Elev8 Strategy Blog

3 UPGRADES AND IMPROVEMENTS TO KEEP SMALL BUSINESSES AFLOAT AMID COVID-19

m.rolandis@yahoo.com (Rolandis Michele) — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 11:31:58 GMT

Upgrades and Improvements to Keep Small Businesses Afloat Amid COVID-19

Now that it’s been over a year since the pandemic began, Yelp’s Economic Impact Report revealed in September that 60 percent of coronavirus-induced business closures will now be permanent. Breakfast and brunch establishments, gift shops, men’s clothing retailers, and food trucks have been hit the hardest, as well as bars and nightlife venues. However, businesses that adapt to the current situation will be more likely to survive and thrive as the pandemic continues on.

Let’s discuss three of the upgrades and improvements that can help small businesses to adapt and stay afloat throughout the remainder of the pandemic — however long that may be.

1. Business Technologies

To stay afloat as the pandemic wears on, now is the time to upgrade your business technology so you have everything you need to work effectively from home, sell your products and services online, and stay in touch with your customers, clients, and employees.

A new desktop computer , for example, will keep your personal information safe and secure — and equip you with the memory, power, and speed you need without breaking the bank. If you or your employees need portability, however, a laptop computer will be best.

In addition to desktop computers and laptops, other tech essentials for small businesses include webcams, all-in-one printers, digital cameras, and security systems for physical business locations.

Moreover, you’ll need a reliable internet connection if you’ll be working remotely throughout the pandemic. By upgrading your internet, you’ll experience ultra-fast speeds and minimal lag time for all your 4K streaming, web browsing, and video conferencing needs.

2. Enlist Professional Help

Staying afloat is one thing, but to reach your target audience online and continue to grow your business during the pandemic, you may need to enlist the help of Elev8 Strategy who can handle:

● Web development to create your business website or e-commerce store.

● Search engine optimization (SEO) to boost your search engine rankings and drive traffic to your business website.

● Content creation for your website, blog, social media pages, and other marketing materials.

In addition, a formation service can help you register as a limited liability company which means protection from litigation, reduced paperwork, and possible savings come tax time.

3. Contactless Payment Methods

To reduce contact and prevent the spread of COVID-19, now is the time to shift to contactless payment methods, even if you’re not operating online. Since contactless payments eliminate the need to enter a personal identification number (PIN), swipe a credit card, sign for a purchase, or pass a credit card from one person to another, contactless options are a whole lot safer amidst the pandemic — and they’re more convenient as well.

Some of the best contactless payment options include:

● Apple and Google Pay

● PayPal

● Venmo

For businesses with point-of-sale (POS) systems, Google or Apple Pay will be the easiest alternatives to traditional payment methods. For those without POS systems, however, Venmo and PayPal will be best. Bankrate offers some tips for getting started with Venmo, while this guide to PayPal credit card processing will help you to accept contactless payments via PayPal. If you use PayPal’s Commerce Platform, your business can accept a combination of PayPal, Venmo, and credit or debit card payments.

In Conclusion

To keep your small business afloat, you’ll need to make a few business upgrades and improvements — and it’s a good idea to enlist the help of several savvy professionals. If you need help affording these upgrades and improvements, be sure to explore federal, state, and private coronavirus relief options for small businesses.

Elev8 Strategy can take care of all your digital marketing needs to improve your online presence. Get started by completing this form!

Written by Julie Morris

Image from Pexels

WORDPRESS COMPARISON WITH ELEV8 STRATEGY

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 16:53:02 GMT

How our websites compare to wordpress websites

You Deserve Better

You could have your website built on WordPress, but it wouldn’t be worth it.

WordPress was built for blogs, not small businesses. A good small business website can’t be built on WordPress without the use of unstable plugins that will break your website every time WordPress runs an update. We are a better choice because small businesses are our specialty.

Better SEO

Right from the start, our websites’ innovative, built in architecture improves SEO automatically. Our entire platform is aligned with Google protocol to raise your website’s Google ranking.

Better Performance

We optimize our websites to load faster

and score higher on the Google PageSpeed test. On WordPress, your website’s content will be slowed down by numerous code and software bloats.

Better User Experience

Our natively-responsive websites provide a better user experience across all devices. Turn more visitors into customers with up to 70% higher conversion rates than industry averages.

Better Security

We’ll keep your website safe and secure with free encryption and auto-renewing SSL certificates. On WordPress, you’ll have to pay for manual installation and all security updates.

Better Build Times

Our natively-responsive websites provide a better user experience across all devices. Turn more visitors into customers with up to 70% higher conversion rates than industry averages.

Good is Good,

But Better is Better.

Don’t just make a good choice; make a better choice. Let us build you a better website today.

ELEV8 WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY IN CYPRUS

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 14:02:41 GMT

ELEV8 STUDIO PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT IN CYPRUS

Your standard, successful website is made from a blend of beautiful design, clearly written content and a well-thought-out conversion funnel. And all of that’s great, but who wants to just be ‘standard,’ when you can be so much more? To maximize your website’s potential as a customer-conversion machine, you need to create a visitor experience that is highly engaging and speaks directly to your potential customers’ needs.

We at elev8 deliver professional, high-quality websites for our clients that evoke emotion and improve interaction. Simply put, our design work delivers real, measurable results.

Our state-of-the-art features are proven to increase search engine ranking, boost sales, and deliver a better overall experience across every device type.

One Website That Works On Desktop, Tablet and Mobile

Traditional desktop-only sites simply won’t cut it anymore. One study from comScore found that 49 percent of digital media time is spent on mobile devices, with tablets accounting for an additional 12 percent. With just 31 percent of time left over for desktop devices, it becomes clear that websites should be built mobile-friendly, tablet-friendly, and desktop-friendly. That’s why we employ what’s called responsive web design.

Traditionally, responsive design means stretching and shrinking your site to fit different screen sizes. However, we take it a step further by tailoring different features for different devices as well. For example, a Click-to-Call button will appear on a mobile device, but not a tablet or desktop. The experience and the needs of a visitor can greatly differ between a mobile and desktop device, and we make sure that our content and designs consistently reflect that.

Website Personalization

Normally, the web is a uniform experience—every visitor gets the same experience on a website as the next guy. But over the past few years, large enterprises like Amazon have used a strategy of website personalization to boost their conversion rate. This is because creating a one-to-one visitor experience speaks directly to a potential customer and their needs.

However, we don’t think this technology should be reserved for companies with vast budgets and endless resources. So, we at elev8 have developed a way to offer this kind advanced customer-conversion technology to small business owners like you.

Stats on Website Personalization

There’s a few statistics that show how much web personalization can help the success of your website.

• Nearly three in four (74 percent) online consumers get frustrated with websites when the content that’s displayed, such as offers or promotions, has nothing to do with their interests.

• In-house marketers who personalize their customers’ web experiences see an average of 19 percent uplift in sales.

Our agency can create a dynamic website that changes based off user’s behavior such as visit history, proximity to your business, time of day/week/month, device type, etc., that adapts its content to deliver a tailored experience with business-driving features that increase conversions.

Website personalization truly is the next great frontier in web design.

Better Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

No matter how big or small your website is, SEO is one of the most powerful tools available. Search engine optimization relates to how well your site does in search rankings on sites like Google and Bing. The higher your site climbs in rankings, the more likely it will gain new traffic, visits and customers.

Knowing this, we employ the best of the best SEO practices on all of our sites to get our clients the most traffic possible. We accomplish by highly targeting certain keywords and optimizing the structure of your site to be the most Google- and Bing-friendly it can be.

Once again, this is where responsive design comes into play. The websites create are structured under one URL (e.g. www.elev8strategy.com), which makes it easier for these search giants to find relevant information on your site that helps give you a boost in rankings. This is especially important for highly-valued mobile search traffic.

Currently, mobile devices are winning the battle for supremacy in local search, and these searchers are looking to take action. According to a study from Google, four out of five consumers conduct local searches on search engines and 88 percent of them are doing it on smartphones. What’s more, 50 percent of these people will visit a store within a day.

But we don't’ stop there. We’ll work hand-in-hand with your business to gain a full understanding of what we can do to develop a comprehensive SEO strategy that generates more traffic on every device.

Business-Driving Features

Building a beautiful website is only half the battle—you also need a website that can perform. Here’s a list of our features that we can build into your site to increase conversion.

Site Widgets

• Click-to-Call

Enables customers to call a business in one click from a mobile device.

Maps

Integrated with Google Maps, provides step-by-step directions to a brick-and-mortar location.

Multi-Location

For businesses across a region, provide a map for site visitors detailing each store location.

Online Scheduling

Available through vCita, enables customers to schedule appointments on desktop, tablet and mobile.

Coupons

Put coupons into the hands  of customers by dragging and dropping them onto a site. Control the amount of the discount, duration of coupon, etc.

Restaurant Menu

The content from a menu of an existing restaurant website will be automatically imported when using this widget and laid out in a beautiful new format.

Business Hours

A crucial part of any website, this widget can be filled out manually or automatically imported from a website.

Contact Form

Drag and drop a Contact Form into a site to give customers an alternative way of reaching out.

Custom HTML

Add your own HTML/CSS/JavaScript to the page directly. Great for third-party integrations or adding custom code.

Click-to-Email

Provide visitors with the ability to directly email the small business that owns the website.

List

Create a list of anything from products to staff members using this widget.

Yelp Reviews

Displays your best reviews directly on a site to build a business’ credibility with potential customers.

Image Slider

Give visitors a swipeable image slider to view multiple images without taking up too much space on the site.

Photo Gallery

Include a photo gallery on any page. Provides a shadow box effect to focus the viewer on the image.

File Upload

Upload PDFs, spreadsheets  and more.

Social Icons

Links to your social media pages are neatly arranged and can be dropped anywhere on a website.

YouTube Video

Embed any YouTube video by dragging this widget into place.

Twitter Feed

Keep visitors up to date by displaying a live Twitter feed.

Facebook Comments

Allows visitors to comment on a linked Facebook page without leaving the site.

Facebook Album

Add a photo gallery of images from your Facebook business page.

Facebook Like

Enables visitors to like a business’ Facebook page without leaving the site.

Visitors can share the site on their social media networks simply by clicking on this icon.

WordPress Feed

Incorporate blog posts from WordPress directly on your site.

Superior Speed

High-speed website performance isn’t a luxury for a great website—it’s a requirement. Not only do people expect a page to load quickly, but Google has indicated that pagespeed is a direct factor for SEO. Neither your customers nor Google has a second to spare waiting for a page to load, so pagespeed is one of our top priorities.

When we’re crafting our sites, we go through extreme lengths to ensure that we live up to the promise of a fast site, and we routinely test the speed of your site to double check that we maintain that standard. Here are a few ways we achieve the speeds demanded by both Google, Bing and your visitors:

1. Optimized Images – Our images go through a process that generates a number of images in different sizes (to be delivered as needed to the device your visitor is using) and compresses them without losing quality.

2. Server Response Time – Sites hosted through our agency will display for your clients very quickly. We write our code and design our infrastructure specifically to this end.

3. Global CDN – To double-up on speed, we use a global CDN, so no matter where someone is trying to view your site from, the site load-time for them is just a few seconds.

4. Constant Testing – We routinely test our client’s site speed scores every to make sure your site speeds meet our standards.

Better Overall Experience

So now you know the nuts and bolts of our website building process, and you have a better understanding of the features that we offer. But what all of this really comes down to is, at the end of the day, we want to help our clients be successful.

Why Work With Us

We’ve found the only way to accomplish all these goals to build a special relationship with our clients through a constant process of communication and feedback. If we’re going to carry out our promise of delivering a personal and incredible website experience to your potential customers, we also need to deliver a personal experience to you.

Elev8strategy.com

SIMPLE PRACTISES FOR BAIDU SEO

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 11:49:35 GMT

SEO TIPS FOR BAIDU

Theirs a recorded increase in the number of businesses in Cyprus trying to reach out more and more clients located in China most of which to promote Cyprus Citizenship by Investment Program or Cyprus Permanent Residency program. Real estate developers, law firms, immigration consultants to name a few want to be found in China as they see the huge opportunity.

However if you want to be found in China theirs only one search engine you must be optimised for and thats Baidu.

Theirs no doubt that Baidu search engine is the undisputed leader in China with the latest statistics showing over 80% market share, a huge number if you take into consideration that Google owns less than 3% market share in China.

However optimising your site for Baidu is a complete new game compared with optimising for Google, baidu is a unique complex and challenging environment, in other words SEO for Google will not cut it for Baidu

Bellow i have put together a short list with simple tasks you can perform that don’t necessarily require seo knowledge to carry out.

So If you want to break through China’s market and get seen, start with the bellow simple tasks.

Domain Name. Baidu prefers domains that use a .cn top level domain (TLD). While there will be .com and .net sites ranked by Baidu, and especially as the search engine expands its reach, Baidu continues to favour .cn domains. This does not necessarily mean you need to change your domain, you could purchase a variation of your domain in .cn for example www.mydomain.cn and point that domain to your site also.

Hosting. Other search engines do not care where your site is hosted however Baidu does, they want you hosted in China. This will eliminate any danger of beeing blocked and websites hosted in baidu are faster to load compared to websites based outside. Their is more to this than what i have put down here, i read an article that was helpful with pros and cons of this action, you can find it Here Definitely companies that have a physical presence in China will find this process much easier.

ICP License. Typical of China’s bureaucratic governance and in line with its censorship regime, all websites should apply for an Inernet Content Publishing (ICP) license. It is not difficult to obtain but generally takes around a month to secure when documents are all in order. Without an ICP license, ranking high on a Baidu SERP is difficult, if not impossible.

Language. You want your page visible in China so you must present its content in Chinese, be aware: not all Chinese is Chinese to Baidu. Baidu favours Simplified Chinese characters and while it will also index Traditional Chinese, it doesn’t rank dialects, Cantonese, or other foreign language sites (English,Spanish, or German) high on SERPs.

New Content.Same with Google, Baidu favours fresh content over older content and so a useful optimisation strategy is the regular creation and publication of new, fresh content. This could be regularly adding press releases and media releases, and ensuring that content is engaging, speaks to the Chinese zeitgeist, and make sure you publish on a regular basis.

Anchor Text. This is important to Baidu, i am talking about anchor links driving customers to other pages of the same website (internal links) Baidu pays a lot of attention to this, you must make sure you are aligning the anchor text with the nominated keyword for that page or blog post. This technique is considered good SEO in Baidu but also for other search engines too.

We at Elev8strategy.com perform SEO services for a variety of businesses on search engines such as Google, Yandex and Baidu.

We are currently offering a complete Free Website Audit Report that will show you bugs and fixes that are potentially holding you back and costing you valuable online visibility. None of the above seo practises should be looked into if you haven't firstly performed a thorough audit on your website, you need your site on top of its game with as less bugs as possible before you begin optimisation.

If you want us to generate a free report please Contact Us and send through bellow information

Name / Surname

website domain.

contact details