Month: September 2018

Visual Showcase: 4 Tips on Using Website Image Galleries

Posted on by Mario

web development tips

For better or for worse, the average folk no longer go to the internet to read, unless you count diatribes in 280 characters or less as reading material. Much as I’d hate to admit it, videos and images, thanks to YouTube and Instagram respectively, is where the world’s attention and time is now mostly spent. That’s not to say that texts are a thing of the past, they’re just simply not enough in a world where reading is no longer a common habit.

This is of course a long-winded way of saying that businesses have to mix up images and videos in order to keep their customers occupied. Displaying text on website is mostly an uncomplicated affair but uploading and publishing multimedia contents on your website require some considerations for optimum results. Right now though, we’ll be specifically discussing the issue of image displays in web development.

Image galleries as visual presentations

On e-commerce websites and design firms, image galleries tend to play a prominent role. It’s common on e-commerce websites for example to feature multiple images of the product being sold and for design firms, the ability to showcase their portfolio is a key marketing strategy. While technically it is possible to use other platforms like Instagram to showcase your work, forcing potential customers to switch between your website and Instagram account isn’t ideal and generally, it’s best to keep them contained within one place.

It’s with this knowledge in mind that businesses have to figure out the best way to display multiple images within their website. One way of approaching this is to implement an image gallery. As e-commerce customers lack the ability to physically interact with the product itself, image galleries can be indispensable in substituting that level of intimacy between customers and your products, but only to a certain extent. To help get you started, here are 4 guidelines you could follow when developing an image gallery for your website.

Use gesture navigation for mobile devices

In large desktop and/or laptop monitors, screen real estate might not be much of a consideration but remember that mobile internet traffic is now just as big, if not bigger, than desktop internet traffic. While it’s true that mobile phone screens are now getting bigger and bigger, they’re still small and you need to account for this by dedicating every inch of the screen for your images.

Instead of using navigation buttons, make use of gesture navigation such as swipes for mobile devices. Left and right should be used for previous and next images. You can also be creative with this by including other functionalities using gestures. For example, why not try inserting captions with a swipe down? Or displaying thumbnails for all of the images within the gallery using a swipe down? Just make sure that your users are informed of all of these possibilities before they open the gallery.

Try to make it easy for users to go back to the main site

This actually happened to me once before, I was in the middle of browsing an image gallery when I wanted to go back to the article but I simply couldn’t. This kind of mistake is a big no-no and businesses need to make sure that switching between the image gallery and the main website should be a seamless experience. For desktop, making the close gallery button more prominent should be easy while for mobile devices, using gestures as stated above could be an alternative.

Properly consider the aspect ratio and orientation of each images

Again, the important thing to consider here is the orientation for mobile devices. Landscape images fit perfectly with widescreen monitors but for the most part, smartphones are in portrait mode by default. The conundrum here is whether you should still display your images in landscape orientation, thereby requiring mobile viewers to tilt their phone to properly view the images, or you crop them to fit into the width of a typical phone screen.

If it’s the former, you need to be consistent and avoid portrait images as much as possible. I’ve been in a situation where I have to constantly switch my phone’s orientation in viewing a series of images and I can tell you firsthand that it wasn’t a pleasant experience. If you’re going with the latter, make sure that you’re not cropping any important details from your images. Go through each of them individually to make sure you’re not cutting off anything important.

Use high-quality images

This one’s a no-brainer but I’ve seen enough pixelated images to know that businesses still misses this point entirely from time to time. If you’ve got no high-quality images to show for, there’s no need to implement an image gallery. Using an image gallery only to showcase low resolution images is akin to displaying a collection of tweets in a hardcover book, the packaging is just too good for what’s inside.

Closing thoughts

Keep in mind that the image gallery deals exclusively with presentation, the content itself, which in this case comes in the form of images. A proper image gallery ensures that your images won’t be misrepresented in the transition from offline to online but it won’t be any help to you if you don’t have any quality images in the first place. Here’s a final tip to close things out, focus on making great images first, whether from photography or design, and then you could start your work on an image gallery.

Poor Criticism: The Impact of Negative Reviews on SEO

Posted on by Mario

SEO impacts

Back when I was still in high school, I peruse Wikipedia a lot when it comes to school assignments. No matter if it’s a biology project or for a history paper, I would usually check Wikipedia first in one way or another. This attitude persists throughout my early college days until I enrolled in a class where the professor practically outlawed us from using Wikipedia source. The reason? Because Wikipedia, and other similar wiki sites, crowdsource their information.

The basic gist is this, anything you see written in Wikipedia is put there by a dedicated member of community who may or may not be an authoritative figure in their field. Crowdsourced information has been the hallmarks of modern internet, with platforms like Yelp and Trip Advisor allowing members of the public to submit reviews on businesses. How these reviews affect SEO is a question SEO services and marketers have been struggling to answer.

21st century internet and the wisdom of the crowd

For the most part, giving the public more input in how companies are viewed is an excellent idea. Giving center stage to vox populi, the voice of the people, is the foundation of a democracy and customer and/or user reviews are simply another outlet for that idea. Every business these days have to contend with reviews in one way or another, as all anyone needs is an internet connected device to either badmouth or praise your business.

The old marketing adage states that any publicity is good publicity. What this saying means is that bad reviews could still be good for you as long as they spell your name right. In terms of SEO, where the goal is to increase traffic to your business’ website by raising your presence on the internet, that adage would seem to be true. The truth however is slightly more complicated than that and we’ll now discuss just how exactly could negative reviews impact your SEO efforts.

They could actually improve your credibility

This might sound strange but a couple of negative reviews could actually improve how your business is viewed. It’s statistically impossible for your business to garner nothing but glowing praises and people tend to look at businesses like that with a skeptic eye. I look at a restaurant with a rating of let’s say a 4.6 out of 5 and I would usually think to myself that it might be a good idea to eat there at some point.

On the other hand, when I see another restaurant with the same number of reviews but with a rating of 5 out of 5, I would immediately grow skeptical. Nothing could ever be that perfect and when I see something like this, I tend to suspect that there’s some funny business going in the background. The only time that unanimous praise like that is allowed is when you’re at a funeral.

They could give you some ideas on marketing

Here’s one nugget of truth when it comes to reviews, they are rarely, if ever, objective. People tend to judge products and/or services not based on their inherent qualities, but based on how a certain product fulfills their own expectations, no matter how misguided those expectations actually are. And it’s these expectations that you could manipulate, for a lack of a better word, with how you market your products.

For example, let’s say you run an omakase restaurant, the Japanese tradition of letting the chef choose what to serve you, and you received a scathing review from a customer complaining that the food that was served to them was different from what they expected. You could for example write a post explaining just how omakase works and that what the chef serves you is completely up to the chef’s discretion and what ingredients are available on any given day.

It’s not just about the reviews; it’s how you respond to them

A 2017 survey shows that online reviews make up about 13% on how Google handle local search results but Google implies that it’s not just about the reviews themselves, it’s about how you respond to them. If your customers could take time out of their day to perfectly explain to the world where exactly your business is falling short, the least you could do is to reciprocate and respond to their reviews.

If the complaint is something that you could immediately check for yourself and rectify, like if one of your employees is behaving irresponsibly, state what have you or are you going to do to fix this. If it’s something that would need further work behind the scenes, acknowledge that there are things that need improving and that you are working on them. Sometimes, all people want is the simple knowledge that their inputs are being heard.

The impact of reviews on SEO

Reviews are designed to benefit potential users and as can be seen, their direct impact on SEO isn’t especially pronounced, making up only 13% of how Google determines local search results. It’s how they affect potential customers that should be a focus. Instead of thinking of negative reviews as something to combat, you might want to start considering them as opportunity to identify areas in your business that you could improve.

Why Combining Business Thinking and Design Thinking is the Core of Your Business Strategy

Posted on by Mario

design thinking

When it comes to business, we don’t just think about success and goals, but we have to think about the plan. Sometimes, some people have money to start a business, but don’t have a plan to make creative ideas to improve their business. Too much absorbed in finance management will do no good for you. If you have a business, make sure you spare a space for design thinking. It doesn’t matter whether it is web design, interior design, or any design. If you have a business, make sure you have a business thinking combined with design thinking. Why? If you only have business thinking, it would be hard to promote your business creatively, but if you only have design thinking without business thinking, you would be overwhelmed with budgeting errors. Yes, everything needs balance. Create your balance now after reading this article!

There are two important parts of a business that a business owner should hold; the value of new creation and the value of improving the existing. Basically, we use more design thinking and brand development for creating something new – and that’s what we call the value of new creation. However, when it comes to business thinking, we manage created or existing value in order to develop and improve it into grand innovation that will attract target audience in a way that makes them interested in our products or services.

Design thinking should be at the core of strategy development and organisational change in order to create a culture that is focused on a way of solving problems. This way of thinking can be applied to products, services, and processes; anything that needs to be improved. Combined with business thinking, on the other hand, design thinking can re-create the used creation and improve its quality. With business thinking, you can balance it with your budget and creative plan to be used in marketing.

That’s how important combining design thinking with business thinking. Of course, that is extremely helpful when it comes to marketing. If you need more information about creative design, do not hesitate to contact us and let our awesome team help you.