How many of your visitors are viewing your website through a mobile device? If your website isn't optimized for mobile viewing, you may be losing customers.
Do I Really Need to Optimize? Yes! These days it isn't enough to have a website that displays beautifully on the web. With the invention of smart phones and tablets, more and more people are viewing web pages on a device other than a computer. And those devices don't have a mouse, can't display Flash, and don't have the screen real estate of a regular computer. Have you ever tried to view a non-optimized website on your tiny smartphone screen? How easy is it to click links, read text, and use the functionality? Not very. How Many Mobile Users Are Out There? If you haven't checked in a while (which I hope isn't the case), take a look at your site visitors and what technology they are using. Roughly one third of my visitors view my site from a mobile device. And depending on the industry you're in, you may have even more. Let's put this into a real-life scenario. Let's pretend your website doesn't have a mobile version yet.
...and that's only if your mobile viewing percentage is at 10 percent! What if your website mobile viewing is at 40 or 50 percent? At 50 percent you may have lost 1500 potential customers. Good Mobile Optimization vs. Bad So you've got your website set to display on a mobile device. Great! Have you gone through this checklist of common issues?
Bottom line: Your website needs to cater to the mobile viewing trend, or you're bound to lose out. If you've built your website using a tool that doesn't automatically create a mobile version (or simply don't have a developer to help you), look online for assistance. There are many tools available to create a customized mobile version of your site, or many companies that can be hired to do it for you.
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Suppose you're writing a blog or creating some marketing materials, and you need some images to embed in your copy. Always make sure your images are free for commercial use. The last thing your business needs is a lawsuit! Here are some good resources for images:
Wikimedia Commons Pixabay Free Photo Bank Freepik Photopin Openclipart Freerange Morguefile Freedigitalphotos Dreamstime Microsoft Clip Art U.S. National Library of Medicine U.S. Department of Agricultural Research Service Science Photo Library My favorite inexpensive (but not free) site is: Fotolia Any other good resources I've missed? Blogs seem to be the hottest trend on the internet. Many companies are adding them to their websites in the hopes of increasing their customer base. But is this always a good idea? It depends on the company, and it depends on who is in charge. Here are some things to consider.
1. Can you write? If you are going to run and/or write a blog, first and foremost you have to be able to write. And to write well. Blogs are used to drive traffic to your site and to demonstrate knowledge and expertise. They are also used to engage your market in relevant trends and keep them updated on things that are going on in your organization or field of work. But if you can’t write with skill…then don’t write a blog. Let’s imagine a scenario where a potential customer sees an interesting blog title and clicks on it. They have arrived at your website, which was goal number one. Great! Now they start reading the blog entry and find that the wording is jumbled, there are spelling errors, it doesn’t flow, and overall they just can’t understand the message very well. What just happened? You just lost a customer. Why? Because you lost credibility. So before you add a blog to your site, consider whether or not you have the writing skills to successfully run one. And if you don’t, employ outside help to write or edit your content to make sure it stays professional. 2. Can you consistently add content? If you maintain a blog, you have to be able to consistently add content to it. It doesn’t have to be every day, although this is ideal. But it should be on a regular basis so readers stay tuned into it, view you as credible and invested in your company, and even start following you on RSS feeds and the like. A stagnant blog loses its effectiveness. It’s almost like that can of expired soup that ends up at a discount store – at one time it looked really appetizing and was worth some money, but it’s now sat there unattended so long that it’s no longer in the forefront of most shoppers’ grocery experience. And its worth has devalued to a discount price. Blogs need to stay relevant, they need to be active, and they need to keep moving. A living, breathing blog is an effective blog. And one that can convert prospects into paying customers. 3. Will a blog really benefit your particular offering(s)? Before undertaking the time and monetary cost of running a blog, consider its value to your company. What are you selling? Is it a product or a service? What topics around that product or service can you discuss in a blog? Is there enough there to make it worth the time and effort? Make sure you know the answers to those questions before you add a blog to your website. You don’t want to embark on the journey, only to find out that after 10 posts you no longer have anything to say. Good writers know how to continuously find topics to write about. It’s a skill that you can learn, or that you can hire someone to do for you. But regardless, blogs are not relevant for every company. Other marketing efforts may be worth more for your particular company depending on what you are trying to sell, and how much information about that particular item or service is really out there. Think hard about the return you are trying to get on a blog investment, before investing in one. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. So you own a business, or you are growing a business, or you are launching a new product or service. While at first glance entities like sales personnel and product quality (hey, a lot of people successfully sell very poor quality products!) can seem much more important than writing, writing is actually very large part of what drives new business, sells existing products and services, and promotes continued interest in what you offer. How so? Well let me explain.
Most likely you arrived at this website because of something I wrote. I speak directly to a handful of prospects everyday, but not enough to cover all of the traffic my website receives. And not enough to attract the amount of service inquiries and quote requests I get. Think about the websites you visited yesterday, or this year. How did you get there? Maybe you searched for something. Or you saw something. Or the way something was described or written intrigued you enough to want to learn more. Maybe it was on Google. Maybe it was on a social networking site. Maybe it was sent to you by a friend. But you saw words. Think about the ads on TV. What makes those ads compelling…or not? Are we watching silent films? Or are we hearing people speak, and watching text come across the screen, and looking at branding and taglines? Words. Words are powerful. Words are used in every aspect of business, from print and web ads, to radio and television campaigns, to business procedures and contract negotiations. The words that sell are words that took thought and talent to create. Have you taken a look at how your words are performing? How much are you willing to invest in your business communications? Find talent in this area. It’s the number one way to continue to grow your business when you can’t be there. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. So you created a website. Great! But do you know how it's performing? Do you know which content is effective, and which isn't? Do you know where people are entering your site and where they are leaving?
This is where a program like Google Analytics comes in. How do you use Google Analytics? Well, you insert a bit of code into your website code, and Google extracts all kinds of useful information from your site to help you continue to monitor and improve its performance. What kind of information, you ask? Well it tells you things like:
Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. I just came across a posting on a freelance site. It said something along the lines of, "I want a new website designed, I want it to be number 1 on Google, and my business opens in a month." Hmmm....is that really possible? No, honestly it's not. Unless you want to pay to get your listing at the top (via Adwords), which can become costly if your website is ineffective. So how can you get your site to number one without having to pay extra?
Getting listed on the first page of a Google search is not a fast or easy process. Not only do you have to first get your site listed so that it will even show up in search engines, but you have to establish a presence and start driving traffic to it. Moving up in the Google rankings has to do with how you create your website copy, how you create your URLs, what types of information you contain in your site, and how people find you. If your site is stagnant and rarely accessed, it will start falling into obscurity and will never appear in searches. If your site is active and thriving, eventually you will move up in the rankings and hopefully make it into that first page of listings. The key is to get your site up and running, monitor traffic using a program like Google Analytics, and make sure it is functioning effectively. You need to monitor how people are finding you, where they are moving around in your site, and whether or not they are leaving your site immediately (this is what we talk about with the term "bounce rate"). There are a few ways to help drive traffic to a brand new site. The best way is to focus on inbound marketing - or, having people find you by linking to your site from other places. How can you do this effectively? Do some research on your own. Or hire a marketing consultant or freelancer to help you. A knowledgeable freelancer who understands how to write website copy can help you find the best ways to drive traffic to your site, and eventually get you closer to that coveted #1 slot. Need help growing your business or nonprofit organization? Browse my website to learn about how I can help you with your particular needs. Creating an effective website is more than just creating a snazzy look. These days, designers may be quick to create sites that provide fancy graphics, smooth transitions, and other nice-to-look-at features. And this is good, because first impressions are important. But they aren’t everything.
In fact, a fancy and professionally designed website will not guarantee an increase in your business. Furthermore, focusing more energy on the look of your site rather than the content will not perform well for your business at all. How is this so? Presenting item A: SEO. For the non-techie people, this means “search engine optimization.” Search engine optimization is the process of creating content, tags, linking, and other non-design elements that increase traffic to your site and improve your Google/search engine rankings. This is done via targeted content, carefully selected key words, and meta keywords/meta tags in the HTML code. Presenting item B: Content Sometimes even if the SEO is good, the content itself will actually cause zero increase in your conversion rates. What is website conversion? Website conversion is the process of creating website traffic into actual business. Good content is an essential part of this process. You only have seconds to make an impression and engage your readers with your content; if you have attracted the traffic but lose them at the first page of your site, you have a problem. Presenting item C: Layout A good website presents material in a way that is easy to scan, is well organized, and allows the visitor to quickly locate the information they are most interested in. If you are targeting several different markets, it is key that every type of client from every type of market can quickly find the information they are looking for. Ideally, from the home page. Creating an effective website is one of the most important things you can do to increase your business. Invest well. |
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