One more (very good) reason to have a Responsive Website

All hail Googlebot!

A while back I wrote this post describing why your business should have a responsive website. In the article I included the standard reasons, i.e. your website is optimised to give the best impression on a wide range of devices, it's easier for visitors to use your website regardless of which device they are using,  you don't need to have a separate website for visitors using smartphones to access your site – if you want the full story I'd suggest you read the post. In any case there’s now another, very valid, reason to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.

The boys and girls at Google have decreed that, in addition to relevance of content, frequency of updates, keywords, age of website, amount of site traffic, and inbound and outbound link quality a new factor will be added – whether or not the site is mobile-friendly. If your site is not responsive, or does not respond well to queries from different media, it will not rate as well as a responsive site does. The result is that the Page 1 position that you have worked to maintain on Google could well be gone at one fell swoop, and the only way to regain it is to upgrade your website to responsive design.

It’s a sad fact that while responsive design has been around for a few years now the majority of business websites are designed for computer systems only and do not cater for alternative methods of viewing web content such as smartphones, tablets or smart TVs (yes, at the current time this is even true of this blog!). During this time the number of media queries from the new generation of web capable has grown exponentially so it was really only a matter of time before Google decided to take this step.

In short, if you have a business website and it is not responsive on different media devices, now is a very good time to talk to your web design team about a site upgrade.

Not sure how your site is seen by Google? Check and see if your site passes the Google ‘mobile friendly’ test here. If it fails and you want more information or would like assistance we invite you to contact the team at mhdesign.

Goddammit Illustrator!!

Good to know there are others out there that feel the same was as I do. Adobe Illustrator is just so 'early 1990s'!!

What is the most important page on your business website?

Thought that it was the homepage, or the 'contact us’ page? Sorry, but you’re completely wrong.

It’s not that these pages aren’t important because they are. They include key information about your company, your product or service and your brand and they allow visitors to make an enquiry. But the most important pages on your business website are your landing pages.

Landing pages (also called ‘lead pages’) are pages that are designed specifically to capture fresh leads. They are usually linked to an online campaign and include relevant keywords that make your product or service more likely to be found in online search results. Most importantly, they should guide the visitor towards a specific course of action (getting more information, downloading something or making an online purchase).

A website will often have different landing pages for particular promotions and campaigns. Often these will include different versions of the same landing page that provide statistics on which keywords and approaches rate better than others. This ‘A/B testing’ means that you can ‘tweak’ and refine your landing pages to optimise your search results. Furthermore, this can be done very quickly enabling business owners to improve landing pages that are doing well and modify or cull pages that are not performing as desired.

A landing page is not a typical website page. While it should include branding cues that link to a business, it will differ in these areas:

1. It will have clear, concise and strong headline that complements the online advertisement that featured in the search result.
2. It will have impeccable spelling and grammar. If this is the first contact a visitor has with your company it's important to create a good impression, particularly if you're asking them to buy something!
3. It will feature trust indicators, including references from reliable sources such as media. If you're wanting people that don't know you to hand over personal information or buy something you need to establish trust. Trust indicators can include testimonials or industry affiliations.
4. It won’t have navigation any other web pages. Instead it will have a clear call to action that guides viewers into your ‘sales funnel’.

Well-constructed landing pages guide visitors through a process and capture key information, resulting in increased enquiries and sales leads while growing your enquiry database.

To find out more about landing pages and how they can work for your business talk to us at mhdesign.