Four Essential Ways for Small Businesses to Boost Sales through Digital Marketing

When it comes to increasing sales, nothing can compare to the power of the internet. Whether you have a local place of business or an online global presence, there is no better way to reach millions of people, literally overnight. Small businesses looking to boost sales should really investigate how to accomplish that through digital marketing. Here are four essential ways for small businesses to boost sales through digital marketing.

1) Go Mobile

Recent statistics indicate that more people shop from their mobile devices than they do from their home PCs. In fact, it is such a huge portion of the market that Google even changed their algorithms to better serve mobile searchers. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, now is the time to act. Make sure your online marketing is mobile friendly. Not only will you rank better with the search giant, but you will reach a significant portion of your market that you would have otherwise missed out on.

2) Online Discounts & Vouchers

Another great way to boost sales online through digital marketing is to advertise great savings with online discounts and vouchers not available at physical locations. People love a bargain and when they feel like they are getting a product at a saving they wouldn’t get at their local retailer, they will jump on the chance to save money. You can even find out which discounts and vouchers to offer with online tools that show in real time UK retail spending trends. This is perhaps the best way to boost sales based on buying trends.

3) Social Media

It has become almost cliché to hear marketers saying “We are social creatures.” But, in reality, that is exactly what we are. Marketing experts tell us that people will spend more money with someone they trust than from some unknown person or entity. In other words, they aren’t really spending money as much on your product as they are on you. If they trust you after having built a relationship through social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) they may even pay more for your goods than they would at another shop. Why? Again, the trust factor. Social media is great for establishing trust and if you don’t employ this as part of your digital marketing, you are losing a huge portion of the buying public.

4) Pictures, Videos and Infographics

Finally, people want to see what they are buying. Use pictures, videos and infographics to display products and to show why a consumer should buy them. Many innovative ecommerce sites have gone to 360 panoramic views of products so that viewers can see all sides in one shot. This is especially important in the fashion industry as the shopper can see both the front and the back of a garment as opposed to a stock shot of that item in a box.

Again, whether you are looking to build foot traffic in a physical location or to increase online sales, there is nothing like the broad and rapid reach of the information superhighway, the internet. Use these four essential ways to boost sales and you will see just how quickly digital marketing campaigns can make a difference.

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Why Website Experience is Critical to Business Success

Marketers have long postulated that “your website is your best salesperson,” and this statement is probably the best way to describe the importance of having a neat and informative company website that interacts with the audience. Considering the number of internet users who browse the web to find products and services they need, it’s clear why your website needs to provide seamless user experience.

Moreover, user experience can even determine the way people perceive a brand, which is another reason why webmasters should adopt a user-centric approach to building a website. Namely, as confirmed in an earlier research by PEER 1 Hosting, 76% of ecommerce decision makers claim website experience and brand perception are directly related.

Mobile is the next conversion platform

Few years ago, building a mobile-friendly website was rather optional, while today it is an imperative for businesses large and small. Even Google is preparing to roll out a new algorithm that is supposed to affect around 50% of search results according to some estimates. This means that half of the websites out there are still not optimized for mobile display, which translates into lost visits and potential purchases from mobile devices.

Given that today web users increasingly make purchases or calls from smartphones and tablets, mobile website is one of the critical aspects of user experience that needs to be considered. In a survey mentioned above, 35% of respondents pointed that mobile device compatibility contributed to overall business, which clearly points to the importance of this.

Overall design encourages people to complete actions

Once you ensure a visitor can actually land on your website, you need to make it easy for them to navigate across your pages. Here, simplicity is the key because it enables even the first time visitors to easily understand what your website is about and how to get to the specific pages they have been looking for.

Again, different studies on user behavior reveal that if a visitor doesn’t see what he or she has been searching for immediately on the page, they are likely to leave – frustrated. This is why a well-designed company website needs to display information in readable format and ensure every call-to-action or internal link is transparent. Coupled with graphic and textual elements that successfully communicate messages relevant to user’s query, such pages are more likely to drive conversions.

Speed is critical for user retention

Slow loading pages have always been seen as a major negative user experience trigger and are the most important aspect of your website you need to optimize. As reported by Kissmetrics, 47% of users are likely to leave a website if it takes longer than 2 seconds to load, while the research by Ensighten previously proved that this also negatively affects conversion rates.

Therefore, improving page load time is critical to website success and it should be done by writing a clean code, optimizing images for faster load and minimizing HTTP requests. Furthermore, the choice of a local web hosting provider and a scalable plan that supports your growth can be another way to overcome this issue. For example, if you’re running a local business in Sydney, choosing a web hosting provider that uses Australian servers would guarantee faster page load time. The same goes for businesses in Switzerland or any other region.

These are again rather technical aspects that you need to handle, but whose overall impact may well be worth your time and effort. By making the right decisions about everything from a web hosting package to the design and development team, you can ensure the best performance of your pages and, therefore, a greater number of satisfied users.

Conclusions

Considering the extent to which people nowadays rely on the internet search, it’s unsurprising that they’re increasingly expecting seamless experience on company websites. For website owners, this means that if a website fails to load properly on different devices, your prospects are likely to abandon it and try to find relevant information elsewhere. Obviously, this may translate into a lost revenue, which is certainly a scenario every business wants to avoid.

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Start-up Story: SqueezeIT – My Fight Back

Read part 1 and part 2.

I then checked out Thebeesknees in California to make sure they were legit, they even phoned me and answered any questions I had for them so that put my mind at ease and I could buy the software in a white label (see Wikipedia) version which meant I would own it outright.

Researching Irish market

So next I decided to research the Irish market again in more detail and be the master of my own destiny – and hopefully business – to see if anyone was specialising in this type of service and found that although there was plenty of web design companies offering mobile site services none were specialising in adapting websites for mobiles so I decided to keep going. I was actually beginning to enjoy my little adventure!!

I even contacted some of them to see if they would be interested in working with me and needless to say I was underwhelmed by the avalanche of responses I received.

I joined meetup and went to various meetings and got mostly positive feedback on what I wanted to do during 2014 as further research and also to network but everyone was “too busy” or wanted to be paid from day 1 which was not possible. Discouraged? Moi? No way Jose!!

Name and resources

I decided on the name SqueezeIT for the company and registered the name with the Companies Registration Office (CRO).

Actually one company I contacted said that they could offer the same service as me but after four weeks I still haven’t heard from them, so go figure. I also researched pricing in the market and drafted a business plan.

One thing I was adamant about was to use my own resources to get everything started and not rely on others until I had something to “show” for my efforts as I also wanted to find a business partner to work with from a similar technical area as mine to achieve some credibility.

I then researched and decided on my target market – both offline and online – but that I will keep under wraps for now as it has been decided on at this stage but it did take some time. The devil is in the detail as they say.

To be continued…

Written by Aidan Murray. As part of ‘Use SBC as a channel’ initiative, SqueezeIT has an exclusive offer for SBC members: “We will waive the 100 euro deposit for the first five companies that sign up for our service with us and will give a 50% discount for the next five businesses.”

For more information on this business visit Partner Site: emergo-online.com | Email: squeezeit@yandex.com |Phone: 087 261 7576.

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How Small Businesses Benefit from Mobile Technology

In the past, it was not always possible for a single person or a small business to compete with large businesses or corporations. Limits came in the form of physical restrictions or infrastructure restrictions. Now, however, with the onset of new technology, and specifically mobile technology, the playing field is becoming more even. Three of the aspects of new tech that are making this happen are cloud computing, mobile devices and industrial flexibility. Let’s look at how small businesses benefit from mobile technology…

The Advantage of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a big deal. A huge deal. A shift in business operations that shakes the very core of operations. No longer does a person need physical hardware in a specific location to do computer work. Now, through a network of shared virtual space in the cloud, all of that work can be done through the Internet. In terms of efficiency and adaptability, it is the perfect system for new, small businesses, because they no longer have to invest in prohibitively expensive hardware solutions to things like networking. Basically, small business can rent the space and computing power that they need, and expand later when they have to. Plus, because it’s in the cloud, they can connect to this power wherever there is internet.

The Advantage of Mobile Devices

Big business used to have an advantage because all of their resources were in one place, and all of their employees could get to them. T-Mobile now offers efficient, powerful and long-lasting mobile devices as well as its ‘no reason to get stuck’ option to give small business owners the power to business from anywhere.” Connectivity is exploding in terms of efficiency and data transfer rates, so where the advantage used to come from centralized resources, now the advantage is coming from centralized communication. This is a huge shift, and one that bodes well for creative people who work hard on the go. As mobile devices get better and faster, and networks grow stronger, this is only going to benefit small businesses more.

The Advantage of Industrial Flexibility

Another part of infrastructure that often foiled small business was production and distribution. Now, however, with mobile technology, business orders can be given through third-party production and distribution companies in real-time through the cloud, and order information and navigation data happens immediately. Once again, the advantage big business had of individual factories and shipping facilities is now turning into a disadvantage, because mobile technology is setting business communication free from the shackles of time and space.

Centralizing communication, rather than centralizing resources, is at the heart of mobile development, and this is the primary reason that small business owners can take heart that with a good business plan, the opportunities for success now are much greater than they were in the past. If your idea is good, if your plan is legitimate and logical, and if you have a product or service in mind that has a target audience that is out there waiting for you, then now is the time to make use of mobile technology as its availability expands.

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