Union Square Design
Posts by Mai Erne:
Tips to Get a Free SSL Certificate for WordPress Website
How to Get a Free SSL Certificate for Your WordPress Website
SSL certificate is needed to accept online payment and create a secure gateway for your website. Obtaining an SSL certificate for your WordPress website has become imperative owing to the new algorithm of Google Chrome browser. Starting from 1st July websites who do not have an SSL certificate will not be displayed by the Google Browser. So to assist you in obtaining a free SSL certificate, we have listed a few approaches, read along to find out.
Best Business Phone Services for Small Business
4 Best Business Phone Services in 2018 Perfect for Small Businesses
Adding your phone number to your WordPress powered website can pave the way for your business. By linking these two you can avail the convenience of receiving customer’s calls. However, the addition of a business phone service will give you more than just one benefit. You will be able to track the duration of the call, overall usage and much more. Operations like call routing, tracking caller ID etc. will also become extremely easy.
Following is a list of the best business phone services that are apt for small businesses:
How to win a customer trust when your business has zero sales
Congratulations on putting up your first online store. After months of planning and preparation, you’ve actually pulled it off. Now comes the harder part—generating your first sale. It’s particularly harder for a new online store to win a customer trust. After all, many online customers prefer seeing reviews or customers from other people before buying something from a web store.
So the question is—how do you convince a prospective customer to trust you when your business has yet to make a sale online? Here are several tips that you should keep in mind:
Brick and mortar marketing techniques that e-commerce websites should adapt
Online shopping has been the rage for the past few years but did you know that online sales surprisingly represented just 9% of total retail sales in 2017? This means that 91 percent of retail sales are still spent in traditional, brick-and-mortar stores. What does this tell you? First, online shopping maybe convenient but majority of shoppers still prefer in-person shopping because they can physically see the product being sold. Second, there are brick-and-mortar marketing strategies that e-commerce has to replicate in order to get a bigger slice of the pie, so to speak.
Brick and mortar marketing technique 1: Visual merchandising
Do you know that large retail stores spend a lot of resources for visual merchandising? They have personnel which prepare reports that detail which products should be put in prime locations like racks and front windows. And these seemingly simple decisions yield increased sales.
This kind of attention must also be paid to a website’s homepage. Updating the website’s home page should be as regular as updating the display windows at brick and mortar stores. A refreshed home page gives prospective customers another good reason to visit the store. It also leaves an impression that there is a new, exciting product being offered by the online store.
Brick and mortar marketing technique 2: The fitting room
One reason why many people still prefer to go to traditional retail stores is because they can always try a product they are interested in. This is particularly true in clothes.
However, technology can help online stores in overcoming this particular weakness. There are now virtual fit assistants being rolled out by websites
that can replicate fitting rooms in brick and mortar stores. These virtual assistants can eliminate guesswork by predicting the size based on the height, weight and bust size of the customers.
How to Make Copy Work for Your Online Business
Many online merchants overlook the importance of copy in their e-commerce stores. They think that conversion is hinged mainly on optimization, design tricks and other gimmicks. But copy is very important as it tells the story of the business and defines the goods or services offered by the online firm.
Here are three tips to make copy work for an online business:
Prepare copy that talks to the target audience
This may be so basic but many marketers and online business owners tend to forget that they should write to please their customers, and not their brand.
The ideal copy on an e-commerce site should sound as if the customer is seated next to the website owner. It should be conversational with a relaxed tone. If the copy is written in that way, then customers will be pulled in and encouraged to explore the site even further.
When writing for customers, online marketers should consider the nature of the product they’re selling and the kind of person likely to purchase. For example, a store selling electronic products should present the specifications and features of the items on sale.
The copy should have powerful words
The website copy should be exciting for customers to notice it. This is the challenge for marketers—how can they make their product sound appealing or exciting for prospective buyers?
Here’s one tip—step back for a bit and understand what the product offers to customers. For example, does a certain pill improve the health of a person? Can an electronic product make life easier for the customer?
The copy should let customers speak
Website copy should not always be about the brand taking a hard-sell approach in marketing its products. It can also use customer testimonials; allowing current consumers to vouch for the company and the products or services it offers.
Three Ways to Get a Sale for Your New Website
After several weeks of preparation, your new web store has gone online. Now you’re faced with this challenge—getting your first sale. It would be easier to make a sale if your business has been existing at some time, like a brick and mortar store that had expanded online.
Yet things are different for new entrepreneurs who’ve just put up their own online stores. It can really be difficult to get that first sale. Here are some tips to get you started:
Start your own blog to make a sale
Blogging is not only a way for people to express themselves. For online entrepreneurs, it’s a must to have a blog because it’s one way to entice people to visit the site regularly even if they’re not inclined to buy anything yet.
Blogging can also help your site to rank highly on search engines. When a prospective customer looks for products online, your site stands to have a greater chance of being seen by that person.
Build an email subscription list
Another major part of your online content strategy that you should focus on is email marketing. As such, learn how you to build your email list as this can yield that one individual or party who’ll make the first purchase from your site.
Once you’ve built up your email list, you can start priming your prospective clients by creating a drip campaign. Start by sending them a welcome message then follow it up with promotional emails. Just make sure that you don’t spam their inboxes.
Consumers may not be going to your website everyday but they’ll likely be checking your emails. Offer them something on discount and you could be getting your first sale soon.
Tap social influencers to help you make a sale
One of the top trends in online marketing is influencer marketing, or tapping the so-called social influencers. These are people who have a significant following on social media, with high engagement rates but reasonably priced pay rates.
Send your products to these social media darlings. For a few hundred dollars, you can expose your products to a bigger audience. Hopefully, this can translate to a sale in the coming days.
How to Determine if an MLM Company is Worth Joining
Many people dream of earning a living from home. Multi-level marketing or MLM programs have always appealed to those people. MLM has had a bad reputation because of numerous reports of scams. Still, there are still individuals who’ve found success with it. This could lead you to ask— how do you know that a MLM company is legit or not?
Is the MLM company trustworthy?
One of the first questions you need to ask is whether the MLM organization is trustworthy or not. To find out more about the reputation of the firm, do an extensive research. What are people saying about them online? You can go to online discussion forums and review sites such as www.ecosecretariat.org. Is the firm accessible? Is it transparent about its business practices?
The appeal of MLM Is that it is less expensive to get into it than other business opportunities such as starting a new business. For example, anyone can join the organization with a minimum investment fee of $100. The low cost of getting into MLM is one of the reasons why people are enticed to join it.
What is the MLM company selling?
You should also know more about the products that the MLM company is selling. After all, you will also be selling those goods or commodities so you need to get the assurance that those products are of good quality.
What is the MLM company’s compensation plan?
There are different compensation plans offered by MLM companies. Obviously, you should review the plan being offered by the MLM firm you are interested in. Make sure you understand the nitty gritty of the plan. Ideally, you should get a commission for every product sold, and not only on membership alone.
With the bad reputation that MLM has gotten, many people have expressed skepticism about the money they could make with MLM. But some studies have shown that an MLM rep can make an average of $25,000 a year.
Email marketing tips for small business owners
Email marketing was once deemed ineffective by many small business owners. But don’t look now as studies continue showing the change in customer preferences. It seems that many clients online prefer receiving promotional materials via email. Moreover, return on investment on email is impressive—it is estimated that every dollar spent on email marketing can yield $44 in return.
If you own a small business online, here are some email marketing tips that you should keep in mind:
Email marketing tip 1: Make signing up easy
This one is obvious. If you’re to grow your firm’s email list, then you must make it easy for anyone to sign up. Make sure there are subscribe forms found throughout your website. Place them in noticeable areas such as the homepage, in widget areas, in the footer section or within the blog content.
Email marketing tip 2: Incentivize
Aside from making it easy for visitors to sign up, you also need to encourage people to sign up. How? By offering incentives. Something of value like an e-book, coupon, or even a checklist can be given away to people who sign up for your email list.
People will feel more confident revealing their email addresses if they get something in return. Thus giving an incentive is always a proven way to encourage people to sign up.
Email marketing 3: Change the content
Subscribers won’t like it if you send out the same content in every email. This underscores the need to vary your content.
There’s no shortage of content ideas for your email marketing campaigns. For example, you can invite local customers to an event that your business is hosting. This may be a seminar or product demo. You can also send emails to customers about a new product or service that your business is launching.
Digital Marketing Trends Your Business Should Be Catching Up on
Digital marketing has been the rage for the past several years. It’s become an imperative for any business, big or small, to employ digital marketing tactics in order to stay ahead of the competition. Below are some of the trends your business should be doing:
Digital marketing trend 1: Mobilfication
A growing number of online shoppers are buying using their mobile devices. It’s no surprise that mobile will continue to be a priority for many digital marketers in the years to come. It is also the reason why websites should be mobile-ready or viewable on mobile devices.
Here’s one way to put mobilfication in motion: send several messages to your prospective customers a month.
Digital marketing trend 2: Chatbots
Chatbots have been the rage as of late. These are computer programs that can respond to comments or questions of customers. These are used for engaging customers, answering their common issues and closing businesses.
Setting up a bot correctly can do a lot of wonders to businesses. It’s hard for the ordinary individual or customer if they’re talking to a real person or a bot.
Chatbots can be used on messenger apps like Facebook Messenger. These tools enjoy high open rates, sometimes hovering the 80% mark. This means sending a thousand messages via the chatbot tool could yield 800 persons seeing your message; which is far better than sending emails.
Digital marketing trend 3: Videos
The rise in popularity of Facebook Live and Instagram videos highlights how vital video is in reaching out to a wider audience. Video has the ability to tell compelling stories. It can help your business to get its message across and in the process, lead to higher sales. One research suggests that video on a sale page can increase conversions by up to 80%.