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Online Aesthetic
Now that we're on the topic of online, let's talk about your online aesthetic. Your online aesthetic is basically the business card to your business. That comes down to your website. That comes down to your social media platforms. All of that needs to look and feel consistent. One thing that is for sure is that there's plenty of evidence that suggests that consumers are becoming increasingly less likely to seek out brands' websites before they actually decide to do business with them. What I'm saying is that it's not imperative that you have a website in order to get business. A lot of brands are only using their Instagram or only using their Facebook pages, or perhaps only using their Pinterest. But nevertheless, it is important for you to have a website for SEO reasons. Links are the currency to the web. When you have successful links that link back to your website, that actually increases your visibility online. Therefore, I do encourage that you create some sort of website that doe...
s give some basic information and does have links to, again, increase your visibility online. One of the angles that we like to take with, or that I like to take with a lot of my businesses is, when I'm trying to create a really intricate website, but I don't wanna lose out on time, what I do is I create a landing page. A landing page is actually a really great opportunity for you to allow your consumer to understand what it is that you are going to be offering, so then they can feel you out. They can decide to opt in or opt out, and while they are there, we'll then ask them some questions. Over here, you see that we let them know who we are about. See the world differently, diversity matters. Diversity in imagery matters and what we did is we wanted to entice them to ask them questions, because those questions were going to help. Remember back when we were talking about market research. It's gonna help me understand the price point that I want to utilize when we go live, because we are not live with our website because we're still uncovering things about our audience. This is a good way to test it out. What did we say? We said, get five free images at launch by taking a short survey. Now, you've got their ears. Wow, I can get five free images just for answering a short survey? Even that word right there, short or quick, that elicits in them, okay, who cares. It's low maintenance. I mean, short, quick, sure, and I get five images? Easy. There's a call to action. This is an example of the landing page that we created for TONL and what we had here was home, which, of course, got them here to main page. FAQ, there's a lot of questions that people might have. When are you going live? When do we get our images? What types of images will you have? These were just certain questions that started to come in as we announced that we were going to be launching, so we had that as a one-stop shop. Then, of course, we are proving ourselves, so we did have a press section. Then, it lent itself to our credibility and then contact us. That was an ability for anyone who wanted to work with us or perhaps interview us to get in contact with us. Here's another example of a great concept of creating a website that practices simplicity. This website here is from photographer, Temi Coker, and he's a photographer who likes to shoot just every lifestyle imagery. His backdrop of his site allows you to see his work, but then you also have the ability to learn more about him through his headers. A few things to point out here is that he has his logo, so anytime you see Coker, you understand, oh, yeah, that's Temi Coker. That's the photographer that I like his lifestyle shoots. Over here, he did a great job of including pictures of his work and he was very specific. He put weddings because obviously he has done some sort of poll or in his experience he understands that maybe perhaps more of the money or the opportunities are in weddings. He gets straight to the point. If you go to his website, there is no searching to figure out, okay, is it weddings? Is it lifestyle? It's, hey, this is his expertise. He does have a list of what he does, but I want you to see what I do for weddings since I know that's probably why you're here. Most importantly is that he has a social media, he has social media buttons. He understands, of course, that a lot of the users now online are trying to figure out your presence. He has that available for you to see. This is a great way for you to have that simplicity. Now, if you do click on his work, it then leads you to more headers. He has an about us page. He has more of his contact page here, if you wanna get really straight to the point there. It's just important that you always leave a way for your consumer to reach out to you. If you have a landing page, it isn't just. Sometimes I get people and they have a landing page and there's nothing else there. They ask you questions, they don't offer you anything, they don't have a contact us. It's like, okay, we said minimal, but not that minimal. People still wanna connect with you. So, just try to be as straightforward as you can, still show who your brand is, but keep it low maintenance because you're either working on a more intricate website or your social media is enough. Is enough of a face for your brand. For your actual website, there still needs to be a call to action when you go live with your actual website. This example that we're using here is from Bloguettes. What you see here is, as soon as you enter, just a few moments after you're browsing, they timed it out correctly that there's a popup. There's a call to action, because we live in a world now where people like to bounce. For those who don't know what bounce is, bounce is a term in marketing where let's just say that you wanted this necklace that you saw at Macy's for $20, but you remember seeing it at Forever 21 for $15. So, you bounce from Macy's over to Target. Well, Macy's hates that because they wanted your business, they wanted your money. You leaving obviously takes money away from them and you're finding that brands are noticing that you're doing that and they'll say, hey, I saw you over here. They'll send you like a, they'll shoot you a message. Did you, are you sure that you wanted to leave? Do your best to create some sort of call to action a few moments while people get to your website. Again, you may lose their attention if you don't do that. The next thing you wanna make sure you do with your website is make sure that the number of clicks are minimal. You want to be as precise and straightforward for your consumer 'cause they're there for a reason. If they have to be squinting and searching and looking around to figure out where they can reach you, where they can get your product or service, you're going to lose them. Make sure that you have it be as straightforward as possible and your headers are also really important. Okay, yeah, your headers, that's where the thing misaligned, but your headers are really important here because, again, those are like the jump buttons. People look to see in those corners to be like, okay, where's home, where's about, where can I shop? Make that very clear and concise. It doesn't make sense for you to keep that all the way down in the middle, when people, when they first come to your page, they wanna see that there. The more guided and seamless the experience is, the higher the conversion will be. Ways that you guys can make this experience seamless is implementing artificial intelligence. Active AI is basically the fact that when you get to a website, they already know your name. You start to type in your name and it automatically populates your password, that just caters to the current world where we want things yesterday. When you go on and you have to retype in your password and your name, that becomes really annoying for a customer. If you can have things where it's an easier checkout, where there are things that are, that you are remembering of that consumer, it makes the experience mutually beneficial. Again, just creating a more seamless way of maneuvering on your website and activating AI. I will say that if you pay attention to a lot of the leading industry people in AI, Salesforce, they just had a big conference and they said that AI is the future. In any way that you can adapt your websites to really implement that, that will be crucial. Here are some website resources. If you're needing help in creating a website, I am an Aries so we are all, we're very dominant, strong, and we think we can do everything. I used Wix for a lot of my career. I've also tapped into Word Press. Squarespace is awesome. Weebly is also great. A lot of these websites have a drag and drop, so they have people who submit templates and then you can just be like, okay, I like that template. You literally just replace the images with your own and it just lends itself well if you're just trying to get something quick out there. They have wonderful landing pages, so you can even use that while you actually use a more custom Word Press website that you're creating on the side. That first example of our TONL landing page, that was used through Wix to give you perspective.
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