TWP Publisher, Author at TotalWeb Partners • Page 11 of 32

October 25, 2021

Your 9-Step Guide to Website Planning

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Planning a website or redesign is an enormous undertaking. At the enterprise level, a site redesign can take several months to more than a year to complete, cost hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars and span thousands of pages.

If you’re the one planning for the design, you’ll need to consider the time and cost, as well as messaging, site layout, brand identity, user experience and performance.

You’ll need to meet with key stakeholders to define business goals and figure out who your customers are and why they’re coming to your site.

You’ll also need to create content that engages your audience at key touchpoints and nudges them through your funnel.

And that’s just the beginning.

After you’ve conducted research with stakeholders and devised a path forward, you’ll actually need to build the thing. That could mean hiring a third-party web development agency or creating an entirely new codebase in-house. Either way, you’ll have to think about the architecture and SEO structure, third-party integrations and responsiveness across screen sizes and browsers.

Even after the launch, you won’t be done. You’ll need to continue to iterate and test how well the site is performing against benchmarks. (And considering the average lifespan of a website is just two years and seven months, you probably don’t want to spend years building it).

October 23, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Optimizing Your Email Marketing In 2021

E-Marketing, Marketing Email Marketing

Digital marketing has more than shown its worth for businesses of all industries over the past year, and one strategy that’s been particularly valuable has been email marketing.

Email marketing is arguably more important now than it ever was before. However, while email marketing is extremely important right now, it can also be difficult to do well. If you want to get all of the benefits of email marketing, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with all of the best practices and stay current with the latest trends.

Don’t miss the impact that good email marketing can have on your business going forward. Use these tips to optimize your email marketing in 2021 and start appealing more to your audience.

Give emails a personal touch.

You’re probably already aware of the overwhelming amount of emails that people get each day, as you likely deal with this yourself. We all get tons of emails from businesses, and many of them don’t even look like they were meant for us specifically.

Generic emails sent out to all your contacts that don’t apply to a particular group of people or an individual won’t have much of an impact and could end up just getting deleted.

In 2021, personalization is one of the most important things you can do for your marketing efforts, especially email marketing. The more relevant you can make something, the more potential it has to be effective.

No one wants to spend their time reading emails that weren’t intended for them, and they definitely won’t feel compelled to do whatever the email is asking of them.

Ensure that you’re creating emails with relevant information for certain groups so that it appeals to their needs and interests. To personalize even further, include the recipient’s name, so they know they’re getting an email meant for them, not just anyone.

Boost engagement with interactive features.

Personalization isn’t the only way for getting users to be more engaged when reading your emails. While you may be able to write engaging content to keep your audience interested, adding interactive features to some of your emails is a great way of boosting agreement. This gives them more than just text to read when they open your emails.

October 22, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Why Do Pillar Pages Matter For SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization, SEO

A pillar page is an organized piece of content on a website that can help search engines see its worth and connection with other pages on the site. If the page is structured well, it can impact the website’s rankings because of the high searched terms or additional highlighted useful information. Our agency has experienced good results with the value of pillar pages for SEO.

Let’s start with the basics.

What Is A Pillar Page?

A pillar page acts as an index of a particular subject that shows (and links to) related information that the reader might want or need. A pillar page cannot have all the information about a single topic, so it has to be spread on other pages.

For example, a blog post focuses on a topic with much information. For SEO, the blog post should include links that create a network for the search engines to crawl the content further. Even a homepage or product or service page can be tied to a pillar page.

Pillar pages are a valuable part of a content strategy. You can write about a topic and narrow down the post with relevant material. A pillar page surrounded by associated content can allow site visitors to dig deeper all in one place—your post.

How Do You Create A Pillar Page?

A pillar page should include a broad range of keywords, be useful to readers and promote taking action. Here are some important things to remember while creating a pillar page:

October 20, 2021

by TWP Publisher

How Minimalism leads to Effective Website Design

Website Content, Website Design Practices Website design

What Is Effective Web Design?

Everyone has their own definition of what effective website design and development is and it will vary from one individual to the next since people all have different preferences. Although personal preferences might differ, certain trends do emerge in artwork and design.

Web designers wanting to say ahead of their competitors will frequently just contact their users. When a website is being designed, a minimalist approach might be a highly effective way to connect with users. Designers will often focus on minimalism in order to ensure that the attention of users is focused on the aspects that are most important.

What Does Minimalist Web Design Mean?

Various design trends influence minimalism. Minimalism is about simplicity and staying focused on a design’s most important aspects. Using this approach can demonstrate a subject’s true form and draw out its uniqueness and elegance.

Minimalism in web design aims to avoid making web design mistakes by eliminating aspects that might cause users to lose their attention on the design. The strategy makes it possible for web designers to focus on a design’s most important elements. The user interface can be simplified and unnecessary elements can be eliminated

Minimalist Web Design Features

A design technique’s popularity does not necessarily translate into user needs being supported. The goal of minimalist web design is to create focused imagery in order to create an effective link between the website and the user.

October 19, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Can BIMI Help Marketers Build Customer Trust?

E-Marketing, Global Marketing, Marketing Brand Indicators for Message Identification

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) enables marketers to add a logo to their emails in the inbox so subscribers can quickly identify their messages and trust that they’re from the right sender. It can do for email marketing what https in front of a web address did for websites.

It provides a shortcut for consumers to decide whether or not to trust an email and gives them the confidence they need before opening an email as to whether it’s what it says it is or if it’s some sort of scam. The visual cue that BIMI provides may create trust and lead to fewer unsubscribes and spam complaints, and boost the deliverability of your email marketing messages.

At the beginning of the year, we wrote an article on building customer trust with BIMI. Now that Google has general support for BIMI in its inboxes, we asked marketers about their thoughts on how BIMI will change email marketing.

How Will BIMI Change Email Marketing?

Like other email authentication standards, BIMI is essentially a text file in a specific format. BIMI helps organizations enhance their return on a channel that they already control and delivers a strong payoff for minimal investment.

BIMI files live on your sending servers and give the receiving inbox information about the sender. BIMI uses the DKIM, SPF, and DMARC protocols, which makes protecting a brand from fraud easier for email marketers, but that’s just one side of the benefits of BIMI. Let’s take a closer look.

Read more: Can BIMI Help Marketers Build Customer Trust?

October 18, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Google: Don’t Remove Old News From Your News Site For SEO Reasons

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO

Google’s John Mueller said he would not recommend that you remove old content or old news from your news site for SEO reasons. He said “I don’t think you would get a lot of value out of removing just old news.”

John said this at the 50:12 mark into the last video hangout this past Friday. He was asked about removing old news from a news publisher site for SEO reasons. John said it is “not something I would recommend.” He said “from that point of view I wouldn’t do this for SEO reasons.”

I don’t think you would get a lot of value out of removing just old news.

It’s also not something I would recommend to to news websites because sometimes all the information is still useful. So from that point of view I wouldn’t do this for SEO reasons.

If the reasons why you want to remove content or put it into kind of like an archive section on your website for usability reasons or for maintenance or whatever.

That’s something that you can definitely do but I wouldn’t just blindly remove old content because it’s old. The advice is a bit different from a year ago but not totally different.

Read more: Google: Don’t Remove Old News From Your News Site For SEO Reasons

October 16, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Six web design trends creatives need to prepare for in 2022

Website Content, Website Design Practices Web Design Trends

If that wasn’t enough, web designers and agencies are currently reeling from another seismic change. This May, Google launched its Page Experience update, which puts a much greater emphasis on user experience when it comes to ranking websites in its listings.

The importance of this should not be underestimated. It means that web designers now need to put much more emphasis on elements like loading speed, interactivity, safe browsing and visual stability…or they’ll quickly see their sites disappear from the first page of Google.

Creative Brand Design, a leading London web design agency, is at the cutting edge of all these developments. So we spoke to them to get their take on the new trends that we can expect to dominate in 2022.

Read on to learn the trends, some examples of them in action, and how to get on board in your web design practice.

1. Fun and optimism

Throughout the 2010s, web and app design was dominated by cooly minimalist, purely functional interfaces. And that made sense at the time. With the iPhone having only appeared in 2007, followed by the first iPad in 2010, most of the public was pretty new to the web. And so making digital services easy to understand, use and navigate was the main priority.
As many creatives pointed out, the side effect was to dampen down the more fun and experimental side of the early web. Now that most people are familiar with digital platforms, there’s arguably space for a return to some of that.

Read more: Six web design trends creatives need to prepare for in 2022

October 15, 2021

by TWP Publisher

Email Marketing Success Lessons from the Pandemic

E-Marketing Email Marketing

Email quickly emerged as an unsung hero during the pandemic. Branch availability and safety protocols changed almost daily. Government stimulus program rules changed weekly. No customer communication vehicle was as timely or cost-effective as email. But how else did bank marketers successfully deploy email, and what enduring lessons can be learned? Finally, for those who are revisiting which email system to use, what can they learn from their peers in terms of must-have functionality and pitfalls to avoid?

Most successful uses

Bank marketers have an eternal debate regarding sales versus service. This debate carries over into the optimal use of email communication. Community banks often fall on the side of service, emphasizes Jamie Conaghan, CFMP, vice president of marketing, Main Street Bank of Marlborough, Massachusetts.

“We are a relationship bank, so our email is relationship based,” Conaghan says. “We use it to establish trust and add value to our customers. We offer helpful information they can use and benefit from.” Jamie went on to say, whether it is fraud education, holiday hours notification or an invitation to a virtual seminar on HR recruiting, email is a very popular and effective medium.

Other community banks and larger institutions come down on the side of sales, such as Chad Murray, SVP marketing of Think Mutual Bank. “Email is our second most important connection point with customers, after personal interaction,” Murray says.

October 12, 2021

by TWP Publisher

SEOs experiencing delays in data on Search Console performance reports

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO, SEO Optimization

“We’re currently experiencing longer than usual delays in the Search Console performance report. This only affects reporting, not crawling, indexing, or ranking of websites,” said the Google Search Central Twitter account on the morning of Tuesday, September 21. “We’ll update here once this issue is resolved. Thanks for your patience!”

Many SEOs have noticed the change in their Search Console reports this morning and have taken to social media to ask if they’re the only ones seeing the issue. “Is there a GSC bug? Apologies if I am late to the party here, but the last day we even have partial data available is the 18th?” asked Tessa Bonacci Nadik, Director of SEO Product at Cox Automotive.

She’s not alone. Other SEOS say September 18 was their last day of data. Aleyda Solis reported that her last day of data was September 17.

We’ll continue to update this piece as we know more.

Why we care. If your data isn’t updated, don’t worry just yet. The glitch will likely be fixed soon, but make sure to inform your clients and adjust your weekly reporting to ensure no misunderstandings or data mistakes. If you’re using the Search Console API, it’s also likely you will see 404s until the glitch is remedied. Google assured SEOs that the glitch isn’t affecting how sites are seen or indexed, just how the data is being relayed back to them. It’s also a good reminder to go into Search Console regularly to check your data and not just rely solely on tools that may pull the data into automated reports.

October 11, 2021

by TWP Publisher

5 Web Design Resources that will Inspire you website

Modern device with web design template. Vector illustration

Website Content, Website Design Practices Web Design

The appearance of a website plays an important role in any business whether it is big or small.

The website of your business interacts with the prospects on your behalf. That is the reason why people judge the credibility of your business by its design. While designing your website, keep in mind that your website should be well equipped to cater to a good user experience. A good layout, images, and typography matter more than we usually think.

A study by Stanford found that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. In short, the design of your website:

Sets a good first impression

Builds credibility

Projects authority

Proves legitimacy

Highlights your expertise

Building a website from scratch can be a daunting task. When you fall short of ideas, take inspiration from others. Make them your muse. When you look at the work of others, you gain a new perception of looking at things that might have been missing in your own work. Also, this way you keep pace with the latest trends.

In this article, you will find places to look for the best website designs in the world. There is a massive amount of resources available on the internet to get inspired from. But it can be overwhelming. So without any delay check out a concise list of the top five best website designs to seek inspiration for your ideas.

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