The Essential Elements of Mobile Website Design

| May 9, 2013 | No comments

mobile-web-design

Today, it seems as if just about everyone has a smartphone. Not only do a large number of people have a smartphone, many of them use it to access the Internet on a regular basis. What does this mean for your business? It means your website has to be optimized to meet the needs of those users who may visit from a mobile device. The elements of mobile website design are often different from your typical web design.

Your Content

Some companies think they need to cut back on the amount of content they use on a mobile website to make it less cluttered and easier to use. This isn’t necessarily true. You could be removing content your visitors want to see. Instead of getting rid of the content, you need to streamline that content so it works better with the mobile platform and allows your visitors to see the content they desire on the platform of their choice.

Easy Navigation

Easy navigation is an important element for any website, but it is even more critical for mobile website design. The screens on mobile devices are often smaller and users will be using their fingers instead of a mouse to navigate through your site. Keep this in mind when you are implementing the navigation features into your site.

The Layout

The layout of your mobile site will often be quite different from the layout of your desktop site. Your desktop site is often spread out without the need for scrolling. The mobile site, however, typically requires a single-column layout that doesn’t require your users to zoom in or scroll to see everything on your site. This can sometimes create issues with your current content, but if you get the right help, you can overcome these issues.

Mobile Features

Mobile devices are designed with specific features in mind. For instance, many of today’s mobile devices are equipped with GPS. This means you can build a location feature into your mobile design that tailors your website to the location of the Internet user. Another great option for your mobile website design is highlighting the phone number so users can call you with the touch of a finger instead of having to type in the entire phone number.

Mobile website design is a requirement if you will be launching your website on mobile devices. Because so many people are using these mobile devices to access the Internet, it is essential to the success of your business to offer this option to users. With the right help, you can build a quality mobile site that will attract visitors and give them the information they require.

Contact us for help building your mobile website to provide the most effective customer experience.

Category: Articles, Mobile Marketing & Web

Mobile Email Marketing: Closing the gap between mobile devices and email campaigns

| May 8, 2013 | No comments

mobile-email-marketing

An interesting disconnect in mobile email marketing was identified in Marketing Land recently: Although there is a quickly increasing trend in the number of commercial emails being opened on mobile devices (set to surpass the number opened on PCs by the end of 2013), less than half (42%) of surveyed companies actually design their commercial emails for display on a mobile device.

Knotice, a digital marketing agency, released its bi-annual report in February, revealing that of 500 million commercial emails sent across 11 different verticals, 41% were opened on mobile devices (including smartphones and tablets). This was expected to reach over half of all commercial emails within 3-6 months.

Marketing Sherpa, in its 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, found that fewer than half of surveyed marketers designed their emails for mobile devices. Furthermore, only 21% integrated their mobile channels with their email campaigns.

Marketing Land described this as a disconnect. We think it’s a missed opportunity.

Consider another finding of the Knotice research: Only .07% of the emails opened on a mobile device were later reopened on a different device (e.g.,  PC). If the recipient did not act on the offer at the time they opened it on their mobile device, they were highly unlikely to revisit it later in order to seal the deal.

To respond effectively to the growing mobilization of our society, it is imperative that we integrate our mobile and email campaigns and to design commercial email messages specifically with the parameters of a mobile device in mind. An offer that arrives incompatible with the technology on which it is received, fails to deliver. We miss an opportunity. As use of mobile devices surpass our stationary PCs, we will continue to lose more and more opportunities to reach our consumers.

PinPoint Local wants to help you design an effective mobile email marketing campaign. Contact us today, and we’ll get started!

Resources:
Marketing Land

 

Category: Articles, Mobile Marketing & Web

Three Solid Tips for Local SEO

| April 26, 2013 | No comments

local-seo

 

Local SEO is just as important for small business owners as big SEO is for the big guys. Local SEO ensures your business gets seen when people are looking for services in your area. As a result, business gets boosted, and you get more visibility. No one can argue that this is a good thing, so here are a few tips when you’re considering optimizing your local SEO.

1. Think about what type of competition you have in the area. Look at your competitors’ websites and blogs, even, before you start optimizing. Look at the types of keywords they’re using and try to find similar ones to use yourself. The key to good local SEO is to find keywords that are searched for often, but not used a lot. An easy way to do this is to find keywords your competitors are using, then find similar ones with a high search volume. Google trends can be a godsend here, because it’ll allow you to see which local SEO words are trending.

2. Repeat your keyword often, but not too often. Google’s algorithms are complex, and with this, repeating your keyword too often can actually hurt your search ranking. The term used for this is ‘keyword density’ and it represents how many times your SEO term shows up compared to the total number of words in whatever content you are providing. there is no magic number that gets hits, but 5% is a good number to shoot for. For local SEO, your keyword density should never exceed 10% of the total words in your content.

3. Don’t try to game the system. Google’s search algorithms are robust and smart, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are smarter. There are plenty of tips that will give you a temporary SEO boost, but not all of them are good tips. For example, repeating your keyword over and over, adding irrelevant meta tags, and adding keywords in text that is the same color as your background will all temporarily drive up your search rating. These techniques will also get you banned from Google’s search algorithm entirely, because they are considered spamming. So play clean.

If you need more local SEO help, be sure to contact us. Here at PinPoint Local, we represent the best of local SEO. We’ll be happy to get your local business the best search rating possible.

Category: Articles, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tags: , , ,

@PinPointLocal Giving Back

| November 29, 2012 | No comments

giving-back

We are very proud to announce our support of The Ronald McDonald House Charities of Denver. The Ronald McDonald House does phenomenal work and touches the lives of so many families in need. Families come to the Ronald McDonald House when a child or family member is in need of medical attention but has no soft place to land while seeking treatment. We understand the importance of keeping families together during a time of crisis and especially during the holiday season.

This is why we were particularly proud to announce our participation in the Location3 and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Denver’s Light the House KOSI 101.1 Radiothon on Nov. 13 sponsored by Eggland’s Best, Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children at P/SL and Duro Electric. We proudly donated to this worthy cause in the hopes that it will provide some much needed comfort to families during the holidays.

Category: Announcements, PinPoint Local Alerts

Social Media Engagement: Right vs. Wrong

| September 21, 2012 | No comments
social-media

Social media engagement done right can be tricky, but Walmart’s recent Facebook failure has reminded us of some of the major pitfalls of a large organization. For some larger organizations the issue is finding an individual store’s niche within the local community. Yet for some big companies, it’s finding how to balance a corporate mentality with no localbility in their stores to social media.

 

The purpose of any business outreach is to drive consumer action, but steps like engagement, awareness and reputation take place before any action is even thought about in the mind of a consumer. Social media by definition generates awareness and sustains engagement - probably the most important aspects of a organization’s reputation. However, generating engagement with your consumers has to be earned. Your company has to have the appropriate look and presence, so that users will want to communicate and feel like their efforts to connect matter. If these things are missing, consumers will not feel it worth their while to engage, thus you’re business’s reputation will diminish or remain stagnant.

 

This is where Walmart failed, they made their local Facebook pages look too generic and stiff. Naturally, users felt it not worth their while to engage. As a result all action-based efforts the store was trying to drive probably failed. What Walmart failed to realize was that this type of engagement probably should have never been in their social media strategy to begin with.

 

Users who desire to connect with local businesses on social media do it because they feel they and the company are stakeholders in the community. This could mean a store hosting exclusive local sales or sponsoring a local baseball team they watch. But big companies that have identical stores and don’t perform community outreach in the first place, shouldn’t try to reach out locally on social media. Marketers need to evaluate what social media strategy best fits the company and engage users on social media accordingly.

 

Ultimately, we can not stress enough how important it is to engage with your online audience. It’s also vital to make them feel connected and special to your organization, whether that’s using localbility or corporate initiatives, if you want to drive them to action.
We have the tools and knowledge to make your organization’s social media experience successful and drive consumer action! Contact us to discuss our service or strategies! We’d love to hear from you!
Category: Announcements, Articles, Need To Know, Social Media Solutions

Be Careful Who You Trust!

| September 14, 2012 | No comments

Our firm had personal run-ins around March with fraudulent companies approaching us and our clients.

As a result we wrote a blog post explaining how to determine the legitimacy of these firms. We also recorded the call from one of these firms to increase awareness of these disturbing organizations.

If you would like to see our informational post to learn about this, check it out and for the recording follow this link.

Category: Articles, Need To Know

@Help! How should I handle twitter complaints?

| September 12, 2012 | 7 comments

Twitter proves to be a very strong social platform for you to advertise your business and brand. Nearly 50% of Twitter users follow brands (Source: Marketing Pilgrim). This proves to be a great advantage for your company because tweets are short and sweet and only 140 characters. Additionally, tools like hashtags (#) and replies (@) give your followers an easy way to connect to you.

Easy connections mean a lot of great things for your business. Your customers will feel like they can reach you easily and they can leave you feedback quickly without much personal interaction. Of course, this also means they can leave you negative feedback just as easily as they can leave you positive feedback. So what should you do? How do you handle all these tweets? Read this explanation from Twitter:

First and foremost, you need to be actively managing your twitter feed, and we don’t just mean sending out tweets on a regular basis. You should be monitoring WHO is following you, and keeping a close eye on any replies and hashtags that involve your business. Twitter provides simple tools for you to use, such as getting email notifications of mentions (@), and there are a number of other programs that can help you manage all of this information all in one place.

Hopefully, this information has helped you to understand the twitterverse a little better!

Check out our Twitter: http://twitter.com/pinpointlocal or @PinPointLocal

Category: Need To Know, Social Media Solutions, Uncategorized | Tags: , ,

Huge Local Business Opportunity

| September 7, 2012 | One comment
Bet you didn’t know 80% of customers abandon a mobile site if they have a bad user experience?

Even more staggering is the fact that one half of all local searches occur on mobile devices.

So local business owners, is your mobile online presense good enough to corral and maintain your consumers? Do you have the knowledge to make your mobile online presence visible and alluring?

Don’t fear, because we have the digital solutions for all those questions. PinPoint Local is offering a revolutionary business opportunity in a customized package that gives you the tools to not only be successful, but to be your own digital marketing team.

In this package we provide you with a local city directory thats applicable to your area, a city mobile app, mobile website and a social media presence. The app includes up-to-the-minute information on all local events, business locations, coupons and more. We also provide you with a comprehensive dashboard that allows you to control all these platforms from one easy-to-use access point.

But you may be asking why use PinPoint Local?

That’s easy, we have the experience and knowledge to give you the real deal — to get what you actually paid for. What a revolutionary idea! Instead of giving you a mobile website posing as an app, like most firms do, we actually give you an app customized to Apple, Andriod and HTML5 platforms.

Best of all, we provide you with the hands-on training and full service support that you need to conduct your business’ activities and these platforms on your own. This means that you would be your own boss, you would get paid directly from clients (no third party firm) and you would keep 100% of what you sell in advertising.

Want in? Go to http://www.pinpointlocal.biz/ or @PinPointBiz for more information.
Category: Announcements, Need To Know, PinPoint Local Alerts

#AnimalOfTheMonth: An Early Start for May: #SaveTheSeahorse

| April 27, 2012 | One comment

We are so passionate about our #AnimalOfTheMonth Project, that we just couldn’t WAIT until next week to pick out and adopt our next animal…The Seahorse! How could we resist this little adorable sea creature? So let today mark the official day we are announcing that we will #SaveTheSeahorse in the month of May.

Seahorses live in shallow tropical and temperate waters, anchoring themselves to sea grasses and coral. Their diet consists of bottom dwelling organisms, including shrimp-like crustaceans and plankton. They face threats from bycatch, incidental capture and habitat degradation. Unlike most other fish, they are monogamous and mate for life. Rarer still, they are among the only animal species on Earth in which the male bears the unborn young.

Additional Resources:

Learn about ou #AnimalOfTheMonth Initiative: http://blog.pinpointlocal.com/?cat=30

World Wildlife Fund: http://www.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/gifts/Species-Adoptions/Panda.aspx

 

Category: #AnimalOfTheMonth, #SaveTheSeahorse

#SaveThePenguins: Our Penguin Has Arrived!!

| April 25, 2012 | One comment

We were delighted that today, which just happens to be World Penguin Day, our adorable little fluffy penguin showed up in the mail!

We are thrilled to have our latest #AnimalOfTheMonth here…and we are all getting excited to adopt another species next month!

Learn more about our #AnimalOfTheMonth #SaveThePenguins and #SaveThePanda initiatives here on our blog!

Additional Information:

PinPoint Local’s #SaveThePanda Initiative (what started it all) http://blog.pinpointlocal.com/?cat=18

World Wildlife Fund: http://www.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/gifts/Species-Adoptions/Panda.aspx

Category: #AnimalOfTheMonth, #SaveThePenguins, Announcements | Tags: , , , , , , ,
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