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The use of a DIY web builder results in countless mistakes that will cost you time and money in the long run. Designing a website requires experience and knowledge that will convert potential customers into sales. A flawed website makes the user experience unpleasant, resulting in your potential customers being driven away from your page and on to your competitors, which is not the objective of a functional website. DIY web designs should only be used as a temporary platform while you wait. Website design companies have years of experience in web design and can assist you with all aspects of the web conversion architecture development and management process. Ensuring your website needs are fulfilled with expertise. 

A website is your first impression 

Website design companies for small businesses can assist you with the look and layout of your website. Helping to increase your brand’s awareness and sales by representing your brand 24/7, your website is the business card of the digital age. A website that takes a long time to load and does not function simply and intuitively are just two mistakes that can happen when you use DIY web designs. The layout, images, and buttons of your website can generate more sales if done correctly by a professional. 

DIY builders result in design mistakes

The difference between a functional website and a good website is significant. A website consisting of elements such as optimization, responsiveness, and consistency make it a website that is functional and reputable.

Interior and Exterior functionality 

The optimization and coding on the back-end are just as important as your content on the front end. A DIY builder prevents you from identifying messy and confusing back-end coding, which causes your website to slow down and causes chaos on the users’ screens. The mistake of using a DIY builder causes your site not to be optimized on both ends, driving users away from your site, directing users to your competitors. 

Not compatible with Mobile devices 

Responsive website design companies can assist you with the compatibility of your website across mobile devices. The functionality of your website on cellphones and tablets is crucial. More than half the web traffic worldwide is composed of mobile users. When you use a DIY builder to design your website, your website will consist of poor image optimization and your website not recognizing whether or not the user is on a cellphone or desktop site. DIY builders also forget to include a click to call compatibility and search functionality. DIY builders require you to go through hours of trial and error for a site that is not fully functional.

Start receiving targeted traffic from the moment your new website goes live. For a website that will deliver and exceed your expectations, contact our team of friendly professionals at WSI New Media Marketing today. 

To understand what an inbound ready website is, you will first need to know what inbound marketing is. Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that puts the human element back into marketing. It educates and engages with potential buyers instead of just selling to them. Outbound marketing, on the other hand, interrupts your potential buyers with brochures, television and radio advertisements, print ads, cold calls, and email blasts. Inbound marketing does not do any of this. 

Inbound marketing does not fight for potential customers, rather it attracts customers through informative and engaging content. It addresses problems and concerns of potential clients, answers those concerns, and builds trust and credibility in the brand. Inbound marketing includes email marketing, but it’s targeted at true opt-in contacts and not just blasted at an audience who may not even want to hear from you. Inbound marketing is about nurturing your leads and audiences by offering them something valuable, like perhaps a jam-packed and informative newsletter. 

Inbound website design

An inbound ready website uses a modern website design called UX/UI design. These initialisms stand for User Experience Design and User Interface Design. Both need to be in place to totally optimize your user’s experience and for your site to be fully functional as an inbound website. 

Your inbound ready website needs to make good use of whitespace. Less is more, and you don’t want your pages crammed to the brim with content and visuals. A clean and simple website with lots of whitespace will be easy to view and navigate.

Lastly, an old and outdated website can reflect poorly on your brand and destroy your reputation. Audiences will not want to linger on a website that has nothing to offer them. Make sure your ‘About us’ page tells a great story and is up to date. Outsource a writer to do this for you to liven it up and make it interesting to read. Be sure to add fresh Search Engine Optimized content to your site regularly. Make your content great so that users check in regularly to see what’s new. Don’t forget to include CTA’s (calls-to-action) strategically throughout your pages to motivate your audience to take action.

Whether you are totally new to the world of digital marketing and need a complete revamp or simply want to improve your current digital marketing strategy, our digital marketing agency in Greensboro, NC, can help. We also offer web design, content creation, and copywriting services. 

Want to know what separates good website design companies from awful ones? The good ones understand what makes a user interface successful. The user interface (or UI) of a website is the most vital aspect of any website, and if it is poorly designed, users will not stick around for long. Here are some tips on improving the UI design for your next website project. 

Five tips from a website design company to create a fantastic user interface

1. Get to know your users 

Creating a stunning UI starts with understanding the people who will be using it. It should be the first step in designing a UI because if you get it wrong here, your UI will never provide users with a positive experience. 

Get ready to research your audience and figure who they are, what they need, common behaviors to expect from this group, how they use websites, and what they will expect from the interface. When you combine this knowledge with your target audience’s demographics, you will have the best shot at designing a UI that will impress them. 

2. At a glance 

Make navigation easy for your users by putting everything they need at a glance. If your users need to scroll endlessly or click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for, they’ll go looking for it somewhere else. This step is especially important if your audience does not consist of digital-natives. People who grew up without digital media may take a little longer to adapt to changes, and they might not have the same intuition for digital interfaces as a younger audience. By making everything accessible, you’re casting the widest net possible.  

3. Simplify as much as possible

There is beauty in simplicity, and it is convenient too. If you can make your interface simple, you’ll have fewer complaints and issues to deal with. Simplify your UI by using visual cues and elements to break up sections, use dark text on light backgrounds (and vice-versa) and implement white space to keep your designs from looking cluttered and becoming visually overwhelming. 

4. Be quick and responsive 

Nobody likes being left to guess what is going on, so be sure to design your UI to give feedback quickly and respond immediately. If your UI doesn’t indicate when it is busy processing something, or when input is needed, your users will wonder what is going on and either duck out of the process, or resubmit information. This could lead to higher bounce rates, and it could break parts of the process if the system is overloaded with submissions. 

5. Be consistent 

Consistency in your design will help your users to react more intuitively to your design. If you keep rearranging and changing elements, you will confuse even the most digital-savvy user. Consistency also extends to the fonts, logos, and general design aesthetic on your site and should be aligned with the overall brand identity of the website you are creating. 

If you’re looking for responsive website design companies and website design companies for small businesses, contact WSI New Media Marketing in Greensboro, North Carolina, for more information.

Time for a new website? One thing we can say is that you need to know exactly what you want. The more specific you are with your brief, the better your web design company can build the perfect new website for you. This blog will give you a guide to enable you to draw up the best possible brief to give to your designers. It will help you answer all the questions they are likely to ask before you even make contact for the first time. This will make you more able to explain exactly what you need when the time comes for the briefing.

Company Details

Start with a short but relatively detailed description of the company. Give the designers a full idea of the following:

• What it is you do,
• The history of the company,
• The number of staff you have, and
• Both short- and long-term business goals.

The designers need to know who they are dealing with and how they can add value. Be sure to include your main contacts and their details, so these can be included in the Contact section of the website.

What Do You Want From the Website?

Explain why you want the new website:

• What are your goals?
• What needs to stay the same?
• What has to change?

Target Market

• What industries do you serve?
• Who are your main existing customers and who are the new ones you want to target?
• Who is the competition?
• How do you want your customers to interact with your site – inquiries, more info, make purchases?

Your Current Website

Give your designers as much information as you can about your existing site (if you have one). Include information such as:

• How long has it been up?
• What is your traffic like?
• What devices are your site designed for?
• Are you happy with the current traffic/sales, and so on?
• How would you like these to change?
• What are your concerns about the current website?
• What about the website do you like and want to keep as it is?

The New Website

Explain what your goals are with the new site, for instance:

• Is it just a redesign, is it a rebranding, or is it a bit of both?
• Do you want increased traffic or sales?
• How many pages do you want?
• What are the key features you need?
• What type of frequent updates will you need – newsfeed, blog, and so on?
• Will you do this in-house or would you want the agency to offer it as an additional service?
• What will the main call to action be, for instance, ‘buy now’ or ‘make contact’ or perhaps other options?

Also, remember to consider the future:

• How are you planning to grow the business?
• How can the website be future-proofed to keep up with the coming changes?

Content

• Do you simply want to transfer the content from the old site to the new or do you want to create brand-new content? The agency can offer you copywriting services if you need them.
• Do you have videos, downloadable documents and other content that you would like to add?
• If not, would you like to create some?

Design

• Give the designers a few links to websites you would like to emulate in some way.
• Also tell them what you want to come through in the visual elements, for instance, give them some key descriptors of your company that they can keep in mind when designing your look and feel.

Deadline and Budget

Tell the designers exactly what you need in terms of deadlines and tell them what budget you have to work with. You both then have a good idea of what can and can’t be done and how much leeway there might be with regard to money and time.

Contact WSI New Media Marketing for excellent website design.

Time waits for nobody. 2020 is already rushing ahead regardless, and digital media marketing is running with it. Digital marketing moves as quickly as the technology it uses, so all the world’s top social media agencies need to keep up with the latest trends in order to stay on top of their game. Here are four of the top trends in the practice of digital marketing  in 2020.

• Greater Personalization

Marketers are using AI to create personalized experiences. Customized content can be delivered to users based on their search history, location, and interests. You can also create product recommendations and content suggestions as well as automate advertising. AIs can also be very effective in automating your email lists. This enables you to hone your targeted emails to a fine edge with mail campaigns that are personalized to the extreme.

• Sentiment Analysis

Do you want to better understand how customers feel about your products? Social media mentions aren’t always as clear cut as you would want them to be, but now you can analyze their tone with the use of AIs. The AIs analyze posts relating to your brand to understand whether people have positive, negative or neutral feelings about what you do. They can even flag and prioritize negative responses so that you can act on them quicker and take steps to manage your brand’s public image.

• Chatbots

Chatbots are nothing new. They have been used for some time already as a way to provide customer support quickly and without putting any strain on your staff. They are getting more and more sophisticated now, however, able to provide ever more involved assistance with increasingly more complex queries. Chatbots also streamline customer service and make it not only quicker but also more effective. They can also be used to gather data from their interactions, putting them in a database, which you can then use for marketing purposes, providing information on your customers. You can then use this to perfect your marketing efforts.

• Video Content for Social Media Marketing

Video content simply attracts more views than any other format. People would rather watch a video than read through even a single paragraph of copy. You can strategize the way you use videos by posting them for limited periods of time – leveraging your audience’s FOMO and prompting a customer to take action. Make use of Instagram Stories for example. You can also add hashtags and get users to engage, thus creating and developing a relationship with your audience and fostering brand loyalty.

If you’re uncertain how to make good use of these trends, you can always hand the work over to a top social media agency that can use all of these methods and technologies to promote your brand. Contact WSI New Media Marketing and let us follow the trends for the good of your brand, through social media marketing, PPC advertising, website design, and mobile marketing among other methods.

 

Drawing traffic to your website can be a tricky affair. At times, you think you’ve hit on the winning formula, only to find that your numbers suddenly start to drop. You’re throwing in every trick in the book – every keyword is perfectly researched, all your social media postings are carefully strategized, your website design has been carefully planned for optimal UX, and yet the traffic dwindles.

That’s okay. It happens. The thing to do is remember that the internet – and thus digital marketing by extension – is an ever-changing thing, and you need to adapt with it. Every so often, you need to regroup, rethink, and try something new. Here are three tips to help you give your traffic a boost.

1. The Celebrity Touch

Celebrity endorsements have worked since the days of newspaper ads – and they still do. Now, we’re not suggesting that you pay your favorite sports star to do a cheesy commercial giving your product the thumbs up. Digital content marketing can be more subtle and more interesting than that. You can draw interest to your site by posting content that features celebrities connected with your line of business, and leveraging off their fan base. It can be as simple as an interview with a star, famous author, or a luminary in your industry. You’d be surprised who’s willing to talk to you if you only ask.

Alternatively, ask a well-known blogger to write a guest blog for you and/or write a blog for their site. In this way, you could be attracting a whole new audience.

2. Social media: LinkedIn, Reddit

LinkedIn is the most effective platform to post business-related content. And, its users have a bigger attention span than those of other social networks. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, it has users that are more likely to click on, and actually read, in-depth articles on subjects that interest them, as well as clicking through and finding out more, provided they see a benefit to them professionally.

Reddit is another way to open up to different audiences, but in this case, you need to be a bit smarter and more targeted. Don’t just post content broadly; identify and research specific sub-Reddits that are applicable to your market, where potential new customers may be found among the readers.

3. Be Adaptable

Ultimately, no matter whether you follow the above advice or any other specific tips, the point is to be willing to shift your opinions and strategies in order to move with the times and undulating trends of the internet. You need a holistic SEO strategy that can help you keep your finger on the pulse all the time and change your approach accordingly.

WSI’s Adaptive SEO™ services will help you keep ahead of the trends, altering the angle of your digital marketing attack, while still maintaining the integrity of your brand. Contact us to start applying the adaptive treatment to your SEO strategy.

 

 

 

If you ever needed a reason to embrace mobile marketing with open arms, Google’s new mobile-first indexing is it! Below, we explain what this type of indexing actually is and what it means for your company’s website going forward. 

• Mobile-First Indexing 

In December of last year, Google made a big announcement that detailed how over half of the pages shown in search results globally are from mobile-first indexing. In other words, the vast majority of the pages that you visit from a Google search are based on how Google crawled and indexed that content based on the mobile version of that page.

• What Does This Mean for My Business? 

Ultimately, what it means is that if you are not paying attention to mobile marketing and making doubly sure that your company website is mobile-friendly, you are likely losing out on half the traffic that you could be getting to your site if you were. 

In order to maximize your mobile marketing and SEO going forward, you should keep the following guidelines in mind:

• • Your mobile site should contain the same content as your desktop site. It is not recommended trimming your content for your mobile site. 
  • Structured data should be present on both versions of your site.
  • You should include metadata on both versions of your site. Meta titles and meta descriptions, in particular, are of the utmost importance. 
  • Make sure that all images have alt tags on both versions of your website. 

Need help with mobile marketing, mobile app marketing, and mobile content marketing? When it comes to expert mobile marketing services, you cannot go wrong with New Media Marketing! For more information on how we can aid you in improving your Google rankings, do not hesitate to get in touch with our team.

WSI has announced that it has recently partnered with the Heat-Timer corporation of Fairfield, New Jersey to redesign their website, increase their search visibility and implement a digital brand marketing program. The new website can be viewed at:  https://www.heat-timer.com/.

Heat-Timer® is the premier maker of advanced heating and domestic hot water controls in the USA. Their product line includes wireless, internet-based control systems and sensors, as well as sophisticated motorized valves. Heat-Timer controls are unique in the industry for their ability to learn the heating characteristics of a building and optimize boiler control for maximum energy savings.

“We chose WSI because they were the only agency really able to speak intelligently to the digital marketing of our products in the channel,” notes Vinny Clerico vice president of sales. “They bring a lot of resources and expertise to bear on problems of marketing and technology and we felt we had good roadmap for future initiatives.”

WSI Marketing Program For Heat-Timer®.

WSI was engaged to do the web design and implementation, as well as provide all the copywriting and SEO operations for the new business initiative. WSI reviewed and did extensive background research on the competitive environment for commercial heating controls and designed a custom solution that leveraged our technical copywriting, graphic design, and our ability to translate complex product offerings into simple, compelling concepts that can be used for broad marketing and brand development.

As a result of detailed competitive analysis, WSI created unique, SEO optimized page content catering to the unique and diverse product offering of the company. These custom pages and graphics developed by WSI include content for:

• Boiler Control Systems
• Motorized Tempering Valves
• Energy Management Systems
• HVAC Controls

The marketing program that WSI has implemented for Heat-Timer® includes organic Search Engine Optimization, content marketing and social media advertising. WSI’s SEO Program will also produce quality blog, graphic, social media and video content to syndicate on external web properties including WordPress, Weeblyand Blogspotin addition to several other WSI proprietary content distributionplatforms.

Call WSI for a Digital Branding Overview

For those looking to see what a truly intelligent and comprehensive marketing solution looks like, please give WSI a call today.

This blog originally published at https://wsinetmarketing.com/wsi-heat-timer-partnership

“Trust is built when no one is looking” – Seth Godin

Trust factors are subliminal keys that your website sends out to users. Here are some of the most important trust factors to include on your site:

• Social Media Icons

Having your social media profile icons visible on your website is good for local SEO and PR purposes, as well as establishing trust. You can put your social media icons in your website’s footer, at the top of the page, and on your Contact Us page. Make sure the icons link to your social media profiles and that these pages are regularly updated.

• Site Navigation

Your site structure should be designed with users in mind. Not only does it help search engine crawlers to index pages, but it shows users that your website (and business) has been carefully planned and executed.

• Contact Information

Include your phone number, email address, and full street address. This will help users to get in touch with you and to assure them that you are a legitimate business. It will also help to drive leads.

• Reviews

People want to do business with companies that have been reviewed by real people. Reach out to your existing and happy clients and ask them if they would give you a review to publish on your website. It is a good idea to do this once a year so that you have updated reviews. Set a reminder in your calendar so that you can get ongoing feedback to share with potential clients on your website. An added benefit is that it can highlight potential weaknesses in your business.

• Blogs

Blogs are a great tool to drive traffic to your website and to drive leads to your website. If you have educational and helpful blogs on your website, it can also help to create trust with your website visitors.

• Returns Policy And Warranties

If you are selling products on your website, make sure that you have your returns policy and warranties where website visitors can easily find it. People are cautious to part ways with their credit card details and this information can make all the difference in closing more deals.

• Secure Payment Gateway Symbols

Potential clients need to know that you are using trusted payment gateways and credit card processing. Include the information and iconic logos on your website.

WSI New Media Marketing is one of the top web design companies in Greensboro, North Carolina. Contact us for SEO Optimization services, pay per click advertising, and more.

Many of our web design clients have started to ask us whether it is worth it to incorporate a chatbot into their website designs. So, are chatbots just a fad?

If you have ever seen a chatbot on a website, then you have probably seen just how much potential a chatbot can offer. Whether or not you incorporate chatbots into your site will depend on your business and the industry you are in. Here are a few of the basic benefits that most companies will receive from using a chatbot:

• Instant Marketing Channel

A chatbot is an instant marketing channel that allows you to sell to your customers in real-time while they are on your website. Instead of running the risk of your potential customer not finding what they are looking for or clicking away because they are not convinced, a chatbot can help you to close more deals.

You can even take this instant marketing channel one step further if you have an e-commerce website. With Facebook Messenger, your business will be able to sell and directly take payments inside the app, enabling you to quickly close deals and boost your bottom line.

Even if you are not selling physical products, chatbots are still very useful in marketing to your target audience. In the same way that you use email marketing, you can send messages directly to your audience about new content on your website, for example. This is a great option for companies in the B2B sector.

• Build Relationships

Chatbots are a great channel for building relationships and selling to your audience. In today’s day and age, customers expect instant responses from clients. Investing in a chatbot will help you to meet this need.

• Automated Customer Responses

If you are not planning on using chatbots for your sales and marketing, there are still uses that you should consider. You can give clients instant feedback with automated responses, which will help you up the engagement you have with clients. You can create automated quick, simple and repetitive responses to frequently asked questions. These predefined responses can significantly reduce the number of messages and queries that you need to respond to on a daily or weekly basis.

WSI New Media Marketing is a digital marketing agency and website design company for small businesses in Greensboro, North Carolina. Contact us for more information about chatbots and responsive website design today.