When you’re embarking on your own business quest, it’s important to learn how to enhance your online presence via a business website.
Although you can always hire professional designers, it can be a substantial amount of money for a beginner entrepreneur.
That’s why many business owners decide to launch their websites on the WordPress platform. According to the stats published by VentureBeat, about 30% of all the websites on the Internet are built on this service.
If you want to follow in their footsteps, you should learn more about some useful plugins that can ensure better functionality for your website.
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
Every website owner needs to know how many visitors have visited their website during a specific period.
Other metrics, such as visitors’ locations or heat maps are also of great importance for business and website owners.
To make your WordPress more practical, you can get the Google Analytics Dashboard for WP plugin.
Instead of roaming from the Google Analytics tab to your WP dashboard, this addition will let you keep all the important traffic data in one place.
From the page views and sessions per user to device stats and locations, you’ll be getting a comprehensive insight visitors’ habits on your website.
This handy plugin also enables you to easily track outbound links, users’ downloads from your website, and affiliate links.
WPtouch Mobile Plugin
If we’re to believe some current polls, the whole world has gone mobile. To be more precise, 52.2% of the entire website traffic in the world was made via mobiles in 2018.
Therefore, it’s clear that every website needs to be as responsive as possible to mobiles and other similar gadgets.
If you’ve chosen WordPress for your website platform, you can simply optimize it for mobiles using the WPtouch Mobile plugin.
Not only that it will adapt your website to mobile users, but this add-on will also enable you to change the fonts, colors, as well as navigation options in a simple way. You don’t have to know how to code or use other programs.
If you realize at one point that you have so many mobile users that running a regular website doesn’t pay off, you can simply transform your website into a mobile app.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
Apart from high traffic and mobile responsiveness, every contemporary WP website needs to attend to their visual appeal.
As explained by experts from the logo design Houston office, a custom business identity is important for every single website, regardless of the niche.
In addition to the logo and the brand name, your WP website needs to contain original but light photos.
This is where the ShortPixel Image Optimizer plugin comes on stage.
With this special tool, you can compress as many as 100 pictures per month for free. That is more than enough a capacity for a new business. As your compression appetite grows, it’s possible to pay for a bigger package.
This plugin will keep the original photos in another folder, which is a great way to keep all your website images in one place.
What’s more, you can also compare the regular and the compressed version of the same picture to see if you’re contented with the results.
Today, when we’re all trying to reduce the load time as much as possible, this plugin can do wonders for your website.
P3 Profiler
Speaking of the load time and speed, new website owners should make sure that they don’t overdo with the number of plugins.
On the one hand, you shouldn’t hesitate to install the ones that will improve your website.
On the other, some of you might end up setting up more plugins than necessary.
If you notice that your website has started slowing down or the bounce rate has increased, you need the P3 Profiler plugin.
With this addition, you’ll be able to identify how each installed plugin affects your website performance.
Also, you’ll get a chance to look at the visual representation of plugin activities on a timeline. That way, you’ll be able to see for yourself which of the installed plugins play an important role on your website and which ones are idle. The latter ones will most likely cause slowdowns in the website performance.
Apart from that, this plugin enables you to track the use of different plugins over the course of time.
In turn, this will help you compare their current and previous usability.
The bottom line is that you’ll know which plugins should be deleted, due to their inactivity.
Broken Link Checker
Apart from launching a well-organized website with relevant content and proper WP plugins, it’s also important to optimize it for search engines.
While every single part of the website plays a certain role in SEO, you should pay special attention to broken links. If your website and blog are brimming with links that lead nowhere or show the 404 error, your visitors might find you messy.
The Broken Link Checker plugin conducts the background link monitoring process for all your posts and links.
Once a broken link is discovered, a notification will appear on the WP dashboard. Also, you’ll be notified via email.
All the links that don’t work anymore will be displayed in a different color inside the posts.
One of the greatest advantages of this WP-plugin is that you can manipulate those links directly from the plugin. So, there’s no need to manually update each such link.
Removing or updating broken links is like taking out garbage from your home. It has to be done all the time in order to keep the website organized and relevant to its visitors.
Conclusion
One of the reasons why WordPress is the leading website platform is its simplicity and affordability.
However, it also takes some time to learn how to make the most out of your WP website, especially if it’s used for business.
Plugins are those special ingredients that can turn every WP website into a functional, user-friendly unit.
Since there are thousands of different plugins, it’s important to find the best ones for your needs.
We hope that this guide will be useful for entrepreneurs who are thinking about launching their first website.
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Author Byline: Liam Collins is a tech pundit and Web enthusiast working at TuiSpace.com. He spends most of his time reading and writing about the current affairs in the world of information technology. When he isn’t working, he likes going for long bike rides and walks in nature.
According to a report, 60 percent of internet access come from mobile devices. Additionally, Google researches found out that 67 percent of smartphone users in their survey said that they are "more likely to buy from a mobile site."
So what does this mean for you? Well, mobile is something you can't ignore anymore. It's here to stay, it's powerful, and is a necessity.
In this post, we'll walk you through with the top ten mobile advertising tools to help you promote your business:
1. Adjust
Adjust is a mobile analytics company that lets you understand the ROI of your different campaigns.
It has features like behavioral segmentation, mobile attribution, and looking for patterns in App store reviews. As a result, you can better measure a user's behavior throughout every stage of the funnel.
The tool also helps you out in areas like:
User acquisition and retention- The software has an adjust tracker link so that you can effectively track users the very moment they start interacting with anything of your campaign ads. You can also monitor the type of users that open your app, how many are retained in the process, etc.
Retargeting and re-engagement- There's no doubt that upselling previous customers are easier than gaining new ones. So one of the most practical ways to get more engagement in your app not acquiring new users, but merely retargeting the previous ones who already have downloaded your app.
2. Tune
Tune helps you track your mobile ad campaigns across various publishers and networks.
“Mobile Marketing Console,” is one of the tools that Tune provides, letting you measure engagement and track data during every step of the customer's journey.
3. AppsFlyer
Similar to Tune, AppsFlyer lets you gain a more extensive insight on the performance of your mobile ads. For instance, if you have created an app that you're trying to market, then this product can be perfect for you.
You'll also gain insight on the following:
Real-time data- You'll get an extensive list of real-time data (clicks, conversion rates, the total number of installs, a full-funnel view, etc.)
Tracking user retention- Lets you do a cohort analysis of various user groups that come in through different marketing channels. That way, you'll know which channels are bringing in the most loyal customers.
Retargeting attribution- Through retargeting attribution, you can start retargeting campaigns to inactive users, so that they can start using your products again.
4. Tatango
Tatango makes it possible for agencies to start mobile SMS marketing campaigns for clients. It also gives everything a business needs to jumpstart a campaign such as:
Short Code Provisioning- In its most basic form, shortcodes short-form phone numbers utilized by companies to send out a mass number of messages. Tatango gives shortcodes for businesses in just a matter of months.
Software- It also has user-friendly software applications that you can utilize to launch your messaging campaigns.
Strategy- Tatango has mobile messaging professionals that will give you sound advice on how you can create your mobile messaging campaign at every step of the way.
Compliance- Handles all compliance requirements without giving you complicated documents/ guides before starting your campaign.
5. Kiip
Kiip lets you advertise to people in mobile in a way that you'll love. Most of the ads are presented in "a moment of delight."
For instance, a local business can give a voucher for a free drink in a fitness app after a user has completed a goal.
Since users experience a strong emotional response in the experience, a positive association with the brand is formed, which encourages users to take action on the ad.
6. Yelp
Perhaps one of the best places to run mobile ads are the apps that people often use when they are on the go. Yelp is one of them.
People are using this app to search for restaurants, nightlife activities, etc.
Therefore, if you own a business that's dependent on a physical location, you can significantly improve your sales by keeping your information on Yelp up to date.
It also helps you run targeted location-specific ads to achieve premium placements in Yelp's search results and your competitor's business pages.
7. Adagogo
Adgogo is perfect if you're a small business looking for the tool for a modest marketing budget. It allows you to craft ads quickly, and target them to particular locations to improve your conversions.
Moreover, you can either show the ad on a particular region or show it to smartphone users that are in a certain radius of a given location.
8. Localytics
Localytics is a mobile analytics company that lets you track engagement on your own mobile app. It helps you track massive amounts of data so that you can improve engagement in the entire customer journey.
9. Criteo
Criterio helps you deliver personalized advertisements on various devices for customers. It utilizes machine learning technology, which can predict when will users more likely to engage with an ad.
Based on these insights, Criterio can help you launch highly targeted ad campaigns on the right mobile apps. This tool allows you to get premium ad placement on the right products.
10. Facebook Mobile Ads
Facebook is the platform you'd probably want to start experimenting with if you're going to start running mobile ads. It's because a staggering 60% of Facebook users are using mobile devices to access the site. Facebook Ad Examples
Advertising on Facebook's mobile platform gives a better overall return. The click-through rates are 12x higher on mobile than with a desktop. Facebook Video Ad Examples
Here are ways how you can get your ads on a user's mobile feeds:
Sponsored Page Ads- When posting ads, you can opt to run the ad and show it to people who are not directly your followers or friends. You can utilize sponsored page ads to run offers and generate greater engagement.
Promoted Page Ads- Quite similar with sponsored page ads, but the only difference is that promoted posts are not allowed to be shared outside your fan network on the platform. Meanwhile, sponsored posts are presented on feeds that are not directly your existing followers. Instagram Ad Examples
Over to You
Mobile advertising has proven to be one of the most effective, and yet underutilized marketing channels. By utilizing these tools to promote your business, and by working closely with the top mobile advertising agencies, you can achieve the results that you want in the long run.
SEO is like a semi-mystical art that seems to be at the core of all successful business ventures in the digital age. This isn’t too surprising when you consider the fact that SEO is all about increasing the visibility of your product or service, so that the many denizens of the Internet can find you.
SEO is, in other words, the ultimate form of marketing, since it brings attention to your business in the most fundamental way possible.
There’s a lot involved in a successful SEO strategy, including off-site link building, which can be conducted via guest blogging, and so on.
Before you get to any of that stuff, however, it’s important to get a handle on the most basic and fundamental elements of SEO – in other words, getting your on-site SEO protocol under control ValentLegal.ca.
Get comfortable with using 301 redirects
A major element of successful SEO is getting high-quality links pointing to the right pages of your website. These links will inevitably come, in part, from other pages on your site, but should primarily come from other websites that have a good ranking on Google, that are well trusted, and that don’t have any reputation for being dubious.
In theory, the more high-quality backlinks you have pointing to a particular webpage of yours, the more SEO-boosting “link juice,” as it is sometimes known, will be imparted, and the better that webpage will rank.
So, bearing all this in mind, you can see why it would be a potentially devastating thing to have to reformat or recreate a particular webpage, and have it become associated with a different URL. While this process is often inevitable, it can lead to a loss of all your SEO ranking if it’s not handled in the right way.
So, what is the “right way” to handle such a situation? Well, a 301 redirect, of course.
A 301 redirectis essentially a way of redirecting an old URL that has links pointing towards it, to a new webpage, while also signalling that all associations with the past URL should be transferred to the new one.
A 301 redirect allows you to recreate or redo your webpages, without having to start from scratch in the SEO sense.
Research your keywords carefully, and find the right niche to corner
All SEO starts with the right keywords, and those keywords aren’t just things that you think sounds cool, or that roughly correspond to your business idea.
To identify the right keywords to embed in your site and content, you’ll need to do some independent research, likely using Google’s external keyword tool, and other similar services.
Understand that every keyword you might choose to use will have a certain associated search volume. If your keyword has a truly enormous monthly search volume, the odds that you’re going to be able to rank for that term on the first page of Google search results is minimal. The competition is simply likely to be too strong.
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that you can expect to remain in perpetual obscurity, at least when it comes to Google search results.
The other potential pitfall is that you choose a keyword term that has far too few monthly searches – perhaps none – and so end up optimising for a largely useless term that gets you no traffic.
Keyword research is something that you should take quite seriously, and do quite diligently. Keep in mind that even small variations in the keywords you use can result in significantly different monthly search volumes.
Understand that “Content is King,” and update your site often
A well-worn truism in the SEO world is that “Content is King.” This sentiment was largely developed as a pushback against the earliest SEO practices that developed, where trash content stuffed with keywords was enough to help sites to rank well on Google and other search engines.
Since then, the algorithms involved have become far more sophisticated, and trying to do this kind of unsophisticated “keyword stuffing” will get your website dropped off the deep end and never seen again on the search engine.
What Google’s algorithm rewards is, fundamentally, high-quality content, specifically of the written variety.
Ensure that your website features well-written content, that clearly and effectively communicates your core message to your audience.
In addition to creating high-quality content for your static webpages, you should also consider running a blog, or otherwise updating your website on a regular basis – as this also seems to be rewarded by Google’s algorithm.
Do you get website envy whenever you look at your competitor’s business website? Perhaps there's looks so much better than yours but you just can’t put your finger on why that is. Or maybe you know that their site is converting a lot more leads into actual sales, while yours isn’t doing all that great on that front.
It can be very disheartening knowing that your website isn’t quite as good as those other companies who you are in head-to-head competition with. It can be even worse if you aren’t really sure why yours isn’t hitting the spot. You might spend hours staring at each site trying to compare them but nothing might jump out at you.
You might be finding it hard to figure out why your site is failing because you just don’t have a good basic knowledge of website design and content marketing. Don’t worry, though; this is where this blog comes in! If you read on, you will find a list of possible reasons as to why your site might not be doing quite as well as your competitor’s.
When was the last time you tried to use your website yourself? If you haven’t been on it and clicked around for quite a while, it’s about time you went back to it. You might find that the site is very difficult to navigate around or some of the links on it might even be broken. If either of these are the case then they could be damaging your SEO, let alone making it very frustrating for your customers and clients to use. So, first things first - you need to fix any broken links as soon as you notice them. Then it’s worth checking all the navigational menus and ensure that they make sense and are easy to follow.
Their Website Is Optimized For Mobile Use
Did you know that the majority of web users now look at the internet on their smartphones and tablet devices rather than on laptops and desktop computers? In fact, the use of laptops and desktops has considerably fallen over the past few years. So, you need to make sure that your website can be viewed on these devices with smaller screens. In order for that to be the case, you need to optimize the website’s design for mobile. If you aren’t entirely sure how to do this, you can enlist a web designer to help you out with it. Once your site is a lot more mobile-friendly, you will find that web users stay on it for longer, which will reduce your bounce rate and help your SEO.
Ah, SEO. It’s the thing that many business owners love to hate! They love it because they know that it is super important for their website and can help to direct a lot of web traffic, but they hate it because they just don’t understand it. However, it’s really something that you need to start getting on top of. You need to especially work on your ecommerce SEO if you have an online store as this can help you bring considerable traffic to your site. Thankfully, it can be easy to get your SEO back on track after quite a bit of neglect. One of the first things you should do is to hire an SEO consultant who can help you turn things around for the better. It would also be worth improving the quality of your content and ensuring that all the metadata is correct.
Your website is there to provide your customers with all of the essential information that they might need about your company. So, it’s important that any kind of information that someone would want to find out about you is on there. This includes pieces of information like your company’s main phone number, its address, and any emails that might be relevant to the general public. They should also be very visible and easy to find. If not, then your customers could be getting very frustrated when they land on your site and spend too long trying to find this kind of information.
Your Competitor Is Taking Advantage Of Mixed Media
It’s always worth taking a look at your competitor’s website every now and then to see the kinds of things that they are using it for and doing with it. For instance, one of the things that they might be doing that you’re not is using mixed media. This includes things like video and photos. While these might not be essential to improving your website’s SEO or functionality, they can keep any web users who land on the site very interested, which will persuade them to stay around for longer. Plus, these kinds of mixed media have also been shown to greatly improve a website’s engagement as well.
One further thing that could be holding your website back is its loading times. If it takes a long time to load then any web users could very quickly become bored and might navigate away from the site before it has fully loaded. Not only that, though, but Google will also be very aware of a site’s loading speeds. If it is incredibly slow, then it will downgrade the site’s overall SEO.
Yours Just Isn’t That Nice To Look At
One final thing that you shouldn’t forget is the overall aesthetics of your page. If it doesn’t look good then there is no way anyone will want to stick around and browse it to see what you have to offer. So, it’s always worth getting it professionally designed by a web designer. Try to stick to web styles that are currently seen to be very trendy as these will really appeal to the majority of web users who land on your page.
If you change things around, your website should start doing better than your competitor’s!
Technically speaking, mobile apps can be built
in virtually any language. C, C#, C++, Python, JavaScript, Java, PHP, you name
it. There is just one caveat- if you are out to build a mobile app in say
Pascal- an almost dead language, you would need to build it from scratch. That
is, you would need to code every single module and API required for your app-
that’s akin to reinventing the wheel over and over again. That’s why no one
does it.
If we talk in particular about Android apps, Java was until quite recently the default choice. Then Google extended support to Kotlin as an official language for Android application development. Now the natural question that everyone’s bound to ask is- is Kotlin better than Java? If so, why? If not, why not? Let’s try and answer each of these questions:
Java
With decades of development experience and
millions of developer community behind it, Java doesn’t really need an
introduction. Parts of Android as an OS itself has been written in Java and
given its wide usage, has a very robust community and resource pool.
What makes Java Special?
Java is platform-independent and thus comes in
handy while building cross-platform apps.
Since parts of the Android SDK is written in
Java, there are no compatibility issues.
Being a product of Oracle, it gets regular
updates
Java is fast. It compiles faster than most of
the languages around
Given its maturity, it has got a wealth of
support tools like frameworks, IDEs, libraries, etc.
Problems with Java
Too much boilerplate code
Compilation, at times, is slower
Kotlin
A product of JetBrains, Kotlin dates back to
2011 but it was only in 2017 that it was sponsored by Google as an official
language for Android. Thereafter it has registered an exponential growth in
popularity and user community. The language is completely interportable with
Java that means any Kotlin code you write would be direly compiled to Java
Bytecode.
What’s special about Kotlin?
It solves the pain of null errors by including
it in its type system
Much more concise than Java that converts to
fewer lines of code that in turn converts to shorter development time and cost
Includes smart extensions that come in handy
while building APIs
Completely interportable with Java
Problems with Kotlin
Steep learning curve
Relatively non-existent developer community
Highlights
Kotlin solves two of the most prominent
problems of Java- its verbosity and null errors, something that everything that
every developer would appreciate once they start using Kotlin.
But to start using Kotlin is perhaps the biggest challenge. App development companies who employ the finest of Java developers won’t just spend resources to solve the problems that expect developers are comfortable with anyway. For new developers, the problem is the exact opposite- they suffer from the problems of Java but simply won’t find expert Kotlin developers as a mentor.
This essentially creates the proverbial
chicken and egg problem. Java developers won’t switch to Kotlin until it has a
vibrant community. But it won’t have a vibrant community unless developers
switch to it.
Final verdict
Now that you have better insight into the comparison of Kotlin vs. Java, the answer to which one’s better is as always- it depends. The momentum that Java has built over the years is its greatest strength. It simply is time and resource-consuming to shift entire teams from Java to Kotlin- thus pushing up the cost of Android app development. On the other hand, if you are just starting out, Kotlin is definitely a better bet for the future.
