5 Compelling Reasons Websites Matter In Your Sales Funnel Posted on April 2, 2023April 2, 2023 by Gabe Valdivia Introduction Whether you’re a professional services provider, entrepreneur, or ecommerce store, a website plays an important role in your sales funnel. You probably already know that a sales funnel is the process that starts with your prospects and follows those leads through a qualification process that results in a decision. A website is one of the few web properties you’ll have full control over and where you’ll have a great deal of influence over your potential customer’s journey. Let’s go over 5 compelling reasons websites matter in your sales funnel. Brand Awareness First impressions go a long way. Your branding creates an impression, and that determines how your customers view your business. Your colors, typography, logo and style tell your customer about your business and professionalism. If your branding resonates with your customers, you’ll tap into a loyal customer base, and that leads to successful outcomes in your sales acquisition process. Lead Generation Successful branding plays a crucial role in lead generation. You’ll need to decide what action you need your customers to take. Do you want them to contact you via a contact form? Are you looking for your customers to book a consult or buy a product? Once you know your objective you’ll need to place consistent calls to actions in the form of links, buttons, contact forms, testimonials or downloadable materials. A well-made website helps garner leads. The goal is to help customers take the next step in the sales acquisition process, and we’ll achieve that through education and engagement. Education and Engagement A website gives you the power to educate and engage with your potential customers. You’ll have the platform needed to tell them about your professional services or the products you sell. Create informative blog posts, video content, guides, and more. By creating content that is both relevant and helpful, you’ll educate and engage with your customer base. Creating content that your customers can identify with helps create trust and build authority, which leads to more leads that convert and cultivates a loyalty. You can also use a website to answer frequently asked questions, offer helpful resources, and post testimonials from other satisfied customers. Education and engagement leads to more sales and builds revenue. Sales and Revenue Sales and revenue is the result of great branding, quality leads, informative content and customer engagement. A quality website will give your business the needed growth by providing a seamless transition from lead qualification to guiding the customer intent and converting them into leads. Websites give you the ability to integrate booking systems, ecommerce capabilities, and drive organic SEO. All of which drives traffic to your website, where you’ll have the opportunity to dazzle and enchant! Your website can also provide up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, leading to increased revenue and customer loyalty. Once you have a loyal customer base that keep coming back, you’ll need to focus on customer retention. Customer Retention A website plays an important role in customer retention. You’ll have the ability to allow customers to contact you in a variety of ways. You can use contact forms if you prefer to minimize calls. Contact pages are great for listing all the information you want your customers to have. Frequently asked questions can help those who might have a commonly asked question and need a quick answer. Websites can integrate chat bubbles for instant communication. Blogs & forums can also help a website create a community where your customers can mutually support each other. Use your website to offer loyalty programs, discounts, or exclusive content that rewards customers for loyalty. Newsletters can be a great way to both keep your customer informed and keep them coming back. You’ll have a many different options available to grow your community and your business. Conclusion In conclusion, a website is a critical component of any sales funnel. It plays a vital role in creating brand awareness, lead generation, education, engagement, sales, revenue, and customer retention. By optimizing your website for each of these stages, you can create a seamless user experience that guides potential customers towards making a purchase and keeps existing customers loyal. If you’ve enjoyed this article on 5 compelling reasons websites matter in your sales funnel, take the next step. Contact me if you have any questions, need a website, website redesign or would like an SEO consultation. Back
Migrating WordPress Sites Posted on March 5, 2023March 9, 2023 by Gabe Valdivia Migrating your site from one hosting service to another So you need to move your site from one hosting service to another. The following process is super easy. Begin by installing WordPress on the new hosting service. Use whatever 1-click install program your hosting service offers. 1. Install All-in-One WP Migrate plugin on the live site. First you’ll want to log into your WordPress site. Then on the left side WordPress navigation go to Plugins > Add New. On the plugin search page search for ‘wp all in one’. Select the All-in-One WP Migration by ServeMask. Click on the Install Now button and then click on Activate. After the installation completes you’ll see a new menu entry for All-in-One WP Migration on the left side WordPress navigation. Stop here. Don’t do anything just, yet! Great! Now, move on to the next step below “On your PC/Mac/Linux download and install Local by Flywheel”. 2. Install All-in-One WP Migrate on the new hosting service Install WordPress via some 1-click install service offered by your hosting service. Install and activate the All-in-One WP plugin. Navigate to the All-in-One WP Migrate menu option and select Import Select the file you downloaded previously Let All-in-One WP Migrate do its thing Log into your site again using the user credential from the WPJelly install Done. Back
Typography in Web Design Posted on March 5, 2023March 9, 2023 by Gabe Valdivia Introduction Let’s begin by defining what fonts are. Simply put, fonts are a grouping of typographic characters with similar characteristics. Fonts are defined by their weight or thickness, style or slope, serif edges, and variants. For example, Times New Roman, pictured above, has a very distinctive style that is commonly used in newspaper articles, research papers, and academic settings. The end of each letter has a squared-off point on each end. Times New Roman can come in different variations. It can be regular, italic, or bold. Other fonts lack the serif ends, while others look much more like handwriting. The Psychology of Fonts As a web developer or small business owner, you don’t need to know the specifications or details of the font family, but you do need to understand that selecting the right fonts for your web project has a powerful psychological effect on your visitor. Research has shown that font type has implications for marketing, advertising, and persuasion. Beyond the power to convince, using the right font pairs will guide, delight, and inform your visitors. Let’s dig into actionable things you can do to leverage your use of fonts. The first decision you’ll want to make is how your fonts affect your visitors. You’ll want to consider which font families are right for your needs. For example, Serif fonts, pictured below, tend to lend seriousness and weight, while sans-serif fonts tend to be more open and friendly. Consider the following when choosing your fonts: Serif Fonts: Convey a sense of stability and formality. They send a message to the reader that the company is stable. They are typically used by financial institutions, law firms, insurance companies, and consultants. Sans-Serif Fonts: Are a cleaner more modern typographic font family. They lack the serif ends characteristic of serif fonts. Sans-serif fonts are known for their openness and inclusive nature. When paired with serif headlines they tend to lend websites with a balance of authority and openness. Script Fonts: Can range from fun & amusing to formal & creative and in some cases script fonts when limited to a logo or signature denote credibility. Fonts Readability & Contrast Fonts should be easy to read. Making fonts easy to read means considering some factors. Keep in mind that your selected font family will look differently at similar font sizes. For example, 38 pixels on the Open Sans font family will look smaller than on another thicker font families. Size Paragraph font Size: The first consideration might be font size, how big will your font be? On the web, we are limited by screen sizes and the various settings your site visitors will have on their monitors or other device screens. The most common font size for paragraphs might be 16 – 18 pixels. However, on small phone screens, that font size might cause the font to look unnaturally large and cause your sentences to break into new lines in a place where you might not expect. For smaller screens, developers often reduce the font size by a couple of pixels. Heading font sizes: Headings almost always need to be adjusted several pixels in size across tablets and mobile sizes. For example, a heading with a font size of 38 pixels on desktop monitors will almost certainly be too large for an iPhone or Android screen. The font size would need to be reduced by several pixels on tablet size and several more on mobile devices. Consistency in font sizes: It’s important to stick to set font sizes in headings and paragraphs. For headings, you might determine a logical font and size. Make sure all the headings across your site are consistent in terms of font-family and size. The same goes for paragraphs, subheadings. Contrast You’ll want to be kind to your readers’ eyes. Make sure that you are either sticking to a font color that is dark on a light background or light on a dark background. Avoid colors that tend to hurt the eyes, such as text on a red background. Don’t forsake those visitors with “low vision or color deficiencies.” Use an online tool to check for color contrast. Not only will your site be inclusive of everyone, but you’ll also end up avoiding poor aesthetic choices in the process. Font Family Pairings Choosing the right font pairing brings together everything we’ve discussed, and it can have a powerful psychological effect, too. More importantly, pairing fonts is an important element of design on any website. You don’t have to be a design guru to pair great fonts. Consider your website’s industry or purpose, don’t lose sight of readability, font size, and contrast. With that small amount of knowledge, navigate to one of the many websites that have done the hard work for you. Pick a font pairing website, visit Google Fonts choose a font pair combination that suits your needs. Conclusion My goal was to help guide developers and small business owners by providing the most relevant font considerations. In short, consider the psychological effect your font will have on its intended audience. Make your site readable by considering how font size and contrast affect the reader. Spruce up the design by pairing your fonts effectively. And keep your font sizes, colors, and pairings consistent. Citations: [2]: Emotional and persuasive perception of fonts Juni S, Gross JS. Emotional and persuasive perception of fonts. Percept Mot Skills. 2008 Feb;106(1):35-42. doi: 10.2466/pms.106.1.35-42. PMID: 18459353. [3]: *The picture superiority effect: support for the distinctiveness model * Mintzer MZ, Snodgrass JG. The picture superiority effect: support for the distinctiveness model. Am J Psychol. 1999 Spring;112(1):113-46. PMID: 10696280. [4]: Illustrations used throughout this post by Pablo Stanley via Figma Back
Color Schemes in Web Design Posted on March 5, 2023March 9, 2023 by Gabe Valdivia What is a color scheme? A color scheme is simply a pairing of colors composed of primary colors, secondary colors, and accent colors. Usually, just 3 colors that when paired together work well. Let’s discuss each of those in more detail. The primary color is your main color, and it is used for large sections of continuous color. Secondary colors are used less frequently, and your accent color is used even less frequently. Think of the 60/30/10 rule. Your primary color is used 60% of the time, your secondary 30% of the time, and your accent color 10%. Think frequently, less frequently, and rarely. Colors have meaning and are related to different industries. For example, blue is used in education and health care industries, while red is used in restaurants. Lastly, research indicates that color has an effect on our psychology. Make sure your website colors are relevant and have the right effect on visitors. How color is misused? Common mistakes that most people make when choosing colors for your site are: Using colors that don’t pair well Poor contrast Glaring to look at Colors clash with your logo’s colors Not having a consistent color scheme Here’s how you can improve. Pick colors that go well with your chosen field or industry. Make sure your colors match. Limit yourself to a primary color, a secondary color, and an accent color. You can of course use different hues when needed, but be consistent in your application of these colors. You can use an online service to select color pairings that go well together. Ensure the colors have sufficient contrast between your text, headings, links, and the background colors. Make sure your paragraph color matches your color scheme. I’m not saying use red or purple for your paragraph, but avoid plain black as your body font color – it’s boring. This short take on colors in web design is part of a series covering color, typography, visual hierarchy, use of white space, layout choices, and images in web design. Cover Illustration: Doodles by Pablo Stanley Back