Tag: How can you make your website accessible to anyone

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

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for businesses! Your business should have a holiday marketing strategy by now. But, if you haven’t planned out one yet, don’t worry. We will help you develop your holiday marketing strategy. 

In this blog, we listed some ideas that can help you get more sales and revenue this season. Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

Start Your Marketing Campaign Early

Start as early as possible! Before December rolls around, your target market should start thinking about your brand and their holiday shopping. This is why you should always need to work on your seasonal marketing campaign early.

Before November or December, holiday marketing campaigns can already be launched. Most people buy gifts early even though there are also many consumers who are prone to last-minute shopping. Get the attention of this audience by delivering out holiday advertisements and seasonal sales ahead of time. With this strategy, you can motivate these early shoppers to purchase your product.

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year for CONTENT

Since it’s important to start your holiday marketing campaign early, it is in your best interest to also plan your holiday content in advance so you can be ready to publish once the timing is right.

By reading this blog, we know you are already thinking about it and that’s a great place to start!

You should not wait until the day before a sale to send an email, and you cannot expect to rank in SEO with your content overnight. You will have a wealth of holiday content ideas once it’s time to go live when you start today.

Try to take a look back at your previous holiday content and think about what you can learn. If you had content that performed well, maybe it only needs to be revised a bit to be updated. Use a holiday content calendar to stay on top of the year’s trending keywords. Of course, there may be some items from last season that you’d prefer to forget. You can also look for content from other websites to base your content when you create a new one. One more thing, you can also change your website design to a holiday theme.

Have A Compelling Offer or Give Out A Holiday Sale

Holiday discounts can serve important purposes. It can serve to drive sales for the busiest buying season of the year. It also makes your brand more competitive, with discounts being offered by competitors, so it is necessary to offer some holiday sales and special offers. 

You can also consider whether there is something you can add that comes at little or no cost. You can either give a bundle a product or service or maybe offer a free consultation. All you need is a little imagination.

Produce Festive Ads

You can focus on creating ads that feature a holiday theme in the ad copy or graphics, if you are investing in pay-per-click advertising, For example, your ad copy may put in the text layout, “Get the perfect gift this holiday season,” to emphasize the holidays and/or put holiday decor on your graphics. You can definitely extend this strategy to your content too.

Gratitude Is Always On-Trend

The theme of gratitude extends by weaving its way through all the season’s holidays because the end of the year is an emotional time. So might as well give thanks to your potential and existing customers this season.

Holiday content trends may come and go but what will never go out of style is showing gratitude for your customers and community. Consumers always love to hear they are  appreciated or have made an impact.

You can definitely do an entire gratitude campaign. The only caveat is that your expressions of gratitude must be genuine. So get personal! Some examples are providing a special offer or discount code for your loyal customers, hosting a giveaway, shouting out your customers or members of your audience on social media or creating hand-written notes or letters in every purchase.

iManila can definitely help you with your future holiday campaigns. 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!

The holiday season is just around the corner and so are the holiday shoppers. In a survey, 85% of consumers said that online shopping is part of their holiday shopping plans. And as an online business owner, you cannot just disregard this statistic.

With that being said, is your business website ready for a high volume of website traffic and engagement? Review your web hosting plan. Everything depends on your hosting solution – performance, resources, security, control – everything!

If your e-commerce website is hosted on a dedicated server, there is no need to worry about its overall performance during the holidays. But, if it is hosted on a different server, you may want to make a switch before the holiday comes.

So, why migrate to a dedicated server? Let’s have a closer look.

Supports massive website traffic

If you have a shared web hosting plan, your website would have a hard time to deliver high quality performance when a certain number of daily visitors is reached. This is because resources are split among multiple websites in this type of solution.

Unlike with a dedicated server, even if your business website exceeds 1,000 daily unique visitors, high quality service is guaranteed.

Increases security

Expect hackers and other cyber threats to be on the prowl during the holidays. Increase your website’s security and protection by moving it to a dedicated server. This solution provides stronger security than a shared server. 

For instance, distributed denial of service (DDoS) has been on the rise for years. It refers to a cyber threat that floods a site with fake traffic in order to shut down a server. If you’re using a shared server, you don’t stand a chance against DDoS resulting in downtime during the holidays. However, with a dedicated server you get to enjoy DDoS protection and the capability to add more protection as needed.

This is also highly recommended for those business websites that deal with sensitive, large amounts of private data.

Improves page loading speed

Slow page-loading time can be frustrating. If your page takes longer than three seconds to load, expect holiday shoppers to abandon you. Plus, it could harm your search engine optimization (SEO), making it hard for potential customers to find you.

But, the good news is that you can optimize your page loading speed by migrating to a dedicated server. Again, since the server is exclusive for your use alone, therefore, all the resources are for your own consumption too.

Provides huge storage capacity

In a shared web hosting solution the storage is limited since the server’s storage is shared to multiple websites. Unlike with a dedicated server, the storage is all yours. You will be needing all that storage for the holidays. Imagine, holiday content, promotions, shoppers’ data, web design – all of these take a huge storage space.

Gives you peace of mind during the holidays

As an entrepreneur, you’ll be worrying about a lot of things this holiday season – inventory, marketing campaigns, sales, and others. By having a dedicated server, you can cross out your business website’s performance on the list. You’ll have the assurance that your website will perform at its best, working for your advantage during the holiday season.

Gear up for the holiday season. Keep up with the demands of the occasion than be sorry later on. Upgrade your hosting plan now to a dedicated server with iManila!

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!

Christmas is just around the corner and a lot of people have already started spreading Christmas spirits through their websites. How about you? If you haven’t done any preparation yet for your site, don’t worry, you still have time to make some quick changes.

To make the process a bit faster, we have prepared some web design tips to make your website merry during the holidays.  So, let’s get started!

 

Consider holiday color scheme

Try adjusting the colors of your current web design to come up with a shade associated with the holidays without losing your branding. For example, if your brand color is red, you may adjust it to a burgundy red, maroon, or crimson. If it’s blue, try the shade cyan cobalt blue and maybe add some touches of silver. Play with your website’s color scheme and you’ll find how your website can easily carry a unique holiday theme.

Choose eye-catching CTAs

Call To Actions (CTAs) that are holiday inspired are a great way to gather online customers in the Christmas shopping spirit. CTAs like “sweet treats from us to yours”, “12 days of surprises”, “‘tis the season to glam up” and such will definitely catch your website visitors’ attention.

Just as well, don’t forget to put importance in the proper placement of your CTAs on your business website. Put it on your homepage where people can immediately see it. You may also insert it on other high-traffic subpages of your site if you want.

Add creative banners or pop-ups

While some may call it a “call to action”, banners or pop-ups are a good addition to your site. It allows your business website to have more space for images and links. You could use this to highlight special holiday offers or a link to your holiday catalog. It’s great for extra emphasis.

Switch your fonts

For a holiday themed web design, consider choosing unique font designs that are often used during holiday greetings or on holiday decorations. In that way, you can also lift the spirit of the holiday to your consumers. Consider cursive fonts, which is a very popular choice among e-commerce websites.

Update your business logo

You can change your logo by adding some holiday decorations into it. You can either change it into a holiday themed color or add a Santa Claus hat. This is to show your consumers that you are celebrating the holidays with them.

Include holiday offers

Add some holiday offers to your business website. May it be a holiday item, a christmas card, or holiday gift wrappers, it would be a great addition to your site. Just make sure that it is still in line with the brand or product that you are originally selling.

Add holiday themed photos

For the final web design tip, add holiday themed photos. Since you already changed your website color, fonts, and so on, use Christmas themed photos as well. In this way, it will look more put together.

We hope that these web design tips help you redesign your website for the holidays. You can always continually edit your website to accommodate for specific holidays ahead. Don’t forget to create quick changes to your social media pages as well to lift up the spirit of Christmas.

Need help redesigning your website? Talk to the experts of iManila!

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!

With the growing popularity of Facebook nowadays, it is no surprise that many businesses utilize this platform for online advertising. If you’re one of those people who are planning to invest in social media advertising specifically in Facebook Ads but don’t know where to start, then you’re in the right place! 

In this blog, we listed various types of Facebook Ads to help you decide what’s perfect for your business! Read to know more.

Types of Facebook ads

Stories ads

Stories ads are a type of digital marketing that shows up when users are watching stories rather than scrolling through their news feed. Since stories are trending right now, this is actually a great way to promote your products. To make it effective, your image or videos must appear in a vertical format so that they can work properly.

Messenger ads

Messenger ads are a great option for businesses that want to add a personal touch to their products and services. They usually appear in users’ chat tabs as well as in between messenger stories. When using this type of ad, you can edit the messenger chat and redirect them to their preferred destination. It can either redirect to your website, app, or a direct message with your Facebook page.

Augmented reality ads

If you want something different and want to give a unique experience to your audience, then Augmented reality ads are definitely a great option to use. In this ad, users have the ability to view your products from new angles and virtually explore the products. Overall, this gives your audience a realistic shopping experience.

Image ads

As the name suggests, image ads use photos to advertise products and services. It allow marketers to use boosted posts or create dedicated ads for Facebook image ads and a call to action.  Take note that Facebook recommends keeping the words to less than 20% of the image. Too many words may be distracting for users. As a result, it could lead to the rejection of your ad.

Video ads

Video ads are one of the most popular Facebook ads that are used today as it tends to be more engaging and informative. This is perfect for start-up businesses to use since it is highly engaging and effective to use. Currently, more than 1.25 billion people consume video on the platform each month. To make this type of ad effective, all you need to do is follow your video requirements, including Facebook ad sizes, aspect ratio, and video length.

Instant Experience ads

This is another type of ad that gives users a unique experience. Basically, Instant Experience Ads feature a full-screen, multimedia ad that delivers rich content experiences to audiences. Compared to other social media ads in this list, it has a lot of capabilities that allow users to view images, watch videos, swipe through carousels, click through to tagged products, and even tilt to pan for unique angles. Overall, this is a highly engaging Facebook ad type and leverages a combination of assets to give your audience an immersive user experience.

Poll ads

If you’re a start-up business or planning to launch a new campaign and want to know the interests of your audience, Poll ads are the way to go! This type of ad gives marketers the ability to survey their targeted audience with a question, offering them two answers to choose from. This is an effective ad for boosting engagement with your existing audience, as well as generating brand awareness among new potential customers.

Slideshow ads

Slideshow ads are a great option to use if your team is simply looking to repurpose ad assets you already have. What happens here is Facebook takes your image ads and puts the files together in a slideshow video format. This can help you leverage the power of video without needing an extra budget for videos, which can be costly.

Collection ads

If you have a commerce platform for your business and want to turn Facebook users into online buyers, then collection ads might work for you. It features a main image or video, as well as three smaller images that showcase your other products underneath. Moreover, once they click this ad, it can redirect them to the actual commerce website to purchase the product.

Carousel ads

Similar to collection ads, it lets marketers feature images to advertise their products. The only difference is that carousel ads can feature up to 10 images or videos. What’s great about this is that every image or video can have a unique link, so this is a great Facebook ad type if you’re promoting a product collection.

Lead ads

Lead ads are beneficial for business owners who are looking to grow their email database and potential customers. With this social media ad, digital marketers can create a survey form that the audience can fill out and submit a form. Moreover, lead ads auto-populate most of the fields in the survey so people can fill it out easily. As a result, it reduces friction, which makes them more likely to complete the signup form.

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads is a type of social media marketing strategy that connects your store’s product catalog with your Facebook. Compared to other ads here in this list, the ads they see are personalized and relevant to their personal interests. With this ad, you can create carousel ads for different categories and show them to users who’ve visited pages within the corresponding category.

Now that you know all the options, invest in a digital marketing agency now, and let us help you achieve your Facebook advertising goals!

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 online marketing services in the Philippines. iManila is 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. 

Work together with top advertising and digital marketing agencies in the Philippines like iManila and make your brand goals become reality. Talk to us!

An auction takes place for the keyword every time there is an ad spot on a search engine results page. Multiple factors including bid amount and ad quality decide who will appear in the top position.

These auctions are what keeps the gears of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising moving. They begin when someone searches for something on a search engine.

Now, what is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click is a form of Search Engine Marketing. It is a model of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time their ads get a click. It’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.

What are the different types of PPC?

One of the most common types of PPC is the paid search ad. When people search for things online, especially if it’s a commercial search – meaning, the user is looking for something to buy – these ads appear automatically.

This could be anything from a mobile search to a local service search like someone looking for a caterer in their area to someone shopping for a gift searching “best anniversary gift for wife”. These searches trigger pay-per-click ads.

In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.”

Other forms of PPC advertising include display advertising, typically, serving banner ads and remarketing.

What are keywords and why do we use them?

Connecting advertisers to users’ search queries, keywords lie at the center of PPC advertising. Queries are the actual words that users type into the search box of a search engine to find results.

Marketers use keywords to target users by matching their queries. Keywords work as generalized abstractions of a wide range of search queries prone to irregularities like misspellings. Advertisers can match search queries with more or less precision, depending on the keyword match types they use. It can be a broad match, phrase match, or exact match. 

Budgets & Bids

Advertisers need to choose how much they are willing to spend on a given keyword to participate in the auction.

Budgets should be set depending on the overall campaign strategy, but bids are a more precise way of controlling spend.

When creating a campaign, all ad groups must have bids, but keyword-level bids override ad group level bids. Most advertisers use automated bidding strategies. This allows them to set a specific goal for their campaigns and identify the most appropriate bid for each auction. It can be applied to individual campaigns or a portfolio of multiple campaigns.

This may sound a lot to you especially if you’re new to the online advertising world. But, don’t worry because iManila is here to help!

A certified and badged Google Partner since 2019, 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.

Work together with top advertising companies in the Philippines like iManila and make your brand goals a reality. Talk to us!