What are the Common Problems for Web Hosting and How to Avoid Such Problems?
Every online business requires a website. But a website is not possible without a hosting service. Web hosting is the process by which businesses are provided a space online to showcase their content. The website will be accessible to the users only if you have proper hosting service and there are web design companies in Dubai that will help you make sure you do this correctly.
Good web hosting is critical for a website to function smoothly. It shouldn’t be taken lightly. Sometimes it may be on the more expensive side but focusing too much on cost is not going to help your business.
There are many common problems faced during web hosting and they are given below along with ways through which you can avoid them for your website creation process to go smoothly.
Hacking and security
This is one of the most common problems faced by most businesses online. Almost every website is under the threat of hacking and no matter how extravagant your security plan is, hackers will find some loophole to get to your data. As a result of hacking, your entire website can disappear from the internet in one night or the security of you and your consumers can be at risk.
Consumers give a lot of sensitive information to a website once they decide to use it and it is only because they have a certain level of trust in your website. Even a small security invasion can threaten this trust and ruin your business.
When you hire a hosting service, make sure that they offer enough security as a part of the package they are offering you. The company you hire for website design in Dubai may know about some of the best web hosting services and they can help you make an informed decision.
You also have to back up your website frequently. If one day, you see that your website has disappeared from the internet, you will have to completely rework a new website from the beginning and it will include a lot of expenses. By frequently backing up, you will always have the latest version of your website with you in case of any emergency.
Slow loading time
Consumers nowadays hate nothing more than waiting long for something. With the internet being used for everything now and available to everyone, people don’t have the patience to wait for a slow-loading website. Anything more than 2 to 5 seconds and they are out.
A slow loading time can be due to many reasons. It can be because of high-resolution image rendering, auto-playing videos, forms, browser, the user’s internet speed and even high traffic at a particular time.
The distance between the server and the user can also drastically affect the loading time. To avoid a slow loading time, check with the web hosting service you are planning to hire about the availability of a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Through CDN, cached versions of your website will be available at different locations so that the loading time is reduced. A reputed web design agency in Dubai will have prior experience with this and can help you make choose the best service provider.
Site crashing due to high traffic
As an online business, you need high traffic for your business to grow. But high traffic coming at one particular time unexpectedly might lead to problems in the functioning of your website. Loading time may be slower, some features may not work, navigation can get difficult and the site can crash.
When you want or you are expecting high traffic, it is always better to use a dedicated hosting service. On a shared server, your website and another website are sharing space and if both of you get high traffic, your site will tend to crash or your load time will be very slow as a lot of users are trying to get to you simultaneously. The company you have hired for website development in Dubai can choose the best-dedicated hosting service for you. When you have a dedicated hosting service, you can handle sudden high traffic better as you can make changes when necessary and take action quickly.
Cost of web hosting
It is a common tendency of people to go for the free service. If anything is free or very cheap, people flock around it and try to get it for themselves. But sometimes for free services, you may have to pay the price in some other way.
When you purchase a free plan, what is the web hosting service provider getting out of the business deal with you? They might require ad space on your website and you can never know how those ads will affect your business.
Sometimes costs may be very low because of the limited services they offer. Once a website is up and running, it is essential to make sure it doesn’t face frequent downtime. You have to look at the kind of data plan and bandwidth provided by the web hosting services. Sometimes these service providers might also charge more than what is necessary for the service they are providing. It is easy to get cheated if you don’t have the right information with you.
You have to have a good knowledge about web hosting services and what you require so that you can enquire accordingly and choose the service that suits your needs the best. By hiring the best web design company in Dubai, you can be assured to get great insights on how to choose the web hosting service provider that suits you and your business. They can also tell you about the costs you can expect so that you will only have to pay what is required, nothing more and nothing less.
A business running on the internet depends on its website for actual sales. You shouldn’t try to cut the cost where web hosting is concerned. Having good web hosting is necessary for a business to perform well. Get the help of the website development company in UAE that you have hired and choose the right web hosting service that supports your website the best so that your business can boom.
Important Factors To Consider Before Developing An iPhone App
In today’s world, as technology develops, we have to keep up with it to stay relevant. In a world where the majority uses mobile phones for their everyday activities, everyone has certain expectations on how businesses conduct themselves. Having an app for your business is one such expectation. It isn’t necessary to explain why or how an app can benefit your business. Apps have become a part of the business world, it is our responsibility to ensure that we hire the best company for Android or iPhone app development in UAE.
The world has seen an increase in the number of users of iPhones in the past few years. This may be due to several reasons such as security, ease of use or receiving timely updates. If you have decided you want to create an iPhone app, keep the following important factors in mind when doing so.
Have a plan
Before you jump into the development process, you should have a clear plan as to how your app is going to look, feel and work. It is your app. Without your guidance, no one will be able to create it for you. You should plan out the entire process so that no errors are caused along the way. Even a small error can cost you a lot of money.
Plan out what you want to achieve with your app and what areas your developers should focus on so that you don’t get side-tracked during the development process. Having a clear-cut plan can help your team perform better.
Do market research
Having just an app idea is not enough. Do proper market research that will support your idea. By developing only an iPhone app, you are serving only a particular niche in the market. When your target is that specific, you have to do a proper analysis of the market so that you serve their needs properly.
Ask questions to find out what they are looking for. For example, who makes up your target market, what your target audience will expect if they acquire the app you are going to develop, and so on. You can refine your plan according to their likes and dislikes. You can also analyze your competitors and see how their apps are doing in the market. This can give you some idea about how to make sure that your app performs better.
Originality
The originality of your app is one major factor. The App Store is very competitive. Unlike Google Play Store where you can just submit an app and it gets available for all Android users, the App Store has a lot of criteria that you will have to fulfil before your app can be available there. Once you submit your app, it undergoes an investigation process and only the best get selected to be available on App Store. Your app has to be original and unique for you to have any value in the market.
The agency you hire for iOS app development in UAE will have an idea about the App Store criteria and they can guide you when developing your app. To stand out in a market where so many different apps are available, you have to be unique and your idea has to be original. When your app is monetized, people will be more careful to see if they really need your app. An app that is not original will have no value when people have to pay to get it.
Make it user friendly
However great your app idea is and however useful it is to the customers; it won’t succeed if it is not user friendly. Why would a customer purchase an app if it confuses them too much and so they can’t use it properly? When you plan the layout of your app, think from the point of view of your customer. The company you hire for iOS apps in UAE will know how people normally use their phones and the usual navigation patterns of an iPhone. When you give them your idea, they can develop the app in a user-friendly way.
The user-friendliness of an app is a make-or-break factor. It is difficult to make an app user friendly for everyone. But you have to invest time and money to do proper research and design the user interface. Not investing enough into this process will cost you more later.
Testing
Once you have a prototype of your app ready, it has to be tested as many times as possible. You can only figure out how viable your app is if you test it. Many problems you didn’t know existed can come up when you start testing. They can be either minute problems or severe ones. If you don’t spot it and release a defective app, it can be a very bad blow to your reputation. Test your app again and again until you are sure it is in its best form. Through multiple testing, you can also increase the time before the next maintenance is required.
You can also ask people in the same industry, colleagues, other agencies for iOS app development in Dubai or even a small portion of your market to try it out for you and get their feedback. Such feedback can give you a lot of information on ways to improve. You can never fully understand all the needs of your audience. Assuming that you can is a huge mistake. Through this feedback, you can find ways to improve your app to fit their needs.
iOS apps are a huge market. There is great potential for growth in this market if you have the right kind of app. Even if your app is the best concept-wise, it can fail miserably if it is not developed properly. Having the right team to develop your app is as important as having the right idea for an app. When hiring, consider any company that is at the top of iOS app development in Dubai as they will have the best experience and know exactly what the consumer will like most. Keep the above points in mind and hire a great team to help you succeed with your iOS app.
Expert Tips to Improve Your Website’s Design, Branding & UX
Now that the Covid-19 crisis is beginning to ease, organizations are putting more and more emphasis on emerging from this crisis in the strongest position possible. Based on this guide has been created to help the best website, brand, and communications managers assess their company’s website and branding while in this pandemic.
How Strong is Your Website's User Experience (UX)
No matter how efficient your website looks or how well it performs, it will live and die by the experience it offers to your key audiences. Organizations often assume that their website’s UX is strong because it was tailored to their key audiences when the website was first built. In reality, your website’s UX should be under constant review as the company evolves and changes. It may have been a long time since your company last took a step back and defined its key audiences and user groups. If this is the case, now could be the perfect time to make some headway on this front.
Work with your teammate to clearly define who your key user groups are and how you want them to use your website. Ensure that every area of the organization is represented and, wherever possible, base these definitions on up to date demographics, analytics and data. Once you have a clear understanding of who your key audiences are, a great way to test how well your website design Dubai caters to them is to create a set of user person. These are individual, fictional characters with motivations and personalities, each representing one of your key user groups. By navigating your website from each person's point of view and attempting to achieve their individual goals, you can test your website’s UX from each of your key users’ perspectives and record any obstacles or issues that you encounter.
Another important step to optimising your website’s UX is to make sure that your website is set up with analytics reporting, whether through Google Analytics. This will provide you with a data-driven impression of how users are interacting with your website on a basic level. Are they mostly using desktop or mobile? Which pages receive the most traffic? Which products are selling best?
Once you have a strong understanding of who your key audiences are and how they interact with the website, you can go one step further by setting your analytics up to report on your website’s key goals by tracking conversions. Conversions are a very useful metric in assessing your website’s user experience; they can be used to track specific events and journeys, like a prospective client’s journey from your home page to your contact form or a customer’s journey from an advert on social media to a completed purchase. You can even track the use of your website’s search bar to see what content your users are trying to find on your site.
Overall, the best thing you can do to assess your website’s general UX while in this pandemic is to use it regularly. Set time aside every week to try out a few different user journeys and record the issues that you find, with screenshots and URLs, before passing these issues on to your team to resolve.
Is Your Brand up to Date and Consistent?
Much like your website’s UX, your company’s brand needs to be allowed to evolve and grow as the organisation moves forward. Your branding and its implementation – on and offline – should therefore be under constant review. Understanding your audience is as important to effective branding as it is to providing optimised UX. An excellent place to begin when reviewing your branding agency in Dubai would be to follow the steps described in section one by redefining your key audiences.
With your user groups clearly defined, you will be perfectly placed to review your brand from a user’s perspective and identify its shortcomings. Here are some steps you can take to assess and improve the quality of your brand.
Work with your design team to ensure that you have a clear, regularly updated set of brand guidelines.
Establish an ambitious set of design principles in line with your positioning and key audiences.
If your brand operates across multiple digital touchpoints, ensure that each area is consistent. For example, your web design in Dubai's look and feel should be in line with the styling of your brochures, email signatures and social media posts. Just one of these being out of touch with the rest will make your organisation look inconsistent and unprofessional.
Do You Have Effective Design System in Place
Your website design system is a combination of everything involved in your brand, from brand guidelines and design principles through to website development in Dubai processes, accessibility best practice and style guides. An effective web design system will hold all of your brand’s key documents in a centralised and easily accessible location, constituting a unified system. The scale of your web design systems will depend on the size and nature of your company/brand.
If you do have a design system in place, it is vitally important that you regularly review and update it. If left unchecked, it will become diluted and, eventually, redundant. As a result, your website or brand’s look, feel and messaging will become inconsistent and unaligned with your positioning and values.
We're Here to Help
This is an expert guide that we will be sharing to support website designers in Dubai through this difficult period, covering everything from website upkeep to UX and marketing. If you identify any issues resulting from these guidelines that require external support to resolve, our team is ready to help. You can get in touch with us through info@zapiotech.com, or by calling +971 52 708 1010.
What is the Best Online Payment Gateway for eCommerce Business in Dubai?
As times change one has to bring about changes in the way one does business. Adamantly sticking to old methods will only leave one behind in today’s fiercely competitive business environment. Taking your business online is the biggest and most necessary trend in today’s business world. For online businesses, customer convenience is paramount for effecting sales. They have to also be able to trust your eCommerce business for it to be successful. One of the biggest points to keep in mind for an eCommerce business is, choosing the best online payment gateway, which is both dependable and safe enough to make your customers comfortable. The agency you partner with for your eCommerce website design in Dubai can integrate the payment gateway of your choice to the site for its smooth functioning.
The payment gateway is one of the most important features of an eCommerce business. Having a dependable payment gateway will help boost your sales. It is crucial to ensure that no fraudulent transactions occur as it can affect your business and hence your customer’s loyalty very badly. You have to have enough confidence in the payment gateway you choose to give a guarantee to your customer also.
A payment gateway is a channel that connects the eCommerce website and the customer’s bank so that money transferred by the customer reaches the seller’s account safely. Online money transactions are not possible without a payment gateway. The payment gateway encrypts the data the customer gives the merchant and ensures the customer has money in his account before enabling the transaction of the required amount to the merchant’s account.
Ecommerce website design in UAE may be different from the rest of the world in the regulations they have to follow. This affects the payment gateways you may want to use. The following are some of the best online payment gateways for an eCommerce business in Dubai:
Telr
This is one of the most popular online payment gateways today. It is available globally and therefore your international transactions can also happen smoothly and efficiently. The payment gateway is highly customisable and offers a variety of payment methods. Their pricing system is three-tiered; entry plan, small plan and medium plan. If you start with an entry plan and you have more volume of transactions than as per the requirements of the entry plan, you will be switched automatically to the next tier plan. The gateway charges monthly fees and as you move on to a higher tier, the monthly fee reduces but a small percentage of the total transactions will be charged as a transaction fee. Integration of the payment gateway can be done in three ways. An agency you hire for eCommerce website development in Dubai can help you with the integration process.
PayTabs
PayTabs is another excellent option for eCommerce businesses in Dubai. The company started out in 2015 and is well known for its anti-fraud protection. It supports multiple currencies and is available on a global scale. The payment gateway is PCI-DSS certified and offers many add-ons along with their service. They can give shout outs to your business on their social media page for you to get more exposure. They also help in setting up an online shop and you can enter into strategic partnerships with them.
They also offer three plans for pricing; start-up plan, growth plan and an enterprise plan. The plans are based on the volume of transactions expected. There is a fixed monthly charge for the start-up plan and they charge a small percentage of each transaction in the growth plan. With the enterprise plan, you can contact their sales team to negotiate a price. You will have 24-hour support from their team of experts.
PayFort
PayFort is a payment service offered by Amazon primarily for businesses in the Middle East region. It doesn’t have a wide global reach but it is a really good option for businesses in Dubai. They offer high security during transactions and accept multiple payment methods.
They offer two pricing plans, the standard plan and the customized plan. The standard plan charges a fixed percentage of transactions plus a monthly fee while the customised plan, as the name suggests, is where you can negotiate with them and come up with a pricing method that suits you and PayFort the best. There is no set-up or integration fee. The payment gateway is made to suit the consumers of Dubai so it can be a very good option for your eCommerce business.
Cashu
Cashu is one of the oldest and most trusted payment gateways in Dubai. It was created for the Middle East and North Africa region and is the largest payment gateway in that region. It does not function on a global scale but it guarantees security in each and every transaction. When consumers use Cashu, they have an option of doing online purchases without an actual bank account. Cashu provides an e-wallet that consumers can fund before making purchases. They also allow consumers to combine multiple payment options for a single transaction.
Checkout
Checkout is another payment gateway that works on a global scale. It started its services in 2012 and offers multiple payment methods including Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, American Express cards, JCB and more. They also allow you to accept payments from digital wallets such as PayPal. They provide flexible financial tools and insights that allow you to give your customers the best experience. They price their services based on the volume of your transactions. Integration can be done using several methods including API and Iframe and a specialist in eCommerce web development in Dubai can assist you in setting it up.
Other payment gateway options include Stripe, CC Avenue and 2Checkout. You have to carefully analyse each payment gateway before making a decision on which to use. Choosing the best payment gateway is vital for the success of your business as the gateway you choose involves the trust and loyalty of your customers. When looking for a payment gateway, take the advice of an agency for eCommerce web design in Dubai as they are more knowledgeable in this field. Know where your business is headed and choose a gateway that will provide the best services for you and your clients.
Web Designers Vs Web Developers: What is the Difference
When creating a new website, people often get confused between the terms web designer and web developer. In simple language, a web designer is a person who creates and designs the look and layout of your website while a web developer is a person who writes the codes to build the website and deploy it to the worldwide web. Any reputed website development company in UAE can offer you both services under one roof.
Let us look at the difference between a web designer and a web developer in detail:
WEB DESIGNER
A web designer is a person concerned with the visual aspect of your website. They decide on the whole look and feel of the website so that the users find it attractive and have the best experience.
They have good knowledge about different fonts, colours, typography, graphic design and more. They also have good knowledge about the target audience’s tastes and design the interface accordingly. A web designer creates attractive and responsive websites. The design of the website plays an important part in deciding the site’s ranking in search engines. The best web design company in Dubai can provide you with a website that makes the user interaction easy and smooth and also ensures a high ranking in search engines.
A website designer can have different roles. They are:
User Interface (UI) Designer
The user interface is the point of interaction between the website and its user. It is all the navigation buttons and icons and links that help you interact with a website. A UI designer has to create a simple and easy-to-navigate interface for the clients based on proper research done by the UX designers. They are responsible for how the user interacts with a website.
A UI designer is also concerned with the aesthetic aspect of a website. They have to think about the layout, the colour schemes, spacing, different icons, images and more. They also have to think about the responsiveness of the website on different devices and design accordingly. On a good user interface, users will instinctively know what to do to reach where they want to on the website.
Use Experience (UX) Designer
A UX designer is concerned with giving users the best experience on the website. They have to think of all are the ways users will interact with the website and design layouts that will provide the most hassle-free experience. This can be achieved only through proper market research. Based on the collected data, they confirm the website’s final layout.
While UI was concerned with the visual appeal of the website, UX is concerned with the consumer’s experience. A web design agency in Dubai has experts in different design areas who conduct proper research to plan and design the layout of the website.
Visual designer
A visual designer is a combination of a UX and UI designer. They ensure that the website is aesthetically pleasing but at the same time easy to navigate.
Web designers use several tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. They also have to have strong knowledge about programming platforms such as HTML and Javascript. They create a wireframe for the website so that web developers can work on building them. Expert web design companies in Dubai field designers who are properly trained in these tools and programming platforms and will be able to design something that is visually very attractive and easy and comfortable to use.
WEB DEVELOPER
A web developer is a person whose concern is with building what the designers have created. They are responsible for the technical aspect of the website. They have to take in the wireframe created by the designers and make a functioning website out of it. They are also responsible for further maintenance of the website after it has been launched. Any server problems are fixed by them so that the users can have a seamless experience. All the complex coding on the back-end is done by them to make the website functional.
There are mainly three types of roles for a web developer. They are:
Back-end developers
Back-end developers are people who are well versed in complicated programming languages like Python and PHP. They create the core part of the website using different programming languages according to the type of website. The back-end is where all the internal functioning of a website happens. They do coding on the servers and databases and therefore their work is not visible to a user of the website. They also have to have strong knowledge about MySQL or other database management systems.
Front-end developers
The work that front-end developers do is visible to the users of the website. They are the ones developing the visual aspect that the web designers have created. The code and programme the website layout and the different points of interaction according to the wireframe. They have to be well versed in programming languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Full-stack developer
A full-stack developer is a person who knows both front-end and back-end development. They have complete knowledge of how the web works and can programme a website so that the back-end and front-end work together seamlessly. They are overall experts in website development.
Website development requires a good understanding of how the web works and different programming languages that can be used to build those websites such as Python, PHP, C#, JavaScript, MySQL and more. They make the website functional and ensure that it works smoothly and effectively. Companies specialising in website development in Dubai can help in creating the logical and efficient website that you require.
In simple language, the job of a web designer is similar to that of an architect while the job of a web developer is that of an engineer. Web designing is visual while web development is technical. These terms cannot be used interchangeably. You can always approach a company specialising in both website development and website design in Dubai to get a good quality product as they have experts in both fields who can work together. Both are different steps in creating a website and it is important that both are present to get the product that you and your customers want.
9 Ways to Grow Your Business with the Help of a Website
At present, we are in a digital world, where everything runs on the internet platform. What’s more, with the outbreak of Covid-19, the internet platform has ascended to a level where more importance has been given to the online business. Consumers are not just found in shops or offline, they can also be found globally. Websites are one of the most powerful tools in the current digital age, where we can reach out to a wider audience. They are not just meant to promote a product for your business, but they also play a key role in predicting the quality of your work. Websites assume a fundamental part in your business, would you like to know how? Peruse beneath to discover.
The first impression is the best
At the point when you build a website, it ought to be planned to remember the customers. A very much kept up website will consistently be interesting to clients. Since, if a website development in Dubai isn’t easy to use, you will undoubtedly lose traffic, potential customers, just as, crucial business. Thus the first impression consistently has an indispensable task to carry out and it endures in the personalities of clients. Also, to create a good first impression, your business website has to be appealing.
Ease of access
It becomes easy to find any company’s profile using the website if you have one. Websites are designed in such a way that you get the details of the company in a click and one can have a look at the company before contacting the vendor for details. Isn’t this Easy!
Reaching a larger target audience
Whether, running a small or large scale business, you can always reach out to as many people as you wish, globally, with the help of a website. Website design in Dubai are active all-round the year and can be accessed at any time, as per the wish of the customer.
Prior check on the company
If the customer wants to connect you for your brand or product, he/she can always look into your website for the quality of your work you are providing, before contacting you. From the websites, the customers can look into the aspects of your product in the market, why they should buy your product, look for customer feedback, and many more.
Professionalism
Building a website is not an easy task. Everything matters when you develop a website for your business. Your business website should have a clean and efficient web design agency in Dubai with unique content. With these factors, your website can gain a good flow of traffic. If your website is not well maintained, it shows unprofessionalism in your business. Starting from professionalism which you show in the content of your website.
Use social media icons
Social media is a powerful tool to promote your business to potential customers and gain valuable insight through social listening. Through social listening, you can find out what customers are saying about you, gain insight into their behaviour, identify keywords and trends that appeal to your target market and so improve your customer service. Social media can help you to build your website profile and attract new customers.
Online customer service
You can always help to solve customer queries on the website, by having an interaction in the FAQ’s section. By doing so, you can even help other customers who have the same query. This is advantageous for the customers, as they can communicate remotely.
Customer review
Customer review does have a great impact on any products or services, sold or conducted. Let’s say that you want to buy a mobile phone. You check the requirements and search for them. And, one would check for customer feedback as well. This is because we believe in the feedback given on the product when someone has already used the product. As the reviews increase, your business also grows well. The reviews are available on the websites.
Offer great customer service
Ensure your customer service is exceptional and go the extra mile when you can. Your customers will not only remember great service; they will also be more likely to refer other people to you.
When you practice continuous improvement in all of these areas in your business you will make more money, increase profit, and build your business, contributing to your future financial success! For more detailed info, contact us on +971 52 708 1010 or email us at info@zapiotech.com.
7 Secrets To Enhance Sales For Your Successful eCommerce Website in Dubai
E-commerce has taken off in a big way with the pandemic looming large today. People want to do all the buying from the comfort of their homes, from regular everyday items to luxury purchases. The idea of creating a website is to reach your online store to many more customers than you can get in a brick-and-mortar facility.
However, if you want to own an eCommerce website and you are a resident of Dubai, the first thing you should do is get in touch with the most reputed web design services in Dubai to help you set up the eCommerce website. The next thing is to see that your website is designed effectively. Ensuring that these design aspects are implemented on your website would turn random visitors to the site into long-time loyal customers.
It is not easy to design an effective website consisting of many parts, each of which has to be thoughtfully made up, to represent an effective whole. Whether it is the UI/UX, product pages or the navigation tools, they have to be simple but attractive. Given below are a few hot tips that would help you get the right mix for the best eCommerce website.
#1: Highlighting your Brand
What is the kind of website that you would like to buy your favourite brand from? Should it be simple and effective or gaudy and cluttered? Any visitor would look forward to receiving straightforward information about the products listed on the site. Your brand’s personality should make itself felt the moment the visitor lands on the website page. This should also last through all the other pages.
Each page should depict your brand and precise messaging about the products sold is a must. Anyone landing on your website should know what to do and how to navigate to the page they want. All these contribute to your brand’s personality.
#2: Choosing the colours properly
It is a well-known fact that colours affect the emotions of people. Therefore, ensure that the eCommerce website development Dubai team pick the colours that relate to the mood of the audience. Colours can connect to specific emotions of the audience that is looking at the pages of your website. This will also translate to the same feelings towards your product/brand.
As an example, a website for sanitary ware may include a lot of white space and minimalist designs with splashes of scarlet for incorporating a luxury look. Adding other colours to the pages may not appeal to the audience.
#3: Keeping it Simple
Simple and uncluttered websites are always more appealing. This encourages visitors to buy. Visitors also benefit when there are fewer distractions on a page. Therefore, the less you add to a page, the better.
Ensure there are fewer links to click through to reach what they want to purchase. Any site would do better with fewer advertisements which can be very distracting. The most important point about an uncluttered page is that it offers fewer choices to the buyer. This is always better for both the buyer and the seller.
#4: Simplifying the menu
As an eCommerce website owner, you would like to offer as many products as possible to your audience. As attractive it may seem, having hundreds of product categories and sub-categories does not make the eCommerce website cut with the audience.
A landing page for every primary category (when the user clicks on one) with simpler navigation is what you should ask of the eCommerce web development Dubai specialists. The ideal method would be to highlight up to 3 or 4 categories on the main menu. There is a need to break down a category only when the visitor hovers on the preferred one.
#5: Including product/lifestyle photos
First, make sure you include clear and large product photos on your website. The product photos on all the pages should bind to a cohesive feel for the customer. Large photos add to product detail and this will likely please the customers. In case you are not a skilful photographer, ensure that you hire a professional to click pictures of the products that you want to be included on the website.
Clear and correct photographs of products help to augment information available about the product and contribute to better sales. Photographs of products from different angles contribute to additional detail about the product. As per research, in a majority of the cases, product returns stemmed from the fact that the product appeared very different from the actual one received. Always remember, the more product details your customers see, the better it is for your turnover.
#6: Making your page easy to scan
Experts in eCommerce website design in the UAE would concur with the fact that the page should be designed in a manner that can be easily scanned with your eyes. The page design should avoid large blocks of text. Emphasis on graphics is a better idea. Photographs should be the ones that lead your customers to the different pages of your website.
Only small blurbs of text are recommended, even in the ‘About Us’ section.
#7: Adding Testimonials/Reviews
This is just about the most important part of your eCommerce site. Customers prefer visiting the reviews section because they cannot interact with you one-on-one like in a brick-and-mortar facility.
The addition of testimonials and product-specific reviews to the product pages would greatly help. Nowadays there are eCommerce website themes that allow you can ask eCommerce web design Dubai professionals to add to the end of your product pages. Many of them are customizable and it is a good idea to use them lavishly.
Wrapping up
Adding share buttons on your product pages and blog posts is a big plus. Your eCommerce website design Dubai partners will be able to advise you on how best to place these buttons where they will function well. You can even get your eCommerce website professionals to place image share buttons so that your customers can share the products they liked and found useful.
All these will attract more customers to your site, keep them loyal and will help you to increase your turnover. Go for it!
Hiring a Web Development Company in Dubai? Avoid These 5 Mistakes
Having an online platform is necessary for a company’s success nowadays, especially after the onset of the pandemic. Most businesses that only had an offline presence failed to survive during the pandemic. Having a good website is a very important step to establishing yourself online. Many companies specializing in website development in Dubai can hire to get the best services.
You can list out the best website development company in UAE for your website but there are a lot of mistakes that you can make in the process of hiring one. Be careful and avoid these 5 mistakes when hiring a web developer in Dubai.
Putting too much focus on the cost instead of the quality of the outcome
As a business, everyone wants to reduce their costs as much as they can. Lower costs could mean more profits. But most of the time lower costs can also mean having to make sacrifices. When you try to cut the cost too much, the quality of your product will also come down. You can get a lot of people to work for you at your desired rates but many of them may not be able to provide a product at the quality you expect.
But at the same time, hiring a company that is too expensive is also not wise. Be practical with how much money you are going to spend. Spending too much doesn’t assure a great quality product. Prepare a budget and try to stick to it when hiring a team. Find the middle ground. Keep in mind that you get what you paid for and pay accordingly. Hire an affordable website development company in Dubai that can build a good quality website for you.
Not checking the portfolios of the prospective web development companies before hiring them
It is very important to thoroughly check the portfolios of all your prospective candidates before deciding on whom to hire. Checking these portfolios can give you an idea of what these companies can do and who can match your vision the best.
When analyzing these portfolios, make sure that you have someone in your team who understands how websites work so that the evaluation of the candidate companies can be done correctly and the company most suitable for the job hiring.
Another thing you have to do when checking those portfolios is to actually verify them. A lot of people can lie in their portfolios and resumes or forge reviews. You have to verify that whatever projects they’ve mentioned in the portfolios are actually true and up to the standard they have mentioned.
Some dedicated time will have to be set aside to hire the best web design company in Dubai.
Hiring web developers who’ve only developed unresponsive sites
Smartphones are a huge part of people’s lives now. Everyone is on their phone at least two hours a day. Your website must be responsive to mobile devices for it to have a good reach as browsing on the internet is also done on mobile phones now.
A responsive site is a site that works well on any device. The website will be able to function properly on any device including a mobile phone, which is the most commonly used device by people nowadays. To rank well on the search engine, your website has to be responsive. Therefore, when hiring a web developer, make sure they know how to develop a website that can be accessed on all devices properly.
Hiring a company that doesn’t understand your requirements
Your vision for your company determines where your business will go. You have to have a clear vision of what you want out of your business and you have to hire someone who can understand that and work accordingly.
Hiring a company whose work conflicts with your requirements is one major mistake that you should avoid at all costs. You should communicate clearly what you want with your web developers and try and understand what they are doing to have a great quality website.
There are cases where the clients don’t really understand what the web developers are saying as they use a lot of technical terms but hire them anyway thinking they would do a good job if they know all those. Try and understand what they are saying and if you don’t understand ask again. You should only hire people who can work well with you. To get a good website, you must have a clear understanding of what it should look like and what it should include and the developers must know how to make your vision a reality.
Hiring a company that hasn’t updated the technologies that they use
Just knowing how to develop a website is not enough. You have to have the necessary technology to develop it. And it should be the latest so that you can get the best results. Hire a company for web design in Dubai that has the latest technology and are also updated on all the new trends in web development so that your website won’t be outdated. Your website should look good and the user experience should be great for greater turnover. Having a team that is updated on the knowledge and the technology required is key in developing the best website.
Your website is something you cannot sacrifice on. It is the only aspect of your business that your consumers see before they engage in business dealings with you. You have to make sure it looks good and ranks well and the user experience is great for it to have the necessary reach for your business to be successful.
People often make a lot of mistakes when hiring a web design company. The five given above are just some of the major mistakes to avoid when choosing your candidate. Sometimes web development might cost too much and sometimes you might be paying more money than what is required for your website. You must do proper research before hiring a company for website development in Dubai to avoid mistakes and get a good quality product.
Pros and Cons of Minimal Navigation in Web Design
You will notice that menus and navigation are shrinking for a while because something is happening in your website design. Minimal navigation elements and style are gaining too much popularity along with the hamburger menu icon. Hamburger is the menu icon that helps you to design a website that looks and feels very simple. You will find most of the website developers in Dubai make use of Hamburger design. The minimalist design approach is the latest trend in website design that is followed by most designers. The minimalist design approach makes the user interface with your website at ease.
So in this blog, we will discuss the main pros and cons of minimal navigation in website design. At the end of this blog, you will get a clear idea that why you should always go with minimal navigation. So let’s start!
What is Minimal Navigation in Design?
First, let us discuss what is minimal web design? It means a minimal navigation design tries to take away the unnecessary elements of a website and focuses only on the vital aspects. For instance, tabs, menus, and content that are unnecessary are removed while the most necessary elements are retained and highlighted. The point is to take as much clutter away as possible: no tabs or pop-ups or dropdown menus.
Minimal navigation on a website means that the navigation is kept to a minimum. Users of the website should not have to do a lot of searching, browsing, or even clicking to get the information they want. Because it results in a positive user experience; minimal navigation websites have become a trend in web design in Dubai, and indeed, around the world.
Some advantages of minimal navigation web design
There are many reasons which make this design a hot favourite amongst website owners. We’ve listed some of the advantages of this trend below:
It is super easy
Users are always on the go; they need information quickly and easily. This is where having minimal navigation helps a lot. It helps them find the information they’re looking for in a very less amount of time and with minimal effort. Websites that are hard to navigate and full of unnecessary information bore the users and hence lose them too. A minimal navigation design helps users engage with your website for longer.
Small navigation elements have become the rule
Small navigation elements become essential for mobile devices. Most of the customers use mobile phones thus the mobile website should consist of minimal menu items that will be shrunk in hamburger style icon. Navigation is a very essential and common element on small devices. It raises the question of whether this icon will fit another desktop screen or not.
Focus on some other entry points
Minimal navigation will give you a chance to focus on some other design factors such as a call to action button, card elements or button elements that will make users read content from one to another or a scheme that will drive users from one page to another page. While considering the plan if you start designing your website so it can help you to rebuild conversion or keep the focus on another factor to make the interaction between users and website. A user doesn’t have to take rounds through the entire website to find out where to take help from. The minimal navigation design helps users to clearly spot call-to-action options and take actions. Thus a minimal navigation plan can benefit you to achieve your goal.
Some disadvantages of minimal navigation web design
A minimal navigation design approach will not work for every type of business website. Selecting a minimal navigation style depends on the content and the individual preferences. Some reasons to not consider minimal navigation are mentioned below:
Some user will find this design so simple
New generation people do not love the simple website they look for animated design and structure. So it is important to check your audiences and whether they prefer simple or animated design structures. Thus sometimes, the minimal design style can lower your users. To keep track of whether navigation elements are helpful or not you must check the analytics that how many customers are using such elements to navigate plus check whether they are using those elements.
Users might need a map
Users, especially those unfamiliar with icons, might get lost. You might want to study your website’s analytics to remedy this issue and plan your design elements and icons accordingly.
Your content can get buried
Although having minimal navigation web design can give ease to users in finding information, it can hide some of the content. It could lead to users not being able to reach some information they might be trying to find. An expert website design company in Dubai will be able to smartly incorporate all info simply and easily.
Lost in busy designs
Your website can look ineffective because of the absence of a new design. It would be good if you have used a minimal design approach and your website is getting crawled by Google and other search engines, else you might face so many challenges. For this, your menu bar should be sticky along with the dark or white box. It does not matter whether your menu bar has a small number of choices, it is important to just add and make it clickable.
Summing Up
Successful website design not only helps the website grow but also makes the users come back to it again and again. For an eCommerce website in Dubai, it is important to have a list of menus with inner pages. Minimal navigation trends may have taken all over the net, but it comes with its fair share of ups and downs. You can be smart and still enjoy the minimal navigation design with some tweaks here and there! For any inquiry, contact us now at +971 52 708 1010 for a quote or email us at info@zapiotech.com.
Top 8 Tips for Setting up an eCommerce Website in Dubai
eCommerce website development is a very competitive business industry so it helps to have a well thought out plan for your online store design and development.
There are 3 key areas of importance to any website, particularly online shopping websites:
Ranking - Making sure your website is found by search engines
Conversion - Getting people to buy from your online store
Retention - Keep customers coming back to your site
Here are our 8 best tips to consider when starting an eCommerce website:
Choose a well-known platform
There is plenty of tried and tested eCommerce web development company in Dubai you can use. Trying to figure out the best one to use is the challenge! Make sure you choose one that is popular, has great support and produces beautiful looking shops.
Fast loading pages
There is nothing more frustrating than a page that is slow to load when you visit a website. Most people will just move on to another website when this happens. Make sure you use a platform that fast-loads pages and don't use things like flash which can slow things down.
Be original with your content
Make sure you take your photos and write your descriptions for the products you are selling. If you don't, your content will be more or less the same as another eCommerce website in Dubai that you purchase from the same supplier.
Search engine ranking
Search for a keyword that you're hoping to rank highly for and compare the results. If the websites are badly designed or outdated then you've got a good chance of ranking them and selling in that area. If they're fantastic websites and doing well then consider whether you can compete with them.
Your eCommerce website needs to be more than just a shop - write high-quality blog posts to keep the content on your web page fresh, link to your products and establish yourself as an expert in your chosen topic. This will help gain your customer's trust and also increase your search engine ranking. Make sure you can allow your customers to share your products via social media. Include customer reviews or videos about your product and these may also appear in your search results to encourage customers to visit your site.
Retain Customers
The best way to retain customers is to get them to sign up for a newsletter. Prompt your customers to sign up for a newsletter throughout your eCommerce website, and make sure this process is quick and easy to do. Giving a discount coupon off a customer’s next order is also a great way to entice them back for another sale.
Social Media
Facebook is a direct marketing tool and it's free so you’d be silly not to take advantage of it. You can interact with your customers, answer questions, run competitions, notify customers about new products, sales and discounts. Pinterest is also becoming more and more popular and can also be used to drive sales by pinning your products to a board. Displaying social media buttons on each website page is essential - including your product pages.
Website Design
A stunning looking website design in Dubai makes all the difference but make sure your website design matches what you are selling. Think about your target market and what kind of look and feel you think will appeal to them when viewing your website.
Do some research
Make sure you know what you want to achieve with your eCommerce website design Dubai. Check out what your competition is doing and how you can do it better.
Zapio Technology has a couple of very affordable eCommerce website development Dubai packages available to get your online store website up and running with a professional look and feel. We’ll create your stunning website for you and afterwards, you’ll be able to add/update content, add new categories/products, add new functionality etc with no further costs involved. We also provide email support and helpful tips and tutorials to assist you with this. Contact us now at +971 52 708 1010 for a quote or email us at info@zapiotech.com to kick start your eCommerce web development project in Dubai.
7 Ways To Tell If Your Website Requires To Be Updated
But when do you have to update it? Constant updates can be tiresome and costly. At the same time, not updating can cost you more in the long term. Exactly predicting when to update is not very easy. But there are a few indicators that can help you in deciding when to update. Given below are 7 ways to tell if your website requires updating.
Loading time for the website is too long
If your website takes too long to load, customers will get out quickly. People are not patient anymore. Anything that takes longer than 10 to 15 seconds is too long for people nowadays. By the time your site has loaded, your visitors will have gone to another place to complete their task. The reason for a slow loading website can be heavy content like pictures or animations that are too large in size. All of that has to be optimized for a website to load faster.
Your website is not secure
The security of a website is very important. There are a lot of predators on the internet nowadays. It is very difficult to know what is safe and what is not. Check the codes for your website and see if it is safe for use. Customers give a lot of private information to a website such as their name, contact information and bank details. They have to be sure that your site is safe to do so. A secure site can attract a lot of visitors and you can approach a website redesign service in Dubai to make your insecure site secure.
Navigation on the site is not user-friendly
People like it when things are organized and they can navigate and find what they want easily. A confusing site can be very frustrating to users. They will get out of your site faster than you know. Having a user-friendly site is key when designing a website. When navigation becomes easier, people tend to spend more time browsing through your website and getting to know your business. A confusing website is a big indicator that it needs an update. Talk to a website redesign company in Dubai to get help in organizing your website and making navigation easier.
Site is not mobile-friendly
Google algorithm considers a lot of factors to rank websites on the search engine result page. The site is mobile-friendly or not plays a very big part in that. We live in a society where people use their mobile phones for everything. The go-to device for browsing on the internet is almost always a mobile phone. To avoid the risk of customers getting frustrated with your website and for your website to have a better ranking on the search engine, update your website to be mobile-friendly. A responsive web design can really improve your ranking and visibility.
Your site isn’t visually appealing
Fashion trends come and go like trains in a railway station. Nothing lasts forever. Keeping up with it is difficult. The same is the case for website design and layout trends. What are popular changes very quickly and it is very difficult to keep track of it but if you do, it shows customers that your business is still active and relevant to their needs? It is not necessary that you update your website as frequent as the trend changes. But as soon as you feel that your website is looking old or outdated, update it and see the difference. There are many companies for website redesign in Dubai that you can approach to make sure that you don’t lose out on potential customers just because your site isn’t visually pleasing or looks old.
You are using outdated plugins
A plugin is additional software that adds a particular feature to existing software. Your website can have a lot of these plugins. A lot of plugins that were very popular in earlier times, like Adobe Flash, is now outdated and most devices don’t support it. When a consumer visits your website, he is searching for information. It can annoy the user if he gets a notification to download additional plugins to see the content of the website. Using an outdated plugin can ruin the user experience on your website.
No leads from the website
A website is where you get most of your business leads from. Not getting any new leads is a clear sign that you have to update your website. When a potential customer visits a website, they browse through the website to get familiar with what the business has to offer before entering into a deal. If there are absolutely no new lead generation through your website, it means that there is something about your website that is turning potential customers off. Approach any agency for website development in Dubai to know what those turn-offs are and update them so that you don’t lose out on those potential customers.
The one disadvantage of an online business is the fact that your customers cannot see and experience what they are purchasing before actually purchasing. So, it is your job to make sure that your customers trust you enough to make business deals with you. The first step towards that is ensuring you have a secure and updated website that can attract new leads. It is your responsibility to find the best agency for web design in Dubai to get the best website for your business. Update your website often to meet the customers’ needs and it will do wonders for your business.
Hybrid App v/s Native Mobile App Development Dubai: which one you should choose in 2021?
The benefit of hybrid apps is that they are commonly simpler and quicker to create than local applications. They likewise require less maintenance. In any case, the speed of your hybrid app will depend entirely on the speed of the user's browser. Eventually, this implies half hybrid apps will never proceed as quickly as a local application.
Building a mobile application for your business must be one of the top priorities for your business. From building a brand identity among your customers to retaining customers in the long run, a robust and stable mobile app does it all for you. Not only this, the mobile app development Dubai is probably the only source of revenue for several companies and brands. Whether you are looking to raise funds or trying to capture a bigger market share from your competition, having an app will go a long way.
One of the major points of decision making goes into deciding whether one should build a hybrid app or a native app development. While it can seem a bit trivial at times, it is not. Choosing between native app development and hybrid app development in Dubai is an important decision. In this blog, we are going to make this very decision making simpler for all our readers.
To understand the difference between a hybrid app and native apps and then decide which one suits your requirements better, let’s first understand the difference between hybrid and native apps.
Hybrid App v/s Native Mobile App Development:
Hybrid Apps: Hybrid apps are a blend of native as well as web applications. In a hybrid app development company in Dubai, the core of the applications is written using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, the build is then encapsulated into the native technologies of respective operating systems. To make your mind on hybrid app vs native mobile app development, you must understand these basic pointers that we have discussed so far.
The only difference here is that the hybrid applications, unlike web apps, are not required to be opened in web browsers. These hybrid applications are running within the native operating system into its embedded browser. For a hybrid app to be shown in iOS, Webview is used to show the hybrid apps in android smartphones.
Reasons to go for Hybrid App Development
A majority of people in the industry will advise you to go for hybrid app development. And not without good reason, several factors make secure sites hybrid app development a great option for you. Let’s look at some of them:
Low cost: Because web technologies are used for building these apps, developers do not need to have specializations. This means that the development cost is significantly lower than that of a native app.
Less time to build: For companies that are just starting up, time is of utmost essence. You cannot wait for months to get your hands on an MVP. To win this race against time, hybrid app development can be a great tool on your side. The low effort nature of hybrid app development will save you a lot of time. You can then use this time to build a better product and reach out to the consumers.
Native Apps: These are apps that are built in the specific framework for the operating system it is being used at. It means that the native development language and tools for the particular operating system are used to create the app. For instance, a native iOS app will be written in Swift. Similarly, a native android app would be built using Java or Kotlin and compile in Android Studio. Most of the leading apps that you normally use such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Telegram are native apps. The fact that these apps are written in native programming languages is one of the biggest reasons why these apps are so stable and highly intuitive. These apps perform well because the developers have better access to all the devices’ and OS’ capabilities to make the execution of functionalities as streamlined as possible.
Reasons to go for Native App Development
While it is true that building a hybrid app for your business is advised by most of the people in the industry, there are, as a matter of fact, numerous benefits of creating a native app. It is important to know the benefits of native apps before finalizing the decision on hybrid vs native app development.
Better performance of the apps – Native apps are built using platform-specific programming languages and compiled in a customized environment as well. This helps the developers to achieve optimum performance in these apps. Founders across the world have long come to realize the higher performance that is offered by native apps.
Better User Experience – The majority of users do not think about the technologies being used to build an app. The most important factor for them is how well the app works. This is the primary reason why we always emphasize the importance of UX. With native apps, you can offer a much more polished and fine-tuned user experience to the users.
Better access to functionalities – If you are looking to build an app packed with premium functionalities and a lot of high-end features, native might be the right thing to pick when you are doing the hybrid vs native app development comparison.
Wrap Up
All said and done, you need to understand the needs of your business. If time and money are what you are looking to save, hybrid app development is the way. But if you happen to be an established brand with numerous users across the world, you must go for better performance and better functionalities. This means building a native app. Have any questions about this post on hybrid app vs native app development comparison? Feel free to get in touch with us at +971 52 708 1010 for a quote or email us at info@zapiotech.com.
5 Bad Web Design Mistakes That Must Be Avoided
Your web design is a make or break part of your website. It decides your sites online traffic. Spending money building the perfect website with the best font and best content will all go to waste if people don’t actually visit your website. Online visibility must be one of your main goals while designing it. Little mistakes also can cost you a lot. You can get web design services in Dubai who will help you avoid mistakes while designing your optimal website that can be very visible.
Given below are five bad web design mistakes that must be avoided to build the best website
Not making your website mobile-friendly
Nowadays, it is difficult to find people who don’t use smartphones. Every single person has a phone and most people prefer their phones over desktops or laptops to surf the internet.
A mobile-friendly website is a very good investment. Even Google now uses mobile-first indexing, where websites that are mobile-friendly are indexed and ranked first. Therefore, if your website is not mobile-friendly, you may lose out on the opportunity of getting a higher rank on the search engine result page.
Lots of visitors may stumble upon your website by chance, and if it is not optimised for the mobile screen, they will immediately leave. Therefore make sure your website is mobile-friendly. This is not a difficult task. A reputed web design company in Dubai will be able to help you with this.
Low speed for loading page
People are very impatient and the internet has made this worse. When a page loads very slowly, users leave the page quickly.
If your website is loaded with content and design elements, it takes too long to load and users will be gone before you know it. A lot of images and design elements may look really good to you but it makes the page loading time very slow. People expect your page to load within seconds and there is nothing holding them back from leaving your site if it doesn’t load fast enough for them.
People can find anything on the internet. Yours doesn’t necessarily have to be the only site containing information on what the users want. You lose out on a lot of traffic with a slow loading website. Reduce the number of images on your website or optimise them for faster loading. Having a slow loading website can also affect your ranking on the search engine result page.
Having too much or too little going on
Users should know what exactly your website is within 5 seconds of landing on it. Having too much or too little content can be harmful. Companies specialising in website design in Dubai can help you in getting the perfect balance between the two.
Having too many things on the screen can confuse and overwhelm the users and they’ll leave quickly. Having mismatched fonts and colour palette will not look pleasing. Having too much includes content that you have created and all the ads, videos and pop-ups. Users want to get to what they want as quickly as possible. Going through a lot of other things before finally reaching relevant content won’t make them happy. In design remember that less is always more.
But having too little is also not good for your website. Website should contain information to keep the users hooked. Keeping it simple is the best way to go but designers often make the mistake of taking out the essentials also. Websites should be clear and concise. Leaving users to guess what your website is about is also not good.
There are many free tools available on the internet to design your own website. But for your website to rank higher in the search engine result page and get traffic, you might have to take the help of the best web design company in Dubai.
Poor navigation
Make sure your navigation pane is visible and organised. Most of the time, users use the navigation pane to browse your website. It can be very irritating for your users to search for the navigation bar.
Also make sure that you don’t clutter your navigation page with too many options. Having too many options can also be very overwhelming and tiring for your users. Most of the time, the navigation bar will be on the top. Try to not put too much information in the top. Having too much information on top can cover precious content space.
Make sure your navigation options are neatly organised for ease of use. A good point to keep in mind when designing your website is to keep your clickable logo that takes users back to your home page on the top left corner of the screen at all times. This will also make navigation very easy.
Not having a secure website
Having a valid HTTPS certificate is very important nowadays. Hypertext transfer protocol secure, more commonly referred to as HTTPS, is the secure version of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). HTTP provides a way for web users to interact with websites. HTTPS is the encrypted version of HTTP. HTTPS is now preferred by most users as sensitive data such as log in credentials and bank details can be communicated safely through HTTPS. If it is not secure, users get a prompt on the top of the browser saying the website is not secure. Most users take this very seriously and might even leave your website. A successful website design company in Dubai can help you in clarifying and taking care of this process.
Today, a website is a big part of a business. People get to know about you through your website. Therefore it is very important to approach firms specialising in web designing in Dubai to build the perfect website. The above-mentioned mistakes are ones that people often make. Avoid those mistakes and your website will rank higher much faster and you will be able to give the best experience to your customers.