I Do Web Marketing

Theming Thursday is a weekly feature on the “I Do Web Marketing” blog dedicated to various themes that you can use for your business or personal website. Every Thursday will have a different choice of themes, centered around a particular CMS. For the foreseeable future, we will be highlighting Joomla and WordPress related themes, as well as email templates. These themes are available for purchase and provide your website with a fresh, modern look and feel that is desired by your website visitors, which will lead to hire conversion rates. These will not be the end all be all of conversion and SEO, but they will point you in the right direction.

I have hand-picked the following three WordPress news and magazine themes for you to check out:

WordPress News and/or Magazine Themes #1
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WordPress News and/or Magazine Themes #2
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WordPress News and/or Magazine Themes #3
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Stay tuned to next week Theming Thursday edition as I will be rolling out three more hand picked themes for you to utilize. Do you have recommendations or themes you’ve developed? What do you think of the themes I have handpicked?

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Theming Thursday is a weekly feature on the “I Do Web Marketing” blog dedicated to various themes that you can use for your business or personal website. Every Thursday will have a different choice of themes, centered around a particular CMS. For the foreseeable future, we will be highlighting Joomla and WordPress related themes, as well as email templates. These themes are available for purchase and provide your website with a fresh, modern look and feel that is desired by your website visitors, which will lead to hire conversion rates. These will not be the end all be all of conversion and SEO, but they will point you in the right direction.

I have hand-picked the following three Joomla business and corporate themes for you to check out:

Joomla Business and Corporate Theme #1
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Joomla Business and Corporate Theme #2
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Joomla Business and Corporate Theme #3
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Stay tuned to next week Theming Thursday edition as I will be rolling out three more hand picked themes for you to utilize. Do you have recommendations or themes you’ve developed? What do you think of the themes I have handpicked?

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Theming Thursday is a weekly feature on the “I Do Web Marketing” blog dedicated to various themes that you can use for your business or personal website. Every Thursday will have a different choice of themes, centered around a particular CMS. For the foreseeable future, we will be highlighting Joomla and WordPress related themes, as well as email templates. These themes are available for purchase and provide your website with a fresh, modern look and feel that is desired by your website visitors.

I have hand-picked the following three wordpress business and corporate themes for you check out:

WordPress Business and Corporate Theme #1————————————————————————————————————–

WordPress Business and Corporate Theme #2————————————————————————————————————–

WordPress Business and Corporate Theme #3————————————————————————————————————–

Stay tuned to next week Theming Thursday edition as I will be rolling out three more hand picked Joomla themes for you to utilize. Do you have recommendations or themes you’ve developed? What do you think of the themes I have handpicked?

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This is part 2 of a 2 part series. To read the introduction to this topic, please read Part 1, which can be found here: http://www.idowebmarketing.com/converting-visitors-to-customers-with-conversion-optimization-part-1/

Conversion Optimization – This is a somewhat newer term that hasn’t yet gained the buzz that it will here in the next couple of years. It should be every website’s goal to convert 3% of their visitors to customers. Most websites are nowhere near this amount. In fact, most are even less than 1%. A conversion could be a sale of a product, a quote request, contact form, or just any action you deem has value to your company. Lets do some quick math on how much of an important piece this could be to a company’s bottom line.

Company ABC sells a product for $50. Lets say they get 200 visitors per day to their website. If they’re converting at 1%, they’re looking at making 2 sales which equals $100/day in sales. That is $3,000 a month in sales.

Formula for Conversion Rate @ 1% = 200 x .01 = 2 x $50 = $100 (per day) x 30 (days) = $3000

Now, after a full conversion analysis and applying necessary changes in how your website functions, lets say Company ABC goes from 1% conversion to 2%. This now equates to $200/day in sales. That is $6,000 a month in sales.

Formula for Conversion Rate @ 2% = 200 x .02 = 4 x $50 = $200 (per day) x 30 (days) = $6000

$9,000 a month if that conversion figure hits 3%.

Formula for Conversion Rate @ 3% = 200 x .03 = 4 x $50 = $300 (per day) x 30 (days) = $9000

So just based on this small company improving their conversion rate from 1% to 3% it could mean $6,000 in additional sales. This was money that Company ABC was leaving on the table. They did not have to hire anyone, did not have to create a new product line, did not have to develop a new marketing plan, they just sold more of what they had simply because their website was set up to properly convert visitors to customers.

Nielsen Norman Group provides this type of analysis and has some details that can be found here: http://www.nngroup.com/services/testing.html

You may have noticed they charge anywhere from $22,000 to $40,000 for this assessment. How can they charge so much? Well, they’re customers are the likes of Dell, Adobe, Google, etc. So these high costs can easily be justified with even the slightest statistical improvements. These companies aren’t making just 2 sales a day. If Dell improves their conversion rate and now sells 6 more laptops a day, they’ve more than paid for the conversion cost in one month’s time. You can see why this would be a worthwhile investment.

We knew this went away from our approach of having 100% appeal to all businesses, so we’ve brought this price down to a modest $1,000 and is included in our Bronze packages and above. So now any company can reap the rewards of improved conversion analysis as a catalyst to improving their sales.

Have questions? Be sure and post them in a comment so others can benefit as well!

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

With the recent rebrand of SEORCHERS, we wanted to shift our focus away from web development and concentrate solely on SEO and internet marketing.

However, we wanted to really do more than just improve search engine rankings. After all, that’s what most SEO Firms claim to do. In our opinion, SEO without conversion is just traffic without sales. Frankly, we expect if our clients are going to be truly successful with internet marketing, their campaigns need to place an equal amount of strategy into what happens once vistor’s land on their website.

The reason? You have about 3 to 5 seconds for a visitor to decide whether or not they will stay on your site. Each second longer, and each time they visit another page on a site – the better chance that company has of converting the visitor to a customer.

How can we be different? How can we stand out, in a positive way, in an industry that has more than its fair share of shady characters? These are questions we had to answer during the course of our rebrand. Furthermore, we felt our success as an SEO Firm was 100% tied to our partner’s (i.e. client’s) success with our SEO Services. So we packed our new found belief in this dynamic approach towards improving their ROI’s. This set us on our journey to begin educating both prospects and our current base of partners.

We needed to get all of our partners to see the big picture; because in order to maximize conversion rates of the websites we market, we had to look at how each visitor experienced their website. The truth was in almost every instance changes needed to occur and website owners had to be open to making critical decisions that would help increase their opportunities.

But how? By working directly with a knowledgeable conversion specialist!

In Part 2 of this post, we’ll take a closer look at the actual art of conversion optimization! You can read part 2 here: Conversion Optimization Part 2.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

It is easy to think that all people view websites in the same manner. It took me awhile to learn that every one is different, and therefore everyone tends to view web pages different as well. Just because I know where to find a link, or the site structure makes sense to me, it may not always make sense to the viewer.

Often times when I am creating a website, I have to stop and think about the viewer who will be looking at the site. It’s important to keep this in mind from the very beginning. Not only in the design aspect, but in terms of the development of the site as well. Think of your potential customers. What are they looking for?

Utilizing drop down menus can be an effective space saving tool. However, be sure that your links are organized correctly. Placing your products under your “About Us” drop down menu, might not be the best thing to do. You want to make things easily accessible to your potential customers. Your products and services should be something that stands out on the page. Don’t just use a textual link, you may want to also enhance the link with an image in the body of the main page as well. From an SEO standpoint, you want to make sure you also provide textual links as well, so that search engines know how to crawl your site.

In a past post, I mentioned things to avoid when developing your web site. You also want to follow those rules as well, to avoid just immediately losing potential customers.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

So your business needs a web page, and you think you’re up for the task. Afterall, there are billions of websites on the web, surely you can make one, right? Well, if you can work your way around the internet, odds are, you can also put up a website. There are hosts, which will make it relatively easy for you and you will be given a generic looking template that is used on thousands of various websites. The problem for you is, this is for your business, and you always want to make a good first impression. You only have one shot to make your first impression, and this is why I always advise customers to hire a professional, whether it is Novel Concept Studio or not.

A good web designer is worth their weight in gold. You will save literally hundreds of hours of learning the trade. Not only your own time investment, but if you hire a friend so that you can get it done cheaply, it may cost you later in terms of mistakes and missed opportunities. Also, if the web pages are not put together properly search engines may have difficulty “crawling” your website. Meaning, you won’t be getting good search results.

Your budget will obviously affect your decision. It is important to remember that if your website requires such things as flash, or e-commerce capabilities, you are looking at a very heavy time sink for your developer. If you have absolutely zero money, you may be able to find a quality designer that will share in revenue, but the odds of finding a quality web designer with no money are pretty slim. You will be forced to use a student, or someone very new to the field who needs something to showcase in their own profile. The old adage, “you get what you pay for,” still holds true.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of web designers out there. So how can you tell a good one from a bad one? Well, quite frankly, you want to look at their profile. If, for some reason, they do not have a profile available online, then ask for a few of the URL’s of sites they have developed. Take a look at those sites. Are they professional? Do they have clean layouts, with good color schemes and typography? These are important factors in your decision. Another important factor in your decision should be how well they communicate. I know at Novel Concept Studio we take great pride in responding to our customers immediately. However, there are several developers out there who take several days to respond, if at all! This, in my opinion, is unprofessional and shows you what kind of developer you’re dealing with.

Doing a website yourself will provide you with invaluable experience that can be used time and time again. However, if this is your first website and it relates directly to your business, then I highly recommend hiring a professional.

As a web development firm, we are often approached by clients with things that they are wanting on their website. They want a large image in the middle, with music playing in the background with a yellow, red, and pink color scheme. They want pop up advertising on every page to “catch customer’s attention.” If customer’s are dead set on this, then we will kindly turn them away. Quite frankly, we don’t want our name being associated with a website that is looked upon as an annoyance.

There are a handful of issues to avoid when developing your website, and we are going to cover some of them here:

Background Music
Believe it or not, not everyone likes your choice of music. This also can contribute to slow load times. This is a big no-no, especially if there is no stop or pause ability.

Pop-ups
No, they don’t grab your customer’s attention. In fact, web surfers can’t close them soon enough and will just immediately leave your site. They may even worry that your site has infected them with spyware. Besides, many pop-up ads are now blocked automatically via their browser or pop up blocking software.

Large Graphics/Images
These image files usually take up a lot of space, and cause slow load times. It is suggested that you break up this image into several smaller images. If you have Photoshop, try the slicing feature.

Frames
There is not a bigger sign of an old web page than one that utilizes frames. These are no longer an acceptable format for your site. Bookmarking/Printing becomes impossible. Not only that, but pages found on the web containing frames, will not contain any navigational features as those are apart of another frame.

Horizontally/Vertically Scrolling Pages
Research has shown that visitors that need to scroll to see your page’s information typically will not view more than what is on display. Avoid long scrolling pages, and break them up into different links if need be.

Unruly Backgrounds
Nice backgrounds may make you stand out, but for all the wrong reasons. You do not want your background overtaking your actual web page.

Poor Navigation
If visitors cannot find the information they are looking for, they will go to another web site to find this information. Make everything clearly defined and easy to find.

Appropriate Color Scheme
I know red, yello, and purple are colors of the rainbow, but that doesn’t mean they will look good on your web page. You need to stick to a color scheme. There are plenty of web sites out there to get ideas from and even tools available to help you choose color schemes.

An important thing to consider for your web site, is the hosting provider you will be using. There are literally hundreds of thousands of web hosting providers. So, how in the world do you figure out which is best for you?

Free Isn’t Always Better
Lets start off this discussion by discussing free hosting solutions. There are several free hosting providers, but I do not suggest them. I don’t suggest them because they are usually limited in the amount of services they offer. Meaning, they may not allow for .php files, or allow you to set up databases. They also will restrict the disk space you can utilize, and they will also limit the amount of visitors that can view your page (bandwidth). Most often, they also require large banner ads to be displayed on your web site. These appear very unprofessional and not something I suggest.

Please Press 1 For English
Most hosting providers nowadays are in the $4 to $10 a month range. There are several factors you should consider. Number one, do they have a contact phone number? Believe it or not, there are several hosts that don’t even have a number listed. Should you have issues, you need to know someone will be there to take care of them. If they do provide a number, are you speaking with somebody or are you leaving a voicemail. If you leave a voicemail, how long does it take them to respond?

What do they offer?
Another thing to consider are the services they are offering. How much bandwidth are you allowed? What kind of disk space are you given? If you have not registered a domain as of yet, is this something you can do through their site? How many email accounts are you allowed, if any? Do they support common file extensions such as php, asp, or mysql databases? Obviously, the more services they offer the better.

Father Knows Best, and HostGator Delivers
Now having said that, you may be wondering the host I personally recommend. I can say with confidence that HostGator is who I recommend to all of my clients. They have superior customer service, their uptime is nearly 100%, they offer UNLIMITED bandwidth and diskspace! All of this for as low as $5.95 should you go with their three year hosting plan. 

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Choosing a web design company can be a difficult decision. There are several factors that you should consider before choosing your developer. In this post, we will discuss those factors and helpfully help you decide what will work best for you.

Before getting too involved with the process, you first need to consider your budget. If you have a $250 budget, then a professional design firm may not be what you are looking for. You need to keep in mind that web developers have invested thousands of dollars for their education and thousands of hours into learning their craft. Keep in mind that if web development was easy, you’d be doing it yourself.

Once you have your budget range calculated, then you can move on to finding the right developer. Obviously, you want to work with a firm that has established web sites and can provide references upon request.

Another thing to consider is your time line for the project. If you need to have your site built within one month, it is important that you convey that message. A true test I always recommend is to see how long a web development company takes in responding to your inquiries. At Novel Concept Studio, we take great pride in responding to inquiries as quickly as possible. We have found this to be a staple to our success.

If you want a fully developed e-commerce solution, or a web site developed using the Joomla CMS, then it is important that the web development company you are working with also has experience with those aspects.

It is important for your web site to portray a professional appearance. So you also want to keep this in mind when choosing your developer. When you looked at their portfolio, did you feel they presented a professional appearance? Obviously, we would like to think that you would consider Novel Concept Studio for your web development needs. However, should you choose to go with another developer than we wish you the best of luck!

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.