2009 - Images Get Social

By the end of the first decade of the new millennia, the Internet had saturated every part of our culture. Flickr was named one of Times 50 best websites of 2009. Created by Yahoo, Flickr gave people a place to store and share their photos online. Flickrwas the first site to use collaborative tagging. The idea is that if everyone is allowed to tag everyone else's uploaded photos, then a rough-and-ready categorization will naturally emerge from the wisdom of the crowd. This is what "made" Flickr.

 

 

 

2014 - The Rise of Inbound

With a growing online economy, businesses were looking for more ways to interact and connect with prospects. Online ads and pop ups had been frustrating users for years and there were now more ways than ever to block these interruptions. Instead of marketing at prospects, smart marketers decided to try a new approach. By offering advice and engaging prospects with their website, marketers could now nurture leads into customers. Inbound was born. Hubspot's software has helped thousands of companies world wide. Their number one lead source? Their website. The interactive design and CTA's above the fold have been tested and proven. Many of today's marketing sites look to Hubspot for design ideas. Many more have moved onto their COS platform. This design shows the move towards using the full page and how text is an important part of design.

 

 

2015 - Growth-Driven Design 

2016 - Social Media and White Hat Backlinks

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest, all function as search engines much like Google and Yahoo. This increases the demand for content and marketers are stretched further every month. 

Relevant internal and external backlinks are a vital part of helping Google understand your website's context and authority. The need for white hat backlinks also increases the pace at which companies begin pushing content on social.  The metrics to accurately measure the ROI of social selling are not fully understood, however, sales professionals believe in the power of social selling.

The Present - Data-backed OmniChannel Marketing: SEO Optimization is Key

Today's marketers understand that a company's website is often the first opportunity they will have to connect with a potential customer. Complementary colors, an eye catching logo, and pages that present the mission of the company are all important. Web design must also incorporate clear navigation, relevant content, and images that relate to the products or services. 

Load time is an essential part of the overall design and cannot be ignored. With millions of websites to browse a slow site is not worth waiting for these days. 

Each page much incorporate SEO optimization on all images as well as meta descriptions and title tags. A great design may look nice, however it will not help Google find you.

As Google continues to tweak their algorithm for semantic search marketers who stick to SEO best practices and track their progress using google analytics will be able to make small adjustments based on insights about how their website ranks in search, organic traffic, referring sites, and the most popular pages on their website.