All posts by Steven

Digital Branding

The Importance of Personalization in E-commerce Industry – Tailored for your Customer

 

‘’ Men are like wine – Some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age‘’ – Pope John XXIII

Just like wine, personalization has been aging gracefully and has come of age. Today, personalization has become contextual and is heavily leveraged by data. User experience in Human Computer Interaction will be divergent in the near future as the Artificial Intelligence which we interact with becomes more aware of the context of interactions. Presently, using purchase histories, the algorithm suggests items for buying products based on the customer’s buying and behavior pattern analysis.

According to a study, approximate 65% were sent an email from a brand. Out of those of 65%, 82% opened the email as the subject line was customized.

 

Marketers are hacking this simple marketing trick to improve conversion rates. Marketers who correlate impact of personalization on conversion rate see an average rise of approximate 19% in online sales. Most companies make personalization a top priority.

Today, personalization can be done at multiple channels and customer touch points through CRM tools. Consumers know that they are being tracked online for marketing purposes and they react positively for personalized experiences. A recent poll on what activities consumers online are likely to indulge on websites that personalize their experiences shows that approximately 50% would come back to the website and 46% would buy products and services from the website.

As the stats echo personalization is required for creating brand affinity and loyalty. Personalization provides meaningful experiences to consumers at every touch point. Data is a key enabler and a powerful predictor of customer’s daily activities and acts as a template for gaining useful insights.

E-commerce websites have been incorporated with semantics enhanced strategies and time aware recommendations. Most companies keep personalization as their top priority. However, they fail to implement it because of multiple user interfaces, pricing policies, and customized check out methodologies.

Psychological effects such as emotions and attention along with the change of perceptions can be triggered through visually appealing user interfaces and layouts. This is a great guide on marketing and engaging with a distracted customer. So why do people crave for personalized products?

According to me, personalization is something similar to garnishing an already expensive dish. Garnishing is an easy way to ensure the food looks as good as it tastes. Many e-commerce industries provide great customer experiences through an implementation of customer relationship management software.

Service CRM handles personalization so effectively that it brings the spotlight onto the customers and makes them the centre of attraction. When you are getting something focused towards you, it creates a sense of ownership. How many times have you got Goosebumps when your close friend or wife calls you by your first name? Hearing name triggers greater brain activity and more and more organizations are now understanding that addressing and remembering customer names are a key to winning that person over. CRM tools can send automated messages with customer names during wedding anniversary or birthdays.

Some of the other methods that marketers use to create personalization are through programmatic marketing, retargeting, proximity marketing, and consumer owned contents. Using programmatic marketing, buyers are served ads based on their needs and preferences. Retargeting, on the other hand, is a cookie based technology to follow buyers as they move from one website to another. Retargeting helps customers based on their online practices and intentions.

Proximity marketing lets marketers target buyers based on where they visit offline. Consumer owned content may include adding customers Instagram photos after their product purchase or by providing links to customer’s Facebook or Twitter posts.

Personalization reduces information overload on the customer and provides them with internal sense of control. More and more online retailers are allowing customers to customize their products based on their preferences online. Users take delight in designing the products as they have greater flexibility to add colors and accessories. This generates high website engagement.

Customers become the participants in the product development cycle. They are effectively converted from buyers to customer advocates. Custom designs can be created with product personalization software. Some of the highly accepted customizable products online include T-shirts, furniture, laptop skins and posters.

Customer metrics can be procured through service CRM and loyalty programs may be created. Send right emails and messages to the right person at the right time by using service CRM software. No customer wants to feel like a number, they want to feel understood and valued. So, personalized stories based on products can be created. Personal stories can move both the heart and the mind.

‘’The ability to see our lives as stories and share those stories with others is at the core of what it means to be human‘’ – John Capecci and Timothy Cage.

CRM tools can effectively bridge the gap between customer’s preferences and big data as both can be merged for gaining productive insights regarding consumer behavior for targeted marketing strategies. Personalization can be effective paraphernalia for business dominance in the competitive market.

Digital Branding

Healthcare Marketing: Five Google Analytics Features You Should Use

If you are marketing a medical or a healthcare website, the web analytics should be an essential component of your online strategy. And Google Analytics is known to be the most effective tool helping to understand your online audience and to find out what content they enjoy and which platforms they use. It’s also quite handy when it comes to determining their conversion rate. Regardless of the size of your medical practice, introducing Google Analytics to your digital marketing can help you to utilize the use of your budget.

 

More than a half of medical marketing professionals are already using Google Analytics. However, most of them are missing out on the features which may help to transform the online presence, as well as bring even more consumers and profit.

 

Here are five ‘hidden’ features of Google Analytics that only a few people actively use:

  1. Website Search

These days almost every website has a search bar for visitors to find the information they are looking for. The availability of this feature is not only crucial for your website usability but also can help you to understand what information you need to include on your website. And the Site Search feature of Google analytics can help you to retrieve this data. By using this tool, you will be able to find out which products and services are valuable to your visitors, as well as measure your website’s usability.

 

You can enable the Site Search feature in the Admin section of your Google Analytics account. Just follow these steps:

 

  • Go to Admin section
  • Click on “View Settings” under the website you would like to track
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the page
  • Turn the switch on and fill in two fields with the website’s search parameters. Search parameters are the words and phrases that precede a query in your URL.
  • Enter search parameters into the Query Parameter section and everything except specific search terms will be filtered out from your report.

 

If you did this correctly, you would be able to view the search data under the Site Search segment of the Behavior section under your Google Analytics’ account reports.

  1. Weighted Sort

When examining the performance of your website pages, you can quickly sort the Google Analytics table by the number of ‘page views’ and ‘bounce rate.’ You can do it by clicking on the particular heading. Yet, just sorting the table by one attribute of your choice may not give you the full view, since arranging by bounce rate won’t put your pages in order by traffic volume and vice versa.

 

The Weighted Sort feature may help you with that. It allows Google Analytics users to see which pages have both high traffic volume and bounce rate. This information is useful to spot the conversion opportunities you missed. Moreover, it is easy to activate and use Weighted Sort feature. Just click the “Bounce Rate” column header to sort all your rows, and then click on the drop-down menu next to “Sort Type” and select “Weighted” from the list. The first page in the list will have the highest bounce rate as well as page views.

  1. Trackbacks

It is easy to get lost in Google Analytics with its numerous valuable features. Yet, there is a section which is dedicated to social media and can help you to measure its impact on your healthcare website SEO. This function is called ‘Trackbacks’. It helps you to see who engaged with your website content, including blog articles, downloadable content or even with any product page. You can check how many times the same URL linked to your site, as well as separate passive visitors from active (engaged) ones.

 

It is essential to note that whenever you have an opportunity to share your content or to co-sponsor an event, you should also approach it as an excellent opportunity for the link building. Link building is a crucial part of successful healthcare SEO strategy.

  1. Funnel Visualization

The Funnel Visualization feature under Google Analytics helps to analyze the journey of your website visitors. It shows the path of your visitor through the site until they abandoned their original way, visited pages and left the website.

 

The principal focus of the Funnel Visualization feature is measuring the website’s conversion rate. And if you have ‘Goals’ set up, you can monitor what prevents users from reaching your goals, i.e., making a decision, booking an appointment, contacting you or purchasing something. The Funnel Visualization is the way to track which marketing campaigns perform well and which are not. At the same time, it provides a deep understanding of visitors’ drop-offs from the web pages and ways to optimize them for more conversions.

  1. Remarketing Lists

Remarketing is known to be one of the most powerful tactics healthcare marketers should use. And Google Analytics’ Remarketing feature can help you to capture the potential clients who didn’t convert the first time they visited your website. It is used to optimize the message which didn’t work the first time around. Thus, it gives you a second chance to convert website visitors into customers. Moreover, it allows you to spend less on your advertisement.

 

It is essential to note that the Remarketing feature works with Google AdWords accounts. It helps you to create lists of potential customers and target them during your future marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use this feature without an active Google AdWords account.

 

To turn on this feature, please follow these simple steps:

  • Under Admin section of your Google Analytics find Property column and click on “Remarketing” under it
  • Click on “Audiences” drop down to create custom audiences
  • Let Google create it with the help of a Smart list or create your list based on new and returning visitors of the website. You can also create such a list using the particular website page visitors who reached a predefined milestone or purchased something.

Once the audience created, you can add it to your future advertising campaigns at Google Adwords.  Google Analytics limits you to 2000 remarketing audience lists per account.

Keep abreast of Google Analytics improvements and updates

Google Analytics often updates its interface and adds new features, so even the most frequent users can miss out something. So it is very crucial to repeatedly look through your analytics account to find out which new features are added.

 

For your comfort, Google has released numerous training sessions and study materials to watch and read to get acquired with this powerful tool. Moreover, it is possible to get certificates by passing free exams available online.

 

Google Analytics is highly critical for search engine optimization (SEO); it allows measuring the return of your link building, content marketing, and social media efforts. And the mindful use of Google Analytics, which is easy to install and setup, may do wonders. It can help you not only to measure your rankings, but also to check whether your website provides your visitor with the information they had been looking for.

 

Spend some time on the research of features, and no doubts you will understand how your website is converting (or not converting) your visitors.

Digital Branding

Warehouse Rental: A Comprehensive Market Place

As you launch a business, announce plans for celebrations or plan an event for religious ceremonies, you’d naturally be concerned about space. Even if you’ve been in this business for some time but did not need much space during the initial period, you will find yourself in need of larger spaces once your operation expands. This is why having a convenient way to browse and choose the warehouse suited to your needs is a convenient and practical facility, especially if you also include the usage of a real estate virtual tour. Your warehouse rental doesn’t have to be permanent and you can search through a variety of warehouses with rentals varying in the length of time (usually based on hours or days) and prices.

A flourishing business involves clients, services, faculty, machines and equipment, goods, paperwork, and inventory at a much larger scale than that of individual or home based businesses. In fact, not just businesses alone but events like wedding ceremonies, graduation parties, religious ceremonies etc. all require space and what better way to accommodate yourselves than that of renting a warehouse? Warehouse rental is the ultimate deal for individuals and business owners. Warehouses entail a wide variety; manufacturing buildings, industrial premises, event venues, and multi-use spaces are all considered warehouses that serve as space properties. These spaces can be used for various purposes such as production, parties, corporate events, storage, distribution etc.

The nature of your purpose primarily determines the type of space, property or venue is best suited for you. This factor also determines your space leasing needs with regards to the rental period. For example if you are targeting an audience in a particular city like LA, you’d want to choose the most suitable venue and duration that enhance your access to them.

Space warehouse generally covers the following subsets:

– Party
– Meeting
– Workshop
– Film shoot
– Photo shoot
– Wedding
– Performance
– Storage
– Fitness Class
– Dinner

Navigation 

Warehouse rental Los Angeles is an exciting and a happening prospect. If you are one of those who aspire to showcase their exhibitions before the elegant yet rowdy and hedonist society of LA, you can use platforms that compile all available and vacant venues displaying rental charges, and date availability in just a few clicks. These platforms are designed to filter out the best options, while at the same time, allow you to enjoy features like price comparison, immediate connection with the hosts and booking facilities all in just one navigation. This is a relief in itself as you all know how frustrating traditional search engines can be. At times, it is troubling to find exactly what you’re looking without exhausting yourself completely.

With legit marketplace platforms that feature searches over a wide variety of warehouse you can look forward to planning a number of events in your life. One of the best things about such platforms is that they have prices quoted upfront for you to explore. You can imagine how exhausting it is to send emails for rental inquiries to various sites just to be ignored by some and receive negative or unsatisfying responses from the others.

Vicinity 

Another particular feature about a warehouse marketplace is that it compiles all positive venues from a particular vicinity. This means you don’t have to worry about missing out on venues that may offer you the right deal. You get to enjoy a comprehensive search result from all the available warehouses in the LA vicinity.

Digital Branding

How to Instil Your Brand With Remote Teams

Guest post by Gemma Church 

Flexible working is a wonderful thing. Research reveals it gives staff a better work/life balance and attracts the best talent into your business – but how can you ensure your company culture is retained when your staff are scattered to the four winds?

It’s not an easy task – but it is a necessary one as 75% of the US labour force is predicted to be remote by 2020.

Company culture is also a vital component for any successful business. It will provide your staff with a great employee experience and this directly affects your bottom line – as the below graph from Great Place to Work demonstrates. It is also one of the top job benefits for employees and helps you to retain your staff.

So, how can you create and maintain a company culture when some or all of your workforce use flexible working practices?

  1. Find the right tools for your staff

Every employee is an individual and it’s important to match different preferred ways of working with the right tools to foster communication and collaboration. For example, you could use Slack for text communications, Zoom for voice and video chat and, if you have a particularly valuable employee, you could even fork out for a robot virtual presence.

Whatever you decide, make sure you offer a range of solutions and attempt to combine both your digital and social tools to encourage camaraderie. You don’t have to be in the same room to socialize and make sure you encourage your staff to communicate on a range of topics.

But make it clear to your staff that they need to be available on these communication channels when they are working. Just because they’re working remotely does not mean they can go AWOL.

  1. Organise incentivized meetups

Face-to-face meetings are a rarity (or, sometimes, an impossibility) for remote teams. However, you should try to organize at least one group meeting each year.

You could also informally base your business out of a coworking space, which provides your staff with the flexibility to use such a space as and when you need it. Lucas Seyhun, founder of centrally located co-working space in NYC The Farm, said: “Our space attracts many different flexible workers. Some remote workers use our space nearly every day because they want to escape the home office. Others will simply book a meeting room for a couple of hours on an ad hoc basis. We also have corporates that regularly book dedicated offices. That’s the beauty of coworking – it matches the flexibility of remote work perfectly.”

As Lucas mentioned, many big businesses are now embracing coworking spaces for their remote workers. It allows such companies to connect, collaborate and innovate with the startup space.

Some businesses find coworking is a better option altogether. For example, the company behind WordPress, called Automattic, recently closed its San Francisco main office because its staff were finding different places and means to work.

You could also consider creating “work buddies” where a small number of nearby staff members could meet up regularly for a chat or a more formal meeting. Again, coworking spaces provide the perfect backdrop for such meetups.

  1. Reinforce your values

You must be clear on your company’s mission and communicate that message with every single member of your staff. Do this regularly to keep your staff focused on your goals.

There are many ways you can reach out with your company’s mission. You could use your internal communication tools to demonstrate how your work impacts your customers to keep your staff on point, for example. Videos and images are also impactful ways to achieve this and will keep remote staff focused on what’s important.

You can also demonstrate your values and show your presence with local community sponsorship. This tip comes from web app automation company Zapier, whose workforce is 100% remote. The company has sponsored developer meetups, startup weekends and donated its time to non-profit organizations. And if someone on in their workforce wants to do something similar in their city, they’ll sponsor it.

“By doing this, team members feel more like there is a local presence in their hometown,” according to Zapier.

In essence, it is important to offer your remote teams a variety of ways to communicate, collaborate and encourage your corporate values. This will help you create and build your company culture, no matter where your staff are.

About the author

Gemma Church is “the freelance writer who gets tech”. She’s a specialist freelance science writer, journalist, and blogger. Her USP is that she’s worked in the science and technology sectors she writes about, bringing a unique level of understanding and experience most writers cannot offer.

Digital Branding

Wikigains Shows 10 Ways To Use Vouchers To Encourage Repeat Business and Build a Brand

Today customers have more options online than they had ten years ago. According to WikiGains, customers’ buying pattern has changed from purchasing at their preferred physical store to visiting different online stores, comparing prices, searching for deals and discounts before adding a product to a virtual shopping cart. As a result, every online merchant, at some time or the other will be faced with the decision of offering deals, coupons, and discounts.

While offering good deals frequently can encourage repeat business and drive customer loyalty, using them haphazardly can harm your brand image. Here are 10 effective ways you can use to drive customer loyalty, conversions and acquisitions.

1. Weekly or monthly discounts

These are traditional ways to offer discounts and they are often used at the end of a week or month to meet specific business goals.

2. Cart abandonment email

A study showed that nearly 70% of online customers abandon their carts for some reason or the other. Sending a tactically-crafted abandoned cart email can encourage people to come back and complete their checkout. There are many sites like Shopify and Klaviyo that offer easy to customize abandoned cart emails.

3. Special holiday or season deals

While Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and other holiday seasons are big occasions to offer attractive discounts, you can use other opportunities throughout the year like the onset of winter, summer or autumn to share appropriate discounts and offers.

4. Prelaunch coupons

Your business may be in the prelaunch stage or you have just launched a new product. The pre-launch offers enable you to create a sense of inquisitiveness among customers regarding the product. They help in driving more traffic and turning new customers into loyal ones.

5. Minimum value to get discount

In coupons sites like Wikigains, you can find deals that require customers to spend a minimum value to get a discount. This is a good tactic to encourage customers to spend more.

6. Special discount for sharing on social media

When you start a new online store, the biggest challenge is to reach out to more people and attract customers. So, offering an incentive on every Like on Facebook or sharing on other social media platforms can be a good way to raise the visibility of your brand.

7. Refer-a-friend

The referral programs work even today because people tend to rely on a brand if it is referred by a friend or relative. Wikigains says you can use this to your advantage and encourage more referrals by offering a good discount to both – the person referring and the one being referred.

8. Welcome discount for new customers.

This is a ‘feel good offer’ that gives first-time customers a positive experience with your brand. They are likely to remember you, refer friends, and even come back again to convert into a paying customer.   

9. Create an email or subscription offer

Building an email list is extremely important for the success of online retailers. When you offer a coupon or discount in exchange for a visitor’s email address, it increases your chances of conversion. This is a win-win situation where the visitor receives a good discount and you get their email address. This can be used to create customer loyalty, build a solid relationship, or send promotional materials to them in the future.

10. Special incentives to influential people

Offering discounts to famous bloggers or celebrities that have a huge fan following can be an effective way to promote your brand. So, if a blogger writes positively about your products or a celebrity talks about your excellent service, your brand value increases tremendously.    

Wikigains.com is a voucher site that has been operating in the UK since 2012. Alex Papaconstantinou, the founder of Wikigains, and his team, have accumulated a wealth of experience in the industry as they have seen it through several ups and downs in the last few years.

Local Branding

How To Hire The Perfect Candidate

The U.S. unemployment rate has plummeted to right around 4 percent in recent weeks. And while that’s great news for the economy, it’s definitely not ideal if you’re trying to find the perfect candidate to fill a job at your company.

Whether you’re looking for someone to serve as a receptionist and greet visitors at the entrance to your office or you’re in search of a CEO with the right personality traits to be the face of your company, you’re likely finding it more difficult than ever to fill open jobs. Obtaining the right business skills is never an easy task, but when done properly they can really make a difference. There’s plenty of quality resources online like Businessstudynotes where you can get free exam material and see where you stand.

If you need a hand, here are some tips that will help you track down the perfect candidate for any position.

Create a Detailed Job Listing

The first thing you’ll need to do when trying to fill a position at your company is to create a job listing and post it on job sites. This job listing should serve two purposes:

  1. It should clearly outline the skills you want the perfect candidate to possess
  2. It should give all candidates a rundown on what your company is all about and what you have to offer to those seeking a job

This job listing should be as detailed as it can possibly be so that you only attract the right candidates for the position.

If you want candidates to have X amount of years working in your specific industry, you should include that. If you want them to have X amount of years of college education, you should include that, too. You should lay out exactly who you want your ideal candidate to be.

Additionally, you should provide interested candidates with what you’ll be looking for from the person who earns the job. You don’t want there to be any confusion in the future about what the job entails.

Avoid Setting Up Standard Job Interviews

Is there anything more boring than sitting down with a candidate and asking them a bunch of stock questions about their education and work experience? They’ll likely provide you with the same answers over and over again. It won’t give you a chance to find your perfect candidate if you take this approach.

Instead of going the standard route, how about taking a more creative approach to the interview process? You can:

  • Provide the best candidates for a job with a tour of your office or facility and ask them questions along the way
  • Invite the best candidates to lunch or dinner and pick their brains as you enjoy a meal together
  • Take a walk around the block and see how the best candidates interact with the outside world to give you a better idea of what kind of people they really are

While you will obviously need to get down to business at some point and ask the perfect candidates questions about themselves, that doesn’t mean it has to be done in your average interview setting. It also doesn’t mean you have to ask the same old interview questions.

Get as creative as you can with your questions and really get to know candidates before you narrow down your search. You will be doing yourself and your company a favor by going all out with your interview questions.

Place Candidates Into Real-World Scenarios

In addition to asking job candidates questions about themselves and their work experience, you should also try and put them into real-world scenarios and ask them how they would react to certain situations if they were hired by your company.

Role-playing is a great way to find out more about a person who has applied for a job. For example, if you’re trying to hire someone to be a magazine editor, you might ask them something like:

  • “You just got a big scoop from an anonymous source. The source told you that a famous celebrity is pregnant and ready to give birth any day. One of your coworkers tells you that you should write a story about it immediately and publish it on the magazine’s website. What do you do?”

The candidate won’t actually have to sit down at the computer and decide whether or not to write the story. But their answer will tell you a lot about what you can expect from them if and when they start working for you.

Give Candidates Optional Homework

There are more and more companies who are keeping the interview process open long after the actual interview ends.

If you really want to find out what a candidate is made of, send them home with a homework assignment and ask them to send it to you when they’re finished.

This will show how committed candidates are to a job, as many people will opt against doing additional work after an interview. These are the kinds of people you probably don’t want working at your company in the first place.

Ask Colleagues for Second Opinions

Once you have done all of your interviews and sifted through the choices you have, it will be time to narrow down your search.

Usually, there will be a handful of people who will stand out to you. Whether you liked the answers they gave during their interviews or they blew you away with the response they gave to your hypothetical workplace scenario, you’ll have a few favorites.

At that point, you should ask your colleagues to share their thoughts on specific candidates. You shouldn’t be trying to find the perfect candidate alone. Instead, you should trust those who work with you to lend a hand.

Sit down with a few colleagues and tell them about the best candidates. You might even want to bring those candidates in for second and third interviews with others in your company.

Your colleagues will be able to pick up on certain things you might have missed. It will be well worth your time to include them in the decision when searching for a perfect candidate.

Make Diversity a Priority in Your Hiring Practices

While you shouldn’t hire candidates based solely on gender or race, you do want to keep diversity in mind when trying to find the perfect candidate. You want to have people of all backgrounds working in your office or facility to make it the best it can be.

Diversity should be something you strive for, and it should also be something that is discussed at the highest levels of your company.

Always Check References Provided by Candidates

All employers ask candidates to include references when applying for a job. The majority of them then follow through and use those references during the hiring process.

But it’s kind of surprising to hear that not all employers check references. References can be an invaluable resource for companies hiring new employees.

Before you offer a job to someone who seems like the perfect candidate, you should call at least one of their professional references and ask questions like:

  • What was it like working with this person?
  • What did they bring to the job when you worked with them?
  • Did you have a pleasant experience working alongside them?
  • How did they improve your company’s culture?
  • Would you recommend them to another company looking to hire the perfect candidate for a job?

The answers you get when checking a person’s references will tell you just about everything you need to know about them. If the references hesitate to give a person a glowing review, you probably have a cause for concern.

Trust Your Gut Before Offering Someone a Job

There are going to be times when you interview someone and they look and sound like the perfect candidate.

They have the right education to do the job you need them to do. They have plenty of experience in your field. They might even have great references from their past employers.

Yet, for whatever reason, you still have this nagging suspicion that they just wouldn’t be the right person for the job.

While you obviously don’t want to overthink your decision and spend weeks and weeks trying to make it, you also don’t want to ignore any gut feelings you might have.

If you think someone might not be right for a position at the end of the interview process, try your best to confirm your suspicions. Go back and interview another reference or use social media to see what you can find about a candidate.

In 2018, there are so many ways that you can do extensive background checks on people to see if they’re definitely the best fit for a job. Use everything you have at your disposal to decide if you’ve found the perfect candidate. While not every company can follow these tips, many of them can be adopted. The sooner you implement these interview tips into your hiring process, the sooner you’ll be able to make sure you’re making the right hire for years to come.

And if you’re not convinced that’s the case, then keep looking until you find someone who is perfect for the position.

About the author:

Friddy Hoegener is the Co-Founder of SCOPE Recruiting a boutique Supply Chain, Operations, and Executive recruiting firm. Friddy holds a Master of Social Entrepreneurship from HULT international business school in London, UK. He started his career in Supply Chain Management with ABB Germany before moving to the United States where he worked for Thomas and Betts as well as Kohler where he left a successful career in the supply chain to join the recruiting world. Today, Friddy and his team utilize their networks and knowledge to match some of the best supply chain and operations talent with exciting opportunities from Start-ups to Fortune500 companies.

Legal Branding

Auto Insurance As A Part of Everyday Life

If you live in the United States of America, chances are that auto insurance is part of everyday life, at least for car owners. Driving a car is a privilege which comes with some sorts of responsibilities in the form of auto insurance policies.

Proof of insurance is basically an indicator that you are willing to take responsibility for your driving and you care about other drivers’ safety and welfare. Most states in the country make auto insurance compulsory; similar to a driver license; you must be an auto insurance policyholder to be considered the legal driver.

There are, however, several states where auto insurance is not state-mandated requirements including New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and California. 

New Hampshire

Since 2010, residents of New Hampshire are no longer required to purchase auto insurance. This regulation applies to any driver who has not been involved in a road accident, convicted of DWI (driving while intoxicated), or convicted of any serious traffic violation.

However, if you are involved in any road accident, you have to be responsible for covering damages both for bodily or property injuries. If you cannot fulfill this responsibility, the state will probably revoke your driver license. In other words, your responsibility is required only in the event of an accident; you do not have to pay a premium fee, but you need to cover all the damages for the injured party when required.

Viking insurance company of Wisconsin 

There is no compulsory law requiring drivers to purchase auto insurance in Wisconsin, but the state does require you to prove responsibility is some other ways.

You can do this by placing a cash deposit of $60,000 with the WisDOT (Wisconsin Department of Transportation) as liability insurance for vehicles or filing a bond with the department. If in any case, a police officer stops you while you are driving, the officer will check to determine if you have any of those. 

California

California has similar regulations to those of Wisconsin. Drivers can prove their responsibility not by purchasing insurance but simply covering for damages in which case they are at fault in road accidents. The compensation can reach up to $30,000 for injury or death in a single accident.

For property damage, the compensation can reach up to $5,000. Since you do not have to purchase insurance, you should place a deposit of $35,000 or file a bond of that amount with California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Although insurance is indeed not compulsory in some states, drivers are still required to be responsible and prove it by covering damages of the injured party in the event of accidents. Proof of financial responsibility can be done by placing deposit or filing bond with the state.

Protect your brand
Digital Branding

How To Use Digital Asset Management To Protect Your Brand

Protect your brand

Before getting started with the details of what digital asset management is and how it works, let’s first talk about the protection of a brand name and how important brands and trademarks are. Consumers just love brands, as a brand means something in a busy world when customers have limited time to make their purchase decisions. Finding – and sticking – with brands takes away the frustration of searching and the risk of buying an inferior product or service.

This behaviour is something we all need to pay attention to. As business owners, we have to make sure that we are doing all we can to protect our brand names because sooner or later we all realize that the backbone of our company is our trademark and our brand name.

Digital brand assess

What Can I Do To Protect My Brand?

As a business owner, we are pretty sure that you know how you have to take care of your company, the importance of delivering quality products and services to your customers, and how you have to protect your brand from any legal and copyright issues. Today’s technology makes it possible for you to share your brand assets and protect your brand by storing all your digital assets (images, videos, documents and metadata) in one central digital library. This technology is called Digital Asset Management (DAM) and this is how it helps in the protection of your brand.

What Is DAM?

DAM or Digital Asset Management is more of a business process that helps companies manage their workflows, digital rights, and permissions. This process also helps in storing, organizing, and controlling the rich media that includes multimedia content, videos, animations, pictures, and music, etc. It basically is an infrastructure that allows you to manage and control all of your digital assets. Moreover, DAM makes it easy for you to identify, analyze, locate, and then retrieve your assets.

Protect your assets

How DAM Helps In Supporting Brand Identity

How exactly does the digital asset management system help in the protection of the brand?

DAM helps marketers and business owners manage multiple assets all at the same time. Even a small business has thousands of assets to be managed for different social media platforms, partner and agency use, e-commerce and that can be a huge hassle if it’s done without any software or any process like the DAM. For example, DAM helps when your communications team needs approved images to put on social media, with files optimized so they are in the right format. Your PR agency needs to find archive video of a 10-year-old product for an upcoming article, they can search the metadata and quickly find the video they need.

With the Widen digital asset management system, all of the distribution, archiving, and rights management is done with complete ease because you get better and improved visibility and control of your assets.
DAM increases speed to market and makes sure that the right people will get the right image at the right time.

The information about your assets and their transfers are always safe, and they cannot be misused since you can schedule assets to expire on a specific date. If you need to update a file in the DAM platform, every link to that file will automatically be updated. This ensures brand control that all the values and visual integrity of a brand are retained.

Easy asset access

Why Use DAM

These are a few fundamental advantages of using DAM for your brand. The best part about digital asset management is that it is easy to use and you will understand it quickly. DAM systems can integrate with the other systems that you use today, like your CMS and CRM so they all work seamlessly.

If you genuinely want to take your business to the heights of success, then you have to invest in a DAM system and protect and grow your brand.

Digital Branding

Please Stop Confusing Customers With Your Pricing

It is a criminal offence for traders to deliberately make misleading price claims about their goods or services and against the letter of the law to make prices confusing to the consumer.

For example, ‘was £120, now £99.99’ is deceiving if the goods or services have never been presented at the higher price. It is also misleading/confusing if a trader fails to show ‘hidden extras’, or to make it clear when a price is conditional on, say, another purchase.

The Competition Markets Authority have stated that some unit prices and particularly promotions have the worrying potential to mislead customers  – and could even be a breach of consumer law.  This came after a complaint from consumer group Which? who raised concerns ‘about confusing and misleading promotions and a lack of easily comparable prices’.

Some retailers are guilty of increasing the price of products prior to the start of a volume promotion and promotions such as ‘was/now’ offers, where a product is on sale at a discounted price for longer than the higher price was applied, is considered to be deliberately misleading consumers.

Supermarkets (the main culprits) could now face legal proceedings for confusing customers with non-transparent multi-buys, “deceptive” shrinking products and baffling discounts, the CMA has announced.  Supermarkets are now under surveillance to revise their current pricing practices or face being taken to court, with all the ensuing adverse publicity that will involve.

The CMA has called for new guidelines to be issued to supermarkets and has published its own ‘at a glance’ guide to help consumers.  However, the complaints still keep coming into the Retail Ombudsman  – and the current rules are only guidelines, not hard and fast legal obligations.

So, consumers are still likely to get angry about any attempt to pull the wool over their eyes.

Currently, around 40% of grocery spending is on items on promotion – and (good news) the vast majority of these are above board, says the CMA.  However, there is definitely a lack of regulation in this area and the CMA states that consumers should never be misled or confused about how much (or how little) they are getting for their money.

It stated that ‘unit pricing’ allowing comparisons between products needed to be made more clear-cut.  As an example, some similar products in supermarkets were priced per 100ml and others per 100g, making it impossible to make a price comparison.  Is this artful deception on behalf of the supermarkets?  Surely they should make it less complicated for the shopper to compare like for like?

Generally, retailers do take compliance seriously but the CMA has called for supermarkets to end the practice of running “was/now” promotions, where the discounted price is advertised as a promotion for longer than the higher price, was employed.

The CMA also wants the Government to introduce new standards about “unit prices”, which indicate to shoppers what the price of a single item is in a multi-pack so they can compare prices more easily and decide whether it really is cheaper to buy the multi-pack.

According to new research from Which? almost 3/4 of consumers believe supermarkets are trying to confuse them by using misleading pricing practices – and shoppers are very unhappy about the following:

  • Poorly labeled products
  • Prices small and hard to read
  • Inconsistent pricing.

The greatest confusion occurs with fruit and vegetables sold loose or in packs but it extends to other products sold in cans, jars and bottles.

Which? has called for a change in the law requiring retailers to clearly display the price of items per unit, so that shoppers can easily compare the value of similar products. The unit price is the price by weight or volume that allows shoppers to compare the true cost of products, even if they come in different sized packaging.

As an example, if a 500ml jar of mayonnaise costs £1.05 and a 750ml jar is £1.47, a clear unit price would show you straight away which jar gives you the most mayonnaise for your money. In this case, the 500ml jar is 21p per 100ml and the 750ml jar is 19.6p per 100 ml. The current confusion caused by inconsistent pricing means shoppers don’t always get the best deal

Most shoppers usually assume that items sold loose would be cheaper but this is not necessarily the case – for example a Sainsbury’s pack of four baking potatoes is currently being sold at 70p, while the supermarket also sells them loose at £1.00 per kg.

It is also confusing for shoppers when the prices for different brands of comparable products are measured differently – one price may be displayed in ml and the other in grams.  The regulators have called for consistency in weights and measures for comparable products.

Which? executive director Richard Lloyd has said:

“With household budgets squeezed and rising food costs among the top worries for consumers, it’s all the more important that stores make it as easy as possible for people to spot the best value products. All food and drink should be clearly and consistently priced by weight or volume across all stores, including products which are on special offer.”

 

Morrisons has subsequently announced a promise to make unit prices consistent among similar products and to make the print on shelf labels larger and more visible.

Sainsbury’s has also announced that it will be trialling a new label format, which will include clearer unit pricing, to assist customers to identify the best deals.

Non-Food Pricing

When selling to the general public, all pricing information must be clearly legible, unambiguous, easily identifiable, in sterling, and inclusive of VAT and any additional taxes.

Pricing information must be shown close to the product, or in the case of, for example, online or mail order sales and advertisements, close to a picture or written description of the product.

Prices can be shown:

  • On goods themselves
  • On a ticket or notice adjacent to the goods
  • Grouped together with other prices on a list or in a catalogue in close proximity to the goods. If counter catalogues are used there should be enough copies for customers to refer to

Pricing information should be clearly available to consumers without them having to ask for assistance in order to see it.

Legibility refers to a consumer with normal sight. Traders must also comply with the Equality Act 2010 and take account of the special needs of the elderly and disabled groups.

Promotions

Promotional offers should be unit-priced to reflect the single standard product.

Retailers may give additional information if they wish (for example, the ‘reduced unit price if purchasing a multi-buy’ offer may be shown) as long as it is clear to which products it relates.

Limited period promotions (such as 10% extra free) that relate to individual products may retain the unit price of the standard product for the period of the offer. Retailers may give additional information if they wish – for example, they may show the unit prices of both the standard and promotional products but they must be crystal clear to which products they relate.

Make sure your prices are also ethical

The Institute of Business Ethics has suggested that companies issue statements of ethical practice in regard to their dealings with customers – and this will cover pricing too.

The statement should incorporate a declaration about what circumstances will make your company increase their prices and by how much, how prices should be conveyed to the consumer and the company’s allegiance to all applicable pricing laws. The ethical pricing statement will need to be kept up to date to ensure all fresh guidelines are adhered to.

It really doesn’t make any sense to confuse your customers with your pricing. Eventually, they will get wise to what you are (deliberately or otherwise) trying to do and will vote with their feet by taking their business elsewhere.

Indeed, Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, said the complaint from Which? about confusing pricing had come too late as many shoppers have already abandoned the big 4 supermarkets in favour of discounters Aldi and Lidl.

It will always be sensible to price transparently because consumers are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to comparing prices – and it might just be that what you are doing, at best, is at variance with the letter of the law – or could even be downright illegal.  Do not take that risk.

 

This article has originally appeared on Black Curve’s Blog.

Digital Branding

Different Types Of Printing And What They Are Used For

When you are getting things printed, whether it is pictures, brochures, business cards or anything else, you want it to be as high in quality as possible. When you order these things online, it may be hard for you to determine the quality of the product you are ordering if you do not know the proper printing material that you should choose. This could lead you to become disappointed with the end results if they are not what you were expecting.

This is why we have put together a list of the different types of printing and what they are used for. Make sure to keep reading if you would like to find out more.

Printing Companies

There are many different companies that can offer you services for printing, these companies can print anything you need for your business which means you can get everything you need print and design wise for your company. If you’re having trouble finding one, then take a look at the website theprintauthority.com where you can find great printing services that will benefit you and your company in a number of ways. They offer a much greener process to help reduce their environmental impact which is why they’re one of the preferred choices across many businesses.

Then there are companies that provide equipment and accessories needed for a printing company to work, such as Bonfilt, who’ve been supporting businesses doing screen printing, printing on plastic products, and printing on glass.

Green Printing

Green Printing has been popular since it was first introduced; this is because it is a process that makes the printing a lot environmentally friendlier than what the usual printing process involves. This process involves printing fewer amounts, changing the types of paper used and changing the ink or using recycled products.

Spot Printing

Spot Printing uses specific ink such as PMS inks in different colors including fluorescent and metallic inks. Using this type of ink is the best for matching for each job. Spot Printing is useful for preventing forgeries of important documents such as passports and bonds as well as money.

Offset Printing

Offset Printing is the process which involves using a printing press, wet ink, and printing plates. Offset Printing usually takes longer as there is more involved work when it comes to set up and because the product has to be dry before finishing can take place. This type of printing is known for producing the highest quality available and is known as the most beneficial choice when producing large numbers of prints.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is taken from electronic files that can be printed as photos or canvases as well as fabrics and even synthetic materials. This type of printing doesn’t require printing plates as it is printed straight onto the media substrate. This printing is a lot more popular as it is cheaper to use, takes less time and can be printed at any time you need it.

In Conclusion

Now you know the different types of printing and what each of them is used, you can make sure that you are choosing the right type of printing for your next project. Make sure to think carefully about the ink used and the type of paper for the best possible results.