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How to Drive More Traffic to your Website?

Every time we see successful campaigns online, we often ask ourselves – why can’t I drive traffic to my website like this? Believe it or not, there are ways to gain more traffic to your website – you probably just haven’t figured out the best strategy to use to attract visitors.

If you’ve been struggling with driving traffic to your website these past few months, well, you’re not alone. Based on 2019 research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of content professionals are having trouble with knowing what is most important to their audiences, while 50% are challenged with knowing the goal of the audience at a particular stage of the customer’s journey, and 49% are finding it difficult to predict the steps in a customer’s buying journey. 

From writing a new blog post, posting on social media, and strategizing for a new email marketing campaign, there are a lot of strategies that can be done aside from those that you may know about. Lucky for you, in this blog we will give some tips on how to utilize different strategies in order to hit your KPIs. 

Website Analysis 

Before you start setting up your campaigns, you might want to know the status of your website. Of course, what better way to understand what your site needs than by conducting a website analysis or audit. Before you drive traffic to your website, it’s imperative to learn more about your audience and what can be done to improve your website. There are paid and free digital marketing tools to use which will show you what can be improved and worked on in your existing website. By conducting a website analysis, you’ll be able to find out which aspects of your website may need improvement or if there are any current security concerns on your site. In this way, you can be sure that once you start getting traffic on your website, you can be assured that users will not instantly drop out or leave your site due to security vulnerabilities or broken links or even bad user experience. 

Paid Advertising 

You can drive traffic to your website immediately with paid advertising. Through the use of search engines, you can run pay-per-click ads or run remarketing campaigns through different types of ads. Using your social media, you can also run display ads or sponsored posts. Your approach will most likely include a combination of different types of advertising. To add more assurance, according to the 2020 CMO Survey, firms expect social spending to rise by 62% over the next five years. 

Organic Social Media 

Organic social media is not a new strategy. That is why marketers should take this into consideration. Aside from posting on social media platforms, you can also use Instagram Stories, especially the swipe up feature, live video, IGTV, or Facebook Messenger – anything that will let your customers take them to your website. The strategy with organic social media is to be an early adopter of new features. 

For deeper understanding of social media, Facebook is releasing an automated lead generation feature on Messenger which allows businesses to create an automated chatbot experience within Messenger to link to content offers on your site. This is a great feature for driving traffic to your website. Read through our blog to know how Social Media can help grow your business.

Contests and Giveaways 

This is by far the simplest yet most effective way to drive traffic to your website in an instant. Running promotions or contests can give your website a quick boost, while also rewarding your followers. You can start by hosting giveaways on social media, through your email list, or both. 

To implement this effective strategy, you must first decide what platform on which to host your giveaway. Then choose a prize such as free tickets, discounts, etc. Then you can select your criteria. And then you can now write your ad copy, create your graphics and now post and promote your content. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This type of service is very important as this is one of the ways to determine the visibility of your website across search engines. Through SEO, you can upload your blogs related to your products and services to keep your customers updated with the latest offerings. 

On-Page SEO 

As mentioned above, SEO in general is very important in website traffic. On-page SEO can definitely let your website rank higher in search engines and bring in more traffic. Make sure that your on-page SEO elements are included such as page title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and the URL. Showing up in top positions in search engines will generate more traffic for your site. To learn more about SEO, check out our blog here. 

Video Marketing 

Gone are the days when static images were the best weapon to attract customers. The rise of user experience where customers need to see beyond the image of a product is within us now – thus the increased popularity of video marketing. In fact, Cisco’s report states that video will account for 82% of traffic by 2022. With this, it’s best to start implementing video marketing into your strategy as soon as possible because these days, this is the content people are clicking on. 

If you’ve surpassed those struggles to get traffic to your website, congrats! Implementing the tips above can help you increase your traffic as soon as possible. But once your traffic has started to improve, it’s time to talk about conversions. iManila, with 25 years of experience in the industry and as a certified Digital Agency in the Philippines, is the right agency that creates highly-functional websites, provides top notch hosting services, digital marketing and technical support services that can support your business objectives, whether that means driving traffic, lead generation, or even sales. To transform your ideas into a digital trend, message us and we’ll lead the process towards success!

Debunking the Most Common Website Myths

It is always a milestone for a business to have their own website as it’s a great way to expand their online presence. It can be exciting, but there are also a lot of myths about having your own website. 

We’re here to debunk those common myths and help you get on the right track to having the best business website possible!

Once you have a working website, you’ll attract visitors

Getting the website working and online is only half the work. What happens here is that there is a mismatch in expectations with business owners with how websites can give them the results they want. 

The truth is that it takes time, resources, and skills to attract website visitors. There are many factors to consider such as search engine optimization, paid search ads, video ads — in short, a lot of promotional means to get the right amount of traffic to your site. Once you put in the action then effort, that is the only time you’ll be seeing an increase in your website traffic. 

If your website looks good, you will start getting sales

Closely related to the previous one, while a well-designed website may be grabbing the attention of your visitors, it doesn’t necessarily equate to a sale. 

It is true that to attract new people and to give visitors a good user experience you would need a beautiful website, but at the end of the day, it’s still the quality of your products and services and brand reputation that weighs more. If all you are offering is aesthetic but your products or service fail to follow through on its promises, it will fail because people will be able to see through it. A business first and foremost must focus on its own products before worrying about aesthetics and appearances. If you are focused on delivering the right value to your site visitors, your site would work its magic even without the over-the-top designs. In short, your product should speak for itself, your website is merely a tool in helping your message get across to potential customers. 

Once your website is up, the work is done

This again is a mismatch of expectation as websites need ongoing attention much like any other business that needs to be nurtured and maintained. 

Website maintenance is a thing and part and parcel of this is renewing your domain registration on time, protecting your site from any potential threats such as viruses or cybercrime, keeping your design up to date in line with current trends, and investing in promotion to keep the site visitors coming. 

Your website needs to have all the features the other websites have 

There is a misconception that more features means your website will be better. While you may get a lot of inspiration by viewing websites of other brands, you may start to notice some of them have certain elements such as carousels for their headers. But again, it is always important to know the value of each decision as these can hinder your customers from properly navigating your site and getting them to do what you intend them to do. 

For websites, simplicity is key. The bells and whistles would not matter to your customer if they can get their business done on your website in the most direct and simple manner. It is always about the value that the customers get from your products or services. If you are thinking of having a certain feature, know that if it wouldn’t add anything of value to your customers then it’s better left out. 

What’s next?

For different people you may ask, websites may mean different things for them. However, it is important to know what it is that your business really needs as everyone has different approaches. Each business works differently. It is nice to research more about how you can create the kind of website that suits the purpose you intend it to and helps you achieve your business goals. Starting with debunking these common website myths, we hope to be able to guide you in creating your dream website. 

Getting the right experts on board can help ease any worries you might have about building a website on your own. Rest assured that you can find the right partner in iManila, who has been in the industry for over 24 years. Learn more about how we can help you build your website and how we can make it work for you. 

The Hidden Benefits of Dedicated Hosting Service

 

When you are working in a marketing department or most especially in the IT department, you heard about your web or email server a lot of times. You would probably hear the term dedicated hosting service too. During the days when you are having massive marketing campaigns online, you’ll probably make it your default process to make your website as the primary landing page. And in the midst of the campaign, you will definitely experience some unwanted glitches. Two of these glitches are slow loading time of the website and inaccessibility for a certain period of time. If your company website and even emails are hosted on a shared environment, then this occurrence is expected. These things are all related to your hosting server.

Below is a perfect example of a similar situation that can be possibly be attributed to hosting server issue.

Scenario 1

One best scenario that would also describe this kind of difficulty is the booking website of a known LCC (low-cost carriers) airlines here in the Philippines. This airline, which is famous for its super low flight price promo, runs Piso-fare which is an annual flight sale. You can book flights that are incredibly cheap in advance. When this happens, a lot of consumers who are also into booking cheap flights are complaining about the inaccessibility of the website. Some may have encountered booking a slot but are having a hard time processing the payment or worse, experiencing an expired session, prompting them to start booking again.

This is really frustrating for visitors and often leads to poor traffic and conversion.

The fault may not be solely due to the server – because the coding and programming quality are also factors to consider – but the hosting server holds a large portion of the responsibility for this matter.

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Scenario 2

Probably the most epic of all are the government websites. In some corporate documents and presentation, government data is very important in setting the road for strategic directions. And oftentimes, government websites failed us the time we need them the most.

However, there are government websites that are hands-on in managing and optimizing their websites. The office of the president and the vice president, the Philippine Statistical Authority, and the Department of Science and Technology are some of the offices that have tidy and performing websites.

Verdict

There are two potential reasons for this kind of scenarios:

Firstly, they could be using a shared hosting environment and haven’t anticipated the surging visits to their websites – hence the problem of downtime and slow loading time.

Secondly, they could be using a dedicated hosting environment, but not solely dedicated to their websites. It is possible that even the webmails and other intra-agency files that eat the buffer space that should be used, in times of surging web visits.

Dedicated Hosting Server for your Website

The thing is, before signing a contract or allocating server space for your website, you need to have a background of your industry’s competition first. If you are catering to end consumer with built-in product catalog, you might want to consider a dedicated server for your website.

Why?

Because, catering to end consumer means, capturing a larger audience than those of the companies who deal with businesses. And usually, tangible products which are fast-moving are much prone to bloating web visits. Another consideration is if you’re a publisher. Publishers experience doubled the traffic of FMCGs. If you are either of the two, you need to go for a dedicated web hosting.

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Hidden Benefits

Sometimes we take things at face value. When it’s pricey, we turn it down. When it is a little cheaper, we go for it. The truth is, things that are priced cheap are often limited or capped. Those that are expensive will last longer and are flexible, and the same thing goes for hosting services.

Shared hosting environment is practically affordable because it is meant for website owners that are not into online commerce of publishing. An info site that is made as a reference site for the company, won’t consume much. That is why shared hosting server will do – even with email hosting in it.

  • Greater security and flexibility

Compared with shared hosting server, the dedicated server gives webmasters and web owners the flexibility that they need. Dedicated Hosting also comes with a better security because you don’t need to worry about other tenants that you are sharing the server with. In short, you have the full control of the server.

Dedicated hosting services usually come with support too. When you are having troubles managing the environment, you can contact your provider and seek some help. We at iManila, we don’t just provide support, we provide 24/7 support to make sure our hosting clients are well taken care of.

Since you are using the entire environment for your own benefit, that means the resources are all yours to use. That means that even when there are unexpected surges of web visits, your website is still up and running. Here in iManila, our servers guarantee a 99.95% uptime.

This is the best part. Since dedicated servers are flexible, you have enough room to scale-up your environment should the need for it arises. Will all the evolution of media consumption, the trend is always going up. People are more demanding in terms of content. Gone are the days of text and images, as people are starting to get accustomed to rich media such as plotagraphs, GIF animation, motion graphic and videos. These file formats are seriously eating up spaces, and once you are compelled to use them, a scalable dedicated server is your only choice.

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With the fast evolving online community obsolescence is the only constant word to describe it. Megabytes are now just a child’s play, and who knows? The terabytes might be the next end users’ USB making hosting servers much bigger than they are now. With dedicated hosting, you have the power to scale up anytime you want, and with the support and security that comes with it, you can be sure that your website can meet the demands of the coming years.

For inquiries about web and email hosting service, you can call iManila at (02) 490-0000 or through the direct landline of our tech support guys at (02) 959-4807. You can also send us a direct mail at [email protected] or fill-out our contact forms through this LINK.

 

 

Why VPS Hosting could be a perfect fit for your website

 

The demand for creating online assets like a website is remarkably increasing in the past years. In September 2014, the World Wide Web has hit its first billion mark in terms of published websites. And now, the world has reached 1.2 billion websites with internet users that are thrice as much as the number of world’s published websites. With a simple 1:3 ratio of the website to internet users, imagine a huge number of data going in and out from billion websites hosted on various servers around the globe – that is 45,341 gigabytes worth of internet traffic happening every second. That is huge, and that is a little exhausting for servers working 24/7 just to keep websites up and running.

Now here’s another fact this that is noteworthy. Through the years, the internet users have evolved into a no-nonsense kind. The evolution includes a remarkable dip of users’ patience while surfing online. An average internet user expects a website to load not more two seconds. And every second after that is business going down the drain.

See related blog: Mobile Friendliness Ranking Factor

If you are a website owner who happened to be a business owner too, how would you know if your current web host is capable of handling your current and future web traffic?

That is simple.

If you have seen a sudden spike of web visits in your analytics, and that was sustained for a longer period of time, chances are, your website loading time will drastically increase. And that only means a longer waiting time for internet users who are trying to access your website. If that happens, you’ll know that you are reaching the limits of your web server.

Would you transfer to a bigger one?

The answer is always case-to-case basis. Suppose you are currently hosted on a shared server – meaning, you’re sharing the resources of one server with other tenants – will you upgrade to a dedicated one? Well, it depends. If you are a highly-visited online content publisher, then it’s a big YES. But if you are not, then you need to anticipate your future plans for your website to be able to make a wise decision.

See related blog: Shared or Dedicated: Know what’s best for your web hosting needs

However, the truth for most SMEs is that upgrading to a dedicated server could be a little too uncomfortable in terms of cost. But what if your website is too big already for a shared environment? What will be the other option?

The answer is VPS hosting.

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So what basically is VPS hosting?

VPS are virtualized servers inside the main server. A little too vague right? Well, the advent of hypervisor software in the early 2000s made it possible to efficiently use hosting servers by virtualization. That’s when VPS started to become a hot item for businesses like yours.

VPS is like having multiple independent and private servers inside the main server. You might be asking yourself right now, what could possibly be the difference between VPS and shared hosting? Since they are both working on the idea of a shared environment? Below are the key features that will help you understand why VPS will suit your needs better:

  • Autonomy

This is probably a top feature of a VPS hosting.  The subscriber (which is you) has full access to the VPS’s OS, with unrestricted root or administrator permissions. This level of access allows you (of your IT team) to configure the VPS to meet your own unique requirements.

  • Security

Unlike the former shared environment that you used to have, VPS are virtually secured because it is not affected by the other virtualized servers.

  • Flexibility

VPS allows you to host multiple websites. For instance, you can host your main website and a development site on the same VPS.

  • Scalability

And if you are not satisfied with its specs? You can always upgrade to higher specifications without worrying about downtime. To be honest, this capability depends on the provider.

  • Cost-efficiency

Since dedicated servers are expensive, VPS servers are way cheaper that the former. In most providers is just a few gran higher that the highest shared server offerings. You basically have the flexibility and capacity of a dedicated server for a cheaper cost.

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The thing is, upgrading to a dedicated hosting service isn’t always the best course to take in times like these. VPS is more secure and much cost-efficient option for SMEs looking for a solution to their increasing web traffic issues.

And if by chance you are looking for a trusted VPS hosting provider, you can reach us at (02) 959-4807 or at (+63)917-8476005. You can also email our skilled technical support specialist at [email protected].

Why do you need an SSL Certificate?

 

The demand for data security these days is increasing as e-commerce sites and social media networks continue to grow at faster rate. You cannot go online completely without having to log in your important details and credentials. From as simple as subscribing to a webinar to as confidential as online shopping and e-banking, a netizen has to log in their credentials. This particular setup has online phishers and hackers drooling.

For some users, sharing information is not a big deal. However, there is a huge portion of the global community who take these matters seriously as incidents of identity theft and malicious activities have gone on the rise.

On the other hand, businesses and organizations who ask for personal information from their users must protect their user’s information by securing their website against online theft. And this challenges most of the online sellers and e-commerce sites regardless of the extent of their daily online transactions. And that is what SSL addresses – data encryption.

What is SSL?

According to GlobalSign.com, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificates are small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic (secretly written) key to an organization’s details. When installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the https protocol like this:  2017-03-09_105446 and allows secure connections from a web server to a browser.

Different Levels of SSL Validation

Secure Socket Layer certificates vary depending on the level of encryption needed to be implemented on the website. And there are some trust indicators that you can see in the address bar of the browser about SSL certificate of a certain website:

Standard SSLs are classified into two:

 – Domain Validation SLL:

Domain Validation is the basic form of SSL certification which automatically signals the browser that the connection between the server and the browser is secured using SSL certificate, thus a change in the standard HTTP to HTTPS.

EXAMPLE:           2017-03-10_131942    Domain-validation

– Organization Validation SSL:

The organizational SSL Validation is a high assurance SSL certificate that provides instant identity confirmation of the organization owning the website and a stronger SSL protection. It activates a green browser padlock and HTTPS. When you click on the trust indicator padlock, it will reveal the corporate or organization identity of the website owner.

EXAMPLE: Organizational-Validation-Incapsula

Extended validation is the highest level of data encryption of the three. This activates both the padlock, “https” and the green address bar in all major web browsers.

EXAMPLE:  imanila-extended-validation

 

Why do you need to get SSL now?

In line with their mission to promote secured browsing and responsible data protection, Google just recently updated their Chrome browser with a security feature that flags unsecured websites. Yes, you heard that right!

Have you noticed the left-most part of your address bar that indicates whether a site is safe or not? That is exactly what the update is all about. So imagine yourself as a business owner with an unsecured website. Every time audience goes to your website and sees no trust indicator, all your marketing efforts will go to waste.

Why? Because your business bottom-line – which is conversion – is not fulfilled.

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Firefox also moved towards a safer online browsing

It was just a few months back when Google updated their Chrome with security plug-in that flags websites that are not secured. This time, Firefox moved forward with the same goal – to promote a safer online browsing.

Firefox will display a gray lock icon with a red strike-through in the address bar when a login page you’re viewing does not have a secure connection. This is to inform you that if you enter your password it could be stolen by eavesdroppers and attackers.

This is a new feature that is available starting in Firefox version 51. Starting in Firefox version 52, you will also see a warning message when you click inside the login box to enter a username or password.

 

Don’t wait for that moment

Don’t wait for the updates to completely roll-out before moving to HTTPS. The right time to secure your website and your users is now. iManila offers a wide range of web security from SSL Certification (HTTPS) to Malware removal.

SSL (secure socket layer) is all about website security. Give your clients more reason to trust your brand online with iManila’s SSL certifications. With this standard security technology, you’ll be able to provide your market the guarantee they need to feel secure about any transaction they make on your website.

Remember, security is all about trust, and trust means business.

Secure your the website now with iManila. Contact us to learn more.