1. Overhaul your imagery by focusing on authenticity

In 2019 there’s going to be a real trend for visuals that switch from stock images, to genuine photos. This focus on authenticity can help you in building visitor trust (a notoriously tricky challenge when it comes to the world of websites). If your web pages are graced with that image of the Shutterstock Receptionist (who literally works for everyone in the world), it’s time to make a change and introduce the real faces of your business to the world.

2. Be mobile ready

Google has long since emphasised how mobile websites are now essential for ranking within their search results. However, if you’ve been putting off a re-design to move to mobile, now is the time. Google is now effectively ‘marking down’ websites that don’t present a beautiful online experience for every device – desktop, tablet and mobile. If you’re not sure whether your website is already mobile-friendly, you can check using Google’s simple tool.

What’s more, beyond Google’s word of warning on the matter, it simply makes sense to provide a website that scales to your visitor’s device. After all, what good is a web presence if mobile visitors (who now account for 51% of all internet surfers [Smart Insights] can’t interact easily with your site?

3. Review and rewrite your copy by asking “WIIFM?”

How long have you featured the same words on your website? And how much thought was placed into them when they were written? Your copy should act as a sales person – it should be persuasive, speak in your visitors’ language and compel them to act with calls to action that feature throughout.

Finally, on your homepage, you should talk of benefits, not features or product specifications. To achieve this, you need to place yourself in your customers’ shoes and always ask “What’s In It For Me?” If what you’re speaking about doesn’t matter to your visitor by explaining what they’ll gain when purchasing your product or service, you simply won’t make the sale, gain an enquiry or get that brochure download.

4. Content – It’s always reined as King, but in 2017 it’s going to be judge, jury and executioner

Your blog should serve as an essential marketing tool – it should drive search engine visitors to your blog, demonstrate your expert insight and grow your social media audience. If you’re yet to make the most of your blog, 2019 is the year to finally tackle it (and if you’re already blogging, then the following tips will serve you just as well):

• Carefully consider what your target customers’ pain points are, and how your content can provide guidance, hints, tips and tricks as to how they can overcome them.
• Undertake keyword research using Google’s keyword planner to ensure you’re targeting the right terms.
• Check out your competitors and the ways in which they’re creating content that’s useful to their (and your) audience.
• Share your posts on social media and always reply to responses – whether on social media or in the blog comments

5. Be sociable

Social media is only becoming more important for business, and with 90% of marketers achieving a return on investment with just 6 hours a week (MediaKix), it makes sense to ensure that your social strategy is on-point, and this begins with your website.

• Add social share buttons to your blog.
• Enrich your content with shareable images that provide valuable information (such as infographics, graphs and useful tips).
• Use a tool such as Hootsuite to see how much social engagement your blog posts are receiving – from this you can create more content that your audience are showing interest in.
• Add a ‘Click to Tweet’ feature, allowing users to quickly and easily share short sections of your content.

Looking for a fab new website? Contact Newcastle Web Design today!
Email: hello@nclwebdesign.co.uk | Phone: 0191 603 1069

The post Make 2019 your best business year yet – with our five simple website tips appeared first on Newcastle Web Design.

As one of Newcastle’s leading web design agencies, we’ve helped countless people on smaller budgets create top business websites. Over time, we’ve learned some incredible tips that can make any small business website better and in this short article, we’re going to share three of them. Let’s take a look.

Responsive design is essential.

Creating a website used to be a relatively simple process. You’d make something that looked incredible whilst viewed on a landscape screen and leave it at that. Then things got complicated with the arrival of smartphones and tablets as we created dedicated mobile websites to display on these smaller screens. Now? Well, it’s simple again – with responsive web design. 

Responsive web design means that your website reflows perfectly to fit any screen it’s displayed on. By going responsive you save money on multiple designs and present your customers with a unified design across all platforms. 


Local, not broad, SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) might well exist somewhere between science and art, but there are ways to make it work for you. As a small business, you’re working to a limited budget, so why try to take on the big boys? 

By tailoring your SEO for a local market, you’ll save yourself a good deal of money and appear at the top of Google for local customers – something that can’t be sniffed at. So, instead of optimising around words like ‘web design’, try for ‘web design north east’ instead. The same goes whether you’re a butcher, baker or candlestick maker. Be specific!


Encourage interaction.

Everyone has a contact page on their website, but few actually draw any real leads from them. So, why not encourage that interaction through the form of a scroll triggered box on your website?

Scroll triggered boxes are becoming increasingly popular online, in fact, you’ve probably seen one today! They’re those boxes which appear in the middle of the screen when you’re scrolling down a page or moussing over to leave. Sometimes they ask you for an email address, sometimes they encourage you to call. Other times they’ll offer a special one-time discount. Research has shown that scroll boxes dramatically increase engagement levels on websites of all sizes.

Looking for a fab new website? Contact Newcastle Web Design today!
Email: hello@nclwebdesign.co.uk | Phone: 0191 603 1069

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In the past simply having a website was good enough and so many of us had simple landing pages built so people could find out basic information such as physical locations and opening hours. However, the way we use the internet has changed dramatically, and you might find your website is no longer converting visits into sales, won’t load properly for the ever-growing number of customers using their phones to access information, or it simply isn’t getting the traffic it deserves. If that’s the case, it sounds like your website needs a spring clean. Here are our top tips for sprucing up your website on a budget:

Rewrite your content: A recent study found that 70% of those who use online dating websites wouldn’t respond to somebody with bad spelling and grammar. It’s a rule that applies to businesses too, so take a look at the words on your website. It could be that poor phrasing, incorrect spelling and mixed messages are turning customers off.

Make sure your details are up to date: If the internet isn’t a major part of your business, there’s a good chance you haven’t touched your website since it launched. Over that time, you’ve probably moved, changed numbers or at least are using a different email address. Keeping that information up to date is essential to landing new customers.

Consider a redesign: This might sound drastic, but there’s no denying your website will be many peoples introduction to your business. Ugly, poorly designed websites present a bad image to your potential customers, and shouldn’t be accepted. There are countless companies offering affordable web design in the North East (including our good selves!), so don’t rule out a website overhaul. It may sound like a cliche, but investing in a good quality website really does pay for itself.

Don’t ignore SEO: If you want your website to be at the top of Google, it won’t come with luck – you need SEO. It might seem more art than science, but search engine optimisation is the only way your website will get found on Google. Do your research and target local keywords, not national ones. ‘Web design Newcastle’ is much more achievable than, say, ‘Web design’. Be smart, you can compete if you think carefully about your keywords.

Looking for a fab new website? Contact Newcastle Web Design today!
Email: hello@nclwebdesign.co.uk | Phone: 0191 603 1069

The post Is It Time To Give Your Website A Spring Clean? appeared first on Newcastle Web Design.

An audit needn’t cost anything and seeing where you might be going wrong is a great way of improving your SEO. One useful option is a site such as woorank.com, which allows the user to get a free review of their website; it will highlight any errors or areas of improvement that you might not thought of. It will also detail common problems such as broken links, load and usability issues, which could all be affecting your SEO ranking.

Once you have that information to hand, act on it and see the impact it has on your site’s SEO over time.

Improve your share-ability

Social media engagement and shareable content are imperative to SEO. If you already have social media buttons on your site but they don’t attract a lot of shares, then there are a few basic tweaks you can make. First of all, make sure that the social media buttons are easily visible to the reader and experiment with positioning. If you don’t already, then end every post by actively encouraging readers to share your work.

Next, you’ll need to look at the content itself. Is there anything you can do to make content more compelling? Try engaging visitors by adding striking images and video, creating polls or infographics, and encourage readers to interact.

Keywords

Keywords are the most obvious aspect of a site’s SEO, however, many businesses don’t make the best use of them. Take a moment to review your current use of keywords. Are they featured in the URL and meta tags? Can you change page titles and headings to naturally include your targeted keywords?

Next, analyse your current content. Ensure that the keywords read naturally and are relevant, and that the content on the page has been written with the reader in mind.

Build authoritative links

Relevant, credible links are an important factor in the ranking of your website. Building or completing your social media pages should be the most obvious place to start, and regularly sharing your links on Twitter, Facebook and bookmarking sites is one of the easiest ways of creating backlinks yourself, which can bolster rankings. Other options for building links include guest posts on blogs in your chosen niche, and posting regular press releases.

Build a sitemap

There are so many reasons why a sitemap is necessary for your site. A sitemap will make everything much easier to find and it allows the search engines to be notified as soon as you’ve added new content to the site, thus aiding SEO. This is one of the simplest steps any website owner can take to improve their search engine rankings, and if you need any help building one, there are plenty of free tools and plugins available online.

Looking for a fab new website? Contact Newcastle Web Design today!
Email: hello@nclwebdesign.co.uk | Phone: 0191 603 1069

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