Why You Should Check It Out

• Link-Building Strategies: Proven techniques for acquiring quality backlinks that enhance your site’s authority and increase organic search visibility.
• Keyword Research: How to identify the best keywords for your business and incorporate them effectively into your content to drive targeted traffic.
• On-Page Optimization: The essentials of SEO, including on-page SEO and optimizing titles, meta descriptions, headers, and images to improve search engine rankings.

About the Speaker: Michel Ann Sharritt

Cue Camp, Founder and Vice President

Michel Sharritt, a leader in playability and usability, has over a decade of experience helping Fortune 100/500 companies like Microsoft, Disney, and Sony create engaging, accessible, and successful products. An expert in game design and user experience, Michel has presented globally and published extensively on usability, accessibility, and design methodologies.

The post The Essentials of SEO (Webinar Recording) appeared first on CueCamp.

It’s vital that YOU, the business owner, have full control over your website. This includes your hosting account, your domain account, and your website backend to make edits.

Access to Your Hosting Account

Your hosting account is the server where your website resides, or the ‘physical’ computer that serves the files and database running your website.

You should be the one paying the monthly or yearly hosting fees. Are the renewal reminders going to your email, or someone else’s email? Having access to your hosting account not only ensures you maintain control but also allows you to determine whether your website stays online.

Access to Your Domain Account

Just like hosting, your domain controls everything related to your website (and email) URL and typically needs an annual renewal. Are the renewal reminders going to your email, an employee’s email, or an email at another company? Is the contact information listed on the domain actually yours? If the domain ever expires, everything related (website hosting, email, etc.) will stop working.

Backend Access

Being able to edit content is essential for keeping your site fresh and relevant. Most websites have a CMS, or content management system, that allows for simple content editing capabilities. Are you able to log into your website to make basic changes to content, such as new working or swapping out an image? If you can’t access the backend, you may miss out on opportunities to engage with your audience or update important information.

Ownership of Your Website

When you lack login credentials to your hosting account, domain, and website backend, you risk not truly owning and controlling your website. This can create significant hurdles if you ever want to make changes or switch providers.

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t hesitate to reach out for help. Our team is ready to work with the original creator of your site or investigate ways for you to regain access. Remember, it’s your business and your website—take charge of it!

The post Access Credentials: Do You Own Your Business Website? appeared first on CueCamp.

Why You Watch: User-Friendly Website Design Tips

• Menu navigation: Make it effortless for users to find what they need through well-organized, easy-to-understand menus on your website.
• Content placement: Optimize your layout to guide visitors with ease to content that they are looking for.
• User journey: Ensure every interaction is intuitive, and there are not too many steps to find content of relevance.

Learn how to create a website that keeps your audience coming back. A user-friendly website is key to creating a simple and intuitive user experience. Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your digital presence!

Free Resource: Get a free review of the user experience (UX) of your website by requesting a free marketing and UX analysis from CueCamp today. You will receive a report with recommendations for your website.

About the Speaker: Michel Ann Sharritt

Cue Camp, Founder and Vice President

Michel Sharritt, a leader in playability and usability, has over a decade of experience helping Fortune 100/500 companies like Microsoft, Disney, and Sony create engaging, accessible, and successful products. An expert in game design and user experience, Michel has presented globally and published extensively on usability, accessibility, and design methodologies.

The post User-Friendly Website Design Tips (Webinar) appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Make Navigation Simple and Intuitive

Navigation is a critical component of UX. Visitors should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. A well-designed navigation menu should be simple, clear, and intuitive. Consider using clear and concise language, organized categories, and a hierarchical structure that guides visitors to the information they need. Want a research-driven report on your website for free? Ask CueCamp for a free UX analysis of your website.

2. Use High-Quality Visual Content

Visual content, such as images and videos, can be extremely impactful in engaging visitors and improving UX. High-quality visual content can help visitors better understand the information being presented and can break up large blocks of text, making it easier to read. When selecting images and videos, be sure to choose high-quality, relevant content that supports your message.

3. Provide Relevant and Valuable Content

The content of your website is one of the most important aspects of UX. Make sure your content is relevant to your target audience and provides value to them. This can include information about your products or services, blog posts, and resources such as how-to guides or eBooks. Keep your content updated and consider using a content management system to make it easy to manage and update your website’s content.

4. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

With the increasing use of mobile devices, it is more important than ever to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly website should be optimized for smaller screens, with easy-to-use navigation and clear, concise content. Consider using responsive design to ensure that your website looks great on any device.

5. Optimize for Speed

Website speed is a critical component of UX. Visitors expect websites to load quickly and will quickly become frustrated if a website takes too long to load. Make sure your website is optimized for speed by using a fast hosting service, compressing images and other media, and using a content delivery network (CDN) if necessary.

6. Consider User Feedback

Finally, it’s important to consider user feedback when designing and improving your website. Ask for feedback from your customers, friends, and family and use this feedback to make changes to your website that will improve the user experience. You can also use analytics tools to track how visitors are using your website and make changes based on the data.

In conclusion, improving the user experience for your website can have a significant impact on the success of your business. Free tools are available to review your website’s UX, such as CueCamp’s free user experience analysis. By following these tips, small business owners can create a website that is user-friendly, visually appealing, and provides value to their visitors. In doing so, they can increase website traffic, customer loyalty, and overall business growth.

The post User Experience Tips for Websites appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Find Your Best-Selling Products

First, conduct a bit of research on your business to find out what sells the best. You may already know this intuitively, but research into actual sales figures and profit margins will be of use. In certain cases, great-selling products or services may not generate income for your business due to slim profit margins. Alternatively, you may wish to prioritize other products / services with less traffic, but higher margins.

Additionally, consult your website and social media analytics to see what actually interests your audience. Particular landing pages or social media posts may receive more traffic than you realize, which is worth noting. You might start by examining a subset of products or services, focusing efforts to generate powerful landing pages that convert. Certain businesses (such as an e-commerce clothing store) may have hundreds of products with a different type of sales cycle. Understanding how and why your customers buy from you will help in the design of good landing pages. For example, an online clothing store with $20 items will have a shorter sales cycle than stores selling $1000+ items.

Finally, to help refine your list, a business SWOT analysis can highlight both successful and problematic areas to change. A SWOT analysis looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats: serving as a lens to examine your business. A brief analysis of these four categories reveals products or services that need attention and a marketing redesign. In addition, opportunities for growth are typically revealed that can help improve your digital marketing efforts.

2. Design Attention-Grabbing Landing Pages

Following the analysis done in step 1, you can focus on designing landing pages that grab the attention of your customers. The SWOT analysis (from step 1) will clarify the unique value proposition of your business. Leveraging what sets you apart from your competitors will dramatically improve your marketing. Drawing the attention of your clients to these unique properties will show why they should buy your product or service. Focusing on what it can do for clients (from their perspective) supplies a compelling reason to make a purchase. Be sure to present a powerful, unique value proposition.

For example, when Apple, Inc. releases a new product, they market it clearly with their users in mind. Rather than listing out technical specs first, Apple makes use of vibrant imagery from actual product usage, showing us what the product can do. For instance, iPhone marketing will headline how it is capable of low-light photography, and show crisp images taken in low-light. These may include someone blowing out birthday candles in the dark or sitting around a campfire at night. These contextual examples help people imagine what owning the new product might be like. Concrete examples show users what they can do themselves with the product.

Other phone manufacturers may try to tout superior hardware in their product (such as the camera’s F-stop or shutter speed; or more powerful hardware specifications). However, Apple creates a compelling reason to buy through examples of use, using storytelling and vibrant imagery. Finally, a clear call-to-action is presented: a button to ‘buy’ the product. This enables users to enjoy the described benefits of ownership, as conveyed by their marketing and storytelling.

3. Create a Powerful Call-to-Action for Lead Generation

A good strategy for designing landing pages is to place yourself in the shoes of a typical customer. Make sure that marketing content speaks to your customer’s goals and desires. Do not communicate from your own perspective. Tell a story or show an example of a client using the product or service to communicate from their perspective. Rather than starting with what you offer, addresses how you meet their wants and needs first. This helps prospective clients imagine themselves using your product or service while raising social capital.

Once you’ve created compelling landing pages for your top products or services, what can you do to raise conversion rates? Analyzing your marketing for clear calls to action will shed light on whether you are compelling your audience to take further action. Frequently, we want customers to make a purchase. However, most business models and sales cycles are not this straightforward. Often, businesses want their prospects to ‘take the next step’ and reach out. This may be requesting users to send a message or call the business. If this is the case, the call-to-action should be as straightforward and simple as possible.

What is the End Goal for Lead Generation?

For each landing page, decide on the best ‘next step’ for your sales cycle and for lead generation. Then, focus on making that process as simple as possible. In other words, analyze the landing page at a macro and micro level to be sure the process is easy. Want users to reach out? If so, a short form at the bottom of the page may be best for lead generation. Asking users to fill out a long form will probably cause many of them to fall off the bandwagon. Too many form fields can cause users to question why so much of their personal information is needed. Or it may simply annoy them by having to spend too much time filling out the form.

To conclude, this step should focus on compelling your prospects to act and making that action as easy as possible. Analyzing the user experience (UX) of the landing page is an excellent way to see what needs improvement. Streamlining your landing page UX and fixing issues will result in better lead generation. Business processes might be considered as well, including how transactions are managed. If users fill out a form, who gets it? Integrating forms with a CRM tool (software for customer-relationship management) could be a smart decision. A good place to start might be with a free UX audit from CueCamp.

4. Analyze & Create Resources of Interest

Take a multi-pronged approach to your digital marketing and create interest by offering resources to potential customers. Using the list generated in step 1, think about any resources that might help your customers engage with your business. For instance, a marketing company might realize that their audience often wants to learn about email marketing basics. In this example, creating a short guide as a downloadable PDF will capture prospects. Asking users to fill out a short form (name, company, email address) will capture leads for future prospecting.

Downloadable guides, e-books, blog posts, interactive workshops, and how-to videos are a handful of resources that you can use to generate interest. These efforts support a digital marketing strategy that makes an effective use of your website as a lead generation machine.

5. Newsletters and Social Media Posts

A monthly newsletter with valuable information or discounts may be a way to stay connected with customers, without overwhelming them with too many messages. A proper balance of touchpoints, with high quality information, is key. Email newsletters can offer resources of interest, upcoming sales, or industry news. In cases, segmenting your email marketing list will allow more personalized, customized email marketing to your audience. For instance, if you own an online clothing store, emails might be personalized based on gender, shopping habits, or other interests. As shown above, emails can be sent to customers that did not complete their purchase with an incentive to do so. An analysis of your marketing strategy and business objectives will clarify the type of resources you can offer for the highest impact.

Similarly, social media can be an effective way to draw people to engage with your brand. Like newsletters, a suitable amount of content for your business will help generate quality conversions. Posting low-quality content daily can overwhelm those following your brand, causing users to unfollow you on social media. Alternatively, posting too infrequently can cause a loss of interest. Analyzing your business objectives and designing a social media strategy to create a buzz for your business will draw prospective clients to your website. Additionally, hashtag research can separate your audience by interest, demographics, and location: enabling you to deliver personalized content to their social media feed.

6. Use Paid Ads & SEO for Lead Generation

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is concerned with optimizing landing pages (and websites) to rank highly on Google search. According to Google, the first five organic search results capture over 67% of all clicks. If your website ranks below the first page or search results, SEO can help improve your search rank to capture more traffic, which leads to more sales. Further, SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, according to BrightEdge. Optimizing your website for keywords of high relevancy has a drastic impact on the traffic driven to your business website from search engines like Google.

The steps outlined above support an overall content marketing strategy, which aims to drive quality traffic to your website and drive business growth. Besides organic search rank, you can place ads on Google to get to the top of search results. Likewise, social media ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will generate prospects and drive traffic to your website. Enabling retargeting / remarketing on your paid ads will push ads to users that previously interacted with your brand. Retargeting users is based on their analytics data. These users are more likely to convert based on their earlier interest in your brand.

Summary

Digital marketing efforts are driven by both quantity and quality. Focusing on both the quality (your website / landing page user-experience) and quantity of leads (your inbound marketing efforts) will generate success. To make your website a lead generation machine, the six steps described in this article will help you reach that goal.

Incorporating a multi-pronged marketing approach across social media, search engines, and paid ads will drive new prospects to your website. What happens once they reach your landing page is up to you, and the user experience provided on your website. For a user experience analysis of your website, you can request a free audit from CueCamp.

Depending on your business, a range of marketing touch points are needed before a prospect becomes a qualified sales lead. When possible, personalized content of high relevancy is more likely to convert a prospect. High-quality content, delivered on a regular cadence, results in a website that will engage your prospects. Crafting a content marketing strategy to achieve this goal will turn your website into a lead generation machine.

Written by: Matt Sharritt, Ph.D., Founder, CueCamp

The post 6 Easy Steps That Will Make Your Website a Lead Generation Machine appeared first on CueCamp.

Marketers must use discretion and choose to create the most relevant content for their brand and business. This requires research into the popularity of keywords to determine which are too competitive, and which present opportunities. Often, ranking higher for niche keywords that are more pertinent to your business can yield impressive results.

How does this affect your content marketing strategy? Content marketing is concerned with creating fresh, attractive, and useful content for your target audience. This content draws potential clients to your website or social media channels to engage with your brand. This in turn drives brand awareness, engages you with your target market, and drives revenue.

Content Marketing Stats to Know

As previously mentioned, content marketing drives business results, and supports the attraction of new customers. According to HubSpot, 47% of buyers will look at three to five pieces of content before reaching out to a sales representative. In addition, 82% of marketers report actively using content marketing this year, compared to 70% last year. Content can take the form of blog articles, social media marketing, videos, webinars, and emails. Higher quality content, along with pertinent information for your audience, will result in higher quality leads. With that in mind, how can you find content that matters to your audience?

Content Marketing Tools to Find Topics that Matter

Following are three of the best tools to find topics for content marketing, which all make use of Google search. Research on your competitors will help identify what your industry peers are doing. Google’s Keyword Planner can show the popularity of keywords and view their bid range, which helps determine competitiveness. Finally, industry influencers (those of prominence in your industry) can be great sources of trending topics. You can research trends on Google search, and social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter).

1. Competitor Research

Researching your competitors can show you what your industry peers are doing with their marketing efforts. This presents opportunities to see industry trends, and spot gaps in content that your business might use to its advantage.

As shown in the above example, searching Google for local businesses (e.g., “seo companies near me”) results in a list of local businesses to inform your business. Use of the “near me” in the search query will yield local results on Google. Typically, ads will appear first (not in the screenshot), followed by organic search results (in the above screenshot). Clicking through the list will help you discover both companies and indexes related to your search. In the above example, many of the results are landing pages that rank SEO companies, rather than actual SEO companies. These indexing websites (such as Yelp) create an opportunity for businesses to build citations that link back to their business. This can increase exposure by being added to the list, as well as raise ranks by creating additional backlinks to your website (a factor in Google search rank).

As shown above, Google attempts to interpret a search by offering related questions to the search query. In the above “people also ask” section, a user can click the questions for quick answers. These answers are in the form of a snippet of an article that Google ranks highly on the topic. They also present an additional strategy to rank on Google for content marketers.

2. Google Keyword Planner

As shown below, Google offers a powerful content marketing tool to help content strategists find interesting topics for their industry. In the example below, simply starting with a search for ‘pizza oven’ and ‘bbq’ yields many related keywords. Some of these results can then inform a content marketing strategy.

Google’s Keyword Planner, a tool from Google Ads, shows search data for keywords of interest. Content marketers can research a keyword’s search popularity (average monthly searches, and change over time), current competition, and bid range. This information can be especially useful to examine to inform a content marketing strategy. This data can help explain what your competitors are doing, and the difficulty to rank for those keywords. Keywords with high competition are often more difficult to rank high, while less-competitive keywords may present an opportunity. Less-competitive keywords, of high relevancy to your business, may present an opportunity to rank highly.

Long-tail keywords, or those that are usually longer phrases than commonly used keywords, can be powerful components of your content marketing strategy. These types of keywords are more specific, and typically have a lower volume, but can be of higher relevancy. This results in higher conversion rates, as they are more specific and relevant to your potential clients.

3. Industry Trends and Influencers

Popular marketers, individuals, and brands can start trends in your industry. It is important to keep informed of industry news and events to stay current and build your content marketing strategy. Social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great places to follow industry leaders and topics (such as Instagram hashtags). Searching a trending topic, news, or upcoming event are great ways to generate ideas for your marketing strategy. If a topic is relevant to your industry, it’s important to partake so you present yourself as an industry leader. Industry trends can be formal or informal, such as a meme on social media. Participate early, as to not appear ‘late to the party’ or out of touch with your industry.

Google Search Rank

According to BrightEdge, 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Sparktoro reports that 92.96% of global traffic coming from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps.

Ranking Content

Ranking your content as high as possible is very important for your business. In fact, the first five organic search results account for over 67% of all clicks. Likewise, only 0.78% of Google searchers click on results from the 2nd page, according to Backlinko. The generation of content that ranks high is of critical importance for all businesses. However, some keywords and content are very difficult to rank highly, as the space is very competitive.

For instance, searching Google for ‘restaurants’ is very competitive, as there are many restaurants. This makes it difficult to rank very high for this term, although paid ads may help (discussed below). Attempting to rank for generic search queries may not be in the best interest of the business.

Google My Business / Local Businesses

Detailed search queries are typically more useful to a user than searching for something generic like ‘restaurants’ in Google. In fact, 69.7% of search queries contain four words or more, according to Ahrefs. In the following example, a user looking for ‘pizza delivery Naperville’ receives results highly relevant to their search location.

Searching for something like ‘pizza delivery Naperville’ instead of ‘restaurants’ produces a list of local pizza delivery restaurants. In this case, a user was probably looking for a pizza place that delivers near their location (Naperville, Illinois). This produces more relevant results for the users. Based upon the search query, Google will look for local businesses ranked by popularity and quality.

Many factors are factored into Google search results for local businesses. Google My Business is a way for businesses to manage their local profile on Google, with details like hours, location, and service area. Businesses with higher numbers of good reviews rank higher in local search, as shown in the above example. Google will rank based on location, reviews (quantity and quality), as well as other review websites (Yelp, etc.).

According to Think With Google, 30% of all mobile searches are related to location. Likewise, 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business within a day. Of searches done for something nearby, 28% result in a purchase. Both Search engine optimization (SEO), and local SEO (as described above), are of critical importance for businesses to attract customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, or SEO, drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media according to BrightEdge. Many factors relate to the overall rank of your content. To optimize your content, many factors should be considered. For instance, a blog article should aim for quality content that mentions keywords throughout the article content, including headings and image alt-tags.

As Google algorithms change, so do suggestions for ranking high on Google. Over the years, ranking strategies have changed due to relevancy, and Google continually improves ranking algorithms to read content like a human. As an example, some marketers have used black-hat SEO techniques, which attempt to cheat the system to rank. Websites used to list every nearby city in their page footers, attempting to rank high in all those locations. As Google learned from these tactics, the algorithm changed to penalize black-hat techniques. Priority was given to rank content or businesses actually in a particular service area, with a good user experience (UX).

Other techniques, such as overloading content with keywords, sacrificed readability and usability in an attempt to out-rank competitors. Google algorithms have changed to prioritize content that is more useful to actual users: with current algorithms supporting content of higher relevancy and quality. Accordingly, websites with a better user-experience (speed, security / HTTPS) and more backlinks (others linking to the content) are prioritized in search rankings.

Pay-Per-Click / Google Ads

Using Google Ads, marketers can place ads for their products or services based on a set of keywords or phrases. These ads will appear above Google search results when appropriate, and rank based upon several quality factors and a CPC (cost-per-click) bid. For example, when searching for a ‘pizza oven’ (a product), ads will appear above the organic search results to help businesses sell the product.

Google Ads will rank (against other ads) based upon a variety of factors, including:

• cost-per-click bid (price paid to rank for a keyword or phrase)
• expected click-through rate (how often users are anticipated to click the ad)
• ad relevance (how closely the ad matches the search query), including previous search queries (as shown above)
• landing page experience (how well the destination page promotes quality content, security, loads quickly, and provides a good experience for users)

With ads showing above organic search results, they can serve as a shortcut to get content or products at the top of search results. Often, considerable time is needed to get content to rank higher. If organic search ranks are low, Google ads can help get content to page one of the search results.

Summary

This article introduces some of the basic principles of content marketing, and why it matters for your business. Your content marketing strategy determines how your business ranks on Google, and how well it can attract new customers.

A great content marketing strategy begins with some research. Investigating what your competitors are doing, especially successful competitors, can help your business generate ideas for growth. Finding areas that your competitors missed allows your business to carve out a niche to attract new customers as well.

Google provides many tools to help you in these efforts, including their keyword research tool (Google Keyword Planner). Performing a search on Google to look at page rank is useful as well. Google Ads can show the competitiveness of keywords and the cost of running ad campaigns for those keywords. According to Internet Live Stats, around 3.5 billion searches are performed daily on Google, and ranking high for relevant content will drive business growth.

Your content marketing strategy should be at the core of your overall business strategy. In short, your content strategy will determine how well your overall marketing efforts work. Do you have any content marketing stories or examples you can share? We would love to hear from you in the comments below. As always, please reach out to CueCamp if you’d like to chat about Google search or your content marketing strategy.

Written by: Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D. (Founder, CueCamp)

The post Content Marketing Strategy: Tools to Rank Higher on Google Search appeared first on CueCamp.

User-friendly Experience + Simplified Buying Journey = More Sales

For the business owner, a well-designed e-commerce platform allows them to run their business easily, and can help streamline daily operations and customer service calls. Following are some tips and best practices to follow to help grow both organic traffic and sales conversions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and UX

User Experience and SEO are critical components of any e-commerce site, especially as industry verticals are becoming more competitive. Digital advertising prices continue to rise and generating organic traffic is essential. In addition, cross-functional expertise is required to build a website that has good UX and SEO, as these fields continue to overlap. Google algorithms are becoming better at reading page content, placing priority on well-designed content that is not artificial. Prior black-hat tactics to raise search rank, like loading page footers with keyword-dense text, are now causing page ranks in search engines (like Google or Bing) to drop. Driving organic traffic can feel daunting and will take time, but will pay-off in the end with good SEO practices.

Website Sitemap

Part of good UX and SEO involves a well-designed sitemap. A sitemap reflects the website page and navigation structure, and hierarchically organizes website content. Adding a sitemap to Google Search Console is important for any e-commerce site, so that search engines crawl and understand product information. Google will be notified to any changes that you make to your site, which should happen on a frequent basis so content does not become stale. A sitemap not only makes the new content you post discovered quickly by search engines, but is reflected in the website navigation to users (helping tell them about the content on your website).

Simplify Page Content (and Clutter)

Clear, simple to understand content can raise engagement with your audience. In many instances, “less is more” – as said by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, a German-American architect that pioneered the minimalist movement. Your website visitors appreciate you communicating your message in a simple, yet efficient manner.

Similar to a cluttered advertisement, websites with distracting content, too much text, or an unclear message will lose their effectiveness. Over time, more and more things fight for our attention, and the average user has a shorter attention span. Users are willing to spend less time figuring out what you’re trying to get across, so get the job done with simple, clear messaging on your website. Design each page using proper keyword research and ensure landing pages have a clear engagement goal in mind so that your content has a purpose.

Optimizing Website Structure and User Journey

Supporting the intentions of website visitors is critical to raising conversion rates. Whether the goal is to sell a product or communicate an important piece of information, users should be able to fulfill their needs as efficiently as possible when using your website. If a product is difficult to find or a message becomes muddled, conversion rates will fall.

Part of optimizing the user experience (UX) of a website is to ensure that different types of users (personas) are able to achieve their goals efficiently: whether it be completing an action or finding information. A well-designed navigation structure will help the user journey, so that users can find what they want in the least amount of clicks (and with less confusion along the way).

Make Sure Your Site is Responsive

More people are becoming accustomed to purchasing groceries, clothing, home décor, and vehicles in the comfort of their homes. According to Forbes, Cyber Week had 62% of traffic coming from mobile in 2018, and fifteen percent of orders of were placed on mobile phones over the Thanksgiving holiday. Other sources place over 60% of website visitors (and climbing) using a mobile device like a phone or tablet. With this in mind, websites need to use a responsive design to be sure that content is optimized for mobile devices. The lack of an intuitive UX can result in user frustration, causing visitors to leave before completing a purchase on a website.

Website speed

Website performance contributes heavily to page rank and SEO, as well as usability. Research by Google describes how sites appearing on page one of Google display content in 1.19 seconds on average, while those on page two display primary content in 1.29 seconds. Some tools that can help you gauge and improve your website speed are Website Grader by HubSpot, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom Website Speed Test.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate

An SSL certificate authenticates your website to encrypt data that is being transferred from a website to users. SSL certificates ensure that a website is secure when visitors make purchases, which is important is the growing age of e-commerce. An SSL certificate encrypts sensitive user data, such as personal bank information, phone numbers and addresses.

Google Chrome, the most-used browser, has begun notifying users when a website is not fully secured with an SSL certificate. Fully encrypting data using SSL will provide users the best, most secure experience: ensuring that sensitive data is transmitted securely between the browser and web server. In a world where data breaches and security are becoming commonplace, users will trust and show loyalty to brands that value their privacy and sensitive information: highlighting the need for SSL certificates on websites.

Conclusion

Optimizing your website has a powerful effect on your marketing effectiveness, as well as your bottom line. Increasing conversions on your website, whether serving a goal of purchasing products or communicating information about your business (in a clear, efficient manner) will attract new customers and build loyalty. By optimizing the user journey for your website, different types of users can be served in a more effective manner.

The skill sets involved in designing a website continue to broaden and overlap. Experts in development, graphic design, SEO, UX, marketing and content writing need to know how their design decisions impact other areas of design. For example, designing a page around a keyword (SEO) impacts the website structure (UX), written content, and image content on the page (which can also impact website speed). A working knowledge of these fields is required to balance design decision trade-offs to make websites more effective, and this expertise can yield powerful improvements. In many instances, a simple analysis of a website by an expert can present some low-hanging fruit, which can have a huge impact on results.

To gauge how your website currently measures up, and identify some low-hanging fruit that can improve your website, request a free website marketing analysis from CueCamp. This report is in video form, generated by CueCamp’s team of experts to show the user-friendliness and marketing effectiveness of your website. Start out on the right foot, and reach out today.

Authors: Shannon Olear & Matt Sharritt, Ph.D. (CueCamp)

The post Boost Store Profits: E-commerce Experience Optimization appeared first on CueCamp.

Visual / Content Trends

Clean-lines and simple designs are still being used across several industries, but the use of shapes in web designs will be used more in the future. From a design perspective, this will help draw a consumer’s attention, as it is unexpected and differentiates the brand, given typical design aesthetics we are used to seeing. In the coming year, a rise in animated content, bold colors and fonts, and video will dominate website marketing trends.

Bold Colors & Serif Fonts

Bold colors are on the palette: offering marketers a way to brand their company in a way that sticks out to consumers.

Large, chunky fonts seen in decades past are resurfacing, providing a way for marketers to differentiate themselves and their brand. Serifs, or decorative stroke that finishes off a letter, are trending upwards in web marketing. As screen resolutions rise across mobile devices and desktop screens, serif fonts are becoming more popular. Sans-serif (no serifs) fonts were the trend of years past when screen resolutions were not as high, and these fonts looked better on lower-resolution displays (making them cleaner and easier to read).

Animation / 3D View

Animations on your homepage create visual interest that can attract and engage consumers. Besides the resurgence of animated gifs, micro-animations will continue to grow in importance: especially for e-commerce websites and the fashion and décor industries. For example, consumers may want to see a 360 degree view of clothing, jewelry, or home décor. Consumers want to see the entire look of a piece they are buying. Augmented reality apps are on the rise, allowing users to visually see paint colors, furniture or other items placed in their home by overlaying the product using a smartphone and its camera.

Raising Engagement with Video

We know that everyone’s attention span is directed towards animated visuals and video, as animation is a great way to capture attention. Videos provide a source of information and guidance that lead to higher conversion when done appropriately. Video content needs to be part of your marketing strategy in order to capture consumer’s attention, while providing rich, engaging content. Typically, less than one-minute videos are recommended across both website and social channels to get a message across efficiently.

Security and Performance Metrics

Data Security

Google Chrome, the most-used browser, will notify users when a website is not secured with an SSL certificate. These requirements will continue to tighten, notifying users when they visit a website that is not fully secured. Just having an SSL certificate is no longer enough – all resources on a web page (images, form data, etc.) need to be transmitted securely in order to pass muster. Fully encrypting data using SSL will provide users the best, most secure experience: ensuring that sensitive data is transmitted securely between the browser and web server.

If you have a website or plan to launch one soon, be sure that every page on your website is secured using SSL. Not securing your website will not only negatively impact the user experience, but will also lower search rankings for the website. In this day and age, consumers are concerned about privacy issues. Maintaining a secure site is important so that consumers feel that they can browse and purchase items from your site without compromising their privacy. According to CA Technologies, 86% of those surveyed value security over convenience when purchasing a product. 78% of those interviewed felt that high security of their personal information was of primary concern. Privacy is a requirement for customer loyalty: making security of critical importance.

Mobile-First Design

Mobile visitors have already surpassed desktop visitors across the web, making it even more important for your website to be responsive: available to users on both platforms. Responsive design allows content to scale and lay-out differently based upon the size of the screen in which the content is being viewed. This trend towards mobile will continue , making a mobile-optimized website a necessity.

Website Performance / Speed

These two items are the most important when it comes to SEO, page ranking and usability. Research provided by Google earlier this year outlined that sites that appear on page one of Google display their primary content in 1.19 seconds on average, while those on page two display primary content in 1.29 seconds.

Some tools that can help you gauge your website speed are Website Grader by HubSpot (shown above), Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom Website Speed Test.

Search Trends

As previously mentioned, website speed is important not only for the user experience, but also for search rankings. Besides page speed, voice search, and a trend towards user-friendly content, will be seen as search algorithms are better able to process human language.

Voice Search

Voice Search will see an increased share of search queries on search engines such as Google. With the increased usage of bots and intelligent devices in the home, people will use technologies like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant to look up information. This preference will raise the rates of search queries using more natural language, as opposed to keywords. For example, a traditional search for “Chicago weather” might be replaced with “What is the current weather in Chicago?”, and could yield different search results depending on the algorithm and website SEO.

ComScore put out a study in 2019 that half of all online searches will be voice-based by 2020. Anticipate that Google will be changing with the times and changing their search algorithms, which will impact your search campaign strategies that you go to market with today.

Search Algorithm Changes

Google search algorithm changes can have a major impact on the SEO of websites, and the ranking achieved on Google. In the past, websites would focus on adding as many keywords as possible (for example, listing towns in a page footer) to attract as much traffic as possible. However, Google search algorithms are getting better and better at ‘reading’ content in a fashion similar to users, and interpreting what your content actually says. This reinforces good copywriting practices, and creates a better user experience (UX) for your users.

Conclusion

With a new decade upon us, we will see the rise of new technologies and a continuation of some existing trends within digital marketing. Unfortunately, the days are gone where a sole webmaster can handle the wide variety of expertise involved in creating a well-designed website. A combination of overlapping skills is required: in addition to programming, graphic design, SEO, security, social media marketing, content writing and user-experience expertise is needed.

To gauge how your website currently measures up, a great way to measure its effectiveness is to request a free usability analysis from CueCamp. This report is in video form, generated by CueCamp’s team of experts to show the user-friendliness and marketing effectiveness of your website. Start out on the right foot, and reach out today.

Authors: Shannon Olear and Matt Sharritt, Ph.D. (CueCamp)

The post Website Trends: Marketing Opportunities to Maximize Growth appeared first on CueCamp.

Common landing page design element mistakes to avoid

1. Content is not broken down into logical blocks

It is easier for users to digest information if it’s grouped into logical blocks. Set padding to 120 px-180 px and separate blocks of text by using colour backgrounds.

There is little padding between sets of related information, plus this design needs colour blocks to divide content into logical sets. As a result, this information is hard to digest and it is unclear which text should go with each block

Paddings are large enough, and the blocks are separated by colour, which makes one thing immediately clear – these blocks contain different types of content

2. Uneven spaces between items on a webpage

Same-size spaces should be set around logical blocks. Otherwise your page will look messy, and users may not give equal consideration to each section.

Spaces of various widths look uneven and create an impression that company information is linked to the header although every block is equally important

Same-size spaces around headings and the body copy help perceive the logical blocks as carrying equally important information

3. Padding that is too small means that users cannot break down content into logical blocks

To avoid logical parts from blending in, keep them separate and insert a large space (at least 120 px) between them.

Use narrow padding, and the blocks that make up the site stick to each other. This overloads the page and is quite confusing — a site visitor is led to believe that this is one solid text and not parts with different meaning

Padding is large enough so the difference between these two blocks is immediately visible

4. Avoid low contrast for text copy on an image

There should be sufficient contrast between text and background. To make copy prominent, place a contrasting filter over the image. Black is a popular colour but you could also use bright colours and mix and match them.

Another option is using a contrasting image from the start and placing the copy on top of a dark section of a photograph. This image is too light, which makes reading the text copy too difficult

A filter applied to the photo makes the copy easy to read

5. Too many styles on one page

Too many typographic and webpage design styles on one page make it look unprofessional and hard to read. To avoid this, limit yourself to a single font and two options for saturation, for example, normal and bold.

Because of too many typography styles beings used, it’s unclear where the emphasis lies

One font, one colour and two types of saturation. The typography on the page looks neat and clear

6. The colour block is too narrow

Avoid emphasising narrow page elements with colour. It just doesn’t look good. For example, headings are already well marked thanks to their size, type saturation and paddings. Would you like to highlight a particular point on a page? Use a colour background for the entire block, including a related heading and text copy.

Headings placed on a colour background break up the page’s continuity and look like separate, independent design elements

Both the heading and a related text share the same background. It shows they belong to the same logical set

7. Too much text copy inside narrow columns

When there is a lot of text copy in narrow columns, it is difficult to read because site visitors have to skip from one line to the next. Plus, it just doesn’t look good! It’s best to cut on the number of columns and shorten the text copy, otherwise nobody will read it.

Long, contered columns are hard to read

There is little text in these columns, so reading it is easy

8. Too much centered text

Centering text on the page works well when there is little text, otherwise it’s hard for users to navigate it efficiently. At the same time, increase the font size starting from 24 pixels.

If you need to include a lot of text, use the blocks featuring collapsable text copy (in Tilda, it’s blocks TX12, TX16N or the button BF703).

Long, centered texts are not easy to read

A short text under a headline (both centered) look good on a page

9. Text copy is superimposed over an essential part of an image

Avoid covering meaningful parts or small details of an image with text. This way, you will both obscure the image and make the text illegible. Try different positions for the lines such as centering them or aligning text left or placing them vertically.

This headline gets in the way of the woman’s face. With so many tiny details, it’s hard to read the text

The image and text copy are easy to read and form good composition

10. Misusing visual hierarchy

For information hierarchy to be clearly visible on a page, the title on the cover should be bigger than the rest of the headings or at least the same size, especially if the headline is long, for example.

The heading on the header is disproportionally smaller than the following heading, which is confusing. Why? It makes the second heading appear more prominent

The heading on the header is bigger than the one in the following block, so the whole page looks consistent

The same principle applies to visual hierarchy within a logical block. The headline should be the largest design element on the page, followed by a smaller, less prominent subhead. Next, features titles that follow should be noticeably smaller than the heading, and of the same weight. The smallest fonts should be used for features descriptions.

This will help site visitors distinguish between the most important and less important information.

The headline is smaller than features titles and seems secondary, although it’s more important in this context

The headline is the most prominent design element on the page and although features titles are written in a smaller type, they are still clearly visible

11. One logical set is split into two

A full-screen image or gallery, following a text, resembles a separate, independent block. If you add padding around the gallery, both text copy and images will look as a logical whole thanks to a shared background.

A full-screen gallery looks disjointed from the headline above and looks like a standalone block

The gallery shares the same backdrop as the heading right above it, which makes the whole composition look solid

12. The title is too large and long

A very large font is perfect for a short sentence. If the headline is long, use a smaller size font. It will be easy to read and leave plenty of space to all other design elements on the page.

A headline that is too big takes up an entire cover, while design elements jostle for space and the headline is hard to read

This page is composed well, all the design elements are in balance with each other, and the copy is easy to read

13. Wrong use of border styling for buttons

Borders are necessary when a button is transparent. Adding a border for a colour button does not make sense, it’s just another meaningless design feature that overloads a page and makes it difficult to read it.

14. Using too many colours

Using too many colours on a page is confusing, and it’s unclear which bits are more important. One or two colours are enough to give visual prominence to what’s really important.

There are too many bright colours on the page; this is confusing

One colour accent creates variety and doesn’t distract from the contents of the page

15. Overloaded menu

People visit websites to find solutions to their problems. Help them! Use the menu to help people navigate the website and find what they need quickly and easily. Don’t overload them with with excessive information. It’s enough to have 5-7 menu items. This menu carries too much information, making site navigation more difficult

A simple menu makes finding what you need easy

Mistakes in article design

1. Long, solid copy

A wall of text makes reading difficult to understand. For easy navigation, split it into paragraphs or introduce breaks such as a key phrase or an image.

A wall of text is hard to look at

Elements such as pull quotes or images make reading texts easier

2. Headline is positioned at the same distance between previous and next paragraphs

A headline should not ‘hang’ between chapters at a similar distance because it belongs to the paragraph that follows. The distance above a headline should be 2-3 times bigger than the space under it. At the same time, the distance under a headline should be roughly the same as the space between paragraphs, or slightly larger. This way, the header will visually refer to the subsequent text.

The heading is positioned at an equal distance between paragraphs above and below it, and it’s unclear which paragraph it belongs with

Thanks to the use of padding under the heading, it’s obvious that the heading belongs with the text that follows

3. There is no logical order

In typography, contrasting is used to visually divide different levels of text and establish a strict hierarchy. Main headings should be the most prominent on page, subheads should be considerably smaller but still clearly visible.

A heading and subhead are approximately the same size, and there is no clear hierarchy between them

Logically, the heading is more important than a subhead

4. Different padding above and below blocks

If blocks carry the same weight, they should have the same look and feel and be positioned at an equal distance from each other.

If the space between the header and an author’s image is too narrow, it looks as if the author has more to do with the header rather than the text that follows

Thanks to identical size padding above and below the image, blocks appear equal

5. Caption is positioned too close to an image

On one hand, an illustration and its caption form a whole but these are two separate design elements, and captions should not interfere with images.

The caption sticks to the image and we have trouble properly engaging with either of them

There is a lot of white space between the image and its caption, yet it’s clear that the caption goes with the image

6. There is too little space between subhead and text copy

A subhead and text copy that follows belong together but if the space between paragraphs in an article is bigger than the space between the subhead and the following paragraph, the article looks disjointed.

Space between a heading and a paragraph is smaller than between paragraphs themselves

Space after the heading is slightly bigger than space between paragraphs

7. Stand-out design elements are placed too close to the main text

Design elements used as expressions of emphasis such as key phrases or quotes are independent objects. For them to truly stand out, set them at 75-120 px from the main body copy.

There is too little space between the main text and stand-out elements

A pull quote truly stands out thanks to big padding

8. Low-contrast design elements

If you’d like to emphasise a certain phrase, be bold, make a key phrase bigger than the main text by 10-15 px. Let the key phrase really stand out from the rest of the text.

Now everyone can see it thanks to a large font and sufficient padding around the text

9. Colour background for a narrow text block

If you’d like to highlight a small section of a page such as author information, it’s enough to set sufficient padding around this, which will create an impression of space. Don’t place this section on a colour background; this will look out of place.

Don’t use colour for the subhead. Using a bigger font and padding should be sufficient to make it pop on the page

10. There is an empty space between two full-screen images

When you are using several full-screen images in a sequence, avoid leaving a space between them. The border will still be visible, and there is no need to add an additional design element. It just doesn’t add anything.

An empty space between full-screen images make no sense and doesn’t look good

There is a harmonious flow between images in this example

11. Too many design accents being used

Design accents (such as boldface here) work well when there are few of them. Put in too many, and this will get in the way of reading the page. |
Many words are marked in bold, so the text copy appears broken

A few marked words draw attention to themselves, and don’t interfere with the rest of the text

12. Too many typography styles

Design should not interfere with readability. The fewer typography styles there are, the more important design elements are visible. It’s enough to emphasize headlines and subheads, and use contrast for key phrases.

This text has too many typographic devices. They are distracting to the reader

Very few typography styles, emphasis is clear, and text hierarchy is observed

13. Centering text in a long article

Centering is usually applied to headlines and block quotes to distinguish them from the rest of the text. A centered long text is difficult to read.

A centered text looks messy, plus it’s hard to read

A text aligned to the left is easy on the eye

14. Headline appears too close to the image

A headline is an individual design element. It should not sit too close to an image that follows. For a winning combination, set padding at no less than 60 px, and add a subhead – it will unfold the contents of the page and place the right emphasis where you need it.

The headline sits too close to the image, there is no breathing room on this page

Here the headline is separated from the image by a subhead, and it relates to the entire section, not just the image

15. Using italics when they are not needed

Italics are used to highlight a word or a short phrase within a text. It is not as immediately noticeable as bold type but it does allow you to make an emphasis where you need it.

Don’t write everything in italics (body copy, headlines). And if sans-serif fonts are used in text copy, avoid italics altogether.

The phrase stands out already thanks to the font size and padding, so the italics are not really needed here

Italics are in the right place, adding the right amount of emphasis

16. Blocks appear out of place relative to the centre of the page and each other

You can spot this error easily yourself if you take a small break after editing your page (changing font size, alignments or indentation) and taking a look at what’s on it.

In this example, the headline is shifted to the left, and text copy to the right

All text elements are in harmony with each other

Written by: Ira Smirnova, Masha Belaya, Julia Zass (via Tilda blog)
Design and layout: Julia Zass
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Common Webpage Design Element Mistakes appeared first on CueCamp.

#6: Company Website Pages Take Forever to Load

If your website does not load in an expected amount of time, users will leave. It may sound like an unreasonable ultimatum, but it’s true: 47 percent of customers on e-commerce websites expect their site to load in two seconds or less, and 40 percent will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.

Do yourself a favor – check out Google’s Page Speed tools to make sure your website is as quick as it needs to be. If it’s not, consider either upgrading your hosting or cutting content that takes to long to load from your website’s pages. A variety of things like interactive ads, uncompressed images, and JavaScript can negatively impact page load times.

#7: Unnecessary Content

It’s incredible how some people have a knack for talking your ear off without saying anything remotely useful. That’s not a good talent to have, especially online where users are bombarded with information.

From a Web design perspective, that means that if your website is loaded with unnecessary information, or the sitemap is filled with too many bells and whistles, people are likely to get frustrated and ditch out for a competitor. Be succinct and keep it simple. Lengthy text should be shortened, making use of headings and subheadings to break up the text and help users scan through page content.

#8: Neglecting Mobile Users

It’s somewhat baffling how many webmasters still don’t see the importance of mobile. After all, mobile searches now outrank desktop searches, and smartphones are quickly supplanting computers as the browsing device of choice. If you haven’t taken active measures to support mobile – for instance, through the implementation of responsive web design – you need to pull yourself out of the past immediately. Mobile-optimized content is vital for good usability on the mobile devices that your visitors use to visit your website. Mobile website visitors should be able to easily scan and read important content, as well as complete basic tasks like finding your contact information.

#9: Missing Your Target

As a web marketer, you understand how important it is to know your target audience. You’ve probably spent hours creating customer profiles and figuring out how to attract consumer attention. This is just as significant in web design. The way your website looks and “feels” will naturally attract a certain type of visitor. Some websites are highly professional; some are trendy and hip, while others are fun and bubbly. Sometimes, a website tries to speak to too many audiences. If you try to please too many types of customers, you can end up with a confusing website that appeals to none of them. Identify and profile your target audience, and cater to their needs.

#10: Poor Navigation

Navigation issues will kill your website’s popularity fast. We live in an age where everything is delivered to us in an instant, and anything longer will make visitors abandon your site. Making your navigation menu difficult to find or use are common web design mistakes. Have you ever been to a website and you can’t find the menu or a search bar? It’s quite frustrating. Make sure the navigational aspects of your website are easily understood and even easier to notice.

Conclusion

If you want to avoid frustrated users that abandon your website, you need the following features:

• Support for mobile users
• A clean, crisp interface
• No excess information; provide users only what you know they’ll want to see
• Fast load times
• A clear and consistent brand message throughout
• Professional, high-quality content that is free of mistakes (e.g. broken links, spelling errors)

To get started fixing up your website, you can check out our top 5 tips for creating a powerful homepage for your website. In addition, if you would like your website reviewed by one of our experts for free, please visit CueCamp and request your free marketing analysis video. You will receive a 5-10 minute video that analyzes the usability and marketing effectiveness of your website, delivered within 48 hours.

Written by: Michel Ann Sharritt
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Part 2: Are You Making the Biggest Web Design Mistakes on Your Company Website? appeared first on CueCamp.