In todayâs e-commerce-driven market, it can be challenging to find ways to sell your products.
There is great potential with e-commerce because people do so much of their
shopping online, yet with so many online vendors it can be nearly impossible to
stand out from the crowd and sell your products especially when you are first
starting out. It is for this reason why
it is helpful to be aware of a few alternative ways to sell your products.
These methods could give you a unique edge which will boost your sales and
improve your brand awareness. This can,
in turn, increase your sales.
1.
Your Own Self-Hosted E-Commerce Store
Having your own e-commerce
store is a
great way to sell your products online because it puts you in complete control
and you do not have to pay to use a hosted store. It can take some time and effort to run and operate an online store,
but it can also be highly rewarding to
build a store from the ground up. Additionally, you can use dropshipping, which means that you do not have
to worry about inventory or storage because the vendor is responsible for
shipping to the customer.
2.
Across Multiple Marketplaces
When a consumer
needs to purchase a product, it is likely that they will visit any of the
following popular marketplaces:
Amazon
eBay
Walmart
This means that you will want to sell your
products across multiple marketplaces. Creating listings and managing orders
can be tricky and time-consuming which is why it is a good idea to use a
marketplace integration service. This
should include Amazon inventory management along with other marketplaces so that it
can be easy to manage your listings from one central source.
3.
Google Shopping
People also use
Google to search for products so you will want to appear on Google Shopping. This
is achieved by setting up a Merchant Centre account and create a Shopping
Campaign in Google Ads.
4.
Social Media Influencers
Influencers can
have a huge impact on the success of a
brand and even influence trends and popular culture. If you are able to get a social media influencer to recommend your products on their page
(for a price) with a direct link it could help you to tap into an entirely new
market and boost sales.
5.
Pinterest
Pinterest is another excellent platform particularly for
those selling art and jewelry. You can sell here by setting up a business
account and use Promoted Pins to advertise your products and then encourage people to follow your account.
These are just a
few alternative ways to sell your products online. The key to success when it
comes to e-commerce is making sure that
your products are available and visible everywhere that your target customer
shops. This means that you need to identify who
your target customer is and where they shop so that you can create and optimize
listings to increase the visibility of your product. When you do this across
multiple platforms, it should
significantly boost sales and brand awareness.
The design
industry is one which is incredibly competitive. Digital marketing is essential
no matter what industry you work in, but particularly when you operate in a
highly competitive one. Digital marketing can help a brand to stand out from
the crowd, increase awareness and establish the company as an authoritative
source in the industry. So, what are the best marketing techniques and
strategies to implement for a design agency? There are a few highly effective
methods to use which can work wonders whether you are a new agency, a small
company or a much larger business looking to conquer the industry.
Blogging
In order to
attract clients to your agency, it is essential that you can position yourself
as an expert in the field. The best way to do this is with a regular blog where you share relevant, helpful and engaging
content which could include:
Case studies
How to guides
Interviews
Industry news
You need to make
sure that this content is engaging, so it is smart to use a variety of media
with each post.
Social
Media
Social media is
also a great tool for showing your expertise, and you can share your blog posts
here. You should also use social media to keep people updated with news from
your agency, to directly communicate with your target audience and acquire new followers. You can do this by:
Encouraging people
to like and share posts.
Connecting with
existing and previous customers.
Running promotions.
Sharing industry
news.
Online
Portfolio
Potential clients
will also want to see what projects you have worked on to see if you would be a
good fit, so an online portfolio is a must. You should also show your process
and the impressive tools, technology and software that you use. This means that
you need to invest in the latest and best tech – you can find a
low-cost professional PCB design tool which will help you to improve your design process
and impress any visitors.
SEO
As with most
industries, people use search engines to find an experienced design agency. Ultimately
you will need to appear as close to the top of search engine results lists as
possible which can be achieved with SEO. Use an experienced digital marketing
agency for the best results.
Client
Referrals
Word-of-mouth marketing remains one of the most effective ways
to increase awareness and acquire new customers. You can encourage your
existing clients to recommend your services to their network by incentivizing
them to do so with deals and discounts. This should mean that you both retain
and acquire new customers who could have a significant impact on the success of
your brand. You should also use customer testimonials on your company website
as social proof.
Design is a highly
competitive industry which means that high-quality marketing is essential. Try
a few of the above marketing strategies, and you should soon start to see
results and increase your authority in this competitive field.
Efficiency is one of the best words in business. It means you have mastered the art of the supply chain and are wasting the least amount of materials and products as possible. When your company is efficient, you have less to sell at a discount, can provide excellent service and stock for your stockists, and of course, recoup as much money as possible. Improving the efficiency within your supply chain, however, is not quite so straightforward. Supplier to supplier, or business to business, can become quite convoluted. You might personally only work with one supplier and one stockist, but do you know who supplies that company?
Knowing who
you work with and improving
the efficiency along the entire chain is how you will save on costs
and reduce risk all at the same time. At the same time, implementing the right
tools can help increase your sales and reduce the processing time at the core
of your operations.
It isnât easy to work as a middleman in the supply chain, but with these tips, you can make the entire process easier and more efficient.
Carefully Vet Your
Suppliers
Transparency
is the name of the game, and it is only
when you know where every aspect of your product has come from and where it was made can you mitigate risk from the source.
In some cases, the risk involved could be in a faulty product that has not
passed all safety tests. In others, it could be a risk to the lives of workers
along the supply chain, as was the case with the Rana Plaza Disaster in 2013,
where suppliers illegally built warehouses to such an unsustainable level they
collapsed in less than 90 seconds.
In short, know who your suppliersâ suppliers are, and vet them to ensure the safety of the product and those working there. Customers and businesses alike are becoming more demanding when it comes to where their products came from, and doing this can help you discover inefficiencies in the supply chain that can be easily rectified.
Improve Collaboration
with Your Supplier and Buyer
A great way
to reduce processing times and improve B2B operations is to operate an easy to
use portal where your customers can self-serve information online. The Omnia
product suite from www.weaveability.com
offers a
range of digital transformation solutions that provide a truly personalised
customer experience. In this digital age,
both businesses and consumers expect to easily purchase from and communicate
with suppliers online. With the power of Omnia, you can customise the
experience for every type of customer without any additional integration or
hardware. You can also enable real-time communication thanks to instant access
with your master data.
Use Data Management in
Your Favor
Another
great way to improve the efficiency of your company is to use
your own numbers in your favor.
One of the biggest wastes for any supplier or retailer is buying too much stock
that then goes wasted. This stock will either be
held up in storage, or it will need to be sold on at a loss. By using
your data to find the sweet spot of supply vs. demand, you will be able to
provide enough product to your customers without overdoing it.
No matter how appealing your businessâs brand may be, it will be of no use whatsoever to you if it doesnât reach your target audience. You should treat the task of expanding this reach with the seriousness it deserves by devoting as much of your time and as many of resources as you can to it.
To see what you need to do when you set about to expand your brandâs reach, make sure to read on.
Shoot for the stars
If you want your brand to reach far and wide, thereâs no time for you to be thinking small; you have to shoot for the stars. More to the point, you have to communicate your brandâs mention on the webâs most significant publications. By doing so, even if you are ultimately unable to have your brand mentioned on the world wide webâs most prominent and authoritative sites, it will still be better off with regards to where it falls in the ranking pages.
In order to reach the sites that are deemed social influencers thanks to the following and pull that they have, first and foremost, you have to align yourself with a company capable of performing an effective SEO technical audit for you. A company that is an expert in this field, such as Click Intelligence, will be able to sort through all of the different factors that are potentially holding your brand back from communicating with social influencers. First of all, they will check all of your websiteâs elements, from its coding to its content, against their own audit checklist to ensure that nothing about your site is hampering your brandâs potential growth.
Become a content authority
To truly expand your brandâs reach, you need to have the reputation of being a content authority. This is because content is king in the digital work of today.
To become an authority in this sense, whether itâs written, photographic, infographic, or video content that you opt for, you need to ensure that everything you upload is informative down to the T. This means no mistakes! Nobody is going to believe in your brand or ultimately trust in your businessâs capabilities enough to bring you their custom if you cannot provide accurate information on the subjects that you are supposed to be an expert in.
A practical and proven way to become a content authority is to guest blog. If you can becomeprolific in this sense, you will find more and more opportunity to slip your brand into the content that you create. As a result, your brand will be right under the nose of your target audience, which is right where you need it to be.
Use Facebook to promote yourself
Thanks to the fact that it helps businesses reach a highly specific and responsive audience, Facebook is fast becoming one of the Internetâs leading paid search channels. If your brand is going to be seen anywhere in its bid to expand, it should be on this social media platform.
In order to expand your brandâs reach, as stated, thereâs no time for thinking small. To create a big brand, everything you do must be BIG.
You may go through your entire life without every facing security problems online, but you also never know when something can go terribly wrong. Being a victim of a cybersecurity attack will involve a lengthy process and a lot of trouble in order to get everything back on track.
In order to prevent the situation from being unsalvageable and potentially affecting your businessâ reputation and standing, then the preventative measures mentioned below should be considered. Collectively these can see you operate safely online while taking the best possible measures to prevent a cyberattack impacting your company.
Anti-virus software programs
Your very first step should be to download anti-virus software security programs on your laptop. This will defend your computer against malware, and you will be very thankful that you have it should something ever occur.
Install a firewall
A firewall is another security measure that you can take when operating online. This maintains the security of your private network and will block any unauthorized access from getting in.
Long and complicated passwords
Coming up with a long and complicated password for everything that you do online is an easy way you can help prevent a hacker from accessing your data with ease. Whether itâs a password for your banking information, your email, or anything else for that matter, this will act as another barrier for protection.
Secure your wireless network
Is your Wi-Fi router secure? If it isnât, this is something that you need to do sooner rather than later. Try to use WPA2 to secure it, rather than WEP. Passwords that you encrypt with WPA2 are more difficult to hack.
Cloud security
Fearing a security breach shouldnât stop you from using the cloud to your advantage. Acloud is a great tool for you to store your information in one succinct place that is online, and is accessible to multiple users, be that fellow employees, other companies or clients.
You can read more about the security issues that you could face and the solutions to deal with them through www.mcafee.com. A company that is an expert in providingthese types of services should always be your go-to solution to ensure that any security software program is properly installed and working on your computer.
Safe surfing and shopping
Do you know what to do in order to surf the web safely? What about the steps you need to take in order to complete safe online shopping? When you are purchasing something online, you should make sure that the site you are giving your credit card information to is encrypted, and thus has a secure sockets layer. You will notice this if the URL has a lock next to it.
Moreover, make sure to use familiar websites and as always, donât overshare what you donât need to.
These practices will limit the chances of something happening to you. With these easy solutions, why wouldnât you do what you can to protect yourself?
One of the most used feature in Hitsteps is heatmaps. Heatmaps provide an extensive insight into pages usability and design. However they hide informations too. A LOT of informations.
Following screenshots are from a classic Hitsteps heatmap when page is scrolled down. You can see some clicks around the screen.
It is a good start but there are a lot more to see from behind the scene data that generated this heatmap. Here comes the Page Analysis.
We have built Page Analysis to be dynamic, extensible and interactive. Page analysis provide data for heatmaps. but a lot of data that are not possible to view within heatmaps, are now provided via Page Analysis feature.
Looking at screenshot below, you can see how page analysis identify each HTML DOM Elements, bind to the element and show number of clicks that happened on that element. Furthermore, Page Analysis provide you with live and interactive view of your website. It allows you to click on your menus and buttons, and see clicks on sub menus and popups where you would not be able to see on a generic static heatmap.
This deep level of aggregated page elements analysis is a power tool for any UX designer who are trying to improve usability of a dynamic website. Perhaps video below can put this feature in better perspective:
This feature come pre-activated in all free trial and Pro accounts. You do not need to enable page analysis to record clicks on a specific page. It record all pages by default.
Like it or not, we live in a world where the cleverest marketing strategy attracts the best customers whether your product/service is the best or not. Popular brands are powerful, and, in the end, they get to take the bigger slice of pie.
Similarly, in the world of business, a well-developed personal brand matters more than the level of quality one is able to deliver. The personal brand defines your work experience, your capacity to solve problems in your field of work and talks about how you communicate with customers.
While it sounds a bit far-fetched, there are studies that show people who managed to put together great personal brands tend to get the best projects and earn more than the average Joe. And this doesnât happen because they are smarter or more knowledgeable. It happens because they understood the power of branding and learned how to apply it in their professional life.
Still, the concept of personal branding is a work in progress. As a result, itâs difficult to find high-quality and actionable advice that fits your particular situation. This is why we put together a guide with some of the most efficient personal branding techniques that are easy to understand and apply.
#1: Surround Yourself with the Right People
There is a quote usually attributed to motivational speaker Jim Rohn, that says âyou are the average of the five people you spend most of your time withâ.
While the quote is highly debatable, there are some truths to it. Basically, what the author is trying to convey, is that we are influenced by the people with which we get in contact on a daily basis. However, we are also influenced by the people we follow on social media, by the books we read, and videos we watch.
So, take the quote and transform it according to your needs. If you have the possibility, get in touch with specialists in your field and establish a connection. They can be your co-workers, your managers, or even people you met at a conference. You donât have to be friends with them or even spend every single day talking; you just need a way to communicate your thoughts and get feedback.
Furthermore, make sure your social media feed is loaded with publications and posts from authority content creators in your field. People love getting messages, shares, and comments on their posts, so it will be easier to find a connection.
The idea is that you absorb the information and type of behavior you see every day. So, to become a highly regarded professional with a strong personal brand, you should surround yourself with people who are already established as such.
#2: Continuously Improve Your Skills
The fuel that drives a strong brand is represented by your willingness to improve yourself. Just like a product or service grows by implementing customer feedback (positive and negative), you also need to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses.
Furthermore, a professional who is open to the idea of improvement sends a strong message to their clients or employers. It shows you are ready to grow without someone pushing you from behind.
The good news is that you have a plethora of resources and materials at your disposal. For instance, if you want to improve your business management skills, you can take a leadership and management course online or you can buy the book thatâs most recommended by specialists in the area. The same goes for every new skill you want to master.
In the end, in an ever-changing business environment, itâs important to upgrade your knowledge and set of skills.
#3: Find Your Uniqueness
Your uniqueness is your very own advantage in building a strong personal brand! Itâs the element that attracts the right type of customers and the force that gets you where you want to be.
So, if youâre not sure what makes your brand unique, have a look at your activity. Read the feedback you received from clients or analyze behavior reports received for annual evaluations at work.
You donât need something thatâs Earth-shattering and paradigm-changing! You only need to identify that element that makes people remark you as a professional. It can be anything from âhigh-quality work at a fast paceâ to âunlimited access to high-end resourcesâ.
#4: Find your True Voice
Unless youâre a Steve Jobs type of person, it can be extremely difficult to find your voice from the very beginning. But thatâs normal; we are not all geniuses and we donât have to be.
So, when you first start, your personal brand will be a mixture of elements you learn from the people you admire and follow (see point #1). But, as you learn and grow, your voice has to change. You need to be on a quest for authenticity so, in the end, youâll get to identify your uniqueness.
The voice of your brand must represent your true aspirations and opinions in life. Also, make sure to stay true to your brand, even when the times arenât as favorable. This shows integrity, a quality thatâs highly valued in todayâs business environment.
#5: Create a Toolkit for your Brand
The main purpose of a strong personal brand is visibility. You invest time, money, and energy in a wide range of activities to make sure the right clients or employers take notice. However, some tools are more effective than others when it comes to creating the right type of visibility.
To this aspect, we created a short list with the tools that are bound to produce the most positive impact:
Your Website
In todayâs day and age, if you donât have a website, you donât exist. Whether youâre an entrepreneur or an employee, make sure your site or page (it can also be a LinkedIn profile) is up to date and running. Also, include information about things such as: â˘Â Professional achievements â˘Â Projects you are passionate about â˘Â Awards and nominations â˘Â Affiliations with interesting people and projects â˘Â Certifications & Academic degrees â˘Â Publications and participation to conferences
Social Media Presence
Yes, a web page and a social media profile are two different things. And you need both to increase your visibility!
We recommend selecting the channel that is most likely to get your post in front of possible customers (LinkedIn, a blogging platform, or another professional network). Itâs important to stay active and develop an authentic style that speaks about your level of professionalism and dedication.
Speaking Engagements
Should you ever have the opportunity to participate as a guest speaker at a conference, make sure to RSVP yes! This type of events gather all sorts of people from your field of interest and are an amazing opportunity to increase brand visibility.
Sure, you have to be delicate with the process and avoid becoming a nuisance, but it helps to stay on your clientsâ mind. This way, when they need the services you offer, youâll be the first to call.
Written Materials
A book, articles in an authority publication (online or offline), a PDF you send with newsletters, any type of written materials can improve brand visibility. Even more, if you are a published author in your field of activity, it strengthens your position in the eyes of customers.
Wrap Up
In the end, itâs important to get involved and be present in your field of interest. It may take some time, but every step you take is a brick for your professional future. A strong personal brand canât be built overnight and it has its own challenges, but with the right tools and inspiration, you will succeed
Oli Kang Oli is a working mum who has a passion for teaching and all things educational. With a background in marketing, Oli manages the digital channels and content at Courses.com.au
We are excited to step into 2019, which will be an exciting year for all of our customers. Hitsteps is working toward integration with a session replay recording service Reactflow which is currently under development and we at Hitsteps are monitoring the development and providing help wherever necessary.
Additionally we are working toward integration with iOS Numeric app which allows you to view your dashboard statistics on your mobile phone and Apple Watch.
Hitsteps growth did not stop in 2018 and there is no sign of slow downs! we are looking forward to 2019 and upcoming partnerships and integrations.
Wish you a happy new year from everyone at Hitsteps
The internet has become the center of our modern world. Itâs where we get all of our information, and itâs where most of us communicate with one another. As a result, itâs imperative that your business have a strong online presence. This means maintaining profiles on all relevant social media platforms, as well as employing a strong SEO and content marketing strategy.
But while itâs important to develop a strong internet presence, itâs equally as important to monitor and maintain it. And part of this process involves performing an audit of your online presence to make sure youâre saying everything you want to say about your brand, make sure thereâs nothing out there misrepresenting you, and also to check to see if itâs time to update your marketing strategy.
However, this is another case where the why is much easier to understand than the how. You may recognize the need to audit your online presence, but you might not be sure of exactly how to do it, so here are three things every online audit should include.
Check for Negativity
The first thing youâll want to do when auditing your online presence is to check to make sure no one is saying anything bad about you. Start by simply performing a Google search of your company name. Check the first page of results, but also dig into some of the stuff that comes up on the other pages. You never know if there is a blogger out there who has an ax to grind, and itâs better to identify these issues before they become more serious than they need to be.
If you do find something, there are a few things you could do, such as:
Nothing: If there is something out there that is obviously false, or that stands no chance of becoming more mainstream, then it might be best to just leave things as they are, especially if you had to wait until page nine on Google to find something negative. Sometimes drawing attention to these things can be worse.
Reach out to whoever posted the negative content: Sometimes a quick email responding to whatever claims this person is making, and also asking them to take down their post, can be enough to bury whatever negativity is out there.
Use SEO to bury it: If whatever negative thing is written about you is too big to bury and you canât get people to take it down, then you may need to get more aggressive. You can hire a reputation management company to help you bury these bad search results further down in Google, for we all know how often people look past the first page of search results.
Youâll also want to spend some time combing through review sites. If your business is on Yelp or Trip Advisor, make sure there arenât any really negative comments out there. And if you find something, address it. You may not be able to win back a customer with a bad attitude, but you will provide some context to the comment that may soften its significance when future users stumble upon it.
Confirm Consistency
Your online presence is really important for promoting your brand, and one of the most important things when it comes to branding of any kind is consistency. This is because you never know when someone will come into contact with your brand, but you want to make sure that they receive the right message whenever they do.
As a result, a big part of your audit should be making sure that all your messaging is consistent. Take a look at each piece of content on all different channels and ask yourself what these things are saying about your company. But before doing this, make sure youâre clear about what it is you want to say. Then, compare this with whatâs out there, and anything thatâs off message should be deleted or changed to more accurately reflect the brand message youâre trying to convey.
Study the Numbers
Another thing you should do while auditing your online presence is to figure out what kind of return youâre getting from these efforts. But before doing this, figure out what it is you want to get from each channel. For example, are you looking to convert people into customers? Or do you want people to sign up for your newsletter? Or are you just looking for engagement?
This matters because it will help you identify where your efforts are paying off and where they are not. For example, if youâre spending money on Facebook ads hoping to drive sales, but this isnât happening, then itâs time to rethink your strategy, or maybe even to drop Facebook advertising from your mix.
Overall, when it comes to digital marketing, quality is always more important than quantity. It may seem smart to be involved on all platforms, but doing so also exposes you to risk; there will always be irrational people. As a result, you need to be sure that this risk is worth it, and an audit of your internet presence will help you figure out if this is the case.
Evaluate Frequently
Itâs important to stop and do a full audit at least once if not two or three times a year. But this shouldnât be the only time you stop to look at your internet presence. Evaluation should be built into your approach, as this will help you identify more quickly when something isnât working, allowing you to adapt and keep moving without having to deal with unnecessary setbacks.
About the Author: Kevinâs current focus is running Broadband Search, as well as being the owner and founder of several other business. His business ventures have helped make Kevin an expert in digital marketing, and he likes to share his expertise with other business owners whenever he can.
This update involve all of our customers. According to this update, you will see different number of active online visitors (probably lower) and higher number of idle visitors.
Hitsteps tracking engine developed back in 2013. In that time, Hitsteps web analytics competitors such as Clicky, Woopra, W3Counter or HiStats were detecting live online users using rough analysis.
Some such as W3Counter were just looking at last 10 minutes unique visitor page views and using it as live user counter. It served the purpose at that time and Hitsteps utilised this method.
As time goes by, we added a ping method to our analytics which ping your visitors every few seconds to ensure visitor remain online. We were then shifted from old method to a hybrid method of calculating between Active and Idle online visitors.
As of today, Hitsteps is using a completely revamped method to calculate online visitors. Hitsteps now look at your visitors activity, tab focus and other information to determine if visitor is online, idle or offline.
Now, if your visitor do not interact with your website (scrolling, moving mouse, clicking, …) or focus out from your website (opening another page in another tab, clicking on another window or minimising browser window), we will immediately mark this visitor as Idle.
Likewise, If browser window get focus, mouse movement or scroll, we will mark this visitor as Active online.
We believe this change is necessary in order to show accurate online active and online idle visitors. however it will cause our numbers to differ from previous version of Hitsteps Analytics and perhaps all other web analytics out there who are using old methods to detect online visitors.
