Today’s marketing world is dominated by two different types of agencies: digital and traditional. Obviously, as a digital agency, Alter Imaging is biased when comparing the two but we (sorta) tried to provide an unbiased comparison.
Let’s start with a look at what a digital agency is…
Time to abandon the idea of making "Home" primary in your navigation.
When we develop a new website, one of the first steps our account managers take is to develop the site map. The purpose of the site map is to outline the hierarchy of the website pages and how they will relate to each other. Invariably, we have clients who want to put the ‘Home’ button as the first item in their main navigation. Read More
A new website can cause clients and potential customers to see your business in a whole new light, but only if they are aware that you launched a new one in the first place. Sure, existing customers will probably notice eventually, and assuming you have a good search engine optimization plan in place, new visitors will eventually come. But given the time and expense it takes to put a new small business website together, it make sense to promote it as much as possible.
Website advertising services from Alter Imaging can do just that but here are four great ways to promote the launch of your new business website yourself: Read More
Your sign? Social Media Monitoring will tell us the answer!
Recently there was a kerfluffle on the web when astrologers announced the introduction of a 13th zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. Another word for “kerfluffle” is buzz. In social media marketing, where there is buzz, there is an opportunity for savvy marketers to expand their customer base.
For this case example, we are going to pretend to be a modern day Psychic Reader’s Network, aka Miss Cleo (remember her?) We are also going to assume that our fictional Psychic Network is active in social media…namely Twitter and Facebook.
So here’s how they could have marketed the event. Read More
At Alter Imaging, we think that the best type of customer is one that is well-informed. There are literally hundreds of web design and marketing companies in Charlotte and, to a novice eye, we all pretty much look the same on the surface. For starters: it is hard to tell the difference from a web design that was built from scratch versus one that was based on a template. With millions of business sites on the web, it is important to stand out by using unique, original content, images, and graphics.
With that in mind, here is a handy guide to help you vet potential web design agencies and avoid some of the common pitfalls.
Read More
At Alter Imaging, we keep an eye on new developments with Google’s search results page. The last few months have seen huge changes with the introduction of instant results and, more recently, the incorporation of local results into the non-sponsored section.
Google is trying to make us search smarter and faster. If we search smarter, we find what we want and thus keep coming back to Google for more answers. If we search faster, Google gets to display more ads. In essence, Google wants to increase average ticket size (number of searches) and frequency (how quickly we revisit)…just like any other business.
Google’s latest development is the ability to view previews of of a website by mousing over its search result. This feature is currently available on the Chrome browser. Edit: It now is appearing on Firefox, too (but with a slightly different implementation).
For a time, when it came to internet marketing, many marketers would claim that their only job was to get a website to rank for competitive keywords and increase traffic. “What happens to the traffic”, they would claim, “is up to the website designer and manager.” But some search marketers (myself included) have held the belief that our main responsibility to the client is to increase sales, not just traffic. We call this practice conversion rate optimization or CRO and it is becoming more mainstream.
A flood of traffic does not always mean greener pastures. You have to convert that traffic into sales.
For me, I’ve focused on conversions out of necessity. My internet marketing career started over 5 years ago working in house for a large real estate agency. After about a year there, we achieved the top rank for almost every major phrase. Traffic was abundant but the expected increase in sales did not come. It became my job to find out why and thus began my education on conversion rate optimization. Here is what I learned:
We're the one on the left...
At Alter Imaging, we like to consider ourselves a “boutique agency” which is a clever way of saying we aren’t very large. It is true. Despite being named as a top 25 web design company by the Charlotte Business Journal for the last 6 years, Alter Imaging has under 15 full-time employees.
Most of the time, our design portfolio speaks for itself but occasionally, a potential client wants to know more about our size and capabilities. Initially, they see our small size as a liability and part of the sales process is countering the mantra “bigger is better”.
When you hear “Just do it” or “Think Different“, what comes to mind? If you’ve been conditioned enough, you’ll recognize that the two phrases are the taglines of Nike and Apple. The same thing goes for other taglines like “Who ya gonna call” (Ghostbusters) and “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” (Kellogg’s Rice Krispies). These taglines stick for two reasons, you’ve heard them often, and they’re well designed. If those are the two factors for tagline success, then it’s easy to write a good tagline, right?
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We're Alter Imaging. A Charlotte-based web design and advertising agency that produces consistent results for both domestic and international clients. Companies choose us because of our in-house talent, our commitment to quality work, and our dedication to their success. Take a moment to find out why we're consistently ranked a Top 25 Web Design company.
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