Today we have two quick and easy ways to entice your clients this spring: new Mother's Day GC designs, and a brand-new email design, just for Graduation season!

First, I have a question for you: when was the last time you looked at your own Instant Gift Certificate page? Go ahead, take a look (even if you regularly switch around your designs). Now, take a look at our demo site, which shows off the latest GC designs from our talented in-house artists: New and Featured Designs

We add new designs all the time, but with Mother's Day coming up, you should freshen up your IGC page for maximum effectiveness. It takes just one action, in your SpaBoom account on the Setup tab.

[Even if you do not want the brand new designs all at once, you already have them in your list! Just click the "show hidden" checkbox on your GCs view and you can select the designs that YOU want to feature.]

Go into your Setup Tab, then click on GC Designs on the left side of the screen. You'll see your already selected list of thumbnails.

On the left, look for the "Update Designs" link, and click on that.

What does "Update Designs" mean? It gives you all the new and cool designs, replacing any name, category, popularity or hide changes that you've made. Custom designs that you've added will be left untouched. So if you have renamed a design or moved its category or hidden it, that will be undone. Any NEW design of your own is always safe.

Go ahead and click OK on the next screen, and you'll be all set. You will now have a good number of new and snazzy Most Popular designs as well as Graduation, Father's Day, and Mother's Day — perfect for heading into the summer!

Here's a peek at the IGC page for an org that has just restored defaults:

Next, take a peek at this snazzy email template:

This design is all ready to go – just choose it for upcoming emails with a simple Email Marketing action.

Login to your SpaBoom account, and open your Marketing Tab, under Email Marketing, you can create a new email for your clients, or just choose the upcoming campaign called "Spa Makes the Perfect Graduation Gift". Select "Graduation" as your email design and save the campaign. Now, send a test email to yourself, and bask in the happy graduation vibes!

Our Aveda marketing webinar was full of great ideas for ALL spas and salons – 'tis the spring season and it is time to revamp your strategy and focus on the clients you want to attract! Don't let summer creep up, like it always does – take charge and you'll have a wonderful warm season this year.

Watch the webinar all over again, as it was recorded on April 30th:

Download the presentation: Aveda Marketing Webinar [PDF]

Having trouble figuring our why you don't have Facebook likes?

One challenge of Facebook is understanding a business's role in developing an engaged audience. When you buy radio you basically buy an audience, a known quantity. Radio stations create content and then give it away to anyone interested in what they are broadcasting. This is how they develop an audience. For example, you can buy "time" on a station that appeals to women between 35 and 49 based on music preferences for that "demo." Essentially you buy the right to interrupt the target audience's free music and try to get their attention for your advertisement.

Facebook is different. The traffic on any Facebook page (personal or business) comes from content its owner creates and delivers. If you want Facebook fans you must create a page that is as interesting (or useful) to your target audience as the music on their favorite radio station is to them.  If your Facebook page is not relevant, fun or useful no one (but your blood relatives and BFFs) will "like" it. To put it another way, your posts have to be worth liking.

If I have a shop selling cookies, my very best friends and customers might like my page just because they love me or my product. But if my Facebook page is inconsistent and boring they might keep buying my cookies (or might not if I irritate them) but I will eventually lose them as Facebook fans. There are plenty of other interesting pages to read and only so much time in a day.

What if, instead, I post a picture of a plate of cookies with a kid's hand-written note saying "i luv u momee" or "sory i broc your window" to generate engagement?  What if I invite people to post pictures or stories of cookie apology-worthy moments? Your goal is to create connections with an interesting post that will be "liked" and more importantly shared with lots of "friends" who might wonder where they could get those tempting cookies.

At Spaboom, we have created really clever ways (like Sweepstakes) to build your fan base over time, but these clever tools work best if you already have an interesting Facebook page.  What makes an interesting Facebook page? That depends on your business and your customers. There is one sure measurement of a quality on a Facebook page, the number of likes, comments and shares you get from your posts. If that number is 0 you have some work to do if you want to be liked.

Janell was "rocking the webinah" yet again with a presentation on how to reward your clients with . . . Rewards! This is SpaBoom's newest feature and ready for your use and feedback (see our blog post on how to get it started in mere moments, here: Reward Your Repeat Customers)

Watch the engaging and quick webinar on strategy and how to hit the ground running (the start is even hitting the ground running – sorry for that!), held on April 17th: Thanks For Being a Friend

Download the presentation: Thanks For Being a Friend [PDF]

You've worked hard to get clients in your doors – but getting them to come back time and time again seems like the holy grail of service businesses. If you have our "Suite Plus" marketing package, you can offer your customers just one more little perk to help them remember how great your services are and to keep coming back: Rewards!

We just had a Webinar explaining the concept and going into some marketing strategies to use while creating your Rewards Program, but this is a simple "how to get started" – no fuss. (Watch the webinar here, any time – just look for the one called "Thanks For Being a Friend" on 4/17.)

Here's how to create your first Rewards Program:

1. To enable Rewards, head over to the Marketing Tab and scroll down to the bottom where you see the "Turn On" button under the Rewards Section:


No Rewards button? Nothing on your Marketing Tab? You might need to upgrade your account to include our Plus Marketing Suite to get Rewards and all the super awesomeness we have crafted for your spa management needs.

2. Or click on Rewards in the side column, then click on "Go":
3. To view your Reward program, click "Rewards" in the left column on your Marketing tab. You'll see the default rewards program we have set up for you to get started:
4. To change the name, just edit the field and click "Save" or "Update".
5. Next, decide how much you'd like to reward your customers and how much you'd like each Reward Point to be worth. For some businesses, equating 10 Reward Points to 1 dollar of value is easy. Your customers will rack up points quickly which makes it almost a game. Then they can redeem their points for Offers or Gift Certificates of your choosing, keeping the cycle of their business with you alive.

Examples of Rewards Program Strategies

• Let's say you place a huge value on follow-through with referrals. Leave the default points for "Share with a friend" to 0 (that way you will not be rewarding for one of your clients essentially sending out spam to their friends or random email recipients), but then set "Shared friend signup" to a large number – perhaps 100. That means you're effectively granting a $10 gift to your new referred customers – not a bad deal for them and an effective way for you to grow your clientele.
• On the other hand, what if you really value any current client who would simply recommend a friend of theirs to you – providing an email address – even if the friend never becomes a client? Easy – then just set "Share with a friend" to something other than 0. We recommend setting it to "1″ and keeping the "Shared friend signup" number much higher to give the existing clients a reason to make sure their friend signs up!
• Rewarding the Services clients: to pamper the clients who purchase Services, set your Points level for the Services purchases to higher than that of dollar GCs or Deals. Easy!

Let us know what you think and how you plan to use your Rewards Program to grow your loyalty!

Joy of Spa News: Instinctive Mothering, Powering the World edition is now ready for you to customize. It is ready to fly as is, but we always encourage you to make it yours by playing with the introduction, which follows:

This edition of Joy of Spa is dedicated to the miracle and power of motherhood. Happy Mother's Day to all of the Moms out there, and thank you. We are who we are because of your love, instinctive mothering, devotion, and hard work. Team Joy.

This edition will launch over a three day period, April 23rd-25th, unless you've opted to change the date it goes out. Be sure to make any changes prior to that date! (And be sure to send yourself a test email after making any edits, and remember that Events that encompass the date on which your email is sent will be included in the email as well.)

Note: The new articles that accompany this edition of the Joy of Spa News will appear magically before it goes out to your clients, even if you can't see them in their entirety when you send yourself a test email. No worries, they'll be in place! We promise!

We highly recommend creating Mother's Day-related events and relaxing, soothing, service packages to accompany this edition of Joy of Spa News. Helping people choose a great spa gift package for the occasion provides them a perfect gift solution while increasing the average amount of the gift certificates — a win win!

Remember, the Joy of Spa News is branded with your spa's logo and when your client clicks to read more, the website is branded with your logo, too!

Not yet signed up to send a beautiful, branded newsletter to your clients on a regular basis? Now is your time to get onboard! Go to Setup, Basics to put Joy of Spa to work for your spa!

Have you stopped to wonder what your clients value from your business?

Of course you have – that is what we typically build our service menu and mission statement around – the valuable commodity that we provide to our clients.

Here is the bigger question — Do you know what their perception of value is?

That is the key to developing a loyal client base and maintaining their loyalty over the long haul.

It is easy to get caught up in the mission of the business and forget to check in with clients to see if the output of effort is running in tandem with client wants and needs or if they are widely divergent from one another.

Think about how many loyalty programs you belong to. Now think about how many of them you are actively engaged with (tracking progress, redeeming gifts, etc). I’m guessing the answers are very different to those questions – as is the case for most consumers who participate in loyalty programs.

There are three basic principles to follow when creating an ideal loyalty program, to ensure that your loyalty program works for you and your clients:

1. Make it easy to understand

One of the biggest mistakes we see with loyalty programs is that they are convoluted and take a bazillion hours to understand and figure out. Keep it simple. If your front desk has to look up how it works every time, you can almost certainly be sure that your clients don’t get it either.

2. Give exceptional value as the reward

If your best selling treatment is a one hour massage, then a valuable reward offer would be a 1 hour (or more) massage. They aren’t going to stop getting the one hour massage because you gave them one. Just the opposite in fact – typically clients will use rewards systems to build additional value into their overall purchase budget.

3. Manage the rewards points for your client

In the fast pace of our daily lives keeping track of one more thing is not really an option we entertain unless it is paramount to our overall well being. It is critical to any loyalty program that the burden of tracking be shouldered by the business. This allows for you to enhance the value of your system, making it a no-brainer for your clients and it lets you showcase your exceptional attention to detail through customer service care.

If you don’t have a loyalty program, what are you waiting for? There is no better time than now to get one started!

Join me for our upcoming webinar (Thank You for Being a Friend), Tuesday April 17th 1pm-2pm Eastern, to learn more  on strategically designing a loyalty program to benefit your spa or salon.

Remember that whole Timeline thing? Now that it's old news and we're all used to it and stuff, we have some follow up on changes to the Facebook Sweepstakes app.

We want the app to draw people in for you whether you are running a Sweepstakes or not. Therefore, we've added the ability to drive email newsletter subscriptions when you're not running a Sweepstakes. You can turn this on by going to Marketing/Social Media/Facebook Authorization. Customize the text that appears and save and you are ready to go. When fans visit the app and you're not running a Sweepstakes, they'll be prompted to sign up!

We've also created some pretty new images for the Sweepstakes App that you can upload to your Facebook page. In the spirit of promoting email signups, these images say "Follow us!" You can download the images (and instructions for how to use them in Facebook) here. We'll be adding new images throughout the year, so check back from time to time.

Marketing Land says you'd better use email to send promotional messages to your spa or salon clients.

New research reveals that even today, an overwhelmingly majority still prefer to receive marketing via email and there’s no close runner-up.

This same survey reveals that email marketing delivers more conversions than any other medium, which means more purchases and higher revenue with each email promotion.

So you know that email marketing is the definitive promotional marketing tool, now make sure you have the right offer and timing.

Your promotional offers should piggyback on life cycle events, like holidays and birthdays, to ensure your emails are more timely and relevant to clients.

This new research emphasizes the importance of your email-marketing list to your business, make sure you use it wisely.

One of the most innovative and effective strategies for growth in small business is the ability to develop deeper relationships with your clients.

Join us as we discuss the proven ideas for creating effective loyalty programs, along with the best ways to implement and manage the program to maximize the potential of your spa or salon.

Reserve your Webinar Seat Now!

Title: Thank You for Being A Friend – Webinar
Date: Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Long time readers of our blog know that I'm not a big fan of Groupon. It's not because I don't like marketing or promotions — that's what I live for! I just think requiring a 50% discount and then taking a 50% commission is ridiculous.

Two major reasons why Groupon will be challenged to gain real growth in existing markets:

• Market forces will drive down 50% commission rates. I'd rather have 100 appointments with a more reasonable discount and a 20% commission than 300 with a 50% discount and a 50% commission and the inevitable bad reviews that come with it. Try it out yourself with the Daily Deal Calculator.
• Deal fatigue is setting in. Small businesses are tired of attracting bargain hunters that just move from deal to deal, and the real consumers we want are getting tired of being bombarded with deals.

These issues are starting to catch up with Groupon:

So, what should you do?

• One answer, of course, is just to not run deals. This can be hard to not do when everyone around you is doing it, so…
• Negotiate hard with daily deal sites. 50% isn't set in stone.
• Use the Daily Deal Calculator to really understand the impact of a potential deal, and follow the advice there for crafting more profitable deals.

What's your response? What are you doing with daily deals now?

We hope you found much to love in our Facebook Timeline for Brands webinar. Considering the changes went live today on Facebook, you need to make sure your strategy is in place to present your very best face forward to your public – clients and future customers!

Download and follow along with the presentation here: Facebook Timeline Webinar Slides.

Watch the webinar on all these changes and your strategy, held on March 27th: Facebook Timeline for Brands

Download the presentation: Facebook Timeline for Brands [PDF]

Facebook Timeline goes live for brands today.

Early results are in with some interesting revelations that you can apply to your spa or salon business right now. It’s important to proactively make these changes to leverage the enhanced look and to increase engagement with your fans.

Here are 2 key insights so far:

Photos and videos increase engagement.

Wildfire Interactive conducted a study by looking at 43 brands, ranging in fans from 20 thousand to 40 million, and analyzed key engagement variables (21 days prior to and 21 days after the change). They found that the new Timeline layout enhanced engagement because images and videos are displayed more prominently on the page; videos and pictures have been shown to garner more attention and with the new format, they are getting more comments as well.

New pinning feature increases engagement

Pinning is a new Facebook timeline feature that allows your spa or salon to "pin" a particular post/promotion to the top of your Facebook page where it will remain for up to 7 days.

Search Engine Watch reports that timeline’s new pinning feature has helped lift brand page engagement, as analyzed by Simply Measured. Pinning allows your fans to clearly see important content and gives you the ability to tell your story more effectively.

Think about what your fans need to know about your business first and then pin that item to the top. It could be a video about your latest service, a new promotion or an event going on in your spa or salon. Your fans will take a look at your cover photo and then directly to your pin to see your latest news.

Make sure your cover photo is attractive and represents your brand. You can now add key dates and milestones to your page so take time to fill it in completely. It's important to use the new pin feature effectively by changing it out on a regular basis. Finally, manage your page by adding photos and videos that increase engagement for your business.

Take a peek at the webinar we did this week, going over everything: Facebook Timeline for Brands.

It's a leap year, but February was still a short month. So, how many minutes on average did women aged 25 to 54 with children spend on Facebook in February? You guessed it, 484 minutes.

Packaged goods stalwart P&G has taken notice:

P&G is widely reported to be reducing their marketing budget, and then focusing more of what's left on social media. And you should do the same. You may not have the celebrity endorsements of Ellen DeGeneres and Sofia Vergara, but you don't need it. You're not trying to get people to talk about Pepto Bismol and Tide. You want them to talk about going to spa, which they already want to do!

Your clients are on Facebook. Their friends are on Facebook. And those are the people you want, so you have to be on Facebook. Spend less money and get more clients.

Facebook may hit 1 billion users this summer, but overall social market share is becoming more diluted which should emphasize the importance of focusing on the needs of your most engaged fans.

Marketing Land has outlined a new study from Pew Interactive that gives new credence to the 80/20 rule. In the study, Pew surveyed 269 Facebook users and obtained information on their Facebook account to confirm the responses.

Most of your Facebook fans don't interact very much but the ones that do are vital to overall engagement. They are sharing your content, liking your pictures and commenting on a regular basis. Understanding how they interact with your brand can help you develop strategies that improve overall fan engagement moving forward.

Facebook power users are adding more friends, averaging about 8 per month, with men sending out more requests and women receiving more of them overall.

In addition, power users "like" more Facebook content than the majority of users. According to the study, approximately 1/3 of respondents used the like button once a week and 37% of respondents had their own content liked. The most engaged 5% of users link content over 100 times each month.

There's a reason Facebook might be testing private messaging between Fans and brand pages. According to the Pew Interactive study, the frequency of Facebook messaging use meant almost double their application of the "like" button.

About 20% of users in the study commented on a post every day and about 55 commented 100 times or more per month. The average Facebook user commented on posts much less often.

Perhaps the most important revelation in the study concerned the social reach of the average person on Facebook.

Jason Spero, Head of Global Mobile for Google, has developed his 12 mobile predictions for 2012 based on a recent research report, Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users.

Smartphones and tablets are changing the dynamics of everyday life and are impacting how spas and salons communicate with clients online. Our love affair with mobile devices creates tremendous opportunities as well as new challenges that local businesses must face head on. Spas and salons that take a proactive approach to mobile will be far ahead of the pack by years end. SpaBoom's dynamic websites automatically detect a mobile device and show an optimized mobile version, which is better for SEO. Your address links to Google Maps so clients can find you, and your phone number becomes a link so they can call you.

Don't wait, changes are happening quickly and your ability to adapt your mobile strategy will be a critical component for effective client engagement. Start by checking out Jason's predictions and then take a look at some of our recent posts about tablets and optimizing your website for speed and mobile.

Here are Jason's 12 predictions for significant developments in mobile in 2012:

• More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point.
• There will be 10 days where >50% of trending search terms will be on mobile
• Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away
• “Mobile driven spend” will emerge as a big category
• Smartphones will prove exceptional at driving a new consumer behavior
• Tablets will take their place as the 4th screen
• New industry standards will make mobile display easy to run
• 5 new, mobile first companies will reach the Angry Birds level of success
• The ROI on mobile and tablet advertising will increase as a result of the unmatched relevance of proximity
• The intersection of mobile and social will spark a dramatic new form of engaging consumers
• 80% of the largest 2,000 websites globally will have an HTML5 site
• One million small businesses globally will build a mobile website

Almost 5% of global online traffic (U.S., U.K., Japan, Australia and Singapore) came from mobile phones and tablets in 2011 and that number will grow exponentially in 2012. According to ComScore, tablets saw a huge rise in popularity in 2011, in less than 24 months the market has grown to nearly 40 million tablets here in the U.S. Tablets are quickly changing how consumers work and play online, and that evolving interaction should compel you to consider how your spa brand looks on tablet devices.

Consider ComScore's report that 35% of tablet users access their emails daily from their device. That means you need to think about creating visual interest and compelling copy in your email campaigns to take advantage of the tablet's enhanced resolution capabilities.

You can use color to attract attention and engaging content that gives tablet users precise steps to take action in order to increase your email conversion rates. Test your emails on a tablet device before you send them out so you can see for yourself how they look.

Litmus.com has put together a great Infographic that outlines the Tablet’s target audience and usage trends all of which can be used to help you reach these sought-after tablet owners.

According to the Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Equipment Team at Morgan Stanley, consumer tablet demand is still under-appreciated. The key takeaways:

• Tablet shipments could hit 100 million by end of 2012
• Tablets are accelerating the adoption of the mobile internet
• 2/3 of companies expect to allow tablets on their networks within a year
• Users are moving beyond web surfing, email, games, video, and applications to content creation
• Tablets should reduce PC market growth by 3 percentage points in 2011—maybe more over the long term
• Tablet growth is likely to benefit the established leaders while challenging legacy technology
• The impact on printing companies may be the most under-appreciated cannibalization story, and we highlight AMD, Dell, Lexmark, and Ricoh as potentially challenged from tablets

So what can spas do to enhance their online brand for tablet users?

• Make sure your website views appropriately on tablet devices so your business can take advantage of the unprecedented growth
• Most spas and salons won't need a dedicated tablet version of their website
• Keep your site design crisp and clean so online visitors can maneuver around and actually use your navigation
• Stay away from Flash, since iPads don't support it

You may have noticed that Facebook announced that Timeline is now available for Pages. In fact, all Pages will be converted to Timeline by the end of this month. We're recommending that you hold off converting your business page to Timeline until we've had a little more time to develop a comprehensive social media plan around this exciting new design.

If you've already converted your Page, don't worry! It didn't break anything.

Today we're going to spend a little time in this post discussing what Timeline is and how it works. The next post in this series will discuss more of what you should do with your Timeline.

Cover Photo

The first thing to see on a page is a big beautiful cover photo. The cover photo has to be at least 399 pixels wide. If you pick a photo that is too small, it'll get stretched and look funny. If you pick one that is larger than the minimum size, you'll be able to drag it around to select the part of the photo you want to appear. Please be aware that cover photos are not supposed to contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it at our website"
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page's About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as "Get it now" or "Tell your friends"

Profile picture

You still get a profile picture for your Page. This picture will appear with all your Page's posts.

About

The About section will include the address, phone number and hours (if you want).

Custom App views

To the right of the About section, is a section of up to 12 views of custom apps. The first four appear "above the fold" while the remaining views are accessed by clicking the More button.
The most important apps should be above the fold, including the Boomtime Sweepstakes app (naturally).

Photos

The Photos view is the only one that you can't move. It will always be in the first position.

Likes

If you click through on the Likes view, you can see a graph of the Like activity and other Insights information.

Other App views

For the remaining views, you click the More button to edit the views and then use the pencil to make changes to the view.

For example, you can select to swap the location with another view.

For some apps you can change the name and the image that appears with it. This is done through the Admin panel and is discussed below. (There is also an Edit Settings link on the pencil drop-down, but it doesn't appear to work in all browsers.)

Once you have your apps ordered and customized the way you want, take a look at the actual timeline.

On the right

On the right side of the timeline, you will see your friends who also like the Page. Under that will be a comment from a friend about this page, if there are any. So this content will be different for every person who views your Page.

Recent Activity

Under the friend-specific activity, a box that shows posts by other fans on the page appears.

The rest of the Timeline

The rest of the Timeline shows posts by your Page. There are a number of ways to make a post stand out and get attention.

Milestones

You can add posts and designate them as Milestones. Click the Milestone button in the post window to create a Milestone, such as when the business opened. Milestones appear as highlighted posts in the timeline.

Pinned topics

You can pin a post so that it stays at the top of the timeline. It will stay at the top for seven days. You can only have one pinned post at a time. You can pin the post from the pencil menu in the upper right-hand corner of the post. A pinned post will display a little bookmark graphic on it. Why does it have a bookmark instead of a little pin? No one knows.

Highlighted topics

Highlighting a post makes it spread across both sides of the Timeline. Click the star in the upper right-hand corner of a post to highlight it. You should consider adding a dramatic picture to highlighted posts to make the most of the expanded room.

Messaging

Messaging allows fans to send you message directly without having to post on the Timeline. This is handy when fans have sensitive information to transmit. You can't initiate messages with a fan. You can turn off Messaging through the Admin panel.

Admin panel

Open the Admin Panel. You can see some summary information about your page here. This is also where you see Messages from fans.

When you Edit Page, you have access to turn off messages and set the posting level to the page so that posts have to be reviewed before they will show up. Don't turn that option on, btw, we're just pointing out that it's available.

This slight overview should give you a lot to think about as you plan the transition for your business page.

It's only been a few days since Janell presented her amazing webinar on revitalizing your salon's marketing image, and our materials are ready so you can relive the experience, or see it fresh. (Join us next time for awesome Q&A at the end and the chance to get your inquiries addressed.)

You can perfect your salon's marketing image, taking advantage of the first 2 biggest and busiest seasons in the industry — Mother's Day and The Wedding Season.

Janell demonstrated how to craft perfect multi-media campaign messages, utilize interesting and expert tips, and broaden your message reach while creating convenience for your clients — all in less time than a color treatment takes!

Watch the video:

Download the presentation: 30 Minute Salon Marketing Makeover [PDF]

Your website literally has a millisecond (thousandth of a second) before losing a visitor to your competitor. If you want any advantage online, your clients better nickname your website “speedy.”

Consumer expectations have changed dramatically in the past few years, we feel deprived if we don’t get it fast enough.

Our computers and mobile devices have become an extension of our brain to the point that delays feel jarring and reduce our thought flow. It’s an amazing contrast to the 1990’s when we'd click our mouse and then have time to bake a pie, rake the yard or knit a sweater before anything would come up on the screen.

We have forgotten the decades-old trauma, the insufferable buzz sound accompanying a dial-up, 300-baud modem on a Commodore 64 computer. It was that interminable wait, eclipsed only by the time devoured bringing up CompuServe or AOL content, that ultimately brought us to our knees in submission.

Tech-hungry smart phone and tablet users are downloading videos, news updates and maps to your spa or directions to that just-opened restaurant at an exponential rate, creating a virtual traffic jam. It's very important for you to understand that a slow website diminishes the user-experience and directly correlates to a less engaged visitor who rarely digs into your website, leaves quickly and will not book an appointment, purchase an Instant Gift Certificate or read your spa blog.

Optimizing your website for speedy delivery is expected, and not paying attention will cost you dearly. Ironically, consumers have a completely different set of expectations for load times on mobile devices, but that is also changing quickly.

The state of mobile load-time today according to econsultancy.com:

• 74% of users will abandon after waiting five seconds for a mobile site to load.
• 57% have experienced problems when accessing a mobile site.
• 46% would not return to a poor performing site.

Tips from SpaBoom Website Design Experts:

• Every element of your dynamic website must rank high for speed.
• Never overlook end-user load times when designing your website, its their experience you must satisfy.
• If you are infatuated by the idea of flashy visuals on your website, if you demand unnecessary clutter resulting in an overly complex website then you will diminish the load speed of your website.
• Less is more. Keep your website design clean and avoid flash at all costs.
• Reduce image file sizes to make pages load faster.
• Avoid music and unnecessary distractions on the homepage.
• Avoid all auto play including ads, music or video.
• Don’t put too much content or unnecessary media on your website.
• Most website visitors are using a decrepit, 5-10 year-old computer so the load-times must optimized for those delicate machines. It will minimize crashes caused by too much data.