Today, more buyers shop for products online. 

According to Statista, over two billion people bought products or services online in 2020, and e-retail sales grew past $4.2 trillion worldwide.

Luckily, this is an opportunity to increase your eCommerce sales and profits.

How can you turn these shoppers into your customers? 

By first converting your website visitors to qualified leads.

If you execute this step effectively, it becomes easier to nurture your leads and convert them to customers. But, first things first, how can you capture more leads for your eCommerce store this year?

In this post, I’ll show you 7 eCommerce lead generation tactics that work well in 2022.

Why Does Lead Generation Matter in eCommerce?

Before we go into the tactics, why does lead generation even matter for your eCommerce store? What are the potential benefits you stand to gain?

Here are 5 of them:

You have access to buyer’s information

When you acquire leads, you’ve obtained details such as: 

• Name 
• Email address
• Phone number
• Address
• Gender
• Product preferences

With the stiff competition among eCommerce stores today, having information about your potential customer can provide an edge to convert an individual into a customer.

These pieces of information will help you create relevant offers that can convince your prospects. 

Again, buyer information can help you determine the right time to send offers to them. 

Acquire more feedback

When you capture a lead, one of your aims is to understand that lead. 

And to achieve this, you need to acquire as much information as possible from them.

Through interactions with your leads, you’ll obtain information about their favorite products, their pain points, budget, and more. This feedback gives you the ability to improve your service and capture even more leads in future marketing campaigns.

It becomes easier to track marketing results

In some cases, shoppers browse through your store and buy products without leaving their information. This can make it difficult to know how effective your marketing campaigns are.

By generating leads, you’ll have an objective number of your audience size. 

While running marketing campaigns, you can easily track results based on the number of leads you have and how they progress through the sales funnel.

Increases your chances of boosting sales

Since you have leads in your marketing system, you can create personalized marketing sequences to convert those leads into customers. 

Through your interactions, you’ll understand a lead’s preferred marketing channel and connect with them on those channels.

Furthermore, the knowledge you have about leads over time helps you recommend the right products to each prospect. 

As a result, you’re likely to improve sales compared to sending your whole product catalog to a lead.

Increases website traffic 

During your interactions with prospects, you’ll often share website links for them to check some pages. Whether you’re trying to educate your audience or promote an offer, directing them to your website pages will provide all the information they need at different stages of the sales funnel.

Due to these campaigns, you can get more valuable traffic to your website. 

Effective eCommerce lead generation tactics

Now that you know why lead generation is a must for your eCommerce store, you probably want to generate more leads. 

But it’s not an easy task. For instance, stats have it that 61% of marketers rank lead generation as their number one challenge. 

Nevertheless, you have to engage in this activity and do it successfully. So, what are lead generation tactics you should consider using in your marketing campaigns?

1. Use a lead magnet

Think about it, your inbox is crowded. Likewise, your website visitors’ inboxes are crowded.

This makes people reluctant before giving out their personal information. Of course, you intend to provide value to your subscribers after they sign up.

To most visitors, however, that’s insufficient. You have to provide value right now. 

That’s why using a lead magnet can increase the number of eCommerce leads you generate. 

For eCommerce stores, some common lead magnet ideas include:

• Discounts
• Free shipping
• Giveaways
• Shopping guides

Here’s a popup from Old Navy promising a 20% discount for its visitors:

Beyond that, the clothing and accessories company also promised information about new arrivals and exclusive sales. These are lead magnets that can convince a visitor to enter their email address.

While using a lead magnet, you have to observe some best practices. First, the lead magnet has to be relevant to your audience.

For instance, a discount offer is more attractive to a shopper than telling them to subscribe to your latest blog posts.

Therefore, a discount will be more effective as a lead magnet than promising to send newsletters.

Another point to keep in mind is that the lead magnet should be helpful within a short time. If potential leads don’t need your lead magnet until 3 weeks, then it will have a weaker pull.

2. Use exit-intent popups

Since shoppers now have so many choices, they might compare offers on 4 or 5 websites before deciding where to buy. 

Apart from that, shoppers may have other reasons to abandon your website.

And sometimes, when they leave, they never come back.

Whatever reason they have to leave your site, you can use a popup maker to create exit-intent popups to bring them back. 

And if they’re on your checkout page, you can turn the leaving shopper into a customer.

Even if they end up leaving your website, exit-intent popups allow you to acquire their details for future contact.

Here’s an exit-intent popup example from Minimum, an eCommerce store:

Through this exit-intent popup, Minimum captured 9,362 leads they would have probably lost.

3. Optimize your pages for valuable keywords

A lot of times, shoppers begin their buying process through a Google search.

If your website content shows up among the results, you have a chance of attracting visitors and converting them to leads. Otherwise, you’re losing potential leads.

Now, the first step to content creation is by optimizing your pages for keywords you want to rank for. 

What keywords are your potential customers using on search engines?

You can discover keywords and group them based on different search intents. 

These include:

• Navigational keywords: these are keywords used to find specific brand pages e.g. Shopify login page.
• Informational keywords: these are keywords used to find information about a topic, product, or service, e.g. how to identify original calf leather.
• Commercial keywords: these are keywords from searchers who will likely buy in the future but have not settled on a product e.g. best TV set.
• Transactional keywords: these are keywords searchers use when they’ve decided on a product to buy e.g. buy brogue shoes in Boston.

These keyword groups allow you to target potential leads at different stages of the sales funnel. 

That said, you can’t perform adequate keyword research without the right tool.

Some popular keyword research tools today are SEMrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, keywordtool.io, or any of these alternatives to SimilarWeb.

Once you discover the keywords potential customers use, you can optimize your page for those keywords.

Optimization includes tasks such as:

• Adding target keywords to parts of your pages such as URL, title, subheadings, and more
• Ensuring your page content meets the search intent of the searcher 
• Increasing your website speed
• Making your website mobile-friendly
• Having a simple website structure

Apart from optimizing your pages, you should also perform off-page SEO tasks such as building backlinks to your pages and guest blogging.

4. Optimize your landing pages for optimum conversions

Landing pages are one of the most potent tools for generating leads. In most cases, you can create landing pages specifically for marketing campaigns.

Whether you’ve created a social media or search ad, you’ll direct clicks from them to your landing pages. 

On this page, you have to present an offer that is convincing enough for visitors to submit their details. 

Furthermore, you can use psychological concepts such as social proof, fear of missing out (FOMO), scarcity, and more.

Some elements you need to optimize on your landing page include your offer, page copy, background image, CTA text, CTA button color, and more. 

Beyond that, your landing page should be congruent with your ad. 

That is, your ad design and eCommerce offer should be similar to that on your landing page for continuity. 

Another vital part of optimizing your landing pages is performing A/B tests. 

With A/B tests, you can compare two variations or more of your landing page to see the one with the highest conversion.

However, to run effective A/B tests, you should only test a single element of your page. This way, you’ll easily identify the change responsible for your increase in conversions.

Some A/B testing tools you can use to track user behavior and perform A/B tests on your landing pages are VWO, Optimizely, and Crazy Egg.

UK Tool Centre, an eCommerce store, removed filters from its woodcare product page. 

Through this optimization, the store achieved a 27% increase in engagement on its product page.

5. Create search ads with sitelink extension

For your eCommerce store, there are many product categories your customers want to browse. 

When you create PPC ads, the sitelink extension allows you to add page links below your ad.

For instance, if you’re running PPC ads for a keyword such as “men’s shoes,” you can link to a landing page that contains a selection of men’s shoes. 

But below the result, you can add sitelinks to different types of shoes.

In this situation, the searcher may see a category that interests them. Consequently, you increase the chances of a searcher clicking through to your website. 

Here’s an example from Kate Spade:

You can see that even the ad sitelinks are relevant to the search query.

According to Google, adding sitelinks to your ads can increase the average CTR for that ad by 10-20%. And for queries where the searcher is searching for a branded term, the CTR can increase by 20-50%.

Once you get searchers using valuable keywords to visit your landing page, it becomes easier to convert them to qualified leads.

6. Host social media giveaways

Most people love gifts. Especially, if the gift is a product they admire.

That’s why giveaways and contests are popular with most people. 

Think about it, if you have social media followers, these are people who are already interested in your brand. Therefore, a giveaway will only improve the interaction and trust they have in you. 

Apart from improving interactions, there are other benefits of running a giveaway depending on your campaign goals. 

For example, some possible benefits include:

• Increasing social media followers
• Improving brand awareness
• Increasing website traffic
• Generating leads
• Increasing sales

Talking about generating leads, how do you achieve that during your social media giveaways? One effective way is to use your entry criteria.

Some of your entry criteria may include participants entering their email addresses or following you on social media. Even though it’s challenging to account for social media leads, they can become customers in the future through your social media campaigns.

Here’s an example of a giveaway on Instagram by Goodnight Macaroon, an eCommerce store for casual women’s clothing:

By using a giveaway tool, you can create a giveaway landing page on your website. Consequently, visitors can enter giveaways and submit their contact details. 

7. Run ad remarketing campaigns

No matter how great your website or effective your campaign is, some visitors will leave without converting. 

Are these people lost forever?

With ad remarketing, you have the opportunity to bring back visitors who have left your website. One advantage ad remarketing has over traditional ads is that recipients already know your brand. After all, this is not an ad from an unknown brand promoting products they have no interest in.

Therefore, remarketing ads usually get more clicks than traditional ads. 

If you want to run a remarketing ad right now, some popular platforms you can explore are Google, Facebook, and Instagram. 

To create effective remarketing ads, you can create ads according to the pages an individual visits. This way, the ads will be even more relevant to the recipient.

For instance, a WordStream study revealed that remarketing audiences get 2 – 3X better click-through and conversion rates than new visitors.

However, the landing page for your remarketing ad shouldn’t be the original page they bounced from. If the page failed to convert them the first time, what’s the chance it will convert them the second time?

So, you should modify the original page to increase the chances of conversions. When some of them come back to your website, they can submit their contact details or, better still, buy a product.

In a remarketing ad case study, Sierra Trading Post sent ads to visitors who viewed their products. This led to a 5X increase in conversions for the eCommerce store.

While this campaign has increased sales, you can run similar campaigns for lead generation. 

Conclusion

Generating consistent leads is a must for your eCommerce store if you want your business to survive and thrive. In this post, I’ve provided 7 tactics that still work effectively in 2022.

Of course, there are probably tens of tactics you can exploit. However, you can start with these tactics to capture more leads and generate sales.

Which of these tactics is your favorite? Is there a tactic that has worked wonders for you but is absent here? Let’s hear in the comments!

The post 7 eCommerce Lead Generation Tactics for 2022 appeared first on noupe.

If you are an hourly employee looking to be a salaried worker or happen to be an organization that has traditionally had hourly employees, but is now considering making them salaried, there are some points that need to be considered before making the transition.

In most cases moving an employee from hourly to salaried comes with a variety of advantages, but this may not be a universal phenomenon. You need to consider your organization’s objectives to see if this would be a right switch. Below are some of the top considerations that need to be addressed while doing the salary vs hourly comparison. The information mentioned below takes into consideration only the processes that are in effect in the United States. The process for transitioning employees in other countries may slightly differ. 

Overtime

Traditionally, if you have a salaried employee, they do not qualify for overtime pay, unless they are treated as a non-exempt employee. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), usually hourly employees are non exempt and salaried employees are exempt from overtime pay. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but those are quite rare.

Additional Expenses

For salaried employees, organizations usually provide additional benefits like insurance, retirement plans and paid time off. These can be counted as additional expenses from an organizational perspective. Care needs to be taken to ensure that employees are satisfied with the benefits package before proceeding with the finalization of the list.

Internal promotions

Salaried employees are eligible for promotion and can expect internal growth within the organization. Many professions that are considered supervisory, professional, or managerial all fall under the salaried employee stature and are hence positions with scope for advancement. Moreover, salaried positions are overall considered more stable.

Time tracking

Salaried employees enjoy a fixed pay every month because their monthly payout is not dependent on the number of hours they worked. This means tracking their work hours is also easier because they usually have a fixed schedule that they adhere to.

Once all the above points have been considered and if you are choosing to move an hourly employee to salaried worker, below are the steps that need to be followed.

Step 1 – Analyze job duties

FLSA has a strict set of job responsibilities that fall under exempt duties. So, your employees’ duties need to be analyzed before converting them to a salaried worker. If they are continuing to do job responsibilities that are considered non-exempt, you as an organization will still have to pay them overtime hours, as the employee will be considered a non-exempt salaried employee.

Step 2 – Calculation of salary

Federal as well as Local government rules need to be checked to ensure that you are paying the mandated wages for your salaried employees. Minimum wage comes into the picture if your employee is salaried-non exempt. The federal minimum wage, or state minimum wage, whichever is higher, needs to be paid to your salaried-non exempt employees along with overtime pay not less than 1.5 times their regular pay. Otherwise, the FLSA requires wages of a minimum of $684 per week, and needs to be paid for salaried-exempt employees.

Step 3 – Employee Confirmation

Your converted employee needs to be made aware of the change in their employment type, and all the deductions/ additions that come with the transition. This can be regarding the benefits, overtime pay changes or even work timings. If there are any changes in job responsibilities, those need to be informed as well. Clear communication between the organization and employee are necessary to avoid future payroll issues and complaints. Employee buy-in is mandatory before you make any change to their contracts. Only once the employee has gone through and confirmed the new terms of employment, should you proceed with the transition.

Step 4 – Track Working Hours

For hourly workers, since their pay depends on the number of hours they work, time tracking is highly important to ensure accurate pay. For salaried employees, since their pay does not depend on the number of hours they work, they can be put on fixed schedules and need to be ensured that they are not working longer hours than necessary. Their time can be tracked purely for documentation purposes but is not as critical as it is for hourly workers. Any time tracking methods that were in use can be continued to be used to track work of employees. If you have a time billing setup for your clients, this information can be used for billing purposes. Even though payroll doesn’t need up-to-the minute time information of your salaried employees, this may be critical for your client billing setup. 

Step 5 – Updating Payroll and HR Software

Most organizations have a payroll or HR software in place to manage their employee payouts. After you move your hourly employee to salaried worker, this change needs to be updated in your necessary software as well so that accurate payments are made to the employee. The employee contract also needs to be updated accordingly to ensure that the new changes have been agreed upon by both the employee as well as the organization. If you have a time tracking software in use, that also needs to be updated for the employee to take into consideration their new hours. If you are using an external vendor to manage payroll, they need to be informed accordingly to take the employment updates into consideration.

Conclusion

Though the advantages of having salaried employees are many, all the legalities revolving around the government laws need to be strictly followed before making any changes. Organizations that are found to be in violation of these laws will have to pay stiff penalties and fines along with worker compensation for their distress. If you have doubts or need clarification about labor laws and how they affect you, it is always recommended to get a legal consultation done before making any changes and to ensure you are not in violation of any rules. A strong working relationship with your employees can be the foundation for success for your organization.

The post How to Move from Hourly Employee to Salaried Worker? appeared first on noupe.

Customer communication is the foundation of your business’ success and a big part of customer service. 

How you treat your customers directly impacts the development of your business. When you think about it, it is logical that when customers are satisfied (and have benefits from your products or services), they will keep coming back. This, in turn, helps you attract more customers and increase your revenue and brand recognition.

Businesses start communicating with their clients from the day they start operating. Back in the day, it was a simple, two-way communication  between a provider and a customer. 

Nowadays, with the development of technology, things have changed in many ways. 

Modern businesses use multiple communication channels – from email to website and social media ads. Unfortunately, so many possibilities come with a great risk. In fact, the cost of poor customer communication for businesses can reach up to several billion per year! 

To prevent such a scenario, pay attention to the following in order to create the ultimate customer communication strategy. 

Omnichannel communication

Nowadays, 74% of customers use various channels of communication in order to complete a single purchase. With this in mind, it is essential to provide a consistent experience for all of them. For example, if a client contacts you through your website, email, or your company’s social media, they should have the same experience, both in terms of content and quality. 

Omnichannel communication is important in delivering a consistent experience for a customer, from pre-sales to post-sales and the process in between. Omnichannel customer communication delivers an improved customer service experience and keeps your business growing.

The important thing is to enable your customers to reach you easily. For example, you can add a call now button to your website – that’s how your clients will be able to reach you immediately. The aim is to use all of the possible channels of communication and to do that purposefully, with customer satisfaction as your primary goal.

The use of chatbots

Waiting time is listed as the main reason for the high customer bounce rate, with around two-thirds of online customers giving up on a purchase due to long waiting times. The frustration that comes with long waiting times can be reduced with the use of chatbots. 

Chatbots automate the communication you have with your customers and can help you save a lot of time and resources by answering the recurring questions automatically. This means that your customers will get an immediate reply. And you’ll be able to do that 24/7 since chatbots can always be available on your website.

Most client issues can be solved with the help of a chatbot. Besides the direct effect on customer satisfaction, this is beneficial for your employees as well. With the help of a chatbot, you will provide space for your support and sales teams to use their time more efficiently. By reducing the time your agents spend on repeating simple questions, they will be able to give special care to customers that need it.

First-time customer communication

Customer loyalty is essential, and you are more likely to attract and retain loyal customers by teaching them about your products and services. Statistics are on your side: around a quarter of your customers who have a good first impression will most likely remain loyal for almost two years. Besides that, around 90% of them will spread the word about the good experience they had with their friends and family. 

You can start by providing a warm welcome message that you can personalize for each of your clients and demonstrate how to get the most benefits from a service or a product that you are providing. 

Many of your first-time visitors are not familiar with your business. Most probably, they have been searching for a solution to their problem and came across your website. In order to retain them, pay attention to cover the essential parts that the first-time customer interaction should have:

• Personalized welcome message
• Initial setup of product/service 
• Demonstration of the features of your product/service
• Providing easy access to the knowledgebase

Successful onboarding can have a tremendous impact on customer loyalty, so you should craft  educational, welcoming content. Don’t forget to personalize it and keep the human touch throughout the whole interaction with your customers.

Measuring customer satisfaction

Customer feedback is a critical input for your business, so you should take it seriously. To make the most of it, ask people for feedback from after each customer service interaction. That is how you will track your customers’ happiness and improve your service to suit their needs.

Many businesses realize the importance of satisfaction with customer service and use a couple of standardized ways to track them. One of the most common ways of measuring them is through surveys. Customers record their feedback by answering different forms of questions and provide you with real-time insights about their satisfaction.

The two most common methods are Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction Score. 

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This score represents the likelihood of your customers recommending you. How to measure it?

• Start by preparing a survey with a scale from 1 to 10, where your customers respond with how likely they are to recommend your business to their friends and family.
• Mark the customers that respond with a score from 1 to 6 as detractors and the ones that respond with a number above 6 as promoters.
• Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, and you will get an NPS. For example, if 60% of the respondents were promoters and 20% of them detractors, your NPS is 40.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

This is a score that you can directly connect with the quality of your customer support. This way, you’ll know how well you’re taking care of your customers which will allow you to explore the potential issues in depth by asking additional questions. 

CSAT surveys provide a quantitative metric that shows the level of satisfaction of your customers and more importantly, qualitative feedback that explains the reasons behind it. CSAT is easy to measure:

• First of all, create a simple survey and send it to your customers
• Collect the responses and sum of all positive ones.
• Divide the positive responses by the total responses that you have collected 
• Multiply the result by 100

Be proactive

Are you only interacting with your customers when they reach out to you? If yes, it’s time to change that. Don’t worry about seeming too pushy. Statistics say that customers actually love proactive customer communication. Brands that have a habit of initiating contact with their customers are rewarded both in terms of customer retention and loyalty

Start by reaching out to your customers and engaging with them. This is one of the best ways to get timely feedback and help them solve the issues before they become serious.

This way, your customers will feel more connected to your business and help you improve. 

There are many ways you can achieve that, from asking for feedback to keeping your customers up to date with any changes in your company. The only things left is choosing the communication channel and the ideal frequency of reaching out.

For example, if a visitor of your website adds an item to their basket without completing a purchase, you should take action. Proactively reach out to them, check if they are facing any problems and convince them to complete the purchase.

Note: make sure that your customers agree on this in the first place. You can do this by using a subscribe button. 

Practices to avoid

When speaking with your customers, you should aim to maintain a concise and honest attitude and a friendly approach. As it is essential to cover the above-mentioned, there are behaviors that you should avoid while communicating with your customers:

Sounding generic. Make sure that you address your customers by name and add a human touch to all of your interactions. Start with small changes and see how they benefit your business.

Not being true to your word. Delivering on your promises is what sets you apart from the competition and creates the credibility of your business. You must ensure that the company can follow up on the promises made to customers.

Creating delays. If you keep potential customers waiting, they are less likely to convert to consistent, loyal ones. Chatbots and responsive salespeople are effective ways to solve this issue.

Being too pushy. Or absent. You should find a sweet spot in the frequency with which you communicate to your customers. The goal should be to reach out to them consistently but make sure that you have their permission to do so first.

Conclusion

Creating successful customer communication has a lot to do with satisfying your customer’s expectations and making them feel like a part of your business. Simply answering support requests will not help you reach this goal. You need to strategize customer communication practices to improve customer service and provide unique value to your customers.

The development of effective customer communication skills should become one of your company’s primary goals. This is how you’ll create a strong brand image, attract new customers and build a satisfying relationship with the existing ones. And when your customers are happy, your whole business thrives.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Succeed in Customer Communication appeared first on noupe.

As a data analyst, you feel most comfortable when you’re alone with all the numbers and data. You’re able to analyze them with confidence and reach the results you were asked to find. But, this is not the end of the road for you. You still need to think about your target audience, that is the people who’ll be reading your report. If they don’t understand the report, then all your effort is in vain. This is why it’s crucial that you learn how to write a good data analysis report.

Your coworkers and clients don’t have nearly as much knowledge about data analysis as you do. So, your report needs to be straightforward and informative. The article below will help you learn how to do it. Let’s take a look at some of the practical tips you can apply to your data analysis report writing and the benefits of doing so.

Benefits of Writing Well-Structured Data Analysis Reports

Before we dig any deeper into the writing tips and tricks, you must understand what are the benefits of writing a comprehensible and professional data analysis report. After knowing how it can help you in different segments of your professional journey, you’ll be more willing to learn how to do it.

Below are the main benefits a data analysis report brings to the table.

Improved Collaboration

When you’re writing a data analysis report, you need to be aware more than one end user is going to use it. Whether it’s your employer, customer, or coworker – you need to make sure they’re all on the same page. And when you write a data analysis report that is easy to understand and learn from, you’re creating a bridge between all these people.

How?

Simply, all of them are given accurate data they can rely on and you’re thus removing the potential misunderstandings that can happen in communication. This improves the overall collaboration level and makes everyone more open and helpful.

Increased Efficiency

People who are reading your data analysis report need the information it contains for some reason. They might use it to do their part of the job, to make decisions, or report further to someone else. Either way, the better your report, the more efficient it’ll be. And, if you rely on those people as well, you’ll benefit from this increased productivity as well.

KPIs

Data tells a story about a business, project, or venture. It’s able to show how well you’ve performed, what turned out to be a great move, and what needs to be reimagined. This means that a data analysis report provides valuable insight and measurable KPIs (key performance indicators) that you’re able to use to grow and develop. 

Clear Communication

Information is key regardless of the industry you’re in or the type of business you’re doing. Data analysis finds that information and proves its accuracy and importance. But, if those findings and the information itself aren’t communicated clearly, it’s like you haven’t even found them.

This is why a data analysis report is crucial. It will present the information less technically and bring it closer to the readers.

Data Analysis Report Writing: 7 Steps

After reading about the benefits of writing a data analysis report, you’re hopefully motivated to cut to the chase. The process of writing such a report is far from simple, but you can master it quickly, with the right guidance. 

This is why we’ve prepared a step-by-step guide that will cover everything you need to know about this process, as simply as possible.

Let’s get to it.

1. Decide on your Data Report’s Goals

The first thing you need to do before you even start writing your data analysis report is to decide what is the goal behind it. You need to answer the following question:

• What do I want to achieve with this report?

There can be all kinds of goals in your mind – from supporting a decision-making process of your coworkers to showing your client why they need to invest more in a certain segment of their business strategy.

Once you have a goal, you have something to focus on. Your goal is the core of our report and you’re building the section around it. This is the only way you’ll be able to communicate it clearly and not lose the reader’s attention too soon. 

With a defined goal, you can start planning how you’re going to achieve it.

2. Consider your Readers’ Expertise

You are writing your report for a certain target audience, and you need to keep them in mind while writing. Depending on their level of expertise, you’ll need to adjust your report and ensure it speaks to them. So, before you go any further, ask yourself:

• Who will be reading this report? How well do they understand the subject matter?

Let’s say you’re explaining the methodology you used to reach your conclusions and find the data in question. If the reader isn’t familiar with these tools and software, you’ll have to simplify it for them and provide additional explanations.

So, you won’t be writing the same type of report for a coworker who’s been on your team for years or a client who’s seeing data analysis for the first time. Based on this determining factor, you’ll think about:

• the language and vocabulary you’re using
• abbreviations and level of technicality
• the depth you’ll go into to explain something
• the type of visuals you’ll add

Your readers’ expertise dictates the tone of your report and you need to consider it before writing even a single word.

3. Include Data Visualization Elements

You have all the data and numbers in your mind and find it easy to understand what the data is saying. But, to a layman or someone less experienced than yourself, it can be quite a puzzle. All the information that your data analysis has found can create a mess in the head of your reader.

So, you should simplify it by using data visualization elements.

Firstly, let’s define what are the most common and useful data visualization elements you can use in your report:

• graphs
• charts
• images
• tables
• maps

There are subcategories to each of the elements and you should explore them all to decide what will do the best job for your specific case. For instance, you’ll find different types of charts including, pie charts, bar charts, area charts, or spider charts.

Whatever you choose, keep in mind that it needs to help you bring your data to life in the mind of the reader. Find the best combination and remember to keep your data visualization elements neat and simple.

For each data visualization element, add a brief description to tell the readers what information it contains. You can also add a title to each element and create a table of contents for visual elements only.

4. Organize Information

When writing your data analysis report, it’s not enough to just include all the valuable information and use understandable language to do so. It also matters how you organize the information you’re presenting.

If your report isn’t properly organized into meaningful sections, the reader might give up on reading it or just find it extremely hard to understand anything.

Here’s what we suggest you do:

• divide the report into sections
• make sure each section helps the reader complete a milestone
• organize sections using subheadings
• make sure you write short paragraphs
• use bullet points and lists to present important information
• number the pages
• add a table of contents at the end

This way, you’re helping the reader decide what sections to read first, how to look for the answers they need, and what information to prioritize. Simply put, you’re helping them create their own journey when reading your report and reach their conclusions on their own terms.

5. Proofread & Edit Before Submission

All the hard work you’ve invested in writing a good data analysis report might go to waste if you don’t edit and proofread. Proofreading and editing will help you eliminate potential mistakes, but also take another objective look at your report.

First, do the editing part. It includes:

• reading the whole report objectively, like you’re seeing it for the first time
• leaving an open mind for changes
• adding or removing information
• rearranging sections
• finding better words to say something

You should repeat the editing phase a couple of times until you’re completely happy with the result. Once you’re certain the content is all tidied up, you can move on to the proofreading stage. It includes:

• finding and removing grammar and spelling mistakes
• rethinking vocabulary choices
• improving clarity 
• improving readability

You can use an online proofreading tool to make things faster. If you really want professional help, essaymarks.com is a great choice. Their professional writers can edit and rewrite your entire report, to make sure it’s impeccable before submission.

Whatever you choose to do, proofread yourself or get some help with it, make sure your report is well-organized and completely error-free.

6. Stick to a Template Going Forward

The first time writing a data analysis report will be the hardest one. The lack of experience as well as the pressure to not make any mistakes will make this process a lot more difficult than it actually is.

But, once your first report is finished, you’ll see just how easy it was to write it. 

Then you can think about using this first report as a template for all your future reports. That means you’ll keep the:

• main sections
• formatting settings
• design elements

You can also find and use data analysis reports templates online and simply add the data you’re presenting. A template will help you speed this process up but also:

• focus on the content instead of the form
• build your recognizable writing style
• stay focused and make no mistakes

A template will get you the extra couple of hours you need to go over the information you’ve shared and check if your data analysis report is truly as useful and informative as you want it to be.

7. Ask for Second Opinions & Feedback

Finally, your own judgment isn’t going to be enough to ensure the report is ready to be submitted. It would be a great idea to have someone else take a look at it before you send it out.

Here’s why this is the case.

Your brain has been working on this report for quite some time. It knows every word, comma, and figure involved. This is why it will be hard for you to look at the report objectively. You’ll miss out on mistakes that someone else might just spot within seconds.

So, find someone you trust who’s willing to take a look at the report. It could be someone with the same level of expertise as our target audience- to make sure the report is comprehensible. Or, it could be someone more professional and experienced, to verify the quality.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, it takes some skill and a bit more practice to write a good data analysis report. But, all the effort you invest in writing it will be worth it once the results kick in. You’ll improve the communication between you and your clients, employers, or coworkers. People will be able to understand, rely on, and use the analysis you’ve conducted.

So, don’t be afraid and start writing your first data analysis report. Just follow the 7 steps we’ve listed and use a tool such as ProWebScraper to help you with website data analysis. You’ll be surprised when you see the result of your hard work.

The post Writing a Good Data Analysis Report: 7 Steps appeared first on noupe.

Without an established online presence, it can be incredibly challenging to grow your small business. That is exactly why digital branding is so important for your company. It enables you to connect with your consumers easily, stay relevant to your audience, and even stand out from your competition without much effort. But even though it might seem simple at first, establishing your business as a brand online can be a difficult process if you don’t have the right tools and resources at your disposal. To help you reach online success, here are some of the most essential digital branding guidelines you should follow:

Invest in branding

Just like any other branding strategy, your digital campaign should have established branding elements in place as well. This means creating the perfect logo your audience can easily associate with your business, as well as choosing a distinct color palette that helps to build brand identity. Aspects such as fonts and typography, graphics and imagery, taglines and slogans, and the overall tone of voice you use in your writing are also crucial. All of these elements come together in order to create unique and instantly recognizable online branding for your small business.

Focus on messaging

Brand messaging represents what your company says and the way it says it. The messaging should convey the main goals, core values, beliefs, and overall purpose of your business, and it should also speak directly to the desires and needs of your target audience. For that reason, your brand messaging must include mission, vision, and positioning statements, as well as your unique value proposition and the differentiators that set you apart from the competition.

Create buyer personas

In order to target your audience efficiently with your digital marketing efforts, you must first determine exactly who you’d like to reach. Chances are high that potential consumers will learn about your small business and connect with it through your online presence. So, try to create buyer personas by identifying demographics through markers such as age, gender, and location, creating surveys, utilizing social media channels, or even using specific marketing platforms. When you pinpoint your target audience, any digital branding tactic you implement will be that much more effective.

Shift to social media

With billions of people around the globe using social media each day, it’s truly essential for your digital branding. It allows you to reach a wider audience, engage consumers more effectively, and even encourage them to make a purchasing decision. But not all social media platforms are created equal. To ensure success, focus only on those channels that are truly relevant to your target audience and most frequently used by them, whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. Then, create a posting strategy based on the platform and the unique interests of your audience.

Build a great website

Websites are crucial for businesses of all types and sizes, representing your digital storefront and an easy way for consumers to find all the necessary information about your company. That is why it should be as clean, simple, and easy to navigate as possible. Along with a memorable or branded domain name, consider using a more personal .me extension as well, as it’s the ideal solution for a small business. When it comes to web design, focus on branding throughout and maintain consistency, while brief and concise pages might be the best solution for the overall efficiency of your website.

Prioritize SEO

If you want to ensure your target audience can find your website easily when performing a Google search, you will have to invest in search engine optimization (SEO). This means posting interesting and high-quality content on your website regularly, using relevant keywords, filling your content with useful backlinks and internal links, increasing the loading speed of your website, optimizing it for mobile and voice search, etc. The more you focus on great SEO tactics, the higher you will be able to position your website on search engine results pages, and the more potential customers you will be able to reach.

Consider advertising

Using the power of the internet in an effort to promote your business, online advertising is another great way to enhance your digital branding efforts. If you create a social media marketing campaign, social media ads will likely be an important part of your strategy. Apart from that solution, there are a number of other online advertising options you could go for, including search engine ads, mobile, and desktop feed ads, display ads, and retargeted ads. Choose a solution that suits your marketing tactics the most, as well as one that is most relevant to your target audience.

Try email marketing

Email marketing is a tried-and-true branding tactic that can enable you to effortlessly reach your target consumers, especially those demographics that don’t use social media. If you want to implement this strategy, begin by building a list of leads that are most likely to convert into subscribers or website visitors, and then focus on creating branded marketing emails for promotions, raising brand awareness, or simply conveying information. Keep in mind that the most efficient email marketing campaigns are always carefully scheduled, simple to read and understand, and have a clear end goal in mind.

Analyze competitors

There are likely a number of companies that offer similar products and services to yours, and it can often be challenging to differentiate your brand from the rest. That is why doing a thorough competitor analysis could be of great help. Set some time aside to research the market and review the tactics that are currently working well for your competitors. Based on their strategies, you can identify what will be efficient for your business as well, see which aspects you can change and improve, and even pinpoint exactly how to stand out from the crowd, thus accelerating success.

In terms of digital branding, growing a loyal and dedicated consumer base that buys frequently and believes in your company is absolutely essential. Do some research and utilize the tips above to find the best strategies that will bring growth and success to your small business online.

The post Digital Branding for Your Small Business: Essential Guidelines to Follow appeared first on noupe.