Sports Card Strategy Show

One question I've been asked a ton recently, and seemingly 40% of all web projects is about adding an automated chat feature to a website. 1. Paul, does it work? 2. Paul, how should we do it? The answer to the first question is, yes, it CAN work, but you have to nurture it just like your other digital marketing and customer service initiatives in order for it to work. For example, an office receptionist can work, if he does his job well, paying attention to people who walk in, asking them immediately how he can help, offering them something to drink, asking about how their day is going, and then directing them to the right place, and even occasionally asking them for their contact information so they can follow up. If you treat your chat bot initiative on your website in this manner, it can be one of the greatest customer acquisition tools in the history of digital. However, if your office admin (in this analogy), is NEVER at his desk - always off doing something else - and when he actually is sitting at his desk he's too busy to look up from his computer, your chat bot initiative will FAIL. To answer question 2, I'm fond of a third party service called TIDIO.com. I've used many WordPress chat plug-ins, and none work as well as TIDIO, which works on any kind of website, all you have to do is insert a line of javascript code in your website.

One of the things about having a WordPress website is that there are several factors that control your website's health, well-being and performance. One of them that controls your site's compatibility with Plug-ins - among other things - is the version of PHP that you're running. Now, if you've been on a Managed WordPress host like GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator or even WPEngine for several years, there's a good chance your website is running an older version of PHP, like 5.0 or 5.2. WPEngine is the only host that is requiring updates, allowing you to test on a one click staging environment, and identifying incompatible plug-ins that will break once they upgrade your site. But GoDaddy Managed WordPress makes it easy to upgrade as well. This video shows you how.

A super interesting question popped up during one of our recent Data Driven Academy Live Access Sessions. Member Kelly Savoca of CottonandMoss.com asked, I'm thinking of only picking two social media outlets to go deep into putting content out on, due to time constraints, which two should I pick between FB, Insta and Pinterest. Listen to our answer here.

Pinterest has an advertising platform with the ability to run ads and sponsor pins, but the greatest and most powerful thing we've seen when analyzing web data on Pinterest is that simply being active on the platform drives traffic from your Pinterest page to your website. We explain in this video taken during a Data Driven Academy Live Access Session - www.datadrivenacademy.org.

Pinterest is an often overlooked platform as it relates to garnering web traffic and driving conversions for brands. But if your company is creating content for platforms like Instagram and Facebook, the reward of also creating a version for Pinterest should definitely be worth the time. We discuss further in this audio from our Data Driven Academy Live Access session - www.datadrivenacademy.org

There's no coincidence that I'm posting this on YouTube and embedding it in my website. :) Kelly Savoca of CottonandMoss.com asked a great question in a recent http://datadrivenacademy.org Live Access Session for Data Driven Academy Members. Should I be using YouTube or Vimeo to embed videos in my website? Her concern was related to the "suggested videos" at the end of YouTube Videos. Check out my answer. It's pretty compelling.

One of our principles at Data Driven Design is "don't overthink it." Many small businesses, marketers and content strategists totally over think their content. How many words does it have to be? How many photos does it have to have? Who cares? None of that matters. The only thing that matters is POST FREQUENCY! Find more ways to increase the frequency of your posts and blogs. Watch this video for tangible tips on how to do this. It will increase your web traffic when you execute. The proof is in the data.

In this fun interaction with Kelly Savoca from CottonandMoss.com during one of our http://datadrivenacademy.org members live access sessions, Kate Hickey and I debate whether or not your content actually NEEDS photos. I highly recommend you listen! :)

Did you know that the data says in order to get conversions on your website, your visitors need to return anywhere from 3-5 times? This means, if you think you're going to sell people products or services the first time they visit your website, you're sorely mistaken. As a result, you need to implement many strategies to get people coming back to your website, among them, deploying Facebook Ads to people who have visited your website in the last 30, 60, 90 days. This is also known as Facebook Remarketing, and this video shows you how to set create remarketing audiences in Facebook Ads Manager.  Taken from a live access session of http://datadrivenacademy.org.

Believe it or not, starting a new eCommerce website and getting conversions is one of the hardest things to do. Improving your website design and functionality is only about 20% of the battle. Assuming the product(s) you're selling is/are good and there's a market for them, you'll now need to begin the battle of building enough awareness for your brand to drive enough web traffic to your site, then eventually convert that web traffic. The data shows you'll need at least 100 unique visitors per day, and to keep them coming back 3-5 times to finally start to see some eCommerce conversions. Depending on your time and budget, this can take years. I break it down in this video for www.DataDrivenAcademy.org members.