Does SEO Even Matter Anymore?
When the internet first became popular, the name of the game for small businesses was search engine optimization or SEO for short. These are the techniques web builders can use to improve the odds of their websites being ranked high on Google, Bing!, Yahoo and other popular search engines.
Beginning in the late ’90s and continuing until just a few years ago, most people used these search engines for school, work, and social purposes. But most importantly for businesses, they also used Google and the others to find the products and services they wanted.
So using SEO to get your business ranked at the top of the search engine results pages for the keywords that best describe your business was critical to your online success.
The Rise of the Mega Monsters
Flash forward to today, when a handful of big online retailers have essentially taken over the marketplace. Amazon, Wal-Mart, eBay, and a handful of others are the go-to websites for the majority of consumers who want to buy products. And apps like Uber, StubHub, Tinder, and other big players have taken over specialized online services.
So where does that leave your business and SEO? Does it even matter anymore?
The answer is: Yes! While most small businesses are never going to be able to compete with the scale or variety of products offered on sites like Amazon, they can still use SEO to attract local customers looking for specialized products and services that are specific to their business.
SEO in the past few years
For example, a consumer seeking to buy a new winter coat, might simply use Amazon or Wal-Mart. But if your business offers a specific brand of coat or coats that serve a certain audience such as long-distance runners, or customers in your specific geographic region, you can still use the web to capture that core customer using SEO techniques.
Mega online retailers may have exploited the internet to attract the lion’s share of web customers, but your business can use the same SEO techniques Amazon and others use to find the prospective customers and clients who are seeking the specific products and services you offer.
Five Basics Every Web Page Creator Should Remember
Web design today is more complicated today than ever before. Now that just about everybody is online pretty much all the time, websites always need to do more, more, more.
Keeping up with the latest developments can be a real challenge, especially for new web designers. It’s very easy to become overwhelmed by everything that’s going on to the point where the simplest, most basic things are forgotten.
With that in mind, here are five basic things every web designer needs to keep in mind when creating web pages of any type.
Five Basics Every Web Page Creator Should Remember – Keep It Simple
The last thing anybody wants to see when they log onto a web page is TMI, which stands for “too much information”. Generally, the simpler your website, the better.
Since most people are going to be looking at your website on their phones, it’s important to remove any dense blocks of text. Instead, use photos, illustrations, and key phrases to get your message across.
Make It Instinctual
Web users today don’t read instruction manuals. They want to land on your site and instantly understand what they need to do.
Make your website instinctual so that anybody can automatically use it even if they are totally unfamiliar with your content.
Highlight Your Brand
Don’t get distracted from your core message: Your brand. Whether you are promoting products or services, offering entertainment, or any other end purpose, you have a brand. Find it and promote it above everything else.
Get to the Point
People’s attention spans are shorter than ever. Anything extraneous on your website should be purged so that you can drive your visitors to do whatever it is you want them to do.
Five Basics Every Web Page Creator Should Remember – Make It Personal
One of your biggest goals should be to get people to return to your website again and again. Capture personal information like visitor’s names, email addresses, and phone numbers so you can continue to market to them in the future.
Websites today are more complicated than ever. But if you keep these five simple basics in mind, yours can be successful.
Use Separate Websites For Specific Audiences
If your business uses a website to promote your brand, sell products or services, or simply generate new customer leads, you already are ahead of the game. An increasing number of people worldwide are choosing the web over every other media to find the companies, products, and services they want.
But what if you are doing business in one country and want to attract a more global customer base. For example, you have a business based in the US but want to be able to attract customers from Canada, the UK, or Australia. How can you do it?
The Money Problem
If you are simply offering information and not products or services that need to be paid for, you may be able to get away with just one website. But if you are doing actual business in other countries, you probably will want to consider a separate website for each country that you have paying customers.
The problem is with the money. While it is technically possible to accept multiple types of currencies on the same website, it can be really complicated. And you can’t expect customers to pay in your local currency. You wouldn’t want to buy a product online from China and have to pay in yen, would you? Of course not!
Canadian customers need to be able to pay in Canadian dollars. UK customers need to use the English pound for currency. Mexican customers want to be able to pay in pesos. If you require them all to pay in US dollars, you’re probably going to lose the sale.
Use Separate Websites For Specific Audiences – Focused Content
Another benefit of having separate websites for each country where you do business is that it gives you the ability to fine-tune your content to your specific audience. You can even use a different language.
When you globalize your company, you generally need to use a different website for each specific set of international customers.
When It Comes to Customer Service, It’s Personal
If you want to create a deeper, more meaningful connection with your online customers, you need to make your interactions seem more personalized.
When people feel as if you know them and they know you, they are more likely to come back to your website again and again as opposed to an impersonal competitor. Engaging customers on a personal level is the key to your online business’s success.
When It Comes to Customer Service, It’s Personal – What’s My Name?
Countless studies have shown that people respond positively to hearing their own names during live interactions. The same premise holds true for online interactions as well.
Using customer’s names in emails, text messages, online offers, and elsewhere helps reinforce the idea that you have an interpersonal relationship with that person. In the same way that people like to hear their name spoken, they also like to see it in print — whether it’s online, on their phone, or elsewhere.
Capture your customer’s first and last names during the initial interaction then store this string to use it throughout your future contacts. This will help build relationships with your customers and keep them coming back for more.
When It Comes to Customer Services, It’s Personal – Put a Face to Your Name
While it’s important for the customer to hear their name, they also need to hear yours. On your website and during your interactions with your online customers, make a point of including your name and, if possible, a photograph of you so that they can put a face with your identity.
This helps strengthen trust bonds with customers and inspire confidence in your business relationship. When appropriate, you also can include personal details about your life, such as introducing your spouse and children, including photos of your home, and talking about vacations, your career, education, and more.
If you want strong relationships with your online customers, make it personal.
Post-Interaction Opinion Surveys Offer Multiple Benefits
When customers click on your website, shop in your online store, or even visit your brick and mortar business, you want to ensure that they have the most positive, problem-free experience possible.
If something goes wrong — such as their having a technical issue, a negative customer service interaction, or they fail to get the products or services they want in a timely manner — you need to know about it as soon as possible.
Resolving a problem to a customer’s satisfaction can often strengthen loyalty bonds and make the formerly unhappy customer a raving fan of your business.
Valuable Information
But you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know about it. And an unhappy customer who believes you don’t care about their business can be poisonous to your business. If they complain about your website or business to their social media contacts alone, it could cost you hundreds of potential customers.
One of the fastest and easiest ways to identify and correct problems is through post-interaction opinion surveys. As a consumer or web user, you may find these to be annoying. But if a customer has a genuine problem with your business, it offers them a fast and efficient way to be heard.
And post-interaction opinion surveys give business owners the opportunity to win back the business of unhappy customers and convert potential toxic complainers into raving fans of their business.
Post-Interaction Opinion Surveys Offer Multiple Benefits – Opportunities to Improve
Post-interaction opinion surveys also give web page owners valuable input as to how they can improve their visitors’ experiences.
When you are looking at your own web page every day, it’s hard to see it objectively. But opinion surveys from existing customers give you key insights that you otherwise might now see.
Post-interaction opinion surveys are relatively easy to create. Many web page design programs have plug-ins that will automatically generate them for every customer who visits your page.
Despite Tech, Business Still All About Connections
Ever since commerce first began in pre-historic times with people bartering with each other for goods and services, success has always been more about who you know than what you know.
Business is about connections, whether they be vendors, customers, suppliers, or even competitors. The more people you know, the more successful your business will be.
Different Arena, Same Game
The rise of the internet and online commerce over the course of the last two decades may have changed the way people buy and sell products, but it hasn’t changed the way the business world works. It is still critical for business owners to expand their list of contacts and continually interact with an ever-widening circle of people.
Whether you are selling a box of corn flakes on the shelves of your grocery store or providing a website for people to order their breakfast cereal of choice and having it delivered to their doorstep the same day, the need for business owners to attract new customers, discover new suppliers, and make new connections with others within their same industry remains the same.
Despite Tech, Business Still All About Connections – Networking Advantages
Tech has changed the way most companies do business. But gives business owners new ways to make critical connections with others inside and outside of their specific industry.
Networking has never been more important. But it also has never been easier. Now it’s possible to participate in networking events, interact with other business people, and seek out and connect with customers, vendors, suppliers, and even competitors right from your laptop.
Face-to-face interactions remain one of the best ways to build relationships with other people within your industry. But it’s no longer the only way to expand your list of contacts.
Attend networking events. But also join online forums, chatrooms, and other online opportunities to create critical connections with more people who can help your business succeed.
Voice Search and Digital Assistants Here to Stay
The latest trend in tech today is the growing popularity of voice search and digital assistants.
Every major tech company now has their own version of this helpful, disembodied technology. Amazon has Alexa. Google has Google Assistant. Microsoft has Cortana. And, of course, Apple has Siri.
Within just the past 12 months, the number of web users who rely on digital assistants to help them listen to their favorite music, answer questions about the weather, set cooking timers, and even unlock doors and turn lights on and off has increased exponentially.
Adapting to Change
This isn’t just a fad. Voice search and digital assistants are here to stay. In fact, Google recently reported that 1 out of 5 internet searches now come from voice queries.
Ignore this change in the way people use the web at your own peril. Today, smart businesses are adapting by using long-tail search keywords and natural language that matches the conversational tone people tend to use with their favorite digital assistants.
For example, for web-based searches, a user might type in “auto mechanics near Cincinnati, Ohio”. But the same person conducting the same search via their voice searching digital assistant might be more likely to say, “Siri, where is there an auto mechanic near me?”
Shift Towards Voice Search
The shift toward voice search will become even bigger as more and more people get the enabling devices in their homes. Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home will likely be one of the most popular holiday gifts this year.
Voice search technology also is becoming more prevalent among automakers who are looking for ways to provide the convenience of online access to their customers while minimizing the risks of distracted driving.
As digital assistants go beyond smartphones and enter our homes, our cars, and eventually our workplaces, the opportunity for businesses to use SEO and content to connect with this growing market increases.
Web Design Florida: Stock Photos vs. Authentic Images
Have you ever gone to a website and seen a photo and thought, “Hey, I’ve seen that before!” If so, it was probably an image that the web page creator copied from a stock photo service.
Stock photo services can be either paid or free. Free services include Wikimedia Commons and Flickr. You may need to attribute the author of the photo but you can usually use their images without having to pay a royalty.
Paid stock photo sites include Getty Images, Shutterstock, and many others. When you use photos from these sites, you typically need to pay for them. How much depends on the photo.
Benefits of Stock Photos
But both paid and free stock photo sites types include hundreds, if not thousands, of images that can serve to illustrate practically any type of web page content.
Writing a blog about tree houses? You can grab a stock photo of a tree house to include with it. Creating a web page about pet adoptions? There are stock images of sad-looking puppies or kittens that will perfectly illustrate the point you are trying to make.
Stock photo sights are simple to use. You just use the search function with the keywords that describe the photo you want and you instantly can be connected with dozens of appropriate images.
Stock Photos vs. Authentic Images – Authentic Images
Authentic images are those you take yourself using the camera on your smartphone, professional photographic equipment, or other photo-taking gear.
There are two big benefits to using your own photos on your web pages: 1.) You don’t have to pay anybody a royalty (or worry about being sued for copyright infringement), and 2.) They give pages viewers a more personal insight into you and your content.
Most web designers will agree that including images on your pages is critical to connecting with visitors, whether you use stock photos or your own authentic pictures.
First Impressions Critically Important for Websites
When meeting new people, first impressions are important. How people look, the way they act, how friendly and helpful they are all influence your decision whether or not to interact with them.
The same holds true for web pages. In fact, first impressions are even more important when people land on your web page. That’s because visitors will make judgments about the credibility of your web page in as little as 50 milliseconds after they land there.
And one out of every five people who visit your website will leave and never come back.
The First Crucial 10 Seconds
There are two primary questions people ask themselves when landing on a new website:
- Is it safe?
- Does it provide specifically what I’m looking for?
If a website doesn’t seem safe — in other words if people fear their laptop, smartphone, or another device might become infected by a virus or their personal data may be stolen — they will jump off instantly. With so much malware out there, it’s a legitimate concern.
Similarly, most internet users today don’t have the patience to waste time with a website that isn’t exactly what they are looking for. Within 10 seconds, visitors are likely to size up your web page and decide if you are giving them what they want. If not, they will click off and likely never return.
First Impressions Critically Important for Websites – Testing Your Web Pages
That’s why it’s a good idea to continually test your web pages to see how it measures up to these two questions. Test it yourself using different devices than the ones you usually use.
Plus, you want to have other people test your websites as well. Ask friends or co-workers to give you their initial impressions. Or incentivize your customers to respond to a brief survey to share their thoughts.