Top tips for making your website look awesome

Like people, websites also need to be dressed for success. Here’s how you can make yours look impressive and have visitors eager to do business with you.

Make a statement with professional photographs

Before site visitors read what’s on your website, they assess it by checking out your images. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words, but are those words truly what you want to convey to your audience?

Blurry, outdated, or irrelevant pictures tell your site visitors that you don’t care about their browsing experience. In-house photos are the best option, but stock images shouldn’t cause any problems as long as they are optimized for mobile viewing and relevant to your content.

Help visitors find what they want with search tools

If your set of offerings is not expansive, a simple navigation menu ought to help visitors find what they need. However, the deeper your catalog gets, the more you’ll need additional tools. One way is to affix a search bar in your header so that people can use keywords to scour your site. Another way is to engage visitors via chat. You can preprogram a chatbot to ask questions that narrow down a visitor’s intention, or you can have a live agent address a visitor’s concerns in real time.

The more helpful your website is, the more it will foster trust in your brand and make visitors more likely to do business with you.

Extra tip:
Reduce the number of clicks a visitor has to make to achieve their objectives. For instance, eschew using the “Read more” link on product descriptions on product details pages. Visitors dive into a product page because they’re interested in fully learning more about the product, and the “Read more” link just hinders them from doing so.

Present your case clearly with good copywriting

The last thing you want to do is to confuse and frustrate your customers, so it’s important to keep all of your product or service descriptions as straightforward and simple as possible. If what you’re selling has detailed information, such as dimensions or technical requirements, make sure that they’re easy to read and are typed out.

Don’t use screenshots of information tables because web visitors compare offerings by collating information from different sellers. If your information is displayed in the form of an image, you’ll force users to type the info themselves. You’ll immediately lose the ones who don’t want that sort of hassle.

Let visitors get to know your company better in the About Us page

Your brand needs a story behind it that customers can relate to. Every company website should have an About Us page that describes your team, your company culture, and what sets you apart from the competition. Whatever your story is, make sure it’s accessible from any page on your site.

Hire a professional web designer

If your budget is tight, there are DIY site builders specifically geared toward small businesses. Or for a relatively low monthly fee, you can hire a managed website provider. A website provider will take care of:

  • Form – They’ll make your site look impressive on any screen size.
  • Function – The provider will ensure that your site is easy to use and works as expected, whether you’re using a keypad and mouse or just your finger or stylus.
  • Fixes – If something in your site is broken or you want to make changes to it (such as integrating an appointment scheduling app), they will handle it for you.

With more revenue originating online, small- and medium-sized business owners can’t afford to overlook the importance of creating a fully functional website.

Ask yourself what your website is doing for you and whether it’s aligned with your business needs and objectives. The GCInfotech professional web design team is here to help.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. SOURCE

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Optimizing website images for SEO

Small- and medium-sized businesses are often tempted to relegate their search engine optimization (SEO) analyses to the free reports offered by online platforms like WordPress and Google Analytics. Unfortunately, those reports rarely provide the details you need to make improvements. One of the things they tend to glaze over is image optimization.

Do images really affect my SEO?

One of the reasons images tend to be overlooked when auditing SEO is because it’s easy to forget just how many images your website has. Maybe you only had a few photos on your homepage when you first built your site. Over time however, you probably added countless visual elements to blog posts, landing pages, and team photos — drastically increasing the influence of your images on your SEO.

Image resolution and load speed

The first thing to check is how your images affect your site’s speed. If you’re using ultra high-resolution photos, those with mobile devices or satellite data connections will have trouble loading your site. Site load times affect your site’s ranking on Google, so make sure to pair your images down to a more reasonable resolution and save them as web-friendly file types.

  • Choose the JPEG format for illustrations or big photos since it provides clarity and good colors in a smaller file size.
  • Select the PNG format to preserve background transparency.
  • Use the SVG format for icons and logos. Combine this with Javascript or CSS to resize SVG images without losing quality.

Keywords and image title

The days of keyword-stuffing are long gone, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with uploading images with filenames like “DSC2558.jpg”. Before doing so, make sure the names of your images are relevant to their content, such as “gym-trainer-helping-lift.jpg” or “call-center-customer-service.jpg”. This makes it easier for search engines to derive information from the images on a page.

“Alt text” and title text

Even though Google is getting better at recognizing image content without any help from text identifiers, describing your images in your website’s back-end is still important for SEO. Every image on your site should have enough text-based information without disrupting the user experience.
To see how this works in WordPress, open your site dashboard and click on Media. This will display all the images, videos, and audio there. Click on any photo and you’ll have access to text editing tools. Whatever you include in the Caption field will be shown below the image, so check that it corresponds with your content. If not, skip it. In this case, user experience takes priority over SEO.

The Alternative Text and Description fields will be visible to visitors only if the image doesn’t load or if they select it manually. They may not seem that important, but these should be considered non-negotiable for SEO purposes.

Check that your site is doing all these things before requesting another SEO report. If your score changes, audit your image optimizations regularly. If you’re still seeing red, there are a number of web- and cloud-based platforms that can help improve your content. Give us a call today to find out more!

Ask yourself what your website is doing for you and whether it’s aligned with your business needs and objectives. The GCInfotech professional web design team is here to help.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. SOURCE

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Five design tips to improve your website

It’s not enough for small businesses to have a beautiful-looking website these days. Small business owners must also adopt web design trends that not only attract more visitors but ultimately increase sales. Consider the following web design ideas to achieve just that.

Scrolling

Scrolling is a convenient method to navigate a website. Instead of clicking on confusing menus and drop-down tabs, you can just scroll through a one-page site that has a cleaner look and is usually more intuitive to users. This web design style is definitely more important now that people have grown more accustomed to mobile web browsing.

You also have to decide how far visitors will have to scroll to get to know your company. While a long scrolling page gives you more white space and content to work with, a short scrolling page can quickly convey your company’s message and encourages action.

Animations

One way businesses have been setting themselves apart from others is by adding customized animations to their pages. This doesn’t mean you should overload your site with flashy effects that take forever to load. If you want to use animations on your site, give it a subtle twist. For instance, Slack’s loading animation features their logo.

Additionally, animations can be used to increase user interaction and engagement. Hover animations will allow your users to position the mouse over your content and get an immediate response without having to move between pages. Slideshows on your homepage can also showcase what your company is about without throwing too much information at the audience. When deciding to add animation to your page, figure out how a specific effect can enhance the user experience while showcasing your business.

Flat design

To achieve an optimal viewing experience for users, many companies have adopted a flat design for their websites. The flat design style replaces the elements that give an illusion of depth, like shadows and textures, with minimalist typography and colors. For example, Google employed this style to get content to viewers more effectively. The company added flat-design colors and used a sans-serif font. This allows the logo to load faster and makes it easier to read, as well.

Full-screen forms

More websites and apps are using full-screen forms to increase user interaction. Rather than being redirected to another page where your visitors decide to register or login to a website, they are welcomed by a full-screen form right on the home page. This is also especially useful for mobile users since they are less likely to misclick sections of the form.

Customized photos

The next time you want to use photographs to highlight your company, forget about using stock photos. Business websites that exhibit the company’s own photographs on their homepages look more personal and stand out from the competition.

While these trends are popular at the moment, don’t blindly adopt them all because it might end up looking messy. Instead, use the trends that are best suited to your company.

Ask yourself what your website is doing for you and whether it’s aligned with your business needs and objectives. The GCInfotech professional web design team is here to help.

 

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. SOURCE

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Three Tips for Improving your SMB’s Web Presence

According to the B2B research firm Clutch.co, in 2018 a small amount less than two-thirds of all SMBs in the United States had their own websites, but interestingly, the same study also reported that only 17% of those SMBs with websites are actually investing in Search Engine Optimization – or what gets your SMB’s website to the top of Google’s search results so that new and old customers can actually find your official website.

The reason for this statistical discrepancy will be blatantly apparent to most SMB owners. The marketing budget is not unlimited for SMBs, and unnecessary expenses should be avoided, but don’t trick yourself out of realizing the importance of your company’s web presence.

Research has been done that states that upwards of 80% of people lookup and research an SMB or their product or service before visiting a site or buying something from them. Even if your company has a website, chances are your most important content and information is being buried by other, less relevant search results. The following are three ways to ensure the right audience is seeing your site, and benefiting from all of the services you offer:

  1. Off-Domain Visibility

For SMB owners that haven’t built a website yet, this tip can be especially helpful. As you build your website, think of other ways to increase your online presence. Tools like Google My Business(GMB) are a great way to provide information and content for potential customers on the web, even before your website is completed. If you have little experience in this area, it can help to consult with an experienced company offering Google My Business services.

It is also beneficial for any company trying to establish an online presence to have consistently-updated social media profiles. This provides a different avenue of exposure for your business, and may even reach potential customers you might not find elsewhere.

  1.  Technical SEO

The benefits of, and strategies behind technical search engine optimization(SEO) are some of the most important concepts to learn when it comes to getting your website found by the right people.

 

Search engines rely on complex algorithms to rank sites based on a host of factors like page load time and rendering speed. Testing your site’s HTML and correcting errors, along with finding and eliminating pieces of duplicate page content will also go a long in boosting your page in the rankings. This means there are two important things you need to understand:

 

  • Why search engines view your site the way they do and the factors they are looking at when indexing
  • How to control and optimize the aspects of your site that are being evaluated by search engines.

Working with an experienced web development-, marketing-, or SEO-focused company can give you all of the tools you need to harness the power of technical SEO services.

 

  1.  Fresh Content

It is important to be consistent and earnest when it comes to posting content for your website. Simply providing fluff content stuffed with industry keywords will usually result in a lower ranking or your site. It is important to work with someone who knows what google is looking for and how to strategically plan content management services as part of your website design. Fully understanding the role of fresh content and how to manage it with a well-laid-out plan can make your website visible to those who are searching for it.

 

Having a site that looks great is only half the battle when it comes to attracting customers and providing a great first impression. A stream of content that is both relevant and useful plays an important role when it comes to the way Google and other search engines view your site.

 

Bonus: Up to Date

It’s current year, your SMB’s website should not look like it’s from the same era as bell-bottom jeans. While some would rightfully argue that completely redesigning and updating the look of your website is not an easy step toward fixing your SMBs web presence, it is one of the most important ways a company can improve its presence on the internet. If your SMB needs a website overhaul, Xponex Marketing can help. We’ve worked with dozens of SMBs to modernize their websites and optimize their SEO to give them competitive advantages in their marketplaces.

Ask yourself what your website is doing for you and whether it’s aligned with your business needs and objectives. The GCInfotech professional web design team is here to help.

 

Published with consideration from SMBnow.com. SOURCE

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