The creation of a domain name is one of the most important decisions your organization will make as it strives to compete with a wide variety of other businesses internationally. The competitive nature of web searches will also only continue to increase as the internet expands upon the amount of websites it offers its users. As a result, your domain name choice will significantly impact your website’s success, especially as it pertains to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM). We will further elaborate on just how domain names impact these important marketing strategies in the sections below.
Designing Keyword Based Domain Names:
If your mentality is similar to that of many other business owners, you may currently be operating under the belief that purchasing a domain name that takes advantage of well-researched keywords will ultimately increase your profit margins. With Click-Through Rates (CTRs) and search engine rankings on Google at stake, it is vital to understand whether this method of choosing a domain name is still as effective as it once was.
In SEO professional’s circles, many SEO strategists would have once suggested the purchase of Exact Match Domains (EMDs) to be the single most effective way to improve CTRs, get your company recognized, and ensure your spot at the top of the most popular search engines. If you are still having difficulty understanding exactly what an EMD is, consider the following: if a keyword search shows promise of “rejuvenate your website” as a set of words that will increase the amount of times your website shows up on a search page, then you would likely seek to purchase a domain name that uses the title RejuvinateYourWebsite.com. This method of selecting domain names holds a few different advantages, which include:
- The presence of the keywords in the website’s name assists your website in being located online.
- Other webmasters are inclined to include your domain in their searches due to the keywords in its title.
The greatest setback with this strategy however is the dependence placed upon search engine companies to retain their original algorithms so that they remain favoring your organization’s original domain name. If history has taught us anything, it is that we must continue to adapt in order to survive, which means search engine companies must do the same. As a result, the aforementioned strategy is no longer as helpful as it once was! In fact, current search ranking statistics indicate that EMDs have gone from around #13 in search results to #26, a significant decrease! While this may detour you from selecting an EMD alone, note that selecting an EMD while deploying other strategies will still increase your domain’s ability to be found online.
Selecting Keyword Domains that improve Click-Through Rates
With an increased click-through rate, your organization will benefit significantly in terms of your bottom line profits. Owning a premium keyword domain can help in that regard, especially as it relates to ads. With numerous studies conducted regarding the relationship between ads and domain names that increase CTRs, it has been found that ads featuring generic domains that match the product performed much better than other ads that featured more generic domains. Domain names such as DivorceLawyer.com that were featured in ads had a significantly higher CTR due to their generic nature.
When designing your domain name, it is also important that you consider these factors:
- The search volume will be important to consider. As a note, you can perform a keyword search to find out the exact volume of a phrase. This will help determine whether you would like to use the keyword or not.
- Consider the cost of your domain and whether it is worth purchasing. If it is already in use, purchasing the domain may be absorbedly expensive and not worth the investment.
- If your domain name is not a .com, you may wish to reconsider. The .com domain extension is the original website destination and as a result significantly more popular.
Select a Domain that you can easily Brand
While having EMDs that match your organization’s target keywords provides you with some initial benefits, those domain names are not always brand friendly. If you are seeking to increase in size, scope, or recognition, you must be able to brand your domain name effectively. Designing your brand will take time and careful thought, so do not rush into any decisions. It is important that your users are able to find, remember, and share your company information with their friends and family online. If they can easily recognize your brand, your company is on the path to success! The benefit behind branding is made clearer when you consider the fact that search engines seek to promote legitimate businesses. With that understanding, do not waste another second, start branding your domain name today!
Developing a Domain Name you can Brand Successfully
There are organizations in existence today that have selected to develop a domain name without considering whether their domain name will easily fit into their company’s branding efforts in the future. If you have yet to embark on this route, you are in luck because you can benefit from some of the information contained below, which will help you successfully brand your domain!
- Select an Extension that Matters
The number of domain extensions has steadily increased over the past few years to include extensions such as .org, .gov, and .edu. While these are viable options for domain extensions, .com is still the best extension to choose due to the fact that it accounts for over 75% of all extensions.
- Test your Domain Name’s Relevance
- The words you select for your domain name will obviously mean something particular to you and your colleagues. However, to really determine whether your domain name expresses what you intend, you may wish to seek out other people’s understanding of what your business offers, based purely off of your proposed domain name. If the two don’t match, you will likely want to reconsider your domain name so that you are portraying what you intend.
- Seek to be Remembered
- With many companies offering similar services, it is vital that consumers are able to easily remember your domain name. If your domain name is not catchy, it is less likely your organization will be remembered, which will likely result in a decrease in website visits. Ultimately, this impacts your bottom line!
- Beware of Spelling Mistakes
- If your domain name is not easy to spell, you may wish to reconsider using it. The same holds true if you are using numbers in your domain name. Oftentimes with numbers, you will want to purchase the same domain name without the number (ex. 2step.com —> twostep.com).
- Use a Unique Domain Name
- Competition between businesses requires that you create a domain name that stands out. If you have to continuously explain who you are and your domain name is not easy to remember, chances are it may not be as unique as you think.
- Demonstrate your Authority through Competence
- In order to be taken seriously in the business world, you must first demonstrate your competency through your domain name. If your domain name is downloadcomputerviruses.com, chances are you will not be pursued because that domain name sounds like it can cause people significant computer issues.
How To Find A Great Domain Name
If you scoured the internet, even briefly, during the creation of your company’s initial name, you were likely met by the reality that some other organization already had that name or one that was very similar. Instead of seeking options to purchase their domain name, which would likely be a time consuming and expensive task, consider setting up a brainstorming session with your colleagues to create several usable domain name ideas.
- Using some of the following strategies can help you develop a domain name that your company and consumers will gravitate towards for years to come.
- Use existing words to design website domains that people will select to visit. These can be words as simple as “cat” or “dog” and combined with words like “grooming” to create web domains like CatandDogGrooming.com. The advantage with selecting this type of name is that people are already familiar with the words.
- The design of new words can be an enticing route for designing your new domain name. If you look hard enough online, you may find websites with names like visex, a word you may never use in your daily life but exists as a website domain.
- Combining names of two ordinary words is another plausible option in domain name creation. Several popular websites such as Facebook combine two words to make their websites work. If you think you can combine two words and make a great sounding domain name, go right ahead! Many successful businesses have done it in the past!
- Using one of the services like namesmith.io can be handy to help create useful names.
While the process of deciding upon an excellent domain name takes determination and many nights spent researching, it is well worth the effort. You will find, almost immediately, that your efforts help you rank higher in search engine findings, attract more visitors to your website, and ultimately increase your bottom line! With those increases, you will undoubtedly be able to expand your business, which results in you realizing your dreams! That sounds fun right? So, get to work! We wish you the best!
The invention of email and its ever expanding inbox over forty years ago revolutionized the manner in which businesses reach out to their consumers. With over 144 billion emails sent and delivered each day of the year, a company’s ability to attract the attention of their consumer base via the use of marketing messages, competitive subject lines, and other strategies is more crucial than it has ever been before.
With such an elite channel of communication, businesses around the world have chosen to invest millions of dollars into developing email marketing campaigns that will increase their profit margins exponentially. While an incredible amount of funding is spent on these campaigns, it is not always immediately evident whether the campaign has been or will be effective. As a result, many companies sought to explain the science behind why people click and follow through on responding to emails they receive. Those answers and our interpretation of them are contained below. Enjoy!
Seize and Desist your Current Personalization Efforts
While your organization is most assuredly seeking to develop a personal relationship with each of your consumers, personalizing your emails with the traditional “Dear [insert name]” may not be the best option. With the turn of the century and the advent of more advanced technology, cyber security concerns are at an all-time high. Consumers no longer trust personalized emails with their names on them due to their undeserved resemblance to phishing, identity theft, credit card fraud, and other message types. Instead, seek to build relationships with your customers by demonstrating that you understand them on a more personal level. What is more personal than a name you ask? How about their purchase history or consumer demographic? Through guiding a customer to similar products they have purchased in the past, you are showing that your organization recognizes them as an important piece of your customer base. You are also more likely to increase your sales through this method because people are more likely to purchase items they have purchased in the past (98% more likely according to some studies). Overall, if your organization is seeking to personalize messages you are sending to customers, do so in a manner they will appreciate and find useful!
Size Does Matter when Creating Subject Lines
The perfect subject line is no longer created in the mind of a literary genius twirling in his office chair chewing on his pen cap. Instead, it is derived from a multitude of scientific research! The most modern research by marketing professionals indicates that subject lines between 60-70 characters do not provide an increase in open rate or click through. Those subject line lengths are essentially dead space that should be avoided whenever possible. Instead, email subject lines should be created containing more than seventy characters to engage readers in clicking through the content or fewer than forty-nine characters to increase a recipient’s open rate. In fact, email subjects with less than 10 characters, according to these studies, have an open rate of around 58%. This is obviously a significant discovery because marketers using this length for their subject lines are more likely to have their information viewed by email recipients. Whatever length you decide (longer equals greater instances of click-through whereas shorter equals greater open rates), your ultimate goal should be to try your hardest to avoid the dead zone spoken about earlier.
Prime Email Sending Time: 8:00—12:00 am
Several companies, including Experian Marketing Services, have surveyed whether emails received during the day or evening hours are more effective at engaging customers. While many of today’s emails are constructed during normal business hours (8:00 am—5:00 pm), these studies have found that the emails receiving the highest open rates are sent during the evening hours, 8:00—12:00am to be specific. During this block of time, click through and sales are sometimes increased as much as 22%.
Through a quick analysis of the chart above, you will notice that the 8:00pm—12:00am time frame is the least used, which results in emails sent during this time frame being more easily seen by consumers. Sending emails when everyone else isn’t is the key to business success! However, one factor that companies rarely consider in this effort, is their consumers’ behaviors pertaining to their review of email messages. Companies need to understand when their consumers will be online checking emails otherwise their messaging may fall upon deaf ears or blind eyes in this case! Please keep in mind that consumer preferences change overtime. As a result, it is important to frequently test when your consumers are accessing emails so that you can adjust accordingly.
Giving is Better than Receiving when it comes to Free Content
The creation of templates and tools for your customer base is perhaps one of the best projects your organization can take on. When customers receive useful products from your organization, especially those they can use for future projects, they will grow more connected to your message and your organization. These items should not be given away without a catch however. In each free template you should include hyperlinks that direct consumers to relevant pages on your website that will increase their click through rates and ultimately purchases.
Mobile Devices Account for a Large Portion of all Email Opens
Consider making the following changes in your email marketing efforts to increase your organization’s visibility on mobile devices:
It is estimated that roughly 47% of emails are pulled up on mobile devices. In order to illustrate what that might look like for your company, consider the following statistics. If your email list accounts for $200,000 in sales each month, could you truly afford to dismiss $88,000 in revenue because your emails do not display properly on mobile devices?
In order to create a more responsive design for your emails, consider the following:
- If your email template is not currently one column in width, adjust your page accordingly. This will improve the way your email shows up on a smaller, mobile screen thus significantly improving your email marketing program.
- Increase your font size so that readability is improved exponentially for all mobile device users.
Ensure that the amount of pixels displayed on mobile devices are large enough in quantity that the images are clear and easy to read.
If you choose to display your organization’s call-to-action, you will want to make sure that it is noticeable to the untrained eye and obvious enough that it can be tapped. Ideally, you will want this to be at the top of your page so that your users do not have to scroll lower to find it.
You may wish to design your mobile webpage so that users are able to tap the middle of their screens with their thumb or fingers easily. If this is not the case, users may be less inclined to click further into your webpage.
Email Reigns Supreme over New Social Media Websites
Social media website numbers continue to increase annually with millions of users creating new accounts. While many companies look at the expansion into social media as an opportunity to expand business, they fail to recognize that email is still the most powerful player in converting new customers into purchasers of your products. A recent study of over 300,000 referrals who became new customers at various companies conducted by SocialTwist, indicated that 50.8% were converted after reviewing email, compared to 26.8% for social media site similar to Twitter and 22% for social media sites similar to Facebook.
Send email on the weekends
If you recall our discussion earlier about sending emails during the evening hours, you will not be surprised to find that weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) outperform the weekdays as it pertains to email click through and viewing. The reason for this increase in email interaction is similar to the evening hours in that the volume of emails sent on the weekend is significantly lower than during the week. While the click through and open rates were not nearly as strong as the evening hour rates during the week, they still showed a slight increase! In email marketing, even the slightest increase can mean a greater profit margin!
Review Subscriber Groups and Identify Inactive Subscribers
As your business matures, you will secure an increasingly large group of subscribers/regular customers, and their contact information (ex. emails, phone numbers, social media account addresses, etc.). With the wide array of data you will be collecting from these individuals, it will become increasingly important that you maintain an appropriate level of contact with them as each year continues. This includes developing a marketing plan that incorporates checkpoints during the year in which you actively seek out opportunities to reengage consumers who have lost contact with your organization. If you consider that recent research estimates inactivity in a contact list at an outstanding 63 percent, email marketing can truly be a game changer! It is vital that you seek to engage or reengage everyone in your contact list at least once every 90 days.
Don’t wait any longer, start investing in your email marketing campaign now while these ideas are all still fresh in your mind. Through following these simple words of advice, you will see an increase in Click-through rates as well as several happy customers (many of them being returners!). We wish you the best of luck! Feel free to contact us if you would like any more guidance in this area!
The internet’s boundaries are expanding at an exponential rate as we proceed deeper into the twenty-first century with some researchers estimating the existence of approximately one billion different websites as we enter 2016. With this enormous selection to choose from, you may be shocked to find out that the average person only explores around 96 different domains per month, which is roughly 0.0000096% of the websites available.
If your organization currently operates its own website, you may be asking yourself how you can compete with the plethora of websites clamoring for people’s attention on a daily basis. The key, in almost every case, is by providing a website that functions at an exceptional level for the people who wish to interact with it.
If, at any point in time, you find your website to be functioning at a less than optimal level, you may wish to consider whether your website is due for a redesign. To assess this, don’t only rely upon your employee’s interactions with the website, ask the everyday visitors to your website for feedback, as this feedback will inform your decision to redesign.
While many companies invest multiple hours and thousands of dollars into expansive redesign processes, know that this is not always necessary because many websites already function well with the demographic they are trying to reach…no need to fix what’s not broken, right?
If you are unsure whether a website redesign is warranted for your organization, consider some of the following scenarios. If you agree that your organization is experiencing several of these scenarios, then venture forth with the amazing opportunities that result from website redesign.
Implementing your Rebranding Efforts:
Overtime, nearly every company designs and implements a different approach to its original branding efforts. These updates often impact your company’s logo, mission and vision statements, processes, and more. With these changes, it becomes necessary to update not only your company’s website but also all documents used within your organization. Your rebranding efforts will undoubtedly be noticed by anyone who has interacted with your website previously, so feel free to show them off and let the world know!
Adding Improved Functionality:
If you are seeking to add additional features such as blogs, user forums, e-commerce opportunities, and other improvements to your website, a redesign is most definitely in order. With this increased functionality you can better interact with your customers, allow them opportunities to discuss your product with one another, and even open up opportunities for them to purchase your products online. These simple changes will make a world of difference for your users and your company.
Making it Mobile:
With the advent of numerous mobile devices (ex. smart phones and iPads), many of today’s internet cosmopolitans visit company websites while on the move between their various commitments. Through redesigning your website to function properly on all types of mobile devices, you will ensure that your company reaches a much larger audience. With this larger audience and increased functionality, you will also undoubtedly be able to secure more of the vital funds necessary for your company’s future.
Incorporation of Social Media:
If you have yet to connect your company’s social media accounts to your website, you are risking the success of your business! In your next website redesign, consider linking each of your social media accounts to your webpage so that visitors to your site can easily connect with your company on a more personal level. You should also consider taking this a step further by adding social sharing tools so that people can share, tweet, or pin your product to their personal pages! Once you have created these opportunities for your customers, they will likely take advantage of them by spreading the word…nothing like free advertising right!?
Improving Usability:
When considering website redesign, it is important to note the difference between usability and functionality. When companies talk about improving usability, they mean they want to improve customers’ abilities to easily find the portions of their website they are looking for. Through collecting customer feedback, those individuals in charge of website redesign will be able to change their website in a way that leaves end users willing to come back time and time again.
Updating Data:
With the online world constantly evolving, old technology needs to be replaced at a consistent rate (ex. Flash Media Player). Through this consistent reinvigoration of your website, you will surely find happy customers who can successfully navigate your website and view all items with ease.
Simply to Change things Up:
The desire to “change things up” can happen at any time and is oftentimes an indicator that your organization has been presenting itself in the same manner for multiple years. It is also an excellent indicator that your customers may be feeling the same. If you decide to change things up, consider adding new images, changing colors, or making other relatively simple changes.
Implementing a Content Strategy:
As your business relationships flourish and your company expands, you may find that your organization needs to provide fantastic content to actively engage both your employees and customers. This content should be SEO (Search Engine Optimization) optimized so people who search for content similar to what you sell can easily find your product within the first few links presented on major search engines like Google. You cannot just provide the quality content, you need to ensure that it is easily accessible on your website. If your content is accessible and of high quality, you are on your way to business success! Don’t forget to post new articles on a consistent basis so individuals who interact with your website are met with new content upon their visits.
Providing a Video about your Product:
There are dozens of reasons why you should be doing video marketing but we’ll let the numbers do the talking! When companies place videos on their websites, they effectively increase the length of a customer’s visit by 4 minutes….that is a huge advantage for any company! Additionally, websites with videos embedded into their pages are fifty-three times more likely to show up in search results. With a higher likelihood of getting noticed online, your company will benefit greatly from your decision to place a video on your website.
Speed up your Website:
It is no longer enough for your company to only improve their website’s responsiveness, they must also seek out opportunities to increase download speed while simultaneously limiting data use. This is necessary because internet providers and smartphone carriers are consistently cutting back on or charging more for the amount of data their customers use. With these limits being placed on your customers, you would be doing a disservice if you made your website visitors download seemingly endless amounts of information, images, and more. The majority of web designers agree that if your website takes longer than 5 seconds to load, your website’s visitors will become disinterested and likely leave. In order to assess what exactly is slowing your website down, it is recommended that you look into hiring a web designer to take a quick look. They may be able to determine which portions of your site can afford to be downloaded at a later time, thus improving your speeds exponentially.
Increasing Traffic past your Home Page:
If you have yet to utilize the full strength of Google’s Google Analytic’s software, you may not be analyzing your website’s traffic to its fullest potential. Google Analytics is excellent in this regard due to the fact that it is free to sign up and place on your website. It also takes relatively little training to understand, which makes it a great software for anyone at your company to use. Once you have installed this service, look through your site’s stats to determine how far people are diving into your website prior to leaving to explore other web locations. Additionally, this software allows for monitoring of the amount of time spent on each webpage within your site so that you can further understand where customers are spending their time. With this type of detailed information, you can strategically alter your website’s design so that it retains people at each step of the process.
Once you have completed your website redesign do not forget to perform periodic check-ins to verify that all of your changes have taken place and are functioning the way you hoped. This is important because many organizations often assume the work was done correctly only to find from customer feedback that the website is now performing worse than it had been before. Save yourself that headache by designing a test version of your future page for customers to try prior to implementing it completely. If it works well for them, then it will work well for others!
We hope you enjoyed reading this article and we wish you the best of luck of with your new website!
In the corporate world, building and maintaining a website is your company’s initial step towards interacting with its consumer base. However, the creation of a website can no longer be the only way organizations interact with their customers. In order to be successful in business within today’s modern marketplace, companies need to expand their digital storefronts to social media marketing websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. Those who don’t, face the very real risk of falling behind their competition, which is why we want to provide those of you still on the fence about adopting social media, with several reasons why you should!
1) It’s Free
The word “free” is rarely uttered in business, but when it is, people pay attention! Your participation in social media is one of the rare instances in your company’s history where you could realistically get away with paying very little to nothing and still have a heavy return on your investment. If you find that your company does not currently have the time to appropriately manage several social media accounts, consider hiring a social media management or public relations company to assist you. In many cases, these companies charge $3,000-$7,000 a month but also provide you with a guarantee you will see an increase in the number of people interacting with your product. Whether you get it for free or pay a monthly sum, social media is the route to go!
2) You can Respond Immediately to Feedback
Consumer feedback is vital to your company’s success, so why wouldn’t you want to be able to respond immediately to their complaints? If these problems are brought to your attention via social media, you can take the necessary steps to solve them. Unsure whether this will work for your organization? Consider the fact that numerous studies have shown that companies who respond to their consumers’ needs retain them at increasingly better rates than those who do not. Don’t forget to research how to appropriately respond to complaints. Unfortunately, we all know some people who are not equipped to do so effectively!
3) People are Receptive to Social Media
The fortunate reality for many businesses, is that consumers view social media websites as social media and not an extension of business or advertising campaigns. As a result, people don’t shy away from interacting with your company online as frequently and oftentimes are more receptive to the message you are trying to portray. Take advantage of this feature by reaching out and wishing your customers wonderful days or by thanking them for shopping with your company. You can also provide rewards based on customer interaction with your organization. These rewards could consist of deeper discounts or other relevant rewards for your customer base.
4) You will Find New Customers
Through utilization of marketing strategies specific to each social media website (Ex. Twitter’s use of hashtags or the “@” symbol), companies can find additional segments of the population who may have never heard of their product and thus increase the amount of consumers choosing their product over the competition. While you may not have originally thought about this, the more relevant content you post online, the more likely it is you will be found on powerful search engines such as Google. Therefore it’s important to post frequent, relevant content.
5) You will Make more Money
Through establishing a social media presence for your business, you will find that your customer base is more likely to purchase the products you sell. They do not flock to your social media site purely based on the fact that you have one. Instead, they go to social media sites that provide them with incentives to purchase company products. If you use social media sites such as Twitter, try tweeting coupon codes that are only good for people who have “followed” you. You won’t be disappointed by the amount of people who purchase an item using the code.
6) Your Competition is Using Social Media
In the business world, when you have a product that works, you have competition who seeks to sell their version of your product. Don’t be the organization that falls behind due to the fact that you did not create a social media presence early on, as this can result in a potentially expensive social media campaign to catch up. Get online and beat your competition!
7) Get Insight into your Customer’s Lives
The very nature of social media inclines people to overshare information about themselves and their likes/dislikes. As an organization, you can utilize that information to tailor sales opportunities directly to their needs. You can also determine if there has been a switch in your consumer’s desires, which may result in your company adjusting their marketing strategy as well.
8) Social Media Marketing Arena is (fairly) Level
In “brick and mortar” businesses, traditional ad campaigns can cost millions of dollars, which is often an impossible purchase for a start-up company. Online, all companies start off on equal footing, which makes a huge difference in accessing customers. The companies who thrive to create “viral” content in cyberspace with the cleverest, attention grabbing strategies as well as link worthy content, will increase their website traffic and sales exponentially. You will still need to outwit, out network, and out write your competition and provide superior products but this is the basis of business, isn’t it?
Overall, the new millennium absolutely requires social media presence along with website creation. While initial social media websites, such as Facebook, have been around for quite some time with organizations reaping their benefits, there are still new sites to explore. As a company owner, you are strongly encouraged to establish your organization on multiple social media websites as this will expand your organization’s reach. Who knows, through creating your social media accounts, you may just find a new customer base you did not know existed.
