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17 Great About Us Pages to Inspire You

Every business needs a website. And every website needs an About Us page.

Actually . . . take two steps back.

Let’s revise that.

Every website needs a unique and exciting About Us page that compels visitors to buy your product or service.

Stick with us, and we’ll look at what an About Us page is and why you need one. More importantly, we’ll discuss how to create compelling About Us pages that build trust, increase conversions, and boost retention rates.

After that? We’ll dip into 17 examples of unique and exciting About Us pages and delve into what it is about them that makes them worth a special mention.

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What Is an ‘About Us’ Page?

In short, it’s a page that serves to inspire people — either to work with you or to buy your product. It can contain (but isn’t limited to containing) your brand story, your achievements, and your best testimonials.

Related: Customer Testimonials and the Power of Social Proof

What Is an ‘About’ Page Not?

An About page is not a page for pushing a hard sell or a page for boasting about your business. It should offer an up-front and honest portrayal of your company, its story, and your brand values.

So when creating an About Us page, you should make sure to:

Stay away from the hype. Users can see straight through it. Leave it for social media.

Avoid a sales pitch. If a reader is on your About Us page, there’s a good chance they’re considering using your service or buying your product. They’re looking at why they should choose you. So don’t sell your product or service. Sell you.

Why?

It’s simple: People work with people, and people buy from people.

Tips For Making Great ‘About Us’ Pages

You should now have a decent idea of what an About Us page should and shouldn’t contain.

We’re going to follow this with a few tips to help you stand out and create an About Us page that works for you and your business.

Be creative. Don’t fall into the trap of simply writing a brief summary of your business and calling it a day. The best About Us pages are creative, informative, and interesting.

Don’t follow the crowd. If someone’s reading your About page, there’s a good chance they’ve been reading (or will read) your competitors’ About Us pages. So, make sure your page stands out. It should make it almost impossible for a potential customer to forget you.

Feature faces. Consumers like to know who they’re buying from or working with, so make sure to feature at least some of your team on your About page. It can really help boost conversions.

Oh, and never use stock photography. Ever.

Be transparent. Your About Us page serves to sell your story and get buy-in from your visitors. Transparency is incredibly important to win your visitors’ trust.

Don’t forget about CTAs. Like any other page, About Us pages need calls to action. Many sites seem to forget that this is a key page for converting visitors. Make it clear to readers what you want them to do next.

Related: 7 Tips for Writing Winning Calls to Action for Your Website

How To Make An ‘About Us’ Page That Converts

1. Keep your copy simple.

Don’t litter the page with industry jargon and confusing copy. The words should leap off the page and inspire your visitors to take action. A block of text that visitors have to read six times to grasp is not going to cut the mustard.

2. Make sure your contact details are on the page.

This might seem obvious. However, we dug through countless About Us pages while researching this article, and you’d be surprised at how many we came across that didn’t contain contact details or even a contact form.

If a visitor’s got as far as looking at your About Us page, there’s a good chance they’re thinking of working with you or using your service. Don’t miss that opportunity to convert them by making them search for a separate contact page.

3. Put yourself in the readers’ shoes.

What do you think they are looking for? What do they need to know? Many About Us pages don’t seem to have considered these things. At all.

Does your page highlight your skills? Your knowledge? Your experience? Does it explain to readers the benefits of using your service or products? Does it reference your USPs?

4. Don’t be afraid to use visuals.

Consumers today are used to things being delivered fast. Whether it’s a product they’ve ordered or, in this case, information.

Are you able to sell your service or business in visuals and words? The human brain processes images much faster than words, so if you can, use both.

5. Include customer testimonials.

Trust in your brand is essential. Testimonials from genuine customers are a massive selling point and can help convert prospective clients into actual, revenue-generating customers.

Fancy going one step further?

Alongside customer testimonials, include quotes or endorsements from influencers or industry experts (if you can get them, of course).

6. Tell a story.

Tell your company’s history, but in a way that compels visitors to keep reading. Who doesn’t love a good story? Stories get visitors more invested in your brand. And that, naturally, leads to more conversions.

Bonus points if you can craft a more personal story.

7. Make sure the page loads fast.

This, of course, goes for every page on your site, but it’s crucial that key conversion pages load as fast as possible. Make sure to talk to your web developer and emphasize the importance of page load speed.

You can find out exactly how long a particular page of your site takes to load and what can be done to make it load faster with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Related: 12 Reasons Why Your Website Is Slow and How to Fix Them

8. Don’t forget the fold.

Ideally, all important information should be positioned above the fold. You should also guide users to scroll down and read more.

9. And mobile usability.

While it varies from industry to industry, more than half of internet browsing now takes place on mobile devices. So make sure your About Us page, and your site as a whole, is built for mobile first.

You can check if a page is mobile-friendly using Google’s Mobile-Friendly test.

17 ‘About Us’ Pages That Get It Right — And Why

Are you in need of some inspiration to help you build your ideal About Us page? Look no further. We’ve scoured the Internet to find some of the best About Us pages out there.

No matter your niche or what kind of business you run, you’ll be able to find some inspiration in these 17 examples.

Let’s take a look at each one and discover what makes these pages so unique and exciting (and worthy of inclusion on this list).

1. HERoines Inc.

What makes this a good About Us page?

The page itself is simple and aesthetically pleasing, and it loads fast.

It features photos of the team that seamlessly fit into the page design.

The colors and tones used match the rest of the site, creating consistency across all pages.

It covers the brand’s visions and goals using inspirational, engaging copywriting.

The CTA button sits to the right of the page and remains visible at all times.

2. Iconiq Creative

What makes this a good About Us page?

It’s free of unnecessary words and gets straight to the point.

It features case studies, a client list, and their credentials — all in plain sight, for all to see.

They feature multiple testimonials (although this could be improved by slowing down the carousel or giving users the ability to scroll at their own speed).

They’ve linked to their founder’s website, so visitors can learn even more about the brand and its history.

It showcases their humanitarian work in a “Giving & Causes” section.

3. RubyLove

What makes this a good About Us page?

The copy is upfront, accessible, and fun — despite the brand selling products that (sadly) still have some stigma attached to them.

It sets out their mission from the first sentence.

It’s not always a wise idea to sell on your About Us page; however, this site succeeds by soft-selling using videos, great imagery, and natural internal linking.

It features a section that boldly states the benefits of their products and how they can help you. In other words, the copy is user-centric.

4. Band

What makes this a good About Us page?

As a creative studio, this About Us page demonstrates that knowing your user is crucial. The page kicks off with some fantastic imagery that reinforces their business mission.

The copy is minimal but covers what’s needed: who they are, why they exist, and why you should work with them.

5. Anton & Irene 

What makes this a good About Us page?

This is one of the best one-page websites we found. Anton and Irene have effectively turned their entire site into an About Us page. It’s edgy and daring and, well, pretty unforgettable.

The photography for the team (just the two of them) is incredibly creative. When you hover over their figures, snippets of what’s beneath the veneers are revealed. This one definitely isn’t following the crowd. Exactly what a design brand needs.

It tells you who they are and what they do using one sentence and a few bullet points. In other words, it’s minimalist and to the point, while letting the user know exactly how Anton and Irene can help them.

It features where they’ve appeared and what they’ve achieved, and it breaks it down into fun sections using hard facts (with a side of cheeky humor).

Their contact information is some of the most detailed on this list, but it doesn’t feel tedious or over-the-top. It has that human touch. Largely because they’ve injected their personality into the entire page.

They top it off by featuring testimonials and highlighting the awards they’ve won — and they manage this without sounding like they’re giving you a sales pitch.

6. LessFilms

What makes this a good About Us page?

They understand their target audience. As a video production company, they (understandably) use video to tell their brand story, and they do it in less than a minute.

Everything else is kept to a minimum — they inject a little humor using bullet points that articulate who they are in less than 20 words. To top it off, they have a team member section that makes you feel like you know them personally. The page makes it almost impossible not to want to work with them.

7. Mailchimp

  What makes this a good About Us page?

Despite being a big company, Mailchimp successfully manages to circumvent any corporate tropes. Instead, their About Us page makes you feel like you’re going to be working with a small team.

Each section is only a couple of paragraphs long. Despite having a ton to talk about, Mailchimp understands that the reader only needs top-level ideas (though you can go off and learn more, thanks to dedicated pages for the company’s culture and history).

At no point does the page feel like a sales pitch. It simply pulls you into what Mailchimp stands for and who they are as a company.

8. 500px

What makes this a good About Us page?

As an online network for photographers, you would expect great visuals on their About page, and it doesn’t disappoint — especially if you happen to be a dog person!

The page goes on to explain who they are and their commitment to their network. Plus, it’s completely free of fluff.

It sets out the benefits of joining the network, and it does it clearly and concisely.

9. GIPHY

What makes this a good About Us page?

If you’ve ever used a Graphics Interchange Format file (aka a GIF), then you’re probably aware of GIPHY. GIFs are fun. So GIPHY should be too. And they certainly haven’t let us down. They’ve seemingly taken their ethos, worked from the ground up, and created an About Us page that’s quirky, engaging, and completely on point when it comes to reflecting the brand and its identity.

And it’s pretty much done entirely using — you guessed it — GIFs.

10. Twitter

What makes this a good About Us page?

Twitter’s About page hits the nail on the head when it comes to copy with brevity. It lays out who they are and what they stand for without going into too much detail. You know precisely what you’re going to get from the social network just by looking at their About Us page.

It does an excellent job of moving visitors down the funnel and getting them to sign up and start using the site. They do this in part by pulling trending content into the page. This gives readers a CTA to try the platform.

11. Moz

What makes this a good About Us page?

Moz is known for its transparency, and this shines through in their About Us page. It’s honest, to the point, and tells you their entire story — but without dragging on or going into unnecessary detail.

The page also acknowledges their faults and when and why that had to pivot their products to survive in their niche. This is pretty unique and impressive. Not all companies are so honest.

Related: How to Write a Blog Post — A Step-By-Step Guide

12. Cupcakes and Cashmere

What makes this a good About Us page?

While Emily’s adopted a more traditional approach, this About Us page clearly conveys who Cupcakes and Cashmere are and what they do.

They do this using a set of strong visuals that show there are real people behind the brand with a legitimate mission.

The site also includes a comprehensive FAQ section where pretty much every question a reader could have is answered — right down to how their affiliate links work.

13. Eight Hour Day

What makes this a good About Us page?

This is another creative studio that successfully reflects the quality of their work with a simple About Us page that doesn’t beat around the bush.

They tell you who they are, what they do and why they do it, and who they’ve worked with.

And they do it all on one page, using clear, concise, and engaging copy.

14. National Geographic 

What makes this a good About Us page?

Creating a more corporate About Us page that doesn’t feel stuffy and stagnant isn’t easy, but National Geographic manages to pull it off. The page begins with an inspiring video that’s right on-brand.

The page then discusses their mission, alongside information about their leadership team. It also features a job board.

Finally, they point you towards some of their most recent content — essentially a fairly subtle CTA.

15. Cultivated Wit

What makes this a good About Us page?

As a comedy company, you’d expect their About Us page to be on the playful side. Cultivated Wit hasn’t let their visitors down. They’ve delivered engaging copy that articulates their mission statement in just a few hundred words.

Cultivated Wit also uses well-chosen team imagery that makes it crystal clear who they are and how they work.

16. Lonely Planet

What makes this a good About Us page?

If you’re reading the About Us page on Lonely Planet, you probably already know what they do — and Lonely Planet gets this. So, instead of preaching to the choir, the focus is on how their site can help the user.

This page demonstrates the importance of design when it comes to an About Us page using stunning visuals and incredible design. Every part oozes class.

17. GummiSig

What makes this a good About Us page?

Gummisig is a freelance web designer, so we’d hope they’d know how to put a good About page together. Thankfully, this one doesn’t disappoint. From the start, you know you’re on a quality page when you see the text, “Who is this man? Dude, myth or mega designer.”

Gummisig also shows how important it is to inject your personality into your About page. The copy reflects this perfectly, so readers can get a real feel for who they’ll be working with.

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So, What’s Your Value Proposition?

As you might have noticed, there’s no one set way to design an effective About Us page. Pages can be casual or corporate. Silly or serious. Image-led or copy-led. Or both.

Throughout all these pages, the running theme is that they engage, educate, and entice readers to become customers. They’re also an accurate reflection of the brands, and leave users feeling that little bit closer to the company — as well as the people behind it.

Create an About Us page that ticks these boxes, and you may well find you’re converting more customers (and better quality customers) with minimal extra effort.

Good luck, and more importantly, have fun!

The post 17 Great About Us Pages to Inspire You appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/how-to-create-about-us-page/

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How to Create a Kick-Butt Crowdfunding Campaign on Your Own Website

Lightbulb! You’ve got a great idea. We’re sure of it: You’re destined to sell the next must-have tech toy or life-changing product. The virtual masses have a problem, and your business has the solution.

Trouble is, you need a little $$$ to get your venture the ground. No problem.

In this day of 280-character tweets and viral BuzzFeed listicles, anything is possible. Harness the power — and pennies — of the masses to make your idea a reality with the web’s favorite money-making method: crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding has become one of the most highly-favored and fastest-growing ways to raise money for causes, events, and projects. Crowdfunding accounts for $34 billion raised globally! That’s no chump change.

Familiar with Exploding Kittens? How about the Facebook-acquisition Oculus? Between cutting-edge wireless headphones, pioneering smartwatches, high-class fitness equipment, and more, scores of recent small-biz triumphs are the results of successful crowdfunding efforts. Crowdfunding (and a killer web host) can provide the means for ordinary small businesses to accomplish the internet age’s American Dream.

But contrary to popular belief, you don’t need Kickstarter to, well, kick-start your fundraising into high gear. By enlisting the power of your own brand and site traffic to build (financial) support, you can run your campaign on your terms and reap long-lasting business benefits. It’s demanding and requires hustle, but the growing hype and effectiveness of crowdfunding are on your side (plus, we believe in you!). From now on, consider your site as your all-in-one crowdfunding workhorse. Skip the outsourcing — you have what you need to succeed.

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A Closer Look at Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a big player in the current state of e-commerce; it’s on the rise and still evolving as people and businesses experiment with new ways of utilizing its power. A marriage of crowdsourcing and microfinance, crowdfunding impacts not only the way businesses raise money, but also how individual consumers spend money.

Crowdfunding also deals with social community on the web. Just as the internet can bring together like-minded individuals for virtual book clubs, organized playdates, pop culture fan clubs and more, this collaborative financing system creates communities out of clicks and unites web users to a common goal: your great idea. It also offers avenues for web users to support companies and projects that interest them outside of traditional brick-and-mortar methods. Through your crowdfunding campaign, your website can play a role in utilizing and adding to those virtual circles and influencing buyer behavior.

Crowdfunding is typically categorized into a few main types (with many other smaller types), including Reward-Based (the pledge-based kind you’re probably most familiar with, like Kickstarter or Indiegogo), Peer-to-Peer Lending (alternative or non-traditional banking and lending solutions, like Lending Club), Donation-Based (GoFundMe fits here), and Equity (real investments made to startups). Crowdfunding has even extended to supporting top-tier athletes, financing education, and even offsetting the cost of the your annoying Facebook friend’s honeymoon fund.

OK, back to your hot new idea. Do you feel overwhelmed with the idea of crowdfunding it into creation? Don’t fret. If you’ve got a website up and running, you’re already well on your way to mobilizing your followers (and getting them to open their wallets).

Why Crowdfund?

Like exercise or flossing your teeth, the benefits of crowdfunding are multifold. It may not be right for every project, but if it serves your needs, it offers a host of benefits. Not only does crowdfunding offer value in financial ways, (can you say CHA-ching?) but it can bolster your brand, establish stronger and more loyal customer communities, increase the visibility of your business, help you conduct better market(ing) research, and build beneficial buzz that lasts beyond your campaign.

So, what’s the benefit of ditching those popular platforms and hosting a crowdfunding campaign solo on your site? Let us count the ways:

Avoid Extra Fees. Yep, with popular platforms, you have to fork over an additional percentage of your earnings to the site. Take Kickstarter for example; they charge a fee for their services — 5% of the collected funds, as well as a 3–5% fee for payment processing. Same with Indiegogo. Why share your hard-earned $$$ with a platform? Keep the funds (as much as 10% more!) by bypassing the popular sites and running your own campaign.

Retain Full Control. Normal crowdfunding platforms set the ground rules for your fundraising campaigns, often leaving you with rigid parameters that restrict your campaign length, payment processing methods, branding, and more.

Issue your own edicts by running the campaign on your site. Stay in the driver’s seat and determine the experience of the campaign for your participants — tailor structure, aesthetic, and technical aspects to your personal goals. You can design and dissect every step of the customer flow to your unique specifications, rather than working around the popular platforms’ established models. A custom setup gives you the reins to alter campaign length, pledge level, media options, reward offers and more with flexibility. Plus, you’re able to give your backers more options and can implement more tactics, like affiliate marketing, that you can’t do on those other sites. Your creative spin can help set you apart and improve user UX. With a custom setup, you’ll be able to:

Skip the Competition. There are a lot of people out there peddling products — you don’t want to get lost in the noise. Ditch your e-commerce competitors by drawing them to the unique campaign hosted on your site and setting yourself apart from the millions of other look-alike campaigns on other popular platforms.

Own Your Customers. With self-hosted crowdfunding, the support (and traffic) you bring to your site is yours — you don’t have to share ownership with the big platforms. You set the rules and determine how you interact with backers. Plus, as audiences engage with your campaign, they’re likely to continue engaging with you — hopefully converting to loyal, repeat customers.

Build Your Brand, Not Just a Product. Say you’re running a Kickstarter campaign to push a new idea. Once the length of the campaign elapses, it’s over. Consumers don’t necessarily have the means or motivation to engage with you after it ends. But if your campaign is tied to your website, you’re building continued awareness of your business, not just your one-and-done product — an awareness that can benefit your site for long after your campaign wraps up. The traffic and engagement — not only the money — will do your site favors in the long run.

Tailor to Your Audience. What works on the popular crowdfunding sites might not be what’s best for your audiences. When running your own crowdfunding efforts, you can tailor processes and design to meet their needs, enhancing the chances of successful campaigns and increased engagement. Plus, you’re building a loyal community.

All-or-Something Model. With many popular crowdfunding platforms, you’re faced with an all-or-nothing model: if you don’t meet your ultimate fundraising goal, you don’t collect any dough. When you run things on your own website, you can still collect funds even if you don’t hit your target amount.

Utilize Your Momentum. You’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into creating a slick website, outfitted with smart design and killer content. You’ve designed marketing campaigns to grow your social followings and established a strong business model. Let your labor serve you: with the momentum you’ve already created, you can run a successful campaign without relying on the aid of established crowdfunding services. Utilize the energy you’ve already created and keep things moving full speed ahead.

Skip the Learning Curve. If you’ve built a loyal, engaged following, users know that they can trust you. They know what to expect from your site and how to interact without hiccups. Don’t send them to another platform unnecessarily — you might lose them. Even as popular crowdfunding options, not everyone has used the big platforms. Rely on the familiarity of what you’ve built and keep them committed to your brand and what they recognize. Plus, on your end, keeping things in-house is a bonus: you know your site and can manage your campaign better when you pull the strings.

Remember: if you’re new to running a website or don’t quite have the technological know-how or promotional power to pack a punch, an established crowdfunding site might be a good tool to start financing your project.

If you want to run things, do keep in mind: building and running a campaign (not to mention the everyday, routine tasks for your site) are no small to-dos, especially when playing manager. While success is never guaranteed, you can increase your chances of meeting your goals through commitment, grit, and a wide arsenal of tools: strong planning, social media mastery, technical prowess, exhaustive advertising and PR work, tip-top customer service, and patience — especially during the tricky, sometimes complicated, aspects of a campaign. (And it’s okay to outsource and automate where you can). You need to stand out — that takes work. But that’s what we’re here to help you do. Read on.

DIY Crowdfunding: How to Host a Campaign on Your Site

So now you’ve got the why. Let’s talk how. Start small and follow these steps:

Do Your Research

To build a better campaign, do your homework.

Utilize the host of tools available on the web to conduct vital research, like reading up on trends related to your industry, market, and keywords. A few to start:

Google Keyword Planner makes monitoring traffic and competition around keyword trends simple.

Know your target. Visualize the audiences that might like your product by building buyer personas and customer profiles with this HubSpot tool or YouGov Profiles.

Discover what’s popular in internet conversation by perusing Google Trends.

Put a finger on the pulse of social conversation by analyzing real-time social media trends with HootSuite.

Let Google help you understand how the world is using the internet with its Consumer Barometer.

Access raw datasets in a host of fields from the Pew Research Center.

Scour Think with Google to find useful stats, tools, trends, and insight. An example? Explore shopping trends and product popularity with Google’s Shopping Insights.

In addition to taking advantage of the web’s wide array of tools, take to the popular platforms to research crowdfunding projects similar to yours — crowds that have backed like-minded campaigns might be interested in participating in yours, too.

And of course, don’t neglect the most important research: direct engagement with your current visitors. By soliciting their feedback, you take important steps in preparing your campaign. Create those essential early adopters by talking with potential customers and those who might be interested in learning more about your product or idea. Discover your audience — and find them early on.

(FYI: The research stage is also a good time to identify possible mentors!)

Gauge Your Idea

Sure, it felt like an epiphany when you dreamt up your new product idea in the middle of the night. But can your lightbulb moment translate into successful business numbers? Not every invention will reach iPhone-level success, so put the feelers out early and often to gauge the level of interest and the potential of your idea.

First of all, take time to assess the demand for the product and the needs in your field. Does your idea fit into a niche too limited to garner enough interest or attention? Does it offer the promise of providing real value to your visitors’ everyday lives?

Create a business pitch and get feedback from family, friends, and strangers, noting observed holes in your plan, places where details can be improved, and questions addressed. Are you solving a problem? Providing value to a perceived need? Is your plan realistic and unique? This insight can help you know if your idea is viable enough to continue, and provide the direction to guide further planning. If you hit roadblocks, keep refining your pitch — or rework your idea.

Plan and Set Goals

Just like Rome, successful crowdfunding campaigns are not the result of a single day’s work. To see your efforts come to fundraising fruition, plan ahead before clicking ‘publish.’

The most successful and well-orchestrated crowdfunding campaigns have a few characteristics in common; one is good planning. Take the time to consider a few goals, like:

What is Your Budget? How Much Do You Need to Crowdfund? Let’s talk $$$. How much dough do you need to bring your idea to fruition? Determining your budget and financial goals is one of the important steps in planning and ultimately running a successful campaign. Determine your fee structure, price points, and try to account for the expected — and unexpected — costs, including the rewards you’re offering for backers’ support at each tier (if you choose to go the reward-based route). Remember to add in production, marketing, shipping, payment processing fees, and other costs (it doesn’t hurt to add in an extra percentage for emergencies).

Then consider: if you reach your goal, can you deliver on your product and your promises? Make sure to take the status of your website and your business into account. Plan your goal numbers around the current strength of your following and readership — a smart target amount that pushes you and your backers, but that is still realistic based on your site’s situation. Use your research about each aspect of the campaign to establish your figures. Work with a budgeting template to crunch the numbers (and try this nifty program to estimate fundraising possibilities).

What Type of Campaign Will You Run? What form of crowdfunding works best for your ultimate goals?  Are you hoping to build your pool of investors? Then start planning a campaign using equity crowdfunding. Are you looking to offer incentives to backers? Build a reward-based fundraising campaign. Your crowdfunding type will guide future decisions regarding execution, design, length, and marketing approach.

How Long Will Your Campaign Be? What is the optimal length of time for your campaign to be successful? It’s important to find a balance. Too long and you exhaust your followers (and yourself) and decrease your chances of success; too short and you might be cutting off opportunities for engagement with potential backers. According to insights, the optimal campaign length is 45 days. Whatever length works best for your audience and your business, make sure to plan strong campaign bookends — 42% of funds are raised in the first and last three days of a campaign. Give yourself a timeline that allows for a realistic execution of your idea. Demarcate important phases, communication frequency (crowdfunding campaigns raise 126% more when owners update supporters), and desired campaign milestones.

What Rewards Will You Offer? You want to incentivize visitors to support your innovation. What rewards will you offer them for participating in your campaign? Will you put their name in a special acknowledgment section? Offer them an advanced copy of your product? Give them a reduced pre-sale price? Take time to think through which offers will motivate your audiences best. Decide the rewards you’re going to offer (if you need ideas, check here) and how you’ll separate them into different donation tiers — you’ll want to cater to both the casual and gung-ho backers. Even these small offerings can help encourage backers to pitch in and build positive momentum.

With goals established and plans made, you can now direct each step of your campaign with your ultimate aim in mind.

Prepare the Technical Components

Now that you’ve got the details of your campaign mapped out, it’s time to make sure your site is capable of handling the technical tasks of running a successful crowdfunding campaign. Between setting up seamless checkout processes and creating a positive UX, polishing your site and oiling its gears assures that your campaign — and your business — runs smoothly. As the home-base for your campaign, your site needs to be functional, consistent with your brand, and appealing (no Comic Sans or animated graphics here). Prep your site before you begin your campaign by completing the following checklist:

Use a Quality Hosting Provider. If your site can’t handle campaign crowds or the heavy tasks of running an e-fundraiser, you can’t expect to draw crowds and reach your financial goals. Having a reliable provider ensures that all aspects of your site perform at highest capacity and that visitors have a positive experience on your site.

Additionally, a good host provides a hardworking CMS to keep up with your campaign responsibilities (like sharing updates and creating spaces for interaction). Partnering with a quality host is one of the most critical parts of running a successful campaign on your site, and luckily, we can help you with that. We’re hosting experts.

Create Customer Service Channels. Another hat you’ll need to don as you run a crowdfunding campaign on your site is that of customer service rep. Whether you build a team or are committed to answering every email yourself, you’ve got to make plans and prepare to field a high volume of questions, comments, and concerns about your product or service during the length of your campaign (and after).

Successful communication promotes trust and satisfaction among your backers, and encourages continued participation and engagement — even shareability!

Be transparent in your communications and make your audiences feel like a critical part of your campaign (ahem, they are) by preparing built-in methods for visitors and backers to contact you easily. Provide simple contact forms and then respond as quickly as you’re able.

Be Responsive. DYK? Fifteen percent of crowdfunding donations are made on mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re frustrating visitors and missing out on crucial sales. So don’t neglect responsiveness and make sure your site is functional — and appealing — across devices.

Optimize Checkout Processes. Having a simple and seamless (and safe) checkout system on your site will make or break your campaign. If there are too many steps or barriers to making purchases (like hidden fees or unexpected shipping costs), users and potential backers will hit the road, taking their credit cards with them. Thus, no funding and no leads. Make sure your site is equipped with a trustworthy payment gateway (do your research!) and test it regularly for potential friction that might prevent people from checking out.  Display security signage and make navigation clear. And test, test, test!

Continue Providing Quality Content. While you run your campaign, you can’t neglect the king of your website: content. Continue to furnish your site with blog posts, articles, and useful information so that audiences have a reason to keep engaging with you after the campaign ends. If your site contains a wealth of valuable content, there’s a better chance of visitors sticking around, interacting, and joining your loyal band of followers (surely, they’re going to be your number one fans — foam fingers, anyone?)

Create an Appealing and User-Friendly Design. When potential backers visit your site, what will they find? If the design and navigation of your website are unclear or visually noisy, they won’t stick around long enough for you to see a penny.

Lay out a menu that’s simple and easy to navigate. Don’t create a labyrinth; you want visitors to quickly find what they’re looking for.

Create special pages of your site dedicated to your campaign and your backers, where they can find information, updates, and contact forms.

Related: What Is User Experience (And How Can You Use It to Build a Site That Suits Your Audience)?

First impressions are crucial, so make your website inviting: clean up your design by ridding it of old, outdated content and implementing design principles that attract eyes. Keep visual elements consistent and use them to target your CTA. Their experience on your site should be positive enough to inspire confidence in you and your campaign.

Stay Social. Keep the momentum going by linking to your social media accounts on your site, so that audiences can engage with you in multiple ways. This also provides them with other avenues to receive campaign updates and share links (meaning: more eyes!)

Start Tracking Analytics Early. Of course, the statistics you gather during your campaign help you judge its success (or lack of). But setting up analytic-tracking software early on in the process can provide you a wealth of useful information as you move forward, like insights into better understanding your traffic, visitors, and conversions. Get Google Analytics (or your favorite monitoring software) up and running and start measuring. (More on analytics to come).

Now, a word (or two) for you WordPress users: building a successful crowdfunding campaign can be easy as pie on the popular platform with a fundraising-ready theme or plugin.

Gather Leads with Landing Pages

Now, time to drop a truth bomb: you can’t expect to draw crowds the day you launch your campaign. You can’t, that is, unless you’ve performed the necessary prep work.

The reality is, successful crowdfunding campaigns are actually built long before the campaign hits the web. How? Email.

Let us explain. Committed backers don’t appear out of thin air the moment you announce your campaign, especially if they know nothing about your product, and money is involved. Supporters won’t come running with wallets open unless you’ve taken the time to introduce them to your brand and ideas beforehand. Spend the months before your campaign meticulously generating leads by building an email list. Outfit your site with strong landing pages that feature an opt-in email form, committing your visitors to engage with you before you begin dropping campaign hints. Those invested audiences will be critical to your campaign success.

(We’ve already created the exhaustive guide to building landing pages, so if you need a crash course, start here.)

And it’s not just sending out an occasional “hello” email once in a blue moon. Building and prepping the rapport you need before your project launch requires that you provide value-ridden communications (like free downloads or other offerings, useful content, etc.) to your followers consistently over time. If you’ve given them something they want and made an effort to solicit their feedback, they’re more likely to engage (and pony-up!) when you present your campaign.

You can propel your success in those first days of your campaign, a push that can carry you through to fulfilling your goal if you’ve built and prepared an engaged following before you launch. Spend the necessary time building an email list so you can leverage those crowds once campaign time comes. It’s proven: 53% of email shares convert into donations, so make garnering an essential part of preparing your website. The small investment of time you spend building a landing page and collecting leads will be rewarded with increased crowdfunding success down the road.

And don’t stop building an email list once your campaign is over. Email is still one of the most powerful (and multi-purpose) marketing tools in your arsenal, so use it to continue to build your subscriber list, inviting readers to share content, and to recover abandoned shoppers through email communications.

A few more words on landing pages: you’ll want to set up a few pre-launch pages (that you’ve thoroughly tested), enticing visitors about what’s to come. They should have a singular focus dedicated to collecting email sign-ups. During your campaign, your landing pages will likely feature CTAs inviting crowds to contribute to your campaign. Keep your landing pages updated as goals change before and during your campaign.

Get the Word Out

While hosting your campaign on your own site has a myriad of benefits, the popular platforms often have an advantage: they’ve got traffic built in as established sites, and as a double whammy, reporters often scour popular crowdfunding sites looking for projects to publicize. So while you’ve got that working against you, implementing a solid marketing campaign can help you bring attention to your project. You’re not out of the game yet — not even close.

Like most aspects of your campaign, marketing should be planned and developed long before you launch, and with significant chunks of your budget devoted to it.

You need your campaign to gain early traction to promote a positive trajectory, so give it a big push as you begin, and continue to engage in daily marketing activities. Repeat after us: ABS. Or, Always Be Searching. Trust us; there really are audiences out there willing to invest in your idea.

We’ve identified email as a key marketing tactic; here are other crucial ways of promoting your campaign:

Build connections. Engage with other blogs, influencers, and media connections within your industry that can share your campaign with their own communities. Provide featured interviews, guest posts, or other collaborative content to widen your reach. Craft content that includes other campaigns and ideas similar to yours —  then share it with those businesses. It’s likely they’ll want to share! Chances are, you’ve already built relationships that can help further your goal. Get those big players clued into the brilliance of your idea, and they’ll do marketing work for you (a fancy term we like to call ‘social proof.’ It’s powerful stuff!)

Encourage Referrals. Put your current customers and early adopters to work building hype. Incite your followers (especially those superfans) to engage in word-of-mouth (err . . . word of keyboard) promotion and to recommend your idea to their friends by providing shareable links and content. Bandwagon backers can supercharge your conversions, boost your fundraising numbers, and become their own powerful influencers.

Tweet, Post, Share, and Snap. Social content is shareable, meaning that social media marketing is an important way to get more eyes on your campaign. Utilizing the communities you’ve built on these platforms and planning targeted ads, you can pack a wallop in spreading the word; in fact, 12% of Facebook shares convert into donations. Plus, easily digestible bites of content shared on social platforms are often easier for you to craft — and easier for audiences to scan.

Write a Too-Hard-to-Ignore Title. It’s the first thing your site visitors will see, and if it’s not captivating enough, it might be the only thing. Your campaign’s headline is your blink-of-an-eye opportunity to draw crowds in, so it’s got to be strong, benefit-driven, and eye-catching. A few words and visitors have decided whether they’re pledging loyalty or taking a hike. Your title also largely impacts your campaign’s shareability, so don’t just wing it. Take time to plan out each word, build a hook, and make it as effective as possible so your visitors will keep reading.

Publish a Video. The numbers don’t lie: campaigns with personal videos raise 105% more than those that don’t. It’s hard to argue with that. An emotionally-resonant video will prove an asset to your campaign and provides essential information to potential backers: what your idea is, and why they should support it (or, the what and why). If your wallet allows, hire a professional to produce a top-notch video for your campaign (or invest in some quality equipment to make your own).

Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Measure Your Success

Without a yardstick to measure results, you can’t judge the success of your campaign. Of course, the numerical figures of your fundraising clue you in, but there are more analytics to consider when quantifying the success of your project.

A few basic metrics to keep your eye on:

Traffic Source. Where are your site visitors coming from? Are they direct, from Google searches, or referrals? Note the highest performing channels and give them additional marketing attention.

Cost Per Conversion. What’s the price of getting a visitor to act on your CTA? To sign up for your email list? To make a purchase? With this number, you’ll want to aim for a proper ratio of the cost of generating traffic divided by the number of conversions. This stat helps you know how to best spend your advertising dollars.

Interactions Per Visit. The goal is that visitors who come to your site are engaging with you. But if your interactions per visit are low, customer behavior is showing that something on your page is hindering potential customers from acting. Armed with this knowledge, you can identify troublesome pages, improve ill-performing elements, and modify the information provided to better your chances of finding success when your campaign goes public. Figure out what’s causing visitors to slam on the brakes and improve momentum.

Unique Visitor/Return Visitor Conversion. How do first-time visitors behave on your site? How about returning visitors? Do newbies sign up right away, or does it take subsequent visits from the already-acquainted to generate leads? If a majority of your visitors aren’t following through on your call-to-action until second or (yikes) third visits, then work to identify what is preventing them from immediately responding.

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Raise Those Funds

Well, there’s your start. Are you ready? The success of your crowdfunding campaign lies in your hands. Scary, isn’t? Sure, but it’s also exhilarating. With your hands on all the controls, you control your e-commerce destiny. Contrary to the internet’s common dialogue, you don’t need a Kickstarter or other platform to build a successful campaign. With a decked-out site, careful planning, and megaphone-like marketing, you can draw crowds and raise the funds you need to bring your stellar idea to fruition. You’ve got this.

The post How to Create a Kick-Butt Crowdfunding Campaign on Your Own Website appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

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20 Fail-Proof Ways to Come Up With New Content Ideas

Running out of ideas might be one of the worst situations when you depend on content to drive your business. You probably never imagined this would happen when first starting your online business. However, realizing you have nothing to say when facing a blank blog post is frustrating and panic-inducing.

But don’t worry. You have plenty to say!

Everyone gets hit with a case of “blogger’s block” once in a while. Fortunately, there are lots of tried and true methods for getting back in sync with your editorial calendar.

In this post, we’ll talk a little about why having fresh content matters. Then, we’ll share 20 fail-proof ways to come up with new content ideas. Let’s get started!

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Why Creating New Content Matters

Content creation is a key aspect of inbound marketing, but it’s also how your audience gets to know you. Your next potential customer will only know you as an online persona. As such, you’ll want to take advantage of every opportunity you have to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Providing new, insightful content to your audience is an efficient way to do this.

Additionally, companies that post more content get more traffic. Publishing 16 or more blog posts a month can help you pull in nearly four times the traffic of your less prolific competition.

Of course, content creation isn’t just about what’s on your website.

You’ll also want to have steady social media content to help promote posts, articles, and videos. Social media is also an effective way to let your current followers know you have something new to share and bring fresh eyes to your content.

Finally, keep in mind the trust factor when it comes to digital consumerism. Without the benefit of a physical storefront, if you’ve stopped producing content, it can be hard to tell if you’re still around. An e-commerce website with a blog and social media that hasn’t been updated in six months is unlikely to inspire confidence in potential customers.

Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

20 Fail-Proof Ways to Come Up With New Content Ideas

Now we’ve covered why developing new content is so important, let’s get to work with 20 fail-proof ways to create new content ideas. There are plenty to get through, so let’s begin!

1. Create Topics in Bunches

Coming up with a topic under pressure can be stressful, and the relief you feel when you come up with something might be enough to make you stop for the day. However, you may want to try extending that brainstorming session and coming up with a few ideas at once.

Batching similar tasks together is a tried and tested productivity technique. It can keep you focused and cut down on multitasking. What’s more, you can better develop themes in your content, which will likely come in handy to keep readers engaged.

So pour some coffee, set a timer, and away you go!

If you can, try to come up with enough topics to last a month or two. You can plug your new topics into your content calendar and make a plan for your next brainstorming session while you’re at it.

2. Scour Social Media

Social media could be a continuous source of topic ideas. Since Americans spend about two hours a day on social media, chances are your followers will be online discussing what they’re currently interested in. By doing a bit of virtual eavesdropping, you can kickstart your content idea generation.

To start, look at what’s trending among your current followers. Take note of questions they’re asking and topics they’re interested in — but don’t stop there. Instead, let yourself go down a rabbit hole. Who are the other people and brands that your fans follow, and what hashtags are they using? All of this information can be used as fodder for future content.

3. Review Your Blog Comments

Engaging with your readers in your comments section is an effective way of building a relationship with them. However, you can also read through comments to develop new ideas.

Your readers are likely from different parts of the world and have very different life experiences from you. So they may be leaving unique insights into and observations about your post’s subject matter. They may even be asking questions that you can answer in future blog posts.

Interacting regularly with your readers can make it more likely that they’ll leave thoughtful comments. After all, if you take the time to respond, it’s more rewarding for them to share their thoughts. You might also give them some encouragement with a strong Call To Action (CTA) at the end of your posts.

4. Conduct Interviews

Interviews with an expert in your niche are a versatile way to help develop content for your blog or social media channels. The material you get from a single interview can bolster your content calendar for a week or two.

First, the material lends itself to multitasking. Of course, you can publish the interview as a blog post. However, you might also shoot some video and share short clips of the highlights.

Also, as there’s likely some overlap in your audiences, you may gain new followers from your guest. You might try creating a few easily-shared social media graphics for your interviewee to post on their channels.

Try reaching out to a personality in your industry to see if they’re open to being interviewed. You might want to try asking some of the people your audience follows on social media. If you’re concerned about coming up with questions, this could be a good time to poll your readers to see what they would ask.

5. Check Out Competitor Sites

Your competitors’ sites are a potential goldmine of content ideas. After all, they’re targeting the same population as you!

Of course, you can start with their blog to see if they’ve covered any topics you haven’t thought of. If you find ideas this way, try to outdo them by creating longer and better content (otherwise known as the Skyscraper Technique). However, take care not to plagiarize. There’s nothing wrong with using their content as inspiration, but be sure your words are your own.

Next, head for the comments sections. Just like your own audience, your competition’s readers are likely asking valuable questions and sharing thoughts that you can use as a jumping-off point.

While you’re on their site, you might also want to sign up for their newsletter. They may offer additional content to subscribers that you can’t access on the website.

6. Google Search Suggestions

Google may have some great ideas for your next topic. This tactic can be incredibly valuable, as you don’t need to provide much information. Also, the suggestions you get back will be relevant and mostly optimized as they’re based on actual searches.

Start by typing in a general idea or even just your niche. You’ll get a list of potential topics. You might want to log out of your Google account first or use a private browsing tab, so your past search history doesn’t influence the results.

Also, check out the People Also Ask and Searches Related To… sections. These are two more places to find topic and keyword inspiration.

You may want to incorporate this strategy into your topic brainstorming sessions. If you come up with one good idea, Google might help by giving you five more.

7. Connect Your Brand to Current Events

Be on the lookout for any current events you may be able to relate to your brand. While your audience may not be especially interested in the event itself, a clever and relevant tie-in could take advantage of trending searches and hashtags.

This can be an excellent strategy for social media posts, as they’re shorter and more in-the-moment. Keep in mind, although this tactic can be a lot of fun, you’ll want to exercise some caution to avoid tying your brand to anything overly controversial.

You might also stick to your niche when discussing current events. You can spotlight any new developments on social media or dig into the latest happenings with a blog post.

8. Create Product Reviews

Even if you don’t sell a product, you can still review items your followers may find helpful. Product reviews are another versatile bit of content. You can quickly tweet out some praise, being sure to tag the relevant company when you do. Reviews also lend themselves well to video, as you can demonstrate the product and “humanize” your business.

Start by thinking of things you use every day and if they might be useful to your audience. For example, if you’re a food blogger, you might not believe a scented candle relates to your niche. However, if you swear by it to get rid of lingering food smells in your apartment, your readers will likely appreciate the recommendation.

Furthermore, you can ask your audience about the items they can’t live without. A monthly product review could quickly become one of your more popular features.

Related: 36 Brilliant Blogging Tools to Help You Write Better, Publish More, and Increase Traffic

9. Use a Topic Generator Platform

If you’re still stumped, you can get an assist from a topic generator platform. You might try HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator.

This free tool can provide you with up to a year’s worth of weekly blog post topics. All you have to do is type in up to five different nouns and click on the Give Me Blog Ideas button. It may not offer cast-iron and fully-formed ideas; however, it can be a great starting point for developing more relevant content.

10. Tell Personal Stories

It’s highly unlikely that you’re the only person creating content in your niche. Your audience follows you because they like you. Chances are, they’ll enjoy learning more about your successes and failures.

These stories may inspire your readers or make you more relatable to them. Best of all, since you’re pulling from your experience, there’s no research required.

How you share your story is as personal as the story itself. You may want to write a narrative or simply list lessons you’ve learned over the years. You could even let your audience ask you questions on a Twitter chat or YouTube live stream. This is also an excellent opportunity to tell your brand’s story.

11. Get Ideas From Industry Newsletters

No matter your niche, it’s a pretty safe bet that there are a few respected newsletters dedicated to it. These periodicals are likely full of up to the minute details about topics your readers will be interested in.

Try subscribing to some industry newsletters and use what they cover to help cultivate fresh content for your blog. You might also note who is writing the content and who is being interviewed for these publications. Following these people could lead to even more inspiration, or even an interview or two.

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12. Watch YouTube Videos

Having your own YouTube channel is a great idea, but you can also use the platform to develop content ideas. You may start by watching videos in your niche and reading through comments for inspiration, similar to what you might do on a competitor’s blog.

However, you can also try searching for some of your old topic ideas and then using the suggested videos to come up with new ones.

You could also try looking at the most popular videos in your niche. This should give you a good idea of what your audience might be interested in.

Related: How to Start a YouTube Channel

13. Stay Up to Date With New Products and Tech

Regardless of the industry you’re in, new developments are likely happening all the time. Staying on top of new products and technology related to your niche can regularly help you generate new content ideas. If you subscribe to industry newsletters, you’ll be well-positioned to discuss these advancements.

Try sharing this information with your audience on social media and get their thoughts on it. This is potentially an effective way to get a conversation started on your social platforms, which could spark even more ideas for you.

14. Talk About Recent Studies

Conducting original research is a great way to generate content, but it’s not always practical. Instead, let your readers know about new studies or survey results related to your niche. This strategy provides value to your audience and helps cement your reputation as an expert.

While you should probably share these findings on social media quickly to capitalize on recency, you might build other content as well. For example, you could craft an in-depth blog post or shoot a video exploring the study’s potential impact.

15. Refresh or Expand Your Old Content

Speaking of studies, if you’ve included any in older content, it could be time for a refresh. Taking time to look through old content can help update facts and statistics for the sake of accuracy. Also, suppose the content is especially dated. In that case, you may have been trying to rank for different keywords or using poor Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices.

You might also look through your older blog posts to see if you can expand upon ideas. A small paragraph in an old article could be fodder for a brand new piece of content.

Finally, you could browse your metrics to identify lower-performing posts that could benefit from some attention.

Related: Keep Your Content Fresh: How to Repurpose Old Blog Posts

16. Visit Online Forums

If you’ve already mined your own comments section for reader questions, you might want to try some online forums next, such as Quora. This website is devoted to the asking and answering of questions and covers just about any topic you can think of.

Type in your area of interest, and you can find a wealth of content inspiration. Look for questions you haven’t covered, or curate a few related questions and try writing an ultimate guide.

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17. Give Your Users a Survey

To find out more about what your readers would like to see, try asking them directly. Your audience will be familiar with the types of content you produce and the topics you cover, so they’re in a great position to provide advice.

This can be as formal or relaxed as you’d like. You can select individuals and ask them directly what they’re interested in, or just hold a conversation on Facebook to find out more about your audience. You could also try sending out a survey to your newsletter subscribers.

Related: Take Your Content Strategy Up a Level with a Content Audit

18. Read Conference Agendas

If you’ve had success checking on industry newsletters, you might also explore conference agendas. These can be full of interesting topics to research and knowledgeable people to follow or connect with.

You can try reading through agendas for upcoming or even past industry events. If it’s being talked about at a conference, you should probably be talking about it as well. And once it’s safe to attend events again (thanks, COVID-19), you might consider writing a roundup for your followers.

19. Help a Reporter Out (HARO)

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a website that connects journalists with sources. While you can use this tool in the hopes of being included in a story, it’s also helpful for generating content ideas.

Signing up for HARO as a source will get you three emails a day full of potential content topics. You’ll receive pitch requests every weekday, which you can mine for potential content ideas.

20. Browse Amazon’s Best Sellers in Your Industry

Amazon lists the top-selling books by industry. You might find your next read there, but it can also give you a sense of what people want to learn about. The list is based on sales and is updated hourly.

You can pull up a list of relevant titles and start judging books by their covers (and table of contents). Try scanning summaries and chapter titles to help generate new content ideas.

Blog Post Ideas Made Easy

Consistently coming up with new content ideas can be one of the more stressful aspects of running an online business. However, it also has the potential to pay off. Besides better traffic and increased profits, content creation is how you build a community and engage with your customers.

In this post, we shared 20 tips that should help you come up with some new content ideas. You might start close to home by reading through your blog comments and looking to improve or repurpose old content. Don’t forget to stay on top of current events in your industry through conference agendas and new product developments. If you’re still stuck, you might want to give a topic generator a try.

Developing new content takes a lot of time and energy. The last thing you need to worry about is whether your web hosting is reliable. Have a look at our shared hosting plans so you can get your brain back in the content creation process.

The post 20 Fail-Proof Ways to Come Up With New Content Ideas appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

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How to Prepare Your Website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

You probably haven’t started thinking about turkey and cranberry sauce, but maybe it’s time you did.

No, you don’t need to go grocery shopping or plan your Thanksgiving feast quite yet. Still, as your hosting experts, we’re telling all you website owners out there: You need to start strategizing for the epic holiday weekend. 

We know it’s been a difficult year in many ways. You’ve likely felt that strain hard in your business as you’ve adjusted during COVID-19 conditions and embraced an online environment. The reality is this: Many people are out of work, small businesses are struggling, and consumers likely have less $$$ to spend. 

But that doesn’t mean you have to end the year on a sour note. As the calendar approaches the normally mammoth holiday shopping dates of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you can prep your business — and your website — to make the most of the spending season.

Even in less-than-ideal conditions, holiday shopping has a lot of potential to boost your business.

Historically, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend has been a record-shattering buying event that you’ll want to get your business on board with. Last year, Black Friday brought in more than 93 million  in online sales, 

Those aren’t the only eye-opening numbers; a survey reported that more than 189 million Americans shopped online during the holiday shopping season’s harbinger weekend. That’s a lot of potential customers — and potential sales — for your business.

Here’s the catch: If you aren’t anticipating the Black Friday e-rush well ahead of time, you could be looking at a mass exodus of your site’s visitors, who will happily take their credit cards elsewhere for the year‘s biggest spending season. Cue the flying-money emoji. 💸💸💸

Over the years, people have increasingly turned to their screens for Black Friday deals rather than retail stores. For example, in 2019, consumers spent a whopping $7.4 billion at online stores on Black Friday — an increase of $1.2 billion from 2018. This year will likely break e-commerce records as people shop from the safety of their homes. 

And never underestimate Cyber Monday’s money-making potential; in 2019, Cyber Monday brought in $9.4 billion online, a near 19% jump from the previous year and markedly the biggest online shopping day in history.

So what’s on your Black Friday/Cyber Monday To-Do list? Well, you need to prep. Your site needs to be whip-quick and bug-free, not to mention stocked with quality products and smart navigation. 

And we can help with that! 

First, we’ll talk strategy, helping you plan out the best ways to get your sales in front of customers. 

Review Your Site & Goals

Plan Out Sales

Create a Marketing Campaign

Track the Competition

Generate Buzz

Then we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of prepping your sites for the e-crowds, one technical task at a time. 

Assess Your Web Hosting

Build Your E-commerce Store

Focus on Safe Shopping

Edit Your Return Policy

Fine-Tune for Optimization

Prep for Customer Service

Test Your Site

Plan for Contingencies

Analyze the Results

With a website primed for a critical weekend of sales, you can put on your stretchy pants and enjoy another slice of pumpkin pie — while you watch your business grow. 

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Create Your Marketing Strategy

Whether your small biz is a team of one or one hundred, you need to have a pow-wow, STAT. You must organize a Black Friday plan of attack before your site gets left out in the dust. With an increased focus on online sales during the holiday shopping season, you have to be ready. Start with baby steps. 

1. Take Stock (Literally and Figuratively)

It’s smart first to take a look at where your business stands. What are your goals? How established is your brand? How is your social media presence? And what are you hoping for — in sales terms and otherwise — for the big Thanksgiving shopping holiday?

Knowing where you are and where you want to go helps you set appropriate goals and put a plan in place to accomplish them.

Then there’s physical merchandise or, if you sell a service or non-physical commodity, virtual goods. 

In the case of tangible products, you will need to take stock of your items and increase inventory (and shipping supplies) in anticipation of sales (especially of your best-selling items) so that those ever-important buying days run as smoothly as possible. Keep a spreadsheet of inventory handy — this can help you stay organized and be useful if contingencies arise (more on this later).

Regardless of what you sell, you need to make sure you have the tools in place to run a sale on your site and figure out the kind of sale you want to offer — based on lifetime customer value or cost per acquisition stats — or if you’d be better to provide more out-of-the-box savings, like service upgrades or add-ons.

So, make some calculations and gather your data — you need this information for our next stage of planning.

Remember that COVID-19 has moved many businesses nearly entirely online. So how you approach inventory, shipping, and the services you offer will differ from years past. It will likely require additional time, planning, and resources to successfully navigate a successful holiday shopping season. Plan ahead and prepare for contingencies (we know you’ve been dealing with a whole year of contingencies).

2. Plan Out Your Sales

Believe it or not, holiday shoppers are researching products and scouting deals well ahead of time — like, now. So it’s important — crucial even — to take time to get organized by mapping out the sales you’re going to offer for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. Plan ahead to avoid messy last-minute sale scrambles and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants deals (yikes).

Also, note that coronavirus conditions have caused shortages in many industries, many of which could affect your manufacturers, suppliers, or operation suppliers. It may take extra time to get what you need, so plan for these delays well ahead of time when planning sales.

The sooner you have a plan in place, the sooner you can bring attention to your Black Friday sale and prep customers to bring their holiday dollars to your shop.

A simple Excel sheet works well for outlining planned sales — identify products or a set discount, regular and sale prices, the sale timeline, and how you anticipate promoting that sale.

You may need to talk with your supplier (if it’s not you) to work out the production details of increased demand.

Also, keep in mind that most Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers haven’t completed their holiday shopping at the end of the Thanksgiving spending spree. Last year, only 18% of people (46.3 million) were done with holiday shopping before Nov. 1. So don’t see Black Friday as the end-all, be-all. 

In your plan, include actions (and additional incentives) that encourage Black Friday shoppers to return to your e-commerce store throughout their holiday shopping and, eventually, become loyal customers. 

3. Map Out a Marketing Campaign

Now that you know what kind of sales you’re going to offer, you need to disseminate that information effectively to consumers. Advertise well ahead of time and prep your customers for buying.

We know things this year have been hard. Since we’re all pinching our pennies, here are some affordable — and creative — ways you can create a BFCM campaign that drives sales. 

Related: The Best Holiday Marketing Campaigns (And What You Can Learn from Them)

Email Marketing

If you’re wondering where to start with Black Friday marketing, email is truly a safe bet, since a healthy, growing email list is invaluable for your small business or e-commerce website. 

Sending marketing campaigns to those who have chosen to be engaged with your business allows you to tailor personalized messages that have the most impact come buying time. 

Electronics giant Best Buy hypes up Black Friday discounts with anticipatory email messages.

Promotional emails can prep your most loyal consumers for an upcoming sale or reward frequent buyers, and specific types of communications (like abandoned cart emails) can help wary or slow-to-act visitors complete unfinished purchases.

Your promotions can also help you to build an email list. It’s like an epic circle of benefits.

Related: Build an Email List With Your WordPress Website in 3 Simple Steps

Social Media Marketing

While social media tends to cast a wider net in marketing, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can help you tease upcoming promotions and provide creative ways of distributing Cyber Week deals. You can also boost your posts to target specific audiences or reach a larger crowd for only pennies on the dollar. Tailor your content to each platform for maximum effectiveness.

Create a calendar to help you determine and plan out the best times to distribute marketing content — then stick to it! Consistency rules.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Sure, the saying goes that the early bird gets the worm, but if you’re planning deals late in the game, all hope is not lost. While search engine optimization (SEO) and other organic traffic drivers take time to implement, pay-per-click advertising allows you to pay for more clicks (hence the name) right now. 

If you’ve got more of a marketing budget at your disposal, you can utilize PPC campaigns to have more control over your search engine rankings and, at best, turn clicks into customers and see strong ROI. 

The basic steps are to create an ad and make bids on virtual auctions for top placement in search engines. Check out Google AdWords to learn more and start generating more traffic to your site.

4. Keep an Eye on the Competition

With a tidal wave of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals flooding every inch of the web, your small biz needs to set itself apart against other small operations and big-name retailers.

Extra touches can help distinguish your site from a rival online retailer; consider offering a gift (or an additional discount on future return purchases) with each sale, expedited or free shipping, special packaging, or customized thanks-for-shopping messages from your business. Watch your industry competitors and work to have the leg up.

Rifle Paper Co. incentivizes customer purchases with bonus gifts.

And even if manpower or budget limitations restrict you from including additional incentives, always provide hassle-free returns and friendly, prompt customer service. Emphasize the personality and care offered by your small business versus big-box retailers. Customers like to support small businesses and, in most cases, will appreciate, remember, and reward a more intimate online shopping experience.

Related: 11 Ways Your Online Store Can Compete with Mega-Retailers and Win

5. Build (More) Buzz

In addition to your organized marketing efforts, you can boost the hype for your Black Friday steals by engaging in additional awareness-building activities.

Craft Winning Copy and Create Alluring Graphics 

Time is on your side; with your early-bird preparation, you can plan out and prep copy that is engaging, personable, and error-free. Same with photos and graphics; planning ahead guarantees you have attractive visuals that impress and persuade. Putting special attention to even these most basic of website fundamentals can significantly improve your users’ experience during their holiday shopping.

Related: How to Write Product Descriptions That Really Sell: 8 Simple Tips

Utilize Hashtags

Insert yourself into the popular topics of each week by taking advantage of trending hashtags. The viral hype will seamlessly (and effortlessly) aid in spreading the word about your products and upcoming sales. #blessed

Build in Scarcity

Shoppers will naturally feel a sense of urgency to buy if they know your limited-edition, few-in-number, or wildly-discounted product won’t last long. Use language that reminds shoppers to act quickly to score the best deals.

Powerhouse retail brand Madewell offers customers a product exclusive — enticing buyers to act quickly.

Display Shop Signage

Well before the actual Black Friday/Cyber Monday crowds hit your e-shop, you can outfit your site to prep visitors for approaching sales. Consider updating your homepage with a special Black Friday header or landing page signage that cements SALE into your customers’ minds — especially those who are conducting their holiday gift-giving research now.

Clothing company Anthropologie displays sale signage on their site homepage, inviting visitors to engage.

Update Your Blog

Hopefully, your blog is regularly outfitted with quality posts that are relevant and engaging. If it’s not, get writing. A blog consistently updated with useful content brings visitors back to your site and builds your brand. Use friendly, personable language that establishes you as a trusted authority in your field or industry.

Related: How to Write a Blog Post — A Step-By-Step Guide

In the next few weeks, consider publishing useful holiday shopping content, like curated gift lists or helpful instructional guides (wink, wink) that feature your products and provide a service to customers.

Media entertainment company Brit + Co compiles helpful content for visitors — a creative way to feature their products.

Pitch to Other Blogs and Social Media Influencers

Influencers are called influencers for a reason. Get your products in front of the web’s most influential people, and you could be rewarded with more traffic to your site — and ideally, new shoppers. 

Pitch your products to other sites (for their gift guides, guest posts, or other content), and you’re inviting a whole new set of eyes to explore your offerings. Score!

Share Positive Product Reviews

Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful, especially in e-commerce. With prompts on your site or through after-purchase email messages, invite your customers to leave product reviews. Share the glowing ones with new customers (and turn them into repeat customers) or use them to persuade on-the-fence buyers.

Write and Share Customer Spotlights

Bring attention to the superstars championing your products or services — your existing customers! Profile their unique story and how your business helps them achieve success. These stories (like our own tales of a millennial-minded online publication creator or writer looking for a quick way to set up a website) will inspire other consumers to engage with your brand and, ideally, make purchases.

If you’re looking to go even more out of the box, try these other creative promotional ideas. 

And lastly, know this: According to Adobe, the power of social media influence on purchases is decreasing, but retailers have greater opportunities to invest in email marketing and search optimization for increased revenue. That could be a major thumbs up for your site if done well. So plan now.

Prepare the Technical Aspects of Your Site

Planning the details of your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales is essential. But that’s only the first step. Especially when shoppers notice the buzz you’ve created and want to make purchases. Is your website up to the challenge? If not, start here!

1. Consult With Your Hosting Provider

As is necessary for success in all parts of your website, a site that’s functional and ready to deliver during the fall’s killer shopping holidays depends on your website’s foundation: your hosting provider. Your provider should be reliable and helpful, and at the most fundamental level, keep your site up and running 24/7.

Yes, a good hosting provider is essential. So consider: 

Can your hosting plan handle surges in traffic that may occur during Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales? 

Can it keep you safe from virtual vulnerabilities? 

And if your site does go down, will you be compensated by an uptime guarantee? 

Based on your needs, you may need to consider upgrading to a plan that can do more heavy lifting during the rush.  

Not sure what plan is best for your site? Chat with us. We’ve totally got your back.

Is Your Site Ready for a Cyber Monday Sale?

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2. Set Up Your E-Shop

Before you can draw customers in with deep discounts, you need to make sure your site is actually outfitted for e-commerce, if you haven’t already. 

Whatever tool you use — like WooCommerce or Shopify — get it up and running well before the big day. Ensure that it’s capable of handling your site’s crowds and that it allows customers to make purchases using a simplified checkout process. 

Related: How to Build an Awesome Online Store with the OceanWP Theme

3. Provide a Safe Shopping Experience

A vital part of building trust with your clients (and ensuring that they make return visits) is shopping safety. 

Shoppers — especially ones with the seasonal inclination to splurge — want to know that their information is safe on your site. That’s a big reason to think about security. A study by the Department of Commerce revealed that half of U.S. internet users are deterred from buying online because of worries about privacy and security.

To remove worry from customers’ minds, display prominently on your site’s checkout pages signage that proves it’s safe to shop with you.

Otter’s safe shopping signage puts customers at ease.

More often than not, your hosting provider can help you get set up with a free or low-cost SSL/TLS certificate (an authentication and encryption system — meaning, data is transferred online safely). If you’re a DreamHost user, we’ve got you covered.

Another way to ease your customers’ minds about security: Share the other websites that have featured your products. Display endorsements from other blogs and companies, (it’s OK to toot your own horn!) and give your products and services an outside seal of approval.

Bath product company Tubby Todd boasts the backing of other sites that help establish trust and authority with potential customers.

Visitors to your site will see the buzz already building around your business from other familiar companies and will be more likely to engage. Consider it e-commerce FOMO.

These trust-building measures that can make a world of difference, especially on those big shopping days. 

4. Create an Easy-to-Find Return Policy

It’s inevitable — some customers are just not going to love their purchases. The National Retail Federation estimates the value of holiday gift returns in 2019 to be nearly $100 billion. Currently, up to 40% of all online purchases will be returned, but 96% of customers said they would shop with a retailer again if their return experience with that business was positive. 

With the vast majority embracing online shopping this year, you’re likely to see an increased rate of returns. Returns are not only a part of the holiday season but a valuable point of interaction with consumers. They are an opportunity to connect with your audiences, provide them the best possible experience, and encourage repeat business and customer loyalty.

REI’s return policy is clear and easily found. 

First, make your return policy easy to find — in a limited number of glances or clicks. Keep your customers loyal by avoiding “the fine print” mentality; clearly state shipping costs, deadlines, and return policies (and make it big enough to read, please).

5. Fine-Tune for Optimization

You want every aspect of your site to be optimized for the best possible web experience. With eyes on increased sales, more traffic, and a loyal following, fine-tuning your site in these specific areas will help you build your numbers.

Make Your Site Mobile

We could easily inundate you with reasons why having a mobile-responsive site is so important, but we’ve already been there, done that. So instead, we’ll just pass along a few key statistics to prove our point.

Like the fact that Black Friday is big (no, let’s say B-I-G!!!) for mobile. Last year, both Black Friday and Cyber Monday were record-breaking days in retail history for e-commerce, with sales reaching nearly $3 billion on mobile.and 61% of all online retail coming from smartphone transactions — and that’s only on Black Friday.  

Cyber Monday also made waves for mobile in big ways, with transactions soaring to $3.1 billion, the highest ever year-over-year dollar gain for smartphones. What’s more, smartphones accounted for more than half of all traffic on retail websites on Cyber Monday.

Holy smartphone, Batman. 

Mobile is also crucial for good SEO. How? Well, having a site that’s mobile-responsive increases your chances of earning a high ranking in search engines, and therefore, your chances of being found by potential customers.

Your site can look snazzy on a desktop, but if it delivers a disappointing mobile presence, then you can say adios to your sales. 

Ensure that your site’s template is mobile-responsive. Make sure that your site loads fast on a mobile device, links work, images load correctly, and any pop-up forms display correctly. Consider utilizing the AMP initiative to upgrade your mobile experience for users.

Boost Your SEO

As a small business or website owner, you’ve probably already had a rudimentary education in the importance of SEO. 

Simply put, SEO means positioning your site for discovery in search engines. After all, a simple search is where most people begin their holiday (or basically any) shopping. 

More than any other shopping season, you want your site — and by extension, your products — to have the best chance of meeting the eyes of potential customers. So prepping your website by establishing good SEO is a task of high importance as you anticipate Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Even if you’re a beginner, you can take a few small steps to improve your SEO. But remember, SEO gains take time, so get started now — the sooner you optimize, the better.

If you want to dig deeper into optimization, consider taking a few additional measures to improve. We recently outlined 13 key steps to boosting your SEO, but check out these main takeaways:

Ensure that you’re using a quality hosting provider. (Ahem, over here. Waves.) This can make a big difference. A reliable hosting service that helps your site perform will aid in your site ranking highly.

Choose a site theme that’s designed with SEO in mind. There are many themes available out there, but not all will help your site increase in rank. Not only does a well-picked web template provide an attractive layout and improved functionality (which aids SEO, too), but its quality code does wonders for optimization. When choosing a theme, look for ones identified as “SEO-Friendly.”

Use an SEO plugin, like Yoast. 

Improve your permalink structure.

Use a responsive design (meaning: works across devices — see the “Make Your Site Mobile” section above).

Get wordy! Long-form content is rewarded by Google algorithms, so go in-depth on your blog posts and be comprehensive. Provide value. And don’t forget to analyze and organize content. Perform a content audit if necessary.

Optimize your images. Resize your photos to increase load times and use the right file format. Oh, and no “asdfjk.jpeg” file names here. Get descriptive on your photo files. Really, it helps.

Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Simplify Your Navigation

The Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping weekend is crucial for your business or website. Fail to simplify your navigation, and you could be looking at potentially lost sales and disengaged — not to mention frustrated — customers. 

Don’t squander your opportunity by making your website a maze of riddles. It’s got to be easy to navigate. 

Whether that means streamlining your design or improving the menu, tidy up your site structure. Simplify searches and checkout processes so that your customer can get from Point A to Point B in a minimal number of clicks — and you can make those sales that much faster.

Reduce Your Load Times

A reality check here: No customer (Black Friday-frenzied or not) will stick around on a slow site. 

As attention spans on the web get increasingly shortened, you need to think speed. One major key to a speedy site? Your site’s design. We outlined all the dos and don’ts in-depth, but here’s what you need to know for the holiday crunch:

Choose a good hosting provider (Check! We’ve got your back).

Optimize your images.

Minify resources like JavaScript and CSS.

Leverage browser caching. If you’re using WordPress, you can use a handy plugin or utilize our services.

Get rid of outdated or unused plugins.

Utilize expired headers.

Enable CSS sprites.

Implement open-source AMP technology (a Google-developed initiative designed to help developers build sites run optimally on mobile). Use the AMP WordPress plugin to start.

Once you’ve used your load-speed toolbox, test your site’s performance with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

6. Be Available for Customer Service

While shopping, your customers may have an urgent question about your holiday sale, sizing, or shipping (or a million other things). 

If possible, be available to answer their up-to-the-minute questions during the Thanksgiving weekend. If you anticipate heavy crowds, assemble a team to help address consumers’ pressing needs, and leave them with a positive and memorable customer service experience. 

Related: How Your Online Business Can Nail Customer Service

Enable a live chat function on your site or have a customer service email readily available for them to contact you — and be waiting by the keyboard. 

Glasses retailer Warby Parker makes customer service easy with accessible buttons.

(And you DreamHost users know that you can count on us on Black Friday. We’re just a chat away.)

7. Test, Test, Test

The best way to anticipate any potential glitches or problems with your e-commerce site during the holiday shopping rush is to test it. 

We know we sound like a broken-record-meets-Jan-Brady, but: TEST, TEST, TEST. 

Think about it: You wouldn’t turn in a term paper without reading through it, using spell check, or editing for grammar mistakes. And the way your site looks is just as high-stakes for your business, so perform necessary trial runs.

Test your links for functionality (this handy WordPress tool can help), analyze responsiveness across devices, check load times, and even request visitors’ feedback. The more you can correct beforehand, the better.

8. Plan for Contingencies

By now, 2020 has taught us all that even the best-laid plans sometimes go awry. So in your preparation, you should try to account for unforeseen circumstances (like website downtime) and — dare we say it — emergencies you might encounter during the holiday shopping rush.

Besides allowing us to Zoom in our pajamas and inspiring our makeshift WFH spaces, the pandemic has caused us to pivot in many business-altering ways. Some things to think about as you prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday: 

Do you have no-contact pickup options for online sales? Make sure to set up curbside pickup as a delivery option on your website. 

You might need to bulk-buy hand sanitizer or make your meetings virtual. But your website also needs crisis-friendly adjustments. Website owners should make sure to update eleven key things. 

Are you a service-based business used to running your business IRL? If you’re needing to adapt and run operations online, consult these moving tips. (No heavy-furniture-lifting required.)

Luckily, preparation can help you anticipate some of those potential mishaps. Make a contingency plan for situations that may arise — like an “if ___, then ___” exercise — so that you can quickly correct problems (and keep your blood pressure low because #holidaystress).

To help prevent unanticipated issues, take a few prep steps, like analyzing your site’s past Black Friday statistics (see the next section) and asking helpers to stand by. 

9. Analyze Your Results

A good rule of thumb after executing a plan is to review your outcomes. Whether you utilize Google Analytics or another metrics platform, gather the data and use it to make informed decisions on how to improve your site. 

Don’t let those numbers go to waste — they provide you with valuable info about customers’ behavioral patterns and a starting point for further improvement. Dedicate specific time to reviewing last year’s data (as you prep for this year’s shopping rush) and this year’s — so that you can continue to reap the financial benefits of the holiday shopping season. 

Related: 20 Metrics Every Blogger Needs to Track to Measure Success

Are You Ready for Black Friday Weekend?

Hey, you’ve made it this far into 2020. Give yourself a pat on the back. Wave your mask in the air. We know it’s been hard. But as the holiday shopping season approaches, you can still prime your business operations to take advantage of and prepare for the increase in online traffic. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a big deal for your website, and the time to prepare your site and strategy is now!

With a website primed for handling the e-crowds and a winning marketing strategy designed for our “new normal”, you’ll be able to navigate Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2020 and turn seasonal shoppers into frequent buyers that’ll follow you into 2021. 

Ready to optimize your site for Black Friday? Start with DreamHost. Leave migrating your site, installing WordPress, managing security and updates, and optimizing server performance to us. Now you can focus on what matters most — taking care of your customers! Check out plans today.

The post How to Prepare Your Website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/prepare-your-website-black-friday-cyber-monday/

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This Colombian Clothing Brand Is Tackling Fast Fashion’s Environmental Problem

The so-called fast-fashion industry — which brings runway fashions to discount stores — means more trendy clothes are produced faster and cheaper. It also means that, when trends change or cheap fabric wears thin, much of that gets thrown away — about 85% of all textiles produced annually end up in the landfill.

The list of the industry’s environmental offenses goes on: Discarded clothing contributes to microplastics polluting the ocean. Creating fast fashion produces more carbon emissions than international flights and maritime shipping combined. It takes 2,000 gallons of water to produce one pair of jeans.

Enough is enough, says Claudia Martinez Puerto.

“Fashion is a part of the life of every single person, and it is one the most contaminating industries in the world,” Martinez says. “One of the problems of the industry is the amount of waste it generates.”

In 2015, Martinez founded Les Common People, a Colombian clothing brand styled as “an indie clothing brand for indie women.” As Martinez became more familiar with the fashion industry — including its notorious waste and, at times, dubious supply chains, riddled with low pay and poor working conditions — she decided to make some changes.

“In 2018 we decided to change the concept of the brand and focus on environmental sustainability and the development of products with textile waste,” Martinez says. Les Common People uses discarded textiles, including waste from clothing manufacturers, to upcycle and stitch together one-of-a-kind garments from jackets to pants. And all the stitching is done by in-country locals, giving Les Common People control over the working conditions.

Martinez has relied on DreamHost to support her entrance into the world of e-commerce — and her goal of a more sustainable future. “By upcycling, we can begin to be part of the change that humanity is looking for: people who care about the environmental and social impact it generates,” she says.

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Style and Sustainability

Martinez was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, and today runs Les Common People in her hometown.

“This country is full of inspiration,” she says. “Its landscapes are like no other; its people are quite unique and even though Bogota is kind of a messy city, it has some really beautiful places and you can find all kinds of things.”

Martinez began her career as a freelance advertiser, designing and sewing her own clothes as a hobby, before building Les Common People. She works with other collaborators to help with photography, design, and accounting.

“I wanted people to feel in clothes the way I did with the clothes that I made for myself. That was the moment I decided to start my own fashion brand,” she says.

Les Common People founder, Claudia Martinez Puerto

Today, she designs and even sews some of the clothing for Les Common People, drawing inspiration from art, music, and film. The name of her company, which combines English with her native Spanish, reflects Martinez’s own fashion philosophy and why she wanted to get into the industry in the first place.

“The name of the brand was born from the idea that all human beings are the same and that we communicate who we are through the clothes we wear. We are ‘common people’ full of  originality and uniqueness, people who use the garments that we wear as a way to let the world know who we are.”

But expressing your individuality through beautiful and stylish clothing, she says, doesn’t have to destroy the environment.

“In a market full of fast fashion brands, finding unique, authentic and designer garments is an almost impossible task, which is why at Les Common People we decided to create unique garments from upcycling of completely new textile waste,” she says. “We add value to fabrics that were wasted for others; we transform 100% new textile waste into garments.”

This strategy — creating pieces that are not only different from what you find in the store, but that are crafted and designed individually, using available fabric waste to create a look literally found nowhere else — creates a perfect marriage of style and sustainability. And this union results in the opposite of fast fashion: handcrafted, quality garments meant to look great for years.

“By mixing design with sustainability values, we reached the midpoint we were looking for,” Martinez says. “We are offering a product with the style and design of the brand, a product that will help mitigate the environmental problem generated by this industry, and that was developed respecting all the links of our productive chain.”

Supply and Demand

Another of Martinez’s priorities is cleaning up the supply chain. The bargain-priced, trendy clothes lining shelves at many western shops are often made by workers in China, India, and other countries, primarily women and girls, many working long hours in dangerous conditions for as little as 15 cents an hour.

To make sure her clothing is both skillfully and ethically made, Martinez collaborates locally to create her inventory.

“We outsource the manufacturing of the garments to small producers in Bogota, where our brand is located,” she explained. “As a brand with sustainable values, we managed to create designer garments from upcycling. And by producing locally we can manage the work conditions of the people who make all our garments possible.”

The source of her clothing itself is new textile waste — that is, unused fabrics that would have otherwise been discarded into landfills. The raw material dictates what kind of projects Martinez and her collaborators can work on and forces creativity into the design. The result is a one-of-a-kind patchwork look in her clothing that mixes complementary patterns and textures.

“By taking the waste of others, we have the possibility of developing our creativity through the different shapes, textures, reliefs, and designs that the textile waste gives us, and with this create a unique garment,” Martinez says.

The waste fabric also impacts the lineup in the inventory. Right now in the Les Common People shop, you’ll find jackets and pullovers for sale — because they built the collection based on the materials that were available at the moment.

Martinez and her team are currently busy producing their next collection, which will feature shirts and pants designed to pair well with the outerwear. In addition to sustainable production and supply chain, Martinez’s products stand out for their design.

“Our products are recognized as a garment with style and design, which is appreciated for its originality as well as being an easy garment to integrate into our clients’ closet.”

Challenges and Triumphs

Owning and running a small business suits her, says Martinez — even with the long hours it demands of her.

“I like the independence that having your own business gives you — having control of your own time and working the way you like to,” she says. “Even though you may think that working by yourself is going to be a more relaxed job, it isn’t. Sometimes you have to work 10 times more, but it is really gratifying when you see the results of working on your own project.”

The workload was a challenge, especially in the early days of Les Common People, but bringing in outside help allowed Martinez to hone her strengths. She learned to let go of the details and keep her eyes on the big picture.

“When you have a small business usually you do almost everything by yourself and that is not an easy task,” she says. “For me, it was hard to let people in and get help to do things. I thought that I could do everything by myself, and I was so wrong. Even though I wanted to do everything and have control of every little process so everything gets done the best way possible, it was impossible and I was draining myself. Now that I have some collaborators, I can focus on the design and management — the things that I am good at.”

Martinez has been able to build Les Common People into a full-time job for the past few years. “I love what I have achieved,” she says. Now she’s looking forward to continuing to grow the business and building a bigger team.

Of course, Martinez’s background in advertising has been an asset, “with all the communication of the brand and how to work with inspiration boards and get ideas to reality,” she says.

And customers have really connected with the brand, Martinez says. They feel they can really get behind the social mission of her clothing label — and the style and design don’t hurt either. They especially recognize each piece for the time that it takes to create by hand — the oversized bomber jacket in the Les Common People collection, for example, requires more than 10 hours of sewing to construct.

“People love how original and innovative our products are and how easy they can mix it with all kinds of garments,” she says. “The social and environmental core of our brand are also really appreciated by our customers, who are looking for ways to make a good impact on the world, and they find that in our brand.”

Related: Building Your Own Business Website? Don’t Make These 10 Mistakes

Spreading the Word

Les Common People is an online e-commerce store without a brick-and-mortar location. Fairs and other live events put the clothing in front of buyers, so they can see and experience them in person. Otherwise, the brand relies on connecting with potential customers online and through social media.

“We love to hear what our customers have to say about our brand and products,” she says. “Through social media, we connect to our clients and possible clients, and on our website, they can find all the products so it is really easy to get from Instagram to our site, for example.”

Related: 10 Easy Social Media Tips for Your Hard-Working Small Business

Les Common People’s website is simple and to the point, and the homepage goes directly to their shop — a choice Martinez made purposefully.

“What we love about our website is that it is really clean so clients can focus on our products,” she says. “Even though it is a basic site, it is really easy to navigate and to get in contact with us if our clients want to. The main thing we want our clients to find is our products and that is the first thing they see when they get in.”

She recognizes that there’s room in the future to develop the site more and use it as a space to tell more of the company’s story, but for now, it is focused on showcasing their products to the world.

Martinez used WordPress, hosted by DreamHost, to build her website. This power combo, she says, helped her make a smooth entry into building an e-commerce business that relies so much on its website for sales.

“DreamHost has a very user-friendly dashboard, is easy to use, the support forum is very complete, and the customer service is excellent,” she says. “The WordPress hosting plan really helped me to build, develop, and manage my website.”

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Changing Our Clothes, Changing the World

For now, Les Common People ships only within Colombia. Shipping costs outside of the country are high, and as a small brand, they are focusing on local growth for now. They do have plans to ship worldwide in the future.

To benefit her work with Les Common People — and for pure personal enjoyment — Martinez is studying artisanal dyeing techniques, such as marbled fabric and dyeing textiles with natural pigments. “I really enjoy learning new things that I can use for my personal and professional life,” she says.

She also is always on the lookout for new ways to support her brand’s mission of sustainability in fashion.

“We want to keep creating unique garments made of upcycled fabrics, to learn new techniques to keep hundreds of kilos of new fabric out of the landfill, and to continue our path into sustainability not only with the brand but with our life as well,” Martinez says.

With these changes in hers and other brands and a growing awareness of the environmental toll of fast fashion, Martinez is optimistic about the future of fashion — and hopes that her customers and others will make responsible choices about what clothing they purchase and wear.

“We all can be part of the change and dress without affecting the planet and its inhabitants,” she says. “The world is changing; the way we dress should too.”

The post This Colombian Clothing Brand Is Tackling Fast Fashion’s Environmental Problem appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/customer-spotlight-les-common-people/

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An Update on Spam Filtering at DreamHost

Two and a half years ago, we started a series of improvements to our email service to make it more reliable. Our email service hadn’t received as much attention as it should have over the years, and it was starting to show. Customers, friends, family, and even DreamHost team members regularly saw emails delayed or rejected because of blocklists, email client connection timeouts and errors, and various issues with webmail. Once we realized the impact we could have, we set off to fix it, and the results have been dramatic.

We’ve made a lot of progress but still have a ways to go!

Our current project is to migrate our spam filtering service to a new provider for incoming messages. Unfortunately, we’re discovering that it tends to be overly aggressive and sends some messages to your spam folder that clearly don’t belong there. Spam blocking is a bit of an art form that requires careful attention to get the balance just right, and we’re working on that balance to get acceptable results. Our new provider is working closely with us to solve the problem and prioritize development efforts that will improve incoming mail filtering at DreamHost.

One method we’re using to resolve the problem is to train the spam filtering algorithm in bulk. Some customers have written to our tech support team for help and have been asked to provide examples of messages that have been mis-filtered. Thank you to everyone who has done so; these messages have been extremely helpful in training the filtering algorithm quickly.

As we monitor the reports of incorrectly filtered messages, we’ll also be safelisting known good senders at the DreamHost level. While training the filtering algorithm can take some time, these changes will have immediate effects. We are adding well-known domains to our global safelist when they have a valid DMARC configuration. This is a manual process and is similar to the allow and blocklist settings you have in the control panel and mailboxes interface. We’re also working to improve the interface in our customer control panel to make this even easier going forward.

We have seen progress in the functionality of our spam filters over the last two weeks. We’ve seen fewer legitimate emails getting caught by the spam filter, and customer complaints are trending downward. Our spam filtering partner has further updates planned to improve its capabilities, and we are continuing our manual safelisting process. We hope to meet your expectations (and our own) very soon.

Enhancements So Far

One of the first improvements we made was to completely refresh the hardware we use for email service. Our previous generation of email hardware had reached the end of its practical life, and it struggled to keep up with the growth in email users and the amount of storage they consumed. The new hardware is faster, easier to maintain, and highly scalable. This has brought improvements to our email service speed and stability along with fewer errors for customers in their email clients.

Next, we took on the challenge of rejected customer emails due to our email servers appearing on blocklists. The unfortunate fact is that spammers are relentless and will use every method at their disposal — legal or not — to send their junk messages. That includes breaking into our customers’ email accounts and using them to send spam. The activity on these compromised accounts leads to our mail servers being placed on blocklists and, unfortunately, legitimate emails are often blocked as a result.

We implemented a third-party service to filter outgoing emails and reject sending fraudulent messages or spam. We immediately saw our email servers’ reputation improve, and their appearance on email blocklists is now a thing of the past.

Earlier this year, we changed our webmail system to use the popular open-source software, Roundcube. While this may appear to be a simple software change, there was a lot of work to migrate existing data from the old webmail system to Roundcube. We also took the opportunity to modernize the infrastructure and deployment process behind the scenes making it easier to operate going forward. When all was said and done, we had gained a more performant webmail system with a beautiful and responsive design.

Future Plans

We have several more projects we want to complete to further stabilize and improve the reliability of our email service. The next project will be a change invisible to email users. We will be updating the architecture of our email back end so that it is more manageable and fault-tolerant. This isn’t an exciting project from a “cool new features” perspective, but it will result in less downtime and errors for the service.

Looking further ahead, we plan to improve the deliverability of messages sent from our hosting machines and customer email forwarded outside of our service. These services are also affected by compromised accounts, blocklists, and spammers. Our aim is to ensure those legitimate messages are delivered to their final recipients.

We have lots of ideas to further improve the email experience once we get past these crucial initial projects. To name a few, we want to improve the email user experience in our control, provide better options for spam handling instead of simply moving it to the spam folder, and provide better integration of features in webmail.

The list may be long, but we are excited to build it!

We appreciate your patience while we work to continually improve our email offering at DreamHost. Please don’t ever hesitate to contact us to share your thoughts about email — we truly value your feedback.

The post An Update on Spam Filtering at DreamHost appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/update-spam-filtering/

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The Best Tech Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween

It’s that magical time of year again when spooks and spirits abound. And what better way to celebrate than watching some scary movies alone in the dark. Mwahahaha!

Evil laughter aside, horror films have a storied history, beginning in the silent era with stars like Lon Chaney and Max Schreck up until present-day hits like Get Out. Audiences can’t get enough scary cinema. And a common theme running throughout the horror genre?

Technology.

Think about it: high tech and horror go together like tricks and treats. History’s horror catalog is filled with countless mad scientists, killer robots, and imaginative technologies that come with unintended — not to mention terrifying — consequences.

So armed with a bucket of popcorn and a fair bit of hubris, we decided to combine our love for technology (we’re a web hosting company, after all) and horror films to find out which ones deliver the biggest tech scares.

Fair warning: this isn’t a list of family-friendly flicks. Many of these are down-and-out, shock-and-awe, blood-and-gore horror films so use discretion if you’re screening around young ghosts and goblins, okay?

Now turn off the lights, grab a flashlight, and back up your website — it’s going to be a spooky ride.

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Science Gone Mad

Our first category features films that revolve around a single scientist or scientific goal. These films definitively prove why clinical trials are a *very* good idea.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Dir. James Whale — 1h 15m

In the sequel to Whale’s own 1931 classic, Frankenstein, a new mad scientist, Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), shows up to continue Dr. Frankenstein’s work, who now wants nothing to do with his disastrous experiments. Pretorius finds The Monster (Boris Karloff) and promises him a mate.

What unfolds is an amalgam of creepy imagery, religious symbolism, and psychological games, as you realize, despite his brutality, The Monster is a deeply sympathetic character. Pretorius eventually does create a mate for The Monster — The Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester) — and you guessed it: it doesn’t end well.

Fiend Without a Face (1958)

Dir. Arthur Crabtree — 1h 14m

The constant outpouring of nuclear power from a U.S. Air Force test facility causes one of the neighboring town’s retired scientists, R. E. Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), to covertly reroute some of the power to his own lab, where he’s secretly conducting telekinesis experiments.

Through these experiments, Walgate ends up inadvertently creating a race of invisible “thought” monsters that attack the townspeople and suck out their brains in order to multiply. These creatures are completely invisible for much of the film until they finally appear as slimy brains that slither around via their attached spinal cords. Suspenseful with an incredibly high “ick” factor, this horror movie is a fantastic watch.

Altered States (1980)

Dir. Ken Russell — 1h 42m

Professor Edward Jessup (William Hurt) is an abnormal psychologist who experiments with hallucinogens in a sensory deprivation tank. By doing so repeatedly, he begins tapping into a previously undiscovered part of the human mind.

His wife, Emily Jessup (Blair Brown), desperately tries to calm him down from his infatuation with this alternate reality, but Edward insists that he’s about to find the next big breakthrough in the field of evolutionary science. The results of his obsession are very unexpected and truly horrifying.

Complete with disturbing hallucinogenic sequences and a mind-altering musical score, this film is one heck of a ride.

Re-Animator (1985)

Dir. Stuart Gordon — 1h 26m

Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a medical student who attempts to reanimate the dead using a special serum. During his experiments on both animals and people, he uses especially high doses that result in the subjects behaving insanely violent.

As West starts to become obsessively self-consumed, more bodies are reanimated and wreak havoc, and the film becomes an all-out gore fest.

Honestly, this has some of the most unique — and utterly disgusting — makeup effects in film history. It’s gross, irreverent, and funny.

From Beyond (1986)

Dir. Stuart Gordon — 1h 26m

Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) — yep, another Pretorius — and his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), develop a device called the Resonator, which emits a frequency that enlarges the brain’s pineal gland allowing those within range to see a reality beyond normal human perception.

Pretorius becomes obsessed with the machine’s power and crosses over into a parallel dimension, leaving his lifeless physical body behind. Tillinghast and a new scientist, Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), conduct further research on the Resonator to discover what happened. What unfolds is a series of grotesque sequences and haunting visuals that scream 1986.

Scanners (1981)

Dir. David Cronenberg – 1h 43 min

This cult classic definitely has some Stranger Things vibes — at least where offspring-with-mind-numbing-superpowers content is concerned. In this case, a fictional drug causes pregnant test subjects to bear children with altered neurological functioning — specifically, with telepathic and telekinetic ability.

These individuals, called Scanners, are now an underground channel of curiosities, locked in an unconventional good versus evil tug-of-war between those Scanners who are learning to control their abilities and those wanted for use as weapons in building a new world order.

This thought-provoking flick is especially well-suited for gore-hounds — yep, that much-talked-about head-explosion scene is only the half of it.

Tech Gone Awry

Each of the films in this category focus on a single type of technology. Someone should have QA’d this ish.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace — 1h 38m

Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), the owner of a Halloween mask manufacturer, is gearing up for his biggest sale of the year. Meanwhile, Dr. Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins) is investigating a mysterious death that seems to be connected to the masks.

Unfortunately, detailing the technological aspects of the plot would spoil it for you, so you’ll just have to watch it. I promise it’ll surprise you.

Though audiences disliked this film when it was released (mainly due to the fact that it didn’t have anything to do with the series’ iconic antagonist, Michael Myers), it’s a uniquely interesting take on the Halloween horror franchise.

The Fly (1986)

Dir. David Cronenberg — 1h 36m

This remake of the 1958 classic film is centered around Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), an eccentric scientist who is in the process of building a set of telepods capable of instantaneous teleportation. Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a science journalist, is invited to Brundle’s lab to document his process.

After several attempts with inanimate objects and animals, Brundle is convinced the telepods are ready for human trial and uses himself as the guinea pig, not realizing that a housefly snuck into the pod prior to the experiment. Brundle’s human DNA and the fly’s DNA become intertwined, and we witness his methodical and eventual transition into a human-fly hybrid.

Combining impressive effects with humorous and compelling performances, this film is a modern sci-fi horror classic and an absolute must-watch.

eXistenZ (1999)

Dir. David Cronenberg — 1h 37m

Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a world-renowned video game developer, famous for her virtual reality games played on biotechnological VR gaming consoles that connect directly into human spinal cords. Geller demonstrates her newest game, “eXistenZ,” to a focus group where she is shot by a member of a counter-VR group called the Realists. Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a marketing trainee, rushes to her aid, and the two of them embark on a harrowing journey through what may or may not be part of the “eXistenZ” game narrative.

You’re never quite sure what is real or what is virtual reality, and that’s one of the reasons why this film is so darn compelling. It’s also inherently eerie and will leave you scratching your head — in a good way.

Pulse (2001)

Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa — 1h 58m

Several people in Tokyo discover ghosts entering the living world — and consuming lives — via the internet. Well, that’s the simple explanation. Kurosawa weaves a complex narrative with a lot of plot points happening beyond what we see on the screen.

The themes of death, suicide, depression, love, isolation, despair, and hope are all present in the film. Let’s put it this way: this film will sit with you for a while. It’s easily one of the creepiest and most compelling horror films made in the last 20 years.

The Den (2013)

Dir. Zachary Donohue — 1h 21m

Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) is a grad student who is conducting sociological research on a video chat service called The Den. She ends up video chatting with a number of people from all over the world until she witnesses a live murder. After looking into the murder, the killer’s focus turns on her and her friends, resulting in a grizzly and unexpected series of events.

The entire film is made up of spliced together computer and phone footage, but this isn’t just another stale, by-the-numbers found-footage gambit. The suspense is palpable, and it results in a twist that is both surprising and terrifying. It’s an underrated horror gem.

Ghost in the Machine (1993)

Dir.  Rachel Talalay — 1h 35m

Karl Hopkins (Ted Marcoux), a serial killer and local computer technician — because hey, even murderers need a day job — is hunting down his next victims when he crashes his car in a storm. While undergoing an MRI, a lightning surge transforms his mind into electrical energy, which he then uses to continue his reign of terror, infiltrating electrical grids and computer networks to kill.

Even with this cringeworthy, trainwreck of a horror flick — featuring a ‘90s view of the most overblown ideas of what tech of the future could look like — you might still, after watching, be a little hesitant to microwave that popcorn.

How to Make a Monster (2001)

Dir. George Huang – 1h 31m

The return of the deadly power surge. (Has anyone in these films ever heard of a surge protector? Just wondering.) This time, a lightning strike and an AI chip bring a frightening video game, Evilution, to life. Crafted for a new level of terror by three renowned game designers, the monstrous — and now real life — game confines the developers alone in a building and targets them as prey.

A video game-themed storytelling of what could happen when your creation turns against you, this film ranks pretty high on the cheesiness factor but is a good pick for when you don’t want your horror getting too heavy.

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Robots Gone Bad

Last but certainly not least, when it comes to thrills, these films focus on the dark side of advances in modern robotics and artificial intelligence.

The Stepford Wives (1975)

Dir. Bryan Forbes — 1h 55m

Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) is a freelance photographer who moves from New York City to Stepford, Connecticut, with her husband Walter Eberhart (Peter Masterson), only to find that all of the women in the small town are vapid, seemingly contented housewives. Joanna befriends a fellow newcomer, Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss), with whom she begins to unravel the sinister plot.

Joanna eventually realizes that the self-obsessed husbands of Stepford are replacing their wives with androids, programmed only to keep house and support their husbands implicitly. Though this social satire is soaked in transparency, it’s an entertaining and suspenseful viewing experience. Plus, the ending is a masterfully executed exercise in psychological chills.

Demon Seed (1977)

Dir. Donald Cammell — 1h 34m

Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) is the creator of Proteus IV, a particularly advanced AI software that was built to solve the world’s biggest problems — think disease and famine. His wife, Susan Harris (Julie Christie), feels estranged from Alex, and the situation is made worse by Alex leaving her to focus more on his research.

Proteus IV becomes self-aware and motivated to procreate. Susan gets unintentionally caught up in the AI’s plan, and what follows is an experimental science fiction film that tests the boundaries of what is morally right and wrong. It’s a fascinating watch.

Alien (1979)

Dir. Ridley Scott — 1h 57m

Though this timeless sci-fi horror film primarily deals with the eponymous “alien,” one of the most chilling and unexpected parts of this thriller is the reveal of the AI character. For those of you who still haven’t seen it, we won’t give away exactly who it is. But trust me, it’s a solid twist.

After a commercial resource-gathering mission, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the crew of the spaceship Nostromo are returning to Earth when they intercept a distress call from the planetoid, LV-426. And that’s when the excrement starts hitting the fan at a methodical and spine-shivering pace.

The film does an immaculate job of familiarizing the audience with the social environment of the Nostromo crew, so when the android character is made known, it’s a very effective reveal. If you haven’t seen it already, do it. It’s a classic for a reason.

Chopping Mall (1986)

Dir. Jim Wynorski — 1h 17m

The Park Plaza Mall has recently installed a brand new team of high-tech security robots to patrol the complex at night and make sure there are no intruders. Unfortunately, a group of teenage mall employees is planning an after-hours party in the mattress store — if you know what I mean.

Of course, the security robots malfunction and go on a killing spree. This film is pure 1980s schlock at its finest. The acting is terrible, the action is laughable, but the entertainment value is 100. It’s a genuinely great piece of trash cinema.

Hardware (1990)

Dir. Richard Stanley — 1h 34m

Moses Baxter (Dylan McDermott) is a scavenger in a futuristic urban wasteland. He buys an old robot head off a mysterious trader and gives to his on-again, off-again lover, Jill (Stacey Travis). Jill installs the robot head to an android body that she’s already been working on — as one does. But soon, the robot develops a tenacious bloodlust and starts terrorizing everyone in its path.

Auteur director Richard Stanley is a controversial figure, admired by some and panned by others. The world he creates in this film is engrossing and admirably executed, but you’ll have to be the judge of whether or not this is cinema gold. For our money, it’s worth a watch.

Related: Your Website Downtime Survival Guide

Jump Scares Ahead

Well, there you have it: 15 fun tech horror movies to watch this Halloween. Sink your claws into as many of these films as you like, and let us know if we’ve missed one of your horror cinema favorites.

Here’s wishing you all a safe and happy Halloween! Just remember, technology can be a real killer.

The post The Best Tech Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/best-tech-horror-movies/

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7 Web Design Mistakes That Could Be Scaring Away Your Visitors

What is keeping internet users up at night? It could be that scary movie they just watched, or worse yet, it could be your website. 

If you’ve got a digital presence decked out in a ghastly design, it’s likely robbing you of precious clicks, driving away potential customers, and sabotaging your chances of building a well-ranking, authoritative brand. 

The good news? You don’t need to be a web designer or an expert in web development to improve a weak website!

In this guide, we’ll detail seven scary web design mistakes that could be spooking your visitors —  and how to fix them quickly — so you can make sure your website is all treats and no tricks.

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1. Scary Slow Site Speeds

For consumers browsing the internet, nothing is more spine-chilling than a slow-loading site. Before you can say “Boo!” they’ve abandoned your page, leaving you with irritated audiences and suffering engagement. 

In fact, page speed can be the make-it-or-break-it factor for the success (or failure) of your website, dramatically affecting everything from sales to sign-ups to search traffic. 

Visitors have high expectations: 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 49% abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. Plus, 79% of online shoppers who have trouble with site performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again. 

Ouch. That’s a lot riding on your site’s load time and overall performance. 

Is your site (creepy) crawling? Use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to clue into your site’s performance and discover needed areas of improvement to achieve lightning-fast load times.

We’ve also got a few tips to speed things up: trim down bulky code, patch up caching issues, optimize your site’s CSS, and perhaps most importantly, choose a quality web host. 

2. A Haunting User Experience

Now let’s take a trip in the way-back time machine, you know, before COVID-19 changed everything.

 Think about the last experience you had at a brick-and-mortar store. Did the floor layout, decor, and atmosphere invite and engage you? Or did tight aisles, overly-intrusive sensory elements, or labyrinth-like setup negatively affect your shopping experience? Whatever your experience, we’ll take a guess that it largely determined whether or not you wanted to visit that store again. 

It’s the same with your website. 

The kind of experience users have on your site (from the second they land there) will affect how — and if — they engage with you. If your site contains nightmare navigation, unsavory design elements, or poor performance, visitors won’t stay long. 

To craft and cultivate a positive user experience, make your navigation and drop-down menu intuitive so users can find what they’re looking for. Then follow aesthetically-pleasing design principles and keep site operations fine-tuned. If your visitors have an enjoyable experience on your site, not only will they be more likely to come back, they’ll engage with you and help you find site success.

Related: How to Build an Awesome Online Store with the OceanWP Theme

3. An Unresponsive Layout

Ready for some hair-raising facts? Based on data from January 2018, the global population of unique mobile device users reached 3.7 billion — yep, billion. What’s more, 52% of web internet traffic in 2018 was mobile, and the mobile-only audience is expected to grow to 55 million by 2022. 

Mobile internet usage is gaining significant traction, and will likely overtake desktop internet usage in the future. That means if your website is not optimized for different types of screens, including smartphones and tablets, you’re going to lose out on meaningful engagement from your target audiences. 

Related: How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

Plus, having a responsive site isn’t just important for user experience; it’s a critical element of your SEO strategy. Google operates on a mobile-first indexing policy, meaning the search engine predominantly uses the mobile version of website content for indexing and ranking. So, investing in a mobile-first approach to your web design is essential when it comes to optimizing for search engines and, ultimately, driving traffic to your site. 

Responsive design also affects your brand image. A whopping 89% of people are likely to recommend a brand after a positive experience on mobile. On the other hand, 46% of people say they would not buy from a brand again if they had a less-than-stellar mobile experience. What’s more, 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site. 

The key takeaway here?  

Prioritize a website optimized for mobile and responsive across devices and different browsers.

4. Terrifying Typography

You might not think the fonts on your site matter, but utilizing type haphazardly or without thoughtful intention is a major design flaw and affects the experience your visitors will have, even if just subconsciously. 

Just like with other elements of design, typography follows rules — dictating what text combinations, colors, font size, and layouts are aesthetically-pleasing and effective. Well-established typography can increase your conversion rates, build your brand authority, encourage action, amplify your message, and create a positive sensory experience. 

Consult our guide for typography to-dos, and plan your font strategy with meticulous consideration or else you risk interrupting usability and cognitive fluency. 

Related: How to Build a Lead-Generating Landing Page with WordPress (3 Steps)

5. Ghostly Calls to Action

When you enter a haunted house, you never quite know what you’re going to get. Zombie up ahead? Hidden skeletons behind the door? Unidentified noises behind you? As you’re feeling for the exit in the dark, you’re going to face a host of unexpected and spooky mysteries. 

Your website visitors shouldn’t feel like they’re having a haunted house experience when they type your URL. 

When internet users land on your site, it should be free of mystery ghosts and ghouls. Meaning, visitors should know what to expect. They should know where to find a contact button, how to navigate your menu, and above all, what you want them to do — whether that’s read a blog post, subscribe to an email list, follow your social media platforms, or purchase a specific product.

Having a clear call-to-action button helps users know how to engage with you, vastly increasing the chances you’ll find success (and those boosted analytics you want!). Guide potential customers to a specific action with a clear, prominent, and well-distinguished icon or button and include it on all your pages and content.

Related: 7 Tips for Writing Winning Calls to Action for Your Website

6. Spine-Chilling Safety Oversights

Online users worry (a lot) about online safety. In fact, 73% of Americans who use the web are concerned about online privacy, so your website needs to be a safe space, free from creepy-crawly web demons and malicious malware. 

First, outfit your site with an SSL certificate, giving your visitors the peace of mind that your website is secure. Even the presence of a safety badge or security can do wonders. 

Then, tighten security by using a quality web host, upgrading to HTTPS, utilizing secure plugins, configuring file permissions, and backing up your site regularly to keep site terrors at bay.

Related: How to Back up Your WordPress Website — A Complete Guide

7. Cloak–and–Dagger Content

The fact of the matter is, you need to offer your website visitors value or else they have no reason to stay. 

With quality content, you provide users with a way to engage with you, helping drive traffic and build a following. But if your content is hard to find, sub-par, or (gasp!) nonexistent, you’re sabotaging your chances of success. Use the following tips to make sure you’re creating top-notch content. 

Embrace Your Niche

Whatever field or industry you occupy, keep your content consistent for your target audience. Relevant content will build your brand and help establish your site as an authority amongst your competition, distinguishing you from the rest.

Proofread

Error-ridden content will brand you as an amateur. Stay professional by taking the time to edit and polish your content before hitting “Submit.” Clean content will go a long way toward establishing your brand.

Related: How to Create a Brand Style Guide for Your Website

Offer Value

Not only are attention spans shorter than ever, but often, visitors need a good reason to even engage with your site. Entice potential customers with incentives — whether that be free e-books, blog posts, printables, or insider tips — to get their eyes on your content.

You don’t have to post content on your site every hour, but you should be posting regularly. Your visitors should know when to expect new content from you. This will build their trust — and your authority. Use a content calendar to plan, schedule posts ahead of time, and keep yourself organized. If you want a few pointers, check out our guide to creating a content marketing strategy.

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Fix Those Eerie Web Design Errors

Don’t give your audiences the heebie-jeebies with poor website design. Offer them the best of online experiences with the virtual treat (we’re talking king-size candy bars here) of a well-designed website. 

Fixing those pesky web design mistakes will prime you for top-of-the-line placement in search engines, improve user experience, boost conversions, enhance site usability, lower your site’s bounce rate, and establish your online presence — plus, they won’t leave screaming. 

Sounds good, right? 

If you’re ready to makeover your website, trick-or-treat yo’ self to a professional web design. Our talented designers can create a polished, professional website (and brand) to reflect your vision at an affordable price. Learn more about our professional design services today!

The post 7 Web Design Mistakes That Could Be Scaring Away Your Visitors appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/scary-web-design-mistakes/

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How to Find, Monitor, and Beat Your Competition

Everyone wants to get ahead of their competition. But there’s far more to love about monitoring the competition than just the satisfaction of beating them in the search results.

In short, you can learn a lot from your competitors.

What they’re doing right. What they’re doing wrong. Or simply, what they’re doing.

And you can use all this information to your advantage, especially as a small business owner.

But first, you need to find out who your competitors are (or check that those you think you’re competing against, are actually your competition).

In this post, we’ll walk you through how to identify who your competitors are, the tools and tactics you can use to track them, and the opportunities for you to use that information to beat them.

How to Identify Your Competitors

The Tactics You Can Use to Monitor Your Competitors

Tools to Track Your Competitors

Ready to take your website to the next level? Let’s dive in!

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How to Identify Your Competitors

Your obvious go-to is Google. Just search for your most important keywords, and see who’s ranking for them.

Bear in mind, however, that depending on the size of your brand and the Domain Authority of your site, those at the top of the search results aren’t necessarily your “realistic” competitors. You can still analyze them and learn from them, but your focus should be on companies you share a (more or less) level playing field with.

For that, you might have to step off the first page of Google’s search results. You might also have to look up some slightly less competitive search terms.

Businesses with a local presence have another thing to consider.

Your closest competitors are those that are not only close to you in terms of the products they offer but geographically, too.

Discovering them, thankfully, is easy. Just adapt your search terms to include the location (or locations) of your premises.

Other ways to uncover your competitors are included in some of the tools we’ll talk about below, so stick with us to learn about some of the best tools for finding and monitoring your competitors’ marketing activities.

But first, let’s talk about …

The Tactics You Can Use to Monitor Your Competition

Wondering how to monitor your competitors? And how you can get started with competitor analysis? We can help!

There are countless ways you can track your competitors and what they’re up to — for example, the strategies they’re employing, the keywords they’re targeting, and the results they’re getting.

Just looking at their site (specifically their title tags) should give you a good idea of the keywords they’re targeting. Tools like SEMrush, Sistrix, and others listed below can be used to view some of the keywords they’re ranking for. You can also use the FATRANK Chrome extension to instantly discover where a site ranks for any given keyword.

In addition, you can look at their current links and monitor their sites for new links. Pay particular attention to industry-relevant links, and links to content they’ve created (you may well be able to target those links too.)

Another tactic for monitoring your competitors involves researching and analyzing their most shared content.

Why’s this content getting shared?

Who’s sharing it and where?

And how can you create something similar (but better) to try and replicate their results?

Just simple things like checking in on their social activity, reading their blog content, monitoring their brand name with Google Alerts, and signing up (and paying attention to) their mailing list can give you valuable insights into your competitors’ tactics and the quality and strength of their marketing strategy.

Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Tools to Track Your Competitors’ Ads

What Runs Where

What Runs Where is designed solely for competitive analysis of the paid ads market.

In short, it removes the guesswork and reduces the time you spend testing, so you can start pushing out more effective ads faster.

Sistrix

Sistrix covers most of what you need in a digital marketing tool. Included in that is a nifty little feature that brings up heaps of data for any site — perfect for sites you want to keep an eye on.

All you need to do is login and head to the More section. From there, you can click Ads and access the dashboard.

Next, populate the search bar at the top with the domain you want to look at, and you’ll be presented with all the data Sistrix has on that domain.

You can see:

Their paid keywords

Their profile

Their display URLs

The word count of their ads

The display position

The strength of the competition

Their top ad copy

The history of their paid keywords

Their best keywords

You can even see and look at the banner ads they are using.

Handy, huh?

SEMrush

SEMrush has been in the digital marketing space for years, and if you want the most bang for your buck, it’s a good bet as your go-to SEO tool.

Their competitive research for ads kicks butt and is invaluable when it comes to spying on your competition.

Navigate to the Advertising Research section, and you’ll get a wealth of data, including:

Number of keywords

Estimated traffic for the competitor

The estimated traffic cost

Changes over time can also be viewed in simple — but super helpful — graphs.

In addition to this, you can view position changes, competitors, ad copy, ad history, pages, and subdomains.

Pay special attention to the Competitors tab. It’s extremely useful.

For one, you’ll get a cool looking competitive positions map.

You’ll also get a list of all potential competitors and their data. In the example below, we can see that Walmart has over 15,000 competitors in its ads market.

The amount of data you can collect on your competitors from SEMrush is — in short — amazing. Trying to collate this data by hand would take weeks or months, but in SEMrush, you can grab it with the click of a button.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, we’ve worked out a free trial with SEMrush for our readers, so you can see if the tool is a good fit for your site without a long-term commitment!

Spyfu

Founded in 2002 and originally called Googspy, Spyfu is one of the original players in the ad monitoring tool space.

While Spyfu has since evolved into a more complete marketing tool, its ad competitive intelligence alone makes it worth investing in.

To access it, head over to the PPC Research tab and enter the name of the domain you want to research.

From there, you get a nice clean dashboard that includes a lot of data. You’ll see:

Monthly paid keywords

Estimated monthly PPC clicks

Estimated monthly PPC budget

Overall market research

How long Spyfu has been collecting the domain’s ads

Buy recommendations

Worst performing keywords

This can also be exported to a handy PDF.

If you want more, click on the Competitors tab in the main menu. Spyfu will then pull the data for the sites it believes are competing for ads for that domain.

If you believe Spyfu’s picked the wrong competitors or you have a particular competitor in mind, you can add a custom domain.

The tool also lets you graph PPC keywords, paid clicks, and ad budgets over time. Handy.

Another powerful feature in Spyfu is Kombat.

The name might sound a bit intimidating, but don’t let that put you off. It essentially lets you compare the keyword universe of three domains to see which ads are competing and which ads are exclusive to a particular competitor.

This will help you spot where your competitors are outdoing you because you don’t currently have ads in those areas.

Beyond this, Spyfu can help you supercharge your PPC research and account with other features like Keyword Groups, PPC keywords, Ad History, Ad Advisor, and Adwords Templates.

Related: The Top SEO Tools to Optimize Your Website for Success

Backlinks

If you’ve been working in Digital Marketing for a few weeks or even a few days, you likely understand the importance of links. They’re pretty much the heart of SEO and still today remain one of the biggest ranking factors.

Related: How to Create a Link Building Strategy

But how do you find out who’s linking to you, and more specifically, who’s linking to your competitors?

Here are a few tools to help.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs was a bit of a latecomer to the backlink research tool market, but it quickly established itself as one of the big players thanks to its massive index of links and ultra-smooth interface.

Once logged in, head over to the Site Explorer section.

From there, just pop in your own domain or the domain of a competitor.

Ahrefs will start doing its magic and pull in data points for the domain, including:

Ahrefs rank

Number of backlinks

Number of referring domains

The number of keywords it ranks for

Organic traffic

Traffic value

Crawled pages

A breakdown of the kind of sites linking to the page

Referring pages, IPs, and subnets

New and lost referring domains

New and lost backlinks

The distribution of links by country

How the links are distributed across Ahrefs URL rating

That’s a whole lot of data!

Everything is exportable to Excel, so you can easily chop and change the data and focus specifically on what you want to dig into.

One of Ahrefs’ best features for competitor research is their Link Intersection Tool.

Simply add in your own website and a handful of your competitors’ sites.

Click Show Link Opportunities. Go and make a cup of coffee. And wait for the magic to happen.

When you return, you’ll find a list of backlinks that your competitors have and you don’t. You can then target some of the strongest sites from the list yourself.

Link Explorer

Founded in 2004 by Rand Fishkin, Moz is arguably one of the best-known SEO tools in the market.

Until a few years ago, their link index was, let’s say, a little underwhelming. That changed when they launched a brand new version of Link Explorer. It blew the old version out of the water and regained Moz its position as a legitimate competitor in the backlink analysis market.

So how do you use it?

From the PRO option in the main navigation, you need to locate the Link Explorer. As with other tools, you then need to put in your website (or a competitors’ site) to grab the data.

You should then see a dashboard that looks like this:

Like with the other tools listed above, you’ll get a wealth of data, including:

Domain Authority

Linking domains

Inbound links

Ranking keywords

Discovered and lost linking domains

Domain authority, page authority, and linking domains over time

Nofollow and follow over internal and external links

Top follower links to the site

Top pages on the site

Top anchor text for the site

Linking domains by DA

Moz also has a couple of features that can help you compare your site to your competitors’.

Look on the left-hand side of the navigation and you will see an option called Compare Link Profiles. Click it.

Next, drop your competitors into the boxes provided.

Click Analyze, and grab a twinkie while you wait.

If you’re looking at the root level data you will see:

Domain Authority

Spam Score

Total links

Internal followed links

External followed links

Internal nofollow links

External nofollow links

Total linking domains

Followed linking domains

The results will look a bit like this, and in no way should we be surprised that Amazon has ALL THE LINKS!

This is also super useful if you’re looking at exact pages on your site and similar pages on a competitor’s site. Links could be the reason your really awesome page doesn’t rank as well as a competitor’s not so awesome page.

You can also compare Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Linking Domains over time.

Majestic SEO

Majestic is the grandfather of all backlink tools. It’s probably been around since before the Internet was invented. Heck, they even sent a 3D model of the Internet into space.

Much maligned for its poor UX, Majestic more than makes up for that with its data.

Dropping your URL (or a competitor’s URL) into the search box will give you data on:

Trust Flow

Topical Trust Flow

Link Profile

Citation Flow

External backlinks

Referring domains

Referring IPs

Referring subnets

Link Context

Crawled and indexed URLs

Types of backlinks

Incoming languages and site languages

Link density of inbound links

Backlink history

Anchor text

And so much more.

You also get some (not so pretty) data visualizations.

If you want to do a more competitive analysis, then head over to the Related Sites tab and Majestic will give you a breakdown of all the sites it thinks are related to your own. You can then look at who you believe to be your closest competitors and analyze their Link Trust Flow and Citation Flow.

Super useful. And so much data that it will keep you busy for ages.

Majestic also has a pretty cool Compare feature (you can compare one site to yours in the Lite version of the tool, and up to five in the Pro version.)

Simply pop your domain into the search box and then click the compare button.

Add a competitor into the second URL box.

Click the search button, and you’ll get backlink comparison data that covers:

Target type

Title tag

Primary Topical Trust Flow

Trust Flow

Citation Flow

Majestic Million (the top million sites in Majestic’s index)

Referring domains

Referring IP addresses

External backlinks

Indexed URLs

Average total outlinks per page

That’s a lot of data (which is exportable by the way) for you to dig through. Happy analyzing.

Content

We all know about the importance of great content. Google’s been telling us to create “great content” for years. So how can you spy on your competitor’s content? How can you see what’s working for them and what isn’t? There are many great tools for doing this, but here are two of the most powerful.

BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo was one of the first content analyzing tools to enter the market, launching back in 2012. It has become so ubiquitous in the space that many other tools base theirs around the features and functionality of Buzzsumo. We’re not sure how Buzzsumo feels about this, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Buzzsumo’s handiest competitor content analysis feature is the Content Web Analyzer. You fill this in the content section of the navigation.

Simply drop in a topic that you and your competitors are likely to cover, and let the tool do its magic.

It will return results like this:

As you can see, it locates the top-performing content for that topic and gives you the following metrics:

Facebook engagements

Twitter shares

Pinterest shares

Reddit engagements

Number of links

Evergreen score

Total engagement

You can also dig deeper to find out where on the web this type of content is most popular, its word count, and what sort of content gains the most traction for a given topic.

During this, you’ll identify some of your competitors’ most successful content. If you want to learn more about it, Buzzsumo will let you search by domain.

This is extremely useful for uncovering the strategies they’ve used and to what success.

Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs initially launched as a tool for analyzing websites’ link profiles. Over the years, they’ve added more and more tools to their suite. One of those tools doesn’t get talked about as much — which is a shame because it’s awesome.

Want to try it out?

Log in and head over to the Content Explorer section.

As with Buzzsumo, you just enter the topic you’re looking to analyze and pop it into the box.

You’ll then see a dashboard that brings back loads of data.

The title of the content

The author

Word count

Twitter shares

Facebook shares

Pinterest shares

Domain rank

Referring domains

Organic traffic

Traffic value

If you’re looking to discover new competitors, then head over to the Websites tab and you’ll see a list of 100 domains with the top-performing content for that topic.

If you know the domain of a competitor, you can also search for their site specifically.

And you’ll get to see their top-performing content.

That should keep you busy for some time.

Related: Take Your Content Strategy Up a Level with a Content Audit

Keywords

Solid keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO campaign — but where’s the best place to find keywords — and more importantly, your competitors’ keywords? Here are some of the most powerful keyword research tools and some of their features.

iSpionage

This is a comprehensive competitor analysis tool that will help you uncover your competitors’ most profitable (paid) keywords, as well as their most successful ad copy and landing pages.

In other words, iSpionage offers deep insights into what’s working best for your competitors in the digital ad space, so you can go one step further and get two steps ahead of them.

Sistrix

Head over to Sistrix’s SEO tab and pop in a keyword that you want to rank for. Sistrix will then search its index and return data, including:

Competition

Search volume

Global search volume

Similar keywords

Related keywords

SERP features

Top ranking domains

The top-ranking domains will help you surface some of your competitors in the search results.

SEMrush

SEMrush works in a similar way. Simply dropping your keyword into the search function of the Keyword Explorer section brings back all the metrics you might expect, such as:

Volume

Keyword difficulty

Global volume

Trends

Related keywords, variations, and questions

Dig a little further and you’ll see the actual search results for that keyword. You’ll also be able to find competitors to analyze.

Want to find keywords that your competition ranks for, but you don’t?

Head over to the Keyword Gap tool and pop in your domain and the domains of your competitors.

In only a few seconds, you’ll have data relating to keyword opportunities for your site, as well as an overlap that shows which keywords the domains have in common, and which are unique to each site.

You can even see where your site ranks for a given keyword and where your competitors are outranking you.

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Bonus Tools To Add To Your Arsenal

Unfortunately, no one tool covers everything you need when discovering and analyzing the competition.

With that in mind, here are a few bonus tools to check out too. 

Website Review from WooRank. A free website and SEO checker.

Ubersuggest. The free version of Ubersuggest brings together metrics that you would see in a site like SEMrush.

Answerthepublic. A free or paid tool that helps you unearth the questions your target market is asking.

Screaming Frog. A desktop crawler that can help you establish the SEO tactics your competition is using. This tool can also be used to discover broken links on your own site.

Sitebulb. Another desktop crawler that offers insight into how the competition has set up its website. You can then benchmark, pinpoint, and prioritize your SEO efforts in the areas where your competitors are not doing so well.

Feedly. A handy tool that enables you to monitor all your competitors’ content in one place.

Monitorbacklinks. A tool dedicated entirely to monitoring your own and your competitors’ keywords and backlinks.

Website Grader. Primarily a tool for figuring out how to improve your site, it can also be used to grade your competition.

Social Mention. A real-time social media and analysis tool that will help you unearth even more of your online competitors.

Another Great Tool? DreamHost SEO Services

Now that you have a bevy of tools to track your competition, it’s time to dive in. Whether you want to monitor ads, backlinks, content, or keywords, you now have your arsenal to get informed and get ahead.

If this is all a little too much to take in and you’d rather leave the nitty-gritty to someone else, why not talk to us about our SEO services? You’ll get your own SEO team, new content every month, regular on-site optimization, and much more — all from just $399 a month.

The post How to Find, Monitor, and Beat Your Competition appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/how-to-beat-your-competition/

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36 Brilliant Blogging Tools to Help You Write Better, Publish More, and Increase Traffic

Running a blog can be tough. There are times when it can feel like having multiple jobs. Not only do you need to create fresh, high-quality content, but you’ll also have a website to manage, social media posts to schedule, and data to analyze.

Having a versatile bag of tools at your disposal can keep your blogging gig from becoming overwhelming. There are solutions for most of your day-to-day tasks, from design to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and everything in between.

With all the possibilities to choose from, you could spend weeks just combing through your options. So we’ve done the hard work for you. In this article, we’ll cover why you need the right tools. Then we’ll detail 36 brilliant blogging solutions worth checking out. Let’s get started!

Why You Need the Right Blogging Tools

As a blogger, you’ll want to find tools that help you become more productive and successful. For example, discovering topics to blog about that your audience will love can be tricky. The right solution can help you brainstorm ideas and explore new niches you weren’t previously aware of, saving you a lot of time in the process.

What’s more, there’s more to blogging than just writing. You need to be sure people can discover and share your website. Therefore, to maximize your reach, you’ll want to look into blogging tools that give your SEO and social media a boost. This can make up for any lack of knowledge or experience on your end, and free up your attention for your actual content.

Related: How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

36 Brilliant Blogging Tools to Help You Write Better, Publish More, and Increase Traffic

We’ve argued the case for having the right blogging tools at the ready. Now let’s explore 36 of the top options and see what they can do.

Research

Content creation requires lots of research. You need to be sure people are searching for what you’re going to be writing about. You’ll also need someplace to keep ideas and notes.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Before you start writing a new blog post, you might want to make sure you’re using words that people are searching for. Google Keyword Planner can provide you with feedback on your potential keywords.

This great tool will help you by showing you how popular each chosen keyword is through search volume metrics. You’ll also get some suggestions for other relevant phrases you may want to use.

Price: Google Keyword Planner is free to use, as long as you have a Google Ads account set up.

Related: 20 Metrics Every Blogger Needs to Track to Measure Success

2. Google Trends

When trying to nail down an idea for a successful blog post, you might want to start with Google Trends. You can enter any topic into the search box, and this tool will provide you with a ton of information and history about it.

You can filter your results, which is especially useful if you’re trying to capture a particular region’s attention. Google Trends also provides you a list of related topics, which you can use to brainstorm more content ideas.

Price: Google Trends is entirely free for anyone to use.

3. BuzzSumo

If you’re wondering what’s trending in your niche, BuzzSumo can tell you. Just search for the topic you’re interested in, and you’ll get a list of the top-performing content in that area.

You can also enter the URL for one of your competitors. BuzzSumo will give you a list of the top-performing content from that site, so you can see what’s resonating with your potential audience.

Price: BuzzSumo offers a seven-day free trial. After that, you can choose from several tiers starting at $79 per month.

4. HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator

When you start blogging, it’s hard to imagine ever running out of ideas. However, the day will likely come when you sit down to write and come up empty. That’s where HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator comes into the picture.

Provide the generator with up to five nouns, and it will return a week’s worth of blog ideas. If you need a year’s worth of topics, you can enter some details and unlock 250 more potential blog posts.

Price: The Blog Ideas Generator is free for anyone to use. But, if you want more ideas at once, you’ll have to trade some information to get them.

5. Evernote

With all those new blog post ideas, you’re going to be doing a lot of research. If your bookmarks bar is becoming a disorganized mess, Evernote can provide a place to keep all of your screenshots, notes, and articles.

What if you prefer a mix of handwritten and electronic notes? You can actually scan your notes with your phone into the app. You can even search these scanned documents since Evernote can read handwriting.

Price: Evernote has several plans to choose from, including a robust free version. You can upgrade to one of the paid versions starting at $7.99 per month.

Writing and Grammar

Well-written, readable content is crucial for a successful blog. Even the most compelling ideas will suffer without the right words to convey them.

6. Grammarly

Even the strongest writer can benefit from having a second pair of eyes look over their blog posts. Grammarly is like having an experienced editor making suggestions to improve your writing and style.

Each time you open a new document in Grammarly, you can set goals for its tone, formality, and intent. You’ll then receive feedback to help you hit those targets. Grammarly also has a Chrome extension, so you can check your emails and Google Docs as well.

One downside: Grammarly is currently only available in English. If you’re looking for a multilingual grammar checker, consider Language Tool, which can check your writing in more than 20 languages. It’s what our team uses to review Spanish content.

Price: Grammarly’s free plan checks your grammar, spelling, and conciseness. The premium tier adds more style and genre checks (as well as a plagiarism detector) for $11.66 per month.

Related: From the Experts: 20 Great Blogging Tips for 2020

7. Associated Press (AP) Stylebook

The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook is a reference every blogger should have on their bookshelf. Using AP style for blog posts can help to keep them concise, clear, and informative.

The AP Stylebook is updated frequently. If you buy the book from the official website, you’ll receive email notifications about these changes. It’s a simple way to keep up with stylistic adjustments.

Price: You have multiple options for purchasing the AP Stylebook. A spiral-bound physical copy will cost you $26.95. The online stylebook starts at $22.00 for one user.

8. Google Docs

Google Docs is a web-based word processor. You can use this application to compose, edit, and format your blog posts.

One advantage of Google Docs is that you can access your documents anywhere, regardless of your device. For a blogger on the go, this is a must-have feature!

Price: Google Docs is free to use. You can upgrade to G Suite for additional features and applications, starting at $6 per month.

Project Management

Blogs have a lot of moving parts. Project management tools can help you stay organized, so your blogging tasks stay on track.

9. Asana

Asana enables you to build a roadmap for your blog projects. You can group tasks to make up a project or divide them into smaller chunks.

If you collaborate with other writers on your blog, Asana is a powerful tool for team management. You’re able to see at a glance where each post is in your pipeline.

Price: Asana’s free option allows collaboration with up to 15 people. Premium plans begin at $10.99 per user per month.

10. Trello

Trello’s design is based on cards, lists, and boards. It’s an intuitive system that can hold a ton of information.

Trello is an excellent alternative to Asana if you’re looking for something a little more streamlined. You can keep all the attachments and notes you need for a task on its card. This format is also easier to handle if you’re a team of one.

Price: Trello has a robust free option that enables you to have an unlimited number of personal boards and ten team boards. Upgraded plans begin at $9.99 per user per month.

Design

Gorgeous visuals to complement your words are an essential part of creating branded, shareable blog posts. You don’t need to be an artist, but the right tools can help you fake it.

11. Adobe Photoshop

When you think of photo editing software, Adobe Photoshop probably comes to mind. Whether you’re touching up a stock photo or creating a new logo, you can probably do it with Photoshop.

One exciting aspect of this platform is that new features are always being added. One of the latest is the object selection tool. You can lasso or draw a rectangle around an object, and the selection snaps into place around it.

Price: You can try Adobe Photoshop for free for seven days. After that, plans start at $20.99 per month.

12. Canva

Canva is like Photoshop’s younger but no less accomplished sister. The free plan gives you generous access to templates, stock photos, and other design elements. However, Canva Pro contains some valuable features as well.

With a Brand Kit, for example, you can collect the colors, fonts, and logos that make your blog recognizable all in one place. Imagine the time you could save on looking up HTML color codes!

Price: You can upgrade to Pro for $9.95 per month. There’s also a 30-day free trial.

13. Logaster

Are you struggling to come up with a logo? If so, Logaster can generate a variety of options to choose from in seconds. Just enter your blog’s name and scroll through the possibilities.

If you’d like, you can give Logaster more information to build your logo with. For instance, you can try specifying a color and industry for more personalization. If you’re not entirely happy with the design, you can do some editing by signing up for a free account.

Price: You can download and use the small version of your new logo for free. However, Logaster also offers packages that include different size logos, letterheads, favicons, and more. These range from $19.99 to $89.99.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO has many different facets that all need your attention. The following tools can help you analyze and optimize your blog’s content, so you’ll have a fighting chance for higher rankings.

14. Yoast SEO

If you have a blog on WordPress, you’ll probably want to install the Yoast SEO plugin. This tool makes optimizing each of your posts easy.

For example, you can give Yoast SEO a keyphrase, and it will return actionable advice that you can use to improve your post. The premium version can even account for other forms of that keyphrase, including synonyms and plurals.

Price: You can get started with the free version or go all-in with Yoast SEO Premium. The latter starts at $89 for one site.

15. SEMrush

It might be unfair to give SEMrush only one spot on this list, as it provides multiple tools. SEMrush offers insights on everything from social media to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

Most importantly, however, SEMrush’s SEO Toolkit can give you an edge over your competition. The Domain Overview lets you see which keywords your competitors use. You can use this information to hone your content plan over time.

Price: SEMrush plans range from $83.28 to $333.28 per month. Higher tiers get you access to more reports and extended limits. The good news? We’ve worked out a free SEMrush trial for our readers, so you can see if this tool is a good fit for your blog without a long-term commitment!

16. MarketMuse

MarketMuse is a complete, AI-based solution for content. This tool can lend a hand with anything from research to content creation.

The ability to optimize content can make MarketMuse a valuable part of your blogging strategy. Its AI analyzes your copy and makes suggestions for the language you should use. This can boost your SEO rankings, as you’ll be using the same words your audience uses to search.

Price: You can try MarketMuse’s Pro plan free for a month. After that, the cost is $325 per month.

17. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an invaluable resource if you’ve been blogging for a while and want to move to the next level. This SEO toolset can help you maximize your efforts.

While Ahrefs offers a wide range of features, it started as a backlink checker and still excels at that task. The Content Explorer tool analyzes individual pieces of content and displays how many backlinks they receive over time.

Price: Ahrefs offers a seven-day trial for $7. Full plans start at $82 per month for a single user.

Related: How to Create a Link Building Strategy

18. Can I Rank?

Can I Rank may be the next best thing to hiring an analyst. This tool uses AI to deliver actionable insights that can help you improve your blog’s SEO.

To do this, Can I Rank’s reports provide steps towards ranking for your target keywords. You’ll get suggestions for improving your current content, and new keywords you may want to focus on going forward. The AI will also connect you to other SEO tools that may be helpful.

Price: Can I Rank has a free plan, which limits how many times you can access each report. Paid plans start at $49 per month, and a free trial is available.

19. Ubersuggest

Installing the Ubersuggest Chrome extension gives you access to SEO metrics and insights every time you search.

Ubersuggest can help refine keywords that you’ve researched. If you perform a search with one of your target keywords, you’ll receive a list of related target phrases, along with the search volume for the current month and the estimated competition for the keyword.

Price: This extension is free. You don’t even need to create an account, although you’ll gain access to more features if you do so.

20. LinkMiner

Broken links can hurt your site’s SEO. They’re easy to fix but not always simple to find. Fortunately, the LinkMiner Chrome extension unearths broken links for you.

This extension provides you with overall results for each page you analyze. It also highlights all the links in your content in red, so you can get them fixed right away.

Price: You can use this extension for free.

Related: Improve Your Search Engine Rankings with These Tools

Site Management

A user-friendly CMS can make managing your website much more straightforward. When you pair that with reliable hosting, you’ll have a solid foundation for your blog.

21. WordPress

WordPress powers 37% of all sites on the internet, and for good reason. This free, open-source platform is powerful, flexible, and supported by an active community.

One appealing feature for bloggers is the Block Editor. This editor makes it easy to create stunning, rich content, with no design or coding experience necessary. The drag-and-drop interface makes it possible to rearrange your content and experiment with different possibilities.

Price: WordPress itself is free. You’ll just have to pay for a hosting plan. You can also choose to purchase premium themes and plugins.

Related: What Is WordPress?

22. A Managed WordPress Hosting Plan

You’ll probably get more out of WordPress if you complement it with a managed WordPress hosting plan. These specialized plans come with extras that can make your website building and upkeep a lot easier.

After all, just because you’re a blogger doesn’t mean you’re a web designer. That’s why our DreamPress managed hosting plans include a website builder specifically designed for WordPress sites. After you’ve created your site, we’ll keep it safe by performing daily and on-demand backups.

Price: Managed WordPress hosting can vary in cost depending on your provider. Our hosting plans start at $16.95 per month.

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23. Wordable

As awesome as the Block Editor is, there are advantages to composing your blog posts in Google Docs. However, you’ll lose a lot of time copying and reformatting your posts before publishing them.

The Wordable plugin accomplishes all of those tasks in a single click. Wordable doesn’t just import text; it also brings along the images and headings. You can have guest writers submit their pieces as Google Docs and import them with Wordable. You don’t have to set up an account on your site for them, and you won’t have to reformat their posts either.

Price: You can test out Wordable with a three-export trial. After that, plans start at $19 per month for one user and one WordPress site.

Social Media

Handling multiple social media channels can create confusion and the potential for mistakes. To avoid that, you can stay on top of your social media schedule with the help of these tools.

24. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is the editorial calendar of your dreams. It can help you manage blog posts and get them onto social media platforms.

CoSchedule’s Blog Calendar lets you see your scheduled blog and social media posts in one place. If you need to reschedule a post, you can just drag and drop it wherever you’d like. The calendar automatically adjusts the accompanying social media messages.

Price: You can get the Blog Calendar for $14 per month. If you’d like to add more functionality with the Marketing Calendar, the price increases to $29 per month.

Related: How to Create Your First WordPress Plugin

25. Social Snap

Social Snap is a social media plugin for WordPress. This solution comes with a suite of tools designed to get more traffic to your blog.

With Social Snap, you can place social sharing buttons anywhere in your blog posts. The floating sidebar could be an effective strategy if you tend to write longer content. You can also customize the buttons to match your website’s design.

Price: Social Snap offers plans starting at $27.30 per year. There is no free trial, but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

26. Buffer

If you’re in the market for a complete social media solution, you may want to check out Buffer. This platform provides tools to help you publish and analyze your content.

Buffer’s Publish tool enables you to manage all of your social media channels from one dashboard. With some determination and a lot of coffee, you might schedule a month’s worth of content in a single afternoon.

Price: Buffer Publish begins at $12 per month. The Pro plan enables you to schedule up to 100 posts.

27. Click to Tweet

Click to Tweet is a free plugin provided by CoSchedule. If you have your eyes set on the Twitterverse, you’ll likely want this blogging tool at your side.

With it, you can pull out especially tweet-worthy wisdom from your content. Your readers can then share these insights with their followers in one click.

Price: Click to Tweet is free to download and use. You do need to provide some personal information and sign up for CoSchedule’s mailing list to access the tool.

Video

You may already include video on your blog, as it can increase the time visitors spend on a page. If not, these solutions can get you started.

28. YouTube

You may already use YouTube to host your videos, but there’s more you can do with the platform. For example, did you know that you can live stream with YouTube?

Live streaming is a fun way to connect with your audience and has been growing in popularity in recent years. It’s a great way to build a sense of community around your blog.

Price: YouTube is free to use. All you need is a Google account.

Related: How to Start a YouTube Channel

29. Adobe Premiere Rush

If creating video content sounds like a lot of work, you can check out Adobe Premiere Rush. This helpful tool makes producing a video (almost) as easy as posting to social media.

With Adobe Premiere Rush, you can capture and edit footage right from your mobile phone. You can even add graphics, overlays, and voiceovers. Then you’ll be able to share the video to your YouTube channel, Instagram account, Facebook page, and other social media platforms.

Price: Adobe Premiere Rush offers a free trial that limits you to three exports. After that, you can access the software for $9.99 per month.

Analytics

By keeping an eye on your blog’s statistics, you’ll be able to see where you can improve. If you’re not a data analyst, you might appreciate some help in that department.

30. Google Analytics

If you haven’t already installed Google Analytics on your blog, what are you waiting for? Its many tools will give you access to the metrics you need for running a successful blog.

While your hosting provider may provide you with some traffic data, Google Analytics offers you a wide range of numbers. Knowing where your traffic is coming from will help you focus your efforts on those channels.

Price: Google Analytics is free to use. You just need to add a tracking code to your website.

31. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is a plugin that helps make Google Analytics even more powerful. It’s a match made in blogging heaven.

A favorite feature of MonsterInsights is the Google Analytics dashboard. Instead of navigating away from WordPress, you can view all that data right in your admin dashboard. You’ll also be able to see what’s happening on your blog in real-time.

Price: MonsterInsights plans begin at $99.50 per year. There’s no free trial, but there is a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Marketing Your Blog

Having the best content on the web won’t do you any good if no one knows it exists. Fortunately, you can get your blog in front of more people with these tools.

32. OptinMonster

As a blogger, convincing readers to sign up for your email newsletter is critical. OptinMonster can help you create opt-in campaigns that turn casual readers into devoted fans.

If your opt-in isn’t user-friendly, it’s unlikely to convert. OptinMonster gives you powerful targeting options, such as device-based targeting. This ensures that mobile users only see campaigns that are optimized for their devices.

Price: OptinMonster’s basic plan will cost you $9 per month.

33. Hunter

Guest posting is a tried-and-true link building technique for bloggers. Crafting a strong pitch is hard enough, but sometimes the most challenging part is finding the right email to send it to.

To make things easier, you can simply enter a domain name into Hunter’s search box, and the tool returns every email address it can find for that company. You can use this to see a particular individual’s email or search for a role, such as “submissions@” or “editorial@”.

Price: You can perform 50 free searches per month. Paid plans start at $34 per month.

34. NinjaOutreach

Partnering with an influencer can increase your blog’s audience. NinjaOutreach enables you to filter through lots of influencers in your niche, so you can find the right one.

Whether you’re targeting Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or YouTube, NinjaOutreach has you covered with its extensive database of influencers. You can even find other bloggers who may be interested in collaboration.

Price: NinjaOutreach offers a 7-day free trial. A monthly plan starts at $119.

35. Mailchimp

There’s more to email marketing than sending out a blast whenever you publish a new post. Mailchimp helps you organize your list and send out updates on time.

No one wants to read ugly emails, but thanks to Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop builder, you can make customizations and even add images and videos. Then, real-time analytics lets you monitor how effective your campaigns are.

Price: Mailchimp offers a generous free plan to get you started. You can get an upgraded email-only plan for $9.99 per month.

Related: The Website Owner’s Guide to Email Marketing

36. Teachable

Sharing your knowledge is an effective way of establishing yourself as an expert in your blogging niche. Unfortunately, setting up an online course can be a challenge.

Teachable is a complete solution for building and running an online course. You can make your lessons extra special by taking advantage of Teachable’s live features. For example, you can schedule one-on-one sessions with your students to check in on progress and answer questions.

Price: Teachable’s Basic plan comes with everything you need to create your first course, and costs $29 per month.

11 Blogging Tools We Use on the DreamHost Blog

While all of the blogging tools on this list are excellent, we have some favorites we use for the DreamHost blog itself. Here’s some extra love for the solutions that make our job so much easier:

Google Docs: When it comes to collaboration, you can’t beat Google Docs.

Grammarly: Even the most seasoned writers miss an Oxford comma from time to time.

Language Tool: This is a useful grammar checker if you need support in languages other than English. We use it for our Spanish content!

MarketMuse: If you love the content on our blog, we have to give some credit to MarketMuse.

WordPress: Like so much of the internet, we love how easy WordPress is to use. It really is our favorite blogging tool!

DreamPress Hosting: Not to toot our own horn, but we’re really good at this hosting thing.

OptinMonster: No one wants to annoy their blog visitors with unwanted opt-ins, and we’re no exception.

Yoast SEO: We’re proud of what we publish, and Yoast SEO helps ensure that our blog content gets seen by plenty of visitors.

CoSchedule: Keeping track of when and where we’ve published our content is much easier thanks to CoSchedule.

Canva: The one-click resize option for various social media channels is a gift.

Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to be sure we’re giving you more of what you want.

If you’re not sure where to begin, the above tools should start you off on the right foot.

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What’s Your Next Blogging Tool?

Handling a blog on your own is a difficult task. Taking advantage of a few of the many blogging tools available can give you back some valuable time.

Today, we’ve looked at a few reasons why you might want to invest in some blogging tools. If you’re just getting started with your blog, you might try out Google Docs and Grammarly to keep your content organized and polished. If you’re ready to step up your marketing game, Mailchimp can give you the edge you’re looking for.

Ready to put those new blogging tools to work? It may be a smart time to upgrade your hosting service, to prepare for all the new traffic you’ll be getting. Check out our managed WordPress hosting plans!

The post 36 Brilliant Blogging Tools to Help You Write Better, Publish More, and Increase Traffic appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/blogging-tools/

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“Power Outage” Brings Tabletop RPGs to Young Players (And Their Grown-Ups)

Bebarce El-Tayib didn’t learn that Dungeons & Dragons or other tabletop RPGs (role-playing games) existed until he was well into adulthood. He was intrigued, and on his first Father’s Day — his daughter was eight months old at the time — his wife encouraged him to check out a local game shop that was debuting the fourth edition of D&D. He was hooked and eventually branched out to other RPGs.

Fast forward a few years: El-Tayib’s baby girl is six and now has a four-year-old sister. His gaming was going strong, but with one hiccup — the girls kept stealing his dice. “Eventually I realized if I ever wanted the dice back, I’d have to come up with a game for the girls to play,” he says.

So he started looking around for options to introduce his kids to tabletop RPGs but came up short. “Considering their ages, most of the role-playing games out there were either too advanced or too adult,” El-Tayib says. “Some of the few that I found, while good, were often just simplified versions of adult games.”

His solution? Invent a new game to play with the girls.

Several years and hours upon hours of work later, the Power Outage world was built, and its corresponding Core Rules Book finally ready to be published.

“Power Outage is a superhero-themed tabletop role-playing game that is designed for kids, but fun for adults looking for a more casual, light-hearted gaming experience,” El-Tayib says. “It’s absolutely drenched with puns as well.” Built to engage kids as young as four years old, Power Outage’s cast of characters pits such villains as Break Fast, InstaGator, and The Bulshefist up against the Pocket Protector, SuburbanKnight, Rockin Troll, and other heroes.

After reaching its funding goal on Kickstarter and making an official debut in 2019, Power Outage was nominated twice for an Ennie, a notable award in the RPG world. El-Tayib is building an audience for Power Outage and has gotten great feedback from fans so far.

“I think the best compliment I ever received was when someone referred to me as the ‘Mr. Rogers of role-playing games,’” El-Tayib says.

And along the way, he’s relied on DreamHost to power this and other passion projects.

Choose Your Own Adventure

As a kid in elementary school, El-Tayib loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. “So much so,” he adds, “that I would write my own and run them with kids at the lunch table. That was before I knew that RPGs existed.”

He was introduced to the concept as an adult through the early Penny-Arcade podcast crew, which was testing out and describing the new Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition. The idea of RPGs “immediately shot me right back to elementary school,” he says. His favorite game these days, other than Power Outage, is Tales from the Loop, which represents the kind of quality he’s chasing with his own game.

“My goal was to create a game that brought parents and kids to the table, have fun, and maybe learn a little,” El-Tayib says. “I’ve yet to meet a person that hasn’t claimed to have had a blast playing Power Outage.”

In creating the game, El-Tayib relied on his daughters for playtesting to craft an RPG that was truly centered on a child’s experience. “I built it from the kids’ perspective up — I think that really informed the shape of the game,” he says.

While most traditional RPGs focus on battles and fighting, Power Outage was built with a choose-your-own-adventure flair that gives kids — and their parents — different options for what kinds of games they can play. El-Tayib created a system he calls CAPE: Combat, Alternative, Puzzle, and Exploration. Each path creates a custom adventure that styles gameplay according to the preferences of both parents (who lead the game) and kids.

“Don’t want your kids fighting? Choose an Alternative path,” El-Tayib explains. “Want your kids to practice problem solving? Choose a Puzzle path. Additionally, I created a substantial amount of guidance for new gaming parents that I’ve been told sheds some light for even veteran players when switching to gaming with kids.”

Ultimately, he hopes the game can help parents, gamers or not, connect with their kids in a way that resonates.

“I want kids to have experiences with their parents that they’ll remember growing up,” El-Tayib says.  “I want a channel to open up about themselves, without fear of reprisal. The ability to instill into an avatar their desires and see those play out, and in doing so, educate those adults playing with them.”

Feedback on Power Outage has been overwhelmingly positive — especially once he can help players ditch the expectation that this child-oriented game aligns, or should align, with Dungeons & Dragons gameplay.

“It’s also amazing seeing pictures from fans holding up kids, often infants, next to my book with the promise that a new player will be starting up soon,” he says.

Related: Herald and Sons Publishing: The Ultimate Father-Son DIY Project

Child’s Play

By trade, El-Tayib is the chief technology officer for a public school system in New Jersey. Part of his work includes considering the needs of students with disabilities, and in developing Power Outage, accessibility was top of mind.

The Power Outage rule book has a section outlining accommodations to make the game playable for all children, including those who need physical, communicative, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional adjustments to the gameplay. In creating this content, he consulted experts in special education to review his recommendations and terminology.

“Role-playing games allow all of us to not only break free of the limitations we find in our everyday lives, but express our real selves through our avatars,” El-Tayib says. “The absolute need to make that process available to everyone is imperative. We need to be accessible. We need to be inclusive. We need to bring everyone to the table, and if we can’t, then we need to drag that table over to them.”

El-Tayib wants his entire mythology — based on Outage, an ancient, mysterious island that appeared in the Pacific Ocean — to be fun and understandable to children of all ages and abilities.

“I eliminated death from the game, changing your standard HP (health points) to YP (yield points),” he says. “Kids are freer to enjoy their creative spirit with the knowledge that they can get up and try again. All the villains are fun and humorous, but many have deeper contexts that parents can use to exemplify lessons.”

Power Outage does have a slight amount of number crunching, and still uses the “‘math rocks’ — i.e.,  dice — my kids loved to steal in the first place,” El-Tayib adds. The game is designed to allow players of different skill levels to work together on the same goal, so kids of all ages can still play together. It lists generic powers for the avatars to use but leaves the details up to players’ imaginations. Power Outage throws out the traditional RPG character races or classes — wizard, human, elf, etc. — to give kids more wiggle room to create the avatar they want, be it a robot, a werewolf, or a princess.

“The sky is literally not even the limit,” El-Tayib says. “It allows kids to keep their creative mind, while conditioning the effects into manageable gameplay. Heck, it even has a comic strip in the back that explains all the powers.”

Related: Leveling the Web: 12 Questions with Accessibility Expert Gian Wild

Running the Game

Creating and testing the game and teaming up with designer Rosanna Spucces to give it a polished look was the fun part. Getting Power Outage, a self-published, indie game, out in front of an audience, has been El-Tayib’s biggest challenge.

“I’ve often described promotion of an indie game with the analogy of a crowded bar,” El-Tayib explains. “Everyone is in there, clamoring to have their story heard, often talking over each other. You have that solid group of people that are always there listening to you, but your story never really branches out from your table. Your friends will share it, but the message doesn’t get much farther out from where you are. Then someone walks in and everyone in the bar looks up at once and shouts “NORM!” You’re incredibly appreciative and flattered by those that you have with you — your small group of friends and fans. But you always wonder, ‘Man, what makes everyone like Norm so much?’”

El-Tayib’s found that his best tool for promotion is creating loyal fans of the game. He’s given the rule book to podcasters and Twitch streamers and has run games online and at conventions.

Earlier this year, he coordinated Shelter in Play, a quarantined-themed charity sale with 17 other kid-friendly game creators, who offered their products together as part of a $10 bundle. Proceeds were split between Extra Life 4 Kids and the Child’s Play Charity, with each charity receiving a little over $3,500 each.

“I’ve probably given away eight times or more digital copies than I’ve sold,” El-Tayib says. “On the whole, I believe people in the communities I’ve engaged with have a bit of faith in my character, and they’ve rewarded me by helping me to promote things.”

Home Base

El-Tayib has been a proud DreamHost customer since 2006. So when it was time to get serious about publishing Power Outage, he knew exactly where to build its website, which he hopes to grow into a community hub for game players and fans.

“I like that it’s built with WordPress, which has a lot of adaptability and the allowance for personalization,” El-Tayib says.

He’s built websites for others and himself for years. Along with a website for Go Nerdy, his parent company that publishes Power Outage and other resources, El-Tayib runs a personal website, bebarce.com (“Who else gets to claim their own first name as a domain name?”), and is developing a wiki site to provide resources to make tabletop RPG play more accessible to people of all abilities.

“DreamHost’s support is great,” El-Tayib says, “and absolutely tolerant of my late night blunderings. There have been quite a few times they have bailed me out of a hotspot. The site structure on the back end is super intuitive and it offers a lot of control. Honestly if I’m not building a site directly on DreamHost, I’m often encouraging others to migrate to it.”

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Work Ahead

Outside of his day job and work on Power Outage, El-Tayib is passionate about writing. He’s written a few children’s books, and he’s working on a series of princess-themed STEM stories with titles like “The Princess and the Placebo” and “A Princess’ Primer to the Theory of Evolution.”

“I also enjoy woodwork, even though I’m a bit of a novice at it,” he says. “I made a tie rack and, recently, some custom sandboxes for my kids and extended family.” Tech consulting and side gigs also keep him busy, not to mention juggling his family and trying to invest time into advocating for more accessible gaming tables.

As far as Power Outage goes, he isn’t done promoting or working on the game. He’s working on supplemental adventures — a necessary component to keeping a tabletop game growing and earning money.

“The biggest mountain is sustainability,” he says. “I have to find a way to create future products faster, with better turn around, and increased promotion.”

Currently in the works: an adult version of Power Outage.

“It’s called Power Outage: Neon Knights,” El-Tayib says. “The idea is to take all the campy weirdness of Baywatch Nights and apply it to my own world setting. But of course, ‘adult’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in any way more mature. After all I’m a pretty immature adult myself.”

The post “Power Outage” Brings Tabletop RPGs to Young Players (And Their Grown-Ups) appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/customer-spotlight-power-outage/

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How to Start a Business: The Complete Guide

So, you want to start a business? To strike out into the unknown, discover new opportunities, change the world, and make some money along the way?

The road to becoming your own boss can be a long one. But we’ve got you covered.

In this guide, you’ll learn all the steps — from creating a basic business plan to hiring your first employee — that you need to start a successful small business. You’ll learn how to:

Refine Your Business Idea

Create a Business Plan

Decide on a Business Name

Define Your Brand

Register a Domain

Secure Social Media Accounts

Create a Website

Find an Accountant and an Attorney

Determine Your Business Structure

Register with the Government and IRS

Open a Business Bank Account

Purchase Insurance

Set Up An Accounting System

Set Up A Project Management System

Set Up A Payroll System

Set Up A Communications System

Set Up A Shipping System

Hire Employees

Hire Contractors

Choose Vendors

Develop a Marketing Strategy

Set Goals and Create a Growth Plan

So, without further ado, let’s get right to it and learn how to start a business.

The Big Idea

Every creative endeavor has two halves: the idea and its execution.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs can come up with some type of idea but end up struggling with the second part.

Need proof? First, how many friends of yours have revolutionary app ideas? Now, how many have actually developed an app, released it, and built a successful business out of it? Chances are, the answer to the second question is a lot lower.

When you start your own business, you need to have an execution plan ready from the get-go. So, let’s start things off on the right foot and make sure that you break your big idea down into small, realistic steps.

1. Refine Your Business Idea

Few things kill a new business like an idea that’s way too vague. How do you even start building your business if your idea is simply to “make a new type of social network?”

The answer? You don’t. You either refine your idea into something tangible, or you put it to the side.

But most ideas can be saved with a dash of refinement and a bit of polish. The key to doing so is asking the right questions:

Why are you starting this venture?

Who is your target demographic?

What product or service are you offering?

When will it be available, and when would someone use this product?

Where will your product be available?

By answering these questions, you can turn a vague idea like “start a new social network” into “start a new social network for US-based professionals and recent college graduates to connect and find job opportunities in their alumni networks.”

Once you get through your first round of questions, ask more questions: Why would this target demographic use this over LinkedIn? What are the features that separate it from the competition?

Refining your idea is like making a sculpture out of a block of marble. Start by cutting away big chunks on your first pass, and then chip at the little details once you’re further along.

But remember that sometimes, ideas simply won’t work, and it’s often more important to know when to give up on an idea than how to refine it. There’s no shame in admitting that a business idea isn’t a good one and putting it to the side so you can focus your efforts on another one.

2. Create a Business Plan

The next step is to start working out the nitty-gritty by working out a detailed business plan. Besides serving as a guide, your business plan can also come in handy when looking for investors or grants.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, a traditional business plan should have these elements:

Executive Summary: Sum up your business. Why will it be successful? What is your mission statement, and what are you offering? In short: Who are you as a business, and why should anyone care?

Company Description: Expand on some of the points in your executive summary. What problems does your business solve? What is your team like? What’s your competitive advantage? Your company description will likely overlap with your executive summary to some extent, but you need not only expand — you can include new information here as well.

Market Analysis: Explain how your product fits into the market. What are competitors doing? How can you do it better?

Service or Product Line: Describe the products or services you’re selling in detail. Include information about patents, the product’s lifecycle, and its benefits. This information will form the backbone of your business model.

Marketing and Sales: Explain how your marketing and sales strategies work. How will you get new customers? How will you keep them?

Funding Request: Include information about how much funding you’ll need over the next five years and what you plan to use that money for.

Financial Projections: Prove that your business is stable and ready for success by projecting what your finances will look like in the next few years.

3. Decide on a Business Name

Chances are that if you’ve made it this far, you already have some type of working name. But if you don’t, make sure you iron one out by this point.

When coming up with your business name, keep these tips in mind:

Your name should be catchy and sound good when you say it out loud

You should be able to trademark your name

The name should be somewhat related to your product or service’s benefits or features

Make sure you can get a .com domain for it

Your name should be easy to spell

Some entrepreneurs get backed up at this stage. While it’s definitely important to make sure your business name has some allure to it, don’t overthink it and hold your entire business plan up just because you can’t settle on the perfect name. Give yourself a reasonable amount of thinking time, and go with your favorite option after that time has elapsed, even if you’re not thrilled with it.

4. Define Your Brand

Businesses are like people — they have names and personalities.

Once you’ve settled on a name for your business entity, start to consider what other features you want people to recognize your brand by.

At this point, you’ll want to design a logo and set some brand guidelines. What tone will your business take in its communications? What colors represent it?

Oatly, for example, has defined itself through its playful and irreverent copywriting, its logo, and the colors blue, brown, black, and white.

Ideally, your branding should be recognizable enough that even if you release a new product, customers will immediately realize that it’s a new addition to your product line.

Secure Your Space on the Web

With COVID-19 still raging across the world and society showing no signs of retiring social distancing restrictions anytime soon, maintaining a strong digital presence has become more important than ever.

Luckily, starting a website and building a social presence is easier than ever before. Here’s how.

Related: 11 Ways Small Businesses Can Pivot to Survive a Crisis

1. Register a Domain

Your domain is the address that people will type in when they want to visit your website. It’s essentially your online calling card.

For example, our domain is dreamhost.com. If your business were called Doug’s Donuts, your domain might be dougsdonuts.com.

The vast majority of businesses will want to get a .com name. However, other domain extensions, like .ai, .inc, and .net, may be worth consideration in certain cases.

Purchasing and registering a domain is a simple process. All you need to do is search for your desired domain on a reputable domain registrar’s website and purchase it. Most registrars will guide you through the process.

Once you’ve got a domain, you’ll need to connect it to your website. Most website building platforms offer instructions on how to do this.

Overall, the hardest part about registering a domain is finding one that isn’t already taken. In some cases, you may need to get a bit creative by adding words, i.e., Doug’s Delicious Donuts, or change your name entirely so you can get a better domain name.

2. Secure Social Media Accounts

It’s estimated that there are 3.6 billion social media users in 2020. To ensure your business’s survival in the modern business climate, you need to be where your potential customers are — on social media.

But don’t be intimidated — you don’t need to actually develop your social media presence just yet; you just need to get your usernames. Like domain names, usernames on major social network sites are hot commodities and go fast, so you want to lock them down ASAP.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly unlikely that you’ll end up finding that the same username is available across all social media platforms. Most businesses will need to edit their handles slightly or have different accounts per platform (i.e., @dougsdonuts on Twitter and @dougsdeliciousdonuts on Instagram).

Related: 10 Easy Social Media Tips for Your Hard-Working Small Business

3. Create a Website

What use would your domain name be if you had no website to go along with it? Once you have a domain ready to go, it’s time to start building your website.

These days, there are tons of online website builders that make it easy to get a site up and running quickly.

But if you want your website to run on a powerful, tried-and-true platform, building a WordPress site is one of your best options. WordPress powers approximately 38.4% of all websites, so there’s no lack of support, powerful features, and communities to get involved in.

DreamHost offers a drag-and-drop WordPress website builder with shared hosting that combines the ease of a website building tool with the raw power of WordPress. This gives the business owner the best of both worlds.

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Whatever your business goals, we’ll be right there with you, making sure your site is fast, secure, and always up. Plans start at $2.59/mo.

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Deal with Laws and Finances

Starting a business can sometimes mean navigating a lot of red tape. Between registering your business, structuring it, and opening a bank account, many entrepreneurs quickly find themselves with their hands full.

Here’s what you need to know to get started.

1. Find an Accountant and an Attorney

If you’re serious about your business’s success, it’s a good idea to start things off on the right foot and hire an accountant and an attorney. Starting a business is a complex process with lots of legal requirements, and this team will be able to guide you through it and answer the many questions you’re sure to have along the way.

If you’re on a very tight budget or starting your business as a side hustle, you may be able to hold off on this step. But keep in mind that you’re running a risk when you don’t have a professional helping you with complex tax, financial, and legal issues.

Plus, an attorney and accountant will help you figure out how to choose a business structure — the next step in your journey.

2. Decide on a Business Structure

Choosing a business structure is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. The legal structure you choose will determine how you pay taxes and how your business is viewed by government entities.

Importantly, your business structure will determine whether your profits are taxed on a pass-through basis or not. Owners of pass-through businesses include their share of profits as individual, self-employed, taxable income. Owners of non-pass-through businesses pay themselves a salary and report their income and the business’s profits separately.

The most common business structures in the US are:

Sole Proprietorship: This structure can be used by businesses without any employees. All businesses that do not formally register are automatically considered sole proprietor operations.

Partnership: Have a business partner? Partnerships are a simple structure for businesses with two or more owners. Profits are taxed on a pass-through basis.

Limited Liability Company (LLC): LLCs are among the most popular pass-through structures for small businesses. This structure separates personal and business assets so that you can’t lose your house or car if your business goes bankrupt.

Corporation: A corporation is a standalone legal entity. Profits are not taxed on a pass-through basis, so owners need to pay themselves a salary. There are several types, including S Corp, C Corp, and non-profits.

Cooperative: A cooperative is a business owned and operated by a group of people who use its products or services. These people typically own shares in the company, and profits are distributed amongst them.

3. Register with the Government and the IRS

Most business registration is conducted at a state level, so you’ll need to look into your local laws to see what’s required to legally form your business. An attorney can be a great help here.

Once your business is registered, you might need to file to get a federal tax ID called an Employer Identification Number (EIN). You can think of an EIN as a Social Security Number for your business. According to the Small Business Administration, you’ll need an EIN if your business does any of the following:

Pays employees

Operates as a corporation of partnership

Files tax returns for employment, excise, or alcohol, tobacco, and firearms

Withholds taxes on income, other than wages, paid to a non-resident alien

Uses a Keogh Plan (a tax-deferred pension plan)

Works with certain types of organizations

If you’re running a sole proprietorship or single-member LLC, you don’t need a separate tax ID — your profits are taxed as personal income.

4. Open a Business Bank Account

Having a bank account for your business can help you keep your personal and business finances separate, making accounting and filing taxes much easier. It also offers an extra layer of protection for your personal assets, maintains a professional image, and allows you to open a business credit card.

You’ll need to have all your business’s formation and tax documents, along with a business license and ownership agreements to open a bank account. Your accountant will be able to help you here — especially if you’re considering applying for a business loan.

5. Purchase Insurance

Many business owners forget this step or simply don’t realize how important it is.

Don’t be one of them. Purchasing liability insurance can sometimes be the only wall that protects you against bankruptcy if you get sued for some reason. Plus, if you hire employees, you’ll legally need to have worker’s compensation and unemployment insurance.

Set Up Your Daily Operations

A business is like a machine. To keep it running smoothly, you need to make sure all the parts fit together and stay well oiled.

1. Accounting

Your accounting system is the backbone of your business’s financial operations. Without a good system in place, you won’t be able to process invoices, make payments, etc.

Your best bet here is to speak with an accountant who can help you find a solution that works for your specific needs.

2. Project Management

A robust project management system ensures that projects reach completion in a timely and organized way. Project managers communicate with different team members, contractors, and other external businesses to keep everyone on the same page.

Whether you’re going to be your sole proprietorship’s own project manager or you’re hiring one for your corporation, it can be a good idea to invest in project management software like Asana or Trello.

Related: The 7 Best Web Management Tools for Small Businesses

3. Payroll

If you plan to hire employees, you’ll need some type of payroll system. Gusto, Intuit Payroll, and Bill.com are all good options.

If you’re hiring contractors, a payroll platform can also help, but it’s not entirely necessary.

4. Communications

If you’re hiring employees or contractors, you’ll need a way to communicate with each other. While email works fine in most cases, many businesses prefer platforms like Slack, which speed up communication and are more convenient than email.

5. Shipping

Businesses that have an e-commerce component will need to set up a shipping system. To figure this out, you’ll need to compare options like USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL to see which one best fits your needs.

Related: The 30 Best Apps for Small Businesses in 2020

Build Your Team

A business is nothing without its team members. When building your team, you’ll have to mix and match three types of members.

1. Employees

Employees are full-time or part-time workers. Hiring employees comes with a slew of legal and tax responsibilities, such as paying payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, etc. If things don’t work out with an employee, you can’t just fire them so easily.

However, there are benefits to hiring employees, such as having reliable team members always available at set times. You also get more control over the work produced.

2. Contractors

Contractors are typically independent businesses themselves, so you won’t have any legal responsibilities as their employer (outside of what’s covered in your contract). You can hire them at will without a long-term commitment.

However, contractors are independent and not full team members, so you won’t have the same level of control over the work they produce. Plus, they may not be available when you need them — they have their own schedules and businesses to run, after all.

Contractors are useful for businesses that need specific deliverables, like graphic design, writing, web development, etc. But businesses that need operations run around the clock, like customer service, management, etc., will likely want to hire employees.

3. Vendors

Some businesses choose to outsource some of their work to third-party vendors. For example, you may choose to hire a third-party call center to field all your customer service requests or for on-site security. However, this is typically only required for larger businesses, so it’s something to keep in mind as you grow.

Grow Your Business

Once you’ve planted your business’s seed, you’ll need to water it so that it grows into a successful startup.

1. Develop a Marketing Strategy

Marketing is essential. Without it, no one will even know your business exists.

Marketing comes in many forms, from content marketing and PPC ads to email marketing. If you’re not familiar with these terms already, it’s a good idea to read up on them a bit.

However, to really get your marketing going in the right direction, you’ll likely want to hire a professional.

Related: 12 Marketing Strategies to Promote Your Local Business

2. Set Goals and Create a Growth Plan

Businesses rarely grow without goals. To ensure your business continues to evolve over time, it’s a good idea to set SMART goals — goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

What does that mean? Instead of setting a goal like “grow my business,” write something like “increase sales by 25% by January.” Now, your goal fulfills the smart criteria.

To build a growth plan, you simply outline a series of these sorts of goals for a period of one or two years. Typically, businesses divide this period into quarters, so you’ll ideally have eight goals for a two-year period.

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How to Start Your Own Business: Key Takeaways

Starting a business is a long and arduous endeavor.

But it’s also incredibly rewarding! Few things are as satisfying as seeing others enjoy your hard work and benefit from your products and services.

Really, what could be better than running your own business?

If you’re ready to become a small business owner, DreamHost shared hosting is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get your idea off the ground. For just $2.59/month, we give you everything — a free domain, SSL certificate, professional email address, and privacy protection — you need to thrive online.

While there are no certainties in business, there is one guarantee: Whatever happens, you’ll learn a lot and grow as an entrepreneur. That much is certain.

The post How to Start a Business: The Complete Guide appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/how-to-start-a-business-guide/

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How to Choose the Right Domain Name

Which is harder: Naming your kid or choosing a domain? 

Sure, your bambino is stuck with the moniker you choose until they can get a judge to change it, but you won’t need to reinvent the wheel to come up with something to call them. You can look to historical figures, literary characters, or even your favorite TV show for inspiration. 

However, when it comes to a domain, you’ve got to make sure your digital baby is truly unique. No repeats allowed.

So what makes a good domain name? 

Generally speaking, you’ll want something memorable, brandable, and easy for people to type and pronounce. It’s also smart to avoid anything too long or overly specific. By following a few simple guidelines, you can pick out a name that helps to drive more traffic your way. 

In this guide, I’ll explain why your domain name matters and share 11 factors to consider when making this decision. I’ll also discuss the best places to register a domain and how you can get a free one along with your web hosting. Let’s get started!

Your Great Idea Starts with a Domain Name

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Why Your Domain Name Matters

Your domain name is as much a part of your brand as your business name or logo. Even if you’ve nailed your branding in every other respect, if there’s something about your domain name that puts potential customers off, they’ll likely go elsewhere.

The opposite is also true. If your web address is accurate and as fun to say as it is to use, people will be eager to check it out and share it. First impressions matter, and sometimes your domain is the initial experience people will have of your brand. 

It’s also not easy to change your domain name after your site is online. You can do it, but it can be time-consuming and does have consequences. It can lead to a loss of traffic and unnecessary downtime. In other words, life will be a lot easier if you take your time now and come up with a name you love.

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Domain Registration

11 Important Factors to Consider When Choosing a Domain Name

As with most big business decisions, you’ll find plenty of opinions about how to select the right domain name. To make it easier, let’s take a look at eleven key points to consider.

1. Choose Your Top-Level Domain Extension Carefully

A Top Level Domain (TLD) is the piece of your domain that comes after the site’s name. The most common TLDs are .com, .net, and .org.

There are plenty of newer TLD options, but it’s usually best to keep it old school and stick to .com if possible. It’s been around the longest and is the most popular, so people are very familiar with it.

Of course, it’s possible you won’t be able to secure a decent domain name with a .com TLD since many are already taken. However, it’s not the end of the world if you have to use an alternative.

You’ll find tons of available options that can add personality to your web address. Just make sure that whatever you select makes sense for your website and audience.

Related: The Complete Guide to New Domain Extensions

2. Incorporate Keywords Strategically

Keywords aren’t just for content. Search engines use your domain name to understand what your site is about and help determine search rankings. So it’s essential to include keywords where possible. 

The keywords you choose for your domain name should be relevant to your website. It’s much more important to represent your content accurately than to add keywords for their own sake. If you’re stuck for ideas, you can give Google Keyword Planner a try.

This free tool lets you explore keywords by search volume and other factors to identify terms people actually use. Don’t get too carried away, though. Using too many keywords, especially popular ones, can make your site seem boring and maybe even a little untrustworthy.

3. Make Sure Your Domain Is Easy to Pronounce and Spell

You probably want your domain name to be memorable. However, if you’re thinking of going the Elon Musk baby-naming route, don’t. No matter how cool it looks spelled out, there will come a time when you’ll have to give someone your website or email address verbally.

Word-of-mouth is still powerful advertising. What’s more, it only works when people can actually pronounce your domain. This also makes the name easier to remember, increasing the odds that people will visit and pass the site along to their networks.

4. Avoid Hyphens

Using hyphens may seem like a creative way to get the domain name you want. Unfortunately, they’re tough to express verbally. They also make the domain more difficult to type. Some people will likely forget about them entirely and end up on someone else’s website.

Generally, when you’re brainstorming domain name ideas, try to avoid anything that isn’t a letter. That includes replacing letters with numbers. Those kinds of touches make the name a lot easier for people to misremember and mistype.

5. Avoid Using Doubled Letters

Using doubled letters in a domain name is practically asking for typos. Doubled letters are hard to read and even harder to type correctly.

If mistakes happen often enough, you may end up with someone typosquatting and stealing your traffic. Plus, having to spend even a few seconds longer than necessary trying to figure out how to spell your domain is an unnecessary distraction.

6. Keep Your Domain Name Short

There are several reasons short domain names work better. First, shorter names are easier to remember and type. Therefore, they are beneficial for branding purposes.

Also, an overly long domain name is yet another way to look suspicious. If you don’t use too many keywords and make your name easy to pronounce, on the other hand, your domain will probably be short naturally.

7. Stay Unique and Brandable

A unique domain name can help your business stand out and potentially help you avoid legal trouble. It can also contribute to your marketing efforts, so you’ll want it to be brandable. 

StitchFix is an excellent example of a unique, brandable name.

StitchFix checks all the boxes when it comes to marketable domain names. It’s fun to say, doesn’t have any inherent meaning, and is easy to remember and spell.

8. Pick a Domain Name That’s Flexible

Your domain name is one area where you don’t want to paint yourself into a box. While you should be specific enough to attract an audience, you don’t want to be so precise that there’s no room for your website to grow. 

For example, “shutter.photography” might be perfect for a photography blog. However, if you decide to write about other art forms as well, you’ll be stuck with an inaccurate domain name. So it’s smart to consider upfront how your site or business may expand over time.

9. Do Your Domain Name Research

Once you’ve narrowed your search down to a few candidates, you can use a research tool to determine if it’s available.

However, just because the domain name is available doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t have a valid claim to it. To be safe, you’ll want to perform a trademark search before making your choice.

It’s also best to make sure you can secure appropriate social media handles. If you can’t get an exact match, try finding something that makes sense with your domain name.

Related: Boost Your SEO Ranking with These Domain Best Practices

10. Don’t Get Analysis Paralysis

Chances are that if you want a domain name, someone else probably wants it too. If you’re sure about your choice, go ahead and buy the domain.

This is especially recommended if it’s reasonably inexpensive. Plus, if you come up with something better later on, you can always let the registration lapse. You don’t want to end up in a dispute because you didn’t act fast.

11. Protect Your Brand With Multiple Domains

Have you ever heard: “If the shoe fits, buy it in every color?” Well, if the domain name fits, buy it in every TLD.

Even if you manage to snag a coveted .com address, you might consider purchasing other options and setting up redirects. You can even go a step further and buy common misspellings of your domain name.

This is a smart strategy to apply to social media as well. Even if you don’t think you’ll use Twitter, you might want to grab a decent handle if one is available. You’ll be ready if you ever decide to tweet, and you’ll prevent anyone else from taking that username.

Picking the Best Place to Register Your Domain

Once you’ve picked out a domain name, you need to choose a domain registrar, which is the company where you’ll purchase it. When shopping around for a registrar, here are a few things to keep an eye on:

Domain transfers. Check out the registrar’s transfer policy. If it’s complicated or expensive, keep looking.

Pricing. Some companies offer lower prices for the first year and then increase them when it’s time for renewal. You may even be locked into a multi-year contract.

Expiration policy. You don’t buy a domain so much as rent it. If you forget to renew the lease, someone else can take it from you. Look for a registrar that offers automatic renewals and a grace period.

Domain privacy protection. As a website owner, you’re required to add your personal information to a public database. Domain privacy protection hides your primary contact information to help keep your identity secure.

Subdomains. You don’t have to register subdomains separately. However, you’ll want to ensure that your registrar makes it easy to add subdomains to your site.

There are plenty of registrars you can use. However, sometimes it makes sense to register your domain through your hosting provider.

Related: Why You Should Consider Keeping Domain Registration and Web Hosting Under One Roof

How to Get a Free Domain With Your Web Hosting

Some web hosts offer a free domain name when you sign up for a hosting plan. You may have to pay for renewal at the end of the first year, but it’s not typically expensive. You also won’t have to worry about migrating your domain if you register it through your hosting provider.

At DreamHost, we offer a free domain name when you sign up for one of our Shared or DreamPress hosting plans. Once you’ve selected the right option for you, just click on Register a new domain.

You’ll be prompted to search for your desired domain name. Simply add your domain to your cart and complete the checkout process!

Related: Didn’t Get Your Domain Through DreamHost? Here’s How to Transfer

So Many Potential Domain Names . . .

There’s a lot to think about when choosing a domain name. After all, it’s one of the first major decisions you’ll make when establishing your online presence. Putting some time and care into this selection can help set the stage for success down the road.

Fortunately, there’s lots of information you can rely on to help you make your choice. Keeping your domain name short, pronounceable, and easy to remember will get you off to a strong start. Once you have a name in mind, you can follow our suggestions for choosing a registrar and getting a free domain with your web hosting provider.

Have you settled on the perfect domain name for your website? Get a free private domain registration when you sign up with DreamHost!

The post How to Choose the Right Domain Name appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name/

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How to Successfully Deal With Tech Support (5 Simple Steps)

Spoiler alert: Setting up a website can be stressful — especially if it’s your first time. And even if you’re a pro, having something go wrong with your website at one point or another is pretty much inevitable. The hard truth is that technical difficulties can make you want to throw in the towel.

But don’t give up, champ. 

DreamHost’s brilliant tech support team is here to get you back on track. For more than 20 years, our top priority has always been customer satisfaction, which is why our support team wins awards for quality and responsiveness. 

What’s more, getting help with your website is even easier if you know what to expect when you reach out to us and what you can do on your end to make the process as quick and painless as possible. Yep, you’ve got the power!

In this article, we’ll help you cope with your website’s technical difficulties, give you some advice for contacting technical support, and let you know what to expect when you interact with a customer service rep. 

Want to jump ahead? Here are 5 steps to successfully dealing with tech support:

Try Some Basic Solutions

Document the Problem in Detail

Contact the Support Team

Request a Callback (If Necessary)

Work with the Support Specialist to Solve the Problem

Are you ready to uncover the secrets to getting good customer service? Let’s dive in!

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Step 1: Try Some Basic Solutions

If it looks like your site has gone offline entirely, there may be a quick fix you can tackle on your own. First, check to make sure the website is genuinely down and that the issue isn’t something on your end.

Security software may be blocking your website, especially if you’re trying to access it from a different network than usual. Maybe your cat unplugged the router. Actually, she may be trying to help, so don’t forget to check and see if the reset worked. Last but not least, have you tried turning your computer on and off again? You’re welcome, fans of The IT Crowd.

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Once you’ve eliminated other possibilities and determined that your site is down, you’ll want to know whether it’s just you or if it’s a hosting problem. You can look at the DreamHost Status page to find out if there’s a system-wide issue.

If DreamHost is experiencing downtime, there’s no need to contact tech support, as we’re already aware of the problem. You’ll just have to sit tight until it’s over.

If this doesn’t seem to be the source of the issue, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

Did you miss a hosting payment? Maybe your payment information changed and you forgot to update it. If so, once you’ve paid up, your site should be back in a few hours. 

Have you recently made a Domain Name Server (DNS) change? If you’ve swapped hosting providers or made a similar change, your website may be down for several hours. Patience is the solution here.

Did your domain expire? Perhaps life got crazy and you forgot to renew your domain. It happens. Fortunately, DreamHost gives you a 30-day grace period.

Are your files in the wrong place? Websites can be finicky, so if you’ve moved an important file, your site may go down. You can check on this using the website file manager.

Have you changed any code recently? If you suspect this is the problem, you may want to review your error log. Even if this isn’t the cause, the information may be helpful to share with tech support.

These are just a few possibilities, but asking the above questions may help get you on the right track. 

If you were able to pinpoint the issue, you might want to see if you can DIY your way to a solution. Troubleshooting help is available 24/7 via our Knowledge Base and blog. Or you can join our private Facebook group to swap ideas with other website owners. 

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Step 2: Document the Problem in Detail

So you’ve done your detective work, but you still don’t know what’s wrong. It’s probably time to call in some expert help. However, before contacting support, you might want to spend some time carefully documenting the issue your website is having. Being thorough now will make it easier for tech support to get you a solution quickly.

First, try to reproduce the issue. A problem that can’t be copied will be much more challenging to solve. If you’re able to consistently trigger the issue, you can provide more information to the DreamHost tech.

If you’re unable to recreate the exact circumstances, try to accomplish the task in other ways. Now might be an excellent time to explore the forums. Another user may have some helpful insight or creative suggestions for how to reproduce your problem.

You don’t need to be a tech expert to document complex issues. Just use precise language to describe what you see in as much detail as possible. If you’re vague or inaccurate, you’ll likely end up having more back and forth with the support agent.

Once you’ve put together a detailed description of the issue, you’ll want to compile your website’s recent history. Identify which domain is having problems and what Content Management System (CMS) you’re using. Include any changes you made, no matter how innocent they seem — even installing a new theme or plugin can sometimes create problems.

Additionally, you’ll want to take screenshots of what you see to support your description. A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in tech support! Bonus points apply if you can grab some video while you’re at it.

After you’ve thoroughly documented your problem, you’ll need to gather your account information. Have your domain name and the last four digits of your password handy.

Related: How Your Online Business Can Nail Customer Service

Step 3: Contact the DreamHost Tech Support Team

Now it’s time to contact DreamHost’s award-winning, in-house support team. You can access a technical support specialist by email or live chat. If you’re an existing customer, both of these options will be available to you through your panel on the Contact Support page. If you’re unable to log in to your DreamHost account for any reason, you’ll need to contact support using the online contact form.

No matter which avenue you choose to get in touch, you’ll start by filling out the Contact Support form. Remember all that information we asked you to gather in the first two steps? Plug it into the form. Include your detailed description of the problem, as well as any methods you’ve tried to fix it.

Live chat is available from 5:30 am–9:30 pm Pacific time, seven days a week. The service is available in Spanish as well. After filling out the Contact Support box, click on the Chat now button and wait for an agent to join.

Once the chat is complete, you can review it in the Contact Support page’s Recent Messages section. Keep in mind that while it may be convenient, live chat is best suited for situations with a quick fix. If your issue is more complicated, the chat agent may ask you to open a ticket via email, as this is the preferred method for contacting support.

You can create a ticket the same way you access the live chat. The only difference is that you’ll click on the Submit a ticket button after you’ve filled out the Contact Support form.

Once you’ve submitted your ticket, it will appear under Open Tickets. You can withdraw it if you solve the issue independently and no longer need help from tech support. Otherwise, you’ll be able to view your conversation here. 

Step 4: Request a Callback if Necessary

After support resolves your issue, you can still refer back to the conversation if needed. You can find the closed ticket in the Support History section of DreamPanel. You’ll also find any other messages from DreamHost here.

If you need to submit a file, you can do so by selecting the Attach files link at the bottom of the form. If you prefer, you can send the file via SFTP to your DreamHost server. Just be sure to explain what you’ll be uploading and where you uploaded it.

DreamHost’s support team doesn’t typically operate over the phone. However, callbacks may be available to you, depending on your plan. You can choose to add three callbacks per month to any plan for an additional fee.

To access phone support, check the Request a callback box when you submit your ticket.

  Here, you’ll also be able to add your phone number and a preferred time. Even if you choose to have a callback, be sure to include as much information as possible when filling out the Contact Support box.

Step 5: Work With Our Support Team to Solve Your Problem

The DreamHost support team tries to reply to all requests within 24 hours. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll completely solve the problem at that time. You’ll be working together with a support agent to diagnose and resolve your issue. Tech support is a team effort.

Be prepared to answer some questions and maybe even perform a few tasks to help diagnose the trouble. You’ll also be able to ask any questions that you may have. If it turns out the issue isn’t with DreamHost, our support specialists will try to point you in the right direction to get it worked out.

Of course, it helps the entire process if everyone tries to remain calm and courteous. Glitches and technical difficulties are part of owning a website, and this likely isn’t the only time you’ll encounter frustrations. Even if you’re worried about losing traffic, it won’t help to lose your cool. You haven’t done all that yoga for nothing. Breathe.

Remember, even if your website is experiencing significant downtime, DreamHost has a 100% uptime guarantee. You’ll receive credit for the inconvenience, and we’ll do everything we can to improve your customer experience.

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Great Customer Support Is a Click Away

Handling website problems is no one’s idea of a fun time, and TBH, neither is interacting with angry customers. It’s totally normal that you’re feeling stressed out, frustrated, and maybe even embarrassed for not having the answers yourself. But before you open that bottle of wine, keep calm and contact tech support.

Knowing what to do when complex issues arise can make the situation a little less scary. Also, planning ahead when dealing with tech support can help you get the most out of the experience. Gather as much detailed information as you can and know what channels you have available to you, as well as how to use them.

With DreamHost’s superhero tech support team in your corner, you can build your website fearlessly. Get started with a hosting plan today!

The post How to Successfully Deal With Tech Support (5 Simple Steps) appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-tech-support/

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The Difference Between WordPress.com & WordPress.org

What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? Turns out, it’s big, especially when you want full control over your website.

What do the New York Times, Katy Perry, Forbes, The Walt Disney Company, and Sony Music all have in common?

Well, for one thing, these well-known entities — and many others — have websites powered by WordPress.org, the open source force that for more than a decade, has been behind more than a quarter of the internet!

You’re probably familiar with WordPress, at least the WordPress.com side that allows you to quickly — and easily — create a basic blog (with that omnipresent .wordpress.com domain) and outfit it with preloaded themes and accessories.

But click over to WordPress.org, and you’ll quickly realize that with a self-hosted WordPress website, there are a lot more options.

Let’s dive in and discover everything — down to the nitty and the gritty — about WordPress, both the .com and .org sites, and find out how you can create your ideal space on the web.

WordPress.com: The Basics

So what if you didn’t even really know — until now, of course — that there were different WordPress services.

No problem. We’ll start with the bare bones.

WordPress.com, the WordPress you’re probably most familiar with, is a browser-based — meaning, no downloads involved — commercial website that is really popular amongst internet users. WordPress.com gets more unique visitors per month than Amazon!

WordPress allows users, after creating an account, to build and host their own blog on the WordPress site at no cost. We all like free, right? The approximately 76.5 million existing WordPress.com blogs are evidence of that.

As you create your new website, you’ll notice a few features of WordPress.com. For starters, you will get to create your domain name — up to the .wordpress.com tacked on at the end.

Additionally, WordPress supplies themes, which are essentially design templates, that you can choose from to customize the look of your blog or website. Many of these templates are free, but you can purchase a premium theme for a fee.

With a few clicks and no strain on your wallet, your* website is up and running. Voilà!

Related: Up Your Blogging Game with 20 Tips from Today’s Best Content Creators

The Hidden Costs of a Free Website

Ah, so you noticed the asterisk. Let me explain.

First of all, let’s understand what goes into making a website. In order to make a basic, functioning site, you need a few things:

Domain Name

Web Hosting

Content Management System (like WordPress)

Your code, plugins, images, etc.

There are other tools you’ll want for maintaining a website, but these are the basics.

WordPress.com is a website hosting service where you can house your blog or site for free. It is run by web company Automattic, and as you can see from the checklist below, its pre-programmed software helps users build and launch sites by providing them a domain name, the tools and templates to design their site, and a place to host it.

Now, back to the *fine print.

With WordPress.com, the website you create isn’t technically yours. Sure, you’ve plastered your name — or your brand’s — across you. But with WordPress’ commercial site, the $0 plan does come with some virtual expenses.

1. Limited Space

For one, while there is no cost to set up or house your website on the WordPress site, the site restricts space with an allowance of 3 GB. So if you’re website features high-quality videos or photos, your space could be limited, and you could be looking at a sizable fee — up to $25 a month — for a plan upgrade.

2. Stuck as a Subdomain

What’s more, if you’re anxious to ditch the .wordpress.com domain (a tag that makes you simply a subdomain of WordPress), you’ll have to dish out for that, too, as a custom domain requires a plan upgrade. There’s also no option for a domain email — something that your growing business will eventually need.

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Domain Name Registration

3. Fewer Metrics

There are some important metrics to gauge the trajectory of your blog or website — like bounce and conversion rates — that ideally, you’d want to be able to track on your own terms. But you’re limited to the analytic tools provided by WordPress, without an option to install your own analytics plugins or software, if you use the free service. In order to install your own analytics plugin, you’ll have to spring for a paid business plan.

4. WordPress Ads

A free plan allows WordPress.com to place ads on your site without your permission; you have no control over their content or placement, and none of the advertising revenue goes to you. Removing them requires — you guessed it — upgrading to a paid plan.

5. Less Control

Your free plan allows simply for basic design customization — a bunch of free WordPress themes and select themes you can buy — without the luxury of CSS options or code alterations. The Premium and Business paid plans allow for third-party theme and plugin integration, which help enhance the look and functionality of your website.

With this, you run the risk of having a cookie-cutter blog design; with only a handful of free WordPress themes, many blogs may look like yours. You have the option of purchasing a new theme or paying someone to make a custom one for you, but again, you could be looking at a wallop to your wallet. The cost-efficient option of WordPress.com becomes, at that point, not so cost-effective.

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6. Monetization Rules

And speaking of costs, there’s probably a chance you’d like to make money online. Well, with WordPress.com basic plans, you are not able to place your own code for ads like Google AdSense and must follow specific guidelines for affiliate linking and sponsored posting. So monetization on your blog also comes with its own price.

Related: How to Create Your First WordPress Plugin

WordPress.com: Apartment Complex of Internet Real Estate

If you’re looking to quickly get your info on the web in a fuss-free, no-frills manner, then WordPress.com is a great option. Potentially, from start to finish, you could get a website up and running in a matter of minutes.

It’s also a painless choice if you’re a little apprehensive about the technical aspects involved in creating and maintaining a website, or just want to get an initial feel for blogging. Sustaining a website on WordPress.com can be a temporary option, too, if you decide later that you want to migrate your content to your own self-hosted site.

But if you’re trying to build a long-term website and authoritative brand, then you’ll want your own domain, and you’ll surely want more control over the look and feel of your site through plugins, templates, and upgraded features.

So, when considering the characteristics of WordPress.com, think about it this way: WordPress.com is like renting an apartment versus owning a home.

When you rent an apartment, you have little control over what the apartment looks like; it’s likely that most of the apartments in the complex look similar unless you dish out more for fancy upgrades like a fireplace or an extra bedroom. Additionally, you’re subject to the rules and regulations of the company that owns your complex.

On the other hand, the upkeep is managed by a team of maintenance workers. You’re also protected by security personnel or a code-restrictive gate. The management deals with all the sometimes-messy, behind-the-scenes aspects of running the property. Ultimately, an apartment can be a good choice for those not yet seeking long-term housing or while still exploring a certain neighborhood or town.

So with a WordPress.com site: maintenance and security are largely maintained by the site itself (apart from your own secure password — you are in charge of your own apartment key, after all). You have minimal control over the appearance and functionality of your blog unless you pay for fancier addendums. But it can be a good choice for those who are testing the blogging waters and want to start small.

WordPress.org: The Basics

Not to be confused with its commercial counterpart, WordPress.org is often referred to as self-hosted WordPress.

It was created in 2003 (it’s older than Twitter and Facebook!) by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Simply put, it’s open source code under the GNU General Public License — meaning it’s free to use, modify, build upon, and redistribute to create your own website, blog, or even an app. You download the code directly from the WordPress.org page (and at this moment, WordPress 4.8 has been downloaded 7,649,315 times . . . and counting!)

The source code is a framework — think of it like a skeleton — that is used in a development environment to build and customize your site. The engine is the same for yours and other websites that use the WordPress software, but the remaining features and accessorizing parts are yours to control and create. Make sense?

Because the code you work with is just the framework, it must be used in tandem with a web host, a company that provides space on its servers to house your website. The hosting service you choose will depend on the amount of space and bandwidth you need as well as your budget. For instance, DreamHost’s Starter Shared hosting plan starts at just $2.59 per month.

WordPress.org also provides substantial resources — called Documentation — to aid with the development of themes and plugins for your site, among a myriad of other useful topics.

Additionally, there are community-led forums that help answer common questions and aid with troubleshooting problems. The community features of WordPress.org allow you to collaborate and connect with other users for help in building your site.

Related: How Much Does It Actually Cost to Set Up a WordPress Website?

How to Create a Self-Hosted WordPress Website

According to WordPress.org, these are the steps for carrying out self-hosted WordPress functions.

Find a Web Host

Download & Install WordPress

Read the Documentation

Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these.

Choosing a Web Host

A web host is a third-party vendor that provides space on a server where your website is stored and provides the means for it to be accessed on the internet. There are a number of flexible hosting options, based on your site’s needs.

DreamHost offers additional perks through our service plans, like free domain names and unlimited hosting. We recently partnered with the folks at Automattic to make Jetpack Professional available to DreamPress Plus and Advanced customers.

And for the record: We come endorsed by WordPress.org and power more than 600,000 WordPress blogs and websites!

Related:

But even if you know which hosting provider you’d like to use, there is still the matter of choosing the right hosting plan for your website. Here is a quick, easy-reference guide to the most common types of hosting available.

Shared Hosting

Your website or blog is placed on a server with other sites, so the cost for the hosting is shared amongst the clients. The catch: a heavily-trafficked site on your server may affect your own site’s performance.

Virtual Private Server

A VPS acts as multiple virtual servers, even though users share one physical server and resources; a step between shared hosting and a dedicated server. To learn more, check out this beginner’s guide to VPS.

Dedicated Servers

Maximum control and resources at a higher cost; you exclusively rent your own dedicated server and don’t have to worry about sharing resources with other sites.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Additionally, DreamHost offers DreamPress, three managed WordPress hosting plans, where many of the technical components of operating WordPress — such as updates, security, and backups — are handled by our experts.

In this way, DreamPress mirrors the ease-of-use of the WordPress.com option. Plus, you’re armed with more power than you’d get from a basic shared plan and have access to 24/7 support, highly-tuned performance features, and easy management. And have we mentioned speed? With DreamPress, your service is five times faster than regular shared hosting.

Ultimately, a managed WordPress solution is the best option for WordPress beginners, giving you more control and less stress.

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Installing WordPress

Unless your web host is handling the software setup for you, there are a few things you’ll need to do for your WordPress installation.

Each requirement is explained through WordPress.org’s handy guidelines.

Reading the Documentation

Lastly, the Documentation allows you to find guides in building and using all the extras: plugins, themes, etc. Unlike a free WordPress.com site, WordPress.org allows full freedom in using your favorite premium plugin or uploading a custom theme. The sky is the limit! You can even create email addresses in conjunction with your website – a great tool for businesses.

But with that freedom – as Eleanor Roosevelt said – comes more responsibility.

With more control over your website and the ability to alter the code, you will be in charge of updating the WordPress software as new versions are released, paying for your web hosting services annually, maintaining the site with necessary backups and security precautions (if you haven’t chosen a hands-off managed WordPress hosting plan, that is), and protecting against spam and errors. If something goes wrong that you don’t know how to fix, you might need to hire a professional to help.

WordPress.org: Craftsman Bungalow of Internet Real Estate

Remember our housing analogy from before? Well, unlike renting an apartment, using the WordPress software is like owning your own home.

With a home, you are totally in charge of maintenance of the house and yard, paying your mortgage each month, taking security measures, and making necessary repairs and upgrades. But, when you own your own home, you have greater license to change features — like removing a wall or changing wall paint — and you also have a property that really belongs to you.

And that’s how it is with self-hosted WordPress. The control is in your hands, as is the increased responsibility to maintain your site. You can alter your WordPress theme and code, and you actually own your online content. This is especially important if you’re striving to create a lasting brand or monetize a website.

The Choice Is Yours

Your choice of WordPress.org or WordPress.com truly depends on what you want out of your website and, of course, your budget.

So how much does a WordPress website actually cost? This guide tallies up the annual expenses for a range of WordPress websites – free, budget-friendly, mid-range, and high-performance – so you can choose the right option for your goals (and wallet).

Remember, your hosting provider will play a big part in the total cost, so make sure you choose a good one. We’d recommend checking out our Starter Shared hosting plan if you’re looking to get a site online for less than $3 per month.

Ultimately, you’ll be on the path to choosing the right platform for your website after you analyze your goals, your level of comfort with technical functions, and your budget.

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The post The Difference Between WordPress.com & WordPress.org appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/wordpress-differences-beginners-guide/

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Herald and Sons Publishing: The Ultimate Father-Son DIY Project

Ethan Herald is a natural storyteller. Almost as soon as he started talking, he made up fully-fleshed characters and told his parents all about them — what they did, where they went, what they wanted for dinner.

Today, five-year-old Ethan is a published author — thanks to his dad, Brian Herald. Herald, a technical writer by trade, was amused at his son’s stories and started jotting them down to remember them. Eventually, he realized that many of Ethan’s stories were more than a child’s ramblings; they had recognizable plots with beginning, middle, and end.

“One story in particular really stood out, so I thought that it would be cool to turn it into a book for him and surprise him with it,” Herald says. “So I wrote it out and broke it into pages and made a full story out of it and hired an illustrator.”

He printed a few dozen copies to share and expected to stop there. But soon, Herald dug into the world of self-publishing, and the more he learned about the industry, the more he wanted to see what he could do with his son’s stories.

That’s how Herald and Sons Publishing, the ultimate father-son DIY project, got off the ground. To provide a platform for Ethan’s stories, Herald started up their own indie publishing house. “On our website, we say it tongue-in-cheek: We are building a publishing empire on a foundation of child labor.”

Herald and his sons, Ethan and four-year-old Jonah, are a year into the project and have collaborated on two books, with a third scheduled to hit the presses this month. To flesh out a world around their characters and engage audiences, Herald is experimenting with activities, coloring pages, and videos — all hosted on their trusty DreamHost website.

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Telling Good Stories

Brian Herald and his sons Ethan and Jonah showing off their published books and the Herald and Sons website.

Growing up, Herald was part of his own father-and-son business. His dad owned Herald and Sons Construction, and he fondly remembers helping out on projects when he was young.

“He still has one of the ‘Herald and Sons Construction’ signs hanging up in his garage,” Herald says. “I still see that every time I go over. And when I thought of the name Herald and Sons Publishing, I was just like, ‘Oh man, that’s just too perfect. I can’t not do that.’”

Herald built his humble “publishing empire” to provide a home for Ethan’s books online, and the additional projects he creates. From the beginning, Herald wanted to make sure to put out a quality story that other kids could relate to.

“I wanted them to be good stories,” he says, “with a moral, a lesson, or substance to them, not just these tangents that my kids go on.”

Their first book, Forest Explorer, features Nino and his younger sister, Tenna — characters who have basically become members of the family now, thanks to Ethan’s detailed descriptions of the two and their adventures. In the story, Nino goes on a walk in a forest near his home. He notices flowers, insects, and the smells of the forest, and then spots a forest fire, which he tries to put out until the fire department comes to save the day.

Herald asks his sons questions to flesh out and fully develop each story, pushing for more and more details — including ones only a kid could dream up.

“I asked Ethan, ‘So, how did that fire start?’” Herald says. “And he’s like, ‘A dragon came down and sprayed fire.’ Oh, of course, the dragon started the fire. Obviously, it wasn’t because the bush was dry, and it was a strong wind or anything like that.”

Herald wrote that answer down with a smile, hoping that his son’s thinking would connect well with other children. He asked for more details about what Nino saw in the woods, and “I realized that there was a moral there, or a lesson, which is being curious — like, you should always be aware of what’s around you, and you should be curious about what’s going on. So I try to infuse that in the story.”

Forest Explorer — plus its sequel Picture This, Imagine That — and a soon-to-be-published Nino and Tenna camping adventure story are available as printed books, e-reader downloads, and even audiobooks. Herald hopes these stories, along with the accompanying printable activities from his website, have some role in promoting language learning among young readers.

“The goal has become to entertain and inform readers while promoting literacy and language learning,” Herald says. “The stories and the kids’ activities and coloring pages are based around developing language, using repetition with words. In the back of my mind, I keep asking, ‘How is this helpful? Is this actually contributing something to the kids reading the story?’ I don’t want them reading empty words with nothing behind them.”

Related: This DreamHost Customer Is Helping a Generation of Young Women Own Their Power

Possibility Through Self Publishing

Forest Explorer was never supposed to be more than a fun surprise for Ethan and Jonah. But through the process of writing and printing it, Herald was introduced to the world of self-publishing — and the idea that he could take action to bring Nino and Tenna to a wider audience.

“I got really into a few podcasts, and one in particular, called The Self Publishing Show,” Herald says. “It just really struck me how they take a marketing perspective, and not just say, ‘You’re a great writer; your stories deserve to be told.’ It was more focused on, like, the logical steps you can take to promote your stories.”

Once Herald understood there were steps he could take to market his stories, he took it on as a personal challenge to see how far he could take Herald and Sons. He doesn’t sell the books directly on his website, but they’re available from a number of online retailers, including Amazon.

“Amazon has a really great platform for independent publishers where they offer a print-on-demand service,” Herald says. “Originally, my plan was to set up a seller account and just mail these things out one by one. But that simply is not scalable — I can’t be going to the post office every single day.”

He’s also made the print and audiobooks available to libraries, both locally and around the country, and can track when the book is checked out. “To see it getting discovered in a library and then checked out and listened to, it’s kind of cool.”

Related: Bibliophiles, Unite! Meet the DreamHost Customers Behind Silent Book Club

Thinking Like a Marketer

Herald has found marketing his books to be a challenge, and he really enjoys that aspect of publishing children’s stories. He stays up late at night filling Excel sheets with potential keywords, crafting ad copy, and finding new ways to get Ethan’s characters in front of more people.

“You can’t just put a book out and just sit there and wait for it to do anything,” he says. You have to build a world around it, have activities that go along with it, and engage people — get them interested and give people something to do.”

One of his challenges is catering to two different audiences. The books and corresponding activities are used by children — but the ones doing the spending are parents and grandparents. “You’ve got to reach the parents and create something that they think their kids would enjoy. That’s really tricky, and I’m still working on getting the right voice and brand to present our stories as something a lot of kids would like to read.”

A key piece to organically growing an audience is creating fun, engaging activities and other materials freely available online that can introduce kids (and their parents) to Nino and Tenna. Herald offers activity books and other printable activities, including weekly word searches, mazes, coloring pages, and more.

Particularly popular are his kid’s calendars. Released each month in color and as coloring pages, the calendars list one fun holiday — think “Wiggle Your Toes Day” or “Chocolate Chip Cookie Day” — for each day of the month. Herald promotes these calendars on social media, using them as a way to bring visitors to his website and build his email marketing list. At the beginning of a new month, he advertises them on social media and sees big increases in website traffic — but always trusts his web host to keep everything loading quick and smoothly, even on busy days.

Home Base

Ethan and his son dropping some copies of a story into Little Library boxes around town.

This wasn’t the first time Herald has built and managed a website, though. He played drums in a band and started a flooring business with a friend and, in both cases, dreaded working on the websites.

With Herald and Sons, he took a leap of faith and switched over to a WordPress site hosted by DreamHost. Herald had been intimidated by WordPress in the past, but found it surprisingly easy and user friendly — and much more detailed, powerful, and effective than other platforms.

“I’m loving it; it’s so easy to use,” Herald says. “It does such a good job. I wish I’d used it to begin with other websites I’ve worked on.” He does most website updates on a browser, but sometimes he has to make a quick update or has a brilliant idea on the go and uses the WordPress app on his phone.

Herald runs social media accounts for the business, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time using them specifically to grow his audience. Concerned about social media platforms and changing algorithms that impact how followers find activities and updates, Herald decided to focus primarily on his website.

“It’s so important to have your own space, your own home base,” he says. “I’m trying to do a lot of different things for marketing, like Facebook and Amazon advertisements, and just using social media a little bit. The website has been huge in this, because everything I come up with, it all goes up on the website, and that’s our home base for everything.”

The website is also key to building an email marketing list, too. WordPress through DreamHost integrates seamlessly with MailChimp to help people sign up for the newsletter to learn about activities and get the kids’ calendar through email.

Herald is happy with his choice to use DreamHost for his website — a choice that was solidified days after he signed up.

“I got an email from a marketing manager; her name was Marissa,” he says. “She reached out just to say hi and check in, you know, to see if I needed anything.”

They emailed back and forth a bit. Herald discovered that Marissa had a new baby at home and ended up sending her a copy of Ethan’s story. “That was a personal touch that felt really great,” he says. “It was validation that I was going on the right path.”

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Teaching Grit

Whether or not they build that publishing empire, Herald is glad to work together with his kids on a project that’s not just fun, but that can really teach them something. Beyond giving Ethan and Jonah the chance to be creative and think critically about story and plot at such young ages, Herald hopes they develop a grit that will serve them well in future projects.

“One thing that I really hope that they get from this is that if they want to create something, or have an idea, that they can just go for it,” says Herald. “They don’t have to wait for somebody to tell them it’s a good idea or even have a good reason for doing it, other than just being interested in it.”

Herald hopes that the boys will be proud of their work down the road — even if it might bring some teasing and embarrassment in the notorious middle school years. The publishing business has been around for about a year now. He’s not sure how long the Nino and Tenna series will last, though Ethan is as eager as always to fill his family in on stories and details about the characters. Eventually, Herald wants to try his hand at writing his own fiction.

For now, Jonah loves hearing their books at bedtime, and Ethan is happy to see his stories in print, scrawling his autograph in five-year-old handwriting across each copy that gets sent out to a friend. Though sometimes on re-readings, Ethan has more feedback on the book: “That’s not what Nino was wearing!” or, “That’s not what he did!”

Herald laughs it off. “It’s OK; we’ll fix that in the next edition.”

The post Herald and Sons Publishing: The Ultimate Father-Son DIY Project appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/customer-spotlight-herald-and-sons/

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Fixing Tech’s Gender Gap: 10 Questions with Author Therese Huston

With male leaders outnumbering women four to one, the tech industry has notoriously been a gentleman’s club. Still, more and more women are “leaning in” and finding their places at the table in technology and science. But are their voices equally valued?

DreamHost takes this issue to heart and has been working to support women in tech for years.  And that’s why we reached out to author Therese Huston.

“When it comes to decision-making and leadership, men are from Mars, and women are from a less respected part of Mars,” Huston says. The author of How Women Decide: What’s True, What’s Not, and What Strategies Spark the Best Choices,  Huston shares her insights on challenges facing women in tech — and how we can all do better to make sure every voice is heard.

Therese Huston

1. What challenges do women face in a male-dominated field?

A really common complaint — and one backed by research — is that women have to keep proving their competence. People are more likely to notice women’s mistakes and to remember them longer; while with men, we tend to remember successes longer and more readily forgive mistakes.

Related: 6 Things Women in Tech Are Sick of Hearing

2. We like to think that all good ideas are valued and recognized. How true is that in practice?

Sadly, credit is not always given where it is due, especially when it is due to a woman. I’ve heard countless stories about women making a suggestion that doesn’t get picked up, but then when a guy makes the same suggestion later, all of a sudden everyone is enthusiastic about it.

Researchers studying mixed-gender work teams in male-dominated fields found that when a group’s successful problem solving was evaluated by an outsider not present for the collaboration, if it wasn’t specified exactly who did what, it was automatically assumed that a man was the top performer and deserves the credit. That’s really concerning, especially when management teams are doing reviews or considering promotions.

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3. What are some key differences between how men and women make decisions?

Actually, research by neuroscientists is showing that under normal circumstances, men and women actually approach a problem the same way. But put them under stress — maybe with a deadline, the threat of a product being cut — and you’ll see a difference. Men suddenly become much more drawn to risks and big rewards than normal. Women do the opposite; they want to do what they know will work, what has worked in the past, what they know they have the full resources to accomplish.

I like to use baseball as an analogy: Men want to go for the home run, which is very difficult to accomplish but offers a big reward, while women aim for the more tried-and-true goal of getting on base. What you want in stressful circumstances is a mix of both strategies.

Unfortunately, all too often in tech at the management level, it’s just a room full of men. What that says to me is that we really need to tap more gender balance in our leadership teams and to listen to the women who get there.

4. How true is it that women rely on emotion in decision-making?

You’ve heard the phrase “woman’s intuition” — but probably not “man’s intuition.” We think of women as going with their gut or following their heart. However, the research shows that women tend to take a more analytical approach; they are more likely than men to do research and analyze possible scenarios and pros and cons. It’s actually the men who are more likely to go with their gut and what “feels right” as opposed to doing the necessary analytics.

5. How are women’s decisions received differently than men’s are?

There’s ample evidence that women’s ideas are more scrutinized. A Yale researcher asked people to read about a scenario in which a male or female leader in a traditionally male occupation made a costly mistake. They then evaluated how good or bad a leader they thought that person was.

When a male leader showed poor judgment, his rating dropped about 10 percent, while a woman making the same mistake suffered three times the penalty, and some people even called for her demotion.

When we scrutinize a woman’s mistakes much harsher than a man’s, that makes it all the more difficult for women to simply be promoted within the organization, let alone reach the c-suite. In tech you’re told to fail early and fail often — but that only really applies if you are a guy.

6. Is it only men who are guilty of gender bias?

Not at all. Women will often think that men’s ideas are more credible, though they are likely to disavow that if you ask them. We all live and work in the same culture and are subject to the same unconscious biases.

7. Sounds like we have a long way to go. How can women make sure their voices are heard?

One of my favorite techniques is amplification. This idea actually came from the Obama administration. Women were finding that their ideas weren’t being heard or given due credit, so they began to amplify one another in meetings: If one woman in the meeting suggested an idea, another woman in the meeting would immediately speak up, name and credit the first woman, and repeat her idea. The women later reported getting credit for their ideas and more opportunities to contribute.

Amplification translates well to tech, where women can team up with each other or a male colleague, and it doesn’t come across as aggressive — a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” trait commonly criticized in female leaders.

Related: What It’s Like to Be a Black Woman in Tech: A Q&A with Kaya Thomas

8. How can women advocate their ideas without being dismissed as overly aggressive?

There is some fabulous research recently looking at which types of aggressive behaviors work for women in meetings and which don’t. Talking louder or getting angry, for example, is not liked. But one aggressive technique that doesn’t seem to lead to penalties for women is interrupting.

It might feel awkward to interrupt — it certainly does for me — but it’s effective. I don’t mean you should spend the whole meeting talking over everyone, but if there is something you really want to say, then say it. No one is going to call on you; if you’re waiting for a pause, it’s not going to happen.

If you, like me, find the thought of interrupting painful and stress over finding the right moment, try counting backward from ten and when you hit one, blurt out your idea, no matter what. Interrupting gives you a huge surge of adrenaline and helps you stay enthused in the meeting, rather than tuning out and giving up.

Another strategy to help women — or really, anyone — to give their ideas a boost is to frame it as a question. So say “Would it be possible to … “ instead of “What we need to do is … “ Research shows that this phrasing invites discussion and gives ideas more airtime. The phrasing can be a little tricky for women because there’s a fear that they are sounding soft and asking for permission, but it is actually an effective strategy for both men and women looking to get their voices heard.

9. What can men do to support their female colleagues? 

For one, they can partner up with the women in their group and try the amplification technique — or simply get in the habit of amplifying good ideas. Prompts as simple as, “What I like about Emily’s idea is . . .” or “I think Samantha suggested that earlier” ensure that women get credit for their ideas.

Managers or others who may want to help without coming across as patronizing could pass along the article about amplification in the Obama administration to team members, starting a conversation about this issue and what everyone can do to help.

Related: Six Women Programmed the First Computer . . . And Didn’t Get the Credit

10. What can tech companies — like DreamHost — do to help?

They need to put conscious strategies in place to counteract unconscious gender biases. In meetings, those in management could make a habit of asking to hear input from someone who hasn’t spoken yet. That creates an opportunity for women to speak up, along with anyone else who might need more time to think through their comments.

Saying something as simple as, “Wait, I want to hear what Julia has to say,” can open the conversation, as can bringing the conversation back to an idea that may have been interrupted. Managers could also take the time to write down the division of roles, so when the work is being analyzed later, women will get credit for the work they’ve done.

Related: 30 Ways to Be an Ally for Women in Tech

Now Share Your Voice

We’d love to hear your take! What are some biases you’ve noticed in the workplace? How have these affected you or your co-workers? What strategies have you used to make sure yours — and other’s — ideas are equally heard and valued? And have you tried any of Huston’s techniques? Join us on Twitter and Facebook to start the conversation.

The post Fixing Tech’s Gender Gap: 10 Questions with Author Therese Huston appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

from Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/fixing-tech-industry-gender-gap/