Expert WordPress Web Design Atlanta and the World
I had the best time reading through last week’s survey results. It was great getting to know you and the issues you are facing in the digital world. I know most people don’t particularly enjoy filling out surveys especially if they are a long as this one so I was blown away by the response from so many people who all filled it out in its entirety! So thank you so much! [Read more…]
I was looking at our customer list the other day and saw that our New Tricks team has designed and developed websites for more than 300 businesses. We’ve also provided website training, social media and email marketing campaigns and training.
The good and the bad of this industry is that websites, user-experience, social media, SEO and digital marketing techniques are always changing. That keeps things interesting but its also good that I’m an avid reader and researcher so I can keep up with it all.
And since I do this when I get questions from my clients, I like to write up the information to share it so that you, my readers, learn something new. [Read more…]
It’s now Hotlanta here with the summer in full swing. I don’t know about you, but I am feeling kind of lazy and want to hang out at the pool. And, I am going to share with you the best poolside/beach reading I have found in a long time, The Chet and Bernie Mystery Series. I know that I am a biased, dog-lover but I am heartbroken that I have finished the entire eight book series and can’t get my fix of Chet, the wise and endearing canine narrator of the series.
Sometimes in life we brush up against people who are hard to get along with. And since business is no different, we need to figure out how to deal effectively with more difficult clients.
One of my favorite little books on the subject, How to Hug a Porcupine? poses the question like this:
My daughter turned thirty last Friday, and to celebrate she came up from Orlando to Atlanta, where she would also be with me for Mother’s Day. I told my 81-year-old mother, Ann Knight, who lives in Pensacola, that Amanda was coming to town and that we had cooked up a Cuban party to celebrate; she was all over it!
After checking her calendar (you’ll see why she needed to do that), she said yes and packed her red Jetta and drove up for the weekend.
At 81, Mom is still spontaneous and full of energy, and that includes her use of technology. At Amanda’s tropical birthday party, Mom was busy taking pictures with her iPhone we gave her for Christmas, a few years ago. [Read more…]
Let’s start with the supposition that you have a skill or expertise of some kind that you are passionate about and enjoy sharing with others. If you can connect with a significant number of people who share your interests or need your services and would be willing to pay for them, then as they say, “You are in Business!”. And you’re in a position to get paid to do what you love.
If this sounds like you, here are five steps for you to take to get paid to do what you love.
One of our clients called this week to tell us about having to close her brick and mortar women’s clothing store, which she opened just over a year ago. This young woman chose a great location for her store, but she was one of the first tenants to go in and for quite some time, she was pretty lonely there. She would have had a much better chance of success if only she had opened this year rather than last, since the larger tenants have finally come on board and are now bringing in foot traffic she needed to make it work. I could hear in her voice, how difficult it was for her to let go of her dream. I’ve been there. [Read more…]
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”–Anais Nin
Someone I love very much had his heart broken last weekend. Yes, Valentine’s Day weekend. On the biggest day for love and togetherness, I know he was not the only one suffering. I usually talk about taking risks in business but it is the same for love.
As a clinical psychologist turned web-marketing guru, I know that loving and letting ourselves be loved takes an immense amount of courage. It is one of the bravest things we can do. It’s not a stretch to say that it’s like putting yourself out there in your business or on your website, because both require vulnerability and perhaps failing more than a time or two. So despite the painful stories we have desperately been holding onto, we have to reach out and make and connections, even when we think we can’t possibly take that risk again.
Now listen up.
That’s how Perry Marshall starts his email newsletters. And boy, have I listened up!
His book, 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More, is such an eye-opening book. It’s filled with so many expansive ideas that when I page back to what I have underlined, it’s all underlined!
For years, management people have known about the 80/20 concept. Also known as the Pareto Principle, it was named after an Italian economist who in 1906 showed that 80 percent of his country’s wealth was owned by 20 percent of its citizens. In the late 1990s, Richard Koch reintroduced Pareto’s work with the bestselling The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less, which applied the principle to just about everything. So I’ve known for a long time that 80 percent of sales will come from 20 percent of the customers, 80 percent of the time we wear 20 percent of our clothes, and 80 percent of the wear on my carpets is found on 20 percent of them.
Then Marshall expanded the concept into fractals, pointing out if 20 percent of your customers account for 80 percent of sales, then 20 percent of those customers will account for 80 percent of those sales. He then goes on to show the mind-boggling implications this has for sales.
What does that mean for your business? First, look closer and see if 20 percent of your customers account for 80 percent of your profits. You might be more than surprised. A core group of customers might represent close to 100 percent of your profits.
I used to be proud of a very popular post on my site about how easy it is to set up a Woo Commerce store. Now it makes me cringe because of how naïve I was when I wrote it. Today people who want an ecommerce site can be pretty naïve too. If you’re thinking about setting up an ecommerce site, keep reading to learn what I’ve found out since that first post. What I have to tell you will serve you well.
Note that Woo Commerce remains the best e-commerce solution for WordPress and powers over 30% of all online stores. It is easy to install and set up, but operating an ecommerce site is easy only for straightforward transactions. You will quickly run into complex issues around sales tax, shipping, credit card merchant accounts and security.
Once you have those things ironed out, don’t expect to relax. It’s not uncommon for ecommerce sites to have conversion rates of 1-2%. The median is 2.35%, and only the top 25% of accounts have more than 5.31. “Build it and they will come” worked for a mystical baseball field, but your ecommerce site is not a green patch in Iowa. You need a strategy that will generate decent revenue. You need my ABC approach to ecommerce success.
Arrange Your Ecommerce Website for Business
Build and Implement a Marketing Plan to Increase Traffic
Correct Your Sales Processes to Increase Your Conversion Rate
Take a close look at these steps before you undertake an Ecommerce for WordPress, and they will serve you well. [Read more…]