Posts in category: Web Design

The General Data Protection Regulation or the GDPR is expected to come in effect on May 25^th 2018. The new privacy regulation law will majorly affect the digital marketing industry, as well as website designs and integrations. According to the GDPR Cyprus law, all companies whose website doesn’t already comply to the new set of regulations will have to introduce major changes in order to follow the privacy laws and restrictions.

Not only that the GDPR Cyprus is going to impact the design of your website but it will also affect the way you utilize other applications and track digital activity. The whole idea behind the new regulation law is to protect people’s personal data, which includes everything from their name and home address to their email address. In other words, the new law will require all businesses to offer transparent explanations and evidence of personal data usage and to give their audience complete freedom in choosing to opt-in or opt-out of different marketing campaigns and newsletters.

How to make your website comply to GDPR Cyprus

Violation of the new law is going to lead to strict fines, which can sum up to over 20 million Euros. In order to avoid large fines, you should check your website to make sure it complies to all new regulations. Even though some sites have already followed these rules before the GDPR, it is better to check yours before it’s too late.

The number one concept of the new regulation is allowing the audience to actively give consent to certain actions. Most sites used to take advantage of pre-ticked consent boxes when asking visitors to subscribe to the newsletter and most visitors would give their consent without even noticing it because the box was already ticked. From now on, any inaction of that sort won’t be considered legal consent. The visitor will have to actively tick the consent boxes themselves if they want to accept your offer or request.

Furthermore, all requests for a visitor’s consent must be given separately. You can no longer ask the visitor to accept the Terms and Conditions and give their permission for contact by ticking the same consent box. These consent requests will have to be separated so that the reader has a clear view of what they are consenting to. This also allows for better user experience in general so it will definitely benefit your site.

Besides transparent consent forms, the already subscribed users must have a clear and easily accessible way to unsubscribe, that is, opt-out of your subscription. The process of cancelling a subscription should be simple and fast, without requiring any additional information. The subscribers will have to have the option to either partially unsubscribe from some forms of communication or to stop the communication completely.

It will no longer be enough to mention “third-parties” in your web forms but you must name each party the user is giving consent to. You will also have to check the Terms and Conditions and the privacy notice of your site. Make sure all the information is transparent, concise and straightforward. Any inconsistency may be considered a violation of the GDPR Cyprus law.

Make sure to clearly explain what type of personal data the website retains, how long it keeps it stored and what the company does with all that information. To make things easier, you can use the sample of a correct privacy notice provided by the Information Commissioner’s Office. If your site accepts payments you will have to make sure it does not retain any personal data while passing it through to the transaction gateway. If your site is catching any of the users’ personal data related to payments, that is considered a strict violation of the new law. In that case you have to modify the site and program it to remove all data within 30 days.

Last but not least, you have to make sure you list all the third party applications you use to track the site’s success and visitors’ behavior on it. This includes any third party marketing automation software, including call tracking and lead tracking apps. Even though the providers of these applications promise their tools are GDPR compliant, you should still check all your contracts carefully to make sure you don’t miss out on something. Using third party programs brings along many GDPR compliance risks so make sure you read every detail of your agreement with them.

It is mandatory for every business to check whether their site meets the GDPR requirements. The law is going to come in effect on May 25^th of 2018 and all businesses violating its new rules will face strict fines. If you are curious about the ways you can ensure your site is GDPR Cyprus compliant or you need help regarding the regulations, feel free to contact us!

We have all been there. We invest in the fastest internet and yet, some of the websites we visit turn out to be incredibly slower. In fact, surveys show that having a slow internet speed is one of the most hated things in the world. As you might be aware, Google hates recommending websites that load slowly to its users. This is because the company prefers providing its users with the best content. As a result, the speed your websites loads in will determine how highly-ranked your website is. To measure your website speed, we recommend that you use Google Page Speed Insights, which is a free tool. This article will explain simple ways you can do to improve your website speed in Cyprus.

Website Hosting

A website host is a company that provides the tools and technology to store your website content. Whenever you visit a website, all this content is stored in such a web host. As such, the host that you use will determine how fast your website loads. If you use a host with old servers, chances are that they will be slow to load. It is recommended that you use one of the largest website hosts such as GoDaddy and Blue Host because they have the financial resources to continue updating their servers.

Graphic Size and Website Speed in Cyprus

If your website is graphic-heavy, it could be the reason why it is slow. In most cases, a text-only web page will load faster than one with multiple images. Therefore, to remedy this problem, we recommend that you minimize the usage of images on your website. If these images must be there, we recommend that you reduce their image size by compressing them.

Remove Redundant Code

A website is created by lines of codes. Some of these codes are usually unnecessary, which means that the website can perform well if they are removed. To improve your website speed in Cyprus, it is recommended that you remove the redundant code that is not needed.

Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

AMP is a technology that was developed by Google to increase the speed of page loading. This happened after Google realized that most people were using mobile devices to access the internet. Web pages that use this technology usually load faster compared to those that don’t. Other than AMP, there are other similar technologies like the use of a content delivery network (CDN), fully implemented HTTP/2, and the progressive web apps technology.

Use the Popular CMS Platforms

As a website owner, you can decide to code your website yourself. This is a process where you write the entire code of the website by yourself. This is not only a long process but it can also produce slower websites. Instead, you should use the popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. These are companies with thousands of developers who specialize on the website design technology. They are also in a competitive industry, which means that they try to ensure that their websites are the fastest. Using these CMS platforms will save you time and make your website faster.

As you work to make your website faster, having a good website design and SEO partner. At SoftwareCy, we are one of the best companies in the industry. We are the best in Cyprus, having worked for some of the biggest companies.

The furniture industry is – slowly but surely – being disrupted on a macro and micro level. On a macro level, companies like Amazon and Alibaba have made it possible for people to shop online from global supply chains. Often, these companies offer these furniture sets at a significantly lower price than local merchants. On a micro level, small companies are leveraging the influence of the internet to create their own online furniture stores. In this article, we will highlight the need for exclusive furniture store website design in Cyprus.

The Problem

In Cyprus today, a good number of furniture stores have websites. Many of them have invested thousands of dollars in these platforms. However, looking at some of these websites, we believe that more needs to be done. In our conversations with traditional store owners, many tell us how little ROI they are seeing from their digital investments. Others tell us about the increasing customer acquisition costs as they try to attract more customers.

Need for Elegant Designs

A good furniture store website design in Cyprus needs to incorporate the concept of elegant designs. This means that it needs to be appealing to the eye. As you are aware, people are visual in nature, and they will judge the quality of the furniture being sold by the look of the site. Therefore, you need to ensure that you have a modern logo. In addition, you should have excellently-taken and edited photos of the furniture you are selling.

E-Commerce in furniture store website design in Cyprus

A website is a good thing, especially when you want to attract shoppers to your retail store. However, a good furniture store website design in Cyprus needs to incorporate the tools of e-commerce. This means that the store should have a checkout button that accepts various payment options. As a company, you need to also offer affordable shipping solutions because people are more comfortable buying online.

Furniture Store SEO

With so many furniture store owners creating their own websites, the need for search engine optimization becomes increasingly necessary. SEO is a process in which every search page of a website is optimized to rank higher in the search engines. To do this, experienced developers use a number of SEO tools to ensure that Google’s criteria is met. Research shows that websites that rank higher on the search engines perform better than those that appear on page 2 and above.

Mobile Optimization

A good furniture store website design in Cyprus needs to be optimized well for the mobile devices. This is simply because most people in Cyprus and around the world are now more comfortable buying mobile devices. These devices include smartphones and tablets. Therefore, it is essential that your website is optimized for all these devices. In fact, Google tends to prefer websites that are optimized for mobile than the traditional ones.

Content for Furniture Stores

A good content strategy is very important for furniture stores. By content, we mean text, video, and infographics, and other long-form content. Today, people are consuming loads of content in the internet. Furniture store sites that perform better are those that have diverse and intuitive content strategy.

At SoftwareCY, we have worked on tens of luxurious furniture store website design in Cyprus. We have helped past customers rank higher in the search engines and cut their marketing costs. Our team of expert designers will help your company have a premium website that generates tens of leads every day. Get in touch with us for more information.

A website is a must tool for businesses of all sizes. Whether you are a trucker, a furniture store owner, or a lawyer, having a website will help you attract leads. In fact, studies have shown that companies with quality, well-designed websites tend to perform better than those without. While having a website is good, having one that is responsive is better. In fact, if you have a website, you should run a  free mobile-friendly test to see whether it is responsive. This article explains why you should insist on a responsive website design.

Responsive Website Design Attracts More Audience

After the introduction of the iPhone and the subsequent launch of Android, more people shifted their attention to mobile devices. Today, more than 3 billion people have smartphones. With the cost of data declining, these people are doing a lot of work using their smartphones. Therefore, if you build a responsive website design, you are sure to get more people visiting your website.

Search Engine Optimization

For years, Google has favored websites that are well-optimized for mobile devices. In the past, before the concept of responsive website design, developers used to design two websites. One would be for desktops and the other would be for smartphones. As the screen sizes of smartphones increased, developers found this to be hectic. It is during this period that the concept of responsiveness came into effect. To promote it, Google decided to provide higher rankings to websites that are optimized for mobile devices.

Google did this because it saw the potential in mobile. To further continue with this trend, the company announced that all websites will be indexed using the company’s mobile-first indexing. In the statement, the company said that:

While we continue to support responsive web design, dynamic serving, and separate mobile URLs for mobile websites, we recommend responsive web design for new websites. Because of issues and confusion we’ve seen from separate mobile URLs over the years, both from search engines and users, we recommend using a single URL for both desktop and mobile websites.

Ease of Use

As a internet user, you likely love websites that are easy to navigate. Websites that are unresponsive are very difficult to use on mobile devices. This is because they have been designed with the goal of being navigated on desktop platforms like PCs. When using those websites, users have to pinch and zoom. All this makes the websites be very difficult to use. Therefore, you should opt for a responsive website design if you want your visitors to have an easy time navigating the sites.

Visually Appealing Websites

As a business person, you want your website to be visually appealing to your users. The best way to do this is to ensure that the site is good on both mobile and web platforms. This is because websites that are designed to fit in all platforms are usually better than unresponsive ones.

Therefore, if you own a website that is not attracting a lot of mobile traffic, you should first do the test described above. At SoftwareCY, our team has a good understanding of designing websites that are mobile ready. Get in touch with us and we will do it for you as soon as possible.