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The Power of Collaborative Marketing for Small Businesses
In today’s competitive market, small businesses often face challenges in standing out and reaching their target audience. One solution lies in the concept of collaborative marketing—a strategy where businesses work together to achieve shared goals. This approach offers a cost-effective and innovative way to boost online visibility, expand customer reach, and foster business growth.
Understanding Collaborative Marketing
Collaborative marketing is the practice of partnering with other local businesses, brands, or influencers to promote mutual products or services. Unlike traditional business advertising, this strategy emphasizes shared resources, creative ideas, and a unified effort to attract new customers.
For example, a retail shop selling eco-friendly goods might collaborate with a nearby café to cross-promote their offerings. This partnership helps both businesses attract more customers, strengthen their online presence, and boost local store visibility.
By sharing resources, small companies can achieve what may have seemed unattainable alone, such as reaching a wider audience or driving online sales growth.
Benefits of Collaborative Marketing for Small Businesses
Enhanced Visibility Collaborations allow small shops to leverage the online presence of their partners, increasing their store visibility. Listing your business on platforms where your collaborators are active can help attract new customers and improve local search rankings.
Cost-Effective Growth Traditional business advertising can be expensive. By partnering with others, businesses share the cost of marketing campaigns, saving money while still accessing tools for online promotion. This is especially valuable for companies looking for affordable ways to advertise.
Increased Customer Engagement Collaborative marketing creates opportunities for interactive campaigns that draw local shoppers. Whether through events, co-branded promotions, or social media collaborations, this strategy fosters deeper connections with local store customers.
Strategies to Implement Collaborative Marketing
Cross-Promotions
Partnering with businesses that offer complementary products or services is one of the easiest ways to collaborate. For instance, a boutique might work with a photographer to showcase their clothing line in creative photoshoots. This strategy boosts retail shop promotion while enhancing both partners' business exposure online.
Shared Events
Hosting joint events can bring together diverse audiences. From pop-up shops to community fairs, shared events are excellent for driving foot traffic and improving customer engagement at local stores.
Digital Collaborations
In today’s digital age, partnering with influencers or other small brands for social media campaigns can help businesses expand their online audience. Using platforms with free marketing tools for small businesses can further amplify these efforts.
How Collaborative Marketing Drives Online Growth
With increasing competition, the importance of maintaining an active online presence cannot be overstated. Collaborative marketing leverages digital platforms and free listing services to promote retail businesses. By aligning with partners, small companies can create impactful campaigns that improve their e-commerce visibility.
For instance, creating shared blog posts, hosting joint webinars, or running giveaways can lead to significant online sales growth. These activities not only attract more shoppers but also improve the brand’s local search rankings.
Moreover, digital directories and free store listings make it easy for small businesses to showcase their collaborations, enhancing store visibility without the need for a big budget.
Real-Life Examples of Collaborative Marketing Success
Small businesses across industries have achieved remarkable results through partnerships. For instance:
A local bakery teamed up with a florist to offer special gift packages during Valentine’s Day. This collaboration led to increased store traffic for both businesses.
An e-commerce store selling handmade goods collaborated with a popular YouTube influencer for product reviews, significantly boosting online sales.
A yoga studio partnered with a retail shop selling athleisure wear to create a fitness event. This event drew local store customers and promoted both brands.
These examples highlight how collaboration can drive business visibility, foster customer growth, and create long-lasting partnerships.
Best Practices for Collaborative Marketing
Choose the Right Partners Select businesses with similar values and complementary audiences. Aligning with partners who share your vision can maximize business growth.
Leverage Digital Platforms Use free marketing platforms and directories to amplify your collaborative campaigns. Digital tools make it easy to list and promote retail businesses to a wider audience.
Track Results Measure the impact of your collaborations. Tools for online promotion and customer engagement can help monitor growth and adjust strategies accordingly.
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Small Car, Big Benefits: Streamlining Operations with Mini Cooper Fleet Services
When it comes to fleet management, bigger isn't always better. Small cars, such as the iconic Mini Cooper, offer a host of benefits that can help streamline operations and maximize efficiency for businesses of all sizes. In this blog, we'll explore the unique advantages of incorporating Mini Cooper fleet services into your business operations and how these compact vehicles can pack a big punch when it comes to mobility solutions.
The Mini Advantage: Efficiency, Style, and Versatility
At the heart of Mini Cooper fleet services lies the undeniable appeal of the Mini itself. Renowned for its compact size, agile handling, and eye-catching design, the Mini Cooper is a standout choice for businesses seeking efficiency without compromising on style. Whether navigating crowded city streets or cruising along the open highway, the Mini Cooper offers unmatched versatility for a wide range of business applications.
Cost-Effective Mobility Solutions: Maximizing Value for Your Fleet
In today's competitive business landscape, cost-effectiveness is paramount. Mini Cooper fleet services offer an affordable alternative to larger, more expensive fleet vehicles, helping businesses save on acquisition costs, fuel expenses, and maintenance fees. With their smaller footprint and fuel-efficient engines, Mini Coopers are not only budget-friendly to purchase but also economical to operate, making them an attractive option for businesses looking to maximize value without sacrificing performance.
Tailored Solutions for Diverse Business Needs
From corporate fleets to delivery services and everything in between, Mini Cooper fleet services can be tailored to suit a variety of business needs. Whether you require a fleet of compact cars for urban deliveries, executive transportation services, or promotional events, Mini Cooper offers flexible leasing and financing options to accommodate your specific requirements. With customizable features and accessories, businesses can personalize their Mini Cooper fleet to reflect their brand identity and meet the demands of their operations.
Environmental Sustainability: Driving Towards a Greener Future
As sustainability becomes an increasingly important consideration for businesses worldwide, Mini Cooper fleet services offer an eco-friendly alternative to traditional fleet vehicles. With their efficient engines and low emissions, Mini Coopers help reduce the environmental impact of business operations while still delivering top-notch performance and reliability. By incorporating Mini Cooper vehicles into their fleets, businesses can demonstrate their commitment to environmental stewardship while also reaping the benefits of reduced fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
Enhanced Brand Image: Making a Statement on the Road
In today's competitive marketplace, a strong brand image is essential for success. Mini Cooper fleet services offer businesses an opportunity to make a statement on the road with their distinctive design and iconic styling. Whether adorned with custom decals, branded wraps, or corporate livery, Mini Coopers are sure to turn heads and leave a lasting impression wherever they go. By aligning their fleet with the Mini Cooper brand, businesses can enhance their visibility, credibility, and overall brand image in the eyes of customers and stakeholders alike.
Conclusion: Driving Towards Success with Mini Cooper Fleet Services
In conclusion, Mini Cooper fleet services offer a host of benefits for businesses seeking to streamline operations, maximize efficiency, and make a statement on the road. With their compact size, cost-effective operation, and environmental sustainability, Mini Coopers are an ideal choice for businesses looking to enhance their fleet management strategies. Whether used for corporate transportation, delivery services, or promotional events, Mini Cooper vehicles offer unmatched versatility, style, and performance that can help businesses drive towards success in today's competitive marketplace.
This blog highlights the unique advantages of incorporating Mini Cooper fleet services into business operations, emphasizing the efficiency, versatility, and cost-effectiveness of these compact vehicles. Through customizable solutions, environmental sustainability, and enhanced brand image, Mini Cooper fleet services offer businesses a strategic advantage in fleet management, helping them streamline operations and drive towards success in today's competitive marketplace.
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WordPress vs Shopify: Price, Power, and Everything in Between
Ecommerce platforms like WordPress and Shopify have transformed the way businesses sell online. With intuitive store builders, built-in marketing tools, and robust analytics, these solutions make it easier than ever for merchants to create professional online stores.
But which one is right for your business?
WordPress and Shopify take different approaches when it comes to ecommerce. In this comprehensive comparison guide, we’ll look at the key differences between these two juggernauts to help you make the best choice.
WordPress vs Shopify: At a Glance
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty details, here’s a high-level overview of how WordPress and Shopify stack up against each other:
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty details, let’s briefly look at what each platform offers:
Price: WordPress vs Shopify Cost Comparison
The cost of building your website is undoubtedly a big factor in the WordPress vs Shopify dilemma.
Let’s compare their pricing models:
WordPress Pricing
WordPress is open-source software, so the core platform is entirely free to use. However, you will need to pay for:
Web Hosting: $3 to $40 per month
Domain Name: $10 to $20 per year
Themes: Free to $60+
Plugins: Free to $200+
With WordPress.org, you have full control over your budget. You can keep costs low by using free themes and limiting plugins. Or you can create a more advanced site by investing in premium add-ons.
On average, expect to spend around $10 to $50 per month with WordPress.org.
There’s also the WordPress.com hosted option which provides an all-in-one solution. Their paid plans start at $4 per month and include hosting, domain name, and basic themes. However, it has much less customization freedom compared to self-hosted WordPress.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify uses a subscription-based model with predefined packages:
Basic Shopify: $29/month
Shopify: $79/month
Advanced Shopify: $299/month
This covers secure hosting, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain name, and built-in features like checkout, shopping cart, and payment processing.
You also get access to themes, marketing tools, and 24/7 support. But you’ll have to pay extra for advanced apps, features, and transaction fees.
On average, a basic Shopify store costs $50 to $100 per month factoring in all expenses. Their advanced plans get considerably more expensive with added costs.
WordPress vs Shopify Pricing: The Verdict
WordPress offers greater flexibility and control over your budget. You can launch a site for less than $10/month if needed.
Shopify is simpler but more restrictive. Their subscription model bundles hosting and a domain which provides convenience, but limits customization. It’s costlier for advanced features.
For small sites, WordPress is more budget-friendly. But Shopify can be cost-effective for larger stores requiring built-in ecommerce features.
Features: Built-in Functionality Comparison
The features and functionality that come out of the box also impact your choice between WordPress and Shopify:
WordPress Features
As an open source CMS, WordPress offers core features like:
Custom Post Types: Create different content types like posts, pages, case studies etc.
Taxonomies: Categorize and tag content for better organization.
Management: Upload and manage images, documents and multimedia.
User Roles & Permissions: Control access and privileges for different users.
Widgets and Menus: Add widgets, navigation menus, sidebars etc.
Themes: Enhance visual design and site presentation.
Plugins: Add extra features like ecommerce, forums, social media integration etc.
REST API: Build custom apps and integrate with other platforms.
WordPress is like an empty canvas you can paint however you like. The core platform provides the foundation and flexibility to build any type of website.
Shopify Features
As an ecommerce solution, Shopify offers built-in tools for:
Store Management: Add/edit products, view sales and reports.
Cart & Checkout: Simplified shopping cart and checkout process.
Payment Processing: Accept payments via major credit cards, PayPal etc.
Orde Management: Track and fulfill orders, process refunds.
Discount Engine: Create vouchers, coupons and promotional codes.
Abandoned Cart Recovery: Recover lost sales via follow-up emails.
Shipping Solutions: Print labels, calculate rates and connect carriers like UPS.
Tax Calculations: Automatically apply the right taxes at checkout.
Shopify aims to provide everything merchants need to start selling quickly. But advanced customization requires using Shopify Experts or technical know-how.
WordPress vs Shopify Features: The Verdict
WordPress offers open-ended customization while Shopify focuses on built-in ecommerce features.
For blogs, portfolios, membership sites etc. WordPress is ideal. For online stores that prioritize fast setup over advanced design, Shopify is a better pick.
You can add ecommerce functionality to WordPress through plugins. But Shopify still provides a more seamless sales experience.
Ultimately, choose WordPress for flexibility and Shopify for convenience.
Ease of Use: WordPress vs Shopify User-Friendliness Comparison
Let’s examine how easy it is to use both platforms, especially for beginners:
WordPress Ease of Use
With its open-source roots, WordPress initially had a reputation for being tricky to master. But with new innovations like Block Editor, the WordPress dashboard provides an intuitive user experience.
Key aspects that influence WordPress’ ease of use:
Simplified post editor: The block editor streamlines content creation without HTML.
Responsive design made easy: Mobile-friendly, responsive themes allow building websites rapidly.
Drag and drop interface: Rearrange content quickly through dragging and dropping components.
Extensive documentation: In-depth support articles and tutorials help troubleshoot issues.
Thousands of themes and plugins: Quickly find solutions for virtually any requirement.
Yes, the learning curve is steeper than Shopify. But modern WordPress is nowhere near as complex as before. With a good host and theme, anyone can build and manage a website.
Shopify Ease of Use
Shopify positions itself as an intuitive, easy-to-use ecommerce platform. The dashboard simplifies store management through:
Step-by-step setup: Guided process helps launch new stores rapidly.
Simplified editor: Edit products, pages, blogs etc. without coding skills.
Drag & drop interface: Visual components to quickly assemble high-converting storefronts.
Mobile-ready themes: Themes that adapt to mobile layouts out of the box.
Detailed analytics: Review key metrics and sales data at a glance. 24/7 customer support: Get help from real people when stuck.
Shopify reduces the learning curve for beginners through smart defaults and guidance. But you still need patience to learn the platform thoroughly.
WordPress vs Shopify Ease of Use: The Verdict
For complete beginners, Shopify offers a gentler initial onboarding. But WordPress quickly catches up through its intuitive editor and quality themes.
Advanced users may still find Shopify’s closed system restrictive. WordPress offers greater control through code access.
Ultimately, both platforms have implemented features and interfaces that facilitate easy use for all users now. Choose based on your willingness to learn and desire for customization control.
Scalability: How WordPress and Shopify Handle Growth
Scalability is crucial for long-term success. Let’s see how WordPress and Shopify hold up as your business expands:
WordPress Scalability
Some key advantages that make WordPress highly scalable:
Open source code: Modify core files as per evolving needs.
Extendable via plugins: Add capabilities like ecommerce, memberships etc. on demand.
No sales caps: No upper limit on the number of products or orders.
Caching plugins: Boost performance with caching plugins as traffic surges.
VPS and dedicated hosting: Scale hosting resources by upgrading plans.
CDN for media: Use a content delivery network to manage heavy traffic.
No code changes needed: Handle more visitors without touching any code.
Notable global brands like Sony, BBC, and TechCrunch run on WordPress without issues. The platform’s open-ended architecture can handle enterprises with ease.
Shopify Scalability
Shopify also offers ample capacity to grow, albeit with some limits:
Auto-scaling servers: Shopify optimizes servers and CDNs as stores grow.
Limitless products/orders: Add unlimited products and process higher orders over time.
Shopify Plus: Upgrade to Plus plans for more resources and less downtime.
App ecosystem: Integrate apps for better inventory, accounting, fulfillment etc.
Partnerships: Get Shopify Experts for complex customizations.
Limited source code access: Can’t modify core files to optimize performance.
Sales caps: Limits on total sales volume based on your plan.
Shopify can comfortably handle small to mid-sized businesses. But the closed system hampers scaling capabilities for huge online stores.
WordPress vs Shopify Scalability: The Verdict
WordPress offers virtually unlimited scalability thanks to its open-source foundations. Shopify’s proprietary approach eventually hits performance and customization bottlenecks at enterprise scales.
For most small businesses however, either platform provides ample headroom to grow over time. But if you foresee rocket ship growth, WordPress is the wiser long-term choice.
SEO: Comparing WordPress and Shopify’s Search Optimization
SEO can make or break your business. So let’s see how WordPress and Shopify stack up on optimizing your site for search:
WordPress SEO Features
With WordPress, you get fine-grained control over on-page SEO through features like:
Search-friendly URLs: Create descriptive permalinks for pages and posts.
XML sitemaps: Dynamically generate XML sitemaps to index new content faster.
Meta title/description: Craft SEO title tags and meta descriptions for better click-through-rates.
Alt text and image SEO: Add alternative text and title attributes to images.
Premium SEO plugins: Extend features through Yoast SEO, RankMath, All In One SEO etc.
Schema markup integration: Improve rich snippet appearance in SERPs through schema.
Page speed optimization: Use caching and other performance tweaks to improve page speeds.
With the right efforts, WordPress sites can achieve top rankings on Google and other search engines.
Shopify SEO Capabilities
Shopify also offers core SEO capabilities like:
Search-engine friendly themes: Themes follow SEO best practices by default.
Product metadata: Add SEO titles, descriptions, tags etc. for products.
Blog metadata: Optimize blog content for search engines. Image optimization: Resize images automatically.
Sitemap: XML sitemap generated for search engine crawling.
Page speed optimization: Shopify applies server-side caching to accelerate page loads.
Additional SEO apps: Get advanced tools like SEMrush integration through apps.
The main downside is the lack of access to modify core SEO settings on Shopify stores. But overall, Shopify still enables decent SEO results.
WordPress vs Shopify SEO: The Verdict
WordPress offers more fine-grained control over SEO settings through open-source access. Shopify forces reliance on themes and apps.
But both platforms enable proper technical SEO optimization for store owners without deep expertise. At a high level, SEO results will depend more on your content quality, backlinks and conversions rather than choice of CMS.
For most use cases, WordPress and Shopify are quite evenly matched for SEO.
Design and Customization: How customizable is each platform?
Let’s examine how much control you get over tailoring your site’s design and functionality:
WordPress Customization Options
WordPress empowers you to customize both design and functionality through:
Open code access: Edit core WordPress files like PHP, HTML, CSS.
Thousands of themes: Vast theme library with options for any niche.
Theme customizer: Visually edit theme colors, fonts, layouts etc.
HTML/CSS editing: Modify themes by editing code directly.
Child themes: Modify themes safely through child themes.
Plugins: Extend functionality through 60,000+ plugins.
Custom plugins: Build custom plugins to add unique features.
Hooks and filters: Modify behavior without changing core code through built-in integration points.
You get infinite room for customization with WordPress for both design and functionality.
Shopify Customization
Shopify offers relatively limited design flexibility:
Themes marketplace: Access 100+ themes including free and paid options.
Theme editor: Edit theme design elements like colors, fonts, and layouts visually.
Manual HTML/CSS editing: Make template file modifications directly through code.
App store: Install apps to add advanced ecommerce and marketing features.
Shopify Experts: Get help from certified developers for complex customizations.
Limited core code access: Can’t modify Shopify source code directly.
Shopify simplifies design changes without coding knowledge. But you ultimately need advanced skills or outside help for complex customizations.
WordPress vs Shopify Customization: The Verdict
WordPress grants immense design and functionality flexibility through full access to code and theming capabilities.
Shopify limits customization to simplify the process for non-technical users. But you’ll eventually hit roadblocks without coding expertise.
For advanced custom sites, WordPress is the best fit. For simple stores that don’t require major custom features, Shopify suffices.
Community and Support: Which Has Better Resources?
Let’s compare the user communities and available support resources:
WordPress Community and Support
As the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress boasts:
Vibrant community forums like WordPress.org forums and reddit/rWordPress for seeking help.
Comprehensive codex with developer docs for hooks, functions, classes etc.
Dozens of tutorials and courses on sites like Lynda, Udemy, YouTube etc.
Hundreds of Meetup groups in cities worldwide to connect with other users.
Global WordCamp conferences for learning best practices. Active Stack Overflow tags where developers answer tough coding challenges.
Facebook groups for generic and niche-specific discussions.
The unparalleled WordPress community makes learning and troubleshooting easier. Help is always at hand through various channels.
Shopify Community Support
As a newer platform, Shopify offers:
Shopify forums to exchange ideas and ask questions.
Shopify Experts marketplace to hire Shopify developers and partners.
Official Partner program for agencies and freelancers.
Shopify Academy with courses and certifications.
24/7 customer support via live chat, email, and phone.
Ecommerce community on Reddit – though smaller than WordPress subs.
Active Shopify Stack Overflow tag for development queries. Shopify community on Facebook to connect with merchants.
While the community is steadily growing, it can’t yet match the sheer breadth of WordPress’ user base currently.
WordPress vs Shopify Community: The Verdict
WordPress enjoys over a decade of growth in its community with users worldwide. Shopify is expanding but still lags behind.
You’ll find significantly more learning resources, experts, and users for WordPress-related questions today. But Shopify communities are expanding daily.
For immediate support needs, both provide multiple channels like forums, Stack Overflow, and official help. The choice comes down to specific feature needs.
Security: How WordPress and Shopify Compare
Security is a crucial priority for any business. Let’s see how WordPress and Shopify stack up:
WordPress Security
Being open source, WordPress is sometimes perceived as less secure. But modern WordPress offers robust security through:
User management: Restrict author access through roles and permissions.
Automatic updates: Option to enable auto-updates for core, themes and plugins.
File permissions: Set appropriate file permissions for hardened security.
Database prefixing: Hide true database table names from outside view.
Security plugins: Add layers of protection via plugins like WordFence, iThemes Security etc.
SSL encryption: Force HTTPS connections across your site.
Brute force protection: Thwart brute force login attempts.
Backups: Backup content to avoid losing data.
With thoughtful hardening approaches, WordPress sites can be very secure. The key is taking proactive measures through settings, plugins, and best practices.
Shopify Security
As a hosted platform, Shopify invests heavily in security measures like:
Secure hosting: Shopify applies OS-level protections across servers.
Backups: Stores are backed up twice a day to avoid data loss.
SSL encryption: Encrypts all store data for secure connections.
Fraud analysis: Helps detect fraudulent orders and payments.
Web application firewall: Blocks malicious requests targeting your storefront.
Regular audits: Shopify undergoes regular security audits and tests.
24/7 monitoring: Continuously monitor infrastructure and applications.
Shopify’s hosted nature means you don’t have to worry about security configurations yourself. But you have relatively little visibility into their processes being proprietary.
WordPress vs Shopify Security: The Verdict
Shopify invests tremendous resources into security given their scale. This frees you from handling security yourself.
But ultimately, neither platform is inherently more “secure”. Appropriate precautions will safeguard WordPress sites well. And Shopify sites aren’t invulnerable either despite rigorous measures.
For most use cases, both platforms are secure enough when configured properly. At high traffic volumes, Shopify’s dedicated security team can be an advantage. But WordPress offers more transparency into your security setup.
Apps and Integrations: Which Offers Better Expandability?
The ability to expand functionality through apps and integrations is important too. How do WordPress and Shopify compare here?
WordPress Apps and Integrations
WordPress allows integrating external services through:
Thousands of plugins: Plugins exist for virtually any feature under the sun.
Custom plugin development: Build custom plugins with PHP and WordPress hooks.
Webhooks: Enable real-time data syncing through webhooks.
REST API: Integrate mobile apps and external platforms via the REST API.
Here are just some of the integrations possible:
eCommerce: WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads
Forms: Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7
Live Chat: LiveChat, Tidio Chat
Marketing Automation: Mailchimp, Constant Contact
Memberships: MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro
LMS: LearnDash, LifterLMS
If you can dream it, chances are there’s a plugin or API-based integration available for WordPress.
Shopify Integrations
Shopify offers robust integrations through:
App Store: Shopify’s app store has over 4000 apps for different features.
Shopify Partners: Certified dev partners can build custom apps.
Here are some popular integrations:
Accounting: QuickBooks Online
Fulfillment: ShipStation
Customer support: Zendesk
Marketing: Mailchimp, Facebook Messenger, Google Shopping
Wholesale: Wholesale Club, Acumen
The app store provides ample integrations for common merchant needs. But highly customized integrations may require hiring a Shopify Expert.
WordPress vs Shopify Integrations: The Verdict
WordPress offers near endless integration possibilities for any situation through open-source flexibility. Shopify integrations cater more specifically to ecommerce use cases.
Both platforms cover 90% of small business needs through their respective ecosystems. But WordPress provides better long-term flexibility for edge cases or future needs.
In summary:
WordPress offers superior customizability for complex sites and functionality demands. The plugin ecosystem enables experienced WordPress developers to accomplish virtually any implementation goal.
Webflow simplifies creating modern designs through its intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Perfect for smaller sites less dependent on advanced custom code.
Both platforms integrate robust content management for dynamic updating of blogs, products and site pages.
Consider the factors above in light of your website goals, team skills and size to determine if WordPress flexibility or Webflow simplicity is the way to go. Many factors come down to individual site needs – there’s no universally “perfect” CMS platform.
Hopefully these WordPress vs Webflow comparisons have helped provide clarity and confidence in evaluating both CMS options for your upcoming web project!
If you need help with setup, development or migrations for either CMS platform, our expert WordPress development services team is here to assist.
Final Verdict: Which is Better – WordPress or Shopify?
So in the battle of WordPress vs Shopify, which platform wins out in the end?
The final verdict depends greatly on your specific goals and vision for your website.
For most online stores and ecommerce businesses, Shopify is the easier choice. The convenience of baked-in ecommerce features can’t be understated.
For blogs, portfolios, directories, forums, or membership sites, WordPress provides more design flexibility and customization freedom. The possibilities are endless.
Here’s a quick recap of the key strengths of each platform:
Main Advantages of WordPress
Open source platform with unlimited customization
More budget-friendly for smaller sites
Superior long-term scalability potential
Vast ecosystem of themes and plugins
Better for content sites like blogs, news, portfolios etc.
Stronger SEO control through source code access
Main Advantages of Shopify
All-in-one simplified ecommerce solution
Faster and easier to setup online store
Built-in tools for payments, shipping, inventory etc.
Suitable for selling physical/digital goods
Optimized checkout and shopping experience
Top-notch security protections
The ideal option comes down to your specific website vision. For online stores prioritizing fast setup over advanced customization, Shopify is a phenomenal choice that delivers quickly.
For maximum design flexibility and scope for growth, WordPress can’t be beaten. The possibilities are endless if you’re willing to invest a little more effort upfront.
Whichever platform you choose, the key is finding the right partner to help you build your online presence. For expert WordPress development services, we offer solutions tailored to your specific business goals. Get in touch or request a quote to kickstart your project.
This article is originally published on Simplior Technologie's Blog.
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The Best Australian Web Hosting for Small Businesses: Empowering Online Success
A strong online presence is essential for small businesses in the modern digital era. Reliable web hosting is a vital component of a successful online business. Selecting the ideal hosting company is crucial for Australian small businesses. We'll examine the best Australian web hosting for small business in this article and equip them with the resources they need to thrive in the digital world.
Cost-effective Hosting Plans:-
Small businesses often have budget constraints, and finding a hosting provider with cost-effective plans is essential. The best Australian web hosting for small business offer a range of affordable packages that include essential features such as ample storage, bandwidth, and reliable support. These plans ensure that small businesses can establish a strong online presence without breaking the bank.
User-Friendly Control Panels:-
Managing a website should be hassle-free, especially for small business owners needing more extensive technical expertise. The top Australian web hosting providers for small businesses offer user-friendly control panels that make website management intuitive and straightforward. Small business owners can handle tasks like domain management, email setup, and website customization with easy-to-use interfaces.
High Uptime and Performance:-
Any online firm that experiences downtime risks losing customers' trust and suffering financial losses. The top Australian web hosting companies put a high priority on uptime, making sure that users can always access websites. To supply high-performance hosting solutions for small enterprises, these providers make use of cutting-edge infrastructure, including redundant systems and stable server networks.
Conclusion:-
Selecting the best Australian web hosting for small business can have a big impact on how successful you are online. These hosting companies enable small businesses to create and maintain a strong online presence thanks to their affordable plans, user-friendly control panels, excellent uptime, and first-rate customer service. Small businesses may concentrate on their core operations and confidently traverse the digital landscape by making an investment in dependable web hosting that is tailored to their needs. So, whether you're a new or established small business owner in Australia, take the time to shop around and select the web hosting company that best suits your needs and positions you for success online.
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Learn How to Select an Appropriate Web Development Company
Learn How to Select an Appropriate Web Development Company
Everyone is in a rush to find the best web development company to build their business websites as quickly as feasible in today’s competitive world. However, if we examine closely, we will discover that we are not considering most of the issues, such as why we need a website. And what type suits your business objectives? Or whether it can hold its own against competing for websites?
After finding the answers to all the questions stated above you should move forward towards hiring a competent web development company. Your website’s quality can help or hinder your business’s advancement. Making the wrong decision when choosing a web development firm might go south. Here is a list of some helpful hints for finding the best web development firm. Please consider them once before saying yes to any web development services.
Know your wants
The primary goals of a website for many small businesses that provide professional services are to establish trust, educate, inform, and convert visitors into leads. While there are hundreds of web development businesses that can easily deliver the ask, there are a few factors to consider, such as the type of content management system and the location of the website. These elements can have a big impact on how the website is managed on a day-to-day basis, as well as when, not if, the site is redesigned down the road.
Consider expanding beyond Back-end development
Web development takes a number of things and processes in addition to programming. Shortlist companies with proven experience in creating and designing responsive websites. Device friendliness is a must-have feature, as mobile devices account for about 60% of all web access. If you want something a little more than a simple website, start looking for a company that provides additional services to web creation. The services may cover everything from mobile app development to QA help and automation.
Go through and through with Portfolio
Every firm has a customized digital presence and a web development firm is no different. Visit it and look at their previous work in the “Case studies” or “Portfolio” sections. Examine them thoroughly and it will provide you with a greater understanding of their work as well as the types of clients they catered previously. Choose an agency that has dealt with clients who are similar to you who indicate that they are already aware of the obstacles and how to overcome them. The portfolio should be full of their prior projects and from each tailored to the needs of a certain client, you understand their services better. Also, take a look at what clients have to say like reviews on different platforms. And don’t hire professional web development services with no portfolio.
Know More about their Web Hosting
Consider whether the Web development firm hosts the websites it creates. Any down time incidents, defenses against hackers and viruses, and website backup are all noteworthy pointshere.
Also, enquire about, how often do they make a backup of the site? And what is the uptime guarantee?
Ask about the ownership once the website is ready
It’s important to think about IP ownership. Ensure the ownership of the website once it’s live. Always sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with the corporation and workers you worked doe the website. Many service providers commonly work with a large number of clients in the same industry at the same time.
Will there be ongoing assistance or is it time-bound
Some custom web application development services include a certain degree of support as part of their hosting packages, while others charge for time. One has to make adjustments to your website, now and then and there will almost certainly be a cost. It’s good to know the budget for everything in advance upfront.
There is no one solution to all web development, and each organization has its own unique business model. However, with a little research and help, you may reduce the expense of developing your website.
The bottom line
It may take more time and effort to search for the above-mentioned unique features in web development businesses before you find the ideal one. If you find an experienced servicepartner that can assist you in meeting your business needs and allowing your company to expand enquire about everything and ask as many questions and clear all the doubts you have.
It is simple to create a website, but the one that sticks out is one that delivers excellent customer service as well as simple and superior solutions. Because website construction and maintenance aren’t all fun and game and we require the services of a website development firm for a longer length of time, customer service becomes even more crucial with every passing day. A proper market survey for the most viable website development firm that provides excellent solutions in a cost and time-efficient manner without compromising quality is also noteworthy.
Look at the portfolios and reviews before the agreement and use the information to take the best-recruiting decisions. Treat everyone fairly and keep the whole process as transparent as possible. You don’t even have to struggle at all as you can simply contact IBR InfoTech to get in touch with one of the best web development company.
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Best Small Business Crm For Mac
Philasmicos CRM 2 is a simple client management software for Mac aimed at freelancers and small businesses. Philasmicos Contacts is basically a “lite” version of the more powerful Philasmicos R5 CRM but is cheaper and easier to use. INSIGHTLY.COM – #1 Free CRM for Small Business: Online Customer Relationship Software. Insightly is the easy, powerful and affordable online Customer Relationship & Project Management Software used by over 400,000 small businesses world wide. CRM software isn’t as common on Mac as it is on Windows but we’ve reviewed the very best CRM software for Mac users running small businesses in 2018. Effective Customer Relationship Management software helps you achieve greater efficiency in customer management and maintain your client database saving you time and stress. The Best iOS 12, iPhone & iPad Small Business CRM Gro CRM is a friendly, modern and simple to use CRM and contact management app that your team will love. Work smarter, be more productive and win more business! Daylite is the Mac CRM focused on productivity. It allows you to build amazing customer relationships with improved customer service, more effective processes and the chance to save time and improve efficiency. Brought to you by Marketcircle. Following a 30-day free trial, expect a monthly plan priced at £22 per user per month. Visit the website.
Crm Software For Mac
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Best Small Business Crm Tools
What Is CRM Software?
A successful sales effort means maximizing every interaction with a customer, without the customer experiencing any additional burden. To do that, salespeople need to be armed with the very latest information you have about a lead. Not just who they are but what they have purchased, how they're using it, and how happy they are with the results. That's where customer relationship management (CRM) software shines.
Often, small to midsize businesses (SMBs) try to mirror CRM functionality with just a large and ever-growing spreadsheet. However, not only is CRM software easier to use than a spreadsheet, it's what you'd expect if your contact list decided to evolve a brain and take part in your sales conversations. It records your customers' contact information and remembers the details of your relationship and every interaction—whether by phone or email, and nowadays across other channels such as social media or even your customer helpdesk.
This information is a gold mine of opportunity, letting you identify prospects for up-sell or cross-sell, convert existing customers to new products or services, target new marketing, or even track invoices. The software is also a fail-safe, preventing sales people from chasing the same prospect. Choosing the right CRM software for your business can dramatically improve your team's collaboration and productivity, increase sales, and heighten customer satisfaction.
In its September 2018 report, 'CRM Software Market Research Report - Global Forecast to 2023,'Market research firm Market Research Future forecasts the CRM market to grow up to 35 billion by 2023. In addition, the CRM market's compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will be 6 percent between 2017 and 2023, according to the report. A key area for CRM growth in 2018 and 2019 will be the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) to leading CRM platforms. Manufacturers like Salesforce and Microsoft are either building their own AI engines to enhance their CRM capabilities or partnering with the likes of IBM's Watson and similiar players to integrate AI's benefits into their offerings. This will have significant impact in any CRM's ability to parse data and draw new insights from all kinds of customer interactions, and that has a direct impact on CRM revenue as market research firm, Statista, details below.
The Revenue Impact of AI Adoption in CRM
Such a revenue impact is possible because AI-enhanced CRM is literally a quantum leap ahead of what many companies still call customer relationship management even today. Even now, employees might use a spreadsheet to simply pass on information about past sales via email threads. Or worse, such information is often left to casual word of mouth, which means it's often missing when needed or it's entirely forgotten. CRM software keeps this information in one place, efficiently organizes it, and makes it possible to take immediate action with it. Such actions can include sending a loyal customer a gift card on their birthday or offering an up-sell opportunity to a platform from which you know their business can benefit (based on previous conversations). It's also a great way to woo back inactive customers. The key is to select the software that's right for the way your team works. The last thing you want is to see employees fighting new software instead of interacting with the customer.
Crm Software For Mac
CRM software isn't just about tracking and maintaining contact information. While most look to CRM software as primarily a sales tool, it's moved beyond that space. Marketing and customer service departments can dramatically improve their offerings and operations with CRM as well by using its data to more effectively segment demographics and record and reuse customer incident information. CRM software also helps coordinate interdepartmental actions. For example, the sales team can take advantage of something a customer service representative discovered in a separate transaction. Depending upon the software you choose, you can set and measure sales goals, deliver and track email marketing campaigns, or keep an eye on what people are saying on social media.
Pricing and Add-ons
Price can be a significant factor when evaluating CRM software, but that analysis should focus on more than just the upfront costs. Most of the CRM software we looked at offers per-user pricing but it's important to check what's included in that price and which features you actually need.
Training can eat up a chunk of the budget as can upgrades and ongoing support. Consider how much it would cost to integrate the software with existing systems and whether or not you would need additional equipment. That mobile implementation looks slick on the vendor's website, but will it still look that slick once you've designed the customized CRM forms your business will use every day? Does it mean the sales or customer service teams need new smartphones or maybe even tablets? These costs can quickly add up.
Taking the time investment into consideration is why trying out more than one program is key. This way, you can choose the software that will be most efficient for your company. If you have the resources to train and onboard staff and customize the software yourself, then eventually it will start to work for you. But smaller teams can't afford to invest in software that asks a lot up front; you need something that will be up and running in a day in most cases. Read the support documentation and you'll get an idea of setup complexity and any issues you might bump into with the software you already have. Use the free evaluation period to try out important features: import data, add information manually, connect accounts, and assign tasks to other users. Take note of how helpful the software is and whether or not it creates more work. Keep track of how often you have to consult the help system to complete a basic task.
As CRM software has grown more sophisticated, it has branched out into many different directions. There are plenty of options for implementing your CRM in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model or for deploying it on-premises by using your own server. Cloud-based CRM is rapidly growing in popularity because it means you can quickly get up to speed and don't have to worry about managing software on your own servers, which adds complexity and cost. You can look for the software that has deep hooks into social media management and analytics platforms so you can record customer interactions on Facebook or Twitter. Plus, you should definitely consider CRM software that integrates with your business phone system so you can capture call and conversation information. Look closely at your business processes, discuss with employees what they need and want, and contrast that with your bottom line. By doing so, you'll quickly have an accurate picture of the right CRM software for you.
It's tempting to forgo this homework and simply pay for one of the big, all-inclusive CRM software packages just to have access to every feature you might need now or in the future. But that approach will almost certainly wind up costing you more in both time and money, while probably delivering less flexibility than you'd expect. That's because these large CRM software packages are often platforms rather than tools. This means that those myriad features they advertise are really the product of integrating with a host of third-party solution providers, not options you can simply turn on. Third-party integration means not only added licensing dollars but also new integration costs.
A better approach is to understand how your employees have to use the software as well as how they want to use it. Think about what tools your team is currently using and what processes they follow. Figure out how those tasks map to the CRM software you're evaluating. Consider what some of the most common tasks are. For example, if the users have to dig through menus and submenus every single time they want to log a call or email, then the tool will actually complicate their jobs instead of simplify them. Form a small group of users who understand these day-to-day issues to help you in your evaluation; frontline salespeople and managers as well as IT managers are a good start. You don't want to impose a tool that actually makes key tasks more difficult or complex just so you can pay a premium for features those same employees may never touch. More and more CRM tools are also combining the email and sales experience into a single smart inbox or centralized dashboard view to manage all or most daily communications and tasks, without leaving the CRM tool.
As with any piece of software, it's essential to take advantage of free trials when available. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, you can't get a real sense of how the CRM software works until you use it yourself. Be sure to have colleagues from different departments try out the software, too, so you can understand how successful it is in different situations and business processes. This way, you can eliminate programs with too many or too few features as well as understand how much training will be necessary.
Most of these companies offer at least a 14-day trial (and we consider that fairly short as 30 days is better) and some, including Apptivo CRM, Insightly CRM, and Zoho CRM offer free plans, albeit with limited features or users. These can either serve as a full-time solution for small companies or as a long-term trial for larger companies. Apptivo CRM, Insightly CRM, and Zoho CRM also offer free trials as do Base CRM, PipeDrive CRM, and Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional.
Ease of Use and Support
CRM software must be intuitive or you'll never want to use it. Make a note of how many clicks it takes to conduct a basic task and how easy or difficult it is to find the features you need. Beyond being easy to use, CRM software should be able to manage user error. For example, if you try to conduct a task on the wrong screen or input the wrong data, then the best software will identify your error and suggest the right way to do it. On the other hand, poorly designed software will either let you make the error unchecked or will throw up an unhelpful error message.
One way to figure out if CRM software is really easy to use is by training others on how to use it. If you get stuck while training someone else, then that's worth noting. Think about the time it will take to get your team up to speed and whether or not it's worth that investment.
Finally, when you run into problems, whether it's a software bug or a problem using a feature, you'll need a responsive support team. Verify what type of support is included with your subscription and the hours of availability. If available, read through the support documentation, FAQs, and other self-service help (options include blog entries, public knowledge bases, and even online training videos). If there aren't any self-service options, then consider that you'll have to contact support whenever you get stuck. That said, you should contact support while you're trying out software and make a note of the response time. Ask a lot of questions; this will also help you familiarize yourself with the product. CRM software is complicated, but support shouldn't be.
And watch out for gaps in the support plan. Many of these solutions, especially the SaaS entries, have tiered, subscription-based pricing. That often means different levels of support depending on the subscription you choose. If your business process requires access to the CRM on weekends, for example, then make sure you've got access to support during those hours.
Email, Mobile, and Social Features
Don't get distracted by CRM capabilities you won't use. Make sure the software you ultimately select captures the information that's essential for your business, allows effective follow-up, and is easy enough to use that your team will work with it, not around it.
Remember that new technologies, while slick, aren't automatically pervasive. For example, social media is a game-changing technology for interacting with customers. But as much as social and collaboration applications such as Slack are catching on, that doesn't mean email is dead. Most customers still expect to interact with you via email, and an email can still capture much more data than a Facebook post or a tweet can. Understand how your company interacts with customers over email and make sure your CRM software acts as a complement to that relationship, not as a hindrance. CRM software should automatically capture data from email interactions, not force your employees to manually enter email data. Similarly, integrating your CRM software into your email platform means that entering the customer's name or ID in one platform automatically brings up data from the other.
Take the time to also properly evaluate the mobile app; this should be considered a separate app, not just as a mobile 'capability,' and you also shouldn't be asked to pay anything extra for it. Mobile devices are an entirely different breed from desktops or notebooks. Employees use them differently and software renders them differently, which means that business processes that involve them will behave differently. Make sure your CRM software of choice can support the mobile device platform your team uses and carefully evaluate what the app can do. Some apps offer a read-only view of your sales pipeline or contacts so that you can look up the relevant information while out and about. Those apps won't let you make updates until you get back to a computer. Others offer a seamless and responsive experience, letting you do everything you would do on a mobile device that you would on a computer (but usually presenting tools and features differently, which can be difficult for some users to get used to). Don't commit to CRM software until you've actually used the mobile app in a way you and your team would on a day-to-day basis.
Companies, including Sugar CRM and Zoho, cater to the mobile workforce, with full-featured, responsive apps, and mobile layouts. If you have a field sales team that leaves their laptops behind and instead works on their tablets and smartphones, then you need to give them the tools they need.
Marketing Automation
The ability to act as a lynchpin for a well-planned marketing automation strategy is one of the most valuable aspect of CRM software, and it's a shame that not all software packages offer it—though most are beginning to get there. Marketing automation is a popular term these days and it refers to the software's ability to remind sales and marketing representatives to follow up with customers at the right time. Automation reminds you—or, in some cases, actually handles the task for you—of needed activities such as following up 30 days after a sales purchase with a coupon or calling the sales prospect 14 days after the individual signed up for a trial of the software. It can also extend to other software, such as kicking off an email marketing promotion based on criteria that are reached during a phone call with the customer, even if that call was initiated with the CRM system.
This also extends to lead management, which is a core capability of all CRM platforms. Lead management tracks and manages prospective customers (often called leads or 'opportunities') across lead generation and acquisition and throughout the sales pipeline. Lead management can be executed in more of a hands-on manner through tracking progression in a sales pipeline dashboard or reports. Some CRM software providers use a greater degree of marketing automation to trigger actions and sales stages based on lead progression. Lead management is a part of all CRM platforms but how the provider handles it can make a big difference.
Some CRM platforms have email marketing built in while others can connect with a third-party service, such as Campaigner or MailChimp. Automation can also play a part in email marketing, where an action by a prospect, lead, or customer, triggers an email or email campaign. For example, if a user signs up for a webinar on your website, then that can trigger a series of emails about what to do next. Likewise, if a user cancels their account, then that action can trigger an off-boarding campaign that prompts them to save their data or it can trigger an incentive campaign offering discounts or other perks if they decide not to cancel after all. Automation can also mean changing the status of a customer or prospect based on an action on their part.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are also starting to show up in CRM software. Bpm'online uses automation and predictive technology to remind users to complete tasks and guide them what to do next. Salesforce launched its Einstein AI-based business intelligence (BI) platform, which can also provide automation across email management, lead and opportunity scoring, and forecasting. These technologies have a huge potential to save time and to help sales teams perform even better.
Third-Party Integrations
It's important, as we've noted, to determine which features are included with your subscription and which require a third-party add-on. However, it's also worth looking at the software you already use to see if it's compatible with the CRM software you're considering. Maybe you already have email marketing software that you love or you want to connect your cloud storage service, lead management tool, or customer service management platform. As we've mentioned, you'll definitely want to be able to connect your email account and perhaps your calendar, too.
Another excellent example of a value-add integration with CRM would be your product support or helpdesk platform. Next to your sales staff, your product support professionals probably have the most direct contact with your customers and the information they gather in the course of even a short conversation can be gold to a salesperson. Problems with one product line can mean upsell opportunities to another. Reconfiguration requests can indicate new business needs that can also generate upsell. Integration requests can let sales staff know with whom they're competing for key business processes. There's more but you get the idea. Establishing a two-way data exchange between the helpdesk and CRM systems can populate both platforms with valuable data.
Integration today takes two basic forms. The easiest is if the CRM system or the system to which you're trying to connect supports the other as a 'native' integration. That simply means that the company in question has a prebuilt integration module you can simply select, download, and implement as needed. You'll have the best luck with big-name targets here as many companies pre-build integrations for companies such as NetSuite or Salesforce, for example.
The other method is that, if both system support an open application programming interface (API), usually one based on Representational State Transfer (REST). With an API, you can have your in-house IT staff (provided they can do some coding) or an out-of-house contract programmer build a custom integration for you. That option certainly provides the most flexibility and customization but it can also add significant cost depending on the level of your coding talent.
Reporting and Analytics
Once you've been using CRM software to manage your leads and deals, you can see how successful you've been and where you're falling short. Look for CRM software with reporting features that can be customized so that you can see how employees are performing and which types of customers are responding. Look for a tool that lets you export reports if you need to present high-level data to company stakeholders.
Next, take that API or native integration and plug it into whatever business intelligence (BI) tool your organization likes best. That's because BI can turn that humdrum CSV or PDF file reporting data into live data visualizations and dashboards. These can keep you, your sales team, and anyone else with access to the CRM data completely current on sales statistics, demographic information, product popularity, and any number of other metrics. Additionally, only today's BI tools let you combine data from multiple sources—such as your CRM database on one side of the business and your warehouse and supply chain on the other—and ask complex queries that take multiple data sources into account to provide new insights that any one data source simply couldn't.
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Don't Forget About Security
Invest in security. There's no simple way to put it. When you're working with the sales pipeline and customer data, make sure security is top of mind—especially if you're using a SaaS-deployed CRM solution (which means not only the app but likely also a big chunk, if not all, of your customer data resides in the cloud). You should feel comfortable with the company's security requirements. It is a warning sign if your CRM software lets you select a password but doesn't generate an audit trail whenever someone makes a change, or if it doesn't let you define the access controls for each user. Customer data is an extremely valuable commodity especially now that customers are more reluctant to part with it. Securing it isn't just about maintaining privacy; it's about protecting profitable relationships that directly impact your bottom line.
Integration plays a role here but it's mostly about research. From an integration standpoint, you can make sure your chosen CRM software can integrate with as much of your current IT security software as possible, such as your identity management system, for example, so your employees can take advantage of single sign-on authentication. But even more important than that is doing your homework. That means digging deep into the vendor's service level agreement (SLA) and ascertaining exactly where your data resides, who is responsible for its safety, and what happens if there's a problem. Doing some Google surfing to see whether this vendor has been breached in the past and what their response was is another good indicator of just what you're getting your data into.
Putting Top CRMs to the Test
In this roundup, we tested some of the most popular CRM software packages on the market today. The packages include Apptivo CRM, Base CRM, Bpm'online CRM, Freshsales CRM, HubSpot CRM, Insightly CRM, Less Annoying CRM, Pipedrive CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM. We've worked hard to evaluate this CRM software with the aforementioned criteria in mind, so check out each of the reviews below to figure out which package is right for you. All have their strengths and weaknesses—some are geared more toward small to midsize businesses (SMBs) while others have broader email marketing capabilities. Some CRM systems are easier to use out of the box, with simple navigations and standard workflows, while others offer deeper and more complicated degrees of customization. Some are dirt cheap while others can be quite expensive when you start moving up tiers, scaling up your sales workforce, or adding premium functionality.
Our three favorites are Apptivo CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM, each of which earns an Editors' Choice designation. However, depending on your business needs, the size and scope of your sales team, and the means by which your organization aims to engage and grow its lead and customer base, any one of these CRM platforms might have the right combination of price and features to work for you. It all depends on your business needs, the size, and scope of your sales team, and how your organization aims to engage and grow its lead and customer base.
Best CRM Software Featured in This Roundup:
HubSpot CRM Review
MSRP: $0.00
Pros: Free version available. Very intuitive interface. Excellent email integration.
Cons: Gets costly when you start to add premium functionality. Relatively new, so some minor feature oversights, such as only allowing a single email address per contact record.
Bottom Line: HubSpot CRM is an excellent choice for smaller companies looking to get into CRM for the first time, especially since it's free. But while it's an easy step to take at first, be aware that it can get pricey if you flesh out its features as your organization grows.
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Zoho CRM Review
MSRP: $12.00
Pros: Free for up to 10 users. Stellar feature set. Gamification modules. Google integrations. Valuable reports. Powerful email marketing tools.
Cons: Workflow automation limited to Professional edition.
Bottom Line: An early player in the CRM space, Zoho CRM offers plenty of power, a decently intuitive interface, and a vast collection of advanced features and third-party integrations. All in all, an easy pick for Editors' Choice.
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Freshsales CRM Review
MSRP: $12.00
Pros: Offers a variety of native and third-party integrations. Great customization capabilities. Intuitive interface. Free version available.
Also, take the time to look at the work others have created with the product. Free photo editing tools. You need to closely research the product and get really clear on both the product's strengths and its weaknesses.
Cons: Fewer third-party integrations than the competition. Reports not available in the free plan.
Bottom Line: Freshsales CRM is an easy-to-use customer relationship management platform aimed at small to medium-sized businesses. A friendly price and a good feature set make this app well worth considering.
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Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional Review
MSRP: $75.00
Pros: Smooth workflow processes. Tons of advanced features. Highly customizable. Social collaboration. Robust third-party app marketplace. Free 30-day trial.
Cons: Steep learning curve. Expensive, especially when accessing more advanced lead generation and managerial features.
Bottom Line: Salesforce combines a formidable feature set with a matching learning curve, but the platform offers everything you could want as far as CRM capabilities for organizations of any size.
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Bpm'online CRM Review
MSRP: $25.00
Pros: Task automation. Personalized tools for event planning, ad campaigns. Predictive unified business process. Feature hiding capabilities. Automatic triggers for marketing campaigns, like programming emails.
Cons: Relatively short trial period. Initial experience can be daunting. Forms require some coding skills. Doesn't work directly with social networks as Zoho CRM does.
Bottom Line: Bpm'online CRM has long been focused on larger businesses and enterprises, but it works fairly well for midsized companies, too. This popularity is based on the product's evolution, which now includes excellent analytics and reporting as well as marketing automation features.
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Less Annoying CRM Review
MSRP: $10.00
Pros: Simple, uncluttered user interface. Low monthly price. Multiple active pipelines for each lead. Straightforward lead management tools.
Cons: Basic reporting. No notifications of lead handoffs within the application.
Bottom Line: Less Annoying CRM might be the simplest of the simple CRMs we reviewed for small businesses. While you'll need to be careful that this entry-level solution still gives you the features you need, it's an excellent package for beginners at a reasonable price.
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Insightly CRM Review
MSRP: $29.00
Pros: Email tracking and templates. Granular sharing settings. Power BI integration greatly improves reporting capabilities. Expanded workflow management features in mobile apps. Creates web forms to harvest leads.
Cons: Lead assignment rules only available in Professional and Enterprise plans. No automatic email forwarding. Lead and contact info split into separate tabs. Pipelines not available for leads.
Bottom Line: Insightly CRM ticks all the boxes that most small businesses want when it comes to customer relationship and lead management. However, this platform adds some tools you don't see under a CRM hood every day, including data gathering and project management features.
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Pipedrive CRM Review
MSRP: $10.00
Pros: Simple, intuitive interface. Helpful guidance. Easy setup. Solid mobile apps. Customized web forms for collecting leads. Can create more than one pipeline.
Cons: Limited functionality for the price. No separation between lists of new leads and contacts.
Bottom Line: Pipedrive CRM is a solution that drops feature depth in favor of ease of use to attract small businesses. If you're satisfied with basic functionality and you want to implement CRM quickly, then this package might be for you.
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Apptivo CRM Review
MSRP: $10.00
Pros: Do-it-all, customizable solution. Affordable. 24-hour support. Great mobile apps. Granular security controls. Workflow and campaign management tools.
Cons: Integrations still custom rather than based on standard APIs.
Bottom Line: Apptivo does a great job of checking all your CRM boxes. A fair price, a friendly interface, and lots of customizable capability makes it an easy Editors' Choice pick, especially for smaller businesses looking to get into CRM quickly.
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Base CRM Review
MSRP: $45.00
Pros: Simple interface. Free 14-day trial. Free training webinars. Full-featured mobile apps. Innovative predictive analytics reporting.
Also they mostly arrive with a remote control these days, giving you direct media control, but you can always go the extra mile and get a wireless keyboard and/or mouse. Mac as nas. For HDMI Access to the NAS for Media or as a NAS PC = Generally you need a QNAP NAS for HDMI NAS access.
Cons: Customization ability is limited. Deeper automation, reporting, intelligent analytics, and permissions only available at higher tiers. Significant price increase.
Bottom Line: Base CRM does a solid job of delivering a simple to use CRM aimed at small business customers. It even manages to set itself apart through some advanced analytic capabilities and reporting.
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Does anyone have suggestions for the best small business CRM tool/software that works well with the Mac email client?
I want pretty simple functionality--load my contacts, track my email interactions, scheduling of emails to certain individuals (we know that the Mac email client doesn't allow scheduled emails which is incredibly lame, but that's another conversation) and some simple opportunity/lead tracking.
I'll also be using AWeber for email marketing.
I tried SalesForce, but it was a total beat down even trying to integrate my Mac contacts..
Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Cheers!
Small Business Software For Mac
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)
Best Small Business Crm Tools
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We begin by learning about the requirements of our clients and their businesses with Web Designing Company in Perth, and also getting to know about goals, vision, and mission of our clients. We are seasoned and professional developers who work to create websites. Our goal is to deliver our clients with sincerity and the best possible experience.
When your website looks unattractive or obsolete, your audience will have an instant negative opinion of your company. We won't appeal to your website, which would discourage them from your listing. You're going to lose out on leads, and they're going to switch your site to a competitor's list.
Who Are We?
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Why Choose Us?
Winx Designer, the Best Web Designer in Perth provides the lowest best prices for a timely web design facility in Perth. At very affordable rates, customers enjoy the benefits of skilful and talented services.
Cheapest Web Design in Perth and maintenance prices for Web Designing in Perth. We build various types of websites based on your business, customer base, market, and target audience. Our professional team ensures Best Web Designing Services in Perth that you get tangible results from every solution developed at Winx Designer.
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With the right partner like us, you can achieve excellent digital performance! Winx Designer is a Perth based company that offers global businesses a full range of web services. Our strategies are second to none, from web design, design, SEO, and digital marketing. The company deals with a successful online reputation building for consumers in different territories.
It gives them their first experience of your company as your audience visits your website. They'll be evaluating your company in seconds. You want to have a positive impression on the viewers in these first few seconds.
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Video Marketing Tips To Skyrocket Your Traffic
The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing
Buy now attention- all video marketers and email marketers… personalize, notify and customize any video and get high user engagement, leads & sales with this ultimate video marketing technology a cloud based software requires no complicated installation, no hosting and no technical hassles.
Video is also a nice addition to your content marketing. Outside of your main website, you’re likely creating content like blog posts, articles, or guides. When you create new written content, just like this guide, include video to make it more engaging! and remember, videos themselves are pieces of content. Video content marketing as a term is often used interchangeable with video marketing, especially when it refers to the non-advertising parts of video marketing.
So, you’ve finally published a bunch of videos for your business. Great! now, how do you get people to actually watch them? just like blogs, or any other inbound-angled marketing, videos need strategy to fuel their success. Use these publishing and promoting guidelines to get the maximum mileage out of your video marketing.
The old model of video marketing does do what a lot of brands think they need – it just delivers video. But that thinking creates problems around strategy, promotion, measurement, and, fundamentally, the impact that piece of video will have on the audience (and ultimately, the brand). Following the new rules enables you to practice video marketing with a more holistic approach that is more likely to achieve your business and your audience’s goals.
Blogadvice, tips, tricks, and more. Inspiration hubvideo examples from the pros. Content libraryreports, webinars, and videos. Case studiesread through our many customer stories. Video marketing guidefrom strategy to analytics. Video sales guidevideo throughout your sales process. Video production guideprofessional videos on your budget. Featured reads 2020 video trends report find answers to big questions around video in business.
Why You Need to Focus on Video Marketing in 2019
A good video marketing strategy focuses on diversity. You should experiment with the types of videos you want to offer. It is always good to provide your audience with a variety of content to enjoy and engage with. A majority of brands find customer testimonials to be the most effective. They act as social proof and help you build trust and credibility.
In addition to the entertainment aspect, more and more marketers are focusing on video marketing strategies because of how beneficial they are. Think about it from your own perspective for a minute. Would you rather read a long page full of text or watch a quick video to learn about a new product? would you rather spend time reading about the steps of a company’s sales process or watch an animation to associate each step with a visual aid? if you’re like 80 percent of the population, you’d rather watch the video.
With extensive digital marketing experience, 1 source media group is able to implement a strategic approach to video marketing. We will target your ideal audience in your local area or across the united states through calculated video content that is efficiently marketed. Our focus is to target your demographic through social media and youtube. 1 source media group is able to promote your video message anywhere.
In producing video marketing, be sure to keep your buyer’s persona in mind. Persona is a representation of how your target audience behaves, what are their goals, and what motivates them to buy a product. This information can be acquired from demographic and market research that you can find across the internet. It helps you focus your content so that it’s suitable for your audience. With detailed data, you can improve your overall marketing campaign and increase conversion rate.
Newsflash! creating a video is not video marketing. It’s easy to see why people confuse these two terms though; most of the online chatter is about the production of online videos, and few focus on promotion and distribution, which is what online video marketing is really all about. If you’re a smart duck (and i’m guessing you are since you’re reading this), you know that promotion is vastly different from production. And as such requires a whole different set of tools, tactics and strategies.
The 12 Types of Marketing Videos
I think that a major hindrance to creating videos is not feeling lost about what you are going to create! i have great news for you: adding video marketing to your content marketing strategy offers great flexibility in its various types and formats: educational videos introduce viewers to a concept or a field. These usually branch out to a number of topics and require very careful planning.
Video marketing works best when it has a purpose. "creating a viral video" doesn't have a purpose. Here are eight examples of different types of marketing videos with a purpose that we cover in our guide: option 1. Testimonial videos – to build trust. Option 2. Product demo videos – to boost conversion.
Different types of video content are going to serve different marketing purposes and there’s no shortage of content types out there. Let’s talk about a few of the most common types of videos used for marketing. 1. Product/service videos product or service videos explain and show what a product or service does as well as the tangible benefits.
Online videos are an essential part for any business's content marketing because of its popularity across all age groups. Video is also widely shared on social media and via messaging apps, increasing the reach of your business information. Most importantly, video marketing is proven to improve leads and sales. Types of video you can create include explainer videos, branded videos, animated videos, and more. Video content marketing can be a challenge, but with the expert help of a video content marketer you can achieve the business benefits you want.
If you already filmed a commercial for tv, it’s as simple as uploading it online—although viewers would definitely appreciate something new for the online version. You could upload a longer version online with “extra footage,” like walmart’s online tv commercial with more famous cars. How to master video marketing once you have an idea about the types of marketing videos that will work best for your brand, the real challenge begins: making them and marketing them. Here are 9 expert tips for marketing your videos like a pro.
How to Make a Video for Your Business
The preference for video content is not just limited to streaming online movies and shows or watching youtube video clips, video is now extending into brands with studies showing that consumers (over 50%) are interested in video content from brands or businesses that they support ( hubspot, 2018 ). Facing the growing demand by users for more visual content, more brands are building video into their marketing strategy to build sales, brand awareness, trust, and a growing customer base. Platforms like instagram , youtube, and facebook are the most common.
Marketing , strategy emily watts0 comments share we live in a world where people look for solutions to their problems on the web. From social media platforms, blogs, websites to video streaming services, there are so many things to keep us from boredom today. And not only for those of us who use the internet for personal needs to keep up with the latest trends and news; businesses also use these tools to run their promotional activities.
It has been proven that video content has increased conversion rates in sales. However, poor production quality may have the reverse effect on a consumer. Products and services that are not presented well can drive away prospective business. As with all marketing techniques, quality should always be of the highest concern. When creating video ads and promotions for your website, be sure to carefully consider your ad campaign.
In 2019, marketers at all types of businesses, small or large, can make video work for their budget and goals. You can shoot a complete 4k video right from your smartphone. And even if you don’t know how to edit videos, there are user-friendly, professional-grade video editing software options for all levels of content creators.
Apart from being a rich, visual medium, there are a lot of perks to making online video marketing part of your digital strategy. Simply put, the numbers tell a compelling story. These video marketing statistics highlight precisely why so many companies, in industries across the b2b and b2c spectrum, are taking advantage of this medium—and why video marketing should be part of your business, too.
5. Educational or How-To Videos
We all love learning new things. If brands find a way to make learning faster, quicker and fun, all the better! in the top of the funnel, a lot of your target audience is out there searching for new info – that’s where educational videos come in. Educational videos offer real value to your audience that they can apply to their everyday lives.
Educational “how-to” videos can be extremely popular. Use this video marketing format to teach your target audience something they want to know. Brands often use these videos to teach customers how to get the most out of their product, or to build a trusting relationship with potential customers. Here’s one of our “how-to” videos in which we show viewers how to start a t-shirt business:.
Educational videos tell viewers about your business/product, hitting on three main points: what your product or service is the benefit behind your product or service how your product or service works now, it doesn’t have to be in that exact order but those three points will provide viewers with enough information to know whether they want to continue learning about your company or not.
One of the best ways to grow your customer base is to help more people find out about who you are and what you do. Rather than getting lost in the crowd, you want your business to stand out among your competitors. With videos, you quickly convey what your core values are. You can increase exposure to potential customers by offering entertaining, educational videos that inform them about your company and help them remember your name.
youtube
Want more info? Look no further. https://gibsongirlsmarketing.com/services/
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Best Website Platform for Small Business [2020] | HarvestOnlineMarketing.com
4 Best Website Builders For Small Business in 2020 Compared (Pros and Cons)
So you want to build a website for your small business, but you’re not sure which platform is best to host and build your website on. I get it! There are so many options and the ones that are best for you really depend on your specific business and what kind of resources you’re willing to contribute to launch the perfect website for showcasing your services and products.
I am writing this comparison from the perspective of a
small business owner that wants to get online easily without paying massive development fees
, and wants to choose the best platform for them from the start instead of having to jump around. This angle is largely focused on service based businesses, as that’s who I tend to work with most often, but I will also touch on my recommendations for the best e-commerce platform.
Before we jump into the details, you should know that
we can build you a website on any of the recommended platforms here.
You
can
book me directly for a VIP Visibility Intensive
to have your custom website built on any of these platforms
,
or hire my team to build your
small business website on Harvest Builder
.
Psst… Get on the earlybird list for my
One-Day-Website masterclass!
You will learn
how to build a small business website,
step by step
in
one day
in this course. Get on the earlybird list here.
Best Small Biz Website Platforms Summarized
Don’t need to read the full comparisons and just want a quick answer to the best website builder/host for your small business? Here you go:
1.
Self-hosted WordPress:
best for business owners who
do
want to maintain their own server or are okay consistently paying someone else to, are comfortable with a learning curve, and are comfortable handling WordPress errors as they come up.
2.
HarvestBuilder
: best for service providers and business owners who
don’t
want to deal with hosting and servers,
don’t
necessarily want to build their site themselves, yet still want the DIY customization of a quality website builder once its live, and would prefer to have a direct support on hand (me & my team!) vs a big company support maze.
3.
Squarespace:
best for consultants, entreprenuers, and business owners who
don’t
want to deal with hosting and servers, but
do
want to build the site themselves, and are okay with paying someone else to do updates when they don’t feel like it, or prefer the Squarespace community and support system.
4.
Shopify:
best for business owners who will have a heavy emphasis on ecommerce products. Shopify is the best, easiest, out-of-the-box solution for a DIY ecommerce site for your small business – and even if your site is somewhere else, their cart can still be used to sell products from your SMB website on any other platform.
Website Builders Comparison Chart
To see this chart on your mobile device, just tap and slide to the part of the chart you’re interested in.
Website Platforms to Avoid – Free/Lacking
Before we jump into platform specifics and comparisons, there are a handful of website platforms I would strongly urge you
not
to use. These are any free platforms where your features are limited (meaning you’ll have to move later anyways, doubling the amount of time and effort you put in, instead of doing it right the first time), or where the out-of-the-box functionality of the platform will impact your visibility negatively.
The website platforms I personally
do not recommend using
are
Weebly
and
Wix.
Why? Because after 10 years helping businesses increase their visibility in search engines, I can tell you Weebly and Wix are
not
set up to get you the best visibility for your effort. I know their ease of use is very attractive, but I have never seen a high performing website on either of those platforms, and instead see massive gains in search engine visibility when moving from one of those platforms to any of the 4 recommended above.
If you are desperate for a low cost small business website and just need to get a page up, I would instead recommend the
website platform through Google My Business
,
as long as it’s used with a custom domain.
And I would
only recommend that until you can afford a higher quality platform.
So, which recommended platform is best for YOUR business?
Let’s jump into features and comparisons for the website builders I
would
recommend.
Which platform is best for
you
depends on a few key factors that you need to ask yourself.
Which resource
would I rather put towards my online presence – time or money?
Of that,
how much
time or money
am I willing to personally input to maintain the website?
What type of business do I have
and therefore
what type of website
am I trying to put together?
(local service based business, consultant/entrepreneur portfolio, blogger, ecommerce store)?
With those questions in mind, here are the best business hosting platforms I can recommend with their pros and cons, and why they might (or might not) be the right fit for you.
Self Hosted WordPress
Are you comfortable learning a technical website platform, dealing with website errors, cpanels, FTP connections, and performing maintenance yourself? Then WordPress might be a great platform for you!
When set up correctly with speed optimization and site-architecture/crawl optimization in place, this is a very customizable website platform. WordPress as a platform is free, and your only ongoing platform costs are to the host of your choice. There are even great front-end page builders like Thrive Architect to make the design process more straightforward.
When done yourself, this can be a
low cost
but
high learning curve/time-intensive
option to get set up.
When built by someone else, this can be a useful way to get online at a low monthly cost, as long as the web designer
knows how to optimize it for you
and as long as
you can maintain it yourself
(or pay someone else to when issues come up.)
PROS:
Highly customizable, large online community, many plugins since it’s one of the most popular platforms.
CONS:
Too many features/bloat for what most businesses really need, typically the least secure website platform out there (and dealing with a hack is NO fun), have to stay on top of maintenance and updates (which might break your site) by yourself, or pay someone else to do it – usually an unpredictable cost.
Use WordPress if you’re not scared of tech, or of paying someone who can handle the tech. If you just need a small business website though without extensive custom features, a website builder might be a better option for your business long term.
Harvest Builder
Do you want all of the perks of an optimized WordPress website (high visibility, great user experience, easy to update content), without the tech headaches? Or do you want done-for-you website updates and changes
included in the platform fee,
and with an easy, intuitive website builder to make endless changes yourself to your heart’s content?
Then a site built on Harvest Builder might be the right choice for your business.
Harvest Builder is our internal platform, and it’s like WordPress and Squarespace had a baby. I believe in this platform so much that
this website you’re reading right now is built on it
.
It is more SEO-friendly than Squarespace out of the box, and more intuitive, easy to update, secure, and optimized than WordPress. It has all of the features a small business needs without extra bloat, SEO or security issues, or constant maintenance.
Even non-technical business owners can log in to make changes if they want to, but the platform also includes 1 set of changes per month – so you can update your website as often as you want at a predictable cost. You get the optimization of WordPress and the ease of Squarespace.. without ever having to touch your website again if you prefer not to.
We don’t offer fully Do-It-Yourself plans (yet), but a site on HarvestBuilder is an
affordable and low-time-intensive way
to get online quickly, with a website that does everything you need it to (including blogging.) Your startup costs range from $99 to $600, depending on whether you want a templated or custom site, and whether you want my team to build it, or you want me to build it for you in 1 day (this would be done through a VIP Visibility Intensive directly with me.)
PROS:
Optimized out of the box, predictable cost, your level of hands-on time is completely elective and up to you, there is no server maintenance, and the interface is incredibly intuitive.
CONS:
Because of the concierge/direct support, and done-for-you nature of maintenance and website changes, this
is slightly pricier than other site builders like Squarespace, where you are on your own or have to hire outside help.
Use HarvestBuilder if you’re a service based business that needs a reliable, beautiful website – without banging your head against the wall, spending hours learning new technology, or dealing with hiring unpredictable outside help.
Squarespace
Are you a public figure, consultant, or entrepreneur who needs to get online without managing your own hosting, and need to stick to a smaller budget, but you are pretty hands on and are okay with hiring outside help when you need it?
Then a Squarespace website might be the right choice for your business.
It tends to lack the bloat and security issues of an un-managed WordPress website, while having a pretty intuitive design editing interface. Its visibility is not *perfect* out of the box because of some platform quirks (for example, navigation links don’t point to the canonicals of each page – which in layman’s terms means the internal linking they use gives less value throughout your site, in Google’s eyes) but if you don’t want to learn WordPress and are okay being pretty hands-on, it is a great site builder to get started with (and eons better than Weebly or Wix.)
With a little time and effort, a business owner can build an effective Squarespace website that won’t need constant technical babysitting.
However, there is no hands-on support offered here. If you want your website updated or changed, you’ll either have to do it yourself or find someone to hire, often at an unpredictable cost.
PROS:
*Mostly* optimized out of the box, very affordable, no server maintenance, easy to build a nice looking website yourself, can hire out hands-on help if you don’t want to do it yourself, more secure and easier to learn than WordPress.
CONS:
The platform fee only covers hosting and basic support – Squarespace plans don’t provide monthly content/design updates.
Use Squarespace if you’re a public figure, artist, consultant, entrepreneur, or professional that is totally okay with being hands on on a regular basis and learning a new platform – but perhaps wants to avoid the deeper technicalities of WordPress editing and maintenance.
Shopify
Do you need to build an online store for your business, with the store functionality being its primary purpose?
Then a Shopify website might be the best hosting platform for your business.
Although Shopify can be pricy, I’ve found it has the best balance between functionality and features without having the excess number of moving parts that can constantly break in a WordPress or Magento e-commerce store.
Another factor to consider with Shopify is that if you want to sell
some
products but keep your website on another platform, you can use their
lite plan
to take advantage of their shopping cart without hosting your full website on their platform. To do so, you simply add your products to your existing website in whatever manner you prefer, and then link to Shopify.
So you get the benefit of an excellent, bug-free checkout, without having to worry about cart security issues like you might on WordPress, and without the constant development costs/nightmares of Magento.
The blogging functionality is not
quite
as good as any of the above builders, but if your priority is e-commerce, then the trade off is likely worth the switch.
PROS:
You can easily launch an online shop in a day with Shopify, and you don’t have to worry about PCI-compliance yourself, because they have a built in cart. It’s much more optimized than other e-commerce platforms, it’s secure, and it has a large community behind it for hiring third-party help and adding plugins and apps.
CONS:
If you’re hosting your website on Shopify and using a non-Shopify payment processor, they do add an extra percentage to the fee. The higher plan you’re on/the more you’re paying monthly, the smaller this fee will be (down to half of a percent.) However, I believe (anecdotally) that this fee is worth it for the checkout experience and lack of excessive development costs, because in comparison to Magento, it’s unlikely the platform fees will outweigh the extensive development costs that would be required on other platforms. The blogging functionality is also lacking in comparison to the other platforms here.
Shopify is my best recommendation for any small business that needs e-commerce functionality as core factor of their presence online.
Wix & Weebly
I’m not going to get into full comparisons of these website builder hosts here, because I honestly can’t recommend them! I think using these platforms does a big disservice to any business that wants an ROI-generating online presence.
If you really can’t afford anything else, using the Google site builder (linked at the top of this page) is still a better option than Weebly or Wix, because it should be considered temporary until you can afford to get on a more robust platform. Or, WordPress can still be another low-cost option if you DIY it and are okay with getting around technical barriers.
Keep in mind if nobody sees your site, it’s basically like it doesn’t exist – which is why your platform is so important!
source http://www.harvestonlinemarketing.com/blog/best-website-platforms-for-small-business-compared
source https://harvestonlinemarketing1.home.blog/2020/04/07/best-website-platform-for-small-business-2020-harvestonlinemarketing-com/
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Best Website Platform for Small Business [2020] | HarvestOnlineMarketing.com
4 Best Website Builders For Small Business in 2020 Compared (Pros and Cons)
So you want to build a website for your small business, but you’re not sure which platform is best to host and build your website on. I get it! There are so many options and the ones that are best for you really depend on your specific business and what kind of resources you’re willing to contribute to launch the perfect website for showcasing your services and products.
I am writing this comparison from the perspective of a small business owner that wants to get online easily without paying massive development fees , and wants to choose the best platform for them from the start instead of having to jump around. This angle is largely focused on service based businesses, as that’s who I tend to work with most often, but I will also touch on my recommendations for the best e-commerce platform.
Before we jump into the details, you should know that we can build you a website on any of the recommended platforms here. You can book me directly for a VIP Visibility Intensive to have your custom website built on any of these platforms , or hire my team to build your small business website on Harvest Builder .
Best Small Biz Website Platforms Summarized
Don’t need to read the full comparisons and just want a quick answer to the best website builder/host for your small business? Here you go:
1. Self-hosted Wordpress: best for business owners who do want to maintain their own server or are okay consistently paying someone else to, are comfortable with a learning curve, and are comfortable handling Wordpress errors as they come up.
2. HarvestBuilder : best for service providers and business owners who don’t want to deal with hosting and servers, don’t necessarily want to build their site themselves, yet still want the DIY customization of a quality website builder once its live, and would prefer to have a direct support on hand (me & my team!) vs a big company support maze.
3. Squarespace: best for consultants, entreprenuers, and business owners who don’t want to deal with hosting and servers, but do want to build the site themselves, and are okay with paying someone else to do updates when they don’t feel like it, or prefer the Squarespace community and support system.
4. Shopify: best for business owners who will have a heavy emphasis on ecommerce products. Shopify is the best, easiest, out-of-the-box solution for a DIY ecommerce site for your small business - and even if your site is somewhere else, their cart can still be used to sell products from your SMB website on any other platform.
Website Builders Comparison Chart
To see this chart on your mobile device, just tap and slide to the part of the chart you’re interested in.
Website Platforms to Avoid - Free/Lacking
Before we jump into platform specifics and comparisons, there are a handful of website platforms I would strongly urge you not to use. These are any free platforms where your features are limited (meaning you’ll have to move later anyways, doubling the amount of time and effort you put in, instead of doing it right the first time), or where the out-of-the-box functionality of the platform will impact your visibility negatively.
The website platforms I personally do not recommend using are Weebly and Wix.
Why? Because after 10 years helping businesses increase their visibility in search engines, I can tell you Weebly and Wix are not set up to get you the best visibility for your effort. I know their ease of use is very attractive, but I have never seen a high performing website on either of those platforms, and instead see massive gains in search engine visibility when moving from one of those platforms to any of the 4 recommended above.
If you are desperate for a low cost small business website and just need to get a page up, I would instead recommend the website platform through Google My Business , as long as it’s used with a custom domain. And I would only recommend that until you can afford a higher quality platform.
So, which recommended platform is best for YOUR business?
Let’s jump into features and comparisons for the website builders I would recommend.
Which platform is best for you depends on a few key factors that you need to ask yourself.
Which resource would I rather put towards my online presence - time or money?
Of that, how much time or money am I willing to personally input to maintain the website?
What type of business do I have and therefore what type of website am I trying to put together? (local service based business, consultant/entrepreneur portfolio, blogger, ecommerce store)?
With those questions in mind, here are the best business hosting platforms I can recommend with their pros and cons, and why they might (or might not) be the right fit for you.
Self Hosted Wordpress
Are you comfortable learning a technical website platform, dealing with website errors, cpanels, FTP connections, and performing maintenance yourself? Then Wordpress might be a great platform for you!
When set up correctly with speed optimization and site-architecture/crawl optimization in place, this is a very customizable website platform. Wordpress as a platform is free, and your only ongoing platform costs are to the host of your choice. There are even great front-end page builders like Thrive Architect to make the design process more straightforward.
When done yourself, this can be a low cost but high learning curve/time-intensive option to get set up.
When built by someone else, this can be a useful way to get online at a low monthly cost, as long as the web designer knows how to optimize it for you and as long as you can maintain it yourself (or pay someone else to when issues come up.)
PROS: Highly customizable, large online community, many plugins since it’s one of the most popular platforms.
CONS: Too many features/bloat for what most businesses really need, typically the least secure website platform out there (and dealing with a hack is NO fun), have to stay on top of maintenance and updates (which might break your site) by yourself, or pay someone else to do it - usually an unpredictable cost.
Use Wordpress if you’re not scared of tech, or of paying someone who can handle the tech. If you just need a small business website though without extensive custom features, a website builder might be a better option for your business long term.
Harvest Builder
Do you want all of the perks of an optimized Wordpress website (high visibility, great user experience, easy to update content), without the tech headaches? Or do you want done-for-you website updates and changes included in the platform fee, and with an easy, intuitive website builder to make endless changes yourself to your heart’s content?
Then a site built on Harvest Builder might be the right choice for your business.
Harvest Builder is our internal platform, and it’s like Wordpress and Squarespace had a baby. I believe in this platform so much that this website you’re reading right now is built on it .
It is more SEO-friendly than Squarespace out of the box, and more intuitive, easy to update, secure, and optimized than Wordpress. It has all of the features a small business needs without extra bloat, SEO or security issues, or constant maintenance.
Even non-technical business owners can log in to make changes if they want to, but the platform also includes 1 set of changes per month - so you can update your website as often as you want at a predictable cost. You get the optimization of Wordpress and the ease of Squarespace.. without ever having to touch your website again if you prefer not to.
We don’t offer fully Do-It-Yourself plans (yet), but a site on HarvestBuilder is an affordable and low-time-intensive way to get online quickly, with a website that does everything you need it to (including blogging.) Your startup costs range from $99 to $600, depending on whether you want a templated or custom site, and whether you want my team to build it, or you want me to build it for you in 1 day (this would be done through a VIP Visibility Intensive directly with me.)
PROS: Optimized out of the box, predictable cost, your level of hands-on time is completely elective and up to you, there is no server maintenance, and the interface is incredibly intuitive.
CONS: Because of the concierge/direct support, and done-for-you nature of maintenance and website changes, this is slightly pricier than other site builders like Squarespace, where you are on your own or have to hire outside help.
Use HarvestBuilder if you’re a service based business that needs a reliable, beautiful website - without banging your head against the wall, spending hours learning new technology, or dealing with hiring unpredictable outside help.
Squarespace
Are you a public figure, consultant, or entrepreneur who needs to get online without managing your own hosting, and need to stick to a smaller budget, but you are pretty hands on and are okay with hiring outside help when you need it?
Then a Squarespace website might be the right choice for your business.
It tends to lack the bloat and security issues of an un-managed Wordpress website, while having a pretty intuitive design editing interface. Its visibility is not *perfect* out of the box because of some platform quirks (for example, navigation links don’t point to the canonicals of each page - which in layman’s terms means the internal linking they use gives less value throughout your site, in Google’s eyes) but if you don’t want to learn Wordpress and are okay being pretty hands-on, it is a great site builder to get started with (and eons better than Weebly or Wix.)
With a little time and effort, a business owner can build an effective Squarespace website that won’t need constant technical babysitting.
However, there is no hands-on support offered here. If you want your website updated or changed, you’ll either have to do it yourself or find someone to hire, often at an unpredictable cost.
PROS: *Mostly* optimized out of the box, very affordable, no server maintenance, easy to build a nice looking website yourself, can hire out hands-on help if you don’t want to do it yourself, more secure and easier to learn than Wordpress.
CONS: The platform fee only covers hosting and basic support - Squarespace plans don’t provide monthly content/design updates.
Use Squarespace if you’re a public figure, artist, consultant, entrepreneur, or professional that is totally okay with being hands on on a regular basis and learning a new platform - but perhaps wants to avoid the deeper technicalities of Wordpress editing and maintenance.
Shopify
Do you need to build an online store for your business, with the store functionality being its primary purpose?
Then a Shopify website might be the best hosting platform for your business.
Although Shopify can be pricy, I’ve found it has the best balance between functionality and features without having the excess number of moving parts that can constantly break in a Wordpress or Magento e-commerce store.
Another factor to consider with Shopify is that if you want to sell some products but keep your website on another platform, you can use their lite plan to take advantage of their shopping cart without hosting your full website on their platform. To do so, you simply add your products to your existing website in whatever manner you prefer, and then link to Shopify.
So you get the benefit of an excellent, bug-free checkout, without having to worry about cart security issues like you might on Wordpress, and without the constant development costs/nightmares of Magento.
The blogging functionality is not quite as good as any of the above builders, but if your priority is e-commerce, then the trade off is likely worth the switch.
PROS: You can easily launch an online shop in a day with Shopify, and you don’t have to worry about PCI-compliance yourself, because they have a built in cart. It’s much more optimized than other e-commerce platforms, it’s secure, and it has a large community behind it for hiring third-party help and adding plugins and apps.
CONS: If you’re hosting your website on Shopify and using a non-Shopify payment processor, they do add an extra percentage to the fee. The higher plan you’re on/the more you’re paying monthly, the smaller this fee will be (down to half of a percent.) However, I believe (anecdotally) that this fee is worth it for the checkout experience and lack of excessive development costs, because in comparison to Magento, it’s unlikely the platform fees will outweigh the extensive development costs that would be required on other platforms. The blogging functionality is also lacking in comparison to the other platforms here.
Shopify is my best recommendation for any small business that needs e-commerce functionality as core factor of their presence online.
Wix & Weebly
I’m not going to get into full comparisons of these website builder hosts here, because I honestly can’t recommend them! I think using these platforms does a big disservice to any business that wants an ROI-generating online presence. If you really can’t afford anything else, using the Google site builder (linked at the top of this page) is still a better option than Weebly or Wix, because it should be considered temporary until you can afford to get on a more robust platform. Or, Wordpress can still be another low-cost option if you DIY it and are okay with getting around technical barriers.
Keep in mind if nobody sees your site, it’s basically like it doesn’t exist - which is why your platform is so important!
source http://www.harvestonlinemarketing.com/blog/best-website-platforms-for-small-business-compared source https://harvestonlinemarketing1.tumblr.com/post/614694044220669952
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Best Website Platform for Small Business [2020] | HarvestOnlineMarketing.com
4 Best Website Builders For Small Business in 2020 Compared (Pros and Cons)
So you want to build a website for your small business, but you're not sure which platform is best to host and build your website on. I get it! There are so many options and the ones that are best for you really depend on your specific business and what kind of resources you're willing to contribute to launch the perfect website for showcasing your services and products.
I am writing this comparison from the perspective of a small business owner that wants to get online easily without paying massive development fees , and wants to choose the best platform for them from the start instead of having to jump around. This angle is largely focused on service based businesses, as that's who I tend to work with most often, but I will also touch on my recommendations for the best e-commerce platform.
Before we jump into the details, you should know that we can build you a website on any of the recommended platforms here. You can book me directly for a VIP Visibility Intensive to have your custom website built on any of these platforms , or hire my team to build your small business website on Harvest Builder .
Best Small Biz Website Platforms Summarized
Don't need to read the full comparisons and just want a quick answer to the best website builder/host for your small business? Here you go:
1. Self-hosted Wordpress: best for business owners who do want to maintain their own server or are okay consistently paying someone else to, are comfortable with a learning curve, and are comfortable handling Wordpress errors as they come up.
2. HarvestBuilder : best for service providers and business owners who don't want to deal with hosting and servers, don't necessarily want to build their site themselves, yet still want the DIY customization of a quality website builder once its live, and would prefer to have a direct support on hand (me & my team!) vs a big company support maze.
3. Squarespace: best for consultants, entreprenuers, and business owners who don't want to deal with hosting and servers, but do want to build the site themselves, and are okay with paying someone else to do updates when they don't feel like it, or prefer the Squarespace community and support system.
4. Shopify: best for business owners who will have a heavy emphasis on ecommerce products. Shopify is the best, easiest, out-of-the-box solution for a DIY ecommerce site for your small business - and even if your site is somewhere else, their cart can still be used to sell products from your SMB website on any other platform.
Website Builders Comparison Chart
To see this chart on your mobile device, just tap and slide to the part of the chart you're interested in.
Website Platforms to Avoid - Free/Lacking
Before we jump into platform specifics and comparisons, there are a handful of website platforms I would strongly urge you not to use. These are any free platforms where your features are limited (meaning you'll have to move later anyways, doubling the amount of time and effort you put in, instead of doing it right the first time), or where the out-of-the-box functionality of the platform will impact your visibility negatively.
The website platforms I personally do not recommend using are Weebly and Wix.
Why? Because after 10 years helping businesses increase their visibility in search engines, I can tell you Weebly and Wix are not set up to get you the best visibility for your effort. I know their ease of use is very attractive, but I have never seen a high performing website on either of those platforms, and instead see massive gains in search engine visibility when moving from one of those platforms to any of the 4 recommended above.
If you are desperate for a low cost small business website and just need to get a page up, I would instead recommend the website platform through Google My Business , as long as it's used with a custom domain. And I would only recommend that until you can afford a higher quality platform.
So, which recommended platform is best for YOUR business?
Let's jump into features and comparisons for the website builders I would recommend.
Which platform is best for you depends on a few key factors that you need to ask yourself.
Which resource would I rather put towards my online presence - time or money?
Of that, how much time or money am I willing to personally input to maintain the website?
What type of business do I have and therefore what type of website am I trying to put together? (local service based business, consultant/entrepreneur portfolio, blogger, ecommerce store)?
With those questions in mind, here are the best business hosting platforms I can recommend with their pros and cons, and why they might (or might not) be the right fit for you.
Self Hosted Wordpress
Are you comfortable learning a technical website platform, dealing with website errors, cpanels, FTP connections, and performing maintenance yourself? Then Wordpress might be a great platform for you!
When set up correctly with speed optimization and site-architecture/crawl optimization in place, this is a very customizable website platform. Wordpress as a platform is free, and your only ongoing platform costs are to the host of your choice. There are even great front-end page builders like Thrive Architect to make the design process more straightforward.
When done yourself, this can be a low cost but high learning curve/time-intensive option to get set up.
When built by someone else, this can be a useful way to get online at a low monthly cost, as long as the web designer knows how to optimize it for you and as long as you can maintain it yourself (or pay someone else to when issues come up.)
PROS: Highly customizable, large online community, many plugins since it's one of the most popular platforms.
CONS: Too many features/bloat for what most businesses really need, typically the least secure website platform out there (and dealing with a hack is NO fun), have to stay on top of maintenance and updates (which might break your site) by yourself, or pay someone else to do it - usually an unpredictable cost.
Use Wordpress if you're not scared of tech, or of paying someone who can handle the tech. If you just need a small business website though without extensive custom features, a website builder might be a better option for your business long term.
Harvest Builder
Do you want all of the perks of an optimized Wordpress website (high visibility, great user experience, easy to update content), without the tech headaches? Or do you want done-for-you website updates and changes included in the platform fee, and with an easy, intuitive website builder to make endless changes yourself to your heart's content?
Then a site built on Harvest Builder might be the right choice for your business.
Harvest Builder is our internal platform, and it's like Wordpress and Squarespace had a baby. I believe in this platform so much that this website you're reading right now is built on it .
It is more SEO-friendly than Squarespace out of the box, and more intuitive, easy to update, secure, and optimized than Wordpress. It has all of the features a small business needs without extra bloat, SEO or security issues, or constant maintenance.
Even non-technical business owners can log in to make changes if they want to, but the platform also includes 1 set of changes per month - so you can update your website as often as you want at a predictable cost. You get the optimization of Wordpress and the ease of Squarespace.. without ever having to touch your website again if you prefer not to.
We don't offer fully Do-It-Yourself plans (yet), but a site on HarvestBuilder is an affordable and low-time-intensive way to get online quickly, with a website that does everything you need it to (including blogging.) Your startup costs range from $99 to $600, depending on whether you want a templated or custom site, and whether you want my team to build it, or you want me to build it for you in 1 day (this would be done through a VIP Visibility Intensive directly with me.)
PROS: Optimized out of the box, predictable cost, your level of hands-on time is completely elective and up to you, there is no server maintenance, and the interface is incredibly intuitive.
CONS: Because of the concierge/direct support, and done-for-you nature of maintenance and website changes, this is slightly pricier than other site builders like Squarespace, where you are on your own or have to hire outside help.
Use HarvestBuilder if you're a service based business that needs a reliable, beautiful website - without banging your head against the wall, spending hours learning new technology, or dealing with hiring unpredictable outside help.
Squarespace
Are you a public figure, consultant, or entrepreneur who needs to get online without managing your own hosting, and need to stick to a smaller budget, but you are pretty hands on and are okay with hiring outside help when you need it?
Then a Squarespace website might be the right choice for your business.
It tends to lack the bloat and security issues of an un-managed Wordpress website, while having a pretty intuitive design editing interface. Its visibility is not *perfect* out of the box because of some platform quirks (for example, navigation links don't point to the canonicals of each page - which in layman's terms means the internal linking they use gives less value throughout your site, in Google's eyes) but if you don't want to learn Wordpress and are okay being pretty hands-on, it is a great site builder to get started with (and eons better than Weebly or Wix.)
With a little time and effort, a business owner can build an effective Squarespace website that won't need constant technical babysitting.
However, there is no hands-on support offered here. If you want your website updated or changed, you'll either have to do it yourself or find someone to hire, often at an unpredictable cost.
PROS: *Mostly* optimized out of the box, very affordable, no server maintenance, easy to build a nice looking website yourself, can hire out hands-on help if you don't want to do it yourself, more secure and easier to learn than Wordpress.
CONS: The platform fee only covers hosting and basic support - Squarespace plans don't provide monthly content/design updates.
Use Squarespace if you're a public figure, artist, consultant, entrepreneur, or professional that is totally okay with being hands on on a regular basis and learning a new platform - but perhaps wants to avoid the deeper technicalities of Wordpress editing and maintenance.
Shopify
Do you need to build an online store for your business, with the store functionality being its primary purpose?
Then a Shopify website might be the best hosting platform for your business.
Although Shopify can be pricy, I've found it has the best balance between functionality and features without having the excess number of moving parts that can constantly break in a Wordpress or Magento e-commerce store.
Another factor to consider with Shopify is that if you want to sell some products but keep your website on another platform, you can use their lite plan to take advantage of their shopping cart without hosting your full website on their platform. To do so, you simply add your products to your existing website in whatever manner you prefer, and then link to Shopify.
So you get the benefit of an excellent, bug-free checkout, without having to worry about cart security issues like you might on Wordpress, and without the constant development costs/nightmares of Magento.
The blogging functionality is not quite as good as any of the above builders, but if your priority is e-commerce, then the trade off is likely worth the switch.
PROS: You can easily launch an online shop in a day with Shopify, and you don't have to worry about PCI-compliance yourself, because they have a built in cart. It's much more optimized than other e-commerce platforms, it's secure, and it has a large community behind it for hiring third-party help and adding plugins and apps.
CONS: If you're hosting your website on Shopify and using a non-Shopify payment processor, they do add an extra percentage to the fee. The higher plan you're on/the more you're paying monthly, the smaller this fee will be (down to half of a percent.) However, I believe (anecdotally) that this fee is worth it for the checkout experience and lack of excessive development costs, because in comparison to Magento, it's unlikely the platform fees will outweigh the extensive development costs that would be required on other platforms. The blogging functionality is also lacking in comparison to the other platforms here.
Shopify is my best recommendation for any small business that needs e-commerce functionality as core factor of their presence online.
Wix & Weebly
I'm not going to get into full comparisons of these website builder hosts here, because I honestly can't recommend them! I think using these platforms does a big disservice to any business that wants an ROI-generating online presence. If you really can't afford anything else, using the Google site builder (linked at the top of this page) is still a better option than Weebly or Wix, because it should be considered temporary until you can afford to get on a more robust platform. Or, Wordpress can still be another low-cost option if you DIY it and are okay with getting around technical barriers.
Keep in mind if nobody sees your site, it's basically like it doesn't exist - which is why your platform is so important!
source http://www.harvestonlinemarketing.com/blog/best-website-platforms-for-small-business-compared
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Leverage Your Business Potentials With Professional IT Solutions in Toronto
If you are looking for professional IT solutions in Toronto, you should first ideally define your requirements. IT solution can comprise bundle of related software programs or services that are sold in a single package to address your comprehensive IT needs. IT service providers, vendors and value-added resellers promote their software programs & services under the tag “solution” to endorse the concept that buying the product or service will assist the client successfully sort out an issue or handle a complex situation.
What are the types of IT services?
Information Technology commonly known as IT is at the center of most business operations. With use of advanced technology and tools, IT facilitates day-to-day operations. However, like most technology, things break and need to be updated for smooth running. IT is one key area of business that needs to be efficiently looked-after as even the slightest of discrepancy can lead to down-timeand impact operations. IT services are required to ensure that a business’ IT network is up-to-date. IT service also helps in identifying any issues proactively so that they can be resolved before the issues can disrupt operations. Listed below are some of the common types of IT services:
Network Infrastructure:
Network and IT solutions go hand in hand. The network infrastructure of a company usually includes its internet connectivity & internal networking between computers, printers and other devices.
As far as networks are concerned, the main responsibility of the IT service provider is to keep the network up-to-date and secure from both external and internal threats. They do so by installing & managing firewalls. They will also monitor your network to identify & react to suspicious traffic and intrusions.
Cloud Computing:
Many businesses these days are depending on the Cloud to host their data. In most of the scenarios, the data includes sensitive information regarding clients, stakeholders and other valuable assets. Your IT service provider can help manage your Cloud environment in 2 ways – (a) by configuring & managing the cloud environment, and (b) by keeping your Cloud system protected against threats, such as intrusions.
Managed IT service:
IT service providers that work with small-sized businesses are usually called as Managed Service Providers (MSPs). This usually includes a wide range of services that helps small businesses with their IT needs at a pocket-friendly price. Having professional Managed IT Solutions in Brampton is a must if you want to prevent costly IT issues from forming in the first place. Managed IT Service Providers offer affordable plan to manage your IT to ensure that your network is running at optimal performance. Some MSPs even include security in their package to strengthen your cybersecurity measures against imminent cyber threats.
What does an IT solutions company do?
Primary responsibility of an IT Solutions provider is to access your IT environment to determine what is needed to keep your IT heath at peak performance. It includes reviewing the current infrastructure and then planning a range of software and service to form an IT solution that will help manage the client’s IT needs. It solution companies are comprised of IT experts who make up the company’s core IT Team. They help clients by offering expert consultation & objective recommendation on a wide range of IT factors. IT support firms predominantly work in 2 ways: sorting out instant IT issues & executing precautionary measures against potential IT issues.
If your business unexpectedly faces a server or network breakdown, your IT support firm will immediately should receive an alert, knowing that something is wrong. Then your IT service provider will analyze & diagnose the issue, sorting it out as soon as possible. The objective here is to lower your business downtime and increase network performance.
For specialized Toronto IT support, reach out to Network Repairs. Network Repairs is an IT Solutions and Managed Service Provider based in Brampton, helping Small and Medium Businesses with their ITneeds at an affordable budget.
Disclaimer: This content is created and provided by a third-party online content writer on behalf of network repairs, and is for commercial purposes only. Network repairs does not take any responsibility on the accuracy of this article.
Source From: https://itsecurityservicestoronto.blogspot.com/2019/12/leverage-your-business-potentials-with.html
People Also Read: Top Reasons Your Business Needs Security Camera Installation IT Support and IT Solution – Similar Yet Different Services! 4 Big Reasons Why Cloud Computing Is Gaining Huge Popularity?
#IT Solutions Toronto#Managed it solutions Brampton#network and it solutions#IT Support Toronto#Toronto IT Support
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The Best Sound And Lighting Business in Houston Tx
Premier Sound as well as Lighting Inc. in Houston Tx is a leader in supplying detailed company event layout as well as business event production services. Specializing in lighting, led lighting, audio visual solutions, sound, video clip screen, we transform your vision into a truth.
We have thirty years experience carrying out corporate awards ceremonies, corporate meetings, business incentive events, keynote speaker discussions, presentation monitoring, profession programs, and event site consulting. We companion with you making sure that your occasion is impactful, creative, on schedule, and on the spending plan.
For over 20 years we have actually serviced every kind of get-together, some big, some little and plenty of over the top.
We have earned a reputation for having the ability to obtain it done, despite that, just what, when or where. On schedule, on budget and providing what is called for plus some.
We value customer confidentiality and also ensure that your occasion is best.
So if you have a Landmark Birthday Celebration, Wedding, Bar Mitzvah, Xmas Party, any sort of get-together or charitable charity event call us for a full plan; Concept to Completion.
Extending years of strong experience
Premier Sound & Lighting Inc
. That you require "the perfect occasion!".
With Premier Sound And also Lighting state of the art sound system there is no question that high quality prevails volume. We have the equipment to fulfill your sound needs regardless of the dimension or the location of the event. The devices is attached and wired throughout the place to bring the high dynamic audio from the phase to its target market participants through our mixing boards.
Make a visual declaration that will be kept in mind. Surpass designs and also flowers and also allow our Lighting Developer create the ambience that is required for a sophisticated environment with limitless color, structure, and also movement of light. Enhancing with color is a huge element in taking your occasion from dull and also normal to amazing as well as over the top. Southern Sound as well as Lighting's diverse lighting supply allows us to light a myriad of various sorts of occasions from small mixers to national company events and also concerts. Our knowledgeable staff and the deepness of resources offered permit us to give a budget-friendly solution for all your lighting requires.
Given that lighting equipment remains to create as quick as technology allows, we are constantly stocking the current equipment offered, from led the same levels to relocating lights. We acknowledge the amount of understanding and also experience necessary to promote your occasion.
Premier Sound & Lighting Inc. is pleased to offer an exceptionally high requirement of lighting designers as well as service technicians in order for your event to run as smoothly, properly and also as expense efficiently as feasible. Call us for more concerning exactly what we can supply.
Premier Sound and Lighting is among the leading full-service occasion production companies in Texas. We deal with every one of your manufacturing requires including lighting, sound, video clip and hosting for events of all sizes in all kinds of areas. Our team integrates the most recent in innovation with years of experience to attain trouble-free, budget-minded, modern and imaginative settings.
Our objective at Premier sound is to offer the very best as well as best quality solution at a reasonable cost. Our years of combined experience in sound, lighting, as well as video clip will certainly aid you to earn one of the most educated prepare for your event. Making a tiny club program or a concert with 100,000+ individuals, the Premier Sound and Lighting goal is to make the following program better than the one before, and also consequently, our largest rival is ourselves as we look for to attain a greater criterion of manufacturing.
We use only the most effective gear in the market from JBL, and also on down the line. We take satisfaction in servicing all Texas with our place in Houston Tx.
Occasion management business, event organizers as well as internal occasion groups collaborate with the Premier Group to produce flawless company events, charity galas, fashion programs, pageants, extraordinary wedding celebrations, conventions, dancing celebrations, musical performances, church manufacturings and even more ...
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The Modern Trend of Web Design
In the last couple of years, web design has undergone a drastic change in the field of web development. The change has been characterised by the technological advances and countless new design options that have come up. The modern web design trend is all about interactivity, user-friendliness, quick access and look & feel factor of the website.
The key factors of web design are as below:
Design, which will transform the ideas into a visually pleasing design and build the targeted audience. The web designer has to take the responsibility to maintain the design for the entire website.
Architecture would create a plan. The designer has to make the strategy, gathering ideas and resources and make the design of the website.
The X-factor for choosing
Mango Consulting
We are passionate about what we do and we are giving more than 100% to add value to the service or product that we offer to our clients up to their optimal satisfaction. We’ve got the web development side of things down to a fine art. We can code, build, integrate, design and make compatible for all the screen size that means its responsive in nature and fit for the purpose. We are making sure to stay up-to-date on the latest versions of HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, Angular.js, Bootstrap and integrating them in an optimal fashion to ensure your website design remains highly flexible.
From the trends and design point of view we are offering the websites that include the features like Seamless Interaction, Voice User Interface, Personalised user experience, Scrolling websites, Dynamic background elements, High-quality Illustrations and many more.
Website is the digital front door to your business
Effective design is about effective communication. We would love to meet the deadlines and satisfy your brand objectives. The purpose behind our designs is to communicate your brand to the end user in a way that will impact and motivate them.
It’s a virtual manifestation of your real-world business, based on this particular thing your potential customers will judge you. Then it’s better to get it right in the first instance. We’re happy to advise and guide you on planning your new website. But at the same time we keep in mind that your site should be easy to navigate, fast loading and mobile friendly – the rest is entirely dependent on the business in question.
An e-commerce website will look decidedly different from a software developer’s website and a large enterprise is going to have a greater budget than a sole trader. The final product then will depend on what you’d like to achieve with the resources available with you. Whatever works for you works for us, and we’ll always do our best to accommodate your requests, no matter how trivial or ambitious they may be. From integrating e-commerce to incorporating lead generation forms, custom widgets, video, audio, downloadable content and much more. We’ll apply all the nuts, bolts, and add-ons that your site needs. The finished product will be a fully bespoke, responsive website that will help your brand stand out on the web and attract new business.
There are so many websites in the market. To stand out from the crowd we at Mango Consulting offer the web design services depending on the requirement of the clients that is useful for them to build a target audience. Nowadays, websites are important for all from a very small business to the extent of a large enterprise.
You won’t just get your design, but also added value to the website like E-COMMERCE DEVELOPMENT, WEBSITE COPYWRITING, CUSTOM WORDPRESS WEBSITES, LANDING PAGE DESIGN & OPTIMIZATION.
We give you complete services to help with your online presence. We strive to create just the right website for our clients keeping in mind their customers and their business purpose; to create just the right website for each client. We can help you have the website that will not only look great but also serve the purpose to get more business.
Depending on the services required we offer the below types of websites for our clients.
Static Website
Dynamic Website
Responsive Website
Custom Web design
Corporate Web Design
Static Website
Static Websites are the web pages where each page is coded in HTML and CSS and are used only for display purpose. There is no server-side scripting in static websites. Since static web pages contain fixed code, the content of each page does not change unless it is manually updated by the webmaster. We can build a static site by creating few HTML pages and publish them to a web server.
Dynamic Website
In a dynamic website the content is changed depending upon the audience. A dynamic website contains both client and server-side scripting language.
With client-side scripting, HTML scripting builds the page and can utilize JavaScript and other web-based programming languages like Angular.js, JQuery, Bootstrap to change the data that the HTML scripting adds to the page as it is built.
The scripts of server-side scripting are run on the server hosting the page. The process of how the page is built is determined by parameters defined in the server-side scripting. The server-side scripting language like PHP, Asp.net and Node.js
Responsive Website
A responsive website is a combination of grids, flexible images, and media queries. We help our clients to move out of the complexity and design an attractive website for them. The layout magically adjusts itself to more comfortably fit the new width of the browser, even if you make the page as skinny as the resolution of a mobile phone.
Custom Web Design
Our custom web builds do not rely on templates and plugins. This allows us to provide you with a customised, user-friendly, stable and reliable website. We focus on the specific needs and goals of our clients. This helped us evolve and develop custom web solutions that deliver results for our clients. Our developers are ready to face challenges whether to enhance an existing application or architect a new enterprise application from the scratch.
Corporate Website Design
Regardless of your product, services, or goals, corporations need their online presence to strive their growth in their business. Both small and big organizations need their portfolio displayed in a presentable manner on the web. This is to sustain the competition and reach a larger audience. Our experts design and offer value addition to the website to appear different from competition and sustain longer.
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How bad website design is ruining your organic rankings
Don’t kid yourself – when you think about website design does your mind go to slick image carousels and fancy graphics, or organic search performance?
I’ll wager my daily coffee(s) that it’s the former, but be warned: Bad website design can seriously impact your SEO ranking, potentially lending your competitors the edge in capturing vital digital leads.
So, let’s explore what website features impact SEO, why your site needs to be mobile friendly, and the tools you can use to squeeze the most out of your company’s corner of the internet.
Struggling with these common website tracking problems? Digital Strategist Chas Lang is here with the best fixes and advice. https://t.co/IYyPAXasu5 pic.twitter.com/ayKWWG6NCT
— Castleford Media (@castlefordmedia) January 14, 2019
What website features impact SEO ranking?
Here are some common website features you must get right if you want Google to look favourably on your site:
1. Keywords
Despite what you may hear, keywords are very much alive in 2019. However, shoving them in willy-nilly, or deliberately overfilling articles and pages with keywords, won’t help your website’s cause. In fact, keyword stuffing is actively penalised by Google’s algorithm – you could actually slip down the rankings rather than rise up.
Your website design should include keywords in the following core places:
URL – While only a minor ranking factor, every little helps – if you can organically get keywords into your URL, then go for it.
Title tags – This is the big one. Without a title tag, Google has no immediate idea of what a given page is about. This makes it harder for the search engine to index your site, meaning you could miss out on appearing in relevant searches by prospects.
Heading tags – More on formatting later, but breaking up copy with keyword-optimised title tags will make digesting the content easier for both readers and the crawlers. Google uses to understand pages.
Body copy – Whether it’s a blog or a landing page, including keywords naturally in your copy helps alert Google that it’s relevant to a specific search query.
Alt tags – Google uses alt tags, or alt text, to determine what’s in an image and how this relates to accompanying text. This is because crawlers can’t see and understand images themselves.
2. Navigation
It’s crucial your website navigation boosts both SEO performance and user experience. Illogical or broken site architecture will frustrate human searchers and search engine crawlers alike. Here are some top tips:
Use content hierarchies – Start with broad landing pages that link to related, more specific sub pages. You can continue this pattern so bots can follow a clear progression through your site. This also gives you the opportunity to rank for general head terms as well as more specific long-tail keywords.
Include horizontal linking – The danger of content hierarchies is that you silo different sections of your site from each other. Prudent use of horizontally linking across different arms of your hierarchy makes life easier for crawlers to connect the dots.
Get specific – People aren’t searching ‘products’ or ‘services’, so don’t use these in your nav. Instead help search engines and users know exactly what a page will contain before they crawl the copy itself.
Be careful with dropdown menus – If you want to use dropdowns, ensure they are written into the HTML. If not, these can be hard for bots to crawl, meaning you lose ranking points for navigability.
Beware JavaScript – Google and co. can have real trouble locating internal links created with JavaScript. Therefore, if you use this programming language, your site architecture can seem non-existent to bots. Search engines are improving their capability here, and some would argue JavaScript is vital for user experience, but be wary when it comes to using it for nav.
Make the most of blogs – It’s common practice for a blog CTA to link to a product page, but this can also work in reverse. When a blog post can aid the buying process for a specific item, don’t be afraid to link out to it.
When #copywriting is done right it woos your site's 2 most important audiences: search engines and prospects. Companies with value-adding copy rank and they convert. https://t.co/B6vkcAxrK3
— Castleford Media (@castlefordmedia) June 7, 2019
3. Page speed
Google and humans are equally impatient it seems, and page loading speed is an important ranking factor.
There are two sides to how this works:
Time to first byte loading – How Google measures page speed is somewhat unclear. However, research from Moz shows the search engine might be specifically looking at what’s known as ‘time to first byte’ – i.e. how long it takes your browser to get the first byte of info from the page server. Those that deliver faster are considered higher quality.
Crawler allocation – Much like marketers, search engines are time poor. They have an allocated crawl budget, and a slow site may miss out on being fully indexed if its pages are slow loading.
So, how can you speed things up a bit?
Compress files – HTML, CSS and JavaScript files can be compressed using a software app called Gzip. If you want to compress images, use a dedicated program like Photoshop or Lightroom so you don’t reduce quality too.
Boost your server response speed – Factors from your hosting solution to your website traffic can slow your server response time. Root out potential speed bumps in the form of insufficient memory and slow database queries to improve this.
Take advantage of browser caching – Browsers can cache lots of information so they don’t need to reload whole pages should visitors return. You can use a tool named Yslow to select how long you want information to be saved, with a year being a standard timeframe.
Cut redirects – Every time a webpage redirects to another, users have to wait for a request-response cycle between the browser and server. Reducing redirects therefore means shorter wait times.
4. Formatting and appearance
You also need to consider aesthetics when optimising your site for SEO ranking. The following can influence how your website performs:
Formatting:
Search engines reward copy that can be scanned easily for takeaways, so including the following elements can be beneficial:
Bulletlists and numbered points.
Short paragraphs with clear headers.
Bolded texts.
Pictures:
Images on your website should:
Have an image title.
Be relevant to the page they’re on and accompanied by alt text.
Be compressed without compromising on quality.
Other rich media:
In addition, including other rich elements such as videos or social media embeds can boost your ranking. It’s important that these are used only when they add real value to the page.
#Infographics are powerful because they tell a story, offering information in the form of vibrant images. But there's a big difference between a successful infographic and one that fails to fly. The key is tailoring them to your audience. https://t.co/VAUW6XBqI1
— Castleford Media (@castlefordmedia) June 16, 2019
5. Security
While our eyes often skim over the first part of a domain name, for Google there’s an important difference between HTTP and HTTPS sites.
Given the name of this subsection, there are no prizes for guessing that the S here stands for security. HTTPS websites protect users in three ways:
Authentication prevents cyber attacks on users.
Data integrity means internet files can’t be corrupted as they’re transferred to the searcher’s browser.
Encryption means hackers can’t steal user information or track their activity.
Security has been a Google ranking factor since 2014, and a study by Blue Corona found that 40 per cent of page 1 results are HTTPS sites.
As recent digital privacy controversies have shown, the public is becoming increasingly critical of companies that don’t take adequate precautions to protect data. As ranking factors reflect searcher priorities, expect to see security becoming even more important in the years to come.
Why mobile friendly websites rank better in SEO
Mobile friendliness is so important to ranking today that it deserves it’s own H2.
According to Statista, 52.2 per cent of all worldwide website traffic in 2018 came from mobile phones. This was up 2 per cent from the year before, and nearly 10 per cent from 2016.
Since 2015, Google has made it explicitly clear that mobile friendliness is a ranking factor. Indeed, a survey by Blue Corona found that 70 per cent of sites on page one of Google’s results page are optimised for handheld devices.
If your business hasn’t yet adapted to what marketers at the time dubbed Mobilegeddon, here are some things to think about:
Design responsively – To ensure your mobile audience sees the same content as desktop users, make your website device responsive. If you’re not a programming expert, either get professional help with this or seek templates that have designated mobile functionality.
Avoid Flash – Flash is bad. Bad for SEO (due to slow loading speeds), bad for your street cred (because who uses Flash these days?) and definitely bad for mobile searchers as neither iOS or Android support its use.
Use media queries – This allows your site to ask a device what size it is, and then instruct the browser to display your content according to the relevant CCS you have set.
Don’t block CSS, image files or JavaScript – While in the past, some mobile devices couldn’t support these elements, most now can. Given you want to make your site as universally reachable as possible, leaving these options open is in your best interests.
Consider scrolling – Thumbs and fingers aren’t always precise as computer mice, so making sure your buttons aren’t too big or too small will help users get around your site easily.
Optimise for local search – You should do this for your site anyway, but the local factor takes on new significance for on-the-go mobile users who may be en route to purchase. An important step is including your business’ postal address and phone number in the site metadata.
Mobile page speed – Rapid loading is even more important for users accessing your site from a handheld device. You can use the same tactics outlined earlier to speed up page loading.
Important changes in mobile, (Google) Maps, and Microsoft have been dominating the news headlines. Here’s the rundown of the goings on in the content marketing world last week! https://t.co/pbJ9mgDUZU
— Castleford Media (@castlefordmedia) June 7, 2019
Useful (and free) tools for improving a website’s SEO performance
Google’s Webmaster Tools – Google itself has a host of tools you can use to analyse your website’s SEO potential. For example. Fetch as Google allows you to view a URL as Google sees it in order to pinpoint weak spots.
SEMrush – SEMrush can conduct a full SEO audit of your site including keyword research and link analysis.
Google PageSpeed Insights – A self-explanatory tool, Google PageSpeed Insights not only speed checks your site, but also suggests ways you can improve loading times.
Hubspot’s Website Grader – This is another great multipurpose app that allows you to analyse:
Mobile readiness.
SEO performance.
Security for users.
Performance, including speed metrics.
Check My Links – Perfect for a final check before your site goes live, Check My Links allows you to, well, check your links. It can analyse both internal and external links to ensure none are broken.
UpCity’s SEO Report Card – Primarily a competitor analysis tool, SEO Report Card lets you analyse factors including:
How well you’re incorporating keywords in your site.
How quickly your site loads.
How easy it is for crawlers to index your site.
from http://bit.ly/2MUsXPx
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