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Essential Elements Of An Awesome Landing Page

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
 
When you sit down to think of a new way to market for your business this year, one of the first things which might come to mind is creating a website which will share your story, your products and show people who you are. A website is a window to your business and many people upon hearing your name will search for you online in the hopes of getting a better understanding of your business. The landing page of a website is the most crucial thing of all to add to your site, and here is how to make a great one.

Links, links, links

When it comes to making a website which will connect you to your business and make sure that people can connect with all aspects of the business you will want to ensure that you places links all over the website which will help people to find what they are looking for. Links to social media channels can be placed in either the header or footer on every page and things such as links to other blog posts on your site can be added as you create new ones. You want to make it as easy for people to connect with you as possible.

Good navigation

Every website needs a good style of navigation to make it as easy as possible for people to move around the site to get to where they need to go. When it comes to planning a sitemap for your website and making sure that your customers can find pages easily you will want to make sure that the menu is in a prominent place at the top of the page and also that you have a search bar on the header so people can make a search to find what they need.

Stunning imagery

Images speak 1000 words, and images are the perfect way to breathe some life and character into an otherwise dull landing page. When you want people to visit your website you want them to see something they like and click through rather than leave the site and cause you a large bounce rate. Images can be exactly what you need to entice people into your website and make them want to know more. If you were visiting a website and you saw a page which had a recipe for cookies with no image, and another site with an image: which one would you want to explore? Images are the key to making a statement and the key to making people want to engage with your brand.

Featured posts

A great way to entice customers further into your website on the landing page is to add some featured posts on there which people can visit directly from the homepage. When choosing featured posts for your landing page make sure that you think about the season, what’s popular at the moment and which of your posts seem to be the most popular. 3 featured posts is usually enough and will cause people to want to stay and explore your website further.

Clever branding

When it comes to making yourself know to the world and getting people to recognise your brand and logo, you need to be smart about it and find a way to place your branding in as many places as possible. The header of your website will likely feature a logo and then you can add the logo to other parts of the landing page to really make people familiar with who you are and what you look like. It is a kind of subliminal message which should work wonders for your brand.

Amazing content

When it comes to making an amazing landing page and an engaging website in general, content is key. Content can be anything from images, videos, articles, social posts and more which you share with your audience to gain a response. Have a think about making a video to introduce your brand or demonstrate the use of a product and have this in a prominent place in the landing page. Video can be very engaging and an ideal way to keep people on your website for longer.

Good SEO

SEO is essential if you want to be successful on the internet and even though you can’t necessarily see SEO at work on your landing page, you should still take the time out to do it. Think about changing your meta title and description to include lots of keywords which suit what the website is about and what you can offer to your customers. Ensure that you have keywords all over the landing page in different places to make search engines rank you higher. It is a time consuming task to do but it is more than worth it for your exposure in the end.

A cohesive theme

When it comes to making your website the best it can possibly be you need to pick a theme and stick to it. Luckily, most CMS platforms such as WordPress have many themes you can choose from, and it means that you can have a consistent colour palette, font and design all throughout your website. Having a dynamic theme from the moment the customer steps into your world is crucial if you want to grab onto them and keep them interested.

Testimonials

One of the things which can sometimes be ideal to add to a landing page for your website are testimonials. If you have had customers in the past who have said wonderful things about your business and who would support you through anything, you can add their testimonials on the landing page to prove to new customers that your products and services are worth their money. Having reviews front and centre on your website shows the viewer that you have nothing to hide from them and it will immediately create a foundation of trust between you. The more testimonials you can add the better, and people will trust that you mean what you say and will be more likely to buy things from you.

Nathan Ives Listed as a StrategyDriven Trusted Services Partner

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StrategyDriven Service Provider NetworkStrategyDriven is proud to introduce Nathan Ives as our newest Trusted Services Partner!

Having completed our rigorous certification process, we found Nathan Ives to be a market leading service provider with proven client results.

Nathan Ives’ flagship website, www.StrategyDriven.com, hosts hundreds of digital products – ebooks, videos, podcasts, articles, and full-scope training programs – and is accessed by over 31,000 unique visitors viewing over 1.8 million webpages every month.

Nathan Ives provides services in the following areas:

  • Market: Marketing and Sales
  • Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship

About Nathan Ives

Nathan Ives’ creative genius drives the elegant professionalism of numerous online businesses and digital product platforms. His flagship website hosts 100s of digital products and has been visited by millions of people.

Learn more about Nathan Ives at: https://nathanives.com

About StrategyDriven

StrategyDriven provides executives and managers with the planning and execution advice, tools, and practices needed to create greater organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior bottom line results. At StrategyDriven, our seasoned business leader experts deliver real-world strategic business planning and tactical execution best practice advice – a blending of workplace experience with sound research and academic principles – to tens of thousands of business leaders worldwide.

StrategyDriven Service Provider Network Provider Network Disclaimer

7 Essential Tweaks to Make to Your Website in 2018

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales ArticleA good business website must be fast, visually-appealing, helpful, professional, and visible in the search engines. It must also comply with various legal regulations. However, with shifting consumer behaviors and new requirements introduced by the likes of Google and governments, it can often feel hard to keep up.

To ensure your website ranks highly in the search engine results pages and continues to make a profit, here are seven essential tweaks to make to your website in 2018.

1. Make Your Site Mobile Responsive

As 60% of web searches are made on a mobile device, you must create a responsive site if you have yet to do so. This is a big Google ranking factor, and your site is more than likely being penalized in the search engines if you have yet to comply with their requirement.

A responsive site simply adapts the content and page layout to the device it is being viewed on. As a result, your website will appear differently on a desktop in comparison to a smartphone or tablet. It doesn’t mean you have to create a separate mobile site. It simply means introducing an intelligent template that can detect screen size.

2. Add an SSL Certificate to Increase Security

While an SSL (Secure Socket Layers) certificate is not a legal requirement, it is believed to now be a Google ranking factor. The certificate simply encrypts information delivered between a site visitor and the secure website so that it can provide a more secure connection between a browser and web server.

It is commonly used on business sites that handle credit card and personal information, which is the reason why it is now a positive search signal for Google. Adding one to your website can ultimately increase your trust in Google, which can help you to shoot up the search engines.

3. Comply to GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25th, 2018 and was designed to protect the personal data for all EU residents. Even if you are outside of the EU, you must comply to the new regulations if you collect, process, or store personal information from anyone within the EU. If you fail to comply with GDPR, it could be a costly mistake for your business.
While most large organizations that regularly collect data from the EU will have responded to the new regulations, many smaller businesses might not be aware of their legal requirements. It is critical to understand your responsibilities to protect your business and your EU visitors’ data. That’s why you need to do your research on GDPR compliance.

4. Find Out What Doesn’t Work with A/B Testing

If your website is failing to convert visitors into customers, you might want need to tweak your web pages to increase your sales. A/B testing is an effective way to find out what is or isn’t working on your site. It will simply show some users a different image, color, text, or minor layout change, which might make a big difference to the user experience. As a result, you will be able to identify what is or isn’t working on your site to make the permanent changes.

5. Improve Your Website Accessibility

Did you know there are more than 57 million Americans living with a disability, who have a combined disposable income of $544 billion? If your site doesn’t offer the accessibility stated in the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, you will more than likely be unable to secure their custom. This will not just lead to a considerable loss of revenue, but it may also leave your business vulnerable to a potential lawsuit.

6. Prevent a Hacking with a Web Application Firewall

A web application firewall (WAF) will increase your site’s protections against a hacking or brute force attack. As a result, it can stop unauthorized access to your website, which can keep your site safe while protecting your customer data.

You might not think your website will be hacked, but 37,000 websites are hacked every single day, so it is a very real threat to your business. Install a web application firewall to ensure your business doesn’t become the next victim.

7. Introduce a Helpful Click-to-Call Format

As stated, more people are visiting websites on their smartphones, which is why you should consider introducing a click-to-call format onto your website. If you want to encourage visitors to become customers, a one-touch solution could make it easier for people to get in touch with your business on their smartphone. Work with a talented web developer today to increase your sales and the user experience.

Four Risks to Avoid During B2B Web Development

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article

A basic tip provided by start-up technicians, expert technology specialists, self-help experts, and network experts on how to start an online business is: “Be Effective.”

Start-ups in e-commerce do their best, often taking part in courses tagged “Start-up 101” that are being promoted as the “easiest”, “fastest” and “best”, and they all seem to disappear in one or two years for reasons unknown. The people who have created new e-commerce enterprises ask the same questions raised by slick and motivational articles about success, instead of clarifying their vision. Unfortunately, none of these resources contains a single piece of advice on how to avoid at the typical errors synonymous with web development during the creation of platforms.

Our company is not just a web development agency; we are the technology partners of several start-ups. Our focus is on quick launch, and long-term projects have also become our priority. Our company is not only interested in the development hours paid by the project owner, but also in the success of a project, the development of additional features, maintenance capacity, and scalability.

Without further ado, we will talk about the main risks involved in web development:

Risk No 1: Contractor’s Experience

Most decision makers try to find an experienced web development company with skills that align with the planned project. If all companies were the same, there would be no single company or proposal that matches the needs of a specific project.

Solution: Look for a web development contractor with extensive expertise. Brendan Wilde of Discountdomains.co.nz believes that it demonstrates the contractor’s ability to implement different business models and bring the experience of other business areas to the benefit of the system. ‘A contractor with limited experience can be a star in a specific field but cannot always see the system in a broader sense’, Wilde added.

Risk No 2: Shortcuts

Some decision makers believe that if they find a contractor with the same experience in implementing the same type of project, then there’s no use to invest in research, analysis, lists of features, prototypes, etc. This may seem reasonable for small business websites or blogs, but when it comes to B2B systems and e-commerce platforms, these errors could lead to huge losses.

Solution: Take your time. Analyse the functionalities and their means of implementation, plot production, create prototypes and align the system’s professional outlook with marketing experts before coding. This will save costs on redesign, or solve technical bottlenecks created by lack of planning. This phase requires between 2% to 7% of the project budget, but saves a large amount of funds for long-term projects. Since start-ups are high-risk on their own, we suggest you avoid all possible dangers whenever you can.

Risk No 3: Length of the Project

This risk also relates to the cost of the project. The trick is to combine the financing model and the development calendar. In a linear process, different experts participate in various parts of the project, passing the baton to the next phase and to the team of experts. This approach may be suitable for small projects, but for large platforms it can ruin the whole idea. This is because the project could be obsolete before you even launch it.

Solution: Look for web development agencies aware of this risk. We have seen a huge positive impact when involving all types of experts in every phase of the project. This workflow ensures a faster transition of expertise among project team members at every stage of development, reduces repetitions and over-clarification, saves development costs in general, and shortens the development cycle.

Risk No 4: Linear Development

As per practical implementation, consider linear workflow as an example. The customer decides to create a B2B web platform from scratch. In a linear workflow, the first two months would be devoted to engineering requirements, creating feature lists and creating prototypes. The following two months will be dedicated to the correction of the prototype with the designers, the outlook design, the correction of the design (because the customer takes on a marketing agency for the purpose of the project) and the fine-tuning of the design. Development will begin in the fifth month simply because the corrections made in the second phase would return to the previous phase and would be used again in the second phase. This process is long, boring, complicated and risky in a competitive environment.

Solution: Try to reduce these repetitions, since the amount of work done by the requisite engineers in two weeks is enough to start working on prototypes, present the marketing agency with results, demonstrate the concept, and implement the changes and subsequently adapt to the market.

In this way, the client can start receiving comments from project experts in four weeks instead of four months. In addition, several specialists work at the same time: the developers are involved in the requirements analysis phase to discuss the performance of features and in the prototype phase to share their vision of coding design with the highest engagement ratio during the phase of development. The participation of designers is at the highest during the design phase, but also influences prototyping because they share their UI/UX experience and continue to support developers during the development phase.

With projects created in two weeks, you can start the development phase faster, using good WordPress plugins. Since the start of the design work is two weeks after design requirements, one month of preparation in this model is sufficient to initiate the development of back-end and front-end, and align the design or functionality with the recommendation from the marketing agency.

Think big, ask relevant questions, act quickly and pay attention to the details of hidden importance. These can ruin the entire project or bring it to the highest peak of business.

Conclusion

The team of web developers over at ALT Agency believe that with any web development project the key to success comes down to project management.

When projects aren’t planned correctly from the start they tend to fall apart mid project and leave to unexpected delays and often increased costs for clients.

By sitting down as a team and planning correctly and using tools such as Trello and Invision it allows for a much clearer outcome and with through planning with all requirements and elements of a development broken down it’s easy to identify issues before they arise.

How to Create a Professional Online Presence For Your Startup Business

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The Internet has made it easier than ever for budding entrepreneurs to start a business, but the nuances of “being online” can be confusing. If you’ve recently launched a startup, the first thing you’ll want to do is create a professional online presence, so people know who you are, what you do and how to reach you. Whether or not you intend to sell your products or services online, it doesn’t matter; you still need a website and some active social media profiles for your business to grow. With this in mind, here’s how to build an online presence for your startup business in five easy steps.

Step One: Do Your Research

Before you start marketing your business online, you need to know who you’re marketing it to. Find out who your target audience is and how they use the Internet, and then you can target your efforts more successfully. You probably already know your business goals (perhaps to turn a profit or fill a gap in the market), but you also need to think about the goals of your customers. What do they want and why are you best placed to provide it?

Step Two: Create a Website

As a startup business, your first investment should be a professional-looking website. There are tools you can use to set this up for free, but if you want to make an impression and stand out in your field, it’s best to consult with a web design agency. Web design can be tricky; as well as layout and branding, you also need to consider security, mobile responsiveness and search engine optimization to help people find and use your website.

Step Three: Get Active on Social Media

To connect with a modern audience, you need to know how to use social media for your business. Refer back to your customer research to decide which platform is most likely to reach your target audience. The key here is consistency: you don’t have to be on every site, but you do need to provide communication and consistency if you want to build trust in your brand.

Step Four: Promote Your Business

Social media provides the perfect platform for promoting your business, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s free or even easy. Paying for ad space and running targeted campaigns is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and build a following. Without investing at least some time or money, you’re unlikely to make much of an impact.

Step Five: Keep Up the Good Work

Now you have a professional online presence, which will attract high-paying clients, help spread the word about your products or services and enable you to build a glowing reputation. The work doesn’t end here, however. Creating a professional website and setting up your social media accounts is just the first step in marketing your startup. You also have to maintain your online presence to keep growing your business.