9 Signs You Need a Website Redesign In 2019

is it time for a website redesign?

Many businesses have trouble determining when it is time for a few changes and when it is time for a complete overhaul.

Here are some things to consider.

  • Is your website visually appealing?
  • Does your website perform for you?
  • Is your website built on the correct platform?
  • Is your website technically sound?
  • Is your website user friendly?
  • Is your website compatible with the latest technologies?

If your site has outdated content, you will never achieve the rankings you may be looking for.

A new website is well worth the time, effort and investment when you see how you can make your website can work for your business!

IF YOUR SITE LOOKS DATED, IT’S TIME FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN

We hate to break it to you, but when it comes to websites looks are everything!

We have all seen those boring, bland, non-scrollable sites filled with never-ending text that is easy to forget. By creating a visually appealing website you are inviting customers to visit your site time and time again.

Generally, your website should have the following criteria:

  • Good visual design – Visually pleasing is what we aim for
  • Relevant content – Relevant content should always be catered to your customer. Be sure to tell your viewers, clearly, what you are selling and what separates you from your competition.
  • Easy navigation – You should have clear and easy navigation. Users should never have to hunt for relevant pages.
  • A call-to-action – Many users depend upon the call-to-action at the end of the page to take the next step. Call-to-action buttons make it easy for customers to do what you want them to do which is good for them and good for your business!

IF YOUR SITE IS NOT MOBILE FRIENDLY, YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN

Mobile first marketing has been the norm for years. To market your business successfully it is a MUST for your website to be mobile friendly.

Why you ask? Because users spend on average 69% of their time on a mobile device. As a business, you need to be able to reach your audience where they naturally spend most of their time.

Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. Not only are you losing business, you’re handing it over to a competitor!

IF YOUR WEBSITE SPEED IS SLOW, YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN

Nothing kills a user’s experience faster than a slow load time. If you operate an e-commerce store on your website, it worsens that load time and usually users don’t stick around long enough to even have an experience. In fact, 79% of online shoppers who have had trouble with a website’s performance admit they would not return to the site to purchase again.

YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOUR BOUNCE RATE IS HIGH

Your websites bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who visit your website but leave without visiting any other pages. For example, if you have a bounce rate of 75%, that means 75% of visitors are leaving after landing on just one page.

IF YOUR INDUSTRY HAS EVOLVED, YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN

Industries are constantly evolving, make sure your website reflects that change.

IT IS TIME FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOU CANNOT EASILY UPDATE YOUR CONTENT

Consistent and relevant content is one of the surest ways to rank higher on Google and keep the traffic heading to your website. If you are not able to keep your updates consistent you will fall behind your competitors.

Because SEO (search engine optimization) is constantly changing, it is important to be able to easily get in and tweak, add to and optimize pages as necessary.

One of the best ways to make sure you can easily update all content is through a content management system (CMS). Many popular website platforms like WordPress and Drupal double as a CMS. If you do not have one in place, it’s time to consider a platform that will support your content needs.

YOUR WEBSITE STILL USES FLASH

In the late 90’s, Flash was the “it” platform for stunning websites.

In 2010, Steve Jobs banished flash from iPhone, and it was all downhill from there.

These days, using Flash is an SEO sin, and most modern browsers no longer support it. Because of that, it can cause websites to load extremely slow, and due to lack of support often times the flash doesn’t work at all.

YOU NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOUR CONVERSION RATES ARE LOW

One of the biggest signs a website does not perform well is the absence of; or low conversions.

There can be many reasons for low conversions, not all of them mean a full redesign is necessary. However, similar to bounce rate, we often find the cause of low conversion rate stems from negative user experience.

YOUR NEED A WEBSITE REDESIGN IF YOUR WEBSITE IS INCONSISTENT

By consistent, I am talking about consistency in design. It is very important to make sure the tone and voice of your businesses brand is consistent. If your website does not match your brand such as an inconsistent color or logo, it could be enough to throw viewers off and confuse them on what your brand actually is. The look, feel, and function should remain the same across all pages of your site.

Don’t worry, we can help

If your businesses website can relate to any of the above, it’s time for an upgrade and we can help! We offer full website redesign and marketing services to help increase your sales and help drive customers to your business! Contact us today!

Fill out the below form or call (714) 332-0015 for a free consultation and marketing review.

The Importance of Local SEO and 6 Rules to Improve Yours

local SEO

The Importance of Local SEO

Picture this scenario: a local customer in the need of your product or service. These days, the first thing they are likely to do is to pull out their phone and type in “enter your business here near me”. Maybe your business is the hot new bagel shop down the street, the movie theater with the best seats, or the legendary pizza spot, chances are your customers are going to use Google to find the best businesses near them.

The trick is landing your business’s webpage near the top of the search engine’s results. This not only grants exposure to new customers in the area but allows you to retain existing customers who are indecisive about a local purchase decision. You do this by optimizing your webpage among other things in accordance with a search engine’s guidelines. Thus we have Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.

This is important because 75% of customers never scroll past the first page of a search engine like Google.^4 That is a lot of money (and potential) left on the table if you don’t rank near the top. That is the importance of local SEO.

In this article, we will discuss the importance and impact of local SEO for La Habra businesses and things you can do to optimize your site and content to attract more patrons.

Who can benefit from local SEO?

The beauty of SEO is that almost any type of business can reap the rewards of being placed at the top of Google search results. This is especially good news for local businesses because 46% of Google searches are local ^1 and 76% of local searches result in a phone call^1.  

The aim of this article is to…

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is similar to general SEO but the difference is searches with certain geo qualifiers, such as city, state, zip code, etc., and ‘near me’ searches, where Google picks up the geo-location of the person and provides search results from that area.

The Basics Of Local SEO

Now that we know what Local SEO is, let’s take a look at how you can create an actionable gameplan to improve your business’s SEO efforts.

The first thing a business owner needs to do is make sure that their business address is updated in Google My Business as well as other online directories. Without this, the business will not show up any time someone searches for something “near me” or for a business in La Habra.

The second thing you can do is make sure that all your information is accurate and consistent across all online directories you have registered your business under. Any discrepancies found by Google may result in your business not showing up in the local 3 pack, which we will talk about later.  

Now that the basics of the locality have been covered, we need to look at your business’s on-page and off-paged SEO.

On-page optimization is making sure that the content and HTML source code is up to date with the search engines’ latest guidelines. If you’re a business owner in La Habra, be sure to consult with Morales Design in order to improve your on-page SEO strategy.

Off-page SEO refers to backlinks and other external indicators that make your website reputable. These indicators can include the domain, overall look and design, and sharability among other internet users. Off-page SEO can also be improved with the right approach from a professional with experience.

How Does Local SEO Impact Your Business?

Many brick and mortar businesses tend to underestimate the impact of local SEO whether good or bad. According to Hubspot, here are just a few important findings that you may not have known:

  • 50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on computer/tablet did the same.
  • 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day.
  • 60% of American adults use smartphones and tablets to search for local product and service information.

As you can see, local SEO, especially on mobile devices, can affect your business’s bottom line in more ways than ever.

Getting Your Business On Google’s Local 3-Pack

As discussed earlier, appearing on Google’s local 3-pack can be lucrative due to the prime real estate on the top of Google’s search page. Here we will break down how to get your business on Google’s local 3 pack in 6 steps.

  1. Make sure your Google+ Local page is completely filled in and up-to-date.
  2. Cultivate reviews on your Google+ account. Receiving multiple positive reviews can be beneficial when it comes to boosting your visibility, especially since Google reviews and stars will be plainly visible on the 3-Pack.
  3. Make sure your listings throughout the web are accurate and consistent. This includes business name, address, and phone number.
  4. Cultivate locally relevant links to boost your visibility. There are a number of ways you can accrue reputable links, such as sponsoring local nonprofits and events or joining a Chamber of Commerce.
  5. Build standard backlinks to raise your organic rank. Backlinks are best gained through outstanding, well-distributed content that attracts readers.
  6. Build a strong presence on social media and other platforms to establish yourself as a local business with loyal followers.

SEO success will attract new and existing customers to your business by ranking high on Google. For many businesses, their search result position will make or break successful profit margins and a successful local business.

Sources:

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/local-seo/what-is-local-seo-why-local-search-is-important/

https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/inbound-marketing-stats

https://www.brightedge.com/glossary/optimize-google-3-pack

Top 3 Things Local Businesses Should Do Online

Top 3 Things Local Businesses Should Do Online

It’s very important for a business to have a great website! If a business has a high-quality website, they’ll likely attract new customers and keep their current audience engaged with their content, brand, and services. Small businesses ask us all the time, how to better prepare themselves to do business online and how to get the amount of website conversions that they’re looking to achieve. Today we discuss the top three things that businesses should do for their website, what small businesses should do to maintain their website, tips on social media, and insights on what local businesses need to be doing online.

Small business are really tight on time and resources. These stats are pretty astounding in terms of what people aren’t doing online and what they need to tune into. Check out some of these facts.

Ninety-three percent of small business websites are not mobile ready. That’s from a very reputable research source. Sixty percent of small businesses don’t even have a phone number listed on their site. Three-quarters of them don’t have an email contact address. Forty-three percent of business listings are missing or have incorrect addresses.

These are some basic things here, and I think if you want to do better online as a small business you have to understand how people are searching for you. Four out of five consumers use search engines to look up local information. This is addresses, hours, directions.

They also use local search on their smartphones, and the behavior is really shifting quite a bit here. People are now starting to do a research process before they purchase something. They might include time on their tablet, time on their smartphone, and time on their desktop. In fact, another study shows that the average consumer will utilize over two different sources from a different platform before they’ll zero in on a local business that they’re going to visit.

What’s critical for our local business customers to be doing?

There certainly is a lot of stuff. There’s the bare minimum, so let’s hit that first. There are always ways to grow from there.

The first one is to really start with your website. As you mentioned, your website is and still will be the hub of your online presence. It’s essentially your online storefront. You need to make sure that your website is a well kept, clean, and an inviting place for people to come and learn about your business.

A couple of things there. One is that you want to make sure that you test your website on these different mobile devices. Many websites are not ready for mobile. You should always look at your website both on a tablet, as well as at least an iPhone and Android device. Maybe you can leave some of the more obscure platforms out there, but check them out to make sure your website content is visible.

Make sure that your contact information is visible on your website. Usually, the best practice is to put it at the top of the page. Certainly make sure that you can find it on a mobile device as well as a desktop.

You also want to take care of your basic onsite SEO for your website. Instead of being less specific and forgetting to mention what cities and places you service, make sure that you go back over your website and identify the keywords that people might be using when looking for your business. Make sure those keywords exist on your website.

One of the other things that’s really important these days is testing the speed of your website. Google has actually shown this many times, that fractions of seconds, and certainly seconds, make a difference. People aren’t that patient, so if they sense that your website is taking too long to load they’re going to hit the back button and go to the next one.

Make sure all those things are in place. Once you have that, certainly make sure that you claim the local listings. That’s usually the low hanging fruit for many businesses. Go to Google. My Business is what they’re calling it now. Make sure that you’ve verified and claimed your listing there. We also recommend using services like Yext which gets you all of the other directories that are important other than Google My Business. Those are certainly important things to start with.

The last one is to look at social media, but be realistic about what you’re going to do with it. It’s more important to pick one social media platform and stick with it than going out and claiming all of your social media profiles, putting icons on your website, and then never actually doing anything with it.

Aside from those three, once you get all that in place, you need an ongoing strategy for keeping your website up to date and putting out fresh website content and relevant information for your audience. That’s how you’re going to get those conversions.

Content us today for your free website and marketing review.