by Marianna Muscat | Aug 23, 2019 | Digital Media Marketing
Digital marketing is a rapidly growing and changing organism. As fast as the technology develops, so marketing practices and trends move with it. That means you need to keep an eye on the trends and grow too if you want to keep ahead. Here are some of the developments you should be keeping an eye on in the latter half of 2019.
Voice interaction has taken off in a big way
Why type an entry into a search engine and read the results when you can just talk to someone? Thanks to Siri and Alexa, consumers have got used to just asking their devices whatever they want to know. This is revolutionising the way that people search for information on the web, and thus also the way in which SEO is done.
Up to this point, a search engine would return page after page of results on the basis of a typed enquiry. With voice interaction, only one or two search results are returned. That means far greater competition for the top spots in the search rankings. It also means that SEO now involves optimising body text, headlines and meta-descriptions for speech.
Video is no longer an added extra, emails get personal
Video enables you to create branding content that is more easily accessible, often more engaging and has a more immediate impact on your audience. YouTube viewership grows all the time, making it an increasingly viable marketing platform. Granted, the costs of video production are greater than those of text-based communications, but there is often a tremendous payoff for that expenditure, with increased audiences and closer customer engagement. Videos used to be supplementary content. This is no longer the case – it is an essential and increasingly central part of your digital marketing strategy.
Email marketing is also evolving rapidly. Generic mailers used to be the norm but since they tend to fall through the cracks, end up in spam folders or simply get deleted by irritated recipients, the tendency is now to personalise email communication. In this case, emails are sent to customers in response to specific actions, such as browsing a particular product or completing a purchase. This personalised treatment tends to be more effective and is often the final call to action before a sale is made.
Contact WSI to assist you in creating a great, on-trend digital marketing strategy.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 12, 2019 | Content Marketing
We rely on Google for everything from remembering who the artist of the latest pop song is to finding a pizza parlour in our neighbourhoods. It’s easy to think of Google as a website that we use to find information. But, small business owners often forget to consider how others are using a search engine to find their products and services.
There are a few tools that you can use to get your website found in Google’s search results. Simply follow these four easy steps:
- Submit Your Site to Google
Google isn’t the omnipresent being you think it is. While Google will inevitably pick up your website’s pages at some point, you can speed up the process by submitting your site on the Google Search Console. This is the digital equivalent of tapping Google on the shoulder to say that you are alive and ready for them to index your site.
Another nudge to Google’s crawlers is to leave a link trail online. When blue hyperlinks start appearing online, Google sees it as a command to process and index your new pages. A great way to achieve this is to share your website links on social media, do a guest blog on a popular industry website linking back to your site or ask friends in high (blogging) places to give your brand a shoutout and a link online.
If you don’t have the budget to hire an SEO expert, use the Google Keyword Planner to review search rankings for keywords, phrases, plurals, singulars, misspellings and long-tail keywords related to the products and services you offer. Visit competitors’ websites to see what keywords they are using. These keywords should be included in your content, metadata and image alt tags.
Google penalises websites that are not optimised for mobile users. If your website doesn’t dynamically change to accommodate different devices, then you will have a hard time ranking well for your chosen keywords.
Need help with your content marketing, link building strategy or website design? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 8, 2019 | Articles
While it’s no secret to anyone with even a passing knowledge of digital marketing that search engine optimisation (SEO) is the lifeblood of successful online business, what is not so commonly known is how exactly to make your online presence SEO-friendly. Yes, we all know about keywords and so on, but there is more to it than that. Here are three absolutely indispensable tips to keep your website and/or blog truly optimised for search engines:
Don’t Write for Search Engines
We’ve come to think that users follow search engines and that the best way to maximise your online presence is to manipulate bots and algorithms through the use of the right keywords. The best approach is actually the opposite. You need to write with your end-user in mind, with the intent to offer quality, useful content, usually with a purchase or other action as your ultimate object. If users find your content helpful, search engines will follow their lead. Keep your keywords in mind of course, but write for people first, not for search engines.
Link to Other Sites – And Have Them Link to You
Like the previous point, this comes down to the quality of your content. Great content that people demand will attract the notice of your peers and even competitors and other stakeholders. The more reputable among these will give credit where it is due and link back to you. Customers, reviewers and others will do the same. You should always return the favour, as well as linking back to sources that are relevant to your content. This creates a network of inbound and outbound links that search engines will pick up on and reward. So, don’t only focus on internal backlinks, spread the love and make the circle bigger.
Don’t Forget Your Meta-Description
Most bloggers get their titles, body content and keywords right and then forget about the meta-description or throw it in as an afterthought. This is a fatal mistake. Both users and search engines will punish poorly written meta-descriptions, or ones that are too alike. Remember that this is the first thing users will read of your content in the search engine results. If they are not impressed, they won’t click through. In addition, search engines don’t like repetition or duplication. If you have a tendency to copy and paste, Google will not be your friend. Put more thought into your meta-descriptions and make them unique and enticing.
Contact WSI for more guidance in setting up and optimising your online presence.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 26, 2019 | Website Design
Developers and designers can work together effectively to literally change the world. Most projects tend to start with design and finish with development. The process can be faced with a massive disconnect whereby designers hand over their designs and anxiously wait to see if developers are going to interpret them the right way. However, this shouldn’t be the case; developers and designers need to board the same team showcasing their different skill sets, roles and strengths. So, how can you make the designer-developer relationship work effectively?
Work as a Team from the Outset
In traditional web design processes, designers handle the initial phases of researching, analysing and developing prototypes without engaging developers. This leaves developers in the dark; something that leads to the designs being pinged over to the developers’ desks with instructions. It is a process that has many problems. Initially, designers will have a dream of a magnificent design, which eventually turns out to be time-consuming, difficult and downright impossible to execute. The developers, on the other hand, feel that they are disconnected from the project. When developers are involved in the design from the outset, they have an understanding of the problems the product aims to solve and the needs of the users. This way, they are able to validate designs and unearth technical issues that may bring problems down the line.
Have Standards
The designers and developers need to have the right knowledge and tools for the job to ensure things are done fast. However, sometimes, a lot of time is wasted on arguing and discussing logistics.
Think of it this way, developers and designers can have lengthy discussions about a WordPress plugin they need to use that can pull together the website design considerations that have technical constraints. This takes a lot of their time, however, when you agree on something, it makes sense to use that plugin as the standard on other forthcoming projects unless it’s not suited for that project. The same should happen for grids, sizes, conventions and margins among other elements of website design. When you standardise the systems and processes, the individuals in the team know what is expected of them. The small stuff won’t bog them down, and they will have more time to concentrate on building a product that will work for everybody.
Create Prototypes
It’s often said showing is better than telling. However, experience trumps all. It is important that the web development team, including the designers, start prototyping in advance. This helps the clients or website owners to understand the ideas of the developers and designers, and user testing can start. Prototyping eliminates misinterpretation and it allows developers to know how they are going to envision the product to function as intended. It is easy for the developers to map out how a website design product needs to be built. In addition, prototyping cements the collaboration between the designers and developers at an early stage.
Review the Final Product Together before Staging
When the website development process ends, the developer and designer should review it together before it goes live. This allows the team members to make any suggestions or ideas for improvement. There are DevOps tools that developers and designers can use to ensure that there is a great collaboration and any changes are worked out as the process goes on.
At the end of the day, developers and designers should be in the same line with no guessing, arguing, assuming, finger pointing or rolling of eyes at one another. If designers and developers aren’t talking in one voice, it can result in friction, which may lead to delay in delivery of the product or spill over into producing a subpar product. Collaboration is a skill that developers and designers have to learn and master, and it will take away the blame game that comes about when things go haywire.
For your website design and development needs, contact WSI OMS now to discuss your options!
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 22, 2019 | Website Design
If you are looking forward to building a new website for your start-up, you need to ensure that from start to finish, the process is handled the right way. Whether you own a hardware store or whether you are a photographer or whether you run another kind of small business, having a great website is very crucial to your success. It may also be that you want to make your current website more effective. In order to achieve this, you will need to have the right team to do the web development process. Here are a few valuable tips to help you create a great small business website:
Choose a Good Domain Name
Also referred to as the website address, a domain name provides the entry point to your website. The domain name is crucial because it makes a good impression for website usability purposes in addition to search engine optimisation. You need to ensure that the name is easy to spell. So, try to avoid the use of slang or highly esoteric words and keep it short. Have an appropriate domain extension like .com; unless it is suitable to use other extensions like .edu, .gov, or .org. You also need to avoid using hyphens and numbers.
Once you have picked the right domain name, you need to purchase a secure, scalable hosting that offers good tech support.
Create a Clear Description of your Brand
You need to let audiences know who you are as well as what you do so that they are not confused when visiting your business website. Create a “hero image” or homepage banner along with other subsequent banners. These will offer a visual representation of the services or products you offer. Ensure you have a nice introductory text blurb placed near the top area of the page describing who you are and the things or products and services you offer. Ensure you have a footer and main navigation menus with “About Us” page links that are easily accessible to audiences. This allows visitors to read more about your brand or business.
Have the Best CMS
A content management system (CMS) is an application or software programme used to create as well as manage your digital content. Having a good CMS helps you to maintain your site properly without the need of having the technical knowledge. Get a CMS that best suits your unique website needs. This is crucial because different CMSs are used for different purposes like extensibility, user-friendliness and budget. You can use a CMS like WordPress, which is the most popular and has many useful plugins. If you are worried about your website security, you can consider a different CMS like Drupal, which is considered more secure than WordPress.
Optimise Your Site for Search Engines
For your site to be indexed by the search engines and rank well on SERPs, you need to build a strong SEO strategy. Some of the most effective SEO practices include the following:
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- Use of the right keywords
- Optimal website coding
- Ensuring fast loading speeds
- Installing SSL certificates and ensuring the website is secure
- Having a mobile-friendly website
- Building high-quality backlinks
- Getting positive reviews online from sites like Yelp, Google and Facebook
- Building internal links
- Using social media
Create and Publish Superior Content – Regularly
Content is king in online business. People are searching for content that is informative, interesting and that grabs their attention. You can publish blog posts, quality articles, social media comments and other kinds of content to help drive traffic to your site.
Video content is also an ideal way of advertising and marketing your brand. Use content that has an on-brand tone and makes people enjoy reading it so that they can share it.
Use Webmaster Tools
Small business website owners need to analyse the data received from their traffic as well as the site performance. They can install tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. The tools can track information like daily and weekly visitors to the site and the number of page views. They also determine the bounce rate or the percentage of visitors coming to the site and leaving after only viewing one page. Other elements that webmaster tools can check are broken links on the site, the average time visitors spend on a site, crawl errors and website downtime.
When you follow these steps and tips, you will have a highly functional and effectively performing website that not only attracts leads, but that will also convert them. Talk to our experienced team of web designers at WSI OMS to find out how you can have your website up and running in no time at all!
