Tag: Web Design

  • 17 Ways To Win at Growth Hacking 

    Growth Hacking

     

    Growth Hacking is a great option for anyone looking to grow their business fast! For anyone unfamiliar with the term, growth hacking refers to a series of techniques used to add social media followers rapidly and with minimum investment on your part. As growth hacking’s popularity grows, people are coming with more and more ways to draw followers to their brand. The tricky part is usually finding out which technique works best for you. Don’t worry, we’re here to help! 

    So, in no particular order, here is a list of 17 of our favourite growth hacking tactics! 

     

    1 – Smart Social Media Monitoring 

    In 2020, having a social media presence is absolutely necessary. The disheartening part of being a new company on social media is the fact that every account starts with no followers. So how can you kickstart a social media following? One answer is with strategic social media monitoring.  

    This is often overlooked but it’s the easiest and most effective tactic for organic growth! Develop an understanding of your target audience’s online presence and find out who they are currently supporting. Once you find this out: interact with your target audience and interact with competitors. 

    Important: Be polite; don’t take it as an opportunity to attack other companies in the same industry. One ethos of the web: “collaborate and compete.” This is doubly true interacting in the same spaces as your competition. Be informative. Be helpful. Create meaningful interactions with the pages and avoid any direct solicitation of your products and services! You’ll have better results creating a meaningful interaction (eg. “this makes sense of X”) rather than a generic comment like “nice picture” or “you might like our page, check it out”. 

    2 – A/B Testing with Measured Conversion 

    Knowing your customer’s behavioural patterns at the beginning of your venture can be difficult. Your landing page, wording or design elements could be the thing that’s driving potential customers away and you might not even know it. With A/B testing with measured conversion, you can determine your target audience’s behavioural patterns to quantify which test versions are more effective. 

    A/B testing can be as basic as changing one word, changing the colour scheme of your CTA buttons or trying out a new blog title. The key lies in tracking it, so you can see whether any given change affects conversion or not. 

    3 – Guest Posting & Tools like Help A B2B Write & HARO 

    Guest posting is the act of writing blog posts or articles for a website that isn’t your own. Though can take time, it’s a great tool for increasing brand awareness. 

    Looking to get started with guest posting? Reach out to credible websites and see if they are interested in including one of your blog posts. If they aren’t accepting guest blog posts, then try a guest blogging platform such as myblogguest.com; or place yourself as a potential source for journalists on helpab2bwriter.com or helpareporter.com. 

    If you’re thinking about guest posting, keep in mind. 

    • Write blog posts for websites or people that have a similar (or same) audience to your target audience
    • Be informative! Apply personal experience and research to the topic.
    • Don’t be afraid to work with an old topic. Use juxtaposition to contrast an old idea with something new in the field. 
    • Be positive. Try to add new knowledge and insight through your work. Don’t just re-hash established data.
    • Include a call to action or a minor pitch at the end to entice people to visit your page. 

    4 – Leverage Referral Programs

    A great way to grow your business is with a referral program! Referrals allow existing customers to vouch for your business and act as a trusted voice to people in their network. This system is cyclical as it then opens the opportunity for new members to act as the trusted voice to their network and so forth. 

    When implementing a referral program, the most important element will be to offer an incentive program with it. Dropbox is a great example of this; the company allowed both its users and their referrals to add an extra 500 MB upon successfully referring new members. This referral program increased signup conversion by 60%.

    5 – Become a Leader on New Platforms 

    Social media is an ocean of opportunity, but popular platforms like Instagram and Facebook have plenty of boats. Becoming a leading fashion brand on crowded platforms such as Instagram or Facebook takes much more effort. Incorporating your brand on a new social media platform or a platform that does not have leaders in your industry on there, gives you the opportunity to become the leader. Keep in mind, for this to work, you need to know which social media platforms your target audience uses! 

    6 – Add Value with ‘a Freebie’

    Similar to food samples at Costco, offering your customers a “Freebie” is a great way to give your customer a taste of what you have to offer before they are required to commit. If your business doesn’t allow for a customer to “try before they buy”, offering a gift to add value is also an option. 

    A “freebie” can be a trial period of your service, a sample of a product to try, or a specialty gift to act as a “thank you” for choosing your company. 

    7 – Add Personality 

    Personality is another great way to increase brand loyalty and viral potential. There are two ways to add personality: Creating or emphasizing a social media style and tone for your brand, or putting a human face to your organization. 

    One example of this is Chris Hughes from A Nerd’s World; a web developer and SEO professional in Toronto. Chris has a captivating personal presence and highlights this through his successful YouTube channel. Creating a trusted personality linked to his brand’s name has given him a large social media presence (over 20K subscribers) and growth for A Nerd’s World. 

    8 – Run a Contest 

    People love a chance to win free stuff! Running a contest is a sure way of generating brand awareness and growth on social media. The key to running a social media contest is to make sure your prize fits with the company’s brand. This helps you attract people who will continue to follow and support your brand after the contest is over. 

    Don’t forget to be purposeful with your contests. Have a goal in mind and make sure that the reward, the rules, and the contest structure are aligned with those goals. 

    9 – Create Tiers and “Freemium” options 

    “Freemium” is a portmanteau of the words “free” and “premium;” it’s a business model that involves offering customers both complimentary and extra-cost services”

    This strategy attracts people who are interested in the product as well as those who love to see the word FREE! 

    10 – Partner with Influential People  

    There’s no denying, the word “influencer” has been exhausted after the last few years but that doesn’t mean they aren’t effective! Similar to defining your target audience, targeting the right influencer for your brand and product is the key for amazing results. 

    Influencers have spent time cultivating trust from an audience of like-minded people. Their referral can increase conversions and generate sales immediately. Sounds great, right? Well there’s more! Influencers are also skilled at creating great interactive content that can be shared to your platform later. 

    11 – Create FOMO  

    FOMO is the fear of missing out; the state of anxiety caused by the thought of missing out on something great. Done right, it entices purchase to purchase a product or service to avoid that anxiety. 

    Create FOMO by creating urgency; give them an offer they can’t refuse! This is typically done with online contests, special sales and offers, and limited-time promotions to name a few. Another tactic is creating exclusive offers. For example: 25% off select merchandise for those on the mailing list. 

    12 – Building Online Communities

    A social media presence should be a priority for all businesses. It isn’t just a cost-effective marketing platform; it’s also a way to build a customer-facing online community. Building your online community will involve a few detailed decisions: deciding on a target audience, picking your niche, developing content strategy and creating valuable content. 

    There’s no denying that building an online community takes time, especially if you’re starting from scratch, but the results are growth in brand awareness, brand loyalty and trust, direct product/service feedback, and more!

    13 – Gamification Strategies (Competitions, Rewards) 

    Gamification is the process of adding gaming elements to non gaming environments, such as your online community. Gamification can be any form of loyalty program that creates competition to receive the most incentives. 

    The best example of this: Starbucks’ Summer Drink game. This summer exclusive game allows customers to connect their Starbucks account to a board game. Players earn moves with every Starbucks purchase made over a certain period of time, which allows them to move across the board to reveal prizes.

    Strategies like the Starbucks Summer Game create engagement in the community and provide instant gratification for consumers, while simultaneously generating more sales for the company. 

    14 – Build Your Email List Pre-Launch 

    An email list of engaged users who are excited about your brand or product release is a great asset to your business. The question is, how can you generate an email list of users interested in your brand before launch date?

    One technique to generate an email list before you launch is by using the calls to action in your guest blog posts to direct readers to your email signup page. This page should be designed to attract visitors to convert and add themselves into your mailing list. 

    Another great means of adding people to your email list is to offer them something in exchange. Find something of value to your target audience, and offer it to them in exchange for joining your email list. 

    15 – Repurpose Content

    Repurposing content is a great way to be consistent online when you’ve hit a creative slump. You do have to remember that not all content can be repurposed. Anything topical, that’s tied into a specific time, trend, or event shouldn’t be repurposed. It’s better to repurpose things like general concepts, facts, or marketing tactics that are still up to date. 

    Recyclable content goes beyond pictures, infographics and videos. It also includes blog posts or other articles that you may have written in the past. Just tweak them a little to bring them up to date.

    16 – Content Promotion Strategy 

    Creating content is one step, but the real priority is getting it seen. Start by promoting it on all appropriate platforms. Not all posts are built the same, so if you’re looking to share a post across all social platforms, make sure it is edited to work for all platforms. (Ex: adjusting image size, rewording language, adjusting calls to action) 

    If you’re a newer brand, share your blog posts and content in your newsletter. Not only are you getting your content seen, but you could be reaching new potential followers.

    17 – Website Pop-Ups

    Pop-ups are an effective strategy markets use to garner conversion rates higher than 40%. Depending on how much content you have on the page, passive viewers may not scroll down to where you can convert them. A pop-up puts important information like  announcements or your email list sign up right in front of their eyes. 

    But aren’t pop-ups annoying? Not when they’ve been strategically set at the 30% mark of the page! This allows engaged readers to scroll through the site as normal, only giving them the pop-up at the point where they expect to be hooked. This way they’re more likely to convert to the CTA you just put in front of them.  

    About Us 

    Web321’s Web Design Subscription Plan makes it possible for small businesses to get a lovingly maintained website for just $321 a month. This done-for-you service includes absolutely everything a small business needs to have a compelling, safe and secure website and online presence.

    We love the idea of using growth hacking to build our market position. We’re hiring for a growth hacker position soon! Come back and check out our site for details.

    For more information, check out our website https://web321.co or @web321co on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. 

     

  • Play Twenty Questions With Your Website Decisions

    These are unprecedented times, right? Unprecedented can be a good thing, though. Given industry make-overs across regions, fields and firms requiring re-evaluation of company structuring, financing, product placement and promotion, there is no better time than now to change how you use your web presence. Given the vast shifts to online research, merchandising, sales and delivery, crafting a site that maximizes search engine optimization, content delivery, user friendliness and e-commerce efficiency has never been more important. Whether potential clients are looking for new employment, expanding their network or just to make a purchase, your website could be the destination they rely upon to make an informed decision. If you’re a small business trying to gain your foundation or a mid-sized firm looking to expand, your site has to allow you to stand out from the competition instantly.

    The big question you’re probably wondering is, what is it that sets one site from another? In short, brand optimization: knowing what you want to present to your potential client and how you’re going to present it. To get there, and create the online performance your brand deserves, you need to consider the following questions:

    1. How easily can customers access the information they need? An educated consumer is a reliable consumer and one who will likely generate many referrals.
    2. Does your site inform visitors what service or product your business provides? Purpose generates performance.
    3. Is your site compatible on mobile and desktop interfaces? In a changing and dynamic world, you need to be able to accommodate multiple user platforms.
    4. What attributes do you find effective about your competitor’s sites? Comparison and competition are what drive the innovation that will carry over into your site’s performance.
    5. How is your server speed? In fast-paced and changing world, top download speeds can separate the elites from the needy.
    6. How clearly is your brand conveyed to your potential consumers? You need to be able to convey your brand’s mission to clearly and effectively win customers and sales.
    7. How easily can visitors access your site’s features? The unknowns of online traffic make this exciting consideration a necessity to ensure site accessibility for anyone and everyone.
    8. What kind of search engine optimization are you willing to develop? Search engine optimization can be a deal-breaker in saturated markets.
    9. Who is your ideal client? You need to make your site as tailored to your clients as your brand is.
    10. What is your desired site traffic? Maximum traffic is critical to generating consistent sales.
    11. What content is generating the most traffic on your site? Another critical component in ensuring that your site is as tailored and accommodating to your user base.
    12. How well can you monitor traffic and capture data? A difference maker when it comes to providing real-time updates relating to consumer support, client feedback or brand development.
    13. What are your long-term goals for your site? Given the variety of dynamic features and accessibility tools, this is the component that generates the long-term development strategies essential for sustained growth.
    14. What development plans have you considered relative to your long-term site management? As consumer tastes and preferences change, your site needs to be able to change with them.
    15. How well are you generating repeat traffic? Not everyone shops the same and many patronize as much for the entertainment value as for the retail value.
    16. How well do you encourage users to share your content? A crucial factor in a world driven by social networking and 24/7 digital presence.
    17. How well does your site interface with social media? Again, necessary for compatibility, particularly in targeting younger and middle-aged demographics to keep them informed and engaged with your developments.
    18. What ways can users interact with your site? As with making your site user friendly, consumers often gravitate towards sites that provide maximum sensory stimulation relative to the online format, allowing them to conveniently engage with your product and spend at the same time.
    19. How well doe your site suggest that sales are the main priority? Because, as we all know, sales are success for brand and client.
    20. How well does your site help you reach your performance objectives? Site traffic is product placement, more traffic equals higher sales, and higher sales leads to higher sales objectives that lead to sustained success!

    If attracting traffic and keeping visitors engaged is the main priority in website design and management, you may be feeling your eyeballs spinning inside your head after all these considerations. The priority, however, is your vision from a web management company so that they can craft and maintain the site that will generate YOU the revenue YOU deserve. Here are some considerations when choosing a web management service for your site:

    1. Provides domain name acquisition, expediting and easing the searching and branding process to allow your business to stand out and stay that way.
    2. Obtains an SSL (secure sockets layer), certificate which allows your site to conduct transactions involving sensitive data, crucial to conducting online sales, password storing and other sensitive information logging sought by online consumers. Some providers charge extra for services such as customer support and enhanced encryption rates. The truth: there’s good SSL and there’s overkill. We know the difference.
    3. Facilitates website hosting, an essential service that allows your website to be connected to other servers, essential for users to access and engage with your site in any capacity, whether it is browsing, connecting to provide feedback or procuring product that drives your sales. Website hosting range in value but there is a Goldilocks zone of how much hosting should cost. We have hosting that suits our clients well.
    4. Provides website updates to keep your site looking sleek, savvy and user friendly. Sought after features include webpages, content, media, navigation, forms and background images. These features allow your site to generate the brand image that helps to drive reliable consumer traffic, sales and trust. The more updates you need, the higher the fee can. But what if that’s a blank cheque you don’t want to write? Our maintenance plan includes unlimited updates.
    5. Monitors CMS, or content management system, updates that allows you to manage your marketing through uploading, publishing and managing your site’s content.
    6. Provides technical support, including server errors, broken links, encryption holes and any other possible hindrance to successful site operation. Turnaround times regarding fixing errors after they’ve been reported are a critical component to fluid site operation; the faster, the more expensive.
    7. Generates website analytics support that, while not always a necessary service, provides clients with such information as site usage time, traffic volume and individual user frequency, allowing clients to tailor their site design to their targeted market
    8. Enables e-commerce system support, streamlining online payment to allow secure, timely and reliable transactions and payment confirmation.

    All of this sounds great, but the problem is, if you don’t know who you’re dealing with, what essential services you require and don’t research carefully, you can get stuck paying for services you don’t need or that don’t maximize your online commercial activity. If you don’t like that, there is good news: we carry out our management and updates as part of one done-for-you fee. If you’re a mid-sized enterprise trying to run a stream-lined, online enterprise and take it to the next level, or you’re a small business looking to break through into your respective industry, creating a well-managed and affordable online presence is key. That’s where Web321 comes in. Web321 offers industry-tested, constantly-updated, consumer-driven and economical web design and web management services to meet your business’s needs. With a price of $321 per month, Web 321 is offering a bargain compared to the fees charges by other providers, you get the following:

    1. 24/7 managed web presence, including website design and maintenance, search engine optimization, social media networking and online advertising, with unlimited support requests to handle the dynamic nature of your enterprise
    2. Daily site backup with malware and virus protection and real time site monitoring to address whatever problems you may encounter
    3. Design and development standards such as domain name registration, SSL, CDN and hosting to ensure that you have a solid foundation in the online marketplace to maximize and maintain your desired traffic
    4. Per request, website design refresh every 2-3 years to ensure that your product remains attractive to Google and its avid users, another traffic maximizing feature
    5. Streamlined, three-step account set up that speedily and securely allows you to share your passion and allow Web321 to provide a quote, get to work, and continuously provide feedback and reports to get your brand to the next level,
    6. Custom booster packs for additional web management that includes brand awareness, online sales, impactful images, Google adwords and the latest techniques to generate maximum site traffic

    Just because these are unprecedented times does not mean these are impossible times. Whether you are entrenched in your industry or taking advantage of market opportunity, Web321 can help you accelerate your goals and dominate your online presence. Now is the time to take advantage of what the web has to offer; Web321 can make these unprecedented times exceptional times. Go to https://calendly.com/web321/lets-talk to begin your journey to making your business future better than ever.

  • It’s 2021: These Are Seven “Features” That Shouldn’t Cost Extra

    Seven “Features” That Shouldn’t Cost Extra

     

    When it comes to web design, there are many designers and packages available. Various players in the web industry have tried to differentiate themselves with new features and buzzwords – but how many of these “premium features” are actually standard? In many cases, your provider may be artificially throttling a feature they get for free, or in unlimited supply, just to turn around and sell it to you as something special.

    When looking for your next website design, make sure that you are not paying a premium for the following features: 

    1. WordPress Website

    WordPress websites are fast, powerful, and secure – but they are built using open-source software which, on its own, is free. Web developers may use WordPress as a foundation to build great websites, but they aren’t paying anything for the tool they’re using. Granted, it does take a small amount of effort for a developer to install WordPress and connect it to a database, but that’s true of any website content management system. WordPress should be marketed as a feature – because it’s definitely one of the better platforms out there – but if a package charges you a premium for WordPress, look out!

    2. Mobile-Ready

    In a time where almost everything is digitally driven, 45-55% of website audiences are viewing sites using mobile devices. In fact, having a mobile-ready (“responsive”) website is more important than ever! 57% of users visiting a non-responsive website on their mobile device won’t recommend that business.   A good web designer should make every site they build responsive by default, without a premium charge. If your designer is trying to tack on extra fees for this “feature”, look elsewhere!

    3. 99% Uptime 

    Website uptime is the time that a website or web service is available to the users (“up”) over a given period. Optimal website uptime is 99.9%, which guarantees your website is up and running with only 43 minutes of downtime out of the 720 hours in a month. 

    If your website has an uptime of 99%, out of the 720 hours in a month, your website will have a downtime of 7.2 hours per month. That difference is huge!

    A 99% uptime guarantee is nothing special and falls far short of the minimum 99.9% uptime you should be looking for. If you’re being charged a premium for 99% uptime, in our opinion, you’re getting fleeced.

    4. Unlimited Email Addresses 

    Hearing “unlimited” always sounds like a win and mentally justifies a premium price. However, you may not know that most hosting comes with unlimited email addresses for your domain – all your web designer has to do is activate them for you. What’s actually limited is the drive space available on the server – and most providers will cap the size of each email account to prevent hitting the drive space limit. Essentially, if your web designer is charging you extra for more email addresses, they are charging you a premium for something they get for free.

    To put this in perspective, imagine a pizza parlour offering you a pizza that has 20 slices. This sounds like a great deal, however, is the pizza really any bigger than if they cut the same pizza into 10 slices? Be careful you aren’t paying more money for the same thing just because there’s a more impressive number attached.

    5. Unlimited Blogging 

    Here’s another example of how packages use the word “unlimited” to create the illusion of a juicy deal. The space available on your server, or server farm will reach a cap at some point. However, this cap is usually very large and isn’t a problem for most businesses (unless you’re an extremely large firm such as Facebook).  

    When it comes to blogging, you shouldn’t have a limit to how much you can publish. Blogging as a tool on your platform helps create viewership on your website and demonstrates your thought leadership. It gives you the opportunity to drive search traffic, generates leads, and acts as content for email newsletters. 

    If you’re given a limit of how many blogs you can post on your website, your provider is artificially throttling your growth simply so they can ask you for more money. The only limit on how much you blog isn’t server space – it’s subject matter and time. (We can actually help with that, too.)

    6. Unlimited Form Submissions

    Forms on your website allow your future clients to contact you about purchasing your services, request quotes, or inquire about your company. Form submissions are the key to successful conversion on your website. 

    Some providers are stingy with their bandwidth, and will actually throttle the number of form submissions you’re allowed – even though their capacity to handle form submissions is huge! This means that at some point, you’ll reach a limit of form submissions for a given time frame. If you want more, you’ll have to shell out extra money for this “feature”. Not cool.

    7. Content Editors 

    As your business grows, you’ll probably look towards hiring talent to contribute or edit the content on your website. A hidden element of some packages is artificial “limits” to how many content editors you are allowed on your website. On WordPress websites, for example, there are no practical limits to how many editors you can add to the site – unless your web developer imposes one.

    When it comes to your website, you may want to limit the number of content contributors for administrative or tracking purposes, but your web provider should never impose a technical limit on this number. If they do, they’re likely looking to make an extra buck off you.

    Web321 is Different

    At Web321, we know you don’t have money to waste. You shouldn’t need to bribe your web design, web management or hosting company for features that should come standard. Our pricing structure is simple – $321 for everything you need, no artificial limits imposed. That means if we don’t pay for it, neither do you.

    So if you want an all-in-one web design, hosting, and management experience that includes standard in every build:

    • WordPress website platform
    • mobile responsiveness for every screen size
    • free premium plugins
    • 99.9% uptime guarantee
    • unlimited email addresses
    • unlimited blogging
    • unlimited form submissions
    • unlimited content editors
    • unlimited done-for-you content updates
    • and a lot more

    …visit our website at https://web321.co or email us at [email protected] for info.

     

We’ll take good care of your website.

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