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Why a Custom Website is Better for Your Brand’s Web Development in Minneapolis, MN

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There are many ways to build a website today. It can be as simple as using a free website template provider or as elaborate as writing your own HTML, Java, Python, or other type of web development code. Depending on your budget and level of investment in a website project, some of these methods may be better than others. For the majority of public figures, small brands, and other websites that only require the basics, website builders like Squarespace and Wix can work just fine. While these templated website builders can offer adequate solutions for those looking to stick with a pared-down, attractive site, they are often too limited for businesses or brands looking for more dynamic options. If you need anything that website builders don’t offer, or expect your site to grow into something more unique in the future, the best option is to take advantage of custom website building services. At MLT Group LLC, we help companies and brands create innovative, high-functioning websites with our services for SEO marketing, design, and complete web development in Minneapolis, MN.

Comprehensive Marketing

MLT Group offers comprehensive marketing and design services, including SEO strategies, digital marketing campaigns, web and graphic design, social media marketing, and video production. Our mission as a third-party marketing firm is to help clients achieve their content goals and sustain long-term success as an online presence.

Website Builders

The number of website builders available to a wide range of individuals, brands, businesses, and content creators has grown exponentially in the last five years. Template-based website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify make building a quality website attainable for those without coding skills or a budget they can use to pay a third-party website builder to create from the ground up. These sites have many benefits, and they’ve been integral to thousands of small businesses establishing their online brand.

As of 2021, Squarespace has about 3.8 million subscribers with a starting price of $16 a month for personal sites, and Wix has about 200 million subscribers and offers a free template program in addition to their more expensive upgrades. Website builders like these are great systems for building nice-looking, simple sites that can incorporate basic e-commerce with added costs.

If these capable systems are available for such low pricing, you may be wondering why any business would utilize custom websites that are built either in-house by their own marketing team or built by a third-party builder. Despite their many benefits for quick, low-cost, and generally well-designed sites, these template systems have significant drawbacks for brands that want to give themselves room to grow into prosperity.

The Benefits of a Custom Build

When it comes to quality web development for your business, you shouldn’t have to waste time or money on a unique website that fits your brand’s aesthetics and offers peak performance. Even if you own a small business, it’s worth it to invest in a custom website that you can take with you as you grow your brand, instead of using that energy and expense now to create a template-based website that will limit you down the road.

web development

Templates Limit Design and Future Growth

Custom websites are not limited by the template system that website builders like Squarespace and Wix use. The templates those builders use are generic outlines that, while they offer some customization options, often end up resembling many other sites out there. If you rely on website builder templates, you could even have a site that’s similar to one or more of your direct competitors. Website builder templates also limit the functionality of your site in addition to the aesthetic design. Most of these templates don’t allow growth for added marketing tools like multi-faceted blog integration, distinctive e-commerce systems, and custom calendars.

Custom Sites Have Better Integration

Custom websites can also integrate with almost any service that has an API (Application Programming Interface). Some website builders do allow for basic integrations of services, but these are very restricted capabilities. Again, the templates will limit your ability to integrate new features and tools into your site. If you are using one of the many website builder templates and you attempt some integration, it could jumble your entire site. Custom sites are built to work with all exterior integration via APIs, so you can continue to make your online presence more dynamic with a richer site.

 Custom Sites Have Better Mobile-first Designs

Another benefit of a custom site is the ability to completely control the way your website looks on a desktop or a mobile device. Every website should have full functionality on both device screens, since most people access sites on both platforms today. The largest issue that website builders have with mobile device translation is handling content blocks. As text, images, and other content sections are relayed into a mobile setting, they tend to stack and jumble in ways that are difficult for users to process. A custom site can go beyond the simple translation of a desktop website display into a mobile device. Instead of mirroring into a mobile format, custom sites can contain two distinct programs for the larger landscape screen of a desktop and the smaller portrait screen of a smart phone or other mobile device.

Website Builders Limit Multi-Development and Staging

Website builders like Wix and Squarespace do allow you to build your site, make changes, and see the final product before it’s published for the world to see, but those development stages and detail work-outs are much more limited than when you build a custom site. Custom-built websites can spend much more time in multi-tiered development environments while each aspect of the site design is staged, tested for functionality, and meshed with each other. Since custom sites often allow for greater complexity and higher system capabilities, this development and staging time is a critical component of the quality control process.

Custom Sites For Web Development Can Grow with You

The simplicity, ease, and cost of a website builder might look like a good option for where your business is now, but what about how your brand will grow in the next five or ten years? Your website’s functions should be able to grow with your company and continue to allow space for new marketing tools, e-commerce abilities, design features, and more. We can’t always predict the new technology that will be available in the future of web design, but custom sites built today are created on a foundation that’s set up for long-term growth and the integration of new internet rules, web design systems, and brand changes. For most small businesses, a website builder template can help you create an online presence now, but custom sites will give you that space for now and for the future.

Benefits of Custom Websites

There are many other reasons why a custom website is more beneficial to businesses of all shapes and sizes than website builder systems like Wix and Squarespace (including the fact that the accrued costs of a website builder subscription often equal the initial costs of a custom website set up), but these are just a few of the most significant points of interest.

If you’re considering working with a third-party marketing firm to build a custom website after reading this, we can help. MLT Group offers fully customizable web development in Minneapolis, MN, including building a custom website. Contact us at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online today to learn more.

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4 Kinds of Keyword Research for Marketing and SEO Web Development in Rochester, MN

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Just as with many other technologies, the way search engines and web systems work changes over time. As recently as just a few years ago, Google and other search engine algorithms favored websites with saturated keywords and over-stuffed URLs. Today, those same practices are penalized. If you’re new to web development, it might be daunting to know where to start. Building a website requires a complex combination of design elements, relevant text and data content, keywords, search engine rule following, and more. To integrate the best search engine optimization (SEO) systems into your web presence, you have to follow the requirements set by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search algorithms to put your website on the map in terms of ranking. A higher rank on a search engine results page (SERP) will give your website more visibility, credibility, trustworthiness, and authority. One of the greatest tools available to website and content creators for both SEO and marketing purposes is the use of keywords. As a third-party marketing firm and provider of expert web development in Rochester, MN, MLT Group LLC uses a wealth of knowledge and experience to embed and implement the right keywords in the right places on your site.

Experts

Our web design, marketing, social media, and SEO experts, graphic designers, videographers, producers, and project managers offer comprehensive services to meet any of your online objectives. If you’re embarking on a web design process alone, however, it’s important to remember the usefulness of keywords.

Keywords

Keywords on your site will help lead search engines to your web pages, content, and media in many ways. Not only are keywords directly linked to various types of user inquiries, but they can also help you decide the most effective content to create, build marketing campaigns, and utilize social media effectively. Researching which keywords will be the most effective for your brand can follow several different paths depending on what purpose they will serve.

Keyword Analysis

The four main categories of keyword analysis include research for SEO and search engine marketing, research for social media marketing, content creation research, and research into specific audiences or market demographics.

Web Development

For web development objectives, understanding those four paths for keyword research can help you build content that better meets user needs and improve your Google ranking.

SEO and search engine marketing keywords:

This type of keyword research is considered “classic” investigation. Determining which keywords relate to your brand and overall website content while also meeting user inquiries will increase your SERP ranking. Some basic SEO keyword use could be the inclusion of a general search term with a location. For instance, if your website serves as an e-commerce retail space but you also own a physical store, you can benefit from the use of keywords specific to your products, online shopping terms, and your actual locations. To use an existing example, if a user searches “vintage band t-shirts in Rochester, MN,” they will see there is an online store featured at the top of the Google search results for Ragstock. A branch of this retailer is located in a Rochester mall, but it also provides online shopping for vintage band t-shirts and other clothing. Using keywords to match the most-searched user inquiries (whether those searches are information-based, navigational, or transactional) in relation to your site content is the primary way to improve your SEO results.

Marketing

Another use of keywords for SEO/marketing purposes, specifically for search engine-based marketing, is for targeted promotions and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The keywords used in these kinds of ads work similarly to SEO keywords on your actual website. Google and other search engines will rank ads that their algorithms find relevant to the user inquiry higher on SERPs. Paid promos and PPC ads related to keyword searches are also favored above organic results, often at the top of a SERP.

Audience and market research keywords:

You can also use keyword research to learn more about your audience or a specific user demographic. Using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner system, your own website’s analytics, or even through market research with various news media like Reddit, YouTube, Quora, and Google News, you can pinpoint what audiences are asking, buying, talking about, interested in, unhappy about, and more. With keyword research geared towards audience behavior, you can also determine demographics like ages, locations, professions, languages, and other information. Google Trends is another free system that allows you to search keywords to see their level of trending over certain periods of time. Using keywords relevant to your online brand that are trending across large audiences or are discovered for niche user sets can assist you in building a diverse and dependable following to market to.

SERP ranking

Using keywords for a broad audience (like “vintage fashion”) combined with more unusual or underground keywords that are still related to your content (such as “vintage 1950s letterman jacket”) can be one of the most effective ways to grow your audience simply through SERP ranking.

Social media marketing keywords:

Another extremely effective use of keyword research is determining social media trends and understanding how to use hashtags (and tags in general) accurately. If you have an online presence, it’s highly recommended that you also have at least one social media platform. Ideally, brands should utilize the broad reach that multiple platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat provide. Each of these social media platforms offers fully-developed “SEO” systems that use similar properties to actual search engine algorithms. These platforms index and rank accounts, tags, topics, and even images to best answer a user inquiry based on keywords and location.

Social Media Marketing

The trick to social media marketing is that each platform system is different from the rest. A trending post on Instagram won’t translate to video formats, and it may not hold the same attention on Facebook or Pinterest. Similarly, popular tweets reposted on Instagram and Facebook may actually be penalized for showing up as text content spam or advertisements that break platform rules. The best way to effectively use each social media platform’s keyword system is to spend time learning their various search systems and formats with the information applicable to your brand and audience.

Content creation keywords:

One rule of good SEO is to continue publishing fresh content that adds richness to your web presence, provides real information to your audience, and follows the rules of search engine algorithms. The pressure of creating new content frequently can make it difficult to plan what blogs or news to generate. That’s where keyword research for content creation can play a significant role in guiding your publishing path and answering your “who, what, where, when, why, and how” questions. Content creation will naturally intertwine with your overall approach to SEO practices, sharing your brand goals and getting results together.

Fresh Content

Although fresh content creation for the sake of staying prominent in the eyes of search engines is important, you can also use keyword research to determine other reasons why content should be made. For example, using content to grow email subscriptions, generate sales, partner with other brands, introduce new projects or leadership, and gain new certifications or authority over your work can all be important reasons for generating a blog post or even building a new web page. Using the right keywords in that kind of content will only make their release have a more effective impact on audience growth and SERP ranking.

Keyword research opens many doors to building your online presence positively. Whether you are building a brand-new site or enriching existing content, we can help. To learn more about the use of keywords for web development in Rochester, MN, contact MLT Group today at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online.

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How Media Content Affects Your SEO and Web Development in St. Paul, MN

There are many aspects of web development that can be utilized to build a site with the information, tools, and aesthetics appropriate to your brand. Most websites use design elements that have become standards like dropdown menus, landing pages, contact forms, and other common features recognizable to users. Conforming to expected web design elements will make your website easier to use and can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) results.

Web Development

Busy company leaders often choose to hire the services of a marketing firm for development of their websites. MLT Group provides complete services for web development in St. Paul, MN and across the country, including SEO, graphic design, social media marketing, digital marketing, video production, and more. Our experts can build your website to follow digital standards and emerging trends while ensuring your site is attractive to search engines and users alike.

Quality User Experience

In addition to supporting your brand’s online presence and providing the type of information that will answer user inquiries relevant to your company, a quality user experience (UX) should be a top priority in all your web development processes. The initial step to achieving a good UX for your site is a fast load time. Many users will click away from sites that load slower than two seconds. You may have had successful SEO that brought your page to the top of a search engine results page (SERP), but if a user clicks on your site and it loads slowly, you’re likely to lose that interaction.

Ranking Highly in Search Engines

If you build your website to offer a user experience that makes information easy to find and your company easy to do business with, you will have made a great start. Additionally, developing effective SEO that gets your site ranking highly in search engines is key to bringing in targeted traffic. Site features that catch that attention of users and keep them interested while on your site can be useful as well. However, don’t overdue these as clean and simple is still highly desirable in most site designs and some fancy features like pop-ups and interstitials can be detrimental to user experience and search engine rankings.

Overlays:

Overlays are dialog boxes, images, videos, or other types of content that show up directly on a browser window. A common example of an effective overlay is a request for users to sign up for a newsletter or enter an email for a first purchase coupon. Most retail sites, news resources, and blogs will use overlays to prompt users to sign up to receive emails from the company’s newsletter or advertisement system. These often are not penalized by Google or other search engines, but if they compromise the UX, they can damage SEO. Many web developers will pay close attention to how overlays affect the UX on mobile devices due to the smaller screen space. If you use overlays, make sure they are easy to close, show up within a few seconds of your page loading, and don’t show up repeatedly once the user has closed the box.

Pop-Ups:

Thanks to spammy pop-up ads that were common with the early internet days, Google and other search engines do not award sites that use any pop-ups. If you have pop-ups, not only is it likely that users will have browser prevention that automatically blocks pop-ups, Google will punish sites with pop-ups by lowering their SERP ranking. Pop-ups are different from overlays because they show up when a new window is opened rather than over a page. Pulling up a new window in addition to the page clicked will alert Google to potential spam and security risks. Generally speaking, we don’t recommend the use of pop-ups.

Modals:

Modals are similar to overlays, but they require action in the dialog box before users can interact with the page underneath. Common modals include sign-in requests, requirements to enter birthdates to continue, requests to verify users are over 21, requests to accept or deny cookies, CAPTCHAs, and other legal or paywall specific content. If modals appear right after the page loads, aren’t repeated once the user has provided the requested action, and are easy to understand, interact with, and close, Google will not penalize the use of that kind of media content. You can run into problems when using modals for advertisements or if the visual content is spam-like. If you have to use a modal, make sure it is not taking away from the UX or slowing down the load time of your site.

Interstitials:

Some sites, like Forbes.com, for example, use interstitials. Forbes uses them to show advertisements for their sponsors on their landing page. Interstitials are essentially timed overlays that cover part of the screen for a few seconds when you enter a site. These interstitials, or “interstitial experiences,” will stop you from interacting with a page or cover a large part of the screen as you scroll down. Even though they only last seconds, they can significantly damage the UX, and most search engines do not favor websites that use interstitials. Large brands like Forbes can get away with using interstitial advertisements on their landing pages, but most sites will see a decrease in SEO when they use interstitial elements. However, interstitials can be used effectively in very limited applications. They may be useful in making a user stop and acknowledge something before interacting with your site or to add some fun elements to your site’s entryway (such as this “Species in Pieces” interactive exhibition site). If you plan to use an interstitial, it may be beneficial to offer users the option to skip the experience.

Improve the UX of Your Site

For each of these elements, there is a lot to consider when taking into account how they will impact your SEO. Primarily, if you can utilize these elements to improve the UX, you can deter the negative impact they might have on your SERP ranking. If your website loads quickly and meets the needs of user queries while incorporating any of these types of media, Google and other search engines will be less likely to penalize your site. Tracking bounce rates, conversions, and other evidence of positive or negative user reactions will help you analyze how these elements are affecting the UX of your site. Have a backup plan if you have to remove these elements due to poor user interaction results.

Site Speed

The timing of these elements is also important. Generally, these elements should appear right when your site loads and only for short periods of time (or as long as users want to engage). Some exceptions to this rule could include an overlay that appears after a user reads a page or adds a product to their cart. Installing these elements into your site should also not pose damage to the user experience. If users can’t click past an element, if an element appears untrustworthy, if it slows down your site’s load time, or if it jumbles the primary design and informativeness of your main site, you probably want to avoid incorporating these types of media. Keep in mind that even if you install these elements and they don’t result in a bad UX, Google and other search engine algorithms might penalize your SEO results.

To learn more about web development in St. Paul, MN and how different elements of design can impact your SEO, or to get started with our team of skilled content creators and marketing experts, contact MLT Group at (507) 281-3490 or sales@mltgroup.com today.

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Features of an Effective Marketing Firm for Quality Web Development in Minneapolis, MN

Whether you own a company serving local customers or a brand recognized internationally, having a website with user friendly tools, in depth information about your brand or business, and a unique design aesthetic are all key factors in digital marketing success. There are many ways to build a quality website yourself, even with minimal development knowledge, including with the many web building services available today. However, these web builders can cause design issues, create functionality roadblocks, and may lack in search engine optimization (SEO) tools. The mid to high cost for web builder services at top tiers may not be worth it to many brands. Small marketing firms in your area often compete with web builder costs while providing a better range of services, flexibility, creativity, and overall greater level of care. MLT Group LLC offers comprehensive services for web development in Minneapolis, MN and the Upper Midwest, including digital marketing, SEO services, social media marketing, graphic design, video production, and web design.

Effective Web Development

There are many properties of effective web development, and while many technical aspects of web design may shift with time (such as Google and other search engine algorithms), there are several core values that remain largely constant. Even with more and more cookie cutter web builders coming onto the market, there are still many reasons to work with an independent marketing agency.

web development

Cookie Cutter vs. Custom

Web builders rely on templates that make it easier for anyone using their services to build nice looking websites quickly. However, these templates tend to become cookie cutter examples of excessive website conformity. The first problem with template or cookie cutter websites is that they are not unique. Many other brands, including your competitors, may use the same web builder services and templates. If your website starts to look the same as others, the creative and innovative aspects of your company may be overshadowed by the conformity of your site design.

Website Functionality

Another issue with cookie cutter websites is their functionality. Templates provided through web builder services may not include unique tools for media incorporation, ecommerce, and other custom needs. Additionally they often don’t give you options to accurately manage your SEO performance. Cookie cutter sites often offer some SEO tools, but without the ability to fully tailor to your specific brand’s SEO requirements. Some brands need ecommerce SEO emphasis, while others might need SEO that increases readership of fresh content.

Templates

The templates offered through web builder services may be easy to use to a point, but if you don’t have any web design expertise, you’ll struggle in the confines of your selected template. By outsourcing your online development process to an affordable marketing firm, you’ll be able to expand far beyond the limitations of templates. The goal of a marketing firm is to customize your website and marketing campaign every step of the way, giving you ownership over your brand and web presence that a cookie cutter website cannot accomplish.

Small Firm Effect

There are several ideas behind the concept of Small Firm Effect. Firstly, small businesses exist for a reason. They are serving a purpose that larger companies are not able to provide, and their continued success is evidence of this fulfillment. Secondly, small market capitalization has a tendency to outperform large market players, partly because they offer more boutique, quality services. Small companies are able to thrive with a quality over quantity approach to business, much the opposite of large corporations’ usual inability to provide the level of service quality that small firms can. Because they can’t provide a boutique level of quality, larger companies rely on quantity over quality.

Smaller firms can offer better quality services because they are more flexible and nimble to changes in projects or markets, their smaller staff is more attentive to customer needs, and with fewer projects on the schedule, they can spend more time and energy on precision and tailoring. Small companies can also focus on locally targeted content and become a part of online or physical communities.

SEO Marketing

Effective SEO tools will place your website in higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERP). Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo use crawling bots that scan the content, data, security, and other aspects of your website pages. They will then index that information and rank sites based on how positively and accurately they answer a search query according to the search engine algorithm. Algorithms change over time, but many core SEO practices stay relevant for long term use. One example is backlinking. Backlinks have survived as a potent ranking factor despite the banning of many backlink related spam techniques. An example of an outdated SEO practice is keyword stuffing or overloading the use of keywords in your text content. A change that is coming in SEO marketing practices is Google’s launch of their Page Experience signal system. These new SEO guidelines are geared to favor websites with strong user experience metrics, including fast load times, interactivity, and balanced visuals.

Pay Per Click

SEM marketing techniques like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and Google Ads can be effective, but nothing beats SEO practices for positive results and cost effectiveness. The strategic use of keywords and multimedia, installation of metadata, URL building, continued release of fresh content, and increased accessibility for a broader range of users will all play a significant role in improving your SEO. Our team of SEO experts, freelance writers, graphic designers, and video production staff combine forces to make our customers’ websites soar to higher ranks on SERPs.

Social Media Marketing

Another aspect of effective web marketing is the use of social media platforms to promote your brand and grow your audience. Having multiple social media outlets for your company might seem like a lot of tedious work in order to build hashtags, create well designed visual content, and write strong captions, but there are ways to streamline the process. The best social media presences will have a team dedicated to running on mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Social media marketing campaigns can see even further audience growth by creating video content for platforms that are expanding the internet in unique ways, such as TikTok and Snapchat. If you can’t afford your own social media marketing team you can still get a whole team working for you by contracting with an agency like MLT Group.

Improving Social Media

To get started improving your social media marketing presence, there are a few basic steps you can take. Or have experienced digital marketing pros help you with these steps.

  1. Establish your ideal customer and target audience. This can include demographics like age, location, income, social media presences, job titles, and aesthetics.
  2. Examine your current presence before determining the next steps forward. Pinpoint which platforms and networks you are the most important to your target audiences and optimize your presence on those accounts with clear photos, descriptions, bios, and URLs.
  3. Make a messaging that is a constant across all your social media platforms and your website. This messaging should explain to your audiences the values of your brand and help build trust with potential and existing users.
  4. Calculate your key performance indicators (KPI). Social media analytics often provide metrics that work as KPIs, such as likes, shares, conversion rates, brand shout outs, sentimental feedback, time spent on each platform, and post reach.
  5. Create fresh and engaging content on a regular basis. Social media is a great space to humanize your brand, show what’s going on “behind the scenes,” and overall build a fun and interesting environment beyond the professional aspects of your website. You can also use your platforms to curate other brands; content and outreach to build relationships with like-minded companies.
  6. Track your data, analyze results, and use this feedback to continually optimize your social media marketing practices. Social media platforms are the best spaces for trial and error because of their low cost and ease of content production.

If you also utilize ecommerce as a primary part of company operations, pairing those online sales tools with SEO, social media, custom site design, and the support of a boutique firm will help your brand grow and build a dedicated audience with strong user relationships.

To learn more about our services for web development in Minneapolis, MN and across the country, contact MLT Group at (507) 281-3490 or at sales@mltgroup.com.

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2022 Web Design Trends in Minneapolis, MN That Will Improve Your Brand Image Online

Since the coronavirus forced nonessential shutdowns and working from home became the norm, internet technology dramatically increased its development speeds. New tools and systems are advanced almost daily, design elements and product features trend with frequent turnover rates, and changing SEO algorithms can make or break your site’s effectiveness on search engine platforms. If you own an online brand, it can be challenging to know what the best methods are for success. To answer some of your questions, we’ve gathered data on what’s working and what’s popular today for SEO and design growth. There are a few trends we’ve predicted will become some of the pioneers for web design in 2022. If you need comprehensive, high quality web development and SEO services, MLT Group’s experts can provide web design, marketing, SEO, social media, video production, graphic design, and more. We provide services for complete web development while meeting contemporary web design trends in Minneapolis, MN and across the country.

Web Design Trends

While there are web building foundations and core values that can remain valid for many years and change only with the invention of significantly new technology, there are also hundreds of standards that shift with web design trends. From SEO algorithms created by search engines to the general visual aesthetics of a website, there are many aspects of web design that can rapidly change as new trends arise.

This coming year will likely see changes to web design and technology, especially because of Google’s spring launch of the Page Experience update. This update changes the SEO algorithm for Google rankings to place greater emphasis on user experience. Google’s SEO index and ranking system will now favor sites that have media, tools, aesthetics, and other features that improve user experience.

Some other changes that are predicted to be major web design trends in 2022 include the following:

Fun and positivity:

After the heaviness of 2020 and 2021, users are predicted to respond better to fun, positive, and visually optimistic site designs. This means colors will trend bolder and brighter, sites might include nonconforming functional features like animations and illustrations, and there might be an increase in the use of visual and sonic media. We are already seeing trends of sites using illustrated entry pages, animated buttons, unique fonts, and even games. With a trend of lighthearted, positive messaging both literally and visually, brands are building their websites to connect with users who are just now easing back into pre-pandemic patterns of life.

Some great examples of sites using fun, positive design systems include the Bernard Forever site, Grace Potter’s site, the Guns 2 Swords site, the Great British Bake Off site, and many more. An easy way to start incorporating fun and positive designs into your site is to increase your use of bright colors, include more visual media like photos or illustrations, and increase movement of site tools without compromising the user’s ability to navigate your pages (such as a bouncing page button or a photo reel).

3D and interactive:

Another predicted trend for web design in 2022 is the incorporation of three-dimensional systems and the increase in user interactive systems. This is largely due to the excitement around newly developed technology, but we think it’s a trend that will last because it improves the user experience and opens the door for increased brand presence at the forefront of modern web designs. 3D designs and interactive multimedia can exist because of the high resolution and detailing capabilities of today’s screens. Standards in image quality have shifted from HD to 4K over the last couple years, and some devices even use 6K-8K screen resolutions. In addition to increased resolution, internet speeds, broadband limits, and data feeds have increased dramatically to gather information better and faster.

Thanks to increased abilities for screen resolution and internet speeds, websites can incorporate cutting edge technologies for 3D and multimedia design. This includes augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), smart video, interactive statistics content, micro animations, large scale videos, highly expanded images, and more. These design features can be used to make your site more engaging for the user, increasing your brand profile and improving your profile’s imagery.

However, when incorporating 3D and interactive designs, it’s important to keep in mind that many users might not have access to screens with the highest resolution or internet capacities that can load complex media. There are ways to still build 3D and multimedia systems into your site design that can add richness to your brand and still be simple enough in coding and data requirements for all users to process on their devices. Two great examples of this are the Sennep site and the Kaspersky security company map.

ScrollyTelling:

ScrollyTelling, or narrative visualization, has been a growing trend over the last couple years. This involves the presentation of long form content in a text format “translated” for the user by breaking down each part of the text into smaller sections and including images and other media along the way. ScrollyTelling can impart information in 1,000 words or more to the user by breaking that information into intuitive paragraphs accompanied by related imagery. It resembles the way magazines format long form articles and editorials. This system of narrative visualization can be built into your site design easily, using the existing aesthetics and formatted spaces of your pages.

ScrollyTelling is a useful way to impart informational or journalistic articles, blogs, or product pages to your users. Some great examples of narratively visualized pages include the Apple AirPods product page, MLT Group’s page on SEO for Minneapolis, and a very in depth Huffington Post interview with chef José Andrés.

Also referred to as “deep dive content”, this style of web page has special importance for search engine optimization. Pages of 2,000 words and more provide Google and other search engines with a cue that the page may be a good resource for searchers. Utilizing scrollytelling design concepts makes these long form pages as engaging as they are important to SEO.

Mindful and accessible:

With a growing social importance placed on equality, human rights, and inclusive activism, it’s no wonder that mindful and accessible web design is a huge trend today. Especially after the pandemic lockdowns when everyone turned to the internet for news, entertainment, and work more than ever before, web designers realized they needed to make their sites clearer, quieter, and more direct. Part of mindful web design is to make your site a low stress, clean, and oriented space for the user. This includes using your white/negative space to create a sense of calm, removing overwhelming and unneeded graphics, and generally optimizing your site for as many types of users as possible.

Making your site mobile optimized and thumb navigation friendly will also increase the user’s accessibility, as most will interact with your site on their phones and laptops interchangeably.

A big part of making your site mindful and accessible is to adapt it to become ADA compliant. Incorporating features that follow the regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is not only an ethical practice, it will also expand your usership to people with disabilities like visual or hearing impairments, seizure conditions, cognitive issues, and much more. To learn more about our ADA compliant features, click the blue circular button in the bottom left corner of our site.

2022 web development standards:

In addition to these general design trends, there will also be standardized developments that will improve your site’s ranking in search engine indexes. Two of these coming requirements include mobile first design and SSL certificates. Optimizing your site for mobile is not only a mindful and accessible design system, it’s just not really optional anymore. Since 2017, almost half of the global web traffic was done from a mobile device, and Google uses mobile optimization standards as one of their key ranking systems. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates started as their own trend, but today are a highly standardized security system. SSL security measures authenticate the validity of your site to users, and they encrypt the translated data, protecting user devices and identities.

These are just some popular web design trends in Minneapolis, MN predicted for 2022. To learn more about web design and our comprehensive services, contact MLT Group at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online today.

 

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Core Values of Effective Web Development in Minneapolis, MN

If you’re building a brand, you need to have an online presence for long term success and audience growth. Ideally, that would include a website and social media presence on multiple platforms, as well as digital marketing and ad placement, but at the very least, your online presence should include a website. Building a website can be intimidating if you’re unfamiliar with the tools, but with the right support systems, you can put together a quality site that meets your needs and holds space in search engines. Many popular website builders available today make putting together a website easy, but to create a well-designed site that increases user engagement and accessibility for a diverse audience, it’s important to understand core values that make up good web development. At MLT Group, we specialize in SEO-based designs for websites with quality content that users will respond to positively. When you work with us to build your website, you benefit from our extensive understanding of effective web development in Minneapolis, MN and across the country.

Web Development

It doesn’t matter if you own a business, manage a nonprofit organization, or are a public figure, you will benefit from a quality website. As soon as you establish a website that operates as your own platform, you can start to grow your brand with search engine optimization, digital marketing campaigns, and more. Your website will be the central component of your digital marketing. Quality web development for your website should be guided by four core values in order to achieve the best site possible for your brand and users.

Design

You probably have something in mind for the aesthetic design of your site, but remember there are other aspects of design that are critical for making an effective website. These design aspects don’t have anything to do with the superficial “look” of your brand, but they are key in formatting a site that makes your ideal aesthetics work for you in other ways.

When you design your site, you want to make it as user-friendly as possible. First of all, this means a fast loading time is a must. A slow load time causes significant bounce-back results, meaning users immediately go back to the search results page. About 50% of users report bounce back if your site takes longer than two seconds to load. Additionally Google penalizes sites that take more than two seconds to load, negatively impacting search rankings. Make your site design load quickly by reducing cluttered code, eliminating media that slows things down, creating caches, and implementing technical SEO tactics.

If you’ve got a fast load time down, make your site user-friendly by reducing cognitive load without compromising key information. This essentially means relying on a standard of simplicity. Have a well-organized site with pages that each have information easily available. Text content should be written concisely and plainly, however word counts are important to Google and other search engines so don’t skimp on text… just be sure it reads well and is visually pleasing in the way it is displayed. For many sites, that text should also use objective language. Making use of the negative space will also help break chunks of information apart to be more easily digestible.

Another way to design a user-friendly site is by using convention without compromising your design aesthetic. There are certain conventional design standards used on the internet, and users are accustomed to those standards. Drop down menus, contact forms, tags, and having a home button in the top left corner of a page are all examples of conventions you can use to make your site easy to navigate.

When you design your site, think about how you operate as a user. Think of some of the most confusing and difficult websites you’ve come across and avoid the things that you didn’t like about them. Even some large companies with plenty of access to quality designers have been called out for their poor site designs like RiteAid (poor use of negative space and difficult to find what you need) and the Yale School of Art (confusing graphics, unreadable overlays). If you sacrifice good design for your aesthetics or if you have too much information on your page, users are less likely to enjoy interacting with your website.

SEO

Implementing search engine optimization (SEO) is how users find your site through search engines. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use algorithms to find sites and display them in a specific order. Using SEO will increase your chance of your site ranking highly among those results.

There are many ways to implement SEO, such as including keywords in your text content, creating meta descriptions and title tags, and using geo-locations in your H1 and H2 tags. Combining all of these SEO techniques is important to a comprehensive search engine optimization of your site. On social media platforms, for example, hashtags are a basic SEO-like tool. Building SEO into your site takes work, but it’s worth it because it will exponentially increase your audience over time.

One example of effective SEO is building a blog or news page into your site and posting new content regularly. Google and other search engines favor fresh, original content in their algorithms, and you can incorporate keywords frequently and with variety in blogs. Additionally, blogs give you the opportunity to give more information to your users and increase the nuances of your brand.

MLT Group offers comprehensive SEO services for many aspects of your site, including onsite SEO, content development, link building, and search engine marketing. Incorporating SEO into your site yourself is doable, but it does take time to do the research and build the content. Getting help from a professional like MLT Group lifts the majority of SEO from your shoulders and helps you enjoy a better, more effective website.

Adaptability

You never know what device someone will use to interact with your website. Smart phones, tablets, PCs and other screens all have different dimensions and they handle code slightly differently. Because of this, it’s important that your website is adaptable to all kinds of device displays.

When you’re building your site, keep in mind it’s easier to optimize a site for mobile, tablet, and computer screens from the start, rather than after it’s been built for one type of screen. To alter your site’s designs to fit smaller screens, think about how to shrink a page down without making text and images microscopic. Make sure the page will still load quickly (you can test load times with Google’s speed tester), and ensure your content is reorganized and resized appropriately instead of having text and media jumbling on top of each other.

If possible, the ideal solution for mobile optimization is to build your site using responsive coding. Ask your website professional how this works.

Accessibility

Most brands make it their goal to cater to a diverse audience, but to do so, you need to make your website accessible to people with different abilities and needs. This includes people with hearing, vision, cognitive, and processing impairments. That poses some challenges because a website is often a fully visual resource. However there are many ways to create accessibility in your site.

MLT’s site, for example, has several installed profiles that make it possible for people with disabilities to interact with our content. Users can adjust the profile of our site to be seizure safe, have enhanced visuals, make it easier to focus on information, and eliminate potential distractions. We also have keyboard navigation and screen reading options for blind users. For even more customization of our site profiles, users can adjust content such as resizing font, letter spacing, alignment, contrast, and text colors. Click the blue circular button in the bottom left corner of our website to learn more.

Following ADA compliance guidelines for website accessibility can give you a good starting point for making your site useful for all kinds of users. Making your site accessible is not only an ethical decision, it avoids potential fines from legal action, and it gives your audience a better opinion of your brand. Making  this an important part of web development.

Design is the main component of core values for website development, and with it comes SEO use, adaptability, and accessibility. With these in mind when building your website, you’ll be on the path to establishing and improving your image, growing your audience, and making a space for your brand.

To learn more about web development in Minneapolis, MN with MLT Group, contact us at (507) 281-3490, sales@mltgroup.com, or online today.

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ADA Compliance for Web with Responsive Web Design

In 1990, the US signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into civil rights law. This act makes discrimination based on disability illegal and overall provides the same protection of rights for people with disabilities that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides for people of all races, religions, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin. Title I of the ADA covers employment opportunities and prohibits discrimination in the workplace. Title II of the act enforces compliance to ADA policies in public entities and public transportation. These regulations are detailed in the ADA Standards for Accessible Design. Title III of the ADA requires public accommodations and commercial facilities to adhere to regulations, guidelines, and other code requirements. When it comes to website design, businesses, public figures, nonprofits, and all other independent parties must comply with the ADA’s accessibility laws. With the help of MLT Group’s design team, you can build profiles and adjustments into your site that help you meet ADA compliance requirements via responsive web design. Additionally we offer a powerful menu of onsite tools to make websites fully ADA compliant while providing adaptability control directly to the user.

 

Not only will having an ADA compliant website help you avoid a lawsuit or court judgement, it also protects and supports everyone who may wish to interact with your site and improves experiences with your brand for persons with disabilities. This in turn expands your audience and increases site traffic.

 

One of the most direct and surefire ways to build ADA compliance into your website is by following the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level.

 

WCAG 2.1 AA (released in 2018) is the most current edition of the most widely accepted web conformance to ADA guidelines. In WCAG 2.1 AA, there are 50 criteria your site should incorporate to ensure best ADA compliance. Checklists for these criteria can be found relatively easily online. For example, through this resource, you can find thorough guidelines and checklists in digital or downloadable PDF formats. In addition to these WCAG 2.1 AA criteria, there are many other ways to build ADA compliance into a responsive web design that site owners can include on a case-by-case basis.

 

The most powerful of these solutions is the accessibility control menu which allows users of different adaptabilities to adjust their experience with a site’s content to fit their specific needs. An example of this solution in action can be found on this site by clicking the blue and white person icon in the lower right corner of your screen. The menu allows users to choose from a list of adaptation to customize their experience with the site. Fully ADA compliant, this website solution is also updated every 24 hours so that new content is quickly made compliant as well.

 

While digital ADA compliance can get very detailed, there are common problems website designs often have that limit content accessibility for people with disabilities.

 

Common Problems with Content Accessibility

  1. Images: Frequently, websites that aren’t ADA compliant will feature images without text or verbal content equivalents. For visually impaired users or users with other disabilities that impact their ability to read image displays, an image that isn’t paired with text or verbal descriptions is inaccessible.

 

Fixing this issue requires the integration of technologies that improve access for disabled users, such as screen reader programs that translate text into auditory content or Braille display systems that turn digital content into refreshable, physical characters. Programs that speak or translate caption text into touchable displays can be easily installed into most website designs, and they go a long way in improving your site’s ADA compliance.

 

Adding text equivalents to images is also simple, typically through generic HTML code adjustments or tags. Because screen readers, Braille, and similar programs can’t translate from an image, adding text captions to pictures on your site is an ideal starting point to improving image accessibility.

 

  1. Videos: Like images, videos and multimedia content have accessibility issues for visually impaired users. Videos also pose access problems for hearing impaired users because they often introduce auditory content in addition to their visual components.

 

To make a video or other type of multimedia that combines visual and auditory aspects more accessible to disabled users, there are two solutions you can integrate into your site. First, adding text content equivalents/descriptions paired with the same screen readers and Braille systems that give visually impaired users better access to images will help bring video and multimedia content up to better ADA compliance. Secondly, incorporating captions that narrate the video into text as it plays will help hearing impaired users interact with multimedia content.

 

Today, there are reliable programs that auto-generate captions for auditory components throughout a video. While many of these caption-generator tools are useful and save content creators time, including more precise subtitles that have been accurately translated and well-placed as a video overlay will make your website’s multimedia easier to access for hearing impaired individuals. It might take more time to incorporate non-automated subtitles and other carefully built features, but it will improve your ADA compliance and make your brand more attractive to users with disabilities.

 

  1. Documents: If you’re following common internet standards, many documents, forms, text displays, and even images on your website might not be in an ADA compliant format. For example, if a document is available to users only in a PDF (portable document format), then visually impaired users will have low accessibility to that information.

 

If you translate a document’s information into a text-based format rather than just in PDF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, or other image-only format, it will increase disabled users’ accessibility to that content. This is because text-based documents like HTML or RTF (rich text format) can be processed through screen readers and other disability assistant programs. RTF documents are generally the most compatible format for the majority of translation technologies.

 

If your site requires users to fill out forms, read contracts, or interact with documents in any legal ways, it’s critical to improve accessibility for disabled users by providing those files in text-based formats as well as visual formats.

 

Another way to increase the accessibility of documents for visually impaired users is to provide tools that allow them to enlarge text, change font and display colors, and alter other font settings. These text-adjustment technologies help users quickly change a document display to read it right on your site. If making those small changes provides document content access for some visually impaired users, they may not have to spend the time to translate a text-based document through another system. This also increases your ADA compliance and provides accessibility for users that might be visually impaired for many different reasons.

 

  1. Design: Last but not least, the design of your website is a large part of building a foundation for comprehensive ADA compliance through the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. While aesthetics, formatting, and the general design of your site can be a key part of building your brand, keep in mind how all users, including those with a broad range of different abilities, will interact with and react to components of your site.

 

Take into account font, colors, brightness, size, and layout. Some users might have a hard time seeing small text and images, react negatively to certain colors and sounds, or find it difficult to focus on the information you’re providing. Additionally, many sites that aren’t ADA compliant don’t have seizure-safe designs or don’t provide warnings of potential bright lights, animations, or colors. All of these issues are addressed by the powerful adaptability solution used on the mltgroup.com site.

 

The best way to make your website accessible to all users without giving up the aesthetics and designs you want to build into your brand is to provide tools that let users make adjustments when they need to. Tools that let users change display designs without sacrificing the informational content will help visually and hearing-impaired people interact with your site, but other adjustment tools can make your content more accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, ADHD, or autism, as well as many other neuroatypical users.

 

To improve your website’s ADA compliance, these are some general issues to address. At MLT Group, we follow WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines in our site design. This includes seizure safe, vision impaired, cognitive disability, ADHD friendly, blind users screen reader, and keyboard navigation motor profiles. We also offer the adaptability menu solution found on this site which automates formatting for compliance when new content is added to the site.

 

It’s easier now than ever to incorporate tools for responsive web design that people with disabilities can interact with and use to navigate and process your site. By following WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines, making a proactive checklist, and integrating even the simplest ADA compliant tools, your website will become more accessible to all users and your ethical practices as a content creator, company, or other website provider will improve.

 

To learn more about incorporating ADA compliant designs into your website, contact MLT Group at (507) 281-3490 or sales@mltgroup.com today.

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Unpacking Google’s Guidance for the New Mobile-First Index

There’s been a significant development in today’s internet. While it looks the same, how we find and access the billions of pages on the internet has changed.

That change is “mobile-first indexing,” and Google’s been testing and slowly rolling it out for a few years. Now, finally, mobile-first indexing is being applied across all of the webpages that Google indexes. Because Google is BY FAR the most common starting point for consumers on the internet, it’s a tectonic shift in access.

Unless you already pay attention to trends in search engines, this might be the first time you hear about mobile-first indexing.

Read (or scan!) on for a jargon-minimum unpacking of this big change in the internet.

Here’s What You Need to Know

Later on, we’ll explore what Google’s mobile-first index means in more detail. Here’s what you need to know right away:

  • If your website is newly created since July 1, 2019, you’ve started out under Google’s mobile-first indexing.
  • If your website is older than July, 2019, then if you haven’t already been added to mobile-first indexing, you will be this month (September 2020).
  • If your website is not optimized for mobile access, you absolutely must update your website. You’ll be left behind in the dust of search results if you don’t (not to mention the website will simply not be easily usable).

Many sites have already been added to mobile-first indexing – including ours, which was integrated to the new system in 2018. The system’s been slowly rolling out for a few years now.

You can confirm your site’s indexing crawler on your site’s page on Google Search Console.

 

But now it’s here for everyone, regardless if you pay attention to the Google webmaster and developer guides or not.

Mobile-first indexing will be old news for some, but if you’re a business owner or otherwise run a website and you’re NOT familiar with the latest developments, scan this post! We’ll break down the need-to-know info about mobile-first indexing for the non-developers of the world.

What Is Indexing?

“Indexing” is one part of the process Google undertakes to organize and present to you the billions of pages of content on the internet. The process goes like this:

  1. Crawling: A Google program, affectionately named “Googlebot,” scours the internet by hopping from link to link to link. Googlebot finds pages on the internet.
  2. Indexing: Once found, a page will be indexed. That means Google stores information about that page: what’s on it, what’s it doing, etc.
  3. Ranking: Based on all the information gathered, Google’s algorithms rank the pages in the index whenever you enter a search term. These are your search results.

The above are the basic workings of Google’s search engine.

 

What is Mobile-First Indexing?

Previously, Google looked at the desktop version of your website when it crawled and indexed all the pages on your website. (Special aside: Google does not index and rank websites; Google indexes and ranks webpages.)

Now, Google is indexing the mobile version of your webpages and using that information to rank your webpages.

That means if you haven’t paid much attention to your mobile site, then you need to now—because that’s the one Google is paying attention to!

Real quick – why make this change? Since October of 2016, most internet traffic has originated from mobile devices. Sound surprising? It did to this humble writer, but think of all the simple questions you ask Google, or how often you’re waiting for some appointment and you’re browsing Facebook or (like me) reading obscure corners of Wikipedia. Or you’re out and about (in that pre-pandemic world) and searching for a place for lunch or dinner. Much of the casual queries and social media use and shopping occurs on mobile. That all adds up.

Because the internet is mostly accessed on mobile devices, and Google has an all-important directive to provide useful search results, Google now effectively ranks mobile sites rather than desktop sites. Google wants to provide the best internet experience possible, and that won’t happen by pointing someone on a phone to a site that can’t run well on their device.

 

Why Should I Care about Mobile-First Indexing?

OK, so the nerds at Google have shifted around how their internet-sorting thingamajigger works. Who cares?

Here’s what’s most important to understand and why you should care about this process:

Google controls your internet.

Google and its related properties receive over 90% of internet traffic.

Google has decided that it’ll use the mobile version of your site to rank search results. If your mobile site is clunky, un-usable, or even just under-optimized, then you’re starting the race for search traffic about a mile behind your competitors.

Essentially, if you don’t play by Googles rules, your site will not be easily accessible in search results. If you care about search at all, you need to care about the mobile version of your site.

Is My Site Ready for Mobile-First Indexing?

Unless your site is older than a few years, it’s pretty likely you’re already under mobile-first indexing. Regardless, you need to make sure you’re adhering to the best practices for mobile-first indexing.

Simple details follow, but here’s the big picture for what you need to do:

  • Ensure your website is uniform no matter what platform it’s accessed on (whether desktop, mobile, or tablet).
  • Ensure that your website is functional and easily usable no matter which platform it’s accessed on.

These are the main principles of the best practices as given by Google themselves.

A lot of their best practices can be boiled down to have a responsive design for your website. “Responsive design” means your website’s design adjusts itself depending on the size of the screen accessing it—so it’ll look uniform and coherent whether it’s a smart phone or a desktop connecting to your site.

There are also some more in-the-weeds aspects of web development and design that should be attended to. For example, the meta data and descriptions must be consistent between the mobile and desktop versions of your site. Other more technical parts of your site like structured data must also be consistent.

There’s a lot that needs to be checked if you’re trying to ensure your website is ready for mobile-first indexing. The easiest way to give a general check-up might just be to pull up your site on your phone or tablet:

  • Does the website still load quickly and smoothly?
  • Is the content (the text) all the same as the desktop version, and is it easy to read on a small screen?
  • Can you easily interact with the different menus and buttons?
  • Do images and videos still load effectively?
  • Are any ads on the site integrated without being too in-the-way?
  • Can you still find parts of the site easily?
  • Do all the links still work?

That’s a quick and dirty check-up on the mobile health of your website—a very important check-up under the new Google indexing system.

Ensure Your Site Is Usable and Beautiful on Mobile

Want to learn more about responsive design for your website? Need a check-up to ensure your website’s good to go for the future? Contact MLT Group today!

 

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Use Responsive Web Design for Conversion Rate Optimization

The conversion rate of your site is a measurement of how many users interacting with your web pages take the next step. Whether that means signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, sharing a post, or any other engagement, an optimization of your conversion rate is a goal every website owner should have.

The most practical way to optimize your conversion rate is to build a responsive web design with user friendly interfacing tools and a clear-cut aesthetic. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) starts with a strong, simple website foundation that easily integrates the tools you need.

 

While everyone can benefit from conversion rate optimization, there are specific types of user engagement that website owners can generate with effective CRO tools. Common goals of engagement that website owners want to “convert” users to take the step into doing include making a purchase, signing up for a mailing list, following on social media, sharing information on social media, contacting your business, and even just clicking to another page. There are two main types of CRO that you can utilize to meet these goals of engagement with your site: primary CRO and secondary CRO.

Primary CRO: Direct interaction with your site

When users interact directly with your website, the factors that guide their interaction depend on how you build your site and the tools you provide to them. Much of this depends on design, comfort, and information.

Visual Interest

The visual features of your site are the first and foremost aspects of your website that users will engage with. Because it’s your front line of interaction, it’s very important to have a clear design that showcases your brand’s aesthetic

Gaining the interest of your targeted audience is the initial step to increasing conversion rates. Appealing visuals is part of that, but it’s also very important to build your site with a simple, intuitive design. Information should be clear to users about your site, products, and purpose, and it should be a natural experience for them to move from one page to the next. Piquing user interest and keeping it is the first step in increasing conversion rates with responsive web design.

Trustworthiness

The internet can be a dangerous place. Users want to feel safe when they interact with a website, and it’s up to the website owner to ensure that trust. Things like pop-up windows, obscured links, and ads can severely reduce conversion rates and damage your website’s relationship with users. Building in links, windows, buttons, and other design features that are transparent in their motives, easy to understand, and show they are secure is a sure way to increase conversion rates.

CRO doesn’t mean tricking users into engaging with your site. It’s a way to open the door for new and return users to build trusted relationships with your website and everything else you offer.

Accessibility

A big part of supporting your website’s trustworthiness is making it as accessible as possible to users. This means having a fast load time for all pages, a clean build without errors, high resolution, and a logical structure of information. It also means your website should have all the information your users need to know, from contact information to details on where materials are sourced and what other parties you work with.

Improving conversion rates depends on users being able to use your site as the tool you want it to be used as. Keeping a perspective on how accessible each new part you integrate into your site is key in supporting CRO.

Navigation

One way to better understand how accessible your site is to users is by considering the way they will navigate through it. Supporting CRO requires a good navigational system that lets users click through your site and find exactly what they are looking for as quickly as possible. However, it can also provide room for exploration through other parts of your site that could lead to another conversion rate different from a user’s initial search goal. Exploration with your site’s navigation system can happen before or after your user makes their first conversion.

Practically speaking, this can mean a suggestion for another product after a user puts an item in their cart, or it may be an opportunity for users to perform a broad search on your site that brings up many products meeting the search term.

Secondary CRO: General interaction with your brand

While the majority of the conversion rate analytics come from direct user interaction with your site, secondary reactions also play a big picture role in CRO for your brand. Interactions external from your site, such as social media and press, often lead to a more direct conversion in the future.

Social media

If you don’t have a social media presence on popular platforms, you are significantly limiting your conversion rate potential. Not only is social media a source of free advertising exposed to a global audience, it’s also a tool for you to build a community around your brand.

For many site owners, too, social media is a way to humanize a commercial enterprise while showing constant news updates that may otherwise be unworthy of a full press story. For example, many use social media to show the staff involved, processes used, and other “behind the scenes” information.

Implementing all of these uses of social media for CRO and saturating multiple platforms with your brand profiles creates countless opportunities for backlinks to your website. Links directly from your profiles or from followers and similar brands are a large contributor to direct website traffic and increases in conversions.

Newsletters

Another common secondary interaction with your website and brand is a regular newsletter. Establishing a mailing list sign-up option on your site will let you collect a fan base that includes users who do not use social media or who want more in-depth information and updates about your business. Links through your newsletter bring users to your site where direct interaction and conversions occur.

Targeted Ads

As a website owner, you know what types of users your audience includes. An effective way to spread your website’s presence to new users is with targeted ads. Targeted ads are especially useful for finding new users on social media. In fact, many targeted ads are only activated through social media platforms.  Users clicking on targeted ads are more likely to lead to a conversion because those users are open to interacting with an advertisement in the first place. Ads can seem untrustworthy, and users tend to stay away from them unless there is genuine interest.  Be smart with your ads!

Community

Depending on your brand, you may be able to generate a real community around what products or services you offer, nonprofit actions you perform, or whatever else your website showcases. This community is built on various tools including social media, newsletters, and ads. Bringing together people who support what you do builds a natural support system for CRO. For many website owners, testimonials and anecdotes are some of their most persuasive elements for conversion. If you see a community forming around any aspect of your site, no matter how small, don’t underestimate disregard it. Foster community with interaction and content.

Build a Responsive Website

Implementing some or all of these CRO tools is an option for many website owners. These tools provide a standard for responsive web design formulated around CRO, but there may be other techniques unique to your own website you can use. MLT Group LLC can help you generate new ideas while utilizing tried and true methods for CRO and responsive web design.

Contact us today!

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Small Business Website Design: How to Know What You’re Buying

A topdown photo showing a laptop and board with the word "finance" on it.

There’s no shortage of web development and digital marketing experts who will throw jargon and acronyms at you until you lose sight of what you’re actually buying from them. Do your CTAs produce a decent CTR? Or maybe you need to enhance the onsite SEO within your CMS to boost that CR? But—wait—don’t even think about adjusting your PPC campaign until you’ve synthesized your CPC data with your current understanding of your typical CLV.

In the extremely competitive digital marketing field, some try to stand out by dishing out the alphabet soup and convincing you it’s delicious.

It’s possible to cut the crap, talk common sense with a small business owner, and build a website that attracts, converts, and satisfies customers. That’s what good small business website design is all about. Launch a new website with MLT Group, and you’ll understand what you’re buying and how it works.

Continue reading for a guide—including three essential questions—on how to know what you’re buying when you invest in custom web design. Consider it a resource for when you’re thinking of working with someone to develop a new small business website design. You will find no jargon, no acronyms, no bull below—we promise.

 




 

Does the developer understand you, your brand, and your audience?

Knowing is half the battle, as a great sage once said. Any small business website design worth its salt begins with a robust discovery process. That means you sit down with the design team who will ask and learn about your business, brand, and audiences. This conversation informs how the designers, programmers, and writers will approach your website.

A web development team that takes discovery seriously won’t just take this meeting and call it good. Discovery continues throughout the process as both the business owner and the development team think, work, and learn more about the project. Perhaps new research into likely site visitors will change the language used on the homepage. Maybe your business just won an award or earned some other recognition, and you’d like it emphasized on your website.

For this to work, open communication is vital! Both the development team and the business owner must be familiar with each other and maintain open communication. Good development teams will take the lead with progress updates, questions, and submissions for your review. They’ll prod you for feedback and explain their choices. Beware the jargon: if these conversations become bogged down in technical terms, you’ll begin to lose sight of where your money is going.

 

Will your site attract visitors?

Your money goes much further when your development team can build a site that attracts visitors who Google search for words related to your business. What’s the point of building build the most beautiful dream home if there are no roads to it?

How are these “roads” to your website built? Through detailed research into your audiences’ search patterns on the internet. Knowing how your audiences tend to use Google and other search engines should inform the design, building, and writing of your website. Once this research is completed, solid developers will send this research to you to ensure that it matches your business—and smart developers will ensure this research report is understandable. Without clear communication, misunderstandings early in the process will inevitably lead to delays in your new website’s time to market.

 

The header of the MLT Group's traffic and analytics report to clients, which reads "Digital Marketing Scorecard."
The header of the MLT Group “Digital Marketing Scorecard,” a quarterly report submitted to individual clients that clearly communicates their website’s performance, including traffic numbers, conversions, and recommendations. Clear communication makes a web development team more accountable for results.

 

Another related but distinct part of attracting visitors is the mobile design of your website. Your website simply must look good and be easy to use on mobile devices in 2019. Most people nowadays use their phones or tablets to search on the internet. Make sure you ask about your site’s mobile design. If you’re not getting a design specifically for mobile screens, run for the hills.

 

Does your website convert visitors to customers? 

Savvy designers will compose a beautiful website, and smart researchers, developers, and writers will build the roads to it. Once your website attracts visitors, it must convert them to satisfied customers.

By far, the best thing you can do to ensure your website converts visitors is to use a custom design and build. A custom design accomplishes several things for your small business.

  1. A custom design for your small business’s website will make your business appear more professional and credible.
  2. Custom work will also ensure your website suits your brand and audience perfectly.
  3. A custom website design makes your website easy to navigate for visitors. The navigation of your website—its menus, page arrangements, links, and so on—should be clear at a glance, and it should be tested to ensure ease of use.

 

Small Business Website Design: Coyote Creek Gun & Archery Desktop & Mobile Homepage
Above are the desktop and mobile designs for Coyote Creek Gun & Archery, located in Rochester, MN. Each carries the same branding, but each design also guides the visitor’s navigation in a way that suits the platform: for example, large images and space on the desktop, and large buttons and a “call” button on the mobile.

 

 

If you want to make sales and move money, you need something custom for the job. Don’t rely on a preset theme to carry your business online.

In addition to custom design, compelling writing on your website will engage your site’s visitors to think and act. The writing for your website should be informative, adding real substance about your products, services, and brand. The writing should also be persuasive. Returning to the discovery process, a good writer working on your website will know the right levers to pull to make your audiences convert from visitors to customers. Whether that means appealing to emotions, logic, or your company’s great reputation, a writer working a custom job for your site will ensure your website makes a great argument to visitors.

Small Business Website Design: Call to Action on 12 for Heath Homepage
Homepage for 12 for Health, a wellness program. The first text visible to a visitor is a strong call to action: “Go beyond traditional health programs.” A good web development team will write custom content for your site that includes strong language that speaks directly to your audience rather than simply saying how great your business is. (Though that’s important, too!)

 

Finally, a custom website will include the final steps your visitors need to become customers. That could be forms that they fill out (like “request a quote” or standard contact forms) and/or a cleanly designed eCommerce shop for them to purchase the product or service.

 

Know What You’re Buying

It’s easy to spend a lot of money on a small business website design and not really know what you’re getting. Digital marketing has plenty of jargon, acronyms, and snazzy terminology to hide behind. Digital marketing can be extremely powerful and grow your business, but you have to cut the crap when working with an outside development and marketing team. Remember and return to some of the fundamentals in this guide to ensure you really know what you’re buying when you’re spending money for small business website design.

 

If you want a small business website design partner that’s rabidly anti-jargon, practical, and results-oriented, learn more about MLT Group. Having built websites and implemented digital marketing plans for over two decades, we’ve seen trends come and go, acronyms rise and die, common sense terms turn to jargon. We keep up with the latest research and design trends, but we’re not going to pretend that showing off our expertise with jargon will help us or our clients succeed. We work for results.

 

Interested in a free audit and proposal? Contact us using the form below, and we’ll get back to you in two business days or less.