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Asith Hettiarachchi

Does your website convert?
 Does your website convert? 1024 536 Asith Hettiarachchi
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You are carrying out all your online marketing and social media campaigns along with every other promotional strategy with a clear objective; Website Conversions.  Your landing page is the key driver that gears up conversions and determines the success of your campaigns. 

Let’s see if your landing page really converts and how you can track your conversions… 

What are website conversions? 

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Simply put conversions are visitor actions on your website which you desire to achieve.
For an instance, if you want your visitors to subscribe to a newsletter and if a visitor subscribes, it counts as one conversion. Even brochure downloads, form submissions, views of directions and online purchases are included under conversions. 

So basically, now you see why website conversions are important as it measures your web marketing efforts and ROI effectiveness. Therefore, your landing page must be strategically formatted to encourage visitors to perform the expected activities on your website that would create a conversion.

Why is it important to track conversions?

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Because website conversions can give you deeper insights and the conversion metrics are the most accurate figures on your performance. 

Marketers are obsessed with these metrics as there is no better way to identify which funnels work and which did not. Imagine if you can see the entire journey of your customers through metrics and perfectly optimize those touch-points? 

Yes, that is one of the magical things you can do with conversion tracking. 

Once you start conversion tracking, you are assured with a dead sure positive ROI for all your campaigns. 

What can you do to improve conversions? 

The first and the most significant thing you have to do in order to gain website conversions is, improve your landing page experience as the quality of your landing page matters not only to your conversion rate but also to your ad ranking.

Here is what you can do:

Create custom landing pages

Instead of driving visitors to your typical homepage, you can create a custom landing page for your campaign. Because the landing page is considered the heart of your campaign and it should look like a part of the campaign and be on point to create quality leads. It will generate comparatively greater website conversions. 

Always remember – Do not make it bulky but informative and follow up with a ‘Thank you” page. 

Split-test your landing pages

It is always better to test two different landing page designs to check which one performs better. Because in website development for a specific campaign, landing page designs make a great impact on website conversions.  

You can try out different text, images and graphics to see which design generates more conversions. You can alter the headline, call-to-action and forms to identify elements that create change. 

Experiment with video landing pages

In optimizing your landing page including videos on it, is proven to be extra effective. Usually, videos grab and hold the attention of visitors than text as people are more likely to watch a video on the go rather than reading a paragraph.

Especially if you are selling a complex product, there isn’t a better method of demonstration than a video, therefore, when it comes to website development of your landing page, try to include an intriguing video to get more conversions.

How to measure results? 

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Well, finally you should know how to measure your landing page conversions. 

Here are some key metrics to go through to monitor your campaign performance

  • Conversion rate – The number of visitors who have completed the desired action on the page versus the total number of visitors.
  • Form abandonment rate – The ratio of the number of abandoned shopping carts versus number of initiated / completed transactions
  • Bounce rate – The number of times a visitor leaves your landing page without initiating the desired action
  • Time on page – The average time spent on the landing page
  • Traffic source – The source that created landing page traffic

As you can see, conversions are the ultimate objective of all your marketing efforts. If you aren’t getting enough conversions, the time, money and resources spent are a total waste. This is why you should speak to us as we create result-driven landing pages which guarantees conversions and generates positive ROIs.

Cracking the Google Code
 Cracking the Google Code 1024 536 Asith Hettiarachchi
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Googling something is one of the most frequent tasks we do on a day-to-day basis from finding a home remedy for common cold to purchasing a car.

Though there are many search engines out there, Google still leads the search engine industry, since 1998. Their ability in delivering the best search experience and a better business exposure are the two main reasons that helped Google secure the spot as the best.

Yes, Google gives great exposure for businesses than other search engines do and now you know why being on top of Google search results is the dream of any website owner.

If you are a website owner and looking for ways to rank higher on Google in order to get more organic traffic to your website, this article is for you. We dedicate this post to explain our audience how Google works and what it takes to rank higher on it.

So, let’s start with…

How does Google search engine works?

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Imagine a librarian in a library that has all the books, magazines, and other materials that exist in the world. Google is similar to such a librarian. The only difference is that Google only has content that exists on the world wide web.

Just like a librarian, google searches, sorts and delivers the best materials to fit your needs upon your search request.

For this, Google uses two main processes.

  • Google index, the process of adding web pages to Google search
  • Crawling, the process of discovering new and updated pages to be added to the Google index by Googlebot.

Though we think that we search the whole web when we search Google, what really happens is Google go through its search index to find the matching results for your search query.

Google bot is the software developed by Google to help them with the scanning, finding, adding and indexing new web pages. It’s the search engine spider for Google.

Now you have a better idea of how Google works, let’s have a look at how to rank on Google.

How to impress Google?

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Ranking on Google depends on many factors. Yet above them all lies content as the prominent key to Google ranking success. It may be web content, blog posts, press release, social media content or videos, creating relevant and quality content can majorly impact on ranking higher on Google search.

But just creating quality and relevant content alone can’t get the job done for you. This is why you need to pay attention to using the right keywords that you want your web pages to rank for and right metadata, the data that you sent to Google search engine that is not visible to readers.

The Long Game

Appearing on the first page of Google search results doesn’t happen overnight. It requires a long-term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice that can be used to improve the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

There are two types of SEO techniques people use for ranking higher in Google search. They are,

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Black Hat SEO

Optimizing the web pages to rank higher on search results, breaking search engine rules focusing on only search engines.

  • Duplicate Content
  • Invisible text
  • Stuffed Keywords
  • Cloaking or Redirecting user to another website or page
  • Links from websites with non-relevant content

White Hat SEO

Optimizing the search experience for humans who search, not for the searching bots.

  • Relevant Content
  • Well labeled images
  • Relevant Links and references
  • Complete sentences with good spelling and grammar
  • Standards compliant HTML
  • Unique and relevant page titles

Although black hat SEO techniques can give you fast results, such practices may result in your site being banned from Google for using unethical techniques. Which is why leaning more towards white hat SEO practices is important. This can be a long-term investment in terms of SEO.

Just creating a website is not enough to get more business in the digital world. So make sure to pay more attention to optimize your website for search engines.

If you are interested in attracting more organic traffic to your website, give us a call and book a free consultation session with one of our SEO experts.

Watch Out For These 7 Social Media Trends in 2018
 Watch Out For These 7 Social Media Trends in 2018 1024 536 Asith Hettiarachchi
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From all of us at Jigsaw to all of you… Happy New Year! It’s already 2018 and the season of holidays are over. It’s time for you to switch from holiday mode to work mode and up your game for 2018… For all the brands and marketers out there, here are the latest social media trends we expect to see more of in 2018 based on what we’ve seen in 2017.

1. Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality


At first, social media was just text, then came photographs, videos, GIFs and memes. The next big thing is AR and VR which will take off in 2018 as big companies like Facebook, Google and Apple keep introducing new tools and services incorporating these technologies.

2. Live streaming


Live streaming dominated the whole year of 2017 and will get even bigger in 2018 as now many audiences and brands are more comfortable with the content format and experience on live streaming in 2017.

3. Focus on Generation Z


Time has come for your brand to switch your focus from millennials to generation Z. Born between mid-1990s to mid-2000s, Gen Zers is the first generation who grows up 100% online and is slowly entering into the labour force. Thus, marketers have to adjust their social media marketing strategies to stay ahead of the game.

4. Online Hangouts


The rapid growth of apps where you can live chat with multiple people at the same time, made a splash last year, grabbing the attention of major social media platforms’ like Facebook and it’s a trend that goes hand in hand with live streaming and Z generation.

5. Privacy and open source


2018 will be a year, more people lean towards platforms and social apps that maintain user privacy as their top priority or offer open source APIs, so the users are sure their information won’t be sold to advertisers.

6. Gamification will extend to social media apps.


Gamification, applications of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts, will make a significant impact on this year. We expect to see a rise in social media and gaming hybrid apps in 2018.

7. Ad growth


With the decline of organic reach on social media platforms, we’ll see a bigger shift in ad growth in 2018. Though we are not sure yet that paid advertising is not the only way to get seen or not, brands will definitely have to increase their budget in social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to get sufficient results.

Social Media Marketing Challenges in 2018

1. Less Organic Reach

Organic reach keeps declining on many social media platforms year by year. Therefore, brands have to have better strategies for consumer engagement and outreach formats to build a very specific and highly engaging community than just trying to please everyone.

2. Social Media Video Peaking

Video shined on social media advertising last year more than ever and will continue to peak in this year as brands reaped amazing results with video advertising. As different social media platforms offer different video capabilities, brands will find it challenging to build a strategy that balances their business goals and the video offering of each social media platform.

3. Tool Fatigue for Brands

With new social media tools popping up everyday, brands and marketers will face tool fatigue trying to tap all the new audiences that come along with the new tools. And this creates it more challenging it for marketers and brands to find them and focus on the right tools that bring them the most ROI.
So, there you have the top social media trends we think will explode in 2018. If you need any help or insight in planning your social media strategy for 2018, of course, you can get in touch with us.

For now though, here’s to a year of online marketing success!

Websites, Your Way
 Websites, Your Way 1024 536 Asith Hettiarachchi
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We know, you want a dynamic website for your business or your brand but wait….. Do you know what a Dynamic Website is?

We get many inquiries requesting for websites, most have only a general idea of what they want their website to look like.  Once they have a chat with our web development experts at Jigsaw they realize that there is so much more to consider. For instance, buzz words and how to use them intelligently to enable optimum SEO, the types of images to use or even choosing a target market applicable colour palette and typography.

To save you the hassle, below we’ve listed the main types of websites with simple and clear definitions to help you understand the best type of website for your business.

Let’s begin!

Dynamic Websites


A dynamic website is a website or an individual page that contains information that changes and customizes automatically in real time depending on the viewer, time of the day, time zone, language and many other factors. Such websites are controlled by two processings namely; server-side scripting(code) and client-side scripting. A dynamic website must have a server-side language like python or ruby, and a database system to stores the dynamic information.

Let us put what is a dynamic website in a simpler way this time; Facebook, Twitter-like social media platforms are dynamic websites.

Static Websites


Websites that have fixed content are known as Static websites. These websites are coded with Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML) and show the exact same content to every visitor. This doesn’t mean that a static website’s content is text only. Static pages can feature images even videos but every viewer will see the same content every time. One of the best examples of a static website is Wikipedia.

Interactive Websites


If you have come across a website that has pop-up boxes, videos or audio clips or a forum or even a contact form, you’ve seen an interactive website. In simple words, an interactive website is a website that allows visitors to do more than just reading and scrolling down. These websites enable viewers to interact and communicate more with the interface. Some elements that will tell you a particular website is interactive are comment boxes, story, photo and video submissions, live chats, clickable maps, online transactions… etc.

Web Applications


While a website focuses mainly on information, a web application primarily allows users to perform actions. Simply, it’s a computer program that stored on a remote server and runs in a web browser. It gives access to its users anywhere anytime. A web application is highly customizable and can be very helpful in tackling unique business operation management challenges. Google docs is one of the most popular web application in the world.

E-commerce websites


E-commerce websites are designed to facilitate online transactions of goods and services transferring information and funds over the Internet between vendors and customers. The most common e-commerce website is retail selling related platforms while there a few other types of e-commerce websites. Auction websites, business-to-business services, music portals, consultancy websites and finance management websites are to name a few. Amazon and eBay are few major e-commerce websites in the world that will give you a clearer idea of an e-commerce website.

To succeed in the online business world having the right website that suits your brand image is essential.

Have more questions on what type of a website suits best your business? Contact our web development experts at JGSW now and we’ll help you identify the ideal solution for you.

Facebook Explore Feed: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
 Facebook Explore Feed: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 1000 524 Asith Hettiarachchi
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Is Explore Feed Going To Be The Death Of Facebook Organic Reach?

Would all the money, time and effort spent on growing your Facebook page likes going to be in vain soon?

Well, this is a burning question most of the brands are wondering from the day they noticed the new testing feed on Facebook; Explore Feed.

Launched last month as an isolated test, the feed has already started to make the publishers in Sri Lanka panic. The test currently runs in 6 countries including Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala and Cambodia.

In this post, we plan to have a look at this New Feed of Facebook, its advantages and more to help brands use Facebook marketing with clear answers.

What is Explore feed?


Basically, the Explore Feed presents all the organic brand content from publishers and businesses- which used to be in your news feed, thereby splitting the main feed or the news feed into two different divisions. This leaves the news feed only with posts from family and friends and all the other promoted posts.

You can find the Explore Feed on the left sidebar once you Sign in to Facebook which available in both mobile and desktop versions.

The same new feed has been launched throughout the world apart from the six countries mentioned with one difference; as a complementary feed of popular posts automatically customized for each person’s interest.

Advantages and disadvantages

advantages-and-disadvantages
Since Sri Lanka has already become a Guinea pig in this infant test by Facebook, having a deeper understanding of the explore feed is important in order to survive in Facebook marketing, incase the feed becomes more than just a test. Therefore we have listed advantages and disadvantages of the explore feed below.

Advantages

  • Allows users to see posts from their family and friends separately from brand content.
  • Ad-free. This gives more room for organic content.
  • Enable users with more opportunities to discover relevant brands as the new feed follows an algorithm that presents content based on relevance and user interest even from pages they haven’t followed or liked yet.

Disadvantages

  • People may not see posts from the pages they follow.
  • Reduces organic reach of all pages a great deal
  • This in turn, badly affects the pages with a small marketing budget as paid advertisements seem to be the most efficient way to get your content on the right screens.
  • Difficult to access the feed on mobile browsers, which again impact negatively on organic reach of pages.

Will you have to pump more and more money into Facebook as the organic search is about to die? Or will this go the other way around as now you have more free space for brand content?

Although we cannot predict anything on advertising CPI (Cost Per Impression) as no one has a clear idea how the algorithm of this new feed works, we are sure on one thing; Facebook’s goal here is to see the user preference to see content from friends and family in a separate feed from public and brand content.

There’s still a silver lining

Yes. It’s already affected the Sri Lankan brands throwing marketers into panic mode. However the silver lining here is that it hasn’t been permanently implemented. Hear it from the Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed

There is no current plan to roll this out beyond these test countries or to charge pages on Facebook to pay for all their distribution in News Feed or Explore.

The Underappreciated Beauty of Animation
 The Underappreciated Beauty of Animation 1024 536 Asith Hettiarachchi
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Let your Imagination run wild! What do you have to lose?

“Animation is not a Genre, it is an Artform” – Brad Bird

Video is one of the most effective ways of immediately creating a lasting impact. So it’s not a wonder that it’s one of the most sought-after modes of communication, advertising and entertainment. Irrespective of industry, message or intention, videos remain right at the top.

In our first Blog Edition, we will look at the beauty of Animation and reveal a little surprise that we have up our sleeve.

Animation is not a spontaneous artform, it has to be carefully and meticulously crafted with a lot of hard work. But, if you do it right, viewers will not be aware of the complexities involved.

2D and 3D animations are at the core of what we do, specializing in producing videos to communicate our client’s message to their target audience. Limitless imagination, brainstorming and ideas generate such results and complete a project at optimal quality.

If one tries to control the process unnecessarily, the process is limited. Constraints are something that we have learnt to screen out of our creative processes, so that creativity takes over.

With widely available talent, locally and worldwide, and globalization that allows sharing of information, ideas and skills, it is a prerequisite that one must be ever-evolving with the latest trends and technology. Thus, bringing us to the revelation of 2D animation to imitate 3D movements. Yes, you read right.

Let me to break that down if it seems too complicated.

Think of cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Popeye, or even our modern-day Ben 10; these fall into the category of 2D animations. On the other hand, 3D animations would be Despicable Me, Pets and Ice Age.

In order to demonstrate the difference using our in-house productions, below you will find a 2D video we had produced for one of our clients in relation to their new online platform for selling authentic Sri Lankan books online at minimal prices to Sri Lankans all over the world:

Purelankan – The Sri Lankan eBook Store. View more here.

On the other hand, below you will find a 3D animated rig model:

3D Animations (Unicorn and Hulk). View more here.

See the difference?

The characters in the initial video do not have human-like or realistic movements, whereas the second one does. The movements are generated through the use of a method called ‘Rigging’.

If you are familiar with the world of animation, you must be aware that there are numerous animated layers that go into the complete movement of the character. Rigging and imitating human like movements can be done through manually selecting the area of the character’s body that will be used as pivot points to animate these actions.

Rigging is the process of creating connections between objects to make animating easier.

There are two options;

  1. Controls can be created
  2. One object can be controlled by another; similar to a Parent-Child relationship.

Rigging enables more efficient animation. Without the use of rigging, one would need to animate each part of the character through use of Key Frames, Rotation and Translation for each individual movement frame by frame.

Our evolved method of production now enables 3D effects to appear on 2D animations. Here rigging is used to ensure this happens.

Demonstration below:

The beauty of this method is that one does not need to go to the extent of generating 3D videos to imitate real life scenarios.

It goes without saying that when it comes to animations, there are certain levels of expectations especially with modern-day technological and graphical advances.

Audiences are awed and appreciate work that is closer to life, as they find it easier to see themselves in the position of using or experiencing the product or surroundings respectively.

We believe this effect will satisfy that expectation. We can satisfy this expectation.

Click here for more information on our portfolio.