When it comes to marketing a business on a budget, you want to invest your time, energy, and money into starting a conversation with your target market as a way to promote your brand, product, or service. A lot of individuals confuse this with advertising, which is the avenue that requires payment for exposure and name recognition. If you are just getting started, you want to get some leads and customers first and build up a budget that can then be funneled into advertising.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH MARKETING?

To get started with marketing, you have to be willing to put in the work. You have two options with this, either pay someone else to do the work or do the work yourself. This is called sweat equity, which is where you increase the value of your brand, service, or product through earned labor. Once you are willing to put in the work, you have to ask yourself who your target audience is, what is the problem they are trying to solve and how does this relate to your brand, and where is their attention at? Answers to these questions will determine where you put your focus in one of the three marketing forms.

• Inbound Marketing: this is creating content that is valuable to your target audience in such a way that it positions your brand to look attractive. You offer value to your audience in exchange for contact information. Examples of these include: providing free resources, using videos, creating blogs, or sending out whitepapers. Inbound marketing is useful in that the content you create can be re-purposed down the line into things like e-books and guides. Essentially, with inbound marketing you want to get started as early as possible as the more content you create, the more value you have to offer. It is important to note here that inbound marketing brings the customers to you.
• Outbound Marketing: this is all about going to your audience and starting a conversation with them. A lot of businesses will have a hard time with outbound marketing because it’s awkward. It’s all about going to where your target audience is and handing out mailers, picking up the phone, and knowing on doors.
• Networking: this one is the biggest one of all as you have to meet new people in order for them to take advantage of your brand. This means you have to be present where your audience’s attention is. Examples of networking include going to networking events, joining networking groups, and going to conferences. The key with networking is all about forming connections, getting contact information, and scheduling a follow-up. Never try to push a sale when networking, as no one wants to hear it.

The key to marketing is to be consistent. A lot of businesses will try things for a month, throw a whole bunch of things out there and see what sticks. This isn’t the route to go; instead, you want to use a combination of inbound and outbound marketing for about 4–7 months with 4–7 different streams of marketing, in order to see what brings in results and what works.

NEED HELP WITH MARKETING?

In today’s hyperconnected world and highly competitive business environment, it’s crucial for a business to be able to reach its target audience online with its core message, products and services or latest promotions. Arize with us and we will get you ranking on the first page of google. Call us (516)-367–0830 for a free consultation.

HOW TO MARKET ON A BUDGET? was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every day millions of people go online and search for the services you are providing but they can’t find you? Are you taking the right steps to ensure that your website is found among the top ranks? Google is the go-to place for everything. Whatever we need, whenever we need, we Google it. So, ranking high in the Google search results is extremely important for the success of a business.

If you want to be the first name to be seen by your target audience whenever they search for the product or service you provide, you have to do everything you can to make the top of the list.

What to do and how to do it? How to get first-page Google ranking from having no online presence? Here is a short guide for you to grasp the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so your website is found on Google:

LET’S START:

The first thing you need to understand is how search engines work. Take the internet as a humongous library. There are billions and billions of books of all genres. The same goes for websites. Among these billions of websites, your website represents a single book in a huge library. With tons of information out there, if you do not take the right measures, your website will be lost in the sea of websites.

Let’s take a simple example for better understanding of how the process of search engines goes. If you need a certain book in a large library and no idea where to look for it on your own, where would you go? The librarian. Similarly, for the library of websites, Google acts as the librarian. Google points you towards the right direction so you get to the relevant resources. That is what search engines do. Google makes sure that you find the right content you are looking for.

In order to be the relevant content for your target audience, you have to do: On-page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

SEO — A HISTORY & OVERVIEW:

Google guides you to the relevant resources. But that is only possible if you do that after doing search engine optimization for your website content. Search Engine Optimization is the art of getting yourself placed amongst the higher rankings. Every business employs SEO to make sure that their content ranks highest in the Google search results.

In the late 90s and 2000s, some people found ways to trick the system that assisted Google in displaying the sites in the top of their list. This act of using sneaky tactics to rank your webpage on the top is called Black Hat SEO. What they did was that they stuffed their content with keywords and Meta tags so they could rank higher. This resulted in credibility loss of Google and other search engines. Because of Black Hat SEO, websites with low-quality and poor content were getting the higher rankings.

Later on, in the spring of 2012, Google went through a makeover and revamped its algorithm called the Panda Update. This update was brought to penalize those sites which had opted for Black Hat SEO and were poor-ranking sites and, reward the sites with quality content.

HERE ARE THE TWO MAIN STEPS OF DOING SEO:

ON-PAGE SEO:

Still using the example of books and the library, let’s talk about on-page SEO. A book has various parts and so does a website. Let’s see what does on-page SEO entails.

The book cover is the first thing that the reader sees. No matter how much we use the example of never to judge a book by its cover, things are bit different for websites. So, focus on the design of your website and the main thing is that not only is it attractive, but user-friendly. The design of your website is extremely important.

We read the back cover of the book to catch a quick summary of the story. The different sections or page titles of your website serve the same purpose. See that your site is friendly as well as easy to understand. The visitors should be able to understand whatever is on the website.

A book contains a short but valuable author’s biography as well. For effective on-page SEO, see that a credible and influential personality of the industry links themselves to you. This creates a good repute and builds trust among the people coming up on your website. Social proofs also serve the same purpose when any renowned person apart from your industry links themselves to you.

Next, we have the table of contents. This means that you should have an easy user interface so that the visitors can easily navigate through the site.

Last but not the least, content. We all are aware that the content is KING. It is one of the most important things for SEO. The content and the information you publish on your website should be original, unique and relevant. Your content should be of high-quality and relevant to the keywords that you are using.

OFF-PAGE SEO:

Let’s discuss off-page SEO. When you design the site for the users that is one of the activities of on-page SEO. But what you do after that, you begin with off-page SEO and what does it mean? When you link your site with other sources. They can be your partners, people you previously worked with etc.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE METHODS TO DO SO:

Submit your site to search engines: Search engines crawl the web to find the relevant pages for you. This is called indexing and you can increase the pace by submitting your site to search engines such as Google Plus, Bing, Yahoo etc. Also, you can re-submit your site whenever you make any change.

Add your sites to local directories: Do not forget to optimize your website for the local directories as studies reveal that 97% of consumers search for local business online and the online searches have grown by 58% in the last few years. The key, optimize your Google My Business Page and include all the relevant information.

Link to Social Profiles: Take advantage of all of your social media profiles. Add the link of your website to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + accounts, Twitter and other places. Create a solid online presence to strengthen your website link trail.

Contact Us

Need help ranking first on Google? Contact Us

GETTING FOUND ON GOOGLE was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Whether you are offering digital services to customers, have a localized website selling digital products, or are running your own small business, you want to invest your time into Google My Business, a free business listing through Google. To put it simply, Google My Business is responsible for the map listings that people see when they do a search inside Google. These local map listings generally come in threes and are what individuals click on to call your business. Why is this important? 72% of people who search within Google and click on a map listing will call that business within 72 hours, the first three listings will get 33% of the clicks, and all traffic you receive from this listing is free.

What Makes a Map Results Rank Higher Than Another Map Result?

There are five factors that you can utilize that will rank you higher than another map listing.

Business Signals: are the consistent citations that you have across Google. This will include things like your business name, telephone number, and physical address. This makes up about 19% of your map ranking.

Link Signals: this is how many websites link back to your website. When a website links back to you, it is vouching for you to Google that you are a credible and legitimate website. More importantly, you want websites that use anchor text that has the keyword you want to rank for. Finally, you want websites that have a high domain authority linking back to you.

On-Page SEO: makes up about 14% of your map listing and is all about optimizing individual web pages to rank higher. This includes written content and HTML source code optimization.

Reviews: makes up about 13% of your map listing. The more reviews that you have from customers with pictures, the higher click-through rate you will have.

Behavior: this makes up about 10% of your map listing ranking. This factor is all about your click-through rate. The website that gets more clicks will always rank above a website that has fewer clicks. One way of getting clicks is by using a branded name that is professional looking and sounding.

5-Step Local SEO Ranking Process

1. You want to start with Google My Business. Go in and verify, edit, and add in your business name. Make sure that your business name has the keyword you want to rank for in it. The reason for this is when people search in Google, your map listing will show up because the keyword is in the title of the business. Make sure to add in a description of your business, images, and videos. You also want to add in a profile picture/cover picture and fill out as many categories that your business belongs under. If you can, max this out as this is a pre-ranking signal.
2. Go and claim directories. Go to Yelp, Yellowpages, Facebook, Hotfrog, and Foursquare and complete the steps in Google My Business, on these directories. Once you are done here, go to advanced directories like your local chamber of commerce, the BNI of the local area, the Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, and Home Advisor and repeat the steps above. All of these will give you backlinks to your business.
3. Ask your customers to leave high-quality reviews in Google for your business with images.
4. Head to Moz to make sure that there are no incomplete listings online. If there are, fix them up.
5. Write location-driven content that is centered around your local area and link it back to your homepage.

Step By Step Process for Google My Business

1. Go to Google.com/Business if you do not have a listing. If you have a listing, just log in.
2. Hit start now and add in your business name with the keyword you want to rank for.
3. Add as many categories as you can that you want to rank for.
4. Set your hours, phone number, website URL, and business description with your ranking keyword.
5. Add in client information for users.
6. Add in pictures with the file name as the keyword.
7. Once you’re done with this, continue to claim directories, get high-quality reviews, and write location-driven content.

Need help to set up your Google My Business for Free. Contact Us

USING GOOGLE MY BUSINESS FOR SEO? was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Before we begin, it is important to be clear on few things

Branding, marketing, and disruption. Each of them are discussed in detail:

BRAND AND BRANDING:

What is a brand? A brand isn’t just a company doing or making something. Brand is a gut feeling. Your brand is not what you say it is but a brand is what others are saying about it. A brand is formed by how people perceive your brand. And these perceptions are based on their brand experiences.

Branding has got a lot more to do then graphics and designing. It is about influencing other people and their gut feeling with engaging and quality brand experiences. So, when they see your brand, they are able recall those experiences and remember the influence they had on them.

So, how do you do that? How do you do successful branding that actually brings results?

Branding is how you influence the public about what you are doing whether it is a product of your company, any services you are providing or even if you are promoting something. Whenever and whatever the public sees about your company, influences their feeling about your brand. All of these include everything: your logo, website, social media pages, and promotional brochures etc.

Effective and engaging branding creates memorable brand experiences and this way, you are able to rightly convey the message about what your brand means.

MARKETING YOUR BRAND:

Marketing your brand is not that difficult. But for that, a very important misconception has to be clarified. People confuse advertising and marketing. You would think they are the same but they are not. The difference might seem minor but it really helps in knowing exactly what you need to do while marketing your brand.

Advertising is all about creating awareness. The billboards you see, the ads you hear on TV or hear on the radio — all advertising. So people know that XYX Company is launching a product or is up to something. But marketing is one step further. It is not about awareness but engaging in conversation with the target audience. It is about talking to people you wish to serve and provide services.

How do you do that? Let’s take a look:

There are two ways two do marketing. Inbound and Outbound marketing.

Inbound Marketing: In inbound marketing, you have to position yourself in such a way that you appeal and attract the audience. Like a moth to a flame. You work up on your brand image to make people come towards you themselves and ask about what you do, how you do it. You create such content and make such an offers that the consumers get a fair idea of what you do and what they do see, is attractive enough to pique their interest and make them come to you and initiate conversation.

It is all about contacts. Making people to give you their contact details. So, may be you can start with a giveaway that is good enough for people to give you their contact numbers and emails.

You have to use up your resources to add value. You should be right where your target audience is looking.

Outbound Marketing, on the other hand, is when YOU initiate the conversation with your target market. The people you want to buy from you, use your products and services. How does outbound marketing work? You have to make the first move and start the conversation. In any way possible. It can be through telemarketing, going to events and handing out cards, pamphlets or brochures, door-to-door. May look redundant but it is one of necessary steps you need to take for marketing your brand. Popular examples are networking and email marketing. You meet new people and build relationships. Whenever someone you know needs your help or knows someone who might use your expertise, they will call you up. Emails start from the inbound marketing when you get people’s contact and email but then, you can switch to regular emails and keep them updated.

You have to use the ideal mix of both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. There are tons of ways to market your business and brand. But you have to ascertain that you have at least 3 4 channels to market your product and services through.

DISRUPTION:

Identifying the conventional methods of doing things and then challenging them with new ideas that bring a new vision and add value to the customer experiences. Convention is what everyone does but they might not be the best way. You have to disrupt the market or else you will get disrupted. Market is ever-changing so you need to bring the disruption yourself. Think of how you can move ahead of your rivals.

A popular example is Uber. Uber has brought a massive change in the transportation industry and yet, it owns no cars! They challenged the conventional methods of cab service and provided a ride model which boosts greater competition and better services.

IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS A BRAND:

You should know who you are as a brand. And ask yourself about:

• Your features, benefits, and values. Features are the tangible products like your product. Benefits are the advantages your product offers and values is the underlying motivation. For example: you sell detox tea (that is the feature). It helps you lose weight (benefit) and the makes you feel better about yourself (values).
• Then, what value you are adding to your consumer’s lives?
• Have you worked on your elevator pitch? If yes can you tell about your company in 30 seconds?
• Have you though to Global Biz Objective? What motivates you do what you do as the brand. Find your WHYS and realize why you do what you do.
• Know about your Key Performance Indicators. Do you think you are on the right track in achieving your GBP? What are the efforts (not monetary) are you taking to achieve success?
• What is your process to take advantage of the offer? Can you help your customers and simplify the process in 3–4 steps?

Want to understand your brand and how you can market it. Contact Arize Digital and ask for our strategy session.

A GUIDE TO POSITION AND MARKET YOUR BRAND was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Before we begin, it is important to be clear on few things

Branding, marketing, and disruption. Each of them are discussed in detail:

BRAND AND BRANDING:

What is a brand? A brand isn’t just a company doing or making something. Brand is a gut feeling. Your brand is not what you say it is but a brand is what others are saying about it. A brand is formed by how people perceive your brand. And these perceptions are based on their brand experiences.

Branding has got a lot more to do then graphics and designing. It is about influencing other people and their gut feeling with engaging and quality brand experiences. So, when they see your brand, they are able recall those experiences and remember the influence they had on them.

So, how do you do that? How do you do successful branding that actually brings results?

Branding is how you influence the public about what you are doing whether it is a product of your company, any services you are providing or even if you are promoting something. Whenever and whatever the public sees about your company, influences their feeling about your brand. All of these include everything: your logo, website, social media pages, and promotional brochures etc.

Effective and engaging branding creates memorable brand experiences and this way, you are able to rightly convey the message about what your brand means.

MARKETING YOUR BRAND:

Marketing your brand is not that difficult. But for that, a very important misconception has to be clarified. People confuse advertising and marketing. You would think they are the same but they are not. The difference might seem minor but it really helps in knowing exactly what you need to do while marketing your brand.

Advertising is all about creating awareness. The billboards you see, the ads you hear on TV or hear on the radio — all advertising. So people know that XYX Company is launching a product or is up to something. But marketing is one step further. It is not about awareness but engaging in conversation with the target audience. It is about talking to people you wish to serve and provide services.

How do you do that? Let’s take a look:

There are two ways two do marketing. Inbound and Outbound marketing.

Inbound Marketing: In inbound marketing, you have to position yourself in such a way that you appeal and attract the audience. Like a moth to a flame. You work up on your brand image to make people come towards you themselves and ask about what you do, how you do it. You create such content and make such an offers that the consumers get a fair idea of what you do and what they do see, is attractive enough to pique their interest and make them come to you and initiate conversation.

It is all about contacts. Making people to give you their contact details. So, may be you can start with a giveaway that is good enough for people to give you their contact numbers and emails.

You have to use up your resources to add value. You should be right where your target audience is looking.

Outbound Marketing, on the other hand, is when YOU initiate the conversation with your target market. The people you want to buy from you, use your products and services. How does outbound marketing work? You have to make the first move and start the conversation. In any way possible. It can be through telemarketing, going to events and handing out cards, pamphlets or brochures, door-to-door. May look redundant but it is one of necessary steps you need to take for marketing your brand. Popular examples are networking and email marketing. You meet new people and build relationships. Whenever someone you know needs your help or knows someone who might use your expertise, they will call you up. Emails start from the inbound marketing when you get people’s contact and email but then, you can switch to regular emails and keep them updated.

You have to use the ideal mix of both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. There are tons of ways to market your business and brand. But you have to ascertain that you have at least 3 4 channels to market your product and services through.

DISRUPTION:

Identifying the conventional methods of doing things and then challenging them with new ideas that bring a new vision and add value to the customer experiences. Convention is what everyone does but they might not be the best way. You have to disrupt the market or else you will get disrupted. Market is ever-changing so you need to bring the disruption yourself. Think of how you can move ahead of your rivals.

A popular example is Uber. Uber has brought a massive change in the transportation industry and yet, it owns no cars! They challenged the conventional methods of cab service and provided a ride model which boosts greater competition and better services.

IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS A BRAND:

You should know who you are as a brand. And ask yourself about:

• Your features, benefits, and values. Features are the tangible products like your product. Benefits are the advantages your product offers and values is the underlying motivation. For example: you sell detox tea (that is the feature). It helps you lose weight (benefit) and the makes you feel better about yourself (values).
• Then, what value you are adding to your consumer’s lives?
• Have you worked on your elevator pitch? If yes can you tell about your company in 30 seconds?
• Have you though to Global Biz Objective? What motivates you do what you do as the brand. Find your WHYS and realize why you do what you do.
• Know about your Key Performance Indicators. Do you think you are on the right track in achieving your GBP? What are the efforts (not monetary) are you taking to achieve success?
• What is your process to take advantage of the offer? Can you help your customers and simplify the process in 3–4 steps?

Want to understand your brand and how you can market it. Contact Arize Digital and ask for our strategy session.

WHAT DO WE ALL KNOW ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING?

Digital marketers and business organizations, irrespective of their expertise and niche, are well familiar with the weight content marketing holds on their business. In recent years of digital media have led to the cultivation of three essential adages in the minds of content marketing experts and business organizations. These facts include:

• Social media is the stronghold of user attention. Over half of the global population engaged with the internet in one way or the other.
• Given that, content creation is a necessity to disperse the information related to your business effectively.
• Digital marketing is the way to initiate a successful marketing campaign on social media platforms.

CONTENT CREATION CAN BE CHALLENGING:

Despite the extensively acknowledged importance of content creation in business marketing, the most prominent challenge business organizations and digital marketers have to face is the selection of content and its distribution. One common mistake marketing service providers and business organizations make is releasing all of their content in a very concise yet comprehensive manner. It means that business organizations tend to post all of their information at once, instead of adopting a segregation strategy, which leads to exhaustion of time, ideas and resources.

THE NEED FOR CONTENT STACKING:

The solution to the challenge of content creation and distribution lies in content stacking. This method is merely a way of pruning essential content into useful parts to eliminate the clutter from content creation. Content stacking is helpful for the digital marketers as it saves time, ideas, effort and resources in the context of content creation and distribution.

CONTENT STACKING EXPLAINED:

Content stacking is a method of dividing a wholesome content into sub-contents. It means that you can take a comprehensive idea and split it into its respective components. In this way, you can increase the volume as well as the value of the content which you will be using for marketing purposes.

SPLITTING PRIMARY CONTENT INTO SECONDARY CONTENT:

Usually, marketing content revolves around a fundamental business goal/idea which is explained to the users. In other words, a complete corporate video comprising upon the history, services, mission, vision, testimonials, and call of action will be consider as the primary content. If you segregate this video into sub-videos, each explaining one section of the first video, then every sub-video will be referred to as secondary content.

• TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE VIDEO STACKING:

Corporate video stacking can be done by creating one or more videos on each aspect of your business. For instance, you can create one video about your business history, five videos explaining your services and so on. After this, you can take 15 seconds from each of these minutes-long videos to create a wholesome corporate video.

• TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE E-BOOK STACKING:

Writing an eBook is undoubtedly one of the best ways of creating a robust professional impression upon your clients. EBooks provide you an opportunity to put your business information out there from which the users can easily access it. EBooks have to be written comprehensively and shall include all the sections related to your business history, services, etc. Here are some tips on eBook stacking:

USING THE EBOOK AS A LEAD MAGNET:

Always post exciting sub-sections of EBook in the form of articles and blog posts on your website. Ask the users to send their email to access complete versions of your EBook.

WHAT WILL YOU GET?

• Multiple chances for a lead generation
• Faster collection of user emails for business marketing purposes (sending promos, business offers and newsletter subscription)
• A good stock of blog posts and articles
• A good share of social media block posts
• Enhanced engagement with your visitors
• A chance to extend content distribution into weeks, months and even a year.

CONTACT ARIZE DIGITAL FOR EFFECTIVE CONTENT STACKING:

Arize Digital is an expert in handling your content stacking requirements. Only tell us about your needs and our team of content creation and stacking experts will take care of the rest for you.

Contact Us

CONTENT STACKING was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

UX DESIGN EXPLAINED:

UX design is an abbreviation for User Experience Design. Contrary to the traditional brand-centric designing approaches, a UX designing approach is all about the ways and means in which you can enhance your brand’s accessibility, usability, and user-pleasure. UX design constitutes the scientific and artistic principles which are applied to develop a solid user-centric design strategy which drives impressive results to your brand when implemented in true means.

USER-CENTRIC DESIGN APPROACH:

UX design is ultimately a user-centric approach. It means that this designing strategy is all about taking yourself out of your brand’s frame and putting yourself in a user’s position. When you put yourself in a user’s place, you will get to know exactly what points and valuable information is missing from your branding strategy. A UX design, in other words, fills the holes which are mostly and unfortunately left open by implanting brand-centric brand approaches.

THINKING OUT OF THE BOX:

UX designing emulates businesses to think outside of the box. It offers you a framework to put yourself in the shoes of your users and view your brand from their eyes. When you opt for performing UX designing, you are more focused on answering questions like

“What are my brand’s users?”

“What are their interests?” and

“In what ways can our brand serve them?”

UX design strips off your compulsion of revolving your efforts around “YOUR brand,” “YOUR services” and “YOUR perception of the target audience.”

WHY IS UX DESIGNING IMPORTANT FOR BRANDING?

ADDS VALUE:

UX designing revolves around the goal of enhancing the usability of your branding strategy. When you think about what kind of information your users would like to see on your website or landing page, you are automatically able to pinpoint the deficiencies in your traditional branding strategy. In this way, you can add valuable information to your brand and enhance its value.

IMPROVES ACCESSIBILITY:

By accessibility, it means how easy it is for your users to access your brand’s information from various platforms, sites or devices. A UX designing strategy will help you in streamlining the accessibility of your brand for the users.

PROVIDES GREATER USER SATISFACTION:

Another core aim of UX designing is to enhance user pleasure as much as possible by bridging the gaps in your brand. The users are better able to know more about your brand if the site offers a better user experience.

BYPRODUCTS:

UX design channels many advantages into your brand once you are successfully able to achieve its core goals. The by-products of UX design enhance your traditional branding strategy by strengthening the following aspects:

SEO:

When your brand becomes more accessible, the users are better able to search and view it on SERPs which helps in enhancing SEO.

BETTER CONVERSION RATE:

UX designing makes your brand more usable by which users are drawn towards your services.

MORE PROFITS:

UX design works amazingly to make your brand more pleasurable which means that you can quickly draw the attention of as many buyers as you want and gain lump sums of profit from them.

TIPS TO CONDUCT EFFECTIVE BRANDING:

UX designing is part and parcel of modern branding strategies. Although the conventional branding methods are crucial to construct necessary branding infrastructure, UX designing is vital to strengthen branding infrastructure. Here is how you can conduct an effective branding using UX designing:

REMEMBER THERE IS NO BRAND IF YOU HAVE NO USERS:

UX designing is fundamentally user-centric whereas, common branding strategies are mostly brand-centric. If you incorporate UX designing with your existing branding strategies, you can gain cumulative benefits of user-centric and brand-centric approaches. Imagine all the benefits you can achieve!

ADD UX DESIGN IN ALL YOUR APPLICATIONS:

Never limit your brand to a particular framework. Instead of applying UX designing to small landing pages and websites, move on to implementing it on all your business application such as mobile apps, informative videos, sales presentations, and brochures. The best way to move forward is staying one step ahead.

CONTACT ARIZE DIGITAL’S UX DESIGN EXPERTS TODAY!

Arize Digital specializes in providing expert UX designing strategies and solutions. With Arize digital’s professional and experienced UX designing experts, you can be sure of the fact you will be getting more than just the expected results. Contact us today for consultations and more information on UX designing.

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WHAT IS UX DESIGN AND WHY IS IT CRITICAL FOR YOUR BRANDING? was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The evaluation of the distinction between mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive websites has been a hot topic for discussion among Web-Development experts for some years. Even Web-Design experts like Long Island Web Agency tend to get baffled upon being questioned regarding the said topic. Although the concept seems to be simple given the self-explanatory titles, it renders some complexities which need to address carefully. Experts in Web-Design niche know the importance of having a firm grip on distinguishing between intermingling concepts like mobile responsiveness and mobile friendliness for the sake of close-to-perfect Web-Development strategies. Therefore, it is essential to know about the nitty-gritty of both these concepts to better differentiate between them.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS:

The requests for mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive websites are increasing day by day as the world gets to know more about the importance of both these forms of sites. Everyone wants a Web-Development expert to provide him with a perfect Web-Design which will fit his or her preferences. However, some misconceptions are still prevalent among developers as well as website owners regarding both these concepts. Some of the frequently addressed mistakes in the world of Web Development are:

• Mobile devices can only support responsive websites. In other words, people tend to believe that just a responsive website will work on mobile devices.
• Responsiveness is a compulsion for every website meaning that no site can function properly if the web-developer fails to make it responsive.
• Responsiveness is interlinked with mobile-friendliness. People tend to believe that a mobile-friendly website means that is automatically a responsive one.

Clients need to be confident about the kind of website they want and clearing these misconceptions will help them in gaining better clarity regarding their decision. Here’s a breakdown of all the differences between mobile friendly and mobile responsive websites which will help in altering these misconceptions mentioned above into the right form:

MOBILE RESPONSIVE WEBSITE:

A mobile responsive site is an all-inclusive package of web-responsiveness. In a simple explanation, a mobile responsive website is the one which tends to exhibit changes depending upon the needs of its users. This also means that the site can respond to the needs of the users as well as of the device on which it has used. A mobile responsive site has dynamic visuals. This means that if a site has a layout of 4 columns, then in smaller resolution/device the columns will take the form of a single column layout. The textual and graphics content which include web description and images will also change according to the device type and user needs.

A mobile-responsive design offers visual and operational convenience because it tends to automatically hide additional content, images, and design elements so that the user can navigate across the pages quickly. This design preserves essential website information and protects the redundant data on its smaller display.

TIP:

Being a client, the best way to check if a website is mobile-responsive is to reduce your browser’s window size. You can minimize the browser on your desktop screen to switch it from maximum to minimum display size. If the columns, text, and images can get smaller to align with a smaller screen, it indicates that the site is responsive.

KEY FEATURES:

DYNAMIC CONTENT:

A mobile-responsive website has a crucial trait of altering its outlook depending upon the needs of the user and device type. For this reason, responsive websites have a dynamic content which changes based on circumstances. You can check the Long Island web agency’s web-responsive webpage to get an idea.

OPTIMIZED IMAGES:

A mobile-responsive website has optimized images. This means that only essential and SEO compliant photos will show on smaller screens.

NAVIGATION:

A mobile-responsive website has shipping which condensed into one specific area rather than an array of wide-spread navigation bars and columns. This feature helps the users in proper navigation to their desired pages and eliminates unnecessary Web-Design clutter.

PADDING AND SPACING:

A mobile-responsive website has just the right combination of padding and spacing. There are no overlapping margins, clumsy content overlaps or lack of proper clicking space.

DEPENDANT WORKABILITY:

Since a mobile-responsive website is subject to change its Web-Design by the device which is used, mobile-responsive website relies on the mobile operating system to function correctly.

CUSTOMIZED MOBILE EXPERIENCE:

Users get to enjoy a highly functional and customized website experience by using a mobile-responsive website design.

LIMITATIONS:

Although a mobile-responsive website offers a streamlined mobile experience, the Web-Development strategy requires a lot of expertise, sufficient time and proper planning. It is also a bit expensive.

MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE:

A mobile-friendly device is characterized by its consistent performance which is constant in functionality on all types of devices. It means that a mobile-friendly website never changes its alignment or outlook to fit with user needs or device type. It has designed in a way which makes it work in the same way across all kinds of devices. The lack of change in alignment does not indicate that a mobile-friendly Web-Design will be useless in certain aspects on mobile devices; it merely means that the website layout and arrangement of content will appear the same on all devices.

In case of a mobile-friendly website, the Web-Development did by keeping in view the limited workability of a mobile-friendly website. For this reason, features like drop-downs and navigation panels limited as excessive elements can cause several complications for mobile users. The absence of Flash animation is also another change which is subject to the functional limitation of a mobile-friendly website.

Across all devices and all boards, a mobile-friendly website is entirely the same. The users encounter no usability issues nor any lack of functionality irrespective of the type of device from which they are viewing the site.

KEY FEATURES:

STATIC CONTENT:

A mobile-friendly website supports static content. This means that this Web-Design will not support larger images and complex visuals like flash animation.

NAVIGATION:

The navigation of a mobile-friendly website is not limited to a short area instead it is simplified because the users can quickly view prominent columns and navigation bars on top of the page.

IMAGE DISPLAY:

A mobile-friendly website has a smaller image display to speed up image downloading.

INDEPENDENT WORKABILITY:

Since a mobile-friendly website has a consistent layout across all boards, it does not depend upon the device type for its workability at all. A mobile-friendly website works the same on a desktop browser as well as on a smartphone browser.

SIMPLIFIED USER EXPERIENCE:

Unlike the condensed navigation of a mobile-responsive website, a mobile-friendly Web-Design does not limit the user to a specific corner to reach his desired page. The users can view the dropdowns with one look and enjoy a simplified user experience.

LIMITATIONS:

A mobile-friendly website has limited features. You cannot expect crazy features from a simple Web-Design as that of a mobile-friendly website. It directly works and does the necessary job.

TIPS TO PICK THE RIGHT WEBSITE:

Choosing from a mobile-friendly website and a mobile-responsive website is quite baffling because of the plethora of features associated with each type of Web Design. To get a suitable Web-Development based on these two types, it is essential to cross-match your needs with available features. Here are quick tips which can help you in determining the kind of website you need:

CHOOSE MOBILE-RESPONSIVE DESIGN IF:

• YOU HAVE A BIG MOBILE AUDIENCE:

If you are running a site which has at least 35 percent mobile traffic, then it is a sensible decision to go for a mobile-responsive website. This will help you in improving user-experience and offer you a more professional outlook.

• YOU HAVE A COMPLEX SITE:

If your site has complex images and content features which are hard to be displayed on mobile screens, it is best to ask for a mobile-responsive website because it is dynamic in nature.

• YOU PLAN TO HAVE LONG-LASTING FEATURES:

A mobile-responsive website is a perfect pick for you if you are seeking a site with a longer shelf life. With a mobile-responsive webpage, you will get to enjoy access to long-lasting up-to-date Web Design.

CHOOSE MOBILE-FRIENDLY DESIGN IF:

• YOU HAVE A SMALLER MOBILE AUDIENCE:

Clients who have website traffic sourced from less than 35 percent of mobile users are recommended to go for a mobile-friendly website. Doing so will save you the extra costs of getting a mobile-responsive Web-Design which is not so important in case of low mobile traffic.

• YOU HAVE MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD SITE CONTENT:

If your site has more straightforward images and essential textual content which is easy to view on mobile devices, going for a mobile-friendly website is the best shot for you. This will eliminate the clutter of complex functionality.

• YOU HAVE SMALLER IMAGE SIZES:

Smaller images which are quick to download make a perfect indicator of getting a mobile-friendly Web-Design which will easily download on mobile devices.

Need a mobile responsive website? Contact Us

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MOBILE RESPONSIVE WEBSITE AND A MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE? was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you are planning to design a new website for your business, professional service or non-profit organization, you should have a clear idea about your necessity of building a website. Although you might have the most attractive web design, you might lack the best content and most important functions that should be on your website.

The main aim of any website is to attract as much as customers and to deliver the specific information that are helpful for them. It’s time to start putting it to work so you can grow your business and take advantage of the huge potential consumer base for the online market. First, you should know about the three universal negatives that you should avoid.

• Never overthink it
• Nobody cares
• Don’t be cute

DON’T OVERTHINK IT

When you design the website, don’t over think about the professionalism, design and the values, because nobody cares about a website unless it doesn’t deliver the right information or useful products that they are looking for. It is also important not to design the site too cute. It will appear as childish or gives a negative impression to some visitors.

UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE

Secondly, you need to understand your audience, “Who are my visitors” and “Who am I” This is very important because the content that you will publish on your website must suit the audience. After carefully choosing your audience and your role in the website you need to have the following checklist.

• Requirement list
• Sitemap
• Wireframe
• Content

In this you should add the industrial standard elements in the website, this is not a rule but these items are very important to the views as well as the site. You can use a single page scroll down or 5-page standard set up with home, about us, what we do, content and product.

Following items should include in any website.

• Brand Identification “Logo”
• Navigation “Needs to be on top because that is universal for all users”
• Clear tagline “What are you trying to convey”
• Visual engagement
• Welcome message
• Social proof
• Contact info
• Call to action

BRAND IDENTITY

You can provide a clear brand identification through an attractive logo or unique images with a professional name. And make your private domain name something easy to remember. Preferably the name of your business or organization

It is important to have an easy and smooth navigation system on the website because many people looking up businesses on smartphones more than computers.

When you use images and videos, make sure you describe your aims and content of your organization. It will deliver the first impression of your website to most of the visitors. Through images and descriptions, visitors to your site should be able to figure out right away what your company does.

SELLING POINT

If you represent a business, it is important to Highlight Your unique selling point. It allows your visitors to know why they should stick around and do business with you, instead of clicking back to the search results.

Additionally, there should be necessary contact information about the site owners including email, contact number and address. It is nice to link any social media pages like Facebook or Instagram to your footer because it helps with SEO.

When you add content, make sure not to add too many unnecessary words. Only add the most important content on the first page. These contents should be Search engine friendly (SEO). If you have any other content that you need to add, you can easily add under blog or article sections.

Finally, you should have a simple and attractive call to action. If you are a business easy way of purchasing some online good or booking and professional service. And most importantly your site should be secure and have an efficient online credit card payment system which is approved by Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI DSS).

Need a website to be made? Contact Arize Digital

WHAT SHOULD GO ON MY WEBSITE? was originally published in Arize Digital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.