ProCraft Web Services

07/14/2022

Why Email is Still One of the Best Marketing Tools

Aside from its use in marketing, email is the standard tool for communicating with customers.

Email has a built in element of trust. Consumers are used to engaging regularly with their email accounts to accomplish important tasks in their life.
For example, consumers rely on it when they purchase online to find out about their order and communicate with the store.

Consumers also rely on email to get appointment and reservation confirmations, to get communications from their doctors, and updated from organizations they belong to.
Email is a popular way to receive virtual tickets that can then be scanned for entry into a venue.

Email has withstood the test of time when other social media platforms and communication methods have come and gone. For example, most businesses find it impractical or not economical to consistently keep in touch with customers by mail or phone.

Email is one of the best ways to consistently stay in touch with your customers, and one of the keys to effective marketing is consistency. It builds trust, and keeps a customer aware that you are there to serve their needs.

To avoid having your customers ignore your email you need to provide value in your email.

One of the best ways to do that is to make your email personalized and targeted. Segment your customers into different lists based on what they like and their preferences. Then the emails sent to each customer list can be personalized in terms of subject line, images and message.

Read the full article on this topic at inc.com

Why Email Marketing Is Still Important in the Digital Era

https://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/why-email-marketing-is-still-important-in-digital-era.html

It's not the coolest new thing. It just gets results.

06/21/2022

Improve Your Email Marketing with a Better Subject Line

You send out marketing emails to all the prospects on your email list. You have a great offer and worthwhile information, but what if no one opens the email?

It all depends on your email’s subject line. What should your recipient think when they see it?

Unfortunately, a majority of email recipients admit to reporting email as spam after reading only the subject line. You definitely don’t want to be labeled a spammer.

Here are some tips to help you write an effective email subject line.
--- Keep it short
--- Make it personal. If possible add recipient's name or company to the subject line.
-- Make it relevant to recipient. Mention how the email contents relates to them, or their industry.
-- Show your value. State in the subject something valuable that you are offering.
-- Create urgency. Mention some time sensitive aspect to what you are offering.

05/14/2022

Increase Website Sales by Focusing on User Search.
Understanding user intent is a key indicator in what that user may want to purchase. However, it can be a mistake to assume strong user intent based on a user just visiting a page on your website. That can be hit or miss.
Instead, what a user searches for is a better indicator of intent then just browsing.
You might notice, for example, that someone searches on a high-intent keyword, goes to a results page, clicks on a link and spends time on a product page, goes back to the results page, clicks on another link, and so on. That shows high intent.
Using Analytics tools it is possible to track events such as particular keyword searches, and then capture those users that do not make a purchase. This group can then be targeted with an email campaign focused on the keyword that they searched for with the goal of turning them into purchasers.
Read more in the article: Using search and email to recognize customer intent at

Browsing is no longer a strong indicator of intent. Search tells you more.

04/13/2021

Changing Your Website’s Domain? Don’t Lose Your Ranking.

If your website has a good ranking on Google, and then you change your website’s domain, your website will lose all its ranking. Which means less leads and less sales.
How do you prevent this from happening? You need to implement a 301 redirect.
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirection. Sending traffic from your old domain to your new domain. Best of all, it passes the full ranking power from your old pages to your new pages at the new domain.
The 301 redirect is indicating to both browsers and search engines that your website pages have moved permanently. Search engines interpret this to mean that not only is the page at a new domain but the content has moved too. The search engines will carry over the full ranking power of your old pages to the new pages, at the new domain.

How to do you add a 301 redirect to your website?
It requires special instructions being added to a special file located with your website files. Specifically, your .htccess file which is used to configure how your web server operates. You can ask your web developer or hosting company to do this for you. This updated .htaccess file is added to the website files of your original website at the old domain. Then when people visit your old domain they will automatically be sent to your new domain. It is recommended to keep hosting your old website for at least one year to redirect all traffic.
Using a 301 redirect when you change your website’s domain will preserve your search ranking and make it easy for visitors to find your website’s new location on the web.

03/21/2021

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on Brand

According to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Amazon's most important piece of intellectual property is their brand name.

According to Jeff Bezos, brands for companies are like reputations for people, and reputations are hard earned and easily lost.
You have to earn trust, one step at a time.

You make a promise and deliver on that promise. You say you will deliver tomorrow, and then actually deliver tomorrow. If you do that over and over again, then you will instill in your company name a reputation.

Jeff Bezos says he likes to think of a brand like a person, and what reputation do they have, and how have they earned that reputation.

02/03/2021

What is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is the service that makes your website available to the world, and allows visitors to see your website on their smartphones and computers.

A website is essentially a collection of computer files that get interpreted by your web browser. If someone wants to see your website they have to access those files, and they will typically do that by using a web browser on their smartphone or computer.

Companies that provide web hosting services operate large data centers. These data centers have high speed, high data transfer connections to the internet. A data center contains a collection of special computers called servers. These servers have special software that gives them the capability to process requests to view a website from the outside world, and then to send out the appropriate files.

These web hosting companies rent out space on their computer servers, which allows you to place your website files on one of their servers. Once your website files are on one of the web host’s computer servers, your website is accessible by anyone from anywhere in the world through a web browser.

When someone wants to visit your website, and they put in your web address, their computer or smartphone connects with the server computer at your web host. Then your web host sends the appropriate webs site files to the visitor’s smartphone or computer, and this makes your website appear in the visitor’s browser.

You might be wondering how that visitor’s smartphone or computer knows how to find and connect to the specific web host server where your website files are stored? Your website domain takes care of this. A website domain is what tells a visitor’s smartphone or computer where to find your website files on the internet. Your domain acts like the address for your website files at the web host you are using, and passes this location information on to the smartphone or computer of anyone trying to view your website.

Web hosting is a requirement of having a website that can be viewed by the world. Without web hosting your website is not available or visible on the internet.

01/11/2021

Grow Your Business with Online Marketing

Online marketing involves promoting your business and growing sales by using social media, pay-per-click ads, website ads, video and email marketing.
The reason online marketing is effective is because you are connecting and reaching your potential customers in the places where they are spending their time – on social media, searching online, watching videos, and using email.
Creating a presence for your business in all these places where your potential customers are spending their time builds familiarity and trust toward your business. The idea is that when these people are ready to buy they will remember you and turn to you first. Now, your business is not some unknown, impersonal entity, but instead you have a positive place in their mind, which means they are more likely to buy from you.
Online marketing becomes even more effective when you use multiple types of online marketing. This creates an even stronger impression and relationship with your potential customers. It also allows you to reach people at different stages of your selling funnel. For example, one method of online marketing can create awareness of your brand, while another can overcome objections.

12/17/2020

Improve Your Website Ranking with Linkable Assets

Are you making use of linkable assets on your website? A linkable asset is any content on your website that another website may want to link to, and is created with the intention of attracting those links.
As you may know, backlinks (links to your website from another website) are highly valuable when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). More backlinks will definitely improve your website’s ranking in search results.

Some examples of linkable assets include: infographics, eBooks, free tools, surveys or studies, how-to articles, resource pages, and videos.

Also, the better the quality of the linkable asset the more likely it will be linked to. So put in the time to create something of high quality that others will find truly useful.

11/26/2020

Watch Me Learn Switches to Video On Demand.

Our client Watch Me Learn sells educational video products for children. They used to only offer their programs on DVD, but now they have switched to offering their products as streaming and downloadable video on demand. We converted their programs to a streaming video format, and used the Vimeo video service to set up their videos so they can now be streamed to tablets and phones. Their videos can now be purchased and downloaded, or can be rented by the week. We also updated their website with new information about the streaming video offerings.

Visit Watch Me Learn's Video on Demand page:
http://www.watchmelearn.com/our-products/video-on-demand

11/19/2020

A popular feature of many websites is a homepage slideshow, sometimes called a slider. A slideshow is a great addition to your website which can help to persuade visitors to take a closer look at your website. A slideshow is a fast way to communicate what your business sells or the services you offer. In this blog post we offer specific ideas you can use to create slides for your website’s slideshow.

A popular feature of many websites is a homepage slideshow, sometimes called a slider. This feature typically displays a series of images (the slides) one after another. Usually the slides will be on screen for 2-5 seconds, and then advance to the next slide automatically, or there will be buttons o...

11/05/2020

Top 3 E-Commerce Tips from Amazon's Jeff Bezos

1. Obsess Over Customers
Put customers first. Pay attention to your competitors. But put your energy into your customers.

2. Invent
When faced with a problem don’t accept either or thinking. Look for solutions that deal with both ends of a problem. That type of solution frequently requires you to invent something new. You can invent your way out of any box if you believe that you can. Think in terms of inventing on behalf of customers. It’s not a customer’s job to invent on behalf of themselves. You need to listen to customers. But they won’t tell you everything, so you need to invent on their behalf.

3. Think Long Term
If you want to obsess over customers and put customers first, and invent on behalf of customers, then you need to think long term.