Tech Blogs

The first impression matters: Everything starts with speed

Before diving right in, let us first understand the basic dynamics of a competitive market. The internet beholds the diasphora of an abyss of corporats, all wanting to be on the top of the ladder. Amid all this chaos, grabbing the attention of the customer gets a little tricky. You might be the toughest competitor around but would be likely to fail if your customer slips away from your hands, just because you couldn't catch an eye. Hence, making a first contact is very important and what's more important is, how fast you make it. If you are not fast enough, you are most likely to fall victim to your customers' loss of patience. This loss of patience means a win for your competitors and a dead end for you. Your customers not only get impatient but also form a bad first impression of your website, and therefore, your company. It is extremely essential to have a good web loading speed, so that the visitors can be converted into customers or subscribers. The quality of your service or product would be of any value, only if your customers are willing to stick to your page until it loads completely. Hence, the story of every website starts with speed. You may have noticed that some of the biggest companies today, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google load tremendously fast, and there's a reason why. Their engineering teams are obsessed with making the websites faster and faster, and they work really hard to outdo themselves every other time. However, it is very important to understand  that working on the maximisation of speed yeilds positive results only if the other factors of your website are healthy. Factors such as the quality and nature of the content, backlink structure etc play an important role here. If you're providing a decent amount of quality content that satisfies your customers' searches and has a robust backlink profile, then website speed is definitely one of those things that you would be needing to optimise for SEO.

The page-loading speed is a ranking factor: Google considers this as a user experience parameter

Google, as a search engine, has come a long way and continues to march ahead while setting milestones every once in a while. Back in 2010, it announced that page speed was indeed a ranking factor, but was only focused on the desktop searches. Then again in 2018, it made mobile searches the focal point to track speed and rank the websites. This clearly indicates that Google is now prioritising the consumer experience even more, and is hence, concerned about the time it's visitors waste while waiting for a website to load. This "wait time", in technical terms, is also known as the "Time to First Byte". When you enter a web address into your browser, it looks up the domain name and goes to the appropriate server, like your host. It then looks up the files that it takes to construct a webpage. The time that this whole interaction takes is called the time to first byte. The ideal time to first byte is three seconds to the most, and yeilds better results as it gets lesser. More than three seconds of webpage loading can result in loss of potential customers. This depicts the cut throat competition, and the concern with which google works towards it's customers' comfort.  This is rightfully justified that waiting pulls the overall user experience towards the south of the graph, and Google doesn't compromise the comfort of the users even if the competition is too high, or there are endless links to look into. It keeps optimising it's ranking factors from time to time, to give it's users, the most favourable results that are not only content rich, but also lightning fast, hence enriching their over all webpage experience.

Fast loading websites have a higher conversion rate and a lower bounce rate

While the magic of first impression is still in play, and the customer finally gets the taste of your content, the chances of conversion sky rocket. Conversion rate is the rate at which the visitors of your websites are getting converted into actual customers. A number of companies have found that a decrease in page load time of a few milliseconds increases conversions. Mobify found that decreasing their homepage's load time by 100 milliseconds resulted in a 1.11% uptick in session-based conversion. Retailer Auto Anything experienced a 12-13% increase in sales after cutting page load time in half. Walmart discovered that improving page load time by one second increased conversions by 2%. Apart from the converted customers, many visitors leave the webpage after being tired of waiting for it to load. Many just leave due to lack of relatable content, or after seeing a single page. This percentage of the mass gives us the bounce rate. BBC discovered that they lost 10% of their total users for every additional second it took for their pages to load. Hence, suffered an increased in the bounce rate. It is quite clear, that the speed of the websites affects the conversion and bounce rates. Speed of a website is directly proportional to the conversion rate, while it's reversly proportional to the bounce rate.

Do a test drive today - how to test your website speed?

No matter how fast the website may seem on paper, it must go through a series of tests to actually understand how fast it works under different practical conditions. Hence, it is important to do some website speed tests regularly, to ensure the smoothness of the user experience. A website speed test should let developers know not just how fast their site or application is, but also which elements on the page are causing slowdowns. There are many online providers who provide free site speed test tools, and all you need to do is just provide them with your web address. The site speed test will analyse the over all operating speed of your website, and give a detailed report of the different performance metrics such as the load time, time to first byte, requests for resources by the browser, page size, etc. Although, the performance metrics may vary among different speed test providers.

What is Google speed update?

Speed Update, as it was called, when google announced it in 2018, is a new ranking algorithm designed for mobile search. The unique thing about this update was that it was meant to impact a very small percentage of queries, ie, it would only impact the webpages that were too slow, and would potentially be a bad experience for the user.

It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

Is your site going to be penalized?

The question now may arise, that is your website safe? Is google going to lower the rank of your website and penalise you for being slow? Well, the answer here is not black or white. Instead, it lies somewhere in the grey area. Having a speedy website is important, and it undoubtedly adds to the chances of a good ranking but the other factors cannot be  ignored as well. If you lack in content, or a decent backlink profile, the chances of succeeding would be low. Hence, you must have a content rich webpage, and it should be relatable to the users' searches. Only once you fulfill this checklist, then you can use speed optimisation to increase your conversion rates. Speed would be of no use if the customer finds nothing interesting on your webpage. And at the same time, the content would be of no use if the first impression goes wrong, ie, the load speed is too slow. Therefore, all these factors go hand in hand and are two sides of the same coin. In order to be safe, both these sides would require equal attention.

Adapt to Google's speed update: Switch to AMP

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, a Google-backed project, designed as an open standard for any publisher to have pages load quickly on mobile devices. In the year 2016, google officially integrated AMP listings into it's mobile search results. Pages using AMP coding appear within special places in the search results and are often spotted with an "AMP" tag.

AMP is the new standard of fast browsing and is likely to take over in the coming years. It is highly recommend for all website administrators to switch to AMP in order to keep in touch with the ever dynamic phenomenon called the internet.

What are funnels? - A game setter

We believe what we see, and see what we believe. This statement has been proving it's authenticity since a long time now, especially when it comes to marketing. We've seen companies rocketing inspite of having mediocre products and also the ones that have sunk even with better products. The reason? They couldn't sell their idea. Selling a product comes way ahead. First, the inception is to be made. In a country like ours, where the population is increasing faster than the speed of light, creating awareness about something has become a chaos. Inspite of having millions of people around us, finding a lead who would willingly convert into a customer is equivalent to finding a needle in a bunch of hay. You might find a lead, but only to be surrounded by your competitors, who wouldn't leave your way even if your lead becomes your customer. So, how to be certain, that your converted customer would remain loyal to you over the time? Well, the truth is, that you can never be too sure. Hence, it is necessary to "keep the spark alive". Creating awareness in a humongous population might be a tough task, but if we are smart enough to pull the trigger at the right time, we might just be able to weaponise it in an unimaginable way.  This population can be a permanent pipeline, supplying fresh customers to your business, just out of sheer loyalty. In the present era, where generating revenue has become a race, existence of a business no more depends upon how hard you work. Gone are the days, when a traditional sales promotion technique or a nice column in a daily could help you build a client base. Today, trying out a particular marketing tactic and then waiting for the miracle to happen is a waste of time. The expectation of the people as customers, has increased many folds in the past years. They do not just need a product or a service, but a brand they can rely on. A brand, which not just fulfils their need, but also takes care of all the other strings attached to it, in the form of after-sales services. Once these check lists are looked upon, and duely addressed, your customer gets elevated or becomes a loyal customer. The big question now is, that what makes a lead become a loyal customer? Well, this is what the digital marketing sales funnels address. A digital marketing funnel is a cocktail of various marketing tactics, which attracts people who know nothing about your business, and converts them into loyal customers who would willingly share their experiences, with their relatives and friends. The beauty of a marketing funnel is that it not only generates customers but acts as a game setter for any business.

Why are funnels benefitial?

All of us would agree, that smart work is important. Hard work pays off once, but smart work can pay you throughout your life. This statement marks the importance of funnels. Let's imagine a scenario. Two brothers are given a work to do. They are asked to fill buckets of water from a lake nearby and then carry the bucket back to the city. One of them does as instructed while the other thinks of a  one time solution for the job. While one brother works hard to get the filled buckets back to the city, the other creates a pipeline that would supply water from the lake whenever he wanted. This single yet smart effort will save him a lot of time and labour. While the other brother will have to work hard, again and again, he will sit back and relax just because he designed an automated way to do his work for him. The moral here, is automation. A business is a vast phenomenon, with numerous problems seeking your kind attention. In this chaos, addressing every problem gets very difficult. Hence, automation is the only way to keep the showing going. A marketing funnel is designed to cater to very specific objectives. Objectives of different business organisations might vary, and hence it's important to analyse them properly. From their target audience to their organisational goals, everything is taken into consideration and a funnel is tailored specially for their unique need. This funnel now acts as a filter, which once put to action, would attract  leads and convert them into loyal customers for as long as you want.

A deep dive into 4 levels of convertion funnel - Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action

Understanding the journey of a prospective customer, from knowing nothing about your business to becoming your loyal customer is very important. It's worth noting, that not all leads who enter the funnel, come out as loyal customers. However, the odds of acquiring faithful customers improve greatly with this formula. The quantity of the output decreases, while quality takes the wheel. Although, it all starts with mere awareness.

Awareness- A product must attract the      consumer's attention. This can be done through various marketing techniques. Specially in case of digital marketing, with so many digital platforms around us, the possibilities are endless. Just letting your audience know that your product exists marks a step towards your first sale. Though, creating awareness also includes giving relevant information about the nature  of the product, pointing out it's uses, it's uniqueness, and all other prospects that could help you to attract customers.

Interest- Once the awareness is made, you start getting potential customers, who now identify your product. This is when you act to maintain this interest. This can be done by grabbing the best opportunity to communicate with your leads, and getting them to make a micro-commitment to take some form of action. Depending on how comfortable your lead is, and the nature of your product, you can smartly decide what action you're going to choose. For a low priced item, like a bottle of soda, that action could be a sale. For Selling a higher priced item, like a car, that micro commitment could be a smaller action, like going for a test drive. The point here is, that you want to encourage them to move to the next logical step in the relationship. This can even be done by simply taking their contact details in the form of their names, phone numbers, emails, etc. In this way, you're engaging with the lead and the chances of sale increases many folds.

Desire- Building of interest leads to the desire of possession. Once the interest is built, the next level of the convertion funnel takes over. It is responsible for nurturing this interest, and turning it into a strong desire. This desire, in turn, acts as the fuel for performing the next level of operations. It is the key to sales.

Action- As soon as a desire to buy floats in the air, it's eternally important to catch it quickly and convert it into a sale. Although, the process doesn't end here. In order to build a lifelong relationship with your customers, you must keep a check on them even after the sale is made. This builds a sense of loyalty in their minds, as they know that they're being taken care of.

Understanding the core components of a Digital Marketing Sales Funnel

If we break down the components of a digital marketing sales funnel, we get three parts. Namely- foundation, floodgates and sales funnel. If you think about the fundamental use of a funnel, you place the funnel where you want something to pour into, then you pour the substance into the funnel and it fills the container. These components do this exact same thing here. Let's have a closer look at them.

Foundation- Before designing a digital marketing sales funnel, a thorough research needs to be done, in order to build a strategy to ensure maximum efficiency.

Conducting a complete competitor analysis, developing SMART goals, and identifying the buyer personas can prove to be extremely beneficial. A perfect funnel is to be made, that would give tailored output just to meet specific needs.

Floodgates- These deal with the down pour of traffic into the funnel.

Traffic can be generated from many different places including search engines, social media, advertisements, email campaigns, offline events, etc. The best performing sales funnels are those that utilize all sources as a means to generate traffic into the digital marketing sales funnel.

Sales Funnel- The sales funnel is comprised of 3 components: a lead magnet, an amplified, and a conversion event. A lead magnet brings in potential customers, after which they are persuaded to buy a product. Only after the persuasive methods work and the customer is convinced, can he be converted into a loyal customer.

Don't just build leads but loyal customers

A business is a long term phenomenon. In order to survive longer, it needs people that support it. No business can run successfully forever without the support of its people. It's people include it's workers, suppliers and most importantly, it's customers. If a business plans on running a marathon, it's must to have loyal customers. Or else, its life span will not last more than a 100 meter race. Hence, the main focus of any business should not be towards generating leads and making sales. Rather, it should focus on building a relationship with it's customers, so that they stay with the company through thick and thin and make it immortal.

In the end, here are some ways that can help you to increase your sales

1. Social networking and publishing

2. Pay per click campaigns

3. Emails

4. CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) and    sales integration

5. Targeted Transactional content

6. Social monitoring

7. Referrals

8. Gratitude

Computers to Smartphones

The nature of evolution is really interesting. We change according to our needs. Well, today, we've even created things, that evolve, not for their own, but for our needs. We have machines that we created and have been making them better eversince. Computer, the miracle made by man, was a status symbol when it was young, and is sitting  in our living rooms and offices today. This change is not natural. It was created by us, because we needed it. We have got to admit, that our lives are dependent on them. They store infinite amount of data, that accounts for our entire life. All that fits in a tiny machine, you can access it whenever you want, and it's super easy too. It saves you a lot of space and time. Now, the hustle is about making it better. We keep making them, smaller and faster. The evolution of a computer has been so interesting and amusing, that we can't just wait to see what comes next. Today, computers have become an indispensable part of us, and hence we have them in the form of laptops and sometimes even Mobile phones. The size of a computer really makes a huge difference in the choice of a user today. Having a smaller device makes it more convenient for its user to carry it, or to even use it at most times. Sometimes, you might feel too lazy to even switch on your laptop to check a mail. This is when you pick up your mobile phone, and put it to use. In this way, mobiles are rightfully taking away the spot light from computers. Mobile browsing is a new standard. Firstly, it is cheaper than a computer and hence, more widely used. Today, you might find a person who doesn't have a desktop or a laptop but you will hardly find someone with no mobile phone. Just like computers, even Mobile phones have come a long way in terms of evolving, and are better known as smartphones today. In fact, we are more addicted to our smartphones than to our computers. In numerical terms, 55% of the total web traffic today, is through mobile phones, and is Constantly on the rise. Considering the statistics, we can safely conclude that users are more inclined to use internet on their mobiles, rather than on thier computers. Though, it takes a lot to fit every single content we see on a desktop, into a tiny mobile phone.

Mobile Responsive Design

Out of all the ways to shrink your website and fit it inside your smartphone, the most efficient and the smartest way would be to simply develop a design, that takes care of this transition, and moulds the websites according to the sizes of the screens. Same content, different sizes. It saves you the time and effort to create a seperate website suitable for the smart phone, let alone the expenditure. Therefore, a mobile responsive design is the simplest way to achieve the desired results in the most cost effective way. The mobile viewing experience has been repetedly filtered over the time, and has become really refine today. The result was really exciting. Visitors of these mobile responsive designed websites remained on the website longer, and even got converted into potential customers. The bottomline being, we can cater to the 55% of the total traffic on the internet, by making the user experience better. An important thing to note is, that this share over the total internet traffic is increasing. Even at the moment.

In the year 2011, the mobile browsing traffic accounted for 11% of the total internet traffic. And it has been on a roll eversince.  Progressing to a decent 25% in 2014, it has made a major leap today, standing strong at 55%. Lack of a responsive degin would directly mean ignoring the majority of the population on the internet. Potential customers walk out due to a lack of user friendly interface. A mobile responsive design not only helps to retain a visitor, but also paves the way to attract them. Even Google uses mobile first indexing for ranking the websites. Indexing denotes that a website is eligible to be reflected in the search results by google. Therefore, mobile first indexing means that google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. It's important to understand the fact, that google does not rank the websites higher just because it has a mobile version. The mobile website must be user friendly as well, in order to get a good ranking. Also, it should have the same content as it has on the desktop version, which includes both the structured and meta data. Hence, in order to push your website towards the top of the search results, you not only need to make your website smaller, but also fit all that data it has in its desktop version. This is where a mobile responsive design comes into action. Infact, with this design, reaching the audience has become even more  convenient. We can now send push notifications directly to the pontential or subscribed audience. Since mobile phones are more widely and regularly used, there's a minimum chance of non-engagement.

The Future

If we look at what's ahead of us, we can confidently say that mobile phones are the future. We might not feel the urge to adapt right away, but if we do not respond to the change, it would take a toll on us sometime or the other. Well, that is the nature of change, it never happens suddenly. It is a process. It happens around us and we just fail to notice it sometimes. Though not adapting to it for a longer time can also cause extiction. Hence, it's best to keep a track of our surroundings, and mould ourselves accordingly.

Choosing a good CPU cooler is as important as choosing a computer itself. If you are a moderate user, you might do away with the stock cooler that comes with your CPU. But, in case you are into hard core gaming, or just happen to overclock your CPU quite often, having an efficient CPU cooler is not an option but necessity. Let’s say you identify your need for a better cooler- It would still be a battle half won. Picking out the best suitable and efficient cooler for your system would be the next step. Now, how to choose a good CPU cooler? There are several factors that contribute to this process.

First things first, how much heat does your CPU generate? The idea is to compare the amount of heat generated by your system and the capacity of the cooler to dissipate the heat. Both your processor and the cooler have a TDP (Thermal Design Power) rating. Ideally, the TDP of a cooler should be more than the TDP rating of the processor. The reason being, a CPU  overclocks under heavy workload, which could raise the TDP of the CPU even higher. A good cooler should be capable of keeping the temperature under control, even in the most extreme conditions. It wouldn’t be going too far, if you choose a cooler with TDP three times of your CPU.

Now, how big is your cabinet? Buying even the best cooler would be worthless if it doesn’t fit inside your cabinet, now would it? Hence, knowing exactly what size you want is a must. It is recommended that you buy a cooler that is slightly smaller than what your CPU would seem to fit.

What socket type does your CPU support? Even if you choose an efficient cooler that fits your cabinet perfectly, it might so happen that the socket of the cooler and of your CPU don’t match. To avoid this problem, it is important to do a proper research and know what you are looking for before you make a decision.

Air cooling or liquid cooling? What type of cooling suits your requirement? Although both the options offer remarkable performance, they still have their own pros and cons.

·      Air cooling offers efficiency under low maintenance, while liquid cooling demands more maintenance and carries the risk of leakage.

·      Air cooling is not suitable for extreme high-end requirements. Liquid cooling, on the other hand,  performs better than the best air coolers in such conditions.

·      Air coolers, at higher ends, can be bulky and cause clearance issues in the cabinet whereas, liquid coolers maintain a lower profile when it comes to bulkiness.

Coolers are undoubtedly an indispensable yet undervalued part of a computer system. Make sure you make a thoughtful pick while choosing a cooler for your CPU. Only when coupled together, you can make the most out of your CPU.

Have you been planning to buy a new PC or upgrading your current processor? Well, if you are, it would be only natural if you tried doing a thorough research before coming to the conclusion. While shopping for a new processor, you might have come across the terms “locked” and “unlocked” processors. If you are wondering what do these terms actually imply, this blog is for you.

So, what is the difference between a locked and an unlocked processor? Which one of these should you choose to buy? Let's find out.

An unlocked processor allows you to change the clock settings of the CPU which means that you can overclock it. While, on the other hand, locked CPUs cannot be overclocked. Denoted without the k at the end of its name, locked CPUs do not give you the freedom to change the CPU settings. Unlocked processors are denoted with a k at the end of the model number, like the Core i7-4770k and Haswell-E Core i7-5820k, and are made with an unlocked clock multiplier. These processors can run under extreme pressure due to the overclocking, and when coupled with a worthy chipset, they can be overclocked for faster than factory core speeds.

Let's assume that you're a light or moderate user, and you wouldn't need to overclock your CPU. Could this mean that you should simply avoid these unlocked processors? The answer to this isn't black or white, but rather lies somewhere in the grey region. Intel made a smart move when they made their fastest processor by stock core speed, the i7-6700k, an unlocked processor. This straight away implies that if you're looking for the highest processing speed possible, you would have to buy the i7- 6700k, even if you do not plan on overclocking it at all. Surely, if you do not require such processing speed and power at your disposal, you might as well buy a locked CPU.

Are turbo and overclocking the same?

Did you notice that all current Intel i5 and i7 processors list two different clock speeds in their specifications list? This is the turbo feature included with these processors. It might seem quite similar to overclocking, but that is not the case. The turbo mode is just temporary overclocking that the processor does to itself automatically when in need of a little extra thrust.

So this was the comparison between a locked and an unlocked CPU. Although there are only a few differences that make these two distinct, they do make a noticable difference, and must be taken into consideration before making a smart purchase.