Optimize Your E-Commerce Store For Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2017!

Its that time of year again!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a great opportunity for online retailers and e-commerce businesses to drastically increase their sales with discounts and sales. 

Have you prepared your Magento store  the millions of shoppers, amped up to spend money for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? We have some tips that may help you and your store prepare!

Promote Promote Promote!

People can’t find you if you don’t tell them.  Send out dedicated newsletters to your subscribers by creating coupon codes and send them to customers in newsletters. Try conversion rate optimization software to track your customers conversions and promote specials via pop up ads or banners on your site! We love Picreel as they use the ReelOverlay feature where you can capture a new lead, gain a sale, or simply keep a visitor on your website longer with a pop-up that is customized according to your needs.

Add social media buttons to your product pages to encourage visitors to share your offers or post on blogs, community forums etc. Don’t be shy!

Give Your Store a Makeover

If you want your products to jump off the shelves during the campaign, you need to change the look of your website. Turn headers into banners to promote discounts. You can use several tools to do so. Check out our User Experience Extensions to help with things like search engines, product sorting, frequently viewed items and more!

Optimize Your Site

A holiday campaign performs best with seasonal landing pages. You can SEO-optimize  pages by using Black Friday- and Cyber Monday-related keywords. Use captivating images, write great content to allure shoppers. Try Image Optimization for faster load speed on images or Minify Js/Css/HTML to reduce page size, bandwidth and server load. 

You can also add temporarily SEO keywords to existing product pages to enhance your chances of getting new customers who utilize search engines to find discounts on the Internet.

Having an SSL certificate is also essential: shoppers may abandon the shopping cart if they see that the connection is not secure and they may be at risk of losing credit card data.

Make Sure Your Shopping Cart is Prepared

One of the most frustrating things for customers can be the checkout process. How many times have you seen your potential buyers just leave everything in the cart and bail? Its not a fun feeling. Abandoned Cart Modules have been extremely popular, allowing the system to inform your runaway customers that they have some good stuff waiting to be purchased! Check out Abandoned Cart Reminder or Follow Up Email for more info!

Give Your Customers a Reward or Discount

Everyone loves a good deal, and thats the main idea behind Cyber Monday and Black Friday. The great thing is, being an E-Commerce store, your customers can avoid the hassle of getting dressed and perhaps trampled by the deal seekers! Try Shopping Cart Price Rules to enable custom discounts for the Holidays or Free Gift to spread some love to those good customers you want to thank or introduce to your products. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the best time of the year for ecommerce businesses to take sales to the next level. Some businesses miss the opportunity by failing to prepare their Magento store for the holidays. Stand out from the competition and see how Extendware Extensions can help you get on track. We offer 7 day free trials and 30 day money back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose!

Have fun and Happy Holidays from Extendware!
Use Code: CYBER20 at checkout for 20% off any Extendware Extension! (Excludes services and license updates; valid through 11/18/17)

Why LoadView, A Cloud Based Load Testing Tool, Can Help Your Websites and API’s

Website Load Testing Explained

You’ve built what you think is a pretty good website, and you can’t wait to start catering to visitors—while your site may have performed just fine when you were the only one testing it, are you sure it’s up to the challenge of handling real operating conditions?

Load testing is essential to deploying a web presence that works, and you can’t afford to launch without it. Here’s what you should know.

What Is Load Testing?

In the realm of modern computing, the concept of a load is equivalent to the amount of demand being placed on a given system at a particular moment. For instance, network hardware such as servers, or the computers that answer requests for your website’s data, make decisions at specific rates and only accept a certain maximum number of connections. Similarly, a site’s database software backend may not be capable of processing more than a limited volume of transactions at one time.

How Does Load Testing Work?

As you can see, there are many different ways to quantify load and measure the performance of the distinct elements that make up a functional website. Load testing simulates what could happen when your site faces real-world conditions. For instance, you might use a testing tool that generates thousands of requests that your server has to answer or force your shopping cart software to process hundreds of dummy orders simultaneously.

You can take this practice even further by pushing your site beyond its limits, which is known as stress testing. By exceeding the reasonable demands that your website usually faces, you get a better picture of what could happen during disaster situations.

What Can Load Testing Reveal?

Why try to break your site with stress testing or have it perform simulated tasks? The idea behind load testing is to prevent the unexpected from catching you off guard.

Websites and the business systems that they connect to depend on a seemingly endless amount of computer code. Many sites and server operating systems run tools and libraries from hundreds of sources. It can be hard to anticipate when something might not behave the way you assumed it would.

To make life tougher, many programmers design software to fulfill specific needs in a limited range of use cases. It’s not unreasonable to assume that you might commit a fatal error while attempting something you thought was totally fine. Instead of waiting until you’ve got a thousand customers trying to make Black Friday purchases to find out that your site can’t cope, it’s better to learn how it behaves in a safe testing environment.

Load testing doesn’t just let you know what you’ve done wrong. It also reveals what you could be doing right. Since testing exposes performance data, it makes it easier to optimize the way your site works so that it meets demand.

How Can I Get Started?

Whether you’re preparing for Cyber Monday or just trying to create a new revenue source, automated load testing needs to become a part of your software development cycle. To learn more about your options, check out LoadView-Testing.com

Glenn Lee is a Web Performance Engineer and Technical Writer who has worked at Dotcom-Monitor for 5 years. He is passionate about the technology industry, how it progresses rapidly, and meets varying global development needs. Glenn focuses on web performance advancement.

How excellent customer service can lead to eCommerce success

As the largest eCommerce players such as Amazon continue to enhance their customer service experience, it puts increasing pressure on smaller retailers to follow suit. Customer service means more than handling post sales enquiries, it also covers many steps leading up to the customer making the purchase decision.

Importance of good customer service

Consumers have extremely high expectations when it comes to customer service. A recent survey by Business Insider discovered the 60% of US consumers didn’t complete a transaction due to a poor experience and that 66% of US consumers will actively pay a higher price to shop with a company that provides a high standard of customer service. With this in mind, there is clearly a lot at stake for ecommerce retailers to provide the best possible shopping experience and after sales care.

Customer service before the sale

Before you can convince a visitor to part with their money, it is essential to create a smooth shopping experience. We have highlighted a number of key areas below.

Easy Product Finding

Different shoppers like to use ecommerce sites in different ways. For example, some people prefer to use the onsite search, whereas others will use the navigation or rely on recommendations. It is therefore essential that you have all of these bases covered. If your onsite search is not up to scratch, look to incorporate a third party extension or plugin. Make sure that you have a simple to use product filtering function on your category pages. And also make sure that your related product recommendations are well maintained.

Clear and visible delivery and returns information

When a customer is going through the process of determining whether to make a purchase, they need to know how much any added extras will cost and how easy it is to return items once they have purchased them. Having a clear and visible delivery and returns policy always visible will solve this.

Free Delivery

Further to the above, offering a free delivery option either on all purchases or above a certain spend level can further incentivise a browser to become a shopper.

Flexible delivery options

Online shoppers are also looking for flexibility when it comes to delivery. For example, they might be happy to pay for an expedited same or next day service or they may find a click and collect more suitable for their needs.

Fast site

A slow loading website can be a conversion killer. If your site is too slow, you will be leaking customers and it can also have a negative impact on your Google rankings.

Mobile experience

More people shop on mobile devices that on desktop. It is therefore essential that your mobile experience is fully functional.
Customer service after the sale

Once the purchase has been made, the traditional after sales care will kick-in.

Multi channel support

As with browsing, different customers will expect different channels of communication. It is therefore important that you have a number of alternative methods for customers to submit enquiries, questions etc. These are: Livechat, telephone, email (have this connected to a support ticketing system) and social channels.

Listen on social media

Sometimes a customer might try to reach you directly or indirectly via social media. It is important that you have a customer service representative listening to your social channels so that they can pick up and deal with any complaints and queries before they escalate.

Fast response to query

It is sensible to publish a reasonable response policy on your website, however, you should always strive to beat it. The faster that you can respond to a message or query, the less time the customer has to post a complaint online. This should be taken into account during the traditional seasonal busy periods, planning for this and hiring extra temporary support staff can be sensible.

Delivery problems

If a delivery problem occurs, do whatever can be done to take the pressure from the client. Contact the courier company on their behalf and do what you can to remedy the issue. If the delivery is delayed and the customer paid extra for faster delivery, you should refund this charge. Further to this, you should offer an extra incentive such as a free gift or discount with their next purchase.

As we have seen, there are many ways to enhance the pre and post purchase experience in order to have a positive impact on revenue and general customer satisfaction. Now is a good time to review your existing processes and see if they where they should be.

David is a Director at Best Response Media. They provide innovative Magento ecommerce and digital marketing solutions from their offices in Central London.

PHP 7 Why It’s Great and Our Compatible Extensions

We have great news at Extendware. Not only are we adding new Magento 2.0 extensions weekly, but we are also updating our extensions to PHP7. Many of them are available now so we thought we would share a little bit about PHP7 here in our blog!

Much Faster Speed

A great advantage of the new PHPNG engine is the significant performance improvement. The development team of PHPNG refactored the Zend Engine, and remarkably optimized memory usage. With PHP 7, not only your code will be executed faster, but you will also need fewer servers to serve the same number of users.

64-Bit Windows Systems Support

PHP is a prominent member of the LAMP stack which means its native environment is Linux, but it’s also possible to run it on a Windows system. PHP 7 introduces consistent 64-bit support which means both native 64-bit integers and large files will be supported, allowing you to confidently run the language on your 64-bit Windows system in the future.

The New Zend Engine

The Zend engine has been powering PHP since 1999 when it was introduced with the PHP 4 release. Zend PHP#NG-01-01(not to be confused with the Zend Framework) is an open source execution engine written in C that interprets the PHP language. PHP 7 receives an entirely new version of the engine coming under the code name of PHP#NG (Next Generation). The enhanced functionality of the initial engine and adds an extensible object model and a significant performance enhancement to the language.

Anonymous Classes

PHP 7 enables you to use anonymous classes, already a well-established practice in other object-oriented languages like C# and Java. An anonymous class is a class without a name. The object it instantiates has the same functionality as an object of a named class.

The syntax is the same as what we are used to in traditional PHP classes, only the name is missing. If anonymous classes are used well, they can speed up coding as well execution time. Anonymous classes are excellent when a class is used only once during execution and in cases when a class doesn’t need to be documented.

Error Handling

Handling fatal and catchable fatal errors have never been an easy task for PHP coders. The new Engine PhP image 2-01Exceptions will allow you to replace these types of errors with exceptions. If the exception is not caught, PHP will continue to return the same fatal errors as it does in the 5.X series.

The new Engine Exception objects don’t extend the Exception Base Class. This ensures backward compatibility and results in two different kinds of exceptions in error handling: traditional and engine exceptions. To enable programmers to catch both, PHP 7 introduces a new shared Parent Class under the name of Base Exception.

New Spaceship and Null Coalescing Operators

The Spaceship operator runs under the official name of Combined Comparison Operator. The notation of the new operator looks like this: <=> (kind of like a simplified spaceship, if you imagine it right). The Spaceship Operator returns 0 if both operands are equal, 1 if the left is greater, and -1 if the right is greater. It’s also called a three-way comparison operator, and it already exists in other popular programming languages like Perl and Ruby.

The Null Coalescing operator is denoted with two question marks ( ?? ). You can use it when you want to check if something exists and return a default value, in case it doesn’t. The coalesce operator returns the result of its first operand if it exists and is not null, and the second operand in any other cases

Enables Accurate Type Declarations

Have you ever wanted to prevent unintended return values by declaring the return type of a function? PHP 7 enables developers to enhance the quality of their code with the help of return type declarations.

Imports from the Same Namespace

The new Group Use Declarations feature will be crucial for those who want to import many classes from the same namespace. The new syntax cuts verbosity, makes your code tidier and easier on the eyes, and saves you a lot of typing time. It will also be easier to read through and debug codes, as group use declarations help you identify the imports that belong to the same module.

Frees Up Space

The goal of PHP 7 was to free up the space to enable improvement, so it was necessary to get rid of many deprecated functionalities and old and unsupported Server APIs and extensions.  All the removed items have been deprecated for a while in PHP 5 so most likely you haven’t used them for a long time. However please note if you have a legacy app running on older PHP versions the new PHP 7 can potentially break the code.

Check out some of our updated PHP7 compatible extensions!

LLucene-Searchucene Search

Increase revenue and customer satisfaction with faster, more relevant search results. Lucene Search is a powerful and flexible search solution that helps ensure your customers can always find the products they want.

 

Full Page CacheFull-Page-Cache-(Web)

Full Page Cache reduces your Magento store’s First Byte Time, Increases your web server request rate, reduces database load, and makes your store much more responsive

 

 

CacCache-Crawlerhe Warmer

The Magento Full Page Cache Crawler / Warmer will ensure your Full Page Cache solution is always “warmed” and ready to serve your store pages at the fastest speed possible. The extension is efficiently coded to reduce bandwidth, CPU, and crawling time.

 

 Image OptimizationImage-Optimization-(Web)

Images are very important for online stores, but unnecessarily large images can slow down the user experience and reduce search engine rankings. Image Optimization will optimize your images and reduce their size without sacrificing image quality, so that your site images are faster loading.

 

Auto-Translate-(for-web)Auto Translate

Increase your stores potential customer base by allowing users to translate the page to their preferred language. Ensure advertising campaigns and feeds targeting certain languages will automatically translate to that languageMinify 1.0

 

Product-Labels-(For-web)

Product Labels

Automatically highlight your special offers, featured products, sales, and more. Multiple images / labels per products supported, flexible rules, and many, many options to empower you to market your products the best way possible.

Branding Your Business on a Budget

Branding is one of the key tools to a successful business. I mean, if people don’t know what you brand is then how can they buy something, or even better, become a loyal customer? To some brand marketing may come naturally, but for others it is just something else they have to do…but there are ways to make it easy and not expensive to implement.

There are ways you can get creative and brand your business. It may require a little time, but in the long run, you will see the ROI and can actually save you money!

Find a Voice

Once you’ve identified your buyers are you can start to see your brand form. A brand identity is the things that make people aware of what your brand is, aka your voice. Figuring that out follows a process not unlike the one that’s used to determine your personas but instead of answering questions about your target audience, you’re answering questions that are more introspective to your brand. What are its values? What does it represent?

 Know Your Peoplepeople-01

The needs, goals, and behavior of your potential customers dictate how you convey your product or service. Understanding those things helps you determine what kind of media your personas are consuming, what motivates them, and where they “live” online. Having that information helps develop a compelling, effective brand and it helps you reach the right people!

Use Social Media

Now we know who your personas are and we know what to say to them and how to say it. Yet, where are they located?

Since you might have a clear picture of the different pieces of your audience, it’s important to figure out where they’re spending the most time, especially on social media. It is effective to reach people where they are already present, which includes their online behavior, too. Once you do establish that presence, you need to maintain it. How many times have you gone to a brand’s Facebook Page only to find that nothing has been posted in the past three months? Chances are, it didn’t have a positive impact on your perception. That can be avoided by planning and scheduling social media posts like you would with any other marketing calendar. That’s a huge part of staying relevant to your audience. By sharing content that pertains to what they’re likely thinking about at a given time of year will be a key to your success.

Blog 

Blogging is important as we have said in other articles. It is the “attract” stage that turns strangers into visitors to your website.

blogging-01Blogging might be the most fundamental step of inbound marketing. It helps you reach qualified customers, by creating the informative content that matches the information they’re searching for. It’s so important to make it relevant to this audience, when you’re writing, make sure the content is optimized for those searches. After friends and family, blogs are the third most trusted source of information. That content will also serve as material to populate your social media networks, and we’ve already covered what a crucial part that plays in branding on a budget. One of the biggest struggles we hear about is the cost of spending time on it. If you are new to the web and blogging, check out firstsiteguide.com. Here they can show you how to start, run and grow your own blog!

Like planning your social media presence, having an editorial calendar for support-01-01your blog can be helpful in maintaining consistent timing and fresh content.

Customer Service

Whether you’re serving customers or clients, the goal is to create a delightful, sharable experience. And when the client or customer experience is a priority, it shouldn’t cost you much for them to talk about it. That revisits the importance of your identity and voice. As you go through these brand creating steps, think about the values that you want to be resonated in those things. Is amazing customer service one of them? Those values are what shape the brand, and that influences the voice you project to your audience.

Get Branding

Building a brand might seem like a huge undertaking, especially with limited resources. However, there are plenty of economical ways to not only get started, but to continue the momentum you start with these efforts. The thing is, you can really have fun with the process!

Tips On Making Your Online Store Successful

Ok so you have your store all set up, now what!? Just like anything, an online store takes a lot of time, care, and effort to make it successful for you and helpful to your customers. Here we look at some elements needed to ensure everything is working properly. Make sure to ask our support if we can help set you up with a Magento extension that will benefit you and your business!

full-page-cache-webFAST LOADING TIMES

We don’t really think about loading times these days and that’s because a reliable high-speed internet connection is taken for granted. Although one thing is for sure: People aren’t going to stick around for long waiting for a page to load! This is all about making the shopping smooth. You want to optimize your online shop for speed so there’s no money left on the table! Try Extendware’s Full Page Cache extension for Magento to make your pages run faster!

PRODUCT REVIEWS

Sometimes the best advocate for your online shop and product are your customers. Your product descriptions can only do so much to convince folks to part with their money. Allowing your customers to review products they’ve bought lets them express how they feel about the overall experience and the product itself. It is also the perfect way to get your products validated by a third party! Reviews produce an average 18% increase in sales, and having 50 or more reviews on a product can increase its conversion by 4.6%

QUALITY IMAGES

With today’s smartphones packing some very capable cameras, almost anybody can shoot quality product photos. Who would buy something without seeing a photo first anyway?

camrea-01Tips on taking good photos:

◦ Make sure the lens is clean
◦ Take shots with lots of light available
◦ Try different camera angles
◦ Increase the resolution
◦ Check out special shooting modes
◦ Get help from apps with filters and tools

image-optimization-web

 

Another issue with photos can sometimes be that they are too large to load quickly on your site, leaving customers waiting on the next page to load. Extendware’s Image Optimization extension can help your images load faster reducing the drag time with large photos.

EASY PAYMENT PROCESS

Your checkout page is the final stop on people’s shopping journey. And one of the best ways to increase conversions and sales is to make it hilariously easy for folks to pay you. This is the place where visitor finally become your customers. To help make your payment process as easy and simple as possible, follow these great tips:

◦ Make sure to have several payment methods availablepayment-methods-01
◦ Don’t force people to sign up, tacky!
◦ Make sure your checkout page matches the rest of your store
◦ Don’t redirect people
◦ Make errors easy to fix
◦ Don’t ask for unnecessary information
◦ Reassure folks with security certificates

QUALITY DESIGN

Most online shoppers base their opinion of a website on overall design alone and many do not return because of overall aesthetics. A professionally designed online shop can go a long way to making it successful. It also adds credibility and is a way to show your brand personality.

RELATED PRODUCTSwho-viewed-this-also-viewed-for-web

This is upselling at its finest. On your product pages show visitors other items people have bought together or items that are complimentary to each other. For instance, customers may need a pair of batteries for a device or would be better off with extra memory for their camera. This is your opportunity to increase revenue because it shows items visitors may not have otherwise been looking for. Try Extendware’s Who Viewed This Also Viewed extension to help push similar items.

EASY STORE NAVIGATION

For anyone shopping online, one of the simplest ways to make the experience pleasant to make sure they find what they’re looking for. Make your online shop easy to navigate with an effective category, filter and search system. Since people shop online for convenience, this just makes the whole shopping experience faster and easier for everyone

Remote Work and Virtual Teams

Managing virtual teams is a top concern for today’s businesses. It is considered smart when companies can find ways to decrease costs and provide better employee experiences. Today’s workers are widely dispersed. Your team might work at home due to flexible scheduling or maybe they are located across time zones. It is important to have the right tools to foster collaboration and ensure remote working doesn’t feel so…well, remote. 🙂

Personalization Features

Today’s remote collaboration applications recognize that teams need a higher degree of personalization features. Simple touches, like uploading team photographs, providing access to short bios, and showing who is online, can help build relationships and create the sense your workers are part of a bigger team.

Mobile Devicesmobile-devices-01

Investing in the right hardware is a key component of managing virtual teams. Remote workers often fare better when they have access to laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Mobility is a key value of today’s remote work culture, where staff provides critical support to your business anytime and anywhere. Equipping them with the right hardware enables them to focus on collaborating and creating value.

To-Do Lists

Who doesn’t love a to-do list! These lists help keep individual members of your team organized, while also enforcing proactive management. Managers can check to see what an individual worker is spending their time on daily. Try Hubstaff.com to help monitor your team! A program like this helps teams get a sense of how everyone’s contributing to the broader effort, which helps identify new opportunities for collaboration.

Collaboration Software

slack-3-05Unified communication software enables a business to create a secure, virtualized collaboration environment. While your team members can’t walk across the aisle to talk with a colleague, this solution is the next best thing. From easy file sharing and document collaboration to texting and product status updates, collaboration between team members becomes seamless. Try Slack as a team communication tool!

Cloud-Based Apps

Nearly every app your business uses is available in cloud format, from communication applications to customer relationship management software. Strategically investing in cloud-based applications, allows you to enable teams to access the information they need, wherever they are.

 File-sharing applications

The ability to share files and work on them together is an important part of collaboration. Papyrus or Confluence are great examples.Your finance team may need to review a spreadsheet and update it in real-time, for example, or a sales team might need to work together to refine a presentation. With virtualized collaboration environments, colleagues can share the same screen, edit documents together, and track all the changes in real time, resulting in whiteboard session-quality collaboration.

Collaboration Toolsvideo-conference-01

Communicate with video chatting, texting, and voice calls.Collaboration tools make meetings and one-on-one conversations easy. Remote workers can have multi-person video chats, allowing them to see each other and build deeper engagement, similar to face-to-face meetings. Texting allows colleagues to easily ask a question. Breaking down barriers to basic communication is an essential part of managing virtual teams.

Project Status Updates and Software

On a larger scale, transparency and visibility into project progress is essential. With remote teams, project management applications are frequently updated as tasks are completed. Managers can identify challenges before they become roadblocks. When remote workers see how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture, it helps them feel more connected.

Train Remote Workers on How to Collaborate

The most talented and innovative employees may not intuitively understand how to be part of a remote team. Invest in training your team on how to stay productive on their own, on your company’s mission and values, and how to make the most of the collaboration tools provided. A well-trained remote worker generates better results.

Keep Updated on New Collaboration Tools

toolsNew tools are always being developed to make it easier for remote teams to stay connected and productive. Look for needs within your team and watch for tools that help solve those problems. Continue to evaluate new tools in the collaboration space to see if they’re offering new features that can help your team connect effectively.

Remote work has a ton of benefits for businesses, from decreasing costs to increasing productivity. Having help is essential, and means you can take that much needed vacation you have been waiting for! ( Need a good set of luggage? Click Here!) Investing in collaboration tools are poised to capture the full benefits of this work arrangement, maximizing productivity and business results.

SEO Best Practices For Your Business

Search engine optimization can be a tough subject for some people. There is so much information and misinformation available online making it confusing for new users. When I began, many questions ran through my head. Does the latest tactic I’m reading about work? Does it work for all sites or only some? Or is this just another crackpot theory that sounds reasonable, but will never help to improve search traffic to my site?

SEO can be confusing but it doesn’t have to be. The basics of SEO are actually pretty easy to understand and if you give yourself to learn search engine optimization you’ll be able to sort fact from fiction and you’ll have the tools to delve into more advanced SEO concepts.

How to Approach SEO 

Search engine optimization is a subset of marketing. It can fit into your overall marketing plan and not be your marketing plan.marketing-strategy-03-01-01

You can do everything wrong when it comes to SEO, never receive a single visitor from a search engine, and still have a very successful and profitable site.

If you take a step back and market yourself well some of the more difficult parts of SEO will take care of themselves. That’s not to
say you should ignore SEO, but most of us don’t need to obsess over every little detail. There are ton of factors that determine where a page will rank in search results. Obsessing over one of those factors doesn’t make sense. Try to see the big picture rather than stewing over one detail.

SEO is not a set it and forget proposition. It’s an iterative process. You do what you can, measure the results, and continue to improve. You can’t SEO a site in a day or month. As with marketing in general, SEO is never ending. It also changes daily and what works for one site may not work for another.

SEO can be generally categorized into 5 different areas:

  • Keyword research
  • Search engine friendly site development
  • Analytics
  • Link Building
  • On-page SEO

Each of the above is important and they all work together. The whole s greater than the sum of the parts. Let’s talk about each of the above in more detail.

Keyword Research

Everyone would like their pages to rank #1. So…what is it to rank #1?  Not all keywords and keyword phrases are created equal. Some are typed into a search engine more often and some are more likely to lead to a sale. You don’t need to optimize for every possible keyword or phrase.

Say you sell real estate in Charleston, SC. You might think it important to rank well for the phrase “real estate,” but is it? Someone looking to buy property in Chicago or Los Angeles isn’t going to be interested in the homes you sell in Charleston. It is pointless to spend time and money trying to get those people to your site. You’d do much better to target phrases that include South Carolina and even better Charleston.

There are 3 types of queries someone might type into a search engine

keywrods-01Transactional queries – searching with an intent to purchase

Informational queries – searching for information from general to specific

Navigational queries – searching for a specific site or page

All three types of queries are important and each of them could ultimately lead to a sale. Someone finding helpful information on your site at one point may come back later and buy something. It is important to understand that what a person types into a search engine reveals something about their intent. Based on the searcher’s intent you may want different pages of your site ranking for different queries.

Developing a List of Keywords to Target

Brainstorming is the first step in developing good keywords. Write down as many words and phrases (50-100) as you can think of that relate to your site and understand that this is simply the start of your research.

As you brainstorm ask yourself: Do you only offer web design or do you also offer web development? You might specialize in
ecommerce design or small business web design. Maybe you also offer web hosting. Each of these will likely become a keyword theme around which you can build a more detailed list. The next step is to expand your list with some keyword tools.

tools-3-01Here are a few great tools:

  • Google AdWords Keyword Tool
  • SEO Book Keyword Tool
  • WordTracker
  • Keyword Discovery

There are also a variety of more advanced keyword research tools should you desire them.

Don’t worry about the absolute numbers with keyword tools. The numbers are estimates. Consider the numbers more in relative terms in comparison to each other. If all of the above tools show that more people search for web design than website design, it’s probably true.

A few tips about building keyword lists:

Find the words and phrases your customers use instead of industry jargon.

Look for synonyms – Similar to the above seek the words potential clients will use. You call it e-commerce. They might type ecommerce. Is it web design or website design?

Add qualifiers – Our Charleston SC real estate agent might add Charleston, South Carolina, or both to most every phrase. As a web designer your services might be affordable or professional. Optimizing for “professional web design services” also optimizes for “web design services”

Qualify your qualifiers – You might be tempted to add a qualifier like “free” since so many people use the word. However, someone searching for free anything isn’t looking to buy.

Look to your analytics package to see what phrases are currently bringing people to your site.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO, while capable of providing a valuable source of traffic, is still only one way to attract potential clients and customers to your site. Think of SEO as part of your marketing strategy instead of your whole marketing strategy

SEO is a process that can begin anywhere. Most of the time it will begin with keyword research, especially if you’ve yet to build your site or create the initial content. Keywords help you define who your market is and what that market is looking for. They’ll also lead the way when it comes to how you develop your site, what content you choose to create, and how that content is written.

Check out: The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce SEO Pt 1

 

Easy Ways to Boost Your Wi-Fi Signal

Have you ever had a deadline at work and suddenly your Wi-Fi stops working? How about moving your laptop to the other room and “poof”, no more Wi-Fi? This can be one of the most frustrating situations one can face in the workplace or at home. Many times there are simple hacks than can fix the situation.

Don’t throw out your router just yet…check out some great solutions to help boost your signal.

Watch Where You Put That Router!
Yes, I have complained about my Wi-Fi only to have the cable company tell me that I shouldn’t have it on its side on the floor. Whoops! To achieve the strongest possible wireless connection, position your Wi-Fi router on a flat surface off the floor and closewifi-router-01-01 to the center of your home if you can. It is ideal to place it somewhere up high and out in the open is best, away from brick, stone, metal or concrete walls that could mess with the signal.

Place your router accordingly so that signals will go straight through walls, as opposed to at an angle. Wi-Fi signals will significantly weaken when they hit walls at angles. The best thing to do is in a multi-floor home or office is to place your router on the top floor for maximum coverage.

Also make sure to situate your router at least 10 feet away from certain devices or objects that could interfere with your signal, like refrigerators, cordless phones, garage door openers, speakers, microwaves, and mirrors.

Switch the Channel
To reduce interference from neighboring Wi-Fi networks just switch the channel I am told that channels 1, 6 or 11 are the best and most common channels for wireless networking. It all varie depending on the router you have. If you switch and your signal is still not working, try any other channel until you find one that maintains a strong connection.

Update Your Router’s Firmware
firmware-01Maybe your router just needs an update. Manufacturers are always tweaking software to dish out more performance and speed. Most current routers have the update process built right into the admin interface, so its easy to click just by hitting a firmware upgrade button. Older models still require you to first find and download the firmware from the router manufacturer’s website.

Buy a Strong Wi-Fi Antenna
Many Wi-Fi routers come with an antenna or two, but sometimes there are not strong enough to send signals to hard-to-reach areas and distant corners. If you add a high-gain or “booster” antenna to your router, it can fix the problem! This will instantly extend and strengthen your router’s range and give you coverage over large areas. They aren’t expensive, as I purchased a Cisco-Linksys High Gain Antenna Kit for for $15. The great thing is that you don’t have to be a genius tech superstar to install a high gain antenna. Just unscrew the old and replace with the new!

Buy a Plug-in Extender
High-gain antennas broadcast your Wi-Fi signal and Wi-Fi extenders, also called repeaters, rebroadcast them with improved range and speed and you can say adios to Wi-Fi dead zones.
The process of finding an extender’s sweet spot can be hit-or-miss at times. You may have to move it a little to find the best location and tilt the antennas on it.

off-02-01

Don’t Share with Others

I am all about being neighborly but there is no need to share your Wi-Fi network’s name with your neighbours. You can prevent this y turning off its Service Set Identifier (SSID) broadcasting option. This blocks strangers in your area from seeing your network, mooching off it and slowing it down. Most important, it reduces your risk of getting hacked! Of course, password protected Wi-Fi is also strongly encouraged to prevent this.

Distractions and How to Stay Focused

I love writing these blogs for Extendware, because I get to tell my stories and sometimes in my writing, make realizations on my own work habits. Recently I have noticed when I am focused and enjoy the tasks I am executing, nothing can stop me from getting things done. Then, there are the less attractive tasks. Those are the tasks that trigger my once focused self to be easily distracted. I was working on a spreadsheet that could have taken an hour, yet instead it took about three. Here are the reasons why.

I noticed dirt on the floor and decided to vacuum

I answered emails every time one came through

I played fetch with my dog

I answered my phone and talked to my cousin for 30 minutes

Pretty much anything that could distract me, I let distract me. Does this sound familiar?

We Are All Guilty

Many of us can get pushed off balance by the slightest interruptions at work, while others easily tune them out. In all honesty, nobody is completely attentive to their work 100% of the time and we can all use some guidaWe are all guilty-01nce on ways to avoid or ignore disruptions. The key is to limit distractions as much as possible. We’d all get burnt out pretty quickly if we didn’t get distracted from time to time to take our minds off of work. The bigger issue is when distractions take up too much of our time and prevent us from getting anything done. If interruptions in the office are not managed, they can seriously deter your focus and may lead to factual mistakes, poor performance, and poor judgment.

Frequent distractions can also negatively affect your mood. They can prevent you from getting your work done on time, which creates more stress for you and can make you more frustrated and unhappy at work. Happiness comes with work that has meaning to you, and seeing positive results from your efforts. Distractions can decrease focus, which increases stress, which can intensify any poor work habit you may have.

A distraction can take many forms. External annoyances like loud mouth phone talkers in open cube space to personal distractions such as social media or personal email.

DISTRACTIONS-2-01Types if distractions depend on your line of work, office space, size of your company etc. Some examples of the various culprits include: Relentless e-mail, text messages, social media, co-worker or client interruptions, visitors and unscheduled meetings, music, TV, alerts, IM’s, ringing phones, other people talking, noisy copy machines, vehicles going by outside your window, elevator doors opening and closing…wow I am getting distracted just writing this!

There is hope! If you regularly lose focus at work because of one or more of these distractions, there are a few things you can do.

Time Management

Reserve blocks of time for work that requires the most concentration. The regular 9-5 timeframe might be standard but to assume people will use that exact formula is silly.  I like to use the first hour at work to make headway on my most time consuming and difficult project. Some people feel like they can focus later in the evening, after kids go to bed, dinner is over etc. Its all about finding what works for you. If you are sharing an office, ask your co-workers for quiet time, and if that’s out of the question, take your work into a conference room or other quiet space.

TIP: Try hiring a maid service like these in Chicago and New York City! You can focus more on your work and less on the dust!

MUTE-01Limit Technology

Spending a just a few minutes each day checking personal e-mail or texting is not a problem but doing it in excess can be detrimental to your day.  I turn off my email and text alerts during work hours so they don’t distract me, then I dedicate a couple times a day to check for anything urgent. The key is to check, and move on if not pressing.

Organize Your Space

It’s so easy to catch sight of something that will only take a couple of minutes and stop working on the big stuff to address the little things. Don’t let visual distractions cost you important focused time. Keep your desk clean and put the urgent items in file stackers or a tray. Anything else file away out of site!