7 Features Your Website Must Have in Order to Be Successful

You want your business to thrive, right? Looking to increase your credibility and exposure to potential customers? Need an easy way to drive revenue? Good news! There is a simple answer to get your business on the right track and one that might seem like common sense.

In order to achieve all the above goals, you need to ensure you company has a website.  I know, you’re thinking, of course, everyone knows you need a website today.  So, you did the due diligence and launched a website for your business.  But what if that website doesn’t seem to be performing for you like it should?  Just having a website doesn’t mean customers are automatically going to flock to your business.  Having a website is like having a storefront without a sign.  You have a location that allows people to do business with you.  The only problem is, they don’t know who you are, where you are located, and what you do.  That is why business owners invest in signage, marketing, product placement, and, of course, a website.

So, you know you need a website, but just like with a storefront, your website must be a great representation of your business and what you stand for.

Here are 7 must-haves with your website:

1. Responsive Website Design

Responsive web design simply means your website automatically conforms to the best user experience, regardless of the device. 70% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. To stay on top of your competition, your website must have a comparable user experience across all devices, whether mobile or desktop.

2. Clear Navigation

Think about your own experience on a poorly designed website. You are trying to find contact information or specific content about the company’s services and yet, you get lost in a never-ending scroll and click monstrosity of annoyance. You end up leaving that website to find a competitor with a clearer direction. People are looking for quick, simple, and efficient. Having a clear navigation path on your site will enable a better user experience, as well as aid in your search engine optimization growth.

3. Content, Content, Content!

When it comes to your website, content is king! You must infuse high quality, engaging content to attract your ideal consumer AND keep them on your site. People coming to your site have a problem in which they are hoping for your products or services can solve. Say they need a new roof. They want to investigate a bit to see if it is the best company to hire to replace their roof. They want to know you have knowledge and experience in the area. They want to be sold on the fact that your company is the best in the business when it comes to roofing. That is all done with content. Content is what draws the customers to your website. Relevant and engaging content is what pulls your website to the top of search engine results. Content is what is going to set you apart from your competition.

4. Thoughtful Design

You always want to be thinking about the user experience when it comes to your website design. Having an explosion of colors, a gazillion pictures, and 24 various fonts and sizes will make any visitor dizzy and drive them right onto the pages of your competition. Your color pallet, images, and content should all be placed with purpose throughout your site and guide the user to the information you want them to focus on. Think of it like a road map, guiding your ideal customers to exactly what you want them to do.

5. Customized Call-To-Action Buttons

Also referred to as CTAs, this is one of the most critical parts of your website. Call-to-action buttons guide your customer to interact with you in a preferred manner. It could guide them to fill out a form, or maybe to call now, (which they can do right from your site!). Maybe it is to complete a sale right on your site if you are an ECommerce business. Your call-to-action buttons are a subset of your well thought out design. They remind your customer to engage with them and further their interaction with your business to get closer to the sale.

6. Consistency

It might sound repetitive, but consistency is so important for a good user experience. Consistency on your website means that your colors, images, content, navigation, messaging, and overall message has a cohesive flow throughout the entire site. When a customer lands on your website, whether they land on your home page or a product page within your site, they should know right away what business site they are on, what you do, and how you can solve their problem. A great deal of this will focus on your brand messaging, a topic we will explore deeper in a separate blog.

7. Engaging Visuals

There is an old saying in marketing that is still true today. If you were to remove all the text from an advertisement, a customer should still be able to tell you what you do or what you are selling based solely on the image used in that ad. The same is true for your website. The first thing people will focus on is one that lands on your site if the images. Your images need to tell a compelling story. Much like your content. They need to be engaging and purposeful in both placement and messaging.

Another concept to embrace is video. People are 10 times more likely to engage with a video versus a static image. You are allowing people to learn about your business, what sets you apart, and pull them in with compelling content – all at the ease of watching a video. A well-executed design that incorporates both static images with thoughtful and poignant video will take your website to the next level.

Just like your food in your refrigerator, don’t keep your website past its expiration date.  Websites created in the 90s and early 2000s are in desperate need of a refresh!  Technology changes quickly today.  For your website to stay relevant and be found by customers online, you need to keep your content fresh and your platform and design current to your customers standards.  

How Can You Get Your Website to Attract More Customers?

Perfexion is a full service, interactive agency. We harness the power of great design, the most advanced technologies, and strategic branding to enhance your professional presence across the web and beyond. Click here to get a FREE website audit and customized solutions for your business.

PPC Best Practices for Extra Effective Text Ads

What is PPC?

PPC, also commonly known as pay-per-click, is a method of search engine advertising to generate clicks to your website. Unlike organic search, PPC involves paid search marketing. Paid search marketing means you pay for your website to appear in paid advertising sections of relevant search engine results pages. In simpler terms, results are determined by payment from advertisers.

What is the difference between organic and paid search?

Organic search is based on natural, unpaid rankings. These rankings are determined by SEO best practices, including well written optimized content, creating accessible and relevant URLs and keywords, producing captivating title and description tags, and off page optimization strategies. These efforts can be performed in-house or by outsourcing SEO campaigns to an experienced agency.

Other popular SEO practices are updating and posting new blogs, finding and removing broken links, looking at competitors’ keywords, and using outreach and marketing tools to make the company more known.

Paid search allows you to pay to have your website displayed on the search engine results page when someone types in specific keywords and/or phrases that match the demographic and other targeting setup within the 3rd party search providers system. There is budget setup as well as detailed targeting criteria that determines where and how your ads are shown. The paid search providers have a campaign setup and maintenance process involving keywords, negative keywords, demographics, geo-graphics, campaign performance metrics, landing page optimization, as well as bidding strategies.

Types of Ads

Search ads, like mentioned above, means a business advertises within the sponsored listings of a search engine or a partner site by paying each time your ad is clicked (PPC).

For example, a consumer who wants to look for new iPhone headphones will head to Google and search for a keyword or topic related to headphones for a smartphone. When an ad is shown, he or she will click the ad and be taken to a landing page having content related to the search, and hopefully, purchase the product.

Display ads are shown to consumers when they are browsing online. Based on the targeting being used, this happen when searching for your product or service, or when they are reading online where the content is related to their search. The ad can be triggered by their intent, or because of the relevant web property or placement they are on. These ads are advertised through banners or other ad formats made of text, images, audio, video, etc. These formats can include various placements including the top of web pages (similar to the traditional banner ads) and larger text, such as billboards.

For example, a consumer is searching the web for study materials for his/her upcoming exam. Various musical artists are shown with new releases. The consumer isn’t specifically looking for new music, but display and banner ads are showing up throughout Google. He or she then clicks on the image with the promotion taking them to the corresponding landing page.

Remarketing ads are strategically placed ads to connect with people who previously interacted with your website. If a customer leaves your site without buying, remarketing allows you to market to them again.

For example, a consumer has recently browsed Best Buy and had added items in his or her online shopping cart. He or she decided to leave the site before purchasing a product. A week later, that same consumer went back online and your ads are show again or remarketed to the consumer. Based on the web property, the same items recently added to her Best Buy shopping cart can appear, alongside other similar products that he or she may think of purchasing.

Paid Search Optimization

For paid search optimization, there should be a prioritization approach to maintain consistent growth and performance. Here are some common goals that companies tend to have:

  • You should always define your goals and objectives (both short and long-term). This includes identifying and maintaining your specific audience. This should include repeat customers but also new customers.
  • Determine which type of campaign(s) best fit with your goals and audience. Companies often use both organic and paid search programs. Search-based campaigns can be a better fit for some, while sales-based campaigns can be better for others.
  • You want to increase sales and revenue.
  • You want to increase site visitors.
  • Do what your competitors are doing.
  • Do what your competitors are not doing.
  • Optimize content to maximize shareability.
  • Improve company outreach and recognition.

Guidelines for Effective Text Ads

Writing good ad copy for PPC ads can be tough, but if done well, can make your company more profitable. Similar to any approach, you should define and thoroughly know your target audience and what they want. A crucial way to gain the attention of potential customers is to ensure that you know how to, and more importantly, can fix their issues and pain points. To help you better figure out what your audience wants, look at it from the customer’s perspective and decide what you personally would want from the specific company. Then, determine how you as a customer would fix the problem, and implement this into your actual practice.

Next, you should always address the audience in your ads. Using the words “you” and “your” are extremely important. If the audience believes that you are talking directly to them, they will more likely have a positive attitude towards your business.

Make sure to utilize human emotion. A potential or existing customer does not want to read a boring ad that he or she cannot relate to. You want to make your audience feel something. To do this, determine what emotion(s) you want to captivate and tap into. Sometimes evoking negative feelings can be better than positive feeling because people tend to act quicker when they see or hear something bad happening and want to solve a problem.

For example, if you are doing an ad on childrens floats for the pool, mentioning the high risks of adolescent drowning would be more beneficial than targeting solely the floats. If a parent reads an ad that says, “Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide”, they would probably be keener to act.

Using metrics and numbers is very important. Spelling out each number is not only time consuming, but less appealing to the eye. Be sure to use exact numbers instead of rounding. Numbers and statistics tend to grab people’s attention, so utilize this as much as possible.

It’s also crucial to use all the space that is provided. Google AdWords allows up to three 30-character headlines and up to two 90-character descriptions. Make sure to fit all the necessary information into this space, while also using a display URL and ad extensions if desired.

To outshine your opponents, you want to highlight what makes you different. Because of the limited amount of space, you need to make your ad and selling points unique. In order to do this, you should ask yourself the following:

1. What does my company/business do better than anyone else?
2. Are you making any special offers or doing anything that sets you apart?
3. What is unique about your brand image?
4. What customer problem are you solving?

When thinking about ads, you should also strive to go local. People tend to trust businesses that are small and local, rather than huge corporations. If you have a specific geo location but want to expand into other areas, make sure to create different campaigns for each location. Use keywords that match those geographic locations. For example, if your campaign is taking place alongside a coastal area, it is smart to include terms such as “beach”, “rock”, “sea”, “water”, “offshore”, etc.

Start your campaigns with strong, action verbs that grab the reader’s attention. If you start off your ad with the words “Call for more information”, readers are going to skip right over that. However, if you start your ad off with something like “Get a huge discount” or “Save up to 10%…”, readers will be more inclined to click on your ad.

You should regularly review and maintain your PPC ads. One way to do this is to split test between your ads to see what is working and what needs to be improved upon. There are numerous methods to split ads, but some of the more common include: placing your ad in different locations, using different words in your ads, trying different figures and statistics, experimenting with different display URLs, and emphasizing various advantages of your service.

There are several 3rd party tools to help you create, maintain and improve your PPC campaign performance. They are also a great way to review your campaigns and metrics against your competitors. Reviewing competitor search ads over different days and hours of the day will give you a barometer on the market and competition.

Lastly, creating a successful PPC ad takes time. However, it will get easier with time and practice. Determining your goals and objectives, defining your budget, targeting your niche audience, making a list of relevant keywords, bidding on the right keywords, creating an attention-grabbing headline and description, and utilizing human emotion are just some ways to produce the compelling ad you need.

Thinking of Dumping Your PPC Program? 4 Common Misconceptions…

Clearing up the Misconceptions around PPC

Have you considered using Google or Bing pay-per-click – PPC – to market your business online but are concerned PPC won’t work for you? Perhaps you’re already using PPC but feel you’re not getting the hoped-for results and are even thinking of dropping your PPC campaign. Before walking away from pay-per-click altogether, make sure you fully understand the power behind PPC and the results you can ultimately achieve. Don’t be swayed by negative opinions about PPC, but rely instead on the factual information and data only a professional PPC administrator can provide. Here we clear up a few common misconceptions around pay-per-click advertising and provide a fresh perspective on how to eye your PPC to further attract customers and grow your business.

True or False: PPC is the only form of advertising your business needs.

False. Pay-per-click is good and can get results, but it should not work in a figurative silo. Only when PPC is combined with one or more other forms of advertising you do in other marketing channels will you see real results. When you promote your business in other channels, such as through SEO, social media, in print, or on radio or TV, you gain name and brand recognition. That way, when a new or existing customer is searching online for the services you offer, the chances of that customer seeing your ad and clicking on it are improved. Decide on the types of advertising that work best for your business, and combine these with a properly run PPC program for best results.

True or False: SEO alone is more cost effective than PPC and can return equally good results.

False. While it is true that SEO may cost less to run and manage than paid search/PPC, in the larger context of advertising and ROI, it doesn’t. That is because PPC serves to support your SEO programs and, just as PPC should be combined with other forms of advertising to maximize results, PPC should also be used strategically to enhance the return on your SEO investment.

A business that is looking to cut expenses and trim their advertising budget may target PPC because they perceive the cost is too high when compared to what they pay for an SEO program alone that provides organic search traffic. But when they look more closely at how paid search is working in concert with organic search results, direct traffic, local listings, and other advertising channels, they cannot help but see how they all support each other. If any one piece of the advertising pie is removed, you can most surely expect to see decreased click-throughs, calls, traffic, and other results.

True or False: PPC is expensive when compared to the cost to acquire a new customer.

False. This myth can be quickly and easily debunked when you step back and look at the entire customer life cycle. Business owners understand they need to first reach a potential customer, then acquire the customer by bringing them to the company website or store, then convert the person into a paying customer, then keep the customer beyond their first purchase and hope they become a loyal partner and advocate for your business and your brand.

None of this happens by accident. In fact, PPC helps at every step of the customer life cycle and your paid search expense is offset by the overall (lifetime) value derived from each customer. This, of course, assumes your PPC program and SEO campaign are well organized and properly run to work in conjunction with each other. When your company’s relevant information appears in different places in a web browser, and SEO gives you solid results from organic searches and click throughs, you will more than compensate for, and validate, your PPC expenses.

True or False: Once I establish my PPC campaign, it will run itself.

False. For a PPC campaign to be successful, it must be logical, organized, based on well researched keywords, and relevant to your target market. Campaign management is also important to track performance and make changes based upon user activity (or lack of activity).

Beyond these pay-per-click advertising must-haves, business owners can leverage PPC in other ways that also drive targeted traffic and spur growth for their business. Consider the business that sets up a PPC campaign based on a particular product or product line they sell. With some creative thinking (and help from a digital marketing professional), that business could consider offering new products and services that are related to their original line, and take advantage of the existing PPC account structure to bring in new customers or entice existing customers to buy more.

An effective paid search advertising campaign ensures that a company’s online marketing message lands directly in front of the company’s target audience and gets them to click on the ad. Paid search and pay-per-click advertising is not going away any time soon. This type of digital marketing has proven effective and lucrative for businesses who fully understand and are engaged in how their campaign is set up and run.

If you’ve been struggling to understand how PPC works or would like to know how well your pay-per-click ads are working for you, talk to a professional. Perfexion, Inc. is a professional web design and development company located in the Philadelphia area that understands everything you need to know about PPC and internet advertising. We specialize in helping clients maximize their return on every internet advertising dollar they spend.

We are a Philadelphia-based web design and development company located in Plymouth Meeting just outside King of Prussia. We specialize in optimizing our clients’ web content and ensuring their sites perform to the best of their ability. Contact us today to arrange an initial consultation.

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Paid Search

Is Paid Search Marketing for You?

The vast majority of businesses today rely on their company website to promote themselves and their service offerings. Interested people visit a company’s website and take any number of actions: read about the company’s services, fill out an inquiry form, call their toll free number, buy their products, or, if they’re not interested, click away.

The challenge companies face is to get people – potential customers – to visit their website in the first place. If these people know you, they can perform a quick, simple internet search based on your company name. But, if they don’t know who you are or what you do, getting them to your website takes some doing.

Web developers specialize in making sure a website is optimized to appear in search engine results through the use of search engine marketing (SEM) tools such as search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is about making a website appear high in natural, or organic, search results. A user enters a search query using relevant keywords, and receives search results that match the query based on relevance. A website that has been search engine optimized will have taken into consideration all relevant keywords and thus improve their chance of appearing higher in search results – and ultimately being shown to the person looking for their services.

Another way a business can be found on the internet is through paid search results. Paid search is a form of internet advertising – also known as pay-per-click (PPC) – by which a website owner pays for their web page/ad to display when a user performs a search using specific keywords and then clicks on the company’s ad. Different search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) display paid ads differently, but, in general, the ads appear on a search engine results page either above the results of an organic search or set off to the right. Paid search results can be further set apart with other visual indicators such as shading or a border around the ad itself.

The advertising space available on a search engine results page is limited, so advertisers must compete for this space by bidding on how much they are willing to pay if someone clicks on their ad. If an online advertiser bids higher than other advertisers, and their ad is highly relevant to the search being performed, their ad is likely to appear at or near the top of the search engine results page.

As with other forms of SEM, the objective of paid advertising is to strategically increase traffic to a company website and generate leads and conversions for the business. An effective paid search advertising campaign ensures that a company’s online marketing message lands directly in front of the company’s target audience – those who are most likely to buy their products and services – and gets them to click on the ad.

Of course success and effectiveness of a paid search advertising campaign also depends on how well the campaign is managed and monitored. Because a company pays for their internet advertising every time someone clicks on their ad, the ad should be the most relevant it can be to the person viewing it. If someone clicks on a paid ad and is taken to the advertiser’s website, but then immediately clicks away, the relevance of the ad to the person doing the search was not optimal. The goal for a company that uses paid advertising should always be for whoever clicks on their ad to be looking specifically for the very business offering the company provides, so that once the person lands on their website or landing page, they see exactly what they’re looking for.

A business that is thinking of doing a pay-per-click campaign would do themselves a huge favor by consulting with a professional web development company that is experienced in managing these types of campaigns. The expertise that goes into understanding, setting up, and running a successful campaign is usually beyond that of the average business owner. The best way a company can maximize the return on its paid search advertising investment is to rely on an expert to run and manage their campaign. Paid search campaigns require the following, and more:

  • Proper keyword research
  • Well-written, effective advertising copy
  • Analysis and tracking of the coding and tagging associated with the ad campaign
  • A relevant landing page that maximizes the investment on the advertising and conversions
  • Checking for click fraud (fraudulent clicking on the ad)
  • Industry expertise and competitive knowledge (knowing what the competition is doing)

Paid search and pay-per-click advertising is not going away any time soon. This type of SEM has proven effective and lucrative for those companies who fully understand and are engaged in how their campaign is set up and managed. To learn more about how your business might benefit from paid search and PPC, contact Perfexion, Inc. – a professional web design and development company in the Philadelphia area that understands everything you need to know about internet advertising. Perfexion specializes in helping clients market their business using all available online tools. Contact them today to schedule your initial consultation.

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WEBSITE pfxn.com
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Understanding Search Engine Marketing

Online Marketing: What Is SEM?

Search engine marketing – SEM – is a form of internet marketing in which an online business purchases ads on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing, with the goal of increasing traffic to its company website. SEM can be a highly effective and valuable strategy in support of a company’s digital marketing efforts because SEM lets advertisers place their marketing message directly in front of their target audience.

The real power behind SEM is that a company’s ad appears in front of their target customer at the very moment the customer is the most motivated to buy – when they have just performed a search for whatever it is the company is selling or promoting. SEM can also be highly effective when used in conjunction with social media outlets such as Facebook, YouTube, and other online apps.

SEM Paid Advertising

SEM is also known as paid advertising, pay-per-click advertising, keyword advertising, and targeted advertising. The advertiser bids on specific keywords that an internet user – the advertiser’s target customer – might enter when performing a search for a particular product or service. Then, when a search query is performed using those keywords, the advertiser has the opportunity for their ad to appear on the search engine results page (SERP) along with the search engine’s other results.

These paid or sponsored ads can be text-based or they can be more visual and provide potential consumers with information they likely find most useful upfront, such as customer reviews and price. Ads appear alongside other search results on a SERP and are identified as such. Sponsored ads can appear above the list of search results at the top of the page, or they can be located along the right side of the page.

SEM works in combination with search engine optimization (SEO), which involves managing a website’s content and behind-the-scenes site architecture with the objective of improving the website’s ranking and visibility in search engines and on SERPs. Understanding SEO and applying it correctly and wisely is critical to the success of any SEM campaign, since success is determined by how well you, or your web developer, selected and bid on keywords to be used in the paid ads.

Different search engines refer to their paid advertising programs differently. For example, Google’s service is called Google AdWords and also Pay Per Click (PPC), and Bing’s service is called Bing Ads. Google is, by far, the most widely used search engine, but the benefits derived from paid ads through any available search engine are generally the same.

Benefits of SEM

Through search engine marketing, businesses can:

  • Gain new website traffic and improve click-through rates, as paid ads help attract more potential customers – Well-managed ad campaigns rank well in search engine results, which means a company’s ads can appear directly in front of their target consumer at the moment they are searching for the company’s products or services.
  • Trust that the web traffic they receive from paid advertising will be highly qualified – Consumers who click on a company’s ads are looking specifically for what they offer.
  • Set their advertising budget, then pay only when a consumer clicks on the ad.
  • Reach mobile customers anywhere, anytime – Ads appear when customers are out searching (that is, shopping) for the very products or service a company offers.
  • Paid ad campaigns are flexible and can be customized – Target consumers by: geography, gender, remarketing, age, day, whatever aligns with the advertiser’s needs and budget.

SEM requires close attention to know what is, or is not, working. Web developers continually test, monitor, and adjust ads to ensure each ad investment returns the maximum results. They track keyword performance and make real-time adjustments if something is not performing as well as expected.

Web Development SEM Support

Web developers and digital marketing experts should work with businesses to ensure the SEM services they provide will generate results. Web developers should:

  • Consult with and analyze the business – And the competition, and fully understand the business’s target market.
  • Gather the business’s detailed requirements – In terms of the goals for each ad campaign, the maximum budget, and the expected results.
  • Research keywords – With proper analysis, a developer can come up with a list of optimum keywords the company’s target audience might use to search online for the products and services they offer.
  • Properly align budget with each ad campaign – Advertisers often have multiple bid strategies with different amounts of ad spend for each.
  • Place ads and monitor results – Ad testing, monitoring, and adjusting is mandatory to ensure the best results and maximum return on each ad investment.

SEM Goals

The goal of SEM is to increase and enhance a company’s visibility and relevance to targeted users – both customers and potential customers – with the purpose of increasing web traffic, improving conversions, gaining additional qualified leads, and ultimately growing profits. Perfexion, Inc. provides search engine marketing services including establishing and managing pay-per-click campaigns. They specialize in online marketing and understand what is needed for SEM to perform at optimum levels and provide a positive return on every client’s PPC investment. We are a Philadelphia based Search Engine Marketing, web design and development company located in Plymouth Meeting just outside King of Prussia.

Contact Us Today!

WEBSITE pfxn.com
E-MAIL hello@pfxn.com
CALL 610-783-7660
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