CAll Us: +1 888-999-8231 Submit Ticket

Choose Between AliExpress vs Alibaba for Dropshipping

As a dropshipping store owner, you run many risks finding reputable suppliers and quality products.

Bad wholesalers devastate your bottom line. Defective or poor quality products drive down your online reviews. Disreputable suppliers offering brand knockoffs put you at risk of store closure. Expensive or unreliable shipping equals frustrated customers.

The process of emailing and calling potential suppliers can be exhausting. Outreach is labor-intensive. So, savvy eCommerce store owners are turning to markets like AliExpress and Alibaba to quickly find thousands of dropshipping suppliers and an enormous product selection.

What Are AliExpress and Alibaba?

AliExpress and Alibaba are two huge online marketplaces that are part of the Chinese holding company Alibaba Group. Both marketplaces save you time from finding reputable suppliers and products, but each has different profit models, integration, shipping, and payment methods. Depending on your business goals, one will likely fit your dropshipping needs better than the other.

Here are the differences dropshippers need to consider.

What is a Dropshipping Supplier?

Dropshipping suppliers are wholesalers or retail stores that enter into agreements with wholesalers and retailers. The dropshipping agreement usually splits the marketing costs and order fulfillment between the supplier and buyer. Dropshipping suppliers save money by letting dropshippers handle the expense of product promotion. In turn, dropshippers save cash on inventory space, packing supplies, and shipping costs. The partnership keeps overall costs low.

Product Pricing

Although many people consider AliExpress a wholesaler, it’s actually a retail site. AliExpress dropshippers are technically paying end consumer prices, not wholesale prices. It’s truly what most people consider a “dropshipping site” because it ships individual products to consumers for you rather than selling them in bulk to retailers.

Alibaba is more of a wholesaler approach, offering discounts for buying in bulk. Most of Alibaba’s manufacturers make consumer products. You can find individual products for sale (usually higher-priced items), but the majority of offerings are cheaper bulk items. The market is intended to be an online B2B platform for manufacturers or trading companies, but dropshippers use it regularly.

Orders on Alibaba have a minimum order quantity (MOQ), which manufacturers list as the number (e.g. “100 pieces”) required to fill an order. The MOQ is almost always negotiable with international firms. If the MOQ is too high, make an offer before passing on the purchase. Prices on Alibaba commonly appear in a range (e.g. $40-45). Make sure you’ve nailed down the price with the supplier before finalizing the order.

The products you sell will drive your decision about which marketplace to choose.

If you need customized items and a more wholesale approach to buying and pricing, Alibaba is a better solution. If you want to buy ready-made products at any quantity, AliExpress dropshipping may be the better answer.

Some eCommerce owners begin their dropshipping enterprise with AliExpress until they’ve built up enough sales volume to switch to bulk buying with Alibaba.

Product Types

As a wholesaler, Alibaba offers both small items in large quantities and large items in small quantities. AliExpress sells larger amounts of high-margin items like clothing, cell phones, jewelry, and personal care items.

For example, if you search for “refrigerators” on both sites, you get results for the actual appliance on Alibaba, but for AliExpress, you get pages of refrigerator magnets.

Overall, Alibaba caters to manufacturers, trading companies, or resellers who trade in large quantities. AliExpress connects mostly China-based businesses with international buyers.

Supplier Rating

Both Alibaba and AliExpress have certification programs to ensure their suppliers are reputable and reliable. Part of verifying vendors is checking to see if they actually exist. Some “manufacturers” are just retailers buying and reselling products, falsely claiming they are producing them at a factory.

Alibaba has three verification types:

  • A&V Check — “Gold Suppliers” have passed authentication and verification inspection by the company as well as a third party.
  • Onsite Check — Alibaba staff verify the supplier’s basic company information is accurate and that the manufacturing facilities physically exist.
  • Assessed Supplier — Third-party verification of supplier claims about products.

AliExpress supplier verification may feel more familiar—it’s similar to vendor ratings on eBay and Amazon. The site displays “Feedback Scores” on products and overall seller ratings on communication and shipping speed.

Some suppliers display AliExpress’s Buyer Protection plan on their orders. These plans guarantee refunds for late or wrong shipments.

Payment Methods

AliExpress and Alibaba have different products and pricing structures, which impacts your buying experience. Because AliExpress is a retailer, it offers more consumer-type payment options like credit cards. Alibaba focuses on international wholesale markets, so its payment options are optimized for larger transactions.

AliExpress dropshipping offers different payment methods for purchases made in-app (Android / Apple) versus on a website. Credit card purchasers can use Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Maestro. Dropshippers wanting more traditional banking methods use wire transfers or Western Union. This is only a partial list of all AliExpress payment methods.

AliExpress also has a PayPal-like credit and debit card service called AliPay. Even though you’re able to use the same buyer account on Alibaba and AliExpress, AliPay is currently only available on AliExpress.

Alibaba transactions usually involve large international shipments and large sums of money. The platform supports traditional wire transfers, telegraphic transfers (T/T), letters of credit, lines of credit, and eChecks. But you can also pay with credit cards in some cases.

Shipping Costs

Shipping costs on Alibaba and AliExpress depend on who you are buying from—manufacturers and retailers set their own prices. Many suppliers offer “free shipping”, but they’re simply rolling the costs over into the unit price just like dropshippers.

Like Alibaba, many orders come from China. So some items may take weeks. Check shipping times for a vendor by purchasing a small, inexpensive item to test. You’ll see how the vendor communicates and how long your order takes to process, ship, and arrive.

Shipping with Alibaba is a much different experience. Orders are larger and arrive at ports via boats. Some shipping costs include “Free on Board”. This means the costs of delivering the products to port is included in the prices. However, you are responsible for shipping costs from the port to your storage destination. Shipments to port can take up to six weeks depending on the destination and order size.

Shipping insurance with Alibaba is an option to consider. Cost Insurance and Freight (CIF) stipulates that the supplier pays the freight insurance up to the destination port. You take responsibility for damages from there.

What to Ask a Supplier

Whether you’re using AliExpress, Alibaba, or finding suppliers yourself, good communication with vendors and manufacturers helps ensure fast delivery times and happy customers. Every situation will be different, but you must ask the right questions to protect your interests.

  • What’s the final price? Alibaba prices come in ranges. Nail down the final price before you commit to the purchase.
  • What is the production time for my order? Figure in the amount of time it takes for the manufacturer to actually produce your order, not just ship it to you.
  • How long will it take to receive my order? Customers want to know when they’re getting their stuff. Get good estimates on shipping times and keep customers satisfied.
  • What’s the minimum order quantity (MOQ)? This is often negotiable. If you can’t afford their minimum order, haggle.
  • What are the shipping cost estimates for this product? Accurate shipping costs are critical to figuring your markup. Omit this question at your peril.
  • Do you provide samples? An easy way to check a company’s quality control is to sample their products.
  • Do you have any references? Ask for examples of other stores who sell their products.

Adding Dropshipping Products to Your Store

To sell dropship items, you need to import them to your WooCommerce website so customers can see them.

You can do this manually by copy and pasting descriptions and adding product images. Items on AliExpress are easy to import either manually or automatically. If you’re only handling a few dozen items, importing manually works. But store owners who are selling hundreds or thousands of items need a more practical strategy.

Several online services like Ezusy or WooDropship let you automate importing AliExpress products to your WooCommerce store. With a few clicks, you’ll be able to select hundreds of products to import.”

If you’d rather buy than subscribe, look into a WooCommerce dropshipping plugin that will perform the same automated product import.

There are no automated services or plugins for Alibaba because most dropshippers change the market’s bulk product listings to individual items to sell in their stores. Importing the description and images for a list of “500 Christmas Bulbs” doesn’t work for a dropshipping site selling individual items.

Advantages to Using Both AliExpress and AliBaba

Don’t think of AliExpress or Alibaba as an either-or choice.

Instead, use both as two parts of a single strategy to meet your short-term and long-term business goals.

  1. Use the low startup costs of AliExpress to get your business off the ground.
  2. As you grow, switch to storing your own inventory and take advantage of the wholesale prices Alibaba offers.

Mix this strategy with good marketing, and you’ll have an edge on your dropshipping competitors.

Ready to Build Your WooCommerce Store?

Managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi comes with cart abandonment technology, lightning fast load times, and built in security.

Check out our plans to get started today.

Source link

What is an Ecommerce Business Incubator?

Business incubators give brand-new businesses access to the resources and mentoring they need to thrive. Around the world, business incubators are nurturing new companies in every industry and showing them how to grow beyond their in-house assistance.

Does your business need one? Not necessarily. But the experience and assistance may be invaluable. A business incubator may be just the thing to keep your new store from becoming a statistic.

How do you know if an incubator is right for you? This guide can help.

Business Incubators Make It Easier to Start Your Business

Starting a new business is hard work, particularly without the right tools and opportunities. Incubators strive to provide everything a new business needs which typically includes:

  • Advice from Experienced Mentors
  • Physical Space for Offices
  • Business Courses
  • Networking
  • Financial assistance
  • Technical support
  • Services

Access to investor funding is a really huge potential benefit, too. At some incubators, potential investors are around to provide businesses with their first funding in exchange for equity stakes. You can also learn valuable information about loan opportunities from banks and alternative lenders if giving away equity isn’t part of your business plan.

To be successful in starting your ecommerce business, you’ll need to put in a lot of effort. Incubators help you channel these efforts in the right direction.

How Do Business Incubators Work?

With the right resources, entrepreneurs can set up their businesses for a successful start and paced growth. New business owners often don’t know what they’re missing and aren’t sure where to start with their early research.

An incubator may provide you with a basic office lease, consulting, networking, and mentoring — usually for a fee. As you grow, you can scale up or down quickly in the services you use without penalty.

These organizations may be for-profit or nonprofit and are frequently associated with a specific industry, city, or academic institution. Their mission is generally to boost the economy by enabling new businesses to grow sustainably and successfully. Of course, how they achieve their mission and what they do to support businesses may vary tremendously.

When you’re ready to move your business out on its own, you’ll have an established network you can refer to later if you need support.

Benefits of a Business Incubator

New ecommerce businesses can potentially improve their survival rate and entrepreneurs can learn about their companies with support and guidance. It’s a place that naturally leads to business relationships and opportunities as startups learn and grow together.

Beyond networking, there are other potential benefits such as:

  • Expertise: Lawyers, CPAs, marketing consultants, business analysts, and other experts may be in-house or on a list available to all businesses.
  • Better mentoring: A-list entrepreneurs who’ve been where you are now are typical on-hand mentors.
  • Community: If life gets lonely as a new business, having others around who can empathize can be helpful when the going gets tough.
  • Reduced overhead: Basics like a receptionist, meeting spaces, and assistance from a business research assistant can be expensive, but an incubator can make these benefits much more affordable.
  • Discounts: Special group discounts are often included in your membership.

There may be a variety of additional benefits depending on the nature of the program, and the partnerships they’ve cultivated for their members.

Startup Office Lease Through an Incubator Program

For many businesses, incubators provide their first office space. This is usually at a below-market rate so your company can focus on business operations and not have to worry so much about covering rent. Also, your lease will probably have a great deal of flexibility so you can adjust the space you’re using and accommodate the change in your company.

Since you’re in the same building as other new companies and among others from your industry, you have the opportunity to network closely with people who face many of the same concerns and challenges.

Even if your program doesn’t include a lease, the list of other participants gives you opportunities to connect with businesses you may never have met otherwise.

Networking with Other Incubator Participants

Your fellow startups can actually teach you a lot. Even if you’re technically competitors, it’s still worthwhile to meet other business owners and talk about issues facing your industry. Within an incubator, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to find others who have insightful contributions to share.

Meetups, discussion nights, and social activities give you a sense of camaraderie and motivation. Connecting with others gives you a chance to ask questions and learn who the other participants are outside of work. It’s also a way to get business advice. Those who are further along in their entrepreneurial journey may share tips and ideas with you. Don’t be afraid to ask — as long as you’re also open to sharing information that’s helped you. Remember, what goes around comes around. Build goodwill and be a positive influence.

That good karma you’re building will come in handy when you start promoting your business. Aside from customers, some of the most important people you’ll promote your business to will be within your business world.

Find Investors for Your Ecommerce Business

If you’ve ever wondered where you’ll find your first investors, an incubator may be right for you. That’s because incubators often host invitation-only investment nights and pitch events where you can interact directly with potential investors and learn how to explain your company’s value proposition.

Those first investments can make reaching your business dreams a lot more realistic and accessible.

Who Shouldn’t Use a Business Incubator

Business incubators may not be very helpful for some businesses. For instance, if you’re an experienced business owner with adequate resources, incubators may not be as valuable. If it’s not specific to your industry and doesn’t include mentors and resources that are relevant to you, that could also pose significant issues.

To find out if an incubator would actually help, be sure to start with research. Talk to the coordinator or liaison and prepare a list of questions.

Here’s a list to start your research:

  • What does the typical process look like for participants?
  • How do I know I’ll be successful in your business incubator program?
  • What is your track record with businesses in my industry?
  • Who are the mentors?
  • What resources are available?
  • Can I talk to some graduates of the program?

As you think of other questions, be sure to jot them down. If a particular program is not the right fit, it’s easier when you can find that out before investing your time and energy into it.

If you can, consider participating in an ecommerce business incubator.

Business Incubator for Ecommerce

Business incubators provide opportunities to find tailored advice and resources that fit your ecommerce industry. It’s an industry-specific resource so you won’t have to waste time learning about issues that don’t apply to you, and everything is purpose-built for your success.

That said, there are fewer ecommerce programs because most incubators are generalists.

Why Ecommerce-Specific Business Incubators Have Added Value

No two businesses are the same, and ecommerce as an industry works differently than other areas of business operations.

Here are a few issues an ecommerce incubator may help you resolve:

  • Niche research
  • Product sourcing
  • Patent and trademark law
  • Licensing
  • Import and export information
  • Ecommerce technology
  • Design and photography
  • Forecasting
  • Accounting and legal issues
  • Marketing and advertising

These areas are somewhat different from other industries.

Find an Ecommerce Business Incubator

Business incubator programs exist all over the country, but relocation may be necessary for the perfect opportunity. Online programs are also available.

Search The National Business Incubator Association’s business incubator database. Keep in mind that most are generalist business incubators.

You may also want to check with your local chamber of commerce and find out if the business community where you live has any additional resources.

Examples of Ecommerce Business Incubators

These business incubators specifically serve the ecommerce industry:

  • Rocket Internet: Working with online companies globally, Rocket focuses largely on ecommerce. Graduates include Zalora, Westwing, Hello Fresh, and Lamoda.
  • Nordic Etail: Specific to Sweden, Nordic Etail grows ecommerce companies and is a newer incubator focused on online retailing.
  • A Better Lemonade Stand: An online incubator for ecommerce businesses offering growth resources, manufacturer listings, help with branding and business plans, and more.

Some incubators are more competitive than others. Many have formal arrangements and contracts, while some have very basic requirements or allow informal buy-in to access specific resources.

For some incubators, getting in is a competitive process. These are usually the organizations that invest the most in their members.

Applying for a Business Incubator

Each business incubator program has its own requirements and expectations, so it’s important to do your research. Programs that provide investment to all participants and offer the best mentoring are usually highly competitive.

During the process you may:

  • File an online application at the start and wait to be called for the next steps.
  • Interview with one or more of the founders — it may be required to interview in person.
  • Provide financials or share financial information about your business.
  • Present your business plan or pitch a panel of program advisors.
  • Review a contract outlining expectations and responsibilities.

Once you’re in, incubators generally don’t provide as much pressure to succeed as accelerators do, but this is no time to kick back. You need to work hard and get moving.

Getting the Most From Your New Business Incubator

When you start the program, take every opportunity you can to work hard and learn from the mentors around you. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and take some time getting to know the program.

Learning about business incubator success stories can also help you find out how to get more out of your new business incubation program.

Many of today’s biggest companies are incubator graduates. Y Combinator, a business accelerator, is very similar to the incubators supporting small businesses, but it offers a more competitive environment and a shorter incubation time frame of just three months.

These companies are now just a few of the famous Y Combinator grads:

  • Airbnb
  • Dropbox
  • Reddit
  • Stripe

Feel free to use them as inspiration as you grow your business. The right support and mentoring may take your company further than you’d ever expect.

Managed WooCommerce Hosting Can Help

Fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi makes it easy to start growing your business immediately. Packed with state-of-the-art technologies, Hostdedi ensures low cart abandonment while helping you maintain a high-performance WooCommerce storefront.

Source link

Email Analytics: How to Track What’s Working and What Isn’t

In the ever-changing landscape of online marketing, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

Email marketing works, and it works well.

It drives the highest ROI of all B2B strategies. In fact, studies show that email marketing campaigns earn $44 for every $1 spent. Nice.

With email analytics, the more you know, the better, so you need to have a handle on your email marketing analytics.

When it comes to email marketing, it’s crucial to understand exactly how your audience is interacting with the content showing up in their inbox. In this post, we will explore how to track and interpret results for key email marketing metrics.

Google Analytics Email Tracking 101

Using Google Analytics for email tracking is an essential tool.

Once you set up tracking, you’ll be able to see how well links in your emails are performing, what percentage of your traffic is opting into your list, where visitors are converting on your site, and more.

Here’s how to set up your email marketing analytics.

First, set up ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics. Next, work within your email software provider to connect it with your Google Analytics. For example, with MailChimp it’s as easy as going to their Integrations page and authorizing Google Analytics, and then checking a box that enables link tracking when you set up your campaigns.

Once you set up the connection, you’ll be able to see sales that were driven by your email campaigns directly from your email software provider’s dashboard.

It’s not just your analytics tracking and email marketing conversion rate you should be monitoring. There are lots of other goals to consider.

6 Email Marketing Metrics (and How to Work Them Out)

Before jumping right into a campaign, it is important to define the goals and KPI metrics you want to accomplish and which metrics you need to track to work toward those goals.

Let’s explore your options (plus the formulas to work them out).

1. Open Rate

Open rate is the number of emails opened compared to the total amount delivered.

The sender name and subject line affect the open rate most, so make sure to test these variables. Then write copy that makes people actually want to open the message.

Adding “You’re nearly out of time …” creates a sense of urgency and makes people want to open that email to avoid missing out on the offer.

2) Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate is the number of clicks on the links in an email message, divided by the number of emails delivered.

For a good click-through rate, you want to pay close attention to the email content, particularly the images, copy, and calls-to-action.

Not only does this content stand out, it’s personal too. Using “your deals” makes people feel they will lose something if they don’t click through.

When it comes to CTR, you want to test the wording and styling of your call-to-action (CTA), content layout, and images often.

3) Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of email addresses that returned an error after they were sent.

These errors fall into two camps:

  • Hard bounce (permanent) – invalid (or non-existent) email addresses that will never get the message.
  • Soft bounce (temporary) – full inboxes, out of office notifications, or temporary server issues. If resolved, the email will be delivered.

Monitoring bounce rates is a good habit to build for a few reasons. For starters, higher than average bounce rates may point to a larger problem such as:

  • An issue with a specific email client
  • Incorrect input or upload of the email addresses
  • Fake/dummy email addresses resulting from ineffective collection methods

Don’t forget: Hard bounce rates are a key indicator used by internet service providers (ISPs) to determine sender reputation. Always clean up your email lists promptly when these issues crop up. If you don’t, your email account could be frozen.

4) Conversion Rate

Every email you send should have a clear action you would like users to perform:

  • Make a purchase
  • Read an article on your blog
  • Fill out a subscription form
  • Request a quote
  • Sign up for an event or webinar

Email conversion rate measures how effective your email is, in relation to your objective. Always be aware of this and how it averages at different times and levels.

The conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who complete a desired action (or become customers). It really depends on your conversion goal.

Here’s how to calculate your email conversion rate:

(Number of users who have completed the action / Emails delivered) x 100

Calculating your conversion rate is a two-step equation.

  1. Divide the number of signups (or purchases) by the total number of successful emails deliveries.
  2. Multiply that number by 100.

Simple.

Once you’ve got your head around your email conversion rate, you can compare it to industry benchmarks to see how it stacks up.

Experiment with different CTAs and monitor the effects on your conversion rate.

5) Opt-Out / Unsubscribe Rate

Having people unsubscribe from your email list is inevitable.

Keeping track of these trends is important for you to understand why your audience may not be engaging. Ideally, you want the number of unsubscribes to be lower than the number of new users.

If this rate rises, it’s time to do some digging. Examine your list-building tactics, email content, and sending schedule. Are you making any obvious mistakes that could be causing your audience to scroll past your emails? If nothing jumps out at you as an immediate problem to fix, consider running A/B tests to work out why.

Some aspects of email testing can include:

  • Subject lines
  • Send name
  • Send time
  • Email content formatting
  • CTAs within emails

One way to determine what to test is to simply ask people why they opted-out. Email service providers usually allow you to survey users who unsubscribe. Your survey doesn’t have to be super complex, just offer subscribers a few possible reasons to choose and reply:

6) Overall ROI

We’ve saved the best for last.

Return on investment (ROI) puts the key in key metrics. Accurately monitoring ROI directly measures the cost-effectiveness of an email campaign.

Why? Because if you know how much you earn from your emails, and how much it costs to send them, you know how much you can invest in future campaigns and predict future earnings.

If your emails generate $20,000 in sales every month, and the cost of producing and sending emails is $1,000/month, your ROI is 1900 percent.

(If this sounds high, it’s actually lower than the average of 4400 percent. There’s a reason email is still so popular.)

In fact, your functional ROI may even be higher. Not all of your sales are going to convert directly from the emails you send. Sometimes people see an email, click the link, and come back to it later, but it’s still possible to get an approximate ROI through Google Analytics via assisted conversions.

So What Can I Learn From My Email Analytics?

There are lots of other email marketing metrics to consider, but you want to focus on metrics that are important to your business.

What do these important metrics actually tell you? And what can you learn from your email analytics? (I’m glad you asked.)

  • Who is reading your email? – Check your email reports to see the number of people who opened your email. Note your most engaged audience members and perhaps reward them with a loyalty discount.
  • What did your subscribers like in your email? – Have a look at your click-through rate and unique clicks to see what content your list is liking the most. This will help guide you when it comes to creating content. If a topic is getting a lot of attention, it makes sense to produce more and feed your audience’s interest.
  • When’s the best time to email? – Find the sending schedule that gets the most engagement. Once you know, stick to it and be consistent so your audience starts to expect your emails.
  • On what device are people reading your email? – Find out whether people are reading your emails on mobile or desktop, then make sure you are using a responsive email template.

Get Even Better Email Tracking With Managed Hosting

Monitoring and analysis are essential to get the most out of every email marketing campaign.

Always be tracking. When it comes to your email analytics, there are three things you want to keep in mind.

  1. Make sure you can measure email performance
  2. Make sure your email list is healthy
  3. Make sure you are progressing toward your goals

If you can keep on top of all three, you are on track for an awesome email marketing campaign.

Get Started With Email Analytics Today

With a store powered by Managed WooCommerce Hosting from Hostdedi, your store will be able to create customer segments, customize marketing emails easily, and generate more customers.

Source link

Best Photo Editing Software for Product Photography

There’s no way around it. Product photography has a major impact on how customers perceive your brand and its products.

When you use high-quality images and professional photo editing:

  1. Your products look more valuable — so you can charge more for them.
  2. Your store look more professional and trustworthy — which can build your brand reputation.

You don’t have to be an expert to master photo editing, as there are hundreds of tools and services that can help you whip your product photography into shape.

In this post, we’re sharing 14 of the best photo editing software tools that are both free and paid.

Best Paid Photo Editing Software and Services

Paid photo editing software is generally more advanced than free versions. Additionally, all photo editing services incur at least a small fee for you to outsource your editing. This makes paid software and services the best option for ecommerce stores with a high volume of product images or a desire to be more creative with editing.

Subscription Photo Editing Software

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a web-based subscription photo editing software. It provides all the expected professional editing tools, including resizing, adjusting exposure, and retouching. You can also use it to add graphics or text to your images. If you prefer, you can download the PicMonkey app for iPhone or Android.

This option is a simple and user-friendly photo editor that’s geared for beginners to photo editing. You can purchase a Basic subscription for $9.99 a month, a Pro subscription for $12.99 a month, or a Team subscription for $33.99 a month.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a popular photo editing tool with advanced editing capabilities. This feature-rich tool allows you to make extensive image corrections as well as to add graphic design elements for promotional images or marketing assets. Keep in mind that a tool of this caliber and extensive features may require some training to get up to speed.

For individuals, pricing ranges from $9.99 to $89.98 per month, depending on the services and features you want includes.

One-Time Payment Photo Editing Software

Corel PaintShop Pro

PaintShop Pro is a popular photo editing software that you can download to your PC — provided it uses Windows 10 (it is not compatible with Mac).

In addition to the basic photo editing tools, PaintShop Pro also allows you to edit raw images, to create animations with your photos or to add drawings or text. For a one-time payment of $79.99, it’s marketed as the “affordable alternative to Photoshop.” (Photoshop is about $10 a month or $120 a year.)

Alien Skin Exposure X4

Alien Skin Exposure X4 can be purchased as standalone software for Mac or Windows, or it can be purchased as a plug-in for Photoshop or Lightroom.

What differentiates this software from others is that it merges all its features into a single screen, compared to other software that may open different screens for organizing files, editing, or exporting. You can use Exposure X4 for all professional editing, including batch-editing with preset filters to save time. The regular version is $114 and the bundle version is $149.

Photo Editing Services for Outsourcing

Pixelz

Pixelz is marketed as an on-demand retouching service, and it exclusively serves ecommerce companies for product photography. You send your images to Pixelz to be retouched to eliminate flaws or remove or replace the background, and you receive back the edited images within 24 hours.

In addition to paying a small fee per photo, you pay a subscription every month. For solo entrepreneurs the cost is $9 a month, for small to midsize companies it’s $95 a month, and for large companies with a high volume of images it’s $1,995 a month.

Fix the Photo

Fix the Photo is an established photo editing outsourcing service that offers everything from editing wedding photos to retouching product photography.

For product photography, they offer image cropping, color correction, noise reduction, and background removal. At the Basic Level, editing is a flat rate of $2 per photo, but there are discounts for volume orders.

Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac and Windows

The best free photo editing software for Windows 10 and Mac are enticing alternatives to more advanced paid options, especially if your product images don’t require creative editing or significant adjustments. In addition, free photo editing software is often easier to learn for beginners than high-tech software.

Free Built-in Photo Editing Software

Apple Photos

Apple Photos includes basic editing capabilities, and it is automatically downloaded to your Apple devices. It offers a surprising number of features, including the ability to edit raw images. If you simply want to retouch or sharpen your images, then your built-in Apple Photos editor may be all you need.

Google Drive Editor

Google Drive Editor is one of the best free options for photo editing software for Windows 10 and Mac, because it integrates seamlessly with your Google Drive. This makes it easy to store and organize photos for editing. The editing options are basic, but if your images are already high quality, you may not need to get a more advanced photo editor. You can sharpen images, enhance with filters, or rotate and crop.

Free Web-Based Photo Editing Software

Fotor

Fotor is a user-friendly photo editing software you can use right from your browser. It’s designed for beginners to photo editing and is one of the most popular choices for web-based photo editing software. You can selective blur, retouch, add filters, add lettering or graphics, and more. And it’s completely free.

Host Your Store On Hostdedi Fully Managed WooCommerce

If you have an ecommerce store, consider hosting it with Hostdedi. Try managed WooCommerce hosting to keep your customer information secure and your site at top speed. Check out our plans to get started today.

Source link

Boost Ecommerce Customer Experience and Increase CRO

With more shoppers moving online, ecommerce customer experience is becoming a more complex and critical part of acquiring and retaining customers. According to HubSpot, 80% of consumers say they would stop doing business with a company because of poor customer experience. And by 2020, a Walker study estimates that customer experience will dethrone product and price as the primary way to differentiate a brand.

Customer experience is the soon-to-be-crowned king of ecommerce, and you’ll need a good design and marketing strategy to compete. Here are some strategies for building an ecommerce customer experience to support your conversion rate optimization strategy.

What’s Ecommerce Customer Experience?

Creating an ecommerce customer experience involves fulfilling the practical and emotional needs of your customers. Practical needs include intuitive navigation or an easy-to-use checkout process. When you meet a practical need, you make the customer journey easier. A customer’s emotional needs are satisfied through user experiences like enticing product images that inspire them to buy or an “About Us” page that builds positive brand affiliation.

By satisfying your customer’s practical and emotional needs, you’re able to nudge them into converting more. Without a simple process, customers get frustrated. Without an emotional connection, they lose interest. Effective customer experience satisfies both needs with a comprehensive design and marketing strategy that increases conversions.

Homepage Design

Customers need to know what you’re selling and how to find your products. Your store’s layout and navigation is the foundation of this experience.

Main Navigation Design

Your customers have a better experience when your main navigation is simple and displays all of your product categories. Customers can get confused when they hover over a “Products” button only to be overwhelmed by a drop-down menu of dozens of product names and categories. Keep it simple and streamlined.

Don’t hide all of you categories behind an “All Products” button. This makes it hard for the customer to see everything that you’re selling. They might think you only sell electronic gadgets when you also sell clothing.

Your main navigation should display your product categories on your homepage. At least 18% of ecommerce sites don’t do this, according to Baymard Institute.

Keep your navigation headings specific. Avoid general labels like “What we do” and “Products”. These descriptors are straightforward, but they don’t inspire clicks, and your customers aren’t searching for those terms anyway. Instead, use Google Keyword Planner to populate your navigation panel with relevant keywords to describe your various sections.

Site Search

Having search functionality on your ecommerce site is the quickest way to connect customers with the products and services they’re looking for. So, make your search box prominent on the page, especially for the mobile version of your site. The most common placement is at the top of the page for both mobile and desktop.

Use contrasting colors for your search field and/or button so customers can find it. Design your search field with icons like the magnifying glass so customers immediately recognize its function. And put the search field on every page of your website.

Autocomplete helps customers find what they are looking for faster. Use the search bar plugin to deploy this technology on your store.

Product Pages

When a customer land on your product pages, you can increase their motivation to buy if you design your page and marketing strategies to include these elements.

Incentives

The law of reciprocity states that a customer will feel motivated to repay you for something you’ve given them. That’s why incentives like free gifts or discounts are effective ways to compel customer conversion. By giving customers a small gift, you can then ask them for “payment” later, in the form of signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product “recommended for you.”

It can be frustrating for customers on the edge of converting to wait a day to purchase, only for the item to sell out or for a sale to end. Keep shoppers up to date on current availability and sale timelines. By making it known when an item is popular and selling out, potential customers aren’t caught off guard by inventory shortages.

Social Proof

Fill your product pages with proof from others that you’re a reputable vendor. Customer trust is a major motivator and is affected by many different factors—from online reviews to what payment gateway you use.

One easy way to show social proof is to display trust badges on your product pages. Badges from the Better Business Bureau, PayPal Verified, or McAfee Secure all communicate that you run a legitimate business, improving your ecommerce customer experience. Here are some other types of social proof:

  • Client testimonials
  • Press mentions
  • Customer reviews
  • Expert/Celebrity testimonials

Product Images

The happy customer is the one whose expectations match the product they receive. When done correctly, product images go a long way in setting customer expectations before payment and shipment happen. That cuts down on returns and improves customer experience.

Plus, attractive images of your products are enjoyable to look at. Get a variety of shots. Close-ups emphasize fine details, while different angles create an overall understanding of a product’s shape and size. To get the best of both, use medium shots of products and hover zoom tools for closer looks.

Pay attention to your image file sizes. Large files make your product pages load slower unless you have web hosting designed for ecommerce. You should optimize your images by compressing them and using browser caching to increase page load speeds. Here are some recommended image sizes for your product pages:

  • Small Thumbnails: 200 x 200 pixels max
  • Medium Sized: 800 x 800 pixels max
  • Hover zooms: 1,000 x 1,000 pixels max

Really amp up your customer experience by A/B split testing your images to discover which images drive the most conversions.

Checkout Process

There’s no better place to look for barriers to conversion than the checkout process. Complicated checkouts can lose you almost a third of your conversions. Big or small, any hiccup in payment and shipping can cause a customer with the sincere intention of leaving with your products, to instead, leave a bad review. Here are some common checkout problems to avoid.

Account Required

According to a Baymard Institute survey, 37% of shoppers say they will abandon their carts if the site requires creating an account. The sale you’re missing is more important than the gathering of customer contact information. Customers who don’t want to buy from you because of the extra step to purchase aren’t going to be enthusiastic about your emails either. Make guest checkout an option. It will reduce your cart abandonment rates and improve your customer experience. And use a cart abandonment plugin to recover any lost sales you have.

Shipping Charges

Customers often get sticker shock at the checkout process because of extra fees, taxes, and shipping rates. Up to 60% say they will leave an online store because of extra costs like shipping. Cut down on cart abandonment by throwing in shipping for free when you can. Roll the shipping costs into the product’s price to keep things simple and streamlined. The improved customer experience will offset any loss the higher price presents.

Customers love free shipping, so let them know you’re offering it every chance you get. Put it on your homepage, emails, banner ads, and social media ads. And use the advantage of free shipping to upsell and cross-sell. Offer free shipping for multiple items or as a “special offer” when sales slow. Customers know they can maximize the free shipping advantage with more purchases. So, they’re incentivized already.

Personalization

The best customer experience is one that’s personalized. Forty-eight percent of consumers spend more when their experience is personalized. Keep it all about your customers with these features.

Sizing Charts

Sizing is a big reason why many customers opt for brick-and-mortar retail rather than online. Overcome this fear with a helpful sizing chart.

Give your customers enough sizing information in your charts. Provide numerical sizes (6, 8, 10) along with their standard descriptors (small, medium, large). Overall, try and include sizing information that doesn’t require measurements, since most customers won’t know their measurements, nor have a measuring tape handy.

To increase your sizing accuracy, encourage your customers to upload images of themselves wearing your clothing or using your products. Consumers can use them as a helpful fitting guide. Plus, the images are a highly effective form of social proof.

Color Swatches

To add another level of personalization, include a color swatch selector next to your sizing chart on your product page. The color swatch lets customers easily cycle through the different color and fabric options you provide.

Recommendations

Product recommendations increase conversions. One Barilliance study found that 31% of ecommerce site revenues resulted from product recommendations. Recommendations also improve your customer experience. Customers who engage with recommendation widgets are 5.5x more likely to complete a purchase than those who don’t.

Recommendations fall into three categories:

  • Those based on data from individual customers (“You might also like…”)
  • Those based on data from other users (“Other people also liked…”)
  • Or a mixture of both types of data

Plugins like Recommendation Engine for WooCommerce give you the flexibility to offer recommendation within all three of these category types. In the Barilliance study, the best performing recommendation widgets were those making suggestions based on what other customers were buying.

To make your recommendations more effective, place them above the fold of your product pages so customers don’t need to scroll to find them.

Page Load Speed and Customer Experience

Website performance affects both the practical and emotional aspects of the customer experience. When customers have to wait for product images to load or transactions that take too long, their frustrations grow exponentially—and their experience suffers. Performance studies estimate that for every 1 second it takes for your ecommerce site to load, your conversion rate drops 7%.

Use a site speed tester like GTMetrix to get a performance benchmark. Then use the GTMetrix report to identify ways to improve your page load speed times. Also, consider whether your current website hosting is optimized for ecommerce. For example, some WordPress hosts are built for blogs, not image-heavy, high-traffic online stores.

The Future of Customer Experience

If the customer experience is soon to become the key differentiator of a brand, what are the big picture implications for online store owners? Online sales lack the personal connection brick-and-mortar stores enjoy. There’s no happy face to greet them at the door, no fast and friendly sales associates or dressing rooms for confirming a good fit.

These are limitations online store owners will need to overcome by anticipating objections before they happen. That means maximizing the personalization benefits online shopping does offer—like predictive algorithms for personal recommendations and targeted marketing campaigns.

Despite the anonymity and privacy online shopping affords, shoppers will always crave the need to feel special and connected to something. That something is your brand, which is nothing more than the collection of the dozens of small touch points that make up your customer experience. Make each one count.

Ready to Try a Hosting Solution Built for Ecommerce?

Speed plays an integral role in the overall experience a customer has at your store. Our Managed WooCommerce Hosting platform reduces query loads by 95% while automatically handling image compression, which enables your store to run quickly. It also includes premium plugins from IconicWP that help keep your store lightweight while providing additional functionality such as color swatches for your product pages.

Source link

How to Set Up Multi-Channel Attribution and Reporting

Most online retailers and ecommerce businesses rely on numerous sales channels to drive conversion and revenue. This is called a multi-channel attribution marketing strategy. But, there’s a problem.

How do you make use of all the conversion data that those channels generate? Do you have to manage the data separately on every channel, or is there a way to bring it all together in one comprehensive reporting tool?

If you’re asking yourself these very questions, there’s a good chance that multi-channel attribution modeling and reporting is your answer. So we’ve put together everything you need to know about multi-channel attribution and Google Analytics multi-channel funnel reporting.

What is Multi-Channel Attribution?

Multi-channel attribution is a term related to analytics. In theory, it refers to the rules that a business owner has in place to gauge the performance of (or the sales generated by) every different marketing channel.

In practice, multi-channel attribution involves assigning a value — often dollar amounts — to every sales channel and customer touchpoint that occurs throughout the buyer’s journey. As you follow revenue back through your conversion paths, you can see which channels are contributing to the most conversions.

You can also track these conversions with multi-channel attribution. In this context, conversion is considered any action or consumer behavior that’s deemed “valuable” and moves the consumer further into your conversion funnel. For instance, you can assign a conversion value to emails acquired from potential customers who requested a PDF download. Ultimately, the purpose of multi-channel attribution is to determine which of your channels and touchpoints have the greatest effect on consumer behavior, conversion, and revenue. It’s a way to read massive amounts of data and find out what returns you’re getting on your marketing investments.

Understanding Multi-Channel Funnels

Google Analytics takes a lot of the work out of multi-channel funnel reporting. Once you have Analytics installed on your ecommerce store, the platform collects data to show you the role that your sales channels play in converting leads into customers.

Let’s take a look at how multi-channel funnels are represented in Google Analytics with these terms to know.

Acquisition Channels

In Google Analytics, acquisition channels are labels used to group or categorize your sales channels and customer touchpoints. As you use multi-channel funnel reporting, you’ll see a number of acquisition channels referenced throughout the different reporting menus, including the following: Paid Search, Organic Search, Direct, Social Media, Email, and Affiliate.

Assisted Conversion

An assisted conversion is when a channel or touchpoint moves a customer further into your conversion funnel. In Google Analytics, assisted conversion reflects how the points of engagement that occur along a prospective customer’s buying journey contribute to conversion. All but the final interaction in a conversion path are considered assisted interactions.

Conversion Path

A conversion path is a sequence of channels and touchpoints that reflects a prospective customer’s buying journey. Typically, there’s a first interaction, assist interactions, and a final interaction which is the last touchpoint before conversion.

Custom Channel Groupings

Google Analytics separates sales channels and customer touchpoints into groups. The default channel groupings fall in line with the standard acquisition channels which include Paid Search, Organic Search, Direct, Social Media, and Email, and Affiliate.

However, you have the option to create custom channel groupings of your own. Therefore, custom channel groupings are when you add to or replace the default channel groupings in Google Analytics.

Multi-Channel Funnel Reporting With Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides several useful reporting options for your multi-channel funnel. These reporting options take the data you’ve collected and turns it into a visual so you can see clear insights into your conversions.

When it comes to Google Analytics multi-channel funnel reporting, there are five options to know. To access each of these different reporting options in Google Analytics, navigate to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels.

Overview

Overview provides a snapshot of your conversion data. With Overview, you’ll get a representation of how your sales channels and customer touchpoints work together to convert leads. One of the main elements is a line graph that shows your conversions over time. By default, you’ll see your conversions over the past 30 days. Additionally, you can compare your conversions to other conversion-related metrics.

Overview reporting is also where you’ll find the Multi-Channel Conversion Visualizer, a Venn diagram-esque representation of how your sales channels interact and overlap. By toggling channel groupings on and off, you can hone in on the data you need.

Assisted Conversions

In Google Analytics, an assisted conversion refers to when a channel or touchpoint aids in the conversion process. All touchpoints in the conversion path, other than the final touchpoint, are considered assists.

The Assisted Conversions feature offers performance data for your channels, showing how often they are converting. From there, you can get quite specific with the reporting. For example, you can see which specific landing pages and URLs are assisting in the most conversions by selecting the appropriate primary dimension under the “Other” tab.

Under the Assisted Conversions menu, channels and touchpoints are broken down according to whether they initiated, assisted, or completed a conversion. This is useful for determining where your channels and touchpoints tend to fall in your conversion paths.

Top Conversion Paths

The purpose of Top Conversion Paths reporting is to show you which conversion path(s) convert customers with greater frequency.

Each line item on the list is a unique conversion path, consisting of one or more channel groupings. So if, for instance, the top conversion path shows as Organic Search, Social Media, Direct Search, then you can deduce that the most conversions are coming from an interaction that looks something like this:

  • Someone discovers your business in a non-branded Google search
  • They follow your business on social media
  • They eventually visit your ecommerce store through a direct Google search
  • They make a purchase

Time Lag

Time Lag reporting tells you how much time the conversion process takes for your customers. In other words, the length of time that spans between the point of first contact with a lead and when the purchase is made. This tells you how long it takes for your customers to convert. If the conversion is quick, then the channel or conversion that preceded the purchase has much more value than if conversion takes many days.

Path Length

Path Length reporting shows how many interactions (with your channels and touchpoints) it takes to convert leads into customers. When conversion requires just one interaction, then the channel or touchpoint that converted the customer is extremely effective at converting and has immense value. Conversely, when numerous touchpoints are necessary to convert, then individual interactions have less value.

How to Set Up Multi-Channel Attribution

Basic multi-channel reporting is built seamlessly into Google Analytics. However, if you’re looking for more advanced reporting, you may need to do some additional setup.

Follow these steps to ensure that all your data is included and organized appropriately in the Google Analytics multi-channel funnel reports.

Link Your Pay-per-Click Campaigns

By default, pay-per-click campaigns don’t show up in Google Analytics. For pay-per-click campaigns to be reflected in Analytics, you need to link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account. Once the two accounts are connected, Google Ads campaigns will be counted under the Paid Search channel grouping.

The process is rather simple.

  1. Log into Analytics and open the Admin panel, then navigate to the property you want to link the AdWords account to.
  2. In that property’s column, click Google Ads Linking, then click New Link Group.
  3. From there, select the Google Ads account you want to link and follow the prompts to complete the linking process.

Create Custom Channel Groupings

Google Analytics has default channel groupings, referred to as “MCF Channel Grouping.”

The default channels are:

  • Display
  • Paid Search
  • Other
  • Organic Search
  • Social Network
  • Referral
  • Email
  • Direct

For many business owners, these default channel groupings are sufficient. However, custom channel groupings might be necessary for certain situations.

A prime use case for custom channel groupings is separating branded from non-branded keywords.

This addresses an increasingly common way that people use search engines, which is to use a business name as the search query. For this reason, separating branded from non-branded keywords minimizes the amount of direct traffic that could be mistakenly categorized as Organic Search.

The option to create custom channel groupings is available in most Multi-Channel Funnels reporting menus. When available, the option appears as a dropdown box.

Select the Create a Custom Channel Grouping option. This will bring up a window where you can customize the names of the channel groupings as well as how they’re defined. When finished, click Save. Then your custom groupings will show in your conversion reports.

Manage Your Data Points

It’s important to track the right data in Analytics. When you’re tracking the right data points, you can make extremely useful and insightful inferences from multi-channel funnel reporting. However, when you’re tracking the wrong data points, the picture you’re getting from the conversion reports won’t be accurate. If you’re basing your decisions on inaccurate data, it can create a host of other problems.

For example, while it’s useful to track visits to your store’s website as points on a conversion path, you shouldn’t qualify a visit to your store’s website as an actual conversion.

In other words, users who visit your store online shouldn’t be considered “converted” under most circumstances. Similarly, visits to a specific product page probably shouldn’t count as conversions either.

The data points you track should depend on the goals you set for your business, whether it’s converting prospects into leads, converting leads into customers, or some other goal.

Segment Your Data

In Google Analytics, segmentation is how you isolate and analyze specific data points related to your conversion. There are a number of situations where you might need to create a conversion segment. For example, you could filter instances where the first interaction in a conversion path was with a paid advertising campaign. With conversion segmenting, you can hone in on the most pertinent or relevant data that wouldn’t otherwise be visible in the default reporting options.

Segmenting your conversion data can be done with the Conversion Segment builder in Google Analytics that is accessible from any of the Multi-Channel Funnels reporting menus.

At the top of the page, click on Conversion Segments, then click Create New Conversion Segment. After naming the new conversion segment, use the conversion segment builder to customize which conversion paths you want to be included in your segment. This is achieved by defining the conditions of your desired conversion path.

For example, if you wanted to create a segment that shows instances when a specific website served as the first interaction in a conversion path, then the conditions would look like this: [Include] [First Interaction] from [Source] [Containing] WebsiteURL.com.

Once you’ve completed these basic setup steps, you’ll be able to track your multi-channel attribution using the reporting options in Google Analytics.

Make Managed WooCommerce Hosting the Foundation of Your Conversion Funnel

A multi-channel marketing strategy can only be as strong as the ecommerce store where your leads will shop. If your store relies on a low-quality hosting provider, then all your efforts to implement multi-channel attribution will be for naught.

Fortunately, there’s Hostdedi, your premier hosting provider for ecommerce. With managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi, you’ll have everything you need to run (and grow) a successful ecommerce site.

In fact, we have created more than 20 different performance tests to ensure that your site can handle any amount of traffic coming from all your sales channels. Best of all, managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi is available in tiered plans, so there’s hosting for virtually any budget.

To learn more about our managed WooCommerce hosting, check out our plans today.

Source link

Ecommerce Photography: Hiring a Product Photographer

Make sure your product photos are exceptional.

Good product photography isn’t cheap, and cheap product photography isn’t good. DIY product photography can be a false bargain because less-than-stellar photos of your products can drive customers away (and end up costing you sales).

Great photos, on the other hand, generate revenue because 93 percent of customers consider visual appearance to be an essential part of purchasing decisions. One study found that images have a strong influence on price sensitivity.

When you need to hire a professional to take care of your ecommerce product photography, it’s important to know what questions to ask. Once you have the answers, you can better evaluate your candidates and find the right person to get the job done. There’s a major difference between amateur and professional product photography.

Another thing to keep in mind is what kinds of photos will be best for your brand and product pages. We’ll touch on that later.

Let’s look at some critical questions to ask a freelance photographer before you hire them.

1. What Kind of Equipment Do You Use?

There’s almost no limit to the number of gadgets and tools a photographer can employ to get the perfect shot, but by knowing what sort of pictures you need, you’ll have a better sense of what equipment those shots will require. This is a key screening question because it will help you evaluate a photographer’s skill level and expertise.

Here are some contextual examples of how this question is relevant for your search:

  • Do your product photos need a flawless white background (known as a “Packshot” in the world of ecommerce)? This background will call for a specific type of lighting.
  • Do you want to showcase the fine details of a product? You’ll want to make sure the photographer has a macro lens and knows how to use it.

Remember: Equipment includes software, too. As ExpertPhotography notes in their post on lighting and equipment, the right tools can be as simple as a mirror, a good lens, and an interesting background — but you need to hire a photographer who knows how to use them.

Find out what photo editing programs your photographer uses and what their policy is concerning editing and production. Depending on the look you want, processing can take much longer than the actual shoot.

Software can also cover up sloppy technique. You don’t want to be invoiced for the time a photographer spends correcting their own mistakes. Ask about their production process and how they price that part of their work.

2. How Many Photos Can We Expect to Receive?

You’ll want to have several images per product on your site. A single image often doesn’t show enough of the product to convince a buyer. Find out how many images are included in your photographer’s rate and ask how they are organized.

You’ll also want to know the average turnaround time for images from the shoot to final edited versions. This will be important if you’re working on a launch schedule and need to meet deadlines. Ask about availability and turnaround times from the get-go, and have your photographer commit to a deadline in writing.

3. Are You Insured?

Ask to see a copy of your photographer’s insurance policy. Are they covered if products get damaged or somebody gets hurt during the shoot? The time to answer these questions is before something happens.

It’s also a good idea to ask about the photographer’s deposit policy. You can expect to lose your deposit if you have to cancel, but what if the photographer has to cancel? Do you get your deposit back? Talking about money can feel intimidating at times, but you’ll want to get these details out of the way before making a commitment.

4. What Is Your Experience/Background?

Experience with product photography is critical because you need someone who knows not just how to shoot products, but how to handle them as well.

A skilled photographer knows how to work with items that attract dust, have reflective surfaces, or show fingerprints, for example. This experience can mean the difference between showcasing smudges and literally getting the white glove treatment.

Don’t underestimate the value of experience in terms of years in the photography business. A photographer who has more experience is usually better at adapting to unforeseen issues that may come up (because they’ve been there before.) Ask about the number of shoots they’ve done. Don’t be afraid to ask for references while you’re at it.

5. Can I See a Portfolio?

When in doubt, look to a photographer’s past work. If their entire portfolio is landscapes or family portraits, this might not be the person for the job. Try to find someone whose portfolio reflects experience doing work that’s as close as possible to your project.

If you love someone’s portfolio, don’t be afraid to go with the less experienced but more impressive photographer. You can get good value for your money this way.

Call those references, too. Find out what went into the finished shots you see in a portfolio. Did the photographer get it right the first time, or have to go back and forth with the client?

6. What’s Your Style?

Photography is as stylistically diverse as music. If you were hiring a band, one of your first questions would be what style of music they play, right?

Different photographers will deliver different styles, and different styles come with different setup requirements. Ask for a general description of the photographer’s style and review his/her portfolio through this lens. Make sure their primary style strengths match what you are looking for.

7. Do You Shoot in Natural Light or Studio Light?

Lighting is a marketing decision. Which sort of lighting suits your brand? Both natural and studio light present logistical challenges to consider ahead of time.

  • Natural light is best for showcasing products being worn or used, or in a realistic environment.
  • Artificial light is best for capturing details and emphasizing the product on its own.

Natural lighting depends entirely on the location, the time of day, and that most unpredictable factor, weather.

For studio lighting, are you bringing your products and models and whatever else you need into the photographer’s studio, or are they coming to you? Do you have space for them to set up?

Making Nice in the Midwest explains how different types of lighting produce different photos when working on product photos.

You’re going to want to figure out as much of the lighting as possible ahead of time and discuss the logistics in detail. The last thing you want is to deal with scheduling conflicts for a shoot during “the golden hour” or a rain delay or a location that doesn’t have the right light.

8. What Does Your Fee Include?

You need to know what you’re actually paying in extra fees. Ask for a breakdown of the total cost.

Some photographers charge a studio fee and an extra fee for retouching. Some photographers will charge for travel, or for rental equipment. Find out not only the cost of your project but how much it could cost with all the extras.

9. What Are the Rights to the Photos?

Get this in writing, as the last thing you want is to have a simple product photo shoot turn into an intellectual property dispute. Unless otherwise agreed in writing, the images belong to the photographer by default. An experienced photographer will provide a contract — this will protect both of you.

Many photographers charge a digital rights fee. This is not the same thing as copyright, and it needs to be spelled out in your contract.

10. Do We Supply a Shot List? Is There a Creative Director Managing the Shoot?

Communication is key. Make sure you understand each other completely before you sign anything or put anyone on the clock. Everyone should know who’s in charge of creative direction for the shoot.

Be clear about what kind of guidance and input your photographer expects from you (and vice versa) at every stage of the project.

Hire a Product Photographer with Confidence

The more you know about what goes into professional product photography, the easier it will be to get yourself on the same page as a photographer who can deliver it. These questions should give you more than enough info to make an educated choice when hiring a photographer to create amazing product photos, which will help to create product pages that sell more products.

Need an Ecommerce Hosting Solution?

Managed WooCommerce Hosting from Hostdedi comes standard with image compression which will keep your images looking excellent while retaining site speed, along with premium plugins from IconicWP which will enable more functionality for your product pages to shine.

Source link

How to Use Email Marketing Segmentation to Drive Sales

An email list can be a powerful sales tool, but what’s more powerful?

A segmented email list, that’s what.

Did you know that open rates for segmented emails are 14.31 percent higher than for non-segmented campaigns?

Making sure your email is reaching the right audience, at the right time, and with the right content can jump-start your sales engine.

In this post, we will cover how to use email segmentation as a tactic to deliver relevant email marketing to your subscribers based on their demographics, interests, location, and purchase history.

What is Email Segmentation?

Email segmentation is dividing up email subscribers into smaller lists (aka segments) based on set criteria.

Usually, this segmentation is used as a personalization tactic in order to deliver more relevant email marketing to subscribers.

Segments exist so that marketers can craft different offers and content for specific people based on their interests and behavior instead of just sending one email to everyone. It’s much more effective.

The 4 Benefits of Email Segmentation

There are four benefits of using market segmentation:

1. Improved Sender Reputation

Internet service providers (ISPs) calculate how recipients interact with your emails when they get them. If most aren’t engaging, then the ISP will mark that email as unimportant or may even begin to send it straight to the spam folder. Using email marketing segmentation can help deter this.

2. A Personalized Approach

With email marketing, it’s not a one size fits all, cookie-cutter approach. You need to consider how customers will respond to your messages. Not all users will respond the same.

Consider how your message will be received by different customers and how they will engage with it.

Segmenting your email list lets you speak to your customers depending on different factors (more on that later) and what they actually want. Not only do users get what they want, but you increase your chances of converting them to customers.

3. The Right Message at the Right Time

Your email list is made up of contacts that are at different stages in the sales cycle.

They need different information depending on which stage it is. Sending the wrong information at the wrong time to the wrong person is a waste of everyone’s time.

Avoid this by segmenting your list so that you never miss out on any potential sales.

4. Better Results

Here are some of the outcomes you may get using email marketing segmentation:

  • Better open rates
  • Higher click-through rates
  • Increased revenue
  • Improved deliverability
  • Lower unsubscribe rates
  • Additional clicks
  • More engaged users

Sounds good right? Of course it does. Let’s learn about the different types of email segmentation you can apply.

Types of Market Segmentation

There are lots of different ways you can segment your email list. Let’s run through some email segmentation strategies you can start using right now.

By Demographic Data

Segmenting email lists by demographics is one of the most obvious. Things like age, gender, and income can give you a good idea about a person and their interests.

One of the simplest ways to grab this information is during the sign-up. Ask some additional questions.

An email marketing platform like Mailchimp will let you customize email sign-up questions. Just don’t ask too many questions as this can put people off from signing up.

Something as simple as this form will do the trick.

Decide what is most important for your business and include those questions in your signup process.

You can also collect more data later. Encourage subscribers to complete their profiles by offering them an incentive like a coupon or a free gift. Or simply make periodic surveying a part of your general process, such as post-purchase or every year.

By Looking at Email Engagement

Looking at email engagement is a simple but effective thing to do when it comes to segmenting your list. Open rate and click-through rate are worth your close attention.

For example, you can segment your list into active versus inactive users.

By looking at users who haven’t opened an email in months compared to users who open every email, you’ll be able to create special campaigns to try to help inactive users re-engage.

Alternatively, you’ll be able to send exclusive emails to your active users as a reward.

You may also want to consider emailing your less active subscribers less frequently. It may make them less likely to unsubscribe from your list which can happen if someone with a smaller interest in your business sees too many emails from you.

After all, open rates and unsubscribe rates are critical to the overall send-ability of your list. If you have too many unsubscribes or a dismal open rate, email marketing software providers may freeze your entire account.

By Geographic Area

There are loads of different ways to use geographic data in marketing segmentation, especially for businesses with physical stores.

Again, gathering up this data doesn’t have to be complicated. Just asking for a zip/postcode on sign up will help:

Some email software providers can even tell you where subscribers are based on their IP address when they open one of your emails. So if you don’t manually collect postal code information, you may still be able to see where your subscribers are located.

Once you know where your customers are based, there are a few things you can do with that data.

Send Time-Based Emails

Send emails at the best times for customers spread across different time zones. Some providers even allow you to do this with the click of a button.

Target Based on Weather

When featuring sales and specials, highlight cold-weather clothing to folks in colder climates, and lighter fabrics to those in warmer places.

Capitalize on Local Interests

Feature the colors of local sports teams to different regions regardless of what you sell. You could target orange and black apparel to people in Cincinnati, as those are the colors of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. Or feature red items to people in Manchester, England which is the main color of Manchester United FC. Even if the item isn’t sports-related, people in these cities tend to have an affinity for these colors.

Target Geographic Tastes

Different areas may have affinities for different flavors/aromas if you are selling food products. You might promote a whiskey-flavored chocolate to people in the Southern U.S., a chili-flavored chocolate to people in the Southwest U.S. and a beer-infused chocolate to folks in the Midwest.

Past Purchase History

Understanding your user’s past purchases is a good way to improve your segmentation.

An easy method here is sending out email recommendations for similar items (or accessories) that would go well with their previous purchase.

Amazon is the master of this technique.

If a customer bought something from a particular category, there’s a good chance they will like similar products. If a customer is looking for women’s camping backpacks, they’ll likely be interested in women’s hiking shoes and apparel as well. It’s equally likely they may also require replacements or upgrades which you can also send in targeted email blasts.

Amount Spent

Do you sell a range of high and low-value items? The amount spent by each customer can be a useful segmentation strategy.

Using this data, you can find out which customers buy more high-ticket items and which are more interested in the affordable ones.

From there, you can send out emails featuring products that are in each person’s price range, and increase your chances of them converting.

Analytics allow you to see which customers only buy when they have a coupon, and which ones buy without coupons. That way, you don’t send coupons to folks who buy without them, and those who love coupons will get them.

Time Since Last Purchase

Segmenting users by time since last purchase can be a very valuable strategy.

It doesn’t make sense to send the same email to a customer who has recently made a purchase as the one who hasn’t done so for a while. Plus, it will be annoying to the customer who’s only recently purchased from you.

Instead, split them up into two groups:

  • Frequent customers – these will generally like your brand and are engaged. Try upselling them products in line with their purchases or offer them promotional deals.
  • One-off customers – these customers bought from you once or a few times, and haven’t purchased in a while. Try offering discounts based on past purchases or send them reminders to make a purchase.

Interests

This might be a little trickier to get working, but it’s an investment that can do wonders for your sales.

By creating user profiles, you can get detailed information about users/subscribers personal interests and send them emails accordingly

If you’ve got a massive store that sells a range of products, you can let users select which products they want to hear about in emails.

By simply asking your subscribers to pick their preferences, you can make sure your targeting is spot on with every email you send out.

Email Segmentation: A Winning Tactic

Email segmentation and targeting go hand in hand. Understanding how your market will respond can be a real boost to sales.

And since everyone can use more sales, email marketing segmentation is a tactic for businesses of all sizes to use. Your customers get what they want, and you get more sales. Everybody wins.

Managed Hosting Can Help

Armed with the tools available from Hostdedi’ managed WooCommerce hosting along with some creative thinking and data, you can start targeting your audience with these segmentation strategies today.

Not a Hostdedi customer yet?

Check out our managed WooCommerce hosting plans to get started today.

Source link

7 Tools To Optimize Images And Speed Up A WordPress Site

Whether you’ve got an ecommerce site, a brochure site, or a thriving blog, if you use images on your website, you’re going to need to also think about image optimization.

7 Image Optimization Tools For Your WordPress Site

Here are seven tools that get the job done:

1. ImageOptim

By default, the free ImageOptim exactly preserves image quality, but if you adjust the settings, it will use more aggressive optimizations to get the biggest results. ImageOptim reduces image file sizes so they take up less disk space and down­load faster by applying advanced compression that preserves quality, and removes invisible junk like private meta­data from digital cameras, embedded thumbnails, comments, and unnecessary color profiles.

2. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer has a suite of WordPress plugins to help speed up your site through faster loading images. The free plugin uses available optimization tools directly on your web server or using the EWWW I.O. API to compress and resize JPG, PNG, and GIF images and PDF files.

3. TinyPNG

Make your website faster by optimizing your JPEG and PNG images automatically with using the Compress JPEG & PNG Images WordPress plugin. This plugin comes standard with Hostdedi Managed WordPress Hosting, making it even simpler keep your images optimized.

4. Imgix

Imgix transforms, optimizes, and intelligently caches your entire image library using simple and robust URL parameters. With imgix, you first share where your images already live, then you resize, crop, and enhance your images with simple URL parameters while intelligent, automated compression that eliminates unnecessary bytes. Finally, customers see images fast thanks to caching and global CDN. Plus, with a pay as you go plan, you only pay for the images and bandwidth you actually use.

5. Compressor.io

Compressor.io is a free online tool that allows you to reduce the size of your images while maintaining quality so there is almost no difference before and after compression.

6. Optimus.io

Optimus targets a lossless compression of PNG images and a slightly lossy compression of JPEG images of media uploaded to WordPress — while focusing on protecting your data. The Optimus WordPress plugin slims down the original image and all preview images of an uploaded image file and only compresses images that are uploaded to the WordPress media folder after the plugin has been installed.

7. Jetpack Site Accelerator

Jetpack’s Site Accelerator (formerly Photon) helps your pages load faster by allowing Jetpack to optimize your images and serve your images and static files (like CSS and JavaScript) from the Jetpack global network of servers. Site Accelerator uses the WordPress.com CDN, meaning your images are hosted on their servers, alleviating the load on your server and providing faster image loading for your readers.

Keep Optimizing Your WordPress Site

Image optimization isn’t the only way to optimize your WordPress site for speed. You can also try using a lightweight and trustworthy theme, WP Disable to decrease bloat, and GTMetrix reports for speed analysis.

Optimization never ends, and you need to always be on the lookout for the latest tools to keep your site faster than the competition.

Need a Managed WordPress Solution?

The Compress JPEG & PNG Images WordPress plugin has been vetted by our team and comes automatically packaged with your site as part of Hostdedi Managed WordPress Hosting.

Check out our plans to get started today.

Source link

How to Add a Field to a Bookable Product and Re-Calculate Product Price

Looking for a great way to add custom bookable products to your store?

When it comes to creating bookable products, the WooCommerce Bookings plugin has a good amount of options for customizing the way a service or physical goods can be scheduled and booked.

Managing multiple resources is a breeze with ‘Resources’, and ‘Persons’ makes it easy to designate a certain number of bookable items.

When it comes to adding more complexity to the bookings product page, things can get tricky.

Let’s Build a Product Page

Let’s say you’re building a website for a luxury spa.

Your client has mentioned that they’re selling a lot of Hot Stone Therapy add-ons with their Deep Tissue Massage in store, but they’d really love to allow clients to purchase the add-on directly from their website when booking.

As you begin to create a product for a Deep Tissue Massage, out of the box, the page will have all of the functionality needed to book the service, but no add-ons.

Add Additional Value to the Product Page

What you really want to build is a bookable product page that both earns your client an additional $30 per massage, and offers a simple experience for the client booking the service.

Having the option to book the add-on is important, but so is the real-time adjustment of the total booking price so the client knows exactly what they’re getting and how much they’ll pay.

Here’s an example of the same product page, this time with the Hot Stone Therapy add-on included (and real-time price adjustment).

To achieve this simple and value-adding result, you could definitely add a field to your product page using WooCommerce hooks. If you’re looking for a quicker way to add custom fields to a bookable product and don’t want to spend time creating custom code, there’s a faster way.

After installing the WooCommerce Extra Product Options Pro plugin, head over to the products menu in the WordPress admin, and select Extra Product Option.

Next, add a new field. I chose to add a Radio field, but there are plenty of field types to choose from. Make sure to add a wrapper class to your field as we’ll be using it to adjust the display of the options on the product page.

Note: There’s no additional work needed to enable the product page to auto-update pricing.

Once you’ve designated the price in the options area of the field in the backend, it will automatically update when selected by the user based on your rules.

One of the things that makes this plugin particularly powerful is that you can set display logic in the Display Rules tab.

In this case, additional product options will only be displayed when viewing a product within the Massage category.

Once you’ve set the options within the product field exactly how you want them, save the field by clicking Update Field.

After creating a Radio field, there’s a little bit of CSS cleanup we’ll need to do. The options will likely display in one wrapped line underneath the booking calendar, which isn’t the easiest to understand if you’re booking the service.

Remember that wrapper class? We’re going to use the wrapper class to adjust the display of the option fields so that they’re showing on separate lines.

Use the CSS editor to add the following custom style:

.yourwrapperclass label {display:block;}

With that small CSS change, your product page should look similar to this:

And there you have it.

Grow Your Online Store With Managed WooCommerce Hosting

Now you know how to add a custom field with auto-updating price to a WooCommerce booking product page.

In addition to the strategies we’ve listed here, a great hosting plan can be instrumental to growing your business. Fortunately, Hostdedi has you covered.

Our managed WooCommerce hosting plan is ideal for growing businesses. Specially designed to convert more sales, WordPress managed hosting for ecommerce is packed with cutting-edge technologies to reduce query load times and cart abandonment rates.

To learn more about fully managed WooCommerce hosting, check out our plans to get started today.

Source link