Iceberg Web Design can help with all your digital marketing needs. So don’t let your marketing budget go unused.

With the hits many businesses have taken throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have cut their marketing budgets to curb spending. Data from research firm Gartner CMO Strategic Priorities Survey 2020-2021 reveals that the proportion of revenue allocated to marketing was cut almost in half, from an average of 11% in 2020 to just 6% in 2021—the lowest proportion allocated to marketing in the history of the survey. 

The Problem with Reducing your Marketing Budget

• You risk losing market share
• It will be harder to attract new leads
• Even if you hold onto your current business, you will find it next to impossible to grow
• Out of sight, out of mind

Marketing is Essential, and it Can Be affordable

You can make the most of your marketing dollars by choosing wisely where those dollars should be allocated. Of course, the best place to start is with your website. That’s because your website is a continuing source of marketing.

It is versatile and evergreen. It is essential as a calling card, but it is also more than just a calling card. You can add features that not only help in your marketing efforts but can also streamline your business.

A Good Website, and All Good Marketing Starts with Great Content

It is essential to have clear messaging, the right tone, and precision branding to reach your target audience. This will make the most of your marketing budget by allowing your advertising arrows to hit their bullseyes.

Good content extends to your social media marketing, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, Tik-Toks, and special campaigns. Everything must have brand consistency and a clear plan.

What You Can Cut

It’s essential to evaluate what you do well in the marketing sphere and your target audience. For example, it is far better to focus on two social media channels and use them well than to use all the channels only halfway and often the wrong way.

Use It or Lose It

Use your Marketing Budget by the end of the year, or they may be cut from your budget next year.

• SEO Audit- Work with an SEO Expert to evaluate your keywords and your overall SEO. This can help you formulate a plan for the upcoming year.
• Blog Posts- Now, use those keywords to up your website’s SEO. Hire an SEO professional content writer to ensure your post hits all the marks.
• Social Media Campaign- Retarget your social media and use it combined with powerful content and stunning imagery to gain leads and customers
• Update Your Website- Start the year with a new website that expresses your company’s message and mission.

We Can Help

Iceberg Web Design has SEO Content Writers, Digital Marketing Specialists, and incredible Designers and Developers. We can help with all your digital marketing needs. So don’t let your marketing budget go unused. Contact us today!

The post Using Your Marketing Budget appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

We have two main products that result in beautiful websites: our turn-key websites and our custom websites. The process to get there is quite different, however. Let’s look at some additional factors and how they could affect which option you choose.

Size

If your site is five to seven pages, both turn-key and custom development will work well. But once you get beyond seven pages, you would be better served by a custom site.

Time

Semi-custom websites can be launched as quickly as six weeks from kick-off. This timeline includes content, design, and buildout. We do most of the work for you on turn-key sites, so if you are busy, all you will be expected to do is a content interview, review content drafts, and provide assets and access to your site.

Custom sites take much longer than turn-key sites. How much longer depends on the site’s features, the number of pages, and numerous other factors. You will receive a timeline once we schedule the content interview or content planning session. For customers who wish to be more involved in the process, the custom is the way to go.

Features

Our semi-custom sites are perfect for businesses that want to develop an online presence with a professional website. You can add features, but keep in mind that any additional features will also add to your site’s price and timeline. You may be better off going with a custom site if you want more than one or two features.

If you would like online business tools integrated with your website, complex forms, advanced search and filtering, multiple galleries, a blog, dynamic team section, events calendar, custom animation, video background support, e-commerce, and other features, a custom site is a perfect option for you. 

Design and Development

The design and development time for a turn-key site is much faster and does not include a mock-up. It will match your branding, resulting in a professional, attractive website.

Custom websites will have a mock-up phase and will be completely customized. This is one of the reasons they take much longer than our semi-custom turn-key sites.

Price, Maintenance, and Access

There are no upfront costs for a turn-key site other than for content writing. After that, you pay a monthly payment. You do not have access to make changes to your site, but you will have 15 minutes of updates each month and quarterly plugin updates.

Custom sites cost more, and you pay for them upfront. Included in this are the more extended design and development time, hosting and full access to your site.  Depending on your monthly hosting plan you may also have 15-60 minutes of free support each month and either monthly or quarterly plugin updates.

The Choice is Yours

Both turn-key and custom sites have many advantages. The best for your business will depend on which of those advantages are most important to you. Either way, you will be pleased with the results. Contact us today to get your project started.

The post Turn-Key or Custom Website: Which is Right for Your Business? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Red

Red is an energizing color used to convey love, power, and even aggression. With red, context is essential, as well as the amount of red that you use. Used sparingly and in the right way, red can make quite an impact.

Pink

Pink is a softened version of red, romantic and hopeful, soothing and compassionate. It doesn’t stimulate the way red does so that it can be a good alternative in the right circumstance. But it can come across as immature, lacking power, so think carefully about what message you want to get across.

Yellow

Yellow connotes joy. It is the color children use to make a smiling sun. Why is the sun smiling? It just seems happy. Like red, yellow must be used sparingly. Too much yellow can cause feelings of anxiety.

Orange

Orange is a soothing color, representing the warmth of home, food, and family. Orange is motivating. The color of dark saffron and marigolds is also the most dominant color in India. You can see how significant orange is within eastern spirituality since Buddhist monks, Sikhs, and Hindu saints all wear the color.

Blue

Blue makes us think of purity, dependability, and peace. It is universally well-liked. This is one of the reasons you see it used on prominent social media platforms. It brings a sense of trust and relationship building. The one caveat is that blue can also come across as distant and cold if you don’t balance with other elements.

Purple

Purple balances the physical energy of red with the spiritual reliability of blue. Portraying royalty, magic, and courage, it is a color that promotes creativity. If it is overused, it can cause people to become distracted by introspective thoughts.

Green

Green portrays many things, nearly all of them positive. Because nature is filled with an abundance of green shades, we think of green as life-giving, peaceful, natural, healthy, and harmonious. And of course, we associate it with money in the United States since our paper money is green. That is where the only negative can come in. If you wish to portray greed, you can use green for that, as well.

Brown

Brown is boring. There. I’ve said it. It’s a beautiful color, but it will never lift anyone up or prompt them to act. That said, it is also safe. It will never upset anyone, either. It’s just…. brown. Avoid it if you can. It won’t add to your marketing campaign at all.

Gold

Gold is a luxury color as much as gold is a luxury item. Don’t overuse it or you risk looking tacky and egotistical. It is a great accent color, though, especially when paired with another color that can convey the message you want to get across.

Learn More about Color Psychology for your Website

•         Hubspot did a button color test and found a red call to action button outperformed a green one by 21%.  That’s amazing! The only thing they changed was the color of the button.
•         Iconic Fox has created a fantastic infographic on color psychology.

How to Get Clicks

This brief overview barely skimmed the surface of how color affects our buying decisions. The good news is that you don’t have to become an expert on color psychology. Our web designers and digital marketers understand what makes consumers click. To increase your conversions, contact us today! 

The post Color Psychology and Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Business Locator

If you have more than one brick and mortar location, having a location page is an essential complement to your local SEO because it is a great way to target location-specific long-tail, location-specific keywords.  

Hirshfield’s

One great example of a store locator the one Iceberg Web Design built for Hirshfield’s.  For this page, the customer has several ways from which to choose a location.

•         If they want to allow location services, GPS will enable the list to automatically show the closest stores to their location at the top of the left sidebar. You can accomplish similar results by putting in the zip code of the area you are looking for.
•         Perhaps they have a favorite store already. In the lower-left is an alphabetized list of links to all Hirshfield’s stores.  
•         You can also look at the interactive map. The map links to store hours and other information a customer may want to have.

For a business locator as in-depth as this, it is important to ensure that all locations have a unique page for that specific store only. The address and GPS location allow location services to find the store that the customer is looking for quickly.

Stonegate Builders

Thinking outside of the box can lead to new ways of using old tools. For Stonegate Builders, a Division of Gonya Homes, we built a location page to help potential homebuyers find where they had available homes for sale. The way theirs works is through a map that shows the various neighborhoods with Stonegate Builders homes for sale. When you click on the link, it takes you to a page where you can learn about the community, the houses in it, and how to get more information.

Stonegate Builder’s location page is different from Hirshfield’s because each of their customers has their own unique buying habits. In the end, it comes down to what the customer is going to respond to best.

Select Eyecare

Select Eyecare is an eye care clinic with an in-house lab and three locations in the northern Twin Cities metro area. Iceberg Web Design created a location page for Select Eyecare that had their locations on a single page as part of the company website. We chose to have their location page laid out this way because it best suits their needs and customers’ needs.

Avoiding Doorways in Your Location Pages

It’s essential to make your location page unique and useful for users, and if possible, have one location for each of your physical stores. That’s because of something known as “doorway pages.” This black hat SEO tactic can become a trap that is easy for you and your customers to fall into. To learn more about doorway pages, read this article by Google Search Central. Follow Google’s recommendations, and have a separate Google My Business page for each location.

To avoid any pitfalls and reap the rewards of a business locator page, it is best to use an experienced website developer like Iceberg Web Design. We would be happy to meet with you and discuss your next project. Contact us today!

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In general, we recommend a total website makeover every two to three years to keep up with current design and development trends. Security is another reason for revamping your website every few years. But there are other indicators that it’s time for a new online look.

You’ve made changes to your core values or processes

Has your business received an internal makeover in the last year, but your branding hasn’t received an external one? Maybe you’ve hired new employees or had significant employee turnover. Perhaps you’ve increased your product offering or niched down to serve a more specific audience. Your website should reflect your business – values, services, staff, and processes. Businesses are ever-changing entities, and as yours grows and changes, so should your website.

You’ve Decided to Add Integrations to Your Site

Websites are no longer just for bringing in clients. They are business tools that you can use to hire people, portals for members, renters, or employees, payment centers, and more! If you can imagine it, it most likely can be done.

You’ve started investing in SEO or online ads

If you’re focusing on bringing traffic to your website, you want to make the best possible first impression on your new website visitors. Your website should be up to date and have a straightforward design that lets your website traffic know what they should do. Powerful calls to action on every page will help convert traffic into customers.

Your Site Doesn’t Have a Mobile-Friendly Design

Half of all website traffic comes from mobile users, yet not all websites are mobile-friendly.[1] When encountering a website that is difficult to view on smartphones or tablets, mobile users often become frustrated and leave for another site.

<side by side images of mobile-friendly vs. non-mobile design>

Your Page Loads Slower Than 3 Seconds

Google ranks websites primarily for customer experience. Page speed is an essential factor in a website user’s experience. People are impatient and will click back on a slow site.

•         The ideal website load time for mobile sites is 1-2 seconds.
•         53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
•         A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

How fast is your website? You can find out by using Google’s Page Speed Insights. Just put the page URL into the search bar at the top of the page, and within a minute, you will know whether it is fast (green), slow (red), or somewhere in the middle (yellow).

You Wrote Your Website Content

Most business owners write too technically because they know their business’s ins and outs and want to share it all. Professional content writers write from a sales standpoint. We know how to attract site viewers and convert them into customers. We also know how to increase your ranking on a Google search engine results page. This will make your site easier to find when someone searches for a business like yours online.

Nobody is Filling Out Your Website Contact Forms

If people visit your page, but they aren’t filling out your contact form, it is a good indication that you need a layout upgrade, content with the right calls to action, and maybe even a giveaway or lead magnet.

Your top competitor just redesigned their website

If you are going to compete, you have to play on the same field. We always look at what the competition is doing when we redesign a website.

Are you ready for your new website? Contact us today!

[1] Clement, J. “Mobile Percentage of Website Traffic 2020.” Statista, 19 Nov. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/.

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