Importance Of An Updated Website For A Business
The demand to start an online website for any business has been the growing since the start of the 21st century. When browsing the web you could go dizzy seeing how many websites are turned up when a Google search is made, every product you could think of now has a website that presents their products and all you need fro about them.
Considering the growing numbers, only a handful of online entrepreneurs see the value of an updated website. For most, as long as the orders are coming (mostly from old customers) the need to update is never considered. To be able to appreciate website updating, it would be best to know the reasons why a website needs one:
Increase customer base
Every business loves making a sale always, with the use of an online business site you get to increase the number of customers. The beauty of the Internet is in the continuous exposure each website has to the entire world 24/7. Even as you sleep, your website will attract visitors and users who are looking for something in your website. An updated website helps your business go global.
Build credibility
Everyone is capable of sizing up someone when they get to see face to face, how could anyone do this online? This concept is a bit difficult, since the users would have to contend with just a picture of you in the About Us page. But consider your business website as an extension of the owner. An updated website gets referral visitors from other sites and search engine because the website properly represents the product and services.
Online presence
When it comes to referred and search engine driven traffic, a website has to be current in its content. Once a website posts useful and informative content in their website and blog, search engines are bound to remember. Besides a popular store is always well-visited and always precedes it’s reputation.
Easy integration of applications and plug-ins
Though you may not need new applications or plug-ins, it is always best to be prepared when the time comes. If a website runs on a WordPress or Magento templates, the updated versions should be installed for purposes of keeping up with the improvement of the template.
All of the reasons mentioned above all translate to more online visits, increased sales and more opportunities. To be able to know when your website needs an update depends on the sites performance when it comes to user frequency and page bounce rates. With the help of an online website analytics script, you will be able to see what pages are driving traffic to your site and which pages are being left as soon as users get there. Once the figures are in, then you could see the difference by a mile.
Creating A Landingpage That Wont Tank 2
In planning the landing page, one factor that is always considered to be the basis of creating one. Online marketing includes Value Proposition which not only partains to your company tagline but your landing page and webpage as a whole. The company landing page functions as the promoting arm of your website and as the sales “representative” that opens the door of possibility for business with the company. It’s objective on the other hand is 3-fold: to exract leads, to funnel visitors and to generate sales.
The first part of this series dealt with the elements of the landing page which we follow up with the benefit of value proposition aspect of your webpage. Every company website has a measure of assurance for visitors since this is the online way to establish trust. Once a page states your services and the pledge of competence or effective service, visitors will become customers.
The basis of your website design, interface and navigation are the following:
Your potential customer
Give a face to the market you would want to corner.
ex. working mothers, gym-going moms, soccer moms, hot moms etc.
Demography
Company customer demography differ depending on what a company is.
| Business to Consumer | Business to Business |
|---|---|
| age range | industries |
| gender | location |
| education | annual revenue |
| location | annual budget for service |
| income | Decision maker |
Whichever your business may be, there are basic questions to consider for both, it runs like one of them beauty pageant questions. These do come to mind when customers consider your service or gettign a product from you.
Knowing who and what your market is, makes up your value proposition statement. The landing page is part of the statement that answers the questions above. The statement is concise and easily points out why they are at your site and why your product and services are the solution.
Google And Their ‘New’ AdWords Program
Last week our company received an email from Google about the AdWords Professional exam. The email stated that Google was ‘retiring’ the GAP exams and has launched the AdWords certification program. Reading through the links within the email and some research made gave little information why they thought of stylizing the AdWords exams. The new certification program promises to provide “agencies with comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts”. As a past GAP examinee, wasn’t this what the GAP was all about? In the email sent to us, Google further mentioned improving what was once the GAP now renamed AdWords Certification Program. No problem there, replacing the old with a new one which is an improvement of the old one- not totally new in my book. What I appreciate with the email though was Google’s realization of the following:
Online materials are not up-to-date
The online training materials and tutorials didn’t keep up with the GAP interface changes and the introduction of new tools. We had a colleague who was studying for the GAP and handled a campaign using the Beta interface but was studying the old tutorials. He had a difficult and placed way lower than the first examinees who averaged 87%. There were several tutorials that didn’t have any tests for examinees to try to further understand the concept.
Curriculum interrupted strategy the company wanted to go with
Instead of managing the company AdWords account for the company, examinees were managing the account to be able to test the tools and suggestions from Google. It was unlikely for low budget companies to be able to keep up with the ones with cash to allocate and spend on online ads.
Member eligibility and program benefits benefited companies more than the exam takers/passers
The difference of taking a test for the company and for individual wasn’t much. You got the badge that linked to the professional page. What IF an examinee took the exam to get hired for their expertise? There was no proof of their being eligible except the former employers’ GAP Badge.
Exam Segments
With the new and improved formula AdWords Certification Programme, Google has pledged to provide curricula that enhances strategy and tactical know-how. The Certification process is not an all-in-one exam, each examinee starts off with the Fundamentals Exam which tests the basic knowledge about the AdWords program. After which, according to readiness and competency, the examinee can study and prepare for the next level of exams: Search Advertising Advanced Exam, Display Advertising Advanced Exam and the Reporting & Analysis Advanced Exam. The good thing about this new and improved certification is that the learning and preference testing comes in stages. A company that leans more to Search Ads rather than Display could opt to not take the exam they do not find useful. As a new rule of thumb though, the individual qualification calls for the Fundamental Exam and one advanced exam. Individuals are now given a free pass for minimum spend requirement while company spend requirements shot down 10 times from the original l figure. Companies are now given a minimum spending requirement of $10,000 from a whopping $100,000.
Despite the confusing retirement of the GAP which is now the new (and improved) AdWords Certification Programme, the opportunity for individual examinees and company certification examinees to better use Google AdWords and tools to their advantage.
Creating A Landing Page That Wont Tank part 1
Building your website is a an ongoing process, one of the elements of your website should be the landing page. The landing page is a more compact version of your website less navigation tabs. Each landing page is said to be a doorway for visitors and prospective clients towards your website. The landing page is the one page you would have to direct your links and ads to.
To get people interested in you would depend on how you design, present and fix the landing page. Like a nicely designed home, the door would have to match the design and what the home features are. Just like your website, there are elements to an effective landing page. Any landing page could be good to look at, but not all are effective enough to get conversions.
Research
The research you need to do is about the people you would want to reach, the people who would need your product or the ones who have loved ones and friends who need your product and the ones who are interested in what your product is.
Who Are Your Visitors
Never start at the drawing board. When website owners start at the design and landing page structure, they base it on better judgment with no consideration or thought about the customer. A deeper understanding about your visitors and future customers is the keystone of every web page. There are a lot of speculations and suggested formulas on how to get to know your visitors and clients. Keep it simple, think of who needs your product and put yourself in their place and situation. Routine questions about trust, assurance and intangible things aside, focus on what you wold want to see if you were a customer or site visitor. They’ve said it before, we’ll say it again :
Focus on them and not yourself. Picture the ideal client from their state and appearance and their circumstance.
What drives them
A good deal is what keep people hook, to get them to bite on the hook is knowing they need your product. This is easier said than done since there have been numerous articles about it but rarely are they making conversion through landing pages themselves.
How much are you promising them?
In terminology this would be called Value Proposal. This is the element where you would have to work out the value of your product and the add-on value you would do for clients. Be committed as you write down that proposal, they are not just words but a trust that you solicit from someone over the Internet.
Design
Once you have a better understanding on who the landing page is being made for, you are now ready to incorporate design to the landing page’s visitor data. Some things to keep in mind when it comes to design, there are 3 things that are constant: Company logo, company name, and company colors. People are big on consistency and keeping the basic design of your website helps you maintain your identity. Use images that visitors can connect or identify themselves with. A product and user match should show positivism. Happy and images of contentment convey the outcome and promise of their purchase.
Content
Have useful information but keep what you have to say short and simple. The landing is limited by the space to combine all the elements of your landing page. Go for shorter copy and leave the rest of the space for another aspect of design.
Testing
Once the structure and template of your landing page is complete, you have to test its technical functions. You would have to go with this on a test site or do it live. Do the links work? Is the back button enabled? Are you linking to the pages that are helpful to your visitors? Is the shopping cart link functioning well? Auto-responder messages well written? Is there harmony? Did you leave out something important? Become your visitor and try going through the landing page and take it all in.
By the way, to be able to continue actual visitor profiling and trending, put in a tracking code which shows you the results of the landing page you have created. As you look into the trend of your visitor, you get to know what effectively keeps them coming back.
Refining Your Google Search (the basics)
Are you planning to dive into the world of Search Engine Optimization? There is a lot for you to learn, one of which is the very basic : the search. Each website is crawled by bots and spiders and depending on the search engine, information and data from your site is sandbox-ed and will get listed. Since Google is the frontrunner among the search engines that have made guidelines about how to optimize your weblog or website, we start with the things we rarely use for searches. Using the Google Search bar as a standard, here are several ways they would put forth a search:
Square Brackets denotes a [query]
We are so used to working offline that we carry over several offline practices that may get you inferior search results.
Phrase Search are phrases attributed to “a person” or “part of a title” “words attributed to someone”
The quotation marks would signal that you want each phrase and a more trimmed down search focused on the phrase itself.
Inside a specific [site: ]
You know where you found the article on anti-aging cremes, the thing is you forgot what Item code of the Face Gravity crème was in. The braces and the colon before the website name you need to find out about. [Face Gravity crème: anti-aging.com]
Terms not needed [-]
Terms are connected to some other terms that just muddle up your search. The best thing to put is the hyphen [-] for excluding other terms form the search. For instance, you want to find our about the latest Flip camera that has a USB port [Flip camera-HP printer].
Asking the *unknown
This type of query, the search engine knows what word or words take preceding among the ones you listed. Other words listed with the *word is there to narrow the search but information
you need is on the ones with the *asterisk before it. The *asterisk works on a word and not a string of words.
[Exact + Searches]
symbol before a word, joins it with the word before the + sign. This makes the search more accurate the. Typing and adding+an typing a sentence or a long-worded query.
OR | Option
Putting OR in caps between 2 sets of information you need enable the search engine to search for wither of the 2 sets of information. You can also use the symbol | which done by pressing at the shift key and the backward slash key. Some searches though can’t be [exactly] put nor can Google classify the word: or, in lower case, as a specific alternate search. For the search engine not to misinterpret the query, keep these in mind:
- several words are ignored automatically and are called ‘stop words’. These are ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘for’ phrases or words which are well known and are normally attributed to the term itself.
ex. (the mentalist) the search will not exclude the word ‘the’ since this is a well known movie turned TV series;
- the term Single Ladies doesn’t need the ‘+‘ or the [bracket] for Google to know it’s Beyonce’s song
- sometimes synonyms may replace the original words you put in the query
- language analysis will refine your searches as long as there is sufficient data that the page is deemed relevant ex. Casio baby watches will always result to the Baby G-shock watches by Casio
- Unless you would want a to see product by its series number, the $ must always be put before any number if you are searching for a product being sold at a particular price.
- When using the hyphen: a space before and after indicate you don’t want this term searched on the other hand sans space after the hyphen and a space before the hyphen indicate that these words are strongly -connected
This is the way people at Google have thought of refining searches with the use of punctuation or symbols on your keyboard. The first time anyone would ever have heard about this is during a review on Google’s guidelines.There are several search engines empowering people to make use of the Internet as a reference, yet only Google has set the standard of what a search engine can contribute to website optimization and an easier search process.
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