Website Forms

Weekly Links Roundup – Site Speed, Product Pages, Contact Pages, WordPress Security Myths

February 22, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

You know your website is slow. It’s always been like that. But do you really understand what that slow site could be costing you in terms of customers and conversions? A recent report shows that 70% of buyers are influence by a site’s page loading time. The average site loads in about 15 seconds – but a number of studies show that the majority of online shoppers will leave a site if they have to wait more than 3 seconds. If you need help making your site faster, check out our Performance Optimization service or get in touch with questions.

Learn how to take your product pages to the next level with this great post on design elements to make product pages soar. Start with inviting, high-quality photography – this is really critical – and then polish your text descriptions to make your product seem irresistable. Be sure to have a clear call-to-action (Add to Cart) and don’t pack the page with too much information. Never get in the customer’s way!

Here are tips for making an effective contact page – including having a contact form (form submissions are something you can measure in Analytics). But don’t make your form too long – studies show that the more questions you ask, the less likely people will fill it out (that’s really true for general contact forms, and doesn’t necessarily apply to all types of forms).

Finally… it’s always fun to debunk WordPress security risks, and here are the top 5 for this week. WordPress is no more or less secure than other online platforms. The biggest security problem for a WordPress site is the negligent site owner who fails to keep plugins, themes and WordPress updated, making their site a prime target for hackers. Don’t be that person! Be better and keep your site safe.

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

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

January 25, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

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 – Signup Forms, Contact Forms, Google Tag Manager, KPIs

May 4, 2018 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and marketing links of the week.

Looking to grow your email list? Start at the beginning by sprucing up your signup form – and pay special attention to #11, the privacy statement, with GDPR coming up in just a few weeks.

Building the perfect contact form, from a more UX-based perspective.

If you use Google Tag Manager, this post from Sucuri about how GTM is being targeted by hackers to deliver malicious code. The take-home is that *any* external script, even those from Google, has the potential to be a problem. Minimize their use as much as you can; the more you have, the bigger impact on site load time, at a minimum.

Finally… How do you know if your website marketing efforts are paying off? You can use a tool like Google Analytics to look at traffic and visitor behavior, sure, but what exactly should you be measuring? Learn how to define and measure appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business.(If you’ve never listened to one of Paul Boag’s podcasts, I highly recommend them).