Fall is here, along with pumpkin spice everything and thoughts of a new calendar year. Have you started considering what your web presence should look like in 2016? We’ve scanned website trend predictions for 2016 and compiled this post for your consideration and planning.
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Looking Ahead to 2016: 5 Web Design Trends to Consider for the New Year
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Membership Site Tools Now Available for WooCommerce
Does your business plan include offering an online community for clients and customers? Would you like to restrict access to content on your site to a membership community only?
WooCommerce now offers extensions that help their e-Commerce customers offer and manage memberships and subscriptions. If you use WooCommerce (2.2 or newer) for your e-store and offer memberships (or plan to), these extensions are worth checking out.
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LinkedIn Marketing: A Survey of Tips from Social Media Experts
“LinkedIn is one of the most effective platforms for expanding your reach and improving your business results,” reports a June 2015 article on SocialMediaExplorer.com.
With 364 million members globally (around one-third of those in the U.S.), LinkedIn is living up to its claim to be the largest professional network. And it’s not only for job-seekers. Recent developments are expanding its reach as a networking and business development tool for businesses of all sizes.
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Customer Feedback: Are You Listening?
Businesses of all sizes have a valuable resource right at hand for improving the success rate of their products and services — yet many often never tap into it. What is it? Customer feedback.
Recently, Website Magazine featured an article by Kevin Dunne entitled, “Check Your Ego: How to Avoid Killing Customer Feedback,” which addresses the importance of hearing from and listening to your customers.
“To succeed in a fast-paced world with increasing customer expectations, development teams need agility. Agility means adapting product to customer, and that agility can only come from visibility into what the customer really wants,” writes Dunne.
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Pinterest Marketing: “Buy It” Pins Coming Soon
Now is a good time to take a serious look at marketing with Pinterest – if you’re not one of the 500,000 or more businesses already doing so. Later this month, Pinterest will introduce “Buy it” pins – available for direct sales by businesses using Shopify or Demandware for online commerce.
Initial “Buy it” pins, expected at the end of June, will operate on iPhone and iPad. Later phases of the roll-out are planned for Android and desktop shoppers.
For businesses, this new development adds to the already popular appeal of Pinterest.
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Web Design: 6 Fundamentals of Customer-Centric Sites
Is your website designed with your customers in mind?
In his book The Invisible Computer, Donald A. Norman writes: “Quality only comes about by continual focus on, and attention to, the people who matter: customers.”
Norman, an advocate of designing products based on the needs and wants of the end-users, is credited with coining the term “user experience.” Now a buzzword in web design circles (and others), it has its own acronym: UX.
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Custom or Template? Choosing the Right Option for Your Site
Custom design or template? When creating a website, it’s one of the most fundamental decisions to make. Both options are valid, so how do you decide?Compare this to another fundamental choice: how to make a dinner entree. Will you make your own creation from scratch or follow a recipe?
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More Mobile-Friendly Google Search Coming April 21
Have you typed a term into Google search on your phone recently? If so, you’re in good company – as some estimates say more than six out of every 10 Google searches are mobile. If you’ve been in the six or seven, did you find what you were looking for? Did your search results provide a link to a relevant, mobile-friendly site, one that could be viewed easily on your phone?
Google wants to ensure its mobile users are getting “friendly” results. Consequently, in 10 days the company will institute a significant change in how it ranks pages in mobile searches.
