America's only social media promotion company.

Call us at 740.497.2651 or email at philmershon@returnoninitiative.com

"We remain 100% committed to the proposition that small, medium and growing companies are entitled to outstanding representation on the web and on social media. That commitment is why the quality of our work is superior and our prices are so reasonable. We have learned that when we do a great job for our clients, our clients are better positioned to serve their own customers well. What other kind of world could you possibly want?" -- Phil Mershon

Website design, optimization and social media

What does this mean to you?

We develop websites (website design ideas are crucial)--Your website must not only sell your product or service, it must also possess trackable metrics, a personalized image, targeted promotion, and enhanced productivity.
We promote websites through social media--posting throughout every day, enticing people to spend time on your website.
We perform SEO--Some of this is internal to your website, but a surprising amount takes place out in the rest of the world.
We perform Analytics reviews through Google, Alexa, Majesticseo, Website Grader, The Hoth, Check Your PageRank, Ahref and elsewhere.
We index your website through 776 search engines and directories so that people you want to discover and locate you can do so.
We provide your web hosting--Why are you paying other companies money every month for something that should be included in one low price?
We perform Keyword Research--We never tell you what to do. We do make intelligent and informed suggestions. In short, we consult with you in a positive and respectful manner.
Website design cost should always be minimal. Ours cost between $249 and $749.

We do all of this so that your business may trend, dictate, pivot and inspire, right along with your marketing strategy.
So many Social Media platforms exist , some overlapping, all unique: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Flickr and others. Each of these can impact your brand. Each post, tweet, upload, pin and action on your behalf creates a file on the internet, a file with your name on it. Each file should contain a link to your website, relevant text and a compelling image, any one or more of which should entice or incite a call to action.
Website design reinforces social media marketing and vice versa.

And another thing or two. . .

Social media versus running ads

Some people confuse what we do with running ads on social media. I am sure adverts have their place, but there are several reasons, discussed on our ad facts page, that may lead you to prefer promotion.

Beginning with a great website design

Of course, the process begins with a great website. Some people come to us without one and we rectify that condition. Most people already have a website and many of these websites are just fine. Many, however, benefit from a little back office repair.

One area is performance. Your website page size ought to be below 3 MB. You want very few HTTP requests. Your page loading speed needs to be faster than 5.3 seconds. So in this case, smaller is definitely better. Likewise, proper browser caching stores recent views in local memory. Another negative impact on performance is too many redirects (limit your site to one). Javascript and CSS should usually be minified wherever possible. And of course improper image size can mess you up. All of these are issues Return on Initiative is happy to fix.

What do search engines think about?

In the final analysis, here are the factors that Google thinks about when deciding how important your website is.

The older your domain the better. While you cannot make your domain older than it is, you can push your expiration into the future by adding years to the expiration.
Maintain ownership of your domain rather than continually switching the owner.
Keep your domain registration public.
Your pages ought to cover several topics.
Page loading speed must be lightning fast.
Google will tell you straight up: duplicate content works against you.
Your site should have images and those images should be optimized, meaning you should include alt text and captions, at a minimum.
Google Caffeine wants your content to be fresh, so update as often as necessary with substance.
Do not be afraid to update your pages when new information makes the old obsolete.
Outbound links from your site to high authority sites sends trust signals to Google.
Supplementary content additions such as calculations devices are good for authority.
Multimedia elements tell search engines you are professional.

Components of Google's Ranking Algorithm

Just a little more information

Additional components of preferable websites:

Disallow broken links. Check these often.
Short urls have a slight edge.
Google media guidelines will tell you that it is wise to have sources and cite them, just like a research paper.
Have a Contact page.
Please have a sitemap, and not just because Search Engine Journal says so. A sitemap helps spiders crawl your site.
Have an SSL certificate.
Display a "terms of service" page and a "privacy" page.

A quick word about engagement. Website engagement is a process whereby the visitor to your website acts--in the verb sense of the word. He or she clicks, moves to another page within the site, buys something, leaves comments. Since our customers receive monthly reports from us about how their websites are performing, it may be helpful to know what the average engagements are across the whole of the internet. The average bounce rate (the percentage of people who leave your site after seeing only one page) is 69.0%, so anything lower than that is better than average. The internet average of pageviews per visit is 1.97. And the average minutes spent on any one website across the internet is 1:56.

Your website and social media consultant is happy to discuss these and other important facts at no cost. Simply telephone 740.497.2651 or 480.737.1822 or complete our simple contact form.

Just a few final items.
At Return on Initiative, we believe that any reputable design, development and marketing company will take the time to know your business before the work begins. At the same time, not all otherwise fine website companies handle the follow-up as well as we do.

The average cost we assign to a website is $449. The most we have ever needed to charge was $2,500 and that was a very special circumstance. According to Web Design Rankings, most completed websites cost anywhere between $500 and $15,000. We think that is crazy.
After the website is completed, many website companies will mention to you that you need SEO in order to attract customers. At Return on Initiative, we take it for granted that you as a business person want customers. Therefore, we build optimization into everything we do and follow through for the life of your website.
How long will your website take to create? Everything being equal, the longest you should expect with us is two weeks and the majority of our sites are up and running well within ten calendar days. With other companies, you will experience a wait of 16 to 20 weeks.
What about technical support and just regular consulting? We are happy to take your telephone calls any time. With the vast majority of development companies, you have to send an email and wait for someone to get back to you.