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Marketing Mobile

Mobile Computing Massively Influences Desktop Computing

As the use of smartphones continues to grow exponentially it is no surprise that all of that usage would somehow have an impact on other things. With more and more people using their phones to perform daily tasks that they once would have to wait until they got home and would sit in front of their desktop computers to do.

People can now take care of paying bills with a couple of taps of the screen on their smartphone and get on with their busy day. There are so many other things that these handheld wonders that simply slip into your pocket can do. You cannot walk many steps down any street these days without seeing someone on their smartphone.

With all that being said, it has not gone unnoticed by the media and marketing industries. The explosion of mobile device usage is definitely on the minds of the people who make it their business to pay attentions to trends in computer usage. According to the numbers, over 65% of digital media is now consumed by mobile devices.

One of the main reasons for this is that the mobile service providers have invested huge sums of money to increase the speeds of their networks and the mobile phone makers have improved the devices to point where they are actually more powerful than many of the desktop computers found in most homes.

With all that power and speed at the fingertips of so many people, it is not surprising that this has caught the attention of the web designers and content providers all across the Internet. The fact that the mobile user’s traffic has surpassed the traffic coming from desktop users has obviously begun influencing how content providers are tailoring their content for the smaller mobile device screens.

Speed Enhancements

Website design and development has seen a major shift in how they are being approached and this is due in large part by the explosion of mobile device usage. With so many websites being accessed by mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets at a higher rate, it is important that websites need to be adjusted as to make the experience for the mobile user much better. It is extremely important that websites and web pages load faster and use much less of the device’s resources. All of the enhancements being employed by web designers are also benefitting the desktop users as well.

New Graphic Techniques

The onslaught of the usage of mobile devices has also appeared to have affected the way web page graphics are being used all across the board. The concept of using less complex graphics to benefit the small screen user has also benefitted desktop users as web pages load quicker and the graphics have an appealing look to them. There is even a new innovation in a graphical design called Flat Design that is being used to reduce the complexity of icons and other graphic components being used in web design.

Human Computer Interaction

The term Human Computer Interaction is used to refer to the design and use of technology that focuses mainly on the interface between the user and the computer. This is extremely important as it can be useful for website owners to be able to get the most bang for their buck, so keeping the cost of HCI lower would be a huge plus. One of the easiest ways to improve the ROI and therefore reduce the cost of HCI would be to place the search bar in a more prominent location, preferably at the top of the page.

Use of Typography

Fonts and type size have become a greater area of emphasis with the access to a greater number of fonts and typestyles to web designers and content providers. Since the screens are smaller on mobile devices it makes it more difficult to read content that is in smaller type size, this has caused the content providers and website designers to rethink the standard 12-14 pt type sizes and bump them up to 16-18 pt. They have also opted away from the plain old standard Arial or Comic Sans, more some much bolder type.

Final Thoughts

It really should not come at any surprise that today’s computing experience is highly influenced by the mobile device usage. The trends have been pointing towards mobile traffic outpacing computer desktop traffic over the past couple years and this means there had to be a shift in order to accommodate the use of mobile devices for accessing websites and web pages on the Internet.

It does seem that it has actually been a positive thing for both the desktop user and mobile user at the same time. This is mainly because the web pages are loading that much faster and they aren’t having to sacrifice the usability of the site to get it.

Categories
Marketing Social Media

SEO for e-commerce: Six ways to improve sales through SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the best thing going when it comes to an Internet business. It is attributed directly to boosting the traffic to any website and that includes e-commerce type websites. While page optimization is often thought to be strictly about page ranking by search engines, the real truth is SEO techniques can be quite effective when it comes to boosting sales for e-commerce websites.

In order to be successful at e-commerce you not only have to get traffic to your sites, but you have to encourage them to make purchases when they are visiting your sites. This is where you can benefit from using SEO optimization techniques to make the most from each of your e-commerce pages. In this article, we will discuss 6 ways to e-commerce sales through SEO.

Here are the top challenges we face in inbound marketing:

As you can see, SEO ranks at the very top of all inbound marketing priorities. There’s a lot more to it than just showing up- let’s get started and we’ll discuss what you need to do!

#1 It all begins with keyword research

While keywords are an extremely important part of SEO, you need to tailor it more to fit with e-commerce as compared to standard web pages. One way to do this is to target keywords that fit with your products on your pages. Unfortunately, traditional methods for finding keywords won’t be as successful for product pages, instead, you need to use a different keyword tool for coming up with the best keywords.

Our recommendation is a for you to use a website called Übersuggest. This website has proven to be more successful at finding the best keywords as compared to most other Google keyword search tools. This site helps to find your numerous product-specific keywords that match your products for each of your pages that you can use in order to help your sites to improve its search results.

#2 All product pages need to be optimized

When it comes to your e-commerce website you have to treat each product page individually. This means every page has to be optimized separately so that Google and other search engines don’t treat all your pages the same and you could easily be penalized.

Page optimization is very specialized and it consists of several different elements such as image optimization, uses keyword in the product title, optimises product descriptions with long content and includes product review schema. Each of the optimization techniques is extremely easy to implement.

#3 Linking is very important

Search engines like Google find that backlinks to a website are the number one factor for quality when it deciding on page ranking. The way they look at it is if others are willing to link to it then there must be a very good reason. So, with that said, how do you go about getting these all important link backs, you have to give people a good reason to want to link to your pages.

The best way to do this provides the best quality content about the specific products that you sell on each page. The other way to do it would be to write content about the e-commerce business that you have set up with the products you sell. As you can see, there are two very different ways to go about it.

#4 Site Structure needs to be right

When it comes to looking at your site the search engines look at how the site is laid out. You want to be sure that it is set up in a way that makes plenty of sense and that appears pleasing. While you may think the arrangement makes sense, it has to look that way to Google’s web crawlers or your page will not be ranked as high.

When you have multiple pages on a website, how the all the pages are tied together has to be in a hierarchy that makes sense and that is what makes a website setup perfect. All of your products should be arranged in different categories and those categories should be listed in an order that makes sense. A good rule to go by is to ensure that no pages are more than three clicks away from the homepage or you risk the web crawlers might overlook some of your important pages.

#5 The best site experience wins

The key to any search engine is to provide its users with the best quality search results and therefore you need to provide the best quality experience for the visitor as possible. If you give them a reason to stick around your site chances are greater that you will end up with more buyers.

In order to ensure the best experience is to provide high-quality products for them to buy and to provide high-quality content for them to see. The freshest and most relevant is what they want to see. It doesn’t make any sense to have the same old content on your site if you want people to keep coming back.

#6 Bring your best content forward

If you haven’t noticed by now, there is an underlying theme throughout this entire article. While SEO techniques change over time, the one constant is CONTENT IS KING. You must pay close attention to all of the content on your pages and it should always be fresh, relevant and to the point as possible.

All of your product descriptions should be clear and concise, with as many details as to give the visitor no reason to go anywhere else to find out about the product you are selling. All images should be quality, a high resolution where possible and have some customer reviews of your products are extremely helpful.

This is a whole lot of information for you go through, but we hope that we touched on everything that is relevant. We further hope that you are able to use it to make your e-commerce website the best you can.

Categories
Creativity Marketing Social Media

8 Simple Ways to Improve Your Instagram Feed

Reformat your pictures

You may not know this, but you are now able to select how your photos display on your pages. In the beginning, you could only arrange them in portrait format. Now, you are able to select the orientation of each picture between portrait and landscape. This will give you more control over how all your photos look on each page.

Turn on notifications of the people you follow

Don’t forget to turn on the notifications for the people you follow on Instagram. If you want to know immediately when they post on their Instagram, it is really simple to do. Just pick one of the photos they have posted and click on the icon that looks like three dots. This will give you the option to turn on notifications of when they post their photos.

Center the text in your bio for more visibility

This tip might make you groan a little, but it does work! Your bio not only tells people all of the things that you want people to know, but the way it looks sometimes gives some hints about who you are. To ensure that your bio looks great and centered, you will need to use spaces between the text. This is because the coding on the page does not accept normal HTML coding tricks. Instead, you have to use the “old-fashioned” way of spacing, simply adding extra spaces in the text.

Use the “Liked” feature to your advantage

Another helpful tool in Instagram is using the “liked” history option to find your favorite photos. If you are like many Instagram user you mark many photos with the like button as you see them. By clicking the like button that photo is tagged and you can use the Post You Liked filter option. This checks your history and checks for all photos you liked and you can go back a view them. This option can be found in the menu bar of the Instagram page.

Use a blog to promote your Instagram

If you have a blog, you can easily post yours or a favorite feed of someone else’s and post them on your blog. You can use a number of 3rd-party plugins for blogs using the WordPress platform. The plugins are really easy to use and many of them are completely free.

Real time tracking of hashtags

There are a number of different 3-party apps that you can download and used to help you get the most out of your social media sites. One of those apps is called keyhole and it allows you to track hashtags, which has been become one of the most important parts of social media. This app allows you to track several different sites at the same time.

Keep search history clean

Deleting old and maybe embarrassing Instagram searches is really easy to do, but most people don’t even think about using the feature. It is much easier than you think and it only takes a few clicks and then the searches are completely gone for ever. Just go to your profile and click the menu and find options. Click on the Clear Search History and click to confirm and you are done.

Remove tags from pictures

Sometimes we all do things that we are not actually proud of and even worse there quite possibly could be some pictures of it and they ended up someone’s Instagram feed and you were tagged. The good is there is a way that you can protect yourself from those people important to you that know your Instagram name. You can click on the offending photo and click on options and choose Hide From My Profile. Then you also want to select Remove Me From Photo, by doing both of these will block the people on your feed from seeing it.

We hope that one or more of these tips will help you get the most out of your Instagram experience.