Site speed and performance are critical components in attracting customers to your business and keeping them happy.

Because of that, we’re often asked how small businesses on a budget can ensure their website loads quickly across various devices with heavy user-traffic. Keeping your website running fast and functioning as it should be to serve your customers is an ongoing process, however, you can start your site with speed in mind.

As developers, here are our top tips to consider as you build your fastest website yet.

 

WordPress Theme Choice

We love Divi by Elegant Themes. They took the common speed bottlenecks of WordPress sites head-on for a better customer experience and we’ve leveraged those traits to build some of the fastest sites for our clients.

A while back, Divi had a bad rap among developers as being too bulky and slow. Since then, they have made a multitude of improvements making it much more capable of competing against other themes when it comes to speed.

Check out this video on Divi Performance Enhancement! Improved Google PageSpeed Scores, Reduced File Sizes and Requests

Hosting

In most cases, this is going to be the biggest player in site speed. Think of it this way: when you go to a website you are loading everything that you see from a server somewhere. This content and information can only be delivered to you as fast as it’s host allows.

You’ll see godaddy blanketing the web with ads for inexpensive hosting and they become the norm. However, there are many other options out there that are better suited for speed.

This brings us to cloud hosting. Whenever we switch a site from godaddy to a cloud-based server like Cloudways first thing we see is a reduction in monthly fees and in page load time.

Aside from cost, cloud hosting is one of the best options because it stores your content and website on a bunch of different servers. That way, when it is loading, if a server is running slow it won’t affect the website as much as it would if it were all loading from the same spot.

Site Development

You can have the best hosting and best theme, but if you don’t build with speed in mind, you’re not going to get the results you want.

Here are our top development considerations for a fast site.

Plugins: Plugins are files that you are plugging into your website that load when your website is being pulled up. If there are a bunch of things you don’t need or that you’re not using they are still loading with the site. Before downloading and installing a plugin look at the last update date and the reviews. Make sure it’s updated and doesn’t have a bunch of reviews complaining about it.

Ask yourself, how many plugins am I using and what am I using them for? Is there something I can custom code to avoid using a plugin? With plugins there is no magic number that a site should have or shouldn’t.

Images: One mistaken belief with images is that you can run an image optimization plugin when you’re done with the site and call it ‘good.’ Although it’s better than doing nothing, it is not a magical fix to image optimization.

You’ll need to look at how the image is going to appear on the page and different screen widths. For example, you might have an image on the computer 1800px by 1200px and you’ll have to ask yourself, “do I need that full-size image loading on someone’s phone?” The answer is, “no.” You’ll want to create a specific image to load only on mobile.

Think about how the image scales. Is it a image that is one size but scales down to half the size on the actual page? If that’s the case you need to make the dimensions as it would appear, especially in an online retail scenario.

Another image optimization tip to increase speed is resolution. Yes, you have that beautiful 300dpi raw photo of your team but you’re only viewing things in the quality your screen is. Tip: we stick with the standard of 72dpi and typically drop the quality down to 60% without losing any of the quality on the website.

Integrations: Did you know things like google integrations, adroll, facebook pixel, maps, and even youtube videos slow your site down? When you have these integrations loading on pages you can not control them with the cache. Integrations are actually loading things and calling to different sources. For example, if you have a google map on a page it calls to google maps and loads them as their host loads them.

Caching: This is a fairly simple thing that can be done to improve your website. How caching works is when you go to a website and it loads it will save “cache” the items and content on that page. When the user visits it again it will load faster, great for customer retention! Check out a Cache Plugin like Breeze and get started on increasing your website’s speed asap.

Want a fast WordPress site that keeps your customers coming back for more?

You can’t focus on one element of the process – your theme, hosting and development choices all play a part in performance. Stay tuned for more Airglow Digital tips on maintaining a fast WordPress site.

Considering a new website design? Now is the time. Airglow Digital offers great options for website design and development at an affordable rate.To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting website, get in touch.

If you’re growing your lawn care business and trying to land the most exclusive residential jobs and big commercial contracts, you need to make sure you are marketing your business in an effective way that will reach new customers and help you retain them. Here’s a few things you can do right now to win lawn care service market share in your area.

 

#1. Build a website focused on generating sales leads

Your website is your best chance for a great first impression. You need a professional, responsive design that effectively communicates the services you provide and quick ways to contact you. Make your site stand out by using your own images from jobs you’ve completed instead of stock photos.

Choose a domain name that is easy for people to remember and feature it prominently on your marketing materials. Phone numbers are harder to remember and people won’t call right away when they see your truck driving by with a large phone number on the side, but there’s a good chance they’ll remember your website and give you a visit the next time they’re in need of lawn care.

#2. Stand out from the competition

Research competing businesses in your area and pay attention to what kind of services and deals are offered. Find an area of service, pricing, or results that you can feature to make visitors to your website clearly see why you’re a better choice.

Make sure all the services you offer are displayed prominently with all relevant details included. Your website visitors will compare lawn care services before they choose who to hire, so make sure your business stands out above the others.

#3. Use search marketing

When someone searches for lawn care in your area, you’ll want your website to show up in the search results.

Use pay-per-click advertising to run ads through auction-based systems like Google Adwords.

Set up and rank for Google My Business, the maps listing and review platform Google uses for geo-targeted searches.  It’s free and can be optimized with your descriptions and customer reviews.

Your website will organically rank higher in search results by optimizing your website keywords, links, social media and blog content.

Use retargeting ads to target previous website visitors. People often don’t turn into customers the first time they see your website, so retargeting ads will remind them about your business and help push them to make the decision to hire you.

#4. Client testimonials

You won’t go far in this business without happy clients who recommend your services.

Online reviews are one of the first things people will see when they search for your business. If you have bad reviews – or no reviews at all – it will turn people away.

Make it clear to your staff that every client is a potential reviewer, and work on consistently finding new ways to improve your service to a level that exceeds expectations.

Unfortunately, people who have bad experiences are much more likely to leave a review than a satisfied customers. Use emails and follow-up calls to reach out to happy customers and ask them to leave you a review.

Feature testimonials on your website and your company video. Seeing satisfied people who recommend you makes it easier for potential clients to decide to choose you over your competitor.

#5. Create a Facebook business page

Facebook is a great place for lawn care businesses to generate leads.

To create a strong Facebook business page, be sure to:

• Include all your contact information
• Set up Facebook messenger and check messages frequently
• Set up reviews
• Regularly post videos and images of your work

Encourage clients to leave Facebook reviews and use recommendations to refer you to friends.

#6. Use email marketing for client retention

Don’t let a competitor poach off your past clients. You need to keep your brand in front of people so they don’t fall for advertisements and deals offered by other businesses.

To help your clients remember you even in the off-season, regularly send a newsletter with special deals, lawn care tips, business updates and more.

Use customer relationship management software (CRM) to track contacts, deals, personal information, and scheduled work for each client.  Use this information to send email reminders of when certain yard care services need to be considered, along with a call to action to schedule the service.

If you haven’t considered a new website design before, now is the time to start thinking about it. Airglow offers great options for website design and development at an affordable rate. To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting website, get in touch.

As we head towards the third decade of the new millennium, web designers have continued to cope with constant shifts in technology. Designers have adapted to these challenges and manage to create sites that are user-friendly, clear and innovative, consistent with the corporate style, adaptable to every conceivable device and just plain beautiful all at once.

In 2017, mobile usage overtook desktop browsing. Mobile functionality is key to staying relevant in 2018, while desktop sites must continue to evolve as well. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some notable web design trends promising to take over in 2018.

1. Drop shadows and depth

The use of drop shadows is nothing new, so why bring it up? Although shadows and outer glows have been used in website design for quite a while, because of the progress in technology and web browsers, we are now able to create some new and exciting variations. With progress of parallax layouts and grids, designers are applying shadows more now than ever to create depth as if there is a world beyond the screen. This is a direct reaction to the flat design that we have seen growing in popularity over recent years.

The use of shadows is a creative way to enhance the aesthetic of a web page, but also helps the user experience by providing emphasis on specific elements. For example, using a soft box shadow when an item is hovered gives the appearance that the information is important and also appears as if it was popping off the screen.

2. Vibrant, saturated color schemes

2018 will definitely be the year for an excess of colors online. While in recent years we have seen designers starting use bright vibrant colors, most were still sticking with web safe colors. Recently, we have started to see designers being more and more courageous with their approach to colors. They are combining bright vibrant colors with intense super saturation for headers that not only evoke an emotional connection, but also stand out and draw the user’s focus to a specific element.

This has been fueled by the advancement in monitors and devices that are more suitable to reproduce richer and brighter colors.  Vibrant and even clashing colors are useful to newer brands and start ups who are looking to instantly attract their visitors attention, but is also perfect for the company that is looking to set themselves apart from the traditntal web safe websites out there.

3. Particle backgrounds

Particle backgrounds are a great solution we have seen growing in popularity. We have seen the good and the bad with video backgrounds; although they are a great way to tell a story, they have been slowing down websites drastically. Particle backgrounds are animations that are created with lightweight Javascript to allow movement to be created as a neutral part of the background without the load time of a video.

They say that an image says more than thousand words, and a moving one certainly does. Similarly, particle backgrounds immediately attract the user’s attention, so brands can create a memorable impression of themselves in only a few seconds. Additionally, motion graphics like these are becoming more and more popular on social media, providing eye-popping leads back to landing pages.

4. Mobile first

As mentioned earlier, mobile browsing has now officially surpassed desktop. Almost everyone these days shops and visits websites on their smartphone. In the past, this was a clunky process that users were not as quick to adopt. Designers puzzled: how do we get a decent menu, submenu and subsubmenu on a small screen?

But now as mobile design has matured and become more of a necessity, the mobile roll-out hamburger icon has become established to minimize the menu sizes for smaller screens. Load time and simplicity is key to mobile designs. You might not be able to feature all the high res beautiful photos on mobile, but they can be replaced with icons. Mobile needs to have a focus on delivering viable information in a clean, easy to read format. The use of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)  is another option we have seen growing in popularity and it is starting to become the staple for delivering users content that is clean and loads fast. Google is pushing AMP by giving higher ratings to websites using AMP.

5. Custom illustrations

Illustrations are great, versatile media for creating images that are playful, friendly and add an element of fun to a site. Experienced artists can make illustrations that are full of personality and tailored to a brand’s tone—what all brands strive for in markets that get more crowded each year.

While this trend is perfect for businesses that are fun and energetic, it can help make brands that are typically perceived as serious and right-brained more approachable to their customers. Whatever your brand identity is, there’s likely an illustration style to match it.

6. Big, bold typography

Typography has always been a staple for designers to create personality, evoke emotion, and set the tone to how you should feel when reading the content. Like we’ve mentioned before with the advancements in screen quality and browsers (excluding Internet Explorer), designers have much more freedom when it comes to creating eye catching typography on websites. In the never ending quest to lower our bounce rates, a lot of designers have been making landing screen headers much larger to try and capture the users attention and draw them in quickly. We also expect to see the use of custom handmade fonts to continue to grow in 2018.

For web pages in particular, headers are key SEO elements and help to order information for the scanning eyes of readers. Looking ahead to 2018, designers will take full advantage of this with web pages featuring large and impactful headers spun out of creative typefaces.

7. Subtle animations

As browser technology advances, more websites are moving from static images and finding new ways, like animations, to engage users in their communication approach. Unlike the particle animations mentioned earlier (which are generally large backgrounds), smaller animations are helpful for engaging the visitor throughout their entire experience on the page. For example, graphics can animate the user while the page is loading, or show the user an interesting hover state from a link. They can also be integrated to work with scrolling, navigation or as the focal point of the entire site.

Animation is great tool for including users in the story of a website, allowing them to see themselves (and their potential future as customers) in the characters. Even if you are only interested in animations for fun abstract visuals, they work well to create meaningful interactions for your visitors.

8. Dynamic gradients

Over the last few years, flat design has been a much preferred web design trend over dimensional colors, but gradients are making a big comeback in 2018. Last time gradients were around, they were seen mainly in the form of subtle shading to suggest 3D (Apple’s iOS icons were a great example).

Now, gradients are big, loud and full of color. The most popular recent incarnation is a gradient filter over photos which is a great way to make a less interesting image look intriguing. A simple gradient background can also be the perfect on-trend solution if you don’t have any other images to work with.

9. Fluid Shapes

Social media behemoth Twitter surprised users when they introduced circular user photos, but this signaled the start of a trend. Web design has always been rather “boxy”, focusing on lines, hard edges, polygons, and rectangles- or at least, this was the case until 2017. The preference for fluid shapes and circles is already beginning to develop, so expect to see this continue through the new year as website design trends towards being pleasant to look at, smooth, and flowing freely. This is in direct contrast to the “boxed in” feel of the past few years’ design trends, and should seem more natural to mobile browsing, which takes place on devices with rounded corners.

10. Patterns, Lines and Circles; Geometric Shapes

This very trend appeared in 2016, gained its popularity in 2017 and will continue to develop in 2018. Using mixed forms and patterns on the page, it is possible to achieve great results. Design and layout appearance is highly appreciated in the design field. Flat design and material design are to be combined greatly with decorative elements and simple shapes. 2D design continues to exist; still, some changes have occurred.

If you haven’t considered a new website design before, now is the time to start thinking about it. Airglow offers great options for website design and development at an affordable rate. To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting website, get in touch.

When it comes to getting results with social media, one of the most important considerations is targeting the right audience. No matter what type of business you have, chances are most of your audience is using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and others.

Within the overall umbrella of an effective digital marketing strategy, social media campaigns are proven to bolster your traffic and response from your campaign. Your SEO agency can do more than just improve your search words and track your organic search results. For social media, your audience is the key to a lot of your decision making. Knowing who your audience is, on every level, will help you speak to them in a way that will engages their interest and develops loyalty to your brand.

Additionally, having a successful and engaging social media account will help boost your SEO.

Benefits of Targeting Your Audience for Social Media.

You need to clearly define your audience before deciding how to reach out to them. This may include a profile that will list everything you know about your audience, from age and location to interests and hobbies. Knowing as much as you can about who your buyer actually is will help you write content and speak directly to them in a language they understand, which in return will create a more loyal customer and lead a higher ROI on your campaigns.

It’s a natural tendency to treat people the way we want to be treated, but the fact is we are all different and want to be treated differently. Your audience is the same, so learn how they want to be treated, their likes and dislikes, and connect with them that way.

Some decisions you’ll make based on your target audience include:

• Platform: There are more and more social media sites from which to choose. In addition to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you also have Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat. Part of targeting your audience is choosing which of the platforms will give you the best results. Knowing the demographics of social media users is very helpful.
• Tailored Posts: Your audience might respond well to images or video, some may respond better to longer written content. The type of posts you make needs to be tailored to the audience you are trying to reach for better engagement.
• Timing: Knowing your audience means that you have the edge in timing your posts to publish around their schedule and events that are important to them. If your audience is teens, you are not going to make posts and publish content during school hours, you are going to get the most bang for your buck by knowing what time they login to check out their social media platforms.
• Profile: Your audience will be particular in the types of things that speak to them and your profile setup is no exception. Use your targeted knowledge to help inform everything from your image choices to the way your summaries are worded.

 

One thing you should realize is that your audience can change and expand. You may find that you’ve been targeting one audience but another type of customer emerges. Digital marketing is fluid so you can use the knowledge as you go to tailor new campaigns as your audience grows. This allows a more individualized approach for better engagement.

 

If you’re considering using social media as part of your digital marketing efforts or are looking to revamp how you use social media for your organization, get in touch. Airglow Digital offers bespoke social media marketing packages that are affordable and suited to your needs.

The social media landscape has changed drastically over the past decade. Social media used to be a platform for sharing content to drive people to your website. But these days people are given more content than they can absorb. With that being said it is more important now than ever that your content is engaging and captures attention.

The days of just sending mass messages are gone, today it’s more about creating a few individual and unique interactions with your users. Here are the main reasons we believe engagement is so important.

Organic reach and referral traffic are on the decline.

Logic dictates that consumers are eventually over saturated with information as more and more posts are made. Realistically they don’t have the time to even click on all the posts that stand out to them. As a result, businesses that heavily rely on social media to drive traffic to their sites are taking a very sizable hit.

A common remedy for this would be to focus more on creating content that resonates with its viewer instead of focusing on the volume of your content and posts. Connecting with the user is imperative in creating a relationship that will last.

 

Social media is becoming more popular.

To achieve the best results with social media, marketing organizations have to find the balance between posting on their news feed (the traditional way of messaging for most) and more personalized one-on-one messaging. Social media has become the preferred way for it’s users to connect with and follow their favorite brands.

It’s in our nature to be drawn to things and brands that we can connect with not only through values but through direct communication. Use social media to create posts that start a conversation with your users. The key to social media engagement is creating a long term relationship with your users.

 

Customers are using social media to reach brands.

There are increasing numbers of people going onto social media accounts to reach their favorite brands either for support or to just connect. People are commenting on pages and posts along with sending direct messages.

Helping customers on social media is a great opportunity for brands to publicly show how great they are at making sure their customers are happy. Being responsive on social media will increase the chance of a customer purchase and start to build a long term relationship with your customers, while ignoring them can show disconnect and reduce their brand loyalty.

Social networking sites themselves are reacting to these trends as well. Twitter now lets people direct message businesses without the business having to follow them and you can send auto responses and welcome messages. On Facebook you can set up automatic replies to FAQs.

 

Algorithms love engagement.

The level of engagement on your posts is solely determined by the quality of your posts. Social networking sites will promote posts that prove engagement.

If there are a lot of people engaging and reacting to your posts, this will tell the social media algorithms that your post is interesting and useful, which will boost the likelihood people outside your network will view it. On Facebook and Instagram engagement is based on likes, comments, and shares; on Twitter it is based on retweets and likes. Furthermore, the algorithms will also take in account the quantity of negative and positive interactions with this post.

On the other hand, if people are choosing to hide your post or aren’t interacting with it whatsoever, algorithms will assume it’s irrelevant and will show it to less people. This further reiterates the original point that sending out generic or static marketing messages is no longer effective.

 

The value of engagement.

Creating engaging posts and providing swift one-on-one support increases brand loyalty, customer retention and ultimately increases sales revenue. Positive engagement will position your brand as reliable and trustworthy, making people more likely to recommend you to their friends and family.

 

 

If you’re considering using social media as part of your digital marketing efforts or are looking to revamp how you use social media for your organization, get in touch. Airglow Digital offers bespoke social media marketing packages that are affordable and suited to your needs.

Launched in 2003, WordPress has become one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world. Today there are nearly 75 million websites built on the WordPress platform, powering more than 25% of websites.

As a small business owner, you’ll obviously want a professional looking website that is fairly inexpensive while having all the features you want and the ability to edit and manage it. Sounds like a pipe dream, right? WordPress is a free open-source program that is designed to make things easy, making that dream start to seem more like reality. Here are our top reasons why we love WordPress and how you can benefit from it.

 

Easy to Use and Learn

Ease of use is the main reason WordPress has become the most popular CMS and the first choice of millions of users. Even beginners are able to easily navigate the dashboard and make edits to pages and update content. WordPress is a web-based program, so you will not need to download or pay for any other applications to be able to make edits and add things to the site.

Most Popular Content Management System

WordPress was initially developed as a blogging platform designed for ease of use, and there’s no doubt that it is the best blogging platform available today. It made sense for designers and developers to focus on building out websites using this open source platform that will work for any kind of business. WordPress is continuously developing new features that enhance customization and make the editing and updating process easier. That’s why many popular brands like CNN, Time, Best Buy, TED, Dow Jones and NBC Sports have trusted WordPress and adopted it for their websites.

SEO Friendly

Building a website without at least basic SEO is about the same as not having a website at all. In today’s competitive world of online marketing, every business owner needs to have their website built with SEO in mind. A beautifully designed website is just not enough these days; you will need quality SEO to make sure your site is being found above the competition.

WordPress is built on clean, consistent, and streamlined code which makes things easier for search engines such as Google to index your page and read your content. It’s built on logical architecture, responsive design, and the ability to set up Meta Tags for each post and page. With WordPress, you can drive more traffic to your website easily.

Security

WordPress is open-source, which means everyone has access to the code. This makes it an easy target for intruders and hackers. However, just like many other content management systems who take security very seriously, WordPress is continuously working to keep their platform safe. As WordPress is so popular and owns over 25% of the market, there are are also other developers creating solutions to make WordPress more secure. These solutions and plugins to safeguard your website are available for sale or for free.

Free Themes and Plugins

If you are more of a tech and design savvy person who likes to do things yourself, there are many free WordPress themes and plugins available. If you go this route, you’ll be able to create a fairly good looking basic website with little to no investment other than time. Many designers and agencies will develop a WordPress theme for you as well.

Once you have a WordPress theme developed and you are managing the website, you will find thousands of plugins that can be added to the site for enhanced features. Keep in mind, it is still good to have a developer working with you when adding plugins for enhanced features because sometimes there can be conflicts or plugins that haven’t been updated to run with the current version of WordPress. It’s a lot cheaper to hire an agency to customize a plugin to work with your theme than to have one built from nothing.

Multiple Media Types

Content plays a very important role on your website, but having content can only go so far. A great way to make your website more engaging is by creating other media types such as animations, images, videos, audio, etc. WordPress offers a program that supports and can handle multiple media types.

WordPress supports images that include .jpg and .jpeg, .png and .gif. It supports audio files that include .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, and .wav. The video file types that WordPress supports include .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .avi, .wmv, .ogv, .mpg, .3gp and .3g2. With so many file upload options, WordPress gives you more freedom to upload.

Supports Multiple Users

Another feature that draws a lot of people to WordPress is its ability to handle multiple users at one time. The ability to have multiple different users managing different aspects of the website is a big reason why a lot of larger companies with marketing, design, and development departments love WordPress so much. You don’t have to hand over control of your entire site to be able to give access to content creators.

WordPress offers you access to four main author roles which include: administrator, editor, author and contributor.

• An administrator is the most powerful role which has access to all functions of a site, including publishing content and managing users.
• An editor has access to publish and edit their own posts as well as other users posts.
• An author has only access to publishing and managing their own posts whereas a contributor is only capable of creating and managing their posts.
• A contributor cannot publish their posts, it is the responsibility of an editor or the administrator to review and publish them.

 

Keeps Getting Better

Let’s face it, WordPress just keeps growing and getting better and better as each day goes by. Since the day it was developed as a blogging platform, WordPress has evolved significantly and fairly fast. The popularity of WordPress has never seemed to decrease they continue growing and making their platform a force to be reckoned with and we are sure will continue to dominate the market in years to come.

Millions of active users and large team of developers are always working together to make WordPress better than before. WordPress is really something special thanks to them and their community of supporters.

If you haven’t considered a new website design before, now is the time to start thinking about it. Airglow offers great options for website design and development at an affordable rate. To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting website, get in touch.

It’s important to project the best image of your business, and your website is no exception to this rule. The web is likely the first place your customers and potential customers are going to look to learn about your business.

You don’t want to deter them by looking outdated and out of touch, or by making it impossible for them to access the content they came for. Just because you aren’t actively hearing complaints about your site doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. Most people will simply leave your site if they don’t enjoy their experience or find it difficult to access valuable information. Check out the following list to see if you’re overdue for a website redesign.

1. Mobile Unfriendly Site

You hear us pushing responsiveness all the time, and for good reason. Responsive design is about good usability. It’s smart, and it ensures your customers will experience your site as you intended no matter where they view it from. Once thought of as a trend, it’s become recognized as the new standard in web design. We access the Internet from an absurd amount of different devices, all with different screen sizes, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. You need to account for the wide range of screen sizes your users will view your site on, and take advantage of responsive design to cover all your bases.

 

2. Lack of social media presence

Having a social media presence online is crucial now. If you aren’t sharing those accounts with your target audience on your main channel, your website, then how will they find you? Social media is a great way to build a relationship and keep in touch with your customers, as well as promote your business. It’s as simple as including the social links in the header or footer of your site, or the contact/about page. This way, your customers know exactly where to find you and can engage with your updates.

 

3. Can’t make edits

The inability to control what’s on your site makes it impossible to stay current and provide your users with the most up-to-date info about your company. The lack of current information will not only make your site look dated, it can also hurt your business. If you’re no longer offering a certain product or have extended hours of operation, your customers need to know. Make sure that you enlist the help of a good content management system when you redesign your site.

 

4. Slow website

We humans have pretty short attention spans (about the same as a goldfish) and even less patience. We want everything on the web to be lightning-fast. If your website takes more than 4 seconds to load, you’re likely to lose a third of your visitors in that time. As ridiculous as that statistic may be, it doesn’t change the fact that the longer your page takes to load, the more customers you’ll lose. Another important point to consider here: Google considers website speed in their search ranking algorithms, meaning you’ll fall further down the list of search results if your site is slow.

 

If you haven’t considered a new website design before, now is the time to start thinking about it. Airglow offers great options for website design and development at an affordable rate. To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting website, get in touch.

Video marketing is fast becoming a necessity for any business to boost their online presence.

There are many advantages in using videos to promote your brand. The combination of audio and visual elements make it the perfect tool to be able to inform and educate your users about your products and services. The use of videos is the perfect tool to be able to tell your story and share a lot of information in a short period of time. This allows you to connect on a more emotional level with your users and lead to building lasting relationships.

1. Product Explainers

A product explainer video is a simple video that tells about your product or services and why its better than anyone else’s on the market. These videos are less sales focused and more informational driven videos that customers can relate to and remember. Explainer videos can be done by shooting actual live footage or something more animated.

 

2. Storyteller Videos

Storyteller videos are much like your “about us” page on your website but with more impact. Your story is the soul of your business and needs to be told. A good storytelling video will spark and evoke emotions that will relate the viewer to to your story or your brand. When creating a storytelling video it is important to convey the passion your have for your brand, why you started your business, your mission, the “human” side of your business along with your business personality.

 

3. Case Study Videos

Case studies are the best way to share your work with your customers. It will help with building trust and reliance on your brand and highlight quickly what you are capable of. In these videos it is important to show case the results just as much as what your did. These should be 1-2 minute videos telling your customers about recent work you have done and will get the information across a lot faster and leave a more lasting impression.

 

4. Guest Content Videos

Now we’re not saying go out and bring a celebrity or influencer to gain views, but inviting respecting and well recognized personalities to be featured in a video talking about products or services that relate to your offerings is a great way to find NEW customers and retain more of them. The powerful effect of videos along with the information from the influencer will leave a more lasting impression on your users and gain more trust.

 

5. Lifestyle Videos

Lifestyle videos are becoming more and more popular. They are kind of like a “behind the scenes” video that are aimed to give views a look inside your company and what it is like to work for you. Quality lifestyle videos will have a similar effect as a storytelling video in telling the human side of your company or offerings. These are just another great way to create a quality brand impression.

If you haven’t considered video marketing before, now is the time to start thinking about it. Airglow Digital offers great options for video marketing at an affordable rate. To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting video, get in touch.

A website is much more than just a pretty way to display your brand or company. Your website needs to be set up so that it is actually working for you and helping you meet your business goals.

How to get the most out of your website is something everyone should be asking themselves. A good place to start is by defining what you want to get out of your website. If your goal is to get users to fill out a form or request more information, your site design and content needs to reflect that.

1. Effective Calls to Action

A successful Call to Action (CTA) drives visitors to take a desired action. CTAs are typically kept above the fold or in clear sight on a page so visitors know where to take the next step. CTAs are the key to lead generation but they need to be done right to convert traffic into leads.

• Make them bigger and bolder than most other elements on the page, but don’t overdo it.
• Consider colors of the CTA, whether it is a link, button or image. Make them look so good people will want to click on them.
• Offer CTAs that provide value, like guides, whitepapers, estimates, etc. “Contact Us” is the worst form of a CTA. Don’t rely on that as your only option for conversion.
• Make the CTA look clickable. You can do this by making a button or adding a hover effect to an element.
• Less is more. Keep it simple and be clear on what is being offered.
• Test when possible. Try testing different colors, language, and placement to see which CTAs get more clicks and drive more leads.

2. Consistent Branding

Your brand must be consistent throughout all your channels. This includes your website, print collateral, email marketing, your packaging, and even your office/store decor. There is nothing less professional than receiving a beautiful mailer from a company, then you go to the website and it looks nothing like that mailing.

3. Authentic Imagery

Wherever possible, use real photography. Avoid stock photography if you can. Stock photography certainly has its place, but it should be used as filler, not as your main content. I would much rather see a photo taken in someone’s office, rather than a stock photo of pretty people smiling at the camera.

4. Basic SEO

An important aspect of SEO is making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand. Although search engines have become increasingly sophisticated, they still can’t see and understand a web page the same way a human can. SEO helps the engines figure out what each page is about, and how it may be useful for users.

• Build Inbound Links – Off-Page SEO is about building inbound links, essentially getting other quality websites to link back to you. Search engines call this authority or “link juice.” The more inbound links you have, the more important your site must be, thus the higher you’ll rank.
• Title Tags & Meta Tags – A Meta Tag is a line of code that is contained in the background of a web page. Search engines look at meta tags to learn more about what the page is about.
• XML Sitemaps – The general incentive behind an XML sitemap is to help search engine crawlers (or “spiders”) sift through your pages more efficiently. An XML sitemap is simply an .xml file containing a listing of all your pages and when they were updated. It’s a lot like a subway map. It shows the structure of your website and where are your pages reside.
• 301 Redirects – We’ve all experienced a time when we clicked on a website link that ended up being broken. Typically you’ll see a “404 message” or “Page Not Found.” A lot of times this is caused when a page is moved to a new URL and the old link hasn’t been directed to the new page. Think about the lost opportunity when your customers or potential buyers want information that they can’t locate.

5. Quality Content

Content is one of the most important aspects of any website. With the rise of inbound marketing, content has become front and center in the minds of marketers. It is what search engines and people are looking for. It’s what drives visitors to your site and turns prospects into leads.

If you haven’t considered a new website design before, now is the time to start thinking about it. Airglow offers great options for website design and development at an affordable rate. To learn more about how we can help you reach your target audience with an exciting website, get in touch.