Have you ever met someone that tries too hard? It seems like we all know a person who would be likable if only they would tone it down a bit. When optimizing a website for search engines, that can also be the case. You run the risk of overdoing it, which hurts you in the long run. 

It's easier than you realize to do too much. However, it's also tempting to turn your head and not do enough. More and more of our clients come to us because their websites aren't working for them. We strive to achieve the perfect balance of  doing just enough to help them have a stellar, world-class website that does what it is supposed to do without being the annoying over-achiever. 

We really liked this infographic from SEOBook. It compares the many ways SEO can go, and how to get it "just right". They've called it "Goldilocks SEO". 

We've discussed before the difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO and how we are committed to a strictly White Hat operation here at Immerseme. Another promise we can make is that we will always strive to find that perfect balance for our clients as we optimize their websites. We won't be the annoying kid in class that tries too hard, but we also won't do the bare minimum. We use tools and analytics to make educated decisions and strategic choices for our clients. We see great results and will continue to learn more about the ever changing SEO landscape as we advance your message to your audience. 

It's time for an intervention. 

There are times when it is tactful to just keep your  mouth shut, but there are times that it is appropriate to help out a friend.

Your friend has a business or a ministry or a church or an organization. And they have a website. You went to this website and it is, um.... well, it's just.... not conveying the message that you know they are trying to convey. 

So, why keep it to yourself? Maybe your friend doesn't realize that it looks like a 7th grader made their website. 

Maybe your friend doesn't know that half the links you click on do not work. 

Perhaps they don't realize that if your whole website is an image and there are no words, no links to click on, Google doesn't really know that you exist. 

It's quite possible that your friend doesn't realize that having a bad website can be more harmful than having no website at all.

When people are searching for a new church to go to, they will check out the church's website. BELIEVE US, they will not visit a church if the website gives them the vibe that this church has not made any progress since 1996. Especially if the church website still is talking about the Easter service from 2002. 

Color matters. Content matters. Placement matters. Links matter. Wording matters.

Your website is supposed to communicate your message, not just facts and information. You're saying who you are, what you believe in, and how you operate. Your website is like your virtual window display. You don't want someone to drive up, see the front of your store, and then drive away because it doesn't look like the kind of place they want to visit. 

Tell your friend. Do it. You're doing them a disservice by letting them think that all websites are created equal.

Contact us for more questions or if you don't know how to tell them gently. We'll help you out. :)

You'd think color doesn't really matter when choosing a design for your company branding. The fact is that when it comes to design, everything matters. Just like we strongly advise you not to use clip art for your logo (don't even get us started on that!), we also strongly advise you to seek help from a professional when making branding decisions. 

Not convinced? Check out this infographic we found that shows the color choices of the biggest companies out there:

Isn't it interesting how the vast majority of these brands fall into two main color families? We're not saying you have to go blue or red, but we are saying that there is a method behind the design madness. 

Why did you choose the design you currently have for your business? How did you come up with the concept? Our graphic designers and branding experts are well-versed and qualified to help your company come up with a brand that appeals to your audience and advances your message. There is a process that we go through to pick the look, the color, the font, EVERYTHING that goes into the design. Don't let clip art happen to you! 

Giving makes the world ‘round. And, here at Immerseme, much has been given to us. We’ve been blessed. So, you know what we decided?

We decided we want to give back!

There are so many wonderful organizations that do amazing things for amazing people. Often these jobs are thankless and pay next to nothing. Sadly, many of these organizations have to dedicate so much of their time to fundraising to keep themselves at a functional level of operation when they should be focusing their efforts on doing what they do best.

We put our brains together and came up with an idea that we are MEGA excited about:

We’re gonna give away a website.

A really, really cool website.

A website valued at more than $5,000.

A website for a non-profit organization.

And then we decided to make it fun and decided to make it a CONTEST!

Because we love contests.

So, we’re calling on the troops. (And by “troops” we mean “YOU”.)

We’re gonna need your help. We want to know who you think should get this website.

(A super cool, over $5,000 custom website for a non-profit organization.)

(Plus a year of hosting.)

(For reals.)

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking that you want to know how you can get your favorite non-profit organization nominated. Here’s what I can tell you for now:

Over the next few days and weeks you’ll start to see how you can nominate one of these super awesome non-profit organizations for one of our super-awesome websites.

So put your thinkin’ caps on. Get ready.

IT’S CONTEST TIME!

Stand by for now, troops. Instructions to come shortly.

When we started this company over a decade ago, we had to spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince folks that their business needed a website. As we're now in 2011, we rarely have to have that conversation anymore. Everyone knows websites are necessary. Most people have one. 

The conversation we're having now is this: WHAT IS YOUR WEBSITE DOING FOR YOU?

Think of your website as a salesman out in the field. 

It just so happens that his field isn't Dallas, San Francisco or Boston, his field is the WORLD WIDE WEB. (That's a mighty big field, folks.)

 So, he's out in the field trying to communicate your message to the people who are looking for you or looking for someone like you. Have you given him all the proper tools? Does he have all the necessary information? Is he speaking clearly? Does he engage people quickly? Is he boring to talk to? Does he look nice? Is he dressed in a sophisticated manner or is he kinda outdated? Have you told him about your new products or specials? Have you made him aware of any upcoming events or recent news that he could be sharing? Is he going to the right places? Is he representing you well, or do people leave him wanting something more? When he comes back into the office, is he giving you a detailed list of where he has been, who he spoke with, and what that person needs?

Is your website just an online version of your tri-fold brochure? Or is it working for you?

Replenish is a ministry focused on helping, restoring, and encouraging pastors who have reached a point of exhaustion in their ministry. (Did you know that 1500 pastors a MONTH are permanently walking away from ministry?) Lance Witt, pastor and speaker, reaches out to the “burned out”. His book, Replenish, Leading from a Healthy Soul was recently released by Baker Publishing and can be purchased on Amazon. 

With the launch of the Witt's new book, their existing site (designed by Immerseme in 2009) needed a new look. Immerseme was given the task of rejuvenating the Replenish website. The redesign was geared towards matching the design, look, and feel of the upcoming book. We also removed the flash content from the previous site for usability reasons, and made several landing pages for those that are looking for the book or looking for Lance’s consulting and speaking services in order to increase conversion goals for site visitors.

Take a look at the new Home Page for Replenish:

And here’s the landing page for his book and consulting services:

In order to further extend the Replenish Brand, we've also created customized HTML Newsletters and even a Twitter background.

We’re really excited for Lance and look forward to seeing the continued growth of Replenish! Go check it out for yourself at www.replenish.net.

Wild Purls Yarn is a yarn boutique in Billings Montana. As a retail storefront, WP sells yarns, patterns, knitting tools, and offers on site classes. In April 2011 Wild Purls relocated to an area that has proven to offer significantly more foot traffic. The Billings market is a shopping destination of sorts for surrounding communities that creates a geographically diverse customer base (including many tourists to the area). This created the need for better communication methods to maintain contact with the base, both local to Billings and beyond, and offer more opportunities to connect with the Wild Purls brand.

Their previous website was a on a platform that created ongoing management challenges as well as an inability to add e-commerce capabilities to the site. Here's a quick shot of the old site:

The new Wild Purls website Immerseme developed allows online shopping, knitting class registration, and a significantly better back-end user management system through the ImmerseEdit CMS.

Additional care was taken to create many graphical abilities like CSS Buttons, styling and layout options to keep the cost of management down by enabling the Wild Purls staff to manage site content without requiring additional graphic design costs to create images, buttons, etc.

Ultimately the conversion goals for the new Wild Purls Yarn site is to increase new customers through class registration and adding online shopping as an additional sales channel.

Check out the new and improved Wild Purls website design:

If you want to check it out for yourself, please visit the Wild Purls website.

We also designed an email newsletter:

 

We have been so excited to launch this for Wild Purls! We've truly enjoyed working with the client and look forward to watching them continue to grow!

We recently came across this B2B infographic from Marketing Sherpa. 

The #1 most effective demand generation tactic? Website design, management, and optimization. The #2 most effective is SEO. 

While it's very important to have a solid marketing budget, it's even more important to make sure that that budget is geared toward the right channels. The #1 tactic for creating engaging content is using a multi-channel messaging strategy. Is your business using new media to accomplish this?

You're headed to a meeting. You spoke to this company on the phone and you think they might be the perfect business to partner with. They seem to be reputable and knowledgeable. If all goes well, this could be a very lucrative partnership for both of you.

But then, you get to their office. Let's just say you're...... less than impressed.

The walls are painted a lovely hue of mustard yellow. It smells funny in there. There are papers everywhere, stacked on the floor. The framed velvet "art" on the wall is slightly disturbing, and the orange shag carpet is a bit much. You feel like you've stepped back into the 70's. The first face you see is a woman who is dressed in running shorts and she is smacking her gum. She's got the television in the lobby turned to a Maury episode entitled "Are You My Daddy?" and the couch you're told to wait on is covered in cat hair.

Maybe you were wrong about this company. They seem dated, unprofessional, and messy. Before the meeting even begins, you leave. You know this isn't the right fit.

My friends, this is what will happen to you if you have a bad website.

People come to you on the web to get a first glimpse of you. This is a MAJOR first impression that is hard for people to forget.

Your website will make you seem either legit or irrelevant. Classy or unprofessional. Attractive or overwhelming.

You may have great content, but if it isn't presented well, it won't matter. People will click out of your website faster than you even know if they don't feel like this is the right place.

All websites are NOT created equal.

Are you making the right first impression?

Once the initial design for a website is finished it’s easy to assume that the work is done, however this mindset can lead to a stagnant website giving the image of little progress or stability for your organization. When thinking through how often to update your website, think of your website like a plant; the work isn’t done once you’ve got it planted in the ground. Without water, sunlight, or weeding it will eventually just shrivel up and die. Initially the website might attract a lot of visitors and be as pleasant as a bouquet of roses, however over time, and a short amount of time at that, if there’s no care then the amount of visitor activity will decrease and much like the roses, the website will begin to lose it’s appeal.

Content should be updated as often as possible. A newspaper wouldn’t continue to put out the same headlines and articles every single day and if they did most people would stop reading the paper altogether. Fresh content once a day or even once a week sends a positive message that your business is healthy and thriving and also makes significant impact in the quality rankings of search engines.

Remember, Search Engines are trying to provide the most relevant results to searches. In most all cases content on a topic that was indexed a week ago is much more valuable than content posted 2 years ago and the ranking results will show.

How often should I update my website design?

Another thing many people don’t think about is changing up their website design. While this doesn’t need to be updated nearly as often as the content, it is a good idea to make changes about every 12 – 18 months. Updating too soon could indicate instability while waiting too long could leave visitors wondering if you are still in business. Additionally, web design is always changing and there could be many browser advances and new features you could be missing out on to help bring in more visitors.

With a little care and some fresh content you could see a steady flow of visitor traffic to your page.

Do you run a business so that you can have nice conversations with lots of people? If you are a people person, that may be something that you really enjoy doing on a daily basis. But, is your success measured by the number of conversations or conversions that you have? Now, don’t get me wrong… conversions are the result of good conversations. However, sales pay the bills.

Having a great web design is just the starting point, kind of like opening a store front. The next key measuring point is increasing foot traffic to create opportunities to actually convert in to a paying customer. Converting website traffic to specific actions or goals is no different.

Measuring website success is not only a function of how many visitors you had to your website but the number and percentage of visitors that completed a desired action (i.e, made an online purchase, signed up for a newsletter, completed a contact form, scheduled an appointment, etc.) as well. Ultimately, we are looking for and measuring increased revenue.

As a strategic partner, Immerseme helps you to grow your business by improving your bottom line. We do that by facilitating more conversations with your prospects through search engine marketing like SEO and Campaign Management and drive that traffic to a specific call to action constantly looking for, measuring, and tweaking to result in increased conversions and repeat business for you.

With advanced analytics your website is completely accountable to you. Not only do we track conversions, we measure the value of those conversions to help you to determine your ROI and provide relevant decision-making data to help determine how to spend your marketing dollars.

At Immerseme, we help you make strategic decisions for the future based on hard data in real-time. As a strategic partner, our success is measured by your profitability.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help you increase your revenue.