Solodev CMS

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A Web CMS for the Modern Advertising Agency

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Remember your 21st birthday? OK… maybe it’s a little fuzzy. You can blame the fancy shots for that. But turning 21 is more than an excuse to party – it’s a major milestone and a rite of passage to the next chapter in life.

Well, this year marks the 21st birthday of the web Content Management System (CMS), and there’s plenty of reason to celebrate this groundbreaking innovation.

If you’re still unfamiliar with this three-lettered acronym, “CMS” is a fancy term used to describe the software that organizations around the globe use to build, deploy, manage, and host websites. The advent of the web CMS gave unprecedented new powers and capabilities to advertising agencies, helping them evolve into a new breed of “digital agencies.” CMS unlocked a world of control, providing firms – both small and large – with the kind of software needed to offer web solutions to their advertising clients. This revolutionary technology propelled the advertising industry into the 21st century and transformed the agency model forever.

However, not all web CMS platforms are created equal – and that couldn’t be more apparent than it is for the modern advertising agency.

Although many point to 1996 as the official “birthdate” of the web CMS, the origins of Solodev date back to the early 2000s – so we were just in time for the party. It was a different world back then; the software was calling all the shots, and CMS might have more accurately stood for “Compromise Management System.” It was a bleak landscape, one where almost every aspect of how users could design and build websites was limited by the solution.

This immediately struck us as odd. Why wasn’t there a single platform on the market that gave users the space to create on their own terms? Wasn’t the web supposed to be about “freedom?”

When we set out to build the Solodev Web Experience Platform, our goal was simple: to be a truly unique voice in the CMS industry, and deliver on the promise of total freedom across design, functionality, scalability, and security. We wanted to build a web CMS that enabled users to dictate to the software how they would design and build their websites – not the other way around.

We then took things a step further, re-architecting Solodev for Amazon Web Services in a SaaS delivery model – the first enterprise web CMS to do so. Without even knowing it, this one decision would ultimately revolutionize the business model for the entire industry; Solodev made procuring an enterprise web CMS easier for agencies while lowering the cost, freeing more funds for the creative process, and providing a platform that was infinitely more focused on the overall “web experience.” Finally, agencies had a secure, scalable, Cloud-based platform that was uniquely designed around their industry needs.

While most enterprise CMS platforms provide a singular web experience (in other words, a website interaction that doesn’t change whether you’re a programmer in Brooklyn or a retailer in Spain) Solodev aimed to be different – and we truly hit our mark.

In recent years, there’s been a dramatic shift in our industry, focusing more on the holistic “web experience” as a reflection of design and functionality. But thus far, the effort has been composed of “polishing up” the singular user’s experience. Unlike other solutions, Solodev gives agencies the power to craft unique web experiences for different customer segments – from geographic regions to demographics to behavioral mechanics. This strategic agility not only helps agencies cater to a vast array of clients and their respective customer segments, but ultimately provides a more well rounded experience to the end user. Simply put, the Solodev Web Experience Platform is the next evolution in web content management – and in the coming years, the notion of a singular web experience will become a thing of the past.

At its core, Solodev was built for digital agencies, helping them achieve greater control and flexibility over their website services than ever before. Multi-site management continues to be a major factor for agencies when considering web CMS platforms, so we focused on building the most robust, multi-site management capabilities on the market. With one login to manage all of your clients’ websites, Solodev gives agencies the ability to create credentials for internal personnel as well as clients, using a permission-based system where agencies control who has access to what on the most granular of levels.

Thanks to our SaaS delivery model, agencies can also sign up for Solodev and be up and running in minutes rather than months – all at a reasonable price point that frees up dollars for creative. Agencies no longer have to worry about hosting fees, long-term contracts, and managing multiple web CMS platforms with different contracts and hosting configurations. Simply put, we wanted agencies to have total freedom when it comes to design, functionality, scalability, and security; no compromises, just the power to create whatever they imagined for their clients.

To deliver on this promise, we rebuilt our software layer by layer and optimized our platform to take full advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its entire product suite. Agencies can now craft custom websites without their web CMS telling them what to do and how to do it. Instead, Solodev serves as a true “blank canvas” for agencies to bring digital brands to life.

Solodev gives agencies a strategic agility they’ve never had before. If a client needs a project done quickly – or specifies that they want their website deployed in a cloud environment – agencies can respond with lightning speed using Solodev’s On-Demand model. Deployed in 45 minutes or less, Solodev is one of the fastest platforms on the planet, giving you the ability to create re-usable templates to speed up development time.

Because of our SaaS and Cloud-based configuration, Solodev doesn’t come with the baggage that most competitors do. There’s no $500,000 price tag with our software; in fact, our entry-level plan is only $99/month. There are no licensing fees, no need for IT maintenance, no manual updates and none of the expensive and often unexpected add-ons that come with traditional enterprise web CMS deployments. In essence, Solodev delivers one of the best Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) on the market while enhancing agency productivity on multiple levels.

Solodev’s advanced templating system empowers designers to create the core layouts of any web design on a virtual “blank canvas” – one that web developers can easily transform into re-usable templates. This allows agencies to write minimal code that delivers maximum impact, and focus more on their creative process. And with Solodev, agencies can even build evergreen template “packages” that replicate a given style or design scheme, providing a foundation on which to develop future websites.

When it comes to content, Solodev gives agency writers and content creators more control than ever. Imagine writing copy while watching your web page update in real-time (working in draft mode and eventually publishing). Now imagine doing it all without any laborious training or deep technical knowledge. With Solodev, it’s all possible – and agencies now have a key advantage in managing and growing their overall content strategy.

Turning 21 is a major milestone for the web CMS. But when the party’s over, how does the industry continue to mature? And for digital agencies, how does it answer the need for greater freedom and control? The answer, in a word, is “experience” – and at Solodev, we’ve always focused on making the best web experience platform on the market. A key part of that is simplicity; that’s why we’ve intentionally left E-Commerce, Marketing Automation, and other enterprise software out of the mix. We wanted our CMS to be the best at what it does – and not another “jack of all trades.” And while most competitive platforms have recently begun to package their CMS with their own nascent enterprise software applications, we decided to give more freedom to the users – and made integrating with your favorite “best of breed” software vendors, from CRM to ERP, extremely easy.

When we say “total freedom” in all aspects of your web presence, we mean it. Solodev forces nothing on you – just the power to create your most imaginative ideas online. It’s the only platform that simply and elegantly delivers a blank canvas where you have complete freedom to design, build, and deploy your websites and applications – without compromises or limitations.

And after 21 years of waiting, there’s no better birthday gift than that.

About the Author

Shawn Moore is the founder & CTO of Solodev and the driving force behind the Solodev Web Experience Platform. A visionary leader, Shawn has strategically grown Solodev from its inception as a small web design company to a successful software company that services clients across the nation and has been named to the Inc. 5000’s fastest growing private companies for the past two years in a row.

Winner of several industry awards for Best CTO and CIO, Shawn Moore is changing the content management landscape with Solodev. With over a decade of executive experience serving as CEO of Solodev and COO for software company Helium Flash, Shawn has the industry knowledge and product passion that continues to drive the development of the Solodev Platform. He is a graduate of Stetson University and often speaks on IT related trends and topics at conferences and universities across the state.

advertising digital marketing digital experience web development web design ad agency webcms

The Cloud: From Crossing the Chasm to Reaching the Tipping Point

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Many businesses face the same problems and as a result, the planet’s sharpest minds have attempted to find solutions. Two such people are Geoffrey Moore, author of the widely popular book “Crossing the Chasm”, and Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point”. Both of these books compliment and even reference each other in their comprehensive look at the major problem all businesses and products face: How do you reach mass-market adoption?

Even the largest corporations ask themselves this question when rolling out new products or new services offerings. Throwing money at this universal problem is not the answer. In fact, there is no singular answer but an organic evolution that, when carefully examined, is a map to mass-market adoption. This map is laid out for the world to see in both of the aforementioned books but today; we’re going to use these books as a framework to discuss how global organizations have finally crossed the chasm and are in the process of reaching the tipping point when it comes to cloud computing.

It’s impossible to discuss cloud computing without discussing Amazon Web Services, the true catalyst that eventually led to mass adoption of cloud computing technologies. Yes, there is a number of cloud computing providers today, but in 2006 when AWS was founded, Google and Microsoft hadn’t even considered building their own cloud offerings. Google Cloud launched five years later; Microsoft Azure launched four years later. Despite Amazon being first to go “all-in” with their new offering, it took a few years for their technology, particularly their EC2 server offering, to reach a level of maturity where early adopters would dip their toes in the water. At that time, the technology simply wasn’t ready, and the business world viewed the cloud as unreliable if they even considered it at all. That all changed with a few visionaries that paved the way for the rest.

Around three years after the founding of AWS, a number of startups trying to disrupt their respective industries experimented with cloud computing to varying degrees of success. Between 2008 and 2011, everything changed when startups that were “early adopters” of cloud computing technologies such as Spotify, Netflix, Airbnb and Twilio showcased the benefits of cloud computing to the world through the massive adoption of their respective products. Despite this success and newfound attention focused on the cloud, it was still too early for widespread adoption, even by Fortune 500 companies.

A perfect storm came together that knocked down the concerns most had about cloud computing, namely security and reliability, and would eventually lead to an urgent race to the cloud. Of course it all started with AWS in 2006, but it would take a few years for AWS to even reach the technological maturity required to scale cloud technologies. With the advent of IoT, or the “Internet of Things”, large organizations started to use IoT technologies like smart home products and wearables, and everything from cars to tractor-trailers and oil drills were outfitted with sensors. What these mega corporations didn’t know at the time was these new technologies in IoT were all cloud-based. Suddenly the cloud became much more appealing.

While IoT was getting all of the publicity, AWS continued to iterate and expand their cloud offering. Tech enthusiasts who had adopted cloud technologies began rapidly developing tools to complement and enhance existing cloud technologies. The igniting spark that led to the race to the cloud was the ability for organizations to configure their cloud environments using fully scripted architecture, as well as the evolution, price reduction and availability of server redundancy, namely across multiple regions. What previously took organizations months to complete could now be done in minutes. While it used to take months or weeks to update Solodev to its latest software version for our customers, it now takes the simple click of a button. While IT departments across the globe began their research into the cloud years beforehand, they now had the data to prove the value of the cloud to decision makers at their organizations. In 2014, cloud computing finally crossed the chasm, shifting from limited usage by early adopters to more broad adoption by what Geoffrey Moore refers to as “the early majority.”

The perfect storm also included the aging of outdated technologies and data centers built during the early days of the Internet. As these data centers began to age to obscurity, the major decision organizations faced was whether to renovate their data centers, requiring a massive investment, and keep everything on-premise — or — to move to the cloud where they could scale for increased productivity and efficiency on all fronts. With the advent of technologies like continuous integration, AWS CloudFront, Chef, Docker and hundreds of other tools, organizations could now control their computing resources and speed up software updates while keeping their websites and applications redundant across multiple servers in different regions with absolutely no downtime.

Around 2015 or 2016, cloud computing finally reached the tipping point and became adopted by its many skeptics and conservatives. As a result, a race to the cloud began and is still in full swing as Fortune 500 companies try to catch up to smaller, more agile organizations who found success faster in migrating their operations into true “cloud-based” businesses. Solodev was a part of the early majority of cloud computing, beginning our efforts to rebuild Solodev for the AWS Cloud in 2013 once the technology had fully matured in a way that was scalable, reliable and affordable. After three years of rebuilding the Solodev Content Management System (CMS) to be a true cloud-based solution, the timing couldn’t have been better as the year Solodev was named the “Best Cloud CMS” was the same year cloud computing truly hit its tipping point. Despite being a relatively small software company, we have the expertise and agility to help Fortune 500 organizations move their massive ecosystem of products, services, websites and applications to the cloud and saw it first hand after appearing at Amazon Web Services re:Invent in 2016.

Almost every single phone call, email or inquiry Solodev receives involves large organizations trying to move to the cloud — and we are uniquely positioned to serve that need. Being early in the adoption of cloud computing, the Solodev team has experience with the kind of innovation that most large conglomerates simply can’t risk. It was our belief in the cloud, and our commitment to unlocking the potential of the cloud in the enterprise CMS industry, that brought us to the point of being able to take advantage of the tipping point and bring other organizations to the cloud. Today the tipping point has been reached, and in one-way or another, everyone is moving to the cloud. Now, the real focus is on how to truly build a “cloud-based” business rather than simply making your product or service available on the cloud.

For more information on how Solodev can help bring your organization to the cloud visit www.solodev.com or call 1–800–859–7656

About the Author

Shawn Moore is the founder & CTO of Solodev and the driving force behind the Solodev Web Experience Platform. A visionary leader, Shawn has strategically grown Solodev from its inception as a small web design company to a successful software company that services clients across the nation and has been named to the Inc. 5000’s fastest growing private companies for the past two years in a row.

Winner of several industry awards for Best CTO and CIO, Shawn Moore is changing the content management landscape with Solodev. With over a decade of executive experience serving as CEO of Solodev and COO for software company Helium Flash, Shawn has the industry knowledge and product passion that continues to drive the development of the Solodev Platform. He is a graduate of Stetson University and often speaks on IT related trends and topics at conferences and universities across the state.

cloud computing aws cloud aws technology tech iot big data Amazon Web Services

This Month in Code: April’s Web Design Roundup

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Top Three Parallax Implementations

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Parallax creates a depth and transition effect when scrolling down your web pages to the content below. The following tutorials shows you different ways to add parallax to your website.

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CSS Transitions and Transforms

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CSS transitions and transforms can create animations that enhance the user experience on your website. In this tutorial you’ll see practical implementations of CSS transition properties to define durations, delays, and easing functions as well as CSS transforms that allow you to rotate, scale, and move elements.

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The Underuse of Metadata in Optimization

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When it comes to your content optimization project, metadata is often overlooked. If used at all, many tend to focus strictly on the basics such as a meta title and meta description. While those tags are certainly important, they nonetheless only scratch the surface of the full scope of meta tag optimization. This tutorial contains some of the more neglected meta tags that can be used to help better optimize your content and website.

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5 Things to Consider When Creating a Landing Page

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Landing pages are a huge part of any inbound marketing strategy for lead generation. Each campaign you run should have its own landing page. There are several statistics out there back up the fact that the more landing pages you have, the more leads you will receive. Choosing a content management system that easily allows you to craft landing pages is essential to a successful landing page strategy.

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Craft a Beautiful Web Design for your Portfolio

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A majority of websites are places to showcase your work whether it is a personal portfolio, a client portfolio, or even an offering of products or services. In this tutorial we are utilizing echo.js to lazy load the images in your portfolio so you have a wonderfully designed portfolio without compromising on page speed or web design.

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Originally Posted on the Solodev Web Design Blog

web design web development web developers front-end web development Front-End Design html css javascript seo

Craft a Beautiful Web Design for your Portfolio

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A majority of websites are places to showcase your work whether it is a personal portfolio, a client portfolio, or even an offering of products or services. Ultimately, whether you fit into any of those personas, you are all trying to do the same thing.

You’re all trying to showcase what you have to offer in a way that is aesthetically amazing so that others want to engage with you. Your website is the best place to do this but where your website is hosted and managed can have a massive effect on how much web design control you have over your showcase design.  In this tutorial we are utilizing echo.js to lazy load the images in your portfolio so you have a wonderfully designed portfolio without compromising on page speed or web design.

Find the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the Solodev Web Design Blog!

web design web development web developers front-end web development Front-End Design html css javascript

5 Things to Consider When Creating a Landing Page

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Landing pages are a huge part of any inbound marketing strategy for lead generation. Each campaign you run should have its own landing page. There are several statistics out there back up the fact that the more landing pages you have, the more leads you will receive. So, let’s take a look at some tips on how to build your landing page to convert!

1. Keep it specific

Have one offer? Good, keep it that way! Multiple offers on a single landing page decreases conversions.


2. Layout matters

The layout of your landing page should be consistent on every front with a clear headline, body copy, and CTA. Use contrasting colors for the CTA and be sure to A/B test everything you do. Don’t go overboard with testing though, start off with a simple color change for the CTA or even a new headline for the page. Be sure that your landing page doesn’t have navigation as well, the whole point of the page is to direct your user to a specific action.


3. You need social proof

You could claim to be the Queen of England selling her priceless swans! However, if there is no proof of that, it will only serve to turn away visitors. There are five categories of social proof and having any forms of these proofs on your website will increase conversions:

If you follow these best practices you should see an uptick in conversions, be sure to track every change you make while testing and see what variants of the page works best. If you need help designing your web experience, feel free to ask us any questions in the comments below.

Expert: approval from credible experts

Celebrity: endorsements from celebrities

User proof: approval from current users of the product (customer testimonials, caste studies, etc).

Wisdom of the crowds: approval from large groups of other people

Wisdom of your friends: approval from your friends or people you know


4. Avoid clutter

Over-the-top images usually distracts site visitors and increases the load time of the website. And we all know what happens when the load time increases for a site page, the conversions drop.


5. Optimize for mobile

75% of users in the U.S access the internet on mobile devices, keep that in mind as you are creating your page. Be sure there is enough padding from the edges on mobile devices, make sure elements of your page are appropriately large enough, and strip away as many unnecessary design elements as possible.

If you follow these best practices you should see an uptick in conversions, be sure to track every change you make while testing and see what variants of the page works best. If you need help designing your web experience, feel free to ask us any questions in the comments below.

Originally posted on the Solodev Web Design Blog

web design web development web developers front-end web development Front-End Design html css javascript digital marketing digital experience

The Underuse of Metadata in Optimization

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When it comes to your content optimization project, metadata is often overlooked. If used at all, many tend to focus strictly on the basics such as a meta title and meta description. While those tags are certainly important, they nonetheless only scratch the surface of the full scope of meta tag optimization.

As a review, it’s important to understand the role of metadata in regards to your website content. Metadata is ultimately not for the end user but, rather, helps search engines and other programmatic features properly index the page. The end result is that your web pages can be better associated with specific keywords, search queries, and display a variety of information in search results or on social media.

Below are some of the more neglected meta tags that can be used to help better optimize your content and website. Implementing these tags will not only improve your on-page content but will better resolve crawl errors and give you additional outlets for your optimization efforts.

Canonical URL

The canonical link is one of the most significant tags you can implement on your website. At its core, the canonical link helps resolve issues of duplicate content. In situations where multiple pages show the same content, the canonical link specifies the preferred URL to index and display in search results. Additionally, Facebook and Twitter use the canonical link when constructing their sharing features.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.solodev.com/">

Open Graph Tags

The Open Graph protocol helps define the pieces of information in a variety of external applications. The most notable application is Facebook and how it parses a page’s Open Graph tags to construct a shared link. With Open Graph tags, you can specify what image you want to use when sharing a link in addition to its display title. All of this gives you greater freedom in creating a highly targeted and optimized links that can better draw traffic.

<meta content="https://www.solodev.com/" property="og:url">
<meta content="website" property="og:type">
<meta content="Content Management System | Web Experience Platform | Solode" property="og:title">
<meta content="Professional Content Management System for web design, web experience management, enterprise hosting and web development support. Built for the Amazon Cloud." property="og:description">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="www.solodev.com">
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US">

Twitter Card Markup

Similar to the Open Graph protocol, Twitter offers a number of meta tags that you can use to better construct how your URL will display in a tweet. Again, this helps you control at a granular level how your content is visually displayed.

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@solodev">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Content Management System | Web Experience Platform | Solode">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Professional Content Management System for web design, web experience management, enterprise hosting and web development support. Built for the Amazon Cloud.">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://www.solodev.com/_resources/images/content/hero-image-video.jpg">

Don’t Forget the Basics

While optimizing the above meta tags will take your content to the next level, it’s important not to forget about the elementary title and description tags. While most content management systems will construct these automatically, it’s crucial you review and make sure some basic points are followed. These tips include:

  • Keep your meta title short(ish) and make sure it includes your primary page keyword
  • Keep your meta description to under 160 characters and ensure it contains your primary and secondary keywords.
  • Avoid using duplicate titles and descriptions. This can be difficult as auto-generated tags tend to fall back to the same strings of content.

As web design aficionados, we tend to focus on the frontend and the visual display of your websites. Underneath all of that, however, is a world of tags and structured metadata that play a crucial part of your content optimization efforts. Take the time to properly configure these tags as, in the long run, you’ll begin to see their increased value.

Originally Posted on the Solodev Web Design Blog

seo PPC Marketing meta data search engine optimization digital marketing web development

The Weekly Recap of Web Design and Digital Marketing Tutorials

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Every day new HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and marketing tutorials are posted to the growing Solodev Web Design & Digital Marketing Blog! Here is a list of what was added the week of April 17th!

How to Best Structure Your URLs

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When it comes to content search engine optimizations (SEO), there’s absolutely one thing that takes precedence: your URL.

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The Web Experience: The Customer Journey and Micro-Moments

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What can you do to ensure that your customer journey includes micro-moments?

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5 Ways to Optimize a Mobile Site

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Mobile-first is an all-encompassing design and development philosophy that adequately addresses the needs of the modern user and how we all consume websites

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How Long-tail Keywords Can Improve the Web Experience

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“Optimize for long-tail keywords,” is a phrase slung in SEO articles across the web, but how exactly does this help your prospect’s web experience?

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Originally Posted on the Solodev Blog

web design web development web developers front-end web development Front-End Design html css javascript

How Long-tail Keywords Can Improve the Web Experience

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“Optimize for long-tail keywords,” is a phrase slung in SEO articles across the web, but how exactly does this help your prospect’s web experience? Easy — these specific keywords are what your target audience are searching for.

For those who are unaware of what a long-tail keyword is, it’s a search query that includes 3-5 words. Usually, length of the keyword determines how easy or difficult it is to rank for said keywords. Conversion rates for long-tail keywords are on average, 2.5x higher than broad terms.

There are many ways to research long-tail keywords, a simple google search with a scroll to the bottom will reveal other terms that people have searched for and is a good place to start.  For example, if you search for artic foxes and scroll down there are many related search terms that are longer than two words:

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HINT

If you’re really a savvy SEO marketer you would also have this nifty chrome extension called, Keywords Everywhere. This extension shows you the average monthly searches and average CPC per each keyword right under the google search bar.

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You can also use Google Adword’s keyword planner tool to find additional long-tail keywords if you have an account. If you are looking for a more detailed and longer list keywordshitter is your go to. 

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There are also places for you to add negative and positive filters to narrow down your result.

After you have done your research, produce quality content that includes these keywords across your website. Just don’t stuff the keywords, make sure it makes sense. Remember, your goal is to enhance your prospects web experience and not hurt it by writing content that doesn’t make sense.

But what about your PPC campaigns? Do you use long-tail keywords for that? Personally, I would advise against it, using broad match modifiers for your keywords will take care of the long-tail keywords while keeping cost low. Plus, it doesn’t make sense to include a keyword that has such a low search volume that your ad doesn’t even serve for it.

To sum it all up, when researching for your long-tail keyword remember what your user’s intent is and write quality content that will enhance your prospect’s web experience.

Originally posted on the Solodev Web Design Blog

seo PPC PPC Marketing long-tail keywords google search digital marketing

5 Ways to Optimize a Mobile Site

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Mobile-first isn’t just an empty design trend. It’s an all-encompassing design and development philosophy that adequately addresses the needs of the modern user and how we all consume websites. While the majority of us understand mobile’s magnitude, if not defacto primacy, it’s nonetheless still approached as an afterthought when it comes to design and usability.

All of this is to say that you should treat mobile designs and interactions with the utmost importance. When designing a site, every style or development change should be viewed on desktop and mobile, in parallel. This brings our conception of mobile design up to level of significance it deserves based solely on site traffic.

The following are a few design, development, and marketing tips to optimize your mobile site. By following these concepts, you should make significant inroads with your mobile site’s usability and search engine optimization.

Start by Designing for Mobile

The first rule of thumb is essential: start by having mobile designs. When it comes to a website design or redesign project, designers often start with a general wireframe of the site’s layout. At this stage in the project, it is absolutely crucial to make sure there is a definite mobile-first design in place and that there is a strategic approach to how the site will render of mobile devices.

When making these designs, there are some fundamental concepts that should be implemented. First, don’t forget about ensuring there is adequate padding from the edges on mobile devices. Text with zero padding makes it incredibly difficult to read and looks inelegant. Similarly, make sure your elements are appropriately large enough on mobile devices. This includes your text and various actionable buttons. If your mobile users can’t legitimately read your content or press links/buttons, then you have an enormous user experience problem on your hands.

Lastly, it’s important to strip away as many unnecessary design elements as possible. This all comes down to that question of readability. Remove unnecessary graphics, use icons instead of bulky text, and make sure only the most pertinent pieces of information are displayed.

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Add Device Specific Classes

Ideally, all styling changes would be simply handled by media queries and would globally affect all devices the same. Unfortunately, not all devices react the same nor do they have standardized dimensions or support the same libraries. While the vast majority of design elements will appear the same on different brands, there will be the odd outlier that will require its own device-specific solution.

One way to account for this is to apply a global class that includes the device or viewpoint. Using some JavaScript, you can detect the device in use and have your CSS handle those unique cases. Similarly, you can use an external toolset, such as Modernizr, which creates a number of classes depending on what device/browser in is use which allows you to specifically target screens that, say, don’t support Flash or HTML5 videos.

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Don’t Forget about Forms

As web designers and developers, our primary goal is to create web experiences where users have the freedom and capability to interact. One of the clearest examples of this interaction is filling out a simple form, such as a contact or lead generation form. It is essential to make sure your forms are optimally styled for mobile devices so that your users can submit information when needed.

The simplest method to do this is to ensure that your form fields stack upon one another. Some common problems that arise, however, is that there’s no sufficient padding between the fields or that the field inputs themselves expand outside the viewpoint, requiring the user to scroll horizontally. You should be able to address these problems directly with media queries. Of course, a prebuilt mobile-first design framework such as Bootstrap should adequately handle these scenarios.

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Don’t Use Popups on Mobile - EVER

You may be tempted to add popups at various points on your website. They can encourage user interaction, add to newsletter subscriptions, or drive the consumption of specific content. This is all fine on desktop views, where the user has enough screen space to close the popup and move on with their web experience. On mobile devices, however, it’s a completely different story.

Popups on mobile devices simply create bad user experiences. They often are impossible to manually close, they often extend outside of the viewpoint, and they generally make things more difficult for the end user. Additionally, Google has specifically targeted mobile popups as a point of contention and will actively penalize your website. All that being said, don’t use mobile popups. Hide them or actively disable them for specific responsive viewpoints.

Analyze and Find Drop-off Points

Lastly, it’s important to analyze your mobile data and find drop-off points for your mobile visitors. This analysis should provide critical information as to where your users get hung up, frustrated, or otherwise decide to leave. Finding these pages can lead you to discover specific design elements that are not mobile friendly and which otherwise disrupt your experience.

Within Google Analytics, you can add a segment to your Behavior Flow to specifically see the overall progression of your mobile viewers. Diving into these specific mobile interactions is the first step to the continued optimization of your mobile websites.

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It goes without saying that your mobile web experiences are a huge deal. With the trend of mobile traffic continuing, you don’t want to miss out on losing potential users due to either bad design elements or broken functionality. It’s absolutely crucial you to take the time to optimize and analyze the specific mobile view of your website. Following these basic tips, you should be well on your way to fully optimizing your mobile site.

Originally Posted on the Solodev Web Design Blog

mobile responsive digital marketing mobile first web design Website Design responsive html css javascript user experience UX Design

The Web Experience: The Customer Journey and Micro-Moments

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Do you ever remember a time where you were in a store contemplating to purchase something and not having a smartphone in hand to research the competition? I sure don’t. Our smartphones are so closely integrated into our daily lives, it’s hard to imagine a time when we didn’t use them. And yes, as a marketer, you want to be a part of a micro-moment.

What is a micro-moment?

Google defines it best as: “Micro-moments occur when people reflexively turn to a device—increasingly a smartphone—to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something. They are intent-rich moments when decisions are made and preferences shaped.”

Our instant – give it to me now, generation has made us fickle consumers. Our hands hold a computer that gives us access to anything in an instant and we expect that in return. So, what can you do to ensure that the web experience you deliver includes micro-moments?

  1. You’ve mapped your customer’s journey, place a microscope over it
    1. Scrutinize your consumer journey and examine what can be classified as a micro-moment. See where people can learn about your product, make a purchase, find something that inspires them, and everything/anything in-between.
    2. Categorize these moments:
      1. I want to know
      2. I want to go
      3. I want to do
      4. I want to buy
  2. Understand prospect’s needs in the moment
    1. Put your digital transformation cap on and think, what could make this easier or faster? What features would be useful for this micro-moment?
  3. Deliver the experience
    1. Use location, time of day, season, (even the weather, yes), and product availability to deliver experience that seem tailor-made for your customers.
  4. Optimize, measure, and optimize some more
    1. As with anything, continue to measure and optimize your micro-moments. Are all your moments integrated seamlessly across all devices? Does your micro-moment journey seem segmented?

If you still haven’t jumped on the micro-moment bandwagon, consider these statistics 82% of smartphone users consult their phones in store while considering a purchase and just in the past year there has been a 29% increase in mobile conversions.

Originally posted on the Solodev Web Design Blog

digital marketing digital experience micro moments web experience web development web design