Business Services

Your Site Won’t Succeed Without a Good Shopping Cart

By Secure Net Shop

Do you have an ecommerce website? Are you planning on making one? In either case, you probably already know that in order to have a successful site, you’re going to need to include all the necessary ingredients. This will can mean all kinds of things, but let’s start with one of the vital basics that so many people don’t put much thought in and later regret.

Every site needs an internet shopping cart for their customers to use. It’s really no different than a grocery store in that regard. That being said, it’s a lot different in some very important regards. You’re probably not worried about people stealing your groceries when using a cart at the store. However, your customers are most likely thinking about this all the time when they’re on your site. They’re right to, as well, when you consider how many people get their identities stolen throughout the year because they shopped online.

That’s why you must invest considerable time into finding the right website shopping cart for your needs. Fortunately, this doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money as, these days, there are all kinds of affordable options out there to choose from that will be good for any budget.

Every ecommerce secure net shop has to have a few things, no matter what industry it’s working in. Amongst these is a reliable web shopping cart for customers to use. Fortunately, Secure Net Shop has exactly what you’re looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trends That Will Drive Digital Advertising in 2015

Digital advertising is an ever-changing art, and we must remain adaptable to the times. New opportunities are occurring almost daily, and the industry has made some significant changes that have cut down on click fraud. There has never been a better time to enter the market, compete on honest ground and grow great campaigns. These trends will drive much of that growth, and it’s likely you will experience some or all of these changes on the consumer and advertiser sides.

Video Ads

Video ads offer an important advantage that banner advertising has had trouble keeping up with. Banner ads can be effective at selling ideas and brands, but video ads are effective at capturing engagement. Expect mobile video to become a topic of much discussion this year as the industry determines methods of building a proper video ad that sells.

Viewable Impressions

Click fraud brought a grey cloud over the industry for a bit, but things have changed and sunnier skies are on the horizon. With viewable impressions, advertisers can be sure that actual humans are seeing their ads. Measured on both the supply and buy side, traffic must conform to specific standards before the marketer is charged for the view.

Native Ads

Millenials don’t respond to sales lingo. It’s become more common knowledge as time goes on, and advertisers looking to reach this group will need to pivot to native advertising if they want to reach this market. Native ads are placed within content, and often have significant research and attention devoted to them.

Each of these trends represents significant opportunities, perhaps an opening for a layered approach to all of them.

Bio: Since the early 2000s, Ted Dhanik has grown brands and businesses online. Ted Dhanik practices digital advertising with an emphasis on results-driven marketing. Search for Ted Dhanik to find more tips on growing your campaigns.

Why Choosing a Full-Service Solution is Good Business

A full-service experience can be more effective than a buy-side platform. These solutions start the process by reviewing and assisting in the preparation of your campaigns. A team of people will be working with you throughout the process, so you’re not merely handing this off to someone else. You set the goals, they handle the optimization.

If you’re interested in growing your campaigns through the usage of a full-service solution, read on for other benefits.

Goals and Targets

Many newbies don’t know where to begin. It’s difficult to determine what you should be looking for, and even harder to determine what is or is not working on your campaign. Even experienced players have a tough time breaking into a new market. That’s the prime advantage to a full-service offering. The process of launching, testing and scaling a campaign is performed for you.

You have to designate the conversion rate you’re aiming for and the provider takes care of the rest. They work hard to match your campaign by interest and demographic to users that are likely to convert, then they work on improving your campaign to reduce unnecessary spend and improve conversion rates. This could involve improving your targeting, making changes to the dates and times your ads show, or increasing bids to bring more traffic to a well-performing landing page.

Of course, this process can take time. It’s a good idea to budget for a few months at a time because some campaigns may require additional testing before they produce to their full potential.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is the CEO of engage:BDR, a digital advertising company specializing in mobile and desktop distribution. Ted Dhanik has been in digital advertising since the early 2000s, and is active as a mentor with Start Engine. For more information about Ted Dhanik, visit engage:BDR.

Uses of the Time Clock System

Written by Allied Time

The time machine has considerably evolved in the workplace. These clocks now serve for different purposes and are increasingly gaining popularity in organizations. Several years ago, the time clock was simply used to record attendance and working hours. The evolution of this system has brought considerable advantage in the workplace.

1. Precise Time Tracking

Prior to time clocking systems, attendance records had to be kept independently. The employees had to present their own time sheets which had to be validated by the employer. Errors in estimates could easily have occurred in these situations. The timeclock prevents these errors.

2. Tracking Working Hours

Some organizations pay overtime work or reward their employees for staying late to resolve issues. The time clock makes it easy to determine which employee remained in the office till late and which employee did not participate in the task.

3. Multi-location clocking and Web and Phone-based systems

Some timeclocks can easily be networked with others located in remote places. Employees can also use their phone or laptops to connect to web or phone apps in order to enter their current locations and track their number of hours worked. This is particularly convenient for field employees.

4. Enforce Company Policies

The time clock can be used to determine a certain behavior in employees who are recurrently late. It can also be used to determine whether employees are taking adequate lunch breaks after a given number of hours.

Allied Time is a company specializing in time and attendance systems since the 1960s.

Real-Time: The Difference Between Buy-Side Platforms and AdWords

The impact of real-time is huge for the world of advertising. Predictive advertising feels right around the corner for those in the know, but real-time bidding and reporting offers tremendous value to marketers who can tap into this data for actionable results.

AdWords data is usually served on a delay. They maintain an extremely large inventory, and deal with many buyers at once, so the process has a natural delay to help manage the flow. Buy-Side platforms offer the advantage of a pool of placements ready for sale. As a result, bidders are in control of their data and their ads.

Reach

In order to understand what makes placements so valuable, consider the placements that AdWords offers. All placements are run through the Google Display Network. This is only one source. An buy-side platform pools from multiple sources, using placements all over the Web. With proper targeting, you will be able to reach any member of your audience when you utilize a buy-side platform to purchase this wider range of inventory.

Targeting

AdWords limits targeting to context, leaving you to guess at user intent. Buy-side platforms offer the ability to target granularly. Industry wide, we’re not ready to target specific users but we can target by extremely specific groups. Age and gender are now a given, but marketers can explore types of business and education level for the targets they seek out.

Final Thoughts

One of the areas most impacted by real-time is reporting. Marketers can view their campaign performance and make judgments on which bids or targets are working best within minutes of deployment. This can take up to 18 hours on a platform like AdWords.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is a passionate direct marketing guru and industry insider. With fifteen years of experience in banner advertising, Ted Dhanik is ready to help businesses harness mobile to increase conversions. Contact Ted Dhanik to launch your first campaign with engage:BDR.

How to Manage Time for Off-Site Contractors

The world of business is changing, and it’s becoming common for employers to work with contractors off-site. This practice isn’t new, but the Web has made it much easier to find good help, hire them and manage their hours remotely. If you’re looking to take advantage of this growing independent work force, you’ll need to consider all aspects of hiring a temporary contractor in the same light as your full-time workers. You will need to manage their time clocks, provide them with paychecks at a steady period, and log the hours they have worked so you can report that expense on your tax forms.  Here are some tips to manage those off-site workers.

Hire the Right Employee

It takes a certain kind of person to live the freelance lifestyle. A freelancer doesn’t have a boss, per say, their only responsibility is to the client. There are freelancers that are very deadline oriented, and those who tend to let projects fall by the way side. Dependability is what you need most when it comes to working with someone off site. It will be your responsibility to delegate work to them, but they should be able to complete the work you are asking for within the time frame you have specified.

Supervise them Properly

If you never bother to follow up with your contractors, they won’t check up on you. It’s not their job to communicate goals and project hopes, it’s their job to produce the work you ask for. Set employee milestones, and clearly communicate measurable goals for the project. This is for your benefit too. At the end of the work, you’ll have an easier time deciding whether the freelancer is worth using a second time if you can measure how well he or she performed against the bar that you set. You should consider providing them with a time clock online, so you can see how long their projects are taking them and what they are doing with that time.

Communicate Frequently

Make sure you periodically check up on your contractor, inquiring about project status and if they have questions moving forward. Make sure to respond timely, and also provide your contractor with a point of contact that leads directly to their supervisor (most likely you).

Final Thoughts

The more attention that is paid to the contractor, the better the work you receive will be. Manage the goals of your contractor, and provide them with the tools and resources they need to complete their job.

Related Story: Optimize Your Employee’s Time

Related Story: Manage Satellite Employees
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Allied Time sells time clocks for businesses. Order a new time machine from Allied Time to manage your employees more efficiently.

How to Automate Campaign Deployment

Automation allows you to do a lot more within your day. Through the automation of a few menial tasks, you can save your brainpower and energy for things that require your full attention. Automating small tasks, like reporting, help to save time throughout your day. If you schedule your campaigns, and automate their deployment, you’ll be as close to “set and forget” as you can get.

Save Settings

You need to start by saving all of the settings related to your campaign. If you can do this within your traffic network, that’s a great place to start. Your other option is to build a spreadsheet. There is a bit of manual labor here, but the idea is that you’ll create a template to launch new campaigns with the same settings. Save things like location targeting, demographic targeting, ad copy, keywords, and anything else relevant to your campaign.

Automate Times to Show Ads

Day parting is a technique that allows you to divide up your day into chunks you can use to show display advertising. You might find, for instance, that users don’t respond well to your ads on weekends. Setting your display advertising to only show ads on weekdays would save you money, and hopefully improve your conversion rates.

“Set and Forget” Myth

Set and forget is largely a myth, at least in the traditional sense. Automating a portion of your campaign is not a substitute for watching the results. You’ll find that automation will help you deploy campaigns, but you will still need to analyze what customers are doing if you hope to grow.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is the CEO of the premium digital advertising company, engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik began marketing at companies like MySpace and LowerMyBills. Today, Ted Dhanik is based out of Los Angeles and helps businesses develop through online lead generation.

Tips for Display Advertising Efficiency on Mobile

Display advertising isn’t as simple as posting an ad and calling it a day. You need to pay great attention to the user experience and serve an ad that loads efficiently and conveys your message. Mobile brings a host of new issues related to file sizes, so it’s crucial that you update yourself on proper guidelines.

Size of Ad

The size of your ad depends on the publisher. There are only a select few ad sizes to choose from, such as the feature phone banner or smartphone banner. The size of the ad doesn’t just dictate who can see your copy; it also affects load speed, and ultimately the views on your ad. Try to also remain mindful of file size, striving for under 5 KB in small ad sizes, under 15 KB for medium sized ads, and under 30 KB for large ones.

Color Usage

The screen size on mobile means that certain colors don’t mesh as well with each other as they might on desktop. It’s harder to build themes, because clarity of copy is much more important. In these situations, it’s best to fall back on the light/dark themes for color. Light text against a dark background is almost always easy to see, no matter the lighting conditions at the time.

Ad Scaling

Ad scaling is a fairly new concept in banner advertising, but it happens with rich media ads frequently. Ad scaling refers to ads that seem to grow in size based on how the user views the screen, or what he clicks on. Ad scaling on mobile can hijack the browsing experience and lead to a poor browsing experience for the user. Always test your ads before you deploy to avoid these unintended consequences.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is a direct marketing expert with industry experience with some of the biggest brands online. Ted Dhanik is the co-founder of engage:BDR, and its CEO. Find out how to build leads with display advertising tips from Ted Dhanik.

Small Businesses Need Time Clocks

By Allied Time

If you’re running a small business, I don’t need to tell you that you’re already running an uphill battle. Furthermore, you probably aren’t interested in spending any money you otherwise wouldn’t have to. Small businesses need excess resources more than anyone.

One important option is making time clocks a regular part of working hours. This is a huge step in the right direction of making sure you’re getting everything from your employees.

Even huge companies spend a large bulk of their overhead on employees, so small businesses have it even worse. That’s why it’s so important you make sure those you are paying are constantly working when they’re on the clock.

While a time clock at work may make you think of a number of old fashioned models, that’s simply not the way it is anymore. Nowadays, you can go with a Lathem time clock or some other high-tech version. Models like Lathem time will make it easy for you to track your staff’s hour and impossible for them to get around it.

You can optimize these benefits even more by synching it with software that can provide you with easy reporting methods so you can get a big picture at any time. Small businesses need all the help they can get and this is an excellent way to do it.

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For all your company’s timekeeping needs, it pays to visit Allied Time’s website. They have everything from an electronic time clock to other famous brands that will help you track your business’ workday with ease.

How to Improve Your Online Display Advertising

Written by Ted Dhanik

Keyword-based targeting leaves a lot to the imagination. Even when you want to post banners, keyword-based advertising leaves too many variables that a successful campaign must wade through to see huge conversions. Before you start throwing money at testing principles, focus on targeting the right users with your ads and your conversions will rise.

Placement

Knowing the sites on which your ads will be posted helps you determine whether the placement is good for your market. For example, you wouldn’t run a mortgage ad on a crafts site. The two don’t mix, and the audience isn’t likely to shop for a mortgage. You can use Analytics to determine some of where that traffic comes from, but your traffic provider may be able to provide some insight as well. Ask about specific traffic segments that may include clusters of similar websites. Your provider may even have some tips on which targeting settings would help your banner advertising campaign would get the best start.

Targeting

Demographic targeting is one of the most effective tools you have at your disposal. With demographic targeting, you can adjust your campaigns to meet specific qualities that you need to convert from your target market. Targeting also means the difference between appearing on websites that may be relevant and targeting websites that your audience specifically checks for products like yours.

There is also retargeting, which focuses on audience members that have already seen your ads and visited your website. This tactic is very useful if you have poor conversion rates, as it only targets people for multiple viewings, eliminating the volume of new customers that may be disinterested in your messages.

Analysis

Knowing more than just whether someone converted is the key to forming a strong campaign. You should be tracking which websites they came from, using parameters that both you and your traffic provider can recognize. This way, your display advertising will show up in your own analytics software and track the sites that hosted the ad in your traffic provider’s analytics. Piece these two bits of information together and you will have data you can mine from to learn more about customer behavior.

Final Thoughts

Display advertising requires plenty of testing if you want to scale a campaign successfully. Using these tips, you will be able to find the data you need on placements and target those placements effectively. A combination of demographic targeting, focusing on placing your ads on the proper websites, and analyzing the data your ads generate will help you build your customer base.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is a display media expert. With over fifteen years of experience in sales and direct marketing, , Ted Dhanik is poised to help businesses run aggressive banner advertising campaigns online. Contact Ted Dhanik to learn more about engage:BDR, a premium advertising network for online marketers.

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