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https://kennbivins.com creative thinker and do-er Sat, 22 Mar 2014 20:56:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Contemporary Art Installations – Circa 1920 https://kennbivins.com/contemporary-art-installations/ https://kennbivins.com/contemporary-art-installations/#respond Sat, 22 Mar 2014 20:56:53 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=300 Robbie Williams will go head-to-head with Olympic athlete Usain Bolt at the 2018 Soccer Aid charity game. The Rock DJ singer will serve as the captain of the England team, while Olympic sprinter Bolt will head up the World squad in the latest edition of the charity tournament, which Robbie co-founded in 2006. "I am...

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Robbie Williams will go head-to-head with Olympic athlete Usain Bolt at the 2018 Soccer Aid charity game.

The Rock DJ singer will serve as the captain of the England team, while Olympic sprinter Bolt will head up the World squad in the latest edition of the charity tournament, which Robbie co-founded in 2006. "I am buzzing that Soccer Aid for Unicef is back," Robbie said in a statement. "Reclaiming the title for England this year is going to taste so much sweeter with Usain leading the Soccer Aid World XI. I can't wait to lead out the England team on Sunday 10th June at Old Trafford in what really is a game like no other. With your support, we will help children in danger around the world." Retired athletics star Bolt, who will be playing his first official soccer match, said his team will be unbeatable and that he already has a special celebration planned for when he scores.
"It is my dream to make it as a professional footballer, so to be able to step out onto the pitch at Old Trafford in June, and play against some of football's biggest legends is going to be remarkable," he said. "I enjoy the thrill of competition in front of a crowd, so Robbie and his England team better watch out as I won’t be going easy on them!"

Robbie and Usain, who have recorded an advert for the competition, will be joined by celebrities and soccer legends which have yet to be announced.

The match will take place at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England on 10 June (18) and will be broadcast live on ITV in the U.K. All profits from ticket sales and viewer donations will be given to United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) UK, for which Robbie serves as an ambassador.

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]]> https://kennbivins.com/contemporary-art-installations/feed/ 0 Things to Know for Your Website Redesign https://kennbivins.com/things-to-know-for-your-website-redesign/ https://kennbivins.com/things-to-know-for-your-website-redesign/#respond Fri, 21 Mar 2014 21:52:48 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=308 A well-designed website can lead to more conversions. Visitors and potential customers are attracted to websites with a good design that is welcoming. You may look at your website and feel like it is outdated. Your sales may be decreasing and your website design could have something to do with it. Maybe your website just...

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A well-designed website can lead to more conversions. Visitors and potential customers are attracted to websites with a good design that is welcoming.

You may look at your website and feel like it is outdated. Your sales may be decreasing and your website design could have something to do with it. Maybe your website just doesn’t function well and the user experience is presenting issues and leading to complaints.

If these things are happening to you, it may be time for a new website redesign.

However, you’re probably thinking that you don’t know where to go. What do you do if your website could use a new, fresh look in a redesign? If you have made the decision to start a redesign process, here are some things to consider:

Before starting the redesign process, consider your competitors. What is their website design like? How can you incorporate elements of their design or strategies they may be using into your own. Competitive analysis is a good opportunity to see ways that you can make your own website better than your competition. You want to redesign your website to be more effective, load faster and have easier navigation.

Outside of comparing your website to competitors, be sure to review your old website. Be critical of your current design and identify what is working for you and what isn’t. If you’re considering a redesign, there are likely things about your current website that are not working or that you don’t like. If you have detailed analytics, you can look at the traffic patterns of visitors and see if certain pages have high bounce rates, or look at heat maps to see visitor behavior.

As you enter into the redesign process, figure out exactly what you want to prioritize, who your target audience is, what is working for your current website, changes that you want to make to the design and new goals you want to achieve. Once you have these things figured out, you can start building a redesign plan for your website.

In trying to create a quality redesign and a quality user experience, you want to make sure the website redesign has strong visual features. This is important because people tend to focus on visuals. Using custom photos is a good way to do this. By using your own photos instead of stock images, you can create more of a response.

You want to use elements that are personal to your brand that represent the tone and voice of your website and the content you produce. Use fonts, colors and images that reflect the identity of your brand. Use colors that contrast and go together well to create more pop on the design.

In addition to the actual design elements, make sure you have a blog to continue to create content and write about topics that can attract traffic to your website and add landing pages that are designed to welcome and convert new visitors into customers.

Once you have completed the design elements of the website, you want to make sure that the website is being optimized properly, and you may consider optimizing the website for voice search as well so that your website is listed among results for people using phones or voice-recognition devices. Also make sure that your website design is optimized for mobile devices so that it is responsive to all mobile users.

A website redesign may sound like a lot, but remember the reasons you are considering a one in the first place. You feel something about your website looks outdated or is not working anymore and you want to change that.

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]]> https://kennbivins.com/things-to-know-for-your-website-redesign/feed/ 0 3 Easy Website Tweaks to Convert More Visitors https://kennbivins.com/3-easy-website-tweaks-to-convert-more-visitors/ https://kennbivins.com/3-easy-website-tweaks-to-convert-more-visitors/#respond Sat, 07 Sep 2013 14:03:47 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=303 Not all marketers have the time and resources to go through a full website redesign process. Here are a few simple but proven techniques that you can implement today and optimize your website’s conversion rate. Call to Action Button Color This is one of the most important elements of your website. The “Call to Action”...

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Not all marketers have the time and resources to go through a full website redesign process. Here are a few simple but proven techniques that you can implement today and optimize your website’s conversion rate.

Call to Action Button Color

This is one of the most important elements of your website. The “Call to Action” button is the button that guides your visitors to the desired business goal, like signing up for a trial, downloading a whitepaper or contacting sales.

There is no real best practice about using a specific color across all sites and businesses. If someone tells you there is, don’t trust them. CTA buttons are like road signs that tell people which is the right way to go. As such the most important thing to have in mind is that they need to be in contrast with their surrounding. A good way to determine contrasting colors is to use a color wheel. For example, if you have a background that is in the “Blues” spectrum the corresponding color for the button should be from the “Reds” spectrum.

Another thing to remember is that no matter how logical a color change might look, always A/B test any changes to validate your assumption.

Pop-ups

For many years there was a certain stigma to using pop-ups on your website because it was thought that they ruined user experience. But with the proliferation of A/B testing and the ability to validate efficiency, more and more companies are starting to revive pop-ups as means to increase conversion rates.

The key to success with pop-ups is context. Forget about homepage pop-ups. Wait until your visitors have browsed a bit, so you can determine their intention.

Communicate Value on Sign Up Forms

The sign up form is the hardest and most important hurdle you need to take your visitors over, so you need to get it right.

You can always experiment with removing form fields, but this way you are capturing less important business information which will limit the segmentation options for post-registration initiatives like email marketing or sales follow up.

That’s why a more suitable tactic is to increase the desire of people to sign up.

For a newsletter form this can be done by adding a summary of all the useful resources you will receive if you leave your email.

For forms that ask the visitors for more information, like trial forms, you need to put a bit more work in. Things to consider adding, in addition to the benefit of signing up, are social proof like testimonials and things that address anxiety concerns.

Following those three simple techniques can get you closer to meeting your marketing goals. But remember, always test new things against current versions to make sure there is an improvement.

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]]> https://kennbivins.com/3-easy-website-tweaks-to-convert-more-visitors/feed/ 0 5 Important Mobile-friendly Features Every Website Should Have https://kennbivins.com/5-important-mobile-friendly-features/ Fri, 06 Sep 2013 23:35:16 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=5357 Nowadays consumers spend over 3 hours a day using their smartphones, and 87% of smartphone owners say that they use a search engine on their smartphone at least once a day. In addition, Google recently announced that they would deprioritize non-mobile websites in organic mobile search results, since visiting a non-mobile site from a smartphone...

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Nowadays consumers spend over 3 hours a day using their smartphones, and 87% of smartphone owners say that they use a search engine on their smartphone at least once a day. In addition, Google recently announced that they would deprioritize non-mobile websites in organic mobile search results, since visiting a non-mobile site from a smartphone can deliver poor user experience. Having this in mind, we compiled a list of five important mobile-friendly features your website should have if you want to win mobile users.

1. Responsive Website Design

Your website is not only being visited by a variety of different devices and screen sizes, but also the same visitors are returning to your site using multiple devices. This means that your website needs to provide the same level of user experience no matter the device it is being looked through. Responsive design is a web design approach which guarantees that website pages, are able to automatically reformat themselves depending on the device they are being opened on. So, desktop, tablet or phone, it really does not matter, the content will be displayed in a way which is easy to browse.

2. Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

Call-to-action button helps your site visitors understand what action you want them to take during their visiting and makes it easy for them to do so. Most mobile devices, like smartphones have limited screen space which means the CTA buttons should be adjusted to account for this limitation. One of the best practices is to use sticky navigation and place the button in it.

3. Simple mobile-Navigation

The navigation is the tool with which visitors will browse your website. And having in mind the limited space of mobile devices, it must be simplified and always visible. The navigation for mobile screens should be vertical and the space between the navigational elements should be large enough to avoid misscliks.

Example of simple and clean mobile navigation. There is enough white space between each menu item.

4. Usable Forms

Forms are the key conversion element of every business website. They should be very short and require only the most needed information in order to decrease the time spent by the visitors for filling it out. If your website requires more information, make sure that the forms are combined in small logical groups and clearly indicate how many steps your visitors have to take to complete the form. They also have to be big enough, so the users can easily click on them.

Don’t expect visitors to browse your whole website in search for your company phone or email. Just because you know it is at the bottom of the About Us page, doesn’t mean they will know. Make sure it is visible at all times. A quick tweak like putting your contact info in the main navigation or in the footer can significantly improve the number of inbound inquiries you receive.

5. Click-to-call Functionality

For B2B or Ecommerce websites it’s essential to have a method for visitors to easily contact you. Click-to-call allows your mobile visitors to phone your business in just one tap, and it is a great alternative over filling forms which sometimes may be difficult to fill out on a mobile screen.

By covering all those mobile-friendly features, your website will be one step closer to achieving its business goals. When developing your website, make sure you have a strict process for testing your website for mobile use.

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]]> 4 Common Homepage Design Mistakes Hurting Your Business Goals https://kennbivins.com/4-common-homepage-design-mistakes/ https://kennbivins.com/4-common-homepage-design-mistakes/#respond Fri, 06 Sep 2013 18:03:03 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=301 You website’s homepage is the storefront of your business. If it doesn’t communicate what’s inside in an engaging and clear way, customers will most likely pass it by. We compiled a list of the most common things that are overlooked by businesses when creating their website’s homepage. 1. Not communicating your product value proposition effectively...

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You website’s homepage is the storefront of your business. If it doesn’t communicate what’s inside in an engaging and clear way, customers will most likely pass it by. We compiled a list of the most common things that are overlooked by businesses when creating their website’s homepage.

1. Not communicating your product value proposition effectively

To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.

This is a pretty short window, so you need to quickly help people understand what’s your product and why they should keep browsing your site. Make sure you have that short pitch visible in the top section of your homepage, so people can see it without having to scroll.

2. Not calling visitors to action

Your website exists to entice an action in visitors that pushes them to the next step in their evaluation. This is also known as Call to Action. Some of the most popular calls to action are related to trial download, contact form submission, demo signup, and purchase.

However, many fail to have a visible call to action on their homepages, which is the place on which the majority of their potential customers will land.

A simple thing like putting a contrasting button with your most important call to action on your homepage can significantly increase your chances of converting visitors into customers.

3. Not providing shortcuts to important information

Visitors come to your website to complete certain set of tasks, like learn about the product benefits, see what customers you have, or check the pricing. The easier you make it for them to gather this information the higher your chances of convincing them to keep browsing your website. Putting links to such resources on your homepage can significantly shorten the amount of time a user needs to get to the information she is looking for.

4. Not providing contact information

Whether you are designing a website from scratch or want to improve the effectiveness of your current one, follow those simple tips and you will be one step closer to achieving your business goals.

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]]> https://kennbivins.com/4-common-homepage-design-mistakes/feed/ 0 Is Your Content Marketing Effective? https://kennbivins.com/is-your-content-marketing-effective/ https://kennbivins.com/is-your-content-marketing-effective/#respond Wed, 28 Aug 2013 21:40:14 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=5352 A big part of online marketing is content marketing. Marketers need to put together a strategy for producing content in various stages from planning to creation to the promotion and finally analysis. Each step of the content marketing process holds great importance, but many people don’t check on their analytics as often as they should. Two...

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A big part of online marketing is content marketing. Marketers need to put together a strategy for producing content in various stages from planning to creation to the promotion and finally analysis.

Each step of the content marketing process holds great importance, but many people don’t check on their analytics as often as they should. Two main reasons for this are fear over the results or a lack of understanding what the analytics mean.

So, how can you be sure that your content marketing strategy is working and producing results that are measurable? Here are a few things to look for:

Website Traffic

One of the standard ways to measure success is through website traffic, the number of visits and pageviews you are receiving to your website. These statistics are often the first things you see on an analytics report.

Subscribers

If you issue a newsletter or have a subscription service, keep track of the number of subscribers you have on your email subscription list. Once you have a basic count or establish a modest subscriber list, you can start tracking growth by keeping a count of new subscribers each month.

Search Engine Rankings

There are certain keywords that will rank higher than others, but getting your website optimized so that you appear on the first page of search results for those keywords is the ultimate sign of a successful content marketing campaign. You can track average page placement of keywords to see how you are ranking on a month-by-month basis.

Average Time on Page

You may have a large number of pageviews, but that doesn’t tell the full story of how well your website is performing. You can triple website traffic in a month, but if visitors aren’t staying on the page, they likely are not reading your content or making a purchase. Analytics reports break down the average time on page so that you can see if people are just visiting to quickly browse your website or if they are actually reading and invested in your type of content.

Social Media Following and Shares

Social media is an essential part of content marketing as well because it provides channels for promoting content. There are two measurable ways to see how effective your content marketing is on social media. If you are building a following and getting more followers to your social media, it means that your audience is increasing and your potential customer reach continues to grow. The more shares you get on social media further extends that reach and can help increase your following and ultimately shows which visitors are impacted by your content.

Feedback

What better way to see how effective your content marketing is than by getting direct feedback. Comments, messages, social media updates, contact form submissions and reviews are just a few ways you can generate feedback to help improve the quality of your content for your target audience.

Leads

If your content is designed to generate more business, the number of leads you get as a result of your marketing efforts is another way to measure success. No matter how you receive your leads, you want to understand what draws people to do business with you and which parts of your content marketing efforts were effective.

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate is a great tool to see what is truly effective. You can reach a large audience with social media posts or email marketing, but the only way it is paying off is if people actually click on the piece of content to learn more about your business. Click-through rate is measured in analytic reports.

Need help getting started in content marketing? Turn to the experts at VamTam for assistance. We have worked with many clients to provide various content marketing services and want to help you!

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]]> https://kennbivins.com/is-your-content-marketing-effective/feed/ 0 4 Tips To Make Your eCommerce Site More Trustworthy https://kennbivins.com/4-tips-to-make-your-ecommerce-site-more-trustworthy/ Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:01:38 +0000 https://byra.vamtam.com/?p=12438 Many factors go into making a successful eCommerce site. One of those factors is making sure that your targeted customers view your site as trustworthy. If people do not trust your website, then they are less likely to buy your products. If you search online for how to make your eCommerce website more trustworthy, you’ll...

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Many factors go into making a successful eCommerce site. One of those factors is making sure that your targeted customers view your site as trustworthy. If people do not trust your website, then they are less likely to buy your products.

If you search online for how to make your eCommerce website more trustworthy, you’ll come across many different articles and websites with ongoing lists about all of the steps you need to take. In this article, however, I’m going to cut through all of those steps and give you four tips to make your site a more trustworthy eCommerce site.

Design

Think of your eCommerce site as the face of your business. It’s the first thing people see when they search for your business and your brand. If your website’s design is outdated and not up to par, it could mean losing potential customers. In addition to the look of your website, navigation and usability are key. With roughly 5 seconds to capture their attention, if a consumer lands on your website and has a hard time finding what they are searching for, they will bounce and head directly to a competitor’s site.

Mission

If you can’t initially grow your business by word of mouth, how are you going to get people to invest in what you are trying to sell? The answer: your mission statement, about us page, story, etc. No matter what you call it, having an informative and open ‘About Us’ page, ‘Story,’ or ‘Mission Statement’ will give consumers insight into who you are, what you are selling, and your reasoning behind it. Many people tend to skip over this part of building a website, dedicating more time to other aspects and leaving this section with the bare minimum. However, if you want to build a successful eCommerce website that people deem trustworthy, personalization and background is the way to go.

Reviews

Ratings, reviews, testimonials, you name it. The number one thing to convert consumers into customers, besides design, mission, and your actual products, is customer reviews. New companies and businesses that don’t have a huge customer base need to rely on actual customer testimonials and reviews in order to build their reputation. Incorporate these customer testimonials, ratings, and reviews on your product pages, ‘About Us’ page, email campaigns, and more. Potential buyers will be much more receptive to the positive experiences of your customers rather than the claims you make about your own business.

Policies and FAQs

Last, but most certainly not least, policies, badges, and FAQs. Before displaying your badges and implementing your policies and FAQs, the first step you should take to make your eCommerce site more trustworthy is utilizing an SSL certificate. After this, you should implement your policies and create a FAQs page. This will give people an idea of the kind of business you are running and should answer their questions about ordering, shipping, paying, returning, etc. It’s also a good idea to display any certificates and badges you may have that would assist in instilling trust in potential buyers.

In conclusion, the four most important steps you should take to make your SSL certified website more trustworthy to consumers are stellar design and a great user experience, an informative and personalized “About Us’ page and mission statement, highlighted customer reviews and testimonials, and an easy to find policies and FAQ’s page. Consumers won’t put their personal information on a website they can’t immediately see is secure and they won’t waste their time searching for products on a messy and outdated website.

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