In the world of WordPress, your chosen theme will determine the way your website looks — and to some extent, the way it works. All of your site’s style — the layout, the images, and the typography — come from your theme’s code. As such, choosing the right WordPress theme provider is one of the... View Article
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Video is increasingly impacting ecommerce. Consumers use it for purchase decisions. Influencers live-stream product endorsements. And brands deploy video for engagement and product offerings. Here is a list of platforms for shoppable video.
The post 12 Platforms for Shoppable Video appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
Online merchants need data to drive decisions. An example is tracking visitor activity. In this post, I'll review how to set up the reporting of common site interactions using Google Tag Manager.
The post Using Google Tag Manager to Track Visitor Interactions appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
WebProNews
Microsoft Moving to Purchase TikTok
Following a weekend of back-and-forth talks, Microsoft appears to be pursuing a deal to purchase TikTok.
TikTok has found itself in hot water, with the Trump administration threatening to ban the social media app. This comes on the heels of numerous controversies surrounding the app’s privacy and security. It has been sued over claims it uploaded user videos to servers in China without permission. Numerous government, military and business organizations have banned the app, and the company has been accused of violating child privacy. In a rare rebuke within the tech industry, at least one CEO labeled it “fundamentally parasitic.”
The end result has been the Trump administration first threatening, and then promising to ban the app in the US. At the last minute, however, Microsoft floated the possibility of buying the beleaguered social media company. After initial opposition from the administration, it appears a meeting between Trump and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has opened the way for talks to continue.
”Following a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Donald J. Trump, Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States,” says the company blog.
”Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President’s concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.
”Microsoft will move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any event completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020. During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States Government, including with the President.”
Microsoft Moving to Purchase TikTok
Matt Milano
In my (sometimes) humble opinion, well-written surveys can be a reliable and effective method of generating newsworthy content.
Surveys allow you to deeply explore personal beliefs and behaviors. They can be tweaked and tailored specifically for your goals, and they appeal to our seemingly universal need to care way too much about what other people think.
I’ve written a lot of surveys in my time at Fractl, and all that experience has taught me plenty of lessons. So, here are five tips that you can employ today to make your next survey a winner.
As content creators, we get paid to be curious, and that’s awesome. Running a survey is a unique opportunity — don’t waste the chance to ask questions worth asking.
We take for granted that our respondents open up about their deep thoughts and personal experiences, maybe even ones they haven’t shared with anybody else. You can write better surveys by simply appreciating that.
Here’s how I like to think of it: Do you want to think up some questions and find out how basically all of society would answer them? If you asked that to just about anybody, I’ll bet they’d take you upon it.
The point is simple: It’s pretty freaking cool to find out how thousands of people think, feel, and behave.
When you’re engaged, your findings will be more engaging.
A well-developed campaign brief is the absolute most important part of any project. A survey brief provides structure and strategic direction for your survey. By immersing yourself in the topic, you’ll yield better, more insightful questions.
Let’s dive into each one of those elements a little further.
Here’s something I thought I’d never say: All of those English teachers were right. Every essay did need an outline, and so does every survey.
(I still don’t believe them that the green light over the river was a carefully crafted metaphor for something-or-other, but that’s a discussion for another article.)
Outlining your survey will give you a clear path to follow. This allows you to focus on the more interesting, nuanced aspects of your topic. Having structure, perhaps counterintuitively, actually makes it easier to improvise and take chances.
Clients aren’t paying us to write surveys because they know we enjoy it, they’re paying us because we achieve their goals.
Drafting a brief will help you clarify your objectives and strategize how to meet them. Referencing that brief throughout the process will keep your survey and your goals aligned.
For example, we often have the goal to build brand awareness for a client. We do this by earning media coverage through the content we create.
When we run surveys that serve as the foundation of our content, we have to consider what journalists (and their audiences) will find interesting. If we don’t keep this in mind, we won’t meet our goals.
A brief isn’t just about planning and outlining; it’s about digging into the topic and sparking curiosity.
This allows you to get the obvious angles out of the way and tap into what’s really newsworthy: a novel, personal, unexpected, nuanced, and humanistic takes on a topic (no matter how common it may seem).
My writing process for a brief typically follows a simple formula:
By the time you get to your actual survey, you’ll have immersed yourself in the topic. You’ll also have a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve, and you’ll have a detailed, strategic plan.
Specificity doesn’t just ensure clarity and accuracy. It enables you to ask targeted, insightful questions.
“It’s not what you said, Dad, it’s how you said it.” – me, all the time
Choose your words — and your questions — carefully. Detailed, nuanced perspectives make topics more interesting, more relatable, and more newsworthy. Specificity is how you get that.
There are a lot of areas where you can employ specificity to write better surveys, but I’ll focus on the most important: How to ask your questions and set up potential answers.
Here’s an example: “How many times per week do you shower?”
If you’re me, the answer is “not enough, according to my wife,” but if you’re most people, that question could be interpreted in more than one way. Are you asking how many total showers a person takes in a week, or how many days out of the week that person showers? Are you asking about this week, last week, or whatever random week they might be thinking of?
Some better ways to ask this would be: “In a typical week, how many total showers do you take?” You could also ask more specific questions like, “What’s the longest amount of days that you’ve gone without a shower?” or “In your opinion, to what extent is it acceptable to skip a daily shower occasionally?”
When it comes to providing answer choices, I often aim for the option that will give me the most actionable, most specific data. You can’t unmix paint, so give yourself a good palette instead of a few pre-mixed colors. You can always bucket, convert, and manipulate your detailed data later.
For example: Don’t ask for age ranges. Ask for ages. Do you plan on using age ranges? Great, it’ll take you 10 seconds to make them later if you have each age. Income brackets? No. Why? Ask for income and create your income brackets later, after you’ve done all the interesting things (average, median, percentiles, and more…) that income brackets wouldn’t have let you do.
By phrasing your questions specifically and thinking about how you’ll use the answers, you’ll avoid confusion and being too vague. You’ll also be able to ask more targeted questions. Have you ever done X? Have you ever considered X (even if you haven’t done it)? Have a clear idea of why you’re including each question, and what specifically you hope to do with it.
A survey is where the personal and the universal break even.
By tapping into the emotional, humanistic potential of your surveys, you can generate takeaways that truly resonate with a greater audience.
There are plenty of ways to write a newsworthy survey, but to me, surveys are the most interesting when they explore the human condition — when they reveal something about who we really are, why we do things, and how the world affects us.
So how do we do that? By opening up the clock and seeing what makes it tick.
Don’t just ask for answers; ask about those answers. People told you that they do X? Great. How does that make them feel? Is there someone in their life who wishes they didn’t do X? How does that affect their relationships? How does X affect their health? Their life satisfaction? How do they feel about people who don’t do X?
Surveys are interesting because they tell us about ourselves. Personal takeaways are more unique and are more likely to resonate with the audience on an emotional level. What people do is interesting, but it’s not as interesting as the reasons why they do it, how it impacts their lives or the way that doing it makes them feel. Tip: If you’re getting really personal, you can make the question optional so people don’t feel uncomfortable having to answer.
Everything is complicated and (almost) nothing is black and white. Use your surveys to explore the underlying complexity behind people’s beliefs and behaviors. Measure ambivalence by asking respondents if they acknowledge any points that contradict their beliefs or if they ever second-guess or feel guilty about a behavior. Tap into the inherent nuance of most topics by asking questions about its underlying causes or hidden effects.
Let’s take student loan forgiveness, for example. Many people who support loan forgiveness can believe it’s unfair to some people. At the same time, plenty of those who oppose it might acknowledge that it would benefit people, but that other concerns are more important.
By exploring the layers of complexity, we give the topic a fair and detailed perspective, while also uncovering interesting, newsworthy takeaways.
Explore cause and effect. Ask yourself how the topic might impact other areas of people’s lives. Ask yourself how their perspectives on your topic might correlate to other beliefs and behaviors.
Draw connections between people’s perspectives on your topic and their behaviors: Is it making your life better or worse? What are you doing to deal with it? How has it impacted your relationships? What do you think is causing it? Do you think it’s good/bad? Do you think it’s important?
Ask questions that people haven’t asked yet. It’s really that simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.
Do we all get stuck in our habits? Absolutely. Do rhetorical questions seem to be one of mine? Clearly. Is it important to break out of them? Not this time for me, apparently, but yes!
Try new things in your surveys and on your survey platform, and you might be surprised at how much you’re able to pull off.
If you don’t know what to try, here are some ideas:
You may not move forward with every experiment, but it can certainly open your eyes to new ideas.
I do have to add the caveat that self-reported information has its limitations. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t explore fascinating subject matters and gain more insight into public perception and behavior.
Approach survey creation with curiosity, attention to detail, and a sense of experimentation, and your chances of creating compelling content will increase dramatically.
John Bernasconi is a Creative Strategist at Fractl. When he’s not probing anonymous survey respondents about their innermost feelings, you’ll probably find him out in the garage covered in sawdust or in the kitchen (still covered in sawdust).
The post Five quick and easy ways to make surveys more effective for content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
“If you build it, they will come”.
This nugget of wisdom may have worked for Kevin Costner’s character in ‘Field of Dreams’ when he’s spurned onward by a disembodied voice to pursue his dream of building a baseball field.
But in reality, this sort of advice can prove disastrous for entrepreneurs. After all, businesses rely on strategy, planning, and development for long-term success.
In today’s day and age where online shopping is the new normal, it takes more than just building a great store to draw in more customers.
Search engine rankings play a huge role in making your online store more visible to shoppers. If you rank higher on the SERPs, there’s a higher chance that you’ll rake in more sales.
Shopify is one of the most recommended ecommerce platforms. Data from BuiltWith shows that usage of the CMS platform has doubled since 2017, and it currently has more than one million active websites.
Shopify is a great option for your online store because it offers easy backend administration and can be easily tailored to your specific requirements. More importantly, it’s packed with SEO-friendly features right out of the box.
Keep in mind that boosting organic traffic to your online store is different from optimizing other websites for SEO. In this guide, we’ll walk you through some key steps on how to master SEO for Shopify.
The way you organize content on your page is crucial to SEO success.
If shoppers can quickly find what they’re looking for on your site, they tend to spend more time on your page. Longer dwell times tell Google that your site offers value, which can give you a solid rankings boost.
To top that off, a logically structured site makes it easier for Google to crawl your website. Ideally, your site architecture should look something like this:
If you look at the diagram closely, you’ll see that your product pages (third row) are only a couple of clicks away from the home page (first row). In turn, organized and user-friendly web design makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
Poor site structure, on the other hand, makes it harder for search engine spiders to find and index all the pages on your site.
Meanwhile, if your site architecture is interlinked, spiders can easily follow your links. A simple site architecture also means that link authority flows a lot easier from pages with more backlinks (your home page) to lower-ranking pages (product pages).
The graphic below shows what the site structure for a baking blog should look like:
Duplicate content happens when similar content exists on two separate URLs. The page could either be on your site or someone else’s.
Duplicate content on Shopify can have a negative impact on your search performance. Search engines tend to be tolerant of internal site duplication. But if it appears as if you’ve copied text from another site, you could get hit by a search engine penalty.
The good news is that once you’ve wiped your site clean of duplicate content, you can improve your search rankings significantly.
Consider using tools like Copyscape to check for plagiarism and other external duplicate content. You can also conduct site audits to identify pages with similar content to other URLs.
Or maybe your site is due for a redesign or content update. Break free from duplicate content by writing a new copy.
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO success. Here are a few tips on how to generate relevant keywords for your store:
Now that you have a list of keywords and a simplified site structure, you can start optimizing your pages with your chosen search terms.
Start with your top pages first, such as your home page and main product collections. The first step to optimizing them is by writing title tags and meta descriptions. Here are some general guidelines for you to follow:
It also pays to add alt texts to your images. Since Google Images is the second largest search engine in the world, you can drive more traffic to your site through your images. That’s why it helps to add alt texts that describe what an image is about.
Once you’ve finished optimizing your titles, meta descriptions, and alt texts you can work on creating unique content to your product pages.
Keep in mind that your descriptions should be written from a user-focused POV. The best way to boost the relevance of your content is by discussing your product’s features and benefits.
301 redirects tell search engines that a page is no longer available and that it’s moved permanently to a new URL. After all, you don’t want your customers to move to your competitors after they land on a ‘404 Not Found’ page on your site.
The goal is for you to lead visitors to a new page, which you can do by creating a URL redirect through your Shopify admin portal. Follow these steps to add 301 redirects:
Keep in mind that before you can redirect users to the new URL, you’ll need to delete the existing webpage.
If your website loads slowly, it could hurt your Google rankings. That’s why you need to put forth the effort to make your site load quickly.
Check for your store’s site speed through tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix. On Shopify, however, you have limited options when it comes to boosting site speed. Here are a few factors you can work with:
Search engines rely on link building and outreach to determine how the community at large values your site. Think of backlinks as the word-of-mouth equivalent of SEO. With better quality backlinks, you can build your credibility and boost the organic traffic your shop receives.
Below is a list of some backlinks you can obtain for your site:
Content is the reason why people visit your site. You may feel tempted to skimp on content marketing for your ecommerce site, but crafting content that delivers value adds to the overall user experience.
People who are ready to buy the moment they visit your shop make up only a small percentage of the marketing funnel. Publishing informational content like blog posts can help you educate people at different stages of the buyer’s journey. In turn, it can also increase the chances of them buying from you in the future.
Your content is a way for people to get to know your brand without selling to them directly. With well-written content, you can rank for more keywords and earn backlinks.
Your Shopify store automatically includes a blog called “News.” If you want to create a new blog, select Blog Posts > Create a new post > Create a new blog.
These steps will help you create a Shopify site experience that is also SEO-ready. Share your thoughts, tips, or queries in the comments section.
Stefanie Slclot is Lead Outreach Specialist at Growth Rocket.
The post Foolproof guide to optimizing Shopify for SEO appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
With a myriad of marketing tactics at our disposal, cool marketing technology that can track performance and automate campaigns, and countless strategies and processes to optimize marketing, sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.
For many marketers, we think in terms of leads (impersonal, just a number) and not relationships (personal and real). Sometimes we miss the obvious: successful marketers build relationships. We must remember that a lead is a real person, and to be a successful marketer, we need to build a relationship with prospects.
A new research study by Ascend2 is Building Relationships for Lead Conversion. The survey was fielded the week of June 8, 2020, and a total of 263 marketing professionals participated.
Considerable shifts in the way businesses operate are leading marketers to re-examine the way they approach lead generation. Building meaningful connections with buyers is now a critical part of generating and nurturing leads that convert.
Here are a few noteworthy findings from the Asend2 research study, as well as insight from marketing professionals.
Half (50%) of marketing professionals report struggling to generate enough relationships as they shift marketing efforts to more digital-forward initiatives. Building meaningful relationships with new and existing leads requires appropriate allocation of budget and resources, which 42% of marketers report is a top challenge for lead generation success.
Top Challenges of Building Relationships for Lead Conversion
Jeff Haws, Senior Marketing Manager, MessageGears
How can you generate stronger relationships? An important first step is to know more about your ideal audience and give them something of value based on their needs.
Jeff Haws, Senior Marketing Manager at MessageGears, explains, “one of the keys to effectively building relationships is to identify your ideal audience and tailor your messaging and targeting to them. Eliminate as much noise as possible by developing a laser focus on those people who will benefit the most from your unique value, and make sure marketing and sales are on the same page about who those people are.”
Social media (58%), email marketing (49%), and website/SEO (44%) lead the way as the most effective channels for building relationships for lead conversion. Developing an overall strategy of how all of your marketing tactics connect and work together as part of the customer journey is an important step to building stronger relationships.
Most Effective Channels for Lead Conversion
Mike Grehan, CMO & Managing Director, Acronym
It is helpful to consider the customer journey when looking at channels. The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand. Where does the journey start? Where does the journey end?
According to Mike Grehan, CMO & Managing Director at Acronym, “the customer journey most frequently starts with search and very often ends with search. Many brands are loaded with content for the transactional part, but seem to lack content for the early stage. This is why SEO is still so important. Well-crafted and optimized content for answering questions and solving problems creates brand affinity much earlier instead of trying to battle for attention at the checkout.”
When building loyalty and trust with an audience to build relationships, creating and distributing content is essential. Forty-one percent (41%) of marketing professionals agree that content in video format is most effective at building relationships to generate leads that convert. Educational content types such as webinars and original research are also effective, according to 36% of those surveyed.
Most Effective Content Types for Lead Conversion
Rameez Ghayas Usmani, Digital Marketing Executive, PureVPN
There are many format options to consider. Rameez Ghayas Usmani, Digital Marketing Executive at PureVPN explains, “written content is undoubtedly useful, but today, visual materials such as infographics or videos are outperforming for marketing and relationship building purposes, and they will continue to be one of the most frequently used marketing strategies for 2020.”
Dan Bailey, President at WikiLawn shares another content strategy. “Our lead generation strategies now focus on providing free, high-value content as part of a sales funnel. We create articles, videos, and other content, and put that content behind a landing page where the user has to enter their email address to get access. We run Facebook ads to direct people to this landing page, and once they’re on our list, we continue to build a relationship with them.”
Many marketing dollars previously allocated to in-person events and direct marketing efforts are being redirected. Over half of marketers say that much of their lead generation budgets will be attached to social media (54%) and website or SEO improvement (51%). Another 44% report that email or automation will account for a significant amount of budget in the year ahead.
How Lead Generation Budgets Will Be Allocated
Building relationships is especially challenging right now with the cancellation of live events and employees working remotely. How can you replace that face to face experience?
Joaquim Miro, Chief Growth Officer, Hoppin’ World
Joaquim Miro, Chief Growth Officer at Hoppin’ World, said that “being able to be face-to-face with a prospect is always the best way to convert them into a client. Therefore, looking for options that allow this to happen remotely is an important next step.”
Use technology to do virtually what you would do in person: train, give guided tours, have Q&A sessions, and more. Be creative to build a relationship with your prospects and don’t let challenges stand in your way.
How are companies reallocating their budget?
Quincy Smith, Founder of ESL Authority, reveals how his organization is shifting budgets. “We’ve reallocated our in-person budget (previously used for job fairs, campus visits, etc) into online retargeting,” said Quincy. He continued, “we’ve always had significant organic traffic, but are only now attempting to retarget it given that we cannot do much in person. So far it’s very much trial and error, we’ve done paid ads before but not for this purpose so we’re still testing messaging, platforms, and imagery.”
Sunny Ashley, CEO, Autoshipinvoice
Sunny Ashley, CEO at Autoshipinvoice, has moved a bulk of its marketing budget and efforts to SEO and content marketing. Sunny explains, “there are 3 main reasons why: 1. SEO can be done relatively cheaply, for the cost of time and labor in writing content. 2. SEO best practices are ever-evolving; this means there is always something new to learn. Since marketing now has more time and flexibility without the need to plan for physical events, now is the time to try new SEO techniques and experiments. 3. SEO takes time. If direct marketing methods aren’t as effective right now while our customers have less budget, now is a great time to build a catalog of content that will grow in influence over the coming months. As business begins to return closer to normal, our SEO efforts will hopefully be peaking.”
Joaquim, Quincy, and Sunny are all finding ways to understand their target audience, reallocate budget based on what is working, and focusing on building relationships that convert.
Conclusion
Building relationships takes time. Marketers need to listen to their prospects, analyze the data, test new tactics and strategies, optimize existing tactics and strategies, and be flexible and agile in what you do to build relationships that convert.
Here is a link where you can download the entire report, Building Relationships for Lead Conversion.
The post 4 Noteworthy Lead Conversion Trends: Research and Charts appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.
