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How to Create a Custom 404 Error Page for Your WooCommerce Store

February 25, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

What is a 404 Error

A 404 Error is an error message displayed when an accessed page is not found in the server that you want to access. It is a standard response when an entered address does not match a data from a server.

This happens when you rename, move, or delete a page. This message also appears when the URL is incomplete, mistyped or misspelled. You can change the way your WooCommerce store responds to this error by redirecting or just letting your visitors arrive at a custom 404 Error page.

Creating a Custom 404 Error Page

You can actually just leave it and most websites would just send out a typical text response. So why create a custom 404 error page for your Woocommerce store? A lot of people are highly visual.

Web design is a huge factor in discerning a company’s credibility. Zabisco found out that 40% will respond to visual information better than plain text. This alludes to the importance of creating a visually-appealing custom 404 error page.

Custom content will not only boost your branding but will make customers have a more positive view of your company. Custom content is one of the many reasons that make a customer feel positive about your website.

Statistics/Case Studies on 404 Error Pages

From a search engine ranking standpoint, 404 error pages will not hurt your ranking per se. It only matters when an important link in your site returns a 404 error. This important link could be your “about” page or “contact” page. Your rankings could suffer since these important pages are actually ranking factors.

Any other 404 error could also frustrate your visitors and just leave your website. Shopify surveyed why online retailers are losing 67.45% of their sales. They discovered that some of the most common mentioned issues are website problems.

A 404 error also affects a website’s bounce rate. A bounce happens when a visitor comes to your website, does not click on any other page and leaves. Search engines like Google use bounce rate as ranking factor.

A high bounce rate raises several red flags for your WooCommerce store. It may imply poor user experience and your website may be deemed irrelevant to your market.

Elements of a Custom 404 Error Page

Now before you go and make any changes, keep in mind that each theme is different. There are different ways on how you can create a custom 404 Error page. Here are some important things that you need to consider.

Use Simple Language

A regular site visitor will not understand a typical technical 404 message. Use simple human language to inform your site visitor of what went wrong. You can even use language translations or location specific pages. The goal is to deliver a clear message.

How You Can Help

Apologizing and offering a helpful suggestion should be the main theme. The aim is to change the negative experience from 404 pages into a positive one. You can do this by:

Adding a search box
Showing your menu navigation
Adding a contact, subscription or ticket submission form
Adding a sitemap, category lists or key links
Linking popular posts or social media accounts
Giving out coupons, discounts, or other offers

Time spent in your site should not end in your 404 page. These elements are also engagement and conversion boosters. Your customers stay happy and you get a positive rep.

Examples of Good 404 Error Pages

A lot of huge brands out there appeal to human emotions in their marketing strategy. This is because customers are not buying products, they buy the experience. 404 Error pages in the past are just simple text warnings. Websites now use humor or a bit of personality to communicate their brand to the customers. You can use graphics, animations, or even videos. Here’s some inspiration to get you started.

Popscreen

Popscreen showcases a clean and bright but simple and straightforward 404. You can see a link to the home page and popular videos as well as search bar.

GOG

GOG displays a unique design to say that you lost your way. The 404 error page retains the navigation and footer menu so it is easy for users to navigate. Users can also report the error.

UX Booth

The UX Booth 404 error page uses simple, concise and direct language and an immediate apology. The page suggests popular links on the website as well as the list of categories. It also retains the footer links and the search bar.

Average Joes Blog

Average Joes Blog is a good example of category-rich 404 error page. In fact, the 404 error page is a replica of the home page.

Philips

Philips goes creative and witty with its 404 error page. It mentions the absence of lighting then explains what happened and suggests popular links.

Email Center UK

The Email Center UK website uses humor. Since you are at an error page, it means someone messed up and you get to choose who to fire for the fiasco. Below all that is a simple link to the home page.

Hootsuite

The Hootsuite 404 error page lists down possible reasons for the error. They used ‘fowl” language to keep the identity of the brand/mascot.

IMDB

The IMDB 404 error page uses a simple layout with a clever idea. Every visit to a 404 error displays a random movie quote. Movie buffs will definitely find this entertaining. A convenient link to the home page is also positioned at the top.

Blue Fountain Media

Blue Fountain Media makes a 404 page that you will look forward to – an actual PAC-MAN game. They retained their main navigation and a “Go Back” link that takes you to the last visited working page.

Not Found Org

NotFound.org actually uses its 404 error page to achieve a goal. It is an app that you can install in your website. It lets you customize your 404 page to help their cause – find thousands of children that go missing every year.

Creating a Custom 404 Error Page

Now that you have some inspiration, it’s time to create your own. You can check out WordPress’ basic guide here if you are able to code, if not you can check out the plugins below.

Since WooCommerce is installed on the WordPress platform, you can use the power of WordPress plugins to create awesome About Us pages.

Custom 404 Pro

The Custom 404 Pro plugin lets you override the default 404 page with any page of your choice. To set your custom 404 error page:

Install and activate the Custom 404 Pro plugin.
Create a new page that you want to use as your 404 error page.
Click on Custom 404 Pro on your WordPress Dashboard and then click on Settings.
Set the page or URL that you want to use as your 404 error page and then click on Save Changes.

404page

404page is another easy plugin to use to create custom 404 error pages. To create a custom 404 error page using the 404page plugin:

Install and activate the plugin.
Create a new page that you want to use as your 404 page.
Click on Settings and then choose the page that you want to use as your 404 error page.
Click on Save Changes.

Test Your 404 Error Page

To test if your new 404 error page is working, just pop any non-existent URL in your domain on your browser. If your new 404 error page does not appear, check if your website is set to redirect to your new 404 error page.

Conclusion

404 Error Pages can be annoying but you can use them to your advantage. Customize them to boost engagement and conversion. Align your new 404 error page with your brand image and website goals. It will do wonders for your WooCommerce store and your brand. Do you have any other suggestions for creating a good 404 error page?

How to Counter Brute Force Attacks on WordPress

January 15, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management System (CMS) available. Its popularity is the reason why it is highly targeted by attackers. A secure website is a must if you’re operating an online business so you can protect your business and your customers.

In this article, you will learn:

What is a brute force attack?
How to know if someone is brute forcing into your site
How to counter brute force attacks on WordPress
What to do when someone succeeds at brute forcing into your website

WordPress does not currently have any built-in feature to stop brute force attacks so you are responsible in preventing them on your own website.

What is a Brute Force Attack?

Brute force attack or brute forcing is one of the leading causes of website compromises and is similar to a trial and error method. The objective of the attacker is to gain access to the server level of your site by using various username and password combinations repeatedly until it succeeds. Not only that, it can also be utilized to find hidden pages and content in a web application.

Brute Force Attack is, simply put, an attack to the weakest link in a website’s security. Sucuri, a security company focusing on spotting and repairing compromised websites, reports at least 770,000 brute force attacks every hour. Your website is vulnerable to this type of hacking if you require user authentication or login access.

There are endless catastrophic possible events that could happen once an attacker gains access to your site. The access will be exploited and accounts can be locked out, malware or viruses can be injected, important financial transactions can be compromised or blocked, or data can be changed or stolen. All the hard work you have invested in your business could go down the drain in an instant and hurt your virtual presence.

Brute Force Attack Methods

Brute forcing can be done in different systematic ways. It can be done manually or with automated tools. This can be done in a matter of minutes or years depending on the complexity of your authentication data and process. In most cases, it is done by automated tools that use bots to crawl the web and look for weak preset conditions and weak targets. For WordPress, the common targets are the /wp-admin extensions, /wp-login.php and the XML-RPC.

Brute Force Attacks can be used positively if the goal is to test a website’s security but unfortunately, most of the time, it is used by hackers to crack encrypted data for their own advantage. There is a growing number and improving array of automated tools that can be used for brute force attacks. They are simple to use that even a teenager can use them. These tools determine the length of usernames or passwords and try different possible combinations to gain access. The following are commonly used methods:

Dictionary Attack

The common targets here are administrator accounts. In this method, the attacker will use a database or ‘dictionary’ containing millions of words that are commonly used as a login password. Each one will be tried for authentication. The attacker will succeed once the password is accepted as correct.

These attacks can lock out one account or more and gather more information from the site depending on the error responses. This is actually resource- and time- consuming but this can be done quickly with better computing power. It does not decrypt information. It only cycles through a list of words until it becomes successful.

Hybrid Brute Force Attack

This is similar to the dictionary attack but the attacker may use permutations of words from a password dictionary, your real or site user name, website and company name. It uses a smarter set of rules, such as adding numbers and doubling up some characters or words, to intelligently guess passwords. An attack can occur and succeed quicker if more information is available to the attacker.

Reverse Brute Force Attack

This is less common but your website is vulnerable to this if your site users use weak passwords. In this method, the attacker will try to use one password and try to match it against many user names.

How Do You Know if Someone is Brute Forcing into Your Site?

The tough reality is Brute Force attacks can be the same as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) or DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. You can differentiate them by the intent. DDoS/DoS is after disruption of service while Brute Forcing is after gaining access. DDoS/DoS however can be a byproduct of Brute Forcing as the access attempts can overload your servers. Some attacks are easy to detect but some are harder to detect because they use different open proxy servers.

Careful observation and monitoring is necessary to detect Brute Force Attacks. Be on the lookout for irregularities and malicious activities in your site. To help you out, these are the most common ones experienced by victims of brute forcing:

Numerous failed logins coming from the same IP address
Multiple usernames used to login from the same IP address
Continuous login for one username from various IP addresses
Logins with suspicious usernames and passwords
Overloaded server memory that results from excessive bandwidth consumption from a single use
Performance problems
Weird links
Notice from the webserver of attacks and an unusually large amount of data being used in a short period of time
Website redirects to a different page or website
Unwanted popups and ads are all over their site
Malware or virus
Spam emails or comments
Help desk flooded by complaints of locked out accounts.

How to Avoid Brute Force Attacks

A Brute Force Attack can be minimized, if not avoided, as long as you follow these steps.

Keep Everything Updated

WordPress themes and other plugins update their version to keep them safe from vulnerabilities and to fix bugs. Updating can be tedious but this will help protect your site from known exploits. Just make sure that you keep a backup before doing updates. Be on the lookout for updates in your WordPress Dashboard for the following:

WordPress Version
WordPress Theme
WordPress Plugins

Use Strong Passwords and Change Them Regularly

The best way to protect your site is to use strong passwords and avoid keeping the same password for a long time. If your site allows numerous login accounts, it is best to make sure that all your users follow these basic rules in making strong passwords:

Keep your passwords long. Use a minimum of 8 characters.
Keep it complex. Do not use dictionary words.
Keep it mixed. Use a combination of numbers, upper- and lower-case alphabets and non-alphanumeric characters.
Check if your password is a common password.

Avoid Common Usernames

sucuri-common-usernames-1 — “admin” is the most used username for Brute Force attacks. Image Source: https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/03/understanding-denial-of-service-and-brute-force-attacks-wordpress-joomla-drupal-vbulletin.html

This is very important especially for administrator accounts. Do not use the default username ‘admin’ or any similar usernames containing the same word. Doing so will significantly increase the likelihood of your site being attacked by malicious users.

Use Two-Way Authentication for Administrator Accounts

For extra security, you can activate two-way authentication in your Cpanel or use a plugin such as miniOrange’s Two-Factor Authentication (Google Authenticator). The con to this, however, is you would need to have your phone with you all the time and your log-in process would take more effort and time from you.

Set Administrator Logins to Certain IP Addresses

If you have the privilege of getting a static IP address, this is a great added security option. You can actually block all sign in attempts from all other IP addresses by editing your .htaccess file. However, this can be a problem if your network uses dynamic IP addresses that can change over time.

Design Your Site to Not Use Predictable and Data Exposing Behavior for Failed Login Attempts.

If you are tech savvy, this is one option that you can do by changing the error messages that your website shows. For example, an error message that shows ‘bad username or password’ will make the attacker try the next information in their list. Adding progressive delays every failed attempt can also help improve your website’s security. You can also prompt your users to answer a captcha or a secret question after failed attempts. Be wary of using captcha though as it can negatively affect your websites user experience.

Secure Your Site with Tools and Plugins

There are many available tools and plugins that you can use. Some are free and some come with a price. Here are some tools, plugins and features that you should consider to significantly improve your website’s security. They can help you counter brute force attacks on your WordPress site. Before adding a plugin, you need to check if it’s compatible with your theme, other plugins, and WordPress version first. Some of the tools mentioned below may overlap with other ones in the list.

Security Scanner

There are so many security scanner plugins available for WordPress and most of them also include various tools that improve your website’s security. Top plugins that you can check out are:

Login attempt limit, blocks, and delay

There are plugins that can limit the rate of login attempts and block IP addresses temporarily to protect your site from brute force attacks such as WP Limit Login Attempts. You can also be on the lookout by tracking IP, usernames, passwords and adding idle timeout in your login with Login Security Solution.

Hide Login Page and Data

Attackers would normally target your /wp-login.php or /wp-admin. To hide your login page, you can use WPS Hide Login plugin.

Strong Passwords

WordPress already generates a strong password for new users but if you are not a new user, you might want to create a very strong password by using a mix of upper case and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.

One way of creating a strong password that is easy to remember is to think of a sentence. For example: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” Take the first letter of every word and you will get “TQBFJOTLD”. Convert some letters to numbers or symbols and you can get “7Q3FJ0T1D” and then vary the remaining letters to upper case and lower case. Your strong password could be “7q3Fj0T1d”. Whenever you want to type your password, just recall the sentence that you used to generate your password.

Cloud/Proxy Services

You can use the aid of cloud or proxy services to help mitigate attacks all over the web as these block the IPs before they even reach your server. Cloudflare and Sucuri CloudProxy are notable services to check out.

What if Someone Already Got into My Site?

Don’t Do Anything Rash

The worst mistake you can do is to delete things without backing up data first or cause further problems by troubleshooting. If your site has been compromised, the best option is to seek professional help.

Keep Calm and Regain Control of Your Site

Take a step back and calm yourself down. You can still recover from this miserable event. Try to regain admin access of your site. If your password was changed, you can simply get access again by using the ‘forgot password’ option. If this has failed, get in touch with your hosting provider.

Change All Your Backend Passwords

This is an important step that you should do when you regain access to your hacked website. Make sure that you use a strong password so you can avoid further damage being done to your website.

Identify the Damage Done

Once you’ve gotten access to your site, scan your website with online malware scanners like Sucuri’s or with Google’s Safe Browsing. You can do the latter by typing this in your url: google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=yoursiteaddresshere.com

Check with Your Hosting Company

Some hosting services provide technical support for issues like this. Getting professional help is still recommended.

Restore from Backup

If you keep regular backups, you can restore your most recent backup just make sure the backup that you chose was from before your site was compromised.

Check and Change User Permissions

Checking user permissions, especially if there are many accounts that can access administrator settings, should be done to further prevent other users’ access while you’re cleaning up.

Close Hacker Backdoors

Secure your wp-config.php file and close all the backdoors that the hacker may have left. You will need professional help for this.

Change Your Passwords Again

Yes, again. The hacker may have gotten wind of your new password through a malware so change your password again when you are done cleaning up.

Have Your Site and IP Address Whitelisted

Once you have finished cleaning your site up, find out where you have been blacklisted. You may still be marked as spam by some online services like Unmask Parasites.

Summary

Your e-commerce website being compromised is one of the worst experiences an entrepreneur can go through. So planning ahead and hardening your websites security should never be taken lightly. The adage “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” rings true. If you did the hardening methods we have shown in this article, give yourself a pat on the back. If you are here because your website was compromised, get professional help as soon as possible.

How to Create an Awesome About Us Page for your WooCommerce Store

March 3, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

Your e-commerce site is the face of your company and your brand on the web. Your “About Us” page tells your visitors who you are and what you do. In this post, we will teach you how to create an awesome About Us page.

What is an About Us Page?

The About Us page introduces your brand to your visitors. More people check a website’s About Us page before making online purchases.

About Us Page Statistics

According to the NN Group, while most websites do have an About Us page, these websites often do a poor job of presenting their About pages. They also found that there are more people who couldn’t find information about a company or organization. Factual information from these websites was replaced by out of place marketing. As a result, the subjective satisfaction of website users decreased from 5.2 to 4.6, on a 1-7 scale.

Importance of an About Us Page

Increased Trust Rating

People who shop online check for proof that the company they are buying from is legit. Showing your website’s legitimacy boosts your credibility. This just shows that consumers are very wary of where they spend their money. The About Us page helps you show consumers that you are worthy of their trust, money, and time.

Increased Conversion

In another study, consumers spent five times more when shops tweaked their About Us page. They even spent 22.5% more, on average. These figures may rise depending on how good your About Us page is. Increase your profit by connecting with your visitors on a more personal level.

SEO Opportunity

The SEO opportunity in About Us pages is no rocket science. This page can just contain more keywords related to your niche than other pages in your website. It’s a good idea to fit niche-related keywords all over the page, just don’t over-optimize.

Increased Engagement

Adding important internal links, other media and links to social media pages can help increase engagement. You can also add a contact form to serve as a lead generation tool to gather emails.

What Info Should I Put on My About Us Page?

Before creating an About Us page, here are a couple of things you need to do.

First, identify your audience or target market. Better yet, create a customer persona. Use this knowledge to customize the content on your page and reach out to that audience. Stay away from the typical general corporate-speak. Rather, use a personal but professional tone and feel.

Second, provide key context. The About Us page should show what your customers want to know about you. Every element, from text to multimedia, should be a part of your story. Make this page appear ‘human’. Customers enjoy getting a sense of the company behind a product and website.

How to Structure Your About Us page

Teaser or Tagline

This is a brief phrase or statement that summarizes your organization. Copyblogger was witty enough with their power statement. What is your company about in a nutshell?

The Round-Up

This section usually contains a paragraph or two. It features your company information, vision, goals and main accomplishments. Be careful not to overdo this by using empty superlatives. The goal here is to provide information and not to gloat.

about-sample-nng — A straightforward About Us page example from the Nielsen Norman Group.

Quick Facts

Add some quick facts on your About Us page. This can come in different forms. You can add information about your team, history, performance, or your office culture. Stay with the facts and let your customers be the judge. Get creative by using different multimedia or graphic elements. Just remember that whatever you put should be accurate and verifiable.

about-sample-abbvie — Easy on the eyes information from AbbVie.

about-sample-woothemes — Simple but informative layout from Woothemes.

Outsider’s Perspective

If you have industry awards, reviews and testimonials, let them be known in your About Us page. If you have a lot, you can add some highlights in the About Us page and link to a sub-page where the rest of the info is placed.

Engagement

This is an avenue for interaction. Add elements like a contact form, social media buttons, and calls-to-action.

Introduce Your Team

Adding information about the people behind your company will boost your credibility. Take time to post photos or some quick information about your team. The National Center for Biotechnology Information found that photos inflate subjective feelings of truth.

How to Create an Awesome About Us Page

You can create your About Us page just as you would any other page. Some WordPress themes have a built-in special About Us page template. If your theme does not have that, you can create a simple About Us page by going to Pages and clicking on Add new. Add your content and then click on Publish to save your page.

Add content to your About Us page as you would to any other kind of page.

Name your page “About”, “About Us” or “About ”. Use the same for the permalink.

How to Add Your About Us Page to Navigation Menu

Once you’re done saving your page, you need to add it to your navigation menu. Go to Appearance > Menus.

To display your About Us page in your menu navigation, select About Us page in the list of pages. After that, click Add to Menu. Drag it to desired position. Click on ‘Save Menu’ when you’re done.

Plugins that Can Help Create an About Us Page

Plugins are your go-to solution if you don’t know how to code. Here’s a list of plugins that you can use to create an awesome About Us page.

Powr About Us

Powr About Us is a plugin with free and premium versions. The free version lets you create profiles for your company and employees. It has the features from the premium version, but it shows the plugin’s watermark logo and has limited support. The premium version has premium support, analytics, no access limits and no watermark logo. Once installed and activated, you will see a plug icon integrated in your Pages editor. It’s a drop down menu that lets you add shortcodes in the content area. This will help you create a professional About Us page. Once added, you will be able to edit them on the front end of your site.

Page Builder by SiteOrigin

Page Builder by SiteOrigin is a free drag and drop page builder. It adds a ‘Page Builder’ tab in the Pages editor after installation and activation. This plugin has a lot of options that you can use to create an About Us page. It allows customization of page dimensions, layouts, and adding different elements to the page. For more advanced users, you can also use CSS to further tweak the look of your page. The plugin allows for creating some very unique About Us pages.

Team

The Team plugin by ParaThemes will help you build a responsive grid team profiles in WordPress. It uses pure HTML & CSS3 and is easy to customize. It lets you create profiles that include descriptions and links to social media profiles. The free version gives you enough customizations with unlimited team members. If you are not satisfied with the free version’s options, you can get their pro version which gives more in-depth custom controls. It has drag and drop, pop-up profiles, and more display options.

In Summary

The About Us page is an essential part of any website as it introduces your company or organization to your audience. For a Woocommerce site, having a good About Us page may result to an increase in the site’s performance. Creating an About Us page is simple and easy but you need to build it with your users in mind. You may also enlist the help of a plugin to help you create one. Do you have any more tips or ideas that you’d like to share regarding About Us? 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.

How to Add a Favicon to your WooCommerce Store

February 29, 2016 By John Leave a Comment

What is a Favicon?

Favicons are typically 16×16 square images. Old versions of Internet Explorer refer to the bookmark section as “favorites”. Hence the name “favorites icon” or favicon for short.

What is the Point of Having Favicons?

The main purpose of having favicons is to easily distinguish different websites in the bookmarks page. Here is a snapshot of a bookmarks page. Notice that the pages without favicons are hard to distinguish if they belong to the same website or not.

Search engines and websites then are not as powerful and strongly connected with links. If you came across a good site, it was usually a good idea to bookmark it. As a result, people often have a long list in their “Favorites page”. The favicon answers the need to tell each website apart in the list at a glance.

Favicons are not limited to bookmarks pages though. It is also used around different parts of the browser like the history page, tabs, and more. Favicons play a huge role in online branding providing easy recognition and association. If you are serious in brand recognition, then you must add a favicon to your site.

Adding a Favicon to Your Woocommerce Store

Starting from WordPress 4.3, you can now add your favicon directly using the admin panel. Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Site Title, Tagline, and Logo.

Simply select a 512×512 image from your media library or you can upload a new one. If you select an image larger than 512×512 or a non-square image, you will receive a prompt to crop your image.

After this, click save and publish. Refresh or restart your browser to see your new favicon.

Note that this is a default feature since WordPress 4.3. If you don’t see this feature in the theme you are using, contact your theme’s support for assistance. Or you can do it the old fashioned way with the steps below.

How to Make a Favicon?

If you have a small logo, that would be good to use for a favicon. Otherwise, you’ll have to create a miniature version of your logo. If you are not comfortable working with graphics, you can contact your graphic designer to help you out.

How to Manually Add a Favicon?

To add a favicon to your WooCommerce store, start by saving the image to one of your site’s folders. You can upload it using FTP or via media library upload. After saving it, take note of the filename and file path. It is best to save your favicon in your website’s root folder or in the images folder of your theme’s folder.

On your Dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Editor. Find your theme’s header.php file. Remember, the best way to edit your theme’s files is via a Child Theme. You can select one from several Storefront child themes to help you customize your WooCommerce store.

Paste the code below in your header.php file just below the other lines starting with “<link rel=”.

<link rel="icon" href="http://www.domain.com/favicon.png" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.domain.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

Replace “http://www.domain.com/favicon.ico” with the file path of your favicon. Save the file and you’re done. You may need to restart your browser to see the new favicon.

I hope we helped you in adding a favicon to your WooCommerce store. If you have any questions and feedback, leave us a comment below. We are always ready to help.