Manta, an online community dedicated entirely to small businesses, surveyed it's residents and found that 90% of them use social media for their businesses. The most popular way to attract new business opportunities is through your company website, which many businesses closely connect with their social media. 24% of the business owners surveyed gained new customers through their websites, with Facebook following closely behind at 19%. Other social media outlets followed. So what does this mean for your business? It's important for you to know where and how to find your customers. Are they on Facebook? LinkedIn? Google+? Since not every business caters to the same audience you must carefully think through your specific target audience and where they are most likely to congregate. Ask yourself these questions (among others): What social media venue would attract your t...
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At Your Creative People, we enjoy brainstorming and dreaming up ways to innovate and improve our CMS product, Backstage. As one of our clients, did you know you can be a part of that creative process as well? In a large way, our client's help to build Backstage by highlighting the needs of their industries or businesses and pointing out ways to make our Backstage CMS even simpler for you to use! Have you seen the "Submit an Idea" feature in Backstage? When you discover a need for a new feature, or even just a neat idea that you think could streamline your process of updating your website, mobile site, or app, click the button and share it with us! We take and review every idea individually. Any idea that can benefit all Backstage users is added to our development list for inclusion in a future upgrade. We're not promising your idea will go into effect immediately, but...
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In our home, we love watching the Olympics. Our eyes were glued to the screen in amazement as we watched feats of skill, courage, and determination that worked to inspire us all. We marveled at the height the gymnasts got on their tumbling runs, the speed at which the swimmers glided from one side of the pool to the other, and the fact that it's possible to drop a 300 lb. barbell on yourself and still walk away unscathed (yes, that really happened >). We also couldn't help but be mesmerized and talk about the bright yellow feet that were flying at breakneck speeds across finish lines whenever track and field events were shown. Yes, we couldn't help but notice Nike's grand marketing scheme and notice those bright yellow-green sneakers every time they appeared on the screen. Just like Michael Johnson's golden shoes in the 1996 Atlanta games, Nike won the attention of th...
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Secret #1: Keep it simple Navigation. Make it easy for your customers to find the products they are searching for. Using simplified navigation (for instance breadcrumbs like the Apple Store example) gives your customers instant orientation to which page they are viewing and a visual path back. Search. Since approximately 50% of users are search driven - they instantly locate and use the closest search tool - having a search that narrows search results as you type is a great feature. Your results page should effectively and graphically list the results, proving to be simple to understand. Checkout. An easy checkout system or shopping cart can make the buying process smooth and more inviting. For example, it's easiest for me to checkout online with simply my e-mail address as a guest checkout, rather than having to create a new user account at each site I shop at. If yo...
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