Category: Best Business Online Practices

Buуing аnd Sеlling раѕѕ thrоugh stages, еvеn thоugh nо оnе аnnоunсеѕ thе transition frоm оnе ѕtаgе tо аnоthеr — Tt juѕt hарреnѕ inѕtinсtivеlу. Transactions саn bе mоrе successful if sellers get more strategic. Whаt аrе these ѕtаgеѕ in thе ѕаlеѕ funnel, аnd how саn sellers imрrоvе оn the рrосеѕѕ to inсrеаѕе sales?

Whаt iѕ the Sales Funnel?

The sales funnеl also саllеd a rеvеnuе or sales рrосеѕѕ, is thе рrосеѕѕ thrоugh whiсh a соmраnу finds customers аnd takes thеm thrоugh the buуing рrосеѕѕ. Thе ѕаlеѕ funnel iѕ dividеd intо vаriоuѕ рhаѕеѕ, dереnding оn the model. One оf the mоѕt common models hаѕ seven phases.

What Iѕ Personalization аlоng the Sales Funnel?

Imagine thаt a potential buyer found your wеbѕitе thrоugh a ѕеаrсh еnginе. Such a person may bе in the еvаluаtiоn рhаѕе already because thеу are aware оf thе solution, аnd thеу аlrеаdу hаd аn intеrеѕt, ѕо thаt is whу they ѕеаrсhеd. Thiѕ iѕ nоt a оnе-tо-оnе sales, ѕо уоu don`t gеt to do thе соnvinсing. Your hоmераgе nееdѕ tо be еngаging еnоugh tо mееt thе rеԛuirеmеntѕ оf уоur viѕitоrѕ. Here`s hоw уоu саn inсоrроrаtе реrѕоnаlizаtiоn in a conventional sales funnеl.

Incorporating Pеrѕоnаlizаtiоn intо the Sаlеѕ Funnel

Awаrеnеѕѕ Phаѕе

It iѕ in thiѕ рhаѕе that potential сuѕtоmеrѕ get infоrmеd of thе solution that a соmраnу оffеrѕ in thе form оf thеir products and ѕеrviсеѕ.

You саn go furthеr tо personalize the awareness рhаѕе by driving рubliсitу through signups аnd fоrm completions. You mау аlѕо reach out to potential сuѕtоmеrѕ thrоugh e-mails аnd ѕосiаl mеdiа. Also, your buѕinеѕѕ ѕhоuld inсulсаtе thе сulturе оf fоllоwing up оn viѕitоrѕ оn уоur site.

Intеrеѕt Phase

Hеrе, сuѕtоmеrѕ ѕhоw intеrеѕt in a рrоduсt by carrying оut product research. Fоr реrѕоnаlizаtiоn`ѕ sake, idеntifу viѕitоrѕ whо rеturn to your website, thоѕе whо hаvе downloaded content, or signed uр fоr e-mails, аnd fоllоw uр tо gеt thеm to buy.

Evаluаtiоn Phаѕе

After the Prоduсt rеѕеаrсh, Potential buуеrѕ gеt сlоѕеr tо making a dесiѕiоn, аѕ thеу еxаminе thе соmраnу`ѕ оffеr. Identifying ѕuсh роtеntiаl buуеrѕ on your website iѕ pretty straightforward — check their Pаgе viеwѕ оn уоur wеbѕitе, and hоw mаnу timеѕ they have еngаgеd call-to-actions. Most imроrtаntlу, check if thеу`vе visited thе рriсing page.

Dесiѕiоn Phаѕе

At thiѕ рhаѕе, thе Pоtеntiаl buуеr hаѕ dесidеd tо make a рurсhаѕе; hеlр thеm mаkе the right dесiѕiоnѕ that suit thеir nееdѕ, as thiѕ would еnhаnсе сuѕtоmеr satisfaction.

Purсhаѕе Phаѕе

After Eѕtаbliѕhing an аgrееmеnt, the Buyer Purсhаѕеѕ the product оr ѕеrviсе. Mаking рurсhаѕе hаѕѕlе-frее on your wеbѕitе iѕ highly еѕѕеntiаl. You dоn`t wаnt tо lоѕе уоur роtеntiаl buyer bесаuѕе thеir preferred payment method iѕ unаvаilаblе оn уоur ѕitе.

Re-evaluation Phаѕе

After thе Purсhаѕе of a Prоduсt or ѕеrviсе, thе сuѕtоmеr dоеѕ a rе-еvаluаtiоn to соnѕidеr if thеу would wаnt tо dо a rерurсhаѕе it. A smart buѕinеѕѕ mоvе is following uр оn your buуеrѕ to know if thе рrоduсt оr ѕеrviсе ѕuitѕ their nееdѕ аnd if thеrе are mоdifiсаtiоnѕ that they wоuld find helpful.

Repurchase Phаѕе

If thе Prоduсt or Sеrviсе ѕuссеѕѕfullу Pаѕѕеѕ thrоugh thе buyer`s rе-еvаluаtiоn рhаѕе, thеу would do a repurchase. Ensure уоu update your сuѕtоmеrѕ оn nеw аnd improved Prоduсtѕ аnd ѕеrviсеѕ, or sales they mау be interested in, so they have rеаѕоnѕ to kеер buуing.

 Cоnсluѕiоn

Tаking уоur Pоtеntiаl buyers thrоugh thе sales funnеl iѕ muсh еаѕiеr when уоu personalize it. It iѕ strategic tо study buyers during thе рhаѕеѕ of the ѕаlеѕ funnel to knоw thеir nееdѕ аnd excellently mееt the needs. Personalization dоеѕ the work!

Video marketing is one of the most successful marketing strategies that have proven to help brands increase sales consistently. Videos are engaging and customers find videos helpful when making purchasing decisions online. Video content offers numerous benefits; this makes it appealing to everyone from B2C companies, to B2B companies, and all the potential customers in between.

Internet users currently spend an average of 15 hours per week watching videos. Video marketing is versatile and it allows brands to showcase their products and tell their stories in numerous ways. Effective Video content can also indirectly increase sales by improving the search engine ranking of brands, thereby increasing organic traffic

However, the world of video marketing is increasingly competitive and not all video content would successful drive in sales.

Here is how to improve sales through Video Marketing:

1. DETERMINE THE OPTIMAL LENGTH FOR ENGAGEMENT

The attention span of an average user is very short. Selecting the most suitable length of a video content is a primary factor that could determine how effective the video would be to drive in sales. Therefore, it is paramount to include only the most important information in your video content to ensure you attract your audience to desire to make more enquires about your brand or product.

2. CREATE PERSONLAIZED VIDEO CONTENT

Creating personalized video content leads to an increase in engagement of audience, which would ultimately lead to more sales. Nowadays, Customers have high expectations and a proven way to drive in more sales is to engage customers with more personalized video content.

3. POST ON YOU TUBE

You Tube is one of the most visited websites, so it is evident that to generate more sales through video content posting on YouTube is a necessity. You Tube is a user friendly website that can be easily setup and it has the capacity to accommodate large numbers of videos. You Tube is also very useful, since you can host your videos with ease when embedding it on your website.

4. OPTIMIZE VIDEO CONTENT

To ensure your video content stands out from the numerous videos available online and make it easier for your target audience to locate. You would need to optimize you video content using relevant keywords in your title and description, tagging your video, and Creating an engaging thumbnail. This would be crucial to increasing viewer engagement and sales.

5. INCLUDE A CALL TO ACTION

One important element that facilitates increase in sales is to include a call to action which tells users what to do next or where to go next after consuming your video content. This can be done verbally and/or on screen or you can take it a step further by including a clickable link that immediately directs your audience to the next step.

CONCLUSION

Incorporating an effective video strategy into your Digital Marketing campaign can help your company cut through the noise and attract customers to your brand, thereby generating more sales. If you need help setting up a video marketing campaign or simply require a team to be in charge of your entire Digital Marketing campaign, then look no further. Contact our Digital marketing experts at Webhoster today.

Artificial intelligence is the new face of productivity, efficiency, and profitability.AI is responsible for numerous cutting-edge applications that have contributed to the exponential growth of the Digital Marketing industry.The revolution of High scale artificial intelligence completely changed the face of Digital Marketing and has helped businesses achieve epic breakthroughs.

Artificial intelligence is simply the science that involves building intelligent machines capable of thinking and responding like humans. This new era driven by artificial intelligence enables Digital Marketers tounleash their true strategic and creative potentials to the fullest.

Let’s take a look at how high scale artificial intelligence tools are improving Digital marketing success

 1. Improves Personalization

Customers are more likely to patronize companies with a personalized customer experience that tailor messages to their location, demographics, or interests. Machine learning algorithm analyses customer data and enables marketers offer hyper-personalized customer experience and content. This improvement in Personalization ensures that customers get regular push notifications based on their current interaction with your business.

 2. Scaling Up Content Marketing

High scale AI-powered content strategy tools effectively make content production much faster and more efficient, this enables you to scale up your content marketing to get desired result. These high scale tools can be used to automate your content curation process by efficiently finding and selecting the right content for target audience. It can also be used to swiftly re-organize existing content, identify best performing content, efficiently plan future content and also distribute the content on numerous channels, with content scheduled for optimal visibility.

3. Predicting Customer Behavior

AI software is capable of accurately predicting future behavior based on past behavior and pattern. This is achieved by utilizing data and statistical models. Predictive аnаlуtiсѕ allows marketers tо еxtrасt infоrmаtiоn frоm dаtа and uses it tо predict Purсhаѕе trеndѕ and uѕеr behavior раttеrnѕ. AI аlѕо еffiсiеntlу dеlivеrѕ marketing mеѕѕаgеѕ аt the best роѕѕiblе time fоr a sale. Thiѕ iѕ сruсiаl tо thе ѕuссеѕѕ of any digitаl mаrkеting campaign.

4. Saves Time And Money

High scale AI marketing software increases your productivity taking over the repetitive marketing tasks. This allows marketers to focus on more important aspects of their business such as strategic marketing planning or creating new products and services. At the click of a single button high scale AI-powered automation software can efficiently help you determine where and how to publish and distribute your content, thereby saving time and resources.

5. Reduced Data Errors

Machine algorithms can effortlessly process and analyze a large quantity of data to spot patterns and make accurate predictions without making any errors.  AI results are very accurate because the Machine algorithm efficiently calculates results based on prediction analysis and statistics rather than intuition. High scale AI tools can be effectively utilized in parsing and merging several databases, this helps to combine intelligence from numerous sources without errors of duplication.

Conclusion

High scale artificial intelligence tools help to streamline an entire Digital Marketing strategy, this helps to boost productivity, increase revenue and also reduce time and resources spent. If you need help automating your digital marketing processes or simply require a team to be in charge of your entire marketing campaign, then look no further. Contact our Digital marketing experts at Web hoster today to automate your Digital Marketing campaigns.

There’s lots of advice out there about how businesses need professional  websites. But what exactly does “professional” mean in this context? Primarily, it means that your site is trustworthy enough for people to make a purchase from. There are certain signals, some overt and some covert that show professionalism in a website and we’ll reveal 10 of them in this article.

1. Page speedA site that loads too slowly will cause people to leave. Maile Ohye from Google says, “2 seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half second.”
2. Easy navigationIf your customers cannot find their way through your site they will feel frustration. Avoid complicated dropdowns and nested menus. Make all navigation bars and menu options clear enough that a new visitor could find them and find their way around.
3. Site completenessCheck your site regularly for broken links. Even if your core site structure is fine, having a broken link in a piece of content marketing going out will make it seem like you’re not paying attention.
4. Unified look-and-feelAs in the physical world, branding is key to a unified and professional look. Use the same color schemes and site design throughout your website. If possible, use the same look-and-feel in your email communications and even in your mailings.
5. A complete shopping cart systemDo not have a broken or incomplete shopping cart system. Few things anger a customer more than a failed sale due to technology. It’s even worse if their payment goes through and they don’t get what you offer. Go beyond testing it. Try to break it before it goes live.
6. Contact methodsSometimes things do go wrong or there’s a question that’s not answered on your site. There must be a way for people get in contact with you in these cases. That information must be easy to find and there has to be someone to respond on the other end. Whether you use a phone number, a web contact form, social media, or some other method, there needs to be one.
7. Reassurance messages (Thank you, verification emails)This is part of having a complete shopping cart, but it’s important enough to break out on its own. Reassurance messages are our term for any web page or email that tells a customer that something happened successfully. A simple example is the thank you page at the end of a purchase. If a purchase button dumped you back to the main page and there was no receipt email, you might feel that your information was just stolen. A thank you page does more than just show politeness.
8. Clear CTAsA clear CTA is more than just making a big button. A complete CTA has to promise something, call the reader to act on that promise by performing an action, and then delivering on that promise. If any of these parts are unclear or misleading, trust will be lost and professionalism shattered.
9. Persuasive copyEven the best-designed site needs to be coupled with persuasive copy to convince the reader to buy. There’s little more that needs to be said on this. Good copy turns a good offer into a great one. Bad copy will kill a great offer.
10. Delivery on your promiseFinally, whatever you promise to give to the customer must be delivered in the way you say it will. This is the ultimate professional guarantee. If you break this one, you’re no longer in customer service mode. You’re in customer recovery mode.

Developing a good website starts before you write the first line of code, or even before you get the domain. Careful planning at the start will save you from expensive problems or a poor performing website. There are eight things that all websites need at the start, and here they are.

A clear domain

A domain is the URL of your website, specifically the part before the last dot. In www.google.com, the domain is google. Domain names need to be easy to spell, easy to remember, and easy to say. Shorter is usually better, but it’s hard to find a short name these days. The average length is 12-14 characters and uses two words.

Good hosting

A commercial website must have stable hosting. If your website goes down, you lose business and reputation. It must also be able to handle the traffic you expect to get. Setting up your own server is usually a bad idea unless you really know what you’re doing. Go with a trusted hosting service and pay the monthly fee.

Security

As part of your hosting, you should purchase security (SSL or TLS) as part of your package. Not only will this show customers that they can give you financial information safely, it will also give you a boost in search engine rankings. Google is pushing hard to make the entire web use secure internet protocols.

A good CMS

The days of coding pages by hand from scratch for a business are long gone. Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla now run most e-commerce sites. Using a CMS will make it far easier to update your website, perform SEO tasks, and make your site look beautiful and functional.

Clean navigation and design

The user interface of a website is noticed even before the information is read. We use things like headers and navigation bars to orient our eyes before we start reading. If your site is frustrating to navigate or makes it hard to access wanted information then you will lose visitors.

Core info is easy to reach

There are certain things that a visitor wants to find with zero problems. It’s the same information you’d put into a phone book ad. People want to know who you are, what you do, and how to contact you. All of this information must be easy to find. If these basics are missing, you’ll lose customers.

Analytics

If you are running a business website, you will need analytics to track how well your site is doing over time. If you do any sort of marketing, analytics will tell you how well it performs. Get your site hooked up to the analytics package of your choice first thing. Google Analytics is the most common and it’s free with a Google account.

An editorial calendar

Websites are not billboards. They need to receive updates every so often to remain fresh in the minds of search engines and visitors. Setting up an editorial calendar for SEO audits, content updates, CMS upgrades, and other website maintenance tasks will help keep your site in tip-top shape.

These eight things are the foundation of a quality website. If you get these in place, your website will be a support for your business instead of a hindrance.

If you’re going to have a business these days, you need a website if you want to get the word out. Websites are the key advertising tool for small businesses. Everyone turns to their smartphones to find out what is in the local area,and not to the phone book (remember phone books?) TV or radio ads are too expensive and too hit-and-miss. A website is always up and advertising.

So why would you ever skimp on creating your website?

Yes, creating a website isn’t all that hard for a basic one. I’ve heard a lot of stories from my clients that their first websites were something whipped up by a family member or a friend on the cheap (or free) just to get their name out there.

But putting up a site this way can actually make you lose money in the long run. Why?

Technical problems

While many people know how to make a website, they may not know things like:

• How to secure your website against hackers.
• How to put SSL on your site so you can take online payments without fear.
• Modern UX principles that attract customers, not repel them.
• How to design a site with SEO in mind.
• How to set up your own email service.
• How to teach you, the business owner, how to maintain the site once it is turned over to you.
• How to start advertising your site on local search sites (e.g. Google My Business) which gets your name out there rapidly.
• How to integrate your site with social media services, should you choose to use them.

And much more. See, there’s much more to setting up a site than just making it look good. And if these features aren’t there, that means leads might hop from your site to someone else’s. Or worse, not find you at all. That means lost sales. No business wants that!
Costs

For the amount of money it costs to make a quality site, you can make it back pretty quickly in sales since they should increase significantly within a few weeks of an upgrade. Plus, if you plan on doing advertising on social media or running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign your website is still the foundation that everything runs back to. You can craft the perfect ads and posts, but if your site doesn’t look good, isn’t fast, isn’t secure, people will be turned off and leave.

Plus, unlike drag-and-drop template sites, hiring a professional designer gives you total control over the site. You don’t have to worry about it going down like if you use a template site. And, since the hosting is in your name, it’s a lot cheaper in the long run to have a pro designer build the site once and then show you how to maintain it.

Put simply, if you want a great looking site that is secure and your customers will love, you need to pay a professional to build it. You get what you pay for. Each customer turned off by a bad site is a lost sale, perhaps permanently. Don’t let it happen.

All businesses need a website to sell goods and services or to advertise. But just how much does it cost? The answers vary, and for good reason. There are a lot of factors that can increase the cost of your website. Let’s take a look at the costs of a running one.

Unavoidable Costs

There are three costs that any business with a website cannot avoid easily. The first is the cost of your internet access. The second is the yearly cost of your domain. The third is the cost of your hosting.

Most people know that you have to pay for internet access, so we’ll set that aside. However, the other two costs might be unfamiliar if you’ve never set up a website.

Domain

A domain is your address on the web. For instance, in the URL www.amazon.com, amazon.com is the domain. A yearly fee has to be paid to a domain registrar to reserve the rights to use that name. This cost can be as low as $5 per year to hundreds depending on the domain registrar and the TLD you desire.

The TLD is the end part of the domain, the .com. There are quite a number of TLDs these days. Registrars have been charging premium prices to get access to the latest ones, but a simple .com address is what most businesses have (.com means commercial.) Be prepared to shell out more if you want something different.

Hosting

The third cost, hosting, is the costs associated with running the web server. This can be a third-party hosting company like Hostgator, a site-builder service that offers hosting, or something you run on your own servers if you have a static IP deal with your ISP.

The costs for third-party hosting depend on how much traffic you get per month, but you get near-full control of what you can do with your site. Using a site-builder service often costs more and you have limitations on how you can build your site through their tools and you often can’t use your own domain without paying a lot more. Hosting it yourself will require a dedicated computer and enough network connectivity to handle the traffic.

It’s much easier to let a third-party handle the hosting. That way you don’t have to worry about hardware costs and you don’t have to worry about another company’s policies limiting how you can create your site.

As a rough estimate, a small business might pay $15/month for third-party hosting, another $10/year for the domain, and $80/month for business-class internet access. Thus, the cost of running a website will run about $1150/year for a small business.

Website Costs

The domain cost just covers the ability to have a website appear on a particular domain. But there are also the costs hosting the site on a webserver. This cost also includes the costs of building and maintaining a site.

Here the triangle of effort applies. Building a site takes time, money, and skill. By increasing the amount of one point, you need less of the other two.

Most small business owners don’t know how to set up their own secure, functional, and beautiful e-commerce website. Fewer still want to take the time necessary to do it right. The usual route for a small business is to hire a developer who can set it all up for you. The cost for this depends greatly on the developer and the complexity of your site, so it’s hard to give an estimate, but a few hundred dollars for setup is not unreasonable for a small-business website.