In recent years, one of the surprising trends has been the rise of mindfulness in the workplace. Many business leaders are turning away from the traditional stereotypical mindset of “hard-charging, aggressive, workaholic business person” and are seeking a softer, calmer, gentler, and more generous and peaceful approach of mindfulness.
Mindfulness means different things to different people. Some business leaders are using meditation or mindfulness apps to help them stay focused and calm throughout the day; other business leaders are doing yoga or using a daily spiritual practice to help them keep their minds clear and centered. But whatever mindfulness means to you, there are a few reasons why mindfulness can help your business. With mindfulness, you will:
Stay calm and centered
Running a business is exciting, and most business people are powered by passion, but that doesn’t mean you have to be running ragged all the time and feeling like a nervous wreck. Mindfulness helps business leaders stay relaxed and focused. If you’re feeling frazzled or overworked, mindfulness—whether it’s meditation, yoga, or some other spiritual practice, or even something simple like going for a walk outdoors and feeling grateful every day—can help you stay in your best, most productive mindset.
Make better decisions
If you’re sleep deprived, anxious, and cranky, you’re less likely to make good business decisions. Mindfulness practice can help with this, too. Being mindful can help your brain feel rested throughout the day; it keeps your mental muscles feeling fresh. Instead of feeling pressed for time and low on patience, mindfulness helps you remember to operate with a spirit of abundance: There is enough time, there is enough room, there is enough opportunity for you to do your best work.
Mindfulness acts like a little angel on your shoulder, nudging you in the right direction and helping you make the right decisions—and helping you feel at peace with the decisions you make, even if the results don’t work out as well as you’d hoped.
Manage your time better
We only have 24 hours in the day, and unless you’re a cyborg who doesn’t require sleep, we’re only awake for 18 hours (or less). Instead of working more hours, look for ways to maximize your time by maintaining a calm, clear mind. Mindfulness can help you relieve your anxiety, improve your mental clarity, and boost your productivity—not by spending more hours at your desk, but by getting more out of the time that you spend, and by getting better at delegating or offloading your workload in more productive ways.
Many businesses have started offering a “subscribe and save” feature, which allows customers to receive a product at regular intervals, rather than making a simple one-time purchase. Amazon was one of the earliest adopters of this feature in its modern format, but it has since spread among major online retailers and small companies alike.
The idea is fairly simple: Give customers both a one-time purchase option, and the option to “subscribe” to a specific product, receiving it weekly, monthly, or even semi-annually, in a specified quantity. Usually the subscription feature comes with a discount per product, so consumers are incentivized to subscribe.
Could offering this feature increase your total revenue?
The perks of subscribe and save
Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of this approach:
Multiple purchases. A customer will be presented with two options: make a one-time purchase, or softly commit to indefinite, recurring purchases in the future. If even a fraction of your customers commit to future purchases, the mere option of subscribing and saving should increase your total revenue. For any product where a subscription makes sense, having the subscribe and save option is strictly better than only offering the one-time purchase.
Consistent revenue projection. Encouraging customers to subscribe and save may also help you make more accurate revenue projections. If you’re able to retain a certain base of frequent-buying customers, you should be able to reliably predict at least a chunk of your monthly revenue, helping you stabilize your income. Depending on the size of your business, this could help you secure more funding or make smarter investments.
Brand loyalty. Subscribing and saving is also a cheap way to secure more brand loyalty from your customers. If you can convince someone to buy something once, they may commit to buying from you indefinitely, because it’s just as easy as buying a single product. Ordinarily, every time a customer needs a product (like toilet paper or laundry detergent), they’re faced with a decision on which brand to buy from; if they’re subscribed to your service, the decision is already made.
Don’t underestimate the power of convenience. Most customers don’t like the hassle of going to the store every time they need a specific product, or having to remember exactly when and how much to buy of a given product. Subscribing and saving takes away the guesswork (i.e., customers don’t have to set up manual reminders on when to buy the product), and spares them effort (i.e., they don’t need to make a conscious decision to make the purchase). Giving them a more convenient way to buy the products they want or need will add to your value proposition, and encourage more customers to choose you over a direct competitor.
Are there downsides?
Of course, there are some secondary, somewhat negative considerations to keep in mind as well:
Profit margins. Not all customers will be willing to subscribe if it means buying the product at the same price as usual, but conversion will make sense if you give a discount. Unfortunately, giving your customers a significant discount means eating into your profit margins at least slightly. If your business is dependent on making a minimum profit margin, the subscribe and save feature might have to serve as a loss leader to generate more business.
Ongoing management. Managing customer subscriptions inherently requires more internal processes; you’ll need to develop a way to receive and handle subscription requests on your website, and you’ll need additional staff to ensure that subscription orders go out on time (and to handle cancellations). Overall, however, the costs of these additional pieces of infrastructure pale in comparison to the additional revenue you’ll generate in the process.
Product-specific considerations. You’re also probably already aware that not all products are equally likely to attract subscriptions. Items that need to be replaced periodically (like air filters or batteries) are common choices, as are perishable or frequently used and disposed items (like groceries or paper towels). But if you’re selling big-ticket items like computers or game controllers, odds are subscribe and save won’t be a feasible option. Consider your products and consumer demand carefully.
Overall, the weak points of a subscribe and save feature are heavily outweighed by the advantages—as long as you have products that require frequent purchasing. Invest the time and effort to keep your product subscriptions up and running, and make sure your target demographics are familiar with how it works.
For years, companies of all sizes have employed a department dedicated to managing the people who work there. Human resources is one of the most fundamental departments in a business, and in 2019, it’s getting a face-lift.
The way people work is changing, and with it, so is how people are managed. Here’s what you can expect for HR as we usher in the New Year.
HR will play a bigger role in business strategies
For years, HR has not been considered a strategic part of an organization. That perception has started to shift recently, and in 2019, the pendulum will continue to swing in that direction. Going forward, HR will continue to play a bigger part in a business’s overall strategy.
Those businesses that do not view HR as strategic believe so because the department is viewed as having an administrative role with no control or oversight of other departments. Pundits also say that HR employees are unable to participate in important conversations about organizational structure, so they do not have a voice in company decisions.
In 2019, perceptions will start to shift, giving HR a more significant role in business transformation initiatives because of its role in directly impacting culture and processes. The C-Suite will hold HR to the same standard as other departments. For example, HR will have its own set of KPIs to hit and be tasked with forward-thinking responsibilities that innovate on traditional practices.
Healthy employee engagement will become more of a priority
Gone are the days of employees clocking in and out, and then calling it a day. Today’s workforce is connected to technology which tethers them to the office. As daunting as that is, this technology empowers teams to stay engaged, regardless of place or time. For employers, that might seem like a blessing, but for employees, it could feel like a nightmare. As employee happiness and engagement becomes more of a priority, so will balance.
In 2019, employers will establish clearer rules of engagement and expectations for when and how employees should be in communication. New platforms will be adopted to empower teams to find balance away from work, while still keeping employers in the know about scheduling, benefits, and other HR needs.
The goal of introducing these new platforms and developing healthy engagement policies will be to achieve better balance in today’s world where nearly everyone has a smartphone glued to their palm. HR will be pivotal in crafting and introducing these new standards.
Automation will shift job descriptions
Artificial intelligence has been on the minds of employees for years. As it becomes increasingly prolific in our business and personal lives, HR will need to shift job descriptions to account for where there’s a human need and for when the jobs machines can take over.
Although this might sound futuristic, many employees and employers alike are excited for what’s ahead. HR used to be a department where many jobs were administrative and tedious in nature, preventing team members from playing a bigger role in strategic work. Now, with more time freed up thanks to automated processes, HR team members can shift their focus to becoming more strategic, empowering them to make a bigger impact on market trends.
Diversity will continue to play a major role
Amazon recently announced that the algorithm it was testing to help automate recruitment was scrapped because the machine was proving to be sexist and learned sexist practices. The importance of diversity has come to light in recent years, and now HR departments are seeing their flaws more clearly than ever before. Having these flaws exposed will cause employers to take a closer look at what they can do differently to push past implicit biases and move toward a more diverse workforce.
If you want to get found online (and get customers to buy from you), then you’ve got to pay attention to search engine optimization. SEO is more important than ever for getting found online—and getting customers to buy from your business.
And that’s because online search has become the top way people find local businesses. A whopping 87% of people used a search engine to find a local product or service in the past month, the Local Search Association reports.
SEO used to be a specialized skill that required hiring a professional to drive traffic to your website. Today, while SEO is still somewhat of an art form, there are tons of tools and tips you can use to undertake the project all by yourself—with excellent results.
Here are three important steps to improve your SEO and get found online:
1. Do your keyword research and use the right keywords
Keywords are the words people use when searching online for what you sell. There are tons of apps and programs out there to help you choose the right keywords to use in your website, online ads, and other online content.
An easy place to start is with the Google Keyword Planner tool—the best-known and most popular keyword tool. Although it’s intended for planning online ads, you can also use it to find keywords to use on your website. Type in keywords related to your business, and Google shows you how commonly they’re searched and how much competition there is to rank for them.
You can also get ideas for keywords by using Google Trends, which shows the most popular search terms on Google currently. For instance, if you own a website that sells cosmetics, you can type in “cosmetics” or “makeup” to see what search terms are most popular in the past week, year, day or other length of time. You can also sort results by location and whether users searched the web in general or were specifically shopping.
Using our “makeup” example, a couple of popular terms are “Halloween makeup ideas” and “makeup revolution concealer.” Knowing this, you could use these keywords to create content about Halloween makeup ideas, or spotlight Makeup Revolution Concealer (if you carry this product) on your website.
It’s important to make keywords part of useful content. Don’t just cram keywords into your website, or Google will penalize you. Focus on putting relevant keywords in your website headlines, title and image tags, and meta descriptions.
If your business targets local customers, include location-related keywords throughout your website, too. For example, if you own a pizza parlor, you can improve your SEO by listing the names of cities and neighborhoods where you deliver on your website.
2. Go Local
Speaking of local, a presence in local search directories is vital to get found online if your business relies on a local customer base. Plus, every place you’re listed online helps contribute to your SEO efforts so you rank higher in search engine results pages.
Get listed in as many local search directories as you can (basic listings are usually free).
When you’re filling out your listings, be sure to include any information that a potential customer would need to decide if they want to do business with you—and that means a description of your business that includes your keywords. Also include your hours of operation, address, phone number, photos of your location, map and/or directions, and your website URL. Basically, the more details you provide, the better! Remember to use location-related keywords in your description, too.
Pro tip: If you want to improve your SEO, your business name, address, and phone numberinformation (NAP for short) needs to be completely consistent across all of your local search directory listings. If your address is written out this way on one website:
4747 Wilson St., Suite 10
and this way on another:
4747 Wilson Street, Ste. 10
the search engines will read these as two different addresses—and two separate businesses—so your website won’t get the SEO “juice” you would otherwise get from the listings.
3. Make it mobile-first
Mobile devices now account for more than half (56%) of all visits to search engines. In other words, if customers are searching for what you sell, there’s a good chance they’re searching on their smartphones rather than their computers.
What’s more, Google now factors a website’s mobile-friendliness into its search engine rankings, so if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, your rank will suffer.
The takeaway: To get found online, it’s no longer enough for your website to be mobile-friendly. Instead, it should be designed primarily with mobile use in mind. A mobile-first website design can translate easily into desktop format, so there’s no downside to this approach.
Stay on top of SEO
SEO is always changing, so it’s important to keep learning. Do your research and find out what other people are doing right. Talk to other business owners and find out what they did to increase SEO.
Companies receive a lot of resumes, and a good number of them are discarded fairly early on in the hiring process. So, what element makes a resume stand out, allowing the applicant to move on to the next round of the hiring process?
Q. Is there a key item a resume must have in order for a job candidate to advance to the interview stage of the hiring process?
1. Specific results
Resumes should follow the old copywriting rule of claim, proof, and benefit. When a resume makes a claim and backs it up with proof, then this will have the strongest impact on whether the person can move ahead to the interview stage. When providing proof, a resume should offer specific results, and then explain the benefits of those results.
2. Relevance
Hiring managers primarily look for one thing on resumes: relevance. This includes experience that is relevant to the job description and special skills that are relevant to the preferred qualifications. A candidate whose resume is clear, concise, and draws these direct parallels will always make the short list and be invited to interview.
3. Length of employment
You need long-term team members who can learn about your company and help push growth forward while moving up in the company. You want to know they’ve spent time and effort in their previous workplace.
4. Customization
A lot of resumes come from people who have made no effort to customise their resume for the position. They include irrelevant details, they don’t respond to requirements that are in the job post, and they show no evidence of research. Generic “tech” resumes that the applicant has sent to dozens of businesses don’t impress. You need to see tight, concise resumes that show an understanding of what the role entails.
5. Alignment of core values
A candidate with strong potential will study our website and incorporate our core values somewhere in their resume or cover letter. Even if a potential employee doesn’t directly address the values, we look for words and indications that show an alignment to our values, such as proactiveness or positivity.
6. Quality references
If a job candidate is willing to put high-level references down, that tells me they worked hard at their previous job and are proud to have others speak on their behalf. If what I see is a collection of references from 10 years ago, red flags go up.
7. Proper grammar and spelling
As the most important document to represent yourself and your career path, your resume needs to be perfect. Nothing detracts quicker from your resume’s first impression than poor grammar and spelling. Not only does it not reflect well on you, but it also may be an indicator that you are unwilling to ask for help from friends and family, which could reflect future behaviors in the team environment.
8. Decent formatting
Even if a candidate has relevant experience, there are a blinding myriad of CVs to review. The keywords we look for are sometimes hidden in resume formats that do not help highlight experience. We’re looking for relevance or a quality in the candidate that convinces us they can complete the work.
9. Quantifiable success
A hiring team can quickly assess a candidate’s ability to succeed in your company by analyzing their use of data in their resume. Look for individuals who can quantify their accomplishments. This helps to get a sense of the tangible impact they have had on other organizations, giving insight into how much real value they may be able to bring to your business.
10. Ability to follow directions
The only real information you need to get from a resume is an overview of how well an applicant reads a listing and follows the instructions therein. Ask for something specific, just to gauge the applicant’s responsiveness, but then immediately move on to their portfolio.
11. Growth
When evaluating resumes, you should look for growth. Has this candidate grown from job to job? Has their position escalated in each job location? If not, then they were seemingly treading water, which is not what you want. You want people who are hungry.
12. What makes you memorable
The resumes that stand out do something different. They don’t just focus on education and experience—they give an idea of who the person really is. Completed a marathon? It shows a level of commitment; you worked full-time while earning your degree? Powerful—it shows that you have a strong work ethic. Share what you normally wouldn’t put on a resume. That way you’ll be memorable.
With a technology with as much machine learning (ML), it can be difficult to avoid hyperbole. Sure, billions of dollars in investment are pouring into ML projects. Yes, machine learning is a centerpiece of digital transformation strategies. And, to be certain, machine learning is often what people are talking about when they use the umbrella term “AI.” So it’s worth taking the time to look at real-world ML capabilities being developed and deployed at digitally nimble companies around the globe.
Artificial Intelligence defined
By definition, artificial intelligence is “(1) a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers; (2) the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.”
Essentially, AI capabilities allow a computer to analyze vast amounts of information and data to arrive at a “reasoned” conclusion about the subject at hand, simulating the human decision process, often with better decisions being made.
While it is easy to define, the challenge has been the application of AI to everyday life. One successful application has been in the area of content matching and recommendations for streaming media, radically transforming the on-demand viewer experience. Rather than attempting to scale the “expert” human work necessary to classify, curate, and catalog content into consumable collections, machine learning has become a core staple in personalized content delivery. By analyzing user behavior, preferences, and more, streaming services can more accurately tailor recommendations and push targeted content with greater opportunity for monetization and engagement.
Virtually every other industry is or should consider incorporating AI into their business models. You do not need to be a large company to take advantage of AI in order to provide better service to your customers—both at a lower cost and with better results. AI can help small and mid-sized businesses anticipate and fill customers product needs faster, improve inventory systems by incorporating Just in Time processes, reduce shipping and stocking errors, and facilitate the payment and collection process.
Eight business domains where AI is profoundly changing the landscape
Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences
Wherever you fall on the death disruption debate, we can all agree that aging is a challenging experience. Even if you don’t aspire to immortality, you likely recognize that increased joint pain and susceptibility to illness and injury will erode anyone’s quality of life. But deep learning (a subfield of ML) may be able to slow the aging process. Scientists are now using the technology to identify biomarkers associated with aging. Soon enough, a simple blood test could tell you which parts of your body are showing signs of wear and tear, and your doctor could help you mitigate, and perhaps reverse, those effects through lifestyle recommendations and medication.
Food
Up to 40% of a grocer’s revenue comes from sales of fresh produce. So, to say that maintaining product quality is important is something of an understatement. But doing so is easier said than done. Grocers are at the whims of their supply chains and consumer fickleness. Keeping their shelves stocked and their products fresh can be a delicate balancing act.
But grocers are discovering that machine learning is the secret to smarter fresh-food replenishment. They can train ML programs on historical datasets and input data about promotions and store hours as well, then use the analyses to gauge how much of each product to order and display. ML systems can also collect information about weather forecasts, public holidays, order quantity parameters, and other contextual information. They then issue a recommended order every 24 hours so that the grocer always has the appropriate products in the appropriate amounts in stock.
Businesses that implement machine learning in their replenishment workflows reduce their out-of-stock rates by up to 80%, along with up to 9% in gross-margin increases.
Media & Entertainment
Machine learning allows media companies to make their content more accessible to consumers through automatic captioning systems. Since implementing an automatic captioning program, YouTube has enabled 1 million functionally deaf Americans and 8 million hearing-impaired Americans to watch and enjoy its videos. As of 2017, its ML programs have become sophisticated enough to include captions for common non-speech audio, such as laughter and music, creating an even more complete experience for viewers.
Information Technology
Although machine learning is generating unprecedented business insights, many organizations have failed to invest adequately in AI systems. For instance, McKinsey found that “the EU public sector and health care have captured less than 30% of the potential value” of big data and analytics. Organizations that want to avoid a similar mistake will need to ramp up their data science abilities—but so will workers who want to stay competitive in the job market. By 2020, there will be more than 2.7 million data science jobs, and the demand for workers who understand and can work with ML technology will only grow from there.
Law
Deep learning applications are especially impressive in the legal sector due to the nature of the language these programs must parse. Legal phrasing can be complex and difficult to decipher, yet deep learning systems are already capable of analyzing tens of thousands of vital documents. When legal teams needed to dissect contract clauses that upset their or their client’s business and invoicing processes, they once had to manually review stacks of rigorously prepared documents. Now, they can feed them into a program that works far faster than any lawyer and that can pick out important phrases for further analysis by the legal team.
Insurance
Improving risk prediction and underwriting is in everyone’s best interest, which is why machine learning is such a gift to the insurance industry. In auto insurance, for instance, ML algorithms can use customer profiles and real-time driving data to estimate their risk levels. They can then formulate personalized rates based on that information, potentially creating savings for both consumers and insurance companies.
This process may be enhanced by even more in-depth analyses, in which ML programs pull in seemingly unrelated social media data to create a more precise profile. The insurance industry could use artificial intelligence to identify which policyholders are gainfully employed and which seem to be in good health. Theoretically, someone who is responsible in those areas of their lives will be a responsible driver as well.
Education
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) hold enormous potential for disrupting the classroom and helping students learn. These AI programs serve as virtual tutors, and they adapt their digital lessons based on each child’s strengths and weaknesses. Each time the student completes a task or quiz, a ML program processes that information to customize future materials.
By “learning” a user’s unique needs and identifying which types of lessons are most effective for them, the ITS helps the student overcome learning challenges and retain more knowledge. Research indicates that students who use intelligent tutoring systems perform better on tests than their peers who learn via large group instruction.
Health care
Due to the high costs associated with health care and the significant benefits offered by better health care decisions, we are likely to see exponential growth in the application of AI to health care in the years to come.
Modern artificial intelligence is finally delivering on its promise to help consumers and businesses make better decisions and improve their quality of life. Small and middle market companies embracing AI today will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Modern, beautiful web design is integral to the success of your digital marketing strategy. A well-designed website can showcase your brand and elevate your business above of your competition, while an outdated or poorly-designed site can inhibit the growth of your company. Your website is where prospective clients make first impressions about your business, and it sets the tone for what level of service, expertise, and experience they can expect from you.
While it is true that redesigning your website can be a costly investment, it is often well worth the initial cost over the long term. The additional business generated from a modern, functional website should more than recoup the initial cost of development.
So what constitutes a modern website? Rather than attempting to define it, here’s a short checklist of some of the most obvious indicators that your website is outdated and in need of a refresh.
1. Poor mobile functionality
Only 10 years ago, “mobile friendliness” was an unknown marketing term. Smartphones and the subsequent increase of mobile web search only became popularized in 2007 with the release of the iPhone. Before this time, mobile web search was uncommon—a negligible factor when compared to desktop usage—and was not on the radar of many marketing professionals.
However, since that time, mobile search has become a powerhouse, driving the majority of online search. In fact, 51% of web searches were performed on a mobile device in 2017, meaning that mobile search has become even more important than desktop search. Not only is mobile search on the rise, but optimizing for mobile users should be an essential part of every digital marketing strategy.
If your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, you’re overlooking a major segment of web users and unintentionally setting up your website for failure. Search engines use the mobile functionality of a website as a factor in their ranking algorithm. Ignoring your mobile optimization will result in lower search rankings, costing you sales and leads.
With more and more people relying on their phones to make web searches, you’ll want to make sure that your website performs well for mobile users. Nobody likes to access a mobile website only to find that it is hard to navigate or that it does not display properly on their device. Besides not likely returning to your website after a negative experience, many of these users will not refer your website to their family or friends.
This means that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, your customers are likely going to go over to your competitors. You don’t want to lose customers merely because your website didn’t perform well and provided a poor user experience.
2. Slow website speed
As a web user, there’s nothing more annoying than coming across a slow website. It doesn’t matter if your website looks stunning—your web user will quickly become annoyed and leave before they’ve even get a chance to see it.
Let’s face it, web users are somewhat impatient. Modern marketing has primed us to believe that faster is better, and this is reflected in our pursuit of faster devices, internet speed, and communication mediums. As a result, if your website takes longer than three seconds to load (the generally accepted load time for a modern website), you risk losing your user out of impatience. This is referred to, within the marketing world, as “pogo-sticking.” In fact, research by Google has found that 53% of mobile users will leave a website if it doesn’t load within three seconds.
Think about that for a second: More than half of your user base is willing to leave your website and go to a competitor if your website doesn’t load within three seconds. As crazy as this statistic sounds, it only underscores the importance of optimizing your website speed. This is especially important in the case of an e-commerce store where this pogo-sticking will result in a more direct loss of sales.
Slowly-loading websites often fall into one of two classes of site speed issues: User-based issues and website-based issues.
User-based issues are those issues that you have no control over. They are the problems that arise as a result of how the user interacted with the website. These can include slow internet connection, device-related problems, or even the user’s inexperience with technology. There is little you can do to fix user-based issues, as they are out of your control.
Alternatively, website-based issues are due to technical errors within the website that cause it to load and perform more slowly, and are problems we can control. Poor-quality coding, large file sizes, excessive server requests, and unminified or unconcatenated HTML/CSS/JS files are among the most common issues we see when tasked with resolving a slow website. All these issues are the result of poor design and underscore the importance of hiring a quality developer.
Another server-side issue that could be costing you website speed is limited bandwidth due to the limitations of your hosting package. Many websites purchase the bare minimum hosting package to start with, but as time progresses and there’s an increase in web traffic, they never upgrade their hosting package to match the increased user demand. It’s a simple fix, but one that many webmasters and business owners don’t consider when attempting to resolve site speed issues.
If you just want to increase your website speed and don’t want to invest in a website refresh, you could try things like optimizing your images, avoiding excessive redirects, optimizing content, and making your website cacheable, in addition to everything we’ve already covered. However, before you invest in a website redesign, you’ll want to review these tips and make sure that a refresh is warranted. There’s no sense in going through the whole web redesign process to remedy a slow website if the issue can be easily resolved.
3. High bounce rate
A high bounce rate is something that will give any digital marketing an instant headache. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visit your website, but click off your website without clicking through any of the other pages on your site.
Let’s say, for example, that your bounce rate is 50%. This would mean that one of every two visitors left your website without clicking on any other pages. This is a huge problem because they didn’t buy anything, or even show enough interest to click around. Their actions suggest that they don’t consider your business to be an option, based on their initial assessment of your landing page. Their first impression of your website and brand told them you weren’t what they were looking for, so they looked elsewhere.
A wide variety of factors can lead to a poor bounce rate. Some of these include your site speed, mobile functionality, UX/UI design, or even content. Part of improving your bounce rate is captivating your audience long enough so they start to look around and genuinely consider you as a solution to their need, whether that is a product, service, or even just information. A good first impression is crucial to increasing your user engagement and improving your bounce rate.
4. Outdated design
The visual appeal of your website is one of the primary factors that contribute to users’ first impressions of your brand. Within the first seven seconds of landing on your website, your users have already made assumptions about your business, based only on how your site is presented.
We’ve all seen websites that look like they’re from the 1990s and have barely been updated since. What would your first impression be? Would you think the company was modern? I’m guessing not. Most likely, you would assume the company was outdated, had poor customer service, wasn’t a leader in their field, and was, perhaps, even close to shutting down their operations. Yes, something as simple as your website design can cause your customers to make all kinds of assumptions about your business.
User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are related, but flip sides of the same coin. Both UX and UI combine to engage the user and provide a visually appealing, yet practical experience for the user. Improving your user experience will help engage the user, resulting in improved metrics like “time on page,” bounce rate, and conversion rate. Subsequently, all of these UX/UI improvements help to improve your search ranking, since Google sees that the user found your webpage useful and engaging.
In order to assess whether your website is modern, you have to gain a functional understanding of modern web design. For example, if your website has no photos, outdated content, or has a confusing navigation process, your website probably needs a redesign.
5. You’re still using Flash
In the late ’90s, Flash was the primary media plugin for all websites. Back then, if your website was up-to-date, it would have been using Flash, but nowadays most browsers no longer support it. Because of this, Flash will cause your website to load more slowly, due to diminishing browser support.
Most websites have already said goodbye to Flash, but if you haven’t, then it’s time you had your website redesigned.Seriously. Modern websites are trending towards a clean, minimalist look, and contain lots of images, infographics, and cleaner blocks of text. Proper user interface design ensures that the user is presented with a clean, functional interface, and that website navigation is logical.
Do I really need a website redesign?
I find that small business owners often have the most trouble identifying that their website is outdated. Even when their website was developed more than 10 years ago, they still feel like “it was just yesterday” and don’t want to commit to another large redesign project—usually due to the initial cost of the investment. Their aversion to another large investment blinds them from seeing the outdated condition of their website, and this can cost them business over time.
If your website suffers from any of these issues, and you are unable to find a simple solution, it may be time for you to invest in a new website. It’s no secret that website development can be a lengthy and costly process. However, as we’ve already stated, while website development might require a substantial investment up front, that cost should be quickly recouped from the benefits the website provides.
Welcome to the toxic workplace! You may have already been here before, actually. Maybe you worked for a business you knew was bad out of necessity. You might have taken the job for a paycheck, desperate to find work, only to discover a unpleasant company culture and dysfunctional boss lurking beneath the surface.
The inverse could have happened, too. You might have started a rewarding position, only to watch it gradually fizzle over time. Great leadership was phased out, perks and benefits were cut, and the overall atmosphere diminished as talented employees saw the warning signs and exited quickly.
A toxic work environment isn’t one where you had a bad day or made a couple of mistakes one time. It’s a place where negativity champions every aspect of the business every day. This kind of atmosphere impacts your own sense of self, causing your health to take a nosedive and making you less productive. Instead of feeling confident and proud of what you have accomplished, you’re wracked with fear and worry that everything you do is wrong. You want to speak up and initiate change, but are too afraid of the consequences.
What can you, a lowly employee, do when confronted with the reality of spending your days in a toxic workplace?
Before you dive into taking action, you must first recognize and understand what makes the company toxic—and not having your favorite snacks stocked in the break room doesn’t count. You may have spotted common red flags at the beginning, or found out about them later.
There’s a high employee turnover rate; you’re losing a handful of people on a monthly basis. Everyone who sticks it out gossips about how awful the business is and how much they hate their boss, manager, and even the coworkers they gossip with. (You may gossip with coworkers, but you’re not immune to being the target of said gossip.)
Higher up individuals routinely go on power trips with employees they perceive to be beneath them. They’ll never provide constructive feedback, but they give “this is wrong and you are stupid” criticisms.
You don’t feel good being there, physically. It’s not uncommon for you and your fellow coworkers to call in sick on a regular basis.
You have legitimate complaints, but can’t approach anyone with them. You don’t have anyone you can trust or think anyone will listen. Not even HR seems like they can help out—and that hurts.
Despite it all, you still believe in your job and what you do. (If not, you would have been part of the turnover crowd a long time ago.) You want to make changes and believe shifting to a transparent environment can be done.
If you want to remedy a toxic situation for the better, here’s what you need to do.
Confront the toxic environment’s source
The toxicity may not be your boss or any one person within the company. There could be a variety of factors that have had a domino effect over the years aiding to the poor work environment. It’s time for you to do a little research and find out what went wrong.
Try to connect with former employees who worked for the company years ago—you can find them on LinkedIn. Ask them how they remember the business. Let them share with you what the company did right and try to uncover a common thread to the slippery slope downward. You can keep all of this information confidential, of course, but you want it on your side. The more you know what led to the creation of the toxic workplace, the easier it will be for you to find a way to end its reign.
Be the example
Don’t waste your time on idle gossip. Be the employee who brings positivity to conversations and turns around catty chatter for constructive collaboration. Discuss with coworkers projects you would like to get off the ground running and see who wants to join you. Encourage everyone to contribute ideas and applaud their brainstorming efforts. Work hard, map out a strategy, then take your plan to the boss along with your coworkers. Share what you’ve been doing and how this particular initiative can provide a return on investment for the business.
You can’t change anything if you stay quiet or refuse to speak up and break the mold. Being the example ultimately means being brave enough to leave fear at the door. Your behavior will speak volumes about the type of leadership capabilities you possess and the kind of trust and faith your teammates have in you.
Be kind
There is a phrase “Kill them with kindness” that is often used in situations like this. The gist is that no matter how many people are mean to you, you should not acknowledge their behavior and you should always be kind. This tends to throw individuals for a loop. After all, they’re expecting you to sink to their level.
However, there’s something about this phrase that feels forced to me. It’s almost as though you’re only focusing on being extra kind the to people who have wronged you specifically. Why not treat everyone with a mutual amount of kindness and respect? Be kind to everyone you work with, no matter which department they may be in. Act as their cheerleader. Applaud their hard work and motivate the team to keep on doing great things!
Marketing buzzwords are everywhere. You can barely get a paragraph or two into an article before you encounter them. In some cases, buzzwords are used brilliantly and accurately to help readers understand a topic; other times they appear to be used to make the author seem more highbrow than the reader.
I am on a mission to make sure that marketing buzzwords, and buzzwords in general, are used the right way. In this post, you will learn how to use buzzwords to build authority on a topic that people can relate to.
Use buzzwords to share knowledge
Marketing buzzwords provide you with the opportunity to share your knowledge, ideas, and passions. And since buzzwords are unique to an industry, this uniqueness allows you to build authority.
Let’s look at social media marketing consultant Mark Schaefer, as an example. He coined the term “content shock,” which essentially looks at how the present model of content marketing is unsustainable because there is too much of it and too little time to read it all. What started off as just a phrase has become a buzzword. That buzzword is now used to convey knowledge on the subject of content marketing. If you hear the term “content shock,” chances are you’ll also hear Schaefer’s name in the same breath.
This is the power buzzwords have to help you share knowledge and ideas. Schaefer was already regarded as an authority on the subject, but the term he coined opened new doors and new ways of thinking. It’s also helped him stand out from every other person who talks about creating content and content marketing.
Even if you are using another buzzword that’s already out in the wild, you can still share your knowledge on it. Let’s use the term “Conversational Commerce” as an example. This buzzword was coined by Uber’s Chris Messina and is free for anyone to use. This means that although there is increased competition, it also means that there will be more people and brands following the term, people who want to know more. If you are able to become an early mover and can share your ideas, knowledge, and experiences before the competition gets too fierce, you will be able to build your own following related to the buzzword.
Create content that aligns yourself with the term and become an authority on it. Don’t just use a term because you think it sounds fancy and modern.
Use buzzwords to drill deeper, not fan wider
One of the biggest issues with content creation is that there is so much of it, and it all sounds the same. This is again a case of buzzwords being used poorly. So instead of trying to use as many buzzwords as you can, you should drill down to a specific buzzword.
Refer to your own experiences, insights, and ideas to create something unique and powerful—this is what people want to read about. If you want to become an authority on a subject, you need to offer something that people can’t find elsewhere.
What makes people who you consider to be authorities on subjects stand out from others? They own a space, help you understand a topic, or make you think of things from a new perspective. They haven’t done it by talking about every marketing topic under the sun; they’ve done it by being specific and insightful on a smaller range of subjects.
You are what you create
Always keep in mind that you are what you create. If you want to be seen as an authority, you have to create authoritative content.
When you see generic content that’s the same as everything else out there, you can probably deduce the writer isn’t an authority on a topic. If you want to be an authority, you can’t produce what the everyone else is doing—you need to create something new, something that only you can create, and something you are proud to put your name next to.
The more you immerse yourself in a buzzword, the easier it is to become an authority on it. By spending time researching and learning about a subject, you will come up with unique ideas on that subject. And those unique thoughts are what will set you apart and help you rise above the rest.