Vancouver SEO, CRO, Web Design & Development | F.A.Q ANTSAND

Frequently asked questions

We will try to answer question's that keep you awake at night, helping you make a more informed decision

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If you are in a dilemma, trying to select the right web design team, or wondering how ANTSAND can fit your business needs, this page is for you.

The question in here are written in no order. We strongly suggest you reading the whole document as it will help clarify your doubts.
  1. What services does ANTSAND “Hire us” provide?

    ANTSAND “Hire Us” is a service provided by ANTSAND. It is to create an online system for our clients, which helps increase the conversion percentage of website visitors to customers. This includes web design and web development, which has elements of SEO, copywriting, marketing, infographics, data visualisation, analytics, social media marketing and much more. We look at your web presence holistically and make every component work in harmony.

    idea conversion system

    List of services we offer that will help you to create a website that works

    The main idea behind ANTSAND, is to move our clients from our inexpensive products to the high end products. We call it the value ladder.

    From website maintenance to a full service conversion optimization service, the ANTSAND ecosystem is designed to help you in every stage of your online business. The more expensive the product, the more value you will get. You can start to see increase in leads, customers, refferal and stronger call to actions as you move up our value ladder.

  2. Why do websites design companies vary so much in price?

    In this industry you can start to make a website literally for free to a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars all the way up to 100,000$ and up. The difference in the cost lies in few key components. As the complexity of your site increases so will the cost. But the key differentiator is craftsmanship. Top design companies will design a website that is customized as per your business needs, building your brand and making your website converts where as cheap design shops will just use templates and modify it.

    Depending on your budget, skill set and time, you would need to select the best option.

  3. Why do professional website companies charge so much?

    Craftsmanship and Results! Designing a website from scratch requires creativity and you can’t buy it. Firms that use existing templates or modify existing frameworks will be way less expensive. Design shops that build sites from the grounds up have the advantage of creating something unique, making your site attractive, helping you to stand out and help boost your sales and revenue. In the end, you want your customers to notice you and use your service.

  4. Who are the best website design companies?

    The best web design companies are companies that build websites for conversion. They don’t design websites for search engines to find and rank you. They build websites for your customers to notice and buy from you. The difference between the two is, one is just for vanity whereas the other is to help increase revenue.

  5. What are the components of a great website?
    • Usability - How easy is it for users to navigate through your website?

    • Credibility - How credible is your website? Can you deliver on the things you promise on your site?

    • Loyalty - Is you service and product so good that your customers are recommending your service to others?

    • Appearance - Does your site look great and appealing?

    • Clarity - How clearly have you defined the benefits of your service or product?

  6. What is the difference between SEO, CRO?

    SEO is search engine optimization. Web designing and marketing your site for search engines to find and rank you high. CRO is conversion rate optimization. It is to design a site to increase the conversion percentage of visitors to customers. If your site is designed with CRO in mind it will fit SEO needs. The vice-versa is not true.

  7. What is the philosophy behind CRO and what do you mean by 'increase the percentage of visitors to customers'?

    When a user visits your site, and they get these 6 impressions, as mentioned in the book 'influence by Cialdini -

    • Reciprocity - They see great value in your offer and are willing to exchange money in return

    • Commitment - They feel trusted and they believe your products or service will truly deliver

    • Authority - They get a great sense that your product or service is the best in the market. They put your product or service on a pedestal.

    • Social Proof - Users are raving about your product and people have given great reviews

    • Scarcity - They feel if they do not buy your product or service they may miss a golden opportunity

    • Liking - They like your company your brand your offer and everything about it

    Properly communicating these 6 influential triggers is a critical component to marketing. Conversion is a combination of having a breathtaking product people want with remarkable marketing. It is this combination, that will convince visitors into customers.

    Ultimately it is how much revenue you make. If visitors visit your website and you can convert more of these visitors to customers, you have a good conversion percentage. Optimizing this process is 'CRO' and this is what 'increase the percentage of visitors to customers' really mean.

  8. How does a CRO process work and how does it differ from SEO?

    SEO is about ranking your website for certain keywords for search engines to rank you high. This involves writing great and valuable content, having back links pointing to your site, making it easy for users to view your website on mobile and tablet platforms and giving them a good experience. But this does not corelate to customers being convinced to buying your product. CRO is a bit more complex. It is purely the science of designing websites to generate more customers.

    This includes:

    • Identifying how to position elements on a website that will convince potential buyers to buy vs having elements on a page because it feel like it might work

    • Identifying colors that entices users to click vs a random color that only matches your brand

    • A picture that communicates a message subconsciously vs a random image

    • Identifying navigation elements, which helps in escorting a user to make a purchase vs making it hard for the user to figure out how to navigate

    • Creating powerful value propositions and messages, that communicate exactly what result they will get if they purchase your product vs messaging for the sake of being creative or trying to generate keywords that might help in organic rankings only

    There are numerous small but very critical elements. It is identifying these components that makes CRO a complex science.

    The main component to a CRO process is to make changes based on data. For e.g. You may like to have a video playing at the bottom of a page because it feels like it should be there. When you look at the data, it suggests no one is playing the video. If you position the video on the top of the page, there is a drastic boost in viewership. This is what data will tell you. How to design and develop your website.

    The process of CRO is to gather as much data as possible and try to make sense out of it. It is only from interpreting the data, should you make design decisions. This is what a CRO process is, in a nutshell.

  9. Does ANTSAND do SEO?

    Yes! Our job is to increase the conversion percentage of visitors to customers. To get visitors to convert, the quality of your visitors is critical. SEO helps in targeting the right audience to your site, which in turn results in higher conversions.

  10. How long does it take to make a website?

    It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks or even months. It depends on the complexity of the website, how the website is being built and the skill level of the firm building it. At ANTSAND we try to develop the initial draft of your website within a few days and we hand code everything from scratch.

  11. Should you use offshore web-designers?

    You certainly can outsource your website design on portals like elance, freelancer, Fiverr or anywhere cheap in the world. If you are on a limited budget you certainly should outsource. You can even get a premium quality website if you find the right freelancer.

    But the difference between using a local design shop like ANTSAND vs outsourcing -

    • We understand the local conditions and your business. We will build your website for conversion, where as your outsourced website will be built for vanity.

    • If you don’t find the right freelancer, you can end up paying more that you expected.

    • Long term support is within reach and a phone call away. Your outsourced partner is on a different time zone and your only mode of communication with them is through email.

    • You are supporting Canadian business. Which in turn will help you and our economy.

    • We hand craft 100% of the code we deliver. Speed, usability, reliability and viability is at our core. Your outsourced friend is going to use a template or framework, will tweak it and deliver it to you. Nothing wrong, just that your site will look like the million other websites out there.

    • We are just brilliant at what we do. Period! Outsourcing is no match.

  12. Getting the message right is critical

    We do copywriting and product messaging. Our job is to make your website do the selling. If it is not selling for you it is not working. Crafting messages on your site that give your customers the necessary value they are looking for is an ART. We go out of our way to interview your clients so that we can deliver the right messages on your website.

  13. Does ANTSAND use Wordress?

    No. We don’t use WordPress. We are not against using any third-party libraries or software. We just prefer not to rely on it. On the other hand, every code that we deliver can be easily converted to a WordPress template or any other framework. We make sure our code can be installed on all major open source platforms.

  14. Why does ANTSAND not use WordPress, Drupal or Joomla or any other CMS (Content Management System)?

    At ANTSAND, we craft a lot of code in house. Relying on frameworks and tools limits our creativity. We want speed, we want your site to look good, and we want you to expand your site as your business grows. Using frameworks like WordPress is a huge bottle neck. At our core we are a software company and there is no need for us to rely on 3rd party software's. On the other hand, all our code can be converted to a WordPress template. So, it does not mean using our service you can’t use WordPress.

  15. We only want our website to be developed using WordPress or standard CMS software?

    At ANTSAND every code we develop, can be easily converted to a WordPress template or any CMS software of your choice. We make sure our code is compatible with all the standard software.

  16. Does ANTSAND use templates or we code from scratch?

    At ANTSAND we may get design ideas from templates and other websites. But every HTML and CSS code we deliver to you is handwritten by the ANTSAND team. We do use Javascript frameworks and certain powerful libraries to modularize our code. But we use our best efforts to limit using external plugins.

  17. Why do you write code from scratch when you can use templates?

    Nothing wrong with using templates. The issue with using external templates is your website speed starts to get slow. The less request your website makes to a server the faster it will be. Many HTML templates are loaded with fancy plugins and animations. They may look cool, but most often than not they cause problems. Your browsers start to respond slowly, the time for the template to load takes a bit too long and just too much hassle. We take speed very seriously as it can be a deciding factor between your customers choosing you or your competitors.

    Using templates, will make your site look like the million others out there. Your clients will notice the templaty effect.

    There are many other reasons, but site speed and brand-new feel are critical element.

  18. Does ANTSAND do backend development?

    Yes we do. All the code we deliver to our customers runs on our servers which are hosted on amazon and azure.

  19. Can ANTSAND make an ecommerce site for us?

    Technically we can. Will we? Depending on your needs and budget. We will have to sit and have a strategic conversation with you and your team. We prefer to work with business that already have an established working model and a steady revenue stream. If you are a startup you are better of using shopify.

  20. Is your code secure?

    We try to keep our servers secure. We constantly run virus check and are partnered with security firms to keep our site and our client’s site secure.

  21. Do you provide maintenance for websites?

    Yes, we do. We provide an inexpensive service to fix small issues. It starts at $49/task. No monthly fee. Just per task basis. If you choose to fix more tasks at once the price gets cheaper. Visit antsand maintenance to know more about this service offering.

    If you have higher maintenance requirements, there is an option to choose Bank of Hours. You can buy any number of hours of work you think you need, and we will bill you accordingly. Bank of Hours is around $75/Hr. Send us an e-mail for more information.

  22. Do you guys do A/B and multivariate testing?

    Yes, we do.

  23. How is A/B and multivariate testing really done?

    We configure our servers that help categorize users based on demographic and other variables. Based on these variables your website can be displayed differently. We add analytics to each of these variations and measure how they perform.

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