“The beauty of the internet is that you can quite literally launch a business and make money online with very little to no capital,” R. L. Adams of Entrepreneur explained. “If you understand the mechanics of online marketing, or if you’re great at social media, you’ll clearly find it easier. But you don’t need to be a pro to start your business online.”

There are, however, a few critical tips you simply can’t skip or ignore if you want an online business to grow and be as successful as you envisioned. No matter what kind of online business you want to start, the following four tips should be part of the process. Let’s dive in!

1. Clearly Define the Problem or Need

This is maybe one of the most important tips to put into action when starting an online business. By clearly defining the problem or need you aim to solve or fill, you are developing the foundation of your business. This is a must-do, because everything you do, from marketing your business to setting up buyer personas will be based on this one tip for starting an online business.

How do you clearly define the problem or need? First, look within, since you may have come up with this business idea based on a problem or need you had. Next, turn to the internet to communicate with people in forums and social media groups, do keyword research to see monthly search volume, and look at competitors.

2. Develop Actionable and Informative Content that Takes People on a Journey

This is another very important tip for starting an online business. Content is still very much king, and if you know how to write compelling copy that takes your target audience on a customer journey, you will find yourself with a robust customer base in no time at all.

How do you do this exactly? One of the biggest mistakes new business owners fail to do is tell their stories. People want a connection with the brands and businesses they buy from now, so let your audience by telling them the story of how you got your business idea. Then you use that story to lead the audience on a cleverly crafted customer journey.

The basic map of a customer journey includes peaking interest (your story), define the problem or need, offer your solution, showcase your authority to solve the problem or fill the need, highlight testimonials, give the benefits, show the offer, have a guarantee, and ask urgently for the purchase.

3. Make Your Online Business Website Stellar

When starting an online business, you need to ensure your online presence is powerful, because it is basically your store front. Would you shop at a store that looks hideous inside and out? Probably not, and the same goes for your website, since it is your store front. Aesthetics are not the only issue either. You also need to provide a strong user experience in order to keep your customers engaged with your site, products, and/or services.

To do this, you need a website planning guide for optimal growth and success. Building a new website is pretty easy these days, but there are still a ton of obstacles to overcome if you want to launch a stellar site. Factors like font, colors, white space, easy navigation, visual content (images and videos), opt-in call to action (CTA), simple checkout, and much more.

You can take your online marketing efforts to the next level with an integrated direct mail marketing campaign. Thanks to modern tools, you can track physical mailers—which have incredible ROIs—and gain invaluable data. Design custom envelopes using online tools from websites like https://www.envelopesuperstore.com/ and don’t forget to add QR codes to your mail to make it easy for them to take action. 

4. Optimize Organic and Paid Search for Maximum Results

Having a website up and running is only half the battle. The other half of the battle involves SEO in order to increase your online business’ visibility, and to outrank your competitors on Google. This means employing a few simple optimization tactics.

First focus on organic search optimization. This includes in-depth keyword research, minimizing page load time, building backlinks, competitor research, and other key SEO elements. Then you will focus on PPC ads on Google. You can use the in-depth keyword research you did to build your ad groups and the competitor research to write ad copy that will convert users. By doing both organic and PPC optimization, you will begin driving quality traffic that turns into sales.

Wrapping Up . . .

The above online business starting tips are only the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more little nuances to growing your online business into a thriving success. However, the above are a few of the most important and tips you simply can’t skip. If you do, your journey as a business owner can be more difficult. What is your top business tip? We want to hear from you. 

The post 4 Online Business Starting Tips You Simply Can’t Skip appeared first on Inspiredology.

“People are literally, physically interacting with those symbols in a way that they never did,” Michael Bierut, partner of design firm Pentagram told Fortune. “Their customers are having a really, really intimate sort of relationship not just with those brands, but with the symbols that represent the brands.”

If you’re looking to create a logo that promotes an intimate relationship with your brand, you’re in luck. The following seven logos are inspiring consumers in a big way in the travel and leisure industry. Let’s dive in!

1. TripAdvisor

The TripAdvisor logo is one of the most trending logos in the travel and leisure industry right now. The little owl with binocular styled eyes speaks to the mission of the company, providing quality insight into everything travel and leisure.

Many who know the TripAdvisor logo by heart may not know that the red and green eyes of the owl actually symbolize the “yes” or “no” choice consumers make when choosing a hotel, accommodation, cruise, activity, and more.

2. Hipmunk

Who doesn’t like cute animal logos? Hipmunk, a travel and leisure booking site, takes the furry animal logo and makes it trendy. The chipmunk cartoon equipped with travel accessories makes booking flights, cars, hotels, and vacation packages fun and entertaining.

The Hipmunk logo is truly “hip,” and has the perfect aesthetic look to connect with travelers of all ages. The logo also takes on a mascot type feel, as the chipmunk can be seen all over the website doing different things, and wearing different outfits.

3. Dan Flying Solo

Dan Flying Solo is certainly not your traditional travel and leisure website, nor logo. The logo is a very unique combination of fonts and font size with an airplane launching abroad, just like Dan.

The logo text definitely speaks to his global brand and mission; “Getting Lost In Places, Meeting New Faces,” something many travel and leisure consumers can interact with in a meaningful way.

4. Boat Planet

Sometimes simplicity is more powerful than a combination of fonts, sizes, and catchy colorful designs. Boatplanet.com, an online platform boaters can turn to for help, like repairs, has a logo that speaks to the core of what they do.

The logo also has the branding skillfully positioned with “boatplanet” just to the right of the aesthetically pleasing boat logo design. When you land on the website, there’s no question you came to the right place.

5. Travelmath

Travelmath, a website that calculates the best and most efficient way to get from point A to point B, has an animated logo with an arrow that slowly wraps around the globe before the brand name appears.

This is a fun and interactive way to connect with travel and leisure enthusiasts in a fun way. It also provides a great service for those always on the hunt for the most affordable way to travel.

6. Sleeping In Airports

Sleeping In Airports provides all you need to know about catching some wink eye in airports during travel, as well as what you can do with your time during long layovers. The site’s logo really defines their brand and mission with a clever sleeper covered by an airplane blanket.

The website extends the connection of their logo with fun animated cartoons of people sleeping in airports, on the go, sightseeing during layovers, and more. This is a good reminder to keep your logo branding connected to other visual content you have on the marketing whiteboard.

7. Australia.com

Many of the world’s government tourism sites are boring with much left to be desired in the logo design department. However, Australia.com took their travel and leisure logo to the next level.

The logo incorporates nearly every color you would expect to see while traveling through Australia. From the light beiges of the outback to the golden sunsets on the beach, the Australia.com logo really captures the viewer.

They also integrated the time-honored mascot of Australia, the kangaroo. The colors are what make up the kangaroo’s definition in the logo, packaging it all together nicely in one colorful, yet simple design.

Get Inspired . . .

The above seven logos that inspire travel and leisure are really only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many aesthetically pleasing designs, as well as animated logos starting to make waves. Give your consumers something to talk about with a powerful logo that grabs attention and engagement. What’s your favorite logo of all time?

The post Logo Design Inspiration For Travel and Leisure Branding appeared first on Inspiredology.

But it’s not impossible. New e-commerce businesses are being launched all the time, and the most successful ones manage to do well for their owners. Still, there are plenty of things a new e-commerce business needs to do right if it wants to thrive. Among most important ones is to create a successful e-commerce website.

Hosting and Platform

If your e-commerce was a band, the hosting provider would be the rhythm section. They are in charge of laying down the foundation that keeps together everything else that’s going on. If the rhythm section can’t keep time, there is no way a band can sound good. Similarly, if you choose an unreliable host with bad services, your e-commerce website will not perform well.

When choosing a service host provider, you should also use your choice of platform as a criterion. Let’s say you want to use WordPress to build your website. Next, you want to use Woocommerce to power your store. In that case, you should look for a provider that offers hosting made for Woocommerce as a hosting package. That’s the best way to make sure that you are getting the services your website will need.

Top-Notch Design

You should never underestimate the power of visual attraction when it comes to your e-commerce website. People will start forming an opinion about your website as soon as they land on it. Most of the information they will use to form their opinion is visual. Even if you use well-written copy for your landing page or homepage, the visuals will still be more important because people process them faster.

There are some shortcuts you can take to ensure your website is well-designed. One of them is using a theme that works on your platform. Alternatively, you can hire someone to design your website from scratch if you have money to burn. At least for the beginning though, a high-quality theme and a person with an eye for the visuals can work wonders.

Quality User Experience on All Devices

Mobile shoppers are the segment of consumers that are getting the most attention lately. There are some misconceptions about people’s habits when it comes to shopping on mobile devices, as desktop shoppers continually exhibit higher conversion rates. But mobile traffic is still very important if you want your potential customers to discover and browse your e-commerce website anytime, anywhere.

Your website should provide a good user experience regardless of the device it’s displayed on. Visitors need to be able to find what they need quickly. They need to be able to move around your website using their thumbs alone. They need to be able to see the most important elements on your website. These are only some of the things that count towards a quality user experience, and you need to fine-tune them all.

Easy Checkout Procedure

Few things can frustrate your customers more than a complicated checkout process which also lacks transparency. Every checkout procedure must include some hoops your customers need to jump through. However, it is your job to keep the number of the hoops to the minimum. It also helps if you provide all the relevant information before the customers arrive at the checkout.

One of the things you can do is to inform your customers early about the costs of shipping. Let them know exactly how much money they need to pay before they get to the checkout. You should also allow your customers to create a profile if they want to reduce the number of steps it takes to check out. You will have to take your security very seriously if you plan to store your customers’ sensitive information, though. But the investment should pay off if you start seeing fewer abandoned carts.

It will take time and effort to build a successful e-commerce website. Keeping your website successful is also a labor-intensive task. You will have to constantly look for new ways to improve your website. You will also have to test every new choice you make and ensure that your website appears in front of the customers you are trying to attract. But it all starts with making good choices when first developing your website.

The post 4 Elements of a Successful E-commerce Website appeared first on Inspiredology.

Let’s discuss them one by one and see how you may benefit out of each of these steps:

1. Create an appealing portfolio website

Your website is your personal ID card. It will also serve as the most powerful and effective example of how your work looks like, how skilled you are and what types of jobs are you good at. There are several topics we should discuss here and I am therefore going to start with the most basic two of them:

The domain name and the hosting provider

The first thing to look at is, of course, the domain name. Choose it wisely because it will be hard to change it later and start your SEO all over again. If you want to use the website strictly as an online portfolio and maybe for an adjacent personal blog, use your own name as the domain name. It will be easier for your clients to find you and you will be able to build a strong personal brand.

The next thing that your success may depend on, besides the content of the website, is your hosting provider. As you may already know, Google and other search engines value two things: the quality of the content and the speed of the website.

The speed is the issue you should solve once and for all by selecting the appropriate web hosting provider for your website. My first choice for a personal blog or a portfolio website would be SiteGround. They are reliable when it comes to speed and WordPress support and their uptime ratio is very high. You can read this review here and make up your mind based on actual data and reliable information.

Make sure you share valuable content with your readers

My first choice would be an industry-related blog. There, you can write everything you want as long as the topics are in line with your professional skills. However, if you only want to create a portfolio website with a limited number of pages, I suggest creating some green content that will answer some of your readers or customer’ questions. Let’s say you run a design consultancy business and you want to be as informative as you can about your business and what you can offer your potential client. You can create a page where you explain what consultancy is and how to get the best out of it. Here is a great example that answers the question the best. “what is consulting?”

Why is this a good example?

Well, your website is also important if you want to attract new customers and build a strong personal brand. You can reach out to large audiences through social media and advertising but you can also benefit from the organic traffic. The more valuable your content is, the more likely it is that the search engines will send people to read it. Also, one of the best ways to write about a specific topic in SEO terms is to answer questions people may have about it.

Create a top-notch contact page or contact area on your website

As a freelance designer, your main focus should be on finding new customers and landing new design jobs. So far, you’ve managed to create a compelling website that loads fast and shares valuable information with the audience. What you need to do next is to create an easy to access contact page and maybe share some testimonials as well.

If you take a quick look at your favorite websites, you’ll notice that most of them have contact pages with easy to complete forms that make it easier for someone to pose a question, ask for a quote or send you another type of message.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, however, you need to think outside the box. How can you do it? Well, let’s learn through the power of example. Take a look at Mission Restorations, a website that really nails the contact page idea, by putting it right on top of the main page.

2. Learn when to say “no”

Saying “no” to a client or a project is hard when you are struggling to make it on your own as a freelancer. However, it’s important to learn when to say it and how to say it.

While it’s important to be willing to learn new things, you should also consider what types of jobs you are good at and what your strongest designing skills are. Your reputation will not suffer if you say no to a client claiming you are already booked. However, you will have a lot to lose should you take a job you are not prepared for and fail to deliver on time or fail to deliver at all due to lack of skills.

3. Be true to yourself and show consistency

People are more likely to work with companies and professionals they know and feel they can connect with at a personal level. What you need to do at this point is sell out your own personal brand in the best way possible. This includes truthfulness and of course, consistency.

Make sure you are completely honest about who you are, what are your values, what are your strengths. Know that maybe some of your potential customers will not agree with everything but this will only help you select better who to work with and build a powerful, more solid, personal brand.

4. Know your numbers

Even though you are freelancing, you should treat this job as a business. This is the business that is tight up to your name and that will allow you to make a living. What do you need?

1.  A budget. Know how much you need on a monthly basis. Know the minimum sum you need to earn in order to meet ends with all your expenses and maybe, invest in the future as well.
2.  Your rates. In order to get to the aforementioned budget, you have to adjust your hourly or daily rates accordingly. Set a minimum rate. Do not go under that rate.
3.  Know how much you can work each day. Set your minimum and a maximum number of working hours and stick to the plan. If possible, work no less than the minimum amount and no longer than the maximum number of hours. You need money to keep your living standards but you will also need time to recharge your batteries. Based on this, accept jobs only if you know you will be able to deliver on time. Failure to meet deadlines may have a negative impact on your personal brand.

5. Sign a contract for every project

You don’t need endless legal agreements and tons of contract pages that cover every aspect of your projects. However, you will need something to ensure you that you will be paid and of course, that there are some obligations on your part and on your employer’s part as well.

Maybe at first, you will not be able to land official jobs and projects but as time goes, you’ll have to try to make your jobs more official. You will need proof for your portfolio and you will need insurance for payments.

Also, it would be best to set up a general agreement to state that your work is original, that you should respect your client’s confidentiality and vice versa. This legal agreement should also stipulate terms of payment, deadlines, the size of the project etc.

Conclusion

Starting up as a freelance designer may not be as easy as it seems at first, especially if you try to do it as a full-time job. However, if you are at least trying to do everything by the book, at some point, you should succeed.

Starting with your portfolio website and up to the legal agreements you will sign for each job, in particular, you can follow the steps described throughout this article in order to boost your freelance career.

Becoming more successful and building a strong personal brand should be always your two main tasks. Act accordingly and always look for more. Every day presents itself with an opportunity to take a step further.

The post How To Boost Your Freelance Design Career appeared first on Inspiredology.

Of the thousands of plugins available, there are a handful that contribute to the design of your page. The key is to find plugins that complement your overall vision. And when you’re using design for marketing intent–whether you’re a legal firm selling information pocket books or an apparel shop selling boho outfits–relevant plugins can boost your strategy and mission. Most importantly, they need to match the look and feel of your brand. Every plugin, regardless of its utility, needs to have a proper place on your site. And when you use the right plugins, you ensure that each feature has a valuable purpose in your marketing and design scheme.

Superfly

Superfly is a responsive WordPress menu plugin that can help you take your navigation to the next level. For any website, navigation is a key component to the overall user experience. Your navigation is the foundation of usability, and if it’s not intuitive enough, your visitor might just walk away before they have a chance to figure it out.

Superfly allows you to be unique with your navigation without compromising simplicity. You can easily create a standalone user-friendly menu, or make a menu that complements your regular menu. Where Superfly really shines is its ability to add beautifully designed vertical menus; a design tactic that’s trending, but hard to add to existing templates that come packaged with pre-adjusted horizontal menus. You can add images to the menu background, display a compact icon bar, enable full-screen mode for your menu, and much more.

Everest

The Everest plugin is the perfect addition to your “About Us” page–but really, it can go wherever your creativity takes you. This simple plugin allows your to showcase your timeline and help visitors better understand your story. A timeline is ideal for startups and small businesses who want to convey the achievements of an organization without lauding the reader with blocks of text. Instead, you can choose from over 50 pre-designed templates, and customize your design according to your brand aesthetic. Choose from vertical or horizontal options, Facebook or Twitter layout, and add a wide range of media, from YouTube videos to Soundcloud clips.  You can check out their templates on their plugin page.

Responsive Lightbox

The Responsive Lightbox allows users to access larger versions of any gallery image in a lightbox effect that’s optimized for mobile device. In today’s world, mobile searches are even more common than desktop searches, which makes the ability to easily view photos on mobile very important. Unfortunately, this is where many businesses miss the mark. You can select from seven responsive lightbox scripts, automatically add Lightbox to image and video links, and much more. Most importantly, it supports Woocommerce products, which allows browsers to seamlessly view your products.

Swifty Bar

Every ecommerce shop needs a blog. A blog increases SEO, builds brand awareness, and helps establish your business as a thought leader in your industry. The Swifty Bar plugin adds a neat, efficient bar to all your posts that displays the Read time (similar to Medium’s adored “read time” addition), the author, title, and next and previous posts. This is a very light addition to what you’ve already got working for it. A little enhancement goes a long way.

YITH Commerce Compare

As a consumer shops, they are constantly comparing one product to the next. Traditionally, these shoppers may be left to their own devices, and are forced to compare mentally or on a notepad. Many shops have advanced to providing a comparison base. YITH Commerce Compare makes this easy to do. Users only have to click a button near the product to compare differences. Those products are migrated to a table for intuitive choice-making. There are also plenty of customization options, as you’re able to style the compare table to your liking so it can align with your brand. Product comparisons allow users to clearly see key differences in features and products, making them feel much more confident about their purchasing decisions and less likely to feel buyer remorse.

The post 5 Design Plugins For Your WooCommerce Store appeared first on Inspiredology.

Is your photography not getting the attention it deserves?

We live in the digital age. There’s so much noise on the internet and it’s getting hard to get noticed.

Most of you are great photographers and do a really good job with your camera. And your work can add some value in someone’s life.

But when your work goes unnoticed you start to get frustrated.

Sound familiar?

It’s not enough to take great photos. You need to promote your photos as well. If you want to become a successful photographer, you need to make sure that your work reaches the right audience.

But the question is how will you get attention?

Digital marketing is here to help you to get your work noticed.

Recently I came across a question on Quora: “How can I use digital marketing for my photography work?”

So I decided to write this post.

You don’t get booked because you have good pictures, you get booked because you are visible to your audience.

Are you wondering how to do this with digital marketing?

Here is a simple definition to make you understand:

“Digital marketing, the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media, differs from traditional marketing in that it uses channels and methods that enable you to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t – typically in real time.”

Digital marketing channels like SEO, social media, email, blogging, and mobile will help you to get more exposure and expand your reach.

In this article, you’ll find 5 digital marketing methods which can help you to promote your work and make some extra cash with your photography.

1. Create a website or blog which connects with people

Why do you need a photography website or a blog?

If photography is more than your hobby and you want to build a business model around it, then you need a website or a blog.

A website gives you an opportunity to talk about yourself, and showcase your photography and personality so your audience can relate to your work.

Your blog is a great place to talk with your audience, tell stories, share your journey, and let viewers know the story behind a picture.

Your website also acts as a portfolio for your photography work which helps magazine publishers and clients to hire you.

Are you thinking about creating a photograph website or blog?

Choose a relevant niche. It will help you to stand out from the other photography blogs. Build yourself a brand.

For inspiration, see famous photographer Joe McNally’s website:

2. Get active on Social Media to interact with your audience

A photographer should always look for the ways to make his or her work more visible online.

Social media is a great platform to interact with your audience and show your work to people.

Create a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter profile, and Pinterest board to spread awareness of your work.

A picture speaks a thousand words. But a photo with an engaging caption speaks a million words.

Post photos regularly on your social media channels to stay in your viewer’s eyes. Remember consistency is the key to success.

Engage with your followers and create a real conversation with them. Reply their queries and ask for suggestions.

Build a pattern of trust with them and they’ll more likely to buy from you.

Here’s Simone Bramante’s Instagram profile to inspire you.

3. Sell your photos online

Do you have a quality of photos that you believe people may want to buy?

Today, the popularity of self-publishing has increased. Many writers and bloggers are self-publishing e-books which has made stock photography in demand.

You can sell your photos and images as stock photography. People need high-quality stock photographs for their website, blogs, email newsletters, templates, banners, flyers, and more. This can be a great opportunity for photographers like you to earn some good numbers.

Selling your photos through a microstock website is easy and quick. I recommend you try Shutterstock, iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, and 123RF.

If you have a website, you can also use it to sell your photos online. Let your visitors buy a photo directly from your gallery on your website.

4. Email marketing can be your friend

If you’re a guy and you like a girl, you ask her phone number first, right?

You don’t propose marriage. If you get her number, the first you have to build is a strong relationship.

The same goes for marketing.

If you want to build a relationship with your website visitors, first you need to ask for their contact information (email address).

But how should you do that?

Your website or blog is the best place to collect their email addresses. See how Photofocus ask me for my email address.

Email is the great way to communicate with your audience, show them your work, and provide them interesting and relevant content. Email helps you to build trust with your leads. And always remember this phrase, “People buy from people they trust.”

Email produces measurable results. It converts 3 times better than social media.

If you’re ignoring email, then my friend, you’re making a huge mistake!

5. Create a photography course and post it to Udemy

If you’re not familiar with Udemy, let me tell you about itI – Udemy is an online marketplace where anyone in the world can take or teach a course on virtually anything.

How can it help you?

You can create a photography course and post it here.

Choose “photography” category from the drop down menu. To get more specific results, you can also choose a sub-category. And you’ll get all the available courses.

Create a FREE account, create a new course, and start selling.

I hope you use these methods will help you to make some good money using your photos. Do you want to share some ways which helped you to make money online? Or do you have any questions? Please share them with us.e

The post How a Photographer Can Use Digital Marketing to Make Some Extra Cash appeared first on Inspiredology.

Custom Design Options

First off, clients must understand the difference between custom designs and templates. You should communicate that a truly custom design will set their brand apart from the competition. Moreover, it will be entirely dedicated to their company identity rather than some annoying website design. As a result, a custom web design would be truly unique and tailored to their company.

Saves Clients Plenty of Time

Secondly, clients still have to take the time to register domains, setup hosting and configure a website. Even with the easiest website builders, it still can a lot of time and there is no guarantee for a professionally finished product. With a professional web design service, they will receive a quality product without investing nearly as much time. They just have to communicate what they are looking for and it will be done in a professional manner.

More Robust Functionality

Moreover, web designers can create more functionality for clients. Depending on the type of website, designers can create graphics, drop downs and sections that increase conversions. Explain to clients that you have experience in putting together graphics and creative mobile page layouts that are designed to get users to take action. If clients understand that there is a potential for more revenue through better functional design, they are much more likely to pay the additional costs.

Ability To Scale The Website

When potential clients start out, they are sometimes limited in their thinking. They want a website, but forget about the future. You should educate them about how to grow their website. Web designers have the ability to help them create a blog, upload more products and integrate social media updates. There is a lot of work that goes into maintaining and growing the website. If you explain the future opportunities, they are much more likely to look at you like a partner.

Access To The Latest Technology

Good web design services utilize the latest technologies and trends. Of course, the modern level of design and coding will be more secure than an outdated template or builder. Show your clients how your web design work will offer enhanced security and protection for their online presence. Any sensible business owner or manager should take this point very seriously.

Web designers need to teach prospective clients why they are better than the DIY website options. As long as your prices are reasonable, you should be able to convince your clients based on the custom design, better functionality, security and time saved. If all else fails, sell them on the future of what their website can become with a professional at their side.  

The post 5 Reasons Hiring A Web Designer Is A Great Choice appeared first on Inspiredology.

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If you are, you must understand that every business needs some kind of contract to keep it going. A business of any kind can’t survive without contracts. Contracts can thus be called the lifeline of any business.

However, as your business carries the burden of more contracts, the number of contracts you have in place may become very complex to manage. Whether you are a small company or a large corporation, contract manage will inevitably be a time consuming process.

That being said, for business that have loads of contracts to maintain, there is a better and more organized system which can be used to properly manage all contracts. This is called an automated contract management system, and its use is of the utmost importance when managing a variety of contracts. Failure to do so can leads to distractions results and may even lead to losing clients and a loss of reputation within your given industry.

This is why automated contract management plays a pivotal role in assisting you in an organized and timely manner during the entire lifecycle of contracts.

In this article, you’ll find 6 benefits of the automated contract management system which will offer a great helping hand to your business (and increase your productivity), while dealing with huge loads of contracts.

1. Better Understanding of compliance and monitoring portfolio

One of the most obvious benefits of automated contract management systems is that it offers companies a more comprehensive understanding of compliance and the ability to monitor client portfolios. The ability of companies to standardize the language and process surrounding contracts is the pathway to increased compliance and efficiency.

With an automated contract management system, the standard legal and compliance templates, which are already approved beforehand, can be applied by to large variety of contracts. This allow for the system to manage all sorts of deviations within an acceptable level if there are any changes that need to be made from the standard language of a contract.

2. Improved Sales Cycle Times

With the automated contract management system, businesses can move contracts speedily from one level to another. With such systems, you can master approvals and workflows and the entire processing of the businesses becomes rapid.

With such an automated contract management system, the person next in line gets notified as soon as the contract gets to the stage where their involvement is necessary. This ensures that the contract seamlessly moves from one stage to another without any issues.

With an automated contract management system, you can hit your sales goals easily. As shown in the data below, organizations that utilize an automated contract management system are offered the following benefits:

• Improvement of contract renewal rates by 25%.
• Increase in revenue by 1 to 2%.
• Cut in contract cycle time to around 50%.

3. Sharing critical information with your salespeople made easy

Because the details of contracts are very delicate, sharing any information with an unwanted person can result in the loss of a contract. However, an automated contract management system makes the task of centralizing all contract information much easier. This makes the process of managing contracts a win-win scenario.

Consider this scenario: your key point of contact leaves and now passing on the information and the account is required. The new person in charge – who doesn’t have the information offhand, needs the complete documentation for the deal to close and to avoid any last minute hiccups.

To avoid such last minute troubles and errors, you need an automated contract management system where the critical information is stored in one place and a person can quite easily get the needed details to complete the task.

4. Achieving Cost Saving

As everyone knows, flying blind can result in an unwanted expenditure of energy. If everything is directed properly, things can be managed in a much better way and can be completed with higher accuracy and more efficiency.

With contract lifecycle management tools, you are offered broader sourcing and also have a procurement strategy, which helps you in avoiding costly mistakes.

Additionally, you are given a more efficient way to track down the contractual obligations, which can help you in checking the risks and contract leakage. The overall significance of the automated contract management system results in much better-improved efficiency while dealing the contracts and a big amount of savings due to potential mishaps.

5. Reduction of Risks

With an automated contract management system, there is a lesser chance of costly mistakes. Because humans are prone to committing mistakes, the chances of errors in such a system are reduce. This is because the system captures necessary information of all kinds, ranging from the request to the approval, thus allowing the sales team to focus on closing deals without hassle.

6. Strengthening partner and Customer relationships

An automated contract management system offers a chance to strengthen both business partnerships and customer relationships. With a tighter control over information and a better reorganization of information, the flow between your business and client’s requirements remains smooth. This will allow your company to be in a better position to maintain the needed workflow for contracts.

With an automated contract management system, you are offered a great deal of time to focus on and manage your resources in the most efficient way possible so that you can get the most out of your channeled relationships.

An automated contract management system is a must for leading organizations which have an appetite for progress ahead carry their work in a more collaborative and organized manner. Such systems reduce the errors, maintain a better workflow and help in organizing the contracts better, with the ultimate goal of providing support at every level of the contract lifecycle.

The post Why Should Your Business Use Automated Contract Management System? appeared first on Inspiredology.

I was just reading an article on Adweek about how eCommerce sites are moving into print when it struck me: What about digital content? What about digital magazines?

Are they still a thing in this social media oriented world? Well, of course, they are. Moreover, they can help your marketing strategy whether you are oriented towards digital content marketing or printed content marketing.

Benefits of a digital magazine

A digital magazine, unlike a printed brochure or even a printed magazine, is obviously easier to publish, costs less and it allows you to better track your readers, their background, their social status etc. It will be easier to print and promote your magazine after a while after your digital version became popular among members of your audience.

Of course, there might be reasons to print brochures and magazines if your targeted audience is comprised of people who do not use the Internet but at the same time, there’s no point in starting an eCommerce website if you cannot sell on the Internet in the first place.

Therefore, I am going to address this article only to those who are conducting their businesses online.

Now, considering you have studied the market and reached the conclusion an eCommerce venture is the right choice for you, the digital content may prove to be quite useful in the long run, especially after you’ve managed to establish your brand on the market. Let’s talk a bit about some of these benefits:

Branding: Digital magazines represent a great way for your targeted audience to know you, your brand, your products, values and everything you stand for.

Interactivity: Digital magazines allows you to publish written content and also video clips, interactive visual elements, buttons and calls to action such as “Buy Now” buttons for each of your products, video tutorials or presentations and so on.

Accessibility: When it comes to accessibility, digital magazines may not be as popular as blogs but at the same time, they are among the most accessible types of content. You can publish a digital magazine on your website, on a digital publishing platform, on social media or, you can distribute it to subscribers via e-mail or as downloadable materials. Moreover, a Html5 magazine can be accessed from any browser, on a computer or mobile device, without the need to install additional software.

Build relationships and trust: Content marketing helps you (A) build trust with your customers and (B) build new relationships with other influencers and professionals from your industry through guest posting and collaborative work. Let’s elaborate on these two statements:

1. When you share valuable content with your customers, in time, they will value your expertise and share your opinions with friends and colleagues. They will rather trust honest professionals who chose to communicate with them and share with them part of their expertise than silent brands who do not value the importance of content distribution.
2. Content marketing will help you build relationships with other complementary businesses or professionals from your industry as well. You can either guest post on other websites or accept guest posts on your website or digital magazine. Of course, you can do both as well.

Nevertheless, you will have a lot to gain from the relationships you are going to build with complementary businesses you collaborate on exchanging information that you and they are going to publish.

Things to consider before engaging in content marketing

Content is the “king” when it comes to these days’ marketing. Content attracts fans, followers, and customers as long as we are talking about valuable content, information that your customers seek and read with interest. For a marketer or an entrepreneur that tries to promote an eCommerce business there are two important things to consider at this point:

1. A website. You need a website that is dedicated solely to content or a blog attached to the eCommerce website.
2. A suitable web hosting. Consider the web hosting service you have chosen for your shop and then add all the new users that come to read your blog. You need a powerful service, one that will be able to handle your store, your blog and digital magazine downloads at the same time and ideally, with some kind of web hosting uptime guarantee.

Elements that are important for a digital magazine design

You have decided that your digital marketing strategy needs some improvement and as a consequence, you want to start publishing a digital magazine. What do you need? What are the design related issues that have to be taken into account before publishing?

1. Choose your tools

Before starting to design a digital magazine, you should, of course, choose your tools. As a designer, I am sure you are already accustomed with some of the best design tools such as Photoshop or InDesign. If you are an entrepreneur or a marketer and you choose to design the magazine on yourself on the other hand, you may encounter some difficulties in this area.

However, if you are choosing to publish online a digital interactive magazine, and consider using a professional online tool such as Flipsnack to design your pages, you will find out that the task at hand may be easier than you have imagined. You will get the job done faster than ever and you will also get Html5 ready to publish magazines. Why Html5?

Well, you need interactivity and accessibility. Html5 flipbooks are easier to integrate or embed in any web page, and they are accessible from any web browser, regardless f the operating system or the device you use to access them. Moreover, you can easily integrate call to action buttons that will direct your readers straight to the products described in the magazines or on other specific pages of your eCommerce website.

2. Choose a mobile-friendly layout

Upon starting your design, this is the most important thing to think about:  the layout. Think about your users or customers and the devices they use to access your website or read your digital magazine. I am sure that you are already aware that at least half of them will access your content from a mobile device and not a computer. As a consequence, your layout should be designed according to this fact so that it will be legible to both, computers and mobile phones or tablets. I advise you, therefore, to create an adaptive layout, suitable for mobile devices as well.

Here’s an example from Aluk, a company that designs and engineers high quality, reliable and performance driven aluminum systems. They chose to promote their brand in a digital magazine that features a clean and readable layout, visible on computers and smartphones as well, as you can see from the following two screenshots:

Tip: If you insist on using the PDF format instead of a Html5 flipbook, consider publishing your magazine in a portrait format, more friendly to the mobile user.

3. Create your content

At this point, your choice depends on what you are selling on your eCommerce website and how you can complement your products with carefully selected pieces of information, tutorials, articles and other valuable data for your customers. My advice is that even if you are only promoting products, to make sure that their descriptions only will add value to your customers. The texts should be informative, straightforward and easy to understand and read.

Tip: It will work best if you mix informative content with product descriptions. Thus, you will give your customers something of value in return for their time and money they spend on your store.

4. Choose your visual styles: fonts, images, white spaces

How your audience perceives your brand depends mostly on how professional looking your digital magazine gets to be. The fonts should complement the images and vice versa but you should also consider the readability of your texts. Fonts that are too small will be hard to read and your message may not reach to the readers who will rarely make an effort to zoom in each of the pages just to read your text. I couldn’t stress enough how important it is that your font matches the content. If you are creating a flipbook for a wedding related ecommrce business, then a handwritten font is the right way to go. Here are some of the handwritten fonts that we love, and would totally recommend on using. 

Make also sure that you have professional product images and appropriate backgrounds, suitable for your offers. However, the products should be the main focus of each page and not the backgrounds. Do not neglect the power of white spaces. They make your pages readable and they also give them a professional look.

Let’s take a look at Food Inc’s digital magazine.

Examine how they managed to balance images and text making their pages not only appealing but also readable and professional looking.

5. Choose the distribution channel

Once you have designed and saved you first digital magazine, the final step is to choose your content distribution channel. Here you have several options and your choice will depend mostly on your marketing strategy.

Website publishing /download. Should you choose to create your magazine online, as a Html5 flipbook, you will most definitely be allowed to store it in a personal cloud-based storage and embed it directly into your own website. However, you can also choose to download it as a PDF file and let your clients download each issue of your magazine directly.

Subscription access/download. You can also publish your magazine on a protected page of your website and give access only to subscribers. Or, you can offer the PDF file as an award for social media follows or newsletter subscriptions.

Access via a mobile app. This option may be more expensive than the previous solutions but at the same time, it may prove to be quite effective if you are relying on customers who are accessing your eCommerce website from a dedicated mobile app, more than they do it from personal computers. It all depends on your audience and their overall online interests and behavior.

Third party distribution channels. There are, of course, some third-party digital distribution channels you may choose to publish your magazine on, such as Slideshare. Thus, you will be able to expand your audience and increase the chances of attracting new customers.

Conclusion

As a designer, whether you are a professional or only an amateur, creating your first digital magazine for an eCommerce website may not be as difficult as it may have appeared at first.

Considering you know to whom you are addressing, the types of products you are going to present and the available distribution channels, you are already good to go. All you need further is access to an online professional design tool, professional pictures of the products and professional and informative texts to complement your visual content.

What do you think about digital magazines? How many did you design until now? Where did you publish them and how? What other elements you know to be important for such designs?

The post What Designers should know When Designing Digital Magazines for eCommerce Websites appeared first on Inspiredology.