Choosing the right website design agency in Zanzibar for your business can be confusing or difficult. The island is filling up with web developers, then there is Tanzania and East Africa! Help is on hand…
In order to effectively use your online presence for the growth of your organisation, search terminology is a crucial component. In this knowledgebase article, we explain what schema markup is.
Any size business needs an online presence, so creating a website is a great way to build your brand, connect with clients both old and new, and expand your organization’s potential.
There is plenty that may be done to succeed, whether you need a promotional website or an eCommerce platform; yet, having a website alone won’t guarantee success.
A nation’s Digital Infrastructure has become the lifeblood of all sectors of that nation’s society. In every country there are national infrastructure sectors which may include: Communications, Defence, Emergency Services, Education, Business, Energy, Finance (Commerce), Food, Government, Health, Transport and Water. Several nations have defined ‘sub-sectors’ like; Emergency Services for example can be split into Police, Ambulance, Fire Services and Coast Guard.
One core part of good IT Infrastructure is Internet Connectivity. We are constantly being asked “What is Zanzibar’s internet connectivity like?” or “Is there affordable, good, stable, fast internet in Zanzibar”?
With these questions in mind the increase in Digital Nomads choosing to live anywhere in the world, and the increase in the need to be connected and work online, we address the whole subject of Digital Connectivity and Digital Infrastructure on the island of Zanzibar.
1. DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY
Why is Digital Internet Connectivity so important? Well, Digital connectivity has become a necessity for the national health and welfare of Zanzibar with broadband and mobile services linking homes and businesses across the island of Zanzibar with the rest of the World.
With recent growth and expansion comes a growing demand for data, and therefore the speed, reliability, and capacity of broadband connections, is growing rapidly. Demand will continue to increase as businesses, homes and all types of economic infrastructure become smarter. The Covid 19 pandemic accelerated these trends and reinforced the fact that the provision of fast and reliable digital connectivity is now almost as central to society and the economy as the supply of electricity or water. Internet connectivity is integral to everything from education, to business, to healthcare.
For example; Hospitals and clinics in Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar are introducing ‘tele-health’ and online remote consultations. These consultations are done via online digital video connections. ‘Tele-health’ is a term given to the service given when a piece of healthcare equipment (eg blood-pressure monitor, mobile ECG etc.) is used by the patient (sat at home) that gives a readout that a doctor remotely located in a Zanzibar clinic can read digitally. In addition a doctor remotely located in Europe can join the consultation and is able to give immediate advice to the doctor in Zanzibar. A three-way remote online consultation.
Digital infrastructure consists of various interconnected networks which are owned and operated by different companies. Broadly, these networks are split into three different levels:
The core network is the backbone of the digital communications networks and is the “intelligent” part of the network, which identifies where the network’s subscribers are and ensures that data is sent to the correct user. It connects an operators’ network directly to the backbone of the internet.
The backhaul is the middle of the network and consists mostly of high capacity transmission lines that connect the core network to the local exchanges for fixed broadband or wireless base stations for mobile connections.
The access network links directly to an end user’s equipment, such as routers or mobile phones, and connects them to the backhaul network.
Access networks for broadband include copper and fibre connections to premises, and for mobile connections, consists of networks of base stations.
Digital infrastructure is a complex and interdependent system of systems, but we will focus on those services that are accessed by consumers and businesses and broadly splits into two categories: fixed broadband and mobile connections.
Note: Within the next two years SATELITE CONNECTIONS will be introduced to East Africa by the Starlink Project (Elon Musk). This will undoubtable radically change the Digital Infrastructure in Zanzibar.h
Fixed broadband provides a continuous connection to the internet for homes and businesses, replacing previous ‘dial up’ connections. To use home broadband, customers usually connect devices wirelessly to a WiFi router. The router is connected through the wall to broadband cabling technology, which is normally supplied to the premises via a local ‘exchange’ box. The ‘exchange’ in turn connects via more cables to the exchange, which is part of the internet service provider’s network. There are a range of different service levels that fixed broadband can provide depending on which access technology is used:
Copper (ADSL) consists of a copper cable connecting the exchange to the cabinet and the cabinet to the premises. Copper networks are only capable of providing a basic level of connection and can be unreliable. Actual speeds delivered by copper connections diminish with distance.
Fibre Optic Cable to the exchange cabinet consists of a fibre cable connecting the exchange to the cabinet but a copper cable connecting the cabinet to the premises. Fibre to the cabinet can provide superfast connections but, like ADSL connections, is susceptible to faults and actual speeds diminish with distance between the cabinet and the premises.
Full Fibre to the premises consists of a fibre connection from the exchange all the way to the premises, normally bypassing the cabinet. It can provide gigabit connections and can be more reliable than the other technologies. Generally, distance to the premises does not affect the speed delivered and localised congestion can more easily be avoided.
Firstly internet service is normally defined by Minimum Speed (stated in Mbits per second).
Here are some example categories of Minimum Speed and the activities that service can support:
Decent Broadband:
Usually at least 10Mbps (download) and 1Mbps upload. For making video calls, downloading a one-hour episode of high definition television (HDTV) in around 15 minutes.
Fast Broadband:
Usually at least 20-100Mbps (download) and 10Mbps upload. For small businesses or individuals working online ‘in the cloud’ for file transfers, small video production. Capable of supporting up to 10 devices at once at a single location, downloading a 1hourr episode of HDTV in around 5 minutes
Superfast Broadband
Usually 30Mbps to 300 (download) and up to 30Mbps upload. For larger business. Capable of supporting multiple devices at once, downloading a 1-hour episode of HDTV in around four minutes
Ultrafast Broadband
300 to 1000Mbps (download). Multiple people streaming ultrahigh definition TV at once, downloading an hour episode of HDTV in less than 30 seconds
Gigabit Broadband
1000 and above (download). Capable of downloading a high definition film in under one minute or a full 4K film in less than 15 minutes
Mobile networks provide telephony and data connectivity services to consumers by using a mobile phone as a terminal. Like fixed broadband, there are a range of different service levels that mobile connections can offer.
Mobile access network infrastructure consists of two main elements:
The radio access network:
The network of base stations providing cellular coverage across the UK, allowing mobile devices to transmit and receive data via the radio spectrum. Base stations vary in size and cost, but each requires an appropriate site with a power supply and a fibre or microwave connection to the backhaul network.
The radio spectrum:
Part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and is widely used for modern day telecommunications, broadcast TV and radio. Information can be transmitted over different frequency bands within the radio spectrum. The radio spectrum is a finite resource and so bands are allocated to users, the government has a duty in each country to ensure that the spectrum is efficiently used.
Type of Mobile Data Service available in other countries:
2G – The oldest available technology deployed in the UK, now mainly used for telephony services 3G – The first generation of service that enabled the use of internet services 4G – The most widely accessed technology, capable of delivering reasonable capacity broadband for video streaming 5G – The latest generation of mobile communication technologies, with the potential to provide ultra-reliable, low latency and very high capacity connectivity that can support new use cases across areas such as transport and the industrial Internet of Things
Mobile Data Service available in Zanzibar:
4G LTE – There is no true standard for 4G LTE, it covers the entire range between 3G to 4G, giving it a massive range of potential speeds. On average, however, download speeds range from 1-5 Mbps, with faster speeds available in good coverage areas.
Mobile Data Coverage in Zanzibar:
Coverage can be patchy on the East Coast even though the island is flat – it does rely on the coverage provided by the relay masts. Stone Town is the more reliable area for reception – but it all does vary on Service Provider, distance from mast and device you are using. Zantel remains the most constant but it does depend on where you are located. Our advice would be try two or three mobile service providers out before deciding.
Fixed wireless access can also be provided by satellites. This is particularly important for premises where no other connection type is available. However, connections provided by geostationary satellites are have often provided poor quality due to the distance between the satellite and the premises it is connecting to.
This may change as more low earth satellite constellations are deployed, such as Starlink and One Web, which are closer to premises and therefore can provide better quality. Starlink is scheduled to come to East Africa in 2023.
Satellite connectivity may be the biggest opportunity that Zanzibar has towards providing affordable, reliable, fast, internet connectivity to the island. If this happens the economy will benefit from opportunities for increased investment in ALL of the sectors vital to Zanzibar’s citizens and the Island’s Communications, Defence, Emergency Services, Education, Business, Energy, Finance (Commerce), Food, Government, Health, Transport and Water.
Like water, Zanzibar needs Internet Connectivity to flow fast, be affordable, accessible and reliable.
Simply Sustainable IT Software Solutions in Zanzibar Tanzania
What makes us Zanzibar's best Website Developer and Tanzania's top IT Software Solutions provider?
Simply IT believes in SUSTAINABLE (long-term), AFFORDABLE (competitively-priced), LOCAL IT Solutions that meet international standards.
Many IT companies in East Africa talk about Digital Solutions. But we specialise in sustainable website design. We don’t just talk, we practice it. A sustainable IT solution is best designed and maintained by a professionally trained LOCAL support team. That’s why we are HERE in Zanzibar for you!
Simply IT is based in Zanzibar, is run by a Zanzibari and seeks to train locally.
If you want advice on IT in Zanzibar; be that Digital Marketing, Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation or anything else please contact us for a chat.
Pops has been an IT professional for over four decades, with a global work experience that spans multiple countries. Beginning as a Programmer and Analyst at a renowned corporation in the UK, he climbed the ladder to eventually become the Director of Global Information & Communications Technology. Along the way, he also led a Digital Marketing Consultancy in Europe for ten years. Presently residing in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Pops pursues his hobbies of watching rugby and football and Stand Up Paddle Boarding.
This is a common mantra we hear a lot in Zanzibar and Tanzania; “A website is not important anymore…Social Media is more important now right?” Wrong!!
Social Media is important but it has not replaced the need for a well-designed website. An outdated, confusing or broken website will hurt your brand and your business. We are not saying it might hurt your brand, we’re saying it will hurt it.
So how can you get a website that succeeds? You can create an awesome website by absolutely nailing your web design from the beginning. But what is web design, actually? Read on if you want to learn what web design is all about, why it matters and how to get it right.
What is web design?
Web design is what creates the overall look and feel when you’re using a website. It’s the process of planning, building the elements of your website and putting it all together, from functionality, structure and layout to images, colours, fonts and graphics.
Web design has numerous components that work together to create the finished ‘experience’ of a website, including graphic design, user experience design, interface design, search engine optimization (SEO) and content creation.
In Tanzania and East Africa we have noted that the Tourism sector is still extremely blasé about Search Engine Optimisation. Many businesses, tour companies and hotels believe that just having a website is all that is needed. We often ask CEO’s and business owners, to type into Google the phrase they think a potential customer will use to find their website on the internet. “Best Hotel in Zanzibar”, “Recommended Safaris Tanzania”, or “Top Tours in East Africa”. How close to the top of the search results do their businesses appear? If it is not on the front page, then it matters not how beautiful their website is… it will not be seen! SEO is an important element to website design and development.
All these elements combined determine how a website looks, feels and works on various devices. If you want to find out more about the whole process just give us a call at Simply IT and we will be happy to explain the process and how it fits for your business.
Web design is different from web development, which is the actual coding that makes a website work. When you’re building a website, you need both web design and web development. Although you can find web designers who are also web and UX (User Experience) developers, these are distinct skill sets. We have a team of seven in Simply IT to cover all the elements of website design and website development.
Here’s what your website will look like in its earliest stages:
Web design is different from web development, which is the actual coding that makes a website work. When you’re building a website, you need both web design and web development. Although you can find web designers who are also web and UX (User Experience) developers, these are distinct skill sets. We have a team of seven in Simply IT to cover all the elements of website design and website development.
Web designers take your ideas and turn them into a mock-up that shows what your future website will look like. Web designers handle the creative part of designing a website.
Web developers—also sometimes called technicians, engineers or coders — take the mock-up made by your web designer and then translate it into a coding language so it can be displayed on the web. They make websites functional, which often means custom-coding widgets, scripts and other tools.
A user experience developer, also known as a UX developer, is the one who makes your website user-friendly. They have technical skills as well as design skills and put them to work creating websites that attract and keep visitors.
First impressions really matter. We can’t stress this point enough: if you don’t have a strong web presence, you’re holding your brand back. A lot of potential customers who find you on Social Media often want to check out your business and ‘brand’ presence on your website. Often the first impression means a user will exit your website almost immediately. This is called the ‘bounce-rate’ Good web developers and web designers will be able to give you reports of how well your website is doing. Monthly SEO and audit reports are very useful to determine how good your website is.
If your website does not appear prospective customers who search the web for your brand or product or service and find nothing might think you’ve gone out of business or you are not serious or a professional business. If they search and find something sub-standard, they’ll get the impression that you don’t care much about your company, service or product. Make every relationship that begins on your website a great one by getting your web design right.
Now that you know what’s what and who’s who, let’s look at some tell-tale signs of great web design and what distinguishes it from not so great web design.
Good web design isn’t all just subjective. With other types of design, like illustration or sticker design, a lot of what constitutes “good” is up to the viewer’s taste. With web design, the line between “good” and “not good” is much more defined. A well-designed website is a website that perfectly creates the experience your visitor is looking for and it can be measured and analysed.
So don’t just rely on what you think looks good, or what you think works best. Ask others. Market Research is an important part of good website design.
Good website designers not only design for their clients, they also ask others what they think about a certain design. So if you are having your website designed or redesigned, make sure you ask a good percentage of your present customers to assess the new design and make suggestions. Design is not just about what a website looks like, it has to work well and give a good experience for your customers. So ask them what they think! The cardinal sin of many a CEO is to think they know what customers will think or do when they visit the website. Don’t fall into the same trap… ask them!
Firstly, you have to attract users TO your website. This is the step that business owners and CEO’s often forget. Again this is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Web design that works is web design that converts. In marketing terms; “convert” means getting the user to take a specific action. When a user does go to your website and follows through with an action that your website set them up to take, your website made a conversion. Conversions can be anything, like signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, booking a room, hiring a bike, opening an account or accessing more content on the website.
Effective web design brings a few different elements together to promote conversions. These include: • Compelling use of negative space • Choices, presented simply for the user (the fewer choices the user has, the less likely they are to become overwhelmed and confused) • Calls to Action – clear and obvious calls to action • Limited distractions and a well thought out user journey (ie. using only images and text that are 100% relevant to the subject on the page, featuring only buttons that lead to desired actions and using font variations for emphasis and calls to action, not just for the sake of featuring different fonts) • Responsive design (a design that resizes and reorients itself to the user’s screen, making the website easy to use on any device: phone, tablet, laptop or desktop browser. • Appropriately sized readable fonts that follow a hierarchy (see “Limited distractions”) on all devices • Relevant, high-quality content and images that hook your readers’ attention • A balance between the amount of text and images on each page (too much text can overwhelm a visitor, too little text can be equally disengaging) Every design choice you make will affect your website’s usability and conversion rate in some way. All of them.
If you don’t think aesthetic design choices affect conversions, think again. Your website must be attractive — especially to your prospective user, so try to figure out what style is going to speak to them. Remember the ‘cardinal-sin’? Ask your customers what they think of your design and the user experience. Invest in eye-catching images that work with your brand. Stay away from obvious stock photography. If you are selling a product, then images of your products should be on every page especially the top banner slides. Anything else can be a distraction if there is no obvious link between your products and the image. If you want an image of your location or your shop, then the best place to put this is on your ABOUT US or CONTACT US or FIND US page and not on your Home Page and definitely not on your Product Pages.
Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, coined the phrase “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”. This could not be more apt when it comes to design and websites.
Let’s say you have a Chocolate Shop in Zanzibar. A visitor to your website typed “Best Handmade Chocolates in Zanzibar” to Google. They clicked on the results to go to your website and the first image they see is an image banner of a Zanzibar Waterfront or a beach… but absolutely no Chocolates in sight! Yes, it shows Zanzibar, but they aren’t looking for an empty skyline or a beach… they are looking for chocolates. The image is a distraction because it is not the main thing! If you want to show a Zanzibar waterline on your Chocolate Shop – put chocolates in the forefront or put images of the Zanzibar beach, skyline or your storefront on another page (About Us or Contact Us). Zanzibar is the location not the product!
Then there is engagement; The most effective Images of your product or service will usually engage with potential customers. The easiest and most effective way to engage is to include people in the images. Images of an empty restaurant give the same impression as if while looking for somewhere to dine and you walk past an empty restaurant. Who wants to go into an empty restaurant? Why is it empty? Maybe if it is the
ONLY restaurant in 3 miles you may go in. But studies show people are less likely to enter an empty establishment than a busy one! So try to make the images show your product or service is successful. Remaining true to your brand is key to successful website design. Even the most gorgeous website is useless if it doesn’t match your brand or engage with customers.
Other building blocks of an effective web design are: • Buttons • Fonts • Colour palette • The visual balance between your images and copy on each page
Of course, good web design isn’t just utilitarian. Visitors like websites that are engaging and fit the brands’ aesthetics. No matter how you achieve it, meshing an on-brand, engaging look with design elements that convert is how you win at web design.
We’ve gone over what good design is. Now let’s talk a bit about what it isn’t.
As a general rule, visitors shouldn’t have to do any work to use your website. The whole experience of using your website should be straightforward and intuitive.
Here are some examples: Clear calls to action are great web design; murky ones are bad web design. High contrast fonts are smart, effective web design; low contrast fonts that are hard to read are poor web design.
Here are a few other elements to avoid: • Distracting images and backgrounds. As a general rule, stay away from tiled backgrounds. Though there are a few select instances where a tiled background could be a good choice, in most cases they’re distracting. • Non-responsive design. Nowadays your website simply needs to be mobile responsive. All websites should look good and function well on mobile phones and tablet devices. • Unclear links and buttons. Visitors shouldn’t have to hunt for links and buttons, they should be able to quickly see which images and pieces of text will take them to new pages or confirm their choices. Similarly, users should be able to clearly recognize fillable fields. • Generic or irrelevant stock photos and filler text without valuable information.
Certain web design elements, like grid layouts, aren’t inherently good or bad choices. They can be used in effective and ineffective ways, so taking care to do them right is a must.
Another tricky web design element is animation. It’s not 1999 anymore, you shouldn’t have a comet tail trailing the user’s cursor or make them scroll past a row of dancing hamsters to get to your content. But an animated exit pop-up that brings visitors’ attention back to your site and gets them to convert? As long as you provide a simple choice that will not frustrate website visitors, then Yes!
Wow! Getting web design right is a complex process and there are lots of things to look out for. Thankfully, you don’t have to do it alone. Firstly, you can go look at other websites online that you like. Secondly, choose a professional web designer you can rely on their skill to get the perfect result.
There are a few different ways to get the website you need. The way that’s right for you and your company depends on how complex of a website you need, how much your budget is and how much of the work you can do yourself.
You can work directly with a web designer. Simply search the internet for good “Website Developers Near You” – always browser the website developer’s portfolios and clients and pick the designer you like best and who fits the style and look you’re going for.
Why choose a good website developer near you? Although website development can be done anywhere in the world. We have found that the best solutions are done by agencies or freelancers that know your both your local marketing and your international needs.
A website designer can customize an existing template or design a completely fresh template for your website. If you want your website built from scratch, you can work with a designer and developer who has the skills to make it happen.
If you need help coming up with ideas for your website design, how about hosting a design contest by providing a brief and having designers submit designs based on your specifications? Or just go ask three web designers to bid for the job, asking how long and how much they would charge.
Using a template-driven website builder (like Wix or Squarespace) is also an option. Although these are very limited in many ways and you’ll need to be more hands on. If you’re not a designer you will be limited to what these platforms offer, but you can always hire a designer to customize a template for you.
You can also work with an agency that builds custom websites like Simply IT. Pick this option if you want an all-round solution which includes web design and website development. Always choose this option if you need to build a complex website like ecommerce from the ground up, but be aware that this end-to-end solution may cost you a little more – but in the long run save you money and a lot of time and make far more sales and conversions.
Be prepared to invest in high quality web design. Your web design could cost a few hundred to thousands of dollars, depending on its complexity. What you’ll spend is proportionate to what you need.
So how do you know if you need a custom-built website or if a template will do you just fine? That all depends on what you need your website to do and what you plan for it. If scaling is part of your business plan, get a custom website. If you need it to be search engine friendly, if you need to adapt it to various business needs, if you have very specific ideas about the website that demand that it be built to your specifications, you need a custom website. When these aren’t priorities for you and you don’t have a large budget, a customized template is the way to go.
By taking a hands-on role in your website’s design process, you’ll guarantee that you’ll get a website that meets or exceeds your expectations. Tell Simply IT website designers and website developers about your brand, your voice and what you plan to achieve with the website. The more information they have, the more equipped they are to deliver the perfect web design for you. Explain your vision to them and then let them work their magic!
Pops has been an IT professional for over four decades, with a global work experience that spans multiple countries. Beginning as a Programmer and Analyst at a renowned corporation in the UK, he climbed the ladder to eventually become the Director of Global Information & Communications Technology. Along the way, he also led a Digital Marketing Consultancy in Europe for ten years. Presently residing in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Pops pursues his hobbies of watching rugby and football and Stand Up Paddle Boarding.
Simply IT develops E-commerce websites for our clients in Zanzibar, Tanzania, East Africa and Europe. We have identified ten factors that make a successful and profitable e-commerce website.
Today’s consumers have many options for online shopping. In order to generate sales through your e-commerce website, you’ll need to provide an excellent user experience and convince visitors that your products and your site are worthy of their business.
Designing for e-commerce websites always presents challenges and complexities not often found with other types of sites.
In this article, we’ll look at the ten specific factors that are generally present in well-designed e-commerce websites. This knowledgebase article should help you to plan your own website and ensure you’re able to create a site that will meet your goals.
1. Simple
The focus of an e-commerce site should be on the products for sale. A design that’s extravagant for no legitimate reason will usually do more harm than good. It will draw attention to the design of the site and away from the products.
If you study effective and successful e-commerce websites you’ll notice that many of these sites feature a very clean design and layout. This style works well for e-commerce because it keeps the emphasis on the products instead of the design.
Simplicity in design and layout also helps to improve the user experience. Simple sites are easy to navigate and shoppers can find what they’re looking for with minimal distractions on frustrations.
A good example of a simple website in Zanzibar is Inaya Zanzibar
Many shoppers are influenced in their purchasing decisions by the brand. The need to establish a strong brand is important for both online and offline selling.
In the cases of stores that sell online as well as in physical locations, the website is only one part of an overall branding strategy. The website should work well with other branding efforts of the company so that customers feel comfortable on the website.
As a startup, branding should be a long-term goal. You won’t have the benefit of a long history and trust that’s been developed with customers. You can start by creating a strong brand image that’s used consistently on your website, your social media profiles, and other marketing materials.
In our previous example Inaya Zanzibar is a familiar brand to many people. When you visit their site, you’ll see the recognizable Inaya logo in the site header.
Selling online is different than selling in a physical store because the buyer cannot touch the product or see it in person before making a buying decision (unless they’ve seen it somewhere else).
Providing quality photos that accurately portray the product can help overcome this challenge and can make the buying decision easier for visitors.
Ideally, product pages should include several high-res photos for each product. Shoppers may want to see different sides or angles of the product. The more they can see, the better they’ll feel about buying a product they haven’t been able to see in person.
The quality of photos and images is often critical because visitors will judge your company and your products based on these visuals. High-quality images will give the impression of a high-quality product.
The other thing customers often want to see is the product in use. Photos or videos that depict the product being worn, the size of the product, or used or the effects of the product is key too.
East African Motorcycles in Zanzibar uses both high-quality product photos on its site as well as lots of photos of parts of the bikes they sell and rent. They also have lots of photos of clients using the bikes on tour or rental. Viewers can see photos of the bikes from the driver’s viewpoint front, rear, and in use.
Visitors who haven’t purchased from you in the past are likely to be skeptical. Any type of testimonial, review or social proof you can provide will go a long way towards convincing visitors that you’re legitimate.
Social proof can involve:
Genuine user reviews and ratings – Today’s shoppers want to be able to read product reviews from other customers. With a platform like Shopify or BigCommerce you can easily add review functionality to your site.
Testimonials and quotes from customers – Showcasing customer testimonials on your website can also help to build trust with visitors. Including a photo of the person providing the testimonial will help to make it feel more genuine and authentic.
Media coverage or recommendations on other websites – Show visitors where you have been featured. You can gain the trust of visitors by leveraging the exposure you’ve gotten elsewhere.
Social proof popups – A growing number of sites are using small notification popups for social proof. Visitors see that other people are buying your products and it helps to build trust.
Good & Proper (built with Shopify) provides user reviews on product details pages.
The first requirement for selling a product online is that the shopper has to be able to find exactly what he or she is looking for. Effective navigation is important to any website, but it’s especially critical for e-commerce sites. Lost visitors will result in missed sales, so every effort should be made to have a site with clear, logical navigation.
E-commerce sites often face considerable challenges with navigation due to the number of products presented on the site. Large sites, like department stores, have to be especially careful with navigation because finding what you want will usually become increasingly difficult with more options. Many e-commerce sites use mega menus so visitors are able to find exactly what they want in a quick and efficient manner.
One factor to consider is how the average visitor will attempt to find a particular product. What makes sense to the web designer or even to the company owing the site may not be the same path that the average visitor would take to find a product. Sufficient user testing is extremely helpful for identifying potential navigational issues.
Sometimes it is worth have a number of different methods to reach the products on offer. So good navigation can also be aided with features like a good sitewide search along with filtering and sorting options. The filtering and sorting may be applicable for browsing categories of products in addition to the site search results.
Other features like related products, lists of top selling products, and breadcrumbs can help with navigation, in addition to having an effective menu.
User experience on e-commerce sites is critical to success. If the checkout process involves too many steps or is confusing, shoppers will wind up abandoning their cart with items left unpurchased.
Ideally, the checkout should involve a minimal amount of steps and should be as easy as possible for shoppers. Don’t force visitors to create an account in order to checkout. And if they do have to create an account, be sure it involves no extra steps aside from creating a password.
Another option for some e-commerce websites is to provide quotations rather than to commit to booking. This gives the opportunity to engage with customers by phone, email, WhatsApp or SMS. This ‘human’ interaction also makes the customer feel valued and special. This is good for large purchases like bookings for travel trips, rentals, hotels and other large purchases.
Lots of user testing and generating feedback can help to create an effective checkout process.
An example of a complicated checkout process is found on East African Motorcycles e-commerce website. They handle sales of bikes, booking tours and even rental bookings. This could be confusing and complicated – but they have included quotes bookings and rentals in a very simple user experience.
Mobile e-commerce accounts for about 45% of all e-commerce in the US (source). An effective e-commerce site today MUST be mobile optimized to allow visitors to purchase from their smartphone or tablet.
Several of the details we’ve already covered (including simplicity, ease of navigation, and an easy checkout) are also critical for the mobile user’s experience.
Make sure your site functions well on mobile devices. Again, this is easy if you’re using a web-design company that understands the importance of using mobile, tablet and laptop testing to create a good quality user experience.
Inaya Zanzibar is a good example of a good responsive e-commerce website.
Everything about an e-commerce website should be done with the user in mind. The success of the site and business depends on visitors being able to find the products that interest them, get the details they need to make a buying decision, and easily complete the purchase. Aim to make the entire process as easy as possible for visitors.
The most effect e-commerce websites do more than just display products. You can connect with visitors and draw people in to your brand by including some personality in your site. This can be done through the visuals on the site as well as the copywriting.
Think about your target audience and what they relate to. They should feel a connection to your brand when they visit your site.
But good SEO often goes hand-in-hand with good sustainable website maintenance and branding.
If the most effective e-commerce websites connect with visitors and draw people in to the brand then having a developing team that fully understands the product is vital. It helps if that website developer is local and able to maintain the website as well as help it be promoted to the correct target audience.
Sustainable SEO will guarantee the website will increase in visibility and be profitable.
It’s Hallowe’en as I write this and what better time to talk about one of the scariest things I guarantee you won’t have thought much about as you relax in the paradise island of Zanzibar.
Everyone now knows the insidious effects of a ‘virus’! The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has been a global phenomenon. But did you know that right now there is an equivalent IT worldwide pandemic?
You probably already know about the danger of viruses on your PC, or malicious ‘ransom-ware’ on your office desktop or malware that gradually slows your browser down. All these are annoying, but these pale into insignificance when we turn our attention to websites. There are over 2 billion websites all around the world. Maybe you own or have a business that has a website, or you sell products or services online using an ecommerce website. Brace yourself…
People spend a lot of money on getting a professional and well-designed glossy website to promote themselves, their interests or their business. But very few people – especially in Zanzibar, Tanzania or East Africa consider the risk of owning a website with no security. And I am not referring to that ‘thing’ you were persuaded to pay your website host a few dollars a month, that has the word ‘security’ in the title… its usually not really up to much!
Sit down! Pour yourself a stiff black coffee and read this next sentence slowly three times…
The average website has 44 hacking attacks every single day? Yes, that’s right 44 hacking attempts… and over 18 million websites are currently affected with malware (malicious code).
Increased Hacking attempts in Zanzibar 2020-21
In 2018 there are more than 1.86 billion websites on the internet. Around 1% of these — something like 18,500,000 — were infected with malware at a given time each week; while the average website is attacked 44 times every day. It’s not getting any better either!
Sitelock published its Q4 2017 Website Security Insider analysis of malware and websites based on statistics from 6 million of its 12 million customers. All these customers use at least one of Sitelock’s malware scanners, while a smaller subset also use the firm’s cloud-based web application firewall (WAF). The WAF provides insight into DDoS attacks against websites, while the sca≈nners provide insight to the state of malware in websites.
Actual hacking attempt on a test website in Zanzibar
At Simply IT we have nearly 50 client related websites hosted all around the world. Most of our clients are in Zanzibar, Tanzania or East Africa. In the last 18 months we have noticed a distinct increase in both human and bot-hack attempts on client websites. There has been a big increase in 2021 with attempts from Eastern Europe, China and Indonesia.
As an experiment we setup a dozen new websites hosted on our shared server. We monitored them but intentionally did not install anything to protect them – however, we DID pay a leading hosting company each month to ‘protect’ the websites. Within three months 98% of the websites were infected. Some very badly. Speed and reliability deteriorated gradually, as did storage space on the server. Thousands of files were infected and an email account was used for spam mail. We used only well-known WordPress and industry standard plugins. But almost without exception each website was compromised in a variety of ways.
What does that mean for you?
Let me pause here and ask you something: Do you know for sure if your website developer bought a legitimate theme for your website? Hacked or nulled themes are available free (saving hundreds of dollars for developers), but they come with a deadly payload… themes and cheap plugins can be pre-infected with ‘back-door’ code that allows hackers to inject malware into your website and gain access to the back-end of the site, your files, passwords, emails and even the server that it is hosted on.
Beware! You may be paying for a website that is wide open and ready to be used and abused by hackers… not just for you or your business. We would advise you to always ask your web developers about security and not just fancy graphics and videos on your website! Insist that your website is maintained carefully with security in mind, plugins are kept up-to-date, your website is monitored for speed and reliability and that your developer installs a reputable firewall, and virus scanner and backup process. WordPress has plugins that are all free or at most $99 annual subscription – so it won’t break the bank. You can pay a starting cost of $499 to have an expert remove the malware that has brought your website to its knees.
Here at Simply IT Zanzibar we provide all these security features, and more to our clients, as part of our website monthly maintenance contract. If you have customer names, addresses passwords or even take payment or even hold financial information – all these will be compromised if your web developer ‘just’ gives you a fancy website. And in most countries you are legally bound to inform all your customers if there is a breach of their data stored on your website or email system.
Scary right? And it doesn’t even need to be YOUR website that is infected… Most websites are hosted on ‘shared servers’ – which means other websites share the same server that your website is on… they are not ‘socially distanced’!
But it gets scarier when you start to learn exactly what malicious ‘malware’ code potentially does to a website… maybe now is the time to go hide behind the sofa as you read on…
WHAT IS MALWARE?
Malware is a general term for malicious software used to leverage a site’s weaknesses for various harmful activities. In the context of WordPress websites, malware in WordPress can affect a website’s performance on every level, from the web server to the user experience, and even the site’s SEO performance. So, if you are not paying attention to what is happening to your website now, it could be too late to save your site by the time you do.
For that reason, keeping tabs on your website’s performance and identifying changes as they happen is the first step towards building a secure WordPress site.
We have noticed a very sharp increase in hacking attacks and malware ‘injected’ into local websites in the tourist industry in Tanzania in 2020 and 2021. From what we have seen in Zanzibar, the ripple effects of a malware attack on your site take the following forms:
1. Overuse of server resources
When your server is hacked or compromised, it means someone else (in this case a hacker) is partially or entirely using your server resources to their advantage. They could be using it to pull off a number of misdeeds like:
Attacking other websites
Using a single machine to attack websites is risky because it can be easily detected and blacklisted. But detection of a large number of machines is difficult, which is why hackers are constantly fishing for new hosts. Hackers are even known to use popular websites to attack targeted sites so that it won’t raise alarm immediately.
A vast majority of the time, malware attacks go undetected because the purpose of such attacks is to use your server resources without drawing your attention. You can, however, detect if your website is being exploited by noting if your site’s performance is lagging. You will notice that your site has slowed down suddenly.
Perhaps you’ll see that your web server is unavailable for the visitors of your site because a majority of your server is being used to execute unwanted activities. We have come to notice that there are a number of other ways hacking affects your site’s performance. We suggest, keeping an eye out for any sort of sudden changes in your website and acting immediately.
Sending out spam emails
Mail spam is unavoidable. Millions of spam reports are sent every day which accounts for 59.56% of traffic on the internet (as of September 2017).
Hackers use compromised websites to send hundreds and thousands of spam emails for a number of purposes. Email servers around the world use different methods to deal with spam. They track the IPs of the servers sending out spam emails and blacklist them. Therefore, hackers are always on the lookout for IP addresses that have a clean record, meaning that the IPs are not blocked by popular email providers. In several cases, we have come across instances where a website’s owners are completely unaware of what is happening until the host identifies something’s fishy and alerts them about it. By this time, it may be too late and domains are already blacklisted by spam watchdog services like Spamhaus.
If your site is hacked and thousands of spam emails are being sent out using your server, your web host may also suspend your account until you clean it and remove all malware, which is one of the worst things that can happen to any website. Usage of large amount of disk space
Hackers can have various purposes in mind when they are accessing your site. Some hackers may have hacked your site to store millions of files. These files take up a large amount of your disk space. The burden of those unknown files tends to bog down your website. For those who don’t know, unlimited hosting plans do have a limit. This can lead to situations where you are unable to add any content. Moreover, maintaining your site will become a challenge with a lot of unwanted files littered about the site. Also, your web server can suspend or ban your account due to malicious activities on your site.
Slows down site
When your visitors make a request to load a page from your site, hackers may fetch files from other servers and load it along with your page. This can damage your site’s performance because the whole process is time-consuming. Visitors to your website may not hang around the extra 5 seconds your homepage takes to load. You lose traffic and potential customers.
2. Deterioration of user experience/browser performance
Malware in WordPress can affect how visitors see your website. The user experience of a website is important for the success of the site (or business). If your users are not happy with your site’s performance, then they might not return to your site (or use your service – if you are offering one).
In May 2020 Google announced that user experience was one of the growing factors they use to rank websites on their Google Search Engine. Malware will seriously affect your website’s visibility.
Websites become slow
Studies show that the average attention span for human beings has shrunk from twelve seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in this digital era. Therefore, slow websites are bad for business.
We discussed earlier how overuse of server resources slows down your site. If your website takes too long to open, people are likely to hit the back button within a few seconds. That way, you will lose visitors before you get any. Also, it can have disastrous effects on online business like e-commerce sites. Amazon, the world’s largest retailer site can lose up to $1.6 billion in sales due to a second’s delay. In 2013, the giant retailer lost $66,240 per minute during a thirty minutes downtime.
Load external Javascript/iFrame resources
You might have come across websites with shady pop-ups, usually on the top of the page asking you to go to a different site or make a purchase, etc.
It’s a little confusing because the pop up seems completely unrelated to what the site is about. The reality is that someone has hacked into that site and has inserted malicious Javascript/iFrame. So, every time someone tries to open the page, the malware gets loaded too, therefore increasing the time it takes to fully render a page. This makes the site slower. Furthermore, the visitors of the site are getting duped into making purchases and doing other unwanted things while riding on the site’s credibility.
Mining cryptocurrency
You have probably heard of Bitcoin – the most popular cryptocurrency. It’s generated through a process called ‘mining.’ Over the last couple of years, cryptocurrencies have been quietly gaining popularity and more and more people are buying and selling them.
Because Bitcoin has shot up in price, it’s popular among hackers who want to get rich quick.
Hackers infect websites with malware and install cryptocurrency miners. They use your visitors’ browsers to mine cryptocurrency every time they open your site. Your website could be one of these ill-fated sites. If you are experiencing a sudden change in your website’s performance, then it’s possible that hackers are harnessing the power of your machine’s processor for the purpose of mining cryptocurrency.
3. Degradation of SEO performance
Search Engine Optimisation is one of the primary reasons websites get hacked. Google has clearly recognized SEO being a motivational factor in hacking so that your visitor is redirected to a malicious site. So the more visible your website is, the more of a target it becomes.
SEO spamming (known as the pharma hack)
Pharma hacking is a very common phenomenon. On the web, there are restrictions on advertising illegal drugs like Viagra, Cialis, etc. Therefore, pharmaceutical sales websites resort to SEO spamming to get people to visit their site or make purchases. They often insert spammy keywords into posts and pages and cloak them from regular visitors.
The SEO spam is only visible to web crawlers like Google-bots. Besides this, there are a few who are able to identify pharma hacks even in their hidden form.#
It’s well noted that modifying a site’s SEO structure will have a tremendous effect on your website. You will lose a chunk of your visitors along with your reputation and credibility. Your website too will experience a fall in ranking and there will be a major drop in the speed of your site
Google blacklisting
Google is the biggest search engine on the web and aims to provide its users with the best user experience. Thousands of websites are blacklisted by the search engine giant on a daily basis. Many of these sites are legitimate businesses (like yours). Your website may seem like it’s adhering to Google guidelines and yet you are suddenly blacklisted.
The blacklisting occurs often a result of malicious code being injected into the website without your permission. Once your WordPress site is blacklisted, your visitors won’t be able to access your site. Google will prevent users from visiting a compromised site in order to protect their machine from getting infected.
As a result of being blacklisted by Google, your website will be unreachable for days. It will negatively impact your SEO and you will end up losing search ranking, resulting in a fall in organic traffic. It will, unfortunately, also damage the reputation you had worked so hard to build
OVER TO YOU - NEED HELP OR ADVICE?
Have you been noticing a difference in your site’s performance lately? Did you try finding out the cause?
Please do contact us at Simply IT Zanzibar, if you need any help – even if you are only needing advice on how to protect your website. If you want a website health audit, or believe your website may be infected with malware and want it cleared, or just want peace of mind, please get in touch.
Last May 2020 Google announced that page experience signals would be featured more and more in Google Search ranking algorithm (the method it decides how to rank a website by it’s content)
These new signals would measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page and contribute to Google’s ongoing work to ensure people get the most helpful and enjoyable experiences from the web.
Throughout 2020 we’ve seen a median 70% increase in the number of users engaging with tools such as Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights, and many site owners using Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report to identify opportunities for improvement. At Simply IT we have had an eye on Google’s Search Console Core Web Vitals also for all our client’s websites.
Then towards the end of 2020 Google announced that in addition to the improved User Experience criteria it would roll-out something called the ‘Core Web Vitals’ metrics in May 2021.
User Experience
1. The first four elements of UX-Experience Signal
First let’s just list the first four elements Google has started to use to measure good user experience (sometimes called the ‘XU-experience Signal’):
The ‘page experience’ signal has been using the following signals for a few months now:
Mobile-friendliness (good ‘responsive’ pages that appear well on a mobile smartphone and tablet)
Safe-browsing (The page doesn’t contain any misleading content or malicious software).
HTTPS-security (SSL certification denoted by the padlock you see on your browser beside the URL of the website you are viewing).
Intrusive interstitial guidelines (pop-ups that do not provide any new content that you cannot already see on a page).
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
Before we move on to look at the latest three Core Web Vitals it should be noted that Google announced that to encourage mobile browsing it would also prioritize AMP content. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. A stripped down version of webpages that allow fast mobile browsing.
Specifically, Google announced that for non-AMP content to become eligible to appear in the mobile Top Stories feature in it’s Search Engine its new algorithm would out in May 2021. Any page that meets the Google News content policies will be eligible and Google said it will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as they rank the results.
2. The Three Google Core Web Vitals
Googles ‘Core’ Web Vitals were first introduced in 2020 and are designed to measure how users experience three main things: the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page.
Specifically, these are defined by Google as the three main ‘Core Web Vitals’ at this time:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
First Input Delay (FID)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Towards the end of 2020 Google announced that these three signals would be part of a big roll-out in May 2021 of their algorithm and encouraged website developers to modify their websites accordingly.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):
The time it takes for a page’s main content to load. An ideal LCP measurement is 2.5 seconds or faster.
First Input Delay (FID):
The time it takes for a page to become interactive. An ideal measurement is less than 100 ms.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):
The amount of unexpected layout ‘shift’ of visual page content. This is what you see when elements of the page are updated and other elements (eg text) are shifted to make space for the new element, particularly when a page loads. An ideal measurement is less than 0.1.
In addition to the timing updates described above, Google announced that they would test a visual indicator that highlights pages in search results that have great user page-experience.
LATEST UPDATE (May 2021)
As of May 4th 2021 the latest news is that Google have decided to introduce these changes gradually and not roll-out the final algorithm all at once (we hear the collective sigh of relief!).
So we will see regular updates, maybe on a monthly basis that start to ramp up the focus on these Core Web Vitals.
Then next year in 2022 they will focus on new metrics in their Algorithm roll-outs.
Conclusion
Google’s mission is intended to help users find the most relevant and quality sites on the web. The goal with these updates is to highlight the best experiences and ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for. Google’s work to achieve this is ongoing, which is why they plan to incorporate more page experience signals going forward and update them on a yearly basis. Google hopes that the tools and resources they provide make it easier for to create great websites, and thereby build a web ecosystem that users love.
At Simply IT we are always updating our website health audit tools and our Search Engine Optimisation practices & reports. We also are constantly utilising tools to integrate the core web vitals into the website experiences we design and create. Why? Well, to be compatible with these Google aims and updates, helps our client’s websites with our Search Engine Optimisations to higher rankings on Google Search Engine.
INTERNET SERVICE SPEEDS IN ZANZIBAR 
INTERNET SERVICE SPEEDS IN ZANZIBAR 
4G LTE – There is no true standard for 4G LTE, it covers the entire range between 3G to 4G, giving it a massive range of potential speeds. On average, however, download speeds range from 1-5 Mbps, with faster speeds available in good coverage areas.
A website designer can customize an existing template or design a completely fresh template for your website. If you want your website built from scratch, you can work with a designer and developer who has the skills to make it happen.
Pharma hacking is a very common phenomenon. On the web, there are restrictions on advertising illegal drugs like Viagra, Cialis, etc. Therefore, pharmaceutical sales websites resort to SEO spamming to get people to visit their site or make purchases. They often insert spammy keywords into posts and pages and cloak them from regular visitors.
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