Your Online Calling Card

Look at your website as your online calling card. Use it to introduce your business to potential customers. Include images of your business and the people who work there. Make it personal and customize your website accordingly. Show your customers who you really are and focus on the pride you take in providing the highest quality service possible. If you want this to be your first impression, make it a good one!

Provide Accurate and Relevant Information

Always do your best to provide information to your customers that is as accurate and relevant as possible. People want to be able to take something with them when they visit a website. They want to learn something. They want information they can use that will make a difference in their lives. Add new content that is fresh and up-to-date. The information you provide to your customers will be what is needed to build a solid foundation of trust.

Make It Colorful

Websites need to be bright and colorful. Add images and videos. Create photo collages and use graphics that are eye-catching. Use colors that match your business logo. Balance your colors so they are pleasing to look at. Work with a website designer who understands how certain colors work together. Once you have the right color scheme and graphics, your website will shine. It will be one that potential customers will remember.

Use Interactive Tools

People love to use interactive tools. Include a Live Chat button or a survey they can take. Give your customers something to do while they are on your website. Make each page easy to navigate so your customers can find everything they need with only a few clicks. If your website is easy to use and offers real-time interactions, customers are more likely to return if they are looking for something you specialize in.

Be Unique

Another way to make sure your website stands out and gets the attention you want is to make it unique. Be creative. Showcase the things that make your company the best choice. Look at a few of your favorite websites and find out what makes them so special. Now look at your own company and find the key points that set you apart from the rest. Build your website so that those points are the primary focal points that make your business stand out.

Building a powerful website is important. Without it, your company is at a huge disadvantage. When you have a well-built website, your business will stand out among its competitors. Putting a little extra effort into the creation of your online calling card will pay benefits longer and more effectively than any other type of marketing strategy.

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What is AMP?

Simply put, the AMP version of your website is essentially a bare-bones framework that contains only the most important parts of what you have to offer. Google, along with many other observers, are convinced that the greatest opportunity for growth lies with mobile devices. In order to make the most out of this, websites need to be able to load quickly, even in areas that have less than optimal data coverage.

Will AMP Affect Your Website?

Google has made it clear that if your website loads slowly in a mobile browser, you are going to be penalized for it. Since AMP is at such an early stage in its development, implementing it on your site now could give you a leg-up on your competition. AMP results are at the top of search pages, meaning even if you have the top spot for a keyword, if you do not have AMP set up for your website, you will be below pages that do.

How Does AMP Work?

AMP works by using a specific type of code called AMP HTML which puts certain constraints on what can or cannot be published. Third-party Javascript code on your site will generally not load within an AMP page, since it can considerably increase loading times for someone on a mobile device. It is still possible to use third-party code on the AMP version of your site, but the code will need to fall in line with AMP guidelines. Major third-party developers such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram already have AMP-specific versions of their plug-ins so that they will continue to work on your website.

Implementing AMP on Your Website.

If your website runs on WordPress, there are a few plug-ins you can download straight from the dashboard that will do most of the work for you. One of the best, and most frequently updated, is the official Automattic/Wordpress AMP plugin, which can be found here. This plug-in creates an AMP version of all of your existing pages, which will then be indexed over the next few days.

For sites that do not run on WordPress, the process of creating AMP-compatible pages for existing content will require an overhaul of your CSS. This is something usually best left to a professional, since it can take a lot of time to do the right way.

Tracking with AMP.

Keeping track of your visitors through Google Analytics is fairly simple throughout the AMP version of your website, as you only need to add a bit of code to your pages. Other tracking programs may not work quite as easily, which is where professional help would usually come into play.

The post Everything You Need to Know About the AMP Project appeared first on Ready to Run Designs.

Due to consumers’ smartphone usage around the holidays, many companies will look to capitalize on it by increasing mobile marketing in the fourth quarter, according to Nexage. With this increase in marketing and advertising comes an increase of demand for RTB ads, up from the second to third quarter an incredible 70%.

According to Nexage, RTB is going to be an integral part of mobile marketing, as evidenced by a growing number of companies joining the bandwagon. Wes Biggs and others have said that close to 50% of their inventory came from RTB, and that was tied back to mobile marketing and advertising.

Furthermore, an increase from 8% in the first quarter and 21% in the second quarter of 2012, RTB ads made up 34% of all the impressions from its network in the third quarter, Adfonic reported. All these numbers indicate not only that RTB ads will continue to increase in terms of number of companies that use them, but that they will be used more often by those same companies. As a result, the importance of mobile marketing has grown exponentially since the advent of the smartphone.

Even with the increase in tablet users, 89% impressions still came from mobile phones during Q3 2012, compared to 11% from tablets, according to Adfonic. Even with Millennial Media’s different interpretation of the data, it still showed 74% of impressions coming from mobile phones, much higher than from any other device.

Much of the increase in mobile marketing can be attributed to the sheer number of smartphone users today compared to any other time in its history, with that number increasing all the time. In Q3 2012, according to CNET, more 427 million smartphones were sold worldwide. This doesn’t account for the millions of people who already owned smartphones when these figures were released. Each year, more and more people switch over or upgrade their phones to a smartphone, and that means an increase in data usage. For these reasons, companies have recognized just how important mobile marketing is to their business. Not only do they have to market and advertise online to desktop computers, but according to eMarketer, ad spending on mobile devices by 2017 will all be equal to that spent on desktops.

Therefore, a continued growth in mobile marketing can be expected. According to Digital Media and Entertainment for IDC program vice president Karsten Weide, in 2015 “there will be more users accessing the internet through a mobile device rather than a computer.”

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