6 Reasons to do a Website Redesign !

You've probably heard at some point of time, “maybe we should do a website redesign?” and if you haven’t yet, that day will come soon, that I promise.

Having done a few, we can reassure you that a website redesign is no magic bullet. It won't be a quick win, even though many marketers and business owners perceive it to be.

A new website doesn’t automatically guarantee a jump in conversion rates or an increase in revenue. There can be complications and you need to consider the impact on SEO (search engine optimization) if you are changing the site’s structure.

Nevertheless, if you do your homework correctly (i.e. research and testing), a website redesign will propel your business forward.

There are several explanations as to why you want to redesign your website. Maybe your visitors aren't converting or the bounce rates are too high. Maybe your website doesn't reflect your business goals and vision any longer, or worse - it's not mobile friendly.

Digging deep and understanding your reasoning and the needs of your buyer personas is essential before you even think of reaching out to a  web development agency.

Is a website redesign really necessary?

Website redesign basics

You might have heard that a website redesign should be done every 3 years or so. But when should you really do it? Is it really worth the time, stress and expense?

Your website can be a major source for leads and revenue and if it isn't, it might be time to take a close, hard look at how it's performing. Your prospects visit your website to decide whether to buy a service or goods from you and if they aren't satisfied, they will leave and quickly forget about it.

    "88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience"

If you give them a nice experience, they might be swayed to visit your pricing page.

We have seen opportunities to perform significantly better by creating landing pages, so we decided we needed that kind of flexibility to exist on those websites.

What is the first thing you need to do?

First things first, gather data on the current Users journey and map out everything.

Plan the project and set priorities for your end goals, but keep in mind that the User's needs are the primary focus, so make sure they always match.

Create prototypes to better understand what the new website needs to be to match all requirements. User testing is the correct way to see if the created architecture works for what the User is looking for.

Remember, the User defines your failure or success - use data and feedback to create the perfect journey for your user.

What are the challenges you can expect?

Restyling a website is a delicate process. Changing the IA (Information Architecture) could cause discrepancies with well-ranked pages on search engines - so you can use them as milestones to build the new architecture and improve ranking for other pages later.

Another challenge is consistency between products. Keeping your branding, copy and product consistent isn’t as easy as it may seem, but it can only benefit your brand.

So, why redesign your website? There are six solid reasons, but above all, we want the new website to reflect your values as a company and put you in a position to serve your customers the best we can.

Six reasons for doing a website redesign

1. To communicate your brand values better

Rewrite all of the copy as part of the website redesign, keeping value to your Users. Each section of the website mirrors the primary message you're communicating, making it simple to navigate and understand. It is a fresher, brighter look with visual cues as to how your message can help you be more productive on social media.

After a few months of testing, start phase two of the redesign project. This time around, we focus on visual styling improvements and adding some more back-end functionality.

The redesign of the website also helps the re-branding project. Your logo, marketing collateral, social media presence, online adverts, support site, blog and eventually, the actual desktop app must all been revamped.

2. To improve website usability for your visitors

If you have a ‘brick and mortar’ store, you aim to keep it presentable and welcoming. The same story applies to your online site. With the new website, you improve your site structure and the user journey. To do this, we focus on telling a story that connects your core USPs (unique selling points) with the pains and challenges of your customers.

We add brand new sections to the site. We also introduce custom contact forms to make it simpler for prospects and customers to get in touch with you and receive responses as quickly as possible.

3. To improve usability and flexibility for marketing.

Creating a new landing page, changing the formatting or sequence of page elements and adding new assets are all crucial tasks for testing your site’s performance and improving conversion rates. You need a website developer to create a website that doesn't just look good but is also easy to manage and marketing focused.

4. To improve SEO and site performance

While your old website had detailed menus, most pages are usually image-based and the overall length of the copy and the number of inbound links lacks heavily. The website structure is tedious for some users as well as for search engines. To counter this, we need to analyze your best performing, high-value pages and used them as the cornerstones for your new website structure.

It’s ideal to have an experienced web developer or a technical SEO expert to help you in the process. But if you don’t, there are plenty of resources online that can help guide you, including painless website migration tips and advice on performing an SEO audit to check rankings. It’s also wise to do a full link audit before launching your new website.

5. To improve the quality and volume of the leads generated

Inbound leads are important to your marketing funnel, so we want to generate more high-quality leads by improving the website and strategy. To do this, we need to expand on the type of content that lived on the site.

After a few months of testing, we can confirm that knowing your buyer personas is crucial for improving conversion rates. With tools like Optimizely, you can A/B test your website pages and only make changes when you know they will work with the majority of your visitors. You will see an increase in conversion rates every time you change the copy to specifically target your ideal customers. So do lots of testing, before and after you redesign your website.

6. To facilitate integrations with external software

Last but not least, you want to make your website compatible with all of the tools that we currently use to improve data capture, testing and user experience. We integrate with a live chat tool. Spending less time on admin tasks is one of the best pieces of advice we can give! There are quite a few marketing technologies that can help you do just that - especially useful if you are working with a lean team.

An Opportunity

There are many reasons why you should do a website redesign or migration. Understanding the ‘why’ and planning the project while keeping user experience and function front of mind is what works.

Whenever your website doesn't perform as it should, be it because of design, conversions or general feedback issues, it's an opportunity to improve. Testing concepts and new page designs before making drastic changes can help you get a good grasp on what your final spec will look like.

11 Web Design Trends to Watch in 2019

Guest Author Emma Knightley from Digital Marketing Institute
_____________________________________________________________________

With 2019 just around the corner, we look at 11 web design trends you should consider using. Balancing aesthetics with functionality is a difficult act, but get it right and you'll set yourself up for increased user engagement and higher conversion rates. 

Find out how you can improve your online presence with these 11 actionable tips.

“Mobile internet usage is predicted to increase sevenfold between 2016 and 2021 – Statista”

1. Make Mobile a Priority

According to Statista, “In 2016, 43% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones, up from 35.1 percent in the previous year.” It’s true that the importance of mobile-friendly web design has been increasing for the past several years, and that trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. 

In the first half of 2018, Google rolled out its new Mobile First Index, placing more importance on the mobile version of your website by making it the first to be seen in the search results. This means that your website must have mobile-friendly design.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are also becoming more important. If you haven’t already heard about AMP, it’s an open-source coding standard for publishers that allows them to load their sites quickly on mobile. Traditional mobile websites can be a bit clunky, but AMP ramps up the mobile experience by stripping down code, using external resources for media files and running scripts in parallel to allow pages to load instantly.

Whether you are designing a brand-new site or retrofitting any existing site, AMP is a must for 2019. No potential customer likes a page that loads slowly, and you don’t want to push prospects to one of your (faster) competitors.

2. Irregular Grid Layouts

Grid layouts provide an easy way for designers to tie all of the elements of their web pages together, giving each page a theme and making it easier to navigate. This design theory has been around forever, but there's been a shift in the way they're being used.

Many content management systems, including popular platforms such WordPress, use grid design as the basis of their templates. Two years ago, CSS grid was introduced to provide designers with more options. 

In 2019, we’ll see a shift toward designers using more neutral space and more irregular grid layouts for an ultra-modern design style. Simple styles that include the use of whitespace (or negative space) makes content stand out so that it’s easier to read and navigate. These styles are also easier on the eyes, encouraging users to spend more time on your site. 

3. Bold Fonts & Bright Colors

To complement these modern design styles, you’ll need type font that stands out. Bold font styles help users focus on your content, while the whitespace makes it easier to read and skim through. Together, they’re a perfect complement. Because people typically only spend a few seconds, up to a couple of minutes, looking at your pages, you need to catch their attention with colors and designs that stand out. 

The goal is to create an easy and enjoyable experience for the user to keep them on your site for as long as possible and eventually convert them into paying customers.

In 2019, we may also see these fonts and colors taking the place of images. This makes sense for mobile especially. Unlike images, which slow pages down, scaling the size of your typography won’t impact performance. It also creates cleaner lines on your page that helps your calls-to-action pop. Large buttons, hero images, and clickable images are going out of style and making way for large typographic expressions. 

4. Increase in Micro-Interactions

Facebook and other social media networks have made micro-interactions extremely popular. Users love the ability to contribute a variety of reactions to posts and private messages, from the traditional “liking” of posts, all the way to a flurry of animated hearts you witness when you share the love in private Facebook messages. These micro-interactions allow the user to interact with others without reloading the page.

This is different to the traditional static website user experience, which requires users to reload pages to take action, such as submitting a review. Such a scenario may seem like a minor inconvenience, but it creates a speedbump for customers that will cause some of them to bounce from the page, meaning you lose out on potential conversions. Micro-interactions help level out these speed bumps and provide users with richer interactions.

Using micro-interactions on your site in 2019 will allow users to communicate real-time and increase the speed and connectivity that they have come to expect in a mobile-connected world.

5. More Advanced Scroll Triggered Animations

Scrolled animation triggers encourage users to keep scrolling down your website pages with specifically triggered interactive elements that increase engagement. Here’s one great example of scroll triggered animation from Apple. These animation triggers are nothing new, but they have begun to be used in a new way. The best scroll triggered animations are minimalist, educational and strategic, designed to increase conversions.

Scroll triggered animations can also clean up the look and feel of your website. Instead of having a collection of buttons and menus, your site will convey a true, interactive experience for your users.

6. Top Sticky Elements vs. Bottom Sticky Elements

You know your users read from left to right, but have you thought about the fact that your users are getting used to clicking at the bottom of their smartphones or mobile apps to navigate? 

Since mobile app design is so important to modern web design, website developers are beginning to make sticky menu items scroll from the bottom of the site, as opposed to the top of the site’s pages. Progressive web apps are somewhat responsible from this design evolution, as developers start to design for modern functionality. 

7. Responsive Design

Responsive design is less of a trend than a principle, and it’s been around for a number of years. However, its importance cannot be overlooked. Responsive design is when your website is designed in a way that it resizes to look appealing across multiple screen sizes: mobile, tablets, TV, wearables or desktops.

Though the UX revolution has been happening for nearly a decade, it’s only recently been implemented on a wider scale. In 2019, we expect this design element will continue to expand to include new forms of technology such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

8. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

They may still sound like terms from a sci-fi film, but artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have hit the mainstream. Three years ago, Google’s AlphaGo AI beat a skilled human Go player for the first time, a defeat that had long been sought after, and AI assistants like Siri are available on millions of devices.

  

So it comes as no surprise that Adobe’s Sensei promises to make AI tools easily available to web developers around the world, while The Grid has been offering AI-based web designs since 2014. As AI and machine learning continue to advance, we’ll start to see them make their way into webdesign in other, more advanced ways.

9. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs)

Although they are not new, in 2019 you can expect this graphic format overtake more traditional file formats such as PNG, GIF and JPG. SVGs are vector images, not pixels, which gives them many advantages.

They are incredibly scalable (while maintaining their quality), meaning they won’t affect page speed when animated because they don't’ require any HTTP requests. SVGs are essential to providing quality multimedia experiences for users in 2019 (360-degree views, 3D images and Cinemographs).

10. Progressive Web Apps

Apps make up a large portion of mobile media time, and web designers are started taking notice and blending the best of web and app behaviors. This hybrid creation is referred to as a Progressive Web App. In 2019, we’ll see a trend in upgrading websites to add elements such as animated page transitions, push notifications and splash screens. Some websites like Medium, are already there, offering apps that are easily accessible with a click. Such apps will continue to evolve to meet each user’s personalized tastes.

They are useful to users from the very first visit in a browser tab, no install required. As the user progressively builds a relationship with the app over time, it becomes more and more powerful. It loads quicker, even on flaky networks, sends relevant push notifications, has an icon on the home screen, and loads as a top-level, full-screen experience.

11. Internet of Things Connectivity

Connecting web services to the Internet of Things has been a huge trend in 2018, and it will continue on this path in 2019. 

IoT devices can include objects as simple as a refrigerator to as complicated as a tidal turbine. These “things” use sensor arrays and server-side processing to receive and act on their environments. APIs that allow web developers to connect and communicate with these devices are currently being created, leading to even more interconnectivity of the next several years.

Simple, Functional, Futuristic Design in 2019

In 2019, the focus will be on designing simple but powerful websites that are well optimized for mobile devices and heavily focused on user experience.

 These sites will feature new types of formats, styles and technologies. Is your brand’s website ready for what 2019 has to bring? 

Google Ranking Factors 2019: Opinions from 1,500+ Professional SEOs

The following is a guest post by Rand at SparkToro.

---

In August of 2019, 1,584 professionals in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) took a survey sharing their opinions on the relative use and merit of various inputs in Google’s ranking systems. This report shares the aggregated results of that survey. Each year, the survey will be repeated to show trends of how ranking factor opinions shift.

How Google Weights Ranking Inputs

Respondents were asked whether they believed ranking inputs were fixed in the algorithm’s weighting system, or whether certain types of queries (or all queries) weighted ranking elements differently.

The responses show that nearly 2/3 thirds of survey takers believe Google has a wide variance of how ranking inputs are weighted depending on the query words used. This makes analysis of the ranking systems vastly more challenging (as a ranking input might be very important for one set of queries, and relatively unimportant for another). Hence, in the ranking input weighting results below, results should be interpreted with knowledge of this potential variance. I.E. SEO's generally believe certain factors outweigh others in importance, but not necessarily in the universality of this ordering.

Ranking Factors Overview

The question text shown to each participant was the same: “For each of the following factors, enter your opinion of how much weight it receives in Google’s organic ranking systems (the classic, ten-blue-links style results).”

Participants in the survey were given a 0-10 scale to rate each of 26 ranking factors with the following labels:

• 0 – Not Used
• 5 – Moderately Weighted
• 10 – Very Heavily Weighted

The visual below illustrates the results from highest average (8.52/10 to lowest (4.19/10).

Consensus vs. Variance of Opinions

Using standard deviation, we can see how on some factors, survey-takers generally agreed (i.e. their responses were tightly clustered around a number) vs. had more disagreement (i.e. responses were spread out). The visual below ranks the factors by level of disagreement.

As might be expected, there’s relative consensus around the top ranking factors (“relevance of overall page content,” and “quality of linking sites & pages”), and more disagreement toward the bottom of the list. This suggests that some SEO practitioners still feel very strongly that factors like keyword-use in domain name, and age of website are powerful influencers, while others think they have little to no impact.

Most interesting to me was the relatively high disagreement on two factors in particular: “Use of Google” AMP and “Content accuracy with accepted facts.” Given that both of these are, in my opinion, used situationally in the ranking algorithms, the high distribution of responses makes sense. One could argue that Google AMP is “all or nothing” factor — in the AMP box on mobile, it’s essential to even being considered, and in all other cases, it makes little difference. A similar case could be made for content accuracy — that it’s used when Google’s applying a high trust parameter to YMYL-type queries, and not applicable at other times.

Comparison of Self-Described “Top 10%” of SEO Professionals vs. All Respondents

Those taking the survey were asked to rate their level of SEO knowledge and experience from “0” (New to SEO) to “10” (Top 10% of the Field). The distribution of those responses is below.

The visual below compares the responses from the 8.1% (129) of survey-takers who said they were in the “top 10%” of the field to the average across all survey-takers.

Perhaps surprisingly, the comparison is not particularly striking. The most variance comes on keyword use in the URL (-1.06) and age of website (-0.97). In general, those with more self-described knowledge and experienced rated all factors a little lower than those with less, perhaps evidence that those with greater experience find more complexity in Google’s ranking systems.

Which trends will have the biggest impact on SEO in the next 3 years?

Each survey-taker was asked to rate the following trends based on their perceived impact to the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) over the next 3 years.

These results show that professional SEO's generally think Google’s own activities, especially their layout choices in the SERP's (Search Engine Result Pages), their decisions to enter more verticals as a publisher and competitors, and their technological/product advancements will have a far greater impact than any government, competitive, or outside influence.

Rand’s Personal Analysis

I compared this year’s data to the aggregated opinions from the previous Moz Ranking Factor opinion surveys across the prior 14 years (2015, 2013, 2011, 2009, 2007, 2005), and found a number of fascinating trends:

• For the first time, content > links & keywords: In the early days of the survey, keywords were the top-voted ranking factors, then, for nearly a decade, links did. Now, content relevance and quality dominate. I think this perception is generally correct (though links are still a powerful #2), and it reflects the great strides Google’s made in understanding content that satisfies searcher intent.
• The perceived value of anchor text is diminishing: Anchor text of links had been a mainstay in the top few ranking factors every year until 2019. It’s not even in the top 10 anymore. I think that’s probably incorrect as an absolute assessment, but I agree that in general, Google has been moving away from an over-reliance on that factor across the prior two decades (1998-2018).
• Mobile friendliness & load speed are bigger than expected: My impression from case studies and Google’s public statements are that these elements are relatively small direct ranking factors (though, I’d posit that indirectly, they nudge things like link earning, engagement, and other important inputs). Seeing them so high was a surprise, and may reflect that modern SEO often conflates correlation and causation (though, as I’ve often argued, correlation in the SEO field is not only interesting, but useful).
• Amount of Content & Age of Website: It’s my belief that, while both are correlated with higher rankings, neither of these are technically used by Google to rank web pages. I’m surprised (and a little disappointed) that they scored so highly.
• Filtering by Geography: One of the biggest misses of the survey this year was my failure to ask where the respondents did the majority of their SEO work. It’s my perception that the importance of various ranking inputs has great variance depending on query language and geography, and I hope to show that in future years.

On the trends front, I found the results initially surprising, mostly because I’m a skeptic on the impact of voice answers (which scored highly), and strongly expect the joint investigations from various branches on the US government to results in significant changes to Google. However, on reflection, I believe the “3 years” time-frame is perhaps responsible for these results. An investigation and subsequent court battle could take significantly longer to resolve.

Methodology & Survey Phrasing

• 1,584 responses were collected via a Typeform survey published from August 6th – August 27th.
• Twitter, LinkedIn, and Email were the primary collection methodologies.
• Respondents came from around the world, although most were from English-language-speaking countries, and the survey was offered only in English.
• 920 responses came from desktops, 654 from mobile phones, and 15 from tablets

The text of each ranking factor from the survey was simplified to create the visuals and data charts. Full text as used in the survey is below for those interested in the precise wording (which tended to be more explicit and explanatory).

“For each of the following factors, enter your opinion of how much weight it receives in Google’s organic ranking systems (the classic, ten-blue-links style results).
If you believe signals are differently weighted based on the query, assume this question refers to the average weight of that signal across all queries.“

• Relevance of the page’s content to the query (i.e. is the text topically relevant to the searched-for keywords)
• Quality of the websites and pages linking to the page
• Use of words, phrases, and content Google might deem “highly relevant to” or “crucial to answering” the query (apart from the query term itself)
• Google’s perceived expertise, authority, and trust of the host domain
• Mobile friendliness of the UI/UX
• Exact (or near exact) use of the searched-for keywords in the content, title, and meta data of the page
• Quantity/diversity of the websites linking to the page (i.e. more unique linking domains vs. many links from the same sites)
• Accuracy of the content (i.e. whether, from Google’s perspective, the page’s/site’s content is truthful and correct)
• Link authority of the host domain (based on the quantity and quality of the links that point to the entire website)
• Google’s perceived expertise, authority, and trust of the individual page’s content (and, if identifiable, the author behind it)
• Use of entities relevant to the query (like names, concepts, places, etc) in the page’s content
• Web page load speed
• User & usage data signals such as searchers’ click-preferences, bounce rate relative to other pages/sites in the rankings, pogo-sticking, engagement, etc.
• Freshness/recency of the content’s publication
• Anchor text of links pointing to the specific, ranking page
• The location, frequency, and distance of words and phrases closely related to the searcher’s query in the text of the page’s content
• Total amount of content on the page
• Use of unique images/visuals relevant to the query
• Site accessibility factors (like use of alt text on images, screen-reader friendliness, use of color, design of online forms, header us, re-sizable text, etc)
• Anchor text of links pointing to other pages on the host domain
• Keyword use in the URL
• Mentions of the host domain or its associated brand in content around the web (aka “unlinked mentions”)
• Age of the website/domain
• Use of Google’s AMP web component framework
• Presence of external links in the page’s content (i.e. linking out to other websites)
• Keyword use in the Host Domain Name

“How much of an impact do you believe the following trends will have on SEO in the next 3 years?”

• Voice search as a query input (i.e. a searcher speaks their search to a mobile or desktop device instead of typing it)
• Voice-answered queries like those offered by Google’s Assistant, Alexa, Siri, etc. (i.e. a searcher receives a spoken-voice answer without a screen of results)
• Zero-Click searches on Google (queries that result in no traffic to the sites that appear on the SERP)
• Advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence
• Changes to the quantity and presentation of ads in Google’s search results
• Google entering more verticals and competing directly with publishers in their results (e.g. Google Flights, Hotels, Jobs, Events, Maps, Play, Books, etc)
• Government intervention in the technology and web landscape (e.g. EU’s GDPR, Articles 11+13, US Justice Dept. investigation into Google’s antitrust behavior, etc)
• Loss of cookie, visit, and web tracking data (from privacy-focused changes from browsers, tech company changes, and govt. requirements)
• Visual search advances like Google Lens, photo-based querying, or other image-search technology leaps
• Google Discover and other latent, content-nudging/engagement technologies
• Government intervention in Google’s operations from Congressional investigations, Justice Department actions, plans like Bernie Sanders’ or Elizabeth Warren’s to break up Google, or other anti-monopoly activity

The raw data for each factor, including mean, median, and standard deviation, are in the chart below:

The Science of Social Timing

By Guest Author: Neil Patel

The #1 job of any modern marketing plan?
Creating spectacular content.

The best content engages customers and leads, builds relationships, and doesn’t scare people away with aggressive sales tactics.

People want useful, interesting, and helpful sales content. And thankfully, most marketers already know this.

According to 2017-18 data from the Content Marketing Institute, 86% of B2C marketers and 91% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing.

And in our ad-blocking world, content is one of the best methods to get your message in front of as many eyes as possible without resorting to annoying ads.

So if you’re not already in the content game, start using content marketing today.

But along the way, you’ll probably run into a simple problem—when do you share your content for maximum impact?

Every channel has peak times, as well as times when almost none of your potential buyers are online.

Today, you’ll learn when to share the amazing content you’ve created to reach the most people.

Best channels for your content

Let’s start by analyzing the channels you can use for your content.

There is an infinite number of ways you could send your content to potential customers and prospects, but only a few are really worth your time.

But while there’s always new hype about the latest and supposedly greatest ways to share your content, three really dominate the field. Focus on these and you’ll be fine.

The three are email, blogs, and social media platforms. Research shows again and again that these platforms tend to be the most common, most effective, and most visited channels.

Now, chances are you’ve already tried (or are planning on trying) all three of those channels.

But no matter how great your content or which networks and blogs you work on, if you’re not sending it out at the right time, you’re going to struggle.

How to give yourself an extra boost

with proper timing

Here’s a little marketing secret you’ll learn once you master the basics of quality content: when you share can be as important as what and where.

Think about it: the internet is a global playground, with people online and browsing for content to consume 24/7.

What you post or send at any given moment will be seen by a very small percentage, with an even smaller percentage actually taking notice of it.

You’ve got to hit publish or send at the opportune moment. Don’t guess about when it’s most likely to have the farthest reach and biggest impact. Know for sure.

For example, the Central and Eastern time zones account for over 80% of the population in the United States.

Publishing to Facebook at 9pm in Los Angeles means it’s midnight on the East Coast. You’re excluding a huge chunk of potential readers.

When they wake up the next moment, your post or tweet is long gone.

Be selective about when you share. You worked hard on it. And they want to see it. Share at the best time on social, email, and your blog.

Correct timing for social media posts

Every network has its own highs and lows. You can use that to your advantage by posting on the right day at the right time to increase your likes, shares, and clicks.

We’ll talk about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram here.

But you should know that if you’re using a more market-specific platform not included here (say, YouTube or Pinterest) they have their own peak times.

Experiment with different posting times to see what results in the best response for your industry or vertical.

Facebook timing

Facebook is the undisputed king of social media, with billions of members and strong market dominance.

Even if they’ve encountered scandals in the last few years, they still dominate the social media space and likely will for a long time to come.

Of all the networks to take part in, Facebook should probably be on your list. Customers just expect it.

Look, there’s always new data coming out about the “best time” to post on Facebook, but in reality, you can use Facebook’s analytics tool to find out what works best for your audience.

Just log into your Facebook page and select Facebook Page Insights. You can see when your users are most active, what time zone they’re in, and a host of other data.

Schedule sample posts at different times throughout the day, then test and revise.

One tip is to measure weekend engagement differently than weekday engagement. So schedule posts at different times Monday through Friday than on Saturday or Sunday.

Twitter timing

Twitter is another social media platform with a broad user base that spans different industries.

If you’re using Twitter, my best advice is to post on a regular basis. I try to post every hour, seven days a week.

Sure, there might be a peak time to post your most important updates. You can do some research on posts you schedule to see what works best.

But in general, you need to be engaging with people all around the world (and even the night owls where you live) at all times of day and night.

Of course, that’s impossible for a human to do, so use a scheduling tool like Buffer or MeetEdgar to push out tweets, even when you’re asleep.

Instagram timing

Finally, I have a simple tool you can use to improve the times you post on Instagram.

The life expectancy of an Instagram post is longer than Facebook and Twitter combined, though this is gradually changing as there’s more and more content on the platform.

When posting on Instagram, expect to get 50% of your comments within the first 6 hours, and 75% within two days.

The best strategy to posting on Instagram is to use an analytics tool like Iconosquare. With this type of software, you can quickly see where your followers are located.

With that information, send out your posts in the morning in their time zone. When people wake up, they often engage with Instagram first thing in the morning, so target people early.

And of course, you can adjust this depending on when people get up—if you know your audience tends to sleep in, schedule it later in the morning.

The best time to send out an email

Email marketing is the best return-on-investment you can make for your business, with an average return of $44 for every $1 spent according to 2016 data.

And if that’s not enough, email has a higher conversion rate than search and social combined.

Moral of the story? Use email to share your content and engage with your customers and leads.

But if you want to avoid being deleted, overlooked, or ignored, you’ve got to time those precious messages to arrive in the window.

Like all of the suggestions in this article, compare my recommendations with what data applies to your specific industry and the emails you’ve sent out in the past.

But typically, you’ll get a higher engagement rate in the mornings than in the afternoons or evenings. In fact, 10pm-6am is considered a “dead zone” since so few people are on email at night.

Remember, people often read our emails first thing after getting up. So be sure to have an email waiting for someone to read right out of (or even in) bed.

When to post on your blog

Of course, blog articles have the longest lifespan of any of these channels. People still read blog posts that are years old, even when they’d never do that with social media updates.

So, how often should you publish?

According to 2018 data, sites that publish 16+ articles each month drove 3.5x more traffic than those that only published four or fewer monthly posts.

So publish frequently—around every other day or so.

But, as with social and email, when you hit that publish button is important.

Publish during peak times during the day, and you’ll likely see more traffic and more engagement (comments and sharing), but you’ll also face stiffer competition.

Publish during downtimes, like at night, and you’ll face the opposite—fewer competitors for attention, but less traffic overall.

The best time to post can’t really be determined with such simplistic factors without understanding your specific market, but here are some general guidelines.

For maximum traffic, the best time to publish a post is on Monday in the late morning around 11am. The weekend is over and people are looking for something interesting midway through work.

If you’re aiming for comments, though, research suggests that Saturday morning is the best time.

People are just more likely to engage when they’re relaxed and reading on a weekend morning.

And finally if you’re looking for links, early morning publishing can help, and Monday and Thursdays are both great days for this.

But remember—the ultimate strategy to improve your blog readership isn’t to worry too much about posting times.

Since a blog post doesn’t “expire” as quickly as an email or social media post, your focus should be on promotion and sharing through other channels, not just publishing at the right minute.

Conclusion

Most content marketers already know they need to be writing the best content for their audience.

And I’d venture to say most of those marketers also know the best channels to post their content on, whether that’s through email, blogs, or social media.

But many marketers are missing out on the final step: when to post the content. With a deep knowledge of when the peak times are for your audience, you can maximize the impact of everything you write.

Sending out content at the right time is the secret sauce that will give you a leg up over your competitors.

And in the field of internet marketing, small details like communicating with your audience at just the right time can make a big difference.

What times work best with your content schedule?

_________________________________________________________________

About Neil Patel

He is the co-founder of NP Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.