Stock Photos are Killing Your Image (And What to Do About It)
Stock photos… To use them or not? Is that a question you’ve been considering for your brand? As a new year approaches, you may be reevaluating your content branding strategies to make a more solid impact in 2018. When it comes to your brand, there are some obvious refresh points to cover, like website design, written content and online marketing strategy. But some less obvious detractors - like stock photos - may be lurking on your site and harming your brand without your knowledge. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Take in the Whole Picture Images are a great way to tell a story, and indeed, image-driven marketing continues to perform well year over year. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver a glossy picture-rich site and churn out clickable social media content on popular image sharing sites (notably Pinterest and Instagram). If a picture says a thousand words, then your site and social media images have a lot to say about your brand. What are they saying? A thoughtful, visually driven photo campaign can powerfully impact your brand’s messaging across platforms. But if you’re not delivering photography services, this may be difficult to achieve. After all, you’ve got content to write, clients to meet with or widgets to make. In an effort to save time, and maybe a little cash, you may be tempted to turn to stock photos to tell your story for you. However, they may be costing you more than you think. Yes, stock photos tell a story, and it’s not your story. Consider brands with websites that you really connect…
WordPress for Businesses
WordPress may have been released in 2003 as a blogging content management system (CMS) but it has grown up since. No longer is WordPress only for blogs. More than 60 million WordPress websites testify to its versatility. WordPress is helping businesses succeed including dog trainers, custom sign makers, branding agencies, and active gear retailers.Why is WordPress a good choice for a business website? Control and Ownership Control and ownership matter to business owners. Your products and services wouldn't be what they are without you. The same is true of your website. Large businesses may be able to afford a unique CMS (although even the BBC, Bloomberg, and Disney use WordPress) but small businesses usually opt for customizing a CMS already available. Most small businesses turn to WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly. Yet only one of these gives business owners robust control and ownership.WordPress is open source meaning that anyone can use it or modify it. You aren't beholden to the hosting solutions (and pricing tiers) of a single company. Choose virtually anyone to host your WordPress website and move it anytime. WordPress' open nature also means that it is easy for a developer to modify your website. You aren't stuck living within the walled garden of a single company. WordPress puts you in control.WordPress also takes your ownership of your data seriously. You own your business and you own your website. You should have complete control of your website's data. WordPress allows you to access (and export) your website's data anytime. So if you were ever to move your WordPress site (or leave WordPress behind) you can take your data with you. That isn't always true of other popular content…
Introduction to Structured Metadata
Your website should help search engines and social networks understand it. Your content is designed and written for your visitors. Typically website owners expect Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others to just understand that content and display it logically. That usually works. Search engine crawlers have become quite advanced and social networks can often just pull an image and a text snippet. But what if you could ensure which title, description, and image show on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and beyond? Well you can with structured metadata! Help search engines understand your website Structured metadata is important content but it isn't visible to your visitors. Metadata is content written specifically for search engines and social networks.Structured metadata can be used to inform search engines what title and description to use for a page, what your hours are, what your logo is, who wrote an article, what a recipe's content is, and more. Structured metadata can also be used to tell Facebook and Twitter what titles, descriptions, and images to use. With different metadata styles you can even force your pages to appear differently on different platforms.Metadata doesn't directly improve your search rankings. However, it does eliminate the element of chance in how your links display. Usually if you can define how your links appear you can increase your click through rate. You know, perhaps better than anyone else, what your audience is looking for. Make sure that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others are displaying your site the way you want them to.Structured metadata is quickly transcending its once exclusive purpose as a search engine tool. If you send a link to an iPhone user they now see a preview of the webpage…
Quiz Powered Lead Generation
So your website has regular (and hopefully growing) web traffic. Your bounce rate is even improving. Yet you still aren't generating leads (or making sales). You may need a new means of converting visitors into leads. Well placed calls to action (CTA) within your value added content is the most effective form of lead generation. This is often called "content marketing". An increasing number of websites are now including interactive quizzes in their content marketing strategies. Quizzes are growing in popularity - both for increasing website traffic and for generating leads. Buzzfeed uses them to drive traffic to their website. Perhaps you have even taken a quiz a friend has shared on Facebook. What if you could custom build a quiz that matches your brand, hooks to your product or service, and is easily sharable - all without knowing any CSS, HTML, or JavaScript?That's what Interact is for.[*] Interact Interact is software as a service that helps your website generate leads, drive sales, and grow your social reach - all through quizzes.Here is just one example of what you can do with Interact: Interact makes it easier than ever for you to include interactive quizzes on your website and social media channels.Every quiz can include an optional subscription form asking quiz takers to subscribe to your email list to see results. Interact claims that an average of 50% of quiz takers subscribe to an email list. That's a much better conversion rate than those sidebar subscription forms you're using!You may also include a CTA on each quiz completion screen pointing quiz takers to an article, product, or service that matches their results. Personalized product recommendations have a much better…
Weebly vs WordPress
So you are thinking of building a website (or having one built for you). You've heard of popular software like Weebly and WordPress. You know that you want to make changes to your site on your own after it is launched. Which do you choose (if either)? Here we pit Weebly vs WordPress so you can make the most informed decision. Content Management Systems Both Weebly and WordPress are Content Management Systems (CMSs). A CMS gives website developers, owners, and admins the ability to build, write, modify, and extend web content. Using a CMS means that you may not need to write any code to modify a page, publish a blog post, add a product, or change simple settings. Both Weebly and WordPress do these things and more. Weebly Weebly is one of the most popular drag-and-drop DIY web builder services. It has grown by leaps and bounds since 2007. Their (mostly) intuitive builder, simple pricing tiers, and one-stop-shop model has propelled their growth. According to Weebly, their software now powers more than 40 million sites. Weebly is proprietary software and is tightly controlled by the company. WordPress WordPress is still the king of content management systems. It powers more than 60 million sites including 35% of the top 10k sites on the web. WordPress powers such sites as TechCrunch, The New Yorker, BBC America, Bloomberg Professional, The Official Star Wars Blog, Variety, Sony Music, and MTV News. WordPress is open-source. Anyone can view the code, contribute to the project, or build onto the software. Weebly vs WordPress Let's put these two in the ring and see who emerges the victor. Theming and Styles Both WordPress and Weebly support themes.…
Sweet Dreams 4 Kids Daycare
Sweet Dreams 4 Kids Daycare in Owings Mills Maryland is an established local daycare with an outstanding reputation. Angela Jones-Coleman has over two decades of childcare experience and has maintained close relationships with the families she serves. Until recently Sweet Dreams 4 Kids Daycare did not have a dedicated home on the Web. Like many local businesses, Sweet Dreams 4 Kids relied upon word of mouth to sustain their business. Yet, a dedicated website increases trust and reputation and may help the daycare sustain their business and be more competitive. We provided the daycare with a simple yet functional website that could be expanded modularly. Sweet Dreams 4 Kids wanted a simple one page website to keep web-development costs down. They wanted to start small with the hopes of growing the site in the future. We designed their site to grow with their business - whether they expand the site themselves through the WordPress admin panel or give us a call to add a feature or updated content. We designed the site from scratch using modern responsive design, bright fun colors, and simple yet interactive content. sweetdreams4kidsdaycare.com lists essential information, provides a means of contact, contains an interactive Google Map, and an interactive tool for sharing and viewing reviews. Rystedt Creative designed the first version of sweetdreams4kidsdaycare.com to grow with the daycare's needs. We may continue to work with Sweet Dreams 4 Kids Daycare to expand the site's contents as time goes on. We (or the daycare itself) may replace stock images with original images from the daycare and a slideshow or gallery, expand information, add a contact form and contact page, and a visual layout of the daycare. Rystedt…
Quick and Dirty Guide to Estimating Your Web-Development Costs
So you need a new website. How much should you budget? Should you expect to pay $1,000 or $10,000? Estimating your web-development costs can be difficult due to the range of firms and freelancers available to do the work. In our previous article we broke down the main factors that contribute to web-development cost including your time, knowledge, and money and whether you hire a firm, freelancer, or friend. Whether you pay low or high pricing is largely determined by what you are paying for and how experienced and knowledgable your developer is. [button id="c54861b7a5309c95ee6d9d602379f687" text="Read part 1 here" url="https://www.rystedtcreative.com/tech-talks/hire-a-web-developer-expected-cost/" target="_blank" alignment="center" alignment_mobile="default" image="" icon="ti-book" icon_alignment="left" style="1" size="medium" radius="0" border_size="2" shadow="simple" full="false" tale="none" margin="0px 0px 15px 0px" text_color="#ffffff" text_hover_color="" background_color="#1f78e6" background_hover_color="#6ba2e5" border_color="" border_hover_color="" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="29e04c67583cc78b1272d1b8436e36a0" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/button]Now that you know the main factors that contribute to a web-development hiring decision you need to research actual pricing. What products and services are you paying for? What are the price ranges for these items? Answering these questions with actual figures will get you an estimated web-development cost to budget for. Design Web design and development are often considered two different pieces of the web building process. Web design includes colors, typography, and layout. A web designer will often deliver a mockup of the site's design or at least a design direction for his client before actual development begins. Whether or not you are paying for web design is an important question to answer when determining how much you should budget for a new website. You generally have three design options available to you. You can pay for a predesigned template, a customized template design, or a custom and unique design. Predesigned…
Blessed All Hallows’ Eve from Rystedt Creative
A blessed All Hallows' Eve to all our readers! The close of October marks the close of our fourth month running this creative firm. We love the clients we have the pleasure of serving. Thank you for trusting us to help you improve your online presence. The Web can seem a bit mysterious (and even scary) for many of us. The Web has come a long way since "Web 1.0" in the 90s. Keeping up with search engine optimization, social networking, email campaigns, and content marketing are enough to keep one busy every day of the week. Thankfully, you don't need to perform an exorcism on your website. We know the appropriate rites to get your site acting the way it should. But don't take our word for it: Joshua at Rystedt Creative was beyond helpful when we ran into technical issues with our website. His extensive WordPress and Woocommerce knowledge helped to answer all of our web development questions. He was always available with a friendly demeanor and ready to talk us through our questions and what needed to be edited or changed on the website, and even showed us via screen-share the exact steps necessary. We greatly enjoyed working with Joshua and would recommend him to anyone! – Mallory Olson, Rocket Active Gear Here is some of the most hallowed content we've published in the last four months: Tools The Outstanding Website Quiz and Checklist There are currently over one billion websites online but few of them stand out from the crowd. Use our quiz and checklist to see if you stand out online. Website Self-Evaluation To complement our evaluations and consultations we have developed this website self-evaluation.…
Where’d All The People Go? Understanding Bounce Rates And What To Do About It
Does your website have what it takes to hook visitors in and get them to stick around for a while? Maybe you’ve considered this concept at length and are doing everything you can to make your website a virtual lounge where people like to come and just hang out. Or perhaps you haven’t really given it much thought. Regardless of which camp you fall into, it’s important as a site owner to understand why your customers come to your website and how to get them to stick around. Often, people come to a website and stick around only long enough to realize they just don’t want to be there. And of course, for web pros like us, there’s a nice fancy phrase to explain those visits: bounce rate. Your bounce rate is calculated by measuring the number of visitors that click onto your page - through whatever means you may attract them: web searches, social media links, backlinks on other sites, opened emails, etc. - and almost immediately click to exit. A high bounce rate, meaning that you have a bunch of visitors that only stick around to see next to nothing, is not good for your website health. Think about it: the customers that you’re going to convert into sales are the ones who stick around to see what you have to say/what products you have to offer. When people are sticking around for less time than the average yawn, they’re not seeing the content that you’ve developed to draw them in. And worse, they’re certainly not sticking around long enough to make a purchasing decision. We all want a lower bounce rate. Part of accomplishing this is to…
Website Self-Evaluation
Some organizations contact us because they are aware that their websites need improvement but they are unsure what exactly needs to be done. In order to assist these organizations in prioritizing their web-work we provide free website evaluations and initial consultations (contact us if you want to take advantage of these services). To complement our evaluations and consultations we have developed this website self-evaluation. Don't just take our word for it - evaluate your own website! We encourage you to download the PDF version of this document for use in your organization. Call a meeting of the decision makers and knowledgable leaders within your organization, load your website, and discuss the questions for the sections relevant to you. Purpose: Should our website primarily be for members/employees or non-members/customers? (This is your audience) What content is our audience looking for? Is that content easily available on our website? What content is our audience looking for that is either missing or difficult to find? Design: What is the atmosphere of our organization/business? Does our website’s design reflect that atmosphere? Why or why not? How could our website better reflect that atmosphere? Is our website easy to navigate? (For example: Are the contact and blog pages where you would expect in the menu?) Is our site mobile optimized? Engagement: What is the most natural way for our audience to contact us? Is that contact info available on every page? Is there a way to streamline this contact method? (For example: a contact form is better than an email address and a social media feed is better than a social media link.) How easy is it for website visitors to share…