Author: David

Categories
Web Design

Out dated web design

Looking around at different websites I’m shocked at how many businesses have out dated, poor functioning websites that are representing their business to prospective clients. I came across so many that not only looked cheap and unprofessional but all had link that didn’t work, websites that could be accessed properly from a mobile device and graphics that didn’t display properly. All of these issues could very easily be addressed by getting a web designer to update your business page and ensure that it’s not only functioning properly but it also looks great to attract more business.

The way to look at it is that for most companies the website is the first impression that a potential customer gets of your business so it’s important to make an impact for all the right reasons.

If you ran a shop you wouldn’t let it get scruffy and out dated otherwise people wouldn’t come in so why let your website get like that?

So get a good web designer in and give your website the facelift it needs to give your business a boom!

Categories
Social Media Marketing

When is social media an effective form of marketing?

Social media can help grow any business, pretty much regardless of what industry you are in. It is a great way to build your brand, inform your audience of new products and services and even get traffic to your website in the early days.

Once a website goes live it can take a number of weeks before it is picked up by the search engine spiders and shown in the search results of pages on Google and Bing. In the mean time you can start to spread the word on a multitude of social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

You need to try and build up a community of followers on these sites so you reach as many people as possible. Asking friends / colleagues and family to share your posts as well will also increase your reach.

Make sure that you get the right balance when it comes to the frequency of your posts. Too few and people will lose interest, too many and people will get frustrated and unfollow you.

Categories
Web Marketing

The importance of website content

Website content is one of the, if not the, most important element of any good site. Without decent quality content your site will struggle to preform well on the search engines in terms of keyword rankings and will also not give your viewers the information they require. When it comes to website content, there is always a bit of a battle between what is need from a visitors pint of view to what is required for high quality Search Engine Optimisation. Really the two should go hand in hand, but often you may have to add a little more content than you really wanted to in order to improve the SEO. You need to be able to understand the basics of SEO in order to see how you need to write you content for the site. Any good marketing company will be able to give you guidelines on approximately how much content you should have on each page and the keyword density etc for a particular keyword you wish to get ranked for. Keyword stuffing is very frowned upon by the search engines, so it is imperative to get the balance right.

Categories
News

Internet Explorer overtaking Google Chrome in the US

Recent studies have shown that the long standing Internet Explore browser offered by Microsoft is becoming favoured over the Google Chrome web browser. Since November 2014, Internet Explorer has shown a massive peak in users and has now over taken Google Chrome in the running. This information has been published by the company StatsCounter but many are dubious about the facts and figures. Microsoft has such a small share of the mobile marketing that many people are finding it hard to believe that Internet Explorer is more widely used than Google Chrome.

Microsoft have said that they have asked StatsCounter to investigate further and would not comment further until this had been done. Microsoft does still have the largest share of the PC market though so the information could be correct wit many mobile users possibly using Firefox or Safari instead of google Chrome. StatsCounter have said they are rechecking all the data and will confirm shortly.

Categories
Social Media Marketing

How effective is social media advertising?

Social media advertising is becoming more frequently used with adverts not just appearing at the side of the screen but also within the news feeds. There have even been false accounts set up sharing links that look like news site articles with intriguing headlines designed purely as ‘click bait’ these sites often lead nowhere or crash once loaded and sit collecting clicks.

Facebook has recently announced a rise in effectiveness of its right-rail adverts after they have conducted tests using eye tracking software to establish whether these adverts are looked at and for how long they capture the consumer’s attention.

This rise has been as a result of a re-design of the exiting style of adverts and has led to a 29% increase in people noticing the ads and a 50% rise in people looking at the ads for a period of time.

Right-rail ads (shown down the right hand side of the news feed) are cheaper that adverts that appear in the actually news feed and are usually less effective however with the above rise taken into consideration the right-rail ads are certainly not lagging too far behind.

Categories
Social Media Marketing

Facebook slowing down while other social media sites boom!

With Facebook still the clear number one winner in terms of users, the third quarter of the web index has shown that the rate in Facebook is growing has slowed down where as other social media sites such as Pinterest and Tumblr have grown.
Facebook has recently had its tenth birthday and the first ten years have seen massive growth in terms of users. It is without doubt still the most favoured social media site out there with over one third of all internet users having a profile, but over the last 6 months it has dropped off the top spot in terms of growth of the most additional members or active users in a period.
Other social media sites still have a lot of catching up to do to have any where near the same amount of users as Facebook does, but we will have to wait and see what Facebook pulls out of the bag next.