Online presence is not only about having websites and social media accounts for your business but also about how the brand’s reputation is online.

It has become immensely crucial for small businesses and white-collar professionals to manage their reputation, as it affects their business directly. Managing online reputation involves social listening, actively participating in customer interaction, and includes proactive roles.

Therefore it has become necessary to have an Online Reputation Management (ORM) strategy or an ORM agency to handle your brand reputation online.  It allows businesses to look through a digital window, which evinces the avenues to improve and grow.

How to increase the reputation of your online business?

Ask your customers to write a review

What is worse than a negative review of you or your business online? Think! It’s not having a review at all.

Negative reviews are not always bad. If your brand has all the good reviews, the customer might not believe them at all. Negative reviews can be overpowered by positive ones.

Now the main question is, how do we encourage customers to write reviews for you or your business?

There are various methods to generate user reviews, some of which are listed below. Make sure you capture the attention of users to give you a review.

1. Email
2. In-App popups
3. Feedback prompt
4. Offline

An example of how an Uber Driver is encouraging customers to rate them. A message like this ensures that a customer rates the driver.

Expand your presence

Think extensively about your business and which platform people are more likely to use to search for you on the internet. You need to find out where your target audience is present and then leverage the power of social media channels. 

Most businesses and professionals have their presence on Facebook and thinking that it is enough, is a big mistake! Users rely on all types of websites to gather reviews.

• Yelp
• Facebook
• Google
• Trip Advisor
• Better Business Bureau
• Yellow Pages

Make sure you have a presence on all these platforms because it becomes extremely difficult to judge which platforms are trusted by maximum number of people.

Let us explain it by a simple example: A doctor did not list himself on Yelp, but customers still gave feedback and reviews on the portal. The timings and the phone numbers mentioned were all incorrect. Potential customers were turning into unhappy users as they were unable to communicate with the doctor.

In this situation, it would have been better if the doctor had claimed the business page and submitted correct information. Even if you received a negative review, at least potential customers now have a way to communicate with you. That is why it is important to spread out on all the portals where your customers might be present.

Encourage customers to upload the product in use

While you may be promoting your product or profession with high-quality pictures and videos, encourage your customers to upload pictures too.

77% of people say customers’ photos influence their buying decision more than professional pictures. The customer’s picture builds trust and gives authenticity to your brand which helps in improving your online reputation.

Find ways to get your customers to review your brand with pictures. A profitable giveaway, a chance to be featured on social media, are a few ways to get the customers to post pictures along with a review.

GoPro is benefiting from this marketing technique for many years now. They encourage customers to upload pictures that they have taken from their GoPro devices. It not only encourages customers to upload pictures on social media but also helps in increasing the conversion rate.

Respond to the public on social media

Social listening is a process that brands and individuals use to monitor social media channels for mentions, competitors, products or ideas which are relevant to their niche. This information is used to analyze the information for actionable insights. The action can be anything depending on the goal, like responding to a review or strategizing marketing for the future.

Customers will be talking about your brand on social media, make sure you notice. Thank the ones who have appreciated your business and maybe provide something extra which will keep them loyal to your brand. The ones who have left a negative comment are also important as this is where your customer service enters the testing waters. It is crucial as you want to defend your brand but would not want to start an argument with the customer.

Strategically plan your reply to a negative comment, address the issue at hand and provide the customer with a reasonable solution.

A restaurant received a negative review from the customer on Facebook. The restaurant apologized for the mistake but also moved the issue to another channel so that they can resolve the matter more privately.

Start working on your blogs

The best way to improve your online reputation is to build a domain authority which can be achieved by blogging.

A huge part of lead generation depends on blogging. Publishing quality content on a regular basis will help in SEO. Thus, helping in increasing inbound and outbound links.

Diesel cafe has a website and a dedicated blog section where they update their clients on new arrivals in the menu. This way the cafe is increasing their authority on search engines. 

Take advantage of tools that monitor your online reputation

How would a business know if their reputation in the market is good? Businesses can easily monitor reviews on their website and social media, but that is not enough to assess your online reputation. 

For example, a business has mentioned you in a negative light on their blog. Will monitoring Google and Facebook help? Would you ever get to know about it?

This is why it is important to take advantage of tools like Google Alert to monitor where your business name is being mentioned. 

Reputology is one of the dedicated solutions to help you analyze reviews and comments. The tool algorithm identifies the emotion of customers and finds an appropriate reply to the same. Some other important tools are: 

1. Mention
2. Buzzsumo
3. SentiOne
4. Chatmeter
5. Social Mention

The above screenshot shows a tool called Mention. When searched for Swiggy, it shows all the results where the word Swiggy is mentioned. It also shows the influencers who are using the brand name. A must-have tool to keep track of your online reputation. 

Partner with influencers

Influencers have the power to convince people to buy a product or do business with you. Just like user-generated content, they have the power to create social proof for the business.

Brands need to find appropriate influencers according to the niche of the business.

Instead of brands promoting their own image on their own page, influencers can show the product in use. People follow and listen to influencers because of their expertise in a particular area and when they approve of a product, it highly influences the decisions of consumers.

Skinny mint collaborated with Kylie Jenner to market their brand on her social media profile. She uploaded a picture with their product on her Instagram profile with an engaging caption.

Showcase testimonials

As we have talked about it above too, encourage customers to write reviews and add pictures in their reviews. Gathering a lot of reviews is not going to help your business unless showcased on appropriate platforms. Wherever the potential customer might search for you, reviews and testimonials should be present there. Make sure you showcase the name and designation of the reviewer. The designation must be in accordance with your business functionalities. For example, for a restaurant,  a food blogger providing reviews makes it a credible source.

A local dietitian has a dedicated section of reviews on her website that showcases reviews of the customers who have benefited through her diet plans. Before and after pictures of customers make it more authentic.

Steps for fixing negative reviews:

1. Build good reviews to suppress bad reviews- While business owners can not control the feedback customers leave on your website, they can dilute negative reviews by building up positive reviews.
2. Read the review and check if you need to change something- A negative review surely does affect your brand’s reputation. Think, is there something that needs to be changed in your business? One feedback might have affected a lot of your customers. Analyze the review and your business strategically.
3. Respond to it professionally and with a solution- Only one customer leaves a review (good or bad), a lot of them read it. So respond to every review that your brand receives.
4. Dilute negative reviews in SERPs- Like mentioned above, dilute the impact of negative reviews by an overpowering positive development. What if you are not getting enough positive? Take the help of a global reputation management agency. Talk to the critic on a private channel- While you are dealing with the negative review on a 3rd party review portal, make sure that you also email or call the concerned person to apologize and give a valid explanation for the issue.
5. Turn them around- Keep in mind the people who review you online can become the most influential fans of your brand.
6.  On the whole, if you or your business reputation has been damaged, it can be reversed. Also, if you are trying to build a reputation on the internet, it can be done by following the points mentioned above. Through an efficient online reputation, you can create the utmost credibility and trust for yourself or your brand. A good online reputation can help create a good perception from existing or new customers; ultimately resulting in increased sales and revenue of your business.

The post Online Reputation Management Tips For Small Businesses And White Collar Professionals appeared first on FATbit Blog.

Define The Purpose of Your Dashboard

Dashboards are great asset to understand the overall performance of a business and pick up on early signs of potential issues. But not all dashboards are created equal. Many dashboards are ineffective simply because they are built on no clear requirements. At the very least, before building a dashboard, one has to get the answers to the following two basic questions:

• Who will use the dashboard?
• What kind of decisions will be made based on the data provided through the dashboard?

If you’re unable to answer these two questions, it’s important you probe for more clarity. Only once the objective of the dashboard is clear in your mind, should you proceed with its development.

Types of Dashboards

There are 4 types of data dashboards for business intelligence (BI) and their selection comes down to the overall goals of your analytics and data monitoring practices.

1. Strategic Dashboard

The strategic dashboard is used to monitor the long-term business strategy through key performance indicators. Its chief aim is to bring departmental performance in alignment with the overall business strategy. They are complex to create and are mainly used by senior-level management.

Strategic dashboards rely a great deal on past performances. A strategic dashboard offers a bird’s eye view of the revenue and the customer overview for the current and last period. The findings from a strategic dashboard can inform the management of the current state of business, its growth rate and how stats stack up against the long-term business goals.

2. Operational Dashboard

Operational dashboards are meant for monitoring and managing the operations within a shorter time-frame. Their administration usually rests with the junior level managers. Since these dashboards are based on real-time data, their main focus is on creating alerts about business exceptions. Operational dashboards facilitate the smooth workflow of departments and help them stay ahead of problems.

It gives crucial operational information for KPIs such as Total Impressions, Total Clicks, Total Acquisitions and Cost Per Acquisition and the total amount spent. This is very useful as any deviation from the desired course can alert the marketing department to adjust its operational activities.

3. Analytical Dashboard

As the name suggests analytical dashboard is meant for analysts to collect vast amounts of data and use that to support executives. Analytical dashboards’ effectiveness is derived from their use of historical data-usage.

Analysts study this data to find out trends and create predictions and targets, which can form part of a business intelligence strategy. The analytical dashboard can be seen as an intersection between the strategic and operational dashboards.

4. Tactical Dashboard

Tactical dashboards are used to trace the performance with the company’s goal and objectives. They help middle-level managers in the decision-making process and see how the market reacts to the company’s actions. The level of detail in tactical dashboards falls between the operational and strategic dashboards.

With a tactical dashboard, it’s vital to use proper technology to support its various functionalities. This will enable drawing deeper insights from analyzed data, identify the problems, find out their root cause and make sound decisions to improve the current scenario.

In the IT project management dashboard, one gets a complete overview of the project. All the different activities and their progress status is easily understood. Moreover, there’s a separate section for risks and the average time consumed in different tasks. Once the project is finished, a comprehensive IT report can be created to evaluate results, and enhance the efficiency of future projects.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Their Selection:

KPIs are at the core of any dashboard as it’s these metrics that display a visual representation of the insights drawn from different business processes. Once you’ve identified your target audience and established your ultimate business goal, you’ll be able to select effective and value enhancing key performance indicators for your dashboard.

Measure your KPIs against the following 6 points to validate their selection:

• Aligned – Ensure that the KPIs align with the objectives and strategic goals of your organization.
• Attainable – Whatever indicator you choose to measure should have data that’s easy to obtain.
• Acute – They should bring everyone on the same page and going in the same direction.
• Accurate – The data used for performance indicators should be reliable and accurate.
• Actionable – Each indicator should offer key insights into the business that is actionable.
• Alive – Since the business never stops, so shouldn’t your KPIs. Keep evolving them.

KPIs generally fall into the following five categories:

• Sales – E.g. average order size, gross profit, conversion rate, new customer order vs returning customer orders, shopping cart abandonment rate.
• Marketing – E.g. site traffic, new visitors vs. returning visitors, bounce rate, average session duration, traffic source, newsletter subscribers.
• Customer Service – E.g. customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, hit rate, net promoter score (NPS), first response time, average resolution time, active issues.
• Manufacturing – E.g. cycle time, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), overall labor effectiveness (OLE), yield, number of non-compliance events or incidents.
• Project Management – E.g. hours worked, budget, return on investment (ROI), cost variance, cost performance index (CPI).

Good Design Accentuates The Details of a Dashboard

The User interface (UI) and User experience (UX) of a dashboard are as much important as its overall functionality. Following are the six best practices for designing appealing dashboards.

1. Know Your Audience and What They Expect From Dashboard

Who is your audience? That’s the first question you need to answer. Create user personas and look to know their behavior and preferences in detail. Once you’re done with that, you’ll know what your audience expects from a dashboard. Focus on no more than 5 key takeaways that your audience will want to see. Then by applying the F and Z reading pattern, structure your page accordingly.

2. Great Dashboards Lead With Key Data

There’s something about dashboards that throw big numbers up front and clean out the clutter. In a way, they communicate confidence and decisiveness. The style of the dashboard should be right up with any modern and clean design. Presentation of this type in dashboards gives instantaneous access to the most important data and saves the end user’s time.

3. Use Information Architecture To Create Stunning Design

When designing the dashboard it’s good practice to refer to the principles of information architecture and hierarchy. They help you decide which card to display and in what position. The F and Z patterns reflect how a user’s eye scans a page. The same logic needs to be applied in structuring and ordering of elements on your dashboard. Start with the key takeaways and let your dashboard flow from there.

4. Different Views Make For a Clean Design

Dashboards that offer many views while keeping the main view as simple as possible are most desirable. The user should be able to easily filter data by date, access information about payments, and so much more while maintaining a simple and elegant look. Presenting all that information on a single screen would create a total mess.

5. Consistent Design and Color Theme

While data might be the most sought after thing on a dashboard, that doesn’t mean it can’t look appealing from the word go. In an ideal dashboard, the web designer manifests a great combination of pleasing colors with light and proportionate amount of data. The outcome is a visible, easy to navigate dashboard with an elegant look.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of a data dashboard lies in offering balance in all things. It should be appealing but visually light, edgy but straightforward, and most of all it should be tailored to help you achieve your business goals and serve your audience.

The post Building the Perfect Data Dashboard for Business Intelligence appeared first on FATbit Blog.

Sales reps are no longer the first mode of interaction between businesses and consumers. That place has been taken up by the internet, which daily attracts millions of new users. In this circumstance, it is vital for brands to understand how consumers prefer to interact with businesses online.

After analysing consumer behaviour and their interaction with web pages, we have come up with this article. It contains most effective touchpoints to engage users and assist them in completing their desired actions.

Read below to see the touchpoints and how various brands utilize them for customer interaction.

Captivating Touch Point Examples to Improve Interaction and Optimize  Customer Experience

The following touchpoints have been precisely created to increase interaction between the website and visitors. You can implement them in your website to improve the overall design and experience.

1. First Fold of the Homepage

Source: W-Tutors

The 1st fold of the homepage is the first thing your visitors see when they visit your website. It needs to be attractive, user-friendly and clutter-free. Most companies utilize their front fold by providing an “enter email” field to interact with the brand. It is an easy way to connect with customers and improves navigation.

2. Newsletter Subscription Bar

Source: Voyij

Businesses can ask visitors to sign up for email newsletters in a variety of ways. One of the most effective ways is to request the visitor via the newsletter subscription bar. It is easy to fill and does not misguide visitors. They know they’ll be signing up to receive your blogs and promotions in their inbox and can contact your brand with ease anytime they want.

3. On-Page Contact Form

Source: Visitors Guru

The main goal behind on-page contact forms is to collect appropriate details about your customers before they contact your brand. This helps businesses provide more personalized experiences and target high-quality leads. A business can add various types of fields in the contact form.

4. Free Product Demo

Source: FATbit

Consumers prefer receiving free demos of products before making a purchase. It keeps things transparent and assists in increasing conversions and trust. Brands who incur major expenses in providing free demos can limit their number to 1 free demo for each customer.

5. Testimonials from Clients and Partners

Source: Oyo Cater

Client testimonials motivate consumers to interact with the brand. They act as a trust-building element that progress the buyer’s journey towards conversion. There are several client testimonial formats that a website can use. It can also integrate a ‘Contact Us’ button with the testimonials section to use the section as a subconscious CTA.

6. Author Bio

Source: Entrepreneur

A short bio with a link to a landing page can help businesses create a distinct profile. If you plan on investing time and money to establish your presence on a third-party website, then focus on bringing value through content as well. Furthermore, you can use big data and content marketing to reach the right customer.

7. Live Chat for Answers to Questions in Real Time

Source: KoutureStudios

Consumers in every sector expect brands to provide fast and reliable customer service. They don’t want to navigate through the traditional IVR systems and want ease in finding customer support. In such a scenario, providing chat support via your websites is a very helpful option. If you cannot provide real-time support, then several AI-enabled chat integrations are also available.

8. Comments Section

Source: Wiser Community

Consumers consider comments and reviews a genuine source of information about a company or its products. They also use the comment section as a way to approach brands to clear any queries and doubts. This is especially common on blog pages. Also, consumers replying and interacting with other consumers also increases the website engagement.

9. Social Media Sharing

Source: Pendazi

Social media buttons enable visitors to share your products on their social media handles. This does marketing for your brand and helps visitors and influencers get a third-party opinion from their followers. Platforms like Facebook also provide a private message option, which is an upgrade to traditional social media sharing.

10. Pop-ups for Product Demo

Reference: Yo!Yumm

Pop-ups with a light and functional design that are timed well enhance the user experience. They assist in customer retention, and product demo pop-ups even introduce your products to visitors. There are various types of pop-ups that you can integrate into your website, such as exit-intent pop-ups and timed pop-ups.

11. Call-to-action Text – Inside Post

Source: PwC

Depending on the funnel stage a market asset belongs to, businesses can place various types of CTAs inside their blog posts. Contrasting colors, urgency, desire and preciseness in CTAs makes them most convincing and useful for business websites.

12. Push Notifications

Push notifications remind users to visit your store on an intermittent basis. eCommerce businesses have been using push notifications as a means for promotion and interaction for many years. Whether the user will click on the notification or not, it depends on the ad copy you sent. Also, push notifications can be sent on both computer web browsers and mobile phones with the later being more popular. They are a different type of CTAs with a very high chance of users reading them.

13. Email Signature

Source: WiseStamp

Email signatures signify a logical conclusion of your communication, making them noticeable to the users. A well-structured email signature amplifies brand image and can be used to convey important information just like the example shared above. This email signature has the primary contact number of the business along with the email address and the website for the receiver’s reference. Furthermore, links to the company’s social media handles advertises brand footprints and enhances brand awareness.

14. Survey Participation Request Form

Source: Adobe

To use surveys as a touchpoint, businesses can frame questions that are no hassle for their website visitors to answer. In the above example, the form is not shown upfront. Instead, it appears as a popup, asking the visitors if they would like to complete a short survey. A click on “Yes, later” will open a separate window to which the visitors can come back to at a later stage.

15. Landing Page CTAs

Source: Adobe

Many brands have configured a default contact button in the navigation bar of their website. As a touchpoint, a simple ‘contact us’ button is not so convincing and does not deliver value. Instead, brands can ramp up their landing pages by providing in-context CTAs that align with the buyer journey and assist in conversions. 

16. Refer a Friend

Source: Sprint

Rewarding consumers for referring your products to family and friends can also increase website engagement. It is good for business promotions and the reward only needs to be given incase of successful referrals, which means when a referred person actually buys your service or product.

17. Search Bar

Source: Oyo Cater

In a world, where consumers are hungry for experience, search bars should be made to bring convenience. In the above example, the search bar is the most prominent touchpoint, motivating visitors to interact with the brand. Any other type of web element or touchpoint would have taken away the convenience of finding products from consumers and resulted in poor conversions.

18. The Hover Effect

Source: Simplicity

Website design practices like hover effects use animations to improve the user experience of visitors. For example, a change in the color of an element when a visitor moves his mouse over it is an example of the hover effect. Using the combination of various animations and colors, brands can use the hover effect to increase clicks and user engagement.

19. Internal Linking

Source: Visitor Health Insurance

Internal linking has two benefits – enable a website visitor to explore the topic and improve ranking in search results. Ideally, keeping the sales funnel in mind and inserting appropriate internal links can lead visitors to the final purchase decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

20. Call-to-action Text – Side

Source: Uni Diamonds

Concealed CTAs that popup once a visitor takes an action also work as feasible touchpoints for brands. For example, in the given image, Uni Diamonds is using mail and call logos to conceal CTAs. Not only are they improving user experience, but also making the web design clutter-free.

Due to the presence of uncountable websites, consumers today have varied experiences in interacting with online businesses. In these circumstances, clear-cut digital touchpoints assist businesses in providing their consumers a direction to interact with their websites. Moreover, integrating these touchpoints not only improves a brand’s web design but also ameliorates the customer experience and encourages interaction.

Majority of the websites mentioned in this article are developed by using FATbit products. To get a website with similar UI/UX design, you can check out our wide range of products or feel free to contact us for custom development.

The post 20 Customer Touch Point Examples To Improve Your Customer Journey appeared first on FATbit Blog.

A tailored and right digital marketing plan presents an opportunity to streamline the marketing operations and effectively use digital marketing channels to expand their consumer base and promote their services. So, this blog presents a roadmap to formulate a successful digital marketing plan for a business. It presents the advantages of the digital marketing industry and lays down a beginner’s guide to utilize it to your advantage.

Advantages of a Digital Marketing Plan

A highly structured digital marketing plan for action steers your business toward success with well-planned strategies. Implementing agile and calculated measures in your digital marketing plan will reap numerous benefits listed below.

1. Provides Industry Insights
2. Assists in Determining Business Goals
3. Steers Department Co-ordination
4. Improves Efficiency of the Business
5. Helps in Finalizing the Time and Budget Allocation
6. Get Acquainted With Your Target Audience
7. Increase your Return on Investment
8. Boost Your Productivity
9. Reformed Analytics and Optimization

A digital marketing plan will guide you to your goals and help you benefit from your business. Next, we will discuss the components of a marketing plan.

Digital marketing strategies aligned with one’s business goals guide toward the required goals. Now, let us dive into the guide to creating a digital marketing plan for businesses that will produce effective results and enhance operations.

Steps to Build a Successful Digital Marketing Plan

A well-planned digital marketing plan affirms a successful expansion of services digitally. Expanding your business using a suitable framework assists small companies in competing with large and established enterprises. Given below are steps that can help one attain desirable results.

Step 1: Define Your Business Goals

The growth of a business highly depends on the set goals and the measures taken to achieve them. A thorough analysis of your SMART framework that assists in formulating a business plan in a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely form while also aligned with your required business strategy formulates a profitable plan of action. Define your online value proposition while considering the 4 Ps of marketing- product, price, promotion, and place.

Furthermore, consistently defining goals and evaluating strategies helps businesses overcome stagnating barriers. Business owners can develop KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and adhere to a planned direction. Additionally, by following the RACE framework- react, act, convert, engage- business owners can analyze and adjust the marketing plan according to their needs.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience 

The primary aim of a digital marketing strategy is to build traffic and increase the global reach of a business. Identifying the customer persona of your target audience and catering to their needs is of utmost importance. You can identify your target audience by conducting thorough market research and analyzing potential competitors while also understanding the pain points and preferences of your client base. Formulating a content strategy that aligns with your audience’s preferences will give a head start to the marketing strategies. These plans include consistently monitoring analytics, market competitors, user feedback, customer behavior, and more.

Step 3: Choose the Right Digital Marketing Channels

After identifying their target audience, businessmen can employ digital marketing strategies for their business through popular channels such as social media platforms, content creation, pay-per-click marketing, email marketing, and more to utilize the benefits of the online ecosystem.

Additionally, smart budget allocation is also essential through paid search and social media advertising, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO marketing strategies ranging from high-performing channels to moderate budget allocation. Multiple digital channels that are used to increase the reach are listed below.

• Search Engine Optimization: SEO utilization assists businesses in increasing brand awareness. It helps recognize targeted keywords and attract the target audience. It aids in tracking, analyzing, and optimizing the online ranking of a business. 
• Email Marketing: Email marketing helps build a positive relationship with potential customers. Recognizing your consumer persona and producing a personalized email marketing strategy will ensure a positive impact on your business.
• Content Marketing: Promoting the brand and introducing new customers through informative content builds customer loyalty while providing readers with valuable assets and more. 
• PPC Marketing: The pay-per-click ad campaigns are known to yield better results when organic marketing campaigns are difficult to attain. It assists in increasing brand awareness. 
• Social Media Marketing: SM marketing requires a tailored strategy to attain performance-driven results leading to qualified lead generation. A well-structured social media plan assists in increasing business manifolds. 
• Video Marketing: The modern attention span can be attracted through video marketing. With high shareability and engagement prospects offered by the marketing strategy, this prospect increases the ROI of a business. 
• Online Reputation Mangement: ORM services are essential to maintain a loyal consumer base with the credibility offered by the business. A well-maintained online reputation yields high returns and is an effective marketing strategy. 

Step 4: Develop a Content Strategy

Developing a content strategy is essential while preparing a digital marketing plan. An effective order to follow while strategizing the content begins by planning the content and reaching out to the target audience through inbound marketing and planned campaigns.

Planning content after reviewing consumer journeys using analytics such as Google Analytics, Semrush, and Meta Insights to inspect the best platform with the highest return on investment. Preparing valuable and engaging content and making personalized AI-driven content will bear successful outcomes.

Step 5: Implement Paid Advertising

There are multiple ways to generate traffic on your website. Some require monetary funding and are known as always-on marketing, which includes paid, earned, and owned strategies. The methods can be implemented after a strategic content creation of your business.

• Ad Words Campaigns by Google: Adwords is a product by Google that displays the banner of your business on the platform. It is feasible for all business sizes as it only charges money when there is any click on the banner. 
• Yahoo Advertisement Solutions: Yahoo advertisements are paid solutions for businesses with good ad budgets. The platform publishes ads on its homepage at the access of millions of search engine users. Therefore assisting in targeting region-based ads. 
• Social Media Campaigns: Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter) accommodate growing users worldwide. Social media Campaigns assist businesses in targeting a global audience. 

Furthermore, channeling retargeting strategies on the internet is another way of penetrating the cyberspace of a potential client. These are chosen by business owners to convert leads into customers by taking advantage of AI-powered advertisements. Modern AI technology has analyzed vast details and data and identified the patterns of the audience to predict user behavior. The retargeting process begins with the segmentation of the audience, followed by setting clear goals, testing, and then monitoring to adjust accordingly.

Step 6: Utilize Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the most effective digital marketing strategy with 63.9% of the world’s population on the internet. The best social media platforms for your online businesses are LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly called Twitter), and more.
Source:datareportal.com

Taking calculated steps for effectively leveraging the platforms, such as setting up the key performance indicators (KPIs), posting engaging content consistently on these platforms, utilizing the large proportion of the influencer market through PR and outreach, and finally, evaluating the strategies through multiple analysis tools to make data-driven decisions.

Employing social media marketing strategies in your digital marketing plan assists in increasing brand awareness, trust, and authenticity, promoting high revenue returns.

Wrapping Up

The modern business scenario presents monumental opportunities for new businesses to flourish and for traditional enterprises to expand their services by leveraging the benefits of the digital marketing plan. This blog covered the steps to create a widespread and successful marketing strategy that ensures thriving results. Utilizing the complete advantages of these marketing strategies, a businessman can boost their business manifold. You need a well-planned strategy to capitalize on and maximize the benefits of a good digital marketing plan. Consult market experts to provide an optimal digital transformation to your enterprise.

The post How To Create a Digital Marketing Plan For Online Business in 2025 appeared first on FATbit Blog.

The good thing about having an eCommerce business is you can have tons of visits to your site—no matter the time or location. The bad thing about it is that turning those visits into actual sales can be much more difficult than doing so in a physical store. This is where conversion rate optimization plays a key role for your business.

The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of conversions/total number of visits. The definition of conversion may vary from web page to web page, but, ultimately, it is what you want users to do when they land on your page. It can be a download, a sign in, a subscription. But if we are talking about eCommerce, normally, what you’ll want them to do is buy. The bottom line is you should be able to keep track of this number because what cannot be measured, cannot be managed.

Conversion rate requires periodic maintenance, always trying to find the new way to improve too, eventually—and hopefully sooner rather than later—, optimize your marketing efforts. So, if your conversion rate is stocked, that’s a red light telling you should do something differently.

When these numbers are not as expected, you’ll probably find marketers and business leaders doing pirouettes and trying some crazy ideas to try to increase their conversion rate. Maybe resizing some buttons or adjusting the headers on your web page will remediate the situation temporarily, but it will be like putting a patch on a flat tire.

Suggested Read: Colors & Conversions of a Website have a Deep Connection

Before making any changes to your page, ask yourself this simple—but critical—question: Is your online reputation trustworthy?

Asking an Internet user for their personal and bank information requires an important amount of trust. To do this, you must be credible and reliable. Your brand and product should be trustworthy. People may want what you sell, but if they can’t trust you, they won’t buy from you.

And when your clients want to know if they can trust your business or not, you know who they are turning to? Online reviews.

That’s right. User reviews are changing the way businesses are done.  Here are some interesting stats you should know about that:

• 72% of internet users say they trust online reviews just as much as they would trust a relative or friend’s opinion.
• 61% of users say they’ve read online reviews before buying a product
• 63% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews
• 50 or more reviews per product can mean 4.6% increase in conversion rates

So, how can you increase your conversion rate and get those sales your business so badly wants? Take good care of what your online reviews say. They can eliminate the doubts potential customers may have about your product or service, which—if you learn how to swing it—can strengthen your business’ reputation online.

Quite simply, user reviews increase conversions. They come hand in hand. So, if you want to take those sales from your dreams to real life don’t forget to gather online reviews from your happy customers. It will add up to success!

The post Online Reviews Can Impact The Conversion Rate Of Your Online Store & Website appeared first on FATbit Blog.

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Before buying, people compare. Before comparing, people judge.[/tweet_box]

Every webmaster wants to know “how to make a website sell more”, with 60+ hours of research and 14+ years of experience in the online marketing area, FATbit has compiled this 101 actionable points to help you in engaging visitors, improving sales, and making the right impact. You should definitely diagnose your website against these 101 points. Enjoy the post…

On coming across a website for the first time, online users skim through it quickly, and if it doesn’t meet their expectations, it is abandoned within seconds. If losing your treasured customers due to this haste of seconds is your biggest nightmare then learn about the tips to make your website sell and play safer with FATbit expert’s recommendations.

Your unique product or service will get a chance to impress only if the website leaves a positive impression. It seems unfair but unless you are a big name or the only supplier of the product/service, you will be judged by your website. And visitors judge whether your website is worth their time or not in just a few seconds.

So this post will teach you how to impress your visitors and generate more leads. The points that roll in this list will equip you with the jargon of optimizing a website to improve sales and increase online visibility. All you need to do is making an action in the given direction for witnessing a notable change in your conversions.

The First Impression should always be right

1. Organized website structure which includes a well-planned homepage as well as unique and custom design. Minimalist design without distracting backgrounds ensures the information reaches visitors seamlessly.

2. Other than going for readily available templates, go for a custom design that offers you a unique and distinctive look.

3. Adopt color psychology which aids in increasing the conversion rate of an online business.

4. Modular layouts that let content shine have the biggest impact on visitors.

5. Have a consistent style across your website. This makes it easy for the visitor to get accustomed to your website design.

6. Header sliders are a thing of the past. Nowadays it is prefered to use illustration in the header, 360 degree videos, animations and gifs which tell a story.

7. Use favicon and logo on every page of your website.

8. These days screen sizes vary across platforms, therefore it is advised to adopt a responsive design for your website.

Also Read: 10 super tips to build a user-friendly mobile website

9. A hero image is an ideal solution to immediately arrest a visitor’s attention and entice them to explore your site further.

10. Do not overstuff your website with content and graphics. Use a minimalist design and lighten up your website.

11. Avoid using unnecessary popups as they hinder user experience. Use them effectively.

12. Ensure there are no spelling mistakes, typographical errors, spacing or alignment issues.

13. Website loading speed should always be kept in check. If your website is slow to load then it will not only decrease user’s interest in your website but also affect your search engine rankings.

14. Picking up appropriate keywords will help reduce the bounce rate as only relevant traffic will visit your landing page.

15. Restrict the amount of information you display on the homepage and just highlight details like logo, tagline, services offered and USP.

16. Use scalable vector graphics (SVGs) for a responsive website.

17. Use skeleton screens to improve the speed of the UX.

18. Never use a splash screen for a website. It is only useful for mobile apps.

19. Do not use a registration or subscription popup at the doorstep of your website.

20. Auto-play audio and video are not recommended for a website.

21. Separate advertisement from the main content.

22. Do not display information on your website that is not yet available. Seeing a “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” is not advisable.

23. Ensure there are no 404 errors, broken image links and resolve any form of technical issue.

24. Conduct cross-browser testing and screen resolution testing before making any webpage live.

25. Replace your stock images as it prominently screams that “we are fake”. Put more authentic images instead or use a combination of stock and custom photography.

User-Friendly Architecture

26. If you publish large amount of content on a regular basis, then it is advised to use page hierarchy to organize your content. This helps users to find the content more easily.

27. In the menu bar, you should a mega menu with a responsive sub-navigation menu.

28. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and users can find the relevant information without any hassle.

29. You can use a vertical dot navigation style and one-page scrolls.

30. Do not waste your header image just to look pretty. Offer a CTA or link the image to an inner page.

31. Make sure that you always use breadcrumbs for navigation.

32. Offer the main value proposition within the first fold of your web page as 80% of users spend their time looking at the information above the page fold.

33. Provide a glimpse to the user that there is something below the first fold too, so that the visitor scrolls down and views the remaining content.

34. If you cater to a global user base speaking different languages, ensure that your website has options to be translated as per the target audience.

35. Instead of using old CAPTCHAs, get creative by using latest CAPTCHA trends which can be fun for your website visitors. This includes word and math solution, drag and drop, JQuery slider, etc.

36. Add a sitemap in the footer and site search option at the top.

37. Always ensure that the external links do not open in the same window.

38. Provide acknowledgment to the user after any type of successful conversion.

39. Keep the branding consistent throughout the website, like same font, color scheme and layout pattern.

40. Prefer pagination over infinite scrolling.

41. Design your website in accordance with user expectations, like clicking on the website logo takes user to homepage.

42. Make sure that the functionality of the back button is consistent across your website and does not break the navigation.

43. Avoid the automatic refresh of the content when the user is viewing a dynamic page. You can place a notification stating new content is available.

Conversion Path Optimization

44. Value-based exits – Offer more value when a visitor is trying to exit midway.

45. Focus more on enticing CTAs. Ensure that it creates anxiety and urgency, solves some problems and compels someone to stay on the website.

Must Read: How to create best CTAs that create more leads and sales

46. Use contrasting colors for the call to action buttons and test different shades to determine what works best for your website.

47. Include content and media that is persuasive.

48. Always keep your main heading and text towards the top left corner and your call to action towards bottom right

49. The checkout process ought to include minimum steps and minimal forms

50. If a user has left some conversion critical action midway to browse some other page, offer them a reminder to complete the process, but do not pester them.

51. Use arrows on your page as a directional cue to boost conversion

52. Always do a follow up on a user who left a process midway.

53. To control cart abandonment you can also offer deals on products added to the cart.

54. At the time of the checkout show the images of the product in cart.

55. Feature most selling and popular products on home page.

56. Your landing page should be dedicated to a single cause and should not have any outbound links.

57. Make your registration process quick, streamlined and hassle-free.

58. Pricing Structure should be carefully planned and should not seem overly expensive.

59. The price should be clearly indicated where necessary. You can also create a sense of urgency like limited time offer or n items are left in stock.

60. Ensure that your landing page offers the visitors all that has been promised.

61. Use high-quality product images on the product page.

62. Remove any form of distraction close to conversion funnel.

63. Offer recommendations in the form of suggested items or related products.

64. Physical addresses, contact number and tech support details should be clearly visible on the contact us page.

User Engagement

65. As more and more web pages are designed with border-to-border artwork in a single-column style, the content below the fold is more likely to be missed. Add arrows or other visual cues to encourage scrolling.

66. Principle of Reciprocity– Give away valuable resources related to your industry for free (example: a free eBook, a trial pack, etc.) so that the other person feels indebted and uses your services or refers you to someone else.

67. Have a limited number of tabs in the menu bar and incorporate nesting of menus.

68. Organize Webinars and other online events to discuss latest trends of your industry.

69. Make the content available on your website shareable across social media platforms.

70. Publish a blog on a regular basis to engage users through your content.

71. Stay active on Social Media websites to build a network.

72. Start a newsletter to update your subscribers about any new event, product launch or any useful update.

Give a human feel to your website

73. In the era of Chatbots and artificial intelligence, customers do look forward to get the answer to their questions with a personal touch.

74. Use “About Us” page to introduce mission, values and vision so that the visitors get to know more about your company.

75. Include a list of your employees and their credentials so that the visitors can see who is working behind the scene.

76. Ask your users to leave feedback or some suggestions.

77. Do not merely list all your offerings in a bunch of bullet points. Properly highlight how your product or service can solve a problem.

78. Users prefer to choose you if they like you over the competition. Ensure that you solve their queries in a timely manner, do not charge them unreasonably, and make them feel important.

79. Keep your comments section moderated to avoid spam or irrelevant comments.

Trust building elements

80. Show your availability on various social media platforms. Highlight your accounts on your website.

81. Showcase your company culture to your potential clients.

82. Use guarantees, risk reversal mechanisms for garnering trust.

83. Talk about awards, accolades and recognitions entrusted upon you on your homepage

84. Include case studies/stories of your work with your past clients. Highlight list of your clients, past works in the form of a portfolio, or live demo of a product.

85. Showcase what neutral third parties (authoritative sources like news publishers, influential blogs) have to say about your work.

86. Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, contract details, shipping policy, return policy, etc. should be transparent and clearly mentioned on your website.

87. Always highlight why you need particular information, when requesting it from the visitor.

88. Use testimonials from past customers and place them right before your CTAs. This is highly helpful in increasing conversion rate.

89. Secure your checkout pages and display security icons/signs on them.

Content Relevance and Presentation

90. Have a dedicated page to address user queries and FAQs.

91. Clean the cobwebs on your website. Refresh your look and content from time to time.

92. The content on your website should be original, plagiarism-free and should focus on your target audience.

93. Use hand-drawn annotations, which always commands attention.

94. Use visual aids and statistics to support your content.

Also Read: What makes visual content so critical for a website

95. To improve readability, use the same alignment consistently across the page.

96. Use interesting headings, sub-headings, and fonts to draw attention to your content and make it easier for the reader to scan through the page quickly.

97. For an eCommerce website, there ought to be a proper visitor and product segmentation.

98. Give your visitors a reason to buy from you via competitive positioning or USP.

99. Clearly tell your customers how you are better than the competition by highlighting the solutions you provide for a given problem.

100. Your webpage should highlight all the information that is crucial to the visitor.

101. Highlight a clear breakup of the difference between various packages offered, highlighting which package offers what.

Bonus point

Add fun elements: People remember how you make them feel, if we make them smile by including some fun elements on website. They will always remember the website and bounce rate can also be reduced.

With this checklist of 101 actionable points by FATbit, now you definitely know the answer to this mystic question ” how to make your website sell “.

We know it has been a long post but there is still one important lesson left. There are various not-so-good-looking websites that are doing great in the web zone. Craiglist surely is a good example.

To stay updated on professional insights and industry best practices, it would be helpful if you subscribe to the following: Conversion-Rate-Experts, ConversionXL, Marketo, Moz & FATbit Their blogs are a great resource to learn more about conversion optimization and internet marketing.

Also Read: Actionable Strategies To Increase Blog Traffic

For making a lasting impact, it is important to keep in mind visual as well as functional aspects. While undertaking design and development work for our clients, we always keep the above points in mind to ensure real business benefits. These tips to make your website sell will certainly save a lot of your time on research and will directly give you a well thought out action plan to implement.

If you have anything to share with us don’t forget to make use of our comments section. Your comments and feedback are valuable to us.

The post 101 Actionable Best Tips: How To Make Your Website Sell appeared first on FATbit Blog.

The 90-second rule for conversion

Once prospective customers reach your landing page, you have 90 seconds to convert them.

When you have so much less time to entice a user, it becomes paramount that you come out with all guns blazing. You need to put your best effort to ensure that the conversion rate of your website is high. And believe it or not, the colors you use on your website play a major role in it.

Do colors really have an effect on humans?

Why is that a brand associated with health or peace mostly chooses green as their primary color? Why is that a brand catering specifically to females use chic colors like pink or purple as their primary colors? Studies have shown that a color increases brand recognition by 80%. For example, if I ask, which brand comes to your mind when I say “RED”, your answer probably will be Coca-Cola. Likewise, if you ask any teenager, which brand comes to mind when they hear “GREEN”, their answer probably will be Spotify.   Such is the effect of colors on humans. In addition to this, there are several other factors like:

• Color accounts for 85% of the reason why you purchased a specific product.
• Because we process images 60,000 times faster than text, colors play a persuasive physiological effect on our brains.

Ecommerce companies can also alter their sales by adopting a color that appeals to their targeted marketplace because:

• 52% of the shoppers do not return to a shopping website because they do not like the overall aesthetics of the website.
• 42% of the shoppers base their opinion of a website on the color and design alone.

Therefore, if the primary color used on your ecommerce store does not appeal to the visitor, there is a huge probability of that visitor not returning to your website.

As discussed above, colors affect user’s emotion and by leveraging this you can easily draw their attention, hence increasing the conversion rate of the website itself. The bottom line is that color plays a major role in developing a perception of prospective customers about a specific brand.

So, the real question is how to make colors a high point of  customer-experience and marketing ?

Also Read: 15 Tips to Design a Perfect Contact Form

How to decide which color your brand should choose?

When you are discussing with a website designer, the overall design of your website, the color is probably the last thing on your mind. However, the fact remains that it is probably the most powerful thing that can result in success and failure of your website. Moreover, you often tend to go for the colors, which appeal to you yourself. Have you ever done a research on your target audience, trying to find which color will help your online business the most?

The above image is better known as Robert Plutchik’s famous “wheel of emotions”. It illustrates how variant shades of some colors correspond to variant emotional states. It is often used as a benchmark for determining which color would be best suited for a website. Tools like color-wheel of Canva can also be used to find out what colors go well together and generate the perfect color schemes for your website. In addition to that, you should also do a market analysis of which color properly denotes your sector. For example, if you are in food tech then it is best you choose a shade of red.

Where Should You Use Color?

Mere understanding, which color theme your website should adopt will not suffice. One has to analyze and use colors systematically to ensure optimal results. This brings us to the next big question; why should you use the colors. As we are talking about the color scheme of a website, we need to take cognizance of several aspects like hero graphics, headline, borders, backgrounds, buttons, and popups.

The 60-30-10 rule of Colors

Proper use of colors focuses on four crucial principals, the right way, right time, right audience and right purpose. So to create the best impact, use a combination of three colors and apply 60-30-10 rule.

• The primary color should cover about 60 percent of the total space and encompass a unifying theme of the design.
• You should use 30% of the space with secondary color to create some contrast.
• Finally, the 10 percent of the space should be used by accent color to provide the final touch of elegance.

Useful color tips to increase conversion rate

• Use colors based on gender specifics – If you cater primarily to a specific gender base, it helps if you pick colors that are liked by that particular gender. Studies have shown that women generally like blue, purple and green color while men prefer blue, green and black.

• Use blue color to garner trust – Blue is a color that most people associate with trust, peace, and loyalty. This is why it is one of the most widely used colors among businesses. The biggest social network Facebook uses Blue and so does Twitter. Even PayPal whose whole business works around trust and security uses blue as a primary color.

• Yellow for capturing user attention – Most of the people are ignorant of the fact that yellow color is mostly used for warnings. However, many brands think that it is a color of joy and happiness. As Yellow stimulates the brains excitement center, it is best to use it for garnering the attention of the user.

• Green is suitable for environmental products – This is a no-brainer. Most of the ecological companies use green as their primary color as it is a chromatic symbol of nature itself. Another aspect is that people generally tend to click on the green button more often than any other color. Therefore, it is advisable to use green on CTA buttons.

• Black color adds sense of exclusivity and luxury – According to color psychology, the darker the color more elegant and sophisticated it seems. This is why black is often stated as a timeless color.  Most of the luxury brands use black as their primary color. Even Uber named its luxury cab service as Uber black.

• Red color has a unique pull – Most food tech companies use the color red as it associates with hot and also makes you hungry. This is why big brands like KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King use red in their logo.

• Avoid just using black and white – Black and white is a forgettable color combination. Therefore, if a website just has black text on white page, most probably readers will not remember it for long.

• Use bright colors for CTAs – Studies have shown that the highest converting colors correspond to Red, Green, Orange and Yellow. On the other hand, darker colors like Black, Dark gray and Brown have very low conversion rate. The biggest retailer in the world, “Amazon” uses Bright Yellow as “add to cart” button.

• Do not neglect white – While analyzing color psychology we fail to address one color which is most widely used in a website. White is one color used by every website. However, many color theorists do not count white as a color. Irrespective of that, one must use white space as a powerful design feature. One such example is the most popular website across the globe, “Google”. Nowadays many websites use plenty of white space to denote a sense of spaciousness and breathability.

Conclusion

There are colors all around us. When we say grass, the color that comes to our mind is green. The same is applicable vice versa too. Working on the same psychology, big brands, and online businesses have started to focus on colors in order to build a connection with their audience. This not only helps increase the trust factor but also results in better conversion rate.

An appealing and revenue generating website is the upshot of rigorous analysis and user focused design. If you are not able to generate expected revenue from it, chances are it lacks on both the fronts.

The post Colors & Conversions of a Website have a Deep Connection appeared first on FATbit Blog.

But, is the structure of your blog and elements present in it helping readers to go through your posts smoothly?

Here are the best practices to improve the UX of your blog to allow readers to go through your posts easily; therefore, to improve its engagement rate and get more social shares.

Blog homepage – Provide a helpful signage

Most of the time readers land on your post following its link shared over the web. But a few readers arrive on it only after first coming to your website or blog homepage. It is crucial that you don’t overlook this factor, and work on improving the homepage of your blog.

The blog homepage must have an intuitive layout & navigation, and should be designed in such a manner that effortlessly directs visitors to the post page. Few techniques that most successful blogger practice to engage visitors on their blog include:

1. A featured image depicting the topic of the post in a clear & concise manner, and is also visually appealing
2. Counter for number of views & comments to highlight the engagement on the post
3. Create a unique excerpt summarizing your post to engage visitors so that they can have a better idea what the post is about

Although the above-mentioned practices are widely accepted in the blogger community, it is okay to come up with something new, but only if you are sure that it has a chance to work.

For example, marketing blog QuickSprout’s homepage displays post in a slightly different way. They use the introductory part of the post as the excerpt so that users get engaged with the post even before reaching the post page.

Separate and sticky top navigation

Plan a separate navigation bar for your blog to make visitors feel that they are on an entirely different section of your page. A dedicated navigation bar will also allow users to navigate through your blog easily, therefore, improve its engagement rate.

If your blog has many categories, put on the most popular ones on the navigation bar. Make a provision to keep the navigation bar always on the top as users scroll down the page. In technical language, make it a sticky navigation bar.

Additionally, also place a link back to the main website on your blog so that visitors don’t need to manually enter the URL to visit back your website.

Smaller visual span – Make it easy for eyes

Keep the view span of your blog somewhere between 650-750px to minimize the eye movement.

Don’t break the neck of your readers by making them move from one end to another to read every line on your blog. Keep the post span between the aforementioned limits, so that readers can read lines with the minimal eyeball movement. This, in long terms, will also improve your blog’s average stay time per visitor.

Keep paragraphs short and crisp

It takes a lot of effort to read big paragraphs even if they are very informative. Long paragraphs give readers a feeling that the post is a never-ending read; therefore, it becomes probable that they might lose interest somewhere in the middle of the post.

Ideally, a paragraph should consist of only 3 to 4 lines. Anything longer than this would require a lot of concentration from the readers’ end.

Don’t force readers to try too hard just to read your post. Keep paragraphs short, give readers pit stops to visualize things, and allow them to connect well with the post content.

Quick tip: Using bullet points to explain the process, benefits, features, etc. can do wonders.

Always go black-on-white

When it comes to the background color of your post, never-ever do any experiments. It should be white, always white. And the font color should be black (or a darker shade of gray) as it appears very clear on the white background, therefore, improve the readability of your blog.

Also, avoid using fancy fonts or too small font size for that matter, as it can adversely affect readability.

Don’t date a post

If you write posts on tips and how-to topics to educate your readers, then in most cases, that piece of content is meant to be evergreen. Adding date to it will make your post look outdated even if you update your posts on regular basis.

Two ways out of the date thing:

1. Do not allow the date to show with the post and in the URL.

2. Or if you think adding a date is important, try not to highlight it much. And if you regularly update your blog, keep a counter that automatically updates the date to the last time you updated its content.

This will tell readers that you regularly update your posts, therefore, chances are good that readers will come time & again to your blog.

Spread it with social sharing icons

A good post deserves to be spread across different social networks. And to make sure that it happens, you need to place social media sharing icons with your post.

Choose social media networks, where you want your post to be shared, wisely, and according to your audience.

Social media sharing icons should always remain visible to readers, so that your post can be shared whenever a reader feels like.

Tell your programmer that icons should stick to a place when scrolling down; also make sure that it doesn’t obstruct the post content view.

Let’s sprinkle some icing sugar on the cake:

1. Make a provision to show the total number of shares for the post like ConversionXL do. This will act as a social proof for the readers.

2. Make sure when someone tweets your post, your Twitter handle is displayed along with it. This will help you to easily track re-tweets and will also ensure that you get credit for your work.

Discuss this with your programmers and suggest that changes are required in settings of the plugin used for social sharing.

3. Let readers tweet a quote or a line from your post.

Don’t let the interest die

To keep the post engaging throughout its length, you should always maintain the balance between text and visual content. If you are giving tips, explaining a topic, giving your thoughts on a strategy, then it is possible that the post may go up to 1800-2000 words.

Keeping readers engaged on a long post requires including of following types of visual content:

• Screenshots
• Vines
• Memes
• Gifs
• Infographics
• Videos
• Quotes
• Tweets
• Stats
• Graphs

Do not try to add all of the above mentioned visuals in your post as it may affect the loading speed of your page. Here are a couple of tips in this regard:

• Always add optimized images and other visuals without compromising on quality.
• Always measure your page load speed using this tool.

Add estimated reading time

Your headline triggers the interest of your readers. Telling them right away the estimated reading time of your post can improve its engagement factor considerably.

Adding estimated reading time also improves the bounce rate. Always keep in mind that your readers’ time is important, therefore, make it a habit to always add time at the top of your post. Also, remember that adding estimated reading time only makes sense when it is for text only, not for post with lots of visual content.

Note: Add estimated reading time only if you think your post will take about 6-8 minutes to read. If the post will take more than that, mentioning time may have the opposite impact and discourage readers to read your post in the first place.

Insert CTAs smartly

Ask yourself: ‘Why do I have a blog?’

Answer might be: ‘To educate people.’

But that’s not true all the times. When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients.

[tweet_box design=”box_12_at” float=”none” author=”@Fatbit_tech” pic_url=”https://www.fatbit.com/fab/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/UX-of-Blog.png”]When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients[/tweet_box]

Therefore, it is also important to allow readers to learn about your services & products. To make it happen, practice following:

• Do internal linking in your posts
• Insert CTA-AB (Call-to-action –Action button) i.e. a statement that recognizes the pain-point or need of readers, plus the action button that takes visitors to a service/product/contact page.

Some CTA tips and etiquettes:

• Do not over stuff your post with CTAs and internal links
• Make sure you are adding relevant CTAs to the post and placing them at appropriate places

• Utilize your side panel and add a sticky graphical CTA which always remains visible to readers
• Add an exclusive CTA with benefits, social proofs, and offers at the end of the post

Don’t leave reader on a dead end

You did an extensive research and came up with an informative article; but don’t do the mistake of neglecting the end, otherwise, all your effort to engage readers may go in vain.

Deploy the following tactics towards the end:

Add a conclusion
A great article starts with a great title and ends with a great conclusion. No matter how engaging your entire article is, if you fail to add a conclusion in the end, it would be a purposeless piece of content; and your readers will go away without doing any further activity on your blog.

The conclusion should be short and a sum-up of all the main points of the post. Not only will it improve the engagement rate of your blog but will also motivate readers to take further actions.

Ask a question
Ending conclusion with a question is also a great way to motivate readers to take part in commenting.

Your post ends here…

Let’s talk about some more engagement tactics which are not the part of your post but play a great role in engaging readers.

Comments section

Now it’s time for the readers to ask their questions or answer the questions asked (by author) at the end of the post.

After going through a post, readers may have some queries which they want to ask. So, it is reader’s turn first. Comment form should appear on the top of the comments section.

On few blogs, comment submission form comes after all the comments. On a blog which receives hundreds of comments, such a practice is discouraging for readers, as they will have to scroll down a lot just to find the comment form.

Additionally, try to respond to all the comments from your readers. This will enable you to build a relationship with your readers, as well as encourage readers to comment on your future posts.

Send readers to other posts

Your readers are hungry for information, so feed them with more content. Here are few techniques you can try out:

• Highlight related posts (or previous & next post) below the comment section

• Place quick links for recent/trending/ popular posts in the right panel of the blog
• Highlight relevant categories and tags in the right panel to allow users to find related content easily

Conclusion – Provide better experience to improve engagement and trustworthiness

If you succeed to provide a better user experience and engage readers on your blog, you will automatically succeed in improving your brand value. And an improved brand value will help you achieve overall business success.

Let’s go through above-mentioned practices for improving the UX and engagement on your blog once again:

• Improve blog homepage to drive readers to post page
• Plan a separate and sticky top navigation for your blog
• Keep smaller visual span on post page
• Keep paragraphs short and crisp
• Always go for black font on white background
• Avoid placing date with a post (or place them smartly)
• Place sticky social media sharing icons
• Add visual content to keep interest alive
• Add estimated reading time (Not for blogs with extra-long posts)
• Insert call-to-actions to keep readers to allow readers to take further steps
• Don’t leave readers on a dead end

Are there any other ways to improve the UX and engagement on a blog? Please suggest in the comments.

The post How to improve User Experience of your blog to get maximum shares appeared first on FATbit Blog.

After reading this blog post, you will be able to generate higher sales from the same amount of website traffic. Here are some checkout-process optimization points that will boost online sales without spending a marketing penny:

Be transparent about shipping details

A major reason of shopping cart abandonment is that users are updated about shipping charges at the last step. To avoid last moment loss of sales, maintain transparency in shipping options and charges based on area of delivery, date of delivery etc. Update shoppers about the shipping cost before checkout process. This will build trust in the minds of shoppers and increases conversion prospects in checkout process.

This is critical for online stores with multiple vendors having different shipping policies, charges, speed of delivery etc. Making such small changes in checkout process will help boost conversions.

Inform about product stock-out in advance

Online shopping may be convenient but browsing through product pages to find what you like is exhausting. Thus, no one likes to see a product stock-out popup after order placement and payment. Be very clear on your website about remaining stock for all products, sizes, colors, configurations, etc.

Products saved in abandoned carts and wish-lists must be automatically removed when they stock out. When stocks are limited, an item must be added back to the stock after a pre-set time period to avoid getting blocked in abandoned carts. Not doing this can lead to lost sales.

Well now let us dig deep into the first and most important reason of abandoned shopping carts: Annoying Checkout Process.

Use social login and guest checkout

Online shopping drives majority of its revenue from impulse shoppers. Such shoppers especially do not wish to spend a lot of time registering on every online store. Neither do they want their emails to be bombarded with promotional mails. So, as an online shopping store owner, you need to make the registration process as effortless as possible.

• Allow login through social profiles – With social login feature, shopper does not have to fill in basic details and remember a new password.

• Provide the option of guest checkout – It makes the checkout process quick, convenient and hassle free.

Chumbak has done a great job with this page. The page is very neat and all login options are clearly stated. Optimize your checkout process in such a way to improve store sales.

Clearly state checkout process

Online shopping must be synonymous with convenience shopping. Your website plays a major role in making that happen. A customer who plans to buy from you deserves to know how long it will take to place the order and how many steps are involved. In addition to an optimized product catalog and simple registration process, you must clearly display the steps involved in the checkout; just like TrendIn has done:

PropShop24.in also tried implementing something similar but ended up stuffing too much information in their checkout page. There is nothing technically wrong with it; it just ends up leaving little space to breathe.

To test what works better with your website visitors, track user behavior for multiple versions of your webpage through Google Analytics. Use data related to Bounce Rate, Exit Rate and Time on Page to get a better understanding of what needs to be tweaked with your website’s checkout process.

Limit Navigation

When the shopper is adding products to shopping cart, you can provide shopping suggestions to up-sell or cross-sell. But once a visitor starts the checkout process, limit navigation options. Do not keep your top navigation and footer active.

However, don’t freeze the navigation completely. Just limit options to go back. Provide an option to visit the product catalog and home page. Allow shoppers to contact customer care to clarify any last moment doubts without giving strong visual clues.

Allow easy updation of checkout details

At every step, a shopper must be able to see what information has already been submitted by him. He must also have the option to go back to a previous stage and change the information already input by him. Flipkart does this beautifully.

Following points will certainly come handy to optimize checkout process for better sales;

• Effective CTAs must prompt him to edit incorrect information.
• A visitor must not be forced to use the browser’s back button
• The checkout process must not start from the very beginning if a visitor goes back to edit details.
• All important information like shipping address, contact details, etc must be stored automatically in user dashboard for subscribed users. In case of repeat purchase, there must be an option to pick up pre-stored information.

Optimize conversion forms

Valued of registered users cannot be ignored even if you offer guest checkout option. Increase the number of registered users by making the registration process simple and quick. Jabong is using an effective pop up as a registration form;

• The form is compact and clean.
• It does not ask for redundant information.
• There are no unnecessary details.
• It doesn’t freeze the website.
• There is a social media login option too.
• There is a preselected option for the company newsletter.
• Monetary benefit in exchange of signup for new visitors.

What Jabong did with a small popup, Zappos failed to accomplish with a full-fledged page. Its registration page is cluttered with company credentials, multiple newsletter options, terms and conditions, and what not.

The shipping information and payment details collection forms must also be planned on similar lines. Optimize your website’s conversion forms with these points;

• The city and state must be auto filled once the pin code has been filled in.
• You must not have multiple columns to fill in the address asking for street name, nearby landmark, etc.
• There must be transparency of charges for payment options like cash on delivery.

Add trust building elements

Include client testimonials, security badges, payment options, return policy, and customer support visuals to increase conversion prospects. Even if a user is not looking for this information, such elements build trust and give shopper another reason to purchase. Where and how you place these elements is also crucial. ModCloth has placed them in the page header and just near the checkout button.

Add information to your checkout pages that answer buyer’s doubts. This is particularly important to boost conversions of a checkout process when the product/service being sold is of a high value. Apple includes an FAQ section under its checkout page. All these are successful examples of optimizing a website’s conversion funnel.

Utilize thank you page

A user who reaches the Thank You page and leaves your website is also a loss of future conversions. Such a visitor can become a repeat buyer if provided with right options.

• Suggest your customer to buy complimentary or related products or services. Make them available at a discounted price for a limited time period.
• Ask them to fill out a survey about their shopping experience. In return award them with a discount on their next purchase.
• Request buyer to share the news of recent purchase with friends in exchange of a referral discount on next purchase.
• Make your return policy very transparent to avoid any last moment cancellations.

Evaluate your website’s checkout process for above mentioned points to sell more from the same amount of traffic. If your checkout process is fine but your website sales are still low as compared to incoming traffic, there might be other issues with the conversion funnel.

The point is you don’t need to invest in marketing and advertising to increase online sales. Simple website upgrades can do the trick.

Do you have something to ask? Share your questions in the comment section and our experts will answer!

The post How To Optimize Your Store’s Checkout Process to Boost Online Sales and Conversions? appeared first on FATbit Blog.

Search Engine Optimization:

1. Relevant Keywords optimization of content

If you have a tight marketing budget then you cannot rely only on online advertising and offline sales team to generate all the traffic for you. You need to enable your website to generate the right kind of traffic that will stay and buy from you. For that optimizing your webpage content and architecture for the most relevant keywords is very important.  Plus all the content that you generate for brand building, knowledge sharing and marketing communication, both on-site and off-site, must also be keyword optimized. You can choose multiple tools to find the relevant keywords and search queries eg.

• Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/)
• Google Auto Complete Suggestions
• Terms used by people in related discussion forums
• Ubersuggest (http://ubersuggest.org/)

 2. Diverse Content Production

Invest in diverse content production and content marketing. Generate content specifically according to the people who will be buying your product/service and market it to them. Don’t just start blogging about topics that your competitors are already talking about. Find your niche and stick to it. Your customers should know exactly what you specialize in. In the year 2014, people are already exposed to too much content. To prevent your company from looking like a “me too”, produce diverse content like:

• Slideshows to target the executives and share them on platforms like Linkedin, SlideShare, Google+, etc.
• Make videos about your work culture, processes, and quality assurance procedures to connect with your audience through YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc.
• Interesting graphics, creative and informative infographic designs that share valuable data, etc through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr.  You can use free tools like Piktochart (http://piktochart.com/) and Canva (https://www.canva.com/) to design these graphics.
• Conduct Webinars with industry experts on Google Hangout to get some instant visibility.

Sharing your content on external platforms will improve your company’s overall online presence and help in building these platforms as a constant source of traffic. If your content is worth reading and sharing, it will become a recurring source of traffic for your website. Hence, your content is helping you increase targeted website traffic at an affordable cost.

Also Read: How to increase an online store’s traffic in 60 days [Case Study].

3. Try improving domain Authority

Try guest blogging on relevant, high authority domains. Such blogs rank well on search engines, have a good subscriber base, generate relevant traffic and have an established social network that you might not have. So try earning a valuable back-link by sharing your content through such blogs and divert traffic to your website’s marketing pages. It will help you improve your website’s domain authority and improve your website’s overall search engine ranking.

Ever since unethical link building has been penalized by Google, everyone is looking for guest blogs where they can share their content at low cost; hence giving rise to loosely moderated low-quality blogs. Don’t “buy” free website traffic when you can get it yourself.  Rather establish multiple FREE high authority blogs on Weebly, WordPress, Quora, LinkedIn, etc, share informative content and divert traffic to your main website. FATbit’s SEO team advises online marketers to adopt this technique to avoid a future penalty.

4. Optimize for location specific searches

If you are an offline business, register your business details and website in relevant directories, classifieds and portals. Every country has its own popular classifieds and yellow pages that list businesses. There are some databases that also list similar online businesses. These act as specialized search engines and send traffic your way. Try to share multiple locations where your service are available, business details, contact information, website URL and customer reviews, etc.

You will need a dedicated team to constantly generate content, optimize it for search engines and promote it.
Hire an SEO team at affordable prices

Increase Referral Traffic:

5. Strategic business alliances

Tie up with complementary service providers to make them act as referral sources.  The travel industry has been capitalizing on this for quite some time and you can do it too. When you buy a holiday tour package it usually includes some hotel reservations. This very hotel is “recommended” by the online travel agent, because it’s basically a strategic tie-up. Similarly, you can try to explore options where you can partner with websites and establish referral programs. They can act as your affiliates and send traffic, mature leads and business your way. This will help you limit your expenditure on online marketing and sales team maintenance in exchange for a pre-decided commission.

Adaumont Farm acts as an affiliate for selected caterers (http://adaumontfarm.com/vendors.html) and helps generate traffic for their respective websites.

 6. Promote referral programs

Businesses can also promote a social referral program through their website. Here existing customers can be promised attractive discounts on their next purchase or some freebies every time they share updates about the company with their network. It can be executed by sending mails or asking their friends to join through social media platforms. These referrals tend to perform better than advertising to the masses.

Try Increasing Repeat Visits:

7.  Give Incentive for Repeat Purchase

The probability of making a sale to your existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new visitor is 5-20% and it even costs 5 times higher.

People feel that the online marketplace is highly price sensitive but there are some people who are brand loyal because they trust very limited service providers for genuine products and timely delivery.  FATbit advises marketers to maintain a proper database and find out who their loyal customers are. Reward your loyal customers and give them an incentive for repeat purchase (eg. a discount on next purchase, loyalty points which can be redeemed, etc). This can turn out to be the most inexpensive way to increase website traffic, and sales.

Betabrand (http://www.betabrand.com/modelcitizen) is doing a great job at promoting repeat purchases. They are engaging their customers by asking them to upload pictures of themselves wearing what they bought from Betabrand (+getting user generated content for FREE). In return, they are not just giving a discount but adding an element of urgency by putting a time limit of 24 hours on the offer.

8. Use retargeting effectively

Adroll (http://www.adroll.com/retargeting) – a popular retargeting solution says that approx 2% of visitors buy/ subscribe on their first visit to an online store. Effective retargeting techniques bring can help make the remaining 98% revisit your website. A repeat visitor has higher probability of buying than a new visitor, because he already knows what you have to offer.

Retargeting tracks the people who visit your site with the help of cookies and displays your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online. These are basically the ads that follow you around. Use efficient filters to choose who will be a part of your retargeting ad campaign to save on the expenditure.

If you do not wish to use paid ads, you can also use email marketing by sending your subscribed users details of the products that they almost bought. Just hire an expert developer to program your website for retargeting. You will also need specialized landing pages to get the maximum returns from retargeting ad or email campaigns.

9. Increase your subscribed user base

Try to increase your subscribed user base in order to increase repeat visits. The subscribed users will constantly get updates about new product launches, latest offers, your blog content, and PR activities.  When used effectively, this can turn out to be one of the most affordable ways to get repeat traffic and more customers.

It is also easier to maintain a close relationship with your subscriber base than with the audience at large. Such visitors are more probable of coming back to your website. Just make sure of the following things when you try to expand your subscriber base:

• Do not force opt-ins.
• Do not use irritating pop-ups that completely freeze the website.
• Do not force people to subscribe just because they wish to buy from you. Allow guest checkouts.
• Do not spam their mailboxes with excessive emails.

You do not just need a website but efficient marketing to generate regular traffic for your website.
View FATbit’s online marketing services

Relationship building:

10. Social Media Marketing

If you want to connect with your target audience, you or your social media marketing team needs to stay active on all social platforms where they are active. This might not get you direct sales but can act as a recurring source of free traffic. Share your content and the latest updates with them. If you have limited manpower, improve your presence on only relevant social media platforms. Speak the language of the targeted platform and share only platform relevant content. People do not wish to see you sharing professional slideshows on Twitter and funny graphics on LinkedIn.

11. Initiate discussions

Take part in discussion forums and communities where your target customer segment is active. This is one of the very old, tried and tested way to increase website traffic and customer base at a fair cost. Share your valuable insights in your industry related discussions, share your content links and service page links wherever you feel is relevant and permitted. Such participation in discussions makes you more accessible and increases your company’s visibility.

Usually a lot of companies start writing promotional content in discussion forums and populating them with links, which is a big no-no. If someone finds your comment useful, they are naturally bound to tracing you back to your company website. Ask your employees to take part in discussions through their personal profiles as people prefer talking to other people rather than companies.

12. Give away something for free

Giving something free to your customers gives you instant acceptance and brings you one step closer to your customers. Companies launching a new or lesser known service/product must come out with a limited period demo or trial version to make new people try it. Something given out for free gets shared frequently through positive word of mouth, gets talking about in guest blogs and is more often shared through social media platforms. All these act as multiple sources of free traffic. You can also give out free ebooks, guides, etc. for download to your customers which carry valuable insights about your product/service/industry and can be helpful to your customers. In return you can ask for a subscription to your newsletter.

We hope that these tips will help you kickstart your online business and start generating traffic for it at almost negligible costs. If you feel that you have a great product but do not have the time and expertise to market it, it is advisable to hire professionals for the task.

What other techniques you use to generate FREE traffic for your website?

Hire professional marketers to generate multiple sources of recurring traffic for your website.
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The post Learn Targeted Traffic Hacking to Acquire More Customers at a Low Cost appeared first on FATbit Blog.