When driving visitors to a specific landing page of your website, it is important to ensure that the landing page is clean and professional looking, with clear and concise calls to action. You will want to make the most out of the landing page, which is especially true when there is a Pay per Click initiative in place. In other words, why spend advertising dollars to send traffic to a page that does not effectively encourage your visitors to complete some sort of actionable step?

So, what types of steps or action items should your landing page encompass? Below are a few that – in my opinion – every landing page ought to have.

• Calls to Action. I would recommend a minimum of two. A few examples include: Download Our Latest Whitepaper, Sign up For Our Monthly Newsletter. View our Portfolio, Buy Now, etc. These are all excellent forms of lead generation for your company and can be then used as a sales tool. Be sure to include any promotions or discounts you may be offering.
• Professional Looking Page. Often times, this is the first impression your visitors will have of your company. Make it count. Display the components of your website that make your company stand out above the rest. I.e. Awards, Certifications, etc.
• Relevancy to what the visitor searched on. For example, if you are a beauty supply site and the searcher typed in Volumizing Shampoo, he/she should be taken directly to the page within your website that supports this search query.
• Simplicity. The page should be concise, with a clear direction as to what you want your visitors to do.

Your landing pages are a very important part of your online marketing mix. Make the most out of them!

It is a well known fact that the holidays are prime time for online retailers. A good holiday season can be the difference between what turns a company from being in the red to being in the green. The biggest, most obvious, and anticipated holiday is Christmas, which typically yields the highest traffic and sales; especially for an ecommerce website.

Unfortunately, a common mistake many online retailers continue to make is not capitalizing on the many other holidays that can also drive increased, qualified visitors and (ultimately) sales.  It is important to remember that consumers are always looking for a deal and chances are… your competition is probably doing a good job of enticing them with holiday offers. As a friendly reminder, below are the holidays/seasons by month that should not be forgotten and can be taken advantage of in your pay per click initiatives. Some are religious holidays, others are simply the start of a new season, or perhaps a holiday you would never have even thought about, much less utilized to drive traffic to your website.  Be creative with your ad copy, keywords and incentives; you just might be pleasantly surprised with the results!

January: New Years Day, Martin Luther King Day

February: Groundhog Day, Chinese New Year, Lincoln’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Washington’s Birthday

March: Ash Wednesday, St. Patrick’s Day, Spring Begins

April: April Fool’s Day, Passover, Good Friday, Easter

May: Mother’s Day, Memorial Day

June: Flag Day, Father’s Day, Summer begins

July: Independence Day

September: Labor Day, Autumn begins, Rosh Hashanah

October: Yom Kippur, Columbus Day, Halloween,

November: All Saint’s Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving

December: Hanukkah, Winter begins, Christmas, Kwanzaa

I highly recommended that you start planning your marketing calendar a few months before each holiday to ensure that you will be all set with whichever promotion you choose to offer, as well as have plenty of inventory available. Happy Holidays!

Who else is sick of trying to access a website from a Blackberry, Android or iPhone only to be unable to view the site properly, due to the site not being mobile-friendly? Ugh! It is very annoying when that happens and it is happening way too often!  It amazes me how many companies are missing the mark when it comes to mobile. Considering the fact that the number of Smartphone users continues to grow, more and more people will be utilizing their devices to access the internet. Companies ought to create a mobile friendly version of their website in order to serve their customers better. It is beyond frustrating for someone trying to find basic information such as your store hours, phone number, current promotions or directions, to not be able to get this information because you do not have a mobile-friendly version of your website.

A mobile website should be simplistic in nature and certainly does not need to be like your full website. The cost to design a mobile website is also relatively inexpensive.

The mobile website should contain basic information that people want or need to see. As an example, here is our mobile website, compared to our full website.  As you can see, we have skinned the mobile site to have a similar color scheme to our regular site. We have then included just a few pages: Home, About Us, Contact us and Services. In addition, we have made our full website available from the mobile site, as well as included links to our Social Media channels.

There are no excuses. Too many people are forgoing their laptops and PC’s and simply using their Smartphone’s instead. You must have a mobile friendly version of your website immediately if not sooner. Go mobile or go home!