The real estate industry in India and Bangalore in particular is growing rapidly with real estate companies establishing new developments in and around the city. Real estate developers are also using digital marketing to update their clients and potential clients on the new projects and any exciting news that they may have.
From opting for a responsive website to having engaging social media content across channels, real estate developers are including digital marketing as part of their marketing and sales strategy. Keeping this in mind, we have put together a detailed report on the digital marketing strategies of some of the top real estate developers in Bangalore.
With developments ranging from residential to retail, from commercial to hospitality sectors, Mantri Developers are one of the few real estate businesses that have provided high-quality properties that match the current trends and future needs.
Mantri Developers have a descriptive website that covers details of all their projects elaborately.
Key features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 46.2K | 0:02:57 | 3.8 | 49.58% |
span style="font-weight: 400;">UX Audit: From a user’s perspective, this website has a lot of useful information. However, a more organized and spacious layout would connect better with the users and improve their experience.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 40 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 3k followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per week and have many promoted tweets too. The tweets are good from the users’ perspective. However, the engagement is low.
Facebook: They also have an active page with only organic posts and around 20k followers. Although they have tried interactive posts like the one shown below, the engagement is quite low. However, they can try to boost their posts to make it reach masses.
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 4k followers. No recent updates are there in the page, but the older posts have good engagement. They respond to the comments on posts, which gives really good impression to the audiences.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with 164 subscribers. They post one or two videos every month which has good engagement.
Their Google+ and Instagram Pages are not active.
They have a Wordpress blog, but the last post was in August 2013. Blogs can give them a lot of traffic, so they should start posting at least one blog per month.
Prestige Developers is a real estate company that has triumphantly built a lot of residential, commercial, retail, leisure & hospitality based properties.
Prestige Developers have a common website, which covers detail of all their projects across all the cities they are serving currently. Their website is mobile responsive.
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 147.7K | 0:02:56 | 2.89 | 54% |
UX Audit: The elite images rolling in the banner connects the user to the luxury of the brand. The main menu could have been more prominent, instead of being placed against the sliding banners, but that apart, the site has very nice organization of the project information - presented state-wise and sorted by price.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 42 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 2.5k followers. They do 10 to 12 tweets per week and have no promoted tweets. The tweets are mostly about their projects or on reasons to buy property. And the engagement on tweets is decent.
Facebook: This is also an active page with around 4 lac followers. All posts are organic and the engagement is low. They have almost same posts on Facebook as the ones they have posted on Twitter.
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 3.5k followers. The page is active and engagement is also decent but they are posting same content on all the channels. They should differentiate the content as the audiences are different in different channels of Social Media.
YouTube: They have a YouTube account with 867 subscribers but it is not active. The last post was posted a year ago.
Their Google+ is not an active account, and they don’t have Instagram Page.
They don’t have any blog linked to their website. Blogs are a very good source of traffic and link building, so they should start a blog and link it to their website.
Tata Housing is one of India's leading real estate developers. It is a closely held public limited company and is a subsidiary of TATA Sons.
They have a website that covers details of all their current projects. Website has many tools like EMI calculator, Property finder, etc. and has a payment option as well.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 144K | 0:01:47 | 2.72 | 65.56% |
UX Audit: The website comes with a clean layout and a very neat color scheme. One of the hugely useful utility – Search, is well planned here. User experience could be enhanced by placing the search in the primary top portion of the layout – so that it is easily discoverable. Every internal page corresponding to a project, has a different color scheme suited to the image. Even though the common practice is to maintain color consistency across pages, from the UX perspective this is indeed appealing.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 39 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 14.5k followers. They do 3 to 4 tweets per week and don’t have promoted tweets. They have a diverse set of tweets ranging from customer testimonials to the initiatives they have taken in general. The engagement on tweets is good.
Facebook: This is also an active page with around 2 lac followers. All posts are organic and the engagement is good. They have interesting posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 12.5k followers. The page is active, and the engagement is also good. Content is exactly same as what they have posted on Twitter.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with 1187 subscribers. They post 1 video every month mostly about their new projects.
Their Google+ is active with around 600 followers, and their Instagram account is not active.
They have a blog which is linked to their website. The blog is not active as last post was on 6th Jan 2016.
Founded in 1976, Sobha Group is one of the largest real estate organisations in India and the Middle East. Today, they have presence in 24 cities and 13 states across India and throughout the Middle East.
They have a website that covers detail of their current project in all the cities they are serving in India, and they have an option to go directly to Dubai site.
Key features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 226.8K | 0:03:10 | 3.3 | 59.85% |
UX Audit: The submenus on the main menu are very interesting, with an image and well placed submenu items. Even for mobile, the menu is optimized well. The banner is the most informing entity of their website. It covers all the deals, promotions, new launches, etc. Usually extensive sliding banners don’t work, from user perspective. However, since the information below the banner is very minimal, the user has a better opportunity to focus on the extensive banner.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 32 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 2k followers. They do 5 to 6 tweets per day, which is a lot as compared to their competitors. They have a diverse set of tweets ranging from their new projects to the general industry based news. Despite these, engagement is low on tweets.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 5.5 lac followers. All posts are organic, and the engagement is good. They have interesting posts like customer testimonial which is shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 15k followers. The page is active and engagement is also good. Content is almost same as what they have posted on Facebook.
YouTube: They have a YouTube account with 466 subscribers but it is not very active. The last post was 8 months back.
Their Google+ is active with around 515 followers, and their Instagram account is not active.
They have a blog which is not active. They do not have any mention to their blog on their website.
Century Real Estate prides itself on being an integrated, full-service landholdings development company that offers the best real estate & property developers in Bengaluru.
They have a descriptive website, which covers detail of their current project in all the cities they are serving in India.
Key features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 20.5K | 0:04:48 | 3 | 46.54% |
UX Audit: The elevation overview image used in the banner is very attractive. It gives a very detailed idea of the luxury and environment of the residential project. The location sorter-tab is a good utility to filter residential projects in specific areas. The slide-in enquiry form looks neat and works comfortably.
The section ‘Bangalore - the place to be’, is well aligned with the idea of living in a place overlooking green luxury – the strength of their residential project.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 27 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account, but the followers are very less; it is around 50 only. They do 5 to 6 tweets per week, but the engagement is very low. Some of the tweets are interesting which give emphasis on Call-To-Action as the one mentioned below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 47k followers. Some posts are organic, and some are boosted, and the engagement is good overall. They have interactive posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 1.2k followers. They don’t have any post on their page till now.
YouTube: They have a YouTube account with only 13 subscribers and it is not very active. They post once in around 3 months.
Their Google+ is not active, and they don’t have Instagram account.
They have an active blog which is linked to their website. And they have newsletter sign-up option for their blog.
The Puravankara Group commenced operations in Mumbai and has established significant presence in the metropolitan cities of Bangalore, Kochi, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Mysore and overseas in Dubai, Colombo and Saudi-Arabia.
They have a website with categories for cities they are serving in India and then cities have description of their current projects.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 91.4K | 0:01:44 | 2.2 | 67.51% |
UX Audit: They have a very interesting drop down menu with all their residential projects listed. The supporting icons plus location information makes way of navigating to residential options more convenient.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account but the followers are very less, it is around 360. They do 5 to 6 tweets per week but engagement is low. Most of the tweets are themed around investment like the one shown below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 37k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement.
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 4k followers. They don’t have any post on their page till now.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with around 400 subscribers.
Their Google+ is not active, and they don’t have Instagram account.
They have a blog, but it is not active. It is also not linked to their website. The last post was in 2014.
Ozone Group one of the top builders in Bangalore & Chennai among the real estate construction companies.
They have a website with description of their projects on the banner images, which is very visual and catches the attention.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 72.2K | 0:01:23 | 1.76 | 72.22% |
UX Audit: The information architecture of this page is very well-planned. Banner information with different projects and their status, makes it a valuable source of information. The website has a very well-built footer with latest news, enquiry form, and contact us.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 35 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 1.5k followers. They do 2 to 3 tweets per week, but engagement is low. Most of the tweets are informative, like the one shown below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 1 Lac followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They have many images posted for different occasions.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 800 followers. They have posts related to their achievements and activities on their page.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account, but the subscribers are less. They have almost one video upload every week.
Their Google+ is not active, but the Instagram account is active with similar posts as Facebook.
They have a blog which is active, and it is linked to their website. Content is mostly about their projects.
Architect led design company in real estate development, Total Environment creates luxury apartments and villas for sale in India.
They have a website with very less content. They have put images of all their projects and every image has a small description of the project.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 10.7 K | 0:04:42 | 11.86 | 22.30% |
UX Audit: The image slider is very different from the usual websites. It focused on every facility that the residence provides, thereby giving the user an entire perspective of what they’re signing up for.
On the con-side, there is no evident attractive information about their residential projects; the user might lose out on the purpose of the page
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 21 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have a Twitter account with only 100 followers. The account is not active, last tweet was in April.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 15k followers. The posts are organic and have good engagement. They have interesting posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have a LinkedIn business page with around 2k followers. They have very few posts that are about job openings only.
YouTube: They don’t have an YouTube account.
Both their Google+ and Instagram are not active.
They do not have a blog.
Nitesh Estates is the luxury real estate brand, which has developed state-of-the-art homes, hotels, office buildings and shopping malls in India.
They have descriptive and visually appealing website, which tells about their projects and promotional activities in detail.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 17K | 0:04:30 | 3.9 | 29.11% |
UX Audit:
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 31 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 9k followers. They do 5 to 6 tweets per week, but engagement is low. They have tried engaging in campaigns like the one shown below:
Facebook: They have an active page with around 42k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They have many posts that talk about the facilities they have in their projects like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 3k followers. They have posts related to their projects and the engagement is good on their page.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with around 1.2k subscribers. They have almost 2 to 3 video uploads every 2-3 months.
Their Google+ is not active but the Instagram account is active with similar posts as Facebook.
They have a blog which is active and it is on their website. Content is very diverse ranging from general topics of real estate to specific topics like tour of their property.
Brigade Group is a real estate and property developer in Bangalore & the rest of South India since 1986.
They have very colorful website, which tells about their projects across various cities. Their website is Mobile responsive.
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 99.7K | 0:01:55 | 2.22 | 58.56% |
UX Audit: Quick Finder turns out to be an excellent feature and well-placed to a user’s visibility. Categorizing their properties based on Commercial, Retail and Hospitality is very thoughtful. However the second half of the website could have maintained a more prominent and vibrant color theme like the first half of the site.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 40 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an Twitter account with around 150 followers. The account is not active, and the last tweet was in 2015.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 13k followers. The posts are organic and engagement is low. They have tried interactive posts but still the engagement is low as the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 9k followers. They have posts related to their projects and the engagement is decent on their page.
YouTube: They don’t have YouTube account.
Their Google+ is not active, and they don’t have an Instagram account.
They have a blog, which is on their website. It is not active; last post was in December 2015.
3 decades of delivering Quality Homes has made DRA a name synonymous with quality apartment constructions in Bangalore.
They have a website with good description of their ongoing as well as upcoming projects.
Key Features:
UX Audit: Each of the individual projects has a set of features that can viewed by a simple click, and all changes being reflected in a single space. This is a very simple navigation.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 19 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 300 followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per week but engagement is low. Most of the recent tweets are about their new project.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 25k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They have most recent posts only about their new project.
LinkedIn: They have an LinkedIn business page with around 80 followers. They have no posts till now.
YouTube: They don’t have a YouTube account.
Their Google+ is not active and they don’t have Instagram account.
They don’t have a blog.
Casa Grande defines designs and develops quality livings spaces and operates in niche residential segments like luxury villas and apartments in Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore and Cochin. The company also sells plotted development spaces. Projects in the pipeline are to the tune of around 2500 crores in the luxury apartments and villas category across these 4 geographies.
They have a website which is visually appealing with big banner images, info-graphics and video testimonials from clients.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 76K | 0:05:29 | 3.21 | 43.02% |
UX Audit: The semi-parallax look adds a luxurious feel to the general theme of Casa Grande. The well laid-out contact information at the top of the page facilitates easy contact. The feature that shows the number of completed, ongoing, and upcoming projects. Clean color theme of the website and well organized layout is a great advantage.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 22 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 2k followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per week, but engagement is low. Most of the tweets are same as the ones posted on Facebook.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 1.2 Lac followers. The posts both organic as well as sponsored posts have decent engagement. They have some engaging posts like the one shown below:
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 490 followers. They have posts related to their offers but the engagement is very low on their page.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account but the subscribers are around 200 only. They have almost two video uploads every month.
Their Google+ is active but engagement is low, and they don’t have a Instagram account.
They have a blog which is active and it is linked to their website. They post almost twice per month which is good as compared to their competitors.
They have a website with description of their projects and lot of content related to their mission/ vision. They have videos of testimonials by their clients.
Key Features:
UX Audit:
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 24 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 150 followers. They do 4 to 5 tweets per month which is low as compared to competitors. The engagement is low on their posts.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 8k followers. The posts are organic and have decent engagement. They post once a week mostly.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 100 followers. They have posts related to their achievements and activities on their page but the engagement is low.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account but the subscribers are less. The last video they uploaded was 9 months back.
Their Google+ is active, but they don’t have Instagram account.
They have a blog tab on their website but after clicking it is re-directed to their home page only.
Mahindra Lifespaces is one of the most reputed real estate property developers and they provide a one stop solution for NRI investment in India.
They have a website which is very colorful and interactive.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 56.6K | 0:02:19 | 1.76 | 65.56% |
UX Audit: Using green as a theme is very impressive to an audience in real-estate. The simple and clean design appeals to the user’s experience. Sticky enquire and book now buttons, really serve the purpose of contacting, comfortably.
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 41 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have an active Twitter account with around 1k followers. They do 2 to 3 tweets per week but engagement is low.
Facebook: They have an active page with around 1 Lac followers. They have both organic as well as sponsored post and have decent engagement. They have some video posts that are quite interactive.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 22k followers. They have posts related to their projects mostly and the engagement is decent.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account but the subscribers are less. They have almost 2 to 3 video uploads every month.
Their Google+ is not active and the Instagram account is active but engagement is low.
They have a blog which is active and it is on their website. Content is diverse which ranges from general real estate topics to specific topics like their projects.
Godrej Properties has been instrumental in the construction of Residential, commercial and township projects across 12 major cities in India & continues to be.
They have a website with all the information needed but it is very simple in terms of design. They have all the information on the banner images which is very visual.
Key Features:
Website Insights:
| Total visits | Avg time on site | Page views | Bounce rate |
| 209.2K | 0:01:20 | 2.05 | 72.01% |
UX Audit:
Moz Rank: They have a Moz Rank 46 for Domain Authority.
Website Speed:
Twitter: They have multiple Twitter accounts according to projects.
Facebook: They have multiple Facebook accounts according to projects.
LinkedIn: They have an active LinkedIn business page with around 33k followers. They have posts related to their activities and the engagement is good.
YouTube: They have an active YouTube account with around 550 subscribers. They have almost one video upload every week.
Their Google+ is active and in Instagram account they don’t have any posts.
They have a multiple blogs for various summits and projects.
~Other contributors to this blog post are Allan William, Pournima Balasubramanian, Nandita Raman, Rohit Uttamchandani, Srilakshmi Indrasenan, and Akila Priyadarshini.
Understanding User experience and its importance
The father of UX - Don Norman defines user experience as a science that encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services and its products. User experience takes more than just defining it. Let's relate it to the real model.
What makes shopping fun? Most of you would say - ‘buying the product’. I agree, but not entirely. Buying the product is the last step of the shopping process. What led to buying is your positive experience at the store, walking down the different sections, stacked with a variety of designs and then finding the perfect take away. Not to forget, the billing experience!
Let us map the real-world model to your online experience on a business website – right from getting to your website through a certain landing page, to reading your content; from navigating the site to finally taking a conversion action, everything counts as user experience.
Research studies on UX and A/B tests on websites have led to pointing out thrust factors that impact the experience of a user on your website.
UX Factors that lead to conversion
Let us see how we can build a good website design below:
1) Product Pitch: The pitch of a website sketches out the business identity. Content that speaks out about how the business goals are intended to benefit their customers, caters positively to the user’s experience. This is the part of experience where tone of the website builds trust and communication with the user. A strong selling pitch can boost your sales.
2) Comfortable and Intuitive navigation:
Comfort and intuitiveness are key factors that lead a user to conversion. Even if you perfectly speak out how good your product is, if a user fails to see the interface as friendly, intuitive and quick - they are likely to bounce.
3) Content & Aesthetics:
Neil Patel says that great content is definitely the reason behind returning visitors and he quickly adds that good content is valuable only when it's readable and engaging. That’s where aesthetics comes in. Content becomes friendlier when the formatting stands out in a way that grip the user's attention. A good use of contrast colors for backgrounds and text can make a piece of content interesting to read; adding images that are crisp and meaningful, makes your content 10x; visual cues using text formatting, colors, icons can guide the user about your site;
Everything that brings about a conversion like important content, call to action, contact information etc. should be made to stand out by using principles of aesthetics.
In addition to SEO, Google algorithm is emphasizing on returning results that have an excellent user experience. So it's important to always look back at how your website is doing from the UX perspective.
Here’s an excellent example to demonstrate how the thrust factors contribute to providing an experience that builds a trust relationship between the customer and the product.
Gehna, a brand that sells stunning unique Indian jewellery have made their online presence valuable by providing a user-friendly platform for online shopping and jewellery customization.
Some of the reasons why Gehna’s landing page User eXperience ticks:
1) The first impact this website makes, is with its aesthetics. Clean layout with enticing images, interesting fonts and color balance, which ultimately leads to a pleasant experience.
2) The content on this page is kept optimum without distractions and has excellent customer value. Studies in cognitive psychology state that a user is prone to action whenever he finds all the necessary information around a CTA. The banner on this page impresses the user by laying out their available services in a dignified way. This is the point which engages the user and leads to conversions.
3) By giving their users an insight into their work, customization process and user testimonials, they have built trust with their prospective customer.
To sum it up, with their unique propositions, well organized content and evident CTA’s, they have provided the customer an impactful experience that bags conversions. I urge you to remember, a great landing page UX leads to the quickest conversions.
If you notice in entirety, it’s the little things that tend to add up in the big way. What demonstrates this is the power of a well-designed form with a proximately placed CTA
Every CTA leads a step closer to conversion. Once a prospective customer decides on a product/business, the only thing in between, is the experience of making it happen. Be it a registration, purchase checkout or a reservation - more often, the last step towards a conversion is completing a web form. UX is indeed impactful here.
To understand this better, let’s take a look at a few insights from conversionXL’s Peep Laja
The key is to ask only for relevant information and skip the research questions. This means that a 5-field form out performs a 9-field form by approximately 30%. Research studies based on usability ROI, has seen that every time a form was simplified, businesses saw huge increases in their conversion rates.
With a great service pitch, an eye-catching image and simple fill-out form, Pamperazi clearly tells you what you’re up to.
UX is so impactful that it can break or make your business revenue
Statistics from experiments conducted by various organizations has shown the tremendous impact that UX has had on sales/revenue. Let us explore a few examples & case studies
Call to Actions
According to Jared M Spool, founder of user interface engineering, changing a CTA button on a checkout form increased a major e-commerce website’s annual revenue by $300 million. In fact studies even show that a prominent CTA button right next to some related content can increase conversions from 2.78% to about 19%.
Here is a great example of Casa Grande’s Aldea. It adds prominence and proximity to the CTA.
1) Providing sliding images of the exteriors and interiors of the apartments.
2) Displaying the amenities and perks of the apartments, evidently
Having given a perfect picture of what the user is signing up for, a CTA is provided right in place for users to make further enquiries. This is a high-converting UX.
Visual Design
A well balanced design is about proper use of page elements and colors. Visually balanced designs have a positive impact on the user experience.
LaundryBoy is a winning design that puts together a great visual balance. With their website themed around blue shades, they’ve made their CTA completely stand out in a balanced contrast. Would you ever believe that a visually balanced design could lead to a 25% higher conversion rate.
Practice of Decluttering
Your landing page will always face a 5 second test to grab the user’s attention. The impact made here brings about the conversion. The Weather Channel wanted to turn people into premium subscribers. They decluttered their homepage and had a single subscription action with their features enlisted
Listen to the Users voice
Users, be it retained customers or prospective customers, have come into the habit of letting businesses know what is causing the friction. Valuing their feedback yields huge difference in your conversions.
Creating a new sign up page based on user feedback, raised the revenue for SEO Moz by additional $1million.
Your users are adapting to trending designs, which is why your designs has to update as per contemporary standards or be even better.
With a great UX - make them an offer they can’t refuse
A lot of research has been done around the impact of design on content. Recent studies on cognitive psychology states that people are moving from text-driven content towards visually mediated content.
Content is more strong and easily assimilated, when accompanied by informing design/images.
Olympia Grande makes the right use of content and images to showcase the strength of their residential project. By placing prime information like project overview, cost and enquiry in a compact space of the user focus, they’ve got the user’s attention. That's a winning strategy for quick conversions!
UX impacts SEO which in turn impacts your sales
A good UX makes your website accessible, useful, usable, findable, credible and valuable. All of this impacts the SEO positively, leading to a good ranking on search engines. A website that is optimized with quality content and good experience, will gain customer traffic and succeed at customer retention.
It is wise to learn from others mistakes; it’s a faster path to move ahead. Bad UX is mostly about doing the basic functionalities wrong. So in addition to demonstrating what works, let me point out what doesn’t.
Common Issues in UX that break sales
Research studies in UX have shown that 88% of the visitors do not visit a website that has given them a bad experience.
As you see, UX is an integral part of a business website bridging your customer to your business. Understanding the usage pattern of your users gives an insight into their experience, learning what part of your website frustrates or confuses them helps incorporate some necessary changes to the website to get better conversions.
With a lot of companies investing in UX, it is evident that the user’s experience with a website is having a soaring impact on the sales and revenue.
Here’s wishing your user eXperience a good health!
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Thinkstock offers user generated premium royalty-free images, vectors and illustrations selected from Getty Images, iStock and other worldwide image partners. The unique thing about Thinkstock images is that you can download and use any image at any file size without affecting your price. It is also the only subscription that offers images from over 40 collections.
Imagedb has a collection of high quality, diverse range of over 80,000 Indian stock images. Apart from this, Imagedb also has footage and other services including image key wording, retouching, masking or clipping path, Image filterization etc. The company also arranges for commercial shoots for clients, depending on their needs.
FreeDigitalPhotos.net offers pictures and illustrations for free of charge, for business, personal, charitable or educational use. The pictures that are available for free are small in size however, the website also lets you download larger size images but it comes with a cost. Once you have chosen the image you want, the portal lets you download them without even registering.
ImagesKart was founded to provide advertising and communication agencies visual content key to researching, purchasing, and downloading of Indian Images. The company has more than 5000 contributors spread across India and aboard.
Unsplash provides free and high-resolution photos that have been submitted, free of any usage restrictions, by established and up and coming photographers. Every 10 days, 10 new images are added to the website. All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero so you can copy and modify them at your will.
IndianPhotoStock has a unique mix of stock images and fine art photography by Sanjay Marathe. The website hosts more than 20,000 images of India and USA and has pictures of travel, monuments, people, culture, festivals, infrastructure, agriculture, cities, villages, rural life and many more subjects.
An American stock image company, Getty Images has an archive of over 80 million images and illustration and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage. They have a large central repository online where you can browse for images and buy the rights. Cost of the images varies from the size and resolution of the image. Apart from this they also offer custom photo services for their corporate clients.
Dreamstime is one of India’s leading stock image companies that provide high quality digital images and illustrations at an affordable price. Currently the website has around 15,000,000 registered members, more than 300,000 contributing photographers and over 44,000,000 photos, illustrations, cliparts and vectors.
If you are looking for Indian contemporary stock images, then Stockimagebank is the place to go. The company provides high quality images to agencies such as JWT, O&M, Leo Burnette, Lowe Lintas and clients such as Sony, Microsoft, Nestle, P&G in India & across the globe.
Dinodia has all pictures relating to India including historic pictures from 1980 onwards. They also house, paintings, illustrations, black and white images and contemporary color images. With a total archive of over 50 million images online, Dinodia, paintings, illustrations, black and white images and contemporary color images. They also have over 100 contributors who take pictures for clients in case they don’t have images a particular client is looking for.
Think we have missed out something? Let us know by leaving a comment!
“Page abandonment increases with every second longer it takes for your website to load”
You just created the sleekest website on WordPress that has a super responsive user interface and killer content, but you’re not getting any conversions! It all boils down to page load time at the end of the day. No matter how wonderfully you craft your website, if your page loads slowly, your visitor will navigate away. They’ll navigate to an uglier website with terrible content but that loads quicker. You don’t want that.
Page abandonment increases with every second longer it takes your website to load. All hope is not lost, however. With just a few simple and easy to implement ideas, take your tortoise of a webpage and give it a turbo boost.
First of all, test your website’s load time with this handy tool from Pingdom or pagespeed from Google. Does your website pass the 2-second rule? According to several surveys that a Kissmetric article researched, most web users look for a website that loads within 2 seconds. The longest they’ll wait is 3 seconds! Any longer than that and your page needs heavy optimizing.
Before reading any further make sure you have a good server and has servers based in India (if you are targetting the Indian market. We would recommend Bluehost for a shared Linux hosting or a Wordpress optimised hosting if your site is on Wordpress.
So you’ve run the test for your website and it’s pretty slow. What next? Check out these scientifically-backed tips to improve your website’s speed.
Yes, implement LazyLoad into your website design to improve the amount of time it takes for your site to load. With LazyLoad, you can cut back on the page load time, and allow users to save their bandwidth. Win-win for all!
Images (in sizes) are indirectly proportional to any website speed. Bigger the image, slower the loading, best solution is to compress images without losing quality. You can use free image compression tools like Caesium to compress images without losing much of its sharpness & clarity. In wordpress, there are plugins like Smush.It or Ewww Image Optimizer which use lossless/lossy method to optimize the images. The great thing about these plugins is that they work in the background every time you upload a new image you can also run it retrospectively on all of the images uploaded to your media library. They come with limitations that the base image should not be more than 1mb in size (so Caesium can be used to compress initially).
The WP-Optimize plugin allows you the freedom to optimize your MySQL database with just a click!
Want to be a cache-all master? With the W3 Total Cache, make caching a breeze. This will let your website load at blazing hot speeds, and ultimately lead to better conversions and leads. It can take care of elements like browser caching, Javascript, CSS & HTML Minification, setting expiry headers etc. Be careful in using the tool as it can affect your design & CSS files too.
Are your images, content, Javascript code and CSS in the same location? Consider having them on external files via a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare for the same.
Want a winning idea for speeding up your website? Reduce or get rid of cookies altogether. Your visitor will also be thankful that cookies don’t bog their system down.
Don’t redirect. When you redirect your visitor to another page, you’re only adding an additional HTTP which makes your page load slower.
If you are planning to build a website in the near future, you might be confused on which platform to use. While there is a whole bunch of content management systems (CMS) in the market, you might want to use the platform that allows you to do it without worrying too much about the technical aspects like coding.
In simple terms, a Content Management System is a software tool that allows you to create, edit, publish and manage web content. The main objective of a CMS is to provide an intuitive interface to manage your content on the web.
There are many good content management systems like Wordpress and Drupal; and they are all fantastic. But choosing one among them can be difficult because you do not know if the website is suited for the needs of your website. The server can sometimes be a challenge in having an effective CMS and we usually recommend the Linux based servers being provided by Bluehost or Amazon Web Services.
This article shall make you aware of the different aspects of the Top-5 Content Management Systems in the market and help you make an informed decision.
Homepage: www.wordpress.org
One of the world’s most popular content management systems, Wordpress started out as a blogging platform, but has grown and advanced significantly over the years. Based on PHP & MySQL, Wordpress is used by almost 23% of the top 10 million websites around the world. Examples of Wordpress websites are Social Beat, ithought, etc.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Homepage: www.drupal.org
Drupal is the 2nd most popular PHP-based content management system. It’s a powerful, developer friendly platform that can be easily used for building complex websites. In the latest releases, database management modules have been added that allow managing SQL operations without writing SQL queries. Many big companies like General Electric, Time Warner and Sony Music, are using Drupal.
Advantages:
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Homepage: www.joomla.org
Joomla is quite often, an intermediate choice between Wordpress and Drupal, having the power of a Drupal website and at the same time managing the user-friendly nature of a Wordpress website. Joomla has a lot of plug-ins and themes available to choose from, so you can easily customize your website based on your requirements. It’s suitable for creating back-end networks for a wide range of purposes like inventory control and reservation systems to online commerce websites.
Advantages:
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Website: www.silverstripe.org
SilverStripe is another open source content management system, best serving the needs of developers slightly comfortable with coding. Built on an object-oriented framework called Sapphire, it has multiple platform modules allowing it to support a content formats like blogs as well as forums / communities. SilverStripe code is bound together through independent frameworks; thus providing it the capability to support any CSS Style Sheets and HTML codes.
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Website: www.textpattern.com
A highly flexible content management system, TextPattern is a free, PHP based CMS that is more often skipped when looking at the top CMSs for websites. It leverages Textile to quickly convert plain text to XHTML, making it user-friendly for beginners.
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Live Chat is an efficient communication medium for proactively engaging customers and converting them into leads. This can be done at ease with the help of well trained agents using some of the many Live Chat tools avalable. However, deciding which one to pick be a bit confusing. Hence, we have put together a list of the 10 best live chat softwares for your website that can help boost sales and service your customers.
Before we go into the details and the USPs of each of the live chat softwares available, here's a quick comparison of the features these platforms have to offer and their pricing:
USP: Social Discovery to help better understand the customer
Facebook ,Twitter and LinkedIn icons are bound with the chat option and if the agent feels that he/she can connect with the potential customer through social networking sites the customer can give a friend request or follow the customer directly from the chat area. This feature is called as ‘social discovery’, which is a unique feature and it also helps the agent to know about the customers better and further chats can be made more customisable. The details of the customers can be seen only after accepting the chat requests. Apart fom this, Snap Engage also allows the agents to remotely control the user's browser and help them navigate to the right pages quickly. Also, tthere are blogs written in their website which helps the agent to enhance his/her skill to be a star agent. Unlimited access to sites is provided by Snap Engage. CRM and help desk can be integrated.
PRICING
The basic price is $60 in which 4 agents can be employed.
USP: Competitive Pricing
Zopim is an affordable, easy to use Live Chat option. When you engage with a customer, a separate pop up doesn’t appear on the screen for every customer, instead all the windows and controls are integrated with the dash board they offer, unlike many other chat options. Automated chats are possible so that you can reach out to customers, before they complete their conversation. Integrating with Zen Desk can help in multi-channel support like emails and social media. Chat history is available by which it becomes easy for the agent to know the customer.
PRICING
Free version is available and the basic version costs for $11 (single agent) per month.
USP: Customizable GUI
The customisable graphical user interface GUI makes Olark stand out from the rest. When it is Christmas time, it gets updated to the Christmas theme. Every celebration can be more fun with the GUI it offers. The logo of the organisation can also be incorporated in the paid versions of Olark. After every chat, rating can be given for the chat from which instant feedback of the conversation through live chat can be noted. Another noteworthy component of Olark is ‘savethecart’ feature by which the agent can know what is the product that is stored in the cart and based upon this the chat can be done and targeting becomes easy.
PRICING
The basic version costs $15 (single agent) whereas the free version limits in the number of chats.
USP: Geo targeting and content targeting
The geographical location of the website visitor can be tracked along with the content what they are looking for so that even the greeting by the agent can be of the language which the viewer follows which gives a personal connect to the user and the user is more likely to buy the product. Keeping track of the content can also help in product that can be promoted through chat as a follow up. Unlimited access to sites and can be managed centrally. There are three versions like other chats that include basic business, smart business and enterprise Omni.
PRICING
The basic price is $29.95 and free version is available with limited features
USP: Integration with G-talk and Instant Messenger
Ogg Chat can be integrated with G-Talk and Instant messenger. Separate desired departments can be created and operators can be added to the chat. Every operator can include a schedule chart to keep a track on the pending schedule. Some data are available that can be used to analyse like brief chat history but however real time monitoring of the viewers, usage of canned messages is a considerable setback.
PRICING
The basic version of the product costs $9.95 and all plans include a 14-day free trial
USP: Real time translation
Internationalisation is possible as it offers real time translation feature. Languages are translated instantly which makes it easy to use in non-English speaking nations. The admin interface isn’t much cluttered. It is a simple, user friendly admin which the consumer may like to use. Prioritising the mails become easy with the email management system that is offered. All the information about the clients can be viewed in one click, but a separate window opens up every time which may be tough to view for a series of clients.
PRICING
A 30 day free trial is available with constraints and the basic version of LiveHelpNow chat costs $21 per month
USP: Quick response through the Mobile application
Users find the mobile application very useful as the agents can respond to the queries from any place. However, the user interface doesn’t support any other language other than English which is seen as a drawback. Live Chat tickets can be administered through e-mail. Service Level Agreements are complex when compared to other chat options. Kayako allows the user to create a macro which enables automatic response to some of the basic and repeated queries as it reduces the response time of the agent.
PRICING: The basic version of the Kayako Live Chat costs $24 and three versions of Kayako are called as Case, Fusion and Engage
USP: Ease of file sharing
Casengo has one inbox for all the chats, emails and social media posts. The cloud based application allows the responders to post their answers in a quicker phase than other options. The customers of online retailers and other small businesses have the response in a very fast time period. Most of the live chats, attachments can be sent only through downloadable links, where as the file itself can be sent as an attachment, however sending multiple attachments is not an easy task using Casengo.
PRICING:
The basic version costs $9.65 (9Euros), Free version can be used in which enables only the chat option
COMM100LIVECHAT
USP: Guaranteed 100 percent uptime
Comm100livechat, as the name suggests this live chat claims to produce 100 percent uptime. A typing indicator allows agents to see what their customers are typing before they submit their message. With 'MaximumOn' technology, the software also ensures that your live chat program runs continuously without interruptions, despite failures at both server and data center levels. Chats can also be extended onto mobile platforms; including on iOS and Android devices.A drag-and-drop file transfer feature allows agents to share a file that provides all the requested information. However, no real time translation is available and no co-browsing option is available.
PRICING
The basic version of the live chat costs $29 and there are different versions based on the Shared Server and dedicated Server
USP: An all in one live chat with email integration
If your business is a small firm and is looking for a one stop solution that integrates e-mail with your live chat options, website live chat can serve your business. It supports till 20 multiple chats with quick tabs to enable swift performance. The user interface helps to edit the interface without coding. Internal operator chat that helps to interact internally when a query hard to manage by an agent can be used to clear his doubts.
PRICING
The basic version of the live chat costs $20 and there are different versions available with different pricing.
Almost a year back we had created a list of top Indian Websites that were not responsive. A lot has changed since then. Myntra has moved to an App Only approach and closed down their mobile site. In the same context, Google’s next update is expected to be rolled out on April 21, 2015 and will concentrate largely on positively impacting sites that are mobile responsive. There will also be a marginal negative impact on mobile search results for websites that are not responsive.
So the question to ask here is, whether you site is mobile friendly? Google has its Mobile Friendly Testing Tool which can help you check. If you get a message "Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.", then you have little to worry as you will most likely be on the safer side of the line.
However, for those who haven’t made their site responsive this Google update is going to put in jeopardy the search traffic and eventually ranking. Here are some tips to help you get started on this front.
Creating a mobile responsive site will be the key step towards being in tandem with the Google update. This was Google’s announcement earlier this year which clearly indicates Google’s focus on mobile friendliness. “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”
The main reason behind the update taking this path is Google’s consistent stand on giving users the best online experience. With mobile traffic having significantly overtaken PC traffic in the past two years this update seems all the more relevant. Google even has an extensive guide on creating mobile friendly sites. If you have Google Webmaster they have a new Mobile Usability feature to showcase if there are usability issues that still exist.
If you are using a Content Management System (CMS) To make your site mobile friendly here are a few essential tips:
For Word Press Sites: If you own a word press site you can simply use a plugins available online. The three best plugins available are
For Magento Sites: Using existing mobile responsive themes is one option that many are considering. If you have an existing theme which is non-responsive then there are plugins to help with this.
The last option would be to adapt the existing theme to being responsive, but it requires extensive changes to be made at the code level.
The time your site takes to load plays a strong role in improving your page rankings. Despite the best mobile data connection, sites sometimes take a while to load and the reason behind it could be due to complex codes, slow server and other factors. Analyzing these problems and addressing them quickly can help give your site an advantage.
Using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom Speed Test tool can help give you an insight into the changes you can make in your site to make it speedier.
Once these changes have been made appropriate modifications have to be made in the Google Webmaster Tool as mentioned in the steps below.
With the update coming out today, it would be prudent to make these changes to your site as early as possible. Making changes sooner will help your traffic remain higher after the update. If you are having difficulties in making these changes, hiring good developers to make them is always a recommended option.
We would love to hear from you if you have seen any positive or negative mobile traffic from today. Please do share it in the comments below.
The Internet Era has now given way to the Mobile Internet Era, with 15% to 35% of traffic coming from mobile devices, and this is only slated to grow. Inspite of the fact that already about 1/4th traffic is from mobile, many top Indian websites are not mobile compatible (read our article on 10 Indian websites that are not mobile responsive). If your website is not optimized for the mobile, you are definitely losing out on leads and customers and also on search engine rankings.
So how do you go about optimizing your website for the mobile? Google PageSpeed Insights is a useful tool that helps you identify issues, rectify them and make your website mobile friendly. Below is a summary of the key recommendations to make your website mobile friendly:
It can be really frustrating to click or tap on a link / button on a phone or tablet and accidently, hitting on the wrong button because your finger pad is larger than a desktop mouse cursor. The tap targets should be scaled such that they are large enough to press / click easily.
If your webpage does not have a meta-viewport tag, mobile browsers will consider you page to be not mobile friendly and hence, fall back on a desktop viewport. Moreover, it might apply font-boosting which can interfere with your intended page layout. The first step in configuration should be width = device – width. It should be kept in mind that not all mobile devices have the same width. Also, users prefer mobile sites scrolling vertically rather than horizontally.
Check the font sizes. They should be legible to mobile users across devices. Google PageSpeed Insights checks the font sizes on whether it is enough to be read comfortably by most users.
If you want to attract users who are using their mobile, avoid plugins, as most smartphones do not support flash and other plugins.
If you have a website already and are thinking of making it mobile friendly, it's possible. But in many cases, a complete redesign, factoring in user experience and website analytics will help increase your website's conversion rate and boost web and mobile traffic. If you are using Wordpress or a CMS then there are quick fixes to make your site compatible - for example in Wordpress there is a mobile solution called WP Touch.
We would love to hear your thoughts on mobile/tablet compatibility and how do you see it evolving.
At a networking meet last week, I was not surprised to hear a couple of interesting questions thrown around. Some of them which I got hold of, are as follows:
Firstly, let me start off with the difference between the mobile website and a mobile responsive website.
A mobile responsive website design means that no matter what the screen size is, the content always optimizes for the corresponding screen size. Thus, the website can be viewed using any device with any screen size like mobile, tablet, etc. This eliminates the need for cumbersome panning or resizing the website when viewing on different devices.
Alternatively, a mobile website means that you have a separate entity built for a specific devices’ screen size only. Try opening it in a differently-sized device and you would immediately want to check out other competitors in the industry with a better user-friendly website rather than suffering anxiety, eye-strain and blood pressure trying to work your way through the website.
This inspired me to have a look at the Indian companies that do not have a mobile-responsive website and I was pretty surprised to see that a lot of the big names also, do not have an optimized mobile web strategy. Some of them are discussed below:
The advantages of moving to a responsive web design are many, right from getting mobile traffic to your website to making the website adaptive to the future devices. There are companies that do have dedicated apps but again, not everyone is expected to have the app installed on their device. Instead, a responsive website can allow them to browse without frills. Companies can either opt to brace up for the future or be ready to lose up to half of their traffic in the future in the absence of a mobile responsive web design.
Feel free to reach out to us in case of any feedback or comments at team@socialbeat.in.
As per the Indian Brand Equity Foundation report on the Indian Real Estate industry, Real Estate is India’s second largest employment generation sector after agriculture and contributes about 6.3 per cent to India’s gross domestic product (GDP). Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Indian Real Estate is expected to touch US$ 25 billion in the next 10 years from its current US$ 4 billion while the sector’s projected annual revenues is expected to be US$ 180 billion by 2020. This enormous growth potential seems to have lured a good number of startups to the industry.
Web Design and User Experience Perspective:
Most of the startups in the space seem to have invested a lot of time and attention in Web Design and User Experience to differentiate themselves from the bigger and more established players.
Housing.com, for instance, has an excellent interface with the property-search button in the centre. The interface is map-based and all property-search results turn out as places on a map. It also has a Shortlist button enabling the user to shortlist options and come back to them later to take a final call. While they have scored well with their interface, what sets them back is the fact they have yet to garner a large number of listings, leaving the user with very few options to choose from.
PropTiger differentiates itself by providing a portfolio tracking tool which enables the end user to know the status of their property investment in terms of pricing, construction progress, project and locality updates, price trends and market talk, which is intended to help them decide the right time to sell their property.
HomeShikari, a TTK services company started in 2011 and currently operating only for properties in Bangalore, is trying to crack the real estate problem by shunning the brokerage model and embracing complete transparency. HomeShikari too allows the user to search for properties via a map-based interface and has worked on a neat ad-free website with a good user Experience.
RealtyCompass claims to be a consumer centric property portal focused on providing the consumer with the information of every new project in the city. Started in July this year and based out of Chennai with a presence in 4 cities in South India, they are looking to expand rapidly to 10 cities pan-India.
Metroplots, also started out of Chennai in 2009, has witnessed good success in 3 major markets of Chennai, Bangalore and NCR where it currently operates and is on an ambitious expansion spree to 20 more cities. They have a strong online interface which offers investors an array of options to choose from while looking for deals and have also created a proprietary SAAS tool called Sales Desk to enable builders & agents grow their business.
Social Media Strategy Perspective:
All startups in the space have been actively using social media platforms to build their brands and engage and acquire customers in an attempt to revamp the industry.
Facebook seems to be the favorite tool with all startups to interact with their customers and promote their services. Housing.co.in, now Housing.com has over 236,000 likes, Commonfloor over 115,000 while HomeShikari, RealtyCompass and PropTiger have about 25,000, 22,600 and 10,000 each.
Amongst the other platforms, Twitter seems to be used more than the rest with Commonfloor being the most active of this pack with over 6500 Tweets and 3500 followers. Metroplots with over 3000 tweets and Proptiger with over 2800 seem to be catching up.
The use of Google+ and LinkedIn as social media platforms is just beginning to catch up while YouTube as a marketing platform has not been used much by either of these startups, with PropTiger being the lone exception. PropTiger has begun uploading videos of the projects listed with them on YouTube and currently has over 40 videos.
With big players such as Magicbricks and 99acres already established in the space, these startups are taking their Web Design, User Experience and social marketing strategy seriously and working on capturing a big chunk of this growing market.
Are you taking your Web Design, User Experience and Social marketing strategy seriously? Call us for a discussion. in the meantime, read our comprehensive guide for digital marketing for real estate.
