According to new research from comScore, on the State of Local Business Search, search on mobile phones is growing. The study found that 22% of U.S. mobile phone users searched on their phone in January 2011. That’s an 8% increase from the 16% who reported searching via mobile in January 2010.

Not only are more people searching from their mobile phone, the frequency of mobile search is increasing, too. The report found that of those conducting a search on their mobile device, 27% reported searching at least once a week, 43% reported searching 1-3 times per month, and 20% reported searching almost every day. According to the report, 73% of users are conducting search via a browser on their phone, and 56% conduct search using an app.

Further, 33% of mobile users are accessing local content, demonstrating that the rise of local search is not only for desktop users. One of the most popular types of information that users are looking for is maps.

So What?

Well, when it comes to marketing your local business online, this research underscores the importance of two key things:

1. Having a mobile friendly site for your business so it can show up in local search.
2. Optimizing your business’s Google Places page so that it will rank well in Google maps search.

Do you have a mobile optimized site for your business? Is your Google Places page optimized?

Contact us if you need a little help.

Here are my top 6 reasons I may hate your website:

1. Slow Load Times – If your site takes more than 4 seconds to load, then chances are I’m not waiting around. Google hates slow page load times too and is starting to incorporate it into their ranking algorithm.
2. Splash / Intro pages – These pages were cool in 2000 but now they just waste my time. I do not care to see the same intro every time I visit your site. An exception would an intro where you’re really telling me something new or making an offer.
3. Poor Web Design / Confusing Layout -  I use the 4 second rule on this one too. I should be able to quickly determine the following: Am I on the right site? Do you have what I need?  What do I need to do next?  Don’t make me think about it.  Your web design needs to lead traffic down a path that leads to conversions.
4. Too Little Information – Give me as much information as I need to move to the next step. If I cannot find the information on your website, then it is likely that I will move on to the next site. A good rule of thumb is to give your visitors as much information  as you can in a manageable format. Give me a quick overview and then give me a link to more detailed information if I want it.
5. Lack of Contact Info – Seriously?  Are you a real business? I’m very skeptical about doing business with a company that doesn’t give me easy access to contact them, if needed.
6. Too Many Google Ads – I really hate sites that are littered with Google Ads. I understand their value but a home page with Google Ads throughout it screams spammer to me. Google hates spam in their search results, yet many of the spammy sites I run across are littered with Google Ads…go figure.

Most of my reasons are common sense, yet I still see websites everyday that I hate. How does your site stack-up?

Warning: Don’t Lose Sales Because Your Web Design Sucks

Did you try and save a few bucks and design your own site?  Or worse, have your out of work brother in-law design it? Don’t do that. Your business reputation will suffer. You see, just because you can afford to buy the tools, doesn’t mean the experience in how to use them also comes in the box.

I’m not the design guru at WSI but I have seen enough bad designs over the years to know what not to do.  In today’s world, online credibility can mean the difference between ever getting a chance to talk with a prospect, much less close a deal.

Listed below are seven of the most common mistakes webmasters and business owners continue to make with their websites.

1. Cluttered Home Page – You have probably seen these sites – there is so much information on the page it makes it impossible to know where to start first. Simplify the process and have a clear plan on where you want your visitor to go. Simply put, make it easy for them. Start with eliminating as many icons and buttons as possible. Get rid of that ‘Welcome to our site’ paragraph while you’re at it. Keep it simple for your visitors and they will not only stick around, but they just might come back, which is a very good thing.
2. Animation - This was cool in the 90s – it is now considered annoying. If you must use animation, the maximum the animation should “loop” is three times. You want to use animation to draw attention, but you do not want to annoy your visitor.
3. Unreadable Backgrounds – You’ve been there, the website that looks good until the background image loads and now you cannot read the text. The beach, the sky, your dog – I am sure they are all very important to you, just do not use them as your background.
4. Inconsistent Text – Yes you can have different fonts besides Arial, Verdana, and Times New Roman, but do not go overboard. Stick to one font for your text. Fonts like Arial or Verdana are easier to read on-screen than Times New Roman. Also remember that if you use a certain font for your text, your visitor must have that font loaded on their system in order to view it properly. You can create graphics with different fonts, but remember, graphics can slow down the download time of your page.
5. Background Music – Background music on a page adds no content but increases the annoyance factor and the page download time. It is okay to include music clips on your site, but give your visitors the option to listen instead of assaulting them with your choice of music. Since most people surf the Internet at work, or have music already playing on their computer, adding to that really detracts from their experience.
6. Color Combinations – The Web Palette consists of the 216 colors that both Macintosh and Windows systems display accurately. A lot of graphics are “too large” meaning they have “unused” colors in them which cause the graphics to be larger (in file size) than they need to be. By taking out these unused colors, it will make your graphics load faster. Sometimes by as much as 30%.
7. Overall Consistency – Do not change the layout and design of your site from page to page on your site. Instead, keep the look and feel consistent throughout. Keep the color scheme, sight lines, navigation buttons and text links in the same places from page to page. This will give the visitor a better experience as they will come to expect certain aspects of the site appearing in the same places each time.

These seven “traps” are not the only “traps” which can cause your visitors to leave your site. Remember to review your analytics on a regular basis and check the “top exit pages”, make adjustments and continually test to find the optimum look and feel of your web design.

By understanding why people are leaving your site before contacting you or buying, you can make changes and modifications to those pages to make them more appealing.

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of having an effective landing page. Now I’m going to give you a few practical guidelines.

Step 1: Define Success

In order to accomplish your goals, you have to know what they are. Is this an eCommerce website focused on transactions? Is the purpose to generate leads, or is it about branding or relationship building or increasing your database through membership registration? A good marketer will often start at the bottom of the sales funnel and work their way up to the point where the visitor first enters the funnel.

Step 2: Define Your Customer

It’s NOT about YOU! Many businesses feel compelled to tell their story to what they perceive as a captive audience. There is no captive audience on the Internet. Check your ego at the door; it’s just too easy for visitors to leave and find what they really want.

A tried and true technique for defining you customer is to actually create a persona… complete with name and age and marital status, etc. You may even have multiple profiles; just make sure that you prioritize them. Remember… if you try to appeal to too many different customer types, you will wind up appealing to no one. Once you know WHO you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to THEM.

Step 3: Selecting Domains

Most businesses consider their home page their landing page. That may be perfectly acceptable in some instances, but it is not always the best choice. Your landing page may be part of a micro-site or single page with its own domain name. You might consider one or more “vanity names” targeting a specific product or service. That is particularly effective when the domain will be visible, such as on printed material or other instances where the domain will be visible such as sponsored link advertising (pay-per-click).

Step 4: Wireframing

Essentially a “sketch” of the page layout. Start by listing all of the elements that go on the page and lay them out on a piece of paper taking up approximately the amount of space they will warrant. You should do this before you write the copy because the space available will dictate the amount to copy you have to work with. Make sure that you place the most important elements above the “fold” (the spot on the page where most visitors will have to scroll down to see more).

Step 5: Copywriting

People don’t actually read on the Internet… they scan. They see headlines, bullet points and graphics. Headlines should refer back to what the visitor was looking at before they landed on your page. Only about 20% of your visitors will actually read the body copy… still, it has to be good (less is more). Don’t forget the call to action! You might test matching up the call to action with the headline since that is almost certainly the one element on the page that you can be sure they will read.

Step 6: Testing & Tweaking

This is not a spare time activity. It is something that should be scheduled at regular intervals. Examine your metrics, make incremental changes, and re-examine the effect. Don’t make too many web design changes at once or you won’t know what you did to effect the changes. Your testing and adjustments should match your original goals (Transactions, Lead Generation, Branding/Education, Relationship Building, Registrations, Viral Marketing, etc.)

Our friends at e-Nor.com just published a great guide for mobile usability. It’s well worth the read if you’re looking to improve your the mobile usability aspect of your digital marketing.  Read the full article.

I love this video from the NFL combine. Rich Eisen, the 40-something ESPN guy in the suit, probably thinks he still runs fast. Then you see Tim Tebow blow him away. Then, “here comes Jacoby Ford”. It’s a hilarious video but it also shows you how everything is relative. From a business perspective, no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better and room to improve.

The same concept can be applied to web design and search engine marketing.  Don’t believe me, then check out your competition.

Good, clean web design is one of the most important factors for site usability.  Every design aspect of your website should be understandable and clear to the visitor. Our attention spans are extremely sort when we’re searching  and  a good design doesn’t require visitors to think too much about navigating a site.

Here are a few simple guidelines:

• Navigation links should be clearly visible and easily understood.
• The most important information must be above the fold (the fold is the bottom of the site that is visible on your pc screen).
• There should be clear Calls To Action on every page.  What is it that you want the visitor to do next?  What if they are not sure- where should they go to get more info?  Tell your visitors what they should do next – don’t make them think about it.
• Provide multiple avenues for visitors to get information. Some people just want the highlights or a product compared to others that want to read reviews or technical specifications.
• Your visitors should be able to quickly find all the information they are looking for.

By following these guidelines, your visitors can immediately find their way around your website.  You are essentially putting them in control of the experience with a well-defined course that you have defined.

Website usability is all about giving the right information to the visitor at the right time.  The “right time” is different for each person and a good web design addresses your visitors varying needs and buying processes.

Remember, visitors will enter your site on different pages if you’re doing effective search engine optimization and they should always be able to tell what to do next (or more importantly, what you want them to do next).

With a new web design, you can improve your search engine rankings drastically or you can lose all of it. The biggest risk is losing the value of your inbound links which usually point to specific pages. To make sure this doesn’t happen, be sure to include an effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) design plan as part of your overall redesign process.

SEO shouldn’t start after the website is finished. It should begin with the initial development/design of a website.  Don’t treat SEO as an after thought.

Listed below are the basic components of a SEO design plan.

Goals

Start with the business goals of the new website. Every website should have goals, otherwise it is pointless to have one. The goals for your website could be any of the following: generate sales or leads, build your online brand and visibility, showcase products or services, or provide useful information to users and clients.

Analysis

Always analyze your website traffic statistics to determine what results are currently being generated. If you’re already ranking well for certain keyword phrases or if you have pages that are performing well, then you certainly need to know that and develop a plan to ensure you maintain those results.

Keywords

Select keyword phrases that have good traffic volume and that accurately describe what you offer. More specific keywords, i.e. long-tail phrases, will bring more visitors that are closer to making a buying decision.

Website Architecture

Design your navigation to be both user and search engine friendly. Think about what you want the user to do and make sure the path is clear. Make use of clear Calls To Action throughout the site. Imagine your website is a storefront (which it really is).  When a customer comes into your store what do they see and what do you tell them?  Very few retailers let a shopper browse the store without offering some assistance, such as ‘we just got our summer line in this week’, and ‘we’re running a buy one / get one free offer this weekend’.  Think of your website the same way to optimize the experience for the visitor.

Content

Content isn’t king – conversation is king, but to start conversation, you need relevant unique content. Search engines and visitors love content. Optimize your content to be seen by as many people as possible.

Links

Use an internal linking structure with keywords to enable website visitors to find exactly what they are looking for on your website.

Inbound links

Maintain the content that is attracting inbound links on your current site. If you can’t keep the content on the redesign, then develop a plan to replace those links.

Identify your inbound links providing the greatest value and develop a plan to contact those sites and get the links changed to your new pages.

SEO planning is very important before and during the design process of any successful web design project. It can make a huge difference in maintaining and building upon existing traffic and conversion rates.

We’re spending a lot more time these days digging deeper into web analytics with clients.  Visitors and Pageviews are great to look at, but the real effort should be focused on conversions.

A “conversion” is a user-defined event. It can be anything you want it to be. Some common conversion events are:

• Contact form submission
• Phone call
• Request for quote
• Newsletter signup
• Online purchase

One of the goals of any Internet Marketing strategy is to continually improve the results of your key metrics and conversion rates. In doing so, it is helpful to know how other companies are doing so you have a sense of what is attainable. Google Analytics provides some useful data for benchmarking standard metrics within your industry. However, one thing they are not currently benchmarking is conversion rates.

Do you wonder how your conversion rates measure up when compared to other websites?  Check out the chart below to see typical conversion rates for paid advertising (PPC), organic search (SEO) and online shopping engines, broken out by conversion type.

The data supports what we already know – organic conversion rates are typically higher than paid conversion rates. The reason is that organic searchers are often already familiar with the brand.  They have spent time searching for specific products or services and are more likely to be closer to purchasing. However, the conversion rate for PPC is not that far off at 5.8% for lead generation (contact forms, emails, etc) compared to 7.0% for organic search.

My take away’s are:

1. PPC advertising should not be discarded. When used effectively, PPC can deliver highly targeted, relevant traffic that converts on a scale close to SEO.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO) should be the number one tactic in your internet marketing strategy.  Organic results are more trusted, provide the opportunity for much higher traffic and generally convert higher than PPC search.

So, how do your results compare?

WSI Webworks announces the launch of a new website for Kifco®, a major manufacturer of traveling irrigation systems.  Kifco® Water-Reels™ are uniquely designed to irrigate large areas–such as crops, sports fields, and parks–unattended and without the expense and safety hazards of in-ground sprinkler systems.

The new website will be a helpful resource for Kifco® customers and for the company’s nation-wide network of distributors. Customers can browse the entire product line, search for a dealer nearby, and get detailed product support including manuals and troubleshooting guides. Dealers can login to a secure area to download the most up-to-date product information and marketing materials for Kifco® Water-Reels™. Visit http://Kifco.com for more information.