What Is Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is the number of people who visited the landing page only, then quickly left the website without looking through the content. This rate may include people who accidentally get to your site, those who click on your site but feel as if you aren’t what they are looking for, and people whose attention is lost immediately upon landing on your site. The bounce rate is a percentage, calculated by the dividing the number of visitors visiting only the landing page by the number of total website visits.

The bounce rate calculation signifies that the lower the bounce rate, the higher the conversion rate. This is very important because no matter how much web traffic a site has, if the people who visit the site aren’t quality views, they will leave immediately and raise the bounce rate. Keeping a lower bounce rate means that the people who visit a site are interested in the content itself and are intrigued enough in the company, products, or services to look around, expose themselves to the brand, and perhaps convert.

• Content
  Content on a web page should first and foremost be user and customer friendly. The content on a site should keep the visitor’s attention and spark an interest in learning more in order to reduce the bounce rate. This means that the content should be original and unique, relevant and intriguing, and not too long.
• Loading Time
  One of the fastest ways to lose a visitor is to have a long loading time on your website. With the introduction and vast adoption of high speed broadband internet, web surfers are quick to leave a page that doesn’t load immediately. Reduce your loading time by having the smallest image files possible and by cleaning up the HTML codes and CSS files to be as streamlined as possible.
• Page Designs
  An appealing aesthetic on a website design can engage your audience and keep them interested enough to look around. If a page looks outdated, ugly, or unintuitive, it is likely that the visitor will be inclined to leave. Consider consulting with a user experience designer when creating a web design for your initial site.
• On-Site Links
  On-site linking, when you link valuable words to the associated pages with in your site, helps reduce bounce rate by making it simple and easy for visitors to find related and relevant information within your site.

Taking these measures to reduce bounce rate will help improve conversion rate of a website and help keep and draw in qualified site visitors. For more information on what you can do to increase the effectiveness of your website, call our internet marketing specialists at 919-341-8901 or schedule a consultation to get started.

What Are Categories?

Categories are a lot like folders. They are collections of things with the same topic or theme. Of course, on blogs you can attach more than one category to your content, but the purpose is the same- to categorize.

Usually, there are a set amount of categories, which is the beauty of this device. With a set amount of categories they are utilized properly and give your blog a focus, subject and purpose. It is helpful for your audience to be able to scan through the list of categories quickly and choose the topic they want to browse. Categories are a great way to give your content structure with an easy browsing experience.

The hard part is in the hands of the publisher; deciding which categories they want to use and when posting, which category each entry belongs in. The reason this is the hard part is because when deciding on categories, its vital that the publisher doesn’t pick any topics that will have too many or too few posts in them, since there isn’t a point to making a category if it will contain all or too few of your posts. Pick categories that reflect your blog content and can act as a table of contents to your reader. Limit the number so that assigning categories is simple and effective.

What Are Tags?

Tags are equivalent to tags in real life; labels you attach to things. One of the differences between tags and categories is that tags aren’t pre-set the way categories are. Tags are written in manually, giving you the freedom to add whatever tags you want. If tags exist, it will link it to posts with the same label, and if it doesn’t exist, it is created as soon as you hit publish. Tags let you label the content with more specific terms that better and more accurately represent the content than a category can.

However, tags aren’t always the most helpful for the browsing experience. One way to help incorporate tags into the browsing experience is to add a “tag cloud”, which is a block of tags where each tag has a different size that coordinates with the number of posts with that tag. A tag cloud helps visitors identify more specific themes within your content, based on popularity.

Tags are good for showing what specific subjects are most popular on your site, but as far as browsing, it can be difficult because there can be thousands of posts with a tag, or even just one.

Deciding Which to Use

Choosing categories or tags depends on the content you are publishing and how the search functions.

User submitted sites like Flickr or YouTube have millions of submissions tend to lean towards tags over categories due to the pure volume of submissions. With so many specific posts, categories wouldn’t provide enough clarity and specificity to enhance the browsing experience, where as tags have more narrow scopes of content while still containing thousands of posts. So, the more content uploaded, the more important tags become.

If the search feature on your site looks to tags for returning results, they obviously carry importance. However, if your search is powered by an external search engine like Google, the tags may not me as useful.

In blogging, tags aren’t as important as categories, since the amount of content is less and user experience and navigation is a top priority. Categories help develop an organized focus and browsing experience for your audience and can provide more direction and clarity than tags. Readers generally like to find posts on a particular theme, and that’s what categories provide. Since you can assign multiple categories to posts, there is flexibility in categorization.

For more blogging tips, check out some of our previous blog entries. Our internet marketing strategists are available to answer any questions or to simply consult on how to promote your online brand. Call 919-341-8901 for a free consultation or fill out our inquiry form and one of our internet marketing specialists will be in contact with you soon.

Online video marketing has been a growing trend that we expect to stick around, and here are a few reasons why.

Interaction

Video brings a more personal interaction between a business and its audience. The mix of visual effects and sounds makes it an effective way of capturing an audience’s attention. Not to mention, a video on your website keeps the viewer on your page, longer, engaging them in something in between a face-to-face and virtual interaction.

Speed and Ease

Video gives the web-users new information delivered fast and made simple. As they say: a picture is worth a 1,000 words, but when you add sound to it it’s worth millions for your business!

Return on Investment

Video is extremely cost-effective to produce. For example, we film all of our videos in our green screen studio at our office in Raleigh, North Carolina. Keeping all of our work local and in house lets us keep costs low while maintaining quality. Videos are a multi-functional too, keeping visitors on your site, or leading them to your site if published on other video sharing hubs like YouTube or Vimeo.

Branding

Video offers the chance of increasing your brand’s recognition. Whether it is used to describe and show the functions of a product, to introduce a company, for online seminars and conferences or for advertisements, videos can be effective ways to gain recognition of your brand. Our talented group of 3D animators specialize in creating logo animations for our green screen videos, giving your video the look and feel of your company and providing a branding tool that is informative as well as entertaining.

Traffic

Video drives traffic to your website. That is either by adding a link to a website or by placing the video on search engines along with well-chosen keywords and tag lines. Google assigns more importance to sites with videos then the sites without video, so the chances are, your site will rank higher.

If you are considering adding a video to your website, call 919-341-8901 or fill out our contact form to request a quote. Please also check out our video portfolio to see some more of our work and sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the latest news in the web video world.

The first thing to know is that when we perform a search, we aren’t actually searching the internet; we are searching the engine’s index of pages on the internet. Google is the largest search engine with over a trillion pages in its index.

Pages are indexed by software programs called spiders. Spiders crawl the web, following links on pages and logging the pages they point to. Then they continue by following the links on those pages, logging those, and so on, until they have an index of over a trillion pages in the search engine.

So, when you go to search for a certain set of keywords, Google’s software searches every indexed page for those words, returning the most relevant results first, based on many different things, such as how many times the keyword shows up in the page, where the keywords are within the text, where the website is from, and the page rank of the website. Page Rank is a patented algorithm invented by Google’s founders, which rates a webpage based on the number and quality of outside links that point to that site. After you search, all of these things are combined to return results that are most relevant to what you are looking for, hence millions of results in half of a second.

It is important to understand how search works so that you can successfully optimize your site to show up in results. At TheeDesign Studio, we build our websites with search engines in mind, creating a custom WordPress content management system (CMS) that is easily indexed by search engines. Then, our internet marketing team helps build incoming links specific for your keywords, so that you show up at the top of the results for your industry.

If you are looking for help getting noticed online, call 919-341-8901 for a free consultation or fill out our inquiry form and one of our marketing specialists will be in contact with you soon.

A QR code is capable of holding up to 7,089 characters in a single symbol, several hundred times more than a traditional barcode. Because of its square shape, which is read both horizontally and vertically, the QR code features a small print size, holding a lot of data. QR codes can hold the same amount of data as a traditional barcode in less than one tenth of the space. Even better, the QR code is able to be scanned even if it is dirty or slightly damaged. Up to 30% of the characters can be recovered from a damaged QR code.

Who Used The First QR Code?

First developed by Toyota in 1994 to categorize car parts manufactured at high speeds, the QR code has evolved into a widely accepted way to code information. Nearly every type of mobile device/smart phone is equipped with a scanner to decipher QR codes. Android, Blackberry and Nokia all provide native applications to scan QR codes, already installed on the devices. The Apple iPhone features numerous free applications, such as RedLaser, that also scans QR codes quickly and accurately. When scanned, smart phones are prompted to perform an action, such as linking to a mobile website, displaying a video, or even sending an SMS text message from your phone.

Because of the ease, availability, and convenience of QR scanners, this type of code is being used far more in recent marketing. Just last year, Dick’s Sporting Goods kicked off its new mobile site by broadcasting a QR code on the world’s largest HDTV video board at the new Cowboy’s stadium in Dallas TX, during the third quarter of the Dicks Sporting Goods Cowboy’s Classic (University of Oklahoma vs. Brigham Young University). When scanned, the code directed fans to Dick’s new mobile site, with an exclusive coupon for $10 off any $50 purchase.

Marketers have reacted positively to the use of QR codes because of how accurately and easily it is to measure response rates. For example, including a QR code in a printed brochure or other print marketing, the company is able to measure how many times the code was scanned, thus returning accurate data on how well the campaign is reaching its audience. The scanned code can link the consumer to the company’s Facebook page, Twitter account, or specific landing pages on their website encouraging the audience to interact with the company, creating more opportunity for exposure, leads, and sales. In addition, the data from scanned QR codes provides a basis for an accurate ROI calculation, or return on investment, which can help justify marketing costs and increase business.

If your business is looking for creative ways to integrate QR codes into your marketing campaign, let us help. Our internet marketing specialists will help you maximize your response rates with interactive technologies and get you noticed. Call us today at 919-341-8901 or click here to fill out our inquiry form and get started.

What Is a Good Example of a Geo Listing?

Let’s use Google. Check it out – go to Google, type in your company name. You’ll probably see a map locating your business and an address. Pretty cool right! Basically, free marketing for your company.

From a marketing standpoint, the use of local business listings has been gaining popularity due to the increase of social media and mobile devices. Consumers not only use these interactive yellow pages to locate a business, product or service in their area; they are also posting reviews of those products and services. Today, there are over 60 local business listing websites on the Internet in five different categories. They include the search engines, social communities, 411 websites (aka yellow page type websites), GPS websites and that age-old business directory.

How Do I Get My Company Listed in Google Local Search?

There are specific steps you can take to get your company listed in Geo-Listing site such as Google.

1. First check to see if your business is listed in Google Maps, now Google Local. Do a search for your business name and include your city name and state in the search query.
2. If you find your listing already exists, and you’ve not yet claimed it, the results will indicate that it is an “unverified listing”. You can verify your listing by clicking on the “More Info” link located next to the business title. You can claim your business by clicking on the link that states: “Claim your business”. From there just follow the security steps of verification and your set.
3. If your listing does not show up when you run your Google Maps query then you will have to submit a new business listing and follow the verification step. You can submit your new business listing by going to: www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage and follow the directions.

As mentioned before it’s important to get your new business listed in Google, however it’s just as equally important to claim your business listing. This is a crucial part of the process because if the wrong person gets access to your business local listing, they can direct customers to a different location by phone or website address. Additional damage can include incorrect information on photos, videos, coupons, and more.

If you have questions or need help getting your website listed in major search engines then the internet marketing specialists at TheeDesign Studio can assist. Just give us a call at 919-341-8901 or fill out our inquiry form to get started.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encryption and secure identification of the server.

So… in other words, that means when you go to a bank website or online store, you are in a secure session and that it’s safe to proceed. Many times you will see the “S” when you are submitting a payment online.

If your goal is to open an internet store, you need to familiarize yourself with HTTPS and how to go about getting one. There are three simple steps to follow to get your website secured.

First, you need a web server that supports SSL (which means Secure Sockets Layer a protocol that provides secure communications on the internet) encryption… I would recommend a server like Apache that comes with “mod_ssl” which provides SSL support. Next, you need a unique IP address for each domain that will have HTTPS.  Finally, you need an SSL certificate from a certified provider… I would suggest TheeRegister.com. Once you have that you are ready to start creating secured pages, and utilizing the web to generate revenue.

If you have questions about HTTPS – or anything else web related – just give TheeDesign Studio a call at 919-341-8901 or fill out the inquiry form.

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google search page was designed to save people time. It does this by taking you directly to the first web page that returns for your query. If you were to type in a keyword or keyword phrase in Google and press the search button, Google returns a results page that shows multiple websites matching your search phrase.

However, if you type the same keyword phrase in Google and then select the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, the search engine skips the search results page and goes directly to the first ranked page for that search phrase. For example, if you enter the keyword “baseball” and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, Google will send you to the home page of Major League Baseball.

So the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is handy if you’re fairly confident that the first result in the search engine is going to be exactly the page you want to find. It saves you time and energy by taking you directly to what they hope you’re looking for.

If you want to learn more about this subject or search engine optimization (SEO), just give us a call at 919-341-8901 for a free consultation or fill out our inquiry form and one of our internet marketing specialists will be in contact with you soon.

A vector file can typically be described as a small, scalable, and editable image that provides designers infinite freedom when it comes to graphic design and illustration. As such, vector images are ideal for graphics such company logos, banner ads, and other design images that often require scaling.

In technical terms, vector images are made up of numerous individual, scalable objects. Each individual object contained in a vector image is defined by a mathematical equation. In other words, a vector image is broken down into a series of geometric shapes which are created by these mathematical equations, rather than pixels, rendering the highest quality possible. The importance of this is that vector images are not resolution dependent. Thus, each vector object is fully scalable and give your designer the ability to resize your logo without the loss of image quality.

It is common practice for graphic designers to use vector based images as the starting point for any new graphic design project, such as logos. However, since you cannot scan a drawing or image and save it as is, a vector graphic designer must create them from scratch by using high-end drawing software such Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, and Corel Draw. If your graphic designer ever sends you a logo file or any other image with the following file extensions: .EPS, .AI, .CDR, or .SWF, then your logo is in vector format.

By now you’re probably asking yourself why it is important to know this information. Well a logo is more than just ink slapped on a piece of paper. A logo is the foundation of your company’s image. It is the reflection of your business, meant to set your company apart from your competition and leave an impression on your customers.

So, why would you want to work with a designer who does not create logos or other images in vector format? The answer is you don’t. If the designer is limited to what he can do with the design of your image, then so are you.

That is why our team of graphic designers at TheeDesign Studio in Raleigh, NC can help. We have a complete understanding of what a logo‘s business function is and the power that it should convey. We utilize all the right tools that give us the ability to design your vision.

So, let’s work together. Call 919-341-8901 for a free consultation or fill out our inquiry form and one of our logo design experts will be in contact with you soon.

What Does That Mean?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites news and updates. i.e., Sports, Money, Business Trends, and more.

In the past people who wanted to keep track of updates on websites would “bookmark” websites in their browser’s and check them day to day to see what had been added. For example, most everyone checks the weather. Back before RSS feeds, people who wanted to be updated on the local or national weather via the net would have to go to their favorite website and check it.

So What Was the Problem with This Method?

The answer is simple. The web users had to do all the work. The information was sent to them automatically which meant they had to search for it themselves. Searching for this information resulted in a lot of wasted time. RSS streamlines a lot for web users.

RSS provides web users with a method of receiving relevant and up to date information without the struggle of searching for themselves. It saves people time and helps them to get the information they want quickly after it is published. Subscribing to an RSS feed is like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it sent to your computer.

If you want to learn how TheeDesign Studio can integrate an RSS Reader to your website, just give us a call at 919-341-8901 or complete our contact form to set up a free consultation and one of our experts will be in contact with you soon.