Social media always remembers even the slightest mistakes. Making one, especially if you’re not a world-famous brand, could drop your engagement and loyalty rates to nill. Many companies have already had their fair share of fails, so why should you go down the road?
We’ve gathered ten main social media mistakes that are frequently made by businesses of all kinds. While not all of them are critical, some might help you lose a customer or two. Avoid doing so by reading more about the fails below!
1. Trying to be in every network
Having a powerful presence on social media is great. You engage more customers, create better brand awareness, and also increase sales. However, that doesn’t always work the way it sounds. There is a bunch of obvious pitfalls ignored by most companies.
While you might have created an account in all existing networks, you can’t publish the same content everywhere. A YouTube video won’t fit on Instagram. Likewise, funny Instagram memes have nothing to do on LinkedIn.
Each platform has specific requirements for the type of content that is posted. Brands that try to be present everywhere usually don’t get it. These companies would repost every publication without any changes expecting them to bring tremendous results.
Everyone forgets that it doesn’t work that way. So here are some tips to consider:
All content must be adapted accordingly to the platform;
Irrelevant content must be substituted entirely;
You might need more than one team for your SMM strategy.
Remember that it is better to stay out of a network than build a negative reputation within it. Focus on the media where most of your potential clients are active. Once you make a community there, move on to secondary websites.
2. Posting content with poor engagement
What is engaging content? Always ask yourself this question before creating something new. If you fail during the creation stage, you won’t succeed when publishing.
Content with high engagement rates often includes:
Texts with helpful information or storytelling.
Several images;
Videos.
Instagram has recently posted a guide about how its algorithms work. This information will help you increase the visibility of your publications.
You must first focus on the quality of your content. If people like what they see, they will react somehow. Any like, comment or share will show the actual engagement rate. Still, what would make people do this?
It is said that video content engages users much better than photos and texts. The statement is quite reasonable once you think of it. There’s something new each second, driving more attention with every moment. Even a simple slideshow made with a free video merger would generate bigger engagement.
As the publisher, you need to know the pains of your target audience. This includes topics that interest them, the style they prefer, and multiple other ideas that show what could strike an emotion. The simplest way is asking people questions or sharing viral information. Yet, it all depends on the area you work in.
3. Nothing special about the profile
Would you be interested in a profile that’s similar to dozens of others? Most likely, you wouldn’t even give it a chance. But, unfortunately, that’s how modern consumers act.
Visiting your profile, the audience usually expects to see something special. By saying “special,” we mean an individual brand style. There are hundreds of ways to stand out. You could have a certain profile layout, one-styled images, powerful texts – anything that draws attention.
Take a look at the accounts of Recess and GoPro. Both have pleasant, attention-drawing images that tell a story about their products. Nothing extra. People see nice photos, brief texts, and an engaging story. In addition, they see the products with the ways they work – that’s another significant advantage!
Some ideas to improve your profile’s first impression would be:
Think of a unique layout (rows, tiles, puzzles, rainbows);
Highlights with good covers and titles;
A profile bio that gives all necessary information;
Engaging texts with storytelling and other features.
You could practice different layouts with a preview application. It will let you see the way your profile would look before any real users. Many accounts use this to build their profiles in one style without errors.
While there is no limit to your creativity, don’t overdo it. Your brand’s message must be clear enough for people to understand it within several seconds!
4. Not using CTAs
The absence of call-to-action phrases helps your company lose a lot of potential clients each moment. Okay, they read your text, saw the photos – what’s next? The audience is free to scroll by without even worrying about additional information about the product.
This is one of the common social media mistakes made by many companies. A CTA isn’t the universal cure. It’s more like one of the elements that make people buy the product or at least get some additional interest.
Some recommendations regarding your CTA are:
Make a crystal-clear point;
Ensure it stands out;
Use numbers to show a discount or demand.
Remember that you mustn’t deceive the audience. If you share a price in the CTA, it can’t be different after a user contacts you. This will only create a negative impression. We need sales, not lowered reputation!
5. Posting irregularly
With hundreds of other brands and influencers creating content every day, having an irregular schedule might prove to be a big issue for your accounts. It is best when you regularly publish during certain days of the week.
Why don’t we say “5 posts a week” or “10 stories a day”? Because that’s not how it works. Primarily, you won’t be able to generate that much quality content for a very long time. Sooner or later, overposting would make your content team turn into an example of another social media failure.
All your publications must be well-planned. That is why it is best when the content is prepared in advance. Depending on your industry, you could publish something 1-3 times a week. Stories must be posted daily to keep your engagement rates high.
Of course, if you want to stay afloat, you will have to do more than that. Each detail must be well-thought to keep people interested. Publishing content will small engagement rates will bury your account, so think of different ways to keep the statistics “alive.”
6. Always trying to sell
Yes, CTA’s are good. But that’s only when they are used in moderation. People will never want to follow an account that always tries to sell a product directly in every post. That’s absurd!
To stop making this error, follow the practices of the top brands in different industries. For example, have a look at Photoshop’s Instagram. Nearly every post is a creation of customers who used the company’s software. Seeing such beautiful images, people are likely to want to create some of their own. How? They buy the software!
Your sales should be made through stories and ideas. Think of your followers as students. Giving them the knowledge directly by saying “buy it” won’t do any good. However, if your lead them to the answer, make them realize that they need the product themselves, the results will be astonishing.
Here are some tips on how to sell your product on social media:
Share stories of your customers;
Involve user-generated content;
Demonstrate the value of your product via different situations.
Selling without selling is hard to master, but it’s definitely worth it. Try applying this strategy and adapt it depending on the customer’s reactions. This is how you will find the best approach!
7. Not promoting best posts
Many companies neglect promotion tools on social media. Sometimes, they use them but only with separate content created for advertisement-only. It might be a good try, although there’s an even better way to apply it.
When you see that a certain publication gets much better statistics when compared with others, it’s a good time to promote it. Subscribers are engaged, so it is very likely that other people will be as well. You never know unless you try!
For best results, you will need to know maximum information about your audience to target people with similar interests. With multiple tools for social media analytics, that shouldn’t be a problem. Remember that each audience requires a different approach. You can’t target teenagers with ads for adults!
Some tips for promoting your best posts are:
Check whether a user will be interested in the topic without knowing what’s going on;
Ensure you target an audience similar to the one that’s engaged in the post;
Work with an experienced targeted advertising specialist not to lose your investment.
If you want to get a free promotion without spending money, try contacting influencers to strike a deal. Probably, some might agree to repost your content for being spotlighted in your profile. However, bloggers usually prefer barter deals if money isn’t involved.
8. Leading a brand with no personality
Have you ever wondered why some brands are remembered, and some aren’t? It’s simple. That’s the way their branding works!
Seeing an ad with a red truck and Santa, people will think of Coca-Cola. A big yellow letter “M” will immediately remind them of McDonald’s. Why? Because these companies have a personality. “It’s that VERY brand!” – here’s what the audience thinks when they see anything related.
Building a personality for your brand requires a ton of work, and that can’t be done in one day. Generally, here are the points that determine your uniqueness:
A clear identity with certain beliefs;
A unique style of doing things;
A suitable tone of voice;
A team that is not hidden from society.
While there are dozens of points that build up a personality, these four are the foundation of all. It’s much easier when you’ve got a community around your product, like in the gaming industry. However, for instance, selling beverages or clothes makes things a bit more complicated.
Follow one style and apply the points mentioned above. You will see what else can be added once you start building a brand personality. If you’re interested, you could also read our previous post about starting an online business.
9. Creating content for everyone
This mistake is literally the same thing as trying to be in every network. Earth is huge, and the population of nearly 8 billion makes it impossible to suit everyone’s tastes. Even if it is a smaller group of people, focusing on your audience is always the best approach.
Now imagine that Asus, a huge technology company, started publishing content about food, clothing, and gardening. What would happen? Yes, total chaos. Current subscribers would be shocked, and new ones wouldn’t even subscribe.
If you specialize in a certain industry, then you have to stick to it. Food companies mustn’t try to apply politics in their campaigns. The same goes for any other example. Apple publishing about food? People aren’t there for this type of content!
They follow a brand because it shares similar ideas and values. Changing those will push away the current followers and is unlikely to attract new ones. Therefore, the best approach is publishing content that is only related to a specific audience. It’s the only way to keep it loyal and engaged.
10. Using hashtags that aren’t interesting for the target audience
If you subscribe to the hashtag “#hamburger,” you expect to see hamburgers. What would your reaction be if you saw a pizza with this hashtag? Okay, then what about cars? Many accounts use tags that aren’t even closely related to what their content is about. Only a negative reaction appears in this case.
Each hashtag is followed by a certain audience. If you are a fast-food restaurant, your audience will most likely be found in such tags as #fastfood, #burgers, #fries, and a bunch of others. You can find all hashtags related to a certain word with free online tools.
Here are some tips on hashtag usage:
Avoid banned and spammy tags;
Don’t use tags that are irrelevant to your content;
Ensure you understand the meaning of each tag applied.
Instagram limits hashtags to 30 per post and 10 per story, while Twitter recommends using only two. LinkedIn suggests using three to five of them to avoid being spammy.
This is a very popular instrument, so there even are different types of hashtags. Some of them are:
Location-based;
Product and niche-related;
Community hashtags;
Seasonal tags;
Acronyms, emojis, and others.
You will find related keywords for nearly any topic. So, if you do not want to end up dealing with negative emotions, use only those that are relevant to your post and account. That’s the only way your target audience will be engaged!
How to avoid making these mistakes?
Even if you’ve read the article till here, you are still likely to keep on making several mistakes. That’s not the reason this material was created, so let’s find a way to help you avoid the most common issues.
The most efficient strategy to remove all errors is creating a checklist. Whenever your team reaches the content-making phase, they will use the list to double-check the material. The same goes for planning and strategizing.
Finally, set a general rule in your content marketing department. It should always be quality over quantity, not vice-versa. Once every member sets this as a lifelong standard, you can be sure that your social media will be on top of the competition.
Are your website visitors leave your site after reading the first post? Increasing the views and reduce the bounce rate of your website pages is a big challenge for the owners. The best and easy way to increase user engagement on your website is by showing them related content. This is one of the amazing proven techniques to increase the page views on your website.
You can easily implement this strategy on your own WordPress website by using different related posts plugins on your site that will help you to display the related posts on your web pages or under the blog posts.
In this article, we will share the best related posts plugins for WordPress websites that will help you to display the related posts on your web pages with different approaches.
Our Top 6 Best Related Posts Plugins
Related Posts Thumbnails Plugin For WordPress
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Contextual Related Posts
Related Posts For WordPress
Inline Related Posts
Related Posts By Taxonomy
Related Posts Thumbnails Plugin For WordPress
Related Posts Thumbnails Plugin for WordPress is one of the most popular free related posts plugin developed by WPBrigade. With the related posts plugin, you can easily customize your related posts display settings, styles, and customize the thumbnails.
You can easily specify the number of related posts that you want to display under a specific blog post. This plugin will automatically use the by default uploaded featured image in related posts thumbnails.
Features
Video Thumbnails
Sidebar widget
Relations builder option
SEO Friendly
Shortcode support
Compatible with WPML Plugin
Languages Support
Related posts thumbnails plugin support different languages
Yet another related posts plugin is another most popular related posts plugin with 100,000+ active installs. Yet another related posts plugin offers both thumbnail and text display of related posts. This plugin automatically adds the related post thumbnails or text display according to your selected option under the blog posts.
Features
Shortcode Support
Related posts in feeds
Multisite Support
HTTPS Support
Thumbnail and list view style
Note: There is no option of displaying the custom-related posts in the Yet another related posts plugin.
Another WordPress plugin that will help you to display the related posts on your website/blog and feeds. Contextual related posts plugin display the related posts in simple contextual form and thumbnails.
With this plugin, you can easily create different styles of thumbnails by adding custom CSS, and shortcodes.
Features
Shortcode Support
Gutenberg/Block editor support
Exclusion of different related posts
Display Custom related posts
EU Compliance (GDPR)
Widget for related posts
This plugin tries to use the images in related post thumbnails if there is no featured image of any related blog post. Same as Yet another related posts plugin, this plugin does not work on large-scale websites. WordPress hosts like WPEngine blocked this plugin because this related posts plugin slow down the websites.
Related posts for WordPress plugin is a lightweight plugin that uses the cache to display the related posts thumbnails on your website or blog. The main focus of this plugin is website performance. This plugin is faster than other related post plugins and will never slow down your website. This plugin display related posts in thumbnail and textual style.
Features
Support Shortcode
Manually add & edit or remove related posts
Widget
Multisite Support
Create Manual links of related posts
Cross custom post type support
Custom Taxonomy support
This plugin is available in both free (limited features) & premium versions.
This is far away different from other WordPress plugins that will help you to display the related posts under your website/blog post content. But the Inline related posts plugin display your related posts within your content. This kind of inline display is quite popular on news websites or blogs.
But if you want to display the related posts under your blog posts content then you have to install the other WordPress plugin.
Features
20 plus combinations of style (themes, colors, hover)
Auto-detect line break without destroying your paragraphs
Automatically add multiple boxes in your blog posts
Add related posts boxes INSIDE your blog post content
In WordPress taxonomy means to sort the content in different terms. Category and tags are the by default two taxonomies used in WordPress blogs/websites. Relate posts by taxonomy plugin helps you to sort the content according to these taxonomies in WordPress. For example, you can select any taxonomy like tags or categories to display the related posts under the content of your blog posts.
This plugin will help you to display the related posts under those blog posts having the same taxonomies as tags or categories.
These are the top related post plugins for WordPress websites that will help you to add the related posts under and between the content of your blog posts. By adding related posts you can easily increase the views and engagement on your website plus easily reduce or adjust your website bounce rate.
Some of the WordPress related posts plugins can be resource intensive and some of the plugins may not work well on shared WordPress hostings.
In this case, you can use the Related posts thumbnails plugin for WordPress that will help you to manually add the related posts under a blog post content. You can easily display new and old posts in the related posts area on your website/blog.
The price to make an eCommerce website can vary from $26,400 to $99,700 and up. No developer can tell you the exact price until they know your requirements: what features you want to add, design, integrations, etc. Especially if you intend to build a custom website, bypassing out-of-the-box solutions.
In this post, I’ll flesh out the cost to develop an e-commerce platform based on the core features. Also, you’ll learn what factors influence the final price.
The estimate here is based on the average hourly rate of $50/hour in Eastern Europe.
Average Cost of E-Commerce Website
As I’ve mentioned earlier, the price of developing a tailored-made eCommerce website can reach $99,700+. You may consider this sum creating the website from scratch. A ready-made solution will cost you less, but it’s a good option for short-term needs.
Why are customer websites better? There are a bunch of reasons. The main ones are page loading speed, adaptability, and Google loves them more. Besides, you can create exclusive UI designs and stand out from the faceless mass. The more complete your website is, the more customers you may attract. Besides, ready-made templates may not be as secure as you expect your website will. Security’s vital when you handle customers’ personal and payment data.
Now, let’s reveal the main factors influencing the price. To make the process easier, I’ve split the e-commerce websites by their complexity, from simple ones to websites with complex features.
Large e-commerce sites must be well-organized to manage high loads and rank well on Google. This is one of the reasons (along with unique design, number of pages, etc.) why e-commerce site cost can go up. By the way, the tech stack will also vary depending on the project. For example, simple websites don’t require push notifications or coupons compared to large-size platforms.
What Factors Affect an E-Commerce Website Cost
To make it clear, the main cost-drivers are:
The number of features and their complexity
Web design difficulty
Number of 3rd party integrations
Developers’ rates
Let’s consider them in detail.
Features: Number and Complexity
The intricacy of tech requirements depends on the website’s size. Respectively, the cost to develop an e-commerce website grows either.
Screens, buttons, fields, logic affect the final price. Moreover, the developers may need to integrate APIs (e.g., payment systems or social login) or design from scratch. All these points matter a lot.
I’m going to estimate e-commerce development cost feature by feature. But firstly, look at the list of must-have pages:
Main page
Shopping cart
Favorites
Check out
Blog
Category pages
Product pages
And the core features:
Integration with payment systems (Stripe, PayPal, Dwolla)
Push notifications
Recently viewed products
Products’ rates and reviews
Search bar with filters
Admin panel
Custom Website Design
The same dependence on e-commerce website design cost: the more complicated your website design will be, the more time developers will spend to implement required elements.
Design isn’t only a bright picture. It should provide customers with a fast, clear, and simple select-buy process. Or even push them to purchase.
Moreover, if you plan to add some animations or ask designers to prepare 2-3 visual concepts (it requires additional time), be ready for higher website costs.
Another point: you may want to design a website that renders well on mobile devices. In that way, you need to consider adaptive web design costs. It’s the right choice if you prefer your web pages to go together with various devices, including smartphones (so you don’t need to develop native iOS and Android applications for mobile users separately).
Number of 3rd Party Integrations
If you want to incorporate 3rd-party tools, add an online chat, or adjust shipping options, you’ll need to pay extra money for your project development.
Payment gateway integrations allow you to sell your products online and provide secure transaction processing. Let’s consider the most popular payment integrations – Stripe and PayPal.
Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per successful cash transfer. PayPal charges the same price, but they also take 5% + .05¢ for payments lower than $10.
Want a robot assistant to contact your clients when orders are sent? Or send them notifications in WhatsApp? Twilio APIs (programmable voice or SMS) is the right choice. It stands for a cloud communication platform that allows users to text, make a call or start a chat from their websites.
Let’s look at the Twilio price policy:
$0.0045 to convey a WhatsApp message
$0.0080 to pass on or get a message
$0.0090/min to get and $0.015/min to place a call
Again, it requires additional time for integration (not much, though).
Another example, emails. It’s a must-have channel if you’re planning to notify customers about their orders being prepared or delivered.
It’s a good idea to utilize the Amazon email sending service (Amazon SES). You’ll pay $0 for the first 62,000 emails you send each month. And they take $0.10 for every 1,000 emails you send afterward.
Developers’ Rates by Country
Software developers’ rates also affect the final price. The specialists who have experience in similar projects will charge more compared to non-experienced ones. Besides, website development services in Eastern Europe or India cost less than in Canada or the US.
Here are the average cost to make an e-commerce website in different country (per hour):
Canada – $100 – $149
United States – $100 – $149
Israel – $100 – $149
Australia – $100 – $149
Sweden – $100 – $149
United Kingdom – $50 – $99
Germany – $50 – $99
Norway – $50 – $99
Switzerland – $50 – $99
Latin America – $30 – $50
Ukraine – $25 – $50
However, a high price doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a well-architectured website. Some software development companies provide high-quality services for an affordable price.
But not so fast. I’ve discovered the basic factors of e-commerce website price, but it also requires additional expenses like:
The domain name ($10 to $20/annually)
Hosting ($100 to $200)
SSL certificate ($6 to $150)
Maintenance ($500 to $12,000)
Finally, if customers don’t know about your e-commerce platform — there is no sense. That’s why it’s essential to add marketing expenses to your business plan. Here are some of them:
PPC advertising (the cost depends on the competition level of the keywords)
SEO (the month price can vary from $300 to $1,500 on average)
Copywriting (from $60 per article)
SMM (the price starts from $500 per month)
Now, let’s move to the most significant e-commerce website cost driver – features.
E-Commerce Website Cost: Estimate by Features
Content, design and the domain will definitely affect the final. However, features that you want to add to your website will take up a tidbit from your budget.
Let’s examine how much time the developers need on average to develop an e-commerce platform for basic features (frontend part).
To make it easier, I’ve combined the features into modules. The time was calculated per module.
Module 1. Registration:
Register using email and password
Login using social media
Logout
It takes approximately 56 hours to implement this module.
Module 2. Main screen
Watched products
Last purchased products
Popular products
Developers will need 96 hours to carry out this module.
Module 3. Catalog screen
List of categories
It’ll take 24 hours to enforce this module.
Module 4. Product details screen
Photo slider
Rate
Add review
Module 5. Cart
List of products
Checkout
It takes approximately 112 hours to implement this module.
Module 6. Profile
Edit profile
Orders
Payment screen
The team will need 64 hours to carry out this module.
Module 7. Help screen
Terms and conditions
About company
Feedback form
It’ll take 32 hours to implement this module.
Module 8. Push notifications
Notifications
It’ll take 16 hours to enforce this module.
Module 9. Analytics integration
Google Analytics
Developers will need 16 hours to carry out this module.
Given these points, it’ll take 456 hours to build a front end of the e-commerce website.
All e-commerce websites need an admin panel to operate items, users and give access to employees. Keep that in mind to accurately calculate the price of building an e-commerce platform.
It will take approximately 456 hours to build a back end of the website. So, the development team will spend 936 hours in total to develop an e-commerce website. Remember that you may need other specialists (UI/UX designer, project manager, QA engineer, business analysts) on a team to develop a full-fledged website from scratch.
Consider the amount of work, it’ll cost you approximately $99,700 to create the e-commerce website.
Tech Stack of an E-Commerce Website
After we determine the price, let’s consider what tech stack the developers need to design such a complex product from scratch.
Front-end part:
Angular
Angular Universal
UI elements libraries
Backend:
Nodejs + TypeScript
PostgreSQL or Mysql
Elasticsearch
Redis
BullMQ
3rd party elements:
Amazon SSS
Amazon SES
Paypal, Stripe, etc
Firebase Cloud Messaging
Login through social network API
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, I’ve explained how to calculate the price to start an online business. As you can see, you need to address various factors before making your ecommerce site.
If you want to create a simple eCommerce platform, you can use ready-built solutions (e.g., Magento, Shopify). But if you tend to boost your business growth and get as many clients as possible, then a custom eCommerce website will be the best choice.
If you are using WordPress or have ever used WordPress, you know very well that you will get too many advanced features if you have installed different plugins. For your kind information, WordPress plugins are the essential part of WordPress. If you want to develop a great website, then plugins are necessary to use.
If you don’t know what plugins are and how they work, don’t worry; let me explain. The WordPress plugins are the PHP script made by the developers. The main motive to make plugins is to extend the functionality of the website.
All plugins come with different features; they always enhance the features or add new functions to your website. Most of the plugins are free to use, but some of them have charges. Once you set up your WordPress site, you can install these plugins.
On the WordPress Plugin Directory, more than 45,000 plugins are present, and thousands of plugins are present on third-party websites. Other than this, individual developers sell more than thousands of plugins.
You can find plugins for everything like data engineering to collect the user’s data, enhance the website, and do many other things. However, I will tell you the top 4 plugins for data engineering to collect the user’s data and to maintain the website.
Why Is Data Important?
Data are the raw bits present in the form of pieces of information and with no context for your kind information. However, if you want to store data, you have to use the software that collects all the data, and this software stores all data and analyzes it.
But in WordPress, MySQL is used to assess the data. However, MySQL stores all your website data and provides you when the data is requested. However, it is open-source software; that’s why MySQL also works with the other open-source database software.
When you know about your website visitors’ behavior, knowing different things about the visitor is very like on which page they spend more time? What is the reason for returning so quickly? Do they love your website? So, it proves that the data will provide you with all the information about every visitor.
When making a blog and website, you should know about your target audience, and it is obvious that the data plays a vital role in making decisions for any website. And in making decisions, open software will definitely help you.
For example, if you have a website or blog and have complete access to visitors’ data. Then this thing will help you to know where you have to focus on growing your website. However, the data collection always enables you to explore your website and allows you to make a decision to increase the traffic and grow your website. At the same time, the data that you get about the website visitors include the locations, age, gender, and other exciting things
Google Analytics
If you want to make data-driven decisions and improve your website, then Google analytics is the best way to do this. But the main thing is that adding Google Analytics is very challenging that’s why too many professionals use the Google Analytics plugins.
Too many data plugins are present in the market to collect the user’s data which works like Google Analytics. However, Google Analytics is a free website that provides you the details of your visitors.
The features that you can get from Google Analytics include:
You can learn how visitors find your website
Easily find the most visited pages or posts
Check the different demographics of the visitors
You can set the real-time stats
Provide an opportunity to track inbound and outbound links
With the help of this information, you can easily make data-driven decisions to improve the website and the marketing strategy. Before installing any plugin, you need to set up WordPress to avoid inconvenience later.
When you connect the Google Analytics plugin with your WordPress website, this plugin will automatically add the Analytics Tracking ID to every page of your website.
So, if you are in search of the best data plugins to collect data, don’t worry; the best Google Analytics plugins are the following.
MonsterInsights
The MonsterInsights is one of the best Google Analytics plugins; till now, this plugin has crossed the 2 million active users. It comes with the best features and easy integration to WordPress, and because of all these things, it offers you to track your website data easily.
It provides you the opportunity to add this plugin into WordPress without entering a single line of code. After installing this Google Analytics plugin, you can quickly check the report of your website directly from the WordPress dashboard.
The best thing about this plugin is that you can use the advanced Google Analytics tracking system without customizing the tracking code. With the help of this plugin, you can collect all your website’s data that you can use to make decisions to improve your website and grow your business.
However, the features that you get from the MonsterInsights plugin include:
With the help of a WordPress dashboard, you can easily view your website traffic detail
Get all the demographic reports of your website visitors
You can easily check that how your visitors can find your website
You have the opportunity to unlock the event tracking with the help of this; you know if the CTA gets clicked
Track with the help of submissions, conversion rates, and also from the views
To show the ad campaign data, you can integrate it with Google Ads
With the help of a single click, you can easily track categories, tags, and custom dimensions
To see the data of the eCommerce store like conversion rate, average order, and transaction, you can connect the Google Analytics eCommerce tracking with WooCommerce.
GA Google Analytics
The next plugin that I recommend is GA Google Analytics. It is effortless, lightweight, GDPR-compliant, and a very famous Google Analytics plugin. The main motive of this Google Analytics plugin is to help everyone add the tracking code on every page of the website.
But the main thing that you have to remember is that this plugin will not show you any insights or data like the other Google Analytics plugins, but still, it does its work correctly.
The GA Google Analytics plugin is the best option for those people who want to know how to extract the data. Other than this, if you want to know different types of information from your WordPress dashboard, you can’t do this with the help of this plugin.
All the features that you can get from the GA Google Analytics include:
It provides you the opportunity to add the tracking code easily on your WordPress website
It allows every visitor to opt-out of sharing their data. But the main thing is that you don’t track the user
You can easily configure too many tracking codes, and this thing will help you to tracks all your links
WP Statistics
The WP Statistics is a powerful plugin. It is very simple and helps you track all your visitors’ activities with the help of the WordPress dashboard. However, this plugin is the best option for geographical and content reports.
With all these features, this plugin will also show you the real-time metrics of the website. The best thing about this plugin is that you can get all these features without paying any money.
But the main thing is that it is not a Google Analytics plugin, but still, it contains too many unique features and advantages. With the help of the WP Statistics plugin, you don’t have to configure Google Analytics, and also, it doesn’t share your website data with anyone.
Sharing your website data is possible because this plugin tracks all your website’s data and keeps it, but it doesn’t share anything with anyone except you. Other than this, the Wp Statistics also increases your website’s backup size, but you have the opportunity to delete the old data of your website.
This plugin comes with too many features; all these are the following:
With the help of the WordPress dashboard, you can see all the stats
You can track all the visitors that are coming from the different search engines like Bing, Google, and Yandex
You can filter all your data according to your needs, like by the version of the browser, by location, keywords, and many more.
After analyzing all the data plugins to track website data, I have decided that MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin to install in your WordPress to improve the website. This plugin comes with the free version but also contains the premium version.
If you buy the premium version, then you will get too many outstanding features. With the help of this plugin, you can easily optimize your website, but the main thing is that you have to try it by yourself. If you don’t like this Google Analytics plugin, you can try the other to fulfill your needs.
How To Add a Data Engineer Plugin To WordPress?
There are different ways to add any plugin to WordPress, but it all depends on where you have downloaded it. The first method that you can use to install the plugin is the automatic method.
In this method, you have to install the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. I already mentioned that there are too many plugins present in the WordPress plugin directory. For this, you have to follow all the steps that are as under:
First, you have to go to the WordPress dashboard
Here you have to click on the Plugins option
After this, click on the Add New plugin, and you will get the plugin’s gallery.
Now, you have to find the plugin that you want to install with the help of the search bar.
After finding the plugin click on the Install now button.
When the installation process completes, click on the activate now button.
The second method is installing a manually WordPress plugin that you have downloaded from any third-party website. WordPress provides you the opportunity to upload the zip file of the plugin. The steps to do this are the following:
First, you have to download the zip file of the plugin from the trusted third-party website.
After this, go to the plugin section in your WordPress
Here you will find the upload plugin button and then click on it
Select the zip file of the plugin that you have downloaded from the third party website
Click on the Install now button and wait until the upload process is complete
After this, click on the Activate plugin option
In Conclusion
I hope that this article is helpful to you, and after reading the complete article, you can easily select the data plugin that is best for you. I guarantee that you can’t go wrong with the above-given Google Analytics plugins.
A vast number of businesses have gone online and millions of employees have shifted to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic—with mixed results.
While many people have enjoyed the flexibility that comes with working from home, some have found it tricky. And then there’s the risk of data breaches and other cyberattacks.
When operating from the office, the day-to-day workings of a company are protected as a matter of course. But with each individual using their own laptop or computer at home… things aren’t so cut and dried.
So… Can it be compromised?
The short answer is yes, of course. Although you could argue that a computer is at risk of compromise in an office too. However, working from home comes with bigger risks, including individuals falling for scams, employees using weak passwords, lack of firewalls to protect employees’ home Wi-Fi networks, and the use of other devices that aren’t encrypted.
It seems that COVID-19 has resulted in a massive upswing in phishing emails. In the past few months, they have increased by over 600%. Malspam and ransomware attacks have also increased exponentially—often by trying to exploit the confusion caused by the pandemic upheaval and knock-on economic effects.
What are the cybersecurity dangers of remote working?
There are several specific scenarios and activities that pose a threat to a company’s cybersecurity:
Human (employee) error
Lack of vigilance
File and information sharing
Use of personal devices
Difficulty accessing IT support
Failure to use VPN
Failure to back up files and data
Use of unsecured Wi-Fi connections
Some of these present bigger risks than others, and the scope for disaster varies. But all are largely mitigated if a company is vigilant and comprehensive in its security practices.
Human error
This unfortunate weakness is applicable whether working remotely or in an office setting. Unfortunately, it’s much more likely to crop up when working from home—probably because sitting in your “home office” results in a much more easygoing approach to work.
Human error can include things like clicking on malware, opening attachments that contain viruses, or setting a weak password that’s vulnerable to hackers.
While human error is unavoidable, training and educating staff can reduce the occurrence a great deal. Keeping staff informed about the dangers makes them more aware, and more likely to spot a scam, phishing mail, or potentially threatening attachment.
Lack of vigilance
Similar to human error, lack of vigilance can result in chinks in a company’s metaphorical armor— weak points in the cybersecurity barrier that protects data from unauthorized access.
Research has revealed that people working from home fall for phishing scams at much higher rates than those working in office. Shockingly, 47% of employees fall for phishing scams when working remotely.
For many people, “working from home” can also mean working from a coffee shop or similar setting where Wi-Fi is available. What they fail to realize, however, is that such networks are insecure and provide hackers or other parties with an ideal opportunity to access confidential data.
Once again, raising awareness to the issue is key, and can go a long way towards improving vigilance.
File and information sharing
Working from home means that people use the internet more often to share files and data with colleagues, instead of using in-house methods or protocols.
Sharing data in this way, from home to home, poses a much greater risk. Immediately the danger of human error and lack of vigilance doubles, purely because there’s more than one individual involved. If employees are not provided with advanced encryption software, then company data is open to exploitation by third parties.
Use of personal devices
This is one of the greatest risks of working from home. Unfortunately, many companies find it too costly to provide every remote employee with a laptop or computer, which results in them using personal devices.
Not only does this mean their own laptops or computers but also smartphones, printers, scanners, and tablets. Many smartphones are not encrypted, totally negating the use of encryption on laptops or PCs and posing the same risk of data breaches. Personal devices may also lack vital antivirus software and firewalls.
A BYOD (bring your own device) policy is an excellent idea, not just for the office, but for those working remotely too. If policies and procedures are in place, there’s a better chance of protection.
Difficulty accessing IT support
Technology is great when it’s working, but all too often employees encounter IT problems, whether on-site or within the comfort of their own homes. It’s relatively simple for the IT department to fix an issue within an office environment, but they are highly unlikely to be able to provide the same service to individuals working remotely.
Internet connections and imminent data breaches can make it difficult or impossible for IT support to render aid and prevent attacks.
Allowing remote access to IT teams can alleviate this issue to some degree, but it’s not 100% infallible.
Neglecting to use a VPN
This scenario is interwoven with many others—use of personal devices and lack of vigilance, for example. Every remote worker should use a VPN, which is a fundamental tool to ensure privacy and security.
Issues with accessing IT support can also result in employees defaulting to personal devices without adequate security when something goes awry with the VPN they’re using.
Failure to back up files and data
One of the greatest worries of every business is the loss of their data, with no way of recovering it. It only takes one attack to bring a company to its knees by wiping out all their files.
To combat this, make use of the cloud and ensure that every bit of information backs up.
Use of unsecured Wi-Fi connections at home
We’ve already covered the dangers of connecting to Wi-Fi in public settings, but people also forget that their home networks are not protected.
Many people aren’t aware that updating home router software is necessary to ensure cybersecurity. And that failing to update other devices results in the same security risks as an insecure Wi-Fi connection. Even routers that have some kind of firewall in place are usually not as secure as an on-site network. This danger can be offset, however, by providing remote workers with a firewall equipped to deal with serious threats.
A New Era Requires A New Approach
It’s unlikely that work will ever return to pre-pandemic “normal”. This requires companies to change their approach to tech. Working remotely is here to stay, cybersecurity must adapt.
What separates good content from great content is the willingness to take risks and push the envelope
– Brain Halligan, CEO and Co-Founder HubSpot.
What makes content great is the writer’s ability to transform words into art.
Basics of marketing
Marketing refers to the process in which you interest potential buyers often referred to as customers to buy the product or service that you are marketing. Marketing is a long process, some of these steps are –
Researching
Selling
Promoting
Distributing
When we market a product/ service we are also creating a brand. We are setting the tone of the brand the kind of messaging that will be associated with that particular brand. One common way of doing this is by creating a unique identity for the brand. For example – why do you choose to buy an X product as opposed to Y? Does the messaging appeal to you, do the ingredients? Does it have a sense of uniqueness to it? There are many things to consider when marketing a brand, first, you must meet the ISO brand standards then you must choose the path that sets you apart from the competition and what markets the product accordingly.
History of marketing
It’s very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when marketing first began. Some people believe that marketing as a means of selling your product existed right from the times of ancient civilizations. It could be possible that during the era of barter systems, traders came up with fun and unique ways of selling their products in exchange for their products. They could have possibly used the tools at their disposal to make their product stand apart. China and India were the first ones who came up with innovative ways and methods to sell their products to others. Their methods were conventional and not recognized as marketing then, but it’s believed that that is where the idea of marketing began to develop.
The 18th and 19th century, people saw a period of rapid social change. The driving factors for this service change was technology and scientific innovation.
What is affiliate marketing?
With the advent of technology, came new marketing trends that have gained popularity. Affiliate marketing is a relatively new form of marketing where businesses pay a commission on conversions through links provided by the brand.
Affiliates are freelancers who don’t own stock, they don’t have to deal with customer complaints or have a fixed number of customers to meet in order to get paid. Affiliates get paid every time a customer clicks on their link and buys a product or service that they advertised.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Unlike conventional marketing methods where there are many process that you need to undergo before going public with your brand, here there are only 2 parties involved these are :-
Affiliate – Affiliates are marketers who promote brand content on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter which then ultimately drives potential customers to the product. Affiliates get paid in commission when their advertisement is turned into a sale.
Gone are the days when advertising was done only through print media. With the advent of technology, more people are spending time online and are hence more prone to seeing an advertisement on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, than television or on the radio. A reason why this form of marketing is gaining more and more popularity is due to it’s inexpensiveness. The merchant isn’t advertising the product, you are advertising a merchants product in return for a commission that’s charged by you. Television advertisements typically run for lakhs even crores of rupees for a simple 30 secs ad. Paying commission to affiliates is much more convenient.
Customers these days are a lot more informed than they were 50 years ago. Today’s customer read product reviews, talks to people before making a decision. What makes affiliate marketing interesting is the fact that affiliates have the opportunity to reach as many customers as they can through their content and then turning it into an effective sale. Research has shown that a referred customer is 4 times more likely to talk about a particular brand and has a 37% higher conversion rate.
As an affiliate, there are many ways, many tools that you can use to promote your or your merchants products. Some of these products are –
Social Media – Suggestive of the name, social media refers to various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc to market a product. This is one of the most popular tools that’s used by marketers these days.
PPC –If you’ve ever made a search online, you must’ve noticed the first 2-3 links that pop up, more often than not, a brand pays the search engine platform to buy that ad space. Every time you click on an advertisement that you see online, the advertiser pays for that click. This is a way for advertisers to advertise their products when someone organically searches for a product that’s relatable.
SEO – SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of your product and increasing your website traffic to gain more customers through both paid and non-paid organic or inorganic search engine results.
Content Marketing – Content Marketing is focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant content that’s consistent to attract and retain a clearly defined audience who will then ultimately drive your customers towards making a purchase or a profitable customer action.
Key pointers to remember when using affiliate marketing
With growing popularity, affiliate marketing is a highly competitive market wherein to be successful you have to do some studying about what works for you and what doesn’t. Here are a few points to remember and work on before becoming an affiliate and promoting a marketers content –
Creating content that generates revenue – When you start working on something new, I’m sure you are going to be super excited and this excitement to post something, anything may or may not work. Good content comes from when you strategize and devise a plan that works best for you and your brand. Randomly placing links in the article isn’t going to help anyone. If you really want your content to help generate sales, then focus on who your target audience is. As long as your content reaches the right target audience, the sales will come.
Incorporate your products in the content – What is the content that you want to put across your platform? Who is your target audience and what is their problem that you would want to solve? Once you have all these answers, you can move on to doing your research. Do keyword research and once you have your content ideas it’s time to start inserting affiliate links into your content. The benefit of doing this is that your links will be specific to the content that you want to promote.
Turning visitors into affiliate customers – When you identify which content campaign of yours has the most traction , you can focus on either promoting that or creating more content that’s similar to that. A lot of beginners assume that in order to generate high sales, you need to promote each and every post with the same amount of money but this isn’t true. Experiment with your content, observe and make use of tools like CPC, SEO and turn them into your advantage.
Different affiliate marketing platforms
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, let’s talk about how to become an affiliate marketer. There are many platforms that are available for you to join online. These platforms have various commissions for their marketers depending on the product they choose to advertise and the platform they choose to operate it from. Some affiliate marketing platforms are –
Reseller Club – Reseller clubs is one of the largest reseller hosting sites in the world. Here you can choose from a wide range of hosting products which is created for web developers and web designers. Earn anywhere between 25-100$ per referral. A referral is a link that has a time validity such as 60 days. This link keeps a track of all the sales which were made by you in the past 60 months.
Flipkart Affiliate – As one of the largest e-commerce platforms in India, Flipkart provides its affiliates with a variety of tools such as banners, APIs for listings on Flipkart, widgets. All these products will help you promote Flipkarts deals/ platforms on their own site/app. An affiliate can earn a commission anywhere between 6-20% based on the category of their choice. You can track your referral links and conversions with real-time reports.
Amazon Associates – Amazon is the largest e-commerce brand in the world. Becoming an amazon affiliate is easy, all you have to do is sign up using your existing amazon account. Customise your links by adding pictures which can help elevate your sale. Amazon affiliates earn anywhere between 0.2% to 10% based on the kind of product they’re marketing. A huge advantage of being an Amazon affiliate is, if a customer opens your link and is then taken to another product through your link, you will still get a commission on that product purchase because it was your link that helped make that purchase.
vCommission – As one of the oldest affiliate networks in India, vCommission is working with some leading e-commerce websites such as Myntra, Snapdeal, and AliExpress with a strong affiliate base of over 18,000+ and has more than 14,000 publishers making it also India’s largest affiliate network platform in India. As a vCommission affiliate, you can earn a commission anywhere between 5,000-100 $. To be eligible for this platform, your content needs to be written only in English.
BigRock Affiliate –BigRock is one of India’s leading web hosting and domain registration company. As an affiliate earn a commission that’s anywhere between Rs. 30 and can go upto 30% on each sale. Apart from domain registration, you can use the platform for email hostings, digital certificates, and website buildings.
Yatra Affiliate – You may have heard of yatra as one of India’s e-commerce travel companies. Plan your entire trip from travel to hotel rooms. Commission for affiliate marketers is given upon paid bookings.
In Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a great way for you to earn some side income whilst staying at home. The great thing about affiliate marketing is that there are many tools at your disposal and so you can be as creative as you want to, to market a product/service of your choice.
If you are passionate about fashion, consider launching a blog about it. But, before you do that, you should learn all the elements that constitute writing a successful blog.
Fashion bloggers connect brand makers with those who want to look good and stay on top of trends. They write articles about style, show successful combinations in clothes, highlight new items and fashion trends. To stay on top of the wave, bloggers go to shows and parties, talk to stars, and collaborate with designers and photographers.
Don’t forget to get in touch with an essay writer online in case you are a student who studies at college yet but would love to pay more attention to fashion blog tips. Here are some tips to guide you.
Select your area of strength
Fashion itself is a broad term, and it describes a lot of clothing genres and accessories. Before you start your new blog, ensure that you select the area you have the best strength as it needs to be a blog that attracts men, children, women, and teens. It, therefore, means that you must have a niche focus in the industry. You then need to build a marketing strategy, a website, and its design. You should also ensure that the area of interest our expertise you select is one that you are fascinated about, and you’ll maintain it in the coming years.
Select a unique but memorable business name
For a fashion blog, you need not be concerned about infusing relevant keywords in your website or URL. Most kids develop and disappear quickly in most fashion industries, and therefore it is not a good idea to make an appearance that your blog is outdated. You should therefore select a name that you consider memorable, fun, and unique. Choose between two to four words that you can easily remember, which can get spelled out easily. You can choose to go with your name or collect stories that sound good when put in a group. You can also infuse what that’s like style or fashion but don’t overdo it.
Make it shine
As you already know by this moment, fashion entails appearance, and he should make it a point of making your blog appear shiny. You can either make a template from WordPress or customize a designed website. Ensure that the appearance is crisp, clean, and stylish. Be sure to make your website mobile-friendly or, in other words responsive, to make it easy for fashionistas to look through the fashions on your page at any given moment.
Build a marketing strategy
Any business requires a marketing strategy and you can choose from an array of available methods. The primary goal could be getting educated on how to jot excellent and compelling content. Still, you should also consider how you will use to distribute your content online to drive traffic to the website. You can choose to use social media marketing, email marketing, banner ads, mobile marketing, optimization of your website, networking, or pay-per-click campaigns. In your plan, ensure that you put social marketing on a higher value because most fashion blogs will work perfectly with their image on social media. Close to 23% of people who use the Internet spend time on social media, and a whopping over 80% are either in blogs or social media.
While developing a marketing strategy, be sure to have one that is measurable. Also, check to see if it has a solid timeline before you open it to the public. Doing this will make you efficiently and accurately assess your return on investment. You may choose to outsource your marketing, making you become a responsible party on a given portion. That is only possible if you have got an enormous budget for the marketing strategy.
The Internet is one of the most efficient ways to advertise your business. Thus, special emphasis must be put on the crafting and building of your website. Different aspects must be considered, such as the inclusion of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. However, after completing the website, the next step is to look for good hosting. This aspect is also decisive for the effectiveness of your website.
Soon, you’ll realize that the market offers different types of hosting. But just two types are the most commonly used to host commercial sites: dedicated or virtual private server. Both alternatives have their pros and cons. Hence, knowing the characteristics of each one is indispensable to make the right decision. To contribute to your decision process, we present the following review of Host-World.
This company offers the two aforementioned hosting alternatives. Are they good? Can they meet the requirements of a demanding business? What about their prices? We aim at answering all these questions in this comprehensive review. Thus, read on and learn whether this is a good hosting alternative for your business.
Hosting Types
So, before we proceed to review the technicalities of this company, let’s understand the difference between the two types of hosting that Host-World offers.
Dedicated Server
In this hosting modality, your website is hosted on a server for your exclusive use. All the computational resources, memory, and storage capacity are allocated to your site only. You don’t have to share it with anybody else. As a result, the security of your site can be very high, since you have full control over the server. Also, you can configure the server as you deem it more convenient.
The drawback of this modality is the rental cost. In most cases, only large businesses and companies can afford a dedicated server hosting plan. It doesn’t mean that a dedicated business cannot be for your site. Dedicated servers come at different rental prices. It may be that one of these plans may fit your budget. If you are interested in this alternative, Host-World offers different plans. Visit https://host-world.com/dedicated and learn more about these options.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
A hosting alternative that offers good functionality at a lower price is the VPS hosting option. In this modality, your site is allocated a virtual server, which runs on a physical server. While several users can use the physical server, in your virtual space, your site doesn’t share resources with other sites. You’re given a share of storage space and memory, and that’s for your exclusive use. Moreover, you can manage your VPS with root access.
The drawback of a VPS is that the performance of your website can degrade when the physical server’s capabilities are exceeded. But because of the lower cost, it is preferred by many business owners. Host-World also offers different VPS hosting plans at different prices. Visit the provider’s website for further details.
What Technical Aspects Should You Pay Attention to?
When selecting a hosting plan for your site, first you must outline your technical requirements. Will your site include a lot of pictures and videos? How many visitors per day do you expect? This information will help you to choose the right hosting package. However, to compare the different packages that Host-World offers, you must understand the meaning of some technical aspects. Below, you can find the list of the most important technical aspects to pay attention to:
Bandwidth. This is the capacity of the hosting server to handle traffic (visits to your site). The larger the bandwidth, the more traffic your site can receive. Make sure to opt for a plan that covers your traffic requirements completely. Otherwise, visitors to your site may experience delays. During traffic surges, your site may even become unavailable because of lack of bandwidth;
Storage Capacity. This is the capacity to store data for your site. For instance, if your site content includes a lot of multimedia, you will need a larger storage capacity. Commonly, hosting servers use HDD to store your data. However, to allow your visitors to access the multimedia resources faster, opt for SSD storage, preferably with NVMe technology;
Uptime. Ideally, your hosting service should have 100% uptime, which means it’d be online all the time. However, this is technically impossible to achieve, since some unforeseen events may cause the server to go offline. In any case, the lowest uptime value you should select for a commercial site is 98%. Otherwise, your website may not perform its function properly, especially if you have an online shop.
Other aspects to consider are the Operating System (OS) and Security. The most common OSs offered for hosting are Linux and Windows. Host-World has both options. Select the OS that’s compatible with your applications. Regarding security, make sure that the hosting provider has proper online security measures in place. A firewall and encryption algorithms are necessary. Routine backups and redundancy are also good security measures that a provider must offer.
Host-world.com Review: Overview
Now, let’s review the Host-World provider in more detail. As mentioned, this company offers both dedicated server and VPS hosting plans. In all cases, the company guarantees 99.9% uptime. This is one of the best uptime guarantees that you can find on the market. The company can offer it because of its server infrastructure, which spans 17 countries. This helps the company to offer good redundancy, security, and performance.
Also, the different locations allow you to choose a data center close to your business headquarters. This is useful if you want your local IT staff to be able to visit the server premises for an inspection or other purposes.
Host-world.com Review: Rental Cost of a Dedicated Server
This provider offers dedicated servers in different locations. Depending on the technical characteristics and features, the monthly rental cost can be between 79 and 900 Euros. For instance, the package 1xIntel Xeon Quad-Core E3-1270 is offered for 79 Euros per month. The location of the dedicated server is in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The CPU is Single Quad Core 4x 3.40 GHz. You also get 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of HDD.
You can also opt for a hosting package with top features. For instance, the package Intel Xeon 2×10-Core Xeon E5-2650 V3 is offered for 900 Euros per month. The location of this server is Bogotá, Colombia. Alternatively, you can find the same package in Guadalajara, Mexico. Here, the computation power is provided by 20 CPU cores. You also get 64 GB of RAM, 1 TB of HDD, and 30 Mb/s of bandwidth.
Host-world.com Review: Rental Cost of a VPS
If the rental cost of a dedicated server is beyond your budget, Host-World offers VPS hosting solutions also. Depending on technical characteristics and features, the monthly rental cost can go from 6 to 100 Euros. For instance, the package KVM VPS 2 GB is offered at 6 Euros per month. The location of this VPS is Toronto, Canada. Alternatively, you can find the same package in Frankfurt, Germany. This hosting plan includes a CPU 2x Xeon Core with 2 GB of RAM and 30 GB of HDD.
The package KVM VPS 16 GB offers a CPU 4x Xeon Core and 16 GB of RAM. The monthly rental cost is 100 Euros per month and the location is Limassol, Cyprus.
Host-world.com Review: Customer Support
Customer support cannot be disregarded. You may have a good hosting solution but, what if you have a problem setting your server? In this regard, Host-World offers outstanding customer service. You can contact their team via LiveChat. The company guarantees a reply within 9.9 seconds. For a technical request, the company guarantees a response within 10 minutes.
There’s nothing like a hosting provider that takes care of customers after signing a contract. With Host-World, we found that in all cases they resolve any technical issue as soon as possible. What’s more, the customer support team is multilingual. Hence, if you have problems explaining technical issues in a foreign language, there probably will be someone who will speak your mother tongue.
Conclusion
Although we have reviewed only a few of the available hosting plans, on the site of this company you can see all the possibilities. Host-World offers a wide array of plans at different rental costs which cover the needs of most commercial sites. The prices are fair, considering the features you get in each hosting plan. Also, with excellent customer support, you are guaranteed a great user experience if you choose this company to host your site. We amply recommend it.
On many occasions, dropshipping is often associated with easy money, passive income, zero expenses, and other superlatives, but, dropshipping is not the easiest way to make money, despite all the false claims from YouTubers promising you that success is guaranteed if you buy a course.
Just like anything, to achieve success in dropshipping, you need to plan how to succeed. Planning involves researching relevant tools and requirements necessary for Dropshipping, which is what you’re doing right now.
I will be reviewing AliDropship, a WordPress plugin that you can use to customize your store for selling products on Aliexpress. Assuming you know that you need a Dropshipping website and you have selected your niche, let’s get right into the review.
What is AliDropship Plugin?
AliDropship is a plugin built for WordPress for E-commerce websites to earn money through Dropshipping business. One great feature of the Dropshipping business is that you don’t need to worry about things like inventory and shipping. You can just focus on promoting your products online and driving customers to them, and AliDropship will take care of the rest.
So what does this means to you is you have the opportunity to grow your Dropshipping business through promotions and advertising and need not worry about codes or incur the extra cost of paying web developers. It is like an all-in-one ready-made drop-shipping business; either you can host your site with it or use the plugin for your WordPress site with it.
However, the AliDropship plugin comes in two variants. The standard plugin and the WooCommerce plugin. If you are a beginner, I encourage you to use and download the standard plugin, which is easier to customize.
Is AliDropship Legit?
Yes, it does what it says. It is easy to install and customize; with One-click, you will import top-selling Aliexpress products directly to your WordPress site.
You set your profit margin, manage, and market with the plugin’s automated solutions. It ranked among e-commerce tools at the 8th number and got an excellent rating among consumers as well.
Is AliDropship Part of Alibaba?
The AliDropship software is developed by Sunshine Digital Marketing LLC and is not a subsidiary or product of the Alibaba group. It works directly with them, but Alibaba has no control over its product and decisions. AliDropship is an independent service.
Advantages of AliDropship
First of all, why should you dropship from Aliexpress. Well, it allows you to sell more than 100M products from over 100K+ different suppliers, from every possible category! Now, here is the list of excellent benefits you can get from AliDropship, that will help you with that:
Easily import unlimited AliExpress products to your store, including product reviews.
Allows Dropshipping integration in WooCommerce store.
Built-in marketing features to send an email and create coupons.
Set custom rules to automate pricing.
From your dashboard, you can track product and access analytics
Free support.
Automated plugin updates.
Disadvantages of AliDropship
There are a few, that we still must to talk about. We don’t think that any of those are critical.
To use the Ali-Dropship plugin, you will need a basic understanding of WordPress.
There are not many themes available.
There is not much room for design flexibility.
Not all services are free.
To use the one-click import feature, you have to be logged in from Google Chrome.
Dropship, is it Easy?
Okay, we already debunked a popular Dropshipping myth earlier, which is with Dropshipping, all you need to is set up, boom, and make money. With the AliDropship plugin, the myth is still a myth. It would be best to get customers to purchase things from the suppliers and improve your online marketing skills.
In other words, you need to take it seriously as you would do a full-time job, and approach it as with a real business that you have. No easy money here, but, many have succeeded to start profitable dropshipping operations and with enough hard work and persistence, you could reach this point as well.
How to Start AliDropship?
Starting with AliDropship is a pretty easy and straight-forward process. Let’s go over the main steps of it.
Install the AliDropship plugin on your WordPress site.
Ensure your website theme is a WordPress built-in theme as the plugin is only compatible with this.
Go to the AliDropship settings and create your price formula, and this will be applied to all your products automatically. You can set it to x2, x3, or x4 the cost price, or you can leave it on the recommended setting.
Set your payment gateways.
Using the license key you received in your mail after purchasing the plugin activates your dashboard license.
To import products to your store, install the AliDropship Chrome extension.
Use the plugin to find products manually or use Dropship.me plugin, to get all the bestselling products from AliExpress.
Import the products to your store; you can edit the product descriptions and then publish them to the store.
Alidropship Review
AliDropship is a plugin for WordPress that enables users to integrate Dropshipping in their stores. The fact that the AliDropship product comes as a plugin, allows the use of it to be easy and does not require any coding experience to set up on any WordPress site. This means you don’t need to employ a web developer’s services, just click and set things up for yourself, and you good to go.
AliDropship Automations
AliDropship can automate a whole lot of functionality for you according to your taste. Some of the things automated include; order completion, product pricing, product searching, and importation.
As a store owner, you only have to focus on driving customers to your store to make purchases and not worry about product searching and pricing because AliDropship provides you with the best-selling products on AliExpress.
For instance, in the search bar and with the import products feature, by using the smart filter, you can get the very products you’re looking for, and if your customers require fast shipping, you can use ePacket shipping to search and get the products that can ship fast and free of cost.
Automate pricing by using the advanced mark-up feature to configure prices for all your goods.
The auto fulfillment feature confirms orders, and AliExpress takes care of crediting you when a customer buys the product.
AliDropship plugin also looks over the status of orders made on your store, and customers can track their order information.
AliDropship Customizations
The AliDropship plugin has a couple of compatible themes, and customization is pretty easy. Popular AliDropship compatible themes include; Dali, Da Vinci, and Michael Angelo. These themes have designed specifically for this plugin and also these themes are simple or easy to redesign.
You have the option to edit your product info, and with the help of the Image Editor, it is easy to edit product images from AliExpress before you import them to your store.
There is no limit to the goods number you can add to your store, and it offers suppliers to choose from and also can choose an extensive variety of goods.
This gives you total control on the design of the user interface and experience of your web store.
AliDropship Marketing
What marketing advantages do AliDropship users have? All the basics of e-commerce marketing are sometimes missed out by other workers of e-commerce integration software and other advanced marketing strategies.
Discount codes and coupons can be used to route promotions on the store, incentivize customers to make purchases, and already Search Engine optimized product titles. The plugin helps build an email list of new customers and customers who make the purchase.
We all know that not all customers will make a purchase when they visit a store for the first time. Customers will often add items to their carts to pay at a later time. Many times they forget to come back and check. AliDropship has a marketing feature that follows up with users that have abandoned their carts with reminders, and this feature is absolutely free.
Also, all the frontend data the Alidropship creates is SEO optimized, those will be liked and promoted by Google search engine.
AliDropship Add-Ons
You see, one core sale driver is countdown timers. Using the Countdown Timer add-on, display flash sales and limited-time product offer to customers, the timer counting down will drive your customers to buy a product before the discount time runs out.
No doubt having your store or products listed on Google’s platform enhances your chances of meeting prospective customers. The Google Merchant add-on helps you get your store name and items on to google search results; with this, you will promote your business more efficiently.
In the Facebook shop, you get the most out of Facebook’s dynamic ads. Allowing you to create and add your shop to Facebook and Instagram. More Marketing if you ask me.
There are just so many add-ons (reasons) why you cannot go wrong with AliDropship.
AliDropship Management
From your dashboard, you can monitor everything. AliDropship performs product updates, traffic, sales, and other inventory-related tasks.
There’s also a prospect to receive up to a 12% discount when a purchased product is delivered, boosting your Dropshipping return. There are also many payment gateways you can set up, including Stripe, PayPal, and PayU.
AliDropship Dashboard
AliDropship’s intuitive user dashboard helps you make the right choices for your business as you monitor & control your sales, orders, traffic, and all-important online store activities. On the AliDropship dashboard, you can view the statistics from your store’s log, such as the number of orders received, your earnings, published products, as well as sales reports and traffic. Generally, the dashboard keeps you in the loop with the general presentation of your e-commerce business.
Your orders are clearly displayed in the tab ‘orders’, and you can filter them by payment status, by date, and fulfillment status. On the dashboard, you can export emails in bulk. This exports all e-mails from previous orders, and then you can use them for market strategy.
How Much Does it Cost to Get Started with AliDropship?
We will now consider all the things you’ll need to get started Dropshipping with AliDropship. First, you must have a WordPress website to use the plugin, and WordPress hosting costs around $12 to $30. It is better to go for good hosting plans to get decent bandwidth and SSL security, which boosts your site’s credibility. If you are just starting out and on a budget, you can use beginner plans, and as you begin to get significant traffic, you can go for better plans.
Next up, after getting the web hosting plan from a trusted company, you want to get a good WordPress theme, you should use the built-in themes for WordPress if you are using the standard AliDropship plugin.
Now, after setting things up on WordPress, you will buy and install the AliDropship plugin for just $89, and there is no free trial available. A demo will be displayed for you to show you what you will be paying for. The $89 is a lifetime fee, so you don’t have to worry about monthly subscriptions as its competitors do. The fee doesn’t include hosting and domain fees.
Another thing you might add to your budget if you have an extra $10 to $50 is a professional email address for your business. Your hosting web service usually offers it for a yearly fee.
Finally, you have set things up in your store, and it’s looking beautiful waiting for potential customers. Well, you have to drive them to your store, and that is where online marketing comes in – you will need to run ads for $50 or less every month.
Should I Use AliDropship or AliDropship Woo?
If you use WooCommerce, then you should go for AliDropship Woo Plugin. AliDropship Woo is better for you since that with it, you will be able to enable WooCommerce themes. On the flip side, you are advised to add a maximum of 500 products, whereas you are allowed a near unlimited 10,000 with the standard AliDropship plugin.
It would be a wise decision, in my opinion, to opt for the standard AliDropship plugin over the Woo version, especially if you don’t use WooCommerce. Using the standard AliDropship plugin does not require WooCommerce.
How Do I Install and Run AliDropship?
Requirements
A WordPress site running PHP 7.1+ (you can confirm it with your hosting company or check it on the WordPress site hosting dashboard).
AliDropship plugin. Go to alidropship.com and purchase the plugin. It is not visible from the WordPress plugin directory search.
Note: You need a license. And the license can only work for a single store. That’s why you need to purchase the plugin from the site mentioned above. You will receive the license directly to your mail on purchase completion.
Steps for Installation
Install the AliDropship plugin on your store.
Go to the settings page.
You want to go to the pricing settings. Here you define your product pricing ranges before you start populating your store with products. It would be best if you did this, so you don’t sell the product for the original price from AliExpress. You can check competitor prices to find the right margin, so you don’t lose customers.
To use the one-click setup feature, use Google Chrome, and install the free AliDropship extension as other browsers are not yet supported. Doing this allows you to import products with one click from AliExpress.
To import products, click import on the AliDropship banner, and the products will automatically be added WordPress Products section as drafts.
It is good practice to edit your own product descriptions; failing to do this may damage your SEO, so you should change things because many product descriptions are not written for optimum SEO generation.
AliDropship also allows you to edit the pictures of the product directly from the plugin before publishing. You might want to remove supply logos and the likes.
You don’t need to use Photoshop or any editing software; just edit it right from your website.
AliDropship and Payments
In the world of e-commerce, one thing you hear quite often is “payment gateway.” A payment gateway is simply a merchant service that processes credit card payments for your e-commerce store. Popular ones include PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Square.
With the standard AliDropship, there are over 20 options to choose from, PayPal and Stripe and the most popular one here. You get a few more top payment gateways on AliDropship Woo, such as; Authorize.net, Square, and Amazon pay.
AliDripship Add-Ons
This software comes with many free add-ons and themes, which can be downloaded directly from AliDropship’s official website.
AliDropship add-ons are divided into five categories: Sales Boosters, Packages, Workflow Automaters, Customer Trust Boosters, and Social Media Promoters.
Add-ons are easy to install; you just download them and import them to your website. Some of these add-ons are free while others are paid for. Some good add-ons to start with are the landing page add-on, which helps you convert your visitors into buyers, and the Beginners set all in one. It would be best if you took advantage of the free ones, too, such as the abandoned cart add-on we discussed earlier.
The AliDropship plugin is potent without add-ons, but they make it even better.
You Have Your the First AliDropship Sale!
Okay, you’ve done a lot of work, and you’ve gotten a paying customer. When someone orders a product from your store, it will be displayed in your dashboard. The next thing for you to do is to process this transaction with AliExpress.
If you are using Chrome and have downloaded the extension, you’ll easily place orders automatically. This saves you a whole lot of time. AliDropship will generate the entire customer’s information automatically, and you can use the bulk feature to process as many orders as you would like.
Then proceed to pay for the order(s). As soon as payment is confirmed, you will see the status update on your dashboard. Your customer will also get a notification confirming their order and tracking details of where the product is currently.
Now all you need to do is wait; AliExpress will be in charge from here on.
How Is The Free Support?
You get a lot of help as you use AliDropship. There is email support, live chat, and the AliDropship forum. You will encounter almost no problem that you will not find a solution listed in the forum. You can also post questions and wait for replies.
You can email the team or contact them with the live chat option, and you will get good responses to your questions. This is one WordPress plugin that offers so much information and support for its users.
You will find that there are over 400 conversations concerning themes and over 200 discussing the add-ons on the forums. Isn’t it great to have your questions answered by official members of the AliDropship team?
And if you are a video person like me, there are video tutorials for you, explaining how to get the best from the plugin.
AliDropship Custom Store Review
We know that to use the Ali Dropship plugin, you need to understand how to use WordPress. If you don’t, there is an opportunity to let the AliDropship experts build a custom store for you, based on AliDropship. Many people who do not fancy to bog themselves with WordPress tech usually opt for this. If you decide to go for this, you will have to select from three packages. Just like with hosting, you get what you pay for.
Here is a breakdown of the AliDropship custom store:
You first select a package based on what you need.
After making up your mind on which package to get, you can place your order.
A personal project manager will get in contact with you.
The team creates/builds a store according to your package.
And that is it; you can start selling products.
The packages range from $299 to $899 per annum, and I know you’re already asking if it includes hosting and advertisements; well, NO. You only get a perfect looking WordPress site with the AliDropship plugin. So, it is of this worth? There is no single answer for that. If you know how to use WordPress, which is not too difficult, you don’t need it; else, it is worth it.
You are actually paying someone else to build a store for you. However, if you already use WordPress, why spend all that money that can be used for marketing on a developer? Just buy the plugin and install it on your store. This way, you have much control over how your store looks instead of a more generic one.
AliDropship vs. WooDropship
WooDropship is a software tool for WooCommerce store owners looking to integrate Dropshipping into their WooCommerce stores, and just like AliDropship, it agrees dealers to import and trade goods from AliExpress. And also automates everything. The difference, however, comes with the pricing. While the AliDropship is a one-time payment that gives you both the standard and Woo plugins, the Woo Dropship plugin offers two subscription packages.
The plans include $20/month and a lifetime fee of $97. There is also a 7-day free trial, so you can get the feel of things, which AliDropship does not offer at this time. The Lifetime fee gives you access to all the features, but the monthly fee has some limitations. For instance, with the monthly plan, you get up to 5000 product variants, and 100 orders can be made. The Lifetime plan gives you unlimited access to both. It is convenient to import unlimited goods with AliDropship,
AliDropship is a better choice for me because it equips you with more marketing and advertisement tools. This is more important than anything in Dropshipping.
AliDropship vs. Aliplugin
Aliplugin is the affiliate marketing plugging for affiliates who take a fancy to earn money through the AliExpress associate program. It has no business with Dropshipping. The Ali plugin will import goods from AliExpress to your WordPress store. When a customer clicks on a product, they will then be taking to the product’s page on AliExpress. When a user buys a product after clicking a link from your site, AliExpress pays you a percentage.
AliExpress turnover margins are minor, but just like Dropshipping, this is another lucrative business that does not require huge capital to start up.
Though, with Ali Dropship, you determine how much you make by setting the prices yourself. Another advantage of Aliplugin is that it does not burden you with customer service because it is used for the affiliate program, but you have to sell a lot more to make more. For brand creators, the answer is quite apparent here, AliDropship proves to be a better option.
AliDropship Vs. Oberlo
Oberlo works exclusively on Shopify stores, and it allows you to search for products easily on Ali express and import them straight to your Shopify store. Oberlo takes care of your customer orders and enables you to have your orders shipped to them in a few clicks. Oberlo is really easy to understand and use, and it offers excellent support for its users.
Let’s talk pricing; Oberlo has two paid plans, the grad plan for $7.90, and the boss plan for $29.90 monthly. They also offer users a free trial of 30-days and a beginner plan that allows you to import 500 products to your store.
Key Features: Search Aliexpress for products and import, automates everything, track and Deliver items to customers, product customization, 24/7 customer support, inventory management.
Conclusion, AliDropship Plugin
My final and honest opinion on AliDropship is that it is a very worthy option for WordPress based e-commerce store owners who want to sell products from Aliexpress.
The main selling points of Alidropship is its pricing, and streamlined experience of importing and managing Aliexpress product on your store, together with a wide selection of add-ons you can install. They help you make the most of Dropshipping by offering sale boosters and marketing options that others seem to be lacking.
It helps you remove the stress of searching for goods on Ali-Express and importing them to your store, and it even shows you which items will probably sell and ship faster with one click, how amazing. The dashboard is just like WordPress and is also a plus as you don’t need to stress if you already know your way around WordPress. It gives you so much control over your store’s general look and helps to focus on what I ore important: get customers. A great timesaver that every drop-shipper must use.
FAQ
Question: Does AliDropship work with Alibaba?
Answer: Sunshine Digital Marketing LLC is the company behind AliDropship and does not work for the Alibaba group.
Question: What if I have a Shopify store?
Answer: if you have a Shopify store, you should consider Oberlo. AliDropship only works with WordPress and WooCommerce stores.
Question: Can I add my own products?
Answer: Yes, you can add your own products to the web store.
Note that items that are not on sale on AliExpress will not be synchronized with AliExpress API; hence will not be updated with stock and prices. This means you have to account for them manually and set their prices.
Question: Is It Worth Installing WooCommerce to Use AliDropship?
Answer: Not compulsory. AliDropship works with both WordPress and WooCommerce, so you don’t have to make the change; just use the standard plugin, but if you already have WooCommerce, use the Woo version.
Question: How many sites do my license support?
Answer: After purchasing the AliDropship Plugin, you get an email containing your personal license key that is valid for only one website/domain name. Sub-domains are considered as separate domains.
However, if you would like to create another store and use the plugin, the license will be deactivated on the first store and activated on the new one for free.
Question: Standard Alidropship or Alidropship Woo?
Answer: The standard AliDropship doesn’t support WooCommerce and cannot use additional WooCommerce plugins, and it comes with free built-in themes developed by AliDropship to work with the plugin.
AliDropship Woo works with WooCommerce stores and can be used with standard WooCommerce themes. Use it for your existing WooCommerce store or to start building it.
Question: Which themes are compatible with AliDropship?
Answer: To use the standard Alidropship plugin, you must use one of the free themes designed for the plugin by AliDropship.
Alidropship Woo plugin is compatible with standard WooCommerce themes and other WooCommerce compatible themes. It is worth noting that the built-in themes are very good on the standard AliDropship.
Question: How many AliExpress suppliers can I work with?
Answer: AliDropship allows users to import any product from any supplier. There are no restrictions on the number of sellers you can add products from.
Question: How many AliExpress products can I import?
Answer: With the AliDropship standard plugin, you can add up to 10,000 products to your store.
AliDropship recommends adding not more than 400-500 products with the Woo version to your WooCommerce store.
From the 1-st of February 2021, an indirect commission will pay 1.5% irrespective of the category. These changes apply to traffic referred to Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es.
As an alternative to being able to earn more commissions with these changes, Amazon has expanded the number of product categories that include commission tiers. If the traffic that you send to Amazon results in sales that exceed the first tier, you can earn higher commission rates, not only on sales beyond the initial tier but on all sales that you generate in a product category.
An example of how this all works
Below are a few scenarios that describe how the changes may, or may not, affect you.
Scenario 1: Let’s say that you are a fashion-focused publisher who doesn’t generate a lot of sales on Amazon, but the vast majority of your earnings result from purchases in product categories related to fashion. If you do nothing, you will likely earn a 10% commission (where your affiliate links to fashion products result in a purchase in the fashion category).
Scenario 2: Let’s consider the same scenario as above, but you *do* generate lots of sales. In this case, if the total qualifying revenue that you generate in fashion (where your affiliate links to a fashion products result in a purchase in the fashion category) is equal to or greater than £15,000 in a calendar month, you could earn 12% commission on *all* of the fashion sales that result from your content (where your affiliate links to a fashion products result in a purchase in the fashion category).
Scenario 3: Now let’s say that you send most of your clicks to pages other than product detail pages. For example, you send most of your traffic to Amazon’s homepage. In this scenario, if you don’t change your linking strategy (and potentially your content strategy too), you would likely see your earnings decrease as you would receive a commission of 1.5%, in most product categories.
Be sure to plan your affiliate store’s expansion or acquisition plans, accordingly. Check it out for the official Amazon statement.
Recent Comments