Category: Curated Content

A person can set up a website to serve any purpose he or she has in mind. Some do it to push a social or political agenda, while many do it to make money.

Whatever their purpose, webmasters are primarily concerned with getting conversions. A conversion could come in the form of a subscription to a newsletter, someone filling out a contact form, or a visitor buying a product or service being offered.

While increased traffic and higher ranking in search results are important indicators of a website’s success, there is nothing like getting conversions to tell a webmaster that he or she is doing things right.

One could have massive amounts of traffic and skyrocketing rankings and still get few to no conversions.

A lot of factors affect conversion rates. Not too many people realize, however, that the color used in the web design is one of them.

Colors make a website look pretty, but they do more than that. The colors you use on your website can also bring out certain reactions, emotions, and attitudes from your visitors, at least according to color psychology.

What is color psychology?

A sub-field of behavioral psychology, color psycholo… Read More

Do your website visitors ask questions about your products and services? Looking for a way to answer those questions in real time? In this article, you’ll discover how to use Facebook Messenger with a free plugin from Zotabox to have live conversations with your website visitors. Why Use Facebook Messenger to Embed Live Chat With […]

The post How to Add Facebook Live Chat to Your Website appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

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Posted by MiriamEllis

“American business is overwhelmingly small business.” – SBE Council

Small businesses have created 61.8% of net new jobs in the US since the early 1990s. Local business is big business. Let’s celebrate this in honor of Small Business Saturday with 3 strategies that will support independent business owners this week, and in the better future that can be attained with the right efforts.

What’s Small Business Saturday?

It’s an annual shopping event sponsored by American Express on the Saturday following Thanksgiving with the primary goal of encouraging residents to patronize local merchants. The program was launched in 2010 in response to the Great Recession. By 2017, Small Business Saturday jumped to 7,200 Neighborhood Champions (individuals and groups that organize towns for the event), with 108 million reported participating consumers spending $12 billion across the country.

Those numbers are impressive, and more than that, they hold the acorn of strategy for the spreading oak of a nation in which independently grown communities set standards of living, set policy, and set us on course for a sustainable future.

Tips for small businesses today

If your community is already participating in Small Business Saturday, try these techniques to enhance your success on the big day:

1. Give an extra reason to shop with you

This can be as simple as giving customers a small discount or a small free gift with their purchase… Read More

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore Twitter adding an Edit Button and LinkedIn redesigning business pages. Our special guests include Madalyn Sklar and […]

The post Twitter’s Edit Button: Pros, Cons, and What It Means for Marketers appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

… Read More

If your business relies on subscriptions to generate revenue, you probably offer a free trial to test your product before you ask your subscribers to pay.

This is a great strategy. People may be hesitant to pay for your subscription initially, but if they can try it first, it gives you an opportunity to win them over and turn them into paying customers.

Some of you may even offer free plans for certain services. The idea behind this strategy is that these people will eventually upgrade to paid plans.

But you can’t assume every free trial or free plan user will become a paying customer.

I see this problem all the time in my consulting work.

Businesses don’t have a problem getting people to sign up for free plans and free trials, but when it comes to getting paid, their conversions are lower than expected.

Even you don’t use this business model yet but plan to generate recurring sales by implementing subscriptions, it’s important for you to get this strategy right from the start.

Certain tactics will help you increase the chances of getting these free trial and free plan users to convert.

I’ll explain what you need to know so you can apply these strategies in your business.

Make the transition as easy as possible

The first thing you need to do is analyze your current process. Go through the steps a user needs to take to become a paying customer.

If you’ve got too much friction, unnecessary … Read More