How to Achieve Responsive Web Design

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One of the biggest directions in digital marketing and website management is responsive web design. This is something that all brands and business owners need to be aware of, especially if they are hoping to attract online visitors, build engagement, and win those all-important conversions.

But what, exactly, is responsive web design?

Essentially, responsive web design is a tech-led, intuitive way of designing websites so that they integrate and work seamlessly with a host of other online technologies, across a range of different digital devices and interfaces. Why does that matter? Because your customers expect to have exciting, seamless, and fast online experiences that allow them to do what they want to do.

Remember too, that today’s online customers have varied needs and different preferences in the way that they interact with brands and spend money online. Many will go online via smartphones. Younger buyers, in particular, will expect to see products and services advertised on social media and then click to buy in just a couple of swipes. Others will want to use web chats to make bookings, find information rapidly, or switch between branded platforms to engage with a range of content.

Designing with different users in mind

Most digital devices are now touch screen enabled, so websites now need to be designed with mouse and touch screen users in mind. Responsive design means thinking about these aspects and adjusting the design accordingly. For example, drop-down menus are fine for mouse users but less so for touch screen users, hence the rise of single-page scrolling sites.

The rise of the fluid grid

Most web designers are now using fluid grids to achieve responsive design. These fluid grids intelligently scale website components for better sizing, which adjusts to every user’s screen. This prevents users from needing to zoom in and out. Users must be able to enjoy the same great experience on your website, whether they access it via a smartphone or desktop PC.

Achieving responsive web design

For better digital marketing, most businesses are now outsourcing their website design to a professional website design company that can deliver a responsively designed website that is future-proofed to integrate with all emerging technologies and to engage customers. Contact Real Internet to find out more about our excellent web design services that are designed to help businesses of all sizes enjoy better results from their digital assets. We provide affordable and adaptable websites, and cover the whole of the South West.

What to Include in a Digital Marketing Plan

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A digital marketing plan is integral for online businesses. It’s a roadmap that sets out all the details surrounding how a business plans to launch its online campaigns. It typically includes crucial factors such as goals, launch costs, and details surrounding any social media channels or platforms required. Let’s take a look closer look at what you should include in your digital marketing plan below.

Objectives of a Digital Marketing Plan

First and foremost, your digital marketing plan should clearly set out the objectives your business wishes to achieve. These will inform your strategy and make sure everyone working on it is on the same page. This also ensures that by the end of your allotted timeline, each set of objectives has been met. Either short or long term, common digital marketing objectives include increasing internet traffic by a certain percentage or converting a higher percentage of readers into customers.

Evaluative analysis

For a digital marketing plan to be truly successful, it must include an evaluative analysis. Consider where your business is at currently (think about your existing digital marketing performance, for example), in comparison to where it wants to be. This is crucial as it helps employees to understand the results of your objectives and whether you’re on track.

Equally, this allows you, as the boss, to set new goals that are more realistic for the business to achieve if the current ones aren’t being met. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, take a look at your figures for the current quarter and compare these to results from the past year. Doing so will help you see whether or not you’re on target and highlight the strengths and weaknesses in your digital marketing plan.

Strategy and tactics

No digital marketing plan will be successful without a clear strategy and tactics. It’s important that you understand where you’ve been going wrong before, so make sure you do plenty of research (including identifying your target market) before deciding on what methods you’re going to use going forward. Some of the most popular digital marketing strategies include:

• Conducting keyword research
• Creating content calendars
• Committing to a consistent social posting schedule
• Providing personalisation in email campaigns
• Segmenting your target audience
• and much more!

For more information about what to include in your digital marketing plan, contact the team at Real Internet today.

How Does Web Design Work?

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Web design is what creates the overall look and feel of a website. It involves planning and building the elements of a website, from its structure and layout to its colours, fonts, and graphics. Web design is not to be confused with web development, which is the coding that makes a website work. Here are the four stages of the web design process, from beginning to launch.

Web Design Project Discovery

Project discovery starts with defining the project. You will need to work with business analysts and researchers to help you identify existing problems in your industry, define your product’s unique selling points, and learn more about your customer segments. You’ll also need to conduct competitor analysis to help you to get a general idea of what has been done in the past to see what design improvements you can offer.

Architecture and Layout

Website architecture begins with code. These code templates determine how elements such as graphics, ads, and text will be represented. Simpler code results in fast page load speeds, less maintenance, and lower bandwidth and labour costs. Website architecture also encapsulates the functionality shown through templates like search, commenting, RSS, etc.

User Interface Design

User interface design is all about creating the visual components of a website. Besides the visual appeal, UI design helps establish your brand identity, draws visitors’ attention and keeps them engaged with your website. During this stage, your web designer defines the visual direction and layout of your site. After that, they decide on a preliminary product structure and conduct a series of interviews to establish a visual language that your business needs. Based on this information, your web designer should be able to create two or three mockups for you to choose from.

Launching, Analyzing, and Revising

This is the last stage of the web design process. The website is ready to go live at this stage, and all internal reviews have been completed. After a successful launch, a comprehensive review will be required to prove that the design is functioning as expected.

If you’re looking for web design services in Gloucestershire, get in touch with us today for more information.

How to Write Content for Digital Marketing

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Much of your success in digital marketing will rely on a steady stream of web page updates, blogs, news items and social media posts; fresh, dynamic content that informs, educates, persuades and influences.

Here are a few tips on content to get you started. These form the basis of an effective content marketing strategy.

How to write content for digital marketing

1. Know your audience

Good content talks directly to your ideal customer. You need to drill down on your target audiences and their buying behaviours and preferences. What do they want to hear?

2. Reinforce your brand

Page visitors and social media browsers make their minds up about you in a split second. They won’t linger to read lots of flowery text or wade through endless scrolling images, so make your brand statements loud, clear and compelling. Tell them why they should buy from you, in a way they can appreciate instantly.

3. Look at your competitors

Evaluating your own content strategy against your main competitors should be a constant process. What are they saying and what imagery are they showing?

4. SEO matters!

Your content is the central pillar of Search Engine Optimisation. Keep track of what keywords and questions your customers use when searching for your products or services. Make sure to work those naturally into your copy, as ‘keyword stuffing’ detracts from your SEO and your credibility.

5. User experience (UX)

Carefully consider the best ways to improve the UX on your mobile responsive website and within your social media. For example, your text should be succinct and sum up your products and services in a clear way. Your images should be strong.

For eCommerce websites, pay particular attention to content and UX on payment pages. Make the process easy and reassuringly safe to use.

6. CTAs

Lastly, make your calls to action prominent and persuasive to encourage your customers to get in touch with you or make a purchase.

If you’re looking for web design services you can rely on, give us a call

How Long Does It Take to Design a Website?

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Creating a website from scratch can take days, weeks, or even months. With so many variables in the website development process, the time required varies from one project to another. While we cannot give you a definite answer of how long website creation takes, we will be sharing the four steps of website creation and will give you a rough estimate of how long it takes to design a website.

Planning process to design a website

Without proper planning, you will lose sight of your goals and end up creating a website that isn’t suitable for your business. Therefore, the first thing you should do when developing your website is gauge your needs and create a plan. Communicate your primary goals with your website developer and let them know the pages and functionality you want your site to have. The planning process for a standard website takes about one to two weeks.

Design process

Once you have a plan of action in place, it’s now time to start designing your website. At this stage, your web designer should give a mock-up of how your website will appear based on your requirements. If there are any changes that you want to be made, communicate them early before development begins. The design process can take anywhere between one to three weeks.

The development phase

In this next stage, your website developer takes all the information you’ve given them and turns it into a fully functional website. Your web designer should always keep you in the loop of the progress being made because you may wish to change a key part of your website once you see it in action. As expected, this stage takes longer to complete because changes take longer to make. In most cases, it takes at least one month to fully develop a standard website.

Final review

Before any website is officially finished, it must go through one final round of revisions. This is to ensure that it looks and works as you anticipated. If there are no major changes required, then this process should take no more than two weeks.

At Real Internet, we cover the entire web design process from initial design to build. If you are looking for a reliable website design company based in Gloucestershire, contact us today to speak to our team of experts.

 

How To Do Market Research For Digital Marketing

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Market research is used to generate a greater understanding of the existing market, including what your potential customers and clients are looking for. By collecting this research, you can refine and adjust your business to suit demand and boost success. Once you have determined your targeted demographic, you can also more easily set out a marketing strategy and create appropriate content or products that will reach your target audience. So, how should you conduct market research?

1. Take inspiration from leading experts

You can learn from industry leaders when conducting your market research. Researching global leaders or successful businesses in your field will be hugely advantageous to gaining inspiration for how to boost your own business. Explore what steps these businesses took when they were in their early stages, note what worked for them and what didn’t, and apply this to your own business. Many larger companies and corporations have published their market research, and this may be valuable for those trying to reach their desired audiences.

2. Be aware of your competition

Having an awareness of your competitors is important for ensuring your own business success. Sharing a target audience with other companies and businesses can be daunting, but an advantage to take from this is that you can judge your competitor’s reach to your targeted audience and learn from their mistakes and their successes. You can research the best strategies to take to maximise the awareness and presence of your business for your audience.

3. Maximise the potential of social media

Social media is such a dominant aspect of everyone’s everyday lives, which is why it should be utilised to the full to benefit your growing business. Ad campaigns across social media are one of the most successful ways to increase the awareness and presence of your business or brand. If you set up a Facebook business page, you can monitor the activity of your audience and use this to ensure you are reaching the right people with your product or service.

If you would like more information about how to conduct market research for digital marketing, contact our professionals at Real Internet for more information. Based in the South West of the UK, Real Internet specialises in website design to boost businesses.