We've integrated a new video player, free of course to our clients.  Here are some amazing highlights of the new built in video player: 

 1. Setup the abandoned cart notice You can configure an automated notice to go out to users that log into your site, add items to their cart, and decide not to check out.
If you wish to offer people a discount for returning or if there is any particular message you would like to convey (such as a reminder on your great shipping rates ) this is a great way to not only capture that client, but keep them happy and returning.

2. Add an incentive to your site to get users to sign up and create an account.  the more users you have logged in and checkout out the site the more abandoned notices will go out and the higher conversion rate you will have.  I have seen many different incentives setup.  Anything from a free ebook when you sign up for some promotional pricing on the first order.  It is totally up to you, you probably know your clientele better than we do.  If you tell us what kind of incentive you are wanting to offer Remote Hands can get it set up for you.

3. Enabling Ratings can help too.  When people come to the site they often like to see feedback from other buyers.   Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Search Engines take ratings into account as a ranking factor when they crawl pages now. Article on ratings as a ranking factor.

4. Enable automated notifications to request your shoppers review the products they purchased.  This is a super common practice these days, and best of all you can completely custmomize the message you send to your shoppers either offering them an incentive to leave a review or appeal to the humanity of helping out others with their important feedback.  See more about how to set this up if you are a WebsiteForge customer here.

Contact Kevin Gannon today if you wish to talk about more ways to increase conversions and other ways to market your website!

(248) 349- 6281

The worldwide e-commerce sales are expected to grow to $4 trillion by 2020! In 2016, in the US alone, e-commerce retailers made $322.17 billion in sales revenue. There are many more benefits of e-commerce. In this article, you'll learn e-commerce advantages and disadvantages so that you can decide for yourself if this is the right business type for you. These advantages of online business will help you stay excited and motivated throughout your e-commerce journey.

1. E-commerce Advantage: Lower Cost

One of the e-commerce benefits is that it has a lower startup cost. Physical retail stores have to pay up to thousands of dollars to rent one of their store locations monthly. Also, they have several upfront costs such as store signs, store design, buying inventory, sales equipment, and more. Physical retail stores also have to pay staff to work and run each location. They may also need to hire security staff depending on the product value in the store.

However, with WebsiteForge annual costs for your e-commerce website can be as low as $1,188, cheap even when you compare to Shopify at $3,192 annually!  The WebsiteForge package is packed with Enterprise level features that don't cost you extra!  We're not here to nickel and dime ya, we want to help you succeed in your online venture.  Offering things like Free site reviews annually, free updates and upgrades that are automatically added for you to utilize, free assistance (Remote Hands and Unlimited FREE support) and so much more!

2. E-commerce Advantage: 24/7 Potential Income

One of the best advantages of having an e-commerce website is that it is always open for business! With your Facebook ads, you can attract someone at 11 p.m. or 4 a.m... Or like most WebsiteForge customers you can rank well organically and attract business for FREE from the search engines.   Most physical location stores are open between 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. By being available at all hours, you can attract people who would normally pick up a product in stores, if the store were open. You can also attract those who may have odd work schedules or who don't have time to shop in-person. For a customer to order at night, you don't need to have employees working the night shift to ensure all orders get processed. You'll never need to hire a security guard either!

3. E-commerce Advantage: Sell Internationally

Next on the list of e-commerce benefits is that a new brand can sell to customers around the world easily. You have the ability to discover your audience whether they're in the U.K., South America, or neighboring countries. If you choose to dropship from Inventory Source which has a variety of manufacturers to choose from or perhaps you want to push your product out to a variety of places online, you can do that with the Go Data Feed Integration.  Both options available from WebsiteForge, giving our customers another advantage.

Contact Us Today to get your business online

The holiday shopping season is upon us.  It is estimated that $123 Billion dollars will be spent this holiday shopping season in E-commerce ALONE! According to Statista

That's approx. 17 Billion dollars more than last holiday season!  What are you doing to prepare to get a piece of that E-commerce pie? 🍕

If you haven't made a plan of action yet, that's ok!  We are here to help.  I've put together some questions to help you decide the best plan of action for your online business this holiday season.

✓ What are you going to feature on these super savings days? do you have a service you can offer a discount on?  Or perhaps you have a unique set of products you want to offer a discount and free shipping on?

✓ How you are going to inform your old customers and your new potential customers of this amazing offer?  We have several ways for you to make an announcement using our mass mail feature (FREE or put up a teaser graphic on your website luring people back on these days.  If you need help with either of these options and you are a current WebsiteForge customer feel free to contact support and we can assist you in getting this done.

✓ Are you going to offer more savings to users that sign up? Hint hint, we think you should!  Getting user data will help you with future offerings and building a customer base that will keep coming back.  We also have ways you can incentivize returning customers.

We are your unfair advantage, here's another reason why:

We optimize, and test, then optimize some more at no extra charge!

I've talked to some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts and read many recent articles and the resounding replies I get, sound a lot like this:

"People need to understand that it's now a ranking factor and if their site is slow then it's going to hurt them."

Here at WebsiteForge, we stay faster than our competition to make sure our Clients stay faster than their competition.

I strongly suggest that you use a 3rd party testing tool - like www.gtmetrix.com to compare your site VS your competition...

And as always, feel free to reach out to us if you are not killing the competition in speed.  There is likely a very simple solution to resolve whatever is delaying loading.

We did a recent test, using some data that was provided to us by our friends over at ShopBakersNook.com

They have a good working friendship with one of their competitors and have done many different tests.  Over the course of the last year and a half we have poured into optimizing and updating the core elements and coding structure for optimal speed and loading times.  And this is a great example of how it's really paid off!

3rd Party Speed Test:	Google Speed Test

 You might think, well great, so they test better.  Why does that even REALLY MATTER?

I've talked about these topics before and hate sounding like a broken record 🔁.  But I know often, people miss a post and they may not realize how important a post really is.  So this post is going to highlight; 

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU NEED TO BE DOING ON YOUR WEBSITE:

Step 1. ✏️ Content Content Content! Add relevant content to your site about your products and services.  I wrote more about this last year and wanted to bring this post to light again because it is very very important for ALL websites.  If you get stuck on how to write good content you can also check out this article precisely about that! :)

Now that you have added all the content that will overly describe how awesome your business is and how well you do you.  we head over to the next very important key to having a successful website.

Step 2. 📈 Get and KEEP your visitors.  I wrote about this last week and earlier this year. Do you know why?  becuase it really is so very important to capture and utlize the traffic that you do have.  This is important whether you are a service based business or Ecommerce! 

Ok GREAT! you have now taken steps to add super power ⚡ content to your website, you have added all of our tips and tricks to capture and keep your existing visitors...what's left?

Step 3. 💨 Speed and Mobile Compatibility. Yep, I said it.  If your website is not yet responsive.  You need to do it NOW.  Google has announced another algorithm change being released in JULY 2018 that speed IS a bigger ranking factor.  And the SEO community has been talking about it.  So you may ask why does having a responsive site mean it will be faster.  And this is a great question.  In and of it's own it does not mean it will be faster.  With WebsiteForge when you have a website designed or re-designed our team KNOWS that Google factors speed and we pour our experience into creating the fastest and most user friendly design we can.  We have tools that help us offer you the fastest initial load times as well as optimizing images for faster loading. You can see in this previous post that our client's site ranked better and loaded faster than a major competitor!

Now that you have followed steps 1 - 3 you can start watching your sales increase like our other clients that have followed these best practices steps.

If you would like an estimate for a site re-design please contact me.  Or if you would like a site review, we can evalutate your site and let you know if there are any features that your site may benefit from using.

The number one question I get asked is "what can I do on my website to increase sales".  I usually evaluate the site and check for many different factors.  But the most common factors are that people have traffic they are just not tapping into!

There are 2 pieces to really improve sales from existing traffic.

1. Capture your audience.  

2. Communicate with the people that are ALREADY on your site!  This means:

a. Get people to sign up!

Whether you offer a free guide to something amazing that is relevant to your site, or a subscription to your blog...whatever it may be.  There are many many ways to get people to sign up on your site.  Find the way that works best for your ideal target clientele.

b. Setup an abandoned cart notice!

For e-commerce, one of the best ways to increase sales is to reach out to those that have already been pondering a purchase on your site.  The abandoned cart notice does just that.

c. Send offers!  

Whether it's an offer to subscribe to your awesome blog or some sort of promotion on your website...OFFER IT!!!  They won't think about you unless you intentionally become a thought in your audiences minds. You don't have to have an e-commerce site to take advantage of the traffic that is already on your site!  If you don't have a blog, you should really consider starting one.  There is a really good article here about how to decide what you should blog about.

Now, if you are having traffic issues on your site (traffic is low) I've written an article previously about ranking either with paid ads or Organically.  Check out the article here.  We can also evalutate your website with you to discuss ways that you can improve the traffic on your site.  Feel free to contact us to schedule a time we can review your site with you and offer up some FREE suggestions on your website.

Personalized communications can make a repeat customer;

Outside research from Narvar has revealed that the modern retailer needs to look carefully at the quality of the communications experience they are providing before and after the "buy button" is pressed.

"Customers Judge their online shopping experiences in large part based on how retailers communicate with them after they click the 'Buy' button.  And the more thoughtful, intuitive, and personalized the communications are, the better."

The study also found that millennials and baby boomers strongly believe that fast and direct communications about an order are the number one factors in securing their loyalty.

Key findings:

• Millennials are 20% less likely to contact a retailer via email than baby boomers and are five times more likely to use live chat on a website

• Fast and direct communications about an order are the number one factors in winning the loyalty of millennials and baby boomers - that's over things like retailers sharing recommendations and product reviews

• Millennials are the age group least likely to want to be contacted by a retailer over SMS

Did you know you can customize(personalize) your automated notifications about orders to your customers?

There are some really helpful variables listed in this help article that can help you personalize your communications with your clients.

In this help article, you can see how to customize the invoices and order related notices that your customers receive.  If you have not done this already I strongly recommend doing so.  It can mean the difference between a 1-time customer and a repeat customer!

5 Awesome Ways for using WebsiteForge to re-market to your Clients:

These days there are so many ways to stay in touch with your clients.  You have Email, Text, Phone calls, Live Chat, and so many other ways. 

1. Recover Abandoned Carts

2. Target, Re-market, and Upsell to previous customers

New Customers vs Existing Customers:

It's 68% more expensive to acquire $1 from a new customer than it is to upsell current customers (forEntrepreneurs)

You can see a general overview of the mailer here.

3. Announce your new products

Did you know you can setup automatic notices to go out, not only to your customers, but to Facebook and Twitter too!?!  This is a great way to inform your customer base and new potential customers about the items you have.

4. If you don't want to offer coupons offer STORE CREDIT!