Fast, Intuitive, Responsive Web Design Wins In Syracuse

John Marino from Pittsburgh, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Syracuse: Hub of Central New York

I lived in Syracuse after my undergrad. I received my graduate degree from Syracuse University while working for P&G, who used to have a facility in the region. Syracuse is a gem of a city. Yes, the winters are tough, and snow is measured in feet. But, the summers are amazing. You are short rides away from the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario.

Syracuse was once a manufacturing and trade hub. But, like all the upstate cities, it was hit hard by deindustrialization of the late 20th century. Today, the city's economy is dominated by the university and the SUNY upstate medical center.

Syracuse, like many towns that are heavily dependent on education and research, businesses have to constantly reintroduce themselves to new customers every year.

Why Web Design is Important in Syracuse?

One of the major challenges for new businesses in Syracuse is the turnover in students, faculty, and employees. Now, that students will likely be back full-time in the fall, be ready with an awesome site to catch their eye.

  1. Your web design in Syracuse is about being visible, at the right time.
  2. It helps you raise awareness among the students and faculty that your business exists. 
  3. A fast mobile site lets the right customers know 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.

For a web design to be successful, it needs to be fast & responsive to do well on mobile, and intuitive so users find what they need quickly.

How Fast is Fast?

5-Second Rule Does NOT apply

I remember as a kid the five second rule. If food fell on the floor, it was still ok to eat it if was on the ground for less than five seconds.

Turns out that germs are more forgiving than mobile users. There is not broad agreement, but it seems they follow the under three second rule.

The 1 to 3-Second Rule

If a page takes over 3 seconds to load, mobile users bounce as the Pingdom chart below suggests.

Pingdom Page Speed Study

SEMRush gauges page speed using a 1 second rule. I would argue they are closer. My personal experience suggests that the widow has continued to narrow.

Search engines grade your speed as part of your ranking. Therefore, page speed is an important factor in search engine optimization.

Main Drag on Page Speed is Unnecessary Code

The root cause of most speed issues is the content management system (CMS) that you choose for your website. 

What is a CMS

In plain English, these are programs such as WordPress and Wix. These programs have three parts. 

  1. User Interface (UI): Place where you enter the content
  2. Theme: This is the general layout and design of the page with all the options
  3. Server: The place where the content and theme are stored as separate files.

The browser has to fetch the data and the full theme in order to render the page. After the browser parses the content, it has to sort through all of the themes features to see which to use. This causes delays in loading, which is typically called render blocking CCS.  

Digital Marketing Agencies Like the Convenience of CMS

With all these disadvantages, you might ask why someone would choose a CMS. A CMS is user friendly. They are faster to build, easier to maintain, and simpler to update. You do not need to understand coding or even basic HTML or CSS commands to get great looking results.

BUT, They Create Render Blocking CSS - Pagespeed Killer

The key issue with the theme. Every theme carries a set of instructions called cascading style sheets (CSS), which tell the browser how the page should look. It will load your content onto the screen following these instructions. 

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 Syracuse 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 Syracuse. 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 Syracuse has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.

Why Digital Marketing is Important in Syracuse?

One of the major challenges for new businesses in Syracuse is the turnover in students, faculty, and employees. Local digital marketing, when used effectively, can help you get noticed.

  1. Local digital marketing in Syracuse 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 your 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 Site Will Yield Best Performance

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.

Any CMS Will Require “Fixing” 

It does not matter that much which theme you choose. All will need some modification to be to pull you out of the 20-40s on Google Page Speed Insights.

Main Options

There are three common options.

  1. Plug-ins: For most CMS systems, plug-in exist to help minimize excess CSS. However, they are not a true fix, but a band-aid. They can definitely help, but they will always be the slowest of all your options. Plus, most require a subscription to gain the most benefit.
  2. AMP: Accelerated mobile pages is a stripped down version of regular HTML. It has fewer options and features, so it is very fast. However, you will need to manage two sites. Plus, you will lose continuity between your desktop and mobile versions. 
  3. Theme Optimization: This requires a developer to strip out the unused code from your theme. This is not cheap, but it can get you close to if not equal to a custom built site.

No Web Design is Really Viable if it is Not Responsive

Users expect the same level of user experience (UX) regardless of device. This is simply the bare minimum of performance.

Custom Builds are Responsive by Design

Custom builds are generally designed for mobile first. They are first designed to work on mobile, then scaled for desktop, not the other way around.

Responsive CMS Themes Require Quality Control

There are several very good themes across CMS providers that can provide a seamless UX experience. However, they require some quality control. 

These are not generally built mobile first. Therefore the first issue is image sizing. If you let the theme do it, it can cost you on performance. Therefore, you will want to be mindful of these pitfalls if you go this route. 

Web Design Needs to be Intuitive

The key challenge with any design is that it is so easy to lost in the visual and aesthetics that we lose track of why people come to a site.

Users Expect to Find What They Need Quickly

Fundamentally, a website is a communication tool. If we lose sight of this purpose, the performance in terms of dwell time, bounce, or conversion will suffer.

In fact, when users were asked what they valued most in a website they chose finding information by a 7 to 1 margin.

A separate report showed 60% users left because they could find what they needed.

Summary

For a great web design, it should excel in three key areas.

  1. The site needs to be fast. Shoot for load speed of 1 second as an average, 3 as the maximum limit.
  2. A web design is only viable if it is responsive. When mobile is primary device for search, this should be a no-brainer
  3. Layout must be intuitive. Users want to find information quickly or they leave.

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 Syracuse 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 Syracuse or the surrounding area, you'll want help from someone who understands the lay of the land, the daily flow, and turnover that is inherent in a college town.
  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 Syracuse, 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 Syracuse

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 Syracuse 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 regions/towns you service, for example “seo services liverpool”, or “seo service fayetteville”.

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 locations are in or near Syracuse. 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 Onondoga SBDC or SCORE Syracuse 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.

Finding the right SEO for your small business in a neighborhood like Syracuse can be a crucial way to get your company noticed online.

If you are interested in what more we do, check out Small Business Marketing in Syracuse.