How a bad website can hurt all your marketing efforts
Jun 18, 2018
10 min read
Table of contents
Your business website is like an old-school brochure of your business that is up and running 24*7. Do you want your brochures to be sub-par and drive customers away?
The answer will most probably a no. So, why take the risk with your website? Not having a fully optimized website can have a detrimental impact on your business which can cripple your business to a point of no return.
From just being a single website in 1991 to reaching the 2 billion mark in 2016, there are still a lot of active websites out there that are just painful to look at and are studded with keyword laden content that doesn’t make any sense to users.
That needs to change!
In this technologically advanced world where an online business can not survive without having an effective digital media strategy, having a website that allures users and perfectly aligns with your marketing efforts becomes all the more important.
A good website and a good digital marketing strategy goes hand in hand You can not just ignore one and focus on the other and expect results, you will have to work on both to make your efforts worthwhile.
If you are facing trouble in making conversions, despite of having a stellar digital marketing strategy in place, chances are that there is something wrong with your website. It can be the content, the visuals (or complete lack of it), it’s speed or anything else that is creating friction with your audience and is driving them away.
Apparently, there are a lot of website elements that can be hampering conversions on your website. Figuring out what’s wrong with your website is what you’ll have to do to get up to speed with making conversions, sales and some money for your business and we’re here to help you with just that.
What follows is a set of website elements for you to focus and optimize that can be the main cause of low or no conversions on your website. Let’s go through them one by one and I will explain to you why optimizing your website for them is so important for convincing visitors -
Lack of proper visuals
Depending on just plain text to make conversions for your business works no more. The human mind is 5x more likely to remember an image than text. According to a study by John Medina. adding visuals increases the chances of a reader retaining a piece of information by 55%. And marketing is all about making it stick.
Moreover, if users are not convinced with the overall looks, color scheme, layout style, fonts or any other design element of your website, most likely they’ll leave. So, make sure you put a lot of thought behind each design element of your website.
Irrelevant content
Having content that doesn’t resonate with your target audience is the most common reason websites fail to convert. Many website owners indulge in uploading spammy keyword-stuffed content on their websites that doesn’t go well with users. Also, uploading content that provides little to no value to readers is a sure red flag. Don’t upload content just for the sake of uploading content. Understand your audience and their needs first and then create content that caters to those exact needs for maximum conversions.
After the recent developments in Google’s search engine algorithms, the main factors it uses to assess the content on your website depends on the basis of the value it provides to users and the sheer quality of it. Writing content for search engines is not a thing anymore, so it’s about time that website owners start focusing on writing content for their users rather than trying to game the system.
Site’s loading time
According to a study, more than 40% of users abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. If your website loads in the same amount of time, congrats to your competitors.
Waiting for a site to load is a pure source of frustration. You’ll start losing website visitors even before they have a glimpse of your beautiful website. And there is little to no assurance that they will ever return back. So, it’s better to speed up your website in every way possible to provide a seamless experience to your users and boost conversions.
Having too much code, extra plug-ins and heavy images on your website are some common reasons to have a slow loading website. Check them first if you are looking to increase the loading speed of your website.
Site’s responsiveness
Everything is going mobile, even Google. The use of mobile has skyrocketed in the past few years, so much that mobile users have surpassed desktop users for the first time in history. So, keeping that in mind, if your website doesn’t cater to mobile users, you are ignoring more than 50% of your website traffic.
Optimizing your website for mobile has some serious search engine benefits as well. See how you can optimize your website for mobile users here.
Cluttered website
Not leaving some white space in your web pages in order to place more content on it does you more harm than good. It’s not easy to make sense out of the content or images when there’s not ample (or the required amount) spacing around it, making it look more like a clutter.
Keep your audience’s readability in mind and try to give as much breathing space to the content on your website as possible so that they can serve its purpose easily, and that is to be read by your website visitors.
Navigational issues
When a user comes to your website, he expects to see content that he cares about first. The navigational steps the user has to take to consume relevant content on your website should not be more than 1-2 clicks and must be straightforward and intuitive. Don’t let your users spend a lot of their time in figuring out how to reach the most important pages on your website, keep the frustration levels at a bare minimum by making it easier for them to consume what they want on your website.
A beautiful website won’t help you if it takes users 50 clicks to reach your service pages, they will be gone before reaching the 4th click.
SEO structure
Optimizing your website for SEO is as important as optimizing your website for your audience. Search engines are usually the most prominent players that send traffic to a website so optimizing your website for them shouldn’t be an option, it should be a priority. Incorporate some high search volume, low competition keywords in your content, optimize the meta descriptions and title tags, add schema markup and build some backlinks from your website to get some extra traffic from Google and gain some more conversions.
But remember to optimize all the content and other elements of your website for your audience first, search engines come later.
Do's and Don’t's of Cosmetics Marketing
Cosmetics have significantly impacted our everyday lives, and with so many companies vying for our attention, it is now difficult for firms in the cosmetic sector to distinguish. To bridge the gap between businesses and their target consumers, beauty marketing is essential. It entails the skillful use of numerous channels to reach a target audience with a brand's message, values, and unique selling propositions. Yet, although marketing may be a potent weapon for businesses, it can also be a double-edged sword if not handled properly. The cosmetics market is fiercely competitive, and one mistake may cause a serious PR catastrophe that damages a brand's reputation and decreases sales. To guarantee a successful marketing campaign that connects with its target audience while avoiding any errors that might have unfavorable effects, cosmetics firms need to use the correct methods and approaches. We will examine the dos and don'ts of cosmetic marketing in this post, offering insightful information on what makes a campaign effective and what might make it fail. This blog will provide you with the information and resources you need to confidently navigate the complicated world of cosmetic advertising, whether you're a new beauty entrepreneur trying to introduce your first product or an experienced marketer wishing to fine-tune your strategy. What are the Pitfalls of the Cosmetic Industry in the Digital Landscape? The digital marketing environment for the cosmetics sector has created a wide range of chances for businesses to connect and interact with consumers. It does, however, have inherent drawbacks that might harm a brand's reputation and financial performance. Some of the major hazards that cosmetics firms need to be aware of and steer clear of are as follows: Misinformation and False Claims The abundance of incorrect information and fraudulent promises is one of the biggest dangers in internet marketing for cosmetics. With the emergence of social media influencers and online reviews, it has become even simpler to distribute misleading information about a product's advantages. The beauty business has a history of creating inflated product claims. Brands must be open and honest about their goods and refrain from making exaggerated claims that lead to a loss of trust and credibility. Excessive Use of Social Media Sites Another trap that businesses in the cosmetics industry must avoid is an over-reliance on social media platforms. The reach and exposure of a company can be severely impacted by algorithm changes and platform policy adjustments, even though social media can be a useful tool for connecting with consumers and reaching new audiences. To lower the danger of unexpected developments having a detrimental influence on their digital marketing strategy, brands should diversify their marketing channels. Insufficient Transparency A trap that can damage a brand's reputation is the cosmetic industry's lack of openness. Customers are increasingly looking for ethical and environmental products. Thus, businesses that fail to convey their dedication to these principles risk negative publicity and clientele loss. To earn consumers' confidence, brands must be open and honest about their sourcing and production practices. Failure to Adapt Lastly, the quick rate of technical advancement might be difficult for businesses in the cosmetics industry. Brands must constantly modify their content marketing strategy in order to stay on top of the newest trends and best practices. Failing to do so may cause a brand to lag behind competitors and lose market share. Brands should keep abreast of the most recent technical developments and trends and modify their strategy as necessary. The Do’s for Cosmetic Marketing Build a Community As a business owner in the beauty industry, building a community for your clients may help you amplify your brand's voice and engage clients. You may provide your clients a venue to post product reviews, talk about beauty hacks, and be inspired by your goods by starting social media groups or online forums. To entice clients and boost sales, these spaces can also be utilized to provide special deals and promotions. Interact and Connect with Your Clients: Engaging with your clients and fostering a feeling of community is crucial when building a beauty community. Participate in debates, reply to their messages and comments, and express your gratitude for their input. Customers are more inclined to stick with your company if you give them the impression that they are VIPs or insiders. Provide Valuable Content: Your beauty community shouldn't serve as anything more than a vehicle for pushing your goods. Instead, it should offer insightful material that appeals to your audience. Provide product reviews, beauty tutorials, and other informational materials that will inform and motivate your audience. You may establish your authority in the field and develop a devoted following by offering value. Disregard unfavorable comments: With every business, receiving negative comments is inevitable. However, it's crucial to deal with these problems quickly and properly. React to critical remarks and communications, and demonstrate your readiness to resolve any issues. By doing this, you may improve a bad situation and show your consumers that you care about them. Leverage the Power of Testimonials Testimonials may be a potent marketing tool for firms in the beauty industry. You may enhance sales opportunities and establish credibility with potential consumers by enabling customers to leave reviews on product pages. Customers may feel more at ease and are more inclined to buy your items when they read positive reviews from other customers who have utilized them. It's critical to keep testimonials structured and accessible in order to maximize their value. Customers can be encouraged to submit reviews directly on your product pages, or you can request their consent before posting their recommendations on your website. This can facilitate potential buyers' research and make it simpler for them to obtain all the information they want in one place. Encourage reviewers to add photographs in their testimonials because beauty items frequently place a high value on aesthetics. This might assist in further establishing your brand's credibility by letting potential customers know what to anticipate from the goods. In addition to getting client feedback, you can also persuade people to provide a review after utilizing your goods. This might be as easy as sending them an email or placing a "thank you" note in their order. It's crucial to avoid seeming like you're pressuring clients into submitting fake reviews. Get Creative with Your Content on Social Media Marketing your beauty company with social media content is a highly efficient strategy to raise awareness, cut marketing expenses, and stimulate organic growth. To stand out and interact with your audience on social media, you must be unique because there is so much competition in the beauty sector. Making how-to videos for skincare or beauty routines is one method to generate compelling content. This might benefit your followers and demonstrate how your items work. Also, you may make subscription lists for email and SMS updates, which can help you cultivate a devoted following and tell clients of new goods and specials. Another successful strategy for interacting with your audience in real time on social media is to go live. This might be a fantastic chance to address client inquiries, provide brand-new goods, or simply establish a personal connection with your followers. Moreover, interactive material like surveys or questionnaires may be a wonderful method to boost audience participation and get insightful feedback. You may also network with other experts working in the beauty sector to create content together and broaden your audience. Another well-liked strategy for expanding your company and using the viral potential of social media is to provide giveaways. Yet, it's crucial to ensure that your freebies are sincere and consistent with your company values rather than merely attempting to get followers for the sake of it. Use tools to make a timetable and prepare posts so that your creative material is constant. By doing this, you can maintain organization and control of your social media strategy. The ability to reply to clients on social media platforms at the relevant moments is vital, to say the least. Since messages increasingly take the place of emails, prompt answers must always be a top concern if you want to keep your audience happy. You may create a devoted following for your beauty business by being inventive with your social media material and maintaining interaction with your followers. Invest in Your Website Your beauty business's success depends on having a user-friendly, optimized website. Your website must be responsive to mobile devices, load quickly, and be simple to use because the majority of users browse websites from mobile devices. Your website, which combines all the information about your company, including your online store, blog, and other pertinent information, will act as the ultimate destination for your clients. Your website should be optimized for search engines, including pertinent keywords to boost exposure in search results, in addition to being aesthetically pleasing. Your website's traffic will improve as a result, and you'll have more customers. Keep in mind that your website represents your brand, and a badly designed website can harm your credibility and reputation. Choose a website builder with pre-designed templates that are optimized for performance and user experience, or spend money on the services of a professional web designer. The Don't's for Cosmetic Marketing Don’t be Lax with your Stat Evaluation Each marketing campaign, especially those in the beauty sector, must evaluate campaign performance data to be successful. You run the risk of losing out on important insights regarding consumer behavior, engagement, and preferences if you ignore campaign performance statistics. You can learn, for instance, how many people are visiting your website, which pages they are seeing, and how long they are spending on each page, thanks to Google Analytics. You may use this information to determine which services or goods are most in demand as well as which pages can benefit from optimization to increase interaction. Similarly to this, you may adjust your content to your audience's tastes by using social media analytics tools to gain information about the post kinds that they find most interesting. Site surveys provide you the chance to get input directly from your clients and offer even more individualized information. By routinely assessing campaign performance statistics, you can tell which efforts are succeeding and which ones can benefit from revisions. Also, you may monitor your return on investment (ROI) and modify your marketing budget as necessary. Don’t Sleep on Micro-influencers The followers of micro-influencers, who generally have between 1,000 and 100,000 on social media, are smaller. They might not have the same degree of celebrity status as well-known influencers, but they have a devoted and active fan base in a certain industry. They are authorities in their profession, and their followers trust their advice. Because of this, they are excellent business partners for companies in the beauty industry, particularly those that specialize. Working with micro-influencers has significant advantages because they sometimes charge less for collaborations than more established influencers. They are, hence, a sensible choice for companies with smaller marketing resources. Also, using micro-influencers enables a more specialized method of marketing. They are frequently more receptive to creating long-term alliances with businesses, which may result in a more sincere and advantageous connection. Micro-influencers also have the benefit of more open lines of contact with their audience. They have the ability to interact with their audience and build bonds with them. As a result, there may be an increase in engagement and trust between the influencer and their followers, which might result in better sales for your beauty company. In general, it's crucial to recognize the importance of micro-influencers in your marketing plan. They might not have the same amount of reach as well-known influencers, but they can be very good at focusing on certain audiences and cultivating real connections with their followers. Don’t Fail at Personal Branding Creating a personal brand for yourself as a business owner may help you connect with your consumers more directly since personal branding is all about showing your own character and personality. You may develop a more genuine and relevant picture of yourself and your business by discussing your path, your motivations, and your narrative. Consumers are frequently drawn to companies with a human touch, and a personal brand may assist in highlighting this. You increase your chances of engaging with clients who hold similar opinions and values by disclosing your own. This might promote brand loyalty and a sense of community. It's also important to remember that a personal brand need not be closely related to your cosmetics company. You may create a personal brand that lives independently, even though it's crucial to link it in some manner to your business. This will enable you to interact with consumers more personally and include them in future business endeavors. In the end, developing a personal brand is all about adding humanity to your company and forging closer ties with your clients. You may project a more genuine and relatable picture of yourself and your company by telling your story, interacting with clients, and speaking out on causes that are important to you. Don’t Forget about SEO SEO is essential for firms in the beauty industry because it makes it easier for potential clients to locate your goods or services when they utilize pertinent keywords or phrases. You may improve your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive more organic traffic to your website by optimizing the content of your website with the appropriate keywords and utilizing other SEO tactics. Yet, if you're not familiar with the best techniques and tactics, SEO may be difficult and time-consuming. Working with seasoned and qualified SEO agencies or specialists is crucial if you want to optimize your website and raise your search engine rankings. More brand recognition, better website traffic and engagement, greater conversion rates, and a more noticeable return on investment are just a few advantages of SEO for beauty firms. You can make sure that your beauty business stays competitive and visible in the digital environment by giving SEO a high priority in your marketing plan. In Conclusion Marketing is crucial to success in the fiercely competitive field of cosmetics and beauty products. It's essential to build a strong brand, develop interesting social media content, optimize your website for search engines, and work with influencers if you want to stand out from the competition and draw in clients. You may develop a profitable plan that increases sales and fosters brand loyalty by adhering to the cosmetic marketing dos and avoiding the don'ts. At Saffron Edge, we specialize in providing successful marketing services to companies in the cosmetics sector. To find out how we can help your beauty business succeed in a crowded industry, get in touch with us right now. ...
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Creating A Good Relationship Between Customers And Businesses
Gone are the days when magic and luck were believed to act and bring prospects to reality. Now the modern world is changing rapidly and with technology at peak publishing content in which customers can read understand and follow is what inbound marketing strategies about. Many businesses has been stuck with employing marketers and pressurizing them to achieve leads that result to sales, actually it is not a simple job especially when the modes to reach the customers is restrictive and occupied making it expensive to introduce new modes of marketing. The idea here is the customers, cost and profit to the company? The result should be the best in the search engine optimization that result to massive leads and following. Recording Leads This is one of the inbound marketing strategies in knowing how many people are fast tracking your business and company. It could include telephone, emails, comments and advices all of which are recorded and interpreted business wise. It helps in getting the right steps and kind of marketing and outburst methods to reach the esteemed customers. Data How well is the business and company able to store data? This is important because centralising these data makes it easy to review each specified form of data for example, emails, video, telephone and so on. Why? Because assembling them together and any financial administration will be highly tracked by how much and scale of preference in sorting the most important to the least. Updates Marketing is a diverse field that is changing day in day out and with the merge with technology it is demanding and requiring companies and business owners to update to the marketing needs that is changing fast as the customers and the level of satisfaction should be high to compete with others and set a competitive advantage over others. Keeping the system up to date. Target This is an important part of inbound marketing because of deriving a specific message that is suited to the customers in brackets. Youthful information is widely different to parenting information. Communication is vital to whom it is directed to, and under the search engine optimisation the published information is good, attractive and friendly that targeted customers can read and understand. Research Always this is a top performing strategy in many businesses and companies that give and yield the exact outcome. It is also a gauge to check why others are placed higher than your company and a mirror to check performance. Connection The platform of Business is wide and may require the technological connection between business to business (B2B) or business to customers (B2C) so as know the level needed to achieve of become a market leader and how the customers will help on this. Inbound Marketing This is the general way of employing methods of reaching a customer letting them know through the various medium you are employing to reach them. Here a customer is the target. The result of inbound marketing is what one can see like increased website traffic, customers ranking the company and customer leads and so on. This type of marketing has to yield result and progress comparing it to companies offering the same. Outsource Inbound Marketing At times that internal marketer and experts can fully exhaust their know how and useful required information and not to mean they are low performers, or not achieving but the company policy and strategies may be bypassed by era, technology thus requiring an outsource expertise in the same area that brings in more expanded measures regarding marketing and especially the online search engine optimization for the companies dependent on the internet. The outsourced inbound marketing experts gives the company a two way traffic for them to concentrate on effective means of reaching customers, information as the internal inbound marketers concentrate on profit margins of the company. Great relieve in fact! This has therefore eased the pressure of multitasking kind of operation as the outsourced inbound marketing expertisely concentrate improving the bond on higher heights. Customers are the priority to any given business and company and their interest should be captured fast and a solution got. These can result to your business being ranked high or low depending with the publish information towards the customers. ...
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10 Best SEO Tools Every Webmaster Should Know!
Every webmaster wants to get on the top of Google, but actually getting there is no walk in the park. You'll have to take care of each and every aspect of SEO to crack it - backlinks, meta descriptions, content quality, keywords and 200+ other factors that Google looks for on a webpage to rank it on SERPs. And taking care of optimizing all your webpages for all these factors can get a bit difficult for webmasters. Luckily, there are tools out there that can help you supercharge all your SEO efforts in a breeze. We actively use the helpful SEO tools we are about to tell you to provide unmatched SEO services to all our clients and drive massive search engine visibility and eventually, traffic to them. So, here we go - 1. Screaming Frog We are hardcore fans of Screaming Frog and have been using this tool since we started offering search engine optimization services in 2009. This tool scans your website like search engines scan the web and will tell you everything wrong about your website that is not chiming well with Google. It checks your website for a lot of things including meta descriptions, meta tags, duplicate content, broken redirects, robots.txt and a lot of other technical things. So, If you are looking to conduct a full SEO audit for a website, Screaming Frog is your go-to tool. 2. Yoast SEO If your website runs on wordpress, you must be aware of this killer SEO tool, if not, you should install it as soon as possible! Yoast SEO comes as a plugin extension for wordpress websites and is an all-round SEO tool that helps webmasters with optimizing their meta titles & descriptions, keywords, urls, XML sitemaps, duplicacy of content, redirections and content readability amongst other things. It's free but if you need some extra functionality, there's a pro (paid) version available as well that you can opt for more SEO benefits. 3. Bright Local Bright Local is just like screaming frog but this tool allows you to monitor and update your local citations across the web as well. Great tool to stay on top of Local SEO. 4. W3C Validator When it comes to SEO, the way your website is written can sometimes make all the difference. Properly validating your website code for SEO using a tool like W3C Validator can bring to light some problems with your website code that you didn't even know existed in the first place. You'll need to sit with your developer on this one. If you don't have one, use our help. 5. Barracuda Panguin If you think your website is hit with a Google penalty, Panguin will help you make sure that your website is indeed hit with a google penalty (Penguin, Panda and the likes) or not and help you get to the bottom of it. 6. GT Metrix The time your website takes to load is vital in determining it's search engine ranking. GT Metrix is a tool that will pin-point everything wrong on your website that is hampering its performance and will provide quick solutions to fix the issues as soon as possible. 7. SEMrush No other tool will help you better with keyword research than SEMrush. Other than that, this tool will also help you monitor and analyze your website traffic, targeted keywords, backlink profile, website content and also gives you a sneak peek of your competitors' backlink profile and the keywords they are targeting. Moreover, you can also conduct a sitewide audit with their new free SEO site audit tool. 8. Citation Labs' Broken Link Builder Working on securing broken links from the web is a great way to strengthen your own backlink profile but can be a bit extensive as finding and securing broken links all over the web is no easy task. Citation Labs' Broken Link Builder simplifies this manual and cumbersome process as it shows you every broken link there is on the web for a specific keyword. At Saffron Edge we use the same techniques to find out and create links for all the broken links for our clients. 9. Ninja Outreach Ninja Outreach makes reaching out to influencers a piece of cake. It is a tool that connects influencers with bloggers for easy collaborations. You can easily search for influencers in your industry and have a look at their platform specific following at a glance with the help of this powerful tool. Also, the tool provides ready-made messaging templates to reach out to influencers in a jiffy. 10. Google Mobile Friendly Test After Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing algorithm, getting a mobile website for your desktop website, if you didn't have one already, became a priority. After the update, mobile friendliness became a detrimental factor in assigning search engine rankings to websites. To help webmasters, Google created their own tool to make sure that webmasters complied to all the mobile website best practices there are and provided a seamless user experience to their mobile users. The tool weeds out and highlights every problem there is with your website that is hurting it's mobile accessibility. Are these tools the only ones out there? No way, there are literally thousands of tools out there that can help you with the above mentioned aspects of SEO. By actively making use of these tools you will be able to keep track of everything SEO related happening with your website and will help you stay on top of everything and gain better search engine rankings over-time. ...
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