So as not to miss out, this year we've made a few of our own.
When it comes to digital or online marketing, and in fact business in general, predictions are often stated almost as fact - although few are backed up by any evidence, nor are they given any context for when, where or for whom they are most likely to apply. We prefer to make recommendations rather than predictions, and base them on what we actually see happening, statistics (nothing like hard evidence!) and our 15 years experience in the web business.
Given most of our customers are small-medium service and location based businesses here in Auckland, our predictions are skewed to be more relevant to these. So they won't apply to everyone, everywhere – but here they are.
There is no denying that your audience is now using mobile devices to access the internet.
However, mobile doesn’t just mean smart phones. Don't sucked into getting a single solution for smart phones without thinking about about your whole audience and all the devices they're using. Look at what they are doing, when and where are they doing it.
Over the last year or so we've seen sites clearly designed for smartphones. On which they probably look very nice, but fail on other factors including use on those old school devices – desktop PCs, and of more concern – SEO. (Conversely we're also seeing the rise of video and large image page backgrounds which may not be so good for mobile).
From our Google analytics statistics, we can see that for those clients that target consumers then the use of smartphones is definitely a factor. But for B2B customers, the percentage of visitors averages around 10% (although this has increased over the last 12 months).
The highest use of mobile devices (tablet and smartphones) for any of our client's websites is 36%. And although this client has a responsive site, visitors are still more likely to make a purchase using a desktop device. And it means that 64% are using desktop devices.
Yes – go mobile. But don't take the headlines that mobile use is overtaking desktop use at face value – it's more complex than this.
One prediction said “business are playing catchup in mobile marketing”. I'd agree with this – but just adding 'mobile friendly' to your wish list is only the start. What we see emerging is the trend for multiple device use – in other words, people haven't necessarily replaced PC's with mobile's yet - they are adding mobile devices into the mix (although we suspect the younger the user, the more likely it is that it is their only device).
Once you have moved to a site that is responsive to the needs of different devices, you need to look at all devices and experiences in a more holistic manner. Are they doing something different when on a mobile device? Looking for something different? What experience do we need to create on a mobile vs desktop? What do we need to do differently? How do we utilise location information as part of this ?
And don't ignore desktop PCs and laptops.
The Takeaway: If you haven't got a mobile friendly site, plan to do it in 2015. Go responsive rather than a seperate mobile site first, unless you have a good reason to do so. Then use your site analytics to start customising content and experience for different audiences as required.
Content is not king – it's the grand, all powerful high emperor.
People have become numb to infographics, funny cat photo's and spun articles at a time when content is even more important than ever – especially for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Create content relevant to your business that informs, guides and yes occasionally even entertains. Do it as often as you can in response to questions, new products and industry news.
Not sure what to say? You'd be surprised just how much information is right there at your fingertips in terms of the knowledge you and your staff have that your target audience would love access to.
Consideration of content length will also become more important. While short forms (tweets and vine length video) containing short messages are on the increase, longer blog posts and articles are more likely to be shared and are more valuable for SEO. So start thinking about 2000 word blog posts like this one ;)
To get better return on this effort, leverage and diversify to appeal to different tastes and different ways of getting content out there, particularly via the social networks. Convert text into slides, video and images. And content can also be in the form of small apps and software.
Of course, don't forget that good content on your website helps convert visitors to customers because it demonstrates expertise, helps solve problems (and therefore demonstrates willingness to serve) and builds trust.
Sadly the quality of content in all it's forms washing around the internet probably won't improve much as shallow, repetitive content continues to be churned out by the lazy, brigade. At least try and stand out a bit.
The Takeaway: Good content will be really, really, really, really important. Really.
Social networking sites have become critical for getting content out and connecting with audiences – but what content, for who and where?
Attention challenged audiences are becoming increasingly picky about which social platforms they use and how they use them – and mobile now plays a very large part.
The main contenders – Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter are still here but increasing irritation with commercial drivers (ads, promoted posts etc.) along with concerns about privacy and use of personal data is driving uptake of alternatives. Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr for image sharing, Vine for short video. The 'anti-Facebook' site 'Ello'.
Google+ continues to battle, with some calling it 'walking dead' and others still maintaining it is critical for SEO. What is true is that not as many people use it, but include it if local SEO is important.
If buying Facebook likes and Twitter followers hasn't already died it will do so soon as businesses realise it's a waste of time because theses fake followers don't engage and certainly don't buy. Embedding social buttons on your website pages still won't work unless the content is good enough to share, so just adding them to your website design wish list is a waste of time.
Shameless self promotion might work for celebrities but business will need to be more saavy and share engaging, easily digestible content if they want to connect. But easily digestible doesn't mean short and shallow. Ironically, business will need to be more social, to be social.
There is a lot of commentary around video becoming the medium of choice, but this will be hard for a lot of small businesses with limited budgets so think this one will only apply to bigger brands. Micro-video (via the likes of Vine) maybe a solution.
Brands will also become more sophisticated in their use of social media to drive conversions and not just chatter, to justify their investment.
For those that aren't yet embracing social media in some form, entering the game will be harder than it was a few years ago when it was newer and there were fewer choices.
As always the advice is to pick the platform that suits your business and is most relevant for your audience. Think about what resources you have available to put into it so that if you are going to do it, you do it properly.
The Takeaway: If there ever was a time to incorporate social media into your marketing - it's now. But you'll need to do it properly. Social is something you are, not something you do.
SEO is certainly not dead but it is becoming harder to make work as a stand-alone strategy. Having said that, it is as important as ever that you are found by the right people looking for what you have to offer.
Google continues the fight against those that want to hijack search rankings or take the easy route and as a result SEO has become more integrated into and reliant on the overall marketing strategy.
Quality content creation targeting individual audience segment needs and social signals are part of this. There is still a lot of debate about social signals and search rankings – Google says it doesn't take it into account but we're not convinced. Site performance has been important for a while and mobile friendliness now counts as well.
Old fashioned link building is in (i.e. earned links) and we certainly hope to see more progress on Google's algorithm changes that does not reward sites with a high rank purely because of an exact match domain or link farming.
Google is the dominant search engine in New Zealand but we are also starting to see Yahoo and Bing feature in some websites visitor statistics. This could increase in 2015 – last year we noticed Google became full of off-shore (and therefore often meaningless) search results. This was likely due to the 'Pigeon' update which was supposed to improve local searching, but appeared to have the complete opposite effect (see point below).
Following from this, it also means 'local' SEO is more relevant for businesses that operate out of a single location (eg Auckland). Location information (physical address information) and optimising content for local area search terms play a key part.
Targeting single keyword phrases took a radical jump onto the cease-and-desist list last year. Longer keyword phrases in the form of questions and inclusions of context (particularly location) are more powerful and drive more visitors than single search words. This is one reason why content in the form of blog posts, FAQs and articles is so important.
We'd love to see low quality SEO tactics stop working and dodgy SEO offers disappear. Sadly that probably won't happen.
The Takeaway: SEO is no longer something you should buy off a random telemarketer that offers cheap SEO services if you want it to pay off in the long run - or work at all.
To get the kind of insight you need to make decisions from a complex mix of SEO, conversion rates social interactions and mobile - you need good information.
Many predictions for 2014-2015 talk about needing to make data driven decisions, although these tend to focus on using that data to personalise messages, segment audiences, monitor market penetration and get customer insights.
At a more basic level, we've always maintained that you need to understand what is happening on your website. Where are people coming from, how did they get there? What device are they using and what are mobile users doing differently than desktop users?
With more devices and channels than ever before, taking action based on verifiable data ensures the best use of resources and budget. You'll also be able to measure specific campaigns and tactics to see which ones work.
The Takeaway: If you don't know how people find your website and what they do there, chances are the site is ineffective.
While not a marketing consideration per se, your website and it's associated data is a critical marketing asset that needs to be protected.
As recent, high profile breaches of the likes of Sony Entertainment or Barnes and Noble show, no one is too big to be a target. At the same time, small business are just (if not more) likely to be attacked if security is ignored.
Security specialists Kaspersky reported an upsurge in malware incidents and predicts Mac's have come to the attention of cyber-criminals. Vulnerabilities in virtual payment systems will come to the fore, and cloud storage systems may increase due to their popularity.
A compromised website doesn't necessarily mean the hacker will leave a notice saying 'you are hacked' but may be secretly using your site to send out spam or have stolen personal customer information or business intelligence. Malware developers are becoming sneakier and harder to detect.
Last year we also saw a frustrating increase in DDOS (denial of service) attacks - which basically means overloading a web server and preventing anyone accessing a website.
Fortunately, a lot of the attacks on small business websites are trying to pick off the low hanging fruit – i.e. those that have no security practices in place. But don't let that lull you into a thinking you'll slip under cyber-criminals radar.
When it comes to website security – it's a case of when it happens not if.
So in addition to website security hardening and ongoing monitoring, you should have a business continuity plan in place. Education staff on best practise like password standards, locking smartphones and looking out for social phishing attempts should be part of it too.
The Takeway: The longer you assume your web designer and/or hosting provider is taking care of security, the more likely it is your site has already been compromised. The cost of rebuilding a website will far outweigh the cost of good website security practises.
Web design trends are often that – design trends. They often have nothing to do with how well a site functions.
This is a big topic so we won't actually be covering it in this post, but design trends we see include:
We pretty much see the recent design trends continuing from 2014 into 2015, with businesses playing catch up with implementation of responsive and mobile friendly designs.
The Takeaway: Don't confuse a design trend with what is necessarily right or effective for your business. And success in digital marketing takes a lot more than good design.
So – those are our thoughts about website and digital marketing in 2015.
We recommend business use these to help identify priorities for 2015. This means that this time next year we can look back and see if we were right!
]]>So now all you have to do is to sit back and wait the phone calls to come rolling on it - right? Sadly, no.
In many ways the hard work has only just begun. Unless you've got someone else who is responsible for carrying out website management activities, you'll have to devote some time to your new site.
One fundamental thing to understand, is that for someone to come and visit your website, they need to have a reason. So you need to understand what needs and motivations your audience have, in order to meet them (and therefore, get paid!).
This should have been incorporated into the design, but if not, you may be able to improve the content over time to better meet their needs. Even if they want an electrician right away, they will still need something from you before they decide to give you a call. This will be information - where are you, what services you offer. But you also have to persuade them to ring you and not your competitors.
If you haven't sat down and thought about how to meet your audience's need to find you, find out about you, find out if you can help them, find out if they want you to help them and finally decide if they want to get in touch - then do it now. It will make the next steps a lot easier.
Here's some things you can do straight away:
For most new websites, time has been put into the content and structure during the design process, so building visitor numbers - ie promoting the site (and therefore your business), will be the priority first up.
If you do nothing at all, the visitors to your website will likely be people who already know you looking for your phone number.
Ways to get more people to visit your website
And to help out, here's 15 ideas for website content
Of course the end game is not just to have lots of people visiting your site, the goal is to get some of these people interested in what you have to offer. So there is no use attracting people from India for your local lawnmowing business. It has to be 'good' traffic.
You can set up a Facebook page and/or Twitter account for your business during your website project, but if not - do it now.
But - and it's a big but - if your business does not have the resources to be actively social, or if you don't have a plan for how to do it - you're almost better off not start until you do. If you think it is important, here are some articles that may be of help:
Once you are starting to get a steady flow of visitors, the next step is usually to look at what those visitors are doing and work out if you can get more of them to do the things you want them to.
This can include:
If you haven't already, set up goals in Google Analytics to measure interactions or whatever activity is an indicator of success on the site.
If you didn't do it as part of the planning phase of your website design project:
So with all this work to do, there is no time like the present. Pick one thing and start from there.
We know it's a lot, that's why we offer website management for businesses.
]]>Why not just get on with it and just aim for "lots of" something - like paying customers?
]]>How about up to date news from your industry - but what do you use as source material?
Google news alerts, come on down!
Google will email you notifications when something is published with keywords you specify.
You can refine it to blogs, news, videos or 'comprehensive'.
Select news, as this will give you world-wide headline news - i.e. what is topical and of interest to your visitors.
Specify how often you want to be notified.
From there you can create articles about relevant topics that are deemed 'newsworthy' to the media.
News outlets keep a keen eye on what is useful to their readers, so it's a good bet that it will be interesting to your audience as well.
You can either summarise the contents of the news or comment on it.
Or just tweet it if you want.
Easy as.
]]>Make it clear to them how to achieve it with calls to action that people just can't resist and can't be ignored!
A call to action (CTA) is a piece of content, typically graphical in nature, that tells the visitor what to do next. It has to align with your business goals, of course. Do you want them to:
Make sure you know what you want people to do when they get to your site and this aligns with their intent and your business goals. Of course all your promotional efforts will be bringing qualified leads to your site in the first place - there's no point having great CTAs for a kids DVD if the visitors to the site are looking for pink high heel shoes.
The next step is to make sure those visitors buy from you then and there.
Mint.com states what they offer and the benefits right above their call to action.
These are benefits that resonate with the visitors needs.
It almost defies you not to download the software if you are looking for financial software - and they add a 'Free' incentive as well.
You may have to offer an incentive for people to give you their contact details, such as a free download or free trial.
All of these are words that are specific actions. It's easy to for the visitor to know what they have to do next.
To create a sense of urgency, add words such as:
Don't use obscure language if you can avoid it like 'Go' or 'Interested?' or the dreaded 'Click Here'.
Don't give the user too many choices or they will become overwhelmed.
Limit the number of interactions or choices your visitors have to make.
Put enough white space around it so the CTA doesn't get lost competing with other content on the page, particularly anything else that is eye catching like images.
Dropbox do this quite well – there is pretty much nothing else on the page.
Position the CTA correctly – ideally high on the page above 'the fold'.
Some will tell you it's best in the centre, others will tell you to put it at the top left of the page which is the area that gets the most eyeball time.
Mozilla and Mint (above) put their call to action right at the top and to the left. For these sites the call to action relates to the primary purpose for the whole site so it works.
Use a colour that contrasts with the main colours on the site.
Make sure the call to action is big enough and use quality images and buttons rather that cheap clip art - there are plenty of free buttons available for download if you look for them.
You can put some kind of call to action on every page. But try not to overwhelm useful content. You could use smaller versions of your main CTA that's on your homepage.
If a visitor does click on a button in your call to action, don't punish them by asking for personal information that has no relevance to their use of the product, or taking them through a convoluted sign up process.
If you've offered them something for free make sure they get what they are expecting, not something with conditions.
Of course a Buy Now button on E-Commerce sites is a call to action, so easy check out processes are a must.
Ultimately any advice is going to be from either a 'what is best practise' or 'what we know works for us' perspective.
This will get you a long way, but your business and your target audience create a special situation that means visitors will respond better to some words, images and designs better than others.
While you could argue in theory that red or orange is a better button colour than blue - the only way you will know for sure is to try both and conduct tests to see what one gets better results.
Website hosting is, simply put, a place to store your website and all its contents where the general public can find it. It is the destination that your domain name leads people to.
A company that specialises in providing web hosting services. Websites are hosted on large computers that typically are part of a data centre or 'server farm' with associated infrastructure to support them.
That computer would need to:
Doesn't sound like any standard home computer I know of, does it?
Imagine the internet is like a huge apartment building with millions of apartments in it, and each one has a unique number to identify it. But these numbers are really big!
If you were looking for one of those apartments, it would be hard to scroll through all those numbers to find the one you want – assuming you (or your customers) could remember it.
A domain name is a short, easy version of this long number!
But if you have a domain name without a website hosted somewhere, you'll have an address that points people – nowhere!
It does depend on what you need. Generally it will depend amount of storage space , bandwidth use and service guarantees.
Much of what differentiates web hosting companies is the technical environment, facilities and support that only a qualified web developer would appreciate, so you may want to leave this decision to someone who understands this stuff.
But given this will be critical to the smooth running of your website, try and use someone who you think you can have a positive and professional working relationship with!
Good hosting comes with reliable, responsive service, flexible packages and good security. But it comes at a cost.
Imagine your website is like a real shop on some main street somewhere. It might have a pretty front window, but behind the scenes the shop needs to have walls that won't fall down, running water, power, a back door that doesn't allow thieves to walk in any-time, carpet that won't trip you up etc.
So like your shop, if you go for the cheapest rent in town, you'll get a run-down, badly maintained shop with poor security in a bad neighbourhood.
Some quite large web-hosting companies are located in areas with not insignificant environmental risks such as flooding, so hosting offshore in an unknown location isn't necessarily the best option!
It's the same with hosting. You are paying your hosting provider to regularly apply security patches and maintain a reliable service with responsive support when you need it.
Speaking from experience (we've been through a couple of providers ourselves) sometimes you have to sack your host if they're not up to scratch!
]]>Above all create fantastic content that is interesting, useful or outrageously entertaining.
]]>Off-page or off-site tactics are things you do that involve other websites or web based tools (ie are not to do with your site). These are primarily about stuff that drives traffic (ie visits) to your website.
Probably one of the biggest SEO challenges for small business is building quality back links. Without the resources and PR muscle of bigger companies it takes a lot of time and effort to build up links from reputable organisations. It means a diligent and ongoing process of spreading the word about you, your business and what you do.
Poor link building means:
Instead try:
Sorry, it's not. There a lot of talking going on about social media, which ones to use and how. The bottom line is you need to at least start thinking about it and decide which tools might help you connect with current customers, and get the word out to potential ones.
Discussions with customers via the web has been going on a long time through forums, message boards and email. The newer tools such as Twitter and Facebook have made it easier and raised the profile.
Register for our email newsletter to get a free copy of our "Social Media guide for small business".
While the tactics largely do involve your website design or content, you (or your web developer) need to keep up with the way search engines see websites. At one point, keywords were the key (excuse the pun), but are now almost completely disregarded because of irresponsible use. It is also no longer necessary to submit your site to the search engines.
Your search engine strategies must keep up with reality of how search engines work.
There's a lot to be said about engaging your customers beyond the social media arena.
For example, if someone sends you an email or submits and comment to your blog, you should respond within a few hours if possible, but no more than a few days. They have taken the time to reach out to you and if you don't respond then it implies you don't care about them. In which case they'll go somewhere else.
Your customers are an excellent source of information for improving and evolving your services. Forums, surveys and informal conversations are a gold mine of information. People will generally give a great deal of information for little or no cost. If there is some time commitment involved on their part, this could be in the form of a reward or chance to win something.
It's important to keep an eye on your competitors (say the top three) and what they are doing in order to stay ahead. Competitive advantage comes from being cheaper, better (or unique) or from targeting a niche, but you'll soon lose this if you are not vigilant.
Make sure you keep an eye on your industry and the competition so you can keep up or - better - stay ahead. Market leaders have a habit of establishing the norm and customers start expecting that from every provider.
A professional design builds credibility - and you only have about four seconds to do it. By then people have decided whether to trust you or go somewhere else. While the aesthetics of good design can be highly subjective, there are generally agreed practises. Badly focused images, poor use of white space, fuzzy logo's, design elements using multiple conflicting styles, poor text/background contrast and incoherent layout will put a dent in your credibility.
The people at Websites that Suck say it even better than we could with the Worst Business Websites of 2009.
Also make sure:
Good navigation is essential or people will give up and leave.
Particularly font types and style of images. You can mix it up to a certain extent, but don't go overboard. Consistency also means making sure that things behave in a way that the user will expect. Previously we've mentioned that people will expect text that is underlined is a link. Make sure that you are also consistent across your own site - if you link partner logos in one place, link every one.
PDF catalogues just seem a bit lazy, particularly from the larger warehouse-sized stores. Information in a PDF means the user has to work harder, and change from a web paradigm to a print one. The contents are harder to search and go out of date. If it complements content, fine.
There are times when a PDF is a good idea, for example when you expect that someone will print the material out (e.g. maps) or you want to retain the format (free e-books). If material is in PDF form, make sure you disclose it.
If you are a small business, putting a picture of you, your team and a bit of information about yourselves shows that there is a 'real' person behind the business and helps to build trust. Visitors like to read about your organisation, who and where you are. If you don't tell them, they'll be asking themselves what have you got to hide?
Tell us about the things that you see on a website that will make you go somewhere else!
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