All posts in How To

Opening The Black Box Of SEO Keywords

By | May 20, 2013 | Advanced Small Business Marketing, How To, Marketing, Online Marketing | No comments

This blog post was written by Bobby Gaglini, who works on the external marketing team at Vistaprint, and specializes in search marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords. They can drive any website owner crazy. But, with some research and solid writing skills, conquering your keywords will be easy instead of exhausting.

Read more…

5 Reasons To Add Photos To Your Marketing Materials

By | October 30, 2012 | Acquiring New Customers, How To, Marketing, Micro Business Tips, Offline Marketing, Retaining Customers, Small Business Tips, Tips | 3 Comments
5 Reasons To Add Photos To Your Marketing Materials

This post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

One of the biggest challenges for small business owners is making a personal connection from a piece of marketing collateral. Many times a postcard, flyer or website lacks the personality that would come across in a face-to-face meeting. One way that you can add some more personality and tell your story to prospects better can be through adding pictures to your materials. These photos don’t have to be of you, but could be of things representing your business (so all of you photo-shy readers can breathe a sigh of relief). Below are five tips to help you enhance your marketing materials through photos. Read more…

The Art Of The Testimonial Part Two: Putting Them To Work

By | October 25, 2012 | How To, Micro Business Issues, Micro Business Tips, Offline Marketing, Retaining Customers, Small Business Tips, Tips | No comments
The Art of the Testimonial: Part Two

This blog post was written by Rob Zodda, who works in creative services at Vistaprint and also has digital marketing experience.

Nice work! You’ve spent a lot of time listening to your customers, and gathering their thoughts. Now you have some authentic testimonials from people whose lives were improved by your product or service. That’s great! But what’s next? Here are five simple ways to put those glowing reviews to work for you. Read more…

The Art Of The Testimonial Part One: Your Customers’ Stories

By | October 24, 2012 | How To, Marketing, Micro Business Issues, Offline Marketing, Retaining Customers, Tips | No comments
The Art of the Testimonial: Part One

This post is written by Kaitlin Ambrogio, who manages Public Relations for Vistaprint. She focuses on communication strategy, working with the media and telling the Vistaprint story.

You have an excellent customer base and you know they have great stories to share about using your product or service. Getting those first hand accounts of how a customer uses your products, or learning about how a customer benefits from the service you provide, are powerful statements that can be used in your marketing strategy to tell your story.

A third party endorsement from a customer can have a huge impact; other customers can relate more directly with someone who is similar to them, who uses and likes your product. Plus it is always better to have someone else say something nice about you rather than saying something nice about yourself. Read more…

A Week of Website Tips for Business Owners

By | September 24, 2012 | Design Tips, Digital Marketing, How To, Micro Business Issues, Online Marketing | No comments
A Week of Website Tips for Business Owners

This blog post was written by Rob Zodda, who works in creative services at Vistaprint and also has digital marketing experience.

Have a website for your small business? Thinking about getting one? Over the next few days, we’ll be taking a look at website creation – from copy tips to site design and much more.

A great way to envision your website is to start by thinking about it like you would your home. You want it to be structurally sound, have a good flow, a little personality and undergo some occasional maintenance, right? The same goes for your website. Here are a few tips to start the week off! Read more…

Must-Have Tips for Business Card Design

By | May 23, 2012 | Design Tips, How To, Micro Business Issues | 4 Comments

This post was written by Keith Manning, a creative director at Vistaprint.

1. Start with a great logo.
Logos have the near-impossible task of simultaneously saying everything and nothing about your business. Good logos depict a particular business attribute or industry commonality — like a tree for a landscaper, or scissors for a hair stylist. Great logos, however, have the power to convey a company’s core values in a way that resonates with customers in a matter of milliseconds. For example, if that same landscaping logo had a swing hanging from that tree, or if the hair stylist’s logo was a pair of hot pink, leopard print scissors, you’d know a lot more about that company and who their target customers are. Choosing a smart, well-crafted logo is perhaps the simplest and most effective form of marketing a business can invest in…and it’s absolutely the first step in designing a great business card.

Examples of great Vistaprint logos:


2. Choose a design that matches the personality of your business.
The look of your business card is far more memorable than the name and number you put on it. But it’s important to leave your customers with the right impression, so be sure the design you choose matches the tone and personality of your business. A vibrant, neon-yellow-striped business card would certainly stand out, for example, but it might not be the best choice for an accountant. Ultimately, selecting a design for your business card should be fun — look for colors, patterns and/or layouts that make you feel comfortable, and that you would enjoy working with. 

3. Let it breathe.
One of the biggest offenses when designing a business card is the inherent need to fill the empty space. In fact, that empty space is as important as the information you put on your business card, because it allows the customer to really see what matters most. Imagine a book without paragraphs or chapters. Sentences would continually run into each other, never giving your eyes a break. That same notion is true on a business card. Put crucial information on your card — name, title, contact info — and let that be enough. The more empty space and breaks between, the easier it will be for customers to read what’s important.

4. Utilize the entire card.
Nobody ever said that a business card had to be a one-sided, horizontal rectangle. You are empowered to maximize the 2” X 3.5” space to whatever suits your needs. Do you have a short company name? Try a vertical business card, for instance. It’ll give you more room to appropriately space out your contact information below. Does your business take appointments? Turn the back of your business card into an appointment card. There are endless possibilities when it comes to what you can do with a business card (check out our graphic on 31 Creative Uses for Business Cards for inspiration). Don’t be afraid to make your card different — it’s what will set you apart.

5. Make it memorable.
Whether it’s a refreshingly simple design or an absurdly creative one, making a business card memorable is great for business. The ultimate goal of any business card is to help promote your business, so make sure that yours is the first­­­ one that comes to mind.


Examples of the finished product:

 

Eight Tips on How to be a Greener Micro Business

By | April 18, 2012 | How To, Micro Business Issues | No comments

Even though micro businesses are small in size, they can still have a big impact when it comes to conserving energy. With Earth Day around the corner (Sunday, April 22), it’s time to think about how small businesses can do their part to be more Green and reduce energy consumption.  Here are a few quick and easy things to start doing today that will have an impact tomorrow:

  1. Don’t print — resist the temptation to print emails! Instead, create folders within your email, to file important messages. Use this suggestion as an incentive to create folders you will actually use.
  2. If you must print, consider printing double sided. Set your printer features to print double-sided automatically and you won’t have to think twice about it. At least you will be using the whole page to print.
  3. It’s so easy, but people often forget: Turn off your computer and printer at the end of the day! You’re not there, so why would your computer need to be ready to work? If you’re thinking, “My computer takes too long to start up in the morning,” use the time to get a cup of coffee or listen to voicemail.
  4. Use those promotional notebooks you pick up at tradeshows and get from vendors. So what if they are not your logo or your vendor, they are perfect for jotting down notes and just think it is one less notebook you had to buy.
  5. Consider giving employees reusable water bottles as gifts. That way you can reduce the number of cups you use and throw away.
  6. Re- use boxes you receive your goods in and re-purpose them to send shipments to customers. Purchasing shipping boxes can be expensive and why not use the ones lying around your office.
  7. Open the blinds! Let the sunshine in, on those sunny days turn off the lights. Natural light will improve your mood and save you a few dollars that day on the electrical bill. Leaving a light on is just like throwing away energy.
  8. Unplug your phone charger. Phone chargers and other power adapters continue to draw power even if they’re not being used. It’s called “phantom power” – and believe it or not, it adds up to 5% of our nation’s power bill!

Want to learn more? A few weeks back in our Micro Business Roundup we included an article from Rhonda Adams of USA Today that includes more tips on how your small business can save energy and be green. The Department of Energy also has extensive resources online and information to consider as you look to make an impact this Earth Day!

Image: Clip art

Google Analytics reports and dashboards to maximize your small business website

By | February 22, 2012 | How To, Small Business Tips | No comments

This guest post comes from Samuel Johns, who works on the Organic Search team here at Vistaprint.

In two previous posts, Google Analytics for Your Small Business and Setting up Google Analytics for your SMB Website in 3 Steps, we highlighted the core benefits of Google Analytics, as well as the basics of how to set up an account. In today’s post, we’ll go over reporting, and how to track the performance of your site.

Key Terms
Before digging into reporting, it’s beneficial to define “metric” and “dimension” to further help you understand the reports you’re looking at. (Note: The definitions of “metrics” and “dimensions” come directly from Google Analytics training documentation.)  A metric is a unit of measurement. Examples include number of visits per page; pages viewed per visit; and average time on site.

 

Metrics can appear in scorecards, as columns in tables, or they can also be graphed.

Dimensions are descriptive attributes. Examples include the city or region where the visit originated; source that referred the visit (such as “Google”); and the browser used for the visit. Many of the reports in Google Analytics contain tables. These specific tables usually break up your data by individual dimensions, and each row in the table shows the data for a different value of the dimension. In the example shown below, the dimension being shown is region. Therefore, in this case, each row contains the data for a different region.

Keep in mind: Metric and dimension variables can be changed and moved around depending on how you want to view the data. One suggestion we have is that you spend time familiarizing yourself with the different viewing options to work out which ones work best for you.

Reporting 101

In the top navigation bar (the orange bar in the new version of Google Analytics), you will see a tab called “Standard Reporting.” As the title suggests, this is a great place to start for your basic reporting of the visitors coming to your site.

  • Setting the Date Range — in the upper right hand side of both the dashboard and the reports, you will see the date range for data on the page. With the date range selector, you can choose any specific date range (specific day, month, year, or even a customized period of time). You can also select multiple date ranges to compare two separate periods of time. In the example below, we have the “compare to past” selected.  This offers you the ability to see the performance of your site compared to previous months and map it back to your marketing efforts.  

  • Advanced Segments — Advanced Segments allow you to drill down a little further into the metrics for a specific segment/group of users. For example, if you’re a company that just expanded to another region, you may want to look at the difference between new visitors and returning visitors by location. By checking both boxes for new and repeat visitors, the report will show both data points split out, making it easy for you to compare the two. You’re able to select a maximum of four advanced segments for a given report. This report also allows you to take a look at your how your marketing efforts are impacting visitors to your site.
  • Dashboards — When you first open Google Analytics, you’ll see a dashboard of widgets. Each widget is a high-level overview of the basic reports already set up by default in your account. You can set up multiple dashboards and link to specific reports you create, making it simple to view and store reports related to a specific topic in the one place. To create a new dashboard for a specific set of reports simply click on the “Add to Dashboard” tab located to the right of “Advanced Segments,” pictured above. From there you will have the ability to add the report to an existing dashboard or create a new one. In the image below, for instance, we created a new dashboard titled “Location,” which has the report for my country and regional performance.

This blog post concludes a three-part series on Getting Started with Google Analytics. Hopefully with this brief introduction you’ll be able to start tracking the performance of your website in more detail. Google Analytics only starts tracking your site once it is implemented, and the data stays there over time. So even if you don’t have time today to look at all the data, setting it up could provide you with a lot of valuable historic information so that you can benchmark your site performance to your business output.

Additional resources:
If you’re interested in learning more about using reports in Google Analytics, check out this six minute training video from Google titled “Working with Report Data.”

If you haven’t tried out Google Analytics yet, head over to www.google.com/analytics to get started. If you’re already using it, what do you think about the insights? We’d love to hear more in the comments below.

Five Tips to Help Your Small Business Go Mobile

By | February 6, 2012 | How To, Marketing, Micro Business Issues, Online Marketing, Small Business Tips, Social Media | 2 Comments
Five Tips to Help Your Small Business Go Mobile

Whether at work, a restaurant or the gym, it seems as though iPhones, Androids and iPads are everywhere. According to Digital Buzz, that’s not very far from the truth; in fact, mobile devices are fast becoming the most popular way to access the Web, and Mashable reports Morgan Stanley analysts think mobile will be bigger than desktop Web use by 2015. But what is the difference between a standard website and a mobile site, and why is a mobile site a good idea for your small business? The short answer to both of those questions is accessibility. Imagine trying to fit everything on your home page onto your phone’s screen. It would be crowded, difficult to read, and even harder to navigate. Mobile sites can alleviate those usability issues, reduce load time and, perhaps most importantly, make it super-simple for users to contact you while they’re on the go.

Setting up a mobile website isn’t as difficult as you might imagine, and following a few of the tactics below can help you — and your customers — get the most out of your mobile site.

1. Stick with easy navigation. Large font, big buttons and short sentences can make your mobile site easier to navigate. Forcing visitors to work hard to view info will likely cause them to give up, and move on. A major advantage of mobile sites is that they’re formatted to mobile devices, so everything is larger, but limited to a specific width so users won’t have to scroll to find their way through your site.

Hint: Check out your mobile site on an actual mobile device…if you find it difficult to navigate, imagine how visitors will feel!

2. Make it useful. A customer is probably accessing your business’s site from a mobile device because  he or she wants to get in touch with you…what he or she doesn’t want to do is scroll through a number of pages before finding out how to reach you.

Hint: Keep the info your visitors are looking for on the home page, and make sure it’s easy to read and click; try adding a prominent “Contact Us” button.

3. Keep it simple. Remember, on a mobile device, viewers are likely interested in quickly learning about your products, finding directions and/or getting in touch with you. While you want your site to be informative, too much info will give your visitors more pages to sift through before they get to their desired destination.

Hint: If you think you’ve added too much content, chances are you have. Think about consolidating it through the use of bullet points.

4. Speed it up. Tons of images, videos and unnecessary content can make your mobile site’s load time far too long.

Hint: Save the flashy stuff for your main website! You don’t need to trash all the bells and whistles you love, just think mobile = minimal.

5. Get social! Adding social media buttons to your site so you can communicate with users in the social space is key.

Hint: No need to add every social site on the Internet — Facebook and Twitter is a good place to start.

Did this post inspire you to go mobile? Tell us why or why not in the comments section!

Image: lululemon athletica

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