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Category: iNews

Web Apps vs. Mobile Apps: Which Is Most Suited For Your Business?

Many people mistakenly believe that websites and mobile applications are the same thing, when in fact they have huge differences. These two are designed and developed differently. Thus, possess distinct characteristics that affect their usability, functionality, and user experience. If you’re considering developing an app for your business, it’s important to understand these differences. This can help you make an informed decision on which type of app to develop based on your target audience, user needs, and business objectives.

To assist you in your decision-making process, we’ve outlined the primary differences of web and mobile apps in this blog. Let’s take a look!

Web Apps

A website application, or simply web app, is a software application that’s accessible through a web browser over the internet. It runs on a remote server and can be accessed through a variety of devices including computers and smartphones. It doesn’t require users to download and install them on their devices. As long as they have an internet connection, they’re all set.

Advantages:

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility: Website applications can be accessed through any device with a web browser. This makes them easily accessible on any platform or operating system.
  • No Downloads or Installations: Web apps don’t require downloading or installation. It saves users storage space on their devices and reduces the time needed to access them.
  • Easy Maintenance: Since website applications have a single code base, updating and maintaining them is easier and more cost-effective.
  • Lower Development Costs: Developing a web app can be less expensive than developing a native app for different platforms.
  • Easy to Share: Sharing web apps is simple because they can be accessed through a URL.

Disadvantages:

  • Limited Functionality: Website applications don’t have access to the same system resources as native apps. With this, it has limited functionalities and performance.
  • Dependence on Internet Connection: Web apps require a stable internet connection to work properly. This can be a disadvantage in areas with poor connectivity.
  • Security Risks: Website applications are vulnerable to security threats like hacking, phishing, and malware attacks because they are accessible through the internet.
  • Not Ideal for Complex Apps: Web apps are not suitable for complex apps that require advanced hardware or software features.
  • Limited User Experience: Native apps offer a more customized and personalized user experience compared to web apps. These are more generic and standardized.

Mobile Apps

As the name itself, mobile app is a software application designed to run on mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. It is typically downloaded from an app store like Google Play Store or Apple App Store. They are specifically designed to run on a mobile device’s operating system, such as Android or iOS. It takes advantage of the device’s hardware, including its touch screen, camera, GPS, and other features. 

Advantages:

  • Accessibility: Mobile applications are easily accessible from anywhere and anytime through smartphones and tablets.
  • Offline availability: There are mobile apps that can be accessed even without an internet connection. This allows users to use them in areas with poor or no network coverage.
  • Enhanced user experience: Mobile applications provide a better user experience than web apps. Since they are designed specifically for mobile devices, users can utilize device-specific features like touchscreens, cameras, and GPS.
  • Personalization: Mobile apps can be personalized to each user’s preferences. This makes them feel more connected to the app and more likely to continue using it.
  • Push notifications: Mobile applications can send push notifications to users, providing reminders, updates, and other important information.

Disadvantages:

  • Development cost: Developing a mobile app can be expensive, especially if it needs to be developed for multiple platforms.
  • Maintenance cost: Maintaining a mobile application can also be costly, requiring regular updates and bug fixes.
  • Device compatibility: Mobile apps may not be compatible with all devices, limiting the app’s reach and accessibility.
  • App store approval process: Mobile apps must go through an approval process before they can be listed in app stores. This can be time-consuming and costly.
  • Limited functionality: Mobile apps may have limited functionality compared to web apps, especially in terms of data processing and storage.

Bottomline

There are a lot of factors to consider when developing an app for your business. Make sure to think of your audience and choose what can provide the best possible experience to them. Another thing, for easier and outstanding application development, partner with a tech company that has proven its expertise and reliability in application development like iManila

With 27 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions.
iManila is a full-service business web development company in the Philippines ready to help you with WordPress website creation or building an ecommerce website for your business. From web design and development and website update and maintenance, to web hosting, email hosting, and technical, desktop and remote support, we are your team. Aside from this, we are also an applications development company specializing in customized web systems for businesses in different industries and a top digital marketing agency that provides a wide range of digital marketing services. Talk to us!

Your Quick Guide to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System refers to a software program that enables businesses to conveniently keep track of all customer-related communications.  It replaces the use of multiple spreadsheets, databases, and apps used to track client data, streamlining the workflow. Thus, CRM systems ensure a smooth and coherent process in the whole customer journey. As an end result, it helps organizations with efficiency, productivity, and relationship building with clients.

Main types of CRM systems

Although CRMs are all-in-one tools and can pull in various features from each type, knowing the different types will help you learn the most important CRM features for your business. If you’re just starting out and are looking for the best CRM systems to use, then this blog will definitely help.

Collaborative CRM systems

As the name suggests, Collaborative CRM systems help companies to connect multiple departments, such as sales, marketing, and customer service. In return, this ensures their organized daily work is based on single-source customer data. Using this system enables all teams to have quick access to all customer data. Hence, preventing data duplication or data loss and increases teams’ productivity in the process.

Operational CRM Systems

An operational CRM System is a type of service that centralizes on streamlining and automating diverse workflows for customer-facing teams. It has flexible tools that are used to create, monitor, and optimize customer-facing business processes.

Unlike collaborative CRMs that use single-source data access and unified data management, operational CRM systems focus on operational excellence and automation for each business unit.

Analytical CRM Systems

For businesses looking to provide in-depth business intelligence based on customer data, then this is the one for you. Basically, these CRMs feature multiple types of analytics such as interactive dashboards, campaign pipelines, workflow-embedded analytics, text & speech analytics, and more. This CRM is typically great for reporting capabilities and ensuring transparency of customer-facing activities for managers and executives.

All-in-one CRM systems

Compared to other CRM system features here, All-in-one CRM systems enable organizations to automate back-office workflows and operations. It provides a full range of workflow automation, collaboration, and analytical capabilities. In return, it allows full-cycle automation of all business units. Overall, it serves as a unified solution for workflow automation for enterprise-level organizations across marketing, sales, service, and operations.

All-in-one CRMs offer tons of benefits for workflow-intensive organizations in such industries as FinServ, Manufacturing, or Telecom, where adherence to standards is essential.

CRM Systems are an essential part of business operations. So if you’re looking for help setting up one for your organization, then let iManila help!

iManila is an applications development company specializing in customized web systems for businesses in different industries. With 27 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions.

On top of this, iManila is also a full-service business web development company in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, dedicated server, technical, desktop and remote support needs and a digital marketing agency that provides a wide range of digital marketing services. Talk to us!

Proven and Tested Ways to Improve Your Website Conversion Rates this 2023

Conversion rate is the core and one of the most important metrics to monitor in any digital marketing campaign. If you’re new to e-commerce, conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the total number of web visitors. 

How does it work? Basically, you run a campaign to encourage people to do a desired action. Conversion rate reflects how well your strategy is. A good campaign gets people to take action and convert while ineffective ones won’t. 

If you have a low conversion rate, better to reassess your marketing plan. Study what makes users convert and where they bounce. Take this blog as a guide! 

Include social proof to your site

Your audience won’t always believe everything you say. So, if you make a claim, it would be best to provide evidence in the form of customer reviews to support it. In fact, according to Trust Pulse, 83% of people are more likely to trust a review than an advertisement. Similarly, 97% of consumers look at reviews before making a purchase. With this in mind, incorporating social proof would definitely help boost your conversion rate.

Shorten your forms

Imagine discovering an e-commerce site that sells high-quality goods at reasonable prices. But then it requires you to fill out lengthy forms to get more information or seal a transaction. What a bummer, right?

Long forms can help you know your audience but can also drive them away. It’s annoying to fill out so many fields before accessing information or buying a product so, consider reducing it. Take Marketo as an example – a conversion rate of 10% was observed with their 9-field form. Reducing the number of fields to 5 increased the conversion rate for the same form to 13.4%. Shorten your forms or drive your potential customers away.

Keep it simple

Aside from shortening your forms, make the buying process easier by simplifying the whole user experience. People’s attention spans are shorter than they were years ago which was proven in an experiment conducted by Etsy. The team added 160KB images to their pages to intentionally slow down their load speed. As a result, their bounce rate increased by 12%. 

Remember, people will abandon your site if it takes too much of their time navigating it. With that, make sure to have a straightforward UX design, clear instructions, obvious CTAs, and make it a point NOT to offer too many options.

Don’t require a login

People choose online shopping for convenience. However, if it requires extra effort to have access like registering or logging in, chances are they will dodge you. Just like in the study conducted by the Baymard Institute, 37% of customers completely abandoned their checkout process when they were required to create an account. In the same study, 38% of the e-commerce sites examined did not even provide customers with the option to create a temporary account prior to completing their purchase.

Don’t risk lowering your conversion rate. Make login or sign up fields optional. Let users browse your shop as a guest. And having a clickable “Checkout as Guest” button is a plus too! 

Make personalized content

As the cliché saying goes, “content is king” – and nothing could beat a personalized one! According to Accenture, 91% of consumers say that they are more likely to shop from a brand that offers deals and recommendations that are relevant to them. This only shows personalized content is something you shouldn’t sleep on. 

To get you started, here are some things you could try for a more personalized content:

  • Establish your target market’s persona then share content that connects with them. 
  • Give each customer a discount that is unique to them based on their location, customer behavior, or how they use your website.
  • If you want to reach more people in your area, make sure your website and content are optimized for local SEO.

While there’s no thing such as “one size fits all” when it comes to your website, these tips could be your starting point. And if you need help in implementing these, you could always hire an all-in-one team that specializes in web design and development, web maintenance, and content writing like iManila! 

With 27 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, a web development company and a top digital marketing company in the country, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions. As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, dedicated server, technical, desktop and remote support, and digital marketing services needs.  Talk to us!

Beat the Heat of Online Competition: Ways to Increase Your Website's Traffic

As entrepreneurs, we aim to rise from the market competition. Having an online presence through a website is a good start but that alone doesn’t make much of a cut. It requires succeeding actions like increasing your website traffic to really be ahead of your competitors.

Website traffic is the amount of users visiting your site. It is frequently used as a metric by businesses to assess their efficacy and success in attracting a larger audience to their brand online. An increase in website traffic means increase in potential customers, conversions, sales, and brand awareness. If you want to level up your business and beat the heat of online competition, take this blog as a guide!

Create Audience Research

Understanding your audience is one of the first steps you can do to succeed in generating website traffic. By conducting audience research you can better understand your target market’s needs, problems, and goals. Knowing this will enable you to develop relevant, customized material for them. Remember, you won’t increase traffic to your site by producing content purely for the purpose of producing it. You must produce material that is audience-focused. 

Do a Keyword Research

The next step in gaining relevant and targeted traffic to your site is carrying out keyword research. This is the premise of your search engine optimization (SEO), a strategy used to organically elevate your rank in search engine result pages.

Keywords are words or phrases your audience uses to find content. You must include these in your headline, meta tags, and content to increase the likelihood of your content ranking. To identify these keywords, you have to invest in a powerful keyword research tool. But, of course, expect that this comes with a price.

Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

Watching your rivals is also a great way to improve website traffic. By looking at what other people do to increase their own organic search traffic, you can create an effective strategy of yours. To start, determine your competitors.

  • Direct competitors: Any company or individual who provides the same goods or services as you do.
  • Indirect competitors: Companies who do not necessarily provide the same goods or services as you do but aim to appeal to the same market as yours. 

Combining your observations on both direct and indirect competitors will give you a great and faultless gameplan. Just make sure that your data is accurate. You may use competitor analysis tools to help you on this. But, again, this could come pricey.

Produce High-Quality Content

Of course, if you want to attract the ideal visitors to your website you need to produce excellent content. Create content that sticks out among roughly 6 million blog entries that are generated every day. To achieve this, make sure your content is easy to read, well written and formatted, informative, and trustworthy. You could also check Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines to know more about content that ranks.

Take Advantage of Social Media

With over 4.6 billion users, social media is a forceful way of generating website traffic. Leverage from this by posting previews or teasers of your new website content. Hashtags are also popular in this channel. Using the right hashtags can connect you to your intended audience. Lastly, social media is a platform for user interaction. Take advantage of this to engage with your audience. 

Use Email Marketing

No one loves your content more than people who’ve enlisted for your newsletter. Use your email list to promote your content. Send some of your blog postings to your email list subscribers. This will serve as a reminder that your blog is a great source of information.

Don’t have an email list yet? Building one from scratch requires a lot of work. Luckily, there are tools available online that you can use. Take note that these come with subscription terms and fees, but are totally worth it.

Run Paid Ads

Running paid advertisements can be a good addition to content marketing. However, its primary goal is to increase traffic to your site. It yields quicker results and enables hyper-targeting, allowing you to concentrate your campaigns to people who connect with your content.

Website traffic is important and crucial in growing your business so better to work it out. Invest if you must. For an easier and cost-effective solution, hire a digital marketing team that can help you with these like iManila!

With 27 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions.

iManila is a full-service business web development company in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, dedicated server, technical, desktop and remote support needs. Aside from this, we are also an applications development company specializing in customized web systems for businesses in different industries and a digital marketing agency that provides a wide range of digital marketing services. Talk to us!

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