I’m Keren.

I run a digital marketing and design agency called Top Left Design. I love marketing and continuously watching and researching trends and experience first hand what works and doesn’t.

It’s 2014, and time to make a plan to ensure your online presence isn’t “oh so 2013” or worse.

Note: Between each of the “6 things each website should be and do in 2014” are examples of these in action with some of our clients at Top Left Design.

There is a reason this is the most popular CMS around. We pretty much use it for all

our client’s websites here at TLD! It’s incredibly flexible and easy to use. This

allows you to have a completely bespoke design, or a high quality premium theme.

You can easily edit all the different pages in your website. We find our clients can learn to be self sufficient with the majority of their updates with just one short training session.

YOUR SITE SHOULD BE BUILT

IN WORDPRESS

This means that instead of just showing up as a mini version of itself on mobile phones and tablets, it looks different. The site would

be built to actually reformat to be easily seen and read on those devices. In some

cases, this means the navigation “stacks” – so links are on top of each other. We design each of the site pages carefully to work well

on each device.

Check out these 2 examples:

YOUR SITE SHOULD BE

“RESPONSIVE”

Older design trends like drop shadows, bevels and gradients now look extremely dated.

Excellent use of typography, flat design, simple use of colour, longer pages with

visuals all along the way, more prominent use of video, and better use of white space lift and

modernise your website.

This does depend on the skills and talent of your designer but stakes are higher and

settling for mediocre design isn’t going to do you or your business any favours!

YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD LOOK

FRESH AND BE IN KEEPING WITH

“THE TIMES”

Having a blog integrated into your site provides you with a way for you to raise

awareness of your brand, show your expertise, and educate your audience – as

well as attract relevant traffic and (very important) exercise your marketing muscles.

Of course this requires you to have develop excellent content planning, headline writing and formatting skills – but these skills will

serve you well!

YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD

HAVE A BLOG

For some, this means changing your website and your marketing plan so you have the right tools (a blog, social

media channels, a content plan). It also means going back to marketing basics – defining your audience and the key messages you want to communicate with them, as well as what you want people to believe about your business and

feel about your brand, and then planning a mixture of educational content, stories and sharable content to

distribute regularly across the channels your audience is on.

YOUR WEBSITE (AND YOU) SHOULD

EMBRACE CONTENT MARKETING

Your content needs to show personality, be consistent and varied at the same

time. It’s not a piece of cake, but with a bit of practice and observing how others

do it, it can become easier and it’s extremely effective!

YOUR WEBSITE (AND YOU) SHOULD

EMBRACE CONTENT MARKETING

I don’t mean just sticking a Twitter icon on your homepage. Any social channel that

you link to from your homepage should be making the right first impression. So, check

out your own profiles. See your latest updates, and think - what impression does

this make? Is the channel designed and setup properly? Are the updates high

quality, interesting, and sharable? Are they frequent enough, but not too frequent?

YOUR SITE SHOULD

REPRESENT SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is an extension of your brand and lets you share your content as well as

curate content in your field and develop relationships.

Embrace the opportunities to be known as a creator, curator, connector and

communicator.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS AN ART AND A

SCIENCE THAT CAN BECOME

SECOND NATURE

If you do have a lot of great stuff going on your social channels, then you can do more

than just link to the channels from icons. You can include Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest feeds and Facebook commenting features and “like boxes” as well as social

sharing buttons on your blog.

AND WHEN YOU ARE SOCIAL MEDIA

“DESERVING” YOU GET TO INTEGRATE FULLY

WITH YOUR SITE

Was that useful? Want to talk?

My details:

Text me: 07788590315Email me: keren@topleftdesign.comTweet me: @topleftdesign (use the hashtag #MySite2014 for a special prize)

Speak soon – hopefully in 2014!