February 2018 | The Web Authority

February 28, 2018February 23, 2018

What Are Your Customer Friction Points?

Nancy McCord is a Google and Bing Partner

Friction points, it’s all about finding where customers have trouble completing during the buying process with you and fixing the issues.

Here are some examples of friction points:

Buyers have trouble downloading completed video files for a drone photography agency. What can be done? Maybe using Drop Box with easy to follow instructions and photos on what to do next for a file download.

Prospects have trouble understanding what is included in a blog post sale. How can that be clarified? Maybe posting samples of content with the right word count and number of links to help a prospect understand the type and quality they will receive on your website to prequalify prospects before they even call.

Buyers have trouble getting contract documents to sign and return. How can the process be easier? Maybe using a digital signing service and online document archive would work to speed the return process.

Each business has their own unique set of friction points. Making things easier for people to buy from you is not all e-commerce focused. Friction points exist even for transactions with consultants and business to business sales, and for people who do not even sell items on their website.

My own company’s friction points have previously been: blog writing samples and writing expectations, prospects not having the proper technology to send or receive a contract, and buyers needing an online self-serve credit card payment center.

Are you hearing the same issues over and over from clients and prospects? That is a friction point. Now’s the time to identify what yours are and do something specific to address them to make buying from you and your company frictionless.

February 26, 2018February 23, 2018

Organic Search Results Have Shrunk

We Are a Google Partner Specializing in Search Marketing, Mobile, and Display. — We Are a Google Partner Specializing in Search Marketing,, Mobile, and Display.

Yes, organic search results have shrunk in your traffic reports due to a change in how people are now using search engines. Here’s why.

Search Advertising
By search engines boosting search ads on the results page, getting rid of ads on the right sidebar on many devices, and by making the ads larger with site links and other helpful extensions, readers are clicking ads versus scrolling down the page to find organic results.

Smaller Screens
As more viewers are searching on tablets and smartphones, the organic placements are increasingly difficult to find and require too much effort to scroll to. Viewers are instead staying on the first screen they are shown that typically have location specific results which appear to be very relevant to their search – even though these are typically paid listings.

Competition
Businesses are finding that to be highly competitive in their marketplace, they simply must be in pay per click and need to have top positioning on the page. Because organic results have slipped so far below ads and Google My Business organic listings, businesses are having to pay for advertising to be seen.

If you need exposure and need AdWords to help drive it, I encourage you to review our AdWords Manager services page. Pricing will be increasing soon, so now’s a good time to start a program at lower set up fees.

February 21, 2018February 15, 2018

Not Sure AdWords is Working? Stop and Find Out!

If you are not sure that AdWords is working for you, I encourage you to stop your advertising and find out.

Here’s what happened for two of our clients…

Both are doctors and both decided that AdWords clicks were too expensive and both stopped AdWords. Within a week, both medical practices were back up and running in Google AdWords again.

The comments from the two doctors were eerily similar – our phones stopped ringing and we had no new patients. Now that’s a real testimony to the power of AdWords for lead generation!

If you are advertising on AdWords and don’t feel it is working for you, I do recommend that you consider stopping your advertising for several weeks to 30 days. As these two clients found out, one week was long enough for them to know that AdWords was not all about clicks, it was about the phone calls and new patients that it brought in to their practices.

Need Help Putting AdWords to Work for You?

If you need help putting AdWords to work for you, I encourage you to review our AdWords Quick Start Services. We’ll help you get running fast and work to get the results you need for your business. Set up and the first four weeks of account management starts at $899. Don’t wait to sign up as we expect to raise our prices in the next month.

February 19, 2018February 15, 2018

Do You Need HTTPS Now?

HTTPS – Google loves it, but for informational websites, moving to HTTPS adds to your costs. Expect to pay $129 to $229 for a SSL or secure socket layer certificate to be able to have your website use HTTPS in the browser bar.

For me at this time, I am not moving to HTTPS and it is mainly due to the additional cost. I do not have e-commerce on my website and I only use a contact form for prospects, so do not feel that I must have this extra security. But, Google loves the security and encryption that HTTPS affords for websites. At some point in time, the use of HTTPS on your website may be a ranking factor for organic results, but for now, it is not.

E-Commerce Sites MUST be HTTPS

If your website has e-commerce, you take payments or log users into a secure area, you really need to be using HTTPS at this point in time, no exception.

New Websites Should Embrace HTTPS

Any new websites we design are all in HTTPS. At this time I do not feel that existing informational websites should move to HTTPS, but that day may be coming soon.

To find out more about how we can help you, I invite you to visit our website to browse our service offerings and read more content on topics that will help your business grow.