iPhone App Developer, iPhone Application Development, Mobile Apps

In this interview, Ramakrishnamoorthy Venkatasubbu (RKM), COO – Impiger Technologies, explains the basics of click to call services. And tells us how it can generate leads for online businesses.

Q: What is Click to Call?
RKM: A click to call service, like Easycallnow, is a web based click to call facility that allows website visitors to speak to customer service agents of a company, instantly. By just filling in their phone number and clicking a button, they can at once be connected to the appropriate agent.

Q: Why would a website visitor want to speak to any company’s customer service agent?
RKM: Most websites cannot answer all customer queries. For example, on a hotel or travel site, a user who wants to book a hotel room in another city may have a queries: on the location of the room (pool facing), price (are there any discounts for bulk bookings), facilities at hotel or cab service. If he does not get the answers immediately, he’ll move away to a competitor’s site. And, perhaps, will never revisit this site.

Q: What exactly does Impiger Technologies’ Easycallnow service do?
RKM: Easycallnow’s click to call service basically dials out both the visitor and customer service agent and connects them over phone. This enhances customer experience and boosts sales.

Q: Who can use this web based calling service?
RKM: Any business having a website and engaging customers online – travel sites, shopping and classified portals, online e-tailers, hotels, real estate agents, finance companies, small businesses and even home business owners.

Q: Does one use click to call only on websites?
RKM: Not really. It can be plugged into emails, newsletters, pdf downloads or banner advertising campaigns.

Q: Can you explain the benefits of easycallnow for online businesses?
RKM: It generates leads by capturing the name, city and phone numbers of the website visitors. The instant connectivity to website visitor means better conversions and sales. Cost of service is based on number of calls connected. With nil software or hardware requirements, it’s a boon to website owners to pump up sales.

Q: How easy is it to implement this on a website?
RKM: It’s a small piece of html code that needs to be pasted on site wherever one needs the Click to Call button. It’s customizable to the website theme.

Q: Is the call free for website visitors?
RKM: Yes. The business using the service pays for the calls their prospects or customers make from the website.

Q: How will businesses be charged for easycallnow?
RKM: There are very affordable monthly and annual packages that you can buy online. And recharge call credits when you exhaust the packages. Apart from the call charges, there’s a small licence fee for every agent’s phone number to be configured on the click to call api.

Q: Will you provide support during installation?
RKM: Our website and email instructions are more than sufficient to install and run this service. But, don’t hesitate to call us for help.

Visit Easycallnow to know more about how a click to call service can help generate leads and grow your business.

Designing a website is like building a business online. Not many businesses are aware of the thought that needs to go with website development. Quite often companies land up choosing a website design company that doesn’t know the critical aspects of website design and development from the point of view of user experience and search engines. And, consequently, such websites don’t generate as much traffic and leads as they should. Here are some tips on what to do before you begin developing your website.

1. Have a clear idea of what the website should do for your business

This is a strategic decision that needs to be chaired by none other than the top management. A website must have clearly defined goals. Are you going to capture leads and do business? What are the various ways to capture leads? Does your business want to interact with customers and get feedback? Which tools will help you do this? Who will take care of the emails and leads flowing in through the website? Is it going to be a static or dynamic website? Can the CEO blog on it? These must be discussed and a clear site map arrived at before talking to your website development company. If you don’t tell ‘em what to do, don’t blame them for a BAD website that doesn’t work.

A clear website idea is half the job done.

2. Document action plan (with owners identified)

Knowing business goals is one thing, translating them into a website is another. Identify who’s going to own this project. Get the man who will manage the website. Bring to the table the business guy who’ll manage the leads flowing in through the website. Who’s going to take care of the blog? The CEO or your PR guy. And what about twitter? Document every little activity with scheduled release dates and owners.

Results don’t come without responsibilities.

3. How to choose a website development company?

For most companies cost is a critical factor while determining who should design the company site. That may well spell disaster for many. Understanding how users navigate on websites. How do they search for information on the internet? How does Google, Bing and Yahoo decide to send traffic to websites? Which blogging platform should you choose – Wordpress, Movebale Type or Blogger? These are very important. Your website development firm MUST know the answers to these. In other words, the firm you hire must be GOOD at understanding user behavior, Search Engine Optimization, website usability, social media and web technologies. Only then can they create a great looking website that draws traffic and produces business results.

Or you may well land up with a website that no one visits.

4. Who’ll give insights into the Google Analytics for your website?

How will you unravel the mystery of what users are doing on your website? Who will tell you why the leads are not converting? Why are the bounce rates high? Why do visitors drop off from the shopping cart? Your webmaster should be able to brief the marketing team and do course corrections, if necessary. For small businesses that can’t afford dedicated resources to do this, someone from the marketing team can go through a ton of resources available on the Google Analytics blog or the web and find meaning. If you can afford, hire a specialist.

If you can’t gain business intelligence from your website analytics, you’re as good as dead.

If you’d like Impiger Technologies to do your website, check out our website > custom software development.

Texas Office:
Impiger Technologies Inc.
1130 East Arapaho, Suite 590,
Richardson, Texas – 75081,
USA.
Cell : (469) 742-1095
Office: (972) 375-6302 | 1-972-375-6301
Fax: 1-888-779-2899
sales@impigertech.com

After a great deal of development effort and some fantastic team work, finally we have posted our first iPhone application online about 3 weeks back and so far it has been an excellent ride! The app can be downloaded from iTunes by searching for ‘Hanuman Chalisa Sing along’ application.

Hanuman-Chalisa-iPhone-App

The graphics work was among the toughest pieces of this app and are we glad that it has really come out cool!! A lot of that credit goes to Sathish and Yousuf, right from the color combinations to the font and the way lyrics are being displayed.

You can play the audio and sing along with the song (hence the name .. duh!) or just turn the audio off and pace it your own way. One can choose to see the lyrics in English or Hindi. Aahh .. Hindi! How can we forget it? The I18N bugs on iPhone OS gave us some sweet nightmares what with the OS not supporting the display of Devanagari words properly. We went around the problem finally with a lot of help from Yousuf.

The other cool feature was the support for landscape and portrait modes. It is apparently easy to do in most iPhone apps and a lot of iPhone apps feature the support for device rotation. But believe me it was not easy at all, at least initially for us developers. To be fair, it would have been easier if placing the UI components in a view was done through code. But if one relies on XCode / Interface builder to do it, it is definitely a challenge and that is exactly what we faced.

Uploading the app for Apple review was another experience. First time around, the app got rejected on grounds of ambiguity in user interface(!?) — because one of the standard buttons was apparently used to mean something else. We went around that problem and when the review finally got over, what a relief it was! I used to check and still do check the app status daily in iStore to see if it has crossed the ‘In Review’ state.

Finally, it’s got done and we are moving on now. On the whole, it was an excellent learning experience for all of us. It laid the foundation for a lot more learning and new challenges to overcome which we are relishing now

Congratulations and Kudos go to the whole team. Any brick-bats? Direct them to me! We always welcome constructive criticism!

Rajasekhar Vuppaladhadiam