Oh, great. There’s that guy again. You know… the one who is always talking about himself? He corners you in the break room to tell you all his accomplishments and brag about his talent. Then he monopolizes your time at your favorite coffee house to tell you the same stories about himself over and over again, day after day. He insists on telling you about his latest gadgets or his newest DIY project. Afterward you have no idea what he’s talking about. (By the way, hasn’t anyone told him about the mustard on his tie or that his fly is down? Not that he’s listening.)
He’s great, he told you so himself. And he doesn’t feel the need to find out if you care.
No one likes the think they may be that guy. But your website might be. If so, it may be time for a website redesign.
A website redesign is due when you need to get found by more prospects, convert a higher percentage of them to leads, and generally improve your brand.
Here are a couple of things to consider...
To Redesign or Not to Redesign: This Should Be the First Question
Just because you’re sick of your site isn’t a good enough reason to redesign. You do it because you want your site to generate leads. That is all.
Cover Your Assets
If you do redesign, make an inventory of all your necessary content, links, keywords, and other assets to make certain they are transferred to the newly redesigned site. You have to preserve all your hard-earned SEO points. And please, please, please tell us you have all your stuff backed up anyway. Somewhere. Anywhere. Except in your brother-in-law’s leaky basement full of magnets.
Home Sweet Home Page
Opting for a flashy home page may impress your executive management but they don’t have to use it to find out the company phone number or figure out what your business sells. Your prospect does, and if he can’t find what he needs within the first few seconds, he’s outta there. You need a useful, easily navigated website with all the essential information on an uncluttered home page. Save the videos for elsewhere.
Get Your Fresh Content!
Search engines love fresh content. It’s like search engine catnip. Blogs, podcasts and e-books, oh my! All are great for keeping not only the search engines coming back, but visitors too. And to be sensational, be educational.
Landing Page, Ho!
This is where you want them to land for specific marketing efforts. Keep it short and simple. Explain exactly what you want them to do and what’s in it for them. And keep the form above the fold.
Testing, Testing, 1-2-3
Don’t just throw your new site out there and leave it. It’ll get lonely. Especially since, without care, the traffic will quickly dwindle. You should be checking your content to see what is converting traffic. Keep tweaking and testing content until it works the way you need it to.
Pinpoint the Pain Points
Metrics are your friends as long as you don’t let them overwhelm you. Most web-hosting services can deliver reams of numbers to you, but some are more useful than others. You want to see:
- How many visitors is your site is getting.
- Where they are coming from.
- How many converted and what converted them, Hallelujah!
With these numbers you can make incremental changes until those numbers are headed in the right direction.
This is just a quick overview of website redesign. For more details, download our e-book, Website Redesign 101: Seven Tricks of the Trade to Enhance Your Website.
A lot has changed on the Internet over the last few years, and not always in obvious ways. Your website is the first thing a lot of your customers will see, and the quality of their experience will leave a lasting impression. What’s more, the growing importance of SEO for small business means that an outdated website could make you all but invisible to your would-be customers.
So, is your business’ website doing everything it could for you? When’s the last time you asked yourself that question, and how satisfied were you with the answer? MLT Innovations’ free Ebook, Website Redesign 101, is designed to explain how to get the most out of your company’s web presence, from basic rules of design to the latest SEO tools.
First, you need to be sure you’re redesigning your website for the right reasons. If you just want a new look and feel, or you’re getting bored with your current site, you risk confusing your users in exchange for some temporary excitement that will fade away within months. Instead, you should focus on making sure your website is easy to find and gives prospects a reason to become customers.
Your website won’t draw in much business if your prospects can’t find it, so you should always consider what decisions you can make to increase the amount of search traffic your site will draw. SEO for small business is a critical step in getting recognized, and you’ll want a site that’s built from the ground up with this in mind.
Bringing people to your site isn’t enough, of course. Once they’ve arrived, you want to make sure they like what they see. Having a pretty website can help, of course, but it’s much more important that your site is easy to use. Customers appreciate a website that makes it easy to find what they want, so make sure you’re giving them one.
Your ideal design combines simplicity with easy access to the information your customers are looking for. Keep in mind the variety of screen sizes and software types your visitors could be using on their computer or mobile device, and avoid a gimmicky experience that won’t display properly on a most of your customers’ browsers. Get people feeling engaged by featuring your blog or social networking pages — and update the blog, as it’s a simple way to attract incoming links to guarantee the fresh content that search engines love.
When you’re building your content, keep in mind how your visitors will perceive you. Come on too strong, by bragging about yourself and your products in every paragraph on every page, and you could leave the customer numb. Instead, focus on giving your customers information they’ll value, tell them stories about how your products get used, and educate them about what your company can offer without them ever knowing it.
Finally, make sure you know how many visitors your site is getting, and who those visitors are. Guaranteeing strong traffic and SEO for small business means keeping track of who’s finding your site and how they’re finding it, so you’ll know what’s working and what to focus on next.
The strongest website is one that’s constantly evolving, without reinventing itself. Make sure your content is fresh and engaging, but pick an overall design that works and stick with it, to make sure your returning customers don’t get lost. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll be well on your way to making your website really work for you.
Posted by
Tom Cuneo on Wed, Feb 08, 2012 @ 01:12 PM
As soon as your customer wakes up in the morning, they are immediately pummled with media from all angles and companies trying to sell their products to them and get their attention. Mainstream media blares marketing to your potential customers at every point in their day, from billboards, radio, television, small signs, solicitors, they are always being confronted with businesses trying to get their attention to buy their products and services. YOU included. This has caused a certain level of numbness with consumers towards mainstream marketing. There is a shift in the poles. With the information age well in gear and the internet being a literal bottomless pit of information, businesses are looking for new and inventive ways to make their product or service stand out. Today's savvy potential customer is looking for more than just who is the loudest, they are more armed with information than ever to cut through the hooplah traditional marketing to find the product or service that best meets their needs.
We have all been to a gathering where there is a person who only talks about themselves all night long, eventually what happens? People get tired of hearing it and they tend to “tune out” that person. The goal of this blog is to get you thinking about your website marketing in this perspective – Am I being “That guy” with my website marketing? Does your website only talk about ME ME ME? If so and if you are not seeing the results you would like to see, it might be time to stop thinking and talking about ME ME ME and start talking and thinking about Customer Customer Customer. What do I mean by this? Today's internet shopper and overall general consumer is starving for information to make the most informed decision about how best to fullfill their needs. Taking advantage of this thirst for knowledge via Inbound Marketing can help put you in the drivers seat of your own websites destiny and how you interact with potential customers.
“So what do you mean?”
Inbound Marketing is a not new but it is more recently becoming more popular as more and more business owners are finding that it is better to draw in potential customers by sharing information the customer finds useful instead of force feeding that potential customer with traditional outbound marketing tactics and methods. This sharing of information has proven to be an effective means of attracting more 'potential customers'. You must stop thinking about people who come to your website as just “visitors”, visitors come and visitors go, a visitor is defined as “a person who pays a visit; caller, guest, tourist, etc”. Stop thinking about the people who come to your site as visitors but every one of them is a “potential customer”.
“Where do I start?”
Getting started with Inbound Marketing is actually rather simple, share information, interact with your potential customers to convert them from potential to active customers. This could be something as simple as using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to keep your customer informed of happenings, encouraging them through social media to share your content. Ahh.. Content.. What's that you ask? But I dont have any content I have products. What is this “content” you speak of you say.... Let's look at a quick example of what good productive content is and how it relates to Inbound Marketing.
Bill owns a liquor store, he specializes in hard to find beers and other specialty products. Bill's sales through mainstream marketing have been ok, but he feels they could be much better considering the specialty offering of products he has. Bill doesn't have a lot of money to invest in paying high end search engine fees to get his site ranked for those products, but what Bill does have is 20 years of experience tasting and pairing different beers and wines with food. Bill sits down and starts writing a blog about food pairings and he does this on a weekly basis diligently, before long more and more of Bill's present customers are subscribing and reading his weekly blog. Before long the current subscribers are sharing Bill's wealth of information with their friends, dramatically expanding the number of subcribers who are reading his weekly blog. It does not take long before Bill starts to see an increase in sales which can be directly tracked back to the increase in his blog subscribers.
What has Bill done here? Bill has taken information he has that did not cost him a thing and shared it with his customers, his customers loved the information so much they began sharing his blog post with their friends, and their friends friends, and so on. Bill appealed to the thirst for information his customers and potential customers had for beer and wine food pairings; turning that into a gold mine using information he already had. He did not have to spend a fortune putting the blog together, the time he sets aside weekly to sit down and write his blog is more than justified over time by the increase in sales. This is a perfect example of how Inbound Marketing works. Bill stopped blairing ads for the cheapest beers and spirits but rather fed his customer base information and it reacted positively and grew. He also found that he enjoyed sharing the information and the positive reactions of his readers.
You, as a business owner, must decide to stop being “that guy” and start feeding your own customer base and potential customers information that is useful and will stick with the customer. Appeal to their thirst for knowledge and information, you will provide them with a helpful service using knowledge you already have that will reflect ultimately in a better bottom line for your business.
Look for other MLT Innovation blogs on Social Media Basics, Website Redesign 101 (how to make your site social and search engine friendly) on our website at www.mltinnovations.com. Check the link below for a FREE Ebook on Webredesign 101 which makes you ask IF you need a redesign but also explains some aspects of best Inbound Marketing design practices.
If you have any questions about Inbound Marketing, Website Redesigning best practices or just would like a FREE website evaluation by one of our marketing professionals, email us anytime at info@mltinnovations.com
Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, last year redesigned its Web site so that smart phone and tablet users will be better able to navigate it. A feature story by Inc. magazine said that this entailed featuring fewer product photos and a larger search box, both steps that make Amazon's Web site look less crowded for mobile viewers.
This begs the question: If what is arguably the world's most powerful online retailer does this, shouldn't you? Is your Web site tablet and smart phone ready? If not, you may need to tackle some important website design issues.
You need your Web site to be accessible to mobile visitors because that market is growing quickly. International Data Corporation predicts that by 2015 more U.S. Web users will access the Internet through mobile devices than by using personal computers. At the same time, Google reported that some 15 percent of its searches from holiday shoppers came from mobile devices on Black Friday of 2011.
The evidence, then, is compelling: Simply put, if your Web site is not optimized to run well on mobile devices, you could miss out on business. The growing number of consumers who do their computing on tablets and smart phones will bring their dollars to sites that are easier for them to navigate.
The key website design strategies to take into account when doing this are fairly simple ones. First, make sure that your Web site isn't cluttered with photos. Photos are important tools, of course. But too many photos can make a site look crowded, especially when consumers are looking at it on a smart phone or tablet.
Next, make sure searching your site is easy even for mobile visitors. This usually means creating a larger search bar, one that's easy for mobile users to hit cleanly with their fingertips. Nothing will make mobile visitors leave your site more quickly than a search bar that they can't quite hit.
You should also equip your site with larger buttons throughout. This works on the same principle as does the larger search bar. If consumers want to learn more about your site's digital cameras, laptops and cell phones, they'll often have to press an on-screen button to bring up additional information. Make sure this button is large enough for them to easily hit.
Also there is the fact that most smartphones and tables do not show flash. Flash on your website should be avoided, especially if it is used for navigation purposes.
Finally, give some consideration to your site's content, too. In the Inc. story, Amazon says that it is now placing a greater emphasis on digital goods -- new tech -- rather than physical ones. That's what mobile shoppers tend to look for. Make sure that your site, too, offers products and content that appeal to smart phone and tablet owners.
These simple website design tips can make the difference between a site that's friendly and accessible to smart phone and tablet users and one that is not. Remember, tablets and smart phones remain hot sellers for a reason; a growing number of consumers prefer to do their computing on the go. This holds true, too, for online shopping. Make sure your website design gives you the best chance to capture today's mobile users.
A company's need for social media presence has evolved considerably in the past decade, and with it an emerging trend of dedicated marketing professionals who study and implement the best practices for sharing information with as many potential customers or clients as possible. Inbound marketing focuses on sharing information with users of social media through the use of analytics, targeted marketing, effective placement and other business solutions in order to maximize the ratio of users who view the information to users who follow up and yield sales.
One vital aspect of inbound marketing is cost, as the use of technological ad campaigns has reduced the overall expense figures associated with gathering the attention of customers or clients. Less overhead is required when ads are ran on websites, networks and blogs, as opposed to billboard or print ads that cost more to implement (and about the same to design). Furthermore, the likelihood of a casual observer to follow a link or banner ad they see when reading a story that interests them via their smart phone, tablet, laptop or desktop is much greater, because this avenue of marketing requires the user little effort; traditional marketing requires the viewer of an ad to retain information and then take inquiring steps to learn more, which expands the territory between when the user learns about a good or service and when they actually purchase it.
Inbound marketing is focused on reducing that space to as short a distance as possible. This means more time is spent on design and copy writing of marketing materials than on implementation, which in turn means a company's design should be top notch and should stand out against other inbound marketing strategies from competitors. This is why it is essential to seek out services from a professional group that has studied and successfully implemented inbound marketing tactics that create the shortest gap possible between informing potential customers and actual sales.
Professional marketing groups are also able to assure that materials are placed online in spaces they are likely to be effective, leaving less to chance and maximizing returns for every dollar spent on marketing development and implementation. They are savvy with user review sites, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, banner ad design and placement, and other key inbound marketing aspects that can make the difference between a company that is making it by and a company that is experiencing great success.
Well…you have this great website, its looks great online but now what? What do you do with it? How do you actually make it “work” for you?
So what is Inbound Marketing? Inbound Marketing is an avenue of attracting and engaging prospective customers online. Inbound Marketing will transform your company into a hub of information and valuable content.
Outbound Marketing looks like this: Spend money on Print Ads, Television Ads, use cold calling, trade shows and Email blasts to draw people to your company. This old way of marketing to your customers can be costly and have a relatively low return on your invesment. It can be tough to get your message heard among other businesses also screaming “Buy me!”
Instead of using traditional outbound marketing tactics, think of inbound marketing like a magnet pulling people to your company.
Sound interesting to you?
Inbound Marketing Looks like this: Blogs, Ebooks, White Papers, Viral YouTube Videos, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Outlets, Webinars and RSS Feeds.
Get Found + Convert + Analyze = Inbound Marketing
Get Found Online & Engage Prospects: Getting Found brings creative content that interests prospective customers or answers a question that your client may have.
Convert Prospects & Leads: Converting Prospects is how to entice visitors to your site into leads by filling out a form. You can then nurture your leads into $$ (cash money) customers!
Analyze your efforts & Improve your decisions: With Inbound Marketing its possible to track your success and see your ROI of various marketing efforts. This allows you to make improvements and invest your time and money where you see the greatest results!