Well, an earthquake happened yesterday. Matt Cutts posted on his blog that the “next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm” (referred to as Penguin 2.0) had completed rolling out.

This is actually the fourth Penguin-related update, but since the others were considered a “data refresh,” rather than an actual updated algorithm, Penguin 2.0, it is.

So, what’s the difference? According to another Matt Cutts blog post explaining terminology, an actual algorithm update seems to yield more changes, even if noticeable changes may not happen much. On the other hand, a data refresh is when data in an existing algorithm is refreshed. The resulting changes to search results is usually even less noticeable.

So, what sort of results can we expect to see from Penguin 2.0? Let’s take a look:

• Like every other Penguin-related launch, its primary purpose is to combat black-hat SEO and webspam. Black-hat SEO is when people use deceptive tactics and shortcuts to make web pages rank higher than they deserve to. The Penguin algorithm aims to catch the websites doing black-hat methods so that search results display websites that are actually what the user is looking for.

• According to Cutts, about 2.3% of English-US search queries were affected to the point of being noticeable by a “regular user.” The scope of the update varies by language, so queries in other languages will be affected differently, depending on how much webspam each language sees.

• According to Search Engine Watch, Penguin 1.0 essentially only looked at the homepage of a website. This “next generation,” however, looks deeper into a website.

What else can we expect?

Last week, Cutts also posted this video, summarizing what webmasters and SEOs should expect in the next few months. The main points were:

• Native advertising/advertorials should not use do-follow links and pass PageRank. Google plans to enforce this more strictly to ensure that users realize that content is paid placement and does not impact SEO.

• There are a few changes coming to tackle “problematic queries.” The examples of these spammy queries mentioned by Cutts included “payday loans” on Google.co.uk and pornographic queries.

• Google is also looking at ways to deny the value of upstream linking with more sophisticated link analysis.

• Expect a new generation of hacked site detection and ways to better communicate to webmasters about malware and hacked sites.

• Google is looking for other ways to help regular webmasters, such as detecting when a site is an authority in a certain space and making sure they rank well for it.

• They’re looking at Panda for additional signals to help sites were previously impacted by Panda, and determining whether the site is truly high quality.

• In the future, you should be less likely to see more results from the same websites as you go further into the search results pages (multiple pages in).

• Cutts wants to be able to give more information to webmasters, such as details, example URLs, etc.

So, there you have it. What’s just happened and what’s probably going to happen soon. How does this information change your SEO strategies?

By Brittany Berger

Related Posts:

• How Do Search Engines Discover Your Web Page?
• The Anatomy of a SERP and Why It Matters
• SEO 101: What is Black Hat SEO?

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Well, now we’re back and talking to Rogers Family Company. A family owned business with a long history, online marketing wasn’t always around to be part of their business strategy. However, you wouldn’t be able to tell that there was a time that they were quite used to traditional marketing by taking a look at their online channels.

Tell us about your business, including the products/services you offer, your target customer, and overall marketing strategy.

Rogers Family Company has been in business since 1979, originally selling tea and freshly roasted coffee to the local businesses in San Francisco on a day-to-day basis. Our original working space was so small we had to move the pallets of coffee beans out each morning just to complete the day’s work.

Over the next 30+ years, we have grown our business to supply the highest quality coffee and tea to major retailers, as well as individual consumers under the brand names: San Francisco Bay Coffee, Organic Coffee Company, Fairwinds Coffee, Black Mountain Gold, Pleasant Hill  and East India Tea & Coffee. All of our products are available on our e-commerce store.

We are a 100% owned and run by the Rogers Family. Jon Rogers and his wife Barbara (now 80 years old) still come in to work every day along with the whole family and the business is truly a “Family Company” (hence the name). The most important thing to us is that our customers LOVE our product and that we are making a positive impact in the lives of everyone our business touches. From the farmers to the retailers and of course the people who use our product. We believe in making the world a better place including the environment, culture and hopefully making mornings brighter every day with great coffee!

What online marketing methods have you used in the past? What results did you see?

Originally we used some PPC and general sales promotions along with press releases.  A few years ago we refocused our internet marketing efforts and really re-worked things from the ground up including: a new e-commerce site (we are currently working on a new responsive version to replace it), SEO, having a strong social media presence, email newsletter and content marketing.

We restructured our company website on WordPress and have been pretty consistent with posting coffee news, fun reads and informational articles. We have also implemented a full marketing calendar so that we are always aware of what is planned next instead of “off the cuff” promotions.

What online marketing method has been most beneficial to your business? What is your strategy for that channel?

The results have been huge. Traffic and sales have more than doubled and are on a continuing upward trend. We are breaking the trends up and studying the specifics to really tailor the plan for the next few years. Our goal is to really improve the slower areas and maximize the gains we are seeing.

Although we have seen big jumps from each category, the biggest is our social media relationships with our customers. Our Facebook fans love our content, product and promotions. Our Twitter followers are involved and active. Our newest outlet, Google+, has been taking off too.  We recently added Pinterest and Instagram as well.

We try to come up with fun and interesting content, graphics, and contests, and most of all add to our fans daily life instead of always promoting products. We are also very lucky that the owners of the company enjoy responding personally to customer questions and comments (especially on Facebook). This provides such a great experience and maximizing on this is very important to us.

One of the more interesting parts of social media interaction is the product reviews and contests by third party websites. We encourage other blogs and websites to use our product for giveaways and contest prizes. They promote their website through social media and we get exposed to a whole new group of people. It really is a win-win.

What online marketing method would you say is most difficult for you or your company, and why?

Content generation – coming up with new and interesting angles, topic and stories. We have several lists of ideas that we draw from daily and we are very lucky to have designer on staff to provide original graphics but it always comes down to the subject material. Fortunately, coffee is one of those things that is easy to write about. However, that means everyone is doing it and any article you could write has probably been written. We believe that a mixture of original content, reporting on others interesting content and fun facts/images is the best approach. That doesn’t make it easy, though.

When you first started out, did you have any misconceptions about online marketing that were cleared up with experience?

How not to become clutter in the mix of advertising noise. There are a lot of coffee and tea businesses out there. It is really easy to be one of the many voices saying the same thing: “Our coffee is better and cheaper!” Everyone says that, and that message is white noise these days. The question was ‘How do we stand out?’

Luckily, we do have some really great points in our favor: We grow coffee on our own farms, our product is better for the environment, and better tasting. We are a family company that really makes a difference in the world. The important thing was to learn how to distill each idea into a message that catches the eye and makes people say “I want to try that.” Ultimately, we learned that remaining consistent in our message and our frequency brings gains over time.

What do you think is the best piece of advice or thing to keep in mind for a small business looking to improve their online presence?

Make a list of things to improve and do something towards accomplishing that list everyday! As the old saying goes, ‘you need to climb that mountain one step at a time.’ Each day you make a positive change in one of your goals is a day you are swaying the momentum of your results.  Nothing turns around overnight. It is important to be able to have a set list of things to improve, determination to make small changes every day and the patience be able to track your results. Knowing your business and tracking your results is critical. Our wins not only tell us what we are doing right but they give us the motivation to try even more. With a little bit of planning and patience, you will begin to find wins all over the place. But that is not all. Embrace and learn from the losses. The losses can be as important as wins and the lessons far more lasting.

About the Small Business Spotlight Series

Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

If you are interested in having your small or medium business featured in this series, please fill out this form!

Related Posts:

• The 12 Best Small Business Spotlight Quotes
• Misconceptions About Online Marketing from SMB’s
• Online Marketing Advice for Small Businesses

By Brittany Berger

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The two companies are already in cahoots as partners, but Facebook may want more; and more is what they’d have to pay. Waze has been in acquisition talks for months and is said to be valued at a staggering $800 million to $1 billion.

Neither company would comment on the rumors, but we all know Facebook doesn’t back down when they set their sights on something. Do you recall back in 2012 when Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion? Or the facial recognition specialist Face.com for an upward $50 million?

There’s no question about it: Facebook has been exasperating all their efforts in its mobile business. As of March 31, 2013 there are 751 million monthly active mobile users on Facebook, an increase of 54% year-over-year. Their desktop business only experienced an increase of 23% year-over-year.

To gain a better understanding of Facebook’s intentions with Waze, let’s review the features that set Waze apart from other navigating apps and devices:

Waze has about 45 million users in 110 countries. Each of these users contributes to real-time traffic reports, accidents, gas prices, road hazards and even police traps. Waze has also partnered with select gas stations, including Kum & Go, Hess, Shell, BP, and Exxon stations to provide exclusive discounts through the app at select locations. These participating stations will show up in the list of reported fuel prices and include a digital coupon that can be displayed to claim the discount.

The traffic function is absolutely seamless, and very easy to contribute to. If you’re in backed up traffic on I-95, a dialogue box will pop up asking if you’re stuck in traffic. Once you click yes, you immediately submit a traffic event that is sent out to all other drivers in the area.

You’ll even begin noticing other alerts pop up on the route ahead. By touching them, you can be informed of an accident or a closed lane. For safety purposes, users can’t actually type anything while the car is moving.

Users experience the feeling of connectivity with other drivers in their area and enjoy actively alerting the community. In 2012, drivers shared 90 million reports as they drove 6 billion miles – contributing to 500 million map edits!

Waze has raised $67 million in venture capital to date, from investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Li-Ka Shing, Blue Run Ventures, Magma Venture Partners and Vertex Venture Capital.

So why might Facebook want to buy this crowdsourcing map application?

One possible reason Facebook plans to buy Waze is simply so they are not left behind. The three top tech companies (Google, Microsoft, and Apple) all already have their own mapping services. Clearly, mapping is a core application for mobile users. Facebook knows this, and plans to craft their mapping service by including social networking.

Currently, Waze allows users to connect to Facebook to see their friends on the map, enabling groups of friends to effortlessly travel in sync. I predict that if the acquisition happens, Facebook users will be able to see where their friends are driving simply by scrolling through their News Feed. Unlike check-ins, Facebook users won’t have to do anything. This idea of social mapping will give Facebook a leg up on competition.

Another likely reason for the acquisition of Waze is for the location data Waze could provide. Users of Waze continuously share their location as they drive. Once Facebook grabs a hold of this information, it could enable them to create location-based advertising. At large, this could really benefit Facebook’s advertisers, as they’ll be able to reach perfect target audiences.

Tell us what you think about the Waze buyout. What do you think Facebook intends to do with Waze? Do you think Waze will eventually muscle out mapping services such as Google or Apple?

By Jade Hammond

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This week is one of those big ones for the tech world: the week of Google I/O, Google’s developer conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. In addition to the dozens of technical sessions, lab sessions, and demonstrations of Google technologies such as Android, Chrome, and APIs, Google had a lot of announcements about the future of their products.

Similar to Apple, Google announces product updates and news during the keynote at the beginning of the conference. The massive 3.5-hour keynote was full of important statistics about Google’s impact across different products and sneak previews of new updates and features to those same products.

It’s a lot of information to take in, to say the least, so we put together an outline of the important updates from the keynotes and a few other tidbits of information from I/O:

Important Numbers & Statistics:

•  At the start of the keynote, over 1 million people were already tuned into the live stream on YouTube
• Chrome (Google’s browser) is now the most widely used browser in the world with 750 million active users
• There are now 900 million Android activations in the world
• Google Play is at 48 billion app installs
• 2.5 billion apps are installed every month

Android & Google Play Announcements:

• A bunch of new tools for app developers were launched, such as an app translation service, beta testing, and staged rollouts.
• Game services will allow game developers to incorporate achievements, social and public leaderboards, streamlined storage API to save games, and real-time multiplayer gaming.
• As rumored, Google launched a music streaming service called Google Play Music All Access.
• There are 3 new APIs for Android, all of which allow developers to take advantage of location services.
• The year-old Google Cloud Messaging is getting a big revamp, including persistent connections, upstream messaging, and notification sync.
• An unlocked “Google version” of the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be made available on June 26 for $649.
• A new program called Google Play for Education will aim to make devices and software more affordable for education.

Google Chrome and Search Updates:

• Google is focused on bringing the best parts of Chrome on desktop to mobile, including faster video-streaming, faster payments, and Chrome Experiments.
• They’re also enhancing Voice Search and adding commands to searches using Chrome on desktops and laptops for a conversational search experience.
• Knowledge Graph has been improved to provide “smarter” information and has added several new languages.

Google+ Announcements:

• Google+ has another new design, incorporating elements reminiscent of Facebook and Pinterest, and is responsive and consistent across devices.
• The stream has a new multi-column design with cards, although you can switch back and forth between this view and a single-column view.
• Photo cards can be “flipped over” to see more pictures with the same hashtags (you’ll be able to exempt your photos from being included in this feature).
• A new “Related Hashtags” feature will look at your posts, determine what they’re about, and automatically add hashtags (that you can go back and remove).
• New photo features include aut0-backup, aut0-highlight to feature your best pictures, automatic enhancements (that you can go back an undo), and a new feature humbly called Auto-Awesome that will automatically put pictures together to create animated GIFs, panoramics, and filmstrips.
• Hangouts has been upgraded to a standalone app for iOS, Android, and the web, within which you can use text, photo, and video. It will replace all the several different messaging apps Google used to offer for a more unified experience.

Google Maps Updates:

• Google Maps for the web has been rebuilt from the ground up. It will be full-screen and have Google Earth and Street View built-in.
• Maps will be customized to show the information you need the most. You can add ‘Work’ and ‘Home’ locations, star locations, add reviews, and more to improve customizations.
• Zagat badges, restaurant reviews, and offers from retailers will be incorporated into tailored maps. There will also be cards with info like a location’s hours and ratings.
• There will be new versions of Google Maps for mobile and an iPad app launched soon. They will have live traffic reporting and re-routing, and customization based on user behavior and search history. Integration with Google Now is rumored.

Image via Google Developers

This question probably received the most varied responses, partly due to how much advice each marketer interviewed provided. These marketers truly want to help others. They didn’t throw us a single sentence about optimizing for search, or how social media is important. These professionals often gave us multiple paragraphs full of detailed and helpful advice.

The advice ranged from what they thought should be at the center of an online marketing strategy, to what sort of content drives conversions, to the importance of qualities such as uniqueness and extreme dedication.

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

You could use the handiest tool out there to create a Twitter list of everyone you follow, but that isn’t the best use. The stream for that list would be exactly the same as your timeline on the homepage. The effectiveness of a list depends on how you use it.

Instead of just explaining how our company uses Twitter lists, we wanted to be able to suggest uses that go beyond our own needs, so that you can find ideas that will really help you.

So we turned to a few people that use social media professionally, day in and day out, since it’s their job to know how to use Twitter lists effectively.

As usual, we want to provide you with tweetable summaries of the information in this infographic. We figured it’s more appropriate than ever for this one!

Ways to use Twitter lists:

• Use Twitter lists to allow conference attendees to connect before the event. -Nicole Denton (Tweet this)

• Create lists of people with something in common so they can connect about that topic. -Lauren Hard (Tweet this)

• Create a Twitter list to keep up with important media outlets for your industry. -Alison Kenney (Tweet this)

• Use Twitter lists to organize, keep up with, and help your own customers. -Taylor Aldredge (Tweet this)

• Keep track of who interacts with you and shares your content using a Twitter list. -Will Mitchell (Tweet this)

• Create a list of people who tweet each other to make following their convos easier. -Mark Sutherland (Tweet this)

• Use Twitter lists to organize your network based on what they tweet about. -Janet Barclay (Tweet this)

• Create a list of important journalists in your industry so you don’t miss any updates. -Mike Essex (Tweet this)

• Use Twitter lists to monitor your company’s competitors to keep up with their strategies. -Shawna Tregunna (Tweet this)

• Create Twitter lists to keep track of participants in your favorite Twitter chats. -Brittany Berger (Tweet this)

If you’re not completely sold on why you should create these Twitter lists, here are a few hypothetical scenarios that using lists could make possible:

• Imagine you’re going to an industry conference and don’t know anyone there. You create a Twitter list of people using the event’s hashtag and attempt to start conversations with people before the conference, and several people offer to meet up the night before the conference so you won’t walk into the keynote not knowing a soul.

• If you follow thousands of people, there’s no way to see every tweet from every person you follow (unless you don’t need to eat, work, or sleep). Luckily, you created a list of all of the media outlets for your industry in addition to following them. So you notice when one of them is looking for people to interview on an article about what your company does. You reply to the tweet and your company gets a mention on a major industry site.

• You have a private Twitter list of competitors to see what they’re doing in the social media sphere. You don’t originally think that your company is a good fit for Pinterest, but notice through this list that several of your competitors are pushing their Pinterest presences and their customers are eating it up. Obviously, you decide to look further into how your company can create a strategy for the network.

Do you have a brilliant way to make Twitter more efficient using a list? Share how you use lists below in the comments!

By Brittany Berger

Related Posts:

• Introduction to Twitter Lists
• 3 Tools for Better Twitter List Management

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What’s even more exciting is that custom video does not have to break the bank in order to be a potent source of potential; animated video creators aren’t charging Disney-fees to take a totally custom explainer from script to screen.  So, whether you’ve got a multi-million dollar marketing budget to work with or you are building your web presence on a shoestring budget, custom video is a fit for any size company looking to boost their marketability online.

Animated video is not just child’s play. Custom explainer videos introduce a brand’s value proposition in a way that is engaging, simple, and interactive. Video marketing has the properties to drive traffic, generate sky-high conversion rates and enhance your search engine optimization.

Here’s how custom explainer video converts window shoppers into paying customers…just like magic!

All the web traffic in the world means absolutely nothing without conversion. A conversion refers to the number of people who turn into an opportunity for a sale from any page on your site. You want your traffic to be active, not passive. If your bounce rates are high and your conversion rates are low, your site is not working for you. It means people are leaving your site without leaving their name. Video does a few things to help boost conversion rates, the first is that it keeps people on your site for longer. Trends show that an increase in time on-page/on-site rates can be directly related to higher conversion rates, and video is a great way to engage an online audience for longer on your site.

Video is also a visual call to action – turning your traffic from passive to active opportunities. An important part of any custom explainer video is an effective call to action. Whether you end your video with contact information, encourage sharing on social media, or you build a contact form next to the player on your page, you need to give your captive audience a way to engage with the information in your video. Ask yourself this question: What do you want viewers to do as a result of this video? Do you want them to contact you, share the information, sign up for a trial of your product, or perhaps take part in a contest or promotion? Video is more interactive than standard web copy alone, which is why it can be utilized as such an effective online conversion tool.

The conversion success rate of your video is relatively simple to quantify using basic Google Analytics or investing in a video hosting/analytics tool. You should see a spike in organic traffic (from search engines), an increase in time on-page/on-site, a growing number of social mentions, and ultimately, more hits turned into home runs! Measure your call to action – have more people signed up for a trial? Have you had more people fill out a contact form, or ‘like’ your Facebook page?

Online competition is fierce, so it’s time to start getting serious about conversions!  Animated video is cost effective, proven to increase traffic and conversions and will ultimately produce measurable results as part of an online marketing strategy.

To learn more about video production or to see examples, please visit http:www.Illustrateitvideo.com

This post is by Christine Sheppard, scriptwriter and blogger at IllustrateiT.

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Notice a common theme is search engine optimization, an online marketing tactic of growing importance with each year. Learn from the rookie mistakes of these smart marketers and follow in their successful footsteps.

It’s not enough to have a website, or even to have a beautiful, well designed website. It takes time and effort to be seen by search engine users. Additionally, you need to use a combination of several online marketing methods to truly spread the word about your product or service.

“If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to websites anymore. (Tweet this!)

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

But we have a confession: we may not have told you the easiest way to manage Twitter lists. In our defense, we told you the most basic way, and the way that Twitter intends for you to make lists.

However, Twitter’s methods for creating and managing lists can be time-consuming and tedious. Thankfully, a lot of services have been created to make using lists easier for you. From creation to completion, there are tools that make Twitter lists and their management much more quick and efficient.

To understand how Twitter lists work, it is a good idea to use them on Twitter.com. But once you have a few lists to your name and it’s become time consuming to manage them, these three tools should come in handy.

To create Twitter lists and add and remove users: TwitListManager

Creating Twitter lists can be a huge time-suck when using Twitter.com; you need to click on each user, select ‘add or remove from lists,’ and select which list you’d like to add them to. It’s the same story for removing someone from a list. If you’re trying to create manage a list with hundreds of users, you better carve out at least a few hours.

So thank goodness for tools like TwitListManager! I’m pretty sure you can do everything but delete an entire list using this site, and you can do it a lot easier than you would using Twitter.com. You can create a list and add a description, then quickly add users to it. Across the top of the dashboard is all of the Twitter lists you’ve created, and going down the page is all of the users you follow. Use the checkboxes to add and remove users to lists from one page. The only con here is that you can only add users you follow to lists.

But TwitListManager makes up for that with a unique feature that’s great for users who like to categorize every user they follow by adding them to a list. There’s a button at the top that says ‘toggle unlisted friends.’ This shows you all of the users you follow that aren’t on any of your lists, so you can quickly run through and add them somewhere, even if you add them all to the same “Miscellaneous” list.

For finding Twitter lists: listatlas

It’s not easy to find lists to subscribe to on Twitter. The only way to discover lists is through the profiles of people listed or the list creator. That’s where listatlas comes in. listatlas is an easy-to-use search engine for Twitter lists. You can log in through Twitter to search for Twitter lists by keyword, and what’s great is that it appears to look for the keyword in list descriptions in addition to the list title.

I like this feature because sometimes users will come up with more creative names for lists that may not have anything to do with the topic on which the list is based. Hopefully, in those cases, the list creator adds a description that tells you what the list is about.

Another great feature of listatlas is that you can browse popular lists, top lists from the past month or week, and the fastest growing lists. These lists are ranked based on the number of users that subscribe to the list instead of anything having to do with list members.

For viewing Twitter list streams: TweetDeck or Hootsuite

So you’ve used the two tools mentioned above to create and subscribe to a bunch of great Twitter lists. Now it’s time to find an easy way to view all the streams for these lists in one spot. You can probably do this with the social media dashboard of your choice, but my favorite free dashboards are TweetDeck and HootSuite. Both of these dashboards allow your to add columns for Twitter lists you’ve either created or subscribed to. This is a lot easier than viewing one stream at a time on Twitter.com and switching back and forth between different lists and your main feed.

How do you make Twitter lists work for you? Share your tips and tricks below in the comments!

By Brittany Berger

Related:

• Introduction to Twitter Lists
• 10 Ways to Use Twitter Lists [Infographic]
• Optimize Your New Twitter Profile

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So when we came across their infographic about landing pages, we knew we needed to eat up every morsel of information found in it. We also knew that you all would probably benefit from it, as well.

We’ve already talked about the most essential components of a landing page, but what we need to talk more about is optimizing those components. We also didn’t give you much advice about design: where those components should go and what they should look like. Please forgive us.

So to make up for only covering the basics of landing pages, we found this for you.

Key takeaways:

• Your Google AdWords quality score can be improved by having consistent messaging between the ad copy and landing page copy. (Tweet this!)

• Spelling errors and improper grammar in landing page content compromises how much the customer will trust your business. (Tweet this!)

• Incorporate trust indicators such as testimonials, press coverage, and third-party trust and security verification to establish credibility. (Tweet this!)

• Calls to action need to be strong enough for the visitor to know exactly what you want them to do next. (Tweet this!)

• Identify keywords that people interested in your product/service might search for and use them in your call to action buttons. (Tweet this!)

• Keep the links to a minimum on a landing page. Too many can distract the user, lead them away from the landing page, and negatively impact conversions. (Tweet this!)

• Never have a call to action button in a place that the user needs to search or scroll to find. (Tweet this!)

• Continually run A/B tests to help optimize your landing page over time. Test copy, calls to action, headlines, images, and all of the other important elements on the page. (Tweet this!)

• Yellow and orange are great colors for call to action buttons since they grab the user’s attention well. (Tweet this!)

• The color red creates a sense of urgency in the user, so it’s often used in reference to sales and limited-time promotions. (Tweet this!)

• Blue design elements create a sense of trust and security. (Tweet this!)

• Green is the easiest color for the eye to process. (Tweet this!)

• The colors you use need to set a mood that will appropriately influence the viewer’s actions. (Tweet this!)

What are your favorite landing page optimization techniques? Share them below in the comments.

Related posts:

• Small Business Spotlight: Formstack
• 10 Commandments of Mobile Page Search
• Landing Pages 101 – Components of a Landing Page

By Brittany Berger

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