There is an abundance of ways that help you increase your sales conversion, but the most important one is usually overlooked by store owners. User Experience design! Yes, you might have a beautifully designed store, with the best images on the market, but if your UX (User Experience) is not optimised, you could be missing out on a lot more money that you could be making.

This post is by no means a complete solution to your user experience woes, but it will give you a good understanding and a great starting point, to help your online store convert more by making and implementing a few changes.

Make sure information is available and uncluttered

How many times have you browsed an online store, tried to look up more information only to be disappointed with a one-liner? Whatever product you are selling, you need to make sure information is available describing what the product is, and how it will make your customer’s life different if they decide to purchase it.

Don’t shy away from creating product videos, they are the sole champion of sales with no contenders! Video communicates your message better, so including one in your product description will help push your customers a little bit closer to the checkout button.

In saying that, don’t just stuff your page with useless information, and don’t make it an 800-word long paragraph! Make sure the description and video are displayed in an uncluttered layout, easy for the viewer’s eyes to scan and get the information they are after.

Unmissable Add to Cart Buttons

Ok, this one definitely sounds very obvious, but sometime you might get distracted by making things very pretty and just create an add to cart button that is so good it just gets lost within the full layout of the page.

By unmissable add to cart buttons, we mean a button that is in a prominent position on the page and invites the user to click it, also try to implement a sticky Add To Cart Button, Sticky Add To Cart Buttons tend to get 8% more conversion.

You will also want to use colors that attract the user attention, but without distracting the user from reading the important information displayed on the page.

Simplified Checkout Process

The checkout page is the land of abandoned shopping carts, take a look at the chart below to see what are the main reasons users abandon their carts:

As per the chart above, there are a few things you can implement in your checkout page to ensure you decrease the number of cart abandonment on your website, mainly focusing on transparency showing the total due amount from the first page, instead of adding shipping & tax later on.

The other would be simplifying the checkout form, try to remove any unnecessary form fields, instead of having different billing and shipping addresses, display a checkout box asking if the delivery address or shipping address is different.

It is also important to offer guest checkout, do NOT force your customers to sign up in order to purchase, you need to entice them to sign up, offer them a discount or track their order through signup.

Reduce your customer’s risk with Trust Seals

While offering guarantees, refunds and free returns are great ways of building the trust bridge with your potential customer, it is also important to keep reminding them of why they should trust you even more.

It is important to display security seals as pictured in the image below, but you can also take it a step further and turn your offerings into badges and seals (i.e. 30 Day money back guarantee badge) these will encourage your users to click that sweet Add to Cart Button.

Persistent Shopping Carts

While the majority of eCommerce platforms come with this feature built in nowadays, it is still important to mention and make sure your website does support it.

How many times have you added something to cart online, only to be distracted by a phone call, a message or completely forgetting about it? probably a lot, a persistent shopping cart installs a cookie on your users’ computer, so the next time they visit your website, their cart updates with the items they have added the last time they visited your online store.

Having a persistent shopping cart, along with retargeting ads and abandoned cart emails, you will be sure to convert some of those forgotten items left in carts all over the internet.

Infinite Scrolling instead of normal pagination

Infinite Scrolling is like going down a rabbit hole if you are wondering what examples can we provide, Open up your phone and go to Facebook or Instagram, once you reach the end of the news feed the app will load more entries.

With browsing there are two schools of design, you can choose pagination, which is a list of numbers at the end of page displaying a set of entries, or infinite scrolling which is kind of similar displaying a set number of entries but when you reach the end of the page, it will automatically load the next set of entries.

The trick comes with desktop and mobile design, on a desktop it is usually recommended to use pagination as it allows users more flexibility with navigation, skipping pages if they choose to, while on mobile opting for infinite scroll will give your visitors a native mobile experience.

Mobile Specific Experience

With eCommerce it is no longer just acceptable to make your product page view collapse for mobile, with mobile shopping growing every single day, it is important to design a mobile-specific experience for your website to encourage users to purchase your products.

Leverage the power of gestures on mobile screens by allowing users to navigate the product page and explore your products through swipes. Whether it is allowing them to zoom on products through “pinching” or sliding product horizontally, through heat mapping you can figure out new ways of optimizing your user’s mobile experience.

Conclusion

While this list doesn’t offer specific changes or implementation, it is supposed to serve as giving you a base idea of what is possible and what sort of implementation to help you increase online store conversion with better user experience.

I would highly recommend diving deep and research all the points mentioned and evaluating which would help your business and which won’t. If you would like us to explore your online store potential with you, we are currently offering a Free web audit and strategy call.

The post 7 Ways To Increase Online Store Conversion Through UX Design appeared first on The Webery Studio.

Well, the change is actually a positive one, it will help people focus more on content rather than just posting repetitive content that gets likes, to show others that they are loved. That’s why we have put together a list of Instagram trends, that will help your business succeed and for people to connect more with your brand, regardless of the number of likes you are getting.

Photo and Video Collages (Carousel)

You are probably looking for an app that helps you create Photo and Video Collage within a few steps, but hold on! Before you do that, let me explain, we don’t mean the old school style collage, we mean a set of photos and videos.

Instagram now allows you to post multiple photos and videos as part on one post, which is a great way to create a narrative and a story to your post, your customers and followers want a visual experience, so make sure you provide them with a storyline that will make them stop and check your post out! below is a great use of Instagram carousels by Nike

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by nike (@nike) on Nov 6, 2017 at 7:00am PST

As you can see, they provided their followers with a narrative and a story before they plugged in their product, creating an emotional investment into their product.

Planned Sets mixed With Visual Art

While Instagram is great for sharing photos and videos from everyday life, some brands have taken their professional photography to Instagram and the results are amazing! So, what do we mean by planned sets, you have probably come across it more than once by now, by planned sets we mean a dedicated space and theme that is present in all your photos, while having your product displayed in candid photos is great, but what makes it greater is when you take it to the visual art route, there are different styles to model, one of the recent ones we have noticed is by Bevilles Australia

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Bevilles Jewellers (@bevilles) on Apr 13, 2019 at 10:50pm PDT

Using a planned set for their product to be displayed in, taking Instagram to the visual art side of things, encouraging your followers to engage with you and take inspiration. Creating an emotional and luxurious feel to the image and in turn the product you are advertising.

Cinemagraphs

This is one of my absolute favorite Instagram trends! So what are Cinemagraphs? Cinemagraphs are a hybrid between photos and videos, usually a video that is turned into a GIF by freezing one frame and masking the object you want to highlight. Ok, it might sound complicated and the reason is, it is! To create really captivating cinemagraphs you will need to be crafty with some sort of video editing software.

While there are some apps out there that will allow you to create your own cinemagraphs on the go such as Loopsie they do have their own limitations. There is also the new addition of Plotagraphs which is turning still images into cienmagraphs by animating a few elements.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Elle-May (@ellemaywatson) on Dec 21, 2016 at 6:16am PST

Story Polls and Questions

You should be making the most out of Instagram stories as it is too obvious to be part of Instagram trends in 2019, sharing behind the scenes and giving your followers an insight and a backstage look into your brand or business. But, stories are not enough on their own, now you can engage with your followers through Polls and Questions, which used correctly can save you a lot of marketing money!

You can use Polls to learn more about your customers, get their opinion and feedback, test products before launch… the possibilities are endless.

With the new Facebook F8 conference, they also announced the Donate feature, so if you are a social organisation or you are raising money for a charity, Instagram stories can be a great way to spread awareness.

Augmented Reality Instagram Story Filters

You have obsessed over it for at least 5 minutes at one point, trying different filters through Snapchat or even on Instagram. AR Filters will now be available for creators and businesses on Instagram.

While you might think to yourself, what’s the point it is a waste of time! You will be greatly mistaken, while AR Filters are just for fun, they can increase your brand awareness exponentially, and used correctly if you are in the cosmetics or fashion industries you can use them for your potential customers to try out your product without the need to physically have one. With AR your imagination will be the only limitation you have.

Insta websites

This one is pretty simple and straight forward. It is a given as a brand or business on Instagram you have made use of the link functionality within your bio, I am assuming it just leads to your website or a product page, which is very limiting if you want to promote a few pages or links at the same time.

Say hello to insta website, there is an abundance of providers such as Linktree, Linky.in, Hype Link, and a few others. The offering is pretty basic, they offer you a one-page website with a list of links on it directing to your desired pages. So you add the link to your Instagram bio and your followers can choose their destination.

Shoppable Posts

If you are an e-commerce based business you need to get excited right about now, so instagram made it possible to tag products to your posts if you have a specific number of followers and you have a facebook page with a shop attached to your account.

Now, they are taking it to the next level with Instagram shopping experience, your customers will be able to shop and purchase your products directly through Instagram, no need to direct them to an external checkout page, they see it, they like it, and they buy it!

Live Streams & IGTV

Live streams have made such an impact on the way we consume things online, with YouTube and Facebook offering Live Streams, Instagram is no different, think about from a business perspective as a behind the scenes look, and a way to engage with your followers face to face, answer their questions, and build rapport.

In addition, Instagram now offers its own separate IGTV app which is poised to be a game changer! While, it is competing directly with YouTube with one main difference, Mobile-based viewing experience (say hello to portrait videos), IGTV is still in its infancy stage, so make use of it by being an early adopter, use it as an educational platform for your customers and prospects, or even use it to give them an insight into how you do business. It is no secret that video is the future of marketing.

With IGTV you don’t need any expensive equipment or camera setup, all you need is you and your phone, so get started today, make sure it is part of your new digital marketing strategy.

Conclusion

OK, this by no means is a complete list of Instagram Trends in 2019, there is a huge number of styles and trends being developed at all times, so make sure you not only follow the trends but create your own, make sure you showcase your business’s or brand’s uniqueness.

And the biggest trend you should follow is just to create, create as much content as you can, always have a content calendar or plan in place, make sure you are always engaging with your followers, and showcasing what makes you different. Nowadays it is all about building relationships through social, so use each channel to its full potential.

Go out there and create!

The post 8 Instagram Trends for Business in 2019 appeared first on The Webery Studio.

Whilst social media pages are a key element in any business’ marketing strategy; offering direct customer interactions and relationship building aspects, It is a misconception that your business needs a page on every single social media platform out there (That is a lot of pages to maintain).

Choosing the social media platform that suits your business the most will save you a lot of marketing money and get you the highest ROI as you will be marketing directly to users that match your ideal customer’s persona.

So which platform should you use? there are a few questions you have to ask before determining which platforms to utilise in your social media strategy, creating a customer persona by answering the following questions should be your first step:

• Who is your ideal customer? Age, gender and location.
• What is their job or role?
• What are their pain points? and what are you offering to alleviate or eliminate them?
• Where do they go to find information?
• What are their major interests?

Answering those questions will help you create a rough sketch of what your ideal buyer would look like and in turn will make it easier to determine which platform will work best for your business. Now it’s time to dissect some of the most popular social media channels to help you determine which one(s) to pursue.

Social Media Channels

Facebook

The behemoth of all social media platforms with 2.23 Billion monthly active users, an average of 35 minutes spent per day making it the holy grail of social media marketing.

Demographics:

Source: SproutSocial

• 62% of Females and 74% of Males Use Facebook.
• 81% of 18-29 year olds use facebook.
• 75% Live in an urban area.
• 75% of adults who make more than $75,000 use Facebook.

Marketing Statistics:

• 78% of Consumers discovered a product through Facebook.
• 89%  of B2C businesses advertise on Facebook.
• 30% of Marketers think Facebook offers the highest Digital ROI.
• Only 31% of businesses use Facebook Messanger.
• The Average Facebook user clicks on 8 Ads per month.

While Facebook has to be the centerpiece of your social media marketing strategy, there are a few considerations you have to put in mind, Facebook users are extremely critical about ad targeting, most just ignore its existence and they do NOT like the sales pitches so your posts have to be educational rather than just sales offers.

Conclusion: Facebook is a great medium for Business to Consumer marketing, while Business to Business marketing might not be as effective.

Twitter

The land of the opinionated and the 140 character limit god recently increased to 280 characters, with 326 Million active users a month, with over 500 Million tweets per day, makes it the land of efficient marketing, it is a great way to communicate with your prospects with a high chance of going viral; after all 34% of marketers use Twitter to successfully generate leads.

Demographics:

• 24% of Male Internet Users, user Twitter.
• 21% of Female Internet Users, User Twitter.
• 37% users are between the age of 18–29 , 25% are between 30–49.
• 25% Live in urban areas, 23% live in suburban areas.
• 27% Make more than $75,000 annually.

Marketing Stats:

• 71% of users are reading the news there.
• People are 31% more likely to recall what they saw on Twitter.
• 75% of B2B Businesses use Twitter.
• Twitter ads are 11% more effective than TV ads during events.

Twitter is a very great marketing tool, but to stand out you need great content, repeated tweeting and responding to tweets, make sure you have a plan and schedule tweets using tools like HootSuite or Buffer.

Conclusion: In a recent survey 49% of respondents prefer connecting and interacting with brands on Twitter than any other social media channel, on Twitter your customers and prospects want to hear what you have to say.

Linkedin

Linkedin is the network of professionals, with 590 Million users over 200 countries and an average of 4 hours of surfing spent per week, Linkedin is the ideal social media channel for businesses and professionals to connect.

Important Statistics:

• 45% of Linkedin Users are in upper Management.
• 2 Million posts, articles, and videos are published on Linkedin every single day.
• Linkedin is the Leading Social Media Channel for B2B Marketers
• Posts with images get twice the comments and engagement.
• 91% of executive rate Linkedin as their number one destination for industry-relevant content.
• 50% of B2B web traffic originating from social media comes from Linkedin.

Conclusion: Linkedin is the perfect platform for your B2B strategy whether you are a new business after generating new leads or a freelancer, but it requires a pretty active and engaging presence.

Instagram

Demographics:

• 64% of Instagram Users are between the ages of 18-34
• 50.3% Of users are Females, while 49.7% are Male.
• 60% of People say they discovered products using Instagram.

Instagram has been enjoying steady growth and being embraced by marketers everywhere and for a good reason, it’s visual and users are emotionally invested in what you share on it which makes it a powerful marketing tool but one that needs careful planning,

Marketing Statistics:

• 80% of users follow at least one business.
• 75% of users take action.
• 70% of users are more likely to buy via mobile.

Here are a few tips to get the most out of Instagram:

• Create a great identity with your profile, include a great description and a link to your website. Utilise the space!
• Create a guideline for your content, consistency with your posts is key.
• Only post interesting visuals, make sure they are beautifully designed.
• Put together a posting schedule and use an automatic posting tool (try to keep it daily).
• Interact with other users, repost interesting photos that match your marketing persona and use the “@” to mention the original contributor.
• USE HASHTAGS, yes use custom and popular hashtags to attract followers don’t be shy.
• Make use of Instagram Stories and Live Features.
• Follow and comment, be active don’t just post photos, use the search feature and comment on hashtags related to your business but STAY AWAY from sales pitches.
• Reach out to influencers.
• Start a Contest or giveaway.

Pinterest

Before we go on telling you why Pinterest is good for a business’s marketing strategy, I want you to check out their success stories page. While Pinterest is quite a different social network, it is a place where everyone shares visual interests so it kind of is a Super Instagram, sharing the same principles, you need a lot of research and planning to succeed on Pinterest.

Demographics:

• 81% of Pinterest Users are Females.
• Millenials use Pinterest as much as Instagram.
• 50% of Pinterest Users are from the U.S.
• The Median age of a Pinterest user is 40.
• Half of Pinterest users make over $50,000 per year.

But why Pinterest?

It Converts and drives traffic

Pinterest offers the simplest cycle of purchase, See It, Like It, Buy it. Directly pinning products from your website with a simple description and a direct link to the purchase page reduces the sales cycle and increases the conversion rate.

Organic Marketing

Posting visually interesting pins will help you gain more inbound marketing through users sharing your pin and saving it to their own collections, exposing you to more prospects than any other social media channel.

It is addictive

Pinterest thrives on its addictive nature, the average time spent on Pinterest is 14.2 minutes per visit!

Great discovery platform

Being able to easily find out what your prospects and current clients are interested in for the possibility of new products and new revenue streams.

Conclusion

While we can discuss more Social Media Networks like Snapchat, Tumblr, TikTok .. etc we will just focus on the ones we listed, again as we mentioned you don’t have to create an account on all of the aforementioned social media platforms, try focus on one or two to start with and find the one that best connects YOU with your ideal audience, after all; you can have millions of followers but none of them really wants your product, focus on the channel that offers the most returns. SHARE. ANALYSE. REPEAT.

The post Social Media Guide for Businesses 2019 appeared first on The Webery Studio.

Businesses now understand that having a website is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Without a website you cripple your business growth and scale potential, it’s like opening up a new shop and refusing to install a door for clients to come in through.

Whether you are an online store or selling offline services and products, we have created a list of 9 website features that every business needs to implement, especially if they run a product based or e-commerce website to help you drive more sales online. Some of them might seem like common sense but the absence of any of them can be costing you potential revenue.

Live Chat and Chat Bots

It may seem like the new kid on the block when it comes to web technologies, but the truth is, they have been around for quite a while, it is only recently they gained the attention of the masses, and a lot of the major companies started implementing them.

Live Chat, offer your customers a way to engage with your business, opening a new line of communication, and in turn building trust. Their functionality is not only limited to offering assistance and giving generic answers based on pre-determined keyphrases. They can get quite intricate with the assistance of machine learning and artificial intelligence, helping your website visitors find what they are looking for and upselling, it’s like hiring a sales person that is working for you 24/7.

We have written a full blog post about Live Chat and its benefits we would highly recommend reading it to learn more.

Frequently Bought Together

A clear way to upsell and cross-sell your products and service, pioneered by Amazon the Frequently Bought Together feature working as a recommendation engine.

The purpose of Frequently Bought Together is to increase the average cart value or order value on your website, by understanding the user’s purchasing habits and recommending complementary products and services based on analysing previous purchase patterns. It might sound complicated and it is, it takes a lot of data and behavior analysis to have an effective functionality.

Whether you are using a custom built platform or utilising any of the widely used eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Even with WordPress there is an abundance of plugins that can help you implement that feature easily into your website.

Wishlist & Email Marketing

You have probably seen the Wishlist feature on major e-commerce websites, while it might not seem as helpful and sounds like it won’t directly impact sales, that’s where you would be wrong.

Building and integrating a Wishlist within your website, will allow you to get an insight inside the mind of your customer, understanding what they are into and what they want to purchase, in combination with email marketing, you can nurture them and educate them about the products they have added to their wishlist, and will also give you the power to directly market and sell to people who have expressed interest in such products.

It also operates as a bookmarking option, while 80% of online shoppers use a mobile phone or a tablet to browse your products and offerings, only 1 in 5 actually check out using their mobile device, the remainder opts to check out on a desktop computer, so offering a wishlist would allow your prospects and customers to bookmark products they are interested in so they can purchase it later.

Exit Intent Offers

Sometimes we go online and browse a store to see what’s around, maybe with no direct buying intent, we find something that is interesting to buy but then the price or the time might not be perfect, so we decide to leave. Your customers do that a lot, imagine if you can give them one last option to buy before they leave!

Say hello to exit intent offers, exit intent tracks the user movements on the website and when the user is about to exit the website it displays a popup with an irresistible offer, whether it is a discount or a lead magnet to collect their emails. Exit Intent popups have shown great results, converting 35% of potentially lost visitors, it is not a small number, helping you drive more sales online.

Scarcity and Urgency

FOMO or Fear of Missing out is what drives a lot of people to take the plunge and make the purchase or commit to something online. It relies on such a basic human instinct.

Utilising scarcity and urgency on your website will encourage your prospects and visitors to make the purchase, you can display scarcity by showing how many items or spots are left, enticing the fear of not being able to obtain the item if they don’t make the purchase right now.

While urgency can be pushed by displaying a count down timer for a promotion, once the timer hits zero it will be gone! An important thing to keep in mind is, while those features seem easy to manipulate it is important to create true urgency and scarcity, it is a double-edged sword, if your visitors find that it is always “urgent” and “scarce” they will most likely opt not to make the purchase as they will feel as if they are being pushed into the purchase, so use it carefully.

Social Proofing & Reviews

No one wants to be the first one to take the leap of faith with a new product or a new service, everyone wants some sort of guarantee and proof that others are willing to purchase it as well.

That’s the magic of Social Proofing, it can be displayed on a website in many different forms, you can use client testimonials, review, and videos, but recently there is a new addition that really encourages visitors to cross over the line. There are so many ways to do so, from displaying a purchase tracker “Someone in X Just Bough Item Y” you have probably seen it on many websites now, or displaying how many people are viewing the item at the moment of visiting the page, to displaying how many purchases were made within the last 24 hours, something that eBay currently displays on its listings.

Guarantees and Returns

It goes without saying that you need to show your visitors that there are guarantees to the products and services you are offering for legal reasons but also no one wants to make a purchase only to be left with a broken item and no one to talk to.

Always display what sort of guarantees you can provide on every single product or service page, you need to make sure your visitors are comfortable clicking the add to cart button, building trust in every step of the way, assuring them that even if something goes wrong there is a procedure in place to assist them with your return policy.

Abandoned Cart Offers

A missed opportunity! So many online stores don’t follow up with abandoned carts, in fact, the average eCommerce store loses over 75% of their sales to cart abandonment. You might have many visitors coming to your website or online store, adding a product to cart then leaving the website for one reason or another. It is your responsibility to drive more sales by reminding them of what they have left in the cart.

It will also allow you to be able to test and figure out what offers and changes you need to implement in order to increase your conversion rate in the long run, whether it is shipping cost that is causing the abandonment or simply your checkout process is not streamlined enough.

You can implement many systems and plugins that allow you to track your abandoned carts and engage with your visitors by offering limited time offers in order for them to convert.

Checkout Upsell

Referred to as the one-click upsell, this method displays a highly relevant item related to the product placed in cart just before the process payment button, for example if you are selling coffee beans online, your one-click upsell can be a travel mug, so it is something that is highly relatable and they will definitely be needing it.

Some online retailers are reporting that they are increasing their sales by 10% just by offering a one-click upsell post-purchase.

Conclusion

While some of the features mentioned in this post, might sound like common sense, it is important to keep remembering that sometimes the simple things are what converts the most, whether it is a reminder email or an exit intent pop up, as a business owner your goal is to optimise your conversion rate and drive more sales online.

If you have any more features or ideas please share them in the comments section below, we would love to hear what tricks you have utilised yourself to increase your online conversion rate.

The post 9 Must Have Website Features To Drive More Sales Online appeared first on The Webery Studio.

Any company of any size can now succeed through digital with the right digital marketing strategy in place, everywhere you look online there is some sort of an ad or marketing happening, and the amazing thing is, marketing is no longer about pushing a sales message, but it is about connecting, and growing communities and tribes around your products or services.

Brands now understand the power of affinity, something that was only exclusive to either the very large corporations with a cult-like following or the small local business owner.

But this is not a blog post to talk about the power of digital marketing nor the case studies and success stories, we will do that in another blog post, this post is about executing a successful digital marketing campaign; you have the right product, the right target market in mind, and the right message crafted, now it is about planning your marketing campaign the right way!

So, below are the three stages that we have identified as must-haves in order for your digital marketing campaign to succeed;

Stage One: Awareness

The stages assume that you are embarking on a new campaign or you are marketing a new product, you might be at a later stage within the marketing cycle, but for any digital marketing campaign to be on the road to success, you have to start with awareness.

Unfortunately, many brands and business treat digital marketing as a classified ad in an old school newspaper, only trying to sell to complete strangers! You have probably heard that metaphor before but let me re-tell it; Business is like a relationship, the customer is the person you are interested in asking out, and the way most brands and businesses do marketing, they go out there and ask for the sell straight away, like asking the person you’re interested in to get married on the first date.

You guessed it right, they will most likely run for their life! same applies to consumers, selling without building interest or rapport will just push them away.  So to conduct a successful marketing campaign you need to show your prospects that you exist first, that should be your only goal at the first stage.

I’ve seen them somewhere before

That’s the goal, you want your prospects to say “oh I have seen them somewhere before”, don’t try to sell to them from day one. It will help your prospects build trust with your brand and business before they commit to purchasing.

You need to position yourself as a person and not just another company with a product to sell, in the awareness stage you want to be relatable, showcasing what your brand is about, educating your prospects on who you are and what you stand for.

Share your message with them, get them to be invested emotionally in your brand, give them something to rally behind and relate to.

Stage Two: Attraction & Nurture

Now it is time to start educating your prospects, they now know what you are all about, they understand your brand message and can relate to the brand’s personality.

The second stage of digital marketing is Attraction and Nurture, which go hand in hand, you need to display your products and services in a way that would be attractive to your prospects, again with minimal selling, you want to create attraction to features of your products and services, and showcasing what life would be like with your products or services implemented.

You want to answer questions your prospects might have, entice and educate them on the benefits of dealing with your brand or business. The goal is not to sell at this stage, it is to build rapport, and shine a light on your products and services.

Typically this stage includes not only ads but a content marketing strategy in place, it is about sharing information and giving to the community, if you would like to learn more about the first two stages, Gary Vaynerchuck really hammered the point in his book Jab Jab Jab, Right Hook Would highly recommend reading it, it should be part of your digital marketing book arsenal.

Stage Three: Action

Selling O’clock! After you have helped your prospects become aware of your brand, and helped them see why you are different and why your products are better than all the others out there, it is time to go for the ask.

But, don’t be too pushy, you simply want to work on the engagement you have seen from your previous two stages, you want to show that your products and services are the solutions to the problems they have.

Another tip to keep in mind when selling online is not to sell with every single post, try and pace your ask, try to align your selling and nurturing efforts. Every post where there is an ask/sell make sure your content and copy is engaging and informative, weave in the sale rather than make it the main feature of the post.

It is a Circle!

You’re not done yet! The stages are not linear in any way, they are an ongoing effort, you need to always run different campaigns targeting different customers at a different stage of the sales cycle.

You need to be consistently showing your business, educating prospects and selling to interested customers, a successful marketing strategy would encompass efforts across different channels that target customers at different stages, and with the right analytics and tracking in place, you can truly personalise your marketing for an optimised conversion.

Conclusion

Every digital marketing effort you take or embark on should be tailored to a specific demographic and target audience, a final note would be, make sure your tone of voice is appropriate for your target audience and your brand persona, make sure your message sticks.

Go out there and test, there is no one-solution fits all when it comes to digital marketing, you need to test and keep on testing till you find the right combination of messages, graphics and target audience that will relate to you and your brand. Make sure you first craft your strategy and spend some time on it before you get started, it will save you a lot of time and money down the road.

The post The Stages of a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign appeared first on The Webery Studio.

The year 2019 is no different, but it also has a few fundamental changes in the way we use the internet and a few trends that can help your business grow.

In this post, I won’t just talk about design trends, think of it as a guide on what 2019 is bringing and what to keep in mind when you are doing your next website feature add on session.

Mobile First Google Indexing

Google introduced Mobile-First Indexing back in 2018, with the transition taking place, slowly but surely all websites will be migrated.

It might not mean much, but it is actually one of the biggest changes that will affect websites online, well website rankings, so it is good to be in the know, and to start off let’s dive in and explain what it is;

So what does Mobile First Indexing mean?

Mobile-First indexing means that Google will be shifting the way it ranks websites, up to the time of writing this article, Google has ranked websites based on the Desktop version of the website, it didn’t penalise you for your website not being super-responsive, and for a while, it was ranking results on mobile differently than they did on a desktop.

That doesn’t you won’t rank at all, it just means Google crawlers will be taking a ‘mobile-first’ approach to determining the relevancy of your website, it does mean though, that your website is more likely to get hit if it doesn’t offer a mobile-friendly experience.

What should you do about it?

You need to make sure your website is mobile-optimised! You might think to yourself “That’s ok, our website is responsive, it won’t be a problem!”, I am going to have to get a bit technical to explain this point; Yes, your website might be responsive but what Google is looking for is mobile-optimised and not just mobile-friendly.

Mobile-friendly or responsive website only means that the website is viewable on mobile devices, the concept behind it is taking the same website as the desktop website and make collapse the page elements to stack on top of each other to fit within a small screen, this is the first step to mobile optimisation.

Mobile-optimised, on the other hand, is taking mobile friendliness to a whole other level, it is focused on providing a mobile-focused user experience Which can mean a completely different looking landing page, with buttons replacing texts or links to make it easier for the website visitor to navigate through.

You can take the first step by testing your website through Google’s own mobile-friendly test tool, it will give you a good indication of how bad or how good the changes will need to be.

Illustration Design

You have come across illustrations integrated into web design more than once now that we are nearly in the middle of 2019, our own website features some illustrations, and 2019 seems to be the year of continuous growth for web illustrations.

So why use illustrations?

Illustrations help you deliver your message in an engaging and creative way while having hero images on your website can deliver a basic understanding of what you are about, illustrations help you showcase what you do in a more interesting way, a more modern way.

It is also key not to go overboard with the number of illustrations on the website, use them as a tool to deliver your message in the right way, think of it as your brand’s tone of voice, is it quirky? is it professional? or is it young? Illustrations can help you with defining your tone through a number of different styles.

Minimalism

It has been around for yours, and it is a pillar in the design world! Minimalism is delivering the content of your website in a clear and minimalistic way of embracing the white-space.

The benefit of minimalistic web design aside from the rich look is using the white space to direct your users’ eyes on the content that you would like to deliver, used correctly minimalistic design can be a great tool to increase your website’s conversion rate.

Bold Typeface

Say it and say it loud, another contender to the trends list is Blod Typeface, while text has always been and will always be part of the design process, having bold text on your page started with the advent of Hero Headers it has recently grown in popularity as the centerpiece of landing pages.

In design Bold Typeface is utilised to grab attention, and deliver your main message loud and clear. We have also seen some really interesting utilisation of bold text.

Chatbots & Machine Learning

Now we are onto the exciting stuff, to kick off the list of 2019 web trends of technologies we will start with the two movers and shakers of the industry; Chatbots and Machine Learning.

What are Chatbots? and What do they do?

Chatbots are a set of automated responses and language identifiers implemented within your live chat service, allowing users to navigate, make purchases, or find information just by asking it. Think of it as a robot that’s handling a part of your customer service.

If you want to learn more about Live Chat, and how it can help your business, we have published a post earlier in the week discussing it in depth, but back to the chatbots for now.

So, yeah it is cool, and sounds fancy but why are they a trend now? Well, the answer really lies in users behavior online, using chatbots can help your users find what they want without the need to have a 24/7 customer services team, you just need to tell it when someone asks for X do Y and it is ready to go.

And to clear the air, no it does not chat with your users like it is a human, it only executes a set of functions or tasks based on what they users enters or clicks.

Ok, so what is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is kind of what you would call Artificial Intelligence, although I am not a fan of calling it that, because artificial intelligence is quite different from machine learning and I will probably go on a rant about it in a different blog post, but for the sake of this post lets say they’re the same thing.

Machine Learning is collating data and figuring out patterns, then executing functions based on the patterns found. That might sound a little complicated, and in all truth it is, but to simplify it, think about this scenario related to chatbots; The user will browse your website and click on a product, then they leave the page and now they want to ask questions, so your chatbot jumps in, but now it automatically knows what product they are talking about, and based on their behavior it figures out which stage of the buying cycle they are, so it offers them a coupon code at the end to make them complete the purchase.

Now the sky is the limit, think about the possibilities and how you can customise your buyer’s experience, and increase your conversion rate by implementing those technologies.

Progressive Web Applications

PWA or Progressive Web Applications have been in the works for quite a while, and they have been creating such an excitement in the web development world.

A simple explanation of what they are is, They are offline websites that can be installed on your phone’s home screen and integrate services such as push notifications, and hardware features. Pretty much they are here to get rid of installable mobile apps.

Google Defines them as follows:

Progressive Web Apps are user experiences that have the reach of the web, and are:

Reliable — Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions.

Fast — Respond quickly to user interactions with silky smooth animations and no janky scrolling.

Engaging — Feel like a natural app on the device, with an immersive user experience.

PWAs will help you offer your users a unique experience, without all the downsides of a regular website, such as load speeds, engagement, and interaction.

Micro Interactions

They are usually unnoticeable, but they play a big role in the way you use apps and websites that implement them. A micro-interaction can be the beep you hear when you refresh Twitter or the color change when you hover over a button. They have one goal; enhance the user experience.

Do you really need them

The short answer is yes, of course, you do! Micro-interactions are not just fancy additions to your design when done right, they provide immediate feedback based on your users’ behavior, encouraging them to complete actions and intuitively understand the function of every button and link on your page.

They also provide feedback that an action has been taken and it is being processed, rather than displaying a blank screen, or a static screen confusing the user and prompting them to click the submit button 200 times.

Voice Search

Now the Google Home and Amazon Alexa are nearly in every home, there is one possibility that a lot of businesses are not accounting for; Voice Search.

You can now tell your voice assistant to make a search for something online, and it will return results, the same way Google does, the only difference is, it reads websites that are voice ready, not being voice ready will exclude yours from the race.

As of January 2018, there were an estimated one billion voice searches per month being conducted, and it is projected that 50% of all searches online by the year 2020.

So to take advantage of the rise of voice search, you will need to analyse your website and make sure that the content is written in a way that can be consumed with no screen, consumed over sound.

Conclusion

This year will be a very interesting one, with the introduction of new technologies and new exciting designs, but it also offers a very interesting new dynamic for businesses online.

It will be the year when businesses will have to make changes to be able to compete and sustain advantage online, with the new technologies that are being implemented it will be very interesting to see the interpretations and implementation of the technologies mentioned through the post.

If you would like assistance with exploring the new features and trends and how they can help your business, we are offering a free strategy call, with no fees, no obligations. We are recognized as a top Website Design Company on DesignRush.

So what are you excited about, what’s the one thing you are going to implement and pioneer within your industry? Share it in the comments below!

The post 8 Web Design Trends and Technologies in 2019 appeared first on The Webery Studio.

SEO and SEM, have become a vital part of any digital marketing strategy efforts, they target the one thing we use on a daily basis; Online Search (specifically Google Search).

In this post I wanted to give you an intro guide that can shed some light on what the two mediums are, and what they mean, and how they can help your business and why your digital marketing strategy should have a focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

But before I get started, let’s get one thing out of the way, this is not a one or the other comparison, SEO and SEM work hand in hand.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of optimising and changing websites in order to affect the ranking and visibility of websites in search engine results pages.

SEO is a non-paid form of optimisation (You results show organically, not a paid ad), to increase the quality and quantity of the traffic the website receives through non-paid search engine results.

The basic principle of Search Engine Optimisation without getting too technical is understanding what and how your prospects use search engines, what words they are using to find what they want, and modifying your web pages to assist Search Engine Crawlers in presenting your pages as a relevant result to what your prospects are searching for.

For example; When you search for the term “Thai Restaurant in Melbourne” on Google, the Crawlers will search Google’s archives of indexed pages, and present all pages that meet the searched term, with the top ones being the most relevant, and Google bases relevancy on over 200 factors that we can get into in a different post, SEO is the process of telling and convincing Google that page X is relevant to the searched term.

It is also worth mentioning there are two types of SEO, both usually are done on an ongoing basis, but to give you a basic understanding of them;

On-page SEO – Is optimizing individual pages on a website, rectifying any technical issues, and adjusting page content to reflect the target keyword.

Off-page SEO – This technique is used to build a website’s reputation and image by connecting it to other websites, preferably of higher status, in the search engine results. They involve link building, managing local listings, and directory profiling. Off-page SEO validates the brand as trustworthy and reliable so as to increase its search ranking.

What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is the practice of using the paid search engine features to market a business through appearing on their SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

With SEM, you bid on keywords that your potential customers might enter when searching for similar services or products to your offering. It allows your website pages to appear within the Search Results page, alongside organic results for those queries.

SEM is also referred to as Paid Search Ads, Paid Search Advertising, PPC (Pay-Per-Click), CPC (Cost-Per-Click), and CPM (Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions), all those terms mean the same thing, well not technically but they refer to the same thing.

In saying that, SEM is becoming increasingly pricey due to its bidding nature, the more companies are bidding for the same keyword, the more the cost per click rises, so it is important to identify keywords that only target customers that are in the buying process would use, to drive down your cost per acquisition.

Which Strategy is Better?

Now pick your side! A lot of marketers and experts will fight for one or the other, mentioning a lot of pros and cons to each side of the equation, but I’d like to advocate for both and mention some pros and cons.

SEO

The internet is becoming full of fluff information every day, every time you search something you get 1mil+ results, which presents a great opportunity for great content, and businesses with great insight to share, SEO will help you rank organically, and yes, some of the traffic you will receive from organic search will not be converted into sales, but it helps you and your business be positioned as experts in the field.

Pros

Visibility — Allows your brand or business website to harness the power of search engines, by displaying your website pages according to your prospective client’s search queries. Gaining trust and positioning as an expert in the field.

Free Traffic — Once your website is ranking for top keywords, you will see a spike in your website traffic for free, organic search results especially the top 10 results, in one study it was shown that the #1 spot receives 33% of the traffic.

An advantage over Competitors — having your website in the top rankings in Google, give you a strategic advantage against your competitors, helping you win and retain a larger percentage of the market share.

Cons

It takes time — SEO takes a long time, sometimes months to start ranking for specific keywords (Don’t trust companies that say will get you ranked within a month!), it will require consistency and a lot of effort.

Website Redesign — If you have an existing website and you decide to implement SEO as part of your marketing strategy, you might get a surprise in the form of a Request for a Website Re-Design! SEO relies heavily on website structure and content, so you might need to cover some upfront cost.

Ongoing Cost — It is not cheap, and it is a long term commitment, SEO is an ongoing endeavor, it requires consistent changes and updates to your web pages, to make sure your pages are always relevant and offer value to your clients.

No Guarantees — No company can offer guarantees when it comes to SEO, your website is under the mercy of the Search Engine Algorithm, any changes can affect your ranking.

SEM

Don’t take your pick yet, while SEO might look and sound like a daunting task, Search Engine Marketing comes with its own set of pros and cons, there is no one solution that fits all when it comes to digital marketing, SEM shines when it comes to immediate results and visibility, below are some pros and cons;

Pros

Laser-Focused Targeting — With SEM you get to choose what specific keywords or phrases you want to show your ad for, you can identify keywords or phrases that only customers with a buying intent would use, and remove any keywords that would bring no return.

Stability — You won’t be under the Algorithm’s mercy, your ad will show for the targeted keyword no matter what changes happen to how the search engine algorithm works.

A/B Testing — The ability to A/B test different pages for different keywords, without the need to worry about rebuilding page authority or ranking, find the perfect combination of keywords and sales letters to drive your conversion up.

No Obligations — You don’t need to make long term efforts, you can always pause your marketing campaign whenever you feel like it, unlike SEO where you need to invest a lot of time and effort to start seeing results.

Cons

High Cost — While the benefits are great, they come at a steep cost, with SEM you pay per click, which can be an astronomical number depending on the competition for the chosen keyword.

No Lasting Effects — Your ads won’t stick around! Once you stop your campaigns your ads will disappear no matter how long you have been running them for.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these two concepts are now clear. SEO and SEM are both unique methodologies for search marketing and both can have a great impact on the success of your digital marketing strategy. But even though they fall under the same category of digital and search marketing, they have their fair share of similarities and differences.

Both these techniques can and do help brands optimize their visibility on search result pages and both aim to display your business web pages when specific keywords related to the business’ industry, business or other offerings are used. Both SEO and SEM are designed in a way so as to increase traffic to a website and its business.

To make the most out of both techniques you need to have a great understanding of your customers’ online buying and decision making behaviours, if you would like to learn more and get started with your digital marketing strategy, we are currently offering a FREE strategy call to help you put together the basic blocks of your digital efforts.

The post The Difference Between SEO and SEM — Intro Guide appeared first on The Webery Studio.

We have also just posted our report on the top 10 Social Media trend you need to know in 2019, to help you craft a better social media strategy.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

With so many different platforms available, and more popping up all the time that could end up being the next big thing, it’s often tempting to make a social media profile on them all with the hope of attracting as many different customers as possible, and the dreams of being the business that pioneered and paved the way. However, this method never works. Unless you have a department full of people at your disposal, you’ll struggle to maintain any of those platforms, let alone them all.

You also need to consider where your customers spend their time online. Facebook has become increasingly difficult to reach your followers organically, but if you serve consumers over 35, you’ll likely still find it is the best platform for you. If you serve university students, you may struggle to get traction on Facebook, but Instagram would work. Find out where your customers spend their time scrolling and be there.

You can find a break down of the top social media platforms, and what sort of demographics you can target on them in our 2 part Social Media for Business Posts Part one and Part Two.

Set Quarterly Goals

If you ask any business doing well with their social media marketing, they’ll all tell you they set goals and create a plan before they post. While posting about something current in the news or something you find inspiring in the moment is perfectly fine (and in many cases, encouraged), you should plan what kind of content and posts you are going to make, on what frequency, with what purpose, and you need to make sure that every single post ties back to your business statement and vision.

Some of the questions you will need to ask when setting your goals are; What do you want to grow? Is it the number of followers you have, general awareness, or engagement? Of course, we all want everything to grow all the time, but realistically, you should try to achieve one specific goal each quarter, at least until your platform is more established.

Test, Test, Test

The number one mistake small businesses make, besides choosing the wrong platform or posting once in a blue moon, is that they post regularly and when they don’t see any engagement, they decide that social media platform just doesn’t work for them. Next time, instead of deciding that it just doesn’t work for your business, double check that your customers are on there, and then experiment with different kinds of posts, there are a number of tools available that will help you measure engagement and get a better understanding of your followers.

Try posts with long blog-style descriptions — Micro Blogs, and others that are just a sentence. Experiment with different images, topics, and video. When something gets more engagement, try doing that same thing again soon. And if you find something that works, continue to experiment from time to time so you continue to evolve.

Use a Social Media Manager or Scheduler

There are plenty of social media scheduling tools you can use to schedule your posts to automatically post for months in advance. If you want to manage your social media yourself, this will be your secret weapon, as they make it easy to take a morning or a day at the beginning of the month to plan and prepare posts for a set amount of time. This can also help you be consistent with your posts over time so you can test their effectiveness before you try something different.

Of course, if you simply don’t have the time to dedicate to social media, but know you need to be on there, you should consider hiring a social media marketing agency who have the expertise to take the reins so you can do what you do best: serving your customers.

Conclusion

Most importantly, do not be harsh on yourself, business is a really rewarding but a tough endeavor, and you need to understand that in order to succeed you need to be trying different avenues of marketing and advertising.

Set yourself realistic goals, and seek help when needed, if you have enough time to perfect your strategy and work on it on an ongoing basis that would be great; alternatively if you like some advice, feel free to contact us for our free strategy call, we will help you identify what steps you can take to conquer social media for good.

The post 4 Expert Social Media Tips to Help Your Small Business Gain Traction appeared first on The Webery Studio.

By the end of this post, you will have a good idea on the benefits of adding Live Chat functionality to your website, while also giving you a few ideas on how to go about implementing them.

What is live chat

Think of it as a texting portal built on your website. Live chat is usually a third-party plugin integrated into your existing website, offering your potential and existing customers a new and open channel of communication.

You have probably come across it on our website, or other websites on the internet, it is a little round double at the corner of the screen with a prompt to start a conversation with a team member or a sales assistant.

It allows customers to chat with one of your staff members, right on your website without the need to leave it.

Why You Should Add it To Your Website

While there are a lot of web trends and features focused around user experience, one of the main pain points for customers that are hardly addressed is communication. Yes, your customer wants to learn about your products and services, and of course, they want to learn about why they should trust you and give you their money, but no matter what we do, we always miss some information, and there is always a question on your customers’ mind that needs answering.

Aside from having your contact details displayed in a prominent location on your web page, the chat feature will allow customers to engage in conversation with your brand or business from any page, with the least amount of fraction.

Offering a chat feature on your website will help you present your business as a responsive one, and will also help you generate more sales by simply answering any questions and eradicate any hurdles that might be stopping your prospect from making the leap, below are some metrics to take the point home.

Helps Your Business Grow Online

Now that you are all up to date with what live chat is and why you should implement it, purely from a user experience point of view, here are some statistics on what makes it a must-have for every product or service based website;

• 73% of customers, find live chat to be the most satisfying method of communicating with a business.
• 30% of customers expect live customer support on your website.
• It is expected to grow by as much as 80% within the next 12-18 months.
• 77% of customers, won’t make a purchase if the live chat feature wasn’t available on the website.
• 1 in 5 customers is willing to stop using a product as a result of slow response times.

The numbers above might be disturbing and will get you thinking on what potential business loss you had experiences just because your online presence was lacking such a vital feature, companies that have implemented the live chat feature, have found great success; Movember Foundation obtained a 97% customer satisfaction rating, while Intuit increase their sales by 211% 

Conclusion

You are now fully aware of the potential that Live Chat can offer your business, whatever your offering is, whether it is a product or service based. A live chat can help you increase your overall online conversion.

There are a wide range of online SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platforms that will allow you to integrate the feature without developing a custom solution, and only requires basic implementation, so if you are a tech-savvy business owner you can probably integrate it yourself, alternatively you can reach out to your trusted developer to handle it for you.

Little Plug; We can assist you with the implementation of your new Live Chat feature, feel free to get in touch with us, and we will help you figure out what is the best solution for your business and explore any advanced features that might help your business in increasing your online sales conversion.

The post What is Live Chat, and 3 Reasons Your Website Needs It appeared first on The Webery Studio.

So, we thought we should share with you the latest social media trends you need to know in 2019, to win the social media game!

The social media landscape is ever-changing, every day there is a new trend, a new platform or a new feature, trying to keep up with it all can be a very daunting task, not only can it be confusing and time consuming, it can do more harm than good implementing the wrong strategy in place, so here are the 10 trends you need to keep in mind and make sure are part of your new social media strategy.

Stories Are Dominating (Facebook and Instagrams Stories)

By now you have probably seen that every social media platform is introducing their own version of stories, pioneered by Snapchat, then ‘copied‘ by Instagram and Facebook, even YouTube now has their own stories.

Instagram stories are now used by 500 million users every single day, and one third are from businesses! So you can see the potential, Instagram stories are discoverable which makes them a great tool to attract potential customers and prospect and increase your brand awareness.

Especially, with the changes to Instagram algorithm and feed, stories will notify your follower that you are still active, with the prominent purple circle, working as a prompt to encourage them to open it and check what is going on. We have a new post about Instagram stories and how to craft engaging stories coming out soon, so keep an eye out for it.

Embrace Ads, Organic Reach is Dwindling

It is no secret nowadays that organic reach is on its way out, you have probably noticed engagement is not what it used to be, and when checking the insights of your posts, even if you have a decent number of followers, your posts aren’t reaching all of them. It is all by design, Social Media Networks are marketing tools, and they are businesses at the end of the day, so they need to make money, we live in a world where the business with the most money wins the largest amount of attention.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still see some traction with organic reach if your content is super relevant, Facebook and Instagram algorithms have one job; it is to keep users on the platform for as long as possible. So, if your posts get lots of engagement and shares, the algorithm will favor it, and show it to as many people as possible, again the goal is to get the user to keep on scrolling, but let’s be realistic, you can craft a viral post every single time, that’s were social media ads will give you the boost needed.

And they are very underpriced, Gary Vee keeps on preaching it, and he is correct, for the amount you pay for social media ads, compared to traditional forms of advertising it is very underpriced, so make sure to make the most use out of it.

High-quality content, too many brands are competing for attention

Every single social media newsfeed is a bottomless pit, you can spend hours upon hours scrolling through it. High-Quality and attention-grabbing content is the only way to stop a potential customer from scrolling past your content, you need to craft every single piece of content with one goal in mind, disrupt their scrolling pattern.

Create eye-catching content, that encourages your users to engage, and encourages a conversation.

Human Connection

It is easy to get lost in the social media world, and speak from a perspective of a brand when presenting your business, and don’t feel bad if you do, so many other businesses do too!

But, social media networks were created to connect people, not just to amplify a brand’s message. Make sure you show your personality through your social media posts, engage with your followers in conversation, reply to comments and send private messages, build a relationship with your followers with every single post.

It is also important that you show humans in your posts, showcase your people and tribe, we are attracted to faces and other humans, show that your brand and business are relevant by showing people in your posts.

Influencers Growth

A lot of people and brands look at influencers are a fad that will be gone in no time, but let’s face reality, influencer marketing is booming and social media influencers is a thing that is here to stay.

Influencer marketing is on the rise, and it can help your business and brand increase its awareness and appeal to a larger audience.

Influencer Marketing leverages a few psychological tendencies, helping your business build immediate rapport with your potential customers, while also providing an element of social proof.

Video Content & Live Video

Video content has been on the rise for quite a while not, and it is not slowing down, according to some experts 80% of all content consumed online will be in the form of videos. And it holds especially true for live videos.

With the introduction of Live Video on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, streaming to your audience is now a click away. Live videos attract followers and audience due to its authentic nature, and how unscripted it is. Helping build rapport with your audience, and building trust.

Messenger and Chatbots

Chatbots have been around for a while, but with Facebook’s messenger chatbot introduction, it has brought them under the spotlight. Chatbots will negate the need for business-specific apps, and the high cost associated with them, you can service your customers right inside the messenger app.

Chatbots also help automate and decrease the amount of support or inquiry emails your business receives, if utilized right, chatbots can help your business grow and scale.

Educate, Don’t Sell

Gone are the days where you can just post a sales offer, or a sales letter on your social media channel. Not that you can’t do it now, you definitely can, but they will be ignored.

One of the big mistakes that the majority of business and brands are guilty off on social media, is constant selling! You should use your social media channels as an educational portal, educate your customers and clients on the benefits and potential of your products and services, show them how life could be with just pictures. No one wants to be sold to.

While some small business will get nervous when it comes to educating their clients on how to do things they charge money for, the truth is, it can be the most beneficial move you will ever take. Educating your customers will help you filter out difficult clients, the DIY crowd, and it will position you as a subject matter expert.

User-Generated Content

Brands have started embracing content created by their customers, with the advent of the mobile phone with cameras better than professional DSLRs, everyone is capable of taking a great picture and crafting a good caption.

User-Generated content helps build rapport with your audience, while also saving a lot of time and money creating original content every single day. It also helps you build a tribe of true fans, sharing your content wanting to get featured by you, and showing potential customers the benefits of your products and services, doing all the work for you.

Platform Specific Content

Another mistake done by a lot of business and brands is sharing the same content on all their social media channels. To attract the right audience and build a following you need to make sure every piece of content you share is native to the platform it is posted on.

While it does sound like a daunting task creating 100 different pieces of content, for different social media channels, but truth is you can recycle your content, don’t post them in the same format, just use the same message in a different format, which we will create another post and discuss it in depth on how to create different native types of content for your social media channels.

Conclusion

The social media landscape is always changing, and you will need to keep on updating yout social media strategy as you go to ensure your business is being presented under the best light possible, and your efforts are relevant.

Now you are all prepared and have the knowledge required to dominate your social media strategy in 2019. If you would like assistance with your social media strategy we are offering a free strategy call with no obligations at all.

Let us know your thoughts, and tell us in the comments about what trends will you be focusing on this year.

The post 10 Social Media Trends You Need To Know in 2019 appeared first on The Webery Studio.