How To Make Every Page on Your Website More Engaging

There’s a lot of content out there on the Web and it’s important to find ways to build an engaging website that draws in and retains a customer’s attention. Sometimes it can seem a prodigious task to keep your page up-to-date and interesting. Some simple ways to maintain a great site are to incorporate memorable web design, add video, link to social media and refresh content to improve the viewing experience for shoppers. 

 

Memorable and Consistent Design

The homepage should display a simple and clean high quality images without much text. You must ensure that the content easy to understand and navigate through the Website. This will ensure that customers won’t lose interest or become frustrated. Keep a theme in mind while designing and stick to it. Use only two to three colors and fonts to streamline the visual landscape and prevent content from becoming overwhelming. Choose fonts and colors similar to or same as your logo which will help your website be seen as an extension of your brand. Make sure your site has a unique web address to help people find your business easily.

Video – Best Visual Content Promotion

The addition of visual content like video can immediately help to add interest to your site. It can be hard to determine how to add video that relates to your product though and the thought of filming content can seem daunting. It doesn’t have to be and the costs outweigh most objections. The prevalence of high quality video recording capabilities on most smartphones means that almost everyone already has all the equipment necessary to produce and edit a short video.

Customers who view product videos are 85 percent more likely to make a purchase, according to a survey. The options range from filming yourself or an employee talking about the products or services you offer to simply showing a product without voiceover. Video content is easier for shoppers to process as well, because 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual.

Social Media Platform

Social media can provide you the best platform to create an interactive environment for your customers. Research shows that 74 percent of adult Internet users have social media accounts, meaning that it’s a good chance to build your customer base. For small business this can be a great way to reach out to shoppers and further develop a customer base. Posting on social media is tantamount to free advertising and all businesses with little or no marketing budget should take advantage of this aspect.

To grow a fan base, offer promotions and coupons that are only available to your subscribers or followers. Be sure to link all your accounts to the homepage of your site so people can find you easily. Encourage followers to share pictures and create hashtags that make your site visible. By sharing video content on social media you might be able to garner a lot of attention, 92 percent of mobile video viewers go on to share what they’ve watched.

Fresh Content – Promote it

Providing fresh content ensures new audience to your website and also retain the returning visitors. Internet users these days are used to a constant stream of new information in their feeds. It is not always a feasible option to provide a torrent of content on the website but offering a weekly promotion of the content or product can work best for you. Plan out a few weeks of content ahead of time so you aren’t looking for something at the last minute or being repetitive.

Conclusion

These four tips can be an excellent way to increase sales and build a broader audience for your products and services. Stepping out of your comfort zone by filming some short product videos or entering the world of social media can vastly improve your brand visibility.

5 Tips to Reduce Bounce rate of your Website

Bounce rate on a website is the equivalent of kryptonite to Superman. While not deadly, bounces are a frustrating reality for most website owners. While bounce rates are disappointing, they are also an indicator that something can be fixed on your site. Whether it’s simple navigation changes, design layout or targeting efforts, we provide you the best ways in which these issues can be fixed and immediately reduce your website's bounce rate.

1. Focus – Attract The Right Audience

Keyword analysis and optimization is one of the moast vital part of directing users to your website.But one should make sure that they are not attracting wrong kind of users. The content that is to be delivered must speak to the needs and interest of visitors, so that they find it interesting to move ahead with the website and thus reduce bounce rate.

For example, if you sell shoes, optimize for shoe-related keywords. The goal is that visitors who have searched for shoes will be happy with your results if you are delivering on the SEO promise that you do, infact, sell shoes. Don’t optimize around socks and shoelaces unless you also sell those. It’s a waste of your SEO juice and your visitors’ time plus it can increases bounce rate drastically.

2. Website Navigation – It needs reconsideration

Bounce rate happens when a visitor visits your website and leaves before clicking through another page. The major reason behind this is that the visitors didnt find the content they were looking for on your page and decided to leave. So, how do you engage visitors beyond their first page view? The designing of homepage and navigation should be kept in mind and should be in coordination with what visitors expect it to be. Make the best use of your space – balance white space with color and navigation design. Use images to help convey your point or product and use large call-to-actions. Navigation should be direct and simple. The goal is to create an environment that is clearly navigable to lead your visitors in the right direction.

4. Quality Content for User Engagement

Quality content is the best to increase user engagement through the use of content generator tools, which use visitor's online activity and highlight relevant content and encourage call to action.

5. Be Mobile-Friendly

More than 80% fo people use mobile to view every sort of data as it is very convenient and handy to use. It is a must that the website should be optimized for mobile view(responsive website) else you would be losing your position in the market. All the business owners and developers must be ready to design each and every website that is compatible for mobile data searches. There are over a billion websites available on the web and if yours is hard to navigate on an iPhone or Android, your visitors will leave.

7 Significant Elements of Successful Ecommerce Website

Ecommerce websites are very experimental & innovative, and since any website that must handle a lot of traffic is put under a lot more pressure, it’s paramount that you have a solid website design for your ecommerce site. There are several, actually seven, design elements that you should always consider if you want your ecommerce site to be successful.

Mobile Responsive Design (Mobile Browser Reaction)

When a website is responsive, the layout and/or content responds or adapts based on the size of screen they are presented on. A responsive website automatically changes to fit the device you’re reading it on. People want to shop while they are on the go, it’s been proven time and time again, if your website is not compatible for mobile, you will have a hard time pleasing your customers. This is an investment that you absolutely must make when starting an ecommerce website.

Security

When a customer decides to purchase something online, he’s not just interested in the price and quality of the goods, but also in the safety of the website, including the payments. You cannot control users’ computers and make sure there are no viruses on them, but you can make your website secure. The use of an SSL certificate is an absolute must for e-commerce sites today. A secure website that uses the SSL certificate contains the “HTTPS” instead of the usual “HTTP” and has an image of a closed padlock in the address bar.

Simplicity & Coherence

Make you website simple and easy to understand, it should provide a smooth way to navigate from one page to another. No one wants to read a manual to be able to use your website. If the website is complicated then you will definitely have a problem getting people to come back to do their shopping again. The design should be simple and very straightforward. The login and sign up options should be very evident and when someone presses buy they shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get down the funnel.

Product Images & Description

The design of your website should accommodate lots of product pictures and descriptive information. Usually the eight-image approach works best (front, back, top, bottom, left, right and some two perspective shots). The product description should provide a detailed insight to the products. No one wants to buy something that they cannot see or they have no information about. This will increase the opportunity for better placement on the search engines.

Site Search tool are vital for Ecommerce

Make sure that your ecommerce website has a convenient search tool. A first time visitor is likely looking for one particular thing. They do not want to spend the whole day sifting through items that they do not need. Filtered searches or faceted navigation are the best and must be present if at all you want to make sure that you get the best results from it.

Colors Combination & Design

The colors that you choose for your website branding can make or break the experience. No one wants to have their senses assaulted by a cocktail of strange colors. One very common mistake many people make with ecommerce websites is setting white text on a black background. Make it easy to see text and images and find colors that complement each other.

Recommendations – Get the Best for your Website

When you provide your customers with links to recommended products they might like, then you are going to make shopping easier on your site and promote additional sales. At least six links will make for an easier shopping experience that encourages extra additions to their cart.

How to increase Web Traffic through Content Writing

Content has become the single most important element for the success of your website. Earlier the developers of website were more inclined towards the design but with time they have understood that content can either make or destroy their website. The relevant and informative content on your website can bring maximum web traffic and make your site a big hit.

Alignment of Tone – Target Audience and You

Here we describe “tone” as a quality of writing that adds strength to your content and relevant to your prospective client. Your tone can be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, ironic, playful, etc.

An understanding of voice and tone in writing will give you an edge over the competition. Many writers ignore these elements, but these are the main ingredients that add flavor to your writing.

Even if your overall writing isn’t bad, the way you deliver or present your value matters. The purpose of writing is to give your audience a wake-up call — to inspire them, it will act as a “Call to Action”. Let your tone and vision draw the target audience closer to you.

As a golden rule goes, don’t use a professional or formal tone in your blog posts. You may get a few people to follow you, especially those who value professionalism over relevance, but sooner or later, you’ll struggle to attract new readers.

Leveraging & Sharing Third Party Content

Third-party content is the kind of content that you find on industry blogs, online publications, videos, online courses, ebooks, etc. The content doesn’t primarily come from you, so it is very important to know how you use it. You have to go a step ahead and showcase results from experiments, analysis, projects, etc. You could do a video, create a Slideshare presentation, record a podcast, write the article and turn it into an ebook that you could use to build your email list. Instead of waiting until something spectacular happens in your business, I encourage you to leverage statistics, experiences and results from other people.

Visualise and Focus on Individual

You need to visualize one person as the “targeted reader” for your content. That one person then stands in for the rest of your readers. Writing to one person at a time is one quick way to make your voice reach to each and everyone reading your content. It’ll make your content more powerful, too. Content written this way engages the audience better, since each person will read it and feel a personal connection. When it comes to blog writing, you need to integrate certain words that personalize the experience for readers.

Incorporate user feedback into your Content

Content and analytics of that content enable us to gain deep insights into what our customers expect from us. One of the most important characteristics of compelling and persuasive content is relevance. Is your content relevant to the right group of people? User feedback shows your audience’s reactions, suggestions and worldviews. This is vital, because everyone has a worldview — you just have to give them your attention.

Visual assests will shoot up content's perceived value

Top social media networks such as Pinterest and Instagram thrive because the primary form of content that can be uploaded, shared, and distributed is visual. When creating content of any form, use visual assets such as infographics, videos, slideshare presentations or interactive content. Videos alone will drive engagement, but when you embed the video in your post or share it on Facebook, you’ll likely triple its reach. As visual information, infographics can help you acquire more organic traffic and clients. Create and share infographics regularly. Publishers who use infographics grow their traffic an average of 12% more than those who don’t.

Writing isn’t for everyone. However, if you decide to make a difference in the world, writing is probably one of the best ways to do that. Great content can cement relationships with your best prospects and leads. Yes, you can create awareness about your product through content marketing, but it doesn’t stop there. That audience needs to be nurtured, too.

8 Critical Elements a Website Homepage Must Have

A homepage is one of the most vital page of the website. Because it commonly gets the bulk of site traffic, it's crucial for the homepage to convert as much of that traffic into leads and sales. 

1) Attention Grabbing HEADLINE
Within 3 second, a website needs to answer, "WHAT DOES THIS SITE OFFERS?" Keep your headline title clear and simple to give the visitors clear picture of the same. It should neither be too long nor be too short and should offer a brief about the content. Heading should not be abstract as sometimes it can mislead the visitors.

2) SUB-HEADING
Your sub-headline should offer a brief description of what you do and offer. Avoid tacky language and messy text. It should provide the complete gist of the content that the user needs to know. Be different and show value. Don't just talk about yourself involve audience also. Also, use “call to action” so that there are more chances of creating a lead on the homepage itself.

3) BENEFITS
It's not only important to describe what you do, but why you do it matters. Prospects want to know about the benefits and advantages. Your potential clients will take a step ahead when they believe that your website also offer them benefits.

4) Clear CALL-to-ACTION
Including multiple call to action (CTA) above the fold is important to driving conversion. Offer two to three CTA (MAX) that map to various stages of the buying cycle. But do remember don't crowd the space with only “call to action”. Manage your space with your content, images and call to action(CTA).

5) Effective FEATURES
In addition to benefits, list some of your key features. This give people more understanding of what's provided by your product and services. This step will help you create a relationshipwith your potential customers by offering product and services along with beneficiaries.

6) CUSTOMER PROOF
Customer proof, is very powerful indicator of trust, which include just a few of your best QUOTES on the homepage. Adding a name and photo make the testimonials more real. Testimonial are a way to built trust among your potential customers who are in contstant search of reviews and then only they prefer the Website content. It helps you generate a positive reputation in the market.

7) User Friendly NAVIGATION
To decrease bounce rates, your visitors need a clear path into your site from the homepage. Make sure your navigation is visible at the top of the page. And be sure to keep it simple and clear so that it should be easier for the vitiors to locate the category pages, contact pages etc. If navigation links are not placed at proper postition, then the customers are likely to skip to another website shooting up the level of your bounce rate.

8) CONTENT OFFER
To generate even more leads from your homepage, feature a really great content and offer freebies and discounts such as a white paper, ebook or guide. This will make them feel wanted and create a great impression about your services.

Top 8 Reason Why You Should Invest In Mobile SEO

We're in a time when technological advances happen quickly in mobile website design, and new players are constantly being introduced. A mobile website design doesn't just look slick but also allows your site visitors to interact with your company no matter where they are and this will give you more opportunities to generate leads. A mobile website design is vital for capturing the maximum number of visitors and sales conversions for your website. Here are the top 8 reasons why you need to invest in a mobile website design:

1) The Era of Smartphones – Go Live!

More than 80% of all the internet users today are having smartphones stick to their pocket and they are ditching traditional home Internet altogether to rely only on their mobile device. If your site isn't built for mobile, you could be missing a massive portion of your market.

2) Unpleasant Mobile Experience – Your Lost Revenue & Potential Client

People are using their mobile devices more than ever. According to a Google survey, 52% of smartphone users said that an unpleasant mobile experience would make them less likely to engage with a company. 74% of visitors will return to websites that have a mobile-friendly design.

3) High Conversion Rates with Mobile Friendly Websites.

Even if the sale itself doesn't take place on a mobile device, that doesn't mean that isn't where the sales process began. 40% of users who research on a mobile device go on to complete their purchase on a desktop computer.

4) Improvise Google SERP Results

Google SERP now favors websites that have mobile responsive designs. You could be hurting your search engine ranking by not taking the right decision at right time. Responsive website is the need of the hour.

5) Social Media will Work Wonders

A growing majority of people use their phone to follow along with social media. This is a clear message that all the social media advertising needs to convert on mobile devices. If you're using social media to build your brand, your website needs to be built for mobile traffic.

6) Mobile Friendly Local Searches

Mobile sites can have geo-tagging to push notifications to people within your local marketplace as well as improve local search engine results.

7) Mobile Advertising Trends

Mobile advertising is an emerging market that is showing positive results. Mobile web design is relatively new, but it's here to stay. So all the future plans in regards to your Website must be responsive or mobile friendly.

8) Potential Customer Expectations

Customers will often look up products on their mobile device immediately -it's a fact that if people can't find your website in mobile search engine results, they aren’t likely to visit your site at all.

Mobile-friendly design is no longer optional. If your website is falling behind the curve, Picknbuilt can help bring you up to speed. Get in touch with one of our web strategists today and we'll help figure out a solution to design the mobile website your clients deserve. Not only this we are saviours of the tragic times and can lead you to the best position.

Top 5 Web Design tips to increase Web Traffic

Web design plays a vital role in how well a website ranks in search results on Google and other search engines. As a result, great Web design can create a dramatic effect on your business and how you make money online.

By implementing a few design improvements that leverage the latest Web technologies like CSS3, responsive Web design for mobile support, HTML5, and more you can derive potentially large gains for very little effort. However, if you are completely allergic to CSS and HTML, then you might want to get in touch with your Web designer and get them to make these design changes.

1. Supersede background images with CSS3 background gradients

Is your website still using background images? Images are large and chew the bandwidth slowing down your website. In almost all cases, background images can be replaced with modern looking, attractive, and lightweight CSS3 gradients. Head over to one of my favorite Web design tools, Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator. This will allow you to create cross-platform CSS using a graphical interface. All you need to do is copy and paste the new CSS code into your own style-sheets, and away you go.

2. Employ Images with text

Does your website use an image to display the site title? Do you use images to display written information? Not only are images large and unwieldy, but they also hide valuable SEO information from Google and other search engines. Using an image as header text is fine for a human, but not for the search engines because they can’t “read” images that contains important SEO keywords and phrases, and you’ll soon notice page rank improvements in the SERP.

3. Implement responsive Web design

Does your website support mobile devices? This is arguably the most important Web design update that all bloggers and businesses will have to do in the near future. Mobile access to the Internet will soon outpace PCs. This makes mobile Web design an imperative. There are several different methods you can use to implement responsive Web design for mobile support.

4. Replace JavaScript with CSS3 transitions

As a general rule, avoid using JavaScript if you can – it can hide important content from search engines, slow down your site, degrade badly, and generally lead to slow the user's browsing experiences.

But, JavaScript has been used to add cool, professional effects to websites for so long that many people don’t even consider what’s out there. It’s a pity because there are pretty amazing, super fast, super lightweight Web designs possible with CSS3 and HTML5.

5. Speed up your Website

Google takes page speed and performance seriously, and so should you. There are three ways you can speed up a Webpage:

1. Reduce the amount of time it takes to build a page on the server
2. Reduce the amount of data transferred from the server to the browser
3. Simplify the DOM (Document Object Model)

1. If you are using a PHP based CMS like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla you might benefit from installing something like APC (Alternative PHP Cache) on your web-server that can help to speed up the actual PHP processing behind the scenes.

You might also look at ways to simplify your website so that there is less PHP or database queries to process. Caching is an important part of reducing server processing loads, and every website should utilize at least some sort of caching to speed things up.

2. You can reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred from the server to the browser using a number of techniques like:

• Compression, or gzipped transfer
• Reduce images
• Optimize images

3. Designers love using tools to design Web pages. Unfortunately, many of these tools don’t create HTML in a very efficient way. Often there are unnecessary containers, tables, boxes, etc.

Those are my top design tips to help drive traffic to your business website. What Web design tricks do you use to improve your page rankings and Web traffic? Do you think that Web design has helped your business succeed online?