Creating great website blog posts is a crucial element of content marketing. It helps businesses and
individuals establish thought leadership, engage with their audience, and drive traffic to their websites.
With the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), it is now possible to harness the power of this
technology to streamline the process of creating exceptional blog posts. In this essay, we will outline five
steps to take in order to create great blog posts using AI.
Step 1: Website Blog Posts Research and Idea Generation
AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of data, including articles, blog posts, and online resources,
to identify popular topics and trends within a given niche. By leveraging natural language processing and
machine learning algorithms, AI can provide valuable insights into what content resonates with your
target audience. This helps in generating fresh ideas and identifying relevant topics to write about. By
using AI to streamline the research process, you can save time and ensure your content is aligned with
your audiences.
Step 2: Content Outline and Structure
AI can be utilized to create a comprehensive outline and structure for blog posts. By analyzing existing
blog posts and articles, AI algorithms can identify key sections, subtopics, and supporting evidence that
should be included in the content. This helps in maintaining a logical flow and ensuring that the blog
post is well-organized. Content that is well structured with clear headlines and sub-headlines connects
better with both humans and the search engines.
Step 3: Writing Assistance and Language Enhancement
AI-powered writing assistance tools can provide valuable support to writers by suggesting
improvements in grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. These tools incorporate natural
language along with analytics to offer suggestions that enhance the readability and clarity of the content. By using AI to refine the language and style of the blog post, you can ensure that your content
is engaging and easily digestible for your audiences.
Step 4: Incorporating SEO Best Practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving organic traffic to a blog post. AI-powered tools can
analyze keywords, search trends, and user intent to optimize the content for search engines. By
suggesting relevant keywords to include in the blog post and offering recommendations for meta tags
and headings, AI can help you create content that ranks higher in search engine results pages.
Integrating AI into your SEO process ensures that your blog post is well-optimized for maximum visibility
and reach.
Step 5: Performance Analytics
AI can play a vital role in analyzing the performance of blog posts and providing insights for
improvements. By tracking key metrics such as page views, time on page, and bounce rates, AI
algorithms can identify patterns and trends in the audience’s engagement with your content. This data
can be used to refine future blog posts, tailor content to your audience’s preferences, and optimize the
overall content strategy. By leveraging AI analytics, you can continuously improve the quality and
effectiveness of blog posts over time.
AI has the potential to revolutionize the process of creating great blog posts. By utilizing AI, you can
enhance your content creation process and deliver exceptional value to your audience. It is important to
note that while AI can provide valuable insights and assistance, it is most effective when used in
conjunction with human creativity and expertise. By combining the power of AI with human intuition
and storytelling abilities, you can create compelling and impactful blog posts that engage readers, drive
traffic, and establish a strong online presence.
Our Charlotte, NC website design team has been all a buzz about the changes coming from Google Analytics. If you own a website, you’ll definitely want to get up to speed on and prepare for the transition in Google’s products.
If this is all news to you, you’re in the right place. Read on to find out more about the changes that are coming.
Here’s the Scoop
Google is preparing to phase out its Universal Analytics (UA) data tracking properties, making way for the new GA4 analytics tracking system. These are two separate data streams, and you can have both UA and GA4 running on your website simultaneously. Over the next year, website owners are encouraged to use both and to compare the differences in how the data is being tracked and to make changes to any reports.
What’s the Timeline?
GA4 actually rolled out in October 2020. If your website was created on or after this timeframe, you probably already have GA4.
You can install GA4 anytime and begin collecting data.
As of July 1, 2023 UA will no longer track data. If you install GA4 now, you’ll have a year’s worth of data by then and your GA4 tracking will continue.
You will have about 6 months after UA stops tracking to download all historical UA data.
What’s Changing?
This is all part of a foundational shift in how data is collected in several key areas. To give you a sense of what’s changing, we’ll review three core areas that are undergoing overhauls as part of GA4.
Privacy Tracking
The old methods of tracking data through IP addresses, cookies, and tags are becoming a thing of the past. A higher level of privacy is being demanded today across various types of activities. You can read about the moves to protect consumer privacy which can be traced back to the European Union’s 2018 rollout of the General Data Protection Regulation.
GA4 will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make predictions and assumptions about website traffic and user behavior. This will supplement the data and fill in gaps created by increasing privacy restrictions.
Cross-device Tracking
Google’s previous tracking was largely based on collecting data from individual devices and sessions. Information was tracked in silos and was often duplicated across devices.
GA4 offers a shift from a focus on individual metrics to a focus on the customer’s journey. It stitches together multiple data streams and sources, for example, from both websites and apps, to offer a more accurate picture of where a customer is in the sales funnel. It uses multiple identifiers to measure a single user’s journey, providing far more valuable insight into engagement and effectiveness.
Engagement Tracking
The metrics used for tracking are being redefined. This will provide a more realistic assessment of your user’s interaction with your website.
Here’s an example.
In UA a user’s visit to your website for several minutes without a next step click or interaction was recorded as a bounce, even though they could have found value in the website.
In the new GA4, Google will track what they’re calling “engaged sessions.” These are defined as the number of sessions that lasted longer than ten seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 page views or screen views. You can see that the new GA4 parameters certainly more accurately reflect today’s user engagement.
GA4 has a number of default actions and events, like page scrolls, clicks, file downloads etc., that can easily be tracked without requiring manual set-up as it did in the past. Together with cross-device tracking capabilities, the data GA4 collects provides a much truer assessment of user engagement.
Take Aways
The new GA4 is a complete overhaul of Google Analytics, designed to be flexible with the changes and increased regulation that are already in motion for the industry. This is the time to install GA4 and to get familiar with its capabilities and how they can help your business. Set up your tracking criteria and begin to learn how to use the reports. And, of course, understand that GA4 is still in its infancy, and more changes will come. The internet and associated technology and regulations are still developing at an incredibly fast pace.
With the speed at which technology evolves and trends come and go, staying on top of your website updates is crucial to your online success. If you’ve recently undergone significant brand changes, want to reach new business goals, or have a site that simply looks a little out of date – it may be time to redesign your website. Let’s take a look at how a website refresh can benefit your business through the story of one of our recent clients: the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, NC.
When do you need to refresh your website?
When we talk about refreshing a website, there are two approaches to consider: consistent web maintenance and small updates, or a major overhaul that includes design and structural change. Maintenance and app updates should happen frequently, and we recommend revisiting your website and making smaller-scale updates about once a year. If it’s been 3-5 years since you’ve made any significant changes to your site, you may want to consider a redesign. When you redesign your website, you’ll have the opportunity to keep things you love, update areas that can make your business appear out-of-touch to tech-savvy visitors, and ensure that your site truly represents your brand.
The U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWC – now Whitewater) came to us with a unique challenge: they needed to both improve user experience on their site with a redesign and change their URL without losing traffic. As their long-time web builder and consultant, we dove right in!
How a website redesign can improve UX
Great websites encourage users to move through pages intuitively and seamlessly. As your business grows or changes and technology improves, a website redesign can be the answer to creating an outstanding user experience (UX) that drives conversions.
The whitewater center was facing these challenges with their existing website:
Difficult navigation
Too much text & dense information
Time-consuming manual input requirements
Outdated brand look & voice
Overall, our team saw the need to make information easier to find, better guide the user through a clear journey to conversion, and eliminate clunky workflows that required daily manual entry from staff. Plus, the brand was ready to update its website’s look and tone to match its level of professionalism and create a clearer connection to its mission of getting people outdoors. Learn more about what goes into refreshing a brand in this post.
UX & brand solutions from Bellaworks
We got to work eliminating these pain points and implementing strategies to elevate UX and align the new website with the brand’s goals. We focused on the elements below to achieve ideal results for this outdoor Charlotte staple, and successfully transitioned their site to its new URL: whitewater.org.
Creating an intuitive journey
User experience is all about effortlessly moving visitors from Point A to Point B, anticipating their questions, and providing answers quickly and easily. We redesigned the whitewater center’s navigation to focus on guiding users from planning a trip to making a purchase without distractions or confusing steps. This included creating a super menu with key starting points, and nesting sub-navigation categories appropriately following those points.
Website design for scanning, not reading
Most web visitors will only spend a few seconds on each page, meaning the text on your website should be clear and digestible. Our team reconfigured page layouts to highlight the most important text and draw users’ attention to key information. By leveraging icons, bullets, expandable panels, and jump-to buttons, we were able to create a design that communicated ideas clearly and encouraged action.
Streamlining manual workflows
To address the issue of daily manual action required by whitewater center staff, we created a bulk calendar management system that eliminated the need for daily maintenance. Instead, the whitewater team could create and update their calendar on a monthly basis, and certain user roles were combined to streamline additional update processes.
Bolder branding for USNWC
The whitewater center had already established a strong brand identity, and they wanted to explore how their website could better support and increase their brand equity. We incorporated their iconic brand mark throughout website pages to reinforce brand recognition and implemented a brand new “Stories” feature. This page would serve to showcase experiences by whitewater center guests and illustrate the benefits of making a purchase to site visitors.
Following our redesign, the USNWC saw an increase in sales and a reduction in hours spent entering and correcting data. They’re happy to share their new website with prospective clients and partners knowing that its appearance, function, and UX is in top shape.
What do you need to redesign a website?
As you can see, successfully redesigning a website to attract your ideal audience, promote a positive user experience, and reflect your brand’s values takes more than just one web designer or brand specialist. It takes a team of web experts who can create comprehensive digital solutions that equally consider your UX, design, security, and branding.
Take a look at our services to learn more about how we can help with your website redesign, and get in touch today to speak with a Bellaworks expert about your website goals.
So, you’ve got a great idea or a new business, and you’re ready to create a website. Do you know what it takes to not only develop a new site but make sure it stands up to your competitors on the web? Bellaworks web designers are ready to share the six most important aspects of building a business website, and what you should be asking if you’re searching for a web designer near you.
What do you need to create a website?
To build a successful website, you’ll need to consider:
There are plenty of free web design companies that will make it seem like creating a site is a simple, done-in-an-hour task. You can absolutely purchase a domain name and put your logo on a home page in that amount of time, but to truly make an impact on the web, there are a few more considerations that can make or break your online performance. A great web development partner will help you navigate these steps and set you up for success.
Branding
Your website is the digital face of your company and needs to, above all, accurately represent your brand. When a client visits your site, they should immediately be able to identify who you are, what you do, and which benefits make you stand out. Developing a brand is a process that involves asking yourself questions like:
What traits does my brand embody? How does it look, sound, and feel?
What are our business values?
What are our key benefits to our audience?
And, of course, you’ll need to have a defined logo, color schemes, and typography standards (we go into why every small business needs a great logo here). This step is key to ensuring that your site helps you build brand equity and awareness with your audience. If you don’t prioritize branding your website, you risk losing customers or confusing site visitors with inconsistent visuals and messaging. If you’d like to learn more about creating a brand strategy for your website, consider collaborating with a professional.
SEO Strategy
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is how people will find your business on the web. After all, your beautifully designed website is only serving you if it builds connections and drives engagement with your target audience.
As we leave keyword stuffing in the past, more and more SEO depends on both on-page copy and back-end coding. There are plenty of trendy SEO strategies out there (some of which can actually harm your online performance), but the best way to build trust with your audience and satisfy Google’s crawlers is to:
Pay attention to the details in your site’s code
Create quality content that provides valuable information for your audience
Setting up the back-end of your site correctly from the beginning saves time, money, and headaches trying to figure out why your awesome business doesn’t show up when people search for your products or services on Google. If you’re up on the latest coding requirements for satisfying Google’s algorithm, then you’re good to go to create a high-performing site. But, if coding just isn’t your thing, this is an area where we’d recommend consulting with an SEO expert.
Site Architecture
Site structure matters both for visitor accessibility and for satisfying search engines. The general rule of thumb for website architecture says that a visitor should be able to get to any page on your site in 3 clicks or less. If you achieve this, your site is both easy (and enjoyable) to use for your customers and well-organized from Google’s perspective. Making sure your site stays easily navigable isn’t necessarily as simple as it seems. This is especially true if your business requires a high volume of pages or pages that regularly need to change (such as product pages). This article from Yoast dives deep into how to design your linking structure, categories, and content.
Design
If you’ve already done some research on web design for your business, you may have come across the terms UI and UX. UI stands for User Interface, and UX stands for User Experience. Both refer to the experience a user has when they visit your website, and often you’ll hear web designers talk about UI or UX optimization. When you design a website with UX in mind, you essentially say “Hey, my customers are the ones who’ll need to be able to engage and interact with this website – what is it that they need?”. If you choose to create a custom website with a web development team, they’ll be able to:
Create specific functionalities for your business What actions do you want users to take on your website? Will they need to make a purchase? Sign up for a newsletter? Your designer will be able to arrange your site elements to make these actions seamless and straightforward.
Leverage human psychology UX research tells us that certain behavior patterns repeat themselves throughout communities – and we can use them to our advantage when creating a user-friendly site. Things like reading patterns, image response, and emotional associations with color should all inform a website’s design
Personalize your site. Along with great branding, your site’s UX should reflect your tone and style as a business. Calls to action, workflows, forms, and even error messages can be a part of a comprehensive design strategy that puts users first and builds your brand.
Copywriting
We’ll be honest: this is an area when many of our web clients say they’d like to do it themselves. And we get it! You know your business best and may be concerned that an outside writer may not be able to speak in your voice. Here comes the but: BUT, a professional copywriter knows what written content will generate leads and boost engagement on the web. Also, they are experts at learning a brand’s voice and writing in that tone to maintain consistency and professionalism across the board.
Copywriting is often one of the most neglected areas of web design, even though it plays a huge role in pleasing search engines and converting prospects once they arrive at your site. If you’re reviewing existing website copy for your business, consider this:
Are you clearly communicating your business’s biggest benefits?
Are your headlines catchy, professional, and in line with your brand’s tone?
Does your copy fit in well with your web design? Is it driving action and conversions?
And the big one: are you including relevant keywords based on SEO research to drive search engine results?
A digital copywriter has expertise in optimizing the text on your site so you can spend more time doing what you do best. They understand details like: how many words should be featured on each section of a webpage, how many bullet points are too many, and exactly how many characters can be in the title of a blog to show up on Google. If you’re partnering with a digital marketing agency to design your website, don’t forget to ask about their copywriting services to make sure every word on your site is working for you.
Web Hosting
Picture this: you’ve just bought a brand new, beautiful car. Then you take it home, and you willingly hand the keys to a stranger who fills it up with the wrong gasoline, burns out the engine, and then steals the whole car. That’s what you’re doing if you don’t prioritize finding a high-quality, secure host for your website. Subpar hosting services can result in:
Slow loading speeds, frustrated customers, and poor SEO
Bugs or hacks that prevent your site from smooth operations
A lack of dedicated customer service to make sure your plugins and applications stay up to date.
Don’t overlook the importance of a trustworthy hosting service, and do your research to make sure your host will keep your website safe and secure.
Can I create a website for free?
The short answer is: yes. There are free services that let you choose a template and drop in your logo, business name, and copy. By working with a professional web design team, you ensure that none of the six steps we went over in this article are overlooked. When you consider that the number of companies doing business online is growing every day, standing out from competitors becomes a daunting challenge. That’s where the detailed service and expertise from web developers can really make a difference. At Bellaworks, we go over this checklist before every website launch:
CHECKLIST
We’re here to guide you through the exciting and complex process of creating a professional website that supports a comprehensive brand strategy. If you’re ready to get started building your business online or still have questions about what goes into making a website, feel free to reach out to our team for a free consultation and quote.
If you are a small business owner, chances are high that you’ve at least heard the term “SEO.” The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing your website and content to increase organic traffic; a fancy way of saying adding keywords to your website to make it more likely to show up in searches and make it easier for potential customers to find you.
SEO isn’t just about quantity of keywords, though — it’s also about quality of content. Yes, we all want more traffic, but you want the people that visit your website to actually be interested in what you have to say and/or sell.
How SEO Works
In short, search engines like Google have “crawlers” or bots that comb through all of the content on the internet, including your website. The crawlers use the information they find to create an index that is then tied to an algorithm that makes similar results pop up when you search for something.
According to Moz.com (a great resource for all things SEO!), there are several factors that search engines use to determine the order (or ranking) that websites are featured from a search.
How to optimize your website
The whole reason we think about SEO is to make it easier for search engines to find you, which in turn makes it easier for potential customers to find you. While you can always hire an expert for some of the more complicated SEO tasks, there are a few easy things you can do on your own right now.
1. Figure out the keywords your audience is searching for.
You know what you sell, what problem you solve, and who your audience is, so get in their brains. If they were looking for you, what would they search for? If you need help figuring it out, Ubersuggest and Answer the Public are two useful tools. You can search for keywords for your website as a whole (about, sales pages, etc.) and for the pieces of content you put up on your blog.
2. Incorporate the keywords into your website and blog.
Once you find a handful of keywords, include them in your headlines, headers, throughout your copy, in the meta descriptions, etc. The trick here is to use them as naturally as possible. If the purpose of SEO is to drive traffic to your website, you don’t want to lose potential customers because you just threw together a bunch of keywords without delivering any real value.
If your website is built on WordPress, Yoast SEO is a helpful plugin for keyword optimization, indexing, readability, and more on your blog.
3. Don’t forget about the URL.
Be sure to customize your URL for each blog post as well. Many sites either assign a random URL to the blog post or just use the title, but you can edit it to either take out words that aren’t relevant in the title or change it completely.
For example, if you wrote a blog post titled “9 Questions to Answer When Choosing a Dog for Your Family,” you may edit the URL to www.yourwebsite.com/best-family-dog so that it only includes the main keywords.
4. Make the most of links.
First, don’t go crazy linking to other pages on your website or in your blog posts. External or outbound links do boost your value with search engines because they recognize that you are crediting someone else for more information, but can make it confusing to the reader if there are too many blue links — and worst of all, it takes them away from your site.
Only add links when they are relevant and make sure you link to the keywords within that phrase. It’s easy if you’re linking to a specific source (like we’ve done above) or study, but if you’re writing about a statistic, you’ll want to link to the most relevant keywords in the sentence. Here’s an example that includes both, from our article “7 Reasons why your business needs a website“: “According to a study by the Local Search Association, a whopping 63% of consumers look for businesses online before deciding to buy from them, yet a third of small businesses don’t even have a website.”
5. Don’t forget about photos.
High-quality photos will enhance your website and blog posts, but it’s equally important to add “alt tags” to them for SEO purposes. An alt tag or alt description is copy that shows up on your site if the image doesn’t load, helps readers with visual impairments, and is another component that the search engines crawl to rank your website.
Depending on how your website is built, you may have to find the alt tag in the HTML or it may be as easy as adding it when you upload the photo. Either way, consider these tips from HubSpot:
The description should make sense, not just be stuffed with keywords.
The description should be specific and actually describe what is going on in the photo.
It should be fewer than 125 characters (CharacterCountTool.com is an easy way to check this.)
Just describe the photo, don’t worry about starting with “Photo of…”
6. Make your site accessible.
Last but not least, don’t turn off potential customers because your website is difficult to navigate. A good site has the following characteristics:
Loads quickly. You have to get the reader’s attention right away or they will leave your site and might not ever come back.
Is mobile-friendly. Customers who have a negative experience with your website on their phone are 62% less likely to buy something from you in the future. Again, a poor experience means they’re not likely coming back.
Has a security certificate (https). This legitimizes your website and builds trust.
The links work. You can’t help it if a website goes offline or a link is changed, but always double-check the links before you publish to make sure that they are correct.
Consistent and correct contact information. Your name, address, and phone number should be exactly the same everywhere it appears on the web.
There’s a lot that goes into optimizing a website, but just take it one step at a time. Create a checklist and set aside time to go through each section of your website.
If you want to hire a professional to help with your website, SEO, or creating content, contact us for a quote.
Your logo says a lot about your business. It’s the one symbol that ties everything about your business together: your brand style, values, story, and more. It’s often the first thing that new and potential customers see about your business, which means it can have a lasting effect on their opinion — and future purchases!
A professionally designed logo is the keystone of your entire brand and makes your business easily distinguishable from your competitors to help attract your ideal customer.
Elements of a Great Logo
Take a moment to think about your favorite logo design. What do you like about them? What makes them memorable? Chances are they have one or more of the following characteristics:
Balance. This doesn’t mean your logo has to be perfectly symmetrical, but the design should make sense and draw someone’s eye to the most important part of the image without being too busy.
Simple or minimalist. Logos with too many words or images can make it difficult for potential customers to remember or recognize. It’s also tricky to ensure that the logo looks consistent when it’s blown up, scaled down, or used on a variety of mediums. Your logo could be a simple typographic design that is the name of your business or a basic image with your name.
Avoid trends. Especially with fonts. While script might be in today, when a blocky font is in 10 years from now, your logo will look outdated. A graphic designer can help you find ways to create something unique, interesting, and timeless.
Matches other brand design. Your logo is one piece of your overall brand design, so you’ll want everything to go together by using the same fonts and color palette.
When to Refresh Your Logo
As your brand evolves or pivots, you may need to update your logo. For example, if your target audience changes from luxury to budget or your main offering changes from a product to a service, you might want to refresh your logo to reflect the new direction of your business.
Or perhaps you jumped on a trend when you first created your logo and now it feels a little outdated.
Many popular and classic brands have changed slightly over the years to keep up with the times.
Take a look at how Pepsi has evolved over the years:
Apple started out with a very complicated logo. After they transitioned to a simpler image, they have mostly made minor tweaks to the color of the apple, showing that small changes can make a big difference.
Once you have a concept, consider how it looks across all mediums: different sizes, social media, print, website, mobile and desktop, etc. Need some support creating a logo or brand that will attract and retain your ideal customers? We would love to help! Start by telling us more about your needs and get a quote here.
You ever get the feeling that your brand has gotten a little… stale? Sure, things are going well, but as your business grows and becomes more successful, there will come a time when you need an update. A refresh. And don’t worry—we’re not talking anything too wild, just sprucing up your logo, marketing materials, and maybe your tagline or slogan.
While a brand used to be limited to the fixed pieces given to a product like its name, colors, and logo, today a brand is much more than that. A brand now involves the tangible fixed pieces, plus the powerful emotional side that exists in a consumer’s mind—including the feelings, expectations, and experiences they have when engaging with a company.
A brand refresh is less of an investment and risk than an entire rebrand. With a rebrand, you overhaul everything, likely because your business or target audience has changed significantly, there’s a new CEO in town, or you’re pivoting and offering something completely different.
A refresh is a way to keep up with your customers and the ever-changing marketplace, and to give your business a more modern look. From Disney to Starbucks and everyone in between, even the most iconic brands update things every once in a while.
But how do you know if you need a brand refresh? Here are a few ways to tell.
1. Your customer base or target audience has evolved
Note we say “evolved” here, not changed completely. If you are shifting your focus from Baby Boomers to Gen Z, you will need to rebrand. If you are expanding to include both Millennials and Xennials/Gen X, you might just need to tweak a few things here and there.
The most important thing is that no matter who your audience is, you get clear on who they are and what they value so that your brand/marketing/offerings speak to them.
2. Your product or services are expanding
Again, if you are moving from making sunglasses to offering landscaping services, you will need to rebrand. But if you are expanding your current products or services to include something new, you might just need to refresh things.
Take Starbucks, for example. A company that once focused solely on coffee and tea now also sells wraps, muffins, and more. They didn’t stop making drinks, so they’ve never needed a complete rebrand, but they have refreshed their logo and marketing materials over the years to reflect that they are about “about a lot more than coffee.” Another good example of this is Netflix. They’ve managed to evolve from a mail-order DVD company to a streaming network that produces their own shows. Their marketing looks different now than it did 10 years ago.
3. Your logo feels outdated
What attracted audiences in 1990 is not what attracts audiences today, nor will it be what attracts audiences 20 years from now. If your business has been around for more than a decade and you’ve never updated your logo, now might be the time.
Conversely, if your business is only a few years old but you jumped on a trendy bandwagon that is no longer trendy (it happens to the best of us!) or as your business has grown you’ve realized your logo no longer reflects the direction you’re going in, you may need a refresh. Consider small changes to your existing logo or starting over and coming up with a totally new one.
4. Your visual messaging is inconsistent
If your marketing materials don’t all have the same colors, fonts, and general vibe, you need a refresh to get everything looking cohesive and on-brand. This includes business cards, flyers, your website, social media accounts—a customer should be able to see any of these and know immediately that it’s all the same company.
5. You don’t have a style guide
It’s a heck of a lot easier for everyone to be on the same page company-wide when employees have access to a style guide. It includes everything from your brand mission and acceptable/unacceptable logo usage to the fonts, colors, and images that you want to represent your company. Creating a style guide is a great way to get super clear and consistent across the board.
6. Your current branding no longer reflects your values or your message has evolved
Like many of the other examples, if you are completely changing directions, you’ll want to rebrand from top to bottom, but if you are shifting your focus or your values have evolved, a refresh is probably all you need.
A good example of this is Coca-Cola. Initially branded as a healthy and medicinal “cure-all” in the late 1800s, the soda company has changed its branding and messaging to keep up with the times over the years (and dropped the cocaine and opium that it once contained!). Today, Coca-Cola remains one of the most popular brands in the world because they continuously tweak their marketing and messaging to stay relevant.
7. Your brand doesn’t stand out anymore
If you’ve read Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow,” you know he talks about how something is remarkable until it’s not. You are different until there is a sea of purple cows all offering the same thing. (If you have no idea what we’re talking about, go get a copy of “Purple Cow” and read it asap. We’ll wait.)
Even if you had a brilliant, groundbreaking product or service idea, once everyone else is doing it, you no longer stand out and you’ll want to refresh your brand so that you continue to be noticed among all the other companies. We’ve seen this in many tech companies: Microsoft, IBM, and Apple have all changed their logos and branding over the years as they’ve evolved and to separate themselves from each other. If you think about each of those three companies when they started, you probably have a different perception of the brand than you do now.
8. Growth has slowed down or stalled
All of the above can lead to growth slowing down or even stalling. If potential (or even current) customers don’t resonate with your branding or messaging, they aren’t going to buy from you.
Now more than ever, people want to feel connected to brands that have the same values and beliefs as them, which means your outdated logo could actually be costing you.
Want help with your brand refresh? Tell us a little more about your needs and get a customized quote here.
Your website is an important part of your business. Think of it as a virtual storefront and a place where potential customers can see what you have to offer, what your company stands for, and what you have coming up in the future. According to a study by the Local Search Association, a whopping 63% of consumers look for businesses online before deciding to buy from them, yet a third of small businesses don’t even have a website.
If you are one of those small business owners who haven’t gotten around to creating — or hiring someone to create — your website, here are seven reasons why you should get a website going as soon as possible.
1. Having a social media presence is not enough.
While we recommend that you use social media to promote your business, the goal should always be to drive traffic back to your website. Social media offers little control over branding and messaging, while your website is completely customizable, giving customers an immersive experience of your brand. Your website is where they can learn about your company and make purchases. The social media landscape is constantly changing, but your website is a constant.
2. Control your company’s message and persona.
As we alluded to in our first point, you can’t control what social media platforms and their algorithms do. You have no control over what people say about your business, either. On your website, you can post positive testimonials, photos of happy customers using your product or service, and highlight specific features or offers.
3. Get a leg up on your competition.
Consumers expect businesses to have a website and in a world where we are overwhelmed by choice, it’s even more important to have a place where people can learn about what makes your service or product different than all the others out there. A website can make your business look more professional and gives it more credibility than competitors who don’t have one.
4. Make it easy for customers to find you.
Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar business or primarily based online, having a website allows new customers to find you (especially if you have a marketing strategy in place!), current customers to make more purchases, and brand advocates to spread the word to their friends and family. Take it a step further and optimize your site for SEO, content, and mobile navigation and you’ll make it even easier for customers to find — and buy —from you!
5. Educate your customers.
It doesn’t matter if you are selling some as self-explanatory as sunglasses or something more obscure like an experience or service, a blog is a great way to educate your customers and provide them information that could make your offering more valuable. Using the sunglasses example, you could have a page dedicated to FAQs: What are polarized lenses? How important is UV protection? If you’re an Italian restaurant, your blog could include recipes, the story of where your pasta sauce originated, methods for making certain foods, etc. Every small business has something they could educate their audience around.
6. Save yourself time.
Using your website as a central place to have your contact/location information, product information, FAQs, guides, or how-tos (and more) not only makes it easier to get sales but saves you time on the phone or responding to emails.
7. Attract potential employees.
Just as your website acts as a storefront for potential customers, it is also a place for potential employees to learn more about your business. Besides having a specific page dedicated to careers or job openings, potential candidates can learn about your company background, culture, and values — before they apply. This will weed out candidates that might not be a good fit and help you attract more qualified job seekers.
Creating a website that will attract customers and boost sales doesn’t have to be difficult and doesn’t have to break the bank. Tell us a little more about your website needs and get a quote here.
At its core, their product is a smartly connected collection of metal, plastic, rubber and glass. Vehicles are a utility designed to move us, and our stuff, from point A to B.
What those marketers sell, however, is so much more.
Take this Jeep ad from 2012, for example.
Notice the ad team didn’t spend space telling us about the engine’s horsepower, displacement, or lb-ft of torque. They didn’t detail Jeep’s experience building rugged, off-road vehicles or explain their exacting manufacturing processes.
Instead, they show us what life will be like behind the wheel of our new Jeep. They help us imagine tackling snowy roads and rugged trails with ease. If we buy a Jeep, the ad tells us, life in winter becomes so much better.
So why didn’t those marketers just provide us a list of comparative specifications? Surely that would appeal to our logical brains. And we all make decisions based on logic, don’t we?
That seems, well, logical. But research on the topic tells a different story.
In fact, 95% of our buying decisions are based on emotion. It’s only after we’ve mostly made up our mind that we use logic and comparison to justify that choice.
So that’s what the savvy Jeep marketers did. They lead us to answer the question “why would I buy this” without muddying up the copy by answering “what did we make” or “how did we make it”.
The influence of our ‘why’ is rooted deep in our brains. If you take the time to understand and expose your customers’ why, you’ll jack directly into the center of their decision making process.
Why ‘why’ works: the Golden Circle and the limbic brain
Humans have the largest brain to body-size ratio of any living creature.
We didn’t start out that way, though. Our brains have tripled in size since our earliest humanoid forbearers. What’s really cool is that you can track some of our newer abilities to the most recently added layers of grey matte.
Language, for example, gets processed in the neocortex, the newest and outermost layer. The limbic system sits behind that, is older (evolutionarily speaking), and concerns itself with feelings and emotions. The limbic system is also where we make decisions initially. And that’s why we don’t first make them with logic.
The problem is that the limbic system can’t process language. So it doesn’t do a great job of explaining its decision making process to the more rational parts of your brain. That’s why we call it the subconscious. Incidentally, it also explains why we often have a hard time putting feelings into words.
Simon Sinek, an author and speaker, has created a simple framework to help us think about how we can jack directly into the limbic system. He calls it the Golden Circle.
His framework breaks down messaging into three questions: why, how, and what.
What: product features
How: company values, experience, processes
Why: benefits and outcomes for the customer
Notice that what and how are all about your company and your products.
Why, on the other hand, is customer-centric. It inhabits the same center of the circle as the limbic system because it speaks directly to our decision-making, emotional brain. The why inspires action which will be justified with logic later. It gets us excited thinking about how badass we’ll be gliding through snow drifts that stop lesser vehicles cold.
Answering why before we get to the what and how, according to Sinek’s model, means our communication will more naturally follow the steps we all take to make decisions.
It’s not always easy to do. The first challenge is learning what your customers’ why really is.
Getting to the real ‘why’
Theodore Levitt, a Harvard Marketing Professor, is famously attributed with the quote:
“No one wants a drill bit. What they want is a hole.”
It’s a keen insight for marketers. It says they should think more about what their products actually do for their customers and less about the features of the products themselves.
But is it true? How many times have you, deep in your subconscious, really wanted a new hole in your wall?
More likely, you wanted the peace of a well-organized space and the new shelf that would get you there. Or you wanted the satisfaction of showing off your DIY project.
The point, says Marketing guru Seth Godin in his book This is Marketing, is that there may be many different reasons why people buy one product. Your job as the marketer is to know what they are.
“Don’t reverse engineer a why to fit your audience. Understand their real why and create a product, and marketing, to support it.” – Seth Godin, This is Marketing
Your customer’s why, Godin explains, is really the change they seek. What is their problem today and what could be their new reality be if they use your product?
To get there, you’ll use two things:
Empathy, one of the most powerful tools in sales and marketing.
A tactic from your average preschooler.
We’ve written about empathy before. It’s powerful because it allows us to go beyond our own experiences and understand what change our customers are looking for. Even when they don’t know how to articulate it themselves.
If you’ve ever spent the day with a preschooler, you already know they are unabashed champions of asking why. We’ll use their strategy to learn what change our customers are looking for.
It goes a little like this:
Why do you want a new vehicle?
I want an SUV with 2nd-row captain’s chairs
Why?
Because I’d like to give my kids their own space
Why?
Because they fuss at each other on road trips.
The real change that’s desired here isn’t actually 2nd-row captain’s chairs. It’s a peaceful road trip.
Likely, other parents would be interested in the same change but haven’t considered how to achieve it. You can use this insight to guide your copy.
“Individual seats for them. A peaceful roadtrip for you”
For a harried parent, a peaceful roadtrip probably sounds like a pretty good idea.
Conclusion
Humans make decisions in our subconscious, limbic brain first and then use our logical neocortex to justify those choices.
In short, people don’t buy what you make or how you make it. They buy what your products will do for them.
As marketers, our job is to uncover the why that will motivate action. Then build website copy, advertisements and other customer-facing communications around it.
As Seth Godin says: “Don’t begin with your machines, your inventory, or your tactics. Don’t begin with what you know how to do or some sort of distraction about your mission. Instead, begin with the dreams and fears, hopes and emotional stakes, and with the change your customers seek.” If you’re ready to create the kind of customer-centric website that will motivate your audience to take action, contact us today and let’s get started.
The cost and challenge of getting someone to visit your website has ballooned over the last few years.
If you’re using Facebook ads to attract traffic, for example, the average cost for a click (CPC) from that platform has jumped as much as 171% year over year. And Google Ads have more than doubled from just a few years ago.
Even organic search, with its ‘no-click’ results and competitive keywords, has become a tough field on which to play.
That trajectory is not likely to change any time soon.
So if it’s more costly to get people “in the door”, then it’s more important than ever that you increase the number of visitors that buy. Even a little boost can make a big difference.
Let’s say your average order value (AOV) is $500 and you have 1,000 unique monthly visitors to your website. A 1% increase in buyers will net you an extra $5,000 a month in sales.
Not too shabby. And the best part? You may be able to get that $5k/month boost with a few minutes of effort and zero extra marketing dollars.
How you do it is the crux of conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Because of its impact on revenue, CRO has become an entire field of study unto itself. Here we’ll cover the basics and offer eight best practices you can start right now to boost your website conversions.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Let’s break this down.
On your website, a conversion is when someone takes a desired action.
Sure, the biggie here is making a purchase or scheduling an appointment or demo. That’s your macro conversion.
But that’s the final step of a marathon. Or maybe a sprint if things are going really well.
Before that macro conversion happens, there are likely multiple micro conversions. While not as exciting as getting a new order, those micro conversions are important to nail.
Why? Because most people visit a website multiple times before making a purchase. In fact, a study by Episerver revealed that a whopping 92% of people visit a website the first time to do something other than make a purchase. Micro conversions keep them moving through your sales process, even if it’s over the course of several website visits.
Here are some examples of micro conversions you’ll want to consider:
Reading an article on your blog (and another, and another…)
Subscribing to your newsletter
Adding a product to a cart
Reviewing technical specifications or product pages
Viewing a video
Downloading an ebook or other educational material
Conversion Rate is just the percentage of people visiting your website that do something you want them to do.
Calculating conversion rate is straightforward:
Just as it sounds, Conversion Rate Optimization is maximizing the number of conversions you get from a pool of website visits.
“Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers,or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage. It is commonly referred to as CRO.”
8 conversion rate optimization best practices
Increasing conversion rate, even a little bit, can have a significant impact on your revenue. Here are 8 best practices you can use to begin boosting website conversions, and revenue, right now.
1. Make your CTAs very specific
A call to action (CTA) is copy that requests an immediate response from your website visitors. They may lead to a macro conversion like “buy now” or a micro conversion like “learn more”. CTA copy may include the words on the actual button as well those immediately around it.
CTAs are incredibly important to conversion, so our first four CRO best practices are all about making them great.
And the first way to do it is to create very specific CTAs. Your CTA copy should tell the reader exactly what to expect.
For example, instead of “Read On”, consider, “Download the full guide now for free”. Instead of “Get started”, try “Start your 14-day trial now”.
2. Eliminate fear in your CTA
Fear is a significant deterrent to taking action. Your CTA copy should ease your customers’ most common fears.
If you offer a subscription service, include the copy “30-day money-back guarantee” in your CTA. If you offer a free trial, add “no credit card needed” below your “Start your 14-day free trial” button.
3. Make your CTA stand out
Since your CTA is the most important element of your landing page, it deserves some special treatment to get all eyes on it.
To get there:
Use a contrasting color that is reserved only for your CTA.
Surround your CTA with plenty of whitespace so it stands out
4. Make your CTA a button (not a standard link)
We humans are hardwired to recognize patterns and understand repetitive processes. Buttons have become the standard for CTAs. So while escaping the box of sameness is great in many areas, this is not one of them.
Look over this example CTA from the Matcha, which includes all four of these elements:
5. Make your headline crystal clear
Now that your CTAs are highly tuned tools of conversion, let’s look at the copy on your landing page.
Ideally, you want a website visitor to know three things within 10 seconds of landing on your website:
What you do
Who you do it for
Why it’s useful for them
Your headline is where this happens. The tendency in your headline is to be clever or to try and boil everything down to three words.
Avoid that temptation.
Clever and concise copy is a great thing, but not if it leaves your visitor wondering what the heck you actually do. Or why they should care. Remember, simplicity sells!
6. Add social proof
Until they really get to know you, people will trust other people more than your business. That’s a powerful fact you can leverage by adding social proof to your landing page.
Social proof can come in many forms. The most obvious is customer testimonials. If possible, add customer names, titles, company names, and a photo; the more detail you provide the more relatable that testimonial will be.
Another powerful form of social proof is based on the “Wisdom of Crowds” theory. Basically, when humans see a lot of people doing something, they’re more confident in doing it themselves.
Use numbers here and be specific. If you have an impressive customer base, let your website visitors know that “26,153 recruiters find more talent faster with our software.”
Finally, if you sell to other businesses, don’t be shy about name dropping. Add logos of those companies that are most relevant to your target customer right on your homepage.
Here’s an example from Marketo. Their landing page quickly explains the benefit of what they do and who it is for. They’ve also included multiple types of social proof.
7. Create authentic urgency
If you only have 10 of that new product left, let your visitor know. If you’re ending a free trial or only accepting five new clients, say it. Urgency is an incredible motivator to take action.
Another great place to use urgency is around holidays. Holiday sales have a natural expiration date.
But make sure the urgency you promote is authentic. DO NOT put up a bogus 24-hour countdown timer that continually resets. People will associate your brand with fakeness.
Booking.com might just be the champion of creating a sense of urgency. Look at this listing for a hotel room in Atlanta. Not only do they tell you there are only five rooms left, but they let you know that three rooms were booked in just the last six hours. Better hurry!
8. Make your contact details easy to find
Our last best practice is the simplest. Maybe that’s why it’s also often overlooked.
Some percentage of your website visitors are ready to take the next step and call or email you. Can they do it without friction?
If you do business in person, make 100% sure your contact details, or at least a clear link to them, are easy to find on your home page. If it’s possible to text on your contact number, say so. People are often more willing to send a text than call.
If you only do business online, like an ecommerce store, you should still have a contact page that’s readily available. It shortens the distance between your company and your customer.
Getting people to your website is an increasingly costly and challenging endeavor. If you’re not optimizing the conversion rate of those visitors, you’re leaving serious cash on the table.
You may be able to boost your conversion rate and increase revenue, with a few simple best practices. Of course, there are a hundred other tactics you can use to get more people to take the next step. And we’ve worked with them all. So when you’re ready to take CRO to the next level, contact us and we’ll show you how.
