When it comes to launching or redesigning your website, you may find yourself asking, “Which is more important to my website’s success – design or content?

From a design point of view

Web design refers to both the aesthetic portion of the website and its usability. Design is what makes your website eye-catching. It can be argued that what you have to say about your product or service matters the most. Even if you have the best design existing if it contains poor content, it will not save your website.

Web design is a crucial factor that won’t overshadow the fact that content remains the most important metric for a website. The chance is lesser for visitors to look at and read your website’s content if the design is not good and attractive. Yes, a good design fetches traffic, yet there is no guarantee that visitors will come back if they are not interested in what’s within the website. Therefore, there are more chances that content can be rehabilitated than design. People can be captivated by great design, and the important thing is to keep them captivated through proper information and coherence to the topic content so that your website gets the right attention. Remember that less is more so avoiding heavy graphics will make your design look stylish and minimalist. Better to add more quality information than to create a complicated design. You’d have to offer something extraordinary and this is only the getaway from a website with a bad design. In other words, sell a product or service that no one else does.

From the content point of view

A good website design surely will get some traffic, but good content for your website is what will make them stay and what will make them come back for more. Though content and design are equally vital for your website, it still rests on what you aim to achieve with the website first.

Marketing:

“The use of high quality, education-based content has become an essential ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, serving customers and generating referrals.”

Once a visitor to your website likes and learns a lot from your content, that visitor will always come back to see the other content you have. In that way, your website will have a devoted visitor every time. Not only that but having good content will help your website to be listed at the top of the search rankings. Your website will be easier to appear on every search engine, and that means more visitors to your website. A good content means more than a good design. It is the life and blood of a website. Especially when your content is new and fresh to the visitors and it has relevance to the many. Creating good content and applying some SEO tricks will surely get your website to the top list. And that is what a commercial web wants, it is to be recognized and grow its visitors. Adding further, one cannot discredit what a good design has to offer to a website. It’s the first step to be recognized by the viewers and it can help to highlight the important contents.

The Takeaway

In that case, we can say that web design and content should perfectly balance one another. Let’s put it this way, great website design creates a vital first impression while content attracts search engines, intrigues your audience, and drives measurable results. Therefore, good design attracts people to your website while good content keeps them there. Both design and content are key factors in obtaining a better position in search engine results.

Cliché as it may sound, still, to see is to believe, even in content marketing. Apart from conveying the message of your brand, you need to convince people that what you are selling is worth their time and money, and the best way to do it is to show them you are the best at what you do.

The dramatic change in marketing

Let’s take a very quick look at how marketing has changed over the course of time. Before, marketing was traditional. It used radio advertisements, print ads, television advertisements, and other traditional channels to allure the public. This marketing strategy, though, was functional at that time. However, with the advent of digital marketing and with the revolution of social media, different approaches to marketing have come to the surface, diluting the effectiveness of traditional marketing.

The advent of video marketing

Before video marketing enters the scene, there’s this kind of marketing that is solely banking on articles as a way to market a brand. Content is at the core of any business’s success as far as brand marketing is concerned. Yet, with the proliferating competition in content marketing, there’s a dire need to come up with, not just high-quality content but also to use strategies on how to market your content online in the most effective of ways.

Choosing the best medium to market your brand is a critical part of your business. Yet, once you’ve found the most effective medium to showcase your brand, you can start hoping that everything else will fall into place. Videos are deemed most effective in this very competitive online marketing world. People respond well to videos. As mentioned at the outset, people want to see something before they get to believe it. So, videos provide the most convincing visuals your customers need and want.

Advantages of using videos

Apparently, using videos in content marketing is a better marketing strategy. Videos can guarantee you positive results for your business. It can improve your content marketing concept and will make your business a success. To remain active in the competition of content marketing, your videos should stand out just as your articles do.

So, if you want to stay in the loop of competitive online marketers and keep that edge burning, you better invest in videos. It’s now or never.

Blogging is a way to share valuable information, experience and relevant content to people that will make your business stay afloat from the huge competition in the digital arena. In this digital age, you must adapt to the way customers shop and buy if you want to make yourself known to your target audience – through blogging.

No matter how small your business is, blogging is integral to your online content marketing strategy.

Here are some benefits of blogging that can help your business.

It Can Drive Traffic To Your Website

Blogging is an opportunity for your business to create and share relevant content to your potential customers. It is a marketing strategy that drives traffic back to your website. Search engines love fresh content. Fresh content is still a key to beating out your competitors in the search engine results page.

Every blog you write, it’s one more indexed page on your website, which means it’s one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website in organic search. If you produce quality content with real value, you can convert that traffic into leads.

It Helps You Increase Brand Awareness

Blogging is extremely useful to promote, maintain and build brand awareness. Through blogging, you can introduce your product and services, create social media campaigns, launch promotions and more.

It also helps you get discovered in all social media networks so make the blog on your website the foundation for all of your social media platforms. When you write a blog post, you create an opportunity for your audience to share your blog on social networks – Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn which helps increase brand awareness of your business to a new and wider audience.

Creating brand awareness and promoting your business through blog posting will improve the growth of your business.

It Helps You Connect with Your Prospects

Blogs allow you to show a personal side of your business which provides another source to have a deeper connection with your customers. By posting topics which resonate with your market and show your knowledge, you are marketing your skills for your business, service or product too.

Start blogging and you’ll begin reaping all of the benefits above.

A website serves as a storefront of a business in the online arena. If your site doesn’t seem trustworthy at any point of a visitor’s initial experience, they’ll likely click back and go to your competitors. To earn trust, here are 5 things, you should consider:

1. Invest in a professional website design

According to the Netcraft January 2018 Web Server Survey, there are over 1.8 billion websites. Can you imagine how big the Internet is and the competition in the online market. However, most of those websites get almost no visitors. Thus, it is really critical for a business to have a professional website to attract visitors and make them enquire or make a purchase. It’s a big investment at first, but is more beneficial and potentially more cost-effective in the long run.

Here are some statistics uncovered:

1. 94% of people stated web design as the major reason for trusting or rejecting a website. (source Ironpaper.com)
2. Further, 48% people stated that a website’s design is the number one factor when it comes to deciding the credibility of a business. (Source Ironpaper.com)

Based on the above facts, having a professional and well-designed website with a clean navigation structure and relevant content can certainly increase brand loyalty, gain trust of your site visitors and increase the chances of conversions.

2. Provide valuable content marketing

A valuable content builds trust by delivering value. Value means your content is helpful that educates your visitors as well as search engines about your website which help you rank well.

True value is manifested for both the company and its clients through the content marketing process:

• Informative, helpful content that educates helps the buyer decide on their purchase.
• Informed clients make better decisions.
• Better decisions make happy, loyal clients.
• Happy, loyal clients are inspired to tell others.

Quality content then helps you establish a good communication with your customers and builds trust with your target customers. Consumers search and visit a website and expect to find all the products, services or information they need. Through content, you provide this information that they’re looking for which keep them stick on your site and increase conversions.

3. Reviews and testimonials

Reviews and testimonials serve as your social proof for your future customers. These are important as it affect the trust your customers have for your brand, as well as the overall credibility of your business. When a person visits your website and read positive words from your previous customers, it greatly influences her decision to purchase from you. The greater the number of positive feedback you receive about your business online, the better your reputation will be, and a solid brand image is one of the keys to getting more clients.

According to a study, 90% of purchasing decisions are influenced by reviews. That means you only have a 10% chance of making a sale if you don’t have any reviews (or testimonials) on your website!

So make it easy for your customers to leave a review on your site by providing multiple opportunities on your site to leave a review.

4. Display awards and certifications

Proudly showcasing your awards, achievements, certifications, and credentials on your website captures a great impression from your visitors and helps to inspire trust from them as it shows your great work and competency in the huge market.

Website footer which is located at the bottom of a web page is the best place to showcase these awards, certificates and association memberships which will ensure people who are interested in your site will see it. This is a proven way to add credibility to every page of your website.

5. Leverage the power of social media

Social media is rapidly growing and every business should have a social media presence to take advantage of its amazing growth. Businesses today needs to leverage proper social media channels in the best possible way as it helps in gaining visibility and building trust among audiences.

Nowadays, due to the influence of the internet, users always make it a point to check company’s social media channels attached to the website before making any purchase decision. To promote your online brand is it important that your.

Integrating your website to your social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, is an effective marketing practice. So make your social media and website works seamlessly together. Social media integration on your website, promotes your online brand and shows transparency that boosts the trust of your potential customers.

Social media marketing refers to the process of using different social media platforms to gain website traffic or attention. Social media marketing can help improve brand presence, grow your business and strengthen potential customer relationships. Nowadays, because of a huge competitive market in the digital era, it is not enough to only have high-quality products, customers want to feel like they have a connection with the brand.

Continued development of the value of your brand should always be the topmost strategic priority of your business because brand value can create brand loyalty and can save your business in the long haul. Brand loyalty is when a customer repeatedly buys the same brand of products rather than buying from competing brands.

When you have customers, of course, you want to retain them and you can do it through brand loyalty. Here are some of the best practices to build brand loyalty through social media.

Create a compelling story

Social media provides a huge opportunity to create a compelling story that your audience can become emotionally connected to, beyond their need for the product or service that you provide. You should make an experience for your customers that is interactive so that they’ll feel like they are a part of the brand’s journey and success which builds a relationship between the two of you. And that’s an advantage for your business!

Create quality interactions

Through social media, companies now have access to a channel where they can communicate directly with their customers – a perfect opportunity that was not easily accessible or cheap before the dawn of social media. With social media’s presence, businesses should then take advantage of it to constantly interact with their followers to build appropriate brand awareness and loyalty.

Respond quickly and effectively

A golden rule for a business is to always respond to your customers’ inquiries or comments on social media to increase brand loyalty. Customers don’t like to wait, they like quick responses and your determination to answer their concerns especially when a customer is requesting something time-sensitive. Timely responses and an active presence on social media will build trust with customers that keep them coming back to you.

Accept reviews

Some of us have heard a salesperson say, “If I could buy word-of-mouth, I’d empty my pockets.” Online customer reviews are very influential, they serve as your word-of-mouth advertising which is effective and has an impact on your brand. Whether the rating is bad or excellent, 1 star or 5 stars, these reviews reflect what kind of product or service you’re selling to the people on your eCommerce website which affects the purchase behavior of your potential customers.

Reward loyal customers

Customers love rewards! Making loyal customers feel valued and appreciated by rewarding them enhances brand loyalty. You may provide your loyal customers a discount, voucher, a loyalty card, or a special offer which they can use for their purchase.

Social media is a game changer for any business that has a big impact on brand loyalty which results in increased exposure, reduced marketing expenses, and more fruitful leads that generate revenue. For your business to grow, you should reach out to almost all segments of society adopting effective social media methods and techniques that create a large pool of loyal customers.

We’ve all heard the buzz. “Content is king,” they say. But what is content in marketing? Content is ultimately what every user is searching for in every search engine especially Google to find the best answers to their questions, as quickly as possible. Content may be blogs, images, videos, articles, infographics, or videos, everything you may find on the Web is content, and the more of it your website has, the bigger your percentage of the Google pie will be.

However, having just content isn’t enough to make your digital marketing strategies work. Any business owner knows that having quality content is the backbone of success on the web, especially now that the digital market continues to saturate. Yet many small business owners still are not giving their resources a commitment to produce quality content for their websites. For many, it’s because having a website is just enough to showcase what they can offer to their customers, for others they don’t have time or aren’t sure what kind of content might attract their audience. But considering that 60% of consumers are inspired to seek a product after reading content about it, investing in good quality content is just as important as investing in quality web design.

What is Quality Content?

• Answer a question
• Written with a personal touch for humans
• Helpful and valuable
• Persuasive and engages the user
• Provides an exceptional perception

Why Quality Content is important?

Here are three important reasons why you must give attention to your content strategies:

1. Improve ranking on search engines

Search engines used to work only by ranking websites related to the keyword with the greatest number of views. That’s not how it works now, especially when developers are molding them to be more sophisticated to better cater to the users’ needs. Quality of the content is one of the three top-ranking factors in Google. This only means that quality content with good SEO strategies improves your chances of being found on the first page of search engines. But it would help if you also remembered that to rank higher on search engines, you must have ideally unique and fresh content that is relevant to your audience.

2. Generate new leads

High-quality content means a great opportunity for businesses to bring themselves closer to potential customers – people who are always on the web – which nowadays means pretty much everyone who makes purchases based on a brand that delivers custom content constantly that they can identify with or feel good about.

82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content. This means high-quality content not only drives your digital marketing plan and overall strategy; it also impacts your lead generation and sales.

“High-quality, education-based content has become an essential ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, serving customers, and generating referrals.”

3. Improve brand awareness

Customers love helpful data and if they see information that seems interesting to them on your web page, they are more likely to follow you and share your content on social media or talk about it among friends It creates brand awareness and attracts the right prospects to your website. Therefore, you must always update your website with quality content to keep your business afloat!

SEO is evolving as the different algorithms of the search engines are changing constantly. SEO must be on top of marketers’ agendas as it is a powerful way to bring you business on top of the digital marketing arena that attracts visitors to your company’s outlets and to direct them towards your sales funnel.

Optimizing your website is an essential element of your online marketing strategy. There are some common SEO mistakes that are tough to avoid. Here are some of them:

1. Using the wrong keywords

Keywords are the most essential element in optimizing a website. SEO is all about the keywords that you want your website to rank for. But are you are using the right ones?

If you want to rank in Google you have to make sure that you’re using the right keywords for all your web pages. One of the most common mistakes in selecting keywords is optimizing for too generic keywords. It’s important to define your products and services in a certain way to understand what words your potential customers would use to search in related to your offerings.

Do not optimize your web pages for wrong keywords. Instead, conduct a keyword research carefully before you start the optimization. Using tools like the Google AdWords KeywordPlanner, SEMrush and Moz Keyword Explorer can help you in selecting the most trending and adequate keywords for your products and services.

2. Outdated content

You might not think having outdated content is that big of a deal. Search engines like Google prefer websites that frequently publish new content because it’s a signal that the business is active and keen to meet the customer’s needs.

Frequently publishing new content or updating existing content with the latest information using related keywords or terms also gives your current visitors a reason to revisit your website, spend more time on the site, and share your content or blogs on social networks which is a good measurement of engagement. So, keep your site’s content up to date. Visitors also want to see content that is current and relevant

Find your top and worst performing pages or blog posts through analytics and improve them.

3. Not optimizing for site speed

According to research, it takes just 1/20th of a second for site visitors to form a first impression about your business. If your website speed is slow, visitors won’t waste their time waiting for it to load instead they will turn away to your competitors, and that’s a loss for you. Customers nowadays have a little patience, so optimize your site speed to have a better crawl rate and provide a good customer experience.

Poor website loading speed can be extremely harmful to businesses. Most consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. 79% of shoppers reported that they would not return to purchase from a slow-loading website.

Use site speed tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest to analyze your site speed and have an idea on how to improve your site including optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minifying JavaScript.

4. Not optimizing images

The images you use on your website provide a visual element that can positively impact user experience. But if they are not optimized, they can also hurt your ranking on search engines.

Optimizing web images delivers high-quality images in the right format, dimension, size, and resolution while keeping the smallest possible size. Image optimization can be done in different ways be it by resizing the images, caching, or by compressing the size.

5. Not optimizing URLs or site structure

When it comes to your website, your URLs are often the first thing Google and customers will see. Many site owners leave the title of the page or the post as the URL, which can lead to long URLs that do nothing to help your search rankings.

Most URLs on a search results page keep their character limit from around a healthy 30-40 words. So, keep URLs short and simple, concise, and optimized them with keywords. Here are some tips:

1. A long tail URL should use a dash (-) rather than an underscore (_) to separate individual words.
2. Avoid using characters like: @&$% and others.
3. Keep your URL and Page Title similar.
4. Avoid keyword repetition within URLs.

Bottom Line

Getting a website to rank in search engines doesn’t happen overnight, but it does take hard work and consistency. Search engine optimization is an indispensable part of any digital marketing strategy today. These six common mistakes can help you recognize them to make your site rank even better.

Consumers today has changed the way they purchase products and services. With having more control on the information they consume, inbound marketing strategy allows businesses to reach their prospects in a targeted and relevant manner that helps to improve their brand name, generate leads and improve sales.

Visible One is a HubSpot’s Agency Partner that offer an all-in-one software for small and medium enterprises that want to transform their business by providing exceptional inbound marketing and sales services.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is about attracting the right customers, at the right time, by producing the right content using digital marketing tools like content, search, social and email marketing. It is the process of getting found, converting interested site visitors into opt-in leads, and nurturing leads with educational content that helps turn them into customers.

As an aspirant digital marketing agency in Hong Kong and Singapore who wants to grow and committed to help our clients expand in the unceasingly growing digital arena, we recently teamed up with HubSpot’s Agency Partner Program. Aside from inbound marketing software, we also provide expert guidance, interminable support, and training to help our clients grow and succeed online.

The platform is very user friendly and perfect for daily operations because all our work is grouped in one place from offering inbound services, scheduling social media posts, blogging, email marketing, following engagement, analyzing our reach and visits from all sources, constructing our landing pages, pretty much everything we do day by day is already in one place.

HubSpot’s software includes effective tools that help us to grow a business, simplifies the process, and makes online ads more efficient at achieving higher ROI and improving client retention. When used properly, HubSpot’s software helps us to rely less on chartering audiences through advertising and focus more on creating “marketing assets” that attract, convert and nurture visitors into leads and sales and then continuously analyze each step to find opportunities for improvement.

As a HubSpot Marketing Agency Partner, we earned more than providing a great inbound marketing platform with many benefits that could help your business grow online. Here some of the many benefits of Inbound Marketing:

1. Increases Visibility and Brand Awareness

Nowadays more than 80% of buyers start their search online. This means your company should have a strong presence in the search results to be able to get found by the right customers.

There are several ways to do this and inbound marketing offers a wide range of practices such as social media, quality blog posts, slideshows, infographics, PPC and SEO techniques that helps to optimize the content structure of a website and all its components that build your brand name and raise awareness about your company thus improve its Google and Bing search rankings.

By producing valuable content that is aligned with the buyer’s journey, you can attract the attention of your ideal customers and will be able to find your information as they conduct their research through the search engines using specific keywords you are targeting.

2. Cost effective and ROI secure

Let’s cut straight to it, inbound marketing is ultimately more affordable and effective in comparison to outbound marketing. Lead to lead, inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional outbound marketing. Inbound is cost effective and that automatically mean better opportunities for ROI. Getting on the inbound bandwagon is helpful for your bottom line and your brand.

By providing the right content at the right time to your ideal customers, you are allowing to find you easily when they are conducting a research online. When they found you online, you can collect data from your them and learn your audience. Inbound helps you make better-informed decisions and more wisely spend your time on the right activities.

3. Increases Trust and Credibility

Unlike traditional outbound marketing, which depend on on cold calls or advertisements, inbound marketing techniques are far less pushy and rely more on the user to take the initiative.

Simply put, inbound attracts potential customers who are already actively looking for products and services like what your company offers through search or social. By giving them what they are already looking for through quality and relevant content, they are that much more likely to choose your business, rather than your competitors. Thus, builds credibility for your company because it shows that you can help them with what they are looking for.

4. Generates quality traffic & leads

In inbound marketing, content is king. Due to its content-driven nature, inbound marketing allows companies to produce targeted content for your ideal customer that addresses specific problems and answers relevant consumer questions which aligns with your buyers’ journeys.

The more frequently you produce valuable content, the more often those prospects are likely to visit your website and engage with it longer. When this happens, you’ll be ready for them with calls to actions, top-notch landing pages and content offers that will help them make their decision that will eventually drive traffic to your website and generates trusted relationships that you can turn into leads. This makes it no wonder why inbound in contrast to outbound marketing delivers 54% more leads.

5. Accurate Analytics

Finally, inbound marketing can leverage your business by providing your company with a more transparent measure of your marketing initiative’s success.

As a HubSpot partner, we have an entire ecosystem at our fingertips to help support the growth and success of our clients through HubSpot analytics tool.

This tool gives us the full feature to oversee, measure and analyze our whole marketing funnel from acquisition to close at any time. The tool provides accurate and detailed reports for all our marketing assets including emails, blog posts, social media accounts, websites, landing pages, and more that help us streamline internal processes and improve our operational efficiency.

To summarize, it’s apparent that inbound marketing can ultimately benefit businesses in this digital age. Interested to power your business growth through inbound marketing? Contact Visible One today!

Benefits of using a Content Management System for your Web Design

Content Management System or CMS is a program that allows modification on websites that includes publishing, editing, deleting, and organizing. Content is an asset to your business. It sets an impression for your business name. CMS prevents information from becoming outdated since old information makes your visitors not stay on your site for long. As the Internet grows, so does the need for content management systems for your website as it gives you control of everything to keep it organized, up to date, and looking great.

Why CMS is very beneficial for each website?

1. User friendly

No Web Programming Experience? No Problem! This program is designed for beginners and can be considered like using a Microsoft word. Once your website is fully developed by a web design professional, managing the actual content on your website is simple and easy to learn.

2. Accessibility

CMS allows multiple people to have access to your website and also easily collaborate on different projects. Using individual accounts, multiple people can add, edit, or update content on the site right from their own devices. It also stores all of your online content for you in one place and is available to anyone with access to the website. In this case, the need to send multiple different files to different individuals is no longer necessary.

3. Optimization

Having a CMS lets you create blog posts, and this content is effective for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). So, CMS is not only great for your customers, but it is also great for your SEO, as you can optimize it for search engines and share it on social media to drive more traffic to your site.

4. Security

In this day of age, the online world is full of threats that can ruin your business website. And every business owner doesn’t want that. Through CMS, it has the ability to protect your site against hackers and virus threats through its countless plugins.

5. Cost Effective

With a content management system in place, you can save time and money. You don’t to look for a specialist to make small changes, but you can do it yourself instantly when you need them done.

All in all, Content Management System is very important to have in your business website. Since it aims to organized and very useful as you; Don’t have to be technically savvy, can have several content managers for a site, have easy-going site maintenance, and have full control over your content.