Recently, a client in the whole health and beauty business who provides Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture added massage therapy to her services. She wants to write a new page for her website to introduce this service. There are two options I recommend. 1. Write a blog post introducing the new service and categorize it as “news” and/or “new services.” Any blog category or post can be added to the menu like a page. Or, 2. If you want it to be a page then do both. Use the content from the blog post and insert it into the page. You can link the post and page to each other. Finding new information in more than one place on a website is a good thing!

I can’t emphasize enough how important blog posts are and should be a regular practice. Here are the reasons why:

1. Posts immediately get sent to anyone subscribed to your blog and encourage people to sign up
2. Posting enlivens your website and makes it more attractive to people seeking information
3. Posts get sent out over the internet apart from your website, pulling in new prospects
4. Posting enhances your search engine optimization and should be a part of any SEO plan
5. Posts can be added to your social networking and newsletter as part of your overall marketing strategy

So, When you think about new activity on your website, don’t forget the blog is waiting to work for you more than just a web page can. Need some training? Give me a shout!

TEXT
You may already have text from a previous website that you want to update or you may have none at all. Brochures, reports and other publications may offer you a good start. The designer or content developer will take this to edit into something usable for the new website, keeping in mind what key words need to be added for search engine optimization. This is a start and you will have to involved in the editing to make it work for you.

GRAPHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
If you have a logo, that is a good place to start for color exploration. Not having a good logo may provide an opportunity to include that design in your agreement. Photographs you may already have should enhance your color palette and brand. If you do have good photography, the designer will suggest or select the ones that will be placed on the home page. Another option is to purchase high quality photographs from a stock agency. Designers will look for photographs with the right colors and style for your site.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Mapping out the layout is key to good user experience. Your visitors will need a clear understanding of what you do and how you will help them. Your designer will create a design that provides a satisfying pathway for a visitor who follows through with a call of email to find out more.

SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH
When all the functionality is set and the layout is finished, your designer will launch the site and make sure everything is working correctly. Flow, typos, links and software kinks need to be worked out. Your site should have a security certificate and your new site should be added to search engines and social networks. Incoming marketing efforts can begin to provide traffic to your site which can then be tracked.

Your involvement as website owner is necessary to achieve good results from your website from the very beginning to the end!

Not noticeable but important

An HTTPS connection guarantees three things

• Confidentiality. The visitor’s connection is encrypted, obscuring URLs, cookies, and other sensitive metadata.
• Authenticity. The visitor is talking to the “real” website, and not to an impersonator or through a “man-in-the-middle”.
• Integrity. The data sent between the visitor and the website has not been tampered with or modified.

Here are those points explained by Kayce Basques, technical writer at Google.

1. HTTPS helps prevent intentionally malicious attackers snd legitimate but intrusive companies from inserting their ads into your websites or onto your users’ browsers. They also like to trick your users into giving up sensitive information or installing malware that will negatively affect user experiences and create security vulnerabilities.
2. HTTPS is not only for those that handle sensitive communications. Every unprotected HTTP request can potentially reveal information about the behaviors and identities of your users.
3. HTTPS doesn’t just block misuse of your website. It’s also a requirement for many cutting-edge features and an enabling technology for app-like capabilities.

HTTP will soon be considered non-secure
And it’s also important to know that Chrome and Firefox security teams are working on gradually marking plain HTTP as non-secure. Ultimately, the goal of the internet community is to establish encryption as the norm, and to phase out unencrypted connections. This means that not have https, will negatively affect your seo and that having it improves a website’s own SEO and analytics.

Can an HTTPS connection be attacked?
There are only three ways for attackers to get through the https security wall and they are very difficult and require significant expense. In addition, they would all have to be targeted attacks, and not feasible to execute against any user connecting to any website. By contrast, plain HTTP connections can be easily intercepted and modified by anyone involved in the network connection, and so attacks can be carried out at large scale and at low cost.

I was surprised that getting an https on your website is fairly easy and inexpensive to do. Ask your service provider to set it up for you. You can set it up yourself on the control panel at your hosting company. Be sure the https shows up in the url of your browser. If it doesn’t, call your hosting company and ask them to help you out. There might be some settings they need to set on their end. and then rest assured, your visitors will have a better experience.

At our group, we pass mostly experience-based referrals. Experience referrals are from using a service and passing on your good experience about the service you received. They’re very important, but they’re not the whole story.

The article “Referral Marketing and Your Professional Services Brand” by Lee Frederiksen, PH.D, is from Hingemarketing.com. He states that another source of referrals, In fact, 82%, are from folks that have not worked with you directly. He says, “These referrals aren’t made in the dark”,

Chart by Hinge Marketing, 2016.

“Specifically they draw on your reputation and what referrers understand about your areas of expertise. These referrals are built on your brand.”

The chart at right reveals that brand-based referrals are driven by your expertise, via speaking engagements, blog posts and social media engagement. Many of my customers have heard me recommend blog posting as not only a way to show you are an expert in your field, but to attract inbound marketing to your website.

Professor Frederiksen goes on to say, “It’s common to hear service providers say that they can win new clients reliably…if they can just get a foot in the door to talk with them. In many cases, that may be true. But what if you never get the chance?”

And get this: Hinge research shows that over half of buyers—a full 51.9%—report they have ruled out firms without talking to them.

Potential clients usually receive the names of several providers.  And most buyers check out providers online, with a firm’s website being by far the most common source of information. But often the provider is ruled out after things go wrong from the website experience. Bad user experience is the main reason a website fails to win over your visitors and you lose them as customers.

I know that good website design improves user experience by answering the questions a visitor wants to know about your services. It provides good user flow. Or, if the website has poor quality content, is unimpressive or too focused on selling, you have wasted a good referral.

In the end, I learned that it takes BOTH a good referral AND a good website to win over a new customer.

I explain that  publishing blog posts, paying attention to website content key words and reorganizing their website for good user flow is a much better way to get new customers. It takes a bit of work, but it pays off.

I came across this article today and I find it very helpful in explaining this topic more thoroughly. So, if you are looking into ad words, read this first.

The article is by Holly Fong —— NEWFANGLED.COM

“It pains us to see money lost to misguided online marketing efforts. Unfortunately, this is fairly common for marketers that invest in online advertising without taking the necessary precautions. Almost all platforms with paid promotion options default to spending your budget as fast as possible. If you start a campaign without taking the proper initial steps, you can blow your budget in less than a week and have nothing to show for it.

For the highest return on investment from your online ads, there are important steps we recommend you take before opening your wallet. We’ve developed a four-step process, outlined below to help you reduce waste and get the most from your advertising spend.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Do not waste money just to get more visitors to your website. You can spend thousands of dollars on pay per click (PPC) campaigns and drastically increase the traffic to your site, but that won’t necessarily impact your bottom-line. It is not just about getting more visitors to your site, it’s about getting the right visitors to find your website. Understanding who you want to target and what their needs are is the first step in establishing an online advertising plan.

The more targeted your audience is, and the more specific their needs are, the more money you can potentially save. Don’t waste your time bidding on keywords with high traffic terms, go after lower-traffic long tail keywords that are more specific to your target persona. Avoid reducing your potential ROI by marketing to an unrealistically broad audience. LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to reach your target audience with dynamically generated, personalized display ads. Your marketing initiatives and calendar should all be centered around your potential customers.

2. Get Informed on the Platforms

There are a lot of places where you can buy ads, there are various types of ads you can buy, and the landscape continues to get more crowded and competitive. Each of these various advertising platforms and ad types have strengths and weaknesses.

LinkedIn is a great platform for promoting gated content such as eBooks to drive and convert visitors on your site. You can use LinkedIn’s advertising tools to get your white paper in front of your ideal customers. LinkedIn allows you to target your audience by company size, job function, title, and location. You can buy both ads and sponsored updates to drive readers to your white paper.

Facebook is a terrific tool for retargeting contacts from your email list and promoting sign-ups for a webinar or event.

Wishpond has also outlined How Facebook Ads increased first-time webinar registration by 450%.

Google AdWords can be used to help you reach prospects based on keywords they’re researching online. Google AdWords is the world’s largest and most popular pay-per-click advertising platform, giving you access to potentially the largest audience. This can either lead to the highest or lowest return on investment depending on whether the ad has been set up for optimal efficiency. Google remarketing search ads narrow your audience to help bring visitors back to your site while increasing brand awareness and trust.

Depending on the asset you are marketing and the stage of the prospect you’re marketing to, a different mix of platforms will most effectively help you achieve your goal. However, the platforms should be viewed in a complementary, rather than adversarial, way to promote your content and services. For example, Google AdWords, LinkedIn and Facebook can be utilized within one campaign or to promote an individual landing page. The ad copy and budget will vary among platforms but the each platform provides another avenue of connecting with prospects.

3. Optimize Your Landing Page

The page you direct paid traffic to should be optimized for visitors coming from your online ads. Sending visitors to your home page or services page can be a confusing user experience if there isn’t a strong correlation between the page and the ad they clicked. You will typically see less time spent on the page and a much lower conversion rate when you pay for visits to these types of pages.

Additionally, landing pages should have one call to action, such as registering for a webinar. Your home and services pages typically contain various calls-to-action which distract the visitor and often can cost you a conversion. After a visitor has filled out the form, it is acceptable and encouraged to display the main navigation and allow the visitor to browse your site.

To take it a step further, we advocate for A/B testing the landing page. A/B testing is comparing two versions of a web page to see which one converts visitors at a higher rate. Subtle changes to the page layout can make a huge difference in the conversion rate. It is important that you only test one variable at a time. For example, you could test the call-to-action placement or the page copy, but do not test both at the same time. By testing one variable, you’ll be able to determine what change led to a better conversion rate. A/B testing is an ongoing process. We encourage you to regularly test all the pages that you’re spending money advertising for the highest ROI.

4. Understand How to Track and Review Results

Possibly the largest benefit of online advertising is the ability to track everything. Honestly, if you are unable to measure how your ads are performing, then you probably shouldn’t invest in paid advertising at all. Once you’ve determined you’re going to invest in online advertising, you should get to know Google Analytics Custom Campaigns, learn how to create customized URLs, and make sure you have goals set up for all the conversion points (forms/CTAs) on your site.

Marketers often wonder if their paid ads are performing as they should be. It’s common for marketers to make the mistake of reviewing their results on a daily or even hourly basis. This is a bad idea and can lead to making premature changes. It is better to let your ads run, accumulate data, and make decisions based on the trends you see over time. We recommend using spreadsheets to track the performance of your online ads. It’s important to remember that form submissions and conversion rate are the metrics to focus on. Impressions and clicks are just a waste of money unless they help convert a lead, which can potentially lead to revenue.

Online advertising is not a quick-fix solution. To see an impact, you have to stick with it longer than a few weeks or months. Time and proper analysis are required to drive targeted traffic to your site and convert leads. Observing the struggles our client’s face in effectively running online advertising campaigns has led us to create the Newfangled Online Advertising Program. This is a 12-month program where a Newfangled strategist will work closely with your team to define your advertising goals, then suggest and implement a digital advertising mix on your behalf, and review the results with you on a regular basis. It’s the best way to make sure you’re not wasting your online ad dollars.

If you’re interested in learning more about this program, click on the button below, or contact us, and we can discuss putting together a program to fit your needs and budget.”

(P.S. I am not promoting you hire Newfangled, unless you have a good budget to do so — Deb Perugi)

From the Newfangled article

After reading my favorite blog’s latest post on Purposeful User Flow, I have new tool I am very excited to share. Thanks, Newfangled!

Finally an answer to the problem of conversion
…that is, getting visitors to “convert” by filling a form or make a call to your company. Most visitors stay on a website for less than ten seconds, experts say. It’s quite a challenge to interest your visitor enough to get a desired action. SEO (search engine optimization) is easy compared to this task, IMHO.

Purposeful User Flow is the organizing method that every business can use, Large organizations with hundreds of pages such as Boston hospitals also benefit from large agencies also apply this method.

What is Purposeful User Flow?
Purposeful User Flow is a structure that is used in organizing content in such a way that the visitor, or prospect, learns about the company and understands why they would want to do business with them.

How does it work?
You start with a statement on the top of the home page with a link (1) that points to the Capabilities section (2) of the business. Identify at least three capabilities. It is not the same as services. I’ll give you an example:

The three capabilities of my friend the Real Estate Attorney is:

1. He/she is knowledgeable and has experience
2. He/she solves problems for his clients calmly and reliably
3. He/she goes the extra mile to get the job done efficiently and on time

Several Capabilities text blocks are always found on the Home page of a website that each lead to their own Services (3) page. Each service explains what you do to earn money and are what make your capabilities possible. Our friend the Real Estate Attorney might list his services such as “real estate acquisitions and sales”, “residential mortgage loan closings”, “representing home buyers and sellers”, etc. Feel free to add descriptions of your services if you feel they are needed or can help with SEO. Next, you will want to point the reader to Case Studies and Testimonials (4).

As described by the Kissmetrics Blog, “Case studies are a great way to tell the world how valuable your products or services are. They go beyond simple testimonials by showing real-life examples of how you were able to satisfy your customer’s needs and help them accomplish their goals.” Sometimes they contain data to support goal success. Adding a testimonial along with the case study tells your customer in their own words how satisfied they are in their own words.

Don’t forget to place your Call to Action buttons in strategic places that link to a form or email. Make it easy for your prospects to reach you when they are motivated.

Purposeful User Flow is also beneficial to a first time visitor who enters the site via a web query and lands on an inside page, such as a blog post. The reader will read the post and then want to know more about the company. He or she will circle back to the home page and follow the flow to get all the information they need to make an informed decision and fill out the form. Chances are, they will!

Wellesley Repertory Theatre has a new website with a lot more functionality and growth potential. Their previous site was showing wear and not easily updated. We worked together to organize their three theatre groups events into a manageable system that makes it easier for editors and visitors alike. The domain has changed from wellesleysummertheatre to its current domain. Visit their new website at http://wellesleyrepertorytheatre.org. Be sure to check out the Box Office page and consider making a reservation to one of their shows! See you at the theatre!