Tag: apps

Google vs. Bing

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Search engines have replaced encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference books and trips to the library, having become, over the last two decades, everyone’s resource for finding answers and information. By far, the most used search engine in the world is Google. It’s been around since 1997 and is constantly improving with new features and algorithms. In fact, Google’s search engine is so dominant, with approximately 65 percent of the country’s search market share, that the word, itself, has become a verb: to Google something is to search for it online; much like the brand name Xerox once became the active word for photocopying something.

Never to be outdone, computer behemoth Microsoft has had several search engines over the years, including Windows Live Search and MSN Search. Today, it has Bing, which in addition to powering its own searches also powers Yahoo search. Thus, Bing serves the other third of U.S. internet searchers.

Why is Google twice as popular as Bing? It may simply be a matter of habit, since it’s been around longer, because, in reality, both search engines are very similar. They both search the Web and deliver images, news, and product information in easy-to-read formats. But since both sites also serve as hubs for the other web properties that their respective parent companies own, both Microsoft and Google stand to gain monetarily by keeping web surfers using their engines. So there has been a brisk competition between them, and when comparing the two search engines (although Bing refers to itself as a “decision engine”) some differences do appear.

The first noticeable difference is the two search engine’s home pages. Google’s is pretty much a blank canvas, while Bing’s sports a colorful home page, with downloadable images that change daily. Along the top of Bing’s home page are links to more images, videos, maps, news, etc. and along the bottom are dozens more links that can immediately take a user to current news stories and other interesting sites. According to Microsoft, all of this was designed to simplify search tasks and make it easier for users either find what they’re looking for, or to encourage serendipitous searches. And when clicking on one of the images at the bottom of the screen, Bing takes its users to pages filled with a lot more information, a lot more images, and a lot more videos than Google.

In addition, the general consensus is that Bing’s video search is significantly better than Google’s. Bing gives the searcher a grid of large thumbnails that can be clicked on to play without leaving Bing, itself. For some videos, it even gives a preview when a mouse hovers over it.

Conversely, most PC experts believe that for informational searches Google comes out slightly ahead. As time goes on, though, it remains to be seen whether Bing’s more elaborate bells and whistles will allow it to whittle away significantly at Google’s market share. It’s the cyber battle of Coke versus Pepsi and as of now, Google is still the one that most users reach for.

How Important are Mobile-Friendly Websites?

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Here’s the quick answer: VERY. By 2017, it is estimated that there will be 150 million mobile websites – that’s 149 million more than there were in 2007. With 4 billion mobile phones being used, world-wide, it won’t be long before many people’s first internet experience will be through a mobile device. If your business doesn’t maintain a mobile-friendly website, you are missing the opportunity to attract customers over their mobile phones.

Google has already recognized this shift when it recently rolled out of a major algorithm update that is designed to allow mobile-friendly websites to appear higher in mobile searches, while non-mobile sites will experience lower rankings. So if you want your site to rank high in Google, it is now imperative that it is optimized for mobile.

However, SEO ranking is not the only reason to have a mobile-friendly site. The fact is, that sometime in 2014, mobile usage overtook desktop usage for the first time, ever. If your business’ site is not mobile-friendly, you’re running the risk of losing over 50 percent of your visitors. So if you want to keep the traffic flowing, it pays to make the move to mobile.

Here’s another reason. Optimizing a website for mobile has been proven to boost engagement by almost twice the average traffic per user. Since the vast majority of people tend to move between devices when completing a task, offering them an engaging mobile experience increases the likelihood that they will re-visit your website on a desktop.

Also, research indicates that consumers are more likely to do business with an online retailer if it has a mobile-optimized site. And finally, many smart phone users employ GPS when they’re on the go. A mobile-friendly site that allows consumers to find nearby services and businesses while still in their cars can increase walk-in traffic substantially. Not only that, the use of bar codes on a mobile-friendly site can be used for instant discounts by those same walk-in customers.

To sum up: SEO, traffic, engagement, and sales are four good reasons why your website should be optimized for mobile as soon as possible. And remember, your competition is already making the move. If you don’t want to be left behind in this next technology wave, you need to make the transition, now.

Does My Company Need a Mobile App?

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There is only one way to answer the question: Does my company need a mobile app? And that is: It depends. It depends on a lot of things going on in your company and the type of business you’re in, so in order to answer the big question, you’re going to need to ask yourself a lot of lesser questions and keep probing until you have enough answers to get past the doubt.

Let’s start with some basic questions: Do you think that your business will benefit from having an app? Will the benefits outweigh the costs? What are your competitors doing and how will that impact your decision? These are not easy things to figure out, but perhaps using an analogy will help. Not too long ago, businesses didn’t have websites. If someone wanted to find your business they had the Yellow Pages and, if you could afford it, paid advertising in various media.

Today, you’d have a hard time finding a business that didn’t have a website. They’re just too valuable a tool for connecting with customers. Your business has a website and your competition does, too. Well, mobile activity is proceeding at a pace similar to the desktop/laptop activity of only a few years ago, and it may overtake it in the very near future. If you believe that most of your consumers will be on their smart phones most of the time, then you may well want to engage with them in that manner. And if your competition is already there, then you definitely need to consider having your own app, as well.

Today, the sectors that are most aggressively producing apps are restaurant and retail. Restaurant apps make it easy for users to find locations, review menus, place orders, and make reservations. Retail apps are very convenient when looking for a specific product or comparing prices. They are also used to find offer codes and coupons. And, of course, some companies, such as Uber, are totally dependent on their app. All these apps have specific purposes. So another crucial question you need to have a good answer to is: “What will your app do?” If you can’t readily explain your app’s purpose, you need to go back to square one.

Here’s another good question: “Is your current website ‘responsive,’ meaning does its layout adjust according to what device is being used to access it?” In the very recent past, most website interfaces were designed to work with a keyboard and a mouse on a large screen only; they didn’t work well on mobile platforms. But a responsive site can be accessed on a desktop or a smart phone and the interface will be optimized for each different device. If your business already has a website that’s mobile-friendly, an app might be superfluous; especially when you consider that apps have to be written and maintained for different platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.), but responsive websites are all-inclusive.

Finally, here are a few more questions that you should consider that relate directly to the consumers you would be trying to engage with your mobile app: 1) “Will your app make life easier for them?” 2) “Will your app make life less expensive for them?” 3) “Will your app make life more fun for them?” Remember, there are already thousands and thousands of apps out there. The world is not screaming for another one – unless of course, it can answer all of the above questions, positively. Then there’s always enough room for one more good one.

This list of questions is by no means exhaustive. But they are the kind of business questions you need to start asking yourself before going to the expense of creating and maintaining an app that might not amount to much more than an icon on page five on someone’s smart phone. If, when all is said and done, you can undeniably ascertain that an app will benefit your company because you believe it will make more than it costs in the long run, and that if you don’t have one you will lose ground to your competition, than you can pretty much conclude that you need it. But ask the questions, first.

Apple’s iPhone 6 Release Highlights the Need for Responsive Design

The Apple iPhone 6 and 6+ have launched, and demand is so high users who order are facing order fulfillment delays reaching into October. The delays don’t seem to dampening sales, however. “Response to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has been incredible, with a record number of preorders overnight,” Apple told the Financial Times.

To avoid these delays, users are waiting in long lines at the brick-and-mortar stores of major retailers and wireless carriers who sell the phone. “There are going to be ridiculously huge lines,” Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, tells USA Today. “Demand for iPhone 6 is so high.”

Reports indicate many of those waiting in line may be app developers or their proxies. This is because developers are anxious to immediately update their apps to run on the new phone and new operating system. Apps for both Apple and Android products have skyrocketed, after all, following the general trend toward greater smartphone use.

What does this mean for businesses? To put it simply, increased. Just as the surge in internet use a decade ago drove companies online, forcing them to build an online presence in order to reach customers, the new wave of increased smartphone use demands that companies now field online sites that can be easily viewed and used on smartphones. When possible, companies are also developing apps to make connecting with customers even easier.

In the past, websites were designed solely for use on computers with relatively large monitors. As mobile internet was developed, users found these sites difficult to view and use on the smaller screens offered by portable devices. The original answer to this question was the development of separate, similar mobile sites designed to be easier to view and use on smaller screens.

The technology has advanced, however, and now websites can be built that automatically query the users device when they access the site in order to determine the size of the screen. Based on the answer, the site then chooses from one of several ready-made format options designed to best different ranges of screen sizes. This is called “responsive website design.”

40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes just three seconds to load.
40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes just three seconds to load.

Determining the right format for the user’s device isn’t the only key to responsive design, however. A properly designed website can also load faster on mobile devices. Even a good 4G connection loads slower than most wired or wireless broadband internet connections, and some flashy features like sliders and large-format graphics that look great on a large screen and load easily through a broadband connection can load dramatically slower on mobile connections. Responsive websites determine the user’s speed and delay or eliminate the loading of these bandwidths hog as necessary. Remember, as we have discussed in another blog article, 40 percent of users will abandon a site that takes as little as three seconds to load, and 79 percent won’t return to a site they previously had trouble loading. In this business, time is quite literally money.

How do you know if your site is responsive? Odds are, if your site wasn’t built in the last year or tow or hasn’t been extensively updated or overhauled in that time, it isn’t – or at the least isn’t using the current full capabilities of responsive design. Here’s a good way to check: Pull out your smartphone. Open your web browser. Enter your site address. If you can’t view or use the site easily, odds are your customers also can’t…or won’t.

If you need a responsive web site designed, or an existing website overhauled to be responsive, at The Click Experts, we can help. We know responsive coding inside and out, and have the knowledge and experience to put it to work for you and your business. This means we can build responsive designs into both template and custom sites. We also build custom apps for both Android and iPhone, so if your company wants there to be “an app for that”, we can help. We offer free quotes, so there’s no excuse to check and see how custom apps and/or a website featuring responsive design can benefit your business. Don’t lose customers due to bad design. Contact The Click Experts today!

Apple introduces the new iPhone 6:

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