Tips to Provide the Best Website Experience

Studies show that mobile device use is increasing, a fact that affects advertisers since the platform and the methods used to deliver information to consumers are undergoing significant changes. A Global Web study showed that 80% of Internet users own a Smartphone as of 2015. According to a Monetate study, the conversion rate for Smartphones is around 4.70%, which is still below the 8.52% average conversion rate for desktops. However, the 102,062 millions app downloads (according to a Statistica study) and the fact that Smartphone users are spending more time using apps than browsing the web (according to a Nielsen study) show that mobile apps will soon become a must-have tool for advertisers. Here are three mobile app development trends you should be aware of in 2015.

1 - User Experience

Due to the huge number of apps available to Smartphone owners, user experience is one of the elements that will determine whether or not an app is popular. A good user experience includes an app that is easy and fun to use but Smartphone owners are also increasingly pre-occupied about their safety and who has access to their data. This growing concern for safety is directly tied to recent headlines about hacks and it is probable that advertisers will not be able to connect with mobile users unless they develop a safe app. User experience can also be improved by state of the art design such as parallax layouts or customization options.

2 - Cloud Integration And Other Smart Devices

The Internet of Things is a relatively new concept but tech experts agree on the fact that the Internet of Things is the future. The Internet of Things (or IoT) refers to the connectivity of objects around us. A good example would be the new Smart TVs that allow users to stream movies and TV shows from a Smartphone or laptop or the Smart thermostats that can be controlled thanks to mobile apps. The Internet of Things should become more prominent in 2015 as consumers develop an interest for connected household items and wearable tech. App developers will have to catch up by focusing on cloud integration and by creating apps that can efficiently communicate with other devices besides Smartphones.

3 - Enterprise Apps

The demand for enterprise apps is growing for a number of reasons. Advertisers are relying on apps to reach out to their audience and make the shopping process easier, but enterprises are also using apps to train new employees, collect and make analytics more accessible to their sales team or to promote collaboration between employees. More companies will invest in app development in 2015 and there should be a focus on features such as safe payments for consumers as well as advanced analytics and cloud integration for employees.

Contensive offers custom solutions such as mobile app development, online integration or responsive design. Contact us to find out more about the services offered and to learn more about trends in app development.

Custom App Connects Trucking Companies With Loads Of Holiday Remembrance Wreaths For Delivery To Veterans’ Cemeteries Nationwide

Leesburg, Virginia–As part of its ongoing commitment to support worthy causes, Contensive recently donated the custom “Truckload of Respect” app to help the Truckload Carriers Association deliver nearly 250 truckloads of holiday wreaths. The remembrance wreaths were placed on veterans’ graves in more than 1,000 cemeteries across the country as part of the Wreaths Across America event on December 13th.

In addition to pairing loads of wreaths with volunteer trucking companies, the Truckload of Respect app also enables users to sponsor the cost of delivering a load of wreaths, and to donate or purchase wreaths to help support the veterans’ wreath charity.

The app’s responsive design allows users to access TruckloadofRespect.org from a smartphone or tablet device as easily as from a desktop or laptop computer. The trucking companies volunteering to deliver loads used the app to search for and select available delivery destinations to best coordinate with their existing routes.

“Given the fast pace of operations in the trucking industry, and the time demands of the holiday season, creating a web app to ease the process of volunteering and donating was a key element in the success of this important event,” said Contensive Founder Dwayne McGowan. “It was a great honor to help recognize our country’s fallen veterans.”

About Wreaths Across America & Truckload of Respect

Growing out of a program started in 1992 at Arlington National Cemetery, the annual wreath-laying event was formalized in 2007 as Wreaths Across America to continue and expand the effort to honor our military veterans. In 2011, the Truckload Carriers Association started its Truckload of Respect program as part of a commitment to ensure that every load of donated wreaths would be delivered to veterans’ cemeteries across the country. In 2014, the program delivered 720,000 wreaths nationwide, with 230,000 of that total placed at Arlington National Cemetery alone, one for each and every veteran interred at the site.

Let me start this blog by throwing a few statistics at you:

• 58% of all US consumers already own a smartphone (and the percentage is growing)
• Over 1.2 billion people access the web from their mobile device
• Globally mobile accounts for 15% of all internet traffic.
• Over 95% of smartphone users have searched for local information

and finally....

Google states that 61% of mobile users who land on a non-optimized site immediately leave the site and return to Google to find one that is more readable.

So, have I got your attention? The bottom line is--if your site is not optimized for mobile devices you are losing traffic. Google understands that users want to consume content in the device of their choice and more and more that means MOBILE.

According to Google, "Smartphone users are a significant and fast-growing segment of internet users, and at Google we want them to experience the full richness of the web".

That is why Google has implemented changes into their search algorithms that will prioritize mobile -optimized sites in searches performed by mobile devices. That of course means sites that are not optimized will be demoted in their rankings.

At Contensive when Google speaks we listen, and based on their recommendations, we have embraced the responsive design methodology when we develop new web applications and websites.

We recommend using responsive web design because it has many good aspects:

• Using a single URL for a piece of content makes it easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to your content, and a single URL for the content helps Google's algorithms assign the indexing properties for the content.
• No redirection is needed for users to get to the device-optimized view, which reduces loading time. Also, user agent-based redirection is error-prone and can degrade your site's user experience.
• It saves resources for both your site and Google's crawlers. For responsive web design pages, any Googlebot user agents needs to crawl your pages once, as opposed to crawling multiple times with different user agents, to retrieve your content. This improvement in crawling efficiency can indirectly help Google index more of the site's contents and keep it appropriately fresh.

Other benefits of responsive web design is that it delivers the same content pages from your current Contensive framework, so you don't have to manage two platforms. Also, if you are happy with your current design you don't have to start over to implement mobile, we can make the necessary design adjustments in your existing style sheets and templates, so implementation is faster.

If you are ready to talk mobile give us a call 571-291-3416 and we can show you how to quickly and painlessly position your site for the mobile world.