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A Guide to Consumer Experience Online

Up until a few years back, it would take a while before a shopper made a decision on which brand to buy along the aisles of a grocery store or supermarket. But as the years went by, technology gifted us with exciting innovations. Mobile phones became more powerful than ever. From having a mobile phone with the singular functionality of doing voice calls, the mobile phone developed into an all-in-one device that more or less had the same capabilities as a personal computer. It became faster and more efficient and allowed people to have technology readily available in their pockets.

This advancement in technology has, in response, led to changes in behavior. Research shows that the current global population spent an average of 6 hours and 42 minutes online. Currently, in the Philippines, the average time being spent online is 10 hours and 2 minutes. This actually makes us one of the countries with the longest Internet activity. In which, various businesses, like you, can take advantage of.

Human Attention Span Is Getting Shorter Than Ever

In a study made by Microsoft two years back, it was revealed that the average human attention span is at eight-seconds, making it shorter than the attention span of a goldfish at nine (9) seconds. This only means that your message and idea should come out clearly to viewers in eight seconds or less!

New statistics from Google also revealed that you only have six (6) to eight (8) seconds to get online audiences’ attention. Whether we like it or not, the realities of user experience all happen within an average moment of 8 seconds – what Google calls micro-moments.

What are micro-moments?

Micro-moments are the collective activities and experiences of people online. It is the usual things we look at or search for online. And usually, these moments are so short, menial, and unnoticeable – and yet collectively an indication of our total online experience.

When we search for something and can’t seem to find it in a snap of a finger, ultimately we shift to different search terms or a different application or browser just find what we need to know NOW. This is a perfect example of micro-moments.

New Consumer Reality

Micro-moments are the new consumer reality. Consumers rely on their smartphones to make pre-purchase validations even before making an actual purchase whether it be online or offline.

In between those micro-moments online, within those quick tapping of their phones, and impatient waiting for seconds, a business has to be there with them – a brand has to be able to show them the things they need to get quickly.

Do you need to adapt to this new reality?

The quick answer: YES! The economy of mobile and consumer experience requires businesses to always be on their toes especially when it comes to improving their customer’s purchase journey and experience.

Why? Because in this day and age, consumer experience is one of the most shared experiences online. Great experiences spread like a heart-warming story – the type people will love. Bad experiences, on the other hand, spread like a wild-fire that turn everything in its path into ashes. In short, customer experiences shared online about your brand can either make or break your business.

These experiences are the online consumer micro-moments that brands and businesses should give importance to. These moments sandwiched in eight (8) seconds have gained the power to change the course of how some leaders run their businesses.

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Are you ready to change the way you run your business? Let iManila help you make consumer-based strategies to enhance your business’s marketing. Learn more about our digital marketing services by clicking the link below.

imanila.ph/digital-marketing

How much is your peace of mind?

It was a hectic Monday, and your office is in chaos preparing for the weekly management meeting– when suddenly a noisy commotion grows in a corner as your employees are starting to break in panic.

“No inbound leads have come in!” an assistant, cried in.

Everyone’s on their toes trying to find out why, only to realize that the culprit is your server, as it crashed and failed to load your website, thus making it inaccessible for a couple of hours now, and still counting.

The sad thing is, this is the third time that this has happened just this month alone, and it’s starting to take a toll on your revenue.

What to do?

This scenario is probably one of the main stressors for most companies relying on their online channels to generate business.

The one-million-dollar question here is, “is it worth it to get stressed over this kind of issue time and time again?”

Our answer is NO.

You can always rely on reputable companies who can do it for you.

As one of the most trusted full-service digital marketing agencies in the country, iManila is the go-to provider of brands and companies here and abroad for the following services:

Hosting

Our hosting solutions are engineered for powerful and reliable performance online. From shared and dedicated hosting to SSL certificates and web security and backup, you can count on our solutions to provide 99.5% uptime and availability.

Web Design and Development

Our mission is to turn beautiful designs into useful and functional websites that represent your business in the best way possible. With a pool of expert designers and developers, we are very much capable of producing well-designed and functional websites from informational websites, to e-commerce sites with various functionalities.

Web System and Applications Development

A website is not just the only thing that businesses need these days. Reach your market through web and mobile applications by transforming your business to carry out automated processes and operations to improve productivity and profit.

Digital Marketing

Today’s online information age is unstoppable and is accelerating faster than anyone can anticipate. With social media networks and search engines rising as key getaways of the information highway, marketers are rapidly shifting from offline to online to reach their customers.

With the combination of both organic effort and paid advertising, you can surely interact with your audience in real-time. To add, digital marketing provides measurable results which can surely empower you to make wise business decisions when it comes to optimizing your campaigns and achieving your company’s goals.

Tech Support Services  

Get 24/7 support from our fully-equipped, highly-knowledgeable technical staff! With over a million man-hours of experience, our technical support specialists can solve and troubleshoot all hardware and software issues of your business.

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Let iManila give you the peace of mind that you need. To know more about our services, call us at +632 4900000 or send us an email at info@imanila.ph.

Things You Need Before Starting a Website

Gone are the days when businesses can only rely on traditional marketing platforms such as flyers, TV and newspaper ads, directory listings, and billboard placements to promote their brand. With the continuous rise of online users all over the world, it is indeed much easier (and more affordable) for brands and companies to create brand awareness and reach new audiences with various online and social media platforms that we have today.

Among the first few things that your brand should have in today’s digital age is a website. As the primary source of information for your company online, having a website is now a must for businesses regardless if they’re an SME or a big corporation. Not only does a website establish your brand’s credibility, but it also is the center of your online marketing strategies to help your business grow.

If you are hoping to build one for yourself, let us walk you through some of the basic things that you need to start a website:

A Domain Name

It is a staple for every website to have its own URL/Web address. It is important for a website to have its domain for the visitors to easily access their website through the internet.

While it is very common for businesses to have domain names that are the same as their business names (such as walmart.com), you can pick a domain name to include any text phrase you want as long as it is not already taken. You must take note, however, that your domain should be relevant to your business. It is the first touchpoint of your visitors towards your website, so make sure it is directly related to your business.

A domain name typically costs around PHP 600.00 to PHP 1,600.00 with a recurring/renewal fee every year. Make sure that your domain has not yet been purchased and is still available for use. You can use iManila’s free domain checker on our home page!

Solid Content & Information

Now this defines the full look of your website – inserting content and images. It’s important to remember that a business website is ultimately just a framework. It isn’t finished until you’ve populated it with content and information.

You must organize all of the things that should be put on each of your web pages. These contents serve as important factors for search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to crawl and mark your website credible. Putting all the necessary content on your website requires a lot of time. We suggest creating your own sitemap first in order to have a clear plan before establishing a website.

Web designer and developer

After deciding on your domain name or even purchasing one as well as gathering the content and information that you want to be featured, the next thing that you will need is a company that can help you build your business site. iManila is one of the leading web development companies in the Philippines! We specialize in creating various websites for different business across all verticals – whether it’s an informative or an eCommerce site!

Establishing your own business website is as important as having your own physical store. It helps create your own identity and showcase your brand online. If you are looking to have your own website, then you have come to the right place!

As one of the country’s top digital marketing and web development agencies, iManila is trusted by many companies in creating credible and professionally designed websites to stand out in today’s online world.

For more information, contact us at (02) 490 0000 or leave us a message at https://imanila.ph/lets-talk/.

Why Online Ads are the New Titan

We’re so used to seeing an advertisement that runs down the lengths of buildings along the most traversed roads in the Metro. Enormous billboards and even LED walls towering over us in all their titan glory.

But sometimes, titans lose their strength. After all, nothing is forever.

No one can deny that these billboards eat up the attention of anyone who lay eyes on their monstrosity. But billboards are only as good as the next one.

Out of sight, out of mind, right?

But the Internet is predominant, which only makes it a perfect avenue for advertisement.

Online advertising is the fastest growing marketing channel which uses the world wide web to deliver promotional messages in various digital formats. These formats range from search engine marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, mobile advertising, and display advertising.

We’ve outlined all of the reasons why online advertising should be part of your marketing campaign:

Reach

Online ads let you customize your target audience. In this day and age when everyone is always online, you can easily target your customers wherever they are. With online ads, you can also “filter” out your reach based on your preference. This is an assurance that your products and services are getting to the right audience who have a higher chance of buying your products or availing of your services. Closing a sale? You can bet on it.

Efficiency

Marketing online is generally much cheaper than traditional advertising approaches. With online ads, you can reach as much engagement as your budget allows you. Online marketing platforms enable you to calibrate your ad according to your audience targeting and budget so you can be assured that your campaign is always maximized. This gives you an initial overview of how many people you can “reach” with your ad, giving you an idea of how much you can expect to turn into leads.

Effectivity

The Internet is a huge place. And at present, more and more people are spending a considerable amount of time on it. From SMEs to large enterprises, everyone’s expanding their reach and creating brand awareness through various online marketing platforms. Just look at the number of online retail stores who’ve successfully built their businesses from their social media channels alone.

Engagement

Among the many advantages of digital marketing, is its ability to directly connect and let you communicate with your target audience.  With TV, radio, newspaper, and billboards, one can just merely see and grasp your message but cannot respond to it right away – a situation that online advertisement has managed to solve. The Web is such an interactive space. Information and ideas can get passed on in a matter of minutes regardless of distance or time zones.

Utilizing the vast amount of Internet users and the time all these people spend online is what a lot of marketers today are aiming to do as part of their individual marketing strategies.

The Internet is universal. Use it to your business’ advantage.

Interested to advertise your brand online? Let iManila help you! From social media marketing, email marketing to Google campaigns, we’ve got it covered! Call us at (02) 490 0000 or email us at info@imanila.ph for more information!

See you online!

10 Common Web Design Terms Every Marketer Should Know

As the company’s trailblazers, the marketing team is expected to take the lead in making sure that their company’s branding is consistently represented for both offline and online materials alike. 

With the continuous growth of digital marketing, more companies are indeed taking more time in making sure that they are well represented online, most especially through their website.

If you’re looking into building or redesigning your website, it is possible that you may be lost with the all the terms that web designers and web developers use that you may not be familiar with. 

Be ready to take the lead and make your next web design meeting more productive by familiarizing yourself with these common web design terms:

ALT tag 

The ALT tag/text or Alternative tag/text displays in the image placeholder while the page is loading. It also helps in optimizing your website for ADA compliance, SEO ranking, and web accessibility. 

Call to Action (CTA)

A specific image, banner or button, CTAs are designed to guide your website’s visitor for a desired or expected course of action (e.g. Download Now, Contact Us, Learn More, etc.).

Domain

An essential component when creating a website, your domain is the “address” where people go to visit your website (i.e. ABC.com).

Hosting

This refers to where you “house”, serve and maintain your website. A web server is a computer running web software that allows and connects your website or web page on the internet. 

Meta Tag

An important aspect of SEO ranking, a meta tag stores information about a specific page on your website such as its description. This information is then used by search engines for indexing to help categorize and rank your website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Plugin

This refers to software apps that are “plugin” in your Content Management Software (CMS) such as WordPress, to enable added features to your website.

Responsive Design

Probably one of the most important things to take note of when building a website, responsive design refers to your site’s ability to adjust to different screen types from desktop, tablet or mobile phones. 

Site Map

The first step in designing a website, a site map acts as the “blueprint” of your website. From its pages and content, it is important to iron it out in your site map to have a seamless website design process. 

SSL (Security Sockets Layer)

With privacy a major concern in the digital age, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a security protocol that establishes encrypted communication between a browser and a website. Make sure that your website is equipped with an SSL certificate (a website equipped with an SSL certificate has a lock symbol appearing before the URL) to keep your website’s information secure at all times. 

User Experience (UX)

UX (User Experience) is the discipline of seamlessly optimizing your website’s content, design tools and techniques to help your website visitors in easily navigating your website. This covers all aspects in creating your website from copywriting, design and even your website’s screen loading time. 

Need a hand in creating or redesigning your website? Let our team at iManila help you!

Contact us today at (02) 490 0000 or email us at info@imanila.ph. 

How Well Are You Remarketing Your Company?

A study done by Google suggests that 95% of visitors will not convert the first time. Stats like this may seem so scary because for business owners and marketing executives like yourselves, you have to ask the question: “How do I get my consumers to convert or buy?” 

In this day and age, it’s no longer enough to just market your products one time or just for a fixed period of time. The fact of the matter is, with the amount of information going around online, consumers’ attention is constantly being pulled from one direction to another. So how exactly can you persuade your buyers to actually take action and go for the “buy now” button?

The answer can be summed up in one word: remarketing. 

Gone are the days when you simply market a product and hope to the heavens that your marketing campaign has been seen and/or heard by the right audience. In today’s highly online world, marketing campaigns are a combination of efforts to target new audiences and to remarket or continuously show visibility to potential and previous clients or website visitors. 

Remarketing campaigns are basically designed to show your company and/or your products off to potential customers who have either visited your site or previously used your mobile app. This remarketing type of campaign can easily be applied thru Google Display Ads.

Remarketing campaigns are also akin to the scenario when customers opt into your newsletter. Many companies today religiously send out electronic direct mailers or email newsletters to databases which they have maintained and grew over the years. These databases are considered as goldmines to these companies, who are able to use these precious contact details as a means to market directly to people who they know are already interested in their product or service.

So where will YOU begin with your remarketing? 

  1. Start with an understanding of your remarketing goals. Who exactly do you want to remarket to? Do you want to target existing clients? Do you want to target clients who have abandoned their cart? 
  2. Evaluate your databases. Are they up-to-date? What kind of your clients are your databases composed of? Do you maintain a database? 
  3. What kind of channels should you use to remarket? Are your clients more inclined to open their emails? Are they more inclined to see your Google Ads? 

Getting started seems difficult but once you’ve gotten the hang of it and you’ve seen the results in conversion, then you’d be happy you did it anyway! 

Just take note that every company does remarketing differently. What might work for us may not work for you – so it’s really about putting in the patience of trial and error. But like what we said, if you’re able to figure it out and do it correctly, we’re sure you’ll be happy you did it! 

Scared to give it a try by yourself? Get some experts to help you!

Drop us a message at info@imanila.ph or call us at +632 490 0000. 

Things to consider when Choosing the Right Web Hosting Provider

Reliable web hosting is essential when building a website for your business. Your website files are all stored in a remote computer server which is called a host. It works when a certain online user wants to view your website and searched for your domain name or website address into their browser. Then, their computer will connect to your website server and your website content will be delivered to their browsers.

Easy as it may seem but web hosting involves various technical processes and technologies. Thus, a web hosting provider or company is a business that has the technologies and services needed for your website or webpages to be seen on the Internet.

To help you out, here are the important factors to consider when choosing the right web hosting provider for your business:

Type of Web Host

With the prevalence of digital media, it’s much easier to get hosting services today from both local and foreign providers compared to how it is a few years back. However, before you get one for your website, you must first know the different types of hosting services that are available and what suits your business.

Here are the three different types of website hosting that you can choose from:

  • Virtual Server Hosting – This is also dubbed as a virtual private server (VPS) that is available for your web hosting needs. It is actually a virtual server that a user perceives as a dedicated or private server even though it is installed on a physical computer that runs multiple operating systems. This kind of hosting is a shared system and has lesser user traffic but provides good speed. Web contents are loaded faster in this type of hosting system.
  • Cloud Shared Hosting – This hosting system is one of the most common and usually the best option for small and medium enterprises. In this kind of hosting, the web space is being shared with multiple business entities while the maintenance and cost of the web hosting service are also being shared by the users. With this, you only get charged for the space that was allocated for you.
  • Dedicated Hosting – In this kind of hosting system, excellent performance can be guaranteed. Dedicated hosting is where a business entity leases an entire server to provide their clients with their own data center. While this type may cost more than the other two, it promises great speed and full control over the server.

Correct Bandwidth and Security

Make sure that the provider whom you are coordinating with can provide the right bandwidth and disk storage space that you require. It is also ideal to go for a provider who can also offer Security Sockets Layer or SSL Certificate that can add protection to your website from potential hackers. (Read our previous blog about why it is important for you to have an SSL Certificate.)

Customer Support

It is ideal for you to get a web hosting company that can provide you with 24/7 Technical Support. When it comes to website maintenance and making sure that your website is always up and running, your provider must have a reel time helpdesk through live chat, mail or call to resolve your queries on the dot.

Now that you have an idea on the various factors to consider when choosing the right web hosting provider, the next step is to look for the best and most reliable company that will not just cater your needs but will also exceed your expectations.

Turn to iManila and see our excellence as it happens! Experience the best web and email hosting in the Philippines with powerful features engineered to provide 99.95% uptime and availability, day-in, day-out.

Contact us now or send us an email at info@imanila.ph!

Improving your Website’s Bounce Rate and Average Time on Page

Great news! Your website is up and you’re already seeing a lot of traffic coming in. But wait, why isn’t there any engaged and invested visitors on your website?

It seems that there are more exits than those who are staying and browsing through. Well, there might be a few analytic components that you are overlooking. Truth is, most businesses are experiencing those same problems on their website, where sadly, bounce rate triumphs average time spent on your page.

The good news is, we’re here to help you! Here are a few tips and ways on how you can improve your website’s bounce rate and average time on page performance.

Work on your website’s structural issues

If you are having trouble with your high bounce rate metrics, it is ideal for you to try and put yourself from a visitor’s perspective. Make sure that there aren’t any errors like 404 pages on your website, and that all your pages load successfully without any image errors.

Improve readability of your pages

When creating a website, one of the most important things that you should look out for is your choice of font. It should be clear and readable. Avoid using dramatic or heavily stylized fonts that can be too hard to read. As your primary digital asset, your website should also feature relevant, informative and engaging content to help build your brand’s credibility.

Build trust and credibility

Adding testimonials and photos of people such as your team or customers can make your website appear a lot more trustworthy. Badges, awards, and certifications can help boost your website’s credibility even more. It makes visitors comfortable to engage on your website and establish a sense of security that they are dealing with the right people to potentially, conduct business with.

Make sure your website is easy to navigate and that CTAs are easily found

Improving your website’s bounce rate and average time on page will ultimately affect your SEO positively. Thus, you have to prioritize on enhancing the UI (User Interface) and UX (User eXperience) of your website. Take note that having a UX/UI-focused landing page will enable your website to captivate your website visitors and ensure that they will engage in what you have in store for them.

To learn more, contact us at +632 490 0000 or visit our website at https://imanila.ph/.

SEO and SEM: The Perfect Online Marketing Tandem

The continuous rise of mobile and online users all over the world has definitely led to more and more companies venturing into digital marketing.

With its fast-paced growth comes constant (and sometimes abrupt) changes in algorithms and features, in which most business owners can’t help but be lost in a sea of digital platforms, strategies, and skills required to run an effective marketing campaign.

Among the most important aspects of digital marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

While these two generally share the same goal of directing visitors to your website, it is essential to note the differences in running each type of campaigns.

To walk you through SEO and SEM, here are some basic insights to differentiate the two:

While there are identifiable differences between the two, companies, especially those with new websites are highly advised to do both at the same time. Running an integrated SEO and SEM campaign provides businesses an opportunity to build visibility and direct traffic to their website faster and more efficiently, which can later on, potentially generate more sales or conversions.

Need a hand in running SEO and SEM campaigns?

Let iManila be your partner in running effective SEO and SEM strategies for your brand. As one of the leading full-service web and digital marketing agencies in the Philippines, iManila has successfully delivered and is continuously running effective SEO-SEM campaigns for both local and international clients, and has, in the process, received the prestigious Google Partner badge.

To learn more about our digital marketing services, contact us through our website at www.imanila.ph.

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