Impact of Email Response Time on Brand Impression

“The growing popularity of social media will suppress the relevance of emails.”

Numerous self-proclaimed tech-gurus predicted this statement more than a decade ago.

Current situation? 58% of people check their mail inbox the first thing in the morning. And globally, a striking figure of 269 billion emails are sent per day!

Take it from us. Email is not going anywhere, not anytime soon. In fact, according to the experts at any digital marketing agency India, this is one of the best marketing tools in the contemporary digital ecosystem.

And we also cannot undermine the importance of prompt email response to build a superior brand impression. Wondering how? Stick to the end!

Email Response Time

You already know the importance of personalized email to draw attention. If you succeed to compel the recipients to check your mail instead of tagging it as spam, we appreciate your potential to curate a catchy content.

But this is not the end. The consequent activities will determine the strength of your overall business strategy.

If the recipients choose to respond, your response time may decide whether they will convert or not.

Remember, people want a reply, and they want it now.

According to a study, 11% of the people expect a response within 15 minutes, while 19% may wait up to one hour. So prepare yourself to meet this level of expectation.

Here’s a striking fact: the companies that respond to the inquiries within an hour have 60X higher chances to earn leads than those taking about 24 hours (source: Time to Reply)!  

So, What Does a Timely Reply Do Anyway?

Evokes a Sense of Reliability - Once you are sending email acknowledgements, you are letting people know that you are proactive, responsive, and trustworthy. This will also create a positive impression of your professionalism and reflect a higher level of dedication to your business.

Compels You to Act - If one person has faced an issue, others can face it too. Be it the slow loading speed or cluttered information on your website - a feedback mail from the end-user can help you identify the potential issues present on your site or app.

If you take an action immediately and fix the issue, it will only enhance the user experience on your portal.

Advances Your Business - If the sender shows interest in your products or services, don’t delay to provide the necessary information. It can produce a positive impact on your ROI (Return on Investment).

Now that you have understood the efficacy of a prompt email response, here are the two time-tested ways to accomplish that. Check these out.

How to Respond to Emails Quickly

1. Employ a Dedicated Team

We understand sometimes it becomes difficult to respond to all the emails at once. This can be a potential problem in large companies. That’s why you should invest in a dedicated team to coordinate with the leads.

Also, if you miss out a mail by mistake, don’t forget to apologize.

2. Use an Automated Tool

There are several Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered email auto-response tools that scan the incoming emails and send prompt and customized corresponding replies. Much like a drip campaign, you see!

Two such examples include GetResponse and RoboResponse. These are capable of engaging leads in an email discussion 24x7.

Here’s a quick tip: Sometimes, it may take you a while to solve the mail sender’s query or concern. In such a scenario, assure him or her with a quick and short reply that your team is on it and you will get back shortly.

This little gesture of acknowledgement can go a long way in generating trust about your business.

Conclusion

Customer Experience (CX) is a crucial factor in the contemporary digital age. In fact, 80% of the people are more likely to convert if the business meets their expectations.

And email response time has a major role to play in enhancing or reducing the CX.

So make sure to deliver a prompt reply and solve any user query. This will leave a positive impact on the psyche of your audience and help in the growth of your business.

Ultimate Checklist for Responsive Website Design

The buzz of responsive website design had already started some time back, but has reached its zenith this year.

The traditional way of designing a site for desktop and then making it work on mobile (or other) devices is simply not working anymore.

The bottom line is, and we cannot stress this enough, smart device-first is the ONLY way to go.

Wondering why? Because almost half of the web traffic is generated through a mobile platform (source: Search Engine Watch)!

Leveraging such a wide audience can produce a great impact on your business. But for that, you need to have a clear insight into making a responsive web design.

Of course, you can seek assistance from the experts at any website design company, nevertheless, you should do your homework first.

So, let’s start from the basics.

 

What is a Responsive Web Design - An Overview

Once upon a time, responsive web design used to suggest mobile-friendly websites only. But with the advancement of technology, the term received a greater connotation. Now, it indicates the sites that can be accessed on any smart device.

A smart device can be as small as a watch or as big as a TV. The responsive websites can easily adjust to the specifications of multiple smart devices and remain equally functional and appealing across any device platform.

So, businesses need to ensure their sites look presentable and navigable across various smart devices, browsers, and operating systems.

But the real problem is how would you understand whether your site is working across devices?

No worry! We got you covered. Here is the ultimate checklist for a responsive website.

1. Run a Thorough Visual Testing
The images and texts should be perfectly aligned. Ensure that the content doesn’t exceed the edges of the screen.

If some part of the content is less important, you may choose to keep it “out-of-sight” on small devices. However, make sure the important part of the content remains visible across all platforms.

2. Mind the Typography

The typography must be compatible with varied platforms. The content is the heart of a website and should be readable and presentable across devices.

3. Test the Site on Multiple Devices and Browsers

This is a crucial part. Before your site goes live, it’s important to check its availability across browsers and devices. It will give you a clear insight into how the users can access your site.

Enhancing the User-Experience (UX) is central to a business. If you find any technical glitch while operating the site, you need to fix the issue ASAP.

4. Assess Traffic Data
Avail mobile and web traffic data from Google Analytics. Here you will learn which mobile devices and browsers are mostly used by the visitors to access your site. Now check how your site looks on these devices and browsers.

5. Check the Loading Speed
Do you know that 47% of people won’t wait for a page to load for more than 3 seconds! So, optimize your site loading speed if you don’t want to increase the bounce rate.

Compress large resources to display them appropriately on smaller devices. However, ensure that the quality is not reduced. You may also boost the site’s performance by using cache data.

6. Ensure Smooth Navigation for the Site 

The navigation element must not overlap the edges of the screen. You may use the hamburger menu icon for hidden navigation. Such an intuitive interface can enables visitors to easily navigate through the website.


7. Examine Interactivity

Various control instruments like keyboard, stylus, mouse, and even fingertips are used while interacting with devices. Keep an eye on the accessibility and responsiveness of your site through these control means.

8. Review the Site Pop-ups

You should check whether the inline pop-ups and browser window pop-ups are responsive.

Now that you have learnt analyse your site’s responsiveness, let’s dig deeper.

In the next passage, we will explore the consistency in design assets. Your brand must maintain consistency in design across various media platforms. This is a crucial element in responsive web design.

Why?

Let’s explain it with an example. The moment you hear “Nike”, ”Apple”, or “Coca-Cola”; immediately you can visualize the logos of these brands, right? This is the power of memorable, strong, and consistent designs.

The design assets must look consistent across various platforms even after resizing or scaling. From icons to typography, colours to font - every aesthetic element of your site come under this category.

To avoid a negative brand impression, carefully test the following:

Fonts

Some fonts are likely to look uneven or clumsy when they are scaled up or down, or viewed on different browsers and devices.

For instance, Mac OS can properly set font-weight, whereas Windows cannot. Again, the fonts may appear to be somewhat slimmer on Safari as compared to Chrome.

So make sure to test fonts and evaluate them on the basis of the above-stated parameters.

Media Files and Colour

Make sure that different versions of an image are compatible with multiple browsers, viewport and device resolution.

You may use the Chrome Developer tools to check if the images can adversely affect the performance of the website. 

Also, identify if there are colour inconsistencies and fix them. For a better understanding, you may take a look at the importance of colour theory in website designs.

Code

Here’s a basic checklist to support you in the code-testing procedure:

-Check if several browsers support a particular JS, HTML, or CSS property.

-Look for any visual discrepancies after writing the codes. Pay proper attention to the following:

• Spacing - The elements or content must not run over each other.
• Alignment - Ensure that the dynamic elements are aligned properly.
• Layout - Check if the entire layout is compatible with various sizes of the viewport.
• Horizontal Scroll - Look for the long links that make horizontal scrolling mandatory on the small-sized screens. These may affect the readability and user experience. Also, test text legibility on different browsers and viewport.
• Adjustable Format - Make sure to adjust the site elements on the basis of the viewport size. Check if the elements can be easily made to hide, appear, or get re-sized.
• Responsive Image - The images should adequately fit within their allotted spaces. Optimize the CSS and JS images; compress or minimize them without affecting quality.

Note that several factors including the browser engine, display resolution, and GPU play a significant role in determining how the end-users perceive the site. So, if you are not much tech-savvy, it’s better to consult a reputed website development company.

Conclusion

Responsive web design needs to be updated regularly depending on the technological developments. Continue to test your site for responsiveness on various devices, browsers, and operating systems.

Remember, an eye-opening survey by Infront reveals that about 94% of people won’t rely on a website if it has poor design and accessibility!

So, put your best efforts to set the first impression. And for any little help, we are always there!

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Warm Greetings On A Happy New Year 2020 From Webguru Infosystems!

Responsive Website Versus Mobile App: A Comparison

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all,” Michael Leboeuf.

If the global mobile internet usage figures are anything to go by then mobiles (along with tablets) will be the dominant platform to access the internet vis-a-vis desktops or laptops. A survey has revealed that mobiles have garnered a healthy share of 51.2% of the global online traffic in 2018 (Source: Statistica.) This growing mobile usage has stirred businesses to adopt a suitable mobile strategy to compete in the online landscape. However, the moot question before them is – whether to build a responsive website or a mobile application. Although both have their respective advantages, choosing one over the other would depend on a slew of factors. These include the target customers, business objectives, required features, and budget.

There are valid arguments on both sides of the divide. Mobile website enthusiasts are of the view that having a responsive website that is accessible on smartphones and tablets is more than enough to address the changing dynamics of online business. However, mobile app lovers counter that by stating the unique advantages of a mobile app that a responsive website simply cannot offer. Before digging deeper with the respective advantages, let us first understand what the two are all about.

Difference between a Mobile Website and a Mobile App

A mobile website is a collection of mutually linked HTML pages that can be accessed by a browser on the internet. It differs from a standard website in the way that it is displayed on a handheld device like a mobile or a tablet with a touchscreen interface. In fact, it is fast becoming the standard for building websites that are compatible with any type of device – desktops, laptops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets. A mobile website provides similar features and functionalities of a standard website (designed to be viewed on a desktop) such as text, images and videos. In fact, professional website development company have long switched over to building responsive websites to meet the trend.

A mobile application, on the other hand, is a self contained program that can be downloaded on a smartphone instead of being run by a browser a la mobile website. Mobile applications can be downloaded from app stores that are specific to an operating system such as Apple, Android, Windows or Blackberry. In fact, there are a host of mobile app developing companies that builds attractive, functional, user friendly and secure apps covering every possible domain such as real estate, tourism, health, education, eCommerce, technology etc.

Which one is better – a mobile website or a mobile app?

This is slightly tricky to answer for each comes with its share of advantages. We leave it to your judgement based on your specific business objectives to choose one above the other. In fact, choosing both can give you the best of both worlds provided you have the requisite budget.

Advantages of a Mobile (responsive) Website

Greater audience reach: A responsive website can be accessed from a plethora of device platforms – mobiles, tablets, desktops and laptops. It can be easily accessed on a search engine as opposed to a mobile app, which is available in specific app stores only. This way a large number of users can easily access a responsive website.

Cost effective: Developing a mobile app is supposedly a much more complex exercise than a mobile website. This makes the latter a relatively cost effective proposition.

SEO friendly: Recently, Google has announced giving a higher search ranking to a responsive website as compared to a standard one. This helps to garner a greater brand visibility and web traffic for a mobile website.

On the flip side, a mobile website can have a few cons as well.

• Accessibility and user experience depend on the quality and speed of the internet network.
• The small screen of a mobile makes it difficult to fully navigate a website unless the usability and functionality are top notch.

Advantages of a Mobile App

Better branding opportunity: Users can have an altogether different experience in accessing information/products/services of a company when compared to its website. A company can utilize the personalized app to target users with better branding styles and tactics. If the company website falls short of user expectations, a mobile app can be the way to go. However, make sure the app provides a rich user interface and seamless functionalities. Also, the app should possess strong security measures to counter fraudulent activities.

Better medium of communication: Since a mobile app can be customized to suit the interest and preference of the user, a business can leverage it to offer personalized communication, recommendations and updates. A mobile app helps to identify the geographical location of a user, which can be used by the company to provide location specific info about special discounts, promotions, and deals through push notifications.

Offline access: Although an internet connection is preferable to run most of the functionalities that are present in a mobile app, the connection is not essential. In fact, by using a mobile app, a user can access business specific information offline as well.

Better UX: A mobile app can provide a better immersive and personalised user experience. It provides interactive ways through which a user can engage with the content. This is in sharp contrast to the similar looking interface of a mobile website. As a mobile app provides a better user engagement, it helps to improve the conversion rates.

Conclusion

Choosing a responsive website or a mobile app ultimately depends on your business objectives. If you are looking to target a large audience cutting across geographies then a responsive website is arguably a better option. On the other hand, if you want to provide a better user engagement and garner brand loyalty among your users then a mobile app is a better option. So, no matter which mobile strategy you choose, it is better to engage a professional web development agency or a mobile app development services or both to reap better rewards.