page load speed of your store.

Prioritize the conversions

The average conversion rate of any Magento e-commerce store is between 2-9%. You can always improve the rate by focusing on converting the visitors who did not purchase anything from your store. A complete new strategy is required that prioritizes the conversion of the visitors in your store. You can always take the help of a proper Magento development company to seek guidance in this domain.

These are some of the ways through which you can optimize an ecommerce store with Magento 2. By including relevant content, deleting the unnecessary ones and also share the content in relevant social handles. Also, go for a powerful hosting plan and give importance to customer reviews for optimizing your e-commerce store. Including high quality images, and videos, prioritizing the conversions, and merchandising the average order value properly can help you to optimize your e-commerce store perfectly. A renowned Magento development company will always help you to set up your online store in a way to maximize sales and retain existing consumers.

What are the Top E-Commerce Security Issues and best solutions for 2018

Almost every household these days has access to the internet. Smart phones have made it easy for people to stay connected to each other across the globe. This brings a huge volume of entities on the internet that eventually raises security threats even more than we can think of! E-commerce is one such industry that has high potential of attracting different security threats. Most e-commerce firms hold sensitive information about consumers that could include credit and debit card details as well. The ecommerce industry can be considered as the most vulnerable industry that experiences 32.4% of attack in any form, because many of these sites and apps have a vast storage of sensitive data and critical information that tempts malicious elements to a great extent. Working with a experienced e-commerce development company can help you make your website immune to security issues because they have keep abreast of latest trends and take steps to ensure that your website is safe from all known sources of malicious attacks.

Some important e-commerce cybercrime statistics are as follows –

• 29% of website traffic is there to harm you

• According to 50% of small businesses, these attacks are becoming more severe and sophisticated at the same time

• Again 92.4% of malware is delivered through email

The effect of these types of attacks on sites developed for e-commerce companies is shocking. 43% of cyber-attacks are aimed at only small companies. 54% of companies experienced one or more attacks that affect the company negatively. 60% of small businesses that suffer cyber-attack do not survive more than six months.

Security risks associated with e-commerce portals can be a result of human error, some accident or unauthorized access to systems. Online retailers are more prone to credit card fraud or data errors. The various types of attacks on e-commerce sites and online merchants are as follows –

Credit/debit card frauds

This is the most common online fraud that retailers face. These occur when hackers gain unauthorized access to customers personal and payment information. For this, the cyber criminals may access the database of an e-commerce site by seeking help from malicious software programs. Many a times, a hacker steals customer data to sell it on the black market. Credit and debit card frauds have been one of the most common types of attack, where people complain of fraudulent transactions.

Man-in-the-middle attacks

As technology is getting way more advanced, hackers are discovering new ways to be a part of the user’s communication with an e-commerce website. With the help of an approach known as the man-in-the-middle attack, hackers can trick users to connect to a public network. This helps the online cyber criminals to gain access to people’s devices when they are on public wireless networks. If the websites visited by users lack strong encryptions, hackers resort to unauthorized methods to view browsing history, passwords, user names and credit card numbers.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

This is a type of security threat that aims to take down online retail stored where hackers send a number of requests to the servers of the e-commerce portal to cause an over load. These attacks usually originate from thousands of untraceable IP addresses. When, this type of threat usually hit servers, it causes them to slow down or shut down completely. Usually when this type of attack happens on a server, the e-commerce site can also go temporarily offline.

Malware

Malware usually refers to malicious software programs. Online attackers usually insert web pages or files that comprise of these malicious programs. These programs help them gain access to online retail stores. With the help of methods like SQL injection, malware is easily inserted into the database of an e-commerce website that with the intent to compromise data. Most online retailers complain of malware being injected which resulted in data breach.

Bad bots

Bots are very popular throughout the web. Popular search engines like Bing or Google use bots for indexing search results. There are hackers that use malicious bots to gather information about product data, inventories and pricing data. These bots can access the database of an e-commerce site and retrieve a list of logins of user accounts.

Phishing scams

This type of scam is sent by known or unknown people through emails. It targets important user data like login credentials or credit card numbers. An attacker may also lure shoppers to get their personal information. When it is sent as an email to an online shopper, a phishing scam may contain links to a malicious website that resembles an existing e-commerce companies website.

Solutions to reduce e-commerce security issues

Some of the best solutions to curb issues related to e-commerce are as follows –

Always go for PCI Complain Hosting Provider

PCI complaint hosting providers usually have stringent processes and policies that guarantee secure payments. This also ensures that online shoppers can use debit or credit card to buy any type of goods or services safely. Some of the measures included by them are risk analysis, use of anti-malware software and encryption, and extensive monitoring. Apart from this, online retailers should ask the e-commerce development company that they work with to deploy PCI updates and scans to prevent any type of security threats.

Go for strong passwords

Strong passwords make it difficult for hackers to gain access to login credentials. A strong combination of alphabetical letters and numbers can make it difficult for hackers to crack passwords.

Try to avoid single storage and backup

Always try to avoid accumulation of data on a single server, instead go for multiple servers or cloud servers to distribute your data in the form of cloud clusters globally. Renowned cloud providers are highly reliable as they take a backup on multiple servers online and offline.

Go for an address verification system (AVS)

Credit card processing becomes easy with the help of an address verification system (AVS). This system can compare customer’s billing address against the information that is stored by the issuer of credit card. This can block suspicious transactions if the information stored does not match with what is stored on the credit card issuer’s database.

Use SSL certificates

For facilitating secure user connections, it is compulsory for e-commerce websites to have SSL certificates. This authenticates the identity of online retail business and secures a user’s check out data. This also keeps customers secure from financial fraud or information loss. The e-commerce development company that you work with can add codes to ensure that pages where sensitive information is collected are protected properly.

Credit/debit card frauds, malware, bad bots, man-in-the-middle attacks, phishing scams and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks are some of the common security issues that affect e-commerce portals. Some of the common ways to resolve the issue are using SSL certificates, strong passwords, going for PCI Complain Hosting Providers and using a proper Address Verification System (AVS). It is also better to avoid single storage and back up space to protect the consumer data on these platforms.