Website Optimization for Internet Marketing

What Should I do to Increase Online Leads Through Web Design & Development Optimization?

At Zigma, we view web design, development and optimization as interconnected components of a successful website.

Although the web design optimization is less technical than development optimization, it is vital to conversion optimization and lead generation. When implemented correctly, they work together to allow you to do what your business does best – reach and serve new customers.

Optimized websites have sound technical components as well as visual components that appeal to two types of users – humans and search engines. Your website needs to reach both types of users to attract more qualified leads.

Every website created by Zigma incorporates best practices in all areas of design, development and search engine optimization (SEO).

Let’s explore how we ensure every website we develop is technically sound.

Why are Technical Best Practices Important to my Website’s Performance as a Lead Generation Tool?

We take the responsibility of creating “healthy” websites that perform well for our clients very seriously. By performing well, we are referring to a website’s ability to communicate with search engines, and entice a client’s target audience to take action (e.g. calling or emailing the company).

Keeping up with search engine behaviours and best practices is extremely important to ensure we continually learn and research how to improve our knowledge with regard to performance, accessibility, SEO and progressive web applications. We can’t expect a website to succeed for a client unless we know exactly how it is being evaluated, right?

How a website is structured not only helps to make it user-friendly, but it must be search engine friendly for Google, Bing (and others) to access and read content. Simply stated, great content for humans does not mean that a search engine will understand it…or vice versa. We assist clients with displaying and writing high quality content that, from a technical perspective, is easy to read and follow. For clients who already have a website, we can provide a content audit to improve it for both types of audiences.

We want our client’s websites to be the answer to search engine users questions. For example, if one of our clients owns a sushi restaurant in Toronto, we will use our technical knowledge to help their website be among the first options they see when someone types “sushi restaurant Toronto.” Ranking higher on a search engine is helpful for business owners in all industries because it puts clients in a good position to attract and secure new business.

Which Technical Tools Does Zigma Use to Enhance Websites?

When we design, develop and optimize a website, we use and integrate tools into it to make it exactly what it should be – the cornerstone of your digital marketing plan.

Zigma uses Lighthouse and Schema.org to measure, audit and enhance the quality of our client’s websites.

Many clients are already using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform when they start working with us. We often integrate Hubspot, Infusion and Salesforce.com into websites for two main purposes:

• Collecting information
• Making it easier to connect with your customers

Our team has experience with other CRM platforms, and we can customize the backend of your website to help you gather and analyze data.

We also track user behaviour through Google Analytics, Mouseflow and VWO to help our clients optimize their design based on user behaviour patterns. For example, when you are shopping in your favourite grocery store, have you noticed that two staple items, bread and milk, are on two opposite sides of the store? This layout helps increase the likelihood that you will spend more time in the store, and buy more than the two items you came in for. Analyzing online user behaviour patterns helps the team at Zigma decide where to place content and how to structure our client’s websites.

Do you know which tools will help you improve your website’s performance? Connect with us to discuss the best online strategy for your website.

What Should I Know About Visual Best Practices (for Humans and Search Engines)?

Firstly, we tell all of our clients that a key element of a website that converts well is a combination of technical and visual expertise working in tandem.

Zigma regularly collaborates with a user interface/user experience (UI/UX) designer to create visually appealing websites for humans and search engines. When clients come to us with a vision for the colours, layout or other artistic elements of their website, we are able to guide them based on this knowledge. We also identify and resolve potential design issues well before they generate errors or make it difficult for search engines to follow the content (e.g. placing a heading too close to a picture or other text).
At Zigma, we ensure that our websites include the following design best practices:

• Colour choices
• Use of contrasting elements
• Appropriate size and quality of images
• Appropriately sized text

We know that good content shines with good design choices!

Functional and practical websites must be easy to read on all devices (mobile phones, desktop computers and tablets). It’s important to remember that the same website will look different on each device; the team at Zigma recognizes the need to ensure users get the best visual experience by using our technical knowledge to make our websites easy to read on all three devices.

Have you ever been annoyed by a website that takes an excessively long time to load? Users want information quickly; if you have a website that loads very slowly, they may move on to a competitor. We optimize the media used on our client’s websites to be certain that they are not slowed down by large videos or excessive pop ups because we do not want them to miss a potential business opportunity. .

At Zigma, we integrate our knowledge of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) into our websites, ads and more. Our clients benefit because our knowledge helps them be more visible to their target market.

Website Audits: How Does Your Website Rank?

Our cost effective website audit offering provides answers to one of our most frequently asked questions – how well is my website performing?

We will provide feedback on the structure of your website, show you where you rank on search engines and evaluate your current content. Adwords are another important tool related to your website, and we have experts on our team who can evaluate them. Making changes to your websites and ads have the potential to provide a large return on investment for your business.

Completing a website audit will provide a snapshot of where you are, where you want to be and what we can do to help you get there.

Do you want to find out how your website stacks up against your competitors? Call our team to book an audit!