Your business’ landing pages are the first point of contact for any new customers visiting your website, so it’s important that you’re making a solid first impression. If you’re struggling to find inspiration for your landing page and wondering what sort of information and tone to take on your website, then this article will provide you will all those answers – and crucially how each one can benefit your business or brand. Take a read below to find out more.
Client Testimonials
Client testimonials are a superb way of highlighting to new customers just exactly what you’re about and some other projects you’ve worked on in the past. Obviously, if you have any negative testimonials it’s a good idea to keep them away from the landing page, but positive reviews from reputable clients are a solid way to show off your skills and draw in new customers interested in using your services.
Contact Information
Obviously one of the most important pieces of information to place on your landing pages is your contact information. You may be wondering why we’ve even included this point because it seems like we’re stating the obvious, but you’d be surprised. Always ensure that the contact information you want your customers to approach you by is clear and easily located to ensure you’re getting the most business as possible. This is particularly important if you’re looking to highlight the fact that you’re using an 0800 number. In that respect, planet-numbers.co.uk can provide 0800 numbers for an extremely cost-effective price.
New products or services
Another obvious piece of information to include on your landing page is any information surrounding new products or services that you’re releasing. Highlighting your latest products and services is a great way of testing the waters and working out what sort of things your customers like. After all, there’s no point releasing something that you’re not going to promote. As well as new products you should always ensure you’re clear about the products and services you offer. Clarity really is the key to attracting new customers and ensuring they purchase from you rather than your competitors.
Latest News
Publishing regular updates surrounding the latest news in your industry is a great way to add fresh and relevant content to your landing page while simultaneously improving your SEO rankings. We’re not talking reams and reams of text; just little snippets of digestible material you can use to highlight things you find interesting that promote your content. Landing pages and blog content are perfect for promoting your business on social media, too.
Information about your brand
I think by now we’ve covered all the main points surrounding what to include on your company landing page. But once you’ve got the important things out the way, take the time to integrate them into your brand tone of voice in a way that appeals to your customer. Information is important, but the way you deliver that information is what’s going to transcribe your words into revenue.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/blur-close-up-contemporary-1029757-3.jpg7861200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-10-04 07:00:322019-10-04 05:15:015 Instantly Positive Highlights You Can Easily Publish On Your Landing Page
All businesses have their ups and downs but if you manage things well, you can get through the difficult periods. It’s when those difficult periods become the norm and the business is constantly in financial trouble that you need to start worrying. Some businesses simply don’t work because the product isn’t right or there isn’t a demand for it right now. It’s hard when you find yourself in that situation because you have put a lot of time and effort into building this business. But it’s a mistake to continue when there is no chance of turning things around because you will just end up wasting more money. It’s better to be realistic and cut your losses. If you think that your business is failing, these are the steps that you need to take.
Exhaust All Of The Options
It might be the case that your business is doomed and there is no way that you can turn it around. But a lot of people act too quickly in these situations and decide that the business is finished, even though they still have some options left. Before you decide to close your business down, you need to make sure that you’ve tried everything that you possibly can to boost your profits and turn things around. If you have exhausted all of the options and the business is still performing badly and losing money, that’s when you should make the decision to close it down.
Consider Selling It
While you might not be able to afford to put any more money into the business, that doesn’t mean that nobody can turn it around. You should consider selling the business and its assets to another company if possible. Get in touch with somebody like Alliant Brokers and discuss the possibility of selling the company. Even if you don’t get that much for it, the extra money will help you to pay off any outstanding debts and secure your own personal finances.
Don’t Take It Personally
Sometimes, businesses fail because they are mismanaged, but a lot of the time, they fail because the market isn’t right for that kind of business to thrive right now. It still comes down to the choices that you made but you shouldn’t take it personally. It’s easy to think that you’re a terrible business owner because your business failed, so you should just give up on it completely. But there are plenty of successful business people with failed businesses behind them. Don’t take it personally, just take the necessary steps to close the business and start looking to the future.
Look For New Ventures
It’s not wise to start another business up right away because you need to build your finances up again. But you should be thinking about what your next steps are going to be and looking at some potential ideas for another business in the future. It may be that you go back to work for a while and start saving some money before you can launch another business, but you should start thinking about new business ideas.
A failed business is a hard pill to swallow, but you shouldn’t think of it as the end of your business career. You can take the things that you’ve learned and apply them to your next venture.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/closed-door-glass-1171386.jpg8001200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-10-03 17:00:282019-10-03 15:53:56What Should You Do If Your Business Has Failed?
You only have to say the word expansion, and people working within a business start to sweat. It’s not that they inherently dislike the idea. It’s just that traditionally, alongside growth, you can expect additional work, risks, as well as an increase in stress and hassle. Of course, when expanding your business, there will always be additional tasks, and hazards to navigate, the same is true for any business. However, much of the hassle can be avoided if you manage the expansion right. Something that you can read all about doing in the post below.
Do your research
The first tactic for a hassle-free business expansion is to do plenty of research before you go ahead. In fact, data is one of the most valuable assets when it comes to successfully growing your business. The reason being that if you make your decisions based on cold, hard facts, rather than instinct, you have a much better chance of mitigating any risks.
What that means is you need to invest in market research before you plan to expand. This being an activity that can provide you with all sorts of information. Such as what type of demographics your products will appeal to and what kind of prices customers will be willing to pay. It can even help to inform the sort of launch that would work best for your expansion.
Additionally, market research is not the only information-gathering exercise that you should do before deciding to grow your business. You also need to make sure that you have all of the figures and projections from your current endeavor. Something that will allow you to establish whether you have the finances to fund a successful expansion or not.
Source new staff before you get big
Next, if you wish to minimize hassle when expanding your business, you need to be on top of your recruitment process. What that means is you need to start thinking about the possible roles you will need to fill. You will also need to consider the different type of employees you will need for your expansion to be a success. Well, before you start to enact your plans.
Happily, there are strategies you can use to help you with this, including creating a database of potential candidates that you can call upon should the need arise. Additionally, for some firms partnering with an agency can help them to quickly fill mission-critical positions during expansion, without having to dedicate too much person-power to this task.
Rebrand accordingly
The next things you need to get a handle on, if you want your expansion to go off without a hitch, is your rebrand. In fact, this is crucial and nearly always necessary. The reason being that there are few products that can be transitioned to other markets and demographics with precisely the same marketing materials that were used before.
Of course, savvy businesses will use the information they gathered at the research stage to inform their rebrand. Something that will make sure that it is as effective as possible for the market in which it is intended.
Particular caution needs to be taken here if you are hoping to expand into overseas markets, as international branding faux pas are common. Of course, these can be hilarious to observers but disastrous to any expansions success, and so be a costly mistake that is best avoided whenever possible.
Use scalable IT services
Scalability is another important concept that you will need to grasp if your business expansion is to be conducted with the minimum amount of stress possible.
In particular, scalable IT solutions are a must for any type of expansion that you want to be a success. The reason being that you will be able to expand the infrastructure of your company as your need for output increases. A situation that more practical, and cost-effective than having to rebuild everything from the ground up every time you move into a new market.
With that in mind, using a data management service for your IT before you begin your expansion is the best course of action. Then, your IT provision can expand quickly with the needs of your business, without it interfering or delaying your movement into other profitable markets.
Secure your supply lines
Finally, if you want your business expansion to go off without a hitch, you need to be sure you can supply the next influence of customers with product. This means you will also need to make sure that you have a consistent supply of materials and the resources you need to create the products. All within enough time to go through the manufacturing process.
Additionally, do not forget to factor in delivery time when you start to supply a new market either. Especially if you plan to make the product in the country in which you are based, and then ship it overseas and distribute it to individual customers.
Happily, making use of the logistics infrastructure that is already in place within a new location can help you to do this. In fact, many smaller businesses choose to partner up with companies that are well established in their new location like Amazon. An action that can make a successful geographical expansion significantly less complicated and stressful to achieve.
Summary
If you are looking for a hassle-free expansion, there are some things you need to bear in mind. The first is that there will always be some risk, and additional work associated with growing your business. However, you can ensure that things go as smoothly as possible by doing the following things.
First of all, you must do your research both in terms of what your potential new customers want. Secondly, be sure that you can staff your expansion successfully. Thirdly, at least some rebranding will be necessary if you’re going to grow your business. While fourth on the list is that you will need to grow your IT alongside the other parts of your business for things to work.
Finally, don’t forget that if your expansion is to go off without a problem you need to source the additional supplies, as well as deliver the product to your new market. Something that partnering with another company can help you do most effectively.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/trace-3157426_1280.jpg8531280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-10-03 16:00:112019-10-03 23:54:39Phenomenal Tactics For A Hassle Free Business Expansion
Many things have changed in the world of business over the past 25 years; in fact, some would say that almost everything to do with business and the associated transactions has changed or been altered in a significant way with the advent of the internet, online purchasing, smartphones, and Wi-Fi. While it may be true that how business is conducted has been altered significantly, it is also true that who consumers are doing business with is sometimes a complete mystery, even to the consumer. Yes, the world of business has changed a great deal in the past 25 years and here are just some of the many ways you may have noticed it altering the way you do business.
Online Information
It may be difficult to comprehend, but there are 55 to 60 billion pages of web information that has been created by people using the internet, and that figure grows exponentially each year. In addition to that number of web search engine indexed pages of data, there are an estimated hundreds of billions of pages of information that are not indexed – including almost 700 million tweet posts each day. Add to that all the emails, government records, and constantly changing pages of products for sale, and you can see how massive the world of online information has become. As little as 25 years ago, that much information available to anyone that wanted to spend time locating it was unthinkable.
Internet Searches
Once upon a time, it was thought the internet held databases, and everything was a product of those databases. While that may have been true during the early years of the internet, it is not true today. Everything is a result of a search task in the modern world. What clothes to buy, what books to read, what restaurant to visit are all the result of a search. Additionally, you no longer need to wonder about something for longer than a few seconds because you can initiate a search and the answer is instantly at your fingertips. The consumer is such a curious group that they ask the internet to answer over three trillion questions for them every year on the search engines. There is no estimation of how many additional queries are made on travel sites for where to go on vacation, shopping databases to compare different items or other areas such as the United CPA Association for information on help in a business matter, but it must be upward of six to nine trillion or more. That means the average person makes around 1,500 search queries a year, or an average of 42 a day.
Social Networks
Social media site owners report that one account alone has more than 25 percent of the world population (1.1 billion people) checking into that single site alone each day. That means that billions of people talk about different products, shops, books, and businesses every day on their favorite social media sites, and some spend hours pasting on walls, sending tweets, and posting stories about their lives. During all that interaction with their keyboards, those consumers also spend time sharing information and pictures about products they love and products that have failed them. For some businesses, the word of mouth meant instant success, but for others, it meant the death of a dream.
Product Placement
Twenty years ago, if you had a new product for sale, you could request a product placement on a shelf or endcap that would entice the consumer to purchase your items. It was the biggest and best way to get the consumer to purchase your product once they were in store. In the past five years, however, it is estimated that millions of consumers no longer step into stores to purchase products, rather they look online for goods, place an order, and have it delivered to their car outside the store or delivered right to their home. This type of consumer purchasing power has done away with product placement, and for many retailers, it has come as quite a quandary as to how to counter the power the consumer has taken away from the advertising agency and distributor.
Commercial Overload
Long ago, there was a time that four or five commercials played in certain time slots between sections of television shows. When consumers complained and used the four or five minutes as a time to get food or take the dog outside, the time slot became known as commercial overload. Today, the consumer is constantly being bombarded by advertisements to sell him or her something using the cookies his or her computer stores; and just like before, consumers are ignoring the ads in record numbers. Not only has it become more difficult to catch the consumer’s attention, but researchers have noticed that ignoring the ad placement begins at a very early age now as children begin using the internet and learn to focus on what they choose, rather than having their attention reverted away by something colorful and flashy. That means the world of advertising is going to have to learn to capture the consumer’s attention in new ways, and it will be interesting to see what advertisers come up with.
The world of business has been forever changed by the internet over the past 25 years. Some say it has been good for the business world, and others claim it has been massively destructive. Only time will tell what the real story is.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/chair-daytime-desk-840996.jpg40676100StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-10-02 20:00:342019-10-02 22:32:33How 25 Years of the Internet Has Changed the World of Business
At the current time, at least 34 percent of websites use WordPress as their content management system (CMS). This is very significant and a good reason why many businesses use this CMS for their website(s).
There are many free and paid WordPress themes available. This is the beauty of the WordPress eco-system which makes small and mid-sized businesses question whether they should use a free theme for their site design, purchase a premium (paid) theme or go the custom development route?
In this article, we aim to look at what makes sense for companies from a strategic perspective.
Is a Premium WordPress Theme Better than a Free One?
A free theme is designed for people and organisations that want a fast, workable solution.
Click a few buttons, install WordPress, add a free theme, begin adding written copy and implement a navigation menu, and you’re already ready to launch!
But hold up there. Are there any negatives to free themes?
Yes, there are.
Many aren’t regularly updated, so when Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) release an update, it may create security holes or malfunctions within a free theme. Because the theme isn’t generating any money, the creator(s) usually will abandon it in favour of other projects sooner or later. Lastly, they also have fewer features and little to no ability to redesign them easily.
How About a Premium WordPress Theme?
Premium themes are far superior.
Indeed, some WordPress designers will start with the solid foundation of a premium theme that they know has a solid code base and then build a custom appearance over the top of that, rather than reinvent the wheel. This may or may not be faster compared to creating a theme from the ground up.
Strategically, using a paid theme looks far more professional and from a security standpoint, they tend to get updated regularly too. This is because there’s a team behind it and the operation is probably generating a profit. Therefore, it’s less likely to get abandoned. Also, when sticking with big-name premium themes, the likelihood of losing the developer and seeing the theme never get updated again is lowered even more.
Is a Custom WordPress Theme Worth It?
For businesses that have a clear strategy where they don’t want their web presence to look like anyone else’s, getting a completely new design via a custom WordPress theme makes the most sense.
A professional WordPress Agency London will have full-time developers, programmers and graphic designers on their team, so they are perfectly placed to craft a site design that matches the needs of the client perfectly. That’s easier to execute when building from the ground up and not starting from a premium theme and making customisations, but either works effectively.
For start-ups, a custom look is vital to establish the brand early. Finding a development team that understands their goals and can create the right solution is important. However, for tiny businesses, using a premium theme and redeveloping that or a premium theme with just a few tweaks here and there is going to be more economical.
There’s no one right answer about what theme to use with WordPress and whether it should be a custom development or not. It comes down to the business that requires the site and what their needs and budget permit them to do.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-589121_1280.jpg8471280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2019-10-02 17:00:392019-10-02 15:34:09Should a Custom WordPress Web Design Be Important to Your Business?
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5 Instantly Positive Highlights You Can Easily Publish On Your Landing Page
/in Online Marketing and Website Development/by StrategyDrivenClient Testimonials
Client testimonials are a superb way of highlighting to new customers just exactly what you’re about and some other projects you’ve worked on in the past. Obviously, if you have any negative testimonials it’s a good idea to keep them away from the landing page, but positive reviews from reputable clients are a solid way to show off your skills and draw in new customers interested in using your services.
Contact Information
Obviously one of the most important pieces of information to place on your landing pages is your contact information. You may be wondering why we’ve even included this point because it seems like we’re stating the obvious, but you’d be surprised. Always ensure that the contact information you want your customers to approach you by is clear and easily located to ensure you’re getting the most business as possible. This is particularly important if you’re looking to highlight the fact that you’re using an 0800 number. In that respect, planet-numbers.co.uk can provide 0800 numbers for an extremely cost-effective price.
New products or services
Another obvious piece of information to include on your landing page is any information surrounding new products or services that you’re releasing. Highlighting your latest products and services is a great way of testing the waters and working out what sort of things your customers like. After all, there’s no point releasing something that you’re not going to promote. As well as new products you should always ensure you’re clear about the products and services you offer. Clarity really is the key to attracting new customers and ensuring they purchase from you rather than your competitors.
Latest News
Publishing regular updates surrounding the latest news in your industry is a great way to add fresh and relevant content to your landing page while simultaneously improving your SEO rankings. We’re not talking reams and reams of text; just little snippets of digestible material you can use to highlight things you find interesting that promote your content. Landing pages and blog content are perfect for promoting your business on social media, too.
Information about your brand
I think by now we’ve covered all the main points surrounding what to include on your company landing page. But once you’ve got the important things out the way, take the time to integrate them into your brand tone of voice in a way that appeals to your customer. Information is important, but the way you deliver that information is what’s going to transcribe your words into revenue.
What Should You Do If Your Business Has Failed?
/in Entrepreneurship/by StrategyDrivenExhaust All Of The Options
It might be the case that your business is doomed and there is no way that you can turn it around. But a lot of people act too quickly in these situations and decide that the business is finished, even though they still have some options left. Before you decide to close your business down, you need to make sure that you’ve tried everything that you possibly can to boost your profits and turn things around. If you have exhausted all of the options and the business is still performing badly and losing money, that’s when you should make the decision to close it down.
Consider Selling It
While you might not be able to afford to put any more money into the business, that doesn’t mean that nobody can turn it around. You should consider selling the business and its assets to another company if possible. Get in touch with somebody like Alliant Brokers and discuss the possibility of selling the company. Even if you don’t get that much for it, the extra money will help you to pay off any outstanding debts and secure your own personal finances.
Don’t Take It Personally
Sometimes, businesses fail because they are mismanaged, but a lot of the time, they fail because the market isn’t right for that kind of business to thrive right now. It still comes down to the choices that you made but you shouldn’t take it personally. It’s easy to think that you’re a terrible business owner because your business failed, so you should just give up on it completely. But there are plenty of successful business people with failed businesses behind them. Don’t take it personally, just take the necessary steps to close the business and start looking to the future.
Look For New Ventures
It’s not wise to start another business up right away because you need to build your finances up again. But you should be thinking about what your next steps are going to be and looking at some potential ideas for another business in the future. It may be that you go back to work for a while and start saving some money before you can launch another business, but you should start thinking about new business ideas.
A failed business is a hard pill to swallow, but you shouldn’t think of it as the end of your business career. You can take the things that you’ve learned and apply them to your next venture.
Phenomenal Tactics For A Hassle Free Business Expansion
/in Entrepreneurship/by StrategyDrivenYou only have to say the word expansion, and people working within a business start to sweat. It’s not that they inherently dislike the idea. It’s just that traditionally, alongside growth, you can expect additional work, risks, as well as an increase in stress and hassle. Of course, when expanding your business, there will always be additional tasks, and hazards to navigate, the same is true for any business. However, much of the hassle can be avoided if you manage the expansion right. Something that you can read all about doing in the post below.
Do your research
The first tactic for a hassle-free business expansion is to do plenty of research before you go ahead. In fact, data is one of the most valuable assets when it comes to successfully growing your business. The reason being that if you make your decisions based on cold, hard facts, rather than instinct, you have a much better chance of mitigating any risks.
What that means is you need to invest in market research before you plan to expand. This being an activity that can provide you with all sorts of information. Such as what type of demographics your products will appeal to and what kind of prices customers will be willing to pay. It can even help to inform the sort of launch that would work best for your expansion.
Additionally, market research is not the only information-gathering exercise that you should do before deciding to grow your business. You also need to make sure that you have all of the figures and projections from your current endeavor. Something that will allow you to establish whether you have the finances to fund a successful expansion or not.
Source new staff before you get big
Next, if you wish to minimize hassle when expanding your business, you need to be on top of your recruitment process. What that means is you need to start thinking about the possible roles you will need to fill. You will also need to consider the different type of employees you will need for your expansion to be a success. Well, before you start to enact your plans.
Happily, there are strategies you can use to help you with this, including creating a database of potential candidates that you can call upon should the need arise. Additionally, for some firms partnering with an agency can help them to quickly fill mission-critical positions during expansion, without having to dedicate too much person-power to this task.
Rebrand accordingly
The next things you need to get a handle on, if you want your expansion to go off without a hitch, is your rebrand. In fact, this is crucial and nearly always necessary. The reason being that there are few products that can be transitioned to other markets and demographics with precisely the same marketing materials that were used before.
Of course, savvy businesses will use the information they gathered at the research stage to inform their rebrand. Something that will make sure that it is as effective as possible for the market in which it is intended.
Particular caution needs to be taken here if you are hoping to expand into overseas markets, as international branding faux pas are common. Of course, these can be hilarious to observers but disastrous to any expansions success, and so be a costly mistake that is best avoided whenever possible.
Scalability is another important concept that you will need to grasp if your business expansion is to be conducted with the minimum amount of stress possible.
In particular, scalable IT solutions are a must for any type of expansion that you want to be a success. The reason being that you will be able to expand the infrastructure of your company as your need for output increases. A situation that more practical, and cost-effective than having to rebuild everything from the ground up every time you move into a new market.
With that in mind, using a data management service for your IT before you begin your expansion is the best course of action. Then, your IT provision can expand quickly with the needs of your business, without it interfering or delaying your movement into other profitable markets.
Secure your supply lines
Finally, if you want your business expansion to go off without a hitch, you need to be sure you can supply the next influence of customers with product. This means you will also need to make sure that you have a consistent supply of materials and the resources you need to create the products. All within enough time to go through the manufacturing process.
Additionally, do not forget to factor in delivery time when you start to supply a new market either. Especially if you plan to make the product in the country in which you are based, and then ship it overseas and distribute it to individual customers.
Summary
If you are looking for a hassle-free expansion, there are some things you need to bear in mind. The first is that there will always be some risk, and additional work associated with growing your business. However, you can ensure that things go as smoothly as possible by doing the following things.
First of all, you must do your research both in terms of what your potential new customers want. Secondly, be sure that you can staff your expansion successfully. Thirdly, at least some rebranding will be necessary if you’re going to grow your business. While fourth on the list is that you will need to grow your IT alongside the other parts of your business for things to work.
Finally, don’t forget that if your expansion is to go off without a problem you need to source the additional supplies, as well as deliver the product to your new market. Something that partnering with another company can help you do most effectively.
How 25 Years of the Internet Has Changed the World of Business
/in StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective/by StrategyDrivenOnline Information
It may be difficult to comprehend, but there are 55 to 60 billion pages of web information that has been created by people using the internet, and that figure grows exponentially each year. In addition to that number of web search engine indexed pages of data, there are an estimated hundreds of billions of pages of information that are not indexed – including almost 700 million tweet posts each day. Add to that all the emails, government records, and constantly changing pages of products for sale, and you can see how massive the world of online information has become. As little as 25 years ago, that much information available to anyone that wanted to spend time locating it was unthinkable.
Internet Searches
Once upon a time, it was thought the internet held databases, and everything was a product of those databases. While that may have been true during the early years of the internet, it is not true today. Everything is a result of a search task in the modern world. What clothes to buy, what books to read, what restaurant to visit are all the result of a search. Additionally, you no longer need to wonder about something for longer than a few seconds because you can initiate a search and the answer is instantly at your fingertips. The consumer is such a curious group that they ask the internet to answer over three trillion questions for them every year on the search engines. There is no estimation of how many additional queries are made on travel sites for where to go on vacation, shopping databases to compare different items or other areas such as the United CPA Association for information on help in a business matter, but it must be upward of six to nine trillion or more. That means the average person makes around 1,500 search queries a year, or an average of 42 a day.
Social Networks
Social media site owners report that one account alone has more than 25 percent of the world population (1.1 billion people) checking into that single site alone each day. That means that billions of people talk about different products, shops, books, and businesses every day on their favorite social media sites, and some spend hours pasting on walls, sending tweets, and posting stories about their lives. During all that interaction with their keyboards, those consumers also spend time sharing information and pictures about products they love and products that have failed them. For some businesses, the word of mouth meant instant success, but for others, it meant the death of a dream.
Product Placement
Twenty years ago, if you had a new product for sale, you could request a product placement on a shelf or endcap that would entice the consumer to purchase your items. It was the biggest and best way to get the consumer to purchase your product once they were in store. In the past five years, however, it is estimated that millions of consumers no longer step into stores to purchase products, rather they look online for goods, place an order, and have it delivered to their car outside the store or delivered right to their home. This type of consumer purchasing power has done away with product placement, and for many retailers, it has come as quite a quandary as to how to counter the power the consumer has taken away from the advertising agency and distributor.
Commercial Overload
Long ago, there was a time that four or five commercials played in certain time slots between sections of television shows. When consumers complained and used the four or five minutes as a time to get food or take the dog outside, the time slot became known as commercial overload. Today, the consumer is constantly being bombarded by advertisements to sell him or her something using the cookies his or her computer stores; and just like before, consumers are ignoring the ads in record numbers. Not only has it become more difficult to catch the consumer’s attention, but researchers have noticed that ignoring the ad placement begins at a very early age now as children begin using the internet and learn to focus on what they choose, rather than having their attention reverted away by something colorful and flashy. That means the world of advertising is going to have to learn to capture the consumer’s attention in new ways, and it will be interesting to see what advertisers come up with.
The world of business has been forever changed by the internet over the past 25 years. Some say it has been good for the business world, and others claim it has been massively destructive. Only time will tell what the real story is.
Should a Custom WordPress Web Design Be Important to Your Business?
/in Online Marketing and Website Development/by StrategyDrivenThere are many free and paid WordPress themes available. This is the beauty of the WordPress eco-system which makes small and mid-sized businesses question whether they should use a free theme for their site design, purchase a premium (paid) theme or go the custom development route?
In this article, we aim to look at what makes sense for companies from a strategic perspective.
Is a Premium WordPress Theme Better than a Free One?
A free theme is designed for people and organisations that want a fast, workable solution.
Click a few buttons, install WordPress, add a free theme, begin adding written copy and implement a navigation menu, and you’re already ready to launch!
But hold up there. Are there any negatives to free themes?
Yes, there are.
Many aren’t regularly updated, so when Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) release an update, it may create security holes or malfunctions within a free theme. Because the theme isn’t generating any money, the creator(s) usually will abandon it in favour of other projects sooner or later. Lastly, they also have fewer features and little to no ability to redesign them easily.
How About a Premium WordPress Theme?
Premium themes are far superior.
Indeed, some WordPress designers will start with the solid foundation of a premium theme that they know has a solid code base and then build a custom appearance over the top of that, rather than reinvent the wheel. This may or may not be faster compared to creating a theme from the ground up.
Strategically, using a paid theme looks far more professional and from a security standpoint, they tend to get updated regularly too. This is because there’s a team behind it and the operation is probably generating a profit. Therefore, it’s less likely to get abandoned. Also, when sticking with big-name premium themes, the likelihood of losing the developer and seeing the theme never get updated again is lowered even more.
Is a Custom WordPress Theme Worth It?
For businesses that have a clear strategy where they don’t want their web presence to look like anyone else’s, getting a completely new design via a custom WordPress theme makes the most sense.
A professional WordPress Agency London will have full-time developers, programmers and graphic designers on their team, so they are perfectly placed to craft a site design that matches the needs of the client perfectly. That’s easier to execute when building from the ground up and not starting from a premium theme and making customisations, but either works effectively.
For start-ups, a custom look is vital to establish the brand early. Finding a development team that understands their goals and can create the right solution is important. However, for tiny businesses, using a premium theme and redeveloping that or a premium theme with just a few tweaks here and there is going to be more economical.
There’s no one right answer about what theme to use with WordPress and whether it should be a custom development or not. It comes down to the business that requires the site and what their needs and budget permit them to do.