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Mobile App Vs Web App

Mobile App Vs Web App

Looking for Mobile App Vs Web App guide?

Apps, short for applications, are a readily used term among general users. And they’re often found confused with mobile app and web app. Developers to create apps know the disparities rather well. It’s important to resolve this common misconception to make the most of each one.

Knowing whether they’re similar, dependent, opposite can help you choose the right option. Let’s explore the basic differentiating details between web apps and mobile apps in brief.

What is a Mobile App?

Mobile apps are software programs, specifically designed to run on mobiles. These are primarily built for touchscreen devices like – smartphones, tablets, consoles. Most apps are launched and installed via two leading sources – App Store (iOS) and Play Store (Android). Android covers 71% of the total app users whereas iOS holds 28% share in the global market.

You can classify mobile apps into two broad categories based on the platform/system compatibility –

  1. Native: Apps are created for a niche platform (iOS or Android), often requiring hardware access for full functionality. Most apps are native apps, developed for a specific platform.
  2. Hybrid: A single code base allows the app to become compatible with all available operating systems (OSs). Popular Hybrid apps used by SME/Startup are Flutter, React Native, Ionic.

Apps are developed using specific programming languages and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), depending on the platform.

  • iOS app mostly uses Objective-C/Swift (program language) with Xcode IDE.
  • Android app uses Java (program language) with Android Studio/Eclipse IDE.

Google and Apple also have proprietary development tools, software development kits (SDKs), interface elements. Developers primarily use these features to create, test, launch native mobile apps.

Mobile App: Positives and Limitations

The general advantages of modern mobile apps can be broadly outlined as follows –

  • Rich, smooth, engaging user experience through device-specific features.
  • Further access to hardware and even other software for enhanced performance.
  • Utilization of device resources to become more responsive and/or speedy.
  • Multiple monetization possibilities are included to get direct money from users.
  • Offline capabilities enable access to features or contents without internet.
  • Real-time communication with users is established via notifications or reminders.
  • Easy addition and functioning of new and/or complex features with tools.

However, you’ll have to address some drawbacks while choosing mobile apps for sure –

  • Developing an app mostly starts from scratch, requiring extensive workload.
  • Costing is high; tends to increase with more features, advancement, complexity.
  • Regular/Periodic update is a must for safety and security of data/information.
  • Consistent maintenance is necessary to keep up with Store Terms & Conditions.
  • Initial approval from the App/Play Store is challenging with many regulations.

What is a Web App?

Web apps are self-sustaining software with no downloading or installing requirements. The software fully runs on web browser, remaining highly adaptive to any device. Its program is stored in a remote server, allowing access to users via Internet when requested. A web app is different from website as web apps display intended content for user interactions.

Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s GSuite are the two best web app examples. Web apps utilize HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python without any standard SDK (software development kit). Instead, developers often have access to custom templates to craft the required features. However, OS compatibility and/or support may be limited for some web apps.

Web App: Positives and Limitations

The standard benefits offered to the users/developers by a web app include –

  • Less cost, effort, time requirement in development without any special features.
  • In-browser access means no involvement in downloading/installing issues.
  • A somewhat steady codebase to remain compatible with all operating systems.
  • Automated, direct, instant updates applied to the app without notifications.
  • Simple, easy, quick development using many custom templates available online.
  • Instant launching for user attention without going through approval process.
  • Fast discovery/analysis by search engines for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Likewise, some associated problems of using web apps to be dealt with –

  • Working offline and/or under poor internet connectivity isn’t possible.
  • Difficult to discover independently or through SERPs with no database listing.
  • Unapproved app quality and/or security means safety isn’t guaranteed.
  • Limited to no access to specific hardware or software features on the device.
  • Variances in versions and updates may cause some compatibility issues.

Difference Between the Two – Mobile App vs Web App

Mobile App Web App
Requires More User Action Takes Less/Minimum User Action
Need to Download and Install from App/Play Store Instant Access through Web Browser
App Gets Stored in Mobile/Device App Remains Stored in Remote Server
Flexible User Interface Somewhat Simple User Interface
Faster Navigation through Short Loading Time Poor Connectivity Leads to Extended Loading Time
Compatible with Complex Functionalities Minimal Support on Complex Functions
Periodic Updates are to be Downloaded from Store Updates/Patches are Directly Applied to the Entire App
Apps can Work Offline Apps Only Work Online
Developing Cost is High Developing Cost is Low
Specific Platform Coding is Necessary No Coding Specification is Required
Software Development Kit (SDK) is a must No SDK Standard Available

Both apps are considerably similar in terms of appearance, response, and functionality from the user’s perspective. That’s where the confusion arises where people start to treat the two app types alternately.

Let’s consider the YouTube mobile app against the YouTube web app to differentiate between the two. You can access the mobile app instantly where the app features a particular interface. Now accessing YouTube through a web browser on the same mobile will come up with the same interface.

Similarly, YouTube exhibits the same features, interface, and functionality as other compatible devices. You can access the YouTube web app from a desktop where YouTube’s native mobile app doesn’t work. Instead, you’ll be asked to download and install ‘YouTube’ software to run the platform.

Which One to Choose – Web App vs Mobile App

Developing an app has become a crucial action required to succeed in online marketing/presence. You may have to develop both, depending on potential audiences, growth, and expansions. Nonetheless, you should go for mobile apps when you expect direct purchases from customers.

Meanwhile, web apps are particularly good when you’re trying to reach more audiences. Anyone with internet access can browse, find, explore, choose your services/products. It’s indeed a viable choice for enterprises, businesses, startups with limited resources, reputation, futuristic ventures.

Contact Tectera a mobile app development company in Toronto to develop web app and mobile app.

Web Design Accessibility Checklist

Web Design Accessibility Checklist

Looking for web design accessibility checklist?

Access isn’t necessarily confined to whether users can find, view, enjoy content anytime. In the web design community, the term implies equal accessibility, understanding, and interaction for everyone.

This everyone primarily focuses on disabled users as 15% of the world population makes up this group. It features physical issues related to vision, hearing, mobility, speech, and cognition. That’s why all your content must be aligned accordingly to let these users understand your services and/or products.

Three Compliance Levels of WCAG

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set the international standards to make web content appropriately accessible for the disabled. It features a distinctive three-level hierarchy for the prioritized support:

  • A: Must-Have
  • AA: Ideal Condition
  • AAA: Exclusive

The long, detailed, technical guidelines are difficult to digest even for developers, let alone general people. However, certain standards are more or less common sense to comply with WCAG.

Keeping the technical aspects aside, let’s take a look at the features to make your resources accessible. A simple yet rather obligatory checklist for web design accessibility includes the following.

1. Structure and Semantics

  • Headings: Different headings (H1, H2, H3, …) break down a webpage content into multiple segments of information. They particularly help users with vision impairment. Always start your page with a single H1, followed by H2 subheadings as well as H3 subheadings within H2.

Accessibility strategies associated with headings involve:

  1. Bypassing of Content Blocks
  2. Accurate, Relevant, Catchy Texts
  3. Hierarchy or Outline of Page

Title tags slightly differ from H1 in terms of on-page SEO. H1 specifies the primary content heading/title. But the title tag defines the webpage to show up on search engine results.

  • Language: Setting a standard language for all the contents is essential to support assistive technology (from conventional to trending). Tools can easily render the rules on captions, pronunciations, texts more precisely.

Go for plain language where possible to keep things simple yet engaging. Hemingway can surely help tighten the words for conciseness. Don’t miss out on the explanation for unusual abbreviations or complex words.

  • Lists: Listing several items on a webpage effortlessly reveals how things are related, how many are there, and/or the sequence of sorted items. Don’t list manually to get rid of unwanted issues related to device compatibility.
  • Tables: Relevant information of different types is put in tables in terms of a potential relationship. The grid of data should have a header as well as a title. However, it’s recommended to avoid layout tables for visuals.

2. Links and Navigation

  • Links: A descriptive, identifiable, creative link text with its intention can offer more accessibility. Readily used ‘click here’ or ‘read more’ isn’t helpful in this context. It’s because the user doesn’t know his/her destination from those words.

Keeping the link text distinctive from the surrounding ones is important. It particularly aids users with low vision or color blindness. Whether clicking on the link will open the requested page in existing/new tabs should be prioritized.

  • Focus Order: You can’t expect a webpage to rank higher in SEO with a random order of contents. So, setting the right focus order is a must for every webpage. The primary requisite of focus order involves logic, intuitiveness, sorting.

Links, buttons, controls, form inputs are some of the foremost focusable elements. Custom elements may present difficulty in implementation and markup. So, sticking to native ones (all the mentioned elements) is an ideal practice.

  • Site Navigation: Sites/Pages with simple yet catchy navigation have a different taste altogether. It may start with multiple ways to access a webpage. Site maps as well as site search are the most widely used navigational approach here.

A consistent navigation pattern should feature the same functionality for headings, labels, and texts. Having a list can also help the accessibility. You should try the visible or non-visible ‘you are here’ indicator for the users’ information.

3. Images and Visual Design

  • Alt Text: It stands for alternative text displayed instead of webpage pictures. Every image must feature a text to describe the content, meaning, intention of the image. It’s essential as slow internet connectivity often prohibits images from loading properly.

Alt texts allow the users to feature a semantic meaning, readable for search engines. The same goes for icons specifically used in the webpage to hold a meaning. Additionally, using alt text is mandatory for images or icons having visual text.

  • Color Contrast: Relying on colors alone for distinguished texts may present issues for colorblind people. Instead, non-color indicators like bold, italics, underlines seem like better alternatives. You should enable such features as keyboard focus as well as mouse hover.

Contrast plays a crucial part in attraction by adding visual interest to colors. Testing the color combo is a must to discover and resolve potential vision deficiencies related to appearance. A 4.5:1 contrast ratio is good for regular texts whereas it’s 3:1 for large texts.

  • Text Resizing: It involves zooming, fonts, and styles integrated for the readers. Sufficient spacing is necessary to eliminate cognitive webpage overload. It concerns line, paragraph, and even word spacing alongside line height.

Visual styling with the font and format must allow effortless reading for all users. No need to utilize uncommon fonts, unless specified for decoration. Keep at least 200% zooming since smartphone users frequently use the feature.

4. Multimedia, Animations, and Motion

  • Audio and Video: Prerecorded items must come with a description, especially a transcript. The transcript should contain meaningful narration, dialog, sounds. A synchronized caption per multimedia content on each webpage is also recommended.

Every integrated video, audio, gif, reel, etc. requires to have general control settings (stop, resume, mute, adjustments). You better use appropriate or standard markups for settings to avoid confusion.  Autoplay of those contents can’t take place either.

  • Alternatives: Users with visual or hearing impairments may not get the message from dynamic content. So, providing a sufficient description for every multimedia content is another prerequisite. You may skip the unnecessary ones, but it’s obligatory for the must-check contents.

You can provide a reasonable explanation right below for certain audiences for further clarity. Controls, flashing, captions, media players are also part of the alternative texts. It slightly differs from that of pics as multimedia features need somewhat longer descriptions/explanations.

  • Seizures: Some dynamic content can cause the users to blink more than usual. Eye strain becomes an issue with a webpage full of such content. That’s where seizure, a potential negative effect, takes place to restrict the design’s overall functionality and performance.

Neither of the contents should cause seizures, calling in a triggered physical reaction, resulting from photosensitivity. Avoid multimedia, animation, in-motion content to have 3 or more flashes in a second. There’s a general flash/red flash threshold to maintain as well.

5. User Input, Forms, and Dynamic Content

  • Keyboard Accessibility: Precise clicking or hovering via a mouse isn’t applicable for all kinds of users. Instead, they have to rely on advanced assistive technology for navigation. It all starts with allowing your entire website to be navigated through a keyboard.

Buttons like ‘tab’, ‘shift’, ‘enter’, and arrow keys should take the lead. Keyboard inputs must facilitate a visible focus order (highlight/border) for all the interactive elements, matching the layout. It further concerns the immediate removal of all focusable elements.

  • Form Labels: Forms require users to enter information through radio buttons, checkboxes, text fields, dropdowns. The required input must feature a proper label, letting users know what info to be entered. People with special needs can particularly benefit from such label-form collaboration.

All the form labels better come in a logical layout while keeping things keyboard accessible. Reasonable formats for numeric data should be available. Additional instructions for specific text fields are to be maintained. Also, don’t forget to put asterisks (*) on any side of mandatory form fields.

  • Error Handling: Everybody makes mistakes; some are negligible whereas a few ones are grave. And it particularly concerns a wide range of errors to happen. Error messages must become visible upon faulty user action in texts with/without a cautionary icon.

The internal error lying within the source code presents the actual challenge in terms of handling. All the crucial parts must be tested, revised, implemented to avoid large-scale changes. Don’t forget to inform users about your ongoing actions to resolve the errors.

  • Dynamic Content: Web elements to update/change in real-time without any reload/refresh are dynamic contents. All the changes are based on selections, inputs, newsfeeds regarding user interaction. Techs like JavaScript, API, Ajax have made these quite easy and popular.

Avoiding silence can break your webpage views in no time, requiring you to help users find the changes. Proper focus, reasonable timeout, independent input are integral parts of such a feature. A multifaceted approach must be implemented throughout for technical solutions.

Wrapping Up

Making your website accessible for all is a somewhat challenging task. The outcome is quite satisfactory nonetheless. There are several tools available to help you audit, detect, resolve accessibility issues rather quickly.

Contact Tectera a web development company in Toronto to create a website.

SEO Benefits of Lazy Loading

5 SEO Benefits of Lazy Loading

Looking for SEO benefits of lazy loading?

Developers have been employing technical tools like lazy loading to make the most of modern SEO. This backend engineering method can obviously make a difference for your website/app. So, knowing its positives as well as when to go for this trendy feature is crucial.

What is Lazy Loading?

It’s a website/webpage loading system to enable a gradual, partial, steady loading of onscreen content. Some elements (let’s say a 4K image) surely take some additional seconds to load. And the waiting time can reach to minutes with a webpage featuring many images, audio, videos.

Lazy loading will instantly load the visible part of the screen clearly while the remaining part will load gradually. Scrolling down will either initiate an opposite effect or simply keep the entire content loaded. So, lazy loading seems like a technique to manage the onscreen appearance.

Eager Loading is directly opposite to Lazy Loading, requiring servers to load all page contents at once. Catching plays a crucial role in eager loading which is readily used to let users return to homepages. Wikipedia is a prime example of eager loading as it mostly contains text.

How Lazy Loading Impacts SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of pushing your webpage contents higher in SERP ranking. And popular search engines utilize lots of different facts to decide or update the ranking. Choosing your strategy will make or break the initiatives based on the integrated techs.

Lazy Loading interconnects some of the forefront prerequisites to achieve success in web/app SEO. So, implementing the tool can provide additional benefits to some of the must-have features users want. Let’s take a look at the top five (5) SEO benefits of integrating lazy loading.

1. Faster Page Load Times

Lazy loading only calls out a webpage when it’s needed or requested by the user. All the web contents feature no interaction, except for the loaded, opened, or requested ones. So, loading a webpage from the server becomes simpler, reducing the load time.

The overall size of the incorporated DOM (Document Object Model) tree gets reduced via lazy loading. A DOM tree contains every element necessary to present a webpage on the screen. Lazy loading enables easier rendering for DOM, resulting in less load time.

2. Improved User Experience

The technique defers resource loading unless requested by visitors, particularly suitable for hefty sites. Webpages with heavy content still load rather quickly with lazy loading. Customers don’t have to wait to see prolonged loading, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Mobile users with compromised internet speed can still effortlessly access everything necessary here. The browser itself doesn’t have to bear extra pressure during loading. Overall, an elevated level of UX is guaranteed with the integration of lazy loading for your website.

3. Reduced Bounce Rate

The significance of reduced or minimal bounce rate for websites/apps continues to surge with more emphasis put on SEO. It’s a crucial metric to measure the overall user engagement regarding the site/app performance among the target audiences.

Lazy loading indirectly but surely helps reduce bounce rates, depending on your web content. Increased retention through viewer engagement occurs, thanks to superfast onscreen response. And it should result in more views, conversation, and sales.

4. More Efficient Crawling

Lots of users struggle to access several high-traffic websites from time to time. It’s because almost all resources load when so many viewers request access. But implementing lazy loading means more like a partial loading of the webpage without optional elements.

It not only saves the bandwidth, data, response but also secures less-necessary content from flowing. You can find, sort, redirect all the resources based on view numbers from an audit. Thus, you can put the best content on top, making search engine crawling easier.

5. Reduced Server Load

This beneficial software engineering tool delays and/or prohibits the loading of retarding elements. A website functioning based on a large database of images, audio, videos puts extra pressure on servers. And it becomes a severe issue with popular or heavily surfed websites.

Lazy loading lets the server provide only the information needed by the users without loading every element all at once. It imparts quite a good improvement for servers dealing with APIs on a regularly changing database. Even the application or website works rather well.

Implementing Lazy Loading

You better conduct detailed research on your overall SEO performance through different metrics/KPIs. Not all sites/apps require the integration of lazy loading, particularly the ones with low databases. Also, you should evaluate whether all the content elements are mandatory.

However, looking into your SEO strategy would be the first thing as superior SEO is the objective here. Make sure search engines can find, crawl, index, and rank your webpages via your content elements.

Google even released a lazy loading document to help developers prevent errors in implementation. A split test on the web/app with lazy loading against the one without this tech may give a comparative analysis. Nonetheless, the actual integration process isn’t that simple.

When to Avoid Lazy Loading?

It’s indeed a good idea for SEO for your online ventures unless you encounter any of the following:

  • Users to make quick scrolling may not get the full onscreen media. Viewers will have to spend extra time on the webpage for a full loading. In this case, you should skip lazy loading.
  • A change in the web/app coding structure is obligatory to incorporate the technique. Any error can lead to serious issues in terms of loading, appearing, and even browsing.
  • As priority elements are loaded first, among which communication elements aren’t included very often. It hinders the communication with server/admin, stretching over extra time.

This means you can’t implement features like lazy loading blindly in an attempt to push your SEO.

Wrapping Up

Internet users heavily prioritize the website speed as well as the content quality. And it’s not always necessary to flood the screen with unwanted elements alongside the intended one(s). That’s where lazy loading can benefit you by limiting the flow of data to speed up the load time. It’ll even help you manage the resources rather effectively to make users stay longer on your website.

Contact Tectera a SEO company in Scarborough to implement lazy loding.

Website Load Time Statistics

Website Load Time Statistics 2024

Looking for website load time statistics?

Imagine the website/webpage to take minutes to load! Well, we all went through that frustrating, irritating, and annoying experience. it’s none other than slower load time/speed to make users turn back from the pages/sites almost immediately.

Load time indicates the time in seconds required to fully access a webpage/website. Internet users click on a link/address to reach an intended webpage/website. The time taken to fully load (≈ appear) on the screen is the load time for that site/page.

What Makes Website Load Time So Important?

You can comfortably enjoy the following benefits by speeding up the overall loading time:

  • A satisfactory user experience (UX) through reduced waiting time.
  • Potential increase in conversion rates against lower bounce rates.
  • Faster loading pushes the page or site in Google ranking for SERPs.
  • Greater interactivity with visitors through superior visual stability.
  • Fast-loading site or page goes rather well with smartphone users.
  • Superb brand perception among buyers to outmatch competitors.
  • Fewer servers and bandwidth requirements enable cost efficiency.

So, maintaining a healthy load time KPI is mandatory to keep up with user satisfaction.

Factors to Impact or Control Load Time

What actually makes the difference between slow and speedy for websites or webpages? It’s the following technical facts you’ll need to focus to lower the time requirement:

  • Catching
  • Code Efficiency
  • Core Web Vitals Optimization
  • Device Type
  • Hosting and Server
  • HTTP Requests
  • Image Optimization
  • Mobile Optimization
  • Network Quality
  • Third-Party Scripts

Implementing, Optimizing, Monitoring is the strategy to make these factors speed up the load time.

How is Load Time Measured for Websites or Webpages

You may think that load time is an individual metric in play; actually, it’s not. There are multiple KPIs behind the back to contribute to web speeds. The key metrics involved in deciding the speed include:

  1. Page Load Time: Total time needed to load a page, starting from user action/click to end with a full appearance on the screen.
  2. Time to First Byte (TTFB): Time required by the web browsers to get the first response upon the DNS request.
  3. Response Time: Total time spent to obtain a complete request on the clicked link/URL from the web server.
  4. First Input Delay (FID): Time needed for the browser to start responding or functioning after the user clicks on the link/URL.
  5. Round Trips: Time spent between HTTP requests to the server with the server response to HTTP, featuring a complete cycle.
  6. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Time required by the largest webpage image/text to appear clearly on the screen.
  7. HTML Parsing: Time spent to fully execute the HTML script upon parsing the HTML into a DOM (Document Object Model).

Must-Know Website/Webpage Load Time Stats

There are cool facts, necessary numbers, and usable practices to find in the 2024 stats related to web loading speed/time. The following facts should intrigue you in a better understanding:

  • There are 25 different factors to break or make the load time, depending on the site or page’s intention or purpose.
  • Light webpages (featuring simpler HTML) load as much as 487% faster compared to heavier ones with complex scripts.
  • The average load speed is 5 seconds on desktop/laptop but the time requirement reaches up to 8.2 seconds on mobiles.
  • Load time depends on the site’s functioning industry; healthcare (insurance/hospitals) pages take 6 seconds on average.
  • The average FID (First Input Delay) on desktop/laptop is 73 milliseconds which counts 59.73 milliseconds on mobiles.
  • An entire website (not a webpage) roughly requires 3 seconds of load time on a desktop due to extra content weight.
  • Hefty websites to feature large files (software/games) can take as much as 486% longer time to load fully for general surfing.
  • The average time to load an entire website on a mobile device is 22 seconds due to the heavy content attribution.
  • Websites or Webpages take 9% extra time to load on mobile browsers compared to their desktop/laptop loading.
  • A one-second load time features the highest conversion rate at 40%, decreasing with each additional webpage load time.
  • The conversion rate becomes 34% for a two-second load time, dropping to 29% for anything slower than the 2secs frame.
  • The likelihood of bounce rate increases by 132% for a 10-second load time against a single-second loading on mobiles.
  • Average bounce rates are 8% for mobile users, 51.6% for tablet users, and surprisingly, 50% for laptop/desktop users.
  • Scientific pages/sites hold the maximum bounce rate among top web genres, measuring 37% on mobiles.
  • Sports sites/pages come first in conversion with a staggering 200 million+ sessions via mobiles in a year.
  • Large media sites lose 10% of users on load time; losing about 7M (1sec), 41.4M (2sec), 62.1M (3sec) users per month.
  • Nearly 53% of a website visitor simply leave the webpage when the loading speed takes more than 3 seconds on mobiles.
  • Website conversion rates exponentially drop by 4.42% with each extra second needed to load within the first five seconds.
  • 76% of the users prefer online shopping through mobiles; they ended up spending a total of $210B alone in 2023.
  • 39% of online retailers/customers/visitors expect the load time of e-commerce webpages to be three seconds or less.
  • As much as 70% of the customers revealed that loading time speed directly impacts their willingness to proceed further.
  • Google considers 200 different factors to rank a webpage/website among which load time lies within the top 20 factors.
  • Implementing CDN (Content Delivery Network) to use edge servers can increase speeds by a magnificent 72%.
  • Replacement of HDD with SSD allowed many websites to become incredibly fast with a load time surge up to 270%.
  • Optimizing the website images, making all the image sizes confined to 500KB, can deliver a 10% additional loading speed.
  • The top 20 US sites have an average loading time of 08 seconds which reaches 1.96 seconds for the top 10 e-commerce sites.

Please Note that tracking website/webpage speed has been a crucial, interesting, relevant practice for SEO. Lots of dedicated surveys are regularly implemented to measure all the involved stats. So, seeing different numeric values for the mentioned facts in other articles is quite common.

Wrapping Up

To simply put, a faster loading speed rules the internet! Whether it’s search engines, target audience, or ongoing competition – more time to load can break all your plans. So, keep in touch with IT specialists to put continuous efforts into minimizing load time.

Contact Tectera who offer web development services to improve website load time.

Benefits of Having a Mobile App for Your Business

5 Benefits of Having a Mobile App for Your Business

Looking for benefits of having a mobile App for your business?

The worldwide digital landscape continues to evolve rapidly, partly driven by the exaggerated use of smartphones. Over 80% of the world’s population holds a smartphone, making it the most readily used electronic device. Apps are primarily the ultimate smartphone feature to achieve such popularity.

Apps, short for Applications, are the software specifically developed for smartphones. You can dive into the near-bottomless ocean of apps through popular app store markets. There was a time when only large corporations, businesses, and companies could afford a convenient app for everyday customers.

Those days are long gone since medium to small, and even app-oriented businesses are now operating in full swing. Even you should consider investing in an app to make a change for you and your consumers. It’s because a business app can put you ahead while drawing the attention of many prospective clients.

Mobile App for Business

Top app stores like Google Play Store and Apple App Store have a separate category for business apps. And they cover a significant portion of the total share of available apps.

Apple App Store contains 10.35% business apps, only second to games (12.68%) by category. Google Play Store features a 7.17% share for business apps, listing third after Games and Education respectively.

However, Google Play Store holds nearly the double number of Apple App Store apps. These simple stats should reveal the extent of business apps’ popularity among general users.

There are distinctive types of business apps available in the play store. Nonetheless, you can consider the following classification as your initial guideline.

  1. Interactive [example – Duolingo]: Customer engagement to craft a dynamic experience for users is the primary objective here. Many fitness and some gaming apps also fall under this category.
  2. Shopping [example – Amazon, Flickr]: Online retailers can’t have anything better than these apps. Customers can buy from a wide variety of available options from anywhere at any time.
  3. Content [example – TED, BBC]: These apps feature informative/useful content for users related to their business. You can consider food blogging or other blogging/educative apps for this kind.
  4. Customer Service [example – Uber, Lyft]: It serves a particular intention of a customer through direct messaging. Businesses are now increasingly integrating chatbots into these types of apps.
  5. Schedule and Reservation [example – OpenTable]: Salons, restaurants, hotels, spas, etc. often use this app. Scheduling an appointment or managing a reservation is the primary feature here.
  6. Loyalty [example – Starbucks Reward, Walmart+]: These apps let their loyal customers access special offers like exclusive discounts. Only a few large companies separately have these apps.

Benefits of a Proprietary Mobile App for Your Business

The positives of developing, launching, and maintaining an app only for your business are many. However, only a few are the root advantages to yield other gains. And they’re always associated with one another, making all the benefits equally important.

  1. Increased Customer Engagement

An exclusive smartphone app for your business can surely hype up your overall customer engagement. Users spend 7x more time in the native app of a business than its proprietary website on a browser.

An app not only pushes the engagement but also speeds up the conversion rate. Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors to make the desired action (purchase). You can experience a 100% up to 300% increase in conversion by having a dedicated app.

The audience can instantly download, launch, and navigate your app to know only about your business. it gives you further opportunities to engage your offers with the potential customers at the right time.

  1. Enhanced Customer Service

A positive customer service is a must since it can drive 88% of the consumers to make future purchases. A business app usually facilitates call-to-action buttons, FAQs, RSVP (queries), and feedback options.

It can ease your customer service workload, providing solutions at the quickest possible time. As long as you can respond to queries timely and properly, the quality of your customer service is likely to thrive.

  1. Improved Brand Visibility

Launching a branded app on the app store lets you spread the business with a few clicks. It allows the target audience to get acquainted with your products/services more closely.

Whenever a user goes through apps, he/she is likely to notice the app. It increases the likelihood of looking into your updates, notifications, offers, etc. Sending push notifications is ideal to remind the app installer about everything a customer may need based on your business.

Thus, a well-designed app can provoke a convenient, regular, interactive experience. More downloads, better reviews, and more activities will put your business on trending app lists.

  1. Valuable Customer Insights

It’s entirely possible to develop, update, alter the app based on customer preferences. Smartphone users are fond of certain features, settings, layouts for specific business apps.

Viewers get to know more about the benefits of your service/offer/product via a few clicks or scrolling. A 24/7 accessibility creates a stronger connection with potential audiences. Modern consumers demand instant gratification which is achievable through a perfect app.

Meantime, an app unlocks the treasure troves of personalized data to understand customer preferences. You can effectively tailor the system, approach, or offers using the data.

  1. Streamlined Operations

Keeping up with the competition or at least, the modern world, needs efficiently-implemented agility. Only a well-developed smartphone app can provide the necessary streamlined operation.

You can literally revolutionize the business portfolio with the integration of streamlined solutions. It concerns the overall optimization of your app through specific actions like automation or simplification.  Streamlined app performance enables real-time communication with the audience.

Adapting to the fast-paced digital environment is impossible without proper management. Streamline operation helps optimize the process by boosting collaboration and centering the database.

Wrapping Up

Having a proprietary app for your startup/business/company unlocks new segments of online success. Better marketing, increased loyalty, higher revenue – everything comes with the mentioned 5 (five) benefits. Launching a well-developed app not only ensures the best of all benefits but also a steady dominance in the competition.

Now know the benefits of having a mobile App for your business, Contact Tectera a app developers in Toronto to develop mobile App for your business.

SEO Benefits of Breadcrumbs

5 SEO Benefits of Breadcrumbs

Looking for SEO benefits of breadcrumbs?

Brands, Companies, Businesses – everyone is looking for online success through their websites/apps. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) happens to be one of the key prerequisites for such an achievement. And Breadcrumb is a technical term heavily associated with SEO these days.

Every leading, popular, great website/app has been harnessing the potential of breadcrumbs. Even you can make an impactful online presence by incorporating breadcrumbs for SEO programs. Let’s have a look at why you better take steps to implement this useful instrument for SEO.

What is a Breadcrumb?

Offering a memorable or at least positive user experience (UX) for your website’s viewers is crucial. A breadcrumb is a tool to let online users/visitors navigate your website back and forth comfortably. It’s a small trail/path of texts (usually single words) to denote the user’s position on the website.

You may recall this instrument by seeing its standard format seen on a webpage (somewhere on top):

‘Home > Blog > Category > Post’

3 (Three) particular types of breadcrumbs are readily used for most websites/apps –

  1. Hierarchy [example: Home > Workshop > Service > Installation]
  2. Attribute/Keyword [example: Home > Services > Supplies > Product > Brand x Rating x Size x  ]
  3. Path [example: Previous/Back Home > Sports > Men > Jersey]

Hierarchy breadcrumbs are the most common since they provide the most advantages from all aspects. Attribute/Keyword ones are particularly suitable for e-commerce as they concern the filter’s application. And the path breadcrumbs can be embedded in either one, functioning more like the back button/press.

You can even see hierarchical breadcrumbs on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) in the following format:

‘https://www.breadcrumbsforseo.com > SEO > Guides > Blog’

Therefore, a breadcrumb is a path to let users/visitors know exactly where they’re on a website. It even helps the viewers to get back to specific webpages using the trail.

Why Breadcrumbs are So Important for SEO?

SEO has been a key strategy to reach, asses, find prospective online audiences/consumers. It primarily concerns how to put your website (more specifically, content-based webpage) on top in search results.

There are lots of points to understand how SEO works, depending on your initiatives. However, all SEO approaches share some common tools/features. A breadcrumb is one of those must-have instruments.

Breadcrumbs have become an integral part of modern, competitive, evolving SEO due to the following: 

  • Enhanced User Experience

Viewers simply don’t like spending or more like wasting time online just because the contents are too scattered. It’s difficult for visitors to navigate a website’s contents without a proper indexing order. That’s where breadcrumbs can offer navigating as well as marketing benefits in one go.

It prompts a user to check out other webpages within your website, exploring more details about your services/products. The audience will get to know you more, eventually leading them to make purchase. Breadcrumbs facilitate simplicity in website elements that everyday users understand.

  • Reduced Bounce Rates

Bounce Rate is a measurement metric for unengaged website/app sessions, expressed in percentages. In simpler terms, it counts the sessions not lasting longer than 10 seconds. Such a short time means that no conversation or secondary page/screen view took place.

Internet surfers merely utilize the Homepage directly to enter a website these days. Instead, organic search via search engines literally turns every webpage into a possible landing page. And it requires you to make every website part alternatively navigable, allowing users to reach there more directly.

This is particularly suitable when the desired content is distant from the original entrance or Homepage. The breadcrumb menu remains visible to the users to choose an easier alternative. Visitors can instantly hit one back button, initiating further engagement. 

  • Improved Search Engine Crawling

Not only the visitors but also leading search engines like Google hold affection towards breadcrumbs. It allows the search engine to understand your website contents while accessing the webpages. Google can even figure out the most important pages to put them on search results.

Internal links developed upon indexing are the ones to improve the overall crawlability of your website. Crawlability measures how easily Google can discover a page through crawlers/bots/spiders. It’s a must for SEO since the generation of search engine traffic heavily depends on it. 

  • Potential SEO Ranking Boost

Ranking higher in Google can redirect more streams of online traffic to your website. Please Note that Google primarily ranks the webpages, not the website, based on the content’s relevance to the searched queries. That’s why SEO ranks have a special significance regarding a website’s performance.

Breadcrumbs lets Google assess the webpage contents of your website through a complex algorithm. A superior crawlability with indexing often results in a push in the ranking. No ranking by Google means your webpages won’t show up on top search results, keeping your webpage view to a minimum.

  • Structured Data for Rich Results

Website structure or web architecture defines how appropriately all the webpages are organized and interconnected within the website. It’s an obligatory requirement of modern sites for UX as well as SEO.

A well-organized website is easy to navigate, even for search engines to index the webpages. It further helps put internal links for every website part, making it easier to find on search results. Breadcrumbs is a simple yet powerful tool to coordinate all your webpages perfectly.

It gives everyone more context about your content (internet surfers and search engines). Breadcrumbs can save time and effort for developers while maintaining an excellent order among all the webpages.

Wrapping Up

Breadcrumbs may not seem anything special at first glance. But when you’ll understand its utility once you start navigating a website without trails. It’s like going from one webpage to another blindly without knowing where to land, what to find, or how to proceed.

You may notice that the benefits of breadcrumbs in SEO are interconnected with one another. It’s not possible to make the most of one advantage without properly implementing the others. That’s what makes such a simple tool so important and impactful for SEO.

Contact Tectera a SEO company in Scarborough for SEO services.

Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

5 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Looking for benefits of digital marketing for small businesses?

Let us embark on a trip into the new digital world where all businesses big and small can be tomorrow’s giant.

Imagine this: for example, you are persuaded that the product or service you are selling is the best and you want this product line to be known by people around the globe. However, the key point is that it is not a must for you to spend a heavy budget on your marketing, and thus, not to shock you that you are shouting into the void.

Digital marketing, the superhero digital marketing tool, is used here to boost your sales.

Whether you are just starting in the exciting world of entrepreneurship, have had your small business for years, or are simply someone with a dream and a whole lot of hustle, I am here to tell you digital marketing is not just for the bigwigs: Considering it, that it is like a pure mechanism which you should use to achieve your main goal and be what you need most to the others.

No longer think of the times when you spent thousands of dollars on ads and marketing, and you just prayed to whomever among your clients you were going to reach. These days, the Internet is about networking and circling every single penny to promote yourself with the main purpose of expanding your business.

Let\’s go together into the magical world of digital marketing. This process entails contemplating the most suitable public, trying to figure out every single centimeter of your marketing campaign and the best techniques that will fire up your brand like never seen before.

And why digital marketing, you might ask? We got your answers.

Target the Right Audience

In digital marketing, hitting the target is like hitting the mark in a throw of darts – that is, it’s all a matter of accuracy.

Instead of making a broad sweep and blindly hoping to hit a bullseye, digital marketing enables businesses to target precisely the sort of customers who will resonate with their product. Utilizing advanced targeting capabilities, businesses can reach potential customers who are demographically, behaviorally, and geographically disposed not just to need their product, but to buy it.

In other words, businesses can design marketing campaigns that reach people who will be receptive to the product, doing so at a time when marketing fulfills its main purpose, encouraging buyers to buy. Whether it is the environmentally concerned millennial market, or fast-paced city living professionals, using the targeting feature allows businesses to tailor their message to a specific audience who will listen to it.

Cost-Effective

Cost-effective digital marketing is essentially the ability to get a high-quality product at a discount. In simpler words, it means getting the maximum possible return on investment without incurring significant costs.

Unlike traditional types of advertising, digital marketing has many cost-effective options that will help you fulfill your ideas without wasting money. For example, pay-per-click advertising implies that a company pays only when a potential customer is interested in what he saw: he clicked on the ad. In other words, this is a payment system for each new lead, for the real interest of the person in the product.

The second nuance is that the budget can be changed in real-time: that is, since a small new business’s budget is limited, set it up, and only if the first advertising campaign is successful, increase it.

Thirdly, many ways to promote their goods and services on the Internet-publications on a company blog, content, and email campaigns require much less investment than traditional types of advertising in analogs.

Measurable Results

Measurable results in digital marketing are to your marketing endeavors as GPS is to your objectives.

Measurable results will inform you where you are, where you are going, and how to get there. Unlike traditional marketing techniques which were mostly hit or miss and haphazard to quantify, digital marketing generates a landslide of data that businesses can use to follow, assess, and gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Every user interaction generates essential digital footprints ranging from website traffic and conversion rates to the open rates of emails and social media posts. These interactions are abundantly available for analysis, providing not only critical insights for improving your campaign but also parts of consumer behavior and choices.

This data-driven method aids businesses in making well-informed choices when you’re toeing the line. It includes tweaking the targeted advertisements, revising the campaign messaging, and reconfiguring the expenditures allocated to each campaign to enhance outcomes. All these improvements can be made in real time.

Ultimately, measurable results validate the value of your marketing spend, outlining what works and what doesn’t to properly allocate that limited budget to guide future success.

Level Playing Field

Leveling the playing field in marketing is essentially ensuring that every business has an equal opportunity to succeed regardless of its size or resources. In the past, large corporations have been able to out-seat smaller ones in traditional media advertising.

However, with the emergence of social media, search engines, and other digital channels, space availability remains level.

The level playing field is based on the principle that a firm’s marketing strategy’s influence on creativity and engagement is more powerful than a company’s excessive funds.

Everyone has an equal opportunity to showcase creativity. In essence, in the digital environment, strategy trumps spending.

Data-Driven Insight

Data-driven insights are the closest thing digital marketing has to a superpower.

They’re about gathering information that will help you make better decisions and get better results. Just about every click, every like, and every purchase your customers make in your digital marketing ecosystem leaves tracks of data that you can pick up and source. When your business crunches the numbers, you gain valuable insights into your customers’ behavior patterns, preferences, and trends.

You may learn as much about what converts as you do about what doesn’t, which empowers you to optimize your targeting, messaging, and campaigns. Data-driven insight may consist of changes to your advertising operations, a redesign of your website, the promotion of new products, and more.

It is a map that leads business firms to better choices and outcomes.

So, to conclude today’s topic, digital marketing is indeed the best way to go. Buckle up, and time to switch!

Now you know benefits of digital marketing for small businesses, Contact Tectera a digital marketing agency in Toronto to do digital marketing for small businesses.

Best Web Hosting in Canada

5 Best Web Hosting in Canada

Wondering which web-hosting provider is the best in Canada? Worry no more, we\’ve got you covered the 5 best web hosting in Canada!

Having an online place is not a question of prestige but a matter of relevancy for businesses, entrepreneurs, and individuals. Regardless of whether you want to create your blog, or platform, or extend your corporate operations, choosing the appropriate web hosting is the basis for achieving your digital objectives.

But with massive choices, sometimes you just don’t know which is which. In this article, we will dive into 5 best web hosting in Canada to help you decide.

Let’s get into it!

Hostinger

Hostinger is here to make your web hosting experience a unique mix of those seminal aspects and features you cannot do without. With strategically located servers in Canada, Hostinger is there to ensure you get high-speed, easy-to-access web content.

Hostinger is there to take your hand and make the journey ahead as easy as possible with an easy-to-use interface suitable for insiders and newcomers.

Features:

Cheap and Dependable: Hostinger’s low cost does not imply low reliability. They provide a top-notch service.

Function-Packed Plans: Hosting options contain everything you need, such as a free domain, SSL certificate, and website builder.

Speedy Performance: Has servers in Canada, where this business offers fast loading and low latency for Canadian people.

Straightforward User Panel: Even if you are starting, you can easily manage your site through their intuitive control panel.

Responsive Customer Assistance: You will get quick help from the support team 24/7 through live chat.

HostPapa

HostPapa is a Canadian provider of dependable hosting services that prioritizes making a difference. HostPapa guarantees that your website will operate excellently with rapid servers in Canada.

The ability to effortlessly operate your hosting along with expert support is just a couple of clicks away.

Features:

Environmentally Friendly: HostPapa takes pride in environmental sustainability. They are about green hosting and supporting practices that reduce the carbon footprint.

Range of Hosting Options: Shared, VPS, and reseller hosting, HostPapa has options for websites of all different needs and budgets.

User-friendly Interface: From the different levels of shared to reseller and VPS hosting, HostPapa’s hosting is easy to navigate and manage your account and website.

Affordable Pricing: Hosting plans at competitive prices, accessible for businesses of all scales and individual users.

Free Website Migration: Offers a free migration to move your existing website to any of its shared resellers, or VPS hosting.

GoDaddy

Being one of the largest domain registrars in the world, GoDaddy is also known for providing various types of hosting, such as shared, WordPress, and dedicated hosting.

Although a bit expensive price, GoDaddy introduces a user-friendly control panel and customer service available around the clock, which makes it perfect for both new and experienced users.

Features:

Variety: GoDaddy offers shared hosting, advanced hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated hosting, amongst other options. This way, they suit various needs.

24/7 Customer Support: When you are facing any problems with the website, you can contact the 24/7 support. You can discuss it as soon as you have time since they run all day long.

Scalability: GoDaddy’s hosting is expandable; therefore, you can conveniently increase or decrease your hosting resources.

Safety features: The company takes security matters seriously and has a variety of products available for purchase via its platform, including SSL certificates, firewalls, and malware scans.

One-Click Installations: GoDaddy ensures that all its users can quickly and easily fill up their web with some popular apps; Money-Back Guarantee.

Bluehost

Bluehost is well-known within the WP community and currently serves more than 2 million Web creators. Bluehost hosts its Canadian products in the Canadian servers to provide Canadian users with fast loading speeds and great performance.

Features:

Compatible with WordPress: Bluehost is recommended by WordPress, and it provides a dedicated hosting environment just for WordPress.

Free Domain: Provides its customers with a domain name for a year for free. A domain extension would normally cost extra, but Bluehost covers it as part of the package.

One-Click Installation: A straightforward way to adjust and set up the website via one click installation.

cPanel Control Panel: Gives its users the familiar cPanel control panel, which assists them in managing their domains, files, databases, and much more.

Unlimited Bandwidth: Regardless of the hosting plan, websites come with an unlimited bandwidth capacity. This means that the website can host as many visitors as possible without extra charges.

Money-Back Guarantee: Allows users to try out Bluehost entirely risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee offer.

SiteGround

SiteGround has a great reputation for quality performance, security, and customer support. As one of the more expensive options on the market, it also comes with Canadian servers that provide the best speeds and uptime for the native audience.

Canadian businesses and developers often choose this platform because of ease of use and excellent service.

Features:

High-performance: Tailored to ensure speed and uptime, which allows for fast loading and rare downtimes.

Strong security: Daily backups, free SSL certificates, malware scanning, and proactive patches, among others, to ensure that websites are always safe and secure.

WordPress Optimization: One-click installation, automatic updates, and caching features that ensure that every WordPress website loads fast and performs to its optimum.

Top-Notch customer support: Available 24/7 through the telephone, live chat, or a ticketing system where the support is knowledgeable and quick, ensuring that users receive help whenever they have a hosting problem.

Scalability and flexibility: Users can essentially update or downgrade their hosting plans as their websites grow while also having the option of shared, cloud, and dedicated hosting, depending on what their sites need.

To sum up, whatever you aim to do on the web – from creating a personal blog to successfully running an online business and anything in between – finding the right web hosting provider stands between you and a masterly victory.

Whether you end up choosing budget-friendly Hostinger or HostPapa, top-ranked GoDaddy and Bluehost, or ever-stylish SiteGround, one of these options is sure to meet your every need at a rate you’re prepared to pay.

Start creating your domain, open it online, and unleash your imagination on the vast, incredible world of the internet!

Contact Tectera a web development company in Toronto to host your website in Canada.

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