9 Secrets to Running a Successful Shopping Cart Website

You will need ecommerce website design if you are into retail business. Here are some tips to build and manage a successful shopping cart website.

Simplicity

Your business website design must be simple. It should not contain all the bells and whistles like flash animation, background music, etc. Users are accessing your website while on the go; the last thing they want is slow loading flash or a blaring background music. Also, keep your Affordable Shopping cart design presentable, simple and free from clutter. That way, the users will quickly find what they need without delay. Apple.com is the best example of a clutter free site.

Always Respond Quickly

When customers submit an enquiry, you must respond quickly. A lazy response to customer queries is a surefire way to lose them. If they order your product, make sure that a receipt is sent to them along with delivery details. If you are on a vacation, then delegate the job of checking your official email to your employee. Also have a customer support number which is manned during your work hours with a facility to leave voice messages during non-working hours.

Interact with Customers Online

Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest can help you build your own community where you can interact with your customers and fans. Fans can also share their experiences about using your product and post it on your social media page. In fact, positive online reviews especially via social media can add credibility to your brand and help in word-of-mouth marketing. You can also have a blog where healthy discussions take place regarding your subject of expertise. A blog can also have sharing buttons so that a wider range of people can benefit from the knowledge.

Have Customers Comeback for More

Your must keep the company website constantly updated with fresh content. Therefore it is good to have a dynamic website with a blog which is constantly updated with interesting articles, so that visitors keep coming back for more. Also make sure that the blog has a comments section with Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons. You can even run offers like “50% off for a day”. This will create interest and the visitors keep coming back for more. Repeat visits to you website by your loyal customers, may even lead to product sales.

Optimize within Limits

Do not try too hard to optimize your website. Let the content feel natural and not be studded with too many keywords. Let it be interesting and readable. If you try to stuff keywords in every nook and corner, your website will be regarded as spam site and demoted by Google. Remember that the key to top SEO ranking is quality content.

Avoid too many Listings

There is a general view that submitting links to various directories, will cause Google to give you a good ranking. The fact of the matter is that Google actually recognises these web directories as ‘bad neighbourhoods’. If your website is listed there, it will be taken as a spam website.

Build your Mailing list

Have visitors to your website to sign up for a free E-Book. They should be able to subscribe to it by submitting their name and email. Thus you can send out newsletters to your subscribers once or twice a month. Take care not to bombard their inbox with more frequent newsletters. Also have an option for your subscribers to opt out. Thus you can build a community of subscribers with whom you can interact and send special offers on your products.

Customer Service

In spite of the advancement in technology; you still cannot replace the element of ‘a human touch’. Having an online shop is not just about getting orders, counting money and asking the shipping guys to handle the rest. You must have customer support executives who are real and not virtual beings; they must be handling customer calls. Customers may encounter a lot of problems. It could be that your website accepted the payment two times, or probably they ordered two times, or perhaps the product with another color or size got delivered. There are many concerns which a customer support person must resolve. This cannot be done by a robot or any virtual telephone assistant. When customer concerns are taken care of, they don’t mind giving you a positive review, whether it be online or by ‘word of mouth’. This generates trust.

Easy Payment

Make your payment method easy. You could opt for an ecommerce solution like Shopify or integrate your site with Paypal. A successful shopping cart website cannot be build overnight. It can definitely evolve into a success over a period of time, by following the right steps. Do you have any favourite tip for promoting an ecommerce website? Do let us know in the comments below.

Tips for Creating Evergreen & Quality Content

When you plan to write evergreen content for your blog, it obviously needs to be subject-specific and stand the test of time. Is this possible in today’s ever-changing world, where technology is changing rapidly? So how will you make sure that it stays relevant time and will continue to get traffic? Here are some tips.

Let content match your product

Let’s say, for example, you own a fashion brand. In this field, there are tonnes of great content ideas you may come up within a short period of time. However, if you are selling a less glamorous product like a mosquito repellent, or house cleaning services, then the content obviously cannot be as glamorous or interesting like the former.

Nevertheless, we found the following pest control blogs very interesting:

http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/community

http://www.thermal-clean.com/blog/

Therefore, it goes without saying that you don’t need a glamorous product to write a great blog. Your blogs can be just as interesting, even if you don’t have a fashion product to sell.

Identify Customer Problems and Solve Them

Customers will flock to your site when they know what they will get from you. If you own a restaurant, then they may be interested in your popular recipes, if you are fashion designer, they may ask you for grooming tips and so on.

Here are some DIY and problem-solving sites that we found helpful.

http://www.doityourself.com/

http://www.ana-white.com/

http://www.curbly.com/

These sites basically fulfil the needs of their respected visitors by providing solutions to most of their problems in a DIY (do-it-yourself) format. Most of the DIY solutions given in these sites will remain ever-green at least for a long time.

Search the Analytics

Check out the site stats to see which search keyword is most commonly used to get to your website. Once you analyse the valuable site data, you will know for sure what works and what doesn’t. You can check the traffic stats to know which kind of posting is attracting huge traffic and which isn’t.

Check out Keywords Rankings– Update Content, Keep it Fresh

Check out the keywords you want to rank for and how those are actually ranking. Find out which keywords are doing better and which are not ranking well. You may plan your content likewise (by incorporating the required keywords in the right proportion. It is possible that the keywords which ranked well, came down due to old content; if so you need to tweak the related content a little bit and make your keyword rank well again.

An old blog need not necessarily be discarded. It just needs to be prepped up with the latest information & added graphics and updated once again.

Be Specific and Technical

Your blog pertains to your niche, so don’t shy away from being technical. Your aim is not to please all audiences, but to deliver the right traffic to your site. So it helps you in the long run to be more subject specific in your blog; avoid the urge to be generic and understandable by one and all.

Curated Content

People have an obsession with the top 10 of everything. Create a curated post containing the top 10 of your respective field. I’m sure people will love it. You may further include links inside those postings for further information. People also love listings and the will definitely come back to your site, to see more of it.

The above tips will help you carve out evergreen content for your blog. The term ‘Go Green’ doesn’t just refer to your environment. It applies to your blog too (pun intended)!

how to increase website traffic, Drive more Traffic to your Website

Strategies to Drive more Traffic to your Website

In the era of social media and online marketing, many people are getting enlightened about websites and the benefits of having an online presence. However, getting your website done for your business is just for starters. Once your business is online, you need to know how to drive more traffic to your website. Run Promotions with Key Influencers Check out the influencers in your particular field and bring them in. Start a contest, where the prize will, of course, be sponsored by you. Let the influencer be the ‘star attraction’ and gather all the attention you will need for the contest. It is mutually beneficial for both of you, as you stand together in success. Advertise Blog Content on Facebook Yes, indeed! You may advertise your blog posts on Facebook. But some might say, “I want to know how to increase website traffic ‘without’ placing ads, losing money and filing for bankruptcy”. You may be correct. However, the good news is that there are ways to advertise in the right way, and not lose money. You may consider placing and place gated content on your blogs, to invite email registrations to build up your subscriber list and work on those with a solid email strategy. That’s because, advertising value-added posts yields a better response than selling things at the outset. Advertise to Custom Audience Advertise your lead generating content after creating a custom audience on Facebook and reap the rich rewards. Facebook helps create an audience similar to your current subscribers and thereby targets the right audience for your advertisements. Once you target the right audience with your ads, promotions and offers, there is a chance of improving your click through rate. Create Great content Your content must reach out to your audience in innovative ways, and help them achieve their objectives. It can be a “DIY (do it yourself) or How-to” post enabling people to achieve their goals, in a practical way. People will be therefore be glad to read your content and to apply your suggestions in their daily life. You may thus follow the below steps:

Provide valuable content
Promote it in the right way
Use the right influencers
Use proper promotion channels
Promote to the right audience

We are providing Cheap Web Design, Hosting and SEO Services around Australia. In this video SEO Expert Brian Dean, speaks about a 3-step process you can use to get more traffic from Google…without higher rankings. He also talks about a “2-minute tweak” for insanely-competitive keyword rankings and the 8 words you NEED to have on every page in your site if you’re serious about SEO in 2016. And more… Answer Questions on Quora Question and Answer sites like Quora are not just there to provide information. They can get you quality audience and leads as well. All you need to do is to answer questions in your field of specialisation. Once you are proficient and consistent with your answers, you will definitely gain the reputation as an expert in your particular field. Gaining reputation is something which cannot be accomplished overnight. You need a lot of patience and persist answering questions; do it rightly for a period of time. Once you are perceived as an expert in your field, then people will flock to your blog or website as a source of valuable information. There are much more ways to increase website traffic. We may therefore choose them according to our preferences. So, which is your favourite way of doing achieving website traffic? Do let us know in the comments below.

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Fabulous Blog-post Ideas that will make your Blog “HOT”

We have always spoken about blogs and their importance in online marketing. However, coming up with blog post ideas all the time is not possible at all. Even if you have the knowledge on the subject, coming up with new titles every time can be very demanding. So here are a few tips, which may come in handy when you are starved for blog post ideas.

Play the part of a journalist

Attend an event related to your field of work. Take pictures, interview people. Write back a blog on the event. This is basically reporting and nothing else. However, when it goes together with blogging, the result can simply be a ‘fresh and relevant blog post’. The bottom line is that you are providing useful content, and better still you are reporting LIVE.

Take a Popular Post and Comment

It is one of the best ways to build your authority as an expert in your field. Comment on a blog or article written by experts and give your take on it (after providing a link to their original posting). Commenting on the blog articles by experts also gets you possible back links, or better still, a re-tweet. This will definitely generate extra traffic on your blog.

Insider’s Secrets

Give your fans, some insight into your field, and how things work. No, I’m not asking you to spill the beans and tell them all your business secrets. However, let them into your world and give them a glimpse of what your average day looks like.

For e.g., if you are a martial arts expert, post a video of martial arts and self-defence. The audience will be grateful that they learnt some new self-defence secrets. In reality, you are not giving anything away. They will still need to enrol for your classes to learn it anyway. Nevertheless, you have created a rapport, and they will definitely come back to your page for more tips.

Expert Opinions

You will need to establish connections with experts in your particular field. Then, you can ask for their take on a particular issue. Ask them a set of questions, and record their replies for future postings. Each question you ask them can similarly be posed to other experts. In fact your questions, have the potential to become separate blog ideas, where your field experts talk on different issues.

Once you do this with the permission of the concerned speakers, publish them as a new blog, and tag them in your post. If you are good, chances are that you will earn a re-tweet and the eyeballs of their followers, who usually come in hundreds of thousands.

Generate Infographics

Many a time, when bloggers are starved for blog post ideas, they can turn to graphics. Infographics are very much in demand, especially those relevant to social media and online marketing. You may choose any other area depending on your expertise and make relevant statistics available, after adequate research.

Behind the Scenes Post

When you are short of blog topics, you can try this behind-the-scenes post. You basically let your audience into your production, retail or service facility through posting pictures of your employees, office, staff recreation and other significant office events. The idea is to let people know that there are human faces at work, behind the brand logo. That way, people associate themselves with the company, as they see for sure that humans with emotions run the company and not robots (no pun intended).

Are there any blog ideas that we have left out? Do let us know in the comments below.

What you need to know about Google Penguin 4.0 Algorithm Update

When Google Penguin algorithm update arrived in 2012, it is expected to take on websites which incorporate Black – Hat SEO techniques to boost their rankings. However, companies resort to paying money and buying links via link networks in a bid to top the rankings. The arrival of the Penguin 4.0 update in 2016, serves as a knockout punch for such websites. So what’s with the New Penguin Update? Four years on, this is the 7th version of the Penguin ‘Behemoth’ and it is definitely ‘armed to the teeth’! In the past, the websites which were affected by Penguin were periodically refreshed. Now Penguin doesn’t need another update to take care of the affected websites. It will re-enforce its impact, by re-crawling and re-indexing the web page. An official statement from Google’s Gary Illyes says, “With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we re-crawl and re-index a page. It also means we’re not going to comment on future refreshes.” Penguin 4.0 is Real-time The problem with earlier versions of Penguin was that, even if the affected websites would make amends by following Google Best Practices, Penguin would need to be refreshed, in order for you to get back your rankings. However, Penguin 4.0 operates in real-time; all it takes is a re-crawl and re-indexing to get back your site ranking. Penguin is More Specific Web pages with spam content will definitely be penalised, however, the overall website ranking will not be affected. Only the particular webpage in question will bear the brunt of it. Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. In this video Barry Schwartz talks about the Penguin 4.0 Algorithm update and some early observations of its “aftermath”. What are Penguin Recoveries? If you have suffered the ‘wrath’ of Penguin 4.0 and your SEO rankings have gone down, you obviously need to recover from the loss. This recovery process can take from 72 hours to several months to resolve. The recovery depends on the below factors:

The kind of penalty
Severity of the problem you are facing
Precise identification of the faults
How soon you are able to resolve these issues
The timing of your re-consideration request. (However, this is conditional. It doesn’t apply in all cases)

Do we need to worry about Penguin 4.0 Algorithm? Penguin 4.0 is not something to worry about, especially when you are maintaining a high level of SEO practice. Even if your website is affected, you don’t need to wait for two years for a fresh update. Penguin is real-time; you can get back what you have lost if you make the necessary amends. We will throw more light on ‘how to recover your lost SEO ranking’ in a future blog post. Do let us know your thoughts in the comments below.