iNews Archives - Page 11 of 31

Here’s Why You Should Build Your Website in WordPress

Choosing which Content Management System (CMS) you’ll build your site in is the first and most crucial part of the website development process. This is because everything depends on it, from your website’s appearance and functionality to performance and security. There are a lot of CMS available today but the majority of website owners and developers vouch for one – WordPress.

WordPress is by far the most popular CMS today. According to W3Techs, it accounts to 810 million websites which is 43% of all websites on the internet in 2022. It is so versatile that you can create any type of website. May it be a blog site, business site, or ecommerce store, WordPress is reliable. Aside from this, people are so fond of it for the following reasons:

WordPress is simple and easy to use

Creating a WordPress website is easy. It doesn’t require much of a learning curve even if you’re a beginner with this CMS in general. All it takes is a theme and one or two plugins to start making pages. It is so straightforward that you can set up your site, create, edit, and publish your content with just a few clicks.

WordPress is an open-source software

Open-Source Software means:

It is free. You can create any type of project with WordPress for free, be it for personal or commercial use.
It is customizable. WordPress gives you every ounce of freedom to customize the platform the way you want it.

WordPress gives you full control

WordPress is greatly known for its vast options of plugins and themes. To give you a background, themes are templates that will serve as a blueprint of your site. On the other hand, plugins are responsible for your site’s features and functionality. Unlike other CMS, you can find a lot of excellent options for free with WordPress.

WordPress is simple to maintain

You might not be aware, but using WordPress is simple and easy to maintain. It only requires a little bit of work. To break it down for you, here are the things you should pay attention to:

Updating the CMS when new versions come out
Updating plugins and themes
Managing your site’s comments (if you enable them)
Ensuring that your website is fully optimized and secure
Backing up your site

If this sounds a lot to you, you can always opt to hire a web host provider and website development company like iManila. Have the time to focus more on growing your business than worrying about building your website.

WordPress is here to stay

As mentioned a while ago, WordPress powers a massive number of websites. This number grows wildly everyday, globally. With a lot of people using the platform, there’s an assurance that developers aren’t going to stop developing it any time soon. You can have the confidence that you’ll always have access to updates that can improve the security and functionality of your website.

WordPress has a lot to offer. If you’re ready to give it a go, talk to the experts at iManila!

With 27 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, a web development company and a top digital marketing company in the country, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions.
As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, dedicated server, technical, desktop and remote support, and digital marketing services needs. Talk to us!

Guaranteed Techniques to Boost SEO This Year

As we have witnessed, Google has rolled out a staggering number of updates over the course of the years. This ties into their pursuit to defeat black hat search engine optimization (SEO) tactics and improve the search engine results pages (SERPs). By this, they are in the effort to emphasize quality content, optimal page speed, and mobile SEO. So, what does this imply in terms of your 2023 SEO strategy?

Keep up or be left in 2022. Follow these best practices that we have put together to get your site sailing through the SERPs this year.

Produce video content

Video is one of the most effective forms of content to engage your audience. In fact, it has made its way to dominate almost all social media platforms, giving the highest ROI among other media formats.

If you want to increase your visibility in SERPs, focus on creating video content that people actually want to see. Invest heavily in it to stand out among the sea of video content on the internet today.

Optimize content for voice search

The emergence and growing popularity of voice assistants globally has forced brands to adopt and capitalize from this innovative practice. With over 4 billion devices worldwide using voice search, not optimizing your content for this is a huge missed opportunity.

While there are a number of important aspects to voice search optimization, featured snippets are the most crucial SEO component. A featured snippet is a search result that Google specifically selects as the best response to a user’s query. It’s the one that appears at the top of the search results page. Optimize your content’s featured snippet for voice search to increase its chances to appear in Search Engine Results’ Pages (at the top even!)

Recycle and repurpose content for different platforms

Repurposing content entails recycling it for use across a variety of channels. For instance, shortening a lengthy Youtube video into a 15-second Tiktok clip as a teaser is one idea. It’s a creative way for brands to come up with new content and help reach a wide range of people who prefer different media formats.

Other ways of recycling content includes turning a blog post or article into a video, and transcribing a podcast into a blog post. It is up to your creativity, really. Just make sure that the style of your content is appropriate for the channel you want to use.

Optimize your site and improve user experience

Let’s not forget that a successful SEO content strategy is built on the fundamentals of SEO. Therefore, optimizing your business website is crucial. Conduct a website maintenance and check your metadata, update canonicals, optimize page speed and load times, design mobile-friendly page layouts, and implement structured data. These are all important in SEO and constitute a positive user experience.

Also, making your website mobile-responsive is now a must! As 2022 data shows, mobile traffic made up almost 60% of all traffic worldwide. And for the foreseeable future, mobile is expected to be more popular than desktop. This 2023, aim to provide your website visitors a seamless mobile experience.

Keep an eye on Google’s algorithm

Google is always changing its algorithms to give the best results for every user’s search. These updates can greatly affect your SEO and content strategies. It would be better to be attentive and vigilant so you could maneuver your strategies as quickly as possible.

Google algorithm update is inevitable like some sort of force of nature. We cannot do anything but keep up with it.

With everything that has been said, we wish everyone good luck in boosting your SEO this year. If you need further assistance or are looking for help with your content marketing (to start), let the experts in iManila help!

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, a web development company and a top digital marketing company in the country, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions.

As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, dedicated server, technical, desktop and remote support, and digital marketing services needs. Talk to us!

The Best Way to Start the Year Right – by Updating Your Website

The year 2023 has arrived! This is the perfect time to give your business website a fresh new look. While there are a lot of ways and strategies to do this, website revamps don’t always have to be extravagant. Sometimes it could be as simple as updating your website and making sure everything is working properly. Doing these can keep your business website stay relevant and offer better customer experience than the previous year.

Having said that, what aspects of your website do you think needs some updating? Does your website need some maintenance? Well, think no more as we provide a list of things you need to update on your website.

Verify and update your contact information

One of the most common mistakes business owners make with their website is forgetting to update their contact numbers and email addresses whenever they change it. Bottomline is when your potential customers cannot reach you, you are losing out and failing to attend to their needs. Don’t fall for this. Check the contact information in your header, footer, and “contact us” pages to make sure it is up to date.

Bonus tip, don’t forget to update your Google My Business page and other directory listings in which your company appears as well.

Examine WordPress plugins

If you are running a WordPress website, the start of the year is the best time to examine your plugins. Check for plugins that are not serving its purpose anymore or are no longer useful for your site. Look for substitute plugins that do the work of multiple plugins. Remove unnecessary plugins and those that don’t receive updates anymore. Do this to ensure that your website continues to function properly.

Just as well, examine the version of the WordPress CMS integrated into your website. Your entire WordPress version may just be outdated together with ALL of your website plugins.

Review your privacy policy

Privacy and security has greatly changed in the past years. Spend the time and effort to hire an attorney who can assist you in protecting yourself if these changes are not addressed in your privacy policy, or worse, if you do not have one at all.

There are also online tools that can help you create your own privacy policy. While this may be a good start, we still recommend having it reviewed by an attorney to ensure that it adequately covers you and your business.

Test your website’s accessibility

It is always a good idea to conduct tests to verify that your website is accessible or not, especially if it was designed to be so. If your website isn’t accessible, now is a good time to have it fixed. In recent years, accessibility has become a hot issue. By fixing it as early as now, you can cater to all possible website visitors while also protecting yourself.

Update your keywords

Having keywords on your business website is important. By targeting the right keywords, it can make your business website rank in the internet, increasing your visibility. Check and consider changing some keywords especially if they are not helping your website rank higher.

Publish relevant content

Nothing screams an updated website more than fresh and timely content. Invest some time in content writing. Create brand new high quality contents to get the attention of your customers. Updating your website content can provide a boost on your search rankings and help you reach more customers online.

We hope these tips will help on how to create a better business website this 2023. If you need further help with updating your website or if you’re looking for help with website repair and website maintenance, talk to the experts in iManila!

5 Reasons to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency This New Year

Juggling between your day-to-day business operations and carrying out marketing efforts is not an easy task. For sure, you would agree based on your past experiences in the previous years. Regardless of your company scale, it is best to have different people handle these two distinct business aspects. After all, it can’t all be done at once. This is one of the main reasons to hire a digital marketing agency this new year.

A digital marketing agency is composed of an experienced team that can manage all of your online marketing needs in one place. From Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Email Marketing to Social Media Management and Advertising (SMM and SMA), and many more, they are your team.

Aside from having the focus to run and grow your business, there are a lot of other reasons why a digital marketing agency is worth your money. Read further as we share the benefits that come with hiring a digital marketing agency for your business!

Have an expert do your digital marketing efforts

Off the bat, hiring a digital marketing agency means having experts do your online marketing efforts. Marketing isn’t as easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of time and experience to fully understand online marketing and plan a strategy that actually works. Sure, you can create a marketing team out of your people but do they have the skills of a pro? The clock is ticking, and this 2023, don’t settle for trial-and-error marketing strategies. Invest in an agency that can bring you marketing success.

Save money by cutting down marketing costs

Many businesses compare the cost of an in-house operation to the cost of an agency when deciding whether or not to hire a digital marketing agency. Hiring an agency is more cost efficient and will save you a lot of money in the long run.

One reason for this is that agencies are independent contractors. It doesn’t require payroll taxes. Plus, you reduce the ongoing expenses associated with full-time employees, such as salaries, health care costs, and benefits.

With an in-house operation, you will also be required to pay subscription fees to some digital marketing tools you need to run campaigns. On the other hand, you won’t have to spend a dime on tools when you hire an established firm. They already have all of it.

Acquire new and innovative ideas

Bored of repetitive and customary marketing ideas? Consider hiring a digital marketing agency. They offer fresh and out of the box ideas, incorporating a new perspective in your company’s online marketing plans. For instance, they can help you find ways to effectively reach your target audience. From platforms to use to media types to produce, they got you!

See measurable results

Know and track the performance of your marketing campaigns with the help of a digital marketing agency. They can come up with an estimated Key Performance Indicator (KPIs) based on your budget. So it would be easier to determine your return on investment (ROI).

In addition, they will identify the crucial metrics that should be followed across the various channels in order to assess each campaign’s effectiveness. And you will be receiving a website audit and monthly or quarterly reports on your campaigns. Basically, a digital marketing agency assists you in making sound marketing decisions.

Enjoy free marketing tools

Digital marketing requires a lot of tools to optimize each campaign. Most of these tools are of premium services, with certain features or upgrades increasing the cost. To name a few, analytics, keyword research, competitive analysis, paid search management, and automation tools are some of the tools you will be needing.

For small and medium-sized businesses, the total cost of using these online marketing tools can be quite high. But with a digital marketing agency, you don’t have to worry about these tools as they already have it covered.

With everything that has been said, if you’re planning to hire a digital marketing agency to help you with your online presence this year, let iManila help!

New Year’s Resolutions for every E-Commerce Business

No matter how successful your business is today, there can always be room for improvement in the years to come. This is why we have made a few New Year’s resolutions to help improve your e-commerce business website. Take a look at some of the tips that your business might want to try to adapt for 2023:

Reply to customers within 24 hours

For this new year, commit to better customer service. By this, make it a habit to visit your inbox everyday and attend to your customers’ concerns. Remember, the buying process doesn’t just end at check out. Your team must understand the level of concern for each customer too. For instance, if one of them has a major concern or issue with your products, at least let them know when they can expect a reply.

Incorporate sustainability in your packaging materials

With climate change and global warming getting worse, consumers nowadays are doing their best to mitigate the causes that they can possibly contribute. Hence, they are patronizing businesses that incorporate sustainability in their operation. As an online business owner, you can incorporate sustainability through switching to eco-friendly packaging materials. There are a lot of available options right now in the market that are made from recyclable materials or are less harmful to the environment.

Give rewards to loyal customers

If you had a loyal customer for years, it would be nice to let them know that you are grateful for their support during this new year. You can offer them promos like free shipping, a freebie, or a discount. Remember, being thankful for your long-time clients won’t make you go bankrupt.

Make your customers’ lives easier

People opt to purchase online for convenience. Make sure to make every step of your customer’s buying process as easy and convenient as possible. Improve your company’s system this 2023. Accelerating your shipping process, implementing single-click payment, and simplifying your Terms of Service are some good points to start.

Use a new website layout

It’s always a good idea to create a new layout and web design for your site as the new year emerges. Whether you change the color of a sidebar or try a whole new look, it will definitely have an impact on the customers. Ensure that it looks equally good on all screen sizes by consulting a web development team.

Get serious with content

As cliche as it sounds, this 2023, content remains to be the king. Level up your content marketing. Produce more creative contents and commit to a posting schedule. It would be best too to identify the best medium to use for your brand – blogs, podcasts, videos, etc. Nothing beats great content in driving traffic and building relationships with your website visitors. It would also be best if you will invest in a digital marketing agency that can help you with your online marketing strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

A new year calls for a new beginning. Consider making some changes in your business’ web system and website for the better. Consider a website maintenance service for your business today! For website concerns, let the experts in iManila help you!

A Year-End Message from our CEO

December 30, 2022
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

Dear Loyal Clients,

2022 has been a very bumpy year for everyone. Although we have experienced a series of ups and downs with the business, with 26 years of experience under our belt, we have been able to weather the year coming out stronger to face the challenges of 2023.

We continue to be grateful that you’re still here with us and we’re honored to grow with you throughout all the economic struggles we share together. Thank you for your continued trust and support in our team. We sincerely look forward to continuing to improve your lives through technology for many more years to come.

Happy new year to you and your loved ones!

Robert A. Deluria
President & CEO
iManila

Are Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns Working? Let’s evaluate.

December 20, 2022
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

Holiday marketing typically begins months before the actual holidays – around the month of August to September to be exact. This is due to the fact that 56% of people intend to cross out their shopping lists way ahead of December to avoid the holiday rush. Smart move, right?

Whether you started early or not, one thing is for sure – you should be seeing some results on your online marketing campaigns by now. As a marketer, instead of celebrating the success immediately or instead of getting discouraged by unfavorable results, evaluate your strategies.

Know what worked and what didn’t. Remember, consumers extend their holiday spending until the first week of January. You still have time to boost your success or stir your fate. Plus, this is a great start too if you want to come back stronger next year. So, without further ado, let’s start evaluating!

Look into your data and analytics

The first and vital step in evaluating your digital marketing efforts is to look into your data and analytics. Study and analyze the numbers and trends from Google Analytics, your ecommerce analytics, and your social media analytics. By doing this, you can easily figure out what’s working and not. Here are some data that you should focus on:

Number of Sales to New Customers

Keeping track of the number of new customers you have acquired during the holiday season is valuable in making smarter online marketing plans. Having this data can help you verify whether or not you are targeting the right customer base and buyer persona.

Number of Sales to Existing Customers

Same logic applies to existing customers as to new customers. Rethink your strategy if holiday sales to existing customers decrease. It’s possible that your communications were ineffective or that the products and services you provide don’t meet the needs of your current clientele anymore. Whatever the circumstance is, take advantage of the busy holiday season to learn what your current customers are looking for and incorporate that information into not only this holiday season but also to your holiday marketing strategy for next year.

Email Metrics

Email marketing can be difficult during the holidays. A lot of marketers are competing in customers’ inboxes. But, don’t lose hope. You can still expect a good return since people are actively shopping and looking for deals. Keep an eye on your email metrics, especially the rate of clicks and opens. These numbers will help you understand your holiday success and plan a better email campaign.

Website Traffic

Knowing your website traffic is important all throughout the year. But, paying close attention to it during the holiday season makes a huge difference given that internet traffic spikes during this period. Examine your SEO statistics and compare your holiday results with your year-round results. Look how customers interact with your website and learn how they find you.This will provide you with insight into the user experience of your website as well as the efficiency of your SEO.

Revisit your marketing goals

After doing data analysis, compare the results to the holiday-season objectives you’ve set for your business. Pay attention to your campaigns across all of your channels to find out if they are succeeding or not. Make sure to go through all the metrics you chose to use to evaluate your campaign performance to get the complete picture.

Amend your holiday marketing campaigns if needed

If you found out your campaigns aren’t working as planned, it’s time to stir your holiday strategy. Make the changes and observe the data again. Repeat the process as long as you need to. Don’t be discouraged to redo your campaigns over and over again. Going through this process will be worth it as it will lead you to a more engaging and tailored marketing campaign for your customers.

If you need further assistance with your marketing strategies any time of the year, iManila can help!

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions. As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs. Talk to us!

Tips to Ensure That Your Website Will Be Able to Handle the Holiday Surge

December 13, 2022
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

As we know, the holiday season brings in a unique business opportunity to boost sales and increase profit. The good news is, your e-commerce store is not exempted from this! Statistics say, e-commerce business owners could expect up to 21% increase in their total sales during this season. With this huge number, can your website handle the demand?

Prepare your website for the extra internet traffic brought by the holidays. Ensure optimal performance with zero downtime even and especially during peak hours. Otherwise, anticipate a negative bottom line as early as now.

But, if you are up for the challenge, here are tips on how you could prepare your website for the massive online traffic this holiday season. Read below!

Determine how many visitors your website can handle

First things first, know how many visitors your current website can handle. Each website’s maximum traffic capacity depends on a variety of factors including your hosting plan and content. Have it checked by a reliable web development team that can give you insights about your site’s performance and valuable suggestions.

Visit your web host

Almost everything in your site relies on your hosting plan. If your website is hosted on an unreliable web hosting server or has the wrong kind of hosting, expect it to perform poorly and expect a possibility of it crashing completely. Consider upgrading your web hosting to a Dedicated Server. It is the safest solution to use especially if you’re anticipating huge traffic this season and you need all the resources all to yourself!

Strengthen your cybersecurity

Aside from the risk of website collapse, having huge online traffic can also increase your site’s susceptibility to hacker attacks. Maintain your site and visitors’ safety against this threat. Install a Secure Socket Layer (SSL), which ensures that the data shared between your website and your visitors are secured and encrypted.

Optimize Your Website

One of the most effective ways to make your business website better is to make it simpler. If your website has lots of elements, you have to consider how your website can handle loads and visitors at all times since this may have an effect.

Optimize all your images, videos, and other elements in your website. Clean up your data, minimize plugin use and choose lightweight plug-ins. Make sure you have a regular backup of your website. Always bear in mind that page speed matters even more to mobile users.

Create a fast and easy way to attend to your customers’ queries

People don’t just buy. They first ask questions about an item or service to ensure that they get the value of their money. So, expect to receive queries over the holidays. You could add an automated chatbot functionality to your website for a quick way to respond to your customers. A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page can also help by providing your visitors answers to their possible questions. Lastly, provide them with your business email or contact number for queries that can’t be solved by chatbots or an FAQ page.

We hope that these tips will help your website for this coming holiday season. If you need further help with this, iManila has got your back!

Social Media Advertising: Strategies for the Coming Holiday Season

December 6, 2022
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

The holiday season is not a fun season for social media marketers because it is definitely a season to plan, compete and win Social Media Ads. This season is one of the most critical and stressful times of the year for marketing teams and agencies alike. However, it is also the best time to promote your brand, get more leads and conversions, if you strategize well.

In this article, we put together winning holiday social media advertising strategies to help you put your brand on the nice list this year.

Use seasonal ad creative

This tip is such a no-brainer. The foundation for successful holiday ads for social media are to use holiday-themed copy, images, and video ads to connect with your customers and motivate them to purchase. The seasonal feel can be outright and obvious, like advertising certain products such as Christmas gifts directly within your creatives.

Emphasize holiday sales and promotions

Incorporate holiday sales and promotions. Decide on what kind of sales will run during the holidays with your team and make a content calendar for your different social media platforms around that particular date.

Use social media ads to let your customers decide and push them to make that purchase they have been considering for months.

Since shoppers will surely look for specific discounts and promo codes, be certain to highlight your special offers in your ad creative.

Strategize your segmentation

Develop the best strategy for using your first-party data. Who will be the best customers to target (or retarget) during your holiday sales — your VIP purchasers? Repeat customers? First-time holiday shoppers? With enough time, you can create a supercharged target audience primed for purchase before the holiday rush begins.

Watch your competition

Keep an eye on your competitors’ ads and strategies so you can re-strategize if needed. Watch what kind of creatives they’re putting out, as well as how early they’re starting to run their holiday campaigns. The last thing you would want is to be caught off guard while your competitors swoop in on your early bird customers.

Stretch your budget to beat the competition

As the holiday season is a competitive one, if you want your ads to be shown in increasingly crowded ad auctions, you’ll need to up your budget. Take a look at your historical data on Facebook, Instagram, and other target platforms before setting your budget. How much were your ad costs in the past? What were your results from that spend? Based on that data, work with your digital marketing team to identify the best budget for this holiday season. Also include some room to adjust your expenses depending on your campaign performance.

Start advertising early

Build and run your Instagram and Facebook ad campaigns as early as you can. The holiday shopping season starts earlier each year, and your eCommerce business shouldn’t be caught unaware. Stretch your calendar (and budget) as long as you can during this season in order to maximize your expenses and get great results.

This holiday season, you either go big or go home. Make the right move, let iManila help!

As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs. Talk to us!

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