Cyberwalker Blog

10 reasons why you should use Shopify to build a web store

At Cyberwalker Digital we build web stores for our clients and our preferred ecommerce platform is Shopify. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Shopify is scaleable. You can start with a $15/month store and scale to a multi-language multi-iteration enterprise site.

2. You can sell anything. Freeze dried strawberries? Yes. Forklift Manuals? Sure. Soursop tea? Yes. Fishing Tackle? Sure just ask the gang at http://tackleoutfit.ca.

2. You can launch with either a free or $80-$100 theme that you buy or have one custom designed by an agency like us.

3. Shopify handles all the web hosting needs and the transactional technology and credit card tools. You just connect your bank account.

4. Shopify handles all the site security so it’s worry free.

5.  One person can manage the store or you can set it up to managed by a team.

6. Tax tables make collecting sales tax easy – by country, state, province or region (including US counties).

7. Shipping can be manually set up or connected to Fedex or UPS or USPS for real-time shipping calculation

8. It’s easy to manage SEO.

9. You can easily sell digital products such as videos, ebooks or software keys.

10. The stores are beautiful, easy to manage and you can be selling in a day or two.

If you would like a free 30 minute consult on how Cyberwalker Digital can help you set up and build your store, contact us here

Or check out Shopify directly and see what the online selling platform can do for you.

Q&A: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people

QUESTION: What is the trick to email marketing so that it does not annoy people or be dismissed immediately as spam, but rather be opened up, read, and actually turn into a lead or sale?

ANSWER: The secret to great email marketing is give more than you take. Give people a reason to love opening your emails.

Give them your best stuff for free. Load them up with everything they need to succeed. Demonstrate why you are the expert in the topic of the list and show them the way. Provide massive value with posts, ebooks, white papers, videos, tips tricks etc

Also be reliable (regular emails) and trustworthy. Never try to trick them or dupe them.

It also means you rarely sell to them on the list and when you do it should be a killer exclusive deal that has high value and low friction (easy to buy, money back guarantee).

The other smart thing to do is to use a Smart CRM system so you can track behaviour and engage with individuals when they demonstrate that they are ready to buy or engage. You can use a variety of platforms. Ontraport is one. We use the sales and email marketing software called  Keap.

How to use content marketing to promote your local business

The fundamental idea behind content marketing is to demonstrate your expertise  on a topic in you specialty and draw attention to your web site so you can earn trust from potential customers and generate engagement.

In a local market this is especially achievable because  the pool of competition is smaller and you can easily rise to the top of the list for a local business using the tactic.

The catch is you have to be willing to put in the time, investment and effort to make it happen,

You can hire an agency to generate the content. Or generate it yourself and hire an agency to promote it. Or, you can do it all yourself if you are ambitious and willing.

Here are 10 content and promotional ideas that will help you get there.  I have used the example of a local eye doctor clinic that wants to draw more local business, but if you are a plumber or a florist or any local business you can substitute your operation using the same tactics:

1) Write 50 answers to the most common questions your customer ask and post them on your website as articles.

2) Use Google Adwords to find out what the most common keywords are around search related you your business and generate content that essentially answers the keyword query. There is a Keyword Explorer tool that is free to use. You can check the AdWords management tool.

3) Build a great guide to solve a problem your customer base has (ie an eye doctor could write a guide to solving failing eyesight aimed at 40+ customers) and offer it as an incentive to sign up for an email list where you share great tips (and occasionally offers).

4) Make sure your business locations are registered locally in Google Places, Bing Places and Yelp and Foursquare

5) Write a comprehensive glossary that consumers can use to understand the world of eye health and publish it on your web site, give them recommendation about The Medical Negligence Experts so they know how to face an unfair situation.

6) Become the eye doctor on Twitter and Facebook using your content and expertise.

7) Engage an SEO agency (try us – we have an SEO pratice) or appointment someone on your staff to get your articles and content ranked on Google and Bing. (Learn how to on our SEO expert site)

8) Produce an Ask the Eye Doctor service on your web site so people can ask eye health questions and use the Q&A to enhance your blog, and be careful on the doctor you trust, many of my friends have had to do doctor negligence claims because of their doctor’s bad service.

9) Fund or back a vision charity and engage in online fundraising and campaigns to draw attention.

10) Use PRWeb or PRNewswire to promote newsy press releases and become the eye doctor who is called by the local (and eventually national) media.

 

5 dumb mistakes I hope you don’t make in your marketing emails

If you read a few of my dispatches on AmazingEmailMarketing.com, you probably know most of the smart things you should do in your email campaigns. You do most of them, right? I knew it!
But what about the dumb things that people do? Look more information on the https://top10pillows.com. What are the common mistakes newbie (or clueless) email marketers make? And BTW these things are specific to content in emails.

1) Too many links. A great email should have a single purpose. There should a single action you are driving the reader to that forwards your business AND what they need. It could just be a relationship building action like filling out a form or giving feedback or read a post. The big mistake is giving them too many things to do. Click here. Chat chat chat. Click HERE. Blather blather blather. CLICK HEEERRE! You then fail to drive them to objective of the email at the end.

2) Put the link too high. Keep your links lower down so you can warm your reader up to the action. Dropping the link in the first or second paragraph is like handing over the icing before the cake is baked.

3) Failure to tell them what they are going to get in the first paragraph. If you are going to give them something good, hook them in the first paragraph. Don’t wait til paragraph 8. Say something like:
Today I’m going to teach you what goes on in men’s heads (and it’s not always sex), but first don’t forget to click the link at the bottom because I am giving you my free 10-page ebook A WIFE’S GUIDE TO TAMING HUSBANDS. Ok, now on to today’s topic…

4) Embedding dumb stock photos in the text. If you are going to embed an image make it something greaaaaat that is someone’s worth eyeball time. Don’t put in some lame stock picture of a dude in shirtsleeves in a boardroom with smiling fake-n-bake employees. Show them a useful graph sure. Or a stat box. Or a picture that reinforces the message and call to action in the email. Generally though available any images. And if you do put a banner across the top, keep it lean.

5) My favorite…This one drives me bonky. They SEND OUT A NEWSLETTER. You know the one with  multiple articles and sidebars and news of the week with a sad picture of the front of their building. That’s so 2002. I can guarantee that their open rate is horrible. Their engagement rate is tiny.

You don’t do anything like this right? If you do. Stop. Get some training.

 

The anatomy of a great email

So what makes a great email? It’s a question newcomers to email marketing ask all the time. We live in the era of post email blasts. No one can get away (for long) with sending out spammy self serving emails to any address they can get their hands on.

The New Email Marketing Rules however guarantee that a well written email aimed at an opted in list of interested subscribers will work to forward your brand and likely sell whatever you are hawking. So here is the anatomy of a great marketing email:

1. Start with a great subject line. Be short and to the point and generate curiosity. Lines like: The one reason why most people fail at business. Or “Our site’s No. 1 dessert recipe”. Or:  “What’s on all men’s minds”. A good subject line begs the reader to open the email because it keeps something hidden, or peaks curiosity.

2. Send from a real person, not a brand or a company. Human to human contact is more interesting and tweaks a human instinct to connect. Email from Joe’s Plumbing is less interesting than Joe Walsh, Master plumber.

3. Your salutation should be Dear Mike, or Hi Mike, or Hey Mike, and not Dear Friend, or Hi there. Most email systems can address people using wildcards by their first name so be sure that you collect a first name at minimum in your opt-in form when someone signs up.

4. Get attention with your opening paragraph.  The first words of your email should grab a person’s attention. Get to the point. You can tell a brief story or share a cool fact or data or pose a question.  I once had a really successful client who refused to invest in search engine optimization. I go on to tell the story of why and what happened when they finally did take SEO seriously. My partner Kay had an email that started – What does a raccoon riding on an alligator have to do with marketing? Then she shows a picture of an actual raccoon riding an alligator. And explained her point. It was pretty compelling. (Read the weird alligator riding raccoon story here.)

5) The body of the email should inspire. Keep it short and write longer if you can keep a rhythm and hold engagement. But the body of the email should inspire the reader to keep reading. Make a point, teach a lesson, give value. The reader should think or say out loud. Hmmm. Or oh cool. Or wow. That response is a trigger to demonstrate you have inspired them. It’s easy to sell into inspiration.

6) Create some desire. Moving into the middle and bottom of the email, it’s time to create desire. You should remember that you are looking for the end user to take an action. In fact you are going to call them into action shortly, so it’s time to create desire. After your attention getting and inspiring  material, you need to close the gap between what was written and what the reader could have if they took your information to heart. So connect your info to a possible outcome. In my SEO story I talk about how the reluctant client finally invested in SEO and spent $2000 for a campaign that had a traffic doubling effect and helped them make more money with their web site. Then I say you don’t need to spend that to with an SEO agency, you just need to learn it yourself. And here’s the dirty secret. SEO is not hard. It’s just somewhat time consuming. Notice I play a bit with the reader’s emotions. $2K could be steep for some people. Then again doubling one’s web traffic is an awesome outcome. Then I let the reader know that SEO is easy (which it generally is) and you can learn it. From who? Guess! Yep, my course. So then I move into…

7) Call to Action…this is where you connect all the dots. You’ve told a compelling story or share something of value that the reader appreciates. You’ve inspired them and created desire for something they could have. You might have toyed with their emotions. Now it time to ask them do something. Create an opportunity and have them take action on the opportunity. In Kay’s case she just asked them to read an article on the Cyberwalker.com web site. But they sure wanted to. In my SEO piece I just wanted to test to see if they were engaged early in a funnel, so I ask them to tell me a story about their SEO frustrations.  Engagement rate has been good. Of course this would also be where you ask someone to buy or register or something that forwards your agenda in the relationship or communication.

8) Sincerely yours….We are not done yet. Sign off from a human, the sender. Not just The Team at Joe’s Plumbing… or ABC Corporation. Be personable.

9) P.S. Add a Post Script. This is a fun way to remind them of something or toss out a teaser at the end of the email. I usually put hints about upcoming products or services. You can do things like P.S. Don’t miss next week’s email because I’ve decided to giveaway a grab it before its gone discount to my course. Or you could also do: P.S. My email marketing course development is under way too. I’ve been feverishly writing the ebook and I promise to share a sneak peak of some of it with you when I get it into shape. Or perhaps another off-handed CTA.

The anatomy of a great email

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