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How important is it to have a website?

By in SEO, Web Design, Web Development
Custom Website Design

Well before we get started, let’s talk about what exactly a website is. “A website is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server.” (Wikipedia) Some of the most common and well known include Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, etc.

So, what is the purpose of a website?

In general, there are two purposes for a website, to inform or educate and to persuade the user into something. When you want to learn more about a specific item or business you usually use search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, which again are website also.

So, let’s analysis this further. We’ll use Google website as our example. The return search itself provides you the viewer with further information. In almost any case you will find two to three search results at the top with the word “Ad” at the top left. If you the viewer are a business owner, you can’t help but to think to yourself “how do I get to the top of that search result for my product or service.” So by Google providing you the viewer with free information about the subject they have just persuade you as the viewer into looking further into Google Ads, which is how they make their money.

There are 5 types of websites:

  • Ecommerce:

    An E-Commerce website uses a shopping cart component to allow users to add and remove products to their cart, show product prices and details, offer deals, and establish discount. A user can view about a product and purchase it all in one place with an E-Commerce website.

    When creating an e-commerce site, it is important to think about how your visitors will be interacting with your site. Products should be easy for users to find, product pages should provide as much detail about the product or service along with great quality images of the product. As your marketing and advertisement budget grows you may want to invest some money in photoshoots of your products and maybe even some graphic design services for ads and photo editing.

  • Personal Website:

    Personal website are good for someone that would like to establish their own personal self as a brand or list their opinions on specific matters.

    Often personal websites are shared with family, friends, colleagues, or others that share the same opinion or view on a subject. Therefore, personal website is usually fairly simple to complete, and they are made-up of mostly text, images, and maybe a contact form. They often do not need optimization, a huge budget, or a lot of time to complete. They are however, often updated with new content to keep the viewers returning. The money for these sites, if any, is generated through guest appearances, paid advertisement, or subscriptions. Subscription websites are a little more complex though.

  • Portfolio Website:

    Portfolio websites are similar to personal website, whereas the website is about a specific person. However, portfolio websites are often used by designers, writers, videographers, artists and other creative professionals to show case their work. This is often done using slide shows, galleries, or portfolio animations. Usually, portfolio sites are easy to create, but also can become more complex depending on the design and functionality of the site.

  • Business Website

    Small Business to Corporation websites Business websites are typically larger in size. Business websites provide an online presence, allowing people to learn more about the company, its employees, products, services, and culture. The goal of a business website is to turn visitors into customers, investors employees, ambassadors, etc.

    Business websites should match s company’s other marketing and branding materials being. For example logo, color tones, pictures, etc. The tone of the company, vision, and mission should be transformed throughout a business website. Blog Websites: Blog websites are frequently used as a platform to voice an individual’s opinion or a company’s valuable content to the customers blog sites are often updated with relevant articles, videos, and photos meant to inform, entertain, and educate your audience. Blog websites can be used as a stand along site, centered around its content, or built within a larger website.

Should you have a website?

If you have a brand, business, product, or service to market the short answer to this, is YES, but why?

Let’s face it a website is the core of your online marketing activities. If you look at all the marketing channels and techniques, what they actually do is bring visitors to your website, and the main purpose of a website is to turn these visitors into customers. In marketing terms this is called conversion. A bad website will basically cause you to waste money on other marketing methods because you don’t need more visitors if you can’t turn them into customers. So, the better your website is the more visitors that are converted into your customers. This doesn’t really matter if you sell consumer products online, provide local services or build houses.

Many people in the industry call themselves web designers, but they are really just some geeks with just coding knowledge. Without much planning they will pretty quickly create a website for you with lots of information, photos, contacts, but the question is that really the way to turn your visitors into your customers. When looking for a Web Developer you should be looking for someone who is serious about your business website needs.

Here at Alpha Omega Ads, we use a 7-phase process to create a successful website that informs, educates, and persuades it’s viewers.

Here is a video to help you with understanding what goes into a successful website:

Phase 1 Analysis:

Information gathering, identify things like the website purpose, website goals, target audience. We look into some of your competitors and see wat may or may not be working for them and why.

Phase 2 Planning:

Throughout this stage we will plan your sitemap, website structure, and technologies that are and will need to be used.

Phase 3 Design:

When designing your wireframe and visual style will make sure to focus heavily on usability of the user interface (UI) for the best possible user experience (UX).

Phase 4 Gather Content:

The content used is a very important part of the process is choosing the right text, photos and videos all optimized not only for your visitors, but also search engines.

Phase 5 Development:

Development here we actually create website using Hyper Text Make Up language and Cascade Style Sheets with some help from databases and other technologies as well. Our websites are coded to be accessible from a PC or mobile device.

Phase 6 Testing:

Throughout this stage we test all the technical features like code and script, compatibility with all the major browsers, and debugging any issues. In this stage, we also ask ourselves if the website really fulfils its purpose.

Phase 7 Deployment:

Once we have launched the site our job is definitely not done yet. We monitor what is happening from the start up to 6 months after your launch of your website. Enabling us to fix any possible deficiencies in your site.

After your website has deployed future maintenance and updates can be set up for additional charges, based on your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual need.

As you have just seen web design is very complex process, but we believe this is how website should be done and our customers agree. If you share our passion for high quality websites? Let’s get in touch.

Did you want to schedule a meeting to discuss your website need? Get in touch with us schedule an online consultation.

What is E-mail Marketing?

By in Email Marketing, Online Marketing
Email Marketing

You have probably heard of email marketing and are wondering what exactly email marketing is and why you should be taking advantage of it.

Throughout this article we will discuss:

So, what is email marketing?

Email marketing is a powerful marketing tool that uses a direct digital marketing approach. Through use of email, you can promote your business’s products or services. Helping to keep your customers aware of new products or services you offer and engaged with your website and social media platforms.

The history behind emailing and email marketing.

We must first talk about the history behind electronic mail more commonly known today as email. The first email dated back to 1971 by a Computer Engineer named Ray Tomlinson. The message he sent was nothing more than a string of letters and numbers with no real meaning behind them. This is when usage for the “@” symbol was introduced.

On May 1, 1978, the first unsolicited mass email was sent out by a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp by the name of Gary Thuerk. With a product launching on December 20th, of that year he wanted to reach as many people as possible to let them know about this new product. So, with a list of about 400 emails, Mr. Thuerk sent the first mass email. Through this email Thuerk said they sold between $13 million and S14 million worth of the product.

How has emailing grown since then?

Though it is one of the oldest established communication methods still being used today it is still largely being used. In fact, currently 333.2 billion emails are sent and received daily. Though social media has grown quickly in popularity over the years it does not measure up to the growth of email users. For example, Facebook at the time of this post has 2.93 billion users. Meanwhile it is forecasted that by the end of 2022 there will be over 4.3 billion email users. Simply put not everyone likes social media but everyone has an email address which is why emailing remains to be a popular form of communication.

What does this all mean? How does email marketing measure up to other marketing methods, you ask?

Well Pay Per Click Ads are great for bringing in new customers but poorly applicable when it comes to maintaining a relationship with the new and existing customers. On the other hand, email marketing can be used for both.

With businesses currently seeing a ROI of $32-$46 for every $1 spent in email marketing, email marketing plays a pivotal role in your business’s successful marketing strategy. It increases brand awareness, helps to build trust and a relationship with the customer, while keeping them engaged and generating leads.

Email marketing can help you build a relationship with your audience while also driving traffic to your blog, social media, or anywhere else you’d like folks to visit. You can even segment your emails and target users by demographic so you’re only sending people the messages they want to see most.

Here is a video to help you with understanding what email marketing is and how it helps you:

So, how do you get started with email marketing?

But how do you build an audience of people to send emails to as part of your internet marketing efforts in the first place? First you must build your subscription list. There are plenty of ways to do this, but the most common is often to offer a gift of some sort. For example, a discount on a product or service, or maybe free shipping for signing up to your subscription list. Send them the gift promised to them to their email address and now you have their email address for future email marketing campaigns.

Now that you have an audience what do you do with them?

As your audience grows you can use emails to have conversations with your customers. Email is a great marketing tool, but it can help your business in other ways, too. Consider taking the occasional break from your regular marketing content to send out surveys, tell you customers how much you appreciate them after buying from you, following up after an abandoned cart, or just say hello. Not only does it give your audience a chance to provide you with valuable feedback, but it also allows them to get more insight into the person behind the business.

Email marketing Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s:

Email marketing also allows you to run A/B tests of a subject line or call to action to identify the best performing message by using email marketing software that can also be configured to easily send out emails. Contact a member of Alpha Omega Ads today to get started on your marketing email campaign.

Don’ts:

Only send when you really need to. Once someone has trusted you with their email address, don’t abuse that trust. Flooding your audience’s inbox with superfluous emails will cause them to lose interest or unsubscribe entirely. Focus on sending them relevant, engaging messages about the stuff they like, and they’ll be loyal for a long time to come.

Email marketing on your own?

Well, here are some well known platforms that help you grown your subscription list and you need no experience to create your first email marketing campaign.

  • MailChimp
  • Constant Contact
  • Sendinblue
  • Benchmark

To list a few.

The moral of the story is though email marketing is imperative to any small to large business or organization. When used strategically it can show a huge return on investment. If you ever find that your business or organization needs help with growing your subscriber list, or maintaining an email relationship with your clients, Alpha Omega Ads is here to help. Email marketing is just one of the many services we offer. Schedule a consultation to see if we can help with your marketing campaign. For more articles like this subscribe to our subscription list below.

5 Top Online Marketing Tips

By in Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tag , , , , , , , , ,

We are often asked how to market a business online. So, here we have come up with 5 marketing tips to help entrepreneurs grow their business and presence online.

Provide Valuable Content

Have you ever heard of the term “you got to give a little to get a little”, well this is exactly the case as a business. New and current clients don’t want to be just fed a sales pitch.

Instead, provide them with valuable content. The top information within your industry. This will help to creating a great relationship between the customer and your business. Some great ways to do this is with blog, newsletter, workshops, events, and so on. Remember you want your customers to come to your regarding anything in your industry.

Maintain Social Media Channels

Social media posts can reach customers in a more personal and intimate way than an online banner ad can. When you create content for social media accounts, you will find you can build trust with customers who do not respond to other forms of online marketing.

Get your reviews up

Once people see your marketing practices in action, they’ll want to check out your reputation before they invest in your products or services. If you really want to impress potential customers, you need strong reviews. People trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Take the time to invest in client testimonials and get listed on platforms and other sites that are relevant to your industry.

Be accessible online

To follow up online reviews, you need to be accessible when people search for your services or industry online. If people can’t find you through Google, you lose a ton of business to your competitors.

Based on keyword research to determine which terms should be used to help with organic ranking in search engines. Based on this information you can determine which strategy is best to get our business seen online. This may include SEO, PC, social media marketing, etc. The bottom line is that if customers can’t find you online, how do you expect them to call, email or get in touch with you?

Make Performance Analysis an Ongoing Strategy

Performance Analysis is important to optimize. Often companies wait until the end of the marketing campaign to analyze how it has done. This limits the potential benefits of the performance analysis.

Instead of relying on past performance to inform future efforts, adjustments should be made to campaigns based on real time insights and data. We analyze the performance of your marketing efforts and make changes as needed throughout your campaigns.

If you have any questions on these 5 marketing aspects, don’t hesitate to contact our team at Alpha Omega Ads! We’re here to help your business succeed.