msmdesignzblog.com » website http://www.msmdesignzblog.com Wed, 15 May 2013 15:02:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 How to Drive in Traffic – Off(line) http://www.msmdesignzblog.com/how-to-drive-in-traffic-offline/ http://www.msmdesignzblog.com/how-to-drive-in-traffic-offline/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:32:59 +0000 Michael Kilcoyne http://msmdesignzblog.com/?p=129 Do you feel as though your web traffic is stuck in a virtual rut?  If so, there are countless techniques to boost your web traffic.  However, if you’re looking for methods that involve offline, traditional marketing; here are 5 effective ways to improve your online presence and increase your traffic:

Give your marketing materials a makeover.

Hire a skilled graphic design team to re-design or enhance your marketing brochures, letterhead and business cards. Make sure your web address is clearly displayed on your marketing materials.  Then consider hiring a good distribution company to distribute your marketing materials to your target audience. Hiring a professional to handle your direct mail will automatically reduce your postage costs. Distributing attractive-looking marketing materials to prospects is a tried and true way of increasing online traffic.

Get more involved in your community.

Every community hosts seasonal events which can help promote your business and drive more unique visitors to your website or blog. Car dealerships, realtors and insurance companies invest in booth space at community events all the time in order to attract more customers. Consider renting a booth and fill with plenty of brochures and business cards with your web address.

Get featured in a popular magazine or national newspaper. Business magazines are always looking for success stories about business owners.  Many Fortune 500 companies have community blogs and forums where they post articles about everyday business owners. This is a great way to gain free traffic to your website.

Sponsor an ad at a local movie theater. Some local movie theaters display ads on their movie screens during movie previews. Sponsoring a movie theater ad is an affordable way to gain more exposure for your website.

Place a cable TV ad. Most cable companies run paid local and national ads for small businesses and corporations. Although this method is a little more expensive, it is an excellent way to attract more business.

Nowadays, society spends a significant amount of time in cyber world making it easy to get caught up in online marketing techniques.  However, older methods of driving traffic to your website are still effective.

]]> http://www.msmdesignzblog.com/how-to-drive-in-traffic-offline/feed/ 0 You have four seconds to capture your customer’s attention. Ready? Go!! http://www.msmdesignzblog.com/you-have-four-seconds-to-capture-your-customers-attention-ready-go/ http://www.msmdesignzblog.com/you-have-four-seconds-to-capture-your-customers-attention-ready-go/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:55:21 +0000 Michael Kilcoyne http://msmdesignzblog.com/?p=387 “Technology promises to make our lives easier, freeing up our time for leisure activities. However, the rapid pace of technological innovation has compressed our perception of time which has translated to our adoption of the relentless pace of the very machines that were supposed to simplify our jobs.”–Wolfsom

speedometer1 300x300 You have four seconds to capture your customers attention. Ready? Go!!The average attention span for web users is four to eight seconds. This means you only have that frame of time to capture their attention in hopes that they will further engage with your website. Speed is the leading component when a consumer decides whether or not they like your website. If your website fails to present itself in a timely fashion, I can almost guarantee you that you have lost a potential customer. And beyond a possible loss in sales, you must assume this unhappy web user will tell others of their negative experience which hinders on your business reputation.

To better give you an idea of how your website performs in terms of speed, Google recently released a tool called Page Speed Online. If your visit http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/, you can enter your website’s URL and with the click of a button, Google gives you a score out of 100 as well as a list of suggestions to improve your website’s speed. Page Speed Online also analyzes your mobile site which is becoming more important due to customers spending an increased amount of time interacting on their mobile devices.

We, at MSM DesignZ, decided to put Google’s new tool to the test. Keep in mind that the amount of graphics such as ‘flash’ must be considered when comparing scores. MSM DesignZ is a full flash website and scored an 85 out of 100. With this score comes a list of suggestions to help improve our speed. These suggestions are broken down into three categories: high, medium, and low priority.

We also entered in other popular websites and they scored as follows:

Full flash websites obviously take more time to load compared to a site with basic functionality.  Many may assume that these websites will score low, however, there are some websites utilizing a high level of graphics that still maintain a high score.

How does your website score?  Do you think that Google’s new scoring tool and suggestions can impove your customer’s experience on your website?

 

 

Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester based NY web design firm specializing in SEO, social media, web and graphic design and much more.

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