Post pobrano z: 6 Things Successful eCommerce Brands Have in Common

The internet has made the dream of starting a business more attainable than ever. But staking a claim in the eCommerce landscape requires more than a name, a website, and some patience. Online sellers who want to survive for the long haul must build a brand from the ground up—one that resonates with shoppers and offers an optimal buying experience.

Studying existing eCommerce businesses is one helpful strategy. Consider these six things successful eCommerce brands have in common when you’re designing your company.

Unique Selling Proposition

Anyone with an internet connection and an idea can launch an eCommerce store these days, but it also means you’ll be entering a competitive market. How are you going to set your store apart? The quickest way is to identify your unique selling proposition (USP) and communicate it clearly to customers. If you have trouble summing up why shoppers should choose your company in one to two sentences, it’s time to clarify it.

Your USP can convey premium products, low prices, free shipping and returns, eco-friendliness, 24/7 customer service or any other service you prioritize for your customers. Thinking about what sets you apart from the pack is important to properly brand your store from the get-go.

Strategies for Social Media

Social media has moved beyond an optional perk in the eCommerce world. Customers expect brands to have a dedicated online presence across their favorite platforms. Social media can help deliver responsive customer service, promote useful content and drive traffic. Consider incorporating social marketing and social shopping into your strategy—the former entails engaging with customers, while the latter allows them to complete a transaction without leaving a social media platform.

Distinctive Branding

Before shoppers even have a chance to figure out your USP, they’re making snap judgments based on what they see. How strong is your visual branding? You’ll want to design a logo capable of sparking instant recognition. You’ll also want to carefully choose colors, fonts, and visuals in line with your overall brand image. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, an entire website is worth even more.

Secure, Trustworthy Website

Consumers want to complete transactions on websites they deem trustworthy. If your eCommerce store looks unprofessional, generic or sketchy, chances are customers will pass it up for a competitor. Your eCommerce store must offer a secure, PCI-compliant payment system. You can further boost trust by displaying site security seals, which improve perceived security in the mind of the customers.

Streamlined Checkout

The more steps you place between customers and checkout, the lower your conversion rates. Simplicity is always best. Avoid forcing users to register for an account before they can complete a transaction. While mandating more work may cause shoppers to bail before paying, allowing them to check out as a guest with the option to make an account later will help streamline their experience. Convenience is especially important, as more and more users make the jump to mobile shopping.

Timely Order Fulfillment

Delivery times have sped up in the last few years, and will likely continue to do so. eCommerce stores need to figure out how to offer affordable, timely shipping to satisfy their customer base. Before working with a third-party drop-shipper, make sure they’re equipped to send out packages fast enough to reflect well on your business. If you handle order fulfillment in-house, give customers the options they need to get their goods when and how they please.

These six things successful eCommerce brands have in common will help you build a strong foundation. After all, branding, marketing, cybersecurity and order fulfillment are always going to be important when it comes to launching and growing an online store.

Featured image by Bench Accounting

Post pobrano z: How Will Digital Marketing Evolve in 2018?

It is hard to ignore the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reach the target audience in today’s digital marketing landscape. It is an issue that everyone is facing. The reason behind this increase in challenges is simple; there are more businesses trying to win the attention of the audience, so you have to be willing to do more to stand out from the crowd.

For you and your business to stay ahead of the market, spotting new trends and integrating new strategies and marketing instruments are important, especially as we get closer to 2018. How will digital marketing evolve in 2018? That is what we are going to find out in this article.

Emotional Marketing

One of the biggest shifts that will be even more prominent in 2018 is the move towards emotional marketing. The most successful digital marketing campaigns in recent months are campaigns that won the heart of the audience, not those that target the audience’s reason and logic. This trend is shaping up to be very exciting too.

Campaigns that focus on compelling stories and emotions generate higher user engagement; emotional engagement on a deeper level. The audience are far more involved and marketers – and businesses – can take advantage of that involvement by delivering a series of messages packaged in a captivating story.

Digital marketing is no longer about transactions and bottom lines. It is more about interactions and building a stronger relationship with the audience. The business impacts of such campaigns will come later and the campaign will continue to produce results long after the relationship is established.

It’s a Content-Centric World

Good quality content will continue to dominate the digital marketing landscape in 2018. This is a rather unsurprising trend for two reasons. For starters, the audience is no longer attracted to short messages and cold calls to action. They are more interested in stories, delivered through articles, videos, and other visual elements.

The delivery of the content matters too. Short-form videos, dubbed snackables (meaning the video can be consumed in less than 60 seconds), will be very popular next year. On the other hand, articles are getting longer and are delivered in a more immersive way, with interactive elements and full-page visuals boosting their impacts.

“Content and social media marketing will be the highlights of 2018,” according to George Lee, CEO of Snap Agency, a leading creative agency with award-winning campaigns in its portfolio. “Crafting content that works for the medium is the way forward.”

Time to Personalize

That last remark by Lee about crafting content that suits the medium sums up the last trend to anticipate perfectly. Gone are the days of producing one content for all channels. It is much more important to tailor the content of your digital marketing campaigns to the delivery channels you want to use.

Producing vertical videos that work for Instagram Stories is far more effective than using a cropped 16:9 videos for the sake of convenience. The audience will pick up on the personalized content too; in fact, they will see badly produced or fitted content as signs of laziness in developing a relationship with them.

Prepare your business for these digital marketing trends of 2018, and you will be leading the market without hassle. There is no better time to start making fine adjustments to your digital marketing strategy than today.

Featured image by RawPixel

Post pobrano z: Really Common Logo Design Mistakes To Avoid

A logo is incredibly important for branding. It simply needs to be perfect as it shows brand personality while conveying information about a company at the very first glance. A logo should never be hard to understand or there is no reason to have one. Logos tell brand stories in an instant, non-patronizing and in a completely clear way.

Much can be said about logo design but in many cases, the first thing should be to understand what you might do wrong. This is why we will mention some really common logo design mistakes you have to avoid.

Raster Graphics That Are Resolution-Dependent

As mobile content is much more important than it used to be, we should mention this mistake first. Logos need to always correctly scale based on host device. All images should appear at a quality that is consistent, all without pixelation. Because of this, using raster graphics is a really bad idea.

Professional designers now use scaling vector graphics. They will scale really well, without losing quality. Editing vector graphics is also much easier.

Blindly Following Trends, Fads And Gimmicks

There are always some brand new emerging design trends you want to consider. However, this does not mean you need to blindly follow them whenever designing a logo. As an example, one of the popular trends is using minimalistic and flat design. Is this something you want to use for everything? When you design for a business selling auto title loans, is minimalistic design enough? These are the types of questions you have to ask.

Always think about designing a logo that will stand the test of time. Also, think about the audience you want to reach with your logo. Does that audience appreciate minimalistic branding? You basically need to think about the future when you design your logo instead of what works now.

Improperly Using Typefaces

Most designers get excited as they work with fonts and this is completely normal. However, this can so easily lead towards a very big problem: improper pairing. This would make everything look really silly. Most logos are designed with an inappropriate font in relation to a brand persona. For instance, when you design a logo with the use of Comic Sans for an attorney, the result will be something that is fun and really light-hearted.
There is a pretty good possibility the client will not like this.

Copying Highly Successful Brands

Always Together by Takahiro Sakamoto

Everyone knows the logos of the big brands like Starbucks or McDonald’s. Because of this, some business owners decide to copy the logos. It is definitely a bad idea as it shows the brand is not creative and a lawsuit is also highly possible. For the designer, aping the successful brands leads to a logo that automatically stands out as lacking creativity. You do not want to be perceived as a designer that is not creative. Also, the result will be bad for the business as clients will recognize the copying attempt. All businessmen know how important it is to be unique for success to happen.

Featured Image by RawPixel

Post pobrano z: Why Reviews Matter for Artists & Designers

Though there are times in life where other people’s opinions of you and your abilities don’t matter, if you happen to be in business, opinions could be the difference between success and demise. As an artist or web designer, your work is essentially only as good as your clients say it is. When your work of art is not presented in a manner that your clients appreciate, their negative feedback can alter your chances of attracting new business.

Kind of sucks. However, it comes with the territory. Though you can’t please everyone, it is essentially your goal to do your best work so that your customers will share positive reviews. It is through these positive words, that you are able to build your brand and credibility in the creative industry and gain new traction.

How Reviews Affect Business

Today’s consumers are more informed decision makers. They don’t make purchases or go into business with brands without first finding out who they are and whether or not they’re good at what they do. Thanks to the internet, finding out about a company is just a few clicks away. Consumers commonly make and search for reviews on products and services they intend to purchase. Here are some stats on how online reviews impact businesses:

• 91% of consumers search online reviews before doing business
• 84% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as a personal reference
• 68% of consumers make a purchase decision after reading between 1-6 reviews.

So, one bad review from one dissatisfied customer will be read by thousands of online shoppers and will help them make an informed decision about your brand after reading it. For this reason, it is imperative for artists and designers to not only generate their best works but to encourage their satisfied customers to post positive reviews.
 

Finding Customer Reviews

So, how do you know where your art or design business stands in the eyes of the customers? You can easily find consumer reviews online. Though you may be aware of sites specifically designed for reviews like Angie’s List, The Better Business Bureau, and Yelp, there are other places you should look for reviews. Major sites like Mapquest.com provide a platform for consumers to place ratings and reviews on companies like Low Cost Interlock, Country Inn Suites Hotels, and more.

Making the Most of Online Reviews

Whether you find reviews of your company online or not, it is to your advantage to get on top of things before something does pop up. Below are a few tips to making the most of both positive and negative reviews found online:

• Create accounts and/or profiles on some of the most popular review sites. This will allow you to verify your business, update the location, put business hours, and be alerted when reviews are added.
• Provide feedback on both positive and negative reviews. Positive reviewers should be thanked for their word of mouth and encouraged to come back again. Negative reviews need to be responded to immediately with compassion. No matter how great you think your work was, apologize that they’re not pleased and offer a resolution. When it has been resolved, encourage them to go back and adjust their review and also provide your own follow-up so other readers are aware that you took care of the issue.
• Encourage all of your customers to write reviews. The more positive feedback you have, the higher your chances are of getting more business.

Yes, when you work in the creative sector, your talent, skills, and abilities are what will help you bring in customers. However, it is the satisfaction and opinion of your initial customers that will determine whether you get new business. Though you can’t please everyone all the time, it is imperative to put your best foot forward with your performance and be active in the online community to let your customers know you hear them and appreciate their business. These steps will essentially help build integrity and credibility for your brand.

Featured image: Painting by Alp Allen Altiner