Tips to Provide the Best Website Experience, Page 22 of 25

1. Affordability

Why continually pay large amounts of money for online advertising when, with some up front effort and cost, you can benefit from ranking at the top of organic listings for relevant search terms? Unlike with paid ads, your traffic does not suddenly drop drastically when you discontinue an advertising campaign. Of course you will need to put in some effort to maintain a top ranking, but once you get recognized by Google as a top website for certain search terms, you are likely to stay there for a long while.

2. Increased Visibility and Traffic

As you optimize your site for relevant search terms, you will see the number of impressions (people who view your site as a result of their searches) increase steadily. Google searches actually provide visitors who searched for the terms targeted by your website. These people are actually looking for your product, therefore bringing prospective clients directly to you.

3. Improved Brand Credibility

People searching for products and services on Google tend to feel that the highest ranked sites are the most reputable ones in the industry. As you move up in the Google rankings, more and more people will visit your site, which further builds your reputation and improves your rankings even more. On the other hand, many people find ads annoying, and they do not provide any credibility for the company placing the ad.

4. Quantifiable Results

With analytics and reporting tools you will be able to determine your position for various search terms, as well as website impressions and visits. You can also discover additional search terms people are using to find your website, which may lead to ideas for new products or services and additional opportunities for optimization.

5. Competitive Edge

There are over 250 million websites, and you need a way to make yours stand out from the competition. Implementing an SEO strategy is an essential step to ensure that you are ranked higher than your competitors for relevant search terms so that potential clients are more likely to visit your site first and hopefully convert into a sale before they even get the chance to visit a competitor’s website.

-Leslie Koenig

So you’ve decided to develop a mobile application for your business? That’s fantastic! Your business is about to grow in some new and exciting ways, but now that you’ve decided to take this next big step, how are you going to go about doing this? There are tons of development companies, chances are, there is probably a plethora in your area, or maybe you’re thinking all you need is a freelance developer. How can you tell what is right for your needs?

As with any two comparable items, there are pros and cons to both, but in the long run, it is apparent that it is more beneficial to stick with a professional development team than a free lance designer (or developer) for several reasons, most of which will help your company long term, and not just getting your mobile application off the ground.

Just like with any purchase, when you shop brands, you pay more, but you are not only paying for the product, you’re paying for the guarantee of quality as well. The same goes for an app development company. You’re going to pay a little more, but the code you are getting is backed by a business that has customer service standards and best practices it adheres too. On the downside, a business with set standards might have a bit of red tape to avoid when it comes to what it is that you want, whereas a freelance designer is not confined to regulations.

Being free from the confines of a company’s policies and being less expensive than those development companies are actually about the only positives that a freelance developer has over that of a development business. With a development firm, you receive input from an entire team of knowledgeable developers, whereas a freelance developer is limited to his/her own knowledge, and even worse, often times freelance solutions can be outdated. With a professional team you receive quality service from a group of knowledgeable programmers and designers with the most up to date information.

Learn how Contensive can help you with develop powerful, cost effective mobile applications.

Meghann Kinshella

Our lead generation program has been very successful to date. The two most important factors for us are simplicity and tracking. It has to be simple to get off the ground, and we track results to interactively improve. Tracking is like monitoring, anything you are not tracking is probably broken and you don’t know it yet.

Here are five simple guidelines that helped us get started.

Develop a Flowchart that Describes Your Process

This is what we use:

Impressions - all the people in your audience, the people you reached

(convert to) prospects - those that noticed you and clicked through

(convert to) leads - were willing to surrender information about themselves

(convert to) qualified leads - potential customers

(convert to) sales - you convinced them to purchase

It does not have to be perfect. For instance, not all sales will come from qualified leads, and not all qualified leads will come from leads, etc. There is time later to refine. Compromise now to get started.

Follow a disciplined SEO regiment

No matter how you convert impressions to prospects (attract visitors to your site), the search engine keyword concept applies. These are phrases that are commonly used to describe your marketing message, your value-add.

Start by selecting relevant, productive keyword phrases. The Google Keyword planner in Google Adwords is a great tool to find phrases. Optimize pages on your site for those phrases.

Create special pages tuned to specific phrases that may not be on your site menuing. These are your landing pages. Landing pages are there for only one purpose, convert prospects. Be sure they are included in your SEO site map.

Convert Prospects to Leads with a Call To Action (CTA)

You likely have at least three groups of prospects; leads, qualified leads, and the rest. When a prospect lands on your site, be sure you always give them an appropriate CTA. If they land on your landing page, give leads and qualified leads unique CTAs, and limit other distractions like your site menu, etc.

A lead might click a button that offers more information about your product. A qualified lead would be more likely to click a button asking for someone to contact them.

When they click the action, use forms to collect contact information, or at least their email address.

Nurture Your Leads into Qualified Leads

If a prospect asks to download your white paper on weight-loss, add them to a list of leads interested in weight loss. You might have a dozen or more topics on your site. Then periodically email offers to your ”topic mailing lists”. Have them respond to similar landing pages, encouraging them to take the next level of offer and fill out a qualified lead form.

Call Your Qualified Leads Quickly

When they are at the point of asking for information, they will likely ask other people as well.

-Jay Kidwell

“You know, like nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.” - Napolean Dynamite

A web application development company will bring with it a diverse set of skills that an application with a varied set of features will benefit from. When using a freelancer the skill levels tend to be focused and vertical. That means when your requirements go outside their comfort level you are paying for their education either in time (project delays), money (extra time spent on the project to get up to speed that gets charged through), or customer satisfaction (post launch bug fixes).

Number Two - Communication

“Two monologues do not make a dialogue.” -Jeff Daly

A Web development company has people whose job it is to speak to the client at the client’s level, the project manager. The ability of the project manager to speak “geek” and “non-geek” will make sure that the client’s needs are correctly translated to the programmers. Plus their job is to represent the client to the development company. Most freelancers don’t have the benefit of being “bilingual” and once immersed in the project it is a difficult task to be able to objectively look at an issue from a client’s perspective. And if you decide to use an offshore freelancer, you are dealing with additional language and time barriers in communications

Number Three - The Schedule

Frodo: “You’re Late”
Gandalf: “A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to” -Lord of the Rings

Freelancers are very limited in how they can address deadline deficiencies. There are only so many hours in the day and one person can only work within them (24 hours can only mean 24 man hours). A web development company has the flexibility of re-allocating resources to turn that same 24 hour period into as many man hours as needed to get a project back on track. Often, web development company contracts have penalties for self inflicted time delays, but it is difficult to enforce deadlines on freelancers especially offshore ones.

Number Four - The “Done and Run” Syndrome

“Brave Sir Robin ran away...bravely ran away away...When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.” -Monty Python and the Holy Grail Minstrels

Our experience has shown us that most freelancer’s interest lasts as long as the application launch. They make their money while working on a project not supporting a project. As the production starts to wind down more often than not they are already thinking about their next job. A web development company lives off of their reputation its not something that can be hidden or easily changed. At Contensive our job doesn't end when the project is finished, we provide ongoing support, training and maintenance to support your application’s life-cycle not just it’s birth.

-Dwayne McGowan

How can you drive more traffic to your website? Easy. Follow these tips for search engine optimization (SEO).

1.Select Relevant Keywords.

Research and develop a set of targeted keywords that are relevant to your business, product or service. You can then analyze how frequently these terms are searched using Google Adwords or another keyword research tool. Different pages should be optimized for unique keywords, and any images should include “alt tags” so that search engines can relate them to the targeted phrases.

2.Develop Quality Content and Update It Often.

Don’t just develop pages stuffed with keywords. Provide useful, informative content to attract new visitors and to keep current users returning. The best way to maintain a high ranking in Google is to constantly provide new, high quality content. A great way to constantly add fresh content is by introducing a blog or news section to your website.

3.Keep Your Website Design Clean and Simple.

Don’t get carried away with animation or graphic files that prevent your web pages from loading quickly. Remember, graphic files cannot be read by search engine robots, so they are not useful for optimizing search results. Keep your website easy to navigate and clutter free so that it is appealing to both website visitors and search engine bots.

4.Submit Your Website URL to Online Directories.

Submit your website’s URL at online directories such as Google Places, which displays localized search results. When submitting your URL in different directories, ensure that all your contact information is consistent throughout and choose directories with an audience that your product or service is targeting.

5.Create Inbound Links with Social Media and Complimentary Websites.

Take advantage of social network sites, blog comments and forum discussions to create inbound links to your website. You can also contact complimentary websites with high Google rankings to set up links to your website from theirs and vice versa.

-Leslie Koenig

Whether your business has never had a company website before, or you are just looking to spice things up a bit, Contensive is ready to get down on your level and understand what it is your business needs. Here is a quick overview of what exactly it is that we’re putting on the table.

1.) Website Development: Our Contensive team is prepared to start your shiny new website from scratch or, if you have an existing website, just revamp a few things like updating content or functionality.

2.) Mobile Application Development: Contensive has the ability to customize mobile apps that integrate with your existing online resources, giving you the ability to share data, improve communication, stay connected, and keeping with the ever growing industry of the mobile web.

3.) Custom Web Development: Instead of a standard application for managing your website that does not differ between clients, Contensive has the ability to customize your web application to the needs of your business. This enables you to gather information faster and manage your content easier, not to mention the program is designed specifically for your business and its websites functionality.

4.) Inbound Marketing and Content Strategy: Contensive works with the SEO Content of your website in order to create more traffic to your website. It also works with landing pages (links to hidden pages that allow potential leads to sign up for information, newsletters etc.) Generating the proper SEO content for your webpage is the key to being in a Google top ten search and generating more traffic to your website

According to a fact published by The International Telecommunication Union, more than 96% of the world's population has a mobile subscription. That more than likely includes you and I, and,undoubtedly has us expecting more interaction with those devices. Whether that "more" includes productivity, entertainment, or social media - we need it.

As manufacturers produce bigger, stronger, faster devices, developers are seeing a growing demand on their skill sets as well. This may have you thinking "great another version of birds vs. pigs," but in actuality, mobile enterprise apps are on the rise as well. In fact, over the last few years a major mobile app market claimed a growth of nearly 200% when it came to interest in mobile enterprise applications.

Now that we have a new way of thinking about how we communicate on a daily basis, expansion in productivity and entertainment by way of mobile applications will more than likely continue to be the everyday way of thinking.

Joshua Foster