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5 Tips for Starting Your Own Website

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Tips for Starting Your Own WebsiteStarting your own website can be a daunting thought, but there is really nothing that should be holding you back. Creating a professional-looking website is easier than ever, and you do not need crazy computing skills to pull it off.

When you do start your own website, these five tips can help you to make sure it gets the best possible start.

Have a Plan

Creating your website is much easier when you have a plan for what you want it to look like.

Your site must be organized in a way that is easy to navigate for your visitors, and this is much more difficult to create without a clear idea of what you want your website to look like.

Before you start building your site, make sure you have a clear idea of how you want it to be structured. With the help of marketing consulting services, you can really narrow down your plan and focus on what’s going to make your website successful.

Speed

One thing you have got to pay close attention to is the speed of your website. If you load your site up with loads of plugins and big multimedia files, then it is really going to slow down your site, and this makes people bounce away from your pages.

For every second that it takes your page to load, you increase the likelihood that your visitor will bounce away from it without engaging with the content, and this will negatively affect your SEO.

Keep things simple, and make sure your pages load quickly.

Mobile Usability

For several years now, more mobile searches have been performed each day than on desktop. Not only does this mean your users need a site that works well on mobile, but it is one of the key things that Google, and the other search engines will look for.

Even today, though, with mobile traffic forming such a large part of internet usage, many websites are not fully optimized for mobile.

Make sure that your content is entirely mobile-friendly.

User Experience

We know how it feels when we visit a website that offers a poor user experience – it’s incredibly frustrating.

When you work so hard to bring people to your website, you cannot afford to be driving people away by having glaring user experience errors on your pages. The internet gives people lots of options, and if there is something people do not like about your page, they can easily get their information somewhere else.

You want to be getting as much engagement from your visitors as possible by offering a clean, easy to use experience.

Avoid the most common UX errors and make sure you’re not unwittingly driving your visitors away.

Offer Value

You have got to put your visitors at the heart of what you do.

Ask yourself, “how can I offer people value?”

If you can offer people lots of value with your website, then you are going to find that people respond to it and engage with your brand.

When Google and the other search engines see lots of people are enjoying your content, then they are going to want to get in on the party and start ranking you at the top of the ranking’s pages.

Why UX Is Essential for your Website

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Why UX Is Essential for your Website

There are so many aspects that go into a successful website, but the user experience is undoubtedly one of the most important. When we’re looking to rank our websites, it’s easy to pay attention to what we think the search engines want and forget that it’s real-life humans who are actually going to be using our website.

Poor user experience can impact your website in many different ways. We’ve all been on a terrible website, which makes the simplest things so difficult, and it can be seriously irritating. However, frustrating your users is only one example of the many problems a poor user experience can cause.

Whether it’s conversion rates, ability to rank, or advertising costs, a poor UX can have serious consequences for your website. To find out if you need a UX revamp, get an audit from someone who offers affordable SEO services.

Ability to Rank

The reason so many people keep going to Google to get their information is because they trust it to give them the best results to answer their queries. If Google suddenly started sending you to websites with a poor UX, then it wouldn’t be long before you tried out a different search engine.

Consequently, Google does all it can to not send its users to websites with poor UX. There are many aspects that enter into Google’s algorithms, and some of them correlate closely with user experience.

For example, if your website doesn’t load properly, then people are going to leave your page without interacting with it, increasing your bounce rate. A high bounce rate signals to Google that users don’t find your page useful, and as a result, you’re less likely to rank well.

Conversion Rates

So, the chances are, you’re already getting less organic traffic because of a poor UX, but the problems don’t stop there.

Converting your website visitors into customers is about building a relationship, and if you have bad UX, this relationship is going to get off on the wrong foot. If you can’t put together a website that works for your users, why would they expect that your products can?

UX problems vary in size, but whether they’re having a small effect on your conversion rates or a big one, that’s money that you’re losing out on. Earning a sale is hard enough, so don’t let a UX problem make it even more difficult.

Advertising Costs

Whichever way you look at it, UX problems are going to make your advertising more expensive. If you’re judging it by cost per conversion, then you’re still going to be paying for the same amount of clicks, but as previously mentioned, you’re less likely to convert those clicks, bringing your cost up.

It’s possible a poor user experience can also mean you pay more for every click you get. Search engines use a quality score to judge how relevant your advert is, and a poor UX can lead to a lower quality score. This means Google is less likely to show your ad, and you can end up paying more when they do.

Whichever way you look at it, user experience is something you want to keep a close eye on, because it can make a huge difference to your website.

 

How Good Is Your Website?

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, How Good Is Your Website?Understanding whether or not a website is any good can be a real challenge. Not only are a lot of factors which dictate this completely hidden from normal people, but they are also complicated and hard to understand. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the areas which you need to consider the most, along with some tools which can help you to get an idea of how well you’re going in each of them. Of course, though, you also have to do some work alongside this, ensuring that your site is in the best possible shape.

Security

Security has always been an important feature on a website, though privacy laws have increased over the last few years and this has made this field even more crucial. You need to have SSL on your site as a minimum, with options like firewalls, bot/spam detectors, and anti-malware tools all helping, too. You don’t have to spend much to make a site secure, and there are loads of sites around the web which can be used to scan your security.

Speed

Along with security, it’s also wise to consider speed when you’re thinking about the value of your site. Users won’t stick around if they have to wait too long for pages to load, often leaving if the pages hang for more than a second or two. Tools like GTMatrix can be used to check your website speed, and will give you loads of suggestions which can help you to improve your current position. A big part of this revolves around your content, with large images and videos slowing down a site more than anything else.

SEO

Having people find your website will only be possible if you have the right SEO. Not only do you need to make sure that you are working on this are regularly, but you also need to ensure that you have the right foundations in place. SEObility is a great site for this, providing you with a detailed analysis of the state of your site’s SEO with the push of a button. You have to pay for this, but it will be worth it to improve your SEO.

User Experience

Finally, as the last area to consider, it’s time to think about user experience. There’s no point in working hard on a website if your users are going to have a bad time on it. You can use a website worth and domain value calculator to start this journey, and this will give you an idea of what your site will appear to be worth to your customers. Along with this, though, it will also help to give tests to real people, and this can be done on social media.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to get started on the work you put into figuring out whether or not you have a good website. A lot of people struggle with this sort of work, finding it hard to know how to figure out the value of their site.

6 Omnichannel Support Strategies for Cleaning Companies

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Omnichannel Strategy| 6 Omnichannel Support Strategies for Cleaning CompaniesMarketers and customer service reps will need to adapt to the changes in the market brought about by technological convergence.

Technological convergence refers to the integration of unrelated technologies that brings forth more convenience and better solutions. One of the offshoots of this unification of technologies is omnichannel customer support.

With an omnichannel strategy, a cleaning company will be able to offer customers a unified customer experience. If you are an owner of a cleaning service startup just testing the waters, an omnichannel strategy might seem like a real bear. However, once you learn the ropes, you can carve out a unique niche and rake in money.

What Exactly Is an Omnichannel Strategy?

An omnichannel strategy is a holistic approach to customer service. The strategy focuses on creating a cohesive customer experience by utilizing multiple channels.

The goal of an omnichannel strategy is to create a seamless experience as customers interact with the company at different stages of the customer journey.

You can have an amazing social media campaign, a user-friendly website, and responsive customer support, but all of this won’t offer maximum effectiveness unless they work together when serving the target market.

Why You Should Focus on Creating an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?

All types of businesses – big and small – can benefit from an omnichannel strategy. Consider the following facts revealed in a report by Harvard Business Review that surveyed over 46,000 shoppers.

  • 73 percent of the shoppers used different channels for shopping
  • 20 percent headed to physical stores for shopping
  • 7 percent shopped exclusively online

The above facts clearly show the importance of focusing on omnichannel marketing for increased customer satisfaction. Using an omnichannel channel strategy can help you boost your sales. A study found that firms that have a robust online channel strategy are 89 percent more likely to retain customers.

Now that you know what an omnichannel strategy is and have understood the importance of a strategy for your cleaning business let’s find out some effective omnichannel strategies that can lead to enhanced customer satisfaction.

1. Focus on a Unified Omnichannel Strategy

The main goal of an omnichannel strategy should be to positively influence the perception of the customers about your brand or services.
Focusing on your customers requires that you not just include marketing in the business success formula for attracting customers but also include merchandising, social media support, and customer support. All of these must work together to ensure customer satisfaction.

The activities of different departments should be coordinated by the sharing of customer data. Marketers should ask the customer support to inform about most commonly asked questions. This will help them know about exactly what are the concerns of the customers.

The customer data should be stored in a centralized location. It should be accessed by every employee at any given time. But that’s not all. The data needs to be continuously updated to ensure that the latest information is available for decision making.

2. Collect Data from Multiple Contact Points

You need to collect customer data from different contact points. All sets of data collected from different channels need to be audited.
Identifying customer data on multiple channels involves researching the different channels to find out what customers say about a particular product or service. You should scour the internet to find out what customers have to say about your company online.

You must research what the customers are saying about their customer journey from the point they place their order to the point where they receive their product. The engagement level should be checked on multiple channels to get an overview of the customer’s perception of your company.

An audit of the data collected through multiple sources can help in assessing customer experience. The information can be useful in improving customer service through deep customer insight.

3. Get Feedback from Customers

Obtaining feedback is an active way of obtaining insights about your customer. Most retailers ask feedback during the purchase stage. However, for deeper insights, you should get feedback at each and every stage of the customer journey.

Consider asking the customer to create a small survey. Ask the customer to give a net promoter score (NPS) that shows how the customer is feeling about a service. The information gathered through this strategy can help in optimizing the omnichannel customer experience.

4. Integrate Online and Physical Experience

Once you have gathered deep insights about the customers, you can use the information to create an integrated online and physical experience.

Create a unified brand message that resonates with the target market across different channels. There should be a seamless transition between the online and physical experience.

The gap between the online and physical space can be reduced to a large extent by using innovative technologies. It can help in creating a unified uninterrupted experience across multiple channels.

5. Mobile Friendly Website

While there are many different digital channels, an omnichannel strategy is driven mostly by mobile devices. A large number of customers today use their smartphones or tablets to access sites online. So, it’s a no brainer that you should optimize your site for mobile screens.

Most users will not recommend a company if its website is not mobile-friendly. What’s worse is that the customers will go to a competitor’s site due to a bad mobile experience.

The hierarchy and layout of the site should be optimized properly for small mobile screens. The most important information should be at the front. Most mobile-friendly sites are built on a grid system pattern that allows easy expansion and collapse, depending on the site.

6. Interactive Rewards Programs

Lastly, you should consider integrating a loyalty program to the omnichannel experience. Make the program convenient for the customers by allowing them to easily check and avail discounts through an app.

The theme of the loyalty program should be the same on all channels.

An example can be given of the Starbucks reward programs that integrated easily with different channels. Customers can check and reload balances using the phone. This information is updated in the central system. They can also pay using the reward card, resulting in increased effectiveness.

The keyword in creating an omnichannel strategy for your cleaning business is consistency. Make sure that you offer a consistent customer experience across multiple channels. This provides a great opportunity to improve your brand image, build loyalty, and boost profitability.

You Know What A Customer Might Want, But Not Exactly

Your business should never assume to know what your customers always want. Funnelling them into a list of options that can either get the product and or service right or as close to right, is the best way to go about things. You offer customers something that is in the ballpark of what they’re looking for but you allow themselves to narrow it down further. For example, if you are an automobile company, you have set organized products. A customer might be looking for a saloon, which you have. However they want to choose what kind of engine it will have, the paint scheme, the interior, the technology and the additional accessories like a roof rack option. However, you don’t possibly know what exactly the customer wants. You can only give them options. When there are a lot of variables floating around, pricing everything they have chosen accurately takes a specific kind of process. This can be solved by a software solution but first you need to provide those options.

In the professional promotions

Think about what is a very specific order from another business? It’s always going to be their promotional gear. They want a certain color scheme, a certain style of clothing, perhaps specific designs, materials, logo placement, sizes and more. That’s why a CQB apparel configurator is something that you need to provide for businesses that want to quickly see how much their unique demands will cost. You firstly configure your products to present them the best foundations, and then after their changes and unique optional choices, you can price what the total might amount to. If they are wanting a large order and then also want their order shipped to a specific location, you can provide them with a quote for the entire purchase from start to finish. When you can provide this, businesses are more likely to be more assured that they can either afford your products or would like to change them.

The retail options

The clothing industry is looking to improve their sizing and generalized approach to their online shopping experiences. For one thing, now almost every retail clothing company has a size guide. They now provide customers with a much more accurate option to choose what kind of length and width product they want. If you are a retail clothing company then you might want to go one step further than this and provide the options of specific features. For example, the torso of a product might be 36 inches across the chest but the arms don’t have a measurement. You can provide this measurement so that the customer can make a more informed choice of what kind of size they would prefer. This is especially desired by women who want to have short tops but longer sleeves for particular street fashion outfits such as crop tops.

The more options you can provide your customers, the more likely they are to positively engage with your business. They might be teetering on the edge but thanks to your CQP software, they can accurately see what their customized product will look like and how much they will pay for it.