Our website series, “Get Found. Get Followed: Building an Online Audience for Your Business,” concludes Tuesday with its second segment, "Using SoMoLo Strategies to Capture Business." We know that marketing your company online can be daunting when you’re busy running every aspect of your business. We want to equip you with the tools to get the job done efficiently.
Part 2 covers the purpose, uses and techniques of SoMoLo Marketing – the Social, Mobile and Local elements that go into driving traffic. The integration of these strategies is no longer an option but a necessity for SMB success. Learn how to develop a following on social media, what evolving mobile technologies offer for marketing and e-commerce efforts, and draw and target consumers near your physical location.
Register now for this event!
When it comes to creating a website that will not only attract customers, but also keep them coming back for more, e-commerce company owners may be at a loss. It can be difficult to distinguish the essentials of a lucrative e-commerce platform from the items that are merely bells and whistles. Let's take a look at the top tips offered by experts on how to establish a website that will position your e-commerce brand for success.
Ensure your website's navigability
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised by the number of e-commerce firms that don't factor website navigation into their considerations. If a product is directly featured on the homepage or otherwise easily accessible, customers need a way to find the item they are seeking in a streamlined fashion. If a shopper can't find what they're looking for on your website, they'll just go elsewhere. SumAll contributor Brian Honigman noted that navigability should extend not only to an easily discoverable search bar, but also to the inclusion of overarching product categories and sub-categories as well.
Presenting and describing products: It's all in the details
Another main consideration to keep in mind with any e-commerce website is the fact that shoppers can't get a full sense of the product they will potentially buy without all the necessary details. Clients can't physically view or pick up the item, so they are counting on the information on the website to help them understand what they will be getting. Designer Daily advised using quality photos with more than one angle of each product to better showcase each item. In addition, anything that can't be gleaned from the images – and even details that can – should be included in the product description. This section should provide answers to any and all questions customers would have if they were in a physical store.
"Don't let your customers doubt; otherwise, they'll go to another website," Designer Daily stated.
Provide clear contact information, address inquiries quickly
When shoppers are considering a purchase, or have already made one, and want to reach out to your company, they shouldn't have to jump through hoops to do so. Every e-commerce website should include clear, easy-to-find information that provides a range of avenues for clients to contact you, suggested iThemes contributor Kristen Wright. While some customers prefer a direct phone call, others may want to send an email or post to the organization's social media outlets. Make it simple for them to do so.
Additionally, when consumers do contact your business, their questions or concerns should be addressed as quickly as possible to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. If you find that your company receives the same question from several clients, consider adding a FAQs page that is easily accessible from the contact information page.
Make checkout easy
Wright also noted that the process customers go through to make their purchases should be streamlined and as short as possible. Only the most essential information should be collected and the shopping cart page should be clear and concise. In addition, this page should also include all the essentials clients will want to know – what the shipping cost is, the total cost of the purchase and an estimated delivery date. As with product descriptions, consumers shouldn't have to guess about any aspect of their transaction.
In these instances, organizations need e-commerce software that will meet their unique needs. Hostway's custom online store software allows companies to use the shopping cart of their choice in connection with a shared hosting environment. Hostway can provide the best-in-class foundation your e-commerce company needs to guarantee its success.
Growing businesses require growing websites – it's common sense. But it's difficult to tell that you've outgrown your current site until it's already having a negative effect for your visitors or internal users.
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They begin by having an in-depth conversation with you about your project, getting to know you, your systems and your needs. They will set out recommendations regarding the importance and details of your migration (by Herbert at dresshead inc). If necessary, they will have a specialist do a “deep dive” analysis to ensure that any complicated elements are correctly addressed.
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When an individual user, startup or established company first considers building their own website, it may seem a daunting task that leaves administrators wondering where to begin. So many elements must be factored into the creation of a prosperous online platform; decision-makers may not know where to place their focus first. However, by pinpointing a few critical factors, potential website creators can be sure that they are positioning themselves and their brand for success.
Experts recommend keeping these considerations in mind when building a website:
Start at the beginning: Platform foundation
My Social Game Plan noted that one of the first things to decide is the platform on which the website will be built, including the component suite and programming language. Though many developers leverage HTML and PHP coding with CSS programming, templates and platforms have emerged to make the process much easier.
Now, providers offer step-by-step website-building solutions that can take the guesswork out of platform creation. These systems include a range of powerful tools for companies in nearly every industry, as well as specialized capabilities for e-commerce organizations. Using this type of solution can streamline the website creation process and ensure that all critical elements are addressed.
Top priority pages
It's essential to keep in mind the specific pages that will be accessible to website visitors. Texelate contributor William Reynolds noted that users have been conditioned to keep an eye out for essential pages that quickly help them find what they are looking for. These include the home page, About Us, Services, Contact Information and others that assist in the navigation of the platform. Decision-makers should be sure that their website includes these priority pages, as well as a search bar, so that users can efficiently locate the product, information or details they sought when they first clicked the website link.
"After all, these pages answer the basic questions we all have: 'What do you do? What's your mission, vision and history? What products or services do you provide, in a nutshell? How can we contact you?'" Reynolds wrote. "Don't get too clever about where you place this information on your site, because the average visitor only has a few seconds' worth of patience to tax before he moves on to his next potential provider."
Users' limited patience
Reynolds brings up an important point that is echoed by My Social Game Plan: The typical user won't spend hours, or even minutes, going through your website to find what they need. Chances are good that if visitors have to scramble to pinpoint specific details, they will simply give up on your platform and opt for one of your competitors. This point should be kept in mind throughout the website design process, as putting oneself in the place of the average user can help streamline the creation process and ensure a beneficial experience for website visitors. For example, website creators should avoid putting too much content or too many bells and whistles on a single page, as it can distract users from finding the information they seek.
"The design must immediately grab the visitor's attention and convey that you have the solution to their needs," My Social Game Plan noted. "Grabbing the attention of your visitor comes down to the details: headings, subheadings, color, a good balance of static information and interactive multimedia, and so on."
Comparison to competitors
The bottom line with website design is often to provide a resource that will offer solutions to clients and keep them coming back. In these regards, decision-makers should take a look at what their competitors are doing with their websites and use this information to their company's advantage.
"This is very often missed and shouldn't be, as it gives great insight into how your competitors interact with their customers," Web Analytics World contributor Chris Elvery wrote.
If a competing organization has a feature on its website that clients utilize more than others or seem to particularly like, company administrators can consider adding something similar to their website.
Leverage a trusted provider
One of the best ways to build your own website is to do so with the tools and assistance of a trusted web solution and hosting provider like Hostway. Hostway not only provides all the capabilities any company needs when building their website, but also offers hosting service to ensure the platform is always on and always available.
We've discussed several times on this blog the idea that webpage load time is becoming an indispensable quality of a good site, whether it be a desktop or mobile site component. The folks at WebpageFX, a full-service Internet marketing, web design, and web development agency, have put this message into a particularly compelling infographic, awash with statistics that bolster the idea that load times directly influence conversation rates and revenue figures.
See their graphic below, and for a look at the blog accompanying this image, follow this link. We're always looking to highlight insightful content such as this, so if you've got something for us, let us know!
Created by WebpageFX
It's no secret: An increasing number of customers are connecting with businesses via the web. Whether cruising a company's website, mobile application or social media page, modern browsing and buying habits have made web presence crucial to a brand's identity.
If you're among the holdouts to prioritizing your organization's web presence, the lack of effective online offerings will cost you important opportunities – namely, connecting with new customers and improving relationships with existing ones.
There are several steps a company can take to improve its web presence, and many are easier than you might think.
Optimize for mobile users
It's no longer just about having a sparkling website: If your enterprise lacks a matching offering for mobile users, optimized for their needs, you risk falling behind your competitors. More and more users are leveraging their handheld hardware to connect with businesses across industries; companies without a mobile-optimized platform risk repelling mobile visitors.
Inc. contributor Jeff Haden noted that some organizations create a similar version of their website just for mobile users. This approach has its benefits – including a consistent look and feel across different platforms – but a much better strategy is to create something completely new. Haden suggested building a mobile website with a unique design that will function across all platforms and reprioritize the placement of items of particular interest to browsers on the go. This technique is best for capturing the biggest portion of the mobile sector.
Focus on search engine optimization
In addition to mobile optimization, business leaders should also prioritize search engine optimization. As Demand Media's Gwen Wark pointed out, a website is only an effective part of a company's web presence if users are able to find it. With a search engine optimization strategy in place – available through a hosting provider or specialized outside firm – the organization's online offerings will appear higher in results from search engines like Google and Bing when customers input specific phrases.
Regularly update online content
Another important aspect of a brand's web presence is providing something new. Businesses that keep the same, stale content on their websites week after week and month after month are missing a number of opportunities to engage with customers. Additionally, Haden pointed out that frequently updated website content can not only help sell products, but can improve search results as well.
"Long gone are the days of static websites. Today's most effective websites frequently update content to give visitors a reason to come back," Haden wrote. "And quality is just as important as quantity, so make sure your company information is up-to-date and communicate relevant details about your business through regular blog posts or updates."
Ensure reliability
While these elements are no doubt key to a company's web presence, perhaps the most critical factor is reliability. Business leaders must ensure that once they build their website, their online offerings are always available to customers. If unplanned downtime occurs, consumers will likely turn to other sources for goods and services. For this reason, it is crucial to partner with a trusted hosting provider like Hostway, which can guarantee that services are always on, and the firm's website and connected web presence are always available.
Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a programming language used by web developers that gives the user more control over the HTML that makes up a webpage. PHP works alongside HTML within the same document, allowing users to easily organize and display information within a browser and create vibrant sites. It has been the dominant server-side scripting language for websites for nearly 20 years, and still has significant staying power. According to recent stats from W3Techs, PHP is used by more than 80 percent of websites, easily outdistancing competitors such as ASP.net, Java and ColdFusion.
So what makes PHP so attractive to website developers? The following characteristics of PHP boost its usefulness:
One of the main disadvantages, however, is that PHP is not usually suitable for creating desktop applications. That's why it is essential to weigh the pros and cons of PHP in relation to a particular project before deciding whether to use it. Also, compared to other languages, PHP applications tend to run slowly. Finally, PHP error handling is traditionally considered poor when compared with competitors, mainly because of PHP’s development history and its support for older functions.
Do you use PHP for website development? Tell us your favorite benefit in the comments section below.
Any hosting customer is allotted a specific amount of hard disk space on the server they’re purchasing. This allotment is for the components which comprise your website: HTML files, images, videos, audio, Flash files, databases and so on. Email accounts, raw access logs and any installed programs or scripts are also included in the total. How much room does this all take up?
The amount of disk space needed depends greatly on the type of website. One with hundreds of large audio and video files, for example, will consume more space than a simple site with five or six pages. E-commerce websites also usually have large numbers of individual product pages with high-quality pictures to describe products, taking up considerably more space than a blog with lots of words but limited graphics.
Most sites, however, will never be large enough to require the "unlimited" packages that many hosting companies offer. However, two significant trends have emerged in website design during the past year that could change the minimum disk space requirements for many companies:
If you already have a website, and the files and folders are archived on your hard drive, it’s easy to find out how much space you’ll need on your host’s server. Go into your local disk, open the folder that contains your website files, right-click on it and select Properties. Still building your website? Consider the stats above when making an educated guess about what you'll need. For example, a 50-page site at 1.7 MB per page means you'll need approximately 85 MB of disk space; that includes photos and interactive images, CSS files and email accounts. A simpler site will need less. You'll also want to allow for growth, especially if you have an expanding e-commerce business or plan to have a significant amount of video on the site.
In addition to the content on your webpages, you need to consider any back-end web hosting features you'll need. We mentioned email accounts and email storage files above, but you'll also need to account for database software and web apps such as shopping cart software, contact forms, secure payment processing, traffic logs and counters, and guest books, among other things. The more features you plan to incorporate into your website, the more disk space you will need. These applications range in size, so you should determine which you'll be using before calculating your total requirements.
If you're just getting started, these three tips will help you make a solid estimate:
Design a typical page and measure it to confirm the size of the files you will have on your average page. Make sure you account for pages with web apps, such as shopping carts or contact forms.
If your website is a simple blog, you can probably count on two hands the number of pages you'll have. For an e-commerce site, it's also easy to measure: How many product pages will you carry? Building a site map can also help you determine how your overall website will look. From there, you can determine the number of pages required and have a pretty good estimate of the types of files that will be on each page.
Every time a webpage is viewed, changed, accessed, uploaded or downloaded from your website it affects the amount of bandwidth you need. Also take into account the number of pages they will view during a visit. It's important to account for web hosting space for your current files and allow room for growth so you can add features as your client base or number of visitors grows.
When you put all these factors together, you'll come close to understanding the space requirements you'll need to get started. Think about how your site will grow (pages, products, visitors) and make an educated guess as to what that means for the short term. Don't worry, however, if you’re off target. Most hosting companies will allow you to upgrade your space needs as necessary.
Savvy business owners know that a strong online presence is vital to attracting and converting new customers, and that the specific domain names resolving to a site can greatly impact the success of that business. For this and other reasons, many companies register multiple domains. Here are a few of the main benefits of doing so.
Protecting Your Brand Online Protects Your Business
You spend a lot of time, money and resources on building and optimizing your online brand to increase the traffic to your site. The last thing you want is other people capitalizing on your efforts, siphoning traffic from your site simply by registering domain names that appear to be associated with your brand. Why not identify common additional domains for your business and register them before any unscrupulous competitors do? It’s an inexpensive way of protecting your brand and can improve your traffic at the same time.
A popular way of protecting an online brand is to identify common misspellings of the domain name and registering those typos as domains. These additional domains can easily be set up to forward visitors to your main website, ensuring they end up at their intended destination – your site. Look at google.com as an example: They’ve registered gogle.com and googel.com as typo domains that redirect the user to the main Google website.
If you’re providing products or services to customers in specific countries, I highly recommend registering your domain name under the country code domain extension for the specific countries or regions you are marketing to, such as .us and .ca for the United States or Canada, or .eu and .asia for the European and Asia Pacific regions. These extensions will let visitors know you have a presence in these specific locations. Studies have shown consumers are more comfortable conducting e-commerce with companies within their region.
Marketing Opportunities with Multiple Domains
If your products have unique and catchy names, it’s a good idea to register those product names as domains. You can set up the domains to resolve to specific landing pages on your site, providing potential customers immediate information about that product. Apple does this with iphone.com, which takes the user right to the iPhone page on their website. Unfortunately, they can’t use that strategy with ipad.com, as someone registered it before them and is pointing it to an unrelated website.
You may also want to consider registering domains for promotions and contests, particularly if they are recurring. Something like yourbrandgiveaway.com – resolving to a promotion or contest landing page – gives your users a quick and easy way to get updates on your current promotions and is great for word-of-mouth advertising. If your brand has a catchphrase or slogan associated with it, you can also strengthen that relationship by registering it as a domain that brings visitors to your site, as Nike does with justdoit.com.
Taking some time to carefully plan out a domain registration strategy is a great cost-effective way of protecting your brand and online presence. Using multiple domains will also give your customers more ways of finding you on the net, can make your site more dynamic, and will give you more opportunities to be listed in search engines.
So you've heard all the hype surrounding SoMoLo: Social, Mobile and Local marketing. But you still don't get what the big deal is, and how it could possibly apply to what your business needs to accomplish to thrive.
Truth is, five years past the launch of Foursquare, we're firmly in the SoMoLo era, and those unwilling to adapt risk being left behind.
If you're ready to learn, check out our free webinar, Why SoMoLo is Critical for Your Business, on June 19. Hostway Senior Online Marketing Manager Alison Brehme will give you a firm grasp on what exactly comprises SoMoLo, explain what's propelled the trend forward, and give you tips on how to capitalize on this phenomenon.
We’ll discuss how increasing smartphone usage for multiple purposes demands your attention, why social media can't be ignored as a medium for customer contact, and how local businesses are finding new clients thanks to mobile technology. You will also receive an exclusive promotional offer to help kick off your SoMoLo strategy.
During the webinar, TweetChat with other participants about the ideas and concepts being discussed via hashtag #somolo.
If you're an entrepreneur, you know that keeping up with the times is an essential part to staying in business. Learn what's becoming expected of you by a new breed of buyers, and see how you can make these changes work to your advantage.
Register Here for our webinar, coming up at 1 p.m. CT on June 19.