Wait! Do You Have A Web Strategy For Your Website?

Developing or creating a new website for your business without a website strategy is like someone who is trying to run a business without a business plan. Having a web site strategy and working to evaluate the results of your strategy will make sure you are meeting or achieving your business objectives/ goals and help insure your web site's success. 

 

A quick search with Google, Yahoo! or any of the search engines will reveal millions of web sites, the majority of which were created with a focus on publishing content about a business or product, with little thought of how practical the web site really is or what the site is supposed to do.

 
Today I would like to concentrate on two elements should be taken into consideration when we build website strategy Wants vs. Needs It's important to distinguish between wants and needs and focus on functionality necessary to reach specific business goals with your web site. 

From my perspective I would say we should have a clear vision when we plan to create a website and identifing customer or client needs.

Developing a marketing strategy is not just limited to your web site goals, but your overall marketing plan and what advertising, marketing and customer service goals are best suited for your web site. 

More often than not, a web site is treated as an afterthought without a specific purpose beyond offering basic company information and an e- mail form. We view a web site as an interactive extension of a company, with few limitations. 
Setting Web Site Goals.

The first step is to list all the specific tasks you want your website to accomplish. Besides offering a potential customer information about your company services, what should your web site "do?" 

Should your website help you to accomplish E-commerce? Serve students for online learning? Distribute information to your customers? Offer customer service? Should your web site be used as a recruitment tool? Or for advertising and promotion?  

Creating a list of priorities  

The most important thing to consider when building a website, is the end user and what he/she wants. To this end, it's important to create user personas, a set of imaginary people that describe the end user or users of the site. Personas allow us to create user-centric designs and ensure that we focus on and empathize with the people we are endeavoring to reach. In practical terms, a user persona is quite similar to a character sheet in a role-playing game.

As you list what you want your site to do, prioritize the list into three categories: 

1) Primary, "must do" goals, how we help persona achieve goals
2) Secondary, "it would be nice if . . ." and what we should do to describe our solution to persona
3) Next phase, "if we have to postpone this, it wouldn't hurt us."  When grouping your web site goals, keep in mind the one overwhelming reason for having a web site in the first place and compare it to each of the goals as you prioritize them.  

After establishing clearly what a client's stated web site goals should be, we compare these goals with a client's expectations regarding their web site, current Internet technology and their marketing and advertising plan.  Separating wants and needs. 

Ordering Web Site Priorities  

Having your priorities outlined and your goals detailed will help you to determine what you really need. Go through your priority list and measure it against your web site goals. If a web site feature you want will help you to accomplish a specific task then include it as long as it utilizes Internet technology or browser technology that is widely supported by today's browsers.  

If you have items on your list that don't match your web site goals well, it's probably a good idea to hold off implementing them. Finally, having a priority list will make it easier to decide what to include or exclude in your web site when working within a limited web site budget.  

10 Tips for a Great Web Site 

1) Making great first impressions is important and your web site may be the first exposure to your company a potential customer experiences. Strike a balance between content and design. 

2) Avoid focusing exclusively on graphic design rather than making the web site useful. Give your web site visitors a reason to visit your site often.  

3) Create simple navigation. Design your site so your users can go from one page to any other page. Avoid navigation schemes that rely on the user having to search for a secondary navigation menu or having to use their browser's "back" button in order to navigate. 

4) Work on creating a web design that will respond to various screen sizes. This means the layout will change based on the visitor's screen size, and on smaller screens 

5) Distribute your web site information on several pages so the user does not have to scroll often. By distributing your photographs and graphics over several pages, your pages will load faster.

 
6) Know who is coming to your site and how your site is being used on a monthly or quarterly basis. This information will be invaluable for updating or refocusing your site to better serve your target market or customers. 

7) Update your site frequently and create a reason for your web site users to keep coming back. Repeat visits give you an opportunity to repeat your marketing message.  

8) Capture information with your web site. Use forms, offers and promotions to get your web site users to tell you who they are and what they are interested in. Not only will this help you to design a more useful web site, collecting e-mail addresses can allow you to notify customers and potential customers about new products or services. 

9) Review your web site goals quarterly. As the Internet evolves and as new technology becomes mainstream, it is good to review the purpose of your site and the usefulness of new tools and implement these new tools when they make sense.  

10) Avoid "do-it-yourself web site design." Yes, there are programs that let you build your own web site. If you don't have experience in graphic design or producing professional web sites, hire a web development company with proven abilities to help you. 

Thank You!

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6 Keys to Building a Successful User Experience

I have talked about user’s experience in one of my articles and I explained what the benefit of adopting UX when start creating the website for your business! In this article I would like to take about two things that can build or break the user’s experience and has negatively or positively impact to your business: copy and design. They are both essential and equally responsible for guiding the user through the steps of how to use your product. Great writing can enhance the user experience, just as subpar instructions can hamper your otherwise wonderful UI.

Here are 6 keys that leads to a great user experience:

1. Present it in simplicity

No matter what the technology that your product has or how sophisticated its features, always think of how your user think and try break things down to the lowest common denominator. Use simple language so that the average person (without technical training) can understand. Don’t use advance technical language to present your product and then trying to explain what it means–the more technical and specific you get, the less likely the reader will stick with you. Communicate the absolute minimum information your reader needs to understand the major components of the product and how to use it.

2. Nab your instructions

If your website offers online services or it is an application, dont go with repetitive instructions as it is come up with counterproductive. Don't repeat information on the tenth step in case they didn't read it in the first. Instructions are like training wheels on a bike: the goal is not to need them after some time. The design of the product should allow it to become self-explanatory after some initial instruction. 

3. Become one with the product

UX writing differs from content writing. Content writing is about creating a voice that readers can relate to. UX writing is about creating the best possible way for someone to understand how to use and enjoy a product or the services in your website. UX writing should reflect the product and its features, not the writer’s vision of the product or their opinion. For example, imagine teaching someone to left-click on the tools tab. You may say, “Easily left-click on the tools tab for an awesome experience.” Or you could simplify and say, “Left-click on the tools tab.” The less convoluted the instructions, the easier the action seems.

4. Start your FAQs as a user

Predict the questions users might ask and address them in your descriptions. Product testing, user comments and experiences will all help you identify any potentially confusing stages in using your services on your website. Integrate these questions into your instructions. For example, if people are used to study in traditional classroom, but your business service is to offer online learning community, point that out as one of its features before you have to respond to 50 messages asking how they can reach you and come by the institution or attend the classes. You want to be sure to give the user a heads up about the way your product may be different from what they’re used to. Anticipate questions and seed within your instructions to avoid future headaches.

5. Make sure that your content is being read

We can spend a lot of time to produce great content, no matter how efficient your workflow is. As the old saying goes, time equals money, and it only makes sense to get as much out of your content as you can. Good and useful content will yield vastly different results from your users. As we know it is hardly to anyone to start at the top of the page and read every single word until get to the bottom. We’re going to scan to find the essential information, so make your page scan-friendly. Provide users a visual that is easy on the eyes, no small print or hard to read fonts. Make sure the color of the text is compatible with the color of the background so that it doesn't strain the eye.

6. Use “You” secret’s word

Finally, using “you” instead of “we” is an easy technique to create intimacy between you and the user. Simply put, saying “you” makes the reader feel you’re talking to them. Using “we” on the other hand, makes them feel like they’re listening to you talk about yourself. Ex: “You’ll be able to organize your notes and ideas more efficiently with Evernote.” vs. “We at Evernote have created a revolutionary way to organize notes and ideas.” The first one tells the user about how they can benefit from your product. The second one tells them how clever you and your team are. Which one will get them to sign up? Exactly.

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How You Know It’s Time To Think Different!

On Sept 27th, 2015 I have attended a conference in Canada hosted by SOHO, and the conference topic was "how to improve your business in Canada". People were talking about hiring skilled candidates, promote your services and  apply a tool such as benchamrking and market research to measure business performance in the market. From my perspective I have another plan and opinion which has a positive impact on business improvement whether in Canada market or other market. 

Nowadays, a website is a necessity for entrepreneurs, small businesses, home-based businesses, and anybody selling products or services. Regardless of your other marketing methods, enabling potential customers to either find you through a Google search or learn more about you after they’ve seen your other marketing material is key to creating and developing new customers.

A well structured website is required to make a business online. As Internet is becomes more important for users. It offers many benefits to make user's life more convenient and easy. For the promotion of business it is needed that you should have a website from where users could browse and purchase products that your business is offering.

Nowadays, people are using apps for different purposes. For every business apps are important to communicate with users on a secure network. They also delegate their tasks with the help of these programs. From exchange of resources to implementation of solutions for an extensive, each procedure needs web programs.

This process was activated due to some customers who were regularly challenging customized sites which can provide their objective. Furthermore, progression in technology has persuaded designers to discover unknown areas of web development. They can utilize the new update in their projects for better performance and adaptability.

A wide range of programs are available to business owners, using which they can make their companies even more effective and thus generate more benefit. The area of web design and development has gone through a technical trend, customized web database integration services have collected the attention of customers and clients.

They can now personalize web programs as per their specifications and requirements.

Web design and development services have become very essential among organizations working in different sectors. Furthermore, customized web programs allow incorporation of several features such as tracking analysis, database, content writing, marketing etc.

It has also been noticed that these programs fulfill business needs, regardless of the products engaged in those, Hence, they help to handle work procedures and information in a manageable way.

Benefits of Web Development Services

A market for personalized web application solutions, has been designed out by a huge number of software companies. Following are some main benefits of employing customized web development services:

1. Web surfing around can be assisted. 
2. Transactions, including loads of information can be handled quickly 
3. The volume of visitors to a website can be improved.

Stages in Web Development Process

Development of a web application includes the following phases:

1. Determining the characteristics of the venture and its objectives 
2. Devising a Specific Strategy depending on the goals of the venture 
3. Developing the Project as per the program 
4. Testing the venture for protection at every level of development

Creating a website for your business more than just a website isn't about a fancy or flashy design. Rather, a smarter design that makes a site more user-friendly with high-quality content worth returning for is all that is needed to make a business or brand stand out among the rest.

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Nobody Would Want To Pay Twice! My Advice For Websites Revenue

There are a lot of articles on the internet right now that showcase predictions for the next year and the trends that will dominate web marketing.  I would say websites have increasingly become the primary channel for sales of goods and services. Many small and medium enterprises (SME) rely heavily on their websites for their revenue. However, it is surprising how little attention is paid to analysis and measurement of this vital sales channel.

In my previous articles, I have discussed the role of content and keywords as a tool to promote the service or product you offer in your website and then the way of evaluating a website performance based on many factors. Online advertising is one of these factors that could help to let people interact with your site and increase engagement, but at the end you should learn to hammer the nails, and if what you build is sturdy and serviceable, take satisfaction in its plain strength.

Therefore, without tracking your profits on any Ads you spend, that means you don’t know if you’re making money or not, this in turn will lead to only one fact; you’re not going to be in business very long!

In this article I’ll give you simple formulas to calculate your ROI and show you how to measure KPI’s for the top three advertising goals.

Measuring your Return on Investment (ROI)

For instance, when you have a small business, I believe you likely don’t have a big accounting department to track and analyze your ad budget spends. Which is true!

But as I mentioned above you still need to learn how to hammer the nails. Perhaps this still seems like a paradox. How can you think carefully about not losing your customers and still be carefree about their options? I assure you that they are separate process. 

It is too simple when you adopt the ROI technique, if you’re spending money and you’re not getting back more money than you’re spending - you’re wasting your hard earned cash and means you are losing customers (Audiences).  You’ve got to stop the leak. You also should know if one Ad is generating more profits than another - so you can put more money into the profitable one.

Measuring your ROI doesn’t have to be overly complicated. You do need to do a bit of math, but, hey, that’s part of business. Let’s take a look at how to calculate your ROI.

A Simple Calculation for your website ROI 

As you likely know, your Return on Investment is basically a ratio of your net profit over the costs you spend to get the profit.  To put it in an equation, your ROI looks something like this:

Your ROI is your revenue less your cost of the thing you sold divided by the cost of the goods sold.

So, for example, let’s say you sell necklace. The cost to produce one necklace is $10, and you sell them for $20. You sell 100 of them from advertising them for example on Google. Your revenue (as you can see) is $2,000. Your cost to produce them was $1,000. And you spent, let’s say, $500 in advertising.

Your ROI is:  2,000 - (1,000 + 500)/ (1,000 + 500).

Do the math. Your ROI ratio is .33, which is 33%.

Measuring your Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Key performance indicators (or KPI) are metrics that measure the performance of a task against the objective that it was set out to do. In other words, it is finding out how you are doing to attain your business objectives. While KPIs can be applied in just about any working environment, in can be an effective method to measure the performance of your online business.

What I would like to say, you will never make your mark in your online business, unless you develop a respect for your content and quality of the service you offer. This is what I have pointed out in my previous articles

 

So, metrics can either be represented as a ratio or a number to measure certain tasks in relation to the objectives of your business. In the SEO field, Revenue, Visits and Page Views are measured through numbers while Conversion Rate, Bounce Rate and Average Sales are measured by ratios. These two forms of metric generally make up KPIs.

To find an effective KPI, you must first understand the objectives of your online business very well because this will be the basis for setting up your KPI. Outline your objectives into specific measurable goals. Then select a Key Performance Indicator for each goal.

To set an example as I gave you for ROI, let’s define a conversion as a completed sales transaction. To calculate a conversion, the basic formula can be: 

Conversion Rate= (Total Transactions/Total Number of Visits) * 100.

That is (6 transactions/50 visits) * 100 = 12% Conversion Rate. And so 12% is your Key Performance Indicator for your Sales Conversion Rate. In this example, it is obvious that having a score of 12% is below the expected performance of your goal for sales conversion. Having this sort of information will allow you to target which area to focus on as you try to improve the performance of your conversion rate. In this case you can try to optimize the functionality of your website.

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Must-Know Before Embarking On Online Business

Online marketing has given a lot of women and men a whole new way to make money and achieve financial independence. If you would like to start or establish new business you need to sketch out a road map for your own web marketing venture, it's necessary for you to have an understanding of the most crucial elements that are going to contribute to your long-term success! 

In the same time, you need to deal with all these elements in efficiency and competently to sidestep let downs when building your online business, something that besets the majority of entrepreneurs.

Do you ask yourself what are these vital factors? 

For me I would say the first thing you need to concentrate on when putting up an online business is your market. 

Studying the market is considered an essential role in starting any online business, it's imperative to determine the specialization you will go with and see if this market has a need for the products and services that you will sell. 

Market research is definitely needed in this specific stage because you have to make sure that there are buyers for what you're planning to offer. A good rule of thumb is to concentrate on a niche market that you're sincerely fascinated with and in which you see many issues that you can give exceptional solutions for.

When you do a market research or selecting a suitable niche there are some steps you need to follow. As mentioned above, you need to differentiate in the services or product you offer and adding more values. The other things you should bear in mind are that you have to pinpoint a market that doesn't have a great deal of competition, provides rewarding options, and has a relatively big audience that is open to new products and services. If your selected market fulfills all of these criteria, then it shows you that it is possible to start a lucrative enterprise in it.

Once you convinced and have decided which niche to go for, you need to choose the products and services that you'll publicize within this certain market. Once again, this is classified as part of market research, and your services and products need to be suitable for your selected niche market. 

Find out what the Demand for the product is:

If I'm going to be a food vendor at golf game, what should I sell there? I may really like Ice cream. Maybe I get up every morning and eat Ice cream for breakfast, and drink some ice chocolate with vanilla flavor.

Then I have a Frozen Yogurt after lunch. So, I really love ice cream, know a lot about them, and think ice cream is the greatest thing in the world! Does that mean that I should sell ice cream at that golf game? Well, it's something that I know people like to eat at golf games.

I know people do buy them at golf games. However, there are things I don't know yet. For example, how many people at that particular game are likely to want to buy ice cream? Generally, ice cream is a good bet to sell at a golf game. However, I may not know the area very well.

Ice Cream is pretty good and refresh during the summer, people just eat them up left and right at golf games. During cold weather, I doubt there is same demand. Am I right?

For instance, I have seen there is a new pre-launch website name canadabazaar.ca The website seems fully functional classified. I have checked the online marketing strategies which they are using to attract user and get traffic, I really like it 

Working on examine your products and services, and dedicate sufficient time to scrutinizing them and also ensuring that they are of efficient and has a good quality  is considered an initial step of business success

Most consumers are savvy buyers and they would find out when you are publicizing unsatisfactory products and services; if they think you're attempting to sell them stuff that are subpar, you wouldn't bring in any buyers or earnings!

It is necessary that you keep things simple, particularly when you are only starting your online marketing business. Even though it might be possible for you to produce your own products and services and come up with original strategies to showcase them, you first need to try to stick to what other internet marketers before you have carried out.

At the end all of these web marketing strategies are based on driving traffic to your website. While valuable, they pale in comparison to the best source of organic traffic which is proper search engine optimization. Therefore, all of your work will be moot unless you convince end users to visit your site. Therefore, you should have a solid traffic creation scheme and carry out appropriate web development, SEO and keyword research in order to invite consumers and persuade them to sign up for your subscriber list as well as tell their family and close friends about you. All of these initiatives are going to need your time and effort; you may undertake them on your own or find corporations and contractors to help you out.

SEO refers specifically to your website's ranking in the search engines. The higher your ranking, the more traffic you will receive. Of course, this raises questions as to how you would boost your site's ranking. There are many ways this is achieved and they include: link building throughout the internet; designing your website with keywords that people search for when looking for similar material; and using meta tags in the HTML of the site so that the search engine robots smile on it when they index sites. Does this sound a little difficult for a novice to perform? If it does, don't worry. There are professional services that can handle your SEO work for you and deliver tremendous results.

To sum up, build a website and do the necessary legwork, you and your home-based business would flourish and have longevity! It is always advisable for business proprietors to be ready, and you have to be completely conscious of what you must do and what can happen in order to realize success.

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How Blog Can Improve Your Business in 7 Ways

If you are interested to do business online, you are encouraged to blog.

You may be wondering why you should blog and whether it is worthwhile for you to do so.

Here are a few good reasons why you should blog.

1) Rank well with search engines

Blogs allows you to keyword optimized for search ranking purpose. You can put keywords in your blog title, blog post heading, description, comment invitation, archive titles, trackback links and category name.

Search engine loves blog. They love fresh content. Therefore a blog that updates everyday has better ranking with the search engines than a blog that updates once a week.

2) Building a relationship

People who visit your blog read your articles and eventually build a relationship with you. A blog allows the readers to know the blogger's opinion or personality much better.You can initiate conversation with your readers in your blog. You can also invite comments or ask questions to your readers. You can find out what are their needs are and how you can meet those needs.

3) Inexpensive way to promote your business

A blog is an inexpensive way to promote your business compare to any other method. You can share with your readers what is happening with your business and what are the changes that is to come.. You can post articles about your products in your blog.

4) Show passion and commitment to your industry

Blogging allows you to show passion and commitment to your readers about your industry. If you do not have a strong passion for your industry, you will not be able to sustain your blog long term. Most successful bloggers usually have their blogs for a period of time and as a result of that they start to reap their rewards for their blogging.

5) Old articles still being read

When you write a good article in your blog, the article does not stay forgotten. Search engines can still pull out your old articles for readers to read if your content is good and has good keywords to it.

6) Alternative Traffic Source

Bloggers like to link and network together. If other bloggers finds that your blogs is interesting and point your blogs to their readers, you will find that you have traffic coming from their blogs. Traffic coming from those blogs is at zero cost and some of their readers may end up being your customers.

7) Build reputation as an expert

Blogging can establish you as an expert in the particular field. When people read your blogs, they can judge for themselves how good you are in the field. You gain exposure in the industry and if you give good content in your blogs most of the time, soon you become an expert. People will trust you and whatever you recommend, they will believe you.

With all the reasons stated above, it is worthwhile for you to blog for your business. So let's not waste time and start blogging.

Want to learn more about blogging or internet marketing? Please contact me @ any time

Good Luck!

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How To Start An Online Business With Only Php Applications Development

With the Internet taking the world by storm, it has become very important for businesses to have a great online presence in order to increase sales exponentially. An effective online strategy is the crux for a business to be successful on the World Wide Web.

There are millions of companies emerging every day and therefore it becomes imperative for organizations to develop an exceptional website in order to be noticed and stand out in the clutter. For online businesses to see a dramatic improvement in their bottom line, it is essential for them to regularly keep in touch with their users and at the same time build relationships of trust and loyalty thereby boosting online sales.

A website that gets a lot of traffic is beneficial to an organization only when it is able to achieve a good conversion rate when it comes to making online sales. A high conversion rate depends on various factors like product catalog, pricing, security and website navigation. A successful website is one which is well-laid out, user-friendly and quick. And one of the best ways to achieve this is to build a web application by exploiting the advantages that PHP application development offers.

PHP is an open source server-side scripting language designed primarily for web development. Due to its ease of use, PHP is one of the most popular coding languages and is installed on millions of websites worldwide. It can be deployed on most web servers and is platform independent; it can be used on almost every operating system.

PHP has the ability to work with web forms and communicate easily with databases, thereby making it one of the most preferred scripting languages for web development. Its simple structure makes creating and editing website pages effortless. It is not only easy to deploy but also has frameworks with a relatively easy learning curve, thereby enabling quick deployment of web applications.

First developed in 1995, PHP can easily be embedded directly into HTML and can also be used as a combination with web frameworks. It is widely used by PHP application developers to build simple, dynamic web applications.

This general-purpose scripting language is appropriate for server-side web development. It can be used for command-line scripting and client-side graphical user interface (GUI) applications, thereby providing users with a gratifying online experience.

Due to its popularity, most web hosting providers support PHP for use by their clients. It is available free of charge and provides complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use making it easy for PHP application developers to develop top-notch web applications. Online businesses see a lot of traffic and need to be up and running at all times.

Benefits of PHP Development

() Ease of writing interfaces to other libraries
() Huge amount of database interfaces like MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, Informiz and PostgreSQL etc
() PHP checks various levels of security which can be set in the .ini file to save the web applications from hackers
() PHP is so simplified that even HTML Coders can integrate the PHP programming
() PHP is extendible
() PHP will run on (almost) any platform
() PHP is Open Source

PHP Application Development is one of the most reliable options that businesses have today. PHP runs in a separate, isolated process within Apache; each request is isolated from every other request. Hence it is difficult for any one process to bring down an entire server thus offering extraordinary up-time.

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