8 Essentials to Create a Highly Converting Landing Page

A landing page is an effective tool to boost leads and conversions. It is the page that helps promote your specific product or service and directs the visitors to your lead magnet. However, a landing page needs to be highly enticing and flawless to grab the attention of the visitor and make them take the desired action. It should give your customers what they want in a simple and clear way.

Let’s learn how to create a highly effective landing page to convert visitors and generate leads.

An Attractive and Relevant Headline

The headline is the first thing a visitor sees when they land on your landing page. It’s the hook that either compels the reader to stay on your page or leave it. Make sure that your headline is attention-grabbing, persuasive, concise, and tells the readers what problems your product or service solves. Your headline should ideally be between 10-20 words and should convey a sense of urgency.

Attention-Grabbing Media

According to BANG!, a Web Designer in Phoenix, giving website visitors some “eye candy” visuals and letting them know visually they’re at the right website is a smart move to prevent high bounce rates on your site.

Relevant and catchy images or videos on your landing page not only effectively demonstrate your products or services but also help persuade your visitors. Adding videos is also helpful as research suggests that videos convert better than other forms of content. Video also helps with SEO and maintains user engagement. Make sure that the images/videos are high-quality and relevant to your products/services.

A Powerful Call to Action

Call-to-action (CTA) is crucial for any landing page; they persuade your visitor to take the desired action. Use buttons to draw attention to the CTAs. Make sure that your Primary CTA button is actionable and visible above the fold. Use actionable phrases like “Start Now,” “View a Demo,” and “Get a Free Quote” for CTAs to increase conversion. Moreover, use strong and bright colors to make your CTA button stand out.

Attract Attention

A landing page can use a popup strategy to engage visitors and encourage action. A well-timed popup can display special offers, discounts, or lead magnets like free ebooks or webinars. Exit-intent popups can appear when a user is about to leave, offering a final incentive to stay. Sticky bars at the top or bottom of the page can highlight promotions without disrupting the user experience. Slide-in forms can gently appear on the side to capture leads without being too aggressive. These strategies help keep visitors engaged and increase conversion rates.

Responsive Design

Most customers use their mobile devices to buy a product or service online, so make sure that your landing page is friendly for people viewing it on mobile devices. Mobile responsive landing pages can help convert leads from traffic that comes from smartphones or tablets. Likewise, responsive landing pages support your social media marketing (SMM) campaigns as most people use social media on their mobile phones.

Show Social Proof

Your social proofs (the number of likes, subscribers, shares, etc.) should be prominent on your landing page. Social proofs help win the trust of the visitors and increase their chances of converting into customers.

Testimonials from your existing customers work as great social proof if you don’t have a lot of data to share yet. When adding testimonials, make sure that they’re accompanied by a picture of a real person. You can also add social proofs into your CTA, such as “Join my 50k+ community.”

Use the Right Colors

Colors have a great impact on human psychology; they influence how we feel or act. Using the right colors on your landing page not only increases the user experience but also helps guide their behaviors, which can improve our conversion.

Depending on your product or service, use colors that convey the message you want. For example, red and yellow are the colors that grab attention and ignite appetite, making them an appropriate choice for a food-related landing page.

You also want to make sure each color you use signifies something. For example, you may use black color for the copy text, orange colors for your CTAs and other clickable links, and red color to highlight something important such as social proof.

Contact Information Should be Visible

Having clear and visible contact methods helps strengthen the trust of the visitor by telling them that your business is legitimate. So, make sure your landing page mentions the methods of contacting you.

You can add multiple methods such as a phone number, an email address, social media buttons, a contact form, and a physical business address. You can also add live chat popups that ask the customers if they need any help.

Keep the Layout Simple

Your landing page should present the information in a simple, minimalist, and attractive way without looking cluttered. Use a clean and simple design that helps people understand what your landing page is all about by utilizing a landing page plugin. Use white space and choose large fonts for increased readability and user experience. Your CTA button should be visible, and make sure that the visitor doesn’t have to scroll to find it.

The Use of Infographics In Your Marketing Initiative

Infographics are an amazing tool that makes even the drab topics fun and simple. They are widely used by organizations in training as well as their marketing initiatives. The long boring spreadsheets with copious amounts of data, when presented in the form of an infographic can also make a lot of sense and are easily transformed into decipherable data that can be easily used. Plus, they are inviting and engaging for the viewers. 

The infographics can be used to a tremendous extent in your marketing initiatives. Following pointers can help you navigate that journey seamlessly- 

Showcase Your Strength In Numbers 

The infographics can be used to show your strengths to your consumers and competitors alike. They can be used to portray the positive data in simple terms for the purposes of marketing. This makes particular sense for your company stock and its needs. One source of information can be your LMS data. Modern LMSs like Thought Industries can provide you with data to use as your infographic staple. 

Start Afresh

Rather than using an existing empty infographic format and trying to weave your information around it, try starting with your data with a fresh perspective, and the ideas will flow for a new and unique infographic for you to use. And, it is advisable to keep your infographic short and simple rather than a complex one, which has an inherent hazard of losing user engagement in the middle. 

Disseminate Information

Educate your customers and partners about your achievements as well as give them the desired knowledge through a simple and eye-catching infographic. It ensures the engagement of the viewers as well as retention. 

Avoiding Complication

As already mentioned above simplicity is the key. If the infographics are too big and complicated they lose their purpose of knowledge dissemination. They might be able to attract the required audience but complicated infographics lose the edge of knowledge sharing and its retention. Thus, the need is to create simple and small infographics to serve their original purpose. 

Be Precise

Precision is a prerequisite of an infographic. Rather than beating around the bush, just dive into the right information. Too much information in one infographic will lose engagement in the middle. And will not be able to share the information intended. 

Use Them in Your Blogs

As a part of your marketing strategy, you can use your standalone infographics with a good amount of views with your blogs and increase their traction. Plus, more people can view in reference to your blogs. Thus, both the individual entities can support each other by garnering more views for each separately. This way your knowledge or information reaches more of your target audience. 

Weave a Visual Story

With an infographic try to weave a visual story. Users are more likely to be stimulated with visual content. In this regard starting with a blank screen is important. A visual story will break the intended content into visually smaller sections, which helps in easier consumption by your audience. 

Optimization for Search Engines

This pointer is a little technical but as important. Your infographics should have appropriate alt tags and file names. It is advisable to take care that these names should also be optimized so as not to slow down the loading time. When your infographics are optimized, they are easily searchable and have the merit of reaching more people and being consumed by them.

Explain the Complex Topics

This is the specialty of infographics. Even the complex information can be disseminated in the form of infographics where it is visually segregated as well as is appealing for the consumer. You can take any complex topic and formulate an information-rich but simple infographic for the benefit of your audience and in turn for you. 

Use True Customer Stories

For the content of infographics, you can refer to the true customer journey and stories that you have and present them in the form of infographics. This increases the appeal of your content, as it comes from an authorized source and is true. Your audience is able to relate more to it and consume it better with a better possibility of engagement and it also offers image enhancement in the eyes of your consumers. 

Make it Simple and Relevant

As is the theme throughout the blog and has been reiterated time and again, the infographics need to be simple enough for consumption by the users. But, just the simplicity does not suffice. The infographics in question need to be relevant to your target audience. Thus, they need to be checked for these markers before they are shared.

Trend Representation

The infographics can successfully be used to represent positive trends to your target market to strengthen your marketing initiatives.

Conclusively, infographics creation and sharing is an ameliorate process and when done in tandem with marketing strategies can do wonders for your organization. 

The Ultimate Guide on How to Start an Event Planning Business

Businesses large and small worldwide are turning to event planners when they need help organizing an event. If you’re interested in learning how to start an event planning business, here’s everything you need to know.

What is Event Planning?

Think back on some of the events that you’ve gone to recently. Maybe it was a wedding, a family reunion, or even a birthday party thrown by someone you knew. What did these events have in common? All of them were planned by an event planner!

An event planner helps ensure all the details go smoothly so that the host can enjoy their time with guests without worrying about making sure everyone has food or drinks or knows where to go. Chances are everyone probably muddled through, but what if there was a way to make the event better and more enjoyable for all of the guests?

Event Planning Job Duties

Beyond the planning of large events, and fundraisers, one of the primary responsibilities of an event planner is helping people coordinate their schedules with the host or organizer. For instance, a potential client might need someone to help plan their anniversary dinner or big birthday bash.

Hire an experienced event photography company for your event to provide photo and video services to document your conference or fundraiser.

This person hires you as an assistant to ensure everything goes according to plan, from reserving a location and booking entertainment to ensuring everyone knows about it and what to expect.Hire

Another example would be a business owner who is relocating and needs help organizing a housewarming party (typically one of the most popular types of events for planners). This person hires you to hire caterers, DJs and ensure that everything goes smoothly with ordering food and drinks.

How to Start Your Own Event Planning Business

So now that we know what event planning involves, let’s take a look at how you can start your own event planning business:

Plan Ahead: The first step to owning an event planning business is to plan ahead, as in months and months ahead. It takes a long time to develop fresh concepts for themes and venues that haven’t been done before. Your planning process should take as much time as the events themselves to ensure everything comes out perfectly.

For example, if you’re hosting a Thanksgiving-themed party, make sure there isn’t another one scheduled for the same day. Consider alternatives like hosting it on a different holiday or weeknight instead of a Thursday. Also, keep in mind you’ll need a few months lead time before sending invitations and raising awareness about your event, so guests have enough time to clear their schedules.

Create a Website: The first thing someone looking for an event planner or assistant will do is search online. You need to have an attractive website with all the information people might need to get them interested in hiring you. Ensure your site includes samples of past work along with testimonials from happy customers.

Of course, make sure your site looks nice and functions well on all devices (since most people will be browsing through their smartphones or tablets).

Know Your Niche: It’s essential to have a niche, such as event planning, release events, funeral planning, etc.. in mind when starting an event planning business. The last thing you want is to be all over the place with your events. If you try to please everyone, you’ll fail at pleasing anyone. People are more likely to hire planners who specialize in their preferred function.

For example, if someone wants a high-class catered wedding, they’ll call up the most expensive 5% of wedding planning services rather than hiring the cheapest one around who also happens to do weddings. Your best bet is to socialize with potential clients and see what type of events they usually host so you can focus on those instead of doing everything under the sun.

Know the Trends: For your business to succeed, you’ll need to stay up-to-date with trending events and new ideas. Things like Pinterest boards and Instagram accounts are great places for discovering new ideas and staying ahead of the game (literally).

Get Creative: There’s more than one way to steal people’s attention, but nothing screams “unique” more than creativity. It takes a lot of thinking outside the box, and some practice before perfection, so don’t be afraid to test things out.

Remember those Pinterest or Instagram accounts we mentioned? They could also double your portfolio so clients know what type of work you can produce.

Decide How Much You’ll Charge for Your Services: Pricing is always a difficult step when starting any small business, but considering that you’ll generally earn 75% of contracted fees makes this decision less tough to work out.

When deciding how much to charge for your services, it’s important to consider the variability in pricing, especially in specific markets such as weddings. Wedding venues can range from picturesque beachfronts to grand banquet halls, and this diversity significantly influences pricing. Additionally, getting married in Texas is vastly different from getting married in California, which also plays a crucial role in determining costs.

You can also choose to have different tiers of packages available, which allow you to have more flexibility when working with clients.

Be Sure to Join Local Associations: Joining an organization can help increase your credibility, especially if other event planners are members. Organizations will also schedule networking events, which ultimately enable you to meet people in the industry that could turn into future clients/mentors/employees.

Network: One of the best things about being a part of an association is meeting like-minded individuals who can provide valuable guidance and feedback throughout your business venture. Make sure to attend every possible networking event, speak with everyone you meet, and try not to sell yourself too much – work on providing value for others.

It’s always good to keep business cards on you, just in case you have the opportunity to meet someone.

Plan Sample Events: Find some places willing to let you test your skills as an event planner before taking on large commissions. This could be anything from planning a wedding reception or birthday party for one of your friends or even orchestrating a fundraiser event for local non-profit organizations.

Use these events to gain experience and build up your portfolio so potential clients can see what type of work you do.

Have Fun: If you’re not having fun doing what you love, there’s no way it’ll ever succeed anyways. Whether you enjoy the creative process or just like managing everything behind closed doors, event planning should be one of those things that get you excited because why would anyone want to do something they hate?

All work and no play make running a successful event planning business pretty difficult, so don’t forget to take some time off and attend events as a guest to see how other companies run their operations before jumping into this crazy industry full-time!

Conclusion

It would be best to always have a business plan ready before diving into any new adventure because it’ll help guide you when things aren’t going according to plan. Building a business plan isn’t all too difficult, and there are plenty of free resources available online.

Running your own business is always difficult, but there are some perks to working for yourself. Not only do you have complete control over the entire process, but the skills you learn will also help you with any future career ventures.

If event planning doesn’t end up being your thing, then at least you’ll have plenty of experience that can be transferred elsewhere.

6 Best Practices for Sending More Professional Emails with Outlook

Every business communication needs to come across as professional and stylish. They should engage prospects and drive customers to take the next step via clear calls to action. Therefore, they need to look good and read well, while being exciting and direct. Follow these tips to make the best-looking emails that deliver results for your business and customers. 

1. Build Effective Email Templates

Templates help build the brand of a business, so should be treated as seriously as any other design aspect. Email templates should be stylish, provide clear areas for text, broken up with branding, products, or imagery, and ensure that all legal corporate and other messages are in place at the bottom. 

Templates ensure consistent branding and a strong look, but should still be quick to load and ensure that calls to action are near the top, as people will rapidly lose interest in a lengthy or text-dense email. You should also make sure you edit the content as per your needs and utilize email signature solution to create a email signature on a organization level that helps in delivering consistent brand and marketing message . 

Time-limited events should be clearly sign-posted with strong visuals to get customers engaged. Remember to update the templates regularly to stop customers from thinking that the brand is unchanging and boring and that years or copyright dates are always correct on the template. 

Also, pay attention to the signature as a professional-looking one can make you appear credible. Here’s a great guide on how to add signature in Outlook

An email signature generator for business can be a valuable tool for building and maintaining a strong brand identity. By using consistent branding elements and including relevant information, such as contact details and social media links, in the signature, businesses can reinforce their image and promote their products or services.

Newoldstamp makes it easy for businesses to drastically improve their brand identity.

2. Double Check Titles, Body Spelling, and Sending Times

Email titles and subheads need to grab the attention of readers, with strong verbs and calls to action. Brainstorm several titles and test them with a few people on your team to find the strongest possible message. 

Also, check that the email makes sense from a consumer perspective and ensure it is grammatically correct. Double-check any text within images, as that often bypasses spellchecks.

Finally, ensure that the emails are sent out at the appropriate time or date. Many emails are commonly sent at 9 AM, 2 PM, or 5PM, and you do not want to get lost in the stampede in someone’s inbox. 

3. Personalize and Customize With Plug-Ins

Just like WordPress and Shopify, you can customize or automate emails with a range of plug-ins to add features to Outlook. These can help create automated newsletters to your subscriber email list, or schedule emails with smart tools. 

There are even payment tools for email, to add PayPal or other services directly to messages, encouraging shopping with fewer steps for customers. Additionally, you can also create custom signatures for different types of messages from various personas or teams within a business. 

From time-saving to making emails look better, there’s usually a plug-in for that. 

4. Make Emails Part of the Marketing Campaign

Marketing emails remain a key part of most business consumer outreach efforts. By ensuring that your emails are integrated with key marketing messages, you can create a consistent tone of voice and ensure they are in harmony with advertising, promotions, and other efforts. 

If you’re seeking help with email management to implement best practices for sending more professional emails consider using effective tools for organizing and managing your inbox, allowing you to craft and send emails more efficiently.

As part of the marketing plan, consider how email can offer a different way to express key messages, along with SMS, on-site messages, and other communications. Use the power of email to deliver regular and interesting messages with more depth than shorter communications. 

5. Vary Your Emails to Deliver Active, Timely Messages

Emails from a company can get very boring, very quickly. This leads to them being ignored, deleted, or unsubscribed from. So vary the look and type of messages you put at the top of emails – while remaining on brand and in tune with other marketing efforts. 

Use email outside of your usual sending times to share fun or interesting information about products or events to encourage customers to look forward to receiving and opening those messages. You can also have a range of personas talking to consumers to help build more of a rapport, and use different tones of voice with them. 

6. Link Emails to Activities, and Always Remember the Unsubscribe Button

Emails should always link to a new or upcoming activity to give it a sense of urgency or timeliness. Natural seasonal events like summer holidays, festivals, industry gatherings, or social occasions are tracked and used by most brands, but you should also look for different or new events that help make your business appear more progressive or in touch. 

Finally, even though every business and marketer hates the unsubscribe button. Make sure it is there and clear at the bottom of each email. Firstly for compliance reasons, but also should customers wish to move on, it is a sign of good grace to let them go without any fuss or shenanigans. 

7. Control your Inbox

Managing your email inbox well is key to keep productive and pay attention to important messages. An important method is to often unsubscribe from newsletters or ads mail that you do not need anymore. Online tools can help with email management. Most of these emails let you unsubscribe easily. When you check and cancel these subscriptions regularly, you cut down a lot of unneeded emails. This makes room for more important emails.

Decide on particular times to look at your emails to greatly better your focus and work. Getting many email alerts can take your attention away, so having set times to read and reply to emails can improve how you use your time. At these times, get rid of or archive emails that are not important. This keeps your inbox tidy and easy to handle. It gives you more time to focus on emails that need your reply.

Conclusion

It is very easy for a company to think that an email campaign is just a string of regular messages, sent out with an expectation of a small response rate. Instead, focus effort on making those emails beyond the norm, with unique information or offers to make consumers more likely to react and feel positive about the messages coming from your business. 

11 Software Marketing Strategies to Use in 2022

Bring your software marketing, up to date with these essential tactics for 2022!

So you’ve got the next, best software product on the market! Congratulations! But how are you going to make sure the right people know about it, and how it can help them? With software marketing of course. Read on to discover the most effective and up-to-date strategies.

Your Website

Before we move on to the other most effective marketing for software firms, we must underline the vital importance of having a high-quality business website. Indeed, most of the other marketing methods discussed below work by referring potential customers back to your website, and in the software business if your site isn’t up to scratch it will affect your bottom line.

With that in mind, you need to attend to both UI and UX, ensuring that your site is stylish, cohesive, and easy to use and navigate. Of course, creating a high-quality site isn’t always easy, especially when you have the rest of your business to tend to. Luckily, by seeking a professional who deals with small business web design you make sure this gets sorted. All while you do what you do best create software and run your business.

Reviews, Ratings, and Testimonials

One of the most important marketing strategies is to build trust in potential customers. Then when it comes to making a purchase, they are much more likely to choose your software. The good news is that the internet is the perfect place to establish this trust.

Indeed, there are three important ways of doing this: Reviews, ratings, and testimonials. In essence, all three do the same thing, get someone to sing your praises that are independent of your business! Use independent review sites like G2, Google Seller Ratings, and display customer testimonials on your website for the win! 

Ideal Customer Persona

Before we get too much further into this guide in software marketing strategies it’s important to mention the ideal customer persona. These are a tool that goes beyond defining your target audience and demographic. Instead, an ideal customer persona is even more detailed and deals with not only facts and figures but the personal experiences those most likely to buy your product will have. Indeed, this is the value of these ICPs, as by getting into the mind of your ideal customer, you can better understand how to solve their problems with both your software and the way you market your software!

Valued Content

Content marketing can be very effective for software companies for several reasons. The first is that by creating content that a potential customer will value you can establish both trusts in your brand, and your business’s place as an expert in your field.

Secondly, valued content, which in the field of software often means informative, or education material can also work wonders for your SEO strategy. Indeed, content marketing is the perfect place to host long-tail keywords that will get your firm to the top of search positions.

SEO

SEO is the act of maximizing the chances that your firm or software product will show up first in an organic search. It is also a marketing method based on quantitative analytics that those working in the software industry can get behind.

However, it is worth noting that SEO is not only a science but also an art, and a distinct specialism in its own right. That means rather than using up the valuable time and energy of your employees on an in-house software campaign working with a specialist is a much better option.

As the cost of advertising increases year on year, many software development companies are looking for alternatives to paid advertising, for more cost-effective marketing strategies to attract new business.

Include PPC

In addition to content marketing, and SEO software firms should also use PPC or pay per click. This is when you pay a search engine to host your ad and position it above the organic search results. Something that means anyone searching for the keywords you use will see your business’s link first.

Get Social

While you may not have considered social media marketing for your software products, it can be very beneficial. Again, the focus here should be on educational and information content, although presenting it in entertaining ways like cartoons can help the complex issues present in the software industry become a little more palatable.

Social media is also great for creating a sense of community around your product with a private invite-only Facebook group, for example. Something that can not only help to create more leads but encourages long-term customer loyalty as well.

Free Trial or Demo

In the software industry, free trials have long been used to convince potential customers of the value of their products. Indeed, combined with specific techniques such as offering full access in the trial version, and encouraging customers to subscribe to get access can be very effective.

However, there is another option to consider here and it’s a guided, in-person demonstration. This means you go to your customer in real life or online and show them precisely how your software can provide solutions for the problems they are experiencing in their business. Indeed, demos are particularly useful in this way because they can be customized to the needs of each client, and so increase the chances of them making a purchase.  

Create a Smooth Customer Journey

No matter how good your product is, no one wants to have to work hard to access or use your software. Instead the journey from research and inquiring about your product, to signing up for it and using it every day needs to be as smooth, and as customer-friendly as possible.

The good news is there are several tactics you can use to ensure this is the case. For example, creating introduction videos for your onboarding process will make it easier for new users to get up and running. Similarly, contacting you for support should be fast, and responsive.

Referrals

Unlike reviews, ratings, and testimonials, referrals are a more active form of marketing. Quite simply a referral is when you get one customer to refer another to you. The advantages of which are that they are likely to be within your target demographic, and you will already have been talked up by your current customer, something that means conversion is that much easier. Encourage this type of marketing by offering discounts to current customers when they refer another. 

Upselling

Another useful marketing tool for those in the software sector is upselling. Upselling is all about maximizing the opportunity you already have when a customer chooses to buy. After all, you have already done all the hard work, and gained their trust, so why not provide more value to them and maximize your income in the process.

A good upsell is all about offering clients additional products that gel with their current purchase. For example, if your software is designed to help clients with their business accounting, providing the opportunity for them to upgrade to offering invoices as well, maybe just what they need.

Vlogs and Pods

Vlogs and podcasts are also important forms of marketing that those in the software industry should consider for several reasons. The first is that there are many that focus on specific niches both concerning software and business, which means you can easily connect with your target demographic.

Secondly, vlogs and podcasts offer a unique opportunity to go into depth on a particular issue or subject. One that for the best marketing results needs to be related to a particular pain point of your ideal customer, and how your software solves it.

Top 18+ Essential Tools You Need To Grow a Successful SaaS Business

SaaS business and its development is quite a complex process requiring special knowledge and skills in programming. However, despite all the difficulties, this sphere continues to grow. Their customers are small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as large firms and startups. Saas companies provide brands with software products. One more thing that is important for your SaaS business growth is keeping your business name memorable. You can simply do it by using a business name generator tool.

The success of a SaaS business, like any other in today’s world, depends on tools and their proper use. Therefore, we are going to share with you a few cases, which will definitely come in handy for enterprises offering SaaS services. Furthermore, at the very end of the article, we’ve prepared a little bonus.

Along with helpful business tools, it is also a good idea to conduct employee performance appraisals to keep your team working at its best. These meetings can keep your workforce up to speed on how to work more efficiently and be their most productive self.

Best Tools Review

1. Qualaroo

Any growing SaaS business must keep tabs on the kind of experience it offers to the customers. Tools like Qualaroo feedback software help you collect customer feedback to understand the ground reality and what needs to be improved to offer the best customer experience.

SaaS businesses have customers of all sizes, from start-ups to large businesses. So, conducting pop-up surveys ensures that you can access all of your customers’ opinions without interrupting their experience and cater to all of their needs. 

Features:

  • Access to pre-designed, customizable survey templates 
  • Different survey types like NPS, CES, and CSAT with advanced targeting, branching, and skip logic 
  • Dashboard equipped with advanced reporting
  • Third-party integrations like HubSpot, Zapier, and many more

2. ContactOut

ContactOut is a tool for finding the email addresses and phone numbers of your leads. It mainly features an email finder Chrome extension that reveals your leads’ contact information as you visit their LinkedIn profiles or company websites. It offers triple-verified contact data, ensuring that you send your cold emails to the right people and through the right channels. 

Features:

  • Email finder Chrome extension
  • Company and people search portal
  • Data enrichment
  • Email verification
  • Email campaigns
  • AI writer

3. Unbounce

It’s a cool platform that helps you create landing pages to attract potential customers.

With Unbounce, it’s easy to become a web designer or developer as the software has many built-in features allowing you to customize landing pages, as well as create them quickly.

The advantage of the platform lies in the fact that you can test it. You don’t need any special skills for this. Go to Unbounce, register, choose a template, and edit it. In addition, it is possible to change elements of the landing page, test it after customization, there is a prospect to integrate with other software, and more.

4. Ryviu

Ryviu is a customer product review platform that makes generating social proof for your store simple and quick. It aids in the conversion and sale of your product. There are both free and paid memberships available.

Ryviu currently supports the 3 most popular eCommerce marketplace including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Prestashop.

This tool is very useful for online shops, especially the dropshipping stores, because it helps sellers import customers’ reviews directly from the marketplace like Amazon, and Aliexpress to their store with some clicks.

Key features: 

  • Export reviews from AliExpress & Amazon
  • Export and import reviews ‘from apps to apps’
  • SEO-friendly review scores
  • Multiple styles & custom style
  • Reply to customer reviews
  • Show useful rating
  • Have Social Authentication & Email verify feature
  • Show Feature Reviews
  • Boost Sales Popup feature
  • Reviews email request

5. Hubspot

The developers of such software first created it for marketing and sales for medium and small enterprises. However, Hubspot is actually used by international corporations these days.

The list of functions of this tool is quite large — maintaining a contact database, organizing and making deals, etc. In addition, Hubspot is used to communicate with clients, schedule appointments, and make calls.

In addition to the user-friendly interface and multifunctionality, the program has another advantage — it is free and has no restrictions on users. This means that the system is versatile and beneficial not only for SaaS companies.

6. Aritic PinPoint

Aritic PinPoint is a full-stack marketing automation software platform for marketing operations teams or SMEs. It helps you to build relationships with leads, automate marketing campaigns and convert leads to paying customers easily.

It has landing page builder, lead scoring, lead tracking, lead nurturing, email campaign management, email campaign automation, marketing campaign builder, a/b testing, website tracking features with marketing file and library management. 

PinPoint integrates with Salesforce, SugarCRM, Zoho CRM and Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Foursquare, Instagram.

7. Intercom

It is a multi-level system designed precisely to communicate with customers. So, what can it do? Talk with customers in chat, real-time communication, data collection, message automation, segmentation, time performance monitoring.

The ability to integrate with social media allows businesses to send messages from a single location. It is also convenient to control the team, and you can define specific restrictions for certain individuals.

8. Segment

The service helps collect information about users and process large volumes of data. It integrates with various applications, allowing it to capture metrics from different devices. As a result, the Segment administrator receives an array of data for analysis and reporting.

The capabilities of the tool: it tracks the audience’s behavior, gives recommendations on how to improve the product for the customer, and there is data loss prevention.

The only drawback of the service is that it takes time to set up the tools. However, even this disadvantage is offset by its excellent technical support, which is ready to help at any moment to use the platform correctly.

9. Weje

Weje is a great team collaboration, workflow management and personal productivity tool. Everyone can upload any docs and create different workspaces for each topic that could be shared with team members. The service provides different diagrams, arrows, doodles and ready templates on its free virtual whiteboards.

  • Sharing and admin features;
  • Board publications — publish into a website;
  • Drawing, Kanban, Flowchart and others;
  • Unlimited free boards and different format files can be uploaded;

Free virtual whiteboards — https://weje.io/online-whiteboard

10. Asana

This is the best program that helps manage the project and coordinate the team effectively. As employees now spend 50% more time in collaborative work, this type of project management system is particularly important. Besides, the service allows you to track each employee’s performance and exchange documentation.

Features: workspace branding, chat, structured project, email checking, notification system, smart search, access management, integrations with other services. 

There are also reporting functions: 

  • Workload management
  • Real-time project status tracking;
  • Goal setting; 
  • Dashboards, and special features.

A big plus of Asana is the user-friendly interface and navigation, as well as the excellent technical support.

11. ScreenRec

Speaking of team collaboration and task management, ScreenRec is a great little tool that will help you with both. 

As the title suggests, it’s a screen recorder and a screenshot tool. But it’s also an instant messaging tool/productivity app. Instead of writing lengthy emails, you can simply open ScreenRec and record your desktop, microphone and webcam. You will get a shareable link instantly and you can paste that in an email, online chat, and so on. 

Created by their own development team for in-house communication, ScreenRec quickly became a popular tool used by web developers, IT specialists, designers, marketers and business owners. You can use it whenever it’s better to show your desktop and/or face and explain. For example:

  • Report bugs
  • Create quick tutorials for customers and colleagues
  • Explain tasks that you’re assigning
  • Review designs
  • Give your feedback on website content 

ScreenRec is free to download and offers 2Gb free cloud-based storage where you can easily organise and search your recordings and screenshots. 

12. YesWare

This tool can replace complex software that would allow your sales department to increase the number of effective emails. Together with YesWare, businesses will get the tools for searching and keeping in touch with a large number of customers and will be able to automate a process such as email.

What’s more, this software will reduce the time employees spend on writing personalized emails and will make notifications more valuable for customers.

Features: 

  • The creation of first-class emails; 
  • Open tracking; 
  • Testing; 
  • Integration with emails.

13. PDFLiner

PDFLiner is the all-in-one cloud-based online platform for working with PDF documents. Using this platform you can easily edit, electronically sign, fill in, add custom branding and content, and modify your PDF documents any way you want.

When visiting the website, you will face a user-friendly interface helping you find the tools you need to work on your PDF. Similarly, you can directly access the PDF converter without using all the features to do it manually.

Features:

  • Editing and filling in PDF documents
  • Making documents fillable
  • Signing electronically 
  • Adding a watermark, and so on.

14. Snov.io CRM

This is a new free sales CRM with a user-friendly interface even beginners will understand. 

As the competent time management of employees directly affects the company’s success, it will help you save quite a lot of time and grow your SaaS business. As a result, all your sales processes will be performed on one platform, and you will successfully move your deals down the sales funnel.

On this platform, it will be effortless for salespeople and marketers to manage their contact base, communicate with leads, and quickly convert them into loyal customers. Meanwhile, their managers will monitor their ups and downs to create a stronger sales strategy and make useful adjustments to the work.

They can also create pipelines that display their strategy and use tags to focus only on important deals.

In addition to CRM, there are several tools for finding leads, verification, or sending triggered mailings. Snov.io already has everything you need! You can read a detailed review of this software on Pearl Lemon Leads where they go into detail about Snov.io and its pros/cons.

15. PandaDoc

With this solution, it is easy to create documents and sign them using the built-in editor, automate document management, and more.

The functions of the service allow you to create a document from scratch or through a template. The following types of forms are available: invoices, contracts, receipts, marketing documents.

Features: ready-made document templates, document analytics, integration with CRM, collaboration, access management, document tracking, auditing, real-time commenting, electronic signatures, and more.

16. Zapier

Do you want to connect different web applications and automate your workflow? This is no problem if a business uses the Zapier integration platform. In addition, companies don’t need programmers, and everything functions very easily thanks to special templates. For instance, there is a new email in the newsletter, and it needs to be entered into Google contacts. With Zapier, it’s pretty easy to set that up.

Features: 

  • Integration with services (about 300 options available); 
  • Task automation
  • Configuring actions; 
  • Data security; 
  • Personalizing integrations; 
  • Managing and setting up access; 
  • Sharing integrations, etc.

17. WiseStamp Signature Manager

WiseStamp is a signature management software with the ability to transform your company’s email communication into a low-cost high-return growth channel. This tool gives you central control over your company email signatures company-wide. From the tool dashboard, you can manage the signature design and instantly deploy your signature to all staff emails. 

The WiseStamp Signature Manager provides seamless scalability so your account can grow in congruence with the number of employees you onboard. It has automated email signature campaign capabilities that make your emails a low-cost lead generation channel, and It lets you add your brand logo and other branding materials in every employee email, and turns them into a branding engine with no additional cost to your business. 

Features:

  • Email signature design panel
  • Email signature marketing (ESM) campaign manager
  • Software integration with leading email and cloud providers (Google G Suite, and Microsoft Office 365)
  • User directory sync with your email provider
  • Automated invites for new users 
  • Signature segmentation by department or job type
  • Editing permissions for department managers
  • Wide library of email signature features and addons

18.  Freshservice

Freshservice is an internal IT helpdesk and service management platform that helps modern organizations simplify and automate their internal IT operations. One important weapon businesses can wield to increase ROI is initiating Service Management within their teams – across every function and not just the IT department. With an ITSM platform like Freshservice, you can gain the ability to put their employees first and earn loyalty from your workforce, customers, and other stakeholders. Freshservice enables your IT team members to collaborate with users and to act quickly in response to support requests, threats to service availability, and security. 

Features:

  • Incident and Case Management for addressing IT questions remotely
  • A Knowledge Base for IT, Service and HR information
  • An Employee Self-service Portal
  • Remote Employee Onboarding
  • Service Catalog to make requests easier 
  • Updating asset details with Asset management

19. peopleHum

peopleHum is an end-to-end AI and automation-driven Hire to Retire HR software for Human Resources to drive business results. It’s cloud-based platform is an intuitive and affordable way for growing companies to track and manage essential employee information.

peopleHum aims to create seamless employee experiences that go beyond the HR silos and whether it’s hiring, onboarding, or performance, peopleHum helps in centralizing that data and automating transactional tasks in order for HR to keep pace.

Features: 

  • Centralized employee database
  • Employee Engagement 
  • Applicant tracking system
  • Time and attendance tracking
  • Document storage and management
  • eSignature
  • Performance management
  • Free trial available

20. Juro

Juro is a contract automation software that helps visionary legal counsel and the teams they enable to agree and manage contracts in one unified workspace. The browser-based platform enables users to process contracts end-to-end, with a flexible template editor and data model which can be set up in minutes to make contract creation, editing, approval, signing and management as seamless as possible. Juro and Juro alternatives like Pocketlaw are renowned for its ease of use, making it the ideal software for legal teams that want to encourage commercial teams to self-serve on contracts, rather than relying solely on the in-house legal function to manage them. 

Features:

  • Unique, flexible template editor
  • Approval workflows 
  • Negotiation functionality 
  • Native eSignature 
  • Smart storage 
  • Renewal reminders 
  • Powerful search functions 

21. simpleshow video maker

This tool is an AI-based online video maker that helps anyone get their messages across in an engaging and simple way with explainer videos. It’s an easy-to-use solution for animated video communication.

The user writes a script and the explainer engine builds the video in a few steps. 

Users can export the video to YouTube, to easily share the link, or download it as an MP4 file.

It’s a great tool for explaining a complex topic, convincing your team, informing your audience or promoting a subject, and the storylines help you to get started in an instance.

Features:

  • Guided workflow
  • Storyline template
  • Best practice examples and practical advice
  • Automagic generation of storyboard that can easily be finetuned by the user
  • Video speed and a voice-over selection
  • Synchronization of user voice with the story (depending on plan)

22. Flatlogic 

Flatlogic platform can be also called a web app generator, the platform’s name speaks for itself. Flatlogic helps to create and run business apps with any structure you want.  Now you can make any type of project, e.g. social network or ecommerce store, or a blog, with one of the most popular technologies like ReactJs, React Native, Angular, Vue for the front end part, and NodejS or Laravel for the back end. Now you can also use PostgreSQL, or MySQL for the database of your application. Flaltogic also offers a wide range of designs inside, like Google Material or several custom design options to make your web app stand out from other web apps. 

Features:

  • Synchronization with your GitHub account
  • Download the zipped archive and edit the source code
  • Running the project locally
  • Support provided
  • Free week trial to test all the functions to the fullest

23. Pics.io

Pics.io is a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool that, as the name suggests, helps you manage your ever-growing library of digital assets (pictures, photos, videos, PDFs, etc.). To help on that front, Pics.io offers a wide range of options to not only organize your collections but also to integrate them directly into your team’s workflow. So, instead of asking your teammate where is the new batch of marketing photos (and if they’re ready to use at all), the necessary information can be searched, shared, and accessed in a few simple clicks. DAM solves all organizational logic so that you can focus on creativity and productivity. And as far as DAM tools go, Pics.io offers one of the best price-to-value ratios on the market.

Features:

  • Keyword and metadata search to categorize and find assets with ease
  • Integration with Email and Slack to receive immediate updates on your collection
  • Sharing assets with teammates and third parties in a few simple clicks
  • Free 7-day trial with full access to Pics.io’s functionality
  • Elegant version control: access all revisions from a single thumbnail, compare revisions to each other, and revert to the old versions whenever necessary.

24. Zonka Feedback

In building a customer-centric business, it’s crucial to consider customer feedback. And what better way to do that than using a powerful feedback management software like Zonka Feedback? It is one of the most reliable saas feedback tools for growing businesses which enables effortless collection of feedback using multi-channel surveys and easy response tracking. Using the platform, you can easily capture customer feedback at multiple touchpoints throughout their user journey using the website, email, SMS, in-app, and product surveys.

With Zonka Feedback, you can measure crucial CX metrics, including NPS, CSAT, and CES. Moreover, you can collect quick and in-the-moment feedback using its free customer feedback app with real-time insights and in-depth reports

Key Features

  • Collect feedback through website, email, SMS, QR code, mobile app, mobile, tablet, and kiosk
  • Website survey free of cost – up to 3 free surveys
  • 500+ ready-to-use, industry-specific survey templates
  • Multilingual surveys (30+ languages)
  • Automated workflows
  • User segmentation and tagging
  • Real-time alerts, notifications, and response actions
  • Unified response inbox
  • Employee performance tracking
  • Seamless integration with your favorite tools including HubSpot, Intercom, HelpScout, and Pipedrive. etc.

Bonus

As promised, here’s a bonus! Actually, there are much more tools that a SaaS business could use. We have presented the most popular options above. Nevertheless, the following services are also worth your attention:

  • MarketingPlatform. A user-friendly and advanced email/SMS marketing automation solution with an omnichannel customer data platform.
  • Albato. This program matches many integrations, allowing organizations to automate many work processes;
  • SalesIntel. Sales intelligence platform to get accurate B2B company and contact data
  • Basecamp. A powerful tool for collaboration and project management;
  • InEvent. As a global event management platform, made for event professionals and A/V specialists, the product delivers outstanding experiences for enterprise companies, empowering them with a white-label solution to create virtual and hybrid conferences, trainings and webinars.
  • EngageBay. The software is for marketing, sales, and service. With such a tool, the quality of customer service will be top-notch;
  • G2.com offers advice on employee’s performance appraisals, or employee performance reviews.
  • JotForm PDF Editor. A program allows you to create professional documents and convert data. It has everything to work with: 600 templates, integrations, protections, and even more;
  • GoToMeeting. A great tool for online conferences. It allows you to easily schedule meetings, etc. You can also use Ex Ordo as an alternative conference management system for scientific, medical, and scholarly conferences.
  • Ganttic. A Gantt chart based online resource planner and project portfolio management tool. 
  • SVGator. An online vector animation tool that’s great for keeping your visitors engaged by creating logo animation, icon animations or landing page animations.
  • Free Business Name Generator is an AI tool that can help you create creative, catchy, and memorable name ideas for your business.

Toggl, Zoho social, hosted eCommerce platforms (Wix vs Shopify), Xero, Microsoft SharePoint Online, M-Files, Userlane, and many other solutions fit perfectly into the work of SaaS companies and make it not only convenient for employees but also effective. 

We hope that you have enjoyed our article and have found what you’ve been looking for!

How To Create a Customer Communication Management System

If you’re a business owner who’s looking for proven and efficient ways to improve your customer interactions, you might need to refine your customer communication management efforts (CCM). Back in the day, CCM used to mean dealing with print materials, phone calls, and not much else. However, a lot has changed regarding communication technology, and CCM has changed with it.

Today communication is a vital component of customer experience, so you can’t skip over it and hope for the best. Instead, you need to consider multiple elements, which may or may not include finding a reliable VoIP phone service provider, maintaining regulatory compliance, clearly defining the roles and responsibilities within the Center of Expertise (COE), and many more.

The key to a better customer experience is through effective customer communication management. Besides improving the customer experience, it can also increase your company’s overall efficiency, reduce risks, and even allow more automation.

Read the article below to learn more about all the benefits incorporating CCM can bring to your business and how to set up a successful CCM system!

Types of Customer Communication

Business owners need to understand there are two aspects of customer communication:

  1. Internal communication management ensures that your employees are aligned and up-to-date with all the latest happenings, including changes in your products and services. Doing this helps you ensure that your staff can provide consistent experiences for your customers.
  2. On the other hand, external communication management ensures that you stay up-to-date about your customers’ needs and expectations. It helps you deliver relevant and timely customer experiences.

With these two aspects in mind, it is clear that customer communication management should be a vital component of every customer experience management strategy. Each aspect requires a different level of focus and attention to detail, so an effective CCM system is the best way to tackle them.

How To Set Up a Customer Communication Management System

Step 1: Design Your CCM Strategy

Before creating an effective CCM system, you must first develop your strategy. This step involves asking yourself the following questions:

  • What is the purpose of my customer communication?
  • What is the purpose of customer communication within my company?
  • What types of customers do I have?
  • What is the priority order for my customers?
  • How many customers do I have?
  • How much time can I devote to improving my CCM strategy?
  • What communication methods work best for me?
  • What channels do I use most often?
  • How can I improve my customer experience through efficient customer communication?

By answering these questions, you’ll better understand what makes sense for your business needs and what doesn’t. For example, some businesses might not have the resources to dedicate too much time to customer communication, while others might have more resources available.

Depending on your answers, you might need to adjust your customer communication efforts accordingly. Ultimately, you will be better equipped to create an effective strategy for managing your customer communication by answering these questions.

Step 2: Create Your Communication Plans and Processes

During this step, you will focus on creating the action plans for achieving your CCM strategy. You want to ensure everything you’ve planned out in Step 1 will get done, so you’ll begin by planning out:

  • A detailed process for how you’ll manage your customer communication.
  • The resources/tools/materials you will need to manage your customer communication effectively.

You’ll also want to plan out how you’ll manage:

  • Customer service processes,
  • Sales processes,
  • Marketing processes.

The key is to keep track of all your communication activities in one place so that you can more easily identify and resolve issues. Doing this will make it easier for you to manage all aspects of your customer communication and achieve the results you’re looking for.

To do this, it helps if you keep a detailed record of everything — from calls and emails to social media interactions. Make a note of what was said or done during each interaction so that you can easily see patterns in your interactions or trends in your customers’ behaviors.

Overall, doing this will help you better understand how your customers perceive your company and decide how best to improve their experiences with your company.

Step 3: Implement Your Communication Plans & Tools

This is where the rubber meets the road. You’ve created a plan (Step 2), and now it’s time to put it into action. You’ll need to determine which tools or platforms are best for managing your customer communication efforts (i.e., email campaigns, social media, telephone calls, etc.). Then, you’ll need to purchase or create each tool or platform that you need.

After that, you’ll need to train staff on how they should properly use each tool or platform and explain to them any new processes they may need to follow while using these tools. Once they’ve been trained, they’ll need time to practice and become comfortable with the new processes before they are comfortable implementing them on autopilot.

Finally, after all is done, you’ll need to observe how these tools and platforms work for your company. Are they helping you achieve the results you’re looking for? If not, it’s back to the drawing board!

Final Word

Customer communication management needs to be an essential aspect of your overall customer experience management strategy. If it is not, you risk missing out on many potential opportunities.

By designing the right strategy and using the right tools, you can see a measurable improvement in your company’s customer interactions. It allows you to build a stable customer base and increase customer loyalty.

There is a lot of information to take in. Still, if you take it one step at a time, you’ll be able to create an effective customer communication management strategy that will allow you to improve your customer experience. Your customers will thank you for it!

4 Tips for Optimizing Your Service Desk

Whether you offer a product or service, it’s essential to provide the clients with fast solutions to their problems. A well-working Service Desk is essential to clients’ satisfaction. How to make it work even better? We’ve prepared some ideas worth considering.

Attracting new customers is hard, but making them stay – even more challenging. There is no secret formula for successful customer retention – it depends on the industry, the specifics of the product and service, competition, and a target group. However, regardless of these factors, one aspect is crucial. It’s the customer service. If it works smoothly, there is much more chance that the client will stay with you for longer. 

Problems happen – what matters the most is how you solve them! Customers can forgive a lot once the technical support is meeting their requirements. Thus, a well-functioning Service Desk is a must. Service Desk is a broader term than Help Desk, which solves the most common issues that occur on a daily basis. Its purpose is to solve more complex problems and use the solutions to improve the service or product in the future. 

How you make your Service Desk work more smoothly to improve customer satisfaction and make the desk processes more efficient?

1. Automate Tasks

Service desk agents solve complex problems that require deep analysis and creative or abstract thinking. In such a case, technology – at least for now – cannot replace human skills. However, some issues are simple enough can be addressed within a few seconds. You can delegate those to the automation tools. We recommend choosing a service desk solution that enables sorting the inquiries automatically. It’s the best way to optimize the workflow and boost the asset management. 

2. Use Automated Ticketing

When it comes to automation, this particular technology really makes a difference. A help desk software powered by machine learning with a function of resolution automated ticketing management allows your agents to focus on more complex tasks without entirely taking over the control. It helps them find the most relevant and explanatory responses. 

3. Use Chatbots (but Wisely)

Chatbots are a great solution if only they are a supporting tool. Letting them take over the customer service may make you lose customers. Many are not the biggest fans of chatbots, even though it’s such a common solution. Avoid the strategy of delegating as many tasks as possible to chatbots and making it harder for the clients to access real-life customer agents. Also, create a complex knowledge base so that the customer can find the answers to the frequent questions without contacting the service desks.

4. Try Video Automation

Personalized videos are a relatively new thing, but it’s probable that soon they’ll become a standard. Even though they’re used mainly in marketing, you can use them for help desk purposes, too. Such a solution is particularly helpful with solving software-related issues. You can adjust its content to customers’ issues, delivering a solution in a visual way. For many clients, it will be an asset. Best help desk software products on the markets enable integration with personalized content platforms.

Top 5 On-Premise CRM Solutions

“On-premise” CRM is a self-hosted and in-house CRM option, the opposite of storing data on the cloud. On-premise allows you to have complete and total control over your data and is often much more affordable than a cloud subscription. With its own CRM, you have complete control and visibility over your own database, allowing it to be fully customizable and user-specific.

On-premise CRM is more desirable for users because of its high level of data protection. The in-house setup allows for more privacy and less opportunity for security hacks. When you are able to “own” your own on-premise software you have the advantage of having it on a psychical device rather than a corporate-owned cloud you are granted access to through subscription. Whether you are looking for a CRM for call center or your small business, this article will show you our top picks.

Here Are the Top 5 On-Premise CRM Solutions:

1. Act!

Because of its contact management features, Act! contact management software is ideal for individuals and small businesses, and it has nearly always remained in the top ten CRMs on the market. The latest version adds additional features such as the ability to develop, send, and track tailored email marketing campaigns, as well as synchronization with a wide range of third-party apps.

Act! price range starts at $37.50 a month and goes up to $399 monthly depending on your database size.

2. DejaOffice

DejaOffice is a note-taking app that installs on your computer and syncs with your phone, making it simple to take notes, schedule follow-ups, and assign tasks. Use it to create a shared database that everyone in your office may access. DejaOffice PC CRM is a contact manager that runs on a PC. It is faster and more secure than web-based products. You can effortlessly keep track of all calls, meetings, tasks, emails, and texts with your customers, vendors, and associates using DejaOffice.

DejaOffice offers the most affordable price range, starting at only $49.95 for a one-time perpetual license.

3. GoldMine

Although it is more expensive, Goldmine also offers the option of a one-time license purchase. GoldMine provides quick and easy access to key data across all of your platforms. You can manage for success with fully customizable charts, colors, and datasets.

Pricing is $1992 for 3 shared users and $3195 to have up to 5 shared users.

4. Bitrix24

Bitrix24 has a number of features that might help firms with marketing and client management. Bitrix24 CRM software makes communication and organization for businesses simple. Because of these benefits, more than 10 million organizations have chosen Bitrix24 as their CRM provider.

Bitrix24 basic plan is $39 a month for 5 users and up to 24G of data.

5. InfoFlo

With InfoFLo you can instantly access your to-do list and contacts with a simple search of the name or organization. You may access your InfoFlo data from anywhere with our iPhone and Android mobile apps. InfoFlo has a variety of add-on options, including invoicing and email analytics.

Infoflo offers on-premise CRM for a one-time price of $99 with the option to add on additional features for $79 each.

Final Thoughts

When you keep data in-house, you and your team will have a better understanding and access to the data you need. On-premise CRM is more cost-effective and there will be no dealing with remote tech support.

There are many options available for varying database and user sizes when it comes to on-premise CRM. Depending on your price range, business model, and if you’re looking for a subscription or one-time license purchase, on-premise CRM is the best option for anyone wanting their data in-house rather than on a cloud server. PC CRM is a safe and reliable option for you and your database.

A Business Needs These Things To Succeed

Some entrepreneurs do succeed but most do end up failing. Those who succeed do so because of much more than just luck, as so many believe. Also, they do not simply hire a random specialist to help them. There is a lot of work that is done behind the scenes. If you are interested in increasing the possibility of success for the business you want to launch, remember that what is presented in the following paragraphs is always needed.

A Genuine Need

A business has to solve some sort of pain point or meet a need for people. You have to identify these by doing research. Without thorough research, it is impossible to know for sure that what you aim to offer will actually be needed.

Successful entrepreneurs tend to be familiar with services, problems, and products. Alternatively, they did work in an industry and fully understand what is needed. The goal is usually to discover some sort of need. But, you have to also verify it after you discover it.

Countless aspiring entrepreneurs simply fall in love with some sort of idea. Then, they figure out that nobody really wants it or needs it but this happens way too late.

Resources

When asked what they need to launch a business, most people say they need money. This is actually only a small part of what is needed. Successful entrepreneur utilizes several resources when they start. They will work from home, they will look for advisors, software, mentors, buy used equipment, partners, trade, and barter. They do not look for cheap SEO companies and always try to get a large number of resources to increase the possibility that the business will succeed.

Credible Experience

This is something few people talk about when it comes to opening a business. But, when you know services, problems, and products in the industry you want to operate in, it will become much easier to avoid pitfalls. Also, those who you will talk to will be much more interested in working with you because of your credibility.

Remember that credibility and experience are always very important for customers, investors, suppliers, strategic partners, and team members. When you lack experience and skills, it will be close to impossible to build a very successful business. Sure, some will tell you that it is possible to hire someone to help. But, even when you do, you should be aware of as much as possible in the industry you want to operate in.

A Solid Business Model

The business model will be vital for making money. It has to include sources of revenue, costs of goods, gross margins, pricing, profit margins, operating costs, and so much more. Basically, you need all elements associated with the income statement and you have to be aware of how you are going to make your business successful.

While creating a very good business model is not at all simple, what you should always remember is that you need multiple revenue sources, a good gross margin, around 10% or 20% profit margin, and competitive prices. If your numbers are not attractive, it is very hard to survive.

Why Should You Invest in a Professional Website Design?

 A major aspect of any business is selling goods and services online. This can be done using an existing website or developing your own site. There are benefits to both approaches; however, investing in a professional website design is the best option for many reasons.

 While some websites may look nice with stock photography and a popular type of design, they ultimately lack the quality and look expected from a professional company. In addition, if you are hiring an amateur to create your site, they might not have enough experience or knowledge to make your website stand out from the crowd.

 In this article, we’ve explained the benefits of having a professional web design.

Gain the Trust of Your Target Audience

Your business is considered legit if you have an attractive, professional-looking website. A well-designed site can help you gain the trust of customers and potential clients, which is necessary for any successful business venture. 

You can get help from web design services in Houston to create a professional website that will represent your business in the best way possible. In today’s crowded online marketplace, it is important to stand out from the competition. A professionally designed website can help you achieve this goal by incorporating unique features and designs specific to your brand.

People expect to see certain things on a professional site, including high-quality images, easy navigation tools, and clear contact information. Your potential customers will often search online for your company before making an order or calling for more information. The appearance of your website plays a huge role in determining whether or not they will choose to do business with you.

Ease Finding Information

Professional web design should include easy navigation across all of your site’s pages in order for your audience to easily find information. Keep in mind that if an individual does visit your site, they should be able to find the information they are looking for easily and quickly, without having to click through numerous pages just looking for it. If it is difficult for users to navigate your site, the likelihood of them returning is low. When people use search engines to find businesses like yours, they will often look for local companies first. Therefore, it is crucial that your site comes up in their search results.

High-quality websites come with several advantages, including saving you money, boosting sales, and increasing client retention. By paying for a professional website design, you will be ensuring that your business has an attractive online presence that represents your company or brand appropriately.

Increase Company Exposure

Investing in a professional website design is the right solution for your business because it increases company visibility. But you need to hire website designing experts who offer some of the best web design services currently on the market, which will help give your brand a new face.

Customizable Beyond Templates

Website designing experts can design every aspect of the website, regardless of the template. This means that your site is capable of being further customized to suit your business needs.

Saves Money in the Long Term

If you would like to save money on your website design, consider consulting with a web designer who will offer their advice on design and functionality at either no cost or a small fee. Most organizations are more than happy to help with this process since it is beneficial for both parties in the long term.

Offers a Higher Return on Investment

With a professional website design, you can have a higher return on your investment because it will be easier to get more traffic. Websites that provide a more interactive experience with tools such as videos, animations, and images are considered more likely to attract visitors from search engines. Sites that are not optimized in this way will generally be ranked lower, which means they receive fewer hits, despite their overall appearance.

Increases Client Retention

When you place a focus on professional website designing, you will find that it is easier to retain clients due to their greater degree of usability and functionality when compared to other sites. With regular updates included, you can ensure that your site remains cutting edge while staying competitive with others online.

Attain Control of Your Content

A great website design gives you the ability to take control of your content, which is essential for any business. This means that you can manage the information independently rather than depending completely on the web designer service. You can make changes to your site’s content at any time by logging in and doing so through a user-friendly interface.

Increases Traffic

With increased traffic comes greater revenue opportunities. The more people visit your site, the more likely they will choose to do business with you or recommend your products and services to others.

Improves Search Engine Ranking

A professional website design results in an improved search engine ranking because search engines use specific criteria when determining where websites are ranked for particular search intents of users. These include things like keywords, social media presence, page rank, and visitor traffic.

Typically, hiring an external web designer or company ensures that you have access to experienced professionals who know how to create compelling websites with top-notch quality. By using creative graphic designs and concisely written content, they can provide exclusive layouts that will help increase your brand exposure.

Producing Actionable Intelligence With OSINT

Every waking minute, we are generating data. Every time we interact with another person, system, or network we generate enormous amounts of data that can be used in various business aspects. Truth is that data will soon if it hasn’t already, become the most crucial factor in any industry and it is time for every business owner to accept it. To remain successful you need to have the right data and know-how to use it. That can be the biggest problem in this time and age, as there is so much data available that it is hard to know which data can be used to improve your business operations. Using open-source intelligence tools can make all the difference between drowning in the ocean of unnecessary data or having the right data at the right moment.

Having the right data in the exact moment you need it without having to go through unbelievable amounts of unnecessary data can help you make smarter business decisions. Not only that you will be getting ahead of your competitors by either offering a new product, introducing a new marketing strategy, or even starting a sale at the right moment, but you can also improve your security protocols by identifying any vulnerabilities and preventing fraudulent activities. 83% of organizations consider data to be an integral part of their business strategy, and they are right. 

Why Should You Introduce OSINT Into Your Business?

Data is not going anywhere and you need to find a way to use its benefits to improve your business, sooner rather than later. You don’t want to end up at the end of the line, trying to catch up with your competitors that have already implemented Osint tools into their business elements. It can make a difference in almost any department, from learning more about the customers and improving their satisfaction, or creating targeted marketing strategies to using it for identifying patterns that might indicate fraud or criminal behavior and preventing it. You just need to be ready to embrace it. 

How to Utilize Actionable Intelligence?

While you might be able to collect additional data by yourself by using the search engines and social media platforms, you would gather a large amount of unusable data and you would have to waste your time going through all that data to find out what is usable and what is not. Open-source intelligence is programmed to find the sense in the ocean of data and provide you with actionable intelligence or in other words with intelligence that can be used to make decisions.

For example, knowing customers are looking for a new product related to reading will be useless information for you because it doesn’t give you any information you can use to create that product even if you are in that industry. But if you find out that customers are looking for a product that will allow them to remotely switch pages on their ebook reader, this will be an actionable intelligence as there is something you can do about it. 

When it comes to fraudulent behavior the same principles apply. Having information that there has been a phishing attack on some industry will not make any difference for you as you don’t have enough information to do anything about it. You don’t know which industry was affected, how the attack was conducted, or what were the warning signs. But, if you collect data that indicates several businesses in your industry have fallen victim to a cyber-attack due to a vulnerability in their network, that will be considered actionable intelligence as you can do something about it. You can check your network to see if the same security vulnerability is present in your network, and patch it up before it can be used against it.

By utilizing data collected with the help of open-source intelligence tools you will be able to gather more information about your businesses and your customers. This data can be used to discover any weaknesses or vulnerabilities within your business, recognize any possibilities for growth or identify fraudulent behavior patterns and by doing so protect your business from fraud attempts.

Open Source Intelligence allows your business to gain actionable intelligence, but it is up to you to act upon it and protect your business. 

Business Tips: Are Your Employees Prepared for Hybrid Work?

In its best iteration, the hybrid workday undoubtedly has its benefits. From hyper-flexibility to greater employee autonomy and freedom, companies that can manage to master hybrid working may have a bright future ahead of them.

If a form of hybrid work is going to stick around in the new year, then striving to perfect it for your own business could be a necessity.

This is no small feat, however, and to get it right, everyone needs to be on the same page, which can be fairly difficult to achieve when communication is split across two worlds, the virtual and the real.

If you feel as though the hybrid work approach is the way to take your company, and you would like a little extra direction, here are some tips to help you get your employees prepared and your working environment secured in no time.

Getting Your Assets Organized

Making sure that your workforce is digitally organized should be among your very top priorities.

Failing to get organized before making the switch to hybrid work can leave your digital infrastructure at great risk.

You may end up losing valuable files such as customer information or product blueprints, or you might even suffer from a cyberattack. Organizing your digital assets and securing all of your data is one of the first steps toward establishing a dependable hybrid working environment in which employees feel comfortable navigating.

Digital asset management systems are fantastic software options that can help you do this. The benefits of a DAM system do not stop at the organization, however, they often provide a turnkey solution that improves communication, collaboration and generally covers the key points in any streamlined business.

Get the Right Hardware

If your employees are not physically prepared to navigate around a hybrid working environment, it should fall on your shoulders to supply them with the tools they need to flourish.

This could mean getting hold of the right hardware. Having the right hardware is winning half of the battle, yet still, many companies neglect to give their employees the right gear.

Be it the personal devices your employees use to access the company network or the components that make up the network itself (servers, software, ethernet, etc.), developing a dependable infrastructure is critical to success.

Create a Positive Company Culture

Positive company culture can take support from your employees to no end, and it should be in your best interests as a business owner to ensure that your staff feels comfortable at work, so it’s a win-win.

For anyone wishing to create the perfect hybrid working balance, the concept of great company culture is particularly important to note.

This is partly because hybrid working can cause a rift in the dynamic of your office, potentially giving way to an ‘us versus them’ scenario between your home workers and your onsite staff.

Avoiding this is crucial if you mean to avoid rifts and work on creating an environment of togetherness.

A company culture that is prepared for hybrid working will likely ensure that rifts and divides of this sort never happen. A few great ways to develop a positive work culture include:

  1. Put employee wellbeing first.
  2. Listen to everyone’s needs. Being an active listener can help you coach and lead others more efficiently.
  3. Be inclusive, and allow your staff equal opportunities. Avoiding bias in hybrid working (and throughout life in general) can help you stay positive.
  4. Train your staff.
  5. Remember to check-in.

By getting to know your staff a little better, you can make dynamic assessments yourself and continue to decide the best course of action in the future.

Offer Training

Hybrid working can prove to be an issue when a digital skills gap separates your employees from one another.

In some cases, this could take away your employees’ ability to carry out their everyday responsibilities.

This obviously spells disaster for your productivity, your employee happiness rates, and, therefore, your business.

Offering training to all those who need it is possibly the perfect way around this issue, as it can help raise everyone up to the same level.

Training is often critical to both personal and professional development throughout one’s career, so do not hesitate to offer it to your own staff on a regular basis.

Remain Transparent

Switching to a regular hybrid business model without telling anyone is likely not going to make you too many friends in one go.

By giving your employees plenty of advanced warning before you make the switch, you can help them get prepared and not spring what is potentially a nasty surprise on them.

Transparency is crucial here, and you can remain transparent by making yourself available to your employees and any questions they might have.

Offer the Choice

Hybrid working thrives on staff autonomy and their ability to recognize and fulfill their personal responsibility.

On some level, this means putting a great deal of trust in your employees. This trust will be reciprocated, but it is imperative that you give your staff the choice of working in the office or working from home; otherwise, you may end up sending the wrong message and harming your operation rather than strengthening it.

Encourage Communication

Without being able to communicate with one another openly and freely, your team will likely begin to struggle with completing their everyday tasks.

Teams need to be able to collaborate every now and then, and this can be hard to do for a hybrid workforce without the right tools or support.

Great collaboration tools are ten a penny nowadays, so making sure that you find the right software to support you is not only vital but there is no excuse not to.

For your remote team to support your in-house team, communication platforms can be your strongest ally, especially if you can find one that allows your team to edit and share their work with each other in real-time.

Developing a hybrid work environment that strengthens your business efforts might seem tough initially, but getting a head start, devising a plan of action, and looking after your employees’ wellbeing can save you from ever going too far wrong. 

Why Should My Business Hire a Cloud Computing Consulting Firm Seattle?

Cloud storage is more common than at any time in the past. From social media sites to apps, this form of remote storage is what makes information portable. Since you plan on making better use of cloud storage in the future, it pays to hire a cloud computing consulting firm in Seattle and learn what this storage solution can do for your business. Here are some examples of what a consultant can do to ensure you get the most out of your usage.

An Expert Evaluation of Your Company’s Cloud Storage Needs

Before it will be possible to decide what to do with cloud storage, it’s necessary to evaluate how you use storage at present. What sort of data is kept in some kind of central repository? What are the reasons for storing data on something like a local server?

At the same time, there’s data that may be stored on individual machines rather than the company server. Was there a reason for that, other than possibly convenience?

Along with general storage on individual machines and on a company server, are there backups that are in use? This may be a secondary server or maybe even a tape backup. How are those solutions used, and what’s the criterion for deciding how data is stored in a secondary environment?

The answers to all these questions will form the basis of what approach to cloud storage would provide the benefits you enjoy now, add more benefits, and possibly simplify the storage process for your business.

Identifying the Most Secure Cloud Providers

With a good idea of what you’re doing now and what a cloud storage solution can do for you, the process moves on to finding a provider who offers an excellent level of security. That security isn’t just about protecting access from your place of business. It will also extend to offsite employees who need access to data while traveling.

As with any type of data and communication offering, the level of security provided by different cloud services will vary. With the aid of a consultant, it’s possible to compare the precautions taken by different services and determine who is a good fit for your business. That includes knowing which services routinely upgrade security measures to fend off the most recently released threats.

And the Ones Providing the Level of Support Needed

While data security is crucial, it’s not the only point to ponder with a cloud service. You also want to know what sort of support the service provides. Which ones have the best track records in terms of responding to customer queries? Is support available around the clock? Does the provider proactively notify customers if an issue is discovered, and it will take time to resolve the problem?

The goal is to ensure that the service you ultimately choose offers a degree of support that leaves you feeling comfortable and valued. Anything less is not worth the money you would spend on cloud storage.

Determining the Amount of Capacity Needed

Based on today’s needs, how much data storage is required? Projecting anticipated growth, how much storage will you need next year, five years from now, or even a decade into the future? Those are questions that a consultant can help you answer now.

Ideally, the cloud service that you choose can easily accommodate more than what you need at present. As time passes and you begin to exceed 80% of the capacity offered through the current plan, there should be the ability to upgrade and receive additional storage space. If this is not something a particular service can offer, it would be best to look for one that can take care of your business in the future as well as now.

Training for Your IT Team

Up to this point, the Information Technology team that you have in-house has overseen every aspect of data storage. That’s mainly been managing the on-site server and possibly a backup server. While the team is proficient in that capacity, it’s important to note that there will be a learning curve once cloud storage is introduced.

That’s another area where an expert with a cloud computing consulting firm in Seattle can help. The consultant can arrange the training for your IT team. This will ensure they can monitor the upload of data to the cloud, check for network issues on your end, and in general make sure the process is working as it should. Thanks to what they already do, the training will likely go smoothly.

Assessing the Ease of Use Versus the Skill Sets of Your Employees

It’s not just the IT team that will need some training. There’s a good chance that your employees will need some help in adjusting to the new way of accessing and storing data. For those who are used to keeping data on local hard drives, this may be a challenge initially.

All employees who need access to the stored data should be trained. That includes sales team members and others who may travel on behalf of the company. They will need to know how to securely access the cloud while on the road. See the training as one way to ensure there’s no waste of time or resources when it comes to making use of company data.

Determining How to Trim Expenses Using Cloud Storage

In the midst of coming up with solutions, the cost is sure to be on your mind. This is another area where the consultant can help. You’ll find out how this method of data storage can, directly and indirectly, save money over time.

For example, you may decide that the cloud will be the primary point of storage from now on. You can drop the secondary server and other backup methods since the main local server will now be your backup. That translates into lower equipment costs. It also means less time involved in making sure data is transferred between devices properly.

You may also find that cloud storage paired with access credentials means employees don’t have to spend time attaching documents to emails and sharing them through a network. Instead, all authorized personnel can go to the cloud, find what they need, and keep working. No one has to wait until an email with an attachment arrives.

Developing a Plan to Transition Data from Local to Cloud Storage

Now that you have an idea of what the cloud can do for the business, there’s still the need to transfer data from your local storage to that cloud account. This is another area where the consultant can help. Between the support offered by the cloud service and the expertise of the consultant, it will be easy to set up a schedule for data transfer.

This process may focus on transferring data from the primary local server as the first step. Once that’s complete, transferring data from local desktops and laptops can be next. Through it all, the arrangement of the data in the cloud can be monitored. The result is everyone knows where to look for the files and documents they need.

If the idea of transitioning to the cloud as either your primary storage site or as a backup for your local server is appealing, now is the time to schedule a meeting with a consultant. After a full evaluation, developing a plan that fits your company’s needs will be an easy task.

How Data Synchronization Can Help Screen Data Collected From Websites

Data synchronization is the process of synchronizing data on different systems. For example, we all know that data generated by websites can be collected and screened for what we are looking for, but how does a business go about collecting it? Data synchronization will allow it to get its hands on the information before someone else does.

For this process to work, a company’s data must have been collected from different sources, and it must be entered into the system to be synchronized. This means that if someone is searching for data, they can do it all at once instead of reading through every bit of information individually.

Ways Data Synchronization Can Help Screen Data

Here are seven great ways data synchronization can help screen some of the different data collected from websites.

Screen Products and Services

Data synchronization can allow data collection from websites to be screened, so only relevant products or services are visible. This is particularly useful for large corporations with many different products and services available but doesn’t want the user to get overwhelmed when they visit their website.

Screen Company Information

Data synchronization can help screen company information from websites, so only relevant details are visible. In contrast, irrelevant information is hidden away to save time and effort when searching for particular data.

For example, if a user wanted to view a list of companies in a specific area, data synchronization would make sure they only see the companies with an online presence and hide any that don’t.

Screen Company Employees

Data synchronization can also highlight any employees of a company with relevant information. This is particularly useful for users looking to see if they have the same skills as an employee or want to find out what other companies that employee has worked for in the past.

Screen Reviews

One of the best ways to screen data collected from websites is to look at product or service reviews. It is an excellent way for users to get all the information they need on a product or service without going into too much detail, as this can save time and effort and leave no stone unturned.

Screen Business-Specific Data

When a business uses data synchronization, users can view business-specific data from websites with an online presence, ensuring they see information relevant to what they are looking for.

For example, if a user wanted to look at restaurants near them that have received four or five stars on their Google review page, their search can be made much easier by using data synchronization using web scraping tools.

Screen Public Data

Public data from websites can also be collected and screened, often using Java web scraping. This includes relevant news articles, social media posts, weather updates, and more.

For example, suppose a user wanted to view the latest news about a company they are interested in before visiting their website. In that case, they can use data synchronization and screen the information to their exact needs.

Screen Industry Data

Data synchronization can also screen industry data from different websites so only relevant information is shown, helping users see the bigger picture of a specific area. If a user wanted to view financial reports on various industries, data synchronization could get its hands on this data and display it in an easy-to-read format.

Conclusion

Data synchronization can help screen data collected from websites, helping a business save time and effort when searching for the information it needs to give its users. Data synchronization is beneficial for large corporations with many different products and services available and those looking to learn about an employee’s experience—all by using web scraping tools.

How To Choose The Best AI Images Enhancer For Your Business

Wait! Don’t delete those pictures. Yes, it looks blurred and you probably don’t like the way it came out, but trust me, it can get a second lease of life. Maybe a decade ago, you would have been right not to keep such pictures on your device but it’s new dawn now! AI image enhancers are here.

AI image enhancers are webpage applications or software that help you to upscale your pictures automatically without going through the manual manipulation of brushes and masks. According to experts from Uploadcare – file handling platform, AI enhancers, ‘analyze an image and perform the needed contrast, brightness and sharpness enhancement to better the image visual quality.’

There’s no doubt that good images play a big role in audience engagement and conversion rate hence be it on your product page, newsletter, social media pages, I’ll bet you want to use high-quality images to get the best result. Who wouldn’t anyway?

But you won’t always get high-quality pictures. This is where AI images enhancers come in.  AI images enhancers will automatically touch up the images. AI images enhancers perform smart image enhancement, tone and color adjustments, compressor removal. What you get is an image with a professional look. Guess what? You don’t need to have any knowledge about photoshop.

How Do AI Images Enhancers Work?

Joelle Katz describes ‘AI enhancers as mathematical tools that are capable of producing high-resolution images from low-resolution shots.’ These AI enhancers work by repeatedly layering colored shapes into areas where there are missing pixels to achieve sparsity.

AI enhancers also deal with compression by reducing the numbers of usable pixels for analysis and work best with the highest resolution images they can get. Simply put, AI upscalers are learning machines that help you to enhance your images from low-resolution images to high-resolution images without information loss.

Functions Of AI Image Enhancers

Resizing

AI Images enhancers are lifesavers when you want to upscale your image. Do you want to increase the size of an image without losing quality, focus, or getting the pictures blurred? AI images enhancers got you covered.

AI images upscale would help you increase the number of pixels on a particular image.

Lighting

There is no doubt images help to capture users’ attention. With the right light exposure to an image, you’re just a few steps away from converting that prospect to a client.

There’s no difference in the amount of damage, not enough or too much light exposure can cause your image but with an AI image enhancer,  you can get the right lighting with just a click.

Contrast

Experienced photographers know how rewarding getting an image contrast can be. But not everyone is a professional photographer or an experienced photographer, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you shoot an image without getting the contrast right.

Yes, contrast helps you to draw viewers’ attention and you sure need that for your business. Should you need help with contrast, AI enhances got you covered. It’ll enhance the key elements you want to focus on and ensure that it draws the attention that you desire.

Deblurring

Everyone has shot a blurred image at one time. While we believe that you can do better, however, the immediate goal is to ensure that you turn the current blurred image into a professional tool that can help you perform the needed task.

AI enhancers have deblurring features that will help you to give your image a second lease to life. Meanwhile, an AI art generator can completely transform your deblurred photos into artistic masterpieces, blending technology with creativity for eye-catching results.

Top 6 AI Images Enhancers For Businesses in 2022

VanceAl

This is one of the best AI image enhancers in 2021 giving you upscaling flexibility from 2X, 4X, 6X to 8X to upscale your low-resolution image to a high-resolution image. Also, anime images can be enhanced to 16X.

Icons8  Upscaler

Icons8 Upscaler is a free image quality enhancer that can help you scale up images by 4X resolution without losing quality.

FixthePhoto

Since 2003, Fixthephoto enhancement services has been the most trusted name in the photo retouching industry. Simply submit your images and specify your needs, and they will do the rest.

Let’s Enhance

This is one of the best AI image enhancers you can imagine. It helps you to improve colors, tones, balance, recover lost textures, and information. It also has compressor removal and gives you a 4X enhancement.

Deep Image

If you are in the real estate or e-commerce industry, then Deep Image should be on your priority list.

Deep Image can help you remove JPEG artifacts, remove noise, and have deblurring features. You also get 4X low-quality photos enhancement.

Upscaleics

Should you desire an AI enhancer to compress an image, think not too far, Upscaleics got you covered. Not only is it simple to use, but it also gives you some control over the resolution you’ll like to reach.

Applications for AI-Assisted Photography

AI systems will no doubt change the photography business as we know it today. Photographers will spend much more time taking photos rather than editing them. Currently, it is common practice for photographers to spend a lot more time digitally developing shots than actually taking them. Corporate portrait photographers, for example, often shoot hundreds or even thousands of headshots in a single day. AI software will help cull these images (selecting the best ones) and make adjustments such as brightness, contrast, color temperature and even image cropping. This means that the business of photography itself will either become more profitable in the future