Monthly Archives

August 2018

Entrepreneur Tips

Three Quick Tips on How to Build Strong Customer Relationships

Building customer relationships is a fundamental process that you need to master in order to run a successful business. But what is customer relationship truly defined as?

Does it mean that you have to send out a birthday card to every customer?

When you have been around the digital marketing block as much as I have, you pick up on the value of customer feedback and use their insights to strengthen your relationships, thus building a strong foundation to support a successful business.

So, to maximize all of your website’s potential, today we are going to focus on how to build customer relationships that can help grow your business. You’ll want to focus on the following key elements to really distinguish yourself from your competition and to elevate yourself in the eyes of those that really matter – clients.

1. Build Up Customer Trust

Everyone can agree — as cliché as it may sound — that a strong relationship is rooted in an even stronger foundation of trust.

Especially when it comes to digital marketing. Trust is everything. If a customer doesn’t trust your expertise because your business website is lacking meaningful information about your company, services, or reputation, chances are they won’t be providing you any of their own information that is needed to get them into your sales funnel.

If you don’t project yourself as being trustworthy, it can be really hard to convert. Luckily, there are a few actions you can take to build up trust including:

  1. Establishing your business website as a trusted source of content. Build up a solid base of information that your potential customers can turn to that highlights your expertise and knowledge about your industry. Inform site visitors about what they can expect after they have purchased your product or service.
  2. Ensure that your product or service is dependable. Shoddy products or poorly designed services will cause your customers to lose trust in your brand. Dependable products tend to keep customers happy about their purchase, and a happy customer makes for a great advertiser.
  3. Anticipate your customers’ needs and offer a solution. Customer service 101: A customer is more inclined to trust a business if the business is putting the customer’s needs above their own.

2. Establish Strong Lines of Communication with Your Customers

The only way you will establish a strong business relationship with your customer is by using avenues of communication effectively. That means polishing up your social media skills, dusting off that email list, and taking your blog posting to the next level.

According to Statista, 41 percent of U.S. social media users expect a reply within a 24-hour period. Social media, when done right, establishes a two-way communication pipeline from business to customer. It is a place where customers can offer their opinion on products and services, vent about any sort of concerns that are bothering them, or review whatever your business provides.

On the business side, it gives your company the opportunity to not only supply some A1 customer service, but to show other profile visitors that you are willing to go above and beyond to fix any issues a customer may be experiencing. That could score you some major points with potential customers because it shows that your company is attentive to its customers’ needs.

Giving your customers the option to opt into an email list helps you send out valuable news and information about your products or services that may be relevant to their interests.

Lastly, a blog can act as a form of communication. If you’re content marketing, you’re already attracting traffic to your website—roughly—based on your keywords and Google ranking. You can gather feedback from customers moments after your blog has been posted.

3. Treat Your Loyal Customers Right

According to an article in Forbes, research done by the Gartner Group, showed that 80 percent of your company’s future profits will come from just 20 percent of your existing customers.

In that same article, it was shown that an increase of 5 percent to your retention rates can yield a profit increase by 75 percent.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Since the majority of your company revenue is generated by customers that have already purchased a product or service from you, wouldn’t it be logical to then ensure that you keep a positive relationship with them?

I’m not saying to go all out and find out intimate details of your existing customers, but showing a little appreciation can go a long way when solidifying that connection.

To do so, you’ll want to:

  1. Keep in touch with them. This is why having an email list is really important. By having their email, you can send out notifications for special sales on products or services that they like based on past purchases or abandoned carts.
  2. Send out tokens of your appreciation. You can also send out coupons to your existing customers to entice them to try out other products or services that you have, exposing them to new items.
  3. Distribute helpful insight. Your existing customers may have purchased a product or service from you without knowing the full extent of how it works or affects them. Distributing helpful information through blogs and other forms of content marketing could save them from having to look it up themselves or through trial and error. This is also perfect for distributing news about upcoming products or services relevant to their interests.

When all is said and done, a loyal customer is also a great advertiser. If you take great care of your existing customers, they can help you bring in new customers.

Building customer relationships should be a priority for your business. Contact a seasoned digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Piña, at (956) 566-4998 to concoct a winning strategy that focuses on building relationships and increasing sales.

Content Management SEO

Beef Up Your On-Page Optimization Game With These Three Quick Tips

Let’s face it. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all of these updates that Google implements on a frequent basis.

Even for a seasoned search engine optimization expert and digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Piña, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of what works and what doesn’t after an update to Google’s core algorithm, but lucky for us, there are some fundamental things that hardly ever change.

And a lot of it has to do with how your on-page optimization is set up. Today, we’re going to discuss how to beef up your on-page optimization so that your website can climb—and stay—high in ranking.

But First, What Is On-Page Optimization?

To put it simply, on-page optimization is a special modification of individual web pages in order to earn relevant traffic and raise higher in Google’s ranking system.

What exactly is modified? That depends.

On-page usually refers to content that is on the page as well as HTML source code that can be modified—or what we in the industry call “optimize”. Since Google is updated constantly, sometimes what works one day doesn’t work as well as it should the next day.

That’s why hiring a digital marketing consultant is a valuable business decision. Running a business is hard enough without a digital marketing plan, but having an expert that can advise you with all of the latest information about on-page SEO, even off-page SEO, and the like is crucial to staying on top of the search engine results page (SERP), maximizing your revenue by being visible to more potential customers.

So without further adieu, here is what can be done to make sure that your on-page optimization is on point.

1. Avoid Low-Value Content Writing and Coding Tactics

Your content, in a nutshell, should not only answer your visitor’s questions—whether it be about your product or service—but it should also help them understand the purpose of your site and guide them throughout it as well.

While our first instinct may be to focus on writing content that is solely geared toward ranking high in search alone, it is pertinent to understand that ranking high is an added benefit. Your true focus should rely on helping searchers, even when they become visitors.

How? By remembering Google’s golden rule: Thou shalt create valuable content.

To ensure that your content is attracting the right traffic to your site, you’ve got to play by Google’s rules, meaning you should avoid:

  1. Thin Content – This type of content is generally defined as content that offers little to nothing of value to the visitor. Back in the old days, in order to compete with other websites, it wasn’t unusual to have content that was used—or duplicated—across many other relevant pages of product that you wanted to sell. It also wasn’t unusual to have nearly the same content on those pages with the keyword being the only distinguishing factor.
  2. As one particular example, this happened a lot with local businesses that would create multiple pages of the same content targeting regions or cities they wanted to pull clients from. The only thing that was different about these pages were the location keywords. This content would ultimately prove to be of little value to visitors, causing them to leave and increasing the business’ bounce rate.

    Before this problem was rectified in 2011 with Google’s update Panda, taking advantage of SEO in this manner was the norm, and it spawned much low-value content all over the ‘net. Now, Google rightfully demotes websites like this in an effort to keep the high-quality content that helps the most people ranking high in the SERP.

  3. Keyword Stuffing – Back then, keyword stuffing is something that a lot of digital marketers did in an effort to rank up their keywords.
  4. When Google was still figuring out all of its semantics, it wasn’t unusual to see pieces of content pop up here and there that were loaded with keywords. For example, let’s assume that you are generating content that has a keyword of “cherries”.

    “Are you looking for cherries in Austin, TX? Hi, I’m Tom, and I pick cherries in Austin, TX! I am the best picker of cherries in Austin that you’ll ever find. These Austin cherries…”

    You get the gist. It wouldn’t be long until Google determined that content stuffed with keywords was considered low-value. Reading it comes off unnatural—almost robotic or auto-generated—to the reader, and no one wants to read something like that. It turns visitors off, leaving you with nothing but an increased bounce rate.

  5. Hiding Text in Your HTML Code, or “Cloaking” – As a general guideline, you want to keep the text within your HTML visible. Why?
  6. In short, you want web crawlers from search engines to see the same content that a visitor would see. When this guideline is broken, it is called “cloaking”. Search engines normally don’t take too kindly on cloaking and will prevent these websites from ranking in the SERP.

    However, Google will, in certain cases, allow cloaking if it contributes to a positive experience for the visitor.

2. Optimize Your Images

An image-heavy website can weigh you down in terms of ranking. Images take time to load, and if your website takes a long time to load—over 3 seconds—then you could be penalized for it.

Luckily for us, that is why we can utilize image compression to our advantage. Because there is no particular “one size fits all” aspect in web design, image compression is the next best thing.

A bevy of options await for anyone interested in using image optimization to improve their Google ranking through on-page SEO. Compression tools like Optimizilla works wonders in compressing images, but you could use other options like “save for web” or tinkering with image sizing if you know your way around that.

Another tried and true way to optimize your images is by choosing the right format for your image. To put it simply:

  1. Gifs are the perfect format for images that need animation.
  2. If high image resolution isn’t a priority for you, use JPEG and test its different compression settings.
  3. If you do need higher image resolution, use PNG-24 for images that have a multitude of colors and PNG-8 for images that have less.

You’ll also want to adjust your thumbnails accordingly, and while you’re at it, make sure that your alternative text describes images for the visually impaired. By doing this, you are providing context of the image to your visually impaired potential customers, increasing your earning potential and becoming a trusted—and frequently visited—source for visually impaired customers interested in purchasing your product or service.

Oh, and web crawlers also gather information about your images from the alternative text, so having an accurate depiction of your alternative text is essential to these little friendly bots and the search engines they serve.

3. Make the Most Out of Meta Descriptions

In short, meta descriptions detail what your website is about to searchers. It is the few sentences below the link to a website that describe what that website is about that you would see after a quick Google search. They are normally created through HTML elements that are nested into the head tag.

You’ve got around a 150 to 300 character limit to make an effective meta description. That’s it. Within that limit, you’ve got to make sure that you have:

  1. An effective Call to Action.
  2. Your brand name visible.
  3. Your geographical location visible.
  4. Any featured details regarding your business.
  5. Any sort of unique value that your business offers.

Make sure that your meta descriptions are relevant to the content on your website. It should essentially summarize the key concept or purpose of your business without giving away too much information that won’t lead a searcher to click through.

Google frequently chooses and displays text that is relevant to the searcher’s query on the SERP. While this helps your meta descriptions for searches that are more unique, you cannot afford to leave out an effective meta description. Google may not consider meta descriptions a ranking factor, but they sure do help your click-through rate.

With These Three On-Page SEO Tips, Paired With Great, Valuable Content Meant to Inform and Entice Your Visitors, Reaching High Search Engine Ranking—And Staying There—Is Easy, Especially When You Have an SEO Guru Like Me, Mauricio Piña, By Your Side. Contact Me at (956) 566-4998 Today.

Digital Marketing

What’s the Word: 19 Digital Marketing Terms You Need to Know


The world of digital marketing, just like any other industry, has its own jargon, acronyms, and technical terms that can seem like a totally different language if you aren’t in the know. While it can potentially take you some time to become familiar with them all, it doesn’t hurt to start getting your feet wet.

Let me, your digital marketing consultant, give you the lowdown on some of the most common and important digital marketing phrases used in the industry.

The Power of Words

If you’re new to digital marketing, then you’re going to want to bookmark this blog or even print it out. There is great power in these words:

  1. Audience: This is the group of people or demographic that you are targeting with your digital marketing efforts. Search engines like Google and social media platforms like Facebook offer various tools to reach these individuals that may share the same characteristics.
  2. Analytics: This is the data found through your website, social media campaigns, content marketing campaigns, and email campaigns. This information can include traffic numbers, conversion rate, bounce rate, engagement, site speed, and much more. They should also be used to improve your website and digital marketing efforts.
  3. Bounce Rate: Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and leave after viewing just one page. You want this rate to be as low as possible.
  4. Call-to-Action: A call-to-action – or CTA – is a piece of content designed to get your audience to perform an action. CTAs tend to contain action words and verbs such as “call now,” “click here,” “visit our website,” etc.
  5. Click-through Rate: This is the number of people that have clicked on a link in your email, display ad, social ad, or on a call-to-action (CTA) in a blog post. For example, if your display ad was seen by 100 different people and only 10 individuals clicked on the ad, this would give you a 10% click-through rate.
  6. Content: Content is the material that you publish online related to your business. This can include videos, social media posts, articles, blogs, and other forms of content that all build brand awareness and establish you as a quality expert.
  7. Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who take the action that you want them to on your website or ad – but this isn’t to be confused with only sales. This can include having individuals submit their emails or signing up for a webinar.
  8. Cost Per Click (CPC): Cost per click refers to the amount paid for having an individual click on your display ad. The amount you pay will vary depending on how competitive the terms are that you want to be known for, the industry you are in, and several other factors.
  9. Digital Marketing: Suffice to say that digital marketing is here to stay. It’s a way of marketing and promoting brands using various digital channels including websites, social media, content, search engine, display advertising, and other forms of media. Digital marketing requires plenty of data analysis to make the most of your efforts.
  10. Engagement Rate: Engagement is the number of times somebody interacts with your content, whether it be likes, shares, comments, or any other number of actions that can be performed. This term is related much more to social media marketing.
  11. Impressions: Impressions is the number of times people see a specific post or content. But this doesn’t mean that they necessarily engage with it.
  12. Keywords: Keywords are essentially the words that you want to be recognized for when people search for a specific service or business. You’ll have to do some research to find out what these terms are for your business (i.e. restaurant in McAllen, dentist in Austin, lawyer in Houston, etc.)
  13. Landing Page: Landing pages are generally stand-alone pages that provide some sort of offer related to your business. Ideally, you CTA is clear, and your landing page content encourages visitors to take action.
  14. Off-Page Optimization: These are the SEO practices you use to improve your organic search rankings but which take place away from your website.
  15. On-Page Optimization: These are the SEO practices you use to improve your organic search rankings by improving internal site factors like meta tags, internal links, content, and more.
  16. Organic Traffic: Organic traffic comes through when people enter the keywords related to your business and find you through the search engine results page.
  17. Paid Traffic: Paid traffic is the traffic your website receives when people click on your ads. Since you paid for the add, you are essentially “paying” for the traffic.
  18. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Search engine optimization is the strategies and techniques used to get your business website on the first page of the search engine results. This includes a wide variety of practices including: content creation, link building, on-site and off-site markup, and so much more.
  19. Unique Visitor – >Unique visitors are technically considered a “new” visitor to a website within a given time frame.

 

And last but not least…

(20) Digital Marketing Consultant –

This is what I do. With my years of experience in the world of digital marketing and website design, I can provide you valuable insight and information to help you build an amazing digital presence.

These terms are just touch the tip of the web design iceberg. Why don’t you contact me, Mauricio Pina, at (956) 566-4998 for a one-on-one consultation where I can teach you everything you need to know about digital marketing.

Digital Marketing

How To Create Phenomenal Digital Ads That Absolutely Grab Attention


Digital ads: bane of the Internet or helpful guides for finding products and services? Well, that’s for your business to decide.

Many companies don’t give the average Internet user the proper respect they deserve. Instead, many businesses create intrusive and drab digital ad campaigns that focus totally on what their product or service is before—if ever—actually engaging with the potential client.

You can bet a year’s worth of revenue that that is something a digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Piña, won’t ever advise.

Today, I cook up an informative post that can give you some insight into what it takes to make a good digital ad. So grab a pen, some paper, and let’s jot down some notes.

What is a digital ad?

Let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a “digital ad”? Is that like a pop-up? No, not really. In fact, Google dislikes pop-up ads probably as much as you do.

Why? Well…pop-up ads are intrusive and have been shown to lose potential customers. Think about it. No one doing their thing online gets a pop-up ad, clicks on it, and says, “Boy, am I glad to see this ad because I need to buy this obscure foreign instrument.

It just doesn’t happen. In fact, in a survey conducted by HubSpot, 73 percent of respondents strongly disliked ads that popped-up over the entire screen.

Because of these old digital marketing practices, digital ads have evolved to encompass so much more than annoying pop-up windows that you have to click out of. Now, it’s the funny ad before your YouTube video starts. It’s that inviting advertisement on your Facebook feed. It’s the link that pulls up in the search engine results page when you search for a particular product or service.

It’s about being less intrusive and obnoxious; more about catering to user needs.

Kind of sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Truth is, digital marketers are just starting to get the hint, and nowadays, ads are becoming less intrusive and more aligned with the interests of potential customers.

While it may seem like advertising on the Internet is an uphill battle, reality is that advertisements (so long as they aren’t intrusive) don’t really bother the general populace. The same HubSpot survey mentioned previously reflects that fact, noting that 83 percent of respondents do NOT consider all ads to be bad. At the same time, these same respondents would like to filter out the really obnoxious ones.

Since people’s opinion regarding digital ads seems favorable, so long as you stay within polite parameters, below are some tips that you should consider before drafting plans for your next digital ad campaign. That is, if you want it to be successful and improve your click-through rate.

Food for thought for your next digital ad campaign.

Before you launch your next digital ad campaign, it would do your business well to make sure that your ads do not fall into the same old routine. Gather your team, order some take-out, and start hashing out ideas for your next ad with these pointers in mind:

  1. Less is Better – The less an advertisement seems like an ad, the more receptive potential customers will be toward it. The goal is to encourage customers to watch your commercial, and not make them feel like you are force-feeding it to them.
  2. Make Your Digital Ads Consumer Friendly – As stated earlier, a good digital ad will invite someone to view the ad rather than force them to watch or read it. That means:
    • No unskippable ads before a YouTube video.
    • No autoplay in video or in-banner ads.
    • No banners that take up half of the screen.
    • No banner that obscures or hides the ‘x’ button.
    • And for the love of everything sacred to digital marketing, no pop-ups!
  3. Ensure Your Ads Are Worth Viewing – You’ll need to really do your research to create a digital ad that engages well with potential customers by doing something that not many other companies get right – either through humor or drama to name a few angles.
  4. One classic example that falls out of the digital marketing scope, but it rings true for great advertising, are the Geico caveman commercials from way back in the day. Their commercials hit the funny bone for of a lot of people, solidifying Geico commercials as a humorous brand of ads, while still attracting business.

  5. Use Design to Your Advantage – Going the extra mile on your digital ad with these tips can be the difference between a great or disappointing click-through rate:
    • Don’t be afraid to add a little white space in your digital ads to emphasize your message.
    • Use your branding colors to draw attention and promote your brand.
    • Evaluate what size of ad would work best with what you want to sell. But also make sure that it falls in line with being courteous to your potential customer as well.
    • Make sure your logo is on the digital ad to promote brand identity.
    • Make sure your digital ad design is consistent with the landing page.
    • The digital ad copy should be the same on both the ad and your landing page.
    • Determine the word count with your designer.
  6. Generate a Clear and Catchy Call-to-Action (CTA) – A CTA is absolutely necessary in advertising. A good CTA encourages potential customers to inquire more about your product or service because of its enticing copy and design. You’ll also want to link out to your landing page or your website’s order page with clear instructions on what to do next (e.g. make a purchase, read more about a subject in your blog, etc.).

Digital advertising is all about finding the right balance. If you need help creating that perfect digital ad, then contact the experienced digital marketing consultant, Mauricio Pina, today at (956) 566-4998.

Digital Marketing

The Basics of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Wouldn’t it be nice if advertising wasn’t so expensive? If only there was some way to have your ad gain exposure for a nominal fee.

One can only dream, huh?

Well, dream no more. Pay-per-click advertising is an essential digital marketing strategy that needs to be mastered in order to grow a business. If you haven’t been taking advantage of it yet, let me – Mauricio Pina — convince you why you should be.

Strap in. There’s a lot to learn.

What is Pay-Per-Click Marketing?

Pay-per-click marketing (PPC) is an economical method of advertising where businesses create ads for their products or services that are then displayed whenever a user searches for a similar product or service within a search engine.

What truly sets it apart is that advertisers are only charged when a user clicks on the ad – that’s where pay-per-click gets its name. It’s also known as “keyword advertising” due to the nature of keywords and how they function in paid search.

How Does PPC Work?

Keywords play a big role in PPC. However, a lot more goes on behind the scenes than just plugging in a search term and magically having a relevant ad pop up in your search engine results page (SERP).

In order for these ads to display properly, an ad auction must take place first. No, there’s no little auction bidding paddles, podiums, or fast-talking auctioneers with long handlebar mustaches and a monocle.

The ad auction is an entirely automated process that allows advertisers to bid for certain keywords or phrases that would, in a sense, trigger these ads to display. Google and other search engines use this ad auction to determine what ads are valid and relevant within a SERP.

For example, let’s say that you were looking for a local course that teaches people how to code. You type in “online coding courses” and find that the first few results are ads.

Clicking on these ads costs the owners money, whereas not clicking on them doesn’t cost them a dime. That is the brilliance of PPC; in a certain way, you get free advertisement exposure until someone clicks on your ad.

Of course, you can’t have the bitter without the sweet. The thing is, there are only so many placements that are allotted. Bidding evens out the playing field a little bit, allowing those that want to spend more a chance to rank first in sponsored or paid results

PPC isn’t dependent on your agency’s budget alone. Google also takes into account a quality score.

What Factors Into A Quality Score and How Does It Affect Your PPC?

Based on how well you are doing in key select areas, Google and other search engines will increase or decrease your bid amount in order for your company to gain a favorable position. These key areas include:

  1. Your advertisement
  2. Your keywords
  3. Your click metrics
  4. Your on-site usage metrics
  5. Your Landing Page copy

These are just a few of the factors that search engines take into account when generating a quality score, so if they are lacking effectiveness, your PPC bid amount will suffer.

But all hope is not lost. You can build up your quality score by:

  1. Testing your ad copy to determine what makes your best click-through rate.
  2. Using A+ level keywords and move the under-performing ones into their own campaign.
  3. Placing keywords in your ads.
  4. Placing keywords in your landing pages.
  5. Focusing your ad campaign within specific parameters like the time of day, geography, or search network to name a few.

A great quality score can trim off 20 to 30 percent of costs and is well worth taking the time to perfect. At the same time, a low-quality score can tank your search engine rankings.

Why is PPC So Important to Digital Marketing?

With a simple bid, so long as you have the budget for it, your company may be able to get that coveted top spot that potential customers are more likely to click on.

Sure, that may mean that each click costs you money, but so long as you improve those quality scores and convert leads to sales with a strong call-to-action, your investment should be well worth it.

Not convinced yet? Pay-per-click ads provide a bevy of benefits to businesses and their websites including:

  1. Getting Started with PPC is Fast – Google AdWords, now Google Ads, is one of the more popular PPC ad platforms that allows you to set up shop in moments. Soon, you’ll be able to attract traffic to your website in droves.
  2. Pay-Per-Clicks Offer Quick Adaptability – It can take weeks to months for organic search engine marketing or other forms of advertising to catch up with audience behavior. By the time it does, you risk missing out on sales opportunities. With PPC platforms, you can make a quick adjustment to meet current marketing conditions and buyer interests within a couple of hours to days at most.
  3. PPC Provides Value – If you’re lucky, you may be able to find certain keywords that are in a niche of their own, which means getting a bid in at a reduced cost compared to other keywords or forms of advertising. These “long-tail” keywords are usually super specific and longer words or phrases that not everyone may have thought of or taken the time to look in to. This is truly a “best case scenario” as this has the opportunity to route a lot of traffic to your site at a low cost.

If PPC seems like a subject that is too complicated or you need the expertise of a digital marketing consultant that can get you real results, contact me, Mauricio Pina, at (956) 566-4998. Let’s get started on your PPC marketing campaign today!

Digital Marketing

Get It Done! How to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate

Conversion RateSo you have a beautiful website set up. You’re posting engaging content on social media and your site is starting to get loads of traffic. Awesome…right?

Well, of course, you want plenty of traffic coming to your business’s website, but if you aren’t converting those visitors then you’re losing out on potential customers. In order to improve product sales, you are going to need to improve your site’s conversion rate. If you don’t know where to start, don’t sweat it! That’s what I’m here for.

As a digital marketing consultant, I’ve had plenty of experience helping small business owners improve on their conversion rate and I want to share a few secrets tactics with you. Don’t let bad conversion rates stymie your business any longer.

What is Conversion Rate?

It’s important to recognize that conversion rate does not simply mean visitors who purchase your product. When it comes to digital marketing, your conversion rate is the percentage of total site visitors who performed a specific action that you want them to take, such as providing you their email, subscribing to your page, or placing an order.

In 2016, the average conversion rate for U.S. online shoppers stood at 3%. But leading businesses stood at over 5% with those in the top 10% having conversion rates of 11.45% or higher.

That means there’s plenty of opportunity for growth and improvement – you just have to know how to get there.

10 Primo Tips to Maximize Your Conversion Rate

1. Limit Options

Yes, options are good, but too many can be overwhelming – especially when it comes to your website’s design and navigation bar. Too many links, too much clutter, and too many options can leave site visitors confused and unable to decide on what action to take.

You can simplify this by giving visitors a (full-screen) call-to-action that only gives them one choice at first. Fewer distractions mean improved UX and growing conversion rates.

2. Don’t Take Too Long

Website load time and speed are absolutely essential, especially with Google taking this into consideration with their updated algorithm. Make sure your site is running at optimal speed so you don’t lose them before you even get a chance to offer your product. According to Google, 53 percent of mobile site visitors leave a page that has taken longer than three seconds to load.

3. Keep Forms Simple

When asking site visitors for their information, make sure your forms require as little information as possible. You should focus on just obtaining a name and email. You can also make these forms pop a bit more by:

  • Using bold headings to convey your message
  • Avoid using an image
  • Use the word “Subscribe” on your call-to-action
  • Use a clean minimal look for your submission button
  • Keep form colors consistent with your brand colors.

4. Your Call-to-Action (CTA) Needs to Pop

While it may seem insignificant, the words you use for your CTA can prove to be a game changer. Action words tend to perform better. Use language like “Get Started,” “Reserve Your Seat,” “send Me Specials Now,” and the like.

Make sure to place the CTA button in an easily accessible area and in plain sight.

5. Testimonials Are as Good as Gold

Testimonials are the perfect tool to draw in potential customers and show proof of your product’s value. Make sure to include plenty of testimonials on your site, in your landing pages, and even in your email opt-in landing pages.

6. Get Creative With Your Offer

Most companies are going to present their offer in the same way – “Get a Free Consultation,” “Get a Free Trial,” “Sign Up,” etc. While this type of wording may work for a small percentage of site visitors, if you really want to get into the upper echelon, you’ll want to provide a unique offer. Do some A/B testing until you figure out what works best for you customers.

Another solid option is to provide seasonal offers or limited sales offers. Knowing that the product might run out or that the sale period is about to run out, might just be the push a site visitor needs to become an actual customer.

7. Landing Pages Can Be Phenomenal

If you’re eager to see those conversion rates grow, then consider creating several unique landing pages, each with their own message and offers. And when I say several, I mean several – anywhere between 4-10 landing pages should suffice to help you get some traction.

Just remember to track data and be aware of what elements of your top-performing landing page helped to draw in visitors.

8. Give Thanks

Sometimes a simple gesture of gratitude can go along way in turning a visitor into a customer. Whenever a user performs an action or interacts with your site in a meaningful way, like following you on Facebook, then acknowledge them.

9. Add Some Flavor to Your Website

There are plenty of elements that you can include on your website or a landing page to further entice customers including:

  • Using videos of your team to add some personality
  • Use high-quality images of your product
  • Avoid using stock photos
  • Implement a live chat tool if possible
  • Use images with people smiling and enjoying themselves

10. Conversion Rates Aren’t Everything (Kind Of)

Yes, conversion rates are valuable but not if you’re reaching out to the wrong demographic. The intent should always be to turn these leads into sales. High conversion rates really don’t mean much if you aren’t performing. Plus, you can end up spending a lot of money on PPC ads and landing pages but with very little in return.

Conversion rates got you down? Contact me, Mauricio Pina,at (956) 566-4998 for a one-on-one digital marketing consultation to turn that conversion frown upside down.