These days, savvy business owners and online marketers know that having a new website isn’t enough; you also need a plan to attract traffic and turn visitors into buyers. That’s because the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are more crowded with competitors than ever. You can’t simply rely on the hope that potential buyers will find your website and like it.

That’s where your online marketing plan comes in. To make you successful, yours should be more than just a list of ideas and incorporate everything you need to hit the ground running quickly.

What matters most, however, isn’t the specific actions, but the structure of your online marketing plan itself. As you put yours together – or get the help of an experienced Internet marketing team – consider the five most important elements:

1. That it’s tailored to your company. No two businesses are the same, and so no two online marketing plans should be, either. It’s important that yours takes advantage of your competitive strengths, rather than copying ideas from someone else’s.

2. That it’s expandable. Not enough business owners and online marketers plan for success. Make sure that the process you have for bringing new customers in can be scaled up if you find that it’s more successful than you had envisioned, or pulled back if you need to make some changes.

3. That you are able to track your return on investment. Are you doing well or poorly with your current online marketing plan? Regardless of your answer, do you have the numbers to back it up? Finding the path from visitors to your website to an improvement in your bottom line is the first step towards making smarter online marketing investments going forward.

4. That there are clear responsibilities. Whether your online marketing plan is enormous and comprehensive, or comes down to a couple of key activities, you should know which member of your staff or web design team is responsible for making it happen and following through. When no one is sure what part of an online marketing plan they are tasked with, things generally don’t get done.

5. That it’s flexible. Everything changes, especially on the Internet where the changes come frequently and at light speed. With that in mind, it’s important that your online marketing plan be flexible enough that you can shift strategies and tactics when you need to. It’s always a good idea to keep going with something that’s working, but you don’t want to be afraid to try new ideas and see what’s profitable, either.

Do you have a mobile version of your business website already? If you don’t, you certainly aren’t alone. For a lot of business owners – and especially those who don’t use their own smart phones regularly – mobile websites can seem like just the latest in a long set of trends.

But, if you look a little bit deeper, you’ll see that now is the perfect time to get involved.

With more than 100 million people in North America regularly accessing the Internet via iPhones, Droids, and other web-ready devices, mobile computing is too big to ignore. That’s especially true if you have an e-commerce site, or one that caters to customers who like to make quick decisions on the go.

The numbers are strong enough to make most companies consider adding a mobile version of their business website regardless of what else they’re doing with their online marketing campaigns. But, if you’re in the process of redesigning your existing website, then it’s a great idea to make a mobile version at the same time.

Here are three ways to integrate your mobile business web design into your overall online marketing strategy:

Brand your regular site and your mobile site together. They should share a common look and navigation structure, so that a visitor to one is immediately at home on the other. While they might not be exactly the same, especially from a web programming and coding standpoint, they should look very consistent with one another.

Emphasize usability. Data plan restrictions, download times, and the desire to find what they want quickly all lead customers to prefer sites with an emphasis on usability over huge amounts of content. Although it’s good advice for any business website, it’s especially critical on mobile sites to be efficient and get to the point quickly.

Tie in social media links on your mobile business website. No two web trends are more intertwined than the rise of social media and the prominence of mobile computing. The two just go hand in hand. Encourage your customers with social media links to follow you online, and you’ll be more effective as a marketer… not to mention get more out of your mobile business website.

What’s the first thing you notice about a business web design team when you look into their services? If you thought of anything other than their samples, then you are either unusual, or have been through the design and re-design process at least a few times in the past.

It’s understandable that business owners and marketers want to focus on web design samples. They are exciting, and give you an instant idea of what the creative team’s capable of, and what kind of future first impression you can make on potential customers. And as any veteran web design team can tell you, a great layout can go a long way towards helping you find success.

With that being said, however, the difference between a very good business web design team and a great one usually has to do with the quality of the questions they ask, not the look of their samples. Why? Because the more your designer and online marketing team understands your company, where it is in the market, and your bottom-line goals, the better job they can do of finding a solution that fits you perfectly.

In other words, there isn’t really such a thing as a perfect web design for everyone, only the perfect business website that works in a particular situation. What looks good for someone else might not be the best idea for you, and it takes a lot of knowledge about where your business is – and more importantly, where you want to be – to create something that’s more than just a great-looking set of pages. Once your customers dig deeper, you’re going to want them to find compelling reasons to pick up the phone, complete a purchase, or otherwise further their relationship with your company.

Web design samples are always going to be important, but they’re never going to be everything. If you really want to choose the right creative agency for your situation, concentrate on finding a team that has the right process, and asks the right questions, after you’re done looking over their portfolio.

What Makes Conversion Optimization So Important?

To a lot of web designers and online marketing teams, “conversion optimization” is one of those extra services that are occasionally offered or mentioned. At our company, they are a centerpiece of what we do.

Why is it so important? Because conversion optimization is what you need to make your site more and more profitable over time. Finding ways to turn higher percentages of visitors into buyers – even at a 10th of a percentage at a time – can easily double or triple the return on investment you see from your business website in the long run.

Here are some of the parts of the conversion optimization process:

Finding your best customers and most powerful marketing messages. The more you know about your customers, the more effectively you can market to them. That’s why one of the most important things we do is help our clients to figure out who their best customers are, along with what sorts of offers and marketing messages they respond to.

Identifying trends in your industry. What have your competitors been up to? By keeping an eye on them, you can get a better sense of what programs are likely to be successful for you, as well as spot new gaps and opportunities that other companies might not be filling.

Revising content and messages. No matter how hard you and your creative team try, the business website you launch is never going to be perfect. Add in the fact that your company will probably change its products, services, or focus at least slightly in the future, and you can see why making ongoing tweaks is important to maximizing your business website’s profitability.

Tracking conversions at different stage of the process. Usually, a business website isn’t really “successful” or “unsuccessful.” Instead, parts of the site work very well, while others aren’t as effective as they could be. By keeping a close eye on the metrics – and seeing where potential customers come in and out of your business website – you can maximize conversions at every step of the way.

Launching your business website is exciting, but it’s only the first step in a long process. If you want to get the most out of your time and investment, then work with us to enhance your conversion rate optimization and get bigger returns in the future.

The look and feel of your business website is incredibly important, but the other half of it – the behind-the-scenes section that visitors will never see – matters just as much. Get the right programming or business package, and your site will be a business powerhouse; skip those, and you’ll have a nice-looking online brochure.

Here are three things your business site needs to have beneath the hood:

A great Content Management System (CMS) for updates and customization. There was a time when having a great content management system was convenient; now it’s a virtual necessity. If you want to make instant updates to your business website, without having to pay your web design team to make the changes, then don’t skip out on a great CMS. Not only does it make edits and additions a snap, but also preserves the great look of your business website in the process.

Online marketing tools. Having a great business website is one thing, but promoting it and attracting customers is a whole different (and just as important) story. Not only do you want to emphasize things like search engine optimization on any business website, but having access to tools like e-mail marketing is important, too. Remember that your online marketing plan will turn out being just as important as the design of your business website in the long run.

Access to detailed metrics and reports. In today’s business environment, it’s not enough to simply “have a hunch” that what you’re doing on your website is working. By tracking the visitors to your site, and generating detailed reports about where they’re coming from and what they’re doing on your pages, you can begin the essential process of turning more of them into buyers. Having the right metrics and information coming from your business website is the first step towards making it more and more profitable every month.

Great-looking business website designs are wonderful, and you shouldn’t let your company go without one. It’s just as important that you have strength “under the hood,” however, so don’t undercut the value of your site by going without any of these tools.