[email protected] / Cranbrook, Kent

Author: Ben Sutton

Provide customers the tools they need to make a purchase

By Ben Sutton /

Web development for great search engine optimisation results

There are 1,477,803,927 active websites on the Internet. A fair proportion of them are likely to be in the same business as you. It can be a real challenge to compete. Companies find that their website does not appear in the top search engine results and approach us to see if we are able to help increase their ranking.

How do I improve search engine optimisation?

One of the steps in our approach to search engine optimisation (SEO) is to review our client’s website to see what makes it unique compared to the competition. We work on the following to ensure the best SEO results:

  • Writing great content that can be shared on social media
  • Auditing and updating technical aspects to help search engines process the content of your website
  • Optimising local business profiles so they are engaging and contain the correct information

The above tasks are a staple part of SEO. Of course, your competitors may be engaging in the same process, so how do you set yourself apart?

Use your expertise to improve SEO

Imagine you are selling a local exercise group service that meets twice a week. Your potential customer performs a search for ‘exercise groups near me’ and finds your company in the top three search results. Your page title and description are optimised and encourage them to click the link and visit your website. Once you have gained a website visit is important to think about the steps they now need to take in order to become a potential new lead for your business. Normally this would consist of well-written copy optimised to best sell your products. Instead, imagine that the next step they take is to enter some information in to your website and receive a valuable result, already capturing some details to help sell your product. Following on with the exercise group example, consider developing a body mass index calculator tool with targeted actions on the next steps to take to improve the health of the website visitor. Such a tool will be incredibly effective in engaging a potential lead to register for your service. Once the visitor has received the result the tool could request their email address for the purpose of sending them further information or a newsletter.

Benefits of developing your own custom tools

There are a myriad of benefits to having a custom tool built for your website. Here is a list of the primary benefits:

  • A custom tool built for your website will put you ahead of your competitors
  • A tool that provides real value may be shared by others on social media and blog posts
  • Information can be captured by the tool that may inform future business direction

Unique features drive sales

By developing a unique tool aimed specifically at your audience you stand a greater chance of converting a website visitor to a customer. Consider how other websites use such tools. A bank may feature a mortgage calculator, a health website may provide a tool to calculate risk of a particular illness, or a travel website may include a currency converter. What tool would suit your website best?

Web development by Crane Interactive

We are able to develop unique and engaging tools that will provide value to your website. If this of interest please get in touch.

Should I blog on my business website?

By Ben Sutton /

We have recently been asked whether it is worth the effort of blogging on your business website. Our opinion on this is…. absolutely!

The process of blogging can be time consuming. Thinking of ideas for posts, researching those ideas, writing the content and taking photographs or finding appropriate imagery can easily eat in to your busy day.

The payoff is well worth it.

What are the SEO benefits?

Authority

Internet search engines (Google) loves finding good quality content to rank highly in search results. A blog gives you the opportunity to be an expert in your field. If you provide value to others in your posts Google’s algorithms may choose your site as an authority on a subject. For example, a plumber may explore a new business direction fitting smart heating devices. It may benefit others if they blog a tutorial on how others can install the kit themselves. Chances are some people may find the article, realise that it’s too much hassle installing the kit and call the plumber instead. If the plumber has some success with that side of their business they may choose to post regularly on the subject increasing the chances that their posts will be listed higher in search engine results.

Local search

A plumbing business may only aim to target a local customer base. It may be that the plumber’s blog is the only website taking about smart heating products within a 50 mile radius. In this case they may become the authority for those products within a local area.

Community

A blog can help provide a sense of community around your business. If you express opinions, talk about your company culture or post the odd photo of your team it may help a potential client warm to your business rather than a dull competitor.

Inbound links

If you post great, valuable and insightful content others may link to it from their own website. Typically, the purpose of a business website is to bring attention to your business. Blogging is a great way to do so. The number and quality of links back to your website is one of the top metrics tracked by search engines when choosing how to rank your website in their results.

Our blogging processW

Find out how we design and develop WordPress blogs for business.

App development in record time with Google’s Flutter framework

By Ben Sutton /

Developing apps for mobile phones and tablets has always been a lot of work. Most companies would like their app to run on both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems. You can almost halve your potential audience by developing for only one platform. Traditionally this can double the amount of work to release an app as it has to be developed in both Apple’s and Google’s frameworks.

At Crane Interactive we have started the process of adopting Flutter, a new app development framework by Google. First released in 2015, Flutter allows you to write code once and it run on both iOS and Android. This greatly reduces development time and allows for easier testing. Unlike some other frameworks that support this methodology, apps written in Flutter are buttery-smooth and run with full native performance on both platforms.

Fast forward to 2018, Flutter now has a beta release and is considered stable enough to release apps to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Flutter is rapidly developed with frequent releases.

Sometimes a feature needs to very specifically tuned to a particular operating system. For example, if Flutter does not support a particular phone feature, you are able to revert to using Objective-C on Apple devices or Java on Android. This allows you to write as much code as you can with Flutter then fine tune specific features to make sure you get the best from each platform.

Flutter also supports different design styles. You can opt to develop your app using Google’s Material Design or Apple’s iOS style. Flutter provides rapid development times allowing more time for testing different user interface designs resulting in an expressive, beautiful experience for the customer. While Apple will accept Material Design apps to their App Store you may choose to fine tune a version of the app to support their respective widgets. Flutter makes this possible.

Here at Crane Interactive we are in the final stages of launching our first app developed with Flutter. Our client is delighted with the rapid speed of development and the resulting app. We are looking forward to publishing the app to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in the near future. Once published we will summarise our client’s experience in a case study. Sign up to our mailing list to be notified when the case study is ready.

Why invest in responsive web design?

By Ben Sutton /

The range of devices that are capable of accessing web-based content has exploded in the past few years. Wide screens, tall screens, small screens, no screen at all. Back in 2012 it was estimated that 8.7 billion devices were internet-connected. Devices such as mobile phones and tablets have driven this growth. Traffic from mobile devices now far exceeds that of desktop computers and laptops. Mobile visits accounted for 52.67% of website visits vs. 43.2% from desktop computers as recorded by statcounter as of August 2018.

Due to the vast range of devices accessing the internet it became important to adapt website content to display correctly on varying screen sizes. Responsive web design was born. A website that has been adapted to be responsive will display it’s content appropriately depending on the size of the screen it is displayed on. For example, it may be possible to display content across multiple columns on a large screen, a smaller screen may only be able to display one column. Visit our website on a mobile phone and again on a desktop computer. Can you see how it adapts? Websites that have not been coded in this way may have content hidden off screen, very small or large content sizes may appear or images may appear too big.

While it can be difficult to keep your own web properties up to date there are many commercial reasons for doing so. Crane Interactive are experts in responsive design and have experience in adapting older code to be responsive. Please get in touch if we can be of assistance. Some reasons for investing in responsive design are described below.

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

As the growth of mobile website visits continues search engine algorithms have had to adapt to deliver the most relevant results. If a website has not had the work needed to be responsive they may now rank lower in search results. The goal of a search engine is to display the most relevant content possible for their customer’s searches. How relevant content is rendered on the device performing the search will be a key factor when ranking results.

2. Faster page load times

When accessing a website from a mobile phone it can be infuriating if the page takes a long time to load or the website is difficult to navigate due to complicated menus. These items are a factor in responsive web design. Pages and images are optimised for the device they are being viewed on. Content and images can be optimised to load quickly even when accessed from often slower mobile networks.

Website menus can be very difficult to navigate from a mobile phone web browser. This is improved by offering large targets for fingers to tap rather than small font sizes and drop down menus. Responsive web design allows menus to be displayed in the most appropriate way depending on the device you are visiting from.

3. Improved conversion rates

What works on a desktop display might not work so well on a mobile phone. You may use a pop-up box requesting that the visitor signs up for a newsletter. On a desktop these can be quickly submitted or dismissed by the visitor as they have a physical keyboard and mouse available to them. On a phone it can be difficult to hit the ‘X’ button or type out your email address. You may offer this option with a button instead. With responsive design you can have the best of both worlds and display the functionality of your website in the most appropriate way.

4. Lower maintenance cost

Before responsive design it was best practice to maintain a separate website targeted at mobiles. The cost of maintaining two websites aimed at different devices is unnecessarily expensive. Maintaining one website that responds to the device it is being viewed on is best practice and reduces costs.

5. Future proofing

Many new devices come to market each year. The advantage of a responsive website is that unless there is a huge step-change in web standards you won’t need to adapt your site design again and again. For a one off cost you can future proof your site so it works correctly on the latest tech.

We would be delighted to take a look at your website and work with you to improve it’s responsive design. If we can be of assistance please get in touch.