Month: May 2019

2 Steps to Better Website Performance

In a world where updates are instant, delivery takes place on the same day, and customer service is only ever a few clicks away, visitors to your website will not stand for it being slow. If your pages take more than a few seconds to load or if your media takes too long to buffer, they’ll leave your site without a second thought.

If your site’s visitors are looking for a service specifically in your market, when they leave your website, they’ll head straight to your competitors. Not only could you miss out on clicks in this instance, but you could also miss out on potential customers.

To ensure that your business’s days of missing out are behind it, you have to resolve to better your website performance. To see how this can be achieved, read on.

Train your employees

The internet moves forward at a frantic pace, and if your employees can’t keep up with it, neither can your company website. It’s essential then that you invest in staff training regularly. By doing so, tech fluency around your office will become the norm, the day’s top trends will continuously be adhered to, and most importantly, your website’s performance will remain optimized no matter who is tasked with working on it and fixing its faults.

One specific type of training that you should certainly consider investing in is a graduate scheme. By offering internships to the tech workers of tomorrow, you’ll ready your business’s website for the future in the best way possible. This is because this type of employee will have grown up with internet technology at the forefront of everything they’ve been exposed to. This kind of knowledge will prove unrivaled as you seek to better your website performance going forward.

Align yourself with external experts

In addition to ensuring your internal team has the tools they need to better your website performance, you’re going to need a number of external experts by your side as well. Without this kind of assistance, you’ll find it hard to devote the necessary time, effort, and resources to your website optimization, especially when you have so many other areas of your business to be focusing on.

In this instance, there are two experts in particular that you should consider turning to:1. A website auditing service, such as DMG—by having an audit conducted for your website, you will be able to see where it’s failing, why it’s so unpopular, and why it’s languishing so far down in Google’s search rankings2. A website monitoring service, such as Pingmeter—this kind of service will keep a constant eye on your website to ensure that it remains live at all times, notifying you instantly should it deem something to have gone wrong with your site’s performance

If you want to better your website performance, then your employees need to become well-versed in fixing faults as and when they happen, and you need strong external forces backing you up. Taking the above advice and putting it into practice, then, is essential.

Two Ways You Can Make Your Online Business More Efficient

Ecommerce is booming. As the fastest growing global retail channel, no business should be without online selling options. If you want to increase your sales and create a larger and more loyal audience, then your website, social pages, and back-office operations all need to be focused on e-selling and digital customer service. Whether you’ve been running a business for a while and are looking for areas to improve on, or you’re a new startup that wants to hit the ground running, here are the two most effective methods to ensure maximum efficiency for your growing online business. Failing to optimize for efficiency means that you will be losing out on both opportunities and profits.

 

1: Website Development

It’s no longer enough to simply have a website, although there are still too many businesses that are missing this fundamental requirement. Your website isn’t just there to let people know that you exist: it should exist as a one-stop location for a consumer to find out answers and, ultimately, spend their money. If your website is not able to be a complete journey for a customer, then it needs to be given a shake-up. Focus on developing a stronger SEO foundation for your website, and that means everything from your content to your sitemap.

 

2: Promote Communication

All business is about communication. It’s more than simply communicating your prices and your products. You need to communicate with your customers, those interested in your sector, your team, and your suppliers. Each of these can be improved through digital means, and for ecommerce success, they need to be prioritized.

 

● Customers: Consider email marketing, social media promotions, and livestreams. The more that you understand your audience, the more likely that you will be able able to communicate with them effectively.

 

● Sector Interest: One of the best ways to build a more secure business is to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. Networking in the digital age has never been easier, and can vastly improve both your sector standing and your customer loyalty.

 

● Team: Your employees have to be able to touch base with you as and when they need it. The more open your communication channels in-house, the easier it will be to encourage valuable idea gathering and more productive collaboration.

 

● Suppliers: The best way to ensure that you have a reliable communication channel with your vital suppliers is to make use of supplier portals. Look at the options from omniaecommerce.com and you will benefit from improved efficiency, more accurate planning, and a closer relationship with those that your business relies on.

Communication is one of the biggest positives to the digital world, and any business that mismanages its communications is going to encounter issues when it comes to growth.

 

Business efficiency is not rocket science. Often, it’s simply a matter of being made aware of the best modern practices and where to adopt them. Not every new trend, innovation, or technology is going to be beneficial for every business model, but the more that you understand which ones will affect your company, the more likely that you will achieve greater efficiency.

7 Reasons To Start Your Own E-commerce Business

Starting a business is something that more and more people are excited about doing, and there is a lot of choices out there when it comes to exactly what you are going to sell and, perhaps more importantly, how you are going to sell it.

E–commerce is a great choice. You can sell almost anything in this way, and because all you really need is a great website, it is a simple thing to set up. Here are some more reasons why e–commerce is the way to go when you are starting a new business.

It’s Simple To Do

Starting up an e–commerce business is relatively simple to do. You need a website, and that website needs to be absolutely perfect – this is where a lot of your startupfunds will need to go because, by the very nature of this industry, the website is your business. Get that right, and you will make sales; get it wrong, and you’ll miss out.

As well as a great website, you may need stock, although this will depend on whether you’re selling a physical product or you’re drop shipping or selling a service. If you need some money to get started, a loan from Bonsai Finance will help, and you can begin your new business very quickly indeed.

It’s The Future

E–commerce is certainly the future (and even the present) of shopping. There will always be people who prefer to visit stores and malls, but for most people who have little time to spare to actually go shopping, it’s far more convenient for them to simply click a few links and order something online to be delivered directly to them.

As long as you make your website easy to use, easy to find, and you price your products fairly, you should be able to sell quite easily online. Even if you like the idea of a physical store, having an e–commerce store to back it up will be useful, and you may find that you make more money online than you do from walk-ins.

An Insight Into Business

Setting up a small online store is a great way to learn about business as a whole without having to leave too much to chance. One of the best things about a good e–commerce business is that it can really just run in the background as long as you are marketing it when you can; this means you can stay working at your day job and simply have some extra money coming in through your store.

If you want to go further and set up a larger business or try your hand at becoming completely self-employed, you can learn almost everything you need to know through your e–commerce site, giving you more confidence and much more chance of success if and when you want to take things further.

Make Money

When people set up their own online business, there will be a number of reasons for it. They might want to:

• Ease the pressure of a full–time job
• Do something to make themselves happy and proud
• Build something for the future

However, whatever the reason, there is something that will underpin everything else; they will want to make money. Making money is one of the very top reasons for starting your own business. If you don’t make money, even if you’re having fun, sooner or later you’ll have to stop.

An online store is a good way to make money, and because you can choose how much you want to make (a little as a ‘side hustle,’ or a lot as your main business), you can be in complete control of every single process.

Reach More People

Having a physical store means that people who live locally will visit. You might have a good reputation that means people from farther afield come too, but unless you are so highly regarded that people from all over the world specifically make it their duty to come to you, you’ll never get as much reach as you can online.

When you have an e–commerce business, you will be able to have customers from all around the world, and you won’t have to open up additional stores (which will cost more and could be a risk) to do it. Just the one website can serve everyone, and as long as you keep it up to date and ensure it is user-friendly (and mobile friendly too) the risk is extremely small, but the rewards can be enormous.

Be Independent

If you like the idea of working for yourself and choosing your own hours, then an online store might be exactly the way to do it. It will be hard work to set it up properly, but in many cases, it can be left running in the background while you do other things, and you can check it once a day to respond to queries and organize parcels to be sent out if need be.

This is the way that you can build a truly wonderful work–life balance. However, don’t quit your day job immediately; you need to know that the online business you are creating can sustain you first. Otherwise, you could find yourself in financial trouble. However, if the idea of eventually not having a boss to answer to is exciting, this could be a great idea for you to try out.

Easy To Market

Marketing for an online store is something that is relatively easy to do – you are already online, speaking to the right audience, so that initial part of the marketing process has already been dealt with.

Using digital advertising to ensure that those who are most likely to use your store and buy your products is a good move to make. You can focus on exactly the right people and create advertising that is going to appeal. This focused approach is how you can make your marketing budget go a lot further, and even though you may well need to spend money in this regard, the better your digital marketing is, the less you will need to spend to get people to visit your website.

How To Take Your Website To The Next Level

Every business needs a great website if they are to attract and retain customers. The company website is how you present your brand to the world, so it needs to paint your organization in a positive light, provide detailed information and make it easy for your target customer to make a purchase from you. 

If you feel that your website is currently not up to the required standard and preventing your business from succeeding, then you need to know a few ways to improve your site and take it to the next level. Read on for a few highly effective improvements to consider:• Switch Host

It is vital that you are using a reliable and experienced web hosting company. This ensures that you have a fast, secure and reliable web site with many hosts making it quick and easy to design an attractive site. Hosts like onyx.io have a range of hosting plans available and a type to suit every need.• Improve The Navigation

The navigation is one of the most overlooked areas of web design. No visitor will stay on a site which is hard to use with poor navigation so you could look to make improvements here if you are struggling with keeping visitors on the site. You need to break the site down into different sections and then to make sure that each section can be visited from each page.• Re-Write The Content

The content is how you speak to your target audience, so every sentence needs to be engaging and valuable. You can improve the content on the website by:- Using calls to action- Using emotive language- Asking questions- Only including relevant information- Avoiding large blocks of text• Make A Visual Impact

Well-crafted text is important, but no one will stay on a text-heavy website. You need to make sure that you make an immediate visual impact so consider replacing any images you have with interesting, high-quality and relevant photos or video. You can also make a visual impact by adopting an interesting color scheme. Although you will want to make an impact, keep in mind that minimal is better when it comes to web design as otherwise, it creates a cluttered and chaotic feel.• Create A Blog

A blog is a highly effective tool to take your website to the next level. Creating regular, relevant and interesting content will help your website and business to succeed in a few different ways:- Brings people back to your website to learn more- Increases your brand authority and reputation- Can be used to optimize your website and improve visibility- Encourages engagement with your target customer• Add Personality

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when designing a website is creating something with no personality which can feel corporate and soulless. You need to add personality through your website which can be done by:- Including brand history- Using images of the team- Including profiles of key figures- Using terms like “I” and “we”

This post should help you to make big improvements to your website which can, in turn, help your company to find greater success and reach the next level.

5 Alternative Ways To Sell Your Products

In today’s e-commerce-driven market, it can be challenging to find ways to sell your products. There is great potential with e-commerce because people do so much of their shopping online, yet with so many online vendors it can be nearly impossible to stand out from the crowd and sell your products especially when you are first starting out. It is for this reason why it is helpful to be aware of a few alternative ways to sell your products. These methods could give you a unique edge which will boost your sales and improve your brand awareness. This can, in turn, increase your sales.

1. Your Own Self-Hosted E-Commerce Store

Having your own e-commerce store is a great way to sell your products online because it puts you in complete control and you do not have to pay to use a hosted store. It can take some time and effort to run and operate an online store, but it can also be highly rewarding to build a store from the ground up. Additionally, you can use dropshipping, which means that you do not have to worry about inventory or storage because the vendor is responsible for shipping to the customer.

2. Across Multiple Marketplaces

When a consumer needs to purchase a product, it is likely that they will visit any of the following popular marketplaces:

  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • Walmart

This means that you will want to sell your products across multiple marketplaces. Creating listings and managing orders can be tricky and time-consuming which is why it is a good idea to use a marketplace integration service. This should include Amazon inventory management along with other marketplaces so that it can be easy to manage your listings from one central source.

3. Google Shopping

People also use Google to search for products so you will want to appear on Google Shopping. This is achieved by setting up a Merchant Centre account and create a Shopping Campaign in Google Ads.

4. Social Media Influencers

Influencers can have a huge impact on the success of a brand and even influence trends and popular culture. If you are able to get a social media influencer to recommend your products on their page (for a price) with a direct link it could help you to tap into an entirely new market and boost sales.

5. Pinterest

Pinterest is another excellent platform particularly for those selling art and jewelry. You can sell here by setting up a business account and use Promoted Pins to advertise your products and then encourage people to follow your account.

These are just a few alternative ways to sell your products online. The key to success when it comes to e-commerce is making sure that your products are available and visible everywhere that your target customer shops. This means that you need to identify who your target customer is and where they shop so that you can create and optimize listings to increase the visibility of your product. When you do this across multiple platforms, it should significantly boost sales and brand awareness.

Digital Marketing Tips For Design Agencies

The design industry is one which is incredibly competitive. Digital marketing is essential no matter what industry you work in, but particularly when you operate in a highly competitive one. Digital marketing can help a brand to stand out from the crowd, increase awareness and establish the company as an authoritative source in the industry. So, what are the best marketing techniques and strategies to implement for a design agency? There are a few highly effective methods to use which can work wonders whether you are a new agency, a small company or a much larger business looking to conquer the industry.

Blogging

In order to attract clients to your agency, it is essential that you can position yourself as an expert in the field. The best way to do this is with a regular blog where you share relevant, helpful and engaging content which could include:

  • Case studies
  • How to guides
  • Interviews
  • Industry news

You need to make sure that this content is engaging, so it is smart to use a variety of media with each post.

Social Media

Social media is also a great tool for showing your expertise, and you can share your blog posts here. You should also use social media to keep people updated with news from your agency, to directly communicate with your target audience and acquire new followers. You can do this by:

  • Encouraging people to like and share posts.
  • Connecting with existing and previous customers.
  • Running promotions.
  • Sharing industry news.

Online Portfolio

Potential clients will also want to see what projects you have worked on to see if you would be a good fit, so an online portfolio is a must. You should also show your process and the impressive tools, technology and software that you use. This means that you need to invest in the latest and best tech – you can find a low-cost professional PCB design tool which will help you to improve your design process and impress any visitors.

SEO

As with most industries, people use search engines to find an experienced design agency. Ultimately you will need to appear as close to the top of search engine results lists as possible which can be achieved with SEO. Use an experienced digital marketing agency for the best results.

Client Referrals

Word-of-mouth marketing remains one of the most effective ways to increase awareness and acquire new customers. You can encourage your existing clients to recommend your services to their network by incentivizing them to do so with deals and discounts. This should mean that you both retain and acquire new customers who could have a significant impact on the success of your brand. You should also use customer testimonials on your company website as social proof.

Design is a highly competitive industry which means that high-quality marketing is essential. Try a few of the above marketing strategies, and you should soon start to see results and increase your authority in this competitive field.