A high bounce rate is bad news for websites.

Why?

It indicates either/both of these two things:

• You are attracting the wrong kind of audience.
• Your website isn’t providing a good user experience.

In any case, a high bounce rate means your website is driving away visitors even before they have a chance to engage with your content. You can literally forget about converting them into customers or repeat visitors. Moreover, a high bounce rate is a red flag for Google and can lead to poor search rankings.

So, what can you do to reduce your bounce rate?

1. Enhance Your Content’s Readability

With attention spans dwindling fast, people just scan and skim content. If they encounter dense chunks of text as soon as they land on your website, they won’t stick around for long. Great content with lousy formatting is a dealbreaker for most people.

The best online writers use these hacks to create easy-to-read content:

• Write as you speak (use a conversational tone).
• Organize your content using H1, H2… tags.
• Try to use bulleted lists as much as possible.
• Break text walls up with images, charts, videos, and infographics.
• Use bold, italics, and underlining to highlight important information.
• Inject questions to encourage “active” reading.

Even if you’re writing a technical piece, avoid jargon and wordy content. Use screenshots, quotes, and real-life examples to make your writing relatable as well as interesting.

Need an example?

Here’s a post on the SiteProNews website that’s easy on the eye and easy to digest.

2. Get Rid of Popups

There was a time when popups were considered a great customer engagement tool. Indeed, they are useful when it comes to collecting email addresses or pitching personalized offers/content.

But that’s where the benefits end.

Popups disrupt the UX and annoy most people. I know that when I visit a website and am greeted by popups, I may decide to leave. 

What makes matters worse is that some marketers use aggressive language in popups. When you barely know a person, it’s completely unacceptable that you use bullying tactics to drive them towards a desired action. 

Take, for instance, this weather.com entry popup:

I’ve no problem with the pop-up copy as such, but the CTA is downright rude. Is it that hard to add a “please?”

You get the point, right?

If you need to use a popup, place it strategically and time it perfectly so that you don’t annoy visitors. Showing a popup to loyal customers after their 100th visit makes sense, but don’t greet first-time visitors with an entry popup. That’s just bad targeting!

3. Improve Your Page Load Speed

Slow-loading pages can kill your UX which, in turn, increases your bounce rate.

So, just how important is page load speed to your retention rates?

40% of people won’t wait over 3 seconds before abandoning a website. For ecommerce sites, this wait time shouldn’t exceed 2 seconds. Sometimes, your website loads quickly on desktops but is sluggish on mobile. 

Sound familiar?

Then, you need to rectify the situation soon since 46% of mobile users say slow-loading websites is their biggest turnoff.

To get your website up and running:

• Remove heavy Flash animations.
• Tweak the .htaccess file.
• Remove query strings from static web pages.
• Remove extraneous plugins.
• Switch to a better domain registrar.

4. Build Multiple Landing Pages for High-Volume Keywords

Having more landing pages means your traffic gets divided for the same keyword. This can lead to faster load and more conversion opportunities. You can segment visitors and target them better.

What else?

It also has an SEO benefit. If a searcher lands directly on your landing page instead of taking a detour via your homepage, it’s better. You eliminate friction from their journey, which translates into a richer UX and longer dwell time.

To create landing pages painlessly, opt for an effective landing page builder. This way, you have greater control over your website and its content. 

If you have the resources and skill to create landing pages from scratch, start with keyword research. To find high-volume keywords, you can use a tool like Google Keyword Planner or one of its alternatives. 

Type your main keyword + a qualifier and click on “Get ideas.” Try to figure out the search intent (informational, transactional, locational) of each keyword idea that shows up. Since your aim is to keep people on-page longer, aim for informational keywords.

For example, if your main keyword is “website design strategy,” you may see these keyword ideas:

• Web design prices: This keyword will attract bottom-of-the-funnel traffic that is near the conversion point. Visitors will either convert or not, and leave the page soon after.

• Freelance web designers: This keyword will drive top-of-the-funnel traffic that is not ready to convert yet. You can create a series of pages around this keyword, one for each web designer. Your visitors will keep flitting from page to page, increasing your dwell time.

Once you identify a few high volume-keywords, incorporate them into your content strategically. Craft quality content and don’t skimp on research. That should do the trick for you.

Conclusion

In this article, I’ve explained four effective ways to decrease your bounce rate. Apart from this, leverage website design tips to reduce bounce, such as intuitive architecture and navigation. But remember, no amount of cosmetic changes can help you unless your content is unique and authoritative.

Do you have any questions about this post? Please write them in the comments. I’ll be back with the answers soon.

The post 4 Proven Tactics to Reduce Your Website’s Bounce Rate appeared first on SiteProNews.

Data can be used to substantiate the points put forth by you. This can help you build trust with your audience. 

What’s more?

Visualizing the data can make it easy for your audience to consume and interpret it. 

So, how does data visualization help you earn brand presence?

There are several ways it does that but let’s first take a closer look at what data visualization is. 

What Is Data Visualization?

Data visualization is the representation of data and information through graphics. It includes the use of visual elements like infographics, tables, graphs, charts, maps, etc.

Data visualization tools can simplify content for your audience so that they can understand trends and patterns in the data.

It also grabs your audience’s interest and helps them understand the message with ease. 

So, let’s now take a look at how it can improve your brand presence.  

How Can Data Visualization Improve Your Brand Presence?

Through data visualization, you can tell compelling stories in a form that is easy to understand. It helps you remove the noise from data while highlighting major and useful information. 

But how does data visualization help improve your brand presence?

Let’s find out.

1. Offers Meaning and Value

Global estimates are that by 2025, the creation of data will be at 463 exabytes of data daily.

Incredible right?

However, even with all data, one thing stands true; we are desperate to find meaning in this data. 

Consumers crave meaningful and valuable content that helps them either understand a concept, navigate their way, or solve a problem.

By using data visualization, you offer them that and get them to notice your content.

It allows you to communicate valuable insights and help customers derive meaning in an otherwise saturated data world. When you use visuals like mind maps and infographics, you present complex data in a form that people can synthesis easily. 

2. Makes Your Brand Memorable and Increases Engagement

Data visualization cements your narrative or story. It helps increase comprehension, retention, and appeals to the viewer. 

If you combine this with an exceptional story, then you can tap into consumer emotions and help them understand better. The visuals can also make it easy for them to recall the information they saw.

But how can you effectively bring these stories to life?

Data visualization may sound alien, especially to those without a mathematical background. But marketers are the best equipped to translate data into visuals. They can weave it into stories audiences understand.

However, do not just post visualizations for the sake of it. You need to create visuals that can grab your audience’s attention, intrigue them, and encourage them to engage with your content. 

Effective data visualizations sometimes require you to collate large amounts of data, scattered on- and off-premise. Big data management can be tricky unless you use specialized tools for it. These tools give you a helicopter view of data at different sources so that you can put together complex visualizations in no time. 

3. Stand Out From Your Competition

Data offers you a unique way to tell original stories. 

For example, if you’ve done some independent research into a topic, you should present your findings in a visual manner.

This can help you tell your story uniquely and set you apart from what’s already out there. It might also help you shed some light on an unexplored topic. 

What’s more?

It offers you a chance to showcase it from a different angle or offer consumers a new perspective.

Publishing these visuals can elevate your brand presence and increase your reach, as more people might view and share your content.

The LinkedIn Workforce Report is a splendid example of data visualization. It sheds light on employment trends in the U.S. with data visuals that offer insights into skill gaps, hiring, and migration trends.

Industry thought leaders, publications, journalists, and people looking for jobs could derive valuable insights from such reports.

Conceding such thoughtful visualizations is not easy. 

Sometimes the entire dataset is right before your eyes, but you are unable to create a memorable narrative out of it. Ideation to creation is a journey which you can master with practice. The more you get in the habit of visualizing data from the audience’s perspective, the better you will get at creating standout visualizations.   

4. Offers Credibility

There is so much information out there that sometimes it’s hard to discern the truth from rumors. 

Consumers want to see hard truths and data visualization can offer them just that. It helps you present hard data in an easy to digest manner, which can improve brand trust.

Take this information from Lifehack on Why Sitting is Killing You, for example. It’s detailed and gives candid truths on what time spent sitting does to your body.

Such information can help you become the source of truth for your audience and influence how they make decisions. However, you must provide these findings in a neat and well-packaged way.  Make it easy for your viewers to understand the message without having to wade through statistics.  

5. Provides Fresh Content

You can repurpose data visualizations into different formats shareable on different channels.

For example, you can create blog posts that dive into the data or publish social media posts with a few visuals as well.

You can also create videos using video creation tools to showcase your data in visual form through them. For example, you can show your audience how the information helps them solve a problem through interactive videos.

Data visualizations can also enhance other types of content. For example, you can create a video that uses the visuals to explain your topic further. You can also use them in company case studies, blog posts, or whitepapers.

Are You Leveraging Data Visualization to Grow Your Brand Presence?

Data visualization can help you build trust among your audience and also lets you convey information to them with ease. Don’t just focus on building awareness. Instead, strive to become the brand customers choose when they finally make a purchase decision.

The best data visualization tip I can offer is to combine data visualization with great storytelling. You’ll be all set to engage your audience while providing them value as well. It can also help you take complex topics and turn them into meaningful and useful visuals your audience can understand. 

Are you using data visualization to grow your brand presence? Share your tips and insights with us in the comment section below.

The post How Data Visualization Can Improve Your Brand Presence appeared first on SiteProNews.

In the U.S. alone, 62% of people worked remotely in 2019, according to the State of Remote Work report by Owl Labs. In fact, the U.S. leads countries where remote working is prevalent, with 66% more remote employees than the global average.

Globally, 18% more employees worked remotely than on-site. And this number is projected to increase in the future. In 2019, remote working trends showed that this work culture has become more formalized than before.

Why, you ask?

Because remote working has numerous benefits. Plus, with web conferencing and team management tools getting more sophisticated and affordable, working remotely will be easier than ever. 

If you are contemplating going remote or are finding it hard to manage your remote workers, this post is meant for you. I’ll explain briefly the benefits and challenges of working with remote teams, and then, elaborate on ways to make remote working a success for your organization.

Let’s dive in.

How Can Your Organization Benefit from Remote Working?

The rise of remote workers is inevitable. This type of working arrangement benefits not only employees but also managers and organizations on the whole.

It’s a widely-accepted fact that happy workers are productive workers. And, adaptive remote schedules make workers happy.

Don’t believe me?

Check this out:

Dr. Peter Hurst, Associate Dean at the MIT Sloan School of Management, carried out a pilot experiment (Quality of Life survey). The aim was to find out the impact of allowing workers to shift from a rigid, in-office working arrangement to a flexible, remote working one.

This is what respondents in his sample said: 

• 90% reported that their family and personal lives have improved.
• 85% said that their stress levels have decreased.
• 80% said that their overall morale and work engagement have improved.
• 62% felt that their companies trusted and respected them more than before.
• 93% pointed out that collaboration with team members was better than before.

As you can see, remote workers are more satisfied with work and life in general. Since they are able to strike a work-life balance, they feel fewer guilt pangs and are able to give their 100% to work. 

Naturally, their organizations and managers will reap the benefits from their employees’ enhanced productivity, efficiency, morale, and engagement. 

Since employee loyalty is greater, their retention is not a problem. In this way, you save on rehiring and retention costs. Plus, there are other obvious cost savings in terms of office rent, infrastructure, and overhead like electricity, travel, and internet.

It’s no wonder that 43% of U.S. employers plan to offer opportunities for remote work this year. 

What Are the Common Challenges of Managing Remote Workers?

Is remote work all upside?

Not at all. 

It comes with a set of unique challenges that are preventing some employers from migrating their entire setup from on-site to remote. 

Before we talk about how employers struggle to adapt to remote work, let’s take a look at the issues that remote employees face.

Buffer surveyed remote workers and found that they struggle to unplug after work (according to 22% of respondents), bond with on-site colleagues (19%), collaborate effectively (17%), and block distractions at home (10%).

Now, we come to the challenges in front of management teams. They face the following problems in managing their remote teams:

• Lack of supervision which leads to trust issues with employees
• Lower employee productivity due to distractions at home
• Conflicting time zones, language barriers, and different work patterns of workers
• Steeper learning curve of remote workers due to lack of face-to-face interaction
• Challenges using technology for communication and collaboration 

Are you facing these challenges?  The tips below can help you overcome them.

4 Proven Tips for Managing Remote Employees

Whether your workforce is entirely remote or partially, you will need to handle them with special care. Only then can you hope to build a cohesive and productive work culture in your organization. Take a look at how you can manage your remote teams.

1. Use Webinars and Video Conferencing  

Communication is at the heart of remote working. You should use as many modes of communication as possible to connect with your remote colleagues.

Webinars and video conferences are a great alternative since you don’t have the option of communicating in-person with remote employees. Attendees can exchange audio, visual, and textual content, as well as share their screens. 

What else?

You can add multiple people mid-meeting and record the sessions automatically. 

Since cloud computing can enable remote working from anywhere at any time, use meeting platforms that are cloud-powered. 

If you need to host an informal session where attendees can take control of the microphone, screen, and instant messenger on their own, video conferencing is a good option. Webinars are good when meeting hosts control the audio, video, and screen sharing capabilities. 

Meetings in both modes can be made interactive by including Q&A sessions, polls, and breakout rooms.

Whichever mode you choose to use, take care to plan the meeting content beforehand, flow, and systems. Using the right meeting platforms can ensure glitch-free meetings.

Use robust tools so that you can focus on the people and content involved in the meeting. Let the tools take care of the technical side of the process.

Some web conferencing tools like FLOW allow you to simulate meetings with pre-recorded content for times when you are not available. 

You can also upload your meeting content in advance on to the platform. It lets you specify what content to show, which presenter to enable, and what technical settings to use at various points during the meeting.

It’s also a good idea to have a brief orientation session on how to use these tools prior to hosting any meeting.

Your virtual meets will not be termed a success unless you are vigilant about the following:

• Draw a meeting schedule that is amenable to all participants, especially if they are scattered in different time zones.
• Inform the attendees in advance about the meeting schedule. Ask them to confirm their availability.
• Before the meeting, inform participants what preparations they need to do.
• Enable audio dial-in option for participants who have internet connectivity issues.
• Have a clear-cut agenda and objectives for your meeting. 
• For interruption-free sessions, instruct participants to switch off their mobile phones and any other sources of distraction.
• Always record the meeting proceedings.
• Discourage people from chatting amongst themselves during the meeting.
• Sum up the key takeaways or ask one of the participants to do so.

2. Use Videos Extensively

One of the biggest hurdles of working with remote employees comes during the training and onboarding processes. It can be tricky and time-consuming to give lengthy knowledge downloads about your organization’s processes, products, and protocols.

That’s where videos can come in handy. 

You can create engaging how-to and demo videos to explain complex processes and proprietary software. These can become valuable training resources for new hires. 

Pre-recorded videos allow self-paced learning which is a must for remote workers. Additionally, you reduce the costs of in-person training since your in-office staff can work on more productive tasks. 

The best part?

You don’t need to hire professional crews or purchase expensive filming equipment to create great videos. There are many affordable tools for video editing, like WeVideo and Camtasia, that you can use without any designing or editing experience. 

3. Build Rapport with Remote Workers

While remote workers enjoy the freedom of working off-site, that doesn’t mean they don’t crave a feeling of belonging.

An HBR survey found that remote workers suffer from isolation syndrome. This is especially true for companies that don’t have fully-distributed remote teams. In these places, remote employees often miss out on fun and rapport shared by on-site teams.

To keep up the morale of your remote workers, the leadership should be sensitive about their issues and make an effort to build an inclusive culture.

It’s advisable to have one-on-one sessions with your remote employees, apart from team meets. Instead of just talking about targets and tasks, indulge in a bit of small talk. Get to know more about their environment, which will also give you insights about the kind of challenges they might be facing. 

While it might not be feasible to get your remote workers together too often, try to meet them at least once a year. 

At other times, virtual facetime will have to suffice.  Look for signs of anxiety reflected through visual cues and body language. 

Why does that matter?

Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s research on non-verbal communication found that non-verbal elements like body language convey 55% of what the speaker wants to say. 

It means that if you rely solely on instant messages or emails for communicating with remote workers, you will convey only 7% of the essence. So, use calls and virtual meets to build a strong rapport.

4. Pay Attention to the Aspirations of Your Remote Workers

Indeed found that 37% of remote workers feel that they have reduced visibility in front of management which keeps them away from attaining leadership roles. 

It’s a hard fact that many managers tend to ignore the career aspirations of remote workers. The “out of sight, out of mind” phrase literally depicts the situation of many remote workers. 

In your one-to-ones, discuss the career path you have in mind for your remote employees. Build trust by delegating high-profile tasks to them. Keep a tab of their achievements and make it a point to give them shoutouts in your team emails and meetings.

Aspirations need not always be professional. Remote workers are sometimes treated unfairly when it comes to vacations. Given their flexibility, they seem perpetually available. Managers can assume that remote workers need no downtime, even when they are on vacation. This can make remote workers feel less valued and overworked.

Unless your remote employees are freelancers or contractors, treat them the same as your in-office employees. That is the best way to retain quality remote workers.

Are You Ready to Go Remote?

Remote work has obvious perks for organizations. But to make it successful, managers have to evolve their mindsets and upgrade their technical stacks and skills. 

The tools and hacks I’ve explained in this post can help you overcome common challenges and produce happy remote employees. Do you have any questions about employee productivity and remote work culture? Write your questions in the comments. I’ll be happy to answer them.

The post How to Make Remote Working Easy at Your Organization appeared first on SiteProNews.

That’s a wise choice. 

Influencers can not only help you reach new audiences, but also win over their trust. You can get leads that are more sales-ready than raw leads. If you work with influencers smartly, you can easily nurture these leads and convert them into paying customers.

But is influencer marketing really that great?

Yes, it is.

We have the numbers to back us up on this. 

According to a study by Edelman Trust Barometer, 63% of people aged 18-34 trust influencers over brands. So if an influencer vouches for your product, it becomes easier to secure buy-in from new customers. 

Influencers can improve your sales and brand advocacy too. 58% of respondents in the cited study had bought an influencer-recommended product and 33% had discussed a brand in their circle because of an influencer.

Great news, isn’t it?

This means that whether you want to create buzz about upcoming products or boost the visibility of your existing products, influencer marketing can do the job for you. 

But like all marketing tactics, you have to plan your influencer-led promotions meticulously. 

If you’re new to influencer marketing, you can find this part challenging. To make your life easier, we have outlined some effective ways by which you can leverage influencers to promote products in this post.

Let’s dive right in.

How Can You Promote Products Through Influencer Marketing?

As stated earlier, customers are losing trust in online ads and self-promotional content. Even using influencers for product promotions can fall flat if it’s not done strategically. The tips below will make your influencer campaigns more relatable and fruitful. 

1. Select the Right Influencer/s 

You should pick influencers that are in the same niche and have similar audience demographics and values as your brand. If you build a network of relevant influencers, you can spread the word about your products faster, even if those influencers have small but passionate audiences.

Example: Designer wallpaper brand, Milton & King, partnered with 45 influencers when they ventured into the US market. 

All of the influencers were from home improvement, lifestyle, or interior design niches. Since the brand and influencers were from related industries, audiences found the collaboration natural and believable.

Manual influencer research can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Influencer marketing platforms like Fourstarzz Media have advanced filters to help you narrow down your search. The tool provides detailed influencer reports that can help you compare their key metrics and audiences at a glance.

2. Give Creative Freedom to Your Influencers

People love influencers for their authenticity. If you hamper your influencers’ creativity with strict guidelines, influencers will lose their edge. They may create content that aligns with your rules but doesn’t resonate with their audience. In which case the whole purpose of hiring influencers will be defeated.

Example: AXE is one brand that lets influencers unleash their creativity to promote their hair grooming products. They teamed up with 30 offbeat Instagram influencers with trendy hairdos. Each influencer created videos in their unique voice, explaining how AXE products helped keep their hair in shape.

One of AXE’s influencers, Anthony Padilla, who stands out for his wild curls, created a video in which he mocked typical beauty advertisements that featured people with perfectly-coiffed hair, whereas this is far from reality. The post touched a chord with the audience and garnered 26K+ views.

3. Host Contests and Giveaways

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Contests and giveaways are a sure-shot way of engaging audiences and promoting products. And they become even more effective when an influencer does one on your behalf.

Your influencers can create sponsored contests with your products. They can instruct participants to tag more users in their contest entry, use a custom hashtag, or reshare the contest post. In this way, your product reaches more people and you get tons of free user-generated content.

Example: St Francis Herb Farm partnered with influencer, Jenny Lam, to host a giveaway on Instagram. Notice how she created urgency by attaching a tight deadline for the contest to end. In the post, she also asked contestants to tag her and her partner brand.

You can use advanced tools for hashtag tracking to discover popular hashtags that are relevant to your campaign. Encourage your influencers and their followers to append the trending hashtags in their posts.

4. Tailor Custom Promo and Discount Codes

Your influencers can offer promo codes for your products, meant to be used exclusively by their followers. This will not only increase your product’s sales but also help your influencer attract new followers. More followers means more brand awareness.

Example: Mel K, one of the influencers who collaborates with Woke Wings, shared a custom promo code for her followers to avail a discount on the brand’s products. This tactic helps the brand boost sales and track the influencer’s ROI.

Connect Your Product with a Cause

Cause marketing is big these days. 

53% of customers want the brands they engage with to support worthy social causes and make a difference. If you and your influencers create a brand story (message) pivoting around a cause, you can strike a chord with the audience and market your products better.

The key is to keep your message real and relevant. Don’t connect your product to a cause just because it is trending. Audiences are averse to brands that use social causes as a marketing ploy. Pick a cause about which you and your influencers are passionate so that your message looks credible.

Example: Boxed Water partnered with influencers to promote the #ReTree project which aims to get people to plant one million trees in five years. Known for championing sustainable life choices (such as eliminating plastic waste), Boxed Water picked a cause that resonates with their brand image.

Cross-Promote Your Influencer’s Content

You need to be visible on as many social networks as possible so that your promoted products grab eyeballs. Both you and your influencers should cross-promote each other’s content by tagging and resharing. You can bypass channels that aren’t important for your audiences or compatible with your product or posted content.

It can be hard to manage multiple social accounts. Luckily, there are tools for social media management that can help you schedule posts and track their performance on all platforms from one interface.

Example: MVMT Watches has a network of influencers of different ethnicities. They promote the brand’s watches on Instagram (where MVMT has a massive following), Twitter (in regional languages), and YouTube.

Offer Sneak Peeks 

To make your products buzz-worthy, give your audience a sneak peek into their making. Influencers can create teaser videos and behind-the-scenes clips to share with their followers. They can post pictures from exclusive product launches and build excitement about upcoming products.   

Influencer reviews are regarded highly by followers. Have influencers review your products and share their opinions on your social stories. Unboxing videos are a great way to do this. You can evoke trust among audiences for new products in this way.

Example:  Skincare student and beauty influencer, Claudia Christin, regularly reviews skin products for brands. Due to her background in medical sciences, her opinions are trustworthy and garner a lot of engagement even though she mentions “sponsored review” in her posts.

Final Thoughts

By collaborating with influencers, you can cut through the noise on the internet and make yourself heard in new target markets. As a product promotion tactic, influencer marketing is not only powerful but also more cost-effective than traditional forms of advertising. 

No wonder why it is being touted as the future of marketing.

There are many ways of using influencer marketing to promote your product. But the tactics mentioned in this post are the ones that have proved quite effective. 

Do you have any more ideas to promote products through influencer marketing? Drop a comment to share them.

The post How to Promote Your Products through Influencer Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

When done correctly, a purchase order system will help you improve your productivity and increase your visibility. But what are the steps to create an effective purchase order system?

Before you dive into the process, let’s see how purchase orders can help your business.

Why Should I Use Purchase Orders?

1. Regardless of the size of the business, a purchase order system helps you dodge duplicate orders. That’s because it’s easy to dig out records for recent purchases.

2. Purchase orders are a legal agreement between sellers and buyers. So, the legal agreement can protect you from any legal issues or price increases that might arise regarding the order. The legal records will also help you if there’s a price change between the time of you submitting your purchase order and the time of delivery.

3. Effective purchase orders also help you simplify inventory management. All you need to do is track incoming orders and match them to purchase orders. Also, the purchasing records are very important during audits.

4. Purchase orders help you maintain a record of your company’s spending. And they will help you plan for a better budget. They also help you to track repeat orders of identical items. You can use built for purpose tools like PurchaseControl’s Purchase Order Software to easily track and manage your spending and plan your budget effectively. It also helps you automate other aspects of your purchase order process.

Now that you know how purchase orders can help your business, let’s take a look at some of the steps to help you create a proper purchase order system:

1. Create Purchase Order Forms

The first step of creating an effective purchase order system for your business is to create purchase order forms. You can create a digital form like purchase orders or purchase requisitions from the beginning. 

You can also use templates for purchase orders that are automated. The forms will help you collect important data like the price of the item, vendor details, and/or order details. Here’s an example of what a purchase order form looks like. You can check out more purchase order templates from TemplateLab.

It’s up to the purchasing process if you want to create an extensive form or a simple one. Once you have created the form, you can use it for auto-generating purchase or linking a vendor’s data. You also use the form to display the entire list of vendors automatically or purchase requisitions.

2. Create a List of Actions in the Process

To avoid repetitive tasks and redundant processes, you need to understand the tasks involved and the process flow of your business. Then create a checklist of actions based on this. The exact details of the process will depend on the business needs and policy. So the checklist differs from company to company.

Before you automate the process in a purchase order system, it’s crucial that you understand your business.

3. Create Workflow for Purchase Orders

Once you have created a digital form for your business, it’s now time to create a purchase order workflow. Since you already know the tasks that need to get completed, create a workflow accordingly.

This workflow greatly depends on the process, so you can allow stakeholders to examine the form and take action or collect data. When a requestor initiates a purchase order, it will be considered as an input task.

When the finance team evaluates the purchase order by verifying it with the inventory and allocated budget, it will be considered as an approval task. You can set automated reminders to ensure that the process is on track and is completed within the deadline.

4. Set Permission and Roles 

Now that you have created the workflow for your business, it’s time to assign stakeholders and set access permissions. Based on a person’s role in the purchase process, you need to assign specific responsibilities and roles. However, access to classified data and visibility might differ based on those roles.

The person who requested the purchase order will need access to input purchase details. Whereas the financial teams and/or managers who review the purchase order will only need access to view order details.

In case of errors, rather than edit access, you will only need permission to send back or reject the request.

5. Execute the Purchase Order System

Now you’re almost ready – your purchase forms are ready; you have automated your workflow management process, and the roles are clearly defined. The next step involves publishing the app. Once you have published it, you need to share it with your purchasing team.

However, before you share the purchase order process system with everyone, you can share the app with a much smaller team first. This team will examine the performance of your app and help you understand whether or not it’s working smoothly.

6. Gather Feedback for Further Improvement

You have tested your purchase order system and shared it with a test group. Now, you’ll need to collect honest feedback. Use tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to collect your feedback. These tools will help you create feedback forms easily and visualize the data from the survey.

Analyze the data collected to see if there is any minor negative feedback. In case of any, see how you can incorporate those recommendations and update your app.

But what if there are any major complaints about functionality or you discover a process gap? If so, then you need to withdraw the app and focus on improving it.

Final Thoughts

You can follow these six steps to create an effective purchase order system for your business. This will help your business increase its visibility and enhance productivity.

How do you create an effective purchase order system for your business? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

The post How to Create a Purchase Order System for Your Business appeared first on SiteProNews.

Influencer marketing is a very popular strategy used by marketers and brands right now. If an influencer supports your brand with great reviews, chances are people following them might buy your products or services.

Twitter is emerging to be an impactful platform for influencer marketing. A single tweet from an influencer about a product has encouraged 40% of Twitter users to buy it. Also, approximately, 75% of people research social media for recommendations and advice before making any decisions about buying.

Work with the Right Influencers

A crucial step in influencer marketing is to identify suitable and successful influencers for your brand. List your required traits in an influencer, keeping in mind your campaign’s goals. This will help you identify influencers who can help you achieve your goals.

Authenticity, activeness, engagement, expertise, and leadership are some important traits to look for in an influencer. Let’s take a closer look:

Authentic: It is important that the influencer truly believes in your brand. The genuineness will reflect in their blog posts, Tweets, or Instagram posts and their audience can relate to your brand. 75 percent of marketers look for the authenticity of the content from influencers.

Active: The key to be a successful influencer is to stay fresh in the minds of their audiences. And this depends on how frequently they post their content on social media platforms.

Engaging: How many like, comments, and shares does the influencer’s content get? A high engagement rate will benefit your brand because it means that the influencer’s followers are interested in the content posted.

Expertise: Being an expert or specialist in a specific niche is an important part of being an influencer. It is always better to collaborate with an influencer who is highly relevant to your industry.

Leadership: It’s simple and easy to follow trends and fads on social media. But one important aspect of a good influencer is that they create and get issues trending.

An increasing number of companies have started adopting an influencer marketing strategy over traditional marketing. While implementing this strategy, one common problem you will always face is finding the right influencers for your brand and products.

There are many tools and software available, which can help you to find and identify relevant influencer marketers. There are paid as well as free tools available. These tools can not only help you find your right influencer, they can also help you to design your campaign.

Grin is one such Influencer marketing platform which can help you identify and work with top social influencers. The software includes search, management, and tracking tools.

How influencer marketing can help you build trust with your customers

1.  Promote the Experience

Help the influencers you work with to get involved with the product. This helps to create a sense of truthfulness and dependability between your influencer and consumers.

Invite the influencer to use and experience your product, help them understand why your service or product is worth talking about/mentioning on social media. The influencer’s posts will reflect the genuineness of their relationship with your product or service.

Example: Sephora is a French chain of cosmetic stores. They offer beauty products including skincare, bath & body, nail color, tools & brushes, hair, and makeup.

Sephora sends beauty products for free to popular beauty blogger, and vloggers, asking them to write a genuine review of the products. This community is known as, “Beauty Insiders.”

As the experiences of bloggers and vloggers are original and unbiased, their followers appreciate the genuineness of the promotions. Thus, increasing trust in the brand.

2.  Offer Discounts

Some people might buy your product or service right after reading the feedback and reviews given by the influencer. But some customers might not because of the high price of the product or just the lack of confidence to try out a new product.

The influencer can use discount coupons on their links to attract more customers to try your product. They can also use unique hashtags to promote the product or brand. The word “Discount” undoubtedly attracts a sizable number of consumers. And there is a good possibility that at least some customers will decide to check out the link.

Example: Daniel Wellington is a Swedish watchmaker. They worked in partnership with many influencers on Instagram. These influencers were asked to post a picture and highlight a discount code for 15% off on Daniel Wellington watches.

In less than five years, Daniel Wellington evolved from being a startup company to a company worth $220 million. Below is the picture of a Daniel Wellington watch posted by David Ambarzumjan, one of the influencers the brand partnered with.

3.  Customer Endorsements

Turning your satisfied consumers into influencers is a great way of strengthening your brand. They have had a good experience and are optimistic about your brand. Use the feedback and testimonials from your customers and highlight it on the front page of your product website.

They will be more than happy to share their experiences. Those testimonials will be the first thing that gets noticed by your potential customers.  It is a clever and effortless tactic to develop and maintain trust.

Example: Glossier is a Manhattan-based beauty startup. Rather than hiring a big celebrity, the company relied on the feedback of regular women. The endorsements from their regular customers helped them to promote their beauty products.

4. Have Influencers Share Your Product or Brand in a Post

A simple way of sharing content related to your brand is having an influencer mention your product in a post or video.

An influencer can also use Instagram or Pinterest to share pictures and share their experiences with your products in the comments.

Around 90 percent of influencers use Instagram to promote products or brands. Next comes Facebook and Twitter with 80 and 75 percent respectively.

5.  Build a Relationship

The idea of using an influencer for marketing will only work out if you put in your time and energy. It is very important to develop a genuine relationship between an influencer and your brand. While contacting an influencer, remember to explain clearly why you would like them to work with you.

Influencers deserve fair compensation. Even before meeting influencers, think about your budget and propose a fair payment to influencer. In your initial email interactions, you can mention the payment which you wish to pay. And you can always invite them to discuss the compensation in detail.

Example: Under Armour is an American company that produces sports, casual, and sports apparel. They built a relationship with Stephen Curry, who is a professional American basketball player. According to the estimation of Morgan Stanley, Under Armour made a turn over of $14 billion. The company was able to achieve such a huge turn over only after they teamed up with Stephen Curry.

6.  Give Influencers Creative Freedom

One of the biggest mistakes brands make is controlling the content developed by an influencer. Restricting the creative freedom of your influencer can actually impact the quality of your brand content.

Firstly, the content developed by the influencer will have an absence of originality as it will no longer be their story. This, in turn, will spoil the genuineness of the campaign.

Secondly, since the influencer is not given full creative freedom to work on brand content, they might not show interest in collaborating with your brand again. This is a major reason why over 63 percent of influencers are not interested in working for a brand again. Almost 83 percent of the influencers are willing to work again with a brand if they are given the creative freedom to play around with the content.

Example: Clothing brand, Zara, teamed up with top fashion Instagrammers on the #iamdenim campaign. The purpose of the campaign was to showcase their latest products.

The brand worked with influencers, who posted their pictures, which showcased some new trends in fashion industry. In less than a year, there was an increase of 4.6 million followers on Zara’s Instagram account.

The reason for this huge jump was the creative freedom given to the influencers.

Final Thoughts

Brands are using influencer marketing to enhance their brand visibility and increase their sales. The crucial part of the process is to find a suitable influencer who will help you connect with your target audience on a large scale.

Make sure you are establishing a strong relationship with your influencers. This will help to carry and reflect the originality of the content to your customers. Such authenticity is the key to winning your customers’ trust.

Do you know any other ways or approaches to using Influencer marketing to win consumers’ trust? Let me know in the comments section below.

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 appeared first on SiteProNews.