The client: Scientific Animations, a major player in the medical animations field.

The challenge: re-brand an international B2B company including logo design, web design and positioning line.

Positioning Line

Logo Design

Web Design

The Scientific Animations logo design and web design are complete and it’s time to start generating leads. Here comes the fun part of lead generation.

Starting with the page titled ‘Medical Animations’ (the most relevant key phrase), we have begun testing different landing page designs using Google Website Optimizer. Along with the original page (same design as the other pages on the site), DMG has designed 2 alternate versions page using different layouts and color schemes. The goal is to determine which layout and color scheme converts the greatest amount of visitors to leads. Leads in this case are those who make contact by completing on of a few forms.

The original design and the 2 variations. Variation 1 has the greatest conversion rate to date in the Google Website Optimizer landing page test.

It is very early in the test, but so far, the 2 alternate versions are about even in conversions, both out-pulling the original. We’ll keep you posted on the results as the test continues.

BigCommerce is a really good ecommerce shopping cart system. The company is young, hungry, responsive and on the ball. The shopping cart is one of the best we’ve worked with. And, we’ve worked on behalf of our clients with all of the major systems since the late 1990s.

However, like most shopping carts, it’s built-in product review feature leaves something to be desired. That’s understandable as shopping carts, including BigCommerce, have so many areas to be concerned with and need to keep up-to-date (shipping function, merchandising features, shopping engine integration, etc.) that it’s difficult for these systems to have the very best of every single thing.

The primary feature so many built-in product reviews do not offer is the ability to automatically push email messages to customers at a certain amount of days after purchase. These messages ask the customer for a product review, include an image of each product the customer bought, and link to the appropriate product review page.

Easy for the customer. Completely automated for the merchant.

In the area of product reviews, DMG recommends and uses for clients Power Reviews.  The Power Reviews Express product review plan is a low-cost, full-featured social commerce product review system that is perfect for many ecommerce online stores.

Integrating Power Reviews and BigCommerce can be tricky. DMG has the experience and depth of knowledge with the two systems to have Power Reviews integrated and fully functional with your BigCommerce store up in a minimal amount of time.

Recent clients for whom DMG has integrated BigCommerce and Power Reviews include:

PhotonLight.com
EcoBayHome.com

Pricing is generally $395, but could be a little more depending on this, that and one other thing.

DiPietro Marketing Group LLC is an authorized BigCommerce partner designer and product reviews integration provider.

Volusion has updated its Facebook Social Store application. They have made it much easier for the merchant and a more pleasant experience for the customer.

While it is not difficult to set up your Volusion Social Store on Facebook, the key is in the customization. It is important to carry over your message as well as the look and feel of your online store to Facebook.

We recently set up a Volusion Social Store for our client, LaptopBatteryExpress.com. We carried over the main message and the look & feel of the site to Facebook. The result is in less than 3 weeks, the Social Store on Facebook has a conversion rate of 25%.

Read more about Facebook Marketing on our Facebook Marketing page.

LaptopBatteryExpress.com had reached a point in its growth where a big time affiliate program made economic sense.

For numerous reasons, Commission Junction was recommended to our client; DMG first worked with CJ back in 1998. However, the CJ conversion tracking code is not easily integrated with Volusion, the ecommerce platform on which LaptopBatteryExpress.com runs. Cj doesn’t really care all that much about the incompatibility. CJ leaves it up to the advertiser to write custom script to make its tracking code compatible with Volusion. This is a major headache.

So, over to LinkShare we go. LinkShare understands the fact that Volusion does not easily accept the conversion tracking code, and that an additional step is required to get the code to work. To its credit, LinkShare actually provides a Volusion-ready tracking code. Free.

Commission Junction and LinkShare have a differing fee structure, which affects the advertiser’s metrics in terms of what it will take to reach breakeven each month. This needed to be taken into consideration.

As of this writing, the LaptopBatteryExpress.com affiliate program on LinkShare is up and running, and growing to the point where it should have a major, positive affect to both the client’s top and bottom lines.

Learn more about DiPietro Marketing Group LLC and affiliate marketing management.

DiPietro Marketing Group LLC has just completed a website redesign for GNRcatalog.com.

The store, a wholesale haven for physical therapists needing equipment and supplies for their field of specialty, runs on the Volusion ecommerce shopping cart platform. DMG is a reseller of the Volusion shopping cart system.

Visit GNRcatalog.com.

For a variety of reasons, AnchorBayTile.com decided to have its ecommerce store transferred to BigCommerce. DiPietro Marketing Group LLC, long time agency for AnchorBayTile.com, was selected to transition the store from Volusion to BigCommerce.

Transferring a store isn’t exactly a piece of cake. It can be time-consuming and frustrating due to the variations in the way different shopping cart systems do things. For example:

* In Volusion, hiding a page has the effect of not showing that page in any navigation. However, it is still live; it can be linked to from a graphic, for instance. There have been many, many instances where our clients have wanted this done.

However, in BigCommerce, hiding a page will not only remove it from any navigation, the page can then not be linked to in any way, such as from a graphic you create.

* BigCommerce, has one built-in navigation system. Volusion has numerous. So, in Volusion, a category can be assigned to a nav section on the left side bar while a different category can be assigned to the main nav in the header.

I could go on as the differences are numerous. This isn’t to say that one shopping cart is better than the other; that really depends on needs. It is to say that there are very important features of one shopping cart system that do not translate exactly to another system.

DMG knows shopping carts. Call to discuss your needs and we can make a recommendation.

Learn more about eCommerce Shopping Carts.

Visit AnchorBayTile.com.

DMG will be transferring SaveOnTapestries.com’s affiliate program from ShareASale to LinkShare within the very near future. SaveOnTapestries will be looking to DMG’s experience with LinkShare and Affiliate Program Management to boost their own program. Program Managers at DMG have become quite familiar with LinkShare and as an agency have even secured discounted rates that are then passed on to their client.

Making the transfer to LinkShare will be different than starting from scratch in that we will look to retain as many current affiliate accounts through the switch as possible. It can take up to six months to get a good Affiliate Program off the ground and the ability to convert sites currently affiliated thru SAS with SaveOnTapestries.com over to LinkShare will likely provide an early boost in the program’s transition.

In part, a large reason why we have decided to advise our client to make the switch over to LinkShare is because of its interface, which gives Affiliate Program Managers much more control over the affiliate recruitment process. Specifically, once signed up with LinkShare you are provided access to all of its affiliates and their contact information, making it much easier to connect with potential publishers.

Another advantage of moving to LinkShare is that they boast a very large affiliate pool, especially in categories complementary to SaveOnTapestries.com. This lends itself well to our general strategy when initially commencing an affiliate project in that we wish to rapidly establish a large affiliate list, then strategically take the time to acquire the larger, most successful affiliate accounts. This proves to be an important approach seeing how often times the top 5% of affiliates can generate up to 95% of a companies’ affiliate-generated sales.

PPC Management with Google AdWords has gotten expensive. In some cases, very expensive.

For the month of January 2012, a DiPietro Marketing Group LLC (DMG) client’s AdWords cost per acquisition (CPA) had ballooned to $42.69. DMG, a Google AdWords PPC Management agency, instituted a new plan of action to address the growing problem of ever-increasing AdWords costs.

We can’t divulge the plan specifics (sorry). However, we can show you the results of that PPC management plan…

MONTH     CPA
Jan              $42.69
Feb              $36.81
Mar             $35.88
Apr              $28.00
May             $25.34
Jun             $27.82
Jul              $26.24
Aug             $29.73
Sep             $22.22
Oct             $16.27

Learn more…contact Steve DiPietro

Digital Day, Inc. engaged DiPietro Marketing Group LLC for a product branding project, branding a line of replacement laptop batteries.

Generally, the replacement laptop battery category is a commodity business. However, Digital Day has them made to its own specs, designed specifically to outperform its cheaper counterparts in both run-time as well as overall service life. Digital Day’s are manufactured using Samsung brand cells and Texas Instruments brand chipsets inside. The result is a laptop battery that runs longer in one sitting than cheap batteries, and will also have a greater life.

To distinguish the client’s product from the inexpensive competition, DMG began product branding with the name. The name selected is Xtend, which helps communicate the product’s primary, unique benefit – extended run time as well as extended service life.

For the next step of the product branding, DMG created the logo and positioning line, which you can see on this page. Both elements further communicate the desired message.

A website was then designed and produced as part of the product branding efforts, XtendLaptopBatteries.com. DMG’s layout and design clearly and instantly communicate not only the benefits of Xtend’s longer run time, but also managed to imply the sense of freedom that comes with a battery that is less reliant on power chords and electrical outlets. The product’s branding message is one that will resonate with consumers and potential distributors alike.

The new Xtend brand laptop batteries sold through fine retailers everywhere, including online at LaptopBatteryExpress.com.

DMG and its client Digital Day, Inc. are both quite confident that the product branding is strategic, well executed and there is every expectation the positioning will ultimately translate into strong sales numbers for the new brand.

Here are the facts at the time DiPietro Marketing Group LLC (DMG) was given control of a client’s Google AdWords account:

1. the spend was running $20,000 per month
2. the AdWords Conversion Rate was 2.6%
3. the AdWords CPA was $34
4. the store’s overall AOV was $100
5. the spend represented 19% of the online ecommerce store’s revenue, and
6. monthly AdWords orders accounted for 54% of the store’s total.

An AdWords cost per acquisition of $34 given the store’s Average Order Value of $100 was unacceptable to the client. The client dismissed the AdWords agency of record, and DMG was brought. The charge was to:

• drive down the AdWords CPA 10%, and
• on a $10,000 monthly spend, a rather significant decrease.

The time frame to accomplish the above AdWords objective was…NOW!

The results? By the end of month 4, DMG accomplished the following…

1. the spend was reduce to an average of $9,200
2. the AdWords Conversion Rate was increased to 3.1%
3. most importantly, the AdWords CPA was reduced to $26.27.

That’s a….

* 23% decrease in the AdWords cost per acquisition
* 19% increase in the conversion rate.

In 4 months. (actually, it took less time than that.)

How did we do it?

Good question. Steve Di Pietro of DMG has been successfully harnessing the power of pay per click since 1998, long before Google even thought of AdWords. Through the combination of the following factors, DMG is able to deliver AdWords results.

traditional strategic advertising thinking
+
award-winning copywriting
+
intimate knowledge of experience with the ever-changing AdWords technical capabilities

Learn more…contact Steve Di Pietro

So, how should Google AdWords PLAs be set up, anyway? Google currently provides a few ways to set up Product Listing Ads (PLAs):

1. Campaign level
2. Ad Group level, and
3. In the Ads tab within an existing Ad Group.

Option 3: Using The Ads Tab In An Exisiting Ad Group: Not Advisable

Option 3, which can be set-up in Campaign > Ad Group > Ads tab, is not a good option under any circumstance for a few reasons. The primary reason is that a PLA created in this way will be mixed with other ad formats (text, display, video) that may exist within that Ad Group. Text ads in particular will compete with the PLA. The result: either the PLA *or* one of the other ads will display for a search based on the key phrases in that Ad Group, regardless of the Ad Rotation settings. There is no chance of *both* a Product Listing Ad and a text ad displaying at the same time for a search, which is highly desirable.

The image below shows 1 PLA and 3 text ads in the same Ad Group. By adding the percentages in the % Served column, which add to 100%, you can tell that the ads are served one at a time. There is no chance of both the PLA and one of the text ads displaying simultaneously.

A PLA Created At The Ad Level Of An Existing Ad Group Will Compete With The Text Ads In That Ad Group. The Take-Away: Only 1 Ad Will Display At A Time (add up the percentages)…No Chance For Both A PLA And A Text Ad Displaying Simultaneously.

Option 2: PLAs Ad Group Mixed With Other Ad Groups: Opportunity For Both PLA & Text Ad To Display

With Option 2, a PLA would be created as its own Ad Group within a Campaign that contains Ad Groups using other formats (text ads, display ads, video ads), which can be done as shown in the image below.

It Is Possible To Create A PLA At The Ad Group Level.

Obviously, from the image above, Google allows advertisers to create PLAs in this way. And, this option does allow for the potential for both a PLA *and* a text ad to display at the same time for a search. This is due to the fact that, unlike Option 3, the PLA is its own Ad Group, separate from any other Ad Group containing text ads. A screenshot of an example follows.

Two PLAs *And* A Text Ad Displaying At The Same Time For The Same Search Is Possible Because The PLA Is A Separate Ad Group.

An additional benefit of this method is that all metrics for the PLA Ad Group like CPA, CTR, etc., as well as bidding, are about and for PLAs only, allowing for more targeted decision making.

However, unless the PLA Ad Group will have just 1 Product Target – All Products – Option 1 is actually the preferred method of setting up PLAs.

Option 1: PLA-Only Campaign: Best Practice

Creating PLAs at the campaign level allows for multiple Ad Groups, all dealing with the Product Listing Ad format.

Creating PLAs At The Campaign Level Is The Preferred Method.

The 1st Ad Group created should be one that targets all products, no filters under Product Extensions. Keep in mind, 1 All Products target per Merchant Center feed.

After a bit of time has passed, enough for there to be useful data, the Search Query report will provide a road map as to which and how many PLA Ad Groups to add to this Campaign. Each of those succeeding Ad Groups would then target and filter specific brands or categories or products of the Merchant Center product feed, based on the reporting data. For example, the PLA Campaign may evolve something like this:

* Campaign: PLAs
* Initial Ad Group: All Products
* Ad Group 2: brand A
* Ad Group 3: brand B
* Ad Group 3: brand C
* Ad Group 4: generic phrase X
* Ad Group 5: generic phrase Y
* Ad Group 6: generic phrase Z
* Ad Group 7: product 1
* Ad Group 8: product 2
* Ad Group 9: product 3

Which segments (Ad Groups) to add will become very clear over time based on the search query report.

PLAs set up as its own campaign as described has the added benefit of allowing the advertiser to properly manage a budget, CPA, etc, solely for the PLA ad format.

There is so much more to Google AdWords PLAs. Especially in light of the fact that they will probably disappear in the near future as Google rolls out its new Shopping Campaigns feature, which DMG is beta testing.

To learn more, or to challenge us with your Product Listing Ads business, contact Steve Di Pietro.

Steve Di Pietro has coined yet another ecommerce-related phrase: Black Cyber Weekend.

Traditionally, the Friday after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday, the day that kicks off the Christmas Holiday shopping season for brick-and-mortar retail stores. In more recent times, the phrase Cyber Monday was created for the Monday following Thanksgiving as a way to encourage online shopping. Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are days to which shoppers look forward because of the steep discounts offered by retailers, both offline and online. The result is an incredible amount of sales volume for stores, and, fantastic savings for consumers.

Originally, the steep discounts offered to consumers by both groups – retail and ecommerce stores – were valid only on those particular days, Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The deals evolved more recently and now stretch to the point where they are now valid starting on Thanksgiving Day (does anyone respect holidays and family time anymore?) and run through the following Monday, blurring the line between Black Friday – on Friday only – and Cyber Monday – occurring on that Monday only.

During a conference call to discuss a sales event covering that period of time, Thanksgiving Day through the following Monday 2013, for client LaptopBatteryExpress.com, it occurred to Mr. Di Pietro’s that neither phrase effectively communicated to the consumer the thought that the sales event would be valid for the entire five days. Why would a Black Friday sale be valid on days other than a Friday? Ditto Cyber Monday.

At one point in the conversation, the phrase Black Cyber Weekend popped out of the mouth of Mr. Di Pietro. The intention was to better communicate to the consumer the idea that the sales event the two were planning for LaptopBatteryExpress.com would cover the entire period, not simply one particular day or the other.

Thus, the term Black Cyber Weekend was born.

Desperate need to move to BigCommerce. Website re-design desired, but, little budget for it. What to do?

Slight ReDesign Increases Buy Rate 19%.

DiPietro Marketing Group LLC (DMG) moved LicensePlateFrames.com to BigCommerce: set up product categories, massaged the exported product file and set up products, customized email messages (order confirmation, order shipped, etc.), integrated the client’s merchant account, imported re-directs, integrated with Google AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools and Merchant Center, etc., etc.

Then, before flipping the switch, DMG updated the design according to the client’s budget. The web design will not win any awards. However, it has increased the store’s conversion rate by nearly 19%.

Google Analytics shows that, for the most recent 30-day period, the store’s conversion rate was 2.29%. No gre4at shakes, either.

But, consider the fact that, in the same period last year, the store’s conversion rate was 1.93%. That is an 18.7% increase.

Even on a tight budget, there are little things that can be done to increase conversion rates via a web re-design.

Again, not an award-winning website redesign. But, hey, an 18.7% increase will pay for it in a matter of months.

Think you and your business are ready to start selling your products through Google Shopping? Think again…before setting up your product feed, make sure you are first in total compliance with Google’s terms and conditions or risk getting shut down from Google Merchant Center all-together for days, even weeks, mid-way through the setup process.

As a digital marketing agency heavily involved in pay per click, Google Shopping and PLAs, one thing we often see is clients getting disapproved from Merchant Center for no apparent reason other than not meeting Google’s terms and conditions. This process can be a major headache to deal with; for one thing it brings your Google Shopping setup process to a complete halt before it gets off the ground.

Secondly, figuring out exactly why your site has been disapproved is another process all on its own. Once your Merchant Center has been suspended it is often left solely to the merchant to figure out why the suspension has occurred in the first place before re-submitting for approval.

Lastly, once you do make the appropriate changes to align with Google’s terms it takes about 48 hours for Google to reapprove your site so you can continue setting up the product feed.

How do you avoid a Merchant Center Suspension? As it turns out, one very common thing that we have been seeing is that a lot of merchants are being suspended for not having clear billing and returns policies listed clearly on ALL checkout pages. Chances are there are links pointing to an entire page with your store’s terms and conditions and maybe you have even gotten away with this in Merchant Center in the past – not anymore. Google has started to enforce this policy, even explicitly stating that links to a Billing and Returns policy, even if on every checkout page, will not suffice.

So… before you set up your Google Shopping PLAs in AdWords, before you set your pay per click budget, and even before you upload your shopping feed, make sure you add ‘clear and concise’ billing and returns information to every single checkout page, as per Google, or risk a time consuming delay.

The post How to avoid delays when setting up a Google Shopping Feed appeared first on DiPietro Marketing Group LLC.

The Volusion ecommerce shopping cart system is one of the better ones available, in our opinion, for small and even some mid-market online retailers. One of the improvements Volusion has made as an option for its merchants is a streamlined checkout process called Simplified Checkout.

Volusion’s Simplified Checkout is an optional enhancement designed to discourage shopping cart abandonment via improvements on both the cart and checkout pages. Whether it knows it or not, Volusion has also done a DMG client a huge favor with this feature. By DMG implementing and customizing this feature, customer phone calls for both cart and checkout page help have been noticeably reduced for client LaptopBatteryExpress.com.

Put very simply, the old cart and checkout pages were a bit convoluted and confusing for the shopper. Of the elements that caused issues, the most significant for DMG’s client was the fact that, though there was a Checkout With PayPal button on the cart page, there was none on the following page, the checkout page.

DMG customized the Volusion checkout page by adding PayPal as a payment method option. When selected, the yellow PayPal button displays. This ended shopper confusion and reduced calls to the store’s customer service.

Many customers missed the familiar yellow Checkout With PayPal button on the cart page. When they got to the next page, checkout, they were frustrated by the fact that they had taken the time on the checkout page to enter all of their billing and shipping information, taken the time to determine which shipping method to select based on delivery date needed, just to get to the Payment Method section on the same page and discover PayPal wasn’t an option. The result? A phone call that a customer service rep needed to take the time to answer.

While setting up the Simplified Checkout feature, DMG was asked by LaptopBatteryExpress.com if it was possible to add the Checkout With PayPal button at the end of the checkout page, near the placement of the Payment Information section, so that the button would be on both the cart as well as the checkout pages.

DMG went one step further; it customized the checkout page even more by adding PayPal as an actual option to the Payment Information dropdown box. Now, should the shopper miss the Checkout With PayPal button on the cart page, that method is readily available as a payment method on the subsequent checkout page along with the usual methods such as credit card and PO number.

Here’s the best part: when a shopper selects PayPal from the payment method dropdown, the familiar yellow Checkout With PayPal button automatically displays as the next step. Very cool.

Enabling Volusion’s Simplified Checkout feature is well worth it as it streamlines the checkout process by reducing confusion on both the cart and checkout pages. Customizing both those two pages to keep within the design template is a must, too. And, further customization, such as what DMG did by adding PayPal as an actual payment option, makes a good thing even better.

Contact DiPietro Marketing Group LLC now for a quote on updating your Volusion checkout process.

The post Volusion Simplified Checkout Reduces Calls For Help appeared first on DiPietro Marketing Group LLC.

Facebook Marketing organic reach for business pages plummets as Facebook’s new Pay to Play Model reaches full effect.

Social Media Marketing has become a staple for many businesses looking to enhance their digital presence and brand awareness. However, recent changes on Facebook has made things tough on social media managers with limited or no budget allotted for content marketing.

Recent Facebook algorithm changes have caused major drops in organic reach for advertisers, creating a need to spend money in order to reach target exposure and engagement rates.

The reason for the Facebook pay-to-play model: an overcrowding of business-driven content onto Facebook users’ newsfeeds and an attempt to monetize Facebook business page posts.

Overcrowded Newsfeeds

There are a finite number of posts that a Facebook user will see within a given day. With more and more companies taking their marketing efforts onto social media platforms, newsfeeds had become over-populated with marketing content; something that Facebook believes (and rightfully so) would sour the end-users experience.

Let’s face it, if a Facebook user scrolls through 100 posts on his/her newsfeed a day, they are far less likely to be satisfied if 90 of those posts were from companies looking to market their content to them, leaving only ten posts by friends/acquaintances.

With the pay to play algorithm, Facebook is able to weed out some of these posts by businesses, ensuring the end user sees less marketed content in their newsfeed and more content posted by friends and family. This helps optimize the ratio of social vs marketed content that appears in a user’s newsfeed.

For the opportunistic content marketer, this is a good thing…if a company is developing great content and willing to put some money behind it, it stands a greater chance for getting in front of the target audience.

Law of Demand

Tip of the hat to Mr. Zuckerberg for taking a page out of his old Econ 101 textbook. With so many companies competing to get their content in front a finite audience, the Facebook CEO recognized a surefire way to monetize his platform even more by creating the pay to play algorithm. Now, in order to reach a substantial audience with your content on Facebook, businesses are forced to spend marketing dollars to do so.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good News: As mentioned earlier, if you or your company is creating really great content, putting some money into Facebook can really skyrocket exposure and branding efforts. The better news: Facebook advertising in general is still pretty cheap. In most cases the cheapest form of digital advertising on a cost per 1000 basis. (see chart below)

The Bad News: Good Content + Marketing Dollars = Great exposure…unfortunately, without the marketing dollars it becomes extremely difficult to get eyes on your content.

The Ugly: Too many people are throwing away money by paying to market the wrong content. If content is king, then great content is an ace.

The post Pay to Play Algorithm: Organic Facebook Marketing Not So Organic (Anymore) appeared first on DiPietro Marketing Group LLC.

Twitter is fading. That was the word in a recent seminar, according to our sources.

But, not so fast.

Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Twitter has struck a deal with Google to make its 140 character Tweets more searchable online. With access to Twitter’s firehose, Tweets made by the social media firm’s 248 million users will soon be automatically visible in Google’s search results.

Twitter gets more opportunities for eyeballs, and, thus, the potential for greater ad dollars. Google gets instant access to a much broader amount of content that is the finger on the pulse of the world.

Increased desirability for advertisers?

Digital advertising agencies and marketers should sit up and take notice. Real-time results means greater opportunities for real-time offers as well as timely, lead-generating content.

Twitter shares have jumped about 17% since the news and the time of this post writing.

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Over the past two months in particular, we’ve been asked a number of times for our thoughts regarding mobile websites and search engine rankings…

* Does having a mobile-friendly website affect rankings?
* Which type of mobile-friendly site should my business have?
* Is my current business’ mobile site OK?

In some cases, the questions were prompted by a notice in Google Webmaster Tools to fix mobile usability issues. In other instances, it was after reading a DMG Marketing Report pointing out the growth of mobile users for a given client’s business. Some were simply driven out of curiosity.

It will affect rankings now!

59% of US smartphone owners engaged in mobile shopping during Dec 2014, according to the International Smartphone Mobility Report. For ecommerce businesses, that isn’t a trend. It’s a sea change.

B2B and B2C? You all know which way the wind is blowing. A mobile-friendly website had been needed just to make calls-to-action easier for the user, if for no other reason.

Here is another reason: Lord Google is forcing the issue.

Google has been highlighting mobile-friendly sites in search results since late
  2014. The nearby graphic includes, in grey, the
Google-added words “mobile-friendly”. Further, since then, it has been experimenting with using the mobile-friendly factor as a ranking signal.

Look out, here it comes…

Beginning late April 2015, Google has stated it will begin increasing search rankings for sites that are mobile-optimized. The purpose is to provide users with easier-to-get, relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices. Learn more on from this Google Webmaster Tools blog post.

Which type of mobile-friendly site should my business have?

Here are the basic types:

1. Responsive
One URL to serve the same page to all devices. But, for mobile users, the page is auto re-sized to fit the screen.
+ Easy to maintain
+ Content consistent across all devices
– Generally, not a good user mobile device experience

2. Dynamic Serving
One URL but two versions of each page. User’s device is detected and the appropriate page is served. (Tablets are shown the desktop page.)
– Not easy to maintain
– Content not consistent across devices
– Costs a little more to create
+ Best user experience

3. Separate Mobile Site
Two URLs. Each desktop URL has an equivalent URL serving mobile-optimized content. Ex: abc.com and m.abc.com. (Tablets are shown the desktop page.)
– Not easy to maintain
– Content not consistent across devices
– Costs more to create
+ Best user experience
+ Can optimize pages specifically for mobile users

DMG would be glad to help you sort through the various types and determine which is best for a particular business.

Is my current business’ mobile site OK?

eCommerce Stores
Stores using ecommerce shopping cart systems such as BigCommerce or Volusion are generally OK. These systems have built-in m-commerce capability.

However, spot checks DMG has performed in the past on behalf of clients  have revealed occasional issues that need attention. Most of these were the result of system or template updates. So, don’t always assume everything is OK; check.

For B2B and B2C, DMG recommends not relying on responsive design. In many cases, the additional time and cost associated with a dynamic serving or separate mobile site is offset by the time and cost it takes to develop a responsive design in the first place. There are numerous other reasons as well. For example: with responsive design, text links on the web page are usually too close together to work well on a mobile device.

You can test whether Lord Google decrees a site to be mobile-friendly with this handy-dandy mobile-friendly site test.

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Why Cater to Mobile Users? April 2015 marked a major Google update: the Mobile Friendly Update. Dubbed by some in the SEO world as Mobilegeddon,

The post mobile friendly web design – mobile or responsive design for 2015? appeared first on AdWords, Design, SEO, Legal and eCommerce Marketing.