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Monthly ArchivesMay 2018 - Hostaculous

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Website Designing Mistakes You’re Probably Making

Website Designing Mistakes You’re Probably Making

If you run a business online or off then you understand the importance of having a website and online presence. However, if it’s your first website, or you designed your website yourself then you might have made mistakes. Luckily, a lot of these mistakes are easy to correct. If you’re relying on your website to drive traffic your way, then you’ll want your website to be a well-oiled machine. Below we highlight the ten mistakes that most beginners make, and what you can do to fix these issues.

1. Lack Of Vision

Your website needs to exist for a definite reason, not simply because you think you should have an online presence. You need to decide upon the purpose of your website before you even begin building. Your website must have a definite purpose, as every page on your website will work to fulfill this purpose. For example, your website could be used to build authority, source new leads, sell a product or service, give information about your business, and much more. You’ll want your user to land on your website and immediately know what your website is all about.

2. Rushing To Market

Instead of getting your website up as soon as possible it’s important you take time to research your market first. For example, if you have an older target market you’ll need to make sure your website is easy to read, digest, and navigate. By having an understanding of your market first you’ll be able to build a website that actually serves them, instead of simply taking up space.

3. Complicated Design

In order to have a successful website it needs to be simple, not flashy. Having an overcomplicated design will only lead to confusion. The goal of your design should be to create the best possible user experience across your website.

4. Design Is Too Trendy

Trends come and go, but timeless design lasts forever. By building your website on the back of solid design principles you’ll be able to create a website that outlasts certain trends and fads. Websites that rely on trends will become outdated very quickly.

5. Out-Of-Date Content

If you haven’t updated your content in years then chances are it’s not up to date with your current business, or the latest web standards. If you have older content your site your visitors may assume you’re out of business, or aren’t as innovative as your competition. If you have a blog make sure you update it on a regular basis, as nothing looks worse than a vacant blog.

6. Poor Quality Photography

Low-quality photography, or outdated stock photography gives your website an amateur feel and won’t do a lot to draw your visitor into your website. Images can help you build a connection with your audience, but only if they’re aligned with your message and business. Make sure you either hire a professional photographer, or use high-quality stock photos that aren’t cheesy.

7. Having Broken Elements/Links

Every element of your website needs to be working. This means you need to test all of your links and pages, so your users don’t end up with the dreaded 404 page. You’ll also want to check all of your internal links to make sure you’re not leading your users to a dead end.

8. Poorly Designed Logo

Your logo is a central piece of your branding. By designing your logo yourself, or getting a cheap logo designed, you won’t do much to further your branding or website. Although your logo is a subtle part of your design it can communicate a lot about your business.

9. Poor Font Choice

Font choice is another subtle element that most business owners neglect. The font you choose needs to compliment your design and increase the readability of your content. This is when it can be helpful to consult the opinion of a professional designer. But, if you’re choosing your own font choice the simpler font is often the better choice.

10. No Call-To-Action

You must lead your visitors somewhere. A website without a call-to-action is akin to nothing more than a virtual business card. Once you’ve proven yourself valuable to your visitors you need to direct them to take action. That action can be signing up for your email list, giving your business a call, or a multitude of other options. Getting your website into tip top shape can take a lot of work. But, it’s time well spent because a well functioning website will help your business grow for the long-term.

What Does Your About Page Say To Your Audience?

What Does Your About Page Say To Your Audience?

Your about page is a crucial part of your website. You can use it to convey valuable information about your business and connect with your user in new and more meaningful ways. Sadly, most business don’t use their about page to actually deepen their relationship with their users. Instead they just use the page to talk about themselves and give a quick rundown of their services offered. These elements are necessary, but they shouldn’t be the sole focus of your about page.

Make Your About Page About Your Visitors

When you’re at a party, or having a conversation with someone and they keep going on and on about themselves, it’s not a very fun conversation is it? Your about page comes across the same way when you only talk about yourself and your accolades. Instead, try a different approach, and make your about page about your readers. The moment a visitor clicks over to your about page you’ll want to tell them the benefits they’ll receive if they stick around. You want to speak to anything that will prevent them from clicking the back button. Address their needs and pain points as soon as possible.

Speak To Their Feelings

When you can convey emotion and feeling with your about page it’s much easier to get them excited about what you’re offering. By taking the time to explain their feelings, your visitors will automatically feel like they’re accepted and part of what you’re building. It’s much easier to get someone to take action when you show that you deeply understand their needs.

Get Into Their Heads

Once you’ve shown you understand them on a level of emotion you need to make your readers feel as if you can read their minds and present them with the perfect solution. You can do this by going deeper into their pain points, and showing how you can solve their problems, and that you’ve done it before.

Use The “Humble Brag”

When you brag about yourself or your business accomplishments you need to do it in a way that doesn’t turn off your readers. Simply listing your accomplishments can actually isolate your readers and make it harder for them to relate to you. A great way to do this is to wrap your accomplishments inside of a story or a joke. Or, you can highlight them alongside other less than perfect details.

Wrap Up With A Call-To-Action

Once you finish your newly upgraded copy on your about page it’s time to tell your visitor what to do next. Since your about page often gets a lot of traffic you should conclude the page with a call-to-action that leads to a subscribe form or some other course of action. Give your users a way to continue the conversation with you. Making sure your about page connects with your users is a crucial piece a lot of online business owners are missing. Get this piece right and you’ll see your subscribers and relationships start to blossom.

How To Grow Customer Loyalty

How To Grow Customer Loyalty

Living in a city built around a tourism based economy has shown me the businesses who survive aren’t those with the best marketing strategy, but those who have managed to retain loyal customers, both local and returning visitors, throughout every season of the year.

The feeling a customer gets coming back to the business often means more than the quality of the service being offered. For instance, one of the most popular coffee shops in my town thrives due largely in part to offering a location in which people want to be seen. As a self-proclaimed coffee critique I can tell you the difference in product would not be enough to create this much separation in popularity. The trick is in the x-factor, in this case providing a hub in which people can see friends, come to get work done, and really gain a secondary experience through visiting the business altogether.

However, earning the adoration of customers is easier said than done. Like any metric in business it involves a variety of factors, a lot of which boil down to good customer service and unique products of high quality. Small businesses are making a come back, and if yours is to contend in the realm of people defining themselves through brands and products it’s important to start gaining customer loyalty right now.

Here are some great tips to get you started.

Focus On Your Most Valuable Customers

Value can be a subjective term, but in this regard a valuable customer should be measured strictly on what they offer your business financially. Think of those who have recurrent faces first, the ones that are consistently coming back to your business and providing regular revenue. I like to think of these customers as ‘buffers’ because in times when business is slow they provide the difference between a strong month or just barely making it.

Financial value may be variant depending on what you’re selling, also. A coffee house may have valued customers based on them appearing most mornings for a cheap cup of coffee; a painting business on the other hand may have a most valued customer just by getting a couple gigs a year. In either circumstance both add up to lifetime value and your energy and attention needs to cater to those already serving your success.

Taking the time to show appreciation and remembrance for their regular support also turns into referrals as word of mouth, which is the most valuable form of marketing.

Invest In Your Customers Loyalty

While this is an old trick, providing reward incentives has proven to be one of the most effective ways to bring customers back in times when they have options for products. Large companies like Safeway have advanced rewards programs by offering discounts on gasoline when you spend money in their grocery outlets.

Many unit based businesses will offer frequent shopper cards, on which you’ll receive a free product after so many purchases. I know when I’m hungry I’ll tend to see if I have any punch cards in my wallet knowing my purchase will be even more valuable later.

Listen To Their Feedback and Actually Make Changes

This one can be tricky depending on how you’re choosing to receive feedback. Less than 5% of customers will respond to surveys when sent out via email, or posted on Social Media. Rather, take the time to scour sites on the Internet where reviews have already been posted, and take action to improve areas that seem to have recurring complaints or suggestions. Not every gripe has to do with the integrity of your business, but more often than not there’s areas of your regular operation that go unnoticed to staff and employees.

What I like to call a two-for-one is putting a survey on the receipt and offering a small discount on the customers next purchase just for returning the survey. Let the customer know you want to hear from them personally and that their return is extremely valuable, because it is!

Meaningful Customer Service

Do you ever feel like certain customer service requirements are a little overboard? Perhaps less genuine even?

Part of gaining a customers loyalty is making them feel a sense of personal connection to your business and that their time spent there is with recognition. Many small businesses put emphasis on employees learning their frequent customer’s names, along with encouraging conversations that contain more depth than just asking how their day is going. Humans crave attention, even if that’s coming from someone who only knows them in one environment.

As your business becomes more well known, try employing these tactics to ensure your product or service means more than just business as usual. Working to gain your customers loyalty will add up to more than just dollar signs for you, it will make your business meaningful to the lives of others which is a great feeling.

5 Excellent Websites for Checking Google Keyword Rankings

5 Excellent Websites for Checking Google Keyword Rankings

One of the essential elements of SEO is picking the right keyword, making them rank & track the keyword position in search.

It is absolutely necessary for a blogger or SEO professional to check their Google keyword ranking for target keywords. One of the most common mistakes bloggers and website administrators make is that they write and publish articles without targeting any keywords at all.

It takes only 10-15 minutes to use a keyword research tool like SEMRUSH or the Google keyword search tool to find which keywords to use. Make sure you take advantage of these tools in order to accomplish this very important step!

Once you are finished writing a SEO-optimized post using your target keywords, your next task is to keep track of its search engine rankings and to continue building backlinks with the proper anchor text.

**Again, proper keyword selection is one of the main factors involved in achieving a better ranking in Google’s search engine.**

Every blogger must aim to use the keywords which users search the most, especially those keywords which will help your website show up on one of the first few pages of search results.

If you accomplish proper on-page SEO, chances are good that you will appear in the first 50 search results.

To improve your SEO, you must manage keywords properly so that you can find out which keywords are strong for your particular domain and which are not. This information allows you to work on using the strongest keywords, thus increasing your likelihood of getting a better ranking in Google and other search engines.

In order to accomplish this goal, you need a tool which can tell you where a specific keyword ranks in Google’s search results without manually going through 100’s of search results and pages.

To help you to do this, we have compiled a list of some excellent free online tools to use to check your target keyword position in Google.

5 Useful Google Position Checker Tools:

1. SEMrush

 

SEMrush is my favorite tool on this list as it is a complete solution for keyword checking.

You can enter your website URL or the individual URL of a blog post, and it will show you which keywords you are currently ranking for. You can further click on any resulting keyword to check keyword competition and other details.

It supports Google (you can select Google Search based on your target geographical region)and Bing.

SEMrush is professional software that is easy to use, and you can try it for a couple of weeks for free before deciding whether you want to subscribe.

2. Ahrefs

 

I’m pretty happy with SEMrush, but if I ever have to replace it with anything else, it’s going to be Ahrefs.

This one is loaded with tons of great features. It automatically detects what keyword your website is ranking for & you can specify ranking based on country.

 

3. SERPWatcher

I’m a huge fan of SEO tools offered by Mangools as they work great & offers great UI. SERPWatcher is the latest addition which let you track keyword position for any domain. You can rack keyword position based on Geo location & device.

 

You can get one of their paid plan to track more keywords. The pricing is most reasonable under the paid tool & will fit your pocket perfectly.

 

4. Google Rank Checker

Google Rank Checker is an excellent free online utility which helps users track keyword positioning in Google search engine results.

In order to use this service, simply put in the keyword you want to search along with the domain name, and it will show you the position of that specific keyword in Google.

It’s that easy.

 

 

5. SERP’s Keyword Rank checker

This one is another popular free Keyword rank checker tool which shows more than search engine position. Along with search engine ranking it also shows CPC and search volume data, for any keyword or phrase.

 

When checking the Keyword rank, you can select the search engine location & also desktop or mobile device. This tool is idle for checking one or multiple Keyword ranking.

 

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