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Content Creation is Running Smoothly. Now What Do You Do?

TELEPHONEHours upon hours have been spent creating solid content and your website traffic has been increasing tremendously. Now what is your next step? Tons of visitors doesn’t equal tons of business even if you have grade A content. Don’t let this discourage you. If you have a well laid out contact page, I’m sure there is some incoming clients.  Lets take this a step further and expand beyond the contact page. Create a spot on EVERY page that allows the visitor to connect with you and become a client.

Call-To-Actions

Call-to-actions or CTAs are located in various spots on the page that are calling on your visitors to take action and fill out some information. Lame definition but the name pretty sums it up.  Most CTAs are a transaction of information. For example, I have written a wonderful e-book but in order for you to download it, I need a name, email address, and some other stuff in return. Pretty straight forward.

Next Level of CTAs

The process works, but the 2-5% conversion rate doesn’t cut it for me.  I don’t have a statistic for the number of people that become clients from that number but I’m sure its very similar.  Is there a different way to use CTAs? Instead of a transaction of information, it needs to be a connection of people.  Network. So instead of offering a e-book, offer some time on Skype to talk or start a Hangout at Google+. The value of conversation will do more for your business than sending a link to your e-book.

How do you improve your CTAs? What can you do different?

 

Filed Under: 31DBC, Digital Presence, Innovation, WordPress Design

Taking a Moment to Analyze Sixrevisions.com

Analyzing Financial DataOur lastest endeavor in the 31 Day Blog Challenge is to go to a website in our niche and analyze.  Unknowingly to them, I have chosen sixrevisions.com. I will break it down into 4 major categories and briefly describe my thoughts within them.

The Design:

They rock a simple two-column layout and color scene that represents wisdom. They do a great job displaying what they do best. Awesome, knowledgable content that has to do with web design.  Each one of the images links to the blog post and they include a nice teaser to pull you in.

The Content:

I walk away from the major of their posts feeling and knowing that I have learned something new.  They stick true to their tag line “Useful Information for Web Developers & Designers. Learning is an important part of growing and resources like this help nurture this.

Reader Connection

Six Revisions interacts by displaying great tutorials for web developers and designers.  Tutorials use education and the exchange of ideas to grow relationships with the readers.

Traffic and & SEO

Hopped over to Website Grader by HubSpot so see how I compared to Six Revisions. (This could be ugly…)

Drum roll…..

Copied directly the WebsiteGrader:

A. Traffic Rank: Top 0.01 %

Alexa is an online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings.

Alexa rank of 2,024 which is in the top 0.01 % of all websites.

B. Competing Websites
Site Website Grade Moz Rank Google Indexed Pages Traffic Rank Blog Grade Linking Domains
sixrevisions.com 99 7 2,260 2,024 99 12,713
www.nextlevelinnovation.com 90 4 140 1,580,055 89 23
C. Score Summary
Section sixrevisions.com
Website Grade 99
Moz Rank 7
Indexed Pages 2,260
Traffic Rank 2,024
Blog Grade 99
Linking Domains 12,713

The great content they provide is why they have achieved such an awesome.  I have my work cut out for me.

Take some time to analyze someone in your market and see how you compare.

Filed Under: 31DBC, Digital Presence, Innovation, Journey

5 Ways To Get More Done With WordPress

SuccessPowerful, and limitless. Two words that best describe WordPress in my opinion.  WordPress gives me the ability to create, update, and innovate. It simply lets the user get more done.  Here are five ways to get more done with WordPress.

  1. Plugins. If you need your WordPress site to function in way that isn’t initially offered right out of the box, just hop over to the plugin directory and start searching.  You will find what you need.
  2. Widgets. Drag and drop at its finest. Change an offer on the homepage. Feature a new page. Add a contact form. If something isn’t working out as planned, change it.  You dont have to know code to add a new look to your site.
  3. Internal Linking. Awesome feature that simplifies creating internal links. Give your viewers new pathways to read more about your blog or business.
  4. Full Screen Editor. Great new feature in WordPress 3.2 that will eliminate that countless distractions and result in getting more done. I started using this feature immediately.
  5. Custom Frameworks. Having a solid foundation to built on is extremely important if you want to focus on getting more done on your blog or with your business. Frameworks alleviate the stress of coding and add the assistance of a solid community.
What did I miss? I know there a more things about WordPress that help you get more done. Lets hear them.
Filed Under: 31DBC, Business, Digital Presence, Genesis, Innovation, Journey, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , ,

Eliminating the Clutter on Your Website

At first glance, your site might not seen cluttered to you. Now you need to take a step back a pretend you are a visitor who has never been to your site. Is your message being conveyed easily or is it difficult to find among all the various changes and upgrades through the years.  This isn’t meant to say everyone’s website is a disaster.  I want to you to see if you can eliminate some of the useless clutter that has accumulated over the years.

Here are two areas you need to focus on if you want to remove the clutter.

Header/Logo

  • Does the header clearly show your logo and display who you are? This is your brand. Its needs to be clear and concise.  Without this nobody knows who you are.

Nav-bar

  • The navbar needs to be simple and direct.  Minimize the buttons. Take complete advantage of the dropdown menus, but keep it organize.  One of my favorite examples of a simple, well-organized nav-bar is Best Buy.

How do we remove the clutter? Not as difficult as it may seem.

  1. It is important to design the site from the customers perspective.  They don’t know where everything is like you do.  Ask a friend to take it for a test drive and try to break it or get lost within the site.  If a first time user can navigate from start to finish without getting lost, then the clutter has been removed from the navigation.
  2. The Nav-bar requires some basic data crunching to decide if its organize properly.  Use analytic’s to see what pages your visitors enter and exit on.  Also keep an eye on the visits by page breakdown.  This shows the most important pages to your visitors. Making the top pages easy to access is a key factor.
  3. Use WordPress.  Makes quick adjustments easy. Need help getting started?
  4. Do not make the logo so it dominates the valuable screen real estate.  I like to make the max height of a header/logo 160-200px.
Now head over to your site and look at it like its the first time you have been there.  Write down your thoughts.
Filed Under: Business Model Innovation, Digital Presence, Innovation, Weekly Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,

What is Next Level Innovation?

Journey - First StepWeb Solutions.

I’m here to help you with your digital presences. As technology continues to grow at an exponential it is important that you keep up. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be on the bleeding edge.

NLI blog was created as a resource to reflect and understand the importance of having a solid digital foundation. Everyday we are surrounded by a wealth of good and bad information.  I want you to be able to sit down and think about where you stand in the vast internet frontier.  This is a place to share ideas and walk away thinking you have learned something new.

Now lets innovate.

For the next 31 days, I will be embarking on my own journey with blogging.  I joined a 31 day blogging challenge being run by Ricardo Bueno. Amazing what you find on Twitter when you follow the right community.  If you would like to join me, that be great. Also please provide feedback, because this journey will not be successful unless you can walk away from here saying you have learned something.

 

Filed Under: Digital Presence, Innovation, Journey

Seven Words

Challenge.

Engage.

Interact.

Innovate.

Live.

Learn.

Connect.

Filed Under: Business Model Innovation, Digital Presence, Innovation, Journey, Weekly Innovation

Create a Website Base and Set Up Your Outposts

Devín Castle Outpost
Why do you have Facebook or Twitter?  To engage and interact with your audience.  Lets look at a model of engagement that is very similar to the one used by our military in various parts of the world.  This post will avoid the political aspects of our foreign policy.  It is only meant to compare your digital strategy with the one used by the finest military in the world.

First thing that needs to be established is the main base, i.e. your website.  Its main purpose is to supply content and establish a presence in the digital world.  Contains EVERYTHING that is important to your digital presence.

Next focus is getting your content to the population.  Set up your outpost in the various social media worlds.  Get your valuable content out to your audience.

Now that you have gotten your content out there, you need to listen. Use the feedback to rework and perfect your content.  What is the point of having an outpost if your not going to listen?

Think about this strategy and IMPLEMENT IT.

Filed Under: Digital Presence, Innovation, Journey, Weekly Innovation, WordPress Design

Radio Interview with Todd Youngblood & Todd Schnick from Dreamland Interactive

[powerpress]

I recently had the great opportunity to interview Todd Youngblood and Todd Schick from Dreamland Interactive (and a few other solid organizations). Our conversation touched different topics revolving around small businesses and their digital presence.

Topics include:

  • How a small business can benefit from a website.
  • The areas a business should focus on.
  • How geographical limitations shouldn’t limit your digital presence.
  • How do you drive new visitors? How do you create loyal visitors?

Thank you for taking the time to listen to our conversation. I hope you enjoyed Next Level Innovation’s first radio show.

Interviewees:

Dreamland Interactive:
Dreamland

Todd Schnick:
Todd’s Intrepid Blog
Find Todd S. On Twitter

Todd Youngblood:
Todd’s YPS Group Blog
Find Todd Y. On Twitter


 

 

Filed Under: Digital Presence, Innovation, Radio, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Creating a Theme Round 2

Here is my second attempt at creating a theme. Tungsten v2. Now off the the fun part, coding. (Made easy with Genesis by StudioPress) If all goes well, I will be offering the theme as a free download.

Filed Under: Genesis, Innovation, Studiopress, WordPress Design

WordPress Can Change Your Digital Presence

What is stopping you from moving your website to a dynamic platform? Think about it. Lets step through some quick questions to see where your small business stands.

  • Let’s start simple. When was the last time your site was updated? Can you update it without going to a webmaster?
  • Can you easy update your product, and/or service?
  • Do you have old products still float around??

If you answered No, No, and I don’t know, then its time to look into making some changes to your digital presence.

Here’s why its time for you to move your website over to the WordPress platform.

  • Community – As of February 2011, WordPress has been downloaded 32.5 million times. So its been used by a few time I think.
  • Versatility – There is a theme for any business out there and if you can’t find one you like, no need to worry, it can be made exactly to your specs.
  • Plugins – Need a calendar? Need membership capabilities? Need conversion forms? You can find them as well.  Hundreds of thousands of plugins.
  • Blogs – The backbone of the WordPress platforms.  Blogs give you the capability to connect with your audience.
  • Unlimited Possibilities.

Now whats stopping you from evolving your static website to the dynamic WordPress platform?

Filed Under: Business, Digital Presence, Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,