TotalWeb Partners Blog

July 7, 2020

15 SAN DIEGO WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES MAKING THE WEB MORE POWERFUL

Website Content, Website Design Practices WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

What would the world look like without the internet? It’s a question that we’ve all wondered to ourselves at a certain point, but in reality, the question we should be asking is, “What would the internet look like without websites?”

We’ve come a long way since the dot com revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Languages and capabilities have evolved to the point where the sites we visit are faster, designed for experiences across devices and ultimately more powerful in just about every aspect. Because of the work of engineers, developers, designers, project managers and several others in a long line of professionals, the web continues to become a more beautiful and innovative place.

Many of the most savvy web professionals have established web design and development companies in San Diego and are working with clients to deliver stronger website capabilities across industries.

BAREFOOT SOLUTIONS
What they do: Barefoot Solutions is a designer and developer of applications for websites, mobile devices and IoT devices that delivers better user engagement and outstanding ROI. An in-depth strategy, design and development process that includes acquiring audience insights, prototyping, visual design, coding and product launching allows Barefoot Solutions to provide top value to their clients and create applications that remain powerful over time.

BOP DESIGN
What they do: Bop Design is a B2B marketing agency specializing in web design, branding and content marketing services for brands across a wide range of industries. Web design services from Bop Design are built on a customized WordPress engine, developed to include heightened capabilities and responsiveness so users always find a pleasant experience.

July 5, 2020

by TWP Publisher

The Importance of Investing in Web Development for Your Business

Website Content, Website Design Practices Web Development

According to the Digital 2019 report, a typical person spends 6 hours and 42 minutes online every day. The rise of the internet has revolutionized how we live and communicate and moved most of us to live a digitally-driven lifestyle. This is now exacerbated as we live in a ‘new normal’ because of the COVID-19 pandemic where we are pushed more than ever to rely on the internet for entertainment, education, employment, and livelihood among others.

With everyone depending on the internet for their access to necessities and supplies (i.e., food, appliances, medicines, clothes, among other products and services), website development has become more crucial to any business’ success. Website development is one of the ways to ensure the success of your business by informing people of products and services your business offers, getting to know your (possible) customers better, and understanding how to improve your product and service further.

Website or web development services include building, creating, and maintaining websites. It includes aspects such as web design, web publishing, web programming, web content creation, and database management.

Having an online presence is no longer an option for businesses; it is a requirement! Here are more of the reasons why companies need to invest in web development services:

Increasing Accessibility

It allows businesses to be accessible at any time of the day. It provides space for everyone to access the information they need when they need it. Whenever customers need to know something about the business, having a contact form, a live chat, an option to comment, or a phone number is a step towards them, which increases the possibility of sealing the deal.

Proving Credibility and Reliability

It allows effective communication with customers. Interacting and engaging with customers shows that the business is concerned about their satisfaction and is responsive to their needs. People prefer to transact with a business with their own websites as it gives them security and assurance.

Expanding Reach

It helps businesses to expand their reach by attracting possible customers or leads. Through website development, testimonies about your product/service will be available. These details help earn the trust and confidence of potential customers in the future. A properly designed website can help build an audience, target niche customer bases, and quickly return your investments. Your website conversion rate can multiply by 200-400 percent if your webpage is well-designed and has a functional, responsive interface.

July 3, 2020

by TWP Publisher

How to Use Empathetic Marketing in Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Marketing Social Media Strategy

If you’re like 44% of people worldwide, you’ve been spending more time on social media during the pandemic. Whether you’re catching up on the latest news on Twitter or chatting with family on Facebook, social media has allowed us to stay connected.

But as a small business owner, are you spending more time on social media being empathetic?

While sometimes confused with sympathy, which is feeling compassion for someone else, empathy means putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes.

By empathizing with your customers, you can better serve them.

Here’s the Merriam Webster definition of empathy: “the action of (or capacity for) understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”

It’s important to take an empathetic approach in all of your marketing materials, from your website copy to your social media strategy.

Because social media offers such a great way to interact with a large audience, you should be willing to put in the time and effort to ensure your communications are not only engaging, but empathetic to what people are going through.

According to the Braze Brand Humanity Index research, around 65% of people were more loyal to brands they felt a human connection with.

So to help you get—and stay connected—with your customers, here are four ways a small business owner can build a social media presence with more empathetic content marketing.

Create an empathy map.
This can be a good first step to put you deeper into the mind of your customer. Originally a tool used in the design and agile development worlds, empathy mapping provides a deeper understanding of your customer. It’s usually split into four quadrants: says, thinks, does and feels.

With your target customer’s persona in the middle, you begin to brainstorm questions, like:

Why do you need my product?
How does using my product make you feel/think/do/say?
What are some stressors/fears in your life?
How does my product help you reach your goals?
Write out your customer’s thoughts the way you think he or she would express. Their needs, wants, desires, hopes, fears, goals and dreams will start to be more clear, and you’ll be able to build a social media presence using messaging that resonates with your followers.

Tap into your customers’ emotions.
I’m not talking about playing on their fears to sell your products, but rather, thinking about how your product makes them feel.

Here’s a way that a brand helped ease their smallest customers’ fears. Philips invented a miniature version of a CAT scanner called the ‘KittenScanner,’ which doctors use to educate kids about the MRI process and put them at ease. Children can try it out with toy animals, taking the focus off of their procedure and onto fun.

It was created back in 2004, but it still gets mentioned on social media, in videos and in health journals as a way to reduce the need for sedation. How could you position your brand in a helpful, stress-reducing way for your customers?

July 1, 2020

by TWP Publisher

5 Mistakes You Might Be Making in Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the best ways to market your business, no matter what industry you belong to. This is because platforms like Facebook and Instagram have millions (or even billions) of active monthly users, and you can easily reach out to them by sharing relevant and interesting content.

That said, here are 5 common mistakes you need to avoid in social media marketing.

Overlooking Branding
There are thousands of large and small businesses posting on social media, so you need a unique brand image in order to stand out. Use various components, particularly the color palette, communication tone and language, and an attractive logo.

When you share images and videos on social media for marketing, make sure they include your company logo, making your brand more recognizable and memorable. If you don’t have one, use a professional designer or freelancer. You can’t use a machine to create a logo, even though these services can be affordable. Only a graphic designer can understand your brand requirements perfectly.

Buying Followers
It’s clear that social media and influencers are changing ecommerce by affecting the very dynamics of marketing. However, do you know that most social media celebrities have tons of paid followers? Many brands and influencers purchase followers, and there are many easily accessible platforms for that.

If you’re considering this step, stop right there. Most platforms have advanced algorithms that can detect accounts that have paid or fake followers, and you could be banned if you’re found to be engaging in this practice. Also, you won’t be able to generate actual interest for your brand online as these fake followers won’t interact with your shared content. So, it’s better to get as many organic followers as possible.

Ignoring the Comments Section
One of the biggest reasons brands are active on social media is to be able to interact with their target audience in a relaxed, comfortable environment. If you want the best results from your social media marketing campaigns, it’s important to interact and engage with your followers on a regular basis.

Responding to comments on posts is a great way to improve your social media engagement. Whether you get praises or complaints, addressing them promptly and professionally will ensure your customers are happy. You can also register their feedback in order to avoid doing things that upset them in the future.

June 10, 2020

by TWP Publisher

The Wild Web: How SEO Can Attract, Engage and Retain Consumers for Brand Building

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

In our connected world, almost every organization has an online presence they rely on heavily to support the bottom line. Amid the ongoing crisis, that hasn’t been more true than now. While the web can streamline endpoint processes like sales, it also functions as a critical gateway for customer engagement. That’s why companies need to place increased emphasis on their online presence for brand building – and where SEO tools can make all the difference.

SEO has always been a critical tool for optimizing a company’s brand online in order to drive leads into the sales funnel. However, in light of recent events that have made brands’ online presence the main channel of customer engagement, we need to ensure we are pivoting and shifting strategies to meet consumer needs in this new reality. With a crowded landscape and more content competing for consumer attention than ever, it’s vital that brands leverage SEO technology to ensure they’re maximizing brand awareness online in order to continue generating revenue by converting leads into loyal customers. Here’s how:

Encourage new customer recruitment and acquisition

Building a brand starts with converting audiences from being “new visitors” – checking out a website to learn about the company – to a “brand visitor” – visiting the webpage because of what they know about the company. This means increasing the volume of non-brand-traffic, which can be done by leveraging SEO insights to understand what consumers are searching for and finding the best route to exposure to rank high in their searches. And the more familiar consumers are, the more likely they are to keep coming back – a recent study from Econsultancy found 82% of consumers click on brands they are familiar with first before looking at other options. With exponentially more brand options to turn to than ever, a sense of familiarity and consistency will help you create an engaged and loyal customer base.

June 3, 2020

by TWP Publisher

3 Tips to Master a Minimalist Web Design

Website Content, Website Design Practices Web Design

The world craves minimalism.

So much so, that whichever aspect of our lives you look at – whether it is the lifestyles we lead, homes we live in, or the products we consume – minimalism is present in every facet.

Even the smartphones in our pocket prove that minimalist design has more than caught on.

Why Minimalism?

Often confused with simplicity, the concept of minimalism entails reducing all elements to only include those that are essential.

This means that while minimalism is simple, simplicity, or using simple forms, does not necessarily translate to minimalism.

In the world of design, minimalism is used to directly convey the message without the unnecessary noise and obstruction of focus due to other distracting elements.

Seeing the benefits of using minimalism to swiftly and effectively convey the message, the minimalist approach has taken root in many branches of design.

From painting and sculptures to digital product design and web design, minimalism has managed to root itself and understandably so.

Designed with minimalism in mind, digital products and web designs are no less impressive.

Apple’s brand is one of the best examples of having a minimalist approach in mind when designing products.

The design itself is clean and sleek, and it puts an accent on every aspect of customer experience – from the first moment you hold an iPhone packaging in your hand, peeling off the foil of your screen, to finally using the smartphone.

Minimalist designs are visually appealing and user-friendly, so it’s really not surprising that so many businesses prefer to have a minimalist web design, as it helps them boost their company’s bottom line.

Taking Minimalist Approach to Web Design
Your company’s website is the best business card you have.

It tells your customers all they need to know about your business – from where to find you to what the business is all about.

May 12, 2020

by TWP Publisher

Building a Career Around WordPress Web Development With Chris Burgess

Website Content, Website Design Practices Web Development

Part of my day job was to look after networks and servers, as well as web applications and websites. I could see the potential for web technology (and the move towards cloud/SaaS) in business and thought WordPress had a place as a powerful publishing platform far beyond blogging. The DevOps movement was also in full swing, and I saw how important it was to break down silos and barriers between different tech disciplines. I also had a number of my own personal websites that I ran in my spare time and found WordPress was the logical choice.

The light bulb moment for me was when I saw my colleagues using the websites that I had built. There were people without much experience using the web, that we’re able to publish and manage content after a few basic lessons. I liked the power it could bring to everyday users, not just web developers. The WordPress mission of “democratizing publishing” really struck a chord with me.

I also saw the community start to grow and gain momentum and I was inspired by the work that was being done in the space.

May 10, 2020

by TWP Publisher

How To Choose Perfect Social Media Platforms For Marketing Your Business In 2020

Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing

In your daily routine of running your business, it is very difficult to make time and be active on all the social media platforms. Shrinking down the choice of the platforms will help you focus and be efficient. It will get the best result on time and money for your investment. But now is not your daily routine. Most of you are stuck in lock-down due to COVID-19 with minimal time to do your regular business activities. This is the perfect time to work on your Digital Marketing Strategies. You can now think about taking your business to Social Media Marketing in this Social Distancing Scenario. Now the question is which Social Media Platform to choose for your business. Well don’t worry, this post is specifically designed for you by the team at Accetrix – Digital Marketing Company in Ahmedabad, India.

Here are the important steps to determine which platform is perfect for marketing your business. Where people go beyond ordinary ways and use different ways to connect online for all kinds of reasons.

Step 1: Recognize your target audience and budget for marketing?
This is very crucial. Be as specific as possible, as it will be easy to create your marketing campaign.

Jot down the answers to the following questions and any other relevant questions related to your business industry. In array to help you build your target audience and the budget for the campaign.

What is your target demographics?
Are they male or female?
How much do they earn?
Their education level
What are their Hobbies?
What are your brand image and message?
How much are you willing to spend?
What is your campaign goal?

Step 2: Define and describe your Goal
Once you have identified the goal and budget for your social media campaign, you need to define the goal for your audience.

As a businessman, your prime aim is possibly be to boost sales by attracting more customers.

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