Sep 13 / 2013
0

Lake Havasu City Web & Graphic Design- Landing Pages, Part II

TGIF NSquared Readers, Boo yah!

Fridays are perfect for reading super cool articles about landing pages. At least we think so. See for yourself:

“What Is a Landing Page and Why Should You Care, (Part II)

…continued…

What makes a landing page most effective?

Ready to create your first landing page, or improve on a landing page you already have? Here are some of the most important elements to make sure your landing page is working hard for you:

Limit Navigation. You’ve brought your targeted traffic to a page where they can take your desired action. Don’t distract them! Limit the number of exits from your landing page so that your visitors are focused on filling out your form. A key part of this is to hide your website navigation elements on landing pages.

Deliver Value. First and foremost, if you have a valuable offer, your visitors will give up their contact information in exchange for your offer. Ask yourself if your offer is compelling to your audience and make sure that your landing pages demonstrates that value.

Enable Sharing. Tap into a huge community of your best (and free!) marketers: your audience. Add share links to your landing page to encourage your website visitors to share your content with their audiences.

Keep it Short. The longer your landing page and form, the more friction you add to the lead conversion process. Keeping your lead form short and straightforward will increase your conversion rate.

Test, Test, Test. As many best practices as you may read about online, your landing page can always use more testing and improvement. Make sure you have a landing page creation tool that allows you to create and test many different landing pages to see what works best for your business.

Are you a landing page guru? Check out some of our advanced tips and data around landing page best practices on effective calls to action and the best/worst button text (hint: don’t use “Submit”). Do you need to make any of these 10 Quick Fixes to Build Killer Landing Pages?

If you’re working hard to drive traffic to your website, don’t make the mistake of not capturing that traffic as leads.”

Aug 31 / 2013
0

Articles, Inbound Marketing, Websites

Have a Rockin Lake Havasu City Website, Part IV

Good morning readers! Boo yah, it’s Saturday!

Welcome to the very last article featuring Hubspot’s cache of well-done homepages. Keep reading to see the rest of these easy to navigate, easy on the eyes pages.

“16 Brands That Totally Nailed Their Homepage Designs

…continued….

12) New Breed

New Breed’s website effectively balances its different buckets of content and presents it all in a well-organized, easily-digestible page.

13) SilkTricky

Another example of content organized into visual tiles is SilkTricky. Notice the use of a carrot visual element (the white triangle in the text boxes) to unobtrusively connect the site’s text and visuals for the reader.

14) Function Point

Function Point’s website maintains a consistent look and feel across all of its design elements. The site’s illustration, style, and choice of colors also help enhance the design and build a visual hierarchy.

15) Woodwork

Despite the potentially overwhelming visuals on this page, clear navigation and layout (shown here) ensures that the user isn’t overwhelmed.

16) Quarter Rest Studios

This homepage is essentially one large slideshow paired with a simple top navigation. It gives the visitor a limited but useful set of options — presumably ideal for the magazine’s visual-based target market.

”

Weren’t these just the coolest ever? Does your business need a website with a homepage that will keep potential clients browsing? Give us a holler! And while you’re at it, ask about our current specials on inbound marketing campaigns and websites. Have a wonderful, safe, and stylish weekend.

Aug 07 / 2013
0

Articles, Inbound Marketing, Social Media

Promote Your Lake Havasu City Website – Why a Google+ Profile is Important for Your Business

Howdy NSquared readers!

You may have heard or seen the hype regarding Google+. But, if you’re anything close to an average American, you already have multiple profiles on multiple social media websites. Is it really that important to have one more password to keep track of? In regards to Google+, the answer is yes.

If you aren’t using a Google+ profile to boost your business, then you are missing out. Keep reading the article below to see why one more password is totally worth it. You won’t regret it!

“Why Google Plus Can be so Important for your Business

Google plus is indexed by Google so it can help customers find your business faster and easier also by creating a business page you can increase your visibility.Google+ has more than 90 million members and 60% of them log in every day.How to reach all those users?

Provide original information but more importantly share other people’s ideas. Also make sure that you post few times a day to reach people in different times zones.

Build up trust

If someone you trust shares a link, you are more likely to check it out. Therefore, comment on your shares, respond to other people’s comments.

Educate your followers

Let your circles know more about your brand as the more they know the easier it is to them to make informed decision about your product or service.

Customer service

Make sure that your customers are kept happy and respond rapidly to their questions and complains. Offer videos or other media to help resolve their problems or issues.

Build a community

Give fans a place to talk and share their experiences but tailor your community to your location and business.

Share media

Do not forget to add media and provide value. Always look for user-created content like e-book, video, reports or photos.

Few ideas how to get it done:

Build a relevant audience by looking for people who are appropriate to your business. You can do that by defining your audience by demographic or location or topic.

Look for a content that your circles would like outside of Google+

Engage in conversation on a post

Read posts by others and comment but at the same time you need to comment on your own posts.

Share a new post since the purpose of a social network is to connect and share.

Finally, do not forget to be consistent and keep your offline and online business presence the same. Moreover, provide a continuity so your clients always know what to expect.”

Contact us if you want to start promoting your business through inbound marketing. Until next time, stay social media savvy!

Aug 02 / 2013
0

Articles, Inbound Marketing, Newsletters, Websites

10 Quick Tips to Boost Sales Using Your Website

Hey there NSquared readers.

Are you using your website to its full capacity? If you aren’t taking complete advantage of your website’s ability to boost sales, you should be! Check out, 10 Quick Tips to Increase Online Sales, below:

“10 Quick Tips to Increase Online Sales

Your online shop is up and running and everything is ready for doing business. Now it’s time to get some action! Your shop needs to be beautiful and user-friendly, but if you want to boost sales and establish a loyal customer base, we have a few expert marketing tips that can help you get there.

1. Use a clear call to action button. There needs to be a sense urgency to encourage shoppers to seal the deal, like “Shop Now”, “Get Yours” or “Buy in 1-Click”.

2. Add images or videos as product demos. This will help customers to already visualize your product as part of their lives.

3. Include customer reviews and ratings of your products. This helps to establish your site’s credibility and creates an added sense of community.

4. Make the payment process super smooth. The most deterring thing ever is if the final click to purchase does not go through for some reason and you have to select product and fill in all the billing information again.

5. Make customer service and customer loyalty a priority. Make sure that you are easily accessible for any questions or returns. Always stand behind your products, guarantee satisfaction and reward customers for their purchases.

6. Highlight products by offering discounts or pointing out your shop’s “best-sellers” or most popular items.

7. Make sure the added value of your store is clear. Shoppers need to see the benefit of purchasing your products. What is unique about your business? The answer to this question needs to be clear not only to you, but also to your customers.

8. Create discount coupons and distribute them on social networks, on printed marketing material (flyers, newspaper ads) or to a mailing list of clients. Limit the amount of available coupons (“first 50 to use this coupon will get a 50% discount!”) or the duration (“a 48-hours sale starts now!”) to stir people up for a quick action.

9. Use more than one photo for each product. For instance, if you’re selling clothes you can upload an image of the clothing item on a white background but also a photo of a model wearing it.

10. Set up a mailing list and keep customers updated on the newest merch, the latest deals or any other news bit that might get them to revisit your online shop.”

Contact us if your website needs a face lift (or you need inbound marketing), so you can take full advantage of your website and have a successful business. Have a wonderful weekend!

Jun 05 / 2013
0

Articles

Your Meme Introduction Article

Howdy NSquared readers. Today we are going to talk about memes. No doubt you have seen them on the internet, but what are they and where did they originate? Check out What’s in a Meme, below:

May 24 / 2013
0

Analytics, Articles

Tips for Online Marketing Analysis, Part II

Hello there! Welcome to Part II of Tips for Online Marketing Analysis! Wednesday we gave the first few tips of online market analysis. Keep reading for the rest!

“Tips for Online Marketing Analysis

…continued…

Modifying your keywords

After you have analyzed a decent amount of data, you can then begin to modify your keywords. Identify the keywords that are not converting well (those browsers are not initially searching for).

This will save you time in attempting to optimize words that are not making you money, and will augment your overall sales by identifying words that are worth your efforts.

How long are they on the site?

Online marketing is also concerned with how long a user stays on a site. If a high number of users leave your site within the first minute, then you know you must work on the look and feel of your site.

If users are staying but are not making conversions, then you know you must improve your ad copy or conversion forms.

Catalog conversions

As previously stated, online marketing employs both search engine optimization and pay per click activities. It is important to track times and region of origin of conversions more so for PPC purposes than SEO.

For instance, if you know most of your conversions take place during the work week as in the business-to-business industry, then it would be beneficial to lower the amount spent on PPC during the weekend hours.

In addition, you may see trends according to season. You could then alter your PPC or SEO practices depending on the traffic particular to that season.

Where are they coming from?

It is easy to know what pages are leading the browser to your site in regards to a pay per click campaign. It is much more difficult to determine this outcome when it comes to search engine optimization.

The search engines will place your pages in the results depending on a browsers search query; so, for SEO purposes, it is very important to know what page inspired the browser to enter the site. If they are landing on the page and leaving quickly thereafter, you know you must improve the copy and design of that particular page. In addition, if certain pages are never leading browsers to your site, then you know it is in need of some intense optimization.

Thanks for sticking with us! Hopefully you enjoyed our May series on Inbound Marketing. Contact us if this sounds like the kind of stuff your business could use (which it totally could…just saying…)

May 22 / 2013
0

Analytics, Articles

Tips for Online Marketing Analysis, Part I

Greetings readers! Our last post introduced what online marketing analysis was and explained some of the basics and the tools you can use. For the rest of this week we are going to have a 2 part “tip” session. Trust us here at NSquared, you don’t want to miss these tips.

“Tips for Online Marketing Analysis

How well are you analyzing your Web site’s efforts? Analysis is important in order to gauge current efforts and to modify for future success. Read the following article for suggestions in measuring search engine optimization and pay per click campaigns.

How much work do you devote towards your Web site? Online marketing is a continuous process. It is not enough to build the site, create content, and hope for conversions; but, you must also analyze your data.

What are you doing to garner more conversions? You have to study your current conversions to incur more of them. It is necessary to analyze your site’s data. Online marketing is contingent on analysis.

The following article is structured to help you get a better sense of structuring your methods of analysis. Consider the following information.

Know what it is and what it is not

Online marketing is associated with search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. These two methods are not mutually exclusive, yet are not one in the same. It is important for an online marketer to make a distinction between the two.

Workers heading the PPC campaigns are interested in analyzing keywords, behaviors of visitors coming from affiliate sites, search engines hosting their ads, etc. Those interested in SEO attempt to leverage organic rankings. These workers are concerned primarily with content, building links, and other methods associated with achieving high, organic rankings on search engines.

Look for as much as possible

As aforementioned, a worker analyzing pay per click is interested in visitor behavior. What behaviors should you track? You need to track as many behaviors as possible. Look at the search engine, the particular campaign, the ad, keywords searched, how long visitors were on the page, if a visitor is a unique or returning browser, etc. Collecting all this information will make it much easier to make decisions later.

Make it more specific

Online marketing is interested in general and specific behaviors of browsers. It is just as important to track individual users as it is to track the general behaviors listed above.

Use cookies or other means to trail the activity of individual browsers on your site. This will be easier to do with your own site rather than an affiliate site.”

…to be continued…

Stay tuned for Tips for Online Marketing Analysis, Part II. Give us an email or holler if you’re interested in inbound marketing for your business. We’ll make it happen, seriously…

May 20 / 2013
0

Analytics, Articles

Online Market Analysis

Know Your Stats

This week we are wrapping up our inbound marketing series. We covered everything from blogs and newsletters to social media. Now it’s time to discuss the final topic: market analysis. Blogs, newsletters, and social media are all things that can boost your business…but in order to take advantage of the best benefits possible, it’s important to tailor your strategy to what works. How do you know what works? Market Analysis…and in this case, online market analysis tools.

Analysis of Online Marketing Campaigns has a great, short snippet to get you started.

“Establishment of a Web Analytics System

The establishment of a web analytics system is the next step in the effective marketing analysis construction. We recommend using Google Analytics because it is free and easy to operate. It features great functionality to receive almost all necessary data.

The installationof this system consists of two simple steps:

Installation of Google Analytics code (simply adding several code lines to all pages of a site)
Setting of goals tracking. You need to follow your KPI here. For example, if you need to get data about the amount of new buyers and the quantity of goods in one purchase, you should set two goals: “New customer” and “Successful sale”.

Also you should define other reliable data sources (for example, Twitter, keyword research in Wordtracker, call-center software etc.). And it is better not to change ways of data gathering, because it can influence data reliability.

Some tricks that can help to organize tracking of the most common goals:

1) Calls tracking:

You may set up phone numbers depending on traffic sources
Your employee may ask users to perform certain action on a site (to press «Thanks for your call» button, to press «CTRL+Enter») which will be defined as the purpose «Successful call»
A combined method (If the client names, for example, the product code during the call, a special script is executed automatically on his computer)

2) Tracking files downloads (price list, case studies, company profile …). The simplest way is adding “onclick” parameter to links with these files, which allows performing a virtual page view for Google Analytics.

3) Tracking registered users. If you want to monitor behavior of registered users you may assign users to “custom variables” in Google Analytics while registering on a site, and then segment these users depending on values of these variables.

May 08 / 2013
0

Articles, Newsletters

The Bangin’ Benefits of Newsletters

Email Newsletters-Your Website’s BFF

Hello business savvy readers! Today is all about the specific benefits of a newsletter. As it says above, newsletters can be your business website’s bff (best. friend. FOREVER). Newsletters can tremendously promote your website, and in turn promote more customers and more business! Completely the opposite of a vicious cycle…more like a viciously awesome cycle.

Check out Martin Jones article, The Benefits of Building Business Through Email Newsletters, below:

“Email newsletters are not often considered one of the strongest marketing strategies for small business. However, recent industry research has suggested that email newsletters are not only tremendously effective in terms of building business, but are also cost-effective and provide a high return on investment. According to Evok Advertising, email newsletters require approximately one-third the cost of producing a traditional printed newsletter, allowing your small business to leverage the savings for other marketing or operational expenses. Here are some of the best benefits of using email newsletters to build and grow your business.

Email newsletters complement your website
An unavoidable aspect of doing business in today’s digital and interconnected world is the having a well-maintained, user-friendly and optimized website. After all, the vast majority of shopping decisions are made after first consulting information online, on a company’s specific website or on a third-party educational site. Additionally, many purchasing transactions are themselves completed online. Featuring your website prominently on an email newsletter is likely to drive traffic significantly, according to the news source.

The key is to give readers an added value that they can’t gain on the website. For instance, include exclusive information behind the history of a new product and talk about its unique features and appeal to customers. Then, share a link to your website where the reader can purchase the product that he or she just read about. The idea is that your website and email newsletter can work together to complement and drive traffic to each other.

Email newsletters help maintain relationships
Oftentimes, a consumer might buy something from your company and then not visit your website or store again for months on end. The best relationships between customers and retailers are ones that are maintained over a sustained period of time, while featuring regular two-way engagement. Email newsletters provide a sterling opportunity for maintaining relationships, according to WiredImpact. With tremendously fierce competition in all industries today, it is essential to not lose customers to your competitors. Regular value-added email newsletters can help you stay on the customer’s radar for a prolonged period of time. However, be careful not to send email newsletters out too regularly to your customer base – nobody likes being spammed and if email newsletters arrive too often, most of them will likely end up in the trash folder.

Email newsletters contribute toward an exclusive community
Amid the increased competition among businesses, customers enjoy having their loyalty competed for. Many consumers choose to be loyal to companies and brands that treat them the best. Email newsletters can contribute significantly in this department. Use the email newsletters as a gateway to an exclusive community of the most valued subscribers. Make the readers feel like they’re staying well ahead of the curve or gaining some kind of competitive advantage over other consumers and companies.

The email newsletter should serve as the voice or spokesperson for your company. All exclusive information should be delivered through that medium, reinforced with notions of exclusivity. Additionally, don’t be afraid to share special offers with this specific group of customers. Let it be known to them that they, the readers of your email newsletters, are the only ones receiving these special deals or coupons. This will serve not only to increase readership of these newsletters, but also eventually the subscriber pool, once word of the exclusive offers gets out.”

As you can see, newsletters are a detrimental part of your inbound marketing. Contact us if you’d like to start keeping your clients in the loop!

May 01 / 2013
0

Articles, Blogging for Business

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

Put a Face on Your Business!

For the next four weeks we are going to share some vital information on blogs, newsletters, social media, and marketing analysis. If you aren’t using your website for inbound marketing, you are really missing out! Stick with us this May to learn how to boost your business like no other…we think you’ll like the results.

Carolina from CC Marketing Online wrote an awesome article, Why Your Website Needs a Business Blog, explaining the importance of this key marketing tool.

“This is a really common question from small business owners. A blog may seem like an unnecessary tool but it’s actually an important marketing asset. The simplest way to look at your business blog is that it is an easy-to-maintain way to spread your brand message to current and prospective clients on a regular basis. Your blog has greater reach than your email list or your website. It’s a consistent marketing tool that can be easily updated.

Your blog helps position you as an expert in your field. You can post content about your industry, how-to’s and other helpful material to show prospective clients that you know your business – and their needs – inside and out. You’ll quickly credibility with visitors to your site.

Your Business Blog and Social Media

Your business blog can go hand in hand with social media to market your business. Many business owners have gotten excited about setting up their Facebook or Twitter pages only to be faced with the challenge of then figuring out what to share on social media. With a business blog, you will have a regular supply of relevant, original information to share with your readers.

While it’s important to market your business with social media, you still need a “home base” for all of your social media and marketing activities. Some businesses have moved away from blogging in favor of other platforms, like Facebook. The drawback with that is that they don’t own their content when it’s posted to Facebook. With a blog, you have control over your content and one space to direct your social media traffic. Whenever you publish a new blog post, you can let your social media followers know and encourage them to visit your site.

What About Blog Content?

To get the best results from your business blog, you’ll need to update it regularly with good content. But don’t worry if you’re not a writer! You don’t have to think about content just in terms of text. You can use different media for your content, such as video demonstrations, podcasts, photos, slideshows and screencasts. Keep it interesting, and you’ll keep visitors coming back.

Updating your content regularly is important for your visitors and the search engines as well. Google and other search engines look for fresh content when ranking your page. As long as you’re using the right search engine terms within your content and updates, you’ll be able to attract search engine traffic.

Your blog puts a face on your business. Use your business’s blog to define your brand and position yourself as an expert in your industry. And don’t worry if you’re new – it gets easier with time!”

So here at NSquared we say try blogging, put a face on your business, and start reaping the hard core benefits.

Want to learn more about blogging on your site? Contact us today and we can get your inbound marketing campaign rolling!

Pages:12 ›

Posts Tagged / inbound marketing

“What Is a Landing Page and Why Should You Care, (Part II)

What makes a landing page most effective?

“16 Brands That Totally Nailed Their Homepage Designs

12) New Breed

New Breed’s website effectively balances its different buckets of content and presents it all in a well-organized, easily-digestible page.

13) SilkTricky

Another example of content organized into visual tiles is SilkTricky. Notice the use of a carrot visual element (the white triangle in the text boxes) to unobtrusively connect the site’s text and visuals for the reader.

14) Function Point

Function Point’s website maintains a consistent look and feel across all of its design elements. The site’s illustration, style, and choice of colors also help enhance the design and build a visual hierarchy.

15) Woodwork

Despite the potentially overwhelming visuals on this page, clear navigation and layout (shown here) ensures that the user isn’t overwhelmed.

16) Quarter Rest Studios

This homepage is essentially one large slideshow paired with a simple top navigation. It gives the visitor a limited but useful set of options — presumably ideal for the magazine’s visual-based target market.

“Why Google Plus Can be so Important for your Business

“10 Quick Tips to Increase Online Sales

“Tips for Online Marketing Analysis

Modifying your keywords

How long are they on the site?

Catalog conversions

Where are they coming from?

Know what it is and what it is not

Look for as much as possible

Make it more specific

“Establishment of a Web Analytics System