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Conversion Rates

Weekly Links Roundup – Ashburn VA, Adobe Apps, Forms, Remarketing

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Ever noticed, if you’re like most Google Analytics users, how much traffic you get from Ashburn, VA? Turns out Ashburn is a big technology center – 70% of the world’s Internet traffic flows through there; about 2.2 trillion Google searches per day.

Adobe’s app subscriptions are undeniably expensive. Photoshop by itself is $33.99/mo for businesses (right now). The first time I bought Photoshop it was in a box with a bunch of other Creative Suite apps for around $600. But anyway, there are alternatives for everything. Here’s a post on 27 free alternatives to Adobe subscription apps. I can also recommend the Affinity products – not free, but solid photo and illustration tools at a low cost.

Here is an interesting post on how form length affects conversions – and it’s not just form length that can have a negative impact. Sometimes longer forms do better, it all depends on a mix of factors.

You’ve probably heard about remarketing (if you’re not using it already) – but you may not be so sure what it is. This is a great intro – learn how to get started with remarketing using Google Ads and Facebook. Basically, remarketing is like getting a second chance to connect to potential customers who already know who you are, such as people who visited your site but didn’t make a conversion.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Republish Old Posts, Content Curation, Website Footers, More Conversions

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Merry Christmas!

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Do you ever republish your old blog posts? If you don’t, you should consider it. It’s likely there are great old posts that just need a little updating before they’re ready to put in front of newer readers. Recycling old content is often much easier than trying to come up with new topics! Learn why and how to republish old blog posts – and the right way to do it to keep your “link juice.”

Speaking of blogging – here’s a post that discusses one of my favorite strategies, content curation, and how you can use it to get more leads to your site. Content curation is the act of sifting through lots of web content and creating posts that group your findings into themes – think boards on Pinterest, for example.

Did you give much thought to your website’s footer (the section at the very bottom)? Or did you assume that most users won’t ever see it and not put a lot of effort into making it useful? That’s a mistake. Learn how to make your footer work harder for you by including things like contact info (or a contact form), your privacy policy or terms of service, and yet another call-to-action.

Finally… learn how to use persuasion to get more conversions on your site. A conversion is anything you want the user to do: buy something, or sign up for a newsletter, or submit a contact form. Use psychology to get more of them!

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Slow Sites, Black Friday, Improving Conversions, Google Reviews, Blogging

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Think your slow-as-a-turtle website isn’t hurting your business? Think again. Google has been looking at page load time since back in 2010, and they use this information when ranking websites. A study from 2016 showed that over 50% of mobile users would abandon a site if it took more than 3 seconds to load. Do you think they’ve gotten more patient since then? Nope. Learn how a slow site impacts your business. And then take a look at our performance optimization service. We can help you stop frustrating your users!

Having a great big sale on Black Friday? It’s time to start sending emails to customers now – like, today. Learn some handy (and timely) email marketing techniques for the big day.

And speaking of the 2018 holiday shopping season… learn how to tweak your landing pages for more conversions. What’s a conversion? That’s an action you want a user to take. It usually includes things like: making a purchase; submitting a contact form; or clicking a contact link. Top tip for this season: chatbots (when done well) can be a big help to your business for both shopping assistance and customer support.

Google Reviews. You know how important they are – and how a bad review can turn your day upside down. But don’t worry… you can respond to bad Google reviews in a meaningful and effective way, and often turn them around to demonstrate how well your business responds under pressure. Hint: you should also respond to positive reviews to show you’re paying attention. The fewer reviews you have, the more important this is.

Finally… does your blog content play it safe? Is it boring? Or do you stretch your boundaries and get out of your comfort zone from time to time? If you think you’re not that kind of writer, maybe you should learn to be. How to avoid creating safe content. This is good advice for all bloggers.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Social Media Auto Posting, SEO Glossary, SEO Challenges, Color

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

Need an easy way to manage the auto-posting of your WordPress blog posts to your various social media sites? Here’s a roundup of 10 plugins for social media auto-posting. I use Revive Old Post for republishing old content, and I’ve also used a plugin not on this list: Social Media Auto Publish. It’s free but limited to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ever been doing your own SEO (or trying to decipher something your SEO expert sent you) and having to deal with acronyms and terms you don’t recognize? Here’s a comprehensive great big glossary of SEO terms for your small business reference library.

Speaking of SEO – ever tried to do it for a product or service with no (that’s zero) search demand? It’s not an impossible task, you just need to think a bit more creatively.

Finally… this week I’ve been working with a client to refine their logo – and by association, website – color palette. Here’s a guide to using color psychology to increase conversions and interactions on your site.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – CRO, Hosting Matters, Online Security

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

Here’s a great case study showing how UX design and visual hierarchy can improve conversion rates of a web page. Simple changes can bring you noticeable results! If your site is not converting as well as it could be, a brand new year is a great time to improve. Get in touch, Red Kite can help.

Where you host matters. Why would you relegate your business website, which hopefully is helping you earn a living, to a $1.99 hosting account? Here’s the latest big outage news from EIG, who bought up dozens of small hosts like HostGator, BlueHost, HostMonster and many more. I was with HostGator for about 7 years after I started Red Kite and loved them to death. Their support fell through the floor when they sold to EIG, with many unacceptable outages and far too much downtime. I left them shortly after for Knownhost (an awesome dedicated and VPS host) and now am with WP Engine (best host I’ve ever used). When you pay nothing, that’s pretty much what you can plan on receiving in return. Do yourself and your business a favor and get a better host if you’re with one of the EIG providers listed in that article.

There’s so much Internet security noise out there, it’s hard to know what to do! Here’s a short but useful list of 8 things you can do to improve online security for your business.

Finally… we lost our 15-year-old dog 2 days after Christmas. I saw this quote yesterday and it made me smile and think of her:

the best thing about dogs is you can act like something really good just happened and they’ll instantly start celebrating too and they have no idea what the context is they’re just always ready to party no matter what