It’s the Heartbleed Virus that has been slowly taking over the Internet for years, but only recently has it come to the public eye. If you’re pretty techie or considered the ‘computer nerd’ in your social circle, chances are that you have come across a couple of these previously, […]
The entire trend pertaining to responsive web design has been continuously changing but has finally come to a conclusive idea of flat designs. These kind of layouts focus on matching all forms of digital media in order to support all devices such as; laptops, desktops, Smartphones, tablets, […]
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at C2 Consulting Group
There has been the never ending debate as to whether SEO or PPC is the better option to bring you the highest amount of potential success and traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) definitely have their own set of pros and cons which will be […]
Turn Your Web Visitors into Customers by Segmenting your Website’s Content
There are endless amounts of websites that aren’t receiving the proper amount of customers in relation to their web traffic, and the solution is quite simple; Segmenting Content. If you have been having trouble engaging your audience to proceed […]
It’s the Heartbleed Virus that has been slowly taking over the Internet for years, but only recently has it come to the public eye. If you’re pretty techie or considered the ‘computer nerd’ in your social circle, chances are that you have come across a couple of these previously, but if not, you’re not S.O.L. Even the techiest of nerds aren’t understanding the Heartbleed Virus. It’s floating around the internet as we speak, and even recently got ahold of thousands of Canadian social security numbers and taxes. Is it as dangerous as it sounds, you ask? Let’s find out.
With the most recent OpenSSL version (1.0.1 launched on April 19th, 2012), there was a little bug that came with it which allows a person (and nasty hackers) to get any information on the memory of a site, without even leaving a footprint. As a result, user names and passwords were taken, as well as credit cards, social security numbers in worst case scenarios. (Sorry, Canada). It was an honest mistake and glitch in the system, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the Heartbleed Virus is happening.
So, do you need to worry? Sure, but there is no need to panic. First, you should change your passwords, especially for services confirmed as vulnerable (Google and Yahoo). You should also be changing your passwords regularly anyway, so this is no big deal. If you can’t keep tabs on your password changes, use password manager apps.
As a little bit of good news, chances are that even if the virus got ahold of your password, the chances of them matching it up with the abundance of usernames it likely has is near impossible. However, people are still taking this precautions and companies are changing encryption keys so ensure that any new data is not vulnerable.
Other than that, you’re probably okay. Relax. The Heartbleed Virus may not have even gotten your information, and as mentioned, unless they’re a puzzle genius, matching it up with the correct combination is near impossible. Just change your passwords and make them at least 10 characters long, with upper and lower case letters and add in a few numbers.
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The entire trend pertaining to responsive web design has been continuously changing but has finally come to a conclusive idea of flat designs. These kind of layouts focus on matching all forms of digital media in order to support all devices such as; laptops, desktops, Smartphones, tablets, and of course, everything that will be released in the future.
The idea for responsive layouts throughout flat designs is to have a single set of codes that will work flawlessly on all devices. There is an assumption that responsive websites are set for mobile browsers only, but this isn’t the only purpose. It’s a basic canvas that becomes dynamic throughout the brilliant illustrations and graphics that are integrated into the layout. The CSS3 media queries provide developers with the ability to customize layouts, whether the site has limited or expanded screen capabilities.
Using this to your advantage means that you do not need to have a variety of different codes to coincide with the various means of technology. One code for all, and then you can customize them as needed.
There has also been a significant increase in people who are building websites for retina devices which were first engineered by Apple with their iPhone 4.. Retina screens are now integrated into all of Apple’s latest products because these screens are twice as dense as other LCD screens. They have the same amount of pixels but digitally, twice as many pixels can be used to fill the same space providing a better visual. For pixel-enthusiastic web designers, this means that they have the ability to create two sets of images with the retina devices. First, they use the sample of the image to double the resolution and then save the standard image at half of the size. Since the larger images get scaled down to the standard resolution, the appearance is significantly clearer and much more crisp on retina screens.
A common tool for responsive web design utilizing retina support is retina.js. This JavaScript library automatically displays @2x retina versions of your image whenever it is being viewed from a retina device and is a handy resource to have, as opposed to have to recode everything within the media queries.
Within web design, there is the CSS position of having header bars “fixed”. This essentially means that the header remains at the top of the page, even as the visitor scrolls down. This allows easy access and navigation throughout your site and makes the experience for the viewer much more user-friendly and enjoyable which is crucial to encouraging viewers to come back and utilize your site. After all, no one enjoys having to scroll up just to go back to the home page.
The best thing about fixed headers is that they can work on almost any website, even the most basic or complex forms. As a result, social networking websites, blogs and even design studios and companies have started to take advantage of this feature that can be quickly added. There is no reason to not opt for a fixed header bar… Unless you simply want to have a web design that is more difficult for the user.
This is a trend that has definitely made a comeback. Large background photos were once seen as a poor choice of web design as they are often fairly too busy for the trend of flat designs. However, with the changes in technology, large photo backgrounds can now be integrated into the layout flawlessly while also ensuring that it flows naturally. It is a fabulous way to captivate the attention of your visitors but you must blend your large photo background into the entire layout so it doesn’t seem to harsh and busy, but rather fluent and pleasantly appealing. This is also a fabulous way to create brand recognition on your website.
With the new CSS3 properties, you can now play around with the opacity edits of your page, and this can come in handy for the previous trend of having large photo backgrounds as it will aid in the blending process. That’s also not to mention that this can be done without any photo editing program which had to be used previous. You can control the transparency on any modern web browser right within the CSS.
Another creative way to use the transparency edit options to your advantage is through rgba() color syntax. While in CSS, you can select specific colors suing Red, Green, Blue and Alpha-Transparency values. As a result, the syntax rgba(255,255,255,0.6) would make the color white at only 60% opacity. It makes the trend of flat designs much easier and personalized. Gone are the days of appearing generic
Although this isn’t a new trend of web design, it has really taken off this past year. Infinite scrolling is a loading technique for layouts that allow for new things to load as you continue to scroll. With this element, you don’t have to constantly click to see more as the next set of information automatically loads. It is extremely simple and emphasizes the user-friendly appeal of your website. This is used on all kinds of websites but typically works best on blogs, search result pages and websites that has constant updates or a continuous flow of content.
You have likely seen box shadows in a variety of modern web designs, and that is because the effects are absolutely stunning and rarely take away from the aesthetics of the site. Unless deep box shadows are overused, of course. Prior to the rise in this web design trend, integrated deep box shadows into the layout was rather difficult as it would take some kind of JavaScript or background created in Photoshop. Now, they can be quickly generated with some lines in CSS and voila!
This trend allows an extra dose of contrast and creativity to be accentuated within flat designs. Since a flat design is detailed minimally, taking advantage of simple features like deep box shadows emphasized the flat design without adding way too much that it affects the basic concept.
With CSS3 transition properties and browser-specific prefixes, dynamic effects can now be created right in CSS, just like they were once done in Javascript. Web designs cannot implement animated effects on a page simply by changing the CC properties. Hover effects and form input fields are common uses of CSS3 animations.
A neat feature is that you can also use Codrops to set a time for the animations, and although this is a new feature, it is certain to hit it’s all-time peak for web designers as it works flawlessly with flat designs. You can add a spike of creativity within your basic layout without having to do any scripting.
This is a complex subject and is merely impossible to thoroughly cover in one category. However, single-page designed websites have been around since the beginning of the internet and has been consistently growing in popularity over the years. They’re basic which is on trend with flat designs, and straight to the point which is what the World Wide Web has made us accustom to – Convenience. You can also integrate the infinite scroll onto your website to easily make it a single-page web design.
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at C2 Consulting Group
There has been the never ending debate as to whether SEO or PPC is the better option to bring you the highest amount of potential success and traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) definitely have their own set of pros and cons which will be broken down right now. You will soon be able to see which practice is the best option for you and your traffic goals.
The first benefit of utilizing SEO is that the benefits that come from the investment will continue to increase, even after PPC has reached the peak. Since SEO is based on a consistently using the practices, the more you use it, the more successful your traffic increases, and the more specific the ads become related to your field of interest. In addition, 85% of clicks online come from a search as opposed to paid ads, and 86% of people searching online trust SEO listings as opposed to any sponsored or paid listing such as PPC.
While SEO builds as you continue, PPC provides you with instant results and can ultimately generation a huge increase in visitors as soon as you complete the PPC action. You can also manage a budget and measure your return on investment much easier by utilizing PPC since you pay per clicks that you receive – Hence the name. In addition, 50% of people visiting a retailer’s site from a paid ad are more likely to buy than those who visit via a general link.
The biggest con of SEO is that you either have to invest your time or funds immediately, and wait for results. It can take awhile for you to receive the fullest potential of benefits that come from utilizing Search Engine Optimization. However, once you have bypassed that initial start up period with minimal results, they will continuously grow more and more. Another con that may determine whether SEO or PPC is for you is that if are any changes to what Google allows for SEO, you have to switch everything up. If you have invested a lot of time in a site that isn’t search engine friendly, you could be looking at a lengthy and costly process. You also can’t predict how you will rank in search engines by utilizing SEO. You can only follow the guidelines and continue to do so, in hopes to continually process on the ranking.
Although you can budget when using PPC, clicks can become expensive, and bidding wars can frequently occur. Since you have to pay for clicks per month, if your budget is exceeded, the ads are gone and so is the traffic that you would have received from the search engine. In addition, you also have to investment a significant amount of time in order to monitor and adjust your ads on a constant basis.
Picking a practice that suits your needs is to imperative to your amount of success and ultimately, your increase in traffic. You need to decide whether you want instant results, or continually growing benefits. You also need to consider your field of interest and determine who your targeted audience is, so you can target them effectively.
Turn Your Web Visitors into Customers by Segmenting your Website’s Content
There are endless amounts of websites that aren’t receiving the proper amount of customers in relation to their web traffic, and the solution is quite simple; Segmenting Content. If you have been having trouble engaging your audience to proceed with a sale, this is an effective way to make the difference that you need to further improve your business and more importantly, increase your sales. Now before you try to market to every possible visitor to your site, take some time and consider segmenting your website’s content to turn your web visitors into customers by addressing your targeted audience appropriately and successfully.
Instead of bombarding your website visitors with tons of visual content on the landing page, segment the content to simplify the message that they will immediately receive. A clear, large image without anything surrounding it is a successful way of doing just that. As the example shows, a popular new website, Huffington Post, the main story captivates your attention, and all of the other options are much more laid back, and set apart from the rest of the main content which engages the viewers upon first glance on the page.
It’s crucial that you speak directly to your audience, as if they are right in front of you. Deliver your targeted messages through valuable content that speaks to your viewers persona by creating blog posts and articles that they can relate to and by creating case studies that share your success stories and customer’s testimonials. Forget about speaking in third person, and speak right to your audience. An example of this can be seen in U-Haul’s service description as the context is full of “Your home”.
Although it’s tempting to share all of your content with your audience as soon as they click through your website, it’s crucial to resist bombarding them with too much information all at once. Your website visitors want a simple experience, and if you throw too much at them at once, they certainly won’t continue clicking through. They’ll click right off. Back to the U-Haul example, their service description is clean, basic and straight to the point. If you aren’t able to simplify your message, consider creating content that offers a short description, but with the option for your visitors to click further to read more.
Your content may be targeted to a specific audience, but it’s imperative to provide different viewpoints and options for them because not all personas will be able to positively view everything in the same manner. Overcome this by providing content in a variety of different ways, such as in quotes, graphs, infographics and newsletters). Comprendia.com appealed their content to a wide range of individuals within their targeted audience by using text, bullet points and infographics.
Creating content where you can interact with your visitors will promote brand recognition, customer loyalty and will keep your audience coming back for more. Social media profiles, blogs and even webinars can encourage interaction. RNB Designs, an architecture company, provides interaction through their social media sites and blog articles which can both be easily accessed on their landing page.
It truly isn’t difficult to have your website layout working to your benefit. All you have to do is place importance on the appearance of your content, and the segmenting of it as well. If your website looks anything like the following, you are in serious need for content segmenting on your Website because your web visitors are most certainly clicking right off of your website, and are certainly going no where close to becoming a customer. Segment that content and get your visitors to stay and become customers.
Do you feel that you could honestly and confidently state what your value proposition is for your business? Prior to establishing your business, it is essential that you take the time to determine what your value proposition is if you would like your business to succeed. The following exercise will help you learn what a value proposition is and how you can write your own.
According to Investopedia, a value proposition is “A business or marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service. This statement should convince a potential consumer that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings.” http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueproposition.asp#axzz2Jfhdr9gu
While this is only one of the many definitions available for what a value proposition is, all of the definitions available agree on two key points:
1. Definitions should be done from the customer’s perspective.
2. Value propositions can give your company the upper hand in the competitive
market.
A value proposition assists you and your company to understand both the customers you are specifically targeting and the value that you can offer in the marketplace. If you and your clients both feel that you are receiving a mutually beneficial exchange, then you can expect long and established relationships with those clients.
Because your customers will define the value of your company, you need to develop your value proposition around their desires. Once it has been developed, it is your job to explain the product or service you are offering while putting emphasis on the strengths of your company to create a competitive advantage.
What can your company offer?
Who are your target customers?
Why should your customers purchase from you as opposed to other competitors in your market?
How will your product differ from the competition?
In order to get the most use out of your value proposition, the answers to all of the questions above should be clear, concise, and poignant.
Once you have addressed all of the questions discussed above and have a firm grasp on the concept of value propositions, you will be able to increase your perceived benefits, decrease the perceived sacrifices your customers will have to make, focus clearly on your resources that are greater than others in your market, and continue to tailor that what you have to offer is different from your competitors
To make this all stick better we’ve put together some great examples of other companie’s value propositions. Some of the companies we list below you may not recognize but you’ll be sure to know what service or product they offer just by reading their value proposition:
Freshbooks – www.freshbooks.com
MailChimp – www.mailchimp.com
Basecamp- www.basecamp.com
Magento- www.magento.com
PayPal (Business segment)- www.paypal.com
Increasing traffic to your business website is essential, but it’s not enough; once viewers make it to your page, you must engage them, so that they buy your products or services. In doing so, you’ve converted a viewer into a customer.
Customer conversion rate, the ratio of converted viewers to the total number of viewers denoted as a percentage, is an important metric for the success of any business. Since this rate doesn’t take the value of the sale into account, it is a relative term.
Each business owner needs to determine his/her target customer conversion rate. If your business suffered a low customer conversion rate in 2012, using these 5 tips can help increase the metric for your business in the New Year.
1. Give Customers Immediate Buying Incentives
While potential customers are making up their minds about your products, be proactive and grab their attention with an announcement of a short-term sale or discount offer available for a limited period only. No one can resist a good deal, and this urges them into immediate action. The key is not to allow them too much time to think it over lest they decide to go away without making a purchase.
Design a catchy campaign on the homepage of your website to bring this sale or special offer to your viewers’ attention. A large banner can be placed at the top of the screen or right in the center of the homepage.
2. Call them to Action
Keep your notices simple for maximum effectiveness. There should be no chance for consumers to get confused. Tell them exactly what you are offering them and how they can get it. When providing call-to-action buttons that say Buy – Add to Cart – Proceed to Checkout or Sign Up, do not feel shy to display them prominently; a large font size and a bold color that stands out from the background usually works well as a call to action.
3. Pictures Speak a Thousand Words
The pictures you use on your promotion campaign are very important. Besides the choice of an image, make sure you do not compromise on its resolution. The last thing you want is to turn off potential customers with blurry or extra-small pictures that requires squinting to view. Online consumers are very particular; since they cannot see the product in person, they need to get a clear three-dimensional close-up look at what they are buying.
Actual photographs of your product are the best, but if these are not available, you may choose stock pictures. In this case, take the time to find the most suitable pictures that closely resemble your products. If you can include functionality that allows viewers to zoom into pictures and rotate them, that’s great; otherwise, upload multiple pictures of the product from different angles. Additionally, a short descriptive video of your products will add a personal touch.
4. Keep the Payment/Sign-up Process Simple
Many customers who decide to buy a product or signup for a newsletter change their mind at the last minute simply because the process was too tedious. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes; wouldn’t you want to get it over and done with as soon as possible?
Don’t make it mandatory for them to create a user account on your website before making a purchase. A guest login should be fine, and you can ask them to later when they may be more receptive.
Don’t advertise any unrelated products at the payment stage; this amounts to hounding the customer. For example, it may be alright to suggest an anti-virus package to a customer who is buying a laptop; however, showing them your range of cameras at this stage makes no sense.
When asking viewers to sign up for your newsletter, only require necessary details. Consumers cherish their privacy, especially with the increasing number of online scams. A sign-up form that requires too many personal details could scare potential customers away.
Simplicity is the best approach to increasing your customer conversion rate. Design your website so that viewers have a great user experience in navigating the pages from start to end. Use simple fonts and colors, and use plain language in your text.
5. Be Smart with Symbols That Invoke Trust
As mentioned before, consumers find it hard to trust a business website that they are interacting with for the first time, especially if they don’t have any reviews from friends and family. So how do you win their trust?
Tell them about any respected organizations that you are a member of or any big company that you partner with. Place this information in a prominent location on your homepage. Seeing these familiar names will help take away any doubts that your readers had about the credibility of your business. What’s more, they’ll spread this trust in your business to their peers, which is the most effective form of
advertising.
This New Year, as you continue your efforts to drive more traffic to your business website, make a resolution to simultaneously increase your customer conversion rate. By incorporating these 5 tips, you can soon see an upward trend in sales and revenue
Getting the Most Out of Your SEO Agency
So far, you’ve been constantly receiving excellent results from your SEO agency. For most people, the fact that the agency they’ve hired is doing what it’s supposed to be doing is already enough for them.
But
Should You Be Satisfied With This?
As a member of a trusted organization and/or company, it is your job to ask questions. Reputation is a business’ most important investment and you have the right to know whether your SEO supplier is engaging in practices that can compromise it.
There might be no predefined standards when it comes to SEO – but still, deceitful optimization techniques and methods that are contrary to the guidelines set by most search engines can spell dire consequences for any business.
Demanding A Clearer Look
Aside from reputation, your money is also at stake here. The SEO agency should be able to explain how their tools work, even if it is proprietary.
And to keep yourself abreast of the latest developments in your SEO campaign, it’s best to set up meetings and other forms of communication with your agency regularly. This way, you have more opportunities to share ideas and strategies which, in turn, could help them produce faster results.
Playing The Same Language Game
Like any other kind of industry or academic discipline, the world of SEO is full of technical terms and jargon that might confuse the average Internet user. To avoid getting their clients overwhelmed, some SEO agencies resort to dumbing down the terms and technicalities in an act of uncalled for patronization.
This is wrong. They must sound like they know what they are doing; technical terms should be left as is. If you need further explanation into the details, they should be able to give it to you at a drop of a hat.
Watch out for red flags: if they can’t provide definitions for their jargon or if they say that they have some sort of a special relationship with a search engine, then it’s probably time to look for another supplier.
Transparency Is The Key
Transparency is the number one characteristic to look for in any transaction. For example, most SEO agencies would provide their clients with a representative sample of the links they’ve placed instead of the whole list. They do this to save time on reports and to let the clients see the big picture instantly. But if you want to see the whole list for yourself, they must be able to provide it wholeheartedly. If they refuse, you should walk out of the door immediately.
What’s Fresh Today, May Turn Bad Tomorrow
It’s hard to justify prying into your SEO agency’s services when they’ve been constantly producing excellent results. But think about it in long-term. The SEO services that they are supplying has a huge impact on your business; it can make or break your business’ credibility. If at any point, you are unsure how your supplier is doing its job, take your time to review their practices
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Until your website appears in Google’s search results, it’s difficult to develop traffic and sales. And until you site is indexed multiple times by Google’s web crawler, Googlebot, it won’t show up in the search results. Frequent return visits by the crawler are necessary to advance in the rankings so your site shows up earlier in searches. The objective of maintaining a website is to generate traffic, so an organized process to make sure your site is crawled frequently is a priority. The good news is that the techniques to get that job done are conventional SEO practices. Taking these steps will both get your site into the search results and, once it’s there, improve your position. The method to keep Google crawling your sites consists of just five simple steps.
1. Add additional content. Fresh content on your website is a magnet both for users and for search engines. The Googlebot loves fresh content and every time it visits your site it looks for it. If there’s nothing there to hold its interest, it might be a while before it comes back to check again. If it detects new stuff, it will return more often. A good example of this are newspaper websites where the content changes consistently, enticing Google to crawl the sites multiple times per day. Update the site whenever it’s logical to do so. Never add content as an end in itself. Always consider the quality of what you’re adding.
2. Use original content. Duplicating content to fill space is counterproductive if you’re seeking to improve your status on Google. The crawler detects duplicate material and may avoid your site if it finds enough of it. If there’s a compelling reason for duplicating information, place the duplicate material on a different page and utilize redirects to refer users to it.
3. Speed up your loading. Just like you, the Google crawler gets impatient with slow-loading sites. When it encounters one it may simply move on to the next site without waiting to see what it missed. This can be very bad for your prospects to earn a decent position in search results. The loading speed of a site carries an increasing amount of weight in the Google algorithm that determines who makes it into search results and how high they are ranked.
4. Map your site. If your website contains a site map, it makes it easier for Google to access all pages of your site. This results in more comprehensive indexing, a great advantage in the competition for a favorable place in the search results. A sitemap simply contains URLs to all the various pages and information on your site. HTML sitemaps are generally favored by Google over the XML equivalent.
5. Cultivate links to your site. The more times the Googlebot stumbles over links to your website incorporated in other sites, the more it will make a habit of returning to crawl your site. These return visits translate into more favorable positioning in search results. Of course, spreading your links far and wide on the web also increases user traffic and sales at your site.
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Using a content management system (CMS) is a popular way for web designers to easily allow the addition and updating of content in a relatively simple package. In fact, there are plenty of web designers that believe that every website should use a content management system. However, a CMS shouldn’t be taken as a “one-solution-fits-all” approach to design and content management. Being able to edit your own content with a CMS has plenty of benefits and drawbacks that can easily affect how your website ultimately looks and feels to your users.
Why Go With a CMS?
One major advantage for having a content management system on your website is that it offers plenty of useful plug-ins and add-ons that allow a great degree of customization. Instead of developing your own individual scripts for shopping carts, photo galleries and other features, the average CMS already offers those features as add-on installations. Although many of these add-ons have been tested to work for the CMS they were designed for, you can still run into compatibility issues that can cause anything from minor issues to catastrophic outages.
The key thing to keep in mind about a CMS is that it still requires ongoing maintenance and updating, despite appearances to the contrary. Like just about any website, a CMS still needs upgrades, patches and other forms of maintenance to function properly. In fact, you probably factor in the cost of having your web designer or yourself maintaining the website as needed.
Can My Website Do Without a CMS?
Your website can do without a CMS, but you have to be prepared to put in plenty of effort to make this work. For starters, you’ll probably end up having to learn a great deal about web design in order to replicate some of the features offered in the average CMS package.
Plenty of web designers go out of their way to include a CMS within their client’s websites, mainly to decrease the possibility of the client breaking their site in the process of doing something as simple as updating their content. In these cases, a CMS works fine since most clients only want to update text content and quite possibly a few images to go with said text content.
Not every CMS can work smoothly within the design of a website. In many cases, you’re probably better off not having a CMS if it severely compromises the webpage’s overall design. Nevertheless, many people opt to incorporate CMS into their websites regardless of how it impacts design.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, having a content management system is not a mandatory requirement. In fact, not every website needs a CMS. The choice of whether or not to use a CMS depends on what you want out of your website. If you’re looking for a feature-rich website, then a CMS might be a better option than having a web designer at those features on individually. In other cases, you might feel that your website will be better off aesthetically without the use of a CMS.
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