Monthly Archives: July 2019

Why Customer Experience is the Ultimate Marketing Tool?

Customer Experience

With the fast development of technology and the introduction of new technical gadgets, the workforce is changing day by day, and the businesses must be prepared and well equipped to match with the rapidly changing business world. Although the digitalization of services replaces every manual work process, the process of delivering an excellent Customer Experience (CX) will always be there as a significant element of success required by the competitive businesses’ organizations.

According to a survey, 92% of the customers believe verbal recommendations of their known people rather than believing an advertisement wholeheartedly. The new and advanced technology options like social media and review sites allow the business brands to utilize these types of recommendations and reviews of satisfied customers as trustable credentials to attract new customers.

What is the customer experience?

Customer experience or CX is the communication and exchange taken place between a customer and a business organization throughout their business. These communication and exchange may include innovation, promotion, support, discovery, advocacy, service, purchase, awareness, etc. Customer Experience is very much essential for Customer Relationship Management ( CRM) as a customer with a positive experience can become a loyal customer of a business brand or organization. The longer the customers are happy and satisfied with a business brand, the longer they will be a loyal and repetitive customer to the business brand. On the other hand, if the customers are poorly treated by the business brand or are not given enough attention and support, the customers will leave as soon as possible. This is the reason the business brands provide better-quality customer service.

How is customer experience different from customer service?

Customer service, in general, is the formal interaction of a customer with an employee of a business brand over telephonic conversation or visit at the store. However, customer experience is the impression the customer has even after the formal introduction or the delivery of the required product or service. For example, if a customer receives good behavior while interacting with an employee of a tourism company while booking a tour package, it is excellent customer service. However, when the customer gets the tickets early, gets a better room than what was promised, and receives personalized services instead of general services, it generates an excellent customer experience. With the help of the advanced technology, nowadays customer service is not just the interaction between two persons, with the help of software’s like CRM, a customer’s previous purchase history can be traced and analyzing that, a company can assume his future needs while providing a service at present. So, the company can send him emails, texts and other forms of advertisements related to those requirements. It makes the customer surprised and happy, and he becomes loyal and constant to the company.

Steps to Improve Customer Experience:

If a business provider follows the steps described below, it can become successful in improving customer satisfaction and increased revenues.

Reachability: Reachability does not refer to the physical stores only; it includes the social media where the modern-day tech-savvy customers spend a significant amount of time. With the help of the social media account, the customers can easily reach to the services of the business brand.

Fixing problems: The business providers have to be very aware of the response to their newly launched products, and they need to perform continuous monitoring over the performance of the products. They need to find and fix any problem that the outcome might have before a customer finds it and experience dissatisfaction.

Do not harass users: Although email is a powerful medium to reach more customers and sell a product, a business provider should not send a bunch of emails frequently to the users. It might annoy them, and they may decide to unfollow the business provider. Some in-app-message services can be used as they are more relevant and useful than email marketing.

Personalization: The pizza brand ‘Toppers’ allows its customers to customize the drawings on the pizza boxes and adding a personalized message. By doing so, Toppers make the customers feel that their decisions and inputs are appreciated and accepted by the brand. It ensures a special bond between the customers and Toppers. Customers like to see their idea featured on the reputed brands.

Giving away free stuff: Everyone loves to get something which costs nothing, and this is a great strategy to enhance the customer experience. Personalized gifts, bonus, coupons, etc. deepens the relationship between a company and its customers and the satisfied customers become frequent purchasers.

Making people famous: If a company uses its customers’ photo and identity (with their permission) in its website, social media, blogs, etc. to tell their satisfactory words, those customers may feel themselves as similar to the brand ambassadors who will enhance the customer experience. The other customers will also recognize the company as a customer-focused one.

Remembering previous purchase: During a customer’s revisit a company website, if he sees his last purchase items as recommended items, it will make him remember his past interactions with the company. It will make the customer feel valued and appreciated by the company.

Final words

We can conclude to the thought that to enhance the relation and bond between the customers and the business brands, customer service plays a vital role. Customer experience is a sort of commitments that a company makes to understand its positive impact on the daily lives of its customers. By following the effective strategies of enhancing customer experience, a business can maximize benefits, boost up, and most importantly, grab new customers while making the existing ones loyal and regular customers.

Top Five Pay Per Click Mistakes

Pay per click

Pay per click or PPC advertising is very much useful to gain more and more potential customers to the business website of a business owner. The process is unbelievably simple. The business owner has to create a series of advertisements and therefore link them to particular phrases or keywords. When a customer searches for something on the internet, using those specific keywords, the advertisements of the business owner shows up as search results. Tools like Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc. help a business owner to display his ad in the sponsored results of the search. The business owner has to pay a fee whenever a person clicks the advertisement to reach his website. It is an effortless and ideal way for new sites to attract organic traffic.
However, Pay per click advertisements can be pretty risky for a business owner if it is not executed correctly. It may result in spending a large amount of money without getting the expected number of new customers. For the original websites, there are some guidelines to avoid these costly mistakes. This article will guide the readers about the five expensive mistakes to avoid when running a PPC advertisement.

1. Sending customers to the Homepage:

Suppose, a business owner sells a specific model of a mobile phone like Nokia E6500 on his website, along with many other items. So, he creates an advertisement using the proper keywords related to that particular model but links the URL which redirects the customers to the homepage of his website. Now, the customer has to go through a series of undesired products on the homepage to finally reach his expected outcome. Moreover, if the customer is pretty impatient, he will quit his search, leave the website, and go to other websites. However, since the customer had clicked on the advertisement, the business owner has to pay money without getting the deal. To avoid this, it is better to add such a URL that redirects the customers to the particular product that he is looking for.

2. Sending visitors to the contact page:

Some business owners link the contact page of their website instead of the product description pages and indirectly force them to subscribe for newsletters or fill user information forms. The customers, instead of filling those forms or subscribing, get frustrated, and immediately leave the website, causing a loss for the business owners. This practice is also against the rules and guidelines set by Google Adwords.

3. Do not split testing ad text:

A business owner should not run Pay per click advertisements without testing them. Before releasing the ad, he must create multiple versions of the ad and test run them in various ad groups. In this manner, the most effective way to reach maximum customers by using proper keywords can be identified. Almost all the Pay per click engines allows splitting tests. However, some Pay per click platforms display the advertisement variation successfully by using a predictive algorithm, but at the same time, this weakens the integrity of the split test data.

4. Too much depending on ‘broad match’ keyword advertisements:

Broad match keyword advertisement is a setting which allows showing search results including the variation of the keywords along with the original keyword phrase-based search results. It is good to boost traffic potential, but it can force to spend extra money as customers seeking for other results can click on these ads which are not useful for them, but causing the business owner pay for it. For example, if a business owner links broad match advertisement with the phrase “Tennis shoes,” the search result will include irrelevant products like “Tennis bags.” “Basketball Shoes,” “Football Shoes,” “Tennis Racquets,” “Tennis equipment,” etc. If the customer clicks on these products, the company has to pay extra even when the customers are not interested in buying those items. So, setting the advertisements to exact search results may decrease the traffic, but it will confine the search results to limited products without making someone spend extra amount.

5. Not utilizing the advantages of the negative keywords:

A negative keyword is the prevention of the advertisements in other search results triggered by a particular word or phrase. If a basketball seller lists “Baseball’, “Tennis ball,” “Football” etc. as negative keywords, then his advertisements will not be shown to those who are searching for footballs, baseballs or tennis balls. Thus, his ad will be limited to basketball-related sought only. Again, Negative keywords eliminate potential traffics, but it reduces the extra costs as the advertisements are clicked by the Target customers only.

Summing up:

In digital marketing, Pay per click advertisements are very much helpful for the new and small entrepreneurs. If this process is correctly used, then it can help the new business start-ups increase their conversion rates and decrease the customer attainment rate. Frequent updates, campaign modification, keyword management, etc. are very much crucial for the Pay per click advertisements as this help to generate customer attention and targeted traffic.

Top 10 Reasons You Should Be Using WordPress for Your Business

WordPress

No matter whether you are planning to start a brand new business or you already have an established one, the first thing that you need to use as the main representation in front of the audience is a business website. However, there are times when you have no idea as to what it should be or where to start. This brings a new question as to how you can develop a good business website in an easy and fast manner. One simple solution to the same is to use WordPress.

WordPress is the most well-known content management system (CMS) and widely used by business managers when it comes to building a corporate website.

Mentioned below are the 10 major reasons why you should be using WordPress for your business.

1) WordPress is Free:

The first thing that comes in our mind when talking about the advantages of WordPress is that it is absolutely free. WordPress is an Open-source platform, this means you can easily download and install the WordPress CMS. Once installed, you can use and modify the same according to your requirements. The only cost that you may need to build a WordPress website is to hire a designer and buy a theme (if any).

2) Variety Of Themes To Choose From:

In WordPress, you can choose from a number of available themes. These themes are nicely organized to provide you with a nice interface of your business website. Apart from the free themes, there are many different premium themes that offer unlimited options like easy to use page builder, plugins, etc.

3) Easy to Use:

WordPress is made in such a way so that it can be handled even by the people who have no basic idea about coding. Therefore, it is the best solution for anyone who wants to develop a simple website for his/her business. In order to create a WordPress website, you just need to choose a theme and use its feature. In no time, you will get a website to represent your business online.

4) SEO Friendly:

WordPress is written by using high-quality codes and markup, which is good for Google and other search engines. This gives WordPress website an added advantage in regard to the SEO. By nature, WordPress is SEO friendly and it is a common fact that WordPress websites tend to rank higher in search engines than websites developed on other platforms.

5) WordPress is Secure:

Given the fact that the internet is full of threats of online spammers, malware, and virus, it is important to build a business website that is fully safe and secure. By default, WordPress is designed in such a way so it can provide you with a very safe and secure platform. Also, you can protect your WordPress website by using some simple means.

6) Responsive Web Technology:

A responsive website is a mandatory feature.WordPress automatically gives you the benefit of responsive web technology. By using WordPress, you don’t need to create different versions of your website for different devices.

7) Easy Content Update:

Content is still the king and in order to do well in the search engine, you must upload fresh content on your website. A website with stagnant content is considered as ‘dead’ in search engines and can negatively affect your online marketing campaigns. In WordPress, you can easily upload content on any page in no time. You can add, edit, or remove the content of your WordPress site very frequently without going through several complicated steps.

8) Good WordPress Community:

In case you need any assistance in regard to the development of your WordPress website, you can ask help from the WordPress developer community. You can also go through tutorials as to how you can solve a particular problem. The resources that are available in the WordPress community are well organized and you can easily find the assistance you are looking for.

9) Great Blogging Platform:

WordPress is a heaven for the bloggers. Given the importance of uploading fresh content on your business website, it is absolutely necessary that you start a blog. A blog is important to publish content regularly for your audience.

10) Plugins:

Just like the themes, there are many different free and premium plugins available for you to use. You can use these plugins to add any functionality to your business website. Plugins are like apps that you can use to implement several features like analytic, SEO Meta tags, contact form, and more.

10 Critical SEO Checklist Items for Website Design & Development

SEO

The website developer may not be as knowledgeable as an SEO expert when it comes to creating a website that does well in the search engine. Although website development needs a set of technical skills, many different factors should be implemented to make your website SEO friendly. The only way you can ensure that you have incorporated the best SEO practices for your website is to follow a standard checklist. These points are essential SEO recommendations that a newly developed website must have from an SEO perspective.

Mentioned below are the 10 critical SEO checklist items for website design & development.

Checklist #1: Am I Building a Mobile Friendly Website?

The first thing the developers should keep in mind is that the site should perform well in all mobile devices. When it comes to design a mobile-friendly website, developers mainly consider following standard development techniques by using a responsive CSS stylesheet. However, some developers prefer to build a separate mobile subdomain. Although there is nothing wrong in creating a subdomain for the mobile version of your website, it is undoubtedly going to make your SEO difficult. This is because Google will consider the mobile subdomain as a separate web property, which will make specific SEO tasks more difficult.

Checklist #2: Is My Robots.txt File Correct?

There are times when the developer feels it necessary to block a specific part of the website or even the entire domain before it goes online. Usually, this is done by using a disallow command in the robots.txt file. This is normal, but the problem arrives when the developers forget to remove the disallow command even after when the site becomes live. It is essential to upload a correct robot.txt file once the site is live. The developer should always make sure that there is no disallow directive in the robots.txt site unless the client purposively asks the same. Using a Disallow: / command in the robots.txt means you are telling search engines not to crawl your website, which can be a significant mistake in SEO.

Checklist #3: Am I Using Correct HTML?

Sometimes, common HTML errors can become a significant problem regarding the site’s average loading speed and result in the poor rendering of the website on various platforms. Since Google now considers site loading speed as one of the most common ranking factors, having a slow site causes issues with site performance regarding keyword ranking. It is recommended that your website uses only W3C valid code. Although W3C validation is not mandatory for classification, it can indirectly affect your keyword ranking. Better coding can also help Google understand your website structure better and improves user experience.

Checklist #4: Am I Optimizing the Images Correctly?

Image optimization is one of the most common factors when it comes to improving your site’s average loading speed and is an important SEO parameter. You may use a high-quality massive image to give a stunning look to your website, but it increases the load time of the website. There is no harm in using a high-quality image on your site if the image is compressed correctly. Image compression guarantees that the quality of the image remains the same, but the image becomes lighter.

Checklist#5: Do the Images Contain Alt Attributes?

Image alt attribution is another essential part of image optimization. Alt attribution is used to tell the search engines about the context of the image. It is necessary to use the best keywords as image Alt tags to get the most of SEO benefits.

Checklist#6: Is the Analytic Code Implemented?

Analytic tracking code is another important factor regarding website SEO. It is also essential that the developer adds properly search console and Google Analytic code to check the health and track the traffic of the website. Apart from the Google search console and Analytic tool, you can use many other tools that are available online.

Checklist #7: Is the Server Using GZip Compression?

GZip compression is an essential element that lets the server compress files for faster network transfers. This type of compression makes sure that your web server provides smaller file sizes, which load faster for your website users. Enabling GZip compression is standard practice and can be considered an important SEO Checklist Item for Website Design & Development.

Checklist #8: Did I Upload a Sitemap.xml?

A sitemap is important for SEO as it tells search boats how to crawl a website easily. Sitemap file contains all the URLs of the website, and this is the most important thing that search engine crawler first sees in the website. The website crawling process becomes more comfortable when you if you put all your website links in one destination i.e., XML sitemap.

Checklist #9: Have I Fixed the Redirection Issue?

If overlooked by the site developer, there could be lots of redirection errors on a website. Some of the common redirection errors are 301, 302, 404, and many more. The best you can do in this regard is to review these issues by using an online tool and ask the developer to fix the same on a priority basis.

Checklist #10: Am I using Meta Title and Description?

Perhaps, the most important tags that affect your site’s SEO directly are the Meta Title and Meta Description tags. Title tags are important as it tells the search engine what your site is about. The Meta Title and Meta Description also appear in the search engine result page, so it’s very much important to optimize the same.

Why Build an Intuitive E-Commerce Site?

E-commerce site

Introduction

Gone those days, when people used to return home from work tired and again had to run to the nearby stores for grocery or other shops for their necessary commodities. Now, a person can order whatever he needs sitting in his office and enjoy doorstep delivery without any hazard with the help of the various E-commerce websites.

What is an E-commerce website?

E-commerce or Electronic commerce is a trade in which products and services are purchased or sold through the internet. In this type of business, funds and data are exchanged digitally between two or more parties. In earlier days, the widely used mediums of E-commerce were email and telephone calls. However, now, with the help of a complete E-commerce site, all the necessary things for a transaction can be done in a few minutes. The most commonly accessed E-commerce sites are the retail sites, but apart from them, there are many more, like auction sites, finance management sites, music portals, consultancy services etc.

Types of E-commerce sites

According to the functions and operations, E-commerce sites can be divided into the following major categories-

  • Business to consumer: Electronic transactions take place between consumers and companies.
  • Consumer to Business: Individual consumers make electronic transactions by offering their products to companies.
  • Business to business: Electronic transition takes place between two companies or service providers.
  • Consumer to Consumers: Electronic transaction takes place between consumers through a third party.

Why Build an Intuitive an Intuitive E-Commerce Site

Since everyone is running out of time, people prefer to purchase from home, rather than visiting a physical shop. The following points describe why it is essential for a business to have an intuitive E-commerce site.

A wide range of choice for the customers:

The E-commerce sites allow the buyers to select from a wide range of products offered by different E-commerce sites. A customer can easily compare the products sold by various sites online and can choose the best one easily.

Remote Business opportunity for the seller:

A physical store can drag the customers of a particular locality, but an E-commerce site has no geographical boundaries. A seller can participate in the world product as the E-commerce sites allow him to reach to the customers of remote regions and countries.

Price Comparison:

The E-commerce sites allow the customers to learn the different prices of the same products sold by different sellers, which will enable them to choose the most suitable products.

Time-saving:

Visiting multiple physical stores at different locations for one particular product kills much time of the customers. The E-commerce sites are time savers as customers search online instead of physically roaming here to there.

Adequate information:

before purchasing, a customer can get all the required info from the product description in the site. The dedicated online description pages serve as the catalogs of the individual products. Apart from this, a customer can quickly contact the seller through the internet for his further queries. Also, a customer can easily track the delivery status of the ordered goods.

Reduce the cost of manufacturers:

E-commerce sites allow the manufactures to reduce the value of the paperwork, documentation, distribution, and other managerial processes. Since there is no physical store required, the manufacturers do not have to pay for infrastructure or insurance. Very few licenses and permissions are required to run an E-commerce site, which is another advantage for the sellers.

Reduce the cost of advertisement and personnel:

Since the entire trade can be made through the internet, there are no requirements of flyers, billboards or other traditional ads, online digital campaigns are comparatively much cost efficient. As the whole process of purchase and exchange of money is conducted through online payment mode, no billing personnel are required to maintain the records.

24/7/365 support:

A physical store has fixed opening hours, so the customers have no option but to wait if they want to purchase something immediately at midnight or on holiday. Since the E-commerce sites are open 24/7/365, the customers can buy anything, anywhere at any time. It also allows the sellers to get more customers as those who work on odd schedules, can easily manage to get what they desire.

Analytics:

With the help of E-commerce site, the sellers can easily evaluate and calculate their customer engagements, productiveness, sales effectiveness, marketing data etc.

Search Engine Optimization:

Since the online business is completely based on the traffic coming from search engines, having better search engine optimization in the E-commerce site can boost up profitability as it helps to reach more new customers online.

Expand the market for new business:

The reputed brands have the advantages of verbal recommendations of their satisfied customers, but it becomes very difficult for a new business to find customers in the beginning. An intuitive E-commerce site allows the business to reach more customers without spending much in occupying physical space.

Creates a Brand:

A perfectly crafted E-commerce creates helps the business to earn a reputation of a reliable brand with its well arranged and organized layouts. The testimonials of the happy customers featured in the site help to gain the faith of the new customers as well.
So, it can be said that having a well crafted E-commerce site enables a business to reach new potential customers, save a lot of money, exploring new boundaries and achieving certain business goals.