Why Is It Mandatory for all business to own a website?

In today’s digital age, the internet has provided everyone with an avenue to conduct their businesses online. Within the last decade, social media platforms have become one, if not the most powerful, source of marketing and promotion. Recent updates also allowed businesses to sell directly to users on Instagram and Facebook.

The recent pandemic has forced businesses globally, to embrace technology. Harnessing the power of tech, eCommerce can help businesses overcome present challenges and unlock potential growth opportunities.

The urgency of the digital transformation is very real. This might make you think it would be wiser to skip website development altogether and head straight to social media. Unfortunately, there are other factors to consider in order to successfully launch your business online.

Besides being beneficial for you in the long run, here are some key reasons why having a business website is still necessary in 2023:

Business Credibility
Business credibility and trust is key to gaining new customers

In the world of business, credibility and trust is key to gaining new customers. A website adds legitimacy. In a sea of competition, online businesses that stand out and convince potential customers to buy from them are the ones that make a profit.

A well-designed website helps you make a more convincing sales pitch to these users. This drastically increases your odds for conversion compared to businesses without a website.

Increased Brand Visibility
The digital age is highly saturated with information. People want more information on a specific product or service before they decide to buy it. With over 80,000 Google searches submitted every second, getting ranked on the first page of Google is not easy.

This is true especially if your business’ presence is exclusive to social media platforms. When searching on Google, you see results related to keywords ‘read’ by the Google algorithm on the website’s contents, not through apps.

Optimising specific keywords on your webpages will allow your website to show up whenever users research specific products and services. Being on the first page of Google increases your chances of being the place where customers choose to buy from.

Stronger Control of Your Brand’s Online Presence
If you create a website for your business with its own domain name and hosting, the content belongs to you. You have the freedom and flexibility to control how you convey your brand story and present it to an audience.

This can be done through different elements like design, copy and images. No social media site completely allows this and the content you post there technically no longer belongs to you.

Saves time and provide better customer service
Social media, with more than 3 billion people using it, makes it easy for you to reach a wide-ranging audience. But having a website provides potential customers a consolidated avenue for everything your business offers.

A website can help your business provide better customer service because of the amount of information it can house. This includes all your products or services and a Frequently Asked Questions page.

A highly personalised User Experience (UX) to guide customers to the information they need will also make things better. This saves you considerable time and energy you would otherwise have spent answering all your Direct Messages (DMs) every time a user can’t find something on your socials.

High return of investment
If you are planning to market your business, a website should be at the top of your list. While it requires a small investment to get started, your website, if done right, should pay dividends. Building your brand and driving new and potential customers to it will guarantee returns.

A study has also found that eCommerce website traffic has significantly increased in 2023, partly due to COVID-19. Yes, social media is incredibly easy to use compared to managing a website. Fortunately, you don’t need to be tech-savvy to get started on creating a website either.

Hi guys, today I’m going to share with you my briefing questions!

If we ask a smart kid what it’s like to make a website, he’ll probably say something like:

Sounds simple! You need to put in some nice text, some really nice images, some flashy buttons and make half a dozen pages. (and isn’t it true?)

And actually, if someone asked each of us the same thing when we were going to make our first website, we would most likely say the same thing. And we would keep answering until we get to the second or fifth customer site and suddenly realize that that information we forgot to ask the customer was missing or, worse, you struggle to think of that extremely killer and creative phrase, and the only thing that comes to your mind are flying cats fighting space ninjas, which could turn into a crazy comic book, but for your current objective it means a complete blank, a tremendous creative standoff, a nightmare!

I’ve been there, so have you probably too (if not, please share your methods too!). So I’m going to share with you the questions, some obvious, some intentionally unusual, that I use to do an initial briefing with clients, and some considerations about each of them:

1 – Company name (and how to spell it).
It may sound silly, it may seem trivial, but sometimes the name can be spelled one way or another than the client’s domain or even the way a partner gave you the name, not the way they actually use it.

2 – Responsible contact
Something to take note of, but sometimes also know who really decides in a meeting with more than one person in the company

3 – Responsible Contacts
That is not always the same person who made a first contact to hire your service. So, to avoid annoying this person as an intermediary, get this contact too!

4 – Products or services
Here, sometimes there will be many and you will have to send them later, but sometimes there will be few and it’s worth breaking down a little about each one, especially when you don’t know the product or service well. At this time, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask the questions you would ask if you were going to buy.

5 – Does your company have a logo? What is the inspiration?
Inspiration is usually the most important thing, it’s usually a story that the owner has already bought from whoever made the logo. And now the most prudent will probably be to follow.

6 – Are there predefined colors of the company or brand?
Sometimes they forget to say they have it, don’t forget to ask. If you don’t have it, it’s even better to think about some color possibilities at this point. Color is vital and above all it will take a lot of work to change later throughout the site.

7 – Tell a short story.
How was the company born? Why does he do what he does?

8 – What is the tone of your brand?
A calmer tone? Hectic? Direct? Formal? If they don’t know the tone of the company, ask the partners’ personal tone.

9 – Brand personality?
If the company were a person and appeared in front of you, what would it be like? Would you be an innovative, logical, activist, defiant, conservative person?

10 – Think about shapes and images when you think about your company:
Here the person can give references to images that have to do with the business, or not. At least try to get the shapes, for example: square or circle? With this simple question you will have an important basis for the design, even if it is to decide whether the corners of the elements’ edges will be straight or rounded.

11 – What do people have to know when entering the site?
Simple question, but one that will give important answers and that the website owner would probably only remember in the middle of the process.

12 – What do we want people to feel?
Trust? Desire? Calm? The feeling can be just as important as the information, and again it will be something that will reflect the essence of the company or the partners.

13 – What do we want people to do?
A question that may seem obvious, but it actually isn’t always. For example: sometimes the customer may prefer the user to get in touch as soon as possible, sometimes he may prefer the user to read some information by scrolling the site and only then get in touch. Maybe they want them to read the articles or just buy them. Anyway, we must always think about user usability, but we also have to think about how the business owner wants this experience to be.

14 – What makes the company really different?
An answer to dig deeper. When he gives the first answer, ask: – But don’t the others do too? Business partners will likely be able to dig deeper and expand on more aspects that make their business really different and that may or may not give them great arguments to be put on the site.

15 – Choose a word for your brand:
Just as Coca-Cola chooses the word happiness, it will likely have a word that represents the company to its customer.

16 – Name three competitors
The customer may know your business very well, or it may not. Asking about competitors will help you to get deeper into your client’s business, complement information and check if the differentials really are different.

17 – Three brands you admire. And the reason.
The most important thing is the reason. And what a person admires about other brands is likely to be something they want for their own brand.

18 – Three brands you DON’T admire. And the reason.
Again, the most important thing is why. And again what a person DOES NOT admire is likely to be something he does not want for his own brand.

These last two questions will help you a lot in thinking about the usability and style of the site.

Final considerations:
There are no right answers. Even answers that seem wrong can provide valuable insights into content. Try even to say this at the beginning of the interview with the client: – There are no right answers, answer whatever comes into your head!
Briefing is about listening, not talking. Leave your comments at the end and only if necessary.
Remember: the site belongs to the customer. But ask if you should follow the information to the letter or if it has space for creation. Some customers want exactly what they say, others accept or want to be surprised, and asking this can save you and the customer time on reviews.
Not all people will answer all, or even half. But that will give you a head start to the responders’ website and give you the revelation that some companies don’t have a very clear path yet, so you’ll have more freedom in laying the stones down and creating that path.

I hope you enjoyed. If you have ideas for questions that you haven’t seen here, please share them with us in the comments!

How to chose the right plugin for your WordPress site

I wouldn’t have thought of doing an article on the subject, because it seems simple and almost obvious.

But in many cases people the problems often derive from a bad choice of plugin and could have been avoided. This can be easily avoided by choosing the right plugin directly.

I will try to give you some advice in this direction, what are you doing to chose the best plugins for your sites and your customers ?

1. Have a strategy

I say it very often, if you want to have a site that is well done and works well in the long term you have to have a strategy. That is, deciding in advance what you want to do and how you are going to do it.

Once you know why you have your website, what you want to offer and how you will deliver it, it will be much easier to choose the plugin you need. You should even have a list of the features you are looking for before looking for the plugin.
When you have found several plugins that meet your criteria, you can compare them to choose the best one.

2. Check the reliability of the developer
In the catalog of WordPress plugins you can directly see who the developer is and go to his page to find out a little more.

Then I advise you to look at the following which will let you know if the developer is reliable:

• Since when the developer is registered on WordPress
• The number of plugins he offers, and the ratings received for his plugins
• The description of plugins: a developer who describes correctly, puts visuals will probably be more used to providing detailed and detailed explanations in the documentation and the support
• Go to the “support” tab of the plugin to see if the developer answers the questions
• When buying premium themes and plugins from a third part such as Envato e.g https://codecanyon.net always be observant and check the plugin s last update and also how many are using it. Some items on Envato can be really old and installing old code can lead to both severe security issues and compatibility issues with both WordPress itself, themes and of course other plugins. It can easily be avoided.
• Also try avoid over bloated plugins with loads of unnecessary functions with will both use excess server resources as memory etc. which will slow down your website and have higher risk of causing incompatibility issues.

3. Check the reliability of the extension
There are several ways to easily ensure the reliability of a plugin. These criteria usually give you a good idea of ​​what to expect:

• The number of installations: There are +60 million sites running on WordPress. If an extension doesn’t have several thousand active installs, it’s probably for some reason …
• Look at the date of the last extension update. This is very important because it tells you whether the extension is maintained by the developer or not.
  For an extension to be reliable over the long term, the developer must regularly fix problems, add security patches and new features. If the extension has not been updated for more than 6 months, go away.
• Look at customer reviews. There must be a lot and globally positive. If they are not positive try to understand why.
  Also remember to see if the developer responds to negative reviews, this is a good indicator of the importance of customer satisfaction for him / them

4. Don’t make small savings

This is the mistake I see almost all the time and understandable, you want to save money. This is normal, but always keep in mind that choosing the cheapest or even free extension does not mean saving money, far from it!

Indeed, developing and maintaining a plugin is very time consuming and therefore expensive, which is why plugins are billed by monthly or annual subscription. Developers who have the money thanks to the number of users and the price will be able to continue working on the plugin by patching security, resolving bugs and conflicts with other plugins. In addition to providing quality support.

Extensions for which this is not done may not only make your site vulnerable but more importantly cause many problems, especially conflicts with other plugins.
This will not only make you lose visitors / customers because of the bugs but force you to regularly debug the site, which will cost you much more in the end.

My advice, if you want to have a site that performs well in the long run, to avoid stress and hassles, choose the best plugins, no matter the price.
You will save time to devote yourself to your core business and will be able to develop serenely.

I love writing, whether about my personal thoughts or just about anything that captures my interest.

So for quite some time I have asked myself, “Should I start a blog?”

I dig on some research about the benefits of blogging, and man, I wished I started long before. Blogging allows me to learn more and earn more at the same time! Don’t we all want that? I have come up with a few yet topmost reasons why start a blog ASAP!

1. Speak Your Thoughts:
Blogging lets you become the head producer and director of your stories. You have the freedom to write about the topics that interest you and present them the way you want them to be. You do not worry about wrong inputs because you control the flow of information.

2. Learn Endlessly and Be Organized With Your Thoughts:
 When writing your blog entries, you will sometimes stumble upon topics you are not so familiar with. This becomes an opportunity for learning since you have to research more about the topic in order to come up with a high quality entry.

When I was starting my own blog, I’ve researched my way on how to start a blog, about WordPress blog, even blogging for money! Later on, these learnings turned into something productive. Also, blogging forces you to be more organized with your thoughts and see to it that one thought would flow effortlessly to another. You don’t want to be writing about your trip to Hawaii and talk about cancer on the next paragraph, right?

3. Build Your Audience Until Whenever:
With blogging, your audience will not be limited to your friends or followers only. Blogging gives you the chance to be connected to billions of people around the globe who is looking for information about a certain topic or interested about the same thing your publishing. With this, it aids you in marketing yourself or your business.

Blogging saves you a great deal of money versus highly expensive marketing campaigns while reaching out to anyone who has access with the world wide web. If this isn’t enough yet to convince you as to why start a blog, scroll down!

4. Establish Rapport and Potential Client Engagement:
If you’re into business, then it’s already a given that you need clients in order to make your business grow. Since blogging connects you to anyone at anywhere, then by giving concrete value through your entry, it would be easier to engage with your leads. These leads are potential buyers, and buyers mean money!

5. Be Known As An Authority:
Okay, we’re not talking about dictatorship here. When you already figured out how to start a blog, most commonly through WordPress blog, you’d realize later on that there are some topics that really interest you and would want to be known for them.

Hence, your audience sees you as a significant person in relation to a topic or idea at hand. It improves your image as a professional and your blogs can even become your modern day business cards. Great, right?

6. Doorway for New Opportunities:
When you’ve established yourself as a key person about a certain topic or issue, different opportunities will be knocking at your doorstep. Speaking engagements, guestings, coaching or mentoring, and even product sponsorships! All these are possible when you start your own blog page. Talk about getting famous, here’s your chance.

7. Expand Your Social Circle:
Blogging allows you to meet new people everyday from everywhere. These people might not just be potential clients but could turn into friends, business partners and suppliers. Who knows, you might just find The One through your own blog page? Exciting!

8. Supports Your Expertise:
Prior we talked about blogs as your new business cards but sometimes they could act as your resumes as well. When you’re applying for a certain position and claim to be a subject matter expert, you can back it up with your blog. How convenient it is.

“Should I start a blog?” Well, I tell you, why shouldn’t you? Enjoy your blogging!

Do you have a blog already? What inspires you to get started with blogging? And what are your struggles from the beginning to where you are now? Share your story to us and let others be inspired too.