Web 101

Joe Steadman, Contributor
Founder and Creative Director of VIP Hosting, LLC
Published October 12, 2018

 

Website Analytics

An essential element to any business is the ability to track conversions and respond to your customer needs. A well written website allows visitors to navigate down your sales funnel in a way that is repeatable and most beneficial to your buyers.

An unavoidable truth is that we are all in business to make money; revenue is the life blood of our operation. The website atmosphere is unique because it can offer many valuable insights to your customers digital footprint, and show us how to best help them find what they are looking for.

Website analytics help you understand the value of your marketing dollars as you track which campaigns are effective, and which campaigns are not. Each element of a search or click is recorded in the database and allows you to establish traffic patterns which guide your most important decisions.

These click responses lead a customer to a sale, email signup, or information request; whichever is appropriate for your conversion goals. Our goal as sales marketers is to continually obtain followup interactions with our customers so they become raving fans. This creates more business and our sales cycle continues.

Email Marketing

When deciding on stimulating email interactions, the most important things we can focus on are our customer relationships, solving unique problems, and helping our customers learn new things about our business. Each time our business leads us in new directions, and these opportunities are a great way to get customer involvement and promote service recognition. Here are some of the basic ways our email marketing system can help:

  • RSS to Email
    You can convert your latest blog posts into a gorgeous campaign and automatically send it to your list. You can specify daily/weekly/monthly frequency and have total control of your style.
  • Autoresponders
    Create a series of emails ready to roll when a subscriber signs up. You create the campaigns and set the intervals (1 day, 5 days, 1 week). The moment someone signs up, we start sending them the campaigns as planned.
  • Triggers
    Create emails that get triggered by event dates. Event triggers are automatically sent whenever a specific date occurs and you can associate one or more dates with each subscriber, automatically triggering an email on someone’s birthday or anniversary.
  • Personalization
    Make your subscribers feel special with a touch of personalization. Using personalization tags you’ll be able to address each subscriber by their first name and more.

eCommerce

Selling on your website is all about leveraging your customers ability to do the important work. If a customer knows what they want, the average sales phone call will take approximately 10 minutes. Each sales person in an 8-hour shift can take about 42 phone calls given a one-hour lunch.

Selling on the web allows you to take hundreds, even thousands of orders simultaneously while ensuring all the item selections, shipping details, and payment processing is done without error.  Cross selling and up-selling are recognized as a benefit to the customer, and encouraged in this non-intrusive environment. This leads to higher sales revenues, and more exposure to items that might be impulse buys.

Shipping on merchandise has become so common that most people don’t mind factoring a few dollars into the price so they don’t have to pick it up.  One of the costliest and time-consuming areas for phone sales is trying to figure out real time shipping rates. eCommerce solves this problem with direct ties to multiple shippers which can calculate your negotiated costs to geographical zones around the nation.

Social Media

Facebook is for older people, Instagram is for moms, and Snapchat is for teenagers. This trend is mostly a generational stereotype but knowing your market is key to its success. Each platform has the ability to segment your demographic which is the most important thing for your business. Social media allows you to leverage the networking effect of circle-based communities. When you buy advertising on one of these platforms, you are not only selling to your group, but if your message is good enough they will share it with their friends. Leveraging each segment will give you exponential exposure and build your popularity.

Recommended Social Media Campaigns:

  • Check in discounts
  • Like and share giveaways
  • Tent card appreciation reminders
  • Event Reminders
  • Event invitations
  • Photo sharing invitations of events

Search Engine Optimization

Phone books have left the scene, and search engines have taken their place. This critical element is so hard to grasp that most business owners are simply frozen with fear. Fraud is everywhere and nobody trusts anyone, especially with something that can’t be seen. The old saying, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself really applies here. Recognizing your unique selling proposition and reputation are all about being an entrepreneur. Getting inside keywords and learning the terms that people are looking for helps you analyze your business. In concert with website analytics, you begin to pattern what is important to your customer and learn how to measure your success online. Submitting to search engines and integrating the technical code is easy with our Search Engine Visibility tools.

Website Design

Design trends move as fast as fashion when it comes to website designs. Each iteration becomes more elegant, and each device is considered at every stage. The standards in modern website design push the physiological limits of flow and symmetry. We have evolved in our ability to process information and focus on the illusions created which draw our attention to the most important messages. These geometric lines are found in shape, color, and space which segments the way we see the world around us. These same principles apply to page layout, and advancing our customer attention to our pre-planned conversion goals. Navigation has been simplified to only a few major topics, and authentic pictures have replaced stock art.