How to use Google my business for local seo

Google my business is a very fast and easy way for small businesses to make their online presence on Google. You can get your business page for free. You need to visit Google my business page and create a account there. At the end of the signup process, Google will verify your business using a 5-6 digit unique verification code. Google send this to you over the phone or via a postcard to confirm that you are owner of business. Once you’ve filled out your basic business info and been verified, Google my Business will add your company’s information to Google local search results. 

Google my business offers a lot of benefits to local businesses:

·         Create an online presence

·         Find new customers

·         Allow your current customers to find you online

·         Allow reviews from customers and you can respond them

·         Create a base of your local seo

Some important points to consider while creating Google my business page:

·         Enter your business address carefully

·         Use pictures & logo of your business

·         Enter accurate business information

·         Use good quotes to describe your business

·         Keep posting discounts and offers on your business page

·         Enter local area code carefully

If you want local search traffic, you need to make sure that you have completed all compulsory effort for that. Google my business can help you to make your online presence but there is more to do. You need to optimize website pages according to local seo techniques. Here are some of suggestions:

·         On-site: You should use your key location in various places on website such as content, meta heading and descriptions, title tags, footer etc.

·         Off-site: List your website on various local directories and portals.

·         Review: Ask customers for reviews on your Google business page. Because positive reviews can provide you huge benefit.

·         Share Content: At last continuously share useful content related to your products.

(Vantage Webtech)

Why typography is so important in web design?

Typography is known as an art and technique, which is used to arrange text on a website. You can say typography is a combination of font, size, spaces and color. Quality typography can increase written communication of your web page. Typography allows you to increase you conversion rate easily and impress website visitors with words & design. It is your duty to put maximum effort to complete the typographical points in your website designs.

 Tips to maintain good typography on a website:

·         Font Size: Small fonts are hard to read on lower resolution screens. Make sure you are using a font size that is easy to read on any screen resolution.

·         Titles and Subtitles: Use titles and sub headings for your content. It makes it easy to understand for visitors.

·         Avoid use of justified text as it can lead bad white spacing on your page.

·         Color: Use high contrast colors for text.

·         Length: A very long or short line may be distracting. For optimum readability you need to keep length of text between 40-80 characters, including spaces.

·         Simple: Use simple fonts on website if you are not much experienced in web design. Because only an expert web designer can use variety of fonts effectively.

Importance of typography in web design

Typography is very useful in web design; you can use it as a tool for improving users experience and usability of your website or either can allow them to focus on your content. Good typography design guides people and introduce your products/ service with amazing content on your website. Whenever people your website, there are chances they will immediately look at the text. That’s why it’s important to use good typography design techniques.

These reasons are why typography is so important. If text used in a design is too small, too cramped and it irritates the viewer, then definitely such kind of webpage won’t get a second chance to get attention of visitor.

(Vantage Webtech)

What is a well designed website and why it is importance for your business?

 Web design can be difficult as it’s not about how good it looks, but you should also make it easy to use. Websites that are not well designed and provide poor experience to user can hurt you with high bounce rate, low conversion rate and loss in business.  It’s important to understand the characteristics of good design that can make or break effectiveness of your online investment. Here are some key elements of a well designed website:

Visual Appearance: A good website must be visually professional, appealing and simple. Keep in mind, your website is reflecting your business, products and services. It may be your first impression on your customers. Your goal is to generate a positive impression and keep visitors on website. Good use of color, easy to read text and quality photography can make your website easy to navigate.

Typography: Text is most important element of your website. Remember that your audience is looking for information that will help them make a decision, so content on your website must be informative and relevant. It’s important to consider elements like font size, spacing, line length, font color, paragraphing etc.

Navigation: Every component of your website should work quickly and correctly. Your site must be easy to read, navigate and understand. Navigation means to direct user where you are now and where to go next.  Some key navigation element includes:

·         Keep your site simple and organized

·         Fast load pages

·         Create links to minimize need of page scroll

·         Use a consistent layout

·         Use long text along with links

Functionality: Make sure all component of your website is working properly because broken or poor constructed components can frustrate your visitors.  Everything should work properly including links, search box, forms etc.

Importance of well designed website

Website is now compulsory for every small to large businesses. A well designed website is known as a valuable investment.  Following are some advantages of having a well designed website:

·         Highlight your expertise with ease

·         Increase conversion rate

·         Benefit in seo

·         Reduce your maintenance time

·         Better first impression on visitors

·         Better way to  provide effective communication

·         Reduces other promotional cost

·         Provides time saving experience to customers

These are only few advantages we explain in this post, I am sure you could think of other advantages to a well designed site. Please feel free to suggest them in the comments below.

(Vantage Webtech)

How to improve conversions of your ecommerce site

One of the fastest ways any online store can increase revenue is to increase conversions rate of website.  Here are some tips on how you can improve conversion of an e-commerce website.

Make Your Website Homepage a Conversion Magnet: The homepage is like a store front and entry-point of your site. This is the area you exactly need to work because here you can convert visitors into buyers. Your visitors here will decide whether they continue to website or leave, their decision depends on how you welcome them. You can welcome visitor effectively if you:

·         Provide them search Box

·         Organize the navigation bar

·          Remember user search and provide related recommendations

·         Have an easy to use product categories group

·         Show discount offers clearly

Free Shipping: 70% of online buyers are looking for free shipping. Having a large shipping fee will definitely scare your customers and have a negative impact on your conversion rate. You should include shipping cost in price and offer your customers free delivery.

Easy to Navigate Product Page: Navigation should be descriptive. Mostly use generic labels and buttons, which can easily communicate with users. When your navigation shows featured products or discounted products, it gets user attention and forces them to make a purchase.

Limited Time Offers: You could offer limited-time discounts to encourage visitors to buy before the deal ends. Highlight the amount they will save by buying now, the time left before the deal expires, and the numbers of people who have already bought that deal to encourage them to click.

Offer Quick Delivery: Online customers are impatient. Long delivery time can make a negative impact on your conversion rate. Offer your customers quick delivery time to boost your conversion rate.

Trust Signals: Try to offer product quality and price guarantee for customers. Another way of generating trust is by adding secure payment options and show genuine reviews of your company.

Conversion rate of a website is hugely important because when you increase your conversion rate, it means you are increasing your revenue.

(Vantage Webtech)

What you need to know to attract more customers to your e-commerce website

As an on-line merchant, it is essential to make your E-commerce website attractive for customers. You won’t succeed unless you can attract customers to your E-commerce website. Acquiring customers for an on-line business may be difficult and time consuming process .Below we listed most effective ways to make it easy to gets lots of visitors.

Use a Responsive E-commerce Site: Now days, customers are using mobiles, tablets, iphones etc. for on-line shopping. You need to reach your customers on all devices, if you don’t then you are losing customers and that means low ROI.  You can also provide them mobile app to feel them comfortable with you. If you are using responsive website, it will also reduces your bounce rate and benefit you with high search engine ranking. Make sure you are using a website design which can be easily accessed from all these devices.

Make Your Website Beautiful: Your website is like a representation of your business and products. That’s why it has to be beautiful and professional if you really want to attract customers. You have to be aware that a user’s purchase decision is usually made just within first 5 second on your website. So make your store beautiful and easy to use as a beautiful store is always considered more reliable and trustworthy.

Post Regularly On Social Media Channels: Social media channels are one of free promotion tools. Post regularly on your social accounts it can increase your brand value among customers.  So, social media is a great marketing channel at no financial expense.

·         Facebook: May be your customer’s want you follow on facebook. You should create your business page on facebook, engage customers and catch their attention.

·         Google Plus: Create a google plus page for your business it’s free.

·         Twitter: Start twitting on twitter. Its simplicity makes it one of most effective ways to engage with your targeted audience. You can also use twitter card for advertising purpose.

·         LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the office block of internet. After setup your business profile on LinkedIn, you have an opportunity to make a link with other companies, suppliers, related websites and people.

·         Pinterest: Create a pinterest page and enable rich pins to your account.

·         Blogger: Use blogging as a brand awareness tool. It can provide you quality back links and targeted traffic.

Prepare Email List For Marketing: Building up an email list for marketing is important. It is effective solution to attract customers and make repeat sales from your customers. Some of most common email ideas are:

·         Emails about new products

·         Mails about promos and offers

·         Recommend similar product after customer made a purchase

·         Send email to those client’s who haven’t been active since a long while with discount coupons to  make them revisit your website

You don’t just need traffic. You need visitors that convert into customers and subscribers. An email list will help you achieve that and allow you to work on your subscribers and drive sales with them.

Huge traffic generation is a continuous struggle for most E-commerce websites. You cannot simply rely on SEO and then sit back and wait for results. You need to create high quality content about products and offer discounts and promos to attract new visitors, convert them into email subscribers and then into paid customers.

(Vantage Webtech)

Ghost Buttons - Web Design Trend of 2015

Ghost buttons are the transparent rectangular and square shape buttons which keep the background visible. These buttons are suitable for websites with large images. These buttons are called ghost because of their transparency.  Most ghost buttons are larger than the normal buttons, but they never obstruct the screen area behind them. Ghost button’s features are:

·         Transparent with background showing through

·         Light font for call-to-action

·         Surrounded by a thin outline

·         Larger than traditional buttons

·         Contains simple text

·         The colour is often black or white

Such types of buttons are used on landing page style website because they can easily capture visitor’s eye and also provide “call to action” response. These are very simple to use, a beginner level designer can also easily deal with them.

Where to put ghost button on your website?

Ghost buttons are commonly placed at centre of homepage or landing page as they can get high visibility here. It’s not a necessary condition. It’s something common because when entering a new website, human eye focus on centre of page for a few seconds.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages?

Some of the pros of ghost buttons are:

·         Clean and simple design

·         Easy design and implementation

·         Ghost buttons create a focal point for calls-to-action without being obtrusive

·         Ghost buttons gives a simple look to your website

·         These buttons works with almost any kind of design

Some of the cons of ghost buttons are:

·         Ghost buttons can frustrate users because they fall too far into background

·         Difficult to recognize for new users

·         Can’t used with flashy or high contrast images

·         Difficult to position

As such, these buttons make the design look more delicate and attractive, but require to be incorporated carefully. If these buttons are used in correct way can be good for design. 

(Vantage Webtech)

How to make your ecommerce site easy to use

Most successful ecommerce websites are those which are easiest for customers to understand and use. To be successful, ecommerce websites have to deliver a good end-user experience to its customers. If you want to be a success online seller, you should optimize your website for ease of use. Avoid broken links and always use suitable categories for your products.

  Create Easy Checkout Process: Making it as easy as possible for your customers to pay is essential for increasing conversions and sales. Following tips can help you make your checkout process easy and effective:

·         Use one step checkout process

·         Provide several payment methods

·         Don’t force user to create account for payment (allow customers to make payment without requiring a account)

·         Don’t redirect people to another websites

·         Make error easy to fix and don’t ever ask customer to resubmit information again

·         Only ask you visitor for essential information

·         Never distract visitors (Don’t put any advertisement to your checkout page)

Make All Call to Action Buttons/Labels Visible: Don’t leave visitor guessing what to do next. When someone adds items to their cart, make it clear they can continue to checkout or continue shopping. Remember you have made so many efforts to bring this crowd to your site; you can’t let people go for poor website optimization issues.

Make Your Website Responsive: The fact is that more and more people use smart phones, tablets and mobile device to use internet. You need to reach your customers on any device. This means you should use a website design which can be easily accommodate to these devices. It will provide you higher volume of sale to your ecommerce business.

Use Shortcuts: No page on your website should be more than three clicks away from any other page. Shortcut should be

·         Buy the product

·         Related products

·         Search for another product

·         Purchase product and add to shopping cart

·         Manage your account

·         Go to checkout process

(Vantage Webtech)

Optimizing your website for web visitors

Website optimization is the art of creating and continuously improving website visitor experience and conversion rates, resulting in high visitor satisfaction and high repeat visit rates. It doesn’t matter how much you optimize your site rankings in google if your website isn’t fully optimized to meet your visitor’s needs. Website optimization is often less expensive then search engine optimization campaigns. Because of that, website optimization often gives you better ROI than search engine optimization. If you properly optimize your website and make it user friendly then you may have an opportunity to convert a large crowd into customers, Otherwise they are just website visitor. Website optimization affects your visitor when they arrive on your website and how they convert for your goals.

How tooptimize your website?

 Website Load Time: When a website does not load quickly, it affects visitor’s behavior, which leads to decreases in sales conversions and revenue. Because nothing can be more irritating then waiting for page to load, so check your website’s home page load time, checkout process load time, and conversion rates at regular intervals. You can increase your website load time in following ways:

·         Move to a faster server

·         Use a CDN

·         Compress images and text

One way to improve user experience is to move a faster server. But if your site has a large amount of content to display, you must use content delivery networks as they can help to reduce bandwidth. You can also use compressed images and content for better results. A server does not have to send out as much data this way.

Make Your Website Responsive: Your website visitors will definitely expect the same type of experience on their mobile device as they do on their computers. So make sure your website is responsive and working properly on all devices like mobiles, tablets, laptop etc.

Improve Navigation Experience: Understand the expectation of visitors and make your website easy to navigate, don’t make them struggle with your menu structure. Divide categories clearly, make all navigation elements clickable links, use accurate navigation titles, ensure every clickable image has ALT text and provide search feature.

Once you optimize your website only then engage in search engine optimization process. Otherwise if you do, you will be wasting your time and money. 

New features in wordpress 4.1

Wordpress Version 4.1 was released on 18 December, 2014 with new features and improvements.  This version of wordpress was named “Dinah” in honor of jazz singer Dinah Washington. This new version comes with several improvements such as new default theme, an improved writing experience and plugin recommendations. Wordpress 4.1 has a renewed focus on writing. The wordpress team has introduced a new distraction-free writing mode.

Here are some of changes/features you will see in new wordpress version:

·         Twenty Fifteen Theme: Twenty fifteen theme is clean, blog focused and designed for clarity. This theme is designed using mobile first approach. It is responsive theme, so it looks good for any device and any screen resolution. It’s straightforward typography suitable for multiple languages. Twenty Fifteen looks best when using large, featured images.

Twenty Fifteen is a two-column theme with a focus on content. It is light in color with a left hand sidebar and content in the right column. It also ships with five different color schemes, ranging from dark to pink that are accessible from within the theme customizer.

·         Plugin Recommendations: When you browse to add new plugins screen, you’ll see a new recommended tab. Recommendations are based on data from thousands of wordpress sites about plugins that are commonly used together.

·         Distraction-Free Writing Mode: Wordpress version 4.1 also lets you concentrate on writing content without distractions with distraction free writing mode. Enable distraction free writing mode and the surrounding interface will fade away when you start typing. It letting you focuses on your writing. To bring back the menu, move the mouse cursor to the left or right of the editor.

·         Inline Image Editing Toolbar: This feature allows you to align your images properly on a blog post. With wordpress 4.1, you can click on the image and select the alignment directly from it. It provides a quick and easy way to align an image or access additional editing options.

·         Choose a Diffrenent Language: Wordpress 4.1 has been translated into over 40 languages. You can now choose a language for your site at any time by visiting the general settings.

·         Logout All Session With One Button: Wordpress 4.1 includes a new Session UI. The UI shows up on the profile page when wordpress detects more than one active session. When pressed, the button logs out of every session except for the active one. This is useful for those times when users might have forgotten to log off from a laptop, phone, or public computer.

One page websites

One page website design trend started in 2013 and becomes more popular now days. A one page website uses just one html page to display the whole data about a business. The content is further divided in sections/parts on single page only. One page websites are suitable for small businesses because as a small business owner you may not have the need to fill many pages with content about your services.

A single page website has many advantages over multipage websites:

·         Benefit in SEO: Single page website design promises a good SEO benefit – high search engine ranking. Inbound links on a single page, fast loading speed and single quality page can benefit single website with better google pr rank.

·         Reduce Cost: Because one page sites tend to be smaller, they will save your web space and bandwidth, which will in turn reduce your hosting costs.

·         Fast Loading Speed: Single page websites are lighter in size then multipage websites. It will surely leave multipage heavy websites behind if you count the downloading time. Fast loading means users can visit your website in a very short time.

·         High Quality: If you prefer quality over quantity, then single page website is the platform which can do that. You have only one page to maintain so obviously it will get all your attention.  

·         Happy User Experience: Single page web design is all about the beauty of creativity that everyone appreciates. And fast loader speed allows user to access Information in just a click. What can better than this user experience? They will surely share their experience with others.

·         Low Maintenance: Making a change or adding a feature in one page website is a lot easier than multipage websites.

Single page websites can be great for new sites and special projects. These websites are best suitable for small businesses. 

Make your website more trust worthy

A new visitor to your website will decide whether to stay on site or leave within the first 15 seconds. You build your site, seo optimized it and visitors are coming to it but still facing problem to convert visitors into customers.  The problem can be that you need to make your website more trust worthy. Main purpose of website should be earning customer’s confidence. If the website appears disreputable, customers will take their business elsewhere.

There are three main areas of a website that you should work on in order to make it trust worthy.

·         Homepage and landing pages

·          Your product/service pages

·         Check out process

Website’s homepage/landing page is the first impression on its visitors, which means it is the first area you need to work if you want to avoid high bounce rate. Build your reputation by adding trustworthy detail on homepage such as when your company was found, show testimonials, show how many customers you have, show your social following, include live chat option etc.

 Once your site visitors have looked over your home page, hopefully they will move forward and look through your products/services. You must set up your product pages in a way that encourages trust in you products and you can do this by providing high quality images for products, show reviews and rating of products, display your shipping information, highlight your return policy etc.

When people selected products into shopping cart you must provide them secure and trustworthy payment options. Clearly display your security system and up to date SSL certificate.  

Remember these points if you want to make your website more trustworthy-

·         Include contact information on home page such as phone numbers, hours of operation, business mailing address, email addresses etc.

·         Provide about us page.

·         Include testimonials page on your website.

·         Provide most secure purchase to your visitors

·         Place certification and memberships details

·         Make sure that website load speed is fast

·         Allow reviews and rating for products/services

·         Include a live chat option on homepage

·         Show your social followings

So get to work now, do a little bit each day and you will have surely optimized your website for trust, and you will see your bounce rates decrease, conversion rates increase, and your shopping cart abandonment decrease.