Tag Archives: business

Is WordPress Right for Your Business?

Posted on September 12, 2018 by Hosting

The post Is WordPress Right for Your Business? appeared first on HostGator Blog . You’re here because you’re trying to decide if WordPress is the right tool to build your business website. It’s a common concern to have, after all, there are dozens of different website builders, platforms, and content management systems to choose from. And you want what’s best for your business. WordPress currently powers around 30% of the internet . This might not seem like a lot, but when compared to the hundreds of different ways people can build a website, it’s pretty impressive. Is WordPress good for a business website?  The short answer is yes. Below we’ll go into greater depth behind that answer. You’ll learn what WordPress is, why it’s a great choice for your business, and finally, we’ll highlight a few themes that will be perfect for your new business website. What is WordPress? WordPress is a content management system. At its core, a content management system will allow you to build your site, and create, edit, and manage content all without knowing how to code. It originally started as a blogging platform, but since it’s early days WordPress has gone on to power some of the largest sites in the world, like BBC America, The New Yorker, and Tech Crunch. With WordPress for business, you build your business website with themes, add new features with plugins, and use the built-in key features to create and manage your content.   Why WordPress is a Great Choice for Your Business When you’re choosing a platform to support your business, you have different needs than someone who’s just building out a simple site for personal use. As a business owner, your website needs to offer you flexibility and control. It should be easy to use, and the platform should scale to meet the growing demands of your business. As you’ll soon learn below, WordPress does all of these things and more.   1. WordPress Is Affordable As a business owner, you probably want to cut costs whenever possible. Now, you don’t want to sacrifice quality, but you’re probably looking for the best possible deal. Luckily, WordPress satisfies those requirements. Right out of the box, the CMS is completely free and open source. Your only investments will be in your domain name and WordPress hosting plan s , and whether you decide to use a free WordPress theme or a premium theme to build out your site. You will have some initial upfront costs, but the lower ongoing costs will make it a better investment for years to come.   2. WordPress Is Infinitely Flexible With WordPress, you can build any kind of site you desire, from advanced eCommerce sites to thousand page content machines, and every kind of site in between. You not only have thousands of different theme options to choose from, but you also have a  massive marketplace of the most popular WordPress plugins you can choose from to add more features to your site. The near-infinite flexibility of WordPress is part of the reason it’s so popular. No matter what kind of business site you want to build, WordPress can help you build it.   3. WordPress Is Easy to Use One of the reasons behind the widespread adoption of WordPress is that it’s very easy to use. Plus you’ll have infinitely more control over the end result of your site, and you’ll always have complete ownership over your data. There are a wide range of WordPress tutorials out there that will help you do everything you need to get started, such as  installing WordPress on your site , building out your theme, installing plugins, and even troubleshooting different issues.   4. WordPress Has a Large Online Community If you run into any issues with your site there’s always a large community you can lean on. You’ll find a wealth of support materials from your theme and plugin providers, and  everything else you need is just a Google search away. Since WordPress is so popular, a dedicated and genuinely helpful community has sprung up. There are dozens of blogs and sites dedicated entirely to teaching you the ins and outs of WordPress and helping you overcome any issues you might run into.   5. WordPress Can Grow With You WordPress powers everything from small blogs, all the way up to some of the largest websites online, like Thought Catalog, CNN, the New York Post, and more. What explains this varied demand? First, it has endless customization options.  Second, it’s built to scale and manage even the largest websites that have thousands of posts and get millions of visitors per month. Another bonus? No major upgrades are required to meet this growth. You’ll have everything you need to scale your website right from the very beginning.   6. WordPress Is Secure As a business owner, your site needs to be secure. Getting your site hacked, or having a security breach can lead to a loss of trust in the eyes of your visitors. In some cases, their personal data can even become comprised, which can be difficult to recover from. Almost every system is vulnerable to hacking. Since WordPress is such a popular platform it’s more likely to be the subject of an attack.  Securing your website will protect your WordPress site against many different types of cybersecurity threats. But, this also means you have even more people working to prevent those attacks and create patches when any security vulnerabilities might arise. You have an extensive set of security plugin options you can install to greatly improve the security of your site. You also have the ability to choose a WordPress managed host , which will take your site security to ultimate heights.   7. You Have Control Over Your Data WordPress is open source, and you’ll be self-hosting your own website. This means that you own everything regarding your website: your files, content, media, and even where you want to host your site. That means you can effectively pack up and bring your site elsewhere whenever you’d like. Using closed systems like Squarespace means that you’re never in full ownership of your site. It is possible to migrate away from platforms like that, but you’ll typically have to leave a lot of your site behind – and spend time building a new site from scratch. Just like all business owners, you want to know who’s in control of your site’s data, and you want that person to be you.   Top WordPress Themes for Business Hopefully, by now, you have a greater understanding of why you should choose WordPress  for your new business website. The next challenge you’ll face is choosing the right WordPress themes for your business. Here are five of the best WordPress business themes we’ve come across for business owners:   1. Divi Divi is a very clean, mobile responsive, and flexible theme. You can effectively use this theme to build any kind of website you desire. It’s built on a drag and drop builder, so all your site’s customization is just handled by dragging, dropping, and rearranging certain content blocks. There are also dozens of pre-built page layout options, so you don’t have to create every single page from scratch.   2.Digital Pro Digital Pro is a great eCommerce business theme that sits on top of the Genesis framework. It’s very clean and elegant and packed with features. You’ll be able to easily customize your eCommerce site through the customization panel, adding text, changing color schemes, responsive layout options, and a lot more. Like most theme options in the StudioPress library , this makes use of a lot of whitespace and offers clean typography. The end result provides your visitors with a very comfortable browsing experience.   3. Navy Navy is a clean and versatile theme. It emphasizes large images along with clear and bold typography to help get your message across. If you’re a cutting-edge company or want to give off a sleek and professional appearance, then this theme is a great choice. Once you install the theme you’ll have the option of choosing between one of 12 different homepage templates, as well as a variety of templates for the rest of your site content.  Plus, there’s a drag and drop builder built-in, so you can easily rearrange your pages to give them a unique look.   4. Corporate Corporate will give your eCommerce site a very sleek and professional appearance. It offers you a very clean and spacious mobile responsive design so you can put the focus on your words and business. This theme works great for companies who also have a physical business, as you’ll be able to integrate your phone number, team page, and address. It even includes cool features like an animated experience display (to highlight your skills), pricing tables, the parallax scaling effect, and more.   5. Foundry Foundry offers a cutting-edge and minimalist theme for  businesses that want a responsive design for mobile devices . This theme presents you with a simple display, while still offering you all the customization options you require. It’s equipped with 25 different concepts that are designed for specific niches or e-commerce business verticals. Each of these essentially acts as a skin on top of the existing  theme. Since it’s bundled with Visual Composer, you can drag and drop your way to building out your site. It’s a great theme for businesses that want to project their message loud and clear.   WordPress: The Right Choice for Your Business Site Hopefully, you see now that choosing WordPress to build your new business site is basically a no-brainer. Its flexibility, affordability, scalability, and ease of use are just a few of the reasons it should be your top choice. Build your WordPress business website today. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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SnelBit.com | Shared Web Hosting starting at 2€/mo | Unlimited Websites and Traffic | 25% Discount!

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Hosting

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Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions?

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Hosting

The post Are HTML Email Coding Issues Killing Your Conversions? appeared first on HostGator Blog . What’s the Key to More Email Conversions? It Might Be Your HTML How’s email marketing going for your small business? If hardly anyone on your list is opening your emails and even fewer are clicking through, you’re probably wondering if your subject lines, copy, and images need work . They might. But there’s another possibility: You may need to improve the code that makes your emails work. Without the right code, your emails can show up in your subscribers’ inboxes as a jumbled, hard-to-read mess or a blank page, even if you’re using an email template. Of course, most small businesses don’t have an email code expert in-house to fix their issues. So I reached out to one to learn more. Anne Tomlin is the founder of Austin, TX-based  Emails Y’all and a self-described email geek whose enthusiasm for her work is contagious. She shared her knowledge about what happens when code goes wrong, why off-the-shelf templates work until they don’t, and how small businesses can diagnose, fix, and avoid some common email coding issues.   Look Good or Get Deleted The first thing to know is that email marketing is challenging because not everyone receives your emails in the same way. Different people use different devices to read their mail, and they may be using a variety of email clients that all have different rules about things like downloading email images. Most businesses know they need to use responsive templates for proper display on mobile devices, but the range of email client rules can trip them up. “A lot of email clients don’t download images automatically,” Tomlin said, giving Outlook as one example. “You can work around that, but a lot of businesses send emails that feature one big image. When those emails are opened with those clients, they’re just blank.” Consumers won’t tolerate that. Tomlin said she recently heard a conference presenter say that about 30% of Millennials immediately delete emails that don’t render properly. Those recipients won’t follow a link to “view this email in a browser,” wait to see if images load, or try to figure out how to read it on their screen. They just delete your carefully crafted message or decide they don’t want to hear from your business again. This is high-stakes stuff in terms of conversions and subscriber retention, but Tomlin says “even major retailers make this mistake.” One clothing retailer sends her emails that are blank, because “the email content is one big image with no live or alternative text” and Outlook doesn’t show it. Another apparel chain sent an email with lots of images that didn’t display, “and the alt text for every image was ‘turn on your images.’” What’s the workaround when you’re sending image-heavy emails? “A good coder can style alternative text to match your brand. Stitch Fix uses alternative text really well, and it’s stylized to fill the image space if the images don’t load. With proper coding, using live text or well-designed alternative text… maybe the recipients will download the images.”   Pros and Cons of Off-the-Shelf Email Templates If major retailers are tripped up by email coding, you can bet smaller businesses are, too. I asked Tomlin whether pre-made HTML templates from email marketing services can help SMBs avoid these email rendering pitfalls. “Most off-the-shelf templates work just fine” for businesses that are starting out with an email program, “but they might not work for every audience.” Tomlin mentions accessibility for customers with disabilities as an example. “Most templates were developed a while back” before accessibility for people with low vision, hearing loss, and other issues was given a lot of attention, and many “aren’t up to date yet with accessible code.” Another potential issue with pre-fab templates is simply the pace of change in the email industry. “Things change weekly, sometimes without any notice. Say Gmail decides to change something on their end, and that may totally screw up the rendering of your emails on, say, a certain type of phone,” but senders don’t realize that’s now a problem. “ Any good developer will keep tabs on the latest changes, notify clients, and update the code” as quickly as possible.   Best Practices to Avoid Email Coding Issues I asked Tomlin what steps small businesses can take to avoid code-related email issues. The first is to format your emails to look good with or without images. “Using one big image with text” in your marketing emails “is not good practice. A properly coded email will have live text that shows up whether the image loads or not.” Other best practices include: Test your emails before you hit send. Most email marketing service providers will show you how your emails will look on a variety of devices. Know your audience’s email habits and clients. “Use those analytics that your email marketing service provider collects. For example, if people aren’t opening your emails in Outlook, you can code some crazy awesome stuff to reach them” or hire someone to do that for you. Know when it’s time for professional coding services. Tomlin cites three scenarios. “When your conversions plateau or drop” or if your email program just isn’t hitting the targets you set, it’s time to look under the hood to see if rendering issues are part of the problem. “When you gain a larger, more diverse audience, say, new customers from other countries,” an email code expert can ensure your new audience sticks around and opens your emails, regardless of the many devices and clients they use. “When your emails don’t look right” even when you’re using a template. For example, Tomlin sometimes sees text-heavy emails with badly aligned columns or copy that gets truncated because it’s too long for the template. When you decide to hire a professional, Tomlin suggests careful vetting. Look for developers who ask lots of questions about your audience and who share information to help you reach your goals. Email coding isn’t just using off-the-shelf templates. “A good coder will build your emails from the ground up and tailor them to your needs.” Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How to Write Your Small Business Case Study

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Hosting

The post How to Write Your Small Business Case Study appeared first on HostGator Blog . How to Write Your First Case Study for Your Small Business Website Case studies—business students analyze them, successful businesses feature them, and marketing experts say most businesses should have them. But how do you write them? The case study creation process is sometimes a big roadblock for small business owners, especially those who don’t have an MBA or marketing experience. In this post, we’ll walk you step by step down the road from deciding whether you need a case study to promoting your finished case study. What Is a Case Study? A case study is a story about how a business helped a customer solve a problem or achieve a goal. Case studies offer more detail than a bite-size testimonial. They also frame the story so readers who are similar to the customer see why that business is the one to solve their issue. People like stories, and marketers like case studies because they offer social proof, help businesses show their expertise, and help prospective customers understand complex or unusual products and services.   Does My Business Need Case Studies? Almost certainly. If your business sells something expensive, highly technical, or so innovative that most prospects won’t be familiar with it, case studies can overcome cost objections, educate prospects, and demonstrate value. For example, international smart home company Loxone sells its equipment and services to homeowners and builders. Loxone has a slew of case studies featuring smart houses from tiny modern to large Victorian, to show how individual homeowners use their products to make their home lives easier: Case studies can help you if your business offers simpler products and services, too. A well-written case study can anchor a marketing program that helps you compete on value rather than price. Dog groomers and cleaning companies can and sometimes do use case studies to show off their results and benefits to clients.   How Do I Write a Case Study? Follow these 7 steps to write your first small business case study. We followed these steps ourselves when writing this HostGator small business case study .   1. Find your story. Every good story starts with a challenge that the main character has to overcome, right? Think about the biggest challenges your customers expect your business to solve for them. Pick the most common one to build your first case study. Let’s say you’re a residential remodeling contractor who specializes in retrofitting homes to be accessible for people with mobility issues, so most of your customers come to you looking to redo their entrances, room transitions, bathrooms, and kitchens.   2. Next, find your keywords. Study the way your customers and would-be customers search for information on the problem you want to talk about in your case study. What do your customers ask about when they first call or email you? When you look at Google Analytics, which search terms are visitors using to find you? Which social media posts generate the most likes and shares? This is how you pick out the keywords and phrases that people use to connect to your business. Include them in your case study so prospects can find it, too.   3. Pick your case-study subject. Ideally, you’ve got customers who love your work and send you referrals. These are the folks who are most likely to agree to talk with you about their experience. Ask them if they have the time and interest. When you get a yes, set up an interview. Besides the time and date that works best for your interviewee, find these things out in advance: How much time they have to talk. An hour is more than enough time for most small business case study interviews. Whether they want to do the interview in person, by phone, via email, or another way. How much personal info they’re willing to share. First name only? Family name only? Full name? Ideally, you’ll get a first and last name and a city, but people have different privacy preferences. What photos will appear in the case study? In this example, before and after photos are the obvious choice, but photos of the client can add credibility, too.   4. Do the interview. Record audio or video and take basic notes. Keep the tone conversational so they’ll feel comfortable talking. Ask about their challenge, why they chose your company to help them, how you solved their problem, and what the result was for them. Focus on details that prospective customers can relate to: Were you able to widen a hallway that was too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair? Does your client enjoy cooking for friends now that the kitchen counter height has been changed? If your customer’s results include facts and figures, use them (with the customer’s permission). If your home remodel saved a customer the cost of moving to a new home, or if you did a remodel for a landlord that allowed her to expand her market and fill more units, the numbers can impress prospective clients.   5. Write the first draft of your case study. After the interview, use quotes from your customer, your chosen keywords, and any numbers that support your customer’s story. The simplest story structure is Your customer had a problem. Your customer chose your business because… You worked with your customer to deliver… You solved their problem by… You saved your customers X amount of time or money. Your customers’ lives are now better because of your product or service. Let that first draft sit for a couple of days, revise it, and then ask someone else to read the revised version and offer feedback. Add your photos and graphics. When you’re happy with it, ask the customer to look it over in case there are any errors.   6. Publish your case study. You can add it to your website’s About Us or Testimonials page or create a separate page for case studies. Thank your customer for working with you on a marketing tool to help your business grow.   7. Promote your case study. Share your case study with your email list and on social media. You can also blog about it, create a print version for in-person meetings and events, and even turn it into a video or podcast.   Congratulations! You’ve got your first case study. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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Finding the Best E-Commerce Marketplaces for Your Online Store

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Hosting

The post Finding the Best E-Commerce Marketplaces for Your Online Store appeared first on HostGator Blog . Why Promote Your Online Store on E-Commerce Marketplaces? A website and an online store are musts for e-commerce, but they’re also only a good start. Industry analysts say small online retailers also need to establish a presence on multiple marketplaces to stay competitive and reach more potential customers. You have more marketplace options than you may realize—and because the marketplace marketplace is so competitive, many marketplaces work hard to make selling, shipping, and marketing easier for their merchants. Why Should You Sell on Multiple E-commerce Marketplaces? Nearly all consumers— 97%, as of June 2017 —search on marketplaces at least some of the time. Avoiding marketplaces means missing out on product searches by virtually all online shoppers. Not only that, but  about a third of shoppers search on marketplaces before heading to a retailer’s own online shop, which means marketplace accounts are marketing tools as well as points of purchase. So signing up your store for one of the big marketplaces like Amazon or eBay should be all you need to do, right? Probably not. The marketplace industry is growing, with new, niche, and international options coming online all the time. For example, Tokyo-based Mercari’s June IPO raised $1.2 billion and it’s planning to expand its current US peer-to-peer market. Limiting yourself to one marketplace limits your exposure to potential buyers. Sticking with big marketplaces also means ignoring smaller marketplaces that may cater better to your audience. And each marketplace has its pros and cons – one may have more visitors overall, while in another your shop has less competition. Your shop doesn’t need to (and couldn’t possibly be) on every marketplace, but being on the right marketplaces for your business is important.   Major E-commerce Marketplaces Here’s a quick rundown of some of the largest and best-known marketplaces along with a few niche options and some peer-to-peer platforms that can also work for certain types of small business.   1. Amazon Marketplace Amazon Marketplace reaches 150 million unique visitors in the US each month, plus more abroad. The marketplace offers businesses who pay a base monthly rate of $39.99 more support and options than individual Amazon sellers receive, like payment processing, geolocation-based offers, and fulfillment.   2. Walmart Marketplace Walmart Marketplace reaches 110 million monthly visitors and only charges referral fees on each sale. Those fees range from 6% for personal computers to 20% for jewelry, with everything else at eight, 12, or 15%. Store owners have to pass Walmart Marketplace’s approval process, which can take up to two weeks.   3. Ebay Ebay had 113 unique US visitors a month in late 2017. Like Amazon, eBay gives individual sellers and businesses a platform for selling. Businesses can choose from a range of monthly plans that include a set number of listings, from a couple hundred (like my tiny resale shop where I offload thrift-store finds) to several thousand. Store subscriptions come with marketing tools, store customization capabilities, and reports.   4. Etsy Etsy , which started as a marketplace for crafters and artisans, reaches some 19 million shoppers. It just announced changes that include new paid plans for shop owners that come with more tools than the free plan. Etsy focuses on handmade goods, vintage, craft supplies, and items manufactured in compliance with the company’s policies. Etsy also connects retail buyers with sellers that have the capacity to produce wholesale lots.   Other US Marketplaces Besides the “big three” marketplaces, you have other options. Japan-based Rakuten runs a US-only marketplace for US sellers that charges monthly fees plus a commission and fee on each sale. Sears runs a marketplace with a similar fee structure. Tech marketplace Newegg operates in 50 countries and offers tiered membership plans, discounted fulfillment help, and promotion tools. Bonanza is a smaller marketplace that excels at getting seller’s wares to rank high in Google search results through careful optimization and helps sellers manage their inventory across marketplaces.   International Marketplaces If your business is already thriving at home, it may be time to look for growth overseas. Depending on demand in foreign markets and your budget for cross-border selling costs, expanding into Latin America and Asia may be doable.   1. MercadoLibre MercadoLibre is the biggest online marketplace in Latin America , and it offers shipping and translation support for merchants outside the region who want to reach its 33 million customers. Approved merchants pay a 16% commission on sales, with no listing fees, but there is a $500 minimum for wire transfers to merchant bank accounts.   2. Alibaba Alibaba is China’s largest operator of online marketplaces, with more than 440 million customers. The company’s Tmall Global platform is open to US merchants who pay commissions on sales plus yearly fees that range from $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the category, so it’s a viable choice only for small businesses with budgets that can accommodate the fees.   Other Marketplace Options There’s not quite a marketplace for every type of product, but there are a lot: For runway designer clothing resale, there’s TheRealReal . For fine jewelry and watches, TrueFacet . Partsmarket is one of several auto parts marketplaces. Reverb caters to musicians looking to buy or sell instruments and gear. Whatever you sell, check to see if there’s an active, specialized marketplace for it.   How to Track All Your E-commerce Marketplaces As you add marketplaces, be sure to track your traffic and sales in each new channel, so you can see which of your new channels is delivering the best results. If your business is very small and you’re only selling on a couple of marketplaces, you may be tempted to try to manually track your sales across all your channels. At best, this is not the highest and best use of your time as a business owner. It’s a shortcut to unhappy shoppers if someone buys the last of an item in your store only to learn that it’s actually out of stock because a customer on another marketplace already snagged it. It’s a better idea to start using multichannel management tools when you set up your marketplace accounts, so your inventory, fulfillment, and shipping are synced from the start. If you’re just adding a couple of marketplaces, your e-commerce service may have plugins available so you can manage everything from your shop dashboard. Another option is a third-party service like ChannelUnity or SellerDynamics that offers integrations among a dozen or more different platforms and marketplaces.   Choosing E-Commerce Marketplace for Your Online Store The bottom line on marketplaces is that they’re where the customers are these days. Research your customers to find out which marketplaces they spend their time on, look into fees and selling requirements, and go meet your audience where they like to shop. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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