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Unlimited Data is a Rip-Off
I recently helped some friends who were having financial challenges. It wasn’t that they didn’t have a good income. It was really just a matter of they did not know where all the money was going. Quicken to the rescue. I helped them set up their checking accounts and we started with the fun task of entering all those check register entries. Good times!
When we got to their cellular bill, I saw an immediate red flag. Their monthly cellular bill was over $180 per month. They told me they only had the two phones, but were told that by their provider that the Unlimited Data Plan was the “Best Value”. Uh-huh…….
I found that interesting as in our household, our cellular bill is about $95 per month. Our data plan? 200 meg per month and we have never gone over over limit. Now my wife and I are pretty hi-tech people. We have smart phones, multiple social media accounts and email accounts as well. What’s the secret to our low cellular bill? Easy. We are always in a free WiFi hotspot. So are you…
Let me explain. In your home, you have a wireless network. At work, you are probably sitting in a WiFi hotspot. At your favorite restaurant, coffee house, doctor’s office, or your best friend’s house, you are sitting in somebody’s wireless network.
So do you really need to have your 4G enabled? Probably not…. Unless you need to check your Facebook or Twitter feed while driving down the interstate.
We do occasionally need to access the 4G as if I am trying to find that new clients home or looking at a menu of a new eatery, but otherwise, the 4G is OFF. And by having the 4G off and a very low data plan, our household is saving about $800 a year in unnecessary data charges. So can yours…
Pull out lasts month bill and look at your data plan. Cut it back. Save some $$$. And stop listening to the kid working at the cell store.
Capture That e-Mail Address
Are you capturing your website’s visitors information?
Your business has a website and it looks great. But when people visit your website, are you capturing their information? Are you getting their email address? Phone number? Anything? Bueller? If you are answering “No” to any off these questions, then you are leaving money on the table. Now, no one likes those annoying popups bouncing into your screen, but as a business owner, they do have an important purpose; to add more names to your mailing list. This can be accomplished quite easily these days and it can be done in such a way that it is not an annoyance to your visitors. There are many pop-up plugins available to add to your WordPress website.
The Problem With WordPress Popup Plugins
There are so many WordPress popup plugins available both free and paid. The main problem with most popup plugins is that they can become very annoying for users. This has a negative impact on user experience. Another common problem with popup plugins is that they can slow down your website. Some take too much time to load while others are very resource intensive on your servers resulting in a slow page load time which negatively affects your SEO. The main purpose of using a popup plugin is to generate leads and boost your email list subscribers. Many popup plugins fail to do that properly because they don’t have the right balance of features and functionality.
The Good News on WordPress Popup Plugins
The good news is that the majority of these plugins are so robust and so programmable that you can configure them to not be an annoyance. A couple or cool tricks that we use are:
- Set up the pop-up so that returning customers do not see the popup again. The popup can be configured so that when a customer comes to your site the first time, that will be the only time that the popup show. We utilize this trick on Mesa Arizona’s own Silver Star Theater.
- Setup the popup so that it displays only when the website visitor scrolls down to the bottom 1/4 of the homepage. The thought process behind this: If a visitor comes to your site and has seen enough interesting content to stay on the page and scroll to the bottom, chance are the popup placed there will not be an annoyance but actually an enticement to see what else you can bring to the table. We utilize this trick on Tucson Arizona’s own SpiritsChild Metaphysical Store.
- The free offer popup. Give your visitors a “freebie”. An e-Book, an informational .pdf, anything to get them to click on that button and fill out the form. We utilize this trick on our own website Two Guys and a Mouse.
Conclusion
Many of your site’s visitors may never land on your pages again. You have one chance to convert them into a lead or capture them as part of your regular audience. Popups allow you to stick a CTA [Call-To-Action] front and center, demanding an action. If readers liked your content, they will be much more likely to give you their email when asked then to search your site for a sidebar subscription box.
If your website is not capturing any info, give us a call, we can help.
If you have a website, Please Do This One Test
Whether you have a landing page, a business website or an eCommerce portal, you have to do this one test.
Adobe recently published an article explaining that mobile visits will soon replace desktop visits. Not really big news if you’re paying attention. Just walk down any busy street or hang out in the mall and you’ll see a common theme. Everyone is walking around surfing the web on their phone.
There have been some extremely important shift in the last few years in the retail space. The most obvious one is, of course, the rise of people doing their shopping online instead of going to a physical store, though that is not as pronounced as you might think, accounting for 8.5 percent of all retail in the first quarter of this year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The other shift is the number of people shopping on mobile device, rather than on a desktop.
These trends are showing no signs of slowing down; in fact, they’re actually ramping up, according to the Retail Industry Report put out by Adobe, which found that not only is mobile about to become more popular than desktop for the first time ever, but that social is quickly establishing itself as an extremely important channel for marketers as well.
And as Adobe states, this is not a trend. This is not a prediction. This is happening now.
“Last year, if you followed the holiday forecast report, we had several specific days, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, where we experienced mobile traffic eclipsing desktop traffic for those particular events. We’re seeing a trend where, within the next couple of months, that will not only be a singular, one day event occurrence, but it will be just the nature of the trend,” said Klein.
Mobile search is also replacing desktop search as well. It’s an older report, but the details bear out this continuing trend.
According to official Google statements, more than 50 percent of search queries globally now come from mobile devices. But we don’t know whether the number is 51 percent or 60 percent, or if it varies significantly by country.
A recent report from Hitwise (registration required) argues that in the US mobile search is roughly 58 percent of overall search query volume. That’s based on an average of 11 key categories and associated queries analyzed by Hitwise in its “Mobile Search: Topics and Themes” report. The company “examined hundreds of millions of online search queries” across PCs, smartphones and tablets between April 10 and May 7, 2016.
So now is the time to easily find out in three easy steps to determine how your website performs in this new economy.
- Step away from your desktop/laptop computer.
- Pick up your smart phone.
- Go to your website.
Your website had better be easy to view/read. This should be done without doing the “pinch and spread” motion on your phone. The menus/buttons should be easy to navigate, again without the “pinch and spread”. You could continue to browse your site, but there’s really no need. You already know how your website looks on your phone. It either performs well or…… it doesn’t. If your site looks bad on your phone, think of your customer’s browsing experience. If your site performs poorly on your customer’s phone, they will definitely X out of your site and take their hard-earned money elsewhere.
After doing the 3-step test, and discovering that your website is not performing well on a mobile device. Give us a call. We’ll here to help.
Your Website is Just Like Your Exercise Equipment
Treat your website like your home gym.
Many years ago, I work up one morning and found myself horribly out of shape. Being a smart guy, I did what any smart guy would do, I went out and bought a “home gym”. I was like a kid on Christmas morning as I assembled my new gym. I watched the training videos. I did a work out, downed a protein shake and hit the showers feeling great. I went to bed that night confident in the knowledge that I had made a wise choice and my life was going to get better. Eeezy-Peezy. I worked out regularly for the next two weeks and then slowly, life got in the way returned to my old “normal” routine. I didn’t get in shape and the home gym just sat there.
Sound familiar? It should.
Your website is exactly the same as that home gym that I bought. You paid big money to have some geek-team create and build your site. Your site went “live” and you even had a big launch party at your business. and then your life/business returned to to it’s old normal routine. And just like that home gym, your website sits there, collecting dust.
Well I’m in great shape now. Actually the best shape of my life. Because I bought some exercise equipment? Certainly not. I’m in shape because I regularly use my gym. I have a plan to work out. There is a goal in place. The gym has grown and all of the equipment gets used.
Dust off that Website!
It is time to dust off your website. Create the game plan for your website. Write out the goals for your website in 2018 and beyond. Here are a few ideas:
- Turn your website into a store. Do you have a product? Sell it on your site. Where will you get customers? Planet Earth.
- Create a newsletter about something. It’s your business/life. You pick the topic. Build an email list of subscribers. Ask any marketer, the money is in the list.
- Offer a free download. A .pdf, an ebook, a video. It’s your business/life. You pick the topic. Build an email list of subscribers. Ask any marketer, the money is in the list.
- Add a blog for your website. Write about that which interests you. There are others out there that think similar to you. Change the world.
I recently attended a terrific motivational weekend. Lots of successful men and women speaking on success, motivation and attitude. I took copious notes all weekend. I learned a lot. But one of the speakers delivered one of the very best motivational thoughts I have every heard. “If you do something, something will happen”. Pretty deep, huh? But he is correct. I bought the home gym and it sat there, being ignored regularly and nothing happened to the man in the mirror. Until I got with the program, my program, and things changed.
You bought the website. If you are ignoring your site and it is just sitting there, then you too, will see no improvement in your business. So get with the program, your program, and change your business. If you need some, give me a call.
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