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What is Website Architecture? 8 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Structuring

Technical SEO
May 28, 2021/by
What is Website Architecture? 8 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Structuring Getting lost sucks. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a city or a corn maze, the ambiguity of not knowing where you are and what could happen next can make you break out in a cold sweat. Website visitors feel the same way when they land on a jumbled website. Nearly one in two people leave a website after visiting just one page. We don’t have a lot of time to make a good impression on a user, and with a poor site architecture, you’re guaranteed to increase bounce rates. It’s critical to structure your site in an intuitive and easy-to-navigate way to retain your audience’s attention. If you don’t, they’ll bounce in seconds. And if people leave your website because your user experience is messy, search engines won’t think highly of you, either. If you need help structuring a website that will engage an audience and rank on Google, we’ve got you covered. We’ll teach you what website architecture is, why it’s important for UX and SEO, and how you can develop a sound architecture for your own website. Without question, your website structure plays a critical role in retaining users and boosting conversions. Implementing a website structure helps you design your website for the user experience. You might have the most amazing content, but if users can’t find it, they’ll leave for a competitor’s site. A typical website structure looks like a rooted tree graph,...
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The Top 3 Buyer Persona Myths, and How They Hurt Your Marketing Efforts

Buyer Personas
May 27, 2021/by
The Top 3 Buyer Persona Myths, and How They Hurt Your Marketing Efforts Meet Elizabeth: a 27-year-old nurse who drives a Honda Civic, enjoys making TikToks, and spends most of her time with her beautiful 9-month-old baby. Elizabeth desperately wants to make more time for herself, but struggles to find the balance between work and home responsibilities. She tries to give herself moments of self-care, but these moments are few and far between. Elizabeth needs a way to recharge, relax, and care for herself. By this description, you know Elizabeth's age, profession, gender, desires, struggles, and pain points. All of this information helps you place her in a category in your mind — but none of that information tells you why she buys your product. Buyer personas typically include descriptions like Elizabeth's, along with other demographics and personality information. In the early days of customer segmentation, this would have been more than enough to inform marketing campaigns and product development. But with growing markets and increased consumer awareness, companies need to go beyond standard buyer personas to reach their audiences. If we can apply what we've learned about how people make decisions, and how we as companies group people together, we'll be able to reach customers like Elizabeth with empathetic solutions that help her, rather than stereotypical cure-alls that are easily overlooked. Here, let's dive into three myths of the buyer persona — and what you can do, instead.  Standard Buyer Personas Aren't Enough The first mention of audience segmentation was...
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Reputation Management: How to Protect Your Brand Online in 2021

Branding
May 27, 2021/by
Reputation Management: How to Protect Your Brand Online in 2021 A positive brand image can undoubtedly influence a consumer's decision to buy a product — and, for virtually every business, building a positive brand image starts online. Nowadays, your reputation is largely dependent on social media and online review sites. For instance, consumers need to read an average of 10 online reviews before they feel they can trust a local business. Since brand image makes such an impression on someone's decision to purchase, you must regularly monitor your reputation online. Still, it can feel like a daunting task, particularly when so much of it is out of your control. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools and strategies you can implement to ensure you're protecting your brand in 2021. In this post, we’ll give a clear overview of brand reputation management, how to create a plan to manage your business reputation, and high-quality tools to supplement your process. Reputation management is a continuous process, as it allows you to stay on top of your brand’s public perception and address possible damaging situations as soon as they occur. When your reputation is positive, you inspire customer loyalty, a significant driver of revenue and growth. A negative reputation can be damaging to sales and customer retention, but it also helps you learn about what customers like, which can be helpful for updating business processes to better meet consumer needs. Brand safety has recently become discussed in conversation with reputation management,...
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How to Get Started with Agile Marketing [+ Examples]

Marketing Strategy
May 26, 2021/by
How to Get Started with Agile Marketing In 2019, DoorDash was losing money on the average order and reported an operating loss of $616 million on $885 million in revenue. By the end of 2020, their revenue jumped to $2.89 billion — a 226% gain. Why the sudden success? For one, the global pandemic spiked the demand for food delivery. But DoorDash also responded to customers' needs right from the start. They delivered COVID test kits and launched the #OpenforDelivery campaign to support restaurants by the end of March, made it easier to filter customer ratings in April, and released a Gifting feature to send loved ones food over the holidays. Simply put, they figured out what customers desired and rapidly delivered. Now more than ever, customers expect brands to understand and respond to their needs. In a survey of global consumers, 58% of people remembered a brand that quickly pivoted and 82% ended up doing more business with that company as a result. But a lightning-fast response only happens if your team can handle abrupt change. Agile marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on quickly executing projects by working in short sprints. It makes room for marketers to shift their focus, adapt to customer needs, and change priorities alongside expectations. With Agile, what once took months to deliver can take weeks. Adopting this approach takes work, but this post shares how to get started with Agile marketing by explaining the process, sharing examples, and showing...
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16 Benefits of Branding & Co-Branding

Branding
May 26, 2021/by
16 Benefits of Branding & Co-Branding In more ways than one, branding is a pillar of success. It helps you develop a set of features unique to your business, like a logo and brand name, which allows customers to come to know your brand and associate it with what you have to offer. Branding is impactful in and of itself, but co-branding brings additional opportunities and benefits to businesses that engage in it. In this post, discover the advantages that come from generating brand individuality for your business, and the added benefits that come from co-branding with a partner. 1. Branding is often the deciding factor for consumers making purchasing decisions. Branding is often the deciding factor for consumers when making a purchase decision. In fact, consumers report being more likely to buy from brands that they know or know and already have a positive experience with. This is especially true for social media, as 89% of consumers say they’ll buy from a brand they already follow and recognize over a competitor. Given this, having a recognizable and unique brand gives you a leg up with customers, as they would feel safer buying from a business they already know. 2. Branding gives your business an identity. Branding gives your business an identity beyond just the products and services you sell. You become more than just a name, especially if you develop a brand mission separate from your products. For example, if your brand is committed to social responsibility, you’ll become associated with those...
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A Non-Designer’s Guide to Visual Hierarchy [Best Practices + Examples]

Design Templates
May 26, 2021/by
A Non-Designer's Guide to Visual Hierarchy Ever click on a website, take one look and say "Hm, that's going to be a no" while you look for the exit button? For me, it's usually because of three reasons: the site looks outdated, crowded, or hard to navigate. Bad design can keep your target audience from gaining any interest in your brand. That's why it's important to understand the key design principles that will help you draw your audience in, keep them on the page, and generate conversions. Here's an easy guide on a specific design principle: visual hierarchy. We'll cover all the elements that contribute to visual hierarchy and look at good and bad examples. Visual hierarchy affects what you look at and focus on in a design, whether it's an image, graphic design, or web design. It's a key player in ct (i.e., how information is organized and displayed for easy understanding and navigation) and can greatly impact the user experience (UX). When thinking about visual hierarchy, you want to ask yourself a few questions: What do we want to draw attention to? What actions do we want our users to take? Where does the eye naturally go to and where do they land? Asking these questions will help you use the principles outlined below to create a clear visual hierarchy. What constitutes bad visual hierarchy? When it comes to visual hierarchy, there's a golden rule: If every element appears important,...
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The Ultimate List: 50 Online Local Business Directories

Local SEO
May 25, 2021/by
The Ultimate List: 50 Online Local Business Directories Promoting a local business isn’t easy these days. Whether it’s because of oversaturation or complicated search engine algorithms, it’s all too easy to feel like no one will find your business in the local search results. Luckily, there’s an easy way to improve your local SEO. All you have to do is list your business in online business directories such as Yellow Pages, Manta, and more. This is called building citations, and it’s a critical piece of a local marketing strategy. Today, Google is inserting itself between consumer and local business websites much more often. For proof, you need to look no further than Google My Business, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), featured snippets, and most importantly, local packs. By building citations, you can make sure that you appear in these local packs when people look for businesses like yours in their area. Business directories may seem like a thing of the past, but they’re a great way to grow your presence online. You can improve visibility by listing your local business' NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on directories, online business listing sites, and citation sites. Aside from improving your local SEO, these can also improve your rankings on search engines because the listings usually link back to your site. Make sure your company listing has the following information once you add it to a directory: Consistent NAP. If you add or update your business on multiple business...
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The 10 Best Storyboarding Software of 2021 for Any Budget

User Experience
May 25, 2021/by
The 10 Best Storyboarding Software of 2021 for Any Budget Today, video can help marketers do a lot of things — it can help you explain your product or service, it can increase traffic to your website, and it can even convince people to purchase a product. 94% of people watch explainer videos to learn about a product or service. Even if you have a powerful written content strategy, if you don’t use video, you’re losing traffic to more video-heavy competitors. Your business is probably already using video marketing, but are you planning your videos for optimal success using storyboarding software? Or are you drawing shots by hands or writing a script and winging the rest? In this post, we’ll go over what storyboarding is and cover some of the best storyboarding tools you can use to make better marketing videos. Storyboarding isn’t just for filmmakers and animators. Marketers can leverage storyboards to craft engaging marketing campaigns and advertisements. The best part is that you don’t have to do it manually. A storyboarding software tool typically provides premade images and characters for you to bring your idea to life. Whether you use video for training, sales, or demo purposes, storyboarding can alleviate the time-consuming nature of video preparation, while also increasing your video’s overall quality and decreasing production errors. If you’re looking for a tool to take your video production process to the next level, take a look at our list of the best storyboarding software out there —...
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The 15 Best WordPress Themes for Podcasters in 2021

wordpress themes
May 25, 2021/by
The 15 Best WordPress Themes for Podcasters in 2021 The number of podcast listeners in the United States is expected to reach 100 million by 2024. (For context, there are 82.7 million listeners in 2021.)  Podcasts provide a source of convenient and intimate entertainment that's only continuing to grow in popularity. While today’s most popular podcasts might vary significantly in terms of their content and hosts ( among other things ), they all share at least one thing in common — they each have their own website where fans can check out their latest episodes and seasons, info about live shows, biographies about the podcast’s hosts, and more details. If you’re a host or producer, chances are you’re busy managing your podcast — and building your own WordPress website may sound like a daunting task. However, creating your site can be quite simple with a WordPress podcasting theme that allows you to share your episodes, seasons, host bios, and any other content you want to provide your visitors and fans. We’ve curated this list of our favorite podcasting themes to help you share your content on your site and make lasting connections with your fans. To determine which theme best suits your needs, review these 15 options, their unique features, and our key takeaways. Afterward, check out the WordPress Theme Directory if you’d like to explore more podcasting themes. 1. Viseo Viseo is a podcast theme with a “latest show” section for your site pages so your fans...
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