Category Archives: Design

Exclusive web design leads are valuable for marketing agencies and freelance designers. Unfortunately, with so much competition, leads are harder to secure in 2022. Some agencies even resort to buying shared leads, reducing conversion rates, and limiting repeat customers.

The good news is that there are still effective ways to generate exclusive web design leads in 2022. You just need to know how to approach the lead generation process. Below, Nolen Walker Academy outlines five fantastic ways to bring in exclusive web design customers in 2022.

1) Make Contact Conveinenent

So many digital marketing agencies lose out on leads because of user inconvenience. When users find your website, it should be easy to submit a contact form. Your forms should appear prominently on the homepage and in the footer of other conversion pages. 

Not everyone wants to talk on the phone immediately, so provide different ways to contact your business. It’s even more essential to ensure easy contact via mobile device. Contact forms must be responsive to any smartphone or tablet so users can quickly contact your company.

2) Stay in Touch With Email

Every dollar you put into your email marketing campaign can return $42. It’s true! Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any lead-generation strategy, no matter the industry. For web design agencies, email marketing is a must. 

But you must be careful with your strategy because you never want to be too spammy. So first, you must generate a good list of prospects based on past company interactions, impressions, and interests. Once you have a good list, try the following tips:

• Be Personal: Studies show that people are more likely to open your email if it has a personalized subject line. You can personalize it by including their name or mentioning a service the recipient has expressed interest in. 
• Use An Emoji: The average email user gets dozens of emails daily, so it can be tough to make yours stand out. A simple emoji can make it look like you put more thought and effort into your message than you probably did. 
• Use Blog Content: You don’t always want to be too sales-y with your emails. Every once in a while, including an exciting snippet from one of your blogs entices the recipient. 
• Don’t Send Too Often: A couple of weekly emails for web design agencies is probably enough. Remember that you don’t want to be too spammy. If you are, you risk your leads hitting the dreaded” Unsubscribe” button.

3) Delegate Lead Generation Tasks

Small web design agencies probably don’t have the workforce to spare on lead generation. But that might not be the case for you. So when possible, it’s always a good idea to appoint the lead generation task to one person or a small group. 

That way, you’re freed up to tend to more critical business matters. Be sure to check in with your lead-generation appointee(s) often and discuss their strategy to generate exclusive web design leads. Delegation is easy when you build an experienced SEO team for your agency.

4) Leverage Reputation & Reviews

Your agency should have a Google Business Profile at the bare minimum. But it would be best to use favorable reviews as a promotional tool. So, respond to as many reviews as possible, whether good or bad. 

You should also utilize reputation management software to display your reviews on your website. One great tool for reputation management is DataPins, which also helps boost your local SEO through schema markup.

5) Go All-in on Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the best way to produce exclusive web design leads. If you can rank for keywords like web design in miami, or web design seattle, you will pick up consistent leads. Web designers in smaller towns can more easily rank for these location keywords though fewer people will click.

Check out some of the basic tenants of SEO for web design agencies:

• Keyword Research: Keywords are still essential in getting your website in front of people interested in your business. Research your target keywords and implement them throughout your site. 
• Link Building: Links are an essential ranking factor, so make sure you have internal links on every page and reach out to colleagues, local business directories, and even HARO to get more backlinks.
• Blogging: Create informational blog posts that target high-volume national keywords. These posts bring in traffic from all over the nation and naturally earn backlinks from authority sites.

Why Are Exclusive Web Design Leads Important?

Exclusive leads are important because they convert at a much higher rate than shared leads. You will be the only person reaching out to the consumer with exclusive leads. Exclusive leads are much more valuable as they save you time, allow you to charge a standard or premium price for your service, and they are much more likely to result in a sale. 

Learn How to Start a Web Design Agency

If you have web design skillsets but lack the knowledge to start your own agency, enroll in Nolen Walker Academy. NWAcademy helps students create their own digital marketing agency in 2022, including extensive courses on lead generation, sales, and branding your agency.

As a veterinarian, your job is to help animals. But how can you help any animals if their owners can’t find you? If you seem to have few patients walk through your doors, the problem may be with your website. A lot of veterinarians overlook the importance of an attractive and functional website. But in the digital age, your online presence can make or break your business. That’s because an astounding 97% of consumers use the internet to research local businesses and services – this includes veterinary offices. 

It may seem counterintuitive but in order to help as many animals as you can, you need to focus on digital marketing – namely, your website design. Your website should be inviting, easy to navigate, and have all the information your patients (and potential patients) may need to make their animals well and keep them healthy. 

In the following guide, we will be going over the most important design elements that veterinary websites absolutely need to utilize.

1) Pet Insurance

A growing number of Americans are investing in pet insurance. With nearly 70 billion dollars being spent on pet medical bills in the United States annually, pet owners and employers are wising up. More and more companies are offering pet insurance to employees as part of their benefits packages. So what does this have to do with your website? When a pet owner visits your site, they should be able to find out whether you accept their pet insurance. Be sure to have a page or section of your website that lists all the pet insurance plans you accept.

2) Practice Photos

We all love our pets. And as pet owners, we need to feel comfortable with the veterinarians we bring our furry friends to because they can’t speak or choose for themselves. Some high-quality photos of yourself with some animals you have treated, happy patients, and your smiling staff will go a long way in instilling trust in potential patients.

3) Exceptional User Experience

While this design element isn’t exclusive to veterinary websites, it is still very important. The fact is that every website, including yours, needs to be responsive. It has to load fast, be easily navigable, and be accessible across all platforms. Invest in a UX designer to help you with your site. Things like first contentful paint, mobile device access (being able to easily navigate your website from a smartphone or tablet), and flat architectural site design are some points of emphasis you should discuss with your UX designer.

4) Essential Pages

There are a few pages that every veterinarian should have on their website: an about page, a contact page, and a services page. The about page should be written to convey what it is that makes you stand out among other vets in the areas. This is a good opportunity to list your credentials, certifications, education, and areas of expertise and to tell patients about your bond with animals. The contact page should have all the necessary info like office hours, email address, phone number, physical address, and any other contact information. The contact page should have links that enable a visitor to send an email or make a phone call with a single click (if they are on a mobile device). You may also want to install a message reception system where people can simply type in a message right on your website without having to send an email. And your services page should provide a clear list of all the medical services you provide (check-ups, x-rays, vaccination shots, emergency care, etc.).

5) A Blog

One interesting phenomenon that is occurring among pet owners is that more and more, they are turning to the internet for help concerning their pets. In a recent study, it was revealed that 70% of participants (pet owners) have used the internet to research information about pet health. In fact, many pet owners take to the internet first before they consult vets, general practitioners, or even friends and family. So in order to capitalize on this trend, you may want to start a blog that focuses on pet health topics. This will draw a ton of traffic to your site form concerned pet owners seeking your specialized knowledge.

6) Local SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a method of getting your website noticed and ranked on internet searches. But as a veterinarian, you are probably focusing on your local market. So your website should emphasize local SEO. Localized keywords (a good example would be something like “veterinarians near me”) are a good place to start. But schema markup, geo-location functions, and review management are also helpful local SEO tools that will bolster your click-through traffic. 

7) Patient Reviews

While your business should be claimed on all relevant third-party review websites like Yelp and Google My Business, you should incorporate patient testimonials on your own website as well. Patient testimonials go a long way toward instilling trust in the minds of potential patients. In fact, 84% of people surveyed in a poll run by Inc reported that they trust online reviews as much as referrals from their friends and family. Having a healthy amount of reviews readily available for visitors to read on your website will not only make your website look more attractive but draw in new patients as well.

Digital Marketing for Veterinarians

So what makes us qualified to talk about the most appealing design elements of veterinary websites? Here at Nolan Walker, we specialize in digital marketing for veterinarians. The veterinary industry is one we have a lot of experience with. We have helped hundreds of veterinarians all around the country implement effective digital marketing strategies and expand their practice – and we can surely do the same for you. We know what goes into effective marketing for veterinary practices so put our team to work for you right now!

Google has been in a ceaseless war with shoddy UX for over a decade now. User experience means pretty much everything to Google, and they have the resources to throw at it. And since Google’s job is to organize and display what the internet has to offer, their crosshairs may be pointed at your site. In the past, we have talked a lot about the different factors that affect Search Engine Optimization and Google ranking. So today we want to continue that discussion by explaining something called first contentful paint. And in explaining first contentful paint, it would help to familiarize and refresh our memory as to what user experience is.

First Contentful Paint and User Experience

First contentful paint is an important aspect of user experience. First contentful paint has to do with the loading speed of your website. When someone types your URL into their address bar or clicks on your link from a search engine or other source, the first contentful paint is the first element of your website that begins to render on their monitor. Usually, first contentful paint is your website’s header or top navigational menu. 

This is the first thing that people see when loading your website and it lets them know that the content that they came in search for is on the way and will render soon. You may be starting to see what first contentful paint and user experience have to do with one another. When your site loads fast – when the first contentful paint shows up quickly and in turn, renders first meaningful paint quickly – Google considers that part of good user experience. When people have to wait multiple seconds for your website to start showing signs of life, Google considers that you guessed it, part of bad user experience. 

The New Era of Google Ranking

We are living in a significant era as far as digital marketing and SEO are concerned. On Thursday, May 28, 2020, Google announced that they would be using a set of metrics called “Core Web Vitals” to incorporate into their ranking algorithm. Core Web Vitals are criteria that judge websites based on user experience. This includes “load time, interactivity, and the stability of content” as Google puts it. And while these changes are not set to roll out until 2021, smart marketers will begin to adapt right now so that they are ready to rank when Google officially makes this change.

Introducing upcoming ranking signals for Google Search based on various aspects of page experience–combining Core Web Vitals and previous UX-related signals.

Read our pre-announcementhttps://t.co/L3IrB2dOnM

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) May 28, 2020

In essence, though, Google will now be looking at SEO and the overall user experience when ranking websites. That means that first contentful paint is going to be a huge decider on how high your website gets placed on Search Engine Results Pages. 

This represents a shift toward more “human-centric” metrics that Google is using to rank websites. You can probably see how this is going to have an effect on the current standards or Search Engine Optimization.

What FCP this Means for SEO

Before you throw out all your SEO textbooks, understand that current SEO practices are still very much valid. As Common Places Interactive lays out in their article, SEO is still going to be the first signifier to the Google bots. In other words, just because Google is getting more UX and human-oriented, doesn’t mean that they are going to start using humans to comb through the millions of search engine hits it pulls up on a single query.

In short, this means that computers are still going to be used to index your website, and what do these computers use to index? That’s right, SEO signals. In 2021 the process of Google rankings is going to go something like this:

• A search is made using keywords
• The Google algorithm will scour the internet in search of those keywords and relevant data
• Google will then comb the sites based on Core Web Vitals and other metrics
• Google will display results based on the relevancy of SEO and Core Web Vitals

So as you can see, SEO is still very much part of the game. As things stand now, it looks like SEO will still be the initial signifier for the Google algorithm. The results that are indexed in this initial search will then be further scrutinized using Core Web Vitals.

Going Forward With FCP

While this may sound like a bit of frustrating news to a lot of webmasters out there, it should nonetheless come as no surprise. Google’s job since its inception has essentially been to improve the way their system provides relevant content to its users. One just needs to take a look at Google’s update timeline to see how much effort the company has put into improving its search engine. It’s obvious to see that Google is an ever-changing machine. So not only should this latest update come as no surprise to you; you should also expect more changes very soon. 

But don’t stress out. There are some very helpful tools out there that you can use for free to improve the speed of your first contentful paint. Google itself launched Lighthouse in 2008 which lets developers test their website loading speed and see how it loads as visitors experience it. Lighthouse will essentially audit your page based on SEO and UX and let you know where and how you can improve.

Adapting to SEO’s Evolution

If you haven’t figured it out by now, it really pays to be adaptive when it comes to digital marketing. The value that Google has placed on first contentful paint and UX, in general, is just another shift that the company has made to keep developers honest and to keep their own users happy. It was preceded by past changes and it will be succeeded by future ones. 

Here at Nolen Walker, our job is to help you be adaptive in the ever-changing digital market. With our tools and guidance, you can stay on top of the latest changes in search engine algorithms.