September, 2023 - Scale - Agile Solutions

Enhancing Ad Performance with Ad Verification

Are you not getting the results you expected despite investing time and money into your advertising campaigns? The problem might not be with your strategy or targeting, but rather with your ad placements.

In the competitive world of digital advertising, it’s crucial that your ads are being viewed by the right audience and delivering a healthy ROI. Ad verification can enhance your ad performance by identifying and eliminating fraudulent or low-quality ad placements.

Ad verification technology is a must for ensuring that your budget is being well-spent. Discover the advantages of ad verification, along with effective techniques, to maximize your ad performance.

Overview of Ad Verification

With a digital landscape full of potential customers, it’s important to target the right audience with relevant ads to achieve campaign objectives. Our innovative Ad Verification tool helps achieve this goal by confirming that ads reach the desired audiences, run in brand-safe environments, and meet other requirements (e.g. regulatory, industry standards).

It works by using sophisticated algorithms and technologies to scan the web and analyze ad placements against predefined criteria. From there, the tool alerts the advertiser of any issues that may impact campaign performance.

By verifying the quality of your ad placements, you can avoid wasting resources and improve the success of your campaigns. Ad verification also benefits publishers by maintaining the integrity of their platforms and attracting more advertisers.

Ad Verification Techniques to Enhance Ad Performance

Ad verification offers various techniques to guarantee the effectiveness and safety of advertising campaigns. Here are some of the most powerful ad verification techniques and their benefits:

Viewability verification

This feature helps advertisers determine if their ads are actually visible to users. By measuring viewability, advertisers can optimize their campaigns and get more bang for their buck.

For example, viewability verification enables you to shift focus on ad placements that have better visibility, boosting engagement and click-through rates.

Brand safety verification

Brand safety verification ensures that ads aren’t displayed alongside inappropriate or harmful content in real-time. Preventing such placements helps advertisers to protect their brand image and maintain trust with their target audience.

While this is important for every brand, it’s particularly critical for businesses in heavily regulated industries, such as financial services, children’s products, food and beverages, and health-related products.

Fraud detection

Ad verification tools can detect fraudulent activities, such as click fraud, ad stacking, and impression fraud. For instance, if an ad campaign suddenly experiences a significant increase in clicks from a certain region or an abnormally high number of clicks from a single IP address, it could be a sign of click fraud.

By monitoring and analyzing data, advertisers can identify and avoid fraud, ensuring that their ad budget is being used effectively and efficiently.

Ad placement verification

This technique checks that ads are placed on legitimate and reputable websites, as well as displayed without any issues. Ad placement verification is a powerful way to increase targeting accuracy and the likelihood of conversions.

Ad performance tracking

Ad verification tools provide performance metrics that help advertisers measure the success of their campaigns. By analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), advertisers can make data-driven decisions to optimize their campaigns for better results.

Tracking and Measurement for Digital Advertising

No discussion for enhancing ad performance would be complete without a close-up of tracking and measurement. Take a look at the top advantages of using ad verification technology to monitor campaigns and report progress.

Gain valuable insights

Ad verification provides visibility into a wide range of KPIs like click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition. These metrics allow you to gauge the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and identify areas for improvement.

Make data-driven decisions

Seamlessly identify patterns, trends, and audience preferences instead of flying blind. For example, you can leverage this data to refine ad messaging, targeting strategies, and creative elements to better resonate with your intended audience.

Optimize your advertising budget

By understanding which campaigns, keywords, or placements generate the highest ROI, you can allocate resources more efficiently. This helps prevent wasted ad spend and allows you to focus on tactics that drive successful outcomes.

Take Your Ad Performance to the Next Level

Ad verification is an essential part of the advertising process. It involves analyzing and confirming key elements of your ad, including accuracy, placement, and brand safety. With the right toolkit, you can take your ad performance to the next level — and beyond!

Meet Google Analytics 4: What Digital Marketers Need to Know

As more businesses move online, insights from Google Analytics and other tools are crucial for understanding customer preferences, creating better user experiences, and making every marketing dollar count. In recent years, however, there have been major shifts in consumer behavior and data privacy. According to Google Marketing Platform, “current approaches to analytics aren’t keeping pace” with these changes which is why it’s “creating a new, more intelligent Google Analytics.”

Learn more about Google Analytics 4 and key features that digital marketers should know to be ready for an evolving technology landscape.

Key Features of Google Analytics 4

As Google begins to phase out support for third-party cookies in the Chrome browser, it anticipates there’ll be data sparsity. Google Analytics 4 builds on the foundation of the App + Web property that was introduced in 2019 and relies on machine learning to fill in the data gaps. The new privacy-centric Analytics automatically provides insights and a holistic understanding of customers across devices and platforms, regardless of industry changes (e.g. restrictions on cookies and identifiers) that create data gaps. Whether you’re already using Google Analytics 4 or plan to soon, here are key features you should know.

1. Smarter insights from advanced machine learning

Analytics is now capable of alerting marketers to significant data trends, which is made possible by Google’s advanced machine learning models. These insights can help marketers improve their marketing decisions and get a better ROI.

2. Deeper integration with Google Ads

A deeper Google Ads integration allows you to build and maintain audiences so you can “reach customers with more relevant, helpful experiences, wherever they choose to engage with your brand.” Google Analytics now measures interactions across the web and apps together, including conversions from YouTube video views, Google and non-Google paid channels, Google Search, social media, and email.

3. Customer-centric data measurement

One of the biggest differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics is its customer-centric data measurement, instead of measurement by device or platform. It uses multiple identity spaces like marketer-provided User IDs and unique Google signals from users who opted into ad personalization. Marketers will be able to gain a better understanding of the entire customer lifecycle – acquisition, conversion, and retention.

4. More granular data controls

Marketers have more granular data controls to manage how data is collected, retained, and used. They’re able to choose when to use customer data for ad personalization, and when to limit data used for measurement only. These options can help marketers adapt to limited cookies or identifiers in the future.

Evolve Your Digital Marketing

Google Analytics 4 is now the default for new properties, however, Google understands that digital marketers may need to retain capabilities before switching to the new Analytics. It’s encouraging marketers to create a new Google Analytics 4 property alongside their existing properties to start gathering data and benefit from the latest innovations while keeping their current implementation. As the technology landscape changes, it’s imperative that brands evolve their digital marketing by using responsive software products to remain competitive.

Check out our product SEO Ranker and discover accuracy powered by innovation.

SEO Benefits of Protecting Copyrighted Content

As a digital marketer or brand owner, it’s crucial to protect the value of your copyrighted content to ensure your website reaps the benefits of search engine optimization (SEO). Not only is content important for SEO, but it’s also a valuable asset for brand differentiation and engagement. Learn more about the SEO benefits of protecting copyrighted content and how to find its illegal misuse so you can take proper action to safeguard your brand.

Why Quality Content is Essential for SEO

In May 2020, Google released a core algorithm update to improve how the search engine assesses content in order to present the most relevant and authoritative content to users. The update essentially reinforced the importance of quality content. When content is original and fresh, it will be more relevant to the user’s search intent which will increase the chances of Google rewarding the page with higher rankings in search results.

Google’s Content Recommendations

There are two primary recommendations that Google offers to site owners – focus on content and get to know the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Google uses what’s known as ‘E-A-T’ (which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) to determine content quality so it can give users the best content for their search query. Here are five easy ways to improve content quality:

Make it easy to read
Use a visually appealing format
Include quality images
Add appropriate resources/links
Make it easy to access

Freshness can also be a ranking factor, depending on the topic. For example, freshness is a major consideration for time-sensitive events and information like a sale, promotion, live webinar, conference, etc. By offering the best content you can, Google’s algorithm will reward your page.

What is Duplicate Content?

There’s a LOT of content on the internet and, unfortunately, there are people that will steal content from other websites, resulting in search engines detecting duplicate content. Basically, duplicate content is content that appears on more than one page on the internet. Duplicate content can impact search rankings because it’s harder for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a search query.

If you have duplicate content within your own site, it’s not as big of a problem. Simply add a rel=canonical tag on those pages to specify which page is the “correct” one to rank in search results. However, other websites that have your content can lower your page’s rankings and divert organic search traffic from your page.

How to Find Illegal Use of Your Content

Protecting copyright content is a must for preventing duplicate content issues that’ll lower your website’s search rankings and improve your ROI. Controlling your content’s distribution ensures that your investment and brand are safeguarded. You can manually search online for your copyrighted content, which can be time-consuming and not 100% accurate since you can miss pages that are using your content.

How Google Analytics Can Help Your Business Grow

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that’s used around the world to grow businesses by allowing them to track, report, and understand their website traffic. However, there are many businesses that aren’t using this powerful tool or taking full advantage of it. Although Analytics offers a wealth of data, you don’t need to use every feature to reap its benefits. In this article, Adretreaver will highlight some of the best ways you can leverage Analytics to grow your business.

5 Ways to Leverage Analytics to Grow Your Business

If you haven’t already done so, set up your Google Analytics account, property (i.e. website or app), and reporting view. Here’s a guide to get started with Analytics. Already have Analytics? Let’s get started on how you can use this service to scale your business!

1. Set Up Website Goals

When you set up website goals in Analytics, you’re able to track and measure performance which is crucial for improving your website. What your goals are will depend on your business. For example, an eCommerce business looking to increase online purchases will have different goals than a service-based business that relies on form submissions to generate leads.

2. Learn What Search Queries Drive Traffic

Knowing what search queries your visitors used to land on your website is crucial for driving more traffic. With the Search Queries report (under Acquisition > Search Console), you’ll be able to create content and optimize pages for popular keywords which will help your site rank higher in search results, increasing organic traffic. It can also help you identify keywords for pay-per-click advertising.

3. Understand What Content Performs Well

The Landing Pages report (under Behavior > Site Content) allows you to see what content visitors land on and how they interact with it. You can determine which content performs well for achieving your goals and use that information to create similar content. Alternatively, you can identify ineffective content and update it to improve performance.

4. See How Long Visitors Stay

Keeping visitors on your website increases the chances of a conversion which can be a purchase, form submission, event registration, etc. Seeing how long visitors stay is important for determining what works. In the Overview report under Audience, you can get a high-level picture of how long visitors stay (‘Avg. Session Duration’) as well as a variety of other metrics such as new users, sessions, bounce rate, and more. If you want to see the average time on a particular page, head over to the All Pages report (under Behavior > Site Content).

5. Determine Why Visitors Bounce

Multiple reports show ‘bounce rate’ which is the percentage of visitors that leave your website without taking any further action. If you have a high bounce rate, then you’re probably not getting the conversions you want because visitors aren’t staying long enough to engage. Determine why visitors are bouncing and fix the issue which can be a negative user experience, low-quality content, irrelevant keywords, etc.

Improve Digital Marketing with Google Analytics

It’s essential that you use Analytics to better understand your website and improve it so your business can grow. There are many ways you can leverage Analytics in your digital marketing beyond what we discussed in this article but with these tips, you can start taking advantage of it rather than letting it go untapped. Online technology is constantly evolving which is why your digital marketing needs to stay ahead by using innovative and responsive products.

See how SEO Ranker improves digital marketing’s effectiveness to scale your business.

How SEO Can Improve Your PPC Advertising

Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising may seem completely different as one is free organic traffic and the other is paid traffic, but there are several ways that SEO can improve your PPC campaign’s ROI. If you don’t put any effort into SEO, it’ll hinder your campaign’s performance and increase ad costs. See how SEO affects PPC advertising and why they should work together in your business.

Benefits of SEO for PPC Advertising

While there are certainly differences between SEO and PPC, it’s important to remember that they both fall under the umbrella of search engine marketing (SEM) which means they influence each other to a certain extent. Here are several notable benefits of SEO for improving PPC advertising so you can have an effective strategy.

Gain Greater Visibility in Search Engine Results

When you have top-ranking positions for both organic search results and PPC ads, your website will have greater visibility on Google’s search results page, which leads to higher click-through rates. This is particularly important for mobile search because ad space is smaller. For example, a typical Google search on a smartphone shows four PPC ads – two at the top and two at the bottom of the results page. However, ten organic results (including the ‘local packs’ section) are displayed on the results page. Those four ad positions have become even more competitive!

Raise the Quality Score of PPC Ads

Google Ads uses ‘Quality Score’ which is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Other PPC networks have similar concepts. For instance, Facebook Ads uses ‘Relevance Score’ which operates under the same principles. When your ads and landing pages are deemed relevant to users, your Quality Scores go up which means higher ad positions. Optimizing your landing pages for related keywords and improving user experience is crucial for increasing Quality Scores.

Lower PPC Ad Costs

Higher Quality Scores not only lead to better ad positions, but they can also lower your cost-per-click (CPC). Optimized landing pages that closely relate to your PPC keywords and ads will be considered more relevant and higher quality than if the pages are unrelated or too general. In essence, having a landing page that performs well in organic search will enhance your PPC’s effectiveness and lower ad costs, generating a higher ROI.

Discover High Converting Keywords

Keyword research is critical for SEO and PPC. Without it, you wouldn’t know which keywords to optimize your website for or which keywords to include in your PPC campaigns. By linking Google Ads and Google Analytics, you can discover keywords that have high conversion rates and add them to your PPC campaigns as well as optimize your website for those keywords.

SEO and PPC Should Work Together

Approaching SEO and PPC as unrelated will hold back the full potential of your search engine marketing. That’s why they should work together so you can see better results like reducing ad costs and increasing clickthrough rates. In addition to learning about how SEO and PPC influence each other, one of the most effective ways to improve your digital marketing is by using accurate, innovative, and responsive solutions.

Explore Adretreaver’s cutting-edge products to see how they’ll benefit your ads and content.

Why SEO Audits Are Indispensable for Digital Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) makes it easier for customers to find your business by understanding and improving your website which is why SEO audits are indispensable for digital marketing. Without them, it’s harder to find out if you’re using tactics that no longer work or discover opportunities that will help your business grow. Learn more about SEO audits to see how they can improve your SEO strategy and benefit your overall digital marketing.

Why is an SEO Audit Important?

Performing an SEO audit is crucial for an effective strategy because it allows you to discover its strengths and weaknesses. You’ll be able to identify and overcome a variety of issues such as:

Algorithm updates
Webmaster guideline changes
Outdated content
Website errors
Low-quality links
Poor user experience

An SEO audit not only helps you find anything that’s negatively affecting your website’s optimization, but also other digital marketing strategies like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, and email marketing.

Your website is critical to the success of your digital marketing because if the pages are ineffective with other types of traffic (e.g. paid, direct, referral), then you’re missing out on gaining and retaining more customers.

When Should You Do an SEO Audit?

A general rule of thumb is to do an SEO audit once a year, but some brands do it more often like twice a year or every quarter. A yearly SEO audit is typically enough for most businesses though. Make sure to keep records of everything you do so you can monitor progress year over year and streamline the process. Additionally, having documentation can help you make a stronger case for your company’s leaders to continue or increase investment in SEO.

How Long Do SEO Audits Take?

Depending on the size and number of your web properties, an SEO audit can take a couple of hours or several months. For example, an SEO audit for a small business that has a 10-page website will be a lot quicker than an SEO audit for a corporation that has multiple websites with hundreds of pages. Regardless of how long the audit takes, it should always include a thorough review, analysis, reporting, and strategic recommendations.

What’s in an SEO Audit?

In essence, an SEO audit reveals the website’s strengths and weaknesses and provides actionable recommendations based on real data. The audit begins by defining your strategic objectives, then conducting multiple analyses to get a holistic view of your SEO and create recommendations.

An SEO audit typically includes:

Keyword analysis
Competitor analysis
Technical analysis
Page-level analysis
Content analysis
User experience analysis
Link analysis
Citation analysis

Google Analytics and Search Console are invaluable services that can you perform these analyses, however, you may need to invest in paid tools to get deeper insights and save time.

Use SEO Audits to Enhance Digital Marketing

While SEO audits are crucial for improving your website’s rankings in search results, they also can be used to enhance your overall digital marketing. Improving your pages will both boost your rankings and conversions from PPC, email, and content marketing campaigns. In addition to doing regular SEO audits, you should also implement cutting-edge solutions that will make your web ad placements more accurate and protect copyrighted content to increase its ROI.

Check out SEO Ranker to see why brands are using our innovative, responsive products to get more out of their digital marketing.

Metrics in Google Analytics You Should Be Tracking

Tracking metrics in Google Analytics is crucial for seeing what is and isn’t working with your digital marketing. Without that information, you’re pretty much flying blind rather than making informed decisions based on real data. These metrics are particularly helpful for measuring the effectiveness of your search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. See which metrics in Google Analytics you should track so it’ll be easier to monitor and improve your digital marketing.

6 Key Metrics in Analytics to Track

Google Analytics provides an assortment of metrics and depending on your business, there may be other metrics besides those listed below that you should be tracking. However, the metrics outlined in this article are universal as they provide a solid starting point for understanding your website’s performance and digital marketing’s effectiveness.

Users

The total number of users who have initiated at least one session in a time frame. This metric is particularly important for better understanding dimensions like traffic source/medium (e.g. google/organic, facebook/cpc) as well as landing pages.

Sessions

A session is a group of user interactions with your website that happen within a time frame. Consider a session like a container for the actions a user takes on your site. Examples of interactions included in a session are multiple page views, events, and transactions.

Bounce Rate

A ‘bounce rate’ is the percentage of single-page sessions that had no further interaction with the page. If a page’s bounce rate is 60%, it means that 60% of users left the page without taking any further action. Reasons for a high bounce rate can be due to the page having irrelevant keywords or low-quality content.

Pages / Session

The average number of pages viewed during a session. When there are more pages per session, it indicates a higher level of engagement since users are exploring your site and learning about your products or services.

Average Session Duration

The average length of a session. Keeping visitors on your site longer is beneficial as it increases the chances of a user interacting with your website which can range from making a purchase to commenting on a blog post.

Conversions and Conversion Rate

Site traffic won’t matter much if you’re not getting any conversions, hence the importance of setting goals in Analytics to track ‘conversions’ and ‘conversion rates.’ You can track a variety of goals like transactions, form submissions, reservations, downloads, and more.

Improve Digital Marketing with Real Data

Tracking metrics in Google Analytics allows you to better understand your digital marketing, monitor progress, and identify opportunities. Using real data is crucial for making better decisions whether it’s finding pages to optimize or determining the ROI on your Google Ads campaigns. Internet technology changes quickly and as data privacy changes are implemented, it’s critical for brands to take advantage of tools like Google Analytics to create innovative and responsive solutions.

An effective way to improve your digital marketing with real data is by using Ad Verification and Content Catcher. Contact us to schedule a free demo and trial to explore their unique features and benefits!

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Building A Website On A Budget

While it is that having a business website improves or to business credibility, in 2020 over forty percent (40%) of small businesses were without an online face, then, the pandemic hits.

2020 and onward determines the new way of representing business is online be it e-commerce or otherwise. Having an online presence gives a way for your potential customers to find you and also a way to give information about what you do and who you are.

Let’s Talk Needs

There are multiple features to consider when building a website as you want to ensure that your online market is getting the best. This includes but is not limited to the design, development, and maintenance of your website. Here goes some information on the must-haves for your websites.

Domain

First, your domain is your name or website address, it is also the URL that will appear once a visitor is on your website, simply put this is what your customers will know you by. It is advised that once available use a domain with your company’s or brand’s name. For example, searching for Adretreaver will be adretreaver.com, Google will be google.com, Yahoo as yahoo.com and the list goes on. The extension (this will be .com or .org to the end of your domain) is dependent on the reason for your business, for example, organizations usually have .org, the educational institution uses .edu and the list goes on.

Once you have confirmed this you need to get your domain name registered, in getting a registered domain name last for a year, and then you will need to renew the registration, yes, this is done annually.

Where Can You Get Domain:

Here is a list of places or websites you can visit to get your domain set up kick start and they will take you through to the end. Note this is done in no specific order:

Hosting

This can be easily considered the home of your website content. A web hosting service is that which provides a space on a server for website files on the internet clients. This is the space that allows the maintenance and visibility of your content on the world wide web.

It is indeed a fact that the company your domain is registered with does not have to be your hosting company. One should also take the time out to research the domain or hosting company to ensure it is cost-effective and has all that you need for them to cover. Here goes a listing of a few of your hosting choice again in no specific order of rating:

Your hosting selection can also be dependent on your business size. If small, medium, or large and low risk there are inexpensive ways to host and still have the perk/features of your own server space. Here is a list of ideas that you may want to consider:

Email Hosting:

The email web hosting service allows you to create email addresses using your domain name (eg., support@adretreaver.com or info@adretreaver.com ) the amount you create is dependent on your account type and size.

Cloud Hosting:

This is unlike your usual server hosting as it affords greater flexibility through cloud resources, using a cluster of different serves to host a website or application. What this means is that once your initial server is experiencing downtime another from the cluster steps in and continue.

VPS Hosting:

Virtual Private Server (VPS), is awesome for websites with mid to high traffic levels. This gives high performance in that it isolates a portion of your server giving a private environment along with the dedicated environs.

Shared Hosting:

For this hosting type, multiple websites can be hosted on the same server. It is low in cost since many users shared resources hence, the cost is dived among users. This is usually recommended to users who a looking to establish an online presence and is easy to upgrade.

WordPress Hosting:

This is particularly geared towards optimizing WordPress websites in that it facilitates bringing the best forward from optimizing the environment, website speed, and security in hosting.

SSL Certificate

A Secure Socket Layer usually just SSL for short is designed to provide security over a computer network, it is a cryptographic protocol. This certificate authenticates your websites and enables connection by allowing the switch from HTTP to HTTPS to protect you from the exchange of valuable data.

How does it work?

Your SSL certificate works by using its algorithms to scramble data such as personal and sensitive data, preventing the easy to read or fetch by hackers. It ensures the data passing from user to websites or systems to systems remain unreadable to the eyes they don’t belong.

Process includes:

Request connection is sent to browser or system
Browser or system identity is requested
The hosting server sends a reply by sending a copy of the certificate
Checks are done to see if this is a trusted signal is then sent to the webserver
If trusted a digital signature is sent to an encrypted session can begin

Template/Theme

Feature and functionality are two (2) of the main highlights that should fuel your newly built website and this is whether you are using a template or a theme. Though clean and simple should be the order of the day one should ensure to select a solid theme that displays all the best parts of their business or a template that affords all the best parts too.

These two terms I have seen confuse newbie website creators of owners so let us tell the difference and additional information. A theme gives the pre-created canvas to work with (theme gives color, space, layout, and the feel) of what you want to build. Templates can be classified as the child of the theme as the changes in your template are done through editing the CSS and HTML codes in your theme.

Content

Your content includes videos, text, or pictures that are shared on your page for the user to interact with. It is advised that you have all content together before starting the process of build or before contacting the developer.

This is advised as developers and designers usually charge for their time (the longer the time frame the more it cost), and for a new company with what to use all penny wisely.

Do not do an overload or try to get everything in for the first launch you will always have time to add more content. For the initial launch aim to get all that is the must know to your prospective customers.

Motivate your visitors by ensuring your content is consistent with your business and your social media pages if there are any. Your web page also should aid in the decision your visitor takes to ensure your call to action and the most vital information is strategically placed on the website.

Marketing

Now you are satisfied with the finished product and you have launched your website, the real work begins and this is to get as many eyes as possible to your website and also that they are organic and using.

There are many avenues to have your marketing done from social media ranking and marketing to search engine optimization (SEO). Another route is once you are knowledgeable of the field you are in and what people are looking for you can go with incorporating the correct keywords and this will drive more organic visitors to your site.

We do know as new website owners you are looking to have your website on the top pages of your favorite search engine or the most popular search engine but remember that takes time. There is, however, an easier way than perfect keywords and it is called pay-per-click. While it is that this may be adding cost to one’s budget pay-per-click advertisement guarantees your website begin in the competition for the keywords you want to use.

Conclusion

Now you have all the tools and information needed to make a professional website always remember it takes time to build your marketing audience so be patient.

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6 Best Practices When Building Your Website

No matter the size of your business (small, mid, or large) you have heard the terms search engine optimization and digital marketing. With the various platform, it makes everything much easier to get a website live in little to no time, and the cost may be inexpensive or high depending on the need.

There are a few questions one must ask before designing and here they go:

What’s the age of my audience?
What do I want my online presence to say?
What features am I looking to have?
What makes me different from the competition?
What is my goal?

In asking these questions your website color, design, and overall content will be confirmed.

Let us get specific with the areas we don’t want to miss.

Clearly Defined Goals

When making goals, make smart realistic goals, meaning they are to be reachable, which helps you meet business goals. This is so as your website is a total representation of your business to the world.

In starting a website we usually have the entire process in our heads and this can be a huge task, so, break it down to bitesize, look at areas in your business that you want to improve or the selling point of what you have to offer, and be SMART with it.

Be Specific about goals:
Ensure goals are measurable:
Make them actionable/attainable:
Must be realistic:
Should be completed promptly:

In launching a website, it may not be intended to attract a particular audience but in that launch, your website sets off the endless possibility.

In most cases, sales increase from here where visitors can close deals and give your sales team an environment to monitor progress.
You can have better interaction with prospective clients, lead generation, and drive better traffic hence your marketing make easier.
Your online presence also will influence potential team members which means the chance of using your website for human resource purposes.
Possible use is also in checking for customer satisfaction and improving if needs be, which makes it a great customer service portal.

Ensure Website Is User Friendly

You will rarely hear a user speaks of the great user experience in a website, but a website that has poor structure and a bad experience will be announced. Here is how to limit the chance of this ever happening to you.

Easy To Navigate

While it is important for an attractive website it is more so important that it is intuitive and easy to navigate. Your website should have clear concise directions all buttons should be clear and it is advised not to have more than three steps to complete your actions.

Use words that are easy to read. At the same time, you want to write the content to your liking you are NOT the user just the owner or content personnel. We know it can be tempting to want to be different but it is always best to continue using simple words such as “Home”, “About” and “Contact”.

Ensure your website is tailored to be easily navigated, this means your menu should be comprehensively descriptive to aid in the navigation process. Depending on your website and the product you may need limited links or a short menu listing.

Responsive Design

With a millennial generation, we are always on the move and we need our business to go wherever we go which means all pages visited are to be adaptable to the devices we use. Screen size and dimension vary which means your website should be tested on all as none responsive website usually leads to a bad reputation.

It is tempting to do testing on the device the website was done by and once it has passed we publish, but, let us look at numbers. Over fifty percent (50%) of browsers use mobile devices to do so and this increases by ten percent (10%) annually. so for audiences over fifteen approximately ninety percent access emails via mobile smartphone. Having a responsive website also aids in search engine optimization (SEO)

Small Starter

Starting small does not mean limited information or content, instead, it means direct, descriptive, clean, or clear content. What do I mean?

Have you ever noticed the many parts of your business you want to display? Or, the more you grow the magnitude of information you want to share? Well, your prospective audience is only there for the experience and yes, the product. Make it easy for them to find.

Another thing is to establish a hierarchy, having a visual hierarchy of your website in the planning phase will allow you to design based on importance meaning putting the most important information first and the rest following in that order. In doing this you will note your headings (size and text style), page center (and information it holds), and the color contrast along with the theme.

Optimizing Your Website for Search Engine

While one of the many aims is to have a great website in whatever industry you are in but it is the least of your problem if people cannot find you. It is awesome to market, putting out paid ads but having your organic traffic is most important.

Once the best practices of SEO are implemented on your website it aids in having you on the top rank page of your search engine, which boasts your accessibility and visibility to your potential audience. Here are a few pointers on some of the best SEO practices:

Use targeted keywords, this should be done throughout your web pages. Search engines such as Google track websites based on users’ searches.
Responsive design, the reward for responsive design is rankings on search engines.
Make your URL simple, having short URLs makes it easier for users to read and are more trustworthy.

Consistency Is Key

You may ask, what consistency has to do with website development? It has a lot to do with everything, from branding to marketing and even colors.

All of your pages that make your website should be consistent with the look and feel. In this your images, color, and as simple as the background can make a positive impact on your audience. Uniformity and consistency in the look and feel of your website do not mean all pages on your website should look the same, all pages do have their personal touch but, folds in the idea.

Your website being consistent is also to be consistent with your company’s branding meaning adding company colors and logo is a must. Also, all templates should be customized to be consistent with the brand.

Keep Your Visitors Motivated

This may be hard to believe most times but, again I say, your visitors/audience enjoys the simple parts of the website. This means unnecessary parts that you are thinking of are not needed (i.e. the parts that share no functional purpose, just there for beautification).

Earlier we spoke about the hierarchy of your website and consistency of color and text, this enhances the usability of the website hence motivating your users as their flow feels natural. This natural flow will aid in guiding the user to finish what was started which means a low bounce rate meaning optimization on varied search engines. This also means all call-to-action (CTA) must be clear and to the point.

Conclusion

Now we have reached the end the aim was for you to acquire the needed tools and information to make your website more user-friendly and interactive. Always remember, never allow your user to second guess where they are when they land on your website.

Shot of a young businesswoman having a brainstorming session in a modern office

Things To Have Before Approaching Your Web Design Team

This article will cover a few areas for our readers who are not interested in a do-it-yourself (DIY) project.

For our article titled Building a Website on a Budget, we covered the areas in building an easy simple website that will cover all the areas of your digital needs. In that, some vital areas may be missed and were not covered as you were focusing on too much as the architect.

While you are trying to hire a web designing team it can be a bit tricky as you may need to check on some specific areas to ensure they fit your niche.

In this we will be covering:

Budget
- Template
- Custom
Plan
Goals
Purpose
History of Designer Team
Visuals
Revision Process
Involvement Need

Budget

In all planning, we always make a financial mapping of where we want to be. With this, you know where you are going and the cost to get there.

We prepare for it all, in sorting or budget planning you need to research on “rate for web designer”, this gives the added confidence needed to approach your prospect.

In some cases, you are head set on the individual or company you want to do business with, in that case, contact them directly or via the website to get a possible number.

It is always best to design on your spending size before approaching your designer.

Some companies or individuals will post their pricing categories on websites or varied digital marketing mediums. These may also be categorized by tools used or be it a template or custom website.

Template

In your daily browsing, you may come across quite a few templates like websites some recognizable others may not be so easy.

The modern website usually chooses this as it is an easier do-it-yourself (DIY) which result in an automatic lower cost.

With being templated you may not have much to offer a visitor that another website gives in visiting, this is so there is not much to change with a templated site so your first-time visitor may get the feeling as though I have seen or visited this space before,

Custom

Selecting your custom route may mean that your project will take a bit longer this is so as your website will be building from the ground to get to the awesome finished product.

This will also be a bit more on the costly side and as you were able with the templated version to have a DIY project, without a solid experience in the web designing field you may not be able to take this project on yourself.

While the look and feel can and may be the same as the template your designer will have much freedom to manipulate the design as seen fit and hence may give your audience a fresh taste when visiting.

Plan

Your plan includes it all, from the beginning which includes the budget to the color scheme, number of pages, the audience you will be targeting, and the platform to build on and launch.

This is the area where you decide based on the service you are providing you ask some of the most important questions.

How interactive my site should be?
What are some of the features my visitors will need? In this, you can think it up based on what you will need, and feel free to ask a friend or colleague’s opinion.

To ensure you have covered the above questions and you are on top of your planning (crossing all t’s and dotting the I’s), you can make a planning wish list or vision board.

Play blocks – WISH LIST – on a rough old blue background. Quite even focus.

In planning your marketing, you ask yourself, what are some of the more economical ways to market your website in its space? Some of those are:

Blogs
Emails
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Social media

The route that is a bit less economical is by contacting a company that uses click-through rate tools (CTR). In this, they simply handle the SEO parts for you.

Goals

Remember the wish list and vision board mentioned above? That will for sure have all the goals for your website on there if you are precise in all areas.

Your goal should be all you know your company or brand needs and with that know how to get there. Before approaching any designer, you need to know exactly what that is.

Most individuals, are designing a website to boast sales and improve brand awareness and in getting there they will need to generate leads, improve CTR (for existing site owners), and adequate to high CTR for new site owners.

While it is that a web designer can help you get there we advise you to do your research and while you may not have all questions answered you will have most. Having done your research helps as some designers or designing companies do charge for consultation and brainstorming your ideas.

Purpose

The purpose of your site drives the goal and this drive the design which affects areas such as the number of pages, the title of pages, and the content on such page. In the event you are uncertain about the pages or number of pages you want to have, start with the general expectation and then go from there:

Home
About Us
Services
Contact

In recent times a creator would have created a webpage for you and that is that but now, creators are conscious of the fact of ranker on the varied search engines and in this want to get the best of it over some time.

It also helps if you go ahead and research others’ work in the niche that you are creating the site for those pages will give you great ideas.

Your site will best serve its purpose if constantly updated and trending, so be sure to post fresh content as often as possible. This content should never be random but must be associated with what your site and product are about.

History of The Designer

There are a few questions that you need to answer before signing off on a designer. Note not all answers may be the ones you want but the designer should check the majority of the boxes. Here are three you can start with:

May I see the work you have done before?
Have you worked on projects similar to what I am requesting?
What is the possible timeline for delivery?

These questions are usually selected as a starter, if your designer cannot see your end goal and guide you along the correct path in the event you are a bit off, it would not be the correct one. The project would take twice as long if you and your selected design do not see the same finishing line.

Visuals

Visuals or images you will need to gather before closing in on your designer, these include, photographs, videos, logos, and animations. Some designers will indeed assist in the event you are using stock images. Stock photo is not the way to go for all as some website needs personal touch dependent on your products and the service you will be offering.

In obtaining all images for your website always remember the copyright and infringement act. What does this mean? This means your images need to be:

Photograph by you (or you being the owner of)
Created by you
Purchased from a professional site that has the authority to sell images
Created for you by a designer

Some popular used image purchasing sites are:

Involvement Needed

What level of involvement do you think you want to have in the design process of your project (website)?

You have done your vision board and all plans are clear after meeting with your designer but, you need to make clear what level of involvement you will have. This will also gauge the number of meetings and how often.

What if there are additional decisions that are to be made? Do you trust your designer enough to level it all up to them?

We always advise all clients and prospects that when we leave that meeting understanding your goal a mutually beneficial contract is drafted which set the base of our relationship going forward.

Your budgeted your finance for the project also budgets your time and ensures you invest in a design that respects that.

Revision

Ensure you review all that is needed for this project before approaching the designer, this gives the assurance that all that is needed for this meeting is there. Do not pressure it, it is just as simple as going to another meeting and you want to ensure all files are there when you are called on (only that you will be doing the calling).

Revision is also a must as, you and your designer of choice should also have an agreement on what this process will be (weekly, biweekly, …).

A full walk-thru of the project must be done prelaunch.

Now that you have all the vital parts all the best on your new creation or plan. I hope these pointers give you all you need for the new step.