Harry Ford | Search Engine Marketer

SEO, PPC, Business & Marketing Advice

7 Effective Design Tips for E-Commerce Stores That You Need To Know

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Website ImageDo you own an e-commerce store which is very prevalent in these modern days? And with that, you also want to have an idea of what are the design tips that you can use and apply on it? If you said yes to both questions, you could read the list below that shows what these effective design tips are.

Here is the list of the effective design tips for e-commerce stores that you need to know.

  1. Should Have an Inclusive and Strong Product Description

As an owner of an e-commerce store, you have to know that you should consider the description of the products or services that you are going to sell it. It is very important that your e-commerce store has an inclusive and strong product description which will surely attract the attention of the people who would visit your site. Each of these product descriptions should be easy to understand, properly written, and more importantly, highly detailed since that your products are intangible for the people.

  1. The Action Buttons Should Be Well Placed

Another one is that your e-commerce store should have action buttons that are in the appropriate and good place where the customers can see it quickly. These action buttons can also be in a colored form so that it will be very visible on the page and can easily grab the attention of your customers. In this way, your customers would be encouraged to buy more sense that the interactions with it are made easy. We did an exact case study for a client selling unique gifts for this. Very important do not discard action buttons.

  1. Should Come With Excellent and Clear Product Shot

You also have to know that aside from the descriptions, it is also very important that the images of the products in your e-commerce store should be in excellent and clear shots so that your customers will be interested in buying these products. You should know that with excellent and clear product shots, the customers will be able to view the products as if they are holding and looking with it face to face. You can also add features in your e-commerce store with regards to product’s images so that you can improve and enhance the display shots.

  1. The Shipping Information Must Be Very Detailed

One important thing that you must also consider is the shipping information of your e-commerce store. You should know that this thing plays a very crucial part in your e-commerce store and can greatly affect your product sales. It is very advisable that your shipping information must be very detailed and comprehensive so that you can prevent your customers from abandoning their orders.

  1. Consider Creating Themes for Special Occasions

You can also consider creating themes for special occasions such as Christmas, Halloween, and the likes in your e-commerce store so that your customers can have more fun and enjoyable shopping experience in it. You should know that by doing this simple and easy way, your e-commerce store can also have a chance to benefit from it.

  1. Make Some Functional Tabs

The best way that you can do to prevent your e-commerce store from appearing disarray and crowded is to create simple and functional tabs in it. With this, you will be able to put all the necessary information and product descriptions without making it disorganized and cluttered or forwarding your customers to the next page.

  1. Consider Putting Customer Reviews

And lastly, you should also consider putting some customer reviews in your e-commerce store so that your potential customers would be encouraged to make purchases on it. You should know that by having customer reviews, your e-commerce store will look like a highly recommended one among the other available e-commerce stores out there.

If you are very much interested to know this topic better, you can also ask the help of a person who is very familiar and knowledgeable about this.

3 Business tips for a scaffolding company

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Scaffolding is very important and necessary when it comes to building and constructing large and tall structures. Scaffolding is a structure that is set-up temporarily to provide support to construction crew when constructing buildings. This temporary structure is made out of steel poles or sometimes bamboo which is assembled in a certain way to provides support to building crew when they do their construction jobs. It can also be used to support builder when doing building repair works, and cleaners when doing maintenance and cleaning on the building. Scaffolding is a tall temporary structure that allows people to reach the height of buildings and structures in order perform needed construction tasks such as building, repairs and cleaning.

CONSTRUCTION IMAGE

Scaffolding for hire is a popular business of providing the needed scaffolding materials to construction companies. A scaffolding company makes it convenient and easy for construction companies to construct and build structures. It is common for construction companies to hire scaffolding companies for their scaffolding needs so they can focus on their construction jobs. Construction companies outsource scaffolding materials to scaffolding hire companies to avoid hassle and loosing time and money on their construction projects. Scaffolding hire companies can be a small business or large enterprise to get into. The market for scaffolding hire companies is difficult and business can be tough. Here are 3 business tips for a scaffolding company to consider in order succeeding in the business.

  1. Seek Advice from a Good Source

Scaffolding companies especially those just starting out in the business should seek advice from reliable and good sources. These sources could be fellow scaffolding company owners but are infaraway places or local entrepreneurs and business owners who have experience in the scaffolding business.

  1. Be Resourceful in Acquiring Solutions & Equipment

Scaffolding companies should be resourceful when procuring for their own scaffolding materials to provide in their business. They can either check and acquire scaffolding materials from local construction stores and selling scaffolding companies or purchase new ones. Companies should compare prices and choose the best option for their materials.

  1. Market and Advertise Effectively

Scaffolding companies should make use of the different ways to market their business in order to attract clients. Scaffolding companies can make us of social media, offline advertising, events and more, to reach out and attract potential client to start business.

These are just a few tips that scaffolding hire companies can follow in order to achieve growth and succeed in the business. We’ve done this for a number of Cardiff based construction agencies, including this one. It is also important for scaffolding hire companies to consider the products and services that they offer and make sure to provide quality and reliable scaffolding materials and services to their clients.  Aside from offering quality and reliable scaffolding services, they should also keep in mind to promote safety as a main priority to their clients in order to build better relationship and trust. Following these 3 business tips for scaffolding company to be successful can be helpful for the business to achieve success and sustain growth.

3 Unique Marketing Ideas (And Tips) For Furniture Companies

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WelcomeI decided to write this post after having a very creative session with one of our clients. They are called Hereford furniture and below is the strategies we used to generate them an additional 2000 visitors in 3 months. All of these are very creative but also incredibly simple to replicate to any business, but more so in the furniture niche.

Tip 1 – Local Flyers

Very simple and very old school but something that works really well if you live in an upper/middle class area and you have a unique offering, such as furniture that is reclaimed. You want your flyers or leaflets to look professional but also not to look corporate. Talking about how you are a family run, local business is a good start and also distributing yourself whilst knocking doors and just talking to people will have the same effect too.

FB AdsTip 2 – Locally Targeted Ads

When people usually do facebook ads or use Google Adwords they spend a lot of money and don’t get a lot of clicks. This is mainly because they are targeting too many people. Instead you should try to stay very specific to your local area and niche and should only be paying for clicks that could potentially result in sales through your business. For example if you have a local store in a specific location then do not bother to bid on any keywords that aren’t in that exact location. You might be prompted by FB or Google that your target audience is too small, but that’s simply because they want to get more money from you. Just hold your ground and advertise to the relevant local parties only!

Coffee SHopTip 3 – Local Shops/Coffee Shops

People talk and people go out in their local area. If no one knows about your business then they are likely to not visit you (makes sense.) To find out about you they need to a.) Either see a piece of your marketing. Or b.) Hear it from a friend. The best way to get B to happen more regularly is to try to place your message throughout your local area. For example in local coffee shops, local mini store and anywhere that has a good reputation. You can also attend small business events, talk and network with other people and just generally get the word out about your business. This is a long term plan but one that does work well in the shorter term too.

Our New Project – Driving Test Cancellations Software

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It’s been a while since our last post on the Harry Ford blog and that’s mainly due to our new project. This is something we have been working on for a number of months now and has finally launched at the end of last year to a highly appreciative audience, not least individuals who like to get things done faster! This of course as the title suggests our driving test cancellations software. This is a piece of software that myself and a friend have created with a very unique and large target market – Individuals who are looking to pass their driving test quickly.

It revolves around looking for late cancellations in or near the specific area you are looking to do your test. The interesting thing about the software is it is fully automated from checking, notifications straight to booking the actual test. This is one of the reasons why I am so excited about this project as it is automated for both us (the creators) and the end user. It works by notifying the individuals who have signed up in a given area of late cancellations. Late cancellations are usually made when someone can’t go to their test at a specific timeslot, say 3.00 on a Tuesday for example.

This slot is then open to the public but there is no service that lets people know when this slot is available, unless you manually walk into the driving test centre everyday you will not know. As a result these slots usually go unused. Instead you can book quickly into this slot. This can mean passing your test in as little as 2 days! Slots come open all the time and people are always looking to pass quicker, hence the software’s purpose and reason for creating it. You can see a few screenshots below of how it works.

It really is that simple.

We hope that individuals will find it as simple as we have aimed to create it, although it wasn’t easy to create! If you have any questions about the software then feel free to go directly to the site and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading.

Introduction to Amazon Marketing

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SuccessAmazon is one of the world’s largest retailers. Anything and everything is sold on Amazon, with the company itself even going into food and drink in the near future. Originally established as an online book store, Amazon now has thousands of businesses on their website selling products through FBA – Fulfilled by Amazon. This means the merchant sends all the items to an amazon warehouse, which then pack and deliver the items for the business. This frees up more time to focus on product design and quality as well as marketing. Generally this is seen as the future on business and why I am giving it a try too.

To get started is pretty easy, you simply have to have a product, build a listing for that product and send those products to amazon directly. The process has been outlined on a number of other websites, so I’m not going to talk about it today. Instead I am going to focus on the key element on how to actually rank a product in Amazon, as ranking high in the Amazon search engine itself, is the best way to make a large amount of sales. Generally this is referred to as amazon seo and although it is similar to Google SEO there are some key differences. There’s an epic guide on perfectly optimised listings for Amazon if you want to check that out.

How to Rank in the Amazon Search Engine

SEO Image

Ranking in Amazon is kind of the same as ranking in Google, the primary difference is the key metric. So lets cover the basics first and then get onto the main difference.

As you probably know, including your keywords in your title, url and on your website is key to ranking for these keywords in Google. This is much the same in Amazon and On-page optimisation is basically the same thing. So if you already know the key element for on-page SEO then implement these into your amazon listing and that will give you a great start. Ensure your listing contains all of your keywords and the description is very long (over 500 words.) You also don’t need to worry about over-optimisation with Amazon.

Once the on-page optimisation is complete its time to get sales and reviews! Unlike with Google (which is all about backlinks) Amazon bases their primary metric on sales. Now a high number of sales will improve your rankings, and a high number of reviews will improve your conversion rate and click through rate as well. This all has an impact on how high you will rank on the amazon search engine itself. But primarily you want to focus on a.) Sales – Getting as many as possible and b.) Reviews-  Getting to 10 reviews as soon as possible!

For more information on the amazon ranking strategies you can watch the video below.

Update – April 2018

Amazon is becoming more and more competitive by the day, we’ve recently helped the ASC guys build a massive list of top tools for sellers, this list is mega and awesome, would highly recommend giving it a read if you are serious about your Amazon efforts.

Where I see Business in the Next 10 Years

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Dominos businessAlthough this is more of a broad business, technology and investing style post rather than my usual marketing posts, I just wanted to do it to give people an idea about what I do with my time (outside of marketing). Technology and investing are 2 huge passions of mine, over the past 3 years I have invested close to a million pounds through different forex, stock and even spread investing channels. In the same time my expenditure on technology and more importantly business tech has tripled! I love anything that makes business more efficient and nowadays that is usually a new piece of tech! Below are 3 things I see happening to business in the next few years!

Speed

Over the past 3 years something has become increasingly clear… We are getting quicker and quicker. Whether this be in terms of making decisions, buying things, getting things delivered or simply getting bored! As a species we now have an attention span of 2 seconds! That’s less than a goldfish (3). But what does this mean for business? Well essentially it means the following – “If you are not fast moving in your business, then you will struggle. Technology updates are coming at an alarming rate, but more importantly the way in which technology is used and adapted is what’s different.

One product I am still absolutely amazed by is drones. These used to be huge government spy units back when I used to think of the terms, yet nowadays a drone is this tiny aerial unit that you can purchase for a couple of hundred pounds that takes HD steady video and pictures from stupid distances and insane qualities! The technology itself is nothing new, but the way its become consumer eligible so quickly is quite scary!

Investments Change

More specifically the way investments are made. There is another housing and financial meltdown coming, as much as it sucks to say it, it is going to suck even more when you are not prepared for it. But luckily tech is going to help us overcome it. Let’s take the last meltdown, what happened? People lost a lot of money, but not if you were quick. The technology I am talking about will help people (not just the extremely rich) to get out of a bad financial position early enough to make it through a financial crisis profitably. That’s personal investment, business decisions and loans!

Businesses Actually Change

I’ve invested in a business that provides betting advice to people in return for their email address. I love the business and the people behind it but if I really think about it, should I be doing this? Nope. I should be focusing on individual specific things.

Businesses Adapt or Die Out

To sum this up in 28 seconds I will embed the video by Gary Vee – One of the most outgoing and upcoming business and investing giants. Owning a 100 million dollar company and probably more than that in investments now too.