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How to Optimize Email Opt-in Forms for Increased Conversions in WooCommerce

May 17, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

As part of your sales funnel, your goal probably is to convert site visitors into subscribers and later on, into paying customers. Email marketing is still one of the best means to connect with your potential customers after they’ve left your site. As you get visitors in your WooCommerce store, you’ll want to get their emails. To do this, you need to learn how to optimize email opt-in forms.

In this post, we’ll show you what you should put in an opt-in form and how to position it strategically on your e-commerce store. We’ll also introduce you to some popular WordPress plugins to easily add opt-in forms on your site.

Where can You Add Opt-in Forms?

It is useful to add opt-in forms in different sections and pages on your e-commerce store.

Landing page

Using a landing page (or a squeeze page) is the traditional method of collecting leads. Because your goal is to get people to sign up to your mailing list, every element of the landing page should support that desired action. Don’t add a side-bar because it will just distract the users from the real goal. Remove links that will take the site visitor away from the landing page before they even fill out and submit the opt-in form.

Feature Box

A feature box is a full-width email opt-in box usually added on top of your homepage. Some do not use a feature box because of two things: it takes up the most valuable space on your homepage, and it seems pushy to immediately ask for an email address. To validate the feature box’s location and avoid getting negative attention from site visitors, make sure that what you’re offering is definitely useful in exchange for their email address.

As an example, the use of a feature box on DIYthemes’ blog resulted in a 51.7% increase in its daily blog subscription.

Pop-up Window

Because of its nature of ‘popping-up’ and interrupting the user while browsing the site, many visitors don’t like pop-ups. Nevertheless, a pop-up window is still one of the most effective lead generation tools. A lightbox works the same way as a pop-up window, but the rest of the site is darkened to make the form stand out.

Note that the timing should be perfect to avoid hindering good user experience. Once seen, you have only 1-2 seconds to grab the user’s attention and pique their interest before they close the window. Here are some examples of high converting pop-up email forms.

Opt-In Forms in Other Pages

Apart from the feature box in the homepage, you can insert more opt-in forms in other pages (About page and Splash page) and in other page sections (top of sidebar, sticky top bar and below the footer).

The About Us page is usually one of the most visited pages in any website, so it’s a good idea to make the most of that traffic.

In a Kissmetrics review, using a splash page might be a better idea than a pop-up on the homepage. A pop-up is frowned upon because it interrupts the user while browsing the site. A splash page appears as a preliminary message. As such, it is better perceived.

Sidebar Opt-In Form

A sidebar opt-in form is the most common email list building method mainly because it is built in to most website templates. Keep your opt-in form to the top of your sidebar though, to maximize results.

Sticky Top Bar

Because a sticky top bar remains visible on top of the page even as you scroll down, visitors have plenty of time and opportunity to notice the message and eventually subscribe.

Components of an Opt-In Form

Once you’ve determined where you want your opt-in forms, the next step is to create them. To increase your chances of getting sign-ups, your opt-in form should have the right timing, design, form fields and copy.

Timing

In using a pop-up window, you need to properly time it. You can set a time delay before showing the pop-up. If it’s too early, you’ll annoy site visitors even before they’ve taken a look of your site and what you have to offer. A 15-second delay is enough time for visitors to look around your site and not be too bothered with a pop-up. Note that this does not necessarily apply to your target audience. It’s best to conduct your own tests.

You can also show pop-ups as visitors reach the bottom of your content or as they exit your site.

Design

To effectively connect with your visitors as they quickly scan your opt-in form, you need to add visual elements that enhance your messaging. Humanize your opt-in form with a photo. Inject credibility with a testimonial or statistic. If your opt-in form is not a pop-up, make sure it will get noticed but at the same match your site’s theme.

Form Fields

More people sign up when less form data is requested. Note that you just need the email address of your site visitors for email marketing purposes. Usually just a name and email in the form will suffice. You can even make the name optional.

Concise Copy

Make your opt-in form copy as concise as possible. It’s important to present a clear purpose when asking for personal information. Spell out what your site visitors will get in return. You can also assure them that you won’t sell their addresses to a third party or spam them. BeemDigital showed an 83.75% increase in sign-ups when they added value and relevance to their opt-in form.

Another effective tactic is to offer a lead magnet, like a free e-book, product trial, discount, or even free shipping. On a side note, you can set up the incentive in such a way that your new subscribers won’t unsubscribe immediately. If you’re offering a free e-book, break it up in parts and offer them in a series of emails. Entice them to want to wait for what’s coming next.

Recommended Opt-In Form Plugins for Your WooCommerce Store

In choosing your opt-in plugin, consider what features you need and choose a plugin that provides just that and nothing more. Anything more is just extra bloat on your site. Below we list some of opt-in form plugins that we can recommend.

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a paid pop-up plugin that offers a wide range of functionality. It comes with an easy-to-use form builder that allows you to create various types of opt-in forms including WordPress popup forms, floating header and footer bars, slide-ins also known as scroll triggered boxes, sidebar forms, after post forms, in-line forms, mobile-specific forms, and welcome gates. Other features are exit-intent technology, page-level targeting, behavior automation and A/B testing, and a 2-step opt-in process.

PopupAlly

PopupAlly’s free version allows you to create advanced popup signup forms even if you don’t know how to code. You can also embed opt-in forms at the bottom of your posts, set a few seconds’ delay or have the pop-up appear as the users leave your site.

Its premium version, PopupAlly Pro, has an optimized interface and extra features. This includes more customizable templates, more opt-in options (horizontal, sidebar, below-the-post, etc) and allows for any web fonts to be used. Click-based and scroll activation timing features and one-on-one email support are available only with the premium version.

Hello Bar

Hello Bar is a free plugin that allows you to copy and paste a code snippet from HelloBar.com straight to your WordPress admin interface. Above is the HelloBar interface from the website. You can choose from several goals like grow your email list, promote your social pages, promote an offer, or add a contact form. You can choose from several styles of opt-in forms and even change the colors to match your website’s colors. To set up HelloBar, just visit the site to configure. The interface is very straight forward so you should have the design in minutes. To apply this to your site, just install the free plugin that is generated specifically for your website. This plugin will only work for the site that you registered it for. You can just create a new one for another site.

This plugin also comes with A/B testing so you can easily optimize for increased conversion.

Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is a plugin built with developers in mind. Included are hundreds of functions, action hooks, and filters that developers can use to create their own custom functionality. Customize field options and forms with its extensive settings. Add a Ninja Form to your e-commerce site easily with a widget, shortcode, template function, or append it automatically to any content. Upgraded bundles include automatic updates, add-ons and sites per add-on, and email support with faster response time.

Which Opt-in Forms Leads to More Conversions?

There is no single correct answer to this question. Different websites vary in terms of design and market. This article could help point you in the right direction, but there are a lot of things you need to figure out for yourself. Get to know your customers by creating a customer persona. When you are able to identify your customers, you’ll know how to market to them. From there, you can create a sales funnel that works for you. Use heat maps like CrazyEgg to find out where your visitors click. Constant A/B split testing will help you determine what variation converts better.

Conclusion

Opt-in forms should be placed strategically throughout your website. Optimize them so they are easily visible. Make them stand out. These forms should offer value and relevance to encourage users to subscribe. Enhance copy with visual elements and keep form fields to a minimum. If you decide to use pop-ups, you need to time them correctly so as not to be intrusive. Make sure you’re getting the most of your opt-in plugin’s features without sacrificing site performance. When your opt-in forms are set up, you need to conduct your own split testing to optimize for maximum conversion.

Hope this article helped you out. Do you have any strategies you’d like to share for increasing opt-in form conversion? Do you want to add something that we might have missed? Let us know in the comments section.

4 Steps to Creating Better Customer Personas for Online Stores

July 27, 2015 By John Leave a Comment

Not everyone is your customer. So, before spending thousands of dollars on your marketing campaigns, it’s important to know who you are trying to reach.

Creating customer personas should be the first step to any marketing campaign.

What you will learn:

How to increase sales using customer personas
How to create customer personas without breaking the bank?
Case studies on popular brands’ success and failure.
How to use your customer persona to 10X revenues?

To learn more, keep reading.

Susan, David, Matt, Monica, or John – one of these personas can be your customer. Consider them hypothetical representations of your target audience’s fears, favorite places online, and motivation to purchase your product.

If you’re like many small business owners who don’t have the means to hire a full-blown marketing team, it’s up to you to identify what makes your customers tick. Here is what we have done for our customer personas at Wooassist.

According to eMarketer’s latest forecasts, e-commerce sales will top $7 trillion by 2025.

With many ecommerce stores found on the web today, coming up with an effective marketing campaign can help a company get ahead of the competition.

Why Do Some Marketing Campaigns Succeed And Others Fail?

It’s very important for marketers to put themselves into the shoes of their target audience. Companies that know how to think like, feel like and behave like their potential customers have the definite advantage.

It’s not a new technique.

Think of your favorite book author or screenwriter. When working on a new character, they write about every possible detail, from that character’s life, background and thought process.

Why Creating Customer Personas are Important?

Customer personas are becoming increasingly useful not only for large companies, but also for smaller online retailers. It’s now possible to have ultra-targeted ads and communications.

Take a look at Facebook’s advanced targeting when it comes to their advertising:

One can target a very specific audience. You can base it on a customer’s location, age, language spoken, education level and interests. To do this effectively, a company needs to define their customer personas.

Case Study 1: Subway’s Jared

Subway, a popular fast-food franchise for sandwiches, named their fictional persona Jared. He is an overweight American who wants an easy-to-follow, affordable diet plan with lots of choices and familiar foods.

When Subway has to make a marketing decision, they first ask, “Would Jared want this?”

This buyer persona helped Subway redefine itself as a healthy place to eat, and they reorganized its menu to highlight its low-calorie meal options.

So, are you ready to revamp your advertising?

If you’re planning to start an e-commerce business, or already have an existing one, it’s time to discover the concept of Customer Persona, and how it can help you grow success.

Personas are fictional, generalized characters built from the real words of real consumers. They incorporate the various goals, needs, and observed behavior patterns among your real and potential customers.

It is not merely a description.

More than a one-dimensional profile, it delves more on the specific attitudes, concerns and criteria that drive prospective customers to choose you, or your competitor. When you have these insights, you have the knowledge to align your marketing decisions.

SUSAN is one example of a customer persona.

Watch the video below:

Before going through the basic customer persona template, it’s important to know where to get all the information you need – sources to help your persona take shape.

Take a look on these three places:

Site analytics.

Take advantage of your site’s analytics. It’ll allow you to see what led your audience to your site, and even the device they used. Take note of where they came from, the keywords they’ve used, and how long they’ve spent on your site.

Social Media.

They call it ‘social media listening’. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. – explore on the different social media platforms to find your potential customers and get to know them. What are their questions, or common problems? How can your products or services be the solution?

Surveys and interviews.

Personas will become more useful if they’re based on interviews, or surveys, gathered from the buyers themselves, customer service interactions, and even sales people. These data can reveal a deeper insight into a customer’s goals and values.

Components of a Customer Persona

When creating your persona, you need to address include several of its components. Take a closer look at your customer base. Identify both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ customers to get a more rounded understanding.

Let’s go through the ABCs of creating your customer personas:

Name.

It may seem unnecessary, but giving the persona a name is essential. It makes the persona closer to resembling a real person. It will also be easier to refer to your persona, instead of having to refer to it as a broad idea.

Background.

This includes the basic background information, including demographics and psychographics. Age, gender, location, family life, likes and dislikes, and location – these data will help you understand the motivations of your audience when it comes to navigating.

Goals.

Remember SUSAN – what was her goal when looking for a product? It’s to get the best price. Setting goals for your persona helps in identifying the results they want. Do they shop by price? Do they want to find a vendor they can work with quickly?

Online Skills.

How comfortable is your character online? Understanding their technical skills lets a business build its website in a way that customers can navigate with ease. It tells you how your audience interacts with your brand.

Platform.

What platforms are they using to get to your website? Your website should have a responsive design, so it can render correctly in any device. Including this in your persona ensures that your website is optimized.

Once you really get to know your customers, you will be able to make a more meaningful connection. Using a combination of raw data and educated guesses, which can include demographics and behavior, you will be able to create a client persona that portrays your model customer.

Give Your Persona a Name

It can be whatever you choose. Humanize it – give it a real name and even a photo. This psychological detail allows a marketer to see his products from the persona’s perspective.

GardenWare does a good job of identifying their customer persona by creating two distinct profiles of their customers.

Job, role, and company.

The best resource for these data is from surveys or interview results. Build surveys that include a field for job title, or type of business.

Demographic information.

For this section of your template, don’t just rely on your best educated guesses. You can get some insight from Google Analytics and survey results.

Five dimensions available include Age, Gender, Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, and Other Categories.

Affinity Categories identifies users in terms of lifestyle. In-Market Segments identifies users in terms of their product-purchase interests. On the other hand, ‘Other Categories’ provides a more specific, focused view.

Google Analytics can also reveal the interests of your site’s visitors. Once you know their interests, you can come up with more customer-oriented posts and ads, in any platform.

For data which are not found on your analytics, you can check on your survey or interview results. Make sure to ask the right questions to get the most accurate responses.

Goals, Obstacles, Values and Fears.

To determine objectives, customer interviews will be of great help. As you identify these data, also come up with your solutions in order to help them meet their goals and overcome their challenges.

Marketing Message.

After creating your fictional buyer, tailor your marketing message by identifying words that are likely to gain their attention. Make an effort to find out what triggers them to make a purchase. Common buzz words may include coupon, bargain, and sale.

How Many Do You Need?

You don’t have to minimize a thousand clients into just one representative. Ideally, there should be about 3 to 5 buyer personas for each business. These personas will be changing along with the growth of your store. You’ll have to review them from time to time.

Modern consumers are smarter. They know when they’re being manipulated.

With a poorly-written content that’s all ‘sales talk’, that’s exactly what you’re making them feel. Be strategic and relate to them more as ‘human beings’. You’ll need a persona template, which you could apply in your marketing campaigns.

Case Study 2: MailChimp Persona Research

Let’s take a look at MailChimp’s persona research. Their objective was to ‘find out who really uses MailChimp’. They believed that what they needed was a clear idea of their current users, to better empathize with them.

Here’s the process of their research:

They interviewed stakeholders in order to identify who uses MailChimp. They were given the same characteristics – smart, self-reliant, and techie. Thus, they came up with the customer persona ‘Fred’.
As for their next step, they ranked their pool of active users by industry. It was found that a huge number of MailChimp customers were represented by the nonprofits, education, and the arts.
Subjects from popular industries were identified and interviewed. Customers were met at their workplaces, in different locations of North America and Europe. Data gathered also included the workplace’s environment, the customer’s emotional state, etc.
Findings were organized and analyzed, and MailChimp discovered a lot of similarities across different roles or types of customers.
MailChimp ended up with five archetypical personas, which they used as guides in developing MailChimp. The last step was sharing the outcome with the team. So, they created posters that now adorn the walls of their HQ.

Done with your customer persona? Great!

Now, it’s time to put those personas to work. Here are ways for you to start using them in order to make smarter marketing decisions.

Post Social Updates in Their Language.

When you post social updates, use the language your buyer persona uses. Is your persona a stay-at-home mom, or the head of the human resources? Speak like how you’d talk to someone in real life. Doing so can make your brand relatable.

Create Their Favorite How-To Blogs.

Even Google reminds online marketers to create relevant, educational content. With customer personas, you will be able to create content that makes a more meaningful connection. Write about the solution to their problems.

Customize Your Keyword Strategy.

Part of creating your persona is knowing their challenges. What’s the phrasing they’ll most likely use to search for solutions? Take this opportunity to customize your SEO, optimize content, and target keywords your buyer persona uses.

Create Offers That Can Solve Their Problems.

What does your target audience want help with? Since you have identified your customer persona’s fears and common obstacles, you will be able to offer effective solutions. This will mean more leads!

Align Campaigns With Your Persona’s Lifestyle

Is your buyer persona a night owl, or more of a morning person? What’s his or her daily lifestyle nuances? Let’s say your target audience goes on a vacation every summer. You can align your campaigns during that month.

Apply Technology They Know How to Use.

Asking your customers to use a technology type that they aren’t comfortable using is not really a smart move. Take for example – making them download a mobile app when they don’t have a smartphone. Again, the platform they’re using is an important component to consider.

Mold Sales to Your Persona’s Decision-Making.

Is your buyer persona the budget conscious type? During the buying cycle, what information does he or she need to go through with the sale? This is a crucial information which can help your sales.

Case Study 3: JC Penney’s Big Mistake

JC Penney Corp. is a well-known chain of American mid-range department stores based in Texas. In June 2011, the company announced that they’ve hired Ron Johnson as CEO. He was the man in charge of Apple’s profitable retail stores, dubbed as Steve Jobs’ acolyte.

In just a month of his being CEO, Johnson suggested a radical rebranding.

The plan was to create a more youth-oriented Penney, getting rid of its addiction to price promotions. The outcome was disastrous. JC Penney totally abandoned their existing customer personas. They have alienated traditional customers, without attracting new ones.

Around 16 months later, Johnson was out. Penney lost $1 billion during his one full year as CEO. After Johnson was gone, the company restored its past philosophy.

Ron Johnson admitted that he didn’t understand what his customers wanted. He didn’t take into account what drove JC Penney customers to shop.

How to Use Customer Personas

Don’t make the same mistake as Ron Johnson did. By clearly defining your buyer personas, you’ll have a much better idea of who, how, and where you should be marketing to achieve the greatest level of success.

Demographic data can help you target your ads, and psychographic information can help you create more engaging campaigns.

Google always reminds us to keep our content fresh. One of the best ways to do that is keeping your customer personas on target.

How to keep your customer personas on target?

This means that you have to always keep their problems and concerns top of mind. You need to write directly to and for your buyer personas. Use them to modify and improve your marketing strategies.

Re-examine and Refresh.

It’s a competitive world out there. Make sure that your customer personas accurately reflect your target audience’s current life situation and purchasing needs. Do this on a regular basis. Put it in your calendar as necessary.

Prioritize Conversations with Customers.

It wouldn’t hurt to browse your blog and social media accounts and read customer comments. Include both positive and negative feedback. Doing so will provide your business with some fresh insights.

Use the Best Data Resources.

Google Consumer Surveys, Quora, Mechanical Turk, and other similar sources can help supplement your current data. Put them to good use in order to keep your personas fresh, and on target.

Add and Delete Personas.

The marketplace is ever evolving. In the months to come, there may be a need to add new personas and delete those who can no longer help. Personas are working tools that should be aligned to the present and the foreseeable future.

Visualize Your Audience.

You can either assign a photo to your customer persona, or keep photos of actual customers where you can see them. They’ll represent your target personas and remind you that you’re creating content for real people.

Popular Brands That Totally Get Their Buyer Personas

Do you ever buy products from the same brand, and stopped to think, ‘They totally get me’? It’s obviously a company that gets their target audience. Let’s take a look at some companies that totally “get” their buyer personas!

Seventeen Magazine

Believe it or not, Seventeen started shaping their customer personas back in the 1950s. The first buyer persona they’ve made was named Teena. They’ve based it on survey data from teenage girls and their mothers.

Seventeen Mag described Teena as the ‘High School Girl who has a peck of problems’.

“She’s what older folks call an awkward adolescent — too tall, too plump, too shy — a little too much of a lot of little things. But they’re big things to Teena. She writes her favorite magazine for the tip-off on the clothes she wears, the food she eats, the lipstick she wields, the room she bunks in, the budget she keeps, the boy she has a crush on.”

Seventeen may have adjusted to the modern world, but its content still caters to girls like Teena, who have problems with their diet, boys, and dating. We can say that Seventeen has successfully channeled what was going on in high school girls’ minds.

Apple’s iPad 2

When Apple launched its iPad2, the campaign was no longer geared towards consumers in general. Instead, Apple identified their customer persona as the on-the-go business professional who needs access at stock options, investment portfolios, etc.

They’ve promoted their iPad 2 into a device for a business professional who wants to make their job more effective and efficient.

JetBlue

JetBlue finally took advantage of social media to reach a younger group of audience. The company’s buyer persona is now the low-budget traveler, who wants a comfortable yet affordable solution to flying.

They even tweeted their campaign ‘Fly like a BOSS’, and as expected, quick responses from their target audience were achieved.

Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble is known for the thousands of products they provide for households. And, one of their personas is the one who’s in charge of shopping for these items – moms!

One of their most unforgettable campaigns happened in 2012, which showed an ad dedicated to the Olympics. They called it ‘Raising an Olympian’, wherein the company focused on a mother’s role in her child’s success. Who can resist such a heart-moving story?

Conclusion

At the end of the day, you want to increase conversion rates and make more sales for your online store. And, creating buyer personas is an essential part of building a successful marketing strategy. You just have to know where, when and how to use it.

For your website.

Because of your customer persona, you will be able to craft a better user experience on your online store. You will be able to generate content that speaks directly to each persona, giving them solutions, instead of just generic content.

For your sales.

Your sales pitch is an important factor to your ecommerce conversion rate. It’s the last thing a customer reads before hitting the ‘buy now’ button. Customer personas can give ideas regarding the motivation, and psychology, behind the purchase.

For your content marketing.

You already know what type of articles your customer persona reads. Thus, you can create blog posts for your target audience. This makes your content relevant. It’ll attract more leads since you’re offering information they want, and they can actually use.

For your advertisements.

You may even use personas to optimize your PPC campaigns. Apply the same keywords your customer persona uses to make your ads more relevant. You can place banner ads on websites that your customers frequent. This will definitely improve your CTR.

Now that you have this information, you have the chance to make your marketing campaigns more effective. Don’t be afraid to meet your customers. The next time you launch a promotion, you can ask yourself the question…

‘Would Susan or Matt be interested in this news?’

How to Write Easy-to-Read Content for Your WooCommerce Store’s Blog

June 1, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

It’s important to come up with a strong headline and back it up with great copy. But if readers find your content hard to read, they could leave your site. To avoid this, you should optimize your content for ease of reading. Use of simple words along with visual aids such as images, charts, graphs, videos, and proper heading structure should help you achieve this.

In this article, we’ll show you some tips on how to write easy-to-read content. We will also recommend a few tools that can help you write simple content.

Why Should Content Be Easy to Read?

A web usability study showed that 79% of web users are ‘scanners’, not readers. This means a typical user will scan the article, picking out individual words and sentences. If the scan deems the page as not very useful, the user won’t bother reading it and promptly skip to the next search result. Users can afford to be picky because of the abundance of good content on the web. With an estimated 3 million new blog posts every day, there’s a lot of competition.

Published content is meant to be read. For this to happen, you need to satisfy the user’s needs in the first 10 seconds as they scan your post. The web user clicked that link to your article because its headline promises an answer to the web user’s question or it has piqued his interest. With content optimized for ease of reading, the user will find more value in reading your content in its entirety.

Maintaining a blog on your WooCommerce store with great, easy-to-read content is an effective way to build traffic and convert visitors to customers. In fact, a survey showed that 57% of companies with a blog acquire customers from their blog.

How to Write Easy-to-Read Content?

Forget about complex sentences, long paragraphs, and difficult words. Keep the message clear. Avoid confusing your readers by trying to sound good. Here’s a list of the things that you can do to ensure your content is easy to read.

Break up your post with subheadings. Subheadings make the structure of your content clearer and easier to dissect. This is invaluable when writing long articles. Scanners will naturally be guided to the important points that they are searching for.
Introduce more white space. Adding just enough white space in between paragraphs makes content easier to read. Without line breaks, your article will look like a big block of content that is unreadable.
Use bulleted and/or numbered lists. Bullet lists are best used when enumerating. Numbered lists, on the other hand, are best used when mentioning steps that need to follow a certain order.
Structure your paragraphs in the inverted pyramid style. This means you include the most important information at the start of the article and the least important information at the end. This is the structure of most news reports. However, this kind of structure does not work for all audiences so take this with a grain of salt.
Avoid long paragraphs. If possible, a paragraph should be made up of 3-4 sentences at most and only deal with one idea. Neil Patel actually uses one-sentence paragraphs throughout his blog and it makes his content easier to read.
Avoid passive voice. Using passive voice is not necessarily wrong but it weakens the clarity of your writing.
Avoid using adverbs. Adverbs are unnecessary and most of the time is just overly descriptive to the point that it is insulting to the readers. For example, one can say “scream loudly” when in fact screaming is done loudly.
A complex topic can be broken into a series of posts. While long articles are good in their own right, short articles are easier to read. If you are looking to write a 2000-word article, you can consider writing a series of short articles instead. This can also help you gain a loyal following on your blog as the readers look forward to the next part of the series.
Add relevant links where needed. When you reference something, it is important to link to it. If your reader wants to learn more about that topic, they can simply click on the link. Linking to your sources also adds to your site’s credibility. Not to mention it can be an opportunity to reach out and network with other people in your niche.
Use images and other visual content. Images make your post less boring. Choose relevant images and make use of charts and graph as needed. Charts and graphs are especially useful when you are presenting data.
Use deep captions. These are captions that are two to three sentences long. Along with the image itself, deep captions can catch your reader’s interest, enough for them to read on.
Proofread before publishing. It is important to get a new set of eyes to review your content before publishing. Proofreading your own content is okay but a fresh set of eyes can spot errors that you may miss.

Tools to Help You Write Easy to Read Content

Here are some online tools that read easy-to-read content.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor checks if your content is easy to read by identifying hard-to-read sentences. In ‘Edit’ mode, you can make changes and see real-time Hemingway feedback to the right of the editor. Adverbs, use of passive voice, difficult words/phrases and hard to read sentences are highlighted so you can fix them on the fly.

This style checker includes a readability grade level based on the Automated Readability Index. Readability is the ease with which your reader can understand your writing. A good target is 7 to 8, but don’t go over tenth-grade level.

Grammarly

Grammarly offers free contextual spellchecker, grammar, punctation, sentence structure and style checks. With a premium account you also get plagiarism checks, vocabulary enhancement and professional proofreading.

If you choose to install its Chrome extension, you can use this to edit content in Gmail, WordPress, pretty much anywhere you write on the web.

After the Deadline

You can use the After the Deadline (AtD) Demo page to check your content online. After you click ‘Check Writing’, click each underlined word to see the suggestion to select or just ignore.

You can also download AtD and use it as a WordPress plugin and extensions to web browsers. This is free for personal use, and they have free server software for commercial needs.

Expresso

Expresso can help you analyze and edit content by helping you choose simpler words and identifying weak verbs, filler words, etc. An extensive list of general and editing metrics are found to the right of the editor. Click on one to highlight the associated words. Note that this is still in its beta phase.

Conclusion

Always aim for great content that is easy to read. This will keep readers on your site for longer periods. If you apply the above tips and make use of the online tools, you’re well on your way to writing easy-to-read content. You can even use these tools to optimize your current content and product copy. Soon enough you will see the payoffs in longer session times and probably an increase in conversion.

We hope the tools and formatting techniques here can help you create easy-to-read content. Do you have any other tips to share for writing easy-to-read content? Maybe you know of some other tools that can help. Let us know in the comments.

Work “ON” Your Business Rather Than “IN” Your Business to Save Time and Increase Revenue for Your E-Commerce Store

May 16, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

As a business owner, you may struggle with having to wear so many different hats and working many hours.

An online business brings with it even more challenges, as you need to develop, secure and maintain your website. These are time-consuming and counter-productive if you do them yourself.

In this article, I’ll show you what steps you can take to effectively work on your business and what are the benefits of outsourcing your tasks.

What Does It Mean to Work “ON” Your Business Rather Than “IN” Your Business?

This popular entrepreneurial mindset has two points: you want a profitable business that produces consistent results, and you won’t need to do the day-to-day activities yourself. Basically, working “in” your business means doing those routine activities that keep the business going every day. On the other hand, working “on” your business means you prioritize developing your business and building customer relationships. Working on your business also means creating a systems-dependent business and delegating work.

Create Business Results that are Systems-Dependent, Not People-Dependent

The system you create becomes the tool everyone uses to get the job done in a way it needs to get done. Working on your business means you need to test and develop these systems to make sure they produce your desired result. When you have an efficient system in place, you’re mostly assured of the quality of work, and that business continues even if the people come and go. Training new staff becomes that much easier.

You may need to personally create these systems on your own. It is important that you document it. For Wooassist, we use DokuWiki to document our processes. You can find your own platform that you are comfortable with. Once the system is in place, it’ll be easier to delegate the task to someone else.

Delegate Work

It’s important that you build a team that you trust. These people will do the day-to-day activities of your business, following the systems you’ve approved or set. Delegation will only be effective if you trust the team to do the job for you. Because you trust these people, you can focus more on being the business owner and developing strategies to sustain and even grow your business.

Outsource Technical Tasks to Save Your Time

Even if you love working in your business, chances are there isn’t enough time to get everything done on your own. This is especially true as your business continues to grow. Hire reliable, technology-savvy staff and those with technical skills that match your needs. Doing so will help you better manage your time so you can focus on managing and growing your business.

You Can Be Assured that Experts Will Do a Good Job

You don’t necessarily need to be The Expert on each role in your company. You may only do a mediocre job at a technical task but a skilled professional can save you time by doing a great job on a role where he’s already an expert. You won’t need to spend too much time learning nor trying to do the job yourself. That’s the developer’s job. For an e-commerce store owner in need of a web developer, outsourcing is the way to go if hiring full time isn’t ideal.

You Have More Time for Leisure/Travel

Nanette Miller, founder of The Training Doctor LLC, outsources 40 hours of work weekly for non-revenue-generating tasks. This includes administrative work, website maintenance and social media posts. Outsourcing allowed her to focus on growing her business and keep a manageable work schedule that allows her to have a personal life. She gets to take about 12 weeks of well-deserved vacation per year. Just imagine the places you can visit with that much free time.

You Have More Time to Spend with Family and Friends

When you outsource, you free yourself of the daily worries of running your business. You have a better hold of your work schedule and productivity. After work, you have time to relax and be with your family. You can even go out and spend time with your friends.

WooCommerce Happiness Engineer Dustin Hartzler strictly adheres to his work schedule and wraps up work by 4:30pm. The rest of the evening is spent with his family and on non-computer activities.

Work on Things that Require Your Skills as a Business Owner

With routine and technical tasks delegated to staff, you can devote more time in managing and developing your business. This means you can focus on exploring ways to innovate on what your business needs to grow. For an online business, here are some functions a business owner can prioritize:

Planning and Strategy

You should have more time to revisit your business roadmap and make changes as needed. Conduct market research to identify current trends that could help you sell your products. Check your competition and find ways to attract more customers. Devote time on continuous learning. You get to leverage on other people’s expertise, but the decision is still yours to make.

Marketing and Sales

You may feel comfortable handling your own SEO and advertising. This is because you’ve conducted market research and you know who your target customers are. When you have clearly defined your customer personas and know how to use them, you’re well on your way to maximizing your marketing efforts. You can also allot time to learn more online marketing strategies and apply them to your business.

Customer Experience

You build customer relationships. You make sure their needs are met, particularly as they navigate through your website. You may also opt to personally address customer queries. You may need help on this though, depending on your business’ size and nature.

Conclusion

While it’s understandable to be very busy at work, especially in the early stages of your business, you also need to know when and how to effectively delegate. Prioritize your core functions as a business owner and focus on growing your business. Set up systems and tools to maintain consistent, quality results for routine activities. Outsource technical and other non-income-generating functions. These actions will help you better achieve a work-life balance. Spend more time with your family and friends and go on much-needed vacations.

Was this post helpful? Do you have anything you’d like to add or share? Let us know in the comments.

How to Build an Ecommerce Roadmap in Under 3 Hours for a ROI of $1000’s

February 16, 2016 By John 1 Comment

Objective of the Blueprint

My goal for this post is to educate retailers, on exactly what they need to have as the foundation of their website, to build a strong digital strategy on successful online store on top of.

This is an action document. Every philosophy is followed by a list of action steps.

There is nothing new here, we have merely taken the best advice from top web design firms and condensed it into an actionable post. If you were to spend 20k plus at a prestigious web agency these are the sort of questions they would address in the pre-contract and kick-off phase of the project.

Invest Just 3 Hours for a ROI of $1000’s

I recognize the opportunity cost of your time and I wholeheartedly believe in delegating as much as possible. But this 3 hours is not one of those times, the reality is it will take someone else much longer than you to do this because the information is already in your head. If you can allocate just a few hours of your time you will end up with a website brief worth 1000’s of dollars.

You will be able to take this brief to a number of web agencies and be a highly sought after client. The biggest challenge web agencies have is a client not providing them with the information they need to do their job. If you present this finished document to them they will love you and you will likely get a much better rate.

Some of these questions may feel repetitive or as though you have answered them 100 times before. Trust this process in the knowledge that all high end web design firms insist on this type of documentation, known as the “Discovery Phase”, and build $2000 plus into the project price to extract this information out of their clients.

If you have a business or marketing plan and some of these questions may have already been addressed, by all means use that as a reference. The critical thing is that you have all the information in your “Website Blueprint”.

Your Business Objectives

The very start of the website blueprint is to identify why you have or want a website in the first place. Your website should be the core of your marketing, not a separate entity. As such, your website objectives need to be the core of your business objectives.

I’m going to throw you in the deep end and run a list of questions that in time you should be able to answer. Don’t worry, these questions are not designed to be answered right now. They are just meant to get your thinking going.

What specific reasons do you have for owning a website?
Are you not really sure, but see everyone else has one and don’t want to miss out?
What would life look like if you didn’t have a website?
What % of income is generated from the site?
What % of leads is generated from the site?
If improvements were made to your website what increase in these percentages could you expect?
What does a successful website look like to you?

Now list the top three business objectives of your website. Here are some examples.

Be found on Google.
Sell Products.
Actively generate leads.
Pre-qualify clients.
Show we are an authority in our particular niche/segment.
Resource to describe the services you offer.

Branding

You probably already have some sort of visual branding such as a logo with a color scheme and brand or trading name. It will be a wise investment to spend 30 minutes looking at these and assessing if they still fit the business objectives you are trying to achieve.

Grab some of your marketing assets, e.g. print brochure, letter head, business cards, existing website, and have these in front of you while you go through the rest of this section.

Who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for?

When a customer visits your website for the first time, you have only a few seconds to answer these questions. The words you use are only one way to address this, There are a lot more subtle cues such as the color, images and font type you use.

Who are you?
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?

Before answering the above questions I want to take you through an exercise.

Answering these questions below first will assist in uncovering the personality of your brand. They may feel a bit weird, but try and see it through.

If your website was a car, what make and model would it be?
If your website was a cookie, what sort of cookie would it be?
10 – 20 Words that describe the business.

On a scale of 1-5, 5 being my business is most like this word, rank the following words.

Feminine
Masculine
Young
Mature
Luxury
Economical
Modern
Classic
Playful
Serious
Loud
Quiet
Simple
Complex
Subtle
Obvious

Target Audience for the Website

If you could have 10 new customers today, but they all had to be a clone of one of your existing customers, who would the existing customer be?

The best way to find that existing client is to identify who is the most profitable, gives you the least amount of grief, is a joy to work with, refers you to new business, pays on time and who you would genuinely like to have more of.

Describe your ideal client. *Some things to consider.

Involved in what industry/business
Title
Income bracket
Education level
Lifestyle
Social circle
Recreation activities
Type of car they drive

Now you can answer:

Who are you?
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?

Positioning

The main thing about positioning is you have to take a position. If you try and be all things to all people you will be nothing to everyone. Here are some different ways to position yourself.

Industry Segment.
Geographic. Position yourself as the local expert.
Price. Expensive or budget.
Process. Demonstrate your process is better and more organised.
Customer service.

The previous exercises will help. Now you know who you are and who you want to serve, it’s now time to present yourself exactly as you want to be seen.

What is your niche, specialty, or position in the market?
What makes you different from your competitors?
What are your strengths that can give you a competitive edge?
What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

Now you are ready to create a positioning statement. Fill in the blanks below:

A [Your Company] client is someone who wants […………………………….] and recognizes our specialized focus in […………………………].

Content Audit

You now need to do an audit of what assets you have that will affirm your position in the market. These include:

Images
Videos
Articles
Interviews
Tutorials
Whitepapers
Case Studies
Portfolios
Testimonials

If they are already on your existing website, that’s great. The questions then are. “What is there?” and “Are they being used as effectively as possible?”

Eventually every piece of content on your site will need to be reviewed and updated as necessary. But for the moment, just taking stock will do. At a glance you will be able to:

See what assets you have
Rate their quality
Rate their relevance to your position in the Market.
See what areas you will need to increase your investment

Call to Action

Now you have identified what assets you have and what you need. Go back to your list of three business objectives for your website and spend a minute to review them and see if they are still relevant now that you have refined your position in the market.

Now with these objectives in mind what are the top three actions you want users to take when they visit your site?

Here are some ideas:

Buy a product
Phone you
Browse your services
Fill out the contact/quote request form
Look at your portfolio
Give you their email address
Like your Facebook page

These top three actions need to be the most prevalent items on the main pages of your site visitors are coming to. You can find out which pages on your site visitors are landing on from Google Analytics.

Fulfilling Website User Needs

Users come to your site with specific tasks in mind. You need to identify what these are and then present them with choices that fulfill their needs at the same time as meeting your own business objectives.

Why would people visit your website?
What tasks do they want to complete when they are at your website?

There are a number of core functionalities most web users expect when they go to a web site, these are:

Contact
Services/Products Offered
About Us
FAQ

Contact Page

Your contact page is the page your customer sees after they have made a significant mental shift in their decision making process. The moment they click on the contact page they become more invested in you and your brand.

The way you approach this will depend on the personality of your brand and the services you offer. Here are a few options.

Serious. Just the facts.

Let people know where they are on the page with a “Contact Us” heading. Followed by; address, phone number, email, and trading/office hours (if applicable).

A map, either an embedded map or just a link to your address on Google maps.

Simple Contact Form including fields for:

Name
Email
Phone
Postal Address
Inquiries

Prompt the User to Think About Their Purchase.

If the product/service you sell is more involved and has multiple options and additional purchasing criteria, you can encourage your visitors to invest time and energy into getting somewhat emotionally involved about their potential purchase with you. You can add fields like:

Type of Project
Budget – If you can’t profitably serve projects under a certain amount you can use this as a filtering process by having a drop down and not offering budgets under $X
Timeline

If the project requirements are more detailed than a few fields it will be worth considering a separate page titled “quotation request” or “project planner”.

Add Some Personality to the Contact Page.

Add a big background image. This could be a recent project, a photo of the team, or an aerial view of your office.

Some fun or cheeky text, e.g. For a good time call …………………
Encourage the client to contact you through social media channels.

Products/Services Offered

Your category page, or pages, acts as a quick link for users to see the details of what you do and just as importantly don’t do.

It is important that the home page, portfolio and about page only give snap shots of what you do, so that the user does not get overwhelmed with details, and instead can get a feel of your positioning in under the 3 seconds you have their attention for.

The category page is your opportunity to go into the detail that you have intentionally held back on the home page, portfolio and about pages. Visitors clicking deeper into your site that get to your category and products pages have requested this information, so will spend slightly more time looking at it.

They still won’t spend as much time as you think, or want, so use of sub-headings and thumbnail images is critical. 90% of people won’t read the body copy. It needs to capture the viewers’ attention in a matter of seconds. This is achieved by allowing the photos to tell the story.

Don’t take the photos on your phone. You at least need a good quality camera and preferably someone that knows what they are doing with it. If you don’t have someone with these skills you should hire a professional photographer.

Is there anyone on the team with a good quality camera that has some training in photography?

FAQ

What are the 5-10 most common questions you get asked? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to answer these as often? Wouldn’t it be nice for your clients not to have to ask? And what about the ones that are too shy to ask? Could you be missing out on a lead?

It’s a simple and easy process and most web users interested in you will appreciate it.

About Us Page

Use this opportunity to go deeper into establishing your position in the market. Review the answers to your questions from the positioning exercise and back this position up here.

This page should be kept reasonably brief and it’s a good opportunity to link to other areas of your site like:

Products/Services
Case Studies
Team member profiles
Blog
Whitepapers
Testimonials

Viewable on All Devices

It is estimated that over half of website visitors will be viewing your site first from a mobile device. If your website is not “responsive” to all screen sizes you could be losing important leads before you even begin.

Responsive design is the practice that allows a website’s pages to reformat themselves depending on which device they are being displayed on. This ensures that whatever screen size the user is viewing your website on it will remain user-friendly.

There is no excuse now for small business sites not to be responsive.

Sales Funnel and Lead Capture

People buy from other people they know, like and trust. The object of lead capture is to get your leads into your know-like-trust funnel, and the best way to do that is by giving them incredibly valuable information over time via email. Yes, boring old email.

The Hero’s Journey

Luke Skywalker was living a simple life as a farmer on the planet Tatooine. He knew there was more opportunity out there in the universe and through a series of events he was called by a message from the princess. At first he resisted, but then his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up and guided him.

This story structure has been used over and over again. The Matrix is another good example, with Neo and his mentor Morpheus. You can use this story structure to develop your buyer’s journey.

Most of you reading this will have something to sell online in firms with less than a 10-person staff. You have some knowledge of digital marketing and can’t deny you need a strong web presence. There are a number of things you think might benefit your business like:

Increase in online sales
Blogging
Weekly Newsletters
Social Media

And generally engaging at a deeper level with your customers via an online strategy.

But how to execute all these moving parts into a cohesive system that does not take all your time or cost the earth is a bit of a quandary. You are resistant to throwing 20-30k to what you don’t understand well enough to monitor, control and be guaranteed a return on your investment.

How am I doing so far?

Wooassist offers a service that is affordable and may solve a lot of your challenges. Instead of selling you our core offer straight away we present this article that guides you through the fundamentals of an online store.

There is nothing here that sounds too farfetched; just some common sense, down to earth advice. And by the time you finish reading this article, you will be much more confident and prepared to outsource some assistance for your online store.

Now Your Buyers Journey

Where Are They Now?

Going back to your ideal client. Where are they now? What problems and challenges are they trying to solve?

Start with the End in Mind.

What do you want them to ultimately do? What do you want to ultimately sell them? Is it a commodity product, a project with X budget or an ongoing maintenance contract?

Bridge the Gap.

It’s your job to guide them from where they are now to where they can be knowledgeable enough in your process and confident enough in your expertise to pay for your service.

Identify the time line from interest to purchase for the niche you are in and then list the information your client needs over this time period to get them to know, like and trust you.

This doesn’t have to be complicated; a simple 2000 word report to get their email address followed up by 5-10 pre-written automated emails could increase your sales by 50%.

You can get into more of these details later. For the moment, all I want you to do is a quick brain storm and come up with 3 potential topics for an eBook or whitepaper.

Ongoing Correspondence

The 5-10 pre-written automated emails are called email auto responders. They are not “Buy Now”. Like dating, we are asked in for “coffee” at some stage, but usually not the first date. And it’s always better to be asked than to ask.

The email auto responders add to the value of the report. They prompt your subscriber to think about working with your firm without blatantly stating it.

After 5-10 emails it might be appropriate to offer a gateway product. It’s much easier for a customer to give you $1000 if they have already given you $100 and feel like they got value out of it. And it’s much easier for them to sign a 10k contract if they have gotten value out of $1000.

A gateway product could be a preliminary design, a consultation or an educational product like a series of video tutorials.

What gateway product/s could you offer?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google’s business model is to return the most relevant search results so people keep using them to search online. Google is very good at correctly assessing the most relevant websites and have hundreds of criteria to determine their rankings.

There is no longer a magic bullet. The answer is to have a well-rounded website built on a best practice code base that offers the content your users are searching for in an interesting and engaging way.

Search Terms

What terms are your ideal client using when searching for your products or service?

They may not be the same terms that you use.

Make a list of the 5-10 phrases that you think your ideal client will be searching and then play around with creating synonyms, abbreviations, plurals, past tense, present tense, verbs nouns, etc. From one word “Shoe” we can get: shoes, footwear, runners, joggers, walkers and probably many more.

You will not rank for shoe, so it’s keyword “phrases” that we are looking for that will attract your ideal client. E.g. Comfortable walking shoes. The words need to be compared to other variants like comfy trekking footwear.

For the moment we are just looking to brainstorm, down the track you can compare these terms and phrases in Google Trends and the Adwords keyword tool.

To go the extra mile you can do a short-term Adwords campaign for a few hundred dollars testing all these key phrases. The data you get from the Adwords campaign will tell you what are the most commonly searched terms and what terms generate the most engagement on your site. You can measure this by bounce rate, pages visited and time on site.

Help Google Find You

You can assist Google by basically labelling your content. Everything on your site can be labelled by what’s called meta data. Meta data is not visible to the user, but helps Google web crawlers identify what your site is about. All good website platforms like WordPress have this baked in to make it very easy to add “meta data” to any page, image or link on your site.

On its own, meta data won’t do much to get you in the rankings. It needs to be accompanied with relevant content that backs up what the meta data is saying your site is about. Your content needs to have your keywords in it, plus synonyms and related words. If you are genuinely writing about the topic you want to rank for then this should happen naturally.

Let Google Know you are Relevant and an Authority

Having links to your site from other relevant websites is still the number one way to rank highly in Google. It’s just a lot harder now to game the search results. A few years ago it was possible to create these links yourself and trick Google into thinking you were popular, but Google has made it its mission to recognize “un-natural” links and have been very successful in this. The best way moving forward is to create content so good and useful that people will link to it from their site and will share it with their friends on social media.

For more detailed information check these links.

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Noticed I linked to them because they are highly valuable and useful.

The irony is you will rank high in Google when you no longer need to. If you create the great content that Google wants you to, and people are sharing your content, then you will be getting a lot of traffic to your site without the help of Google.

Local Geographic Focus

A lot of companies operate within a geographic boundary. Google Places is a great free service that you can sign up for and will increase your chances of ranking on the first page in the Google Maps section, which is right up the top of the search results.

http://www.google.com/business/

You can also increase your chances of getting ranked in Google places for specific searches for your local area by writing articles that relate your service to the needs and uniqueness of your local area.

Social Media

Social media pages can become gateways to obtaining new clients and maintaining good relationships with your existing clients.

The most important social networks to consider are:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google+

If your business relies heavily on visual media, then the following might also be considered:

Instagram
Youtube
Pinterest

How to Start

Once you have signed up for and created your social media profiles and pages, you can start getting followers or subscribers.

First off, try getting your own social media friends and connections, as well as your existing clients to like and follow your pages.

The next step is to create content that your targeted social media users will be interested in. These could be interesting photos, stories, articles and even recent info in your industry.

If you have created useful and interesting content, your followers will start sharing them with their own networks and this creates a chain reaction of sharing and get more people to see your content. If these people are interested in what your business offers, they will like your page and increase your social media presence.

It is also a good idea to provide links to your social media profiles directly on your website and email signatures.

Building Brand Awareness

Your social media profiles and pages give users an alternative glimpse from your website of what your company is all about. Give your profiles and pages an identity and real human voice that your ideal clients can relate to and who they would want to work with.

With that said, however, do not simply talk tirelessly about yourself. People use social media for connecting with others. They do not want to be simply marketed to.

Building Relationships

The main purpose of creating a social media presence is to build and nurture relationships with your existing and previous customer base. Your social media profiles and pages can serve as a means for people to contact you and you can and should promptly reply to these inquiries as well.

If you keep your business at the forefront of your customers’ attention in social media, you will be the one they contact when they need to acquire your products and/or services once again.

Best Practices

Post content that is relevant to your industry like recent industry news.
Post content that interesting or informative to your audience like tips and tricks to home renovation.
Follow similar social media pages in your industry.
Be a part of the community. Interact, share others’ posts and respond to others’ interactions.
Make use of a human voice. Avoid sounding too corporate or salesy.
Observe social media etiquette. Your social media identity defines your brand identity.
Depending on your audience, post 1-4 short updates daily or 1-2 important announcements every week.

Social Media Tools

To save your time, there are multiple tools, free and paid, that can help automate your social media campaigns.

Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/)
Buffer (https://bufferapp.com/)

Conclusion

If this is the first time you have read this, congratulations. Now go through it again and invest just three hours to build a really solid foundation for what is to become your website strategy.

If you have answered the questions, even with your best guesses, then congratulations. You have just developed a really solid platform for building a website strategy and put yourself miles ahead of your competition.

What to do now?

Collate your answers from this blueprint into an “Online Blueprint Document.” The time it takes you will pay dividends many times over.

Regardless of what you sell online there are 101 tasks you can outsource. Whether you choose a full service agency, do it yourself, or something in between like what wooassist.com offers, communication is the key and this doc will get your vision clearly stated and set the foundation for any web developer/designer relationship you have in the future.