In today’s digital world, it is extremely important for business owners to rely not only on traditional media for marketing their products or services, but to make use of the Internet. Every company with an official company website should use it to promote their products and services and offer valuable information for their potential as well as existing customers.
In the clutter of existing elements of a website design, you may find that the most important elements that make up a good design for any business, whether big or small, may get completely ignored. Enlisted blow are the top web design elements that you should utilize to improve your website’s traffic and conversion rates.
Have your own domain name. It goes without saying that when your website has its own domain name, it raises the credibility factor of the company. To make it even more appealing to the potential customers, it is very important to select a domain name that matches the name of your business or company. However, businesses that operate on a smaller scale or those that are start-ups may find it difficult to acquire access to a domain name that is the same as the name of their business. In such cases, a good rule of thumb is to make use of a keyword that best describes the work that your company does. This will help Google and other search engines index your website and increase the visibility of your pages in Google’s search results.
Create an ‘About Us’ page. Your potential customers will want to know more about you and your company goals when they land on your website. If they do decide to make a purchase from your website, they will want to know who you are and where and how your business came into existence. That is why you should provide answers for all of these queries in the form of an About Us page. The simple addition of this page with useful information about your company and its history – along with what you aim to achieve using it – will build trust and confidence in the minds of potential customers. If you own a store that serves customers on location, you should consider including a digital roadmap to help them find your store. Of course, if you are solely on online business, this step can be omitted.
Do not fill up your website entirely with ad space. There is no doubt that an increase in the readership of your company website’s blog pages can help you earn good money from the ads that you decide to place. However, if you end up clogging the entire space on your website with ads, the chances are your potential customers will be turned off and will look to other sources for their needs. Therefore, while it is not a bad practice to have ads running on your website, it is also equally important to keep it to a minimum in order to give your potential customers exactly what they are looking for – informative content that they can make use of.
Maintain a clean background. You may be tempted to add jazzy images that are relevant to your company to fill the background for your website, but this may actually drive potential customers away. As a rule of thumb, a good company website always has a clean background in one solid color, preferably lighter shades of gray, beige or cream tones. However, keeping your background plain white is all the more desirable. Not only does it make your website easier to view; it lends an incredibly professional touch to it as well.
Make sure your visitors can locate your vital content within a minimal number of clicks. If you are confident that your potential customers will benefit from a piece of information that you place on your website, make sure that the window between the customer entering your website and finding the information is as small as possible. If you add too large of a gap between these two elements, your potential customer will end up getting frustrated and visit your competitors’ websites.
Include breadcrumb navigation. Breadcrumb navigation is one of the most professional ways to design your website since it lists out all the links that got the potential customer to the most current page that they are on. Therefore, if the website visitor does wish to go back to the previous page, they can do so by simply clicking on the link instead of having to go all the way back to the homepage and then accessing another page.
Understand the importance of color coordination. For any appealing website, the color scheme plays a very important role. When your background is lighter in shade, make sure that the text that you use features a darker shade to ensure that the it is visible. If you end up using a lighter shade, it will not be possible for the visitor to read what you have to say and this will drive customers away.
Create a well-designed ‘Contact Us’ page. To ensure maximum website conversion, always include a Contact Us page so that your potential customers can get in touch with you when they have any questions or requests regarding your product or service offerings. In addition, this page can help you obtain valuable feedback from your customers that you can use to modify your business approach.
Producing your ideal website design is the first step towards increasing your conversion rates online. Whether you are a large, established company or you are starting a business, the tips above will help you gain the most from your website.
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8 Elements That Produce a Strong Company Website Design
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4 Ways Proper Web Design Can Enhance Your Search Engine Optimization
When designing a website, many amateur web designers place too much focus on the visual appeal of a site instead of its user experience. This is a mistake for two reasons. The first is that – although a website might look pretty – the site’s visitors will not spend much time on the site if they have trouble navigating it. The second is that if your site is not user friendly, it is unlikely that search engines like Google and Bing will recognize its relevance. This will result in your site not being visible to search engine users. The key is to focus on both the visual appeal and the user experience. Your site needs to make a good first impression and grab the user’s attention right away. In addition, your site should be easy to use and interactive so that you keep users interested and enhance your search engine visibility.
Four web design elements that can enhance the search engine visibility of your website:
Mobile Optimization. Search engines are putting more emphasis on mobile friendly websites. If your website is hard to view on a smartphone or tablet, you may be penalized by search engines in the near future and lose your visibility.Many designers create a mobile-optimized website separate from the main company website. Today, the best practice is to have one site that is optimized for both mobile and desktop. Not only will this improve your SEO; it will improve your user experience and your overall website success.
XML Sitemaps. Having an XML sitemap does not directly impact SEO. However, an XML sitemap will help notify Google of any changes you make on your site. This means that your pages will be indexed faster. To put it simply, XML sitemaps make it easier for Google to crawl your site and help it discover pages that may have been neglected. The more pages you have that get indexed, the more visibility your website receives.
Heading Tags. Using heading tags will enhance the readability of your website’s copy as well as enhance your SEO. By adding an H1 or H2 tag to a bolded header on your site, Google will recognize that copy as being significant. That is why you should place your most important keywords within those tags. If you are a landscaping service, for example, you should place the word “landscaping service” in your H1 tag instead of simply placing your company name. Google will put emphasis on the H1 tag and you will rank higher for the term “landscaping service.”
Website Load Time. The amount of time it takes for your website to load has a significant impact on your search engine ranking. In order to minimize your site’s load time for mobile and desktop users, a web designer must lessen the use of Javascripts and large images. In addition, enabling compression will improve your site’s load time as well.
The four web design elements above will have a major impact on your SEO efforts. To truly enhance your search engine marketing strategy, it is important that you consult with a web design professional.
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The Ultimate 2015 Internet Marketing Checklist
Looking to drive more leads in 2015? We have put together a
simple and effective guide to help strengthen your online
presence and grow your business.At DigitalParc, our credo is Design. Drive. Convert. Above all else, these three elements need to be in place.
1. Design a Better Website.
A strong website is the first step to achieving success online. Consumers want information instantly in today’s fast paced, Internet-based world. In a matter of seconds, visitors will judge your business by the look and functionality of your website. Does your website accurately represent your business? We can help you build a website design that attracts new customers and perfectly expresses your brand.
2. Drive More Traffic
What is the benefit of having a strong website if people can’t find it? Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses become listed on a search engine’s un-paid or “organic” search results. The higher ranked on the search results page, and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive. DigitalParc can help your business climb the search rankings and bring new traffic to your website.
3. Convert More Leads
Conversion rate optimization is the strategy of creating an experience for consumers on a website in order to increase the amount of visitors that convert to customers. When a potential customer lands on your website, are they contacting you? DigitalParc can help you increase the odds that your website’s visitors convert into paying customers.
After you have the fundamentals in place, now consider these Internet marketing techniques to help drive even more traffic to your website and create lasting relationships with your customers:
4. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your business. By creating content that is aligned with customer’s interests, you naturally attract qualified traffic to your website that you can convert to customers. Not only does inbound marketing bring new visitors to your website, but it can also help turn those visitors into leads, and eventually into customers.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a very effective, low cost marketing tool. It gives businesses the ability to grow the value of their customer relationships, while also converting new prospects into customers. On top of that, it’s incredibly cost efficient and easy to manage.
6. Pay-per-click
Pay per click advertising is a great, fast way to get visitors to your website. Pay per click marketing, or PPC, is pretty simple to use. Businesses pay to have their listings show up on search engines like Google or Bing, and these listings appear in search results along with the organic, non-paid results. We can help create listings using the right key words to so that you can get increased, qualified traffic to your website.
There you have it. Internet marketing gives businesses a great opportunity to connect with their customers, leave lasting impressions, drive traffic to their website, and increase sales. Contact DigitalParc today if your looking to grow your business in the new year.
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What You Must Know About Website Design Professionals
Why does website design give us a competitive advantage? There are numerous sites online that sell same products. However, some websites that have the same Google SERPs get more conversion than others. One of the primary reasons why this happens is that their website is user-friendly and well designed. Online businesses are “shops” that are open 24/7 so people visiting these shops will usually will not stay there for more than a few minutes. That is all the time a website has to sell itself to the customer. That is why we need proper web design. An appealing web design does not just involve the simple correct placement of buttons and links. There is a complicated procedure that determines the way the webpage should look to the customer. It should be appealing enough to make users want to explore it, place an order and re-visit the same website when they are in need or desire that specific product or service.
How are professional web designs different? Marketing is a major part of conducting an online business and every webpage of an online company must sell the picture of being a professional and qualified service. To do so, the look of the company’s website is important. A webpage should look interesting, inviting, informative, and instructive at the same time. Although that is a lot on a plate, professional web designers are good at linking all of these qualities together on a single webpage. They use innovative and creative ideas that focus on the product or service sold by the company. They tend to integrate marketing with technology to make any website alluring.
Why is it Beneficial to Consult With a Website Design Professional?
Professionals are just that! They are pros at creating fantastic web pages that tell the story you want to tell. They will listen to your ideas and concepts before drawing up a plan to design the web pages. They can revise the content on the website to make it easy to understand and intriguing enough so the user remains interested. They also ensure that keywords are placed strategically to help the website’s placement higher in rank of search engine results. They remain focused on the client’s way of promoting the website online. Professional web designers use the latest technology to make the website available both online and on mobile devices as well other Internet-enabled devices. They will work with their customer to make sure the web design is cost-effective and will provide simple instructions for site usability.
Are there pitfalls to hiring a web design expert? Amateur webs designers do make good websites but do fall behind in some areas such as technology and cost. Amateur web designers most likely do not keep themselves updated on the latest trends and may use out dated technology to build the website. They might not take the task of making a profitable website as seriously as you and may take a complacent approach. The web design may be confusing and not attractive enough to hold on to customers. Old technology can make interfacing really hard for a customer. Sometimes they may load an irrelevant web design that does not convey the message that you want the customer to receive. Amateurs do not have the commitment that professionals have, making it harder for you to meet your deadline.
How can you evaluate a web design? Web designs change constantly because newer versions of a user interface are being invented. One needs to keep up with the newest technology to become a pro in web design. A web design should accomplish many things to make a website popular. The web design should place the content advantageously. The user interface should be instructive and easy to use. The content should be kept to the point in a simple language expression. The color of the web pages should not be too bright or too dull. A clever combination of colors must be used to draw the customer’s attention to the positives of the product. Relevant pictures should be added at the right place to illustrate the point being made. The web design should be such that the latest in technology that is used making the website is at par with the competitors at all times. When a web design checks the boxes of all of the above then you have what you call the “money-making machine” in your hands.
How should you choose a professional web designer? A professionally-designed website will look appealing, use the latest technology for interface, be user-friendly, have the latest news about the product or service, and have placement in the top ten results of any search engine list. Though it sounds exhausting, every professional web designer aims at this goal. Choose a professional web designer who is committed, well experienced and knows what he or she is doing. To consult and hire a web designer, always check out their previous work and see if these websites are faring well. The web design should be affordable as well. A professional web designer will give their honest opinion about your ideas for your website. This way you will avoid nasty surprises that can ruin your business.
There are many benefits of hiring website design professionals to create your company site. So look for the experts that have worked with successful companies and still have the zeal to work one-on-one with you to create something exciting for your online business.
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Internet Marketing Tips: Conversion Funnel Optimization
The fundamental role of a website should be to act as a business’s ultimate salesperson. Too often companies focus solely on the visual appeal of their website, and while this is important, it is not what’s going generate consistent sales. Functionality is the most important factor to consider when creating a successful website. Sales funnel optimization is a strategy that can help turn your website in to a lead generation and conversion machine.
What is a conversion funnel? A conversion funnel is essentially a way of visualizing and understanding the process of how potential customers become paying customers. In other words, it is the steps that your potential prospects take to become first-time customers. Paths can be long, short, direct, or complicated. Understanding the different steps of your funnel will allow you to take actions to improve its flow.
Conversion Funnel Optimization
Analyzing your conversion funnel is the best way to figure out where you are losing customers and how to fix those issues. While the conversion funnel looks different for each website, they all have three basic principals: awareness, consideration and conversion. Let’s discuss each.
Awareness. Brand awareness is the largest component of your funnel. During this step, prospects discover your business and visit your website for the first time. Tools like social media, PR, Internet marketing and advertising are commonly used to increase brand awareness and attract new customers.
Consideration. Once they’ve landed on your website, a customer will evaluate it to determine if you have the goods or services they want and if they are affordable. Two critical factors in this step are sparking consumer interest in your product or service and triggering their desire to take action.
Creating interest is important because it encourages prospects to stay on your website and look around. Inviting headlines, copy and website design elements like graphics are great factors that help generate interest in your business. Once you’ve grabbed a prospect’s attention, you can use valuable content to create a desire for your services. People most often desire a solution to a problem. Make them desire that solution. A good copywriter can be worth his or her weight in gold when turning interest into desire.
Conversion. The final and most important step in a funnel is the action step. This is the ultimate goal of your website or, in other words, the final action you want users to take. For most websites, this action is making a sale, but for others it may be signing up for a newsletter, downloading a file or taking other actions. The easiest way to get customers to take action is to make it simple and easy for them to do so. Make the process of taking action uncomplicated for consumers so they can quickly get the information they need. Do not make them navigate through hordes of pages to purchase your project. Use icons or buttons to make it clear what they should be doing.
Tips for successful funnel optimization: Think of your funnel as a set of filters. At each step, some prospects will be filtered out, leaving only the ones who are qualified to make it to the next level. One way to increase the number of consumers that make it to the final step is to extend your reach and bring more prospects into the funnel. User experience is one of the most important things to consider when optimizing your funnel. Carefully crafting your user experience can ensure that the user stays on task and keeps moving through the funnel, having been given just enough information and options at each step. This can increase the number of qualified prospects that make it all the way through your funnel and increase your conversions.
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5 Internet Marketing Tips to Make Your Website Profitable
Competition is at an all time high. Consumers may be spending more money, but they now have more options to choose from when looking for a product or service than ever before. Consumers are turning to the Internet as their number one source of commerce. More and more brick and mortar stores are becoming showrooms for consumers to research a product before they go and buy it online. Simply having a brick and mortar store in no longer enough to survive in the market place. Companies now need to invest in their online presence to be successful.
Here are five Internet marketing strategies you can use to increase brand loyalty, generate leads, and make more money from your website:
Understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is critical for your business to stay competitive. In today’s Internet-centered world, consumers search on Google for almost everything before making a decision. SEO can help your business gain more customers and increase brand awareness. Business that fail to use SEO lose out on potential sales and new customers, allowing their competitors to take advantage of these opportunities and increase their market share. Its essential that your website ranks for relevant, high traffic keywords so that consumers who are searching for your products or services can find your business.
Update Content Regularly. Updating the content on your website helps keep users interested in your business and what else it has to offer. Stores consistently update their displays, and a website shouldn’t be any different. Update the content on your website at least once a week, especially on your homepage. The homepage is the main point of entry for most of the traffic that comes to your website, so it should be continuously engaging users and showing them what your business has to offer. An engaging, updated homepage will also make consumers more likely to click through to your product pages and become customers.
Have a User-Friendly Design. Having a user-friendly navigation structure will help users find what they are looking for, have a positive experience with your brand, and create more sales for your business. A website should be well organized so that users can find what they want in as few clicks as possible. Navigation should be structured in logical, simple way that makes sense to users. This structure should take place on all platforms that users may access your website, such as mobile or tablet. A responsive web design can provide users with a consistent, seamless experience with your website from any platform. User friendly, responsive web designs not only help your users, but will also help your SEO. Search engines prefer websites that they can navigate and index easily and quickly, and will rank your website higher in search engine results.
Retarget Potential Customers. It is much more expensive to market to new consumers than it is to market ones that have already visited your website. Getting users to come back to your site is critical to generating more profits. You can market to these users is by using retargeting ads through a service like AdWords, or by using email. While it may seem outdated, email marketing is still a very effective way of bringing customers back to your website and creating long-term brand loyalty. Make sure you offer customers valuable content or offers through emails, and aren’t simply spamming them and being a nuisance. Offering exclusive online deals, discounts, or seasonal specials can help keep customers engaged with your brand and returning to your website.
Create Useful Content. Creating high quality, valuable content is one of the most important factors to maintaining successful website. Valuable content will help your business stand out as an industry leader to both consumers and search engines. It will help increase your website’s stickiness, encouraging users to come back to your website, and increasing the chances of converting them to customers. Engaging content is also most likely to be shared, linked to, and written about, which can improve your SEO and brand awareness. Search engines also give high quality pages priority in search engine results. A blog can be a great way to provide valuable, fresh, and interesting content. Make sure to update your blog regularly and provide industry trends or other information that views will find insightful. Valuable content is a great way to attract new consumers, engage with current consumers, and increase sales.
“Investing the time and money to develop a well designed website can take your business to a whole other level,” said financial advisor, Tom Dasher. “In addition, using the Internet marketing strategies discussed above, you can create a website that increases brand awareness, generates conversions, and increases sales to keep your business profitable and ahead of the competition.”
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5 Fundamentals of Good Web Design
A good website is the basis of achieving success online. A professionally designed website will continue to benefit you long after it is launched. It will help improve your search engine ranking, conversion, customer engagement, and more. A great website will put your business ahead of the competition. Below are five fundamental elements that every good website should have:
1. Purpose
A website with purpose is a successful website. Every website should be created with the need(s) of its users in mind. It should be immediately obvious whether your website is intended to inform, entertain or sell goods or services. Making sure that every page has a clear, distinct purpose. This will help eliminate clutter and make your website easier to understand and user-friendly.
2. Graphics
Graphics are essential to every website. Not only do graphics communicate information in a fun and easy way, but they are more memorable than simple copy and they can leave a lasting impression. Videos and infographics are more engaging than text, so it is more likely that customers will actually view them. In addition, they have a stronger opportunity to become viral.
3. Branding
A website should be more than just a place to inform or sell. It should reflect your business or brand. Giving a website a “personality” will help distinguish it from the competition and make it easier for consumers to remember. With the huge variety of companies to choose from, today’s consumers want to use a business that they can relate to and that reflects the qualities they are searching for. Use fun colors and fonts (in moderation, of course) to help give your website a personality that reflects your brand and promotes your unique message.
4. Responsive to mobile devices
To boost your website popularity, develop a mobile-friendly website. The vastness of the online marketplace makes it incredibly cutthroat and competitive. If someone using a smartphone or tablet visits your website, it should be easier to read and navigate through. An increasing number of websites are adopting mobile responsive websites because it will be a major competitive factor in the future.
5. Navigation
How easy is it to find the information you need on your website? Good websites have logical, hierarchical navigation so that consumers can use them with ease and get the best experience possible. Most users will exit – or bounce – to visit a competitor’s site if they cannot find what they are looking for within three clicks on yours.
Website design can be a challenge, check out some of our work if you need inspiration, or contact us for help.