Did you know: in 2020, 28% of online searches for local businesses led to a sale? With the internet playing such an unprecedented role in our lives, businesses simply cannot do without an effective website.

But, you might be wondering how to create a business website? Or what are the different elements your website needs to incorporate?

Keep reading for our guide to having a great website design for your business.

1. Get Interactive

The first of our web design tips is to include interactive elements on your website. These are useful for many reasons. First, they encourage the user to stay on your page for longer.

By including fun elements like a quiz, you create a stronger connection with your potential customer, and they are likely to increase their interest in making a purchase.

Next, interactive elements can also help with lead generation. By including options to sign up for a newsletter or filling in contact details to make an appointment, visitors to your website are providing you with their personal details which you can then target with your marketing strategy.

2. Consider Your Business Objectives

Next, when you’re considering how to make a business website, this process needs to be driven by your business objectives. Take a look at your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and explore how a website can help you meet these targets.

For example, younger businesses might be placing a greater focus on building brand awareness and brand recall. They will want to include regular blog content and focus on establishing consistent branding.

Meanwhile, a business with sales-driven objectives will want to ensure that the user journey from the website landing page to checkout is as simple as possible.

3. Don’t Forget Branding

One of our most important small business website tips is to focus on your branding. This includes the color scheme, font, images, logo, and tone of voice used in the website content.

Each of your webpages should be consistent in your branding, presenting your business in the way you wish to appear to customers. This might be as a friendly, family-run business, or as a professional consultant with vast experience.

You also need to include prominent links to your social media pages. This includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube, if possible. 

The branding across your digital presence and in email marketing should be consistent too. Remember to direct customers to your website in your social media posts and bios, as well as in your email campaigns.

4. Include a Blog

For those small-business owners wondering how to drive traffic to your website, a great way to improve your SEO is by including a blog section in your website. Try to publish articles that address common questions that might arise in relation to your products or services.

This way, someone might enter their question into a search engine, then come across your blog that provides the answer. It is likely that they will then remain on your website and explore whether you can meet their needs.

Make sure your blog is easy to find, and include a search function so that visitors can find exactly what they are looking for.

5. Make Navigation Simple

One of the worst mistakes a business can make is to set up a website with all the essential pages and features, but make it difficult for visitors to navigate. Avoid confusing layouts, and try to anticipate what the most popular pages of your website will be.

These can go at the top of drop-down lists, or in the center of your website to make them easy to find. Don’t forget that you can use analytics dashboards to find out exactly which of your website’s pages gets the most hits.

6. Review and Test

An essential element of web design is to continually review how your website is performing and to test different options to find out what works best. Many website managers and analytics programs offer the possibility of A/B testing. This allows you to compare like-for-like options, such as different images or landing pages, to see which performs better.

You also need to look into digital experience analytics to make sure your website is as effective as possible. This includes heat mapping, session replays, and other tools that let you optimize the user experience.  

7. Set Goals

A component of web design that goes hand in hand with reviewing your website’s performance is setting goals. You should set reasonable objectives for metrics you want your website to achieve.

This will help you determine whether you are increasing traffic and sales thanks to your website.

Some of the key numbers to look at are the number of site visits, the time spent on your site, the conversion rate for your visitors, and interactions per visit.

8. Don’t Forget Contact Details

If one of the purposes of a business website is to create leads, a common error business owners make is to make it difficult for potential customers to contact them. One of the ways around this is a footer across your website with your business’s information.

This should include your business address (if applicable), as well as a phone number and email address that are monitored regularly.

You could also consider an FAQ page that might divert users away from your support team, and allow them to help themselves. 

That’s How to Create a Business Website

Now that we’ve provided our top web design tips and tricks, it’s time to set up a website that will attract potential customers and help move them down the sales funnel until they become loyal, returning customers. Don’t forget that web design is a process of continual improvement and that the job is never truly ‘done’.

If you found this article about how to create a business website useful, be sure to check out our other business-related posts!

The McDonald’s logo is worth $110 billion, which is the equivalent value of 275 White Houses.

Top brand logos are worth much more than even the most expensive real estate in the world but many companies hardly give their designs a second thought.

While logos in the digital marketing world may not be worth dozens of White Houses, there are still some good ones around. Let’s look at the top 10 SEO logos of 2020.

Common Design Cues in SEO Logos

If you compare different companies’ logos in the SEO and digital marketing space, you’ll see some common design cues. They often focus on abstract shapes and symbols that indicate growth or ideas.

Abstract Shapes

Illustrated logos aren’t very common with digital marketing services. Most logos use abstract geometrical shapes and designs meant to illustrate their technological focus.

These shapes also tend to have some kind of relevance to business growth, website traffic growth, revenue growth, or other things that would be a logical goal for any companies working with them.

Images of Graphs

Graph imagery is also popular with SEO companies. You’ll see a lot of line or bar graphs in logos, alluding to the company’s ability to increase your conversion rates, revenue, website traffic, and so on. These logos always show an upward trend in the graph.

Strategy and Idea Metaphors

Images like lightbulbs and mind maps are also popular with digital marketing firms. These logos are meant to show how they can help you come up with new ideas and strategies to grow your business.

Communication Symbols

Communication symbols like speech bubbles, messaging icons, and envelopes are also popular in SEO branding. The internet is all about communication in one form or another so this is a natural fit for any web-based service, digital marketing or otherwise.

Top 10 Digital Marketing Logo Ideas

There is quite a bit of variety in the top SEO logos for 2020. Some use abstract symbols, others typographic or mascot-based logos, while some are quite unusual.

Abstract Symbols

Abstract logos often use symbols that have a symbolic meaning in addition to looking good. This helps them stand out from their competition and become more memorable in their market.

1. True North Digital Marketing

True North’s logo uses a line-based design similar to a mind map but also includes a “compass” arrow in the center. This arrow is pointing up, naturally — to true north.

2. Growth Pro

Growth Pro has an image of a plant or flower growing out of what looks like a stack of coins. This is a good metaphor for SEO and PPC marketing, with the money you put into your campaigns creating growth for your company.

3. Hammer and Stone Agency

The Hammer and Stone logo uses iconography that looks exactly like a hammer and stone. Neither one is a literal interpretation but there’s little doubt that’s what the design is meant to be. It uses negative space effectively to create the handle of the hammer within the stone icon.

Typographic Logos

Typographic logos focus on the brand name by making it the focus. But they use fonts and type designs to make the name itself into an icon for the logo.

4. BRND.TV

BRND TV is a video-based digital marketing platform. Their logo is simply the name of the company but it focuses your eye on the BRND name by using a smaller font for “TV”. The logo also adds a bit of color by way of a green highlight under the “TV” text. That green is used throughout their website to create a consistent look and feel.

5. SearchQuake Marketing

SearchQuake Marketing uses a simple two-letter “SQ” design for their logo. The letters are two different colors and overlap slightly. The line where they overlap uses a jagged style that’s meant to look like a fault line or the tracking line on seismic equipment, bringing to mind an earthquake.

6. Befrank Digital Marketing

Befrank Digital uses a simple logo design that incorporates the “B” and “D” from its name into a single shape. That shape also looks like a magnet, indicating how they can help you draw in more website visitors and clients.

Animal Mascots

Companies that have animals in their name often use that animal in their logo in some way. Sometimes it’s a major part of the logo and sometimes it’s more subtle.

7. Bear Fox Marketing

Bear Fox Marketing uses both animals in its logo. The fox is superimposed on the bear using negative space. With a quick glance, it looks like the bear is stepping forward, indicating how the agency can help move your business forward.

8. Dog Bite Media

Dog Bite Media has a simple text-based logo design with a caricature of a dog’s head. This design is about as straightforward as you can get, with an easy-to-read name and a simple graphic to help improve its branding.

Unusual Designs

Some logos are a little more offbeat. They may use humor as part of the logo or they sometimes combine two seemingly unrelated ideas in the design.

9. Clever Digital

Clever Digital’s logo is an egg with glasses. This evokes the stereotypical “egghead” that knows a lot about computers and technology. The idea here is that they’re those eggheads that can help you grow your business online.

10. Hyper Ghost Media

Hyper Ghost Media has a mostly typography-based logo but the “H” in Hyper has a ghost instead of the horizontal line. This is a straightforward way to create a brandable logo from the company’s name.

Which Logos Are the Most Memorable for You?

Which of these SEO logos are the most memorable for you? If you’re thinking about a new logo for your company, consider what makes you remember these and see if you can work something similar into your own design.

Be sure to check out the rest of our blog for more helpful ideas about designing great logos.

TikTok has over 800 million active users worldwide and is quickly becoming one of the most popular social media platforms. What does that mean for businesses?

With such a large built-in audience, it’s crucial that businesses start marketing on TikTok. The question is, how do you make sure that your videos are viewed?

Growing your list of followers is one of the most important things to focus on. The more followers you have, the easier it is to post your content and let fellow TikTokers take care of the rest.

Read on for four TikTok hacks to increase your followers and maximize your marketing content. 

1. Give Yourself a Headstart

Gaining a following doesn’t happen overnight–unless you want it to. 

Consumers have a tendency to form quick first impressions. If they head to your brand’s TikTok page and see that there are only a few hundred followers, they’ll probably jump ship without finding out more.

Do yourself a favor and check out this program to gain TikTok followers immediately. This can allow you to take control of the first impression you make and encourage more followers to trickle in on their own.

2. Jump on Trends

TikTok is all about challenges. If a challenge comes along that has any relevance to your brand or products, make sure that you take advantage of it–and do it fast. TikTok challenges are changing every few days, so if you wait too long, your content may not be relevant by the time you share it.

To find out what’s trending, start paying attention to hashtags. You should also keep tabs on TikTok influencers with massive followings, as they tend to set the trends.

3. Use Your Other Social Media Platforms to Share TikTok Content

If you already have a few successful social media accounts on other platforms, don’t start from scratch on TikTok. Share your TikTok videos across multiple platforms. This will alert your existing followers to your new account and prompt them to go look for it and give it a follow.

To share your TikTok videos on your Instagram or Facebook accounts, you’ll need to save the videos to the device you’re using. TikTok makes this simple to do–just look for the button with three stacked dots next to your videos.

4. Open Up Your Reactions Settings

TikTok has an interesting feature that allows you to limit who can react to your content. Eventually, it may benefit you to limit who has access to, say, the comments section. However, when you have a small following, you should keep things open.

Head to your settings on TikTok and look for the Privacy tab. Then, scroll to find the “Who can react to your videos” section and select “Everyone.” 

Use These TikTok Hacks to Gain More Followers

Are you ready to bring your brand to TikTok? Use these TikTok hacks to gain followers right away and maximize your TikTok marketing plans.

Want to learn more about how tech and marketing intersect? Take a look at more of our content and find out how you can boost your business online. 

36% of the total workforce in the United States are considered to be freelance workers. This sector of the economy is only expected to grow as time goes on. 

If you are a freelancer or thinking of becoming one, it is important to build your own personal brand.

Personal branding is what separates the upper echelon of freelancers from the mediocre. But what is personal branding and how can you use it to make your endeavors more lucrative? Read on to find out.

What is a Personal Brand?

Personal branding is the process of turning yourself into a business and developing a marketing strategy that benefits your endeavors. A combination of traditional and electronic marketing strategies can be used to build your personal brand.

Social media plays a big part in the modernization of personal branding. Platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest give a user’s profile more weight based on the amount of “followers” they have accrued. 

Followers are the total amount of people who have “followed” their page. This means that they are in the individual’s informational loop. Followers are easy to target for advertisements and ideas from the influencers’ page.

“Nano-influencers” tend to have anywhere from 200-1000 followers and are the lowest end of the influencer totem-pole. True influencers have over 20,000 followers and can start to reel in some serious coin from their personal social media market.

Learning how to manipulate social media sites in your favor is one important aspect of personal branding. Read more here about lifestyle blogging with platforms such as Pinterest. 

Building a Personal Brand

There are other ways to build your personal brand in addition to utilizing social media. The first step in personal branding is to take inventory of any skills or abilities that you have that can be monetized.

Writing skills, landscaping skills, personal training skills, art skills, marketing skills, and advising skills are all examples of skills that can be monetized with ease. Next, you want to work on developing your personal image.

This includes tangible things such as your physical appearance and how you dress. It also comes down to less tangible things such as how you want to present yourself to the public online. Start thinking about creating a personal logo and style.

Next, upload photos, a short bio, your aptitudes, and work history to a web platform of your choice. Picking a platform is another important choice. Social Media websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn provide the basics of a useable platform.

At some point, you will probably want to invest in your own webpage or blog. After you have digitized your personal brand, it is time to start building your target audience. Building a client base can be a long process, but it is worthwhile.

Once you have identified your target market you can choose how you will advertise yourself to them. There are many marketing strategies available to take advantage of, so do some research and choose the one that works best for your needs.

To make your customer base grow, continue to do a good job fulfilling their needs. Then your base will snowball and self-marketing through merit-based recommendations will be your biggest market-builder. 

The ultimate form of personal branding is self-incorporation. At this point, you are officially a corporation in the eyes of the law.

Personal Brands Are the Future

Having a personal brand will continue to be more relevant as a larger chunk of the workforce continues to shift towards freelancing. Hop on the bandwagon early and get yourself ahead of the competition by building a personal brand now!

Start with one of the most fun aspects of personal branding: building your own personal logo. For all of your other news and information related to logos and business, make sure to check out the rest of our blog.