Small businesses to get tax breaks for digital spending
Digital spending is set to become A LOT more affordable for small businesses, after the federal government promised $1 billion in tax breaks.
This means you could deduct $120 for every $100 you spend on digital services such as web design, online sales platforms and marketing.
Deduction claims can be made on eligible digital expenses of up to $100,000 a year!
Isn’t this fantastic news for small businesses that have been hard hit by the global pandemic? Especially if you’re operating at a loss, or haven’t made enough money to justify the sweat and tears of the last few years.
The government is doing this to help businesses become more competitive in a cyber world.
When done right, digital marketing is a lifeline for businesses that normally struggle to connect with audiences.
We already know the fruit is ripe for picking, as consumers now spend even more time online. In other words, your ideal audience is waiting for you to come along and catch their attention in the cyber spaces they frequent.
If the digital tax breaks package passes as law, you won’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay for digital marketing to grow your profits. You’ll attract more people to your website and boost sales, without spending money that you can’t claim back.
Here’s what you can expect if the needed legislation gets the green light…
Small Business Technology Investment Boost:
Who does it apply for?
Small businesses with an aggregated annual turnover of less than $50 million.
What will you be able to claim?
Deduct an extra 20% on eligible business expenses for digital technology. You can make deductions for payments up to $100,000 for each qualifying income year.
When does the policy come into effect?
From March 29, 2022 (budget day)
When is the policy set to end?
June 30, 2023.
How do small business owners claim the tax breaks for technology investment?
- At the end of the 2021-22 financial year: submit a standard expenditure claim (for eligible digital spending between 29 March 2022 and 30 June 2022).
- Then next year, when lodging your 2022-23 tax return: claim the 20% bonus deduction for the previous 2021-22 financial year (29 March 2022 to 30 June 2022).
- Also in your 2022-23 tax return: deduct the entire 120% for eligible digital spending between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023.
We help small businesses to get noticed online and build a loyal customer base:
If you’d like any support with your digital marketing, please reach out to our team.
E-Web Marketing uses strategies that deliver the highest value, because businesses shouldn’t have to spend beyond their means to get noticed online (especially during a pandemic).
For the last three decades, we’ve helped 3000 businesses to lift online conversions, brand loyalty and site traffic. You can speak with some of our clients, who’ve told us they’re happy to give transparent references.
Call 1300 785 122 or fill out this form to find out how we can help you to bolster online sales and improve your business reputation.
7 Simple Principles of Website Design That Impact User Experience
7 Simple Principles of Website Design That Impact User Experience
Can you remember the last time you visited a website and got frustrated because it was difficult to use? Maybe the text was too small, there were too many menu options, or you had to pinch the screen to use the navigation buttons on your smartphone.
All of those annoying memories are down to poor user experience (UX). If your website is confusing or hard to use, your visitors will get frustrated and bounce. That’s why user experience is so important in website design.
In this post, we’ll walk you through 7 key principles of UX. Make sure your website sticks to these fundamentals and provides an intuitive experience for your website visitors.
Let’s dive in.
Navigation – Don’t Make Users Think
One of the most important considerations for website designers is eliminating as many question marks as possible – the decisions that users actively need to make.
Nowhere is this more important than your website’s navigation. If it’s hard for users to work out how to find their way around your website, it raises a big question mark. Instead of focusing on your offer or content, users are forced to think about getting from point A to point B. They’ll get frustrated, and they’ll leave.
You can improve your website navigation by:
- Using descriptive labels in your menu
- Limiting the number of menu options
- Putting your navigation menu in a standard location
- Making hyperlinks stand out from the surrounding text
- Enabling internal search functionality
The goal of your website navigation is to help users find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. Don’t make your visitors think. The more they have to think about using your site, the less they will engage with your offers and your content.
Keep It Simple – Limit the Number of Choices
The more options that you provide, the more you risk confusing or frustrating your users.
Hick’s Law is a psychological principle that is vital to website design. The law states that the more choices you provide, the longer it will take for a person to reach a decision.
If you give your visitors dozens of options to choose from, you force them to think about each one and decide what to click on.
For example, if you include every product you sell in your navigation menu, you’ll overload visitors with information.
One of the simplest ways to limit the number of choices is to group content and products into relevant categories. This limits the number of decisions users need to make and reduces the time it takes for users to find what they are looking for, improving the usability of your website.
Be Conventional
According to Magicdust, highly experienced in website design Sydney wide, being conventional with your website design doesn’t make your site boring. On the contrary, it makes it easier to use and improves the user experience. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be if every website had a unique navigation system?
There’s always a learning curve when a user lands on a website. However, when your site looks and responds like websites the visitor has used before, it flattens the learning curve.
There’s plenty of ways you can make your website unique, but you should stick to the main conventions of website design. For example, think about the huge range of different car designs. A Lamborghini and a Ford look different and feel very different to use, but they both adhere to the main conventions of car design – four wheels, steering wheel, etc.
Accessibility
Accessibility is an integral part of user experience. Your website needs to be easy for people with disabilities to use.
For example, your choice of website design colours can significantly impact readability and usability for people with colour blindness. According to Colour Blind Awareness, 1 in 12 males and 4.5% of the total global population are affected by colour vision deficiency. That’s a big chunk of your audience.
Use high contrast between your text and background colours, add captions to your video content, and include descriptive alt text for your images to improve accessibility.
You can find out more about website accessibility by visiting W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Your website is designed for people to use, so it’s vital that it is accessible to as many people as possible.
Less Is More
Less is more is a website design principle that can be an effective way to improve the user experience of your website.
One of the most important ways to use this principle is white space.
White space is the blank area between different website design elements on a page. Leaving white space provides a natural flow that helps users navigate the content and focus on the most important elements.
Google’s homepage is an excellent example of a minimalist website design that utilizes a less is more approach to improve the user experience. The search function is the most important element on the page. Everything else, apart from the Google logo, is eliminated or placed in the menu options in the corners of the screen.
Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is a website design principle that involves changing the visual characteristics of different elements to indicate their order of importance.
For example, your CTA button is usually the most important element on the page. You want to ensure that it gets more attention than the less important elements.
Amazon uses a strong visual hierarchy on its product pages. The “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” buttons are two of the most prominent elements. This increases the chances of conversion, but it also improves the user experience by helping users accomplish their goals faster.
Strategically altering the appearance and layout of elements can make your website easier to use and help visitors quickly find what they are looking for.
Scannable Content
Internet users rarely read every word when viewing a web page. According to a study by Nielsen Norman Group, 79% of people scan every new page they visit, with only 16% reading text word-by-word.
To improve the UX of your website, you need to make your content easy for users to scan. You can make your content scannable by:
- Using descriptive subheadings
- Keeping sentences and paragraphs short
- Using lists and bullet points
- Breaking up text with images and multimedia
- Incorporating plenty of white space
Making your content scannable helps your users to read your content and find the information they need.
Conclusion
Incorporating the above UX principles will improve your website design and make it more enjoyable for your visitors to use. However, once your site is optimized and live, you need to see how your real-world visitors use your site and if they engage with your page elements the way you intended. You can use heatmaps and other tools to gain insight into on-site user behaviour.
UX is a key consideration of website design. By making your website easier to use, you increase the chances of your visitors engaging with your content, converting on your offers, and purchasing your products and services.
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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Apple’s privacy update (what does it mean for small businesses)?
Apple’s privacy update (what does it mean for small businesses)?
Recent Apple updates give users more online privacy, by automatically blocking data-sharing with app developers.
Companies that use or sell data for advertising must now ask Apple users for permission to collect their data, if that individual has installed the latest software.
This gives the consumer more control over what happens to their non-identifying information.
Wonderful, right?
Probably not for small business owners. This could actually hurt their sales.
If most Apple users keep the default privacy settings; businesses will lose access to a trove of impersonal data about online behaviour. Brands use this information to create effective ads that are personalised towards their ideal consumer.
On the flip side (there is one):
Businesses and marketing agencies now have a fantastic opportunity to find more innovative ways to connect with people, instead of relying on cross-app data that’s often collected outside the awareness of users.
We’ll explore these implications more, but first, let’s cover the basics.
What privacy changes came with the iOS 14.5 software update?
In April, Apple launched a controversial feature that stops app developers from tracking data without explicit consent from the user.
This is called App Tracking Transparency (ATT).
How ATT works:
Every Apple user has an Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) tag. Although this doesn’t reveal personal information, it allows marketers to collect data that can be used to target users with personalised ads.
Such IDFA data includes: age, location, spending habits and browsing history.
Previously, data-sharing was the default setting, unless Apple users chose to opt-out.
However, this all changed with the iOS 14.5 update.
Now, the situation is reversed. IDFA data tracking is switched off by default, but a prompt asks the user if they want to share their data when opening a newly installed app. The choice is now to opt into data collection, rather than opt out of it.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission calls this “a positive step towards genuine consumer control over data collection through apps.”
Implications for data collection:
Apple users can choose to share their data as an opt-in feature – but it’s safe to assume the majority of people will leave app tracking disabled.
Why can we make such a bold claim?
Well, this is what research suggests so far. Mobile analytics company Flurry found that only 15 per cent of worldwide iOS 14.5 users chose to allow third parties to track their data across all apps (as of May 2021).
It’s too early to say for certain what opt-in rates will be. The roll out has been slow and most Apple users hadn’t installed the iOS update on their phones at the time of that research.
Even so, Facebook is concerned about the impact on small businesses that rely on personalised ads to make sales. Facebook says the average small business stands to lose over 60 per cent in sales for every dollar spent on advertising.
It’s also worth noting the social media giant could lose 7 per cent of its own revenue, if the vast majority of users leave tracking turned off.
It’s time to adapt. Businesses shouldn’t rely only on cross-app data:
Google is considering taking a similar approach to Apple, by blocking Chrome third-party cookies by 2022. It looks as though consumers are slowly getting more control over how their data is collected and stored. Any move towards greater transparency is to be applauded.
When it comes to digital marketing:
There’s certainly a place for third-party data in advertising; but it’s a mistake for businesses to put all their eggs in one basket (by relying on cross-app data to study consumers).
We recommend a multi-channel and holistic marketing approach – incorporating different platforms such as organic SEO, content development, paid advertising, reputation management and even offline advertising.
Most importantly, businesses should look for innovative and ethical ways to collect data directly from their consumers, or hire marketing agencies that rise to the challenge.
This approach requires a combination of creativity and trust-building – which boosts your brand’s reputation and performance in the long term.
Although engaging directly with consumers requires more effort than relying on third-party data alone, it’s certainly worth it.
Businesses that go this extra mile know their fate isn’t dependent on technology companies that may restrict data-sharing policies in the future.
You have a lot more security with alternative options up your sleeve. Now is the time to experiment with strategies that help you understand consumers on a level deeper than what third-party data shows (no matter how much of it you have).
Call us on (02) 8413 6400 or fill out this form if you have questions about this update, or would like support to develop a holistic digital marketing strategy.
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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Why you should work on your online marketing now (COVID-19)
Why you should work on your online marketing now (COVID-19)
This article explains why it’s a good time to build your online presence, and how to do that cost-effectively…
Business owners are making tough decisions as they struggle to protect revenue and pay staff during the COVID-19 crisis.
It seems that digital marketing should be one of the first services to get the axe, right?
Actually, no.
It does make sense for some managers to abandon their digital marketing campaign (for now).
But for many others, this move will likely cause more financial damage in the long run – depending on the nature of your business and the results your marketing efforts have yielded so far.
There’s no need to go full throttle with digital marketing at this time. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to pause or cancel some strategies, like paid advertising. However, other strategies (like organic SEO) should be maintained, even at a reduced level.
This advice applies to companies with active digital campaigns, and those without:
Embrace this opportunity to build your online presence, as many of your competitors lift their finger off the pulse. Also, take advantage of the fact that some agencies are now offering services at discounted rates.
3 reasons why this is a good time to MAINTAIN or START a digital marketing campaign:
1. Quality content is in high demand: Consumers are spending more time online as their schedules free up. This paves the way for organisations to deliver engaging content via email, social media or their website. There aren’t as many distractions, so people are likely to sit down and carefully read something that catches their attention.
Those who appreciate your content during this time will probably seek out your company when social distancing is no longer required. From an SEO perspective, websites with strong user engagement tend to rank prominently on search engines.
2. Online shopping is taking off: The demand for online shopping is likely to increase, as more brick and mortar stores shut down and people look for products that can be delivered to them. E-commerce sites that capitalise on this reality could at least maintain some revenue, or even make more money than before.
3. Some activity is required to maintain search engine results: The coronavirus threat will pass and businesses will eventually operate normally again. When this happens, you want your website to rank highly in search results and deliver value to online visitors. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the best strategies – but it’s a long-term relationship that doesn’t handle abandonment well. Your website will drop its rankings and get lost in the dark abyss of the internet, if you neglect all SEO activity. Thousands of dollars could be wasted on a recovery effort that takes many months.
On the other hand, businesses that focus on SEO quickly gain a strong lead over competitors that have paused or cancelled their campaigns during this time.
Keep reading to find out how to protect your business by focusing on digital strategies.
7 digital strategies that will boost your online presence and protect revenue
1. Stay connected with your customers:
- Clear messaging from your company about COVID-19: inform your clients about any changes to your business operations, and precautions that your team is taking.
- Maintain regular contact with clients via email: consider sending out a weekly or monthly newsletter, with advice that may benefit people during this stressful time (especially if it’s related to the service you provide).
- Ask clients for reviews: this gives you the chance to improve your services based on valuable feedback, while also building your online reputation.
2. Evaluate all of the content on your website : How often do you get the chance to sit down with a cup of coffee and read the content on your website? Probably rarely, given your busy schedule. Now’s the chance to do exactly that. Be as critical as possible – does the content reflect your core values and unique selling points? Does it provide useful information to consumers? Is it engaging enough to hold people’s attention?
3. Update old content: This is one of the best ways to boost organic SEO, but it’s something that businesses rarely do. It’s also easier than writing an entire article from scratch! Deliver value by adding new information that’s useful to the reader, or change the tone to make it more engaging.
4. Add new content that interests your target audience: Share your knowledge, especially if it’s useful information that people regularly search for online. But don’t post simply for the sake of publishing content, if you have nothing helpful to add. There’s an oversaturation of information and people don’t need to read the same thing over and over again. Do your research and deliver content in an engaging way. Think outside of the box and incorporate video, audio and images into your strategy. Videos are particularly useful for SEO purposes right now! It doesn’t even need to be high-tech, you can use your phone.
5. Start an organic SEO strategy or maintain the one you already have: This is a low-cost and highly effective investment – considering that more than half of all website traffic comes from organic search. When done correctly, organic SEO enhances the visibility of a website by making sure it’s seen by people searching online. This translates to higher conversions, sales and engagement. It also increases the trust and credibility of your website.
6. Fix your website to improve the user experience (UX design): It doesn’t matter how many people you attract with SEO, if you can’t hold their attention. Even the most engaging content won’t capture an audience, if the website is poorly designed (for example: text that’s too small to read, inadequate spacing and harsh colours). People are more likely to browse websites with clean, user-friendly layouts. We know what works best by studying behaviour patterns when people browse online.
7. Fix your website to make sure you’re not breaking any Google rules: Penalties from Google affect search rankings, leading to a significant drop in site traffic and revenue. Many business owners don’t know why this happens, because they haven’t set out to break any rules. Websites can be penalised for many reasons – both deliberate and accidental. It can be as innocent as falling on the wrong side of an algorithm update, using too many keywords, or accidently linking to a manipulative website. It’s important to get rid of unnatural links and take other steps to ensure you don’t break Google’s rules.
Why not learn some digital survival skills?
You can learn about digital marketing, or arrange for your staff to be mentored by experts during this quieter business period, when there are fewer tasks to tend to. This keeps everyone on their toes; while empowering your team with valuable tools that boost business performance and revenue. For example, learning how to interpret your website data enables you to make informed marketing decisions.
Business is quieter than usual, why not take advantage of that down-time? After some normalcy returns, your team won’t need to rely so heavily on an external agency, which saves you money too.
Why trust us?
The team at E-Web Marketing can handle every aspect of your digital campaign, or teach you how to run it yourself.
- Delayed billing due to COVID-19: we want to help businesses during this difficult time, while our team stays switched on by working on meaningful tasks.
- No restrictions: if a particular service no longer suits you, we can adapt our approach, despite what’s on the contract.
- We know what we’re doing: an award-winning company with more than two decades of experience. Our team is based in Australia.
- No stone unturned: our multi-channel strategy is driven by hard data and extensive research.
- Integrity and transparency: we say what we believe and keep our word.
If you need specific recommendations or would like to discuss any concerns, please feel free to contact me.
Keep well,
Sam Shetty
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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8 Modern Website Design Techniques to Make Your Ecommerce Checkout Watertight
8 Modern Website Design Techniques to Make Your Ecommerce Checkout Watertight
Conversions make or break your eCommerce store. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your website. If your visitors don’t complete the checkout process, your business is doomed to fail.
Companies that use or sell data for advertising must now ask Apple users for permission to collect their data, if that individual has installed the latest software.
Cart abandonment is a problem that plagues every eCommerce store owner. Around 79% of all eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned. For every 100 customers that add an item to their cart, 79 won’t make it through the checkout and complete a purchase.
Not only is that a considerable amount of lost revenue in sales, but it’s also a colossal waste of advertising spend if you are using PPC to drive traffic to your website.
How can you shore up your checkout process and make sure more of your visitors follow through and buy your products?
Here’s a rundown of eight modern website design techniques to reduce cart abandonment and boost sales.
1. Provide Guest Checkout Option
If you can get every customer to create a customer profile, you can monitor how they interact with your website, offer relevant product recommendations, and increase the personalization of your email marketing.
However, your drive to create more customer profiles could be costing you sales.
If you force your online shoppers to create a profile, you could be damaging your conversion rate and your bottom line.
According to a study by Baymard Research, 31% of people have abandoned a purchase because the website wanted them to create an account.
Add a guest checkout option to your website and see if it boosts your conversions.
2. Add A Checkout Progress Bar
Magicdust, an experienced Australian website design agency, makes the point that the key to a conversion-boosting checkout process is simplicity. Every website design element should make it as smooth as possible for online shoppers to complete a purchase.
While some form filling is unavoidable, you can reduce the chances of your customers abandoning their carts by integrating a progress bar into your checkout process website design.
You can opt for a progress bar at the top of the page or make each step of the checkout numbered.
This shows the customer which stage of the checkout process they are currently at, and how many more steps they have to complete.
3. Cut Down Form Filling
Form-filling is, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of the checkout process. The more forms you have in your checkout, the more effort required from your customers, and the more likely they are to abandon their carts.
To increase the user experience of your checkout, you need to identify any way you can simplify and streamline the process through your website design choices.
For example, instead of making users fill out two separate forms, include a ‘Shipping address same as billing address’ button so that shoppers can speed up the process.
When it comes to the forms, ask yourself what information you really need, and remove any sections that are not absolutely essential.
4. Incorporate Social Proof into Your website design
Including testimonials and reviews is a powerful website design technique for boosting conversions. People want to feel reassured that they are spending their money with a reputable business.
Reviews and testimonials provide social proof that other people have already engaged with your business and are happy with their purchases.
By including reviews and testimonials on your product pages and checkout pages, you increase the chances of your visitors following through with a purchase.
5. Provide Free Shipping
According to a report by Walker Sands, 90% of online shoppers claim free shipping is the number one factor that would encourage them to purchase more frequently.
Don’t make your customers pay shipping fees.
People don’t want to be surprised by unexpected fees and shipping costs when they progress to the checkout. If a product listed for $19.99 ends up costing $25 with shipping, you’re going to lose out on sales.
To avoid this psychological barrier, work the cost of shipping into your retail prices. If this isn’t feasible for your business, offer free shipping when the total order value passes a certain threshold.
Not only can this increase conversions, but it can also increase your average order value (AOV).
6. Deliver Instant Gratification
Online shoppers are very impatient. When they order something, they want instant gratification.
While it’s easy to deliver instant gratification if you sell digital products, it’s more difficult if you sell physical products that need to be shipped.
Amazon is the largest seller of physical products in the world. How do they provide instant gratification to customers through the website design of their checkout?
By providing precise information on delivery dates.
When you purchase a product sold by Amazon, you can see the exact date that you can expect to receive the product. You’re far more likely to buy a product if you know it will be delivered in a couple of days.
7. A/B Testing of website design Elements
The most effective way to increase the conversion rate of your checkout process is to put it to the test with real shoppers. Only through testing different website design elements can you know what’s the most effective way to drive more conversions.
You need to be measured about your testing. Identify a single element of your checkout website design to test first.
For example, you might want to test different versions of your call to action (CTA) button.
By providing precise information on delivery dates.
Create two versions of your checkout page with two different CTA buttons – version A could be ‘Buy Now’ and version B ‘Order Now.’ Then split your checkout traffic with 50% shown version A, and 50% shown version B.
By comparing the conversion rate of the two versions of the checkout, you can see which one is more effective and generates more sales. Once you’ve tested your CTA, you can move on to different website design elements to make your checkout page as effective as possible.
8. Follow Up Emails
While not technically a web design technique, cart abandonment emails enable you to boost your sales by capitalizing on the shoppers that have yet to convert and complete a purchase.
Cart abandonment emails are about recovering the sales that you have lost during the checkout process. If an online shopper adds a product to their shopping cart but doesn’t finish the checkout process and place the order, you want to follow up with an enticing offer to encourage them to come back.
To make your offer more compelling, you can include one or more of the following elements in your email.
- Offer a time-limited discount on the product.
- Include free shipping.
- Personalize the email copy and subject line.
- Save the cart and provide a direct link back to the checkout page.
If you can create a compelling reason for people to come back, cart abandonment emails become a great way to boost your conversion rate and drive sales.
Conclusion
Reducing cart abandonment doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your checkout. The above methods are relatively easy to integrate into your checkout website design.
If you’re spending money on paid traffic, optimising your checkout is vital. You want to make the most of every dollar you spend on attracting new customers.
While these best practices should boost your sales, what works for one business might not be nearly as effective for another. Keep testing and improving your checkout process to boost your conversion rate and drive more sales for your eCommerce business.
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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7 ways to stay connected with customers during COVID-19
7 ways to stay connected with customers during COVID-19
This is an incredibly tough time for us all.
Business owners are struggling to stay afloat and pay their employees; on top of feeling anxious about the health of their loved ones and community.
It’s overwhelming, with so much falling outside our control.
But this doesn’t have to mean the end of your business.
After speaking with clients and industry leaders, I’ve come up with seven steps that managers can take to maintain at least some work activity, protect jobs and build relationships with customers during this uncertain period.
Although it’s difficult to attract new people right now, this is a good time to focus on looking after your current clients – who will no doubt appreciate your efforts.
- Clear messaging from your company about COVID-19
- Regular contact with clients
- Ask clients for reviews
- Review your website content during isolation time
- Learn some digital survival skills
- Improve the user experience on your website
- Share your knowledge with clients
Step 1: Clear messaging from your company about COVID-19
It’s important that your clients are informed about changes to your business operations. This message should be highlighted on your website, as well as sent in an email.
- Your operational timing and the level of staffing in your business.
- Changes to how your business is run.
- Procedures that minimise the risk of the virus to visitors.
- Outline any services that can be offered online.
- Explain any assistance that you can offer to clients (for example: free consultation, reduced pricing or refunds).
- How is your business supporting staff? If you’re taking care of your employees, let others know, so they may be inspired to do the same with theirs (which eases some of the stress in the world).
Step 2: Regular contact with clients via email
This is a good time to keep in touch with your clients. If you’re already doing monthly newsletters, consider doing it weekly now. Share advice and tips that may benefit your clients during this stressful time.
Create a newsletter schedule and assign the task to one of your staff members, if possible. Our team can also help you.
If you don’t already have an email marketing solution, this is a good time to set one up.
Step 3: Ask clients for reviews
Ask your clients for reviews that help you to build your online reputation and improve services based on valuable feedback. Again, ask one of your employees to manage this. Alternatively, we can suggest a couple of tools you can use.
Step 4: Review your website content
There’s probably no better time to review and edit the messaging on your website. Most business owners I work with normally don’t have enough time to look at their website, let alone carefully read through it. But now? It’s likely we’re all going to have more time on our hands.
Make a coffee, sit down and read the content on your website. Does it really reflect your core values and unique selling points? Check out your main competitor’s website and see what you can learn from them.
Step 5: Learn some digital survival skills
If you suddenly have a lot of free time on your hands, why not empower yourself by learning how to measure the performance of your website – so you can make informed decisions about your campaigns?
Understanding how to read your website data (Google Analytics) is the most important digital marketing skill for your business.
It’s valuable in the same way that every business owner is able to read a P/L report.
Our team can teach you how to read and interpret information from Google Analytics. This is the best step you can take to make sure you’re investing in campaigns that work (instead of wasting money on those that yield average results).
Step 6: Improve the user experience of your website
Really think about how you can give people a better experience on your website.
Would online chat benefit your business? Are there free resources that would help your clients?
Tools like www.userinsights.com.au capture online behaviour. This helps you to understand why consumers land on your website but don’t engage or contact you.
Step 7: Share your knowledge with clients
Writing a blog post is probably the last thing on your mind right now, but keep in time that people are spending more time online because of social distancing. This means that SEO-optimised blog posts are attracting more attention in the online world.
Think about this:
If everything goes into lockdown, your website would be the only element of your business that isn’t impacted by the COVID-19 virus. It’s the best salesperson you have right now, so it should be active and engaging for consumers.
Rather than pausing all digital activities, I recommend that you keep your website active and visible. When the health situation improves, it’s more likely that people will reach out to your business.
If you need specific recommendations or would like to discuss any concerns, please feel free to contact me. I’m happy to share some additional strategies for your business too!
Keep well,
Sam Shetty
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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Is Your Business Ready For AI?
Is Your Business Ready For AI?
Until recently, artificial intelligence, data-driven marketing and voice search engine optimisation were considered to be ambitious concepts bordering on the ridiculous. Today, these innovative digital marketing trends are among the top priorities for most business owners.
Gone are the days when businesses would fish for customers by finding the right fishing spots. On the internet, knowing where to fish was about targeting ideal prospects by running effective Facebook and Google Adwords campaigns.
Over the last two years, consumers have become a lot more intelligent about digital advertising techniques used by business to get their attention. Many of them view such methods as a rude interruption to their online viewing experience and are using countermeasures such as ad blockers to bypass ads. Moving forward, it is going to take a lot more effort to run a successful digital marketing campaign.
The Rising Power of AI and Data-Driven Marketing
Until last year, many business owners were hesitant to explore AI and data-driven marketing by labelling it expensive or not worth the effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. In 2020, AI and data-driven marketing will be a critical part of any digital marketing campaign, however big or small.
We live in a time when marketing technology evolves at an astonishing pace and consumer interests and behaviours are hard to predict. Marketers can no longer stick their heads in the sand and hope that educated guesses and old methods will continue to work.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can analyse consumer behaviour, search patterns and use data from social media platforms and blog posts to help businesses understand how customers find their products and services.
AI and Conversational Marketing
There has been a marked increase in the use of AI chatbots on websites, in the last 12 months. Medium-sized companies are using chatbots to reduce customer service requests and improve user experience on websites.
With the rise of mobile users, conversational marketing is the fastest way to move buyers through your marketing and sales funnels using the power of real-time conversations. It builds relationships and creates authentic experiences with customers and buyers. Unlike a traditional website chat feature, consumers like natural conversations which makes them feel as if they are speaking to a real person.
Conversational marketing is not a new strategy for building a marketing and sales funnel. It’s a new way to move people through your funnel.
The typical approach to qualifying leads takes days of marketing automation and nurturing emails. According to a study from Harvard Business Review, companies need to respond within five minutes of initial contact to have the best chance of qualifying a lead. Any longer and your odds of qualifying the lead decreases by 400%.
Conversational marketing bots enable your business to engage with new leads instantly at any time of the day or night. Chatbots can understand who those leads are and what they want by qualifying those leads for you in real-time instead of forcing them to wait for follow-up emails.
Conversational marketing will play a huge role in helping sales agents connect with prospects in a more helpful and organic way. Customer success teams have already seen significant benefits using chat as one of their many support tools. When developing a conversational marketing strategy, consider how it can impact every part of your business.
Rather than perceiving it as an acquisition tool, chatbots should be considered part of the offline sales process. Most sales agents prefer to get warm qualified leads and would prefer chat-oriented leads over PDF downloaded leads.
Get the Competitive Edge in 2020 With Conversational Marketing
Would you like to explore how you can leverage chatbots in your business to improve customer service and increase profits?
Omni Channel Marketing
If you haven’t already, you should be exploring how to take advantage of AI to stay relevant in an increasingly complex online marketing environment.
Starting in 2020, focusing on an omni-channel marketing strategy to provide potential clients with information using AI-driven conversations to help them understand your products and services better. No matter the size of the business, AI will play an important role in the coming years.
If you would like to find out how to give your business the competitive edge, book an obligation-free telephone consultation by calling 1300 785 122 or Click Here to Contact Us.
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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Does your site give consumers what they want?
Does your site give consumers what they want?
Are you struggling to attract more consumers to your business in this competitive digital realm? It costs nothing to analyse your marketing campaign to see what works or holds you back. Most managers don’t bother, but this is the best way to promote your brand and boost profits in the new financial year.
No doubt you agree:
It’s hard to appeal to consumers who are distracted by a minefield of options, as your competitors flag them from every angle.
There’s nothing more frustrating than wasting money on ad-hoc online strategies that don’t work!
Too many of us have been there.
This sporadic approach explains why 39 per cent of marketers say their campaign is
letting them down, even though they spend big on it.
It doesn’t have to be this way for you. These companies don’t understand what makes their customers tick.
On the other end of the scale:
Businesses enjoy higher traffic and revenue when they adopt a targeted digital strategy that follows the online journey of their ideal audience and delivers the experience they want.
Why do these organisations succeed?
Nothing is left to chance. They review and adapt their online campaigns to take into account the rapidly evolving digital realm that’s altered human behaviour.
A new breed of consumers:
Consumers have grown used to getting what they want, when they want it – thanks to advances in digital and mobile technology.
Gone are the days of waiting forever for a website to load after you connect your modem. It’s now possible to order dinner, read a review and send emails with the click of a mouse or swipe of a screen.
This explains why modern customers are more curious, demanding and impatient than ever.
People expect every digital experience to be personalised for them, even when their request isn’t clearly stated. They won’t settle for anything less than the ultimate convenience, and there’s no shortage of brands willing to help them scratch that itch.
What does this mean for business owners?
Your ideal consumer is difficult to reach and even harder to please.
The customer journey is no longer a straight shot down the highway: see your product, buy your product, use your product, repeat.
It’s more like this:
A sightseeing tour with multiple stops along the way – each opening new paths of exploration that could lead your potential client astray.
You need to be visible at each of these stages, convincing people to pick your brand and stick with it; instead of switching to a competitor.
To grow your business, you must leverage data to identify your perfect audience, anticipate their needs and deliver what they want – across the multiple channels and devices they’re using at different points in the day.
It’s a lot to stay on top of, especially without a cohesive and integrated framework in place!
Review your current plan (step one of building a powerful strategy):
It’s that time again:
Managers are sitting down to review their business performance, as another financial year draws to a close.
Where does digital marketing fit into all of this?
It isn’t a priority for many bosses, who exclude it from their annual strengths and weakness analysis (SWOT).
Business owners tell me they don’t review their online marketing, because it’s being handled by an external agency. Others have low expectations, having been burnt in the past.
And the worst offenders:
Those who ignore their digital avenues completely, because most of their sales come from word of mouth.
Big mistake. Online visibility helps to drive sales, so they should take it seriously.
Consider the following statistics, for example:
- Over 51 per cent of smartphone users discover a new company or product while using their smartphone (Google 2018)
- More than half of offline grocery sales are influenced by digital channels. (Deloitte 2017)
Could your business benefit from digital marketing strategies that you’ve never considered? You won’t know unless you map your customers’ virtual journey to see how they interact with your brand; and if they’re getting what they want.
Remember:
There’s no need to throw in the towel, even if your last marketing attempt wasn’t profitable.
We know that businesses that thrive at online promotion are organised, set goals, document their strategy and proactively plan ahead. They’re 356 per cent more likely to report success, compared to their counterparts who take a stab in the dark and hope for the best.
The team at E-Web Marketing can help you feel confident about your approach, by conducting a free SWOT analysis of your campaign to make sure you understand all of your options.
Fill out this form or contact us on 1300 785 122 for more information.
Sam Shetty
CEO of E-Web Marketing
Many businesses are invisible online, because they lack the resources to stand out. Our targeted digital marketing campaigns put you on the same path as your ideal audience.
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