Email isn’t going anywhere, and it cannot be ignored.
Millions of consumers worldwide use email and its use continues to increase throughout the years. Email is one of the most popular communication channels, and the majority of emails sent daily are business related.
Think of how many emails you receive on a daily and weekly basis — they consume a large part of our life. From notifications to paperless billing — we rely heavily on emails every single day.
Email marketing has continued to be one of the most effective ways for a business to market to its customers. Email is personal and the open rates put your message in front of its intended recipients more than any other channel.
Email isn’t going anywhere, and while SMS marketing may be experiencing industry-high open rates, specifically in the e-commerce industry, email cannot be ignored. Here is why brands need to be all-in on email marketing.
More customizable and personal than social media
E-commerce brands, especially direct-to-consumer brands, love social media. While social media offers a great platform to market to your customers, it isn’t highly customizable or personal.
If a brand has 100,000 followers on Instagram, for example, every Post or Story is broadcast to that entire audience. What if a D2C apparel brand has both men’s and women’s lines? A post highlighting the women’s spring collection is going to be seen by all followers — male and female.
Email, however, allows an e-commerce brand to segment its list based on data. An apparel brand can have a main list that includes all customers, and then segment that into lists according to purchase behaviour.
Sending an email announcing a new women’s line to customers that have previously purchased women’s apparel is going to perform much better than an offer broadcast to the entire list. The same applies to men’s drops.
Email personalization also helps to create a stronger relationship. A post on social media feels generic, whereas an email addressed to the recipient feels more personal.
Highly measurable data
When you take all of the data available to you and break it down, you can make incredible improvements in your future email deployments. You can further segment your list, identifying your best customers and you can also use data to determine the best days of the week and time of day to send messages.
Numbers don’t lie, and when you take the time to analyse your email data, you will find new opportunities and optimize them to improve your overall results. For example, you might find that general newsletters have a significantly higher open rate on Tuesday afternoon, while special offers convert better on Friday mornings.
Access to this data also allows you to send dynamic content within your emails, tailored to each recipient. When you place an offer for a product they were recently viewing on your website in front of them, they are more likely to convert than they would be if it was just a generic blanket offer designed to appeal to the masses.
Consumers have instant access to their email via mobile devices
Mobile devices have the majority of consumers’ email at the tip of their fingers. You don’t have to wait for them to get home or to login to their email on a desktop or laptop. They are notified as soon as that email hits their device.
Whether or not they open your email immediately depends on several factors. If they are busy, they are going to ignore their email until they have time to dive in. A strong Call to Action in the email subject, however, can potentially get your emails opened very quickly.
Most consumers are glued to their mobile phones all day and all night — from the morning when they wake up until it’s time to go to sleep. Even while working or preoccupied, most will at least glance at their notifications.
Email gives you instant access to the majority of your customer base. Remember, you aren’t the only brand vying for their attention. Strong email subjects to draw high click-through rates are important, as is conveying your message within the first few sentences.
The right offer can trigger an immediate action, which is the beauty of email marketing. A consumer could have no intention of making a purchase, but they become intrigued with your offer, and the next thing they know, their credit card is out and they are completing a transaction on your website from their mobile device.
Cost-effective
Online marketing costs are skyrocketing for e-commerce brands. Facebook ads are becoming increasingly popular, therefore driving costs so high that it’s forcing many brands to look for additional channels that provide a more affordable acquisition cost.
Email is hands-down the most cost-effective, as the hard costs to deploy messages are minimal. Customer emails are collected when they make a purchase and via opt-ins on-site. While there is a cost associated with every email address added to a list, that is a one-time cost.
That email list turns into an asset that becomes more valuable as it grows. Large e-commerce brands can send email marketing offers weekly or bi-weekly and generate a substantial amount of revenue each time without the customer acquisition costs that come with Google Ads and Facebook ads.
We all know that brands and companies don’t quite play with their cards open. And while we can only suspect what happens behind their tightly shut doors, TikToker Selena Wright, @selenawrightcreative, has a lot to say on the matter. In fact, she has made a whole series of videos listing the craziest marketing facts that have amassed hundreds of thousands of views.
The social media manager from New Zealand covers anything marketing-related, from failures our fave brands can’t afford to make but they did to smart design strategies, smart trickeries, and clever product inventions.
Selena’s selection of facts reveals a whole new world of marketing we didn’t know, where every tiny detail has its purpose, and where brands fight in an ongoing Mortal Kombat to get our attention. Let’s read Bored Panda’s interview with the author of these videos right below!
We reached out to Selena Wright, a freelance photographer and social media manager from New Zealand who loves all things creative. “I work with brands to create custom content and get their socials looking perfectly unique to their brand,” she said and added: “I am a self-taught photographer that began shooting on my Mum’s DSLR years ago and went from there.”
#2
In 2012 Dunkin Donuts released a marketing campaign in Seoul, Korea where scent spray devices on buses would release the aroma of warm coffee when triggered by the sound of Dunkin Donuts radio jingle. The marketing campaign reached more than 350,000 people and sales by bus stops increased by 29%.
#3
In 2008 Shreddies launched a marketing campaign launching their new “Diamond Shreddies”. The company was pretty open about the fact that this was basically a joke since they had just just rotated the image of the square Shreddies and it that it was more about getting people talking about Shreddies again. It seems pretty successful as they got an 18% rise in sales.
#4
The T-shirt was invented in 1904 and marketed to bachelors that couldn’t sew or replace buttons.
When asked how she got an idea for her ‘Crazy Marketing Facts’ series, Selena said it was inspired by “a similar series she saw many other creators doing about different things you can do on Canva. I liked the idea of teaching in my own niche while adding a little entertainment value as well.”
And it’s specifically the creative side of things that got the TikToker interested in the marketing industry. “Paid advertising has its place but I really enjoy creating and engaging with high-quality content that tells a story and has a lot of character for brands,” she said.
#5
Joanne Rowling, better known as J.K. Rowling, doesn’t have a middle name according to her birth certificate. The decision to use initials on her book covers was designed so it was more acceptable for the boys to read, who were less likely to read a book written by a women.
#6
Philadelphia cream cheese was invented in New York, and was never produced in Philadelphia. In the 1880s it was known as a marketing trick, because Philadelphia was known for high quality dairy products.
#7
In 2009 Tropicana invested $35 million to change the packaging of their Orange Juice. Within 2 months their sales dropped by 20% and they lost significant market share. So they switched back to the old packaging. The failed marketing campaign cost them over $50 million!
From the marketing facts Selena has posted so far, the fact that she finds the most fascinating is that “Blackberry paid actresses to flirt with men in bars to promote their phones by ladies getting men’s phone numbers and showing off their Blackberries when they saved them.”
#8
In 2011 Jell-O monitored the amount of smiley faces and frowny faces posted on Twitter. When the national average for smiley faces was below 51% Jell-O would release discount coupons for those who had recently tweeted frowny faces.
#9
There’s a rumour that BlackBerry hired actresses to flirt with men in bars in order to push Blackberries on the public. Referred to as stealth marketing, so they would go to bars to get phone numbers and them to put their numbers in their Blackberries, trying to show off how cool they were.
And as for Selena’s plans for the future, the social media manager said that she has “a big passion project announcement coming soon that will be documented all over my social media and TikTok,” so keep your eyes out! Also, be sure to check out her awesome photography work right here.
#10
Before mass marketing of tobacco, doctors considered lung cancer a rare disease. The amount that large tobacco companies spend per HOUR has reached $940,000.
Justin is a photo editor at Bored Panda. He was fascinated with visual arts and arts in general for as long as he can remember. He was obsessed with playing and making music in his teens. After finishing high school, he took a gap year to work odd jobs and try to figure out what he wanted to do next. Finally, around 2016, he started learning how to use Photoshop and hasn’t stopped since. He started working as a visual advertisement producer in 2017 and worked there for almost two years. In his spare time, he creates graphic collages and even had his first artwork exhibition at “Devilstone”.
In an age where all B2B marketing is digital yet very little of it actually works, it’s tough to know whose advice you can trust. Perhaps the first clue is when they acknowledge, up front, just how ineffective most marketing really is.
Alex Boyd, founder and CEO of RevenueZen, isn’t shy about sharing what most B2B marketers get wrong about SEO and LinkedIn. But he’s hesitant to give advice without first understanding the context and nuance of a particular situation, which is usually a sign someone has earned their chops.
I recently caught up with Boyd to hear his thoughts on SEO strategy, demand gen philosophy, LinkedIn spam, and why, at the end of the day, a simple phone call can go a long way.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Kevin Kruse: What have you seen change or shift in marketing and demand generation in the last several years?
Alex Boyd: Anything “mass” has decreased in effectiveness as well as anything easy to measure with a low barrier to entry. Those types of activities have less value because everyone presses the buttons that are easy to press, like sending a lot of emails and running a lot of very general ads. When you think about what marketers need to do to justify their tactics, it’s usually putting up big numbers on a dashboard to show to the CEO who doesn’t always “get it.” And so the easier something is to measure and show on that dashboard, the more marketers will do it, even if the channel is saturated and the leads aren’t converting.
Kruse: What’s a common misconception people have about demand generation?
Boyd: A lot of people think all leads are created equal, but they’re not. How you got that lead in the first place is so important. On paper, a lead is an object in a CRM with an email address. But how would a salesperson define a “lead”? It’s somebody who’s gotten more interested in your product than they were before. The person who says, “I saw your CEO in that great Forbes article and I have a few friends that use your company. I’m ready to sign,” is a lead. But, to many marketers, so is the person who entered their email address just to download a checklist and always dodges your calls when you follow up. Those two leads are not equal. Demand generation isn’t about the quantity of leads. It’s focusing on how the lead got to your company, and whether or not the environment in which they arrived warmed them up to what you sell.
Kruse: In general, what’s working in B2B marketing, assuming “working” means generating a lead that comes to you in the right way and with some interest to potentially buy?
Boyd: You already know it depends, but I’ll share what I’m seeing: first, founder-driven, brand marketing—meaning sharing the perspective of what the leadership team believes in a personal, organic way. LinkedIn is a good example, but this could also look like the CEO giving a fireside chat, or speaking at an event. People want to know what the people behind the product believe because that tells them more than a list of features. The feature list is static, but what the founders and leadership team believe is dynamic—it tells you about the future and where the company is headed. CEOs shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that managing their social media accounts is “below them”: many prominent CxOs of tech unicorns are very active on social.
Secondly, organic search still has a lot of potential. Most SEO is still done quite badly, even by experts. The biggest thing that Software-as-a-Service companies in particular get wrong about SEO is they think they need to optimize for people searching for exactly what they do. That’s table stakes. What the SaaS companies who see massive growth through organic search do is they compete for the attention of their buyer. It’s not a game of what your product does, it’s a game of attention. And if you get in front of people and put your name, brand and insights in front of them while they’re looking for related content and they happen to encounter your product that way, you’re going to show them a new way of doing things. And that’s the core of SaaS marketing: showing someone a new way of doing things.
Kruse: Do you have a real-world example of how that kind of attention-grabbing SEO works?
Boyd: One of the best ways of doing SEO at first is to talk about the basics. Most companies will create a blog for announcements and news, but nobody is searching for your company. So why not rank for keywords they’re already searching for? A company called lightyear.ai is a great example. They’re a marketplace for IT and networking solutions—kind of like a kayak.com for IT. They don’t assume that people are searching for “IT product marketplace”, because they’re not. They rank for things that people search for to educate themselves on how to buy IT. It’s a subtle shift in thinking: when you’re a small start-up, your new idea is not the centre of your prospects’ universe.
Kruse: How should you approach SEO if you’re trying to sell something new?
Boyd: When you’re selling a brand-new product, the way you do SEO should change. Nobody is searching for your unique new product category – yet. If you sell something new, you need to rank for things that are related to what you do but aren’t your product. If you’re building an AI to help recruiters sort through resumes, you don’t want to rank for “AI resume screener”, you want to write about the Top 10 Ways to Screen Candidates, or How To Write An Amazing EEO Statement. Once your company is larger, this game changes and you then want to focus on people who are already looking for exactly what you do.
Kruse: You’ve been creating a new product for LinkedIn. Tell me about that.
Boyd: The way that people engage on LinkedIn has been broken for a long time. A lot of people see relationship-building as transactional: “I liked your posts, please take a meeting.” There’s a feeling of entitlement. That needs to change.
The right way to engage on LinkedIn involves writing good content, engaging with others, networking, and actually building community. Our product shows you which of your target accounts are talking to your competitors, customers and strong connections. And it tells you exactly which important conversations to take part in. The whole point of our product – Aware – is to give people the ability to send a LOW volume of hyper-targeted messages that have 60%+ conversion rate: unheard of.
Kruse: What’s one piece of advice you’d like to leave marketers with?
Boyd: Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Tech marketers spend so much time geeking out on growth-hacking funnel jockeying, but sometimes you just need to pick up the phone and call a prospect instead of waiting around for an answer. I think we need to spend more time building relationships with people, which sometimes means just calling them up.
Feature Image Credit: Founder of RevenueZen: Alex Boyd
Compare the strengths and weaknesses of each platform to help you decide between Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress.
If you’re looking for an e-commerce platform to launch a small business website, Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress are names that rise to the top of any search. Each is a multipurpose platform that supports various online pursuits, from blogging, ecommerce sales, and online bookings, to event tickets, music and photography sales, and more.
Where these top website platforms differ is in their ease of use, control over design, overall functionality, and expandability. We’ll dive into the specifics below, but let’s start with the highlights of each.
Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress: At-a-glance
Wix
Squarespace
WordPress
Best for
Beginners and basic online sales needs
Image-driven brands, influencers, and online sellers
Growth-oriented online brands, bloggers, and ecommerce businesses
Basic pricing
Free to $39/month
$16 to $26/month
From $3.95/month
Ecommerce pricing
$23 to $49/month
$30 to $46/month
From $6.95/month
Ease of use
Easiest option
Easy to moderate
Moderate to difficult
Design options
500+ free customizable templates
40+ free customizable templates
1000s free and paid themes
Blogging features
Basic
Moderate
Unlimited
Sales functionality
Products and services
Products, services, and memberships
Unlimited
Customer service
Help center, email, and phone
Help center, email, and live chat
Online tutorials and forums
Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress: In-depth review
Clearly, there are similarities and differences between these top-rated website platforms. Once you understand the strengths and weaknesses of each and compare those to your needs, choosing between Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress isn’t difficult. Below, we explore each in-depth to help you find the best fit for your unique small business website needs.
Wix: The basics
Wix is an ideal platform for anyone new to website building and in need of a simple, economical, and functional promotional website or online store. Of the three, only Wix offers a completely free plan, however, the free site displays Wix’s network ads and doesn’t support a unique domain name. For a fully branded website, you’ll need a paid plan.
Wix delivers an incredibly user-friendly turnkey solution with website hosting, design templates, and website functionality—like ecommerce and other online sales features—all in one tidy package. Where Wix falls short of the others is in design versatility. While you have many customization features within the template you select, once you publish your website, you can’t swap it over to a completely new look.
Wix: Pricing
Wix separates its pricing into “Website” and “Business & Ecommerce” plans. It does offer a very basic free plan, but any serious branded service website, blogger, or online business will want the ad-free, custom-domain features available with Wix’s paid website plans. You can seamlessly upgrade your free or lower-level Wix website to a higher plan at any time to extend functionality.
You can toggle between Wix’s “Website” and “Business & Ecommerce” plans to compare features and pricing. Image source: Wix.
Wix’s “Website” plans range from $13 to $39 per month and suit the blogger or promotional website builder. Features such as website analytics, SEO, and video increase with plan pricing, but none of the “Website” plans supports online sales or accepting payments online.
To sell anything online using Wix, you need a “Business & Ecommerce” plan, and these range from $23 to $49 per month. These plans enable online payments for all types of ecommerce functionality, including product sales, digital downloads, and event tickets. Recurring payments for membership and subscription sales require Wix Payments, Stripe, or PayPal as your payment solution.
Your Wix website’s address—also called a domain name or URL— is free for your first year with any paid plan. After that, Wix charges you $14.95 per year for your domain. You might save by registering your domain elsewhere, like GoDaddy, Google, or Bluehost, and connecting it to your Wix website. However, Wix’s domain cost is competitive, and handling everything within one platform is simple and convenient.
Wix: Ease of use and design options
The biggest challenge that most new website owners face is making their website functional and visually appealing. Here, Wix has you covered in both respects. Wix offers over 500 plug-and-play mobile-friendly website design themes that you can customize using simple drag-and-drop tools.
With over 500 website templates and many for specialty needs, Wix delivers design options for any online pursuit. Image source: Wix
Wix also provides design themes geared for specialty websites such as event promotion and ticket sales, restaurants, real estate, online stores, music portals, salons, and the list goes on. In short, Wix lets you build a website that looks and works the way you want it to.
However, once you publish your Wix website, you can’t easily change to another theme. Here, Wix differs from most modern website builders. Its competitors, including Squarespace and WordPress, let you quickly change your entire look by swapping themes. With Wix, you can edit elements of your website using built-in design tools; but to update your look entirely, you need to rebuild your website within a new Wix theme.
Wix: Features and functionality
Wix offers a sound set of promotional and online selling features that suit many small business needs. All paid plans include a custom domain name for branding and a professional email address. You also get built-in search engine optimization (SEO), chat, and analytics tools, along with social media link icons and email marketing tools.
Wix ecommerce plans support online bookings and prepaid services, event tickets, music streaming and downloads, physical product sales, and photography and art sales. Wix doesn’t offer built-in membership and subscription sales, but there are some third-party apps that you can connect to expand your sales functionality.
Blogging tools are built into every Wix plan as well. However, its blogging features are basic compared to both Squarespace and WordPress. You can manage multiple authors and contributors, but content-focused brands that manage hundreds of blog posts might find Wix’s single-tier category structure and menu options too simplistic.
Squarespace overview
Like Wix, Squarespace delivers an all-in-one website builder platform that supports promotional, blogging, and online sales functionality. Squarespace is also extremely user-friendly and you can build and launch a beautifully branded website in just a few hours. However, unlike Wix, Squarespace doesn’t offer a free plan. In fact, with a starting price of $16 per month, it can be the most expensive of the Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress matchup.
Squarespace’s blogging features are more robust than Wix’s offering, but WordPress is the recognized leader for blogging and content-focused websites. Squarespace provides fewer design templates than the other two—around 40—but all are ultra-modern and visually stunning. Plus, you can easily swap out Squarespace templates to change your overall design, unlike Wix.
Squarespace: Pricing
Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, but it does provide a 14-day free trial so you can test-drive Squarespace risk-free. If you decide Squarespace is the right option, you can convert your free trial to one of four paid plans and keep building without interruption.
Squarespace offers four pricing plans and the features of each are clearly outlined. There’s no free options, unlike Wix, but you can save if you pay a year in advance. Image source: Squarespace.
Promotional websites or blogs that don’t need online sales or payment processing features cost $16 or $26 per month on Squarespace, depending on the features you need. Ecommerce plans run $30 or $46 per month, with sales-driving features like discount coupons, shipping tools, and marketing options included in the higher plan.
Squarespace’s ecommerce features beat Wix for small-to-moderate sales needs. However, for the money, volume sellers and ecommerce-focused brands are generally better off with more robust ecommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce running on WordPress.
When you launch a Squarespace website, your site’s domain name is free for the first year. After that, Squarespace charges an annual fee, which can cost from $20 to $70 per year, depending on your URL and plan. You might save by registering your domain with a lower-cost solution like GoDaddy or Bluehost and connecting it to your Squarespace website.
Squarespace: Ease of use and design options
For those new to building websites, Squarespace is slightly more complex than Wix but far easier to grasp out-of-the-box than WordPress. Squarespace has a section-based website editor that takes a little getting used to, but its sleek and modern designs offer plenty of drag-and-drop customization options. If you’re able to save a web-optimized image and uploaded it to a dashboard, setting up a Squarespace website will take you no time at all.
Squarespace offers fewer website templates than Wix or WordPress, but each is sleek and modern. Image source: Squarespace
Squarespace offers around 40 plug-and-play design templates, which is low compared to Wix’s 500 and WordPress’s near-infinite options. However, all are visually stunning, which explains Squarespace’s popularity with visual brands and style-focused influencers.
Squarespace templates are mobile-friendly and cater to specific businesses, too. Pre-configured designs for blogs, online stores, music and photography sites, membership sales, and more, make setting up a specialized website a cinch.
An added design plus over Wix, you can completely change or update your Squarespace website’s look at any time by simply changing your design template.
Squarespace: Features and functionality
Squarespace’s blogging features are a solid step above what you get with Wix. If you’re planning a content-rich website and want multiple blog categories, tag options, and stunning visuals all wrapped up in a very user-friendly system, try Squarespace.
In fact, many power bloggers and affiliate marketing brands pick Squarespace over WordPress. It delivers plenty of blogging, SEO, social media, and site analytics power, but it doesn’t require the continual plugin updates and theme maintenance of WordPress.
Its ecommerce functionality is impressive, too, and particularly great for image-focused brands that sell digital products like music subscriptions and downloads, photography, or artwork. It supports physical product sales, event management and tickets, and various services, plus it recently rolled out subscription and membership sales with recurring payments.
Squarespace also integrates with many popular third-party services for marketing, shipping, and bookkeeping functions, including MailChimp, ShipStation, and Xero.
WordPress: The basics
WordPress powers over half of the world’s websites and its popularity is driven by its virtually unlimited functionality and low cost. However, new users typically find that WordPress’s impressive power comes with a steep learning curve compared to platforms like Wix and Squarespace. You’ll definitely spend some time learning the WordPress platform—but it’s worth the effort if you want a site with unlimited capabilities.
WordPress isn’t an all-in-one solution like Wix and Squarespace. It’s a free, standalone platform that works on your choice of hosting service, like Bluehost, GoDaddy, WPEngine, or any number of WordPress hosting options on the market. For example, Bluehost’s basic WordPress hosting packages start at about $3.95 per month, and ecommerce hosting starts at $6.95 per month due to added security features.
WordPress is also infinitely expandable via plugins that add all types of functionality, and free ecommerce themes that deliver endless design possibilities. Pairing WordPress with various plugins and design themes lets you create anything imaginable on the internet. Influencer blogs, ecommerce stores, promotional websites, affiliate marketing websites, video lesson portals, membership sites, and more can all be powered by WordPress.
WordPress: Pricing
WordPress itself is a free platform and for small, basic websites, it can be nearly free to operate. However, as your website traffic and functionality needs expand, your costs can grow. Below are the basic costs you’ll encounter when setting up a WordPress website.
WordPress website hosting costs
Hosting a WordPress website can cost just $3.95 or $6.95 per month for basic websites or ecommerce stores. However, if you receive a lot of traffic or have a large site that demands added storage or bandwidth, your monthly hosting costs can quickly increase. Well-trafficked small business WordPress websites tend to average between $20 to $50 in monthly hosting, due to added security, backup, and storage or bandwidth needs.
Most WordPress hosting providers offer various plan levels and features like security, marketing perks, and storage increase as you move up the levels. Image source: Bluehost.
Website domain name costs
Like Wix and Squarespace, most WordPress hosting plans include a year of domain name registration for free. After the first year, your domain renews at the hosting service’s annual fee. Most WordPress hosting options offer discounted multi-year domain registration to reduce your cost and to reserve your website address for several years at a time.
WordPress theme and plugin costs
As we’ve mentioned before, unlike Wix and Squarespace, WordPress isn’t an all-in-one solution that lets you increase functionality by simply upgrading your plan. WordPress is just a basic framework. You make your website come to life by adding a design theme and, in most cases, functionality plugins.
There are thousands of themes and plugins to explore. Some are free, but most offer a free basic version plus a paid version that expands functionality, design features, and so on. Selecting the right theme and plugins all depend on your specific needs. For example, if you’re publishing a simple blog, a free WordPress blog theme and add a few free plugins, like Yoast for SEO and MailChimp for email marketing, might be all you ever need.
Ecommerce sellers often use the popular free WooCommerce ecommerce plugin on WordPress with an ecommerce theme, but plugins for online lessons, subscription sales, online bookings, event ticket sales, and other specialty sales generally aren’t free. In short, what WordPress costs you really depends on your specific plugin functionality and theme design needs.
WordPress: Ease of use and design options
After reading the above, you’re probably thinking that assembling a WordPress website takes some doing—and you’d be right. That’s why WordPress gets a “moderate-to-difficult” rating for ease of use. However, its design options are virtually limitless thanks to thousands of themes available, so it gets an A-plus on that.
You can choose from thousands of free and paid WordPress themes to bring any type of website, blog, or ecommerce store to life. Image source: Themeforest.
Your initial setup steps are simple if you go with a major WordPress hosting provider. Bluehost and other top services come with WordPress pre-installed. From there, you just need to install your theme and plugins, then set up your website. This is where the work begins.
Selecting a design theme and functionality plugins can be time-consuming and a bit overwhelming for those new to WordPress. However, at the same time, it’s fun to see the many possibilities open to your website, brand, or business.
The best way to get started down the WordPress path is to visit YouTube and search for “WordPress starter tutorials,” there are plenty to choose from. These offer a quick education on installing and setting up WordPress themes and selecting the right plugins for your specific needs. You’ll find that much of this is trial-and-error and even seasoned WordPress users are constantly trying out new theme and plugin solutions.
You’ll also need to periodically update your themes and plugins. This is generally just a quick click in your WordPress dashboard, but it’s a task you won’t have with a Wix or Squarespace website.
WordPress: Features and functionality
Vast, unlimited, and endless are three very appropriate terms that describe WordPress’s functional capabilities. Essentially, if you can dream up a need, there’s probably a WordPress plugin that fills it.
Consider these popular plugins to kick-start your WordPress website build:
WooCommerce: Free ecommerce plugin for WordPress for physical, digital, and service sales
Yoast: Free SEO tools for any type of WordPress website
Sucuri: WordPress security, many hosting platforms include this or a similar plugin for free
Jetpack: Multi-feature tool that offers marketing, social icons, security, backups and more
MailChimp: Free basic email marketing; paid version adds more features
Memberpress: Adds membership and subscription features to WordPress
LearnDash: Adds online learning and lesson sales to WordPress
WooZone: Turns a WordPress website into an Amazon affiliate store
AffiliateWP: Affiliate marketing content creation tool for affiliate bloggers
These are just a few of the thousands of plugins that can take your WordPress website in any direction. You can explore the full universe of WordPress plugins on ThemeForest and WordPress.org.
Many WordPress themes come pre-loaded with needed plugins to help simplify your WordPress website build. You can find theme/plugin packages for ecommerce, real estate, restaurants, blogs, affiliate marketing, online lessons, and membership websites, to name just a few.
Most of these are “Premium” themes and they generally cost from $20 to $150—though most average around $49. These premium theme/plugin pairings are generally worth every cent since they save you a ton of time searching and testing various plugins.
Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress: The bottom line
Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress are all leading website builders with features and benefits that cater to different types of users. Wix and Squarespace are simple-to-use platforms that bundle hosting, design, and functionality into an all-in-one package. Wix is the simplest startup solution, while Squarespace offers more control over content, blogging, and design.
WordPress, in contrast, is infinitely customizable and gives users complete control over hosting, design, content elements, and website functionality. However, WordPress’s versatility comes with a far bigger learning curve compared to Wix and Squarespace.
Remember, it doesn’t cost a dime to set up a free Wix website, or free trials with Squarespace and some of WordPress’s hosting services. Diving in is really the only way to know what each platform offers on both the front and back ends. After test driving each, you’re sure to find the clear winner in the Wix vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress showdown for your unique needs.
This article originally appeared on Fundera, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.
Hide My Email will let you use a “dummy” email address without giving away your real email address.
Apple is getting even more serious about privacy, and with its new iCloud+ service, it will offer a new feature called Hide My Email.
Hide My Email lets you create dummy email accounts that automatically forward to an email account of your choosing, meaning you can email people using that dummy email so they don’t see your real email address. That means if you want to correspond with a business, subscribe to some service, or don’t want a particular person to know your real email address, you can hide it from them in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15.
How to create a new email address for Hide My Email
Once you have iCloud+, you’ll need to head into the iCloud settings in the Settings app.
Launch Settings from your Home screen.
Tap your Apple ID banner at the top of your screen.
Tap iCloud.
Tap Hide My Email.
Tap Create new address.
Tap Label your address to enter a label.
Tap make a note and write a note if you want.
Tap Next.
Tap Done.
There you have it, a new dummy email address you can use when you send emails, so you don’t have to use your real address.
How to deactivate an email address for Hide My Email
You can deactivate an email address you’ve created at any time.
Launch Settings from your Home screen.
Tap your Apple ID banner at the top of your screen.
Tap iCloud.
Tap Hide My Email.
Tap the email address you want to deactivate.
Tap Deactivate email address.
Tap Deactivate.
Now you won’t receive emails from that dummy account anymore, so make sure you don’t deactivate it if you’re still actively communicating with someone using that dummy account.
How to change your forwarding address for Hide My Email
If you ever want to change your forwarding address so you can start forwarding all your dummy email account to a different inbox, you can do so in the Hide My Mail settings.
Launch Settings from your Home screen.
Tap your Apple ID banner at the top of your screen.
The search giant has delayed the rollout of FLoC, its controversial replacement for third-party cookies, until 2023.
Google is in an interesting position when it comes to making the internet respect your privacy. It controls the world’s largest advertising platform, the most used search engine, and the most popular web browser. Together, that means Google has more influence over how your data is gathered and tracked online than any other company.
It’s significant then that over the past few years, Google has joined the effort to eliminate the worst offender when it comes to tracking, third-party cookies. Those are the little pieces of code websites use to track your activity across other sites and apps.
Cookies, in and of themselves, aren’t necessarily bad. They serve valuable purposes like keeping you logged in to sites you use regularly. It’s just that they are also used for purposes they were never intended for, like tracking everything you do online.
In 2020, Google announced that Chrome would block third-party cookies by default–something almost every other browser already does. Since that time, Google has been trying to figure out an alternative that will still allow advertisers to target users without invading their privacy.
Google’s solution, known as FLoC, analyses web activity in Chrome and assigns the user to a cohort. Advertisers can then target ads at those groups as opposed to individual users. Google argues that the method is privacy-protecting since individual users can’t be identified. In theory, that sounds great, right?
Except, basically, no one else thinks it’s a good idea. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, calls it a “terrible idea.” Advertisers aren’t fans either. Amazon has said it will block FLoC from working on any of its sites.
That explains why last week, Google said it will delay the rollout of FLoC, and the blocking of third-party cookies, until 2023.
Look, there’s no question that Google, should it decide to, could make the internet respect your privacy. It could simply turn off third-party cookies in Chrome–just flip a switch and make them go away for good.
The cynical take is that Google is dragging this out because it’s addicted to your data and wants to protect its business. The truth, however, is that’s only partially true. In fact, I think you can make the case the truth is actually worse. Google doesn’t even need that data.
While Google could technically make the internet respect your privacy, the problem is that doing so would give it an enormous advantage over every other advertising network and platform. Google collects massive amounts of first-party data on its users, meaning that it is far less dependent on third-party tracking.
Besides, Google’s most profitable advertising platform is search. Google doesn’t have to do any third-party tracking to know what you search for since you literally type what you’re looking for into its website. All it has to do is show you ads at the top of the search engine results page.
Blocking third-party tracking altogether would certainly affect Google’s business, but would have a far greater impact on the rest of the digital advertising industry. As a result, Google is in an almost impossible situation, but not for the reason it might seem.
Eliminating third-party cookies seems like the best possible outcome for Google because it would force advertisers to become even more dependent on Google. In the long run, it would give Google even more control over digital advertising, which you might think would be a good thing for the company.
Except, considering the antitrust pressure Google is facing, the last thing it wants to do is anything that makes it look like the company is becoming more dominant. Google can’t cut off the rest of the industry–not because it’s being charitable, but because to do so would put its entire business at risk.
If you think Google is facing scrutiny now, imagine what would happen if it became even more dominant. It’s hard to see a scenario where it wouldn’t be broken apart by regulators, which might be better for your privacy but would definitely be bad for Google. Once again, when faced with a decision between protecting user privacy and protecting its own business, Google has chosen the latter.
Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. Today, Rishad Tobaccowala shares his weekly newsletter—this instalment focuses on the potential of tech and talent to unlock new levels of success.
A river of change is carrying everybody and every company into the future; significant forces are sculpting the frontiers of tomorrow.
While there is great complexity we must all grapple with as we seek a profitable and successful tomorrow, there are only two key drivers that matter. These are the ones we should focus on, without getting distracted by the cacophony of distracting headlines or consultants offering complex choices.
Get these two more or less right, and you and your firm should thrive:
Tech alignment: Understand how technology is a) changing people and their behaviour and b) reconfiguring your products, services and experiences by enabling new competitors, redefining value, eroding or creating competitive advantage and radically transforming economics.
Talent upgrade: Given the right resources (i.e., tech alignment), the firm with a disproportionate share of talent passionately aligned with a common outcome is likely to win. It is true in sports, and it is true in business.
These are the two key drivers, and both are required at the same time. Fantastic silicon (tech) with OK carbon (human talent), or vice versa, is unlikely to succeed.
Every board of directors or leadership confab should not begin meetings with financial updates, product updates and M&A updates, but rather with a “tech terrain”—detailing a threat and opportunity matrix and how the company is preparing and making progress in ensuring competitiveness—and a “talent capital x-ray,” which would include not just attrition and retention measures, but also employee joy, educational investments, culture health checks and much more.
Talented people in a good culture with enabling technology is what creates happy customers, innovation, differentiation and profits.
Your company is a tech company
Today, every company is a tech company.
If, a decade ago, one had invested in Domino’s pizza, Apple, Facebook or Google, one would have done better with Domino’s! Yes, Domino’s makes pizza and delivers it to a person’s home, but the company leveraged technology to reimagine and transform every single aspect of its business—from how one could order the pizza, monitor its journey to customers, let customers decide where to receive it (at the football field as you tailgate?) and how it was delivered to them. They reimagined stores and understood how delivery services could become parasites eating into their margin. Domino’s controls every aspect of the customer relationship and delivery.
Domino’s understood technology was its business and could redefine its future. The company understood that the challenges and changes it brings about cannot be stopped and need to be embraced.
Creativity is where art and technology intersect—so if you are in a creative business, you are in a technology business. Communication changes as technology changes, and if you do not adapt, your media business may not thrive in the future. Most newspapers, for instance, were done in by the failure of their management to recognize the impact of technology and not technology itself. Marketing is about understanding and meeting customer requirements, and as customers’ requirements, expectations and behaviours—as well as communication channels—change, every aspect of marketing becomes a technology-infused business.
Smart companies and leaders understand the critical nature of technology and realize that the understanding of its potential should be throbbing in the beating heart of every key employee. Technology implementation may be done by the CTO and CIO, but impact and vision about technology must reside in every leader and should be central to every aspect of product, service and experience design.
Prepare for the Third Connected Age of tech
While technology and online media have been around for a long while, there was a steep change in how businesses were impacted beginning in 1993 with the launch of the First Connected Age—marked by the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. During this period, people connected to discover and people connected to shop; the companies that created the best products and services in these areas, like Google and Amazon, became the most valuable companies in the world. Search and ecommerce transformed many aspects of business.
In 2007, we entered the Second Connected Age, which built on the First Age as technology now allowed people to connect with each other (social networks) and connect all the time (smartphones). Not surprisingly, Facebook and Apple were also big winners and among the most valuable companies. Mobile and social continued this transformation of business, but also transformed many aspects of society. The challenge society faces is that many of the modern communication channels were optimized for consumers with an advertising operating system, but now they are a society operating system, and we need to optimize for citizens.
We have now entered the Third Connected Age of technology, and it will make all the seismic changes of the last three decades pale in significance. This is because not only does this Third Age build on the foundations of what has come before due to advances in technology, but it also comes after three decades of people’s changed behaviour and expectations. (Also recognize that almost every millennial was born after the dawn of the First Connected Age and the modern graphical internet.)
The Third Connected Age will see four new connections:
AI: Data connecting to data, which is a simplistic way of describing machine learning.
5G: Much faster and more resilient connections.
Voice/AR/VR: New ways of connecting—in many countries, voice search is greater than text search.
Quantum computing: Connections to the “New God in the Sky,” as cloud-based computing takes a quantum jump.
Today, a toddler version of these capabilities bundled together are available via Amazon Echo and Google Home. Anticipate, in less than 1,000 days, the transformative potential of these technologies to create a plethora of new winners and losers across every industry.
Upgrade talent
Do you have the best talent in your company working to ensure Third Connected Age readiness?
Talent is all. People are key. A company only transforms if the people in the company transform. A company gets better when the people in the company get better.
If one reads Will and Ariel Durant’s The Lessons of History, it becomes clear that every advance in technology places a premium on superior talent. Basically, technology is like a lever. It allows talent leverage and scale. It is never technology or talent; it is technology and talent. Great people with great tools will dominate all.
Today, we are living in a truly transformed terrain for talent—one where every aspect of what talent wants from companies and bosses, the nature of work and much more are being twisted into new shapes. Smart companies are realizing that the next few years will be driven by how they can upgrade their team through recruiting new talent and training and inspiring existing talent.
Smart leaders everywhere recognize we are at a unique moment in time due to the combined impact of three big shifts: a) the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), b) the role of ESG, purpose and values in a company culture and c) the unbundled workplace and new life mindsets post-Covid. This is the ideal time for leaders to truly rethink their talent strategy, company culture and training plans to attract and upgrade their people.
Talent = growth
Companies want to grow—but so does talent. And if talent grows, the company grows.
There are six types of growth people want, and every company must offer some combination of all six, though they will be varied for every individual, role and career journey:
Compensation: To be paid fairly, and to see one’s total compensation increase as one’s impact, skill sets and contributions grow.
Recognition: Every individual wants to be recognized for their work. They want to work for bosses who allow them to shine.
Autonomy: One cannot learn and grow if every step is micromanaged. If one is rooted in process and routine, how can one spread one’s wings and navigate the winds of change?
Skills: Today, the half-life of many technical skills (and some soft skills) erode and need to continuously be rebuilt. Companies must invest deeply in continuous education.
Purpose: A critical factor in joining and staying with a company is a growing belief in its purpose and value.
Relationships/connections: Growing a network of mentors and colleagues over time is key to career success and happiness.
Few jobs and companies allow for every one of these six growth factors at the same time, but companies cannot attract and retain talent if they do not offer enough of these growth enablers.
Today, we are at a particular junction, where a fusion between a new era of technology (the Third Connected Age) and a new talent mindset is underway. To succeed, we will need to grow our understanding of the implications of technology on our business while enabling our people to thrive by unleashing their potential.
Feature Image Credit: A new era of technology and a new mindset around talent are underway.Malte Mueller/Getty Images
Why media companies need to put social media at the centre of their content and distribution strategies
The attention and support of younger readers is critical for the survival and sustained growth of publishers. However, “the millennial audience strategy honed over the better part of a decade will not work on Gen Z (born between 1997 to 2012)” says Kayleigh Barber, Senior Reporter, Digiday. This is because their media consumption habits are vastly different from the preceding generations.
57% of Gen Zers’ first interaction with news is on social media
“Despite being a significant portion and growing force on the internet for over a decade now Gen Z remains an enigma for many media companies and brands,” writes Barber in a recently published Digiday guide, “Everything you need to know about Gen Z’s media consumption habits.” It offers a comprehensive look at Gen Zers’ media consumption habits and shares actionable insights for publishers and marketers.
Whether or not Gen Z is currently a target demographic in your business strategy, creating a positive connection with this generation and beginning to build brand affinity now is important to ensure the longevity of your brand or publication in a decade or two down the road.
Kayleigh Barber, Author, Everything you need to know about Gen Z’s media consumption habits
41% of US adults, including both young millennials and Gen Zers (18-29 years), say they primarily get their political news from social media, according to a Pew research study of more than 12,000 individuals. A 2019 Reuters Institute study had 57% of Gen Zers reporting that their first interaction with news in the morning is on social media platforms and messaging apps.
Brie D’Elia, 20, a fashion student who is building her personal brand on TikTok, tells Barber that Twitter is her go-to platform for news. “When I want a specific trending piece of information, I always go there because you can see the hashtags and what’s going viral. I just want that [information] fast,” she says.
“Social media at the centre of their content and distribution strategies”
Publishers targeting Gen Z “have put social media at the centre of their content and distribution strategies,” Barber writes. They include Group Nine, Yahoo’s In the Know and Overtime. Legacy publications including The Washington Post have embraced newer platforms like TikTok, frequented by Gen Z. Video is critical for engaging this generation and the Post’s success with TikTok offers valuable lessons for other publishers.
The unique thing about Gen Z is that while millennials have grown up with social media, Gen Z has grown up with video-first social media.
Nick Cicero, VP of Strategy, Conviva
Dave Jorgenson, video producer for the Post, has been creating content for the platform since 2019. His often quirky videos tailored for TikTok have helped the publisher notch 1M followers and 40M likes on the platform. It looks at TikTok as a tool for building relationships with younger readers.
“With our focus on reader revenue at the bottom of the funnel, loyalty is incredibly important to us. But in order to get to a place of loyalty, it starts with a relationship at the top of the funnel,” says Kat Downs Mulder, Managing Editor at the Post.
A lot of what we’re doing is exposing people to The Washington Post [and] getting them to start to develop that affinity to trust in our brand.
Kat Downs Mulder, Managing Editor, The Washington Post
“Inherently a publisher that talks to Gen Z is going to have positive things to say about climate change, and pushing innovation and progression,” Clair Bergam, Associate Media Director, Media Kitchen told Digiday earlier this year. “Brands generally are realizing that they have to get behind these larger social issues or they will quickly become irrelevant.”
In the Know was launched to produce evergreen video content for younger audiences across Yahoo’s suite of sites and channels. It became popular enough to get its standalone site in February 2020. The site notched 25M monthly unique visitors in March, according to Comscore.
The brand had also been experimenting with affiliate shopping since 2019 and moved on to producing shoppable video. It’s gross merchandise value increased by 125% over the past year, according to Andrea Wasserman, Head of Global Commerce, Verizon Media.
The brand also uses Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook to distribute its videos. A single video on Snapchat is able to drive over 1M unique views from the 13-to-24 years group, Wasserman tells Barber.
“Consumption behaviour is driving them towards these platforms”
Digital video sports publisher Overtime has reached 16.6M followers on its main TikTok account—it joined in March of 2019. The publisher has also achieved over 1B likes across the 2,000-plus videos it’s posted during this period. It has 5M followers on Instagram and 3M subscribers to its Snapchat show Overtime Now.
The publisher’s distributed content strategy across social media platforms has been its bread and butter since its launch in 2016, according to its CRO Rich Calacci. “Quite frankly, we don’t see that changing,” he says. “That’s going to be a very critical part of our growth and development, especially as it relates to Gen Z and millennials.”
Gen Z’s “consumption behaviour is driving them towards these platforms and it’s creating digital daily habits, and those digital daily habits are where we want to be.”
Justin Moore and his wife, April, have only been selling products through Amazon Live for a few months, but it has already completely changed the way they do business.
The veteran YouTubers, who had been selling things online for years, were recruited by Amazon in late November to start using the growing video channel, and soon were pulling in tens of thousands of dollars of revenue on their best days. The Moores now field dozens of requests every week, many from curious ad agencies, for guidance on how Amazon Live works. The requests have been plentiful enough that the couple now offers Amazon Live show hosting services.
“The numbers were astronomical,” Justin Moore said, saying that the return on investment was clear the first time they used Live, around Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year. He declined to give specific figures but claims that this year’s Prime Day sales surpassed last year’s Black Friday sales by 52%.
The Moores’ experience may have piqued agency and brand interest in Amazon Live, but it hasn’t drawn a ton of adoption so far. Even as more social media platforms add live shopping to their roster of features and Amazon makes new investments in its Live product, most brands are still hesitant to try it out.
Many brands aren’t sure they want to go beyond traditional ads — or the additional hassle of making a video or hiring a creator. When brands do get into live streaming, cementing a preferred time slot in the Amazon Live lineup can be a long climb up the Amazon rankings.
“Brands know something is there, but they aren’t running to sign up,” said Eddie Segev, studio manager at Top Rated Studio, which creates videos for Amazon sellers and hosts live streams in its studio.
Amazon Live launched in 2016, but it wasn’t until recently that Amazon began making more investments in the channel. In February of 2019, Amazon launched its Live Creator app, which allows users to sell via live stream directly from their phone. Then, in July 2020, Amazon expanded the app to include influencers who are part of the Amazon Influencer Program. An Amazon spokesperson declined to give numbers on how many people are using Live but did say that there were over 1,200 live stream shows during Prime Day 2020.
Today, there are about a dozen live streams happening at one time on a dedicated Amazon Live homepage, with one stream as the “feature” video on the page. These video times and placements are determined by Amazon’s ranking system, which includes three levels: “Rising Star,” “Insider,” and “A-List.” Each level offers progressively better video placements on the Amazon Live page. To ‘level up’, sellers must consistently create content to amass a following and drive sales, similar to YouTube streamers looking to build their subscriber base.
Users must either be a brand registered seller, a U.S. vendor with an approved Amazon store, or an Amazon influencer with an active Amazon storefront to use the Creator app and stream.
But rather than an easy path to incremental revenue, it takes time and effort for brands to see returns. Amazon recommends streaming for at least an hour once an account is approved.
“For Amazon Live to materially impact sales on, say, Prime Day, sellers would need to have been using it consistently for months so they’d have the status necessary for winning a highly visible location,” said Katie Capka, inbound marketing manager at Kaspien, which does Amazon marketing, in an email.
According to a January 2021 survey of U.S. creators by Mavrck, 85% said they use Instagram the most often to live stream, followed by Facebook (7%), and TikTok (4%). Less than 2% of respondents said Amazon Live was their main live stream platform.
For now, many brands would rather use static photos and traditional ad placements, instead of making a video or hiring someone to host a live stream, Segev said.
Melissa Ardavany, director of marketplace client services at Blue Wheel, echoes this. “Live is in the ‘test and learn’ phase,” she said, “It’s also not as mature as the ad placements clients are used to.”
Brands should instead look at Live as a long-term investment, especially if they want to be competitive for the holiday shopping season, or next Prime Day. “I understand that some brands see it as a new format,” said Moore. “Even so, being able to directly attribute revenue from a stream — that’s huge.”
Thinking about building a website? Keep these points in mind for sure-fire success.
Are you planning on creating a website? Here are a few things to consider before you get started.
If you’re thinking of growing your business, a website is a great tool to help you achieve that growth. Having a website allows you to showcase the products or services that your business offers. In addition, it can help your business build credibility and gain more customers.
For your website to become a success, a good amount of planning should take place beforehand. Even if you’ve hired someone to assist you, don’t sit back and relax! It’s important to take note of what your website should include.
1. Branding
Your website is a representation of your company. So, it is important to thoroughly consider its branding. Why? It’ll help attract visitors and contribute to your overall return on investment.
Thinking about branding throughout the entire development process is a surefire way to build a brilliant site.
The branding of a website includes the following:
Logo
Tone/Core Message
Colour Schemes
Design
Fonts
A logo plays a huge role in the identity of your business. Your company logo gives your work an identity that visitors can recognize. You can hire a graphic designer to create one for you.
Your website should carry out the core message of your business. Visitors should be able to quickly understand what you’re all about when they land on your page. It should have a consistent tone that connects to that core message.
The colour schemes, design, and fonts that you use in your website should complement the message and tone of your brand.
2. Usability
Customers are more likely to get drawn to your website if it’s easy to use. You can increase your website usability by including the following:
Navigation Menu
Headings and Labels
Search Bar
A Mobile-Friendly Website
Having a navigation menu gives your visitors an idea of what content is included in your website. Providing seamless navigation also allows your visitors to find the information they’re looking for more easily.
If your website is easy to use, visitors are more likely to spend more time browsing it. Including headings and labels allows your visitors to better understand your website’s content.
Depending on the context of your site, including a search bar can improve its usability. Visitors can simply search and find what they’re looking for instead of digging through your site not knowing if they’ll find it.
You must also make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Lots of people use their phones to browse the internet and having a mobile-friendly design will increase your credibility.
3. A Consistent Blog
An active blog on your website helps you keep your audience engaged. Your blog should provide helpful content to visitors. Producing regular content can increase traffic to your website and encourage users to spend more time on it.
In addition, having a consistent blog makes your website a trustworthy source of information. When people have questions, you’ll be the go-to!
4. Website Security
Security threats are a website’s worst enemy. Websites get hacked every day and it’s very important to ensure that your website is secure.
Hackers can use your website to infect visitors with malware. You don’t want to gamble on the risk of having your website’s infrastructure invaded. Luckily, you can protect your website through web application firewall services and server-side security tools.
5. A Solid SEO Strategy
Your website needs a good SEO strategy. For your website to be a success, it needs to be as visible as possible, and that’s exactly what SEO does for you. When potential visitors use search engines, they will most likely use keywords and terms that are linked to the content on your site.
Your job is to make sure that your website is optimized enough to appear on the results page. Even hitting the bottom of page one on Google can net you thousands of views a month.
6. Choose a Domain Name
Finding a personal domain name that you can be proud of is not easy. If you’re looking to create a website for your business, it only makes sense to use the same name for your website. However, if you are still searching for the perfect name, you might need to brainstorm a few ideas. A domain name is an opportunity for your website to gain brand recognition.
It is important to have a memorable domain name that resonates with your target demographic. Your website’s domain name can be used for your branding across all social media platforms, that way, it’s easier for people to find you.
7. Cost
Once you have considered all the above-mentioned factors, it’s time to think about the cost of creating your website. You have to ask yourself whether you are going to hire people to help you create your website or if you’re willing to work on your own. Creating a website could require you to hire people such as a web designer and a content writer for your blog.
However, you’re not doomed if you aren’t in a position to spend money on hiring people. There are several low-cost to zero-cost tools that you can use to help you create your website. For instance, you can use websites to help you create a logo for your business.
You Can Easily Build Your Website
Some websites do not need to be created from scratch. People often pay large amounts of money for a basic website. You don’t have to worry about the cost of hiring a web developer to help you build your site from the ground up. If you want to create a simple, quick website, you can build it using HTML templates. That way, you can cut costs while you witness your website come to life.
HTML templates act as a guide to help you build your website. The best part about using HTML templates is that you don’t need to have any HTML skills.
Omega enjoys using her writing skills to interpret the digital space. She describes herself as an art enthusiast who loves to explore. More From Omega Fumba
