Category: News

How to create the perfect landing page

What is a landing page and why are they used?

Any business is unlikely to become successful without generating new leads. The purpose of a landing page is to do exactly that, generate leads. It’s a web page which is created for marketing purposes to capture information via a contact form. This could be linked to your website or be a stand alone web page for a specific campaign and your potential client will be led to the landing page from another source such as an email campaign, social media post etc.

So, why should you create landing pages, and how can you create the perfect landing page?

Customised to your target audience

From your experience and knowledge, i’m sure you are aware that every customer/client is different. Creating a landing a page enables you to reach out to a certain audience or put emphasis on a campaign that you are currently running. A landing page allows you to customise a contact page to add anything you wish, rather than direct users to your general contact form on your website. This can also help you track where enquiries are coming from and what works for your target audience.

Headline

Use a catchy headline that will make the user want to stay and contact you. Try using an open question as a heading as these can generate more user engagement. Using short, catchy emotionally capturing messages using your target keywords is highly recommended. Your landing page headline will be the first thing users will see when visiting the page, so make sure you take the time to think of the message you want to get across to your specific target audience.

Design & Content

Design should be kept simple, use your logo and your brand colours to portray consistency and professionalism. Make sure the use of white space is used optimally as you don’t want too much going on the page to distract the user from enquiring.

Colours of buttons on your landing page can influence a users purchasing decision, color is one of the most studied marketing aspects that influence the psychology behind decision-making. Some top button colour examples that you should use include: Red, orange, bright blue, purple, bright pink, yellow.

Easy to read

A landing page should be easy and quick to read. The aim of a landing page is to capture information, so don’t include too much content which will take the user a long time to read. Avoid jargon and keep content simple and straight to the point.

Mobile Friendly

With over 52% of global online traffic coming through a mobile device, it is essential that your landing page can be viewed and used just as well on a mobile as on a desktop. Failing to make your landing page mobile responsive is like hanging up on 50% of your enquiries!

Use short contact forms

Have you ever left a contact form unfinished because you have been distracted? Or simply because it was too long? Don’t bore the user by having too many fields to fill in. Ask for as little information as possible, any additional information which is needed later can be taken from user when you make contact with them.

From experience we know what a user is more reluctant to submit a form if it has more than 3 fields and has a phone number field. Initially you just need to gather some information of users who are interested in your produce or service, so simply asking for their Name and email address is a good starting point to touch base, from here you can later ask the potential customer/client for their contact number if you both wish to discuss things over to phone.

Once the form is submitted, there should be a clear message to indicate that the user has submitted the form with an auto email response to say that someone will be in touch shortly.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of things you must consider when creating the perfect landing page for your company. We are the experts and we know what works, so if you are looking to get more online exposure, contact us today>

Our Recent Website Launches

As a business online, you need to guarantee that your website is the best, to do this it is important that you are offering the best online experience possible. Whether you’re selling products or services, offering the best user experience will help you generate more customers/ clients.

We have created successful websites for a long time now so we know what works well. If you are looking for an expert website design, print work or even digital marketing, don’t forget to check out our services for more information.

Evolution Fire Products

Save money and be safe with Evolution Fire Products. Within their P50 range, they have the product that is right for you. Check out their website designed and developed by Blast Digital.

Evolution

Evolution Fire Products >

Zenith Mobility

Our brief was simple, To create a new website. Their old website was looking a little old so we wanted to give a fresher and more modern feel to their brand by incorporating colour and a clean minimal design. Browse and purchase the very best mobility products on Zenith Mobility’s new and improved website.

Zenith

Zenith Mobility >

Graeme Storm

Graeme Storm came to us to give his personal brand a complete overhaul. This included a new logo designing, branded stationary and new website. The logo and needed something that was modernised, but still had the values of Graeme Storm as a brand.

Graeme Storm

Graeme Storm >

Firenta

Firenta had no existing website, so we were creating a website from scratch. Firenta are Fire Protection Engineering Consultants, so they wanted something quite corporate, clear and concise.

Firenta

Firenta >

If you are looking for a new website you have come to the right place. Want a professional website at an affordable cost? contact us today to receive a FREE consultation.

5 Design Elements that make a successful website

In this digital age, websites are are essential to keep a business successfully running. Without an online presence your business may not even get seen. With this in mind, it’s important to think about all aspects of what makes a successful website. Here are our top 5 web design elements that you need to implement to become successful online:

Colour Scheme

You may not think it, but the colour scheme of your website is a key factor to create trust and brand recognition. An effective colour scheme will make your logo and content imagery stand out. It takes a trained eye to carefully choose the most effective colour scheme to accentuate your website’s message.

Colours can subconsciously spark emotions, so when choosing a colour scheme it’s important to take into consideration how your prominent colour scheme can affect the user’s experience. So the colour red can represent comfort, love and even excitement. Whereas the colour blue portrays calmness, wisdom and loyalty.

To find the best colours, visit this website – checkmycolours.com. Here you can check your foreground and background colour combinations to ensure all the right colours are used.

Did you know that 85% of shoppers base their purchasing decisions on colour?

Fonts

Fundamentally, choosing the right font can help balance out the visual structure of your website design. Get it wrong and and visits to your website could plummet. Choosing the right fonts can complement your website’s colour scheme.

The font must be the right size, if your website font is too big, visitors will have to scroll down the page which will make them lose interest and no one could read font that is too small. There is so much that goes into choosing the right font design, make sure you choose right!

Imagery & Graphics

Imagery is huge when it comes to the success of your website. Its vital that images aren’t outdated, inconsistent and an eye sore. A picture on your website ultimately represents your business and what you stand for, so it’s important not to use generic business images, these are so impersonal and are used everywhere. The more time you put into the design of a website, the better results you will see.

Do you have information or facts you would like to share, but afraid visitors won’t read it? Tell your story using infographics. These are basically a visual representation of information in charts and images.

Call To Actions

With a call to action (CTA) you are looking to provoke an immediate response. If designed and implemented right, CTAs can be quite a strong marketing tool. If a website is designed right, a CTA will be one of the first things a visitor will see, whether this is in the middle of content or as a popup. It’s important that the design fits in with the current colour scheme and displays a clear message of what you want users to do.

Responsive Design

So you have a superbly designed website that incorporates a great colour contrast, the right fonts and professional imagery has been designed. You can now move onto something else right? Wrong! Every web designer knows that their design must be visible across all devices. This means that the chosen website design will look just as good on a mobile as it does on a desktop. Knowing what designs, fonts and imagery will work across all devices is a key element to consider when designing a successful website.

If you really want to succeed online you need to realise that creating a ‘free’ website for your business with a generic template will not work. Everyone has this exact same design! To stand out from the online crowd, it’s important to hire an expert web designer to get all key elements right. We are expert Web designers with an excellent reputation. To find out how we can help you create a successful website, visit our web design page today!

6 top Google tools you need to learn

Did you know that the internet giant Google is more than just the biggest search engine in the world? Google has many free tools available to help a digital marketer succeed online. Find below a list of our top 6 favourite Google tools you should be using:

Google Analytics

For any business Google Analytics is the most powerful free tool to use when analysing your website’s behaviour. At first look the Google Analytics dashboard may look daunting, but when you delve into each section it becomes clear why this should be part of your everyday online marketing efforts.

To set this up all you have to do is create a Google Analytics account and paste the tracking code into the header of your website’s code. Google can then keep track of all your website visits as well as display much more critical data.

The data you can analyse on Google Analytics include:

Real time website visits – On Google Analytics you can see who is browsing your website in real time, what page they’re on and where they are located. This data is stored for later use but it can be handy to see who is on your website right now.

Audience > Overview – This is a general overview of Google Analytics, from here you can set a date range and see how many visit your website has received per hour, day, week or month. Not only that, you can see and overview of what country people have visited most from and which device they used to visit the website (Desktop, Mobile or Tablet).

Acquisition > All Traffic – Within this section you can see where your visitors came from. This could be from a Google search, a Paid advertisement or even another website. With this information you can see what drives traffic to the website and what needs more attention to build up your daily visits.

Goal Tracking – Within the admin section of Google Analytics you can set up goals on your website. This could include adding a snippet of code around a button to track enquiries or triggering an action when someone has reached a thank you page. All this data is integrated into the Google Analytics dashboard and you are able to see which website call to actions work and which may need some tlc.

There is so much more to explore on Google Analytics and even though Google does not display all data, you certainly get an idea of where your digital efforts should focus on.

Google Search Console

Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Consoles primary use is to monitor your website’s performance in Google Search results. To rank on Google it’s important that your website is submitted to Google in order for them to crawl each page. Google Search Console allows you to submit a website and verify that you own the site, which will enable you to access private Google search data which can affect how Google crawls it.

Another advantage of using Google Search Console is their crawl error checker. You can see if Google is having trouble crawling any of your website pages which could affect your ranking ability.

Google Adwords

Google AdWords or PPC Advertising (Pay Per Click) is another useful Google tool to advertise your website through paid advertising to appear at the top of Google’s Search result. All you need to do is set up an AdWords account and create a campaign for a specific product or service you offer. Create a relevant ad to persuade people to visit your website and add specific keywords into our campaign that will trigger the ad once ‘Googled’.

There is a lot more to Google AdWords than meets the eye. You must adjust bids and set ‘match types’ to ensure that you don’t go over budget as well as many other elements; you will not be the first and certainly not the last to feel slightly confused here! To get the most out of paid advertising, we would recommend talking to a PPC professional.

Top Tip – Connect Google Adwords to your Analytics account to compare how many visits you’re gaining from organic searches compared to paid advertising efforts.

Keyword Planner

It’s worth mentioning that within Google Adwords there is a useful tool called the ‘keyword planner’. This is handy if you need to carry out keyword research to determine which keywords you are looking to target.

The keyword planner allows you to see how many average monthly searches a specific keywords receives, how competitive the keywords are to target as well as suggesting new keyword ideas to target.

Google My Business

Looking to get your business shown on Google Search, maps and other Google listings? Then you will need a ‘Google My Business’ account. Google my business is a central hub of information where you can add all of your business details in one place

Google My Business is great for local companies as it makes it easier for people to find you. Once set up, your business will appear in search snippets and Google search map results.

Google Alerts

Sick of Googling the same phrase every week or even every day? Simply set up Google Alerts for a specific keyword phrase and any related posts or news about your chosen topic will get sent straight to your inbox, saving many hours of scrolling Google.

So there it is! Google is a lot more than just a search engine and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Google are always introducing new tools and technological advantages that will point your business in the right direction if used the right way. Got a Google question you need answering? Contact us today! We are always happy to help.

Building an Online Marketing Presence

Here at Blast we are always looking to expand our knowledge in the online world, so recently we decided to attended a workshop called ‘Building an Online Marketing Presence for your Business’. Here we learnt some top digital marketing tips from industry experts, which included a digital marketing Google representative.

What we know

There were many aspects of marketing discussed that we already knew, but as a successful digital marketing company we know nothing should be overlooked, especially when it comes to creating the very best digital marketing strategy.

If you don’t already know, Google Analytics is a great tool that can display a lot of useful information about a website, this can include website traffic, paid search traffic (from AdWords), tracking website conversions etc. Google Analytics was the most discussed topic, we discussed how it works and how to analyse data to configure the best possible digital marketing strategy.

‘42% of B2B buyers use their phone in the business purchasing process, but only 3% of a digital marketing budget is allocated to mobile digital marketing.’ – Google

This quote was mentioned in the workshop and was taken from Google’s own statistics. This is interesting because everyone knows that mobile performance is on the increase, even in the B2B sector, yet this shows us that most businesses don’t focus on increasing mobile marketing efforts as much as they should.

What we learnt

When an online marketing expert from Google spoke at the workshop they provided us with a lot of useful information to take into consideration when creating a successful digital marketing campaign. Some of which include:

Video popularity

We knew that video was great for engaging with customers when it comes to online marketing but what we took from the workshop was how important video is becoming, especially the B2B sector. Now 82% of Twitter users watch videos on Twitter and 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook and YouTube videos a week, this number is set to increase.

Gmail ad promotions

Gmail Ads can be set up in Google AdWords making it easier to target your email subscribers. With this form of advertising you only get charged for the cost per click, helping keep costs low. If you want to get started with Gmail promotions, check out Google’s guide.

Mobile ads

Mobile ads can be useful, if you target the right audience in the right way they have the potential to increase your brand’s visibility and overall conversion rate. However, the Google spokesman recommended not to advertise on gaming apps (unless you’re a gaming company) as these can generate a high bounce rate and spend all of the allocated ad budget.

Moving forward

This workshop was beneficial as an online marketing refresher and the team at Blast would recommend it to any aspiring digital marketer. If you are looking for professional digital marketing help, look no further than Blast Digital. Our expert team are learning and creating new strategies every day to get our clients noticed. Contact us today for more information.

6 Qualities of a Great Graphic Designer

Graphic designers may be easy to come by but finding a great graphic designer can be more of a challenge. There are some key qualities you need to look out for when hiring or aspiring to be the very best. Here are some of our top tips that will distinguish a great graphic designer.

Creativity

A great graphic designer must be imaginative and they must be able to apply that imagination into their work. Creative people don’t just follow the crowd and the latest trends, they find inspiration in everyday objects and even themselves.

37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging (38%).

Consistency

In graphic design, the word consistency often crops up, whether you are working with clients on a website design, creating posters or even flyers, it’s essential to keep your designs consistent following a brand’s identity. Using a brand’s colour scheme, styles and fonts should be considered during all aspects of creation. A great designer will be able to incorporate a brand’s identity into all new inspiring design ideas and if a brand identity isn’t clear, a designer will be able to create one for them.

Problem solving

To become a great graphic designer it’s important knowing how to problem solve. A designer has to make things work, not only to create something brilliant but to know how their designs can work, whether that’s in a website’s development stage or knowing how to work with a client’s challenging expectations. A great graphic designer will not shy away from a challenge and will most likely discover new ideas and ask questions that most of us will overlook.

Always learning

Something you designed last year will not be necessarily how you’d design it now, designing is a lifelong process. A great designer can often be described as humble and always embracing new ideas from others. As the graphic design industry evolves a great designer will be the one to keep up with all new developments to get ahead of latest trends.

Able to take criticism

Not everyone will like everything you design, this isn’t because your design is bad, but because the client may have had a different vision in mind, criticism is something that shouldn’t be taken personally, it’s only another person’s opinion. A great designer will take criticism positively, accept it is bound to happen then learn what works well and what doesn’t work.

Patience

Designing great work can be time consuming, the best ideas often don’t come quickly and it can take numerous attempts for an idea to develop. A great designer has the patience to continue working on an idea that corresponds with the the clients needs. If the client keeps changing their mind, or coming up with different ideas after you have spent a long time making those ideas come to life, a great designer will be patient and give the client what they want (within a set timescale) because you know the end result will be worth it.

There are of course many more traits that a great designer should have but if you can find a designer with all these qualities, you are onto a winner. The demand for visual content is on the rise meaning a designer’s job is more important than ever, finding the right designer for your company’s needs is essential. Our in house graphic designers excel in all of the above and more so if you are looking for excellent graphic design services don’t hesitate to contact us today.

4 Digital Trends that will shape your online presence

Being a huge success online is becoming increasingly difficult, in this day and age the demand for providing the latest technologies is skyrocketing and the constant need for companies to keep up with digital trends adds pressure to every digital strategy.

We know it’s important to keep up to date with the latest digital trends, so here is a list of our top 4 that every successful digital marketer should focus on:

Mobile

People like simplicity when it comes to technology which is what mobile offers the user, just one of the many reasons why in recent years, the importance of having a responsive website can shape your company’s online success.

These days 80% of all internet users own a smartphone, the mobile trend is here to stay and become even more important than before. If your company isn’t embracing this technology yet, you are most likely already behind your competitors.

If you are looking to improve your website with a mobile responsive website design, get in touch with us today.

Live video streaming

Facebook live, Youtube live streaming and Periscope are just some of the most popular live video streaming platforms. Some companies have taken live streaming to showcase their latest product launches or even generate brand interest. Buzzfeed’s facebook live video is a great example of this where more than 800,000 people were watching two employees trying to make a watermelon explode with rubber bands.

Live video streaming works well for companies that already have a strong following, looking for new innovative ways to engage with real-time audiences. If you’re thinking of giving this a go, make sure you have a strong internet connection!

VR & AR

Although Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are not used regularly everyday yet, this technology has certainly engaged a positive reaction with many online audiences.

Within the past year there has been an increase of sales for VR headsets, these were one of the most popular technological accessory must haves of christmas 2016. AR also took off earlier in 2016 with Niantic releasing the augmented reality game, Pokemon Go. This is just the beginning of the VR and AR innovation, the future of these technologies are set to become even better in the near future.

Voice recognition

We have all heard of Siri, you would simply ask a question to your phone and receive an answer. Since then voice recognition technology has grown exponentially and now we are seeing technologies such as Amazon’s Alexa taking it to the next level, where you can potentially control the whole house by vocal recognition. Google has also jumped onto this technological trend recently with the introduction of their Goolge Home smart speaker that was released on the 6th April in the UK.

The future of voice recognition is on the up, soon you may find that you’re using this smart technology in your future business endeavours.

To see your company thrive in the online world and build your online presence, take these digital trends into consideration when creating any future digital marketing strategy. Every digital trend starts with a well designed website, if you are looking for a new site then contact us today.

What to look for when choosing a Website Designer

Designing the best website for your business is one of the most important things you can do to help your business, since, nowadays, most people do their research and choose services or products online. So choosing a website designer is a big decision for any company.

With the plethora of design agencies out there, how do you choose and how do you decide what to look for in a website designer.

Here are our suggestions.

First of all, when choosing a website designer you should consider their experience and their portfolio and whether they have experience in your business sector or not. This is not an absolute prerequisite because experience does not always constitute excellence, but, sometimes, it may make a difference depending on the business; if the designer has experience in your actual line of business, then they might already be aware of the different aspects of the website that they need to highlight and so forth.

The next thing, and probably the most important, is to talk to them. Do they actually listen to you and do they understand your vision? No one knows your business as well as you do and you are the only one who can really know what it is you’re trying to do with your business; they are there to implement your ideas.

Having said that, the next thing is, do they actually have ideas of their own? It’s important, when choosing a website designer, that they can also bring something to the table.

Are their ideas adding to your vision and improving your business appeal, and do they work in conjunction with your own ideas?

Do they know about modern trends and the direction of website designs at that particular time?

Another important aspect is that they design the website with CMS in mind, otherwise you will be constantly contacting your web developer to update the site. Most websites nowadays use the best content management systems, like WordPress or Drupal, and it is important that the website you choose understands this.

They should also develop using ‘responsive design’ so that your website also displays on tablets and IPhones and so forth; this is very important in today’s marketplace!

Finally, you have to consider their fee, although in this case, like in all aspects of life, “you get what you pay for” and if they are dirt cheap, then they’re probably not very good.

‘If you buy cheap, then you buy twice’

There are other factors you should consider when choosing a website designer, but if you stick to the aforementioned, then you should be on the right track.

Best Wishes for 2017

Wishing you all the very best for 2017!

Blast Digital is now entering only its 2nd year as a trading name of Property Webmasters Ltd, but in this time we have managed to attract some very prestigious companies to our client list. We look forward to continue to support and add to this growing list in 2017!

We are very excited about what 2017 may bring, its already started with a bang and this is our first day back in the office! So lets hope that continues.

So, who are we? And how can we help you?

We are a team of professionals in the marketing industry, we offer various services that allow our clients to grow. So, if you are an ambitious business owner looking to take things to the next level then speak to us about how we can help you attract more customers in 2017.

Contact us today >