Canada’s biggest retail conference is all set to be held on May 28, and 29, 2019 at the Toronto Congress Centre and we’re proud to announce that Webware will be at Booth #114.

STORE 2019 is the biggest retail conference in Canada, and the packed two-day agenda features 70 of North America’s biggest names and retail influencers. The exhibition floor showcases never-before-seen retail tech innovations and solutions and targets the unique needs of the retail industry in Canada.

With more retailers joining every day, this is the biggest networking event of the year, and Webware will be there to help you in any way we can.

For more information, call us at 1-844-WEBWARE, or get in touch with us by clicking here.

Are you a real estate agent or agency considering a new website?

At Webware, we understand that each client we serve has unique needs. Websites for real estate agents and agencies are no exception. A great real estate website allows buyers to gain all the information they need about the agency, the buying/selling process, mortgage rates, properties for sale, neighbourhoods and more.

Purchasing a house or commercial property can be both an exciting and stressful time for buyers. That’s why at Webware, we build real estate websites that strengthen confidence and trust among buyers by using clear content, purposeful design, and access to industry specific tools.

Here’s what’s included with your real estate website at Webware:

1. Design and layout to highlight specific needs of a real estate agent website. We make it easy for your customers to find the information they are looking for immediately. The following are all easily located on the homepage:

• Search listings directory 
• Map display of customizable neighbourhoods
• Prominent contact info
• Team/agent information 
• Testimonials
• Live chat
• Clear call-to-action

2. Clear, easy to find property listings. Simple to use search tools to help your customers navigate your property listings easily and efficiently. 

3. Integration with MyRealPages. MyRealPages offers property listing display, advanced search functionality and search by map capability. 

In addition, our Digital Services Team can boost your website with services including:

1. SEO Keyword research and implementation performed by Real Estate SEO experts

2. Regular blog posts on relevant, current topics in the real estate industry

3. Social media updates to stay in contact with your network

From our experience building real estate websites, Webware already knows what your clients are looking for in their search for the perfect property and agent. We understand the features and design required to meet your website needs. Get a beautiful website for your real estate business and reach prospective customers with an effective online experience. Get started today at webware.io 

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10 Essentials for Your Small Business Website

Up to 62% of consumers (and growing) do their research online before making a purchase! It’s never been more important for businesses to have a well-designed, informative website.

To make a lasting impression on potential customers, here’s 10 essentials for your small business website:

1. Mobile, mobile, mobile! Your website must be mobile-friendly.

• Between December 2013 and December 2015, smartphone internet consumption grew by 78%.
• Your customers are likely accessing your website from a mobile device. 
• A responsive website ensures a smooth, easily-navigable experience and happier customers. 
• Googles cares deeply that your website is mobile-friendly. If it’s not, your website will be bumped down the search results pages, finally landing behind your competitors’ responsive websites. 

2. Relevant business information. People are visiting your website to learn more about what your business offers.

• 47% of website visitors check out a company's products/services page before looking at any other sections of the site. 
• Design each webpage from your customer’s perspective: Give them the info they need to make an informed decision about your product/service.
• Make sure important content is easy to find on your website.

3.  Visible Contact Info. It should be as clear as possible how and where to get in touch with your business. 

• The business phone number should be visible on the homepage. Once on a company's homepage, 64% of visitors want to see the company's contact information. 
• Enable Click to Call. Based on Google’s commissioned research by Ipsos, 70% of mobile searchers have used “The Call Button” in order to get in touch directly with companies.  
• Another convenience favoured by many is live chat support. Learn more about why it’s awesome here. 
• A Contact Us page: a feedback form, the business street address, driving directions (if applicable), or even a link to your FAQ section. 

4. Simple Design. The more “visually complex” a website is, the less likely it is to be seen as “beautiful”. 

• All elements (words, images, videos, links) on the homepage should have a distinct and meaningful purpose. 
• Avoid clutter, small/hard to read fonts, and complex layouts. 
• Include clean lines, intuitive navigation, simple font style and colour schemes throughout the entire website. 

5. Reviews. As the digital age’s word-of-mouth, online reviews are a simple, yet effective way to increase traffic, sales, and improve your online reputation.

• 88% of consumers take reviews into account on purchase decisions!
• Add a review widget like Yotpo so customers can leave a review directly on your website.
• Include a few customer testimonials/reviews on your website.

6. Quality images. Showcase your products and services in action. 

• Use high-resolution images to highlight your products and/or services
• Better quality images create a more enjoyable user experience

7.  Understand SEO basics. Search Engine Optimization is a guiding principle when building a website for your business. 

• SEO comprises several factors working together to build your website’s visibility in search engine results.
• Some factors include: website content, mobile-friendliness, website quality (speed to load pages, duplicate pages, broken links, etc), website architecture and geophysical location
• SEO dramatically affects how many people (potential customers!) can find your website in the internet maze.
• Even if you aren’t building your own website or implementing the SEO strategy, it can be extremely helpful if you understand what SEO can and cannot do for your business. 

8.  Call To Action. A visual focal point on your website that invites customers to act. 

• Common examples of Call to Action are “Buy Now” or “Signup Here” or “Enter your email”. 
• Draw customers’ attention to your offer with colours, images, or typefaces. 
• For example, a bright pink “Start Your Free Trial” button against a neutral background will immediately catch the eye.

9. Monitor load time. How quickly (or slowly) the content on your website loads is crucial to maintaining visitors’ interest. 

• Page load speed affects SEO
• Images, videos, or text that takes too long to load can cause frustration and drive customers away. 

10. Advertise your website on social media. Make it easy for anyone visiting your social media pages to get to your website.

• Add your website to all your social media profiles, business cards and other marketing materials
• Facebook updates, Tweets, Instagram posts etc., should eventually entice people to check out your website.

More and more people are fact-checking products and companies online before they make a purchase. Use these essentials to help your small business website stand out among the online clutter. 

Get a mobile-friendly website that not only looks good, but also adds value to your business. With custom designs, digital services and reasonable prices, Webware’s toolkit is the perfect solution for small businesses.

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4 Principles of Psychology to Keep in Mind When Building Your Website

Are you considering an investment in your small business by building a website? The good news - An effective website can help your business reach new customers and boost your bottom line. The bad news - A poorly designed website not only doesn’t help your business grow, it can cause customers to lose confidence in your business and head elsewhere. Understanding what makes a powerful website from your customers perspective ensures a better user experience and more success out of your website. Whether you plan to invest money by hiring someone to build it for you or invest time building your own website, knowing some website psychology basics can help you get the most out of your investment. 

Here’s 4 principles of psychology to keep in mind when building your website:

Pattern Recognition

As humans, our brains are wired to constantly seek out what we recognize. Recognizing patterns helps us understand and navigate our surroundings. If we come across an unfamiliar situation, our brains may interpret it as a threat, triggering a chemical “fight or flight” response. [source]

However, familiarity lends itself to trust. If your website fits the “website pattern”, your customers are more likely to inherently trust your website and business. Upon landing on your business’s website, your customers will make snap judgements (in less than 1 second!). Instilling trust right away improves the chances of your customers staying on your website after their first impression. Your website should include the basics like your logo, obvious navigation, and banners with high-quality images balanced with easy-to-read text to maintain a recognizable “website pattern”.

Cognitive Overload

From a user-experience perspective, cognitive load is the amount of mental effort required for your customers to navigate your website. The original definition of cognitive load, first used by psychologists, defines cognitive load as the mental effort required to learn a new task. For your customers, the new task is to understand how your website differs from other websites then adjust to their behaviour to effectively use the website. The cognitive load required affects how easy it is for your customers to find the information they’re looking for on your website - and as a small business, you want to make it as easy as possible! [source]

The first step to make things easier for your customers (aka reducing cognitive load), is to know what they’re looking for when they visit your website. Are they looking for food/service menus, your blog, products you sell, information on products/services, or contact details? Then, focus on presenting the information in an easy-to-find way. To reduce the risk of cognitive overload in your website visitors, keep your website as simple and clean-looking as possible. Each piece of content on your website should provide valuable info. Using keywords at the top of your website, like in the navigation bar, help customers understand and navigate quickly.

Attention 

Human brains are designed to pay attention to anything different or unique in our surroundings. From an evolutionary perspective, humans noticing something out of the ordinary was developed as a survival tactic to judge potential threats. [source]

Though there aren’t any threats on your website, marketers can take advantage of this human tendency by creating a visually unique Call-To-Action. Draw customers’ attention to your offer with colours, images, or typefaces. For example, a bright orange “Start Your Free Trial” button against a neutral background will immediately catch your eye, drawing attention to what you want your customers to do. For your customers to be able to respond to your call-to-action, they need to know where it is. For the best results, make it easy for them to find by ensuring it stands out from the rest of your website.

Information Scent

With roots in Information Foraging Theory, information scent can be traced back to the earliest humans hunting for food. The scent of information describes our ability to judge whether or not we will find what we’re looking for by following a certain path. Humans are designed to look for cues that point us in the right direction as we hunt for information. The hunt boils down to two factors - motivation and effort. What will I gain by following this cue (motivation)? and is this a worthy use of my energy (effort)? [source]

Tap into your customers’ natural instinct to know where to look for information. Descriptive navigation tabs and meaningful subheadings initiate a strong information scent. Maintain the scent with images and further text descriptions on landing pages. Like cognitive load, the goal is to make things as easy as possible for your customers. Even if you have a lot of products or subcategories, studies show that customers don’t mind clicking several times, as long as they believe they are headed in the right direction. If the cues on your website don’t support humans tendency to follow the information scent, they’ll likely become frustrated and head back to Google to continue their search.

Conclusion

Investing time and money into your website can be invaluable for your business but it’s important to understand the underlying factors of website success. Using science-backed tactics to instil positive feelings in your website visitors means better chances of reaching new customers, increasing awareness and building sales. Time and money are both extremely valuable to small businesses; keep these website psychology basics in mind to maximize your investment in your website. 

Don’t want to waste time or money on your website? Webware’s professional team ensures your website is optimized for user-experience and setup for success.

How is your website working for your business? If it’s not bringing in traffic or sales, it might be time to give your website a health check-up. Here’s 10 common issues that signal your website could benefit from some TLC:

1. Your website is not mobile responsive. Or worse, you don’t know what mobile responsive means. A website that can be viewed on all devices is not optional; it’s essential. In this booming age of smartphones and tablets, non-responsive websites are outdated, annoying to navigate, and severely affect your rank in search results. If your website in not mobile responsive, run, don’t walk, to your nearest, trusted web designer. Read more about mobile responsiveness and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) here. 

2. You don’t know what SEO means. If you have never heard of Search Engine Optimization, that’s a red flag that you need help. SEO is an essential component of a successful and effective website. When ranking websites in search results, search engines, like Google, run algorithms to check several factors on your website. Here’s a few examples of factors that contribute to where your website lands on search engine results: website content, mobile-friendliness, website quality (speed to load pages, duplicate pages, broken links, etc), website architecture and geophysical location. 

3. Your website has no (or minimal) traffic. Your website has very few visitors or the number of visitors is declining. This is most likely related to no SEO or poor SEO practices. Even if your industry is already saturated online (like women’s fashion), there is room for everyone and a little SEO work can go a long way. 

4. Your web traffic isn’t navigating past your homepage. If your website has a high bounce rate, your traffic is either clicking the “back” button in the browser, closing the tab, or going dormant. In any case, they aren’t being captivated by your website and there could be a few things happening:  

• content is cluttered or hard to read 
• content is irrelevant
• there is no Call-to-Action
• your website is attracting the wrong traffic    

Whatever the reason, if visitors to your website aren’t moving from the initial place they land, now is a good time for a general website review. 

5. Your website isn’t updated regularly. In addition to mobile responsiveness, updates to a website positively contribute to it’s Search Engine Optimization. Regular updates help your website and business get found. If it’s not updated regularly, you will likely notice a decline in web traffic and a drop in your search results rank. If you can’t or don’t know how to make changes to your website, seeking help can get you on the right track. 

6. Your website has 404 error pages. These are error messages a visitor will receive when a URL (link) doesn’t exist; either because it was moved or deleted. This can be an annoying and frustrating experience for your web traffic and may send them packing. Search engines, like Google, do not like 404 errors either. This will be reflected on the search engine results page (SERP) with a low rank. A review for 404 error messages and broken links should be part of your regular website maintenance plan. 

7. You have trouble finding your own website on search engines. If you can’t find your own website online, how do you expect your customers to find it? Being unable to find your website (without typing the exact business name) means it’s not fully optimized for search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a basic website practice that makes it easier for search engines, like Google, to find your website. There are several things you can do to improve your website’s spot on the search engine results pages and here is a good place to start.  

8. Your website was designed by you. Unless you’re a professional designer, designing your own website can be tricky. Web designers have studied the discipline in detail and understand what makes an effective web page. DIY websites can be time consuming, frustrating and can lack the professional polish that comes with hiring an expert. An effective website provides customers with a smooth, user-experience; something a designer has been perfecting for years. If you want your website to work for your business, it’s best to seek out a professional designer. 

9. Your website doesn’t have an online marketing plan. Even if it’s basic and simple, every website needs some amount of online marketing. There are both free and paid services to help you market your website. Blogging, social media presence, email newsletters or setup and maintenance of Google tools are all things you can do for free! Without a plan for finding and attracting potential customers, your website may not be as effective as you expected. 

10. Your website uses flash intros. Thankfully, flash intros on websites have been on a rapid decline over the last 5 years. “Flash” is a web coding technology (by Adobe) to create animation, like a video, on a website. Firstly, search engines cannot read flash technology. If your website has any flash elements, they are detracting from your “search-ability” (how easy or hard it is to find something online). Secondly, they use a lot of bandwidth and can take a long time to load. If your web developer recommends flash elements for your website, it’s time to get a second opinion. 

Your website should be contributing your business. If any of the above 10 signs ring true for you, it’s likely your website could be working harder for your business. Seeking the right help can give your website the refresh it needs to compete in this ever-changing internet world. 

Not sure where to start? Webware offers a complete tool-kit to help businesses navigate the internet. Your toolkit includes: a content website or an ecommerce website, blog plus all the digital services your website needs to thrive online.