alpha – alpha®

WordPress ou Wix? E porquê WordPress?

alpha — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 11:48:16 +0000

Wordpress e Wix, são as duas plataformas mais conhecidas para criação de sites.

No entanto, apesar de serem ambas ferramentas para criação de sites, estamos a falar de dois tipos de plataforma completamente diferentes e é importante, antes de mais, clarificarmos as diferenças fundamentais entre elas.

O Wix é considerado um construtor de sites, ou seja, oferece ferramentas para que seja possível criar um site sem ser necessário mexer em código em nenhuma fase do processo. A construção faz-se com base em elementos visuais, como “blocos”, que os utilizadores podem adicionar ou modificar. Nos últimos anos, a popularidade da Wix aumentou justamente por permitir criar sites sem ser necessário ter conhecimentos de programação. No entanto, existem algumas limitações quando recorremos a esta plataforma, que vamos ver mais à frente.

Por outro lado, o WordPress é um sistema de gestão de conteúdo (CMS), ou seja, é uma ferramenta que permite a gestão e criação de um vasto catálogo de conteúdos, juntamente com uma série de ferramentas para criar sites. Atualmente mais de 35% da internet é criada em WordPress.

Assim, a principal diferença entre a Wix e o WordPress é que o primeiro é um construtor de sites e o segundo é um CMS.

Isso também significa que na Wix (que é uma plataforma hosted), o site criado vai ser automaticamente armazenado nos servidores da própria Wix, enquanto o WordPress (que é uma plataforma self-hosted) implica a contratação de um servidor para podermos colocar o site no ar.

Se é verdade que esta segunda opção pode dar um pouco mais de trabalho, também é verdade que dá muito mais controlo sobre a gestão, segurança e otimização do site.

Utilizadores iniciantes geralmente exploram a Wix antes de tentar o WordPress, atraídos pela simplicidade que a empresa anuncia.

De qualquer forma, o WordPress é a opção mais robusta para a gestão de conteúdo, pois oferece funcionalidades mais avançadas para construção de páginas, integração com outros serviços, melhorias em SEO e monitorização de dados, todos pontos indispensáveis para o marketing digital.

Vamos comparar as duas plataformas ponto por ponto:

Wix

WordPress

Facilidade de uso

É um editor extremamente simples de usar e permite adicionar elementos como imagens, textos, criar novas páginas e até gerir a integração com apps de forma descomplicada.

É perfeitamente acessível a utilizadores sem conhecimento de código, possibilitando a criação de sites sem necessidade de fazer instalações, configurações ou alterações que recorram a código.

A instalação de um site em WordPress dá acesso a um (famoso) painel do WordPress que disponibiliza diversas opções de ferramenta.

O facto de ter muitas opções de personalização é uma vantagem, mas também significa que é necessário mais tempo para percebermos como funciona a plataforma.

Não tem o prático “arrasta e solta” e a maior parte das edições é realizada no painel principal e não diretamente nas páginas como na Wix, mas a familiarização é rápida.

Instalação

Na verdade, a Wix não precisa de instalação, o que é uma vantagem. Uma vez que é um serviço de hosted os sites criados ficam alojados nos servidores próprios (o que acaba por ser uma desvantagem, como vamos explicar mais à frente).

Os CMSs como o WordPress são plataformas self-hosted, ou seja, os websites são executados a partir de um servidor local. Isso significa que, embora o software em si seja gratuito, será necessário contratar um serviço de alojamento para colocar o site no ar.

Segurança

Não existe nenhuma plataforma que seja 100% segura, mas no modelo hosted oferecido pelo Wix, a responsabilidade da segurança é da própria empresa

Plataformas hosted são naturalmente seguras por duas razões essenciais:

Os utilizadores não têm acesso para editar as configurações fundamentais da plataforma, evitando o risco de vulnerabilidades.
As plataformas estão sempre a ser atualizadas automaticamente, não tendo o risco de algo estar desatualizado e mais vulnerável a ataques.

Isso não quer dizer que o Wix seja impenetrável, aliás já houve problemas graves no passado, mas a verdade é que não é comum.

No caso do WordPress, o criador do site é diretamente responsável pela segurança do mesmo, pois é proprietário de toda a sua estrutura e tem acesso a todos os dados desde a raiz.

Como se trata da plataforma que serve de base para grande parte dos sites que existem, é alvo de muitos hackers e invasores. Afinal uma pequena vulnerabilidade pode impactar milhões de sites.

Apesar disto, em geral o WordPress é bastante seguro e ainda mais se garantirmos algumas boas práticas como atualizar o site, plugins e temas, instalar plugins de segurança e senhas fortes (no WordPress e no serviço de alojamento).

Design e personalização

O design é um ponto forte da Wix. O editor permite aos utilizadores uma grande liberdade para criar páginas para todos os gostos e estilos, assim como a utilização de diversas ferramentas e recursos úteis ao seu site, como seção de comentários, fóruns, chat e até lojas virtuais.

É apenas preciso ter muita atenção para garantir que o site fica responsive. Determinados ajustes feitos nas páginas em desktop podem não funcionar bem em smartphones e isso não é aceitável nos dias que correm.

Na nossa opinião, o WordPress está seguramente entre os melhores quanto às possibilidades de personalização. A plataforma possui milhares de plugins e temas que podem alterar a aparência e funcionalidades de um site, permitindo a criação de sites únicos.

Para além disso, uma das principais vantagens é que a grande maioria dos plugins WordPress são grátis, o que significa que podemos adicionar ferramentas sem ter de investir dinheiro. À partida, para qualquer ferramenta ou recurso que queiramos colocar num site, existe um plugin para isso.

Finalmente, é muito importante referir que o WordPress é uma plataforma de código-aberto. Isso quer dizer que todos aqueles que tiverem conhecimento técnico podem alterar o código da plataforma para alterar as funcionalidades e o layout base.

Gerenciamento

Para manter um site Wix funcional, não são necessárias muitas intervenções. Todas as eventuais manutenções e atualizações são realizadas automaticamente.

O utilizador só precisa de se preocupar em criar e editar os conteúdos.

À partida, esta facilidade parece uma vantagem, mas pode fazer com o site se torne pouco dinâmico e difícil e evoluir e deixa muito a desejar em algumas funcionalidades que podemos vir a precisar ao longo do tempo.

Por exemplo, a ferramenta de Search Engine Optimization (SEO) não possui muitas opções.

Para termos acesso aos dados analíticos do site, essenciais para o crescimento do mesmo, é necessário fazer upgrade para uma conta premium e implicar um investimento maior do que através da plataforma WordPress.

No WordPress, as tarefas básicas de manutenção podem ser minimizadas com a ajuda de plugins, mas será sempre necessário realizar atualizações manualmente, corrigir erros, fazer backups etc.

A vantagem é a flexibilidade, pois existem diversas ferramentas de gestão que ajudam os sites a ficar mais rápidos, responsivos, lucrativos e fáceis de encontrar.

Por exemplo, permite a customização do URL do seu site, coisa que o Wix não faz.

Resumindo, a Wix é mais direto quanto à gestão do site. Todavia, o WordPress vai mais a fundo e oferece maior liberdade quanto à gestão de tarefas básicas e avançadas, o que é essencial.

Performance

Como mencionado anteriormente, a Wix é uma plataforma hosted, ou seja, os utilizadores pagam pela criação do site + alojamento do mesmo.

Neste sentido, a Wix não permite a alteração de configurações que alterem o desempenho do seu site, mas a própria plataforma garante que todos os sites carreguem o mais rápido possível.

De uma forma geral, a Wix geralmente apresenta bons tempos de resposta nos seus sites e é uma boa opção se o que pretendemos é uma plataforma com bom desempenho sem termos de nos preocupar fazer ajustes manuais.

A desvantagem é que não temos nenhum controlo sobre o desempenho do site e temos poucas opções para melhorar o rendimento.

Com o WordPress optar pelo plano de alojamento que preferirmos e que melhor se adequa às necessidades do site em questão.

Existem diversos fornecedores, incluindo alguns que oferecem uma ótima performance em planos de alojamento partilhado, cujo investimento é mais baixo do que os planos premium da Wix.

Para além disso, existem outras formas de melhorar o desempenho dos sites WordPress: embora a plataforma não possua ferramentas nativas de otimização de imagens e integração com CDN, podemos adicioná-las facilmente com plugins como variados.

Suporte

A Wix oferece uma central de suporte com uma equipe disponível por e-mail, chat e telefone.

O WordPress.com oferece uma equipe de atendimento semelhante.

Para além disso, a plataforma tem uma enorme rede de usuários e colaboradores que se apoiam mutuamente através de inúmeros fóruns e blogs, bem como um volume incrivelmente vasto de conteúdo produzido sobre o WordPress e os seus utilizadores têm acesso a uma imensa gama de artigos, tutoriais, aulas online, livros e cursos que podem ajudar a esclarecer todas as questões que vão surgindo.

Plugins

Os criadores de sites tradicionais não costumavam apresentar incrementos instaláveis além do pacote de serviços adicionais dos seus planos pagos.

A Wix inovou no mercado de plataformas de criação de sites ao disponibilizar plugins drag-and-drop. A plataforma oferece centenas de apps: algumas são gratuitas, outras têm funcionalidades limitadas e existem ainda algumas que são restritos para os utilizadores pagantes.

Quando o assunto são plugins o WordPress é imbatível. São mais de 50 mil plugins disponíveis para as mais diversas funções e serviços, incluindo soluções desenvolvidas por grandes empresas de tecnologia.

O melhor de tudo é que a maioria deles é grátis!

SEO

A Wix já enfrentou várias polémicas sobre a sua desvantagem nos mecanismos de busca e a verdade é que a plataforma é realmente limitada em configurações de SEO.

A maior parte das recomendações da Wix limita-se melhorias de conteúdo. Para termos acesso a dados analíticos, por exemplo, é preciso contratar um plano premium.

Na Wix temos a possibilidade de otimizar o site através da edição dos títulos das páginas, das meta-descrições e pela utilização de diferentes tags no cabeçalho. Podemos também adicionar facilmente às imagens alt tags e customizar as URLs.

Adicionalmente, a Wix oferece um mapa do site, o que torna muito mais fácil e rápido o processo de crawling .

O WordPress, por outro lado, entrega todo o controle aos seus utilizadores, incluindo o SEO. Além de ser previamente preparado para ser bem posicionado no Google, este CMS:

permite customizar as URLs das suas páginas;
viabiliza ajustes diretamente no código;
oferece vários plugins gratuitos, como o Yoast SEO, que ensina o utilizador durante a produção do conteúdo.

Ou seja, o WordPress também oferece todas as ferramentas de SEO que a Wix tem, mas no caso do WordPress temos controle sobre as mesmas.

O WordPress permite que otimizemos a velocidade do site e dá acesso a opções avançadas para indexação e crawling.

eCommerce

Com a Wix, temos a opção de adicionar uma loja virtual a um site, mas só o podemos fazer com um plano pago.

Os planos de eCommerce da Wix vêm com todos os recursos necessários para vender produtos online, mas perde em comparação com outros add-ons, como o Shopify.

Por exemplo, as WixStores aceitam cartões de crédito ou débito, com a exceção do UnionPay – que está disponível apenas para alguns usuários – mas o sistema não vai aceitar o uso de PayPal ou outras plataformas de pagamento que não são mencionadas no site da Wix.

O construtor de sites do WordPress assegura uma grande oferta de plugins gratuitos que permitem que tenhamos mais flexibilidade e escolhas.

O plugin gratuito WooCommerce já é usado por 26% dos sites que estão na lista dos 1 milhão mais populares do segmento de eCommerce.

O WordPress oferece outros plugins gratuitos de eCommerce disponíveis para ajudar os utilizadores a venderem de tudo: serviços, produtos, assinaturas, eventos, etc. É verdade que será cobrada uma taxa sobre as vendas, mas os plugins, como WooCommerce, BigCommerce e Shopify, são gratuitos para instalar.

Preço

A Wix oferece quatro planos premium para sites e quatro planos premium para Negócio e eCommerce. Cada um começa com um plano básico, mas que pode ser ampliado com mais recursos e mais espaço.

No caso dos planos gratuitos da Wix, os sites terão publicidade da marca nas partes superior e inferior e não poderão usar um domínio customizado. Para usar recursos adicionais da Wix como eCommerce, será sempre necessário fazer um upgrade do seu plano.

O WordPress possui código aberto, o que significa que ele é gratuito para quem quiser utilizá-lo. Contudo, com o WordPress, será necessário contratar domínio e alojamento próprios.

Os custos variam dependendo das necessidades do site, mas existem panos de alojamento partilhado a preços muito acessíveis.

Considerando os milhares de temas e plugins gratuitos do WordPress, podemos construir um site com um investimento relativamente baixo. Contudo, os custos podem subir se for necessário recorrer a temas ou plugins premium do WordPress.

Parece-nos claro que existe um padrão comum em praticamente todos os aspetos na comparação entre Wix ou WordPress: se estivermos dispostos a ter um pouco mais de trabalho, o WordPress apresenta vantagens.

Vantagens da Wix

Muita gente encara a Wix como uma plataforma somente para iniciantes. Porém, atualmente a Wix oferece outras coisas, como:
Facilidade de uso.

Construtor de sites altamente intuitivo para criação de sites atrativos e modernos.
Segurança e performance.
Bom nível de customização com integração de serviços externos.
Se pretende uma plataforma que oferece simplicidade na criação e gestão do site a Wix pode ser uma solução, principalmente se quer criar o seu site de forma autónoma e o que pretende é muito simples e sem necessidade de grandes funcionalidades e especificações.

Vantagens do WordPress

Existem vários motivos pelo qual o WordPress lidera com tanta vantagem entre os CMS no mundo inteiro. Entre eles:

É relativamente fácil de aprender para iniciantes, mas ainda oferece diversas opções avançadas para quem é mais experiente.
Oferece um nível de personalização incomparável graças aos milhares de temas e plugins e por ser uma plataforma de código-aberto.
Disponibiliza muitas opções de ajuda para gestão da sua biblioteca de conteúdos.
Garante controle quase total sobre segurança, performance e alojamento.

Não escondemos que o WordPress é um pouco mais complicado de aprender, mas assim que o site esteja construído é possível fazer a gestão de conteúdos de forma quase intuitiva.

Na Alpha® somos especialistas em desenvolvimento sobre WordPress. Por todas as razões que expomos acima, consideramos que esta é a plataforma indicada para servir de base ao nosso trabalho de desenvolvimento.

Atualmente mais de 35% dos sites na internet são feitos no WordPress, enquanto o Wix possui uma participação de mercado de apenas 1,3%.

Utilizando a tecnologia WordPress, conseguimos oferecer soluções totalmente personalizadas, quer em termos de layout, quer em termos de funcionalidades, num curto espaço de tempo e com valores altamente competitivos.

Assim, nossa verdadeira recomendação é que deixe a construção do seu site connosco!

7 Vital Components of a Successful Brand Strategy

alpha — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 10:24:43 +0000

A successful brand strategy is more than just deciding what shade of blue to use for the logo, or what tone to adopt when posting and commenting on Facebook.

As the term suggests, a brand strategy is a long-term plan that affects all facets of your business.

A brand strategy considers factors such as consumer demand, emotions and the competition. It’s arguably even more important than your company’s name.

If you remove your company’s logo and name, brand strategy might seem like it’s barely there. For the most successful brands, though, it pervades all aspects of the company’s operations, from high-level decision-making through to the shipping and handling of products.

If you are still confused about what really makes a brand, you’re not alone. This is why we’ve broken down the science of brand strategy into seven essential components. Take care of each component, and your brand will be around for a long time.

1. Purpose

While a name and a logo are important, they both pale in comparison to your brand purpose. This is what makes you and your employees wake up in the morning. It’s what keeps you going throughout the day. Your purpose is the one thing that sets you apart from your competitors.

There are two kinds of brand purpose:

Functional: This focuses on success at the financial or commercial level. That is, to sell products, make money or provide value to your stakeholders
Intentional: This has more to do with how your brand works and the why. In other words, its big ambitions and the larger role it plays
Microsoft, for example, defines its mission as “to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more”. Notice that it wants to play a role in every person’s success, whether that person is an investment banker on Wall Street or a community organizer in Soweto.

Microsoft’s choice of image is also very telling. It shows a tent pitched under the night sky, the Milky Way looming high in the background. The imagery is supposed to show that the company wants to extend its reach to the remotest corners of the planet and even to outer space. The tech giant is focusing on developing solutions that are accessible to everyone, like its cloud-based storage and application platforms.

When you define your brand’s purpose, remember that it should not just be about making money, unless you’re an investment firm, in which case it probably should. However, even then there should be something more that defines it. The thing that differentiates you from the competition.

It is imperative to keep your business’ purpose front of mind at all times, as it is what informs everything that the business does and every decision you make.

2. Emotion

Your brand’s purpose should be something that resonates with your customers. In other words, it should appeal to their emotions.

Customers don’t always make purchasing decisions based on what’s cheaper or what provides better value. Whatever your company sells or manufactures, chances are there are other companies with similar products, but with more features or at a lower cost.

Of course, providing value to your customers is important and you should strive to give them more of it. Your customers will develop a loyalty to your brand when you give them more for their dollar. But long-time customers can develop an emotional attachment to your brand for other reasons. This might be a positive post-sales experience, aesthetic value of your product, or the feeling of belonging to a community.

Apple users were once known as a small and tight-knit community, starting from the introduction of the Apple I. Even though the company has diversified its product line and more consumers choose Apple over other brands, there is still a mystique that surrounds Apple and Apple users. To use an Apple product means you put a premium on quality and you don’t put a price tag on the user experience.

They have built a brand that goes beyond the price point of their products. Tapping into emotions will help to both attract customers who are on the fence about your product and retain existing clients. Which leads us to the next component of your brand…

3. Customer Loyalty

If you’ve succeeded in building a customer base that loves your brand, your products, and what you stand for, you need to nurture that love and pay it back. This is where customer loyalty comes into play.

Customer loyalty is worth more to your company than all your endorsement deals combined. The people who constantly purchase your products and tell their friends about their experience with you act as ambassadors for your brands.

Recognizing loyal customers will help maintain their loyalty and keep them coming back for more. It doesn’t take much to recognize loyal customers. Something as simple as a personalized thank-you note can already mean a lot. You may also feature their business on your website (this is particularly applicable to B2Bs).

If you want to be a little extra, you can offer them membership to an exclusive club that provides rewards. Membership in loyalty programs grew by more than 1000% from 2014 to 2016, and 63% of customers will not commit to a brand that doesn’t have a loyalty program. If your brand doesn’t have one, you’re missing out on a lot of repeat business. Plus, all of those purchasing insights you get from a loyalty program.

Customer rewards will give both new and existing customers an idea of what they could expect if they stay loyal to your brand. Fostering brand loyalty shouldn’t be confined to just your customers, though. You should also strengthen brand awareness among those who work for you.

4. Employee Engagement

It’s important for your employees to feel like they’re part of your brand, not just cogs in a machine. If you involve them in deciding what your brand stands for, they are more likely to act according to branding, both online and offline.

Your employees should not just promote your brand, but also live up to what it stands for. This could include values like excellent customer service, diversity and a commitment to continuous improvement. Your employees should also reflect what you put out there. It doesn’t make sense if your social media accounts sound playful but your customer service representatives aren’t much fun to talk with!

Nike has taken steps to ensure that its employees live up to its brand name. The sprawling Nike corporate headquarters in Oregon boasts world-class sports facilities specifically for employees’ use. Many Nike workers bike to work instead of driving. The company provides employees with sports attire, including athletic shoes, which they are encouraged to wear to work.

Engaging your employees is a key way of building your brand. It is a clear sign that your company is striving to live up to the lofty targets it has set for itself. It also attracts and retains the best available talent. This in turn helps you to make more sales, develop better products and continue to grow.

5. Competitive Intelligence

In much the same way that knowledge of your brand makes it stronger, competitor knowledge is also a valuable source of insight. After all, you are often competing for the same customers by offering similar products. Watching what your competitors do and determining what works for them can help you make smarter decisions about what to do and what to avoid.

As part of the 1992 USA men’s basketball “Dream Team”, Michael Jordan played with what has been called the greatest collection of athletes in history. Jordan used his experience at the Olympics to figure out his teammates’ weaknesses, defeating three of those teammates in the NBA finals following his return to basketball.

Observing your competitors, or even collaborating with them, will help you stay on top of where the market is heading. However, once you see what your rivals are doing, you have to craft your own strategy. You need to reinforce your unique selling proposition to set your brand apart from the rest.

Your brand purpose is unique. Whenever you make a move based on competitive intelligence, always have that purpose at the front and center of your strategy.

6. Consistency

The key to having a strong brand is being consistent in its application. This means making sure everything you do aligns. Let’s say you use a landing page software for a product you’re promoting. You have to ensure that whatever software you use, the colors, images and messaging are consistent with your brand.

If your corporate colors are blue and white, using teal and yellow on your landing page will at best confuse your potential customers. At worst, using the wrong color combinations will turn off your would-be buyers.

IBM is one company that has been very consistent in its branding. Ever since the iconic 8-bar logo was introduced in 1972, the company also known as “Big Blue” – a nickname gained thanks to its ubiquitous blue computer boxes – has used it on all of its products, including servers, PCs and laptops.

IBM no longer produces personal computers and has shifted its core business to focusing on consulting and cloud computing. The logo, however, is still a symbol of the company’s reputation for stability, innovation and leadership. IBM fiercely guards against the unauthorized use of its logo, fearing that any misuse can lead to the company being associated with mediocrity and poor quality products.

Your company might not be as old or as famous as IBM. However, establishing a brand and sticking to its key elements will help you build a good reputation and a loyal customer base.

7. Flexibility

While consistency is one of the keys to establishing a successful brand strategy, a bit of flexibility never hurts either. This is particularly the case when you’re trying to enter new markets. While consistency sets the standard for your brand, flexibility allows you to adjust according to market demands and to distinguish your company from its competitors.

An effective brand identity is both identifiable and adaptable. As consumer preferences change, your brand must also keep up with the times. Otherwise, it runs the risk of becoming irrelevant.

A good example of a business not being flexible with its brand is Mattel. The toymaker, most famous for its Barbie line of fashion dolls, sued MCA Records and the band Aqua for copyright infringement in 2000 after the latter released a song titled “Barbie Girl.” The lawsuit was dismissed by a U.S. court in 2002, with the judge famously ruling, “The parties are advised to chill.”

The brand realized later, of course, that the lawsuit was ill-advised. In 2009, it featured a modified version of “Barbie Girl” in an advertising campaign to promote a new line of dolls. It seems both parties have, indeed, decided to “chill” and set their differences aside.

Bringing all the strands together

In this guide, we covered a couple of different elements of a brand strategy. I thought it would be nice to have it as a visual takeaway.

A brand strategy is something that every business should have, regardless of its size. There are numerous studies that show the link between a strong brand and good business results. Putting together a successful brand strategy requires a mix of introspection, knowledge of the competition and the guts to try out new things.

When you do brand strategy well, you can take your business further than you’ve ever imagined. Be sure to cover all of the brand components we discussed today, and you won’t miss out on any opportunities to grow your business.

See the full article in Just Creative

10 Website Fails Your Business Is Making

alpha — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 10:06:52 +0000

A website for your business is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity. But, just because you invested in a website doesn’t mean that it’s effective in connecting with your customers and ultimately improving your sales. While there could be numerous reasons why your website isn’t effective, here are 10 of the most common explanations for website fails.

1. It’s not mobile friendly

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most of us, but for the first time ever mobile and tablet usage surpassed desktop usage. As the mobile revolution continues to grow around the world, this trend toward “on the go digital,” will continue. In other words, internet consumption is moving away desktops and in to the portable devices territory. This means that your business’s website has to be optimized for mobile users.

Unfortunately, there are still lots of websites that aren’t mobile-friendly. This is just bad for business since it can lead to penalties from the Big G (Google), decrease conversation rates and deliver your customers a poor experience.

To make sure that your site is ready for mobile users, make sure that you use a responsive design, have large buttons and due your due-diligence on a/b testing, keep your layout simple and again, test it using tools like Google’s Search Console Mobile Friendly Test.

2. Contains too much jargon

I understand that you’re an expert in your field and that you want to demonstrate your knowledge and authority. But unless you’re talking to directly to your fellow industry experts, your average customer isn’t going to understand the technical language or industry jargon that you use to describe your business throughout your website.

Avoid the jargon and use simple and straight-forward language that your customers can easily understand.

3. Lacks content

Your customers have a problem. And they’re turning to your website to help them solve said-problem. That’s why your website needs to contain fresh and valuable content that answers real-life questions.

Remember, that doesn’t mean that they’re searching for your exact business. For example, our blog contains useful information for freelancers and small business owners. If a person is searching for advice on invoicing and processing payments, they could also land on our site because that’s the type of content we’ve been producing, as well.

In short, start a blog and keep writing awesome content. This will also help boost your SEO and content marketing efforts.

4. Hides essential information

Besides looking for information that will make their lives better, if customers are looking for your specific business, they want to easily locate information like:

The address of your business. If you have a brick and mortar business, include a map link.
Contact information, specifically a phone number and email address.
Social media plugins.
Hours, pricing and an “about us” page.

You’d be surprised at how many businesses still don’t have this information on their websites. And, if you’re like me, you may tend to stay from those types of businesses over security or legitimate concerns.

And, there’s really no excuse for forgetting this information. These additions are easy-to-integrate onto your site and usually free as well.

5. Loads too slowly

Customers expect a website to load quickly. In fact, 47 percent of consumers expect a website to load in just 2 seconds or less. And, that’s important to remember because an astounding 79 percent of shoppers who don’t enjoy their website experience less likely to ever return to that site again, nor buy from that site again.

You can test the speed of your site using tools like Pingdom and GTmetrix. These tools provide insights and advice on how to speed your site-up too.

6. Doesn’t have clear calls-to-action

You don’t want to leave your visitors in the dark by making them guess what you want them to do next on your site. So, give them clear instructions by creating a call to action button or hyperlinked text that is front and center.

HubSpot has 31 call-to-action examples that you should review if you need some inspiration. For instance, Dropbox has a blue “Sign up for free,” call-to-action button that stands out from the rest of the page.

Remember, without these buttons, your potential customers won’t move forward with the services or resources that you’re offering. When that happens, you won’t get those all-important business conversions.

7. It’s outdated

Webpages that are maintained and have a current design build trust and credibility. That doesn’t mean that you need to update your site every month. But, if it’s been years since you’ve had a major website design overhaul, then it’s time to find something more contemporary. The last thing that you want is to have a site that looks like a Geocities page from the late 90s.

8. It’s annoying and cluttered

Believe it or not, that are still businesses that insist on having websites that have music or videos play automatically once your enter the site. Even worse, these sites are also full of banner ads, bright colors and flashy text. These sites are just plain annoying and end-up slowing the page down because it’s so cluttered.

So, how many people are going to ever click on that site again at work — or anywhere else?

Keep in mind that a bulk of your visitors are browsing your site on mobile devices too. This means that you’re site should be clean and organized. Keep information to a minimum and use sub-headings, bullet lists and graphic elements so that visitors can digest this info in smaller chunks.

9. Shopping cart or payment platform is broken

Unless you’re relying on a third party payment gateway or shopping cart, then it’s your responsibility to frequently check to make sure that everything is working properly. You won’t be able to make a sale or receive a payment if your cart or payment processor is busted.

10. You don’t guide users to different pages

A lot of businesses send all their traffic to their website’s homepage, as opposed to relevant links that their customers actually want to land-on. This could be because service pages and other pages of the site are just an afterthought when designing a website. But, the fact of the matter is that the home page isn’t as important to general web traffic and the overall design.

Instead, start creating specific landing pages for the various types of potential customers you encounter and where they are in the sales funnel.

See the full article in Entrepreneur

Graphic Design Trends for 2020

alpha — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:53:15 +0000

We have prepared a selection of key trends in graphic design for 2020. From the article you will learn what will be at the peak of the wave, and what goes into the past. So, what will be the graphic design tomorrow:

Templates and textures

Today, there is a noticeable increase in the use of templates and textures, but there is no need to use them like competitors. The trend for 2020 is to combine several patterns in one design, in several parts.

Virtual network users are faced with a deficit of texture and volumetric images. For this reason, the full immersion format is becoming increasingly popular.

Graphic design has picked up trends in recent years. The triumph of gradients is replaced by the triumphant return of realistic textures. Contours and graininess make you want to touch what you see. For this reason, you need to find a really good developer, to convert PSD to HTML. This allows us to speak about the future of this trend, especially in the field of graphic design.

Colour solution 2020

Specialists from the Pantone Color Institute proposed to call the main color of 2020 – a shade of blue. It is listed under the number 19-4052. Its other name is “ClassicBlue”.

According to representatives of Pantone, this shade can be described as “an encouraging presence that can cause confidence, calmness. This blue color will be associated with stability, constancy, which is lacking in the modern world. People are always in a hurry, tired of the excess of information received. They lack trusting communication, honesty. The classic blue color will help to calm down, to gather thoughts.

Specialists of the color institute decided to make a real gift for people. They wanted consumers not only to learn about the main shade of the year but also to experience multi-sensory experience, which will be associated with the classic blue color. Thematic images with soundtracks were created, thematic aroma and special fabric were invented. Cooperation with representatives of world companies allowed inventing even a tea mixture, as well as multimedia installation in honor of the main color of the year.

It is important to mention that the institute of color has been selecting the main shade of the year for 20 years. Experts’ predictions are based on the analysis of many social trends that can have an impact on different industries, including design and fashion.

Isometry

The creation of three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional measurement is a trend that has been actively developed this year. Designers can touch the miracle of making an entire universe in a small space. It will take some time to explore all the details of this universe.

The picture seems clean and simple. It won’t take much time to study it. Specialists note the presence of depth, which can not boast a flat design. The isometry will help to show all possibilities of the general view of the terrain, any program. The isometric design will not conflict with most trends. The picture shows a simple gradient of violet and blue colors. If you add some futuristic elements, the appearance of the structure will change. This picture will attract consumers’ attention.

Conclusion

The most important feature of the trends of 2020 is that they can be combined and you can choose something of your own. This, in turn, makes it possible to create something unique, something new in 2020. The year 2020 is a time of artistry, creativity, and fantasy.

In 2020, we will have to combine heterogeneous aspects from past and future, organic and geometric, artificial and real. Specialists have taken into account the current trends and moods of people. Everything will start with electrification, therefore, this must be remembered.

See the full article in Designer Daily

6 Important Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress for Your Website

alpha — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:44:47 +0000

One of the questions that we often get asked is: Why should I use WordPress? Isn’t my old site good enough? Why do I need to switch to WordPress from another platform? If you’re asking these questions, then you’re at the right place. In this article, we will share 6 important reasons why you should use WordPress. We will also cover all the different type of websites you can create with WordPress as well as showcase popular sites that are using WordPress.

Note: Throughout this article, when we say WordPress, we are talking about WordPress.org also known as self-hosted WordPress. Please do not confuse this with WordPress.com which is a hosting service. For details, see our comparison of WordPress.org vs WordPress.com.

One of the most common misconception about WordPress is that it is just a blogging platform.

It is not.

While WordPress started as a blogging tool, it has evolved throughout the years into a powerful website builder and a robust content management system (CMS).

The best part about WordPress is that it’s easy to use and flexible enough to make different types of websites. That’s the main reason why WordPress has grown so much in popularity. According to a recent survey, WordPress powers 32.3% of all websites on the internet.

Due to it’s robust features, many of the top brands use WordPress to power their websites including Time Magazine, Facebook, The New Yorker, Sony, Disney, Target, The New York Times, and more.

Let’s take a look at why you should use WordPress to make your website.

1. WordPress is Free as in Freedom

WordPress is a free software. It means you are free to download, install, use and modify it to match your needs. You can use it to create any kind of website. To learn more, see our article about why is WordPress free?.

While the WordPress software itself is free, you need a domain name and web hosting to install it.

A domain name is the address of your website on the internet. This is what your users type in their browser’s address bar to access your website (for example, wpbeginner.com).

Web hosting is your website’s house where all your website files are stored.

2. WordPress is Easy to Customize with Themes and Plugins

A large portion of people using WordPress are neither web designers nor programmers. As a matter of fact, most folks start using WordPress without any prior knowledge of designing websites.

For non-tech savvy folks, WordPress is the perfect solution because there are thousands of free website templates (themes) that you can choose from. There is a perfect WordPress theme for just about every kind of website (whether it’s a blog, business site, or an online store).

WordPress themes are easy to customize because a lot of them come with their own options panel allowing you to change colors, upload logo, change the background, create beautiful sliders, and truly customize it to your needs without writing any code at all.

You can also add custom functionality to your WordPress site by using plugins. WordPress plugins are like apps for your website that you can use to add advanced features like analytics, contact forms, membership area, and more.

Just like themes, there are thousands of free and premium plugins available for you to use. To learn more, see our article on what are WordPress plugins and how do they work.

3. WordPress is SEO Friendly

WordPress is written using standard compliance high-quality code and produces semantic markup. In non-geek terms, this makes Google and other search engines love WordPress.

This is why WordPress sites tend to rank higher than others in search engines.

By design, WordPress is very SEO friendly out of the box. You can also use WordPress SEO plugins to further optimize your website. For complete step by step instructions, see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to properly optimize your website.

4. WordPress is Easy To Manage

WordPress comes with a built-in updates management system. This allows you to update your plugins and themes from within your WordPress admin dashboard.

WordPress also notifies you when there is a new version of WordPress available, so you can update your site by simply clicking a button.

To protect your data from any accident or hacking, you can easily use a WordPress backup plugin to automatically create backups and store them safely on a remote location.

You can also manage your WordPress site on the go with WordPress mobile apps.

5. WordPress is Safe and Secure

WordPress is developed with security in mind, and it is considered to be a very safe and secure platform to run a website. However, just like the real world, the internet can be an uncertain place.

There are intruders out there who want to get their hands on as many sites as they could. To protect your WordPress site, there are a few simple things that you can do to make it even more secure.

6. WordPress Can Handle Different Media Types

WordPress is not just limited to writing text. It comes with a built-in media uploader to handle images, audio, and video files.

WordPress supports oEmbed enabled websites which means you can embed YouTube videos, Instagram photos, Tweets, and Soundcloud audio by just pasting the URL in the WordPress post editor.

See the full article in wpbeginner

5 User Experience Goals To Enhance Your SEO Strategy

alpha — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:16:49 +0000

Having trouble ranking high on Google’s search results? How much attention are you paying to the user experience of your website?

In the early days of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you could stuff a page with relevant keywords and call it a day as you shot your way up the search result rankings. Google now looks at more than 200 ranking factors to determine which sites make it to the top of the search results page, and a site’s user experience goes a long way towards achieving that success.

SEO and user experience may seem like opposites, but in reality, one without the other will lead to poor performance. Both share the common goal of getting relevant information in front of users. To put it simply, SEO targets search engines and leads users to your site, whereas the user experience helps answer the user’s questions once they’re there.

If you want your website’s visitors to spend more time on your site and increase valuable conversions while ranking higher in search results, apply these five important user experience goals that should be part of your SEO strategy.

1. Make your site mobile-friendly

It can be easy to overlook one of the most important ranking factors for a site, as most people will design their entire website from a desktop computer. More than half of all web traffic is now performed on a mobile device. With the number of mobile devices forecasted to reach 16.8 billion by 2023, if you haven’t made your website’s mobile-friendliness a top priority, now is the time.

Your site’s mobile performance and structure are also the most important versions of your site in terms of ranking on Google.

Back in 2015, Google made mobile friendliness an important ranking factor, and in 2017 the search engine began the switch to mobile-first indexing for all websites.

No matter how well you’ve optimized your site’s design and SEO for desktop users, your hard work will be lost if those decisions don’t carry over to your visitors on mobile devices. When Google crawls your site, it will calculate the page’s ranking factor off of the mobile experience.

If your bounce rate is high, it could mean users visiting your site from a Google search left due to the page not loading properly on mobile, thus sending a signal to Google to lower your ranking in the SERPs.

Of course, it is still important to optimize your site for desktop users, but if you are not considering users across all devices, the likelihood of Google considering your site in a top SERP placement is quite low.

Steps to make sure your site is mobile-friendly:

Check your website on a variety of devices, including desktop, laptop, mobile phones, and tablets. If you do not have easy access to a range of devices, most browsers have a way to simulate popular sizes, such as Chrome’s Inspect tool.
Pay particular attention to the layout of information and the legibility of text on the screen. Is the flow of your site just as effective on mobile as it is on a desktop? Are images taking up too much space on your phone, pushing important content off the screen? Are buttons easy to press?
Google provides a free Mobile-Friendly Test that can analyze your site’s mobile-friendliness and offers helpful suggestions on where to make improvements.

2. Make your site quick to load

Did you know that just a one-second delay in page loading time can result in 11 percent fewer visitors and a 16 percent drop in customer satisfaction? After three seconds, you could be losing close to half of your site’s visitors.

Google is not blind to this fact either and in 2018 began using a website’s mobile loading speed as a ranking factor in their search results — another reason to make sure your site is optimized for mobile.

If you’ve noticed a significantly higher bounce rate on your site, page speed could be a major culprit. This is especially true for mobile visitors who are likely on the go and are less willing to wait those extra seconds for your page to load.

When it comes to speeding up your website, many common factors could be playing a role. Some issues are easier to fix than others. If you don’t have full control over choosing your hosting provider or have limited editing ability over your site’s theme, there are still a few steps you can take to improve performance.

One of the leading culprits of a slow loading site is its images. This isn’t to say photos and graphics should be removed, but all images should be properly compressed and sized to fit its intended placement.

If you need to include a lot of images, a lazy load script that only loads images as a user scrolls down to them can vastly improve loading time.

Steps to improve your site’s page speed:

Run your site through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to discover areas that can be worked on to improve page speed and performance.
Optimize and compress your images. There are quite a few websites that can optimize your images without negatively impacting visual quality, including TinyPNG.
Consider serving your images from a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like ImageKit.io to further optimize the delivery of your images.

3. Make your site easy to navigate

If a visual hierarchy or proper linking structure is not in place, it will be difficult for your site’s pages to rank favorably, if at all, in search listings. Your users will also likely get lost and leave your site, resulting in high bounce rates.

Navigation

Cleaning up your site’s main navigation is an obvious first step.

Your navigation, whether it is the main navigation, Call-to-Action’s (CTA), or links in the content, should be intuitive and guide your users onto the next steps through your site. It should be clear to the user where each navigational item will take them.

A good goal is to make sure that any page a user may want to get to is no more than four clicks away.

Having too many navigation menu items not only overloads your visitors with too many options, but also it can reduce overall link authority to the rest of your site and make it harder for key pages to rank on search results.

Clear navigation also increases the likelihood that Google will add sitelinks to your site’s listing in the search results. This will make your listing more prominent, and with the added space, help push competitor listings further down the page.

Headings

While your main navigation guides users through multiple pages on your website, proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3, etc) should guide your users through the content of the page.

Proper headings make your content easier to scan and help to identify the main theme of each section.

Google and other search engines also use this heading structure to better understand the content on the page in order to serve more relevant information to potential users in the search results.

You may have a page with outstanding long-form content, but if there isn’t a visual and logical hierarchy, chances are your visitors will get lost on the page and will not find the information they are looking for.

Buttons / CTAs

CTA buttons are important touchpoints to get your visitors to interact with your site.

This user engagement is a key metric to show Google that users are interested in the content you are providing.

It’s important to understand where a user will want to go next on your site so you can offer up the relevant CTA to guide them there. However, you don’t want to overwhelm them with too many CTAs either.

If additional options are necessary, avoid exceeding more than three buttons. In this case, utilizing different styling for primary and secondary CTAs will help make the most important action stand out to the user.

4. Make your site easy on the eyes

Bad design often results in bad SEO.

Having a clean, well designed layout helps further engage your users and reduces the likelihood they’ll bounce back to the search listings to look elsewhere for their information.

Google’s RankBrain algorithm uses artificial intelligence to better understand user behavior and is designed to look at key metrics of a page where design plays a major role in influencing, such as bounce rate, pages per session, organic CTR, and dwell time.

Google is usually secretive about which factors influence a site’s ranking, but the company did reveal that RankBrain is among the top three ranking signals.

If a user can effortlessly move from one page to the next, click through relevant links, and spend a considerable amount of time on your site, Google will recognize your site as user-friendly.

But what if a user lands on your site and finds the page poorly laid out, hard to read, overly complicated, or simply just an eyesore?

Chances are they’ll return to the search results page that brought them to you and check out a competing listing. This “pogo-sticking” is not lost to the RankBrain algorithm and as a result, Google will continue to push your site lower in the rankings.

Steps to improve your site’s visual appeal:

Pay attention to the formatting of your text. Fonts that are too small, hard to read, or in poorly chosen colors, will likely push your lead users off of your page. Keeping your text’s line length to 50-75 characters and paying attention to text alignment are important factors when it comes to creating visual appeal.
Whitespace is your best friend in a page layout. You want to give your images and text room to breathe so that users can better focus their attention and lead to increased engagement.
Don’t go overboard with too many links in the body of your content. Serving up too many with no clear purpose leads to the perception of clutter and will be overlooked by your visitors.

5. Make your site appear trustworthy

Unlike the previous steps you can take to improve the user experience and SEO of your site, measuring the perceived trustworthiness of your site can be difficult. However, that doesn’t mean it should be skipped because gaining a user’s trust is a key factor in ranking higher in search results.

The perception of quality can have just as much impact on your website’s trustworthiness as the quality of the content itself.

Web users have come to expect a certain level of polish and organization on the sites they visit, and if your website appears out of date or without any attention to visual detail, it will come across as untrustworthy.

Once your users form an initial impression of your site, it will be extremely difficult to change their minds down the road. Regardless of your intent, presenting a poorly designed website will make it appear as if your business doesn’t care and puts little to no effort into your work. It doesn’t matter if this is far from reality.

Steps to improve your site’s trustworthiness:

Create a style guide for your website and make sure everything adheres to one consistent look. This may seem like an overwhelming task to complete, but just covering the basics of consistent fonts, colors, and visuals can get you on the right track.
Evaluate your site from the viewpoint of your user. Take a step back and try to think about how they’ll read your content, navigate your site, and find the information you want them to discover. It may help to have someone less familiar with your business to use your website while you observe their actions.
Study the websites of your competitors. While some may fall into the same trap, chances are you’ll discover a thing or two about what can be improved upon and what should be avoided.

The perception of quality can have just as much impact on your website’s trustworthiness as the quality of the content itself.

See the full article in Aronson Advertising

8 Ways To Promote Your Business Without A Marketing Budget

alpha — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 08:49:34 +0000

If you want to run a successful business, you need to invest time and resources in marketing. A good marketing strategy would help you get your products or services in front of your target audience, increase sales, and reach your business goals.

However, traditional forms of marketing like television, billboard advertisements, radio, and newspapers can be very expensive. This might not be an issue if you are a huge enterprise with an entire marketing department with millions of dollars budgeted for marketing. But what happens if you are a small business with little or no marketing budget? How can you effectively market your product or service without breaking the bank? Does this mean that you have to pause all your marketing efforts until you can raise money?

In this article, we would see 8 ways you can promote your business without a marketing budget.

1. Start A Blog

Running a business blog is a free marketing tactic to help your business become more visible online and also reach a much larger audience. Research has shown that companies with blogs have an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that do not blog.

To increase sales for your business, you would need leads. You can quickly get these leads by placing a ton of paid ads to drive new prospects to your business. But this method is quite expensive and the leads stop coming in after you have run out of cash.

So, how can you get new leads without spending money? In two words: blogging and search engines.

Every time you write a new blog post, it is one more indexed page on your website, which means it’s one more opportunity for you to show up on search engines and drive more visitors to your website. Your intended customers are using search engines like Google to search for businesses they would work with. The more blog content you publish on your website, the higher your chances of these customers locating you.

The moment traffic starts coming into your site from search engines, you have the opportunity to convert these traffic into leads. Every new blog post you write is an avenue to generate new leads.

All you need to do is to add a call-to-action button to every blog post. This call to action is basically any content asset that would be valuable enough to visitors of your blog that they would be willing to exchange their information. If you sell software, you can offer a free demo as a content asset. If 10 visitors sign up for your free demo and 2 of them eventually sign up for a paid version, that is two new customers and you didn’t spend even a dime on ads.

2. Create Marketing Videos

If you aren’t using videos as part of your marketing strategy, then you’re missing out on a ton of opportunities to promote your business. The popularity of video as a content marketing format has grown in the past few years. In fact, a report from HubSpot research showed that 50% of customers want to see more videos from brands than any other form of content.

The best part about the video is that it can be used by any business regardless of size, team, or budget. Gone are the days where you need an expensive 4k camera before you can make high-quality marketing videos. All you need is a quality smartphone and you can start making videos immediately. In fact, most customers would prefer low-quality videos that feel “authentic” than high-quality videos that feel “inauthentic”.

Before you start filming your video, you need to decide on the kind of video you want to make. They are several marketing video types you can implement into your strategy. Here is a short explanation of some of them:

Demo videos: A demo video is used to showcase to the customer how your product works. It can be a video of the unboxing of a physical product or a tour on how your software works.
Brand videos: Brand videos are used to create awareness for your business and attract customers. You typically showcase your brand’s vision, mission, products, or services in this video type.
Event videos: Do you have a conference or product launch coming soon? You can use an event video to create awareness for the event. It can be in the form of a highlight reel that shows the attendees what they would gain from attending the event.
Instructional videos: These videos are great for teaching your audience. They can be in the form of educational or how-to videos that show your audience how to use your business solutions better.
Testimonial videos: Customers want to know that a product or service they are about to invest in would solve their specific problem. The best way to show them that your product is valuable is by creating customer testimonial videos where your loyal customers describe how your company helped them solve the challenges they were facing.
Live videos: You can use live videos to show your customers a special behind the scenes view of your company. Almost all social media platforms now offer live video capabilities so you can directly connect with customers on their favorite social media channels.

3. Post on Quora

Quora is a very powerful platform that can help you reach a wider brand audience. It is one of the most effective marketing channels you can use in promoting your business or service.

The platform receives more than 300 million visitors monthly. So if you are looking to increase brand awareness, confirm your authority in your niche, and develop your thought leadership presence, you should check out Quora.

What is Quora?

Quora is an international question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, followed, and edited by Internet users, either factually or in the form of opinions.

Why do you need a Quora marketing strategy?

Here are some reasons you should be interested in marketing on Quora:

The platform has over 300 million monthly visitors so it is a great channel for increasing your business reach. It is also one of the best user-generated content (UGC) platforms in the world.
Improved search visibility: Your content on Quora is also searchable via Google. What this means is that you can also drive traffic and leads to the site through Google even if the content was written on Quora.
Several high profile writers use the platform to reach their audience. Even former President Obama answers questions on Quora. You can use Quora to build your reputation as a thought leader in your industry.
Quora also offers insights into your audience. You can use the platform to answer the questions your customers have concerning your brand and also offer up solutions to difficulties they encounter when using your product; making it ideal for customer service management.
How to get the most out of Quora marketing:

1. Create a brilliant bio: Regardless of the social media channel, a brilliant bio is essential. What makes Quora unique is that you cannot create profiles for a brand unless in special cases. You would have to create a profile for the individual in your organization that would be answering the questions.

Make sure that you fill out the interest, “About Me”, employment and credential sections of your bio. A complete bio would help people find you faster on Quora. Don’t forget to add an eye-catching profile picture to your bio. Your bio should give off the vibe that there is a real person behind the account; customers would connect with you faster that way.

2. Look for questions that fit your industry/business to answer: The point of Quora is to attract customers to your business. You need to answer questions that you know your target audience is searching for. A good way to do this is by answering questions on a problem that your product/services solve.

3. Find question threads with the highest upvotes: Quora uses the upvote point system to show the most popular questions and answers on the platform. Question threads with tons of upvotes usually have a lot of views. If you offer good answers to these questions, you can have thousands of views fast.

4. Run a Giveaway Contest

Running a giveaway is one of the best ways to promote your business without a marketing budget. It is a quick way to create brand awareness and also connect with your customers.

When done correctly, it would cost you close to nothing. This is especially true when you use social media to run the giveaway contest.

The first step to every giveaway contest is determining the kind of promotion you want to run. There are three main types of promotions you can run:

Contests
Sweepstakes
Lottery

Contests

In a contest, the participants would be required to have a skill or make some kind of effort before they can win the prize. The winners are chosen either through voting or by judges.

Some of the most popular contests are video, photo, or essays.

A good example is this Facebook contest by Eggo held in two parts. The first part is a recipe contest where participants submitted their best recipe for waffles. The second part is fans voting for their favorite recipe. The winner receives $5000.

Note: You don’t have to offer money as your prize. You can give the winner a 10% discount off the price of a product you are selling. If you run an ecommerce business you can offer coupons or free shipping as the prize.

Sweepstakes

In a contest, the participants would be required to have a skill or make some kind of effort before they can win the prize. The winners are chosen either through voting or by judges.

Some of the most popular contests are video, photo, or essays.

5. Start An Affiliate Program

63% of businesses say that their biggest challenge is generating leads and traffic. One method of generating leads to your business is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing involves an affiliate signing up to an affiliate program set up by the advertiser to sell and promote their product on a commission-based model. The affiliate would promote the advertiser’s product or service using a unique link, which sends traffic to the advertiser’s website. If the lead sent to the website purchases a product, a commission is paid to the affiliate.

In the context of this article, you would be the one creating an affiliate program that affiliates can sign up for. Starting an affiliate program can be thought of as a way of expanding your marketing team by hiring people who are paid only after successful sales are made.

The best part of an affiliate program is that you are not losing any money. You only pay the affiliate a commission after they have made a successful sale.

Setting up an affiliate program is also very easy. They are several sales tools you can use in launching and scaling your affiliate program in a couple of hours. But, before you go ahead and launch your affiliate program, make sure you carry out research. Analyze what your competitors are doing before starting out.

Understanding the competitive environment informs your decisions on how you will launch the program as well as your commissions, commercial arrangements, and targets.

6. Submit Press Releases

Press releases can be an effective form of marketing, especially for small businesses. If used correctly, press releases are an efficient way to promote your brand and create goodwill in the local marketplace without paying a dime.

For example, when Green Rivers Adventures was about to launch The Gorge, a high-speed zip line, they issued a press release announcing the launch and a number of publications including The Associated Press and Costco Connection, which reached up to 8 million people picked up the story. As a result of this huge press, the company had a sold-out year before its official launch.

You should note that there are right and wrong ways to create and distribute press releases.

Unless you are a well-known brand like Apple, nobody cares about your company or product. Your press releases should not be in the form of a pitch. Journalists or the media are not interested in promoting you or your business so that you can just sell your products (unless you are paying them to do so).

A strong press release would involve sharing expert advice or opinions on a topic relevant to the journalist and their readers. This is some things you can put in your press release:

An interesting solution to a popular consumer problem
Offer a controversial opinion on a popular topic
Bring attention to your business when you receive an award. This works best for local press releases.
Piggyback off the news by offering an opinion or information relative to the topic at hand.

You can use online press release services like PRWeb, Business Wire, and PR Newswire to get started.

7. Setup G2 Crowd & Capterra

Setting up G2 Crowd is free and very easy to do. You can set up a profile for your business in minutes and have the opportunity to be seen by millions.

G2 is a peer-to-peer review site headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It was launched in May 2012 with a focus on aggregating user reviews for business software. The platform compares the best business software and services based on user ratings and social data.

Your future customers are researching their next purchase on G2. So if you sell software, you can reach more customers by claiming your G2 profile.

Capterra is similar to G2 Crowd. It is an online marketplace vendor serving as an intermediary between buyers and sellers within the software industry. The company assists consumers with selecting the best software for their needs.

Both of these services are available internationally so you can reach a very wide audience by setting up your profile. To increase your ratings, ask your users to add a review of your product on G2 Crowd/Capterra.

8. Start a Podcast or Get Featured In One

Podcasts are a great way to promote your product and services. There is a huge number of people listening to podcasts daily. In fact, the proportion of Americans listening to podcasts has increased in the past few years. According to musicoomph, 22% of Americans (approximately 103 million) listen to podcasts, weekly people.

You should take advantage of this trend and start your own podcast show. The best part is that there are a lot of quality free podcast hosting services that you can use to get started. All you need is great content and a good microphone and you are good to go.

The key to running a successful podcast is creating engaging content that delivers value to your listeners. When done well, a podcast can be very beneficial to your brand. For example, given the audio nature of podcasts, listeners tend to hang on to every word, making it excellent for advertisers trying to make their brand known.

Just like with your business blog, create podcasts that are niche based and targeted to a specific audience. When you create content that resonates with your audience, you would receive a high level of engagement.

Another way to boost your podcast is by interviewing other experts. This would bring variety to your show and you also get exposed to their audience that may not have known about your podcasts.

If you don’t want the workload of starting your own podcast, you can get featured in other podcasts in your industry. Reach out to other podcasts hosts and offer to be interviewed in their show. You can use targeted email outreach to connect with these hosts. When you eventually get invited, be sure to deliver immense value to their audience.

Conclusion

It is very possible to market your products or services and create brand awareness without spending a lot of money. With the strategies mentioned in this article, you can promote your business without a marketing budget.

With a little commitment and creativity on your part, you can start generating tons of leads fast.

Which of the tips in this article would you start using first? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

See the full article in noupe

What designers can learn from Etsy’s minimalist icons

alpha — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 15:47:34 +0000

Did you know TNW Conference has a track fully dedicated to exploring new design trends this year? Check out the full ‘Sprint’ program here.

No joke, I go on Etsy every single day. I browse Instagram as much as any other person, but when that becomes tiresome, I open up Etsy to casually scroll. I think what makes me come back to it repeatedly, without being triggered by a notification or alert, is that there’s a mix of finding what I’m looking for and being surprised and delighted with things I wasn’t expecting.

Nir Eyal talks about the importance of the surprise and delight model (as related to Pinterest) in his book ‘Hooked.’ When users get something extra out of an experience that they weren’t expecting, they come back for more.

That’s how I feel about Etsy. I may start by casually browsing for handmade ceramic mugs, and suddenly find myself in an awesome vintage sweatshirt shop. It’s always fun, and the experience feels seamless.

But the point of this post isn’t to delve into Eyal’s model for stellar product design, or the fun of shopping for homemade trinkets when you’re bored, this post is about iconography

Icons have been around forever. According to some sources, Saint Luke the Evangelist created an icon of the Virgin Mary and popped it on a panel for people to carry around with them. Cavemen and Egyptians used them too. Icons were an easy way to communicate with those around them and created a shared written language for people to use.

Nowadays, icons are arguably more important than ever as we continue to push the boundaries in digital design. We’re trending toward minimalist designs that feature extreme amounts of whitespace, as well as usable products that sit on tiny screens like Apple Watches. We don’t have space for tons of text, so instead, we rely on icons to convey what we want users to do, how to do it, and when.

So what does Esty do well with their icons?

They include text labels. A heart can mean so many things…like, favorite, love, etc. Etsy makes it clear that hearts mean favorites on their site, so the user doesn’t have to piece that together through trial and error.
They alter the state depending on where the user is in the flow. On iOS, the icon becomes a solid shape when the user has pressed it. When you’re on the home screen, the home icon is black, and when you’re on your profile, the profile icon is black. This gives the user tactile feedback that they’ve made a decision and completed a task. It helps reinforce the behavior associated with using that icon.
Their icons are simple. No crazy details, intense drop shadows, wild colors, or extravagant animations. The focus is on assisting the user in completing the task, not distracting them with fluff that doesn’t help them.
They play off conventional shapes. The cart icon looks like a grocery cart, the profile icon like a head and body, and the home like a little house. These are not only reflecting real-life items, but more importantly, the icons users see in other apps and sites they visit daily. This takes the burden off of the user in learning a new design system and helps them upskill quickly.

So what does that mean for the rest of us?

Include text labels. Your interface may not look as sleek and clean as it could, but it will be way easier for the user to engage with. Eventually, you can pull an Instagram and phase out text once users are fully accustomed to how things work.
Keep it simple. Some people are saying that skeuomorphism is back, and I don’t really know if I agree with that. I think a very muted version of skeuomorphism is back…more like skeuflat or flatmorphism if anything. Overcomplicating icons with hyper-realistic shading, color schemes, and highlights just makes them harder to see clearly (particularly from an accessibility POV).
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Icons aren’t the time to get wild and crazy with brand new things no one has ever seen before. Most of the time, it’s best to use symbols that users see elsewhere and feel comfortable with.

This article was originally published on UX Collective by Cara Lamason, a San Francisco based product designer passionate about creating data-driven experiences that make life easier. You can read the original article here.

Apply experience-design to your everyday life

alpha — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 11:23:50 +0000

The other day a coworker and I were chatting about our phone’s home screens and the way we organize our app icons. We spent a good amount of time describing to one another our implicit rules on how we prioritize homepage icons, how we choose apps that will sit on the edge vs. the middle of the screen, how we thoughtfully select the ones that will stay fixed on the bottom dock. We were verbally documenting our own unspoken rules on how we had “designed” our phone home screen experience.

The other day a coworker and I were chatting about our phone’s home screens and the way we organize our app icons. We spent a good amount of time describing to one another our implicit rules on how we prioritize homepage icons, how we choose apps that will sit on the edge vs. the middle of the screen, how we thoughtfully select the ones that will stay fixed on the bottom dock. We were verbally documenting our own unspoken rules on how we had “designed” our phone home screen experience.

Here’s where I stand as of today:

I try to limit the number of icons displayed on my homepage to the ones I use every day. The rule is simple: if I haven’t used an app for more than 3 days, I move it to another page. The fact I have less information to look at helps reduce cognitive load 100 percent of the times I unlock my phone.
I removed all red badges from the homepage icons (except Slack and work email) to reduce anxiety and the feeling that I need to click on certain icons in the first place — because I really don’t. I noticed my phone usage has drastically dropped since I changed that setting.
Since I realized I’m often holding my phone with my right hand, I moved icons that I need to access quickly to the right side of the screen, so it’s more easily accessible with my thumb. I don’t really need to open Twitter, Linkedin, or Instagram when I’m walking outside holding my phone with one hand and trying to cross a busy street.

The list goes on forever.

I have rules around how my phone’s second screen is organized as well.

I could write a whole book on the little things I do to optimize my day-to-day experience — not only with my phone, but with my laptop, with my wardrobe, office desk, electric chargers, fridge, backpack. But in all honesty, that would be an incredibly boring book.

Current state of my macbook dock — why keeping all those icons you’ll never use?

The specific rules are not the point (I am not trying to convince you my rules are the right ones, or that they will work for you, and I actually hope you disagree with some of them).

The point is: taking the time to think through what those rules are, and how they are going to impact your everyday.

Why are we not doing the same thing with every single aspect of our lives?

Isn’t that exactly what design is?

Understanding your own use cases

How many times through the course of a workday do you reach for pen and paper to sketch something out while sitting at your desk?
What are the shirts you usually choose for weekdays (when you are in a hurry) vs. weekends (when you may have more time, and feel a little more adventurous)?
What are the 3 things you need to bring with you every time you leave your house?
What is the cologne you wear everyday, versus the one you wear in special occasions?

It strikes me that so few designers I know actually take the time to think about their own user journey throughout the day.

On an average day, how many outfit options need to be handy for you?

We use that same logical thinking when designing the app we are working on, when deciding what to include (or not include) on the homepage, when discussing product priorities with our coworkers, when defending our design decisions to your clients.

Still, sometimes we forget to apply those same principles to our own life.

Designing your life begins with designing the environment around you. It makes logical sense: with the efficiency you gain by designing your own experience, you will end up with more time to design experiences to other people.

Defining your personal KPIs

Design is all about making decisions that prioritize one metric over another. What metrics are important to you?

Less time spent: what are the tasks you repeat every day that can be optimized or automated to save you time?
From using Buffer to schedule my social media posts, to setting up if this than that recipes that will help me manage the UX Collective; I’m constantly paying attention to time-consuming tasks that are repeated at a certain frequency, and finding ways to automate them or eliminate them altogether.
Less forgetting: how can you reduce the number of times you forget things?
Setting monthly reminders to pay the bills, yearly birthday reminders for the people you love, or even daily reminders for more mundane tasks; it only takes a minute, and can save you a lot of frustration and energy later on.
Less decision-making: how can you reduce the number of decisions you have to make throughout the day?
As a designer, you are making hundreds of decisions at work, so you might want to reduce decision fatigue in other parts of your day. Make sure to define your personal priorities: some people (like me) prefer to wear the same color every day to avoid decision-making in the morning, but do not want to give up on choosing a different restaurant every night — or vice-versa.
Less cognitive load: how can you free up your brain from processing excessive amounts of information all the time? Look at the world around you with the eyes of a designer. Aren’t there too many pictures on your living room wall? Too many objects sitting on your desk? Too many apps on your phone home screen? Take a pass at every environment you interact with throughout your day and ask yourself the question: what can I eliminate from here to open up more breathing room for my eyes and brain?

Wearing the same outfit every day reduces the number of decisions you have to make

Owning your daily experience

Being mindful of your own daily experience shows that you care about yourself and others around you. As designers, we spend so much energy thinking about our user’s experience that we forget that, as humans, we deserve better experiences too.

It’s time we move from default choices to more deliberate ones. At every aspect and every level of our lives.

This article was originally published on UX Collective by Fabricio Teixeira.

Para o RiR, é o FIM

alpha — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 10:34:29 +0000

A portuguesa Forever in Movies (FIM) é a produtora oficial do Rock in Rio (RiR) Lisboa em 2020, depois de uma primeira colaboração na edição do ano passado. Vai estar também na Cidade do Rock, no Brasil, já na edição de 2019 que arranca esta quinta-feira, a fazer cobertura especial para Portugal.

A parceria tem duração de dois anos e prevê a produção de todo o conteúdo proprietário da marca sobre as diversas áreas de atuação do Rock in Rio, tanto no Brasil como em Portugal.

“Após uma primeira colaboração na edição de 2018, da qual resultaram mais de 50 filmes, ter o Rock in Rio a escolher novamente a FIM para mais duas edições, entre as quais uma edição internacional, é a prova do valor e diferenciação que a FIM consegue aportar aos projetos que desenvolve, e que tem ditado a nossa afirmação no mercado nacional e internacional”, afirma o founder da FIM, Rui Malvarez.

No evento de celebração dos 15 anos do Rock in Rio em Portugal, de 6 a 8 de setembro, a FIM foi já responsável por todo o conteúdo audiovisual de iniciativas da marca como as Galp Music Valley Sessions, o evento Worten Game City e o Celebration.

Artigo importado: www.briefing.pt/