Building and optimizing a website to promote your business is just the first step on the road to formulating and executing a comprehensive and effective internet marketing strategy. With millions of websites that cover almost all niches, it can be quite difficult to tackle the competition and increase conversion rates and the number of visitors. Network presence is one of the most important parameters for establishing a healthy and powerful brand image in your niche.
Importance of Website Analytics
Analytics is one of the most important factors for answering your client’s needs and increasing the number of visitors to your web page. Understanding what your visitors like and dislike on your web presentation will give you the opportunity to plan ahead and update your site in accordance to their needs. Google Analytics is probably the most popular platform for this kind of researches and it provides a wide range of on-site web analytics that can help you optimize your presentation.
Google Analytics is definitely the most popular free analytics platform, and it is perfectly adequate for your personal blog or a non-commercial website, but when it comes to larger, more complex commercial projects you might need some additional information about your visitors, which can be provided by certain call tracking and on-site targeting applications. By knowing who your customers are and what they like, you will be able to further develop your commercial offer and make it more appealing to your current and future clients.
Adjusting Your Web Presentation for Mobile Users
Responsive website design is an investment in the future since the number of people who are surfing the Internet on their smartphones is getting bigger by the day. In February last year, mobile app internet traffic exceeded the traffic coming from desktop computers in the United States. With this figures in mind it is easy to see the importance of responsive web page design.
Some of the users who surf the web on their mobile phones use specialized mobile applications that proved to be much more practical and easier to navigate than regular websites. Investing in this application and making it available at free application stores, is likely to increase the number of visitors as well as your conversion rate, because after downloading a mobile app, users will be able to receive notifications from your website, whenever they turn on WiFi or mobile internet on their phones. Usage of mobile applications drastically increased during 2014.
Increasing Marketing Power of Social Networks
There are numerous theories and tactics for formulating a successful viral marketing campaign. Social media offers endless possibilities for interaction with your customers, and engaging them to interact with your posts should be your top priority. Dynamic social network pages are a great way to create more followers to the website or brand that stands behind them. Direct call for action is the magic word when it comes to social networks. Make your followers like, share and comment your posts, with a special emphasis on commenting, which is by far the best way for a follower to promote a certain page.
Some powerful brands that were born and raised on social networks are now famous all over the globe. One of these is Humans of New York (HONY), which was almost accidentally started by photographer Brandon Stanton, who takes photos of ordinary New York residents and attaches short quotes and stories to them. First he started a blog on Tumblr and than a Facebook page which gathered more than 12 million followers in a short period of time. Brandon also started several successful Indiegogo campaigns in which he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars for victims of hurricane Sandy, Bed-Stu YMCA chapter and various protagonists from his photographs that were in need.
Today, an elaborate viral campaign is a definite must for engaging your audience and promoting your website or some other brand you sell. However, promotion on social networks is not easy. Most of the bigger companies hire professional digital marketing agencies to represent them online. If you’re doing this by yourself and you miss certain opportunities to get more followers or to engage more people to share your brand name, do not despair, that can happen even to the largest companies with the most famous brand names. One of the best examples of a missed promotion opportunity is the thing that Ferrero, the Italian company that produces Nutella did, several years ago. Sara Rosso, a big fan of this hazelnut spread, opened a web site where she shared Nutella recipes and organized an event on Facebook, called “World Nutella Day” that had more than 45,000 followers. Instead of receiving a barrel of free Nutella, she received a cease-and-desist letter from Ferrero S.p.a. asking her to stop using their trademark’s name. Short-minded community managers from this company didn’t realize the endless promotional possibilities that her web site and Facebook campaign was offering. Soon after, they changed their mind and let Sara use Nutella name, but they still discouraged millions of other fans from promoting their products virally. Bottom line is never miss an opportunity for the free viral promotion.
There are many other ways to further optimize your website for increasing the number of visitors as well as your conversion rates. Online branding became one of the essential pillars of every productive company and following the trends in this industry is one of the most important tasks for every entrepreneur who’s planning to succeed in this fast-changing world.
