Author: Shefali Pandey

The founder and partner of Flora Fountain, Shefali leads the Content and Technology divisions. A one-time engineer who started her career writing front-end code, she took a detour sometime during her 9 years in New York, studied journalism and started writing prose, poetry and sometimes jokes. She now has 15 years of experience in various segments of digital media and writing.  A lover of all things Bollywood, horror, good food and comedy, she curates #RickPick on Instagram to celebrate everyday kitsch, especially in auto-rickshaws. Her lifelong fascination with Bombay inspired the company's name, serving as its initial home and attracting valued clients. Evolving from a website and content-focused agency with renowned clients like National Geographic Traveller, Flora Fountain has now flourished into a 360-degree digital agency in Ahmedabad. Beyond her entrepreneurial pursuits, Shefali is also a stand-up artist and a co-founder of the comedy collective named Mahila Manch in Ahmedabad. Her creative pursuits in comedy is her way of showcasing her versatility and dedication to exploring new avenues of artistic expression.

Categories
Digital Marketing Agency

You MUST outsource your digital marketing. Here’s why.

digital marketing

Marketing is the most crucial cog in the wheel for a business to move forward and grow. Often companies might think hiring a graphic designer and content writer is all it takes to start marketing on digital, but it is a special kind of beast which requires a team of experts with some very special skills to tame it. A graphic designer or a traditional marketing executive usually does not understand the intricate details and trends of social media presence, engagement, search engine optimization, digital campaigns, and the website design and development required to support it.

For mid-sized businesses, this is where outsourcing comes to your rescue. Instead of setting up an entire team of digital marketers — graphic designers, UI experts, content writers, social media analysts — and paying them hefty salaries, businesses can easily hire digital marketing agencies with in-depth expertise across digital platforms. Still wondering if it’s the right move? Read on to know the benefits you’ll reap by outsourcing your digital marketing activities.

Trust the experts

Outsourcing is smartsourcing, especially when it comes to digital marketing. When you hire a digital marketing agency, you get a specialist team of digital marketing experts like search engine optimization (SEO) experts, social media managers, digital content writers, UI designers, Pay-Per-Click campaign experts, web developers, and data analysts. Not only that, most agencies have platform-specific experts for Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Twitter marketing. Agencies also have specialization based on whether you are marketing directly to end consumers, B2C, or to other businesses, B2B. They help you in all aspects of social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, ecommerce, SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Data Analytics, based on your business goals.

This way, you can focus more on growing your business and your digital marketing agency can ensure brand awareness, engagement, leads, and loyalty across digital platforms.

Digital without borders

The internet has no boundaries. You could be a premium tea vendor based out of Assam, India or a staffing agency in New York, United States, but your business can be marketed globally by a digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad, India. Infact, both of these examples happen to be clients of our digital agency Flora Fountain! 🙂

Digital-without-borders

Instead of being forced to recruit digital marketing executives in their city, businesses can hire digital agencies with the best experience in their particular segment whether it is jewellery, fashion, food, or lifestyle. And since all the communication and assets used in digital marketing can freely move through digital mediums like emails, messengers, and office suites, it is a smart and reasonable choice.

Say goodbye to long commutes to even longer meetings around conference tables to discuss every next move. Times are fast and you must be too. Hello digital!

Easier access to your audience

A study by Sprout Social says that customers feel more connected to a brand, if it has a strong social media presence. And on the internet, feedback is faster. Customers can reach out to brands directly on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and leave reviews on platforms like Google Business, Facebook, Zomato, Trip Advisor, Make My Trip, etc. This gives brands an opportunity to really hear what their end-user has to say, make them feel heard with quick response and/or solutions to any challenge. In this way improving the customer experience and solidifying brand loyalty.

Easier-access-to-your-audience

This is possible only when you have a digital marketing agency build a strong presence for your business across all relevant digital platforms and actively manage and engage the audience. Whether it is websites, social media pages, business profiles or digital storefronts.

With people now working, learning, shopping, and even dating online (Thank you, Covid-19!), it is imperative for businesses to tap this goldmine of an opportunity!

What gets measured gets done

Data is very important to understand the growth trajectory of your business. And a digital marketing agency helps you measure your business’ success. How, you ask?

What-gets-measured-gets-done

Digital marketing companies have expert data analysts in their teams, whose job is to study the trends of business on various digital media platforms, measure things like bounce rates, page views, conversions through social media and web analytics. And strategize on how to optimize these metrics. These metrics are usually compiled by digital marketing agencies on a weekly, fortnightly or

monthly basis to give businesses a clear picture of what promotions are working, which products are in demand, and who are the people that are consuming your products. Along with these reports, digital marketing agencies provide tips and suggestions on places you can improve, which new trends to tap on, and choose the next plan of action.

In simple terms, measuring and analyzing data helps brands sell more of what is already selling.

Save money

With a digital marketing agency on board, businesses can keep a closer tab on their marketing budgets. Multiple campaigns for the same brand can be run at the same time. An agency will manage your spending through Google Ads Manager, Facebook for Business, and various other digital tools meant for online campaigns like Google Pay-Per-Click, boosts for engagements and leads, and boosts for profile and website visits.

Save-money

Since these tools offer reports on every dollar spent and track clicks and conversions, businesses can analyze which campaigns require additional resources and which ones can be cut down a notch.

Further, when you have a digital marketing agency manage everything from websites to social media to SEO, you are saving a huge amount of money that could have been spent on hiring, training and paying people to do these jobs for you full time.

Make us your growth partner

Through our technology, design and content expertise, our Ahmedabad-based digital agency, Flora Fountain has been part of the growth stories of many national and international brands and individuals as their full service digital marketing agency. We have been able to help brands with their social media marketing, SEO, website development, content-writing, brand research, digital strategy and online branding, despite being in different geographical locations spread all over the world.

Check out our work here, and to plan out your digital strategy, drop us a line here.

Categories
Content Writing

5 ways of getting creative with professional content writing for SEO

Tiny content writers creating web articles
Tiny content writers creating web articles flat vector illustration. Cartoon creative SEO or blog authors writing text on laptop computers. Freelance, marketing and creation concept

A common misconception among writers in this age of digital is that creative content writing and SEO content writing just don’t go hand in hand. But we, somewhat controversially, believe they can co-exist! HOW?!

First, let’s get some clarity on the basics.

  • What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Content Writing?

Creating readable content for the web that ranks high on search engines, through the use of relevant keywords in the main body and the meta tags and title, multiple headers and bullet points within the article to break down the content, and interlinking them with other relevant articles and pages.

  • What is Creative Content Writing?

This is where imagination takes flight and originality, the front seat. This is where a story is narrated to the reader, engaging them with every line, a chuckle here, maybe a gasp there, keeping them hooked till the end, delighting them with a conclusion that leaves them wanting more.

Now you might be wondering, how does one merge these two seemingly different schools of thought into a single piece of writing? Well, here’s how.

Know your keywords

One of the most common feedback website writers get is that their content does not have any of the keywords the client wants. This is a common problem when the blog is written by a separate team of content writers, only after which the SEO team kicks in for checking the SEO compatibility. Instead the SEO expert and content writer must work closely, right from the blog’s ideation to checking the keywords before its eventual publishing.

To elaborate, the team must first identify the keywords for a few months, as well as, the target audience. This is usually done by the SEO expert. Once done, these keywords are provided to the content writer and together the two can create a calendar of topics for anything from a month to 6 months! In case you don’t have an SEO executive and are operating as a solo writer, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest or Moz.

Flora Blog chat

Enter the name of the industry or the topics you’re planning to write on, and the tool would suggest multiple keywords with their performance, relevance and ranking data too.

Flora Blog

Keep it simple, silly!

Google cares for keywords. But the reader doesn’t look for SEO keywords, but for something that will keep them engaged, intrigued and delighted.

If the content is crisp and short and provides the reader with value as information or entertainment, the targeted audience is usually hooked. One of the best ways to do crisp writing online is through Listicles. Our minds have become trained to at least skim through an entire list, rarely leaving in the middle. And if something is interesting, we spend more time reading the copy, increasing the time spent on the website.

Moreover, overly complex, long sentences, peppered with repetitive words and phrases are a turn off not just for the reader, but Google too while ranking content for its search engine.

This is because search engines rank content that provide answers to the question asked by the viewer. The simpler and clearer the content is, the better chance it has to get ranked higher on the search window. Keep in mind, you are eventually writing for an actual person with an actual problem. The search engine is just the bridge between you and the reader.

  • Keep your sentences short
  • Highlight the topic using H tags
  • Provide answers
  • Make it easier still, use bullet points

(See what we did there?)

And to help with the SEO, apart from using a keyword or two in the copy, link them to a relevant source that backs your idea/solution.

With attention spans getting lower and so much content being available to us online, these tips help the reader keep engaged with the content instead of just skimming away.

Use relevant imagery with Alt Tags

Remember how we all loved comic books as kids? Remember, how our least favourite book in school would be the Math textbook?

Know why? Comic books were full of exciting imagery with captions, while that Math textbook was just a series of long explanations, confusing numbers and no pictures at all.

By adding great pictures, well designed artwork and fun GIFs to your blogs, you’re not only adding relevance to the content, but also keeping the reader hooked to see what comes next, kind of how Pixar does it.

And what’s more, images help with SEO too. Of the 5.4 billion searches done on Google every day, millions of them are for images and videos. When you insert pictures and embed videos within your content with the right Alt Tags, they get pulled up on top, bringing the blog along with it.

Flora august blog

Play a little … with Meta titles, headers, descriptions

Content teams are known to show little or no interest when it comes to “creating metadata” for their blogs. As they believe it is their writing that’s the hero here.

Ironic given that it is after all through the Meta Title, Headers and Meta Descriptions that people find the heroic content online. After all, what is the point of writing a riveting piece, if the audience it is meant for is unable to find it online?

But it doesn’t have to be all dry and clinical. There are great ways to soup up your meta content with the keywords. For example, when writing the meta description for this very article ::

Usual SEO Content Writing“SEO content writing for websites and blogs can be creative. Here is how to write creative website content writing with the help of professional content writing services such as the ones provided by Flora Fountain”
Creative SEO Content Writing“Writers often lament that creativity was murdered by SEO on the Internet, when it comes to professional content writing. But we somewhat controversially believe that creative content writing and SEO content writing can co-exist peacefully … without crying murder”

The first is a very basic way to write a Meta description for this blog. While the second one does the same thing with a fun spin.

Meta data such as titles, headers and descriptions are the perfect vehicles for your keywords in, and the first place search engines look for when trying to index the content.

Whether it is website content, blogs or articles, here are the bits of meta information to ALWAYS have in each page of your online content:

  • Meta Title of 50 to 60 words with your main keyword in it (Usually with a figure in it)
  • Meta Description of 155 to 160 characters
  • Multiple Headers consisting of 6 to 8 words
  • Slug with all the keywords

Maintain the minimum quantity

How many words in a blog is enough? This is another point where the Team SEO and Team Content Writers can get into conflict. While writers seek creative freedom to write as much or as little as they want to express their ideas, SEO experts suggest that an ideal blog must be at least 800 words long.

Why? Because it gives enough room for both, the writers to let their creativity flow and the SEO experts to embed their keywords within.

Also, a short blog that ends abruptly leaves the reader disappointed as he/she feels that they’ve been left hanging. While a long blog makes them drift away and drop the blog halfway.

And here’s a fun fact, an average reader takes only about 3 minutes to read 800 words. Writing content being mindful of this fact, while keeping all others in mind, is the only way to write engaging content that ranks high! This is a practice followed by some of the best digital agencies all over the world, and definitely one of the reasons why Flora Fountain is known as one of the best professional content writing agency in Ahmedabad

So writers, make sure you follow these points while writing and working in tandem with your SEO team. Or, simply drop us an email and let the content experts of Flora Fountain do it for you!

Categories
Ecommerce

Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento: Which is the right ecommerce platform for your online store?

ecommerce platform

Looks like you’ve decided to go digital and sell online! Congratulations! It’s a big step.

But a lot of things right at the start might confuse you. For starters, which ecommerce platform should you start your online journey with? This year everyone seems to be raving about Shopify, last year it was WooCommerce and then someone told you about Magento too. The more you speak with ecommerce website development or digital agencies, the more options there seem to be and the more confusing it gets.
So here’s a definitive guide to understand the pros and cons of using each of these 3 major ecommerce platforms, depending on what, how much and who you are selling to…

So, what is Shopify?

While it might seem new, Shopify has been around as an ecommerce platform since 2007. Despite being a paid only solution, it is the second most popular ecommerce platform with about 20% of the market share. A major reason behind this is that it is a software-sold-as-a-service, which means you don’t have to be a coder to set up a Shopify store.

And Magento?

Magento is the big daddy of customizable e-commerce platforms. It has two services, a free Open Source and a paid Magento Commerce, which like Shopify comes with hosting services. With about 500,000 users, Magento has 10% of the online market, including bigger brands that are into serious online retail of clothes, jewellery and even cars.

And finally we come to WooCommerce?

With 29% of the market share, WooCommerce is the most widely used e-commerce platform. It is actually a plugin for WordPress that extends the functionality of this very popular CMS into an online store.
Still wondering which platform to pick? Read on…

Ease of use

This one is especially important for small business owners, as they end up initially doing a lot of the work on their own.

Ease of use

Of the three, Shopify is the easiest to set up and use. It comes with a managed hosting solution, well-designed themes both free and paid, PCI compliance for payments, and a host of shipping solutions already built by logistics companies – all of which can be integrated without coding knowledge. This means all you have to do is buy a domain, connect it with your Shopify account, select a theme, upload products and get ready to sell online.

This one is especially important for small business owners, as they end up initially doing a lot of the work on their own.

WooCommerce on the other hand requires the user to have their own hosting solution, which needs to be purchased before getting started. So you have to buy your own domain, hosting solution, install WordPress and WooCommerce, before you can start customizing themes or entering products. This makes it not quite as easy as Shopify, however, it does give you more choice in selecting your own server. Because of a vibrant community, WordPress also has a wider selection of free and paid themes available online.

Magento is the platform of developers. While it has its own hosting solution, you can also use the Open Source version and connect it with a server of your choice. Getting Magento set up and customizing it requires developers who have knowledge of PHP and HTML.

Customizability

Customizability is almost inversely proportional to ease of use in this case. With Shopify being the most closed platform and offering the least customization. One can customize CSS for the look and feel of the website and use existing app or create new Shopify apps for certain limited customization. Several workflows like the cart page can not be customized at all in the starting plans.

Customizability

Magento, on the other hand, allows for the most customization from the product page to the payment workflow to the user profiles. For some common functionalities, Magento addons are also available in the marketplace. This is the reason most bigger brands that take online retail seriously, choose Magento.

WooCommerce is also fairly customizable, since it sits on the open-source platform of WordPress that is supported by a thriving community. Most of the features you might want to add are already out there as free or paid extensions to the plugin, created either by WooCommerce creators or the WooCommerce community.

Scalability

Scalability

Magento and Shopify are slightly better suited for large databases of products since they are e-commerce first platforms. With Shopify, while adding products does not impact performance, scaling up does become more expensive as your store grows with more users and transactions.

Scalability of products with WooCommerce is possible, however, since it was created as a content platform, adding too many customizations or products without thoughtful technical architecture can impact performance and slow the website down. As a result, you have to hire WordPress developers who are familiar with optimizing the platform as you scale up.

Security

Shopify’s hosting comes with an SSL certificate and PCI compliance making it watertight and secure. With WordPress and Open Source Magento, you have to purchase your own SSL certificate and keep updating any security patches or extensions that the two platforms release from time to time. This is a fairly common practice for most open source software, so it is not a major concern, however, it does require developer help.

Security

SEO Friendliness

SEO Friendliness

Shopify comes with basic SEO support with the ability to add meta tags, image alt text, generate 301 redirects, automatic XML sitemaps and a blogging feature. However, customizing any of this in the basic plan is not possible.

WooCommerce comes with all the above plus the ability to integrate with mature SEO plugins like Yoast for that extra boost to your store’s SEO, by adding keywords per page, real time suggestions for keywords and more!

Magento being the completely customizable platform that it is allows you to define your own SEO strategy and customize the backend to support all of the above features in Yoast and then some, like canonical tags, Google sitemaps, no follow links and literally anything your SEO expert desires.

Support

Being a paid platform, Shopify has quite an attentive and prompt 24×7 support desk available over email for all plans. It also has a pretty comprehensive documentation and, being the second most-popular platform, a thriving community of developers.

WooCommerce has possibly the biggest community of developers helping each other and clients out. One of the benefits of such a community for smaller businesses is that you can hire a WooCommerce developer for parts of the project or some specific functionality quite easily from these forums.

Support

Moreover, pretty much anything you imagine in WooCommerce has probably already been done and put out as a plugin by someone in the community!

Magento is a mixed bag. While Magento Open Source has a community like WooCommerce, Magento Commerce provides prompt support for its paid users, similar to Shopify.

Pricing
Pricing

Shopify provides three different plans ranging from $29 to $299, which includes hosting services. If you are going for a paid theme, this can cost anything up to $180. And finally, there is a transaction fee anywhere from 0.5-2% depending on your Shopify plan. This makes it ideal for a beginner user, but a little more expensive as you scale up and increase your transactions.

WooCommerce and WordPress are essentially free of cost, however, you end up paying for your own server and SSL certificate. Any plugins required for additional functionality should also be factored in.

Magento Open Source is similar to WooCommerce in being open source and requiring server and SSL. Magento Commerce however is for serious online players since its licensing fee starts at $22,000.

The Final Word

To conclude, if you are just starting out online with a limited monthly budget and a whole lot of DIY spirit Shopify is perhaps your best bet. You can play around with themes, make minor changes to the look and feel, add a payment gateway, integrate with a shipping provider, add products and get started within a few weeks, even days.

However, if you plan to build a slightly more customized website and have the financial bandwidth to hire 1 or 2 developers, WordPress with WooCommerce, can work better for you.

For bigger organizations with a long-term online vision, thousands upon thousands of customized products and a free hand with budgets, Magento is the most future proof and customizable solution.

Need more guidance getting started with setting up your own e-commerce store? Get in touch with Flora Fountain, we are good listeners and even better problem-solvers for all your digital marketing and e-commerce needs. Call now, for a free consultation for your online business.

Categories
Digital Marketing Agency

Digital Agency vs Creative Agency: What’s the difference?

So, you run a business and it’s time you took the marketing up a notch. You know you need a professional agency, BUT, you are not sure which kind of agency you need. A digital agency? A creative agency? Or wait…do you need an advertising agency?

Now, you might think they are all the same fantastic beast with different names. Or you might they are different Pokémons with their own superpowers? (proud millennial here).

Traditionally, businesses have relied on advertising agencies to promote and market their brand. An advertising agency typically designs and writes copy for advertisements run in print such as newspapers, hoardings & magazines, design collaterals for events, conceptualize & create television commercials, create radio jingles….you get the idea.

But times have changed, the platforms for promoting your business are no longer restricted to print and television. Digital is now a more pervasive and cost-effective medium, to market and advertise businesses to customers right where they are : On Their Phone! As you consider digitally marketing your business, it’s time to understand the differences between a digital and creative agency, and how they fit under the umbrella of an advertising agency.

What is a CREATIVE AGENCY?

online shopping experience

A creative agency’s role is to make your brand stand out. This can be done through weaving captivating stories created through stunning visuals and words, creating concepts that inject life into your business offerings and creating a very unique brand voice for your business.

The output of this can be a single unique graphic design, an animated video, a memorable website, a social media campaign, newsletters, packaging.

This usually requires the creative brains of a visualizer or graphic designer, video animator, illustrator, content writer, all of who work together for your business to stand out through creative storytelling across any medium – offline or digital.

So if you want to create mind-blowing brand campaigns, whether audio, video or pictorial and someone to craft your brand’s personality in a memorable way, then a creative agency is the way to go. In India, Flora Fountain consistently ranks as one of the best creative agencies in Ahmedabad for lifestyle, fashion, food, travel, education, medical & media brands.

Still confused? Here’s what to expect from a creative agency

  • Designing logos
  • Designing brand experiences through brand stationary, packaging and other offline collaterals
  • Designing websites, mobile apps, social media campaigns to tell the brand story
  • Creating concepts and moodboards for shoots and campaigns
  • Copywriting for all digital and offline activities such as blogs, articles, websites, social media, ad copies, audio and video scripts
  • Creating infographics to break down heavy data and figures in easy to consume form
  • Creating email newsletter designs with a mix of visuals, content, and data
  • Audio Visual content for digital and television advertisements and promotions.

And when you look for the best creative agency in Ahmedabad, you will see Flora Fountain rank on top of the charts.

What is a DIGITAL AGENCY?

online shopping experience

One the creativity is put on paper or in bytes, a digital agency’s work come into the picture. Digital agencies work on creating a strategy to market a business and then executing this on various digital platforms like websites, social media, search engines, mobile applications and more.

Digital agencies help businesses amplify their brand on digital platforms. This, is usually done through digital marketing practices like search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid promotions on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other such mass platforms, developing websites and e-commerce management for the brand.

The services offered by digital agencies include

  • Search Engine Optimization or SEO
  • Pay Per Click or PPC advertisements on search engines and social media
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing and Management
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Collaborations with other digital entities and influencers
  • Web design & development

Apart from executing these services, strategy is one of the core services offered by digital agencies to businesses, where the agency collects data and analyzes the brand, their competition, their users’ needs, desires, expectations and engagement with the brand across all digital platforms. This kind of data-drive research helps digital agencies create and target a brand’s ideal audience with curated content, both organically and via paid ads. This creating more data to analyze and use as feedback for the next round of strategic digital campaigns.

Research + Strategy + Execution lies at the core of Flora Fountain’s DNA and is what makes us a top digital agency in Ahmedabad with clients worldwide.

Now you might think there are overlaps between the digital and the creative…

And there are.

2020 taught businesses worldwide, the importance of having an active digital presence. How it can help businesses serve existing customers better but also find new customers and avenues of doing business.

More business going digital has added to the digital chatter, making it harder to get noticed. This had made creative storytelling and using research & strategy to create digital campaigns even more important. It has also meant that what companies need now is not just a creative agency or a digital agency but a full service digital agency.

And Flora Fountain is one such full service digital agency that works with creativity. We have team of dedicated experts catering to both creative and strategic needs of businesses online, to provide an end-to-end digital marketing solution for businesses in Ahmedabad, India and worldwide.

We as a digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad design and develop websites and ecommerce solutions on WordPress, Magento, Shopify, custom websites in PHP, manage social media profiles, plan and execute their business promotion strategies on professional platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Business.

But, there’s more! Our teams also consist of creative brains, who can create designs and visuals that improves the recall value of the brand by many levels. This harmony between creativity, strategy and technology is what makes businesses stay on top of their competition. When the creative and digital tango, businesses become more profitable and more accountable to their customers.

We hope this has made the difference between a pure creative agency and a pure digital agency a little clearer. And helped decide how you want to market your business digitally. In which case, why are you still reading this. Drop us a message on hello@flora.ffteam.in for a free consultation.

Categories
Ecommerce

Why your e-commerce website needs smashing pictures

Ecommerce website

A picture is worth over a thousand words

Every time you’re online looking to purchase something, what is the first thing that catches your eye and convinces you to click on it. The PICTURE, right?

It is only after you’ve seen the picture and your mind is convinced in the first few seconds that this seems to be a good product, is when you then move on to read a little bit about it, maybe on the title, the description, and then the reviews.

You see how important images are in e-commerce? If it doesn’t appeal to the eye, people online are going to scroll through and find something else that does.

But, why does this happen, especially with e-commerce and online shopping?

People prefer seeing things over reading about it

We are living in the smart age. Everything from your toothbrush to your television is connected to the internet and your smartphone. We no longer type things to send a message to someone or look up something online. We snap it using our cameras and do the needful (Thank you Google Lens).

Look at all the marketing and advertising studies and surveys done over the years, the visual element has always come out as the winner over text. Yes, people do love a smart pun here, a hidden joke there. But that beautiful dress won’t sell through words, people wish to see the design, the fabric, the idea of how it may look on an actual person wearing it. Only then they’ll take a look at the price and think about placing an order for it.

online shopping experience

But that beautiful dress won’t sell through words, people wish to see the design, the fabric, the idea of how it may look on an actual person wearing it. Only then they’ll take a look at the price and think about placing an order for it.

Here’s a fun fact: Of all the returns that are done after online shopping, over 20% of them happen because the actual product didn’t resemble what the buyer saw online on the website.

So, it is important that you put up real pictures of your products, shot by professionals, from multiple angles with a clean background and ample lighting.

Images contribute to your site’s SEO

YES, you read that right. Images contribute greatly to the SEO of your e-commerce website. With more and more people moving towards image search using Google Snap or photo search apps, the search engine AI identifies and matches the image’s visual elements with the pictures you put up on your website. And when they match correctly, your product shows up as one of the search results. And this is not anyone but the SEO experts of Flora Fountain, the best seo company in Ahmedabad advice it to all.

Additionally, naming your product correctly by its name instead of generic terms like “image1.jpg” helps the search engine to match with the searches and pull up your product online. Your images must also have Alt Text, which describes the product, e.g. Blue Cotton Summer Dress with Floral Patterns. All the ideal keywords got used to describe your product image and it makes absolute sense too.

Enhances the online shopping experience

People prefer seeing things over reading

If your brand doesn’t stand out and appeal to the visitor on your page, you will be losing out on a sale. And well-shot pictures of your products add a sense of originality and make it more trustworthy, since people are missing the tactile experience of examining the product using their hands and are solely relying on the visual experience on their screens.

So, it is ideal that one must invest in good photography of not just your products, but in creating an entire visual experience. Hire specialists who can help you build an entire concept around your product connecting with your brand and guides you in picking the right photographers to create a story through pictures.

It’s not an expense but an investment

The e-commerce space has become intensely competitive in the past decade with more players coming in and selling their wares online. And this trend saw a sharp rise when countries went into a lockdown due to the pandemic in 2020 and people were forced to get everything they need online.

So you need to move up and not rely solely on your brick and mortar store. You can either get an e-commerce website for your brand or business made or sell on third-party platforms like Amazon, eBay, etc. But no matter where you sell online, your pictures are going to play the lead role in attracting customers to your website.

Good, original pictures mean more people online click and engage with your product link. And when search engines and online shopping platforms notice this trend, they automatically rank your product higher. So it may seem like an additional expenditure now, but the ROI on good photography for your e-commerce platform will be multifold.

And if you’re still clueless about how to get started on photography for your e-commerce platform, drop us a line and we at Flora Fountain, Ahmedabad’s best e-commerce website development company, would love to chat about creating a concept for you and guiding you with the photo & video shoots in Ahmedabad.

Categories
SEO

Reasons why your website must be SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED

Reasons-cover-img

What did you do the last time you wanted to look for a doctor around you, or check out a good place that could home deliver your favourite Baklavas on order? You asked Google about it.

Over 90% of the searches on the internet are done on Google and there’s only a 5% chance that we go beyond the results shown to us on the first page of the search window.

businessman-looking

And if you’re a brand that wants to be the first option of your consumer base, then you must feature on this first page every time someone searches for your name or a product or service you offer. The only way to be placed on top of the searches organically is through SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Wondering what is search engine optimization all about and how is it going to help your business or brand online? Here’s everything you need to know.

What is SEO anyway?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an internet marketing strategy where you improve the quality and quantity of your website based on the relevance of what your consumer base is looking and searching for on the internet.

The content on the website is optimized in a manner that ranks higher on the search engine pages of Google or Bing. And when someone looks for something which is even closely connected to your content, it shows up on the top of the search results.

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And this optimization is done by putting up content that’s very relevant to what people are searching for, feature media that’s labelled correctly, contains references and links which support and make sense to the content, and contains the right amount of keywords and phrases which people use to search for your content.

And if you’re still not convinced on how SEO is going to help your business online, here we provide you with 5 benefits of having a website that’s Search Engine Optimized.

Improve Brand Visibility online

We’d like to start with an absolute no-brainer. Just imagine, you are a business that sells premium quality tea through your ecommerce website. While your business and its website appear on top of the search window every time someone looks up your brand name specifically, but whenever someone searches for “premium tea”, it’s your competitor’s name that pops up first. So frustrating, right?

This wouldn’t happen if you use the right keywords which people use to look for your product and service and link it to your website. This way, your brand name features on top of the search results and it gets etched into the minds of people who search for products and content related to your brand. The higher you rank on the search results, your brand’s visibility gets better.

Drive organic traffic to your website and convert them into sales

Apart from improving the visibility of your website, SEO also drives genuine visitors to your website, who hold a higher chance of getting converted into a paying customer for your product or service.

When you use original content, insert the right keywords, use genuine links to establish the authenticity of your content, and provide exactly what your customer is looking for, it is going to show up on the search screens on top.

Understand what and how your consumer thinks

Search Engine Optimization begins with research, about the consumers of the product, their background, their interests, and the time they spend on the internet seeking what they like. And with the data that this research throws up, you can understand the language that your probable customers are talking about and where do their loyalties lie when it comes to a certain product or service offered by multiple brands.

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This helps in using the right keywords in your website, creating content for your website in a language that your consumer base will understand, and keeps them hooked on to it for a longer duration. This, in turn, increases your chances of converting them into a customer.

At the end of the day, your customer is the king and you must create and provide what they wish, and not what you want them to use. And search engines will push only the former on top.

No paying for “Ad Space”

No, you never have to pay Google, or any search engine to rank your website on top of the search results. The positions you see on the results page of the search engine are purely based on who did their SEO perfectly and ticked all the boxes.

We know, you might argue that what about the search results one gets to see with a tiny marker which reads “Ad” in black. They are Google Pay Per Click ads which, just like the name, are paid, advertised links of websites that pay a sum to google for every time someone clicks on that link.

They are not connected to SEO anyway, and all the results you see beneath those links, are purely organic. So technically, if you’re doing your SEO right, you never have to pay for an “ad space” for visibility like businesses have to do with OTT advertising.

Improves credibility of your business

A website that ranks on top of the charts of the search window tends to hold over 70% attention of the viewer compared the ones even in the 2nd or third position. It goes without saying that most of us won’t even bother clicking on the second page to see what more options do we have.

The credibility of brands that rank in the first 5 results is always higher compared to the others. Which means if your brand has done its SEO right, people will prefer clicking on your link if they see it first. This way only the right people get targeted, it results in higher organic footfalls on the website and in turn have a higher chances of getting converted into a valuable lead for the business.

Stay ahead of your competitors

And of course, when you’re on the top the charts every time someone searches for something, you’re miles ahead of your competitors. Just like we mentioned in our first point, you’re able to beat your competitors if you use the right keywords and links that connects with your business, and your visibility is going to peak higher than all.

And if you’re wondering whether your website is SEO friendly or not, how about you drop us a line here for a free consultation with our SEO expert.