Month: January 2022

increase-website-traffic

22 Ways to Increase Website Traffic

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For 22 Ways to Increase Website Traffic

It’s totally normal for web traffic to be down during the holidays, but maybe you’ve noticed traffic to your site hasn’t picked up again yet as we get further into the start of the new year. Perhaps it’s time to shake things up a little! We here at Agency Partner have put together our top 22 ways and strategies to increase website traffic to get your analytics back on track for 2022!  

1. Leverage on-page SEO 

  • It’s never too late to optimize for SEO. This is a great way to increase site traffic without spending a dime. Meta tags, internal links, alt texts, descriptions, readability – all simple opportunities for higher ranking on SERPs to boost traffic  

2. Cross-promote across social media account channels 

  • Your business has at least one social media channel, right? (…right??) Why not use it to promote the latest blog post on your site to naturally drive traffic? Do the same with your email newsletters? Draw attention by featuring an element of your site as a teaser on your socials that pays off for the user when they follow the link for the full article or freebie exclusively found on your site!  

3. Long-tail keywords 

  • Another facet of SEO, long-tail keywords are the more specific phrases (keywords of 3 or more words) users use as they narrow down what they’re searching for. They account for a big chunk of web searches, so it’s highly useful to know how to wield their highly targeted power.  

4. Influencer marketing 

  • Influencer marketing used to be all about the accounts with hundreds of thousands if not millions of followers. Now we’re seeing the power of micro-and nano-influencers and their hyper-targeted audience. Use that to your advantage with partnerships of features, promotions, and networking. 

5. Guest post on blogs 

  • Help establish you and your brand’s site as an authority by guest posting on other sites about your particular area of expertise. Pitch your content ideas for a feature to both drive free referral traffic and strengthen your position in the market! 

6. Clear out non-performing content 

  • Audit your own site for content that may now be out of date or from early on where your quality or style was still in development. Take the chance to update and revamp it. What’s old is new (and improved) again! 

7. Consider PPC 

  • No shame in Pay Per Click advertising! It’s the fastest route to results, and, exactly as the name suggests, you only pay for the ad whenever a user clicks on it! 

8. Have guests post on your blog 

  • What a great opportunity for some more cross-promotion on this two-way street with creators in similar niches or with audiences relevant to you both! 

9. Email blasts 

  • Email marketing has been around for decades already, and it’s still as powerful as ever to direct traffic to your site with mailing list blasts and automated newsletters about new services or products or blog content features. Just be careful not to overdo it. 

10. Build up your online reviews 

  • Social proof is more powerful than you probably think. Give casual users every reason to click on links to products and services on your site by building up online reviews! 

11. Sign up for Google Trends (aka stay relevant!) 

  • Focusing your content on what’s being talked about Right. Now. is such a simple, efficient tactic to reach audiences. If you’ve done the work for optimizing SEO already, too, a traffic increase is all but guaranteed. 

12. Look at competitors 

  • Get inspiration by seeing what’s working for your competitors – then put your own spin on it! 

13. Link build internally 

  • The longer you can keep your users on your site, the more useful you are to your users and the more SEO will naturally favor you. Look for opportunities in your content to reference your past relevant content via internal links. 

14. Ensure device responsiveness 

  • With mobile device access only continuing to trend upward over desktop access, do not make the mistake of devaluing the responsiveness of your site across all devices. Doing so is essentially telling your users to go elsewhere. 

15. Listen to your analytics data 

  • It’s one thing to know what analytics categories are and that they’re important; it’s another to know how to interpret them. Analytics telling you you have a load time of 4.3 seconds can tell you that your site needs streamlining and that it’s probably too slow a speed to satisfy your visitors’ patience. High bounce rate? Look more critically at your content quality. That’s a ton of valuable info about possible traffic drivers right there! 

16. Write how people read 

  • Speaking of high bounce rates, always remember that people typically don’t read on the internet – they skim. If your content is full of big blocks of text, you likely won’t reach your user in a productive way. Keep your site easily readable.  

17. Use push notifications 

  • Especially useful if you’re a business with a product or service to sell, look into setting up push notifications for your site whenever you have a new feature or sale. Just like with email marketing, though, keep aware of how much is too much for your users. 

18. Don’t forget about Pinterest 

  • People don’t intuitively think of Pinterest as a search engine, but that’s exactly what it is at heart! Do your keyword research for how to caption your pins and create interesting boards featuring your unique content. If your audience demographic is there, you should be there, too. 

19. Appreciate the power of H1 tags 

  • If your content tends to run on the long side, H1 tags are your best friend. They help make your site easier for search engine crawlers to understand the focus of your content, thus helping to boost your SERP ranking and making it easier for your site to be found in searches! 

20. Add social share buttons to your site 

  • Include social share buttons wherever they naturally fit under products or at the top or bottom of blog posts etc. The easier it is for your content to be shared, the more likely the user will help to drive traffic for you. 

21. Retargeting ads 

  • Remind the user of the items they left in their cart on your site as they navigate around the internet. Maybe they just need a gentle reminder to come back for them! 

22. Create a content schedule 

  • It’s so much easier to drive organic traffic when your audience knows when to expect a reason to revisit. Set a realistic content schedule for your output and stick to it!

These ideas will certainly help but know that success takes patience. The change will happen as you implement it wisely and stay consistent with it. It can feel like an overwhelming process as a business owner, and API’s digital marketing and development teams are here to help manage the load for you. Contact us today for a consultation! 

 

ui-ux-design

What is UI design? What is UX design? UI vs UX: What’s the difference

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For What is UI design? What is UX design? UI vs UX: What’s the difference

As a small business, it’s important to stay up to date on the latest trends in design for your company app and website. But what’s the difference between UI and UX design? What do these terms even mean? Let’s take a look at the details of each term and how they can benefit your business!  

First things first…

What is UI Design? 

User interface (UI) design is the methods and elements with which designers construct interfaces. It is all about the looks, style, and function of a product’s display. This focus on aesthetics includes the interaction between the user and icons, typography, buttons, colors, and beyond.

Examples:

  • Spotify’s pulldown animation
  • Starbucks’ color scheme usage
  • Domino’s’ order progress tracker
  • Duolingo’s consistent dashboard 

What is UX Design?

User experience (UX) is all about what it’s like for the user when they interact with a product’s interface. The experience design is the method of designing how a product is integrated including respects to usability, branding, and function in a meaningful way.

Examples:

  • Marriott’s booking experience.
  • YouTube’s autoplay features.
  • Target’s password guidance.
  • Grammarly’s onboarding

How Are UI and UX Related?

UI and UX are two symbiotic terms, and UI designers and UX designers are used almost interchangeably for how closely related they are. 

Both UI and UX are highly related design approaches but with very distinct nuances. UI design focuses on the visual and graphic aspects of design and the overall induced feeling. But UI design without consideration for complementary UX design and vice versa, however, will result in nothing but a bad experience for the user. 

All UX designers know that the user’s experience is king and focus on the technical aspects. The ironic part? The most telltale sign of good UX design is that the good UX design goes completely unnoticed by the user. A conducive partnership between the two practices is what wins a user’s trust and engagement.

What’s the Difference Between UI and UX?

Here is where all the nuance we mentioned earlier comes into play.

At the heart of it, UI is a single piece of the user’s process, while UX is anything that affects the user’s process.

UI encompasses all the details that allow a user to engage with a site or app’s interface, while UX is the ultimate experience that user has with said site or app’s interface.

UI is the aesthetic and look, while UX is the feel.

How Does Good UI/UX Benefit Businesses?

The ultimate objective of every business is to make sales and grow the business. Strong UI/UX design can affect a business’ online presence and thus impact the success of the business itself in reaching those objectives. 

  • Engagement

Improve your layout, menus, and navigation to harmoniously encourage ease of engagement with your site or app. A smooth flow of interaction will help support conversion rates which leads to increased revenue.

  • Brand Reputation

Understand what features are important to your users and what they dislike. A UI/UX design experience that matches a user’s expectations and preferences will inherently help establish a positive association with your brand in their mind.

  • Customer Satisfaction

Good UI/UX easily attracts customers and supports their retention, meaning the business stays both competitive and lucrative. A satisfied user leads to a satisfied customer!

Achieving good UI/UX can be tricky – it’s a balance of art and science that takes into account user feedback as well as analytical data. That’s why it’s so important to partner with an experienced web design agency like Agency Partner Interactive who understands the ins and outs of the entire development process for your business’ next design project!

landing-page-optimization

How to Optimize a Landing Page

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For How to Optimize a Landing Page

Not seeing the results you want from your landing pages? With so much to consider in a marketing strategy, it’s easy to overlook an element that just might be what’s holding you back from maximizing your conversions. Agency Partner’s put together some tips on how to optimize your landing pages in 2022!

What is a landing page

In a tiny nutshell, landing pages are all about serving one single purpose (conversion) led by one single action driver (a call-to-action) all focused on one single offer (selling a product, signing up for a newsletter, redeeming an e-book). Simple enough!

For a more in-depth look, check out our recent blog post all about landing pages!

Tips For Optimizing Your Landing Page

Keep Your Landing Page Focused
Users need to focus only on one thing here – your page’s purpose. Keep the number of actions on the page to a minimum. Try minimizing or entirely not including any further site navigation or unnecessary form questions. Any distractions can hurt your chances of a user’s conversion.

Make Your Offer Clear and Direct
The modern consumer does not have time to search and piece together what your offer is. S-p-e-l-l it out for them. Make sure all of your text content supports that singular message and creates a stress-free user experience.

Analyze Your Page’s Layout, Design, and Content

  • Consider Visual Elements

One of the most important factors of digital design is scanability. Use the contrast of colors to highlight your buttons, your call to action, your headlines to make those key elements stand out to your user in a single glance.

  • Test different headlines and copy

In a visual-obsessed world, words still carry a lot of power. When you’re writing, are you considering your user and the way people consume information online today?

  • Text needs to be concise and scannable rather than in big blocks.
  • Keep your language simple, clear, and appropriate for your target audience
  • Lists, be it bullet point or numbered, are an excellent tool for readable formatting.

Think also about the approach and technique of your writing. Marketing is all about the buying and selling of emotion, so what emotion do you want your users to feel when they’re reading your page? Make sure your writing clearly reflects that.

  • Keep the important parts above the fold.

Remember physical newspapers? “Above the fold” comes from placing the headlines and top stories most likely to grab attention all on the top of the first page.

Think of what your landing page shows when it opens up and before any scrolling from the user. It’s the same principle! Put all your most important and attention-grabbing elements right up at the top. Above the fold = Before the scroll

Bonus Tip: Scroll maps like Hotjar can help you quickly view formatting across devices and even give you insight into where users hover most on your page! 

Show Your Credibility
Consider including elements that reassure the user they’re not about to get duped by a scam. Third-party reviews, customer ratings, partner logos, and client testimonials are an excellent tools for this. Just don’t forget to convert any third-party element to run natively on your page!

Test Compatibility Across Multiple Devices

Check your analytics to see how your users are viewing your page. Considering how high the rate of mobile viewing is, odds are you’ll want to check that your site translates well to mobile devices. Then consider the difference between viewing on an iOS versus an Android. A user will quickly lose interest in your page if it’s not UX-friendly on their preferred device. 

Consider Your Page’s Load Time
Is your bounce rate higher than you’d like? Take a look at your landing page’s loading time. A page that takes longer than approximately 3 seconds to load typically sees dramatic drops in user engagement, no matter how good the page is. Nobody’s got time for that. 

A simple way to increase load time is by simplifying your page, be it minimizing the amount of graphics or reformatting any video content, or editing down the text content. The less your site host has to handle, the faster it can share your message, the happier your users, the better your conversions.

Maximize SEO
Search engines can be very particular about what they prefer with tons of rules and best practices to consider. It’s largely up to you to convince Google, Bing, etc. that your page provides value to their users. Keyword research is the most popular method of appeasing the SEO gods; so be sure to invest some time into ensuring you’re targeting the right market and using language that allows you to reach that audience from an angle that lets you stand out!

And most importantly…

A/B Test EVERYTHING!

A/B testing is arguably the key to mastering landing page optimization. The more tests you run, the greater data you have in understanding what truly works for your landing page, from graphics to CTA to layout. It’s a constant task that requires you to only change one element at a time for comparison. Otherwise, the source of the impact on conversion can be tough to determine. 

Landing pages can be a key part of any digital marketing strategy, and they can be tricky to get right. That’s where our team at Agency Partner comes in!  We’ve been optimizing landing pages for years and know what works (and what doesn’t). If you want help getting your landing page right, contact us for a consultation today!

email-marketing-specialist

What is an Email Marketing Specialist and What Do They Do?

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For What is an Email Marketing Specialist and What Do They Do?

The statistics don’t lie.

According to HubSpot, “email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available.”

But don’t think it’s as simple as typing up some copy and hitting send. Email marketing specialists know all the ins and outs of every element for achieving such strong results, from automations and design to audience segmentation and even accessibility!

Email marketing has consistently shown a strong return for the last ten years in a row. It’s become critical for a company’s success and is a highly in-demand field for expertise! Let’s dig a little deeper into what it is exactly, who runs it, and how to get into the game of becoming an email marketing specialist!

What is email marketing?

Put simply, email marketing is the use of electronic messaging to engage with audiences and build relationships. Inform your audience, drive sales, build relationships between your brand and your customers. Think newsletters, announcements, deals/specials, surveys—it’s all part of the larger picture. Email is highly personalized and can be used for both one-off or automated messages; it allows you to communicate directly with customers and prospects as well as gather important data on their habits and preferences.

It’s common for people to confuse marketing with advertising.  Marketing is about building relationships with customers and creating an experience for them that goes beyond simple transactions. It’s understanding human behavior, knowing what they want and need, and working to provide it. Marketing should be genuine and transparent; you’re not trying to inflate a product or service, but rather bring value to your customer base. Advertising falls under marketing, but generally means paid content (i.e., TV commercials, billboards) as opposed to organic messaging (blog posts and, you guessed it, email).

Think of it this way: marketing is about helping people find you while advertising is trying to get them to notice you, and email marketing brings that help directly to your audience’s inbox…with permission, of course!

What is an email marketing specialist? What do they do?

An email marketing specialist or “email marketer” is someone who knows how to create messages that engage an audience and provide value. They manage every aspect of a company’s emails: how they look, sound, and (most importantly) perform. Typically they work within a company, but many email marketers freelance as well. These professionals work closely with everyone from marketing managers to IT specialists to sales teams; depending on how advanced the campaigns are, an email marketer might handle everything!

Typical responsibilities include:

  • Craft both long-term and campaign strategies
  • Test and optimize emails for readability and accessibility on multiple devices
  • Design layouts
  • Monitor email campaign performance
  • Maintain multiple databases
  • Apply audience segmentation and targeting
  • Perform A/B tests
  • Track and analyze campaign results

And especially

  • Always be willing to keep learning and move with the technology

Agency Partner’s own email marketing lead expert stresses the utmost importance of utilizing automation – “Automations allow email marketers to work smarter not harder.” Who doesn’t love that?

How to Become an Email Marketing Expert

Digital marketing is still a new area for much of formal education, so the parameters for entering the field are pretty flexible! Since few institutions offer a specific digital marketing degree, common bachelor’s degrees preferred by employers are:

  • General marketing
  • Business admin
  • Graphic design
  • Communications

Those should tell you a lot about what to expect in the job! With educational platforms like SkillShare and Coursera, you can easily earn a certification in email marketing itself to help you start building your credibility from home and even for free! No matter what route you take, the job will definitely require you to develop a few skills for sure, such as:

  • Writing attention-grabbing subject lines
  • A sharp eye for design and formatting
  • Understanding analytics and how to interpret them
  • Audience insight
  • Campaign strategy

*****

To summarize, as Agency Partner’s email expert puts it, “Email marketers constantly need to balance aesthetics with function. It’s important to have a keen eye for design as well as the knowledge of how to apply that design for functionality…Email marketing is all about emailing the right person, at the right time, with the right message. Personalization, tagging, and audience segmentation are crucial.”

It’s a lot to manage for sure! Need some help with your company’s email marketing? Agency Partner’s team of specialists are one Contact Us page away to get started with crafting your strategy and developing campaigns to build your audience and drive your sales, one inbox at a time!

landing-page-design-1

What Is a Landing Page? Landing Pages Explained

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For What Is a Landing Page? Landing Pages Explained

Whether it’s brand-spankin’ new, redone, overhauled, or just touched up, every page of your website development has to have a clear purpose. The About page, the Homepage, the Search, and the Contact page- all pretty straightforward in their function. But what about a Landing page?

What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page also called a “lead capture page,” is a single web page that appears online when someone clicks your link. That link may appear in a banner ad, a marketing email, a SERPs result, or a social media post, to name just a few. It’s designed to collect digital information from website visitors, such as email addresses and other personal information, or to help convert site visitors into leads. Landing pages help you build an online following, a contact list, and even greater sales—positively vital for any modern business.

Why Do I Need a Landing Page?

In the marketing funnel, the conversion happens once that link is clicked within the ad or email. Maybe it’s where the visitor decides to download that eBook they saw advertised or sign up for a free trial! A landing page should feature these elements:

  • One value proposition
  • A primary, clear message
  • One simple call to action, or CTA

It’s all centered around promoting one singular macro conversion and communicating the benefits of following the CTA. This hyper-focus should keep your objective clear and your visitor, well, focused on following through with that objective.

Can Any Page Be a Landing Page?

The answer is yes and no. There are two primary types of landing pages: referential and transactional.

  • Referential

Referential is all about giving relevant information to the visitor. The goal here is to keep the visitor as focused as possible on the specific message by conveniently providing all necessary info to convert that visitor into following your CTA.

  • Transactional

This is a page where the visitor must first fill out an info form (like e-mail capture for a mailing list, for example) to receive a discount code or access to download that e-book. Capture as much information about the visitor as possible, but be cognizant of how much is too much to your visitors!

While any page on your website can technically act as a landing page, it depends on how singularly concentrated the content, and the CTA of that page is. Often but certainly not always, a landing page offers no further website navigation. It can be very convenient and cost-effective to customize a single page rather than invest in building out an entire website. (Psst…Agency Partner can help with both!)

A landing page can arguably also still have some supplementary content. For example, your main navigation could house several subpages that are highly relevant to the primary topic of the landing page. This would require the user to stay on this single URL for extended periods to access all related content. However, make sure these subpages contain information only relevant to that value proposition, primary message, and simple CTA!

What Does a Landing Page Look Like?

Landing pages, be it referential or transactional, typically include some combination of the following:

  • A headline: This is all about your offer’s top-selling point – make sure it grabs attention!
  • A subheading: Add a bit of extra supporting information below your headline.
  • Copy: Tell your visitor all the details about what you’re offering and why they need it. Keep this information easily digestible – bullet point lists are a great option to include here!
  • A lead form: Key to the transactional landing page, this form collects contact information from your visitors.
  • CTA: Make it clear what you want your visitor to do next – “Buy Now,” “Read More.”
  • Permission checkbox: While not required everywhere, it’s a safe assumption that any contact sent to your visitors who fill out the lead form (think marketing emails) will require their indicated permission. Always get consent first!

Other features to consider

  • Comparisons: Need to convey what makes your product or offer different? Create comparison tables to highlight the exact features you have over your competitors.
  • Testimonials: Stats prove that testimonials rank around 90% in content effectiveness. Let your customers share their stories with you to help build trust and credibility.
  • Video: Video is the most engaging format these days. If suitable for reaching your target customer, embed a native video onto your page.

Look out for an upcoming post on how to optimize your landing pages! We’ll see you there!

Need some more detailed help now with your current landing pages or a new, custom landing page made to promote your offer? Head over to our Contact Us page, and let’s see what we can do for you!

ppc-management

What is PPC management?

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For What is PPC management?

PPC management is no easy task. Deep knowledge of advertisement strategies, their relevant platforms, and how to make ad bids only scratches the surface of role complexity. For those who need the highlights, we’ve got a handy guide to get you started understanding this important role of modern marketing campaigns!

So, What Is PPC?

PPC, or pay-per-click, is a part of online marketing where advertisers agree to pay a fee every time an ad is clicked. Pretty straightforward, right? It’s like buying visits to your site, which is important as organic reach is getting harder and harder to achieve in the ever-growing digital market. One of the most common types of PPC these days is SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, used to describe any advertising meant to help make searching for a certain website even easier. (This is an umbrella term that includes SEO under it.) PPC helps build brand awareness, highlight brand specs, and get quicker results from specific audience types. PPC services are a cost-effective tool as money is only spent by advertisers once the ad is clicked through rather than simply displaying the ad.

PPC ads go way beyond just a search engine results page or SERPs; you’ll see them on YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn. Wherever a product or service has a target market, PPC ads are likely already there. This makes understanding and adjusting your business’ target audience data all the more critical. It also encompasses affiliate marketing, retargeting campaigns, paid search marketing, and price comparison advertising.

The PPC Manager

PPC management services like that of Agency Partner typically oversee the development & execution of ad spend on effective PPC campaigns to meet goals and ROI, both short and long term. They’ve got to be skilled at managing those budgets while also strategizing to build and bolster accounts & critical relationships. PPC services track metrics like view impressions, conversions, total sales value, and click-through rates to help strategize campaigns, optimize bid management, craft ad copy, and even more. With these metrics, they can also calculate the profit by subtracting total cost from total sales value.

Who uses PPC?

The two most popular PPC platforms are Google and Microsoft Advertising. Generally, industries like retail and travel spend the most on PPC, while consumables and home improvement spend the least. Text ads, mobile, and remarketing tend to be the most effective forms of PPC.

These platforms can help professional PPC management services do things like configure website traffic to support your ultimate business goals, whatever they are. PPC can benefit smaller businesses looking to scale up efficiently by offering granular targeting, access to immediate site traffic, comprehensive customizing, and quick results, all with a low entry barrier. Keep in mind that PPC campaigns do not boost your SEO rankings, though regardless, they can still connect your business to a much wider digital audience. PPC and SEO can work synergistically to create a cohesive marketing campaign.

What Does A PPC Manager Do?

  • Keyword Research

It’s almost impossible for a site to succeed without knowing what keywords users are searching for! Research is needed to know what to target and utilize when crafting ad copy for campaigns. For a smaller company’s campaign, targeting mid-tier rankings can be a wise option to gain an initial authoritative ranking before scaling as they grow, and it takes an intelligent PPC manager to know how to do that! SEMRush and Moz are excellent resources for analyzing keyword performance.

The biggest responsibility, though?

  • Campaign Creation, Monitoring, and Strategizing

Someone’s got to build out the ads, strategize bidding, set targets, AND optimize and monitor the campaigns! First off, a bid is the max amount of money an advertiser is willing to spend for each click on an ad, and the budget is the total amount to spend on this campaign. The bidding process works pretty much like a classic auction – Advertisers make a bid on an ad impression as long as the set budget won’t be maxed out, and the impression goes to the highest bidder. So that particular ad wins that spot on the page.

These auction bids are made autonomously, and PPC managers oversee their optimization. They’ll need to track campaign analytics daily and update bids as needed per those reports. If some targeted keywords in the ad copy are performing better than others, their bids should be increased ASAP. Conversely, the bids for keywords underperforming may need to be lowered, so the budget is fully optimized!

So How Do I Become A PPC Manager?

Being a PPC Manager is perfect for someone with analytical and creative skills, excellent communication, and especially time management – you may be leading multiple accounts at once between search ads, display ads, social media ads, and even e-commerce ads!

  • Start developing a deep understanding of what PPC is and how it works – you read this article, so you’re already off to a good start!  
  • Build strong copywriting skills – these will be important for creating effective ad copy.  
  • Take an online course or two to earn certification – we suggest the Googe Ads and Facebook Blueprint Certification.
  • Familiarize yourself with PPC tools – knowledge of Analysis, Google Ads Editor, SEMRush, etc. will be a big bonus when getting started.
  • Study industry trends and current best practices – we recommend the Agency Partner blog, not that we’re biased or anything…
  • Look for freelance and contract work to build your resume – everyone has a start from somewhere!

Feel a little overwhelmed? The role of PPC management is undoubtedly a big task, and the Agency Partner PPC Management team can take care of all of it for you. Head over to our Contact Us page to get started today!