Women’s Media Group
WIX MEETING 7/23/14 ON WEB SITES
Notes taken by Regina Ryan
Speaker: ARIELE KRATZOW outreach manager Wix ariel@wix.com
@wix
@arielkrantzow
About WIX:
Wix allows you to get website with very few techie tools.
Wix company - a DIY website builder - you don't need any code - 100% customizable templates.
You can change any layout.
Find a template that you like - hundreds of templates - don't look necessarily for author templates.
Can also start from scratch.
Started in 2006 - to date they have 50 million users - 750 employees - publicly traded.
Based in Tel Aviv - majority of development work is there and email support is there - phone support is in San Francisco.
50 per cent of users are in the US.
They try to do everything to the highest possible quality - which is why they picked SF - good people there.
The company promotes creativity - wants to help business owners do better - opened up the WIX Lounge as co-working space - freelancers and small business owners are major users - 6000 sq feet - 100 people a day first come first served seating, good coffee, art exibition - just did a book launch party for a Wix user - Ariel's job is an extension of that - reaching out.
Try their best to be transparent and open and helpful to users.
One thing people get scared of with websites - content is what stops them.
So start with the content.
4 steps to building a website:
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Make a goal for your site - is it a home for your work online? Or selling work from your website? Do you want to sell a pdf version of your book? Figure out why you are creating a website. Can't be "we need a website min the 21st century". You want the goal that would make you stand out.
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Make an outline - make a list of every little thing you want on the site - don't think about can you - just put everything down to the specifics of images, about me paragraph, video content, etc. You should encourage video content - 30 seconds and 2 minutes - watching a video means people are a lot more likely to buy or follow up with site. Intermediate connecting step - put content on pages - categorize and assign content to pages.
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What do you actually have available or gettable? Use list as a check list.
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Now go to Wix and you have the proper info to choose the correct template on Wix - the actual concept of building a website is a lot less daunting once you've figured everything out.
Marketing:
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They have tools for promoting - discuss them at shoutout meetings.
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They have a Wix newsletter template - real easy and looks good
SEO - they give you tools to figure it out on your own.
Website is the way to show the online community who you are on your own terms.
You are in control - you can make it your own - creates a home for you and your brand.
Why people need to be online.
No one reads online any more - people are so visual - mostly looking for visual indicators.
What should be on the website?
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Great images.
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Concise descriptions of services.
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You only want to display the most current and relevant work/information.
Don't use grainy photos - has to be a great image; if it's grainy better to skip it. Remember people judge books by their covers. Display the most current and relevant work/information - show that you are up to date.
OK to use clip art? Depends - she rarely recommends stock photography. Wix has tons of stock photographs but if you can take your own images it's better - cameras today take decent photos.
What's the resolution - screen res is 72 dpi generally speaking but when you put it online it depends on how large that photo will be = could become grainy if you enlarge it too much. Digital camera photo should work without doing anything special.
Good thing to tell people: a white background makes everything look one step up; looks more professional.
Concise descriptions of services. Make sure site is always representative of your current goals. Do that through Call to Actioon buttons - links to booksellers, etc.
100% you should have a photo even if you're a company. Can show team members. Think about the tone of the site and match it. Include a picture of the company dog - you can be a little more whimsical - let your personality come out through the site.
That home page is meant to be who are you personally - good to put video there - "Hi I'm Bob" video was enough to grab viewers.
Places to be online besides website: industry related sites.
Social media is huge - but don't bite off more than you can chew. Figure out where your audience is. An older crowd may not be on Twitter. Facebook has a huge range of users - it's not worth tweeting into the abyss.
Main thing is consistency - you have to do what you say you will. If you say three times a day, you have to do it three times a day.
Customer engagement is the main reason to use social media. Get to talk to your customer. Social media is quite positive though there may be rude people - let them slide. Good to meet your peers and people you idolize - tweet to anybody. Can easilly deal with problems which increases all engagement.
Product awareness - events, where I'm going to be.
80-20 number imp to keep in mind - want to be a service to your community so it should be 80 % help and 20% sales
80-20 has become the standard
Platforms:
Facebook - people ask should they have a business profile as well as personal - YES.
Never post anything without an image attached to it - images are all; always credit where you got an image from. (Credit means linking it back to the source.)
Facebook asks what kind of post you want - always choose a photo post or if its video, a video post.
Google Plus - same rules apply - make a profile on Google Plus because inevitably it will come up higher on search ranks because it's Google.
Another good thing is to ask questions and offer a free book for the best answer - check Facebook rules.
Always reply to users no matter what they said - Facebook you can delete posts and just ignore rude comments.
Make sure the people engaging with you are real people.
Twitter - although you are allowed 140 characters, actually 120 characters is ideal - allows you to add a retweet handle.
Engage - don't really sell - be a thought leader. At twitter its easy to reach out to mentors. People are so responsive, even big shots - it's surprising.
Instagram is growing very quickly - it's very visual. Definitely the place where you can take a photo and put a short comment. People love the visual.
Tumblr is more a blog - instagram is a photo and caption.
You can be lighthearted but make your tone match what your product or book is.
Everybody needs to be on LinkedIn. Engagement is growing. If your audience isn't there, not good. Different strategies She relies on LinkedIn to meet people.
Helps you reach out to people - you can do so much on the free version - don't need to pay.
People are responsive on it.
Any time you send a message on LinkedIn it goes to the person's email too so they don't have to look on the site.
Be consistent with:
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Usernames
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Your voice
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Colors and designs
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Font choices
Be your same self online, everywhere. There are tools to find your username and it will create a username that's available on all platforms, which is hard to do.
Tools:
Hootsuite - allows you to schedule post - write out a week's worth of posts and then schedule them through the week.
People want to make a site for a specific book or film and wind up managing multiple sites in the end She says have different pages for different projects on your site.
Get Found - SEO
How to optimize your website to get ranked higher in search results:
There are no tricks to SEO - its all about content, titles, your descriptions, your domain names, images (if they are tagged properly).
Have to figure out what people are going to be searching for. Don't want to list your search words on the site as the bots will find them in the text - if you're true to your industry search engines will find it. People always expect to be # 1 on some vague search terms - you have to get into your niche and be specific.
Getting written up in blogs - especially well trafficked blogs - which become known as a reliable source - is one of the best ways to move up in ranking. Being written up in a reliable source is one of the best ways.
They track you if you don't change your website fairly frequently. Don't have to do much - just go in and do a little fix to make it appear an update.
On January 1 - put a new copyright notice on the bottom. Update the year - calendar minder.
Ranking method:
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The URL first
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The title
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The site description
Keywords help you keep a focus. Use no more than 3 search terms in a description so it reads normally. The informational words should be before the title, i.e. "Free Website Builder WIX".
Wix is a 'freemium' model. Can be totally free! Wix hosts the site for a monthly fee or a fee payed for a year in advance. Most people use the combo which is around $8. You don't need unlimited bandwidth - it's a lot easier to upgrade than downgrade.
Examples:
Tim Anderson - good website but it looks like it wasn't done by a designer. Alignment is too close together and too much text. Layout - one long scrolling site is getting popular. Should have header repeating on each page.
Everyone at Wix does some freelance design on the side. Go to Wix Arena: arena.wix.com
A directory of designers who have applied and been approved by Wix. Their fees should be a lot less than building a site and you have to email the designers to get their fees.
Competitors:
SquareSpace and Wordpress require code. SquareSpace, Wix is easier to use and easier to customize.
Wix Lounge downtown: You can set up one-on-one sessions like the Genius Bar and make an appointment, usually for the next day.