Erik Qualman's Blog, page 550

A Guide to the Perfect Web Design – Tips for Business Owners

While there are many factors that contribute towards a successful business, few are as important as website design and online presence. With a rising number of consumers now shopping online either through a laptop or their smartphone, it is imperative that business owners develop an online presence that can cope with such demand. If your company fails to achieve this, you will lose out on new and even existing customers who demand a responsive and seamless shopping experience when online.

So let’s take a look at three steps you can take to implement the ideal web design.

Create an Uncluttered Layout

If you owned a physical retail outlet, you would go to great lengths to ensure that the layout of the store was clutter-free, easy on the eye and simple to navigate. The same principle should also be applied to your online website, as users must be able to load; access and navigate around individual landing pages easily and without distraction. If you can achieve this, you will develop a seamless and appealing website design that optimizes the user experience.

Optimize Your Website for Mobile Users

We have already discussed how the majority of consumers now source, reference and purchase products online. The world of M-commerce represents a competitive marketplace, however, and only brands that commission responsive and quick loading websites will ultimately succeed and winning new customer. As a general rule, each landing page should open within 3-5 seconds, while it must be easy for the user to switch between pages or complete a quick transaction when navigating with their smartphone. If your website is optimized for mobile devices, you will find it easier to convert visitors into paying customers.

Use Engaging Icons as Call to Action

 

On this note, it is important to look at how a responsive and accessible website design can boost sales conversions. Take popular online casino Europa Casino as an example, you can see how generous promotional offers are such as welcome bonuses and high progressive online jackpots which are displayed prominently beside icons that enable customers to execute an action with a single click. This represents the ultimate example of an effective, online Call to Action (CTA), through which customers are presented with a viable proposition and an easy method of acting on this to the benefit of both themselves and the brand.

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7 Facts You Didn’t Know About Facebook and Should

1. The average US user spends 40 minutes a day on the site.

2. Smartphone users check Facebook 14 times a day.

3. There are, on average, 3.74 degrees of separation between any one Facebook user and another.

4. A third of all divorce filings of 2011 in the US contained the word “Facebook”.

5. You can’t blockMark Zuckerberg on Facebook.

6. 8.7% of Facebook users are fake.

7.  Facebook earns an average of US$5.85 from every U.S. user.

Facts from factslides.com

Images from factslides.com

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

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Three Great Houses of Westeros Show How Social Media Is A Game of Thrones

This post was originally published on the Twitter Counter blog

The new season of Game of Thrones is here, which means that a new round of political intrigue, plot-twisting deaths and violence has just began for the great houses of Westeros.

Each house has its distinct character and culture which definitely reflects on the way they play this game of thrones. And even though in the Social Media world there are no dragons or trials by combat, there’s still something to learn about how to survive and win this game of power.

So let’s see what three of the great houses of Westeros can teach us about Social Media Marketing and winning the Game of Thrones on Social Media.

House Stark: Winter is Coming

In the social media world things are changing fast. Marketing campaigns are going viral within hours, negative comments can spiral out of control and social media campaigns can go terribly wrong. And when things do go wrong, better be prepared.

Just like the Starks, use the resources you have available wisely, be creative and always plan ahead. This way, you are prepared for whatever happens, as long it’s not attending a wedding thrown by lord Frey at the Twins.

Managing a social media crisis like a Stark means:

Making a plan of the steps you have to take should a crisis arise.
Set up a bulletproof social media monitoring system for your brand.
Keep it cool and professional.
Reply to feedback.

House Tyrell: Growing strong

House Tyrell is known for its immense wealth, hidden agenda and determined matriarch, lady Olenna who’s more or less the female equivalent of Tywin Lannister with a bit more compassion perhaps.

In this game of thrones, we’ve seen the Tyrells growing stronger and stronger, working towards their long term goal with actions that are highly calculated, basically keeping their eyes on the prize.

The Tyrells’ strategy for social media is a growth plan that will help you steadily grow strong is key and establishing your brand. Wonder what lady Olenna would advise you?

Being SMART about your social media goals.
Being present on the social media platforms that are relevant to you by posting often and engaging with your audience.
Accelerating your social media growth by getting the word about your presence out there and providing incentives for people to follow you.
Implementing an integrated social media marketing strategy across all platforms.

House Lannister: Hear me Roar

The Lannister’s might not be the most beloved house of Westeros but one thing is for sure; they sure know how to make their voices heard.

A Lannister social media approach would require a strong content strategy that gets the message across, with consistency in producing quality content that reaches the right audience and establishes your brand as a thought leader in your niche.

Some of the key elements of a Lannister-approved social media content strategy are:

Remembering that the Lannisters always pay their debts so if quality content is what you offer, quality content you shall deliver.
Posting content that is relevant to your target audience and newsworthy.
Developing a content marketing calendar for social media with content topics and campaigns, relevant links and trustworthy sources of content, as well as preferred scheduling times.
Setting aside some time at the beginning of each week to prepare your content plan and schedule posts across platforms.

Now over to you! What’s your social media marketing style? Are you more of a Stark, a Tyrell or a Lannister? Leave us a comment right below and let us know!

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Skype For Business Begins Rolling Out Publicly Today

TechCrunch – Microsoft’s “Skype for Business,” which is designed to replace the company’s older enterprise communication tool Lync, is rolling out publicly today as part of the Office 2013 April update, the company announced this morning. It’s also now rolling out Skype for Business Online to its Office 365 customers who currently use Lync Online.

Microsoft had only a few weeks ago unveiled the technical preview version of this software, so it acknowledges that some customers may still require additional testing time. To that end, it’s allowing admins the ability to switch between Skype for Business and the traditional Lync user interface, Microsoft explains in a blog post this morning detailing the changes. (Information on how to continue to use Lync for the time being is available here.)

However, the transition from Lync Online to Skype for Business Online will complete for all customers by the end of May, Microsoft notes.

With Skype for Business, enterprise customers will have access to software that greatly resembles Skype’s consumer-facing client application in look-and-feel, but it comes with enterprise-grade security and compliance features that allow an I.T. organization to better administer and control the software’s use internally within an organization. Skype for Business conversations are authenticated through Active Directory and encrypted, and I.T. can manage the company’s user accounts and deployments. The system also interoperates with company’s PBX systems or legacy video teleconferencing systems, if need be.

In addition, Skype for Business customers are now able to communicate via chat, audio and video both within their own company as well as with any of the over 300 million customers who have a Skype ID using apps that run on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and the web.

The software is also built into Office, making features such as presence, IM, voice and video calls, as well as online meetings a part of the Office experience, Microsoft notes.

Microsoft’s plans to replace Lync were announced last year, as the company began unifying its products under the “for Business” branding. That brand also includesOneDrive for Business, Microsoft’s cloud storage service.

Image from TechCrunch.com

Article by Sarah Perez for TechCrunch 

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

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How To Upload Products In Bulk To Amazon

Listing of products on Amazon can be very productive. The key points and benefits that Amazon offers to consumers as well as the total amount of traffic that it attracts makes Amazon a leading online shopping website in the world. For the online retailers, following are some key aspects which are necessary for you to consider to become an Amazon seller.

Amazon as a Selling Platform & Competitor between Sellers:

Because there are thousands of other sellers on Amazon, you will have to do some research that at what price the sellers are selling the same product that you’re going to sell.

Moreover, if you are selling a product then it’s necessary to have a competitive price tag of what you are selling as this will offer you an advantage in terms of shipping & profitable price.

Profitability, Commission & Review:

You must pay the commission of above 12% for each & every order you receive on Amazon & also for the product having price less than $5 as Amazon charge 1 Dollar per order.

With this, you must be sure that the products which you are going to sell on Amazon should have 40% of profit margin on the product.

Also it’s necessary to provide the shipping service quickly and be sure that the Amazon product upload must have a proper description & information.

Moreover, getting the positive reviews is also an important aspect of your product as it affects the conversion rates of your product in a significant manner and it completely depends on your shipping service & products informative description.

Overall, remember that if you get less than 95% of positive reviews on Amazon, users will avoid shopping from your site.

Uploading Methods to Amazon:

If you have thousands of products to list, then it could be a little bit complicated. Following are the ways you must follow for how to list products in bulk.

A) The Inventory Loader Excel Spreadsheet Provided By Amazon:

This method is very easy to follow as you have these product identifiers which include ISBN, ASIN, and EAN & UPC.

However, if you do have one of the identifiers for the product you want to list, you can just use an Excel template which is provided by the Amazon for listing & validating all the items if you’re not having any one of the identifiers for your product to list.

B) Third Party Solution:

The second option is to implement a third party feeding system such as ‘Go Data Feed’, ‘Single-Feed’ or ‘Channel Advisor’ and the cost for this is between $99 to $5,000 per month. To utilize this method, you still require product identifiers as discussed above with your product details. With this, it’s also necessary to upload inventory by creating Amazon product listing services and also have API or XML integration from your ecommerce site.

Requirements & Validation:

Even if you follow the above mentioned methods for product uploading, Amazon still requires approving all product listings and validating all the fields.  For example, it is required to get permission to list your cosmetic product on Amazon.

With this, there are several other limitations for listing different types of products. All you have to do is be sure that all your products are validated. You must check out ‘Seller Central’ to watch the status and find out the errors of your uploaded product.

Amazon Fulfillment Options:

If you have started following all the above mentioned steps on your Amazon Store, then surely you will now have good profits as well as increased processing orders. The next step is to get the bestsellers that are having 50% of gross profit and forward it to Amazon through “Fulfilled by Amazon” option which basically tends that Amazon will stock the product and provide shipping services on your behalf.

As Amazon includes millions of Prime members who receive their product freely therefore usually the members prefer “Prime Shipping.” This will permit you increase the volume on your selling products.

Bottom Line:

Listing of product items is an important, yet a easier step for becoming an eminent seller on Amazon. If you don’t follow the listing procedure for your product, your product will never be seen. With the templates provisioned by the Amazon, it’s quite simple to boost your business with increased sales of your product.

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How Your iPhone’s Music App Is About to Change

TIME – Apple is planning a big redesign for the Music app on your iPhone and iPad.

The new version featured in a preview version of an upcoming update is based heavily on the current design of iTunes for the Mac, according to a hands-on preview by 9to5Mac. Like iTunes, the new Music app is putting a big emphasis on visuals, with album art taking up half the screen on the player user interface. A mini-player also sticks to the bottom of the UI throughout the app, meaning users can always easily pause a song currently playing.

The overhaul also brings other useful updates, such as the ability to add songs to a play queue and a robust search feature that can trawl a user’s library as well as iTunes Radio.

The new features may signal that Apple is indeed preparing to roll out a new on-demand streaming service under the iTunes brand, as has been rumored for several months. The service could be unveiled at Apple’s developers conference, which starts June 8.

YouTube user DetroitBERG has a video walkthrough of the new app:

Article by Victor Lukerson for TIME

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A Guide to Leveraging Social Media on Your Website

A few years ago, businesses could get away with not integrating social media into the design of their website. The same can’t be said for today. Social media is a vital part of making your brand visible and driving conversions, and those who fail to jump on board fail to keep up with their competitors. If you want to make the most out of your website traffic, you’ll learn to leverage social media. Use these four tips to get you started.

1. Integrate Sharing Plugins

Social media is one of the largest hubs of activity in the world. Almost everyone has some form of social media account, and if you learn to control that market, your website can gain worldwide attention. Getting social media followers in some form is easy if you integrate sharing plugins into your website.

The trick is finding the right plugins for you. Many use a CMS to build their website, such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, and each of these systems has unique sharing plugins for your website. For example, Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard explored many different WordPress plugins in this blog post, and he concludes: “Whether it’s adding social share buttons, follower counts, encouraging social shares, or monitoring social shares…there’s a plugin for you.” It’s just a matter of determining the kind of plugin you want and finding the one that will work best for your purposes.

Once you’ve found the sharing plugins that work for you, make sure they’re visible. Avoid shoving them into the middle of a busy website. Best practices indicate placing these buttons near the top, bottom, or side of a web page; consumers will know to look there based off of traditional webpage setup. There’s not much point investing in social plugins if your consumer can’t find them with ease.

2. Combine Social and Email Marketing

Email marketing is as much of an important part of building and defining your online business as social media marketing, so it makes perfect sense to marry the two into one effective unit. In your social posts, invite your followers to subscribe to your weekly newsletters or specials, and in your emails include sharing buttons to enable easy sharing.

This will do two things: grow your audience and expand the reach of your brand. If your content for both the posts and emails are good, you’ll quickly gain a more devoted following and reach further than you ever have before when it comes to brand visibility.

3. Learn from Social Signals and Analysis

Gaining data and insights from your current strategies is the only way you can hope to improve your marketing schemes, and there are several tools you can use to do that. Websites, such as SproutSocial for example, offer users a comparison of both web analytics and social signals to help determine how you’re doing in your social campaign. The information you gather will help you to establish your goals more clearly and identify areas where you need to improve.

4. Offer Social Sign In

When consumers visit your website, give them a minute to get grounded in your content, and then offer a pop-up that asks if they would like to sign into any social media platforms while they’re there. Though many will say no, many others will say yes, and they’re the ones who are more likely to spend both time and money on your site, according to research from Search Engine Land.

Just be sure that the sign in will keep information private. If consumers’ social media accounts are hacked because of an unsecure site, you’ll be under fire.

Staying on top of social media integration is the best habit you can develop for a healthy website. Use some of these tips and watch your web traffic and conversions grow.

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3 Proven Ways to Use Visuals in Your Social Media Strategy

Social media posts that include visual elements are inherently more engaging than those that don’t.

If you’re looking for ways to drive more customer interaction with your social accounts, we’ve found three ways that you can up your visual game.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to be on every network to achieve results. Based on your type of business, decide which channels are right for you and go from there!

Infographics and Flow Charts

Due to their popularity, infographics are some of the most shareable content on the Web. Their clever cartoon figures and rapidly digestible graphs and charts harness the largely visual nature of digital interaction. This is useful for spreading information and building awareness about your business, since the majority of the population learns visually.

While it certainly adds value to your social accounts for you to share others’ infographics, why not go a step further and make your own?

Social Media Examiner has a helpful guide that shows you how to identify a good topic, gather reliable information, parcel it out into sections, and get it promoted. The more people you have sharing your infographic (which should have your online contact info at the bottom), the more traffic you can drive back to your web presence. Online generators like Infogram can help you get started.

Another value-adding informational medium is the flow chart, which you can create using Microsoft Office or a program such as draw.io.

Flow charts are great for giving your customers a guided thought process about how to use or purchase your products and services. It is extremely easy for these charts to get complex and muddled, especially if more and more ideas start cropping up. Nevertheless, a flowchart that answers questions with a crisp design to boot is a surefire way to get people interacting. Be sure and use it in a blog post so people can comment!

Images in Posts

You need images in your posts. Not necessarily for every single blog entry or tweet; that might be a little overwhelming. But with all the statistics that show how much more engagement posts with images get, more than half of your posts should probably have a visual supplement. They don’t have to be fancy or under an exclusive license. You can find hundreds of royalty-free images through Creative Commons, Compfight, and Pixabay, to name a few. All these should cost you is the space needed to credit the original photographer or artist (and some don’t even require that).

Once your site’s articles are snazzily accessorized with their very own leading image, posting them to your business’s social media accounts will be a breeze, since the main picture of a webpage usually shows up in its link preview (though you will need to attach an image separately in a tweet). The same applies to others’ articles that you choose to share. Jeff Bullas, in his reflections on the early days of Instagram (back when people still put the word “app” in quotes), uses an infographic to explain why visuals are so important. His points — that pictures increase page views, heighten trust in a product, strengthen the reader’s connection to the material — still hold true today.

If you’re going to use imagery to take your posts from good to great, be sure you know what resources are at your disposal. Buffer’s guide to awesome visual content provides a wealth of statistics on why photos are important (in case you still weren’t convinced). It also demonstrates how to evaluate the mathematical aesthetics of a picture you want to use, pick the right content for your post, and tweak it until it’s just right. Follow their tips and you’ll probably be having way more fun than you should be allowed while working.

Optimized Image Dimensions for Avatars and Headers

The simplest rule of thumb is “the higher the resolution, the better.” However, there’s more to picking the right image size than that. Your business’s social channels don’t look very professional when caught unprepared after a network updates its header size, or if different devices show different amounts of the image. That’s why we’re thankful for tools like this guide to social media image dimensions. That one covers headers for almost all the major social networks, and squeezes in a few helpful hints about the size of the pictures in your feed as well.

Many blogging platforms, like WordPress and Tumblr, have varying header sizes depending on the theme you choose. Make some time to test out a few options until you find one that looks good. If you’re having trouble, contact the theme developer for sizing recommendations.

As with the individual posts, you can find free images online to use as your header, or you could make your own. (It’s a good idea to hire a designer to do this if you don’t have much experience in graphic design.) If you’re going the custom route, make sure you take into account your branding and content goals along with the image size.

Got any other tips for us on optimizing your web presence with images? Share your thoughts below!

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Apple Watch is Already Backordered

Mashable – The Apple Watch has been available for preorder for less than six hours and the delivery times for nearly every model are already pushed back at least four to six weeks.

On Apple’s U.S. online store, the only model of Apple Watch that is still available to ship between April 24 and May 8 is the $649, 38mm stainless steel Apple Watch with classic black buckle.

Every other variety is showing shipping estimates of “four to six weeks” and “June” or “July.”

It’s not just in the U.S.; similar delays are showing up in Apple online stores across the globe. In China, nearly every Apple Watch Edition model is completely sold out.

It’s unclear what the availability was for each watch model at the time preorders started. Some reports on Twitter indicate that even at 12:01 a.m. PT, certain models were showing shipping times of at least four to six weeks. If that’s the case, it could mean supply is constrained by more than just pure consumer demand.

If you wanted to just go to an Apple store to buy the Apple Watch, bad news. As we reported Thursday, the Apple Watch will be available exclusively online “during the initial launch period.” It’s unclear when Apple Watch will be available more broadly in Apple retail stores.

Some high-end boutiques in major cities will carry the Apple Watch starting April 24, but don’t expect them to necessarily have a lot of stock.

Article by Christina Warren for Mashable

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

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An Optimistic Look at Hashtag Symbol Usage

A century ago the only thing mankind dreamt of was to have unlimited access to information, and soon it became possible with the Internet. Time moves on, and the Internet develops new options. So, now we can enjoy fast and convenient search with the help of hashtags.

How Can You Define Hashtag?

Hashtag is quite a new phenomenon and it stands for a single word or phrase without spaces and with a hash character before the word/phrase. Hashtags reside on social networking sites and microblogs (like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).

How does it work? The primary function is a fast search: you click a hashtag or type it in a search line and get myriads of results where this hashtag has been used.

If you are eager to learn more about hashtags and would like to find those, which will help you stay in trend, then you need to know that websites for hashtag research exist. The amount of options available on the websites include checking random or searching for a particular hashtag as well as checking a top list of the most popular and newly created hashtags. As a rule, you can contribute to the website by adding a new item. Check some of them and use for your future research: #tagdef, Hashtagify, TOPSY.

Needless to say that hashtags have obvious pluses. However, for every plus there is a minus. Yet, advantages prevail. Let’s have a look at them.

The Bright Side of Hashtags

Quick access to the information you need as it’s classified and tagged 

Perhaps it’s the first and main advantage of hashtags – you get everything fast. You don’t need to make lots of efforts to find a                    hashtag on the web – just click the one you looking for mentioned in a text or elsewhere and see where it’s used or type it                              manually in a search line.

Keeping everything in order

Suppose you have too many photographs on Instagram and need to sort them: separate portraits from landscapes. Ask the Aladdin’s lamp to help you out – hashtags. For each category choose a corresponding name (word/phrase), insert a hash character before it – and voila, you have categories!


You get noticed

If you dream about an online fame, hashtags will assist you perfectly well. It works quite simply: you use some of trendy hashtags to label your post or photo and then it appears in the list of others having the same hashtag. Don’t be surprised, when a number of your followers doubles abruptly. For getting noticed companies make a hashtag too. Thanks to this, customers differentiate unique hashtags of the product/service company promotes from the billions of others.


Easy to follow trends

You’re interested in something and want to learn more about this. For example, you want to enjoy a really great concert or music show. The only thing you need to do is to type appropriate hashtag into the search line. After you attend the concert you’re likely to see some photos from the event. And for now you know what to do to see them.


Find people with the same interests

Do you like yoga? Click a yoga hashtag and find people who like it as much as you do or search for a yoga workshop where you can join a yoga community and talk to a fellow-thinker.

The dark side of hashtags

You cannot control your hashtag usage

Your hashtags live their own lives. You really cannot influence the fact people use hastags created by you. Sometimes they may use them in a wrong context or just in order to get noticed by means of your recognizable hashtag.


Hashtag overuse annoys

Yes, you can be noticed and get more followers, but when you overload your posts with hashtags, well, be ready to lose some of the followers too.

What do we have? Pluses of hashtags are two times more numerous than their minuses. And hashtags certainly have a huge power in promoting products as you join the global web community and assert yourself effectively or anything you promote. Why won’t you take an advantage of this powerful instrument then?

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