Different Website Platforms for Small Businesses
For many people, websites and web design can seem like another world. However, as the demand for online presence and marketing marches forward, we can’t ignore the need for online platforms. Your small business needs a website to remain competitive and meet the needs of customers.
Easily accessible information like phone numbers, service areas, and an address are vital to your business’s success. Meeting your customer’s initial needs online offers the opportunity to provide them with services, products, and information. Online platforms are critical for small businesses to take their business to their customers. Finding the right option for your needs requires research and understanding what each platform offers you and how to use it successfully.
Options for Small Businesses
If you don’t have a background in web design, you may not know where to start. You can look at website building options from a cost standpoint or look for someone that can give you your dream website. Before you pick a platform like WordPress, Squarespace, or Shopify, you will want to understand the different themes, builder tools, and plugs that offer unique editorial and performance opportunities within the website. If you are looking to get things started but don’t know where to go from there, an experienced website developer can help.
Whether you need web design near Chester County, PA, or elsewhere, there are many sites that you can choose to support your company. These different options include incredibly popular types that can subtly transform your business for the better. We will break down some of the leading factors to help you meet the needs of your business.
WordPress: Quick and Effective
If you just need to get up a website quickly to do business as soon as possible, WordPress is a powerful platform. You can build a site for free using their various simple model sites or purchase a premium account for more control over your site. WordPress is easy to learn and offers various editorial options. Even if you are new to web design, they have user-friendly options that you can use to build out pages, post blogs, and provide your customers with the correct information.
Shopify: Amazing Sales Platform
Shopify is one of the leading sales platforms for eCommerce businesses because it includes multiple apps and an integrated payment processor that keeps your sales safe. It also includes a free trial that helps you get started on your site.
Shopify has some limitations to what you can and can’t design, but overall offers a great space to build out your online store.
Wix: Modern Designs With Minimum Efforts
Wix is a low-cost online platform that may be free as long as you let Wix display ads on your site. It lets you set up a quick and in-depth storefront with attractive styles and fast design. You get hundreds of templates designed to meet your business aesthetic. That said, the many app and plugin options give you a surprising level of control for an inexpensive platform.
Squarespace: Getting Started
This website is great for beginners who don’t know where to start and want something minimal to get their feet wet. It lets you quickly build a strong online business or portfolio using multiple templates that support social media integration. While it has some more limitations, this is a good platform to simply add text and images and build your brand online.
Factors to Consider Before Choosing
When choosing a different online platform for your small business, it is important to consider the following factors to ensure you get the best option for your needs:
- Cost: How much can you afford to pay for your online platform?
- Adaptability: What features and apps do you want on your platform?
- Usage: In what ways do you plan on using your online platform?
- Style: Are there many templates that improve your site’s style?
- Simplicity: Do you feel comfortable using this platform yourself?
These simple factors are critical to consider and may affect your overall site quality. For example, if you don’t carefully budget your purchases, you might end up paying far too much for your needs.
While these platforms let you handle web design without expert help, it is always better to find a marketing team that understands these platforms. You need someone willing to do all the hard work for you and provide a high-quality site that suits you.
Getting Help Today
If you need help with WordPress development in Philadelphia and aren’t sure where to turn, we’re here to help. At SEO Locale, we have a professional team with years of experience supporting small businesses like yours. Please contact us now to learn more about our web design options and to find a platform that makes sense for your online operations.
5 Practices For A Great Landing Page
It’s important that business owners and entrepreneurs know the value of setting up great landing pages to drive up conversions. When it comes down to the essentials of online businesses, having an optimized landing page is often right at the top of the priority list. But what exactly is a landing page, and how does it affect the success of a website?
How Landing Pages Work
A landing page is a web page created specifically to drive conversions. They’re a great way to capture the information of visitors to your site in exchange for an eBook, template, video, or any other company offer that you may have available. You can also use the gathered information to schedule a demo, meeting, or over-the-phone consultation to convert these people into paying customers.
The primary role of a landing page is to collect information through a form on the page. Be careful, however, not to mistake a landing page for any web page that has a web form, as that’s not the case. Take a blog post for example. A blog post might have a form that encourages readers to subscribe, but its primary goal is still to educate rather than convert.
A landing page’s sole purpose is to convert. The conversion path for landing pages is relatively linear and straightforward. Visitors fill in a form and automatically become warm leads. The leads then receive emails containing more information about the service or product that you’re offering. Some businesses choose to direct their potential customers to a “Thank You” page where they can access even more information.
In terms of digital marketing, setting up landing pages is not the end goal. Landing pages should be optimized to make sure that you’re getting mileage out of them. Having an impactful landing page strategy in place can often result in a 30-40% lead conversion.
You don’t want all of your site visitors with different needs and intents wading through your general information-rich home page. If you’re creating dedicated landing pages that closely align with a customer’s individual needs, you’ll have a much greater chance of capturing their information and converting them into customers. With the right landing page, you can attract customers to the specific type of service or product that you’re offering.
Here are the 5 best practices to follow when it comes to optimizing landing pages in order to increase conversion:
Apply the 5-Second Rule
People have short attention spans. Our brains are hardwired to pay attention to only the things that benefit us. This is also one of the truths that you should incorporate into every marketing strategy: people don’t want to waste too much time and energy comprehending the content. Consumers want information to be quick, ready, and bite-sized.
When it comes to landing pages, you should clearly state what you provide, how your service will benefit the customer, and what they need to do in five seconds or less. If you fail to do so, your chances of converting your leads decrease, and you run the risk of them exiting your landing page instead.
Keep your visitors focused. Make sure that all of the information they need is above the fold. Your value proposition and CTA must be located right at the top of the page.
Use Short and Creative Videos
Most business owners don’t want anything to do with videos. However, videos can provide an excellent opportunity to connect with your site visitors on a deeper level. This particular medium can be utilized to increase session durations on your website. The more that people interact with you, the likelier you can get them to opt-in or buy what you sell.
Feature a video that has a runtime of 60 seconds at the maximum. In this crucial 60 seconds, you must establish the problem you’re looking to solve and how your customers can benefit from using your solution. Emphasize what would happen if your visitors don’t go with your solution.
Make sure that the short video tells the story of your customers’ transformation. What happened when they tried out your product? How much happier are they now? The video must end with a clear call to action. We prefer to use the same CTA within the page for uniformity and to avoid confusion.
Social Proof
Testimonials or case studies of real people who have already tried out your products and services lend credibility to your landing page. They signify that what you offer can walk the talk. Just like a good referral, people trust positive reviews. Featuring some could benefit your landing page enormously.
While videos are the best when it comes to forging an emotional connection with your audience, you can also use text-based content. With prior consent, we often include real photos of our customers for authenticity.
Remember the customer transformation we mentioned above? Using testimonials and case studies to drive the point further helps to nudge your potential leads down the conversion funnel. Don’t make your testimonials overly lengthy. Make sure to tell the transformation story in just a few sentences.
Clarify Your Value Proposition
At first glance, your landing page must explain what value your service or product offers to your site visitors right away. If your landing page has too many convoluted messages crammed into it, people will immediately click away and go elsewhere.
Visitors must immediately know what it is you do and what’s in it for them. Conversion happens when the value proposition deeply resonates with your audience. We’ve learned that if you’re not solving a problem your audience faces, they won’t feel the need to buy into your solution.
Address your target market’s needs. Break down the reasons why they should prefer your business over others. Once you determine these aspects, incorporate them into your copy. Strong copy entices your audience into converting as leads. Remember, copy and value proposition go hand in hand when it comes to influencing conversion rates.
Use a Strong Call to Action
A CTA tells your audience what to do and where they need to click, sign up, or leave their email address. Your CTA button must be prominent on your landing page. We’ve proven that visually distinct CTAs generate more success in helping you reach your marketing objectives.
Use contrasting colors to get the attention of your audience. Most landing pages take the typical route of using an orange CTA button against a generic blue backdrop. We encourage clients to create their landing pages using their brand colors and with a contrasting color for their CTAs.
We often use commonly understood, action-oriented words to invoke a quick reaction. People don’t want to spend too much time figuring out where to go. Make it easier for them through your copy and design.
The best CTAs use simple, short words to boost conversion in landing pages.
The Bottomline
Landing pages are crucial when it comes to solidifying and supplementing your digital marketing campaigns. You could have a significant amount of site traffic, but this doesn’t automatically mean leads if you don’t optimize the pages for conversions as well.
Follow the above tips, and you’re on your way to creating a useful landing page that’s going to perform strongly and convert better.
Best of Both Worlds: How to Make SEO and User Experience Work Together
When you dig into what search engine optimization (SEO) is at its core, you quickly realize that it’s all about user experience (UX).
Search engines like Google don’t want to recommend their users to sites with a poor UX, so they only rank sites who check certain boxes. And website owners want to rank high, so they try to do things that the search engines want, accidentally improving their UX in the process.
But if you simply focus on UX, you’ll notice that SEO becomes much easier and less complicated. In this article, we’ll tell you a few ways you can tackle both UX and SEO at the same time. Let’s get started!
Responsive Web Design
Did you know that, in 2018, over 52% of all web traffic came from mobile devices? That’s a number that is expected to continue to increase over the next few years, and because of this, search engines have begun to rank sites that are mobile-friendly higher.
By having a responsive website design, your site will look good and function well on multiple devices. And not only will your users enjoy being able to cleanly browse your site on their laptop, smartphone, or tablet but search engines will take notice, too.
Page Speed
It doesn’t matter how good your website looks or how strong your content is if your website won’t load quickly. Users aren’t sticking around to wait for something to load when there are a ton of options in their search results that will give them what they want… and fast.
By ensuring that your site loads quickly, you’re improving your UX and giving your site a better chance to rank higher. Not sure if your site is fast enough? Google offers a useful speed checker tool that will give you a grade, as well as some pointers on how to speed your site up.
Simple Navigation
It can’t be overstated how important speed is in regards to positive user experience. And while loading times play a huge role, user navigation is equally important, too.
Because let’s face it, if users can’t find something on your site in just a few clicks, they’re not going to stick around for long. And if too many users close out of your site too fast, search engines will take note and bump you down in the search results.
A great way to ensure your navigation is good is to follow the three clicks rule. If something on your site can’t be found in three clicks or less, your site’s navigation is too complicated.
Addressing UX and SEO at the Same Time
Well, there you have it! Those are a few ways you can address both UX and SEO at the same time!
Remember, search engines want to direct their users to sites that offer good UX. So by focusing on UX, you’re actually improving your site’s SEO at the same time.
Make sure your site’s website design is responsive, so it’ll work well on every device. Speed is important, too, so try to make sure your site is as fast as possible. Navigation is something that you should put a high priority on as well, especially if you want to keep users on your site for more than a few seconds.
Need help with your SEO strategy? Still have some questions? Contact us today, we’ll be glad to help you!
How Users Interact with Your Website Is A Crucial Metric to Follow
The usability of your website is linked to how efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily your users and visitors can see and interact with your website. Everything in your site will be included in the user experience when they visit such as the use of the menus, navigation bars, buttons, videos, images, content, games, forms and hyperlinks. Owners of websites must monitor how effective their user experiences are.
Why Is Website Usability A Critical Metric?
Oftentimes, the usability of your website is important because it’s all about customer service. The goal of any company is to meet or exceed the needs and wants of their customers and visitors. This needs to be done quickly and effectively. To gain loyal customers that come back time and again, usability must be maintained on every front.
Factors That Influence Usability?
To understand the usability of your website requires organizations to research their target and current audiences. Search engine optimization services from reputable companies like us here at SEO Locale will include investigating your customers’ needs and how they respond to the designs and messages throughout your website. Below are some of the factors that can affect a website’s ability to meet customer needs:
- Accessibility – Website accessibility includes visitors being able to easily navigate, understand and interact with your site.
- Responsiveness – A responsive website design is one that works to offer optimal interaction and viewing experiences across all device types including smartphones, laptops and tablets.
- SEO – Search engine optimization is needed to make an organization’s website visible in the search engines using organic, natural results. SEO is best done by professional SEO experts. At SEO Locale, we can optimize your website to get top listings in the search engine results.
- Layout and Navigation – This factor pertains to how easily and efficiently visitors can find what they’re looking for using the menus and navigation buttons on your site.
- Content and Messaging – More often than not, visitors will visit your site when looking to have a question answered. To satisfy these users, your content and text should be designed in a way that is easily noticeable and understood.
- Effectiveness and Errors – This measurement is taken to ensure there are as few errors as possible with visitors come to your website. It is important to note how many visitors get what they’re looking for after visiting your website. Were they able to find exactly what they were looking for?
- Task Time and Expectations- The task time is a measurement of how long it takes your visitors to find what they’re looking for while browsing your website compared to what they expected. Essentially, you want to find out how efficiently people can use your site.
Website usability is a crucial metric that organizations need to use when planning the layout and design of their website. Ideally, customers should be kept in mind when this is completed. At SEO Locale, we can ensure your website has the best usability possible for your visitors, contact us for a digital marketing evaluation.
Common WordPress SEO Mistakes, 2017 Edition
WordPress is used on over 25% the all sites across the web. It’s easy to understand why. It’s extremely user-friendly, intuitive, easy to post, update and remove pages, and is very SEO friendly. However, WordPress sites are not created SEO friendly. It requires custom work to be done on the backend,
Is it Time to Redesign?
The saying goes ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ but coming top of a Google search can only take your business so far. In an increasingly mobile world, having a responsive website design which assumes customers will be ordering from their phones and tablets is critical to maximizing business and enticing
6 Hot Web Design Trends for 2018
Content Marketing businesses and entrepreneurs know that in order to keep your brand fresh and contemporary to customers, it’s vital to keep an eye on digital trends. Foreshadowing trends will also keep your business one step ahead of the game within the marketplace and to your competition. Digital marketing moves
