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Morristown & Morris County: Not Your Stereotypical Jersey

Morristown and the surrounding county is only surprising if all you know about New Jersey are stereotypes. Morristown, Morris Plains, Parsippany are home to a number of Pharmaceutical and Consumer Goods companies. Having worked most of my career in consumer goods, I know the area well.

One of the challenges for businesses serving the suburbs is physical distance and access by car. It is something we take for granted in the densely packed urban centers. Each of the major towns in Morris County have small central business districts which generally surround the train station for NJ Transit - the well travelled Morris-Essex line. The long constant stream of commuters provides reliable foot traffic. Away from those centers, it is harder for new businesses to be found.

Why Web Design is Important in Morristown?

One of the major challenges for new businesses in the suburbs, like Morristown, is being found if you are off the beaten path. Your website, when used effectively, can help you get noticed.

If you are on the beaten path, then it’s all about timing. How to maximize the daily rush coming in and out of town. This is more applicable to the suburbs like Madison and Chattem.

  1. A fast, mobile website in Morristown & Morris County is about being visible, at the right time.
  2. Mobile can also drive awareness among your target audience that your business exists. 
  3. Mobile is perfect because it lets you target the right customers when they are nearby. It is so much easier to get what you need when it's a short walk or drive from where you are.

Your CMS Can Have a Profound Effect on Page Speed

If you didn’t build your own site, you’re likely using a content management system (CMS) that your web builder chose. If he or she didn’t educate you on the pros and cons, you may be in for a big surprise in your webpages’ performance and search engine rankings.

What is a CMS

The technical definition for a content management system (CMS) is “is a computer software program used to manage the creation and modification of digital content.”

In other words, it is a system that allows the content to be stored separately from the code that builds the page. The user enters the code through a program called an interface, e.g. WordPress, and the interface saves that as the page data. The browser takes the files from both locations and renders the page.

However, while simple and easy, it creates a problem. To make this easier to understand, I use a simple metaphor of an architect, contractor, and warehouse. The user is the architect, the contractor is the browser, and all the design code sits in the warehouse

In this metaphor, we are going to use a prefabricated home. There are a general set of blueprints, but lots of options for flooring, tiles, etc.  Think of this as your theme.

The architect now selects specific options within a house, for example, flooring, tile, window type, etc.  But, these specifications aren’t given to the contractor (browser) until he or she shows up to build the house.

The contractor knows he or she is building a home, but other than that, it’s left open. Therefore, they have to bring all the labor and materials they might use, even if they aren’t needed in this specific build.


Once at the site, the contract reads the blueprints and then has to sort through and organize their materials first before the job can start.

As you can see there is a lot of wasted time and materials that put a burden on the contractor. This is why a theme will never be as fast as a custom build.

Creativity Wins Points.

According to Best Designs, original graphics are the most successful. 

“Original graphics make up 40% of all successful visual content that accomplishes marketing goals, but 43% of marketers struggle with the consistent production of captivating visuals.”

Since we are communicating one message, the artwork that supports it must work very hard to support the message. This is where local market know-how can really help. Original photos and images of your business in Kipps Bay interacting with your neighborhood can add value.

It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Morristown or at your business location.

email marketing for small business call to action

Call to Action

Every email, no matter how trivial, should have a call to action. This is where all the hard work above pays off. If we omit one, we just wasted resources that could have been spent more cost effectively.

We cover email list building in great detail in our post on small business email marketing. Again, we will just hit the highlights here as it pertains to Morristown. Every neighborhood has summer fairs. While these were severely impacted by COVID, in our post COVID world they should roar back with a vengeance. It would be smart to see if you could piggy-back off one or more of them.

Incentives, deals, free trials, and samples are all great options when developing your calls to action. See if you can partner with your neighbors to create a shared promotion. This way one shopper in Morristown has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.

Why Digital Marketing is Important in Morristown?

One of the major challenges for new businesses in the suburbs, like Morristown, is being found if you are off the beaten path. Local digital marketing, when used effectively, can help you get noticed.

If you are on the beaten path, then it’s all about timing. How to maximize the daily rush coming in and out of town. This is more applicable to the suburbs like Madison and Chattem.

  1. Local digital marketing in Morristown & Morris County is about being visible, at the right time.
  2. Once you identify the target, it is important to raise awareness among them that your business exists. 
  3. Local digital marketing lets you target the right customers when they are nearby. It is so much easier to get what you need when it's a short walk or drive from where you are.

Custom Build is Likely Your Best Option for Speed

A custom built website is created by web designers. These designers create code only for the features you use to get the results you want. Therefore, there is no excess code. 

If your developer helps you set up your tracking codes and other third party integrations, then you can minimize any issues those create.

The beauty of a custom build is there is no trade-off between speed and quality. When you factor in the lost revenue from bounces and poor conversion that a slower site creates, the investment generally pays for itself.

How to Deal with a CMS

Without taking any action, your performance on mobile will likely fall in the 20s to 40s on Google Pagespeed Insights

Common Options

Plug-ins

WordPress is the dominant market player. Therefore, we will touch on some of the common plug-in for this CMS.

Most of the plug-ins, save W3 total cache, are simple. Most are not free if you want to get the maximum benefit. They do produce a measurable difference in speed, but do not expect to get above 50-60.

AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages was introduced by Google in and around 2016. AMP is a stripped down version of HMTL which has fewer features, which makes it very fast. But, now you need to manage two sites versus one. Plus, you lose consistency between mobile and desktop

Theme Optimization

Since you are changing the theme itself, this requires a significant amount of coding knowledge to do it right. This usually requires hiring a developer.

A good developer can usually clean up the theme enough that you can reach custom speeds. The cost is generally equal to higher than a customer build depending on the work required.

Summary

If you want lightning fast speed, skip the CMS. We recommend a custom build.

  1. No excess code makes the page faster.
  2. You just have to manage one site. There is no need for a separate mobile site.
  3. The lost revenue due to mediocre performance on mobile will likely return more than the upfront investment in a clean, custom build.

ProStraegix is a web design agency with offices in New York City. We also provide SEO and pay per click advertising support to our clients.

Things to Remember…

If you're thinking about finding help in Morristown or Morris County for your small business, here are the things to keep in mind.

  1. Find a firm that knows your area. If your small business is marketing in Morristown or the surrounding area, you'll want help from someone who understands the lay of the land and the daily flow.
  2. Find a company you can trust. If you can't trust a business to have your best interests, you're already going to be left in the lurch. Make sure you have a guarantee that your business will be treated fairly by all parties.
  3. Get the size of help you need. A larger firm can provide more resources and can do more things. A smaller firm, on the other hand, can feel like a neighbor in the area, with the added benefit of one-on-one help from the best the company can offer.

How to Adapt Our Small Business SEO Tips for Morristown

Aside from all the general tips above, here are some specific actions you can take based on the three key elements of local search algorithms:

Proximity 

All of this assumes that you have completed your keyword research and developed your keyword list. If you have not, this section will be more effective once you do. Please see our previous post on digital marketing in Morristown and then come back.

Go through your keywords list and select those which are good descriptors of your business. If it were me, I would use something like “digital marketing agency”, “seo services”, for example. Then make a list of the neighborhoods you service, for example “seo services morris plains”.

Now comes the harder part, that is frankly a bit tedious. For each combination, see if you can create a somewhat unique post that’s 500-1000 words for that keyword. For us, it is a post like this. I try to write a post that helps my potential clients learn something or do something they didn’t know they could. 

Prominence 

Now, this is the good part. If you do write quality posts for these keywords, you will be raising your prominence. Google knows that all these neighborhoods are in Morristown. So, for each good post you write, you help raise your prominence on a given topic in a given location.

Prominence is also helped by the basic techniques I mentioned earlier, such as being a part of local business groups. Please see the Morristown Chamber of Commerce or New Jersey Small Business  for listings that might pertain to you. Any local listing helps.

Relevance

This is why I like the blog technique because it hits all three key areas. If your keyword is a descriptor of what you do and the neighborhood is one you serve, it is highly that you will score points on relevance.

The same tips would apply if you were wanted to go more broadly, for example, the state level with Local SEO New Jersey

If you are interested in what more we do, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Morristown. If you want the full state, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NJ.