5 Proven Ways For Driving Traffic to Your Website With Visual Content

Driving traffic to your website has become a major marketing priority.

But with so much competing advice, contributing factors and variable opportunities it's often hard to figure out exactly how to get the best results.

When putting together a traffic-driving strategy you need to get a little creative, because one of the most effective ways to drive website traffic is to leverage visual content.

The Visual Content Era

We are living in the era of visual content. The facts suggest that around 65% of people today are visual learners.

Along with this discovery, we also realize that with visual understanding also comes a big challenge for organizations to present the information in an attractive, fun and engaging way.

Our customers attention spans are getting shorter. So it is very challenging to create content that is visually appealing, catchy and engaging, and especially short and condensed.

We need to integrate all of these factors into our content so our customers have access to all types of media and want to stay on our website for longer. It only takes seconds for viewers to close a tab, or switch to another site or source of information.

With the growing trend toward using visual content, we see more and more images, videos, graphs, maps, diagrams and charts being used in order to present viewers with the latest information in an engaging way.

What would be more effective for your learning; Watching a video tutorial or reading it?

Watch this video and make your own judgement…

 

Let's now have a look at the 5 best visual ways for increasing website traffic.

1. Landing page videos

We are all well aware about the growing popularity of landing page videos. Landing page videos are the best visual method to convey a product/service message in a quick, appealing and engaging way.

Animated explainer videos are regularly used on landing pages as a way of informing web visitors about the product/service details in a fun and engaging way.

(Source: Boston Commercial Services)

A bright explainer video placed above the fold on your landing page is the perfect catch: visits go from that initial 8 seconds up to 2 minutes on average. That's a 1500% boost right there.

When viewers visit a website, they look for a landing page video as they know that it can provide them all the necessary information in a short time span and an appealing way.

Landing page videos work really well in increasing the viewers' visit duration on your website. Adding videos to landing pages can also increase conversions by nearly 90% (Superkrush)

For getting a landing page video that exactly demonstrates your business to customers in a fun and engaging way, you can contact a video animation company that specializes in video making.

2. Infographics

Your customers are well informed. They not only require the latest information, but they also need to discover evidence that proves the credibility of the content. They need research surveys, facts and figures that define the worth of any concerning topic.

With infographics, you get the opportunity to give your users all the information they need, even if the data tends to be boring or doesn't look interesting, in a visually appealing way.

Infographics work really well in making the data look engaging for viewers. They depict the information supported by moving objects and animation that gives the data a more attractive look and entices customers to keep watching or scanning it till the end.

For infographics you need to:

• Research your latest industry information


• Include facts and figure that support the recent studies and developments


• Get the infographic designed by good creative designers


• Publish the infographic on your website


• Provide an embeddable code so others can share your infographic

3. Blog images

Writing up a good blog is no doubt a great task. The more information you put into the blog, the more trustworthy you appear to readers. But you can make it even more interesting…

Blog posts incorporating video attract three times as many inbound links as blog posts without video.

You can:

• Add graphs in the blog to demonstrate results


• Add charts to visually show people the importance of the topic being discussed


• Add infographics to the blog. This will do two things at one time. Enable you to offer users a lot of information, but in a visual way that will not bore them.


• Add videos within the blog to make it easier for the audience to understand things


• Include eye-catching and unique blog images

If you want to create an eye-catching and unique blog image;

• Do enough blog content research


• Write an in-depth blog post


• Integrate your blog concept in one single image by imagining the blog concept in your mind


• Get the best designers to design the blog image for you (Or use a tool like Canva)


• Make sure the blog image communicates the blog concept

Just like this:

4. Calls to action

Call to action buttons are extremely important for guiding web visitors toward the next desired step.

With the proper and effective delivery of the content supported by visual means, you can get prospects, leads and even customers!

Your call to action buttons should include:

• Engaging call to action copy


• Red or green colors. A lot research has been done on this. The research suggests that red and green colors should be used mostly for call to action buttons as red indicates a sense of urgency and green indicates something good is coming your way.

Here are some example of call to action buttons:

Here's a live example of an effective call to action button from Hootsuite:

The call-to-action in this case is the “See business plans” which is visible on the website landing page. The ideal button placement should be below the header in order to make sure that it grabs the users' attention.

Also, the title used for your call-to-action should be catchy and engaging enough to encourage visitors to click on it.

5. Client testimonials

Client testimonials enable us to build trust and enhance our credibility with prospects and leads, thus helping turn them into customers!

You can present client testimonials in two ways:

• Either you can show the client testimonial in video form


• Or you can show the client's statement about your services along with their picture.

Under the client's picture, make sure to mention the client's designation and company. People are interested in WHO is saying WHAT!

Wrap

Today, there are many smart strategies you can adopt to drive website traffic. Among these strategies, includes the visual presentation of web content that can hook customers to your website and increase their stay.

Visual content is very powerful. It enables us to provide customers with all the latest information in an attractive and engaging way. It helps us grab our customers' attention.

Guest Author: Mehroz Khan is an Entrepreneur and Co-founder at Videoexplainers-Video production company. He is a blogger, strategist, social media marketing specialist and growth strategist. His expertise includes marketing and video production. Follow Merhoz on Twitter @mehrozanwer, LinkedIn Mehroz Khan or contact him over email mehroz@videoexplainers.com.

The post 5 Proven Ways For Driving Traffic to Your Website With Visual Content appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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Averages are Still Relevant with PPC Ads

There have been a rash of tweets and blog posts recently talking about the problems with using averages in PPC marketing. For example, this one where Julie Bacchini argues that “averages are a sucky metric”:

While it's true that sometimes averages can be very misleading, the problem with the above data set is the huge population variance and standard deviation in the sample.

In this post I want to talk about the math involved here and make a case for the value of averages, as well as respond to some of the criticism of reporting on averages that I've seen in the PPC community lately.

Variance, Standard Deviation and Coefficient of Variance

Sample variance is a measure of dispersion - by how much the values in the data set are likely to differ from the average value of your data set. It's calculated by taking the average of the squares of the differences for each data point from the average. Squaring the differences ensures that negative and positive deviations do not cancel each other out.

So for client 1, just calculate the difference between 0.5 percent and the average change of 3.6 percent, then square that number. Do this for every client, then take the average of the variances: that's your sample variance.

Sample Standard Deviation is simply the square root of the variance.

In simple terms, on average, the values in this data set typically fall 5.029 percent away from the overall average of 3.6 percent (i.e. the numbers are very dispersed), which means you can't conclude much from this distribution.

A simplified way to estimate if your standard deviations are “too high” (assuming you're looking for a normal distribution) is to calculate a coefficient of variance (or relative standard deviation) which is simply the standard deviation divided by the average.

What does this mean and why should we care? It's about the value of reporting on averages. When WordStream does a study using client data, we don't just compute averages from small data sets and make big conclusions - we care about the distribution of the data. If numbers are all over the place, we throw them out and try to segment the sample a different way (by industry, spend, etc.) to find a more meaningful pattern from which we can more confidently draw conclusions.

Even Meaningful Averages by Definition Include Values Above and Below the Average

Another line of criticism from the anti-average camp is the notion that an average doesn't speak for the entire population. This is of course true, by definition.

Yes, averages contain data points that fall above and below the average value. But this isn't a great argument for throwing out averages altogether.

Assuming a normal distribution, you would expect approximately 68 percent of your data points to fall +/- 1 standard deviation from your average, 95 percent within +/- 2 standard deviations, and 99.7 percent within +/- 3 standard deviations, as illustrated here.

As you can see, outliers certainly exist, though if you have a tight standard distribution in your dataset, they're not as common as you might think. So if you're careful about the math, averages can still be very useful information for the vast majority of advertisers.

In PPC Marketing, Math Wins

Let's not throw averages out with the bathwater. After all, pretty much all of the performance metrics in AdWords like (CTR, CPC, Average Position, Conversion Rates, etc.) are reported as average values.

Instead of ignoring averages, let's use the power of math to figure out if the average you're looking at is meaningful or not.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Average Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Averages are Still Relevant with PPC Ads" was first published on Small Business Trends

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Averages are Still Relevant with PPC Ads

There have been a rash of tweets and blog posts recently talking about the problems with using averages in PPC marketing. For example, this one where Julie Bacchini argues that “averages are a sucky metric”:

While it's true that sometimes averages can be very misleading, the problem with the above data set is the huge population variance and standard deviation in the sample.

In this post I want to talk about the math involved here and make a case for the value of averages, as well as respond to some of the criticism of reporting on averages that I've seen in the PPC community lately.

Variance, Standard Deviation and Coefficient of Variance

Sample variance is a measure of dispersion - by how much the values in the data set are likely to differ from the average value of your data set. It's calculated by taking the average of the squares of the differences for each data point from the average. Squaring the differences ensures that negative and positive deviations do not cancel each other out.

So for client 1, just calculate the difference between 0.5 percent and the average change of 3.6 percent, then square that number. Do this for every client, then take the average of the variances: that's your sample variance.

Sample Standard Deviation is simply the square root of the variance.

In simple terms, on average, the values in this data set typically fall 5.029 percent away from the overall average of 3.6 percent (i.e. the numbers are very dispersed), which means you can't conclude much from this distribution.

A simplified way to estimate if your standard deviations are “too high” (assuming you're looking for a normal distribution) is to calculate a coefficient of variance (or relative standard deviation) which is simply the standard deviation divided by the average.

What does this mean and why should we care? It's about the value of reporting on averages. When WordStream does a study using client data, we don't just compute averages from small data sets and make big conclusions - we care about the distribution of the data. If numbers are all over the place, we throw them out and try to segment the sample a different way (by industry, spend, etc.) to find a more meaningful pattern from which we can more confidently draw conclusions.

Even Meaningful Averages by Definition Include Values Above and Below the Average

Another line of criticism from the anti-average camp is the notion that an average doesn't speak for the entire population. This is of course true, by definition.

Yes, averages contain data points that fall above and below the average value. But this isn't a great argument for throwing out averages altogether.

Assuming a normal distribution, you would expect approximately 68 percent of your data points to fall +/- 1 standard deviation from your average, 95 percent within +/- 2 standard deviations, and 99.7 percent within +/- 3 standard deviations, as illustrated here.

As you can see, outliers certainly exist, though if you have a tight standard distribution in your dataset, they're not as common as you might think. So if you're careful about the math, averages can still be very useful information for the vast majority of advertisers.

In PPC Marketing, Math Wins

Let's not throw averages out with the bathwater. After all, pretty much all of the performance metrics in AdWords like (CTR, CPC, Average Position, Conversion Rates, etc.) are reported as average values.

Instead of ignoring averages, let's use the power of math to figure out if the average you're looking at is meaningful or not.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Average Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Averages are Still Relevant with PPC Ads" was first published on Small Business Trends

Blog Comments Revisited: Why Major Bloggers Are Turning Comments Back On

Do you have comments enabled on your blog? Have you ever turned them off? To discover why big bloggers turned their comment systems back on, I interview Michael Hyatt and Brian Clark. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help [...]

This post Blog Comments Revisited: Why Major Bloggers Are Turning Comments Back On first appeared on .

- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle