Typically posted and left to gather dust, the FAQ page represents an outstanding opportunity to engage potential customers, as well as display your personality and score conversions for your online bookstore. Oh, by the way, adhering to these FAQ page best practices will also cut down on the number of disgruntled customers you have, relieve some the load on your customer service team and minimize email inquiries.

1. Make the Page Easy To Find

When a shopper is in a quandary about something, a surefire way to add to their frustration is make them look all over your site for help. The best user interfaces place a “Help” menu item on the main navigation bar, then repeat it in the footer. Another good idea is to include a link on each product page behind a button labeled; “Ask Us A Question” or “Need to Know More?” However, you approach it, make sure the user is taken to your FAQ page in one click when they need it.

2. Keep FAQs Short and to The Point

Populating your FAQ landing page with topic areas and a search window helps users get to specific information sooner. With a search window available, users can ask a question rather than scroll through every FAQ on the page. This minimizes the frustration factor, which helps them stay in a buying mood. Simplicity rules. One of the key reasons Google became the most popular search engine on the web is its home page is just a white field with a search window. Users could ask what they wanted to know with no other distractions. People like that.  Give them a search window and key topic areas, they’ll love you for it. When shoppers find the questions and answers they seek, make your responses pithy, full of personality and get directly to the point in as few words as possible. Answer the question, but don’t go on and on and on.

3. Tell Them What They Want To Know

Too many ebooks online stores populate FAQ pages with what amounts to covert sales pitches. Instead of concentrating on what customers need to know, they tell people what the seller wants them to know. This disparity renders the page largely useless and disillusions the shopper. A well-curated page will satisfy their query and keep them on your site longer—ideally long enough to make a purchase.

4. Use The Page To Learn Your Deficiencies

If you’re consistently getting questions on a particular topic, that’s a sign you’re doing a poor job communicating that information. In some instances, rather than creating a new entry on your FAQ page, go the section of your site best suited to providing a more adequate explanation and rework the content to better deal with the confusion.

5. Direct The User Back Into Your Site

Include calls to action and links back to the appropriate product page to get the shopper back into buying mode as seamlessly as possible. These can be in the form of a button labeled “Back To Product”, or a menu bar offering them a variety of other options—each of which keeps them in the purchasing funnel.

6. Put Your Personality on Display

Your FAQ page is a great opportunity to give your customer an opportunity to bond with you. Humor (where appropriate) can be useful in this regard. Giving customers something to smile about when they’re worried relaxes them and makes for a memorable experience. Demonstrating personality in this fashion also makes your site more relatable.

Adapting your help pages to conform to these FAQ page best practices will make them more useful, while inspiring added confidence in your shoppers.

In some ways, a traditional company can be great. The concept of a traditional company evokes ideas of something tried and true, and something that’s followed a formula of success over many years or even many decades. Many family-owned businesses and long-standing corporations are often considered traditional in many ways.

At the same time, it’s almost impossible to remain entirely competitive in a fast-paced business world if you don’t embrace some ideas of innovation and new technology.

There are ways to balance tradition with innovation and create a culture that incorporates both.

Below are some ways to make this work across your organization.

Start Small

Your employees and even corporate leadership may be reluctant to embrace entirely new ways of doing things, but start small. Introduce relevant, manageable and value-creating technology and software to begin.

As an example, start by eliminating your manual expense report process, and replace it with invoice and AP automation.

This is something that’s almost instantly going to improve efficiency and productivity, and it’s unlikely to be met with a lot of controversy. Once smaller additions are introduced, and new ways of doing things have gained some acceptance, you can move toward larger and more cultural shifts.

Go From the Top

The hardest people to convince to embrace technology and innovation are often the ones at the top, but if you can get them on board, it’s going to be much easier to have that become a cultural shift.

Your workforce is much more likely to move in an innovative direction if they see company leaders doing it.

If you’re introducing new software for example or a new digital platform, you have to get those leaders onboard from the start, and then they can create a sense of excitement for the rest of the workforce.

Encourage Efficiency

Efficiency was touched on above, and it’s really a key selling point when you want to shift ways of doing things and move toward more technology in a traditional organization.

For example, if you have a large sales team, rather than focusing on the concept of replacing them with digital technology, put the focus more on the idea of working smarter rather than harder, and becoming a more streamlined department.

Try to move employees and executives away from looking at technology as a replacement, but rather frame it as an enhancement for how things are done.

Be Transparent and Authentic

Finally, one of the big ways a startup’s culture often varies from that of a traditional organization is in its inherent sense of transparency and authenticity. These are great things to try to achieve even in long-established companies that might tend to have a more tight-lipped, behind-closed-doors mentality.

When you are authentic with employees, explain the rationale for changes and decisions, ask for open and honest feedback and discussion, and create a sense of transparency, there’s more room to welcome new ideas, embrace new technology and have a more forward-thinking and competitive company.  

Having an email list of subscribers is one thing, but actually engaging with those email subscribers is something else entirely. In fact, there’s literally no point to having an email list to begin with if you don’t engage with your subscribers.

If engaging with your email subscribers is something you’ve been struggling with lately, there’s no need to worry any longer. You’re about to learn how you can engage with them to gain higher click and bounce rates.

Here are the top four tips to better engage with your email subscribers:

1. Make Your Personality Show In Each Of Your Emails

Making your personality show in each of your emails is something your subscribers crave most, and yet it’s also something that many email marketers fail to do. Fortunately, you don’t have to make this same mistake.

When writing your emails, write like how you would write or talk to a friend. Don’t make your emails sound robotic or automated. By making your personality show, you’ll make your email messages feel more authentic and unique, which your subscribers will undoubtedly love.

2. Include A Countdown Clock To A Special Event

Another engagement trick you can use is to send messages with a countdown clock to special events. This will help make your subscribers actually look forward to whatever event you’re hosting.

The best email countdown clocks should allow you to choose between different fonts, colors, and sizes, come in a variety of different languages, and will update each time a subscriber re-opens the email.

3. Reward Your Subscribers

Email subscribers love to be rewarded. The moment they subscribe and are sent a welcome email, include a reward such as a free book or video in that message so they feel appreciated.

But you don’t want the rewards to end there. Continue to hold special contests and offer free giveaways throughout your marketing campaign.

4. Segment Your Email List

Segmenting your email list means breaking it down into specific different lists of subscribers. This will make it far easier to manage and also enables you to run a targeted email campaign to increase your leads and sales.

By dividing your email list into different segments of subscribers with different personal tastes, you can then send messages or rewards that those subscribers will be more likely to click. The best way to find out what the tastes of each subscriber are will be to send them a survey with a free gift at the end as a reward to compel them to actually take it.

Engaging With Your Subscribers

Email marketing will only work if you make your subscribers happy and build a relationship with each of them as individuals. This is what engaging with your subscribers is all about: getting them to actually know you as a person.

By following the tips you have just learned in this article, you will be able to more effectively engage with each subscriber and make them happier as a result.

Cloud storage adoption is on the rise, which makes security critical. High-profile data breaches are often in the headlines. This is why it is imperative for businesses and IT teams to understand that security is a proactive, two-way street. According to Gartner, information security spending is expected to surpass $113 billion by 2020. Security can get redundant, similar to a whack-a-mole where you are always on the defense–patching issues. Is the cloud more secure for your data? Read on to learn more.

Applications

Many businesses are moving to the cloud simply because it has the ability to recover quickly from any failure. In addition, the cloud was designed to scale even under heavy loads. As a result, developers have started getting into the habit of breaking applications into components in order to facilitate these types of features.

Here is the problem: sharing components can create a backdoor for users to gain access to data they’re otherwise unable to see or modify. This is certainly much more complicated than sending secure information over fax server software.

Hacking has become a billion-dollar industry. The bad guys are stealing your data and benefiting financially. It’s no surprise we’re seeing ransomware everywhere.

Lack of control

Sending company data to the cloud can make you feel insecure about who is monitoring your data. Who can you count on to keep your data safe? You’re giving up control since the information is no longer in only your hands. You can’t see or feel the servers. You won’t know if they need an update. You have no idea who works with your data.

This is why you need to ensure your cloud service provider offers bank-level encryption to keep your data safe. In fact, all of your data should be encrypted both in transit and at rest.

Explosive data growth

The Internet of Things and big data are fueling data growth. A lot of that data is now stored in the cloud. While cloud vendors do offer updated security services to meet evolving needs, it’s important to stay away from the set-it-and-forget-it train of thought. Your security team needs to monitor everything consistently.

Even if you have an open window, for just a few seconds, the bad guys will know. They are constantly checking for vulnerabilities–it’s their job. The minute you have a vulnerability, you will get hacked. You just can expect security features to protect you all of the time. This is why you must monitor and test your deployments continuously.

Zero-knowledge cloud storage

These types of providers are rising in popularity since they encrypt all of your data on the client side. As the name implies, the vendor has no way to access your data despite the fact that they are storing it. This type of storage can make the difference between keeping your data secure or exposing it to cyber threats. On the other hand, before you upload all of your data to the cloud–you can encrypt it yourself with tools such as Cryptomator and Boxcryptor. By encrypting your data, potential hackers can’t read it.

In a day and age where hackers are making millions, it is critical to do everything you can to keep your information safe. Even if you partner with a trusted cloud vendor, you must play your role in the execution of robust and comprehensive security.

Regardless of the type of e-Commerce site you operate, be it a full-blown site with thousands or products, or a small craft shop where you sell handmade items online, it’s important that you have a steady flow of traffic.

The more traffic, the more sales you’re likely to get.

That seems easy enough, right? That is until you start to notice a decline in your site traffic. It can be frustrating if you’re not getting the results you want, and it can often be time-consuming to do anything about it.

Some of the methods you might take to boost traffic can indeed be time-consuming, but there are some simple, fast things you can do to improve your site traffic in 2017 as well.

Encourage Customers to Share User Photos on Instagram

Instagram is one of the best social media resources for anyone from bloggers to people selling things on their website, and if you’re not putting your focus here, it’s a good time to start.

One way you can boost your traffic is to encourage your current customers to share photos of themselves using your products. When you’re just starting out with this tactic, you can incentivize them with free product samples, or you could do creative marketing such as running a contest to get people to share photos.

Create Landing Pages

Another good way to increase your overall sales and boost your business is to design individual landing pages for your products.

Landing pages should be optimized, and that path can take some work and some testing, but once you find a formula that works they can be great for driving traffic to your site and getting customers to buy from you.

Refresh Your SEO

If it’s been a while since you thought about SEO, make 2017 the year you refresh your efforts in this area. SEO rules may change, but it remains incredibly important as you work to drive traffic to your site. If it’s been a while since you’ve done keyword research or analyzed your site’s SEO, it’s important that you take the time to make adjustments if necessary.

You might also find some great new opportunities for targeting a wider audience simply by using keyword research tools.

Create A Blog

Even if you have strong content on your site describing your products and everything is keyword optimized, you should still think about having a blog.

A blog is one of the best ways to strengthen the brand of your e-Commerce store, let visitors know what your business is all about, and reach new traffic. Content marketing is essential if you want to strengthen lagging traffic numbers.

Incorporate Videos

Finally, if you’re not already, think about adding videos to your social media profiles and your e-Commerce site.

Videos are the perfect way to give people a complete view of your products, and also let them get to know you. When people feel like they know you, they’re more likely to visit your site and buy products from you.

Some of the methods to drive traffic to an e-Commerce site might be labor-intensive, but there are also ways like the ones listed above that can let you improve the performance of your site with a minimal time investment.

Content marketing is nowadays something that is really useful for business owners from all around the world. This is due to so many reasons, including the fact that it can generate links for a website. Most businessmen already know how valuable this is but do not use content marketing to generate those valuable links. A smart content marketing agency will always incorporate content marketing strategies to generate those backlinks through the methods mentioned below and many others.

Via pixabay.com

Guest Blogging

Some SEO specialists think that guest blogging does not work anymore but this is completely incorrect. In reality, this is one of the most effective strategies used by professionals to get backlinks for a website. The great thing about this is that the links that are gained are highly valuable, sometimes coming from publications that are highly reputable and known in the industry. At the same time, authority is increased because only high value content can be used in order to run a completely successful content marketing campaign and create successful websites.

Press Releases

This tool has been used for dozens of years. It is really effective and gives companies the possibility to share really important information, usually through the form of updates. Press releases will always have the potential of attracting bloggers and media, making everything attractive for the clients of a company. Links can be gained from highly influential websites and organizations. You wouldn’t mind getting a link from Forbes, the New York Times or Huffington Post, would you?

Interviews

Arranging interviews has many interesting advantages that many are not aware of at the moment. Contrary to popular belief, the interview does not need to be only in the interest of the publication. Interviews can be carried out by email or phone. Relationships are improved and that would help the purpose of the client. Expanding a network through interviews can bring in very good links and would help you to increase your brand awareness.

Infographics

You need to be careful with this but the strategy can be really effective. If you manage to offer an infographic that has a lot of quality in the industry, it is a guarantee that people will share it. This can create the viral effect that would be really beneficial for you. While it is never enough to do that and you will also need to share the infographic that you create with the use of the appropriate channels and the work involved is high, the number of really valuable links that you would gain is quite impressive. Such visual representations are really effective and any content marketing strategy that involves the use of infographics would be capable of getting many backlinks.

Using Guides

Creating guides that are useful in the industry is similar to the infographics approach we mentioned but the focus is put on content that is much more useful. You may want to consider the alternative but you have to be really careful since offering a guide that would not bring in high quality is never effective.

There are many things to consider when selecting a website builder. Cost, usability, ease of customization, are all factors. But one of the most important things to consider is how good your website can look with the use of a website builder.

Most website builders have anywhere from a few to thousands of themes to select from; but which website builder has the best themes to select from? What follows is a comparison of many popular website builders and their themes. Sure, a website builder may promote themes which looks fantastic at a glance: but how easy are they to implement, and is the platform user-friendly for making edits?

Website Builder

Website Builder leads the pack where it comes to themes that are easy to use, simply to navigate, and provide a lot of great features at a stellar price point. A great solution for the coding inept, the Website Builder platform utilizes drag and drop mechanisms which are rather more intuitive than some of the more popular platforms. The website building platform itself is streamlined, and unlike many others, doesn’t overwhelm the user with complex options and toolsets right out of the get.

Website Builder makes it easy to modify themes with dynamic content using the same function by which you add images and videos; everything from social media or RSS feeds. They also go the extra mile by providing a free image gallery. Unfortunately, many websites have stellar-looking themes, but require that their users find their own high-res images or other content to capitalize on them, creating an additional layer of difficulty in building a stellar-looking website. And unlike many other website builders, the themes here are all automatically responsive and mobile-friendly.

Best of all? A quick look at www.websitebuilder.com templates proves that there are over 10,000 themes to choose from. They’re organized by industry category, which makes it easy to find the best one for your needs.

Strikingly

Single page websites have become very popular for many brick and mortar businesses, and Strikingly is increasingly a favorite option for those needing simple, small websites which look great. Strikingly has free and paid options, with paid options offering third party plugins and lead generation components.

Strikingly offers only about a dozen different themes, but they’re all simple and basic enough to be easily modified and to suit almost any purpose. Unfortunately, the site creation process is one-shot: it’s difficult to edit themes once you save your progress, and there’s no option to export your website should you desire. All of their themes maximize visual appeal, and provide quality high resolution images for users.

Wix

Wix is one of the largest website builders in the industry, and according to press releases from the company, Wix gains over 40,000 users a day. But while they do offer amazing third party application integration and many specialized plugins specific to web needs and industries, their themes fall a little short.

There are hundreds to choose from, but the vast majority look and feel like basic templates, and there are few stand-out designs to choose from. But while their look isn’t really much to write home about, they utilize simple snap-guides to help website builders maintain a good aesthetic, and provide solid customization options such as pre-selected palettes. The Wix platform utilizes a drag and drop editor with a complex editing toolset which can be confusing for first-timers. Wix also allows users to edit html and css.

Wix websites also aren’t automatically mobile; instead, users must design a mobile version of their website, which can be a headache and a time sink.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a website builder platform which is gaining a great deal of headway in the industry, and part of their biggest marketing push emphasizes their fantastic themes. Squarespace has a simple and streamlined design suite which marries breadth of customization options with a simple interface that isn’t overwhelming.

Though Squarespace offers relatively few themes, they pack a solid design punch, and some include video backgrounds. And in addition to being able to deeply customize them, Squarespace makes it easy to switch design between themes… or to even design on two themes at once, so that users can pick which looks better. All of the themes are automatically mobile responsive.

A typical visitor leaves a web page approximately twenty seconds after clicking to it. The visitor quickly scans the initial content of the page and then bounces to the next site until he/she finds what they’re seeking withing those first crucial seconds. However, if your web-page is instantly deemed valuable, it will spark the visitor’s attention and inspire him to navigate through your website and keep returning. So it goes without saying that you want your website to be deemed instantly valuable.

A website can be filled to the brim with useful information and innovative products, however, it will remain unvisited if the site is not eye-catching or functional. We have all seen really bad websites and we have seen some good ones too, the trick to creating a successful website is to learn from the mistakes of the bad websites and be inspired by the effortless appeal of the good ones. Below are seven key characteristics of a successful website.

7 Characteristics of a Successful Website:

Fast load time and fluid navigation: Slow loading and choppy/slow navigation are among the top reasons that many visitors leave a website. Waiting for pages to load is not only annoying to the visitors, it is also a sign of poor back-end maintenance. First of all, you need to partner with a quality hosting company. Arvixe web hosting and similar services offer unlimited space and 24-hour support should you need it.

Other factors that affect load time are third party plugins and widgets and, to many page elements and oversized images. Sift through your plugins and deactivate and delete the unnecessary and speed-zapping ones. Additionally, you need to cut down on your large images and streamline your page elements.

Sleek and consistent design: The design of your website will act as a first impression to new visitors. Therefore, in order to keep their attention, your web-pages needs to be sleek, consistent, organized and interesting.

Choose the right theme of colors that will portray the feelings of the website while also complementing the logo and other graphics. Black text on a white background with easy to read text is highly recommended to create a sleek design. Additionally, the layout of your web-pages needs to be uncluttered and organized.

Pain-free usability: Your visitors shouldn’t have to be confused or anxious about how to navigate through the pages of your website. You need to create a pain-free usability environment so that visitors can find the content that they are seeking with minimal clicks. Going with a common CMS will allow you and your visitors familiarity when they come to your site, just take your time when choosing a theme! Pro tip, have your search button visible as well as your organized archives and a link to popular posts.

Quality content: It is important that you offer your visitors quality content that keeps them engaged and coming back for more. Your content should be relevant to the industry that you are representing and it should offer your visitors insight and entertainment. The content should also be unique and free from errors and fluff.

Inspire open communication: Open communication is important for encouraging visitors to return and also to build business/customer relationships. You should include a contact form on several pages on your website as well as host sporadic giveaways or surveys that allow visitors to interact with the site by filling out usable forms.

Compatible on any browser and web-enabled device:  It is important that your website is compatible on any browser and web-enabled device or you will miss out on a lot of deserved traffic.

Create complete functionality: All of the pages on your website should function in unison. You need to fix any pages errors and/or poor elements that you may have so that visitors aren’t tempted to leave your site.

There are literally millions of websites parked on the internet offering similar content, it is the responsibility of you the webmaster to create the perfect website that gives seekers exactly what they are after. Because a user-friendly, informative website will create traffic and traffic will create success.

There are all kinds of ways you can find yourself involved in community fundraising. Perhaps your child’s school or scout group is trying to raise money for new resources and wants parents to pitch in and help, or a club, hobby group or church you belong to needs to get hold of some funds. Perhaps you have a charity you support and you want to do something locally to help spread awareness and bring in donations. Whatever your reason for getting involved, it can often seem like the world of community fundraising is one that technology has kind of left untouched – with techniques still typically involving age old things like sales, sponsored activities, and local family events.

Via pixabay.com

Mixing In Newer Techniques

Of course, just because community fundraising still has a very old school flavour, that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the kind of techniques used for fundraising that is aimed at a larger and more globally or nationally distributed audience. Using simple online methods can help you get more people involved and interested in whatever you are doing, organising or selling to raise funds.

Selling Merchandise

One of the most usual ways to raise money, particularly for things that relate to children like schools or kids’ clubs, is to sell things designed or made by members of the group you are trying to help. Things like t-shirts, calendars, mugs and greetings cards featuring children’s artwork have long been used to encourage parents to donate money to primary schools, and things like cubs and brownies groups. Getting merchandise like this made is easy, as specialist companies like IQ Cards print and produce custom designed products specifically for this kind of fundraising, but it is in selling them that you can raise more money using the web.

Consider that there are probably plenty of kids in your school or group with relatives and family friends outside the local area who would be happy to own one of the kids’ products and support the cause. By using social shares and distributing pictures and ordering details through other parents, you can easily ensure everybody who will have an interest in your merchandise will know about it and have a chance to buy, even if they are on the other side of the country or the world!

Publicising Events

Social media can of course also help you spread the word about events, like school, church or community sales or fairs, or sponsored events like runs. Twitter is excellent for this as with the right people retweeting you (for example local businesses), you can reach a lot of local people who may not otherwise have found out about the event.

Another good way to use the web to publicise your event is to contact local blogs and ask them to write about your event, or ask if you can write a piece yourself for them to put up. Most communities do have their own blogs, and this is where many people go to find out what is going on in their neighbourhood.

Even if your methods of raising money are traditional, there is no reason not to incorporate some ideas from the internet marketing world to help you gain more publicity and raise more money!