TotalWeb Partners Blog

July 21, 2015

New Website Design Trends We Predict In The Near Future

Website Design Practices Web Design, Website design

Change: It’s a word us digital marketers have gotten very accustomed to using on a daily basis. I supposed anyone who is online — let’s face it, that’s just about everyone — has become accustomed to the word change.

A lot of people cringe when they hear the word change, but for us digital marketers, it only means more opportunity. There’s changes on social media, search ads, Google, just about anything. But what about website design?

Website design has been around a long time, since the stone age. It’s obviously come a long way, but what can we expect to change in the near future. Let’s take a look at 3 changes we expect to see this year with website design.

Content Change

This is a big one, because, as we’ve heard a million times, Content is King!! As if that hasn’t been pounded into your head enough.

But the way we use content on a site is beginning to slightly change, mostly from a informational standpoint to a storytelling type of content. Websites used to be, and a lot still are, all about giving the facts about your business then pointing them to the checkout lane, or whatever the final conversion may be.

July 7, 2015

by TWP Publisher

Mobile Email: The “New Normal” for Marketers and Consumers

E-Marketing Email Marketing, Mobile Email

Remember when having mobile-optimized email was special? Back in the day, just being able to send responsive messages and mobile-friendly links was enough to separate the marketing leaders from the rest of the pack. Well, those days are over. In fact, a recent report from Yesmailclaims that mobile is consumers’ “new normal,” and its data backs up its decree.

According to the email solution provider’s “Q1 2015 Email Marketing Compass” benchmark report, 45% of all clicks on the more than six billion emails analyzed in Q1 2015 occurred on mobile devices—a 10% increase since Q4 2014. What’s more, mobile click-to-open (CTO) rates increased 8.5% in Q1 2015, while desktop CTOs fell 8.6%. And this engagement is having a major impact on companies’ bottom lines. The report cites that mobile email revenue grew 12% since Q4 2014 and that mobile emails accounted for 22% of all email-driven revenue in Q1 2015. In fact, Yesmail, the email marketing division of Yes Lifecycle Marketing, predicts that this number will approach 33% by the end of the year.

“When mobile first started to be a huge factor, marketers were not ready for it and they didn’t exactly know how to optimize for it,” Ivy Shtereva, senior marketing manager for Yesmail, says. “They’re doing a better job and investing more of their resources into making this a mobile-[friendly] experience and optimizing the mobile path to purchase, which has considerably grown in the past and is continuing to.”

Therefore, if mobile is consumers’ “new normal,” then it has to become marketers’, too. Here are five tips on how marketers can create a more effective mobile email strategy.

June 18, 2015

by TWP Publisher

Will New Top Level Domains Matter in 2015?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

In 2014, the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) were introduced to much fanfare from the press and tech bloggers. New web address endings were touted as a land rush on the internet and a game changer for marketing strategies. Despite such pronouncements, new TLDs were largely ignored in 2014, leaving some to expect an explosion in activity in 2015. However, before business owners run off to build new sites with fancy new names, it’s important to separate fact from fiction regarding TLDs and to ask the question, “Will the new TLDs matter to marketers and consumers in 2015?”.

As a brief primer, Top Level Domains are the endings to websites such as .com, .edu, .gov, etc. In the past, these were all handled by the ICANN, but in 2014, the door was opened for entrepreneurs to create their own TLDs that they can control on their own. So now, there are essentially an endless amount of TLDs. Business owners could pay to can have their site end with things like .xyz, .toys, .soy, .wed, and more. Nearly 4 million web sites around the world use one of the newly created TLD.

There have been many different Top Level Domains for website owners to choose from before the introduction of the new TLDs and research has shown that they work in a general sense. People know that the various country TLDs can be used to find information from a certain region of the world. Consumers generally know that .fr is for pages in France and that .ca is for Canada. However, it’s not perfect, a study from Moz suggests that nearly 25 percent of Americans can be tricked into thinking that .ca is for California; so they knew that the TLD was for a region, but guessed the wrong region.

June 16, 2015

by TWP Publisher

5 metrics that affect the success of your website redesign

Website Design Practices Web Design, Website design

When you’re undertaking a website redesign it can be tempting to rush in with the excitement of new possibilities, but it’s important to consider the key aspects of a redesign, both aesthetically and from a business perspective. In order for the process to be successful these two must be aligned if the new website is to provide a high return on investment.

Undertaking a thorough review of your existing website is essential, along with evaluating your content, analytics and calls to action to see how well each is currently performing. If you haven’t re-designed in some time, the online social landscape has changed dramatically, and if you want your business to thrive, you need to embrace both social media and technology to efficiently deliver your product or service to a wide audience. Once the re-design is finished don’t leave it to gather dust. Aim for constant measurement and enhancement. Analyzing your redesign efforts with these five key areas will help you develop a cohesive plan and ensure your re-design is a success.

June 11, 2015

by TWP Publisher

10 Ingredients for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign (Infographic)

E-Marketing Email Marketing

If your email marketing efforts are falling flat, you could be doing it all wrong. While there is no one-size-fits-all magic bullet for gaining new customers or better engaging existing ones via email, there are several simple steps you can take to optimize your chances of success.

Lucky for you, the folks at Mailify have cooked up a simple, step-by-step recipe for killing it at email marketing, with key tips on personalization, mobile optimization, text-to-image ratio and, yes, even the option for recipients to opt-out (hopefully they won’t).

The New York-based email marketing software maker covered everything you need to know end to end, from the first burst of text your email recipients will see, to the all-important call to action and beyond. For a fun (and hunger-inspiring) touch, all of the steps are neatly sandwiched in a 10-step cheeseburger rendering in the clever infographic below:

June 4, 2015

by TWP Publisher

SEO Optimization: How to Avoid Nasty SEO Creep After 10 Years of Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Optimization

SEO is often like website development. In Development, as years pass, you keep adding pages, features, and content. It all works, but you find that it starts to get a bit bloated and disorganized. Every few years, it’s a good idea to take all the improvements you’ve tacked on and rebuild them into the core of a new site.

In SEO optimization, the same thing happens. We find pages to optimize for certain keywords, add other optimized content, and so on. Over time, we find we made the best keyword/page decisions at the time, but those decisions may no longer make sense today. New content was created that is a much better topical fit for certain keywords and pages that were optimized for relevant keywords are no longer relevant pages.

SEO creep happens. But, there are things you can do to minimize it so that the dreaded site rebuild doesn’t have to happen more than once every few years . . . which is just about time when a site re-design is due anyway.

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