If you have doubts about whether or not you need to hire a professional website designer, then chances are you should. The first thing potential customers see is your website and that can make or break their decision to keep looking at your products or services.

A well-designed website is an absolutely worthwhile investment that will generate revenue for your business. However, potential customers won’t explore a site if they think it looks bad so, if your website hasn’t been updated in a while, it could be turning people away at the door of your business.

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As you develop and implement your company’s marketing campaign, it’s easy to get caught up in written content. After all, the written content on your website, blog, and social media accounts can clearly provide information to potential customers. However, visual content is essential to any successful marketing campaign. Images, graphics, and an eye-catching logo work to establish a recognizable brand. 

For many websites and online businesses, traffic is like lifeblood. After all, the more traffic you can maintain, the higher your chances of consistent lead generation and sales. On the flip side, insufficient traffic means that your content and products aren’t being properly proliferated and your business may suffer.

The internet was officially created in 1983. However, it didn’t pick up until the 1990s, when more and more people purchased home computers and individuals realized just how influential it could be in their daily lives. This is great news for you, since it means you can advertise your business to a huge audience of people.

Updated on September 18, 2019. The  original article was published on July 7, 2016.

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Since the original writing of this article, Domino’s Pizza has been in the news for trying to bring a case to the U.S. Supreme Court, contending that ADA Compliance should not apply to their website.
Our feeling on this is that is will fail, and that it makes more sense for websites to be accessible to all.

Since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, any business that “holds itself publicly accessible” has had to make reasonable accommodations for anyone who is considered disabled. These accommodations apply to buildings, restrooms, elevators, parking lots, and cover everything from the width of the parking spot to the height of door handles. Anyone who fails to meet these standards can and frequently is subject to lawsuits that lead to costly renovations, fines, and of course legal costs. Continue reading →

Online business is incredibly complex. In a digital age that has ecommerce sales slowly taking over retail, just about every brand needs an online presence to maximize their potential. This is especially true for ecommerce websites that don’t have the luxury of a physical location – simply a web address in a sea of billions of addresses!

Whether you’re a new online business owner or just want to ensure you’re doing everything right, focusing on the right aspects of online sales can help you to make your business work in the long term. Below are the two most important metrics to focus on at the base of your business to give yourself the best chance at success.

Web Traffic

You can’t make profit without sales, and you can’t make sales without customers!

Separated into two main categories – returning and unique visitors – your total web traffic tells you how popular your online store is. A higher total web traffic means that your business is getting exposure, allowing you the opportunity to turn visitors into customers with your website.

Unique visitors is the preferred metric of the two, as new customers means more people are being introduced to your website, causing you to grow your brand. These are most likely coming from your marketing strategy, and are a great way to measure if your current marketing campaign is working.

Returning visitors are also useful, as returning customers are worth more over their lifetime because you don’t need to pay for the acquisition of their subsequent orders . It also means you have brand loyalty, which will allow you to be successful even once your unique visitors slow from an existing campaign winding down.

To make sure where your visitors are coming from, you should implement Google Analytics onto your website. Here you’ll be able to see the referral links that people are clicking to get to your site, which will tell you where your marketing dollars should go.

Conversion Rate

Once you’ve spent all that money on marketing, you still need to close the deal. No matter how much traffic you have, if you don’t get them to complete the purchase, you’re not going to make money. You could even lose money on each customer if you’re not converting well.

Conversion rate is the ratio of buyers to visitors on your site. If you have 100 unique visitors and 5 make a purchase, that’s a 5% conversion rate – and not too bad! However, that may be too much to expect for some websites.

If your website isn’t responsive, your checkout is complicated, or your site is overall hard to use, you’re not going to gain the trust of your customers – trust that gets them to enter their payment info at checkout.

To improve your conversion rate, consider implementing conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies on your site. These include shortening your checkout form to only necessary information, creating effective calls to action, ensuring your website is fast and response, and providing live support to answer questions.

While the design of a website is of very high importance, often the content – and specifically the verbiage – is neglected, which is a big mistake. You can create one of the most dazzling, well-designed websites in the world, but if you fail to keep people interested and explain your business, then you will be unable to market effectively. To get yourself noticed and ensure your clients and customers keep coming back for more, avoid the following common mistakes when creating your website’s copy.

Whether you want to sell products online or are just looking to attract more customers, a quality website is crucial to your success. A website acts as your virtual storefront – explaining what you offer, displaying products, providing contact information, and even processing orders.

With every new Apple or Samsung release, smart devices are getting more & more popular. These handheld computers can do just about everything a PC can do, but with a much smaller screen. Because of this, unresponsive websites look a little wonky when loaded up on various devices, making them much harder to use effectively. This is where responsive web design comes in.

Responsive web design involves building a website that responds to the environment it is being accessed in. Different devices have their own screen sizes and orientations, making it important that your website fits all of them while still looking great & working correctly. An estimated 80% of internet users own a smartphone (Smart Insights), and an estimated 51% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices (Statista), so if your website isn’t responsive, you risk losing more than 50% of potential users. Continue reading →