Tips to Help Improve the Success of Your Business Website

Having the best web design Santee is not the only thing you need to excel online. For your website to be the central hub of your marketing strategy and to direct traffic and be a resource for potential clients, there are several things you will have to do. If you are planning to launch a new website or want to improve the existing one, here are the top things you should consider doing.

Add fresh content
Outdated content is the number one reason why websites fail. Visitors will not keep on coming back to a website that offers the same content. Your visitors need something fresh. To grab the attention of visitors and keep them coming back, you need to add fresh content. You need to share current information with your visitors in order to retain and drive new traffic to your site. What is more is that Google rewards sites that add fresh content continually. Even as you discuss your website needs with a web designer Santee, it is important that you ensure there is a plan in place for adding fresh content. Blogging is without doubt the best way to add fresh content to your site.

Add high quality images
The quality of your images matter a lot. Low quality images or common stock photos will not help you win the trust of new customers. Ideally, you need to make sure you only add images that are appropriate to your website and images of high resolution. Stock photos are good but don’t overuse them. Whenever possible you need to add your own photos that have been taken by a professional photographer. High quality images are the best way to break up the text. They help drive the point home easily.

Tell your visitors what to do
Your website must have calls-to-action. These are critical elements of a web design Santee. They help visitors navigate your site and make it easy to tell the story of your brand. Your website should have various CTAs in different areas. The CTA you use has to apply to the web page, desired action and part of the story that you are telling.

Make it easy to contact you
Last but not least, it has to be easy for visitors to contact you. Your contact information should be on your homepage and on every page. The idea is to make it easy for visitors to contact you whenever they want to do so. Your contact information should not just be on the contact page.

Doing these things will certainly improve your website. The list is, however, incomplete. There is a lot more you need to do. Keep up with the trends and always take a look at what your competitors are doing.

Web Design Santee

5 Things a Business Website Must Have

Hiring an experienced web designer Santee is the first thing you need to do when working on a business website. You want a website that will accurately position your brand and be a resource for current as well as potential clients. To be able to do this, there are a couple of things your website should have.

Professional design
In the same way you wouldn’t hire someone that comes to an interview poorly dressed; clients will not choose you if your web design is not clean and organized. It is your duty to make sure your website is not outdated, disorganized or unprofessional. Remember that first impressions matter. Users will immediately judge you based on how your website looks. In addition to that, if your website is not functional, users will not bother engaging with it at all. To create a great first impression, you need a web design Santee that is clean, organized and professional.

Clear brand messaging
This is another crucial thing your website must have. Your brand messaging should highlight the unique value proposition of your business. Upon landing on your website, visitors should be able to understand the main value proposition of your firm. The best value proposition is the one that distinguishes you from your competition.

Outline your products or services
A great web design Santee will distinctly outline your firm’s products and services. Being vague will not cut it in the competitive online market. Your website should list and explain your services. You must also add photos of your products. For your website to be effective, it must answer these questions:

  • What industry are you in?
  • Who is the ideal customer?
  • What does the typical engagement look like?
  • What is your specific process of delivering services?

Credibility and trust builders
There are so many scammers online. Clients are reluctant to send money in fear of being swindled. Your website should help build credibility. Start by educating your clients and prove to them that you are the company they need. You should build trust by educating clients through thought leadership content, allow users to leave comments, publish case studies, post testimonials and showcase your client’s logos and project galleries. You also need to invest in customer service. Respond to clients’ inquiries within a few hours.

Conversation opportunities
Last but not least, you have to make it easy for clients to engage with your business. Provide your contact information and make it easy for clients to reach out to you. Other conversation opportunities you should consider include:

  • Sign up for newsletter
  • Signup for a demo
  • Schedule a consultation
  • Download this guide
  • Follow us on social media

Creating a business website is not something you should rush. Every decision you make has to be calculated. The best news is that an experienced web designer Santee will help eliminate the guesswork.

Web Designer Santee

How to Protect Your Website from a Bad Web Host

When working on a web design Santee, you have first to select a reliable web host. The right web host will keep your website up and running consistently and with minimal downtime. A bad web host, in contrast, will be detrimental to the success of your online brand by capsizing traffic and SEO ranking. As a smart business owner, you know that even the best web host can turn out to be bad at one point in time. This is why if you run a business online you have to put in place certain levels of defense to protect your website. Here are some of the things you should consider doing.

Register domain name with a different company
Most web hosting companies offer blanket services where you register your domain with them. As much as that is convenient, it is not the wisest thing to do. Getting the domain name from a different party will keep you from being tied permanently to your hosting company. Any experienced web designer Santee knows that it is easier to move to a different hosting company when your domain name is registered with a different party.

Be careful of your payment method
The payment method you select when paying for your hosting service matters. There are three options available: PayPal, credit card and debit card. Each type of payment has its pros and cons. There have been many cases where people using debit and credit cards ended up having to cancel their cards when the hosting company refused to stop charging their card long after canceling the service. PayPal is the safest method of paying for a hosting service because it is easier to cancel any subscription.  

Pick a hosting service with a long trial period
The best thing about trial periods is that they help you evaluate the service being offered before paying for them. Long trial periods show the hosting company is confident in the quality of their services. The best hosting companies offer long full refund periods. Hostgator and SiteGround, for example offer 45 days full refund period. InMotion Hosting offers 90 days.

Avoid companies that have blacklisted IPs
There are many reasons why you need to avoid using blacklisted IPs. You don’t want emails from your domain to be blocked because the IP you are using is blocked. To check the IP, you can ask for the IP address of your website from the host and run it using blacklisted IP checkers such as www.spamhaus.org/lookup/.

There is a lot more that you can do to protect your online brand when getting a hosting service. The rule of thumb is to stick with the reputable web hosts and always compare prices and features prior to purchasing.

Web Design Santee

How to Keep Your Website Well Protected

When it comes to web design Santee, choosing a reliable web host is the first step to keeping your website safe. The problem is that you cannot rely solely on the protection offered by your web host. To better protect your website, you need to do the following.

Don’t register your domain name with your web host
You will be amazed by how hard it is to switch from one web host to another after registering your domain name with a web host. Registering with a different party will make it easy for you to switch web hosts. That way you will not be locked to an unreliable hosting company. As a matter of fact, registering with a different party is the first thing your web designer Santee will recommend.

Back it up regularly
Backing your website up every now and then is the key to maintaining the well-being of your website. Don’t rely solely on the backup options provided by your web host. You need to make your own backups. Backing your website up ensures that you always have a recent version of it that you can use to restore in case something terrible happens such as being hacked.

Track the web host uptime
The main duty of a web host is to ensure that your website is up and running round the clock. You should, however, not take their word for it. To make sure the web host is still as reliable as he used to be, you need to conduct your own uptime tests. Uptime is the amount of time that your website is up and running, available to the visitors and clients. Anything that is not uptime is a downtime which will cost business. The hosting company you select must offer uptime guarantees of up to 99.9%. If the uptime is bad, you need to switch to another web host.

Regularly update your passwords
The easiest way for hackers to get into your website is through the login page. You don’t want valuable data to be stolen. To make sure this never happens, you have to change your passwords regularly. Use strong passwords that combine letters, numbers, upper and lower case as well as special symbols. You also need to have good anti-virus software installed on your computer.

Doing these things will significantly boost the security of your website. Never be afraid to switch to a different web host if the services you are getting are not satisfactory.

Web Design Santee

Web Design Santee – How to Promote Your Business Website

Even as you plan your amazing web design Santee, your main goal has to be creating a website that drives more clients to your business. This is never an easy thing to do. There are so many websites that never boost business. The last thing you want is to end up with such a website. To funnel clients through your website, you need to promote your website extensively. Here are the best methods you can use.

Paid search campaigns
Your web designer Santee will recommend organic SEO. As much as this will bring great results to your website, it is not the only option you should consider. You need to combine this with paid search campaigns. Organic SEO should be long term and consistent strategy but you also need to use paid campaigns. The best one is PPC (pay-per-click). Regardless of your budget, you will find a package for you. You can pay as little as $500 or as much as $5,000 or more. The best thing about paid search campaigns is that they don’t take as long as organic SEO for you to see results. Your website will be indexed much faster.

Retargeting Ads
This campaign helps optimize your brand to visitors who have already been on your website. With this you need to make use of cookies. Once the cookie has been installed on the computer of the visitor, he will be shown your ads when browsing the internet. Retargeting ads help you stay on top of mind of potential clients.

Social media marketing
You cannot afford to ignore the social media in this day and age. An experienced web designer Santee will include links to your social media so that visitors can easily connect with you on your social media pages. You should also add a link to your website on your social media pages. You should also consider paying to promote your social media content on social media. Facebook charges between $150 and $300 for this.

Email marketing
Don’t forget to build a mailing list. Email still works. You need to send announcements about your website and new products or service through email. Make sure you use an email that has a professional design and one that matches your brand. You should also use the email to send newsletters, hot deals, white papers and anything that can benefit your visitors.

Other great things you should consider doing is publishing a press release, including the link of your website in your business cards and making clients aware of your website in company events. The more people learn about your website the more traffic you will get and the more leads you will capture.

Web Design Santee

Web Design Santee – 3 Best Methods for Capturing Website Leads

A great web design Santee alone will not help drive the leads you need to your company. Even as you plan your next website, there are a number of things you will have to do to get the most from it. In this post, we shall be looking at the three main things you need to do to capture more leads from your website. This article is for you if you have been getting lots of great organic and paid traffic but you don’t have any juicy leads. This issue is common when a website lacks proper lead capture tools to convert the visitors into leads. Here are the best methods you can use to capture leads.

Case studies
The best online marketing strategy will include a combination of both gated and un-gated content. The un-gated content is available for download without the need to share personal information. The gated content, on the other hand, requires visitors to complete a form before they can download or access the content. Your web designer Santee will recommend gated content because it helps you fill your sales funnel as well as nurture leads to conversion.

When it comes to gated content, case studies are the best. This is because they are valuable, results oriented and are mainly needed when a visitor is closer to the vendor selection phase. At this point, the prospects are more likely to give you their contact information to get the case study. They give you their contacts knowing that you will contact them.

Guides and white papers
Guides and white papers are also great gated content. They are excellent lead capture tools for any business. However, for this to work the whitepaper or guide should offer significant value for the prospect. The content need to be well-crafted and documented. The guide or white paper should make it easier for your prospects to do their job or make their life much easier. Great examples of white papers and guides include:

  • Practical guide to hiring an ideal candidate
  • Guide to partnering with a recruiter
  • How to hire the best account firm

Your white paper should provide helpful information to the prospects. They should not just be long ads. They need to be informative and helpful to the prospect. Your web design Santee should make it easy for prospects to download white papers and guides.

Compelling CTAs
The third thing you need to do is add compelling call-to-action. Not having a CTA is the top reason why most websites fail to capture leads. Your CTA should be easy to find, properly worded and easy to understand. Include several CTAs on your website for every stage of your sales process.

These three practices will help you capture more leads. It is also good to keep up with the trends in online marketing. What are your competitors doing to capture leads?

Web Design Santee

What Not to Do When Creating a Killer Website

web design SanteeYour web design Santee will be the first thing visitors see when they visit your website. This is why you need to be very careful before selecting a layout for your website. In this article, we will be looking at the things you must never do when building your website.

Doing it yourself
As much as WordPress makes web development easy, it is not advisable to build a professional website on your own. This is because a lot goes into the backend. Even with the best theme and plugins, you still need to customize everything to achieve something unique. Customizing the theme means editing the code. This is not any easy thing to do. The last thing you want is for your business website to look homemade and full of errors. You can avoid this by working with a web designer Santee that has experience creating websites like the one you want.

Forcing people to think
The worst mistake you can make is that of forcing visitors to guess where what they are looking for is. This happens when you build a website that has a bad layout and poor navigation. Remember that your visitors are running short on time and you always have less than 5 seconds to win their trust. You need to do a three second test. Don’t be afraid to invite a friend for this. See if your friend can figure out what to do next within 3 seconds. If he is stranded, you have to go back to the drawing board.

Adding a blog
Although it is good to have a blog for your website, you need to consider if you will really populate the blog with content. Not just that, you need to make sure that you will be updating your blog regularly. If your blog is outdated, it sends the message that your company is small or out of business. If you don’t have time for blogging, it is okay to eliminate the blog tab.

Trying to please everyone
Your website will only be able to cater to a very small group. This is why you need to identify your main audiences before you start working on a web design Santee. Creating a website that pleases everyone is impossible. You can try but your website will just end up being boring and with a terrible user experience. Focus on one group.

Adding fake testimonials
Reviews and testimonials make it easy for you to win the trust of new customers. Adding fake reviews and testimonials will, however, hurt you. Fake review are easy to pinpoint and they will ruin your brand reputation.

These are the crucial things you need to remember when creating your next website. You must never expect to create a killer website overnight. It takes time for a website to be perfect and to command the attention you desire.

Web Design Santee

Questions to Help Perfect Your B2B Website

web design SanteeYour web design Santee is simply the lobby of your business. It is the first thing customers see when they land on your company website. How the design looks will either lure them in or fed them off. If you are worried your website has been pushing customers away, you need to answer the following questions.

Does it look polished and professional?
Take a closer look at your website and see if the images and layout represent your brand. Is the representation in the best light possible? If your answer is no, then you need to call back your web designer Santee to rework your B2B website. You will need to fix your website if the images are pixelated or blurry and if the website sends the wrong message about your business. Everything must look professional. If your website looks like a personal blog, it will not win the hearts of your target audience. Your website needs to look professional, feel safe and represent your brand in the best light.

Does it look up-to-date?
The common mistake companies make is that of forgetting about their website after launch. Some people only think about their website when they want to add a new product to the catalog. If your website is not updated regularly, it will not serve its purpose. This is more so if the content on the website is more than a year old. If the website is outdated has the same old layout and functionality, visitors will think twice before trusting the information on it. Your website needs to have current information. The content should not be discussing issues of five years ago. As a matter of fact, product information that is more than two years old is considered stale and outdated.

Is it easy to navigate?
Your web design Santee needs to be mobile friendly and the entire website must be easy to navigate. Visitors should not have to guess where to find what they are looking for. Everything has to be axiomatic. In addition to that, even though you have a lot of information to convey to customers, you must not add it all at once or in one page. Doing so will cause your website to look cluttered. Keep your website clean and easy to use.

The ideal website is one that has current information, a clear user flow and represents your brand in the best light. The key to achieving all this lies in working with an experienced web designer Santee. Hire someone that has built websites that are similar to what you want.

Web Design Santee