As you think about web marketing, there are some key considerations for your online presence.
Here are the top 10 things that I think you should make sure that your website design and marketing strategy includes. If your web developer can't provide all of these things... make sure that you find one who can.
Over the last couple of years, a new term has arrived in website design. That is "hero banner" or "hero image". Although the term has gained popularity this year, it has been around for a couple of years.
I have noticed a few different ways that a hero banner has been defined. Some have defined it as a home page or a main call-to-action, but that's really not what it is. It is part of a home page (or other important landing pages) and should contain a phenomenal call-to-action. So, why should you be concerned with this aspect of design?
It was only a few years ago that I thought that mobile use of the web would require very little consideration. When the first iPhone was introduced, the ability to pinch and zoom made it possible to use the small screen to see elements on the page without difficulty.
With Google's algorithm updates in April 2015, mobile responsive is more than just a thing. It's critical to the success of your website in mobile search. You can't expect to be successful in your search engine optimization efforts without having a mobile friendly site.
After building and marketing websites for nearly ten years and working in technology, marketing and visual design for many years before that, you can imagine that I've seen my share of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Perhaps my mental frame is skewed a bit because of what I know (or at least think I know), but I see consistent problems with websites I see.
What's interesting is how many websites are close on being great but miss by a few key elements. I see this problem across websites both large and small. It doesn’t seem to matter how much companies spend… this issue is present on websites that are less than $1,000 and websites that are more than $100,000.
Years ago I worked in the office equipment industry. The companies I worked for sold copiers and printers to businesses, organization, etc. During my tenure at my last copier company, HP rolled out a new copier line. They simply relabeled a line from Konica Minolta.
Our company decided to pick up this line and sell it.
It wasn't a very good copier line. Which is probably why the product line was scrapped after a short while.
I remember asking our rep, "Who is your target market?"
Back came the response, "We sell to small & medium business, departments in large businesses and large businesses."
"So," I said, "you sell to everyone?"
I talk with clients all the time about ways to optimize their websites for increasing their positions in search engines. At Tribute Media, I hope it's obvious, we provide search engine optimization (SEO) services for our clients so that they can better be found on the web. But, we also do a lot of consulting (for a fee) and teaching (for free) on the subject.
Often, I get the question, "Well, can I just have you optimize my website now and then, in a year, optimize it again?"
The short answer is, "No."
Choosing the right web developer for your web project can be a daunting process. I am confident that often time the reason why companies tolerate a sub-par website is because they simply don’t know where to go to get the right developer.
Do you choose Drupal or Wordpress? Do you consider Hubspot for the website and marketing together? Do you have a custom application that needs to be developed. When you find a developer, how do you make a decision that developer is the right one? What are the most important questions to ask.
Here are six key questions that you should ask before you make your decision. They are in no particular order as I think they are all important.
When I say talk, I mean really talk. I don’t mean, can you talk to the person that sold you on the project. I mean can you drive to their office or pick up the phone and call them. More often than you think, you’ll have a local sales rep sell you a web site but the work will be conducted by a number of subcontractors, or worse, by a number of people out of the country.
Recently we had an issue with a new client. The old website provider decided that they were not happy we took over web marketing for this client and sent us a nice letter telling us that we needed to remove the website under the DMCA.
Before we had a chance to even think about responding we got a notification from our hosting provider that they were going to take it down because of failure to comply with the DMCA.
The problem was that all the brand elements on the site were brand elements of the client (taken from their artwork). All the images on the site were stock photos... pretty sure that this web builder doesn't own those images. And the content was so bad that we changed it this week anyway as part of the new contract.
The best part is that the bottom of the old website said, very specifically, that the copyright was our client's. So, it was reasonable to assume that our client owned the copyright.
You'd think that, too, if it was yours, right?
A number of years ago I was traveling in upstate New York and went to a Friendly’s restaurant. For those who don’t know the chain, it’s a family restaurant. You wouldn’t necessarily expect the service and food to be stellar but you would still have an expectation that someone says hi, comes and takes your order in a timely manner and gives you food that is halfway decent.
That particular evening as I was sitting in this restaurant it became pretty clear that they didn’t care about me, my money or my experience. I sat in this mostly empty restaurant for nearly 20 minutes before I even got my glass of water and gave my order. I then waited nearly 30 minutes for my fairly simple meal to find it’s way to me. This meal was mediocre at best.
A couple of years ago, on my personal blog, I posted an infographic to explain social media using bacon. Of course the inspiration came from Justin Foster's book, "Oatmeal v. Bacon". I have put the infographic down below because I love bacon and I think it adequately illustrates the difference between key social media outlets.