Why Are Keywords Important

Whether you are writing a blog, building a website, or building your resume, keywords are important as they are what makes you stand out, it’s the focus word or phrase that separates you from your competition.

Before search engines, keywords were used everyday by employers and employees when posting and applying for jobs. Employers would ask for specific qualifications when posting positions within their company. It was then up to the interviewer to make sure the candidates had those specific qualifications or similar and that met the expectations of the job posting. If they didn’t, then their resume would be over looked.

If I were to post a job for a Sales Position, I might require a minimum of sales experience. If I receive a resume from a candidate who is a veteran of sales, their resume would stand out over someone with 2-3 years of experience. Why, because the word veteran is someone who has had long experience in a particular field.

Search engines are no different. Think of them as the interviewer for the information you are searching for. As Google rolls out their new algorithm Bert, their results will become more relevant to searchers.

Example: If I were to search for “How to earn cashback on shopping” the results might look something like this:

Notice that Google replaces the word “earn” with “get” and the word “cashback” with “money”. The relevance and focus is still making money shopping.

So, whether you are trying to make the top of the list for a job or rank high on search engines, the words you use to describe yourself and your business hold importance.

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A Quick Guide to Great Customer Service – 5 tips

I often complain about bad customer service and believe me, I am not the only one who probably feels the same way. If professors can be rated so can your business and most of those ratings come from the type of customer service you or your team is giving. If you need help improving your customer service, here are some tips.

First impressions

The first step to great customer service is a positive first impression. They count immensely and should feel straightforward and welcoming. If you have a good first impression is more likely that the service will also be positive and vice versa. It’s easy if you use the right choice of words and an uplifting tone of voice. If your greeting is too long, shorten it or if it doesn’t make any sense, tailor it.

Know Your Product or Service

In order to provide great customer service, you need to know what you are selling like the back of your hand. Make sure you or your sales team know how to products and or services work. Be prepared for the common question as well as uncommon. Some customers also may be asking the same questions but in a more roundabout way. Be as articulate as possible so that your answers will end up leaving them satisfied.

Listen

Listening is probably one of the most important necessities of great customer service. If you aren’t listening, you probably aren’t getting anything done, and or answer when it comes to your customers. Listen to how they feel, so you can be empathetic to their problems.

Some customers are making calls on their bad days and often vent. It’s important to jot down all their key issues. Sometimes asking a customer who has already given you information that wasn’t noted, is a great way to get them more upset.
Sometimes customers give details the system doesn’t want or need and jotters are a great way to capture everything before discussing solutions with the customer and putting the right.

Respond as quickly as possible

A huge factor of great customer service is speed and efficiency. You know you don’t like your time wasted, and I’m pretty sure your customers don’t like it either. There is nothing worse than being unresponsive to a customer who is trying to get help, find out about products or simply resolve an issue. You have to remember that some customers have more influence than others. We do live in the world of the internet. They aren’t just one customer; everyone is important to your business. It’s important that you respond to all inquiries, no matter how small. Don’t make your customers feel ignored. You should be prompt in your calls as well as your response times. This includes email response times as well.

According to STELLAService, a few years ago the top 100 retail companies often took 17 hours to reply to their customers. Today isn’t much better, it takes an average of 12 hours to get a response back.

Ask for Feedback

There is always room for improvement. Ask your customers what they thought about your service, products, and business. What your customers think about your business is what either keeps it afloat or causes it to drown. You can use customer surveys, feedback forms, and questionnaires, but you also can also ask them firsthand. It’s better to ask them firsthand because it’s more likely you will get a response than sending a survey in their mail inbox. If it doesn’t promise much for their time, it likely that more than half of them will not be filled out.

Conclusion

All businesses should be built around great customer service. Customers are the livelihood of any business. If you treat them as if they aren’t worth much, you can forget about your business being prosperous. Don’t get too big for your britches after you’ve made a brand and received web presence because it always comes down to other people buying your stuff.

How to Get People to Open Your Emails – 5 Steps

Email is a great way to market your products to other people. All you have to do is get them to sign up for your product or newsletter and then pop out content. Sounds easy right? Wrong! Many people think they can go into email campaigning and immediately get the results they are hoping for. Some are innately good at persuasion, for others not so much. In reality, it actually takes a lot longer, so you have to have faith and determination.

Some people have high unsubscribed rates, low CTR, and low open rates. People are just not engaged. You need high open rates because it tells you how well your relationship with your readers is. With high open rates, you should expect high click-through rates. Click-through rates are how many people are clicking on any link that’s in your email. If people aren’t getting persuaded to click your link you might not get any conversation or purchases. Then, this boring content that is getting no results, leads to a high unsubscribe rate. This is the opposite of what you want. Of course, you want people to subscribe to you and stay subscribed.

Personally, I know a lot of people who have over 1000 unopened emails in their inbox. You never know, you are probably one of them. What makes your email different from all of those other emails? What would make your audience excited to open your email versus the other 999? Inboxes are often filled with uninteresting and boring emails. Your email can be easily drowned, and Google doesn’t make it easier for you to be noticed. You need to seduce people into opening your emails.

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How to Get People to Open Your Emails

Subject Lines

Make strong subject lines that would entice people to be curious about the contents of your email. Most of the time simple subject lines beat clever. Even so, sometimes you have to be clever. If you don’t have any ideas, you can subscribe to popular email lists and study their subject lines.

Use Powerful Words

Use powerful words in your subject lines, because that is the first thing they see when they get a notification. Also use persuasive words because people like things that can move and relate to them. Don’t be afraid to occasionally use weird and bizarre words. Used correctly, it can catch the eye of your reader very quickly.

Promise Something Good

No one is going to stay subscribed to your anything if it doesn’t interest them in any way. First, make sure you are marketing to the right people. Then if you see your unsubscribe rate rising you know that you are not doing something right. You have to do better at providing the people with something that they would enjoy.

Experiment

Don’t expect all your readers to be the same. Even though you are supposed to be marketing to a specific audience, that doesn’t mean everyone has the same views. Learn to experiment. See what people like and what they hate. Trying something new proves to your reader that you are indeed trying. You do not need to follow a strict formula. Templated emails are usually quick and very boring to read. Add a personal touch, because it makes the audience feel more connected to you. You automatically become more approachable. Experimenting comes to the development of your natural voice.

Build a Relationship

People conversate better with real people. So, if you’re using an automated message all the time, stop. I understand if you’re busy, but people feel like they are more included if you add a personal touch. When you build a relationship, your readers are going to anticipate your emails and will open them. They will recognize your name and your writing. Guess what, if you have a great relationship, it’s more likely they will open your email and read it, even if your subject line sucks.

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If you don’t want the headache, we can do it for you. If you don’t have the time, or just don’t want to write your own email campaigns, we can do it for you. We are professionals with the ability to get you the results that you want. We will work with you till we can get you high click-rates, open-rates, and conversation. Contact us for any inquiries you may have. We’d be happy to help.

The Basics of Email Marketing

Email has been around since the 1960s and is what a majority of people are still using to communicate today. It is possibly the best strategy for marketing your business and its products. In 2018, email marketing was ranked as the most efficient marketing channel, beating social media, affiliate marketing, and SEO. People are using email more than other platforms either because they are communicating, for school, or for business.

Building a successful email marketing campaign is more important than ever for entrepreneurs because so many people are using email every day. When you are creating a campaign, you have to remember that you are a guest in their inbox. People do not like pitches, advertisements, and/or interruptions, because they’re everywhere they look when they’re prowling the internet. Also, to the reader come on there is a high probability that your email isn’t special to them, it may look like the rest.

Step 1: Permission

You can’t make an email campaign without people to send your emails to. You first have to get permission from what we would call subscribers. This is basically just an email list. Some people give away free samples while others offer a newsletter or product updates. This is where you should have a strong call to action and where copywriting is very important. When you ask someone to subscribe, you have to have a clear purpose. What are they subscribing for? By sharing a specific call to action, it can cause more people to subscribe to your email list. Some common ways to get people to sign up include:

Free Downloads

Newsletters

Updates, New Releases

Email Series

E-Books

Whatever the incentive, make it clear and enticing so you can promote yourself. Do not ever be afraid to promote yourself, because if not you, who else?

Part Two: Great Content

You must have expectations when you are trying to market by email. Your call to action needs to be strong and your follow-up needs to be consistent. You shouldn’t over-deliver more than you promise. If you say you are going to send one email a week and then send one every day, people may unsubscribe immediately. No one wants notifications from one source every day, it gets very annoying. If you promise daily updates and don’t deliver that also can give you the same result. Keep your promises.

The first follow-up email you send is very important. It should be sent immediately as a means to introduce yourself to your new subscriber. If you don’t have time to respond, you can use an autoresponder. It’s a pre-written email that is automatically sent after a person has subscribed to your content. It’s better to be detailed than to be short and obstructive, but it is always more powerful to pull it off in a quick and concise way.

Coming from an email list that gave out free samples too pitching products for money maybe a little difficult. You may have to think in advance about how you are going to pitch these products to your subscribers. Face it if your subscribers only subscribed for a free sample, they probably don’t know much about your company what you stand for and what you’re selling.

Don’t surprise people with a pitch, ease into it. Save the pitch for unique updates, offers, and announcements. Then you may start sales pitching regularly, which results in successful campaigns. Make sure your messages are consistent with your expectations as well as your customers. Since you are building a relationship with your readers, it’ll be harder to annoy them with all of your emails.

Phase III: Analytics

The 3 most important analytics are open rate, click-through rate and unsubscribe rate.

Open Rate explains how many people have opened your emails. It tells you how well your relationship with your readers is by seeing how fast people open and read your emails. If you have a low open rate that means your subscribers aren’t engaged and you need to work harder on producing better content.

Click-through Rate or CTR should how many people clicked on a link of any kind in your email. If your CTR is low, it means that your message isn’t as targeted as you first thought or maybe your content isn’t getting through to your subscribers.

Unsubscribe Rate tells you how many people have unsubscribed from your email. If your unsubscribe rate is highly rated to your opt-in rate, you are going to have to start working even harder. It is more difficult to build yourself up after you’ve already fallen. Try to find out why people are leaving and fix it. It could be because they don’t like your autoresponder email, or that your call-to-action needs to be stronger.

Conclusion

Remember that you are a guest in your subscriber’s inbox, so do not be a jerk and blow it up. A majority of people think that simpler is better and easier to understand. If you can create content that is simple but can catch the eye of your potential customers, you’ll do just fine. Follow through on your promises. If you say you are going to send updates every day, then you have to send updates every day. Some people rely on consistency. Finally, watch your analytics because they will be the ones to tell you if you need to start changing things up.

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If you don’t have time to do your own email campaigning, we can do it for you. At WMA we try to create captivating emails to engage your customers/subscribers.

Knowing the Difference Between Client and Customer

People often find the difference between client and customer to be confusing while others believe them to be synonymous, but that isn’t the case when you’re apart of the business world.  Based on the business customers can get both tangible and intangible products while clients usually get intangible products.

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Definitions

Customer

A person who pays money for goods and services from another person or company. It is short-term and it’s usually an economic relationship. There is no formal agreement between the business and the customer. A customer would go to a store, purchase something, and then leave. Usually, when a customer comes back often, they will receive the title of client. There are two different types of customers. The intermediate customer who purchases goods with the purpose of reselling and the ultimate customer who are usually the end-user or consumer of the product. Customers are the ones who decide if a product or service is up to par.

Client

When a company and a customer is in a trusting relationship with one another, the customer becomes a client. Clients are looking for professional services or skills and advice from a service provider. This could be a lawyer, accounting, consultant, insurance agent, advertising agency, interior decorator, fashion designer, etc. The degree of personal attention varies from client to client business to business. While both are very important parts of an organization, clients can help then grow long term. Businesses should make products based on customer demand while providing services to client requirements.

First, a client enters an agreement with the organization of their choice Which results in a trusting relationship between both parties. If and when the client is satisfied with the services provided, their short relationship may turn into a loyal and long term one. If your lawyer does great things, of course, you’re going to keep using their services.

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Sometimes the distinction between the two is important to different types of companies. Lawyers usually have clients when someone hires them to create a legal document or to represent them in court. This process isn’t just in and out, so that’s why they are not considered to be a customer.

Healthcare professionals, on the other hand, have “patients”. The healthcare worker is working on behalf of the patient and share knowledge with them, the same way some companies work with clients.

While in real estate the difference is even more crucial than the other two. A customer in this profession is usually using a real estate agent to help oversee the selling or buying of a home, but the agent doesn’t act on their behalf. A client is when someone needs help finding a new place of residence or business location. The real estate agent represents them and expects the agent to know their facts. The agent is used on the client’s behalf.

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For Inquiries contact us at:
Office Line: (413) 301-7962
Email: info@wamplermacgregor.com
Website: http://www.wamplermacgregor.com

Shopify Pros and Cons

Pros

Design

Pricing

Add-Ons

Marketing

Easy to Use 

14-Day Free Trial

Great Customer Support

Built-in Speed & Security for Hosting

All The Necessary Features

Connect with Social Media

Shopify is very easy to use besides its learning curve. They have approximately 200 themes that look great and work on mobile. Shopify provides full SSL and keeps their sites fast. Customers do not have to wait for your page to load. They have great customer service 24 hours, 7 days a week. They also have FAQs, email/chat support and phone support. Shopify is SEO friendly, so you may have a good marketing experience. They come with a lot of built-in features and add-ons in their own app store. Some you have to pay for while others are free.  

Cons

Blog

Traffic

Lock-in

No Email Hosting

Initial setup

Shopify Jargon

Content Marketing

Design Your Own Multilingual Store

 

Shopify is a little more expensive than the other options. Compared to BigCommerce, its is the same price except that the pro for Shopify is $299 compared to their $249.95. Shopify has its own blogging software, but it isn’t the best, especially if you are used to WordPress. If you want to do content marketing, your best option might be to find software somewhere else. Shopify also has a steep learning curve because they have their own jargon. For example, they use the word “collection” vs. “categories”. Another con is that your account is locked. If you wanted to try out another software, just like BigCommerce, you would have to close your shop. You do not have full control over the platform, unfortunately. This means if Shopify chooses to shut down operations one day, then you might lose your online shoppers.

Key Features

Enterprise Plan

Sales Channels

24/7 Support team

Expert Set-up Support

Free and Paid Themes

Shopify Blog with Guides

Own Credit Card Payment Provider

Pricing

3D Cart Pros and Cons

Pros

Lower price

Live chat support

Effective Customer Support

15 Day Free Trial Offers

Unlimited Storage in every plan

Fully Scaled Product Storage Choices

Broad Range of Payment Methods

User-friendly Interface for Experienced Users

The price for 3D Cart is a lot lower than the other software for the first 6 months. After the promo, it is the same price as BigCommerce except that the price for pro is $20 less. They offer unlimited storage for every plan, so if you are selling a lot of products with photos and video uploads, that is one less thing to worry about. They also allow a wide variety of payment gateways. Shoppers will be able to pay with almost all available online payment methods. 3D Cart also has live chat support that can help you solve simple problems.

Cons

Additional Costs

Bugs in Admin Panel

Poor Customer Service

Templates are Not good

Limited Themes & Often Outdated

Not the Most Straightforward

Even though they have live chat support, customers have complained that it is poorly serviced.  Help and support usually take a long time to give proper answers. 3D Cart also has some bugs in their admin panel and many users have complained that the interface is too cluttered. Their templates also aren’t the best. Free templates aren’t professional, and the custom templates cost an extra $99.  They also have multiple essential features that are paid for, even though other competitors’ platforms have them for free.

Key Features

200 Built-in Features

Real-Time Shipping

Mobile-Ready Themes

100+ Secure Payments

Comprehensive  Control Panel

Powerful Marketing Tools

Pricing

Volusion Pros and Cons

Pros

Intuitive Dashboard

Speed and Security

24/7 Customer Support

Customer Support & Onboarding

No Transaction Fees

A Full Set Of eCommerce Tools

Built-in Education & Professional Services

Just like BigCommerce, Volusion has a large selection of guides, eBooks, courses, and newsletters to help you run your online store. They even take it a step further with account specialists who take a direct interest in your store so you can set up your account right. Volusion offers support via phone, email, chat, ticket system and they are there 24/7. Their customer service isn’t as great as BigCommerce and Shopify, but they are still good. Speed is extremely important in e-commerce because no one has time to wait for a page to load, especially if they are shopping. Your store will be hosted on servers optimized for a speedy site. Volusion gives you control over your security and checkout.

Cons

SEO

Pricing

Bandwidth Limit

Design Options

SSL Certificates

Design Options

Blogging and CMS

3rd Party Apps & Extensions

Website Rendering & Revisions

Volusion isn’t as expensive as BigCommerce except for their business package. They use AngularJS for rendering which SEO hates. Google says that “Angular websites can be made discoverable”. They have SEO tools in their Dashboard, but the page doesn’t render any new meta information. It actually doesn’t render anything at all. They assign you as a Google Tag Manager without your consent or approval. There are also 3^rd party trackers that have access to EVERYTHING that you and your visitors do. Also, your personal account information will be embedded into the public source code of the website. Volusion has a very limited theme template store. There are literally  12 themes. They do have 3^rd party apps and extensions but there is only 14 of them. They also do not have any software to make content, so they also do not have CMS.

Key Features

Themes

Shipping

Checkout

Dashboard

Plugins & Extensions

Content Management

Inventory Management

Customer Management

 

Pricing

Wix E-commerce Pros and Cons

Pros

Beginner Friendly

Customer Logins

Multilingual Sites

Never Edit Blindly

No Transaction Fees

Eye-catching Designs

Extensive Apps Market

Detailed Support Database

Advanced Ecommerce Tools

 

Wix is the lowest costing platform of the five listed. They seem very generous compared to the others based on what they offer. Their enterprise option is $500 a month and is usually targeted at big businesses. The Wix editor shows you how your edits impact the design of your storefront and the interface is easy to use, it is drag-and drop. There are also mobile-responsive templates. Mobile responsive and mobile-friendly are two different things. It’s better to have a responsive mobile site. Wix aids you by focusing on creating and developing your brand. They also have a large variety of templates that will catch the eye of your customers. Their SEO options are good, you can customize page titles, meta-tags, and the URLs.

Cons

Large Ads on the Free Version

No stock Management Alerts

No Automatic Tax Calculator

Real-Time Shipping Only in the U.S.

Difficult to Switch to Another Template

One issue Wix has is that they do not have stock management alerts. They do not tell you when levels are running low. Confirmation emails can’t be entirely customized. Also, there real-time shipping is only available in the U.S.

Key Features

Builder

Calculations

Order Tracking

Notifications

Newsletter Tools

Tax and Shipping

Over 500 Templates

Secure Shopping Cart

Product Galleries

Automatic Email

Discount Code Creator

Optimized Mobile Store

7 Payment Processors

Drag and Drop Website

Special Thank You Message

Pricing

BigCommerce Pros and Cons

Everything has changed immensely in the last 30 years. The first built United States shopping mall was opened in 1992, but now most of them are closing down. It’s not only malls, department stores that stand alone cannot keep their stores because most people aren’t going to them. We can deduce that online shopping or e-commerce, and consumer laziness is the culprit of this. Almost all, if not all, companies sell their products online. Many have traded the old brick and mortar shop to the ease of selling their products from home. Some large companies have their own e-commerce shop and website that they have built, while smaller business who can’t afford to build their own use platforms. This month we will be looking at the pros and cons of five e-commerce platforms.

Pros

Security

Shipping

Easy Design

All-in-One Solution

15-Day Free Trial

Store Management

Built-in Marketing

No Transaction Fees

Intuitive Built-in Features

Helpful Customer Service

No Hassle Speed & Security

Creating Products is Simple

Multiple Sales Channels

BigCommerce has great conversion tools, delivery and shipping efficiency, complaint improvement and discount offers. You can create professional-looking stores with no experience at all. They have a plethora of how-tos, advice, and newsletters on how to run a successful eCommerce store. They have a great system for search rankings, fast loading times, traffic, and larger conversation rates. Their website speed is fast, and they have multiple layers of security to help with payment processing. Their customer service is known to be very helpful so do not hesitate to ask.

Cons

Price

Add-ons

Locked

Customers

Expensive Themes

No Lite Version

Extra Fees for Successful

Inventory Management

If you have steady profit growth, it’s likely that BigCommerce will charge you more. They only have 7 free themes, and the other premium ones cost about $170-$195. The lowest monthly payment is $29.95, and they go up. Then you have transaction fees, which on the silver plan is 2%. It might not seem big, but they add up. Then there are credit card fees and add on fees from 3^rd party apps. The theme editor is not drag-and-drop, so it is a little difficult when you first start, but you can get the hang of it. To run a store, you have to sell products and unfortunately, BigCommerce buries their inventory management options with their product options. BigCommerce locks their users in so if you wanted to try out a different type of software, you would have to close your store.

Key Features

SEO

Price Lists

Bulk Pricing

Site Speed

Digital Wallets

Marketplaces

Multi-Storefront

Merchandising

Customer Groups

Social Commerce

Mobile Optimization

Coupons & Discounts

Theme Customization

WordPress Integration

Checkout Customization

Preview Before Publishing

Pricing