VIDEO BACKGROUND ON WEBSITE – WHO SHOULD CONSIDER AND WHAT CAN BE ADDED?

When you come across a video background on a website for the first time it pops-up a good number of questions in mind. Those beautiful 15-30 seconds videos are good enough to entice you to the website and there is no secret that you may want the same for your website as well. The first question that comes across while watching these websites with video background is that if you should consider it or not and if you should consider that what all can you add? Let’s discuss the objectives and possibilities one by one.

Image by Pixabay

WHO SHOULD CONSIDER?

Frankly speaking, any company or individual who has a product or a service to showcase to the client can use video backgrounds on the website. You can be a photographer, videographer, dress designer, Makeup artist, jeweler, baker, handmade gift seller or anyone from any other field. The basic idea behind using a video in the background especially on the homepage is to give a clearer idea about the products and the services to the visitors.

HOW CAN IT BE USED?

There are two ways by which you can create a video background. The first way is by using smaller clips to clear a video montage of your work which can include products, services, behind the scene videos etc. The second way is by using the still images to create a video slideshow which can showcase the products of the services.

DIFFERENT OPTIONS FOR DIFFERENT NICHE

The niche of every website owner is different. Thus it is very important to understand what can be shown in the background video. We have compiled a few examples below which will give you a better idea of what you can include in such videos.

Image by Free Range

• For photographers: Whether you are a product, fashion, wedding or contemporary photographer, the work is entirely different from the other photographers. In case of weddings and fashion photography, you can showcase your best work in the form of slideshows, or you can also add behind the scene videos where you can show what all goes in the process of creating those photographs. In case of product photography, you can show how you illuminated the product to look better in the photographs and so on.
• For videographers: It is much easier for the videographers to have video backgrounds on their website as they already have a lot of content related to the final product as well as behind the scene videos. You can use a blend of both which will give an idea to the visitor how much work it takes to create those magical videos. Alternatively, you can concentrate only on a montage of final edited video clips.
• Dress designers: The dress designers can showcase the latest products in the form of a ramp show, a fashion show or can produce a video showcasing the work that goes behind creating a piece of elegant dress. You can also make a stop motion animation of the process to make it even more interesting.
• Makeup artists: Makeup artists can showcase before and after images, behind the scenes, and a slideshow of final results.
• Jewelers: Just like the dress designers, the jewelers can either showcase a new range of products or showcase the work that goes behind make different pieces of jewelry.
• Bakers: Bakers have a lot of fascinating products and the process of making these products like biscuits, cakes etc. is also very interesting to watch. You can create a small video which runs through the process of cake making or can simply showcase a slideshow of the products you provide.

THE MINOR GLITCH

There is only one problem with the video background on a website, and that is the loading time. If the video size is big, then it will take some time to buffer which can increase the exit rate on your page. To avoid such situation, you should keep the length of the video between 15 to 30 seconds which is more than enough to give the glimpse of your work to the visitor. You can also keep a smaller video in a loop which will substantially reduce the loading time.

CONCLUSION

In short, any business can come up with an idea of a video background for the services or the products. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that you have to keep the size of the video short so that the loading time of the page with video background can be controlled.

THE IMPACT OF WECHAT MINI PROGRAM IN SOCIAL ECOMMERCE

On the 10th of January, Alibaba published an annual report on Intellectual Property Rights. One of the highlights is since Alibaba was a preeminent fight against counterfeit goods, a gaining adhesion of counterfeit sellers are moving their market towards mini-programs and Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform. They even build an overseas webpage through Facebook to introduce a traffic flow into their local platform to sell fake goods. Despite the fact that Pinduoduo and Wechat never made an official statement regarding Alibaba’s published report, however since then, a competition between Taobao (Chinese online shopping website similar to eBay) and Pinduoduo was brought into the public.

With the help of WeChat’s traffic flow, Pinduoduo has totally immobilized Taobao in just two years. However, with WeChat’s enormous 980 million traffic, Pinduoduo may just be an unimportant might within the bulk of mini-programs.

Currently, Wechat can’t share its content to Taobao directly and vice versa, so users can only share their information through “Tao password”. When this was introduced, a lot of people thought that this was almost identical to Baidu’s strategy, but, its not.

Taobao didn’t want it’s users to develop the routine of purchasing straight in WeChat. Undismayed by their policy, they prefer utilizing only its traffic flow. Hence, they adopt hundredths of TaoBao promoters, who are responsible in creating traffic within the circle of Wechat sellers. According to an insider, the daily numbers of transactions from Wechat to Taobao is at least 1 billion.

Wechat is not in favour of this situation, defensively finds a way to block Taobao’s strategy. Even in the year 2017 itself, Wechat had made a few planned measures. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get to the core of the issue. Consequently, WeChat found a way to solve it. Instead of allowing Taobao to gain an upper hand, Wechat hit back by attracting the same group of people to do business on its own platform so that sellers, buyers and prompters can form a closed loop system, and that happened when they announced their mini-programs on the 9th of January.

This development from WeChat was not to be underrated. They enhance their product delivery speed from 3 days to 1 day, which reduce the user’s purchasing cost, a good strategy, thus causing a larger amount of purchasers to migrate to their own platform. Most importantly, this traffic is established by the business seller themself and allows an accumulation of traffic within the WeChat ecosystem. As for this, during WeChat’s public courses this year, Zhang XiaoLong (also known as the “father of wechat”) believes that Wechat’s search system will be the next entry gateway, and it proves by their high traffic.

As of now, Taobao is worried on Pinduoduo’s performance because it is currently the only e-commerce platform that does not share the same traffic system as Alibaba and is a premier platform for local online retailers.

In the e-commerce field, there are a lot of e-commerce platforms like Fanli, ChuchuJie, Mizhe, Juanpi and Mogujie etc. You can treat these platforms as a form of Taobao Coupon or a huge Taobao Promoter. Their platforms does not pose a threat to Taobao and has quite an influence on them. If it will produce a conflict with Taobao, it can easily take over and deliver a striking blow to them. In a way, Mogujie’s achievement today partly comes from one of Taobao’s defensive strategies. Because of the defensive measures taken, Mogujie has since found another way out to be independent.

However, Pinduoduo is different, it was linked to WeChat. Most of its original users enter this mobile e-commerce era directly without the needs of a personal computer. However, with the advantage of Wechat’s 9.8 million users pool, Pinduoduo becomes an envious target of Taobao, yet it has no power over the market.

Our parents can use Wechat to gain red packets, share, connect and pay using Wechat. In this case, mini-programs and Wechat provides a solution that suits our today’s users generation.

As of now, Taobao still hasn’t pit face to face in a battle against Pinduoduo. Of course, when that day comes, Taobao has no power against WeChat’s traffic at all. WeChat can easily overtake Taobao’s promoters with a move like the year before, preventing Taobao from overusing WeChat’s platform for their own usage.

Last January 15 2018, Zhang XiaoLong’s WeChat public lecture PRO became popular in the internet community. One of the important thing to take note of, is that WeChat’s DAU (daily active users) maintains at 800 to 850 million, while WeChat’s at 980 million, closely tipping to a billion.

According to WeChat’s current traffic, being on the top against its peers is not a problem. However, in the e-commerce field, WeChat has some imperfections. Certain people believes that Tencent company doesn’t have the skills yet to perfect the e-commerce spot. Hence, WeChat uses their flaw to their end. They only create a basic structure and provide a complete ecosystem, how the retailers come up with their business models.

When WeChat’s ecosystem improves further, Taobao’s retailers will slowly be attracted over and over. But in the beginning, most of them have no idea how to take this step of transition or transformation. Just like You An Mi mentioned, they should get a portion of that traffic with good retailers, and then they can start attracting more small business.

Taobao has its own brand, and in the near future, WeChat, I believe will have its own brand as well. Different from Taobao, these brands are born within WeChat has its own loyal consumers and fans, and have a direct pool that provides them their users. WeChat is optimistic in this, Taobao will slowly be grind down. And when that time comes, small and medium businesses alike will slowly transform into mini-programs in WeChat.

WEBSITE IS NOT LESS THAN AN ART

WEBSITE IS NOT LESS THAN AN ART

When you hover your mouse on your website what strikes your mind? Stunning and breathtaking visuals that softy encourage you for a call to action? Have you ever poured your thinking to know what drives you to make an action? It’s the mysterious chemistry of art that stands behind your website’s success. The more effort you put into making this art a colorful and engaging one, the better the conversion rates would be. Those who understand that website design is all about art, cash out profits and for those who are still in doubts, here are some points in favor:

1. ART OF CLASSY BUTTONS SPELLS THE MAGIC

When your website features a contemporary example of art from its classy buttons and colorful squares with brand’s message, getting glares is quite obvious. A majority of patrons landing on your website won’t mind spending hours on it to see the stuff inside. Focusing on the designing art in a scientific way encourages them to make an action. They will perceive your website as neat and won’t mind breaking the protocol to buy your product or service.

2. LEVERAGE ART OF LIGHTING TO DRIVE CONVERSIONS

Website design is nothing but a canvas where you use a variety of lighting effects to tilt opportunities in your favor. A beautiful design theme retains and converts customers. Probably, this is what you have been craving for. Setting the tone of your site with colorful layout and lighting effect creates a synergy to improve the mood of the landing customer. Put the flashlight on the warm and friendly look to leave your users surprised. Such a great artistic touch to your website will bring amazing results to your table.

3. ARTISTIC TOUCH TO DESIGN ELEMENTS IS THE KEY

Are you using white space tactically to put an emphasis at some places on your website wherever you need? This is nothing but an art that should be wisely used to create separation and balance of information on the website. An artistic touch to your logos, navigation buttons and call to actions with some white space leads to better user experience. But as a thumb rule, don’t overuse it. Asking for a professional advice comes handy while implementing this artistic effect.

4. USE SCIENCE OF ART TO BRIGHTEN UP YOUR WORLD

People love the art and the business with the best one wins. Consider yourself sitting at a marketplace where people don’t give a dime to the one with dull looks. All that glitters sell. So, if your business is just making pennies, it’s time to revamp it all with an art that’s fulfilling and lovely.

CONCLUSION

The website is not less than an art that requires skills to bring conversions to the table. Those colorful logos, elegant themes and appealing call-to-action buttons give the ROIs a propel you always dream of. Make sure you don’t settle for anything but the best to reward your business with success. After all, who minds sitting at the pinnacle of success? Just pick the reputed design agency that’s driven with colors and art and could pave your way to online success.

Stun your customers with a contemporary website design from We Do Design, Australia. We blend the art in your websites that drive conversions. We draw results on your website canvas, so having us at your side makes a sense for you. Call us today to get a contemporary website.

DOES SMALL BUSINESS NEED TO HAVE A MOBILE APP?

If you own a business, regardless if it’s a startup or just a small one, you need to get a mobile app. Whether you agree or not, a mobile app is now an integral part of a business. Unfortunately, not all business owners realize the importance of having one. In the following sections, we will discuss the common reasons why small businesses choose to skip building a mobile app, as well as why getting one is a must.

Why Do Most Small Businesses Choose Not to Have a Mobile App?

The main culprit of this decision is the cost. Mobile app development is a multi-stage process. On top of that, each stage requires specialization, which means that business owners might need to hire more than two or more experts who are qualified for certain stages.

Moreover, many of these small business owners believe that building a website is sufficient to attract new customers. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. According to the 2016 app development survey administered by clutch.co, an independent research firm, from the 352 small businesses in the US, only less than a quarter of them have a mobile app. The survey later revealed that this is because mobile app development needs tons of money, not to mention the time and effort needed to build one.

5 Top Reasons to Build a Mobile App for Small Businesses

1. Reach More Customers and Improve Accessibility

The prime reason why business owners, especially the small ones, are encouraged to get a mobile app is to reach more customers by being more accessible to them. According to a Gallup Survey, more than half of the US smartphone owners check their phone a few times every hour. This implies that you have high chances of getting new customers if you launch a mobile app as compared to relying on website traffic alone.

Furthermore, since the mobile app can be downloaded and stored on the smartphone, customers can easily access your business wherever and whenever they want.

2. Boost Brand Recognition

One of the important stages in mobile development is the creation of a brand logo. Having your brand situated on people’s smartphone will help your brand’s promotion. Considering the number of times that people check their smartphones every hour, your business’ personalized smartphone icon will help build your brand by providing a visual image that people recognize easily.

3. Engage with Customers in Real Time

Mobile apps allow you to connect with your customers and tend to their queries and concerns immediately, which is a crucial step if you aim to foster trust with your customers. Moreover, mobile apps even help you boost repeat visits and deployment of customer loyalty programs, which are essential to building loyalty in today’s crowded marketplace.

4. Collect Your Business Analytics Easily

Most mobile apps nowadays have built-in analytics that will help steer your business to the right path. Unlike years ago when businesses need to hire experts to manipulate complex information and databases, most mobile apps can now collect and process raw data automatically. Hence, you can improvise and make changes fast to better serve your target market. You can even track the number of downloads that your app has garnered so far, as well as track user engagement and actual sales.

5. Partner with Other Services

There’s a new trend recently which involves similar or related companies partnering to form a sort of mobile ad exchange. This is a program that allows local companies to piggyback on each other’s success by displaying mobile ads on the partner networks, thus allowing you to get new customers. This tactic leads to mutual benefits of the companies involved and eventually helps increase profits.

Conclusion

Although developing a mobile app for your business means spending an exuberant amount of money, getting one is proven to speed up your ROI and more. Regardless the size of your business, mobile app is a must-have tool if you want to improve your brand reputation in the market.

In reality, it’s not a question of whether your small business needs a mobile app; the real question is “why didn’t you have one?” There’s a reason why big companies and brands are putting much effort to build their own mobile app. Even the smallest of companies can take advantage of what mobile app has to offer— which is a lot as revealed in this article.

HOW AUGMENTED REALITY IS IMPACTING RETAIL INDUSTRY IN CHINA?

Augmented Reality in Retail Environments: A Quality Shopping experience most often, the route to sustained success is through developing applications that enhance customer experiences and offering genuine utility. With augmented reality, we are pushing technology out of its boundaries to provide consumers with a custom-made experience. Basically, the use of augmented reality in retail stores has become ideal because it encourages a quality shopping experience among consumers. 

How Augmented Reality is Changing retail industry in China? 

For people who have little time to shop, augmented reality in retail stores and shops provide their consumers with an opportunity to try on items anywhere and anytime without the hassle of going directly to the store. As such, the application of augmented reality in retail environments increases desire and appeal, facilitate choice, and encourage a store visit to make purchases. Undoubtedly, AR is able to improve the online experience to a certain degree, and it prompts a purchase successfully. 

Its ability to allow exploration and to offer options excites and encourages consumers to facilitate item consumption. Some of the exciting features that augmented reality can offer include the AR-enabled fitting rooms, mirrors, and other shopping experiences. Some of the shops in China are already using augmented reality in fashion sections, providing an AR effect in their mirrors and fitting rooms. This allows consumers to try different clothes and styles just by standing in front of the AR-enabled device. Truly, this innovative step in the Chinese retail stores has paved the way to provide consumers with a totally immersive and entertaining shopping experience. 

With over 250 million active 4G subscribers and 624 million internet users, all eyes are now focused on the Chinese market for its vast opportunity and potential in the augmented reality industry. Due to the Chinese internet markets and mobile, foundations for the technology of augmented reality are expanding at a significant speed. Experts are anticipating and expecting the constant growth and popularity of the Chinese AR market.

In fact, past accounts have proven that the Chinese market for AR has become successful. For instance, NeoBear was previously launched to teach children with languages such as Chinese and English through the use of AR phone app which, in turn, has received a huge demand. Another popular AR technology in China is the Fantasy Kaka Bear which is a dancing bear application launched by WeChat.

Conceivably, the most significant trend within the customer-centric approach as of today is the pervasiveness of technology in the direction of Omnichannel marketing.

AR/VR: Growing Popularity

With the wide opportunity for the AR and VR markets in China, their growth is estimated to grow from $865M to $8.5B for the next few years. As it happens, the Chinese government and major Chinese companies are expected to generate a number of mass consumer apps for AR/VR in time. This, in turn, will further expand the Chinese market for both augmented reality and virtual reality products.

It seems that the head of China operations in AR software considers AR and VR technology as something that can be used in the day-to-day life of the Chinese community. Furthermore, contributing factors have emerged to contribute to the growth of the Chinese market for AR and VR. This includes the government support, AR domestic growth, data trade, and AR relationships with the U.S government. Because of this, the bright future of AR in the Chinese market and economy has even become stronger.

Augmented Reality in Retail Environments: A Quality Shopping Experience

Most often, the route to sustained success is through developing applications that enhance customer experiences and offering genuine utility. With augmented reality, we are pushing technology out of its boundaries to provide consumers with a custom-made experience. Basically, the use of augmented reality in retail stores has become ideal because it encourages a quality shopping experience among consumers.

How Augmented Reality is Changing retail industry in China?

For people who have little time to shop, augmented reality in retail stores and shops provide their consumers with an opportunity to try on items anywhere and anytime without the hassle of going directly to the store. As such, the application of augmented reality in retail environments increases desire and appeal, facilitate choice, and encourage a store visit to make purchases. Undoubtedly, AR is able to improve the online experience to a certain degree, and it prompts a purchase successfully. Its ability to allow exploration and to offer options excites and encourages consumers to facilitate item consumption.

Some of the exciting features that augmented reality can offer include the AR-enabled fitting rooms, mirrors, and other shopping experiences. Some of the shops in China are already using augmented reality in fashion sections, providing an AR effect in their mirrors and fitting rooms. This allows consumers to try different clothes and styles just by standing in front of the AR-enabled device.

Truly, this innovative step in the Chinese retail stores has paved the way to provide consumers with a totally immersive and entertaining shopping experience.

Augmented Reality Marketing

Apparently, retail stores in China are craving for innovation that can appeal to their customers. On the other hand, investing in a marketing campaign usually, cost a large sum. Fortunately, the emergence of augmented reality technologies has become an easier and effective marketing tool. Integrating AR-enabled technologies to your products can be used to specifically tailor the needs of every consumer. This then intrinsically provides customers with a sense of exclusivity.

As a good marketing tool, augmented reality in apps and online stores can gain the trust and gather the attention of consumers.

Increasing Demand

Fortunately for the Chinese AR industry, it is not only the consumers that show a strong potential for utilization and consumption. Even their government and the recent AR data exchanges contribute to further developing and advancing their AR industry. Since the Chinese government is giving their full support for AR integrated technology companies, the advancement of retail stores that use AR has even bigger opportunities.

Moreover, the demand for AR experiences by the consumers has also increased. According to a study, it shows that about 70 percent of customers want to visit online stores that offer AR features. Correspondingly, around 40% of them are willing to make a purchase when they obtain AR experience via online shopping.

Conclusion

The future of augmented reality as an integral part of the retail experience appears to be strong. Basically, the Chinese market has already adapted innovations that can optimize the shopping experience for their consumers. Following the right path, augmented reality in online stores can deliver an approach that creates a lasting impact on the lives of the consumers.