Usability refers to how quickly and easily your customers can browse your site and complete an order. Being highly usable is vital for a successful commercial web page. Internet users are notoriously impatient, and many abandon a site if it takes them more than five seconds to complete a step in the ordering process.

Here are some simple usability improvements you can make to improve sales with your e-commerce site.

1.Get Mobile Friendly
By 2014, more people will be accessing the Internet on portable devices than on traditional desktop computers, according to Gartner. Because of this trend, transaction rates via mobile will significantly increase. Your site must display well on tablet and smart phone screens.

2. Keep Checkout Simple Stupid
It must have a speedy checkout process. Making your customers click through numerous steps will cause shopping cart abandonment before completing their purchase, just as 66% of Internet shoppers did in 2012.

3. Don’t Make Registration Required
It should either not require registration or it should make registration optional. In a recent UX study, Christian Holdst found that few of the highest-earning websites require registration prior to purchase. Registration adds steps to the checkout process and requires information that customers may not be comfortable giving.

4. Why Can’t I Find What I Want?
It should not overwhelm customers with merchandise options that most of them won’t care about. The products featured on the main pages should be filtered so that the best sellers are displayed most prominently. Gilt.com has a team of developers that do precisely this, and their site does extremely well revenue-wise.

5. It Takes Forever to Load
Web users are apt to give up on sites that task their patience. To ensure that your site loads fast, you should check it throughout the day, as it might be slower at some times than others. Your web page host can provide you with information like load speeds and down times. You should check this often to see if there are speed or other usability problems you need to address.

For your e-commerce site to be profitable, it should be as simple and easy to use as possible. One way to measure its usability is to compare it to how mega-sites like Amazon.com performs in each of the five categories above. Watch what the big guys do and learn from them. It may require that you do a lot of tweaking to your site, but the results will be worth the effort.

Remarketing: A Practical Example

Understanding how remarketing works is best done with an example. Let’s say for a minute that your site sells cruises. When a customer comes to your site and leaves without making a purchase, the customer’s browser will get tagged with a cookie, adding him to your remarketing advertising list.

Now, as that customer continues browsing, an ad for your cruise website will appear. Since the customer’s searching habits show that he is interested, at least casually, in your business, keeping your site fresh in his mind will help increase your chances of getting that particular sale. Also, because your ads only appear to people who have already visited your site, you are able to maximize your advertising dollars.

Remarketing Versus Traditional Paid Search Advertising

Remarketing and traditional paid advertisements are different because of their focus. The goal of a traditional pay per click campaign is to get a new visitor to come to your site. The goal of remarketing is to get a visitor who left your site to return and close the deal.

Who Should Use Remarketing?

While any company can benefit from remarketing, businesses that are looking to improve their return on investment and who have a high rate of customers who leave without making a purchase stand to gain the most. In fact, Straight North, a leading Internet Marketing and corporate branding company in the Chicago area, indicates that remarketing increases conversions by as much as 50 percent. That’s a high number, and makes remarketing well worth considering as part of your overall branding and marketing process.

Remarketing with Google

Google’s Display Network makes setting up a remarketing campaign simple. Simply add the remarketing tag code to all of the pages of your site, set up your remarketing campaign to target the right type of shoppers and wait for your ads to start bringing them back to your site.

If you are ready to recapture some of your lost customers through highly targeted advertising that reaches only those who leave your site, then consider remarketing. The potential return on investment is high, and the setup is relatively simple, so get started today.

1. Duplicate Content
According to Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Bing, “Search engines demand fresh content.” Do not recycle old content or copy content from others. Add your own fresh, relevant content to preserve your rank. Remember, user experience should be your ultimate goal.

2. Stuff Those Keywords (or Ignore Them)
Keyword usage is essential to SEO, but you have to use them wisely. Incorporate the phrases people will be searching for, but avoid stuffing your pages full of keywords at the expense of readability. Write for the readers, but with keywords sprinkled in, and you will do well.

3. Stuff the Site with Graphics
Search Engine News warns that a site that is all graphics, with no text, will tank your rank quite quickly. You have to give the search engine spiders something to crawl.

4. Ignore Social Media
Do you have 0 Facebook Likes, Tweets or +1′s for your content? Your ranking is going to suffer. As the search engines are getting smarter, they are starting to recognize social media shares as a way to identify quality content. Bing is building strategic partnerships with major social media sites. Ignoring these venues will hurt your rank. Stick those buttons on your blog posts and encourage social media sharing of quality content.

5. Hide Your Text
It may seem logical that stringing together all of your keywords, and then hiding them by making the text color identical to your background, would work to fool the search engines. But that technique died years ago. In no way does this create a good user experience for searchers, and search engines will certainly penalize the website.

6. Ignore Your Load Speed
Google ranks sites well that load in 5 seconds or less. If you are adding so many graphics to your site that it does not load quickly, you will not rank well.

7. Fail to Erase Your Old Site
If you are redesigning your site, don’t forget to redirect all of your old URLs to your new ones using 301 redirects. Sort of like a “change of address” with the post office, this will ensure that your old “address” is not stealing your current traffic.

8. Links from Shady or Thin Websites
Google used to reward sites that had thousands of back links, but not anymore. Now the quality of those links is just as important as the quantity, so ignore the link schemes, directories and focus on building organic links through quality content marketing and expert networking.

9. Wax too Long with Content
Quality content is the focus of today’s search engines. If you can cover the topic quickly, then do so. Give the reader what they need without getting too wordy.

10. Create an Ad-Heavy Site
People don’t like to be bombarded with ads when they get to your site, so ad-heavy sites will be penalized. Yes, you need them to make money, but make sure those ads are balanced with large amounts of quality content.

The search algorithms are constantly evolving with one goal in mind: to provide users with the sites that meet their search needs. This is relevancy. As they get smarter, the SEO “tactics” that once worked by ignoring the human user are going to fall flat. Focus on providing the reader with quality content and a solid user experience, and you will do well.

These social media plugins are some that work well with WordPress, are simple to install and have given many people excellent results.

1. ShareThis
With ShareThis, you can choose which social media websites you want to target. Visitors to your website can share your content and/or vote for you using this plugin. ShareThis also provides tracking reports, and it allows you to customize the colors of the plugin to match your site. This plugin is ideal for users who want to encourage sharing and track reader activity. Its current rating from WordPress users is 3.3 out of 5.

2. Sociable
If you have trouble promoting the content on your site, you can let readers do it for you by installing Sociable. Sociable is one of the most widely-used plugins available for use on WordPress. This plugin allows you to place buttons to the social bookmarking sites of your choice directly on your website. Visitors can then click on these buttons to vote for you and promote your content. Sociable’s current rating is 4.1 out of 5 stars.

3. JetPack
JetPack is one of the most versatile plugins available for your WordPress site. JetPack allows you to integrate your content with your social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. JetPack also allows users to share your content on social networks and via email. For users who don’t want to post the same content to multiple social media platforms, JetPack is the perfect solution. Its current rating is 3.8 out of 5 stars.

4. Shareaholic
A slightly different plugin, Shareaholic includes a social bookmarking menu, share buttons for social media platforms and a button that allows users to share content via email. The share buttons included with Shareaholic are designed to intrigue users, rather than distract them from your main content. If your page is already busy or cluttered, this plugin is ideal. Its current rating is 4 out of 5 stars.

5. Tweetily
Most content marketers are busy people, and you simply do not have the time to stay on Twitter all day long sending your posts. Yet, you need to maintain a presence throughout the day to drive traffic to your site effectively. Tweetily is the answer to this quandary. It will randomly select a post or page on your WordPress site to tweet automatically. You simply set the times, number of tweets and type of content you wish to share. The plugin has a 4.6 out of 5 star rating.

People are spending a lot of time online, and they are spending it on social media sites. These sites provide the venue for content to be shared today, and you need to make it easy for your readers to share your content through their favorite sites. This list of plugins is intended to be a resource of tools you can include in your next social media strategy. As you use them, remember to make sure your social media plugins are properly setup and configured.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Envision Interactive!
Many thanks to everyone who helped with this video.

So, what Is AuthorRank?

If you take the time to search for the phrase “Southern Cooking Tips,” you’ll notice the top result on the results page looks like this:

Simply put, Amy Brantley has a very strong AuthorRank. She has been recognized by Google as an authority on the Southern Cooking, and as such, her blog post in ranking higher than a book on Barnes&Noble and a web page on SouthernLiving.com.

With the introduction of AuthorRank into the ever-changing Google algorithm, the metrics that were once tied only to individual web pages are now also tied to the individual author.

When an established, authoritative author writes something new, it has a better chance of ranking well in search engines simply because it has that author’s name on it and a photograph to make it more personal.

Establishing Yourself as the Author of Content

When an author who Google has recognized as an expert takes his work somewhere other than his highly ranked site, that authority moves with him. This means that industry experts can have more success with their marketing endeavors, without remaining tied to one website they have worked hard to achieve a high rank with. By taking the time to build your rank as an author, you can keep your high rank wherever you write.

How Can You Tell Google What You Authored?

Here are the basic steps:

1. Set up a Google+ profile with a professional image. Filling out your profile with as much detail as possible will improve your efforts.
2. Link your profile to your content. The easiest way is to begin linking all of your blog posts to your Google+ profile using this tag: <rel=”author” link=”your-googleplus-url” />. You can do this in an “About the Author” section, and be certain to use your first and last name as the anchor text. WordPress and similar content management programs offer plugins for this, or you may need your webmaster’s help.
3. List the places where you write in a “contributor to” section on your Google+ profile. This prepares your posts to be recognized by the search engine. If you do this correctly, Swell Path states you may notice Author Rich Snippets next to your links on the SERPs.

By connecting all of your content to your Google+ profile and then listing the sites where you write in the “contributor to” section, you will be signaling to the search engine that you, in fact, were the author of that work. As the piece gets shares and likes through social media, Google’s new algorithm will start viewing you as an expert. The end result is higher ranking and better overall SEO for the pieces you author.

AuthorRank is just one factor in the new focus on the importance of authorship for SEO. Bing has recently announced a similar feature, which will connect to an author’s work and Twitter profile. This shows that, regardless of the search platform used, owning your work and producing quality content for your content marketing efforts is going to improve your search engine results.

So start writing and claiming what you write, and the results will follow!

The spirit of the holidays inspires us to open our hearts and wallets to our favorite charities. It could be buying gifts for those who are less fortunate, volunteering at a shelter or food bank, or giving to a religious organization.

We give to these nonprofits — large or small, seasonally or year-round — because we are emotionally connected to them and believe in their cause. Americans gave $217.79 billion to charity in 2011 despite the recession – a 4% increase from 2010, according to The Center On Philanthropy at Indiana University.

It’s due in part to branding – even though most nonprofits don’t realize it or think of it as branding. Perhaps you wonder how nonprofits can establish such a strong brand image with out any funding for marketing or branding. (We’re not talking about large nonprofits with marketing budgets here.)

It is because they intrinsically embrace three strong brand qualities: a vision and mission, passion, and loyalty – practicing, in essence, grassroots branding.

For-profit organizations wishing to emulate the success of nonprofits can likewise embrace these three qualities to strengthen their own brands.

1. Vision & Mission
It starts with the founder(s)’ vision and mission for the nonprofit — its “highest calling,” as marketing legend Stan Richards calls a brand’s vision. It’s the reason for the organization’s existence. This clear foresight and purpose attracts people, unites them, and guides the organization. Our client, Pastor Rickie G. Rush of the Inspiring Body of Christ Church, expresses it this way: “Having a clear mission for your church is like having a compass pointing you in the right direction.”

2. Passion
Vision and mission are driven by passion; without it, the organization wouldn’t exist. Everyone involved shares the same passion for a cause or ideal. This strong, cohesive force is the catalyst for growth, actions, and change. Sometimes, one person’s passion can inspire an entire organization. Take the case of our client, The Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation. This organization was created in honor of maestro Achúcarro “to showcase, educate and benefit the careers of pianists, while developing and maintaining the legacy of pianist Joaquín Achúcarro in perpetuity.”

3. Loyalty
Along with passion is loyalty to the organization and its cause. Many great nonprofits deserve our support, but we usually give to the same ones year after year. Why? The answer lies in psychological factors such as trust, credibility, or nostalgia. Loyalty also means championing the cause. The shoe company TOMS established a loyal brand following due to their charitable business model, One for OneTM, which gives a pair of shoes to children in need for each pair purchased. TOMS credits their customers for giving away more than 2 million pairs of shoes to children around the world since October 2011. The company states that it is “committed to creating the biggest impact possible with the shoes we give — improving children’s health and access to education – for the long-term.”

Building your brand
A brand is an intangible, ubiquitous force. It isn’t just a logo or a sign; it’s everything that an organization does, says, and believes in. A strong brand has the power to connect with people and inspire actions, from making a donation or a purchase to starting a global movement.

Most for-profits have these qualities but struggle to clearly and consistently communicate them within the organization or in the crowded marketplace. Sometimes they lose sight of these qualities, or the qualities become less important as the organization grows and becomes more operations-driven. As a result, stakeholders, employees and customers become uncertain about their company’s brand and its purpose. This uncertainty inevitably affects the bottom line.

The value in developing your organization’s brand is tremendous and will contribute immeasurably to your company’s success. A clear, distinct, and consistent brand strategy will build loyalty and equity over time, just as it has for the most successful nonprofits.

If your organization can benefit from an established brand, Envision can help you focus on these three brand qualities and more with our 360-degree brand development services and expertise.

Envision was more than happy to partner with WFAA (Channel 8) for the third consecutive year as its online marketing partner for the station’s annual New Year’s Eve event and syndicated television broadcast of Big D NYE 2013.

When Channel 8 approached Envision regarding the continuation of their partnership, Envision looked at this as a great opportunity to expand on the existing BigDNYE.com website. It was obvious an enhanced design was in order, as well as introducing new social features and a mobile version of the website. Channel 8 is a savvy team, so it was a nice collaboration between two parties. Channel 8 helped Envision understand their needs from a broadcast perspective and Envision built on top of that with our knowledge of creating an impactful online presence.

We all know how fast things move in the broadcast world. And due to the client’s need for speed and ever-changing requirements, Envision had to be nimble. From a technical perspective it was critical that the site be built on a CMS so the WFAA client could make quick updates. Envision chose the capable Drupal platform.

This year’s edition of the Big D NYE website introduces real-time integration with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, enabling attendees to publish tweets, messages and photos to the site before, during or after the event. To meet the demands of the growing mobile audience, Envision also created an enhanced mobile version of the website for Big D NYE. Other new features include an online store, streaming video and a new-and-improved countdown clock.

The Big D NYE event takes place at Victory Park American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas on December 31^st, you can check out all the cool stuff planned be visiting their website, www.bigdnye.com.

Why this growing emphasis on content? Because companies are seeing that content marketing is increasing their bottom lines. Here are five solid benefits that your business can receive with content marketing. Understanding these will help you understand why online marketing is taking the lead in online marketing strategy.

1. Marketing with Content Establishes Credibility
   One of the positives found with content is the ability to improve credibility for a company. With the advent of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, simply having a strong SEO strategy that focuses on content-heavy pages and plenty of back links is no longer sufficient as a marketing technique. You must establish yourself as a trusted leader in your industry. A steady stream of quality, helpful content that is properly marketed will establish you as a thought leader in your field.
2. Marketing with Content Leads to Link Building
   Content marketing also helps improve website traffic through natural link building. Link-building strategies are changing as Google takes steps to stop the effectiveness of poor tactics like spun articles that simply exist to point a link back to the website, without providing a bit of help to the reader. Links are still an important part of optimization, but now the quality of those links is important. A side effect of content marketing is link building. If your content is valuable, it will be shared, and those shares will be strong links back to your site.
3. Marketing with Content Is Effective SEO
   A third benefit of content is its impact on SEO. Search engine optimization has not died with Google’s changes, but it has changed. Yet, content, specifically fresh, relevant content, is still one of the most important features of a solid SEO strategy, and will bring traffic to your site organically. According to research from HubSpot, websites with blogs get 55 percent more traffic than those that do not have them. Why is this? Because in the world of SEO, content is still king. In fact, marketing your content works as the glue that holds your entire optimization strategy together.
4. Marketing with Content Focuses on Proper Distribution
   Content creation is not the only part of a content marketing strategy. Marketing turns that content into one of your most valuable assets, as you seek to distribute it to your target audience. There are many different ways to do so, including content distribution in social media, third-party syndication and even guest blogging on high-profile blogs. This benefits your business by utilizing multiple marketing platforms to increase your visibility. Working with a content creation firm that has solid distribution techniques can help you implement your marketing strategy.
5. Marketing with Content Makes You Part of a Community
   Finally, this form of marketing is beneficial because it gives you a place within a community. Content marketing builds links and establishes credibility, but it also works to make you part of a community. Guest blogging using your content on blogs in your industry helps you make connections. Whether those connections turn into customers or people who you can draw ideas from, they will be invaluable as you grow your online brand and build your future business success.

Yes, content, because of these benefits, is the new go-to marketing tactic. In light of this, today’s business owners need to partner with a content creation service that not only understands how to produce quality content, but also how to use it to attract leads and organic search traffic.

Our team of talented strategic thinkers is ready to help you establish your brand and your reputation as an industry leader, helping you reach your goals with our content marketing service.

Contact us today to get started on building a winning online marketing strategy using quality content to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

It’s finally Election Day and healthcare reform is one of the major concerns affecting most Americans’ decisions. Healthcare issues are highly personal and often emotional, which makes it more challenging for consumer healthcare companies to establish a credible and trustworthy healthcare brand. It’s not enough to just provide good products or services; that’s expected. For a healthcare brand to connect with consumers, stay competitive, and be profitable, it must focus its branding strategy on these 5 traits:

Be Human: When developing your healthcare brand, whether it’s for products or services, consider who you are marketing to. Your customers and patients are human beings.

Your brand must connect with them on an emotional and personal level. Instead of using technical or marketing jargon, use common language, so anyone can understand and feel comfortable with what your company provides. Using common language instead of medical jargon makes a person feel more at ease because he or she can understand what you are offering and is more likely to ask some of the more difficult  — or embarrassing  — questions regarding your products or services.

Using images of people, especially actual customers or patients, shows your potential customers that your company cares about its customers and is willing to work with them on a personal, one-to-one level.

Be Compassionate: When executing your healthcare brand strategy, be compassionate in the way your company provides information to potential customers and their families. The marketing messages must show that your company understands and can meet your customers’ physical, emotional and mental needs. For example:

•     Use patient, customer, or doctor testimonials to portray a compassionate manner.
•     Use imagery that emotionally reaches out to your customers and their families.

Be Educational: Consumers are tech-savvy and do extensive research online before making healthcare decisions. Educating your potential customers about your products or services shows that your company has the experience and quality customers are looking for. Educating the public includes:

• Making sure your company’s offerings are easily understood by potential customers as well as by your customer service representatives, your doctors, your nurses and all other personnel in your company.
• Providing educational material to benefit customers and to highlight the company’s experience. Articles, diagrams, videos and infographics are engaging ways to educate.

For example, our client, Spine Centers of America, dedicates an entire Education section on its website to providing patients with comprehensive articles, videos, and FAQs regarding spine conditions and procedures.

Be Transparent: To help provide brand trustworthiness while marketing your healthcare products or services, be transparent by posting true and uncensored reviews, providing information in a non-exaggerated way, and accurately representing your offerings online and offline. Any questions and concerns should be answered honestly and openly with FAQs or other documents. Customers will feel more assured choosing your brand knowing that they’ve made an educated decision.

Be Committed: The most important trait of a successful healthcare brand strategy is your company’s commitment. Express your company’s commitment to your customers’ well-being and your brand strategy by consistently providing great customer experiences and adhering to brand guidelines.

The value of developing your healthcare brand with these 5 core traits in mind is tremendous and will contribute immeasurably to your company’s success. A healthcare brand strategy with a focus on your customer’s needs will build brand loyalty and brand equity over time. Healthcare will always be an important issue for Americans, so invest in your company’s brand now. We are a healthcare marketing agency specializing in developing brands, and we can help your company incorporate these 5 traits and more with our 360-degree brand development services and expertise.