Guest Blog Post – Jeremy Kasdorf with Chewie Media
We’ve been receiving a lot of communication lately from current clients as well as new clients about how to stand out quickly and become visible to more people. Uncertain times and the change in flow of new clients and customers can leave businesses looking for a way of pivoting, as the market pivots, or adapting their website in order to continue to bring in new business. So how can we adapt quickly to changing market conditions?
An Active Website
A website which serves a purpose in your sales process, and not just provides a way to passively appear online is a great option for businesses looking to capture more of their market and even reach out to new people who haven’t even heard of them before. The key to this is that the website needs to be active, not passive. Collecting information from interested visitors, directing traffic towards specific pages, sending off email messages to interested people, and prompting visitors who are about to leave your site to perhaps consider one final time are some of the ways that your website can become more active and engaging. While we still suggest all of the same design truths that we have always suggested – that your website needs to be attractive, quick, and interesting – it is also important now more than ever that your website “reacts” to those who are there, that it completes a task within your sales infrastructure. A website that can answer a question for a visitor is more likely to earn a bit more time with that potential client, and they may also make their final purchasing decision based on that one act.
A Fast Website
People are spending more time online now and over the next few months – so this should immediately be good for any business with a website, right?
Wrong.
As people spend more time online, their patience goes down as their desire to consume new material goes up. Your site stands out like a sore thumb when it takes forever to load. Here are a few things you can do as a business owner right now to fix that.
- Use smaller image sizes.
- Sign up for a CDN.
- Store any videos on Youtube or Vimeo and load them from there, not directly from your website.
Make sure if these steps don’t seem to be enough, that you consult a website expert to see how you can speed up your website further. Also stay tuned as I will be writing a blog entry specifically on speeding up your website.
…individual prices for ads and impressions have also fallen with this decline, and now is the time to take advantage of that.
A Responsive Website
Every year, I think that this may be the year I don’t need to mention that a website will be responsive. I’ve been building mobile-friendly and mobile-first websites for the last decade as I’ve seen traffic on mobile devices increase year after year, and every one of those years I think to myself that it’s going to be something that is standard with all websites finally. And then, each year, I see that it is again required to make note that a responsive website (one that resizes for mobile devices) is paramount in the year 2020 – and this was before we had a Pandemic sweep the globe. People consume the internet in their down time on their phones, that’s more evident each year. Desktops are for when there is a specific task or for work, phones and tablets are for lounging around on the couch, lying in bed, walking from point A to point B, and just about anywhere else you can think of. Phones rule the internet, and they definitely are the primary way that your potential customers and clients will find you now. So make it easy, make sure your website is designed with mobile devices in mind – because people know the difference now and they do leave if websites aren’t nice to navigate on their phones.
Advertise on Facebook
It’s time to go where the people are. They’re on Facebook and Instagram now. They’re checking on statuses, playing games, messaging friends and family, and sharing at an amazingly high rate. Time spent in front of Facebook and Instagram is up.
And more importantly, advertising on Facebook is down. Facebook is experiencing lower spending in retail spaces, travel, consumer packaged goods, and entertainment, which represent a combined total of 30%-45% of Facebook’s total revenue. As consumer demand has fallen, advertising has started to decline. This means that individual prices for ads and impressions have also fallen with this decline, and now is the time to take advantage of that.
Running a Facebook and Instagram advertising campaign is significantly cheaper than running an Adwords campaign and can yield getting in front of a lot more people per day as well. This is the perfect time for this form of advertising.
