All Posts, Marketing, Web Design
As 2011 starts to get closer to end, we as entrepreneurs and self startups all start to think of what we will improve on for the coming year. We reflecting on all of our accomplishments for this year, as well as any pitfalls that we learned from. As a designer, 2011 had many new apps, design improvements, and devices that helped contribute to our creativity. For all the small businesses out there, here are some great items you should implement to your website for better engagement and ROI.
Video – Having a 30-90 second video on your homepage is a great way to briefly talk about your products and services. It gives your visitors a great visual look at your products in action or how truly effective your services are against your competition. My only suggestion is to turn off the auto play option on your embedded video. There’s nothing more frightening than a loud video that automatically starts playing even before a website loads and your visitor scrambling for a mute button or just closing out of your site all-together.
Call To Action – Most everyone who is on the internet has an email address. They’ve got a Twitter handle, a cell, phone, and a physical address. Though they have all of this, it doesn’t mean they’re just going to hand it over to you for nothing. Give them a reason to give you their contact information with something they are looking for too. Could be a short e-book on how to make their own business card out of clip art for starters. Or how to find the best hosting company with the most options for a WYSIWYG editor. Change your CTA maybe each month and see which “gimmick” lands you the most leads. And tailor to suit after that.
Google Analytics – I can’t stress enough how having data is vital to your website. Knowing how many people view your site with some free site-hit button at the bottom of your page is so 90’s. How about knowing which pages people view the most; or how long people stay on each of your website pages; or what buttons and links they click on. What browsers they use (mobile, Firefox, IE, etc). There’s so much more Google offers you for free in data it will blow your mind. What’s key about all that data is that you continue to use it to tweak your site.
Social Media – I don’t need to beat the horse on this one, but your newer potential clients are out there talking about your products and services. They’re talking about you and your competition. If you want free crowd-sourcing social media will give it to you in a lot more than 31 flavors. Your business needs to join and be part of the online conversations that are happening right now. Take advantage of using specials with FourSquare Check-ins or Facebook Places. Check your listings on Yelp. Promote a one day sale with Twitter. Host a webinar and post it on YouTube and inspire people to watch and share it.
You – Yes you, you need to be on your website. For those of you that think a website is only important just to have and not to monitor and keep up with, you’re wrong. I’ve seen too many websites (good and bad) fail to keep updated. Plan a date with your website at least once a month. Our team at Design Theory make it a point to reach out with our clients at least once a month to discuss their website performance, things learned from the previous month, and new ideas and tactics we’ll try for the following month(s).
So what do you plan on doing with your website for 2012? Anything more than what we’ve listed above? Share in the comments below. We’d love to dialog with you.
All Posts, Social Media
So its been a little over a week now that I’ve been in and playing with Google+ (Google Plus). At first glance it has a good few visual concepts that are both familiar and appreciating at the same time. Like any other Google product, it is fresh and new, and takes very little effort to learn. However why should you get involved?
For starters it has a clean user experience (UX). It reminds me of the earlier days of Facebook before the left and right side panels were littered with ads and game notifications. There’s an easy but small navigation bar that has 4 icons for your jump menu that will take you to either your Home Stream, Photos, Profile (yours), Circles.
To the left is a Stream filter that enables you to either view all of your Streams, or just Streams from certain Circles. So no need to be mad that you missed out about your 3rd cousins new baby because she didn’t qualify as “top news” for your wall, you can simply click on your “Family ” stream and not miss out. This also helps keep the clutter out of your posts too.
- Home – This is where your streams will be. Similar to the Facebook wall. Not much different to the Facebook wall, but what I personally like is how you can make a post and have it limited to just your circles, or specific circles.
- Photos – Well this is simple; a place to upload photos from your computer. But the cool factor here is the collage of pictures from people your connected to that covers the page. Soon mobile devices other than current Droids.
- Profile – Here is where you can change/load your picture, details about yourself, location, alias, etc. You can also Chronologically view your posts, view all your photos and videos, and all the +1’s you’ve clicked on around the web.
- Circles – Here is where you see everyone your connected to. Those that you’re not you can easily send out an invite. Part of the invite process requires an email address (Gmail preferred) and what circle you want to place that person in.
One of the game changers to me is the Hangouts option. Multi-video chat with people in your circles is a nice feature. I haven’t tried it yet with more than one person. It’s been a bit tough getting everyone online at the same time and there’s still a limited amount of people able to get into the site. Speaking of that; since official launch the Google servers have been quite loaded with user’s trying to accept invites. So if you received an invite, keep trying. Though you have to sign in with your existing Google account.
I had to explain all of that to tell you my number 1 reason why you should give Google+ a try. The great separation of family, friends, and clients in a social media platform. Facebook is great and has groups and some rather difficult filtering options for sharing with certain people while blocking others. With Circles you can easily have your mom and aunts in a family circle and make posts about that client from hell and neither of your family or clients will see your outbursts (provided they’re all in their respective circles). So couple that with a sleek minimalist interface and you’ve got a good baseline to grow something compelling.
Well let me know what you think. And just for stopping by I’ve included a link to @graphicsfuel’s website for some neat Google+ icons. Yes they’re free so get ’em quick! 
All Posts, Social Media
No matter what your business is, a blog is increasingly being regarded as a necessity. From architecture, to web design, having a blog to talk on your relevant subject matter is a great way to show knowledge and offer tips on your industry.
- You’ll learn more about your industry by blogging. You’ll be forced to continually learn more specific details about your trade, and also find a need to keep your finger on the pulse of newest developments. By blogging about up to the minute topics, search engines will see your blog posts on relevant topics and you’ll actually show up. For example, when Apple does a press conference about a new device, sites like Engadget and Mashable are already talking about it (in some ways live) on their sites.
- An audience will see you as the authority on a subject matter. Do you have inside tips on how to flip realty properties? Well the more you give out this “coveted” information, the more people will visit your site looking for more. And they’ll tell others about your site and blog too. Why? Because the tips you’re providing are practical, and actually work. So going forward, they’ll look to you before even trying Google!
- The ability to engage. What you blog about, people will be able to respond do. Which is nice because for one you get to hear great feedback (good or bad) about what you’re talking about, and also it grows your contact list. These responders will be registered on your site to comment, which gives you their contact information for your newsletters and such.
- To help people. It’s not always about pushing your products and services. It should be more about how you can give back to your community. I think this is a key element because it shows how humble your business is. And if a visitor to your site feels comfortable with you (even having to never have met you), chances are they’ll contact you for services.
- A Social Media hub. As you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites, you link back to your blog on relevant subjects. So if you wrote a new blog post, you should tweet about the subject and link it back to your blog. Same with this the other sites. The hope is that your followers Re-Tweet it, “Like” it, and share it among their friends and followers. This also amplifies your message to lengths that you would otherwise never be able to reach.
- Blogging grows your network. The more you blog and circulate your posts among people on your lists and followers, the more search engines will pick you up in organic searches, and the more visibility your blog will get from people all around the internet.
- Promoting your product and services. Just released some new software that will help save people 30 or more minutes in conversions or calculations? Well put out a press release on your blog about it. Talk about the details, how it works, why it is better than your competition’s software, and how compatible it may be with existing software.
- Compensations. Yes successful blogs do actually make money. Maybe not enough to quit your day job over, but you can make some change by hosting ads on your blog pages. At first it may start with free ad placements from various local or lesser known companies. Eventually as you grow your traffic, you can sell these ad spaces to reputable vendors for their products and services. You’ll want to keep things relevant to your trade and industry.
- RSS and syndication. One of the first things you need to do is setup an RSS so that people can sign up and get your newest posts directly to their RSS readers. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. So that means each time you hit that “publish” button, you readers will get your post directly to their emails, smart phones, and RSS readers almost instantly.
- Because it’s fun. Yes blogging can be fun. I think at first it is seemed as a necessary task, but eventually it becomes something you’ll enjoy doing. Especially when you hear feedback from your readers. The more engaged they become the more you want to provide quality content for them to read and pass along to others.
Do you have some other tips to ad to this? We’d love to hear them in your comments below.
As 2011 starts to get closer to end, we as entrepreneurs and self startups all start to think of what we will improve on for the coming year. We reflecting on all of our accomplishments for this year, as well as any pitfalls that we learned from. As a designer, 2011 had many new apps, design improvements, and devices that helped contribute to our creativity. For all the small businesses out there, here are some great items you should implement to your website for better engagement and ROI.
