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4 Fixes For Your (Painfully) Outdated Website

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Websites have advanced a lot in just a few short  years. In the ’90s, businesses simply aimed to set up online presences, resulting in an Internet full of electronic brochures. Since then, marketers have improved both the functionality and aesthetics of their websites. As a result, they’ve delivered a better experience to customers – and better outcomes for business owners.

The corollary for marketers is that with advances come heightened consumer expectations. Potential buyers increasingly need more from websites than basic transactions and facts about their favorite brands. They want to shop, learn, and play on their own terms, in a fun, user-friendly, and convenient format. Oh, and one more thing: they want all of that from their mobile devices, and they want it right now.

What Does This Mean For You?

It means that if your business hasn’t retooled its website in a while, you’re probably sending the wrong message to potential customers. And by sending the wrong message, we mean you’re losing customers to a competitor. Someone who is more fun, more user-friendly, more convenient, more mobile-responsive, and more “right now”.  Luckily for you, we’re willing to take the time to outline a few ideas to fix your painfully outdated website:

1. Clean Up Your Site

Fast Fact: “94% of negative feedback for websites is design related”

If you’re like most of our new clients, you can probably find everything you need on your own website. And if you’re like most of our new clients, your potential customers probably can’t find a thing. That’s because when you build up a website over time, you begin to lose the intended structure. Your page organization fails to highlight newly released product lines . Links lead to 404 errors. Posts get housed under random categories. For the business owner, it’s just part of a growing business. For maximizing your website traffic, it’s a mess.

The problem is that your site might make sense to you and your team (after all, you made the mess) but your audience is probably lost. So have a fresh set of eyes look over your website. Within 5 seconds of landing, can she tell exactly what your company does? Can she find the blog? Subscribe to the blog? Give her a product description to “purchase” – how long does it take her to find, view, and watch a product video? How many broken links and outdated bits of information did she encounter in her journey? If just imagining this scenario is painful, consider a (free) website audit to discover simple ways to clean up your site.  

2. Speed Up Page Load times

Fast Fact: “A 1 second delay correlates to a 7% reduction in conversions”

Customers no longer tolerate websites with slow load times. You can test the load times of pages and identify the bottlenecks with a number of online tools. You need these tools because your website is a lot slower than you think it is. You’re probably reading this blog on a desktop computer at work (i.e. you’ve got a fast, stable Internet connection). But how would it render on a spotty 3G connection? That’s where you might be losing the people who have better things to do than wait for your site to load.

Resist adding bandwidth-hogging (and annoying) features like videos or music that auto-load. Pick and choose design elements that highlight product features and engage readers – without slowing down your site. That amazing copy you wrote can only sell your product or service if the page renders. And if you have a hero video, 13 images and myriad design elements on the home page, readers never get that far. The best thing you can do is keep your landing page(s) simple. If a reader finds that landing pages take too long to load, that reader is probably going to hit the back button and shop with a competitor, instead.

3. Make It Mobile Friendly

Fast Fact: “57% of all US online traffic comes from smartphones”

How does your site look on a smartphone screen? Here’s one better: how does your site look on an iPhone X compared to an iPhone 6? If you don’t know the answer to those questions, you’re taking a big risk with your website. Customers increasingly rely on mobile devices for browsing. Many of our clients now get over 60% of their traffic from mobile channels. That means that whether browsing, shopping, or scheduling, your customers are probably doing it from their phones.

A mobile-friendly website is crucial to convert these users. Either have your site professionally redesigned for mobile or use one of the many responsive templates out there for WordPress, SquareSpace, or Weebly. Our design and marketing teams can review your bounce rates in Google Analytics (because you DO have Google Analytics code on your site, right?) to tell you what pages to focus on. Next, consider your contact us, make an appointment, and other lead generation forms. We haven’t even seen them yet but I bet they are too long, too free-form, and too hard to complete on a small screen.

Your best bet is to work with a digital agency that adheres to a mobile-first philosophy. The old practice of designing a website for desktop and then tweaking it for the mobile experience, later,  is no longer good enough. Ask your current design team for their thoughts on accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) for your site. (If their answer at any point includes a blank stare, contact webdesign@dabrianmarketing.com).

Accelerated mobile pages are part of an open source initiative that allows developers to create web pages that load quickly on mobile browsers. If your website has a lot of different stories, products, and articles combined with high (or volatile) website traffic, AMP functionality could greatly improve your performance on mobile devices. 

4. Refresh Your CMS

Fast Fact: “82% of customers have a more positive view of a company after reading custom content”

If you’re still relying on your website designer to update content on your site, you’re already behind the competition. Your marketing team should be able to add information to your site through an easy-to-use content management system (CMS), like WordPress. You should have multiple portions of your site updated regularly with current news, upcoming events, and recent blog posts to ensure that new traffic becomes repeat traffic.

Get more value from your CMS by implementing a process to review and update leading plug-ins. Plugs-ins are bits of software that can be uploaded to expand the functionality of your site. If you can imagine a way to extend and enhance your site, someone else probably has, too. And there is probably a plug-in to accomplish it.

Finally, grant multiple people the ability to post custom content. You can assign some to create content and others to review and approve it before it goes live. You can also outsource work to contractors, giving them limited rights to partitioned areas of your site. It takes a little bit of time and effort to get the most from your CMS, but in the end, the timeliness of content and ease of updates ensure a better experience for prospects, customers, and marketers alike. 

Wrapping It Up

The user experience needs to be the forefront of your thought process when updating your website. It needs to be a friendly, smooth-sailing, information-packed adventure that leads prospects toward a conversion. Having an updated site can make all the difference between “I don’t have time for this” and “I’m ready to checkout”.

Once you’ve refreshed your site, set a few dates to review it each year. Keep an eye on other websites and note the things they’re doing that you’d like to see on your own site. Pay attention to the way other companies interact with their customers through their websites, and emulate the best practices that might work for your business. Sooner or later, the competition may even start to emulate you.

Using the information provided here will give you insight and a starting point to fix your outdated website. But if you need a more comprehensive plan to update your business’s website, reach out to our team to discuss our free site audit process.

In the meantime, we love a good laugh, so feel free to share your frustrations with outdated websites. Tell us about it in the comments below!

What Is a CRM and Where to Get Started

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CRM may be an acronym you’ve heard floating around before – but what is it? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, basically it’s how you can keep track of data on past, present, and potential future customers and log interactions with them whether it’s through, emails, phone calls, mailings and so on.

Why would you want to have that information? With information like that you can manage how to regain former customers, retain customers, and gain new ones. You’re probably starting to see that a CRM is an integral tool for sales and marketing for businesses and in fact it is.

You could start a CRM system by collecting and entering customer and potential customer information into something like an excel sheet but that can become tedious work that wouldn’t be very helpful in the long run. Fortunately, there are a ton of CRM systems out there that can help.

Track Conversions

There are a few helpful things to keep in mind when picking out a CRM:

Is It Automated?

As in does it integrate with any platforms you are already using such as your email and social media? This is useful because it will save you or your employees time from having to manually enter every bit of customer information on your own.

Is It Mobile?

Can you access your customer relation information on the fly? This is helpful when you meet a new prospective customer and want to get them in the system right away or access all the information about a customer out in the field without having to log into your computer.

Is It Usable?

A major factor to consider: is the program easy to use for you and your employees? A big reason for businesses leaving their CRM to the way side is not knowing how it functions.

However, searching through all of the CRM options out there can be overwhelming in of itself. I’ve picked a few of some of the best ones out there to get you started.

SalesforceIQ CRM

One of Salesforce IQ’s features is the automatic collection of customer data such as emails, calendar events, and smartphone calls so you can spend more time focusing on the client and less time on data entry. You can also share information with other employees in order to collaborate when communicating with customers. It also creates reports to keep you on track and focused on the most promising sales. It’s mobile so you can work from anywhere and streamline your workflow.

Prosperworks

If you use G Suite then Prosperworks might be the best option for you. It was made for G Suite and seamlessly integrates with G Suite’s apps such as Google Sheets, Docs, Slides, Calendar, Inbox and Gmail and automatically syncs collected information from these apps. It will also remind you when you are not following your schedule to follow up with customers or potential customers. And whenever you update your Google contact information, it will roll over to your CRM.

Hubspot CRM

Hubspot has a great dashboard to gain visibility into what’s going on in your CRM to keep everything organized. You can also swiftly sort customers by a number of filters to keep track of what’s happening. Hubspot also syncs information across several platforms for email, social media, and phone calls. One of the best things about this platform is that it’s free!

Do you use a CRM platform? If so – which one? What are some of the benefits and pitfalls you’ve experienced with a CRM platform? Let us know in the comments.

Top 5 SEO Trends for 2017

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The world of SEO has continuously changed over the years, and 2017 is no different. In order for your business to perform well, it’s imperative that you adapt and stay ahead of the curve, or risk being left in the dust (of your competitors). Below are the top 5 SEO trends for 2017.

Top SEO Trends in 2017
SEO Trends For 2017 – Image Made By Our Web Designer Nick Davies

1. The Never Ending Year of Mobile

We’ve all heard about the importance of mobile. Within the past few years, mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic and the gap continues to increase. On top of that, Google recently rolled out mobile-first indexing. Knowing this, it is essential that your site is designed and developed with mobile top-of-mind

Along with the actual design, the functionality comes into play as well. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs), appear that they are here to stay. AMPs increase your page load speed (which is a ranking factor), and ultimately enhance the user’s experience. Speed (or lack thereof) kills. According to Think with Google, forty percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. That’s an enormous amount of potential loss.

2. Voice Search Trends Speak Volumes

Voice search is the fastest growing type search. According to Google, 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis. That’s not surprising seeing that most of our devices (laptops, phones, and tablets) all have voice search built-in, and the emergence of voice assistant devices (like Amazon Echo and Google Home). Combine this with our fast-paced living, and perceived need to multi-task, one can predict that voice search will continue to grow.

Voice Searches impact on SEO - SEO Trends 2017

Voice searches are very different than typed. The intent of typed searches vary, whereas voice searches tend to be either a command, or question. To optimize for better voice searches, your content should clearly answer the 5 W’s of who, what, when, where and why.

Along with adapting your content, you should also partially shift your focus when it comes to platforms. I’m willing to wager that your primary, if not only, focus (when it comes to your digital presence) is on Google. While Google certainly has the lion’s share of the market, don’t forget about Bing. Bing is set as the default search engine for Apple (Siri), Amazon, and Window’s Cortona (surprise).  

3. Virtual Reality is Really Real

Contrary to popular belief, virtual reality (VR) is not just for gaming. VR is currently changing the way we search, and digital media as a whole. The biggest attraction surrounding VR is that it allows users to experience what’s in front (and around) them,  as opposed to sitting back and watching. The user experience of your site is already extremely important, and I foresee it continuing to gain importance as more people adapt to VR.

Virtual Reality's impact on SEO - SEO Trends 2017

VR will change the way we create content, specifically video. 360 degree videos have been catching the eyes of many on the internet. This will only increase with VR. Your content will need to actually create an experience for your users. Check out this awesome promotional 360 video for the movie Warcraft. Talk about creating an experience!

4. New (But Similar) Faces For Local SEO

A consistent trend we’ve seen over the years is the importance of local SEO. With that being said, the hierarchy of local listings seems to have shifted. Years ago, the top players seemed to be Google, Bing, AOL (lol), and Yahoo. Now, with the increased importance of social, the emergence of alternative digital maps, and the importance of customer reviews, the primary local platforms are the following:

– Google My Business

  • It appears atop the Google search results for local service/product related searches.

– Facebook

  • Facebook search is not only for finding friends, but for businesses as well. Google also displays Facebook business pages and their reviews within their search results.

– Bing Places

  • Similar to Google, it appears atop Bing search results. Also, assuming you didn’t skip ahead, Bing has the potential to grow tremendously (See #2).

– Apple Maps

  • It’s the default map used on all Apple devices (Yes, iPhones).

– Yelp

  • Apple Maps pulls data from Yelp. In addition, consumers’ reviews have become a huge importance to users, and Yelp is one of the most popular review platforms.

Make sure you business is listed consistently and accurately across these platforms to help enhance your search visibility. It’s best to have ownership of all your accounts that way you can monitor and respond to what is said about your business online.

5. The Importance of Schema Markup is Growing

As Google and other search engines continue to develop their algorithms to determine a searcher’s intent, the importance of schema markup continues to grow. Schema markup makes it easier for search engines to categorize your site and better understand its relevance to a search. Since search engines have began using artificial intelligence systems, such as Google’s Rankbrain, it is imperative that you provide them with as much information possible.

Schema markup also allows for you to display quick answers. Quick answers can be snippets of things such as reviews, recipes, or other how-to instructions.

Schema Markup tags impact on SEO

With a new year comes new and exciting opportunities. Make 2017 your business’ year by running a successful SEO campaign!

Ready to conquer the digital world in 2017? Contact us today!

By: David McDowell

Mobile Design Tips For Your Ecommerce Business

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What’s the first thing that pops into your head when developing your company’s Ecommerce website? Are you concerned about the design aesthetically? Or, is it the content on the pages? While these are certainly important, your primary focus should be creating a mobile-friendly site with a quick and easy purchase process.

The Rise of Mobile Shopping

Since last year, shopping related searches on mobile have grown more than 120%. At the click of a button, you can find and buy anything from your mobile device. This is changing the Ecommerce industry as we know it. According to Think with Google, 30% of all online shopping purchases happen on a mobile device. Knowing this, websites must be designed to be both mobile and desktop friendly.

The Customer’s Purchase Journey

An effective mobile design guides a user through the purchase process quickly and efficiently. The path to a potential sale should require the least amount of clicks as possible with fast load speeds. To accomplish this, you must put yourself in the customer’s shoes to think about what may impact them on making a purchase.

First Thing’s First: Load Speed

When a user first connects to your mobile site, the initial concern is load speed. If your site isn’t fully optimized, people will leave before it even finishes loading. Last year, 54% of all holiday shoppers said they plan on shopping in their spare time during the day, like when they are commuting (but, don’t shop and drive). This gives your a smaller window of time The clock’s ticking! get your customers to check out as quickly as possible.

Mobile Design Tips for Ecommerce - Mobile Marketin

Give Them Personal Space

Once someone visits a site, a commonly used tactic is collect personal information…STOP! Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Often when asked to register immediately, a user will close the window and look for another option. You haven’t given them time to check out your site yet, pump the breaks. If you insist, try giving them third-party options like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Product Search and Filter Functionality

Make your products easy to find and give your customers a positive shopping experience with search bars and product filters. These enable users to find specific items they’re looking for. Most users expect this to be as easy as Google makes it, so try not to disappoint!

When it comes to online shopping, most users are hesitant to pull the trigger. Allow for an easy decision by providing customers with the ability to extensively view the product. Give them the freedom of pinch zooming in and out to know for sure it’s what they want. Also, be sure to include all the product details, any discounts, in-store availability, shipping, and user reviews. A great way to help further assure them is to use Youtube videos for reviews and product overview. 50% of smartphone video viewers say they use videos to help them make product decisions in-store or on a company’s website.

Mobile design tips for online shopping sites - Mobile marketing

All this information gives the user peace-of-mind in knowing they made the right purchase. For good measure, sneak a few related items in the bottom of the page to encourage more sales!

A User-Friendly Shopping Cart

The user now has the products he or she wants and is ready to check out. Include easy options to add and remove items from the shopping cart without leaving the checkout page.

Once everything is set, the user will press forward to fill out shipping and billing information. Simplify the process by allowing them to continue as a guest and by offering third-party payment options such as Paypal, Apple Pay, or Android Pay. This helps speed things up. For added reassurance, drop a note under the payment information affirming this is a secure checkout process. Now is a great time to offer special promotions and coupons! Once they submit the order, follow-up with a confirmation page and email with a full-detailed summary of their purchase.

Wrapping It Up

The user experience needs to be the forefront of our thought process when designing mobile sites. It needs to be a friendly, smooth-sailing, information-packed adventure that step-by-step leads them to that conversion. Think with Google says 82% of mobile users turn to their mobile device about a product while in the store. Having a well-designed mobile site can make all the difference between “I’m just looking.” to “I’m ready to checkout.”

Using the information provided here will give you valuable insight and great tips on what to include when setting up your mobile ecommerce website.

As a user, what do you look for on a mobile Ecommerce website? Tell us in the comments below!

Ecommerce Tips To Ensure Success on Cyber Monday

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CYBER MONDAY IS HERE!

And, it’s expected to be the largest shopping day in US history (for the 7th straight year). It is imperative that your Ecommerce is locked down, functioning properly, and ready to go. You may think your company’s website is ready for the rush simply because you have a shopping cart built onto your page, but there’s much more to think about. Use this checklist to see if you are prepared to conquer and surpass your competitors’ numbers on the largest shopping day in HISTORY.

Mobile Friendly = Money Friendly

  1. Cyber Monday is predicted to surpass $1 billion in mobile sales for the first time.
  2. Mobile traffic has surpassed desktop.

Having a mobile friendly site is a necessity. Learn tips for designing and optimizing your site for mobile.

Does your shopping cart and discount codes work?

A functioning cart is the most important to closeout the purchase. When your customers leave items in your shopping cart, they should be able to return without losing them. They should also be able to to view these items across all devices.

Tie in your email marketing efforts with abandoned shopping carts, too. Send an automated reminder email later that day with, “There’s still time left!” or a few days later saying, “We’ll give you a second chance!”

Site Search and Filtering Plug-ins

When someone lands on your site for a particular product or service, it should be easily found right away. To do this, use a site search bar or filtering plug-in. Properly tagging each product with its brand, name and specific features will get your customers what they want and get you another sale.

Optimizing Your Pages and Products

Having products alone won’t drive traffic to your site, and will certainly decrease the chance of a purchase. Adding comprehensive product descriptions that include all necessary information along with image alt tags, captions, and descriptions will increase the search visibility of your product. If you want to rank well in search engines for a specific product or service, this is a. You also want to limit the amount of questions a customer has. By providing this information, your customers will feel confident in making that final purchasing decision.

Reviews and Rating System On-Site

According to BrightLocal, 88% of consumers will trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Reviews on your website could boost your Cyber Monday sales. (or hurt them if not handled properly, ?)

ecommerce marketing tips for cyber monday
Image from Brightlocal.com

24/7 Customer Support

Resolving an issue or answering customer questions immediately can save some headaches for both your company and customers. Offer multiple ways for anyone to get ahold of you. A “live chat” feature on your website can help customers make a purchasing decision faster. Your customers are less likely to make a purchasing decision if they still have unanswered questions. If you can’t answer their questions, your competitors will.

Monitoring social media on a day-to-day basis is also a great opportunity to connect with your customers. When there is an issue, a customer is more likely to head to social media first to bad-mouth your brand. Be part of that conversation; don’t avoid it.

Local SEO: Can They Find You?

Today, mobile is our new local directory. Your customers aren’t pulling out their phone books and local guides anymore, they are searching for your product or service online. The most popular search engines today have algorithms that heavily favor locality. Here are some tips to ensure your business is appearing atop the local search results:

  • Have your name, address, and phone number (NAP) consistently accurate all throughout your site (I suggest in your footer).
  • Embed Google Maps (viewing your location) on your contact us page.
  • Be listed on major local listing platforms such as Google My Business, Facebook, Apple Maps and Bing Places.
  • Use local Business Schema markup.
  • Use local keywords in your URLs, TTD’s, and content, where appropriate.

Appearing at the top of local search results often lead to sales. According to Think With Google, 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business within a day. Of those 76% of searches, 28% result in a purchase.

PPC Remarketing to Remember

So your site functions properly and you’ve optimized it well enough to bring a lot of people to it, is that enough? Not quite. Just as you would shopping in person, your digital customers are going to weigh their options. This means either checking out your competitors, or visiting other websites for additional information about a specific product or service. Make sure you stay top of mind with PPC Remarketing. Remarketing allows you to basically “follow” users that have previously interacted with your brand, and place ads on other websites.

Now after today has come to an end and all the shoppers have gone to bed… Go to work tomorrow and compare your numbers from today to any other day of the year. Did you not see a significant difference? (Eh, or maybe you don’t even have the analytics to compare.?) Either way, that’s when you’ll know your business was not as prepared as it should and could have been.

If you didn’t check all of these items off, you can have better luck next year (and throughout the year) when you work with us. 😉 Give us a call and we can chat about how to grow your company and your Ecommerce website.

What else do you find important for an Ecommerce site to have? Let us know in the comments below!

Get Your Share of $400 Billion in Ecommerce Sales with A Product Data Feed

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Ecommerce sales are expected to grow to more than $400 billion in the next several years, with Forrester Research estimating $414.0 billion in sales in 2018 and eMarketer estimating $491.5 billion in 2018.

Retail and Ecommerce businesses continue to look for opportunities to grow and increase online sales, as well as in the store visitors. One of the most challenging things for business owners is the management of the product data feed or inventory information and availability for products online.

ecommerce website marketing, product data feed
2014-2018 Projected U.S. Ecommerce Sales

What is a Product Data Feed?

A product data feed is an organized list of products and their attributes. Each product can be displayed, advertised or compared in a unique way. A product data feed typically contains a product image, title, product identifier, marketing copy, and product attributes. It is often used to populate product information on ecommerce websites and shopping engines such as Ebay, Amazon, or Shopzilla.

How Can Retailers Use the Product Data Feeds?

Retailers and Ecommerce websites can use product data feeds to increase product awareness and influence purchasing decisions. Online shoppers are using shopping engines to find what they want. Shoppers are searching, browsing, and making purchasing decisions before stepping into a store. Often purchases are made outside of the merchant’s website.

How Can the Product Data Feed Help with Retail Promotions?

It can be optimized to increase organic search visitors. The product data feed provides value information on products, availability of items, shipping options, product reviews and details that are visible for search engine and potential shoppers. Also, it can be used to promote or advertise via social media, mobile apps, and generate local in-store visitors.

Use the Product Data Feed to Position Your Online Business & Retail Store

The product data feed is vital for Ecommerce and retail stores. It shouldn’t be an afterthought but an overall part of the strategy to sell more products. Customers are constantly searching for the least expensive products to fit their needs and sometimes it happens while they are in your store. Your products need to be visible and accessible in-store, online, apps, and shopping engines if you want a piece of the estimated $400 billion in ecommerce sales.

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