Hasta La Gadget!

Imagine you’re running a restaurant. Lots of people come and all your tables are busy.
But no one buys anything – maybe they’ll ask you for a glass of water.

How embarrassing is that?

Maybe you experienced this feeling of inefficiency with your website. You worked hard to get your site noticed, but even though many people visit your site, no one seems to be interested in what you sell.

So you decide to work more to bring more potential clients to your site.

But is that really what you should focus on?

Here are 5 things you should consider if you would like to convert more visitors on your site.

1 – Take your company identity to the edge
Nobody likes to be like everyone else. But it’s the impression most companies give when to their online visitors.

Instead of having a “me too” identity and website, find what is different about your company, and amplify that.

Seth Godin explains in his book Free Prize Inside to go to the edge:
“We’re caught in the centre of a web of boring, the goal of edgecraft is to pick an edge, and go all the way.”

Being a bit better than your competition, a bit more shiny doesn’t help you grow.
Get noticed. Make it controversial. Have fun. Be remarkable.

The book Blue Ocean Strategy also suggests to not play the game of your competition.

For example, if most of your competitors offer a complete service, instead of also adding features to your service, strip it away.

2 – Make your design distraction-proof
Once you have that strong identity, it’s time to translate it to your website design.
Emphasize it in the copy, the colors, the images, the style. But make it clear.

A clear design allows the visitor to focus on what’s important. It also adds credibility and professionalism to your page.

Don’t get too original with the structure of your site. You see, people are used to see company logos on the top left of a page and a horizontal menu on top. Keep it fairly classical so the visitor can focus on your message instead of looking for the info.

Avoid bad stock photos. Adding a picture of a real customer can do great for your conversions.

Finally, make sure you have a consistent design across your site to avoid confusion

3 – Tell them what’s the logical next step
Something in your slick design needs to grab the attention. Something colorful and different. An easy to understand Call To Action button that emphasizes the logical next step to take.
Its purpose is to provoke an immediate response in your visitor’s brain, and usually contains an imperative verb such as “Buy Now” or “Find Out More”.

Unfortunately, there is no magic copy, color or place that wins all the time.
However, if you make your CTA button contrast with the rest of your design by using a complementary color, and a button copy that answers the visitor’s question “Why should I click?”, you should be on track.

You can also enhance the power of your CTA by adding positive testimonials of people that went through this process, or a promotion to entice them to click.

4 – Your contact page isn’t enough. Go for chat
Even if you spent months improving the user experience of your site, visitors will still come up with questions. And the thing is, they don’t want an answer in a day, or even an hour. They want it now.

Certainly, having a contact page is a pre-requisite of your site, but people know an answer through email takes time.

And while having a phone number available on your page is essential for businesses with an office, it’s harder to set up for freelancers and smaller businesses.

An option would be to set up a call schedule app on your site, but once again, it doesn’t provide a quick answer. A phone call is also somehow intrusive, and most people won’t bother to use it.
After all, your visitor might only have a quick question about your product, so booking a phone call seems a bit over the top.

That’s why setting up a chat system on your site can make a big difference. When the future buyers on your site have a question, they just click the chat box and get instant answers from you, which you can provide from your phone, from anywhere.

And if you’re not around to answer, they can fill a simple email form with their question. Quick and non-intrusive.

5 – Add an explainer video to put it all together
You’ve seen explainer videos on top of a page’s site. But why so many people use them?
Simple. It catches the attention of the visitor like no other medium and informs the visitors in a fun, clear and passive way about your company.

To be even more efficient, the explainer video needs to direct the viewers to take action at the end of the video. Recommend them to sign up to your email list, buy your product or simply ask to contact you through the online chat system if they have any questions.

If you’re advising your viewers to click a button, place it below the video, and add an arrow at the end of the video that points towards your CTA button. That will add a visual clue towards the action they need to take.

Having an animated video not only explains what’s happening on your site, but gives sense to the next action to take, increasing dramatically your site’s conversions.

So stop leaving the destiny of your business up to luck.

Take action on what really works. Pick one of these tricks and apply it to your website tomorrow.
It will increase your conversions immediately and more importantly, you will increase your sales and your business will have space to breathe.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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The interesting thing about the world is, it keeps changing. New demands keep springing up, new technologies, and new solutions to new problems. It’s amazing how the world somehow fills a vacuum it creates itself and still moves on. One such demand is the need to have essays written by a professional when the person in need can’t meet up. Some years ago, it wouldn’t have been heard off, but speaking with a professional writer at BoomEssays, it’s clear that this industry is here to stay for a while longer.

When I heard about this venture, it was a hard pill to swallow. I thought the business won’t thrive as not many students would want to indulge such service providers. How wrong I was. It was shocking to see that students from schools like Yale, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, University of Texas, Austin and University of Chicago were the ones making the most orders. No doubt these are incredibly hard working and brilliant students, however, academic work could be so overwhelming! It begs the service of a professional essay writer.

Research show that the most popular academic levels of students who make these orders are Masters Students, Undergraduates and PhD students. The papers range from essays, dissertation, to coursework, homework, and research papers. You would find the most orders from towns like California, Texas, New York and Florida. While there is an equal demand from both female and male students, the most orders come for subjects like English, Maths, Business Management, Sociology, Nursing and Psychology.

The struggles of ESL students are even more overwhelming. As long as they desire to graduate, they will look for ways to overcome challenges thrown at them. Since essay writing is becoming a prominent aspect of the educational system, the steady rise in the business of essay writing is clearly understandable. Some students go on to buy essays online while others request custom made essays to fit their demands. In most cases, all that is required from the students are the topics, deadline and fee. Fees can go as high up as $100 per page. There is generally no involvement from the students in the process of essay writing.

Students have varying reasons for seeking the service of essay writing professionals. Some have kids and work at the same time so can’t afford the time to write their own essays. Some either can’t speak English too well and need to have a perfect essay. Some can’t edit to save their lives and enroll the services of writing professionals to fill that void. Whichever way, the industry is growing in leaps and cashing out on the demands of these students.

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A lot of questions have been raised on the moral justification to this business and rightly so. The question on whether or not these services make a better student out of those who make these demands has various shades of answers. However, students can invest in themselves also by being a part of the writing process. They can choose to ask questions in the framework of these essays to better understand the concept and become better students as well. Essay writers could also ask students to write preliminary ideas or submit first drafts with which they can work. That way there is room for students to better understand the topics and horn their skills.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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A couple of years ago, a friend of mine coined a phrase to describe startups that required a lot of money; he called it ‘the fortune 500 startup budget’. There are so many reasons why startup ideas never become a reality, or die soon after the business is established. Two of the reasons that stand out are insufficient planning and insufficient budget, or both. Mostly both.

So the question is how do we tackle this problem. Do we just sit down, fold our arms and watch the idea slowly dwindle into non-existence? What do you do when your ideas seem too big for your budget to carry or your budget feels too small to sustain your idea? Since we know now – and should if you do not already know – that quitting is not the answer, here are a few ways you can establish your business on a limited budget regardless of how big your startup is.

1. Go into business in your area of expertise
Depending on your prior business experiences and skill set, some businesses will be much harder to start up, while some others, with adequate hard work of course, will turn out to be a walk in the park. Do not try to venture into uncharted territory; always strive to build your business around what you know. If you move into an area of business where you have very little to no knowledge, you will have to rely on contracted assistance. You will most likely find yourself paying asinine amounts of money for consultancy and other unnecessary external assistance. Stick to what you know – or at least what will require very little of you to learn – and you will spend much less on your way to entrepreneurial success. It is that simple!

2. Own a ‘5-star corner office’ at a fraction of the cost
When it comes to work-space, what matters is that you have a location from which you operate; the ‘where’ is not as important. And let’s face it, whatever you can do from a 4 by 4 room on the 10th floor of an office building; you can certainly do from home, can’t you?
You will still have access to smart technology, super fast internet connectivity and the luxury and flexibility to always be available when needed. If you are strapped for cash, turn a section of your home into an office space, fitted out with everything you need. And you have absolute control over the look and feel of your work-space.
If you have children, be sure that they do not have access to the office part of the house. A child picking up the phone when a new client calls may be cute, however, it does not make for the most professional image. In some cases, it may put some clients off.

3. Use coupons to purchase items
Whenever you see an opportunity to buy stuff you need at the fraction of the cost, seize it. One of the ways you can do this is by using coupons. We certainly use them when available for grocery shopping. So using it to purchase office supplies is not far off the mark.
There are many coupon sites out there that you can look through to get some of the most amazing deals on office supplies including stuff like computers, office furniture etc. When I decided to turn part of my home into my office, I had three staff (two sisters and a friend) and I needed some furniture for the space. So I went online and found some really good office chairs on Dealspotr at a good bargain.
This is even more beneficial for big startups that need greater quantity of office supplies; it means more money saved. Who doesn’t love that?

4. Market your business for free
There are only two ways I can think of to market something – anything – for free: word of mouth and social media. Tell everyone you know – friends, family acquaintances, and business contacts – about your business. Also, make this known on your social media profiles. Your friends and family can help you increase awareness for your business by spreading the word, while your business contacts can introduce your brand to their professional contacts too. That way, your potential client base grows as you become more known to people in your circle and beyond.

5. Grow the business organically
This is where most experienced entrepreneurs will shout, “bootstrap!” I agree with them; you must make sure that you run a very tight ship financially speaking, if you want to make any headway in your business. Venture capitalists and their funding is not always the answer. Do not make yourself responsible for someone else’s money so early on in the business.
Grow your business from within; use the revenue that comes in to manage the business from staffing, to bills and other operating costs. Let the business achieve profitability on its own merit.
This does not mean that you should provide funds from your personal income; let the business be solely responsible for itself. This will eliminate the stress and burden of debt and increase your chances of creating a successful business.

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6. Cut costs at all costs
Besides the magic of the ‘coupon’ for purchasing office supplies, there is still a need to save money in the daily running of your business. For example, using a virtual assistant is a more affordable option than a member of staff. Most good virtual assistants are polyglots. They can answer the phones and improve customer service by attending to clients concerns. Having a virtual assistant may mean that you never have to miss any business calls ever again.
Anything you can do without is overspending, and you most certainly can do without a metal business card. Having the ‘cool’ factor does not bring in revenue but being frugal in spending might just be the difference between the success and failure of your business.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Last September, I argued that the-then seemingly mysterious rise of Donald Trump to front-runner status in the race for the GOP nomination for president wasn’t all that mysterious. It seemed clear then, and has only been confirmed since, that “his appeals are crafted – intentionally or not – to appeal to a bulwark of the contemporary Republican Party. That constituency is authoritarians.”

I wrote at the time:

“As Marc Hetherington and I explained in our 2009 book, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, one of the key dynamics underlying the growing political chasm in the United States over the past generation has been the sorting of people with very different worldviews – anchored in polar personality types – into the two major political camps in America. As recently as 1992, when Bill Clinton first won the presidency, authoritarian-minded voters were about as likely to vote Democratic as they were to vote Republican. That is no longer the case. By 2004, white voters with an authoritarian bent had stampeded to the exits of the Democratic Party and joined the GOP. Conversely, the once large number of non-authoritarians who formerly supported Republicans had largely shifted their support to Team Blue. Those trends have only intensified since then, particularly in the age of Barack Obama. This development, the product in significant part of a decades-long shift in party appeals and changing demographics has fueled a bitterly acrimonious political divide characterized by fundamental and irreconcilable differences in worldview between the average Republican and the average Democrat.”

The basis of Trump’s appeal – and its limits – remains vitally important to understand. Many conservatives, especially conservative intellectuals, are now apoplectic over his candidacy. Some, one presumes, feel so strongly for principled reasons. They abhor his tone and his blatant disregard for civil discourse. They deplore his heretical views on the size and scope of government. They think he’s both dangerously isolationist and a reckless buffoon likely to lead-foot America into a head on collision with global adversaries.

But try as they might, conservatives are deluding themselves if they fail to recognize that Trumpism is, indeed, the reductio ad absurdum of the thrust of the Republican Party over a long generation. From Nixon, Reagan and the elder Bush to Mitt Romney (remember his answer to the issue of illegal immigration – we’ll make their lives so miserable they’ll “self-deport?”), Republicans have engaged in none-to-subtle dog-whistles and other means of demonization of the “other.” Whether gays, African Americans, the “wrong” kind of immigrant (read Hispanic), or Muslims, the GOP has played a game of what Rick Perlstein calls demonization “whack-a-mole.” There are countless such examples, both in policy and the rhetoric spewing forth from the highest ranks of the party over decades now, making it impossible to deny credibly what party leaders have wrought. In other words, they’ve created the conditions in which a Frankenstein monster has been able to emerge. And emerge he has.

I wrote last summer, that in some important respects:

“authoritarians [are] less reliably conservative on [some] key issues associated with the GOP. For example, the conservative economic agenda resonated less well with authoritarians than with other conservatives, quite consistent with how Trump is positioning himself. And though he’s now pro-life, it’s evident that Trump’s newly minted views on that issue are half-hearted. As it happens, those scoring high in authoritarianism were themselves not especially distinguished in their support for the pro-life position. Those are two critical planks of the modern conservative platform and on neither are authoritarians particularly adamant, as a group.

What most fundamentally distinguishes authoritarians, as we explained in detail in our book, are three inter-related sets of attitudes about which they are, collectively, adamant: 1) an especially strong propensity to divide the world into us vs. them and a concomitant intolerance of outgroups perceived as threats to America’s existing social fabric; 2) projecting strength in the most straightforward, uncompromising way possible; and 3) the related perils following from the breakdown of law and order.

That, in a nutshell, is Trump’s campaign.”

That has remained the blueprint of Trumpism for more than a year now. It has also been core to the ideology and practice of American conservatism for far longer.

There has also been some confusion about the working class nature of support for Trump. Identifying who comprises the working class is harder than is generally acknowledged. Is it income, educational attainment or occupation that distinguishes this much-discussed segment of America? The answer – it depends on who you talk to. There is no doubt that Trump has polled well with white men who don’t have college degrees (indeed, that may be the only significant chunk of the American electorate with which he’s outperforming Mitt Romney). But he’s still drawing plenty of support from whites with college degrees, and the evidence from the primary season is that many Trump supporters then had pretty good incomes.

In other words, pinning Trumpism on the backs of the so-called white working class is a little more complicated than some have suggested. What has been clear, however, is the extent to which psychological make-up has explained support for Trump. Whether one identifies voters by their level of authoritarianism, or racial resentment or other markers of cultural defensiveness, it is from these precincts that Trump has substantially built his base. And the reason he so easily beat back the crowded Republican field this year is because that base has become so critical to the make-up of Republican Party more broadly.

The GOP recognized this, in some respects, in 2013, when the RNC wrote its so-called autopsy report following a second loss at the hands of Barack Obama. The report identified the party’s lack of appeal to younger voters and to minorities, especially Hispanics and Blacks. While it offered little in the way of concrete approaches to attract such voters, the report’s drafters understood they had a problem on their hands. They still do. As bizarre, erratic and dangerous as Trump is, he did not, contrary to the self-comforting tales of many, come from out of nowhere. His provenance is all too clear.

I co-wrote a book about divorce last year with my former wife. It’s called Divorce: A Love Story, and you can check it out here.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Anker’s back at it again with the discounts, with a special focus today on phone cases. Most of the options here are for iPhones, but there’s also a Galaxy S7 case, and a universal dry bag. Check out all of the deals below, and be sure to note the promo codes.

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