Edward Richter

How To Give Your E-Commerce Customers A Five-Star Experience
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How To Give Your E-Commerce Customers A Five-Star Experience As a business owner, you need not step into your customers’ shoes to understand their feelings. You are a customer yourself first before you are even a businessman. And that has been true since the dawn of businesses and long before e-commerce was even a thing. All along the line, if there has been one thing static, it is customer experience and its influence on the growth of your business. But what exactly does customer experience mean? Is it really that important? How can you ensure that your customers experience a satisfactory time on your website? Let’s get to it. What is Customer Experience? Customer experience in e-commerce is how your customer feels about their journey from your website to the end of the transaction. Your target is to ensure an outstanding customer experience. It involves smooth browsing, a safe checkout, and of course, on-time delivery, and quality of products. A happy customer is more likely to become a loyal one. What Makes A Wholesome Customer Experience? The most important factor that influences your customer is, obviously, the quality of the product that you offer. A close second would be a safe transaction. No one wants to make a payment on a platform that looks ‘shady’. Besides, when you sell something online, you can’t give your customer the personal attention that they would get if they were to walk into a traditional store. To compensate for that, you can make personalized gestures honoring bulk orders and offering special stock for festive seasons. At the same time, ensure easy browsing through relevant keywords and proper filters. Here are a few ideas that can help improve your business’s CX. 1. Design & Development How does a customer land on your website? Through an advertisement or a reference or because of your reputation. So, make sure that your landing page has the qualities that deliver the promises made in the advertisement; make sure that the page lives up to the reputation of the reference. To make the right first impression, you need a fast-loading website and a design that welcomes visitors. 2. Website Browsing Experience Say you Googled “last night sports results,” and it shows you a piece of news from last year or shows an advertisement for beauty products. How would you feel? Now, if your customer searches for, say, a helmet and your website shows results of shoes, how would he feel? Or maybe the result shows helmets but also includes helmet-printed t-shirts, helmet keychains, or wallpaper of a sportsperson wearing a helmet. While the relevant result is displayed, it is still cumbersome for your customer to select the right product from the cluster. So, there are two things you need to optimize – keywords & filters. Relevant keywords will make searching easy and good filters will help them pin down the exact product they were looking for. 3. Product Description Many merchants limit their product descriptions to product specifications only. The idea is that a rational person only needs hardcore details to decide. But what every business person must understand is that no matter how intelligent a person is, emotions always get the better of them, which are generally backed up with logical reasoning. That is why a wise merchant crafts their product descriptions to represent the beliefs and lifestyles of their target customers. Your customer will feel more at home if they can relate to the product description. 4. Provide as Much Product Information as You Can  How many times have you seen a product, say a phone cover, and wondered how it would look on your phone and in your hand? It often happens that even if we like the product on its own, we are doubtful if it would look good on a set or if it would suit our personality. Note that your online customer is going through the same dilemma. You can ease a customer’s selection through a size guide or contextualized photos or by setting them up with related products. In fact, this way you will not only achieve a good customer experience but also may instantly increase your sales if your customers purchase your recommended set. In addition, you can also plan for a chat box and grievance platform to communicate with your buyers on a more personal level. However, if you do opt for this feature, make sure that you use this feature actively. 5. Offer Personalized Discounts One very significant difference between an online store and a traditional store is that in an online store, the personal ‘touch’ is unavailable. You cannot greet your customer with a warm smile every time he visits your website. There can’t be any friendly negotiatory conversation (which undeniably has its own charms). You can’t really compensate for that but you still can make small gestures to connect with your customers on a personal level. For example, you can offer some store credit the first time they make a transaction or you can give them a discount on bulk orders. Even better, surprise them with a birthday discount or personalized merchandise once in a while. Another good way to make a personal connection with your customers is to restock your store during festivals with festive merchandise. 6. Provide a Safe Checkout Reflect on your exit pages. Do your customers bounce off right before they make a transaction? There may be two reasons behind it – your payment gateway is ‘faulty’ or you do not have a convenient payment option. The choice is simple here – patch your payment gateway with safety rules and give more payment options to your customers. Once the order is successfully placed, sent your buyer an email confirming the same. If you want to ensure safe transactions, our team at Exinent can help you achieve the highest level of security through your Magento store. 7. Never Compromise on Quality Nothing assures loyalty more than the quality of your product. Marketing can help…

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How to Create Killer E-Commerce CTAs for Better Conversions
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How to Create Killer E-Commerce CTAs for Better Conversions Call To Action (CTA) buttons are one of the most important factors that contribute to better conversions for an e-commerce website. Naturally, designers and e-commerce stores area always follow hyped CTA rules that don’t work well. As a business owner or a designer, you need to remember that there is no perfect formula for designing the best CTAs. It all depends on your business, the kind of products you sell, and the type of audience your website has.  Before we discuss how to design great CTAs, let us first see the importance of call-to-action buttons or elements. Why CTAs Are Important? It gives a webpage, a website, and any business a purpose It guides visitors on what to do next It correlates directly with revenue  It adds an element of attractiveness to a website It plays a key role in user or customer experience Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while creating new CTAs for your e-commerce website or optimizing existing ones.  1. Position Is Very Important The CTA should be visible above anything else on the page. It should have the most convenient position. Traditionally, it is placed at the center.  For a desktop, users are accustomed to a center-aligned CTA button. However, if you look at your heatmap that marks the movement of a visitor’s mouse, you will notice that a visitor’s mouse hovers mostly in the right section of the screen (or left, for left-handed people). So, now, some designers choose to place the CTA on the right side of the screen. Coming to mobile screen optimization, the CTAs are ideally placed at the center of the screen. Considering the size of the screen, it is usually pointless to align it otherwise. In this case, a comparatively big-sized CTA is used which spreads throughout the breadth of the screen even when it is aligned at the center.  Another important factor in positioning your CTA is to make sure that you place it before the fold. This implies that the CTA should be visible to the visitor without needing to scroll.  2. Choose CTA Colors Wisely The CTA should be the loudest factor on the webpage. Naturally, the color of the CTA button should stand out from the rest of the content on the page. Say, the color scheme of your website is centered around blue. You can color the CTA   in yellow or red. Another wise idea is to design such that the CTA button changes color when the mouse hovers over it. It attracts more attention. Typically, every CTA has two components – a box or a button and a text. Now, the contrast color factor applies to the box section of the CTA. The text color should be such that it is clearly readable within the box clearly.  3. Pay Attention to Size and Shape The size of the CTA text should definitely be strongly visible. But the exact size cannot be defined generally. For a page with only one CTA, it is ideally written in the biggest font.  The typical shape of a CTA is rectangular. Recently, the edges of the rectangle are softened or round. This appeals to the psychology of a user to focus on what’s inside the shape, as opposed to pointy edges which direct the user’s attention outward. Round CTAs are not used in the norm. A round CTA button is used to invoke a sense of surprise. It can be used for offering the user some offline or downloadable content.  4. Be Very Picky With Text The most important aspect of CTA is the voice of the text. It should be crisp and clear. It must include a verb that suggests a clear course of action. For most common CTAs like ‘Buy Now’, ‘Download’, ‘Subscribe’ etc. simplicity is the key. It wouldn’t yield much with creative tags. Creativity is worthy as long as the message is consistent. This means that all the CTAs that redirect to a single page should have consistent text. You do not need to create ‘attractive’ texts for CTAs that perform the same function. Coming to CTAs which are not the most common ones, a little bit of creativity can go a long way. The CTA text can aim at a certain emotion or enthusiasm (e.g. an image). You may try incentivizing the text with tags like ‘Order Now To Get 10% Discount’. These kinds of CTAs create a sense of urgency as well. This factor may work in your favor. Another point of consideration is including an icon with CTA. There is a psychological factor influencing visitors positively when there is an icon along with the text. A survey says that, when an icon accompanies a CTA text, they expect to get ‘more’ by clicking on it.  5. Frequency Plays a Vital Role In basic terms, if you focus on only one CTA, you can include the button 2-3 times on the page. The first position, as mentioned before should be in the first fold. Similarly, the last CTA has to be included in the last fold. In between, ideally, you need not keep more than one CTA.  While there is no technical limit to how many CTAs you can include, if you think from a user’s point of view, too many CTAs will distract them from the actual content. This kind of design can appear to be too much ‘profit-focused’. Best, limit the CTAs to just two or three. 6. Handle Multiple CTAs Carefully  If your page has multiple CTAs, the style of design alters a bit. While the chief CTA will still have the aforementioned features, the other CTAs will be softer versions of the same based on their importance. The color will be less loud, and the text size and content would be smaller. The other features, however, remain the same. 7. Don’t Forget to A/B Test As we mentioned before, there is no black-and-white…

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Healthcare Marketing: 10 Tips for Doctors to Attract More Patients
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Healthcare Marketing: 10 Tips for Doctors to Attract More Patients Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of any business, including a healthcare practice. No matter how good a doctor you are, if you fail to market your skills and expertise well, you are unlikely to attract new clients and be profitable.  Marketing has always been a challenge for healthcare professionals. If you are one of those doctors struggling to market your practice, read these 10 doctor marketing tips from FeedbackClarity. 1. Get Listed on Doctor Review Websites Physician review websites have gained a lot of popularity in the past couple of decades. According to a report, nearly 60% of the interviewed patients admitted to choosing their doctor based on online reviews. Online reputation has never been so important as it is now.  Why Are Reviews So Important? Reviews are extremely important for your healthcare practice. They are proof of your credibility. Online reviews are among the top drivers of consumer trust. Patients feel more confident in calling a healthcare practice when they read many positive reviews online.  When a patient reads positive reviews about a doctor, it gives them confidence that the doctor will be able to solve their problem.  What Are Some Popular Doctor Review Websites? From Google My Business and to ZocDoc and others, there are 10+ notable physician review websites on the internet. You can read more about doctor review websites here. What About the Risk of Negative Reviews? Many doctors stay away from review websites because of the fear of negative reviews. Poor feedback can be a problem. Fortunately, solutions like FeedbackClarity can take care of your healthcare practice’s online reputation end-to-end, including removing negative reviews.  2. Create A Youtube Channel and Share Health Advice Google ads, SEO, social media marketing, etc., are some marketing strategies that come to our minds when we think of healthcare marketing. Well, every digital marketer or a marketing agency pitch traditional marketing strategies. If you ask us, such campaigns may not give you better results due to the market congestion. You need to be creative and plan to do something else that not many of your competitors do.  YouTube marketing is a creative technique that can build a strong brand for your healthcare practice and drive new customers.  YouTube for Doctors: How to Make Most Out of the YouTube Platform YouTube marketing sounds like a challenging, time-taking, and resource-consuming task. In reality, high-quality YouTube videos can be taken and edited easily with mobile phones. Do you know many YouTube influencers use their mobile phones to take videos? What Do You Need to Get Started? Equipment (A high-end phone or a professional camera, tripod, light, etc.) A desktop or mobile video editing software (We recommend hiring a video editor to save time) A keyword research tool such as Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, or SEMRush A content/copy writer who can create video concepts based on keywords  A virtual assistant who can help you in scheduling and uploading videos  How to Get Started Find keywords and questions related to your field of medicine that patients often use to search online. Create presentable concepts based on those keywords. The video concepts can be medical advice, general health advice, frequently asked questions, tips, etc. The only thing you need to remember is that they should be relevant to medical expertise.  Use your phone camera or a professional camera and share the footage with a video editor and let them do the magic. Try to upload a couple of videos every week. Remember, YouTube has many features within its platform, such as description, category, tags, etc., to increase videos’ reach.  3. Upgrade Your Website You might have built your website several years ago. There has been a drastic change in web design trends to suit ever-changing consumer behavior. If your website was made a few years ago, you must seriously consider upgrading it.  Here are the downsides of an outdated website: Less visitor engagement and high bounce rates Slow-loading web pages Less visitor-to-lead conversion  Less secure Responsiveness and readability issues  Check your competitors’ websites.  You are highly likely to find your most successful competitor has the best-looking and most sophisticated website.  How to Get Started Talk to your local web design companies and get quotes. Use freelance platforms like Upwork to get quotes and estimations. Talk to professionals, check their previous work, compare quotes, and go with one that you think offers the best value.  Put Quality First A website is the best investment any business owner can make. A great-looking medical website also leaves a positive impression on patients’ and prospects’ minds.  Prefer WordPress Build your new website on WordPress for optimum SEO results and blog functionality. WordPress has a built-in blog functionality that helps scale content marketing and SEO efforts. Building customer features and functionalities is easier and cheaper in WordPress than in custom websites.  4. Create a Quora Profile and Be Active There Content marketing plays a key role in a business’s organic growth. The importance of content marketing is much more important when it comes to a healthcare or medical business.  While the term content marketing sounds like it involves a lot of effort, it can be as easy as sending an email or writing a social media post.  Question and answers platform Quora is among the top platforms for content sharing. Millions worldwide post questions on Quora. Health has been a top topic since Quora’s inception. People post so many questions about symptoms, general health, surgeries, etc.  How to Get Started on Quora You need to create a Quora account and build a nice profile there. Enter all your profile details, including a professional-looking photo. Provide a link back to your website from your profile to generate referral traffic and leads.  Browse the profiles of doctors on Quora who have a large number of followers and greater viewership.  Answer as many questions as you can. Make sure to write clear and lengthy answers to get the top spot. Different states…

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E-commerce SEO Tips That Skyrocket Your Sales in 2022
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E-commerce SEO Tips That Skyrocket Your Sales in 2022 It is no secret that the only way to increase your e-commerce website’s sales is by driving more traffic. While increasing the number of visitors to your online store is essential, we also need to keep in mind that the traffic you generate must be relevant to your store’s niche.  There are several ways to drive targeted traffic web traffic. Search engine optimization is undeniably the best technique because it is comparatively inexpensive and offers better ROI. On the downside, optimizing your e-commerce store for search engines is tricky. We shared six e-commerce SEO tips and best practices to help you drive a lot of organic traffic to your website.  Here we go!   1. Speed up Your Website Fact: The visitors that come to your website from Google are not your customers but Google’s. Since Google is a customer-centric company, it hates sending its customers to slow websites. Quick question: Would you prefer to go for a spin in a Chevy Corvette or Toyota Prius?!  Just like how an average person loves riding a sports car, an average internet user enjoys browsing a website that is lightning fast. Google has long been considering page loading time as a ranking signal. Therefore, you must make sure that the pages of your website take no more than a couple of seconds to load. The faster the page loading speed is, the better the rankings are. Great content and an ocean of backlinks can’t save your website from plummeting deep into Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) if your site is too slow and sluggish. Fun fact: According to a funny internet saying, the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google results. Nobody ever goes there! Anything not on the first page of Google results can’t be considered a ranking.  Key advantages of a fast-loading website: Better ranking in search engines Improved conversion rates  Increased customer loyalty and reputation  Boost in sales Customer acquisition from competitors.  2. Devise a Search Engine Optimization Strategy As Alan Lakein said, failing to plan is planning to fail! You must prepare a well-thought-out SEO strategy to be successful.  The following are the five major components of search engine optimization.  Keyword Analysis                                                                                           Content Development and Marketing Link Acquisition Competitor Analysis On-page Optimization Keyword Analysis  Keywords or key phrases are the search queries that your potential customers enter into search engines to get relevant results. Let’s say you own and run a jewelry business in San Jose, CA. What do you think your targeted audience search on Google?  Their search queries look like the following. San Jose jewelers San Jose jewelry store Wedding rings in San Jose There are thousands of such keywords and key phrases your potential customers use to find a store or website that sells the items of their interest.  How do you analyze such keywords? Anyone who hasn’t had hands-on SEO experience may find the task of keyword analysis a little tricky. With that said, it isn’t rocket science.  The following free keyword analysis tools help you list all the keywords and key phrases that can drive a lot of traffic to your website. SEMRush Ahrefs Google Ads keyword planner (Helps estimate search volumes) Ubersugges Google search suggestions. You should use those keywords in your product titles, descriptions, blog posts, etc., for better search engine visibility.  Content Development and Marketing Content is king! It will continue to be king in the coming years as well. Content doesn’t necessarily mean blog posts. Content includes titles, descriptions, images, videos, social media posts, and even the transactional or promotional emails you send to your customers. Have total control of your content and make sure it speaks to your audience.   Five golden rules of content marketing Analyze keyword gaps and choose your keywords wisely Create a content calendar and stick to it Write content that helps your audience in one or the other way Avoid stuffing too many keywords Distribute content in social media channels  Link Acquisition Link building is a popular search engine optimization technique that web admins and SEO professionals use to rank their or their clients’ websites on top of the Google results. Simply put, the number of backlinks to your website helps search engines like Google determine the popularity of your site. Websites with many backlinks are highly likely to perform well in search engines than sites with fewer backlinks.   The Murky World of Backlinks Building backlinks is like skating on thin ice. Poor link-building strategy or trashy backlinks don’t add value. They can get your e-commerce website removed from Google’s search index altogether. Therefore, you must take great care to ensure that your link-building strategy is white hat and follows best practices.  You need to build quality backlinks. Quality matters more than quantity here. What is a good backlink? Let’s talk about that San Jose jewelry store example again. An ideal backlink for the online store would: Be a do-follow link (No-follow links don’t count even if you build a million of them) Comes from a relevant website or blog (E.g., a blog that discusses fashion or jewelry) Comes from a blog or website with high domain authority/popularity Have a relevant and meaningful anchor text  If you build a link that doesn’t satisfy any of the four rules mentioned above, your link acquisition efforts are going down the drain.  Remember, easy backlinks from junk forums, comments, social bookmark sites, etc., are dead a long time back and add zero value to your link-building campaign. Competitor Analysis Analyzing the competition is essential for SEO success. This part of the strategy may be confusing unless you’re a digital marketing or SEO guru. Here are some factors you need to consider while analyzing your competitors. Factors Free tools to use Website and platform  Builtwith.com Design, UI/UX flow, and information architecture N/A Page loading speed GTMetrix, tools.pingdom.com, Google Page Speed Insights Mobile responsiveness N/A Traffic SimilarWeb No. of web pages and blog…

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The Top 10 Review Websites for Lawyers and Attorneys in 2022
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The Top 9 Review Websites for Lawyers and Attorneys in 2022 Lawyers and attorneys have always been among the highest-paid professionals in the United States and around the world. Some legal professionals and law firms struggle to find clients and make money. The number one reason lawyers find it difficult to be profitable is poor online presence or reputation. A couple of decades ago, people would choose lawyers based on recommendations from their friends and family. Most people nowadays turn to the internet to find and hire lawyers. A Website Alone Is Not Enough  A website is essential for any business, irrespective of its size. A website is vital for a law firm too. Having a website alone does not help you with leads and phone calls. The website must be discoverable in search engines such as Google or Bing. If not, you need to run Google Ads campaigns to attract the target audience. Will those website visitors convert into customers? Probably not. The reason is your website is just one piece of the puzzle. Check the following image to get an idea of a typical consumer buying process.  Online Reviews Are Crucial for Your Law Firm’s Growth More than 90% of people read online reviews of a lawyer or attorney before hiring one. Without a solid online presence with many positive reviews, it is tough for law professionals and law firms to attract new clients.  So, how do you get more customer reviews for your law business? Step one is having a presence on the leading lawyer review websites. FeedbackClarity presents you with the ten best lawyer and attorney review websites to list your or your firm’s profile.    1. Google My Business for Lawyers, Attorneys, and Law Firms  Google My Business is a free business service from Google that allows any business to create a profile with an address, phone number, photographs, and other details. Google My Business is tightly integrated with other Google products such as Maps and Google Search to help people find local businesses fast.  We listed Google My Business on top because of the several advantages over its competitors. Here are some of its pros. Free Helps find people your business’s address easily Appears on Google’s first page  Simple review/rating platform  Allows a business to display a lot of information, including hours  Helps businesses get more phone calls  Using Google My Business is very simple. All you have to do is either create a listing for your law firm or claim it if a listing already exists. Fill up as much information as you can, including photographs of your business. Request your friends, family members, and happy clients to leave positive reviews on the business listing.  2. Lawyers.com  Lawyers.com is a well-known lawyers’ discovery and review website that has been there for a while. The website has over 1 million lawyers listed and attracts 25 million visitors a month. The website claims that nearly 95% of all American lawyers are listed in their database.  How to get listed on Lawyers.com? Go to Lawyers.com and check your or your law firm’s name to check whether it is already listed in the database. Claim the listing if you find your profile. Contact the lawyers.com team if you need your profile listed.  Unlike other platforms, Lawyers.com has millions of visitors who are actively searching for legal professionals. A fully-completed listing on Lawyers.com with a decent number of reviews can not only help build trust but also drive new customers to your law firm.  Lawyers.com belongs to the Martindale-Hubbel group that specializes in providing professional services, including marketing to lawyers. Martindale-Hubbel is a 150-year-old company based in New Jersey.  3. Avvo – Lawyers Directory and Free Q&A Platform Avvo is another popular lawyers directory connecting legal professionals and people seeking legal help. It is one of the few lawyers-centric websites listed in this article. Avvo claims its website has a monthly viewership of over 8 million. Getting Started With Avvo  Avvo allows legal professionals to create a free listing. Check Avvo’s database and create a listing for your law firm if a profile does not exist already.  Unlike other lawyer or attorney review websites, Avvo provides a questions and answers platform that allows legal experts to share their knowledge. This unique feature lets lawyers establish an authority, eventually increasing their online reputation.  Avvo also offers a range of marketing services for legal professionals. The website is a part of the Martindale group.  4. Facebook for Lawyers and Attorneys Facebook has proven to be a powerful tool for businesses to increase visibility, engage with customers, and build a strong brand. Lawyers must not overlook Facebook and be active on it by posting regular updates.  How Can a Facebook Page Help Your Practice? The following are some benefits Facebook business pages offer to business owners. It allows your customers to rate and review your law firm It lets you display your business information like address, contact details, and photos It creates a brand It helps in building trust It appears on top of Google search results when someone searches your or your business’s name. Positive reviews will be displayed on the Google Search results page as rich snippets.  Setting up a Facebook business page is free and easy. For driving more followers and engagement, hire a social media expert or invest in a social media automation tool.  5. NOLO – A One-Stop Legal Network  NOLO is an interesting entry in this list. It has a directory that connects people with the right lawyers. It also sells legal products and services to its audience. Besides, NOLO offers free articles on legal issues such as divorce, employment law, personal injury, immigration, and taxation.  What Does NOLO Offer to Lawyers? NOLO lets legal professionals in the USA create a basic or premium profile. A basic account ensures a professional profile on NOLO and the privileges to publish legal articles. Lawyers who opt for a premium NOLO account that includes network advertising and…

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How to Choose a Negative Feedback Removal Agency
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How to Choose a Negative Feedback Removal Agency If negative feedback on the internet about your product or service affects your business, partnering with a negative feedback removal agency can help improve your business’s online reputation. Since there are quite a few negative reviews removal solutions available, it can be pretty challenging for business owners to pick the one. If you are actively searching for a negative feedback removal service, we recommend keeping these 5 points in mind before signing up. 1. Must Support a Wider Range of Business Review Platforms A good negative reviews removal agency must support a broader range of business review platforms such as Google My Business, Facebook, Amazon, Trustpilot, etc. The ability to support multiple business review websites is a sign of professionalism and expertise. Most businesses have a presence on more than one reviews platform. For instance, a typical e-commerce seller who sells products on their website and Amazon has their customers leaving feedback on both the websites. Similarly, a local car dealership gets reviews on their Facebook, Google My Business, and other dealership-specific review platforms. Hence, it’s always good to partner with an agency that supports many online reviews and rating platforms. 2. Should Be Capable of Removing Negative Reviews Quickly Negative reviews are terrible for any business. They affect a business in many ways besides affecting its revenue. Negative feedback is one of the main reasons small businesses want to work with an online reputation management company. When reaching out to a negative feedback removal agency like FeedbackClarity, check their capability of removing negative reviews quickly. Keep in mind that many online reputation agencies don’t offer negative feedback removal as a feature. They rely on generating new reviews to hide the negative reviews and reduce their impact. 3. Must Generate a Lot of New Reviews Negative feedback removal is good, and it solves some of your business woes. Generating more reviews is better. A lot of positive reviews for your business help you get many phone calls. They also help increase your business’s visibility on the internet. Your new online reputation management partner should be able to generate new reviews periodically that are positive and real. Remember, some agencies use black hat techniques for getting reviews. Fake reviews will get deleted ultimately, and they increase the chances of getting your listing permanently removed. 4. The Service Must Be Affordable Most negative feedback removal services are affordable. If you come across a service that quoted an exuberant amount of money to fix negative reviews problem, you need to reconsider your decision to work with them. Please make sure a solution’s pricing offers good value for money before partnering with them. We recommend that you go with services that offer their service in a recurring plan over fixed. It ensures that you don’t have to invest huge money upfront. Such a service also allows you to terminate the contract whenever you want. 5. Choose a Local Service Provider You will come across many ORM service providers from different parts of the world, especially from Asia. If you are an American businessperson, we recommend choosing a service provider based in the States. Working with US-based reputation management professionals is that they know customer behavior and sentiments better. Furthermore, they are easy to work with and are available during your work hours for a quick review or discussion.

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How to Deal With Negative Reviews That Are Ruining Your Business
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How to Deal With Negative Reviews That Are Ruining Your Business Negative reviews affect your business in many ways besides hurting revenue and profitability. Poor online reputation discourages an average customer from contacting local businesses. Most business owners know how detrimental negative reviews can be, but not many know how to deal with them. If you are one of those businesspersons hit by negative feedback, find out how you can deal with it effectively. 1. Reach Out to Unhappy Customers Research and list all negative reviews your business have on the internet. Consolidate them in a document or a spreadsheet and scrutinize each one. The next step is differentiating fake and genuine reviews. You can identify real either by looking at the names of reviewers or the way they described their experience. Now make a separate list of fake and genuine reviews. Go through each review and understand why they are unhappy. Check if you can identify reviewers using your customer database. Start responding to those negative reviews very politely. Acknowledge genuine customer reviews and apologize to them. Inform them gently of the reason behind the bad experience and offer them ways to correct it. Explain how you prioritize the customer experience. Remember, prospects will see and read your response, not just those who left reviews. Reach out to unhappy customers via an email or phone call if you manage to find them in your database. Explain the scenarios that led to their bad experience and assure them that it will not repeat. Once you believe your explanation satisfied an unhappy customer, request them to update their review and explain how their online review affects your business. 2. Get More Positive Reviews Do you know what a swarm of positive reviews can do to your business? They can drastically increase your business’s overall rating and bury negative feedback. Most small businesses follow this strategy to nullify the effects of negative reviews. This strategy yields excellent results. On the downside, it can be very challenging and time-consuming. Here are a few tips from FeedbackClarity that will help your business drive positive customer reviews. Use coupons and discounts to encourage customers to leave positive feedback. Run social media contests and campaigns. Reach out to happy customers directly and request their reviews. Make reviews an integral part of your marketing processes. 3. Flag and Report Fake Reviews Every customer reviews platform on the internet, such as Google My Business, YellowPages.com, etc., offers a way to flag and dispute fake reviews. If you believe the negative reviews about your business are fake or a result of a smear campaign from competitors, you can report them directly to review websites. However, you are less likely to get those reviews deleted successfully. The majority of the business review platforms don’t have robust processes set up to expedite business owner reports. 4. Fix Business Processes That Are Resulting In Poor Customer Feedback Perhaps, this is the crucial thing you need to focus on if you don’t want your customers to leave negative feedback. Understand what is making your customers unhappy. It could be because of the quality of service, service delay, longer wait times, poor customer support, etc. Find ways to improve the business process, and the customer experience will automatically improve. If you find it challenging to fix business problems, you can probably hire a business consultant to solve pressing issues. 5. Hire an Online Reputation Management Agency Most business owners are already pretty busy with their day-to-day tasks. It can be challenging to focus on online reputation due to the lack of time or skills. If many negative reviews hit your business, we recommend that you work with an online reputation management solution like FeedbackClarity. FeedbackClarity, a Chicago-based ORM solution, improves a business’s online reputation by removing negative feedback and driving new positive reviews. We can remove negative reviews from: Google My Business Facebook Page Reviews Amazon Store Reviews DealerRater TrustPilot Vitals and many other review platforms Who can benefit from FeedbackClarity services: Doctors and dentists Lawyers and attorneys Auto dealerships Hotel and restaurant owners Other small business owners Do you want to know how FeedbackClarity helps your business? Get in touch with us.

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10 Best Small Business Tools to Drive Growth in 2022

10 Best Small Business Tools to Drive Growth in 2022 Growing a small business can be challenging and has become even more difficult because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The hardest part of growing a small business is driving new customers to your business. As a small business owner, how can you market your products or service with limited resources? The answer is using tools. FeedbackClarity brought you the ten best and most affordable marketing tools you can use to be more profitable. 1. Be a Creative Designer With Canva Have you ever wanted to create beautiful graphics for your business but couldn’t because you don’t know how to use graphic design software? You or an entry-level marketer can use Canva to create various graphics, including flyers, website banners, presentations, e-books, social media banners, etc. Canva is a simple drag-and-drop graphic design platform. One does not need to possess graphic design skills to get started with Canva. So, how do you use Canva? Step 1: Go to Canva.com and Create an Account Canva offers a free account to its users, but the features are limited in the free plan. Step 2: Search and Select a Template Canva offers different types of ready-to-use graphic templates. All you need to do is just browse the templates, select what you want to create, and start designing your first graphic! Step 3: Edit the Template to Fit Your Needs Canva’s editor allows users to add text, graphics, animations, etc., all from its resources repository. In addition, it provides nearly infinite customization options to create any kind of graphics. The platform also allows professionals to create designs from scratch.   2. Send Newsletters With Moonsend A newsletter is a great way to keep your customers engaged and informed about what’s happening in your business. The technical challenges of creating and sending newsletters discourage small business owners from trying it. With Moonsend, one doesn’t need to worry about building complex newsletter processes. How does Moonsend work? Moonsend is a DIY email marketing platform. You would only need an email and subscription plan to start using it. The tool offers several features such as cold email campaigns, monthly newsletters, email sequences, and a built-in database to store and grow your subscribers. Since we are talking about Moonsend as a platform to run and manage newsletters, the two features that caught our attention are its newsletter template library and email scheduling/automation options. Moonsend’s email editor lets you build beautiful and engaging newsletters without design or HTML knowledge. You need to drag and drop resources such as images, text, and CTAs, and arrange them neatly. How much does Moonsend cost? Moon isn’t a free tool. It only offers a 30-day free trial with limited features. On a positive note, their pricing is affordable. Moonsend only costs $9 if your customers (subscribers) are less than 500 and $16 if 1000. The company charges its customers based on the subscriber count. The basic plan works well for most small businesses. 3. Replace Excel With Zoho CRM Are you still using Excel or Google Sheets to manage your business’s customer data? While spreadsheets are great calculators, they are not very efficient when working as databases. As a result, SMB owners lose the 360-degree view of their customers. Many small business owners, especially those who are not tech-savvy, tend to think that CRMs are complex. A CRM is no longer the difficult or an expensive tool it used to be. Most CRMs of the modern-day are cloud-based and have an easy-to-use interface. What is Zoho CRM? Zoho makes web-based business apps such as CRM, support desk, live chat, surveys, forms, etc. It offers an array of tools for small businesses at an affordable price. We listed Zoho over other popular CRM tools because of its free and low-priced subscription plans. How Much Does Zoho CRM Cost? Zoho offers an entirely free CRM that is ideal for beginners. The free plan is perfect for home businesses. SMBs can explore paid plans beginning from $7 a month. The company also offers a complete business suite, which it calls, CRM Plus. 4. Manage Your Team and Projects Better With Asana Asana is one of the best project management and productivity tools available. Any small business with a team that requires continuous project management can use Asana. With Asana, you can control your company, team, and overall productivity. Asana allows you to break down your projects into trackable tasks. The tasks, then, can be assigned to a respective employee with a due date. As a business owner, you can easily track all the tasks within multiple projects and track progress or bottlenecks. We picked Asana as our favorite project management app because it is not only feature-rich but also free. Asana’s free plan works perfectly well for most small businesses and startups. Their paid plans start from $10.99 a month and are ideal for growing companies. Here is how you can get started with Asana. Step 1: Create an Asana Account Go to Asana.com and create a free account with your business email. Step 2: Create Your First Team Asana allows you to create teams and projects. A team can be a function such as marketing, sales, and support, or it can just be one whole company. You can create projects and nest them under teams. Click on the Teams link in the navigation menu on the left and enter the details. Invite your employees or contractors to be a part of your team by entering their email addresses.   Step 3: Create Your First Project The concept of teams and projects in Asana can be confusing for beginners. A team is a group of people categorized by their skills or function; for example, marketing can be a team. On the other hand, a project can be a set of tasks within a team. A classic example of a Project within marketing can be social media or search engine optimization. Click on the + icon on the…

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5 Winning Strategies to Drive More Reviews to Your Online Store
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5 Winning Strategies to Drive More Reviews to Your Online Store Online reviews of your online store and the products you sell influence customers in a big way. More positive reviews mean more conversions and revenue. Whether you are a seasoned e-commerce seller or getting started newly, this article will help you drive much-needed positive reviews to your business. The Basics  Managing online reputation for an e-commerce business can be challenging because you need to take care of your products and the business reviews. Type of Review Where It Appears Review Effect Product review On the product pages Positively or negatively influences the conversion rate of the specific product based on the review. Business review On Google My Business, social media pages, and marketplace trust platforms like BBB Positively or negatively affect the overall reputation and trust. Testimonial On a website’s homepage Encourages new website visitors to buy products on the website. Ideally, it would be best to focus on improving the business reviews on the internet, especially on the platforms like Google My Business. For example, new visitors to your website tend to search your business name on Google to check reviews. However, if there are negative reviews or too few positive reviews, getting converted will reduce drastically. Shift your focus to product reviews or testimonials on the website once you have many positive reviews on Google. Now, let’s focus on the winning strategies you can use to get more reviews for your e-commerce business. 1. Use Coupons to Get More Reviews Please make a list of your most loyal customers and reach out to them requesting business reviews. Offer them a reward, preferably a coupon that they can use to get a discount on your products. Do’s: Run an email campaign targeting your loyal customers. Send instructions in the email on how they can write a review Inform them about how positive reviews help your business grow and help them serve even better. Offer them an exclusive reward in exchange for a review. Create an end date for the campaign to create urgency. Dont’s: Don’t send generic discount coupons that customers can find on your website irrespective of a review. Don’t send the emails to customers you know nothing about to prevent negative reviews. 2. Leverage Social Media Use your e-commerce business’s social media profiles, especially Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to run some contests. Subtly ask your followers to leave a positive review and reward them for their participation. Don’t make reviews the epicenter of the social competition. For example, if you own an e-commerce store that sells camera accessories, you can ask your followers to send their best photos. Ask them to leave a five-star rating for your business on Google, Facebook, etc. (based on your preference) as one of the contest’s terms and conditions. Do’s: Reward the contest winners with products that you sell instead of a coupon to create interest Give yourself enough time to promote the contest on your website, social media pages, and newsletter. Use graphics and text to explain the contest rules clearly. Encourage your followers to share the competition extensively. For example, you can have social sharing as one of the game rules. Use previous contest references such as winners, what they won, etc., to encourage participation. Don’ts: Don’t offer virtual items such as coupons as rewards Don’t put too many terms and conditions Use Customer Service Representatives 3. Engage Your Customer Service Team Your customer service team knows your buyers better. Periodically follow up with your customer service representatives to understand if any happy customers are super excited about your products. Make a list of such patrons, reach out to them personally, and request reviews. As a business owner, you can have your customer service or marketing team run the campaign on your behalf. A message from a CEO or a president usually has better engagement rates. Do’s: Run a personalized email campaign for happy customers, thanking them for being a part of your business. Offer them rewards, preferably discount coupons that they can use for their next purchase. Highlight the importance of their positive review and explain how it can help you serve them even better Follow up with them gently until they respond to your review request. Inform them about the steps involved in leaving a review. Don’ts: Don’t over-follow up for reviews Don’t make rewards the core of your message. Integrate Reviews Tightly With Your System 4. Integrate Reviews Tightly With Your System Design your e-commerce website and its processes in a way that they drive maximum reviews and ratings. Allow customers to review products they buy on your website. Furthermore, create workflows that send automated emails to customers after purchasing a product. Finally, create a page on your website that displays all the testimonials in chronological order. While this approach maximizes the number of reviews and ratings you get, it increases the risk of negative feedback. Ensure that your products and customer service are top-notch to put reviews at the heart of your business. Do’s: Make it easy for customers to review products. Create email workflows to reach out to buyers and request feedback. Create a dedicated space on the website to highlight customer testimonials Build a page to display all of your customer testimonials Request your social media followers periodically for reviews. Don’ts: Don’t make the life of customers difficult. Don’t over-engage customers for reviews or testimonials Work With an Online Reputation Management Agency 5. Work With an Online Reputation Management Agency Working with an online reputation management agency like FeedbackClarity is the way to go if you don’t have time or resources to focus on getting reviews. ORM agencies can not only help build a solid reputation online but also dispute and remove negative reviews. They are skilled at reviving businesses plagued by negative feedback. A few agencies offer an easy-to-use ORM tool as a SaaS subscription. These tools provide incredible ROI, given reviews affect conversion and revenue directly. Are you struggling lately…

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5 Ways Negative Reviews Affect Your Business
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5 Ways Negative Reviews Affect Your Business The Internet has changed the way businesses market their products and services. It has provided an opportunity for businesses of all sizes worldwide to market their offerings quickly and easily. On the downside, the same internet can wreck a business in the form of negative reviews. Bad reviews do not always mean revenue loss. They affect a business in many other ways. This article will find out how negative reviews on the internet can affect your business. 1. Scare New Customers Away According to TrustPilot, a global consumer reviews website, 89% of people read reviews online before buying a product or calling a business. When a potential customer discovers your business online and is greeted with too many negative reviews, they are doubtful to contact you. In most cases, they would call your competitor who has better online reviews. No matter how a potential customer discovers your business, 9 out of 10 times, they will check your business on the internet to read customer reviews. 2. Create a Negative Impression Negative reviews have a psychological effect on people. By looking at negative reviews or low ratings, most people automatically assume a business to be terrible right away. This perception in people’s minds is what is called online reputation. You may have spent years building your business, but most people judge it when they see the reviews. 3. Destroy Your Marketing Efforts Bad reviews directly affect conversions. They negatively impact your lead generation strategies, be it PPC, email marketing, or SEO. Even if a potential customer finds your advertisement on a billboard, they are more likely to google your business name to get a sense of its popularity. Often, business owners increase their marketing efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of poor online reputation. This strategy would increase customer acquisition costs drastically and drain the marketing budget in no time. Ideally, a business owner should focus on fixing negative reviews in such a scenario. 4. Result in Lower Organic Rankings All customer review platforms on the internet, including Google, YellowPages, Facebook, etc., run on an algorithm that ranks businesses with more positive reviews on top. That means your business will rank very low in the order if it has a lot of negative reviews. Besides, poor reviews on the internet can also negatively affect your SEO efforts. Google’s John Mueller confirmed that many negative reviews could potentially affect search engine rankings. 5. Lose to Competition Negative feedback is the number one reason many businesses lose their new or existing customers to their competitors. A customer would always choose a business that has more positive reviews. Having low ratings or no reviews, in most cases, results in losing new customers and revenue to your competitors. Remember, most companies or businesses with an ocean of positive reviews on the internet partner with an online reputation management agency. Removing negative reviews and driving positive feedback is never a problem when working with experts.

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