3 Ways That Site Answers, Feedback and Customer Service Are Winning Over New Customers

Long gone are the days when brands could simply rest on their laurels, blast out marketing messages, and wait for the customer orders to come pouring in. That’s just not how business works anymore, nor should it.

For any business to succeed in the modern economy, you have to recognize and embrace the incredible power of two-way customer communication. Just as much as you want to tell potential customers about your products and services, you should be just as eager to hear what they have to ask and say too.

If a potential customer can’t quickly and easily find the answer to their question, they’re apt to look elsewhere. Conversely, by capturing that initial interest and nurturing honest and open communication with site answers, you could be winning over a new customer by building the foundation for a long-term relationship. As you know, repeat customers are the best customers, and that sort of positive relationship is often founded on great customer service.

But, as a business, how do you ensure that your customers are being heard in a timely and effective manner? How can you deliver top-notch site answers in a seamless and responsive way? Here are three solutions to consider.

#1. Wix Answers

You might already be familiar with Wix and its powerful website builder solution. The company found that it needed an appropriately robust yet accessible site answers solution, and that’s how its subsidiary offering, Wix Answers, was born. Wix Answers is open to mass markets, including at the enterprise level where scale is critically important, making it an ideal solution for enterprise and SME businesses that need a robust, all-in-one customer service solution.

On its surface, Wix Answers appears to be a help desk solution. And indeed, it has a great ticketing and support system so that customers can conveniently ask for the help they need, and customer support staff can respond to these queries in a timely and efficient manner. But, Wix Answers goes well beyond that.

At its core, the basic components include a ticketing system, a call center, and a knowledge base. What’s remarkably useful here is that all three components are intelligently integrated with one another. Many businesses waste tons of time learning and configuring 3rd party plug-ins that integrate into their help desk platform, in order to create a perfectly customized solution that fits their needs. Since many help desk solutions on the market are siloed, in a sense that they offer various components that need assembling, Wix Answers comes off as extremely handy for businesses that want to focus on the customer, instead of the customer support platform.

Wix Answers offers advanced SEO capabilities so that you can create some extremely effective SEO-oriented knowledge-base pages. By targeting specific keywords, the knowledge-base web pages can not only reduce the number of support tickets but can actually attract new leads who search for specific questions on Google.

Furthermore, even if a customer cannot find the answer on an existing knowledge-base page, a support chat widget can appear to initiate a conversation. When the customer types in a question, a ticket automatically opens on the agent’s dashboard (that is if there’s no existing ticket for the customer in question). Following the chat, if the support agent wishes to talk over the phone, the call can be initiated from within the ticket and recorded for later review. Support agents can add new entries to the knowledge base and make feature requests to the development team according to the conversation with the customer, all from the same interface.

This all works as part of Wix Answers’ One Tab ticketing system. Traditionally, customer support staff would need to navigate through multiple tabs as part of the support process. They might need one to see past tickets, another to ask for help from other staff, another to look for relevant articles, another to connect to the call center, and so on. With Wix Answers, all these touch points are integrated and easily accessible from just one ticketing tab. This decluttering makes it far easier for support agents to offer the best site answers possible.

The knowledge base, ticketing system, and call center all work together seamlessly. Bundles including all three products start from $30/month.

#2. Ultimate FAQ

Do you already use WordPress to power your website? The content management system is incredibly popular among all sorts of site owners, from bloggers to eCommerce professionals. While you could create a basic page inside WordPress to list the most frequently asked questions from your customers, the Ultimate FAQ plugin by Etoile Web Design is a purpose-built solution that delivers more.

Whether or not you’re on board with the Gutenberg block interface and design, it’s good to know that this WordPress plugin has been created to support that style of design for displaying site answers. You can choose from several different layouts, including a default layout with expandable text and a colored blocks layout for greater contrast, among others. You also have the option to display all site answers, instead of having them as expandable text blocks. In addition, there is a built-in search function so users can search for their question rather than sifting through a potentially very long list of questions, even if you organize them into categories.

If you’re using WooCommerce to power your eCommerce store, another feature that you’ll really enjoy in Ultimate FAQ is the ability to add a FAQ page to each and every product page. This can be very useful when you have more than a few products, but not all questions are relevant to all products. All you have to do is create a FAQ category with the same name as the product where you’d like the FAQ to appear.

The basic plugin for WordPress is free. The premium license for additional features starts from $34.47 for a single site, including six months of free support. Support is $15 per six-month period after that.

#3. Hootsuite Insights

With a help desk, the customer is actively seeking assistance on a matter. With site answers, the customer is already on your website and looking for answers. But, what’s important to note is that not all customer feedback is going to reach you or your employees directly. Customer service, in this way, can benefit greatly from a more proactive approach rather than relying simply on a reactive approach.

Social media has played very heavily into this, as users may be talking about a company or a brand, but they may not tag that brand directly or they may not seek out assistance directly. That’s where a social media monitoring tool like Hootsuite Insights can come into play. They call it “richer social listening” to empower “smarter business decisions” by helping you “understand the conversations happening around your brand with… real-time social analytics.”

This starts with simply monitoring for brand mentions, but it also looks beyond your own social channels to find relevant conversations where opportunities may await, identify emerging trends and unusual spikes in volume, and gauge the overall sentiment surrounding your brand so you can better serve customers. You can then take in that feedback and act on it, focusing on the specific segments that matter the most to your business.

Hootsuite Insights subscriptions are based on a custom pricing model.

Use site answers to increase user engagement on your site

With billions of active websites and blogs on the internet today, the concept of getting traffic to your site is no big deal. However, what is important is what that traffic does when they are on your site.

With user engagement in mind, the most important area for you to focus your efforts on is with the value proposition and experience each user has on your site. If they find it of value, they are more likely to stick around and will also trust more in your brand.

To increase ROI, user engagement, and repeat traffic, be sure to start implementing these top solutions and methods to site answers today.

Guest author: Zac Johnson is a world-renowned blogger and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space and has helped his readers generate millions of dollars online. He shares his story and guidance at ZacJohnson.com

The post 3 Ways That Site Answers, Feedback and Customer Service Are Winning Over New Customers appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/site-answers/

What Is The Secret To Creating Your Best Art and Work?

Do you have a “sacred place” that is just yours?

That allows you to have the space and freedom to work on what is important.

Some of us work in “hot desk” environments. But these seem to be designed more to save money for the industrial corporation complex than for the creative human.

As humans and as creators we need that “special place” where we can bring forth our best work. It is where we can find our “flow”. And not allow the rest of the world to interrupt or distract.

Some of us do our best work in a noisy cafe. We need to be surrounded by humanity and the buzz of conversation. J. K Rowling wrote “Harry Potter” from the corner of a noisy cafe.

Others need silence. A shut door. A cave. Soft light.

Some are inspired by a view of a world from a distance. To watch humanity go past.

As unique humans we need to find our own creative space that works for us.

The importance of a sacred place

In the 1980’s before the advent of the Web, social media and smart phones, Joseph Campbell (the author of “The Hero’s Journey”) shared how he started each day.

This was his way to inspiration and the special place for the creation and unfolding and manifestation of his art. To write his books that changed the world.

“A sacred place. 

You must have a room…a certain time of day.

You don’t know what took place in the newspapers that morning. Who your friends are. 

You don’t know what you owe to anybody. Or what anybody owes to you. 

Have a sacred place, use it and take advantage of it. 

For creation.

A place where you can experience and bring forth what you are. 

And what you might be. 

A place of creative incubation. 

First nothing may happen.

But if you use and take advantage of it then something will happen”.

35 years later the truth of his insight is even more relevant than it was then.

There is more distraction than ever before.

We all have different visions of that that looks and feels like. But the settling in and the setting down into your zone is just the start.

Then comes the resistance we feel when it comes to revealing our truth to the world.

It is combat.

And as Steven Pressfield outlined in his book the “War of Art”. It is a fight to the death.

Many never start and leave their truth buried. Never to be seen.

Many of us never create or reveal our art.

The struggle and daily combat

In a noisy world we are at the mercy of many distractions. But there are some things that we need to pause and set aside.

And there are many.

• Mobile alerts.
• Checking social media.
• Other people asking questions. Interrupting.
• Opening up your emails.
• Finding out the latest news.
• Television
• Netflix

The platforms and apps are designed to distract. They hire neuroscientists to build in attention addiction.

The artists fears

As we start on the trek of creating, many of us are fearful of getting it wrong.  The biggest enemy of creation is succumbing to not starting. We feel dread and despair.

It is simply “fear”.

The fear of being wrong.

The fear of being imperfect.

The fear of being judged.

We often procrastinate from fear and we never start.

At the heart of this resistance is the battle to take the first step.

Writing the first word. The first sentence. The first paragraph.

That mental chatter is just one obstacle. And there are other monsters at the gate.

The rough draft

As the rough draft unfolds we start to see what we are bringing forth.

It is ugly.

It’s it doesn’t flow.

It doesn’t make sense.

You need to push on. There is no other way.

We start with a rough draft and then it is the process of distilling complexity and noise into clarity. It needs to be wrestled and wrangled into shape.

Polish the imperfection.

It is armed combat with resistance at every turn.

What is my sacred “place”?

The world of business is evolving. We can work from anywhere.

This is transforming how we live and work. This has only just started as we find our way in a world of startups, freelancers and digital entrepreneurs.

Working out of a home office has its own challenges. We need a home that surrounds us. Secure.

Home that has chaos will not serve you. It needs to feel safe.

And sometimes we don’t understand the true meaning of “home” until it is lost.

But it needs to be a place that invites you to be free. To risk adventures. While feeling safe to create.

Provide the base to strike out on adventures and risk. It needs to be a safe place to return from the battles of life. 

Home sits at the core of our being. 

But you don’t know it. Can’t feel it. The meaning of “home” 

Until it is challenged and threatened by dragons that are beyond your control and are uninvited

So….

What is my sacred place?

It looks out on the world. It has two screens. One for research, the other for writing.

A coffee at hand. A desk lamp. No clutter. Both beside me or around me.

A marinating mug of Lemon and Ginger tea.

Silence.

A certain time of day.

And the battle starts anew every day.

“First nothing may happen. But if you use and take advantage of it then something will happen”.

This a happiness ritual that will surprise you if you show up every day. Sit down and strap yourself in and do the work.

What is your sacred place for creating and revealing your art and truth to the world?

The post What Is The Secret To Creating Your Best Art and Work? appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/what-is-the-secret-to-creating-your-best-art-and-work/

How I Improved The Memorability Of My Brand With This Simple Change

Brand…

What does this word mean to you?

A brand is recognizable. Memorable. Trustworthy.

Brand’s penetrate society at every level. They create trends. Influence lifestyle. Determine spending patterns.

As much as we convince ourselves we are in control. That we rationally determine our journey in life, the things we do, and the products we buy.

It’s the brands that truly have control.

So, how do you build a brand that penetrates society’s skeptical guard of trust? (Or lack thereof)

The truth of the matter is, powerful brands are complex. They are not just a name, a product or a slogan. A brand is all of these things and more.

Brands are multi-layered with much of their meaning lying below the surface. We see the tip of the iceberg, while the mechanics of the brand are hidden from the naked eye.

But the tip of that iceberg is important. This is the part that people see, feel, and remember. The tip is what the average onlooker could describe when asked about your brand. It’s your name, domain name, logo, and slogan.

Look for your .ONLINE domain name now at www.get.online and use the coupon code JEFF to get 90% off on 1st-year domains!

How do you make the tip of your brand iceberg memorable?

The visible component of your brand forms your business identity – what makes you memorable or easily forgotten.

It doesn’t matter how extraordinary the work is you are doing under the surface, without a visible identity for your brand, the work is wasted. No one will dig deep enough to discover any of it.

For most of you reading this article, your brand name, logo, and slogan are probably all nicely packaged up and ready to change the world. But what about your domain name?

We too often think of a domain name as an afterthought. Something that is a technicality in the whirlwind of setting up a website. It’s a necessity, but not perceived as brand critical.

This assumption is killing the memorability of brands all over the world.

It’s time we started thinking differently about domain names. Instead of a formality, make them a critical part of your brand identity. In a business world powered by technology, domain names may be the single biggest contributor to your brand.

A short, unique, and memorable domain name adds value to your work and amplifies your influence.

Why I changed my domain name (and you should too)

In case you missed it, I recently made the switch from jeffbullas.com to Jeff.ONLINE for all of the short links I share on social media.

Before the switch, all the content URLs I shared on social media would shorten to a generic Bit.ly URL:

I was missing a HUGE branding opportunity.

Now? All of my content links are personalized using the unique domain Jeff.ONLINE:

As you can see, this change in domain name is immediately more memorable for anyone that sees it. Every impression I receive on social media contributes to the recognition and strength of my brand.

Beyond the impact this change has had on brand recognition and retention, it also adds meaning to my content. The .ONLINE domain extension aligns with the direction and vision of my brand. Plus, it enables me to create simple URL additions that communicate far more information than an automatically generated computer short link:

This simple change has considerably improved link clicks due to the familiarity of the URLs with my audience – it builds immediate trust. In fact, an increase in link trust from unique domain name extensions has proven to increase link clicks by up to 39%!

Was it worth the move to .ONLINE?

The beauty of my shift from .COM to .ONLINE was how simple it was. I could maintain the .COM domain and utilize .ONLINE as a branding initiative for social media and promotional links.

At the end of the day, the internet is crowded. Even for someone like me who has been in the game for over 10 years, your brand can disappear into darkness in a heartbeat if you take your eye off the ball and ignore new trends.

Unique domain name extensions are the next big trend in digital branding and if you don’t jump on board soon, your brand will be seen as outdated, unprofessional, and easily forgotten.

For me, I chose Jeff.ONLINE for a number of reasons:

• It enhances my global appeal because the word ‘online’ is understood everywhere.
• It adds meaning and relevance to my domain name and the links I share on social media.
• It’s short and memorable.
• It improves the effectiveness of my promotional campaigns because the branded links increase trust, click-throughs, and conversions on the back-end.

What could this small (but powerful) change do for your brand?

Wrapping up

By embracing new trends, you communicate that you’re a future-focused business which is in sync with what’s happening around the world.

Unique domain extensions are one example of applying this theory to your branding.

Without a branded domain name, you’re leaving an enormous amount of opportunity on the table.

I chose .ONLINE for my brand, are you ready to make the switch too? You won’t regret it.

Look for your .ONLINE domain name now at www.get.online and use the coupon code JEFF to get 90% off on 1st-year domains!

The post How I Improved The Memorability Of My Brand With This Simple Change appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/brand-memorability/

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Successful Instagram Marketing Strategy

In today’s media-driven world, having an Instagram Marketing strategy is crucial for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Instagram is constantly changing, so staying on top of new features and strategies is important for establishing a social media brand presence.

With 500 million daily active users, it can seem impossible to stand out, however, with these tips and tricks you’ll be able to create a successful Instagram Marketing Strategy like a pro in no time.

Knowing your audience and the goals for your brand

If you haven’t already, first make sure your account is set up as a business profile to easily monitor insights and identify your current audience’s demographics.

Instagram business accounts provide data to show you how your posts perform. This will help you recognize which posts are resonating with your audience and which ones are not. Then you can take this information and pivot from your original Instagram marketing strategy if necessary.

If you’re looking to generate new leads, drive sales, or connect with like-minded people, knowing your audience and overall brand goals is important. Instagram business accounts’ insights detail the gender, age, and locations by cities and countries and when your followers are most active. This information will help you better reach your specific brand goals.

Next, write out your goals for the account and figure out specific ways to achieve them. This may include expanding your audience, which we’ll uncover tips on how to do later in this article. No matter your goals, remember to keep them realistic, relevant, attainable, and most importantly measurable.

Using a quality Instagram growth service

Gaining an organic following quickly can be a struggle. Thankfully, Instagram growth services will help you gain more followers in your niche without attracting bot accounts.

Instead of paying for a set number of followers, organic Instagram growth services use a ‘liking method’ to help facilitate the growth of real Instagram followers. It allows clients to filter the accounts targeted to ignore specific accounts and ensure the users targeted fit your business’ niche.

In order to grow your business, having a legitimate social presence is key. Save your time for other aspects of your business and leave the Instagram account growth to the professionals.

Instagram growth services have helped eCommerce businesses like Original Grain gain up to 150k followers and create a large audience they market to and drive to their website for purchases.  Since doing so they’ve driven 15% of their online sales from Instagram each month.

Creating a content calendar

Gone are the days of posting randomly on Instagram with no thought behind each post.

A content calendar is a tool that will help your business grow, make your life easier, and allow you to keep track of how your posts are performing. Using a content calendar to plan posts ahead of time allows your brand to create a continual flow of content that will keep your aesthetic consistent and help you implement your Instagram Marketing Strategy successfully.

Applications like Sprout Social, Coschedule, Hootsuite, and Later, to name a few, are incredible tools to ease the process of creating a content calendar. These are especially helpful for businesses like marketing agencies that run multiple accounts and need everything in one place.

Using a social media content calendar from one of these applications will ensure you never miss important dates and stick to a consistent posting schedule. When you know of national holidays that coincide with your brand goals ahead of time, you can create premium content to distribute on all social channels.

Tapping into analytics, reporting, and insights

The above applications not only help with planning content but make viewing analytics and reporting a breeze. If you’re running a business Instagram account it’s crucial to understand what these numbers mean and be able to report them to other people within your business, or when making a custom report for your clients.

Instagram business accounts allow you to see insights like follows, reach, impressions, and profile visits. These metrics are vital for future content creation because they tell you how your followers are receiving your content. The biggest misconception of these is the difference between reach and impressions.

Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed, no matter if users click on it or not.

In the past, traditional advertisers had a more difficult time tracking ROI from their campaigns. With social media analytics and insights, businesses can easily see if their Instagram marketing strategy is effective.

With these tools, you can adjust your strategy and see if post times, target audience, or if content types are affecting your engagement.

Optimizing your brand aesthetic

Your brand is your number one selling tool. You can easily attract or drive away customers based on your brand’s aesthetics aka the look, feel, and memorability factor of your content.

To ensure your brand aesthetic stays consistent you must create content that matches your theme and only post user-generated content that enhances your profile.

Building a consistent Instagram theme for your feed can be overwhelming, but the good part is you don’t have to be a professional photographer or graphic designer to develop an aesthetic feed.

Identify your color palette and apply these to your graphics or photos. Using a preset filter or sticking with a consistent editing style will give your feed that cohesive look. Take inspiration from competitors and other accounts in your niche, but also don’t be afraid to make your mark and stand out. Followers will be attracted to your unique ideas and posts.

Collaborating with other brands or influencers

Collaborating with other brands and influencers are great outlets to supplement content for your calendar. Influencers and other brands can help you reach a new audience to raise awareness and promote your brand, product, or service.

The first step to collaborating with influencers is research. Finding influencers in your niche isn’t hard, but ensuring they align with your brand values, have a real engaged audience, and fit in your budget will be more of a challenge.

Take your established goals and find influencers you believe will align with these goals. Next, reach out to the influencer outlining your proposed campaign and in what capacity they can contribute to this campaign. This can range from content creation to posting about your product or giving their followers a discount code.

When pitching to other brands and influencers to create content for your business, make sure to include guidelines to ensure your brand aesthetic isn’t lost in their creative process.

These guidelines can be as structured as you want, but it’s important to work with other creatives who will create content that enhances your brand and resonates with their audience.

Taking advantage of video content

Instagram has been a visual platform from the start. Now more than ever videos are outperforming images in terms of engagement and results.

Instagram gives creators the opportunity to post videos via stories, IGTV and in feed; all valuable outlets to reach your audience.

Instagram videos allow you up to 60 seconds to get your brand’s message across. Stories are a casual way to show followers the day to day of your business or for influencers to do “story take-overs” and show how they use your product.

The most recent addition to Instagram’s video offerings is IGTV. Although not a YouTube replacement for many creators, this outlet allows you to reuse popular videos you’ve posted on YouTube and Facebook or create new ones specifically for the Instagram platform.  The most recent update to IGTV is the ability to upload videos vertically, this has made it convenient and easy for Youtubers to upload their videos on Youtube and IGTV. Many influencers are also using IGTV to share content that would be too long for stories.

Accounts now have the option to add IGTV video previews to their feed for maximum exposure. IGTV provides businesses with an opportunity to create engaging video content with a new mobile audience.

Creating a hashtag strategy

Twitter may have invented the hashtag, but in order to boost engagement on Instagram, you’ll need to implement a hashtag strategy.

Instagram hashtags not only help categorize your content but are also an effective way to reach new users and increase engagement on stories and posts. High engagement on your posts will likely translate to more customers for your business which is the end goal here.

Applications with analytic tracking abilities and Instagram insights allow you to measure your hashtag performance.

To ensure your strategy benefits your business account, a few runs of trial and error will first need to take place. Do the research and find hashtags in your niche or popular ones used by leaders in your industry that aren’t overused by millions of people already. If a hashtag already has millions of posts attached to it, yours will likely get lost in the shuffle.

Once you’ve found between twenty and thirty to use add them to your post caption or in the comments. As mentioned before you will need to play around with the hashtags and use different combinations on each post to attract new users and engagement.

Instagram recently added the ability to add hashtags to stories which is an extremely underused feature. Like regular posts, a hashtag in a story is searchable and will direct new followers to your page.

Pro tip: Instagram allows ten hashtags to be added to each story.

There are many types of hashtags, and understanding the purpose of each is key for developing an effective hashtag strategy for your overall Instagram marketing strategy.

• Branded Hashtag. This hashtag is created specifically for your business. It can be as simple as your company name or a tagline related to your brand.
• Community Hashtag. This type of hashtag connects like-minded users. You can create your own to bring your community together or search your favorite accounts, or those in your network to see what communities they are apart of.
• Campaign Hashtags. This short term hashtag is created to represent a specific campaign like a product launch, partnership, or season. Many times these hashtags are distributed to influencers to add to sponsored posts.

Utilizing your Instagram Bio

Utilizing your Instagram Bio is a crucial part of creating a successful Instagram marketing strategy.

An Instagram bio is the first impression users see when they visit your profile, and you want to make it a good one! Create an interesting and eye-catching bio that’s unique and doesn’t mimic formats of other popular accounts.

The most successful bios showcase the brand’s personality, the purpose of the account, and a wow factor that convinces other users to follow it. Make sure to include your name, contact information, and impressive skills to stand out amongst the millions of accounts on Instagram.

An easy way to give your bio color and personality is to tastefully use Emojis. These Emojis should make sense and represent your brand, not overwhelm the bio.

Instagram is strict on the clickables in your bio, so maximizing the one link allowed is crucial. If you’re looking to link multiple websites at once, and don’t want to constantly be swapping them out, create a Linktree account for easy access to your links. Linktree is free and allows you to house all the content you need to direct your followers too.

Wrapping up

Social media marketing cannot be an afterthought in your overall marketing strategy.

Consumers today are easily influenced by social media to make purchasing decisions. Without a strong presence on Instagram, you’re doing more harm to your business than good.

With this guide to creating a successful Instagram marketing strategy, you’ll be on your way to elevating your Instagram presence, which in return will boost business.

Guest author: Rafaella Aguiar is the Marketing Manager at Kicksta.  She specializes in content and social media marketing.  You can find more daily marketing tips from her at @kicksta.co. 

The post The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Successful Instagram Marketing Strategy appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/instagram-marketing-strategy/

The 7-Point Website Redesign Checklist To Avoid SEO Problems

Does your website look like it’s stuck in the ‘90s? Well, that’s a real bummer! Because the visual aesthetics of your website can have a lasting impact on your web traffic and sales conversions.

So, what do you do? Do you redesign the entire website? Well, that’s always an advised option but undertaking a website redesign can be a tricky and colossal endeavor. You have to face some confusing questions like: Where do I begin? What are the latest trends in designing websites?

But most importantly: How the redesign will affect your SEO and sales?

SEO is a tricky business even for experienced professionals. If you simply slap a new design on your website without considering SEO and its guidelines, it could seriously hamper your SERP rankings.

So, how do you make sure that your revamped website does not end up shoving your google ranking off a cliff?

All you need to do is follow this 7-point website redesign checklist to preserve your SEO rankings.

#1. Analyze your current design and user metrics

The first action is to take a hard, honest look at your current website. What needs changing right away?

Some questions that can help ease the process are:

• Which pages get the most traffic?
• Which pages get the most conversions?
• Which pages are seriously suffering in SERP rankings?

Do a few metric analysis using Google Search Console and Analytics and you will get these badly needed answers.

Next, you should map your users and their journey.

• Who is your target audience?
• Where are they coming from and where do they go?
• What does your audience wish to get from your brand?
• What are they doing on your website?
• Are you offering the best to them?
• Does your audience engage with your content?
• Do they accomplish what they came here for?

Using these simple questions, you can highlight the design areas to focus on from the users’ perspective. If you have a page that is already getting traffic but is not converting well, ask yourself how to improve this situation using unique design ideas like colors, placements, shapes, and formats that your audience would be most attracted to.

The key takeaway from this step is to draft what you are not doing right now. Figuring that out is a necessary requirement for a website redesign.

#2. Scan your competitors and gather innovative ideas

Take a quick look at all your competitor’s websites. Better yet, take a look at the websites of leading industry giants. There is a reason why they are doing so well. Incorporating ideas inspired by big-name websites will ensure that your web design does not scream ‘amateur’.

But what aspects of your competitor’s web design do you analyze and take inspiration from?

For starters, pay close attention to the user experience of their design. Is it user-friendly? Can you find everything easily? Do you enjoy the color schemes and calls-to-action?

Next, take a look at what kind of images they are using. Are they using stock images? Or are they using custom graphics to spruce up their website and pages?

Another great thing to pay close attention to is the content flow of your competitor’s site. What goes where and why? How are things formatted? Take a profound look at how they are doing it and then go back and do something similar on your website.

Taking these small, simple designing tips into account you can really boost the user experience as well as the SEO which will end up spiking up your conversions.

#3. Put your content first

Content is still the King. It’s not debatable.

One of the major areas to focus on during a website redesign is the existing content of your website. Is the content flow effective? If not, a website redesign is an ideal time to make some necessary changes.

Each webpage has a specific task to accomplish from an SEO perspective. This infographic by HubSpot will tell you all about redesigning a home-page and the elements that are an absolute requirement for creating them.

For skyrocketing your conversions, add these design and content ingredients to your pages and see the positive results.

Create a meaningful flow of content to offer a seamless experience to your users. This way, you will reduce bounce rate, improve clicks, prolong dwell time, and boost your SERP rankings.

Proofread your content and make sure there are no grammar, spelling or punctuation errors. As well, don’t publish duplicate or spun content on your revamped website. Always create fresh and new content for every page or else your ranking will suffer a nosedive, sooner or later.

#4. Take care of your on-page and technical SEO

On-page and Technical SEO are other important aspects of web design. Time to get technical!

There are already lots of articles on the internet that cover on-page and technical SEO. So, for this blog, we are going to discuss the things that you are most likely to forget.

• Check your Keywords: Ideally, more than half of the website’s visitors should be organic and targeted. A recent study found that around 91% of content suffers from the eventual death of organic traffic from Google. One of the reasons behind this is a lack of relevant keywords in the content. Re-examine your keywords that are already bringing in traffic. Validate their search and ranking competency data to finalize the required keyword list. Make sure to use LSI and conversational keywords that boost voice-based search rankings.
• Reinforce Metadata and Tags: Reconstruct the page titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph, headers, image alt texts, etc. with relevant keywords to boost rankings and attract more traffic to the website. Additionally, stop repeated usage of the same keyword on multiple pages. Not only does this confuse search engines but also significantly weakens your site’s chances of an organic ranking.
• Review Canonical Tags: Canonical URLs inform search bots the version of a URL they should index. If you mistakenly place a wrong canonical URL on a page, you may miss a lot of potential ranking opportunities. Hence, review each canonical URL and confirm its absolute parity with the respective page URL that you want the search engines to index and rank.

• Check Redirections: Changing up your website can lead to dangerous SEO territory if you do not pay close attention to your 301 redirects and 404 pages. If you forget to design custom error pages, your visitors will get some nasty browser-default ‘Not Found’ errors. If you forget to create or update 301 redirects, your visitors will likely exit your website.
• Update Sitemaps: The sitemap files tell search engines and users about the structure of your website and the location of each resource. If you change anything related to the link structure of your website, you need to generate a new sitemap.xml file and have Google crawl it. If you neglect to do this simple thing, search engines may get confused and consequently, your organic traffic flow will experience a major tumble.
• Check Robots: The robots.txt file tells search engines whether or not to crawl certain pages on your website. If you accidentally restrict search engines or block some resources, it would be SEO suicide. So, make sure to double-check this file.
• Markup NAP with Schema: If you are a local brand, consider adding your business’ Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) to your website. Additionally, think about marking up the NAP citation with Schema structured data. By doing so you can build a strong local citation reference for your local business.

Take extra care of on-page and technical optimization and you should be good to go. You won’t end up sabotaging your SEO while redesigning your website.

#5. Optimize for mobile devices

Mobile optimization can make or break your rankings in 2019. The simple reason is that more users access websites from mobile devices than from PCs. Presently, Google is pushing its mobile-first indexing policy really hard, thus causing mobile non-responsive websites to rank lower than mobile responsive ones.

So, if you are not targeting mobile users, then kiss your customers goodbye.

According to a survey conducted in 2018, 5.135 billion people use mobile devices worldwide. So, if your web design is not 100% mobile responsive, then you are in deep trouble. Besides, you should employ the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) versions of your webpages to serve mobile users.

In addition to being mobile-friendly, you also need to pay close attention to a site’s mobile usability as well. Inspect each clickable element of your webpages on different devices and screen sizes. If you encounter any sort of difficulty during clicking and tapping those, be sure to rework their placements.

#6. Try not to change URLs

Every time you change your website’s design you run the risk of creating broken links.

How does a website redesign kill inbound links?

If you change your internal URLs, every backlink to that webpage becomes a broken link. The worst part is that your hard-earned links will get snatched up by your competition instantly.

So, instead of boosting SEO, your new design will make it take a quantum leap in the other direction. Not just that, it can be a huge hassle to reclaim all these links for a comparatively large website.

Best practice? Avoid changing any URLs; especially for pages that are already ranking and getting traffic. In case you have to, make note of all the URL changes and place proper 301 redirections from the old links to the new URLs. Though recently there has been a debate about whether 301 redirections pass link signals or not. Ideally, they should.

#7. Do some speed testing

Most web designers go overboard with fancy elements. As a result, you end up with a beautiful, possibly unique website but with bulky JavaScript and CSS components, huge images that take forever to load, and a bunch of unnecessary animations.

Here’s the thing:

Redesigning your website should be a strategic move. The vanity of big design-components can decrease your site’s load time immensely.

Above all else, it is essential to have a website that loads quickly. Otherwise, you are just left with a beautiful site that no one gets to see because everyone bounces off of it after 3 seconds of waiting.

Therefore, you should definitely speed-test your new design every step of the way and optimize as much as you can.

A simple 10-point checklist to speed up your website:

1. Buy a good, reliable hosting server for the redesigned website
2. Make sure to use the Gzip compression
3. Enable browser caching
4. Optimize image dimensions and reduce file sizes
5. Enable lazy-loading
6. Minify CSS and JavaScript coding
7. Decrease the number of CSS and JavaScript files/external calls
8. Reduce the number of HTTP calls
9. Fix render-blocking JavaScripts
10. Consider using a good CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Conclusion

There is no limit to ideating innovative designs that will be sure to dazzle your visitors. But any good website redesign should be analyzed by how it benefits the business and its users and not by “how cool it looks”. One of the key reasons why data-driven web design is thriving is because it is actionable, simple, and easy to follow along with.

There are no restrictions as to what you can do in terms of design as long as it does not hinder the visibility and usability of your website. The minute that happens, your website will start to spiral down a rabbit hole, emergence from which will cost you a lot of time and money while hampering your business big-time.

The best approach to a complete website overhaul is to have a concrete game plan. Map out your activities and create a to-do list achievable within an acceptable timeframe. This will help you budget, manage, and market your website much more effortlessly.

If you are reading this blog, it means you are considering a redesign. We wish you all the very best. Be sure to let us know how it goes for you.

Guest author: Soumya Roy is the Founder, CEO of PromozSEO Web Marketing Academy, a digital marketing course in India. He has more than 11 years of full-stack digital marketing experience under his belt. Being an entrepreneur and digital marketing mentor and consultant, Roy loves writing contents related to social media, search engines, content marketing, business branding, etc.

The post The 7-Point Website Redesign Checklist To Avoid SEO Problems appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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