Category:

Website Promotion

The Art of the Testimonial: How to Get Your Clients to Rave About You

by Erez Zundy May 27, 2015

One of your best marketing weapons is the customer testimonial. Testimonials serve to substantiate what you’ve said all along – that you’re a great designer that produces an excellent product and delivers results that meet or exceed expectations. However, you saying all that is way different than a customer saying all that.

Recent studies have shown that nearly 9 out of 10 consumers refer to online reviews to determine the quality of a business. Testimonials contribute to what is called social proof, which is very simply the notion that when others do something, we assume what they’re doing is worthwhile, so we want to do the same thing. Thus, the power of the testimonial: If Sally hires you to design her website, her testimonial serves as social proof to others that hiring you is a good plan.

Most people can easily get their friends to talk about their business, but the problem for many web designers is figuring out how to go about getting those coveted testimonials from clients. In this post, we explore various methods of procuring testimonials from clients that you can then use to generate more business. We also highlight several methods for crafting the perfect testimonial.

It’s Feedback You Really Want

Getting Feedback

At the outset, it’s important to define what you’re really after. Clients can be legitimately scared to give a testimonial. The word “testimonial” tends to elicit a notion in clients’ minds that their face and name will be plastered on your website along with their glowing review of you set in giant type, praising the glories of your work. That can be too much of the spotlight for some people.

Giving a testimonial is also difficult for clients because they often don’t know what to say and we often don’t do a good job of helping them figure it out. It’s a process that is too open-ended, and the result is usually something you can’t use or something you have to re-write (with their permission) anyway, like:

“Gosh, he’s such a great designer!”

Although that’s a nice sentiment, it doesn’t say anything substantive about your talent or your ability to solve clients’ problems.

To avoid that situation, ask clients for feedback instead. The advantage here is that customers are much, much more likely to give feedback than they are a testimonial, even though the purpose for you remains the same.

Where asking, “Hey, would you be willing to provide me with a testimonial?” typically nets you something superficial like that quoted above, a short questionnaire or a survey can get you much better results. Getting feedback in this manner is something that you can structure and provide guidance for clients to complete. Asking them specific questions will get you results that are far more usable, and that will tick the necessary boxes for creating a good testimonial. A few questions to ask are:

What factor influenced you the most in your decision to hire me?
What is the most salient benefit you’ve experienced as a result of my work?
If you recommended me to a friend, how would you describe the manner in which I worked with you?

There are an abundance of other great questions you can ask, but those listed above should give you an idea of how to craft a question such that the client’s answer is specific and highlights what you do well.

Timing is Everything

Asking for feedback at the right time is one of the biggest factors in getting the testimonial in the first place. Sure, you need to provide an awesome product or service, but an ill-timed request for feedback can be off-putting even to the most satisfied of clients.

The right time to ask for feedback depends on the product. In some instances, sooner is better so you can hit up your clients while their giddiness over what you’ve created for them is still fresh. If it’s something like graphic design services that are complete upon delivery, go ahead and include a request for feedback right along with your invoice.

If you’ve created something like a full website, you may need to wait a few weeks until the client has had a chance to reap the benefits of your design. Asking for feedback too soon in this instance may result in feedback that is superficial and doesn’t offer future clients much in the way of insight into your awesomeness. At the same time, waiting so long that the client forgets who you are and what you’ve done for them won’t benefit you either. It’s a delicate balance to strike!

The timing issue may also depend on the client. You will build incredible rapport with some clients right off the bat, so you may feel more comfortable asking for feedback sooner than you would for a client that has been more difficult to work with. But this doesn’t mean that you should only approach your favorite clients for feedback. Some of your best testimonials can come from the clients that challenged you, so don’t be afraid to ask!

Make it Easy for Them

Make it Easy

No one wants to spend 30 minutes filling out a questionnaire, so how you structure your request for feedback is extremely important. Less is more here, so zero in on two or three topics on which you’d like to get feedback. Additionally, part of making it easy for clients to give you feedback is in your delivery of your feedback request.

Keep It Simple

Maybe for one client your questions revolve around your specific products or services and how they met your clients’ needs. Perhaps with another client your interest is in their experience working with you or your ability to communicate effectively. The point being, don’t bombard every client with every question you can possibly think of. Spread out the type of feedback you request of them, and they will be much more inclined to spread the love about you.

Send Them an E-Mail

E-mailing clients can work wonders, because it gives them a quick and easy manner in which to respond, while also giving them enough space to give you honest feedback (which you may not get if you call or ask for feedback in person). If e-mail is your method of choice, give something like this a shot:

Hey, Jim!

Thanks again for hiring me for your website needs. I enjoyed working on the project, and I hope you enjoy the benefits of your new site design.

If you have a moment, I’d love to get some feedback from you, which, with your permission, I would use for marketing purposes. Feel free to answer the following questions and shoot them back to me via e-mail.

1. When did you realize that you’d made the right choice in hiring me?
2. How would you characterize the experience of working with me in terms of communication, meeting deadlines, and my ability to adapt to changing situations?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks,
Tina

An e-mail like this serves the purpose of getting feedback discussed above. It’s easy for clients to do, gives you the ability to connect with them in a timely manner, and by including relatively closed-ended questions, you get the specific feedback you need for a good testimonial, while giving your client enough latitude to sing your praises.

Send Them a Message on Social Media

We live in a world driven by social media, so taking advantage of that to get feedback is absolutely essential. Not only does social media make it incredibly easy to contact past clients (and them you), it gives you further venues for promotion as well.

The power of the testimonial is only magnified on platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Imagine an amazing customer testimonial video on your YouTube Channel, or a shout out from a past client on Twitter. Facebook’s review feature for small businesses is also handy for compiling loads of testimonials for potential customers to see.

Converse and Listen

Listen

Many of the most compelling testimonials you could ever hope for actually come up in natural conversations with your clients. The “AHA!” moments when your client sees how your design will solve a problem for them, or the day when their new site goes live and they gush about what a stress-free experience it was to work with you are perfect examples of testimonials occurring on the fly.

The best part about this kind of naturally occurring feedback is that it is incredibly genuine. Your client doesn’t have to struggle to think of what to say, nor do you have to take a lot of time making requests for feedback. A simple, “Hey, can I use what you just said as a testimonial?” will usually suffice.

Set Up Alerts

Google Alerts

Oftentimes your customers will talk about you and rave about your design skills but not think to include you in on the conversation. A passing comment here on Twitter or a blog post there about how much they love their new site design may go completely unnoticed by you if your clients don’t let you know that they’ve given you a shout out.

Setting up Google alerts will solve this problem. Just enter a string of terms that are applicable to you or your business, including your name, business name, and the word ‘review.’ Google will handle it from there, and email you whenever you or your business is mentioned. You can do the same on Social Mention, which scours social media for the terms you input.

Whenever you receive a notification from Google or Social Mention, you can contact the person that’s been mentioning you or your business and approach them for a testimonial. If they’ve already been offering up praise for you, they will be more inclined to give you more formal feedback that you can use in your marketing strategy.

Creating a Good Testimonial

Testimonials

If you’ve stuck with the process thus far, you’ve gotten some great feedback (or a lot, hopefully!) that provides specific information to your prospective clients about what it is you can do to help them out. Now comes the time to craft that feedback into awesome testimonials that will maximize the marketing value of what your clients have said about you. There are several ways to accomplish this.

Keep It Real

Unless your clients are all journalists, you’re going to get feedback that may not sound proper, and that’s okay. Part of the value of testimonials is their genuineness – if they sound too canned and perfect, customers will wonder if a client wrote it or if you wrote it yourself. Each testimonial should look, feel, and sound like the client that provided it to you, so resist the urge to fiddle with it and just leave it alone. The result will be much more impactful.

Up the Authenticity

Part of making your testimonials as good as they can be is including tidbits that make them more authentic. There is little that will make a testimonial more powerful than including the person’s photo with their feedback. Just seeing a face next to the quote will instantly make whatever the client has said more believable. Also ask your clients if you can include their Twitter handle or other social media information with their testimonial. If your client is a company, ask to include their business name, the city in which they are located, their business logo, or website address to add authenticity to their statements about you.

Tell a Story

As discussed above, don’t waste your time throwing around a bunch of blurbs like “He’s amazing!” on your website and assume that testimonials of that nature will get you anything in the way of respect, let alone additional business. Yes, shorter testimonials are necessary for a lot of your marketing – you can’t plaster your homepage with five or six paragraphs of feedback from clients.

However, some testimonials, perhaps those on a dedicated testimonials page, do need to go further in depth and tell a story. They need to draw your potential clients in, and explain to them (without being overly explain-y) exactly what benefits they will reap by hiring you, and do that without sounding like a huge sales pitch. This is where keeping it real and authentic really come in handy.

Just like when you write a story, there needs to be a beginning, middle and end. The beginning of the testimonial should highlight the client’s original problem – perhaps an outdated website, ineffective banner ads, or ugly icons and buttons. The middle of the testimonial needs to explain specifically what you did to address the client’s problem – an updated website, new branding, or improved SEO, for example. Then at the end of the testimonial, your client should explain what life is like now that you’ve delivered them a solution. Maybe their conversion rates are up or the number of online orders has doubled since the launch of their new site. A good story-like testimonial might go a bit like this:

“Before we hired Jonas our site was outdated and completely not user-friendly. We hired Jonas to build a new site, which Jonas did in a timely fashion, with excellent communication, and met all of our goals. In the six months since, we’ve seen traffic to our site quadruple.”

What Say You?

Getting customer testimonials is just one part of building your online brand the right way. What strategies do you employ to get customer feedback to build your brand? What tips would you offer to web designers who seek to increase the number of testimonials they have? Be sure to let us know by leaving a comment! Also check out our free monthly newsletter for more great tips on building a successful web design business.

Image Credits:
Thumbs Up by Sarah Reid via Flickr Creative Commons
Station 9: Feedback by Deutsches Historisches via Flickr Creative Commons
Insomnia by Lauren Hammond via Flickr Creative Commons
Easy Button by GotCredit via Flickr Creative Commons
Y2.d7 by B Rosen via Flickr Creative Commons
Our Testimonials… by Dave Dugdale via Flickr Creative Commons

May 27, 2015 3 comments

How to Get Friends to Talk About Your Business?

by Erez Zundy March 3, 2015

written by Erez Zundy

Word of mouth is an extremely effective way to build awareness about your business. Nothing beats positive reviews from people that have utilized your services and have come away satisfied. But if you’re just starting your career as a web designer, you might not have many clients to give you feedback. This is where your friends come in.

There are two types of friends you can rely on to spread the word about your business: your “real life” friends and family and your online friends on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Getting help from these two groups requires a different approach, but in the end, both offer unique ways to help you market your business. In this article, we offer a few tips for getting your offline and online friends to talk about your business.

Lay the Foundation

Before approaching any of your online or offline friends to speak on your behalf, you need to explain what it is that you do. Telling them that you’re a web designer isn’t specific enough. Do you have a niche you prefer to work in? Do you provide any other services, such as graphic design? What are your fees? Providing this basic information will help your friends do a better job of promoting your business.

Another key step you need to take in order to get your friends and family to promote your business for you is to make it easy for them to do. They are doing you a favor, so their involvement in your marketing scheme shouldn’t be something that takes up a whole lot of their time. Besides, giving them ways to talk nonchalantly about you and your business will make their recommendations seem more genuine and less like a sales pitch.

Get Props from Your Friends and Family

What better supporters of your business venture than your “real life” family and friends? Your friends and family are excellent marketing tools because they know you well and will be enthusiastic in talking about your business to others. Chances are they’ll talk about your business without much (or any) compensation, so that’s a bonus as well. But you can’t just send them out the door unprepared. Much like with your social media friends, your offline friends and family need to know specifically what you do so they can make informed recommendations to others. There are a couple of ways you can help your offline friends start those conversations.

Hand Out Business Cards

Business cards are a tried-and-true marketing tool that can be made much more effective if a friend or family member can add their recommendation. Give some cards to your friends and family and ask them to distribute them when the time is right. This needs to be a process that isn’t too contrived, otherwise their recommendation of you might come off a little too brash. Casually handing out your business card while mentioning a service you provide or a new idea you have is likely the best way for them to go.

Give Them a Digital Gift

Chances are your offline friends and family have their own set of online friends. Taking advantage of these connections will help you expand the impact of your friends’ recommendations. A nice way to help your offline friends share with their online friends is to provide them with some sort of special image. This shouldn’t be your business’ logo, rather, it should be something special and relevant to your friend. Design a graphic for their birthday or create a holiday card for them to send to their own friends and family. Whatever you create, include your signature or branding, or your website or phone number, that way people that see it can contact you once they see what impressive work you do!

The image above was shared on my Facebook timeline by one of my friends for my birthday and it says “Happy Birthday Erez”. He’s not a designer, but this is a great example of something that made me laugh, was a personal gift, and is something I would gladly share with my friends and followers, even if he would have placed a logo or a small text with his website URL.

Give Them Something to Talk About

Another effective way for your friends to bring your business up in conversations with their friends is to talk about the success you’ve had. Have them discuss a site you just completed for a local business. They can talk about how you donate your time to designing and maintaining a site for a charity organization. Ask them to have a conversation about some free resources you’ve posted on your blog. It’s much easier for people to recommend you if they have something tangible to bring up, even if it’s a relatively small accomplishment. But you and your friends need to share these successes with a good measure of modesty. Again, keep it simple and straightforward so it sounds less like a late-night infomercial and more like a genuine, well-thought-out recommendation.

Get Them Online

Online review tools are all the rage right now. In fact, according to Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers worldwide say that they rely on online reviews more so than any other form of advertising when making a decision to purchase a product or service. Fortunately, there are many great online options for your friends, family, and future clients to talk about your business.

Customer Review Sites

There are a number of websites that allow consumers to leave feedback for businesses. Although some, like Angie’s List, require you and your customers to have a paid account, there are many free sites where your friends can leave you feedback and offer reviews of the services you provide:

Yelp! – Yelp! is a free site that allows consumers to rate businesses on a scale of zero to five stars. With 139 million monthly visitors, it’s a great place for your friends to build your reputation.
Google Local – Google is the most widely used search engine in the world, so having your friends write some nice reviews on Google Local is a great way to boost your profile. Any reviews left for you can be shared in your Google circle, and the reviewer can share it with people in their circle as well, expanding the scope and impact of the feedback left for you.
Yahoo! Local – Similar to Google Local (although with far fewer users), the listings on Yahoo! Local allow customers to post reviews about your business and services using a five-star rating system.

Social Media

If your business isn’t on Facebook, it should be. An incredibly powerful marketing tool, Facebook has a handy recommendation feature that allows clients to post feedback to your timeline. In essence, your entire Facebook profile is a giant recommendation anyway. Since more people have Facebook than not, it’s an easy way to get your friends to give you some props. You can easily create a business page so your friends, family, and clients can leave you likes and comments. If you work independently under your own name and prefer to use your personal page for business, just be sure your page is publically viewable.

Twitter might not come immediately to mind as a place for your friends to chat your business up. However, it’s actually a great platform to do so. Friends can tweet about your business to their followers, which you can then re-tweet as a recommendation. You could even start a hashtag for your friends and future customers to use to shout out how happy they are with the work you do. Those tweets would be indexed by Twitter and would pop up when someone searches for your business. Here are a bunch of guys doing a great job posting design content on twitter.

For all your creative professional friends, LinkedIn is a good place for them to talk about you and the services you offer. There’s a recommendation feature built right into the platform, so your colleagues can easily give you a shout out. If you have a LinkedIn profile for your business, there’s a handy place for your friends to leave feedback on your specific products and services as well.

You might need to incentivize your social media friends to participate in your marketing plan. Offering a commission is a good place to start. If you don’t have the funds to pay your friends for their services, try bartering. In exchange for talking about your business with their friends and colleagues, you can offer to design your friend a logo or other graphic, create a business card for them, or perhaps design a new logo for their business. You could also offer to market their business on your social media channels. Free stuff generally works as well. If you’ve got any merchandise with your logo or name on it, offer it up as “payment” and send it to your social media buddies. You might be surprised at the lengths people will go to for a free t-shirt!

Your Website

If you’re utilizing your friends for promotional purposes, you might as well double-down on the free publicity and dedicate part of your website to customer reviews and testimonials. You can embed tweets or Facebook posts that offer nice reviews of your services. You can also incorporate a form so future clients can leave unsolicited feedback. This is an especially desirable option if you don’t have accounts on Yelp! or other feedback sites. An added bonus is that you have total control over what’s posted.

Did you create your own website yet?

Conclusion

Spreading the word about your business doesn’t have to involve a lot of output of money on your part or time and energy on the part of your friends and family. Word of mouth is an excellent marketing tool that will increase your business’ exposure and convince people that you are worthy of their business. To pique people’s interest, come up with fun, creative, and unique ways to market yourself. And be sure you utilize that same fun and creative spirit to create unique work that will make you and your business memorable for potential clients.

Do you have a creative way to utilize your connections with others for marketing purposes? Let us know your marketing secrets by leaving a comment below. Also sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest design trends and to get more great tips for growing your business.

Image Credits:

With a Megaphone by a Wall by Garry Knight via Flickr Creative Commons

Emerging Media – Twitter Bird by mkhmarketing via Flickr Creative Commons

Business Card Wall by Dustin Ground via Flickr Creative Commons

The Sweet Smell of Success by wackystuff via Flickr Creative Commons

March 3, 2015 0 comment

Design Tips Website Promotion

10 Reasons Users Bounce Too Early

by Bitsy October 10, 2014

written by Bitsy

In the abstract, your website’s analytics look good. Plenty of web traffic is streaming in from all directions from a healthy mix of organic and social referrals. Still, something is off: Conversion rates are down, bounce rates are way, way, up, and all the effort you’ve put into boosting web traffic seems for not.

Common internet knowledge tells us that if a user can’t find what they’re looking for on a website within 3-5 seconds, they’re far more likely to “bounce” (or leave your website before they interact). If your web traffic is steady but your engagement is still low, it probably means that users are having a hard time finding what they’re looking for. In this case, the time is ripe for some website re-evaluation and optimization.

In this blog post, we’ll take an up close and personal look at 10 reasons users bounce too early. Hang on, it’s time to dig deep:

1) You haven’t discovered landing pages yet

In the online marketing world, a “landing page” refers to a content-specific page that users are referred to when they use specific search terms or click a social media campaign. Say that you have an online shop that sells tea from around the world, from oolong to earl grey. If a user is looking to buy oolong tea online, they might type in “buy oolong online”. Instead of being directed to a general homepage from which they’ll have to navigate to your oolong selection, an oolong tea-specific landing page will guide them directly to the product’s “buy now” page, vastly simplifying and streamlining the conversion process.

Your landing pages can be aligned to a Google AdWords or social media campaigns, and can retain the basic design elements of the their “mother” pages.

2) You’re not A/B split testing

If you’ve ever read up on online marketing strategies, you’ve probably come across the talk of A/B tests. Simply put, an A/B test compares the performance of two or more pages of the same purpose. The differences between the two pages is often minimal, such as a slight change in font size or the color of the “call-to-action” button. Still, these subtle changes can make a big difference in the way a user first perceives a website.

If you’re running landing pages aligned to AdWords keywords, you can run A/B tests (or “content experiments”) through Google Analytics. Otherwise, there are plenty of online tools available that allow you to instantly compare the success of different versions of your website, with Optimizely being perhaps the best known. For a complete run-down of everything A/B testing, check out this article at Smashing Magazine.

3) You force users to log-in before they interact

We’ve all been there: You’re roaming around the internet in search of something, and you come across a marketing strategy on a website that is just so annoying, so persistently grating on your patience, that you want to find the person who implemented it and throw your shoes at them. As far as annoying online marketing ideas go, forcing users to sign-up even before they really understand what’s on offer is right up there.

Web users want to feel like more than a grain of sand in your Big Data desert. At the end of the day, users simply want to find what they are looking for, interact with your website as smoothly and as minimally as possible, and get on with their lives. Don’t burden users with unprompted requests for information, especially in the first moments of arriving on your website.

4) You still think that pop-ups are a good idea.

Much like #3 on our list, few marketing tricks are as irritating as pop-ups. Building a strong following and a loyal customer base requires web users to trust you, not to feel barraged by requests.

5) You’re boring users with walls of text

Arriving on a website can be a little like showing up at a party where you don’t know anyone. You search for someone who seems friendly and normal, but you inevitably spend time cornered in the hallway talking to the bore, the guy who monotonously recounts his pet lizard’s feeding schedule as you’re forced to sit patiently and listen, looking for any opportunity to escape. Greeting your web users with a wall of text is a little like that guy.

Web users have a notoriously short attention span, and don’t tend to relish the idea of having to read an essay before they understand what you do. Instead of confronting users with a “wall of text”, break information up into bite-sized pieces, one to two-sentence long bits of information that serve to provide users with an instant idea of what you do.

Save longer explanations and in-depth content for other sub-pages on your website, or better yet, your blog.

6) You’ve employed the “polar bear in a snowstorm” effect

Visual contrast, or the difference between lights, darks and shapes, plays an absolutely crucial role in determining what web users pay attention to. A lack of contrast between background and text, for example, can render a website almost impossible to read. The same goes for spacing and sizing of text; if text is too small or spaced too closely, a web user’s eyes will become frustrated.

Take a good look at your website, and consider if you can amp up the contrast and spacing between elements.

7) Your website’s loading times are at a snail’s pace

According to Fastly, slow website loading times can result in a host of problems, from abandoned shopping carts to lower Google search rankings. What’s more, each additional second a page takes to load increases the likelihood of a user bouncing by a reported 65%.

While IM Creator pages are designed to avoid slow loading times, there are a number of factors to keep in mind to ensure that they work smoothly. To test your site’s loading time, plug your URL into apps like YSlow or PageSpeed Insights Browser Extensions. Next, take a look at this article by MOZ and follow their detailed steps to make sure you right all your time-based website wrongs.

8) You’re punishing users with flashing lights and sounds

Remember how we said that sign up sheets and pop up ads are the most annoying marketing ploys on the web? Well, we must have briefly blocked the horrors of flashing lights and music on websites from our minds. No matter the temptation, avoid adding auto-play music or animation to your site. Not only are these kinds of distractions corny, obnoxious, and desperate, they also have a tendency to slow down your website.

9) You insist on a fancy intro page

Perhaps there was a time in the not so distant past when intro pages – pages that greet users but hold no content – seemed like an intriguing and sexy idea. These days, they just appear pretentious. Every unnecessary click a user has to make to access the content they’re looking for is a click too many. Insisting that your website has an intro page is a great way to bore users even before they are able to access your content.

10) Your website is cluttered

If users can’t find what they’re looking for on your site within a few seconds, they’ll bounce. Abstract headlines, superfluous information, and poorly-spaced content confuse your website’s purpose and make it difficult for users to assess whether they’ve come to the right place. In order to de-clutter your site, try breaking content up into smaller pieces, or move non-essential information to different pages (or further below the fold). Pay close attention to spacing, too: What may seem like a sparse website to you will be a breath of fresh air for users.

Image Credits

Passengers Leaving Metro Train at Wikipedia Commons

October 10, 2014 0 comment

Monetization Website Promotion

5 Sustainable Monetization Strategies to Help You Earn for the Long-Term

by Erez Zundy August 31, 2014

written by Erez Zundy

Let’s face it; commerce makes the world go round and for every website or blog that is launched, exists the subtle or major idea of making money online. Success has a particular appeal that simply cannot be ignored and as we act on our passions, inspirations and ideas, monetization will always tend to be an option.

However, gone are the days when merely having a website in and of itself translated into immediate earnings, the online landscape is vastly different. Customers and readers are much harder to please and consume content with greater scrutiny and in some cases “blindness”. The average performance of banner ads in the late 1990’s was as high as 44%; meaning that 44% of all visitors to some websites would find banners interesting and click them. Whereas in our current digital age, click-through rates on average are at about 0.1%. It is indeed true that banner ads are not as effective as they once were and we’re just not attracted to them anymore. However, it’s not the medium that is the problem but is more a matter of context. It’s about knowing your audience, finding out what interests them, what they’re looking for and providing value which is relevant to them. Banner advertising is just one example of monetization but the greatest earnings are achieved when relevant value is delivered.

The Correct Approach to Earning Online

In the midst of the pressure for short-term gains, whether at the personal or business level, it’s quite easy to get carried away with making money while ignoring the fact that consumers demand more value. A greater focus on the dollars and cents can easily mean less investment in where it matters most, which is the customer experience. It is evident that 78% of customers tend to abandon transactions and purchases because of poor customer service, which is a clear indication on how to implement monetization strategies that work. This can be summed up in the quotes, “the person that gives value first has the leverage” and “If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care” by Gary Vaynerchuk. Monetization should not be your primary goal nor should it be a side thought but it is most fruitful as the result of giving superior value, regardless of your product (blog, SaaS startup or online retail site)

Your investment of time, effort and in some cases money is what will help make monetization a rewarding venture.

In addition, there has never been a time when it’s easier to build websites and maintain a presence online than now. The vast resources online now make it possible for beginners to build beautiful and functional websites for free; so there’s no excuse to not get started. Also, since we’re on the topic of monetization, a few free website builders also give their users a chance to earn through affiliate sales. IM-Creator for example, has an affiliate program which pays $35 per referred customers who sign up for a premium product. The possibilities are endless for earning online.

Here are some options for monetizing your online presence.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is among the easiest methods for earning online. Businesses pay you to promote their products and make sales for them. Some affiliates offer as compensation a percentage of the value of sales while some have more set and predictable payouts.

There are 2 simple rules you need to follow here:

1) The products you promote must be related to your core topic or product.

2) The fact that you promote / sell them is an endorsement, so make sure they’re high-quality products.

A real-life example of affiliate marketing done right is Arsena Schroeder, an IM Creator user that created a special page on her website to promote IM Creator. She even goes further and provides a service designing a website using IM Creator.

In-Text Ad links

For example, VigLink is one of the most profitable and useful platforms for content-driven commerce based on affiliate sales. By using their network you’ll gain access to over 35,000 merchants who are seeking relevant websites to reach wider audiences. The key to making this kind of network work is aligning your website with merchants who offer products that offer great value to your audience. For example, if your content is about sports news and caters to enthusiasts and people active in athletics, promoting products from Nike (who is a merchant with VigLink) would produce above average results since your audience would typically be more in-tune with that content.

Google AdSense & Contextual Ads

Google Adsense is an ad network that compensates content publishers for each legitimate click they receive on banner ads placed on their website. Their ads are usually contextual which means that the advertising they serve on your site is more than likely related to your site’s content or something your visitors may have interest in based on their browsing activities. What you earn per click depends greatly on the industry you’re in and what advertisers are paying Google to distribute and serve the ads. For example, if you’re in the poetry niche, click earnings typically range from $0.10 to $1.00 per click while niches related to law, pay as high as $50 per click.

The best place to start learning about Google’s ad products is their beginner’s policy page and this in-depth guide on how AdSense works. If you have an IM Creator website, refer to this guide to learn how to add AdSense to your website.

Membership / Premium Content

If you have specialized knowledge and experience that the public would find useful, then there’s a possibility they’d be willing to pay you for it. Somewhat like an online consultant, you can create a community where your audience pays a nominal fee to gain access to a wealth of knowledge. The key here is not to charge the highest price you possibly can but to find the right figure that will attract a high volume of participants. A successful example of a membership based model in action, which you should emulate, is the community offered at Copyblogger by Brian Clark and his team. As a pioneer in content marketing from the late 1990’s, Brian has developed his profile as the “go-to” copywriter online and a content marketing expert before it was a “thing.” As a result, he has amassed a unique wealth of knowledge that is unique to the web.

Copyblogger’s membership option is the perfect mix of free membership based content for aspiring content developers as well as a paid monthly “Authority” option presenting the opportunity to gain greater access to privileged and expert-level content. It’s a very focused resource that you’ll hardly find anywhere else; this is what makes the perfect membership community and product.

Your approach

The key to creating a great membership site isn’t finding the right payment model, but getting the concept of membership right. Before people are willing to pay for content, they need to see its value; the focus needs to be on value received rather than cost of membership.

It’s about delivering a great experience and members need to feel like they are gaining VIP treatment, an elite status, high-value information that cannot easily be found elsewhere, special access to you, the expert, and networking opportunities with other perceived high-value members.

Members can either pay on a monthly basis to gain access, pay for individual pieces of content like white papers and guides or on a metered approach which may allow consumption of free content up to a certain numbers of views. It’s up to you and what works best for your business model.

How To Implement On Your Own Website

As you begin assessing the right monetization strategy for your website, ensure that you clearly plan and review the experience for your visitors. You should be able to layout and anticipate what users will see and how they perceive ads; whether they add or damage the user experience. In addition, assess carefully the quality of products offered by any affiliates you choose to work with. Always promote quality brands that align with the vision of the experience you have for your users.

Monetization is quite simple if you have the right motivation. Always keep your customers’ and audience’s satisfaction the center of your focus. Start by building trust and the opportunities for earning will follow.

August 31, 2014 0 comment

SMB Tips & Tools Website Promotion

Video Content and Its Benefits for Online Marketing

by Erez Zundy August 4, 2014

written by Erez Zundy

Online marketing has turned into an art form of sorts, creating promotional material that can reach millions, all the while providing tons of statistical data, which enables better targeting and the creation of better marketing material. However, for inexperienced online marketers, it may be problematic to pick out the marketing method that works best for them. This is usually achieved with a trial and error method and it takes time to figure out what works best for individual situations.

One exception to this rule is video marketing, which is as effective online as it has previously been through our TV screens. The possibilities for the application of quality video material seem boundless. A single video can perform multiple marketing roles; in this article, we’ll go over a few of its key benefits and capabilities:

Social sharing potential

Promotional material doesn’t tend to thrive in boring environments; no matter your audience, they want immediate answers relayed in a casual, playful, and straightforward way. Video marketing has great viral potential and allows you to play with a lot of elements that can increase its chances of catching the sharing wind through social media.

What’s more, video provides the unique advantage of letting you time when your audience loses interest and stops watching.

Managing boring subjects

Not all material is easy to advertise. B2B companies in particular know that it can seem next to impossible to make technical language and abstract concepts pop out of the screen. Even potential clients who are well versed in your business sector’s language don’t tend to have the patience to read through your company’s information.

With a video, much of the wall-of-text malaise that comes from technical language can be improved by simple animations and diagrams. A well-made video not only helps to hold a viewer’s attention as they learn about your product, it also makes it more understandable.

Driving traffic

There’s little way around it, the most immediate, obvious (and free) way to start driving traffic with video marketing is via YouTube. Not only is it the single largest video platform online, YouTube recognized early on the power of social media, and its interface has been optimized to make it as easy as possible for your viewers to click share.

It can take work to develop a steady fan base, but will pay off in the long run. The rules for running a decent YouTube channel are quite similar to running a successful blog:

Punctuality: Keep viewers fed with a steady stream of helpful tips and resources. Just as every blog post you write needn’t be 1,500 words long, nor do regular videos need to be overly steeped in details. Short, happy updates often suffice.
Quality: A no-brainer, but it needs to be re-stated: There’s no point investing time and energy into videos unless you have something valuable to say. Focus on churning out good content as opposed to filling a quota.
Responsivness: Like all user-generated content, YouTube and other video platforms thrive on user comments. If a user comments on your video, be prompt and helpful in responding to them.

Did you know that your website is 53% more likely to appear on Google if you have a video on it?

Statistic and customer information

Your audience’s attention span isn’t the only bit of data you can glean from your video analytics. Different analytics allow you to gain information about your viewers’ gender, age, nationality, location and more. This information is invaluable for future decision-making and for the creation of better targeted marketing material. On top of this, you can ask for additional information through “squeeze windows” – pop ups that encourage viewers to click or subscribe.

In the past, the production of video material for advertising purposes was expensive, but these days, the whole process costs a lot less and it doesn’t really need to be top-notch from the technical side of things in order to be effective. If we look at things across the board, most successful video blogs were started by teenagers from their bedrooms and dorm rooms, with rudimentary budget equipment and video production software. All it takes is a bit of research and a good idea to boost your website traffic, increase conversion along with your fan base. Video material can be combined with your blog in order to network better. The benefits are too great to disregard.

August 4, 2014 0 comment

Content & Writing Creating A Website Website Promotion

The 5 Best Translation Tools To Translate Your Website

by Bitsy May 13, 2014

written by Bitsy

It goes without saying that in order for your website to reach the broadest audience possible, it helps to offer language options in more than just your native tongue. Of course, for those of you who already know this, you may already be muttering, “easier said than done”. Translating large chunks of text for a website is no small task, and tends to come with a considerable (and usually prohibitive) price tag.

So, where to go when you need to translate your German website for your predominantly Japanese customers, or your Spanish website into English for your American visitors? Read on below to find out about our top 5 online translation services to help you get the job done.

1) OneHourTranslation

With over 3000 language pairings, 15,000 on-call translators, and prices starting at just 6 cents/word for basic translation, OneHourTranslation is fast becoming one of the largest and most trusted online translators on the web. They’re also among the fastest, offering translation services at 1-page/hour. You can choose between “basic” translation, which works well for websites and personal documents, or “expert” translation for technical documents that require a more detailed vocabulary. If you’re unsure of the wording or grammar of your writing, OneHourTranslation also offers proofreading services as an add-on.

1000 words from Hebrew to English will cost you about $90 USD.

2) LanguageCloud

With an impressive list of corporate customers, including Adobe, Boeing, and Canon, SDL’s LanguageCloud services are another heavy-hitter in the online translation world, albeit among the most expensive. LanguageCloud offers two types of services: an online API that allows you to input a text and receive an instant, automated translation (much like Google Translate), and a professional translation service powered by a network of over 900 in-house translators and 15,000 freelance translators. Like OneHourTranslation, LanguageCloud offers general translation and expert translation for technical writing, as well as proofreading services. Their only notable drawback is their instant quote system, which requires you to upload your document before receiving an estimate.

1000 words from Hebrew to English will cost you about $228 USD.

3) Elance

More and more, small businesses are turning to freelance job sites like Elance to find professionals for all manner of jobs, from marketing to content writing to translation. You, the client, simply upload a description of what you need done, set a price range, and wait for the offers to come pouring in. Freelance translators bid to get the job, and you maintain total freedom as to who you choose and how much you’re willing to pay. Elance and other freelancing sites like freelance.com offer a great way to get in touch with professional freelancers from all corners of the globe, but they do come with a couple drawbacks. Because anyone can sign up as a freelancer, spammers do come out of the woodwork sometimes – which can hinder your search – and because you’re doing the hiring on your own, Elance might not be the most efficient option for those who need a text translated ASAP. The quality of the translation services also may not be as consistent as if you would work with a dedicated translation service, although with 1000’s of translators to personally choose from, uncertainty is kept to a minimum.

You can set your own prices on Elance, or accept a customized offer from a professional translator.

4) TextKing

In comparison to many other online translation services available, TextKing could almost be considered a boutique translation service, with just 2,700 translators working worldwide. Nevertheless, TextKing offers translations in 47 languages, and starting at 0.07 cents/word, it’s among the better deals in town. TextKing also provides machine-automated translations for quick translations, and offers a wide variety of translations for specialized texts, such as law and medicine.

1000 words from Hebrew to English will cost you about $70 USD.

5) Tolingo

Tolingo sets itself apart by allowing you to search through the profiles of their translators, letting you tailor the text you need translated to the specific knowledge of the person who will be taking on your assignment. With prices starting at 15 cents/word, Tolingo isn’t the cheapest online translation service on the market, but it does offer some interesting services, such as the ability for a client to track the progress of their translation. This is important, especially as the art of translation often depends on the translator understanding the individual style of the author and the context of a text. Like SDL, you need to upload a document in order to get an instant quote, but reviewers have also praised this system as providing a more accurate overview of how much your assignment will actually cost you. Tolingo also offer proofreading, formatting, and online publishing services as add-ons.

1000 words from Hebrew to English will cost you about $180 USD.

Image Credits

Collection National Flags by Wikipedia Commons

May 13, 2014 0 comment

SMB Tips & Tools Website Promotion

Boost your Etsy business with IM Creator

by ruthie May 1, 2014

written by ruthie

Have an Etsy store? Terrific! Now let’s bring lots of traffic and visitors to it.

We love the Etsy community, it is a great and accessible way for people to sell their work and art. We also understand that our customers want flexibility when building their growing brand by having their unique website.

That’s why at IM Creator, we have an easy way to embed your Etsy store to your website. Build your website the way you want it to be – your fonts, galleries, color palette, videos, contact page – and simply add the Etsy store to it.

Start selling on your own website in minutes.

Francesca Mancini is an amazing jewellery designer and has a store on Etsy.

Building her business site on IM Creator, she was able to display her store on the website but also add additional pages about her and her work. This is valuable information that a potential client may miss, with only a slim Etsy page.

Integrate your Etsy shop to your site in 2 simple steps:

1) Create an Etsy mini

2) Add the HTML code of Etsy mini to your site through Add Element > HTML (no coding required :-))

Etsy store integrating perfectly –

May 1, 2014 0 comment

Creating A Website Website Promotion

Trust Seals: What They Are, Which To Use, and Where To Use Them

by Erez Zundy April 8, 2014

written by Erez Zundy

When you think about it, doing business on the internet is a strange game: Millions upon millions of people are forging anonymous relationships in order to buy products that may or may not be legitimate every second of every day. Much of the time, the only guarantee as to the legitimacy of a seller or their product are a few visual signs, know as trust seals. These underrated little symbols can make a big difference when it comes to putting your visitors at ease, and reducing cart abandonment.

In this post, we’ll look at in’s and out’s of adding trust seals to your website.

What are Trust Seals (And Which Ones Work Best?)

“Trust seals” usually come in the form of symbols or “badges” that show users you are a legitimate business. A third-party security entity, such as an anti-virus or encryption service, provides individual websites with trust seals once it has been determined that the website lives up to their standards.

Trust seals can be broken down into roughly two categories: “SSL badges/seals” that show an encrypted connection between your website and the user’s web browser, and “trust badges” that don’t offer any real security other than a proven relationship between a website and its users.

Interestingly, most users don’t know the difference between the different kinds of badges, and most don’t really care. The dozens of badges that exist to place on your website act more as a safety placebo than a real guarantee of security.

With this in mind, it’s helpful to look at some data as to what trust signs users have the most confidence in. Last year, the independent web usability research group Baymard Institute released a study showing that, from a survey of over 2500 people, “Norton Secured” was the most trusted seal, garnering 36% of votes. Second place went to “McAfee Secure”, with 23% of votes, and 13.2% of votes were shared equally by “Trust E” and “BBB Accredited”. Interestingly, the second, third, and fourth place winners of the survey aren’t SSL badges.

Baymard Institute recommends adding several seals to your site to cover all your bases by investing in a Norton SSL seal to show that you have an encrypted connection, a McAfee seal to show that your site is “hacker safe”, and a BBB Accredited or TRUSTe seal to show that you have good customer relations. As we’ll show in the next section, though, this might not always be possible for young entrepreneurs.

Helpful Tip: Users don’t really know the difference between different trust signs on your website, so if in doubt, go for the most popular.

How Do I Get a Trust Seal? What About a Free One?

For many online businesses, investing in a SSL seal or trust seal with Norton or other big companies is a price worth paying, both for the service they provide and the calm they instill in users. For those of us just starting out, though, a big-name trust seal along with encrypted services will set you back about $2700 per year. While free trials are available, free alternatives to the big guys do exist. Be careful, though: You get what you pay for (or don’t) in most cases, so investing a bit of money when you feel you need the right security might outweigh the long-term costs.

Free Trust Seal Alternatives

StartSSL offer a free SSL encryption certificates almost instantly for websites that need to prevent eavesdropping and increased privacy. The service is low-assurance, meaning that it’s not top of the line, but at least it’s a start.

Comodo also offer a free 90-day SSL certificate, with most of the bells and whistles, including a dynamic “TrustLogo” for your website and free daily website scanning.

CAcert is a free community-driven security certificate authority that issues trust seals for free. In order to benefit from CAcert’s collective perks, you need to join as a member of the community. Once you’re in, they’ll issue you with free certificates.

ScanVerify isn’t a SSL encryption service, but it does provide free third-party assurance to online customers that a website has been validated and can be trusted.

Where to Put Your Trust Seal

Once you’ve validated your site with a third party, it’s time to figure out where exactly you should put your badge of honour. In all cases, it’s important to remember that trust seals are there mostly to put your user, not you, at ease, and so it’s best to place them at crucial moments in your relationship with your customers.

Above the “fold”: When web usability and marketing types speak of the “fold”, they are talking about the crucial area of a website that can be seen as soon as you arrive on the page, before you choose to scroll. Putting a trust seal front and centre for a user to see as soon as they arrive on the site can be helpful in establishing an immediate sense of trust, but for some businesses this may also be too flashy or intrusive.
Next to the checkout or payment field: This is by far the most important area to place your trust seals, as it remind users just as they’re pulling their credit card from their pocket that you’ve been recognized for your customer relations and your security. One Get Elastic case study showed that adding a “Mcafee” trust seal next to their payment process boosted sales by 4-6%.

Image credit:

Credit Cards: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Credit-cards.jpg (wikipedia commons)

April 8, 2014 0 comment

SMB Tips & Tools SMBs & Freelancers Website Promotion

6 Powerful Ways to Promote Your Restaurant Online Yourself

by Erez Zundy March 3, 2014

written by Erez Zundy

Word of mouth goes a long way when promoting your restaurant, but it’s not the only way to fill seats. Promoting your restaurant online is one of the best ways to build your customer base, and best yet, it doesn’t have to cost you very much.

Online searches, and your restaurant, are all about local

Promote Your Restaurant

Local is more than a buzzword for Google and search engines – it’s just about Gospel. And among the top of all things that people search for locally is restaurants:

Best “fill in your type of food here” restaurant
Restaurants in “fill in your location here”

These types of terms have a high search volume in almost every local market, making it all but mandatory that your restaurant increase its presence online.

But how?

Here are six ways to promote your restaurant online.

It begins with a website – With sites such as Yelp around, many restaurants assume they don’t need a website. They already have an online presence, without having to do any work. But this is a huge mistake. You want to have complete control over what your online profile looks like, and having a website will make that happen. You don’t need to pay a designer thousands of dollars to create a site, either. There are free restaurant-themed templates that you can use that make you look your best, and make it easy for your customers to find you.
Make sure to add these features to your website – There are some key features you should make to include in your restaurant website. These are based on studies that prove that people look at restaurant websites for three main reasons: to book a table, know when you’re open, and to see your menu. The key features your website should include are:
1. A menu – Don’t just make this a list of items, either. Many restaurants choose to upload their menu as a PDF, so that they can capture the true beauty of the design.
2. Online reservation tool – True, this may not apply to you, but if you take reservations, offer an online reservation tool. You can build a tool within your site, or use a third-party tool such as OpenTable. You can also designate a section for reservations, but simply post your contact information for people to call.
3. Your hours – Don’t just post your hours (so that they’re easy to find) but post when you serve lunch, dinner, weekend brunches, and anything else that pertains to your restaurant.
Start a food blog – This, of course can be added to your website. The purpose of the blog is to help boost your search rankings, but also to add to your restaurant’s branding. You need a voice in order to connect with customers. Your blog can be that voice. If you’re not much of a writer, enlist the help of a local food blogger.
Get social – Your website is a pivotal part of your online marketing, but you can’t ignore the social media aspect as well. Through Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, and other platforms, you can increase your reach and connect with customers in a variety of ways. Highlight your menu with gripping images on Pinterest. Offer on-the-spot limited-time specials to your Foursquare and Twitter followers (such as “Today, from 3 – 5 p.m., come in and say the word Tsetse Fly and get 10% off your bill”). Run contests with your Facebook followers. Promote loyalty and give your customers a chance to win great prizes, which encourages them to come back to you (virtually, and in real life). TouchBistro created an outstanding guide for restaurants social media. It should make your life a bit easier.
Register with Google Places – Remember how we said that local searches are abound with restaurant-based themes? Google a phrase like “Italian Restaurants in (Your Location). Before you even get to the search results, there’s a banner atop the page listing restaurants that match your search. This is a result of Google Places. By adding your restaurant to Google Places you increase your likelihood of ranking high, add Google maps into your search equation, and allow people to easily rate you and give comments.
Speaking of reviews – Be vigilant about monitoring your reviews. You live and die by your reputation, and your reviews are some of the biggest contributors to your online and offline rep. Thank people who have given you positive feedback, and address any negative comments so you at least can contribute your side of the story.

Italina Restaurants

Online restaurant marketing is a must

There used to be a series of commercials for a phone company that suggested it was always worth your while to “call ahead” before going anywhere. While that’s a bit outdated, the overall message is not. People don’t just drop by restaurants any longer. They want to know what they’re getting themselves into, and your online presence and reputation will give them a glimpse into what’s in store. Be sure you put forth the first impression you want to make by having as much control over your online profile as possible.

March 3, 2014 0 comment

Branding SEO Website Promotion

How to Submit Your Site to Google Places

by Erez Zundy February 11, 2014

written by Erez Zundy

You can’t just hope to be found

One of the most iconic movie phrases of the 1980s came from a whisper – “If you build it, he will come” – from Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner. In the movie, Costner’s character built a baseball field in his cornfield, and, as a result, was visited by the ghosts of baseball past.

Sadly, for us folks in the 21st century digital age, it isn’t as easy as building a website and expecting our desired visitors to come. It takes more work than that.

Luckily for us, search engine behemoth Google does all that they can to help us get found by our targeted audience. That’s exactly the premise behind Google Places (once known as Google Local Business Center).

Google Places Benefits

Google Places does more than just help you get found on the web. It puts your information front and center for your potential customers, with enriched snippets such as Maps, ratings and more. In an online climate where “local” truly is king, Google helps you target your audience by matching your Places information with the location of web surfers.

It also gives you the ability to change your information (like store hours, contact information) with ease. As our world becomes more mobile, it’s vital that your business be easily found on a laptop as it is on a smartphone. Google Places helps get you found on all devices, which is why it’s so important that you submit your site to Places.

The 5 Minute Google Places Setup

1. Signing up with Google Places is as easy as going to the site (google.com/places) and clicking on the “Get started for free” button.

From there you’ll be taken to a map of the good ol’ US of A, where you have to agree to the Terms and Conditions of Google Places. You also have to agree that you are, in fact authorized to manage the business.

2. Next, you’ll do what Google does best … search. Before you register your business with Google Places, Google wants to make sure that your business isn’t already on their listing, so they’ll ask you to search for your business. Chances are that your business isn’t on there, but you’ll find some potential matches (from across the world). Assuming you don’t find your business on there, you can click the “No these are not my businesses, Let me create my business” button.

3. From there it’s time to submit your business details, including name, address, and category your business falls under. You also must let Google know if you deliver goods or services to customers from your business location.

4. Once you complete your information, you’ll be told you have to verify your information, via a postcard. You can choose to verify later, which will take you to your Google Places page. But any changes you make on that page won’t appear until you verify your business, so it’s worth your while to just verify now. A postcard will be sent to the address you listed in roughly 1 – 2 weeks, with a PIN that you have to provide to Google. One constant complaint from businesses is that the postcard is often construed as junk mail, and so either they, or someone in their office, disregards the mailing. Google has made it possible for you to add an “ATTN” line to the mailer. Thus, if you fear you may need that extra layer of security to keep your postcard from the trash, do it.

*NOTE: Your PIN is only good for 30 days, so be sure to enter your PIN in your Google Places account as soon as you get it.

5. Once you okay the verification process, you’ll be taken to the same page that you would have been taken to if you chose to verify later (see, we told you it was worth verifying now). here you can begin to make changes to your Google Places page, including hours of operation, a description, special offers and more. Again, these won’t be made public until your PIN is entered, but this gives you a week or two to prime your page for its public launch.

Chances are you’ve heard the term SEO before, which is a marketing tactic aimed to increase your rankings on searches. While thousands of dollars can be (and are) spent on this venture, taking a few minutes of your time to sign up, for free, with Google Places, can help catapult you to the top of the page for web surfers looking, in your area, for what you have to offer.

February 11, 2014 0 comment

Newer Posts

Older Posts