Tag: Business

Take Your Customer Service Dept From ‘Cost Saving & Cost Reduction’ To High Profit & Business Growth

The more communication I have with people involved in telephone service and sales, such as Contact/Call Centers and Customer Service Departments, the more amazed I become at the reluctance to create more sales and profit opportunities through better interaction with current customers, reactivation of lost accounts and new business acquisition.

Companies are forever seeking ways to cut costs and reduce staff – particularly so in Call/Contact Centers (turning so many into ‘Call ‘n’ Wait’ disaster zones) – they often fail to see what rewards they can achieve by using the following formula:

1 humble telephone + 1 skilled operator + 1 established sales system = HUGE PROFITS!

Here are twelve ideas that can dramatically improve your bottom line RESULTS build greater customer RELATIONSHIPS and earn you (a company of any size and industry) more REVENUE.

1. Build the loyalty of your current customers

A ‘no brainer’ right? Why is that so many customers cannot get through to you, when it suits them?

Why are you constantly offering free incentives and reduced prices to gain new business?

CRM is meant to be the new service elixir. Well it is worth nothing if you don’t listen to your customers.

Here’s an example – in the last six months or so, a metropolitan daily newspaper has offered ten-week subscriptions for $39.90 (I pay more and have subscribed for 20 years), contests (win wine if you subscribe, see a rock group in concert!) and give-aways to induce new subscribers. Me, I get some sort of special club membership with the odd discount or special offer. But hey, so do the new subscribers! Who’s ahead?

2. Gain referrals from current customers

The cost of losing customers is almost incalculable. Add to that the people they tell about their bad experiences and the people they never refer to you.

Instead, offer your current customers a total strategy of satisfaction and benefits. Then, encourage them to tell others.

Don’t reward these referred customers (but do give them total satisfaction and benefits). Do reward your current customer for their referral. Develop a system that will encourage customers to tell friends, family, their customers and associates about you and then say ‘thank you’ or offer them something of value for their efforts.

3. Add VALUE to every sale

Here is a really simple equation: If you give value – you get more sales.

That’s it. If your people are trained to offer advice and information, educate customers, offer them creativity and innovation then your customers will buy more products and services, more often.

Even if your prices are slightly higher. This was the IBM way, back in the 60’s and 70’s with some great lessons to be learned. IBM charged the steepest prices in the industry but their service and support was legendary. The phrase ‘no one ever got fired for buying IBM’ originated way back then.

4. Turn an enquiry into a prospect

Then, turn that prospect into a customer. Then turn that customer into an advocate, one of your company’s ‘raving fans’.

All you need are trained people, a system and a monitoring and measuring plan. Simple? Yes it is, and like all things mentioned in this article, I will bet that some of your people excel at this and a number of them perform basic courtesies with callers – and that’s it.

5. Create an upsell program

One becomes two. Two becomes four. Four becomes … greater than the GDP of Argentina.

It is so simple, easy and effective and so few organisations employ this strategy. Many of your people don’t do this because they think the additional cost will put the customer off. It doesn’t. Not if the customer actually sees the benefit of greater quantity or improved quality.

6. Cross-sell at every opportunity

What can your people add on the original purchase? Extended warranty, on-site service, insurance, a savings if they purchase an additional item(s), a special offer or other options?

If everyone in your organisation upsold and cross-sold at every given opportunity, your sales would soar. I have witnessed increases of between 15-45% in companies where a simple upsell/cross-sell strategy was installed.

7. Negotiate on price

Don’t just offer a discount or ‘best price to you’. Let me reiterate, if you give value – you get more sales. Negotiate price. Train your people that by dropping price, they are giving away margin. So, if you offer a discount negotiate an upsell and/or cross sell. Package or bundle your offer to make it attractive and a genuine customer benefit.

8. Follow up

Every time your people give a quote, send a proposal or brochure out via fax, mail or e.mail, they should record a follow up timeframe.

Between one hour and three days. Everyone who requests information should be followed up by telephone. This leads to a higher close or conversion rate (I have witnessed 20-50%) or, if they have purchased elsewhere – your follow up call may be the commencement of a relationship … or not. But you won’t know if you don’t follow up.

This rule should also be applied to complaint management. Most companies have no follow through with people who have complained.

9. Adopt a ‘keep in touch’ program

What can you do for your customers that will allow you to contact them on a planned, regular basis?

Special offers, new product or service introductions or …? The best forms of ‘keep in touch’ are e.mail combined with a regular phone call.

But be warned – you should have a purpose for every call you make or email you send. Don’t just bombard your customers (and prospects) with garbage.

10. Develop a systematic approach to lost customer reactivation

The longer you fail to make or maintain contact, the likelier you are to lose customers forever.

If you check the most recent contact vs previous contact frequency, you can detect a lost or about to be lost customer. Do something to regain their business.

This is the most costly part of your operation – the lost customer, the lost referral.

Do you have a lost customer reactivation plan?

11. Gain new customers

Why are there so few high quality telemarketing divisions in companies? Certainly, the ‘T’ word is considered dirty and grubby in some quarters and indeed it can be. However, where you have trained professionals, comprehensively developed objectives and strategies why wouldn’t a well run telemarketing campaigns gain new business and new relationships for your organisation?

Quality telemarketing will generate leads, open up new business channels/market segments, build business with small, marginal and distance customers, give you real value (as a follow up) from exhibitions and seminars.

This is one of the most under utilised resources for business acquisition (and reactivation).

12. Develop and work your system

Success will come in all of the previously mentioned guidelines, tips and hints if you adopt a systematic approach. That is:

a) A sales and service oriented contact management system, based on a quality CRM package.

b) Well trained people who consistently add value to and gain value from every call they take or make.

c) Monitoring, Measuring and Reviewing each of the above and seeking continuous improvement both in contact management and people skills.

It is simple and what’s more, it works. Use the power of the humble telephone (and quality people) wisely, and you will gain great RESULTS: Relationships and Revenue.

Business Marketing Online: Secrets of Internet Millionaire Webmasters

One mistake that most website owners and businesses are currently making is that they depend on their traffic to come from search engines alone.

Some are even squandering hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly doing (Pay per click) PPC campaign.

This is fatal.

It is impossible for all websites to rank at #1 or among the top 10 all at once in any search engine.

So, once businesses realize this obvious fact, it should be common sense for them to know that the solution should be to diversify their marketing and promotion.

Stop depending on the uncertain search engine traffic otherwise you’ll go bankrupt soon.

You need to do different kinds of marketing and promotions both online and offline.

Some of them are newspaper and magazine advertising, TV, cable and radio advertising, direct mailing promotion, text-link campaign, link exchange campaign, events sponsorship promotion, press release, article promotions.

When you do all these promotions, you get a lot of exposures, traffic from many sources and will not be forced anymore to depend on search engines traffic and rankings alone.

I have also noticed that most businesses are still using the old tactics of copywriting that worked during pre-internet era.

Perhaps that is why many of them have problems in making their websites profitable.

In these internet times, a website content has to be short, direct, interesting and must have a unique selling proposition to be effective and to convert visitors to buyers.

Many people just don’t have the time to spend all day reading the content of one website when they are aware there are thousands and millions more they may have to read before they make up their minds to buy.

I see many website contents which are professionally written, organized and designed.

But all have one common mistake. They forget this fact that I am pointing out:

They are way too long, too desperate in their sales pitches, hype and most of them will not even allow you to read more than one word before their subscription pop-up forms come up and block the websites.

What a very rude and annoying way to welcome a prospect to your website.

In other words, they do so much to repel the customers, instead of doing so much to attract them.

May these insights into website promotion, work at home business income program, online income opportunity, website marketing, work from home business, affiliate programs, internet promotion help you improve your online marketing so as to achieve more success and happiness.

Please feel free to print or publish this article anywhere and read and also send it to your friends and well wishers and please preserve the author’s resource box and website below.

Ikey Benney

Why OpenCart Is Ideal For Your Online Ecommerce Business

The themes, plug-ins, extensions, and tools provided by ecommerce platforms make it easier for enterprises to take their businesses online. You have option to choose from several ecommerce platforms according to your precise needs and objectives. Unlike other ecommerce platforms, OpenCart is open source and free. Hence, you can use this online store management system to build and run ecommerce websites without paying any monthly fees. In addition to reducing ecommerce application development cost, OpenCart also comes with features to accelerate custom web store development.

It enables you to build and customize ecommerce applications using popular technologies like HTML, PHP and MySQL. Also, OpenCart makes it easier for you to build, maintain, and upgrade the web store by supporting model-view-controller (MVC) pattern. Also, it helps you to promote and sell products to more customers by supporting multiple languages, currencies, and payment gateways. You can even take advantage of the features provided by OpenCart to create a robust ecommerce website according to your precise needs.

Features that Make OpenCart Compete with Commercial Ecommerce Platforms

Supports MVC Pattern

As mentioned earlier, OpenCart is developed based on MVC pattern. The MVC pattern enables you to accelerate web store development by keeping the user interface and business logic layers separated. The separation further helps you to maintain the ecommerce website quickly and make changes to its source code without any hassle. At the same time, you can customize the open source ecommerce platforms according to your precise needs simply using HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL.

User-Friendly Admin Interface

OpenCart further comes with a simple and user-friendly admin interface. It allows you to manage multiple stores through a single admin interface. You can even use the admin interface to categorize users/user groups, and set precise access and privileges for each user. At the same time, you can use the admin interface to access important information related to customers, sales, and orders. The latest version of OpenCart also comes with an admin interface which is accessible on both computers and mobile devices.

Supports Unlimited Products and Categories

OpenCart makes it easier for you to sell a large number and variety of products by supporting unlimited products. It even allows you to organize and display the products in a structured way by creating multiple categories and subcategories. You have option to create many categories and subcategories, and assign products to individual categories. OpenCart also allows you to sell both physical and digital products. You can even boost online sales by providing the marketing features provided by the open source ecommerce platform.

Helps to Drive Online Sales

In addition to facilitating sale of both physical and digital products, OpenCart further helps you to promote the products and increase online sales. The admin dashboard provided by the ecommerce platform enables you to create and monitor digital marketing campaigns from a centralized location. At the same time, OpenCart also helps you to boost online sales by implementing reward programs and improving customer journey. You can even take advantage of an integrated system provided by OpenCart to promote the products effectively through customer reviews, comments, and ratings.

Supports Multiple Languages, Currencies, Payment Gateways and Shipping Methods

Unlike other commercial ecommerce platforms, OpenCart does not allow you to sell products through various online sales channels. But it helps you to sell products to customers regardless of their current location by supporting multiple language, currencies, and payment gateways. In addition to supporting thirty-five payment methods, OpenCart also allows you to set up recurring payment option for customers and sell product through subscription. At the same time, you also have option to choose from several shipping options according to the shipping address of individual customers. These options help you to sell your products in a flexible way and improve shopping experience of global customers.

Choose from Many Themes and Extensions

OpenCart is developed as a modular ecommerce platform. It allows users to customize and extend its functionality by adding specific modules. You have option to extend the core functionality of the ecommerce platforms by installing extensions for bestsellers, latest, special, manufacturer, and information. Also, you can use the Extension Installer provided by the platform to add modules without writing additional code. Likewise, you can make the web store appealing by downloading a beautiful theme from the OpenCart marketplace. At present, you have option to choose from over 13000 themes and extensions. However, some of these themes and extensions are commercial and paid.

Refines Product Search

Most users nowadays love fast and responsive ecommerce websites. They even expect the website to allow them to find and compare relevant products without any hassle or delay. OpenCart enables customers to gather information about relevant products through refine search. You can crate filters to make it easier for customers to find and buy relevant products. The filters can be created just like categories. But the filters will make it easier for customers to evaluate and compare products based on a number of parameters including price, manufacturer and condition.

Keeps the Ecommerce Website Responsive

A large percentage of customers nowadays access ecommerce websites on their mobile devices. Hence, you need to make the ecommerce website accessible and look good on smartphones, tablets, and desktop/laptop computers. OpenCart is developed as a responsive ecommerce solution. It makes the web store accessible on a variety of devices by keeping it responsive. You can even enhance the mobile-friendliness of the web store by using responsive themes.

On the whole, you can always consider using OpenCart as an alternative to commercial ecommerce platforms. But you must not forget that OpenCart, like other ecommerce platforms, has its own shortcomings. For instance, OpenCart lacks some of the robust features provided by other ecommerce platforms like caching and hook system. Also, it requires you to use additional plug-ins and extensions to enhance the ecommerce website’s functionality and performance. However, it has been evolving consistently to compete with other commercial ecommerce platforms. You can still consider using OpenCart build a custom ecommerce website developmnet without investing extra time, effort, and money.

The Only Way Left for the Little Guy to get Rich in the Restaurant Business

To make money in the restaurant business, restaurant owners have to have a competitive advantage. If hard work alone would do it, most restaurant owners would already be rich.

There are only two real and sustainable competitive advantages anyone can have in the restaurant business.

Restaurant owners can’t have the best chef or the best location or the best menu or the cheapest prices — at least, not for very long. Chef’s can get a better offer, road construction, building projects and population shifts turn great locations into so-so locations. Great recipes can be swiped and even improved upon. And of course, trying to have the lowest prices is not the way to go.

The only two real and lasting competitive advantages any restaurant owner can have are — Innovation and Marketing.

Ray Kroc knew the importance of innovation when he said, “McDonald’s can innovate faster than the competition can copy.

Peter Drucker (the greatest management author and guru of all times) said, “Innovation is the only lasting competitive advantage anyone can ever have in any business.”

e’s right — “Marketing” is just a sub-part of “Innovation.”

Applying unique marketing techniques is a major part of innovation because —

Marketing is the only thing that generates profit for a restaurant. Everything else is an expense.

Marketing (when done right) is the best investment any restaurant owner can ever make. In the stock market or in real estate someone may hope for a 5% or maybe even a 20% return on their investment. But in marketing, a $100 investment in promotion (ads, direct mail, press releases, etc.) could bring in $1,000 in profit and sometimes much more.

For example, changing only a few words in a headline can bring in two to 10 times more profit from the same ad. And the only cost to make the change would be the time it took the restaurant owner to learn how to write headlines. What kind of return on investment is that?

The average restaurant owner thinks his job is to “run his restaurant.” He doesn’t have time to market his restaurant — or even to learn how to market a restaurant. Maybe that’s why he’s average.

A restaurant owner can’t make $100,000 a year doing $10 and hour work. A restaurant owner’s job should be to market, innovate and promote his/her restaurant.

The restaurant marketing plan for many restaurants is based on whatever the latest ad salesperson was promoting. When it comes to marketing, many restaurant owners just copy what the big boys are doing. That could spell disaster for almost any independent restaurant.

Most restaurant owners work long hours, but it doesn’t take long hours to market, innovate and promote a restaurant.

Look at it this way. A restaurant owner who masters innovation and marketing could swap restaurants with any restaurant owner in town. Let him have the location, the menu, the chef and staff and a year from now the restaurant owner who knows how to market and innovate would have the most profitable restaurant.

Learn to stop chasing the so-called competitive advantages that are short-lived and non-sustainable. Concentrate on Innovation and Marketing and watch your restaurant profits skyrocket.

Jerry Minchey, editor

http://www.MarketingYourRestaurant.com

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Permission is hereby granted to reprint this article as long as proper credit is given including a link back to the website shown in the “Author Bio below.

Cloud Computing and Its Impact on Your Business

The term ‘Cloud Computing’ is one of the most echoed buzzwords in the recent times’ technological expansion. Deliberately or accidentally, you come across cloud storage and cloud computing in everyday life, provided that you are active in the online e-commerce domain.

To be more specific, a majority of people make use of various online video calling facilities like Skype or might regularly access emails for business transactions and also for personal use through Gmail or Yahoo! Here, you access the data or the resources which are lying on a cloud storage environment.

What is cloud computing?

In simple terms, Cloud computing implies delivering hosted services like computing resources or data storage capacity across the Internet. The end-user just needs to have a computer and a high-speed internet access to connect to the cloud where services and resources are shared.

Cloud computing, which has paved the way for a paradigm shift to be introduced in to the IT field, is now being largely used in many fields like web-based software services, on-demand gaming, platform as a service etc. The cloud computing environment is very flexible as the applications or services are platform independent and also the storage location will also be in the cloud, eliminating the need to assign specific hardware to a task.

These services are delivered mainly in three forms like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). In IaaS, the end, the users pay for resources like servers and other infrastructure for a period of time. In PaaS, the platform or system software is accessed from the cloud while in SaaS, the application software and databases are provided by the cloud service provider.

How a cloud helps in your online business?

Developments in the domain of cloud computing and also the interest in this service is on the path of rapid growth as it is used by small and big enterprises on a large scale. Contrary to traditional web hosting services, cloud service is sold on demand and can be treated like it is subscription-based. This is very useful for SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) who cannot afford to purchase large amount of storage space and hardware resources.

The cloud provider provides the services and resources as per the users demand. It is also very easy and fast to use, as SaaS in cloud computing eliminates the need of installing software in your hardware. You can save a lot of money as cloud provides scalability, enabling you to scale up or down, the use of resources or data from cloud, as per your needs. It also requires less staff as the maintenance tasks, hardware and software are quite minimal.

Thus these services look promising from all perspective, whether for a large enterprise or a small online business.

Ad Blocking Technology and the Online Business Owner

Many browsers are now using ad blocking technology in order to attract users. This technology stops things like banner ads, pop-up ads, and even the basic click ads from even showing up on your window, making for ad free browsing. Although this is useful for the user, a lot of internet businesses are feeling threatened by this technology, fearing that they will not be able to get their message across to the public anymore. In truth though, ad blocking technology can work to your advantage, if you are savvy about it. Here is how:

1. Ad blocking saves you money. The problem with the pay per click style of advertising is that you get dinged even if someone accidentally clicks on your advertisement and this kind of accident is extremely common. Perhaps each click is only costing you a cent or two, but it quickly adds up. With the ad blocking, you don’t have to worry about accidental hits anymore.

2. Ad blocking forces you to be more creative-and thus stand out. Banner ads, pay per click ads, and pop-ups are boring and easily ignored anyway. With them no longer reaching people, you have to do some more work in your advertising and visibility efforts. Creativity means that you are more memorable-meaning that you stand a better chance of attracting customers.

3. No matter how prevalent ad blocking is, not everyone is going to use it anyway. Ad blocking sometimes costs extra as a part of a subscription fee, is part of a search engine people don’t like, or someone might decide to disable it. Regardless of the reason, ad blocking will never blanket the world, so why worry about it?

4. Random advertisements scattered across the internet should only be a fraction of your campaign. To be truly successful, you have to have visibility in several laces online, not just one, so if you lose your banner ads, then you should have a contingency plan in place anyway so that you don’t just grind to a halt.

5. If nothing else, you have one less kind of marketing to worry about which means you can spend more time on other varieties that work better or on expanding your business overall. Advertisement blocking is nothing to fear for the organized, creative, and savvy internet business owner. It is simply one more thing to be overcome in your mission to become a successful online business owner.

ERP Software & Business Accounting Software to Support Your Growing Business Needs

Popular ‘shrinkwrap solutions’ Quickbooks and Peachtree have been the launching point for many a business. These products are easy to use, flexible, and with the built-in two dimensional reporting, are outstanding for accounting, and even some advanced application areas like project billing and procurement management.

When is it time to move on, some company owners may ask? While there are probably 50 or so good reasons, but for the purposes of this article, I will highlight a few. If you are running a standalone Ecommerce solution that does not tie to your accounting system, that may be reason one. If you are running a simple sales force automation system like ACT!, Salesforce.com or Goldmine, and the quoting and customer master records are not tied to your accounting systems items, that may be another. In both these examples, integrated systems allow you standardized pricing by customer, item, promotion, or even dealer (partner).

The biggest justification may come with people running simple production planning and scheduling functions on spreadsheets. By passing around spreadsheets, companies are wasting time, and errors can be easily made. Also, once your production scheduling is complete, there is usually no ‘put back,’ to the accounting system. The justification for a systematic planning and scheduling system tied to your back office may be in inventory reduction, improved customer service, or lead-time reduction. If you can add an ‘available to promise,’ to commit an order to a key prospect or customer, you may be able to improve your top line as well.

From an IT infrastructure standpoint, you may start to wonder why the servers in some hidden room in your company are growing. Well with all these disparate systems, it is often time easier to add a server than to try to consolidate applications on one server. This adds complexity and increases your reliance on costly IT personnel.

Find an online, subscription based solution that combines ERP, CRM, Ecommerce and business intelligence in one simple solution. All you should need is a web browser and a high speed line. In summary, small companies can benefit by:

1) Reducing the ‘islands of automation,’ that require rekeying and are conducive to mistakes

2) Reduce the dependence on internal systems and IT personnel

3) Dive into advanced integration application areas like aftermarket service, planning/scheduling, Ecommerce and configuration management and comprehensive sales force automation.

5 Benefits of Working From Home and Having a Home Based Business

The trend to home based businesses is really exploding. And, with good reason. The flexibility and profitability of working from home is tremendous. Besides for the fact that you can get up when you want and wear what you want, there are many other advantages to working from home and having a home based business.

Benefit #1: Increased Productivity

Working from home allows you to have more time. More time for work, or hobbies, or your family. It eliminates the commute to work. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the national average drive-time is 24.3 minutes. Americans spend over 100 hours a year commuting. Working from home not only eliminates the time spent commuting, it also eliminates time in the office spent socializing or leaving to get lunch. This time gained results in more productive hours and few hours spent “working.” Working from home also gives you the freedom to take a break to exercise or do something around the house. You’re home when packages arrive to sign for them. You’re home when the repair man comes and will only give you a four hour window. You are also more available to clients who need to reach you in the evening and on the weekends with a home based business. And, best of all, you’re home for your kids and pets when they need you. According to USA Today, people who work from form report having fewer sick days, improved morale, and improved productivity.

Benefit #2: Tax Savings

Working from home means a home office. A home office means deductible business related expenses such as Internet, phone, office space, subscriptions, and insurance. The IRS allows you to deduct a percent of your mortgage or rent payment, depreciation, property taxes, insurance, and utilities. The percent you may deduct is calculated by the number of rooms or square foot of your home you use for your business. For example, if you use one room of a four bedroom house for your home based business, you can deduct 25% of the homes’ operating expenses. However, this space must be designated specifically for your business on an on-going basis. According to the IRS, in order to deduct something as a business expense the “business expense must be ordinary in your business and necessary for operation.” Ordinary just means an expense that is accepted and common in your business. Necessary means those that are helpful and appropriate to maintain your business. The IRS requires you to separate your personal and business expenses and then only the business expenses can be deducted.

Benefit #3: Flexible Hours

Who wants a strict 9-5 job? It’s wonderful waking up and starting your day on your own schedule. Time to read the paper, get the kids to school, exercise all before you begin work. You have the flexibility to switch gears when you like. If you can only get a mid day doctor or hair appointment, that’s just fine with a home based business. It provides the flexibility to make it to your childrens’ school events, stay home with a sick child, or work late after the kids are in bed.

Benefit #4: More Family Time

One of the most fulfilling benefits of working from home and having a home based business is the ability to gain control over your life. Parents who work from home report a much higher level of family time and a much lower level of stress. If you chose to quit at 3:00 when the kids come home and work at night after they are in bed, that is now a choice of your own accord. Home based businesses allow for balance and the freedom to take the day off to golf or spend it with your kids without having to check in with someone.

Benefit #5: More Profitability

You will save money on rent, meals out, gas to commute, and the cost of work clothes. More importantly, instead of having a boss tell you when you have to work, when you can take vacation, when you’ll get a raise or a promotion, you make those decisions yourself. Your advancement and income is directly related to your own productivity. As a result, you’ll likely want to work harder and smarter since you reap the benefits directly.

Home based businesses are at the forefront of the biggest business movement right now. Technology is largely responsible for this shift in business. We each have the opportunity, if we chose to seize it, to work from home and have the freedom we all dream of.

Freelancing Business – Five Main Challenges To Expect

Freelancing is an ever growing industry attracting numerous global professionals and outsourcers. Each has something to give and take in this industry. While becoming a freelancer sounds so good and easy nowadays, in reality, it is not. There are challenges for choosing to freelance full time. Some of the challenges are beyond what you can do and others are not.

Despite the fact that this business is tricky and challenging, you should aim at attaining success. As a beginner, you are probably looking through various websites in the hope of finding useful tips and hints. In this article, let us focus on a few types of freelancing challenges.

They include the following:

Maintaining discipline – As a freelance writer, graphic designer, web developer, and any other professional, you have full control of your time. While corporate workers have to wake up early and rush things to get at the workplace on time, you are free to keep on sleeping. The simple fact that you lack corporate rules to follow and comply with can make it hard for you to maintain discipline. Without discipline and focus, you would definitely fail.

Procrastination – Corporate employees perform a task when their bosses demand it to keep things flowing smoothly. Since they lack a quick alternative, the employees get into the habit of doing things in time. A freelancer, on the other hand, can quickly form a trend of postponing tasks. Most of us have been a victim, including myself, and the result is not that good. Since the virtual workplace is flexible, a freelance worker get to choose the duration he or she wants to complete projects. The longer the duration, the easier it becomes to procrastinate and loss business.

Time management – Most freelancing beginners are passionate about making money and snatching the best paying jobs. What they do not mostly focus on is how to manage the projects they would win and how to finish them on time. Whilst this business allows too much freedom, one has to realize that it involves real employers. They have deadlines to meet and expect their workers to separate time for work and leisure. Many of us have lost long term contracts because we sort of portrayed laziness or poor time management skills.

Project management – If you are good at what you choose to do online, buyers will never ever want to lose you. Some of you have faced a challenge where every buyer wants their task done in a short time. Most of us get confused, overwork ourselves everybody and still lag behind on the part of the task. Another person makes the most intelligent decision – outsourcing some of the projects. Many starters are afraid to lose clients and hence force themselves on tasks they cannot finish on time.

Setting the rate – Although people have different reasons for freelancing fulltime or part time, they all look for people that can value their hard work. Some clients have pleasant personalities and it is easy to overlook how much they pay for your services. While this sounds good, it is not a very prudent thing to do. Monthly bills will still come and you will need money to pay them. While a starter does not have much of a choice, he or she should learn to set comfortable rates as days come and go.

Top 5 Web Analytics Tools To Improve Business Performance

Every business generates data and records them as part of its operational requirement. The data, particularly related to websites of companies, can come in many forms such as the number of users visiting your site and their locations or better, the number of them purchasing products from your site among others.

If left unattended the data can be treated as plain gibberish occupying precious server space whereas if analysed with proper tools and acted upon, can be transformational to the business. The methodology of web data analytics includes measuring the user traffic, predicting performance, gauging customer satisfaction levels and other attributes of business by using statistics and computer programming.

Why web data analytics is important

  • To find out current level of performance of your website and areas of improvement
  • To extract actionable information to improve marketing strategies, boost performance and improve decision making
  • To know the profile of users and understand their browsing & buying patterns
  • To predict changing user behaviour, market dynamics, and their impact on business

As the challenges before businesses become more complex and patterns of data more unwieldy, the use of analytics tools has become important more than ever before. Thus, to leverage the functionality of the available tools or services to the benefit of your business, engaging professional online advertising services with the right expertise can be a thoughtful strategy. Let’s discuss the top five web analytics tools that are widely used in most companies of today, and the ones you can readily use to help transform your business.

Google Analytics: Arguably the most popular among all the existing web analytics tools, this comes free with the following attributes. However, a subscription based version called Google Analytics 360 is available as well for enterprise users.

  • Tracks and collates the source of web data spread across channels, devices, and locations
  • Tracks the user activity on a website on the basis of performance related metrics such as total number of visits, transactions, revenue etc
  • Analyses user activity on the site including areas (pages) from where users seem to have bounced off
  • Provides detailed reports that can help to improve digital marketing strategies like social media campaigns, besides aiming at better targeting of search engine rankings, and conversions

An important aspect of Google Analytics related to online advertising is called Google AdWords, which offers bespoke services such as Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Known to be the highest revenue earner for Google, this paid marketing service is used by advertisers and web marketers to display product listings, advertising copies, and video content high on Google SERPs.

However, the only area where Google Analytics lags is in providing the description of real time data in its entirety, which it does to some extent but with a few data points only.

Kissmetrics: Unlike Google Analytics, Kissmetrics provides comprehensive web related data about user activity on a real time basis. It shows individual user activity over a period of time spanning across devices, locations and time. It gives an insight into individuals or specific user groups, and is specially useful for mobile apps and ecommerce sites. And yes, it doesn’t come free with charges starting from $200 per month.

Clicky: The tool provides comprehensive real time data on individual user activity, search rankings, and video analytics. Interestingly, it provides a heatmap traction of users in real time through an online widget. The best part is that it is free up to 3000 daily page views but charges $19.99 per month beyond that.

The tool alerts you as well when your site goes offline. It does so by keeping a tab on your site from five different locations worldwide. Thus, it helps companies to work towards real time optimization of business data to arrive at better outcomes.

Woopra: This real time analytics tool has a unique live chat feature that allows site owners or web marketers to chat with users visiting the site. This feature can give important insights about a site from a user’s perspective and helps to improve shortcomings (if any).

Also, by using the tool’s AppConnect feature you can connect with other platforms like Salesforce, WordPress, HubSpot, MailChimp etc. It is available in both free (up to 30,000 actions per month) and paid versions (up to $1,199.95 per month and higher with advanced enterprise level features.)

FoxMetrics: Available at $299 per month, the site provides actionable information to web owners relating to users’ browsing behaviour over a period of time including making sales. By using the tool you can even follow up with customers who have abandoned shopping carts through targeted emails and offers. The tool allows you to create user surveys and feedback forms apart from directing the users to pages that suit them better.

Conclusion

Web analytics tools can provide important insights into user traffic, various facets related to it, and its changing dynamics. However, such information won’t be of any use unless suitable action is taken towards improving the user experience and thereby possible conversions. In the article, top 5 web analytics tools have been discussed in terms of their usage in digital marketing. Readers are invited to give their comments on the same.

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