Posted by Winning Web Design on July 16, 2010 | No Comments
According to the latest MasterCard SpendingPulse Report, The firm tracked performance for several US retail industries and discovered that “most retail sectors continued to demonstrate solid year-over-year gains” in March. Even better news: the e-commerce channel was up 18.4% over 2009, leading to the channel’s 8th consecutive month of double-digit growth. This demonstrates “that the channel continues to grow at a faster rate than traditional brick and mortar stores,” according to the report.
What more evidence do you need to open your selling channel online? The economy is recovering and the Web is reaping the rewards. Set an appointment with our web design and search engine marketing specialist, and see how you can interact with a solution that will help to promote your local small business on the Internet.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 16, 2010 | No Comments
This week, we’ve compiled a few ideas from PracticalEcommerce.com’s monthly list of Great E-Commerce Ideas. Every month, industry insiders provide the site with a few clever ideas for online retailers to get the most out of their Web storefronts.
1. Run short-term incentives. Kate Holroyd suggests, “To drive short-term sales volumes, try these marketing techniques: Offer 24-hour deep discounts on selected products for one day only. Or, offer free shipping over a limited time period, such as ‘Place an order this weekend and get free shipping.’ Repeat at intervals to drive traffic to your small business site.” This is a great tip for small business website owners who aren’t sure how to update their site regularly for optimization purposes.
2. Use text in “chunks.” Marketing expert Mason Wiley tells PracticalEcommerce.com, “Web pages that present a wall of solid text and information are intimidating to shoppers.” His solution? “Separate text into short, discrete paragraphs separated by white space, and use bullets when you can.” As you know, adding and modifying text is easy thanks to the drag-and-drop functionality of our small business website solution. Our small business website owners can experiment with text layouts to determine the most visually-appealing format.
3. Check your website stats. David Farache writes, “By tracking patterns during visitors’ shopping experiences, you can determine which pages should be most advertised, and which pages need adjustments.” Winning Interactive wed design solution makes it easy to track and measure local small business online marketing efforts. The comprehensive statistics section reveals everything they need to know about your business website traffic.
4. Add video. Videos are a great way to provide product or service demonstrations, showcase testimonials recorded by customers, provide virtual tours, and so much more. And, as Bobbi Leach points out, web videos are becoming incredibly popular among consumers. “This gives video the potential to make your ecommerce campaigns incredibly successful,” he writes. This tip pairs well with our next topic…
5. Add a human element. Mason Wiley tells readers to “consider adding a message from the CEO, a photo of your staff or offices, and mission statement. It’s proven to increase conversions.” There are countless features included in Winning Interactive – Boston Web Design solution that allow business owners to personalize their site and interact with their potential customers. It’s all just a matter of a little imagination.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 16, 2010 | No Comments
According to the latest ATG Cross-Channel consumer spending habit survey, only 8% of respondents said they never use a computer to browse/research products or services, which means 92% consumers used Internet to find products or services. This survey was collected from a pool of 1,054 respondents, age 18 and older, living in the continental United States. The research results also discover that 28% consumers said they browse and research on a daily basis, or the 33% who responded that they research online weekly. Now you see even if your prospects don’t plan on selling products online, a web presence is critical to you success. Your potential customers can use your business website to learn more about your products or services 24/7.
The Web is the best way for businesses to reach consumers, regardless of their intent to purchase online. Talk to our web specialist today to discuss how to establish a successful and effective website to market your small business and convert online browers to paying customers.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 16, 2010 | No Comments
While the economy is showing tremendous improvement, consumers may object that economy is still sluggish. If you are running a local small business, you may feel discouraged. Oracle’s comprehensive e-book “Selling through a slump” is packed with industry-specific advice about successfully selling during difficult economic times. Expert Dave Stein offered several valuable tips about selling. Here’s a few of his suggestions:
-”Don’t sell technology, sell business improvement.” It’s not enough to merely mention a particular feature to your potential. You’ve got to describe the actual benefit that the feature provides. As Stein writes, “Your customers’ budget holders rarely care about the features of your technology. Right now they want to know one thing: what you can do to get them through this economic situation. Tell them.”
-”Understand that risk is a big concern to your customers.” Some of your potential customers are going to be understandably apprehensive about earning a return on investment with your products or services. That’s why you need to engage in a detailed conversation about their concerns. When you uncover and note those Hot Buttons, you is able to tailor the presentation accordingly and address their worries.
-”Execute better than your competition.” You need to know how your solution is better than any other competitions out there. Stein advises readers to “Plan and precisely execute every phone call, demo, presentation and reference visit so you are measurably better than your competition.” This is precisely why we offer a completely customized personal website demonstration. First-hand interaction provides the opportunity for our web design clients to understand why it’s the most comprehensive and user-friendly small business website solution on the market.
-”Tune up your competitive selling skills.” But it’s important for you to build substantial value in your solution so that your potential customers will want to spend time to learn about it.
-”If you have a truly unique product, demo early.” Stein’s right on the mark with this one. He writes that “grabbing the prospect’s mind-share early can pay off.”
Keep these tips in mind whenever you feel like you’re in a slump. They’ll boost your confidence and help you establish value in your business solution.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 16, 2010 | No Comments
One universally essential attribute for a business website – regardless of its industry – is high-quality, engaging content. Search engines love fresh content. Your existing and potential customers prefer updated business websites, too. At Winning Interactive – Boston Web Design, our clients can easily control and modify content whenever and wherever they want. Paying (and waiting for) a webmaster to accomplish the same task has been the history.
Rich Brooks at Flyte New Media stresses that a business’ web content needs to be important and relevant to its target audience. “Your content must address your customers’ pain points,” he writes. If you aren’t sure what kind of material is appropriate or effective for their site, just read how Brooks puts it, “This might go without saying, but your content will always be most effective when it syncs with your business goals.”
Not only will fresh, quality content keep site visitors engaged; it will draw the attention of search engine crawlers “The first thing you need to know about small business websites is that people and search engines need to see quality content,” explains blogger Meredith Earhart, cautioning, “If your site is stale, the search engines won’t like it much.”
If your small business website hasn’t been updated in months (or even years) because you haven’t had time, aren’t tech-savvy, or you’re just waiting for a webmaster to handle it, it’s time for you to look into a solution that makes adding and editing content absolutely effortless. You need Content Management System (CMS) which is included in our affordable small business web design package.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 15, 2010 | 3 Comments
BizReport’s Kristina Knight analyzed a new 8Coupons.com study and found that 85% of its customers “spend their dollars within a five mile radius of home.” This shows online marketing on a local level. Consumers are looking for businesses right in their own neighborhood, and using the Web to find them. Knight specifically mentions activities such as:
* Dining out
* Going to spas
* Visiting local bars
* Dropping off dry cleaning
Are you in any of these industries? A good small business web solution can help to draw local customers. From site promotion tools to e-newsletter campaigns, Winning Interactive web design solution is fully-included with all the features necessary to cultivate a base of local, loyal customers.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 15, 2010 | 4 Comments
It’s certainly possible to find great traffic for your small business website from social bookmarking websites. It’s perhaps not something that is appropriate for everyone’s business, though, so hold-off doing it until you educate yourself a little more, first. Bookmarking is time-consuming, unless you pay someone else to do it, so you’ll have to know if you have the time to invest in it. A local small business promotion marketing and business plan should be your first order of priority, so if you’re lacking either one of those then that’s your first action. When you have a plan, then you can decide where to put social bookmarking, if indeed you decide to do it at all. Perhaps you would like to read about a few good strategies for putting the power of social bookmarking in your business.
Your articles will fare much better if the first paragraph is a killer and gets and keeps attention.
That’s where your readers get a positive impression about you and decide to read further. Everything before that must be right, too, but after capturing the readers attention, the first paragraph is where decisions are made. Keep in mind that it has to be unique and should invoke the user’s interest.
People find content on bookmarking sites by reading their headlines, so if you want your bookmark to be seen and spread, then you should focus on creating catchy headlines. So of course it doesn’t really matter how great everything else is if your headline is bad. Same goes for your site, it can be fabulous but people just won’t get there because the headline makes them not bother to read more. You also do not want to put in all that time to network at these sites, and only have it all in vain because your headlines are sabotaging you. So, it is well worth your time to take your time and work on creating good headlines.
You’ll also need to pay attention to when you submit your content. There’s about a 24 hr window in which to make your content stick to the first page of these sites.
So you’ll want to submit when your market is online and there, it only makes sense. If your timing is off, then they could arrive after your bookmark has been covered by all the newer ones submitted after yours. So really, the best approach is to run tests by bookmarking to see when is the best time to submit.
Social bookmarking sites have been used for making people aware of your small business websites and getting targeted traffic. The most valuable component of your campaign is your article/site content. The more you focus on making it better, the higher response you will receive. There will be other factors that determine your success, but what kind of articles you are bookmarking and how well they serve your target audience is the most vital of them all. It will take some time to get everything down, but if you do then you can see steady and high quality traffic from these websites.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
President and CEO of Dotster Inc. Clint Page has a list of essential “musts” for every business to integrate into its website. Take a look at these strategies and discuss with your web designers how to accomplish each one.
Send personalized e-mail. “Every business today needs e-mail,” Page tells readers. With the comprehensive e-mail campaign tools available in Winning Interactive Web solution, it’s easy for businesses to quickly send targeted e-mails to their customers. Page says this is a more credible method than sending e-mails from a free e-mail service site. He writes, “…you can easily increase your perceived professionalism by using a custom e-mail address at your own domain” .
“Design your site.” You’ve undoubtedly come across small business Web sites that were assembled without attention to layout or navigation. As a Business owner, you are busy and don’t have time to create an entire layout from scratch, and you may not have time to learn complicated programming languages. Luckily, our web design solution allows small businesses to choose from myriad layouts and fully customize your web site’s look and feel. And we even have a team of experienced Web designers on hand for clients who would prefer to have your site built for you. Either way, you will be delighted to see how effortless it is to establish a Web site that’s visually appealing and easy to navigate.
“Optimize your site for search engines.” This is a formidable task for any business that’s building an online presence from the ground up, but it’s a vital part of the process. Page explains, “Search engine optimization ensures that search engines correctly index your website, so that potential customers searching for your type of services can find you easily…By optimizing your website for search engines, your site can appear higher in the organic listings, which will ultimately mean more traffic to your site.” Our small business website design solution includes valuable site promotion tools so that you can control your own optimization. And because it’s so easy to update and add content regularly, you will optimize your website even faster than you thought possible.
“Look for a Web hosting company that is focused on customer service.” According to Grant, “The company you choose should be able to help you build your web presence in the beginning and provide the technical support you need to maintain it.” That’s a perfect way to describe our Tech Support team. The specialized team that will guide you through every step of the site building and maintenance process.
The latest results from The E-Tailing Group’s annual merchant survey found that 59% of respondents plan to invest more in e-commerce in 2010 than they did last year. According to the research firm, “Merchants must now step up to the plate given the anticipated growth of e-commerce, coupled with retail economic forecasts. Keeping ROI top-of-mind, merchandising and marketing that embraces existing customers while simultaneously wooing prospects will be a pre-requisite for success.” More stats from their survey are listed below:
92% said they anticipate 2010 Internet revenue to increase over last year’s online revenue.
52% will invest in personalization/customization. Think about features like wishlist capabilities available through your solution.
58% plan on social networking strategies. The social media widgets in our web design solution allow you to integrate your business website with your presence on social networks.
79% will be planning more targeted e-mail.
48% will adopt video strategies. Businesses can easily embed videos in their site to capitalize on this rapidly-emerging trend.
All the market research stats agree with the website marketing expert Clint Page’s essential list for small business websites. Check your current business website again the list above and work out a plan to improve its marketing effective today.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 14, 2010 | No Comments
Google Adwords is one of the best ways to market your small business, no matter you sell products or provide services and you get traffic that’s actually looking for what you’re offering. Google Adwords is on top because it uses direct marketing methods that have always worked. Yes, you can surely go with the free route and choose search engine optimization for getting organic traffic and visitors, but at the same time you’ll have to wait for months to actually see results. Google isn’t always quick to give you good search engine rankings, so Adwords would be the better option for getting the kind of traffic you’ve always wanted. It’s not a free service and it may take a little bit of money to get going, but that money can usually be regained. If you want to become good at Adwords, here are a few techniques to help you get going.
You will want to learn the first trick which is to decide on the most you want to spend on your CPC (Cost Per Click), which is your cost per click for each keyword. This is a critical step that you should take, since your success more or less depends on how far you control your investment. You can use the Google Keyword tool to see the average cost per click for your chosen keywords. You would then want to bid over that if you want to place as high as possible.
You can then bid low if placement isn’t really an issue with you. You can always go back and adjust your bids, even after your campaign is already underway. Just make sure you don’t do what Google tells you to do because they will usually steer you wrong. Just be perseverant and headstrong and you’ll be fine.
A simple yet effective tip is to include negative keywords in your campaign so that you can avoid any un-needed clicks for people who are just surfing the web and have absolutely no intention of buying from you. If you want to cut costs down, get rid of words like no-cost so that your advertisement isn’t shown for those words and the click through rate is given. That and the fact that you’re seeking traffic that converts, so if you’re not using words that are negative, you will not be able to avoid erroneous clicks. However, if what you have is free, then go for it.
Using Google Adwords to advertise online isn’t something that’s no cost. Therefore, before you put money into it, make sure you know what you’re getting back. Your focus should always be on finding out how many conversions your site had.
It’s pretty standard to have a 1% conversion rate, which means one click, lead or action for every hundred people that click on your advertisement. For instance, let’s say your CPC is 50 cents; getting 100 clicks should come down to $50. You’ll want to always concentrate on increase those that convert because you’ll want to make your money back from your investment.
Adwords can be seen as a game that requires you to remain dedicated and focused for you to be successful. There are quite a few ways you can become successful with this ad platform, but you must use the tricks you’ve just been given and keep learning extra ones if you hope to get the most out of your campaigns. Just keep your budget in control, use long tail keywords that don’t cost much and create ads that demand a response. Just keep in mind that to get a lot of success from Adwords, you must put in lots of time and work. There are people who have perfected this platform and are reaping the rewards in terms of a bigger business.
Last, but not least, you need a good website to convert PPC traffic to paying customers. Wikipedia defines the famous term “conversion rate” as:
In internet marketing, conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators.
After you optimize your PPC campaign, your targeted online traffic will click your PPC ads in Google and land on your website. What happens next? With no sales person standing besides these online visitors, what online visitors do is purely up to how good your website is opimized for high conversion rate. IF these visitors hit the “BACK” button and leave your website immediately after clicking on your ads (Google deducts your money instantly based on the price you bit for those clicks), all your money is wasted.
Contact Winning Interactive today to find out how we can improve your small business website’s coversion rate and make each penny you spend in PPC campaign work for you.
Posted by Winning Web Design on July 13, 2010 | No Comments
You can increase your small business website success rate by setting proper goals. If you’re not sure whether your goals will be effective for your business web site, ask yourself these four questions.
1. “Are my goals measurable?” Have you established a way to evaluate your success? If you don’t determine some method of measuring your achievements, you won’t know which techniques are working for you and which ones need improvement. This leaves you guessing, according to business blogger Dr. Greg Chapman, and guesswork isn’t an effective method of operating your business” And while you are guessing, your competitors are improving through measuring their activities, and leaving you behind,” Chapman writes.
2. “Are my goals specific?” You should have a clear vision for what you hope to accomplish with your business web site. Dr. Chapman says that “Explicit objectives are the drivers of achievement.” Commit to a precise objective – whether it’s setting a certain number of appointments every week or earning a particular amount every month. That way, you’ll be able to build a plan around that specific target. As Chapman puts it, “Setting out clear goals for your business allows you to develop strategies to achieve your goals and to create plans which will ultimately drive your business to success.”
3. “Am I driven to succeed?” As an entrepreneur, you know that motivation is the key to prosperity. Check in with your personal ambition and evaluate how passionate you truly are about your business web site. “You are the closest person to your business, and if you are not passionate about it, why would your employees or customers be?” Chapman asks.
4. “Do I actively promote my web site?” Networking, asking for referrals, distributing promotional material with your web site url address… there are myriad ways that you can spread the word about your business web site. But you have to be proactive about it. “Business is generated through taking action,” according to Chapman. That says it all!
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