livebooks blog

‹ Home

On your journey as a small business owner, there will be a few tools that come up that make your life a whole lot easier. One of these tools is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to track traffic and data coming into your website. This information can make a world of difference in how you market your business and build your online presence. You can use the data Analytics collects to help you determine your next steps when it comes to revising your website and marketing to your customers online.

If you don’t have time to do an in-depth study on all that Google Analytics entails, then here are a few quick tips for navigating the analytical side of your business.

Audience demographics

As a business owner, you’re well aware that knowing your audience is key to building your audience and gearing your products or services towards them.

Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool you can use to understand your audience. Under the ‘Audience’ tab, you can find a general overview that includes the percentage of users divided by country, city and language.

You can also enable the Demographics which can give you more details on the gender and age of your users. Knowing this information can help you determine who exactly is visiting your website and how you can cater your website to them.

Page traffic

While you can see how much traffic your overall website is getting by day, week, or even month, you can also determine which sections of your website are seeing the most traffic. By segmenting your analytics by page or post, you can see where your visitors are navigating to or spending the most time on. This is helpful knowledge as it allows you to see what your visitors are most interested in on your website.

If you received a significant amount of traffic to a specific blog post, for example, you might consider writing a similar blog post on that topic because it’s clear that it’s something your visitors are interested in. Similarly, if your About Page is receiving a lot of traffic, that tells you that your audience is interested in the story and people behind your business and you can build upon that.

Traffic acquisition

In addition to knowing who your audience is and learning where they navigate to on your website, a key piece of helpful information is knowing where your audience is coming from. Under the Acquisition tab, you’ll find ‘Channels.’ It’s here that you’ll be able to see which sources your traffic is coming from. The main channels include Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Social, Paid Search, and Email.

This information can give you a lot of insight into how people are finding your business online. If you’ve put a lot of effort into your SEO marketing, then you’ll likely see significant traffic coming from Organic Search. If you’ve been focused on social media marketing, then you’ll probably see a good amount of traffic from Social.

Bounce rates

Bounce rates can be tricky to understand. Put simply, they are the percentage of visits in which a person leaves your website from any page on your website without browsing further or clicking on any other pages.

Most businesses will likely want their website visitors to navigate to more than one page or blog post. A higher bounce rate (such as anything above 50%) means that many of your visitors aren’t exploring more than one page or blog post before leaving. This is seen as a negative “score” in Google’s eyes, because it assumes that those who leave that quickly didn’t find the information engaging and/or useful.

Focus on improving user experience on pages or posts with high bounce rates, and encourage them to click on other pages through buttons and links.

Optimize Your Website’s Design Today

If the data you see in Google Analytics isn’t what you’d hoped it would be, then it may be time to change up your design and content.

With a liveBooks website, you’ll be able to use our stunning, customizable website templates that look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!

What started in the late 1990s as a personal platform to share interests to the online public, blogs have steadily developed as trustworthy sources of information and pillars of communities whose followers may not be living in the same geographic region as the blogger, but their bond to the content creator and the rest of the members is as sturdy as they get.

Blogs come in many shapes: from the classic textual weblog, to vlogs (video blogs) or podcasts. But what emerged as an online-diary created and updated by only one individual is now becoming more obviously a very useful tool for businesses. Not only do they guarantee a constant flow of content, they are also the perfect answer to the newly-emerged question: WHO are these companies?

Trust is earned through hard work and commitment, and businesses rely on blogs more these days to assure the general public that their heart is in the right place. So they share their actions, their thoughts, their vision with everyone who would lend an ear. Whether in marketing campaigns or simple year-round content creation, businesses now turn to blogs to build better bridges.

The results? A reliable online community, an increase in brand visibility and more happy clients. If you’re not still convinced your creative business needs a blog, give this piece a thought.

Before starting a blog, you will need to take some things into consideration:

• You will need to be consistent, make a schedule and stick to it.
• You must find the topics that best suit you and your business and create your posts around them.
• You should know who your target is and adjust your writing persona to them.
• You should use an online platform that is easy to update.

We’ve already covered the top three items in a previous article, so make sure you give that a read to familiarize yourself to the process of starting a blog. So what we’re left is choosing the best platform for your followers and ultimately for yourself.

Use your website as the platform for your blog

There’s a chance you already have a website to showcase your products or services. It’s also very likely you’ve covered all the SEO bases and the website is generating valuable reach each day. So why use another platform for your blog when you can incorporate it to your website under a separate page? Think of all the perks this merger brings.

SEO
Take the SEO you already have set up for your website and add to the reach well-placed keywords within your blog posts can bring! Furthermore, think of your visitors: now they won’t have to change tabs to read your blog, instead they’ll spend more time on your website, where they can easily find your contact info and thus, making it easier for them to get in touch with you.

One platform
Adding a blog to your website means you don’t need to familiarize yourself with the functionalities of a stand-alone blog platform. This affects how you see your future blog posts: the easier it is to post them, the more likely you are to keep posting.
Choose a responsive platform that allows you to easily edit and upload your posts on the go. Once the restrains of your work-space are cut off, the limit to your possibilities goes with it.

One login
We have created tons of users and passwords for our online presence. Too many to keep track of. So why create another if you can bypass this altogether? Having your blog on the same platform as your website means you login once and all your tools are there for you to use.

Regular updates
We know updating your website is more than often postponed. If you had your website and blog on the same platform, though, every time you logged in to post something, you’ll inevitably be reminded that you need to address your website, too. Chances are you’ll find a couple of minutes to make those changes and provide your visitors with new content.

liveBooks is the website builder that allows blog incorporation on the same platform. Your posts, as well as your portfolio, are easy to update and share.

Try our responsive platform today and start your 14-day FREE trial!

If you’re a wedding professional, then you already understand the importance of marketing yourself in a crowded industry. And one of the most effective marketing techniques to use to help you stand out is blogging.

Blogging has many benefits for wedding professionals, whether you’re a photographer, a florist, or a planner. It helps gain leads, boosts your website’s SEO, and positions you as a thought leader in your niche. And the best part is, you don’t need a special bag of tricks to create content. All you need is the wedding experience and knowledge you already have! With a few blogging techniques in the back of your pocket, your wedding blog game will be at the next level in no time.

Blog with your ideal client in mind

As a wedding professional, it’s safe to say that you are an expert when it comes to weddings. No matter which product or service you provide, whether it’s florals, cakes, video, photography, or something else, you may have plenty of experience in the wedding world. And luckily, blogging on your website is the perfect outlet for sharing that knowledge with your audience.

Think about who your ideal client is and what they may be searching for when planning their wedding. It’s most likely related to tips, inspiration, style guides, or current wedding trends. This is your opportunity to use your own knowledge and experience to create resourceful blog posts on topics that potential clients will be searching for.

Once they stumble upon your website, they will likely find your website resourceful, and will see you as a thought leader in your industry. You can write about your specific niche in the wedding industry as well as the industry as a whole, but either way, be sure to think like your client.

Hyperlink to industry resources

Whenever you’re writing helpful blog posts for your audience, like wedding day tips or inspiration, it benefits both the reader and your business to include links to outside sources.

Adding links to major wedding resources like WeddingWire give your posts more credibility as a trusted resource. Another important reason for hyperlinking to industry resources is that it helps search engines understand what your website is and why it should be categorized with other wedding websites. This helps boost your overall SEO in the long run which will ultimately lead to more clients being able to find your business.

Showcase your work

Once you’ve gotten visitors onto your site through inspiring and informative blog posts, now is the time to showcase your own products or services. It is your business, after all!

Your website is, first and foremost, a portfolio of your work and an overview of your business. That means you want to include plenty of samples of the work you have done to give potential clients an idea of your expertise.

Gather the photos from each wedding you’re a part of and choose the highlights (or the entire wedding) to include in a blog post. Post these highlights after each wedding to showcase your style and skills to potential clients who find your website.

Start Blogging on an Easy-to-Use Website Builder

liveBooks offers mobile-responsive, customizable website templates for creative professionals and businesses worldwide.

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free here.

The footer – the info that lies at the bottom of all website pages – always comes last, but that’s no reason to neglect it. Why? Well, for once, it’s the last thing your visitor or potential client sees after browsing any of your pages; and since you’ve made sure they’re welcome with a beautiful homepage, why not bid them farewell in the same way?

Most website owners tend to give the footer as little attention as possible, but for everyone else the footer is the gift shop at the end of the expo – an opportunity to browse and sink in what they’ve already seen, a chance to keep in touch with you.

The footer can serve as the home of many different tools, helpful not only for your clients, but for your business as well. We’ve put together a list of all the things you can use in your footer.

The guide

Take mobile browsers, for instance: on mobile, we tend to spend most of our time scrolling down until we reach the end of the page. Then what? Well, with a footer containing links to your most visited pages, the browsing could go on without having to scroll back to top and figuring out where to go next. Using the footer as a guide to your website will ensure your visitors spend more time on your website. This is especially useful when you have pages with lots of content.

The help

As much as the footer is beneficial to your visitors, it’s also a great help for you and your website when it comes down to SEO. The fact of the matter is that search engine crawlers that go through your website use the links provided by you in the footer to get a better read of what you consider to be important, ranking those pages higher. This doesn’t mean you should put links to all your pages in the footer, but make sure you don’t leave out the most important ones: your Contact and About pages, as well as your most visited page.

The proof

When dealing with clients it’s always a big plus of you can showcase your awards, certificates or badges to further grow your credibility. The footer is the best place for these seals of approval and can be the It-factor that helps your clients choose your service or products confidently.

The token

After your client has exhausted all your content, use the footer to lay down the bricks of future conversations: your social links or newsletter.

The brand

Of course your footer has to be in the same visual parameters as your brand, so go ahead and include your logo, your main copy, your campaign headline, or any other visual elements that are distinctive to your brand.

The fine print

Any site may come with its own technical and legal info. Use to footer to link to Privacy Policies, Terms & Conditions or Disclaimers.

General tips when building your footer:

• Space is important – footers sometimes tend to clutter, so do your best to avoid it. The more whitespace you have between your links, the easier they are to read and, most importantly, access. Never neglect the mobile users!
• Important links on top – you should try and keep your footer organized, starting with a hierarchy of the links you add.
• Make sure anyone can read it – this is especially important considering that most of the time, the font in the footer is smaller than that of the rest of the website. Make sure the font is still easy to read and that the contrast between the text and the background is easy on the eyes.

Sign up for a free trial today to see the many ways a footer can look and feel on all devices!