KKom Marketing Blog

KKom Marketing's blog contains a wide variety of critical marketing knowledge for small businesses.

Website Problems That Will Scare Away Your Customers

October 20, 2018 by K-Kom

Your website is one of the most important parts of your marketing efforts and can be the foundation for your entire business if you provide services, do business around the world, or run an e-commerce company.

Website visitors are easily frustrated and “bounce” or leave if something doesn’t load fast enough or if a shopping cart is too difficult to figure out. In fact, over 70% of carts on average are abandoned with items not purchased, according to Baymard Institute.

Here are a few elements you will want to ensure your website has in place to keep your potential customers interested, informed, and transforming into loyal clients.

Excellent Mobile Experience

With everyone using their phones more and more often, having an excellent mobile website is crucial to gaining new customers or ensuring users spend enough time on your website to complete the tasks you leave for them, whether that’s to purchase something, read a blog, or sign up for the newsletter.

More than half of all internet traffic now comes from phones, and more than half of those make a purchase from their phones. Other screen sizes are being used as well, so having a responsive website is the most efficient option to accommodate everyone.

Minimal Advertisements

It is a good idea to create a road map for website users to guide them to the actions you want them to complete. This can be accomplished with pop-ups, alerts, and other attention-getting strategies. But, once the website crosses the line and becomes annoying, this will be a reflection of your brand name, and people will leave. Interrupt their experience as little as possible, and only do so for important actions.

If you make your money through advertisements on a content-based website, again don’t be annoying. Advertisements slow the website down and are a nuisance to look at while trying to read. Keep it classy!

Clean, Streamlined User-Friendly Design

Everyone thinks differently, and many will not figure out what you want them to do on your website unless you make it very simple and obvious. It is your job to guide them through the conversion process, and ensure every step along the way is quick and painless. Use mouse heatmaps and analytics to see where the highest percentage of users are dropping off the site.

The user interface (UI) is incredibly important, but none of it matters if the website itself breaks easily. If you have a shopping cart, for example, make sure the application works well all the way through the transaction and payment. Check and double-check important buttons for newsletter signups and forms.

Fast Load Speed

There is nothing better to turn someone away from your website than slow load times. If your website takes longer than three seconds, nearly half of all users will give up immediately, and potentially find your competitor’s website instead. Site speed and performance are a top priority for any business who wants to attract new customers.

Does your business website meet all of these points sufficiently? Contact K-Kom today to find out what you can do better to ensure you’re not missing out on hundreds (or even thousands) of potential sales.

The 7 Best Ways to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

July 3, 2018 by K-Kom

As a business owner, your website has specific goals for the visitors that find it. It’s important that those visitors are finding the website for the right reasons, and that they’re finding what they’re looking for. This is the basic premise of a positive user experience.

Bounce rate at its core is when a user visits a website and leaves without traveling to other pages on that site. Understanding whether their experience was positive or not is a bit more complex however. If someone finds your website on Google and comes to a page expecting to learn about a particular topic, and finds nothing they were expecting and leaves, this is a bad user experience and potentially bad for your brand name. If however this person comes looking for a definition or to see a diagram for example, sees it, learns what they need and then leaves, this is a good experience.

So how can you tell if site visitors are finding what they need, and potentially becoming customers later on? The following are things to look for and put into place to ensure your business continues to flourish online.

Page Load Time
This is a major reason many people leave websites in a hurry for a negative reason – when your website doesn’t load fast enough. This is even more important when someone is searching on their phone. Check your Google Analytics to compare average load time of each page to the bounce rate and see if there’s a correlation.
Site Design & Navigation
Once a person gets to your website, it must be easy to figure out and navigate. It should also be attractive and be updated with today’s trending design elements. Most people want the information they’re absorbing to be as up-to-date as possible, so the site must look new. As well, the look of the site can affect the user’s judgement of whether you can be trusted as an expert or not.

The majority of people use their phones to search the web now, so design with mobile in mind. Ensure you’re using a responsive layout to make mobile browsing as efficient as possible, and test it yourself.
Content & Keywords
Content spans from written words to videos and photos. Write for the audience you want to be visiting your website. Ensure the content you’re providing is relevant and valuable to them, and keep paragraphs short, sweet, and fluff-free. Include keywords and phrases that the audience is looking for. Include quality (but compressed) photos and videos that explain your content in a visual way for those users who prefer this type of learning.
Call to Action
Don’t forget your calls to action. Many people need to be told directly what you want them to do, otherwise they may never get there. You’ve already provided lots of free extra value with your content, so tell them why you’ve provided that content – what you need them to do to convert into a paying customer or at least get onto your email list. Every call to action should be visible and clear within a few seconds of visiting a page, and each page should only have one call to action ideally, maybe one minor one to accompany.

If you want to show ads on your site, especially if it’s an extra revenue source for you, you don’t want these ads to be distracting or take away from your own CTAs. Ensure they’re placed properly and are not obnoxious! It’s also advisable to stay clear of pop-ups as these can be very annoying to most users.
Site Search
Include an option for site search. If users can quickly jump to what they’re looking for without having to search around for it on a big website, they’re less likely to bounce.
Internal Links
Make sure every page on your site links to another relevant page on the site to keep people moving in a logical sequence. The more they read and enjoy your content, the more likely your brand name will stick with them, and the more likely they will become a customer!
Prove Your Expertise
If any business is going to be trusted, besides having an authoritative voice and nice-looking website, it’s even better to have real proof of your expertise displayed on the website. If you don’t have certifications to show off, customer testimonials are as good as gold. Not only should these be displayed throughout the site, but customers themselves should also be writing them on your Google My Business profile and business Facebook page.

Once you’ve taken these things into account, analyze your Google Analytics to see if your efforts have made a difference. Start with things like: bounce rate, average time spent on specific pages, pages viewed per session, most and least frequently visited pages. Soon enough your website will be more useful to your potential clients!

If you’d like someone else to take care of your digital marketing strategy and improve your website, contact us today to see what we can do to increase your bottom line!

Marketing Ideas for Home Builders

June 14, 2018 by K-Kom

The housing market is at its highest point since the crash, and seems likely to keep rising for the next few years. As of April 2018, the US Census Bureau announced an official number of new residential construction for the year, April 2017 – April 2018:

1.35 million building permits
1.29 million housing starts
1.26 million housing completions

This can be compared to the year 2005 – 2006, which accounted for:

2.07 million permits
1.93 million starts
1.95 million completions

So it appears we have a long way to go. Another bit of good news is that mortgage costs are only 17% of the average income, which is far below the long-term average of 24%, so much opportunity is still left to be had! How can small home builders compete with big national brands that have plenty of marketing budget and a reputation to match?

Many of the following strategies can also be utilized by other small businesses that have a budget to watch.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO encompasses many topics which are all related to how your brand looks to search engines like Google and people searching on the internet. Google has put a lot of rules in place for the purpose of ensuring their users are seeing the best possible search results for whatever they type into Google. So within that tenth of a second when you hit “search” and see the results, thousands of calculations have taken place to bring you, ideally, the answer you’re looking for.

So what determines if your website will be one of those 10 links on the first page of Google? This includes technical elements within your website like title tags, meta descriptions, internal and external linking. The number of reviews out there on Facebook or your Google My Business listing also has a major impact. How active you are on relevant social media channels is also an important aspect that builds trust in your brand.

If you want your website to show up for certain words or phrases such as “custom home builder Wisconsin” (or whatever location is in your service area), it’s your job to make sure that phrase is on your website at least a few times (including the homepage and in titles), plus other words related to that topic, that are related to your business.

Quality Content

This is a major part of SEO. Blogging, article writing, or simply compiling quality content that your website viewers may be interested in, is the best way to get into the good graces of Google and other search engines.

As well, continuously adding to the website and being consistent about it helps with search engine rankings. Compile case studies, company news, and detailed descriptions of your service offerings to start. Copy the reviews people have left for you on other websites to build website visitors’ trust.

Be the Expert

Your website is your showcase, not only for high-quality photos of your best homes but also your expert knowledge. Talk about your previous projects, what went very well, how things could be improved, new and better materials you’d like to try, etc. Remember, potential clients are not the only people who will find your website. Investors, lawyers, consultants, and your competitors will also be stopping by. So, what is your next big project that requires a few investors? Blog about topics that prove to them that you’re worth their investment money, and don’t forget to write speaking to the audience you’re looking to target.

Paid Advertising

After giving yourself a solid foundation including all of the long-term projects listed above, running different kinds of digital ads on social media, Google search and display will give your brand a major exposure jump-start.

No time to do all this extra work?

K-Kom is a full-service marketing agency with an emphasis on your digital success. Let’s grow your home building business, and let your focus on what you do best!

Quick Tips to Make More Money Online

May 17, 2018 by K-Kom

Increasing sales is the goal for most business owners, and in today’s world promoting a small business online is the most cost-effective way to get up and running with little overhead or up-front cost. Here are a few tips to get you started with a solid foundation and be on your way to increased profits!

Know Your Audience and How to Reach Them

This is likely the single most important aspect of having a profitable business. If you don’t know your market and are not reaching them effectively, you will lose money. Digital marketing companies are trained to do this type of research and will figure out the most cost-effective approach to find your people and turn them into customers.

Website Optimization – SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital aspect of being discovered on search engines for free. The ranking you achieve on Google and other search engines is a foundation to your bottom line, and without it, you’re losing sales to your competitors who have already built this. While the strategy is meant to see the best results over the long haul, there are some aspects which will allow you to see results much quicker.

Learn all about SEO here.

Don’t forget to update the look of your website with your branding and current website design trends. The last thing you want is for someone to visit your site for the first time, think it’s ugly, outdated, and not have a clue how to use it. This also applies to mobile users. Make sure the site is very simple and easy to follow from a phone.

Email Marketing

Touted as the most effective marketing strategy today, businesses are seeing a good portion of their sales come directly from their email list. Do you want to have a weekly newsletter or monthly prize giveaway? Set a small signup form to pop up after someone spends a minute or two on your website.

As you collect a list of relevant email addresses, you can send out coupon deals, new product/service offerings that you think would be of interest, and relevant content that your readers would find value in.

Take advantage of automatic emails when someone initially signs up for your list. This way they will receive a confirmation and your free offering immediately.

Digital Paid Ads

The best form of paid marketing today (for most companies) is digital. Depending on your target market, different strategies will benefit your business more effectively.

Google AdWords: From text ads that appear at the top of search results when searching for particular terms, to display ads that show off banners and any photos (or videos) you, or your marketing agency, a design that will push your campaign goal over the finish line.
Facebook + Instagram: If you have a very visual product or service, these two platforms combined can produce great results, especially if you have a great video to advertise with.

Make sure to pay attention to the way your ads’ landing pages look compared to your ads. They must feel like an extension of one another to ensure there is no confusion from clicking on the ad to landing on the purchase/conversion page. Make it as simple and straightforward as humanly possible (without being insulting).

Social Media Community Building

Building an online community is one of the best brand-building things you can do today. With brand loyalty being so difficult to achieve, this strategy if done right will make your customers love you and keep coming back. After you build a sizeable audience of people who care about your business, you can share special promotions (sparingly) for free.

Facebook has cut down on the number of people it will share a business page’s posts to its followers, so create a reason for your audience to come check your page frequently. Provide valuable or entertaining content that your competitors aren’t providing.

Content and More Content

Written content is the first way Google and other search engines can determine what your business is about, and how relevant your website is for its searchers. This includes the many technical SEO elements like title tags, meta descriptions, alt text for photos, etc. It’s also important to keep everything updated that is able to be updated. Update the blogs at least once per year if it’s needed to keep the content correct. Keyword research is becoming less important, but it still should be done to ensure you’re writing about what your audience is looking for.

Content doesn’t refer to just words. Photos are very important, especially since we are visual creatures. Search engines are becoming better at identifying the contents of images, but it is still best to include alt text to ensure the most accurate results.

Video is currently the best form of content out there, being the most visual and thus the most preferred method of consuming information today. Can you turn your blogs into videos or vice versa?

Internal Links and Backlinks

Internal linking involves linking to pages on your site, from other pages on your site, when relevant. This will ideally provide a congruent and logical roadmap through the site.

Backlinks are links from other websites that link to any page on your site, and this does include social media. The more, and more frequently other websites link to your content, the more trust search engines build in your business, and the higher you will rank.

Google My Business

This applies to local businesses mainly, from brick and mortar to services that are limited to a geographical area. This includes all the pertinent information for people to find and contact your business, as well as one of the best places for customers to leave reviews (the other suggested is Facebook, and in some cases Yelp). You can now chat with customers, answer questions, and post promotions.

Google Analytics

Sign up for free and after you install a bit of code to your website, you’ll be able to see what is happening – amount of traffic, how long people are spending on different pages, demographics, and much more. Perhaps the best part is seeing what keywords people have searched on Google to find you. Then you can use this information to improve your AdWords campaigns and site content to better reflect what potential customers are looking for.

Video Will Be 80% of Web Traffic by 2019

April 12, 2018 by K-Kom

According to a study conducted by Cisco, the love of video watching will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.

Humans are visual creatures, which is why quality photos and videos have become a vital part of social media and website development.

“Every second, 1 million minutes of video content will cross the network by 2021.” (source)

We process visual data better than any other kind – 90% of data transmitted to the brain is visual – and images are processed 60,000 times faster than text! (source) I think most of us can attest to learning a job or task better after seeing it. These simple observations illustrate why, not only photos, but videos have become so popular, and increasingly so.

“It would take someone 5 million years to watch every video added to the internet every single month in 2021.” (source)

Live Internet Video

Live video streaming on various social media and other websites has started to gain popularity as well (13%), especially for major events that have lost their audiences on traditional television. Younger generations almost expect these events to be available live on YouTube and Facebook (eg. New York’s New Year’s party).

Not Using Video Yet?

Because our attention spans on the internet are 8 seconds or less, if you’re not using video, you’re definitely losing new customers and sales.

Fun Facts

Webpages with videos get 800% HIGHER sales rates than pages without video
Video DOUBLES the time people spend on your site
Video produces 157% INCREASE in organic traffic (traffic from Google)

What This Means for Your Business

Any business not incorporating video into their content strategy by this year will likely be left in their competitor’s dust. People are visual. The preference to watch a video over reading 10 pages of text will continue to increase over the coming years. Consider your customers and find out what they would prefer to see in a visual manner.

Some Ideas…

No matter what your industry, there is a place for video.
Interviewing the company owner and employees gives the business a personal feel.
Video testimonials build a high level of trust, as well as an emotional element for new customers, that text will never compare to.

Other Possibilities…

Stream a trade show live (especially when revealing something new).
Offer a facility tour or a look behind-the-scenes.
Give a sneak peak at new products or services.
Flash sales.
How-to or explainer videos.
Answers to FAQs.
and more…

IMPROVE YOUR VIDEO CONTENT STRATEGY

Contact K-Kom to see how you can use video to increase your sales and customer loyalty.

Google Update: Official Announcement of Mobile-First Indexing

March 27, 2018 by K-Kom

Google has been experimenting with their mobile-first indexing for the past year and a half, and they’ve finally made the announcement that they have officially begun migrating websites over to that method, that comply with current best practices. Again, they will ONLY migrate sites which comply with the rules. For example, sites which use responsive web design are well suited for mobile-first.

What is mobile-first indexing?

To provide the best user experience to Google users, the Google spiders or bots will prefer to crawl and recognize mobile versions of pages. More people search using their phones now, so this is the best way to provide the best pages to them. This is not a separate index, it is just a crawl-mobile-pages-first rule for the regular existing index, which was previously crawling desktop versions of pages first.

What does this mean for your website?

You will be notified of your website’s mobile-first indexing being enabled through your Search Console account and you’ll notice a higher crawl rate from the Smartphone Googlebot. If mobile pages are not available, Google will still crawl your website, it just won’t be the ideal and it will affect your ranking within mobile search results, as it has been doing since 2015.

So, the main purpose of this change is not about ranking, but rather a change in the collection of content.

In July 2018, if your site is comparatively slow to load, you are likely to notice a negative affect in rankings for both desktop and mobile searches.

An extra reminder at the end of the announcement restates that ranking is determined by many factors, so while page speed and mobile-friendliness are important, IF the other signals for a particular search determine your content is the most relevant to show the user, it will show.

See the official announcement

Google News: Confirmation of Core Algorithm Update

March 15, 2018 by K-Kom

What has been suspected for some time now, with lots chatter across the web, website managers complaining about their sites’ very sudden and dramatic drop in Google search results, Google has released an official statement confirming various updates.

Here’s what they said:

Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year.
As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded.
There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.

As K-Kom always says, content is the best way to get your website rankings to improve over time. Stated by Google, if your website was one which dropped in the rankings, it’s not because your site is “bad”. It just means others previously ranking under you are now being rewarded properly, so perhaps you now have a more accurate sense of who your competition really is.

What is a “broad core algorithm update”?

Google releases one to two small updates every day, some are noticeable while most are not, and these are generally not announced. The broad core updates only happen a few times per year and are thus much more significant. In the past, these have seemingly been for targeting low-quality results so the “cream” could more easily float to the top.

This update, however, was specifically stated to give good sites that were not previously recognized, some ranking juice. We need to keep in mind, Google’s main goal is to present its users with the best possible answers to their search questions, so each algorithm update is likely with that end goal in mind.

The areas most relevant to SEO right now are the goals of understanding user intent and understanding content. As Google becomes better at understanding these things, your business better is right along with them, giving your customers exactly what they’re looking for on your website.

So while SEO has often been about putting the best-searched terms into your website, now it seems to be shifted into solving real problems your site visitors want solved. If you can make this shift, you’ll be on your way to great rankings.

If you want to learn about the nitty-gritty, here is a research paper done by Google about query expansion.

Concerned about your website ranking? Contact us today to see what can be done to help you rank above your competition and get back in the digital game!

To stay on top of Google announcements like this one, follow @searchliaison on Twitter

Learn more here

Secure Your Website Before It’s Too Late

February 22, 2018 by K-Kom

Say Goodbye To “http”

Beginning last October, Chrome browser began displaying security warnings on website that were still “http”.

In an effort to push website owners to increase web security, any site that has a form requiring passwords, credit cards (or other text input that the browser deems worthy of increased protection), will display this security warning to your website visitors.

Any “http” pages that are in incognito mode will automatically display the warning as well, and now the warning will become more prominent.

This warning is now being added to ALL “http” websites and is becoming more prominent, which may negatively affect your website visitors and their trust. This can affect your site’s bounce rate, advertising impressions, sales and overall brand reputation.

Google’s official deadline is July 2018 for Chrome to begin explicitly warning users if your site is not secure.

Over 50% of internet browsers are Chrome, which means this change will have a significant impact on website owners. The goal is to make the internet safer and more difficult for scammers to slip through the cracks. The effort has been well received, and this seems to be the continued trend for the foreseeable future.

Some countries will be affected more than others, based on how many users use the Chrome browser, but even in countries with less usage, it still accounts for at least 39% (42% in the US and a whopping 74% in countries within South America!).

Either way, Google will continue to push for a safer internet, so it’s better to protect your search rankings and brand reputation now. It’s never been easier or cheaper (and in some cases free).

Is Your Website Secure?

Look at your website, and check your URL for “https://www.yoursite.com”.

If you see “http://www.yoursite.com”, now is the time to upgrade.

Secure Your Website Today

Contact K-Kom and secure your website so you can keep your customers and website visitors safe!