While every small business website is different, the race to get highly ranked on Google is the same for every SMB owner.  Fortunately, there are steps you can take to rank highly on Google, but it takes time and you’ve definitely got to keep up on your technology research.  So if you’re concerned about your Google rank, and struggling for more traffic, read further.  We’ll share tips about how Google ranks your website in search engine results and what you can do to improve your odds in the SEO game.

Why Is a High Google Search Rank Important?

Most SMB owners are urgently seeking ways to get their site seen online. The best way to do this is to get ranked on the top of the first page of a Google search.  Google is responsible for 90% of search results, and therefore it’s a big contender when getting your website found online and gaining traffic from visitors.

There are a variety of ways to get highly ranked on Google, and we’ll discuss that in a minute.  But first, the important thing to know is getting that coveted top-rank spot on Google is crucial.  In fact, according to search engine results page (SERP) reports, 32% of searchers click on the first page of Google results, whereas a meager 17% take the time to click on the 2nd page and a whopping 3% don’t even bother to push on to the 3rd page of results.  With these sobering statistics in mind, you can clearly see how a high Google rank for your SMB website is critical.

How SEO and Google Ranking Factors Work

Savvy search engine optimization is the best way to get ranked as highly as possible on Google search results pages. There are two different types of ranking strategies – organic and paid. Organic search results happen through SEO tactics that you, as an SMB website operator, render yourself through on-page tweaks and satisfying Google criteria.  The only investment you need to make in organic traffic and search results is your own hard work (or hiring an SEO expert). 

Paid search results, as the name implies, involve pay-per-click advertisements that you pay for in order to boost your traffic. The most common example is Google AdWords, in which you pay for a campaign for your website ad to be featured on other websites, and Google searches.

Both paid and organic rankings on Google are governed by their algorithms based on metrics and criteria Google deems important.  In all, there are over 200 Google ranking criteria and factors – and some SEO experts suspect there are more, but we may never know all the tricks up Google’s sleeve in terms of how they assess which sites are ranked higher than others.  But that’s no cause to lose hope in your SEO game.  Read further for how you can improve your Google search result ranking.

Top Criteria Google Looks At When Ranking Your SMB Website

If your website isn’t getting ranked on the first page of a Google search result page, then there’s room for improvement.  Here are the top criteria Google looks for that you can implement on your SMB site to boost your SEO and Google search rank.

Site Speed:  One of the factors involved with ranking high on Google search results is having adequate bandwidth so your site speed is optimal.  You can boost your website speed by obtaining the best managed WordPress hosting services, or dedicated hosts.  These services provide security, fast website speeds, and many more benefits that can meet the approval of Google standards for getting ranked.  When you bear in mind that 68% of web surfers click out of a website that is too slow to load, then you know site speed is vital to your SMB website success.

Get Backlinks:  One of the top ways Google determines your site is relevant is how many backlinks you have. Backlinks are links on other websites that direct back to your website.  The more links Google finds on other websites that link back into your website, the better your rank will be.  You can get backlinks by asking website owners related to your niche for a link placed on their site.  You might also inquire if you can be a guest author and have a blog post on other websites with a link back to your website.

Keyword Factors:  This is a huge aspect of SEO that Google takes into consideration.  To get the tricky business of keyword optimization right, you’ve got to research the keywords or phrases that are relevant to your SMB website’s genre.  For example, if you sell baseball bats, do a Google search on highly sought-after keywords related to baseball bats.  Ultimately, you want high-demand keywords that are in low supply on the internet.  Once you collect this essential keyword data, you can begin building quality blog posts around these keywords.  Be sure to include keywords into the title, the first paragraph, in your image descriptions and sprinkled throughout your article.

Consistent Content:  Most SMB websites die on the internet vine because they aren’t offering fresh, new content on a regular basis.  Google looks for websites that are consistently adding new content.  This is essential for getting traffic to your website.  A blog section on your SMB website is crucial for getting ranked online.  Keep your content evergreen so that Google is constantly scanning your site.  This one thing is a giant in terms of boosting your rank on Google search.

Get Responsive:  Make sure your SMB website is responsive. This means your site needs to be easily viewable on any device.  Google started penalizing websites around 2015 if they were not mobile-friendly by ranking them lower on search engines.  If you’re using a WordPress platform, then get a WP theme that is responsive and mobile-friendly.  Currently, almost 70% of internet users view websites on their mobile phones. Therefore, if your site isn’t viewable on mobile phones, tablets, and desktops, Google will ding you for that, and your site will rank lower in search results.

The Last Word on Getting Highly Ranked on Google

Whether you opt for paid or organic traffic or even hire an SEO expert to help you with optimizing your SMB website, boosting your presence online is pivotal to your SMB success.  So if you’re fed up with low traffic and substandard search engine rankings, employ these tactics to optimize your site and start getting the sales you deserve. 

The post How to Improve Your SMB Website Google Search Engine Ranking appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Whether you’re building a website for your small business or thinking of a site redesign, WordPress (WP) can be your best ally in achieving your online business goals.  So, read further about how this platform can work for you, and why your business should run on WordPress.

Why More Small Business Owners Are Turning to WordPress for Their Websites

According to the most recent WordPress statistics, there are over 60 million websites online today currently using WordPress, and over 400 million people search WP websites each month.  Furthermore, almost 700 WP websites go live every single day. 

These impressive statistics confirm that WordPress gets the popular vote in terms of a go-to content management system, but why?  What makes WP so appealing to SMBs around the world? Here are a few advantages to WordPress that small business owners are raving about.

Big Features Small Businesses Can Afford

Most small business owners are under the impression their budget can’t handle all the frills and features as seen on mega business websites.  This simply isn’t the case.  WordPress is a free content management system (CMS) that packs a lot of power when it comes to adding everything your SMB needs to have a cutting-edge yet affordable website.

What’s more, WordPress is open-source, which means developers can contribute to WPs software. Because WP is so versatile and popular, developers create tons of plugins, themes, and widgets to meet every SMB need.  As of 2021, there are over 50,000 plugins for WordPress, and that means lots of bells and whistles for you to create a fully functional website.

A Reputation for Security

While no SMB website is bulletproof from hackers, WordPress comes pretty close.  Because WP is the largest and most used CMS system to date, they are invested in providing the best, top-notch security measures.  WordPress accomplishes this by constantly updating and improving their CMS for maximum security.  You can also further safeguard your SMB website by easily connecting with a secure WordPress hosting service.  This will ensure your site has optimal protection from hackers and technical meltdowns.

Other content management systems often require users to manually check for updates. That’s not the case with WP.  They have instant updates and conduct regular performance maintenance so you can be confident your site’s security is always up to snuff.  WordPress is also compliant with the most current international security practices and policies, whereas other CMS platforms are left wanting for such proactive security measures.

Super User-Friendly

By far, one of the best advantages of having a WordPress business site is its ease of use.  Even the least tech-savvy business owner will find WP features convenient, user-friendly, and super simple.  Furthermore, because WP is such a popular CMS, if you run into trouble with your WordPress site design, answers are just a Google search away.  

Additionally, a slew of WP themes are available that allow you to easily get the dynamic design and functionality you want for your business site.  Between plugins and WPs easy-to-use features, you can build a website without any knowledge of HTML or CSS coding.

More Than Just a Blog

It’s a common misunderstanding that WordPress is exclusively for bloggers. WP might have started out as a blogging platform in 2003, but today, WordPress has completely innovated upon its CMS to cater to a variety of site owners’ needs.  That said, WP does deliver the capacity for your SMB to have a blog, which is crucial to driving organic traffic to your website. 

In addition to adding a blog on your WP small business website, you can also incorporate other features such as membership modules, shopping carts, portfolios, discussion forums, eLearning capability, auction features – you get the idea.  Your ability to expand and branch out into various different sales modules is almost endless with a WordPress site. 

It’s Geared for SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a huge deal in getting traffic to your website. Thankfully, WordPress has SEO built into the platform.   Out of the box, WP generates meta descriptions and title tags for your posts and pages.  This allows search engines to detect your online content, which can potentially rank your SMB website higher on search engine results. 

But that’s not all.  WP works seamlessly with certain online tools and plugins such as Yoast, which helps you optimize your content to the max.  These plugins are crucial to making sure your posts and pages get ranked well in search engines. Furthermore, there are other helpful plugins available that help you with repairing broken links, 404 redirects, and no-follow checks.  If you don’t know what that means, that’s okay, because WP makes it easy to fix issues that commonly thwart website rankings on search engines such as Google.

A Community of Loyal Users

WordPress has been around for almost two decades.  Over that span of time, WP has built a loyal following. That means there are tons of committed fans of WP, and loads of forums dedicated to WordPress users.  This puts you at an advantage for getting answers, gaining insight, and learning more about WP from legitimate, experienced WP users.  Furthermore, it should be noted that WordPress has a long history, and therefore, solutions for any kind of WP question are easy to find online. 

The Last Word on WordPress

With its legendary security features and overwhelming popularity with pros and newbies alike, it should be clear that WordPress is an ideal solution for your SMB website goals.  The fact that WP is so convenient to use as well as adaptable and scalable means you can also grow your business website with WP without having to suffer from major overhauls as your business grows.  Lastly, WP is the choice content management system when you want full control over your business website, because it gives you the power to publish a site that functions fabulously and looks stunning.

The post 6 Reasons To Have an SMB WordPress Website appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Do-It-Yourself

Gone are the days that you have to pay a professional website builder to create a website for your small business. They will typically charge you a lot for their expertise and pedigree. When you are starting or running a small business, it’s necessary to keep your overhead low. This is why you should build the website yourself. Luckily, there are plenty of tools to help you build an aesthetically pleasing, informative, and stylish website.

For example, using a wuality WordPress hosting service gives you all the tools you need to create a unique and effective site. You won’t just be able to create a site that has all the information consumers need about your business, it will also ensure that users receive a fast, secure, and reliable website experience. 

Furthermore, client management and billing tools allow you to expand your business with online sales and metrics. Whatever your brand, product, service, or business model, a do-it-yourself website will offer everything you need.

Costs To Pay Attention To

There are quite a few costs of building a website should you go a little further. The first cost that you need to think about is the domain. You want to have a unique website link that represents your business. It should be clear and concise. To purchase the perfect website domain, you will have to pay for it. The website infrastructure comes next. This is the money you pay a site like WordPress to provide the infrastructure you need to get started.

You can also pay professionals to build a custom site from the ground up, but it’s a lot cheaper to pay a company that enables you to do it yourself. Website builders are very helpful and affordable. If you plan on publishing a lot of content, you might also want to pay someone to come up with a content management system that best suits your needs.

Beyond the website infrastructure and domain, you should think about the associated art and design. While you can build the website on your own, professional and unique logos and graphics for your brand should be outsourced to a professional. Original and eye-catching graphics are important to creating a cohesive art style and business marketing strategy. Beyond art, graphic design, and logos, you can pay a photographer to take pictures for your website. Photos are a great way to get your business noticed.

Design templates are another item that you could pay for. Website builders have templates available to you for free, but if you want something custom you can pay extra for an original template. Finally, email templates offer readers, subscribers, and customers a way for them to contact you. While building a website with a company that provides the tools for you to create a unique and compelling site, there are plenty of ways to invest in your small business online. Depending on what you want and need for your website, putting in the extra money could pay off.

Website Content

Of course, when you are building your business’s website you will need content. You could write it yourself, but if you pay a professional copywriter who is skilled in SEO, then your site may really grow. One way to utilize digital marketing on your website is to publish a frequently updated blog that targets specific keywords, demographics, and links back to your products and services.

Website content should include all of the information about your business, products, and services. You can include a home page, an about page, an FAQ section, and other helpful information. A blog is another way to expand your audience by using keywords, hyperlinks, metadata, and informing people about what you are offering. You might think that website content is an ancillary part of building a site, but in fact, it is one of the most important parts of the process.

Plug-Ins

A website builder, extra art and design, as well as website content are enough to build a great site for your small business, but there are also plug-ins you can use to expand it. With plenty of tools to easily manage your promotion of a web store or blog, it’s possible to create exactly what you envision for your company’s site. Get in contact with your customers, promote deals, and make announcements with different plug-ins. You can also collaborate better and work towards improving the site.

Maintenance & Updates

Finally, the last step of building a website for your small business is to update it and maintain the platform. The costs will be less than building the website in the first place, but you will also have to renew your domain and pay for the website builder every month. 

One thing is for sure—every small business needs a website. It’s necessary to promote your brand, services, or product while using the digital space for marketing opportunities. You want your customers and loyal followers to have a central place to visit and a website to tell their friends about. It doesn’t matter whether you’re opening a restaurant or have big dreams of turning your start-up into the biggest tech company in the world, a website is a good place to start. Even if your business is just you and your talents, creating a beautiful and accessible site is pivotal to growth. 

The post Tips for Building a Small Business Website on a Budget appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What are Website Plugins?

One of the top ploys small business owners use to improve their websites is utilizing plugins. A plugin is a software add-on embedded in a website to help visitors with an array of different user-friendly features.  Many plugins may come standard with a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or SquareSpace.  Other plugins can be downloaded, and their purpose is to enhance the function of a website. In either case, a plugin is ideally meant to enhance the user experience when visiting a small business website. These neat applications come in handy because they are easy to copy and paste into a website, which means no more complicated coding.

In the old days of website building, plugins were more about novelty than function. While these retro plugins offered entertainment value with moving fish, moon phases, or weather forecasts, they didn’t contribute much value to a website’s purpose or mission. 

Why and When Should Plugins be Used on a Website?

Today, a plugin is judged on its merit to work seamlessly within a website while giving the user superior ability to access important content. Plugins should also help visitors navigate the website and inform them about essential information pertinent to your business mission, offerings, and purpose. 

Resist the urge to embed cutsie or quirky plugins that do nothing but suck up your website’s hosting bandwidth. Plugins should be used exclusively with your business objective and website user in mind. When you’re using plugins, remember your motivation should be all about your client, customer, or the core functionality of your business. 

The most integral plugins are used to streamline customer inquiries, drive sales and build a better customer experience on a website. Examples of these helpful plugins include chat features, resources for product information, shopping cart applications, or marketing pop-ups to alert your visitor about current sales campaigns.

Top Plugins to Improve Your Website

As a small business owner, how you build a website is pivotal. There are many factors such as design, speed, and responsiveness across varying devices. The list of considerations may seem endless. Thankfully, choosing the right plugins doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are a few top plugins that can enhance almost every small business website.

Newsletters and Subscriptions

Your small business relies on keeping connected with your customers and clients. Many third-party newsletter management systems offer plugins you can embed in your website that assist you in managing your subscribers once they’ve opted into your newsletter. Furthermore, these plugins from email services such as MailChimp or ConstantContact offer convenient ways for users to sign up for your weekly or monthly mail-outs.

Testimonials and Reviews

No matter your small business, your success is contingent upon customer reviews. Now more than ever, testimonials are essential to providing potential customers reliable feedback about your product or service. Hence, they feel they can make the right choice by purchasing from you.  Depending upon your content management system (CMS), you may be able to download a Facebook plugin that publishes customer reviews from your FB page and mirrors the same testimonial on your website. Other plugins are independent bits of software that allow your customers to easily leave reviews directly on your site relating to specific products or services they’ve ordered from your business. Some resources to publish visible customer reviews on your website include Schema, WP Review Pro, or Customer Reviews for WooCommerce.

Mapping Feature

If your business relies heavily on local commerce, a handy plugin to consider is a map function. These plugins enable GPS capabilities that present a map to your potential customers. If your website visitor allows access, they can see the distance and directions to your physical location. Google Maps or WordPress Store Locator are two among the most popular map plugins.

Shopping Cart

This is perhaps the heart and soul of any small business website. After all, if your shopping cart plugin is buggy or malfunctioning, you’re ultimately losing a sale. What’s worse, you could damage your business reputation with faulty shopping cart software. Check which shopping cart plugins are best compatible with your CMS. For example, if your content management system operates on WordPress, then the WP shopping cart plugin may be your best, most reliable solution. Suppose you are using third-party e-commerce solutions such as Shopify or a drop-ship service such as Spocket, Printify, or AliExpress. In that case, these companies provide integrative shopping cart applications that may be compatible with your website.

Customer Service Features

Your small business brand, reputation, and livelihood is fueled by stellar customer service. No matter what type of business you run, the competition is brutal on the internet. Very often, companies that win the sale are the ones that provide superior (and fast) customer service. These days, users want instant responses to their questions about products or services purchased online. That’s why a chat plugin such as ZenDesk or Freshdesk allows you to communicate with your customer directly and immediately. While more users want options for chat, this doesn’t rule out traditional email contact forms. Using a simple email plugin such as OptinMonster or Ninja Forms can give your website visitors easy access to customer service via email inquiries.

In conclusion, the power of plugins is virtually endless when it comes to improving your website and establishing a user-friendly experience for your visitors. First, consider which plugins are most important for your small business’s success. Then check if these plugins are compatible with your content management system. Lastly, install and activate your plugins and watch how these neat add-ons can help simplify and enrich your website’s ability to gain and retain business.

The post Why Plugins Matter: The Top 5 Website Plugins for Your Small Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Content marketing has evolved into a critical component of any digital marketing campaign for any company operating in the online world. Original content is essential for blogs, and yet many content authors ignore this guideline and continue to plagiarize. Since the internet is crammed full of content, “authors” grab what’s already available rather than generate new ideas.

Writing can be challenging, no doubt about it, especially when the topic is unfamiliar to the author. However, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an experienced writer or a novice. One thing is sure: we all face the task of preserving originality in the material we create.

First and foremost, if you want your content to shine — and trend on Google — you must focus on making it exclusive.

Search engines are scanning for plagiarism-free content.

If you don’t want Google to blacklist your website, publish original content. It’s that simple.

Google recently updated its algorithm to make it easier for them to detect imposters and plagiarizers. If you’re caught plagiarizing, you can count on your website being blocked. Depending on the seriousness of the issue, Google might even push your site down to obscurity on its search engine result pages (SERPs).

All authors and website admins must recognize the significance of plagiarism detection. Failing to underscore the seriousness of plagiarism is an invitation for your brand to take a serious hit in terms of credibility.

Why is it necessary to provide unique content for content marketing?

Plagiarism-free content will attract a wider audience.

The primary goal of marketing is to attract customers to your company and raise revenue. You must create original content if you expect potential customers to prefer you over your competitors. Plagiarized material undermines a website’s reputation and jeopardizes all of your content marketing activities, online or otherwise. If your company can’t be trusted not to plagiarize, what else can it not be trusted for?

It’s always better to post nothing at all than to post something damaging. If your content is being supplied by an outside writer, make sure you run everything through a plagiarism checker before you post. The stakes are too high and you’ll be held accountable even if you were unaware that the material was not original.

Plagiarism-free content gives a serious boost to your SEO efforts.

Content promotion is also essential for a site’s search engine optimization; its pages would not score highly on search engine result pages without it.

If the website’s content is of high quality, it can help to improve its search engine ranking. Originality is a core component of high-quality content, and search engines like blogs with content free of plagiarism.

High-authority sites will be quick to disown plagiarized content.

Backlinks are essential for increasing your search engine exposure because they represent the level of trust that others place in your content. If your company gets dinged for plagiarism, it typically creates a stampede of other sites removing their links to your material.

High-authority course, in particular, will be quick to disown content that is plagiarized and place that website on a blacklist. One of the ways that those sources earned their authority in the first place was by not directing their readers to spurious content.

If you have something of value to offer, offer it in your own words and trust that interested parties will respond by inviting others to see for themselves. As long as you are producing marketing content that is free of plagiarism, those backlinks will stay in place for a long time.

Consistently providing original content builds trust.

Well-executed content creation should aid in the development of a partnership of sorts between the company and its target audience. Great content connects with consumers and answers their questions. When you offer value, without asking much in return, your audience is more likely to trust your advice and recommendations.

Over time, as your messages hit the right spot at the right time for the right audience, you can reasonably expect that the reputation of your brand will grow. Potential customers are far more likely to come away with a favorable impression of any brand offering high-quality material.

Plagiarism-free content helps build a positive social media presence.

Social media networks are one of the most powerful ways to engage with your target audience. Social networking offers your company a venue to post videos, hold meetings, and get real-time feedback. Moreover, social media channels push new leads to your website. They are an effective platform for building genuine partnerships with your client base.

Much of the power of social media networks, however, is fueled by excellent content production. The immediacy of feedback allows you to dive deeper quickly and make adjustments to your message on the fly. You might only hit so many eyeballs with a Tweet or Facebook status update, but if your content is original and engaging, you’ll gain more views through link-sharing.

Publishing original content helps builds your brand.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to help you raise brand awareness, and you don’t want to do anything to detract from your efforts. Consistently publishing original content is a marketing approach that achieves more than just a first-page ranking for your blog.

Original content will be more visible to prospective consumers as they search the web for products and services that are of interest to them. This is why it’s so important to find out which questions your potential customers are asking. When you publish something that meets a genuine need, it’s a shot in the arm for sales, yes, but also a boost to the credibility of your brand.

What are some strategies for avoiding the temptation to plagiarize?

1. Modify existing content.

You shouldn’t plagiarize, obviously, but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, either. Start by searching for content similar to what you are trying to write. If you’ve ever read something online and thought to yourself, “I could do better,” well, now’s your chance.

The hardest part of writing can be coming up with ideas. Reading existing material will help you clarify what it is you are trying to say and can be useful for developing a bulleted outline of the points you wish to address.

Coming up with marketing content that is plagiarism-free is much easier when you write to an outline. Read what others have said, make notes where you have something different to say, and focus on bringing your own unique perspective to the topic at hand.

Write to your own individual context. Don’t try to please everyone — that’s impossible — but do speak to your core constituency in a way that’s winsome and informative. If you can do so without denigrating your competitors in any way (or even mentioning them by name) so much the better.

2. Feel free to use quotes, as long as they are properly attributed.

There are times when any author — experienced or otherwise — can find it difficult to paraphrase a piece of material. This is where knowing how and when to quote comes in handy.

When you quote someone else, make sure you give proper attribution to the original source. You might need to link to another resource to demonstrate its validity. You might even need to provide footnotes if you use several sources in the same post. Whatever you do, make it obvious that you are treating the original source with respect and good intentions.

If someone else has said something perfectly, maybe you shouldn’t try to improve on it with your own paraphrase.

3. Consider using a paraphrasing tool to keep your content free of plagiarism.

If you’re still struggling to say something in your own words — it happens! — check out some of the paraphrasing tools now available. These online tools can be used to paraphrase content to help you create unique, plagiarism-free content for marketing.

Especially if you’re a relatively new writer, you may find this tip for producing original content helpful. Even if you need to tweak results from a paraphrasing tool, it can be much easier to edit something to your liking as opposed to coming up with all-new ideas.

Paraphrasing tools replace plagiarized words with synonyms, creating at least some difference between your writing and the source material. Some paraphrasing tools remove plagiarized content completely and replace it with unique content.

Parting Reminders

Content marketing is critical for companies of all sizes. Customers are using their smartphones to find you (or your competitors). You’ll want to leverage all of the advantages of online content marketing without shooting yourself in the foot by publishing plagiarized content.

Content marketing using original content can help you not only increase exposure but also strengthen partnerships with your leads and clients. Keep your communication efforts focused on originality, even if that means a reduction in your publication schedule.

The post Content Marketing Using Plagiarism Does More Harm Than Good appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Given that your website is often the first point of contact new customers will have with your brand, your website must establish your credibility enough that they feel safe in transacting with you.

A professionally designed, easy-to-navigate website reflects the effort you have put into creating a good browsing experience, which makes it likelier that your products and services have the same high quality. It is also a crucial step in building your brand community.

In this guide, we discuss in detail the three key UX elements that reflect your brand’s credibility — namely usability, the About Us section, and social proof:

Usability

1. Speed

If your website pages take more than two seconds to load, your customer is likely to become impatient and exit the window. Test your site design for loading speed and make adjustments (such as reducing image resolution) so that it loads rapidly across all devices, operating systems, and browsers.

2. Content

Website content that has not been updated in a long time, such as promotional offers from six months ago, does not reflect well on a site’s trustworthiness either for the customer or for a search engine bot.

Keep refreshing your content to reflect the latest news and statistics, company updates, and limited-period offers or product availability, and be sure to keep the language simple enough for a general audience.

Content freshness determines your domain authority — search engines rate updated website content for freshness higher than those websites where the content does not change. Hence, constantly optimize your ecommerce site for SERPs.

Content also includes other links that your pages lead to. Therefore, be sure that none of those links are broken or spammy. Besides, have clear calls-to-action wherever relevant and make sure your text is in a clear and legible font.

3. Navigation

Once your target audience reaches your homepage, they need to be able to get to the pages they are looking for easily.

Have a prominent search bar on every page and make sure that each page element is arranged in a sequence that makes sense. Drop-down menus should be comprehensive, and each item should be listed in clear, simple language.

4. Accessibility

The ADA requires all websites to be optimized for easy use by customers with physical and neurological disabilities. Run a quick test to see whether your site meets the ADA compliance requirements, and get a consultant’s help if necessary to make the adjustments.

Things like clearly legible text, video/audio subtitles, and alt tags for images will, in fact, improve the user experience for all individuals — differently-abled or not  — and also help your site rank higher in search results. Hence making accessibility one of the important UX elements for every website.

5. SSL

Most buyers nowadays will look for the HTTPS in the website address bar and the green lock. You get these from purchasing an SSL certificate, an absolute must for site security — and yes, Google also considers this parameter while assigning ranks.

Besides, it would be best if you had a firewall in place to block unauthorized traffic, a privacy policy that promises not to share customer information, and two-factor authentication.

Given how prolific cybercrime has become, especially on eCommerce sites, you can never do too much when it comes to site security. Get an SSL certificate today!

About Us Section

1. Contact Information

Your website should have a physical address, telephone number, and email address mentioned, either on a separate contact page or at the footer of your site. This assures your customers that you are a real business and also helps with your search engine rankings.

Having a phone number and email address also shows that you want to hear from your target audience, and you want to make it easy for them, which further establishes your site’s trustworthiness.

2. Brand Story

How did your brand come about? What is the story behind your product or service? What motivates you to do what you do?

Having a page that talks about these things helps build a connection with your customers, who see you as a genuine team of individuals rather than a faceless company.

The more customers can relate to the how and why of your brand, the likelier they are to want to buy from you.

Yellow Leaf Hammocks has a well-crafted “About us” page that shares the entire story of how the company used to be, their comfortable hand woven hammocks, and the original Thai weavers who bring the products to life.

Source: Yellow Leaf Hammock

3. Team Faces

Putting a face to the business you run allows customers to see exactly who they will be working with and adds that personal touch. This is particularly important if your business requires one-on-one calls, business meetings, or home visits.

Add brief bios for each member, including qualifications and experience and personal details like hobbies and family. People attract people.

Social Proof

1. Trust Badges

If customers transact on your website with their credit card information, having trust badges from reputed third-party authorities is critical.

These badges show that your website has been verified as a legitimate one and serves to reassure your customers, particularly now that hacking has become common. Some of the most reliable trust badges include McAfee, PayPal, Norton Secured, Verisign, and BBB.

2. Clear Buying Policies

You should highlight any guarantees or warranties you provide to your customers (such as a one-year product warranty or guarantee refunds on canceled orders) on your product pages or in the website footer.

This includes clear mention of any cases where the guarantees do not hold. Taking this step will clarify things for the customers and avoid any legal disputes for you later.

Moreover, one of the top reasons consumers abandon their carts during checkout is hidden shipping costs and tax charges.

Source: Captured from Pack & Send infographic

Such unforeseen costs frustrate consumers, which could tarnish your brand image in the long run. It might be worth including your delivery cost estimation on the product pages so that they do not get shocked at seeing the total costs at the last stage of the buying cycle.

You will appear as a genuine brand if you are up-front about your pricing. Hiding costs would not take your brand very far!

3. Awards

If you have won any significant awards by industry bodies or specific areas like customer service, mention those on your website. It would be best if you also highlighted any positive mentions in the press on the website.

4. Case Studies

These are detailed accounts of a challenge that your business helped a customer overcome. Typically, you would write these in collaboration with your customer so that their side of the story shines through and showcases you as the ultimate solutions provider for your target audience’s pain points.

5. Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials from happy customers go a long way in setting you up as a brand to trust. Therefore, encourage your customers to leave reviews for you online, particularly ones that describe the challenges you helped them overcome.

Wherever possible, ask your customers to share a photo or video of themselves with their testimonial for extra credibility. Professional reviews from high-authority websites or influencers in your domain can also boost your credibility.

Boost Your Site’s Trustworthiness

The above-mentioned UX elements (and their sub-elements) define the credibility of every website. How you approach the specifics is in your hands. However, the underlying principles remain valid. Try to incorporate them all into your website slowly, and you will witness a considerable boost in your website traffic (and conversions).

The post 3 UX Elements That Make or Break Your Business Website’s Trustworthiness appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With this in mind, there are certain proven, on-trend web design techniques you can use to improve your customer’s shopping experience. Here is a list of the top six user-first web design trends to follow and implement, with a more detailed explanation of each one below.

Combine Photography With Graphics

Users spend 5.94 seconds looking at a website’s main image. You can use that time to interest them, entertain them, or say something about your brand. Don’t waste those five seconds with a “filler” image. Eye-tracking studies found that users actually ignore generic stock imagery.

Try out a mixed media photo as the main image on your website to engage customers and deliver an on-brand message.

Create a Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is all about designing your website so that people instinctively know what to do and where to look on your webpages.

Follow user-first web design best practices to meet your customers’ expectations. For example, the majority of users click on the logo to return to the homepage, so make yours easy to find at all times. Likewise, 64% of users want to see contact details on the homepage, so don’t hide them away.

Place your menu at the top of your page, and always make headings larger than paragraph text. Many small business sites don’t have a call to action on their homepage. Not only is this bad for business, but it’s bad for customers wondering how to take action on your site!

Other ways to use visual hierarchy include drawing attention using size, space, and color. People naturally look at bigger, brighter things first. Direct their gaze to your most important content using design. A bright call to action or bold heading are great examples of this.

Personalize and Localize Content

In a survey, over half of the users surveyed stated that they preferred personalized website experiences over generic ones, as their needs feel more catered to. It also helps build customer loyalty, with just under half stating they’d buy again from brands that provide a personalized purchasing journey.

For those selling globally, an important feature is to localize the checkout stage. Fifty-five percent of users would cancel their order if their favored payment method was unavailable. Most consumers would prefer to purchase products from ecommerce stores that use their own language. Always localize your currency too – 33% of consumers will likely abandon their purchase if prices are only in US dollars.

Finally, reward customers with instant gratification. Many customers would like real-time offers when browsing products online. Try using on-site pop-ups or applying discounts to checkouts automatically for your customers.

Prioritize Mobile-Focused Ecommerce

Forty-five percent of consumers say they’re shopping on their phone more since March 2020, and 70% of mobile searches lead to action within one hour.

Not investing in your mobile design will have a negative effect on your customer experience.

To keep customers happy on mobile, ensure your design is clutter-free and strip content back to the essentials. Use plenty of white space. This helps to avoid a cluttered feel and serves the practical purpose of making buttons easier to click with a thumb or finger.

Improve Website Load Speeds

Even if you apply every design innovation listed above, the harsh truth is that if your site loads too slowly, many customers will never even see your beautifully designed website. Modern users will wait no longer than three seconds before abandoning a site. Tough crowd!

The easiest way to start boosting your site speed is to compress your images. Twenty-five percent of web pages could save over 250KB just by compressing images. Not only is it easy, it’s also highly effective.

You can use a free online compressing tool such as Kraken.io or Optimizilla to reduce your images’ file sizes. Simply upload your images, let the tool compress them, and then download the new, lighter versions.

Make sure to test your site speed regularly. There are free tools to do this, too – popular ones include Pingdom and Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Enter your URL to find out how quickly your site loads, along with tips on how to improve your loading speeds.

User-First Web Design Ideas: The Wrap-Up

User-first web design should always be about the visitor. But with user experience set to become more important than ever this year, it’s the perfect time to redesign your site and boost customer experience simultaneously.

These ideas are easy ways to improve customer journeys, convey your brand, and encourage a greater number of happy customers on your site!

The post 6 User-First Web Design Ideas to Implement appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Bold and Oversized Typography and Visual Elements to Convert

If you want to build a new website or revamp your current site, go for oversized typography and bold visual elements. We are talking about striking typography, eye-catching call-to-action buttons, menu buttons, images, and videos. The great advantage of such “bigger, better” elements on a web page or a landing page is that it makes it clear for the visitor what your business is about right off the bat. 

Think about it this way: pre-click optimization takes the lion’s share when it comes to digital marketing strategies. On the other hand, more than 90% of ad clicks do not convert, and that is because the post-click landing page features poor design and poor optimization. If you dedicate time, effort, and resources to improving the post-click experience of your users on your website or landing page, you might gain those conversions you want so much. 

Creating a contemporary, bold, and striking post-click landing page is easier than it has ever been. Most businesses do not even know that they can create UX-friendly, award-worthy websites, or pages for free. For instance, you can start with website templates by Ucraft or other reputable website builders and optimize every single element to meet your business purposes. A modern, fresh site template attracts visitors, is SEO friendly, and converts into everything you want, from product sales to newsletter subscribers or poll answering. The advantages of the up-to-date website or landing page templates are that they are 100% mobile responsive and even allow you to introduce custom plugins. 

Keep in mind that minimalism and “less is more” are still evergreen concepts in web design trends this year. By choosing bold typography and large graphics or buttons, you should not overstuff the page. However, those essential elements – including high-converting CTA buttons – should speak volumes about who you are as a business and what you want your online customers to do. 

2. Use 3D Technology to Offer Immersive Experiences on Your Website

When it comes to leveraging new technologies to boost your marketing strategies, nothing works better than 3D design for enhanced user experience. Back in the day, the 3D graphics integration was for the champions who had the money to invest in such hi-tech ideas. Now, technology is in a place of availability. Businesses do not need to use NASA-powered equipment to create immersive user experiences on their websites to keep visitors there for as much as possible. 

Designing a web page with 3D tech immersion and user interaction in mind brings the best of both worlds: outstanding UX practices and exquisite business storytelling as a part of your upgraded marketing plan. Using 3D graphics and creating a small universe breaking the boundaries between reality and the digital world is what UX/UI web designers and digital marketers have been dreaming for years. 

The beauty of 3D in web design is that it is appealing by nature, so it is more likely to convert, no matter what your line of business is. Moreover, you can apply it to boost your marketing strategy across a bevy of industries. From creating a 3D experience to demonstrate how a product works to highlighting the users’ benefits should they choose your services, the sky is the limit. 

3. User-Triggered Animations to Promote Interaction

We all have to admit, 2020 was a game-changer when it cajame to how people interacted with websites. For many years, animations were huge in web design; they still are. Nevertheless, they turn users into passive witnesses of other people’s creativity. Website animations, as fun, engaging and converting as they are, make us feel like we are watching TV.

So, user-triggered animations are the new kids on the block when it comes to both trendy web design and new marketing settings worth exploring. The animation that users themselves can trigger by some type of input/action (letters move around with the cursors on a screen, for instance) is far more engaging than animation we just look at with no passion and no intellectual involvement. 

User-triggered animation solves plenty of problems when it comes to web design meeting marketing halfway:

• It engages the users with the website, snapping them out of the regular internet stupor and forcing them to pay attention;
• Challenges users to figure out what to do, where to press, when to scroll, and how to move the cursor to engage with the animation fully; in turn, it slows users down (increasing the time spent on the page), prompts them to use cognitive skills, and offers them a reward;
• Transforms them into mindful, active parts of the experience they share with you in real-time; it is hard to get better business storytelling or marketing than this. 

Just like 3D design, user-triggered animation offers an immersive experience to your users, who will feel more open to listening to what you have to say. Recent reports show that scroll-triggered animation, for instance, is an effective method to animate text, graphics, photos, and video elements on a website. If the users are bringing such features to life as they scroll down a page, they are more likely to engage with that page and, subsequently, the business. 

Bottom Line

Keeping an eye on the latest web design trends to integrate them into your marketing strategy is the wisest thing to do in our fast-paced world. The best news is that you do not even have to buy Tony Stark’s equipment to build an engaging and converting website or landing page. You also don’t have to put aside a rocket-sized budget for graphic designers. With the right tools (many free of charge) and the right creative people, you can make your site look worthy of a million bucks and finally reach those conversion goals you need so much for your business.

The post 3 Web Design Trends to Consider for an Upgraded Marketing Strategy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This goes to show that your online presence, particularly your website, is doing more than half the work for you when it comes to lead acquisition.

When you’re starting your company, all you want to do is get a website off the ground and get the word out as quickly as possible.

However, it is easy to make mistakes during the early stages of this process that could end up costing your brand in the long run, especially if you never address those errors later on.

You may already be doing most things right when it comes to your site, but it can only take a few key mistakes to drive prospective customers into the open arms of your competition.

Here are four potential risks to avoid if you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your website:

Ignoring Mobile

By 2021, there will be an estimated 3.8 billion smartphone users worldwide. This means an increasing number of people will be using their mobile phones to browse the internet.

This requires having a website that is compatible with different screen sizes and mobile operating systems.

If you only make your website accessible on desktop, you are running the risk of alienating a massive portion of potential customers.

Incorporating Corporate Speak

It is easy to fall into the trap of using lots of corporate jargon on your website. You might have the best intentions, however, if your website is crammed with industry jargon, potential customers might be tempted to look elsewhere. Even though you’re marketing to businesses, rather than clients, your website is still going to be looked at by people who want to understand what they are reading, so you may need help from a web design company.

We’re not saying you should dumb things down to a preschool level, but try to make sure you’re using clear and easily comprehensible language.

Focus on making your content understandable to your audience rather than yourself, and have a clear content marketing strategy for the future. If you must use any terms that aren’t considered common knowledge, explain them or provide links with additional information.

Lacking Updates

If you’re a business owner, chances are that you’re leading a hectic life. There are likely multiple roles you have to play within your company, leaving you with not much time or energy at the end of the day.

Updating your website is probably the last thing you want to do, but if you fail to do so, you run the risk of letting it look dated and neglected. That is not a good look when you’re trying to attract new customers.

In case you really don’t have the time to update your site regularly, at least hire an expert like The Web Shop design services to do the design for you.

Adding some content from time to time shows your visitors that you’re actively maintaining the website, which in turn shows that you’re up-to-date on current trends.

Even if you keep the general image of your website the same for a while, and even if you don’t add any significant content, it would be a good idea to update your customer stories on a regular basis.

Adding little notes from satisfied customers from time to time will give your website an extra degree of authenticity.

Failing to Secure the Website Properly

When you’re in a rush to get your business off the ground, you may neglect some website elements that don’t seem major, like your website’s security, but that’s a mistake.

The number of cyberattacks increases every year as technology advances. Just last year there was a 17% increase in data breaches compared to 2018. Not securing your B2B website can put your customers’ data at risk. Not to mention it makes you seem unreliable and unprofessional.

It is imperative that you protect any customer information collected by installing firewalls and encryption technology. It might be tempting to procrastinate on this, but if anything goes wrong, it could cost you dearly.

Make sure to seek the advice of cybersecurity professionals and comply with the latest regulations.

Taking shortcuts when it comes to developing a B2B website can prove costly. It is important to consider all the potential risks involved so that you avoid any problems later on.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list of all the problems you may encounter along the way, but these are a few places to start.

The post Four Risks To Avoid During B2B Web Development appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In order for businesses to thrive, staying relevant in the online space is a necessity. Boring sites with straightforward features aren’t cutting it anymore, so if you’re noticing a downward trend in analytics across the board, here are 10 indicators that a redesign could mean a boon in your business:

1. The Proof is In the Data

It’s easy to get swept up in the hopes of success, but one indicator that never lies about your progress is the data behind it. Your user data and analytics show you precisely where your business stands in the eyes of customers, and quite often, it lends insight into where improvements can be made.

For example, researching your site metrics may reveal that sales have reduced, conversions are stagnant, bounce rates are too quick, and overall site views are diminishing regularly. Of course, there’s always the possibility that your products and services aren’t performing well to a targeted audience, but in most cases, consumers are turned off by some flaw in your site’s experience. Keep in mind, recognizing a drop-off doesn’t necessarily mean rearranging your entire look, but it sets a priority of finding design flaws and reshaping the way you interact with visitors.

2. Your Site Rankings are Low

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just a tool for promoting blog posts or articles. Your website copy, landing pages, pillar pages, and overall design play a pivotal role in determining your site’s search rankings, so if you’re not appearing on the first or second page of a Google search, something’s wrong.

Even if it’s not the overall look of your website, aspects of it must be tailored to provide a fluid layout with optimized SEO descriptions that boost search results. Not to mention, websites that perform the best have a combination of qualities that search engines recognize, such as speedy loading times, high quality content, optimized images, blogs, external links, and infographics. It’s a combination of design strategies that contribute to a positive ranking, and since 93% of online user activities begin with a search engine, developing a high ranking is a direct lead to greater conversions.

3. It’s Unfriendly to Mobile Devices

Research shows that consumers spend 60% of their time on mobile devices compared to 40% on desktops, which means that if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you’re instantly cutting off 20% of a potential customer base. Additional stats from CIODive in 2018 claim that nearly 70% of all web traffic happens on mobile devices, and since smartphones have become the new connectivity norm to a wide range of demographics, your business can’t afford to miss out on traffic because of a clunky design.

Creating a mobile friendly version of your site is quite simple in comparison to developing the main platform. Depending on what host service you use, default and custom templates automatically allow for easy customization for mobile devices, like optimization for different screen sizes, accessibility of photos and videos, dropdown menus for quick links, and buttons to prompt the user to navigate to the full website. Hiring an outside developer to do this for you may be a bit trickier and costly, but someone experienced should have no problem designing an interface that’s both desktop and mobile ready.

4. You’re Past the 3-Year Mark

Consumer habits and trends change at the drop of a hat, and what’s popular or standard one day is sure to become a legacy strategy the next. With that mind, the design of your website is just as susceptible to change at a blazing speed.

Industry norms call for a website redesign every three years. Doing this ensures a competitive edge with fresh startups and major companies that have dedicated teams to consistently update content and features on a regular basis. In most cases, sites that are low-performing do so because their experience is out of touch with mainstream directions. E-commerce abilities are always being updated, SEO keywords are being developed and put to use, and technology itself is dictated by a cyclical time frame that you have no choice but to keep pace with. Altogether, the three year mark is a good place to assess the relevancy of your site and make any necessary changes.

5. The Site is Debt-ridden

Much like how an old appliance needs constant repair to stay in operation, at some point your website becomes too much of a liability with outstanding debts and too many band-aids to replace. At the end of the day, performing minor repairs on a daily or weekly basis comes with exorbitant costs, and rather than keeping a developer on retainer, it’s more practical to scrap the original and start fresh with a new design.

In many ways, performing a complete relaunch of your website is liberating and makes the most financial sense. Sure, you could tackle small problems and chip away at debt-ridden fixes and patches to your tech and UX features, but starting over from scratch allows you to take all the mistakes from your first pass and develop them into long-term strategies that drive profits. In addition, a redesign allows for the implementation of new SEO practices, seamless navigation, minimalism for landing pages and a refocusing of primary drivers, as opposed to pages that are only adding to bounce rates.

6. Downtime and Glitches are Rampant

Have you ever visited a webpage only to see the dreaded “404” error page pop up? Well, when customers see this on your site, it’s a major disservice to your brand. In your defense, it’s not something you plan to happen, but when it does, it represents a critical design flaw or issue in your site that needs to be addressed.

Your site’s credibility is at stake when downtime and glitches run rampant in your UX. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as unscheduled server maintenance, issues with coding, corrupted packets and files, DDOS attacks, or bandwidth limitations that cause slower load times. No matter what the interruption may be, customers are quick to deem your site as unreliable, which means less traffic and less conversions. To make matters worse, studies show that even 5 extra seconds of load time (let alone broken page links) increase bounce rates by 20%, so a redesign could be just the thing you need to straighten out the misconnections.

7. Your Current Design is Out of Touch

Customers have an expectation in mind when they visit a company’s site. An experience that’s modern, fluid, and captivating is what reels them in, so you can imagine how off-putting a site can be with a design that’s out of touch with current trends. Website design trends for 2019 call for minimal interfaces, homepage background videos, black and white color palettes, and glitch art.

A great way to assess your site’s relevancy is to compare it with popular brands who produce tons of regular traffic. For instance, check out Apple’s layout and take note of how well it engages users with quality images and simple navigation bars. Products are displayed in crisp images and bold price points. The rule-of-thirds concept is put to use with wide graphics clean copy. Even Amazon conveys a strategic layout despite selling thousands of products and services. Their homepage displays a limited amount of items in large, clickable photos and copy is restricted to one or two-word labels. Bombarding the homescreen with too many pages and clutter is a byproduct of outdated design strategies, so investigate how you can clean up your UX and get consumers to the heart of your brand.

8. Social Media isn’t Incorporated

Your website serves as a foundation for users to take advantage of direct resources, but relying on it as a primary driver means that your cutting out an enormous pool of potential customers who spend their time surfing various social platforms.

Reports from Brandwatch show that over 3 billion people are active on social media, averaging over 5 accounts for each person. Each day, users spend roughly 116 minutes checking Facebook, posting on Instagram, researching Pinterest recipes, or tweeting about the latest current event. Needless to say, businesses need to market other platforms from their site and encourage visitors to follow them in order to generate growth. Diversifying content creates opportunities for interactive campaigns and building brand culture and awareness. However, some sites don’t carry the latest functionality to promote social channels to a wider audience, which is a mistake. A redesign that incorporates social icons to other platforms and allows visitors to share content to their platform of choice is a necessity that’s well worth the investment.

9. You Don’t Have Access to Your Site’s Design

Although you may not have the wherewithal to relaunch a site from head to toe, having the ability to make quick changes or updates is essential to knowing your brand and maintaining consistent viewership. With that in mind, if you’re kept in the dark about your site’s progress by the hands of a developer, it may be time to rethink your overall design.

Every business, to some degree, should have access to their site’s backend functionality. Whether it’s yourself or a dedicated team member who monitors site activity, having the ability to log in and know the basic inner workings of your design elements reinforces your efficiency to communicate with consumers in a timely manner. It gives you better access to track what changes should be made, offers insights into valuable user metrics compiled by the service provider, and helps you create ideas for what can be developed in the future. A quality developer includes you in the design process and gives you the tools to be in the driver’s seat, rather than you sitting in the back, unable to choose the destination.

10. Your Brand Identity has Changed

Nothing affects a company more than time itself, and after years of trial and error, your brand may take on a new identity that’s not represented by your current web design. Anytime a shift happens in your overall business model, it’s important to share that transformation with users. Whether it’s new packaging design or a new feature, get the message out there as soon as possible.

You don’t want your website to cause confusion about what your primary goals are, especially if you’re adapting to new models and new demands. By aligning the ways your brand identity has evolved, you can express those changes with a brand designer and launch a fresh web design that showcases your main drivers. In the end, you’ll maintain existing clientele with engaging innovations and convert new visitors to dedicated customers.

Change is a Good Thing

Although it may seem a bit overwhelming, adopting a new design is a way for your business to stay competitive in a shifting market.

As consumers gain more information and generate expectations for certain products and services, providing them with a UX that piques their interest and promotes their lifestyle is what leads to higher conversions. Maintaining outdated designs do the opposite.

The post 10 Indicators a Redesign Could Mean a Boon in Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Hitting your online sales goals is one key performance indicator, of course. But what if you want to really get into the details and observe exactly how your visitors are interacting on your site? The answer is to use a heat map.

Heat maps is a graphical demonstration of how website users and visitor interact and resonate with your website.

In other words, what works and what’s not.

With visitor data that’s presented in an immediately-understandable visualization, you get facts about your visitors’ activity rather than relying on hunches. This information enables your team to level-up your website and give your visitors the experience they want. Which buttons are they clicking, their cursor movement, their eyes focus and more.

But because heat maps are seemingly easy to use and understand, many marketing teams formulate quick hunches at first glance without taking time to think about best practices. Avoiding the following common mistakes can make the difference between stagnate and stellar.

Not Using Other Analytics Tools Along with Heat Maps

Whether you’re working on a car, building a home or improving a website, numerous tools should be used to complete the job correctly. While you can certainly gain instant and accurate insights using heat maps, other tools (such as Google Analytics) should be used with them to confirm speculations and hunches or to cross reference data.

Perhaps one reason why some marketers use heat maps in isolation is that the graphical representation is easy to present to managers and colleagues. Simple visualizations are indeed a refreshing change from dull and complex Google Analytics reports. But supporting heatmap-driven epiphanies using other tools will keep you from taking the wrong actions.

When presenting the data, it’s always good to use heat maps. Everyone appreciates quick and intuitive visualizations, especially those who aren’t keen on spreadsheets and other traditional analytics

tools. Then, if someone wants more details about the data, break out the Google analytics information you’ve already uncovered. As always, the more preparation, the better.

Not Taking Sample Size or Time-Periods into Consideration

Heat maps are excellent for visual simplicity.

They remove the complexities and numbers that are found in spreadsheet data. But It can be dangerous to make decisions about your website (or even make website changes) when you forget that heat maps aren’t showing you the size of your data set. Are the colors representing 1,000 visitors to your site, or 50,000 visitors? Adjust the settings of your heat map tool to make sure your sample size is representative of your audience.

The sample time-period is also important. If you’ve set your heat map tool to collect data on the first 2,000 visitors, and that number was reached within the first 24 or 48 hours, how can you observe weekday vs. weekend behavior trends?

What about visitor behavior during the beginning of the month vs. the end of the month? Bottomline, you need a lot of data to reach the right conclusion.

Not Segmenting by New Visitors vs Returning VisitorsI

t’s a common mistake to lump all visitors together in the same heat map without differentiating the new from the returning. Returning customers and new visitors behave differently on websites.

Knowing the differences can be very important for seasonal marketing campaigns, special offers, and being aware of how often visitors are coming back to use your site.

You’ll want to see data for each segment because the two heat maps will look significantly different. You also want the ability to know what kinds of information both segments seek, and how they interact differently with your site.

Not Pairing your Heat Map Tool with Visitor Feedback

Once you’ve used a heat map to gain insight into your visitors’ behaviors, it’s time to go a step further by gaining context.

Heat maps give you a big-picture view that tells you what your visitors are doing. But customer feedback enables you to zoom in and learn the specific why’s behind your visitors’ activities.

When you discover roadblocks and drop-offs, feedback can tell you if the problems are related to product pricing, complicated website functionality, a lack of information on your site, or something altogether different. A couple popular website-feedback elements include:

Popup surveys – These are popup windows that ask one or two quick questions about your visitors’ experience. They should be used as a visitor is exiting your site. A popup window could ask something like, “What is your primary concern about making a purchase on our site?” A couple of choices are then given for the visitor to select

Feedback widgets – A feedback widget appears as a button housed at the side of a web page. When a visitor clicks the button, the widget enables them to highlight specific parts of the web page and provide feedback about what’s highlighted.

On-page surveys – This type of feedback survey appears as a small, unobtrusive window at the bottom of the web page. It’s similar in appearance to a chatbot text window.

Not Recording Visitors’ Activity

Heat maps are great for seeing the overall picture of how hundreds or thousands of visitors are interacting with your website. But the best heat-map technology on the market also gives you the ability to record your visitors’ activities at the individual level.

By recording your visitor’s website activity, you get deep insights that shed light on previously unanswered questions. Learn, for example, the pages that are leading to conversions (or falling flat,) how much time specific visitors are spending on different pages, and whether they’re using mobile devices or desktops. You might even be able to ascertain reasons why a large percentage of your visitors are quickly abandoning certain pages.

The more knowledge you have about individual visitor journeys, the easier it will be to turn your website into a well-oiled conversion machine.

Not Blocking IPs

For new web pages that receive very little traffic, you don’t want your heat map to reflect the activity of people from your own company.

If most of the traffic is coming from a company’s representatives (like marketers and web developers,) the heat map won’t be useful. The fix is to set the heat map tool to exclude your company’s IPs, including the IPs of your remote employees.

Best Practices + The Right Tool = Success

It’s key that you don’t let a heat map’s ease-of-use dull your vigilance.

Also remember that not all heat map tools are created equal. Look for one that enables you to record user activity and offers visitor-feedback options. The ability to differentiate between new and returning visitors is important as well.

The bottom line is simple: the right tool combined with the above best practices will enable you to fine tune your site for optimal results.

The post Are You Making These 6 Heat Map Mistakes? appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Accessibility 

If your website provides a good experience for people with visual impairments and other disabilities, it will almost certainly provide a good experience for everyone else. A focus on accessible navigation, typography, color choices and screen-reader compatibility, will help you create a website that is intuitive and pleasant to use for everyone. – Vik Patel, Future Hosting

2. A Clear, Guided Experience

Effective user experience needs to evoke a feeling; it needs to guide the user; it needs to communicate. UX/UI have become synonymous because brands need to move, communicate and adapt to the user at all times. Being able to understand what part of the customer journey they’re in and where they need to be guided will yield the best results. – Michael Cleary, Huemor

3. Fast Site Performance

Even the best designed and most visually appealing website will fail to engage visitors if it is slow. It should load fast, be responsive to input in fractions of a second, and not leave visitors twiddling their thumbs. With modern web technologies, there is no reason for even a complex site to be slow and unresponsive. – Justin Blanchard, ServerMania Inc.

4. Infinite Scrolling

Many websites have adopted this design strategy to great success by putting their own clever twist on it. Something that not everyone realizes with modern web pages is that you essentially have an unlimited amount of vertical space to work with. Using bucket brigades, interactive elements and other engagement strategies, you can keep your viewers scrolling or swiping down as far as you like. – Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy

5. Easy Navigation to Your Most Important Pages

Most websites have one or two main places that the majority of users are driven towards. That space could be the login or it could be the pricing information. Either way, focus on getting people to those places with the least amount of friction possible. – Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

6. Good SEO

SEO is an overlooked aspect when it comes to UX, but it is the most effective way to engage visitors. While SEO isn’t what visitors engage with on your website, it is something that helps you match your visitor’s search intent to your website pages. A successful SEO strategy allows you to direct visitors to the relevant pages they wanted. By doing this, your visitors engage more. – Alexander Mistakidis, Gamelynx

7. An Immediate Understanding of Your Value Proposition

If I go to your page, within five seconds I should know exactly what you offer and why I should be here. If not, I’m going somewhere else. Immediately show your value and give visitors a reason to be engaged and interested. Think well-made explainer videos, visually entertaining GIFs or even good old-fashioned bold words. Intrusive popups can have the opposite effect. – Troy Osinoff, JUICE

8. A Clean and Simple Design

Less is more these days when it comes to UX/UI on websites. The smallest details usually make the biggest differences. In a world of instant gratification, people respond well to information that is familiar. A clean, simple, intuitive design is more likely to resonate with the audience of today. Adding something subtle, visually appealing and novel can also charm the toughest critics. – Steven Fleisher, Two Degrees

9. A Pop-Up Chat Box

A pop-up chat box floating on the page that allows customers to chat with you or call a customer service representative is a must. This gives them the instant satisfaction of resolving their problem in real time, which is somewhat expected by customers these days. – Andy Karuza, FenSens

10. A Great FAQ Page

This is UX/UI in its best form: self-serve, straightforward and expected. Make it easy for your website visitors to get their questions answered immediately without having to send an email or talk to a chatbot. Spend a little extra time testing and developing your FAQ page instead of treating it as a throwaway page and make sure it’s helpful, comprehensive and clear. – Roger Lee, Human Interest

11. Intuitive, Responsive Design

Companies must determine what device visitors are using and be able to deliver the website that works on that screen quickly so that the user can see everything they want rather than having to struggle. – Serenity Gibbons, Calendar

12. A Call to Action

Many websites miss this key element: a call to action. In today’s world where the average user has an attention span of less than five seconds, it’s important to tell users what to do when they are on your site. This is especially true if you plan on acquiring leads or actual business from your site. Displaying powerful calls to action on your site is the best way to engage your users. – Michael Hsu, DeepSky

13. Video Content

A picture is worth a thousand words. Furthermore, video is worth a thousand pictures. Hi-res photos are able to convey an idea much faster than words. String 30 pictures together every second, accompanied with immersive sound, and you’re on the fast track of information transfer. Put a video library in your website’s menu and add video wherever it’s relevant. Your message will be loud and clear. – Christopher Tedder, Clinger Holsters

The post 13 UX Elements Your Website Needs to Engage Visitors appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What’s one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web host for your company site?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Your Business’s Needs

Before you begin looking at options, consider the type of site you are building, whether you need any special features, as well as your anticipated site traffic volume. Don’t pigeonhole yourself into what your site should look like now. Think about what you want it to be next year. Starting with a good foundation makes it easier to update and expand later down the pike. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

The post 11 Important Factors to Consider When Choosing Your Web Host appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to launch three small business websites, two of which have grown into thriving businesses. Although technology has made it easier to build websites, I’m constantly surprised by the numerous hidden costs that, if unchecked, can quickly snowball into large expenses and eat into your revenue.

Here are 5 hidden costs that can hurt your small business website even before it takes off.

1. Website Infrastructure

This is perhaps the most important factor that determines how much you’ll spend on running your website. Today, there are plenty of options when it comes to building your website. However, if you don’t make the right choice it can prove to be costly down the line, as you’ll see below. Here are the different ways you can setup your website:

• Build a custom website from ground up – This means you need to hire professional developers and designers company like Web designers in Stockport to build your entire website and this can cost you thousands of dollars just to get started. Not many do this anymore, unless you’re an enterprise business with custom site requirements.
• Use a content management system – You can also use free content management systems like WordPress that provide you all the tools required to build your site. However, you will need to hire professionals to setup and customize your site. This costs about $500-1000 every year which includes the developer costs & hosting fees.
• Use a website builder – There are many fully automated website builders like Wix, Squarespace and Weebly that allow you to quickly build your website using a drag & drop interface. In this case, you don’t need a team of developers to build or run your website. You can get your site up & running for as little as $5 per month. All you need to do is spend a couple of hours on YouTube, learning how to use one of these website builders and you should be good to go. This is undoubtedly the most recommended option.

2. Design

If you want to attract website visitors and turn them into paying customers, you have to make your site looks good and for this you may need to get help from professionals like the ones found at the Spicy Broccoli Media website design Agency. It’s funny how ‘design’ creeps into almost everything you put on your small business website these days. Here are 4 design-related costs that you need to watch out for when launching your site.

• Logos & graphics – If you don’t have prior design experience, you can get your logos & graphics designed for as low as $5, at Fiverr or UpWork. If you enjoy designing stuff, then you can try free online design tools like Canva or LogoMakr. I’ve used LogoMakr a couple of times and found it really easy to use.
• Images – Unless you have the luxury of hiring professionals to edit images, you can use free stock images from sites such as Unsplash or Pixabay. Some of them might require you to credit the photographer while using their images.
• Website Design Templates – This is one of the biggest costs while building a website. You can get paid wordpress templates starting from $35 on sites like ThemeForest. Then also consider getting the professionals to design your web site as many are very cheap now and provide amazing web sites so well worth using. If you hire a designer to customize your paid template, it can cost upwards of $300. However, if you want to build your website from ground up, then it will cost at least $5,000.On the other hand, all hosted website builders like Wix, SquareSpace and Weebly provide a huge library of free design templates. Most of them are as good as paid templates. Even if you hire a designer like Calgary web design to style your site, it will cost you less than $100, since they’ll be using the drag & drop UI, instead of coding it themselves.
• Email templates – If you want your blog subscribers and customers to read your emails, then you need to make them look good. However, when you’re just starting, don’t go for paid email templates (cost – $15 onwards). You can sign up for email marketing platforms like MailChimp & Aweber, that offer tons of beautifully designed, professional-looking email templates, absolutely free.

3. Contentbusin

Once your website is designed, you’ll need to populate it with content, so that your site visitors can understand your business, see your products and read your blog posts. Typically, there are 2 types of content you’ll need to launch your website:

1. Web content – It consists of all the textual content present on various pages of your website – whether it’s your home page, ‘about us’ page, or product pages. It includes every piece of text on your site – your tagline, sub headings, product features, benefits, FAQs, and more. It involves a fair bit of creative skill to write a persuasive copy.So if you have a small website of 3-5 pages, you can hire a professional to create web content for you. They charge about $250-300 for at least three pages, with a cheaper rate for additional pages. However, examine their prior work to see if their quality and style of writing matches your requirements.
2. Blog Content – It can be very costly to outsource your blog content, starting from $25 per blog post, especially if you’re starting and don’t know what your audience likes to read. So you might want to invite guest posting on your blog. This will help you get tons of content for free while you find out what topics resonate with your readers.

4. Automation Tools & Plugins

There are plenty of automation tools & plugins that make it easy to manage & promote your website, once it is built. However, technology has become so seamless that you might not be aware how they’re adding costs to your business.

Make a list of all the paid tools & plugins you use to manage your business – from collaboration tools & services like Slack, to email marketing solutions like MailChimp to social media management tools like HootSuite. Even note your laptops’ operating systems. All these tools add costs to your small business. Find out if they have any good open source alternatives. Is there any open source alternative for Slack? How about replacing Windows with Ubuntu?

In fact, our technology costs dropped by 32% when we replaced most of our paid software with their open source alternatives. When it comes to business success, companies will consider return on investment when choosing a web designer. Effectively, web design packages often deliver good value for Australian organizations. Streamlined web solutions can also help you utilize some of the latest technologies suited for specific industries.

5. Maintenance & updates

Once your website is up & running, you’ll have to periodically run maintenance & upgrades on it. They can be in the form of software updates & security patches, or even a new website design. You’ll also need professional help every time your site breaks down. If you don’t factor in these costs, they can quickly swell up your operating expenses.

If you choose to build a custom site from scratch then you can get in real trouble. What happens if the developers who built your site leave, or can’t be reached? Your new developers may have a hard time understanding & fixing your website, and may charge you extra fees for it.

Take control of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript in a completely visual canvas and let KC Vision Media translate your design into clean, semantic code that’s ready to publish to the web, or hand off to developers.

If you have built your site using WordPress, then you’ll need to hire a developer to fix your site every time it breaks down, or whenever you need to make any updates. A good developer can cost between $80 and $180 per hour.

Given the accessibility of the WordPress platform, many businesses owners initially set up their website themselves or with the help of a colleague. One of the strengths of WordPress web design is that it empowers businesses owners and reduces reliance on programmers.

Fully-hosted website builders like Wix allow you to install updates with just one-click, and have a dedicated, 24×7 support team to help you with troubleshooting. That’s why they’re a great option for people who don’t have much technical knowledge, or who are new to building websites.

If you keep an eye on the above hidden costs, you’ll be able to launch your business smoothly and use the saved funds on other important areas such as marketing & hiring.

The post Building A Website? Watch Out For These 5 Hidden Costs appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Increase website security

Many small business owners don’t know that a website, no matter how secure it seems, isn’t as secure as you think. The reason why is that when the site is placed on an unsecure server with various websites, there is a chance of one being hacked. It’s frustrating to know that no matter how secure your site is, it’s not fully protected and poor security can destroy your business. A minecraft server hosting will take preventative measures to reduce risks of privacy violations with the help of firewalls and other electric barriers between a site and those trying to access it with malicious intent. If your site is compromised due to a hosting issue with a well-known company and you chose a low tier plan, the chance of a speedy solution is slim. Business owners sometimes fail to realize the importance of knowing the types of web hosting available and choosing the most reputable providers. Both decisions have a direct influence on the success of your business. We are an IT support services company in Houston that constantly strives to provide dynamic, innovative, and practical consultative design and IT services that will save you a lot of time, reduce costs, and improve the key deliverables for all information technology teams. 

Receive better customer service

When your small business site goes down, you’ll get to know the customer service team of your hosting platform. The difference between good and bad hosts is the speed at which the issue is resolved. A good host offers knowledgeable representatives who will assist you with your problems and answer your questions, whether by phone or chat. Clients with a more profitable account will likely take priority and earn immediate attention. If you went cheap on hosting, you’ll probably be faced with longer wait times, less than stellar assistance, and a fix to your issue that won’t last long. Many small business owners wouldn’t associate customer service with a hosting platform, but it is something you need to think about since it actively affects the experience.

Offer your customers reliability

Your business website often makes the first impression – you want to make sure your customers see a website that runs well and best represents your brand. Visitors may not notice that your website is good when they’re browsing around, but they will notice  if your site is consistently down or isn’t user-friendly. There is always a possibility a website will crash, it’s far less likely if you have a good host. Good hosts are consistently backing up data and cloning sites to ensure they can always provide a fast solution to get your website back and running online so you can sell more products. Less expensive hosting often leads to a slow website – a frustration for many users. There is never a guarantee your website will consistently run without a glitch, but better hosts provides better care to their clients and more efficient web speeds with enhanced security. Reliable hosts minimize many risks involved with your site, which means you’ll have less of a headache if the site experiences any problems.

Small business owners don’t always realize how much hosting matters. There are various options available to everyone who launches a website so make sure you educate yourself before you select your host. A reliable host is the key to overall functionality of a website leading to happier customers and more sales.

The post 3 Reasons Hosting Matters appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Watch my interview (below) with the President of Wix.

Wix has always been a robust platform. RamonRay.com is built on it.

First enabling an easy to use web site editor. Then enabling easy to use applications from Wix (such as Wix bookings) and the Wix app store for 3rd party developers to hook their apps onto a Wix web site.

However, until now, there’s not been a way for a Wix web site to bring in external data via an API call to a data set outside of Wix. Or for a Wix web site to include an almost infinite possibility of features through programming via Javascript.

That’s all changed with Wix Code – which enables any Wix user (or their developer) to build highly customized, intelligent and smart websites – easily.

What might take several weeks to code in a non-Wix website can now be done in hours (or days) with Wix Code.

A startup could in fact use Wix as a testing ground for an idea and have the front end and backend done faster than ever before.

What’s even better is that you don’t have to worry about hosting, storage, security and other details. Since your web application is hosted by Wix – they take care of all the messy details. You just build a beautiful and now more intelligent and customized website.

Wix Code means more professionals can build more functionality into their websites, increasing customer engagement, increasing sales and providing better customer service and a rich user experience.

The post Why Wix Code Is a Game Changer for Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Nearly 70% of small business consumers say the most important factor in a positive website experience is up-to-date and accurate content, suggesting a quick “spring cleaning” could bring big benefits for business owners. That’s according to The Small Business Consumer Expectations Report from Vistaprint Digital, launching today. Based on the results of a March 2017 survey of 1,800 U.S. consumers who have visited a small business website, the report focuses in on preferences for content, design and frequency of updates – and, most critically, what factors leave customers with a bad impression.

Nearly 70% of small business consumers say the most important factor in a positive website experience is up-to-date and accurate content, suggesting a quick “spring cleaning” could bring big benefits for business owners. That’s according to The Small Business Consumer Expectations Report from Vistaprint Digital, launching today. Based on the results of a March 2017 survey of 1,800 U.S. consumers who have visited a small business website, the report focuses in on preferences for content, design and frequency of updates – and, most critically, what factors leave customers with a bad impression.

Consumer expectations of small business websites are high, with 42% reporting that they are not very likely to visit or purchase something from a small business if it has a poorly designed or unprofessional website – and 21% are not likely at all. Digging more deeply into what drives bad impressions, the results reveal that the nuts-and-bolts elements are significant: the top reasons consumers leave a small business website with a bad impression are outdated contact information (nearly 50%) and lack of address/directions/business hours (42%). What is the real impact? Nearly 60% of respondents say they would be less likely to purchase from a small business if they had a bad impression of the website – only 7.5% said it would have no impact at all.

“Based on a recent poll of our customers, we know that lack of time and limited resources are the top challenges for micro business owners as they look to grow their businesses. This latest consumer data arms these business owners with the insights to strategically prioritize their marketing tactics – specifically as it relates to their core digital presence,” said D. Scott Bowen, vice president and general manager of Vistaprint Digital. “With 68% of consumers saying that up-to-date and accurate website content is most important when it comes to having a positive experience with a small business site, allocating time to regular site updates is critically important to putting your best foot forward.”

The post NEWS: Neglecting Website Basics Can Significantly Impact Sales appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Point being: You need to have a great website made by the best Dallas web design company or anywhere else where you prefer. But building a website can be a costly, difficult process if you don’t know what you’re doing, and it’s very easy to wind up with a design you’re unhappy with.

That’s why we’ve put together this simple outline of the basic steps of getting your website off and running. Here are some thing you’ll need to take care of, in the rough order that you’ll probably need to do them.

Finding a domain name

This can be the easiest part of creating the website, or one of the hardest, depending on whether or not the name you’re looking for has already been taken, and whether it has any solid variants.  If neither of those things are an issue, then the process is no more complicated that picking a domain name provider that works for you–from GoDaddy.com to NameCheap.com–and buying it. Usually you can choose to re-up your purchase once every year or every two years.

If many of the names you wanted are taken however, there is another track you can take. The first is to not get a “.com”, but to get something like a “.biz” or a “.org”. Many organizations do this to get the domain name they wanted while only having to change the last portion of the url, and it’s likely to be the most effective way to deal with this issue. Beyond that, you’ll simply have to get creative with your domain until you find one that fits.

Finding a web host

What exactly is a web host? Many people confuse a domain provider with a web host, and while they sometimes overlap, that’s usually not the case.

It’s probably best to explain it like this: The domain name is the name of your storefront. Your online storefront is your website, and the web host is the plot of land your storefront sits on. If this is all sounding confusing, don’t worry. Many web-building platforms now offer to host your site on their servers, or will have an easy way to have your site hosted on someone else’s.

Since you’ll most likely be going this route (it’s the most affordable/easiest for small business), let’s talk about some standard website building platforms.

Choosing a web-building platform

This is arguably the most important part of the process. There are many different platforms available for building a website, and many more people willing to make one for you. How do you pick the best one for your needs?

Well, first things first. No matter whether or not you have someone build your website or you take care of it from scratch, you should be able to easily change basic features on your website without involving someone else. Too often small business owners have someone build their website, only to realize they need to call the programmer every time they want to make a small change because the back-end is a mess, or they just don’t have the basic web skills to make it happen.

If you choose to have someone build your website, don’t be tempted to pick someone who designs decent websites mainly because they are cheap. Many “decent” sites can be a nightmare behind the scenes, and the second most important thing besides an attractive storefront is making sure the back is easy to navigate.

Designing the Website

Once you have your platform picked, now comes the hard work of designing an attractive storefront. This means taking care of everything to the basic design and visual aspects of the site, to how the pages layout, to even creating your logo. Depending on the complexity and how you’re creating the website, it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months to get it in a position where it’s user-friendly and ready to go. With the increase in popularity of websites nowadays, more and more businesses are striving to find that expert Website Design Agency that will be able to provide them with a professional-looking website that is sure to catch the attention of clients both old and new. There are lots of different websites popping up the internet and with the demand steadily increasing; competition among all the website design agencies is fierce.

Driving Traffic to the Website

After you’ve done the hard work of getting your website is up and running, it’s time to get people to actually SEE it. There are plenty of ways to do this but the general version is that you’ll be using either organic or paid means to drive traffic.

Some good, low-cost options for driving traffic include advertising/growing social communities, using the google ad network, doing content marketing (i.e. creating your own blogs or other content and promoting it) as well as networking/linking with other complimentary businesses (for instance, if you run a motel, do a cross promotion with a local eatery to encourage your guests to go to and vice versa). You should design a traffic plan that matches the needs of your business, as not all methods will have success depending on what you are.

After all of this, your small business website should be ready for prime-time. If you’re looking for more information on how to drive traffic, take a look at some of our other articles specifically on driving your website traffic.

The post Building a Website from Scratch – 5 Things You Should Know appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Why You Need Video

You should be using video to get more customers, but what makes it different from other marketing approaches? Customers get more information in a shorter amount of time by viewing one well-made video. Videos give your customers an impression of you and your business. It’s more personal than an email or blog post. Video is used in marketing in many ways today. Short videos posted to Vine and Instagram are short and easily shared. Tutorials and vlogs on your website or YouTube are a bit longer and more informative. Whether you film it yourself or hire a professional, video is one marketing tool you need.

DIY Video

Small businesses often take the DIY approach to save money where possible. Apps such as Vine and Instagram make it possible to create short videos. They’re free and simple to use. You can make new videos quickly, edit clips, and reach all your followers instantly. This option is excellent for things like contests, previewing new products, and even speaking directly to your followers, such as Q&A videos. Doing it yourself isn’t without pitfalls, however. While apps make it seem easy, they can’t make a poorly shot video look good. Take a few steps to make your DIY videos look their best.

Storyboard. Use paper or software to plot out each scene for your video and the dialogue or narrative that goes with it. Come up with a few versions, then narrow it down to the best one.

Lighting. Poorly lit videos look awful. Make sure you have at least one bright light source. Whether it’s sunlight through a window or a floor lamp aimed at your product, be sure the thing you’re filming is brightly lit.

Script. Stumbling over your words makes you sound like a novice and increases editing time. It helps to practice speaking a few times before shooting, even if it’s only a few second clip for social media. The script is even more important when filming a longer video, such as a tutorial for YouTube.

Sound. Tiny smartphone microphones aren’t the best at capturing clear sound in your film production. Be sure there is silence when you’re filming (unless background noise is intentional). Try using the earbuds with mic that came with your phone for clarity. You can also purchase a microphone that plugs into the 3.5 mm jack on your phone or a clip-on mic.

Stability. Don’t make your customers nauseous with shaky video. Invest in a tripod before shooting videos for your business. Choose a full size tripod or a little Gorillapod^® depending on what and where you’ll be filming. Some lower end tripods can droop or slowly move while filming, so look out for that while testing it out.

Image licensing. Avoid getting sued by only using commercially licensed images and video clips. You’ll either need to purchase a license, get permission from the creator, or use Creative Commons (CC) images. Be aware “free to use” and CC works are not always commercially licensed. Read the fine print to be sure you’re allowed to use the image.

Professional Video

Even if you’re able to film a decent video yourself, you may not realize just how labor intensive video editing is. It can be a lengthy and complex process to get to the final, polished version of your video. While you may be capable of doing the editing yourself, it may make more sense as a business owner to pay a professional to spend hours creating a great video for you while you focus on other responsibilities.

Hiring professionals to create your video will ensure a polished final product. The obvious difference in quality gives the impression that your business is trustworthy. When it comes to video ads, tutorials, help videos for your product, and any video featured prominently on your website you’ll want to consider investing in a professional to create your videos. The impact it has on your customers is invaluable.

The post Video Production Tips for Small Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This article is brought to you in partnership with Verisign, the global leader in domain names and internet security

Many small businesses find a website to be instrumental to their growth as a business. However, many small business owners aren’t sure where to start or are intimidated by the process of building a website. Our friends at Verisign, the registry operator for .com and .net, have provided a checklist to help guide you, whether you’re building a website on your own with a DIY website builder or outsourcing to a professional.

Determine the Purpose of Your Website

Every website has a purpose, whether it’s simply to serve as a brochure or to sell products. Decide what your website’s purpose is going to be before you begin, then plan your content around it. To get started, it’s often best to determine the elements that are critical as you launch your website, knowing that you can always expand your website later. For an e-commerce site, for instance, you could put some of your most popular items online as you get familiar with the fulfillment process, then gradually add more items as your business grows.

Choose and Register a Domain Name

One of the most important things you’ll do as you build a new website is choose a domain name. Dot com (.com) and .net are among the most popular domains for businesses that want to reach their customers online.  Since your domain name, or web address, will be used on your promotional materials, it should be memorable, but it should also contain your business’s most essential search terms. Internet search users are likely to click on a keyword-rich domain name that includes at least one of their search terms, compared to a domain name that does not contain any of the keywords.

Plan Your Website

Before taking the next step, carefully map out your website, deciding what pages you’ll have and how they’ll connect to each other. This will give you an idea of the scope of your site, including what services you’ll need. Once you’ve mapped your site, you’ll be able to decide whether you want to hire a provider to design your site or use one of the many DIY tools available. With your plan in place, you’ll know exactly which elements you need to include. Check out a good option for you to create your business website and get more customers.

Locate Web Hosting

In addition to your domain name and website developer, you’ll also need a service to host your site. Some web hosting providers include website builders as part of their services, so you may want to search for this before you make any final decisions about your website’s creation. You can use a service like WordPress that offers hosting for free, but you’ll need to forward your domain name to the WordPress site. This will ensure that when someone enters the domain name you’ve created, they’re immediately directed to your content.

Promote Your Website

Even the best-designed website will be useless unless customers can find it. You’ll need to put effort into getting the word out about your website, including filling it with content that will make it rank well in web searches. In addition to quality content creation, you can also experiment with paid search engine placement, which will give your site visibility to your target audience. Make sure you also promote your site on your existing channels, including using signage in your store, adding it to your print materials, and linking to it on various social media platforms.

A website is the first step toward getting the word out about your business. When you take the right steps from the start, you set up a basic site that you can build on as your business grows. With the right domain name and publicity, your site will help you compete with others in your industry who already have great websites.

This article was written in partnership with Verisign, the global leader in domain names and internet security. All opinions and experiences expressed are my own.

The post Building a Website for Your Small Business? This Checklist Will Help appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This article was written in partnership with GoDaddy, a company that offers domain name registration as well as hosting and ecommerce services to help you develop your online presence.

The phrase rings out on websites all over the Internet – if you’re a business, “you HAVE to be online!” Although most small business owners will recognize the importance of an online presence, many have held back for fear that setting up and running a website is a complex process that they can’t possibly understand or manage. It’s not true! As small business owner Fred Magnanimi said in a recent Smart Hustle interview, technology is a lot more accessible than many people assume. He set up his website and e-commerce store all by himself and with the tools available today (like GoDaddy hosting and e-commerce services), so can you.

I recently had the chance to review GoDaddy hosting and e-commerce options. My conclusion? These are the sort of tools that empower small business owners to take control of their online presence and reach a larger market. They are affordable, simple to use, and include everything a small business owner needs for success.

Want to know what I think about GoDaddy hosting & e-commerce services? Check out my personal review by clicking play on the video below, plus read on to learn more.

The Importance of Hosting and E-commerce

Before I cover the GoDaddy services and features, let’s talk about why you would need them in the first place.

Hosting (or web hosting) refers to a service where a company (in this case GoDaddy) provides access to, and storage space for, a website. It’s a lot like renting your space. Just like you pay to rent your physical location, you pay a web hosting service to rent your online location. The host gives you a certain amount of storage space (for pages, website content, files, pictures, etc.) and they store your information on a server. When someone wants to view your website, they type in your address, their computer connects to the host’s server, and your website is displayed in their browser.

There are some sites that offer free hosting, but that comes with downsides that aren’t ideal for business. For a few bucks a month (as low as $3.99 with GoDaddy hosting) self-hosting gives you perks:

• Choose your own domain name (you want to be timsbakery.com not timsbakery.wordpress.com!)
• Fully customize the design of your website
• Use plugins – tools that extend and improve the functionality of your website
• Add Google Analytics to learn about your website visitors

It’s clear that any person who is serious about their business should choose a self-hosted site over a free site. And why do you need a website? Because it’s where your customers are and where people will go to find you! Even if you are a local business, your customers (and prospective customers) will want to go online to find your location, phone number, business hours, contact information, menu, and so on.

If you have a product you could potentially sell online, having a website gets even more important. That’s where e-commerce comes in. E-commerce refers to the selling and purchasing of goods online. It takes your website to the next level – not only do you have a site that gives information about your business and your physical location, but you also have the ability to sell your products. This expands your reach and opens you up to millions of potential customers. E-commerce is a natural progression for any local product-based business that wants to expand.

GoDaddy Hosting

GoDaddy offers WordPress hosting services for small businesses who know it’s time they set up a website. WordPress is the most popular website building tool because it’s completely customizable and user-friendly. If you don’t feel comfortable setting up your own site, there are also plenty of WordPress experts out there who can help you get set up. The GoDaddy plans allow you to choose the hosting that is right for your business:

• Basic Plan – As low as $3.99/month and $7.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for one WordPress site with a capacity for 25,000 monthly visitors and 10GB SSD storage.
• Deluxe Plan – As low as $4.49/month and $9.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for one WordPress website with a capacity for 100K monthly visitors and 15GB SSD storage, plus extra perks like an SEO plugin.
• Ultimate Plan – For as low as $7.99/month and $14.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for two WordPress sites with a capacity of 400K monthly visitors and 30GB SSD storage, plus extra perks like malware scan and removal.
• Developer Plan – For as low as $13.99/month and $24.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for five WordPress sites with a capacity of 800K monthly visitors and 50GB SSD storage, plus extra perks like a free one-year SSL certificate.

If you purchase an annual plan, you’ll also get a free domain (your chosen URL). All plans include free daily backups and one-click restore so you won’t lose your data, plus free 24/7 support for questions and issues.

GoDaddy E-commerce

If you want to sell products online, you can choose GoDaddy’s e-commerce service which includes your website, hosting, and shopping cart. Currently, you can try it for free for the first month then get a discount of $19.99/month for the first year (after that, the normal price is $29.99/month). With GoDaddy e-commerce you can:

• Easily set up your store, choosing from many customizable themes that allow you to drag and drop product images and add descriptions.
• Take payments online, with the ability to accept all major credit cards and PayPal. You are only charged a fee when you make a sale, which is 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction.
• Sales are automatically transferred to your bank account.
• Enjoy 24/7 support for advice and answers to all your questions.

My Experience with GoDaddy Hosting & E-commerce

There are several things to look for when considering an e-commerce solution for your business. Of course, the specific needs of your business and your goals are most important. But in general, I look for simplicity and the ability to easily add products online. Other things, such as security and integration with other apps, are important as well.

I explored GoDaddy’s e-commerce solution by making a test store of my own.

In my experience, GoDaddy’s e-commerce was fast and easy to use, allowing just about any business to get up and running quickly to sell online. You can sell through QuickBooks or Stripe, for starters.

GoDaddy’s hosting solution is pretty seamless as well. When I tried out GoDaddy hosting, I wanted to see how easy it was to migrate SmallBizTechnology.com over to GoDaddy. After entering a few bits of information, GoDaddy’s migration tool took over the rest and began to automatically migrate my managed WordPress site to the GoDaddy platform. From my experience, it will be easy for anyone who currently has a website to switch from their current host to GoDaddy hosting. Doing so will allow you to lock in the low prices and features I mentioned above.

Also, if you don’t have a website yet, I’m sure you’re now amazed at how easy and affordable it is to set up your online site and store. GoDaddy hosting and e-commerce services are perfect for small business owners who are ready to embrace technology and all the perks that come with it – more leads, customers, sales, and profits. The online world is your oyster, small business owner!  It’s time to set up your website or e-commerce store today.

GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar, with over 14 million users worldwide. Their services also include website creation, hosting, design, ecommerce for small business, security, marketing services, bookkeeping, and productivity tools. GoDaddy has 62 million domains currently under management and is committed to empowering small business owners to successfully start, grow and run their businesses.

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This article is brought to you in partnership with Verisign, the global leader in domain names and internet security

When today’s customer wants to learn more about a business, the first place they usually turn is the Internet. This has made an online presence essential to a brand’s success. Setting up both a website and social media accounts means when customers enter search terms in Google, information about your company will appear.

But merely having an online presence isn’t enough. Studies have shown that businesses that actively engage customers can expect to grow 40 percent faster than they would if they didn’t have an online presence at all. The first step is to online success is choosing a domain name, but the work only begins there. Here are a few steps you should take to build and maintain an active online presence.

Putting Your Domain Name to Work

Once you’ve registered a domain name, you’ll likely begin immediately working to publish a winning website. But there are several different ways you can use this domain name to build your business’s online presence. Building and launching a new website that shows off your products or services is one of the most common ways. But there’s another option.

Instead of building a new website, you can actually redirect your domain to an existing website. This could be an existing platform for your business, like a WordPress or Blogger blog. However, you can also redirect a new domain name to a social media site, which can act as your business’s temporary landing page. While having both a website and social media presence that work together is ideal, sometimes new businesses can’t realistically do both in their early, more formative days.

Starting on Social Media

For any new business, social media is a great way to set up on an online presence at no cost whatsoever. Social media sites come with a built-in base of potential customers, making them the perfect outlet for testing the online waters. However, unlike your own website, you won’t have the level of control you’ll have with your own website. By registering your business’s web address and directing it to point to one of your social media accounts, you’ll be able to set up your online identity, build your brand, and market your business with a professional web address that customers can easily remember.

Of course, social media is at its best when it’s being used as a marketing tool. As soon as possible, though, brands should begin working on developing and deploying a website, which will give a brand optimum control. With so many drag-and-drop-based website development tools, businesses can create their own websites without even calling upon a design professional to help. Once a website is in place, a brand will have the benefit of a scalable online presence that can be updated as needed.

Once designed, your business’s website should serve as your central hub, providing a place for customers to go when they need information. All of your other marketing efforts should drive customers to that website to engage, learn, and, hopefully, buy. Over time, your website and social media presences will serve to complement each other, offering similar information but in different ways; At https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/01/how-to-create-a-customer-centric-experience.html you can learn how to take advantage of it to provide a good customer centric experience.
Your business should use its website alongside its social networking efforts to connect with customers and get the word out about the great work you’re doing.

This article was written in partnership with Verisign, the global leader in domain names and internet security. All opinions and experiences expressed are my own.

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• There has never been a better time for e-commerce.
• It has never been easier to set up an online storefront.

But as simple as it is to set up an e-commerce presence, it’s important to know how to build and market your store before you get started. With the right tools in place, you can build a winning website and draw customers in. Once you’ve set up your e-commerce shop, you’ll need to know how to leverage it to get the best results.

How to Leverage an Ecommerce Platform

As beneficial as an online store can be to your business’s success, it isn’t the only option. If you aren’t quite ready to set up your own online store, consider leveraging one of the many existing platforms for reaching customers online. Marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, and eBay will let you set up a store and reach their already robust customer bases. Angi (formerly Angie’s List) and Thumbtack will help you connect with local customers who are looking for services like yours. The best thing about these resources is that you’ll be able to enjoy quick setup without a huge financial commitment.

If you decide to use a site like Etsy or Amazon as your sole selling platform, you should buy the domain name that best relates to your business and point that domain to your online store. This will give you a single address on the web, whether that address is connected to your Amazon seller account, your Etsy shop, or your own dedicated website. This will give you one online address, as well as the benefit of an easily-remembered address that promotes your own brand up front. It will also give you a company-branded email address.

How to Build Your Own Online Store

Once you’re ready to build your dedicated online store, getting started is easy. Useful website builders like Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix let you build an online store using drag-and-drop tools. These sites offer features like shopping carts, site hosting, and search engine optimization, making sure your online store is easy to use, has a professional look, and ranks well when customers are searching for certain products or services.

While these services generally aren’t free, businesses usually find they’re budget friendly. Generally do-it-yourself site builders cost less than $75 a year and may even be free if shop owners are willing to allow third-party ads on their sites. Best of all, these tools come with customer support to provide technical help when needed.

3 Tips to Guide You

1. Identify your website needs – Your online store can be simple and streamlined or a sophisticated multimedia marketing and sales hub. Determine your requirements before you begin building. If you decide you want a lot of bells and whistles on your site, you may want to consider a professional web developer to help.
   2. Pick a domain name – Your domain name will be your virtual address, as well as your online identity, on the web. Even if some solutions offer to host your site on their domains, you should put your website on your owndomain name to have a consistent, branded web address for your customers to remember. It will also give you an attractive, professional web address to use in your marketing.
   3. Select the right website builder – You can find an array of solutions by doing an Internet search for ‘e-commerce website builder.’ Take time to research and compare two to three options. Make sure they have an e-commerce option and that they will not only meet your needs for today but in the future as well.

With so many great resources, entrepreneurs can easily set up an online store and begin promoting it immediately. Before choosing your site’s platform, make sure you carefully research all of the available options and choose the one that’s best for your own business.

This article was written in partnership with Verisign; however, all opinions and experiences expressed are my own.

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