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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 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.