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You’ve all heard that you need to keep people on your website for as long as possible. The longer people stay on your website, the more likely they are to buy something from you and the better your website will do when it comes to SEO.

So, what are some strategies to make sure that your customers stay on your website for longer? That’s what we’re covering today!

A great strategy is to really utilize your top or navigation bar.

Most people look at this bar during their scan of the front page. By making this bar bold and easy to understand, it makes people want to click and explore other pages of your website.

Try and make the buttons self-explanatory, but also intriguing for your users. For example, instead of saying “About Us” say “Our Story.” This makes the website seem a lot more personal for the people using it.

Another good strategy is to make your pages easily scannable. 

The reason why is that people hardly ever read websites word for word. So, it’s very helpful to use subtitles and make your writings as concise as possible.

Another great strategy is to have a video on your page.

While this takes extra work, people are more likely to watch a video instead of reading through your whole website. So, making a website to explain your process to your customers can be very effective to keep people on your website.

This can also double as a social media post! If you make the video short enough it can be a post that leads customers to your website and is educational!

However, the best way to keep people on your website is to ensure that your website has low loading times. There’s nothing more frustrating than being on a website and it won’t load.

In the end, you just want to make your website as easy to use and as nice to look at as possible. Check out ours! 

E-commerce businesses sell all of their products online. This has been a fast growing business process for many years. But, with the COVID-19 pandemic, these businesses are becoming even more popular than they were.

People are reluctant, or are unable, to go out and actually buy products in person at this time. This leaves an interesting gap that you and your business can fill during this time when there are very few alternatives to e-commerce.

Find Your Niche

The secret to having a successful e-commerce business at this time is to find a niche market that you can tap into. As the market is currently so saturated, you need to make sure that your product is unique so that people will buy yours.

Research some competitors that you may have. Find out what products they are selling and how they are marketing them.

This step can often be the hardest, so go easy on yourself and leave lots of time to research and brainstorm

Setup a Website

This is a very important step of the process because you need a platform to sell your products. Some creators choose to sell products through Instagram DMs, which is definitely an option when starting out.

However, it’s definitely helpful to have everything in one place that is easy for you to operate out of. For the last two weeks, we have broken down different website builders that are available for any size of business. Check those out and do your own research to figure out which platform is best for you.

Where Will You Market?

Marketing is a very important part of an e-commerce business because there isn’t a building that people can walk into. The only way to advertise your business to people is through online means.

So, take your time to look through all the social media platforms and decide which is right for you and your business. Eventually, you may use all of them, but at the beginning you may only be able to handle one or two. 

The important thing is to get your name out effectively and consistently. So, if you can only do that on one platform at the beginning, make sure you use it right! It is better to gain followers on one platform rapidly than lose them on multiple overtime because you forgot to post.

We hope this was helpful, and we wish you luck for your e-commerce journey!

Last week, we broke down two different platforms that you can use to build a website for your business. So, this week we are breaking down two other platforms that are good options when it comes to building your website.

Wix

Wix is a very well known website builder. Wix has been around since 2006, so they’re very established and good at what they do.

There are over 500 templates that you can use on the website to help make it look how you want. However, the templates are not as customizable as some other options. The only thing you can really change is what text and images there are.

There is also an artificial intelligence that comes with Wix that can help you build your website how you want it.

A drawback though is that it’s quite hard to change to a different template and to move to a different platform. As Wix is built so heavily around templates, it can mean that adjusting the website away from your template is quite difficult. So, we recommend that you try out multiple templates until you find one that you really like and you think will work for your business.

As with other websites, Wix has a monthly subscription to use their services.

Weebly

Weebly is also a very popular website builder. A large reason is that it is a cheaper alternative than many of the other options, with a free version available.

However, the smaller price tag means that there are less options when it comes to customizing your website. It operates on a drag and drop system with many options for you to include on your site.

It’s also fully hosted, so you don’t have to worry about the smaller technical things.

However, you’ll have to pay extra to use most of the site’s features and to have your own domain. Also, it’s very hard to move away from Weebly because the system is so unique to the site. Another drawback is that there aren’t many SEO features.

So, there we go! Over the past couple weeks we have broken down four of the most popular website builders. Hopefully, you’ve found one that works for you!

There are many platforms that allow you to make a website using their tools and templates. But which platform would be best to build the website for you? This week, we break down two of the most popular website builders to give you more info and help you with your choice!

Regardless of which website builder you decide on we recommend two main things. 

Firstly, ensure that you purchase a custom domain name. That way, your website will be as professional as possible and easy for your customers to find.

Secondly, make sure to pick the most affordable builder for your company. Your website is an investment that is worth spending money on, but it’s also important to ensure that you don’t pour all of your company’s money into a website. You can do a lot with the cheaper builders.

WordPress

This is by far the most popular website builder out there and there is good reason for it. There are actually two versions: wordpress.com and wordpress.org. We recommend you use the wordpress.org website as it is a lot more flexible with what you can do for your website.

WordPress is completely free, but has a lot of tools that can be utilized to create the website you desire. There are hundreds of templates to choose from and it is very easy to customize.

There are also SEO tools and you don’t need a web designer because it is so easy to use. However, that is also a drawback because you have to be in charge of your own website. Which means you need to maintain it by backing it up every so often.

SquareSpace

SquareSpace is a great tool to use because it creates very modern websites. Their templates include many sleek designs that you can utilize.

They also have lots of features that you can use for the base price. Including e-commerce features, donations, and the ability to sell unlimited products.

SquareSpace has different website levels, but all of them cost money. If you want to utilize e-commerce, you need to pay for the higher level and it is a monthly payment. Although SquareSpace will keep your website up to date for you.

This concludes our breakdown of popular website builders. We will cover more in the future, but hopefully this small taster helps you understand the platforms and gives you a better idea of the different services available to you.

Happy website building!

More and more businesses are beginning to focus on their social media presence. While there is an art to graphics and how often to post, there are also many tricks to captioning your content.

These tips vary from platform to platform, and we will be breaking down the top ones to help you create the best and most effective captions for your business.

In general

First, let’s talk about some general tips for captioning things. The most important thing to include is a call to action! This means that at the end of the caption, you should give your followers something to do.

The easiest way to do this is to ask your followers a question to answer in the comments. Not only does this encourage interaction with your followers, it also ups the engagement on your page because you have more comments.

So a call to action is important across all platforms

Instagram

It’s very hard to resist using as many hashtags as possible with Instagram because it’s a great way for people to find you. However, it is more effective to use fewer hashtags that are very specific to what you’re talking about.

People can follow hashtags, so you want to make sure that the ones you use are common terms to search that are specific enough to your brand. For example, #socialmedia has 21.5 million posts on Instagram and #socialmediastrategy only has 1 million.

The more likely someone will click on your post the better.

Facebook

Even though Facebook seems like the perfect platforms for long captions, studies actually show that shorter captions are more effective.

In fact, the most effective caption length on Facebook is only 40 words! With a call to action, you only need about 30 more

Who knew that captions could be that easy?

That’s the end of our caption tips! And for our call to action: how many of these tips did you know?

Gamification, in a business environment, is a strategy to get your employees more involved and more engaged in their work. It is creating a game that encourages your employees to work harder and feel more positive in their work environment.

Especially, if you’re starting a big project. Gamification gives you the opportunity to reward and encourage your employees when they need to get a lot done in a short amount of time. It is a great way to start off projects with a boom and come out of the gate running.

So what do you need to create a gamification strategy at your workplace? Well, we put together a quick list of things that you’re going to need to start a fantastic gamification!

Track It

If you are running a gamification, what you want is to tap into your employee’s competitive sides. A little competition doesn’t hurt anyone and it can make people work harder.

But, if you’re utilizing it, you need to give people a way to track what progress they and everyone else are making. It can be as simple as a google spreadsheet that everyone can access. 

As long as people can see where they are compared to everyone else, so that they are encouraged to work harder.

Prizes

There needs to be a reason that employees are competing for. However, there has to be a balance between a prize and something crazy.

If the prize is too large then people may take shortcuts and not do the work as well as they could. The trick is to push people to work hard, but still produce quality work.

A good trick is to make the prizes something to do with work. Like a shout out in the next meeting or a blog post on the website. 

The prizes need to make people excited, so if you seem excited about it, your employees will be too.

Participation

The best way to encourage your employees to take part is to reward participation. At the end of the day, it isn’t really about who wins, it’s about getting a good amount of quality work.

So put small rewards for certain checkpoints or something like that. By making your employees feel appreciated, the good work will continue. 

Everyone can benefit from this if you do it right because everyone can feel appreciated and do quality work at the same time.

In Practice

So, when can gamification really be used? Well say that your company is preparing for the holidays and has lots of orders coming in. 

You can make a google spreadsheet with all the orders that need to be taken care of and have people sign-up for items and mark when they finish them. Make it a rule where they can only sign-up for a certain amount of projects at a time (say three). 

But the important thing is that everyone can see everyone’s progress. This is the tracking portion. By seeing where they are in the standings, it encourages people to work harder.

Encourage people to participate by rewarding everyone at stages. Such as, giving them a shoutout in the company newsletter for every ten orders they finish, or give them a small snack. Something that makes people want to participate, as we said above.

When the orders are all filled, reward the person who did the most orders with a shout out in a meeting or giving them a blog post on the website. The better the prize, the more encouraged others will be to work hard the next time a gamification happens.

So that’s it! Gamification may sound strange at the beginning, but if it’s done right, it can be very encouraging and create a fun work environment. Especially during busy times like the holidays. Why not give it a try?

Email marketing is a tricky part of marketing because we’ve all been on the receiving end. All of us have woken up in the morning with five emails in our inbox of brands we don’t remember subscribing to.

But, email marketing is still very effective. More than half of the global population uses email, and, unlike social media, the users are not split between platforms. Meaning that, sending someone an email is the same no matter what mailing service they use. Whereas, when it comes to social media, something you post on Instagram may not reach Facebook users.

But, email marketing is still tricky to get right. So this week we are talking about the mistakes that businesses tend to make!

Too Little or Too Much?

It’s hard to know how much to email your customers. The golden range is between once a week and once a month.

Any less than once a month and your customers are likely to forget that they signed up for the list at all. Any more than once a week and they could unsubscribe because they receive so many emails in a week.

It’s a fine balance between the two, but bi-weekly seems to be the perfect amount. That way if your company has a sale or a special event, you can send more emails to let your customers know.

Signing Up

A lot of companies struggle to get customers to sign up for the email list. Email gets a bad rep and just saying “sign up for updates,” doesn’t really encourage customers.

The best way to get people to sign up is to give them some sort of incentive. A simple way to do this is giving customers a percentage off of their first order if they sign up.

An alternative is to give customers free ebooks when they sign up. Or free trials or samples of other products.

You have to give customers a reason to care about your brand and want the updates.

Balance it Out

You need to have a good mix of products and information. Customers don’t want to feel like they are just receiving a commercial every single time you email them. 

So, you have it out with different things. Consider including information about your team so that your customers can connect with you even more. 

In the end, don’t underestimate email marketing! It is really effective and as long as you avoid the common mistakes we’ve mentioned, you’ll be an expert in no time!

All businesses need to invest in marketing. Not only does it bring in new customers, but it keeps up an impressive standard with your customers.

But it’s hard to know how much to spend on marketing and what to focus your marketing efforts on. Especially if you’re a small business that has just gotten started.

So, we have put together a marketing 101 post to help you know all the answers!

Spending Spree

So how much should you spend on marketing? Most experts agree that about 5% of your revenue should be spent on marketing.

This does increase slightly depending on how much money your business makes, but it should stay around here. This is important to know because it’s something that you should work into your business’s budget.

Marketing is something that should be invested in. It’s how the world will see your company, so you need to ensure that it’s effective.

First Things First

The first thing to focus your marketing strategy on is your company’s website. Your website sells your company 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even when you’re busy and aren’t speaking to customers, your website does the talking for you.

Your website is very important to your business and it’s one of the first things that you should invest in to make sure that it’s the best it can be.

Other Bits and Bobs

There are many other things you can invest in as well when it comes to your marketing.

Social media is a very common one used nowadays. While it seems like you should be able to do social media yourself, eventually hiring a team or signing with a marketing firm can help bring your social media to the next level.

E-newsletters are also something to look into. They can be sent to your customers every week and make sure that they keep your business in mind.

Traditional marketing is also something to invest in at some. The power of radio and television is sometimes forgotten, but it can be very good for your company.

Marketing is a huge part of business and investing in it is investing in your company in general. A good marketing scheme gives your business a fighting chance and it is very worth it.