Category: Business Boosters
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July 23, 2019

Fine-Tuning Your Online Presence

As our Business Boosters series comes to an end, we would like to leave you with some thoughts on what to do next. Here are a couple of final tips to make your business seem as professional as possible. In this article, we gathered the best insights coming from a career in web development. Developer and project manager at Xy Web Solutions, Jeremiah Scanlon, shared his advice on what makes or breaks your online presence.

  1. Mobile, mobile, mobile.
    Optimize your website so that it works well on phones. Guaranteed, most of your users will be visiting you from their smartphones.

  2. Think about an app.
    In keeping with #1, if your product or service warrants it, an app will increase your credibility, customer experience and retention. Cross-platform development has made app development more attainable.

  3. Nobody likes waiting.
    Make sure your site does not take long to load. You can measure this at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.

  4. Consistent branding.
    Do not change your logo, font, color theme, or messaging. It can send clients mixed messages.

  5. Images are key.
    They must be quality images, proportional to the page their located on, be it on mobile or desktop. Jeremiah says, “Create a budget for your images, then double it.” Hire a photographer, build a photo booth, do whatever it takes.

  6. Action-oriented sites.
    If you are an ecommerce business, your goal is to create conversions. If you offer a service, your goal is to initiate contact. Make sure the content on your pages leads to exactly that. Keep your user’s experience in mind when building your website, and they will not disappoint.

July 23, 2019

3 Steps a Startup Must Take

So you have this great idea and it could potentially bring you a ton of profit. You know exactly what the product or service will be, you know how you want to brand it and you’re excited to get this started. 

Take a breath. 

There are a couple of things that every business should first go through to establish reliability and credibility. Let’s touch on them together. 

1. Create a website

We live in a digital age. Whether it’s super simple or overloaded with pages, you should absolutely have a website for your business. It should lead your users to a means of contacting you or purchasing a product/service. It might even have links to the business’s social media page, which is also very important. Once it’s up and running, you can find helpful tips for your next steps in our previous articles about driving traffic to your site and the power of data.

2. Create a custom email address

Picture this: you are on Xy Web Solution’s website and you decide to send them a message. Two days later, you get an email back from sexygal12345@gmail.com responding to that message. Personally, I would be afraid to even click on the email. 

Hopefully, your email address is not in sexygal’s realm. That said, it should not be johnsmith88@yahoo.com, either. A better solution is to create a custom email domain for your business. An email address like sales@xywebsolutions.com would invoke more credibility than the prior two. If you have your domain already and you want to get started we like recommending Google’s G Suite product.

NOTE: Gratuitous plug … use our contact form to ask for a G Suite promotional code and receive 20% off your first year.

3. Claim your business on Google

Head on over to https://www.google.com/business/. There, you will be asked about your business name, location and industry. You can choose whether or not to add a location, which would then appear on Google Maps. Once you go through all the steps, you will be redirected to your Google Business dashboard, where you can do all sorts of nifty things. 

July 16, 2019

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Tried sharing your link on social media? Stuffing your text with keywords? Asking your friends to give the page a shoutout? We’ve all been there. Getting users to click on your page can be tough. Oftentimes we might even be breaking some rules unknowingly. To avoid that, let’s talk about some traffic-boosting methods. 

Unique Content 

There is no easy way out of this one. The more unique and interesting your content is, the more interested your audience (and Google) will be. You may have heard of the trick to bombard your page with keywords – big no-no. Although you should definitely have relevant keywords sprinkled across your page, overdoing it can cause more damage than anything else. Google’s algorithms are savvy to this and don’t take kindly to tomfoolery. Your job is to create quality content for your desired end-user, Google’s job is to deliver the most relevant results.

Social Media

It is always a good idea to share your website on your social platforms. If you’re anything like I was in the beginning, you are probably telling yourself: “I don’t want my friends thinking I want to make money off of them!”. A way around that is creating user-generated content, something I explained in our previous post. More specific methods include redirecting posts about contests or giveaways to your website, posting promotions and of course, putting your website link in the “Bio” section.

Videos

Would you rather read an article or watch a video? Your answer probably matches your audience’s. Not only do many users prefer videos to text marketing, but posting videos on your site would also help you cross-promote your material while giving you a nice boost in organic search rankings.

“It’s no secret that Google owns YouTube, uploading video content to YouTube will get you noticed way more in search results.”

Steve Conca 


These tips should get you on your way, but remember: nothing increases traffic like a good product. If you are focusing more on increasing conversions than improving what got you here in the first place, rethink your priorities. 

July 9, 2019

Still Not Up on Social Media? Here Are 5 Steps to Get Started.

Let’s get straight to it. 

1. Create 5-6 profiles on each social media network.  

2. Upload a selfie as your profile picture. 

3. Repeat after me: “You have got to be kidding me.”

Social media has evolved into a ginormous complexity that is no longer intuitive to manage. This may be the reason why businesses with great potential wait so long to expand their reach. I am here to make things easier for you. Follow these quick steps by tonight to finally start leveraging your social media channels. 

The Real List

1. Literally Set Up Your Accounts

Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn will do. The network you focus on should depend on your audience. LinkedIn might target clients that come from a professional setting. Facebook reaches a wide range of ages, but mostly those 30 – 49. Instagram is especially popular among 18 – 24 year olds. 

2. Upload Your Logo as a Profile Picture

On Facebook or LinkedIn, you can also upload a cover photo. Good examples would be professional photos of your workplace, staff or most recent product.  

3. Come Up With a Theme

Being consistent increases credibility. Choose 2-3 colors and a font type you plan to use. Come up with similar hashtags to include in every post, or even create your own hashtag like we did for #XyBusinessBoosters and #XyWebSolutions.  

4. Post Square Images and Videos

Apparently, size does matter. Square images and videos have proven to outperform landscape or portrait content in terms of views and engagement. 

5. Create User Generated Content

Do not blatantly advertise what your business offers. Many social media users get defensive when they realize that a post is trying to make money off of them. Instead, content like photo contests, client reviews or sharing a user’s photos have shown to grow an account to 400% within months.

June 10, 2019

How Data Can Save Your Business

A World of Data

My friend, you should have clicked on this link ages ago. Running a company in today’s day without analyzing incoming data goes hand in hand with gambling in the deepest corners of Caesars Palace in Vegas.

While there are experienced owners that intuitively feel where their market is going, it is difficult for them to have a hunch about exactly where their website traffic is coming from, or what age group buyers belong to. A failed startup owner confesses:

“We didn’t spend enough time talking with customers and were rolling out features that I thought were great, but we didn’t gather enough input from clients. We didn’t realize it until it was too late” (“The Top 20 Reasons”).

What Can Data Do For You?

Leveraging data analysis tools can answer questions like: “What do my returning buyers have in common?”, “What keywords lead the most clients to my site?” or “What is my profit in terms of each product?”. The same software can generate graphs that visually explain business metrics like  your average order value, gross profit over time and any key performance indicators that you have set for your business. These annual, seasonal or even daily reports can take your hand and slowly lead you out of the casino and into broad daylight.

Analyzing data can lead you toward pushing advertisements in one area more than another, or designing a new product based on your current buyers’ preferences. With informed decisions like these, you can really only increase profit and take your business to the next level.  A couple of months into the process, you might even find it easier to fall asleep knowing that you have a more stable way of supporting your family.

If you are wondering whether or not you have been asking yourself the right questions, follow the link to our survey: “How Data Savvy Is Your Business?”. Let’s see how deep into the casino you really are.

References:

“The Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail.” CB Insights Research, 15 Mar. 2019, www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/.