Category: Business

  • LastPass and ExpressVPN Announce a New Partnership

    LastPass and ExpressVPN Announce a New Partnership

    Introduction

    On September 24th, ExpressVPN and LastPass announced a brand-new partnership. This partnership gives LastPass Premium and LastPass Family users a 30-day free trial for ExpressVPN, giving users the best of both services at no extra cost to users.

    And while this news is surely exciting—more free stuff is always good—it’s important to understand the benefits both services bring to the table. So what exactly do LastPass and ExpressVPN bring to users? Why would these two services partner together?

    The Benefits of Password Managers

    Let’s kick off this article by talking about LastPass. LastPass is a password manager, a piece of software that stores all of your passwords into a locker—a locker you can access with a master password. But what makes password managers superior to a pen and a piece of paper?

    1. Easy to Organize Passwords

    For one, password managers make it easy for users to organize their passwords. When a user logs into an account, LastPass will ask them if they’d like to store the account information into the locker. If the user agrees, the account info (the username and password) are placed in a specific category and is easily accessible at any time.

    For example, a user’s login information for their online banking account would be placed into the “Finance” section of LastPass. This keeps things organized for users and removes the headache of searching for a specific password.

    2. Can Create Strong Passwords

    Password managers like LastPass contain password generators. These password generators often allow users to decide how long the password will be, if it will contain special symbols and numbers, and if it’s easy to read.

    These generators help users create strong, unique passwords for all of their accounts—an important step in account security.

    The Benefits of VPNs

    Virtual private networks (VPNs) focus on the data your device or network sends out while in use. For example, if you frequently use a public network, your data is visible to everyone on the network. With a VPN, your data is encrypted. But how is this useful in the real world?

    1. Encrypts Your Device and Network

    The main feature of VPNs is the encryption they provide to your device and network. Whether you’re on a public network or your private network at home, the data your device sends out is visible, and with the right software, a hacker can easily steal that data and use it against you, for example, in fraud, identity theft and hacks.

    VPNs prevent this by masking the IP address of the device sending out data and encrypting the data it sends out. This encryption effectively masks the data as it travels to-and-from your device. The result? A user’s data becomes unreadable and untraceable to everyone, including your internet service provider, government, and neighbors.

    2. Easy to Use

    Modern VPNs are also extremely easy to use and are quite accessible. When it comes to ExpressVPN, all a user has to do is select which country they want to connect to and click the giant power button in the software. After that, no further input is needed from the user.

    What this Partnership Means for User Privacy

    But what exactly does the LastPass and ExpressVPN partnership mean for users? Well, ExpressVPN and LastPass are popular pieces of software across the world, but besides the free 30-day trial, what does this partnership bring to the table?

    First, let’s take into consideration what has happened here: two titans in the cybersecurity industry have partnered up to bring users more digital privacy. The influence of this cannot be ignored. See, this collaboration will draw attention to the importance of cybersecurity and the need for enhancements within the industry.

    While this partnership may not seem like a big deal at first, it’s important to consider the long-term effects of a collaboration on this level. Further down the line, more cybersecurity companies will see the success of this collaboration and will start collaborating with other cybersecurity companies as well.

    The end result? More enhancements for users on the privacy level. This is the end-goal, and this is what matters most today, where user data is akin to gold.

  • Expert Tips for Managing Your eCommerce Business

    Expert Tips for Managing Your eCommerce Business

    E-Commerce platforms have opened a world of possibilities for both business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs alike. By removing the back-breaking capital needed for starting a brick-and-mortar store, the possibilities of providing products have become endless. As a result, we’ve come to witness businesses dealing in products without having any inventory. Shipping companies have swarmed the globe. Intermediary agencies came to light, doing nothing but managing the operations of other e-commerce businesses. 

    If you ask an expert about the best one to follow in the middle of all these different operational strategies, they’ll tell you there isn’t a specific rule. They’ll point out how some businesses rely on selling high-tag items for profit, while others decide to dominate a certain niche. The strategy of either can work for neither, so it all comes down to your business strategy. However, if you adjust your question to asking for tips on managing your e-commerce business, they’ll give a list of proven tips they all swear by. 

    Here’s what they’ll tell you to do. 

    1. Think Like a Customer

    If you’re still stuck between the pages of plans and statistics, it’s time to take a stroll down the other side of your eCommerce platform. Stop thinking like the executive you are – you’re only looking at how products are selling and the strategies you need to tweak to create more reach. Meanwhile, if you start thinking like one of your customers, you’ll instantly point out all the strategic flows you’ve been missing. Additionally, you’ll start experiencing what a real customer would, which gives you better ideas on how to optimize their experience and tempt them into adding more products into their shopping cart. 

    2. Craft a Full Operational Plan

    Again, forget your strategic plans for a while. Do you have a full operational plan ready to be executed? Many business owners fail to realize the difference between the general plan and the operational one. Your operational plan considers every single factor you’ll deal with once you start your execution – ideally expressed as an action plan that’s divided into tasks and deadlines. Your operational plan must cover every step of your manufacturing process, supply chain, customer service, and promotional strategies. 

    3. Choose the Right Platform

    There’s a world of difference that comes with choosing the right platform and failing to do so. While eCommerce platforms are available in multiple forms and features, ensure you’re very familiar with the technicalities that the platform relies on when operating. Some platforms are relatively easy to use, but they come with limited features. Other well-established platforms offer more features and better user experience (for you), but you’ll still face certain issues. Generally, you’ll face fierce competition on these platforms, so what’s your plan for dominating the market and positioning your brand?

    4. Consider Outsourcing 

    While it’s tempting to do everything on your own (we know what we entrepreneurs are like), it’s not always the best nor smartest approach to operating your eCommerce business. Sometimes, it’s much more efficient to outsource certain parts of the operations to a specialized agency. 

    The experts from https://www.envisagedigital.co.uk/magento-support-services/ point out that using an eCommerce platform like Magento can be worthwhile – only if you ensure the optimum customer experience; this experience will be compromised if the site keeps crashing or lagging. Are you experienced enough to deal with these technical issues? If you’re not, then it’s better to leave it to the experts. 

    5. Map Out a Customer Journey

    Following on thinking like a customer, you must optimize your eCommerce platform for the optimum customer journey. It includes regular site maintenance, yes, but it’s so much more than fixing bugs as they arise. Your main focus should always be to push your visitors to add more items to their shopping cart and finalize the purchase. 

    Think of all the tools you can accomplish without overwhelming the visitor. An optimized eCommerce platform will use a funnel approach to its maximum benefit, taking the customer through a smooth journey, generating leads and conversion, and customer retention. 

    6. Utilize Different eCommerce Marketing Strategies

    There are a few well-known strategies when it comes to tempting customers over the eCommerce platform. For instance, make sure to cross-sell and upsell different products while they’re viewing the page of interesting products. Reminding them of abandoned carts is another popular and effective strategy to encourage them to finalize their purchase. 

    7. Integrate Your eCommerce Platform with Social Media Strategy

    While you’re thinking of different eCommerce marketing strategies, integrate it into your entire marketing efforts. There’s no better way to generate leads than directing your traffic from other social media platforms to your eCommerce platform. Moreover, social media platforms have the best ability to reach your target audience and build a channel of connection with them, so make sure your marketing efforts are always complimenting each other. 

    8. Maximize Email Marketing Benefits

    Speaking of marketing strategies, email marketing needs to be discussed on its own when it comes to eCommerce. You can’t neglect the value of integrating email marketing into your strategy. It’s the best tool you can use to build and maintain the connection with the leads you’ve acquired, from welcoming emails to confirming their purchases, reminding them of abandoned carts, sending promotions and offers, and keeping them updated with your news. Email marketing is the single most important tool you’ll need to utilize to the maximum. 

    9. Test, Analyze, Optimize

    With all your efforts directed in the right place, you’ll only know what works and what doesn’t by monitoring your progress and testing different approaches. Keep testing how you present your products and keep experimenting with different strategies. With every different test, collect the data and analyze the efficacy. Check the conversion rates or repeated pitfalls during the customer journey; this will give you the insights to optimize your eCommerce operations and management strategies. 

    Despite the practicality that eCommerce platforms offer in the world of business, or perhaps, as a result of it, managing a successful eCommerce business is no walk in the park. From product strategies to strong competition, many obstacles are standing between you and success. Instead of discarding all of your plans, it would be wiser to follow the experts’ tips and make simple adjustments to your managing process first.

  • How to Use Testimonials to Improve Your Customer Experience

    How to Use Testimonials to Improve Your Customer Experience

    The fact of the matter is that no business would be able to thrive without satisfied customers. That’s why the goal of every business should be to ensure that their customers are happy with their brand. One of the easiest ways a business can achieve that is by talking to their audience. By asking your customers for feedback, you’ll ensure that they feel valued. What’s more, you’ll also strengthen the connection you have with your customer base.

    All of this can significantly help you improve your business. Not only that, but customer feedback, reviews and testimonials can actually help you bring more customers in. Anyone who sees a positive interaction with a business will be likely to check that business out. That said, here are some of the best ways you can use testimonials to improve your customer experience.

    Offer information to new customers

    Word of mouth recommendations are still one of the most preferred forms of marketing. Simply put, people are more inclined to trust information they receive from another person than information they can find about a business online. Testimonials and user reviews have a similar effect. Any potential customer looking to try a business out will first go through these, before giving the business a shot. So, choosing to include testimonials in your business promotion will only bring you good. This way any potential customer will get a chance to learn more about your business beforehand. That way they’ll know exactly what to expect from your business before they even interact with it. Needless to say, including testimonials in your business promotion will work as an excellent lead generation.

    Improve relationship with existing customers

    As mentioned earlier, customers like to feel valued. That’s why – if you’ve already asked them for testimonials – you should include them in your business promotion. The thing is that the vast majority of businesses usually focus on acquiring new customers. And while this is the right way to go – to a point – you must not forget about your existing customers. Your existing customers are what keeps your business going. So, showing respect and appreciation towards them is as equally important as trying to acquire new customers. This will greatly improve your customer loyalty. And anyone in the business world knows just how important good and strong customer loyalty actually is.

    Customer Reviews
    Customer Reviews

    Promote transparency

    Moreover, customer testimonials can really be used to emphasize business transparency. In some niches, business transparency is extremely important. This is particularly true for highly-profitable and lucrative industries. For instance, the iGaming industry is currently one of the most lucrative industries in the world. With such huge sums of money circulating on a daily basis, transparency becomes very important. That’s why review sites such as AskGamblers became so sought-after. Not only do they offer their users all the relevant information but they also put a high emphasis on transparency. What’s even more important is that they don’t censure their testimonials and user reviews. Instead, you can find plenty of true and accurate information which can greatly aid you in the long run.

    Boost your business

    Next, aside from using testimonials to show your current and potential customers that you care, you can also use them to better your business. Simply choosing to display testimonials is not really going to be enough. Instead, you will also need to really listen to what your customers are saying. If you’re only asking for feedback without actually listening to it, it won’t do you much good. What you actually do is ask for feedback and really analyze the information you’re given. When it comes to paying for a product or service, people will be more than happy to share their opinions. So, you should use that information to grow and improve. See which aspect of your business your customers feel like needs to be improved. And, of course, look for practical and sustainable ways that will allow you to achieve just that.

    Provide relevant information

    In the end, do know that simply slapping testimonials left and right on your website is not the best approach. Instead, you really need to pay attention to where and how you place your testimonials. The best approach would be to group them. If you’re offering a selection of products or services, make sure that testimonials correspond with the solution you’re offering. By making sure that you place relevant testimonials in the right place you’ll offer your customers better insight. And, along similar lines, more information about your offer in particular. This will not only showcase your business in a positive light but it will also encourage better customer interaction.

    Online Reviews
    Online Reviews

    These were just some of the ways any business can use testimonials to improve customer experience. The more you take care of your customers, the more they’ll be willing to give back. So, make sure you use the same energy when caring for your existing customers as you do when looking for new ones.

  • 6 Tools You Need to Run a Successful Online Business in 2020

    6 Tools You Need to Run a Successful Online Business in 2020

    If you are like many people out there, there’s a big chance you’ve thought about starting an online business. As you are reading this, some of you have probably come up with a business idea already. Others may have even created a website and are wondering what’s next. Well, whether you still have your day job or you are currently not employed, an online business can be an amazing way to generate income without too much commitment in terms of energy and money. Compared to starting a brick and mortar shop, starting an e-commerce store can be fairly cost-effective, and the setup process is often less involving.

    For your business to succeed and stay ahead of your competition, however, you have to get several things right. For instance, your marketing approach has to be on point. This means investing in various internet marketing strategies and tools, including SEO, web design, social media campaigns, online ads, and so forth. It also means investing in tools that will help you run your day-to-day operations more efficiently. These include tools that will help streamline processes like customer service, order management, inventory management, appointment scheduling, and workforce management, just to name a few. Without further ado, let us look at six tools you need to run a successful online business in 2020.

    1. Email Marketing Software

    Especially in 2020, where many businesses found solace in online business after COVID-19 struck, the internet market tends to have become more competitive. For this reason, you will need to up your game as far as internet marketing is concerned. This means using various digital marketing strategies, email marketing being one of them.

    But let’s be honest, it can be extremely strenuous when you have to manually send marketing emails to 500 or more existing and potential customers. This is why you need an email marketing tool that automates the entire process while gathering leads and boosting your sales. Some of them have added features like CRM and other tools to help your online business succeed.

    2. Customer Referral Software

    In this age and day, people tend to trust brands and products that previous users are talking positively about. Referrals go a long way in boosting your marketing efforts and increasing your customer base. As pointed out at MarketerStack.com, referral marketing software allows your existing customers to recruit more customers to your business. It is an excellent way to promote your products and services while improving your brand recognition. From Ambassador to FriendBuy and ReferralCandy, there are many great referral marketing programs out there to choose from. You just need to choose the one that best suits your business’s needs, budget, and preferences.

    3. Project Management Tools 

    Keeping track of your projects’ progress with different departments and team members can be a real hustle if you are doing it manually. Instead of endless calls, lengthy reports, and a bunch of meetings daily, a project management tool can simplify things for you. Many of them exist, some available for free, whereas others require a monthly or annual subscription. Some of the most popular project/task management tools out there include the following:

    • Asana
    • Trello
    • Basecamp
    • Wrike
    • Zoho Project
    • Scoro
    • Proofhub
    • And many more

    What’s more, many of these have both a web version and a mobile app that lets you track your projects even while on the go. They help teams within the workplace to stay organized and ahead of schedule. They even allow you to easily share files and tasks with internal and external team members without a hustle.  

    4. Online Accounting Tools

    For your online business to achieve success, proper bookkeeping and accounting are a must. Online accounting tools make various accounting tasks easier and faster, thus saving you money at the end of each month. These tools will simplify tasks such as invoicing, creating quotes, making payments, and bookkeeping.

    Good online accounting software will also integrate with your bank accounts so you can request and import statements at will for easy reconciliation. They also include a cloud storage feature, meaning that you can even access your accounting data remotely from any authorized device without necessarily having to install the program. You just need to open your favorite browser, log in, and start executing your accounting tasks. Some reputable accounting tools you can have a look at include

    • Freshbooks
    • sevDesk
    • Zoho Books
    • Sage 50cloud
    • Xero
    • Wave

    5. Video Conferencing Tools 

    With many people working remotely in 2020, the office-based meetings and conferences may not always be possible. Thanks to the internet, however, teams within your business can meet comfortably from their home offices through video and teleconferencing tools. Zoom is a good example of these tools, and it has been all the rage this year.

    The cloud-based platform is easy to use, and in addition to video conference calls, it also offers other features like chats and can be used for webinars and online presentations. It also lets you stream your video on Facebook Live or other platforms so others can access you. Sessions can be recorded for future access or shared for easier collaboration on projects. Other notable video conferencing tools include Skype, Blue Jeans, Cisco Webex, and Microsoft Teams, just to name a few.

    6. Social Media Managers 

    As mentioned earlier, your business’s success online is also dependent in part on how well you connect with people on social platforms. The frequency of your posts, how long you take to respond to queries, and how engaging your social media posts will play a huge part in building your brand reputation and profitability. Therefore, social media management apps are a must-have, especially for small and medium businesses. Apps like HootSuite help you keep track of all the activity on your profile pages and handles, and you can even automate your posts as you manage your campaigns. Your activity on social media lets you reach a wider audience while also serving as a customer service tool.

    And there you have it. Succeeding as an online business takes some work, but it’s all worth the effort. It takes embracing technology and using it to your best advantage. The above are just a few tools you definitely need for a successful online business in 2020.

  • 5 Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Solve Them

    5 Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Solve Them

    A comprehensive SEO strategy will include not just on-page SEO (which is often the most emphasized) but also off-page SEO and technical SEO. The effectiveness of your approach will depend on how well you address the issues that arise as a result of all three. In this article, we will consider five of the most common technical issues and how you can solve them. That easy? That’s right.

    What is Technical SEO?

    Technical SEO includes everything that is done to ensure the technical elements of your website match the requirements of search engines to improve your organic ranking and improve your online visibility. Technical SEO allows search engines to crawl and index websites more efficiently. It includes four primary elements:

    1. Site structure
    2. Crawling
    3. Indexing
    4. Rendering

    Any issue that affects any of these elements will affect your site ranking and negatively influence the online visibility of your business (and you will agree this is bad). In fact, any attempt at on-page and off-page SEO without technical SEO will not yield a significant result. This means that against popular practice and focus, you should first deal with technical SEO issues before addressing others.

    Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Solve Them

    There is a multiplicity of issues that affects your technical SEO. Here are five of the most common and how you can solve them.

    1. Site security 

    Sites that do not have HTTPs are considered as not secure. An insecure website will affect your ranking. To check if your website is secure or not, type your site address into Google. If your site is secure, then it will show a ‘secured’ message. If it is not secure, it will display a gray or red background with a ‘not secure’ warning. To fix this, you will need to buy an SSL certificate from a Certificate Authority and install the same on your site. This will convert your site to HTTPS and make it secure.

    2. Mobile-friendliness 

    Most people now conduct their searches on their mobile devices. A site designed for use on a larger screen will not work well on mobile if that wasn’t taken into consideration from the outset. This makes it less user friendly and invariably reduces how well you can rank. To fix this, make sure you use a responsive design on your site. This kind of design allows your site to adjust the way it displays its content depending on the type of device being used.

    3. Outdated sitemaps

    Search engines use sitemaps to understand the architecture of your site so that its links can be crawled by search engine bots. The longer a site has existed, the more likely the site structure has changed. Any update to your site structure and links will not reflect if the sitemap is not updated and the bots will end up crawling across broken links. You can easily solve this problem by using a dynamic sitemap generator or by updating your sitemaps and submitting through Google Search Console any time significant changes are made on your site.

    4. Site speed 

    From 2010, the speed with which web pages load became a factor in how well a site will rank. It is estimated that if your site doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less, users will go to other sites. Google Bots are rendered unable to crawl every page on your website if it loads slowly meaning some of your pages will not be indexed. Also, you can use my site auditor’s page speed option to scan your website. You can also use Google Page Speed Insight as my site auditor alternative to identify specific problems with your page speed.

    Ways to fix this include image compression, browser cache, and response time improvement, minifying JavaScript, etc. The specific method will depend on the identified cause. You can just talk to your web developer about this issue.

    5. Duplicate content

    Content is duplicated all over the internet all the time and it isn’t necessarily a problem. However, duplicate content becomes a problem when different URLs on your website lead to the same content. What this causes is that you lose crawler cycles so that there will not be enough resources to crawl your unique contents. To fix this issue, you can

    a) Set your URL preference (www versus non-www) in Google Webmasters so that Google treats any site that links to something other than your preference as if it is still linking to your preference.

    b) Use the canonical tag while sharing your links. All pages with the canonical tag that have similar content will be counted by search bots as links to the original page.

    c) Use the Noindex tag so that search bots do not index duplicate pages.

    Conclusion

    SEO when done properly can help position your business for greater success. You must make handling any technical SEO issues you identify a matter of priority, starting with the ones we’ve mentioned.

  • How to Boost Your Social Media Platforms

    How to Boost Your Social Media Platforms

    In the 21st century, where once before friends and family met up in person and communicated over the phone, we now meet up and communicate with social media. Social media has, undeniably, changed the world, and the way that we know it. Social media use is widespread and you would be hard-pressed to find a single person in the modern world who does not or has not used it. It can be a great way to turn a profit, a great way to meet friends, and a great way to meet potential romantic partners.

    Because of its popularity, it is no surprise then that people should want to boost their social media presence and get as many followers as they possibly can. You may want to do this for many reasons; to bring awareness to your business; to meet new people; to impress your friends, or to get more likes on your pictures. Whatever your reasoning for wanting to improve your social media presence, look no further than here; this page has it all. You will find out how you can boost your social media presence and increase the number of followers you have on your platforms by the end of this article. Here is how to boost your social media platforms.

    Follow Backs

    One of the first ways you should get started on increasing your social media presence is follow backs. This works by following as many people as you can at one time (while keeping track of who you follow, so you can unfollow them if they do not follow back). Often, this will yield huge results and you will end up with, depending on how many people you followed, thousands of new followers (or hundreds). Follow backs are one of the best ways that you can boost your social media platform – and a great starting point. Some people may be dubious about strangers following them and might question you, however, and others may accept your follow request and not follow you back – so be on the lookout for both of these. You can find recommended followers in your platform’s search area, and through there, follow as many people as you possibly can. Just keep clicking follow after follow until your fingers begin to hurt. Within a week of using this method, you should develop a very large follower base.

    Buying Followers

    What’s even better than relying on follow backs is buying followers. Buying followers is a fantastic way to get followers and can be very effective. Buying followers, if you have the money, can give you tens of thousands of followers overnight, thereby increasing your follower-base dramatically. The results that this method yields undeniably makes it the best on this list – it is just unfortunate that many people cannot offset the cost to buy followers. According to the people behind https://www.leoboost.com/buy-instagram-followers, buying followers can increase your exposure, visibility, and your follower count massively. If you are looking for the best method of gaining followers – you might have just found it right here.

    Influencers

    Social media influencers are very popular social media figures who act almost like celebrities. They quite frequently have tens of thousands of followers and their pictures often yield tens of thousands of likes and comments. Influencers make quite a lot of money from social media and it is in a sense their full-time jobs. Influencers can be used to great effect when you are attempting to boost your social media presence and increase followers to your platforms. They will very often collaborate with other social media users (potentially you) and exchange shoutouts. These shoutouts will see the social media influencer posting a picture of you saying, ‘follow my friend X Y Z’ and you return the favor by posting it on your page. Your followers will follow them – and theirs to you. This is a great way to improve your presence.

    Competitions

    Competitions on social media, providing you are a business or service (or hopeful influencer) can be another fantastic way to bring attention to your social media page. Social media users often love competitions and enjoy getting involved in them. Competition could be a great way to draw followers in.

    Giveaways

    Following on from the last point, not only do social media users love competitions, but they love giveaways too; if you offer competition with a giveaway attached to it, you might just see the popularity of your social media page skyrocket overnight. Giveaways are a very successful way of improving your social media presence and are one that you absolutely should try if you are an aspiring influencer, businessman, or social media service. Giveaways are undeniably one of the most attractive things to most people – so definitely try out a social media giveaway.

    Content

    Second, only to buying followers, creating and sharing content is a great way to yield thousands of followers. Social media has become so popular around the world solely because of the content that is on offer on the platform. Many people start out to make their social media pages by simply creating fun and interesting content that people want to read about. These pages that offer content become very popular, often overnight, and can draw in hundreds of thousands of interested viewers and followers. When you make the shift from content to a personal page, you may lose some followers, but a lot will remain.

    Advertising

    Advertising your page can work very effectively. Many do this by posting on the pages of popular influencers and social media figures, with things like ‘follow me – I do X Y Z / am interested in X Y Z’. Advertising your page may annoy some people, but will definitely work on increasing the number of followers that you have on social media. It is certainly something worth trying out – it can’t hurt you can it? Advertising your page should be done moderately, or you may find yourself blocked from many pages.

    With the help of this page, you now know how to increase the size of your social media follower-base, and how to boost your platforms. Social media is the in-thing right now – so it’s only right you want to become more popular on it. Good luck!