ImageWorks Creative blogs

5 Easy Updates To Improve Your Website's Usability and Conversions

admin — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 21:03:54 +0000

Website usability and experience (UX) is all the rage these days. With more analytics than a NASA lab at our fingertips, we now have more insight into how customers behave online and interact with your website. Here are some quick tips to make sure you take advantage of some of today's core usability “must-haves.”

Phone Number, Contact or Call-to-Action on the top right of your website. So simple. Yet in preparation for this article over 60% of the sites I tested did not have a clear call-to-action. For retail and home services, a phone number that is not an image but a code of HTML that is clickable is a must-have. For B2B sites, a contact button or “discuss a project” link is a must. This should be clear and in a contrasting color, so customers can easily find it.
Hero Section Optimization. This is the area directly under your menu bar (which, by the way, should always be on top and never to the side). The goal here is not to be overly cute, but instead in simple paragraph or less clarify who you are, what you do, and why they should care, followed by a direct call-to-action (CTA). The CTA should be aligned with the goals stated on your message. Avoid stock imagery if possible, or at least customize it so it doesn't look so out of the box. Avoid any scrolling images that change fast and make the content hard to read. Make sure the imagery or illustration you use helps support your message. While it is tempting to use numerous messages that animate, this is a no-no. It confuses the user and also makes it impossible for Google and heat maps to accurately track the clicks. Use the rest of the page to get your full story across. These days, users scroll!
Tell a Story. Tell it Well. Our History, Our Mission, Our Vision, Our Message...old lingo for what today is referred to as your story. However, your ‘story” encompasses all the above and weaves them into a fluid user experience that builds trust, credibility, and value. The secret for the purpose of this short guide is to focus on distilling your story through your homepage. Yup, just the one page. It should cover everything you do and what you’re about in short, concise visual areas of content and imagery. The user should be able to scan through your homepage, understand what you’re about, and find the areas that interest them most. This guides them on to another page, where you can provide a more detailed story about a particular product or service.
Call-to-Actions (CTAs). From “soft conversions” such as a social follow, to registering for an event, a demo, or a meeting, it is important to use an array of conversions throughout all pages of your site. Use a mix of links and buttons and try out different content to see which convert the most. The conversions should be tracked in Google Analytics, so you can measure what is working and what is not. For ImageWorks Creative clients, we actually have a client portal where they can track all marketing events. You can see a sample of how it works here:
Heat Map. All in-house expertise and good intentions still won't ever predict how a user will behave - especially when the content is generated from the “inside culture.” What really matters is what a user thinks. For this you will need to install a heat map tool like CrazyEgg in your HTML, allowing you to see exactly what is working and what is not connecting with users as expected. This is also part of our client portal, but you can get a 30-day free trial from the folks at CrazyEgg by clicking here. Our team will be happy to go over the results after 30 days and give you even more tips to enhance your user experience and conversions on your website!

Scott Margenau

CEO, ImageWorks Creative

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ImageWorks Creative wins Gold Hermes Award

luke — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 17:54:05 +0000

Agency Recognized for Superior Web Design Capabilities

The Hermes Creative Awards is a web design competition with online content creation professionals from all around the globe vying for awards that recognize their talents and expertise.

ImageWorks Creative was recognized with a Gold award in these categories:

- Overall Website

- Medical

GANV selected ImageWorks Creative to create a new website that would represent their expertise and professionalism in the medical industry and also provide a convenient way for patients to learn about their practice and to contact them. The results speak for themselves, and GANV is exceedingly pleased with its new website.

On celebrating the award, Scott Margenau, CEO and Founder of ImageWorks Creative said, “We’re thrilled to have our work recognized by our industry peers. A win for one of our website designs is really a win for our clients - and we couldn’t be happier for GANV’s rebranding success.”

Moving forward, the team at ImageWorks Creative is excited that this award marks their continued growth as an agency in its 25th year of business.

ImageWorks Creative is a full-service branding and marketing agency located in Chantilly, VA, that has been providing online and offline marketing services for 25 years. Our diverse marketing offerings are united by one common goal: helping businesses drive more business.

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If you would like to learn more about ImageWorks Creative, please call (703) 378-0000 ext 2 or email sales@imageworkscreative.com.

Why your website design and usability is critical to your business.

admin — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 19:17:06 +0000

Studies show that first impressions are 94% design-related.*

46% of visitors base their decisions on the credibility of a website from its visual appeal & aesthetics.

38% of visitors will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.

75% of judgments on a company’s credibility are based on the company’s website design.

Too often we see companies with websites that seem like they just don't care about the impression they make. Or perhaps they just don't think it's important. This data tells us a different story. Not only should you invest in your website experience, you should consider your overall BRAND experience. When you consider that 97% of your customers will come to your website BEFORE they consider your services or products, it's easy to determine that your website needs to tell your story and is one of the most imperative parts of your business.

Whether your business is b2b, b2g or b2c the experience visitors have with your website will play a crucial role in how they interact and the impression that is made.

It all starts with a strategy, and should continue through the design and “evolution” of your website.

Here are some tips for planning and enhancing your website experience:

Review sites of your competitors. Write down your likes and dislikes
Plan trackable website goals and load them into Google Analytics. Time on page, pages visited, forms filled out, content downloaded, phone calls and a few examples of popular goals we use.
Make sure your HERO (Your initial imagery on the top of your page) clearly explains what your do, and why a visitor should care.
Make sure you use multiple call to actions throughout your site using colors that stand out
Tell your story on your homepage, top to bottom. Cover everything your do in short content areas with links to detailed content areas.
If possible feature awards, partners, and testimonials.
Hire a great writer to make sure you subpage content is compelling and to the point. Hire a website designer to layout the pages with use of imagery to help the content visually.
Make sure you page is scannable and uses call to actions tied to your goals.

ImageWorks creative can help you with your website experience, simply contact us here and we can review your site and help you plan a strategy to improve your website experience right away.

Schedule a call with one of our team members here.

1 Important Tip for Creating Marketing Videos

prajina — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 18:29:46 +0000

The trend for marketing videos is one that keeps growing, and more and more businesses are adopting video creation and sharing as a part of their marketing plan. Whether you are creating your own videos or are hiring a creative team, there are a lot of factors to think about when creating them, and it can often be overwhelming for a beginner. It's a good idea to start slow when you're learning about something as complex as video marketing, avoiding learning a hundred new things at once.

That's why today, we are sharing with you just one tip that will help you make your videos better.

The team over at Animoto has written a great article on What is Negative Space?

Click on the link above to check it out!

How Facebook advertising solves an age-old marketing dilemma

prajina — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 15:20:58 +0000

The very big advertising problem

A fundamental problem with many advertising platforms, like radio and TV, is that the message they deliver often reaches the wrong audience, or reaches the audience at the wrong time.

Honestly, even a well-meaning businessperson could be using modern advertising platforms and still be making this mistake.

What constitutes “the wrong time”? Well, you can base that on where a customer is in their customer lifecycle. If you know what this is, you can go ahead and skip this next section.

The customer lifecycle (or journey)

In 2000, marketers Jim Stern and Matt Cutler came up with the five steps in the customer lifecycle, which mapped out the steps that a customer takes to make a purchase.

They are:

Reach
Acquisition
Conversion
Retention
Loyalty

It is now so widespread that you can’t really meet a marketing professional who doesn’t know it.

There are many different models based off of it, and here is a chart of one model from Alexa:

Most customers will start from Awareness, and ideally, end at Advocacy. Normally, a customer will have gone through all the steps before heading to a new step.

For example, a customer can’t purchase a product without first being aware that it exists. They also can’t evaluate the product if they haven’t engaged with the product in some way to understand what it does.

It’s rare that a customer skips steps, and that’s one of the reasons why marketers hold this model up as a way to understand customers better.

Anyways, back to the advertising problem.

Back to the problem

Many people will advertise to an audience at the wrong stage in their journey.

For example, an advertisement for a new prescription medicine will promote the benefits of the medicine, along with customer testimonials about how the medicine changed their life. Sounds good, right? But there’s a big problem.

Many in the audience don’t have any illness that this new medicine could solve.

These viewers have no need to even enter the awareness stage of the cycle, and the ad is pushing them to the evaluation stage.

There are some in the audience who this advertisement is great for, or maybe for someone they know. However, for those who have no use for such an ad, advertising dollars are wasted. For many, this ad is lost on them completely.

As advertisers, this is the exact situation we try to avoid. If you deliver ads to the wrong audience at the wrong time, they won’t engage with it, and all you’ve done is waste money.

Facebook advertising, when done correctly, ensures that this situation never happens.

“The Facebook advertising platform allows you to strategically organize all 5 stages of the customer lifecycle by building testable custom audiences, retargeting dynamic content to people who engage with specific content on your website and ultimately promote and grow your brand for an exceedingly underpriced cost that will rise drastically over the next 10 years.”

-Luke Miller, Marketing Strategies, Imageworks Creative

How Facebook is the antithesis of wasted ad spend

How? Facebook advertising enables you, the business owner, to target the right users at the right time, so each dollar spent is not wasted on customers who don’t care.

Not only does Facebook allow you to target the right audience, it isn't as invasive or annoying as other platforms.

On TV, radio, and other media channels like Youtube, ads take time away from the user’s main experience, whether that’s watching a football game, or listening to their favorite country station. Most of the time, the user wants nothing to do with your ad.

If they could skip it, they would.

Ads on Facebook, when done right, are considered part of the viewing experience.

An engaging video about different sofa styles when you’re on the hunt for new furniture can be seen as part of the different content varieties a user views on Facebook, despite being an ad.

Here’s a great example of an ad that appeared on my feed just the other day (Background info: I’m helping my sister look for a part-time job and had been doing some research on DoorDash):

Note how it looks just like a normal post (of course, besides the “Sponsored” in the top left corner).

It has all the same reaction buttons, commenting, and sharing options as a regular Facebook post.

Not just that, I was pleasantly surprised to see this ad, as it reminded me to tell my sister about DoorDash.

Since I had visited their website before, it’s likely that this was a form of remarketing.

This is just one example of many, but look how DoorDash effectively used Facebook advertising to deliver the right ad to me when I needed it.

I didn’t feel like it intruded on my time on Facebook, in fact, I was glad that it showed up to remind me about it.

This is why Facebook is different. It essentially solves that age-old advertising dilemma, and bridges the gap between a business and a consumer who needs their product.

You need to be advertising on Facebook

You might have heard that Facebook is dead, or not popular, but that is simply not true.

According to a Statista report from April 2019, Facebook is still the most popular social network worldwide, with over 2.3 billion active users per month, with the US making up 10% at 170 million active users.

We’ll explain this in greater detail in the next section, but again, the dominant targeting power of Facebook is another reason to be advertising there.

Facebook collects data about users given by the users themselves, and you can use this data to target customers by location, age, interests, demographics, education, occupation, and more until you have filtered down your ideal audience group.

The insane targeting abilities of Facebook ads

Let’s say you want to sell a modern sofa to married couples between the ages of 32-42 with children under the age of 8 in Northern Virginia, with a combined income of $80,000 or above, with jobs in real estate and finance, who are 2nd time homebuyers, and also happen to have an anniversary coming up.
If you think this is incredibly targeted, just know that Facebook has the ability to be even more specific than this!

Purchase behavior targeting:

Not only can we target specific demographics, but also Purchase Behavior. This means you can target consumers based on online subscriptions, whether they tend to purchase health and beauty products, sports merchandise, or clothing, and more. You can even narrow down behavior to people actively searching for new modern sofas.

To get a little look at just the Purchase Behavior options, look at this great tree-chart from LeadSync:

Using this criteria that you can set in your ad campaign settings, you can create ads to serve people where they are at in their customer journey.

For example, you can take pictures of modern sofas you have in stock (or even better, a great video of them) and put them right in front of the audience we specified.

Of course, we may not want to target to an audience as specific as the one we mentioned above, but you get the point.

We can then place call-to-actions to follow your page and visit your website.

And just like that, someone who may have been looking at sofas from other furniture stores is brought to your website, where you can convert them to buy from you.

Not only can you do this to promote your products, but also your email sign-up list, discounts, and offers, depending on where the customer is at in their purchasing journey.

To find out what is most effective, you can create different Ad Sets and A/B test them against each other.

Facebook will track the winners, build more audience data from them, and you can create even more ads that are even more highly effective.

This is Facebook targeting in a nutshell.

How to use Facebook to target your customers at the right time

Like customer journeys, Facebook ads should be created based on the path a customer takes to a purchase.

We’ll show you an abbreviated below one based off the model we talked about above.

90% of marketers on Facebook don’t use the platform correctly.

Users don’t like invasion of privacy, which is why you cannot always skip to the “conversion” stage of the ad funnel, even if your product or service is something you are already looking for.

You have to become a part of their personal community first. As we mentioned earlier, people are primarily on Facebook and Instagram to connect with their friends and view updates from their favorite pages.

By going in for the ask right away, you are taking time away from their main experience.

Even if its only 2-3 seconds, people will remember your brand more for spamming then the quality and relevance of your product or service if you skip to the 3rd stage of the ad funnel.

People who are on social media are there to pursue their interests or connect with their friends, not searching for something specific like on Google.

Because of this, you need to use different strategies for…

Step 1: Building Awareness & Trust

One way advertisers do this is through engaging targeted communities with content.

For example, you can promote a useful blog post, say, “30 Basic Furniture Essentials to Fill Your New Home” and target that to people who have recently bought a new home.

Step 2: Consideration/Evaluation

That first campaign built up awareness for your brand, and now we can send a second campaign to the people who engaged with the first one.

We can narrow it further to target people who are on that list combined with the list of people who have recently visited our website.

We’ll include an offer in this second campaign.

Maybe it’ll be:

a guide on indoor house remodeling
a 10% off coupon
something else to grab the visitor’s attention again

If they volunteer their information, say, their email for a newsletter sign-up, we can market to them through other channels as well.

Step 3: Conversion

Now that we’ve grabbed their attention and they’ve considered the product a little longer, we can promote our products.

You can target those customers who have gone through the consideration stage with an ad for a specific sofa model and a limited time deal, and watch customers click through and purchase that product (This is called remarketing)!

See how much more effective this?

Unlike that prescription medicine ad on TV, you’ve strategically placed the right content in front of the consumer at the right time, so they are much more likely to convert.

To sum,

Let customers know you exist
Give them a reason to consider your product
Watch as they buy your product-and remarket to those who don’t.

How much does it cost?

Ah, the dreaded answer to this question: it depends! It depends on a lot of factors, but you have a lot of control over how much you spend on campaigns.

Here’s an example of cost breakdown that might explain things a little bit better:

Let’s say:

-Product Price: $500

-Want to Sell: 20 units

-Current Conversion Rate: 2%

So to make $10,000 of of 20 store visits and sales, based of a 2% conversion rate, we need about 1,000 clicks.

We need to figure out how much 1,000 clicks costs for us. Facebook can set the bid to optimize for clicks automatically, or we can manually set the bid at an average cost per click at something like $1 (Facebook’s 2019 Average CPC is $1.72).

1.72 * 1,000 = $1,720

So this campaign would end up costing us about $1,720 for $10,000 in revenue!

Not bad, eh?

We’re big fans of Facebook advertising. It's powerful and underpriced.

The cost of entry for marketers and businesses has never been cheaper nor backed by an unprecedented amount of user data that allows advertisers to pinpoint and test against multiple targeted audiences.

However, Facebook’s undervalued attention and price won’t last forever.

You should take advantage of it while it is still a steal.

How do I get started?

If you want to get started with Facebook ads, you can get started now.

However, for most busy business owners, we don’t recommend you learn all of the workings of Facebook advertising yourself.

There are better uses of your time, and not to mention, the money spent on the learning curve is often wasted through improper targeting and budgeting.

We recommend that you work with a marketing agency with experience in Facebook advertising and know how to work with a variety of different businesses.

Of course, we're a little biased, but we are ImageWorks Creative, a digital marketing agency in Northern Virginia has a great marketing track record and has wonderful Facebook Ad specialists who can help you achieve your business goals.

We’ve been able to do a lot for our clients, so if you think you’d like some help setting up Facebook campaigns for your business, contact us through our contact form right here, or call us at (703) 782-8990!

Our Newest Client, Green Front Furniture!

luke — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 15:41:45 +0000

Say hello to one of our newest clients, Green Front Furniture!

They have been providing unique furniture pieces and rugs curated from around the globe for over 50 years. From India, Turkey, Argentina, Indonesia, and more, Green Front Furniture offers an unmatched shopping experience built from two generations of heralded success in the industry. Primarily based in Farmville, VA, Green Front Furniture has expanded their collection to Northern Virginia and Metro DC via their Manassas location.

Some cool things we’d like to highlight about Green Furniture:

1.Massive Collection of Furniture Pieces & Rugs

Greenfront’s collection has something for every home. From high end modern pieces to affordable rustic looks, GreenFront’s Northern Virginia location matches their diverse set of furniture collections with expert interior designers, who help you find what you need as soon as you walk through the door, but polite enough to let you enjoy and unguided tour of the facility if you wish to browse on your own!

2.They Import Unique Pieces from All Over the World

They import furniture and rugs from designer capitals of the world, including Indonesia, India, Turkey, England, Argentina, Pakistan, Morocco and right here in the USA. Their store is showcased with one of a kind pieces from every price range that you won’t be able to find in any other furniture store in Northern Virginia or the Mid-Atlantic.

3.They’re Family-Owned

The current owner, Richard Crallé, inherited the store from his father (with the same name)! The current president is Richard “Den” Crallé III! You can read their whole story here.

We are very excited to work with Green Front and promote their unrivaled furniture shopping experience of Northern Virginia and Metro DC.

If you’re interested in a nice selection of furniture coming near you, stay up to date by following Green Front Furniture’s Facebook page.

If you’re interested in partnering with ImageWorks Creative to help your business grow, call us at (703) 782-8990 or fill out our quick contact form here!

ImageWorks Creative in Top 25 Best DC Web Designers 2019!

prajina — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 18:28:23 +0000

For the third time, ImageWorks Creative has been named as one of the top 24 web design agencies in Washington DC by Expertise.com!

We are proud to once again be recognized for our experience and skills.

Read about it on their website here.

A Slow, Long, and Intelligent CRAWL

luke — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 19:38:10 +0000

SEO has come a long way since the birth of the world wide web. Frequent search engine updates to enhance the user experience by providing more relevant and feature rich results have kept brands, blogs, and all sorts of businesses on their toes to keep up with constant advancement changes published by mega search engine providers such as Google.

Long gone are the days where an accidental spelling errors on your website headers could propel you to the top of the search result pages where thousands of users who made the same spelling mistake in their search query would click through to your website. Every notable growth hack has been put out by the world’s top Search Engine Brainiacs/Developers enriching the user experience and forcing companies to spend more on paid advertising on Google and other search engines to increase their reach.

In this Article from SEObook.com, the author, Aaron Wall, who has been featured in the New York Times business bestseller “Mastering the World of Marketing” with Imageworks Creative CEO & Founder Scott Margenau, goes into great depth to try and explain to us how far SEO has come from the “Easy Days” and how businesses and brands should go about managing and updating their search engine strategy standards to keep pace with Google and its competitors. Read the full article to see the timeline of changes and how you can adapt to today’s SEO standards.

How to get your Content into Google's "Answer Box"

luke — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 14:43:11 +0000

This week, we came across an important search article from CMI expressing the staggering rise in voice search and how the keyboard and mouse may soon become relics of the past. On voice search, the only result reported to the user is what is in Google’s “Answer Box” / the non-click result, hence opening up the question of the article, “How do you get to be in Google’s Answer Box?”

Before that question is answered we must first know what the mysterious Google Answer Box is. Based on a user’s search query, Google will populate its Answer Box with what they deem as the best possible answer. If you are able to get your answer in the box, you are placed in the ultimate number one search result spot. Right under the search bar and above all other organic searches. However keep in mind that not all searches have the box. With voice searches expected to jump to 30% out of all web-browsing by 2020, getting in that box will become more and more competitive.

Next, Dennis from CMI lists detailed suggestions on how to get into the box. From these notes we will give our own analysis of the 5 steps to follow when creating content on your website in order to end up in the Answer Box.

1.Keyword Research

Yes, you’ve heard it time and time again from us and every other blog talking about search engines, but in this case CMI offers a non-technical approach. Instead of using every possible SEO tool you can think of in ten seconds, try this “back to basics” strategy…. Ask what your customers questions are and take notes on common terms and phrases. If you can’t get ahold of your customers, talk to your customer service or sales teams who deal with them directly. What words are they constantly using? How many times did they ask certain questions and questions like it? Go through this process with every service/product/information you offer to your customers. You will be surprised how big your list gets.

Once you have a list, start typing them into Google. On the results page, you’ll see the “People Also Ask” dropdowns and the “Related Searches” at the bottom of the page. Grab the most common words and subject related questions from these results as we’ll use them later.

2. Competitor Research:

To find your search competitors, take your keyword list from step one and type them into Google. Next, make notes about all the Answer Box snippets that appear in each of your search queries. Things to focus on:

- Format

- Listed or Paragraph

- Common words

- Length & Length of sentences

Save these notes for the next step.

3. Content Ideation

During step one we found related searches. From those notes, start to write down subjects from those related subjects you can implement into your main piece/subject. Repeat this process for based off your findings from step one.

Step 4: Content Planning

Now we’ll take all of the collected data from the first three steps and determine the details of your content. “Are the current answers handling all the questions in one blog post? Or are they going with long-form content that’s broken up over a series? Review those patterns and mimic them”.

Step 5: Content Development & Optimization

From step 2, find out what your competitors aren’t doing. What are they missing? Where can you improve their results? Take note of where you can add additions and enter those revisions into your own posts.

Lastly, using H2 Headers for your questions is critical. Wrap your questions in H2 tags and answer the question below them.

Step 6: Technical Optimization

The last step requires some technical proficiency. First is structured data/schema markup. “Structured data is HTML markup that gives Google clues about what that content is. There is structured data for everything from reviews to frequently asked questions to articles. You’re going to want to make sure to use structured data to better describe your content.” Optimize the “technical seo” on your site and ensure that search engine spiders can crawl the site. Lastly, make sure you have a functional sitemap.

After following and repeating steps 1 through 5 for all your posts and website content, you should start to get the hang of it. You can also check out our SEO Services page here if you are looking for professional service. To read the full article from CMI click here.

The State of Marketing from the World's Marketing Leaders

luke — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 20:17:13 +0000

Salesforce has released a new report on the “State of Marketing”. Backed by data pulled from over 4,100 marketing leaders around the world, Salesforce breaks down the problems that marketers and advertisers face in a new age of high user expectations and how to structure a strategy to keep up with the world’s best marketers.

The report covers these main subjects:

Marketing Becoming the Cross Functional Glue of Customer Experiences

Customer Experience is becoming the foundation of marketing. CX will be more important that product and price entering 2020. Analyzing customer demands and behaviours is paramount in order to put your team in a position to efficiently utilize marketing tools, plan out personalized customer journeys, and ultimately execute on your marketing efforts.

New Realities up The Ante for Data Unification

The median number of data sources used by marketers has jumped from 12-15 since 2018. Marketers continue to link their resources together by using more second party data in order to extend their audience and utilize marketing tools to track behaviours, interests, and habits.

AI & Trust Underpin Customer Experiences

Marketers adoption of AI has grown at a rate of 44% since 2017. AI is taking data-driven marketing sophistication to an unprecedented level to the point where we are having trouble defining the line between personalization and privacy.

Marketers Strive for Real-Time Engagement Across Channels.

Real time engagements across the customer journey are marketers top priority but also their biggest challenge. Only 28% of marketers are completely satisfied with their ability to engage customers across channels at scale.

Download the full report here!