Don’t Underestimate The Power of 404 — Minneapolis, MN

When someone visits your site and takes a wrong turn, where do they end up? — On a page with indecipherable HTML mumbo jumbo? Instead of frustrating visitors with an Error 404 Page that makes them feel lost within your site, give them a clear path to get back to where the action is.

By designing your own 404 page, you can include the essential links to get visitors redirected to where you intended them to go. You can also avoid the inconsistent design that you would get without a custom page, making the user feel as though they are still within your site, even though they have wandered off the beaten path.

The same goes for search engines. If a person can get lost within your site, so can the search engine bots that scour your site for keywords to improve site visibility. Listing key navigation links on this page will help the user and/or bot get out of nowhere land and back to the pages that count.

Although it is a seemingly simple thing, a custom 404 Error Page has a big impact. It is often overlooked, because in essence its purpose is not to be viewed, but it can help you in more ways than one. It eliminates confusion, helps to maintain brand standards, and is a good SEO practice. Graybow.Olson’s new site implements a great example of an effective and creative 404 page — click here to take a look.

Uncovering the Content Gold Mine

One question that stalks the mind of every online entrepreneur is ‘How does one create web content that sells?’ — In order for your website to generate profit, it is very important that you first optimize your web content. This will allow you to gain more traffic through search engines, which will lead to a higher conversion rate. Beyond merely optimizing the text on your web pages, you must make it appealing to the consumer. It is true that today we are bombarded with more online advertisements than ever before. Never has advertising been more annoying and more mass-produced. How do you increase brand visibility and overall profit without oversaturating the consumer? — Here’s how:

A.)    Proper Design & Functionality:

• 1.)   General Design: Make the site visually pleasing, but not too complicated. Sites with too many things going on make it much harder for a prospective client to focus on how to take action. A general rule of thumb is to make the site organized and very easy to navigate.






• 2.)   Loading Time: It is important that all web pages within a site are able to load quickly. If it takes the customer too longer than 30 seconds view your page, chances are they will bounce before ever reading the content.






• 3.)   Message Saturation: Make sure that your online campaign stays away from overloading spam messages and constant pop-ups. If the customer is bombarded with marketing messages, they will feel overwhelmed, overexposed, and uninterested.



 

B.)    Maintaining Relevance: In order to increase search visibility online, you must first appear relevant to the search algorithms. Web content optimization allows your company to be more visible on the web by leveraging keywords, content, and links that correlate to the products that your company is selling.

C.)    Developing Trust: One of the best ways to hook potential clients is by providing compelling case studies and testimonials. Positive outcomes and demonstrated knowledge of the product or service you are offering will help you to gain the trust of the prospect. Blogs are also important as they build a pattern of communication with the client while also providing food for the search engines.

D.)    Encouraging Action: It is also essential to make it easy for the customer to contact you and/or buy your product. This can be done by incorporating calls to action strategically throughout your website. The whole goal of the site is to gain leads, so the simpler it is for the customer to make contact/sign up/buy your product, the more chances there are of turning that prospect into a client.

Better content equals higher profits. By applying the information above, your company will have a much greater chance at increasing traffic, and converting that traffic into revenue.

 



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• Tags: brand visibility, client, conversion rate, page chances, pop ups, profit, rule of thumb, site, web, website
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Bounce Back from Bounce Rates

Written by Online Marketing Minnesota

When operating an online business it is pivotal for every company to lower their homepage’s bounce-rates. “A Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.” Without question, one of the most important steps your company must take is to reduce the percentage that people “bounce” from your site. It takes a colossal effort in order to implement an advertising campaign, but it is equally important to convert search results into cash. In order to boost sales, your company needs to attract and capture your clients. Here are the 3 most important aspects to consider when attempting to decrease your homepage’s bounce-rates.

 

1)    Be Relevant:

1. Purpose: the purpose of your web site must align with the intent of the client. If you do not target an interested audience, most visitors to your site will be unlikely to purchase.
2. Keywords and Links: when implementing an advertising campaign make sure that you are utilizing keywords that are related to your product, and positioning links in places likely to be clicked on by “interested” clients.
3. Make sure that your home page and landing page are not redundant yet still reflect similar information. This helps to solidify the purpose of your website to your client.

 

2)    Increase the Action:

1. Call to Action: Your landing page/home-page must include multiple ways for your costumers to contact and interact with you. There are too many websites that make it difficult for the consumer to make further inquiries.
2. Dialogue: maintain an open dialogue with your clients. This can be achieved through chat rooms, blogs and forums. The more client-generated content you have, the more reliable you will seem to potential customers.
3. All call to action methods should be easily visible within seconds of entering your site.

 

3)    Improve Usability:

1. Loading time: a simple but often overlooked fact is that if your page takes too long to load, you better believe they are clicking somewhere else.
2. Design: make your website more appealing by not including annoying videos or in-your-face flash banners. Perhaps try multiple designs and ask your customers to rate them on your website.
3. User Friendliness: make it easy to navigate your site, do not clutter your home page with too many tabs or too much text.

 

Increasing conversion is not an overnight process. There are multiple steps that one must follow in order to turn search results into profit. Once you have tackled the task of directing people to your website, you must provoke further action. Through intelligent marketing, you too may heavily decrease your bounce rates.

Looking to improve your companies bounce rates? Need marked improvement in online lead generation?  Visit our Let’s Talk Page, or give us a call – 651-329-3259.



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• Tags: advertising, costumers, homepage, interested audience, interested clients, loading time, open dialogue, percentage, site, website
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• Category: Blog



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Catapulting Profits with Facebook

Written by Online Marketing Minnesota



In the past few years there has been a technological and innovative explosion. Social media platforms such as Facebook have come to dominate the globe, and affect the decisions and lives of countless people. The question that should be on the mind of every entrepreneur is whether or not this social media platform can drive revenue for his or her business. Although the answer to this question can be yes, it depends entirely on how your company goes about invading this new territory.

Social media platforms allow your company to engage the consumer in ways not always possible through ordinary marketing. Your company will increase revenue as a result of:

1. 1. Gaining street-credit: your company can utilize Facebook to garner street-credibility with consumers by offering special promotions, and tailoring your services to specific and local audiences.
2. 2. Utilizing a large consumer base and cost cutting measure: by creating pages on Facebook and providing links to your off-network site, businesses are able to tap into a massive network of people (750 million and growing) without having to pay for any outside research.
3. 3. Customer engagement: Facebook allows your business to communicate with the consumer like never before. They can be your fan, like your page, and even write reviews about your products. Also, by increasing the amount of customer-generated content, you will have reliable and consistent information for prospective clients.
4. 4. Integrates off-network site with Facebook: you can create links on your Facebook page that take potential customers to your off-network website(s). The more people that view your page and clink on the link, the more possibilities you have for conversion.
5. 5. Creates social incentives: when your customer becomes a fan or likes one of your pages, their friends on Facebook become able to see this. In turn, this may influence your customer’s friends buying patterns (this is especially important they are looking to buy products for holidays such as a birthday).

 

One of the most important steps in order to implement an effective Facebook campaign is to integrate your company’s off-network site with your F.B. page. You should make it very easy to connect your F.B. page with your website and vise versa. “That means like buttons above the fold on each product. That means allowing people to connect with Facebook to post reviews—which they can then push out to their friends (Gobry).” This diverts traffic from Facebook to your website, creating greater chances for conversion.

It is important that you begin infiltrating this media platform right away. “Every 20 minutes on Facebook (Huckabee)”:

1)     7.6 million pages were liked

2)     1.5 million wall posts were made

3)     1.9 million friend requests accepted

4)     1 million links were shared

5)     10.2 million comments made

 

To learn more about how your company can benefit from social media platforms such as facebook, visit our Let’s Talk page, or call 651.329.3259.




Bibliography

“Facebook–Money.” Facebook Money on Flickr. Web. 11 Jul 2011. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/famousin24hrs/5359670846/#/photos/famousin24hrs/5359670846/lightbox/>.

Gobry, Pascal-Emmanuel. “Here’s How To Make More E-Commerce Money With Facebook.” Business Insider 3 February 2011: 1. Web. 11 Jul 2011.

Huckabee, Huck. “Facebook Statistics.” Business and Facebook. Businessinternetmarketing.com, 06 January 2011. Web. 11 Jul 2011.

 



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• Tags: Customer, facebook, massive network, media platforms, Money, platform, site, special promotions, street credibility, website
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