How To Get The Best Out Of Your Web Development Team

The following blog post How To Get The Best Out Of Your Web Development Team is available on: Canada West Internet Marketing

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While many people believe that being a leader requires the right knowledge and skills to successfully run the business, it’s much more than that. Being a leader of a smaller or bigger web-development team means creating teamwork culture where productivity and efficiency thrive with the ultimate aim to deliver the best possible results. However, running a team isn’t a walk in the park. As a manager, you need to be able to create a working atmosphere where workers will be able to reach their full potential and inspire others to give their best to contribute and work towards the same goal. Despite giving their best to produce positive results, teams still fail to keep up with the pace of the modern digital world and show their true potential.

So, what can you do to increase your team’s productivity?

Give your team a real insight into business

Web developers are mostly focused on writing code and building a software and aren’t so much involved in decision-making processes in the field of marketing, business development and building a customer base. To make sure that your developers have their say, organize regular meetings where your employees could talk openly about the lessons they have learned over the past month or a week, and let them determine their plans and responsibilities for the following period.

Also, this will help your employees identify their professional road and share any ideas that could contribute to the overall success of the project. By sharing their experiences and thoughts, they will become more familiar with all critical stages of the project development, and they will have a clear insight into how their work impacts the business success.

Organize team building activities

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Besides having the right qualifications and the knowledge to perform their tasks, employees should be a culture fit. Creating a good working atmosphere heavily depends on the social interaction and mutual support between team members. One of the ways you can nurture the relationships between team members is to get them involved in team building activities. From organized group activities and problem-solving activities to organizing corporate events and providing group mentoring, There are myriad of things you can do either indoors or outdoors to bring your team closer. Not only will it build trust and strengthen the relationship between your employees but it will upscale the team's’ productivity and create the team spirit that will have a positive effect on the business in the long run.

Looking for a new career? Check out How to Become a Successful Digital Marketer – For Beginners!

Leverage communication

Communication is the key to successful business. Miscommunication and misunderstandings can have a detrimental effect on any business and eventually lead to a failure. It’s of critical importance to practice open and honest communication with your employees and let them know they can give feedback particularly on the things that deserve much attention. Running a team without having the real knowledge about their feelings and attitudes towards their work will leave you in the dark and cause many future bottlenecks and potentially huge problems. One of the ways you can encourage your employees to freely talk about the things that bother them is to hold weekly meetings and discuss any heating issues. Also, there is a broad range of useful and user-friendly best project management tools that can help your team take the communication to a whole new level. The right communication tool will enable your team to stay in tune with all the alternations of the project and communicate their ideas openly and clearly.

Invest in the right set of tools

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The ultimate goal of your web development team is to deliver high-quality websites and develop best possible results. To be able to encourage your team to give their full potential and maximize their productivity you need to give the appropriate support. One way to do this is to provide them with the right equipment and user-friendly tools that will help them leverage their efficiency. In the sea of project management, communication and collaboration tools available on the market, it’s important to choose the ones that your team will benefit from. These tools will allow your team to adjust the product until it lives up to expectations. Invest in the right tools, and you will see the significant difference in your workflow.

Give financial incentives

One of the top responsibilities of any successful leader is to teach. All the biggest leaders of the world had that sparkle in them that made them stand out from the sea of other wannabees and find their place in the stars. That spark is a vision.

As much as your employees would like to work in a healthy and friendly environment provided with the latest technology and all the resources they can imagine, their ultimate goal is to learn something new and advance in their career. Invest in your team education by giving them access to a free educational library or conduct weekly training sessions where you can discuss all the lessons that you have learned and all the obstacles you had to overcome along the way of reaching success.

Building a trust among your team member and keeping them happy, satisfied and motivated is the crucial factor in running an efficient business and finding your place in the ever-increasing market.

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How Voice Search Will Affect SEO

How Voice Search Will Affect SEO was first published on: Canada West Internet Marketing LLC

New changes to the SEO landscape are always around the corner, and with these changes come new methods for small businesses to stand out amongst their competitors. One of these changes is the importance of voice search.

Voice search is primarily utilized by consumers to speak their searches into their phone instead of typing them into Google. Speech recognition has improved vastly in recent years, and tweaking your website to take advantage of this can be extremely beneficial.

There’s a growing number of people using voice search daily. To make use of this growing SEO trend, here are some aspects to keep in mind about how voice search is affecting SEO.

Age Group Matters

According to Google themselves, as of 2014, 55% of teenagers had used voice search. Their study also showed that 41% of adults were also using their voice, and the numbers are still growing.

This means that the next generation of consumers is going to be using voice search more and more. Ranking for keywords is only one part of the equation, as people type and speak in entirely different ways.

What’s more, teenagers and adults also speak differently? If you compare a Google search, you type in a while logged in versus logging out you’ll notice differences in the results. Google personalizes search based on your user profile, and it takes age and past searches into account among many other factors.

As more users use voice search, their profiles will adjust further. If you know your target customer, you can get an idea of what they might say when looking for your services or products and anticipate that to optimize your mobile targeting strategy.

Long Tail Keywords + Location Schema

Before voice search, a mother might type in “Pediatric Dentist + location.” Now, she might speak “I’m looking for a nearby dentist for my son.”

Google will take location into account, as well as relevant words were spoken. Listening to the words your target customers use when they speak about you or your services can be a big clue into what others are searching for.

If you owned a pediatric dentistry, then you would want to make sure you were properly optimized for all relevant schema tags. Schema tags are metadata that informs Google and other search engines what your site is about and relevant to. You also would want to have information specifically tailored to parents of children on your pediatric dentistry site.

Latent semantic indexing (LSI), which refers to what words Google sees as related to main keywords, is still as crucial as ever. Whether they’re spoken or typed, these words and phrases are still taken into account.

The convenience of voice search through mobile phones is making a strong case for its staying power in the future. As the number of voice searches grows, these techniques to appear higher in the search results produced by them will evolve and change. By implementing the necessary adjustments to your strategy now, you can build a firm foundation in this growing trend.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=3056

5 Key Steps To Taking Your Brand Global

The following article 5 Key Steps To Taking Your Brand Global was originally published to: Canada West Internet Marketing Service

International markets are no longer reserved to tech giants and huge industrial companies. Localization services prepare your website to speak about your product in any language, while international marketers can take your brand global with relative ease. As long as you’re ready to adapt your products, services and content to local markets, you have every chance of achieving international success.

Thanks to the internet and the traffic it generates, any small business can sell anywhere, from Mexico to Mozambique--and even in more traditionally complex countries, like China or Japan. But before you start calculating the ROI, you need to prepare your company for the challenge. Check out these five key steps to taking your brand global with success.

1. You Need a Strategy

Going global is all about speaking local. Meaning you need to approach each market individually if you want to increase sales and become an important player.
There are two major approaches to going global:

• One unique product that fits all markets - like Apple
• The same product customized for various countries - like most brands, from McDonald’s to Colgate

In both situations, you’ll have to localize some parts of your marketing efforts - price, promotion, distribution, and so on. Apple does it, despite its strategy of having one product that fits all markets. The company provides localized customer service for each country in all their stores, while its website offers carefully localized content for every language their customers speak.

Each country has its own particulars when it comes to customer behavior and buying habits, and all governments have their own laws and regulations for businesses. What works perfectly for your company in your homeland could become a total disaster for your future sales abroad.

Building a strategy will allow you to anticipate problems and avoid wasting resources on activities that won’t pay off. Because whether you have to cut prices or invest more in customer care, you can’t let standards slip in terms of quality and brand image.

2. Give Credit to Your Audience

Going global is, first of all, about choosing the right local markets to sell your product. However, the decision doesn’t belong to you entirely. A detailed research on your present audience will help give you the right answer.

Identify countries where you’re already popular and check if you can increase your market share by being a constant presence in the local market. Starting with countries where people already have some basic information about you can increase your chances considerably.

Analyze the market you aim for and the local business environment before investing in localization. Consider the following questions:

• What’s your target market?
• How many competitors will you have to deal with?
• What are the local trends in your niche?
• What makes your product better than local alternatives?
• Can you deliver a product that respects local regulations?

Get point-by-point answers to these questions to have a clear idea about the possible demand for your product. Try to understand any market well before approaching it.

3. Each Journey Starts with Website Localization

Almost everyone who has internet access searches for information about a product online before making a purchase. And 52 percent of users prefer to shop from websites that speak their native language.

So, it’s time to teach your website some local languages, to gain trust overseas. Website localization is at the heart of today’s digital marketing. It’s making your English-only website a multilingual tool for various audiences worldwide.

Start with the technical details. It’s not a simple word-by-word translation because you have to adapt everything to local audiences, to increase trust and engagement. This includes date and time format, currencies, measurement units, address format, images, icons and more.

Then you’ll need to optimize your website for search engines in various languages. Improve your local SEO strategy by digging for new keywords and by building backlinks in the targeted language.

Design your website to support all following changes. Languages are different and what can easily be said in three words in English may need an entire phrase in another language. Make sure your buttons and CTAs stick within the original design, either by coming up with smart translation or leaving room for longer messages.

4. Brand Name: To Localize or Not to Localize

It’s mostly up to you, but research on this topic is fundamental. If your name is invented, like Skype or Google, then you may go with the original, (as long as the word you’re using doesn’t already have a meaning in the target language you’d rather avoid).

Many brands have failed in name localization. Among the most famous is Nokia and its Lumia smartphone, which translates to “prostitute” in some Spanish dialects!

Translating your name and slogan word-by-word is also tricky, because translation may sound odd in other languages. A good localization team can come up with smart solutions for your brand, by putting together the right words. Work with local experts, to avoid bad associations and any possible cultural misunderstandings.

Coca-Cola’s brand name in China was translated to “Bite the Wax Tadpole”, the first time around, as a result of not planning localization well.

Pay attention to small details, such as your logo, brand colors and images. Colors have different meanings from country to country, while visuals - especially photos of people and specific places - can exacerbate cultural differences if used incorrectly.

Moderation should be the key when making changes to your brand identity. You want your usual customers to recognize your style, no matter where you sell, so be sure to avoid brand dilution on your quest to fit in.

5. Focus on the Customer Experience

Customers should benefit from all your localization efforts, whether they use your website to learn more about a product or enter your physical store. Train your staff to provide high-quality services in all languages, together with delivering a good product.

Localize all content, especially when it’s meant to help the buyer and not just to make you more visible. Edit all instructions, contracts, terms of agreement, or any other piece of text your buyer may need to get the maximum out of your product.

Then make sure your customer care respects your homeland standards in all local markets. Shipping, packaging, product refunds without additional costs. These are important features customers look for when choosing one product over another. And they’re usually willing to pay more to get the best services.

The Takeaway

Moving from national to international is an important step forward for your business. You’ll need to be ready to invest hours of hard work in putting together the right team and creating the perfect assets.

Plan way ahead of the product launch and make decisions based on market research, rather than your instincts. You need deep knowledge about your new customers to be able to deliver a high-quality product that meets their expectations and takes your brand to international success.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=3047

The 5 P’s of Content Creation and How to Use Them in UX Better Than Your Competitors

The 5 P’s of Content Creation and How to Use Them in UX Better Than Your Competitors was first published on: http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/

The marketing world has long been considered to be based on the four P's: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. While these are still mostly relevant today (depending on how you're marketing), they aren't the only P's you need for a successful marketing strategy.
Content writing doesn't follow the rules of traditional marketing practices, especially when it comes to UX. Take a look at the five new, improved (and lemon scented) P's of today's era of digital content and learn how you can leverage them better than your competitors:

1. Plan

Every successful UX design starts with a plan, especially when you're adding written content into the mix.

However, if you're clueless about where to start, it's easy to fall in line with what your competitors are doing. A lot of companies do this (perhaps even some of your own competition), but mimicking them does nothing to help you stand out as a leader.

Instead, start by building your three-part roadmap to guide you on your own content journey:

Goals

Determine what you hope to get out of your content. More paying customers? Brand exposure? A boost in social media followers? When crafted correctly, your content can help you do all of the above, and then some.

Buyer Personas

Understanding who will benefit from your content will direct the production phase of your strategy. If you don't already have a buyer persona, make one. Consider things like

• Gender
• Age Range
• Geographical Location
• Role in the buying process
• Reason for Visiting Your Website

The more specific you can be with your buyer personas, the better you can focus your message to speak directly to those people.

Types of Content

Content can take a multitude of forms, each offering its own set of pros and cons. Regardless of what your competitors are doing, some types of content may do nothing to help you reach your goals. Consider what content formats make the most sense for your audience:

• Blog posts - can help boost web traffic and give you plenty to share on social media
• Videos - can help you earn more attention on social media
• White papers - can give your credibility a thumbs up and strengthen your image as an authority in your field
• E-books - can be a perfect tool for lead gen
• Infographics - images are easily shared and deliver bite-sized information in an easy-to-scan format
• Podcasts - helpful in building a loyal fan base

Each of these three supporting pillars of your plan should work in tandem to propel your strategy. Make sure every decision in the design process aligns with your goals, audience, and the type of content you produce. If you find that something seems out of sorts, rethink your decision to stay on target.

2. Produce

Once you've established your starting point, begin building on your UX design with the right content.

For example, if your goal is to boost traffic to your website, part of your content strategy will include creating SEO articles. If you want to increase your leads, you might write an informative white paper or e-book that allows people to exchange their information for a free (or paid) download.

You also need to figure out how to best display your content on your website. For example, some blog layouts appear in list format while others are in grids. Some offer titles only while others display a short preview. If you're featuring a content upgrade or other lead gen tactic, consider how long should you wait before presenting the opt-in box, what the opt-in box should look like, and CTA copy, to name a few choices.

In other words, for every piece of content you create, plan on creating additional content to promote it, anything from social media copy to images to landing pages. How you present your content to your readers is just as important as the content itself.

3. Publish

All that great content you create needs to be seen somewhere, but where?

Your website makes the obvious answer, but there are other worthy outlets that can expand your content's reach and bring you one step closer to meeting your goals.

Start by pushing your posts to your social media channels. If you are writing blog articles or creating infographics or videos, all you need is a click-worthy caption and striking visual element to get people interested. It helps to use the same images on your social media posts as the ones they'll see when they click through to your website to keep their experience consistent.

For e-books, white papers, and other downloadable content, you can create landing pages for each one that captures the viewer's information before they are granted access. You can post information about your digital content on social media and include a link that directs viewers to the landing page.

4. Promote

Not all companies can rely on organic traffic. If you're one of them, you may need to do a little extra work to get your content noticed.

If you're posting on social media, you can pay a few dollars a day to boost your post to people who don't already follow you on your social channels. Paid social media advertisements, such as Facebook ads, offer unique targeting options to ensure your content only appears to those who are most likely to be interested.

For example, if you are producing a podcast, you can create an ad that details what your podcast is about, what time it starts, where listeners can download episodes, etc. You can create a new ad each time to let listeners know when there's something new to hear or if you want to talk about upcoming shows. Use these ads in your paid posts on social media to direct them to your podcast on your website.

Content UX via social media has its fair share of tips and tricks you'll need to know before you start sharing:

• A/B test different titles and images to see which ones get the best response
• Keep your explanation short and to the point
• Include a call-to-action to direct viewers to the next step

In addition to content marketing on social media, you can send your blog articles and other content to those in your email database. Some companies send out emails whenever there's a new article. Others prefer to create drip campaigns that automatically send certain emails at certain stages of the sales or customer life cycle.

Regardless of what you're creating, take care to understand why someone is visiting your site. Be forward thinking in what else they might want to know after viewing your content. This can help ensure you strategically place correlating elements to help the reader find additional information.

5. Prove

Once you complete the previous four P's, you'll need to put your actions to the test. But first, you'll need to define your metrics based on the goals you established.

For example, having 100 new people visit your website an hour after you posted an article to social media might seem like something's working, but if none of those visits result in a new customer (and your goal was to gain new customers), then your efforts haven't lived up to your expectations.

If you are using paid ads on social media, your analytics dashboard can tell you how many views, clicks, likes, and shares your ad received, as well as crucial user information such as location, how viewers found your ad, how many were mobile users, and the ratio of new visits to total visits.

You can also look at your website analytics to see how much your web traffic has increased and other valuable facts. Through hard, cold data, you can develop deeper insights into your audience and gauge what's working and what needs to be tweaked for better results.

It's important you discover exactly how much ROI your content is responsible for. Whatever metrics you establish should align with your initial goals. Using the right metrics to measure your success can mean the difference between a good campaign and a failed one.

In Closing
Perhaps one of the most fatal mistakes some companies make in content writing is giving up too early. Instead of honing their strategy if it doesn't give them the results they want, they throw in the towel and declare content writing doesn't work.

The fact is, it does work, but only if you know how to make it work. Using content to improve UX isn't always intuitive, and results don't happen overnight. But if you can remain consistent, give it a fair shot, and make changes when changes are needed, your competitors will have plenty of catching up to do.

source http://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/?p=3019