https://www.venttraffic.com/ We provide best digital media services, digital marketing solutions, website designs and mobile applications to our target audience. en-us Generating sales requires a lot of hard work and considerable time, as it involves researching potential clients, pitching your products/services to them and following up with them until the deal is closed. Any kind of automation in the sales process will definitely help the salespeople close more deals and will allow you to grow your business faster. The recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with big data analytics, assist in the sales process and increase the sales volume in a smarter and faster way. According to a recent case study published in Harvard Business Review, Harley-Davidson increased its sales by 50% using AI. This is one of many examples of amazing results that can be achieved with AI. Here are a few advantages that AI offers to businesses aiming to increase sales. Predictive Analysis to Improve Pitches – AI helps pick up signals from the digital tracks out of the created data. It can help in analyzing consumer behaviors, and distinguish those that are looking to buy from those that are abandoning the cart. The sales personnel can use this information to target genuine buyers using personalized targeting techniques. Identification of Opportunities –AI can identify clients that are running low on your product, allowing you to react promptly by increasing production or suggesting other products from your portfolio. For example, by using AI, Amazon is able to detect customers’ buying patterns and foresee their needs. Uber has also adopted a similar strategy, whereby heat maps are analyzed for any patterns to help the drivers reach the right location at the right time. High Quality Leads – A simple lead score in the traditional sales CRM does not mean that it is a prospective lead ready to be closed. Finalizing a sale may take months. But how do we know if a prospect is ready? This is possible with AI, as it allows you to observe the buying journey of a customer because you already know what your customer needs! Increasing Productivity – None of us wish to work 24/7, but this is becoming necessary if you are to stay ahead in your business. This is where AI comes to the rescue, as it can analyze the data 24/7 and identify fresh & potential leads, allowing you to optimize your use of time by focusing on those ready to close the deal. AI Is Your Reliable Assistant – Having an assistant allows you to focus on other areas of your business. AI can act as your digital assistant. Previously, CRM systems were used by the executives to record their sales data. However, every time you make an upgrade in the systems, you had to retrain the executives, which was both time consuming and expensive. In addition, as sales people are not very good at data entry, potential for errors was immense. According to Olin Hyde, CEO and founder of LeadCrunch, “AI creates superhuman salespeople. They cannot be replaced by a machine, but a machine can certainly make them smarter and stronger.” With AI, you have voice-controlled digital sales assistants that allow your executives record the information from any device. They also provide the executives with the required information. AI is quickly becoming ubiquitous and is sure to improve our lives. However, AI cannot replace humans in all aspects of their work. Rather, it helps businesses to augment their presence and upsurge sales by offering effective sales solutions. AI is not limited to Tesla or Siri either; it is slowly capturing our daily space, and has the ability to improve our productivity. Employ AI and stay ahead of competition! Author Bio – The author of this blog, Duhane Williams, offers proven success in accelerating brand growth, cultivating and developing new markets, and obtaining optimal levels of brand awareness in highly competitive market segments. He is keen to explore new opportunities too. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/artificial-intelligence/upsurge-your-sales-with-artificial-intelligence-53 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/artificial-intelligence/upsurge-your-sales-with-artificial-intelligence-53 Thursday, 17 May, 2018 00:00:00 UTC “75% percent of internet use will be mobile in 2017, up slightly from 2016, as a growing number of consumers around the world access the web on smartphones and tablets.“ – Reuters, 2016. It is a well-known fact that the future of web lies in mobile technology. Mobiles have changed the way people communicate and access information. They are increasingly relying on phones, tablets, and digital devices to access data. In addition, over 6 billion mobile phone subscribers globally use mobile apps to manage data, navigate websites, connect with others and make purchases. Smart phones have further revolutionized mobile phone use, as mobile apps offer fast, interactive and easy integration with other features on the device. Many businesses have already taken steps to increase their market presence with mobile apps. Hence, a successful mobile app development strategy will have a huge impact on the results that can be gained from its implementation. Here, we present a few tactics that will help you profit from such apps. Focus on Your Company’s Objectives - The app you are aiming to develop should ultimately bring revenue for your company and should not become obsolete in the long run. You should be able to forecast how your app would benefit your business even after 5 years. Concentrate on the User Experience - User experience is essential in mobile app success. This can be achieved by working closely with the designers, developers and the sales team, as each will contribute a unique perspective on the app’s functionally and objectives, thus enhancing the user experience. Analyze Your Competitors’ Apps – New apps are being developed every day. If you are unable to stand out from the crowd, you might never distinguish your business from that of your competitors. Therefore, you must analyze your competitors’ apps carefully. You should sign into the app and should look out for both advantages and shortcomings in its design and functionality. This will give you a clear idea of how to compete in the market. Decide on the App Development Platform – Although there are many operating systems and devices, iPhone is still considered the standard entry point for any mobile application. Decide if you wish to go for a native or hybrid app, as the former supports only one platform, whereas the latter works on different platforms. However, hybrid apps are more expensive, and may not yield the most optimal user experience. If you are sure that the majority of your audience is on a single platform, a native app would be a better choice, as they are faster. In short, app development will be driven by the user engagement and target devices. Use Agile Methodologies – This involves rigorous development and testing until the completion of the software development project, ensuring that your app is completed in the most efficient and effective manner. App development process usually involves determining the functional requirements and breaking them down into various phases, while making continuous adjustments until the desired milestones are met. Businesses must dedicate the necessary resources to mobile app development projects, as well as adopt a persistent approach and thoughtful strategy. The focus should always be on user experience, while ensuring that the functionality meets specific business requirements. Author Bio: Duhane Williams is a Real Media & Business Strategist, specialized in Digital Media, AR/VR, Big Data, Technology Management, Analytics, Branding and APPS. He has demonstrated success in accelerating brand growth, cultivating and developing new markets, and obtaining optimal levels of brand awareness in highly competitive market segments. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com/ to learn more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/mobile-app-development/key-tactics-that-determine-the-success-of-mobile-app-development-52 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/mobile-app-development/key-tactics-that-determine-the-success-of-mobile-app-development-52 Monday, 14 May, 2018 00:00:00 UTC Setting up an Amazon store is easy, but gaining exposure takes time and effort. You will face many competitors that sell the same product, and if you don’t differentiate yourself from them, you might not generate the necessary sales. To do so, it is essential to know your market and your customers, which can only be achieved with thorough research. It is also vital to invest into meeting customer expectations, as this is the only way to retain their business. The Amazon Sponsored Ads are the best way to quickly carve out the market for your product. Amazon offers three types of ads: Amazon Sponsored Products Ads Amazon Headline Search Ads Amazon Product Display Ads Just like any other advertising campaign, Amazon sponsored ads require technical knowledge and proficiency. Here are a few tips that will help you optimize your Ads, and save you both time and money. Make Use of both Automatic & Manual Features – Having control over the campaign helps you make the most profitable decisions. Hence, make use of both automatic and manual features. Automatic features allow you to test the market and find out what search terms are being used by people to find similar products. You can set the campaign using a limited budget, thus ensuring that you limit your expenditure. After you run the test campaign for a couple of days, you should analyze the results to identify the most commonly used search terms to view your ads, which you should use in your manual targeting campaigns. Make Use Of Match Types – Amazon uses broad, phrase, exact and negative match types to refine targeting. You should employ a combination of these to ensure that you target the buyers with an intent to purchase.   Offer Relevant Results – Offering relevant results for their searches is the best way to ensure a good user experience. Hence, it is better to avoid showing ads that are not relevant to their searches. Product listing ads are particularly useful in this case, as they can be linked to the search and will be easily accessed by the potential leads too. Run an Organized Campaign – Organization is vital for cost-effective and successful campaigns. If your campaign is not organized effectively, you might lose more than your investment. The basic logic for organizing a campaign mandates that you group the products with relevant keywords, and tailor the campaigns to each product category, brand, and top sellers. In addition, you should allocate the bids according to the profit margins. Never Let Your Ads Pop Out For Irrelevant Searches – With the help of negative keywords, Amazon ads allow you to prevent the ads from showing up for irrelevant searches. Hence, make the maximum use of the option to block negative keywords, while increasing the inflow of relevant visitors, as this will save you money. Set Different Bids – Not every product has the same profit margins; hence, you cannot use the same bid amount for all keywords. Opt for the keywords that are most likely to bring in the greatest value and offer a higher bid on them. You should also set your bids high to improve your search history. Use the Right Images – Displaying the right images can make a considerable impact on your sales. High quality resolution is always beneficial, as are product details that you wish to demonstrate to the potential buyers. The image should grab the buyer’s attention and make him/her buy it, so post images taken from different angles. It might take some time for your Ads to yield success. Be patient. Examine the results often and make optimizations if needed, as this will ensure that your ads get the maximum reach. Remember, the right keyword can make all the difference in generating appropriate conversions.  Author Bio: Mr. Duhane Williams is an experienced digital marketer and a great team builder. He uses his world-class marketing management skills in providing successful strategies for the development of new businesses. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/amazon-sponsored-ads/change-the-way-you-sell-with-amazon-sponsored-ads-to-maximize-your-ROI-51 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/amazon-sponsored-ads/change-the-way-you-sell-with-amazon-sponsored-ads-to-maximize-your-ROI-51 Saturday, 12 May, 2018 00:00:00 UTC An SEO audit helps you determine what’s working and what’s not working on your current website. Do you know why an SEO audit matters so much for your website? An SEO audit helps website owners determine where their website currently stands in the world of digital marketing. This information can help you improve your site ranks, as well as attain high visibility for the website on the search engines, ensuring that customers can find you easily online. An SEO audit can be performed for your website for several reasons, but here are a few key thoughts: Changes in Algorithm: Moz states that, “500-600 times each year, Google changes its search algorithm.” The search engines are constantly upgrading their algorithms to offer better search results. You need to be aware of these changes and make necessary alterations to your websites so that you are not adversely affected by them. Errors in Website: Make certain that your website does not have any broken links or error messages. Doing an SEO audit will uncover any errors and enable you to fix them and regain the lost traffic. Changing Webmaster Guidelines: The webmaster tools from Google and Bing are continually changing, so you need to be compliant with the trends. Meta Content: Meta Title Tags and descriptions are the first thing a visitor gets to know about your website from the search results; hence, it is highly important to be optimized to be relevant to the site’s content. Work on you content: Fresh content assists the search engines in getting you discovered, and it gives the reason for visitors to come back. If people are not repeatedly visiting your website, you should work on your content to ensure that you always offer what your customers love to read about you. You get new strategic and graphic ideas with the analysis. You get to know about your site’s search rankings, traffic, search percentages, and bounce rates. You get to find and adjust the key components that affect your site’s performance. You get advice on developing new strategies. Know about the flow of your traffic and the keywords that drive the users towards your website. You can discover the sites that provide referral links to your website. Here are a few suggestions on how to get started with an SEO audit: Let the Screaming Frog crawl on the website: The free app Screaming Frog crawls through every page on your website just like a search engine would. This allows you to identify URL issues, duplicate pages, redirects and much more. You also have the option to export all the data to an Excel spreadsheet after the audit, where you can analyze the results further. Once you register and verify your title with the Google webmaster tools, you get to access many aspects, including Crawl Errors, Search Queries, Links, HTML improvements and Sitemaps, which will help you identify your website’s strong and weak points. Customize Google Analytics – when you do this, you get to know more about the users that visit your website. You will obtain data on the time each user spends on a page, if the user is visiting additional pages, which device is popular – mobile or desktop, etc. All these insights will help you optimize the website from your clients’ perspective. The “HTML Improvements” in the Google Webmaster Tools help address the duplicate title tags. This will improve the user experience. URL redirects also confirm that the users and the search engines visit the site without encountering any error messages. Place the XML Sitemap in order– create a sitemap that allows the major search engines to easily crawl through your website and list all the content on your site. SEO audit is very important for upholding your website’s ranking strength. As these are just a few basic suggestions, be cautious when planning your audit. Focus on addressing the weak points in your current strategy and make adjustments so that you can rank better consistently. Author Bio: The author of this blog, Duhane Williams, offers proven success in accelerating brand growth, cultivating and developing new markets, and obtaining optimal levels of brand awareness in highly competitive market segments. He is keen to explore new opportunities too. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/SEO-audit/all-you-need-to-know-about-SEO-audit-and-its-significance-50 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/SEO-audit/all-you-need-to-know-about-SEO-audit-and-its-significance-50 Monday, 07 May, 2018 00:00:00 UTC “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it” – Erik Qualman Social media platforms are continuing to hit new records in terms of user base expansion and revenue generation. Facebook has accrued over 2 billion users, whilst Instagram is expected to reach over 1 billion users before the end of 2018. These trends have made social media management and marketing (SMM) tools a necessity for any business. According to Scott Brinker, “5000 companies are now part of the marketing technology landscape, a huge leap from the 150 itemized back in 2011.” With thousands of SMM tools competing in the market, choosing the best one for you can be overwhelming. Here we present a few social media management tools to watch out for in 2018. Facebook Pages Manager Created by the Facebook, ‘Pages Manager’ helps marketers to target segmented buyers. This tool also helps the Facebook administrators to manage the Facebook pages and profiles more effectively. With the help of Facebook Pages Manager, users can easily post updates, images, videos, and other information and share the same with their network members for as many as 50 pages and profiles. Facebook Pages Manager is free to use and there are no additional fees or installations required. HootSuite HootSuite is the most popular SMM tool for Android and iOS phones. It has been in existence since 2008 and it helps you schedule campaigns across various social networking platforms. With the help of its simple web-based dashboard, you can also simultaneously measure the performance of the campaign in terms of ROI. The option of curating content is also available in Hootsuite where you can add #hastags and look for more keywords. AgoraPulse AgoraPulse offers you all updates about your social content in an inbox. It has the facility to store all old conversations and sync with your social profiles in real time to make sure that you do not miss any comments, tweets and likes. You can manage all the conversations efficiently, leaving you ample time to focus on business improvements. Crello This free graphic design tool provides access to over 10,000 free templates. You can simply drag and drop, as well as easily add, edit and move the design elements within the graphic. Fastory You can create stunning animated or static Instagram stories with Fastory free of charge. You can create your story in three simple steps—choose an animation for your text, upload a video or photo, and add your logo. After you publish the story, it will be sent to your email, from where you can download and broadcast the content on your Instagram or Snapchat. Botletter Similar to an email marketing tool, Botletter allows you to send messages with an image, title, and call-to-action. You can send 1,000 messages per month free of charge.  Anchor Videos This popular audio networking app turns your audio recordings into beautifully animated videos along with transcript for free. You also have the opportunity to check and edit the transcript before finalizing the video. Campsite Campsite helps turn a single bio link into unlimited links for free. Most Instagram marketers face the trouble of having only one link for the entire Instagram account. This issue is avoided by using Campsite, where you can have a friendly page listing several links. Lisa When you are not sure of which photo to post on Instagram, Lisa app will analyze all your photos free of charge and will select the one that is expected to be most liked on Instagram based on a machine learning algorithm. Station This free app helps you manage most of your web applications simultaneously. You get to unite all the apps into one workstation, saving you heaps of time. The Station works with more than 300 applications and is expected to support more in the future. I am sure that many other great social media tools deserve a mention in this blog post. Would you be interested in sharing your favorite ones so that our fellow readers can try them? I am excited to chat about them too. Author Bio: With over 10 years of experience in digital marketing and brand management, Duhane Williams focuses on team building, campaign implementation, market growth and new business development. He is also committed to growing organizational success with the help of world-class marketing management. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/free-social-media-tools-to-try-in-2018-49 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/free-social-media-tools-to-try-in-2018-49 Wednesday, 02 May, 2018 00:00:00 UTC According to a research conducted by Statista, “the number of worldwide web users is expected to reach 3.02 billion monthly active social media users by 2021.” This number alone confirms that social media provide the most powerful platform for any business to connect with millions of current and potential clients worldwide. There are many individuals who have already built business empires with social media, such as Rachel Dunston, the initiator of Rachel Bakes More Cake, who has built a thriving cake business with the help of Instagram. When done right, social media can make your sales climb sharply like a rocket, increase your brand’s awareness, nurture connections and improve the search ranks. But, where do you begin? Taking the first step with social media can be a challenge, as there are many platforms, with so many users who hold diverse opinions. Devising a strategy to target the right audience using the right platform is indeed a tiresome process, but one that is necessary to yield the desired results. Here are a few easy tricks for business owners wishing to master the social media. Brand your company’s social page Include your business's cover image, logo, business name, etc., in all your communications. Unlock every opportunity available in social media to emphasize and distinguish your brand from others. Be You! Nonetheless, it is essential to examine what your competitors are doing on social media and what makes them stay special in the hearts of their customers, i.e., what makes people follow them. Likely, they have capitalized on a unique feature or idea that makes them stand out from the crowd. It is your job to do the same for your business. Promote your blog posts Blog is a vital element of any website. You should update your blogs regularly to share news and upcoming events, or express an opinion on your industry or business. Share these fresh blogs frequently in the social media platforms, so that your users are aware of what is happening in your business. These updates will bring your customers closer to your business. Mention your products/services frequently Never leave your social pages idle even for a day. Give your customers a reason to like or share your page as often as possible. According to Ambassador, “71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.” You can do this by including your products, specials, any funny images, quotes, infographics, or anything that will keep them close to your social page. Capture your viewers’ attention Images and video have the power to grab the viewers’ attention, keep them engaged and prompt them to influence their networks with your posts through their likes and shares. As stated by Hubspot, “Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.” There are many free online tools you can use to customize images or create effective short videos, so make full use of them. Connect with your users personally To devise a great strategy, you must listen to your audience. Social media is an open-ended platform businesses can use to communicate and engage with their customers. This is gradually taking the form of customer service platform, as this level of engagement is expected by customers these days. While this may seem too time consuming, it will pay off as, the more you engage with your customers, the more trust you will generate.   Use keywords It is easy for your existing contacts to find you in any social channel, but what about your potential clients who are looking out for an opportunity to try products/services like those you are offering? Using the right SEO friendly keywords in your social profiles in the form of #Hashtags will make it easier for users to find you easily in their search results. Focus on the networks that yield results Hubspot report says, “80% of marketers indicated that their social media efforts increased traffic.” Not every social channel yields the desired results. To maximize the benefit obtained from your use of social media, you must customize content for each platform. Hence, identify channels that generate more relevant traffic and optimize your strategy accordingly. This might seem counterintuitive, but focusing on the right platform will give you a better return on investment than would attempting to promote your brand with one generic approach. Take one step at a time. Organic social media following doesn’t happen overnight. Only a proper strategy will help you leave a mark in social media. Stay consistent and remain engaged, as your presence will bring you fans and followers of unknown value. Author Bio: Duhane Williams is a Real Media & Business Strategist, specialized in Digital Media, AR/VR, Big Data, Technology Management, Analytics, Branding and APPS. He has demonstrated success in accelerating brand growth, cultivating and developing new markets, and obtaining optimal levels of brand awareness in highly competitive market segments. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com/ to learn more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/easy-tricks-to-master-social-media-for-your-business-48 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/easy-tricks-to-master-social-media-for-your-business-48 Monday, 30 Apr, 2018 00:00:00 UTC Word of mouth is the lifeblood of any retail business. Positive reviews have the power to influence business results, especially if these are made by people that consumers know and trust. Motivating your customers to speak on your behalf is the first step toward creating the buzz for your brand! According to a survey conducted by Nielsen group, 92% of the respondents stated that they are more likely to believe recommendations from their friends and family than any form of advertising. While it may seem that such conversations happen naturally, this is not the case! You cannot sit back and hope that people will recommend your brand to others. You have to win the marketing race these days, and this means encouraging those happy with your product or service to talk about their positive experience. In other words, you have to know how to capitalize on Social Media Marketing. Here are a few Social Media Marketing Tactics, which will help you generate those conversations. Engage with your customers in real time Social networking platforms help you chat with people in real time. Gift your customers with your time. Listen to what they have to say about your brand. Value the privilege of having meaningful conversations with your current and prospective clients via social media. Always respond to the queries of your followers promptly, as this will make it more likely that they will recommend your brand to their family members, friends, colleagues and other associates. People are very busy these days, so they expect instant response to their needs. Social media is the platform that offers them this luxury. They no longer have to waste their time checking to see if they have received an email, or wait for a phone call. When you respond to your customers on social media, your promptness impresses other prospective customers as well, because they can see that you take customer service earnestly and you will go an extra mile to solve your customer grievances right away. Handy marketing at a low cost! Give people the reason to talk about your brand To generate conversations about your brand, you should study the traffic and find out what the buyers are expecting from you. Give people reasons to talk about your discounts, promotions, brand, service, amazing products, incredible success stories or even funny exposés. Gift your social media followers with special discounts, as this will help drive more traffic to your store. It will also help you reward your existing loyal customers and build a positive image for your brand in the minds of the new customers. Always stay hot & hyped! Share your brand Promote your brand online through postings. This will allow your customers to know more about your company and your staff. Your posts can also help generate trust in your business and let the potential customers know what you are selling. Make your customers know that they are very important to you and that their opinion matters. Give the taste of your brand’s culture to your customers, so that they could speak about you or buy your brand.  Inspire your customers with your brand! Think local Personalize your posts based on your location. Using built-in targeting features in your chosen social media platform will help deliver the right message in the right area. This is a great way to build your brand and familiarize with your target community. Tell your story with digital illustrations            Videos & images are much more informative than words and their use has become very popular. It also increases the conversions by 80%. Yes, they perform better than content. Forrester Research Inc.’s report says, “76% of retailers are spending more on Social Media this year than they did a year ago.” Hence, when developing your social media marketing strategy, focus on every detail, including the seemingly insignificant ones. What might seem unimportant to you could be highly relevant to a customer. In other words, do your best to deliver excellence in every interaction with your customers! Author Bio: Mr. Duhane Williams is an experienced digital marketer and a great team builder. He is constantly involved in providing successful strategies in the development of new businesses with world-class marketing management skills. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/build-the-buzz-for-your-retail-store-with-social-media-marketing-47 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/build-the-buzz-for-your-retail-store-with-social-media-marketing-47 Friday, 20 Apr, 2018 00:00:00 UTC Google is considered the most effective search engine. Thus, it should easily bring user traffic to your website. While this is in theory true, as Google is constantly evolving, you need to adapt to the tweaks to retain your high ranks or secure a better position in the search results! You have probably noticed that it has become a bit harder to build referral traffic from Google these days. While the competition has certainly become more fierce, the recent Google updates have also contributed to this issue. One major change that has taken place recently is the ‘Featured Snippets,’ which offer content with an instant stardom in the search results. This search box appears in a snippet view, above the regular organic search results generated by the query you have typed in the ‘Google Search Bar.’ Having your content in the featured snippet box not only brings in a lot of traffic, it also demonstrates your expertise on the subject – as you are Google’s chosen one if you are in the snippet view! How Do You Get Your Content Into The Featured Snippet View? Start with Keyword Research According to WordStream, 50% of search queries are at least four words long. Long-tailed search strings will make it more likely that your content will be featured in the snippet view. In reality, the longer the query, the higher the chance that the search results will generate content in the featured snippet view. In other words, a thorough keyword analysis should be your starting point. Still, during the keyword research, you need to keep the following in mind: The search query should start with a question, such as What, When, Why, How, etc. You should also focus on the informational subject lines. Though Featured Snippets are intended to respond to ‘questions’ immediately, a major portion of search strings that trigger the featured snippets are long-tailed queries with no questions in them. Google Provides You with More Questions According to Internet Live Stats, “Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day.” Clearly, it is important to stay informed about these searches. But, where do you get the details from? When you choose to write on a topic, glance at the ‘People also ask’ section in the search results. The information provided will help you gain further insight into your chosen topic. When you expand the questions to view the answers, additional questions will appear at the bottom. Find Which Search Queries Bring In More Clicks  Check the ‘Search Analytics’ page in Google Search Console and find out the positions your pages hold, as well as identify the top-performing queries. This will help you to adjust your content to ensure that it is featured more frequently. Follow People on Twitter Heaps of opportunities are available to Twitter users. To gain maximum benefit from this platform, follow industry-specific people and look out for the questions they are often asked. This will help you approach your content from a completely new perspective, depending on the demands of the audience and your industry. Speak Data Google is keen about numbers, lists and steps. When you answer a question, ensure that you include useful factual information, ideally in the forms noted above. In short, be informative, but concise. In a study conducted by SEMrush and Ghergich & Co., 6.9 million featured snippets and 80 million keywords were analyzed, revealing that lists and comparison charts are the easiest way to get featured, as Google “adores” structured contents. Arrange Your Questions Systematically Adding queries to the title and subheadings of your article will attract the readers on a personal level. Images Are Important Too Take care to include attention-grabbing images that are annotated well, as this makes it easy for Google to feature your content. Finally, though ‘Featured Snippets’ might minimize the clicks to organic search results, this is still positive development, as it forces the content marketers to delve deeper into the subject, which ultimately paves way for high-quality content. Whether or not your content is featured, optimizing it for the featured snippets will help you get to know your customers better, which will in turn ensure that you can cater to their needs effectively, improving the conversions. Author Bio:Mr. Duhane Williams offers a highly strategic and motivated Infrastructure to successfully manage all facets of strategic marketing and business development operations for industry leading brands, Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/bring-in-more-traffic-with-google-featured-snippets-46 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/bring-in-more-traffic-with-google-featured-snippets-46 Thursday, 12 Apr, 2018 00:00:00 UTC As we reach the end of the first quarter of 2018, it is important to look for the trends and understand where your website stands in the digital competition. Are you setting these trends, merely following them, or even lagging behind? Based on the analysis of the past year’s data, here are a few elements that will likely help you enhance the quality of your search results and will ensure that you stay ahead in the Digital Marketing Game in 2018: HTTPS / Secure Websites Mobile First Technology Voice Search & Featured Snippets Page Speed Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Google Shopping Local SEO HTTPS / Secure Websites Google is now being assertive in the demand for secured connections in order to safeguard the users’ personal information. Possessing a secured website will thus help you surpass the unsecure sites in rankings and will ensure that your content ranks high in the search results. Google has already rolled out unsecure warnings in their Chrome browser in October 2017. Mobile First Technology According to BrightEdge, “57% of web traffic comes from mobile devices.” It is also noteworthy that mobile first content is given priority in mobile searches. Mobile users will seek more content when looking out for brands/services in their local area. Hence, to thrive in your chosen business, optimizing for mobile technology is a must in 2018. Voice Search & Featured Snippets This technology is changing the way we communicate and process information. Google states that 1 out of 5 searches come from voice search queries. These findings are reflected in the increase in sales of digital assistants. However,  to benefit from these developments, long-tailed search queries and a natural language that meets the user’s conversational tone are needed. This has in turn given rise to Featured Snippets. According to the findings reported by Stone Temple Consulting, “nearly 30% of the Google results have featured snippets.” Along with Voice Search, this trend is expected to rival the organic listings on top rank. To capitalize on these features, you will have to modify your content. This will not only ensure that your content gets noticed, but will allow you to connect to your users in a relevant and useful way. Page Speed Google states that a page should load under ‘three seconds.’ Indeed, nowadays, users want instant access to information and don’t like sluggish websites. So, if your page is slow, your traffic will suffer with a higher bounce rate. While speed has always been a critical factor, it will become even more relevant in 2018. Do you know the speed of your website? You can find out on Google’s Page Speed Insights for free! Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning These technological innovations have paved the way for a more personalized user experience. Google’s determination to make advances in this domain with RankBrain/Google’s deep learning algorithm is expected to soon affect the search trends and is likely to lead to further innovations. More changes in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are expected to follow in 2018. Google Shopping Google States, “40% of shopping searches are for broad-match terms.” Yes, Product Listing Ads in Google Shopping are expected to gain prominence in 2018 to respond to the needs of the mobile shoppers, who are demanding a greater choice of products and suppliers. Local SEO The number of Smartphone users seeking the help of ‘Google Maps’ to search for local information is growing rapidly. Many also look for reviews, address, phone number, business hours, etc., before acquiring a product or service. For these reasons, 2018 is going to be a positive year for websites that are optimized for Local Business. Google has also added FAQ feature to Google Maps to allow users to post questions to the business owners, which helps with local business rankings. We would also like to share a few tips from some of the Expert Digital Marketing professionals that will help you dominate the industry in 2018: Olga Andrienko, Head of Global Marketing, SEMrush says, “Fast, secure, mobile-optimized websites are the future. Websites should reflect the clear purpose of the company and have an easy-to-use interface.” Loren Baker, Founder, Search Engine Journal mentions, “I feel that page content naturally answering user questions and expectations of user intent is going to be more important as well. It’s not just about having content that ranks for keywords but also making sure that that content is exactly what the searcher is looking for. Recently I’ve noticed the sites improving their rankings are those that address user intent and answer questions correctly and efficiently, even sites that are new or have few links built to them.” “Google announced it will be switching to mobile-first index in 2018. The best practice is to make a responsive website, and there’s no excuse to avoid doing that in the coming year. Otherwise, your site’s rankings and user experience may suffer,” according to Aleh Barysevich, Founder & CMO, SEO PowerSuite and Awario. Winston Burton, VP of SEO, Acronym Media shares, “As the SERPs continue to get more competitive, brands must be prepared for voice and mobile and should also have high-quality content and links as these are going to be the most influential factors on search visibility in 2018.” “Voice search is going to be more important in 2018. With the expansion of mobile and new home assistance devices like Alexa, Echo, and Google Home being developed into home products, voice search is going to grow exponentially,” says Christine Churchill, President & CEO, KeyRelevance. Stoney deGeyter, CEO, Pole Position Marketing, mentions, "I think the single biggest trend we’ll see in 2018 is businesses trying to figure out how to integrate AI into their content marketing strategies." Traditional SEO techniques are still effective. Still, a number of emerging trends could significantly change the way search is optimized. The road ahead is going to be challenging, but will also be filled with opportunities. Hence, you should focus on long-term Digital Marketing strategies that will keep you competitive in the year ahead. Mr. Duhane Williams have over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, brand management, team building, campaign implementation, market growth and new business development, coupled with commitment to growing organizational success through the provision of world-class marketing management.  Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/search-engine-marketing-trends-for-2018-insights-from-expert-digital-marketers-45 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/search-engine-marketing-trends-for-2018-insights-from-expert-digital-marketers-45 Tuesday, 10 Apr, 2018 00:00:00 UTC According to the findings reported by International Data Corporation (IDC), “Android is the most preferred platform with more than 82% of global users, followed by iOS with 13.9%, Windows with 2.6% and Blackberry with 0.3% users.” Does knowing this help you choose the platform for your app? Mobile App development is an intricate process, with many more options than one may perceive. Not every mobile application is created in the same way. Hence, selecting the right platform on which to launch your app determines its success or failure. Yet, mobile app platform choice is an overwhelming task for many business heads, as it must meet the specific needs of the organization. Thus, it is essential to assess as many platforms as feasible, depending on the specification, and conduct a comprehensive analysis based on the factors discussed below. According to the findings reported by App Annie, “iOS App Store brings in 75% more revenue than Play Store (Android) despite the massive difference in downloads.” While this may be shocking, it highlights the importance of researching the target audience for the app. The obtained results will provide a clear idea of the devices the potential users favor, allowing you to develop a strong customer framework. The other important factors that should be considered when choosing the mobile app platform are: 1. The latest trends – Mobile industry is progressing rapidly and it is necessary to be aware of the latest trends and developments. According to Statista, the portal for statistics, over 2 billion mobile devices are sold each year. To remain competitive and financially viable, every mobile company periodically introduces new devices with innovative features. Even though Android smartphones and iOS dominate today’s market, Microsoft-powered devices and Blackberry gadgets are also popular among consumers. As noted in Smart Insights, “Apps account for 89% of mobile media time, with the other 11% spent on websites.” They also reveal that “33% of consumers start mobile research with a branded website, and 26% with a mobile app.” The upsurge in demand for tablets, as mentioned in The Telegraph spectacles that, Even tablets are becoming powerful these days. Hence, any app development and launch strategy must be based on a multi-channel approach, which supports new devices as well. 2. Consistent user experience – Users expect a pleasing experience from an app. A study conducted by comScore reveals that, “3.1 million consumers access retail content via mobile phones with 8.2 million of those visiting mobile commerce websites.” Predefined websites are unlikely to fulfill their search demands.  According to the findings reported by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies, “Over 70% of iPhone owners report using applications or their smartphone’s web browser to help them while shopping in-store, and 41% are making purchases directly from their phones”. Though mobile apps are a great way to get started, users look for task-oriented clarifications that enable access to relevant information. Multiple native mobile apps are designed to support precise business tasks and stimulate specific user groups. It is vital to channel your firm’s investments into mobilizing your enterprise apps, and get engaged with your business partners and customers, ensuring a persistent native mobile app that targets high-value tasks and produces profitable business results. 3. Data sources - Native mobile apps are a point of contact for those aiming to gain a broader business perspective. These mobile apps must be able to access information and output pertinent results after communicating with the predefined content and data sources. Thus, during the implementation process, it is essential to consider how frequently the information on the devices will be updated and how much data needs to be transmitted across the network. It is also vital to outline the connection between the native mobile app and the data sources. A good mobile app developer will be able to offer a degree of flexibility, so that proprietary information sources and enterprise applications can be incorporated into the app as needed. 4. Management challenges – Even the best apps can fail if the methods used to market and launch it are incorrect. It is also essential to ensure that the mobile app supports the various devices in the market. Most importantly, no app should ever allow third-party access to valuable proprietary information of your enterprise.   Selecting the right mobile app development platform is not an easy task. In addition to the factors outlined above, security, cost and compliance must be considered to make the apt choice towards determining the app platform.   Author Bio: The author of this blog, Mr. Duhane Williams, is a keynote speaker, Inventor and strategic thinker on Digital Marketing trends. He has over 10 years of experience in the field with most of his time spent in digital media, ecommerce and applications integrations and enterprise development. Visit https://www.venttraffic.com to read more. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/mobile-app-development/factors-to-consider-when-choosing-the-right-platform-for-your-mobile-app-development-44 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/mobile-app-development/factors-to-consider-when-choosing-the-right-platform-for-your-mobile-app-development-44 Friday, 30 Mar, 2018 00:00:00 UTC For anyone who is looking to build a website, whether a simple website or a complex one of any shape or size, planning is the first step.  During this planning process, the web strategy is defined before designing or development, also known as wireframing. Hence, wireframes are a great way to improve the quality of work to minimize the mistakes and save a lot of productive time and the resources on the project. “It's critical to simplify and run the business in such a way that resources are released to invest in your main business.” – Safra A. Catz, executive at Oracle Corporation. Sometimes, clients underestimate this method and rush to work on the website development instantly, only to end up with lot of corrections and modification necessary on the tail end of the project. In this blog post, we explain the necessity of creating wireframes even before the commencement of actual work to ensure the designers and the developers are on the same track confirming a smooth flow of work. So, what is wireframing? Wireframe is the blue print for your website’s and application development. It is usually created after deciding the site’s architecture, which has been influenced by the site map or the web-site’s pages flowchart, prior to the creative design phase. The wireframe skeleton is usually illustrated with basic shapes and lines with partial colors and styling, focusing on the layout, content positioning, scope definition and other prototypes. Still questioning why you need a wireframe? Here are some reasons, why wireframing is essential: Screen’s Layout – wireframe gives a solid idea on the structure of the website, before the actual creation of the design. A straightforward wireframe means exploration of multiple ideas in a relatively short time. You can fix on the sidebars, sliders, headers, footers, navigation etc., to state a layout that suits the goals of the client, thus making the mock-up easier. Helps Exhibit Site’s Architecture – How can you exhibit the sites architecture? Fetching the sitemap to wireframe; helps build the initial solid visual process in a project, where a simple flow chart is turned into a tangible plan. A wireframe makes your client think about what his/her actual needs are and helps the client define clear project goals and a primary focus. Website feature Clarity – Wireframing the various features such as product filtering, light boxes, Google Map Integration, hero image and other hundreds of features might not be understood by your client properly at the initial stages. The wireframe element provides a clear-cut communication to the client and exhibits how these features will function, where they will exist on a specific page and how useful they could actually be. Wireframes bring clarity to the projects, allowing to the client to work through all the layout needs. Site’s Usability – The Wireframe helps everyone to glance factually into the website’s navigation, feature placement, conversion paths, ease of use etc., It also shed light on the flaws in the site’s architecture and illustrates how a feature may work. Wireframe Efficiency - With the help of a wireframe everyone in the website development team will be on the same track. Everyone is aware of the goals, what the website is supposed to do and how is it to function effectively for a more fluid creative process, thereby reducing redundancies and increasing efficiency. People might have different tactics to wireframing, but, it is best to choose an option which saves times, assist in collaboration and ultimately improves productivity. A detailed wireframe helps the developers to check out the layout from all angles, ultimately spotting out possible gray areas of development, instead of making a major change and wasting a lot of productive time after the completion of the project. Hence, wireframes are required for a professional website development project to make it simple and systematic. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/website-designs/importance-of-drafting-wireframes-for-your-project-43 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/website-designs/importance-of-drafting-wireframes-for-your-project-43 Monday, 26 Mar, 2018 00:00:00 UTC A survey conducted by the Nielsen Group mentions that, “59% of shoppers choose to buy new products only from brands that are familiar to them!” Just like, you have a personal identity, which distinguishes you from others, your brand’s identity is an essential factor, which sets your business apart from others on the block. When millions of businesses are attempting to establish their brands, it is vital for any business to differentiate themselves from their competitors and help people remember who you are, your business values and credibility. As Jeff Bezos says, “Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room." Indeed, your Brand identity builds your brand’s reputation and if you don’t have an appropriate identity, your business reputation is at risk. The reason is, a brand identity inspires your customers’ experience at every point of the sales channel, says Hubspot. So, it must be perfectly portrayed to grab the user’s attention. Rob Wengel, Managing Director of Nielsen Innovation says, “Brands signify quality and inspire confidence.” Indeed, consumers’ desire for these kinds of products is much higher. So, how could we grab the shopper sentiment through Brand Identity, especially for new products that is launched with or without a strong brand name?  Yes, Design & Content are the major elements that help with this regard to acquire a strong Brand Identity! This Is How Design Influences Brand Identity –  (i) Logo/Wordmark - A well-crafted Logo/Wordmark conveys a sense of professionalism concurrently trying to visualize your brand. The more creative you design the more unique will your brand get set in the minds of the consumers. Ultimately, Logo is the alternative of your brand name, so make sure that you position it prominently on your website, and it is displayed on all the pages to step into the minds of the buyers. (ii) Colors – Usage of corporate color palette on the logo adds a maven touch. Apart from the colors on the logo, complementing it with other cool colors will bring your logo to life, making it easy to identify your brand quickly and make good choices. (iii) Using Corporate Typefaces – Using an exclusive typeface that complements the style of the logo on the marketing materials and website, will create a unique brand identity. Custom typography should be used to make it more distinctive. (iv) Image Consistency – This means that all the images should have an even look and feel, both on printed materials and online. This Is How Content Marketing Influences Brand Identity –  Content Marketing is the most important tactic to stand out as being amazing and extensive in the Brand Identity process. It builds credibility in the minds of the buyers, creating positive impressions through advertising. Words define your company’s mission statement, and calls in the attention of new consumers and boosts the delight of existing buyers. Attention grabbing photos, compelling and valuable information and anything original and credible will fit the statement. The content on the website should engage your site’s visitors and be sure of giving something of value to the readers and make them come back for more. Always update your website with images and standard contents that is apt for your market. Keep in mind, these contents are considered by the Search Engines too, by which you can benefit from SEO as well. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/content-marketing/improve-your-brand-identity-with-a-great-design-and-content-marketing-42 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/content-marketing/improve-your-brand-identity-with-a-great-design-and-content-marketing-42 Thursday, 22 Mar, 2018 00:00:00 UTC In this article, we are going to discuss on “Why the Efficient Network Management in New York is More Important than Ever?” In today’s competitive business world, Network Management has become the vital part of every business IT infrastructure. The best Network Management Services maintains customer satisfaction by helping them in analyzing the health of the website and identify performance bottlenecks and other issues. If you have an efficient network management system in New York, you won’t have to worry about downtime, page loading speed, or the availability IT Support. But without network management or network monitoring, getting an idea of network health and troubleshooting issues is much more daunting. Let’s look at the top benefits of network management services: Optimize Network Performance The Network Management Service which you choose will automatically gather data about the network and alerts the administrator about the issues before someone else reports the issue via phone call or email. Cost Effective Option A good network management system makes it possible for the staff to slash down the cost of hiring expenditures on the organization. If the network management structure works better, then one system administrator is more than enough to monitor and manage the entire network. This will result in more savings on hiring costs that can be used for training, research, and development of your organization. Increases Productivity Thinking how an efficient network management system increases the productivity? Recent Survey done by CenturyLink stated that the benefit of a Network Management System in New York would be freeing up staff time. Because having a well-maintained network management system automatically detects and resolve problems before they become your knowledge, thus ensuring that there is a minimal stoppage to productivity or loss of data. Minimize Security Risks With an ever-increasing number of cyber-attacks, and data breaches, it’s a MUST for you to take extra precautions when it comes to protecting your company information. A good network management system will include features such as: protection against viruses/other malware, hacking, and other internal or external threats.   Why Choose VentTraffic.com? Network maintenance and monitoring Security, file sharing and user administration Monitoring of interconnected network devices Monthly status reporting Event log, backup and drive space monitoring Anti-virus software management From basic support to all-inclusive features, you can customize the service that's right for you. Our network administrators assess your current network structure and create a design that’s perfectly sized to fit your organization’s needs, paying special attention to the number of users connected, the amount of data transferred and types of applications used. On the final recap, An active network management is now more important than ever, for keeping things running smoothly and getting more value out of network infrastructure. There is no more need to brawl with network issues and downtime! Network management services offer a worthwhile feasible solution that keeps your company stays ahead from the competitors. Talk with a network specialist today to see how your business could benefit. For more details, visit http://www.venttraffic.com https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/network-management-service/why-the-efficient-network-management-is-more-important-than-ever-41 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/network-management-service/why-the-efficient-network-management-is-more-important-than-ever-41 Tuesday, 29 Aug, 2017 00:00:00 UTC In today’s digital world, as humans become increasingly entwined with technology, is it needed to develop new software? The obvious answer is “Yes!” As humans, we all make mistakes and the things invented by us too! The importance and seriousness of Software Quality Assurance can’t be denied at any time. Much has been discussed and assessed, and the bottom line is – The Software not tested for its effectiveness can lead to major blunders and putting the client’s system into a risk. There are several reasons which depicts the importance of software functional testing and what are the major things that we need to consider while testing an application or a product. Why is Software Testing Important? Software Quality Assurance Testing determines whether an IT system is robust enough or it needs to rework before rolling out. Testing also reduces the costs by identifying the human mistakes and running errors early in the development cycle, thus helping you to rectify the issues as early as possible. By finding the issues earlier, it would be easier to correct it with less impact on the project. Below mentioned are some of the benefits of performing Software Quality Assurance testing for your product: Reduce Errors: Helps in identifying and fixing bugs at the earlier stage, thus the risk of failure can be reduced considerably. Improve User Experience: Whether the software is designed to use internally or sold to clients, it has to be tested whether it’s easy to use and easy to understand. Only by doing functional testing, you can make sure that the software designed in a way that portrays improved user experience and it’s free from bugs and errors which can be a source of frustration and inconvenience for users. Increased Sales and Happy Customers: Offering your client’s a well-designed, error free, and rigorously tested software/product means that you value them and can go extra mile to offer the best quality product on the market. This will go long way into not getting happy customers but also increase sales/leads. The benefits mentioned above will help you to enhance your testing process with the help of testing tools. On the Bottom Line,  When it comes to the final recap, the important benefit of software testing can be précised into a single term named, “Business Optimization”. As the term, ‘optimization’ encompasses all other benefits including: Happy & Satisfied Clients Customer Retention Less Costs and Saves Time in Customer Queries/Customer Support Less Costs In Fixing Issues (If There Any) Improved reputation and Brand Image Right from collecting the requirements from the clients to reducing bugs and errors, the experts from VentTraffic.com strive to provide the best end-to-end business test solutions. To know more about VentTraffic’s Functional Testing services, visit our website and get in touch with our professionals! https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/software-quality-assurance/why-is-software-testing-important-40 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/software-quality-assurance/why-is-software-testing-important-40 Thursday, 24 Aug, 2017 00:00:00 UTC If you’re running a website, you might be aware of the importance of server monitoring tool. Server monitoring tools can enhance the speed and performance of your website. Here I wish to share few facts that depict the importance of choosing the right monitoring tool, read below: - 79% of online users who have trouble with website performance say they won’t return to the site again. - 47% visitors expect a website speed page load in 2 seconds or less. - 18% of users will ignore a website if it doesn’t load in less than 5 seconds. 30% will abandon the site, if it takes more than 10 seconds to load. - 1 second delay in page loading speed can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. And what makes scary is… An ecommerce store can lose hundreds to thousands of dollars in sales in 7 hours of downtime. Here comes the importance of server monitoring. So, what is server monitoring? Server monitoring is a server that works 24X7 to check and logs your server’s functionality; when your site is down, unreachable or report an error code 404, it will send you an alert message stating the issue. This helps you to mitigate the issue faster, quicker without losing your customers and leads. Hope, now you might understand the importance to use a service which keeps an eye on the uptime and downtime of your website. So, what are the reasons to monitor your website performance? Continue reading…. Maintains the Image of Your Business: Whether you’re running a brick & mortar business or an ecommerce website, maintaining a good brand image is an important factor. Frequent server issues, downtime, and low page response time can jeopardize the reputation and brand image of your company. So, keeping an eye on server and storage management is the important feature to prevent and to stay away from these unwanted hazards and protects the image of your business. Prevent Lost Sales: As mentioned earlier, frequent downtime can cause hundreds to thousands of dollars of lost sales. For every ecommerce websites, the factors such as uptime and website performance with the page loading speed of 70+ are the utmost vital. Ensure the Best SERP’s in Search Results: Your site ranking is significantly affected by both the downtime and speed issues for your website. If your website constantly experiences frequent downtime issues, then Google will consider it as a bad signal and it will be a huge setback for your website’s ranking in SERP’s. Stay on the Loop Wherever You Are: Whether you’re on the road, home, out of station or on your daily commute, you can still keep an eye on your network via server monitoring.  Today’s server monitoring allows you to log in to a web based management platform to view real-time statistics about your network at a glance. As can be seen from the above advantages, server monitoring allows you to save time, money and relieve some pressure on your business. Do you use server monitoring before? How did help you to build a loyal customer base?  Share your experience with us! https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/network-management-service/all-you-need-to-know-about-server-monitoring-tool-39 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/network-management-service/all-you-need-to-know-about-server-monitoring-tool-39 Thursday, 17 Aug, 2017 00:00:00 UTC As 2017 nears its end, online businesses are facing more and more challenges. With growth and revenue become the high priority for all businesses, 74% of marketing professionals have focused on converting visitors into customers, while the remaining 26% prioritized increasing traffic to their website. Here are the few facts which depict the evolution of digital marketing: In 2017, TV ad spending will total $72.01 billion, or 35.8% of total media investments. Meanwhile, total digital ad spending will equal $77.37 billion, or 38.4% of total ad spending. A delay of one second in landing page response time can result in a 7% drop in conversions. Mobile apps convert 100% to 300% better than mobile websites. The cost of digital advertising is raising 5X faster and 71% quicker than the cost of TV ads. While 2017 continues to witness the developments in the realms of digital marketing, so now the question arises in our mind is, “What does 2018 hold?” To help keep you on the right track, here are the few digital marketing & Search Engine Optimization trends to look out for the upcoming year. Live Video Streaming It has been stated that “Online video will drive over 80% of all internet traffic by 2019.” The live video streaming has become more popularized with video streaming apps like Facebook Live and Instagram Live. Live streaming, the easiest way to broadcast your event live has made it much simpler for consumers to engage and interact with your brands/products/services. Social Media Campaigns Whether it’s 2017, 2018 or 2020, the only thing which never changes is “Social Media”. With more and more social media platforms springing up, users will have their attention stretched beyond limits. Digital marketers can make use of this to promote their brand by building a robust social media presence to interact, communicate and engage with customers. Mobile Friendly Websites In today’s internet world, more and more people are ditching their desktop for surfing online and stepping beyond “Mobile Devices”. It has been accounted that with more than 30% of ecommerce sales via mobile phones in 2017, the trend is expected to rise more in 2018. Integrate Cloud Platforms We all never forget the impact of Ransom ware malware attack, right? So, when it comes to deriving the solution to safeguard your data from malicious attack in the future, integrating all data into single cloud platform will be the right choice. This integration provides the marketers with a single point of view to better manage their campaigns, work flows, Google Analytics, and user functionality. Final Thoughts, The above-mentioned are the predictions for the digital marketing trends of 2018. So, what are you waiting for? Want to join the digital revolution? As the leading Digital Marketing Agency in New York, we will introduce you to technological solutions that will take your business to the next level, visit www.venttraffic.com https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/are-you-digitally-ready-to-face-2018-38 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/are-you-digitally-ready-to-face-2018-38 Saturday, 12 Aug, 2017 00:00:00 UTC The software quality assurance plays a major role in determining the success of a company. Despite advanced developments in all the aspects of technology, software design flaws are still posing a major challenge to the software industry. Software quality assurance is an act of sustaining the quality of software so that it can meet all the required standards. This process checks for the quality in each stage of the software development rather than testing after the completion. Here are some disadvantages of having a poor software quality, Delay in production If your system is experiencing a problem in the software, then your developers might spend the entire day to take necessary measures to rectify it. Thus, it can totally interrupt the whole productivity schedule of that day. Also, you may be forced to restart the work on your product. By hiring IT infrastructure service providers, you can detect such issues in its earlier phase and avoid getting your completion date pushed back even further. Your reputation gets affected A company’s reputation is very important for its increased sales drive. Remember that it is very hard to earn a good reputation in this competitive world. Once you have achieved it, your customers would expect the same quality in all your transactions. In this case, a small mistake can easily ruin your brand name. Functional testing is a part of the software quality assurance, which makes sure that your product works just as the users expect them to. Loss of confidence in employees The company staff requires a happy environment in which they can work more productively. The creation of quality software can improve their self-confidence and morale. On the contrary, if they are subjected to plenty of reworks, deadlines, and angry clients, their efficiency might deter. Unsatisfied customers The primary goal of any company is to build a substantial customer base coming back for more and providing optimistic referrals. And it heavily depends on the software quality and the provided service. By the increased usage of social media, their words reach wide, especially if it is negative. Thus, if your service is unsatisfactory you would not only be losing the existing customers but also any potential ones. Loss of revenue If software quality assurance hasn’t been your top priority yet, this is the right time to change it. Because, the expenses related to poor software quality is devastating. Fixing a software will cost you about 4-5 times more, rather than correcting it during the development phase. Globally, the average money spent for software debugging process is $312 billion each year. This clearly shows that poor quality software can bring massive losses to your company. Thus, Software quality assurance must become a critical part of your business. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/software-quality-assurance/effects-of-poor-software-quality-37 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/software-quality-assurance/effects-of-poor-software-quality-37 Monday, 08 May, 2017 00:00:00 UTC In New York, network management is essential for maintaining a successful network infrastructure. It is useful in supporting and managing the company’s WAN (Wide Area Network) and LAN (Local Area Network). By hiring a professional in IT infrastructure services, you can relieve yourself from the stress of many daunting tasks that comes with network management. Here are the some of the most common benefits in attaining the service of a professional network management company, Gaining access to experienced individuals This can be particularly advantageous to small companies with limited budgets. They may not have the required resources to maintain an in-house IT department. Other than the monetary issues, it is really difficult to hire the right people for the job as there is a high demand for IT talent all over the world. Therefore, they can ally themselves with a network management service in New York to gain the expertise of the IT professionals who are capable of handling the entire network. It is the duty of the network management service to hire and train certified IT network professionals who can face and prevent any network related problems. Regular monitoring of network By keeping your network at check routinely, you can avoid many potential problems that could ruin its efficiency. Prevention of the following issues is absolutely necessary for the smooth functioning of your network, Temporary fault If you fail to handle any network problems within an efficient response time, your system may have to face malfunctioning. Network management professionals can easily handle these issues with the help of real-time alerts and computations from remote management software. Downtime It is not pleasant to deal with network downtime as it can result in loss of money and productivity. By routinely monitoring the network, network professionals can identify the symptoms earlier and solve it before it becomes a big headache. Substandard performance All the components are interconnected and even if one of those experiences a glitch, then the whole system gets affected. Thus, the overall performance of your company can get compromised because of undetected network issues. By hiring professionals of network management in New York, you can improve the overall performance of the system. Effective operation Network management services offer upgrade implementation, security, regular survey of network status and network maintenance and monitoring. Hence, they are responsible for providing a safer, cost-effective and easier environment for you and your customers to communicate with. For instance, by monitoring the number of attached IP enabled equipments attached to your network, you can easily determine the spikes in traffics and this would help you make the adjustments, so that you can handle the traffic efficiently. Only a professional service in network management can ensure effective 24/7 access to the network, which has become a vital part of today’s business. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/network-management-service/importance-of-hiring-network-management-professionals-36 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/network-management-service/importance-of-hiring-network-management-professionals-36 Monday, 24 Apr, 2017 00:00:00 UTC Video marketing is flooding the web: it’s the most effective form of advertisement in terms of conversion rates, and video clicks comprise the vast majority of web traffic. Advertisers are constantly on the prowl for new and improved ways to make their video ad content stand out from the crowd (here are a few examples of some recent wildly successful video marketing campaigns). One form of video marketing which is still in its fledgling stages is the interactive video ad. These ads open new routes for ad and product engagement, and since interactive videos have not yet become mainstream in the online advertising world, it is a surefire way to make your video ads stand out from the millions of others on the web. Choose Your Own Adventure Ads & Viewer Empowerment We already know that video ads are more effective than image-based ads because of their emotional appeal and potential for engagement. Advertisers can take this level of engagement to the next step by elevating the viewer from perceived engagement to actual, literal engagement with the plot line of the ad. Viewers simply feel more invested in the ad (and therefore, the brand) when their decisions are directly reflected in the video. It engenders a sense of empowerment and brand loyalty. Types of Effective Interactive Ads This may sound like a complex idea to implement, but in reality, some of the interactive ads with the highest view counts are are very simple and straightforward. The most conceptually straightforward interactive ad is a plot which moves forward, and at different points in time, allows the viewer to choose between two or more options that move the ad plot in a different trajectory. These ads can be somewhat time-consuming, though, as you effectively have to script, shoot, and process the same amount of content you would need for multiple ads for use in only one. However, they are worth the effort because the same viewer will often go back to the beginning and click through different options to see a new outcome, leading to increased product exposure. Rollover Ads Arguably, image-based rollover ads are less engaging, but at the reward of being much easier to program and the potential to be based only on a series of images rather than videos. However, interactive rollover video ads are most effective, but also the most difficult to produce. According to Adweek, Taylor’s coffee chain, for example, has tested rollover ads on Facebook, with different scenes available to view depending on where you scroll your mouse on the home screen. Rollover video ads have been mostly incorporated into website landing pages. However, the format has struggled with compatibility on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, particularly due to the smaller screen size available to mobile users. Interactive Quizzes A modified form of interactive rollover ad that is becoming very popular is the type including interactive quizzes and questionnaires. These types of ads have a twofold benefit for the advertiser. First, as with any interactive ad, the viewer is more intrigued and likely to engage. Second, through the quizzes, the company has the opportunity to conduct market research and gather consumer data straight from the source. Do you think interactive ads are going to be the next big thing? Comment with any other neat examples you’ve seen of interactive ads from around the web! https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/interactivity-may-be-the-key-to-viewership-for-your-video-ads-23 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/interactivity-may-be-the-key-to-viewership-for-your-video-ads-23 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC In the current online marketing environment, the video ad is truly the leviathan of content, both in prevalence and effectiveness. Research shows that 50% of executives look for more info after seeing a product video, Youtube’s mobile video consumption is increasing at a rate of 100% per year, and 87% of all online marketers use video content. As far as conversion rates go, a landing page with a video can increase conversion by 80%, 64% of users are more likely to buy something online after seeing a video ad, and the combo of video and full page ads can increase product engagement up to 22%. However, to reap these benefits, the content of the marketing campaign has to be actually good! The internet is flooded with cheesy, mediocre ads. There are countless aspects of an effective video ad campaign, but the focus in the post is on the importance of excellent plot development in your video marketing.  All Stories can be broken down into six basic classifications In 1965, Kurt Vonnegut, the famous author of Slaughterhouse V and many other books, theorized that every story ever written was but one of a very few shared, classic shapes. This year, the University of Vermont tested this theory and ran a huge sampling of English literature through a computer program for analysis. The results showed that every story falls into one of the following categories: Rags to riches (a person becomes happier) Riches to rags (a person becomes less happy) Tragedy “Icarus”: a person rises then falls “Man in a hole: a person falls then rises “Cinderella”: rise, fall, then rise “Oedipus”: fall, rise, then fall More importantly, they also ran a data analysis to find which plot trajectories were most effective, by seeing which types landed most often on the NY Times Bestsellers List. Interestingly, the most sellable plot types were the Cinderella plot, rags to riches, and, surprisingly, Oedipus plots. Readers are most engaged by plots where a person’s position eventually improves, but also the Oedipal fake-out, where he improves but ultimately fails. So What does this have to do with video marketing? These same plot rules of engagement can be applied to online video ads! The types of plots people enjoy have been consistent over centuries of human storytelling, and the most engaging stories make the most engaging ads. This is where is might be useful to have a creative English major in your start-up. The Cinderella and rags to riches plot types are great for demonstrating how a product can solve a problem faced by the viewer. The Oedipus plot type is better saved for comedic ads: this is video advertising, not Dostoyevsky, so you still have to keep things light. Conclusion Advertising is not just getting people to buy your product. It is honing in on the human condition and using a knowledge of human knowledge to cultivate a sense of solidarity with viewers’ desires and emotional needs. If you can incorporate time-tested plot trajectories like the ones above, your advertisement plots will be more engaging and ultimately lead to increased conversion rates. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/story-development-in-video-marketing-plot-and-viewer-engagement-24 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/story-development-in-video-marketing-plot-and-viewer-engagement-24 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC We all know the days of traditional print advertising are coming to an end. Even basic image-based web ads are having trouble competing with the biggest monster out there: video marketing. Online video ads are the most effective form of advertising today, unsurprising given that the majority of web traffic these days comes in the form of video views. It used to be said that we live in an image-driven society. Now, it’s more accurate to say that we are video-driven. Recent research revealed that YouTube ads have the highest conversion rate of any online advertising medium. Why? Scientists estimate that it is because the ads are usually rich, helpful, descriptive, and engaging. It is easier to relate characters in video ads to ourselves In some senses, it seems counter-intuitive that video ads would drive so much ad traffic. It takes much more time to watch a video start to finish than to glance at and be captured by a still image, for example. However, it is much easier for us to identify with people in a video ad. For one thing, they are moving through the world and changing, like the viewer. It is easier to identify the goal of a character in a video ad and to see the problem that the product or service being advertised is solving for them. We like to see ourselves as active actors in the world, not passive or stagnating objects, which is what flat, still, images subconsciously imply. Emotional Appeal is the biggest factor Humans evolved as social creatures, and over time we learned to pay attention to one thing over all else: shifting facial expressions in other humans. A change from a smile to a grimace teaches us that we did something socially undesirable. The opposite gives us reinforcement for our behaviors and our own happiness. A change from a neutral to an aggressive expression indicates that we did something which may lead to harm being inflicted on us. It is a huge evolutionary advantage to know the effect our action has on our social surroundings, so it makes sense that we would value facial movement above all else. Here’s the problem: sure, in a still image you may be able to read the emotion of a person, but you do not see it change in response to its environment, so you are not as engaged. In a video, you can track situational emotional shifts and environmental response. Video marketing allows the viewer to have emotional engagement. Because of this, the viewer can identify with the actors, leading to ad conversion or eventually brand loyalty. Conclusion Online video marketing is the only medium that is experiencing predictable growth in conversion rates. Effective video ads have emotional appeal, leading to viewer product engagement. What else do you think makes for an effective video marketing campaign? Any favorites you think advertisers could take lessons from? Comment with your opinions below! https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/the-empire-of-video-why-video-marketing-is-dominating-conversions-in-every-market-type-25 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/the-empire-of-video-why-video-marketing-is-dominating-conversions-in-every-market-type-25 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Yesterday, as I was walking through my hometown mall, I wandered into a shoe store looking for a pair of sneakers. Meanwhile, I was on Facebook messaging my mom about our dinner plans for the evening. And in the sidebar of the site, an advertisement appeared. Not just any advertisement, but one for the very shoe store I was walking through! Creepy, right? I had never visited their site online. Was someone watching me through a security camera? My paranoia kicked in, causing me to look over my shoulder all day. Ok, not really, because I actually understand the idea of beacons, but still, weird. What are Advertising Beacons? Advertising beacons are a type of location-based, in-store advertising. They utilize Bluetooth technology, and when a store has a beacon installed, the Bluetooth is used to locate smartphones which are being used by individuals in the store. In-store beacons then communicate with the phone to send advertisements, coupons, or other media. The goal of in-store beacons is to enhance the shopping experience, but to those of us who did not grow up in the smartphone-child era (aka, most of us), it can feel a bit invasive. What’s the point? Research has shown that customers are typically averse to mobile advertising. Why, then, do retailers use this technology if the majority of people are annoyed by it? Well, there are two sides to every coin. It is also true that consumers tend to respond to advertising that is well-timed and relevant. It’s all a matter of figuring out what is relevant and what is just annoying, plain and simple. However, mobile consumers are often on their way somewhere, or are trying to quickly look something up, and they don't have time to be clicking through ads. Information-Gathering vs. User Privacy To me, the part of in-store beacons that is most invasive is the consumer information retailers get from these beacons. They use customer app data to gather statistics about how customers move through stores, their buying and browsing habits, and other data. They then use this to try to tailor later marketing decisions, on both an individual and personal level. There is always a balance to be struck between utility and privacy. It is true that, if the data being gathered has clear benefit in the consumer’s mind, and they have a demonstrable benefit, then maybe the consumer won’t mind this data mining. However, many tech and mobile users, in particular, are more and more concerned with privacy as time goes on. These kinds of mobile, location-based advertising pings sometimes only serve to exacerbate the distaste shoppers have for advertising and turn them off to the brand entirely. Overall, consumers want to feel like advertisers are on their side, trying to help them make informed decisions. Beacons’ advertising can sometimes just feel like a desperate ploy for profit. The industry seems still to have a long way to go in their attempts to integrate mobile advertising technology seamlessly in their stores. In the meantime, I still feel kind of sketched out by these beacons. What’s your opinion? Are they useful enough to be worth it? Still undecided? https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/securities/is-real-time-advertisement-really-worth-compromising-customer-trust-26 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/securities/is-real-time-advertisement-really-worth-compromising-customer-trust-26 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC In my opinion, infrastructure managers are among the least appreciated top-tier management specialists within major corporations. They are crucial to the success of failure of a business, and businesses can make substantial improvements by including them in all aspects of business planning. Our infrastructure manager is, in a lot of senses, the baseboard for our entire company. Without them, the entirety of our business operations crumbles to the ground. They make sure things run smoothly, managing essential components of operation, communications technology, and so many other things. You name it, and they’ve got it covered. Why, then, do so many large companies encourage them to stay within the realm of IT, never adding their valuable input into planning for the business’ future? Here are a few reasons your infrastructure manager should be included in your core management planning meetings. Their specialized knowledge is a crucial addition Infrastructure managers understand how information flows through the company’s systems. If you are at a loss over the root of a problem, they may offer valuable insight into some potential tech-based solutions. In your business planning meetings, they can shine a light on some ways forward which may decrease the friction of new policies and help their implementation run more smoothly. They also specialize in knowing how to keep internal and external operations of your company compatible. If you are considering new partners, a new tech initiative, or anything which could change the nature of communications within the company, the infrastructure manager is the most important person to consult in your core management team! They are the ones who know if your communications system will be able to give you the outcome you want. They keep you grounded and your plans realistic It’s no secret that core management meetings can often end with your heads in the clouds. From a business planning standpoint, it’s relatively easy to come up with theoretical ideas that sound great and will revolutionize your company. However, it sometimes doesn’t work out the way you intend, because the infrastructure of your company simply can’t handle your crazy and complex plans. Infrastructure managers can usually predict pretty well what plans are realistic in the framework of your company’s operational capabilities, and which ones will probably leave you in a budget hole with dampened spirits. However, too often their well of knowledge goes untapped because they are considered the “tech guys,” rather than valuable additions to your business planning. They have contact with employees at all levels If you are working in tech management, it is impossible not to get to know the skills and needs of your employees at different tiers of the company. This is because, in the infrastructure management realm, if something early on down the line doesn’t work out, the tech manager is the first to see it manifest explicitly in some kind of malfunction. All business activities depend on its infrastructure! Do you have any insights into why we don’t include tech managers into planning meetings? Do you think they shouldn’t be included? Comment with your opinions. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/why-your-infrastructure-manager-is-a-crucial-part-of-your-core-management-team-27 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/why-your-infrastructure-manager-is-a-crucial-part-of-your-core-management-team-27 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Nike has long been known as a company that doesn’t fear experimentation. It was one of the first to combine wearable tech with user data and has revolutionized the athletic wear industry. Now it is joining the ranks of other major industries in sharing open source company software with the tech community. This could lead to improvements in the products and other benefits of collaborative programming. Retail technology is changing at a rapid rate, and as new market technologies emerge, companies are expanding the reach of their collaborations. Retail companies such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Target have been using GitHub to share open source software and enable collaborative development for product software. Nike is the most recent of these large companies to utilize Github to post their software and open it to improvements by the public. One major development for the use of open source software projects by major companies is to help the customer-industry relationship improve. One of the most difficult challenges of being a huge company like Nike is that they lack the feeling of closeness to their customer base, and that affects their sales and public relations. However, putting their code on Github can give these companies some of the feeling of collaboration and democracy usually reserved for smaller startups. Github is the largest host of source code in the world For those of you who are unfamiliar, here’s a quick rundown. GitHub is an online platform for source code management, with the added feature of a graphical-based online interface. It is a repository of the initial source code and all the subsequent changes made to the program. This means not only that changes are collaborative, but also that people who have no affiliation with the project can download the source code and adapt it. It is useful to any company that integrates retail apps into its services. Nike has been struggling with slow growth, and this GitHub debut may serve as a way of attracting tech geniuses to employ working on the company’s numerous apps integrated into its products. If Nike’s app development improves, it could snag an even larger market share than the already huge share it holds. What exactly did Nike release on Github? Nike released three things on Github. The first is a logging library which was written in Swift (a programming language created by Apple for iOS). The second is a distributed tracing solution written for Java (gathers timing data). The last is a framework for parsing JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). These will all allow established or new programmers to experiment with their code and make improvements, hopefully attracting tech talent to Nike’s development team. Bravely, they also released the code for their home website. These releases demonstrate a broader trend in the retail world of encouraging collaboration with the tech world and combining forces to try to create the perfect product. Do you think the future of retail will really rely on mobile apps like some say? Or did Nike make a mistake using open source code and exposing its ideas to competitors? https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/nike-steps-up-its-game-with-new-open-source-software-28 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/nike-steps-up-its-game-with-new-open-source-software-28 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC There are times when we are all too lazy to actually go out shopping- that’s why online retail is so huge. But there are countless downfalls to online shopping to go along with its advantages. You can’t actually see and feel the product, for one. It may not be what you thought, too big or for the wrong purpose. Additionally, especially if it's a tech product, you may not even be able to figure out how to use it. The interesting trend of online shopping “concierge” services is trying to ease some of these problems using new retail technology. It’s crazy how technologically complex products we can buy online these days. Your grandma may have trouble figuring out your iPhone, but that high-end camcorder or exercise turbo bike you purchased may not end up being such a breeze either. There is an interesting new trend currently budding in online retail of offering in-home “concierge” services to online shoppers. These services deliver products bought over online platforms directly to consumers’ homes. One example is Enjoy.com, in the San Francisco Bay and New York areas, founded by Apple’s former retail head Ron Johnson. Tech Products bought over the site are hand delivered, set up, and explained via a tutorial. Complicated products such as TVs and computers are installed by the company, and customers are shown how to use them. Who is the intended audience for online concierge services? One would think that this sort of thing would appear mostly to the older generation, who tend to be less experienced with today’s current challenging technology. However, the primary users tend to be younger, working adults who want to be in touch and enjoy the latest gadgets and toys, but don’t have time to spend hours googling setup instructions. Many also use these services to buy a complicated tech product and then increase their technological know-how. These services are currently on the rise in industries besides tech Robin Chan, co-founder of Uber, is developing a concierge service called Operator. This start-up will combine the needs of an “on-demand” economy with the prevalence of mobile messaging. The so-called “request network” will provide online shoppers with an expert who has expert experience in complicated products, who can search for the right product both on- and off-line. The customer messages the switchboard with a general request, such as “I need to find a stuffed lion for a child’s bedroom”, and Operator responds with a recommendation, price, and where it can be bought. This is a simple example, but it is aimed mostly at buyers of complicated products with lots of options or specifications. One could ask Operator the best buying option for a laptop for your child’s college career, for example, and receive an expert response within your price range. Looking to The Future of Online Shopping It is very much possible that this type of “concierge” service, given how convenience is emphasized in today’s economy, could become extremely popular. It is easy to imagine an open market for this in nearly any area, such as clothes shopping with examples brought into the home, catering, web development, and many others. Do you think online concierge services could be the next big thing? Could they possibly make complex products available to a wider audience? https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/bringing-online-shopping-home-innovative-concierge-shopping-services-29 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/bringing-online-shopping-home-innovative-concierge-shopping-services-29 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Every advertiser knows about the importance of advertising via social media. It is drilled into our heads on every economic news site. Something that is getting less attention, though, it the surge of actual commerce happening through social media. One of the most interesting commerce trends right now is the rise in one-step “buy” buttons directly placed on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Consumers have been shown to have mixed views on these buttons, but in some cases, they have been very effective marketing tools. Some Think Social Commerce Isn’t Living Up to Its Potential The “Buy” button which has been appearing on social media sites, according to some, is not very effective because of customer attitudes towards social marketing. From some perspectives, E-commerce consumers simply aren’t used to making their online purchases this way. Selling directly to customers on social media is not exactly possible on a large scale at the current moment because its novelty detracts from its appeal. Most people are most comfortable going to tried-and-true e-commerce sites like Amazon and EBay, rather trying to purchase something via Facebook, for example. Turning Social Interaction Into Commerce Just Doesn’t Feel Right To many people, sites like Facebook feel like talking to someone in person. If a salesperson were to jump into your conversation on the sidewalk and try to sell you something you were talking about, it would simply feel weird. To many, especially young people, social media platforms are a somewhat sacred space for communication. If a ploy to “click here to buy” is wedged between your sister’s wedding photos and happy birthday posts to a friend, it feels like the wrong place, wrong time. As a species, we are evolved to put our social interactions before other things, especially things we don’t necessarily think are relevant to our lives personally. On the Other Hand, Image-based Platforms have been more successful in the realm of “buy” buttons Sites which are based more on images than on words and messaging have had more success with direct buy buttons and social advertising. For example, Pinterest’s “buyable” button has been perceived more positively, perhaps because the social media site’s structure lends itself more to being an advertising medium. This may be because many users’ pages are already centered on material objects of desire. Linking a picture of an object directly to an option to buy is more effective when the site already traffics heavily in images of say, jewelry or home decor. The future effectiveness of buy buttons may simply be a case study in exposure. The tiny sliver of e-commerce sales that happen on social platforms may grow over the years as people become more aware of it as a possibility. Additionally, more products need to be made available via these platforms, because especially in comparison to huge e-commerce competitors like Amazon and Ebay, social shopping sites have a very small selection. Do you think social commerce is on the rise, or about to fizzle out? Would you buy directly from a social media site if it had what you wanted? Comment with your opinions below. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/like-it-buy-it-social-medias-ongoing-conversion-to-retail-platform-30 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/like-it-buy-it-social-medias-ongoing-conversion-to-retail-platform-30 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Except for groceries, if you’re like the average American, you do at least half of your shopping online. It’s pretty likely that most of your friends do too. As social media sites grow and need money for their sites’ upkeep, and retail companies struggle to find niche audiences for their products, the love affair between retail and social media is inevitable. We see our social media profiles as reflections of ourselves; through them, we express our interests and desires. What better place for retail to figure out who and where their niche audiences are? In the meantime, this partnership means that online shopping is becoming, well, more social. Here are some of the ways that retail companies are using social media retail technology to make the online shopping experience more collaborative. Customers want the feeling of in-person shopping, but at home. Humans are social creatures, first and foremost. Retail has always been driven by people’s disposition to go shopping together- as a social activity. So it makes sense that online shopping, traditionally a solo experience, is turning into a more collaborative shopping experience. There are a few things online retailers do to make online shopping feel more like the brick-and-mortar experience. Mimicking the physical shopping process In order to feel like we are shopping in an actual store, online retailers enable customers to use a cart to place items in and look at later to make a decision. Research shows that another thing people tend to do when shopping is asking their close friends on their opinions. This might be why e-commerce sites such as Amazon have incorporated buttons below products that allow the buyer to share to Facebook and other social media sites. This lets the buyer shop collaboratively, by sharing product info with friends to find out their opinions. The development of collaborative e-commerce has been all about finding ways to allow the user to seek recommendation or validation seamlessly, without resorting to methods not intended for e-commerce like texting or messaging. Also, e-commerce developers are seeking ways to allow for collaboration on one screen, in real time. This would be exceedingly useful in circumstances such as booking joint travel lodging and airplane tickets, as these prices fluctuate so much over time. How could online retailers benefit from the rise of collaborative online shopping? As with any retail technology, retailers have to weigh the pros and cons before choosing strategies for their own company. Since social shopping online aligns so well with our intrinsic human nature, there is almost guaranteed benefit to adopting strategies that allow for social shopping. In addition, online retailers benefit from increased traffic, both in page views and page time. Plus, by making online shopping less lonely or alienating, collaborative shopping leads to a more rewarding buying experience, resulting in higher levels of brand engagement and perception. Social shopping can also be used as a gateway into gathering more consumer information on the incentives behind buyer choices, in order to better target audiences and personalize products. Conclusion Allowing for social collaboration in the world of online shopping directly from the retailer, it is possible to come closer to imitating the experience of shopping in an actual store. There are more opportunities for the retailer to gather information, upsell, and cater to individual desires. What do you think about the rise of collaborative shopping? Should retailers push this or encourage shoppers to keep flying solo? https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/bringing-the-human-touch-to-e-commerce-the-future-of-collaborative-online-shopping-31 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/bringing-the-human-touch-to-e-commerce-the-future-of-collaborative-online-shopping-31 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC In 2014, an extensive data breach occurred, the biggest known in history. Hold Security were able to ascertain that it was a Russian cyber gang involved in the theft of 500 million email addresses and 1.2 billion username and password combinations.   Most Content Management Systems (CMSes) have built in security attributes. It is still important, when setting up a website, to be aware of the various security downfalls. You can take steps yourself to secure your site. It is important that we all do our part in counteracting this contemporary security breach. Who Is the Target? While your data is on the World Wide Web, you are at risk of being targeted. It could be either a direct or indirect hit. Indirectly it could occur through goods or service providers, employers or friends and family. The Russian cyber gang did not limit their activities to large companies. Every site visited by their victims was also targeted. The scam involved all worldwide industries as well as a large number of small and personal websites. Some of the Precautions You Need to Take to Secure Your Site. Software It is essential that software is kept up to date. This concerns the server operating system and software such as a forum. You should not hesitate to use security patches to deter would-be hackers. SQL Injection A hacker will attempt to place a foreign code into your query. This will alter tables, get information and wipe out data. It is essential to always use parameterized queries which are a feature of most web languages. Cross Site Scripting Cross-site scripting occurs when a hacker uses JavaScript or other codes to run malevolent code for visitors. It is important to continually check the submitted data and encrypt or eliminate any HTML. Error Messaging. You should be mindful when applying error messages. You should limit the message to generic terms such as ‘incorrect password or username’.  It is important that the error message does not give away the fact that one of the fields are correct. Server Side Validation/ Form Validation It is essential to validate the browser and server side.  The browser is able to pick up simple failures like compulsory fields that are empty and text in a numbers only field.  Failure to do this allows the hacker to insert malicious code or cause unwanted results on the site. Passwords It is important to use strong passwords to your server and admin area.  It is also important to encourage visitors to use safe password practices to protect their accounts.  Passwords should be stored with scrambled values and salting to increase security. When you believe you have done everything you can it is time to test the site for security using a free tool.  Netsparker, one of the free tools, promises to provide: Advanced Scanning. Proof Based Scanning. Flexibility Reporting Ease of Use. The hacker must acknowledge ultimate responsibility for web page breaches.  However, all of us, are accomplices, when we refuse to do nothing.  When setting up a website, it is essential to be aware of the risks and the procedures to secure your site.  Using free security software from well-known companies is also recommended.  What happened in 2014 may soon be a thing of the past. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/website-security-how-to-secure-your-site-32 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/website-security-how-to-secure-your-site-32 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Advertising your business on a website in cyberspace is definitely the way to succeed.  Your website will reach prospective clients globally.  However, there are risks which you should be aware of.  Cyber crime is prevalent, and website breaches of security happen on a daily basis. The perpetrators are motivated by various goals. When considering who needs to take responsibility for website security, the answer is not always clear as we shall discover.   What Are the Goals The corruption or larceny of private or sensitive data. Changing the website code in order to alter what people observe. Denial of Service (DoS) assaults that result in services becoming inaccessible. The perpetrator may want to gain specific information, attack a bigger target or change a popular website.  Whatever the reason, the effects will be catastrophic. Valuable Data and Information. If you possess delicate or financial information, your website will appeal to hackers.  It can be used for financial profit.  Acquiring personal information will also be useful to steal an identity or spread malice. Industrial and Political Espionage. Database information may be useful to rival companies or governments.  Appropriated data or passwords and usernames could be useful to hackers.  These would give access to customer accounts, confidential files, and emails.  US intelligence officers have unearthed information about industrial espionage and the Chinese Government.  Part of its economic policy is stealing company secrets.  The goal is to become the world’s largest economy by leapfrogging over US and other international competitors. An Unsafe Website. Web Application Vulnerability Scanners peruse websites for vulnerable security risks that enable attacks like XSS (cross-site scripting). SQL Injection. Command Execution. Directory Traversal. Insecure Server Configuration. If your site has susceptibilities, it is almost certain they will be recognized and exploited by hackers. There will be security breaches on your website. The Springboard to Larger Gains. You might feel safe as a small company in the market.  However, if your site has vulnerabilities, hackers will target it.  Their goal will be to reach the larger organization to which you are a supplier. It would be possible for a hacker to acquire personal information.  This could be used to produce an email targeting someone in the larger organization (social engineering).  Your website could also be exploited to aid the installation of malware on a targeted company’s computer. Who is Responsible for a Breach of Website Security?  Microsoft critiques have always looked for ways to sue the software giant over security flaws in its products (1).  A recent survey questioned respondents over whom they considered were responsible for breaches.  The following are the results: 30% - perpetrators, hackers. 25% - developers. 22% - users. 14% - deploying organization. 8% - service providers. It is easy to shift the blame to someone else.  If someone enters your house illegally, the perpetrator will be considered guilty.  However, if you leave the back door open when you leave the premises, you will have to take some of the blame. There are ways of securing your website, and you should take advantage of them.  Help to reduce website security breaches. https://www.searchsecurity.techtarget.com/security-liability-whose-to-blame-for-a-data-security-breach  (1) https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+security+breach+on+websites+youtube&qpvt https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/website-security-what-are-the-risks-33 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/website-security-what-are-the-risks-33 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Every business owner should be aware of negative SEO and the threat it poses to their brand. It needs to be reinforced that negative SEO is a real threat, and the best way to deal with it is prevention. Let's take a look at what negative SEO is and some preventative steps to secure your website and ensure your business is protected. What is Negative SEO? Negative SEO is when your search engine rankings are sabotaged through the use of unethical techniques. There is a wide range of methods that can be used to target your website, drive your rankings down and destroy your brand online. Here's a list of some of the more common methods (1): Building a large number of bad links to your website (e.g. adult and gambling sites) Malware and hacking attempts (adds spam content, modifies files, blocks Google) Copying your web content and reposting it repeatedly Removing your site's best backlinks Ruining your site's reputation using fake profiles and accounts Dealing With Negative SEO In 2012, Google launched their Disavow Tool to combat some of the unethical techniques mentioned above. It should be noted though that it can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a month for the fix to work. It's no surprise then that the best way to secure your website and protect your SEO rankings is to focus on prevention. Let's take a look at some of the key preventative steps to dealing with negative SEO. Google Webmaster Tools Email Alerts Using this webmaster tool means Google will send you an email alert when your website is under attack. Email alerts can be related to penalties, malware or if you fail to properly index your pages. Monitor Your Backlinks One of the most popular negative SEO technique involves building bad links to your website. It's important for SEO professionals to keep track of who is linking or redirecting to their site. A great resource for dealing with this kind of threat can be found at monitorbacklinks.com. Instead of manually checking your backlinks, all the required information will be sent directly to your inbox. Website Security Is Key          Ensure your website is protected from malware and hacking attempts. Here a few ways to secure your website: Backup your database and files regularly Make sure you are using a strong password Install antivirus software to ensure uploaded files are malware free Watch Out For Duplicate Content Another common technique to sabotage your rankings is to post duplicate versions of your content throughout the web. Duplicated content will lead to penalties, and your search engine rankings will drop. Free tools available online such as Copyscape allow you to search for copied content. Avoid Making Online Enemies The web is full of potential enemies. Many attackers are simply looking for fun, while others might be out for revenge. Perhaps the most likely culprit will be your online competitors. Either way, be nice and don't give anyone an added reason to target your website or business. Focus On Prevention and Quality Links The preventative steps above can help you deal with negative SEO and increase your website security. Remember, prevention is the key. Another useful thing to bear in mind is that high-quality links on your site make any negative SEO attacker's job much more difficult (2). S. What are your experiences with negative SEO and do you have any other preventative steps to deal with the problem? We'd love to hear any thoughts or questions you might have. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/negative-seo-and-website-security-34 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/negative-seo-and-website-security-34 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC The vast majority of large successful businesses have long since switched from HTTP to HTTPS. In today's marketplace, most business owners and SEO experts understand the benefits of implementing HTTPS. A few important questions remain, however: how important exactly is it to make the switch, and what are the implications for SEO rankings and website security? SEO and HTTPS While some SEO professionals are all-knowing gurus, not all professionals are comfortable with the nitty-gritty technical details. For the technical experts, the benefits of implementing HTTPS is likely something with which they are already familiar, but for others, it can be a bit intimidating. HTTPS:// is not exactly simple. The good news, however, is that you don't need to understand the full depth of what's going on in order to increase the security of your website. The move to HTTPS HTTPS, or HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure, is a protocol that increases the level of security for communication over a computer network. In 2014, Google made the announcement that using HTTPS would be a factor in SEO rankings. While the boost to SEO rankings is actually quite small, impacting around 1% of searches globally, this is likely to increase in the future. As a result, a large number of SEO professionals made the switch and implemented HTTPS. HTTPS and Securing Your Website On top of the small boost to SEO rankings, using HTTPS increases the security of your website in a variety of ways. The most important benefit comes when users have to submit data such as personal information, particularly credit card details. Encryption: if data is intercepted, it cannot be accessed without an encryption key Data integrity: transmitted data cannot be corrupted Authentication: an SSL certificate ensures that the data is being sent to you and not a scammer (1) To Switch Or Not To Switch There are obvious benefits to implementing HTTPS: A higher level of website security (particularly for user's personal information) A minor boost to SEO rankings (that may grow in the coming years) A cool lock symbol next to your web address :) Despite these benefits, not every website desperately needs to make the switch. Questions To Ask Before Making the Switch To determine how important HTTPS is for your website, ask yourself two simple questions: How much traffic does your website get? What kind of information are your users submitting? If your website does not receive much traffic, then the boost to SEO rankings might not actually be worth the investment. If you have a popular site with many visitors, a small boost could make a huge difference. When the majority of personal information being submitted is limited to email addresses, such as on a blog, increasing the security of your website might not be your number one priority. If credit card details and other sensitive information is being submitted, then the benefits of implementing HTTPS are huge. HTTPS Does NOT Prevent All Types Of Attacks It's important to bear in mind that making the switch to HTTPS does not mean your site is fully protected. There are a variety of ways your site could still be compromised, including DDOS attacks, brute force attacks, website server or network hacks and software or SSL vulnerabilities (2). P.S. We'd love to hear your thoughts or questions on the importance of using HTTPS and how it affects SEO and website security. Don't be shy. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/https-implications-for-securing-your-website-35 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/https-implications-for-securing-your-website-35 Thursday, 28 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC By 2019, advertising researchers predict that over 80% of all web traffic will be in video views. This means that anyone with a brain who is not already developing a major video ad campaign for their business, big or small, had better get on the wagon ASAP. However, this isn’t really news to anyone, and we can see the prevalence of video on the internet in every site we visit, particularly in the advertising realm. The unfortunate truth, though, is that there is a lot of bogus video ad content out there. There are two sides to every coin: while a great video ad can engender brand loyalty and boost sales, a lame video marketing campaign can often do more harm than simple image based ads. You have wasted the viewer’s time, and also likely made your business seem phony or inexperienced due to a poor video ad. This is why it is crucial to seek out the skills of true artists for your video marketing campaign. Compelling versus Boring Video Ads Take a moment to think up some of your favorite online videos. Depending on what type of a person you are, the video was probably either very funny or very aesthetically pleasing, or both. No matter how great you are in the marketing world, the “content is king” rule applies more to video marketing than any other field. You have to have a great plot and great visuals. Although in my mind, the days of the basic video ads stuffed with celeb testimonials and 1-800 numbers (cough-Proactiv-) should be confined to the garbage bin, the internet is still plastered with these types of ads! As a viewer, this is unfortunate, but as a video marketer, this is actually gold. It means you have an even greater chance of making your ad stand out and shine compared to the white bread ads all over the web. A video artist’s touch The surge of video ads in the last few years is great news for creative professionals everywhere. Many incredibly talented traditional or experimental video artists have trouble finding work in today’s world, where most content ends up free on the internet. They end up “selling out,” and wasting their creative potential formatting cut-and-paste commission ads. If, as an advertiser, you find a talented artist and give them free reign over the content (ok, maybe with a little guidance), they will almost certainly work passionately and well, because they are able to put true artistry into the video. Artists and Scientists Combine Forces in the World of Video Marketing The successful video ad goes beyond artistic flourish, though. It is important to make sure the most up-to-date market research from your sector is incorporated into the ad. Everything from what colors appear in the ad to the video’s length to the age of the actors will play a role in the ad’s conversion rate, depending on the audience. The combination of scientifically-backed data and impressive execution can make your company stand out from the rest. And if you are a small start-up, don’t worry. There are enough talented “starving artists” out there willing to produce great work for relatively low rates. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/blending-art-and-science-opens-space-for-the-development-of-creative-professionals-22 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/blending-art-and-science-opens-space-for-the-development-of-creative-professionals-22 Wednesday, 27 Jul, 2016 00:00:00 UTC Is Your Branding Working? Your company needs successful branding if you’re going to have any longevity in your business. That makes business branding one of the chief concepts you should examine. Now, for those not familiar with the idea, branding your company is merely building an identity for your business with buyers and potential customers. Therefore successful branding will create loyal customers while bringing existing customer relationships to a higher level. The Importance of Branding Why is this important? Simply put, buyers and returning customers are the keys to profitability and longevity, so you must have successful branding. That’s why you should make sure your branding is working. And how do you achieve that exactly? Start by having a solid plan to brand your business. Below are a few suggestions to consider: 1. Provide Consistent Quality – Everything from customer service to the products and services themselves need to always have the same high quality to help establish successful branding. 2. Create Your Own Look and Feel – In other words give your business its own personality. You’re building an identity for your business, so don't copy others. 3. Deliver All That You Promise – No one likes empty promises, in life or in business, so say what you mean and mean what you say. For example, if you have no intention of honoring a 100% money back guarantee, don't offer it. If you want successful branding, then give your buyers honesty. 4. Put the Customer First – Everything you do – from writing your web site promotional copy to speaking directly to your customers – should focus on what you can do for them. Three Tests For Successful Branding First, keep track of your customer records and see if they are returning. If they’re not, look closely at the four points above to see if you’re falling short somewhere. Second, compare yourself to your successful competition. How are you stacking up? Again, you don’t want to copy others, but you should make sure you’re providing those fundamentals for successful branding Third, and possibly the easiest way to find out if you’ve got successful branding, is to ask. Have your customers fill out a short questionnaire about their experience, touching on the four points mentioned above. If you have trouble getting feedback, offer them a discount on their next order for taking the survey. If you follow these steps you’ll start to get a picture of whether or not you’ve got a successful branding campaign going. If you do, that’s wonderful. And if not, at least you’ll learn the areas where you need improvement for a successful branding plan. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/is-your-branding-working-7 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/is-your-branding-working-7 Tuesday, 25 Aug, 2015 00:00:00 UTC Why is Search Engine Marketing Effective? Do you know the methods of SEM and why they’re so important? The short answer is any promotion you do online equals more clients and greater sales for your business. A 2007 study conducted by Arbitron and Edison Media Research revealed a startling statistic: 33% of U.S. consumers placed the Internet as the second most important form of media they use next to television, which ranked 36%. That means without having an effective online marketing plan you’re losing sales. SEM is effective because you can create buyer awareness for little or no cost. Plus, the methods of SEM can be done by every business – large or small – with great results. Learning More About The Methods of SEM Think about it…there’s a whole generation of buyers who never experienced life without the Internet. What’s more, there are people today online who watched Elvis live on the Ed Sullivan Show. All these age groups are buyers you can reach thanks to various forms of SEM because they all use search engines. But let’s focus on one of the most popular methods of SEM…SEO. The King of SEM Methods – SEO For starters, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are two separate entities. An easy way to remember this is to realize SEO is only one of many methods of SEM. By using what’s called ‘keywords’ and ‘keyphrases,’ content creators focus on words that people might put into a search engine when searching for their products or services. SEO can be worked into several areas of a site including: • Web copy• Metatags and descriptions• Keyworded Web Images• SEO keyword articles (like this one) The best part of all is that SEO is just one of the methods of SEM that get people to your site so they’ll do business with you…and that’s the entire point of having an online presence. Other Methods of SEM Again, SEO is only one area. There are also other methods of SEM that are quite effective. They can include things like: • Press Releases• Banner Ads• Submitting to Search Engines• Linking to other sites• PPC (Pay-per-click) campaigns In the end it doesn’t matter which methods of SEM you choose. It’s only important to remember that, as with any type of marketing plan, off or online, you need more than a single method to see solid results. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/why-is-search-engine-marketing-effective-8 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/why-is-search-engine-marketing-effective-8 Tuesday, 25 Aug, 2015 00:00:00 UTC What Is True Organic Search? In simple terms, true organic search is just a new phrase for the old concept of using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so people notice you. True organic search means using content and keyword relevancy rather than paid ranking to appear at the top of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). That means when you practice true organic search methods, you're taking advantage of a crawler-based search where results on indexing pages is based on your use of SEO and not advertising. Why Use True Organic Search Methods? True organic search is sometimes called 'pure' or 'natural search' because it's old-fashioned SEO that gets you to the top of the SERPs heap. If you rank high in search engines using this method, people usually trust your site more than sponsored links. So although paid ads can play an important role in your marketing plan true organic search results often have greater click-through rates. There are two other key benefits when it comes to true organic search. 1. Branding – Making sure your company is in the top search results 'on its own' gives buyers the impression that your company is an industry leader. 2. Cost – True organic search methods can be free (like listing your site at Google) or low cost if you hire SEO professionals for web copy or SEO web articles. Although some true organic search methods do cost money they can more affordable than paid advertising or PPC (Pay-Per-Click) programs. However, it should be noted that there are some downfalls when it comes to the true organic search. What True Organic Search Can't Do If there's a ying, there's a yang. What that means is, although there are sound benefits to true organic search, it also has its shortcomings. • True Organic Search Requires Time – Creating content and finding the proper keyword relevancy doesn't happen overnight. What's more it requires tweaking your page content and paying attention to statistics like the number and type of links coming to your page and whether it results in sales. • Top Rankings Are Never Automatic – Don't make the mistake that many companies make by believing a few SEO pages once a year gets you to the top and keeps you there. True organic search requires time, patience and diligence. When it comes to true organic search just remember this…it's only one facet of SEM (search engine marketing). In order for any business to be successful you need more than one approach to winning customers. That means although true organic search can benefit you, it's not the only way to greater traffic and sales. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/what-is-true-organic-search-10 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/social-media-marketing/what-is-true-organic-search-10 Tuesday, 25 Aug, 2015 00:00:00 UTC Social media started its journey as an organic marketing tool to help individuals and businesses to build network and find engaging content. Over a few years, paid or sponsored content has become an indispensable part of most of social media marketing strategies, and businesses are spending good amount of money to build audiences here. When we talk about paid social media marketing, Facebook ads are the first that hit our mind. It is the most popular social network, hence could be an ideal place to promote products and Get traffic. Twitter also offers a variety of paid marketing options to get engagement. You need to buy Twitter tweets and followers to build credibility and fascinate potential customers.StumbleUpon could be the biggest source of traffic for you in case you want to promote your blogs, and generate both paid and organic traffic. LinkedIn Advertising has been a part of paid social media marketing, but it is more classified than social. It contributes in promoting any business online, in its own way for good reason. Following are three prominent points on which LinkedIn is different from rest paid social media marketing platforms: #It’s Not Really Paid Social Technically, LinkedIn falls under social media category, but it is very distinct from consumer-facing social media sites. The site offers two types of ad unites- first one is right-rail text ads, and another one is- sponsored updates. The right-rail text ads absolutely lack social elements, whereas sponsored updates are more socially-focused.  However, all sociality will be limited to your LinkedIn Company page. Advertisers can ‘like, comment or share your sponsored update. In Nutshell, you will get limited chance to interact with your audience, because: You simply have to delete the comments you don’t want to appear on an update. No moderation. Any potential customer who has asked any questions is not notified when you respond back to them. # There Is no Real Display Ads You will be surprised when you are posting display ads on LinkedIn, and you hear given below questions: Does Anyone Even Tap on Banner Ads? Do you enjoy polluting the web? Do you have a soul? Although, this feature is helpful for display marketers as it enables them to do more sophisticated targeting and segmentation, but you have to observe behavior before you classify any user as a part of your audience. It is very reactive, so be careful. # A Justifiable Hybrid According to consultant Hutch Cartpenter research, over 72% of the Fortune 1000 are B2B organizations. It is still very difficult to reach them as there are very less places where you find aggregated business data in a comprehensive way. LinkedIn, undoubtedly appears to have the best business data, and hence, crowned as the best ‘B2B advertising player’. Is LinkedIn really worth our efforts? Well, LinkedIn has its own learning curve, but it is really worth learning. Here is why it is worth promoting your business on this social media site: # Visitors TO Linkedinis Business Minded People visit LinkedIn not to kill time, but to promote business. You may get traffic from a single domain, but you are getting you are getting their attention at  the very best time. LinkedIn has recently acquired Bizo, the B2B powerhouse ad network. Although, plans are not revealed yet, but you will definitely be able to target specific business professionals soon. # Unlimited Traffic The social media site receives huge volume of traffic. Even with display-level CTRs, it will take a fortune to reach the site traffic fully. # More Qualified Traffic  When it comes to paid social searches, there are very limited ways to qualify traffic, but with LinkedIn, you can as your search will be based on business characteristics. So, you will be able to show your ads to only those who absolutely fit your target audience. Bottom Line Linked is certainly a different beast in the Pay-Per-Click Advertising Industry. If your marketing is B2B-focused, then there is no better platform then this to reach your target audience. You can choose not to invest in your social media marketing, but remember one thing, most organic social media posts are not directly selling. Investing in paid marketing not only help you grab attention for your product, but also help you to stand out the cluttered social media newsfeed, which indeed helps in branding.  Among all social media sites, LinkedIn has emerged as a strong source for B2B marketing, and business that are targeting other business as a customer could derive substantial results through LinkedIn marketing. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/what-differentiates-linkedIn-advertising-from-other-paid-social-media-marketing-5 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/digital-marketing/what-differentiates-linkedIn-advertising-from-other-paid-social-media-marketing-5 Friday, 19 Dec, 2014 00:00:00 UTC There was a time, when websites were only watched over the computer screens, that too with a few combinations of resolutions. And then, came the time when there are different types of devices, using different screen sizes and different combinations of resolutions. This requirement gave birth to the concept of having responsive designs, the designs that are stretched or shrinked to fit in various screen sizes. In the current age, having a non responsive web site is considered as amateur work. This means, that the web site has to be responsive and should respond differently to different screen sizes.Nowadays, with the increasing mobile traffic, the majority of traffic on ecommerce sites is coming from the mobile devices. Google, in its mobile design strategy has recommended responsive design as a best strategy. Irrespective of the content of your website, news, shopping cart, company information, services description etc., the content should be served properly to mobile screens.In 2010, responsive design emerged as an alternative for the business houses struggling to show their web content across the devices with different screen sizes. However, there are a lot of business houses who are unaware of the benefits of a responsive web designs.A website with a responsive design could serve all available devices having different screen sizes and resolutions. A website could be called responsive, if it changes its layout dynamically with the change in screen size or resolution. The sizes of images, grids and other page elements changes as per the size of the screen. This could be tested on desktop browsers by resizing the browser area and the content will fit the changed width.Currently, clients are aware of the trend of responsive sites and they request for this to the web designers. When people check the visitor statistics and they got to know the number of visitors from the mobile phones, they ensure that their website is tested on every screen size. The percentage of people accessing websites on mobile devices is growing with the growth of cellphone ownership.Also, responsive websites save the effort of developing content for different screen sizes. Developers only have a single set of code to work upon. Although, it takes more time in the beginning, but eventually it is worth an effort. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/website-designs/importance-of-responsive-design-1 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/website-designs/importance-of-responsive-design-1 Tuesday, 04 Nov, 2014 00:00:00 UTC A website serves as a means / source of communication with the target audience. It provides a platform where the businesses can interact with their prospects and customers. Nowadays, most of the businesses have web presence i.e. almost all businesses have their websites. Even if they have the company information on their website, that also needs to be safe guarded and protected against any compromise. Nobody wants their website to have any unwanted information put in by some hacker who managed to hack their company website. The need to have website security has to viewed from two perspectives. First perspective is of the website owner who wants his data and information safe and secure. The other perspective is of the users who access the website who would not want any malicious files to enter into their computer as they open any website. The entire information related to a website is stored on web server. There may be more than one websites hosted on the webserver. When we discuss website security, we are also talking about the security of the web server on which the web site is hosted. The people who are accessing web server for various reasons, should have access on a "need to know" basis. The policies for the web server should be able to identify unauthorised access and grant the defined access to users as per the permissions set for every user. Also, the security levels of the website are defined on the web server on the basis of the content that a web site carries. If your website carries some content like credit card data or users'' identity information, the required security levels would be relatively higher than the security levels for a website that has company services explained. Therefore, the relevant security levels are crucial to the business in order to have the security of the web server and websites. To ensure website security, there is a need to have regular web site security audits. The security audits can identify the probable threats and weaknesses, so that the security updates could be initiated. It is important to discover any vulnerability, before it is exploited by the hackers. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/database-security/website-and-web-application-security-2 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/database-security/website-and-web-application-security-2 Tuesday, 04 Nov, 2014 00:00:00 UTC Marketing over any digital media like websites, emails, social networking sites, banner advertisements, search engines, blogs, news sites comes under digital marketing. The horizon of digital marketing is widening ever since it started evolving. However, in the very beginning of the 21st century, a lot of professionalism came in digital marketing. As a result people started looking at it as an effective tool to establish a consistent relation with the customer.Digital marketing is a powerful mode of marketing and its concepts are deep and relevant to the contemporary requirements of the businesses. This term has not only grown popular but it also has become the most common term in some countries.Out of a wide horizon of digital marketing, one needs to study building of the brand, measuring and analysing the strategies being followed, optimizing the content and modeling the business accordingly.Brand and Media StrategyIn the process of building the brand, the business requires construction of the best digital content, so that the brand gets an opportunity to tell its story.The way a brand is represented in digital media, is completely different from any non-digital media. In digital world, the content gets life with the usage of visuals i.e. diagrams and videos. These things add value to the content and make it easier to understand.While making the brand and media strategy, the business needs to identify the target audience, platform (facebook, twitter etc.), goals (short term and long term), budget, nature of content and the way the content can engage the audience.The business will have to understand the expectations of the target audience and foresee their requirements, so that any wastage of the marketing effort could be avoided.Measurement and AnalyticsIt is critical to measure and analyse the impact of digital content. A successful digital content is always well thought of and structured to make it more relevant to the situation. However, lack of planning and relevancy is what differentiates a non impactful content from the successful content.The measurement process starts with the definition of strategic business goals and identification of the relevant parameters for measurement of the work.After strategic business goals are defined, tactical and to-the-point goals for every strategic business goal are identified. On the basis of tactical business goals, the key performance indicators (KPIs) are to be derived.For the purpose of analysis, the business needs to identify the clusters of audience on the basis of their behaviours, backgrounds etc. to understand the reasons of success or failure of the marketing effort. https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/ecommerce-solutions/digital-marketing-strategy-4 https://www.venttraffic.com/blog/ecommerce-solutions/digital-marketing-strategy-4 Monday, 18 Aug, 2014 00:00:00 UTC