Online Presence

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been asked about adding gift cards to the service and product lines of a business. A lot of small business owners feel intimidated even thinking of adding the option for their customers. the good news is, it is truly not as difficult as it may sound. Adding gift cards to your business can be a great way to attract more customers and increase sales. With the right vendor, you can easily implement this type of payment option in your store. Please note that what I’ll be covering today does not refer to online (e-commerce) stores that use platforms such as Shopify, as they have their own digital gift card option built-in. The first step is to find a gift card service provider that meets the needs of your business. Look for one that offers competitive rates and offers a variety of payment methods, such as PayPal, credit cards, debit cards, and others. Some services also allow you to customize your own gift card design, allowing you to brand it with your company logo or other unique images. Once you have found the right vendor for your business, the next step is to create an account with them and set up a merchant account so you can accept payments. Most vendors offer both physical and e-gift cards that customers can use either in-store or online. You’ll need to set up your point-of-sale system and/or store checkout page on your website so that customers can purchase and redeem your gift cards during transactions with you. You may need help from an IT professional if your system isn’t already compatible with the vendor’s software. Below, I will list some gift card vendors that you can look into to see if they are a good fit for your gift card needs and business. I currently use Square and have used Yiftee in the past with two of my clients – my preference of the two is Square, but you may find Yiftee or on of the others listed is exactly what you’re looking for. Please keep in mind that there will be transaction fees associated with the cards and possibly other costs incurred, so be sure to read each vendor’s information about pricing and other important information before making your decision about which service is best for your business. GiftFly: Add GiftFly to any website and allow your customers to buy and send eGift cards from any device via email and text. Good for fundraisers too. Square: Sell physical and digital gift cards online or in person with Square. Square gift cards have scannable QR codes and barcodes, Square cards work with the Square point of sale (POS) system. Duracard: Duracard gift cards offer customers the chance to renew their balance. Create your custom plastic gift card or you can upload your own artwork. These gift cards can be designed for compatibility with most POS software or service providers. Yiftee: Yiftee offers egift cards for rewards, merchants, and more. Works with any POS system, and can be sent by text, email, or as a print-out. Of course, there are more options that can be considered, but these should give you an idea of what’s available and give you perspective about what you’re looking for in your gift card offerings for your customers.  

Adding links on your website, whether they are to other places on your site or to other sites on the web, are great tools for your business to use. It’s similar to having good relationships with acquaintances and friends – the more valuable connections you have, the better your circle is. Links pointing to your website from other sites and placing links from your website to other parts of your website is hugely beneficial to increasing traffic and extending your site’s search engine ranking. For instance, Google, which is just one of many search engines, values websites that have high-quality backlinks (an incoming link from another website) from other sites. This is because it indicates that your content is useful and reliable enough for other websites to link to it. When a search engine sees many high-quality backlinks pointing at a site, the higher its chances of appearing in search results pages (SERPs). Backlinks could also be in the form of testimonials or reviews received from Google, directories, and/or social media platforms that have those options available. These types of backlinks are as a whole, more beneficial than those links that just have the name of your business and its website link because most reviews and testimonials have someone’s experience and/or opinion included. Of course, being sure that you have the proper navigation on your website by using your header and footer menu bars, or possibly adding a menu to the sidebar is important so that visitors to your site can find what they’re looking for. It’s equally important to remember that when adding internal links, try linking relevant keywords rather than phrases like “click here” – this helps search engines understand what type of content each page contains so they can rank it accordingly in the search engine results That was a kind of rapid-fire overview of why links are so important for your website’s searchability and traffic. Don’t forget that the more quality the link, the better value that association brings to your search rankings and visibility.

Having the right fonts and colors on your website is an essential part of creating a pleasant user experience. It’s important for users to be able to not only be able to see what’s on your site but to quickly read and recognize the content of your pages. Not only does this make it easier for them to find what they need, but it also improves their overall impression of your site. To help you select just the right color scheme and font for your site, here are my top tips to help make the process easy and on-point. 1) Know Your Branding: This might seem like a no-brainer, but often, it’s easy to get caught up with using a lot of pretty colors that might compliment your brand’s color scheme but aren’t actually part of its palette. Overall, stick with your brand’s colors. As you might have noticed, this website uses mainly a dark-colored background. That is part of the branding for my business, as its color palette includes three shades of gray and two shades of green. The choice for a darker background is easy on the eyes for most, especially those who have vision difficulties. 2) Consider Legibility: When you’re selecting colors to use for text and buttons on your website, use the colors from your brand’s palette that are easy to read. You might want to add your brand’s font to special sections or to the headers of your website. This is a good option, however, you need to be sure that no matter what size the font is, it is legible. Additionally, you don’t want to use some fancy script for the entire body of text on your website. Regardless of what font you select and by the way, your theme will likely have appropriate suggestions for you to help you make a decision; be sure you know how it looks in a variety of sizes and on different devices. The general rule of thumb is to use common-style fonts for your website, such as sans serif fonts – Arial or Helvetica works best as they are easier to read on screens than serif fonts like Times New Roman. 3) Think Contrast: Good contrast is essential when it comes to legibility. If you want something more creative than a white background with black text, consider pairing high-contrasting colors together such as navy blue text against a pale yellow background or white text against a deep purple background instead. One of the tools I use to help me select a great complimentary color to use for fonts on the websites I build is https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker – WebAIM’s Contrast Checker. A bonus is, this tool helps your site to be compliant with ADA specifications too. 4) Use Color Strategically: As well as providing good visual appeal, color can also help draw attention to certain areas of your website, such as key information or in the form of buttons. Here again, be sure that you’re using color wisely, especially since you want this information to “pop”. Use a background color in which you’re using a font color that is easy to read. When I created this website, I started with a nearly black background and selected eight different colors that complimented the black color of the background for my text. At that time, I wasn’t certain of what I wanted to use for my brand’s color scheme, so I had lots of room to tinker. After a  couple of months, I started to weed out the colors that didn’t exactly read well with the background, in headings, or in the smaller fonts I was using. Similarly, I did the same thing with fonts. I had two different styles that I tested and finally picked one that was easy on the eyes, no matter what its color, size, or boldness. In closing, don’t forget to stay true to your brand, be sure that your website is easy to look at, and easy to read, and don’t be afraid to test, rinse, and repeat until you get just the right feel and combination.

Keeping your customers safe from malicious activity is an important responsibility of any business. In today’s digital age, an increase of scammers rises using sophisticated tactics to steal money and other assets from unsuspecting customers. Your business should make sure your customers know that they are hearing from the real you and not a scammer or spoof account pretending to be you. Here are some tips to help your customers recognize that the email, phone interaction, or social media account they are interacting with is a legitimate representation of your brand. Firstly, be sure that if you do communicate by telephone, your business’s name shows on the caller ID clearly and that you’re calling from a telephone number that is clearly stated on your website and all other correspondence. Train your employees to always state their name, title, and your company’s name when making calls to customers. Additionally, if your business does not call customers unless they have called you first, be sure that your customers are well aware of that fact. Branding is a key player in keeping your business authentic online. However, be aware that it’s easy to steal your images, content, logo, and other information because anything you publish online, can be downloaded, even if you use a copywrite protection application, there is a way it can be swiped.  Be certain that your business is quickly recognizable. This includes using the same logo, tone of voice, color scheme, and other elements throughout any communication with customers, online and offline. Additionally, including links back to your website in emails or social media posts helps further authenticate the message you’re sending, and leads the reader to your official website. One way to protect your customers against fake emails or social media accounts is to clearly communicate who they should expect contact from when dealing with your company. Make it easy to contact customer service directly rather than a generic support email address. This allows customers to connect with a real person and verify any issues they may have before responding accordingly. Additionally, having customer service phone numbers readily available makes it easier for people to ask questions and get detailed answers that could only come from an actual representative of the business in question rather than by reading information on a website or blog post that could have been created by somebody other than an employee of the company.  You can also provide customer support through secure channels such as live chat on your website, which will help customers double-check their identities without worrying about the potential risk of unencrypted data transmission. Another way to reduce the chances of customers being duped by malicious accounts is to consider making use of 2FA (two-factor authentication) for all interactions with customers; this requires a user first enter their credentials into an app or website before being granted access, thus providing an extra layer of security against hackers posing as legitimate users on behalf of businesses like yours. You can also educate your customers, social media followers, and your employees, about best practices when it comes to verifying who they’re speaking with online. This could involve sending out newsletters containing advice on how they can spot telltale signs of malicious activity such as phishing websites or requests for personal information over email/social media platforms where no prior contact has been established.  Show them ways to identify a fake email account, an unauthorized social media account, and ensure that they have the proper website URL for your business on hand. Your businesses should be aware of how their online presence looks overall in order for customers to be able to trust them when engaging with them online. Take time to monitor how your brand appears on search engine results pages (SERPs), especially those related to trustworthiness such as reviews and customer testimonials. Having up-to-date contact information listed on websites, directories, and review sites will also help establish legitimacy so potential customers don’t think they’re dealing with someone else trying to appear like your business online. Overall keeping up with all these various measures will ensure that customers know they’re hearing from you specifically instead of someone pretending to be you online using phony accounts or messages which could lead to confusion and mistrust between the customer and your brand. Online safety is a process and is everchanging with the evolution of new technologies and applications, but by following these steps, you’ll help ensure that all interactions involving your business are conducted in a secure manner and keep everyone involved safe from internet scams in the process!

Why People Don’t Like Website Pop-Ups & How You Can Make Them More Likable As a business owner, it’s important to understand why website visitors do not like pop-ups. I’m going to share with you several reasons why people strongly dislike pop-ups, based on my own personal experience and the input that I’ve received from others. Before I get started, I want to say that I understand why a business would use a pop-up on its website. Pop-ups can be used as a chat box, instigate a sale in the form of a discount code or an offer, it may give the opportunity to receive a newsletter, or provide value in the form of an upsell or download. The possibilities are endless, really.  With that being said, many times, pop-ups can turn away the visitors that you want to find value with you. Here are a few reasons why: Pop-ups are intrusive.  When people are browsing the web, the last thing they want is for a pop-up to suddenly appear and disrupt their experience. There was a study done by NNGroup that determined pop-ups are the number one reason people abandon a website. I can relate to that. I really dislike it when I’m on a site and am in the middle of reading a description of an item or an article and viola, there’s this image in front of my face. It breaks my concentration. It’s especially annoying when the pop-up has nothing to do with why I was using the site or if I’ve already gotten or used what is being mentioned in the pop-up. Pop-ups can be annoying.  Not only are pop-ups intrusive, but they can also be very annoying. As I just mentioned, the break in concentration or in reading can be annoying, and sometimes even trying to figure out how to close the pop-up is frustrating. Something else that makes pop-ups annoying is when they “follow” you. Each page of a site should not have the same pop-up set up on it if it’s the same visitor on the site navigating from one page to another. This will very likely get you to have someone leave your site faster than you can blink. Pop-ups can be irrelevant.  I touched upon this above, but pop-ups that don’t pertain to me as a visiot or follow me around the site, are irrelevant. If you’re not using targeted pop-ups to ensure that you’re speaking to the visitor where they are in their journey with you, the pop-ups can quickly cause a disconnect. If I as a customer have already opted into your email list, I’m likely already getting your discounts and so I don’t need to be asked again to sign up. Additionally, if I’ve been on your site for two minutes and have already closed the pop-up box(es) on the pages that I’ve visited, I don’t want to have to continue to close them as I navigate your site. Pop-ups can be invasive.  Too many pop-ups on a page or site can take up too much space on the site. I’ve been to sites where there’s a chat box in one corner and an email opt-in box in the other corner, and seconds later, this big box pops onto the middle of the screen for something else. We’re not talking cookie policy acceptance here, we’re talking opt-in here, opt-in there, oh, and how about opt-in here too?  It’s suffocating – there’s too much of the overall web page view being covered in pop-ups. Ultimately, it’s invading the visitor’s time spent on your site and very likely covering important content at the same time.  Pop-ups can be malware traps or appear to be one.  Another reason people dislike pop-ups is that they sometimes serve as malware traps (a scam), where when you enter your email information and once you click download or submit, you could end up downloading malware onto your computer. Now before you get too irritated with me for saying some visitors don’t like pop-ups or mentioning examples of what kinds can turn visitors and customers away, please understand that I know why they’re valuable tools for marketing. However, your site needs to provide a pleasant overall experience for its visitors as well as help your online customer service and marketing strategies hit the mark. An argument could be easily made that aside from marketing tactics, pop-ups are essential, especially in regard to cookies. Opt-in to accept cookies pop-ups are simply a convenient approach to telling users about the cookies and other tracking technology on your website, and it’s not viewed by visitors as a form of advertisement. Typically, cookie pop-ups don’t pop up on the screen after you’ve been there a few minutes and have started reading or navigating the site and they’re to be expected in today’s world. How do you make your pop-ups an asset and not a pain point for your visitors? Be sure your pop-ups provide value.  People won’t be bothered by pop-ups on your site if they’re valuable to them or if they expect them. For instance, if I know that every time I visit a specific brand that I purchase from often, I’ll see a discount code or an offer pop-up on each time I visit their site, it’s a perk, even if I don’t use the code or offer. However, if I’m visiting a website that offers information and I’m reading an article about something that piqued my interest and I’m in the last line of the first paragraph and a pop-up blocks the whole screen and says something like, “If you love this article, check this one out and sign up for our latest and greatest newsletter!” I’m not going to be so cuddly, even if the recommended article is spectacular and I was appreciating your content. The pop-up interrupted my experience on your site – it took my concentration off of your interesting article to force me to focus on other content that you created. Kind of like