Web Design Must Haves for Leads: Exploring Proper Design and Usability

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Most websites have an average of a 30-60% bounce rate.

This means a large majority of web traffic entering your website leaves without navigating to any other pages. What first impression are you giving your viewers?

Your website represents who you are and what you offer. When viewers visit your website they are looking for credibility, trust, professionalism, and stability.

Stanford University and Consumer Web Watch found that “a website’s design was more important than credibility such as having a privacy policy and awards.” The study also indicated that “the visual design may be the first test of a site’s credibility. If it fails on this criterion, web users are likely to abandon the site…”

A great web design should include:

Proper use of colors

To attract your audience and draw attention to select elements, use the right colors for your audience. Do not try to make everything jump out. Your audience will avoid the chaotic mix of colors. Stick to 2-4 colors for your template.

Animations, gadgets, and media

Only implement this to help support content and information. Avoid anything unnecessary.
Layout: A clear navigation structure is a must. Avoid clutter. Organize page elements in a grid fashion instead of scattering them randomly.

Typography

Use fonts, font sizes, and font colors that are easy to read to ensure your site is legible. This brings us to our next element. Maintain consistency. Keep your elements on your site consistent from page-to-page. Consistency will help your visitors navigate your site with ease. This will help your visitors from feeling lost.

 

Images

Images can be a powerful element to any website. Although stock images are easily accessible and inexpensive, visitors prefer real imagery. Marketing Experiments performed an experiment comparing the use of stock photography verses real imagery on a website. They found that photos of real people out-performed the stock photos by 95%. Stock images tend to be irrelevant.

Ultimately, make sure that anyone visiting your website can view it no matter what browser or application they are using. Accessibility is a key element to your website’s growth. Visitors should be able to view your website on a mobile device, a tablet, and a computer. Your website will get more views by allowing everyone to view your site no matter what kind of system they use.

During the Web Design Process, Stay Relevant and Don’t Send Visitors Down a Rabbit Hole

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Search engine optimization (SEO) requires more than the use of keywords; it requires high quality content. You can no longer keyword-stuff your way to search ranking success.

“In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site. (Google)”

Keywords are often added to websites awkwardly which can penalize your website. Content needs to be for humans first, search engines second.

Keywords should be included 1-3 times, naturally, in the page content. Make sure keywords are included in your page title, meta description, and H1 text assuming it fits within the parameters. If a keyword doesn’t work well, work towards a more general keyword. If any word doesn’t contribute to the education of the visitor it likely doesn’t fit.

Marketers can reduce additional effort by including an SEO keyword analysis at the front end of a web redesign project – during website strategy development, then using the findings and recommendations from the keyword analysis to inform content development.

One way to ensure your content has useful keywords is to look at search engines trends such as Google. Refer to historical data to find seasonal content that has done well in the past. Keywords can keep web pages focused, which is important for SEO.

Another way to successfully create content during your website redesign is to capture all the on-site searches that visitors are doing on your site. This will help create helpful content for your viewers.

To successfully redesign your website focus on content development during the beginning phases of your redesign process.

 

Not setting up 301 redirects will send your visitors down a rabbit hole

During a website redesign your old URL needs to be transferred to your new URL. This is where 301 directs come in handy.  A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another.

When a page is moved to a new URL and the old link hasn’t been directed to the new page it causes a broken website link. This causes a lost opportunity for your customers or potential buyers. 301 Redirects helps SEO know where to find your new pages.

Launching a new website without putting 301 redirects will cause you to lose all of your past SEO history and your rankings will decrease.

Before doing any 301 redirects, create URL outline of your old site. Excel is a simple way to outline your old website. You can create a tab for each of your main menu sections and list all menu sub items with their corresponding URL in that tab.

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when redesigning websites is that they create new pages to replace old ones and eliminate old website pages that they no longer want to include in their site.

You are eliminating all of the search engine optimization value that you’ve built up over time by eliminating old pages without redirecting them to the new URL.

In order to keep your SEO ranking high, create a 301 redirect to let search engines know where to find the new page you are creating so your SEO ranking will follow you to your new website.

Web Design Must Haves for Leads: Content is King

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With the rise of inbound marketing…

With the rise of inbound marketing, content has become one of the most important aspects of any website. Content is what visitors and search engines are looking for. It also helps drive visitors to your site and turns prospects into leads.

Give your visitors clear messages. You want your visitors to know what you do within seconds, understand the page they’re on and what it’s about, what to do next, and why they should buy/subscribe/download from this site instead of someone else.

There are a few helpful tips to direct you in delivering the right message

  1. Create a few headlines and sub-headline ideas for your most important pages. This helps you portray to your buyer why they should buy from you.
  2. Include clear call-to-actions. Include links in your body copy, next step links at the end of the copy, and calls-to-action wherever appropriate.
  3. Test your copy. For the most accurate indication of winning a headline, use A/B testing to determine which variation drive the most conversions. You can use tools like HubSpot’s A/B Testing Tools, Google’s Website Optimizer, or services like 5 Second Test.

Educate your viewers about your offers.

Offer them more than product content. Provide eBooks, whitepapers, videos, and other forms of content that is educational. This will help your viewers feel as if they are receiving valuable information along the way and not just a sales pitch.

Offer your viewers quality content.

Create fresh content for your homepage that people can value. Know who your audience is when providing content. Create content that is relevant to your buyers and know your subject well. It is important to have accurate content when you write for your audience.

Keep your content clear.

Avoid using jargon terms and phrases; your audience will render them meaningless. In this day in age, consumers want the truth. They do not want advertising trickery, marketing cliques, and surreptitious methods of persuasion. Focus your content on being clear, not clever, and you will find that more people will trust you.

Blogging

Blogging is one of the most important assets to any inbound marketing strategy and it’s a perfect complement to your website. Blogging creates fresh content for SEO, it helps establish you as an industry authority and thought leader, it helps drive more traffic and leads back to your website, and it’s a great channel to converse and engage with your audience and customers. Blogging will also help make your content shareable and social.

 

Testimonials

Lastly, provide customer testimonials and reviews to prove to potential customers that you’ve successfully helped existing customers. Leverage other online sites to provide reviews such as Yelp to collect testimonials.

How to Build a Strong Wellness Marketing Strategy

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The number of internet users in the United States is growing daily. More than 88% of the U.S. population are internet users; approximately a 45% increase since the year 2000. Google reportedly processes 1.3 billion searches monthly. “…more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers…including the U.S (Google)”

Most people report that the information, blogs, and medical information centric sites they visit are inaccurate or unsatisfactory.

An accurate healthcare resource that people can trust is vital for internet users. We have a 5 step process and strategy points to help put into practice when creating a digital content strategy for your practice.

Following the below 5 steps can greatly increase your effectiveness of your healthhcare marketing strategy.

 

Step 1:  Set your content goals and what you want to accomplish

Step 2: Establish tools and process

Step 3:  Liven up Your Content – What is best to write about and share?

Step 4: Distribute your Content – Placing your content where it deserves to be.

Step 5: Measure Results – Examine the process and begin again

With a combined experience of over 30 years in marketing and design, the team of creatives and marketers at Curiosity can take any of your business goals and put them into a plan that will strive for a positive solution. Since opening our doors we have gained experience to confidently understand
client objectives and easily establish strong client relationships in order to generate and deliver inspiring digital marketing and content strategy solutions. With every project our team strives to push the envelope and use the latest tech and solutions we have available to us.

Website Redesign: Consider your URL structure and referral sources

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Looking further into mistakes commonly made when designing or redesigning a website

Another two points we would like to cover are URL Structure and Shady resources for backlinks

Failing to consider your URL structure

Your URLs play a significant role in your SEO success. If your URLs don’t align well with the actual content of your site pages, you should consider restructuring it during your website redesign.

A general rule to follow when creating a new URL: use dashes (-) between words instead of underscores (_). Google treats dashes as separators, which means it can return results when you search for a single word that appears in a URL. Underscores are treated as connectors by Google. It will only return results when you search for a group of connected words that appears in a URL. Using dashes creates more opportunities for your pages to be discovered.

Your URL structure needs to be organized for the user experience. Use keywords in your URL you are targeting for ranking. Keywords in your URL will help indicate to those who see your URL that they are getting what they want and expect. Keep the structure organized for user experience.

Shorter URLs between (less than 50 characters) are preferred for usability and user experience. Search engines are able to process long URLs without trouble, but it is important to write for humans first and think of SEO second.

Lastly, when creating a URL make sure it is accessible for all devices. Mobile friendly pages are normally ranked the highest in SEO.  Let major search engines know which web pages on your site are mobile friendly in a sitemap.

 

Leaving shady backlinks in place

Backlinks are incoming hyperlinks from one web page to another website. The more backlinks you have pointing back to your website, the more popular it will be.

When you create backlinks for your website, keep in mind that Google and other search engines prefer quality over quantity. Google prefers natural links.

A website redesign is a great opportunity for you to analyze your backlinks and remove the suspicious ones. Backlinks are great to have, but if Google suspects that there are spammy, low-quality sites linking to your site, your rankings could suffer.

A common mistake: Your search engine optimization firm built hundreds of bad backlinks to your website. Google’s penguin algorithm update in 2012 included penalization to websites that built erroneous back links in an attempt to drive ranking. Site links from unrelated sources, micro-sites, and false sources do more harm than good post-Penguin.

You can fix this mistake in your redesign by using Link Research Tools. This will provide detail on harmful link and help you get them removed from your site quickly and efficiently.

 

Most marketers think only about link-building instead of link-earning. Focus on making your content easy for your audiences to consume, understand, and share.

Responsive Design and Thinking like a Human; Two Necessities of Web Design Today

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These items as crucial for both Human and Search Engine View of your site.

Your website needs to be able to reach viewers on different devices such as: desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. “27% of consumers will leave a site if it is not mobile-optimized. (ExactTarget,2014 Mobile Behavior Report).”

Implementing Responsive Design

Responsive design is your best option for delivering a great search and browsing experience to mobile users. This will cause your website’s URLs to be the same across all devices and will all serve up the same HTML code. It is always better to provide the same layout of your website on all devices because people like consistency.

“Customer preference is the most cited targeting dimension that companies are using in mobile marketing, with location as the second most cited. (Forrester, MMA, and Velti, Present and Future Mobile Marketing.)”

The most popular device customers and potential customers use today are smartphones. Majority of consumers use mobile friendly sites because they are of the opinion that mobile-optimized sites run faster than non-mobile-optimized sites. Hence giving them the information in a better more timely experience.

With responsive design, the only thing that changes across devices is the styling. This configuration makes it easier for Google to crawl your pages and retrieve your content. “This improvement in crawling efficiently can indirectly help Google index more of the site’s contents and keep it appropriately fresh.”

Failing to think like a human

When designing o redesigning your website you have to think like a human. Humans want answers. Search engines such as Google have gained the ability to recognized full-sentence queries instead of picking out the individual words that make up a query.

The best information comes from websites that are crafted with humans in mind.

A couple of rules to follow for search engine optimization are: make sure your content adds value to visitors and to write about what you know.

  • • Always add value. Backlinks and keyword rank are important to gain through your visitors. If          your content is valuable, people will read and share it.
  • • When creating content write about what you know. Keep your content natural for viewers.              People will find you more reputable and seek advice from you if you keep your content simple      and natural.
  • • Search engine optimization is not the top priority when it comes to redesigning your website.

The best way to ensure you are focusing on humans before SEO is to make sure you are writing natural content that your viewers can relate to. Whenever you focus on humans first, SEO takes care of itself.

Growth Driven Design: A Smarter Approach to Web Design and Development

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Most websites today are currently built as a set project with a web design team working to put together a perfectly designed website, working on a hypothesis of what type of flow your site visitors will use and how they get to the information that you feel is important to promote your business.

Recent studies have shown that most websites after launch go at least two years before being updated or refreshed. Hence, in some cases, websites can be a headache to small business owners.

The problem.

The way customers search online for businesses and services is always changing. Google, Bing, and Yahoo continually change their search algorithms to better match the way consumers search and the behaviors they follow.  With these changes for best results, your business website needs to change as well.  But how is this accomplished?

Growth Driven Design.

Growth Driven Design is a new approach to designing and building a website. Instead of working the standard 8-10 weeks around a hypothesis, you launch as a website as quickly as possible and then work to keep your site fresh based on real-time marketing and testing results.  Doing this allows your site to be an evolving marketing tool.  Constant change and updates allow you to keep your website optimized for better lead generation and a central goal of generating more revenue.  But the most valuable point to Growth Driven Design is that changes and modifications are no longer based on a hypothesis. The evolution of your site is now based off of actual data gathered from customers.

Some ways to boost your websites conversions include:

 

  • • Creating content continually
  • • Focus on conversion rate – the higher, the better
  • • Test images by swapping between different colors and styles and moods
  • • Run a Usability Test
  • • Install tracking software to track your user’s experience
  • • Personalize for your target Client persona
  • • Reorganize your navigation for easier site search
  • • Increase Search Engine Exposure

 

With the above list of items, you can test your site and check again to focus on enhancing your client’s experience.  The more your site can be customized towards the needs of your site visitors, the bigger the impact you will have on your conversion rate and a higher return on your investment.  Although the process takes a larger amount of time over the traditional website approach, the sky is the limit of improvements and successes of your site.

Web Design Must Haves for Leads: Become a Conversion Machine

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You have the leads, now what?

To increase your websites conversions, you must have effective calls-to-action, CTA positioning, newsletters, landing pages and forms for your landing page.

The effect of a successful Call to Action is to drive a visitor to take a desired action. CTAs are the key to lead generation but they need to be done right to convert traffic into leads. The position of your call-to-actions is important also. Think about where you will be placing your CTAs. Do not place CTAs everywhere; that will give people too many options.

In order to drive CTAs you need to drive those links to landing pages. Landing pages are used to convert visitors into leads by completing a transaction or by collecting contact information from them. Landing pages consist of:

  1. A headline and (optional) sub-headline.
  2. A brief description of the offer/CTA.
  3. At least one supporting image.
  4. (Optional) supporting elements such as testimonials or security badges.
  5. And most importantly, a form to capture information.

Newsletters

Newsletters are easy to offer and effective. Not all CTAs need to be big offers. Newsletters or mailing lists are the perfect way to collect email addresses so you can nurture prospects over time to become leads. Make sure it is easy for people to find your subscription form.

 

Landing Pages

Landing pages are necessary to implement because they direct your visitors to one particular offer without the distractions of everything else on your website.

Once you’ve completed your landing page, it is important to have a form that customers can fill out to sign-up, subscribe to your site, or download an offer. Forms are the key to a landing page. Recommendations for landing page forms:

  • • Only ask for the information you need. Avoid asking for sensitive information that companies or                consumers may not want to disclose.
  • • Consider the value of the offer. The more valuable an offer may be perceived, the more information        you may be able to ask for in return.
  • • Lastly, reduce anxiety for your clients by adding a privacy message that indicates their email will not      be shared or sold. Avoid using the word submit on your form buttons; offer them a free download or      newsletter instead.

Internet usage is growing rapidly which makes a website an important factor for your business. The integration of search engine optimization, social media, blogging, content, call-to-actions, and landing pages will drive traffic, leads, and sales.

How to Build a Strong Wellness Marketing: Set Your Goals

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A strong healthcare digital marketing presence is important in order to reach your audience. Since most people begin their healthcare search online, it is vital to have a strong digital presence.

There are two ways you can be successful with healthcare digital marketing:

  1. Establish your audience. Who are you trying to reach?
  2. Set long term goals for your practice. For example: How many people need to be reached in for the practice to be successful?

Establishing the audience is the most important step. Who does your practice benefit? Healthcare digital marketing is important!

88% of adults in the U.S. have a cell phone, 57% have a laptop, 19% own an e-reader, and 19% have a tablet. Cell phones are the dominant communication tool in the United States, but information is searched in various ways. It is important to optimize healthcare digital marketing for all devices used by your target audience (Pew Internet).

In order to acquire more patients, you must build rapport with them. The use of ethos (ethics), logos (logic), and pathos (empathy) is the best way to create rapport and grow your healthcare digital marketing.

Your ethos (ethics) is important to patients. It is important for your patients to trust your character.

Be reputable. Logos (logic) is a vital aspect in growing a practice. You must show expertise in your field in order to grow your practice.

Lastly, show patients you have empathy (ethos) for them.

Studies have proven that in order to be successful you must create goals. A common mnemonic device that helps is SMART:

Specific: Is the detail in the information sufficient to pinpoint problems or opportunities? Establish your specific goals.

Measurable: Quantitative or qualitative are the ways you can measure your success. Create a metric for your practice.

Actionable: Can the information be used to improve performance? The objective should change the staffs’ behavior for this to be successful.

Relevant: Can the information be applied to the specific problem faced by the marketer?

Time-Bound: What objective do you need to accomplish? Create a time frame for each goal.

The establishment of audience and goals are vital to create a successful digital marketing presence.

2 Items to Never Forget When Launching a Website Redesign

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You’ve finshed the redesign of your website, now what?

The process is done, you followed our steps to make sure your site is up to today’s standards and the site has launched.  There are a couple items that need to be checked to make sure your newly designed site can be found and tracked.

Unblock search engines from crawling your site

When launching your website after a redesign, it’s important to double check that the search engines know where to find you. A common mistake people do is block search engines from their website during the redesign phase and forget to unblock them when the site is complete.

This issue can cause problems when sometimes developers forget to unblock robots from crawling and indexing the website after the website goes live. Search engine optimization is one of the main resources people use to research and purchase a product.

 

“SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal.)”

 

 

One reason this happens is because the site is in a dev environment and has robots.txt set to block all search robots. A robot.txt file is a simple text file placed on your web server which informs webcrawlers like Googlebot if they should access a file or not.

The site is then taken live with all-exclusive robots.txt file still in place and the site’s search traffic reduces.

Search engine optimization allows people to be able to find your website. You can double check with Google Webmaster tools to ensure your site is being indexed.

 

Add analytics tracking to your site

Your website redesign needs to be compared to your old website with analytics software. Once your new website is released, you should be collecting data on its performance.

A couple of questions to ask yourself after you apply tracking software are:

  • • Did your content audit and keyword research pay off?
  • • Is that new URL structure making it easier for visitors to navigate through your pages?

The goal being you want your new website to have a higher conversion rate than your old site. It is impossible to measure without any conversion code or analytics tracking it. That is why it is important to paste the proper Google analytics code on the new website.

Another reason it is important to track your data is to drive continual improvement of the online experience to your customers and prospects.

If your website redesign is not easier for customers and potential clients to use then your new website is not serving its purpose.

Ultimately, your website redesign should add value to your viewers. Analytics will help you make improvements to your website and your sites visitation will increase.