Lytron, Author at Lytron Fort Lauderdale Web Design & SEO Agency

Online Grocery Shopping Booming

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As people become accustomed to getting the products and services they need via their smartphones and mobile devices, they are beginning to turn to eCommerce for even the most routine purchases, such as grocery shopping.

According to a new survey conducted by the group 72 Point Inc. on behalf of online organic grocer Door to Door Organics, the number of consumers who shop online for groceries increased 29 percent in 2015. And 19 percent of those surveyed said they did all of their weekly food shopping online.

Virtual Grocery Cart

Grocery shopping is one of the last holdouts for online commerce. That’s probably because many consumers prefer to physically see the food products they are buying to feed their families — especially meats, produce, and dairy products. Don’t you always open the egg container to see if any are broken?

But given the convenience of online shopping, these attitudes are slowly changing. According to the survey, 13 percent of people said that they used a single grocery provider for all of their weekly purchases, but 34 percent said they used more than one. And 53 percent said they visit three or four online and offline stores each week for their food shopping.

Produce Holdouts

Most are still using online services to shop for everything except produce and other fresh grocery items. And of those people who have bought produce online, more than half — 57 percent — told the pollsters that they were disappointed with the quality and freshness of the fruit and vegetables they received.

Most consumers — 58 percent 00 said the would be more likely to buy produce online if websites included information about where the products were picked and packaged. And 51 percent said they would like to be more willing to buy produce online if they knew that it came from local farms.

The survey reveals that attitudes towards eCommerce are continuing to evolve.

Inspire Creativity with Your Workspace

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Having a workstation that promotes creativity and success is important if you have a job in which creative thinking skills are important, such as a graphic designer or web design professional.

But regardless of your job, most people spend a lot of time at work, so you might as well have an environment that is comfortable and puts you in a good mood so you can be more productive.

Get Some Boxes

Start transforming your workstation by getting a few storage boxes you can use to organize your office and clear out the clutter.

Buy plastic or cardboard boxes at any office supply or home improvement store or get some boxes for free from your local grocery store or other retail business.

Get Rid of the Clutter

The first step is to clean everything off the surface of your desk, other than your computer and telephone. As you are removing each item, ask yourself this question: “Have I touched this particular report/paperwork/other type of clutter in the past week?” If the answer is “yes”, put it into one pile. If the answer is “no”, put it into another.

Most of the items in your “no” pile can be stored away or thrown out. This is especially true if they are printed duplicates of reports or paperwork you already have stored in your computer or can access online.

The majority of the items in your “yes” pile also can be stored or tossed. Unless a particular report or paperwork or other item is something you absolutely need to have access to today, right now, then it has no business being on your desk.

Lighting Your Way

Lighting is an area that is often overlooked but actually can have a profound effect on both the appearance and productivity of your workspace.

You should have two separate sources of light into your room: One from an overhead lighting fixture — or, even better, from a natural light sources such as a window — and the second should come from a task light.

Have a Focal Point

Having a focal point in your workspace directs your attention so that you can more easily keep on task. For many people, this is the laptop or PC at your workstation, but it also can be something like a calendar, a to-do list or something else that keeps you on track.

3 Design Elements that Can Increase Your Website’s Profitability

Everyone visits websites every day. But not all websites convert: That is, actually get visitors to spend money.

Here are three fast and simple things you can add to your website to make them more profitable:

Members Only Area

Exclusivity is a time-honored sales technique. It’s human nature for people to want to be part of the elite group, whether it’s a country club membership, getting into the hottest velvet rope nightclub … or being allowed into the “Members Only” are of your website.

Allow visitors to qualify for this upgrade if they provide you with contact information like an email address or phone number. They’ll be happy because they gained VIP status and you can use their contact information for future marketing campaigns.

3 Design Elements that Can Increase Your Website’s Profitability – Urgent Calls to Action

In action movies, a common trope to create a sense of urgency is a countdown clock. Whether it’s a ticking time-bomb or the countdown to a missile launch, audiences will always cheer for the hero when there is a sense of urgency.

You can do the same thing by adding urgency to the Calls to Action (CTAs) on your web pages by including a countdown to an expiration for an offer or limiting special pricing or offers at a certain number of people. This is often all “window shoppers” often need to be pushed into a buying decision.

3 Design Elements that Can Increase Your Website’s Profitability – Encourage Comments – Ecommerce – Marketing

The Comments section of your blog or web page offers an opportunity for people to interact with your brand, company or products. Always encourage visitors to leave comments and make sure you respond in a timely mannner and ask a follow-up question so they can interact with your web page again.

High comment counts are one of the things Google and other search engines consider when ranking your pags. So make sure you add a “Subscribe to Comments” option as well.

For Your Next Web Design project, Think Mobile

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Today, more people than ever use their mobile devices as the primary way to search for the information, entertainment, product and services they want.

So if you are focusing your energy optimizing your website design for use on PCs and laptops, you could be wasting your valuable time and effort.

Benefits of Mobile Design

The way websites appear on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are different than how they look on computer monitors. For one thing, the screen smaller, so you have less room to create an effective package with your content and images.

Websites also load differently on mobile devices than they do on PCs. So if your website isn’t using a mobile-optimized platform, it could take longer for your site to load on people’s smartphones — putting you at risk of being dumped for one of your competitors.

For Your Next Web Design project, Think Mobile – Building a Better Mobile-Optimized Website

Creating a mobile optimized website for your business website lets you tap into the growing number of customers who are using their mobile devices as their primary web-access tool.

It also lets you convert more “window shoppers” into paying customers. Plus, it can increase your customer retention rate so you can achieve more repeat sales and develop loyal, long-term customers.

For Your Next Web Design project, Think Mobile – Get the Most from Your Marketing Budget in mobile

By focusing on mobile design for your website, you can optimize your web design budget by achieving a higher return on investment.

Mobile-friendly pages engage customers instantly and encourage them to act on whatever action your website is targeting: Buying a product, becoming a subscriber, clicking through to another page, or whatever your goal is.

Mobile-optimized websites can automatically direct mobile customers who click on your web link or type in your domain name to your mobile site. There they will find better screen definition, faster loading times, and user-friendly navigation.

Rocket Your Website to the Top of the Charts

When it comes to attracting new customers and new business online, SEO isn’t everything … it’s the ONLY thing!

Search engine optimization involves using techniques to make your website or web pages more attractive to the most popular search engines — especially Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Why Be Popular?

Popularity is something everybody has to worry about, but especially website owners. Why? Because if search engines don’t “like” your web pages, there’s a very good chance that the customers you want and need will never find them.

Here’s why: When people search online for the businesses, products, and services they want, they usually will go to the search engine on their phone, tablet, laptop or computer and type in the keywords that best describe what they are looking for.

For example, somebody needing a muffler repair in Florida might type in “Florida muffler repair”.

Rocket Your Website to the Top of the Charts – Search Engines Rank Websites

The search engine will instantly search through the billions of websites online to find those that contain these keywords. It will then return results to the search according to an intricate ranking process that is based on such factors as where in the content these websites are located and how many times they are repeated.

Search engines stay in business by giving their users the best results for the searches they want. So they also will consider such things as how many social approval signals a website has — such as Facebook “Likes”, how many times people have shared the site’s link on Twitter, and so on.

They also will look at how many other sites link back to the website, giving additional weight to those that are considered “authoritative sites”, or sites that most people would go to in order to find answers to questions they have. Examples include Wikipedia, About.com, and websites maintained by academic institutions and governmental bodies.

Is Email Dead as a Marketing Technique?

Customer Recognition Programs Pay Huge Dividends

Email has a bad reputation in marketing circles. Given that there are so many other ways to reach potential customers — including text messages, social media, and mobile apps — email has been marginalized by many companies.

Big mistake. If you need proof that email is still a highly effective way to reach people, consider this simple question: When was the last time you checked your email account? Was it this morning? An hour ago? Just before you opened this blog?

Most People Still Use Email … A Lot

Email isn’t dead as a marketing platform. While there are other ways to reach customers that are faster, better, and easier, most people still cling to their email accounts in the same way they keep paying for landlines for their home telephone service or relying on the postal service for daily mail delivery.

While times have changed, old habits are hard to break.

Startling Statistics Regarding Email Marketing

Need more proof that email is alive and well as a marketing tool? Consider this:

44% of people who receive email made a minimum of one purchase in the past year based on a marketing email they received.
33% of people say they open an email based solely on the subject line.
About half of the people on any business’s email list still open or click on the emails the business sends regularly.
70% of people say they used a coupon or discount code they received via email in the past week.
Monday is the best day to send out an email because emails sent on the first day of the week have the highest revenue per email.
27% of people said they wished their favorite businesses sent them more emails.

Email is far from dead as a marketing platform. If you want to keep attracting new customers, the road to their hearts is through their email inbox.

New High Tech Tools Help Target Terrorists

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an entire discipline has been developed by the defense and intelligence communities around situational awareness and visualization.

These include the construction of Geospatial Intelligence, or GEOINT, which exploits and analyzes geospatial data to enhance real-time situational awareness and decision-making. This data includes such things as enhanced satellite imagery, terrain data collected by unmanned drones, and real-time data sources such as surveillance cameras and microphones.

New High Tech Tools Help Target Terrorists – New Government Oversight

There’s even a new government agency charged with managing all this data called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Never heard of it? You’re not alone. It’s not an agency that seeks out a lot of headlines. Its slogan is “Know the Earth … Show the Way … Understand the World.”

The mission of the NGA is wide-ranging and includes such things as collecting intelligence about warfighting from within the battle, humanitarian and disaster relief in crisis points around the globe, counterterrorism, counter-narcotics trafficking and border security, and transportation of domestic security efforts.

Spy RVs

Part of the NGA’s mission is achieved through the use of two Domestic Mobile Integrated Intelligence System vehicles – or DMIGS – which essentially are self-contained, highly-specialized vehicles that look like RVs but are used for domestic crises, natural disasters, and special events requiring intense security.

The NGA’s role also is to “defend the nation against cyber threats by supporting other intelligence agencies with in-depth analysis of cyber networks.” The NGA provides support for the DoD, CIA, NSA and other agencies within the defense and intelligence communities.

New High-Tech Tools

This little-known government agency provides real-time, on-the-fly data gathering and analysis using big data tools and techniques such as using GEOINT to track and analyze the actions of persons of interest, our own forces, and our allies and neutrals, as well as up-to-the-moment information on weather and other environmental factors.

This data can be accessed by analysts and decision makers who need it to respond to situations as they develop, many of which are new or have never been encountered before. Not all data gathering is visual. Some data collection involved analyzing vast quantities of text-based information or even audio clues. This new type of data collection system makes traditional intelligence gathering techniques obsolete.

Through the use of big data strategies, national defense, and intelligence agencies, as well as military forces, are better prepared to respond to imminent threats, as well as to use predictive analysis to anticipate how those threats are likely to occur. The value of instantaneous, high-quality intelligence gathering cannot be overstated in terms of protecting citizens and maintaining our national security.

How Your Website Can Increase Profits

Most businesses today have websites out of necessity. Customers today have an expectation of being able to interact with a company online to learn more about the organization, ask questions or leave comments, or to buy products or orders services directly.

In the past few years, a sea change has happened in global business: Most customers today use their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices to search for the products and services they want. So if your business doesn’t have a website, you probably are missing out on most of your new business.

Websites and Profits

But it’s not enough to simply have a website. It has to meet the expectations of your online customers. And people also need to be able to find it.

An outdated, confusing, or cluttered website may turn more customers away than it attracts. If you haven’t updated your business’s website in a while — or if you can’t remember the last time you gave it a facelift — it’s probably time to review it.

How Your Website Can Increase Profits – Search Engine Rankings

To capture the largest share of the pool of customers for your specific type of products and services, it has to be simple for people to find your website on Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other popular search engines.

Here’s how most retail scenarios work today: Somebody needs a particular product. Let’s say for example’s sake it’s a frisbee cannon.

They take out their smartphone, type “frisbee cannon” into their Google app, along with perhaps their hometown:

“Frisbee cannon Detroit”

Up will pop a list of businesses that offer this product. Here’s the important part: 7 times out of 10, the customer will click on the first business listed. And that’s the business that most likely will get the sale (if they are mobile-friendly, right then and there from the customer’s smartphone!).

Choosing the Right Format

Designers A lot of web designers choose to build their websites using the format they use most often, Flash, without even considering other options such as HTML, CSS or JavaScript.

Flash is one of the most popular formats among web designers because they think it has fewer browser compatibility problems and more user interface options than other formats. But does it really?

Benefits of Flash

Flash is a very powerful tool that allows web designers to create colorful, impressive looking sites that push the boundaries of multimedia. It also has a huge base, so it tends to be more compatible with a broader range of browsers than sites created using CSS.

And let’s face it: Flash lets web designers show off their stuff, impressing clients with the “wow factor” that keeps them on board with your web design.

Choosing the Right Format – Drawbacks of Flash

Yet Flash also has its downside. For example, sites created using Flash tend to rank lower on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines compared to sites built using HTML. Google’s algorithm still struggles when crawling through Flash sites.

Some web designers believe Flash sites also are less user-friendly than HTML or CSS sites. For example, Flash doesn’t let you highlight text for copy and pasting. You also can’t click the Back button to go back a page.

It’s also harder to increase font size and open links in new windows. So there’s often a price to pay in terms of navigation for the intuitive interface.

Mobility Is an Issue

But perhaps the biggest problem with Flash sites is that they are nearly unviewable on mobile devices such as smartphones. Unfortunately, this is the type of device most users today are using to access the content they want online.

So before you automatically choose Flash for your next web design, consider its drawbacks and benefits.

Are Backlinks Still Relevant to Your Website?

Just a few years ago, Google based much of its decision on where to rank a website on how many backlinks it had. The idea was that if a website had a lot of backlinks, it must be important and therefore of value to Google’s users.

But unscrupulous web page designers figured this out and started to artificially create fake backlinks using automated software programs. The result was that Google was leading its users to web pages that actually had very little content and value.

So Google changed its search engine algorithm to give weight to other things such as social approval signals, such as Facebook “Likes”, how many times a website’s link was Tweeted, and others.

So do backlinks still matter to getting your web pages ranked high on Google and other search engines? The answer is, “Yes, as long as the links come from authoritative places”.

Are Backlinks Still Relevant to Your Website? Authoritative Websites

Google considers websites to be authoritative if they are places people generally would go to get answers to questions they might have. That means sites like Wikipedia, Ask.com and About.com are considered by Google and other search engines to be authoritative sites.

So getting links to your page from these sites and other authoritative sites like them — including sites run by education institutions (in other words, sites with the suffix “.edu”) and governmental bodies (sites with the suffix “.gov”) can still improve your page rankings.

How to Get Backlinks from Authoritative Sites

The best way to get these high-value backlinks is for your site itself to be authoritative. In other words, make your website a place web users would go to find answers. Then it’s simply a self-fulfilling prophecy and your page will soar to the top of the Google rankings.

Another way is to plant these backlinks yourself. Go to places authoritative sites and interact with the content, leaving content, posting helpful information, and always remembering to include backlinks to your web pages.