10 Amazing Ways to Use Tumblr for Business

Presently, Tumblr is one of the most widely used social platforms across the globe. Although there are several success stories related to this network, Tumblr could never reach to the top of the radar of several brands existing in the industry.

A lot of people are not aware of the artistic side of Tumblr is artistic. It is a little different from conventional blogging platforms such as WordPress as it comprises of a very strong social component. In fact, most experts celebrate Tumblr for its blogging platform.

Now the question is how to use Tumblr for business. Here are some amazing ways you can use this platform to ensure business success:

Allows People Search for your Business

Tumblr is different from other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. One of the best things about Tumblr is that it employs Search Engine Optimization. Well, that literally means that Google indexes the platform. It offers some amazing plug-ins to share content on other social media websites. It saves you time and efforts to do the work twice. So in case, you have a website, Tumblr will be of great help in driving extra traffic to your primary website landing page.

1. Creates Amazing Blogs

When it comes to ensuring a human face to your organization, the Tumblr helps you to create some amazing blogs. Here, most part of the blogs are crafted by people for people. So it is a good idea to showcase your brand on Tumblr. You can follow other Tumblr blogs and business blogs. Re-blogging relevant posts will help you show your efforts to keep yourself updated on the latest industry news. This is extremely important.

2. Engage Readers and Bloggers

Always comment on posts made by people about your products. You should also respond to comments on your page. You should engage the community in a friendly and positive way. This helps earn trust of your trust of your readers.

3. Varied Media on Tumblr

You can make your blog way more interesting by adding images, website links, videos, texts and other ways to engage individuals on the platform. These make for amazing tools to make your blog highly enjoyable. Another idea is to add sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter. This allows people repost freely across several platforms.

4. Relevant Content

Although a number of media tools are available these days, simply generating traffic without an aim won't give any benefits. You should focus on adding more targeted traffic by using relative content that enhances readers’ focus. Post high quality images of your product. This will prompt people to repost and share with friends. Over 80 per cent of all Tumblr posts are pictures, GIFs, or images of other formats. Hence, it is crucial to make sure you use these to boost reblogging.

5. 100% Free

Interestingly, Tumblr will not make you pay to show your blog to people. Facebook does that! So Tumblr comes as a 100% free platform where you don't require spending a penny. Businesses need to pay for additional features and increased publicity. Why not use Tumblr which is free? Towards the end everything depends on the way your blog looks and how appealing it is for readers.

6. Google Analytics Helps Track Progress

It is easier to connect your blog to Google Analytics. The process helps you to track the popularity of your account and profile including other statistics. This facilitates you to boost your marketing efforts. In short, you know better what works best you and what goes waste.

7. Interactions Develops Interest

Tumblr is all about interaction. So the more discussions you decide on having, the better it gets. Your business will get benefitted a lot from it. The social networking platform allows organizations interact smoothly. You don't have to follow any rules or regulations for business correspondence. All you need to do is link your Tumblr page to the main website for business communications and get going.

8. Tags for Online Marketing

Tumblr has an amazing tagging system. It is a one-of-a-kind that allows users to start typing the name of a company to get relevant tags instantly. It may be quite tricky to use tags with other social media sites. Also not many users will approve of it or understand the whole purpose. Tumblr tags are used extensively to discover content.

9. Increase Traffic Flow with Do-Follow Links

Tumblr will help you get unlimited links to attract traffic to your business website. The backlinks allows to boost traffic to landing pages. It also helps you to boost sales. Your website will rank higher in Google search. Use of relevant keywords and phrases in Tumblr content is important. Do-Follow blog posts and help readers develop an interest in visiting specific pages for discounts and other benefits.

10. Boost Branding Efforts

Tumblr comes equipped with the best of tools to serve as an excellent platform for promoting your brand. The platform is taking off really well. So if you do not join the trend, you will waste the opportunity it offers. Do not wait any more and extend your reach with Tumblr. There are over hundreds of millions of unique users joining the platform regularly. Focus on posting very high-quality content. This will let you gain a strong online presence.

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14 Powerful Ways to Improve Your Facebook Ads

It may be a challenge to increase conversion rates of Facebook ad sans  increasing ad spend especially if you do not hold specialization in the process. However, there several tweaks that will get you good results when you dedicate time and energy into testing different versions.

Listed below are some interesting ways to improve Facebook Ads:

1. Target Similar Brand Followers

There's nothing better than narrowing your target audience for getting higher quality ad results on social media. It is easier to target followers of specific brands on Facebook. This helps when selling products and services to the same customer base and other well-known businesses. It is also a good option when you wish to target customer base of other non-competing brands in niche segments. Use of this makes for a simple solution, especially when other details of the target audience, such as age, job titles, likes, etc, are not available. You can make separate campaigns for each brand you wish to target. This helps you create a more personal creating an engaging message.

2. Attractive Images

Here, it is not important to use pictures of your business, services / products. You can use something relevant if possible, that catches attention of target audience and make them read your ad. Since the image should not contain more than 20 per cent words, its serves as a source for grabbing attention. Once you are successful in doing this, you have already covered half of the path towards the final destination.

3. Use Cover Photo

It is important to engage your fans and boost likes and reach. This is possible by starting contests relevant to cover page. For instance a lot of companies have been seen asking their fans send in pictures enjoying their products. They also announce 'fan of the week' for their cover. Fans find it exciting and engage more with their brand. They will also keep in touch with the page to check if they had won the weekly contest. Cover page definitely makes for free marketing space. It helps engaging fans and promote new products simultaneously.

4. Integrate video

Did you know video promises one of the highest engagement metrics on Facebook? Yes, it holds the highest out of all media options including photos or text used for advertising. It always helps the transitioning advertising process to video from static image or text with a link. It boosts engagement metrics as the audience is likely to spend more time engaging with a brand through gripping videos.

5. Custom Audience Helps

Try uploading a "custom audience". It is a CSV file of your customer list or database. Once you display ads to a customized list of audience instead 'everyone', you actually target people who know you. Also,  these are people who have an affinity for your brand. This process is known to increase the rate of conversion among those who are on your list. Customizing your audience will also help you retain existing customers. As a rule, it costs up to seven times as much to win a new customer than retaining the existing ones. So it is always better to use Facebook ad campaigns to retain customers you have. Try using 'Custom Audience' feature for the same.

6. Collaborate

Advertising collaboration piece with others in complimentary industries help. The combined efforts will help you keep from making clients feel you're pushing something. The idea is to make the process feel organic. Integrate high quality video rigs. Let each entity show they are an invaluable part of the project.

7. Shareable Content

Advertising product or service directly can be avoided if you run ads and promote interactive content your users would like to share. The whole idea is to identify content your target audience engages with. Also make use of paid campaigns for promoting content and ensure optimal performance.

8. Retarget Visitors

You may consider using services such as 'AdRoll'. This will help you to build Remarketing lists and run website activity based ad. When it comes to expense and performance, this process is extremely effective, especially when launching a new product or offering an existing one holding relevance to a specific visitor. For instance, one of your clients launches a new graphic. Then he uses Facebook Remarketing for reaching previous web visitors and generate new sales online. This way, you can target or exclude customers who purchased and offer appropriate incentive to purchase. The process will become a part of all of your product launches and new sale.

9. Test Images

Things may get tough if you go not post several images both in vertical and horizontal layouts. You need to get very creative with imagery. Also, there is no need to make perfect sense with the imagery. You may try out Flickr or Freeimages.com. These places will offer you free photos that you can use. So you can focus on downloading 10 of them first and then make 10 ad variations. The results will amaze you.

10. Test Versions

It is crucial that you test as many versions of your ad as possible with varied pictures, headlines, and text. Most marketers prefer setting a small budget aside to make out which ad performs best. Thereafter, the rest of the budget is spent on that specific ad.

11. Refine your Target

It is crucial that you target ad for a group of people as specific as possible. This is how you are going to make things effective. Casting huge network doesn't make sense. Getting specific with ad content will ensure success for your campaigns.

12. Relate

I can't tell you how many business Facebook pages I've come across that is simply promotion after promotion of their business (some done more cleverer than others). You must first relate to your users. Show them that you care are about what they care about. Challenge yourself to do nothing but communicate and relate for 30 days without plugging your businesses even once. It may seem counterproductive, but spend your advertising dollars on these posts that are relationship focused rather than on posts that are sales focused and I guarantee, if you're genuine, you'll see much better engagement and feel great about your new relationships as a bonus!

13. Make Segments and Optimize Using Multivariate Testing

A lot of people may not know about this, but the ad buying interface of Facebook is quite powerful. It facilitates sophisticated targeting. Most importantly, it allows for experimentation and deep segmentation. Experts suggest the use of experimental design for developing ad experiments that can also be optimized in real time. Different variables need to be tested against multiple pre-defined customer segments. Try using different campaigns and ad-sets each time you test variation. This allows isolation of variance normalized across all. When you do experimentation across multiple segments you get to know what drives performance across the audience and what actually works for subsets.

14. Message and Destination – Match the Two

It works to create several advertising campaigns and landing pages together. Test messaging that attracts attention of your target audience and then converts them on the landing page. Focus on developing multiple landing pages using 'Optimizely'. Thereafter, come up with multiple ad campaigns on Facebook. It is important that you mix and match ads and variations of landing page variations with winning lower CPA (cost per acquisition). It is possible that an ad gets a decent click through, but people don't buy. This is not a good thing. So you should refrain from relying solely on good CPC for actionable and affordable business results.

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Best Marketing Tips for Using Google Plus For Business - Take Your Business to the Top

Google Plus marketing is one of the best options for business options these days. Unfortunately, most people are not really aware of this. Yes, according to studies, Google+ enjoys over 150 million active users on a monthly basis. Interestingly, 50 per cent of its users sign on almost every day! That's incredible!

Marketing on Google+ is an amazing idea. There are a number of benefits  G+ promises over other social networks. For instance, its influence on SEO is one of the major advantages. You can also go for some of the incredible tools that cannot be found in other places such as Google Plus Ripples, Google Hangouts etc.

Use of Google Plus for online business makes for one of the most powerful ways to reach out new audience. You can easily boost your SEO and sales. Here are some of the best marketing tips to take you to the top:

Personalize for Business

First and foremost, you need to personalize Google Plus for your brand. As soon as your page gets personalized, you will be all set for marketing your product. Personalizing profile is crucial! The 'About Us' page should stand out, reflect personality of business in the best possible way, and direct page viewers to relevant pages.

This is possible if you describe your business clearly. Include references or write description to show what your business is all about. Thereafter, you can hyperlink text as a call to action for visitors to click through to your website.

Next, you need to claim a Google Plus Page Custom URL. This option is added by Google to supply your Google Plus page with a custom, personalized URL. The process helps with branding your page via making URL company related as compared to a random string of numbers.

Relevant Community on Google

It is very important to build a community around page to ensure effective. Apart from having a community, you should also focus on having a community relevant to your niche. There are some amazing great ways to build up the Google Plus Community.

First, you need to search through Google+ and see if anyone is mentioning your business. The process is easier for establishing page as people have tagged you in the post. For others Google Plus search bar is the best place to start. You can find people individuals who have mentioned your company name without having tagged you in the post.

You can use 'Google Ripples' and know who shares your content. Content sharing does not necessarily mean credit to the content, your services or products. In fact, the content may be getting shared abruptly and for no reason at all. Thankfully, with Ripples by Google Plus, it is easier to locate and trace these shares. It also helps in finding all kinds of people who have actually shared your content. It also works as a competitor research tool. Simply have a look at who shares posts of your competitor and who you would like to connect with.

Regular posts to Build Audience and Promote Your Page

While building up community, you can post consistently to your page. In case, people add you to their circles, you need to provide them with quality content. Automation tools such HootSuite will help with consistent flow of content. Make sure you interact with those who shares your content. You may either leave a comment or give it a +1 to show your appreciation. Using hash tags is one of the best ways to increase interaction with your posts. Hashtags categorize your posts and allow anyone to discover what you write while searching for that hashtag. Google automatically gives one or two hashtags to posts. However, you should focus on adding as many as you wish to on your own.

Another good way is to make use of custom formatting options. Google Plus facilitates you to customize appearance of text which means you can easily bold, italicize, or strike through text in your posts. This way, you can get your message across clearer or even draw attention to certain parts of your post.

Google Hangouts

These are a free video chat that provides you with the ability to host a chat with around 10 participants. It also opens up limitless possibilities. This means you can easily host webinars, add question answer sessions, provide customer support, live stream chats to YouTube and much more.

Local Google Plus for Local Businesses

Google Plus has come up with a powerful amazing feature for local businesses. It promises to help them in various ways. The feature is quite similar to having a local business page on Facebook which allows for setting location, business type, and a lot more. Clients can easily leave ratings and reviews seen by other people visiting your page. The reviews act as social proof. Here, the reviews are displayed to people with reviewers in their circles. In short, they can have a close look at reviews written by people they know.

Make sure you inspire fans to review your business. One good way is to incentivize the whole thing for them. Offer something exciting in exchange for a review.

Boost your business in the search results within Google Plus and Google itself. Users can easily search on Google Local by location for desired business. Simply ensure that your location is placed in correctly, including the following to boost business in local results:

- Contact info
- Keywords

Google reviews can be seen in the regular search result. Thereafter, you can have a look at business information taken from its G+ page inside the box on the side. The box provides relevant info, directions, and also includes some call to actions, such as asking for a review and follow on Google+.

Another good  way to boost business is via setting up a Google Local page correctly and optimizing it with keywords.

Final Words

Google+ is surely one of the best things with a lot to offer your business through its unique features enabling you to establish a strong connect with the audience and through its significance for Search Engine Optimization.

Following the above listed tips will help you to get the best of the benefits of Google Plus for business success!

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Be Aware and Beware: Your Competitors Can Hurt Your Rankings

Most people believe that finding a great SEO campaign that does its job well is not all that you need. In fact, it is only a small part of your ranking battle. Once your website gets hosted and established, its time to think about competitors seriously. They can simply swoop in and disturb all of the hard work you had put in. Although unfair and unethical, it does happen. Each website owner should be aware of these things and know how to stop it too!

Various types of competitors can hurt your rankings. Some may be ethical and other unethical. However, the key to online business success is to know how to handle this well. Here's what you need to do in this respect:

Out Rank

If a competitor has a better marketing campaign and rankings than you do, they will certainly out rank you. It is a two-way competition. Just as you pushed others down to climb up the ranking ladder, your competitors will do the same to push their business forward. You need to continue with good marketing and ethical SEO tactics. This will help you outrank your competitors.

Understand that not everyone can hold the number one position. It is better to aim for top five. This increases your odds to get to the top and marketing gets simpler. Also, there are dim chances of being pushed out by a competitor while staying aggressive and updated with your marketing campaign.

Link Building is Important

Link ONLY to reputable sites while undergoing a link building campaign. It is also important to check back on the websites to ensure these are worthy of your link. In case, a website loses authority via using bad SEO tactics (linking to poor quality sites / creating spam to increase traffic), everyone linked pays the price and suffer from lower rankings.

Competitors tend to follow the strategy to lower the ranking system and bring down competitors. They may have your link backs placed on non-desirable sites. So keep constant tabs on your link backs. Also use disavow tool from Google to remove links. Always be vigilant while monitoring your website. Contact website owner and ask to have the link removed.

Review Sites

These are the best options to build your brand. These help in driving traffic to your website and establish authority on a specific industry. However, these may even destroy your reputation. Your competitors may be writing these reviews.

In case, an actual consumer writes a negative review, comment on the review and visually display your plan to rectify the situation. For competitor review, speak to the review site directly, and ask them to take down the reviews. Also try to respond to each review personally. Review all the top review sites regularly.

Find Bad Links

Trust the backlink monitoring tool for locating bad links.  It will display all of your backlinks. These can be sorted by backlinks passing PageRank - ones having no SEO value (nofollow) absolutely and those that get completely ignored by Google.  Pay attention to those Google acknowledges and ones that link back to you.

You can check backlinks profile manually. Also sort these by anchor texts and check the ones that look suspicious. Make sure you sort links by social shares. This helps with locating bad links. Remember that 95 per cent of bad links have 0 social shares.

Common Bad Links

Here are some of the common bad links to spot:

- Auto approved comments from un-moderated sites
- Links from pages with less or no content
- Link directories
- Social bookmarking websites
- Websites offering duplicated content
- Links from irrelevant websites

Check Anchor Text

Since many of the backlinks come from images or hidden from users, these may really tough to spot. You can find these by checking the anchor text used on that specific link. The location of the link will be highlighted once the anchor text is copied and pasted into your browser. To find hard to locate links, simply view the page source.

Tag bad links you see and eliminate after checking them.

Get Rid of Bad Links

It is easy. You simply need to get in touch with the webmaster and ask them to remove the bad links. In most cases, webmasters do not have any problems (especially if you are polite). They will remove it without bothering you much. However, if they do not do so, there are other ways you can get rid of these.

There are webmasters who will simply ignore your request. So instead of wasting time returning your request. Remember that the longer bad links are associated with your website, the longer rankings suffer. Also, if a webmaster wants to respond to your request, he/she will do it within 48 hours. In case, you don't get any response within this period, proceed to the next step and get the links removed.

Contact the hosting company and place a request to remove your link. Let them know that a specific site they host has been spamming your website.

Disavow

Using the Google disavow tool can be helpful. It is an effective and easy to use that comes absolutely free of cost. You can go through the tutorials on 'how to use the tool' offered by Google. Although it may take longer, the tool is quite effective. When no one is ready to adhere to your instructions / rules and you simply cannot remove links removed using normal communications, the tool is just the right and best way to get what you want (without any foreign assistance).

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Easy Yet Brilliant Steps to Improve Your B2B Leads Through PPC

There are a number of ways to produce leads for B2B company. PPC is certainly at the top of the list,  especially when you expect instant results. However, PPC is not easy to manage. In fact, the project can get very expensive if you don’t know what you are doing.

According to experts, PPC management is a skill set. It takes time for a person to learn and develop a strategy that produces results without getting expensive. So are you ready to follow the process? You can read and watch all the tutorials, but there will be one definite, you will experience trial and error going through this. Yet, this will surely be worth your while because not only will you learn a lot, you will learn strategies that will work well for you and your business.

Mastering the skill of PPC management will let you produce revenue at higher volume as compared to other techniques. Also other techniques tend to eat up your resources. Enhancing B2B leads through PPC will help increase your ROI while reducing wastage of resources dramatically. While using this technique, you don’t require spreading resources out.

Here are some important steps you can take to boost your B2B leads using PPC:

Know Your Clients

It is important that a business knows their audience (B2C or B2B). There are several ways in which you can improve B2B leads. Several features can help you with your PPC campaigns. However, first, you must know your target customers. Here, it is crucial to develop buyer personas and proper messaging.

A Buyer Persona will allow you to paint a portrait of your ideal customer. The info gathered can be used to target audience, making sure that you are not wasting resources. It also makes sure that the right people see your ads. So no more wasting time and effort on showing ads to people who are not interested.

The next step is to determine the keywords used by your target audience to search for your product or service. You will get insights on websites they frequently visit. It helps with Display campaigns and AdWord Search campaigns.

Articulate Your Offer

This is crucial for B2B sales. When it comes to providing solutions for clients, most B2B organizations have absolutely no problems. Spreading awareness is really important as most customers aren about the benefits of your products or services. They might now know how they will use those in their own't actually aware of benefits of products / services sold by businesses. Under such situations, the customers may not be able to engage immediately as they don’t know what to do about your services and products. For instance, if you offer weight loss and health guidance, you should help the market understand the benefits of engaging with products or services. Invest ample time organizing webinars, various videos, customer testimonials, and even blog posts. While busy with PPC ads, don’t ignore content marketing campaigns that help educate your niche audience.

Create Customized Landing Pages - The moment a visitor gets to one of your landing pages, you have already paid for the click. So it indicates that so called strategies for reducing the number of poor quality leads such as addition form fields, validating email address for business are actually misguided. Your main focus should be on maximizing conversion rates of landing pages. This can be done via optimizing the following elements:

Tailor Landing Pages to Ad Groups - Tailor your landing pages as per the needs and challenges of your ad groups.

Result Driving Offers – It is crucial to test multiple offers to see the one that gets you the most traction.
Test – A/B test your landing pages. This helps determine variants that driving maximum conversions, consumers, opportunities, and ROI. Make sure you always do A/B test for a single element at a time to isolate the overall impact of that specific element on performance. Additionally, focus on testing just two page variants of the page at a time. The most crucial elements to run tests on are above the fold. These include:

Headline – You can test varied versions of the main selling point, offer / benefit.
Call-to-Action (CTA) – The key is to try out a variety of CTA copy, colors, sizes and placements.
Background / Hero Shot - Test a variety of images or videos for hero shot or background.
Form - Test varied lengths and placements for lead generation form. You can also display your form as a pop up, or bottom of your page.

Adjustments to Mobile Performance

Once you have implemented device tracking, you can easily determine the devices that drive opportunities. In case, you feel mobile leads aren't getting converted into opportunities, simply stop running your campaigns on mobile devices. You can also reduce bids. This helps devices receive the bulk of your traffic.

Develop Ad Schedule

In case, you are running ads 24/7, simply set up an ad schedule for your campaigns. It is possible to add days of the week or break down your schedule. All you need to do is add hourly segments for each day of the week. Thereafter, you can track performance for each hour and day that you define.

After combining opportunity data and ad schedule, it is possible to determine days or hours that produce maximum opportunities. This will help you adjust bids for each segment. It also stops running your campaign for the specific segments.

Make sure you have a close look at the data from time to time. In case, you fail to generate opportunities on weekends / weeknights, stop running campaigns during those times. Thereafter, you can move your budget for regular business hours.

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9 Best Ways to Optimize Your Images For an SEO Boost

Do you run an online store? If yes, then image optimization is an art that you want to master. Right from attracting target audience to perusing Google images for minimizing website load time, image optimization makes for a crucial part of developing a successful eCommerce website.

Many times, you must have noticed that your product pictures never show up while doing a Google image search. Have you been wondering if adding "Alt Tags" to images will do good for your website?
JPEG, GIF and PNG - What difference does it make?

Here, you will get to know about the 9 best ways to optimize your images to boost SEO:

1. Name Your Images

Make sure you do it descriptively. Also use simple plain English while doing so. Do not get into the habit of keeping the default file name given by your camera. Use of acceptable keywords will help your webpage rank well on search engines. Effective image optimization demands highly descriptive, keyword-rich file names. Search engines will crawl the text on your webpage. They will also search for keywords within image file names.

2. Optimize Alt Tags Wisely

Alt tags are a great text alternative to images, especially when a browser is unable to render them. In cases, where image is rendered, hovering over it with mouse pointer will let you see the alt tag text developed for that image. This depends on your browser settings. The alt attribute adds SEO value to the website. Better rankings for a website can be achieved by adding appropriate alt tags to the images and associating keywords with images. Use of alt tags is the best way for eCommerce products show up in Google image and web search. For image optimization, fill out each alt tag for each product image on your website.

Make sure you follow simple rules for alt tags:

- Describe images in plain English.
- Selling products with model number or serial numbers? Use these in your alt tag too.
- Strictly avoid keyword stuffing in your alt tags.
- Do not use alt tags for decorative images. You may be penalized by search engines for over-optimization.

Carry out a sanity check on your website on a regular basis. You must take a close look at the source of your web pages. Assess properly to see if your alt tags are filled out.

3. Create a Strategy for Image Dimensions and Product Angles

Displaying multiple angles of a product is a trend that has caught up really well these days. The best way you can capitalize on these pictures is to fill out alt tags. Simply create unique alt tags for each product shot. Add descriptions to base alt tag. This will help potential searchers land on your website. Google will reward you with searchers.

Avoid placing the largest image on your webpage as it lengthens the page load time owing to the larger file size related to the large image. The idea is to shrink the dimensions using source code. Give an option to view larger image in a pop-up or let it displayed on a separate webpage.

4. Reduce the Image File Size

Making your target audience wait for 3 seconds for a website load is ok. 5 seconds is too much! It is a sin! As per a research report published by Amazon, the company lost around $1.6 billion in a year if their pages slow down by 1 second. It is important to understand that Google uses page load time as a crucial factor in their ranking algorithm. So if your images take a lot of time to load, you are actually bidding adieu to your customers.

The best thing to do here is to decrease the image file size on your webpage. "Save for Web" command in Adobe Photoshop is a good way to do that. Ecommerce images should be kept under 70kb. Adjust the image to the lowest file size acceptable when using the command.

Use some of the other online tools if you do not have Photoshop. image editing. Some of the best image editing tools include PicMonkey, Pixlr, and FotoFlexer.

5. The Best Image File Type to Use

Three most common file types used to post images include:

- JPEG
- GIF
- PNG

JPEG (or .jpg) images are the old file type. These have turned into standard image of the World Wide Web. These images can be compressed significantly, resulting in high quality images with small file sizes.

GIFs (.gif) are lower quality images. These are used for more simple images. For instance, webmasters use these as icons and decorative images. The format supports animation and using these for plain and simple images on a webpage is a great option. However, for complex images and pictures, GIFs do not make for an attractive option.

PNG images are gaining popularity faster as an alternative to GIFs. The format supports a wide range of colors as compared to GIFs. The best part is that these do not degrade over time with re-saves. The file sizes may be larger as compared to JPEG images.

Be cautious while using PNG-24 image which is over three times larger in file size than the PNG-8 version.

Here are some tips to follow when choosing file formats:

- JPEGs make for the best option for most ecommerce sites. These are high on quality and the smaller file size.
- Strictly avoid using GIFs for large product images. The size is very large and cannot be reduced. Use of GIFs for thumbnails and decorative images is good.
- PNGs are a good alternative for both JPEGs and GIFS. PNG-8 is better than PNG-24 when using pictures for a product. PNGs are great as simple decorative images owing to their extremely small file size.

Use of an image editing software will let you save images to any of the file types discussed above.

6. Learn To Handle Thumbnails

Most ecommerce sites use thumbnail images. These provide an excellent way to scan category pages fast sans taking up too much space. Although thumbnails are great, you need to be careful. These can affect page loading times negatively. You may lose customers when they hold up category pages from loading. So you need to reduce the size of thumbnail file sizes as far as possible. Also vary the alt tag text. Duplicate text use bigger versions of the same image. Create the different alt text. Lastly, Allow thumbnail to be indexed instead of the large image.

7. Decorative Images – Beware!!

Most websites have an assortment of decorative images. These may include buttons, background images, and borders. An image that's irrelevant or unrelated to product / service is tagged as 'decorative'.

Decorative images tend to add aesthetic appeal to a webpage. However, these usually lead to huge combined file size. Also it slows down the load times. Hence, you need to take a closer look at decorative images to stop them from impairing your website's capacity  to convert visitors into customers.

The first thing to do is assess the file sizes of decorative images on web pages. Thereafter, you must make use of a template that reduces file sizes for website pages. Some of the best ways you can reduce file sizes of decorative images include:

- Convert borders or simple patterns into PNG-8 or GIFs.
- Use CSS for creating colored areas instead of using images.
- Large wallpaper-style background image should be reduced in size as far as possible sans ruining the quality of the image. Try cutting out the middle of the background image. Try converting it to a flat color or transparent. This is one of the best ways to reduce file size to a significant amount.

8. Be Cautious While Using Content Delivery Networks

Content delivery networks (CDNs) are now categorised as the most profitable place to host images and other media files. These help increase load times for your page and help fix bandwidth issues. The only drawback is backlinks. Backlinks are critical for SEO. The more you have, the better your website performs in the search engines.

Placing images on content delivery network will remove the images from your domain and placing it on a content delivery network domain. This means when someone links to your images, they link to the content delivery network website. In short, you must keep yourself from the temptation to follow anything just because it is "trendy". Assessors if it is the best move for your business before joining the bandwagon.

A CDN makes for a great choice if your website does a lot of business each month as it fixes bandwidth issues. For a website that gets "thousands" of visitors a day, simply continue with present hosting situation as it will easily handle the load.

Getting professional help will strategize your move in a way that's best for your business.

9. Test Images

The ultimate aim of image optimization is to help boost your bottom line. Once you have focussed on reducing size of files and getting search engines index these, it is time for testing images and see what precisely converts into more business.

You should test number of product images per page. Many non-hosted ecommerce sites face problems with loading time, the main thing to focus on is to reduce the number of images on a single page. This helps boost click-through rates and sales. However, in some cases, supplying a lot of images per page may actually boost user experience and result in more sales. The best way to find out what works is to test.

You can test angles preferred by your target audience. Providing views your clients wish to see will ultimately increase overall loyalty. Try surveying customers about their preferences while viewing product shots.

Also test the number of product listings you need to have on category pages. This will help you see what works best for your target audience and their shopping experience.

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Value of Money – A Facet of Service Web Design Freelancers Should Focus On

So you are a freelancer and satisfied with your work? This situation seems like as if you have a perfect professional life. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. A lot of freelance web designer feels that they have reached a plateau. There are times when they like to take up more challenging tasks. Another important thing is to work with clients who will pay more and appreciate the efforts made. Every hardworking freelance wants to work with clients who realize and respect the concept of value for money.

This is precisely where you start off with your journey from a freelancer to entrepreneur. The transition takes time, but you need to keep making efforts. It involves taking on more work, additional projects and learning simple yet effective ways to market yourself. These small steps will lead you to establishing your own business.

Being a theme pre-built websites user will help. It helps you know the overall cost of your work. You also know that using the right tools in the appropriate manner will help you save time and deliver excellent results.

Passion is Power

Passion is what can take you to the path of success. It should be topped smartly with business thinking.
Since the concept - 'value for money' is powerful, a freelancer must understand it well prior to applying it. Start off by having a close look at your work process. Make sure you realize the value against time, energy, and creativity (know the amount of time spent for each). Start by showing clients why your work and efforts were worth more than what they pay.

Value of Tools

Know the overall value of tools. Start by having a look at a WordPress theme of your choice. Try assessing if it is functioning the way it should. Is it really helping you provide value for money for clients. Are you travelling that extra mile and spending extra time installing themes? Have you thought of setting up new options? Customizing layouts are another thing you should focus on.

Assess the Theme

Prior to using a theme or a prebuilt website, assess it on all aspects of functions. It should be customizable, easy to use, and should not demand any complex coding. You should be well aware of the features that help you most in your work. Do you think the tool provides an effective way for spending resources?

Pick Wisely

Pick a pre-built theme wisely. Look for one that offers professional-level designs, matches your client’s niche, and customizable. Know the amount of time you will save. The best thing to do is show your clients editable layouts. It saves time.

Three Basic Elements

For delivering superior services, you need the following the three basic elements:

- Skill
- Experience
- Communication Skill

If you aren't getting enough requests for additional work from previous clients or they aren't referring you to others, there are areas you need to look for improvement.

Work Smarter

This is important whether you are a freelancer or not. Working harder may get you results, but working smart will attract success. Keep your eyes and ears open. The moment you see an area that requires improvement, start working on it. Also, research areas that demand help. You need to learn and explore more about the latest design trends, standards, rules, and much more. Listen to your clients well and adhere to their instructions keeping in mind the value for money concept.

Develop Yourself

Once you are capable of producing more value for yourself, you actually work towards offering benefits to all. Invest your time and money wisely. So start assessing your investments individually,  especially in terms of value for money. Towards the end of the month, you will get an idea of things that work well and the spots you require working on to improve. It is all about paying attention. When you pay attention, you facilitate the process of transition from freelancer to entrepreneur. This way, you become your own marketing resource.

Enjoy Your Job

Avoid doing a job just because you have to do it. Taking up a project and accomplishing it successfully is important. However, you should pay attention to small yet consistent improvements on a personal level. Remember, you have multiple skills and talents. Each of these can work for a resource that helps you supply value for money. All you need to do is understand these resources better and the best way to put these into use.

Take-away Ideas

It is crucial that you use value for money as criteria for a test to see the way your work impacts others. This will help you assess relationship with clients in a different light. Also the tools you use should be analyzed well to know if they are providing ample value for money. One of the best examples of such tools is 'Be Theme'. It offers over 220+ pre-built websites to users. When used wisely in conjunction with your niche skills and talents, you can make a huge success out of each project. Studies have revealed that over 50,000 designers love it.

In a Nutshell

It is important that you set a goal towards being a dynamic human resource that clients would look forward to for 'real' value. The mission is definitely achievable with dedicated efforts and using tools.

Good Luck!

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