This month we were lucky enough to publish a guest blog post on Energise Web, a web design agency site. Our article focused on how to use Facebook groups for new business. Check out the full article here.
Author: yarra
It can make or break an experience. You visit a site on a regular basis. It doesn’t even occur to you that it should be loading on specific speeds. Then one day, it just halts. It doesn’t load. You click and you click and you click. Nothing happens. Website speed. It can be a total game changer.
Why Should You Care About Website Speed?
Yarra Web is tapping into this trend. Because there’s a whole science behind it. And there are a whole lot of benefits behind it. Here are a few:
Better optimization on mobile
We’re far more impatient on mobile. In fact, teens (a prime target demographic) spend almost a third of their day on mobile, like tablet devices and cell phones. If a site doesn’t load fast enough, they’re gone. They’re done with it and on to the next thing. This means that your site is missing tons of conversions, just because the Web speed is off.
Higher Google rankings
The aforementioned challenge ties directly into this one. Think about it – if you leave a site within a certain, very succinct time frame, it won’t help it’s Google rankings, In fact, it will minimise them. Dependent on where in the world you’re selling your products, and where your business is located, this can be a total game changer.
Best possible user experience
The most important component of any strategy is that you’re thinking through the needs and wants of your audience. Web strategy these days can focus on two objectives – either sharing information that your audience will appreciate or asking them to do something with a call to action (CTA). There are many easy wins in this space, for example- your CTA could be pointing visitors to yet another area of your site or even your social media platforms.
Sold? Okay, good. We’ve got lots of next steps, including invaluable tools that will take the design of your Website and more specifically and importantly, the speed to the next level.
Tools for Analysing Website Speed
Pingdom, a performance monitoring service, offers a Website Speed Test that couldn’t be easier to use. All you do is type in the URL of your site, included where you’re located, and off you go. The results returned will help explain how fast your site is, where potential bottlenecks may be and what you can do to mitigate these.
Google also offers its own solution. The PageSpeed tool is Google’s solution to ensure that your site loads as fast as possible. You can run the module on both Apache and Nginx servers. What’s their purpose? They both rewrite AND optimize all of the resources on your site. You can speed up your Website with Google DNS. Google DNS is a Domain Name System that is offered free of charge. It helps determine what domain names will contribute to the highest traffic to your site.
Two Very Quick Tips
Now that you know the basics, here are two very quick tips for getting the most bang for buck in website speed improvements:
- Image size- Huge images are beautiful, but they also mean that your site won’t load quite as fast as you like. Make sure your images are correctly sized and saved for Web in Photoshop before you upload them to your site.
- Web hosts– You can cut your page speed loading time by more than half by hosting your Website with a decent Web hosting company, and yes, that means your standard $3 per month web host won’t cut it. Find one that specialises in the technology your website is built with; For example, there are hosts that specialise in hosting WordPress websites.
It seems like Google is taking over the world, doesn’t it? There was a time when it was just a simple search engine, and even then, it changed the game for businesses around the world. In the years that have followed since, Google has increased and enhanced its offerings, now sharing an entire suite of Web-based products that can take your business to the next level. Some make more sense for you than others, and one of the most popular and prolific is definitely Google AdWords. Google AdWords can be overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar. Read on for some of our favorite tips to navigate Google AdWords successfully.
First, a debrief. What is it? Google AdWords is a database and dashboard of thousands of key words. Key words can be anything, but it’s far more helpful if they relate to your business or your consumer. Let’s say that you distribute dog food. Types of dog food, brands of dog food, even “dog food” could be a successful key word. You pay specific amounts for key words, which can then ultimately lead to conversions when your consumers search for those same key words.
AdWords works from campaigns. According to experts like those at Medium, “The best way you get started for now is to select “Search Network only” as the campaign type and then assign the appropriate name to your campaign. Additionally, uncheck the “Include search partners” box for now.”
The next step is to determine where your consumers are coming from. You can target your campaigns so that the key words are optimized in that area. If you’re a smaller business, this can be especially helpful as you’re casting a more specific net. If you’re going to make any sort of investment in Web marketing, you’ll want to ensure that you’re getting everything out of each dollar. This goes a lot further if you have a guarantee that you’re reaching your consumers, versus just hoping that you are.
We previously mentioned that you pay for key words, but you have total control over what you pay. You simply have to pick your budget. Your budget is the maximum amount that Google can charge you each day. You can always go back and update the amount but we recommend that you start small. There’s a learning curve with Google AdWords, as there is with any software or Website. Once you have a better understanding as to what key words cost and how successful they are for your business, you can make updates to your strategy.
Finally, let’s talk through ad extensions. Ads are what appear at the top of your Google search results, and they’re far more curated than you may have thought. What’s important in these ads is that they include a next step (like a phone number or a click here call to action) to ensure that visitors are then heading to your site. The other little bonus that comes with setting up ad extensions is that your ad will consume more visual real estate at the top of Google’s search results, giving your company more exposure. So extensions really are a must, even for a basic campaign.
September 2018 Update:
Google recently rebranded Google Adwords as Google Ads. Google Ads was designed to “… help marketers connect with the billions of people finding answers on Search, watching videos on YouTube, exploring new places on Google Maps, discovering apps on Google Play, browsing content across the web, and more.”
Imagine a goldfish. It’s perfect and beautiful and very, very bright. Unfortunately, that goldfish shares its pond with a million other equally beautiful goldfish. In order to get fed, it has to clamour and slop over every other fish, gulping and gasping for air. Your online advertisements can sometimes feel like that goldfish: pushing and shoving over spots on Facebook to get clicks and conversions. Since 2010, Facebook is a fishpond that’s grown over 680%, meaning that $8 billion is spent on Facebook ads. The reason why?
Facebook has over 1.94 billion users who are active on a monthly basis.
We’ve honed in on the best ways to utilise Facebook ads for immediate and effective results. This post will break down what effective ads look like and how to recreate them yourself. Rather than sweating it out for Facebook, make Facebook do the legwork for you!
Know your Audience
Build up information about the people who visit your site on Facebook or who are interested in areas similar to your business. Learning about who visits your business page will help create a buyer persona.
Buyer personas pick out the key features common to the majority of your audience. Learn the age, wage, life stage of your audience. For example, if you sell staff management systems, you’ll likely be targeting HR departments. Your buyer persona might look like the following:
Jill Bloggs, a 42-year-old HR manager of an IT firm, hates long sales pitches, manual data entry and clunky payroll systems. She is married with two kids.
Those key features your buyers are interested in will be the foundation for your advertisements, so pay careful attention to this step. If you’re advertising to the wrong audience, no one will buy your product. It’s like if your fish was looking for food at the wrong end of the pond.
Nail your offer
Knowing your audience is one thing, but making your product attractive to them is a whole other kettle of fish. Think about the problems your product fixes for your audience. One hot tip to consider is that people buy things as a means to fix their problems or make life more convenient.
Jill wants a more streamlined payroll system so she can spend more time teaching her son Tommy to ride a bike.
Your staff management system can solve Jill’s problem, but let’s take it up a notch. Make this an even more attractive product by throwing in a free trial or a discount code. Bonus deals transform your advertisement from a problem-solver to a game changer.
Effective Design of Facebook Ads
Facebook often rolls out different ad formats to add variance and flexibility for their advertisers. Be sure that yours suits your audience and the product you’re selling. Test out the designs on offer and tailor them to create unique ads.
Even though you know how great your product is, potential customers will likely be a bit more cautious. New customers will want to know that the product they’re buying delivers. Help them out by including testimonials from previous customers. Feature reviews and comments in your ads and your click rate will increase.
Images are another awesome way to engage with users and audiences. Make sure your photos are engaging and tell a story. Action shots, interesting objects and fun concepts in high quality are far more attention grabbing than a bit of clip art.
Videos Get Views
It’s true. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video can have subtitles. Your ad should speak volumes, even when your viewer is watching on mute. Colour, composition and movement should really shine in your videos.
Write a great script that’s punchy, minimal and suited to your brand. Reading the subtitles on a video, your viewer should get the look and feel of your product, and get excited about it. Appeal to the reader’s emotions rather than their practical needs. Make your message clear and precise. If you’re not great with words, get a copywriter to write it for you.
Just do it!
Creating a sense of urgency can push readers to action. Imperatives and short phrases are great for calling the reader to action:
“Act now!”
“Limited time only!”
“Don’t miss out!”
Phrases like these drive traffic to your site and get people looking at your great offers. Be sure that your ad links directly to the product you’re advertising. Clicks won’t convert if you just lead viewers to your website homepage.
Experiment with phrasing and try different formats that will engage with your target market. In the end, it’s what they think that will determine whether or not your fish gets fed.
Measuring Results of Facebook Ads
How do you know if your ad is working? Monitor the changes in the following areas:
- How many people “like” your page
- Online sales or generation of leads
- Post-level engagement
- New opt-ins for your newsletters
- Website click-throughs.
These are just some suggestions, but will largely depend on your marketing strategy. Larger, established online businesses will likely want to monitor leads converted, rather than the number of “likes,” which a startup company might prefer to know. Just be consistent in your measure of success.
One Final Thing…
Although you’re looking to use Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website, think about your business’ engagement as well. Learn a bit about Facebook algorithms and you’ll see that traffic is driven to businesses and pages that engage more with the social network around them.
Let your users know you and they’ll be more likely to trust the product you’re selling. Posting photos of your staff doing some activity, or a cool fact about your niche product will all contribute and add value to the ads you’re campaigning with. If you’re a beautiful goldfish with a personality, not only will you get fed, you’ll continue to grow.
About the Author:
Energise Web Design is a small agency based in Whangarei, New Zealand. They offer a range of services, including; internet marketing, website design and search engine optimisation.