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Benefits of WordPress for: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Website Development

At iAnalyst we are proud to offer web development, search engine optimization (SEO) & overall internet marketing for WordPress sites, along with marketing for all other platforms & code sets. Though WordPress has become the leading content system management (CMS) and rightfully so. WordPress is the perfect marketing tool to expose your company to a larger audience. Since its creation in 2003, WordPress has become one the most popular blogging websites. WordPress has since expanded to be used as a full content management system (CMS) operated by numerous developers with over 76 million sites. With a variety of features, WordPress has become the best platform used by web developers.

Usability
One of the main reasons why WordPress has become so popular is simply because it is easy to use. Adding images, posting blogs, and formatting text can be done quickly and efficiently with limited HTML software. WordPress can be accessed from any computer as long as it has internet access and a browser. The flexibility of WordPress allows the developer to constantly update information in an organized and timely manner. Since the technology is so simple and easy to learn, it will save you valuable time that can be spent elsewhere.

Personalization
Just because this CMS is simple and user-friendly doesn’t necessarily mean it will give you generic end result; in fact, the platform allows for in-depth customization. WordPress gives the user the opportunity to personalize designs to fit their brand. If you choose to, you can have one theme throughout the entire website, or you can have multiple layouts for different pages. This will give your website a unique look that will keep visitors engaged.

Mobile-Friendly Capability
With the overall spike use of mobile devices over the past few years, it is more important than ever for a website to be mobile friendly. Customers will constantly attempt to access your website through mobile devices, so it is crucial for your website to be mobile friendly; not to mention Google’s updates and penalizations for websites not yet optimized for mobile use. WordPress offers this accommodation by recognizing if a visitor is viewing the webpage from a computer or a mobile device to adjust the way the content is viewed. This provides an advantage over having to create a completely different website exclusively for mobile customers.

Complete Control
Another major advantage in using WordPress is that you will have complete control of your entire webpage. With this, you also have the ability to assign certain capabilities to different users for the website. For example, you can limit certain users to specific titles such as editor, author, contributor, and subscriber, which ensures that you will have the control of everything on your webpage. No one will have the ability to change information that you don’t approve of.

Plugins
A major factor that has made WordPress so popular over the years is the availability of plugins. There are thousands of plugins that have already been created to increase the efficiency of web pages. Plugins allow for greater interactions between the administrator and the users, while making the website easier to manage. Plugins can range from ensuring the security of the webpage to adding a FAQs page to the website. Whatever additional feature you need, there is likely a plugin available for it.

WordPress is the most reliable CSM used to create websites and with good reason. The flexibility of WordPress accounts for a wide range of skills in web developing, so whether you’re an experienced developer or a beginner, WordPress is the perfect CMS to use.

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Choosing Sides: The War between Native App and Web App Development

The conversation about whether a business should invest in a native app or a web app has been going on for a few years. The reality is that both are necessary,  each serving a unique purpose. The question of whether or not to invest in the development of a mobile application, however, is an easy one. Every business imaginable, despite its size or the industry it occupies, has caught on the the reality that a mobile application is the best way to keep an audience engaged with their product.

Acting as visual reminders, mobile applications bolster a business’ overall marketing strategy by providing an easily accessible platform for consistent customer engagement and service deployment. It is undeniable that today’s businesses live and breathe on the customer base sustained by this connection.

These benefits come together to impact even small businesses considerably.

Though the “if” of mobile application development is indisputable, the difficulty of tackling the “what” and “how” is as well. Besides considerations such as budget and return on investment, businesses need to consider the main purpose for the mobile application. While native apps tend to dominate in user time spent on the application, web apps have far greater numbers in relation to unique visitors.

This is due to the features and drawbacks innate to the two types of apps.

Native apps can access the native hardware, features and information of the device on which it’s downloaded. They can be downloaded and installed directly onto the mobile device from an online app store and runs as a standalone. Native apps are readily available on app stores and come prescreened by the marketplaces on which they are sold, ensuring that the apps downloaded are simultaneously safe and of high quality.

Native apps are generally equipped for excellent user experience  with faster performance speeds, offline storage, push notifications, incorporation of gestures and accessibility offline.

Information storage on native apps can help conserve bandwidth by curbing the necessity to constantly refresh, as is often the case on web apps. This can be profitable as the connection of many mobile devices are metered.  On the development end, unlike a web app, developers are provided the SDK, tools and support, which helps with the ease and speed of the app’s development.

Web apps are accessible anywhere there is a web connection making it easy to access from any computer or device. They have a cross-platform common code base and don’t require submissions and approval from app stores. A readily available web app can be modified and given a responsive web design. In contrast, native apps are normally more expensive to develop, especially if you consider supporting multiple mobile devices, as each development platform requires an individual development process. In addition, each native app platform has its own programming language.

Web apps can be monetized through advertising and subscription fees, though a paywell or subscription system needs to be in place to charge users. Updates are automatic, ensuring consistency among users. Though limited, mobile web apps can also access native features and information, such as media and geolocation.

Ultimately, determining how to build your mobile app requires looking at one thing: the needs of your target audience. Does your app need to be Internet-enabled? Does it need to interface with any native device features? How essential is speed and performance? How, if at all, will it be monetized? Does your development team have the resources for development or do you need to hire a developer?

And, of course, the all-important question of budget.

As for who wins the war, even with the keen need for native features in the mobile sphere, when it comes to the question of reach vs rich user experience the answer is: it just depends on your company’s needs.

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Top 5 Internet Marketing Insights for 2017

“Google will buy Twitter for tens of billions of dollars. Twitter won’t change much, but there will be more ads. The ROI for buying advertising in Twitter will go up.” This is a quote by Andy Crestodina who is the co-founder of Orbit Media and is considered a leading industry expert.

2017 seems to be the year of substantial increases of innovation in the Martech and Adtech industry. Understanding these new market trends will help teams as they begin to plan a 2017 budget even though some of the new technologies they will need are still on or just leaving the drawing board. Many industry professionals are interested in seeing how Microsoft will utilize the big data they have to create a stronger ad program within their recent acquisition of Linkedin. The thought of combining a huge social network of over 400 million users with one of the largest search engines in the world is every digital marketer’s wet dream. That goes without saying the endless possibilities that will emerge with combining those resources with Windows, Office, Dynamics, and Cloud. Can you imagine writing a blog post or article on Office 365 and being able to just right click to find an expert quote from Linkedin?

Trend #1: Double down on Automation and Social analytics

I’d like to remind everyone that Social Media is still in its beginning stages even though some of us feel that large companies such as Facebook and Twitter have been around a long time they are still in their infancy stage. Such as the beginning of any relationship, martech and social media are still getting to know each other, but social media advertising is projected to generate $11 billion in revenue by 2017. It is one of the largest opportunities of marketing exploration for the upcoming year, and as I mentioned before some of these social websites still have many ideas on the drawing board that will greatly benefit Internet marketing. A DMA research study showed that 70% of companies are still not collecting data from social media channels, so it is important that budgets are allocated towards social media analytics. Many companies are still unable to create and implement a robust social media automation that actually works. Different platforms and tools are still growing to help with prospecting and delivering content to the right customers in the moment they need engagement. Industry experts agree that a more valuable concrete solution is desperately needed to take advantage of this relatively untouched resource. They hypothesize the best solution is some sort of a collaboration between apps, networks and platforms all integrated with a marketing dashboard for end to end reporting of the impact social analytics has across the customer journey.

Trend #2: Invest more in the video and podcast bandwagon

These avenues are and will continue to become the best ways to engage audiences using visuals, colors, sounds and/or music. This also works in tandem with trend #1 because a great video will help build brand loyalty and trust by enriching a prospective customer’s journey. Convenience and sometimes necessity are enabling more video and podcast use, especially among those with a preference of “watching the movie” or “listening to the audio book” rather than actually “reading the book.” According to the newest edition of the DMA statistical fact book, 4 times as many consumers prefer digestible video content to plain text. Even Nicola Mendelssohn from Facebook says it will “probably’ be “all video” in 5 years. There is also an Edison research study that revealed approximately 46 million Americans listen to podcasts monthly, and the average user listens to six a week. Huge corporations are already taking advantage of this such as GE and Netflix who each have their own podcasts with registered listeners. As for future video content, Yahoo is a pioneer and has begun to allow you to take out full-screen auto-play video ads on their homepage. You may sometimes even see pop up type movie previews before accessing their main site.

Trend #3: Becoming as ‘human’ as possible in a digital world as fans want to know the people behind the brand and feel that they are understood.

It is widely accepted that the Internet knows more about you than the coworker sitting 2 feet away from you, so it is easy to understand the increase in paid searches and pay-per-click type of advertising over the last several years. Unfortunately, this strategy can become expensive if you do not have a flawless keyword strategy, and not to mention that there many flaws ranging from generating irrelevant site visits to making people feel they are being spammed in their web searches. Reaching your target market in a more organic type of way using blogs and user reviews has been the best way to establish legitimacy in your respective industry. Focusing more on the journey of a prospective customer and painting a perspective of helping them to buy rather than just selling them is something to look forward to in 2017. An excellent method of establishing this is through a more interactive mobile app with innovative sales and promotions geared towards making a consumer feel like they are part of an exclusive group. For example, the T-mobile Tuesdays app has an offer every week from free dominos pizza to a free Samsung Galaxy phone. There is also Target’s rewards app which uses advanced beacon technology to put offers directly in the hands of their customers as they walk through the store.

Trend #4: Focus more on the Pragmatic approach to building your brand

Stay consistent and make sure your message is always clear through all channels on what your brand is and what it is not as this vision will be your guide towards sound decision making. The right message at the right time can guarantee success where as bad timing or the wrong message will incur a huge setback or even total failure. Take care of your employees and empower them to carry on the clear and compelling message to all customers and stakeholders. The pragmatic approach will continue to increase faster than content of audience-based advertising. Most of the successful companies in the upcoming year will deliver this seamless, relevant user experience to drive true outcome-based results.

Trend #5: Stay Mobile friendly and start becoming wearable friendly

This is a bit of old news but just in case you haven’t heard, make sure Google thinks your site is mobile friendly. It is surprising that many companies are still dragging their feet on this as well as on increasing their Google ranking, but this should be a top priority for any and all brands. It is also very important that content be coded extremely well for customers to be able to transition smoothly not only from a desktop to mobile, but also from any of those 2 to a wearable device. In 2017, it is projected that 1 out of ever 4 U.S. consumers will be using a wearable device, so be sure to take this into consideration when planning a future budget. This means there will be even more data on every move the specific target market is making, and we must be prepared to produce and distribute content to fit each individual target buyer accordingly.