Top 3 Ways to Develop a Great Website With Results

In this day and age, having a website for your company is basically required. Internet marketing has really taken off and website development is more important than ever. in a highly competitive landscape, how can you push yourself over the edge? Paying attention to digital marketing trends and what competitors are doing and getting the basics — local SEO, social media marketing, and a clean, appealing aesthetic with good branding for your website and social media platforms — down is important. Here are the things you absolutely don’t want to leave out of your website development and the digital marketing trends to pay attention to this year.

Keep These Things in Mind With Your Website Development! 

• Mobile OptimizationAround half of those who use cell phones use their phones as their main Internet source. Thanks to smartphones, our phones have become our walking knowledge source and anything we want is a tap away. This is great for businesses whose websites can easily be modified for mobile viewing. Trying to navigate a website that isn’t optimized for mobile use is a frustrating experience for would-be customers or users, and they may navigate out and go to a competitor’s website instead. Even if you have good SEO, it may not matter — you’ll get the hits, but the layout will be frustrating enough that users will go elsewhere.

• Good SEO However, good SEO can help blast your business out to new markets. Local SEO in particular can help drive customers to your site — and to your brick and mortar. Take a restaurant for example. If tourists are searching for “local restaurant” or “local Italian restaurant” or even something as generic as “places to eat near me,” good local SEO can help push your restaurant into the top listings. The higher your ranking, the better the chance that they’ll come to you, instead of another place.

• Link to Social Media Don’t discount the power of social media. Linking your website to social media pages (and having a link to your website ON your social media pages) is a powerful tool. It’s a great way to interact and engage with customers, appeal to their visual senses as well as the tendency to scroll through their social media during the day.

What Digital Marketing Trends to Stay on Top Of 

• Video The State of Social Video 2017 report, put out by Animoto, showed that almost 65% of consumers bought something after watching a marketing video on the Facebook platform in the last month. Videos are a powerful marketing tool; they provide information in a visually appealing way, but can often help customers feel more connected or closer to the company or brand, thanks to seeing the people “behind” the brand or seeing sneak peeks of what daily life looks like for employees or the company. Marketers are falling in line — a 2017 report showed that over 80% of marketers had optimized social videos for cell phones.

• Chatbots Customer service can be a real pain for both sides — it’s a seemingly small thing that can make or break a company. Waiting on hold is not fun for the consumer and can often lead to further infuriation and miscommunication. Enter chatbots. Whether it’s artificial intelligence based or real people behind the instant messaging service, it allows visitors and potential customers to get help in real-time, regardless of the day and hour.

• Social Media Stories We love being engaged and visual tools have already shown to work well in marketing. Social media stories are incredibly helpful here, providing quick snapshots of a routine, new products, and “sneak peeks.” It gives businesses another tool to more intimately connect with users. SalesForce Marketing Cloud reports that almost 85% of customers “love” or “like” when a company gets in touch or responds to them via social media.

If all of these new website development steps are making your head spin, consider teaming up with a specialized agency that makes the thing you’re most nervous about integrating their forte. Don’t fall behind the times — stay up to date and watch your business flourish!