Essential Business Technology That You Need For Your Startup

When you start a new business, there is so much more involved beyond just coming up with a great idea for a product or service. If you have the mind of an inventor without the spirit of an entrepreneur. It can be tough to know how to get things moving for your startup.

The whole process of starting your own business can be very involved and complex, from the design table to getting ready to go live. However, it doesn’t have to be impossible. There are 250,000 new independently owned small businesses launched every year in the U.S., thanks to all of the resources that can help make it easier.

So keep your focus on the finish line and you will get there with a little help and careful research. Set yourself up with the best in small business technology. Look online to find a place to work by searching coworking space near me, and get your idea out into the world. Here are some of the basics in today’s tech that can help you get your business off the ground.

Build Your Website

In today’s world of online business, it is imperative that you have a good website. It doesn’t matter if you are selling a new product, idea or service, you will need to have your own presence online to reach your target audience. Thankfully, you don’t need to be highly skilled in programming. Or web development to build a stunning website that will get attention.
If you want your website to represent your company in a professional. And the impressive way you can use one of many simple but professional website providers. Companies like Wix and WordPress can walk you through each part of website creation using easy to understand tools, plugins, and templates. You can combine quality content, important information for your customers. And attention-grabbing photos to attract the attention that you need from potential customers.

Accounting Software

Once your company opens its doors, you will need to keep your finances in order. Products like Quickbooks or Simply Accounting can set you up with a valuable set of tools. For managing your general ledgers, keeping track of your taxes, processing your payroll. And even printing and sending invoices or purchase orders.
These small business accounting software programs are available for any business owner. And they’re easy to use solutions make them an absolute must for your startup.

Email

Nearly all business communications are now done via email. Gone are the days of paper letters, invoices, and other printed correspondence. You will need to set up a business email through your internet provider, your website domain provider, or an online platform like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
Direct all of your business emails into folders that you can organize yourself. And even set up a marketing email campaign to help draw in new customers.

Social Media

Do not underestimate the commercial power of social media. Nearly every industry has realized the importance of social media platforms for increasing brand awareness, interacting with customers, recruiting new talent, advertising your business. And even directly selling your products and services. Setting up business accounts on Facebook, Instagram. And LinkedIn is an excellent way to get your name and product seen by a huge audience.

Smart Phones

Startup business owners will tell you that most of their time in the early days are spent running in every direction at once. With a reliable smartphone, you can respond to customer inquiries, emails and manage your schedule anytime and anywhere.
Make sure that you set yourself up with a business account with your mobile provider to get the best prices and business-friendly features. You should have a separate business line from your personal line for your convenience

5 Secrets to Boosting SEO for WordPress Websites

Creating a WordPress website is easy but optimizing it for search engines is a challenging task especially for the newbies. The search engine giants such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing care more about the site’s design, images, and contents quality. However, many people try to complicate things when it comes to SEO. They lack an understanding of how to boost SEO for WordPress website.

If you want to start an online business and increase traffic, you need to keep the site simple. With this, search engines will recognize it and get high rankings. Let’s view at 5 secrets of enhancing SEO for your WordPress website:

* Select a reliable web host

Nothing feels better than a retailer whose site has massive traffic. Nevertheless, the traffic can lose meaning if you fail to increase the conversion rate. The speed of your website can enhance SEO. The search engines will only recognize a well-designed and secure site. In this case, you need to be keen when choosing a web hosting provider. Choose one that will improve your website speed. Brands such as Blue host and HostGator are among the leading providers that will help you to create a speedy site. With this, you will get good ranking results and be ahead of your competitors.

* Create high quality and unique content

The most excellent tactic to boost SEO for WordPress website is by producing high-quality content. It should be professional and free from spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Also, matching the content with the products and services you are offering is essential to enhance ranking.
Unique content is another tip of boosting SEO. The search engines punish websites that copy contents from others. They rank their sites low to prevent customers from coming across them. Thus, if you want to enhance your business growth, you need to come up with your unique ideas.

* Use only the search engine optimized themes

WordPress offers a variety of themes that can make a professional website. Some are designed to create a beautiful site while others are optimized for search engines. In this case, choosing the optimized themes is essential because the site will have high chances of appearing at the top.

* Set your permalinks correctly

The permalinks are the address of a website. They help the search engines to link your content, and other people to find your web pages. WordPress comes with a setting option that will allow you to change the URL according to your needs. These links improve the search engine optimization and once created they retain their structure regardless of the content you put into the webpage.

* Add social sharing buttons to your website

Enhancing SEO for your WordPress website is not all about creating a professional and unique site. Being active on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is an excellent way to achieve your goals. Encourage sharing of your content by adding a social sharing button on your site to enhance ranking.
Wrap up
Giving your content a chance to be found on the first page of search engines is a great way to improve your business. You will not only increase traffics but also get high profits

Are your emails not converting? These could be the 3 mistakes you’re making

If email is one of the channels you use to establish your brand, way to go. It’s an excellent platform to share your knowledge, start conversations, and expand your influence. But email marketing is more than that – its primary focus remains to generate conversions. If your emails aren’t converting at the level you expected, you may be making at least one of these mistakes. Keep reading – they’re easy to fix and we’ll tell you exactly how to do that.

You don’t pay enough attention to your copy 

Think about the last time you were on the fence of buying something. What was it that finally made you click that “add to cart” button or put the product in your shopping basket? Chances are, it was a well-written copy. A few lines of text – or maybe just a few words – that resonated with you and convinced you it was worth making the purchase. That’s how copy works: it either makes or breaks your sales. So, if you feel like it needs some improvement, here are three ways to make it more powerful:

• no matter how serious your industry, use a conversational tone. That doesn’t make you less professional, it just helps you better connect with people.
• be concise and laser-focused on your message: cut out any words you can do without and let all your sentences bring home your main idea.
• summarize that main idea in a compelling call-to-action (CTA). This is the most important part of your email copy, the one that gets those people on the fence to click and buy.

Even the best content can fall flat if you don’t manage to find the right words to present it. Without great copy, there’s no marketing. So, take an honest look at your emails to see how you can maximize the power of your words.

You use a messy email list

Let’s say you got your email ready – your template looks beautiful and you’re so happy with your copy. You hit “send” and all you get in return is a bunch of bounces. If your bounce rate is higher than 2% – 3%, you may also hear from your Email Service Provider (ESP), and it’s not going to be good news. Many ESPs will suspend you until you clean your list.
Keeping invalid, abuse or temporary addresses in your database doesn’t do you any good. In fact, it hurts your sender reputation and your deliverability. The messier your list is, the fewer people will receive your campaigns. And when you think about how easy this problem is to fix, it makes you wonder why you haven’t fixed it already.
How?

By using an email validation system to prune off those invalid addresses, along with spam traps, catch-alls, abuse, and disposable emails. They’re all sabotaging your conversions.
Here are two ways in which you can employ an email validation service:

• in bulk: most of these services don’t require any download, so you can just run your list through the system and get it back clean
• in real time: once you pick the right service, you receive an email validation API key that you can install on your signup forms.

You don’t A/B test

You probably hear a lot about A/B testing in email marketing and for good reason. It’s a practice that gives businesses a real chance to improve by painting a clear picture of their performance.
How can you implement it? By creating two versions of the same email and paying attention to your metrics (open, click-through and conversion rates) to see which one performs better.
What can you A/B/ test in your email campaigns? Everything! Your subject lines, CTAs, fonts, and colors, even the tone of your voice. There’s one thing you have to keep in mind, though: make sure you don’t test several elements simultaneously. Experiment with one at a time and allow your campaigns to reach their true engagement potential. Gather and study the metrics in a couple of weeks. Some people won’t open your emails right away, so when it comes to A/B testing, don’t do it in a rush.
Depending on the size of your list, you can deploy an A/B test by splitting your list in half and emailing the subscribers variations of your content. If you want to get into more detail, you can run a test by segmenting your list based on:

• location
• gender
• purchase history
• shopping behavior

The results will speak for themselves: you’ll know exactly how your emails need to look and sound to increase conversions.