Let’s imagine, you have an online business and you already have a very nice website. Someone visits your website and really likes what you offer, but not ready to buy from you.
It is harder to get to know you online than back in the old days when people had only actual shops, where you have met in person with each other. So people might need more time and information to make a decision if they want to buy from you or not.
With a mailing list, you’re able to keep in touch with everyone who visited your website (once you ask for permission) and let them know when you have sales or when you’ve got something new to share with them. You can send them really useful information (not creepy stuff), so they will like you and trust you and decide easier what to buy from you. This is why you need to capture emails on your website.
Emailing people via a newsletter is still the most effective way to communicate with an audience. While there are lots of tools you can use to send these emails, MailChimp is the best — and probably the tool used by the most users as well. 246 billion emails were sent via MailChimp in 2016 alone from their over-7 million users.
If you think MailChimp is not good enough, probably you haven’t used it the right way yet.
Why do I recommend MailChimp?
it is free to 2000 subscribers and 12000 emails a month – including automation, A/B testing, landing pages, and custom templates.
it is easy to integrate it with your other stuff, like WordPress and Woocommerce, SquareSpace website, your Shopify store, your Facebook and Twitter profiles.
the messaging and the graphics make it fun to use! I love that Chimp:o)
Examples of using email marketing in ways you probably not thought of:
write a second email to those people who were interested (for example clicked on the link and checked out the product) in your first offer
write to people who visited your shop page, but did not finish buying from you
creating automated letters, so you can keep a personal touch while saving time for you
use your purchase data to send personalized campaigns and better understand how your marketing affects your customers
with the reports included, you can check how well you’re connecting with your audience and how much money you’re bringing in
The sign-up process is easy and fun, so why not start today and sign up for a MailChimp account.
Planning a website can feel overwhelming, especially when you do it for the first time and don’t know what to expect. Here is a brief list of all the things that might come up when you want to start a website.
1. Branding
Branding is about who you want to be and who people perceive you to be. Do you want to appear elegant, serious or playful etc? Determining your look by the logo, colours, images and fonts you want to use on your website. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it is good if you can deliver a clear message to your customers.
2. Hosting and domain
This is the address and the place for your website. You can start your hosting and choose your domain at the same company, like Namecheap. Go and check them out. But if you want to start a Squarespace or Wix website the hosting is included.
3. Think about your delivery process
How do you sell your products and services or how do you wish to sell them?
4. Think about the functions you need for your website
The most typical functions on a website are blog, contact form, payment function, log in for members, newsletter subscription, social media sharing.
5. Collect Images
You can start looking for a good photographer if you want professional images about you or your product. You can also start looking around on free stock image sites, these are listed here.
6. Think about your sitemap and write content for the main pages
A sitemap is a list of the Titles of all the pages that are on the website. You can start writing content as simple as using any Word processor or the online Google Docs.
7. Check your Legal documents
Make sure you have a refund policy, privacy policy, and terms of service.
8. Collect testimonials
Testimonials are always an essential part of a website, so it is never too early to start collecting them.
9. Write 3 blog posts
Not every website needs a blog, but it is very useful to have one, as a blog is the most effective way to make sure people find your website. More on this here. So if you decide you will write a blog on topics related to your business, get started with at least 3 posts!
I am going to list here the most important tactics that you must implement if you want to have more visitors on your blog and increase your traffic the right way.
1. Publish quality content regularly
Content is still the king in online marketing and it is the best way to make sure people will find you. The content can be: written, recorded as video, recorded as audio (podcast). All of them are good ways to get noticed online.
2. Social sharing
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter still rock! You don’t have to use all of them, but use at least one of them! If your content is video, use Youtube, still the best way to get noticed! Use Pinterest if you are happy with producing quality pictures!
Add a sharing button to your website, so others could share your content as well. If you are using the DIVI theme, social sharing function will be available.
Place links to your blog in your email signature, on your personal Facebook profile, on your LinkedIn profile & so on.
3. Get quality links from popular websites
For example, write guest posts for websites with more traffic than yours.
4. Build relationship
Go where your audience is. It can be in-person events or hanging out online in Facebook groups. Leave meaningful comments on relevant blogs, and respond to comments on your blog.
It sounds like a scary thing but it is not. You can be flexible with your hosting and choose a hosting that is best for your actual needs, so don’t be afraid of moving. The other thing is that hosting services is very similar to mobile service providers. They have so many discounts and other good stuff at the beginning and after a while, they get more expensive. So if you care about your budget you can learn the basics of moving a site to another host and be comfortable with it.
The steps: – install All-in-One WP Migration on your website – make an export with the plugin, and download the file to your computer – install WordPress on your new hosting – install the All-in-One Wp Migration plugin in your new WordPress install – import the previously downloaded file with All-in-One Wp Migration plugin – change your domain settings, so it is pointing to the new hosting
If you want to know what hosting provider do I use, I use Namecheap and they even move your website for free from another provider!!!
The size of the image you upload to your website is very important. It is important because if the image is too big, it will slow down the website speed. And the website speed also effects Google, and how your website will come up in the search engine.
I use Photoshop to optimize my images, but it is a little bit too complicated and expensive for most of the users, so there are other methods for image optimization.
Optimize your images for WordPress the easiest way
Let’s talk about image size. Resizing your image to the right size is the first important thing for your blog. I recommend 1200 x 800 pixel size for your blog images. It is important to keep your featured images (the image you attach in WordPress to each of your blog posts) at the same size. You can check the documentation of your theme for suggested image sizes. Pixlr is an online photo editor and you can use for free to resize your images. The other advantage of Pixlr, is that you don’t need to install anything on your computer as Pixlr is avalable online. Check it out: pixlr.com
Now optimize your image. Amazingly simple and effective tool tinypng.com. Just drop the image on the page, wait for 5 seconds and you can download your optimized image you can use on your website without worrying about the size. Check it out: tinypng.com
Install a WordPress plugin named Smush It. New images will be automatically resized/rescaled and optimized on the fly, in the background.
Do you want to go deeper?
If you want to go deeper into photo editing, Photoshop is the most advanced tool out there. But there is a free tool also, that is capable of very advanced photo editing and it is called: Gimp. If you want to learn photo editing on a deeper level, check Gimp out. They have plenty of free tutorials as well to get you started.
In this video I will show you the quickest way to image optimization on a Mac:
If you are not on Mac use Pixlr. I show you how it is done here: go to the video.
