This month we’re celebrating a few things here.  Here at Sprocket Websites we’re celebrating our 6 year anniversary! We’re also celebrating a great first half of 2016.  To end the first half of 2016, we’d like to take a look back at our most popular articles so far this year.  These are the articles that viewers have read and interacted with the most in the last 6 months.  We love seeing the topics that interest you, so we can give you more of what you’re interested in.  Happy Anniversary!

Here, in the age of mobile internet, you may think that it’s nearly impossible to lose mobile readers. Well, you’d be wrong about that. Even though a vast majority of people are checking in while on the go, an increasing number of people are getting fed up with certain annoyances associated with reading articles or visiting websites when using their phones. What are these huge annoyances? 

The end of the year is fast approaching and it’s time to take a look ahead. What do we have to look forward to in 2016? What trends are on the way out and which are here to stay? Anything new on the horizon? Well, slow down, I’ll fill you in.

No, email marketing is not dead.  In fact, email marketing is kind of huge right now.  I can tell you that with Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Crazy Holiday Deal Madness behind me -I did most of my online shopping based on email marketing campaigns sent from a few stores I frequent online.  I can also tell you that I am a repeat shopper at most of those places online not only because I love their products, but also because they continually send me emails that hit the nail right on the head.  What are they doing right?  I'm glad you asked...

Now that you are social and keeping in touch with your customers and clients –it’s time to make sure you’re staying up to date. You don’t have to spend a lot of time to stay relevant. Just give yourself a checklist that you can refer back to every other month or so to make sure that you’re updated and appealing to customers the way that you intend to.

There comes a time in every person’s life when they’ve got to ask themselves –is it time to redesign my website?  That may not actually be true.  The truth is, however, that if you DO have a website and if you ARE invested in it –it is worth a second look every now and then to see if there is actually need to shake things up a bit.  This could be anything from swapping out colors, to changing your whole theme.  Maybe your little spokesperson is a brunette, but you heard blondes have more fun.  Whatever your reasoning, if you are asking yourself if it’s time to redesign, here are a few pieces to look at that may need a little tweaking, moving, and shaking.

Let’s say you’ve taken my advice by now, you’ve got a successfully running website that is driving traffic to your business. Perfect! Now, let’s talk about taking that next step.  You might be saying to yourself: What’s the point in going mobile? People can still bring me up on their phones if they are searching for me on the internet… To that I would promptly pick you up and shake you. OK, maybe I wouldn’t go that far.  But the appearance of your website is pretty important. Both on AND off the computer. So when a customer visits your site on their phone, if it’s all scattered around, hard to maneuver, or full of information that’s probably not useful to them on the go, they are going to move on.  Their thumbs can only take so much browsing on those tiny screens.  It’s 2013, let’s catch up with the times.  There are hundreds of millions of mobile phone users in the U.S. alone. About 9 out of 10 have access to the internet on their phones. What are you doing to win them over?