Tips And Tricks

The purpose of the logo is not to explain what you do. It’s to help people remember you and define the quality of your organization. The most beautiful logo in the world will not increase sales at all but an ugly one can demolish your brand and lower your prices.

ALWAYS Start with a picture. There is a reason that you don’t see words hanging on people’s walls very often. It’s because we are hardwired to respond to visuals. People don’t like to read unless they are engaged. That’s why books have covers. The biggest mistake people make is to try and describe what they are saying with a picture. The job of the picture is to get people’s attention. if you have their attention they will read what you have to say.

There are two distinct strategies that consistently bring in leads, donations and sales. Most successful websites use a combination of these two strategies because nothing beats them for converting visitors into customers and once you learn to recognize them you will see these strategies everywhere!

When you are a small business owner, there are several ways to test whether your idea could work and be of interest to prospective customers. An effective way to see if there’s some traction for your idea is an approach popular with the tech-industry called an MVP. An MVP is a very simple, stripped-down version of a website with just enough features to satisfy early customers, test pricing or see if people even want your idea. The goal is to get valuable feedback before spending a ton of money on product development.

Real estate in high-traffic corridors is expensive for a reason. Businesses in those places rarely fail. It is the same with websites. Websites with high-volume traffic rarely fail. If you haven’t already, you should install google analytics on your website and see how many people are actually going there. People usually have an over-exaggerated idea of how many people visit their site and the actual numbers can be sobering. Fortunately there are many things you can do to improve your organic search results. Here are the first few steps.

In the Marketing world, the more you can automate the better. Drip campaigns are automated email sequences that strategically send pre written emails to prospects or customers over time. You can create campaigns for your entire list or you can automatically enroll customers in segmented sequences that speak just to them.

There are 2 basic types of digital advertising. Search Based Adversing and Disruptive Advertising. Both types of advertising can be effective, and which is right for you depends on what you are selling. Often it’s not clear which is better so we always recommend doing both and looking at the data to make the decision. Here is how to get started with AdWords.

There are 2 basic types of digital advertising. Search Based Adversing and Disruptive Advertising. Both types of advertising can be effective, and which is right for you depends on what you are selling. Often it’s not clear which is better so we always recommend doing both and looking at the data to make the decision. Here is how to get started with Facebook and Instagram Ads.

Psychological pricing is a marketing strategy designed to coerce people to pay more for your products or services. We also use this model to increase donations for Non-Profits.

Since people first started selling stuff, the basic elements of the sales funnel have always been this: Awareness, Attention, Interest and Action. Sales Funnels are very simple and logical once you understand them and how to set one (or many) up.

There are many factors that contribute to a slow website. Some are technical, like hosting, the theme you use, the number of plugins you use. Some of these are choices, such as Image Size, Streaming Video, Ads and Social Feeds. Big images, Video, Ads and Social Feeds slow down a website but increase conversion.

Faster is always better, but before you make a decision, there is a balance to be had, and OFTEN companies choose conversion (selling products) over load speed.

API, B2B, CMS, CPC, CRM, CSS (and we are still only in the C’s). Good god our industry loves it’s acronyms. Sometimes, acronyms are useful, but usually, they are just plain annoying. But here are 3 VERY good ones. If you only have time to memorize a few, forget KPI’s and learn these 3, they will explode your business!!!!

The question people always ask us is: “What is the difference between a custom HTML 5 WordPress theme and customizing a commercial WordPress theme?” There are advantages and disadvantages with both of course. People usually choose a Commercial theme because it’s much less expensive and easier to maintain. But even if you have the resources, custom is not always better. Read below to see if a custom HTML 5 WordPress theme is right for you.

A website is the first point of contact people will have with most organizations and making your website spectacular may be the best money you ever spend. Here is a guide to help you  understanding why a great website costs money and where you can cut corners if resources are tight.

Our perception is formed through two basic psychological approaches. Once you understand how they work, you can influence what people do without them even realizing it. This is exactly how big brands use your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention.

This is called “Link Building” and is hands down the best way to drive traffic to your website. And if a well known site links to you, it will not only explode page views, but raise your ranking on Google astronomically.

One of the things we are VERY good at is reducing bounce rate. This means that we create sites that engage visitors and keeps them on your website for a long time. One of the principal ways do this is to use big, highly engaging imagery. One thing we know after more than 20 years in this business is that people make a decision weather they stay or leave your site in seconds, even milliseconds. This is far too little time to read text and understand what it is saying. So, what this means is that it is the imagery that makes the difference.

People often ask us what is the difference between the million dollar websites we would build for big brands and the ones built by the low-price website designers you see all over the web.
One factor is that big brands hire teams of psychologists to figure out how to get people to buy. You may not have those resources, but there are a bunch of tricks you can do on your own.

It’s all about cognitive bias. A cognitive bias refers to the systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical or controlled fashion.

Architecting a website is about using internal links is to direct users to other content within your website. However, besides directing users to other content you can also use internal links to flow the link power to your whole site, such that articles that have little to no links also rank on Google. To do this, think of each section of your website as a self contained micro-site – it’s own closed ecosystem focused on a certain subject of expertise. Then make sure every page links to the page below it in each micro-site. Lastly link them all back to the main page of the micro-site.

Creating a great website is the single most important thing you can do for your Business. No one will come to your office or storefront any more without looking at your website first – except for maybe a very few businesses that rely solely on foot traffic. And even then, a great website with a strong web presence will perhaps double your revenue.

Driving traffic is the name of the game on the web. What good is a gorgeous website if no one visits it? Ironically many of our clients seem to think that once they make their site live that millions of people will know about it, then are stunned when they turn on analytics and see that only their mom and their brother are going to it.

The biggest SEO issue that most websites face is lack of quality content. Content is important because it is the way that Google evaluates what your website is about and how good it is. Google is a great reader and it reads, understands and archives the content of each website it crawls. If your content is weak, Google lowers the rank of your website, sometimes ignoring it all together. Google needs to provide great websites for Google users to stay in business and Google sees little value in a website that offers poor content.

Even small businesses have to look good. Your website will be the very first point of contact for your customers, so even if your budget is tight, your website has to be absolutely perfect because you never get a second chance to make a first impression. You may have a great looking site, but is it working properly? A broken website not only will be penalized in search engine results, but it will provide a frustrating experience for your customers and the attrition rate will soar. Use this checklist to see what needs fixing in order to turbocharge your website!

Technology is constantly evolving. This means your new website WILL become outdated. Like a brand new car, if not properly maintained, it WILL break. A website is not to be put up and forgotten about. Studies have shown that keeping your websites content up to date and fresh can boost sales, reduce bounce rates and greatly reduce the risk of security issues. So here are some common problems and some tips to keep your website healthy and running in tip-top condition for a long, long time.

YouTube is the second largest search engine. To ignore YouTube is to ignore potential customers. Follow this checklist to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website.