Basic Digital Marketing

 As we spend more time online than ever before and are more comfortable spending money online, the future of eCommerce and online websites in Canada looks strong. After all, it’s so easy today for the general consumer to just log on and buy. Thanks to content management systems and templates, it’s also real easy for companies to create their own websites. As the numbers continue to climb, you may think there’s no limit to what you can accomplish on your own.

The truth of the matter is that every small business and eCommerce site eventually hits a point where they require more knowledge than its owner may have to reach the next level. Why it might be time to get rid of your personal website and to hire a web design company ultimately comes down to what you are aiming to achieve. Though you may consider yourself an amateur web designer, you’re likely a small business owner first and thereby, you put your company’s operations before everything else. At some point, time is going to be stretched pretty significantly. Also, on top of that, eventually every website runs into some snags and issues. A web design company will not only know how to handle these issues but put in the code to prevent similar problems from happening again down the line. For a small business owner to accomplish the same thing, it might take hours to do the research and to try different things.

When it comes to winning customers online in eCommerce, you want to tap into all available avenues, including search engine optimization (SEO), digital marketing, social media, and more. Just by having a website, it does entitle anyone to success and by not having these channels open, it cuts down on the amount of revenue you could be generating. For small businesses who have never had a website before and who don’t have a dime to give to a web designer, we absolutely understand why building a personal website has its advantages. A thriving eCommerce business though requires some sort of experienced web designer on its side to get it to the next level and to open up new customer acquisition channels.

 It’s easy to dismiss Pinterest as a social media channel that you don’t need to tap into as a small business. After all, it’s not Facebook, it’s not Instagram, and it’s not Snapchat. Pinterest is a collection of photos and photo albums created by users, sharing things ranging from recipes to DIY projects, rock stars from yesteryear, and wedding décor and wedding gowns. At least from a basic understanding, that’s what most people probably see Pinterest as.

The reality of Pinterest is that though it might not be one of the hotter social media platforms, it still boasts millions of monthly active users and is a unique way to target specific categories of the marketplace. There are opportunities here to acquire high-volume traffic and qualified sales leads. There’s even some research that shows Pinterest to be better at attracting traffic to small business websites than any other social media channel, including Facebook. That said, a brand needs to know how to use Pinterest in less sales-y ways to increase revenues. In most cases, this involves some creativity, and non-sales related marketing that focus less on the products and more on the lifestyle.

Where any small business should begin with Pinterest is in realizing that this is a visual platform. Therefore, it requires visual content that is beautiful, fun, and real. Show how your brand makes people feel and incorporate products or services into that however do so in a way that is not overly sales-esque. Small businesses such as wedding décor companies, clothing eCommerce retailers, or design firms have the advantage in a visual medium because it’s easy to express what they’re about. Also, users are accustomed to seeing these types of businesses promote through photos. If your small business is in a less visual medium, Pinterest photos can still work however you need to find what works for you and your audience.

 Design, site implementation, and search engine optimization-specific strategies each play a significant role in determining where a given eCommerce site ranks. Search engines are major sources of traffic and revenue, and should be factored into the marketing plans of every eCommerce site. In this article, we share some tips, tricks, and techniques on how to rank your eCommerce website at the top of search engines everywhere.

To begin with, ensuring a site’s eCommerce catalogue is easily readable is key. Remember, specific products and services pages will fight for their own search engine ranking. Thus, every page must be optimized in order to drive their own ranking success in addition to strengthening the quality and opportunity of the eCommerce site to rank. Taxonomies should include landing pages for each keyword you are intending to rank for. Thereby, divide up your category of product into specific areas of navigation. For example, if you wish to rank according to gender, design a landing page for women’s items and men’s items separately. This way, you can successfully target keywords as appropriate.

In filling out an eCommerce site with keywords and relevant SEO strategies, keep in mind to ensure subcategories of pages do not result in duplicate content. Ideally, what an eCommerce site should be built to do is to drive organic search revenues down through each of these product channels. To this point, ensure that there are more than images included. Search engine crawlers cannot process images in the same way they can text. Therefore, text-based product descriptions and text fields need to be embedded in product pages to assist with search engine ranking.

With literally hundreds of self-proclaimed SEO experts across Canada, how to know you’ve hired the right digital marketing and search engine optimization expert is challenging. Research is time-consuming and knowing that marketing results will only come in months later, if you’ve hired the wrong person, it will take weeks to figure it out.

 In the midst of all the hype that was virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) took over online marketing and the way that consumers interact with brands. Augmented reality goes beyond the limitations of VR – which requires a headset to get in and out. Instead, augmented reality applies virtual elements through the lens of a smartphone to real world living. For the first time ever, virtual objects are able to be applied to real-life physical environments. There exists amazing potential for augmented reality to progress and to continue changing consumer behaviour.

Consumers have always shown a love towards fun, interactive marketing. Since the 1990s, augmented reality has been a key focal point of development in marketing circles. At that time, it was so underdeveloped however that not much came of it.

Today, augmented reality has progressed to the point where Google Glass, Snapchat Lenses, and Pokemon Go all serve as examples of application. Though these trends permeate for a time and then tend to fade, this is just the beginning. As augmented reality tech continues to get better at keeping objects in place and based realistic to scale, developers are continuing to create more immersive AR experiences.

 Product descriptions are an opportunity to qualify interest from a consumer and close a sale. A self-identifiable CTA, product descriptions should not merely describe – they need to sell!

 This is a premiere opportunity to persuade a reader into buying your product and if you’ve been able to get a website visitor to the point of reading a product description, that means they’re asking to be sold to. In this article, these are just a few of the techniques we’ve used to write effective product descriptions for eCommerce marketplaces across Canada.

 When it comes to eCommerce product descriptions, the last thing you want to do is to keep it general and boring. Focus in on the buyer and the information they expect to receive from a product description. Imagine having a conversation with them and the questions they would ask. Speak in the same language as the buyer and ensure the most basic information they would want to know is provided.

 Next, highlight the benefits of the product, as it applies to the customer’s lifestyle. For example, make mention of spending time with family, keeping the household or apartment clean, or the ways a product would improve a consumer’s life. Any product should make a consumer feel either happier, healthier, and/or more productive. Thus, identify the value of the product from the eyes of the customer. 

 Inevitably every website owner eventually comes to the question, “how can I get more traffic to my website?” After devoting countless hours into setting up a site and tweaking everything to your preferences, sometimes the answer is not so clear on how to actually get visitors. Much like setting up a physical storefront, just because you have a website does not necessarily mean it will find its clientele. For other websites, maybe they’ve been able to see steady growth for months and then see numbers begin to fall or growth begin to stagnant. Generating traffic is key to online success and to ensure that those numbers continue to increase, here are four amazing things to try.

1 – Using Facebook, Instagram, and other social media to run ad campaigns

 Advertising on social media used to be a lot less expensive however due to changes in algorithms, the most effective way to engage with consumers on social media is to use paid ad campaigns. Creating targeted campaigns to reach specific subsets of the population on social media has shown promising results. Via the 1.65 billion monthly users currently on Facebook, there is plenty of opportunity to reach new and past customers with an ad campaign. If you’re targeting a younger audience, know that among the 500 million monthly active users that Instagram has, approximately 73 percent of these are under the age of 35. There may be other social media sites you wish to advertise on, including Pinterest or Twitter. Do research into where the most likely place is to find your audience.

 Cutting down on costs for the customer is a huge concern among so many eCommerce businesses. After all, customers seeking to order product online are required to pay shipping premiums, which is evidently not something they would have to do if they bought the same items in-person.

The question of how to lower shipping costs is a common query among eCommerce companies. There are some who might consider increasing prices to cover shipping however if that is not manageable, there are other things to look to that may help in cutting down costs.

Packaging is a big factor that many eCommerce companies look at when seeking to lower shipping costs. By reducing the weight and size of packaging, you may be able to lower shipping costs considerably over time. Think of the packaging that your eCommerce company uses. Is it bigger than needed for some items – it might be. Could you get away with a padded envelope instead of a box – maybe. Remember, shipping costs will always be dependent on size and weight. Cardboard boxes can get heavy, especially in terms of packaging. If there is any way to trim down weight, it could help save big.

 HD-quality photography is a key component to any website, ranging from news and headlines to vet techs, retail, restaurants, technology, science, and more. The right images matched to the right aesthetic can help convey messages and meanings that no body of text can.

That said, rarely do we have the budget to hire a professional photographer to capture all of the photos we need to properly show off the high class of our brands.

Sources of free photos become important to filling in sites that require more photography than they can afford. Finding free stock photos that are high-resolution though can be tricky. Thankfully, there are numerous sites – small, large, and specific – that provide free stock photos at high resolutions. To know where to begin searching, here’s the sites we recommend checking out.

 Customer offboarding comes with some big benefits, yes, and it’s important to know how to make the most from them.

‘Customer onboarding’ is a term used to refer to the initial meeting and beginning to the relationship between company and user. ‘Customer offboarding’ is used similarly, describing the end of the relationship between company and user. Customer offboarding is, simply put, the last time that a user interacts with your brand.

Why offboarding is so important is because a negative offboarding experience is one that could have significant consequences on your company. Customers are willing to forgive getting off on the wrong foot with your company, if they end up satisfied in the end. If a customer’s last interaction with your brand is negative however, that is more likely to result in a negative online review, bad press for your business, and word-of-mouth that could turn the user’s friends and family from ever using your company.

Customer offboarding is all about high standards of customer service in addition to key elements of online marketing and web design, such as truthful marketing, creative copywriting, and user-friendly design components. There’s a reason some potential customers are going to turn away from your business. By knowing why customers are leaving your business and/or what their last interaction with your site is like, it can give insight into how to improve.

 Valued today at approximately $2 trillion in annual sales internationally and expected to grow to $4.5 trillion by the end of 2021, ecommerce and online shopping continues to make big business for small and large retailers.

That said, just because the potential is there to make big money does not mean that setting up an ecommerce site guarantees anyone success. It still requires key marketing strategies to generate buzz, direct consumers to your online store, and to entice users to the point of closing a sale. Here’s the top eCommerce web design tips, tricks, and trends leading into the remainder of 2018.

Mobile-friendliness

 Almost as much as 70 percent of the US population own smartphones and by 2022, that number is expected to each 80 percent. No ecommerce site is complete without a mobile-responsive web design, easy to navigate on any mobile device, including smartphones and tablets.

 Imagine what web design would resemble if it did not have to adhere to the limitations of pages. In theory, that would leave consumers with more creative, intuitive browsing experiences and designers with much more freedom to build satisfying content.

Page-less design is not that far off and if web designers continue to nudge the industry in its direction, it just might make for the future of how websites are built. For one, a big advantage to web design with no limitation of pages is that it lets the story of the page develop naturally. Traditional web design has always fitted content to a square or rectangle. By doing away with pages, the story that is built on the page and the lead into a CTA can be more immersive, interactive, and natural.

From a company perspective, when this is done correctly, it means a higher conversion rate. For consumers, it means a more intuitive browsing experience. Today’s websites are filled with image sliders, top navigation, main bodies, sidebars, and that’s it. In many cases, there are pop-ups asking for your email even before you’ve had a chance to consume the page. No pages mean a web designer can effectively build under any style of visual infrastructure they want and in turn, consumers may be more successfully inclined to click.

 Instead of selecting a broad SEO marketing plan, choosing to pursue local SEO may be even more satisfying. If a business is one that depends on local customers and reaching local customers online, pursuing local SEO is one of the more effective tools one may employ to accomplish these goals.

For companies struggling to rank effectively in their localized marketplace, local search engine optimization can help rank one higher in Google Maps listings, location-related keyword searches, and more.

Local SEO is search engine optimization specifically targeting location-based searching. In building short- and long-tail keywords, including a location can help take an SEO plan further in reaching customers.

To learn how to do search engine optimization successfully, local SEO results ultimately come down to three factors. The first is relevance. Search engines like to build results based off the most qualified, high quality web pages possible. Therefore, you need to provide them with relevant, high quality content. Then, there’s proximity. Though not every search result will contain a location, Google attempts to determine location based on the user. The third and final factor is the reputation that a website carries online, such as in reviews and ratings. The higher that your business ranks locally is dependent on these three things, among many other aspects of search engine optimization that play into it.

 Building a smart, effective small business website begins with investing the time to know what to do and what not to do. There are a multitude of different areas where companies make common mistakes, including inserting too much text, a bad visual design, poor or no CTAs included, and a lack of keyword targeting. Every site is going to go through growing pains, yes, however you can save yourself time and money by getting to know the basics.

#1 – To Hire a Web Designer or to Do it Yourself

 The first step to building a small business website is to decide whether this is something you want to attempt on your own or if you choose to hire someone else. Cost is a big consideration, as web design expenses can add up quickly if one does not where to spend. The unfortunate reality is that most of the business owners who try to do it themselves end up not producing the results they have the potential of having. Be it a simple site or something more complex, hiring someone ensures you get experience and knowledge on your side. Also – and this is a biggie for many business owners – it saves time. Keep your focus on running the business and oversee the larger decisions when it comes to your website, letting someone else do the heavy lifting for you.

#2 – It’s Way more Work than you probably think

 Even with the most experienced of web designers, there’s always something unexpected that will eventually rear its head resulting in more time and effort having to be dedicated to a website. By having outside help on hand, you can literally save hours of your time trying to work some of these issues out. Even better, by hiring a web design company or a single web designer, they should be able to point you towards analytical tools that help in seeing where your site is succeeding and where improvements are required. The nature of having a website is one where continued improvement is a necessity.

 Improving SEO is not as easy as deciding on some keywords and turning out a ton of blog content. If anything, that’s the exact opposite of what any website should do yet so many believe this to be the right way to approach search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization involves many moving parts and constant updates from players such as Google which need to be considered in strategy. Before getting started on a website’s SEO plan, here are the most effectives strategies we’ve found to increase search engine rank.

High quality content that is updated consistently

 Commit to building focused, targeted content that does not compromise on quality. What many companies forget on this point is that beyond developing high quality content, consistency in its release is required. By setting up a regular schedule of weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly releases, you create more value for your site from search engines’ perspectives.

 Search engine optimization has been a key focal point among online marketing experts, for over a decade. Achieving big results in digital marketing depends heavily on a site’s ability to succeed in its SEO strategies.

For sites not able to navigate the waters of search engines, they get left behind fast. Those that do succeed, however have the opportunity to see big jumps in web traffic, increased quality of leads, and higher conversion rates overall. Whether you’ve already involved with search engine optimization or are just getting started, here’s what no one tells you about building effective SEO.

Investing the right amount of money into SEO can see high ROI

There’s no way around it, to succeed using search engine optimization strategies, you need to spend money. Figure these into your company’s marketing campaign budget. Though the price may be high, compare it to traditional means of offline advertising. SEO is cost-effective and does not require a significant amount of money to work. Though it will take an investment, spreading out financial resources smartly over time can see some big return-on-investment (ROI).

 Customer onboarding, within the context of online marketing, is the experience a customer has when they first encounter your website. As important as it is to entice, qualify interest, and provide CTAs in the onboarding process, what is equally important is how a customer’s interaction with your business comes to an end. For that, we look to the term ‘customer offboarding’.

There is an art to bringing customer interactions to a conclusion. Even if you don’t close a product or service sale, if a consumer leaves your website happy, they are more likely to share their positive experience with others and potentially growing your business. If a customer has a negative experience and leaves your business disappointed or upset, this does not reflect well.

There are some businesses who believe customer offboarding to mean doing everything one possibly can to retain the client. That is, make them exclusive promotional offers, provide discounts, and/or do whatever needs to be done to keep their business. At some point though, one needs to recognize when they’re simply not going to reach the customer.

 The type of web design that made the cut even a decade ago is significantly different from the way web pages are built today. Some business websites are quickly falling behind the curb, especially as trends in web design continue to change. So is your business website design trendy or date – let’s find out.

The future of web design is being slowly pulled towards pageless design. When we say ‘pageless design’, we mean a design where all of the content on a website is published on one long page. This is the opposite of what would be considered multi-page design, which is how the majority of business sites are built today. Though the future might be pageless, does that mean that, if your site is not pageless, it is somehow out of touch with the times – not necessarily.

Most of the philosophies surrounding contemporary web design involve building pages that are user-friendly, interactive, embedded with clear CTAs, and that use conversion rates as predominant measures of success. In order for each of these components to work successfully, they must be clear in the information they communicate. Websites are essential tools for businesses to communicate information about their products and services, using CTAs in the process. The multipage web design succeeds because it neatly structures information according to consumer interests, often times being divided among different service pages, different location pages, and allowing brands to embed entirely different pages and CTAs into one all-encompassing website.

 Beat out the competition by focusing on growing online visibility among local consumers, instead of seeking more general non-geographic based visitors. In the mobile search revolution, one of the more dramatic areas where growth has been happening is in local search. Search engine optimization, with a focus on local search engine ranking results, has the opportunity to direct local consumers to content that is relevant and high quality. Here’s how.

Mobile users are a captive audience that if you’re not already tapping into, you should be. Mobile users and mobile search have surpassed desktop use and searches. Approximately 30 percent of all mobile searches related to location, including those performed in Google Maps. To ensure that your website is getting the most visibility it can with location-based and location-related searches, it involves first filling out all citations and business information in any local listings and directories. Be consistent across all listings, including Google Maps, where your business name, contact information, and website link should be placed.

After filling out local business directories and listings, ensure you claim your Google My Business Page and Bing Places for Business. These are two 100% necessary directories, required for local SEO success. This way, anyone who puts in a search on mobile or desktop platforms in your location using the relevant keywords, they should see your site name come up in the results.

 Building a small business website is a necessary part to growing a company in this day and age. Websites act as a 24-7 sales resource, attracting new customers and closing sales without the business owner having to lift a finger. That said, so many small businesses across Canada and the United States don’t have websites, which limits their customer base and reduces their revenue potential.

According to a recent report, only approximately half of all small businesses have an updated website. That’s difficult to hear, especially when more than 62 percent of consumers say that they won’t consider purchasing from a small business if they can’t find information about them online.

Don’t make the mistake that other small business owners have made. Even if the products and services you sell have nothing to do with the online world, a small business website reaches customers in ways that offline marketing can’t.

Building a smart small business website begins with structuring web design around call-to-actions, otherwise known as CTAs. Aspects of web design such as navigation, text, images, video, animations, and others should work to qualify interest of the consumer and point them towards a CTA. By having strong CTAs, it more easily converts visitors into customers. With weak CTAs, a website is going to have limits to what it can accomplish.

 Top ecommerce web design companies are already capitalizing on some of this year’s biggest trends. The trends we’ve included on our list of 2018’s biggest tap into the creative minds of savvy web designers and passionate ecommerce developers. For better conversion rates, adapt any of these tips and strategies to your ecommerce website.

 #1 – Customized, location-friendly, date-friendly email marketing

 Attracting existing and new customers to your ecommerce platform is made easy using email marketing. By sending offers directly to a person’s inbox, catch consumers as they’re ready to buy. Create location-based, limited-time only promotional offers. Send discount codes for special holidays, such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, summer vacation, and more. More companies in ecommerce are seeing bigger revenues from email marketing than they are anything else, including social media marketing.

 #2 – Higher customer engagement via social media and other platforms

 Ecommerce web design marketing campaigns must be built off consumer engagement. Emails, social media, customer service initiatives, and other engagement strategies are extremely effective at leading customers back to your ecommerce marketplace.

 Web design is a costly business, especially when one has to factor in marketing campaigns, social media development, and search engine optimization. Any opportunity to lower costs across a website, most site owners will take. Among the areas where costs can sometimes be slashed down next to nothing is in photos. Though professional photographers, graphic designers, and online artists may not share the same opinion, using free stock photos to fill out a website can be a cost-effective strategy to entice visitors and communicate professionalism.

Now there are certain aspects of site images that one will have to pay for, such as logo, company-branded graphic work, and similarly personalized images. That said, finding high quality stock images is virtually a practice that almost every content-heavy site uses. Be it a single page brochure  site or a content-driven news site, stock images occupy a high amount of space across the board. Though most companies in these spaces may pay for their stock imagery, there are numerous sites able to provide them for free. Among the sites worth taking a spin through, there’s Negative Space, LibreStock, StockSnap, Gratisography, Picography, and ISO Republic, alongside plenty of others.

 Take a browse through some of your favourite YouTube clips and you might see a range of different lengths, some videos as short as fifteen seconds and others longer than twenty minutes. Yes, human beings have short attention spans however to this point, there are videos, TV shows, and films longer than average who have been able to successfully capture an audience. Thus, when it comes to marketing your business, what’s the right length for a video – well, we hope to answer that here.

The relationship between video length and audience engagement

 The single statistic you want to pay attention to, when it comes to deciding what the right length is for your video, is engagement. Finding out how much content your audience is likely to consume before beginning to drop off in significant portions. In terms of video marketing for business, videos up to 2 minutes in length receive the highest engagement before a significant drop-off begins to happen. Thereby, whether it’s thirty seconds, ninety seconds, or the full two minutes, audience engagement is the same across each of these times. Short, sweetened, and to the point, building up a series of two-minutes video clips can help elevate a business to the next level.

 The more information you have about your customers, the more successful you will be at growing your client base. Remember, if you’re not sure about how to market to new customers, look to your existing buyers for answers.

 Assembling as much data as possible about your customers is key for several reasons. First and foremost, it allows one to personalize communications and market specifically to the customer. Studies have shown personalization in marketing to increase loyalty among existing customers and provide a higher chance of obtaining new customers. This is why meeting and getting to know customers is a high priority for so many businesses.

 Just as important as getting to know the backgrounds of your customers, it’s equally important to know what data is most significant. Don’t pursue invading questions about customers’ personal lives or participate in shady behaviour to obtain customer info. There’s many data sets already available to small businesses that they may not yet be tapping into. For example, purchase history is key. By knowing what customers have bought in the past, you may be able to pinpoint what they are most likely to buy in the future. By knowing a customers’ name, this can help personalize email communications to them. These two bullet points have the potential to increase the value of a customer to your business and, in turn, increase revenues.

 It’s not uncommon to hear from small business owners that they don’t need online marketing. Though that philosophy may have worked years ago – like let’s say, in the 1990s – in this day and age, not having an online marketing strategy in place is a HUGE mistake!

 As it pertains to online marketing, there are a number of opportunities for small business entrepreneurs to increase revenues and reach a whole new audience. By setting up a website, a small business establishes a reputable, trustworthy presence online. By engaging in search engine optimization or SEO practices, this gets a business’ name out there on search engines, allowing new customers seeking your products or services to find you. For some companies, designing an e-commerce platform allows them to sell products or services online across the country and even internationally. Also, by building social media profiles, a small business opens up a direct line of communication with new and existing customers, cultivating stronger relationships in the local marketplace.

 As evidenced by the benefits, for any company who are not pushing themselves to establish a strong online presence, they are giving up customers to competitors who are. Far from a waste of time, online marketing is a necessity to thrive and survive.