How To Perform A Cyber Security Assessment

Cyber security is an important factor in a company’s risk management strategy. It needs to be performed correctly so that it won’t leave the company vulnerable to potential threats and attacks.
When it comes to security assessment, the needs of companies vary because the needs of a multi-national corporation cannot be compared to a mid-sized business. However, all companies regardless of size will always try to minimize the amount of risk it undertakes. To do this, risk assessment is a procedure they cannot do away with.
Luckily, risk management does not have to be complicated. It can be broken down into these steps:
Come Up With A Risk Management Plan
Even if you’re good in cyber security, you can’t be everywhere at once. You need a team to back you up and help you gain insights to the total risk of your company. Businesses are usually composed of departments and all of them work differently. Therefore it is important to have a team that can work cross-functionally not only to communicate risks but also to come up with holistic analysis. A good team should have:

• Senior management to provide oversight.
• Chief information security expert (or its equivalent) to check network architecture.
• Marketing to discuss stored information.
• Product management to guarantee product safety as it undergoes development cycle.
• Human resources to provide insight to employee information.
• Manager for each significant business line to take care of all data at this level.

You want to make sure that business objectives are aligned with security goals which is why you need a cross-functional team so that you can get the desired results.
Catalog Information Asset

Interdepartmental risk management is important because it allows you to catalog all information assets. Let’s say that some things won’t escape your notice such as information your business collects, stores and transfers but the same can’t be said with different Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) used by other departments.
Departments might not also realize that they can put information at risk by using some SaaS vendors. In fact, 3
rd
party vendors are usually the source of data breach risks. There are questions you need to ask yourself to help you understand the different information collected, stored and transferred by your company. These include:

• Types of data collected by department.
• Where is it stored?
• What is the transmission process?
• Why are you collecting this information?
• Which vendors does each department use?
• Which info is accessed by vendors?
• What is the authentication process for info access?
• What devices are used by the workplace?
• What are the networks utilized to process these information?

Answers to these questions will give you a clear insight as to what your business is dealing with.
Risk Assessment
Importance of information varies in every organization because some are more critical than others. This is also the reason why not all vendors are secure. After taking a look at your information assets you should now turn your attention to the possible risks posed by vendors.

• Identify networks, system and software crucial to your business.
• Identify information that should have management confidentiality, availability and integrity.
• In case of data loss, which devices are at high risk?
• What are the chances of data breach or corruption?
• Determine the system, network and software that are vulnerable to data breach by cyber criminals.
• What is the potential financial reputation in the case of a data breach?

Risk assessment is not easy and takes time. However, it can be made easier by making a catalog out of your information assets and identifying areas that are easily accessible by cyber criminals. Therefore it is important to go over every information, data, software, network, system and device to understand risks they pose.
Risk Analysis
Risk analysis is the next step to assessment. The way information is secured is not always risk-free. Therefore it is important to consider:

• Probability of cyber criminals accessing data.
• Financial, reputational and operational impact of a data breach.

Determining the probability of impact will help you determine risk tolerance level. This way you can accept, transfer, mitigate or refuse a risk.

Come Up With Security Controls

Coming up with risk tolerance will give you ideas on security controls. They should include:

• Network segregation.
• Password protocol.
• Workforce training.
• At-rest and in-transit encryption.
• Vendor risk management program.
• Anti-malware and anti-ransom software.
• Firewall configuration.
• Multi-factor authentication.

These are just examples of some controls. The most important thing is to always remember to align business goals with security needs.

Monitor and Review Effectiveness
Cyber security is always a hot topic. Somebody will always try ways to come up with methodologies to compromise security controls. This means that businesses need to maintain a risk management program and monitor IT environments regularly for any new threats that could arise. Make sure that your risk analysis is flexible to adjust to new threats. An unbreakable IT security profile is something that can evolve with any risk that comes along the way.

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Reducing IT Costs

It’s no secret that can be expensive especially when it comes to business. However, it is the cornerstone of many businesses so it’s not really something that you can easily do away with. Aside from this, IT costs are continuing to rise as technology becomes more advanced so budgeting for it can be difficult.

Luckily, there are ways you can reduce IT costs without sacrificing the quality of your service or security. Here are some ways you can reduce IT costs for your business.

Renegotiate Existing Contracts

If you don’t ask then you won’t receive. Some business owners simply sign a contract with their vendors and then leave them as is. What they don’t realize is that could be missing out on deals, promos, price reductions and offers.

Negotiate with your vendors if you’re serious about reducing IT costs. Some benefits include:

• Get what you want.
• Receive a good deal.
• Save money.
• Win-win situation for both of you.

Consolidate

Some businesses don’t realize that they’re using multiple vendors for different needs. However, consolidating vendors, platforms and software can help you reduce IT costs meaning more spending power. It will also help improve security.

Other benefits of vendor consolidation include:

• Easier vendor management – fewer vendors mean less relationships to manage.
• Lesser freight costs – the more vendors you have the higher the freight cost since you have to pay for every fare.
• Better relationships with vendors – easier to cultivate vendor relationships. Now that you’re spending money on your chosen vendor they will value your relationship more.

Use the Cloud

The cloud has become an indispensable tool for many businesses. Using the cloud can help reduce IT costs because it can eliminate the need for expensive storage hardware kept on-site.

Cloud computing is cost effective because businesses can scale their needs as they arise. It is also efficient because businesses don’t need to worry about underlying infrastructure costs or maintenance. Best of all it gives businesses a technological advantage by providing innovative technology.

Use Open Source Software

Software can be very expensive in terms of purchasing cost and annual maintenance. Luckily there are open source software that can help you eliminate this cost. There are even software that you can customize because you have access to the source code.

Other benefits include:

• Ability to let your start small. You can start with a community version and then upgrade to commercially supported editions as your business grows and expands. If it doesn’t require support you can continue with the community version indefinitely.
• Solid security. Open source sometimes gets a bad rap in terms of security. However, this is not true because the open source community is very responsive especially when it comes to information security.
• Attracts better talent. Many industry experts believe that IT is headed towards open source. Many like to create their own projects and have the ability to interact with others to develop solutions. Having the ability to be flexible and free helps to attract better talent.
• Flexible and agile. Technology is evolving fast so you have to compete not only on flexibility but also agility. If not you’re going to lose to the competition. Open source gives you the ability to be technologically agile especially when it comes to solving problems.

Offshore Outsourcing

It’s no secret that offshore outsourcing is a good way to cut IT costs. There are many talents around the world that offer lower prices in exchange for their abilities. Outsourcing can also give your on-site talents a break. However, work should always be carried accurately and existing workflow should be maintained. This is why you have to hire outsourced talents only from reliable providers.

Use Managed IT Services With Fixed Fees

Use managed IT services that have fixed fees. IT services usually have varied fees depending on your requirements or whether you need it long or short term. However, using services with fixed fees can make your budget easier to manage.

IT services should include security service that protects your business from cyber-attacks. This should help reduce cost because maintaining an in-house cyber security team can be expensive.

IT costs can be expensive but it is essential for all types of businesses that operate on the web. The above strategies are good examples of those that don’t sacrifice quality. These tips can help you free up cash and maximize profit without compromising the IT requirements of your business.

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E-Commerce Predictions For 2019

The ushering of the New Year is usually accompanied by predictions. However, unlike the spiels you usually hear from fortune tellers at your local flea market, these predictions are more reliable since they are backed by some of the most important names in the internet and tech world.

As we all know, WordPress is powering approximately half of the world’s website. It is being used not only for blogging and networking; it is also the top choice for E-Commerce websites. With so many users around the globe there might be people who are wondering what’s 2019 going to look like for WordPress and E-Commerce?

Let’s ask the experts who were present in Nashville for the WordCamp US in early December of last year. WordCamp is the national conference for WordPress.

Zach Barrientos – PayPal

Zach Barrientos of PayPal merchant services is predicting a boom in the marijuana industry. He explains that as the US federal government regulates the industry, demand for the product will increase and so will the number of sites catering to this type of business.

Matt Cromwell – GiveWP

Matt Cromwell is a partner and head of support for http://GiveWP.com. His prediction centers around donations and non-profits. His prediction is in line with the increase of donations given in the US during Giving Tuesday. According to him, people in the US gave $70 million in 1 day and he sees this number increasing phenomenally. Donations are part of e-commerce so many people are paying attention to this space.

Patrick Garman – Mindsize

Mindsize Partner Patrick Garman predicts more people moving out of the WooCommerce space and moving to WordPress. WooCommerce will remain as a heavy player in the e-commerce space because everyone can use this and WordPress to start their shop. As stores grow and expand there will be many users who will have a love-hate relationship with these builders. This is why he predicts that WordPress will develop a more hybrid approach with other platforms like Big Commerce and Shopify to help provide solutions.

He hopes that solutions generated by these players will be agnostic so that it will become easier to integrate between WordPress and whatever platform they are using.

Justin Nealy – GoDaddy

GoDaddy hosting supervisor Justin Nealy helps people set up their websites every day and predicts that e-commerce ecosystems like WordPress will make it easier for newbies to create an online store. While WordPress is easy to set up, it can be overwhelming to somebody completely new to creating a website or selling online. With help from plugins like Gutenburg, he states that anybody can create a WordPress site with whatever plugin they want.

Brian Richards – WPSessions

Brian Richards runs WPSessions and by extension WordSesh conferences. His prediction for 2019 is a more headless style e-commerce approach just like what BigCommerce is bringing to WordPress.

He is interested in seeing more boutique shops with people creating more independent Etsy shops because barrier of entry for these types of e-commerce shops is reduced.

Chris Badgett – LifterLMS

Chris Badgett of LifterLMS on the other hand predicts a shift from off hosted eCommerce to WordPress eCommerce due to GDPR and privacy issues in Europe. He predicts that users from this area will want to move from the SAS kind to self-hosted WordPress so they have the data located in their country, which is one of the requirements for European GDPR.

He also predicts more complex tax issues in e-commerce and hopes to continue to see more innovation in this space. He predicts that more players will emerge in the tax solutions so that the average user can easily figure out and manage tax especially on a global scale.

What are your e-commerce and WordPress predictions for this year? What do you think about the predictions above? Tell us by leaving your comments below.

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Factors To Consider When Choosing A VPN Provider

As more and more people use the internet, privacy and security are becoming major issues. VPN or virtual private network can come as a handy tool if you want to hide your internet footprints.

There are still many people who are unsure about VPN especially because there are so many myths surrounding it. The most common question regarding VPN pertains to its safety and the next is which service is the best?

Here are some factors you need to consider when choosing a VPN provider.

Protocol and Anonymity

People turn to VPN when they want to be anonymous on the web. There are many reasons for this and the most common is for privacy and protection. This is why the foremost on your mind when choosing a VPN provider is their protocol and encryption technique. This is to ensure that date is transmitted securely from your device to the VPN server.

VPN service providers usually use many different protocols. However always choose a VPN provider that uses OpenVPN protocol. For encryption, your best bet is a provider that uses AES-256 bit encryption.

No Data Logging

Choose a VPN provider that does not log your data. There are service providers that log and store data such as your websites visited, payment information, connecting time stamp and other details which defeats the purpose of using VPN in the first place.

Shortlist a number of VPN providers and then check their privacy policy thoroughly. Check how these companies store, collect and dispose data. The best VPN provider has a no data collection policy.

No To Free VPN Providers

Nothing in this world is free, including VPN service. You should be wary of companies that provide free VPN service. If services are free, this means that something is compromised. Always remember that it’s better to spend money than compromise your privacy.

If you’re looking at VPN services for home or personal use, make sure that it is within your budget. Usually price increases as the number of connections and features increase. There are also VPN companies that provide generous discounts if you avail of their services for a year rather than paying monthly. If you feel that a certain plan and its features are best suited for your requirements, it’s better to get a yearly subscription compared to a monthly one.

Getting a free trial is not bad though. There are many options to consider and you can check out their features during the free trial to find out which one is the best suited for your needs.

Number Of Servers

When it comes to servers, the more the better.

VPN bypasses the geographical restrictions imposed when accessing the internet. This is why there are people looking for VPN services so that they can view Netflix or other sites not available in their countries.

Check the locations where the VPN servers are located. If you want to connect to a specific location, make sure that they have a lot of servers available in that area.

At Least 2 Concurrent Connections

Choose a provider that allows for multiple concurrent connections. You might want to connect to a desktop and your smartphone at the same time.

There are many VPN providers that have this feature. It is best to use a provider that allows at least 2 concurrent connections at the same time. Check the number of connections you need before subscribing to avoid inconvenience.

Platform Compatibility

This is pretty straightforward. If you need a VPN for Mac, then it should be able to support this platform. The same is true for Windows and others. It is also best to make sure that it can also run on Android and iOS.

Always make an informed decision before subscribing to a VPN provider. It can be an intimidating task but doing research can help you make a better decision.

What features do you look for in a VPN provider? What is your experience with your VPN provider? Tell us by leaving your comments below.

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How to Combine Email Marketing and Social Media

Combining two of the most common marketing methods can help you save time, improve your branding, make your message consistent, and maximize the impact you have on your audience and potential customers.

Creating campaign experiences that are cohesive between email and social can save you time purely in asset management. Using similar headlines, body copy, and images from your email to social posts means no more one-off copy needs to be done on a regular basis.

This consolidation of efforts also keeps your message consistent. Not to say that you can’t spice things up from one post to the next—but combining these efforts will make sure every line you create has the same impact and carries the same message.

All of this will strengthen your brand. As your audience sees your campaigns over and over again amidst email and social posts, your message is rooted into their memories by sheer volume and consistency. This builds on your voice and reach, ensuring your audience brings the right image to mind when thinking about your company.

Check out this infographic below to see how you can begin combing your email and social media strategies to improve your marketing today.

Source: How to Combine Email Marketing and Social Media by Campaign Monitor

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How to use Google Analytics: Tools to Analyze Your Website’s Data

So your business is doing well. Your website receives traffic, and activity occurs on its pages. Though, nothing is storing this valuable information which can be used to make data-driven decisions. There is a lack of insight generation. To reverse this untapped potential, you decide to employ Google’s free Analytics application that is housed within their Marketing Platform. This product provides an array of features to help analyze your site’s data with the goal of generating insights on behaviors, trends, and associations useful for improving your online presence and future business. The time has now come to set the service up and dig into its features.

Setting It Up

To start, make sure you have a personal Google account and head to https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/. From there, click “Start for free,” and then “website.” The next entry asks you to create an account name, which will serve as the Google Analytics account associated with your personal one. Then, enter your website name, url, industry category, and time zone. Your industry category does not impact tracking or data collection but rather enables Google to create customizable reports that suit your industry-specific needs. Once completed, you will receive a tracking ID unique to the site that was just set up. In order to enable tracking, some web hosts or website builders like Wix provide features or plugins that allow you to input the tracking ID right into a field. If this is not an option in your case, you can enter this tracking ID into a specific section of a tracking snippet, and then paste that snippet into the code of each of your site’s pages that you want to track. Though tracking snippets can come in different forms to account for functionality, basic tracking snippets work fine for most purposes to start. If you want more information on this, Google’s tutorial pages provide details regarding additional snippet specifications. In general, it is a good idea to browse the various resources Google provides for powering up your website with their analytics.

Overview

Once within the Google Analytics interface, you will see an audience overview dashboard that reports different types of data such as sessions, users, and pageviews, among several others. Scrolling down will pull up demographic splits like language and country. The information displayed in this view comes from the combination of all pages on your site. You can refine the insights displayed on this overview page by date range as well as audience segments. Lastly, a menu resting on the left of the screen provides ease of navigation throughout a majority of Google Analytics’ capabilities.

Segments

Segmenting the audience will isolate a subset of traffic to be juxtaposed against overall site traffic or other segments you wish to analyze. To define (create) a segment, you must set specific conditions related to user, session, or hit data. If the correct combination of those aspects fulfill their conditions, the associated data point enters the segment. Sessions and hits differ in that hits are specific user interactions (click, pageview, transaction, etc) on your site that occur during a session, whereas sessions are the group of hits occurring in a certain time frame or before a defined ending activity.

For your analysis, you might create a segment of users in the United Kingdom who spend at least 2 minutes on your home page — in order to separate them from the rest of your data in reports and dashboards. You can also combine conditions using “or” or “and” operators in order to produce more specific segmentations.

Essentially, segments allow for breaking traffic into more nuanced groups that could be of particular interest. The tool might also highlight important details or lucrative adjustments regarding your site, content, or product, as revealed through the groups targeted with the segment.

Goal Setting and Alerts

Google Analytics lets you define goals — specific on-site activities that you tell the platform to view as a conversion. You may, for example, set a goal that checks if users visit five pages in a session. Every user that visits five or more pages will subsequently be entered as a conversion for that goal. Creating your own definitions for conversions empowers generation of custom ratios and statistics to gauge occurrences on your site.

Site owners commonly utilize goals for monitoring key performance indicators such as purchases, submitting contact information, signing up for a service, or viewing a certain piece of content. Indicators of performance vary across businesses and sites. For example, a commerce entity may value and track purchases, while a marketing one might define performance by the number of email signups. When setting goals for your objective, make sure to contemplate what signifies success, or conversion, in addition to what might provide clues on the broader spectrum of behaviors that make up the critical sales funnel. People might not be purchasing your product today, but they could have viewed it three times, indicating high likelihood of future purchase. Some may decide to set both of those activities as goals. Lastly, alerts function just like goals, but instead of logging conversion, they simply notify you (via email if desired) when a set condition fulfills.

Views

Thus far, you’ve become familiar with creating segments and goals for one particular view – the default overview – that shows combined data from all pages on your website. With this said, the analytics platform lets you add views for up to 25 subdomains per property. Each view you create houses its own segments, goals, alerts, reports, and dashboards. If you create these tools for one view, they can be copied to any other. Within each view, you can also apply filters to exclude certain data from the dashboard or to restrict viewing access for members of your organization.

Reports and Dashboards

You can create reports that – well, report – on different metrics. These forms let you create custom visualizations of data that can be cut in a number of different dimensions. All created reports exist in the “reports” section of the menu, but you can place ones you so choose into each view’s dashboard. In addition to reports, dashboards can house segments and individual widgets including: Metrics, Timelines, Geomaps, Tables, Pies, and Bars.

Integration

Google Analytics provides a supports integration with tons of other services, some of which include: Campaign Manager, Google Ad Manager, Search Ads 360 Reporting, Display and Video 360 Remarketing, and Salesforce Sales Cloud. The platform’s help pagesaccommodate integration inquiries with rundowns for each service. A host of 3rd party solutions, perfect for integration with Google Analytics, lie on the Partner Solutions page. This page essentially functions as an app store for extensions that connect the analytics arm with existing business services. Instituting such integrations allows aspects of the business solution apps to serve as elements within dashboards or on reports. If you have data housed within a business solution app, it will also pop up in Google Analytics.

When checking out the Solutions Gallery, you will see where individuals post their custom analytics creations for all to download and use. In some cases, it may more efficient to find an existing dashboard, report, or segment than generate your own, especially if the desired creation proves to be quite complex. The Partner Solutions and the Solutions Gallery both provide descriptions of the various plugins in addition to comment sections that serve as references when perusing options.

As you may tell, Google Analytics offers quite a powerful suite full of functionality and possibilities for customization that are useful in examining your website’s data. Taking advantage of all the various features may require some familiarization. Though, thanks to the accommodative help pages provided by Google and the many online discussions, you should be able to find your way. Now, go on and generate some insights with all of that information connected to your site!

Author Bio:

Sara is an experienced tech expert who writes with her colleagues on Enlightened Digital, to share her passion with others around the web. After 15 years in the industry, her goal is to bring information on all technology to the masses. Her philosophy is to create each article so that anyone can understand the content, whether they are a consumer or a technology expert. Check out her site at Enlightened-Digital.com.

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Best Online Apps for HR Executives

The job of Human Resources (HR) personnel does not stop at screening and hiring the right people for the company, it also includes duties such as making sure that employees get their commensurate pay and benefits, employee satisfaction and happiness at work, and overall employee productivity and teamwork.

Screening applicants and hiring employees is just one of the easier tasks for HR executives, the hardest part is how to ensure that the best employees stay in the company for good – and how the company in turn can maximize and realize their full potentials and talent.

Luckily in this digital age, there are many online and digital apps that can help HR executives and personnel track each employee’s attendance, manage payroll, and gain feedback. All these can be used to ensure that employees are constantly attended to, and that no one gets left behind (especially when it comes to compensation).

1. Zoho Recruit

Of course, there is an app that can make the screening and hiring process easier, and aside from Zoho Recruit, apps such as BambooHR and Workable can do this too. However, let’s just take the spotlight to Zoho Recruit for now because this is the most popular app in this category.

Zoho Recruit allows HR personnel to post jobs at once on multiple leading job listing sitesand Social Media pages such as LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, etc. The app also allows you to create an applicant form which can be redirected to the company’s website. Most of all, Zoho Recruit helps organize, filter and track every resume that is received from a candidate.

The best part? The app has a completely free version, but this one has very limited features. Its paid version however, has two options. Their most popular package costs $25 per month, while the premium one costs $50 per month.

1. VibeCatch

As mentioned earlier, the work does not stop at hiring and screening employees for the company. It also extends to making sure that they are actually happy and motivated to do their job. Employee engagement is an important duty for every HR executive, and VibeCatch can help out with that.

VibeCatch allows HR executives and personnel to set-up polls, get feedback from employees and enable a crowdsourcing of ideas for company and work improvement. So it could work even for companies who do not have a regular work space yet.

Best of all, the app is mobile-friendly, which makes it easier for both employers and employees to access its features. The app does not have a free version, and price starts at $24 each month for each employee.

1. CakeHR

Recording employee attendance have never been easier with CakeHR. The app is created for small to medium-sized entrepreneurs who don’t want to be burdened with piling documents and spreadsheets that tally an employee’s attendance, absence, leave requests and actual leaves taken.

Aside from time-in and time-out tracking, CakeHR lays out a shared company calendar that could show approved leaves for each employee, approval of leaves for the management to take care of, requests for time-offs from employees, and the number of leaves that an employee is still entitled to.

The app provides two options for payment – one is $3.30 per employee on an annual basis, while the other is priced at $4 per employee on a monthly basis. Interested companies can however avail of a one month free trials service.

1. Workday HCM

Workday HCM is not essentially an app, rather, it is a cloud-based tool that has all the essential features when it comes to HR functions such as attendance tracking, payroll management, compensation plans, recruitment and even up to the retirement process. Aside from that, it is also a place where customer engagement can be improved with its mobile and desktop compatibility.

Workday HCM is however pricey, since its target is mainly large and established companies. Its cost would also depend on the contract agreement, which should not be less than 3 years.

1. HR Management Magazine App

Of course, improvement of customer engagement and management cannot be done without reading up on additional knowledge and trends that concern the HR industry as a whole. The HR Management Magazine app is a place where HR executives and personnel can be up to date with staffing and recruitment strategies, leadership training and seminars, labor law updates, and many more.

Every HR executive should also take into consideration the size and industry of the company they’re working for before deciding which app is best for use. Most apps actually work best for startups and medium-sized businesses (especially those with free versions), but high-priced and premium apps are mostly targeted to large businesses which employ a higher number of employees. With more employees, HR management could get more complicated – hence the need for more inclusive HR services and apps.

Author Bio:

Jessica Radburn is a seasoned writer who enjoys creating helpful articles and interesting stories. She has worked with several clients across different industries such as advertising, online marketing, technology, healthcare, family matters, and more. She is also an aspiring entrepreneur who is engaged in assisting other aspiring entrepreneurs in finding the best office space for their business.

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How to Harness the Power of Instagram for Your Ecommerce Site

With competition in the e-commerce sector getting even stiffer, there is an urgent need for entrepreneurs to innovate. While the internet marketplace has brought about myriad opportunities, especially for smaller brands, the vicious competition on this platform makes it crucial to keep adapting. If you are still sticking to your old website as the only avenue for marketing, you are driving your business to oblivion.

The e-commerce industry is growing rapidly and if the challenges you are facing today are driving you to the wall, you just have to consider the opportunities you are losing. According to a study by eMarketer, retail e-commerce sales will shoot up to $4.058 trillion in 2020.

A similar study by Big Commerce says that over 51% of Americans today prefer shopping online, with over 96% of all consumers already having completed a purchase online. The same study says e-commerce is growing 23% year-over-year, which highlights the opportunity that every business can enjoy if they have the best digital marketing strategy.

There are over 3.7 billion internet users according to Internet Live Stats and you have to position yourself strategically to leverage the opportunities available. The best way to do this today is by riding the crest of the Instagram wave. The days of Facebook dominance seem to be over with its reach reducing and Instagram now gives the innovative marketer an opportunity to thrive. In fact, Instagram has been labeled the world’s most powerful marketing tool and for many good reasons.

The Power of Instagram Marketing

With Facebook’s decline in business marketing, it was only a matter of time before another platform came up. This time, Instagram, a photo and video sharing platform started by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, has come in to provide the much-needed solution. With over 700 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 500 million daily active users (DAUs), this is one of the most powerful social media networks today.

Close to 50% of brands in the U.S are already using Instagram for marketing purposes and according to eMarketer, the number is expected to go up to 71% by the end of 2017. A recent Forrester Research tagged Instagram as one of the most effective social marketing tools.

All these numbers highlight the power of Instagram for your marketing campaign. If you are struggling to leverage the growing numbers of internet users, it is time you learnt how to build your Instagram followers, but first things first.

Harnessing the Power of Instagram for Ecommerce

While it is very easy to set up an IG account, it is more difficult to start getting followers on Instagram and achieve your business objectives. In fact, this is the reason why most brands say social media offers no returns. In the rush to build an IG account, most business owners miss out on the bigger picture and they find it hard to get any results from their campaign.

If you want to leverage the power of IG, consider the following:

• Create an Instagram Strategy

Like with any other business campaign, you have to create a roadmap to get you to the desired objectives. There are many objectives of taking your brand to Instagram and it is advisable to first assess what you want to achieve before even opening your account. For example, do you want to increase your e-commerce website’s visibility on social media or do you want to drive sales?

Are you more after brand awareness or do you want more mentions of your products? Whatever the idea you have, make sure you set it down as this will guide the rest of the campaign. You should also consider the type of content you will be posting, schedule of posting, and the person tasked with posting content among other factors.

• Optimize Your Bio

The cardinal rule when creating a profile for your e-commerce website is to use a public account and use the new business tools to give your profile a professional touch. More importantly, you need to optimize your bio by giving detailed information about your business and more importantly adding a link to your landing page.

This is the only chance to direct traffic to your e-commerce site and it is surprising that most marketers overlook it. While at it, make sure you have optimized the landing page to make it easier for shoppers to compare the products available and make a purchase in a few steps.

• Integrate IG Photos into E-commerce

The easiest way to use Instagram for conversion is by integrating IG photos into your e-commerce website design. You can use a feed or a widget on your landing page with your IG posts to showcase your products. For instance, if you are selling eyewear, why not share posts from your IG account by customers who are wearing the same? This instantly creates a sense of authenticity in your products and you will witness better sales conversions. There are many 3rd party Instagram tools which you can now use to embed Instagram photos onto your website.

• Show Your Best Products

The power of visuals drives Instagram and this is also the reason why it has become one of the most powerful marketing tools over the last few years. It is now possible to showcase your best products in the best way possible. With IG photos, you have an opportunity to call attention to your products.

The platform has the amazing photo and video editing features to give your images an edge. These amazing photos will attract visitors to your store and from there it gets easier to close a purchase.

• Contests Galore

If you want to engage users on social platforms, start with a contest. The same applies on Instagram and it is easy to get started; you just need to choose a prize, pick a contest-specific hashtag, create a contest “theme” and finally aggregate and display the photos online.

• Use the Full Power of Hashtags

Now that there are no links, you have to leverage hashtags which allow connection of your Instagram followers with the larger marketing strategy. Start by getting a small number of real Instagram followers using popular hashtags. To get the best out of your hashtags, use a mixture of broad and specific terms. However, avoid overusing hashtags or using irrelevant ones.

Using Instagram for your e-commerce site is a learning process and these tips will help you get started.

This is a guest contribution by Scott Harris for Instamacro.

Author Bio

Harris is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional with thousands of real Instagram followers for his postings.

The post How to Harness the Power of Instagram for Your Ecommerce Site appeared first on Creativ Digital.

What To Consider In Building A Website

Ready to start building the website for your business?

Before you dive in headfirst into the world of web design, you may first want to take note of these factors that you should consider in building an effective and functioning site.

Mobile Responsiveness

Did you know that mobile web browsing has already overtaken desktop browsing since late 2016? Mobile-friendly sites aren’t just an afterthought anymore. These days, it has become an even bigger priority than your traditional desktop site given the volume of users who do most of their browsing and shopping on their smartphones.

It’s important to create the same seamless user experience for desktop and mobile sites, from the navigation to page layout and everything in between. Not only will this further engage your target market, but it will surely result into higher sales and revenue opportunities as well. And in case you’re not aware of it, Google also rewards sites that are mobile responsive through higher search rankings.

SEO

Optimising your site isn’t just about using keywords and inserting them into your blog post or web content as many times as possible anymore. SEO has become so much more strategic than before that you’ll most likely need the help of a certified SEO agency if you want your business website to rank and be known to your target market.

Also take note that optimisation happens both on-site and off-site and requires a continuous process and progression. This means that even with the best SEO practices put into effect, it may still take some time to see actual results. Just make sure to be on the good side and follow legitimate white hat SEO practices to avoid getting penalized by Google.

Imagery & Graphics

Let’s face it, most people online are attracted towards visual content than text. And while optimised web content is important for your site, it’s also just as necessary to invest in beautiful imagery and graphics to appeal more to your audience.

Balance out the text with high resolution photos and videos, and make sure to strategically position them throughout the site! Also experiment with combining text and graphics by creating infographics that could lead to higher click-throughs and conversation rates.

Call To Action

You’ll definitely want your website to be effective in pulling in your target market and converting them into paying customers. One effective way of doing so is by having different forms of call to actions found on your site.

CTAs can be a click-through button or image, it can be a text telling your customers to order now or inquire about your products/services, or it can even be a main header on your homepage informing visitors of what your business is all about and why they should make the purchase. CTAs can vary for different types of businesses–the key is to do proper research, then test out and check which ones are the most effective for you.

Design

While it’s true that design is very subjective, there’s still a viable standard of what makes a nicely designed website. And these days, it’s not enough to simply put in the images and text from your business’ marketing materials and call it a day. You’ll have to invest in a professionally designed and coded site in order to appeal to customers and provide them with a seamless user experience.

Building a website for your business does seem like such a daunting task at first. But while it may seem such a tedious and overwhelming project to take on, just remember that all it takes is proper planning, a solid vision for your business, and a reliable team of web designers and developers to help turn your vision into reality.

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5 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Pro For Your Site’s SEO

SEO has long been an important strategy for businesses to succeed. It’s even become more necessary in this digital age, especially since more and more consumers are relying on e-commerce to purchase what they want and need.

While there are several optimisation tactics that you can very well do on your own, completely managing it while running your business may not exactly be the best idea. Here are 5 compelling reasons why you should just go hire a pro.

Reason #1: SEO requires technical knowledge.

Let’s get one thing clear: SEO is not easy. Sure, you can start and do some form of SEO yourself but there’s more to it than just reading an article on the best SEO practices. Professional optimisation covers a lot of technical ground, from content to user experience, as well as off-site and specific local SEO strategies that would prove useful for your business.

This is not to say that you can’t do SEO by yourself. It simply means that if you want a more comprehensive and effective way of optimising your site and get the results you want, then it’s better to invest in a dependable and trusted SEO agency.

Reason #2: SEO requires time and attention to detail.

As a business owner, you already have a lot to deal with in running your business on a day-to-day basis. Do you really have the time to constantly monitor and implement various SEO strategies for your site?

Your time is extremely valuable and it would serve you and your business well to leave it to professionals who can really focus on optimising your site, which entails a number of continuous and progressive tasks. A dedicated SEO agency is also updated with changes and updates in algorithms and rules, as well as keeping track of your competitors. All of these come into play into having a successful SEO campaign.

Reason #3: They can provide extensive analytics and do proper monitoring.

It’s not enough to simply see the numbers from your SEO efforts. What’s even more relevant is to know “why” that’s the case and how to go about fixing or improving it further. A professional SEO agency would know what to do with the numbers and more importantly, understand the relationships among your site’s key performance indicators.

Always keep in mind that optimisation is a continuous process. It’s not a one time, big time effort, which is why it requires consistent monitoring and analysis to identify points for improvement. With proper understanding of analytics come better strategies to improve ranking and online presence of your business.

Reason #4: The pros have the pro tools.

There’s a myriad of software solutions and online resources that can help in developing and executing SEO strategies. However, some of which cost more than your marketing budget allotment, which is why it doesn’t make for good business sense to acquire the program on your own.

The professionals are pros for a reason and this includes having the right tools on their belt that provide the right assistance and guide for various SEO strategies and tasks. A truly reliable and proven SEO agency invests in premium software for effective optimisation and they would be able to assess which applications would best work for your business.

Reason #5: Significant ROI potential.

Compared to other conventional means of marketing your business, SEO provides some serious potential for return on investment and a long-term one at that. Traditional advertising can cost you way more than having to pay for monthly SEO services from a reputable agency. With continuous SEO efforts, your business will certainly reap the rewards with the boost it’ll get down the line.

Don’t scrimp on your optimisation budget. It would benefit you, even more, to hire a professional and trusted SEO company Sydney to take care of boosting your business right from the get go. Leave it to the pros to help get your site ranking high, while you sit back and take care of other important business matters.

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Top 3 Key Ways to Build Your Brand Through Content

Starting a business can be quite daunting. Growing it is even more overwhelming and requires grit, drive, and a dash of creativity.

One effective way of building your brand is by creating content that will inform, entertain, and engage your target audience. Remember that in this day and age, content remains king. And knowing how to harness its influence can work wonders in growing your brand furthermore.

So how do you do it? Here are three key ways that you can start with to build your business through content creation.

Identify Your Audience

Who do you intend to reach? What demographic are you trying to appeal to?

These are some questions you need to ask–and answer–before you even begin crafting content. Defining your audience aids in knowing what types of content you need to develop. This can be done in doing market research, developing buyer personas, and so on.

The point behind identifying your target audience is simple: if you know who you’re talking to (or should talk to), you’ll know all the right things to say.

Also note that your audiences may vary depending on the products and services you offer. Should this be the case, you’ll need to tap into proper segmentation to appeal to varying interests of your market.

Set Your Brand Apart From Competitors

After identifying your target audience, it’s now time to define what differentiates your business from your competitors.

Through this strategy, you’ll be able to come up with branded content aimed towards highlighting that certain edge that you have, which allows your business to be known amongst competitors. Knowing this information can help improve your conversions and search engine rankings. In short, a lot relies on this tactic.

You may think that given the oversaturation of today’s market, it would be hard to identify what sets your business apart from all others. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be big. It can even be your business’ key locations, or perhaps crafting content that would highlight all services or products that you offer.

Of course, don’t just push out branded content whenever you can. A good mix of brand and non-branded content released consistently would help improve your online standing, as well as in getting paying customers out of readers.

Repeat and Diversify Your Message

Most of the content that you’ll create will pretty much say the same thing. But in doing this, make sure to diversify your message and make it fresh.

This is even more so the case for niche businesses, in which you’re basically stuck with the same topics and themes. Good news is, a little creativity and resourcefulness can go a long way in crafting new content that would continuously engage your customers and make them trust you.

Do note that it’s not just the way you craft and write your content, but it’s also in the way you present them to your audience. We’re talking about using different formats. If you’re talking about SEO techniques, you can come up with a written blog post, an infographic showing key steps and statistics, colorful visuals to highlight important steps, or even videos that narrate everything about your message.

Suffice it to say, your goal is to tell your audience what you do and how you can help them over and over again, but a little differently every single time. Not only does this guarantee that you’ll reach a wider scope, but it’ll also help in building your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness.

Conclusion

Content creation is an integral part of growing and promoting our business. Expect to encounter a couple of hits and misses before you finally nail what content will be well received by your customers.

What you need to do is to use these three solid tips to start creating the foundation for your brand’s content and from there, analyze, adjust, and refine all the way through.

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5 Tips on Improving Your Skyscraper Content

Skyscraper content has earned a reputation of being an effective medium in increasing click throughs and site traffic. In short, it’s known to be a reliable SEO tactic.

However, this resulted to a lot of sites coming out with guide posts with over 10k words, promising to give you everything “you need to know about” this and that. And while some truly offer substantial content, most of these just comprise of a whole lot of nonsense fillers and cringeworthy copies.

At the end of the day, this makes a skyscraper content ineffective, especially if it doesn’t really convert readers into buyers. So how do you create a skyscraper content that truly engages and well, one that doesn’t suck?

Here are 5 tips to improve your skyscraper content that you can work on right now:

1. Make Headlines Out of Subheads

Apply what you know about crafting engaging headlines into how you write your paragraph subheads. It should say more with less, but it should also give a clear picture of what’s about to go down in the paragraph following the subhead.

Headlines are supposed to intrigue and catch the attention of the reader right off the bat. If your subhead is vague and unsubstantial, you can pretty much bet that the reader would just skip right through probably until the very end of your skyscraper piece. So instead of simply saying, “Grow Your Audience With Quality Content,” perhaps you can try a little more headline-worthy subhead like, “Rouse Your Audience’s Interest with Content that Clicks.” It may not be perfect but it’s something that would make your readers pause and have a read.

2. Say More By Writing Less

It’s a given that a skyscraper piece requires a very high word count–one that’s much higher than your regular average blog post. And given this word count requirement, a lot of copywriters tend to just fill in as much fillers as they can, which bores readers to no end.

Using fillers can be appropriate sometimes, but not most of the time. If you can be more succinct and tell them straight with just a few words, then do it.

If it reads, “As you may already know, writing a skyscraper content can help your site increase page views and overall foot traffic.” Maybe you can reconsider and dial it down a bit by saying, “Writing a skyscraper content can help increase your site’s foot traffic.” More succinct, more readable, more engaging.

3. Don’t Make It About You

Readers only care about themselves and what you have to offer them. This is why there’s no point in making your skyscraper content about you and what you think.

Sure, you may be an expert giving legit advice through your skyscraper content. But you have to still make it about the readers. So how exactly do you do it? By taking yourself out of it and not drawing any attention towards you. You can do this by not using “I or we.” Use “you” as much as you can–pretty much how this post you’re reading right now goes.

4. Transform Boring Topics With a Little Wit

You can do better than sounding like a Wikipedia page. Most topics that uses skyscraper structure are not that exciting and mostly technical. But even if that’s the case, don’t resort to sounding like an encyclopedia and try to inject a little wit and creativity to make it more fun to read.

For example, you can easily find several skyscraper pieces on SEO strategies. A lot of these would include technical terms, which are just all too boring to read. Case in point, a sentence might read: “Putting these SEO strategies into effect can contribute in improving your site’s ranking and lead conversions.” Did you just yawn reading that? So did we.

Maybe you can turn it into something like this: “Using these SEO strategies play a big role in higher rankings and increased sales!” What it all boils down to is how you re-craft your message and making it more exciting for your readers.

5. Pay Attention to Sentence Length, Sequence, and Pacing

Just like with how songs have a certain pace and build-up that rouses emotions to its listeners, your skyscraper piece also needs to have the right sentence length, sequence, and pacing.

The best way to do this is to start short.

And then slowly build it up with relevant information to support your message.

Once you’ve gotten hold of their attention, you can move on to writing complex structures that include technical information, comprising the very meat of your skyscraper piece. (See what happened there?)

Conclusion

Skyscrapers are really effective if you know how to do it right–and not just for the sake of wanting more clicks.

A lot of planning and preparation goes into it before you hit publish. But the best way to truly make it as effective as it can be is to pay attention to the writing.

It’s about the information you present and how you present it to your readers. It’s both the content and the structure–the information and how you craft it and deliver to your audience.

Pay attention to these details and you’ll see your site get indexed and ranked. Not to mention, it’s what makes customers who actually buy out of mere readers.

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Small Business’ Guide on Doing SEO on a Budget

Starting a business can be quite daunting for a lot of reasons. One being the proper allocation of capital and where to invest your limited resources into.

In today’s digital landscape, SEO has become an integral part of growing one’s business online. You simply cannot do without it if you want your business to be known to your target market.

Good news is, you don’t have to go all out in paying for your site’s optimisation.

There are several ways to go about successfully implementing various SEO tactics while keeping in line with your budget. We’re giving you three solid tips to start with, so take out your pens and prepare to take some notes!

Tip #1: Assess which tasks you can do in-house–and do it well!

SEO is comprised of a wide range of tasks and techniques and a lot of it can be done by in-house employees even without having an extensive mastery of SEO–and do it well.

All it takes is a bit of research, practice, and dedication to growing the business. In fact, some of these tasks should be rightfully done by in-house employees given their first-hand insight into the business.

So what exactly are these tasks we speak of? It includes content creation and keyword research. You can even count technical SEO if you dare.

When it comes to crafting content, there’s really no better person for the job than the one who knows the inside-out of the business. The more niche the business, the riskier it is to outsource content creation to an agency that most likely doesn’t have the same level of extensive knowledge as an industry insider.

In connection with content creation, keyword research can likewise be done within the company. There are so many tools–both free and paid–that can be used to come up with proper keyword strategy. A person from within the business would be able to effectively conduct competitor research, as well as identify terms that would be most useful to optimisation.

Tackling the “technical” aspect of SEO may seem a task for experts, but there are parts of it that can be done by in-house employees. Some of which include working with developers to perfect the mobile responsiveness of your site, as well as doing page indexing, site crawlability, audit of internal links, and so on.

With the resources and information about SEO that’s made available and accessible online, in-house employees can arm themselves with the basic techniques to pull these tasks off with ease. These tasks can also be collaborated on by several employees, making it even more effective and sustainable long-term.

Tip #2: Automate simple tasks that take up your time

Once you’ve figured out the tasks that you can do in-house, it’s now time to analyse and see which among these can be automated to save on time and manpower.

Rather than having to do it manually, you can check to see if there are online tools you can make use of to take care of tedious and time-consuming tasks.

Most of these tasks have to do with analytics and reports. These information are integral in assessing how your site is faring in comparison to competitors. It will provide you pertinent trends and highlight any issues that you may have to improve on to get better foot traffic and ranking.

For example, you can use Seomator or DeepCrawl to have scheduled monthly audits of your site. Getting this bird’s eye view of areas to improve on gives you a better insight of what you need to focus on in terms of your SEO efforts on a monthly basis.

Tip #3: Admit when you need help and outsource specific projects

Sometimes, even your best efforts aren’t enough to fully implement a successful SEO strategy. And when this time comes, you have to be humble enough to admit defeat and ask for help–also known as outsourcing.

There are several agencies that focus on helping small businesses with SEO efforts at an affordable and budget-friendly cost. Good thing about hiring an external partner is only having to pay on a project basis as well. For some tasks, it proves to be more costly to hire a full-time in-house employee than paying off an agency on a monthly or case-to-case basis.

Examples of these tasks that may be better off outsourced to an external agency include link building and advanced SEO strategies.

You may think that link building should be easy enough to do in-house. However, there are aspects of it that would be better handled by experienced pros. Just consider the fact that they normally have more streamlined and tried-and-tested practices to get you more links in less time–and do it in an ethical manner. It can also be a pain to continuously monitor your links, so it’s better to just have it effectively managed by an SEO agency instead.

Another reason to pay for SEO services is to put advanced strategies into effect. From having a robust one-off analysis of your site to an extensive optimisation strategy plan, a team of experts may be able to handle it much better than putting the burden on yourself or on your team.

Conclusion

Maximising your budget doesn’t have to mean that you have to scrimp on the majority of your SEO efforts. Sometimes, it may even cost you more if you opt out of paying for professional SEO services.

What you need to focus on is properly assessing which aspects of optimisation efforts would benefit your business if it’s done in-house, by use of automating tools, or by outsourcing such tasks to professional agencies. Through this, you’ll be able to fully make use of your allotted budget wisely and you can likewise expect a profitable return on your investment as well.

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How the Right Web Design Can Boost the Value of Your Digital Business

A valuable business is a business worth owning. It’s as simple as that. A business that could fetch a fair price on the open market is usually profitable, growing, efficient and safe—everything we want to see in our own companies. This is why much of the process of selling a business is made up of looking at where you could improve in one of these key areas.

But business value isn’t only for people looking to sell. It’s a concept every entrepreneur should be concerned with. This is because to consider business value, you need to analyze every aspect of the business, a process that naturally exposes what you’re doing well and where you need to improve.

Nearly everything you do in your business affects its value. No action is too small to avoid influencing the overall value of the business. This is because business value is in part determined by revenues. Most appraisers or brokers will start the valuation process multiplying your yearly revenues by 2.5. From there, they’ll adjust up or down based on some of the less tangible aspects of your business.

Since nearly everything we do is an effort to boost revenues, we can say that nearly all we do is also an attempt to boost business value. This makes boosting revenues one of the key ways to business value. And having the right web design can play a huge role in making this happen, just as having poor web design can put you at a serious disadvantage. Here are some ways appropriate web design can boost the value of your business.

The power of color

One of the first things we notice when we land on a web page is the color scheme, even if we don’t notice it consciously. The brain receives the information and makes several assumptions that affect how we perceive the content we’re looking at.

Now the psychology of color is something under debate, largely because these assumptions our brain makes are heavily influenced by our own personal experiences, diminishing the effect of the colors themselves.

But they certainly still have an impact, especially on first impressions. And with a website, where you’re doing all you can to keep people on your site clicking around, this first contact is critical. You need to make sure the colors you’re using on your site reflect your personality as a brand. This way, when people first land on your site, they will immediately begin making positive associations about your company.

Yet the purpose of all of this is to trigger an emotional response with your viewers. Despite the role of rational thought in bringing humans to the top of the food chain, we are still deeply emotional creatures. When we feel an emotional connection towards something, we’re far more likely to engage with it.

In a B2C context, you want people to feel something towards your brand so that they are emotionally inspired to buy from you. This is how you build brand loyalty, maximize Customer Lifetime Value, and profits, and improve the overall value of your business.

It’s important to remember that you can’t garner this emotional response from web design alone; you also need to have great content. But web design is your first chance at steering people towards the emotions you want them to feel. By getting your color scheme right, you can influence the assumptions people make about your brand, enhancing the connection they feel with you, and increasing the chances they make a purchase.

To give you some examples, consider that the color red evokes excitement, youthfulness, and boldness, whereas blue brings about feelings of trust, dependability, and strength. You can find more information about what all the different colors mean here.

Bounce rate and SEO

Performing well with search engines will make your business more profitable and valuable. A large chunk of the traffic that comes to your site will come from organic search, making it absolutely essential you optimize your site for SEO.

To do this, content needs to be your primary focus. You must work on making yourself an authority so that Google and other search engines will trust you with one of their top search engine results. This requires an acute understanding of your target audience and an excellent content marketing strategy.

However, design plays a huge role as well, primarily by helping you lower your bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website without clicking any links. Google uses it as an indicator of the quality of your content. The idea is that staying on the site and clicking its links indicates users have found what they were looking for. Google then rewards this by placing you higher up in search results.

Again, content is big. But so is design. You average blog reader only spends 15 seconds reading an article, which means you have an impossibly short window to catch their attention, convince them to stay and inspire them to click on one of your links. The design of your site will have a big impact on these first few seconds, and it can play a big role in determining your site’s bounce rate.

To come off as an authority, you need to present your content and your company in a clean, professional and easy-to-read manner. If someone lands on your site and the first thought they have is “what even is this site?,” there’s a pretty good chance they’re not going to stick around.

Make sure your web design presents your content in the best light so that people will hang around and click on your links, which will give a boost to revenues and search engine performance, two drivers of high digital business value.

Don’t confuse people

Attention spans and loyalty on the web are limited. Doing anything to waste someone’s time is going to cost you. This all-important rule is relevant to web design, too.

Most web developers know that the more clicks you make people go through on their way to taking your desired action, the less likely they are to take that action. So, when talking about a digital business, where that desired action is almost always to make a purchase, your web design has a huge impact on revenues and values.

Essentially, if someone needs to travel too far to get to your call to action, they’re more likely to simply give up and search elsewhere for what they want. The same works in reverse. If it’s easy for people to get to the solution you offer to their problem, then they’re much more likely to make a purchase.

This is where beta testing is so important. When you build your site, or when you make some significant changes, make sure to test it out with people outside your circle before you go live. This will give you an indication as to how easy it is to navigate, allowing you the chance to optimize the journey people take to support higher sales and revenues.

Start making design build value today

While business value is traditionally thought of when it comes time to sell the business, it’s about more than just that. Building up a valuable business means putting together a healthy, growing company that is positioned to stand the test of time. Make sure you have the right design so that you can make the most of your site’s traffic and build a business that is the envy of all digital entrepreneurs.

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