The past year has been a wild one for the world of eCommerce. Between lockdowns and social distancing throughout 2020, online sales have rocketed, resulting in ten years’ worth of growth in the space of just three months.
While eCommerce sales accounted for just 19.1% of total retail sales in February 2020, this percentage jumped to 32.9% in May, rising again to 34.5% in February 2021. More people are now turning to online stores for everything from fashion and DIY to their weekly food shops, and it looks like these new consumer habits are here to stay.
Heated competition
As…
A website is the very heart and soul of your online business. It’s the one place where you can really show off your brand and engage with consumers. But what makes a website successful? It’s all about flawless usability and quality content, with great visual appeal.
If you’re looking to make 2021 a year for the books, then these statistics can show you how to make the most of your website.
The Importance of Visuals
1. First impressions are 94% design related
It takes 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about a website, meaning it only takes one glance for…
When it comes to marketing strategies, there are two main routes your brand can go down — push or pull. Both strategies have their benefits, and when deciding which one to use, it’s important to consider the stage your business is at.
Push marketing
Push marketing is where you take your brand directly to your target audience. You push your products and services in front of them, with full control over the timings, frequency and content of your communication.
Since customers aren’t actively looking for your products and services, this is thought of as an intrusive strategy. …
What is growth marketing?
Marketing strategies typically have four steps, often portrayed as a funnel. First, you generate leads by building brand awareness and drumming up interest. You then drive traffic through the funnel by creating a desire to choose your products, until eventually they take action and are converted into paying customers.
Growth marketing adds a fifth step to this funnel — advocacy. Once customers reach the bottom, the idea is to keep them engaged, nurturing your existing client base. This is an easier and more cost-effective solution to increasing sales than focusing solely on attracting new clients. …
With everything that has happened in 2020, it’s time to look ahead and think about future-proofing our businesses. While we can’t predict what future challenges we might face, we can create sustainable and resilient business models designed to overcome the disruption when the unexpected happens again.
What does a ‘future-ready’ business look like?
Looking at the impact of COVID-19, a recent report found that ‘future-ready’ businesses had these six characteristics in common, which can all be linked to technology and an adaptable mindset:
- Have a positive attitude to change
- Are open to new technology
- Actively plan for their technological futures
- …
Here at The Curious Agency, we like to think that we know a thing or two about building a website, and an awesome one at that. We’ve pulled together insight and expertise from some of the best in our business to break down what actually goes into our web-build process. For episode 3, it’s all about UX design.
Design concepts approved, wireframes soundly tested, website launched, we move onto an exciting part of the web build process — UX design. From here on in, it’s all about shaping a user’s emotions and attitudes towards our website.
Design Prototyping
Although undertaken…
The fast-approaching holiday season is often a key time of year for small businesses and multi-national retailers alike. High profile shopping events, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day sales often drive peak levels of traffic, both in-store and online. In the midst of a global pandemic however, the landscape for many local businesses has changed.
The recent announcement of a nationwide lockdown has removed any possibility of high street footfall over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events. …
Here at The Curious Agency, we like to think that we know a thing or two about building a website, and an awesome one at that. We’ve pulled together insight and expertise from some of the best in our business to break down what actually goes into our web-build process. For episode 2, it’s all about brand and creative.
Our journey begins, and website glory awaits. Our first steps are crucial, as they pave the way for other steps in the web build process, and most importantly how users interpret and interact with the website. Over to brand and creative.
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Here at The Curious Agency, we like to think that we know a thing or two about building a website, and an awesome one at that. We’ve pulled together insight and expertise from some of the best in our business to break down what actually goes into our web-build process. Strap in for Episode 1…
Design
The first stepping stone on your way to website greatness, and in our opinion, the most fun. Your website is the digital storefront of your brand. Your users have a personality, and your brand and your website should, too. What is the ethos of…
What makes a website easy to navigate?
It’s an important question for a number of reasons, and one which should be taken into careful consideration with any web-based project. Expectation and reality can often be miles apart in how we expect users to interact with a website, and how they actually interact with a website. It’s a crucial aspect of the user journey which deserves consideration, and leads back to the primary question at hand — what makes a website easy to navigate?
The website navigation
The obvious place to start, and the one which we’ll be doing so for…
The Curious Agency
Our views on creating brands, websites & eCommerce that people love.
