I would like to start this blog, with a story our IT teacher told us in our Content Management System class. He told us about two different approaches from web developers.
Diary entries:
- Diary 1: Bootcamp – UX Design
- Diary 2: Bootcamp – UI Design
- Diary 3: Bootcamp – Development
- Diary 4: Bootcamp – WordPress, Hosting and Domain name
- Diary 5: Bootcamp – Digital Marketing
- Diary 6: Bootcamp – Freelancing
A teacher with plenty of years of experience, which was technical top-notch, and able to program every feature in perfection to a website. He creates awesome websites for his colleagues and friends to earn some money apart from his main job to earn some extra income.
The teacher also had two students in his class who have been the class average, with good basic knowledge of web development. They started their own web development agency and have been much more successful than their teacher, who was technically much better.
They have been so successful because they had a Marketing student in their team, creating online advertising campaigns to increase awareness and visibility towards potential customers to convert them into clients.
This means that even if you have a high level of technical skills, you still need to reach the right people to sell your services. That’s why digital marketing is so important to use nowadays because nearly everyone in the world is connected to the internet.
The costs for ads are also at a reasonable price, even for small businesses, when you compare them to offline ads like billboards, TV, or radio.
Also, it is much more specific, which allows marketers to target the right people at the right time.
Introduction of Carl
To be a successful web designer, it is important to know at least the basics of marketing, to market yourself, your services, and maybe even your clients.
Module number 5 of the Web Courses Bangkok, Web Design Boot camp, was about Digital Marketing.
This class was taught by Carl Heaton, the owner of WCB, with more than 18 years of experience in the IT and Design industry.
His classes are very interactive and also fun. He constantly wants us to think about a topic critically, develop our own solutions to problems, and then apply it to real project examples from his work experience.
If someone has a question, Carl will ask the class to answer first, to keep everyone engaged, and this often creates a lively discussion in the class.
He is always ready to tell a good joke, to relax the atmosphere in the web design boot camp.
Carl teaching web pro studentsWhy is everyone talking about SEO?
Our first Topic was Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO. This is a huge subject for marketers around the world because it can be a free tool to gain awareness of people’s desires and questions when they search online. The higher you rank, the earlier people will discover your content.
SEO practices are not only for Google, it also covers all other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and many more.
On the first view, SEO can be very technical with words like title tag, meta description tag, hyperlinks, HTTP Status codes, XML Sitemaps, robot.txt file, and many more. But it is not as complicated as it sounds, because of our increased knowledge about HTML in module 3.
There are also a lot of free and premium tools to assist marketers and web designers to get the most out of their website and content.
But why is everyone talking about SEO? It is because nobody knows how the search engine algorithm with their website crawlers exactly works!
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Search engine optimization can be a checklist of things you need to do, but it is never guaranteed that you rank first when you check all of your points. SEO Specialists can only assume what ranks them higher, and an update can change the landscape instantly. That’s why it is very important to stay up-to-date with the current trends.
At the beginning of the class, we get a great cheat sheet, which breaks down the different elements and categories.
To optimize a demo website on WordPress, we used the freemium tool Yoast SEO. The plugin is very helpful to fill in the right content at the right space, and even reviews your written data, like your meta description, headings, and alt text.
To gain this knowledge as a web design freelancer can be very important because you can add this service into your portfolio and satisfy your client with something he may not expect.
Meta title and description make the first impression so make sure that it is inviting8 Steps Checklist to score a page.
Following the SEO class, we learned more about website usability and conversion effectiveness. In our first module, we learned about UX Design, which is important to know about the usability of a website.
Web Courses Bangkok gave us an 8-step checklist to figure out a site score. This can land us clients, and market our own knowledge and expertise towards them.
- The first step name is WWW, which means that you need to answer the visitor’s 3 essential questions:
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- What do you want me to do next?
When you are able to answer all of these questions at the top of your homepage, the visitor is more likely to stay on your page.
- The second step is the first overall impression. You will look at the Design, Layout, Colors, Quality, and more to be sure all the questions in the first step can be answered visually.
- The third step is the Call-to-Actions button, to lead your page visitor to the right segment on your website. For example, if you sell Fashion, you want to explore the new collection. If you offer web courses, you want your visitors to see which courses you offer, and what are the starting dates and prices. Or if you are a marketing agency, people want to know which services you offer.
- The fourth step is analyzing the written content. Is there too much or too little information about your company, which can be confusing either way? If you overload your visitor with text, they might bounce off your page. On the other hand, a too-short text can be confusing for people who have never heard about your company or product.
- The fifth step is focusing on visual appearance, especially images. Does your image create value for the customer? It can create value when I support a text or explain your product/service. In the web design class, we learned to avoid stock footage, if possible.
- Step number six will focus on the websites of Trust Signals? These are normally testimonials, company partners, awards, certificates, or accreditation. This will build trust with the viewer to work with you or purchase your goods and services.
- At the seventh of the eight steps is the obvious but often forgotten contact details & directions. If you want to be contacted for requests, consultations, or other matters, you need to show your contact details. Also, if you own a local store, you should add your address and sign up to Google MyBusiness, because it is free and can increase your traffic massively.
- The last step, number eight, is about how fast and responsive your page is. If your page is too slow, people will look for another one, or not come back after a bad experience. Additionally, it should be responsive to every device, from a desktop, tablet to a mobile device, to increase your conversions with great usability.
- The first step name is WWW, which means that you need to answer the visitor’s 3 essential questions:
If your potential client is missing some of these 8 steps, you are able to construct marketing recommendations to increase their conversions.
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The Secret of a successful content strategy
A great way to start a successful content strategy could be a catchy headline like I used it. In the content strategy class, we really get a deep dive, with real examples from Carl’s work experience, to start with learning about the client’s business first, and then move on with the target market, allocating the budget, creating a proposal, planning the content calendar, and so on.
We learned that there is not only one way to do it or a template that we can copy and reproduce. We need to understand the business or product first, to follow up with the right steps.
The different content and platforms we can use increase every year, from social media, newsletters, or trending apps.
In this class, we have been supported with helpful materials and cheat sheets. We even received a document with a questionnaire to create a complete marketing plan for future clients.
Constant review of your campaign with Google Analytics.
Creating content is important, but equally important is the data we get out of our posts, article, or ads. With Google Analytics, we can track our website’s performance in real-time with so much data that it can be overwhelming for beginners.
At WCB, we exercised not only where we can find the data, but we also need to find out why? How? And the marketing action should be followed.
For example, was one question, “What is my website’s top content?”. Why do we ask this? We want to know what brings traffic and what people want to see. How can we see this? We go to Google Analytics behavior and then click overview, which will show us the most visited content. And, as action, we should increase the amount of content in the popular category and reduce the non-popular content.
Analyzing the data is often underestimated because most people just look at the numbers and do not really know what they are next, but if you know why you need specific data, how you can find it, and which actions will be performed, you can optimize and grow your business constantly.
google analytics report overview
Never stop learning!
The digital marketing module was very interesting for me because I graduated in Marketing with a minor in Digital Marketing, and I still learned new approaches, tools, and insights at Web Courses Bangkok.
The trends are constantly changing, and it is important to not rest on your knowledge and never stop learning about new methods and strategies.
After the 5 modules, we are prepared to set up our web design freelance career, work with clients, and make a living, but there are one more important steps that we are missing!
In our last module number 6, we will learn about finances, how to design portfolios, create proposals, and actually find clients.
