Why build an app?

The principles of branding and PR remain, whether your medium is online or offline. Conveying your brand story and providing quality content should be starting point for any branding and PR endeavours.

Providing a useful platform and quality content for free cements your brand values and gives more depth to your brand story. With brand awareness and increased affinity inevitably brings sales. Building an app to serve your customer is one way of doing this, big brands such as Nike have done this especially well by creating their Nike+ app.

When Connolly Red Mills came to us they wanted to create an app that would benefit their customer by giving them information at their fingertips. 

Red Mills produce premium high-performance equine feeds and pet foods, and their expertise in research and innovation has been built up over five generations. It was this type of expertise that they wanted to be able to pass on to their customers. 

As the Red Mills customer is generally not sitting at a computer an app means information is available to them 24/7. Red Mills sales reps have also been using the app to get some instant information.

Laura McDonald from Connolly RedMills says,

“The hope is that we are now answering questions for more people, before the app we needed one on one conversations to relay the information that is now available in the app”

To Red Mills Feeding app is available for free from the App Store. 

How does your site rate when it comes to mobile optimisation?

Here at MOR Solutions we believe that having a mobile optimised site is important for all businesses. 

We have been busy building mobile optimised sites for quite some time and are currently putting the finishing touches to our own updated MOR Solutions mobile optimised site. Since our designers have been studying the mobile Internet market for the past few years I had a chat with them to pinpoint some of the most important factors in mobile optimisation.

Latest studies suggest that by 2015 mobile traffic will have surpassed desktop traffic. A Google study suggests that 74% of people made a purchase as a direct result of information received via their smartphone. 

These statistics put forward a convincing argument but to find out if your business will benefit from mobile optimisation you need to look at your site analytics. Compare and analyse your visitor behaviour and ask yourself some of the following questions. 

When is your site getting most visitors e.g is it at time when they are traveling to or from work? 

Are visits coming from desktop or mobile?

What are people likely to be doing on your site?

Are they looking for entertainment, looking for time-sensitive information or localised information? 

Don't only think about how people are currently using your site but also think about what added value you could bring to your customer by having a mobile site.

So you have decided a mobile optimised site can benefit your business, what does that entail ?

Fast loading

The majority of people expect a mobile site to load faster than a desktop site. Users are unlikely to return to a site that is slow to load and nearly half will go to a competitor site. Look into any factors that are slowing your site down.

Keep your layout simple 
You shouldn't have to pinch or zoom your screen to read text. You shouldn't have to hold the screen close to your face. Buttons should be big and separated from other buttons so that people do not accidentally click trough to a part of the site that they do not want.

Organisation of content.
If you have lots of content that cannot be made more concise make sure you have a prominent search box that can allow people to find what they are looking for without browsing the whole site. Make sure your site only scrolls one way, generally up and down.

Shorten conversion process.

Making it easy for people to convert is very important on mobile, remember this may not necessarily mean making a purchase, it can mean ensuring the communication channel is open for future sales or to enable the customer to take the next step in the purchase process.
If there are forms for people to fill, make sure that they are as minimal as possible. Don't ask for any extra information than is absolutely necessary at that time. 

Make account access easy, quick login options and saving details from previous visits. 

Click to call functions are important, remember this is not just an Internet device it can still be used in it's most traditional form! 

Think of how you can use other mobile phone features to complete your sale or make your content more useful. For example entering shipping dates automatically into a customers diary.

If you decide your site can benefit from mobile optimisation, don't hesitate to give us a call!

Stuff we do!

In recent months we have been working on raft of new sites here at MOR Solutions, one such site is networkireland.ie.

Network Ireland is a great networking association for women in business, professionals and the Arts to  exchange ideas and increase their business contacts.
Network Ireland came to us as they wanted to strengthen their online identity with cohesive branding on their national and regional websites and also provide an up to date live database of members.

National Network Ireland Site

Their national site launched in recent months and contains a database of all members. Local Network Ireland organisations are rolling out new websites in line with the branding on the national site.

New members can sign up online with their local Network Ireland branch.  This easy sign up process requires minimal administration from Network Ireland organisers and is linked to the members database on their national website.

Limerick Regional Network Ireland Site

The launch of Network Ireland site allows members and organisers to network more easily with members outside their local branch and strengthens the organisatiions links to other organisation and networks.

How Google decides where your site ranks, straight from the horses mouth!

Everyone knows a high search ranking on Google is good way to drive traffic to your site. However if you do not understand what Google do, getting your site to move up the search engine results can feel like you are fighting a losing battle. There is so much information out there on how to drive traffic to your site but finding a point to begin at can seem overwhelming as articles are aimed at many different skill levels.

If you want to get your information straight from the horses mouth google have produced a video that gives you a brief run down on how they work in just over 7 minutes. It is explained in simple language and will provide a good baseline of information from which to expand your knowledge on the search engine optimisation.

If you would like to learn more ways to improve your sites performance MOR Solutions are running evening seminars and workshops on this very subject.
Email ava@morsolutions.com to find out which course best suits your needs.