The Web Authority – Page 200 – From McCord Web Services – Google Partner and Web Visibility Experts

April 3, 2013April 12, 2013

Tips for Designing Websites That Look Good on Tablets

People don’t just use their tablets – they love ‘em. The portable, powerful little devices entertain, inform and connect, so it’s no surprise that businesses by the thousands are optimizing their websites to accommodate tablet trends.It’s not just a matter of shrinking the page to the tablet’s vertical/horizontal ratios. Tablet layout is an art unto itself.

Web-to-Tablet Basics
Test. Use a common browser, like Firefox or Safari, on a tablet to see how your current site appears. Does text run off the sides, or images look compressed? The answers will help your designer create a tablet-ready site.

Simplify. A crowded homepage isn’t ideal even on a PC, but it can spell disaster on a tablet. Strip out the non-essentials – the stock photos, the testimonials, the ads – and focus on the most important information and links to get users on their way.

Enlarge. Make live areas like call-to-action buttons large enough to see quickly and finger-sized so that only one touch is necessary.

Un-Flash. The mega-popular iPad is notably resistant to Flash applications, so keep them off your tablet-ready site. Android tablets are advertised as supporting Flash, but early response has had it labeled a disappointment. Interactive elements in HTML5 or JavaScript can recreate the Flash experience without the risk.

April 1, 2013March 30, 2013

Getting Your Full Value Out of Mobile

McCord Web Services is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company and Google AdWords Certified Partner.

As the leader of online marketing Google is paving a new path into the digital world and helping advertisers on the way to understand how to market in our “always on” world. Anyone who is involved in selling knows that the new frontier is mobile and that it is changing how we market forever.

Google has done quite a few really smart things to embrace this new frontier. First, they have introduced AdWords Enhanced Campaigns which is the first step in leveraging mobile activity and advertising on smartphones to reach people where and when they are making buying decisions.

Second, Google created a partnership with DudaMobile to help advertisers get a free mobile website that can be used in the AdWords interface as the destination URL even with the DudaMobile.com domain URL.

Third, Google has done a marvelous job of training and reaching out to account managers like me to assist them with how to help move clients into the mobile arena. The seminars are excellent and topical. Although they are really in a closed by invitation arena and not widely published, much of the information has also been disseminated via Hangouts at Google+.

I personally have attended one and sometimes two, one hour seminars for at least the last eight weeks and have had a Google account manager available to assist me with mobile implementation, followup, implementation of mobile conversion tracking and assists with DudaMobile for my own clients.

The power of mobile is to not just getting click activity on mobile phones, but to understand that the real value of mobile is much bigger than that. Mobile activity drives website traffic, e-commerce activity, and increasingly foot traffic into stores. My personal feeling is that the true power of mobile to drive sales should not be discounted and should be fully evaluated for each business.

Not all businesses will need the marketing strategies that some local selling businesses may need when it comes to mobile, but even national businesses may find that mobile activity is a growing percentage of their overall online activity.

Mobile brings a whole new perspective to the marketing table. Make sure that you are testing, trying out, and really thinking about your own mobile strategy in the weeks and months to come.

March 29, 2013March 23, 2013

What I Like About Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

McCord Web Services is an AdWords Certified Partner.

I’ve been busy doing and early migration for our AdWords clients into Enhanced Campaigns. Through extensive testing on AdWords rollout last month, I found that there was no downside to migration and that there were actually some nice benefits.Here’s Why You Should Upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns Early

1. If you are getting phone calls and have a under one dollar cost per click, moving to Enhanced Campaigns will lower your expenses. Phone calls to desktops and tablets will be free and from mobile phones will only cost you a click instead of the previously default minimum $1 bid. For one of my clients whose typical cost per click was $.21 to go from $1 a call to $.21 per call based on their typical call volume was a huge dollar savings.

2. Records phone calls as conversions based on your needs. We know for a fact that AdWords drives phone call activity and this for many clients is growing in importance. With Enhanced Campaigns, the client and I can decide the number of seconds for a call to be recorded as a lead conversion. And on top of that I can now even specify when the phone number will show. I will typically set the time to be 60 seconds and set the phone number to show during their office hours only. I can schedule the time of day as well as the day of the week.

3. AdWords Enhanced Campaigns offer very granular location targeting and the ability to bid up or down by location. By drawing radius settings around the addresses (even multiple addresses) that are listed as location extensions, you can bid up for better ad placement. For example, I manage a number of AdWords programs for dentists. I will routinely map out a radius of 2 miles, 5 miles, and 10 miles and then bid up 10 to 20% up by location proximity working to get more location specific traffic for my dental office clients.

4. I can now see activity and clicks by actual site link. This information is very helpful in regards to understanding what is important for a client. I can also now add up to 20 site links instead of 10, and change them at will. Now longer are site links tied together as a group, they are individual for the account and you click to add them by either ad group or campaign. The ability to specify site links at the ad group level for some accounts is a welcome enhancement.

5. I can craft smartphone specific ads that fit correctly on a typical smartphone sized screen and choose to serve this ad specifically to smartphone users. This is a very nice feature. I typically will use click to call in the ad text.

These are just a few of the things I personally like about AdWords Enhanced Campaigns and are using for clients. If you are looking for a knowledgeable AdWords account manager for your own program and one that know Enhanced Campaigns, I invite you to visit our AdWords services page for more information and account set up and management pricing.

March 27, 2013March 23, 2013

New Challenges for the Delivery of e-Newsletters

Clients are sometimes shocked when they review their first delivery report for their new e-newsletter. Their 1,000 subscriber list ends up showing that only 10% to 30% of their subscribers actually opened their campaign. From what I have seen with a variety of accounts, the open rate may never top 50% for e-newsletter campaigns.

So What Can a Business Do to Improve E-Newsletter Opens?

1. Make sure you are dealing with a reputable subscriber/e-newsletter service. I like iContact, Topica, and Constant Contact. If you are dealing with a small no-name service you may have delivery issues. The larger services will all police their own clients to be Can Spam compliant and typically work directly with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to try to assure delivery of newsletters. That being said, it is not uncommon for double opted in subscribers to be sent via a specific IP block that has ISP service provider approval and those that are not double opted in to be sent through a different server block that may be filtered out at the ISP level and so never delivered.

2. Try to double opt in your readers. This is a hard one, and most lists we work with although typically “clean” will not be double opted in. Double opted in means that the reader has verified their email address and their desire to receive your message. This is a two step process – sign up for your e-newsletter and then respond to an automated email that asks them to click to verify their email address and desire.

3. Craft an e-newsletter title that is transparent and identifies who you are. Putting your name and a reminder of who you are in the title can help to increase open rates. So can sending at least once a month versus quarterly. For those clients that send infrequently to their e-newsletter list, their open rates will typically be lower, as readers in many cases have simply forgotten that they have signed up or who you are.

4. Make your newsletter sharable and memorable. ISP are watching reader behavior. If more subscribers never read, open, or click things in your newsletter, over time the ISP may lower your newsletter rating pushing it into filtered out status. Here’s a great article that speaks to this topic and shares with you some of the new technology and filters that Internet Service Providers are using to filter out spam.