6 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Professional to Design Your Logo

One of the best ROIs for your business is investing time and money into logo design. Here are 6 reasons why you should invest in hiring a professional to design your logo.

1.       As much as you might not want to believe it, when businesses fail, a part of that failure comes from poor branding and logo design. Knowing this, why take any chances? Your logo is the one graphic that draws customers in or scares them away and genuinely reflects the style and importance of your brand. If you aren’t loving your logo, it’s a good idea to hire a professional to redesign your logo.

2.       A strong, thoughtfully designed logo instantly creates trust with your customers. Think of the most popular brands you love, we’re sure their logo has something to do with the relationship you’ve established with them!

3.       Your logo will be seen everywhere! And by everywhere, we mean on your website, business cards, letterhead, brochures, buildings, and apparel. Your logo should accurately represent your business and attract customers interest.

4.       Having a clean, simple, consistent logo establishes you as a leader in your field. These types of designs are recognizable and easy to remember. Your logo should be recognizable so customers know it’s your company if they saw the logo alone!

5.       Logos created in a pinch are sure to be revisited time and time again. Professionally designed logos last nearly a lifetime. Take the time to work with a professional designer so your logo lasts the entire lifetime of your business if not longer.

6.       Professional designers know what works and what doesn’t. They know what is instantly appealing to customers and what will turn them away. By collaborating with a designer, you get their expertise and you bring your passion for the brand of your business. This combination is sure to lead to a successfully designed logo.

5 Web Design Characteristics that Influence Success

Believe it or not, there are characteristics of your website’s design that are influencing its success this very moment. Continue reading to make sure you are exceeding expectations in these areas.

1. High-Quality Content

Good web design without high-quality content is just that, the bones of a website without anything to hold it together. Content should be creative, substantial, and build trust among your viewers. Creating that sense of trust and confidence in your viewers will aid in converting them into customers. Providing reviews on your website is a great way to build trust and confidence in your viewers.

2. Keep it Simple

Cluttered, distracting websites are sure to lead your viewers elsewhere. Your website should be simple and easy to use. Include your most important and valued elements to your viewers like products, services, reviews, and contact information. In the simplicity of your design, make any contact information or call-to-action buttons stand out making it easy for viewers to find them.

3. Quick Load Time

There’s no doubt we’ve all been spoiled with fast websites that when we reach a website that takes only a few seconds too long, we’re already closing that page and looking for the next. Don’t fall victim to slow loading times as this is sure to drive away your viewers and lower your Google ranking.

4. Keep up with the Trends

While there’s no proven connection between an attractive design and converting viewers into customers, it is likely that a good design will build a viewer’s sense of trust in your business. In maintaining your attractive design, make sure it keeps up with the trends of design. In other words, make sure your website design doesn’t look dated.

5. Unique and Memorable Design

Chances are there are more than a handful of other companies that are offering the same products and services as you. In the realm of determining what makes you stand out from your competitors, don’t forget to include your website design. If your website isn’t made to be unique and memorable by using color, illustrations, and consistency, you’re highly likely to blend right in with the rest making it difficult for viewers to remember who you are.

Typography in web design is a trend that won’t be dying any time soon. Getting creative with your typography is sure to attract customers!

For years, Sans Serif has been the way to go in terms of typography, but the truth is the possibilities are ENDLESS! Serif fonts will be making a huge come back this year so make sure you don’t fall off the wagon! There has never been a better time to get creative with your typography on your website!

5 Costly Web Design Mistakes to Avoid

Web design mistakes are easy to make yet costly to your business. Avoid these five common web design mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to designing a successful website!

1. Fail to Plan

It’s a common mistake that can leave you with a huge bill to foot. We recommend you invest in a high-quality plan before taking the first step to designing your website. Do your research about key factors like your target audience and what type of content will interest them. In addition, it’s critical to analyze your top competitors and determine what works for them and what their audience loves about them.

2. Contact Crisis

Make sure you have sufficient channels for your customers to contact you! This is a common problem and often makes it hard for you to convert leads into customers. Leave a clear Contact Us page that details all the information needed to contact you. The ability to contact you should be effortless in the eyes of your potential customers; this will help you turn leads into paying, returning customers.

3. Content, content, content!

One of the big kickers these days that absolutely cannot be missed is CONTENT! Content is key! You hear it over and over because it’s true! Content must be relevant, applicable, and interesting to your target audience. Eye-catching content means the difference of attracting and maintaining customers versus losing them to your competitors.

4. Dead Links

A critical mistake is failure to vet and manage links. Links should be managed on a weekly basis to ensure none of them are broken. Broken links are extremely frustrating to site visitors and may lead them elsewhere.

5. Simplicity

The simplicity of your web design goes a long way to attracting and keeping your customers. Cluttered designs with multiple fonts and colors can be off-putting, overwhelming, and distracting. Your design should be attractive and easy to read and make your viewers come back for more.

 

4 Steps to Lead Your Website to Successful Optimization

When building a website, one of the most important things we do at NFINITY Web Solutions is look at optimization. A website without optimization is a website without purpose.

Outside of trying to turn visitors into customers, and customers into repeat customers, what else would you use a website for? Websites raise awareness, build interest, and convince people to take action. Should you lack a website that is of the optimal standard, though, it can become a bit of a problem.

Follow the steps below to optimize your website’s performance.

1. Analyze the Opposition
Before you know what is going right, you need to know what you are doing wrong. To start off, take some time to research critical keywords which are popular, competitive, and affordable for your marketing. Then, take a look at the search engine ranking of your main competition; how close can you get to them if you were to begin now? Look at your own site, too. Look at everything from the use of meta tags and keywords to the visibility on-site. Compare how your site looks versus your competition.

2. Create an Optimization Strategy
Now that you know what your competition is doing well, you need to analyze alongside this information. Start off by identifying the main target keywords and phrases. Don’t forget to look at misspelled keywords; they often get a high search volume, too, so don’t disregard them even if they’re spelled wrong.

3. Develop Each Page
Now you need to work out the key factors on each page. For example, take a look at your on-page titles and meta tags. Are they using keywords? Are they clear and accurate with regards to the on-page content? We recommend that you look to get at least 800 words per page, too. While anything above 300 is going to be indexed by search engines, the more content you have on-page, the better.

4. Prepare for Testing
The last step is to test everything. Not every change you make will be a success. Therefore, you need to be able to test things over a period of a week or so with regular maintenance and adjustments depending on what your analysis and feedback is telling you. Don’t neglect to come back and continue your optimization; you need to keep going to make sure that your previous changes were successful.

With all of this in mind, you should find it very easy to make the right calls with regards to the next steps for your business. If you optimize your site following the steps above, then you should find it easy to get things moving forward positively.

Don’t neglect the importance of an optimized website. Done right, a well-optimized website can deliver a much more comprehensive and telling level of results. It’s well worth your time and investment, so don’t hold back from investing in optimizing the running of your website for the best results.

DIY SEO: How to Make it Effective and Sufficient on a Tight Budget

When trying to grow your business on a small budget, many get stuck on how to do SEO when they simply can’t afford paying someone to do SEO for them.

At Nfinity Web Solutions, we see many people who have good websites but with a touch of optimization, could be a very successful marketing tool. However, we also know that many people simply lack the budget needed to invest in SEO.

How, then, can you keep costs down? We have some ideas for you below. Each offers a budget-friendly way to help optimize and improve the general quality of your website.

SEO Tactics for Businesses on a Budget

• Go for long-tail keywords. The first and more pertinent budget-friendly SEO tool is to build content around long-tail keywords. This is a keyword that is more so a phrase than it is a basic single word. For example, if you were a dentist in Mesa, Arizona, instead of using a basic keyword like “dentist” your SEO efforts will be more beneficial if you used something like, “Mesa Arizona Dentist” or if you’re an endodontist, you might want to use something like, “root canals in Mesa Arizona”. The more specific you can be in your keyword phrases, the more easily someone will be able to find your business when searching online.

• Use keywords intelligently. It’s not just about the use of keywords, but the smart use of keywords. By this, we mean spending more time using those long-tail keywords in the right way. From using it on page titles and URLs without overdoing it or forcing it is a good starting point. Try using them in header tags on-site, too, breaking up content with relevant tags that openly explain what the next section is going to discuss while incorporating the keywords.

• Using GMB. Google My Business (GMB) is among the most powerful tools that you use. It’s a very useful way to help improve your Google ranking, as Google now actively takes GMB into account for your search ranking. It’s very easy to set up and manage, and you can find that you can easily categorize your business to avoid missing out on ranking points. Fill in every field, add images and key details, and you will find that it does a lot for your long-term search engine rankings.

• Develop a fresh perspective. A cheap way to help boost your SEO is to make fresh, unique content. The easiest way to keep it unique is through informative content, stories, opinion pieces and the like. Publish content and publish it regularly. The more often you add new content to the site, the more likely it is to be re-searched by the search engine crawlers. This leads to more impressive responses from the search engine. If you are passionate and interested in the industry you work in (you should be), writing good content shouldn’t be too tough.

• Add references. Another key part to boosting SEO is to back up what you are saying. From using business directories to get you more links back to your own site to using social media, you can easily get a lot of positive traffic coming back to you. Add in some guest posting for popular industry blogs and you can easily boost your link building and make your SEO efforts a long-term success.

Top 6 Web Design Trends for Small Business in 2018

Trends come and go and we are always on the never-ending quest for the coming year’s web design trends.

Continue reading to see some of this year’s hottest web design trends.

1. While grids were once a way to keep harmony and logic to our web layouts, broken grid layouts have now become a way to design more engaging layouts and they also offer more creativity. This isn’t to say we should bag grid layouts entirely, but broken grids allow images and text to drift into and across the page. Text and images don’t align perfectly, but this offers a beautiful page that is eye-catching.

2. Rather than letting text on the page do all the talking, bright and meaningful illustrations can be very powerful in bringing abstract concepts to life. Illustrations, if done right, is the initial hook to the customer, bringing them in to see more and learn more about your company. In addition, using an illustration can release the constraints and perception of who your customer might be. A photo of an actual person represents that one person as a user to your company and leaves all other customers unrepresented and possibly feeling unconnected to your brand.

3. Another trend rising to the surface of 2018 is a floating navigation. For years, navigation has remained fixed at the top of websites causing the user to need to scroll back to the top if they need to access the main site navigation. Now, websites are being designed with the navigation always at your fingertips creating a feeling of security and support to users.

4. Sometimes text just won’t do. It is simply not enough to convey a message or drive a point home. This is where video element is the perfect element for web design. Video remains high quality while other graphics cannot.

5. Variable font comes in as a big game player in the 2018 web design arena. There are hundreds of font options to choose from allowing anyone to use font as a creative and expressive element in designing their website. So what’s the big kicker with variable font you ask? Variable font is one single font file, but allows you to have tens of thousands of variations in that one single font. This is undoubtedly incredible!

6. Another design trend that is making waves in 2018 is gradients. Flat design has typically been a preferred design, but gradients are becoming more and more popular. Gradients add an element to design and images that cannot be found in flat design. It adds an intriguing element that catches viewers’ attention.

When designing your new website or renovating your existing website, make sure to include some of these hot trends which are sure to get customers looking your way!

4 Tips to Boost Your SEO with Social Media Use

As you will have no doubt discovered, social media plays a major role in how we work today.

Through the likes of Nfinity Web Solutions, you can help to make your business more powerful than ever using social media use. It’s for more than just creating an organic reaction to your customers: it’s about improving your chances of positive search engine optimization. If you use social media regularly, you can help to improve both your business performance and your natural SEO ranking.

If you want to learn the best way to do that, you can take a look at these four tips to help boost SEO with social media usage.

      1.   Manage Follower Counts.

One of the best things that you can do is get what we will call meaningful followers. The right followers are the ones with a genuine interest in what you have to say. Your business needs more followers who are interested, and less who follow because they were paid to or simply because you offered them a good time. A high-quality social media following that all interact and engage are much more likely to get you higher ROI than a large five-figure follower count that barely even notice your posts.

      2.   Link Building.

Another powerful part of the social media SEO strategy we want to showcase is using social media for link building. With a good following that cares about what you post, you can have your link(s) to website/blog pages posted all across the web for you. The more times people link to it, the better the ranking becomes and the more likely it is that people will see the link as they look around social media.

      3.   Brand Building.

This not only helps to boost SEO rankings normally, but it helps to make sure that you can attract people with more value. Brand building is very important, and this means using social media to build interest in non-promotional posts. From helping to boost rankings for advice pieces to making it easier for you to make the right kind of impression, brand building is much easier when you use social media. Veer away from the promotional side of things, and you are much more likely to get the many benefits of using social media as a marketing tool.

      4.   Local Engagement.

The more discussions you have with locals on social media, the more likely you are to find yourself soaring for local search terms and the like. This is very important – it can help you to reach out to locals and to help get involved with local causes and community projects. From sharing missing posts for locals to help raise awareness to retweeting a local charity page, you can use social media to engage with your local community, boost SEO and do a good deed all at once.

With the above, then, you should be able to see just why using social media for SEO makes perfect sense. Done right, this can absolutely transform the way your business works.

 

Put Your Business on the Grid with a Great Website

When it comes to running a business today, you need to look at a website.

Many people who don’t use the internet much personally tend to make that a worldwide point of view. They think that since they don’t use it all the time, that others are the same. Besides, building a website is complicated, right? And it costs so much money, correct?

With Nfinity Web Solutions, that’s rarely – if ever – the case. We can help to get you on the map ad spotted by customers locally, nationally and globally. To do that though, there has to be an appreciation and an understanding of the unique challenges involved with running a business.

So, how can go a business website be a catalyst to improving the way in which your business is received and looked at? How can you make sure that people enjoy their user experience instead of fear it and/or be put off by it?

Online Support.

The first ‘must’ for your new website is to make it customer-friendly. The more customer support solutions that you can bring up, the more likely that you are to see a proper change in circumstance. If you want to provide proper online support, then you need to make it easy for you them. Contact answers, live chat support and messaging services are all a must in the modern business website. It might seem small, but the impact that it can have on your business is seismic!

Get Spotted.

One of the best ways to help your business get spotted and become more generally visible is to turn to Google searches. Getting yourself on the map is tough work, but with the likes of Google My Business, we can make sure that you are instantly more visible than beforehand. If you want to get spotted. If you want to help become a greater presence in your local area, this can be vital to making that achievable and possible.

Media Management.

Another great reason for having a website is that it can put you on the map better than ever with greater media control. Show people what your products do, or the end result in using your services will provide. One of the best ways to show people the benefits of using your business is to do so by example – use photos, as they can paint the image a thousand words simply cannot.

Blog Writing.

Another powerful tool that you could use to help make your business thrive online and offline is a good blog. Blog pages will allow you to get the help that you need to start making the most of your businesses message, and ensure that you can pass the right message on at the right time.

If you are serious about making your business a success, then you should look into using all four of the above services. Each one can go a long way to making your business more likely to be a success, so give it a try!

 

Website User Experience: 7 Common Mistakes to Avoid

For any business owner, one of the single most important features that you can have is a powerful, active and engaging website user experience.

A good website user experience is hard to find most of the time, and that’s because most sites repeat the same mistakes. While being inspired by a major competitor isn’t a bad thing, you might find that being too similar to them means taking on the same user experience problems that they suffer from.

So, what are some of the most common mistakes to avoid when developing your new and improved website user experience? What matters?

1.         Going down the desktop route. While it would be insulting to just ignore the power of desktop computing, the age of mobile is upon us. If you keep building your website based on a primarily desktop experience, then you can soon find that numbers dwindle and opportunities become more fallow.
2.         Poor customer service. While you personally might hate those 24/7 live chat modules on most sites, they are a massive win with the customer. Sure, it might be annoying just now, but it’s not something you need to necessarily put up with. Improve customer service, and boost your customer retention.
3.         Excessive content. Content is the King and likely always will be, as the likelihood of making reading extinct is a very distant possibility (thankfully). Still, you should look to use a fine blend of images, videos and text to help make sure that your site is as diverse as possible.
4.         Poorly worded content. Another mistake is trying to mask your main aim as a business in flash wording and nonsense. Try and be bold – it’s actually more likely to help you stand out and be seen as a more active, refreshing choice of business to work with. Clarity is better than vague terms over your ‘vision’ and the like.
5.         Poor opt-in. A massive mistake is not getting the customer involved; not showing them that the true art of success lies within your content. Make them want to get involved is very important. Avoid bombarding them with sign-up requests, but don’t be shy to ask, either.
6.         Long-term errors. Now, you might not be a coding whizz. That means that you might leave that user experience problem that customers are all complaining about due to a lack of knowledge. While you shouldn’t try to fix what you don’t understand, you should hire someone who can fix it.
7.         Constant change. One of the worst mistakes that you can make as a business is change for changes sake. Only change something when the analysis and the figures states that it should be changed; don’t change something for the sake of it or to experiment: work with what works change what is broken.

Using the above ideas, you should soon find it much easier to start making legitimate, lasting progress as a business. While it might prove to a massive challenge, it’s by far and away a challenge that your business can rise to meet!