Author: ad_new

Images have the ability to tell a story in a quick glimpse as compared to the endless paragraphs on a page.

But finding the right image for your website is truly a task. Those of you, who’ve tried searching for free stock photos on the Internet probably know what a hassle it is.

Free stock photos are very difficult to find and even if you end up finding one – chances are high of them being, watermarked, blurry, with poor resolution and uninspired.

Fortunately, you don’t have to settle for anything less than you deserve. There are plenty of resources available which give you access to high-quality stock photos without any hassle or significant cost.

So, if you’re drained of the usual unexciting stock photography and clichéd pictures that cost way too much, check out the below list of the world’s best free stock photo websites for designers, business owners and anyone else:

Unsplash

It adds 10 new royalty-free photos in every 10 days which boast of breathtakingly attractive beautiful landscapes. Just scroll down the home page to see foggy rivers, faraway mountain ranges or even battered signs in all their high-resolution glory.

StockSnap.io

It dishes out hundreds of high-resolution images each week which are interesting and versatile. And the plus point, all photos are free from copyright restrictions, and no attribution is required.

Startup Stock Photos

The name may sound specific to startups, there are plenty of professional options to use no matter what industry you’re operating within. You’ll surely have your hands full with these free images.

Pexels

Pexels is committed to adding at least 35 new photos each week. These photos are carefully handpicked from a variety of free image sources to ensure that you’re getting only the best of the best.

New Old Stock

This collection of vintage photos comes from the public archive via Flickr Commons. According to the website, the photos are free of any known copyright restrictions.

Picjumbo

Picjumbo happens to sport a great collection of food shots, so if you’re running a restaurant or nutrition-themed startup, you might find it worth your while to take a browse.

Pixabay

Pixabay is truly a web designer’s dream. It not just offers an accessible search feature, the images are completely brilliant.

Little Visuals

LittleVisuals is an exceptional site, run according to more of small-scale, handpicked approach than most stock-photo sites.

Be sure to check each website’s license page for specific details.

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Facebook Ads have proven time and time again to be one of the most cost-effective forms of online marketing – and the platform just keeps getting better.

With new tools and targeting features, Facebook Ads now have the ability to reach prospective clients with even more precision than before.

If you haven’t started improving your conversions and lowering your costs using these new features, now is definitely the time to start!

Location Targeting

Facebook has always allowed advertisers to reach their audience by targeting specific cities – but with the new Location Targeting feature, your reach can be made more precise and specific. The improvement actually allows one to “Drop Pin” around any particular location, and target people around that chosen point.

This feature works great for local businesses as they get to target potential leads within their actual area.

Expat Targeting

While expat targeting has been around for a while, it was restricted to expats from the US primarily. However, with the latest update Facebook has now introduced a number of different nationalities that are available to reach using the expat targeting feature.

You can now target expats living within a given country and even those originating from a specific country. So, if you wanted to display ads only to people born in India and living in Brazil, you can now reach them with a focused campaign. Facebook says it has 92 million people who live abroad on its network.

Lead Ads

They truly are the ultimate lead generation ad format! Using a standard News Feed ad, clicking the call to action launches a native lead form on Facebook. The form even pre-fills details like Name and Email to save time (the field is editable). This allows advertisers to increase conversion rates, by capturing leads straight through Facebook rather than sending them to an external website. A lot of marketers have extremely high hopes for this new Lead Ad, and it can work wonders for offer claims.

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The launch of Instagram advertising has been welcomed with open arms by businesses around the world, who are now able to use the popular platform to reach over 400 million active users globally.

For people in the Middle Eastern region, its launch has been even more celebrated, as a majority of the Arab speaking population are more available on Instagram than on any other social media platform.

So what makes Instagram Advertising such a win, and how can your business use it?

Instagram in general gives a much higher engagement rate than any other social platform. If you have an active Instagram profile, you will notice that it is far more likely for your posts to get noticed on the channel than on other platforms. It is also relatively easier to gain a good following on Instagram organically.

The introduction of Ads make it even easier to reach targeted users on Instagram, and can do wonders when used in an effective manner.

What you need to know about Instagram Advertising

It offers multiple ad formats

Instagram advertising offers you three types of ads: image, video and carousel. Image ads let you use visual imagery to tell your story and also allure your target audience to take action while video ads give you up to 30 seconds to deliver your message as artistically as you desire & carousel option is image ads on steroids, letting you use multiple images that the viewer can swipe through, providing multiple opportunities to trigger an action.

You have call-to-action buttons for driving traffic to your website

The most frustrating part when it comes to social media marketing is – triggering engagement. You might get a lot of likes and comments, but driving the same traffic to your website is somewhat tricky. Instagram ads offer call-to-action buttons (much like Facebook ads) that allow you to drive traffic directly to your website. The call-to-action buttons are available on all the three ad format types.

Specific ad targeting

Instagram advertisers have always been able to target audiences by age, location, and gender. But now, it is working with parent company Facebook to reach users based on their interests and connections on both networks – a uniquely powerful data set of people’s personal preferences.

There’s less competition

Facebook now has nearly two million advertisers, which means that advertisers are now facing more competition to reach their target audience. Since Instagram is a relatively new advertising platform, it still offers a less competitive platform for advertising and reaching users compared to Facebook.

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Your ecommerce website is undoubtedly your online Business as it reflects who you are, what are your qualities and your traits as an ecommerce business. When you have a well-designed site, your business gets more credibility. When we talk of an effective and result driven ecommerce website design, user flow and user navigation play important roles. Your ecommerce website is the “shop” and it determines how easily the shopper can find what they are looking for. The design should be able to cater to the needs of your potential user and make for a great user-experience.

An ingenious ecommerce website design can help your business ROI go higher. Always remember, the purpose of good design is to make life easier.

How a Good Website Design Boosts the Conversions?

The usability of your ecommerce website goes hand in hand with conversion. Things like making your customer support and contact details front and center, and keeping the forms as easy and clean as possible are all significant ways to assist turn that visitor into a loyal customer.
The appeal, feel and user experience on your website pay crucial role in converting the probable leads. If your website design is catering well to the handy needs of the potential customer, there is no chance of you losing a lead.

Make a new start….get going with the must have ecommerce web designs for your website conversions

The 2015 market trends state that if you want your ecommerce business to boost, you need to opt for the 4 ecommerce design trends. Just have a look at each of these design trends:

1. Flat Design: The bigwigs in the web world; Google, Microsoft and Apple have clearly stated that flat design is here to stay. Though it’s not a novel idea but it’s going to work wonders for ecommerce sites as its pleasing, easy to understand, and uncomplicated to expand and make responsive. It’s directed to focusing towards the content which works in cutting down the bounce rate.

2. Micro UX/Transitions: Your primary objective is to make the ecommerce experience a delightful one for your customers. You may assume that customer is sure to overlook the fun little features but in fact this boosts the user experience and even increases click-through rates. As most of the micro transitions are unforeseen, users get amazed by the animation. Making micro UX effects and transitions a part of your website’s great design is sure to enhance the user experience and create a brilliant impact.

3. Tiled Navigation: Images make more of a positive impact than the text boxes and this is the reason tile navigation is mounting on popularity. When you use image tiles in place of lists, it cuts down the odds of getting lost and gives customers a preview of what they will be seeing. Tiled navigation has needed potential to seize visitors’ attention as soon as they come in contact with your ecommerce store and keep them hooked.

4. Device Agnostic: It’s clearly the time you put an end to designing web pages for specific devices. Your ecommerce site should appear and function accurately on all screen sizes. This is where device agnostic comes into fore. Your ecommerce design must consider the quantity of screen resolution combinations, input techniques, browser capabilities, as well as the connection speed to build the most pleasurable user experience. Device-agnostic design will surely leave your potential customer to return to your website.

Discover what’s best for your ecommerce business and what’s barring those probable conversions; just book a free website analysis with us & give that much needed boost to your ecommerce website!

If you have no social media presence, it denotes your non-existent and the same goes true for businesses as well. Along with a strategically done website, an effective landing page, great content and competent marketing ―strong social media presence is also vital.

It helps you widen your reach and target more users. It makes people aware of your brand, product and services. A good social media presence increases your visibility and aids you reach out to your targeted prospects thus helping you generate the needed results. If it’s done in the right manner, your marketing results will surely be impressive.

But if you miss on the vital elements, your whole social media marketing strategy will fall flat thereby disturbing your sales numbers. And given the fact that not all your posts get to make a presence on the timelines of different social media platforms―especially Facebook; you have to plan it in such a way that you get to increase your social media reach and get the most out of the content you are posting.

So how do you manage that? Well, here we have got for you the three vital tips which if implemented correctly will ensure that your social media reach is increased incredibly.

1. Distribute your content on various platforms: If you have one piece of content, make small changes to it and create versions of that same content for the different social media channels. Post them all on different platforms as FB, twitter, linkedin, instagram, google + and others.

2. Boost your posts: It’s a fact that you can only get a 10% reach organically on social media these days. It’s getting harder and harder to get your stuff seen, and now to get your posts seen you need to pay for it. Boosting your posts is the easiest method to increase the visibility of your content for a reasonable price. Though it does not guarantee actions, it does help for visibility and reaching out to more people. You can also choose if you just want to boost to show it to people who are your fans or also to new people.

3. Get seen on the right platform: Tying up with other brands and giving shout outs to each other on social media is a great way to increase your reach organically and get more people aware about your social presence. This can be done by participating in social events with other brands since images etc of these events later go out on social media, you can then be seen on the radar of the people who follow the other brand as well.

If you can implement these 3 important tips while planning your social media marketing strategy, your social media reach will surely widen up bringing out the desired results.

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Over the years, business marketing has evolved significantly―and we must say that the change has only been for good.

Turning away from old school marketing where businesses primarily made use of traditional channels like broadcast and print to communicate with their potential lead; they have now opted for the more powerful and effective tool―content marketing.

What makes Content Marketing so powerful?  

Every business nowadays swears by content marketing. You may ask as to what makes content marketing so eminent―does it actually works?

Yes, it certainly does. And this is because the consumer is getting smarter with his choice and needs. Thanks to Internet power, every person now has access to world wide information in just no time. They now get each and every detail they need about a brand or product.

They can compare prices, get knowledge about product quality and pick the best one meeting up with their choice among the whole lot.

At a time when your consumer has grown so smart with a lesser attention span, offering the right content helps in seizing customer’s attention span for long and conveying the needed information in a convincing manner. When you have an open dialogue with your customers, you get to win their trust and thus build a relation instigating your product’s sale.

Content Marketing & Your Business

As discussed, content marketing―if carried out in a strategic way, can help your business increase its sales and build in new leads for conversion. Here’s how your business gets benefitted by the right content marketing.

It helps build a personal connection with your customers

By offering relevant content to your target consumers, you create “top of mind awareness” for your brand. This helps you in building trust in your business which apparently leads to establishing good relationships with potential customers.

It drives in more traffic

Until and unless you get more traffic on your business website, you can’t make new clients. Right content strategy helps your website get desired traffic. It helps in promoting your expertise, niche and your unique selling proposition. As long as you include right calls to action, audience that engages with your content is more likely to visit your website.

It increases exposure for your business

When everyone around is using Google for all relevant information, it becomes mandatory for your business to make a strong place in Google search rankings. And to do so, it is vital to develop good quality content making use of appropriate keywords or phrases; this improves Search Engine Optimization. It creates larger exposure and boosts traffic to your business’ online presence thus allowing further opportunities to generate leads for potential sales.

As per research facts, companies that make use of effective content marketing get to see:

55% more web visitors

97% more inbound links

434% more indexed pages by search engines

Content Marketing Tools You Can Use

There are various content marketing tools but all aren’t needed for your business. You can use the ones which best fit your business needs and requirements. However, the few essentials tools are:

BLOG/GUEST POSTS

Blogging significant and engaging articles about your business will make users trust you and support your brand. Guest posts by the industry experts can also keep customers returning and help widen your audience base.

IMAGES

As per user experience studies, site viewers tend to react more to images than words. Creating influential images with wonderful design will aid you spread your message and make an impact on your followers.

INFOGRAPHICS

All love infographics, right? A design led graphic which communicates with words and images pleases the reader. And it even gives easy to access information on complex ideas.

VIDEO

Short videos screening an insight to your business are important content tool. By publishing expert interviews, guides or testimonials you get to communicate the individual side of your business.

CASE STUDIES

If you’ve got it, just flaunt it! Flaunting off your skills is a definite way to help customers understand how your business works. It even aids them to put their trust in your capabilities.

Remember, content will provide you the right value when it’s helpful and you know the consumer can always determines what useful looks like.

Need to identify what content strategy would work fine for your business? Just book for a free strategy session to see the best content marketing fit for your business!

Did you know that followers on social media are 44% more likely to engage with your content if it contains pictures? Visual content can be one of the most powerful tools in your brand’s social media arsenal.

So how do you make sure you’re using your visual content effectively?

Optimise your images

Every social media platform has different dimensions for image uploads, which means every image you share needs to be optimised specifically for various platforms. This ensures that it looks good and relevant details don’t get cut off. Nobody is going to be impressed with content that clearly hasn’t been optimised for their timeline.

Maintain a specific design scheme

When creating visual content to share on social media, it’s important to have a set design scheme that you follow, usually in line with your brand colors.

We recommend spending some time creating design templates that you can easily update with content: for example, a template for an image with a horizontal banner of text. Make sure to keep what you post on social media consistent by sticking to a colour palette, so that it is immediately identifiable with your brand.

Use the power of quote graphics

Social media is flooded with quote graphics, and for good reason – people love a personal touch that helps them connect with you and your brand.

It allows them to form a unique relationship with the identity of your brand, rather than just the product you sell. And it is exactly this relationship that creates consumer loyalty. Plus, people enjoy sharing & tagging such images with friends, making it a great way to boost user engagement.

Pop in some photographs

Scrolling across a page with just designed graphics can get pretty boring and monotonous. Break the rut by sharing photographs instead of graphically designed visual content once in a while.

Not only does this capture more attention, it gives a human element to your brand. While this doesn’t necessarily mean sharing group photo’s of the team every day, it can be used to perhaps photograph the new orders that have just been prepared for shipping.

The possibilities are endless! Your audience starts seeing your brand as a group of working individuals, rather than a faceless corporation.

Visual content has slowly and surely become the king of social media sharing, so make sure your marketing plans reflect the importance of images.

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Great content is fundamental to every website. From influencing brand promotion to building awareness of your product, what you write and how you write is key to every stage of the consumer buying cycle – particularly when it comes to decision-making and getting your site’s visitors to convert.

Your choice of words could either tempt people to buy, or make them lose interest in your product altogether – and every business aspires to have a copy that can impact their bottom line.

Content that converts is easy to spot; it flows effortlessly, stimulates readers’ emotions, and generates a strong wish to act. The question is – how to write something that’s this effective? What exactly is the secret behind writing a copy that converts?

Well, here are seven features that will help kick your conversion copywriting efforts into high gear.

1) Keep a positive tone: Positivity does have a great impact on your target customers. It builds in more loyalty & trust in the brand. When your writing has a positive tone, it stands out to be very personal where you have a direct approach with the reader. It’s simple, accessible and very easy to comprehend.

2) Be concise: Every single word used in your web copy should add value for the reader and act as a significant part of your argument or purpose. Cut out excessive language whenever possible and aim for an average sentence length of about 16 words.

3) Use subheads and bullets: According to a study, 79% of readers skim, while only 16% read every word on a page. Breaking up your page with subheads and bullets will make it easier for those 79% to digest the copy—and ultimately take a desired action—on your website.

4) Avoid overuse of buzzwords: Including certain keywords that drive in traffic is a wise thing to do – but stuffing in words can have an adverse effect on your writing. Overuse of buzzwords and industry jargons affects the clarity of your content and damages concision.

5) Use strong CTAs: The very purpose of your copy is to make the end reader take an action. This is where CTAs help you. They tell the user what to do. To write call-to-actions that can trigger action, use an assertive tone. If you want to make a sale, go for the sale. Close it. Just say it.

6) Know your audience: You need to understand your target audience – specifically their pain points and attend to them in your web copy. Find out why people buy your product or service, how they buy it, what they use it for, and what really matters to them.

7) Revise and optimize: Writing great copy is all about improvising. Always keep changing your way of writing. Experiment with changing fonts, colors, and graphic placements within your web copy to learn how to most effectively drive people to your desired action. Revision and optimization should be a regular practice.

Use these tips to lead your dreary copy ensure that your copy out of the grave and convert every time. The end result will be wonderful: increased sales, better revenue, more customers, and through-the-roof conversions.

Have more ideas to write a copy that converts? Do share with us in the comment box below.