DaBrian Marketing Group’s President and CEO, Daniel Laws, was a featured on Web Analytics World. His featured blog, “5 Tips to Get More Value From Your Business Data” discusses the changes made to your marketing tools that will lead your company to more data and capabilities. READ MORE
In my previous blog, Project Management: Frequently Avoided Questions Part 1, I discussed the challenges one may face when attempting to ask their clients the right questions so that every project may run smoothly. Part 2 will focus on the right questions to ask either your employees or your co-workers so that your team is successful.
Whether you’ve just begun getting to know your newest employee or coworker or they’ve been by your side for years, gaining a clear understanding of where they want to be in life could benefit your relationship and your team’s success. Finding out someone’s motivator and driving force can lead to understanding how to work with, and towards, your company’s goals. If Peter Parker needs to motivate Bruce Wayne, it would behoove him to understand that Alfred is his only ally.
Take the opportunity to ask and listen to the challenges that your employee faces when completing their work. Time will always be a constraint, and organization is a quite common downfall as well, but what resources could you provide to truly help this employee succeed? Additional training may initially seem to undermine your coworker’s skills and knowledge but what has changed since they were originally trained to do their job? Have processes and regulations become an ever changing source of frustration? LinkedIn’s recent purchase of Lynda.com makes it even easier to provide knowledgeable training during any stage of learning at any time. At times, simply lending a listening ear could alleviate frustration as well.
The most important question to ask yourself, and your employee, is “How can we do better?”. No matter how smoothly your relationship has transitioned from stranger to employee or co-worker, it’s best to self-reflect. Spending 40 hours a week with someone is challenging and can leave your relationship in murky waters. Creating the habit of optimizing your relationships with others to a healthy and happy work environment can lead to your company’s success.
Don’t waste your time wondering how to become a business owner, project manager, or co-worker – take a chance and ask the right questions!
There are a lot of factors that will affect internet browsing and assist in allowing a website to show correctly. Two factors that people tend to overlook are outdated devices and software updates. These two factors don’t stop your device from working, however, they can affect your browsing experience in negative ways. What might seem like a small, or not needed update might be a critical factor affecting your browsing experience whether it be on your Android Smartphone, iPhone or your computer.
During testing one of our client’s website, there were issues with how the site rendered on their iPhone. They were having issues with how some elements on the page were appearing. As most of our clients would do, they turned to us for answers. After hours of thorough mission critical updates that were directly related to their poor browsing experience, we advised them to update their device’s software and that resolved the issues for most. Others weren’t so fortunate however, they had to upgrade or purchase a new device because of outdated hardware.
According to Circle Studio, Internet Explorer is the 3rd, 4th, and 5th most popular browser being used today. The problem with this is that 2 of the 3 Internet Explorer browsers (versions 8 & 9) are no longer supported because of their inability to render HTML5 code which is the new standard for creating websites. Now do you see the problem with using outdated browsers?
Have you ever browsed the internet and stumbled onto a site that had jumbled text or graphics? Did it look anything like Figure 1? If not, congratulations your device’s hardware and software are most likely up to date. If you did see something like Figure 1, then the hardware or software of your device might be outdated and needs to be updated. This can be an issue not only for your company when you are trying to market your website but it can also be an issue if people are trying to get to your site. If these potential customers do need to update their device’s hardware or software, they might find your website hard to use if they are on an outdated browser. Another reason this is an issue is because most people surfing the web are using outdated browsers; about 14.5% of those are using a previous version of their current browser, and 8.5% are using, even more, outdated versions. So let’s resolve this issue.
Dear Santa,
This year for Christmas eCommerce PPC account managers would like:
Why is it that I can preview my Search and Display Ads without skewing my Impression data, but can’t do the same for Shopping Ads? As marketers, we would like to know exactly what our ads will look like before they are live on the internet.
We can see the Impression Share lost (Rank), but not the average position that our Shopping Ads are shown. This information would help make decisions concerning bid adjustments at the product group or product-specific level.
While it is great being able to track Conversions, being able to quickly see the amount of each type of conversion (newsletter sign-up, sale, or phone call) would be beneficial. This would be useful in maximizing Return on Ad Spend (ROAS.)
Earlier this year, Google released an algorithm change that essentially said that websites that were not mobile friendly would be penalized and fall in their rankings. This algorithm change means that it is vital for every business to make sure their site has a mobile design to perform well. Here are 5 tips for mobile search engine optimization (SEO) every business owner should follow to make sure their website is successful.
Many business owners fear that by creating a mobile site, they will either need to have a complete overhaul of their current site, or create a new, separate site. Fortunately, this is not the case thanks to responsive design. A responsive design means that the appearance of your site will change based on the device being used by visitors. With a responsive design, you only use one URL, which eliminates the possibility of being penalized for duplicate content. A responsive design is also recommended by Google because it is more efficient for Google to scan and review, which will help increase your businesses rankings within search engines. Shown below is the desktop view of our site (left) and the mobile design (right) using responsive design.
According to Google, more searches happen on their platform via mobile than on desktop in the U.S. We can predict that these numbers will only continue to increase as more Americans obtain mobile devices, thus putting more importance on mobile design. More mobile traffic means that when designing your site, you should consider the mobile design first. Once you’re finished the design, use your mobile site as a core basis for developing your desktop view. There is nothing you can put on the mobile version of your site that you can’t put on the desktop version. Progressively enhance your desktop view with extra information and a more extensive navigation (as long as it’s relevant).
Just as you should design the desktop version of your site with the user experience in mind, the same applies to the mobile design. With that being said, there is a slightly different art to it. For one, the navigation of the mobile version should be condensed to only include the most important pages that drive the most traffic. Also, the buttons and links on the site should be designed for bigger fingers. Bigger buttons and links will increase the ease of use that will certainly impact the user’s actions. If the buttons and links are too small, many users may become frustrated attempting to travel through your site, which will likely cause them to leave.
The page speed and load time of your site are not only a ranking factor but also impacts the user’s experience. Obviously the faster the speed of the site, the happier the user will be. In order to reduce loading time, rich content (images and video) should be optimized (fitting the size of the image to the screen size) and used sparingly.
Just as mobile has become increasingly important for search engines, so has local SEO. In fact, they are directly correlated. According to Google, 50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on computer/tablet did the same. This means that your business name, address, and phone number should consistent all throughout your site, and off your site as well on local listings (Google My Business, Bing Places, Etc). This allows search engines to associate your business with a specific geographic location, which in turn increases your business’s local search rankings.
The goal of a successful SEO campaign is to generate sales and leads, so why not make it easy for your customers to reach you? Adding a click to call number on every page of your mobile site allows users to take the next step in your sales process. Here at DaBrian Marketing, we use a click to call number on our mobile site, as seen below.
As the number of mobile devices and traffic continue to increase, so will the importance of Mobile SEO. To make sure your business does well, it is imperative to adhere to the tips listed above.
For more advice or information about mobile SEO, please Contact Us today or leave us a comment below!
By: David McDowell
Digital Marketing Agency, DaBrian Marketing Group, has donated their time to construct a new website for the popular Reading holiday tradition, Christmas on the Mountain.
For 24 years, the Hillside Playground Association has transformed Hillside Playground (located on North 14th street in the city of Reading) into a Christmas attraction for all. It has become affectionately known as Reading’s “Christmas on the Mountain”.
This summer the Association disbanded and announced the end of their operations. When Savage 61 General Manager Tim Profit, saw the news, he knew he wanted to do something and was going to try and keep the tradition alive. He contacted local businesses, and DaBrian Marketing Group’s, CEO and President, Daniel Laws, to help Reading’s Christmas on the Mountain reach its 25th year.
DaBrian Marketing Group, along with the local community, the Reading High School Marine Corps JROTC, and a list of other companies have donated their support to the cause. Reading’s Christmas on the Mountain is set to open on November 29th, 2015 and will continue until January 1, 2016.
Tim Profit was overjoyed with the website and said, “It’s almost hard to believe DaBrian Marketing is a small business in our community. You think you are working with a fortune 500 company when dealing with them.”
The new Reading’s Christmas On The Mountain website can be found at readingchristmas.com
Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency focused on providing marketing solutions to businesses that want to obtain digital awareness, cultivate meaningful customer relationships, and develop innovative strategies. DaBrian Marketing Group’s services include email marketing, search engine optimization, website design, web analytics, social media marketing and more. Company headquarters are centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania 19602. For more information about DaBrian Marketing Group, visit dabrianmarketing.com or call 610.743.5602.
