Digital Marketing has multiple benefits, and an effective digital marketing plan can assist businesses in streamlining their business operations manifold. The internet has transformed the world into a global village, with approximately 67.5% of global internet users. Leveraging the internet for marketing strategies will produce tempting results for all business sizes. With a well-planned digital marketing plan, businesses can seamlessly reach out to their target audience all around the world.

A tailored and right digital marketing plan presents an opportunity to streamline the marketing operations and effectively use digital marketing channels to expand their consumer base and promote their services. So, this blog presents a roadmap to formulate a successful digital marketing plan for a business. It presents the advantages of the digital marketing industry and lays down a beginner’s guide to utilize it to your advantage.

Advantages of a Digital Marketing Plan

A highly structured digital marketing plan for action steers your business toward success with well-planned strategies. Implementing agile and calculated measures in your digital marketing plan will reap numerous benefits listed below.

1. Provides Industry Insights
2. Assists in Determining Business Goals
3. Steers Department Co-ordination
4. Improves Efficiency of the Business
5. Helps in Finalizing the Time and Budget Allocation
6. Get Acquainted With Your Target Audience
7. Increase your Return on Investment
8. Boost Your Productivity
9. Reformed Analytics and Optimization

A digital marketing plan will guide you to your goals and help you benefit from your business. Next, we will discuss the components of a marketing plan.

Digital marketing strategies aligned with one’s business goals guide toward the required goals. Now, let us dive into the guide to creating a digital marketing plan for businesses that will produce effective results and enhance operations.

Steps to Build a Successful Digital Marketing Plan

A well-planned digital marketing plan affirms a successful expansion of services digitally. Expanding your business using a suitable framework assists small companies in competing with large and established enterprises. Given below are steps that can help one attain desirable results.

Step 1: Define Your Business Goals

The growth of a business highly depends on the set goals and the measures taken to achieve them. A thorough analysis of your SMART framework that assists in formulating a business plan in a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely form while also aligned with your required business strategy formulates a profitable plan of action. Define your online value proposition while considering the 4 Ps of marketing- product, price, promotion, and place.

Furthermore, consistently defining goals and evaluating strategies helps businesses overcome stagnating barriers. Business owners can develop KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and adhere to a planned direction. Additionally, by following the RACE framework- react, act, convert, engage- business owners can analyze and adjust the marketing plan according to their needs.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience 

The primary aim of a digital marketing strategy is to build traffic and increase the global reach of a business. Identifying the customer persona of your target audience and catering to their needs is of utmost importance. You can identify your target audience by conducting thorough market research and analyzing potential competitors while also understanding the pain points and preferences of your client base. Formulating a content strategy that aligns with your audience’s preferences will give a head start to the marketing strategies. These plans include consistently monitoring analytics, market competitors, user feedback, customer behavior, and more.

Step 3: Choose the Right Digital Marketing Channels

After identifying their target audience, businessmen can employ digital marketing strategies for their business through popular channels such as social media platforms, content creation, pay-per-click marketing, email marketing, and more to utilize the benefits of the online ecosystem.

Additionally, smart budget allocation is also essential through paid search and social media advertising, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO marketing strategies ranging from high-performing channels to moderate budget allocation. Multiple digital channels that are used to increase the reach are listed below.

• Search Engine Optimization: SEO utilization assists businesses in increasing brand awareness. It helps recognize targeted keywords and attract the target audience. It aids in tracking, analyzing, and optimizing the online ranking of a business. 
• Email Marketing: Email marketing helps build a positive relationship with potential customers. Recognizing your consumer persona and producing a personalized email marketing strategy will ensure a positive impact on your business.
• Content Marketing: Promoting the brand and introducing new customers through informative content builds customer loyalty while providing readers with valuable assets and more. 
• PPC Marketing: The pay-per-click ad campaigns are known to yield better results when organic marketing campaigns are difficult to attain. It assists in increasing brand awareness. 
• Social Media Marketing: SM marketing requires a tailored strategy to attain performance-driven results leading to qualified lead generation. A well-structured social media plan assists in increasing business manifolds. 
• Video Marketing: The modern attention span can be attracted through video marketing. With high shareability and engagement prospects offered by the marketing strategy, this prospect increases the ROI of a business. 
• Online Reputation Mangement: ORM services are essential to maintain a loyal consumer base with the credibility offered by the business. A well-maintained online reputation yields high returns and is an effective marketing strategy. 

Step 4: Develop a Content Strategy

Developing a content strategy is essential while preparing a digital marketing plan. An effective order to follow while strategizing the content begins by planning the content with a website traffic estimator to identify high-potential topics, and reaching out to the target audience through inbound marketing and planned campaigns.

Planning content after reviewing consumer journeys using analytics such as Google Analytics, Semrush, and Meta Insights to inspect the best platform with the highest return on investment. Preparing valuable and engaging content and making personalized AI-driven content will bear successful outcomes.

Step 5: Implement Paid Advertising

There are multiple ways to generate traffic on your website. Some require monetary funding and are known as always-on marketing, which includes paid, earned, and owned strategies. The methods can be implemented after a strategic content creation of your business.

• Ad Words Campaigns by Google: Adwords is a product by Google that displays the banner of your business on the platform. It is feasible for all business sizes as it only charges money when there is any click on the banner. 
• Yahoo Advertisement Solutions: Yahoo advertisements are paid solutions for businesses with good ad budgets. The platform publishes ads on its homepage at the access of millions of search engine users. Therefore assisting in targeting region-based ads. 
• Social Media Campaigns: Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter) accommodate growing users worldwide. Social media Campaigns assist businesses in targeting a global audience. 

Furthermore, channeling retargeting strategies on the internet is another way of penetrating the cyberspace of a potential client. These are chosen by business owners to convert leads into customers by taking advantage of AI-powered advertisements. Modern AI technology has analyzed vast details and data and identified the patterns of the audience to predict user behavior. The retargeting process begins with the segmentation of the audience, followed by setting clear goals, testing, and then monitoring to adjust accordingly.

Step 6: Utilize Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the most effective digital marketing strategy with 63.9% of the world’s population on the internet. The best social media platforms for your online businesses are LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly called Twitter), and more.
Source:datareportal.com

Taking calculated steps for effectively leveraging the platforms, such as setting up the key performance indicators (KPIs), posting engaging content consistently on these platforms, utilizing the large proportion of the influencer market through PR and outreach, and finally, evaluating the strategies through multiple analysis tools to make data-driven decisions.

Employing social media marketing strategies in your digital marketing plan assists in increasing brand awareness, trust, and authenticity, promoting high revenue returns.

Wrapping Up

The modern business scenario presents monumental opportunities for new businesses to flourish and for traditional enterprises to expand their services by leveraging the benefits of the digital marketing plan. This blog covered the steps to create a widespread and successful marketing strategy that ensures thriving results. Utilizing the complete advantages of these marketing strategies, a businessman can boost their business manifold. You need a well-planned strategy to capitalize on and maximize the benefits of a good digital marketing plan. Consult market experts to provide an optimal digital transformation to your enterprise.

The post How To Create a Digital Marketing Plan For Online Business in 2026 appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

The good thing about having an eCommerce business is you can have tons of visits to your site—no matter the time or location. The bad thing about it is that turning those visits into actual sales can be much more difficult than doing so in a physical store. This is where conversion rate optimization plays a key role for your business.

The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of conversions/total number of visits. The definition of conversion may vary from web page to web page, but, ultimately, it is what you want users to do when they land on your page. It can be a download, a sign in, a subscription. But if we are talking about eCommerce, normally, what you’ll want them to do is buy. The bottom line is you should be able to keep track of this number because what cannot be measured, cannot be managed.

Conversion rate requires periodic maintenance, always trying to find the new way to improve too, eventually—and hopefully sooner rather than later—, optimize your marketing efforts. So, if your conversion rate is stocked, that’s a red light telling you should do something differently.

When these numbers are not as expected, you’ll probably find marketers and business leaders doing pirouettes and trying some crazy ideas to try to increase their conversion rate. Maybe resizing some buttons or adjusting the headers on your web page will remediate the situation temporarily, but it will be like putting a patch on a flat tire.

Suggested Read: Colors & Conversions of a Website have a Deep Connection

Before making any changes to your page, ask yourself this simple—but critical—question: Is your online reputation trustworthy?

Asking an Internet user for their personal and bank information requires an important amount of trust. To do this, you must be credible and reliable. Your brand and product should be trustworthy. People may want what you sell, but if they can’t trust you, they won’t buy from you.

And when your clients want to know if they can trust your business or not, you know who they are turning to? Online reviews.

That’s right. User reviews are changing the way businesses are done.  Here are some interesting stats you should know about that:

• 72% of internet users say they trust online reviews just as much as they would trust a relative or friend’s opinion.
• 61% of users say they’ve read online reviews before buying a product
• 63% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews
• 50 or more reviews per product can mean 4.6% increase in conversion rates

So, how can you increase your conversion rate and get those sales your business so badly wants? Take good care of what your online reviews say. They can eliminate the doubts potential customers may have about your product or service, which—if you learn how to swing it—can strengthen your business’ reputation online.

Quite simply, user reviews increase conversions. They come hand in hand. So, if you want to take those sales from your dreams to real life don’t forget to gather online reviews from your happy customers. It will add up to success!

The post Online Reviews Can Impact The Conversion Rate Of Your Online Store & Website appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

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Before buying, people compare. Before comparing, people judge.[/tweet_box]

Every webmaster wants to know “how to make a website sell more”, with 60+ hours of research and 14+ years of experience in the online marketing area, Diggiecorp has compiled this 101 actionable points to help you in engaging visitors, improving sales, and making the right impact. You should definitely diagnose your website against these 101 points. Enjoy the post…

On coming across a website for the first time, online users skim through it quickly, and if it doesn’t meet their expectations, it is abandoned within seconds. If losing your treasured customers due to this haste of seconds is your biggest nightmare then learn about the tips to make your website sell and play safer with Diggiecorp expert’s recommendations.

Your unique product or service will get a chance to impress only if the website leaves a positive impression. It seems unfair but unless you are a big name or the only supplier of the product/service, you will be judged by your website. And visitors judge whether your website is worth their time or not in just a few seconds.

So this post will teach you how to impress your visitors and generate more leads. The points that roll in this list will equip you with the jargon of optimizing a website to improve sales and increase online visibility. All you need to do is making an action in the given direction for witnessing a notable change in your conversions.

The First Impression should always be right

1. Organized website structure which includes a well-planned homepage as well as unique and custom design. Minimalist design without distracting backgrounds ensures the information reaches visitors seamlessly.

2. Other than going for readily available templates, go for a custom design that offers you a unique and distinctive look.

3. Adopt color psychology which aids in increasing the conversion rate of an online business.

4. Modular layouts that let content shine have the biggest impact on visitors.

5. Have a consistent style across your website. This makes it easy for the visitor to get accustomed to your website design.

6. Header sliders are a thing of the past. Nowadays it is prefered to use illustration in the header, 360 degree videos, animations and gifs which tell a story.

7. Use favicon and logo on every page of your website.

8. These days screen sizes vary across platforms, therefore it is advised to adopt a responsive design for your website.

Also Read: 10 super tips to build a user-friendly mobile website

9. A hero image is an ideal solution to immediately arrest a visitor’s attention and entice them to explore your site further.

10. Do not overstuff your website with content and graphics. Use a minimalist design and lighten up your website.

11. Avoid using unnecessary popups as they hinder user experience. Use them effectively.

12. Ensure there are no spelling mistakes, typographical errors, spacing or alignment issues.

13. Website loading speed should always be kept in check. If your website is slow to load then it will not only decrease user’s interest in your website but also affect your search engine rankings.

14. Picking up appropriate keywords will help reduce the bounce rate as only relevant traffic will visit your landing page.

15. Restrict the amount of information you display on the homepage and just highlight details like logo, tagline, services offered and USP.

16. Use scalable vector graphics (SVGs) for a responsive website.

17. Use skeleton screens to improve the speed of the UX.

18. Never use a splash screen for a website. It is only useful for mobile apps.

19. Do not use a registration or subscription popup at the doorstep of your website.

20. Auto-play audio and video are not recommended for a website.

21. Separate advertisement from the main content.

22. Do not display information on your website that is not yet available. Seeing a “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” is not advisable.

23. Ensure there are no 404 errors, broken image links and resolve any form of technical issue.

24. Conduct cross-browser testing and screen resolution testing before making any webpage live.

25. Replace your stock images as it prominently screams that “we are fake”. Put more authentic images instead or use a combination of stock and custom photography.

User-Friendly Architecture

26. If you publish large amount of content on a regular basis, then it is advised to use page hierarchy to organize your content. This helps users to find the content more easily.

27. In the menu bar, you should a mega menu with a responsive sub-navigation menu.

28. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and users can find the relevant information without any hassle.

29. You can use a vertical dot navigation style and one-page scrolls.

30. Do not waste your header image just to look pretty. Offer a CTA or link the image to an inner page.

31. Make sure that you always use breadcrumbs for navigation.

32. Offer the main value proposition within the first fold of your web page as 80% of users spend their time looking at the information above the page fold.

33. Provide a glimpse to the user that there is something below the first fold too, so that the visitor scrolls down and views the remaining content.

34. If you cater to a global user base speaking different languages, ensure that your website has options to be translated as per the target audience.

35. Instead of using old CAPTCHAs, get creative by using latest CAPTCHA trends which can be fun for your website visitors. This includes word and math solution, drag and drop, JQuery slider, etc.

36. Add a sitemap in the footer and site search option at the top.

37. Always ensure that the external links do not open in the same window.

38. Provide acknowledgment to the user after any type of successful conversion.

39. Keep the branding consistent throughout the website, like same font, color scheme and layout pattern.

40. Prefer pagination over infinite scrolling.

41. Design your website in accordance with user expectations, like clicking on the website logo takes user to homepage.

42. Make sure that the functionality of the back button is consistent across your website and does not break the navigation.

43. Avoid the automatic refresh of the content when the user is viewing a dynamic page. You can place a notification stating new content is available.

Conversion Path Optimization

44. Value-based exits – Offer more value when a visitor is trying to exit midway.

45. Focus more on enticing CTAs. Ensure that it creates anxiety and urgency, solves some problems and compels someone to stay on the website.

Must Read: How to create best CTAs that create more leads and sales

46. Use contrasting colors for the call to action buttons and test different shades to determine what works best for your website.

47. Include content and media that is persuasive.

48. Always keep your main heading and text towards the top left corner and your call to action towards bottom right

49. The checkout process ought to include minimum steps and minimal forms

50. If a user has left some conversion critical action midway to browse some other page, offer them a reminder to complete the process, but do not pester them.

51. Use arrows on your page as a directional cue to boost conversion

52. Always do a follow up on a user who left a process midway.

53. To control cart abandonment you can also offer deals on products added to the cart.

54. At the time of the checkout show the images of the product in cart.

55. Feature most selling and popular products on home page.

56. Your landing page should be dedicated to a single cause and should not have any outbound links.

57. Make your registration process quick, streamlined and hassle-free.

58. Pricing Structure should be carefully planned and should not seem overly expensive.

59. The price should be clearly indicated where necessary. You can also create a sense of urgency like limited time offer or n items are left in stock.

60. Ensure that your landing page offers the visitors all that has been promised.

61. Use high-quality product images on the product page.

62. Remove any form of distraction close to conversion funnel.

63. Offer recommendations in the form of suggested items or related products.

64. Physical addresses, contact number and tech support details should be clearly visible on the contact us page.

User Engagement

65. As more and more web pages are designed with border-to-border artwork in a single-column style, the content below the fold is more likely to be missed. Add arrows or other visual cues to encourage scrolling.

66. Principle of Reciprocity– Give away valuable resources related to your industry for free (example: a free eBook, a trial pack, etc.) so that the other person feels indebted and uses your services or refers you to someone else.

67. Have a limited number of tabs in the menu bar and incorporate nesting of menus.

68. Organize Webinars and other online events to discuss latest trends of your industry.

69. Make the content available on your website shareable across social media platforms.

70. Publish a blog on a regular basis to engage users through your content.

71. Stay active on Social Media websites to build a network.

72. Start a newsletter to update your subscribers about any new event, product launch or any useful update.

Give a human feel to your website

73. In the era of Chatbots and artificial intelligence, customers do look forward to get the answer to their questions with a personal touch.

74. Use “About Us” page to introduce mission, values and vision so that the visitors get to know more about your company.

75. Include a list of your employees and their credentials so that the visitors can see who is working behind the scene.

76. Ask your users to leave feedback or some suggestions.

77. Do not merely list all your offerings in a bunch of bullet points. Properly highlight how your product or service can solve a problem.

78. Users prefer to choose you if they like you over the competition. Ensure that you solve their queries in a timely manner, do not charge them unreasonably, and make them feel important.

79. Keep your comments section moderated to avoid spam or irrelevant comments.

Trust building elements

80. Show your availability on various social media platforms. Highlight your accounts on your website.

81. Showcase your company culture to your potential clients.

82. Use guarantees, risk reversal mechanisms for garnering trust.

83. Talk about awards, accolades and recognitions entrusted upon you on your homepage

84. Include case studies/stories of your work with your past clients. Highlight list of your clients, past works in the form of a portfolio, or live demo of a product.

85. Showcase what neutral third parties (authoritative sources like news publishers, influential blogs) have to say about your work.

86. Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, contract details, shipping policy, return policy, etc. should be transparent and clearly mentioned on your website.

87. Always highlight why you need particular information, when requesting it from the visitor.

88. Use testimonials from past customers and place them right before your CTAs. This is highly helpful in increasing conversion rate.

89. Secure your checkout pages and display security icons/signs on them.

Content Relevance and Presentation

90. Have a dedicated page to address user queries and FAQs.

91. Clean the cobwebs on your website. Refresh your look and content from time to time.

92. The content on your website should be original, plagiarism-free and should focus on your target audience.

93. Use hand-drawn annotations, which always commands attention.

94. Use visual aids and statistics to support your content.

Also Read: What makes visual content so critical for a website

95. To improve readability, use the same alignment consistently across the page.

96. Use interesting headings, sub-headings, and fonts to draw attention to your content and make it easier for the reader to scan through the page quickly.

97. For an eCommerce website, there ought to be a proper visitor and product segmentation.

98. Give your visitors a reason to buy from you via competitive positioning or USP.

99. Clearly tell your customers how you are better than the competition by highlighting the solutions you provide for a given problem.

100. Your webpage should highlight all the information that is crucial to the visitor.

101. Highlight a clear breakup of the difference between various packages offered, highlighting which package offers what.

Bonus point

Add fun elements: People remember how you make them feel, if we make them smile by including some fun elements on website. They will always remember the website and bounce rate can also be reduced.

With this checklist of 101 actionable points by Diggiecorp, now you definitely know the answer to this mystic question ” how to make your website sell “.

We know it has been a long post but there is still one important lesson left. There are various not-so-good-looking websites that are doing great in the web zone. Craiglist surely is a good example.

To stay updated on professional insights and industry best practices, it would be helpful if you subscribe to the following: Conversion-Rate-Experts, ConversionXL, Marketo, Moz & Diggiecorp Their blogs are a great resource to learn more about conversion optimization and internet marketing.

Also Read: Actionable Strategies To Increase Blog Traffic

For making a lasting impact, it is important to keep in mind visual as well as functional aspects. While undertaking design and development work for our clients, we always keep the above points in mind to ensure real business benefits. These tips to make your website sell will certainly save a lot of your time on research and will directly give you a well thought out action plan to implement.

If you have anything to share with us don’t forget to make use of our comments section. Your comments and feedback are valuable to us.

The post 101 Actionable Best Tips: How To Make Your Website Sell appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

The 90-second rule for conversion

Once prospective customers reach your landing page, you have 90 seconds to convert them.

When you have so much less time to entice a user, it becomes paramount that you come out with all guns blazing. You need to put your best effort to ensure that the conversion rate of your website is high. And believe it or not, the colors you use on your website play a major role in it.

Do colors really have an effect on humans?

Why is that a brand associated with health or peace mostly chooses green as their primary color? Why is that a brand catering specifically to females use chic colors like pink or purple as their primary colors? Studies have shown that a color increases brand recognition by 80%. For example, if I ask, which brand comes to your mind when I say “RED”, your answer probably will be Coca-Cola. Likewise, if you ask any teenager, which brand comes to mind when they hear “GREEN”, their answer probably will be Spotify.   Such is the effect of colors on humans. In addition to this, there are several other factors like:

• Color accounts for 85% of the reason why you purchased a specific product.
• Because we process images 60,000 times faster than text, colors play a persuasive physiological effect on our brains.

Ecommerce companies can also alter their sales by adopting a color that appeals to their targeted marketplace because:

• 52% of the shoppers do not return to a shopping website because they do not like the overall aesthetics of the website.
• 42% of the shoppers base their opinion of a website on the color and design alone.

Therefore, if the primary color used on your ecommerce store does not appeal to the visitor, there is a huge probability of that visitor not returning to your website.

As discussed above, colors affect user’s emotion and by leveraging this you can easily draw their attention, hence increasing the conversion rate of the website itself. The bottom line is that color plays a major role in developing a perception of prospective customers about a specific brand.

So, the real question is how to make colors a high point of  customer-experience and marketing ?

Also Read: 15 Tips to Design a Perfect Contact Form

How to decide which color your brand should choose?

When you are discussing with a website designer, the overall design of your website, the color is probably the last thing on your mind. However, the fact remains that it is probably the most powerful thing that can result in success and failure of your website. Moreover, you often tend to go for the colors, which appeal to you yourself. Have you ever done a research on your target audience, trying to find which color will help your online business the most?

The above image is better known as Robert Plutchik’s famous “wheel of emotions”. It illustrates how variant shades of some colors correspond to variant emotional states. It is often used as a benchmark for determining which color would be best suited for a website. Tools like color-wheel of Canva can also be used to find out what colors go well together and generate the perfect color schemes for your website. In addition to that, you should also do a market analysis of which color properly denotes your sector. For example, if you are in food tech then it is best you choose a shade of red.

Where Should You Use Color?

Mere understanding, which color theme your website should adopt will not suffice. One has to analyze and use colors systematically to ensure optimal results. This brings us to the next big question; why should you use the colors. As we are talking about the color scheme of a website, we need to take cognizance of several aspects like hero graphics, headline, borders, backgrounds, buttons, and popups.

The 60-30-10 rule of Colors

Proper use of colors focuses on four crucial principals, the right way, right time, right audience and right purpose. So to create the best impact, use a combination of three colors and apply 60-30-10 rule.

• The primary color should cover about 60 percent of the total space and encompass a unifying theme of the design.
• You should use 30% of the space with secondary color to create some contrast.
• Finally, the 10 percent of the space should be used by accent color to provide the final touch of elegance.

Useful color tips to increase conversion rate

• Use colors based on gender specifics – If you cater primarily to a specific gender base, it helps if you pick colors that are liked by that particular gender. Studies have shown that women generally like blue, purple and green color while men prefer blue, green and black.

• Use blue color to garner trust – Blue is a color that most people associate with trust, peace, and loyalty. This is why it is one of the most widely used colors among businesses. The biggest social network Facebook uses Blue and so does Twitter. Even PayPal whose whole business works around trust and security uses blue as a primary color.

• Yellow for capturing user attention – Most of the people are ignorant of the fact that yellow color is mostly used for warnings. However, many brands think that it is a color of joy and happiness. As Yellow stimulates the brains excitement center, it is best to use it for garnering the attention of the user.

• Green is suitable for environmental products – This is a no-brainer. Most of the ecological companies use green as their primary color as it is a chromatic symbol of nature itself. Another aspect is that people generally tend to click on the green button more often than any other color. Therefore, it is advisable to use green on CTA buttons.

• Black color adds sense of exclusivity and luxury – According to color psychology, the darker the color more elegant and sophisticated it seems. This is why black is often stated as a timeless color.  Most of the luxury brands use black as their primary color. Even Uber named its luxury cab service as Uber black.

• Red color has a unique pull – Most food tech companies use the color red as it associates with hot and also makes you hungry. This is why big brands like KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King use red in their logo.

• Avoid just using black and white – Black and white is a forgettable color combination. Therefore, if a website just has black text on white page, most probably readers will not remember it for long.

• Use bright colors for CTAs – Studies have shown that the highest converting colors correspond to Red, Green, Orange and Yellow. On the other hand, darker colors like Black, Dark gray and Brown have very low conversion rate. The biggest retailer in the world, “Amazon” uses Bright Yellow as “add to cart” button.

• Do not neglect white – While analyzing color psychology we fail to address one color which is most widely used in a website. White is one color used by every website. However, many color theorists do not count white as a color. Irrespective of that, one must use white space as a powerful design feature. One such example is the most popular website across the globe, “Google”. Nowadays many websites use plenty of white space to denote a sense of spaciousness and breathability.

Conclusion

There are colors all around us. When we say grass, the color that comes to our mind is green. The same is applicable vice versa too. Working on the same psychology, big brands, and online businesses have started to focus on colors in order to build a connection with their audience. This not only helps increase the trust factor but also results in better conversion rate.

An appealing and revenue generating website is the upshot of rigorous analysis and user focused design. If you are not able to generate expected revenue from it, chances are it lacks on both the fronts.

The post Colors & Conversions of a Website have a Deep Connection appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

But, is the structure of your blog and elements present in it helping readers to go through your posts smoothly?

Here are the best practices to improve the UX of your blog to allow readers to go through your posts easily; therefore, to improve its engagement rate and get more social shares.

Blog homepage – Provide a helpful signage

Most of the time readers land on your post following its link shared over the web. But a few readers arrive on it only after first coming to your website or blog homepage. It is crucial that you don’t overlook this factor, and work on improving the homepage of your blog.

The blog homepage must have an intuitive layout & navigation, and should be designed in such a manner that effortlessly directs visitors to the post page. Few techniques that most successful blogger practice to engage visitors on their blog include:

1. A featured image depicting the topic of the post in a clear & concise manner, and is also visually appealing
2. Counter for number of views & comments to highlight the engagement on the post
3. Create a unique excerpt summarizing your post to engage visitors so that they can have a better idea what the post is about

Although the above-mentioned practices are widely accepted in the blogger community, it is okay to come up with something new, but only if you are sure that it has a chance to work.

For example, marketing blog QuickSprout’s homepage displays post in a slightly different way. They use the introductory part of the post as the excerpt so that users get engaged with the post even before reaching the post page.

Separate and sticky top navigation

Plan a separate navigation bar for your blog to make visitors feel that they are on an entirely different section of your page. A dedicated navigation bar will also allow users to navigate through your blog easily, therefore, improve its engagement rate.

If your blog has many categories, put on the most popular ones on the navigation bar. Make a provision to keep the navigation bar always on the top as users scroll down the page. In technical language, make it a sticky navigation bar.

Additionally, also place a link back to the main website on your blog so that visitors don’t need to manually enter the URL to visit back your website.

Smaller visual span – Make it easy for eyes

Keep the view span of your blog somewhere between 650-750px to minimize the eye movement.

Don’t break the neck of your readers by making them move from one end to another to read every line on your blog. Keep the post span between the aforementioned limits, so that readers can read lines with the minimal eyeball movement. This, in long terms, will also improve your blog’s average stay time per visitor.

Keep paragraphs short and crisp

It takes a lot of effort to read big paragraphs even if they are very informative. Long paragraphs give readers a feeling that the post is a never-ending read; therefore, it becomes probable that they might lose interest somewhere in the middle of the post.

Ideally, a paragraph should consist of only 3 to 4 lines. Anything longer than this would require a lot of concentration from the readers’ end.

Don’t force readers to try too hard just to read your post. Keep paragraphs short, give readers pit stops to visualize things, and allow them to connect well with the post content.

Quick tip: Using bullet points to explain the process, benefits, features, etc. can do wonders.

Always go black-on-white

When it comes to the background color of your post, never-ever do any experiments. It should be white, always white. And the font color should be black (or a darker shade of gray) as it appears very clear on the white background, therefore, improve the readability of your blog.

Also, avoid using fancy fonts or too small font size for that matter, as it can adversely affect readability.

Don’t date a post

If you write posts on tips and how-to topics to educate your readers, then in most cases, that piece of content is meant to be evergreen. Adding date to it will make your post look outdated even if you update your posts on regular basis.

Two ways out of the date thing:

1. Do not allow the date to show with the post and in the URL.

2. Or if you think adding a date is important, try not to highlight it much. And if you regularly update your blog, keep a counter that automatically updates the date to the last time you updated its content.

This will tell readers that you regularly update your posts, therefore, chances are good that readers will come time & again to your blog.

Spread it with social sharing icons

A good post deserves to be spread across different social networks. And to make sure that it happens, you need to place social media sharing icons with your post.

Choose social media networks, where you want your post to be shared, wisely, and according to your audience.

Social media sharing icons should always remain visible to readers, so that your post can be shared whenever a reader feels like.

Tell your programmer that icons should stick to a place when scrolling down; also make sure that it doesn’t obstruct the post content view.

Let’s sprinkle some icing sugar on the cake:

1. Make a provision to show the total number of shares for the post like ConversionXL do. This will act as a social proof for the readers.

2. Make sure when someone tweets your post, your Twitter handle is displayed along with it. This will help you to easily track re-tweets and will also ensure that you get credit for your work.

Discuss this with your programmers and suggest that changes are required in settings of the plugin used for social sharing.

3. Let readers tweet a quote or a line from your post.

Don’t let the interest die

To keep the post engaging throughout its length, you should always maintain the balance between text and visual content. If you are giving tips, explaining a topic, giving your thoughts on a strategy, then it is possible that the post may go up to 1800-2000 words.

Keeping readers engaged on a long post requires including of following types of visual content:

• Screenshots
• Vines
• Memes
• Gifs
• Infographics
• Videos
• Quotes
• Tweets
• Stats
• Graphs

Do not try to add all of the above mentioned visuals in your post as it may affect the loading speed of your page. Here are a couple of tips in this regard:

• Always add optimized images and other visuals without compromising on quality.
• Always measure your page load speed using this tool.

Add estimated reading time

Your headline triggers the interest of your readers. Telling them right away the estimated reading time of your post can improve its engagement factor considerably.

Adding estimated reading time also improves the bounce rate. Always keep in mind that your readers’ time is important, therefore, make it a habit to always add time at the top of your post. Also, remember that adding estimated reading time only makes sense when it is for text only, not for post with lots of visual content.

Note: Add estimated reading time only if you think your post will take about 6-8 minutes to read. If the post will take more than that, mentioning time may have the opposite impact and discourage readers to read your post in the first place.

Insert CTAs smartly

Ask yourself: ‘Why do I have a blog?’

Answer might be: ‘To educate people.’

But that’s not true all the times. When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients.

[tweet_box design=”box_12_at” float=”none” author=”@Diggiecorp_tech” pic_url=”https://www.diggiecorp.com/fab/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/UX-of-Blog.png”]When you have a company blog, besides educating people, you also need to generate leads and convert them into clients[/tweet_box]

Therefore, it is also important to allow readers to learn about your services & products. To make it happen, practice following:

• Do internal linking in your posts
• Insert CTA-AB (Call-to-action –Action button) i.e. a statement that recognizes the pain-point or need of readers, plus the action button that takes visitors to a service/product/contact page.

Some CTA tips and etiquettes:

• Do not over stuff your post with CTAs and internal links
• Make sure you are adding relevant CTAs to the post and placing them at appropriate places

• Utilize your side panel and add a sticky graphical CTA which always remains visible to readers
• Add an exclusive CTA with benefits, social proofs, and offers at the end of the post

Don’t leave reader on a dead end

You did an extensive research and came up with an informative article; but don’t do the mistake of neglecting the end, otherwise, all your effort to engage readers may go in vain.

Deploy the following tactics towards the end:

Add a conclusion
A great article starts with a great title and ends with a great conclusion. No matter how engaging your entire article is, if you fail to add a conclusion in the end, it would be a purposeless piece of content; and your readers will go away without doing any further activity on your blog.

The conclusion should be short and a sum-up of all the main points of the post. Not only will it improve the engagement rate of your blog but will also motivate readers to take further actions.

Ask a question
Ending conclusion with a question is also a great way to motivate readers to take part in commenting.

Your post ends here…

Let’s talk about some more engagement tactics which are not the part of your post but play a great role in engaging readers.

Comments section

Now it’s time for the readers to ask their questions or answer the questions asked (by author) at the end of the post.

After going through a post, readers may have some queries which they want to ask. So, it is reader’s turn first. Comment form should appear on the top of the comments section.

On few blogs, comment submission form comes after all the comments. On a blog which receives hundreds of comments, such a practice is discouraging for readers, as they will have to scroll down a lot just to find the comment form.

Additionally, try to respond to all the comments from your readers. This will enable you to build a relationship with your readers, as well as encourage readers to comment on your future posts.

Send readers to other posts

Your readers are hungry for information, so feed them with more content. Here are few techniques you can try out:

• Highlight related posts (or previous & next post) below the comment section

• Place quick links for recent/trending/ popular posts in the right panel of the blog
• Highlight relevant categories and tags in the right panel to allow users to find related content easily

Conclusion – Provide better experience to improve engagement and trustworthiness

If you succeed to provide a better user experience and engage readers on your blog, you will automatically succeed in improving your brand value. And an improved brand value will help you achieve overall business success.

Let’s go through above-mentioned practices for improving the UX and engagement on your blog once again:

• Improve blog homepage to drive readers to post page
• Plan a separate and sticky top navigation for your blog
• Keep smaller visual span on post page
• Keep paragraphs short and crisp
• Always go for black font on white background
• Avoid placing date with a post (or place them smartly)
• Place sticky social media sharing icons
• Add visual content to keep interest alive
• Add estimated reading time (Not for blogs with extra-long posts)
• Insert call-to-actions to keep readers to allow readers to take further steps
• Don’t leave readers on a dead end

Are there any other ways to improve the UX and engagement on a blog? Please suggest in the comments.

The post How to improve User Experience of your blog to get maximum shares appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

After reading this blog post, you will be able to generate higher sales from the same amount of website traffic. Here are some checkout-process optimization points that will boost online sales without spending a marketing penny:

Be transparent about shipping details

A major reason of shopping cart abandonment is that users are updated about shipping charges at the last step. To avoid last moment loss of sales, maintain transparency in shipping options and charges based on area of delivery, date of delivery etc. Update shoppers about the shipping cost before checkout process. This will build trust in the minds of shoppers and increases conversion prospects in checkout process.

This is critical for online stores with multiple vendors having different shipping policies, charges, speed of delivery etc. Making such small changes in checkout process will help boost conversions.

Inform about product stock-out in advance

Online shopping may be convenient but browsing through product pages to find what you like is exhausting. Thus, no one likes to see a product stock-out popup after order placement and payment. Be very clear on your website about remaining stock for all products, sizes, colors, configurations, etc.

Products saved in abandoned carts and wish-lists must be automatically removed when they stock out. When stocks are limited, an item must be added back to the stock after a pre-set time period to avoid getting blocked in abandoned carts. Not doing this can lead to lost sales.

Well now let us dig deep into the first and most important reason of abandoned shopping carts: Annoying Checkout Process.

Use social login and guest checkout

Online shopping drives majority of its revenue from impulse shoppers. Such shoppers especially do not wish to spend a lot of time registering on every online store. Neither do they want their emails to be bombarded with promotional mails. So, as an online shopping store owner, you need to make the registration process as effortless as possible.

• Allow login through social profiles – With social login feature, shopper does not have to fill in basic details and remember a new password.

• Provide the option of guest checkout – It makes the checkout process quick, convenient and hassle free.

Chumbak has done a great job with this page. The page is very neat and all login options are clearly stated. Optimize your checkout process in such a way to improve store sales.

Clearly state checkout process

Online shopping must be synonymous with convenience shopping. Your website plays a major role in making that happen. A customer who plans to buy from you deserves to know how long it will take to place the order and how many steps are involved. In addition to an optimized product catalog and simple registration process, you must clearly display the steps involved in the checkout; just like TrendIn has done:

PropShop24.in also tried implementing something similar but ended up stuffing too much information in their checkout page. There is nothing technically wrong with it; it just ends up leaving little space to breathe.

To test what works better with your website visitors, track user behavior for multiple versions of your webpage through Google Analytics. Use data related to Bounce Rate, Exit Rate and Time on Page to get a better understanding of what needs to be tweaked with your website’s checkout process.

Limit Navigation

When the shopper is adding products to shopping cart, you can provide shopping suggestions to up-sell or cross-sell. But once a visitor starts the checkout process, limit navigation options. Do not keep your top navigation and footer active.

However, don’t freeze the navigation completely. Just limit options to go back. Provide an option to visit the product catalog and home page. Allow shoppers to contact customer care to clarify any last moment doubts without giving strong visual clues.

Allow easy updation of checkout details

At every step, a shopper must be able to see what information has already been submitted by him. He must also have the option to go back to a previous stage and change the information already input by him. Flipkart does this beautifully.

Following points will certainly come handy to optimize checkout process for better sales;

• Effective CTAs must prompt him to edit incorrect information.
• A visitor must not be forced to use the browser’s back button
• The checkout process must not start from the very beginning if a visitor goes back to edit details.
• All important information like shipping address, contact details, etc must be stored automatically in user dashboard for subscribed users. In case of repeat purchase, there must be an option to pick up pre-stored information.

Optimize conversion forms

Valued of registered users cannot be ignored even if you offer guest checkout option. Increase the number of registered users by making the registration process simple and quick. Jabong is using an effective pop up as a registration form;

• The form is compact and clean.
• It does not ask for redundant information.
• There are no unnecessary details.
• It doesn’t freeze the website.
• There is a social media login option too.
• There is a preselected option for the company newsletter.
• Monetary benefit in exchange of signup for new visitors.

What Jabong did with a small popup, Zappos failed to accomplish with a full-fledged page. Its registration page is cluttered with company credentials, multiple newsletter options, terms and conditions, and what not.

The shipping information and payment details collection forms must also be planned on similar lines. Optimize your website’s conversion forms with these points;

• The city and state must be auto filled once the pin code has been filled in.
• You must not have multiple columns to fill in the address asking for street name, nearby landmark, etc.
• There must be transparency of charges for payment options like cash on delivery.

Add trust building elements

Include client testimonials, security badges, payment options, return policy, and customer support visuals to increase conversion prospects. Even if a user is not looking for this information, such elements build trust and give shopper another reason to purchase. Where and how you place these elements is also crucial. ModCloth has placed them in the page header and just near the checkout button.

Add information to your checkout pages that answer buyer’s doubts. This is particularly important to boost conversions of a checkout process when the product/service being sold is of a high value. Apple includes an FAQ section under its checkout page. All these are successful examples of optimizing a website’s conversion funnel.

Utilize thank you page

A user who reaches the Thank You page and leaves your website is also a loss of future conversions. Such a visitor can become a repeat buyer if provided with right options.

• Suggest your customer to buy complimentary or related products or services. Make them available at a discounted price for a limited time period.
• Ask them to fill out a survey about their shopping experience. In return award them with a discount on their next purchase.
• Request buyer to share the news of recent purchase with friends in exchange of a referral discount on next purchase.
• Make your return policy very transparent to avoid any last moment cancellations.

Evaluate your website’s checkout process for above mentioned points to sell more from the same amount of traffic. If your checkout process is fine but your website sales are still low as compared to incoming traffic, there might be other issues with the conversion funnel.

The point is you don’t need to invest in marketing and advertising to increase online sales. Simple website upgrades can do the trick.

Do you have something to ask? Share your questions in the comment section and our experts will answer!

The post How To Optimize Your Store’s Checkout Process to Boost Online Sales and Conversions? appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

Search Engine Optimization:

1. Relevant Keywords optimization of content

If you have a tight marketing budget then you cannot rely only on online advertising and offline sales team to generate all the traffic for you. You need to enable your website to generate the right kind of traffic that will stay and buy from you. For that optimizing your webpage content and architecture for the most relevant keywords is very important.  Plus all the content that you generate for brand building, knowledge sharing and marketing communication, both on-site and off-site, must also be keyword optimized. You can choose multiple tools to find the relevant keywords and search queries eg.

• Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/)
• Google Auto Complete Suggestions
• Terms used by people in related discussion forums
• Ubersuggest (http://ubersuggest.org/)

 2. Diverse Content Production

Invest in diverse content production and content marketing. Generate content specifically according to the people who will be buying your product/service and market it to them. Don’t just start blogging about topics that your competitors are already talking about. Find your niche and stick to it. Your customers should know exactly what you specialize in. In the year 2014, people are already exposed to too much content. To prevent your company from looking like a “me too”, produce diverse content like:

• Slideshows to target the executives and share them on platforms like Linkedin, SlideShare, Google+, etc.
• Make videos about your work culture, processes, and quality assurance procedures to connect with your audience through YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc.
• Interesting graphics, creative and informative infographic designs that share valuable data, etc through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr.  You can use free tools like Piktochart (http://piktochart.com/) and Canva (https://www.canva.com/) to design these graphics.
• Conduct Webinars with industry experts on Google Hangout to get some instant visibility.

Sharing your content on external platforms will improve your company’s overall online presence and help in building these platforms as a constant source of traffic. If your content is worth reading and sharing, it will become a recurring source of traffic for your website. Hence, your content is helping you increase targeted website traffic at an affordable cost.

Also Read: How to increase an online store’s traffic in 60 days [Case Study].

3. Try improving domain Authority

Try guest blogging on relevant, high authority domains. Such blogs rank well on search engines, have a good subscriber base, generate relevant traffic and have an established social network that you might not have. So try earning a valuable back-link by sharing your content through such blogs and divert traffic to your website’s marketing pages. It will help you improve your website’s domain authority and improve your website’s overall search engine ranking.

Ever since unethical link building has been penalized by Google, everyone is looking for guest blogs where they can share their content at low cost; hence giving rise to loosely moderated low-quality blogs. Don’t “buy” free website traffic when you can get it yourself.  Rather establish multiple FREE high authority blogs on Weebly, WordPress, Quora, LinkedIn, etc, share informative content and divert traffic to your main website. Diggiecorp’s SEO team advises online marketers to adopt this technique to avoid a future penalty.

4. Optimize for location specific searches

If you are an offline business, register your business details and website in relevant directories, classifieds and portals. Every country has its own popular classifieds and yellow pages that list businesses. There are some databases that also list similar online businesses. These act as specialized search engines and send traffic your way. Try to share multiple locations where your service are available, business details, contact information, website URL and customer reviews, etc.

You will need a dedicated team to constantly generate content, optimize it for search engines and promote it.
Hire an SEO team at affordable prices

Increase Referral Traffic:

5. Strategic business alliances

Tie up with complementary service providers to make them act as referral sources.  The travel industry has been capitalizing on this for quite some time and you can do it too. When you buy a holiday tour package it usually includes some hotel reservations. This very hotel is “recommended” by the online travel agent, because it’s basically a strategic tie-up. Similarly, you can try to explore options where you can partner with websites and establish referral programs. They can act as your affiliates and send traffic, mature leads and business your way. This will help you limit your expenditure on online marketing and sales team maintenance in exchange for a pre-decided commission.

Adaumont Farm acts as an affiliate for selected caterers (http://adaumontfarm.com/vendors.html) and helps generate traffic for their respective websites.

 6. Promote referral programs

Businesses can also promote a social referral program through their website. Here existing customers can be promised attractive discounts on their next purchase or some freebies every time they share updates about the company with their network. It can be executed by sending mails or asking their friends to join through social media platforms. These referrals tend to perform better than advertising to the masses.

Try Increasing Repeat Visits:

7.  Give Incentive for Repeat Purchase

The probability of making a sale to your existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new visitor is 5-20% and it even costs 5 times higher.

People feel that the online marketplace is highly price sensitive but there are some people who are brand loyal because they trust very limited service providers for genuine products and timely delivery.  Diggiecorp advises marketers to maintain a proper database and find out who their loyal customers are. Reward your loyal customers and give them an incentive for repeat purchase (eg. a discount on next purchase, loyalty points which can be redeemed, etc). This can turn out to be the most inexpensive way to increase website traffic, and sales.

Betabrand (http://www.betabrand.com/modelcitizen) is doing a great job at promoting repeat purchases. They are engaging their customers by asking them to upload pictures of themselves wearing what they bought from Betabrand (+getting user generated content for FREE). In return, they are not just giving a discount but adding an element of urgency by putting a time limit of 24 hours on the offer.

8. Use retargeting effectively

Adroll (http://www.adroll.com/retargeting) – a popular retargeting solution says that approx 2% of visitors buy/ subscribe on their first visit to an online store. Effective retargeting techniques bring can help make the remaining 98% revisit your website. A repeat visitor has higher probability of buying than a new visitor, because he already knows what you have to offer.

Retargeting tracks the people who visit your site with the help of cookies and displays your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online. These are basically the ads that follow you around. Use efficient filters to choose who will be a part of your retargeting ad campaign to save on the expenditure.

If you do not wish to use paid ads, you can also use email marketing by sending your subscribed users details of the products that they almost bought. Just hire an expert developer to program your website for retargeting. You will also need specialized landing pages to get the maximum returns from retargeting ad or email campaigns.

9. Increase your subscribed user base

Try to increase your subscribed user base in order to increase repeat visits. The subscribed users will constantly get updates about new product launches, latest offers, your blog content, and PR activities.  When used effectively, this can turn out to be one of the most affordable ways to get repeat traffic and more customers.

It is also easier to maintain a close relationship with your subscriber base than with the audience at large. Such visitors are more probable of coming back to your website. Just make sure of the following things when you try to expand your subscriber base:

• Do not force opt-ins.
• Do not use irritating pop-ups that completely freeze the website.
• Do not force people to subscribe just because they wish to buy from you. Allow guest checkouts.
• Do not spam their mailboxes with excessive emails.

You do not just need a website but efficient marketing to generate regular traffic for your website.
View Diggiecorp’s online marketing services

Relationship building:

10. Social Media Marketing

If you want to connect with your target audience, you or your social media marketing team needs to stay active on all social platforms where they are active. This might not get you direct sales but can act as a recurring source of free traffic. Share your content and the latest updates with them. If you have limited manpower, improve your presence on only relevant social media platforms. Speak the language of the targeted platform and share only platform relevant content. People do not wish to see you sharing professional slideshows on Twitter and funny graphics on LinkedIn.

11. Initiate discussions

Take part in discussion forums and communities where your target customer segment is active. This is one of the very old, tried and tested way to increase website traffic and customer base at a fair cost. Share your valuable insights in your industry related discussions, share your content links and service page links wherever you feel is relevant and permitted. Such participation in discussions makes you more accessible and increases your company’s visibility.

Usually a lot of companies start writing promotional content in discussion forums and populating them with links, which is a big no-no. If someone finds your comment useful, they are naturally bound to tracing you back to your company website. Ask your employees to take part in discussions through their personal profiles as people prefer talking to other people rather than companies.

12. Give away something for free

Giving something free to your customers gives you instant acceptance and brings you one step closer to your customers. Companies launching a new or lesser known service/product must come out with a limited period demo or trial version to make new people try it. Something given out for free gets shared frequently through positive word of mouth, gets talking about in guest blogs and is more often shared through social media platforms. All these act as multiple sources of free traffic. You can also give out free ebooks, guides, etc. for download to your customers which carry valuable insights about your product/service/industry and can be helpful to your customers. In return you can ask for a subscription to your newsletter.

We hope that these tips will help you kickstart your online business and start generating traffic for it at almost negligible costs. If you feel that you have a great product but do not have the time and expertise to market it, it is advisable to hire professionals for the task.

What other techniques you use to generate FREE traffic for your website?

Hire professional marketers to generate multiple sources of recurring traffic for your website.
Get a FREE quote from Diggiecorp

The post Learn Targeted Traffic Hacking to Acquire More Customers at a Low Cost appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

Call to Action is undoubtedly the most important part of your website when it comes to driving traffic to sales funnel and increasing conversion rate. A well-planned & designed CTA seamlessly directs users to take actions, desirable for your business, which automatically results into a better conversion rate.

If you are using common text on your CTA buttons such as “Click here”, “Buy now” or “View more”, etc., then it is time to revise. A common, poorly placed, and boring CTA will not grab user’s attention. Such call to action practices contribute nothing or very little to your company.

Having strong & relevant CTAs on your website, which tell users what exactly they will get by performing a certain action, is the key for creating better engagement & improve conversion – whether it is signups, views, subscription, or sales.

Here in this article, we will uncover different factors that make a Call to Action work with examples, so that your business can bring out the most of its website.

1. Choose your words carefully

After introducing product or service, most online business owners want visitors to fill form, register or purchase directly. Your call to action, however, will achieve any of the mentioned goals only if planned with due diligence. Like mentioned before, a boring button saying ‘Click here’, ‘Learn more’ or ‘Submit’ is not going to help with your goals.

The first example you see here uses a reference to a past success story and urges the prospective customers to contact the company. Use of concrete numbers, case studies etc in the copy of your call to action garners trust and makes an effective ‘call’ asking immediate ‘action.’

Being a little creative in your call to action can also help in building a relationship with website visitors. If you take up a conversational tone like online fashion store ModCloth, it can easily take the visitor to the next step without you sounding pushy. Connecting with an experienced Call to Action optimization services provider can help in implementing these CTA strategies effectively.

2. Start your CTA with a verb

In the English language, we read from left to right, the verb and subjects in a sentence help us in quickly comprehending the meaning of the entire sentence. It is very important to acknowledge these facts when crafting your call to action. When a visitor reaches a website his attention is very elusive.

Your visitors are not going to take any action until you tell them to. They will randomly click here and there; read an entire blog post and not share it; read your product details and not buy unless you ASK them to do so. The same rule applies when you plan the copy of your PPC ad. An ad for Google AdWords might not have a clickable button, but to invite more clicks, it is important to have a CTA. Use verbs in the beginning of your copy to generate response:

• Download your Free ebook
• Refer a Friend
• View Packages
• Contact us now
• Share with your friends
• Add to cart

A study done by Dan Zarrella on over 20,000 tweets sharing a link showed the following results:

So the next time you tweet or share a link on your Facebook wall, ask your friends and followers to ‘retweet’, ‘share’, ‘Click’ and ‘like’ for better results.

3. Add some trust building elements

People are generally skeptical about registering or subscribing online because they fear it will leave them with an inbox full of spam or a lengthy form full of questions they do not plan on answering. Sometimes the copy of a call to action is so vague that it leaves the visitor confused about what lies on the next step. All these factors add on to an ineffective CTA. To clear ambiguity from the minds of website visitors, add some trust building elements. Here is an example;

Sharing customer reviews just below the ‘buy now’ button helps online shopping stores quicken the buying decision. Similarly, sharing testimonials from satisfied customers about your service helps build trust. If you haven’t yet launched your business but wish to start marketing it, you will have a hard time convincing people about the quality of your product or service. Here is an example of someone doing that effectively:

Also Read: 101 things that might be driving website visitors away

4. Use the Whitespace smartly; but first, do use it

Copy, font style, size, graphics, and design are essential components of a call to action. Equally important is the space around that content. If everything around your button or link is gasping for space, then, there is a big chance that people will not even notice your most important button. If you ask us for an exact formula for leaving space around main button, we are sorry to say THERE IS NONE.

Skype uses clear spacing and design to bring focus to ‘Get Started’. This is their primary CTA and clearly gets more highlighted than the secondary CTA ‘Learn about Skype.’

Evernote also uses a very clean ‘Sign Up’ CTA with a lot of white space around it, making it the centre of attraction despite lots of bold and clickable graphics and navigation options around it.
The smallest design element can make the biggest impact on sales figure
Consult expert before redesigning

5. Segment Your customers according to the buying process

Every marketer is trying hard to sell online and spending valuable resources towards the goal. But many are still ignoring the most critical factor; that is, segmentation of customers on the basis of their location in the buying process. A new visitor needs to be dealt differently as compared to a mature lead. Thus, CTAs that they will see should also be different.

A new visitor can be asked to download a free tutorial or ebook that will educate him better about an offered service. Directly asking him to buy something he is not even aware of will just scare him away.

A mature lead can be offered a free trial of the service. Diggiecorp targets website redesign clients with the help of a CTA that offers a FREE report that provides website owners information about critical user experience and conversion website issues.

6. Set the mood with Colors

After conducting multiple tests, experts have suggested that buttons in colors like orange, green and red have a major impact on a buyer’s psychology and prompt them to click. Some have claimed to receive up to 90% higher click through rates.

However, some feel that it has more to do with the brightness and contrast. So, if your background color gives a good contrast to an orange, green or red button, we recommend you to use one. Your main CTA should be of different color than your background. Other less important CTAs can be just a different shade of the background.

If you do not believe in the color psychology, that’s fine too. A big and bright button with a color that contrasts it from the background is enough to get visitor’s attention. The button should look clickable and shouldn’t merge with surrounding elements. The example you see below fares well on all the parameters that make an effective CTA.

SalesForce however went a little too far while promoting their ebook. Their button is the same color as the background. Though aesthetically pleasing, they have tried to share a bit too much about their ebook through a banner that takes the focus away from main button.

Also Read: Colors & Conversions of a Website have a Deep Connection

7. Use CTA template

Every website owner does not have a dedicated design team to take care of content and graphic updates. Thus, a CTA template that can be reused over and over again can serve the purpose. Templates are quick to implement and save on repetitive design cost. It is also easier to test different versions of a CTA if you can easily update them with a new copy.

8. Keep a track on performance

Gmail tested 50 different shades of blue till they found the one that gets them the maximum conversions. Reputed companies regularly experiment with copy, color and size of their main CTAs for best results. Such vital aspects cannot be determined on intuition and designer’s whims. A/B testing of multiple CTA versions is necessary. Make updates on the basis of user behavior data furnished by Google Analytics and third party tools like CrazyEgg and ClickTale.

Mastering call to action elements is important if you want visitors to buy products and fill contact forms. In case you are still planning to use call to action button generators or CTA software to create the most important elements of your conversion funnel, then, you are on the wrong track. As mentioned above, call to action buttons vary from page to page, and require design expertise as well as marketing insights.

9. Use the Space Available for CTA Creatively

To engage visitors with CTA, it is important to use the space available for CTA smartly. To make your CTA stand out, you need to work on its design, position, and size of the CTA. The design of the CTA does not necessarily have to be rectangle, square or circle. It can be an image with text to naturally grab users’ attention. Such as the CTAs on Neil Patel’s blog:

You do want your CTA button to stand out, but increasing the size will not do the magic. The simple rule to decide the size of your CTA size is to make it big enough for it to stand out, but not so big that it distracts the visitors from the content of the web page.

As mentioned earlier, a visitor goes through website content from left to right. You need to strategically plan your CTA well so that it is noticed by the visitor. The location where you place your CTA also impacts its performance. You would want to try different locations- above the fold or below the fold to check which location has the most impact.

Do you think your website might be losing sales and traffic due to poor CTAs? Fill this form to request FREE website checkup that will tell you whether your call to action buttons are working at their best or not.

What else do you think contributes to an effective Call to Action? Share your ideas in the comment section!
Hire experts to test what works for your website and brings you more sales
Contact for a free website analysis

The post How to create best call to action that creates more leads & sales appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

In today’s marketplace, where purchasing decisions are incited by online ratings and reviews of taste-makers and early adopters, only great products will survive.

The difference between an average design and a great design is INTENTION & EXECUTION. Best user experience design companies always work on this ideology. 

Simple, let’s admit it, the moment a user visits your website, you are apparently engaging in a user experience, and hence the quality of that experience will influence the longevity of that user’s stay on the site. So if you leverage a great user experience, you have fair chances to leg up on the competition. So, believe it that User experience optimization matters and it matters more than ever.

Industry stats which prove the importance of UX Design Optmization

• 68% of users leave a site because of poor User-centered design
• About a whopping 97% sites fail owing to bad UX designs
• You have about 3 seconds for a user to find what they want on your web page before they leave.
• 48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring.
• Only 55% of companies are currently conducting any kind of online testing to optimize user experience.
• 44% of online shoppers tell a friend about a bad online experience.

UX Design and Optimization

The web has witnessed mammoth advances; however a website’s success still depends on just one thing: how users interact with it.

Few questions that run through any visitor’s mind as they experience your site and decide whether or not they will return or cruise further are:

– Does this website give me value?

– Is it simple to use?

– Does it navigate me to the right place?

– Am I engaged?

– Is it pleasant to use?

Whether you are aware of these or not, practically UX design is all about convincing them to answer “Yes” to all above questions.

It’s all about keeping your users hooked. Precisely user insights are the most important ingredient to establishing a great design experience for users. For user-perfected experiences, understanding the user’s thoughts and concerns is important.

Fabricating user-centric design involves a wide range of skills that encompass creating personas, wireframes, specifications, information architectures, interaction flows, high-resolution comps, and prototypes; conducting user research, doing usability studies, and organizing content. All this sits within the fuzzy boundaries of UX design principles.

UX design and optimization is typically the kind of work for which we hire specialized UX professionals. This work is about execution.

More often than not, even the best UX focused companies overlook the significance of UX designs. Or the most common misconception is that it is only about visual appeal. Is it really so? NO…User-centred designs are practically more about problem solving. It facilitates interaction, positive experience and ease of usability.

Ok let’s put it this way, if you are targeting a user named David Merchant and he likes blue, balloons, and biking, you better work out a custom experience that makes him feel important and he can relate to what you create within 3 seconds of his visit on your site.

And well, as they say for every great thing to become realistic, there’s always an expert’s involvement. After 9 years of experience and rigorous research involved, Diggiecorp insists on disciplined experience architecture that you call RESULTS!

User experience design principles/rules to making that big move

• It has to be natural & intuitive.
• He should never ever have to stop to think how to do something.
• Operation must be consistent throughout to ensure a great user experience.
• UX design is an idea to improve the lives of users and customer life-cycle.
• Optimizing User experience is a process of discovery, vision definition, strategy, planning, execution, measurement and iteration.
• Creating rich experience for user, is not only about the design, it is more about INFLUENCE.
• Empower and respect your users. Happy users who experience helpful interactions that guide them through your products/services.
• By following principles like creation of working prototypes, scientifically measurable UX results can be achieved.

Here are some of the many benefits that UX design leverage to your business:

• A better UX design Enhances the usability of the system and hence making it more ideal for customers
• User experience optimization results in significant reduction in number of user errors
• Improves the ease of use and learning for your customers
• It increases your audience size and number of return visitors
• Enhances user satisfaction, trust in the system, and also improves referrals for your business
• Reduces development costs, maintenance costs, redesign costs, diminishes support costs, and documentation costs
• It Increases transactions and product sales

And well, it just gets better if we hear IT honchos sharing their principles about UX design. After knowing User Experience Benefits, click here if you interested in knowing more about this service.

The handy cut out and keep list about Best UX design theories from some of the best tech giants’

• “Manage to focus users’ attention. Focusing users’ attention to specific areas of the site with a moderate use of visual elements can help your visitors to get from point A to point B without thinking of how it actually is supposed to be done. The less question marks visitors have, the better sense of orientation they have and the more trust they can develop towards the company the site represents.” – Vitaly Friedman (Editor-in-chief Smashing Magazine)
• “Fix the small bugs. As far as user experience is concerned, the little things matter.  “Learn peoples’ preferences over time. Design for one hand whenever possible. Take advantage of hardware buttons (start, back, and search). Gestures available: Tap double tap, touch & hold, pan, flick, pinch & stretch. Touch: recommended touch target size is 9mm. Minimum touch target size if 7mm. Minimum spacing between targets is 2mm. Visual size is 60-100% of the touch target size.” – Microsoft
• “The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next main ingredient is simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own and use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features” – Nielsen Norman Group
• Google says delight the eye without distracting the mind
• “Allow users to personalize their experience. People love to add personal touches because it helps them feel at home and in control. Provide sensible, beautiful defaults, but also consider fun, optional customizations that don’t hinder primary tasks.” – Google Android
• “Our mission is to make the entire world more open, and this means reaching every corner, every person. So our design needs to work for everyone, every culture, every language, every device, every stage of life. This is why we build products that work for 90% of users and cut away features that only work for just a minority, even if we step back in the short term.” – Facebook

Crafting a user experience design that iterates, builds, and delivers quality products is indeed challenging and great teams make time to watch how real users react on what they built. Diggiecorp – leading web design development company, being an industry leader insists on the same dictum.

Ask for expert consultation today from our highly skilled User Experience professionals and improve your website experience for better conversion. Drive your business the UX way.

The post User Experience Design and Optimization: What-Why-How appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.

This post will tell you exactly what to do for instant online visibility, relevant online traffic, authority resources and greater visitors.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s segregate the ones that will cost some amount of money from the ones that are nearly free or come at very little cost.

Ones that will cost you money

Run an AdWords campaign

AdWords is a very sophisticated advertising product from Google, using which you can create banner & text ads displayed whenever relevant searches are made.

The best thing about them is that you are only charged when someone clicks on the link or banner. If you are small business or store owner willing to target the searchers in your area, AdWords Express has to be the perfect choice.

Keywords selection, Analytics understanding, budget determination, campaign tracking and management are some of the most demanding aspects of running an AdWords campaign.

How to get started- Google Adwords

Yahoo Advertising Solutions

Google might be the search engine giant but this doesn’t mean Yahoo! doesn’t matter. Yahoo has a vast range of advertising solutions on offer for marketers. To be precise, its display solutions are rather impressive if you have a good advertising budget.

Special take on display solutions – Google doesn’t believe in earning ad-money from its search based homepage but this doesn’t stop Yahoo! from doing the same. The popular search platform offer advertisements on its homepage visited by millions of people on daily basis. For every country, Yahoo! maintains separate domain to share news and local updates. So, if you want to target a specific region, it is no problem.

If you are ready to spend the money, then, Yahoo! homepage ad can offer a vast coverage. The best thing about the ad is that you don’t have to compete with other similar ads for attention (like in AdWords).

Here is a link for more details about Yahoo! advertisement offerings:

Get featured on websites relevant to your industry

Getting featured is one of the simplest ways to gain access to a ready-made readership. It introduces you to web users who are engaged and would be interested to listen what you have to say. In you have technology focused product or idea, then, getting featured on websites like TechCrunch and Mashable can give you extraordinary exposure.
The tough part is to identify websites with your target audience because obviously it wouldn’t make sense to get your meat shop featured in The Verge unless it has something to do with a sophisticated meat-cutting tool.

Chances are that you will be charged a decent amount of money for an opportunity to interact with their audience.

Advertise through blogs

In case your business or website doesn’t have anything unique that could be marketed in a featured post, then, the safest option would be to get in touch and discuss advertising. Featured post will remain visible for a limited period of time (till new posts push it underneath) but advertisement will keep on communicating for as long as you wish.

If you own a web hosting company, then, it would be best to put your ads on blogs/websites that share information about technology, web service providers, and online entrepreneurs.

In case you are florist looking for new clients, then, putting up ads on wedding and catering blogs can help greatly. The idea is to get your ad on the right places.

How to do it – The first task obviously is to find authority websites or blogs that host third party advertisements. In case you are familiar with one or two, use the following tool to find more at similarsitesearch

Initial discussion & study will bring you across associated cost, ad positioning, and other details.

Run a Twitter campaign

Trends, hashtags and 140 characters best define the Twitter platform but the popular micro blogging service is obviously more than that. Here are some facts that will really make you consider Twitter for promoting your business or brand;

• It has more than 200 million active users.
• All those people make around 400 million tweets every day.
• And the number is growing with each passing day.

Twitter is home to one of the most engaged online community and its reach is actually monstrous. Here are some impressive things about it;

• You can target local, national or global audience
• You can target people as per their interests
• You can promote your profile, posts or both.

Twitter has a solution for every business need but firstly it is important that you understand all the important details about the platform.

CAUTION- Twitter audience however is known for their in-your-face nature. So, be cautious how you pitch your brand idea and start an interaction.

Get the search engine advantage

People nowadays are heavily dependent on search engines (especially Google) for locating businesses, data, people, or anything that interests them. So, would it be nice to use this habit to your business advantage?

Google AdWords use the same concept to furnish relevant results. However, in this point, we are speaking about influencing real search results in the pages.

For instance, you have started a breakfast joint in New York and you want to target people looking for healthy light meals in the morning. You can accomplish this by making your website and online presence relevant to searches like ‘healthy meals NY’ or ‘best breakfast joint in New York’.

This requires including relevant phrases in your website, profile pages and planning your online presence as per Google Guidelines. If you have a sound knowledge of how search engines work, keyword research, online marketing and also have the time for it, you can manage it on your own.

Usually, business & website owners hire online marketing agencies or SEO experts to manage their online presence. Besides assisting with search engine presence, some renowned companies also assist in polishing social media presence to derive maximum business traffic.

How to get started– It is best to discuss your marketing needs with an agency that specializes in online marketing. Undertaking an online research can bring you across various e-marketing service providers.

Publish a press release

Press release is one of the most famous ways to announce your entry into a particular field or share your success stories. Web based brands use the medium very often to connect with their client base and make a positive impression on prospects.

Through an informative press release, you can;

• Inform the readers about your business idea
• Share future plans and current partnerships
• Communicate business location
• Delve on other important business details

While there are many websites that accept press release submissions, very few have the media links and connections to really make an impact in the desired domain. Some of the best PR submission platforms are;
– PressReleaseHeadlines
– PRWeb
– WebWire

Above mentioned platforms charge a reasonable amount to give you the coverage and reach.

How to do it – On visiting the above mentioned links, you can easily locate the submission guidelines and fee charged. Go through the recently released PRs and you will have a fair idea how to go about it.

NOTE– Make sure that your PR is a professional one. Get professional help if needed

Ones That Cost Nothing

Internet’s ‘free’ spirit is also true for marketing as well. There are ample zero-cost ways to spread the word for your brand, product or offering. Here are the best options;

Get registered on business listings

The ‘local’ phenomenon is rather strong presently and small businesses all over the world have benefited from it. It doesn’t take much to create profiles on local listing websites frequented by people interested in discovering new places and service providers around them.

The big players in the local business are Google, Yahoo and Bing. However, there are various other service providers that have made a name in the field. Yelp and Foursquare are two of them.

Before rushing to make profiles, you need to learn about the three compartments in which you can loosely segregate these platforms;

• Normal listings
• Map centric listings
• Mobile listings

Once you have completed the profiles, filled the important details and verified your business, it will be visible to people looking for similar services. While most websites don’t charge for profile creation, they do ask a fee for additions such as logo, images and other branding elements.

It sometimes becomes difficult for business owners to manage multiple listings. This is where websites like Yext come in. Such services are not free though; they come at a small monetary cost.

Get your interview published

If your business idea has the potential to change the dynamics of your industry or has the element of inspiration in it, then, it would be best to enlist as an innovator or entrepreneur by getting your interview published. Such interview based websites have a steady readership base that looks forward to inspirational stories and personal experiences.

Getting yourself published will give you an opportunity to discuss your business, how it came into existence and other critical details. This will also become a positive web resource for you that will show up on search engines whenever your name will be put to scrutiny.

IdeaMensch is a platform where entrepreneurs come to share their stories. Just visit the website and you wouldn’t have to look hard for learning how to give an interview. Though the interview publishing doesn’t come with a fee, you can choose for a ‘speed-up’ package to get it published on the day of your choice.

Post a SlideShare

Nothing captures web user’s attention better than graphics. Visual elements have high chances of going viral on social media as well. So, you should seriously consider making presentations.

SlideShare is a popular platform that really makes presentations come alive. You can present your business idea or products in a creative way by using pictorial slides. If your slide is an ace in terms of design and content, then, your work also carries the chance to become ‘top presentation’ or will ‘get featured’ on homepage.

If you go the social media shares, you can also make it to ‘Hot on Facebook’, ‘Hot on LinkedIn’ or ‘Hot on Twitter’ list.

All of it at no cost at all!

Here is how a slideshare post looks like;

Diggiecorp recently created a biography themed slideshare on serial entrepreneur, Neil Patel (co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics) to celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit of young tech wizards.

SlideShare is no doubt a platform with huge potential but you also have to think about how you are going to benefit from users interested in your business concept. To make sure impressed ones contact or at least visit the website, you must;

• Make a master description to inform people about yourself and your offerings.
• Keep the link of the website in description
• Include an engaging thank you slide

Opting for a pro package (which is paid) will give you additional features & liberties to make your slides truly conversion friendly.

If creating a presentation and taking care of such details seems too much, then, there are design agencies that offer professional presentation design services .

Create a promotional video

YouTube and Vimeo are both household names and we don’t need to tell what it means to go get million YouTube shares. Creating an engaging video no longer requires a digital camera and high-tech team. You can very well do it yourself with the help of friends and family.

Do remember that nobody likes a boring promotional video; it has to be creative and engaging. Keep the following points in mind while creating the video;

• Focus on the most important thing about your brand/offering
• Humor can do wonders in video platforms
• Make it a duo of informative and entertaining
• Keep a description that tells about you and your offering
• Keep links for people to explore and contact

When it is done, don’t forget to share it on as many social media platforms as possible.

Create an infographic

Infogaphics are presently a rage on web. They work best in furnishing boring facts and information in a creative & fun manner. Possibilities are indeed huge if you have the creativity flair and unique idea.

Online brands hugely make use of infographics to communicate brand message and products.

Here is an infographic we developed in recent past;

Infographics have huge potential for social media sharing and can also be featured in blogging platforms for greater coverage, not to mention it can also be shared through Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. If you have a creative flair and working knowledge of web designing tools, you can easily create an infographic on your own.

However, creating an impressive infographic with no or limited designing knowhow can be a challenging task. To make a lasting impact and convey business idea, it is important that graphic elements and content work together to create a unique experience.

Businesses often hire professional designers to get the perfect infographic for their business idea.

Make influencers talk about your brand

You might be new in the web world but there are people who are followed, trusted and paid attention to.

Be it Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, such people are everywhere.

Try to influence and impress such people to share your idea, message or at least posts. Even if you get such 10 people on board, you have already caught the attention of tens of thousands.

There can be nothing better than influencers from your industry spreading your brand message.

Increase your web presence

Greater the number of positive social resources, the better it is for your web presence. Everyone expects a brand to have an official Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profile. So, don’t forget to create your profiles on such popular social platforms.

In case you deal in something that is visual in nature, then, creating a Pinterest and Flickr profile can benefit greatly. Fill the ‘about section’, ‘description’, and related details carefully because they will help the visitor in learning about you. Moreover, a good description and profile will also help you in dominating search results.

Keep a SEO specialist at hand while creating such social resources. He/she can guide you about creating accounts that will actually generate benefit for you.

In case you don’t know any such person, contact our expert marketing team . We would be glad to assist you.

This may not bring immediate website traffic and queries but is very crucial from the long term business prospects.

Guest blogging

Spreading your brand message to greater number of audience requires a lot more efforts than just advertising. Guest blogging is a popular medium to show your industry expertise, knowledge and also plant your business links at the right places.

By guest blogging regularly on multiple platforms, you can build a followership, influence readers and generate an interest for your offerings. If you are posting regularly on reputed guest blogging websites, then, you are also adding to the search engine value of your website and social profiles.

The best way to go about a guest post is to be as informative as possible. Most blogs that allow guest posting don’t keep promotional links in the content. So, you will benefit only from your author bio. Readers will study the bio only if you will really make an impact.

For social media, SocialMediaToday is widely favored.

For online marketing, Business2Community is quite popular

NOTE- Guest blog only on platforms relevant to your industry

You can also make lenses on HubPages to share your insights and build a following. HubPages is also widely famous for sharing information.

If you really look forward to market your brand, business or idea, above are the most excellent ideas to start with. However, these are not the only things that can bring you name and fame on web. Community participation through forums and ‘answer’ websites is another way to discover people that can be interested in what you have to say.

The Most Important Thing

An amazing website is almost obligatory if you really want to capitalize through above listed marketing & promotional techniques.

Your idea or business may be truly out of the world but until you website doesn’t reflect it, chances of success are rather tiny. Your website would be the most obvious destination for someone influenced with your marketing campaign, not to mention it needs to be there with most of your promotional efforts.

So, make sure you have a great website that truly does justice to your unique plans. In case it doesn’t, promotion can wait for a while. The first thing occupying your mind should be to get the main conversion option (that is, the website itself) right.

The post How to Generate Traffic: Free and Paid Online Promotion Mediums appeared first on Diggiecorp Blog.