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Google’s Omid Kordestani Confirms Buy Buttons. Is Your Website Ready?

Adopt a mobile-first strategy

Back on February 26th, Google announced a couple of major algorithm changes that increased the weight of mobile-friendliness among its ranking factors. This created a big push encouraging website owners to have mobile ready websites before the changes took effect on April 21, 2015. If you still don’t have a responsive website for mobile devices, it’s not too late to adopt a mobile-first strategy in your web development and SEO marketing efforts.

 

This post won’t get into the details of how you should create your mobile-first strategy; however on a very high level, Googlebot — Google’s spider — that crawls your site must be able to access the website’s CSS and JavaScript. The Googlebot’s ability to crawl your site influences how your site is ranked. Don’t have a mobile friendly website; your ranking declines. If the negative impact to your search ranking doesn’t motivate you, perhaps the potential impact to your bottom line (i.e., revenue) will do the trick.

If you want to improve the mobile friendliness of your site, call +1 (646) 926-6584 or schedule a consult with One Epiphany and we’d be happy to help.

 

E-commerce sites get ready for mobile customers

On May 15th, the Wall Street Journal shed some light as to what may have been the driving force behind Google’s algorithm change – buy buttons.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Google plans to add buy buttons directly to its search results.  Google Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani confirmed while at the Code Conference in Southern California this week, “There is going to be a buy button soon. It’s imminent.” The Wall Street Journal report offered additional information by stating the buy buttons will initially be available only on mobile searches. Hence the reason for the algorithm changes and the urgency behind the mobile friendliness of business sites; or so I believe.

Is your paid search game up to par? Or looking to purchase Ad Words (Google, Bing/Yahoo) at a discount? Give One Epiphany a call today (+1 646 926 6584) or schedule a consult to learn more.

 

The importance of mobile friendly websites

Buy buttons will appear alongside paid search ads results under a “Shop on Google” heading. “Organic” search results returned by the algorithm will not have a buy button option. As more people perform searches on their smartphones than on computers, the likelihood of making purchases using mobile devices increases. Even if you don’t have an e-commerce site, don’t forget people are more frequently making mobile searches that lead to offline purchase too. Mobile ready websites motivate users to stay on the website, click, and even purchase (online and off) because of faster load times and information being presented in a manner that is simple and easy to digest. The ease of navigation is another major factor in whether a user continues through the sales funnel or quickly exits to see if a competitor’s site is any better.

Does your e-commerce site provide a user friendly and seamless buying experience? Contact One Epiphany for an audit of your website and we’d be happy to let you know.

Image credits: Carlos Luna, MoneyBlogNewz via Flickr

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Thinking of a DIY Website Migration? Think again.

I pride myself in being a daughter of a mechanic. As a result, I like to know what happens “under the hood” in many aspects of life and work. One example of my tinkering has been with my website. The one-epiphany.com website has been a “pet project” or more affectionately – a labor of love. It’s how I cut my teeth so many years ago so that I could understand and learn to speak developer language. In fact, I use my website for the same purpose even today.

 

My latest endeavor occurred in January when I undertook migrating my website from one host server to a new one. I simply enjoy learning the basic ins & outs of what my development team does even if I never plan to fix or update each & every component or feature myself. No, the website isn’t perfect. No, I’m not a programmer. And no, I’m definitely not the person who will write the code for the next technical project you graciously award One Epiphany :-) .  Now that the focus of my business is evolving and I’m driving more traffic to the website, the purpose (and appearance) of my website will have to change to be representative of the quality of work I provide my clients.  But let’s leave that story for another blog post. Today I am sharing my adventures as a do-it-yourself small business owner; a role I’m sure many of we all take on from time to time…..and shouldn’t.

 

Now, I had been planning to change host servers for months! The task was never made a priority until I realized the migration was the roadblock (real or otherwise) for why I wasn’t ready to implement the very blog you are reading now as well as some other website updates you’ll see in the coming months. Well, when I make up my mind to do something, I want instant gratification, immediate results. So of course, this was no different. Although there were folks I could call and have the job done in a matter of hours, it was late on a Friday and it was unrealistic of me to think I could find someone to start a job right as the weekend was kicking off.  Even though I had never migrated a website to a new server before, I vowed I would do it myself and get it done before the weekend was out. I honestly expected the migration to take me – a “never ever” – a day, maybe 1.5 days at the most. Well, fast forward 3 days later and I finally got it done! It gave me a huge sense of accomplishment. I even went walking around to find somebody, anybody to celebrate my recent victory over the battle of the server migration. However no matter how victorious I felt, the experience was one of the most frustrating ones at best. Frustrating because….

 

  • it ate up an entire weekend plus a work day
  • not everyone from the hosting company considered customer service to be king
  • I wanted the bragging right of saying I did it all by myself
  • stubbornness prevented me from waiting a few more days for “done for me” assistance
  • if I had my developer do it, it would have been finished 3x faster

 

Thankfully for me, what I learned from the experience has helped me with a personal website project I started (& completed) just a couple of days ago. Even so, I don’t recommend you follow my lead of being that stubborn business owner. You know the one who is too proud to ask for help or too stingy with money to realize when something is an investment versus an expense. If I had to do it again, I would hire someone to do the migration for me and learn how to do it myself at another point in time. It takes up too much time and energy to learn a new skill set you don’t plan on using repeatedly.  Instead use your time on something more productive and preferably revenue generating.

 

Lessons learned:
  1. Do not try to learn something new when time is of the essence
  2. Do not let pride get in the way of efficient progress
  3. Do ask for help, even when you want to do it yourself

 

Keep an eye on future blog posts related to being a small business owner and my own company website refresh project. If you want to discuss your particular online marketing concern or would like me to elaborate on anything described in this post, schedule a “virtual coffee date” with me by clicking the button below.

 

Schedule your “virtual coffee date”a 30 minute consultation & it’s FREE!

 

Photo Credit: Andrew Eason

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Finding the Best CRM for Your Business

I’ve been doing research for a client to determine customer relationship management systems (CRM) most suitable for her company. After creating a list of 40+ options, I decided enough was enough and to select my top CRM picks even if I didn’t yet have all the details to fill the numerous columns within in the spreadsheet I had created. Sometimes you have to move forward with imperfect action to make progress. Therefore, I went through the list and identified 6 or 7 CRM providers who fit the bill for this particular client. Then I went through the list again to focus on the features each offered. I was able to narrow the list down to 3 CRM providers based on this deep dive.

The 3 CRMs I selected are Nimble, Zoho CRM, and Insightly. They were chosen for the ease of use, price, features, and flexibility. I had planned to write a detailed comparative review, but it seems someone (or rather FitSmallBusiness.com) already beat me to it. I’m sure there are other similar pieces out there, but this particular comparison was so well written and organized, I felt it would be best to share it with you instead of trying to recreate the wheel. Without further ado, I present the link to the Best CRM for Small Business written by FitSmallBusiness.com.

 

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Kick Start Your Email Marketing in 5 Simple Steps

Recently a small business owner reached out to get some advice on email marketing after reading Cynthia Price‘s article The 8-Second Challenge: Email Marketing for Our Shrinking Attention Span on Entreprenuer.com.  Here is what business owner said:

 

8 second attention span? Yikes. Who markets via email? What tools do you use and how often do you send emails? Do you segment your audience? Do you do a newsletter?

Email marketing is something I’m planning to do more of in the future. Whether it is for my business or a client’s here is what I recommend:

  1. Use a email marketing provider (MailChimp, AWeber, Ontraport, Emma, etc.)
  2. Add an email opt-in pop-up or “hellobar“ to your website if you don’t currently have one
  3. The frequency of emails should be based on the needs of your audience; however, also consider what you can commit to doing consistently.
  4. Absolutely segment your audience. Segmentation could be based on the type of content you create or the type of audiences you target.
  5. Consider creating a blog for your website versus a newsletter alone. This will allow you to create content that will drive your ideal client to your website as well as give you something to share or reference in your newsletter.

The above is just a quick high-level response to the small business owner’s questions. Keep an eye on this blog feed future blog posts will include email marketing provider reviews, thoughts on subscriber or opt-in tools, and more! If you want to discuss your particular online marketing concern or would like me to elaborate on anything stated above, schedule a “virtual coffee date” with me by clicking the button below.

 

Schedule your “virtual coffee date”a 30 minute consultation & it’s FREE!

 

Photo Credit: RaHuL Rodriguez
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