Category: Company News

If you still believe that having a website is enough to succeed with a new business, you might be up for a surprise. Most large brands are now creating a multichannel marketing campaign to improve their communication and branding results, while reaching more customers in a more effective and appropriate way. Below you’ll find a few benefits of creating a multichannel marketing plan for your new business to beat the competition and improve your conversion rates.

Better Reach

Not all customers are happy to visit you in your store. Likewise, some will research the internet for recommendations, and will not be happy to order from your website before they read real customer reviews about your company. Some use LinkedIn, others prefer Facebook groups. You need to be present where your potential customers hang out, therefore, to reach them, you will have to create a marketing plan that involves email, online, and social media advertising, as well as print materials, telemarketing, and SMS.

More Effective Sales Funnels

No online business can survive without an effective sales funnel. You will need to design your customers’ journey from the moment they first hear about your business until they become buyers. If you are present on various channels, and your potential clients can get in touch to ask questions on social media, as well as via email and phone, you can increase your conversion rates long term.

Improved Brand Awareness

Being present on the internet doesn’t get you noticed. You will have to find different channels to get visitors to your website and turn them into followers, who will – eventually  become customers. You need to grab every opportunity to improve your brand awareness in your target market. Using social media and video market can make your content go viral without having to spend a lot of money on advertising, and increase your brand’s reach within your niche.  

Customer Communication

Another great benefit of being present on different channels is that you give your customers plenty of opportunity to contact you and give you feedback. When things go wrong, your clients want more than sending an email and waiting a week to get the issue resolved. Having an online chat on your site and social media pages will improve your customer communication and build your reputation at the same time.

Added Value

You should learn to take advantage of the latest technologies to communicate your offers to your target customers. You can offer incentives for members and repeat customers, or make the ordering process easier. Adopting a simple-to-use shopping cart system can improve customer satisfaction. You might also find professional app developers to design your branded app and get your offers out to your target market.  

Whether you are looking to increase your brand awareness of conversion rates, adopting a multi channel marketing and communication strategy is a good idea. You will be able to benefit from higher conversion rates, improved brand awareness, and reputation. Furthermore, you can take advantage of viral marketing and recommendations.

If you are in the middle of getting your business off the ground and up into the clouds, you have perhaps have had some negative thoughts once in a while. It doesn’t matter if you are launching the next trendy cupcake business or a business IT consulting company – sometimes our thoughts are the ones we have to combat.

I’m struggling with the work-life balance.

Unfortunately, when you are one-person company things do get a little lopsided. It does get better eventually, but in the early days, weeks or maybe even months it all lands on your shoulders. However, a lot of entrepreneur’s rush to earn big bucks. Thus, often causing more work than is needed. Another point is, you’re unlikely to be able to manage your time efficiently yet. The best advice would be, go and do some research on time management and methods that you can put into practice and nail your balance.

Taking it all as a personal bullet.

When you have put so much time, and effort into something, and a client says you aren’t quite right for them, or a friend mentions something they’d change about your design – it isn’t meant as a personal slight. A potential client has to go with what fits their vision and just because you don’t at the moment, doesn’t mean that you won’t be perfect in the future or that you won’t be ideal for someone else.

Friends – often well-meaning – don’t always understand how much time and effort has gone into something, and how you felt after a comment wasn’t their intention.

I am doing so much, and no one knows.

Unfortunately, no one knows how much work the founder of a company is putting in unless they are right there with them. You have to do all of the jobs yourself until you can afford to hire people to help or you manage to get a healthy work-life balance. A common theme is that if you are working from home, people make the assumption you are in your bed till midday and do a little bit of work mid-afternoon – the reality is a lot less sleep than many people think. If you are feeling like this, there is not much you can do, and you don’t need to prove how much you are working to anyone. When you’re done building, it will all be apparent.

I wish I wasn’t the boss, and I had a boss.

When you are the one making all the decisions, it can be a short road to utter decision-making fatigue. You might wish you had someone to ask – what the hell am I doing? In the end, the reason you chose to start your own company is that you wanted to be your boss, and that comes with all the responsibilities.

It is natural to have negative thoughts when some things get tough; the trick is to remember – why you started this in the first place? To build something for yourself, by yourself.

A lot of companies create a website whilst only thinking about the money they’re going to make from it, rather than the experience the user is going to have whilst on it. It’s no secret that a business website is one of the biggest selling points, and for some, it’s the only selling point. So, what effect do you think creating a user centered website is going to do for your business? Well, it’s going to encourage sales and conversions for one. Plus, it really isn’t hard to set it up. All you need to do is have a vision in mind, and let the person creating your website know what you want from it. If you already have a website, there’s no time like the present to switch it up to create the best design possible for your consumers. We’re going to talk you through the process so you have the perfect website ready to use.

Navigation

The thing that so many businesses seem to fail to achieve is perfect navigation. Some of them can be clunky, and you can lose the navigation bar once you’ve clicked on one of the categories. If you want to create the perfect way for your customers to navigate, you should always make sure that you’ve got the bar on show, no matter what page they’re on. They might suddenly change their mind at the checkout, and wish to add something different. If the bar is there for them ready, it’s so easy for them to dip in and out of the sections they need. Plus, it makes it more professional on your end as well. The website looks smoother, and if it’s easier to navigate, you’re always going to be able to generate more sales through conversions. You can also use things such as woocommerce shortcodes to make the whole navigation process easier for them. They have shortcodes that allow the user to view their cart on the page, showing an order tracking form, and many more. These are little codes that you can add into your website yourself by going into the coded view of your website. All you need to do is find the right place to insert, insert it, and make sure you preview it before saving the changes.

Focus On Design

If your website is already designed, and you’ve followed the same color scheme and layout for a while now, then you might benefit from a little switch up. Like with anything in life, we focus on how good things look before we decide to buy it. Your website is no different. Customers like it to be aesthetically pleasing, if it isn’t, it’s so easy for them to turn away and find another company. Try and keep the design simple in terms of how many things you’re cramming onto a page. This will for one, make the website nicer to look at, and secondly, allow the loading time to be as quick as possible. There’s nothing worse than having to wait ages for a website to load when you’re desperate to buy something! Try and use some nice colors in there, the more plain the website is, the less attention it’s going to attract. However, be careful not to go tacky with this. Focus on using pretty and eye catching colours, rather than something that is perhaps a little too bold.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are a form of orientation for the user that a lot of businesses feel their customers no longer use. However, believe it or not, a customer likes to see exactly what they’ll be able to find through your website from the sitemap. It doesn’t take long to sort, and a good developer will be able to whip up a quick and easy one in no time. It lets the user know where they are in relation to the other pages on the site, and helps paint a clearer picture of the website in general. The sitemap section can usually be found at the bottom of the page in the footer, but it’s up to you where you put it. It’s best to let the sitemap have its own page through a link. You don’t have to clog up all of the footer by making the sitemap visible on the home page. Always be careful to make sure the sitemap does not have too many links either, no matter where you put it. It can over complicate the process, and it’ll just look nasty on your website. So many companies seem to over complicate the process for no reason, so keep yours as simple as possible to try and improve usability.

Hopefully after reading this you will be armed with a few facts that will allow you to create a user centered website.

In today saying age, there is nothing more important and having a quality website. Your website is more than just a pretty picture. It is a representation of your brand. It should tell customers exactly what your business is about. It also needs to function effectively and provide an amazing user experience, which includes everything from loading quickly to boasting seamless navigation. With that being said, read on to discover some of the most common web design mistakes that startups make.

Using a free website builder

There is only one place to begin, and this is with relying on a free website builder. This is something that far too many business owners do today. It is understandable that you would be attracted to a free website builder in an attempt to save money. Nevertheless, if you do this your website will look amateur and this will have a negative impact on your brand image. Not only this, but your website will look identical to all of the other sites that were created using the free website builder in question. This is why is imperative to use a professional service.

Failing to pay attention to Analytics

Another huge mistake is failing to pay attention to Analytics. The only way that you are going to improve your web presence is by understanding how you are performing at present. If you do not use Analytics to find out how many people are visiting your website, where they are leaving your website, what pages are performing badly and so on, you will never be able to improve your website and achieve more.

Lack of responsive design

Another huge mistake that you need to avoid is failing to use responsive web design. Nowadays, most people use their mobile phones when they are searching on the Internet. Therefore, if your website is not optimised for use on a smaller device this means that you were going to be missing out on a massive chunk of potential customers. There are a number of reasons why having a website that is not responsive is so bad for business. Not only do you neglect the customers that are attempting to access your site via their mobile phone, but you will also be punished by Google in terms of search engine ranking.

Copying what the competition is doing

Last but not least, another error that is especially prevalent with regards to startup is merely copying what the competition is doing. While it is important to take a look at competing websites and to assess what they are doing good and what they are doing wrong, you should never simply copy. Yes, you can take inspiration, but you need to offer something better and something different if you want to stand out and make an impact in the industry.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding regarding some of the most common errors made by startups when it comes to web design. Make sure you stay away from the blunders mentioned above and you will give yourself the best chance of success online today.

In this incredibly digital world, a lot of people talk about things like content, engagement, and growth hacking. But while these may be the on-trend topics of the time, they aren’t the only things you should be focusing on if you want to ensure that your business is going to blossom. Not in the slightest. In fact, you could be working real hard on all three of those factors, but if you have one thing missing, you may not be able to make any waves. Of course, we’re talking about branding. Because branding can make sure that you have the right impact on whatever you do. From your brand colors to the way that you talk, you need to nail it all. So let’s take a look at how you can do that.

Everything Online

First of all, you have to be able to look at everything that you’re doing online and ensure that it’s on brand to attract your customers. From your logos to your social media icons, and even the graphics or videos that you put out – it should all be branded. So when you’re making videos or images, be sure to find someone that can put these together for you. And when they do, they need to make sure that they are on brand with the design. But you also need to make sure that the content is branded too, and that you’re showcasing your brand personality to project the right brand image.

Documentation

Whenever you create a document in-house, you should make sure that it’s on brand. Create a set format that everything gets written on created in. That way, whenever you’re sending anything out, you’re branded. It’s also a great way to ensure that everyone gets into the brand zone, and feels part of something bigger.

Vehicles

If your business has a fleet or any other kind of vehicle (even if it’s just your own car), you’re missing out on an opportunity if you don’t brand them. Take a look at the different way you can use fleet graphics to brand up your vehicles. This is also a great promotional opportunity for you too. So be sure to create a call to action or showcase your contact details too.

Event Presence

Whenever you’re at an event, or you do anything in a business environment, you need to be on brand. Luckily for us all, there are some great branding options that you can have at events. And you can go all out. From your stand complete with banners and signs to the materials you hand out and even uniforms that you wear, you can brand your presence completely to make a bigger impact.

Every Action

Last but not least, you’re going to want to ensure that you and any members of staff that you have are acting on-brand and representing your brand as best as possible. Establish your brand voice and stick to it, and be sure to choose the right representatives so that you know your brand can stay consistent.

Starting a business is always tricky and challenging, but the challenges are often even greater when you’re starting a manufacturing business in particular. It takes a certain set of skills and priorities to make a success of a brand new manufacturing business. It’s something that you need to think about and plan out now rather than later if you can help it because you’ll regret things if you don’t.

If you’re really serious about making all this happen, it’s important to know what to prioritize and which steps to make as you grow your business early on. You can’t just make things up as you go along because this definitely isn’t the kind of industry that rewards that kind of strategy at all. So read on now and find out all you need to know about getting your manufacturing startup off the ground the right way.

Research First

You should always be sure to carry out research before doing anything else because this is when you find out where your gap in the market is going to be. You can then start to think in more detail about how you’re going to exploit it. But you can’t do any of that stuff if don’t first carry out research and find out what the situation looks like right now. So don’t be tempted to skip past this.

Don’t Skip Past the Legal Details

There are lots of legal hoops you have to jump through when you’re starting a business, and that’s even truer than every if you’re starting out in something like manufacturing for the first time. You don’t want to break laws that help to keep everyone inside your company safe. Even if you think you’re being fully compliant with the law, it doesn’t hurt to check for sure and act accordingly on that information you find.

Create an Unbeatable Team

The team of people you have working for your business will be the single most important factor you have going for your business. They’re the ones who are going to be doing the work on the shop floor, so you want them to be happy and paid very fairly so that you can keep that team together. Get a mix of good characters in your team, as well as a mix of other things. It’s important to have people willing to work hard and show commitment.

Don’t Skimp on Components or Equipment

The components, machinery and equipment your employees use each day will decide how good your final products are. You want to make sure that you buy the best machinery, whether that means huge lathes and production lines, as well as smaller but still as vital components, such as gauges or flow meters from places like FlowMeters.com. It’s up to you to find the very best so you don’t lose out big time later.