Image by: Intel Free Pass
By Michael Sterling
It can be stressful as an online business owner to feel like there’s something missing from your content. The traffic is suffering, the feedback isn’t great, and your bounce rate is higher than ever. Perhaps it’s time to rethink your strategy, and slip on your editing hat. There is always room for editing and at this time of year, it’s crucial to start diversifying what works and what doesn’t.
Don’t Overload On Topics
Often times, business owners will try to please all audiences at once. The result is an overload of topics, categories, and unnecessary words they try and incorporate. If this is you, chances are, the content won’t satisfy anyone. It’s best to focus on your core topics, and find hooks within them to make new points.
A nice strategy that will help is to keep it Fair and Balanced within the subject itself. For example, if you’re talking about how the holidays might affect your family’s spending, don’t go on a tangent about why toys are overpriced in an effort to liven up the passion of your readers.
Stick with the topic (in this example, it’s family spending) and keep it fair and balanced as far as its point of view. Mention how it might affect student loans, a retirement plan, or savings for college – this hits all ages and perspectives without getting off-subject.
Keep in mind: you are how you market yourself. It doesn’t matter in the long run if your core demographic is old people, young people, business people, or artistic types. They are coming to your site for a reason. The content brings them together anyway, so there’s no need to try and please them based on data you think will help traffic.
Streamline Your Tools
There’s nothing worse than seeing a blog containing too many social media buttons, widgets, pop ups, or floaters. It drives people crazy, especially if they’re in a place with limited connectivity since it might take longer for the page to load. You want to retain your readers, not lure them away out of frustration.
Social media is important to be displayed in order for readers to share it on their profiles, however, the more buttons you use for sites that don’t get hit as often, the slower your speed will be. Be sure to streamline your social media buttons to determine which ones are worth displaying, according to the number of hits.
When it comes to widgets and popups, it’s crucial to make sure they don’t affect your business by preventing readers from seeing your content, especially on the sidebar. Many consumers get irritated when they encounter a popup or floating ad, so it’s best to minimize popup use to support building your own list.
Image & Color Efficiency
Many business owners who aren’t digitally aware won’t know the effects of bad color and images. If ever your images aren’t optimized for size, it will slow down speed tremendously.
When choosing an image, it’s crucial to use the right format to minimizing file size based on its type, i.e. gifs for illustrations using a color palette, jpegs for photographs/graphics with color, and pngs to compromise format with a transparent background. The same focus should be paid towards color.
Every choice of color on your site should be strategic. Color psychology is especially important in online marketing. Never add colors just because you think it looks pretty, instead, integrate colors to attract attention. Don’t lose focus of your business’ appeal and always consider the age/tastes you’re trying to convey to your audience.