|
What is Branding in Marketing?
Branding is the process of creating a strong, positive perception of a company, its products or services in the customer’s mind by combining such elements as logo, design, mission statement, and a consistent theme throughout all marketing communications. Effective branding helps companies differentiate themselves from their competitors and build a loyal customer base. This means that customers expect that your tone of voice is the same over email, your website, customer service, and every other touchpoint in your business. If you rebrand, you need to change your logo, and styling everywhere both online and offline. Make sure you create a consistent brand so that your customers revel in your omni-channel presence. Branding in-store can be very different to online branding as in store you have to worry about positioning of products and props that can effect how a customer experiences your brand. Branding in-store is more experiential as people can walk around and pick things up, whereas customers online are experiencing a two-dimensional scene. Of course, certain elements of branding are consistent both online and in-store. These include consistent imagery and logos. Why is Branding Important? A unique brand can have a huge impact on your bottom line by giving you a competitive advantage over your rivals and helping you acquire and retain customers at a much lower cost. In eCommerce, where new companies (and therefore, new competitors) are springing up every day, an established brand can be an invaluable asset in bringing customers and generating profit. Regardless of whether you’re investing time and effort into crafting a compelling brand or paying no attention to it whatsoever, your business still has a brand. However, it may be completely different to how you intended to be seen. By carefully constructing your brand through stories, relationships, marketing messages and visual assets, you have the opportunity of shaping your customers’ expectations and creating a unique bond that goes beyond the buying-selling relationship. Good branding is strategic, while marketing is tactical. When you establish the higher objectives and clearly define your brand promise, you can start crafting a marketing plan that’s geared towards achieving those goals. The Importance of Branding in eCommerce. Branding is a complex process that requires careful planning and calculated approach. Ideally, you should have your branding strategy worked out before you launch your online store to avoid working backwards to try to aligned your store with customer expectations. A strong brand is easy to relate to and draws on values that resonate well with the target audience. For an eCommerce shop, a strong brand can also be a safety net protecting a business from having to compete on price. So how do you go about building a brand for an online shop? Here are the key steps in eCommerce branding:
Something as simple as saying thank you to your loyal customers can go a long way in strengthening your brand image. It’s a surefire way to build long-term relationships with your customers and your brand.
0 Comments
We all know the importance of a high ranking when it comes to internet searches, but the components of those rankings can often be overlooked. Many web creators throw around a lot of SEO buzzwords and talk about boosting rankings, but how often do they get into specifics? Here at Swift Digital Marketing Agency, we dig deep. We know what it takes to achieve and maintain a great ranking, and we use this knowledge to give our clients rock star results! Importance of Page Speed Page speed is just one example of a ranking component that we've mastered. Google actually dings pages that load too slowly, causing them to drop in rank, even if they are excellent by every other metric. Additionally, your visitors will find interaction with a sluggish interface frustrating to deal with. This will, in turn, harm your engagement metrics causing your ranking to decrease even more... (see where we're going with this?). Don't let something as straightforward as page speed cause your rankings to drop. No one wants to see a spike in abandonment rates for any reason, especially something that is so easy to fix! Let us help you measure and increase your loading times, and make your site more attractive to search engines and prospective customers. You can count on Swift Team as your SEO partner. We use clean code and techniques that greatly increase page speed, giving your rankings and UX a boost. Work with us and see your page speeds, rankings, and engagement metrics outshine the competition month after month! Submit this Form to get a call from us or call Swift Digital Marketing Agency at (216)339-6041 In this post, you’re going to learn exactly how to create and implement an effective digital marketing strategy, step-by-step.
So, if you want to learn how to use digital marketing to grow your traffic, this strategy guide is for you. What is a digital marketing strategy? A digital marketing strategy is a plan of action that describes how to use one or more online marketing channels to reach your target audience. It has a list of steps and specific digital marketing goals. Having a digital strategy is important because it will help you orchestrate the different online marketing strategies so that they all work towards achieving your business goals. Together with his team, they will make sure that every marketing activity is part of your digital marketing plan. How to create a Digital Marketing Strategy These are the steps to follow to create an effective marketing strategy.
1. Specify measurable business goals The first step in creating a digital marketing strategy is to specify your business goals. In other words, to determine what you want to accomplish with digital marketing. Any goals you set have to be measurable and well-defined. Everything in a digital marketing campaign is measurable (from start to finish) and you need to take advantage of this and form a digital marketing plan that has specific milestones and targets. Some typical goals are:
While the above is a good starting point, they are still vague. A better version would be: Raise brand awareness by: Increase organic traffic by:
A good way to come up with measurable goals is to use the top-down approach. Start by specifying your goals in business terms and then translate that to digital marketing goals. Here is an example to understand this better. A typical step could be, “Publish 3 new blog posts per week”, which needs to be broken down further to specify which/topics keywords the blog posts will target and what would be the expected outcome in terms of traffic increase. Experienced digital marketing specialists know that this is not always easy to calculate because digital marketing is a dynamic industry and changes all the time. But, having a detailed plan will help you adjust your strategies so as to get closer to your goals as possible. The bottom line is that you need to have a digital marketing plan to follow and not start running campaigns on different channels without knowing what you want to achieve. It goes without saying that your plan has to be realistic, taking into account the competition and complexities of your industry. Also, to be able to analyze data and make informed decisions, you first need to track it correctly and accurately so, having a good analytics system in place is more than essential. 2. Identify your target audience The second step is to identify your target audience. In other words to specify in detail who you want to target with your campaigns. Some marketers, place this as the first step in the process and this is not wrong. What is certain is that this is an exercise you need to perform in the early stages and before finalizing the next steps of your marketing strategy. What does identifying your audience means? Specifying in detail the characteristics of people that might be potentially interested in your offerings. In your audience identification, you should include things like:
Learn as much as you can about your audience The exact details depend on the industry you’re in and the products/services you are trying to promote. A good way to start crafting your buyer personas is to analyze the data you already have available. Digg into your Google Analytics reports, Facebook audience insights, Google Ads reports, and start creating your customer profiles. 3. Understand users needs and search intent Once you know the profile of your target customer, the next step is to use different techniques and try to understand their needs and how they express this when searching for information using a search engine or a social network. There are two ways to approach this process. The first method is to take the typical digital sales funnel and identify what your customers might need at each stage. Digital Sales Funnel The second method is to take the different customer profiles created above, and come up with a separate sales funnel for each. This is my recommended method because it makes it easier to set up and run dedicated digital marketing campaigns for each customer profile. Let me give you an example to understand this better. So, by analyzing each buyer persona separately, you can come up with a more accurate plan of how your content, products, or services can help them solve their problems and needs. Search Intent In the digital marketing world, the needs of users are expressed through search queries. When a user types a search query in Google, it has a specific intent and if your content/products or services do not satisfy it, your digital marketing strategy will fail. That’s why it is important to perform keyword research from the very beginning and capture all topics, keywords, and phrases throughout the buyer journey, from awareness to conversion. Social media networks don’t reveal the ‘searchers’ intent’, what happens then? It’s true that users browsing Facebook may not have a specific intent in mind but they have a particular profile. To increase your chances of targeting the right type of audience, you can analyze the profile of your search visitors (using Google Analytics) and using custom audiences to find matching audiences (Lookalike Audiences) on Facebook. Always use any available data that you have as your starting point for research. The results will be more accurate than using data that is external to your website. Resources to Learn More About Digital Marketing
The next strategic step you need to make is to create a library of content assets. You know your audience and their needs, now it’s time to create various types of assets to use in your campaigns. A digital asset can be a blog post, infographic, image, video, podcast, cover image, logo, and anything else you can publish on your website or social networks. Content Types In the digital marketing world, this is what content marketing is all about. Content marketing is important because it’s the process used to decide what kind of content to create, when, and where to publish it. I prefer to execute this step in the beginning and before running any campaigns because it’s more efficient to have a pool of content assets ready in advance rather than having to do this every time you’re about to start a campaign. When you follow the steps in the order described in this guide (set goals, create customer personas, identify needs, and search intent), then you have all the information you need to work on your content assets. It’s also easier to assign the content creation part to the different members of your team to work in parallel. Content Marketing Strategy Plan 5. Start with SEO as early as possible A strategic decision to make that can positively impact your digital marketing efforts is to start with SEO as early as possible. SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies but it has a caveat. It takes time to work. Unlike other digital marketing strategies, when you start an SEO campaign, it may take 4 to 6 months to generate any results. This is a long time to wait so most marketers tend to focus on other digital channels first (like Facebook Ads, Google Ads). That’s a good approach but the common mistake is that they forget about SEO and only re-visit SEO after they realize that they cannot build a successful digital marketing campaign based solely on paid advertising. So, a better strategy is to allocate a portion of your marketing budget from the very beginning on SEO related tasks. In parallel, you can start working on your paid campaigns and other channels. This way, you’ll reach a point sooner where most of your traffic and sales will come from SEO and rely less on paid ads. In business terms, this means an increase in revenue and profit and this is exactly the goal of a successful digital marketing strategy. How to get started with SEO SEO is a huge topic. Search engines take hundreds of parameters into account before they decide which webpages to show in the results for a particular query. To make it easier to handle, SEO can be broken down into three main sub-processes: Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-Page SEO. SEO Overview Each process is responsible to optimize your website for a number of parameters that will eventually lead to higher rankings and traffic. SEO is important because the majority of search traffic is distributed to websites that appear in the first 5 positions of the search results. So, if you want to get traffic from search engines, you need to appear in the top positions for search terms related to your business. The best way to get started with SEO is to follow a step-by-step approach: Step 1: Review your technical SEO and make sure that search engines can access and index your content without any problems. This is important since any issues at this stage will be catastrophic for your efforts. Step 2: Optimize your content for search engines. In Step 4 above, you will create content that satisfies the needs of the user. Before publishing, you need to make sure that it’s SEO optimized. This means, giving the right signals to search engines (through your titles, descriptions, headings, etc) to help them understand your content better. Step 3: Promote your website and content. One of the most important SEO ranking factors is how other websites on the Internet ‘think’ of your website. If other relevant websites trust your website and they express this through a backlink, this is a strong signal to Google that your website deserves to be on the top positions. If SEO is something that you haven’t done before for your website, the best way to approach this is to add it to your digital strategy and assign this task to SEO experts. You can also use the resources below to learn more. 6. Explore paid advertising channels When you start an online business, you know in advance that a large portion of your marketing budget will be allocated on PPC marketing (paid ads). But, not all PPC platforms are the same. Based on your previous analysis (steps 2 and 3 above), you need to choose which platforms are more suited for your audience. You can use the table below to get an idea of how the user profile looks for the most popular social networks. Social Media Platforms Demographics. For example, if you have an eCommerce website selling directly to consumers (B2C) then Facebook is probably a good choice. If on the other hand, you are targeting Business executives, then LinkedIn is more appropriate. Run Pilot Campaigns First The best way to find out which platforms to incorporate in your digital marketing strategy plan is to run pilot campaigns. A pilot campaign will not waste your budget and at the same time, it will give you enough data to make an informed decision. A common mistake made by digital marketers is to blindly allocate all their budget on one channel because it’s the trend without testing or considering all of the available channels they can use. Here is a list of the most popular advertising platforms you can use to reach your target audience: Facebook Ads – ideal for all kinds of businesses. Works better for B2C. The best platform to raise brand awareness. Instagram Ads – suitable if you want to reach a younger audience. Twitter Ads – Business oriented. Great for informing your community of updates. Linked Ads – Strictly for business-related advertising. Use it to reach decision-makers. Google Ads – The most reliable platform to get targeted traffic to your website through paid search ads. Google Display Ads – Use it for retargeting purposes and to reach your audience in the various Google products (YouTube, Gmail) and thousands of websites that participate in Google AdSense. Bing Ads – Not as powerful as Google but a good alternative to get more search traffic to your website. 7. Use email marketing segmentation and automation The end goal of a digital marketing campaign is to generate more revenue for a business. But in order to get to your ultimate goal, you first need to consider micro-conversions. Micro-conversions are actions taken by users that are part of the funnel that leads to sales. For example, while one of my goals is to sell my digital marketing course, an intermediate goal is to get people to subscribe to my email list (micro conversion). I consider this an important step because I know from my statistics that a large percentage of people that subscribe to my list, will eventually convert. The same concept can be applied to any business or product. You need to give incentives to users to sign up for your email list and then send them personalized emails that will help them make the final decision, which is to convert by buying your products or services. An important element to make this work is segmentation and automation. With email segmentation, you segment your list into groups of people that share the same interests and send them customized content. For example, people registering to my list to download the SEO Checklist will get different email content than people who register to receive my posts updates. If email marketing is a new concept for you, then you can realize that it involves a lot of work and that’s where email automation comes into play. Here is a visual example of how email automation works. Email Marketing automation example. With email automation, you can orchestrate the whole process to run without intervention and manual work. Your job is to set up the automation campaigns, monitor their performance, and take corrective actions. In addition to micro-conversions, email marketing is a great way to raise brand awareness and build a community around your brand. This is something that can positively influence the performance of all your digital marketing campaigns. Resources to Learn More About Email Marketing
A complete digital marketing strategy should not only take into account the traditional online marketing channels but should also cater to new digital marketing strategies that rise to the surface. To be more precise, at the time of writing this post, there are a number of new channels that you can explore like:
These channels are new and most probably less competitive than established channels. This means you can get better results at a lower cost. Will these help your strategy? The only way to find out is to test them by running pilot campaigns (as explained above). 9. Use retargeting and personalization So far, all of the above strategies are related to how you can reach more people but it’s equally important to follow up on users that already know your brand, but are not yet customers. This is known as ‘retargeting’ or ‘remarketing’. With retargeting, you can show specific ads to users that visited your website (or social network page) but did not convert. How Remarketing Works It’s a very powerful technique that has higher conversion rates and less CPA (cost per action) than other marketing techniques. The ‘marketing rule of 7’ (established in the 1930s by marketers), states that prospects are more likely to convert if they see or hear an ad, at least 7 times. Unsurprisingly, it is a rule that is applicable today, and remarketing is the way to implement this. The most popular platforms to run remarketing campaigns are Facebook and Google Display Network. The concept is simple. You connect your website with Facebook and Google by adding a piece of code provided by the platforms. You then create custom audience lists that include the people who visited your website but did not convert. You then create campaigns and ads that are shown to these users as they browse Facebook or visit other websites on the Internet. To make remarketing more effective, you can also add the element of personalization. Instead of treating all visitors as one group, you can add rules to show different ads to people based on the actions they took on your website. For example, you can create a retargeting campaign for people that added an item to their shopping cart but did not checkout. To give them an incentive to come back and finish the process, you can offer them a discount via coupon code. As a matter of fact, retargeting should be a strategy to include in your digital marketing plan from the early stages. This way you’ll maximize the return for any money spend on paid ads or SEO. 10. Work on conversion optimization Another area that needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy is conversion optimization. I can tell you from experience, that 90% of digital marketing campaigns focus on how to get traffic and forget about conversion optimization. What is conversion optimization? In simple terms, conversion optimization is the process to follow to optimize your website so that a higher percentage of your visitors will perform the desired actions. This starts with your website design, content, landing page optimization, email signup forms, shopping cart, checkout process, and other elements that contribute (directly or indirectly) to conversions. One of the techniques to use is A/B testing. By applying a/b testing principles you can measure the effect on conversions by carefully changing parts of your website or sales funnel. I’ll not go into the details on how to perform A/B testing or conversion optimization (you can follow the links in the resources below to learn more), but from a strategic point of view, it’s important to add conversion optimization activities in your digital marketing plan. Here is an example of how a conversion optimization plan looks like: Conversion Optimization Plan You can add it as a step to be executed as part of a single campaign or as part of your general strategy review process. What I advise my team to do is to review conversion optimization after a campaign is considered to be optimized in terms of traffic. In other words, it’s better to try and optimize your campaign to get as many visits as possible with the lower cost and then start testing different landing pages, messages to see which one performs better in terms of conversions. As a rule of thumb, when doing A/B testing, you should focus on specific changes so that you can accurately measure their effect on conversions. Resources to Learn More About Conversion Optimization
11. Evaluate and revise your strategy Digital marketing is a highly dynamic industry. ‘Rules’ change all the time and it’s extremely important that you evaluate and revise your digital marketing strategy to stay current and relevant. Digital Marketing The best way to evaluate your campaign is to do it based on KPIs and other metrics. The most important metrics for any kind of digital marketing campaign are:
If you have a good analytics system in place and can track these for every campaign that is part of your strategy, then it will be easier to make informed decisions. Don’t forget that part of your evaluation should be to look for new channels you can add to your strategy. It’s always a good idea to take a look at your competitor’s strategies and identify which of their strategies you can include in your marketing mix. Key Learnings A digital marketing strategy is a plan that describes in detail how to use various digital marketing channels to grow your business. To create an effective digital marketing strategy, you start by defining your goals. Then through research, you identify the characteristics and needs of people to target with your campaigns. Once you have this information, you translate that into content marketing assets, having always in mind the ‘intent’ of the user. Creating the right type of content that can satisfy the user’s needs, it’s a critical success factor. Then you start with SEO. SEO is the most effective digital marketing channel but it’s not the fastest one. While waiting for your SEO to generate results, you can start testing paid advertising channels by running pilot campaigns. Once you figure out which channels are more likely to work for the satisfaction of your business goals, you concentrate on those. Besides generating traffic to your website, you also need to incorporate other strategies for converting traffic to customers such as email marketing, retargeting, and conversion optimization. At regular intervals, you should evaluate and revise your strategy to include new traffic sources and trends. Call Swift Digital Marketing Agency at (216) 339-604. We can create a successful digital marketing strategy for your company. Want more construction contracts and booked projects? It all depends on having a great construction website. Your website is not an online brochure—it’s your 24/7 virtual sales rep, capable of generating a massive amount of leads and sales. Regardless if you’re in commercial or residential construction, your target audience expects a seamless, engaging website experience--75% of consumers have judged a company’s credibility based on its website design. If your website is outdated, doesn’t attract traffic, doesn’t convert visitors into leads, or simply isn’t up to your satisfaction, you need professional construction website design services. Swift Digital Marketing Agency specializes in designing websites for construction companies that not only look great but also rank well in search engine results and convert your visitors into clients. Let us help you redesign your website and turn it into your number one sales and marketing tool! CONSTRUCTION WEBSITES Construction Website Design Services Proven to Increase Leads & Sales Want more construction contracts and booked projects? It all depends on having a great construction website. Your website is not an online brochure—it’s your 24/7 virtual sales rep, capable of generating a massive amount of leads and sales. Regardless if you’re in commercial or residential construction, your target audience expects a seamless, engaging website experience--75% of consumers have judged a company’s credibility based on its website design. If your website is outdated, doesn’t attract traffic, doesn’t convert visitors into leads, or simply isn’t up to your satisfaction, you need professional construction website design services. Blue Corona specializes in designing websites for construction companies that not only look great but also rank well in search engine results and convert your visitors into clients. Let us help you redesign your website and turn it into your number one sales and marketing tool!
Our Custom Construction Website Design Services From small general contractor website designs to large construction company websites, we have the website services for you.
What Does it Take to Have a Sales-Driving Construction Website Design? Wondering why your competitors are outperforming you? It most likely has something to do with their website and what’s on it. The best construction websites are visible in search engines, mobile-friendly, fast, secure, and have an optimal user experience.
Our web design services aren’t one size fits all—there are no cookie-cutter solutions, at least not from the best companies. A good website design agency will help you figure out the best type of website for your business. What’s important is that your website is beautiful, thoughtfully laid out, and lead-focused. SHOULD I USE A TEMPLATE OR HAVE MY CONSTRUCTION SITE CUSTOM-DESIGNED? Choosing between a template and a custom-designed construction site will depend on your needs and your budget. Most small businesses will do just fine with a proven template, but if you have a large company, have specific needs, or want a website that doesn’t look like any of your competitors’ you should go for a custom website. WHAT’S THE AVERAGE LIFESPAN OF A WEBSITE? Your website is not a set-it-and-forget-it marketing asset. You need to continually update it to keep up with the modern customer’s expectations. When you’re building construction websites you always need to keep in mind that the average website has a life expectancy of 2-5 years, so be sure to pick a design and platform that won’t be too difficult to update.
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN PACKAGES:
Inspirational designs, illustrations, and graphic elements from the world’s best designers.9/27/2021 Professional web design starts with really understanding the client’s business and brand. After all, a website represents a very significant voice for the brand. And, that voice should be front and center in a great website.  The word chocolate can be associated with many words: dark, white, milk, hot, sweet, spicy. As one would expect, chocolate website often use an appetizing brown dominant color. The quality of product photography on chocolate websites is remarkable. Images are often large and dominant and are given a lot of both horizontal and vertical space. In fact, chocolate, especially gourmet chocolate, is often very visually interesting. The ingredients that go into it can also be very aesthetically pleasing. But they all have in common this fascinating sweetness everyone loves. Submit this Form to get a call back from us or call Swift Digital Marketing Agency at (216)339-6041. #SwiftDigital While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research. Well, the need to do keyword research has stayed the same. How you actually do it hasn't. What Is Keyword Research? Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of theses queries, their ranking difficulty, and more. Why Is Keyword Research Important? Keyword research provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google. The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help inform content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy. However, keywords themselves may not be as important to SEO as you may think. More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years, and how unimportant keywords themselves have become to our ability to rank well for the searches people make every day. And to some extent, this is true; using keywords that exactly match a person's search is no longer the most important ranking factor in the eyes of an SEO professional. Rather, it's the intent behind that keyword, and whether or not a piece of content solves for that intent (we'll talk more about intent in just a minute). But that doesn't mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain: Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience. The operative term here is topics -- by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target. For an inside look into how Ahrefs can aid you in your SEO keyword research, check out our case study and exclusive interview here. By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that the most people in your audience want answers to. I'm going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with a list of terms you should be targeting. That way, you'll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you actually care about. Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You'll come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are important to your business, and then you'll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process. If you're a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they're the topics that come up the most in sales conversations. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas -- what types of topics would your target audience search that you'd want your business to get found for? If you were a company like for example -- selling marketing software you might have general topic buckets like:
See those numbers in parentheses to the right of each keyword? That's their monthly search volume. This data allows you to gauge how important these topics are to your audience, and how many different sub-topics you might need to create content on to be successful with that keyword. To learn more about these sub-topics, we move onto step 2 ... Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.Now that you have a few topic buckets you want to focus on, it's time to identify some keywords that fall into those buckets. These are keyword phrases you think are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target customer is probably conducting searches for those specific terms. For instance, if I took that last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software company -- "marketing automation" -- I'd brainstorm some keyword phrases that I think people would type in related to that topic. Those might include:
And so on and so on. The point of this step isn't to come up with your final list of keyword phrases. You just want to end up with a brain dump of phrases you think potential customers might use to search for content related to that particular topic bucket. We'll narrow the lists down later in the process so you don't have something too unwieldy. Although more and more keywords are getting encrypted by Google every day, another smart way to come up with keyword ideas is to figure out which keywords your website is already getting found for. To do this, you'll need website analytics software like Google Analytics. Drill down into your website's traffic sources, and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are using to arrive at your site. Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have. And remember, if you're having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues -- those who are in Sales or Service -- and ask them what types of terms their prospects and customers use, or common questions they have. Those are often great starting points for keyword research. Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly Like I said in the previous section, user intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google. Today, it's more important that your web page addresses the problem a searcher intended to solve than simply carries the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this affect the keyword research you do? It's easy to take keywords for face value, and unfortunately, keywords can have many different meanings beneath the surface. Because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra-careful how you interpret the keywords you target. Let's say, for example, you're researching the keyword "how to start a blog" for an article you want to create. "Blog" can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and what a searcher's intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article. Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post? Or do they want to know how to actually launch a website domain for the purposes of blogging? If your content strategy is only targeting people interested in the latter, you'll need to make sure of the keyword's intent before committing to it. To verify what a user's intent is in a keyword, it's a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself, and see what types of results come up. Make sure the type of content Google is closely related to what you'd intend to create for the keyword. Step 4: Research related search terms. This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it's a great way to fill out those lists. If you're struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in a keyword into Google. When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google's results, you'll notice some suggestions for searches related to your original input. These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration. Want a bonus? Type in some of those related search terms and look at their related search terms. Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage. Keyword research and SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest can help you come up with more keyword ideas based on exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas you've generated up to this point. This exercise might give you alternatives that you might not have considered. How to Find and Choose Keywords for Your Website Once you have an idea of the keywords that you want to rank for, now it's time to refine your list based on the best ones for your strategy. Here's how: Step 1. Understand the three main factors for choosing good keywords.Before choosing keywords and expecting your content to rank for them, you must curate keywords for three things: 1. Relevance Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers' needs. In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than other content that exists on the web? 2. Authority Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative. That means you must do all you can to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, information content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks. If you're not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword's SERPs are loaded with heavy sources you can't compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional. 3. Volume You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences. Step 2: Check for a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords in each bucket. If you don't know the difference between head terms and long-tail keywords, let me explain. Head terms are keywords phrases that are generally shorter and more generic -- they're typically just one to three words in length, depending on who you talk to. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer keyword phrases usually containing three or more words. It's important to check that you have a mix of head terms and long-tail terms because it'll give you a keyword strategy that's well balanced with long-term goals and short-term wins. That's because head terms are generally searched more frequently, making them often (not always, but often) much more competitive and harder to rank for than long-tail terms. Think about it: Without even looking up search volume or difficulty, which of the following terms do you think would be harder to rank for?
If you answered #2, you're absolutely right. But don't get discouraged. While head terms generally boast the most search volume (meaning greater potential to send you traffic), frankly, the traffic you'll get from the term "how to write a great blog post" is usually more desirable. Why? Because someone who is looking for something that specific is probably a much more qualified searcher for your product or service (presuming you're in the blogging space) than someone looking for something really generic. And because long-tail keywords tend to be more specific, it's usually easier to tell what people who search for those keywords are really looking for. Someone searching for the head term "blogging," on the other hand, could be searching it for a whole host of reasons unrelated to your business. So check your keyword lists to make sure you have a healthy mix of head terms and long-tail keywords. You definitely want some quick wins that long-tail keywords will afford you, but you should also try to chip away at more difficult head terms over the long haul. Step 3: See how competitors are ranking for these keywords. Just because your competitor is doing something doesn’t mean you need to. The same goes for keywords. Just because a keyword is important to your competitor, doesn’t mean it's important to you. However, understanding what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you give your list of keywords another evaluation. If your competitor is ranking for certain keywords that are on your list, too, it definitely makes sense to work on improving your ranking for those. However, don’t ignore the ones your competitors don’t seem to care about. This could be a great opportunity for you to own market share on important terms, too. Understanding the balance of terms that might be a little more difficult due to competition, versus those terms that are a little more realistic, will help you maintain a similar balance that the mix of long-tail and head terms allows. Remember, the goal is to end up with a list of keywords that provide some quick wins but also helps you make progress toward bigger, more challenging SEO goals. How do you figure out what keywords your competitors are ranking for, you ask? Aside from manually searching for keywords in an incognito browser and seeing what positions your competitors are in, Ahrefs allows you to run a number of free reports that show you the top keywords for the domain you enter. This is a quick way to get a sense of the types of terms your competitors are ranking for. Step 4: Use Google's Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list. Now that you've got the right mix of keywords, it's time to narrow down your lists with some more quantitative data. You have a lot of tools at your disposal to do this, but let me share my favorite methodology. I like to use a mix of the Google's Keyword Planner (you'll need to set up an Ads account for this, but you can turn your example ad off before you pay any money), and Google Trends. In Keyword Planner, you can get search volume and traffic estimates for keywords you're considering. Then, take the information you learn from Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks. Use the Keyword Planner to flag any terms on your list that have way too little (or way too much) search volume, and don't help you maintain a healthy mix like we talked about above. But before you delete anything, check out their trend history and projections in Google Trends. You can see whether, say, some low-volume terms might actually be something you should invest in now -- and reap the benefits for later. Or perhaps you're just looking at a list of terms that is way too unwieldy, and you have to narrow it down somehow ... Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upward, and are thus worth more of your focus. Best Keywords for SEOUnderstand that there's no "best" keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it's up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic. The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into account relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:
And ... You're done! Congratulations! You've now got a list of keywords that'll help you focus on the right topics for your business, and get you some short-term and long-term gains. Be sure to re-evaluate these keywords every few months -- once a quarter is a good benchmark, but some businesses like to do it even more often than that. As you gain even more authority in the SERPs, you'll find that you can add more and more keywords to your lists to tackle as you work on maintaining your current presence, and then growing in new areas on top of that. Keyword Research Don't forget to share this post! Running a franchise business puts you in a unique position when it comes to promoting your business online. In franchise marketing, for example, the franchisee must align their strategies with corporate marketing guidelines to ensure centralized messaging across the business. However, the franchisor must also recognize that most of these strategies don’t apply at the local level, which is precisely where franchise digital marketing excels. In franchise digital marketing, an experienced franchise marketing agency or marketer devises and applies franchise marketing tactics that deliver growth to a franchise while remaining consistent with corporate marketing guidelines. Finding the right franchise marketing strategy is one of the biggest challenges franchisees face. That’s why most franchise owners rely on the expertise of an experienced franchise marketing agency to help them build the right strategy. In this blog, we’ll share with you franchise marketing statistics that you can use to inform your franchise marketing strategy. Peruse our franchise marketing statistics 2021 list to glean helpful information that can improve your marketing methods. State of the Franchise Industry2020 was a challenging year for franchise businesses all over the world. Both franchisees and franchisors, in particular, are still reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s take a look at a few statistics that provide greater insight into the current state of the franchise industry.
Franchise SEO StatisticsBecause franchises carry brands that are already widely known and accepted, consumers are generally more comfortable working with these businesses. But unless consumers are aware of a location near them, they still won’t be able to visit your store or acquire your service. That’s why franchise businesses need SEO to improve their local visibility. Take a look at the franchise SEO section of our franchise marketing statistics 2021 guide to help you implement a local SEO strategy.
Franchise Advertising Statistics Franchise advertising plays a pivotal role in driving franchise growth. With its precise targeting options, utilizing these methods can prove cost-effective for your business. Whether you’re using a centralized advertising model for enterprise marketing or a decentralized model where franchisees have free rein, taking advantage of franchise advertising services can make a significant impact on your business. Take a look at this franchise advertising section of our franchise marketing stats 2021 list for insights.
Franchise Social Media StatisticsThe power and reach of social media should not be underestimated in today’s digital landscape. Both franchisors and franchisees understand the value of social media, which is why more and more multi-location businesses rely heavily on social media for their franchise marketing efforts. Below are some social media statistics for franchisees and franchisors to guide your social media efforts.
2. Poor Customer Service (49 percent) 3. Irrelevant Content (45 percent) 4. Too Many Ads (45 percent) Social media listening is an integral part of running a successful franchise. This allows you to get a feel of what resonates with your local audience. Keep track of your social analytics and consistently engage your audience in conversation to gain more insights into their preferences so you can create content tailored to their interests. Franchise Email Marketing StatisticsWhen it comes to enterprise marketing, the impact of email marketing isn’t just about sending emails to your contacts. Because branding is vital in corporate marketing, being able to deliver marketing emails directly to your audience’s inbox allows you to deliver a centralized message while still providing relevant, personalized content. Here are some email marketing statistics to guide your enterprise marketing campaigns.
ConclusionIn this blog, we shared some of the most insightful franchise marketing statistics to guide your marketing strategies. We hope that you were able to glean information from our franchise marketing statistics 2021 guide that can help your franchise expand its influence and generate more growth. Franchise marketing can be tricky because it requires a clearly defined strategy that benefits both the brand and its franchise holder. For franchise digital marketing strategies to work, the corporate office must provide their franchisees a certain level of freedom with their franchise marketing strategy to tailor their methods to their local audience. If you need assistance from a top-level franchise marketing agency to generate success for your franchise, Swift Digital Marketing is here to help. We have worked extensively with both franchisees and their parent companies in assisting them to expand their franchise’s influence. Partner with an established agency that understands what it takes to build a successful franchise marketing strategy. Give us a call at (216)339-6041 or to schedule a consultation. Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Email Marketing. Web Designer Secrets For Creating a More Professional BrandThese past couple weeks I’ve been working with one of my website design clients, making updates to the original brand and website I created a while ago. As I’ve revisited fonts and tweaked colors, I’ve found myself using designer knowledge and experience that I’ve learned over the years. I decided to share a few designer secrets with you in this post.  I decided to share a few designer secrets with you in this post. Whether you are designing your own brand and website or hired a designer to create these elements for you, this blog will be helpful for you to discover how to create a more cohesive and professional brand. How to Use a Logo Font Truth be told, a logo is one of the most recognizable elements of a brand. Most often it is the center and of your website. It is used in business cards, and it is a focal point you have with prospective clients.  And if I had to guess, your primary logo font is probably distinctive. As a brand and web designer my goal is to choose a logo font that stands to create a brand recognition with your audience and to differentiate your brand from any other brands in the industry. For the sake of being cohesive, you may have used that same logo font for things like website headers and blog post graphics. But the more your logo font is used outside of your logo, the less distinctive it becomes. For this reason, experienced designers often refrain from using logo fonts for anywhere else. Consider some of the most recognizable brands like COCO CHANEL and Tiffany & Co. Very rarely you will see their logo fonts anywhere heir logo fonts on any of their other graphics? Very rarely, if ever. Does that make it any less recognizable? No! In fact, it makes the logo stand out even more. The brand fonts for headers and body text are consistent throughout the rest of COCO Chanel, but logo fonts aren’t used anywhere else. The same should be true for your primary logo font. Make it stand out more by refraining to use it anywhere else!  Choose Contrasting FontsKnowing which fonts pair well all boils down to one major component: contrast. The best font pairings are usually those that are very different from one another. The contrast doesn’t need to be extreme, but it should be noticeable. Your body text could be either be a simple serif or sans serif font. It should be easy to read. You can have a little fun with header fonts by pulling in a display or script font, increasing the weight of the font, or simply by making it all in caps. These contrast rules category, weight, and size aren’t just for your headers and body text; they also apply to the fonts that are included in your logo. Utilize StructureOur brains are naturally wired to rank items of importance when we view a design. Every time you look at a website or a menu, you look at the elements of a page in a certain order based on visual cues, probably without even realizing it! This ranking is called hierarchy, and good designers intentionally use it to call your attention to the things they want you to look at first, second, third, etc. There are five primary design principles that help create hierarchy in a design:
 Anytime I’ve designing anything for a brand, whether it’s a blog post graphic, content upgrade, or a website page, I consider which items I would like for people to see first, second, third, etc. Then, use at least one of the five principles above to call more attention to the most important elements of your design. Pay Attention to Negative SpaceWhen designing graphics for a brand, there are many instances where it necessary to find a place for a text on the image. Placing a text in the open space surrounding the subject of your photo will create a professional look. Not only does it make the text more noticeable, but it also makes it easy to read. It seems so simple, but paying attention to the negative space with a website design can make a big difference in creating either an amateur or a stand-out graphic. Maintain ConsistencyDon’t frequently switch up the core elements of your brand. You might get the itch to add in a new brand color or change up your fonts, especially if you’re in a creative field. Truth be told, brand recognition is formed by using the same design elements over and over again.  So make up your mind and stick to it. You’ll have a much more cohesive, professional brand as a result! Making seemingly small changes like utilizing hierarchy and negative space may seem insignificant, but they can have a big impact on how your brand and website design is perceived.  When developing a brand, most of us are not sure how many colors to include and how to use the colors together. Do these struggles sound familiar? If so, I have some great news for you. Coming up with a distinct color palette doesn’t require too many special skills. All you need is a basic understanding of color psychology, a little creativity, and the following four steps! Common Color AssociationsYellow is a go-to color for happiness, warmth and positivity. If you ever need an attention grabber, use this color. This color is attention-grabbing. This is the reason why taxis are yellow. Men usually perceive yellow as a lighthearted and childish color. This is the reason, why you don’t see it very often in expensive product advertising for car manufacturers or men’s clothing stores. Yellow is also viewed as spontaneous. Some common associations with yellow include sunshine, warmth, cheerfulness, curiosity, happiness, joy and playfulness. Blue is perceived as serene, trustworthy and loyal. It’s a popular color with financial institutions such as IBM, Bank of America, Citibank and Chase. No wonder, that social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn communicate through this color its message of stability and trust. Blue is also a popular color for promoting products related to cleanliness such as water purification filters, detergents. Not to mention, air and sky airlines, air conditioners, sea cruise lines, and bottled water. This color is usually avoided in restaurant logos and food packaging because it’s said to suppress appetite. Studies have also shown that blue is the preferred color of men. Some common associations with blue include confidence, authority, dignity, loyalty, security, serenity, and success. Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes freshness, growth, serenity, and healing. It also brings strong emotional relation to safety and balance. Darker greens are closer related to money, banking, and wealth. At the same time lighter greens have more calming effect. Some common associations with green include friendliness, harmony, freshness, harmony, health, eco, healing, inexperience, money, and nature. Red color is often associated with energy of action of adventure, drive, energy, excitement, love, passion, and vigor, nut sometimes war and danger. This is also the color passion, desire, love and power. This powerful color is an emotionally intense color. It allows for very high visibility, and is often used to grab viewers’ attention. Think red tag clearance sales and “Buy Now” buttons. Red has also been known to stimulate appetite, so it’s frequently used by food industry brands like McDonald’s, Frito Lay, Nabisco, Kellogg’s, Heinz, and Chick-Fil-A. Orange is less intense than red but still packs a lot of punch; it’s energetic and warm. Like yellow, orange is also associated with joy, sunshine, and playfulness. You often find it used in logos to stimulate emotions or even appetites. Some common associations with orange include creativity, enthusiasm, lightheartedness, and youth. Purple is color closely associated with royalty, luxury, nobility and extravagance. It is a very rare color in nature, many relate it to creativity and mystery. Other common associations with purple include mystery, fantasy, nobility, royalty, and sophistication. Pink is a feminine color that conjures feelings of delicateness and innocence. It is worth noting that bright and vibrant shades of pink often evoke a modern appeal. Overall, pink is known to be light-hearted and friendly. Common associations with pink include romance, gentleness, softness, gratitude and appreciation. Brown indicates nature and utility. This color is often used in logos related to law and construction. It is simple, simple and warm. Common associations with color brown is earthiness, depth, roughness, richness, and utility. Black represents authority, elegance, and power. It’s associated with intelligence, but it’s also associated with evil and grieving. It’s a serious color that evokes strong emotions. Common associations with black include class, authority, distinction, mystery, formality, seriousness, elegance, and tradition. Tones, Tints and ShadesTones, shades and tints, also have an effect on how the color is perceived. Tones are created by adding white and black to the main colors. When you hear that the color needs to be “toned down,” what it means is that its intensity needs to be dropped. By adding different amounts of white and black to a color subdues its intensity. Tints of color are created by mixing a choice of color with white. They convey more peaceful, lighter, and less energetic feel. It is considered more feminine. Shades of color could be created by mixing adding a shade of black to the pure color. This adds a mystery and a darker feel. They’re often considered to be more masculine. Now that we have learned about the color psychology, let’s put this knowledge into practice. Where do we start? Let’s figure out how to choose a color palette for your brand. Here are three helpful steps: Step 1: Let’s Gather Color Inspiration Now that we know so much about the psychology of colors, you probably have an idea of one or two colors that would be fitting for your brand. With these colors in mind, what you can do is to create a secret Pintrest board and collect images that incorporate them. This will allows you to collect images on the board that represent the look and feel you want for your brand to evoke. As you play with pictures and images, look for color similarities. You’ll be more than like me see a trend in the colors you gravitate toward. Shades of gray, white, and gold are consistently seen throughout her Pinterest board, and they were all very appropriate for her ideal clients and the overall aesthetic of her brand. Check out The Yellow Cape Code brand:  Once you’ve gathered inspiration, gather at least six colors for your color palette. I love creating color palettes in Adobe Illustrator, but it is also could be completed through Adobe Color CC, but I love creating color palettes in Adobe Illustrator. The eyedropper tool is especially useful for pulling colors from inspiration photos! Shades of gray, white, and gold are consistently seen throughout her Pinterest board, and they were all very appropriate for her ideal clients and the overall aesthetic of her brand. If you’re having trouble coming up with your initial colors, you can also take a look at Adobe Color CC and Designspiration.net. Adobe Color CC is a fantastic tool that allows you to glance through preexisting color palettes for inspiration, look through different color rules, create and save color palettes. I prefer to look through the Most Popular categories under the Explore tab. Designspiration.net is a great site for both design and color inspiration. You can search for designs that include certain colors by clicking “color” at the top of their website. Truth be told, it is so easy to get sucked in and lose track of time on there. If that’s the look you’re going for, you might consider using a monochromatic color palette, too. However, be cautious and use an array of light and dark tones to create contrast if you go in this direction. Analogous color palettes is helpful in exploring colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. They show a family of colors and they create a pleasing and relaxed palette. Analogous color palettes usually include all cool colors or all warm colors. For example, if brand primarily uses analogous colors: orange, green and black. They’re all warm colors from the same side of the color wheel. However, this analogous palette is a little less relaxed than most because of the pop of contrast added by their use of black. Depending on the look and feel you’re trying to achieve with your brand, you might choose to add a complementary color if your six colors are analogous. This will allow your brand stand out and become more distinct. A strong palette includes a balanced mix of dark, medium and dark tones, regardless of whether it uses a monochromatic, analogous, or complementary color scheme. Be sure to have at least one dark shade in the mix? If not, add black to one of the colors to create a darker shade or replace one of your existing colors with a darker color. Do you have at least one light color in the mix? If not, add white to one of the colors to add a lighter shade or replace one of your existing colors with a lighter color. Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel, so complementary palettes often include both warm and cool colors. I usually strive to create complementary color palettes when I’m designing a brand. Not only does this type of color combination create more dimension, but it also creates balance. For example, the colors of this brand by MaeMae & Co. include both cool colors (shades of green and mint) with warm colors (shades of peach, orange, and pink). These complementary colors create dimension and interest because they’re opposite each other on the color wheel; the hues one color family has, the other lacks and vice versa. They create a nice balance. Think about your color combination you’re currently starting with. Is it monochromatic, analogous, or complementary? Does that work for the overall direction of your brand? If not, make adjustments as needed. If your is colors are monochromatic, consider adding colors that are next to your main color on the color wheel to transform it into a relaxed, understated analogous palette or add colors that are opposite your main color on the color wheel to transform it into a balanced, vibrant monochromatic palette. If your six colors are all warm, analogous colors but you’re hoping for a creative palette with dimension, add a cool color from the other side of the color wheel. And vice versa. And if your six colors are complementary but you’re going for a less-vibrant, understated, and refined brand, you might consider taking out some colors from one side of the color wheel so that they’re all warm or all cool colors. Step 2: Include Both Light and Dark Tones One of the largest issues that I see when selecting a color I see among inexperienced brand designers is the use of a color palette that lacks contrast.  New Step 3: Choose Dominant and Accent Colors Now that you’ve settled on a color combination and a good mix of light and dark tones, it’s time to decide on 1-3 dominant colors and 3-5 secondary colors. You usually won’t use every color in your palette for each collateral item, logo variation, or page of your website, so determine which colors will be used most often and which will be used as accents. Make adjustments to your palette to ensure that the colors you’re using include an array of dark and light tones. This adds contrast and versatility to your brand and website. Do you have to use six colors? Of course not - you’re free to add more or less colors depending on the aesthetic you’re trying achieve. However, knowing the fundamentals of color combination, contrast, information about dominant and accent colors is helpful in being intentional about your brand that could be used for in social media and website design. It allows for the marketing process to be streamlined and versatile. Call Swift Digital Marketing Agency today (216) 339-6041. Atlanta Austin Baltimore Boston Charlotte Chicago Dallas Denver New York Your website matters to your bottom line. Whether you want to increase online sales, generate qualified leads, or drive in-store visits, an attractive, fast, and easy-to-use website (and an experienced professional web design company like Swift) can help your business achieve those goals. Keep reading to learn how our web design agency can take your site and your revenue to the next level. We don't just want to tell you about the beautiful work we do. Swift is the professional web design company that small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) trust when it comes to designing a brand-new website or redesigning an existing one. As your professional website designer, we can help your business create and launch a site that:
Learn more about how our in-house design and development team can build a custom site for your business. Or, connect with our team now by contacting us online or calling us at 216-339-6041 to chat with an experienced strategist about your website, company, and goals. Creating a brand-new or redesigned version of your website is a daunting process. At Swift, however, our professional web design company makes the process seamless for you and your team. Discover how our talented team of designers, project managers, and developers do it in this quick video. 3 core features of our professional website design services (and how they benefit you). As your professional website design company, we provide your business with a full-service solution to web design. From design to development to maintenance, we offer everything your company needs to launch and maintain your site. The three core features that stand out for our clients, though, include the following: Custom website design. Like your business, your website is unique to you. That’s why our professional website design company creates custom web designs tailored to your business, your customers, and your goals. SEO-friendly design For your site to accomplish your goals, from sales to phone calls, you need visibility in search engines like Google. That’s why our designs and redesigns follow best practices for SEO. Responsive design People browse the Internet with a range of devices, from desktops to smartphones, making a responsive site essential. That’s why our team only builds websites with responsive designs. With a custom, responsive, and SEO-friendly website, your business can generate the traffic, leads, sales, and revenue you need. You can also build your brand, as well as your target audience’s trust, which can help you stand out from competitors and accelerate your growth. What do your professional website design company’s services include? Every professional website design company is different, which is why it’s essential to learn what their web design services include. That way, your business can compare pricing and deliverables to choose the best web design company for you. At Swift, our website design services include the following:
Keep reading to learn more about each feature! Dedicated project manager As your professional web design company, we provide you with a dedicated and experienced project manager. Your project manager makes your experience seamless. From reviewing wireframes to signing-off on the final design, partnering with Swift is hassle-free for you and your business. Custom design A custom design provides your company with a competitive edge, especially when competitors use cookie-cutter designs. Your business also gets the advantage of receiving multiple prototypes from our internal design team, which helps you choose an original design that captures your brand. SEO More than 90% of online experiences begin with a search engine, which is why SEO matters. With SEO, your company can attract people looking for products or services like yours, whether your business operates online or offline. That’s why our design, development, and SEO team ensure your site follows best practices for SEO. From maximizing your page speed to optimizing your site copy, we take care of your technical and non-technical SEO. We also offer standalone SEO services that support your strategy, including content marketing, voice SEO, SEO content analysis, and more. Responsive design Responsive design is vital because more than 50% of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Providing users with a website that doesn’t adapt to their device, whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet, can damage your organic traffic, SEO rankings, and website revenue. That’s why our professional web design company only creates responsive designs. Database integration A database, like a payment processing system, can play a critical role in your company’s operations. As a part of our web design services, we provide database integration. Whether you’re looking for a basic, advanced, or custom solutions, our development team can take care of it. Professional copywriting People may skim while reading online, but content plays a tremendous role in their purchase decisions. That’s why our professional website design company features a dedicated copywriting team. With backgrounds in a range of industries, from technical to non-technical, our copywriters can compose SEO-optimized and on-brand content for your business and its website. Ecommerce functionality For ecommerce businesses, as well as companies that accept online payment for offline services, it’s essential to have a secure ecommerce functionality solution. Whether your company needs an enterprise-level solution or a no-fuss system, our in-house development team can handle it. As a part of our services, we also conduct in-depth testing of your system. This proactive step ensures not only the security of your system but also its functionality. That way, your company can launch a site ready for placing orders and processing payments. CMS With more than 50% of businesses using content marketing, you need a CMS. A CMS can help your team publish, manage, and update content with zero developmental expertise. While you can choose not to add a CMS, our professional website design company recommends it because building it into your website now makes it easy for you to take advantage of it later. What is your professional web design company’s process for building a website? As your partner, our professional web design company aims to provide a seamless, hassle-free process for your team. From asking questions to viewing designs to sharing feedback, collaborating with Swift is simple. Get an inside peek at our six-step process to see how we make the whole experience easy for you: 1. Consultation When you choose our professional website design company, we partner you with a dedicated project manager. Your project manager serves as a dedicated point-of-contact for your team. Whether you have questions, feedback, or resources to share, you can send it all to your project manager. At the start of your site’s design or redesign, you meet with your project manager, whether in-person, over the phone, or via video. This consultation allows your dedicated project manager to learn more about your business, brand, vision, and goals for your website. 2. Mock-ups Following your meeting, our team starts building a series of mock-ups and prototypes for your site. Since our professional web design agency features an in-house team of designers, we can have each of them create a mock-up for your website. This approach allows us to provide your business with several different options when it comes to the overall look and theme of your site. Once your team views these prototypes, you can choose the one that fits your vision for your website. 3. Design With your overall design chosen, our designers and developers begin the process of creating your site. From designing your homepage to developing your CMS, our team works with efficiency and accuracy to prepare your website and ensure its optimization for SEO. Throughout this process, you receive routine updates from your project manager. In most cases, your team will also meet with your dedicated project manager to discuss your site’s progress. These meetings, as well as routine updates, allows our professional web design company to ensure your website meets your expectations and requirements. 4. Copy As your site’s design progresses, our internal SEO and copywriting team get involved. To make the process easier for your organization, we provide your business with a dedicated account manager that oversees your SEO strategy and website copy. Following a meeting with your team, as well as research into your business and industry, your dedicated account manager compiles an SEO strategy for your website and its pages. After you approve it, our copywriting team begins writing your content. Since our professional web design company features a diverse copywriting team, we can assign a copywriter experienced with your industry to your account. This ability allows your business to receive on-brand copy that speaks to your audience and their background and experience level. Like your site’s design, your team will also review and approve all website copy. 5. Testing When you invest in professional web design, you expect a flawless website. That’s why our design and development team conduct thorough testing. We ensure the functionality of your navigation, database system, ecommerce solution, and more. Our team also assesses your site’s speed and performance to maximize the user experience and the ranking potential of your website. After testing, we can move forward with the biggest step of all: Launching your website. 6. Launch For our team, as well as yours, launching your site is a celebration. On your preferred launch date, our project managers, developers, and designers undertake the process of taking your website live. Following your site’s launch, our professional website design company does another round of checks to ensure your website is error-free. Once live, your business can start using your site in your digital marketing strategy. For example, your company may continue building your SEO strategy with Swift. Or, you may start new initiatives with our diverse team of online marketers, like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, video marketing, or social media advertising and marketing. If you have any questions about how to market your site and maximize its performance, you can always chat with your dedicated project manager or account manager for recommendations. You can also get immediate advice before starting your website’s design by talking with an experienced strategist. Contact us online or call Swift Digital Marketing Agency at 216-339-6041 for more information! With our unique benefits, as well as our ability to provide full-service solutions to digital marketing, we’re the trusted choice for businesses searching for a professional web design company. What is professional web design? Professional web design describes hiring a professional or experienced web designer or web design agency to create a unique website for you. Does having a website help a business? Yes! Having a website can help your business increase its credibility and visibility, which can improve your sales and revenue numbers. Without a site, it’s difficult for your company to reach a massive audience of consumers and business buyers that use the Internet to find products and services. Why use a professional web design company?A professional web design company, like Swift, offers several advantages, including:
Hiring a professional website design company can also help your team launch a site that is:
All these advantages help your business create, launch, and maintain a website that can:
Many businesses that use website builders miss critical deadlines for launching the new site too. That’s because team members leading the design or redesign initiative will have other responsibilities that require their attention, which leads to publishing delays. In addition to their day-to-day responsibilities, they also need to take care of the following:
All these drawbacks motivate businesses to research professional web design companies. With a website design company like Swift, your company can trust that you will receive an attractive, original, and responsive site that matches your branding and uses SEO. Plus, you don’t have to worry about missed delays or bugs. How much does professional web design cost? A professional web design project can cost anywhere from $1000 to more than $100,000. Prices for professional web design depend on several factors specific to your company, site, and agency. A few examples include the size of your website, the experience of your agency, and the site style requirements of your company. How long does a web design project take? A professional web design company usually requires 12 to 16 weeks to create and launch a website. If you need a site sooner, you can use rapid web design services, like those from Swift. With our fast web design services, our design and development team deliver your website in 30 days. This service, while expedited, still allows your business to receive a custom and responsive site. Earn more revenue from your site with our professional web design company. Swift is the professional web design company that businesses trust. Our experience, plus client-focused approach can help your company launch the best possible site. Call us at 216-339-6041 or contact us online to get started on building your website! Web Design That Maximizes Your Revenue In today’s digital world, your website is the first interaction consumers have with your business. That's why almost 95% of a user’s first impression relates to web design. It’s also why web design services can have an immense impact on your company’s bottom line. That’s why more companies are not only reevaluating their website’s design but also partnering with Swift Digital Marketing Agency, the web design agency. With over web design services under our belt, we're confident we can design a custom website that drives sales for your unique business. Invest in your site’s success with Swift Digital Marketing Designs. When you invest in our professional website design services, you will receive a website that’s:
You can also include additional features as a part of your professional website design. For example, you can request our developers to integrate a database into your design, enable ecommerce functionality, and more. Transparent prices for award-winning web design services. Choose our web design services, and your business can count on 100 percent transparency. From our personalized quotes to our initial designs, our team provides your company with complete access to our web design pricing and strategies. Get a free, accurate, and instant quote for our web design and development services with us. If you’re looking to launch your redesigned or brand-new website fast, we offer rapid web design services. Partner with our team of web designers for this service, and they’ll create a site in 30 days for your business. What do web design services from Swift include? Our team tailors our web design services to your company and its unique needs. That’s why you can customize every feature of our services to your company, products or services, and goals. The result is a website that your company — and your visitors — loves. Learn more about our website design services: Search engine optimization We maximize the results of your website design or redesign plan, as well as improve your digital marketing strategy, by ensuring your website follows best practices for search engine optimization (SEO). SEO refers to an umbrella of techniques that enhance your website’s ranking for relevant search results. A higher ranking in search results correlates to higher visibility among users in your target audience. With better visibility for relevant search results, your website can earn more clicks and traffic from high-value users — that can translate to more store visits, online purchases, quote requests, and more. As we feature a team of talented designers, we can coordinate with our Internet marketing team. Their teamwork ensures your website not only looks good but also ranks well in search results. Website Pages With our web design services, you can rely on our designers to create every page of your website. Whether you’re an ecommerce store, brick-and-mortar business, or service provider, our designers can create the webpages that your company needs to reach, inform, and convert your target audience. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we also offer content marketing services to enhance your strategy. Our web design cost calculator features five tiers for the number of web pages:
What if you need a lot more than 250 pages? Just contact us online — or use our project quote calculator to submit a request for an exact quote. Our experienced strategists will provide you with a customized plan and quote for the pages your site needs, whether it’s 300, 500, or more. You can also call on our team if you’re not sure how many webpages your website needs. They can provide years of advice and trusted recommendations when it comes to web design. Just give us a ring at (216) 339-6041 to chat. Customized style It’s essential that your website captures your brand, which is why our web design services include unlimited style options. For example, if your company requires a sophisticated design that emphasizes the quality and price range of your products, our team can achieve that for you. Additional examples of website styles include:
Our web design quote calculator features these four styles, as well as a no styling option, to provide you with an accurate quote estimate. We don’t limit you to these five options, though, as no one wants a cookie-cutter website. We encourage you to share your style preferences when requesting a quote online or chatting with our strategists. Your dedicated project manager will also invest the time to learn your business, goals, and vision. That allows our designers to create a custom, one-of-a-kind website. Website Copywriting For maximum impact, we also offer website copywriting with our web design services. We feature an experienced and specialized team of copywriters. With their expertise in technical and non-technical industries, we can create compelling copy that engages and converts website visitors. We offer three website copywriting tiers, which include:
As a part of our website copywriting services, we optimize your website copy for SEO. What does that mean? Our digital marketing specialists research high-value, relevant keywords for your business, industry, and webpages, which our copywriters then use to optimize your webpages. When consumers use those keywords in their searches, your website appears near the top of search results. That’s an immense perk, as 75 percent of users don’t go past the first page of search results — in fact, more than 30 percent of all search traffic goes to the first search result. Responsive design. Our website designing services also offer the option of responsive design. However, we recommend responsive design because it supports mobile users, which can consist of shoppers using their tablet or smartphone to browse the web. With more than 50 percent of the Internet’s traffic coming from mobile users, it’s imperative to provide support for users on-the-go. It’s also best practice for SEO, as Google now follows a mobile-first index, meaning it crawls and views websites from the perspective of a mobile user, not a desktop user. If your website doesn’t support mobile users, Google sees that — and modifies your ranking in search results. That can lead to a lower ranking, pushing your site to page two of search results and away from your target audience. With our responsive design option, we prevent that from happening to your business. Database integration Many company websites feature a database, such as for processing payments. We provide full support for database integration, which we separate into three tiers — basic, advanced, and full development. As a part of our database integration services, our team of designers and developers work with your company one-on-one to ensure we develop and launch the exact database your company needs and wants. Not sure what kind of database integration your company needs? Talk with our experienced strategists. They can provide a recommendation, as well as coordinate with our web developers, to ensure you receive what your business needs. Ecommerce functionality For ecommerce companies, we also offer ecommerce functionality deliverables. Like our database integration service, we offer three tiers — basic, advanced, and enterprise. If you’re unsure which level provides your business with the best results, you can chat with our experienced strategists. With their expertise, they can help you determine the most useful tier for your business. Plus, our strategists can coordinate with a designer and developer to confirm that the basic, advanced, or enterprise tier will provide the best return on investment (ROI) and user experience (UX). Content management system (CMS)A CMS is another optional add-on for our web design services. Whether you’re an ecommerce website or informational website, a CMS offers immense value. It can help your business manage and streamline your content, which can improve the efficiency of your content marketing strategy. In most cases, our team recommends a CMS as a part of our web design services. We offer three CMS tiers — standard, advanced, and enterprise. Depending on your company and its size, a standard CMS often works. For the most accurate recommendation and quote, however, contact us online. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we can match your exact web design needs. Our ability to customize every aspect of our web design services to your company also allows us to provide an unmatched level of personalization when it comes to web design. Why invest in professional web design services? If you’re unsure about the value of professional web design services, there are several factors to consider. For example, you could increase your conversion rates, competitiveness, and search ranking. All are results that could have a direct and positive impact on your profits, market share, and growth. Learn more about the specific benefits of web design services: 1. Increase your conversion rate A conversion can range from a shopper purchasing a product to a user signing up for an email newsletter — it’s unique to your business and your goals. No matter your conversion goal, web design services can help. Why? Today, most conversions relate or include an online interaction. For example, maybe you want to drive more in-store visits through local SEO — for reference, 80 percent of local searches convert — which will likely involve users interacting with your website. If you feature an outdated website with poor usability, it’s impacting the first impression of users. That first impression shapes not only their opinion of your company but also their decision when it comes to visiting your location, purchasing your product, or joining your email newsletter. With a user-friendly website that’s intuitive, as well as modern, you can create a positive first impression with consumers. That can make users more likely to convert, whether by stopping at your store the next day, calling your team for a quote, or becoming another subscriber of your email newsletter. 2. Optimize your user experience A website’s user experience offers an immense return on investment (ROI) for businesses — $100 for every $1 invested, on average. It can also deliver a tremendous blow to companies that ignore UX testing, as almost 90 percent of users shop with a competitor after a poor user experience. With professional web design services, your business can provide users with the best experience. For example, our team can improve the usability and readability of your website, whether on mobile or desktop. That makes it easy for consumers to find the information they need and take action. That action can include visiting your store, purchasing your product, and more. 3. Maximize your competitive edge No matter your industry, you have a direct competitor — and it’s essential for your company to have a competitive edge. While you may provide a better product and a better experience, those unique selling points can become lost in an outdated, unusable website. With our website design services, you can ensure that your company maximizes its first impression with users. You can also make sure that your business stands apart from competitors in your industry, emphasizing that your product or service is the best. For example, if you’re a pest control company looking to generate leads, it’s a tough market. You, however, can make it easy for potential leads to contact your company by investing in a website focused on the user experience. In this scenario, your company can benefit from the fact that 89 percent of users shopwith a competitor after a poor user experience. That is an immense gain for your business, offering you the chance to increase your sales and market share with a simple redesign or a quick update to your website. 4. Improve your search rankings Whether they’re searching on their tablet, smartphone, or desktop, users rely on search to find what they’re looking for, from services to products. That’s why Google processes more than two trillion searches a year, and why 80 percent of users turn to search when they need something. If your website doesn’t rank on the first page of search results, however, it’s difficult for your company to connect with those consumers. That’s why SEO is an essential part of web marketing — you need your website to rank to drive conversions, sales, and subscribers. With a competitive SEO strategy, as well as professional web design services, you can ensure your website ranks for keywords or search terms relevant to your business. Plus, you make sure your site provides the best user experience possible. For example, if you provide landscape services in Cleveland, Oh, you may want to rank for the keyword, “landscape design Cleveland,” or, “landscaping Cleveland.” Depending on your strategy, you would probably create a webpage optimized for this keyword. With our design strategies, as well as optimization tactics, it’s likely this webpage would rank on the first page of search results. That allows your company to reach high-value users in your target audience, transforming them from leads to customers. 5. Enhance your Digital Marketing Strategy In digital marketing, your website is your foundation or home base. It’s where you direct users, whether from search results, social media, or another source. As a result, it’s critical to maintain an optimized and up-to-date website that can support your digital marketing strategies. With a robust website like that, your business can improve the results of its other Internet marketing strategies. For example, if you use email marketing, our web design services can increase the number of subscribers earned through your website’s sign-up forms by upgrading your website’s usability. Another example comes from pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With our design and marketing expertise, our team can develop landing pages optimized for conversions for your PPC campaign. That can improve the results of your PPC campaign, maximizing your ROI. How does Swift design websites? At Swift, our web design services provide a 360-degree experience, which includes:
How do we create our customer winning websites, though? By following the five principles of web design. Appearance Creating a beautiful website is the first step to earning new customers. The appearance of your website tells visitors more about your company than your words. A site that incorporates modern design elements, optimized images, and other multimedia is much better at converting customers than a website that looks like it's from 1996. As a result, the appearance of your website plays a huge role in its success! This factor also includes incorporating responsive design into your site. Responsive design is the technique of making your website re-size itself to fit on the screen of any device. So, whether someone's looking at your site through an iPhone or a 27-inch desktop monitor, they'll still get a great, easy-to-use experience. That experience — often called user experience — is the first step in getting a new customer. When users see you have a sleek and attractive website, it’s easy to keep them on your site. But a good-looking website is just the beginning. You also need clear navigation. Navigation Navigation is the part of your website that lets people find what they want. Modern websites have simplified navigation to work on desktops and mobile devices. One of the most popular and effective navigation elements is the breadcrumb. For an example of a breadcrumb, check out the image below. Breadcrumb navigation got its name because it links to every page a person views as they move through your site — kind of like when Hansel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs to follow in their fairy tale. With breadcrumb navigation, your website’s users can jump back to any page they've previously seen. So, if you're an ecommerce site, you can let someone go from a product page to a category page with one click. If you profit through lead generation, you can use breadcrumbs to get users from information pages to index pages, so they can read and learn more about the same topic. For example, a manufacturing website design may feature a breadcrumb menu that guides users from general to specific services, like coating services and then coating services for specific materials. This breadcrumb menu makes it easy for users to go back to the general service and find the service they need. Breadcrumbs are just the beginning, though. You can also use mega menus like the one we have in our header. These menus feature big text, links to information centers, and additional links to specific topics. With hundreds of other navigation styles available, there's no right or wrong answer. It's all about what works for your brand when it comes to providing a stellar experience for your users. Giving them a great experience has another benefit, too — you hold their attention. Once you have a visitor on your site, it's crucial that you keep their attention. If you lose it, your visitor will leave your site, and you'll miss out on a sale. Attention is valuable because it keeps someone focused on your brand, products, and or services. So, if you want to make a sale, you need someone's attention on your website. With that in mind, different companies can hold attention in different ways, including:
Direction Direction refers to showing someone how they can proceed on your page — in most cases, this directs a user to scroll down your page. Vertical scrolling is the most common form of progression on websites because it's simple, intuitive, and useful. The catch is when you use vertical scrolling on your mobile site design. While desktop users use a mouse or scrollbar to progress through your page, mobile visitors use their fingers. That means your mobile-side pages are easy for someone to tap, hold, and swipe so they can scroll just like your desktop users. This design feature goes back to the concept of responsive design. Responsive design may mean that all your site visitors get the same great experience, but how they get that experience is entirely different. Your desktop-compatible site might use mega navigation in the header with lots of drop-down menus and big, eye-catching visuals. But that’s too much content in one area for a mobile site. Instead, mobile sites should have a hamburger menu — a navigation style that lets users tap a button, open a menu, and choose their next page from there. Hamburger menus get their name from their distinctive symbol. You may recognize it as looking something like this: With a hamburger menu, it’s simple for mobile users to navigate to any part of your website. ActionAction is the ultimate goal of earning any new visitor to your website. But visitors won't take action if you don't encourage them! That's why it's so important to use a calls-to-action (CTAs) at the end of every page on your site. A CTA acts as instructions, telling visitors what they should do next to get one step closer to becoming a customer. While that may sound bossy, studies prove that CTAs dramatically increase conversions in every online business model, from lead generation to charitable donations. Whether you want to get someone to a contact page or have them make a purchase, it’s essential to include CTAs in your web design. That’s why our team of copywriters develop compelling CTAs that support your digital marketing goals, from increasing email subscribers to product purchases. CTAs can take the following forms:
It takes time, revisions, and editing to make a performance-driven website something the Swift Digital Marketing Agency has nailed down to a science. Working in your best interests, we create a website to make sure you succeed online. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed