Web Design — Page 2

First Impressions Matter! What Does Your Website Say About Your Business or Organization?

February 12, 2018 By John

What kind of first impression does your website make for your business, community, or organization?

First Impressions Matter! Not many of us would argue that. Unfortunately, when it comes to websites, many business owners, as well as community and organization leaders, don’t often think about how they make their first impression. The reality is that the first impression formed by your prospective customer or visitor is not likely to be made when the visitor walks up to your front door. It most likely will be made online, and in rapidly increasing instances, it will be made on a mobile device.

- Does your website look as professional as you believe your business or organizations is?
- Does your website look professional on phones and tablets as well as a desktop computer?
- Is it attractive enough to make the visitor spend some time on it?
- Can your visitor quickly determine what you offer?

Can your visitor quickly find your contact information?
Does it convey enough to make prospects want to contact you, or order online?
Can they call you with the touch of a button on their mobile device?

People are busier than ever, and their time is precious. The reality is, if your website is more than three or four years old, it likely does not meet Google’s current mobile-friendly standards. If that is the case, you are not making a good first impression when prospects see your website on a mobile device.

First Impressions Matter!

Google Changes The Rules – Mobile-Friendly or Not

April 21, 2015 By John

If Google does as stated, today is the day many small business websites disappear from Google Mobile Search Results. Of course, not only SMBs will suffer, but so will churches, associations, and other non-profits. A few major corporations will be surprised as well.

We understand the importance of mobile in today’s world. Nearly all the new websites we create are device-responsive, and have a mobile-friendly version, as defined by Google, as well as a desktop version.

The vast majority of the websites we have created in the last few years look great and work well on desktops and tablets, as well as phones with “full-browser” capabilities. With smaller devices, the user will have to pinch and stretch some, but they will function. We did create fully mobile-friendly versions for some of our clients websites who chose to be out front in the mobile revolution. Even a year ago a mobile-friendly of a website was a hard sell for us and most other developers, especially those of us who have small businesses and non-profits among our clients.

Google seems to think everyone has deep pockets and/or a development team to create exactly the type of website they deem appropriate. They constantly tweak Google Analytics and Google AdWords. Sometimes the tweaks are amazing and time saving. Sometimes they are amazing and very time consuming.

Google wrote this Finding more mobile-friendly search results post on February 26, 2015, and followed with this announcement Rolling out the mobile-friendly update today.

Here is an excerpt from that post.

“April 21st’s mobile-friendly update boosts mobile search rankings for pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices.

Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
Applies to individual pages, not entire websites

While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.”

You may check using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see if Google classifies your website as mobile-friendly.

It is too soon to know the impact of Google’s latest forced mandate. Every website owner should review their analytics program to see what percentage of traffic is mobile. Remember Google separates tablets traffic from mobile, as most tablets display the desktop version of a website. Once you determine the percentage and number of mobile visitors (and what they do while on your site), you will have to decide if having fully mobile-friendly (as defined by Google) is right for your customers and prospects. Only you know what percentage of mobile traffic meets your pain threshold. Please remember that for this purpose, the mobile statistics, are only valid going backwards in time. Mobile search results change dramatically as of today!

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Is Your Website Ready For Visitors?

November 4, 2014 By John

Is your website, the place you hope to convert prospects to customers, ready to receive visitors?

When we use links to our websites using Social Media, we essentially invite people to our website. When we invite people to our homes, we generally check to see if everything is in its place and that there is nothing seriously amiss. Is that true with your website? When was the last time you reviewed your website to see if it reflects your business and your products or services as they are today?

Here is a little check list to make sure your website is ready for visitors.

Know and state who you are, what you do, and the benefits of what you offer to your visitor.
Know who you would like to visit your website.
- Knowing your audience is critical. If you believe your audience is everyone, you will likely fail.
- Who are they? Why would they want what you offer? When would they want it?
Speak to your visitors from their perspective, not with an industry-speak sales pitch.
- Explain that you know some of their challenges, and how they can benefit from your products or services. If possible, show some specifics.
Does your navigation present a clear and easy path to your most important content?
Is your contact and location information readily visible?
Is your website mobile friendly?

If your website looks as good as you would like, and you check off all the items in the list, your website should be ready for visitors.

Of course, we are always happy to help. Email or call us today! — 1-800-281-9993 or 608-822-3750

5 Quick and Easy Tips to Improving Your Website

July 8, 2014 By John

It doesn’t always take a complete redesign to improve your website traffic and engagement. Do it quickly using these quick and easy tips.

Prominently display your Toll Free (or Local) Phone Number at the top of all your pages.
1. In the top right-hand corner, in a size and color that will make it easily seen.
2. This is an item where function over form pays dividends.
Review your contact information, and update it if needed.
1. We believe your contact info should be in the footer of every page.
2. Be sure your phone numbers, address, business hours, and events calendars are current
Identify your audience, and start your copy with the benefits you offer them.
1. You only have moments to convince visitors to look at more.
2. Don’t place your value proposition at the bottom of the page.
Make sure your home page copy has links to your most important pages
1. Google loves properly coded internal links to relevant pages
Real, verifiable testimonials can help change a visitor to a customer.
1. Having canned-appearing testimonials from a name with one initial for either name is simply a waste of time.

Landing Page Key Elements Refresher — SEO Notes

March 18, 2014 By John

We often talk about important key elements of a well written landing page when we are talking with clients and prospects. Every page on your website is a potential landing page, so it doesn’t hurt to mention these key elements even more frequently.

Of course, pages vary greatly due to the nature of their content. However, there are some basic tenets that should be nearly universal. Here are some key elements that should be included in nearly every page.

Headline
- Short description of what is on the page
- Contains same keywords as title of page
Sub-Headlines
- Makes for easy scanning — People scan before reading
Content
- Page-specific, well-written descriptive text
Images or video
- Visuals attract attention — Videos engage website visitor
Bulleted and/or Numbered lists
- Makes for easy scanning — Did I see this somewhere before?
Calls to action
- Call us today at 1-800-281-9993 or 608-822-3750 for help with your landing pages.

Every page on your website is a potential landing page.

Too many people still believe that nearly everyone sees the home page first when visiting a website. That is far from the reality. You need to treat every page as a landing page that conveys your message, or describes your product or services effectively.

Did I mention calls to action in the key elements of landing pages?

We could be “Putting The Web To Work For YOU!” Call 1-800-281-9993 or 608-822-3750 today!

Keep it Short and Sweet. Enough said

July 26, 2013 By John

if you want it read.

Keep it Short Statistics

Enough said!

Thanks to Statistics Brain.

Source: The Associated Press
Research date: 4.28.2013

First Impressions are important! How does your website look?

May 9, 2013 By John

First impressions matter. In today’s world, the first impression of your business is made by your website. Does your website present your business as professionally as you do when you are meeting someone for the first time? Before meeting or greeting prospective customers, most of us generally take a look in a mirror to make sure we don’t embarrass ourselves. We check our smile, our hair, and our clothes. We polish our shoes or in my case, boots. Sometimes we practice our greeting. Why? First impressions matter.

When was the last time you seriously looked at your website? How does it look? How does it read? How does it navigate?

First impressions matter.

Some Things We Do Just Before and Shortly After Launching Your Website

April 29, 2013 By John

Here are some of the tasks that you may not realize we routinely perform before launching new or redesigned websites. Of course, they will have already been Search Engine Optimized.

Complete proofing of text provided for your website
Validate the code to ensure it is standards compliant
Cross-browser and cross-platform testing and tweaking.
Create a Google Analytics account, and add a Google Analytics code snippet to each page of your website.
Create and configure a Google Webmaster Tools account, and a Bing (and Yahoo) Webmaster Tools account as well.
Link the Google Analytics account with the Google Webmaster Tools account.
Create a sitemap.xml (a specially formatted list of all the pages in your website), upload it to your web server and submit it to the above mentioned webmaster tools accounts. The sitemap.xml file will get crawled by the major search engines, and your pages will be indexed for inclusion in the databases of those search engines. (The correct method to “Submit your URL.”)
Add a link to your website on the WebWise Design & Marketing Client’s page (which gets visited daily by Google bot).
Send a Tweet about your new website.

Yes. Those tasks do take time, but you deserve to have everything about your website done right. Ask your web developer (or yourself, if you do your own website) if they do these things for you.

Desktop Browser and Mobile, Tablet Market Share – September 2012

October 1, 2012 By John

Here are the desktop and mobile/table browsers and versions of those browsers were using to view websites during September.

Desktop Browser Market Share

Desktop Browser Market Share graph

Mobile/Tablet Browser Market Share

Statistics Graphs are from www.netmarketshare.com where you may view the Desktop Browser versions and Mobile/Tablet Browser vesrions. Please note: You may have to login as a “Guest” to view reports.

Do you know what your visitors are using? If not, we can help!

Mobile Website or Mobile-friendly Responsive Design Website: Which is Better for Your Business?

August 24, 2012 By John

For most businesses, considering a mobile-friendly web presence is not really optional anymore. Very few businesses can afford to ignore the explosion in growth of smartphone and tablet users who are looking for businesses just like yours.

You are likely getting emails and phone calls or have seen on the web offers to create mobile websites, mobile-friendly websites (some, using responsive design) or an app. Of course they are promoting the specific mobile solution they offer, whether it is the right solution for you or not. If they try to sell you an app to take the place of a mobile website or a mobile-friendly website, grab your billfold and run.

So, what do you do? Talk with someone you trust who will explain the differences in all of those mobile buzzwords and will help you decide which mobile solution is best for you. The type of business you have and how you interact with your customers and prospects are key factors in deciding your mobile web strategy.

Mobile websites, or mobile-optimized websites, are versions of a regular site optimized to look great on all mobile phones. Additionally, most mobile websites take advantage of advanced capabilities of mobile phones, such as a ‘Click-to-Call’ button that places the call when clicked. Or, a ‘Find Us’ button that goes to a map centered on your location.

Mobile Website - Before and After

Some Google recommended best practices are:

Keep it Quick
Simplify Navigation
Thumb-Friendly
Design for Visibility
Make it Accessible

Mobile-friendly websites created using ‘Responsive Design’ allow having only one website that will adapt to the device on which it is being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet. While that sounds ideal, there are technical challenges. A website built with responsive design will automatically resize for different devices. But when the site has to squeeze down to a much smaller screen, decisions have to be made and coding has to be done as to which content is displayed well, if at all. Depending on the size and complexity of the website, using responsive design can be costly in time, which of course, is money.

Which Mobile Solution?

So what does all of this mean for most businesses? Mobile websites, mobile-friendly websites and mobile advertising are disruptive. They are new concepts of doing business. They should not be dismissed or ignored. They are effective, and they become more effective with every smartphone and tablet sold.

Henry Ford said, “If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.”

For many of you, not having a mobile web presence and strategy will ultimately cost you much more than having a mobile web presence.

Please email gomobile@webwisedesign.com or call us today at 1-800-281-9993 or 608-822-3750 to talk about which mobile presence will work best for you.

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Every page on your website is a potential landing page.

if you want it read.

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