Provoke Design

Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

Website Wow – How To Win The Confidence Vote!

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Confidence is everything! Every time a potential customer goes online in search of goods, services or information, the hope is they will not be scammed, spammed and their PC dammed to zombie, trojan virus hell! Your website must replace natural distrust with instant confidence that you are not fake, phishing or will waste a visitor’s time.

So you check your website analytics and find visitors are arriving and leaving at certain pages. Having been enticed to click onto a link back from your PPC Ad or email marketing newsletter, something about your site is causing anxiety, hesitation and ultimately, they leave without interaction.
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Email Marketing More Meaningful Than Social Media!

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Another in the latest of behaviour studies into today’s social media messaging culture reports that email marketing is still the best sales channel of all. Surprised? The simple truth, as often reasserted, is that far from being killed off by Twitter and Facebook, email marketing is still used as today’s most meaningful online tool!

So, in the age of immediate feedback messaging, instant social media engagement and purpose-search mobile apps, why is email marketing, the, oldest pinger in town, still hitting the right buttons?
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Give Google Fresh Website Content And Get Top Ranking!

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Many brand building websites start out with good intentions but sure enough, maintaining site pages with frequent fresh content gets left behind as daily schedules overtake. As traffic slowly drops, Google rankings go down and panic sets in as the mad scramble to update breaks out!

The key to obtaining high PageRank for your niche market SEO keywords is both a combination of paid search using PPC adword campaigns and longterm online marketing. The latter aims to build and visibly position brand identity, which relies on frequent, fresh optimised content via writing content for blogs, articles, email marketing newsletters and utilising social media networking such as Twitter, Facebook and bookmarking sites. In addition, uploading to YouTube videos is a rewarding method to attract the attention of Google and human user traffic.
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Website Design Works When It Calls For Action!

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Engagement, realtime, share and buzz! The onDemand search criteria for today’s online generation. You would think the social net would rule by now! Nope! Wizzy websites that leave you mystified as to what they want you to do are still everywhere on the web!

Eyecatching pages, happy headlines, news feeds, blogs, sparky vids – yep, some websites have the lot and you are staying to have a look round! A triumph of winning website design you might think, drawing high visitor traffic. But check the analytics and a different picture might emerge of site behaviour. Who are the visitors and what did they do on each page, what were they looking for and did they find it – were they converted?
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Website Design Depends On The Basics!

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The emphasis on integrating social media within daily business activity can sometimes add to website confusion! If design basics are not clear, search content hard to find and page navigation confusing, then sharing the love is not going to happen!

A lovely-to-look-at website, strictly functional eCommerce pages – it can be difficult to strike the balance and get the feel right to attract potential visitor traffic and building brand identity with your market niche. Websites are now small publishing hubs and often, as increasing quantities of different types of content is uploaded, e.g. news feeds, blogs, images, videos, tweets, comments, etc, in the bid to maintain interest and engagement, clarity becomes confusing and navigation a nightmare!
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Google Algorithm – All Change To Quality Content Search

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Google’s algorithm update in May was a significant event. Following rigorous trials, the revamped search bots were unleashed upon the web, programmed to hunt down websites optimised for higher quality content. This spells the beginning of the end for cheap, badly written content, of no interest value or worth in today’s social media sharing world.

Companies have appeared who manufacture written content on an industrial scale assembly line at low cost to drive traffic and obtain PageRank for their clients. In other words, the old school “Pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” principle, meaning the the first casualty is quality.
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Avoid the Email Marketing Fail Whale!

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Recent news that methods of filtering and delivering e-mail by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, based on engagement behaviour aimed to keep ahead of the spammers, is yet another sign that genuine email marketing campaigns are going to have to sharpen up their act or always fail to get through.

The new engagement metrics used by Microsoft Hotmail will now filter messages based on how actively a subscriber interacts with messages from specific senders, and is essentially the latest method, driven by the mailbox provider’s ongoing battle to reduce the endless numbers of false positives, an important factor in KPI analytics.
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Website Design Never Sleeps!

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The web is constantly evolving but crucially, changes are speeding up! Google algorithms change and search engines appear to behave strangely! Typically, search results rankings crash almost overnight and websites who are not up to date with fresh content can disappear off the radar!

Unfortunately, the problem is all too commonplace! A combination of misunderstanding online marketing strategies combined with time and budgetary constraints means not keeping in touch with developments and becoming left behind. Business owners may be unclear, confused or conversely, too fixed or outdated in their approach to their existing or proposed website design and today’s requirements to build brand identity online.
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The Instant Google Elite

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With the development and deployment of Google Instant (UK) a new list of sites have found themselves only a single letter / keystroke away from their audience, welcome to the google elite…
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Online Marketing Goes GeoLocal!

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The effects of post-recession climb back and the ongoing cutback economy are appearing to drive a perceptible shift in marketing strategies. The appearance of a tangible, local marketing revolution seems to be gathering. Driven by new and evolving channels, SMEs are redefining the relationship with their customers by directly interacting with each other on a daily basis.

Regionally based businesses are most likely to have stronger ties with their local area customers and are using microsites to track specific online marketing campaigns more effectively. In addition, many look to increase brand identity on locally focused sites with optimised local market targeting, adopting social media techniques and blogging.
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Online Marketing Keeps on Targeting!

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Last year saw online ad spend reach £3.5 billion. For the first time, online media has overtaken traditional media to become the UK’s largest advertising sector as SMEs increase investment. Despite an overall global reduction as a result of businesses trying to cut back avoidable costs, online marketing continues to rise and it’s not difficult to see why!

According to different surveys conducted by commerce and advertising monitoring groups, in 2009, paid search, or PPC, increased by 9.5% to £2.15bn. As a result, businesses are also now competing against an increased number of bidders when using Google AdWords to market their brand identity and obtain high ranking visibility. The last twelve months has seen more SMEs integrating PPC and SEO into their overall marketing strategies.
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Reasons To Refresh! Site Design Goals.

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Too often businesses might think their website is a kind of magic bullet that just needs a polish up to boost monthly figures. Without a clear understanding of site design goals, the vague reasons given to refresh may be no more than a wasted opportunity.

There is always a compromise to be made between the look of a website and it’s practical function. Successful website design can skilfully combine the two into a powerful online presence that drives traffic, converts visitors and gains high PageRank. But the aim of breathing new life into a brand identity doesn’t happen simply because of rearranging furniture.
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