Having a website is essential to any company’s success these days. Let’s face it, if you don’t have one, you might as well not exist. If you have one and it stinks, well, it’s hard to get that first impression back from a potential customer. There is an endless list of things you can do to enhance your website, make it searchable, and most importantly, user-friendly. For most companies, their website is a major factor in their success which means proper development, design, and execution of the building and updating of a website is critical.

Take a look at these 10 tips for a better website:

1. Make contact info easy to find. Users should be able to locate your contact info easily from any page on your website. Include email, phone, location, hours, etc.
2. Include a call-to-action on every page. You should always be encouraging users to make a purchase, visit another page, contact your company, and more on every appropriate page.
3. Make use of a gallery. Think about using a gallery to display your work including products, services, projects, etc. Show off what you do best with a gallery on your website.
4. Show personality with ‘About Us’ page. People will want to get to know your company, in fact, getting to know you can help pique their interest. Do this through your ‘About Us’ page.
5. Use bold images. Having elaborate, clear, and colorful images on your website adds to aesthetic appeal and visual content. Use images to enhance your site and messaging.
6. Include social media icons. Make it easy for users to find you on social media by including social media icons in your design. Also incorporate share buttons when appropriate.
7. Incorporate testimonials. Have some of your current customers submit testimonials and share them on the site. This helps build brand loyalty and trust in potential customers.
8. Utilize clean and simple design. Having a dynamic site is great, but remember to keep your design clean and simple at the same time. Less is more in the name of user-friendliness.
9. Simple navigation. When you’re developing your navigation and site pages, keep simplicity in mind. You want the user to be able to find what they need as quickly and efficiently as possible.
10. Stick to your brand. Your website should reflect your company’s brand in every way. Utilize the same colors, design aspects, and images associated with your company for brand recognition.

What tips do you have for creating a better website? Tell us in the comments below.

Learn about the characteristics of a user-friendly website by reading here.

About Millennium Agency

Millennium Agency is a nationally recognized, top woman led B2B branding, positioning, and digital marketing firm who knows how to create value that emotionally influences your customer’s buying decision, giving you the competitive advantage. As your trusted partner in B2B software technology and manufacturing, we provide the branding and positioning framework that make an impact – so you can focus on what you do best – run your business successfully. With offices in Boston and New Hampshire, and a worldwide presence, the professionals at Millennium Agency would like to learn more about your business.  Visit www.mill.agency or book time here.   

Building your blog audience can seem overwhelming and at times, practically impossible to gain loyal readers. Beyond the marketing style options for growing your blog audience like promoting it through e-blasts and networking with other bloggers, there are many content driven ways for you to cultivate your audience. When you start to understand your audience and the goals of your blog, you will find that things start to come together and you develop your own unique place in the blogosphere with good writing, valuable insight, and a memorable personality. (more…)

Websites often act as a first impression and business card in today’s digital-savvy world, which is why it’s important that they are user-friendly on every level.

From behind-the-scenes programming to usability and design, developing your website with user friendliness in mind is important to making that good first impression.

If visitors find your site user-friendly, there is a better chance that they will come back again and again for the information they are looking for. Keeping this experience consistent will increase your chances of converting them into a repeat customer.

Take a look at these seven characteristics of what makes a website user-friendly.

1. Mobile-friendly/responsive.

If you’re designing a website for mobile users, you need to make sure that it’s responsive so that it looks good no matter what device it’s being viewed on. This means that the site will adjust its layout based on the size of the screen.

Responsive web design also makes content easier to read.

At the very least, you should focus on making a mobile-friendly website to appeal to mobile users. Once your site is fully mobile compatible, make everything responsive and accessible on every device.

2. Simple navigation.

The first thing visitors notice when they arrive at your site is how easy it is to navigate.

It should be simple for users to find information on your site, and the pages should load quickly so that people aren’t losing patience and taking their search elsewhere. Having a website that is easy to navigate and understand will make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for, leading to better engagement.

Keep page titles short and your site structure organized to ensure a better sitewide experience.

3. Readable content.

In addition to being easy to navigate, your content should be clear, concise, and well-formatted.

This means having clear links between pages, making sure each link takes users directly to the desired destination, and providing enough context for people to easily find what they need.

Utilize headings and subheadings to break down content, as well as short paragraphs and bulleted lists to keep your readers’ attention and avoid confusion.

4. Aesthetic appeal.

Websites with good aesthetics make visitors feel more comfortable and confident when using them.

Your site’s design and content should be aesthetically pleasing, with clean lines, bright colors, and simple layouts. This should be a given – your website should be visually appealing through the use of color, text, images, and, if necessary, animation.

Stay true to your brand and make your website visually striking and more memorable to dazzle your audience and outshine your competition.

5. Visual resources.

If you want to drive more traffic to your website, then you need to provide users with a memorable visual experience.

Make use of visual resources like images, videos, and interactive designs that work to organize your site and inspire engagement.

Visual resources also help to break up your content, so be creative with how you implement them in your site’s design.

6. Fast load times.

We expect a quick response from the web at all times. If we don’t receive it, we are likely to move on to the next thing.

In fact, studies show a site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 5x higher than a site that loads in 10 seconds.

Check your load times and optimize your site as needed.

7. Easy to use forms.

Forms are an essential part of any website, whether it’s a form to request more information, sign up for a newsletter, or submit feedback.

Make sure that your forms are user-friendly by using clear labels, short fields, and instructions.

Your forms should be accessible, easy to find, and a no-brainer to fill out and submit. This will help engage users and lead to more conversions.

Ready to make your website user-friendly? To learn more about user-friendly web design and development, check out our web design services page.

What would you do with more time to strategize and grow your business?

We are passionate about providing business owners and marketing teams with more time to grow while generating creatively brilliant results using digital, PR, web design, branding, and marketing strategies. Send us a message telling us your pain points about your website or any other aspect of your business marketing. We will schedule a free 30-minute consultation to get to know you and discuss your growth goals.

I’m Ready for More Time!

With 91% of American consumers owning a mobile device and more than half owning a smartphone, it has become increasingly evident that mobile marketing is a powerful platform to reach target audiences. The ability to so directly and immediately engage with consumers is like a dream come true for marketers everywhere and, if you haven’t already, it’s time to capitalize on this incredible opportunity. If you need a little more convincing, you should know that by 2014 mobile is predicted to be the main source of internet usage. Additionally, 70% of mobile searches result in consumers taking action within an hour.

The stats don’t lie. Here are seven mobile marketing tips to get you started in the new year:

1. Have a mobile-friendly website. You should have a mobile-friendly site that is usable and easy to navigate. Make it visually appealing while still providing readily available information.
2. Make it responsive. Ideally, your website should be responsive to mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. Responsive sites are on the rise: consider updating your site to fit all devices.
3. Keep it simple. Mobile screens are small, always keep this in mind. Your design, images, and copy should all be simple. By having a simple design, you make it easy to navigate and encourage users to stay and engage with your mobile site.
4. Text messages should be strategic. If you’re running a text message campaign, be sure to be strategic in when and what you send out. You should have a clear call-to-action every time.
5. Make emails mobile-friendly. If your site is mobile-friendly, your emails should be too. Most people open emails on their mobile devices, makes it easy for them to navigate to your website.
6. Include social media. Most mobile users have social media setup on their devices. Make sure that your website and emails contain social media icons that link to your pages and encourage users to like your pages and interact with you. This will help build brand awareness and loyalty.
7. Make it easy to fulfill a call-to-action. Everything from your website to your email to your social media should have a call-to-action. Make it clear and concise what you want users to do.

What mobile marketing tips do you have to share? Tell us in the comments below.

Image courtesy of sippakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Taking care to unify your brand across all mediums is critical to increase brand recognition and loyalty. It shouldn’t be any different across your social media platforms. Though each platform can be very different in the profile covers and images, as well as information allowed, it is an important part of your social media success to implement a unified brand presence across all platforms. This means everything from your logo to your phone number. (more…)

Blogging is one of the best ways to increase your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, especially if you have time to commit to daily blog posts. By blogging daily, you can enhance your search rankings and help generate more traffic to your website. When you add a blog to your site or increase your posting frequency, you will find that you start to generate more organic traffic to your site. This is especially true if you’re selecting newsworthy topics, generating well-written content, utilizing keywords, and incorporating links. Take a look at these major SEO blogging benefits:

• New content. Having new content that provides value and is shareable to readers is key to getting the most out of your blog in terms of SEO. Google prefers websites that are turning new content frequently, especially if that content is being shared across the web and will keep search engine robots coming back to your site.
• Content variety. Blogs allow you to continuously generate content of variety, whereas your general website content is a little more limited and should remain consistent. Use your blog to add variety of topics and discussions to your website. Remember to mix up your headlines to help draw traffic to your blog, and essentially your website. This will help users conducting searches come across your content more often.
• Indexed pages. Your blog allows you to create more pages on your website without compromising the core content of your site. Every new page is indexed into search engines and crawled by Google robots. Again, this helps keep Google interested in your site and, if done correctly, can work to increase your ranking depending on results.
• Backlinks. Incorporating quality backlinks into your blog content is crucial to reaping as many SEO blogging benefits as possible. When Google robots crawl your site, they consider sites with backlinks far more valuable than those without. Utilizing valuable, quality backlinks will increase your domain authority and encourage Google to keep an eye on your site.
• Internal links. Using internal links not only helps traffic flow, but when key phrases are linked internally from your blog it helps search engines further identify the content on your site. This also helps user searches be connected to your content.

Do you find that your website’s SEO results benefit from frequent blogging?

About Millennium Agency

Millennium Agency is a nationally recognized, top woman led B2B branding, positioning, and digital marketing firm who knows how to create value that emotionally influences your customer’s buying decision, giving you the competitive advantage. As your trusted partner in B2B software technology and manufacturing, we provide the branding and positioning framework that make an impact – so you can focus on what you do best – run your business successfully. With offices in Boston and New Hampshire, and a worldwide presence, the professionals at Millennium Agency would like to learn more about your business.  Visit www.mill.agency or book time here.   

 

As Black Friday quickly approaches, holiday shopping is officially underway. For your business to take full advantage of this time of year, it is important to have a good marketing plan. Since so many people these days are doing their holiday shopping online, internet resources like Pinterest are a great way to reach more shoppers and increase holiday business. (more…)

With this year’s holidays almost in full swing, many companies are thinking about how they can leverage their social media during this busy time. This is truly an excellent time to connect with your current audiences, as well as gain new followers. Through a variety of ways, you can engage your audiences, build relationships, and allow audiences to connect with your business on a more personal level. (more…)

Building a strong website is essential for any business. It is usually the first place a prospective customer goes to learn more about a business, so it is important to make a positive impression. While there is a long list of things to include on a website, there are some key aspects that should always be included. (more…)

Email marketing is one of the most useful strategies for a successful marketing campaign. In fact, according to Convince and Convert, 44% of email recipients last year made at least one purchase as the result of a promotional email. (more…)