Author Archives: sue

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Internet Marketing: 11 things to think about when redesigning your website

In the course of my work as an internet marketing consultant I often get asked for my advice on how best to approach a web redesign project. It is really important to protect the performance of a successful website that just requires a new look!

  • Keep Your Current URL Structure

Where possible keep your current URL structure.  This means that if the contact us page of the website current exists at www.mysite.com/contact-us don’t change it to www.mysite.com/contact.

If your widgets are currently to be found at mysite.com/catalogue/widgets don’t move them to mysite.com/widgets

Make a list of all your current website pages to make sure this doesn’t happen. A Sitemap generator such as http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ is a useful free tool for getting this information. You should not need to change URL’s at all if your website only needs a ‘Facelift’ in terms of graphic design and you are not adding or removing products or services.

  • Map old pages to a relevant section of the redesigned website using a permanent 301 redirect.

If you are getting rid of old services or downgrading their importance and absolutely need to move or remove the URL, decide where you want to send visitors and search engines that are looking for the old page.  Prepare a document  of all your old/defunct URLs and specify what the new URL will be or where you want to re-direct people who have book-marked the old page or search engine spider that are trying to crawl it.

  • Make sure each page has a purpose

This is fundamental to a successful website and to the implementation of an effective internet marketing strategy. If you are adding new pages to the website make sure they have a purpose. What content will you be adding to the page and what is the purpose of that content? Will visitors find it useful?  Unless it is a form of some type the content on a page should exceed 75 words. If you don’t have more than that to say you possibly don’t need the page.

  • Prepare a Tender Document for your Web designer

Prepare a document for your website designer that includes all of the expectations and requirements that you have in relation to the website, such as the points above and how you need the website to perform for you – i.e. that the goal of the website is.

  • Copyright

Include in the tender document that once the website is paid for that it becomes your property. Make sure the domain name is also registered in the name of the company and not the developer. This is hardly ever an issue anymore but better safe than sorry.

  • Google Analytics Tracking

Don’t forget to include your current Google Analytics code in the new website. Don’t create a new one –you don’t want to start from scratch. Make sure the company owns and has access to the Google Analytics account. I had a client who told me they had previously lost 5 years’ worth of analytics data when the google account was closed by a disgruntled employee of the website developer.

  • Check for broken links

You should do this regularly anyway but specially after going through a redesign.  Use W3 Schools link checker. http://validator.w3.org/checklink

  • Don’t move server

This one is fairly self-explanatory. Don’t move server at the same time as making other major changes to your website.

  • Link Canonicalization

Ensure correct link canonicalization is in place. E.g. www.mywebsite.ie & http://mywebsite.ie

  • Mobile First Design

Most people now access the internet on mobile devices and tablets. Make sure that your website design is built mobile first. You should test/review the site on mobile as well. Find out more in this blog article on responsive website design.

  • XML Sitemap

Create and submit a new XML Sitemap to tell search engine crawlers what pages are contained in your website. Use the link above to create it. Find out how you can submit it to Google here

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Sales strategy – Improve Your Selling Skills at Trade Events

Getting Value for Your Money

Participation at trade events and exhibitions in these challenging economic times can be very expensive – travel, accommodation and related expenses, stand rental, display material, perhaps floral features, audio-visual, signage, hospitality etc. In other words,  a costly mix of investment outlay that can make serious inroads into the sales and marketing budget of any business, so it’s important to have the right sales strategy.

There are some simple guidelines that can make the difference between success and disappointment when taking part at consumer and trade markets.  It’s really all about good preparation. And then the manner of delivery. Obvious but essential points of emphasis.

It’s important therefore to be very focused on what you have to sell, how you present your propositions, and what you expect to achieve.

And then, there’s the all-important matter of follow-up.

Research your Potential Market in Advance

Find out beforehand what companies will be attending. Study closely the scope of their business activities. Prepare a short list of your Most Preferred Contacts. Do some background research on their buyers, their sales representatives.

Ideally and if you can, let them know in advance that you will be attending and would like to meet them. So make definite appointments if at all possible.

Then get ready to maximise your time by preparing a daily timetable or diary. Remember that time is one of your most valuable commodities when interfacing with potential customers. You must invest it wisely. To quote that well-worn cliché and with no offence implied: make sure you’re not a busy fool!

At the Event

Dress appropriately to do your business. A casual look might be interpreted by some as a casual approach. Make sure your name badge can be easily read and preferably, that it’s positioned on the right hand side of your body– that will make it simpler for all to see.

Stock up with sufficient supplies of your business card. Keep printed material to the necessary minimum. Nobody wants to have to carry bagfuls of sales literature around an exhibition venue all day long.

Don’t expect  your guests to stand around to talk business. For this, you need comfortable lounge seating.  Good quality drinking water is probably the most suitable hospitality drink. Don’t over-do the freebies or the gimmicks. It’s really not necessary and it’s almost always expensive to do this well.

Be sensitive and sensible in the matter of mobile phone usage.  Don’t ever interrupt a sales pitch by taking or making a call. It’s always best to deal with your daily business by text messaging and to leave your mobile conversations to the end of the day. For all of that, your potential customers may well have a different set of priorities – or rules – so do respect them if and when they get diverted.

If you are using hi-tech aids, be conscious that not everyone is fully conversant with the complex language of today’s IT world.  Keep it simple and don’t over-elaborate to show your expertise. Establish a connection at the appropriate level and stay there. You don’t want a client nodding animatedly in agreement unless they fully understand what you’re telling them, and most likely trying to sell them too.

If you quickly establish that the contact is unlikely to be productive,  don’t hesitate to move things on. ‘You probably have a very busy schedule, so I won’t hold you up’ is a good finishing line. Likewise, if things are going well, you might suggest having ‘five minutes more’ or better still, make an appointment for a follow-up personal call.

After-Sales Service

As soon as the event is over, you should grade your contacts by order of priority for follow-up purposes. It’s a good idea to write them all, even the ones who don’t make your Top Ten. You never know when a door might later open.

Your ideal objective is a personal appointment with some real business potential.  There’s nothing to equal a one-to-one sales session in the privacy of a secure environment. And then comes the real test of your selling and negotiating skills. But that’s another day’s work altogether!

In Conclusion

One final observation. If you are participating at an event that is open to the public at large, don’t have your sales material contribute to the mass of merchandise that frequently ends up in the venue’s refuse bins.

It’s still OK to give out balloons to the kids though!

For more information on sales strategy and other top business tips – contact us.

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What is Google Ads Remarketing?

Increase online conversions for your business using Google Ads Remarketing

Google Ads Remarketing is sophisticated, measurable and will unlock the potential of your online presence by increasing sales and generating quality leads for your business.

Remarketing in itself is not a new concept. Savvy marketers know the value of repeat business and qualified leads. Targeting existing and potential customers who meet certain criteria can deliver excellent ROI.

What is Google Ads Remarketing?

Remarketing with Google Ads allows businesses to target people who have already visited their website with online adverts as they browse the web.  Think about the potential of that for a second. These people have already visited that business’s website, they are aware of the brand and some need they are looking to fulfil has already brought them to the site. Thanks to the sophisticated targeting options available via Google Ads Remarketing, business owners and marketers can now unlock the potential of that visit.

How does Google Ads Remarketing Work?

Google Analytics is a free tool many businesses use to analyse website traffic. Analytics works using a tracking cookie; when a visitor lands on a web page the tracking cookie is triggered and stays on the visitor’s computer for a period of time. Google Ads Remarketing works by recognising that cookie and displaying ads as the visitor continues to browse the web.

Google remarketing requires a slight change to the Google Analytics tracking code and that Analytics and Ads are connected. It should be noted that Google Remarketing can be used for both display and search advertising campaigns.

What are the capabilities of Google Ads Remarketing?

I have already mentioned that Google Remarketing is a sophisticated tool, with wide-reaching capabilities. Like any good database, segmenting potential customers based on various key attributes is vital. Google Remarketing comes with several pre-defined marketing lists, and multiple remarketing lists can exist on one website. Users can customise the parameters of their own remarketing lists in AdWords using the Rule Builder, which is mainly URL based. Because Google Remarketing leverages the best of Ads and Analytics businesses can also create remarketing lists in Analytics based on Custom Segments and then use those lists to retarget visitors via Ads.

When creating a remarketing list in Analytics, business owners can use any of four predefined segments:

  • All users to your site
  • Users to a specific page or area of your site
  • Users who completed a specific conversion or goal (These must be enabled, set up and triggering conversions)
  • Smart Lists  – Users that Google determines, via machine learning, to be viable candidates

There is also a fifth option. Users who match the criteria of a segment you configure based on Analytics Dimensions and Metrics. Segmenting by Analytics Dimensions and Metrics is a powerful tool. Here are some examples of Analytics Dimensions and Metrics.

Dimensions Metrics
E-commerce Transactions – the number of transactions the user has completed. Per user, per session,  <, >, = etc.
Gender Male, female
Device category Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile.
Location – where visitors are from Country, Region, City
Medium – the mediums which referred traffic. Organic, Direct(none), AdWords

When creating a remarketing list in Analytics it is necessary to specify the Ads account in which that list is available. That list then functions the same way as any remarketing list created within Ads.

How do I apply Remarketing to my business?

Here are some examples of how business owners could apply Google Remarketing to their online advertising campaigns with the goal of increased sales and leads.

Example One – Abandoned Shopping Cart

Online retailers can retarget abandoned shopping carts in multiple ways, via both search and display campaigns. Remarketing lists can handle multiple parameters. By creating a custom combination list that includes all visitors who put something in their cart but excludes customers who completed a purchase; businesses can retarget these customers. A remarketing list like this can be easily created using the URL Rule Builder in Ads.

This can be further fine-tuned based on the product category of the item the person added to the cart. This requires the implementation of custom parameters to build more advanced remarketing lists in Ads, but is highly recommended for online retailers.

Example Two – Hotel Wishing to Generate More Wedding Enquiries

Create a remarketing list that includes visitors to the wedding pages of the hotel website. A good strategy for the hotel to implement when creating this remarketing list would be to add a parameter that excludes visitors below a minimum time on the page. This may be a good way to segment out less qualified leads.

Follow up by creating a remarking campaign in Google Ads to retarget these potential customers with creative visuals and strong calls to action.

Example Three – Target customers who have previously converted and who have recently visited your website.

Targeting high value, repeat customers seems like a good strategy to me!  This is an example of a Google Analytics Segment that includes UK or Irish customers who have previously bought on the site, and have visited the site in the past 14 days. It can be used to create a Remarketing list.

Once you have selected the Ads account to associate the remarketing list with, this custom remarketing list will appear in that Ads account almost instantly and can then be targeted with ads.

Where to Start?

The capabilities of Google Ads Remarketing are significant and sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start. I believe that Remarketing has the potential to drive sales and leads for any business with one caveat; Remarketing is dependent on the quality and volume of traffic to the website.  My advice?  Give it a try, start with a test campaign for one product or service and build your remarketing campaign from there.

Sue Palmer, Partner at EzSales, is an internet marketing consultant based in Galway. She has been running Ads campaigns for over 18 years. Sue loves sports, particularly basketball and golf and sitting by the fire with a nice glass of red wine. Find out more about how EzSales can help your business with online advertising.

 

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How do I identify the Colours Used on my Website?

Matching colours can be tricky. There are at least four different ways of identifying a colour:

RGB is based on the projection of light.  It is a colour model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colours.

A hex colour is a six-digit hexadecimal number used in website coding and other computing applications to identify a colour. The bytes represent the red, green and blue components of the colour.

Therefore hex colours and RGB are methods of identifying on-screen colours. There are different methods for identifying colours for print.

Pantone is a system for matching colours, used in specifying printing inks, it is generally used to identify corporate or brand colours.

Although a significant proportion of the world’s brands identify their colours using the Pantone system, the majority of the world’s printed material is produced using the CMYK process; this is done by mixing various amounts of 4 colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black.  Most of the Pantone system’s spot colours cannot be replicated using CMYK, the Pantone system uses 13 base pigments plus black and white mixed in specified amounts.

 

All of this underlines the fact that colours on screen and in print do not necessary correspond and exporting one to the other can cause issues. Pantones don’t necessarily work for digital print or for websites, and RGB and hex colours are unreliable ways of identifying a colour for print.

Some pantones do convert to CMYK, so you should ask your graphic designer to ensure to use one of those colours when they are creating your logo and brand identity, you should also ask them who to supply Pantone and CMYK details at the time they are working on your brand identity, so that you can to use them as references when printing, depending on what method of print you are going with.

Free Tool to Identify Colour Used on a Website

So how do I identify the hex colour used on a website?  I use a great free tool to for this. It is a toolbar extension called ColorZilla, it is available for Firefox and Chrome, here is the link to it in the Chrome store will give you the RGB and Hex colour used on any website and much more to boot.

I hope this article was useful, feel free to leave your comments on our Facebook Page if you liked it!

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Subdomain or Subdirectory for my New Blog?

Should I host my blog in a subdomain like blog.mysite.com or in a sub directory like mysite.com/blog?

This is Five Minute Friday so I’ll give you the short answer – in a subdirectory. Find out why below:

From an SEO perspective if you are adding a blog to a website the best place to host it is in a subdirectory of the main site assuming the following conditions:

1. The blog is related to the same topic as the main website
2. You will be updating the blog regularly
3. The main site currently performs when it comes to ranking

A subdomain is treated by search engines as a completely new site and will require separate SEO efforts. By choosing a subdomain the blog will remain part of the main site and link juice and domain authority will be passed along.

As with anything in life there are no absolutes. You may be adding a blog to your site as a branding exercise and SEO is not an important factor. In this instance a subdomain may work better. It may also be worth considering a subdomain if your blog does not meet the three conditions assumed above.

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Link Building or On-page SEO. Where do I spend my Money?

We get asked all the time whether our clients should be focussing on On-page SEO or Link building. Unfortunately, the answer tends to be both honest and frustrating – “That depends”. No one wants to hear that because they’re back where they started – having no idea what to do next. Here’s four examples to give you an idea of how I’d allocate your budget for each one.

What Is On-page SEO?

“On-page SEO” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It could mean keyword research, writing good TITLE tags, internal linking and crawl architecture, even content creation has been dumped into this pile of options. For the purposes of this post, on-page is anything you directly control in the code or content of your site.  Simple, right?  As a rule of thumb, think of the analogy of trying to build a house on sandy foundations, in the rain.  If you don’t have good strategy and site architecture in place with a good base of content and relevant information – forget about driving more links, you’re driving links to a pile of blocks that have fallen down and are crumbling in the sand.

Case #1: The Elephant

70% On-page, 30% Link-building

The Elephant is an established site with a solid, trusted link profile and usually a good base of content. In many cases, it’s a site that’s evolved “organically”, which is a fancy word for “without a plan”. The Elephant could be suffering from any or all of the following:

  • Keyword research is 5 years out of date
  • Keywords are cannibalised across many pages
  • Internal links have grown like weeds
  • Site architecture doesn’t reflect business goals
  • Page TITLEs overlap or are duplicated
  • Old but valuable (i.e. linked-to) content is 404’ing

 

In many cases, no one notices, because The Elephant’s strong link profile and solid content keep it ranking well. The problem is that you’re sitting on a gold mine of untapped potential. Of course, The Elephant should keep building solid links, but a shift in focus (even for a few months) to really planning and focusing on on-page issues, from keyword research on up, could produce huge dividends.  They say elephants never forget and that’s positive but there’s an element of “What have you done for me lately” that cannot be overlooked.

Case #2: Perfect Pat

30% On-page, 70% Link-building

Perfect Pat often comes out in new webmasters. They’ve read 500 SEO blogs and are following all the “rules” as best they can, but they’ve become sooo obsessed with building the “perfect” site that they’ve hit the tipping point of effort versus results. Perfect Pat wants to know how to squeeze 0.01% more SEO value out of an already good URL by moving one keyword.  Ouch, it’s going to take hours to achieve that 0.01% and that won’t deliver significant enough a return to justify the effort or expense.  You’re not quitting, it’s a case of doing the things that will make most difference to your sales growth.

It’s time for Perfect Pat to remember the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle) – there comes a point where your on-page is good enough, at least for now. You have to get Google to your site to put that on-page magic to work, and that means building links. It’s important to develop content (which is why I’ve left on-page at 30%), but put almost every other on-page tactic to the side temporarily and spend a solid 6 months developing and implementing a link-building campaign

Case #3: The World of Pain

90% On-page, 10% Link-building

The World of Pain is a Google engineer’s fantasy (or possibly nightmare). She’s broken every single rule of on-page SEO, which worked fine for a while, but then came “May Day” and “Panda”, and now Google is even talking about penalising her for optimising too much. The World of Pain has let something (Likely a lot of things) spin out of control, including:

  • Blocked crawl paths and bad redirects
  • Massive URL-based duplication
  • Excessive internal search, categories, and tags
  • Aggressive advertising-to-content ratio
  • Extremely “thin” content
  • Nonsensical site architecture and internal linking
  • Keyword stuffing that would embarrass 1998

 

In some cases, this could be “over-optimisation” and an attempt to manipulate the search engines (Inadvertent “Black Hat SEO” stuff), but in other cases the World of Pain is just that – a painful mess of garbage that has had every trick in the book fired at it without any strategy or structure whatsoever. Whatever the cause, put down everything and start fixing the problems now. Chasing new links without fixing the mess is like having your carpets cleaned while your house is burning down, or trying to sell the house to the fireman who’s putting out the fire.

Case #4: The Red Card

10% On-page, 90% Link-building

Finally, there’s The Red Card – he’s broken every rule in the Google link-building playbook, and they’ve finally noticed. This could be a large-scale devaluation or a Capital-P Penalty, including:

  • Paid links
  • Link farms, networks and exchanges
  • Excessive low-value links
  • Aggressive anchor-text targeting

 

If you’ve been naughty enough, you could be facing a serious ranking penalty or even de-indexation. At that point, all the on-page tweaks in the world won’t help you (I left 10% just to keep the site up and running). You have to fix the problem and address the problem links. Bare minimum, you have to stop doing what got you into trouble and show a pattern of positive link-building. You may even have to file for reconsideration. The fix can be tricky, and depends a lot on the situation, but until you fix it, The Red Card isn’t going anywhere.

 

But What About Social?

Before I get a tonne of comments, I purposely left social factors out of this post. I think the influence of social is growing and it definitely deserves your attention (and budget), but I don’t want to confuse an already complicated issue. Also, at this point, there are no major social “penalties” (small-p or Capital-P), so it’s hard to have an SEO crisis related to social media. Still, social should certainly be a part of any healthy mix in 2012.

One Size Never Fits All

I’ll try to keep the point short and sweet (Those of you who know me, will understand how difficult that can be for me 🙂 when it comes to the right mix, there is no one-sized-fits-all solution. On-page SEO and link-building are both important, but how important each one is really depends on your current strengths and weaknesses. Long-term, everyone should pursue a mix of solid on-page structure, unique content, an authoritative link profile, and substantive social presence. Diversity is the best way to future-proof your SEO – if the algorithm changes or you hit a snag on one pillar, at least there will still be enough left standing to keep your roof up and your doors OPEN FOR BUSINESS.

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Internet Marketing – Launching a New Website – Advanced Preparation

Internet marketing strategies generally involve significant investment in a company website. Launching a new website or upgrading an existing one can be a difficult process and many business owners struggle to manage the process successfully.  Even if you have a great website designer, it can be difficult to transfer your vision onto the screen and even the savviest of business people can find themselves overwhelmed by the process.

In addition to managing the technical side of developing a new website, business owners must also go through the process of deciding on and creating the content for their website.  They must develop the correct marketing messages for their business and decide how to convey those messages on their new website.  As a result of all of this many business owners end up compromising on the vision they had for their company website and the functionality that they wanted from it.

Here are some top tips on how to save you some heartache and get the most from the process.

  1. Before you invest in a new website development project or website upgrade look at your internet marketing strategy and where your website fits into it. What are the business goals that you are trying to achieve and where does your online presence fit into that?
  2. Set specific goals for your website. Decide what you want customers to do once they visit your website?  Is it an e-commerce site – you want to make a sale? Do you want potential clients to download an eBook, sign up to a newsletter or fill out a contact form?  Once you set the goals of your website you can use them as reference points when making decisions on the functionality and structure of the website.
  3. Prepare an outline of the structure.  How are you going to organise your website?  By product? By service?  By location? What pages do you need and how do they relate to one another?  When you are doing this, keep your goals in mind. You want potential customers to find your essential products and services easily, and then convert in a streamlined way as possible. There is no point in having your eBook five pages deep and only accessible if visitors follow a specific path.
  4. Integrate your other online marketing platforms. How and where are you going to integrate your blog – social media Pages etc. into your website?
  5. Standard pages.  Don’t forget that there are certain pages that you will need to include.  These include a CONTACT US page and a PRIVACY POLICY if you are using tracking software to monitor the success of the goals you have set for the website.  You may also wish to include things like a PRESS page, TESTIMONIALS, TERMS OF BUSINESS, SITEMAP and or a GALLERY.  Adding additional pages to the structure of the site once development has begun can add to the costs incurred and may compromise the functionality of the site.
  6. Research. Find examples of websites that you like, in terms of colour scheme, style, functionality and layout.  They don’t necessarily need to be from your own industry but will give your web designer a good feel for what you are looking for.

I have managed the building of many websites on behalf of clients, working as an intermediary between the company and the website designer.  The relationship is similar to that of an architect working with their clients and building contractor. Knowing what you want your website to do for your business and being clear on how it fits into your overall internet marketing strategy will mean that you will get more from the time you spend with your developer and can concentrate on building a website that achieves your goals and looks great too!

We haven’t covered the content side of developing a new website in this article – I’ll shed more light on that particular subject next week – it’s a favourite of mine!

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Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates and Solutions

I have been doing quite a bit of online shopping recently, and I noticed how often I got to a certain point in the shopping cart and then abandoned my purchase.  I have done quite a bit of research and analysis on my clients’ behalves on this very subject, so I am well aware of the major roadblocks that affect the completion of a sale online.  Experiencing it from the purchaser’s perspective inspired this week’s Five Minute Friday blog post.

What are the major causes of shopping cart abandonment?
The average shopping cart abandonment rate is a whopping 67.45% this is based on an average rate aggregated over 22 different studies and was last updated this month. Source: Baymard.com

Statista.com has come up with 14 principle reasons that shopping carts are abandoned

Reasons for consumers to drop out of an online purchase in 2012

What these Statistics Mean

Obviously some website visitors abandon for more than 1 reason but these reasons can be broken down into 4 main categories:

 

Issues Possible Solution
Price Issues Display a best price guarantee.

Avoid hidden costs. Display the final price.

Offer free shipping
Website Issues Test website navigation is user friendly and layout is intuitive

Ensure the website is mobile friendly

Host website on a reliable server and monitor server issues & timeouts
Payment Issues Trust is important – display security badges but test where and how they appearOffer multiple payment options

Ensure price is displayed in the home currency of the visitor
Other Issues Many people are just browsing – send a reminder email with a click to complete purchase option.

Simplify the process – make editing the cart easy and avoid compulsory registration

Show images of the products in the cart and offer customer support if buyers have questions.

I hope that these tips are useful, and I look forward to sharing more tips and advice next Friday. Until then…happy shopping and happy selling 🙂

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Why is Professional Website Copywriting so Important?

Why is website content so important? We get asked this question all the time, and I suppose the answer hasn’t changed for some time. Having professional content on your website is important for two reasons:

  • You need to deliver your marketing messages to website visitors and effectively convey your Unique Selling Point’s to maximise conversions
  • The way your website will rank in the search results partly depends on the strength of your keywords and how frequently you have used them in the areas of your site that are crawled by search engines.  Search engines use algorithms that will seek out the frequency of those keywords in your content and add that to the number of times that your site has been visited and again further to check how often people have linked to your site through recommendations or backlinks

It all starts with content in this process because all search engine algorithms use Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. Latent Semantic Indexing is the discovery process for finding related terms and phrases in a document or group of documents; it is a mathematical equation that relies heavily on the context in which any given word is used. For example, if the term “flat tyre” is used in a document, some semantically related terms would be: car, vehicle, repair, wheel, tyre pressure, and wheel brace. You can see that all the words in the list are related to the term “flat tyre”.

How Do I Optimise My Content?

As a business creates content for their website or other online platforms, there is often an overriding goal to have this newly created content found by search engines, however it is important to bear I mind that content needs to be written primarily for your customers. There is no point in ranking highly if none of the visitors to your website convert to sales.

In order to write good website copy businesses need bear two fundamentally important things in mind. Website copy needs to be compelling enough for visitors to the website to generate conversions and the backlinks that are the recommendations that also contribute to your site being found in search, and it also needs to contain the keyword rich content that will satisfy the requirements of LSI. Finding the correct balance is where a good website copywriter comes in.

How Can EzSales Help?

Well, that’s easy.  We help our clients to develop strong keyword strategies and then we assist them in developing great website copy that will balance the need to convert website visitors to customers, while at the same time optimising content for search through LSI.  We will work on the overall content for the main pages of your website and can also assist in developing weekly or monthly blog posts to keep your content fresh.

After all, if you are committed to marketing your services on your company website, you’re going to be working on great new content all the time, right?  Why not work smarter rather than working harder?  Talk to us today about our professional website copywriting services.

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The role of colour in website usability and design

This week through my work as an internet marketing consultant I had reason to consider the role that colour has in web design and more importantly how colour affects website usability. As a result, I discovered some pretty interesting research, and I am happy to share what I found this Five Minute Friday.

I was looking at the Google Analytics stats of a new client’s website, and identified that the major issue on the site was a high bounce rate. I deal with SME’s so there is no budget for professional usability testing; however I did wonder what affect the yellow colour of the header and main sidebar were having on the bounce rate. What I found out about the colour yellow and website usability was really interesting:

Positive

• Yellow is a bright that is often described as cheery and warm.
• Since yellow is the most visible colour, it is also the most attention-getting colour
• Suggests warmth, sunshine and happiness

Less Positive

• Yellow is also the most fatiguing to the eye due to the high amount of light that is reflected.
• As is the most difficult colour for the eye to take in, it can be overpowering if overused
• Yellow can also create feelings of frustration and anger.
• While it is considered a cheerful colour, people are more likely to lose their tempers in yellow rooms
• Babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms.

What this tells me is that it is important to research the colours that we use on our websites. Yellow probably works really well as an accent colour – we use it on our own website, but should probably not be used as a background for content. Our kind website designer has agreed to change it so we can see if the change improves the bounce rate.

Here is some more information about other colours in terms of psychology and website usability.

BLACK is associated with seriousness, darkness, mystery, secrecy. Black absorbs and dilutes all colour surrounding it, black is not recommended as a backdrop to text rich content, as it will make small type difficult to be read

RED: Red triggers a physiological response that speeds up the heart rate, causing the person seeing it to breathe more rapidly. Red is associated with love, passion, and excitement, so if one wants to induce a passionate response, the colour red is always a good bet. One word of caution though – red is also associated with danger, warning and indebtedness.

BLUE is associated with trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism. This is why it is used so often in corporate websites, by airlines and by financial institutions. Blue is also associated with intellect and therefore is often used by high tech and computing industries.

GREEN is associated with money, nature, animals, health, healing, life, harmony. Dark green is associated with luxury and lighter green is more calming and peaceful, making it a good choice for environmental products and pharmaceuticals.

ORANGE is associated with comfort, creativity, celebration, fun, youth and affordability. Research has indicated that the lighter shades of orange appeal more to an upscale market whereas the brighter ones appeal more to a younger audience.

PINK is associated with softness, sweetness, innocence, youthfulness, tenderness. Maternity sites should consider some pink.

BROWN is associated with earth, nature, tribal, primitive, simplicity. Choosing a dark brown shade may cause customers to associate it with dirt.