responsive design Archives

15 Tips For Business Blogs; Google’s Responsive Deadline

04/14/2015 By Jayme Soulati

In this episode 016, we share tips for business blogs. This broadcast is probably one of my top five favorite episodes of the Heart Of Marketing podcast. The three others are episodes 10, 11, 12 where we address dead-blog syndrome.

When John Gregory Olson, my co-host, and I cover ground at a fast pace about tips for business blogs, I always get a refresher myself.

Throughout March and April, we’ve been reminding people about the Google deadline on April 21, 2015. In addition to these tips for business blogs, we cover WordPress plugins to help make the deadline easier. Also in this episode, John shares a story about his own website relating to mobile responsiveness.
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Why Responsive Design Is Marketing’s Greatest Challenge

03/04/2015 By Jayme Soulati

On April 21, 2015, Google will begin to label websites ‘mobile friendly.’ That means your website must be responsive and work on all sizes of screens and most of all smartphones and tablets. As is customary, Google is highly likely to label a site ‘non-mobile friendly’ in SERPS and ding your traffic, too. Is your site mobile friendly? You can test your site if you don’t know; click the link I just shared.

Two years ago, the call to make websites mobile responsive was rampant; yet, few truly new what that meant. I can tell you from experience two years later only a handful know the inside and out of responsive design. Responsive websites are marketing’s greatest challenge.
In my blended marketing firm, websites are one of the service offerings. From message mapping and copywriting to photography and design, a website is a critical component of a company’s marketing. And then there’s the backend of the site that now includes responsive design. It’s the latter that’s wreaking havoc among all businesses because it’s so new.

Perhaps the biggest developers for the largest corporations know what it takes to execute responsive design right, but what about the little guy?

There are thousands of businesses of all sizes caught in the responsive-design maelstrom right now. We consultants MUST do a better job communicating the intricate details and requirements of this burgeoning arena.

The Basics of Responsive Design for WordPress

In WordPress, a responsive design means your site will automagically resize for the 80+ screen sizes throughout the world. You know – all the smart devices and tablets, plus computer screens and now internet TVs. And when the user visits your website from a mobile device (not from a hardwired computer), your website is presented with all the navigation and calls to action neatly positioned on top.

If you elect not to take the plunge into responsive design, then you lose. You turn away traffic, you will not convert leads, you are ignorant of mobile marketing, and basically the finicky and demanding consumer will pick your competitor down the street.
Responsive design is here, now. It’s the ONLY way to code a website today; yet too many companies are still saying NO.

Communicating About Responsive Design

When you migrate your website from a WordPress template to a responsive template or custom build, there are a ton of coding, testing, sizing, more testing on all the devices, hosting, and security issues. How do you vet a web designer who has this knowledge? Is there any way to tell if you’ve hired the right team? What about the actual template selected? How do you know if it’s the right one?

Let me share the lightbulb moment:

Your clients DO NOT UNDERSTAND RESPONSIVE DESIGN. Guess what — NOR DO YOU.

Now that we’re all on the same page with utter chaos, let me share a few examples why I’m qualified to write about this topic.

Soulati Media Can Do 90 Percent Of Your Website

That’s an astonishing statement, right? If you hire me to do your website, I can do 90 percent of it extremely well. The other 10 percent not so much. When you read the examples below, you’ll see what I mean about that 10% that won’t go according to plan. It’s the gray area that no one has control over, and it’s the area causing the most headaches.

Client 1
A client recently spent $20,000 to get a website designed from scratch in WordPress (I know, crazy, right?). Turns out that spend did not include responsive design although it was promised. The team hired used coders in Brazil and each time they touched a page it was developed in a hodge-podge way. Two years later, the client agreed to spend another $2,000 to redesign the site into a mobile responsive custom build. The designers, BlueHost Design, did a phenomenal job. Alas, the client did not like how the new site looked although it was nearly the same as the original site, and she demanded her original site be restored. The site is now no longer responsive, and the new responsive site is sitting dormant on a development server.

Client 2
A small business had a six-year-old dormant website being hosted with a reseller. The reseller refused to turn over access to the domain registrar to transfer the site to a true host and has convinced the client this is not necessary. Upon the build of a new website using a WordPress template and its uploading to the business’s host, the site was the subject of a total hack attack from Turkey. At one point the entire site was replaced with Islamic music and Turkish gobble. The hackers left their identity on the site, and I reported them to Facebook and government agencies. The original team installed an older template that was not properly responsive. It took a second developer team to uncover all the issues with the site and recode the backend. Once the security plug in, Wordfence, was installed, the site did not work with Internet Explorer/Bing, and the developer had to call for technical support to fix this. The client insists on using IE as their preferred browser, although among the four browsers, IE is the least reliable and is being rebuilt. The site was tested on all the screen sizes, and it took two weeks to consistently test and recode parameters to address all the responsive issues. For now, the site is secure, quiet, responsive, and stable. It works on all screen sizes and with all browsers. It took my team three weeks to fix design, update code, work through a 7-day hack attack, improve security issues, and address daily issues with the technology.

Client 3
I have consistently rebuilt my website and invested in advancing my brand to follow industry trends. The point is that everyone is learning at the same time. When I thought I bought a responsive design, it turns out it was merely mobile ready. So, it was back to the drawing board to re-invest again to add the appropriate bells and whistles. My website has gone through about six iterations each with new back-end upgrades demanded by technology disruption.

My biggest piece of advice is what anyone will tell you – you get what you pay for. If you try to scrimp on the edges, then the inside deflates. Please invest the proper amount of budget into your website and be very happy with the outcome.

Tips to Communicate With Clients About Responsive Design

To wrap this up, here are my tips on how to prepare a client for a responsive design project. Each is very important and this should ensure everyone is tracking and prevent misunderstanding.

1. Ensure your client knows the definition of responsive design and why it’s a requirement
2. Let a client know that the entire site is going to be rebuilt with new code
3. Ensure the web host is qualified to handle new site designs, has server security, is accessible to the web team 24/7 for support, and all passwords are in hand to access cPanel and ftp
4. Discuss each step in the process to migrate an old site to a new template or custom build
5. Review the budget required for re-coding and migration; testing; security
6. Review the timeline for this migration and ensure additional what-if time is built in
7. Address the browser issues and ensure all browsers are up to date among all users
8. Ask the client to test the site and help find broken links or unresponsiveness
9. Review the budget and ensure there is enough to accomplish all of the above!

Questions Marketers Should Ask The Web Team

These are the basic questions to pose with ANY web developer team you hire. If the answers are not to your satisfaction or your instinct is flaring, then please trust yourself and move on. Finding the right web partner is so critical.

1. How many WordPress responsive design websites have you built?
2. Were they template migrations or custom builds?
3. How do you know a template is the most current version for responsive design?
4. How will you inform me a template is out-of-date, supported by a developer or ready for responsive design?
5. Are you a designer only? Who on your team is the developer? How deep is your web team?
6. How long have you been in this business?
7. Have you ever managed website security issues – hacks or malicious files?
8. Are you accessible for crisis management evenings and weekends if there’s a hack?
9. Once a site launches live, what do you do immediately following during transition?
10. What security plugins do you recommend for WordPress sites?
11. Share the most challenging responsive design project you’ve ever completed
12. What are the top three risk areas you will be watchful for?
13. How will you bill for this project? At what point are you going to nickel and dime and what’s the best way to make this relationship mutually beneficial?
14. I don’t want my site held hostage because you’re waiting for money. This happens all the time and I need to hear your philosophy and work ethic.
15. Why should I hire you over another developer?
16. What size of customer are you comfortable working with?

These issues will continue to plague marketers and clients. Only when everyone can get on the very same page and understand all the ins and outs will an experience go well. Over communicate and over explain and overdo the due diligence.
The reason above are real and true and based on solid, direct experience. Managing that 10 percent gray area is where the headaches reside. And, here’s the final nugget — it’s technology, folks! It’s going to break and get fixed.

Get Ready For The 2014 Mobile Marketing Revolution

12/09/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Mobile Marketing. It’s ubiquitous; yet few businesses truly understand what it means. Let’s break it down to the basics and see if we can’t get you pushing brain power to smart devices to better understand what this means for you.

Smart Devices Are Prolific

When you’re waiting in line at the retail center this holiday season (it’s what I did this weekend), look at the moms with strollers and shopping carts. What are the kids holding to occupy them whilst mom shops? Tablets! There were more children on tablets strolling through the store than I’d ever seen (and each kid had one so they wouldn’t fight).

When you’re sitting in the movie theater waiting for the junk and previews to stop (what, like 20 minutes?) count how many peeps are surfing or reading on tablets, smartphones or e-Readers. Bet you can’t count that high, can you? Uh-huh.

Now, step up your thinking a notch and imagine the shoppers doing cost comparisons online as they stand in front of a store display. Do you know what’s happening? Retailers are offering a 10 percent cut from online prices.

That’s how I just bought my new Babolat racquets; strolled into Tennis Zone and asked how much (after months of demoing each one), and the clerk looked up the online price and cut it. Pretty soon the smart retailers will have Wifi-ready touch screens installed throughout the store for folks to comparison shop right there and see that the deal in the brick and mortar is better than the online price (it’s a no-brainer because of shipping and other service fees, right?).

Let’s think about one b-to-b example here…I do a ton of online research because I’m a professional blogger. I have to back up my content with a few proof points when I’m really trying to be smarter than the average bear. Research takes time, and I appreciate those 20 minutes in the movie theater to scroll through websites for the best downloadable content I can read later. That content looks primarily like a stale PDF; what’s your take on that?

Navigate Backward From the Mobile End User

To fully understand, because we can list about 50 examples like the ones above in a nanosecond, let’s do a backward navigation from the movie-theater surfers and the comparison shoppers’ end-user experiences.
What do they need on those smart devices to 1) Keep them clicking 2) Earn their loyalty and 3) Earn a high net promoter score? (You know what NPS is, right? Those who love it promote it; those who hate it detract with negative posts and shares.)

A Mobile, Responsive Website. We’ve been speaking about this for more than a year now. Every website built must be designed two ways – for desktop and laptop computers AND for smart, mobile devices. For the latter, it takes some design strategy to determine how to present the website onto the small, vertical (iPhone) screens. The design needs to scale to each screen regardless of size; the site needs to “respond” to the device’s parameters. If your company isn’t mobile ready in early 2014, you will play serious catch up (kinda like the social media train? It left the station two years ago?).

Interactive Content. Consider switching your content format from the dead PDF to an interactive magazine, whitepaper, newsletter and infographic. For anyone using the iPad or other tablets, this format is necessary and required. Because smart devices (phones and tablets) will be the most popular gift this holiday season, according to Gartner, tablet shipments will increase 53.4% to reach 184 million units by the end of 2013, you need to take a hard look at how you’re presenting content.

Long-Form Content & Video. If you’re a professional blogger or a budding blogger writing for a company blog, you need to look at lengthier content, about 1000 words on average, with links, imagery, tips and teachings. It’s never a dull moment in Google land, and SEO continues to shift seismically (hmm, didn’t know that was a word!). Video has always been important to a website and blog because of the marriage between Google and YouTube, for one; not to mention the 80 gazillion users and videos viewed, shared, posted, and embedded on YouTube daily and globally.

Engage on All Screens. https://blog.readz.com/driving-conversions-sales-mobile-inbound-marketing/ Remember, your television is a screen. People don’t always watch their favorite shows on TV; they turn to a tablet, notebook, laptop, or desktop. Think about how you can cross-pollinate each screen available to the end user with some activity that makes them engage. According to Google’s Mobile Playbook 2013, 84% of multiscreen shopping experiences include mobile devices.

NBC The Voice

Let me provide my favorite example…do you watch The Voice on NBC? It’s coming to a head where America will choose the winner in the next 10 days or so. To select the contestants who get to stay in the competition, America votes by text via sponsor Sprint, via Facebook, by downloading single songs on iTunes, and via The Voice website. This year, a brilliant strategy was introduced – the Twitter instant save. As the bottom three contestants were standing there to see who was saved, America got five minutes to tweet the name of the singer they most wanted to save along with a hashtag. The Voice engaged America as they tweeted their favorite choice to save, and in five minutes the votes were tallied, and the singer with the highest number of tweets and retweets was saved. This is ingenious, and a perfect example of how The Voice team engages viewers on all screens.

Google published The New Multiscreen World report detailed in this blog post here by Readz, the company creating “amazing mobile experiences” online by bringing dead whitepapers, PDFs, newsletters, and more alive with interactive links, images, and user-engaged elements.

Get the Website Mobile Ready First

It’s daunting, isn’t it, when you see all of the above above? It’s hard to know which step to take first, and that’s why you start at the beginning with your website. If your site is not mobile ready, I’m going to suggest to you a complete review and likely overhaul of your site.

You need to get a new mobile responsive template and design and develop the site for a variety of screens (see above) that scale. Get it working on the largest iMac screen, and then get it going for the smart devices. Find a developer who really knows what she/he is doing; it’s critical. All the rest will follow in good fashion.

Engage in Message Mapping, Too

I’m also going to suggest you launch a Message Mapping exercise with me to ensure you get your content strategy for external audiences solid. You might like this e-book I wrote (sadly, it’s in a dead PDF…hmm, maybe I need to engage with Readz?), Message Mapping: How to Deliver External Communication with a #RockHot Tool for Leaders.

By the way, what’s a long-form blog post without some required self-promotion? Got any questions? You know where to find me!

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Content Marketing Needs Mobile Publishing Apps

12/05/2013 By Jayme Soulati

When you say and see content marketing touted all over the Interwebz, it’s more about blogging, right? But what about the other pieces of content so critical to attaining goals and objectives? The white paper is one of the most important documents a business can include in its content marketing strategy; yet, few engage with white papers?

Why?

The first reason there are fewer white papers is obvious – they are more challenging to write, right?

Secondly, if a business does not have a solid inbound marketing strategy to use white papers as a lead generator for sales, then companies merely rely on blogging.

Revisiting Inbound Marketing

As a digital marketer, the goal for inbound marketing is to feature content as the lure, if you will, to generate leads from external audiences which turn into conversions.
Think of a funnel when considering what inbound marketing looks like. At the top of the wide open funnel is a wide berth of content ideas e.g. 10 reasons why you need a certified plumber; 25 social media tips from an SEO consultant; 7 critical mobile apps to fuel your mobile marketing strategy in 2014, and more.

These pieces of content can be blog posts, lists, tip sheets and even broader white papers on related topics to these respective themes. They are offered to interested prospects via a call to action in a sidebar of a website on a website page and even more pertinent – on a specialized landing page.
Once the individual indicates they want to download the content, they are asked for their email via a form and the free content is made available.

Publishing Formats for Content

Because a white paper is lengthier than a page; they’re often about 2000 words, give or take 800, the immediate format consideration is a PDF. Think about PDFs a moment. This file format is ubiquitous, and everyone relies on it. However, is it the best file format for your content marketing strategy?

No, and here’s why…PDFs are one dimensional without hyperlinks and without the ability to convert leads, without SEO, and basically, they are DEAD!

Now think a moment about your company newsletter (yes, there are still b-to-b companies publishing newsletters). Typically, it’s posted in a news center as a PDF or sent as a PDF in an email marketing campaign, right?

New Mobile Ways To Publish Pieces of Content

The proliferation of mobile marketing is the biggest trend since sliced bread. I’m not kidding. There are data galore shoving businesses to responsive mobile marketing, and your company needs to get there, too.

The first step is to make your website mobile responsive. You want the pages and elements of your site to scale to any portable and mobile device. Just last weekend, I sat in the movie theater during the pre-movie junk surfing sites on my iPhone, posting to Twitter and resharing content plus commenting on blogs. Look around the movie theater next time and see if others are doing the same? Then, think about your company’s website and worry that it’s responsive for this mobile audience.

Secondly, explore mobile publishing platforms. I recently explored a web app that makes publishing live content, such as white papers, magazines and newsletters, a breeze. Check out this demo of Readz right here. What you’ll see is the ability to scroll pages, click on hyperlinks, enlarge images, and simulate reading a document page by page – from left to right (unlike a PDF that is up to down in a vertical orientation).

You may use the cool iPad apps like Flipboard or daily newspapers and magazines? These apps make the user experience way more intensely entertaining. It’s time for you to do the same with your mobile- and-inbound marketing strategy. Eliminate the dead PDF file format from your content marketing and put in a live publishing platform for all your documents; your audience will thank you.

{Disclaimer: Sponsored Post}

Why Responsive Design Is A Must in 2013

01/03/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Like the new digs? Open up on your smart device and see why responsive design for your website is a critical must have in 2013. What’s the stat? Oodles of peeps use smartphones and mobile devices to surf the net, and it’s only getting higher. (How’s th Calculate at for exact data to encourage your transition?)

There are websites that look good on a tablet; however, when you begin scrolling and navigating, the site really isn’t built for the small screen of an iPhone.

Going responsive means a few things:

Your masthead has to fit snugly within the width of a smart device (regardless of its size). When someone logs in to the website, the masthead has to look normal; when they log in to a smart device, the masthead scales to fit and also pops on that smaller screen.
The sidebar is invisible on a smart device. With a responsive theme on WordPress, the calls to action and badges and radio buttons stack up in the middle of the screen. On the desktop, they appear off to the right as usual.
Careful thinking has to be incorporated into a responsive theme. When designing a website in a content management system like WordPress with a custom theme or existing skin or template, you toss up the sidebar without a worry. With a responsive approach, ordering of calls to action and what goes on the sidebar are mission critical.
You need to engage with a developer who knows what the heck he or she is doing. There is way too much back-end tech required to push the engine of a website. Code is required for anything you do; a content marketer or social media pro cannot ever master all that code.
You do need to understand what goes on behind the scenes of a website. Even when you’re publishing in content management systems and what you see visually on the dashboard is what appears live, the code is right there.
Don’t get left in the cold; get your site responsive so when people begin to surf your site will feel more welcome than the other clunkier site with poor navigation and tremendously obnoxious scrolling.

Websites should always be updating; tweaks to sidebar, refresh of design/color and plug ins, navigation and share bars or comment systems. These are things most bloggers can update on their own, and should.

Afraid of tech like me? Embrace your fears and get your fingers dirty; that way you can better direct the show from the stage instead of in the wings.

Soulati-'TUDE!