Whether you’re a business owner, a digital marketing pro, or just helping your company out by posting on social media, the expectations in 2019 are high. You’ve got goals for growth that may include: boosting organic traffic, refining ads, generating more leads, and possibly creating new revenue streams – just to name a few.
It’s more than enough to make you feel overwhelmed.
As technology use increases, it’s more important than ever to sit down, and figure out exactly what you want… or need, then focus on that on that goal. One of the biggest hurdles we face in marketing our businesses having ‘too many’ goals. We have to ask ourselves, “what is our True North? our main goal?”. Once you learn to set your priorities, your marketing in 2019 will fall into place. We’ve got a tip on ONE top priority, you should make a goal in your 2019 digital marketing.
Popular Digital Marketing Priorities in 2019
First, it’s vital to know what people are doing to enhance their digital marketing efforts this year. Let’s look at what top marketers are setting as their priorities.
As you can see, some of the top priorities are:
- A/B testing or optimizing pages (SEO)
- Refining ad targeting (Google AdWords or other digital advertising)
- Personalizing website content (forms, logins, tailored information)
These are great priorities, but we want you to look at one very curious thing. Only 3% of the study participants said that making sure their websites loaded quickly was a top priority. This could be a huge mistake in 2019
According to this same study,
“Over the past three years, the average web page has doubled in size while connection speeds have remained stable. And so, the average time it takes for a page to load on mobile is now 15 seconds. Given that more than half of visitors leave a page if they’re forced to wait longer than 3 seconds, marketers need to get faster.”
So just how much fast do you need to be? Well, according to Google’s SEO, tracking, and analytical data – if it takes more than 5 seconds to completely load the pages on your website, you’re already losing.
Website Speed
How can a load time of more than 5 seconds negatively affect your website? Here are a few of the main issues.
- slow web page loading can drive up the cost of any paid AdWords/Digital Advertising. We’ll put simply. You pay for clicks with a digital advertisement. Someone clicks on that ad, but the website takes too long to load. Then, they back out of your site. You’ve increased your bounce rate, wasted a click that you paid for, and negatively impacted your SEO all at once.
- Website visitors have no way of knowing if your page is slow, or not loading at all unless they wait. Let’s face it – people hate to wait. It’s easier for people to just click the back button, and find another (faster) website.
- Beyond the fact that a slow site can cause confusion (see above), according to a study from Amazon shoppers, “When it comes to browsing e-commerce sites, many people say they’re less likely to make a purchase (or even less likely to return in the future) if loading time is slower than expected”.
So what can be done to prioritize faster load times on your website?
Tips for Improving
There is a bit of good news if your sanitation website is not as fast as it needs to be. Most of the people who visit your website are more likely to blame their own internet connections before blaming your website! This mistake works in our favor, but we should never rely on our visitor’s patience for longer than it takes to solve our own issues.
There’s more good news. Many consumers and website users are willing to sacrifice videos, photos, and animations for the sake of a faster website. Here’s the short of list of fixes that you, or your web developer and implement quickly.
- optimize images, video, or other media files (best file types for web speed)
- implement back-end fixes like improved caching and hosting solutions
- run speed audits using Google Lighthouse or other tools (free test here)
- implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in some capacity
Long story short, slow speeds can kill your conversions. If your website takes too long to load, fewer people will go from ‘visit to contact’ or ‘visit to buy’. If you wait too long to make speed improvements, your SEO rankings will go down, and people won’t visit you at all.
Contact Us
We know this is a lot of information, but we’re always here to help. If you have questions, concerns, or just want advice on your sanitation business digital marketing – let us know!!