7 Web Development Trends CTOs Should Be Aware of in 2021

Development trends change pretty fast. For tech specialists, it’s essential to stay informed for sharpening the knowledge, while for decision-makers being up-to-date means withstanding a competition.

To help you grasp the web development trends for 2021, we’ve analyzed the market demands across different industries and the latest web development trends.

Here’s a quick list of what we’ve got:

 

  • Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
  • Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
  • Intelligent chatbots
  • Responsive websites
  • Optimization for voice search
  • API-first design
  • Web push notifications

Progressive Web Apps or PWA

It’s probably one of the most meaningful trends of recent years. It’s aimed to make the experience that users get from browsing a website closer to native mobile applications. Therefore, more user-friendly and intuitive.

 

In simple words, PWA is a website offering features that usually accessible on mobile natives apps. Push notifications, offline mode, access to a camera are among those features.

 

A plethora of case studies shows that companies get an increase in revenue, conversion rates, and user engagements after adopting the PWA. The launch of the PWA resulted in two times more daily active users for Starbucks, while Trivago saw an increase of 150% for users who add its PWA to the home screen.

 

PWA let developers improve aspects that users hate about websites: slow load, no hardware support, poor user experience.

Companies Using the PWA

You can find the following companies among those who are already making use of PWA:

  • Alaska Airlines
  • Twitter
  • Starbucks
  • Trivago
  • Uber
  • Pinterest
  • Spotify


 

Tech Aspect

You may want to use one of the following technologies to build a PWA:

  • Polymer
  • Angular
  • React
  • Vue

 

One more thing that makes PWA a worthy investment is that they take up to four times less time to develop than native apps for iOS and Android.

Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages is the technology that Google first presented to the public in 2015. It has been keeping the position of the hotly debated web development trends since then.

In short, the AMP helps to build web pages that load insanely fast and work smoothly across a variety of mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages load for about 2 seconds in comparison to up to 22 seconds for regular ones.


 

Google pays a lot of attention to the load speed when deciding how to rank them in SERP. It means that the AMP technology is also remarkably useful for building a healthy SEO.

Tech Aspect

To get started with accelerated pages, you should learn more about an open-source HTML framework built for this purpose on the official website. There, you’ll find documentation and everything else you may need to get started.

Intelligent Chat Bots

For those businesses working across multiple time zones and having a presence in different countries and continents, it’s essential to provide customers with timely support.

 

Human customer services are often costly and don’t provide the necessary 24/7 support, unlike chatbots. That’s why entrepreneurs wonder how to build a chatbot that’d cover their needs making it another web development trend for 2021.

 

The chatbots powered with machine learning has been a worthy replacement for humans in many customer support tasks. Chatbots can give answers to frequently asked questions, redirect users to the right customer support specialist, and even take an order.

 

What’s more, a recent study shows that 65% of customers feel comfortable handling an issue without a customer support specialist.

Tech Aspect

There are several open-source solutions that can help you build an intelligent chatbot faster:

 

Responsive Websites

Responsiveness is no longer a nice-to-have feature. It’s now a must-to-have feature for every website on the Internet. It has been a trend for many years and 2021 isn’t an exception.

 

Taking into account that an overwhelming number of users prefers mobile devices over desktops and regarding Google’s recent mobile-first indexing policies, there’s no other way to succeed on the Internet except for being responsive.

Optimization for Voice Search

The voice search has an ever-rising potential that businesses simply can’t ignore. The last year’s report shows that more than half of all smartphone users were using the voice search in 2020. This number is going to grow exponentially.

 

Bearing in mind the current state of voice search and its perspectives, it’s definitely a web development trend for this year. Companies will start losing money without adding voice search to their SEO strategy and providing the IT budget for it.

Tech Aspect

The Web Speech API from Mozilla can help you with this task. The API helps to recognize the voice context, respond to queries, and read text content.

API-First Design

With the rise of digital services and their connectivity with one another, API-first design has become a widespread web dev elopement approach. And it’s still a trend.

 

With the traditional development approach, teams rather focus on delivering a smoothly working app and pay little attention to an API. APIs are often perceived as side projects and might not be designed and tested properly.

 

The API-first development, unlike the traditional one, goes simultaneously so that one part of the team doesn’t have to wait until colleagues finish their part of work.


 

Tech Aspects

Here are some popular tools for developing a high-level API:

Web Push Notifications

Push notifications used to be a privilege of mobile apps for a long time. However, web apps with push notifications gain momentum. Push notifications on websites can be used for informing about a new blog post, telling that a thing you were interested in is back in stock, and many other situations.

Tech Aspects

There are plenty of tools on the market that can help you integrate push notifications:

Wrapping Up

So, we have the following web development trends for 2021:

 

  1. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
  2. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
  3. Intelligent chatbots
  4. Responsive websites
  5. Optimization for voice search
  6. API-first design
  7. Web push notifications

 

If you’re building a new product or going to update the old one, it may be a good idea to identify what trends are right for you to start preparations.

 

Author’s bio

 

Vitaly Kuprenko is a writer for Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company with headquarters in Ukraine. He enjoys writing about technology and digital marketing.

How to Increase Customer Attraction Towards Your Online Business

Online business revolve around customers. Customers are the key stakeholders in any business. Success of any business depends on the loyal customer base. Here we shall discuss a few of the ways to increase customer attraction towards your online business.

Sale:

Sale is the form of discount that you offer on products. Choose the product wisely for offering the discount. The product on sale must be having maximum customer’s interest rate. Though it is not a long-term strategy, it brings new customers to the business. After deciding about giving sale on a product, announce the sale on different social media forums including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Competition:

You can organize a competition awarding people about your business, product or services. It is recommended to arrange a competition that is purposeful. There must be a voting mechanism in which you attract maximum customers to your business. Spread the competition on different forums so that maximum people may participate in voting system.

Free sample:

Successful businesses do not hold any barrier between their services and the customer. In order to break the barrier, you can give free samples to the customers. If your product is worthy enough to buy, every customer will buy the product happily after experiencing the free sample package.

Partnership:

In order to enhance the customer base, you can collaborate with other businesses in the market having strong customer base. The partnership is not necessarily be with the established and competitive business. You can choose any business that has maximum traffic on the site for collaboration. In this way, you will get customers from your partner’s customer base and eventually, it will lead to increased customer base of your product.

Blogging:

Blogging is one of the effective long-term strategy for increasing the customer base of your business. Quality content plays a vital role in driving the customers to the product. It is recommended to create a high-quality content that is targeted specifically to customers. Targeted content increases the SEO of the site and improve the ranking of the website on search engine. Eventually, you get more traffic to your site. Customers will read the content and if they find it appealing, they will share the content with their fellows, friends, and family.

Advertisement:

Advertisement is the basic method to advertise your business in different dimensions. You can use Google Ads for advertising. Google Ads require you to spend money, but it is one of the quickest ways to get maximum customers.

Social Media:

21st century is a digital age in which you can reach to customers through different forums. Now you can reach to your customers through the channels which are frequently used by customers. Nowadays, every person has its account on social media forums including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and post relevant content that targets the customers. Through social media, you can get enormous sharing of your posts. So make sure to make an account on every forum.

First time purchase:

You can make the first time purchase experience of your customers memorable by offering incentives over it.In this way, the visitors of your online store or physical business will become regular customers.

Referrals:

Referrals are the most efficient and effective way of marketing your business and getting new customers. This type of marketing is usually done by existing customers by referring it to their friends and family. This strategy works if the product you are offering is of high quality and customers are satisfied with it. If you are running an online business, you can get an automated software for referral marketing.

Network:

Interact with new people by attending business seminars, events and tell them about your business. Introduce your business among gatherings of a chamber of commerce and trade associations. Your business will get a significant boost through your effective interaction.

Website:

Nowadays, customers find companies by looking at their websites first. Your website often serves as the first introduction of your business. So, frequently update your website according to the latest trends in the market. Visitor should not feel any inconvenience while browsing your business website. You can hire a professional website designer for professional web display.

New product:

Offering a new product will obviously attract the customers. It may seem expensive or complicated, but you do not need to launch an entirely new product or service. You can replace an existing product, reprice the product, or even change the packing of the product. It will be considered a new offer and customers will get attracted to the product. Suppose you are running a business of Bluetooth Party Speakers, you can change the color of the speaker that will be considered as a significant change in the product.

Expertise:

You can volunteer your expertise by speaking on different forums. Share your knowledge with your peers and customers. It will build your credibility among people.

SEO Trends To Pay Attention To In 2021

As we near the end of a truly tumultuous year that most people would rather forget, we look forward once again to the coming year and the changes that it brings, specifically to the world of search engine optimization.

SEO has evolved so much since its advent a couple of decades or so ago.

It only seems like yesterday when keyword stuffing was an acceptable way of getting high search engine rankings. Now it’s a widely-condemned practice by Google and other search engines.

The unmistakable emphasis on quality content today is also a far cry from the way search engines ignored it in the beginning. And who would have thought twenty years ago that mobile optimization would even become a thing?

Given that SEO is a relatively young and ever-changing field, we can only expect more and more optimization trends to pop up year in and year out. For 2021, here are some of the SEO trends we believe will impact the industry.

UX Will Blow Up

Over the last couple of years, people have been talking about how great user experience and SEO go hand in hand, but it’s in 2021 that we will see UX become a true-blue, honest-to-goodness ranking factor with the rollout of the Page Experience signal in May 2021.

When sizing up your page’s overall UX, Google will look at your site’s Core Web Vitals, a set of specific factors that focus on the most critical aspects of the user experience such as loading, interactivity, visual stability while loading.

The Core Web Vitals will then be combined with other search signals for page experience like mobile-friendliness, browsing safety, HTTPS-security, and lack of interstitial pop-ups to get a clear picture of the quality of the experience a user goes through when exploring a web page.

Although how Core Web Vitals will directly impact your rankings is still unknown, it’s probably safe to say that getting an excellent page experience score could increase your chances for higher rankings. We have to wait until next year to see what happens, though.

Site Speed Will Matter More Than Ever

Improving site speed has always been a trend year in and year out, mainly because users will always have an insatiable need for speed.

These days, users expect the web pages they access to load in three seconds or less.

If your pages load more slowly than that, you will need to speed things up by optimizing your images for size, content optimization, reducing redirects, and switching to a better web hosting provider.

Voice Search Will Grow Bigger

One clear indicator that voice search will only grow bigger in the coming years is the number of households with at least one smart speaker, the device of choice of voice searchers for their search engine queries.

According to Statista, 35% of U.S. households have at least one smart speaker as of 2019, but that figure is poised to balloon over the years to 75% by 2025.

With the continued rise of voice search, the people who do SEO would do well to optimize for it. They can do things like target long-tail key phrases, use conversational language when creating content, and improve content readability to perform well in voice search results.

Mobile-friendliness Will Grow In Importance

Being mobile-friendly has always been important over the last few years, given that it’s actually a ranking factor.

However, Google’s scheduled rollout of mobile-first indexing for all websites in March 2021 is going to change the mobile game forever.

Starting March next year, the mobile version of your website will be Google’s primary basis when indexing and ranking it. That means your site must perform well on mobile devices or face the risk of your pages dropping in Google search rankings.

Find out how mobile-friendly your site is by checking out Google’s Mobile Friendly Test.

These trends are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as far as 2021 SEO trends are concerned. While trends may come and go, the ones listed above are likely to be around for a long time. Then again, change is the only constant in SEO, and that’s why we all need to be on the lookout for trends that just might become a game-changer for everyone in the coming years.

About the Author

Shawn Byrne is the founder and CEO of SEOPhoenix.net. Shawn started his career in I.T. troubleshooting workstations, servers and networks, then went on to doing SEO as a side project and quickly found success in ranking websites. It was easy for him to grasp not only the algorithms but also the technical side which most SEO strategists miss and neglect because of its complexities. SEO Phoenix then grew based on its own rankings and referrals.

How to Increase Brand Awareness on Your Landing Page

A good landing page will encourage your audience to keep moving through the sales funnel — and convince them that your business has services or products to soothe a pain point they’re dealing with.

However, advertising isn’t the only job your landing page has. It may be the first encounter a customer has with your brand, much like a product on a shelf or an ad on social media. Because you won’t get another chance for a first impression, your landing page also needs to be a good brand ambassador. A visitor should roughly understand your business with a quick scan and know what you do and why you do it.

With these strategies, you can use design landing pages that convince your audience and strengthen brand awareness.

1. Include Your Logo

Your logo is the face of your brand. It’s almost always a good idea to make sure it’s prominently featured on your landing page, even if you’re trying to keep the design as simple as possible.

In general, companies will opt for top-left logo placement, but some landing pages may change this up. A centered logo may be more effective, depending on the overall design. However, keep in mind that customers expect the logo to be in the top left, simply due to how many brands use this placement.

2. Use Custom or Distinct Brand Fonts

If your brand has some excellent typography backing up its look, you can lean on those design decisions to improve your landing pages.

Simple adjustments to your landing page fonts can help bring the page in line with your company’s overall look. They can reinforce the values or aesthetics you want customers to associate with your products.

While standing out is always helpful, it’s best not to go overboard. Some fonts that work great for a logo or header won’t translate well to body text or a form field. Ideally, you should have a standard font that works well for large chunks of text. When designing your landing page, it’s not always necessary to use the same font you use elsewhere in your branding. Sometimes, using one with similar characteristics will be enough to communicate the same values.

3. Use Your Branding Materials

Branding materials that show off what your company stands for — like graphics, videos and images that represent your products — can help a landing page show visitors what you’re offering. They can also quickly demonstrate your business’s values.

H.O. Penn Machinery is a dealer of Caterpillar heavy machinery and tools in southern New York state. The still background image here is actually a video, showing off some offered tools and machinery in action. The imagery in the video — heavy machinery used on construction sites and contractors overseeing work in a residential area — emphasizes the kind of utility and equipment new customers can expect from the brand.

Because H.O. Penn Machinery is a CAT dealer, the video also shows off the distinctive Caterpillar coloration and logos.

4. Build a Palette With Your Brand Colors

You can use almost every aspect of your landing page to subtly echo the look of your company. One of the simplest ways to do this is by basing the landing page palette off your brand colors.

This landing page from Vivino, an online wine marketplace and app, is a good example. The logo, center graphic and “Enter” button at the top-right are all in the company’s particular shade of wine-red burgundy. It provides a little bit of sophistication and re-emphasizes what the brand is all about.

Your landing page’s use of color doesn’t need to be complicated. This is especially true if your company, like many others, has adopted more of a minimalist aesthetic and may have a logo with just one color. Good design may just be a matter of remembering to use your logo shade as an accent, as with Vivino’s page.

5. Get Straight to the Point

A good landing page is scannable. You want customers to quickly know the benefits of working with your company — and it also improves awareness of your company. Your brand is about what you do and why, so if you can explain the products or services you offer in a sentence, you can boost your visibility.

Canva, a graphic design platform and software suite, is a good example of this. The page clearly communicates what the business has to offer — in this case, graphic design tools that anyone can use, regardless of experience level.

Breaking down your offerings into the simplest, most direct form possible will help customers know what you can provide. If your landing page makes things clear, it can help build that relationship between your look, logo and products in the customer’s mind.

6. Match Your Landing Page With Your Ad Campaigns

Consistency is critical in building brand awareness. The more often a customer sees your branding elements, the more likely they are to remember your design choices and associate them with your company.

Because of this, it’s best to keep your ad campaigns and the related landing pages as close as possible in terms of look and language.

Using Landing Pages to Strengthen Your Brand

With the right approach to design, your landing page can communicate a lot about your company and the products you offer. Keeping it in line with the overall look by using colors, fonts and imagery related to your brand will help the page build audience associations between your company and its values.

Lexie is a digital nomad and web designer. When she’s not traveling to various parts of the country, you can find her at the local flea markets or hiking with her goldendoodle. Check out her design blog, Design Roast, and connect with her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

Why Your Web Pages Take Forever To Load

You may have one of the most visually-stunning websites ever made. Its content may be of the highest quality. The website optimization work may be impeccable. However, all of them will be in vain if its pages take a long time to load.

Given the seemingly shorter attention span of Internet users these days, a slow-loading website will not be doing your business any favors. You really can’t stop visitors from leaving your site if your pages take more than two seconds to load. That may not sound that slow for some people, but it appears to be the norm these days, especially with the ever-growing number of mobile users who are always on the go. You need to address your page speed issues, starting by identifying what is causing them in the first place.

There’s always the possibility that all you need to do is switch to a better web hosting company because some web hosts are simply better than others. It could also be something with your web design. If your site is visually-stunning, then it’s very likely that it’s quite heavy on the graphics. You may also be using a lot of custom fonts. Elaborate graphics and custom fonts, without a doubt, help your site look amazing. However, using them too much could slow any site down. Ease up on their use, and you could speed things up.

If you use plenty of high-quality photographs on your pages, then that is a possible reason why your pages take a long time to load. If you want to increase your page load speed, you might want to optimize your images to make their file sizes smaller without sacrificing image quality. These are just some of the possible reasons for your slow-loading pages. Find out what’s slowing your site down because you need to address them immediately.

Check out the infographic below to find out why.

About the Author
Shawn Byrne is the founder and CEO of SEOPhoenix.net. Shawn started his career in I.T. troubleshooting workstations, servers and networks, then went on to doing SEO as a side project and quickly found success in ranking websites. It was easy for him to grasp not only the algorithms but also the technical side which most SEO strategists miss and neglect because of its complexities. SEO Phoenix then grew based on its own rankings and referrals.

4 Rules Of Digital Marketing For Achieving Better Results On The Web

In the era of the Internet, image culture, and ubiquitous information, most small, medium, and large enterprises decide to use various online communication channels. Internet marketing turns out to be more affordable than traditional forms of marketing and allows for better personalization, more accurate monitoring of the campaign progress, and tracking of real results. In this article Licreative technologies describes the 4 Digital marketing rules and guidelines for better results on the Internet

The Internet, including social media, is currently a very strong and popular space for marketing activities:

  • Over 3 billion people around the world are active in social media.
  • 95% of people aged 18-34 are willing to follow their favorite brands on social media.
  • 72% of consumers want brands to offer discounts and other promotions on social media.
  • On average, 46% of users take action after displaying a video ad on YouTube.
  • 64% of online consumers confirm that video ads viewed on Facebook influenced their purchasing decisions.

There is a reason why internet marketing is described as one of the most dynamically developing branches of promotional and sales activities. The scope of its operation is so wide that in fact, everyone will find an appropriate area for them to focus their activities on.

What are the benefits of online marketing?

By 2021, spending on Internet marketing is projected to reach over $ 375 billion. This state of affairs is influenced by many benefits that are associated with the use of e-marketing activities. The most important benefits are:

  • reaching potential customers 24/7,
  • access to detailed data on recipients, which allows you to better personalize messages and adjust tactics to real expectations and needs,
  • automation of certain marketing processes, which in turn saves not only time but also money,
  • the ability to measure the conducted activities and their optimization to achieve better results,
  • strengthening ties with recipients by interacting.

The only question is how does it look in practice?

Developing a comprehensive internet marketing strategy is a complex and time-consuming task. However, knowing and applying the most important digital marketing principles will not only make your work much easier but will also affect the effectiveness of your online activities.

Internet marketing in 4 steps

Below, I discuss the 4 most important principles of internet marketing that you should know. Thanks to the knowledge of these rules, your e-marketing activities will be even more effective and reach a specific audience.

Step 1. – Define your  e-marketing campaign strategy and  goals

No digital marketing campaign will succeed without defining clear goals and strategies describing what you want to achieve and by what methods.

To this end, it is worth following several case studies, market reports, and looking at the activities of competitors. The last of these points can be done in several ways. The use of competition analysis tools is one of them.

In defining your brand strategy, you need to consider three aspects:

  1. Your audience
  2. the goals you want to achieve
  3. and the results you want to get along with the way you measure them.

Step 2. – Create a communicative brand 

Today, consumers expect a personalized and unique experience resulting from contact with brands. In practice, this means that:

it is worth knowing what the identity and personality of your brand is, the focus should be on the skillful implementation of this communication in selected channels.
This will apply to your website, selected social media, marketing communication delivered via mailings, and operation on any other platforms that will be relevant to your business and which you will define in advance in your internet marketing strategy.

Aesthetic graphic presentation of the brand

Another important aspect that builds brand communication is its visual coherence and user-friendliness (UX / UI / responsiveness).

In practice, it comes down to using the same fonts, colors, graphic themes, layouts, slogans, images, making sure that the website is responsive and looks aesthetically on any electronic medium.

Your brand should be easily identifiable and aesthetically presented in each of the used communication channels, starting from the website and ending with social media channels.

Step 3. – Measure results for better conversion

If the campaigns you create are unique, interesting, valuable and of high quality, it will contribute to building a positive image of your brand and increasing trust in the brand.

Do you want to find out if your online marketing campaigns are effective? You should simply follow their results in the world.

In the “Analysis” tab you will find information on:

  • social media coverage – the estimated number of people who have had contact with statements about the brand,
  • interaction on social media – total number of likes, comments, and shares,
  • the number of positive and negative statements,
  • participation of women and men in the discussion about the brand.
  • All of them can help measure the effects of your campaign.

You can create such reports based on a selected period. You must keep your vigilance and follow up on campaign results.

Constant monitoring of results will allow you to see actions that do not convert, so do not waste time on them, and on the contrary – it will help to isolate those aspects that work best for your business.

Step 4. – Establish relationships with Internet users

Internet marketing, unlike traditional promotional forms, allows you to tighten ties with recipients much more efficiently and on a larger scale. And most importantly – this applies to both existing customers and potential ones!

So let’s use its potential and cultivate relationships with your customers interested in your product or services. Deepen contacts by engaging in communication with the client:

  • react to comments and suggestions,
  • track customer needs,
  • be active and even proactive.

Online marketing customer service is a long-term and well-documented investment. Nothing is lost on the network, information is spread very quickly, so caring for the quality of customer relationships can affect the company’s reputation

This is helpful not only because of the time saved that would have to be spent when manually searching for mentions of the brand. Many users do not use the brand profile marking in their entries, and internet monitoring also allows them to reach these threads. Thanks to this, you will not miss any ongoing conversation about yourself and you will be able to join it directly.

A useful function that will allow you to efficiently manage customer service on the Internet is sentiment analysis. The tool will automatically evaluate the nature of the statement due to positive, negative, or neutral overtones.

When determining online marketing activities, it is worth starting with planning. With a well-thought-out online communication strategy, defined goals, methods of achieving, monitoring, and measuring them, you will achieve the most valuable results.

By using e-marketing techniques, you can increase brand awareness, customer engagement, and loyalty, build interest among potential customers and ultimately – increase conversion and financial results. What you want to achieve and in what volumes depends only on you.

Pop-up UX: 8 Ways to Use it Properly on Your Website

If your goal is to turn your customers into leads and customers, pop-ups are effective in capturing your audience’s attention and achieving your goals.

However, a lot of people do not like to use pop-ups because of all the complaints that they received from users.

So, the challenge with using pop-ups in an e-commerce website is that you do not want to ruin your site visitors’ user experience. You also do not want to get many complaints from them.

Fortunately, you can still use pop-ups to enhance your conversions without destroying the user experience people will have on your site. Here are ways how you can use pop-ups properly on your site:

Create exit-intent pop-ups

Perhaps, one of the most annoying pop-ups out there is when it appears the moment a user visits a site.

Not only that they’re disturbing, but they completely degrade the entire user experience, too. They kill the user-experience right from the very moment a user visits your site.

But instead of being discouraged, why not use exit-intent pop-ups? These pop-ups only show up right at the moment when the user is about to leave your site. Thus, you won’t be interrupting their browsing or reading flow.

You’ll have nothing to lose, too, because the user is about to leave and move on to other web pages or sites, anyway. So, why not try to make the most of it?

Timing is key

Another thing that you need to keep in mind when using pop-ups is timing.

When is the right time you can show them to visitors? Do you want to wait until they get to scroll a certain part of a webpage? Or do you want to wait a little longer, and use a timed pop-up instead to give them enough time to get settled?

These are some questions that you need to ask yourself when it comes to timing.

Keep it cohesive

Most people view pop-ups as a form of spam, coming from something that’s totally not related to what they wanted to view.

So, sticking to a generic, poorly made pop-up design significantly drives down the sign-up rates from users. If they feel that it isn’t related to their purpose they’re on your site, they’ll quickly sideline.

Try to make your pop-up box cohesive to the overall look and feel of your site. Also, your fonts and backgrounds should be cohesive in a way that it generates trust, and traction from your audience.

Also, be careful not to match the colors too much as it could just blend in the background. To make it stand out, try switching your primary and secondary colors.

Optimize your copy

To make the most out of your pop-up, you need to craft a copy that is simple and self-explanatory and does not create any confusion.

Keep in mind that you are not just writing for search engines but for real people.

Injecting some personality or emotional connection can go a long way in encouraging more users to sign up on your site.

Segment your pop-up

Most visitors that arrive on your site have different needs and goals. Although they might be interested in a certain product or topic, they do not think and respond the same way with all your marketing messages.

So to enhance the overall user experience of pop-ups in your site, specifically tailor your messages for different audience segments and groups.

The primary purpose why you need to segment your pop-up is to make sure that it is tailored specifically to the needs and interests of your target audience. You can segment these pop-ups according to browser, device, location, pages, and so much more.

Then, plan your pop-up campaigns carefully. When your messaging fits your visitors’ needs more, you can effectively achieve your conversion goals.

Provide clear call-to-action

At the end of the day, it’s simply not enough to create killer content for your site. Your CTA buttons should be engaging enough for users that it helps create a bond between you and them.

Getting your call-to-action (CTA) right from the get-go is an important aspect when creating pop-ups.

After you’ve done your best in keeping their attention to your page, it’s time to put in the extra hustle to entice them to click your CTA.

If done properly, CTA pop-ups will do the real magic for your business, helping you generate quality leads and more sales.

Execute A/B tests

If you want to have a good idea which pop-ups are helpful, and which are the ones that could ultimately hurt your site, then you should execute A/B tests.

Applying this strategy will help you boost your conversions to as much as 40%, while subsequently improving your visitor’s user experience.

When you utilize A/B testing, you’ll be getting first-hand information on the content and design elements that work from the ones that don’t. That way, it’s easier to know which are the things that you want to remove and which ones should stay.

Make them more responsive

These days, most users access the internet using their smartphones and other mobile devices.

So, make sure that your pop-ups show up sensitively on mobile devices as they would on a desktop.

Why? Because Google might penalize you if you don’t.

Also, you’re trying your best to improve user experience here. So, make sure that everything’s responsive as possible, not only for search engines but for your users as well.

Final Thoughts

A lot of website owners find it challenging to display enough information to their audience without distracting them.

So, if you are concerned that pop-ups might ruin your site visitors’ user experience, keep in mind that there are proper ways to incorporate website pop-ups. That said, they can be a vehicle in driving in leads, sign-ups, or sales.

Hopefully, with the tips that we have mentioned in this article, you can utilize pop-ups to enhance your conversions and create a more user-friendly site. Enjoy implementing them and make sure you use them properly.

Public Library Website Design

Carroll County Public Library needed an updated website that was easy to use for visitors. We provided them with a great website that worked for both them and their users.

10 Unique Strategies for Finding New Customers

Growing your business requires a combination of keeping current customers and finding new ones. Retain existing clients by meeting their needs, providing excellent service, and connecting with them on an emotional level. Seeking new prospects requires a bit more creativity and finesse. You have to meet them where they hang out and gain their trust.

Salesforce did a bit of research on the top characteristics of successful business owners. It found about 33% had good communication skills, giving them an edge when reaching out to new customers. If you’re not up to par, make improvements by taking courses, reading articles and trying new tactics until you become an excellent communicator. Once you’ve done your research about who your target audience is, it’s time to try some new strategies to gain their interest.

1. Create Brand Awareness

Making them aware of your brand is the first step in the new acquisitions game. Start by choosing a strong message for your company. What do you stand for and care most about? Your mission should tie into the reason you started your business in the first place. How does your organization help your clients? Why are you passionate about making a change in the world?
Once you’ve perfected your message, share it on social media, at local events and in advertising. Be consistent with your mission, and you’ll begin developing a name in the industry.

2. Add Signage

If you own a brick-and-mortar store, signage helps create awareness in the community. Passersby see a sign about your grand opening or other events and stop in. They’re also useful inside your store to guide users to a specific area or showcase new arrivals. Your signage should match the rest of your style, using brand colors and sticking to a basic style customers see anywhere they interact with your brand.

3. Get Social

Going on social media isn’t anything new, but you can seek new customers on some of the more recent platforms, such as Tik Tok. Look at who your audience is and if you can reach any new people through emerging apps and platforms. If you’re one of the first businesses on a medium, it’s much more likely you’ll develop a strong following. You’re competing with less noise in the early days.

4. Attend Local Events

The best place to find new customers is often close to home. Set up a small booth at a local art festival or street fair. Join in on local chamber of commerce events to network with other business owners. Interact in the local community and get your name out there. Even sponsoring a team at the local Little League park has the potential to bring in new customers you otherwise wouldn’t have connected with.

5. Send Unique Mailers

Come up with a fun campaign and send mailers to people within your target audience. You might do a series including corny jokes related to your industry, leading up to an invitation to a fun event. You could offer something free, such as consultation for homeowners. Think about the typical mailers coming to your home and make yours different. You can send a postcard that is a little larger than average, use eye-popping colors or create a story in booklet form.

6. Attend Trade Shows

Finding a trade show with attendees who fall into your customer profile is an excellent way to expand your reach. If you an afford booth space, set up an exhibit and sign up new customers on the spot. However, if a booth isn’t yet in your budget, don’t let it deter you from attending the conference. You can still make connections just by going to workshops at the event and reaching out to people on the floor.

7. Schedule Radio Interviews

Get in touch with local radio personalities and offer to share your expertise in your industry. For example, if you run a secondhand store, you might talk on a show about saving money or fashion sense. Look at local shows first and reach out to those hosts. Next, expand to national and online broadcasts.

8. Write a Book

Most business owners get into a new endeavor because they have a lot of experience in the industry. Think about the unique knowledge you have and how you could put it into a book. You can either offer it for free in exchange for the person’s email or sell it. You can even give speeches to various groups and sell the book on the side. Once you’re published, you also become more recognizable as an authority.

9. Create a Podcast

Podcasts are quite popular with a broad audience. In the United States, around 75% of people are familiar with them. The number of people familiar with the medium grows each year. A podcast gives you a chance to have a platform and fully promote your company above any others. Decide on a topic and the way you’ll serve up the presentation. For example, you might choose to release it on iTunes.

10. Start a Referral Program

Your current customers are your best word-of-mouth marketing tool. Sometimes they’re just waiting for a chance to tell other people how much they love you. Start a referral program where you reward them for sharing information with others and bringing you new business. If you gain a new customer from a referral, you could offer them a discount off their next purchase, for example.
Another idea is giving them 25% off coupons to hand out to those they know. If the recipient uses the discount, they get the same benefit. Referrals help your business grow exponentially with very minimal additional effort from you.

Pay Attention

Spend time online looking at promotions other companies both inside and outside your industry offer. What creative endeavors make the most sense for your business? Look for ways to introduce your company to new people, and don’t be afraid to try something no one else has before. The key to continual growth is creativity and determination.

Author Bio:
Lexie is a digital nomad and web designer. When she’s not traveling to various parts of the country, you can find her at the local flea markets or hiking with her goldendoodle. Check out her design blog, Design Roast, and connect with her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.