How dull is your digital marketing experience?
Click – home page that looks like it was made in 1993
Click – twenty pages of sales copy
Click – God help us
Even though most companies are aware of how crucial a good website is to their business performance, the internet seems to be full of terrible sites. Chances are you’ve happened upon one or two digital disasters that you couldn’t wait to click away from. At Traffic for Me – we’ve seen our fair share of catastrophes in our time. But we do our best to deliver an incredible service anyway – because that’s what we’re all about.
We’ve all spotted the graphic nightmare – a website brimming with flickering images, contrasting colours, and difficult to read text. Then there’s confusion central, a website that seems to have no navigation, no company aims – and no clue. At the end of the day, you only need one disastrous design mistake on your website to chase away the customers.
Unfortunately, while we here at T4Me might be able to help you track down more traffic and seek out the perfect response to your various email marketing strategies, it’s up to you to ensure that your leads are going somewhere attractive. In other words, you’re gonna need to design a good digital experience.
From responsivity, to SEO, we’re going to cover some of the ways you can design the perfect digital experience for your audience.
Speed is Key: Don’t Lose Their Attention
Would you have even bothered to read this page if it hadn’t loaded in less than a few seconds?
Most companies know by now that a faster website equals a better website. However, just because they have heard that this is true doesn’t mean that they understand how speed equates to success. The truth is that knowing why a fast and responsive website is key to online performance today could help you to better optimise your web presence in the future.
We live in a world where everyone wants results instantly. If you order a pizza, you generally want it on your doorstep in time for dinner. If you call a cab, you need it to arrive at your home just in time for your date. If you click on a link, you want it to give you a webpage within seconds.
Don’t waste the traffic you get from us at T4Me by leaving your prospects out in the cold.
Studies conducted by Kissmetrics found that a single second of extra loading time in a page can result in a 7% drop in conversions, with around 40% of users abandoning a website completely if it takes more than three seconds to load.
What’s more, now that Google has placed “speed” on their list of factors which affect page ranking, a slower website could mean that your intended audience never see your website at all, particularly if you end up on the third or fourth page of the search results.
The bottom line is simple: your customers expect that they should be able to navigate your web pages quickly. If your website can’t deliver that speed, then your bounce rates will begin to skyrocket and your conversion rates will plummet.
The Human Attention Span Is Short
Have we still got your attention? If the answer is yes, then we must be doing something right.
The average person is easily distracted, quickly bored, and ready to turn away from your website at just about any second. Studies have found that a person will leave a web page in between 10 and 20 seconds if it bores them, which means that you have a matter of moments in which to catch someone’s attention and keep it.
When it comes to marketing to your audience, if your loading times are so slow that your visitors leave your page before they’ve even had a chance to read your sales pitch or evaluate your content, then your profits are going to suffer.
What’s more, psychology suggests that humans feel calmer when they believe they’re in control. If your website takes forever to load, then your visitor isn’t going to feel in control – they’re going to feel like someone else is wasting their valuable time.
Finding Your Website: Where SEO comes In
“It don’t mean a thing if it ‘ain’t got that swing.”
-Duke Ellington, It Don’t Mean a Thing. 1943
So we’ve covered why speed is important to your website, but that doesn’t really count for much if you’re not drawing in traffic to begin with.
Sure, a great user experience is important, but where are you going to find those users to get you started? The way that we find and engage with people has changed over the years. After all, when’s the last time you used a phonebook for anything other than keeping your table legs straight or filling the space at the back of your cupboard?
Yeah. We figured.
Once, phonebooks were the go-to solution for shoppers who wanted to figure out where they could get a service or product nearby, and yet now they’re completely obsolete. The world has changed into one that focuses on a mantra of “go digital or go home,” and that means that companies need to embrace a new way of making themselves visible to customers.
Internet search engines replaced the phonebook years ago, and they’re still going strong today. Want to find out where you can get a great meal in your local area? You turn to Google. Need to know more about a product or a service, or even have a question that you want to ask the world-wide web? All you have to do is load up your favorite search engine. So how can businesses take advantage of the new norm? The answer is SEO.
SEO, or search optimization is the strategy that helps to get you to the top of the listings whenever a person searches for something related to your company, product, or service. Since most customers prefer not to slog through pages of search results to get the website they want, being on top matters now more than ever.
Why SEO Matters to Your Business
Your website won’t give you the best results unless you have at least a simple understanding of how you can get people to visit it. It’s like standing in the middle of the street screaming your brand name to the masses otherwise. Chances are people are going to avoid you, ignore you, or remember you as being a total psycho.
Becoming familiar with the foundations of SEO should be enough to help you make your content accessible via search engine searches. Here are a few reasons why SEO actually makes a difference to your business:
- It Works
Most people won’t need any reasons beyond this one. SEO works.
Let’s face it, SEO isn’t as fast as most businesses would like it to be when it comes to generating traffic. That’s why you come to us – after all, at Traffic 4 Me we give you the instant interest your company needs to generate better and more committed followings. From there you’ll need to develop the long-term approach that will build and maintain your brand’s identity over the years.
SEO is the master of effective digital experiences. It helps you to get more traffic to your website, increases your chances of converting visitors into customers, and therefore enhances your earning potential – making your business ultimately more successful.
The more you work on using a great SEO strategy, the higher you’ll rank on the search pages, and the more exposure you’ll get to people that genuinely matter to your company – customers that want to buy your products, clients interested in your services, and even partners who want to work alongside you to help you increase your income and share in the success.
- Consumers Want to Know You
Don’t get a big head – your customers want to know you because they want to feel like they can trust you, not because you’re such an awesome guy. (Even though that might be true).
As great as the world of ecommerce may be, some shoppers are still a little nervous when it comes to making purchases online. Did you know that more than 70% of consumers prefer to research companies before they hand over anything as small as their email address?
And why not? We feel more comfortable if we have evidence to suggest that the websites we’re shopping with are authentic, honest, and not filled with spam-wear ready to take all of our money the second we type in a couple of bank account details.
If a customer searches for your company and you’re lost somewhere deep within the caverns of low search rankings, then chances are that you won’t get the business that you crave. That means that you need to work on building up the visibility of your business before you can start earning happy, loyal customers.
- It’s Not Going Anywhere
Finally, unlike the phonebook, which was bound to go out of style at some point, SEO isn’t going anywhere any time soon. For as long as people are using the internet, search engines are going to be a vital resource in tracking down companies, information and products.
Even though how we use SEO is changing, that doesn’t mean that isn’t just as effective as it’s always been, if not more so.
Today you can’t cheat the search engines into putting your content ahead of the masses by simply stuffing it full of keywords, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t authentically earn your place at the top with good content, a great following of loyal customers generated through email traffic and social media, and more.
Investing in SEO was a smart business decision two decades ago, and there’s no sign of that changing in the decades to come. It’s not like companies are going to stop chasing new customers and new leads.
So, How Can You Speed up your Website?
So, what do you need to do to make your website speedier than ever?
Fortunately, there are a lot of different options available. We’ll give you just three simple suggestions that you should be able to implement in no time at all.
First: Minimize your HTTP Requests
According to information from Yahoo, about 80% of the loading time attribute to a website is spent on downloading all the different jigsaw pieces that make that page – from scripts and stylesheets, to images, and flash. Every one of these pieces needs a HTTP request, so the more components you have to work with – the longer it takes for a page to render.
The quickest way to speed up your website then, is to streamline your design. Use CSS instead of images, combine numerous style sheets into one, and reduce your scripts so that they can be slotted in at the bottom of the page.
Second: Limit your Plugins
Plugins are great.
You can use plugins to count the number of people who visit your website, or show you how great your SEO efforts are. Yoast, anyone? However, if you have too many, then you’re just going to slow your site down with unnecessary weight.
Look at all of the plugins you’re currently using, then delete and deactivate anything that appears unnecessary. Trust us – as cool as that calendar looks – if it’s not doing anything for your users, you need to ditch it.
Third: Optimize Images
Finally, when it comes to images, make sure you focus on format, size, and code.
- Your code should look like this: <img scr=””>.
- Your image should be carefully sized to ensure that it doesn’t take extra time to load. For instance, if your page is 570px wide, you don’t need a 2000px image.
- Your format should always be JPEG. If you can’t have a JPEG, for any reason, then PNG is the next best thing – but some browsers still don’t support this option.
Speed and SEO: Making Your Website a Success
Today, there are many elements involved in making a website a success, and you need to make sure that you cover all of them if you want to avoid the heartache of a bad website and convince your audience that it’s a good idea to do business with you. Here we’ve covered some of the essentials of speed and SEO – the key factors in getting your customers to find your website and stay there for longer.
Of course when it comes to instant results, there are few things as effective as having your prospects delivered on a silver platter. That’s why you come to us at Traffic 4 Me – we give you the means you need to get started. Once you’ve got your piles of awesome traffic, you can start making the most out of it.
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