admin, Author at Webmoghuls

Essential Steps to Follow to Convert WordPress Category Pages into a Landing Page

Going back to the recent past, we are reminded of the ways involved in changing of the pages of the WordPress category into the landing pages. The WordPress development was far more complicated in the past than in the present era. Thanks to a pair of plug-ins that have made the procedure a lot easier than ever before. The new techniques are highly efficient in converting the often so neglected pages into optimized ones.

Transforming the category pages into landing can prove to be better while utilizing the same technique. This can be a lot beneficial than using the tags alone. While discussing this topic, the biggest matter of concern would be a duplicate content. But, that is not a subject to be chewed upon if you have compiled a variety of topics on your blog.

The issue regarding the existence of a duplicate content becomes almost obsolete if the homepage of your blog offers to the visitors something more than just a blog-style list of the recent uploads.

Techniques employed in the conversion

There are a series of techniques involved in the conversion of category pages into landing pages some of which have been discussed below.

1. Structure the category pages

The blogs must be structured in such a way so that descriptions of your posts are displayed on the initial page of the segment; you can conceal them in the following pages with the aid of necessary and effective plug-ins.
The initial page of your site must mandatorily have INDEX and FOLLOW with regard to each segment.
The theme of the content must be customized in such a way so as to tag with only one element of the page.

2. Employ distinctive post quotations

Majority of the modern themes in WordPress development have already been using the post excerpts in order to frame a blog. Most of the issues regarding facsimile content can be resolved by displaying excerpts through the alteration settings for the category pages. You can also employ the thumbnails of the tailored images to highlight each post and embolden the visitors to click-through.

3. Evaluate text-selection and category name

Owing to the conversion of the WordPress category pages the name and link text must be evaluated. It is quite obvious that there will be as many internal links as the number of posts. This includes the breadcrumbs and those that emerge at the first and concluding part of each post.

But, there must be a wise utilization of these links. It is worth knowing that the category page is the lone part of the post that must include the keyword phrase in the form of the heading, or target the individual keywords. The categorization must be made in a tiered structure.

Just focusing on the popular search engine is not recommended here; rather try to realize the ways in which you quest for information and the ways in which you can classify your stuff thereby making it easier for your visitors to find their much sought after topics on your website.

4. Introduce descriptions on the category page

The category description must be written in a specific manner which you can use throughout your website for that category. Something innovative must be tried rather than just specifying the location of the related posts. Provide your visitors with a chance to land on your page by transforming the category pages into landing pages.

The description written for a category must be able to sell off a portion of your blog or site. The description must include at least two paragraphs about the owner of the site, the site in itself and the topic. Some information about the posts must be included so as to ascertain the reliability of the website.

Owing to the introduction of a meta-description, a brief and authentic version of the description is added, which is again made possible by the WordPress SEO.

5. Prevailing posts must be restructured

Reassessing your posts at regular interval is necessary for WordPress development. The quotes and passages must be updated and transformed into invitations that would lure the visitor to return to your website and go through each post again and again. One must also know that the quotes would be appearing on the category pages of the WordPress.

The keyword or the category name must be included after restructuring. It must be remembered, that the quotes are going to be an integral part of the content of the chosen landing page, which on the other hand can be utilized to one’s own advantage.

Final thoughts

The visitors are often lured into the site with the help of landing pages. For that matter, the category pages of the WordPress are perfectly designed so as to grab the attention of the visitors. While investing much less endeavor, the pages can be transformed into a highly appealing platform to attract a huge amount of conversion.

Explore Few WordPress Security Plugins to Enhance Your WordPress Site’s Security

Hacking has become a child’s play in the world of the internet in the current scenario. Even the sites undergoing WordPress development are no different. Nowadays, an email id and password alone are not enough to keep a website safe from hacking. Starting from a small scale business to the renowned brands, the same inconvenience is faced by all the websites.

Moreover, the menace of hackers is followed by a set of reasons why it is essential to introduce security measures to your website:

Simple and secure backups
Firewall protection
Blocking features that obstruct spam posts
Security of the contents from getting stolen
Secured emails

The security plugins of WordPress help you secure your important documents from being in the wrong hands. Have a look at the plugins enlisted below and proceed to safeguard your sites now onwards.

Login Lockdown

It is a familiar thing for any website owner to receive notifications about logins which are suspicious. Diverse password combinations are used by the bots in pacey sequence. The plugin called Login Lockdown can be employed to set a pause after you have experienced a set of failed attempts for login.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-lockdown/

Wordfence Security

Amongst all the other plugins this is the most popular one available. This plugin offers a matchless defense structure while safeguarding your website from suspicious logins, virus attacks, and junk mails. This plugin is able to walk you through from the beginning by scanning through your website from the period of installation. The function of this add-on is to check if anything has been compromised on the website.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/

Sucuri

Sucuri is another effective security feature used in WordPress development by the unconventional users whose websites are prone to hacking attacks. The features of Sucuri are matchless and beyond. The brute force safeguard offered by the plugin necessitates all the website conversions to be scanned thoroughly by the cloud proxy servers before it gains approval to enter your site.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/

Vault Press

The creators of WordPress are extremely conscious about the liabilities of the site hence they created this security plugin. Your site definitely needs a backup so that the information is not lost with the occurrence of any menace. This add-on helps you to generate a backup for your information and within a few seconds, you will be back on the track.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/vaultpress/

Security of iTheme

This all-rounder plugin for WordPress security can actually ensure you to take care of your needs virtually. The suspicious login attempts are detected by this plugin with extreme efficacy. The most popular feature is the option named ‘Freeze’ which restricts your login page and makes you aware of any suspicious attempts to log in.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/

WP Security Ninja

The hackers always think much ahead of what you actually think they can do. Therefore, utilizing such a tool like WP security Ninja can appear to be a boon for your website. You can perform a variety of safety measures on your website while making use of this plugin. It possesses some of the exceptional features which are normally not found in just any security plugin.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/security-ninja/

Google Authenticator

Nowadays, a two-step authentication procedure is mostly preferred by the security experts while setting a password. The plugin called Google authenticator provides your login attempts with a matchless defense that includes a text, app or phone call to prove your identity.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-authenticator/

WPS Hide Login

The WordPress site is usually attacked by the hackers through bots while trying to log in for innumerable times in a typical login page. This is one of the most common ways to hack your website. But, WPS Hide Login provides you with an additional security by transferring the usual WP login URL to one of your choices. This means that this plugin usually hides your login page, thereafter securing it from the hackers.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wps-hide-login/

WordPress Security audit log

If you are a professional WordPress user and possess a much higher knowledge of potential hacking threats on WP then this plugin would be the most useful one for you. Whatever is occurring behind the scene of your website is being supervised by WordPress Security audit log. A single click on the scan button will go through the activities within seconds and display the problem spots of your website.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/

Updraft Plus WP Backup plugin

This unique plugin is helpful in concealing the backups of your site and requirement for restoration. It supports cloud backup of your website. The use of this add-on ensures one-time or automatic backups at ease. You can even restore a site to its previous setting.

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/

Wrapping up

It is extremely important to provide a high-level defense to your website in the present era when hacking has become a common menace. When you have chosen to impart your website a WordPress development, do not hold back on providing matchless protection to your invaluable information using the security features of WordPress.

Quintessential WordPress Plugins You Should Install To Revamp Your Site

In order to maximize the functionality of WordPress, a user needs to add some essential plugins which are great to whip up a professional website and help you take your online business to the next level. To deliver a better user experience through the WordPress development, adding plugins become really quintessential.

So, here is a collection of the must-have plugins for WordPress that will build a better online presence, taking the site from good to great.

1. Akismet

Visit : https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/

This is a great plugin built by the WordPress builders and is useful for safeguarding your WP security. This is a default one which gets installed along with a new site core installation. This anti-spam plugin checks every comment and filters out the spam ones.

For every comment, you will get a status history from this plugin so you can even know about the spam comments that have been filtered out by the moderator or Akismet. For a personal website or blogs, you can use it for free whereas you need to have a monthly subscription for business websites. The premium plans offer additional security alongside spam protection.

2. Yoast SEO

Visit : https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

A relevant traffic comes from the search engines and a potential amount of traffic helps drive more clients. And this is only possible if you opt for Search Engine Optimization for your website.

Using Yoast SEO, you can lay your hands on a pretty famous SEO plugin that is downloaded by millions of users. Albeit WordPress is born-prepared for SEO, it’s better to enhance it more and rule the SERPs like a leader.

This WP plugin maintains the technical SEO, with the inclusion of Meta and link elements, XML sitemaps, RSS optimization, breadcrumbs, etc. Using this plugin, you don’t require struggling for clinching a great ranking; you can simply produce amazing content utilizing this one.

3. Jetpack

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/

Jetpack provides with a suite of strong and useful features for a better WordPress development. Enhanced site functionality, improved security, ample amount of content tools, and engagement features of visitors are all included in this plugin.

Others features are social sharing, spam-free comments, posts by email, related posts, and so forth. This plugin, in fact, provides the option of mobile themes which is responsive and lightweight, ideal for mobile devices.

4. W3 Total Cache

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

One of the most significant SEO factors is speed. The speedy sites rank higher in search engines; this implies more visitors for the commercial website and ultimately more conversions as well. W3 Total Cache plugin helps you serve cached and compressed files to the visitors. This eliminates the pressure on the server which makes your website faster.

5. MailChimp for WordPress

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-for-wp/

This is one of the most famous email marketing solutions for handling emails, subscribers and track results in a bulk. Undoubtedly, this is an amazing marketing tool for the business owners and webmasters. In order to integrate MailChimp for your WP site, you can opt for this free plugin that enables adding a nice subscription form on your WordPress blog. You can try the premium version if you want this for commercial need.

MailChimp for WP helps build nice opt-in forms for adding more potential subscribers to your mailing list. Also, you can simply integrate this plugin with other forms on your website like checkout form, comment or contact form. It assists all the prime form plugins such as WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, etc. Hence, install this one to start an immediate email campaign.

6. Google XML Sitemaps

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

This quintessential plugin automatically creates an XML sitemap for your WP website. In order to allow search engines to better index your WP blog, you should have an XML sitemap. Web crawlers can view your site’s structure with the sitemap and can retrieve more effective results. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing will get notification each time you make a post regarding your fresh content

7. Contact Form 7

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/

Through this plugin, you can create and manage multiple contact forms. You don’t require additional coding with this plugin as the mail and form contents can be customized easily through its settings. This plugin additionally supports Akismet filtering CAPTCHA, and Ajax-powered submitting for helping with spam.

8. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

Visit: https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

The YARPP plugin can showcase a list of pages or posts which are related to the recent post. This plugin gives a great chance for the readers for seeing other appropriate content from the website. Users can showcase only content found on their website or just can generate extra money by showcasing the sponsored content.

Wrapping up

So, this is the list of quintessential plugins for a better WordPress development. There are definitely a lot of plugins out there, which implies we possibly have missed out your favorite one. However, we hope you will find the above-mentioned list useful to you.

Explore the Best Ways of Web Development to Enhance Your Online Presence

A website can better be explained as a collection of individual documents prepared with the help of text, colors, graphics, and these factors are formatted together to build a complete user experience. A comprehensive term for the work involved in building a site for personal or private connection is known to be web development.

In the recent times, it refers to the creation of Content Management System or CMS. You need not have a robust technical knowledge in order to avail the prime benefit of CMS, which allows even a non-technical person to build a site effectively.

A successful website is more than a digital brochure. It is worth the effort to create a functional, streamlined and well-designed website while it can be tough to achieve it. The improvement of the bottom line, however, coincides with the improvement of customer experience on your website. It has been revealed by a study that the assumed trustworthiness is affected by not the content of the website but the design of it. Few of the ways to build a better website has been enumerated below.

1. Unique design should be planned

In the web development of a small business, the typical and most important part is the homepage. This is the first thing a potential customer would seek for, in your website. You keep the answers to the critical questions, to be asked by the visitors of your site, in store.

The possible questions can be about what you are, what your business is all about and what benefits can they yield from your website. Your website is believed to be the prime potential point, with a huge section of 81% of shoppers who intend to conduct an online research before buying a product and the number of client reaches to 94% when they in the B2B market.

Creating an impression must be considered while communicating with your potential customers. The trick to creating a unique design for your website is to consider not overloading your homepage with irrelevant content and stick to the text limit of 120 words.

2. Keep everything simple

In order to make a website optimal for any device that your visitor might be using, it should be kept simple and clean. The use of features like Flash Animation and navigation which are designed for large monitors should be avoided.

3. Content is the critical part

A content that has no efficiency to keep the visitors engrossed can ruin the traffic of your site. The importance of well-written subheads or headlines should be regarded, as it is this powerful factor which enables the visitors to choose between reading and leaving the website.

The relevance of the content must be assured. The factors which help you keep the visitors engaged and active are business hours, production information, new articles, price changes and white papers. Avoiding of random content is highly recommended.

4. Access to site must be easy

The disabilities and difficulties of the viewers who happen to visit your website should be considered. It must be remembered the people who visit your site can have the disability like color blindness or some of the people might have slow internet connection. Therefore, to make your website easily accessible to such visitors a unique design and plan are commendable.

5. SEO and SEM not to be forgotten

The Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing factors should not be ignored as these campaigns can leverage the growth of your small business. The highly specialized fields require a considerable investment of time to learn. There are a huge number of professionals who can help you to optimize your site on search engine.

The success of your website can be hugely impacted on with the execution of SEO and SEM strategies.

6. Ensure a great user experience through organization

Your prospective customers characteristically look for specific information. Most of the pages are being skimmed quickly by the visitors and they do not even read the pages wholly. The success of a website is inevitable when it presents information in an organized and orderly manner. But a site which appears to be unorganized or chaotic cannot attract the interest of a reader.

7. Consider the site loading time

The audit of your site’s performance must be made on a daily basis to check

Site speed
Text and images continuity
Load times
Correct formatting

While browsing through sites, people often become impatient and it is the slow load times which determine whether a visitor will buy your products or not.

Conclusion

When the web development is done in a proper way, it is likely to fetch you immense profit in your business by attracting potential visitors. Therefore, develop a unique plan, follow the best practices of web design and pull them together to present your buyers an exclusive user experience.

SEO and Responsive Web Design: A Combination Made for Each Other

Nowadays, nearly half of all online traffic comes through the mobiles or tablets. The emerging trend of tablets and mobiles means people are visiting websites on every type of devices.

Gone are the days when we used to use the computer for internet surfing. Mobile devices actually have made it easy to surf the internet more easily from everywhere.

Presently, Responsive web design is a jargon for every web developer as they design various types of websites so that these can be accessed from various platforms.

Hence, this type of web design is currently the latest way that is being followed by many designers worldwide.

However, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), can the responsive design enhance the chances of a site ranking better in the SERPs? The answer is definitely YES and here’s why:

Mobile search ranking:

According to the latest mobile ranking method designed by Google, it prefers the sites, especially which are compatible with every sort of devices like mobile, tablet, or desktop.

Bounce rate:

In case your website is not mobile-friendly, it can face the high bounce rate issues for mobile searching. Getting more bounce rate will open more chances for your site to get a negative rank.
Hence, it’s better to have a good connection between mobile and desktop version of your site, so that it can result in a better rank in the SERPs.

Single URL:

When you have a responsive site, you don’t need to create two versions of it because it is expensive and increases the risk of misinformation on either of the sites.

Link building:

Clicking on your mobile-friendly site will take a visitor to the mobile version of it also. It helps connect a visitor connect to the prime web page from the mobile version simply by clicking on the link given by the mobile version of the site.

This is helpful for SEO to stream all the link juice to a single URL and also offers an amazing user experience to the visitors.

Duplicate content:

A mobile responsive site keeps you peaceful as there is no chance of getting hit by Panda for having similar content in both mobile and desktop version.

As per responsive website design strategy, the visitors are served with the content from the similar URL in every device.

Local search:

According to the experts, unlike desktop searches, local search is an imperative factor of mobile searches on the mobile devices.

Not every local search helps in online shopping but some opt for them straight from the mobile SERPs for the business purpose.

Reputation building:

According to 48% of the population, if your site doesn’t work properly on their mobiles, it makes them feel like your organization doesn’t care about their business.

Social share growth:

A responsive web design helps you keep every social share to a single website and it’s completely readable on every device whenever a link to your website is shared.

Usability:

The prime task of responsive design is making sites easier to read for the visitors and thereby, it improves the complete user experience.

If many people enjoy this experience, many visitors will come back. And it is sufficient to know why Google has included the mobile friendliness factor in its ranking algorithm.

Faster load time:

Page load speed is another ranking factor. Responsive web design doesn’t need a redirection of queries to a specific URL; thus, it’s quicker than a mobile website.

As of now, Google has declared that it is utilizing the website speed in online search ranking, and this trend will go on.

Do you have a responsive website design?

The responsive design enables the web page owner to pull the contemporary online users via the smartphone devices and helps him/her to take a step ahead of his competitors.

So, have you already moved to the responsive design? Well, you must be! Webmoghuls’ website developers are on the mission of creating responsive sites the norm for all organizations.

Hence, if you want to drive traffic to your business and your site to rule the search engines, then contact us now to get a new start for switching to the responsive website design.

A guide to visually attractive web design, content & images increase conversion

Let’s accept the fact that a visually attractive web design and content or images help a marketer connect with his target niche a better way. A potential client believes in quality, not quantity. Hence, in spite of creating lots of images, it’s better to showcase right images that reveal right words only.

The professional-grade visual content or images need the right tools to be created. The visually attractive images can maximize your visibility on social platforms and help you in the branding process. So, let’s find out how to create a lucrative homepage with an excellent web design that becomes really interactive to connect with your target niche.

Find high-quality free image sources

There are numerous free images sources on the web that offer thousands of high-quality images for totally free and with no requirement of attribution. Some free image tools focus on technology and business collections whereas some others focus on landscapes.

However, with these sources, you can get an availability of a huge amount of high-resolution images which are ideal to be used for blogs, slide deck, social posts, and articles. You can customize the images to make those more attractive and target your audience also.

Some Free stock images resources

Understand the color psychology

You must understand the color schemes to use for your visual content. You can try a free color-scheme finder that helps choose the perfect color for the images. You can use Adobe Color CC to pick the right color for your image.

You can start with pasting the hex code of your chosen color and select the Complimentary from the Color Rule Drop-Down menu for getting the best-suited color for your visual content. This tool will help you contrast overlays and choose font colors and icons to be used in the images.

Understand the magic behind a symbolic image

A strong image completely speaks to the target audience with its symbolic approach. As humans love connections, they naturally derive intense and ambiguous meanings from the visual content.An efficient symbol has its own magical capacity to deliver right messages to the target niche if you choose it for marketing purposes on social media platforms.

There is no doubt that in terms of copywriting, the key to success is creating visually attractive content to convince your target niche for getting the most desired results. The image should not show the marketing appeal but must be connected with the emotion of the target audience so that they get attracted to it.

Get the ideal tool for font combinations

You basically don’t need to be an expert to choose fonts for your images. With the right tool, you can have top-notch font combinations from the specialists and can see how the combination looks best with the images and graphics to enhance your web design.

Canva.com

canva-font-tools — Find a font combination for your design needsSelect a starter font

fontpair.co

fontpair-font-tools — Font Pair helps designers pair Google Fonts together.

typotheque.com

typotheque-font-tools — Typotheque type foundry

font-combinator.com

font-combinator-font-tools — The Web Font Combinator

Try to get font recommendations online if you want the best visual content. Once you get them, start making them more appealing and convincing for targeting the right niche.

Showcase the website as a visually attractive platform

Want your images to deliver the most desired outcome? Then stop targeting your product; rather create a stage for the audience for having the best experience through your visual content. You can opt for some online ads which will create the platform for the experience which will bring more potential buyers for your product.

When you will select images, you will need to consider the symbolism also because this way you can consider the target audience. The visually appealing elements will showcase the creativity of the designers and also will illustrate their professionalism.

Final verdict

No matter which content you are working with; it can be GIFs, videos, slide decks, infographics, graphics, images, posts, etc. Well, the visual content should be very appealing so the images can tell a complete story to the viewers. Images are a crucial part of social media marketing also. Hence, you must opt for some visual content tools to enhance the branding and engagement.

What are your thoughts on utilizing the stunning visuals as the weapons for branding awareness? Have you tried to make your images compelling enough? If yes, then do not forget to share your experience with us in the comment section below.

Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

There has been a considerable rise of late in the digital marketing space with more and more organisations opting to promote their products and brands in the virtual world.

The internet has provided a stable, progressive – not to mention cost-effective – platform to businesses to reach out to wider audiences, unbound by geographical peripheries.

Social media and internet ad tools are a great medium for interacting with customers using innovative forms of content presentation; a trending tweet, a Facebook poll or even an engaging blog post – each has the potential to gather a substantial number of followers in a matter of minutes.

On top of that, there are various tools available that could be used to determine the metrics of user response, google Analytics being a primary example. A periodic assessment of traffic that is directed to a company website through online marketing means could help to determine how well the approach is working.

Add to that the reasonable cost involved as besides the internet and electricity charge, the rest in terms of effort spent in content creation and distribution is marginally low. However, there is one definite disadvantage to using digital marketing methods. One has to depend on the customers’ access to the internet and technical astute in using the web.

On the other hand, traditional marketing methods have a proven success rate. Such methods include print advertisements like flyers, newsletters, billboards, newspaper display ads, and television commercials and radio spots promoting a product or business.

This form of marketing has a greater reach locally since all it requires is access to a newspaper, a television or a radio – an ask which even the remotest local pockets could meet. Rather than the customer going online to discover your business, you have the choice to bring your service or product to the customer via traditional means.

One disadvantage of conventional marketing though is the relatively higher cost incurred in advertising as every single print space or television slot costs enormously.

So what would be the best approach in choosing a marketing means to promote one’s business? The smart route is a balanced combination of both means to achieve the most effective results.

Most businesses inclined towards innovative marketing trends tend to effectively feed one means off the other. For example, a printed newsletter may contain online information such as social media or youtube links while a blog post may embed relevant information about a television commercial or radio spot.

Most corporations who have thus far only stuck to traditional marketing are finding themselves lagging behind by overlooking the digital space. Contrarily, replacing the existing methods with new-age online marketing means can prove to be dangerous as these methods have been around for a long time and have a proven success rate.

Video – The Sixth Most Popular Content Marketing Tactic

Of late, many folks I’ve come across tell me that their most-visited site besides Facebook or Twitter, is Youtube – not much of a surprise there. So, what could make a simple video-sharing site such a favorite draw with internet users? The most popular and evident reason for this, besides others, is that it enables one to post their videos for the entire world to see.

It’s like starring in your own little movie that entitles you to your five minutes of fame. Users on the site search through millions of such video content for information and entertainment. This in itself is a highly potent combination wherein both “information” and “entertainment” combine to create high levels of audience engagement.

Consequently, it is this opportunity to grab the audience’s attention that prompts several entrepreneurs to create videos for marketing their products and services.

Small-time businesses and start-up companies benefit hugely by creating compressed 5 to10 minute videos that range from describing their products and services, providing information about their company or business, to demonstrating solutions to a problem that they can handle effectively.

“The beauty of developing a video marketing plan is that you are making it easier for the viewer to be exposed to the information you are trying to communicate.”

– Chris Sandoval
courtesy interactmedia.com

However, creating a video alone does not ensure it’s reach to a widespread audience. This is where video marketing comes into the picture. So what exactly is video marketing? It is the process of not only uploading your video to a video-sharing site like youtube or vimeo but also leveraging its proper distribution across the internet in order to build a rapport with a wider audience.

Studies have shown that there is much better retention in the viewer when using audio-visual techniques to pass on information. Also audiences stay on a site longer when a video is embedded showcasing the gist of the information provided as opposed to text.

The smart way to proceed after uploading your video to a sharing site is by suitably tagging it with keywords relating to the content, after supplementing it with a good title and description.

This is vital as it can guarantee a good ranking for your video in youtube search results as well universal search results. Google does a good job of streaming traffic to your video provided the tagging is done comprehensively.

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn can be used to post videos in order to reach users and take advantage of news feeds which pick and highlight content based on the ones with the most number of likes and comments. Using videos with blogs is a common practice these days wherein bloggers feel they get a better emotional connect with their audience through the use of rich media content.

Some interesting numbers :

# About 46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video.

# Video is now the sixth most popular content marketing tactic,as 70% of B2B marketers use some form of online video with their overall strategies.

Overall, a lot of emphasis should therefore be placed on making the video content highly interesting and rich. Good quality of video paired with the use of simple, easy-to-understand narrative, straightforward sequencing sans complicated jumps and shifts, all combine to create an audio-visual appeal that warranties that the viewer stays hooked.

Also, splitting heavy content into small 5-10 minute portion sized videos is a good practice along with the use of non-monotonous visuals.

The richness of the content comes from the information that is being shared, which could be a unique, never-before-seen-or-heard-of kind of thing or something very funny that makes the viewer go for reruns of the same content.

All said and done, it is small wonder that video marketing is fast becoming a true value-oriented means to gaining wider reach within the internet community.

Designing for User Experience

Most designers these days are heard coining the term User Experience (UX) without often a clear idea about the concept. Some think of it as the “magic wand” that would make users love their website. But hey, isn’t that what finally drives the business? Conventional definition of User Experience describes it as the overall perception and interaction of the user with a product or service.

But UX is not just interaction of the user with the system, its main attribute is probably usability. So let’s try and define the usability and UX goals that we consciously know. Common usability goals are effectiveness, efficiency, safety, ease of use, good utility. Similarly, common UX goals could be summed up as entertaining, fun, rewarding, aesthetically pleasing.

“The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.” –

Frank Lloyd Wright

So is there a trade-off between usability and UX? Can a product be both safe and fun? The answer is most definitely yes! In effect, usability answers the question – “Can the user’s goal be accomplished?” where as UX answers the question “Did the user have the best possible experience?” A designer can absolutely model a product keeping both these attributes in mind.

Now coming to the other attribute of UX, which is its association with interactive system design. The phenomenal success of the i-Phone is a primary example of the same.

“The iPhone is a digital experience in the literal sense of the word. The user’s digits roam, stroke, tweak, tweeze, pinch, probe, slide, swipe and tap across the glass screen forging a relationship with the device that is like no other.”

Stephen Fry

Throughout the process of interactive design, designers need to be aware of key aspects in their designs that influence emotional responses in target users. Hence designers employ the use of expressive interfaces to convey such aspects. Having said that, it is often argued that UX cannot be designed.

It is because UX designing depends not only on the product itself, but also the user and the situation in which the product is used. The stimulation that a product provides depends on the individual user’s experience with similar products.

Users have different expectations, different goals and hence use the product in different modes. For example, the way one user perceives a movie might be different than that of his/her companions – which might be based on previous experiences of movie-watching.

It is also a general observation that UX evolves over time. The first time a user tries a product might be with a slightly negative experience. Over a period of time, as he gets more familiar with the potential and features of the product, he might get more emotionally attached to it, leading to more enriched UX. Hence its more apt to say that designers design for UX.

Besides designing the product, the designer can anticipate the potential ways in which the user might receive it and model the product based on optimum levels of user expectations and then some more. After all, it’s not enough that a user comes upon an application and says “nice”, its definitely more gratifying when the user exclaims “wow!” in complete appreciation.

Online Brand Building Through Social Media

In today’s web-savvy world of customers, a huge key to the success of online brand building is Customer Interaction. Brand management revolves plentily around building relationships with customers, providing them with useful information about the product/services, and answering their queries.

Hence its best to say that relying solely on SEO techniques like keywords and content, would not solve that purpose. Today, companies must integrate SEO with social media to promote their brands.

A huge scope has been provided to companies through the popularity of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., to reach huge audiences. Consider this :

The world population has been recorded as around 7 billion in 2012. Facebook hit 1 billion users in 2012. Hence, there is scope of tapping almost 1/7th of the world population in promoting one’s brand via the use of Facebook.

However, the use of these sites does come with a price. Companies need to stay on top of current trends and also maintain their social media pages in order to combat competition. Any form of negative media or campaign might prove highly detrimental.

A user would hardly think a minute before moving to another page if he/she comes across any negative reviews regarding the product. So ignoring bad press would not help your business.

Indifference might prove to be a killer in this clamour for promoting via social media. So the brand builders should make sure they not only provide information, they should also acknowledge negative comments and also gauge the reasons behind the customer’s peeves. The goal is to make sure the comments and tweets of appreciation severely outweigh the negative reviews about your product.

With the emergence of newer review sites like Yelp, bing, etc., more and more consumers have turned to a feedback and PR style. Companies looking to succeed in this ever-growing world of online media need to extend their reach using both social media sites and SEO techniques because that’s where the future is headed.