Com vs Net – What’s the Difference between Domain Extensions
You must be well aware of the importance of a domain name for a website. But the confusion between the two domain extensions i.e. Com Vs Net has always been a hurdle. Therefore, further, you’ll read about the basic difference between the two and which ones’ the better option for your website.
Man’s fondness of dogs is well-documented. We love them for their unique personalities. Their adorable faces never fail to brighten our days. But do you know that dogs can teach us several lessons on online marketing, too?
More and more online entrepreneurs are hopping into the subscription boxes bandwagon. Subscription box contains assorted niche goods delivered to subscribers on a regular basis.
You’ll need to know two things to really make your blog posts effective: your audience, and your goals.
Know and understand your audience.
Before writing a single word and even a post draft, you have to know how the ideal customer would be and what they want.
Who is buying your product? (Age, gender, location, device..)
Why are they buying it?
What do they care about?
What do they believe to be true?
Think how much easier it will be to create amazing blog posts for a 25-year-old male with a medium-high salary that loves photography and that in his free time he actually take pictures. Targeting people like this instead of people who “just like photography”.
Now that you know exactly what kind of audience you are going to target you need to set a few goals for your blog.
Know your goals
Sure, posting twice a week is a goal, but it’s not anything to get all that excited about.
In order to give yourself the right motivation to push your blog up to another level, try setting goals directly related to your business. An example like driving more customers or increasing sales.
Thanks to the opportunities of online marketing, you can fully track the result of your blog post. How can you track this? Google Analytics makes a great work at this.
Now you may focus on business-oriented goals, like having 2% of all your blog traffic-audience convert to sales. Think now how much more motivated you will be to post those articles.
You also want to make sure that your post are set up for sales conersions. This might mean linking your shop’s prosucts, using banners, or including a non-invasive pop-up that provide a coupon code that encourages sales.
FURTHER READING: Not sure how to measure your blogging goals? Check out this free guide to ecommerce analytics for everything you need to know, starting at square one.
Now it’s time to get going on those four powerhouse posts!
AR or Augmented reality uses your smartphone’s camera to turn the real world around you into a different reality.
AR works by using computer vision and tracking through your camera to anchor a virtual object to a physical point in your environment.
But even with all the potential, you can imagine for technology like this, the quality of the experiences so far meant as a side business instead of an e-commerce business game changer.
Augmented Reality: Not new but widely improved
The term “augmented reality” was firstly used in the first 90s. It was developed by the U.S. Air Force’s Armstrong Labs and involved a complicated setup that looked like this.
Since then, there have been different attempts—like the AR glasses by Google that lets you view augmented reality on the go. But these never became a mass product—the technology and the market just weren’t ready for wearable AR.
But that wasn’t the case for mobile AR. An example can be the Snapchat’s Lenses and the extremely successful location-based game Pokemon Go that allowed the user to familiarize with the concept of interacting with virtual objects through their smartphone’s camera in what was the first solid and tested example of AR completely embraced by customers.
The technology was really far from perfect, though. The AR objects couldn’t adjust in size, this was due to an unperfect evaluation of the algorithm that perceived distance objects nor it would stay in place.
As a result, you could still easily distinguish between real and augmented reality.
But everything changed when Apple announced iOS 11—giving developers the ability and the tools to create more realistic AR experiences—where the virtual (added) objects that “augment” the reality were nearly indistinguishable from the real ones.
And with it, augmented reality’s potential has moved beyond the games and started moving towards architecture and interior design.
Bringing Products to Virtual Life
Perhaps the biggest commercial opportunity within these improved AR experiences is how they give us a better sense of scale and let us closely evaluate products as if they were right in front of us.
The best commercial opportunity within this augmented reality is the chance it gives. We can now choose a better approach to shopping by directly seeing the product we want to buy in our real environment.
“Will this painting fit with the hall?”
“How will this lamp look on my desk?”
Instead of hesitating on this decisions, customers can simulate every purchase scenario possible into their own homes through their smartphone.
This was the result:
“This technology allows users to check and control the peculiarities that make that given product unique,” James says. “We always want to surprise our customers with this amazing service and experience that we provide”
Modelled by Shopify’s AR team, this caliber of experience just wasn’t accessible before ARKit.
The fantastic opportunity to virtually place products everywhere you want leads to a more informed and exiting buying experience.
“Thanks to AR, online shoppers will now have the answers to: How will this piece look in my home? How big is the item in real life? What does the inside look like, or the back? At the end of the day, nothing tops the in-store experience, but AR provides the capabilities for guests to make equally informed buying decisions from afar, at all hours of the day.”
Your Smartphone Camera: An Augmented Mirror
For other businesses, AR is not only for shopping or home decoration but also for your own appaerance.
Now you can use your front camera as a mirror so you can use AR that lets you answer the question, “I wonder what this would look like on me?”
Since facial features are approximately equally placed, fun applications of this technology on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have already become popular through social media.
But besides the puppy feature on snap chat, some businesses are using this technology in a more practical way.
Eyewear and cosmetics immediately come to mind—two types of products that you’d want to try before you buy.
That’s why, earlier this year, Sephora updated its app with a “virtual try-on” feature that lets you sample their make-up against your specific complexion. Eyewear companies like Glasses.com have also experimented with a similar feature in the past to virtually try on different styles of glasses.
A web designer is always in search of nice web design blogs to check out the new tips, tutorials and trends of the designing industry. Time is precious and you just cannot keep on scrolling the internet to find the good blogs to gain some knowledge. However, it is essential to bring the highest quality blogs in the search results for the web designers to spend some time and find out what they need.
Subscribe to a few recognized web design blogs this coming year and acquire more knowledge about the latest web designs. See the list below and push your confusion away by adopting these blogs for inspiration:
Smashing Magazine
In the web design field, the Smashing Magazine blog is one of the largest and most popular web design blogs. To get a detailed scoop of the trending web design elements, graphic design and user experience, this website has it all for its readers. Want to get the innovative and useful information about the web design and development industry? Hop on to the smashing magazine website and get to learn latest happenings of the design world!
Tuts
In the areas like illustration, photography, web design, coding, Photoshop tutorials, nothing can beat the increasing popularity of the Tuts+ blog. If sources are to be believed, this website is one place that every designer would love to explore to get access to a wider range of topics. If you want to take your learning to an advanced level, Tuts+ is a flexible and the best option.
Creative Bloq
To get the latest insights of the web design, 3d design and graphic design world, the Creative bloq blog is the ruler. It is a portal that delivers exceptional blend of creative tips and techniques to master the designing genre. With its recognition across the globe, the designers can get to know the best trends of the design and development industry.
What are you waiting for? Browse these websites and see what’s trending…
To acquire brand new customers, you may run various marketing campaigns adopting tools like Kit, Google and Facebook, or apps like MailChimp.
All these marketing activities are now all in one place: Shopify
You will see immediately what is working and what’s not, and can gain knowledge in order to improve your marketing campaigns.
“Within just a couple of minutes using this feature, I have learned more about my conversions and how everything works—and how they affect different products categories and sales funnels—than in weeks and weeks of looking at previously available analytics.”
Imagine that you created an ad with Kit, or sent emails to your customers using MailChimp. Our new Marketing Reports (accessible in the Analytics section) will show you in detail what’s going on on your store so that you can focus on what’s working and avoid what’s not.
You will now have all the statistics with analytics and reports available on your home page. Click to dig deeper and learn:
Sales, visits, orders, and avg. order value linked to each marketing activity
Your best-selling products and highest-spending customers
The difference between returning customers and new customers: which group needs more attention?
How your clients behave on your Shopify store (avg. visit duration, number of viewed pages, your checkout rate, etc.)
Sales-Attribution Reports: Understand Your Customers’ (Buying) Habits
Usually, your customers will visit your store multiple times before purchasing a product, so analyzing what ultimately brought them in to buy is hard yet crucial. They may run through your store through, then advertised by a Kit retargeting ad. But if you aren’t aware of this information you can’t act on them.
With this functional update, you’ll be able to know what funnels led them to buy and track your customers’ paths to purchase. Here’s what’s new:
Conversion Details
Conversion by First Interaction
Conversion by Last Interaction
Attribution Model Comparison
You will be able to know what leads to future sales and you will be able to track your customers’ path to purchase.
Seeing which sources helped you increase your first-time visitors, and which sources directly led to a sale from repeated visitors, will help you market to each of those targets precisely and maximize every dollar.
“This is fantastic additional information. Being able to see the full journey across multiple visits to the website and conversion is very valuable.”
The best online marketers live by a simple rule: launch, measure, and learn. And they never stop analyzing and pivoting their marketing activities and campaigns for maximum results.
Your new reports are now ready to help you do the same. Start creating more effective, proof-based marketing campaigns just in time for the busiest shopping weekend of the year.
“If you’re a good marketing person, you have to be a little crazy.”
– Jim Metcalf
Hobbies can be really funny, but why don’t monetize them.
Choose one of your favorite hobbies and start making money.
Some hobbies and activities, if taken seriously, can be transformed into solid streams of income. Good skills and abilities can bring from free stuff to extra money to full income business. All this just from something that you might have done anyway. So.. Hobbies and more hobbies!
What are your favorites hobbies? Check them.
1. Writing
Writing and publishing online can give you amazing practical opportunities outside the fact of being just a hobby. It can be a plus in your working environment and/or help you establish as an expert on that topic. You can share your abilities on platforms or “rent” them.
The easiest way in order to turn your hobby into a stream of income is offering a service as an online freelancer. You can work as a ghostwriter or for blog posts and articles. Niche content writers with expertise are highly requested.
But if you don’t want to work as a freelancer or for somebody else you can start your own blog and therefore create a blog based business.
2. Comedy
If you like making people laugh why don’t try the most trending comedy type: memes.
You can use your humor and skills to build a fantastic and engaged audience on the internet.
I bet that you follow some social media accounts that have built a massive audience thanks to memes viral videos or just photos and vids on specific niches of humor that none is tapping into.
Then, once you have built an audience you can feature other pages (adn getting paid for it) and sponsor brands or just print t-shirts with one of your viral memes/phrases.
Here there is a way to transform your amazing hobby of
According to Sarah Owen, senior editor of digital media & marketing at trend forecasting firm WGSN, traveling the world as a lifestyle choice is on the come-up, and so influencers are increasingly sharing content that represents a well-travelled life, rather than just the clothes in their closet in the saturated fashion niche.
In a more indirect way, pursuing a “digital nomad” lifestyle can help you fuel your own wanderlust as you travel the world. Not only can you make connections and bring your products to new markets, an online business can be run from anywhere you can get a Wi-Fi connection.
Greenbelly Meals and Minaal are great examples of businesses where the founders are living that digital nomad life.
4. Photography
If you own a nice camera and know how to use it, you’ve got a few different ways you can make some money on the side.
While you can become a freelance photographer, you’re usually restricted to local events and gigs that you can physically attend.
For a more scalable side hustle, you can sell your shots on stock photography sites or as prints. Or, you can use your photography skills to grow a massive Instagram following and monetize it. You just need to pick a niche to serve or a “lifestyle” you want to capture in your photos.
Fun fact: Professional photography accounts are the 2nd most lucrative on Instagram in terms of how much brands are willing to pay for a sponsored post. And you don’t need hundreds of thousands of followers either.
Check out our guide on how to sell photos online for a more detailed look at how to monetize your photography.
5. DIY Crafts
If you enjoy working with your hands and making candles, bath bombs, jewelry, and other do-it-yourself items, why not share it with the world too?
“Handmade” communicates a certain quality, care, and uniqueness that department store alternatives often don’t. You can test the market for your products by selling them on a smaller scale to friends, family, or on Etsy, and think about scaling into a full-fledged business as you rack up customers.
Here are just a few DIY businesses you can start and resources to show you how it can be done:
Your conversions are telling you that. You are letting go a lot of potential customers.
In 2017 Shopify released “Shopify pay” in order to fix a big issue: slow checkouts. Now your customers can checkout faster and you can increase your sales conversions
Thanks to Shopify Pay your customers can save their private information and payment information in just 1 step and use them on hundreds of thousands of stores made with Shopify.
But you may ask… what are the results? Here there are.
Let’s take Balck Friday as an example. Just on BF more than 400k of customers spent over 30 million (USD) three times faster with Shopify pay.
More than 400k of customers spent over 30 million (USD) three times faster with Shopify pay.
Let’s check more Black Friday success-storeies
Victoria Emerson: +400% the conversion rate.
As every other e-commerce business, Victoria is fighting the painfully high cart abandonment rate.
I bet that you want to know why the add to chart numbers are extremely high and why only one-third of people add to chart and only half of them actually check out? We just need to gently push our customers through the process and reduce our drop-off rate per stage of purchase. This is one of the most powerful and straightforward methods to increase your store conversions.
The solution of this problem may be Shopify Pay which is one way that Victoria is “pushing” customers through the purchasing process more easily and faster, and most importantly more efficiently.
Over BF, Victoria’s conversion rate was 4 times higher than her usual.
Shopify Pay is able to improve the checkout process because clients can go through the whole process much easier.
Peel: +200% conversion rate.
For the entrepreneur Alan Cassinelli and the MadSupplier marketing team, the Shopify pay checkout is an amazing solution for this uncomfortable situation:
“We could immediately see the improvements over a basic checkout we have been using for several years. This is e real step forward a new and smart checkout experience. You don’t have any more to enter over and over again”
In 2017 BF, mobile sales surmounted sales made on computer. Actually, mobile-sales accounted for 71% of all orders with a growth of 2x over year.
With Shopify Pay, checkout is quicker and easier than ever before, especially on mobile.
Before planning a vacation you have to decide what could be considered a vacation.
Perhaps you need to unplug for a couple of weeks, or maybe you only need a free weekend in order to relax and let the stress fade away. A vacation could also mean a break from most tasks like order fulfilling and replying to customers.
The duration and structure of your vacation are entirely yours to decide and based on those two choices, you’ll know how much you need to prepare.
So now that you’ve figured out how much time off you’ll take, all what you need to do is finding a balance between the free time and your business. The best ways to do that is hiring a short term assistance and automating your business as much as you can.
Hire a short-term help
Depending on what you want to be handled by your new hire, you will need to teach and educate your new employee about the required tasks.
Check all the tasks that you need to outsorce. Those tasks might be:
Consider each task you’re going to hand off, and map out what needs to be documented ahead of time. That might include:
Customer service
Social media
Shipping
An extremely important task that you HAVE TO do is training. You definetly want that your new hires are completely confident and skillful. By doing that you’ll avoid all knowledge-based mistakes.
Automate your routine tasks
Automating is the key for more free time that in this case you may use it for leisure, travelling, and vacations.
For sure there will be some tasks that you can’t outsorce and therefore you can’t hire someone for those specific tasks, but at least you will be able to scale down your amount of work and take ome free time.
Update your store info’s
We are all humans and we sometimes need to take some time off. All you need to do is telling your customers (with forewarning adn in a clear way) that the bisiness will take some time off and that it will be fully active in short period of time.
Be sure to include in your message the following points:
How long you’ll be away
How it will affect orders and shipping time
What is the best thing to do as a customer
For example, assume that you will be away for one week, and all orders will be shipped the day after you come back. You’ll probaly comunicate it via:
A banner on your store warning that all the order will be fulfilled the day (date) that you will come back