Let’s discuss the various options available for creative mobile design and the benefits to each option as it pertains to your business.

Understanding your Business

The first step when deciding on your mobile experience, is to determine and understand your business goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to sell your products using mobile commerce solutions? Are you providing just information or blogs to your users? Understanding what you are trying to accomplish can often determine what direction to take when developing your mobile strategy.

Another factor we run into the constant change in technology. Every day new devices are introduced into the market and while this may be very exciting, offering new capabilities and ways of user interaction, it makes it very difficult to target all users. As a result, no two projects are ever the same, so it all comes back down to understanding your needs for your business and mobile strategy.

Responsive Web Design vs. Mobile Website

Responsive Website

Responsive Web Design has led to an influx of designers creating experiences that focused on one single website that could target multiple screens or in our case both the desktop and mobile. This idea of a fluid website has been around for quite some time, however the use of CSS3 media queries, has allowed websites to adapt between different resolution and screen sizes and display the content to the user while still promoting an engaging experience. This responsive web design technique, which was introduced by Ethan Marcotte, has led many developers and designers to adopt this idea as a standard solution for mobile web design.

Although responsive web design is a very good solution to creating an engaging mobile experience, it’s not as simple as changing a few pictures or content structure to fit within the smaller or larger screens. When you approach a responsive web design, you have to design your interface for the various screen resolutions and determine how you will redistribute elements. You also must evaluate your content strategy and decide what content is changed or even removed based on each mobile device and how the user will interact with your website. When you begin your responsive web design, you will need to create several mockups to target the various screen resolutions. For instance, if your mobile strategy is focusing on tablets, iPhones, and Androids, you would want a minimum of 3 – 5 design mockups that will plan the layout for each device. In addition, you will also need to ensure that outdated browsers that don’t support CSS3, will degrade gracefully. If you’d like to see examples of responsive websites, check out Media Queries.

So why not create a separate mobile specific website? Responsive web design is certainly an option, but at times the process of development may be to much to handle immediately or you may already have a website and converting your current site into a responsive website may not be a feasible option. In this case, we look at traditional mobile websites.

Mobile Website

The biggest issue with a separate mobile website is the need to maintain two independent websites. This means you would have two separate sites to manage content, design, and SEO. And this has certainly been a reason many people are now switching to utilizing a responsive website, however a separate mobile website at times is still the best option. If your website is full of content or information that needs to be optimized for mobile, then a separate site is usually recommended as we have the ability to determine what content should be displayed on the mobile site.

Take BestBuy.com for example. Their mobile website is a separate website and it makes sense. Having a separate website gives them the control to display what products and information or content to the end user and provide a single task they intend users to accomplish while on a mobile device. It would not be ideal to utilize a responsive design approach for a website of this magnitude.

At the same time, BestBuy has the resources to handle the management of two independently separate websites, while smaller companies may not have the time or money to manage accomodate a separate website for mobile devices.

Web Apps vs. Native Apps

And now we throw a curve ball. If you determine a separate mobile site is the best option for your business, you must then decide between a native app or a web app for you site.

Web Apps

Let’s first talk about web apps. A web app runs in browser and is your normal run of the mill mobile website. It’s built using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and even server side languages such as PHP, so developers can easily deploy mobile websites using the skills they already have. These sites are generally found on a subdomain as seen in BestBuy.com, like m.bestbuy.com, although some utilize a separate domain, ie www.domain.mobi. This option allows your mobile website to be accessible across any device and doesn’t require any downloads or updates. The downside to this approach is that it requires an internet connection, so if the user is out of reach, your website will be inaccessible.

Native Apps

Native apps are device specific and utilize the mobile’s resources. For instance, your app can access the mobile device’s geolocation, camera, and even address book. The upside to this approach is that once your app is downloaded and installed, no internet connection is required. In addition, you can increase your visibility and depending on the type of application, even earn money through advertisements or purchases. The biggest drawback for native apps is that they are developed in specific programming languages, such as Java for Android or Objective-C. This makes it very expensive and even time consuming to develop apps for multiple devices. If your company doesn’t have a mobile developer on staff, then outsourcing would be your only option and can also be expensive. It also requires approval from third party companies for inclusion into their marketplace, such as Apple with iTunes and Google for Android. Not only can this be a lengthy process, it can also lead to disappointment if your app isn’t approved.

Conclusion

There are many different options available, and it may seem overwhelming. Just remember, when you are determining your mobile strategy, there are no right or wrong ways to achieve your desired results. Simply, you must determine what methods are right for your business, what maximizes your goals, and what fits in your budget.

I will discuss what you should budget for your website, what things you should look for in your web marketing plan, and how having a custom website design can benefit your online business. Understanding what goes into a custom website, the time it takes, the functionality that’s required, and how it will benefit your business will explain why successful companies budget this into their business to grow their online presence.

Establishing a Realistic Marketing Budget

A marketing budget for any business will vary based on the industry you are servicing. However, many experts have agreed that your marketing budget should be between 5% and 10% of your gross sales.

This means that if your business generates one million dollars, your budget should consist of about $100,000 depending on your industry, to market and promote your brand or product. As your business grows and you have established a name for yourself, you can slowly reduce the amount of money you spend on marketing.

A typical company looking to build their brand spends between $25,000 and $50,000 on marketing essentials. These essentials are:

• Brand Development - Logo, naming, tagline, online / offline communication of their brand image
• Print / Collateral - Brochures, Business cards, printed material, offline design and marketing materials
• Creative Copy / Content - Engaging and compelling content
• Custom website design - Interactive website that focuses on user engagement and product promotion
• Interactive Presentations
• Custom Blogs
• Email Campaigns
• Search Engine Optimization - Optimizing the website to be search engine friendly and build organic search results
• Social Media Optimization - Optimize social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to promote search engine optimization and drive more traffic
• Lead Generation Tools 
• Search Engine Marketing - Run pay per click advertisements and various other paid advertising to increase online exposure and drive more sales / conversions
• Social Media Marketing

The amount spent changes based on the size of the company, the target audience and goals for their online presence, and their industry. Larger companies or start ups may spend a bit more to boost their presence and kickstart their brand awareness to get maximum exposure.

Your Website is your Online Image

Most people don’t understand the importance of a website and as a result spend less time and money . Your website, in many cases, is your first impression to your client. It’s promoting your brand image online and while it may not seem critical, it can make or break your online and offline business endeavors. Society today turns to the web for everything, from reading reviews, finding directions, or looking for deals. Your company’s website gives your potential customers the ability to form an opinion about your company, before you have the chance to convince them about your offering. It’s the most critical element to your online brand image and it sets the stage for conversions.

This is why custom websites are important for online success. Don’t be fooled by do it your self websites or offerings for services that provide template solutions. Although you may receive a visually appealing design, the website wont function to promote conversions. When a professional creates your website, they discover your audience and customer behavior to craft a web marketing plan that will communicate your goals effectively. Remember, just because something looks good, doesn’t mean it functions properly. There needs to be a balance between form or design and function or communication.

So when you take the initiative to hire a professional or company to develop your custom website, the process will require in-depth marketing discovery to understand both your business and your consumers, in order to develop a marketing campaign that will yield results. Trying to build a website without this foundation is like trying to build a house without any blueprints. It will ultimately fail and break.

Understand your goals and needs

In order to launch a successful website, you must uncover your needs and the complete scope of your project. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you selling a product online? How will you track conversions? What is your target audience or general user? Here are some key elements that should be defined prior to the start of your website project:

• Initial discovery and pre-production – understanding your company and goals, how we can marketing your website. This will include a project plan and creative brief. It’s the foundation to your online marketing strategy.
• Sitemap or Flowchart – an outline of your website that shows the structure and organization of your website. This is where usability comes into play. How will your users navigate your website?
• Visual design that communicates your message effectively to your audience
• A design and layout for your home page that is directed from the visual design of your website
• A design and layout for your sub pages
• Optimized and organized content / copywriting that focuses on your brand, product, and keywords for search engines.
• Interactive elements to engage with your visitor and promote conversions
• Integrated blogs to promote higher link backs and traffic. Content should be well written and provide the user with useful information.
• Online conversion forms. Provide contact forms, online ordering, live chatting, etc to allow the visitor to communicate become a conversion.
• Integrated site search. Let your users search content within your website.
• Calls to Action and or Landing Pages – Create pages designed to lead to specific conversions

As you can see this list is getting long, but following these recommendations will lead to a successful launch and growth of your brand. Now although these services range anywhere to a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each and will require a serious investment and commitment on both parties, the end result will yield a successful website that generates revenue and builds brand awareness.

So what does a custom website cost?

As you can see from everything that goes into the website design and development, there is no single answer for this, because the cost of your website depends on your goals and should ultimately fit into your budget like mentioned above. The larger your company, the more you should invest in your website and online brand, which will result in more functionality, features, interactive elements, etc that will enhance and grow your online web presence.

Many high end marketing agencies will charge in excess of $100,000 for a complete online marketing solution, while some freelancers will build you something for several thousand. What you’ll find is that most settle in the middle, utilizing a a full-service design and marketing agency that focuses primarily on building online businesses. For a complete marketing campaign, interactive website, design, development, Content Management System (CMS) integration, Onsite / Offsite Optimization, Social Media, and Marketing, a reasonable average fee would be between $5,000 and $30,000.

You can hire an inexpensive firm to build your website, or try those do-it-yourself templates, but in the end you will want a professional online brand that will earn its value proposition. A solid brand will increase your revenue and maximize your return on investment.

As an expert at both Web Design/Development and Internet Marketing, I have managed several online campaigns and built many successful websites. $5–$30k is a good range to start for the initial creation of your brand, including your your websites and image.  You should also plan for monthly management, maintenance, interactive enhancements, promotions, lead generating, advertising, search marketing, social marketing and more by setting a monthly budget consistent with your annual revenues as per the above budgeting guidelines. This will help you build your image and establish consistent growth.

What to Expect

Now that you understand what it will take to build an effective online presence and what kind of budget it will take, you will begin experiencing the benefits of a professional brand and online web presence. Some things that you can expect:

• Confidence in your brand. Your clients, employees, and prospects will feel comfort and a sense of security knowing that your brand is strong and effective.
• Increase in traffic and link backs. A better website and brand that establishes trust and authority leads to higher traffic and more inbound links.
• Higher conversions. Visitors will be more likely to commit or learn about your offering if you give them a brand image that communicates effectively.
• Measurement. You can track your conversions and traffic increase. You will increase your revenue and brand awareness.
• Increase in word of mouth. More people will refer your business.
• Your return on investment will be paid back in full and you’ll continue benefiting in substantial revenue growth.

This article will discus the various aspects and best practices in link building and what you can do to improve your website’s search engine rank through an effective link building campaign.

Link building factors

Before you begin any link building campaign, you must first understand the factors that make up link building.

General Popularity

The more popular a website is, the more their links back to your website matter to the search engines. Having lots of industry specific links is great, but in order to establish trust and authority, you will want to get links back from powerful and important websites. Some great websites are .gov and .edu as these are considered prestigious domains by search engines due to the process it takes to acquire these domains. More ideas are submitting your website to directories such as DMOZ or an online web gallery.

Industry Specific Popularity

Although general popular websites are great, getting link backs from an industry specific popular website gives you higher authority. Securing link backs from these are generally more difficult and takes more time, but will provide you with greater return.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is a big signal with search engines and can help determine your site’s ranking. If there are dozens of linkbacks pointing to your website with the right keywords, then your website has higher chances of ranking well for those targeted keywords and phrases.

Link Building Basics

Link building is a challenge for any SEO expert and one of the most critical aspects to online marketing success.

Editorial Accumulation

This refers to links that are given naturally to your website for access and reference to its content and or your company. These links have the highest value as they are considered the most natural. You can’t affect the creation of these links directly, however you can improve your chances of getting these links.

• Link Baiting - Creating content that is good and useful so that people will discuss it. They will comment on it and share it via social media and link to it from their own website or blog.
• Promotion - Promote your content through social networks like Facebook and encourage sharing, release press releases, participate and comment on blogs and communities. Remember the more people who look at your content, the greater the chance of increasing links.

Manual Suggestion / Submission

Emailing links to blogs and industry professionals, submitting your site to directories, or paying for listings, qualify as manual suggestion and submission. As an SEO expert, you will have to convince these individuals or companies as to why your link or resource is of value.

Self-Created / Non-Editorial

Commenting or participating in forums and blogs can help generate a surplus of links back to your website. Although these links are considered low value, they can still lead to higher search rankings when used effectively. There are added benefits to this as well. It helps establish trust and authority for yourself within your industry and in return leads to higher traffic and link backs.

Link Building Best Practices

• Alter your Anchor Text - Anchor text should always reflect the content. By altering your anchor text, you will keep your site highly relevant and highly ranked.
• Deep Linking - Incorporate your link building strategy throughout your entire site and not simply one or two pages.
• Indirect Linking - Instead of just linking to your website and pages, link to sites that point to you. This will boost your rankings and as well as boost other sites.
• Steady Link Growth - Don’t rush to building links, rather take your time and be steady and consistent. Getting too many links too quickly looks spammy to search engines.
• Converse in Conversations - Establishing a name for yourself in your industry can be a big factor in gaining link backs. Converse through social media, blogs, and forums to build trust and authority.

Conclusion

Link building is an art and takes time to achieve desired results. Just remember, be patient and focus on creating quality content for your users. If you have quality content, then others will gladly link back to you.

We will also discuss various resources you can utilize to learn more about Drupal and its ability to help you develop a dynamic large scale website that is easy to scale and designed for performance.

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a content management system designed for rapidly deploying large scale websites. It is designed to allow easy flexibility and scalability for any website, thus allowing your online presence to grow with you. Many people automatically associate Drupal with WordPress and assume that they function in a similar manner. Now although WordPress is a very powerful open source platform for websites, it is not a full blown CMS. In fact, WordPress was developed as a blogging engine, which is why it has become widely popular for individuals and businesses seeking a dynamic blogging website.

Drupal on the other hand was built as a CMS. It provides functionality and performance for tasks that WordPress at times struggles with, for instance the Content Construction Kit (aka CCK), allows for the rapid development of new types of content within your Drupal powered website. Here is an example. Let’s say I have a website with a custom slider on my home page that rotates. In WordPress or various other publishing platforms, I may have to create a plugin or extend the core functionality, with Drupal I can quickly and easily create a new content type and add my content. The Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to nodes using a web browser.

Why use Drupal?

Although the administration area of Drupal can seem a little overwhelming, once you understand how to maneuver your way around in Drupal, it becomes like second nature. Since Drupal was designed as a CMS, it assumes that there will be many types of users with various levels of control who are administering the website. This is great because it adds a level of distinction and control in your website and provides users with more flexibility. This means that the system can support many different features, from basic websites to ecommerce solutions, to even large scale social networks. Drupal provides a solid foundation that allows you to create anything you can imagine.

Here are top reasons why Drupal is a great solution for your project:

• Advanced URL Control — Drupal gives you complete control over URL structure. Each item of content in Drupal (called a node) can be given a custom URL (called a URL alias).
• Custom Content Types and Views — You can use the Content Construction Kit (CCK) and Views Modules to create new content types and create advanced custom views for them without writing any code.
• Revision Control — Drupal allows you to save a new version of your pages every time you edit them.
• Taxonomy — Drupal has a powerful taxonomy (category) system that allows you to organize and tag content. Your blog could allow free tagging much like WordPress while your news section may be more structured.
• User Management — Drupal was designed for communities. This means that your website can have custom user roles and access levels for extended functionality. This is better on team blogging and management.
• Better Page Titles and Meta Tags - You can easily create your page titles and meta tags in Druapl. You have complete control.
• Great Documentation - Drupal’s community is huge and solid and their documentation is widespread. You can find anything from theming guides to advanced modules.
• PHP Template - Drupal uses the PHP Template theme engine and theming in Drupal can be easier than theming in WordPress and at times doesn’t necessarily require any PHP knowledge. Drupal’s Theme Developer Guide is a great resource.
• Large Friendly Community - Drupal’s community is very large and friendly. Many people offering assistance and help to those in need. If you have a question, just ask and we’ll be more than happy to help. Drupal is also known for its meetups and gatherings!

Getting Started with Drupal

If you are like us, when we started learning the benefits behind Drupal, we were excited and ready to get started. But now what, where do you learn Drupal development or how do start deploying a Drupal website? Not to worry, we had the same questions and that’s why we are providing you with some great resources to get you on your way to become a Drupal guru.

• Drupal.org - Drupal is a great place to start when it comes to Drupal development. They have great documentation that will help you understand the basic principles and fundamentals of Drupal development. It’s also a great place to learn about installing Drupal for the first time and the process to get a Drupal installation live online.
• NetTuts - Nettuts is another great resource, packed full of tutorials designed from beginners to experts. You can learn a lot here on web development principles.
• Level Ten Design - Level Ten Design is premiere Drupal development agency offering great resources for Drupal tutorials and documentation.

Conclusion

Overall, Drupal may not be the only solution to a website project, but if you are looking for a robust CMS with dynamic features designed for scalability and flexibility, then using Drupal on your next web project is a solid choice. We love Drupal and have been using it more and more. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, we’re here to help!

Having an attractive website is very critical for churches to share their beliefs and values. As such having a very usable and functional website that conveys the information visitors are searching for will make it very helpful for churches to succeed online.

Elevation Church

Bayside Community Church

Blythefield Hills Baptist Church

Cottonwood Church

Mars Hill Church

Beautiful Life Experience

LifePoint Church

Calvary Church

Life Church

Mission Hills Church

Rhythm Church

Antioch Community Church

LifeChurch.tv

HighPoint Church

Hillsong Church

Newlife Uniting Church

Redeemer Church

Fellowship Bible Church

Kingsfield Church

College Park Church

PlanetShakers

Lake Center Bible Church

Kingsland Baptist Church

ChurchPlanters.com

NorthPoint Christian Church

Disciples Church Springfield

Damascus Road Church

Jerusalem Institute of Justice

Joel Scrivner

Bay Revival

Maze

John Kilpatrick

Christian Stewardship Network

Whites Chapel

Elevation Church: Extension

Let’s discuss the various aspects of pay per click advertising, utilizing Google’s AdWords, and how we can use pay per click to help our marketing efforts rather than just cost us excess money with no results.

Traffic vs. Conversions

When you first consider pay per click advertising, you need to understand its purpose. Many marketers and companies have mislead their customers into believing that the primary success metric is driving “traffic”. With pay per click this should not be your focus, in fact your focus should be on “conversions”. The reason many companies don’t approach pay per click from this approach is due to the fact that it is much harder to track.

Looking at conversions instead of traffic will guarantee a successful campaign and will generate a higher return on investment for your business.

So how do we get conversions? There are several things we can do to help increase our conversions and run successful pay per click campaign:

Landing Pages

The first thing you should consider is your landing page. We need to create a landing page that is optimized for conversions and promotes the product or topic for the ad we are running. Look at it this way, if our advertisement is for custom made cabinets but our landing page is promoting custom installed counter tops our conversions will be low (if any). Our landing page must be relevant and guide the user effectively to make a purchase or perform what ever task you need, such as signing up for a newsletter, contacting your company, etc.

Research shows that people who click on pay per click ads are ready to buy, they are conversion oriented. Guide users to make the purchase. Don’t send them to your website, instead a specifically designed landing page will ensure these conversions.

Ad Placement

Your ad placement is determined by how much you are willing to pay per click over your competitors. If the average cost per click or CPC is $3.00 and your competitors are paying $3.25, if you pay $4.00 per click you will achieve higher ad placement. The draw back on ad placement comes into play when your competitors have poorly optimized advertisements which will lead to an inflated cost per click for everyone. If you increase your quality score, you will be able to lower the impact of the inflated cost per click as a result of the poor campaigns.

Quality Scores

Quality Scores help your pay per click campaign based on the quality of your ads, the quality of your content and landing pages, the length of visitors staying on your landing page, and your conversion rates. Google will assign this quality score based on these factors which will ultimately lower your cost per click and increase your ad placement.

Return on Investment

When deciding on a pay per click campaign, you must determine your return on investment. Say you run a PPC campaign with a budget of $500 and it costs you $5.00 per click and you get an average conversion rate of about 10-15% (varies by industry) and your average product sells at $150.00. Based on these numbers your return on investment is worth it as you will gain about $1500 in total revenue. If you determine that the cost is higher than your return, then a PPC campaign may not be a good fit for your marketing campaign.

Conclusion

When you look at running any pay per click advertising campaign, you must determine first if this will generate the results you need and whether its worth your return. Calculate your monthly budget and focus on building a landing page and content that promotes conversions. It’s easy drive traffic, but if the traffic isn’t targeted, you are wasting money on driving people to your landing page that aren’t interested in what you have to offer.

We explore these top 10 websites and discuss the creativity and functionality that went into the development of these amazing websites. Stay connected and follow us to receive more great articles and round ups! We hope you enjoy!

Slate Studio

Slate Studio is an interactive creative agency located in California. Their website is one of the best designed and developed websites we’ve seen when it comes to the use of a single page website.

Their website utilizes advanced jQuery techniques to create a rich and engaging user interface through the use of  changing the stage or viewable content area dynamically. This technique can provide a troublesome approach, however, Slate’s technique is clean and effective and makes it one of the best we’ve ever seen.

rtraction

rtraction creates digital experiences and offers a very creative single page website design. Their website also features advanced jQuery techniques for scrolling as well as displaying a clean, interactive navigation menu when the user scrolls down the page.

Eclipse Creative

Eclipse Creative is one of our favorites due to its very creative illustrative design. We love the theme that they create to engage with the user, taking them from the ground to the skies and beyond.

Epic Fleet

Epic Fleet presents its information in a very clear and easy to understand way. As a result their single page website is very effective and engaging for users. We also really like their use of colors and textures in combination with the shadowing of text and the button bevels. Very inspiring indeed!

Massive Creative Agency

Massive Creative Agency offers a very interactive single page website. The website features many advanced techniques to provide a unique user experience.

Jibe Visuals

Jibe Visuals is a video production and animation studio in Canada. Their website provides a rich user interface that elegantly scrolls the page. Their website is creatively designed and uses a nice combination of textures and colors to engage effectively with their users.

Evoluxion

Evoluxion utilizes an illustrated interface with a smooth scrolling technique that creates a very interactive user experience. In addition, it features elegant hovers and very creative designs.

Carter Digital

Carter Digital features a very elegant and professional user interface that engages effectively with their visitors and promotes their brand. Their website has also been featured on Awwwards for their creative design.

Bay Area Sports Management

Bay Area Sports Management features a very attractive single page website that promotes user interaction. Designed and developed by Orlando Web Agency, Divups, this website is definitely an inspiring single page website.

Gecko Imaging

Gecko Imaging is nice simple dark single page website. It’s subtle background and use of scrolling makes this website very engaging and interactive.

We will discuss a little about what we offer and the importance of a Facebook fan page.

What is Fanpage Design

Fanpage Design is a custom Facebook page design service geared to providing high quality Facebook fan pages to businesses, brands, and individuals, looking to promote themselves on Facebook. We have created this service as a way for anyone to get a high quality custom Facebook page.

In today’s industry, Facebook is becoming a second home online for businesses. With more than 800 million active users, utilizing Facebook for your business is a great way to market your brand and grow online. Many businesses have still yet to develop a presence on Facebook and those who have, don’t utilize its functionality to work with their online marketing campaign.

So how can you use Facebook properly? The easiest way is creating a Facebook fan page presence that is engaging and interactive for the user to entice them to become a fan. This is why we created Fanpage Design.

Our Goal

We envisioned an easy and affordable business model that offered state of the art, custom Facebook solutions, from landing pages, contests, like gates, to coupons, promotions, and even Facebook Commerce (selling your products through your fan page). This concept allows us to work with brands of all sorts to develop a fan page that will increase fans and drive more traffic to your content and website.

The result was Fanpage Design. Have a look at our video below to understand the full benefits of utilizing this service for your next Facebook fan page project. If you would like to see some examples, check us out at www.fanpagedesign.co and see why so many others are utilizing our services for their Facebook marketing.

So how do you define your website visitors? This article will outline several key factors that will help you to define your audience and create the perfect web presence.

Creating User Personas

When defining your website visitors, we need to first create user personas. User personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way, according to Wikipedia.

We create user personas as a way to understand our customers on a personal level and to create a user experience that we know will generate the buzz and popularity we try to achieve through an effective online marketing campaign and web presence. If we create a website that engages with a 25 year old male surfer, but our business model is geared to promoting our services to a 42 year old lawyer, then our website will not effectively market to our audience. We need to understand our users before we create a website to create the best experience for our audience.

Here are some key questions we can ask when determining our user personas:

• Who are my users?  What are their demographics?
  Demographics are used to understand specific characteristics such as age, gender, income, education, etc. We want to build a personal connection with our users, so understanding everything about them will ensure this.
• What are their web skills? Do your users have any disabilities or challenges in seeing or hearing?
  Remember, Sarasota is a huge community for retirees and as such they may have some impairments that would require extra attention in the development of your website. Do you need to focus on larger type, that allows older users to easily read? We don’t want to make our users squint to read your content.
•  How often do they use the Web?
  Are they frequent users or once a week, maybe once a month?
• What type of technology will they be using? Do they use older computers and browsers? Do they access the web from smart phones?
• How familiar are they with the task you will be requiring of them?

Now that we have a few general questions, we can brainstorm with pencil and paper and write down our user personas. Think about these points mentioned and write down who you believe your website users are. Some people may find it very pointless, boring, maybe a bit difficult and most people overlook this step in the web process. But clearly defining your users will give you a complete picture of where you will market your website and how you will go about driving traffic. Think of it this way, one million non targeted visitors (meaning not user targeted consumer) to your website is not nearly as effective as ten thousand targeted visitors. It’s easy to convert someone interested in your service or product, but a visitor that got there by accident will 99% of the time will leave and not think twice about your website.

If you do the grunt work up front and take the necessary steps to know who you are selling to, your website will provide a unique and engaging user experience. Remember, engagement is the key to online success and that’s exactly what you will be creating.

If you need some assistance, contact us today and we’ll be more than happy to help you define your website visitors and help you create a dynamic and interactive website.

There are many tips and resources to help you create and maintain a successful blog and here are 5 tips that will help you start increasing your blog exposure immediately.

Quality Content will ensure Followers

When you create your blog, first decide what your topic or niche will be. You need to focus on what you are good at and not what you think is popular. People want content worth value and if you provide articles and posts that are copied and pasted together or shows your inexperience on the subject, chances are you will not gain the exposure you want.

Focus on relevant and quality content that engages with your audience. Say you have a blog on website design, one way to engage with your audience and provide quality content, would be to create a tutorial on the subject.

Social Integration will lead to more followers

Integrating social media, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any social network, will ensure higher followers. It’s an easy process and will give your readers the ability to share your article or recommend it to someone else. Remember, you can also utilize social media to market your blog by posting tweets or Facebook updates that direct people to an article.

Here are a few WordPress plugins to help with social media integration:

• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sharebar/
  Sharebar is a nice plugin for adding social sharing to your posts. It creates a sidebar of all the popular networks and gives readers quick and easy access to sharing.
  
• http://www.livefyre.com/
  Livefyre is a great tool for integrating social media within your comments. It provides real time commenting and gives more interaction with your readers
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/addthis/
  AddThis is a great plugin for blogs as it gives the reader many options of sharing from email to delicious. It’s one of our favorites and we use it frequently.

Connect with Authors of Authority

Don’t be afraid to reach out with other professionals in your industry who have a large following. These authors can help you gain attention and notoriety in the industry and help you establish a positive image. Don’t spam them, just introduce yourself or compliment their work. Be friendly and don’t go over board.

Remember your here to connect with these authors, giving a vibe that you are there to boost your morale will most likely lead to a dead end.

Comment, Comment, Comment

Read and post comments on blogs in your industry. Communicate and share your thoughts, opinions, and expertise. This will not only boost your credibility in your industry, but you will most likely get high quality back links to your blog.

When you post comments, make sure they are providing quality feedback. This will draw attention to you and your site. When high profiled authors see your website and the quality of the content, you will start getting links back to your site which will boost your search engine ranking.

Forums are great too

Participate in forums on a regular basis and provide quality feedback. For instance, if someone is building a WordPress website and is having difficulty with their coding, offer some assistance and provide a bit of help. Others will see your feedback, which will lead to higher exposure and your site will get more link backs.

Conclusion

It doesn’t take long to build a positive reputation and ensuring quality content, an engaging atmosphere, and regular participation within blogs and forums, you will become an industry leader in no time!