FAQS
Over the years, we’ve fielded a lot of questions about web development and digital marketing, and we’re answering some of the most common below. (Not finding what you’re looking for? Don’t hesitate to reach out.)
GENERAL QUESTIONS
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When you start a partnership with The Digital Ring, we make your experience as seamless as possible — you’ll have just one point of contact.
You’ll be paired with an account executive or project manager who will handle internal communication to make sure your marketing initiatives are completed on time and on budget. They’ll keep you updated on our progress and answer all of your questions via regular emails, calls, and/or in-person meetings.
Click here to meet a few of our account executives and managers.
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This depends on the complexity of the project.
Typically, multiple members from various internal teams work on a single client’s project at different points in the process.
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We have in-house “specialty teams” (e.g. website development, graphic design, paid digital advertising, and SEO) whose efforts are coordinated by an account executive or project manager. We all share one open office space that makes collaboration easy.
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We involve our specialty teams from the very beginning of every new project. Collaborating from the get-go helps us make sure we ask the right questions to continually push the envelope for your business’s marketing.
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We don’t limit ourselves to partners within a single industry or of a certain size. From sandwich shops to construction companies to apartment complexes to insurance agencies and more, we’ll work with any business in any industry.
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Success looks different for every company. We’ll work with your team from the beginning to define your business’s goals and align our marketing efforts accordingly. We’ve done everything from growing general brand awareness to drastically increasing the number of people who make a purchase.
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On the surface, digital marketing is pretty straightforward: it uses digital channels like the internet and social media to promote brands and businesses. It gets more complicated when you dive into strategy, execution, and measurement, which is where we come in.
Traditional marketing, on the other hand, typically involves tangible products like printed-out mailers, billboards, and old-school newspaper ads. It isn’t dead — it’s just changing. Depending on your business’s target market, location, and industry, there’s plenty of potential for traditional advertising efforts to have an impact on your bottom line.
Despite the big ol’ “digital” in our name, we do both digital and traditional marketing here at TDR.
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While it may be tempting to pass your marketing efforts off to any digitally savvy college student, we encourage you to take a step back and think about working with a professional.
A successful marketing plan has a lot of different parts. It’s more than posting on Facebook or designing a pretty logo — when done right, every digital and traditional marketing effort aligns with your business’s long-term goals.
We’ve found the biggest success from combining multiple skill sets under one roof. Our developers, designers, copywriters, and more work together under the guide of a strategic plan to make sure our clients get the best bang for their buck.
WEBSITE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
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This depends on your business’s industry and specific goals. A good rule of thumb is that you should update your website when any of its information or design elements are out of date. Ever been to a product site straight out of the 80s and felt compelled to make a purchase? Yeah… we haven’t either. For all the details on our web design and development services, click here.
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We love a good blog here at TDR. Generally, good candidates for blog sections are businesses who:
- Want to position themselves as a source of authority on a particular topic
- Have regular company news they’d like to share online
- Want to take their SEO to the next level by using high-value keywords and internal links
In short, we always want to be thinking about the “why.” As long as you have a strategy driving your posts, blogs are a fantastic way to connect with potential customers, keep your existing audience informed, and improve your website’s search engine rankings. (Want to learn more? Click here.)
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We’ve developed a unique website creation process to finish an average client website in just 90 days. We’ll start off with a website development workshop that involves our internal teams from the get-go so we can move forward thoughtfully and efficiently.
If your website needs extra-fancy animation or has 700 pages, it might take us a little longer than three months to complete. We’ll work with you to develop an accurate timeline at the start of your project.
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These terms all mean that a website works on a smartphone, but the specifics of each design process are a little different.
A mobile-friendly website is designed for desktop and “shrinks down” to display on a mobile device. A visitor is technically able to navigate by pinching to zoom in, but it’s not a great user experience.
A responsive website adjusts fluidly based on the device viewing it to look good at any screen size. For example, a large top navigation on desktop might turn into a small toggle menu on mobile.
A mobile-first website is a type of responsive site designed to be viewed on mobile devices from the very beginning. In a mobile-first design process, designers prioritize a website’s key functionality and build it out for smartphones before considering how those elements might look on desktop.
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Responsive websites are industry standard for a few key reasons.
First, more than half of all internet users view websites from their smartphones. It’s important to give them a seamless, consistent user experience across devices — especially when you’re trying to sell a product or service.
Second, search engines like Google have started using mobile indexing to determine what websites to show on their results pages. If your website doesn’t provide a good user experience on a smartphone, you’re likely out of luck to rank on Google’s first page.
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We’re pretty big WordPress fans over here, but we’ll work with any website platform or content management system a client requests. At The Digital Ring, we’re proud to be “tech agnostic” — that is, willing to use any technology tools that fit the project at hand.
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We’re happy to handle your website’s maintenance and updates for the long haul, but one of the great things about WordPress is how easy it is for someone without any coding knowledge to make simple copy changes. Need to adjust a name, date, or add an extra sentence here and there? We can design the backend so you can!
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Absolutely! The very same developers who worked on your project from the beginning will be able to teach you how to make simple updates to your new WordPress website once it’s completed.
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Website design is the process of deciding how a website will look and function, while website development is the process of actually building out that website design and functionality. There’s an increasing amount of overlap between the two fields as website designers learn more about programming languages and website developers give input on design decisions.
At The Digital Ring, we do both.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
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Custom software development is the process of designing, building, and maintaining software that helps businesses handle various processes. Well-built software can help businesses streamline operations, accelerate processes, and increase efficiency. (Learn more here.)
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“Out-of-the-box” software refers to software designed for the mass market that can handle generic business processes. It’s cost-effective and fast to deploy, but if your business is more unique, a custom solution might be your best bet.
At the beginning of our partnership with you, we’ll learn about your business and what you’d like to accomplish before recommending out-of-the-box versus custom software.
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Our software development process mirrors our website development process — both involve a kickoff meeting and ongoing TDR/client communication as we design, develop, test, launch, and maintain the software.
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While we’ve whittled our website builds to roughly 90 days, developing custom software usually takes a bit longer. After we meet with you to discuss your business needs, we’ll be able to give you a projected timeline.
PAID DIGITAL ADVERTISING QUESTIONS
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Paid digital advertising encompasses any way you spend money to reach an audience online. It’s often called paid online advertising, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), paid digital media, or a range of other variations.
At The Digital Ring, our paid digital advertising team handles everything from Google search advertisements to paid Facebook campaigns to display ads (you know, those little images that follow you around after you leave a site, advertising the very shoes you were just ogling at). Want to learn more about our PDA services? Click here.
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We can measure the success of a digital advertising campaign with a range of performance metrics: click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per click (CPR), cost per conversion (CPC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), bounce rate, total impressions, and more. These metrics tell us whether or not users are getting the desired value out of our advertisements.
Our paid digital advertising team will help you understand each performance indicator in the context of your specific business to maximize your paid digital advertising ROI.
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We build out monthly digital advertising reports for each of our partners based on their unique business goals. By default, we keep track of a slew of different performance indicators like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, impressions, and more, but we’ll customize your reporting to prioritize what metrics matter most to your company.
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The time it takes to see results from paid digital advertising campaigns depends on your business’s specific goals and industry. If your goal is to increase general brand awareness, you’ll usually see results within a few weeks. If your goal is to drastically increase sales, it might take a bit longer.
Together, we’ll work to decide exactly what “results” mean to your company to make sure every effort is aligned with what matters most.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION QUESTIONS
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SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a combination of technical website development and content strategies to make your business’s website rank higher on search engine results pages.
This is important because most people click one of Google’s first few results when they search for something — in fact, 90% of users never go past Google’s first page!
Search engine algorithms can be viewed as the “decision makers” that choose what website pages appear when a user enters a search term. Search engine optimization helps your website better “talk” to these algorithms to increase your chances of showing up first. (Click here to learn more.)
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There are hundreds of factors that affect your site’s ranking, but it all comes down to delivering a high-quality user experience that helps you solidify your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Key considerations include site content, performance, and backlinks (i.e. inbound links from other high-quality sites).
Your business’s search engine optimization strategy will depend on your specific industry and long-term goals. We’ll work with you to develop a unique plan that takes into account every last detail to help you see results.
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Website content that’s written with search engine optimization in mind is based on keyword research with the goal of answering a user’s search query. In other words, it aligns your web content with topics users actually care about.
Content written for SEO is also structured in a way that helps the user move through the content quickly and easily: think headers, bullets, and short, uncomplicated paragraphs and sentences.
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Choosing the right keywords to include throughout your website takes thoughtful research and honesty about your business’s voice and industry. You can compare and contrast different search terms with online tools, but the number one thing you should ask yourself is what your visitors will find valuable.
When it comes down to it, writing for SEO is equal parts art and science. Data analytics needs to drive the journey, but a human voice has to carry it through.
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Back in the internet’s old days (circa early 2000s) search engines primarily relied on a metric called “keyword density” to determine what websites would show up when a user entered a search. This led to marketers “stuffing” their web pages with keywords by hiding them as white text on a white background or behind a cleverly positioned image.
Google’s gotten smarter, though, and if you do this now you’ll be penalized. It’s best to get search engine traffic the right way by creating valuable content and making sure your website’s technical features are top-notch. We can help with that.
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Your customer reviews affect your website’s ranking on search engine results pages, especially within your local geographic area. Just like people, search algorithms see third-party reviews as a strong signal of trust — yet another reason to stay in tune with your customers and do work worth talking about!
You should regularly monitor your customer reviews and respond to both the good and bad comments. This not only encourages community — it’s a valuable opportunity to adjust to feedback.
CONTENT MARKETING & COPYWRITING QUESTIONS
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You’d be surprised how often we hear that one! While our copywriters aren’t intellectual property lawyers, they are skilled at creating written content that helps businesses connect with customers, educate their audiences, and generate more revenue.
Copywriting — also simply called marketing or advertising writing — ranges from case studies to email newsletters to blog posts and everything in between. If it has words and it’s involved in a marketing effort — it’s copywriting. (To learn more about copywriting at TDR, start here.)
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We take the time to learn the ins and outs of your brand through a unique immersion workshop. Years of experience and hundreds of successful projects have taught us what questions to ask from the get-go to develop a powerful content strategy that never strays from your brand’s existing voice.
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You bet we can! We’ll work closely with you to learn where your business is, where you want it to be, and how we can bridge that gap.
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Content marketing is the creation of content (e.g. blogs, infographics, and case studies) that informs, educates, and/or entertains the user as opposed to directly selling a product or service.
By publishing valuable content without asking anything in return, you can build trust and establish yourself as an authority in your industry — all while genuinely helping your customers. Then, when the time comes for customers to purchase a product or service — they naturally turn to you.
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The goal of content marketing is three-fold: to build authority and demonstrate expertise in a particular industry, to nurture customer relationships, and to improve a website’s Google rankings. Each of these goals has its own respective metrics that we carefully track.
GRAPHIC DESIGN QUESTIONS
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We use Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign for most of our graphic design work. With these industry-standard tools, we’re able to create high-quality marketing collateral on an efficient timeline.
To learn all about graphic design at TDR, start here.
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Our award-winning graphic designers are involved in every new project at the start. By looping them in from day one, we’re able to ask the right questions and anticipate future needs before they arise.
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We adjust to designing within each of our partners’ unique brand guidelines with a sort of shape-shifting magic: our graphic designers have spent years honing their ability to flit back and forth between dark and light, serious and funny, understated and bold.
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You bet we do! Our designers are skilled at all things digital, but they can bust out a billboard, direct mailer, or brochure design like nobody’s business.
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How long do you have? Here are just a few examples: desktop and mobile-friendly websites, direct mailers, billboards, point of purchase materials, logos, complete brand guidelines, social media graphics, display advertisements, branded swag (t-shirts, water bottles, backpacks, whatever you can dream up), vehicle wraps, banners, business signs, golf tents… and anything else we send them on a creative whim.
BRANDING QUESTIONS
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Your brand isn’t just your logo — although that’s part of it. In reality, it’s everything that makes you recognizable to customers and distinguishable from the competition. This includes elements like your typeface, colors, taglines, mission statement, values, history, messaging, and yes — your logo.
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That’s a good question. Here are just a few reasons why a rebrand might be your best option:
- Your brand feels dated — it’s no longer reflective of who you are today
- You’ve been struggling to connect with your target audience or you’d like to pursue a new one
- You’ve expanded or updated your product/service offering
- You look just like everyone else in your industry
- You need to disassociate your brand from negativity (it happens)
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This varies by project, but our process typically begins with a kickoff meeting and extensive research on our end. Then, we often move into a brand gap analysis — evaluating where your brand is currently and where you want it to be — before creating the various elements to bridge that gap. To learn more about our branding processes, click here.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT QUESTIONS
The best social media platform for your business depends on your target audience. For example, Facebook is now the popular choice of Gen X, while Millennials and Gen Z flock to visual platforms like Instagram.
Once we know where your business’s audience lives, we figure out what types of content get their attention. Do they love videos? Do they engage with humor? Are they looking for copy-heavy posts with lots of information, or do they just want an eye-catching photo on their feed? We’ll decipher the data to answer all these questions and more.
The short answer? Wednesday late mornings. The long answer? That’s just an average pulled from a huge population of social media users… and, like any sweeping generalization, it won’t apply to every brand.
Each business’s ideal social media posting time depends on their audience. When you work with The Digital Ring, we’ll analyze all the data we can get our hands on to see when your customers are actually engaging online — and we’ll continue to test those insights throughout our relationship.
Facebook recommendations make a big difference for some businesses, like service-based companies with a middle-aged audience, but they don’t carry much weight with others.
We can help you figure out exactly what type of customer reviews matter most for your company. Whether it’s Facebook, Google, or the Tripadvisors and Yelps of the world, we’ll make sure to get the word out.