Wednesday, 24 April 2019

What Is the Difference between Web Design and Web Development


Web design
Think about web designers as those who transform an idea, or a story, into a visually appealing design, and use their layout to build the user experience throughout the whole website. They design the website’s look and feel. As an architect would create a plan of your house prior to start building it, similarly a web designer would model the layout of your website before a web developer can start developing it.
Web designers have a difficult role which is often underrated. In their designs they need to integrate the best user experience possible, and create a welcoming environment for the user. They have to change an idea from writing, into a usable design and interface that catches the user’s attention. A website cannot be described as great if a proper design strategy wasn’t applied into the early stages of the project. Nowadays, web designers are rated at the same level of web developers, as without a great user experience and design, the development cannot be truly appreciated by the user.
Web designers have built a whole library of strategic techniques for themselves. You don’t just create a perfect website immediately after reading or thinking about the specifications or the features required. You start with a scope — the focus point and the purpose that the website will offer. You would first roughly envision the designs in your head, and start with a sketch or draft of the design. From sketching, web designers move to wireframes, mock-ups, and to the final design. Professional web designers build the whole website in design components, with a pixel perfect layout of all the web pages, icons, typography and other intricate features.
These are some of the main roles of a web designer:
• Using software tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Framer, or Sketch to build the final layout design of the website
• Have good skills in graphic design and logo design
• Have a good feel for user experience, to identify the simplest approach possible to attain the desired function. This includes the layout, buttons, images and the general format of the website.
• Web designers need to keep themselves up to date with the latest design trends. It’s also important to keep design consistency that is made popular from other web giant companies, such as Google, and Facebook. This makes the website environment and interface easier to navigate and use, as it is already familiar to the users eyes.
• Web designers have to also keep in mind the branding of the website, colour palettes to be used, and the typography and readability of the website.
Web development
Think about web developers as those who turn the designs into a live website. Web developers uses web languages and software tools to develop the design and functionality of a website. Notice, that web developers are further split into two sub-categories; front-end developers, and back-end developers. I see front-end developers as the connection between both web designers and back-end developers, as having a little knowledge of both, would allow a front-end developer to build a fully working website. A front-end developer is the one who builds the interface, and provides the layout as the interaction between the back-end of the website and the user.
Front-end developers use three main languages; Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript (JS). With these languages, a developer is able to create a full-fledged website. From the main design layout, to inserting images, applying different types of typography and font families, implementing animations, the flow of different pages, form interfaces, and more.
Back-end developers are those who control the server data and requests. Usually a website requires back-end services if it contains dynamic data. This means, for example, users submitting a form with personal data (such as creating an account), or saving an article for your blog page. Generally, if the website requires data to be saved, and making it accessible at a later stage, it means that it would also need a database connection. Database connections are made possible by a direct connection from the server itself. Thus, a back-end developer then uses server languages such as PHP or ASP.NET, and writes database queries by using languages such as SQL or MySQL.
Here are some of the main roles of a web developer:
• Building the actual interface through which a user interacts with the website. This interface is built by front-end developers using HTML, CSS, and JS languages.
• Front-end developers can use styling preprocessors, javascript libraries, and frameworks to fasten the process of development.
• Front-end developers provide the markup design to back-end developers, so they can implement a dynamic website, and submit all the required data on the server and databases.
• Back-end developers create the backbone of the website using languages such as PHP and MySQL.
• Both front-end and back-end developers can use the same development environments or IDEs (Integrated Development Environment). These are software application tools where you code and build the structure of the website.
• Web developers may also use versioning tools to keep a history of the previous builds. This will help them to quickly and effortlessly move back to a previous “unbroken” version if required to do so.

Online Reputation Management Strategy - Part 1


Online reputation management (ORM) is a strategy and process of monitoring, identifying, and influencing your digital reputation and credibility online. An effective online reputation management strategy can also provide you with new opportunities and insight on increasing your brand awareness.
If you are a business owner, I’m sure you know that having a good reputation is important for business growth. The same goes for your digital reputation, as most people in today’s digital business lifestyle go online when they have a problem or require information regarding a specific product or service. If your reputation is negative online, will these people looking for answers turn to you? At the end of the day, a bad reputation online will have a negative effect on your business objectives.
There are many other reasons why it’s important to have an online reputation management process in place to help you with your social media and other digital marketing campaigns, but here are just a couple of reasons to consider getting one.
1. Increase sales
Many people are researching brands, services, and products online before they make the final purchase decision. Do you know what they are looking for? If not, then you are already missing out. What difference do your marketing campaigns make if you are not sure what message is being received by the people you are trying to reach?
Most companies start to investigate when their sales start to drop. For some, regaining momentum is not worthwhile economically and the service or product is discontinued. What if you had valuable insights about what your target audience is looking for online? Would this change the game a bit?
2. Build trust and credibility
Having the trust of your clients is a major component of success. Your clients discuss their purchases with friends and when they have a problem they will most likely spread the word about their experience. The internet makes everyone a citizen journalist and you should now worry about negative content spreading like wildfire online. If your company suffers a loss of confidence in the public, there is a chance that you will never be able to turn it positive again. If you can recover from this negative publicity to regain trust from your target audience, the cost will be high in comparison with having a process in place that could have prevented it.
3. Show your best side
Current and potential investors, corporations, banks, and the general public are all going online to research your business before doing business with you. Look at investors as simply being consumers on a different level. These investors don’t know your company well enough and will often make decisions on the information that is available to them. Once again if you have a negative reputation online, it will show. Do you want to be associated with a business with a negative reputation?
4. Online insights
Gossip, speculation, and rumors have destroyed great names in the past and many businesses have lost the confidence of their target market due to this. Today it’s very common to see a celebrity or business with an associated scandal to simply vanish. Quite often this happens by an abundance of all the negative information floating around about them.
During a crisis online it is very common to have inside information available, but is often leaked to external sources before reaching all of the essential channels. Back in the day it was easy to remove the issues internally before they went out to the public. In today’s technology driven lifestyle with access to the social web in our pocket, news travels fast, especially if it’s negative. It can take seconds to collapse a brand that took years to build.
5. Recruitment
Having professional staff is the foundation for a successful workforce. The top individuals in every industry are forever head hunted and by knowing that, they will most likely research your company and look at all the facts concerning your brand before they accept any position at your company. If you know what your competitors, clients, and employees are talking about online, it can make a big difference in hiring someone with a good reputation.

Thursday, 18 April 2019

Online Reputation Management Part - 3


“Online reputation management.” Even if you’ve never heard this phrase before, you probably have a good sense of what it means. The first part (“online reputation”) is easier than ever for you or anyone else to find — just search for your camp’s name in Google.
Finding your online reputation is easy due to two main factors:
1. Google is smarter than ever before. It features search results based on local factors, can autocomplete user’s searches while they type (called “Google Instant”), and tirelessly crawls the massive number of social networking sites now available.
2. Local review pages and social networking sites have made it easier than ever for customers and staff (current or former) to rant or rave about your camp online.
The first step in managing your reputation is to be proactive and put your name out there first: “If you don’t have a Web presence, it’s much more likely that if someone posts something negative about their experience with your business, that review is actually going outrank you for your business name. And everybody loves to click on something that’s negative, so it’s much more likely that your customers will see that. Through repeat clicks and searches, it will actually cause that negative review to rank even higher.”
Claim your business on sites like Google Places. That way, your camp’s name appears in the results if someone searches for camps in your area.
The next step is to register the domain name of your Web site. “Even if you don’t have a big site with a whole lot of moving parts and lots of pages or any other flashy features, as long as you have one page with accurate contact information, as well as accurate hours, and an accurate description of your [camp], that’s going to help,”
After claiming your username, fill out your profile on each network. And just like your Web site, make sure you’ve included accurate contact information. “A lot of problems online are caused when someone doesn’t have the means to contact you — the phone number is out of date on your Web site, or the Web site is broken, or something else. And that’s when they turn to other sites to make a complaint, because they weren’t able to get ahold of you,”
Consider linking your social network accounts to your Web site, and vice versa. This practice is called cross-linking. Linking to your Web site in your Twitter bio, for example, allows a follower to seamlessly find more in-depth information about you; and linking to your Twitter account from your Web site allows customers to easily find and follow your witty tweets.
Another way to be proactive about your online reputation is to create positive content. For example, press releases are a great way to get your name out there. Just keep in mind that, lately, Google has been favoring fresh results. That means something that has a date attached to it — a press release or a news result —will typically show up in the search results when it is new. As the news dies down, however, it will actually fall out of the search results. So also try to create long-term, static content that does not have a date associated with it.

SEO Vs. AdWords Part - 1


What is Google AdWords?
Adwords is an advertising platform created by Google that makes it possible for you to position your advertisement on the top or right-hand side of the search results pages on Google and other affiliate websites.
AdWords allows you to target internet user’s search queries and display your offers every time they look for a similar product. The visitor then clicks on your advertisement and it takes them to your site or landing page.
With Adwords, your business listing can be displayed alongside the natural search results when people search for specific keyword phrases in Google. Search results displayed by Google Adwords are also called Pay Per Click (PPC) results because you shell out money for every click on one of your ads. We’ve illustrated the difference between the natural or organic search results and the paid Adwords search results below.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and is a method of digital marketing that focuses on making your website content relevant to search engines. SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps you to rank higher in the organic, or natural, search results. Properly implemented SEO optimizes your site in terms of keywords, content, links, and other technical aspects.
By optimizing these areas, search engines see your site as the most relevant result, and, as such, put your site in a primary spot on the search engine results page (SERP). SEO is the process of getting more traffic to your website by getting the site listed and ranked highly for queries relating to your product, market, or business in the natural or organic search results.
SEO Versus AdWords
The best practice is to use a mixture of both SEO and Adwords to keep your brand top of mind for internet searchers. Even though you rank in top positions in the organic search results, you should still consider using AdWords to target users who might not be as familiar with your brand.
Here are a few other factors to consider when debating how much of your resources to spend on SEO and AdWords.
SEO requires more time for results than AdWords, but can result in a high rank in Google for an amount of key search terms. There’s no charge per click linked with the organic search results, but on the other hand, ongoing work is necessary to sustain your search engine rankings with SEO.
Adwords can be switched on and off instantaneously, while SEO can take a lot longer to make an effect on search results
Adwords pretty much guarantees your business will be displayed in the search results. There is no assurance you’ll rank in the organic search results through SEO.
SEO targets high traffic keywords mentioned in your website. (Just don’t keyword stuff)
Adwords also permits you to respond quickly to a shifting marketplace by targeting new terms visitors may be looking for. This can be very useful for e-commerce businesses.
Adwords ads are displayed on top of the organic listings. On some screens (particularly on mobile) this area is all the user can see without scrolling.
Adwords targets abundant variations that you have around particular keywords and allows you to use negative keywords, so you can avoid ranking for terms that aren’t a good match for your brand.
AdWords runs on a variety of websites that register for Google Ads, so your site may gain more exposure.
Adwords is a rapid method for generating quality leads and sales.
If SEO is stopped, the ranking of a website decreases over a period of time due to constant algorithm updates by Google.
SEO also optimizes the quality and quantity of incoming links to your website.
AdWords pulls instant traffic from the start of the campaign. This is useful for new websites or services and products that are seasonal.
In Conclusion
You don’t have to choose between SEO and AdWords. These are two very different tools you can use to reach the same goal: an increase in sales and traffic.
It is also very important to keep the user in mind. Above all, provide high-quality content that is actually useful to your readers. Do not “over optimize” it to get better placements. You need to keep relevant content that actually transforms your clicks into business!

Thursday, 11 April 2019

What is Social Media Reputation Management


Social media reputation management is the process of tracking, monitoring and ultimately eliminating negative social media material about your brand to improve your name or standing. If done properly, social media reputation management builds your credibility to customers, which strengthens their trust in your brand.
It’s important to be credible not just on review sites, but on all social media channels. A survey from SDL found 58% of consumers tend to share their positive brand experiences on social media platforms. Not only do consumers share their experiences on social media, but their audiences trust them more than you.
BrightLocal discovered 72% of consumers will trust a brand more-so after reading a positive customer review whether it’s on social media or a review site. You have to be on top of all the social conversations happening around your brand.
Know What You’re Monitoring
An important question to ask before starting is do you know what you need to monitor to improve your online reputation? If not, that’s fine because many brands don’t know what to look for besides the messages coming directly to them.
However, to improve your reputation you have to know what to track so you can monitor all messages revolving around your brand.
Focus Your Efforts on Engagement
To truly engage with your customers, you have to listen to what they say. Social media engagement is a two way street, so make sure you’re listening to help build better customer trust and loyalty.
Social media continues to grow as the No. 1 resource for customer care.
Encourage More Social Reviews
By encouraging more social media reviews, you have the chance to increase your reputation (especially if it’s limited or in a bad spot). Try to provide the easiest route possible to your most sought-after review sites. Clickable images, links in posts and specific images that have calls to action requesting reviews all work well.
At the same time, you want to monitor and engage with the reviews coming in on your most important review sites. This will help lower negative reviews and give your audience a better picture of how you handle customer complaints. Positive engagement always increases the trustworthiness of customers.
Move the Conversation to Social
If you don’t ask, you’re not going to get as many reviews. But we understand that a confirmation, receipt, delivery status and arrival email can be too much. Instead, connect with customers through social media.

What Is the Google Algorithm


Unless you are in the business of online marketing, all of the digital marketing jargon can be confusing. You’re an expert in your business, but you never meant to take on marketing. When your business doesn’t have a budget to hire a dedicated in-house marketing professional this can pose a problem if you don’t understand some of the most important terms.
The Google algorithm updates around 500 to 600 times per year and is in place to ensure the best search results are found at the top of its search engine results. Without the algorithm in place, businesses could SEO their product and services pages to come up as the first results. Having product and service pages at the top of the search engines would provide a less than productive experience to searchers.
Another reason Google does not want product and service pages at the top of the search engines is that it would get in the way of their ad platform. If your product and services pages were showing up in number one and two positions, your company wouldn’t need to buy ads through Adwords.
HOW THE GOOGLE ALGORITHM WORKS
When users type a query into Google, they want to find answers to their questions. Whether they are trying to find out if there is a solution to their problem or what the best solution is, they want to find helpful content and not a product or service page.
Google is just like any other business. They need to make sure their customers come back time and again.
They didn’t become a verb (“Will you Google that?”) without knowing how to provide an amazing user experience.
With over 200 ranking factors, it can be difficult to game the system by figuring out what Google wants exactly. If you try to take all of the advice you find online, your website is likely to be mistake-ridden and look like a keyword stuffed mess of internal links.
The best thing you can do when you are trying to figure out the Google algorithm is to understand that they have their user’s best interests at heart.
EARCH ENGINE UPDATES YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
Focusing on user experience will help you cure most of your questions about what to do for SEO, but there are some updates you have to pay attention to and make needed changes.
Even though there are hundreds of changes that take place in Google throughout a given year, there are only a few confirmed changes. Even when Google confirms a change in their algorithm, they are very brief and vague about what actually took place in the update.
Below are some of the major changes that took place within Google in 2018::
• Mobile-first Index Roll-out – Google confirmed their mobile-first roll-out in March. Sites that aren’t optimized for mobile search noticed major differences as Google displayed sites that are mobile-friendly in the top of the search engines. In July, their update finally rolled out but was said to only affect the slowest websites.
• Video Carousel – Instead of showing thumbnails for desktop search, Google changed to showing a carousel like on mobile. This change meant big adjustments for YouTube video creators.
• “Medic” Update – The “Medic” update shook things up, and webmasters have been shuffling to figure out a fix. This update affected sites in the health and wellness industry the most.
And with every update comes a change in the SEO rules.
WHY AND HOW TO TRACK GOOGLE UPDATES
All of the information you’re learning may seem like a foreign language unless you work in the digital marketing field. If you are running your website on your own, it is important to pay attention to these updates.
Failing to make necessary changes when a major update rolls out could result in:
• Loss of search engine visibility
• Decreased web traffic
• Lower ROI
• Decrease in revenue
These serious changes can make a big difference in how your business is able to operate on a day to day basis.
Instead of thinking about Google changes as a negative experience for your website, think about how it can benefit you. For every website that is penalized, there is a website that is rewarded. If you are focusing on best practices, it is likely that your website won’t be penalized but may, in fact, be rewarded.

Thursday, 4 April 2019

What Are the Key Elements of Reputation Management


Review Monitoring
The top websites for business reviews (platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Google) are teeming with customer activity. Monitoring these and the many other review websites is an essential element of managing and maintaining a business’s reputation.
Businesses that don’t monitor customer feedback on these and other crucial platforms may miss both positive feedback (missing marketing opportunities) and negative feedback (damage their reputation) from their customers.
Responding to Reviews
Responding to online reviews is another critical piece of building a positive online presence. Businesses should respond to ALL reviews.
It’s an easy way to engage with happy customers, which benefits both your brand identity and your one-to-one relationship with that customer. Plus, when it comes to negative reviews, you need to remember that you’re not just replying to just the one reviewer. You’re speaking to everyone who reads this review, including potential future customers.
Social Monitoring
Social media monitoring provides a look at what your audience has to say about you, your competitors, and your market in general. With approximately 500 million Tweets sent per day and 68% of Instagram users engaging with brands regularly, there’s a ton of social activity online.
Monitoring this activity helps you better understand your customers, and provides the insights to improve your marketing strategy, stay on top of trends, protect your brand, find leads, and build relationships.
Mention Monitoring
Brand-related mentions can happen in many areas online, including blogs, news websites, forums, listings and more. With so much activity happening online, tracking the full range of brand mentions across the web is a crucial part of a comprehensive reputation management strategy.
Without mention monitoring, companies miss out on key information that can help them keep track of what clients and customers are saying about their brand, their products, and what their competitors are up to.
Responding to Social Mentions
With all the work that business owners put into their company and digital presence, it makes no sense to ignore the valuable feedback and opportunities that happen all the time online. By monitoring social mentions, you now have the opportunity to engage with your followers, deepen relationships, and leverage existing conversation as marketing opportunities.
On the flip side, with the right approach to negative mentions (an apology and solution), a business could turn a disgruntled customer into a happy brand advocate.
Competitive Benchmarking
Keeping on top of your competition can be complex with the sheer magnitude of content businesses have all over the web. Competitive benchmarking can help you monitor your competition to see how your business stacks up.
Competitive benchmarking helps you determine how you compare to competitors for local search terms. It can also help you track competitors’ social activity and provide insights on the best times to offer deals, share updates, and find out who’s checking in. Plus, it allows you to compare the most important social analytics for local business.
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Why Online Reputation Is Important


• Increase Sales:
Internet is the first place people reach out to when they are looking for a solution or a product. It is also among the best sources for research since one can easily connect with many people who are contributing to the topic. One of the best ways to improve your sales is by engaging with potential customers online through direct and indirect means such as social media posts, and analyzing the best ways to convert them. A reputation management india companies can share insights from your customer’s behavior and reaction, which in turn can help you understand the best form of communication to go forward with to convert the customers.
• Build Credibility
Having customer trust is of utmost importance for a business to succeed. Be it an individual or another client in your B2B vertical, the internet gives them a platform to be a citizen journalist, allowing them to raise their voices online if they aren’t happy with your service or your product. A negative word about your brand will spread much faster than a positive one. Having an ORM strategy in place can help you turn a negative review to neutral to a positive one if addressed in time. It helps you build credibility as a brand that cares about its customers and wants to improve the product. A good ORM service can help you connect and design your communication regarding the same.
• Build a Brand Image
Along the lines of reputation management when it comes to grievances, an effective ORM can help build the perfect brand image. Constantly monitoring the responses to any form of communication online can help create the brand image your company desires. Putting out a social media post? Understand how your customers are reacting to the same, to make the next post which may elicit more positive reaction. Are your customers talking about one particular aspect of your product in a very positive light? Make it the center of your communication. So much can go right as well as wrong while going online with your brand. The key is to get your act straight.
• Recruitment
Another one of the reasons why a company can succeed has to do with the talent driving the product. A good online reputation drives in applications in high volume for any job openings. And it’s no secret that a good, qualified candidate will always do his or her research online before accepting an interview call or even applying to your company. Your company’s online
reputation can be the deciding factor in the candidate saying yes to you. So have your customers and your online reviews on the happier side to get the best talents to work with you.