by nottmarketing | Jan 17, 2023 | Promotion, Website Upgrade
Is your website past its freshness date?
Call Nott Marketing Services when you want a consultation on website upgrades in Killingly CT. Your website is the portal to your company. If your website has not been updated in the last five years or had your key services optimized for your locale, you need an intervention. According to a 2019 Salesforce.com blog post, as many as 87% of consumers investigate their buying options using search engines. Unfortunately, you might never be found unless your website appears on the first page or two in a Google search. Whether you sell online or not, it is common for your target market to do a little research on the internet.
Google Search places more importance on websites optimized for mobile devices. Unless your website has been designed to look good on mobile, tablet, and desktop, your expensive web pages are invisible. The smartphone has succeeded in completely changing the rules of web page ranking. Hand-held devices and increased bandwidth have encouraged the proliferation of highly visual messages. Today, video hero banners, high-resolution photography, infographics, and jquery powered slideshows have displaced text on many homepages. It seems that a picture now conveys the company story. Back when dial-up reigned, graphics were scarce and web pages resembled ordinary documents.
Trending Page Design
There are new protocols for website developers now that public wireless internet is ubiquitous and bandwidth abundant. Have you noticed how many websites now look like Facebook and Pinterest? What was once true for keyword and metatag selection in page text and bold headlines has been supplanted by clever subliminal messages conveyed by photography, collages, and infographics.The abundance of infographics today gives the viewer the visual equivalent of a soundbite. The danger of marketing with chunks of imagery is that one can’t possibly make a rational decision on so little information. Our media screens put your brain in a suggestive state, where rational thought is all but impossible. When your company story is told in pictures, search bots cannot read your pages. Search Engine Optimization is a science, and requires text, headlines and minimum word counts.
Feeding the Beast: Getting Noticed on Google
The most successful websites in terms of search engine visibility and aesthetics, pay attention to the guidelines set by the algorithms. When we tell your story, we want your page to resemble you, not a slick design portfolio. I have never participated in Google Adwords, and I recommend all my clients keep their websites current and relevant.
For 10 years, have contributed short posts about marketing, social media, scams, spam, and other topics from the small business point of view. My message is about what I can do for small business owners who need a dedicated webmaster to present their company stories with care.
That said, I do understand the value of impactful graphics, concise messages, and the new expectations of the hand-held device and the browser with a short attention span. Need a consultation? Call during regular business hours or shoot me an email!
by nottmarketing | Aug 20, 2021 | Planning Your Website, Website Upgrade
We’d like to offer some important guidelines for planning your Connecticut small business website. Nott Marketing Services begins the consultation process during the first conversation or email. We know that every client will have different reasons for establishing a company website. Before proceeding with an in-depth consultation, it will be important that we speak to the company spokesperson or decision-maker for the project. Consult our checklist to prepare.
Checklist
Your website will require the same planning as any marketing project prepared for your company. The advantage of website production over a printed brochure, besides the expense, is that new ideas and information can be published at will, at any time, for very little expense. So, what will you want to say about your company?
These are things we will need for your project:
have you budgeted for an internet advertising project?
have you budgeted for an ongoing marketing or maintenance plan?
do you have a deadline to meet?
is this a new company or service?
do you have an existing website?
a prepared brief company history or introduction of staff
description of your target market or typical customer
have you collected recent testimonials from your clientele?
name two of your local competitors
do you intend to collect leads from the site?
will you sell or collect donations from the site?
do you have a logo, a design scheme, or preferred color palette?
will a photo gallery or short video be helpful in this production?
give us 2 or 3 domain names (dot-com names) you would like, in order of preference
what online and offline advertising campaigns are currently in use?
HOW MANY PAGES DO YOU NEED? Determine the website’s objective before outlining your project. It is easy to underestimate the number of pages needed for a portfolio, product catalog or store. Main pages include the home, contact, about the company, and a main product or services page. However, a cost-conscious new company with very little material in those pages can get away with a one or two page site. A website is a process which can and should have pages and material added into it later on.
CAN YOU AFFORD WHAT YOU DESIRE? The product catalog a client sees in his/her mind may be cost-prohibitive until the business becomes firmly established. Software installation, programming, photo manipulation and graphic design are time consuming services that require attention to detail. From my perspective, a client commonly requests a project with high expectations of professional results from the web design team, regardless of their ability to pay for the service. Unlike other service providers, we commonly wait months or years to be paid for some projects. If you cannot set aside several thousands of dollars to create and maintain your website, start small and build the site over time.
WRITING COPY FOR NATURAL SEARCH There are rules and guidelines in use on the web for search engine robots, and they change frequently. The code behind the designed page should tell the ‘searchbots’ what the site is all about. Providing complete descriptions of every product you sell is of crucial importance. I have written a few articles to give you a little information about planning your website, the role of social networking in your plan, and the science of search.
PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY FOR YOUR ONLINE STORE Quality photos of your products will help you sell yourself as a reputable merchant! Poorly lit or out-of-focus photos do not belong on your professional product catalog. If you cannot hire a product photographer, buy a new digital camera and tripod – and if possible, take a photography class. In the long run, you will save thousands of dollars doing this yourself.
When you’re ready to get the boll rolling, please review our Pricing guidelines.
Now, let’s talk about your home page….
