Overview
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Are Black Women At Higher Risk For STDs?
Socioeconomic, cultural, and gender barriers limit the ability of some young women of color to receive information on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV, access culturally appropriate health care, and reduce sexual risks.
Statistics by ethnicity can be misleading due to relationships between socioeconomic status and ethnicity; yet, illuminating the epidemiology of HIV in different populations may promote prevention efforts in under-served communities. The estimated prevalence of HIV and other STIs is especially high for young women of color many of whom lack health insurance and have little or no access to health care. A lack of well-funded prevention programs specifically addressing young women of color further limits the capacity of some these young women to protect themselves against HIV infection.
Behavioral and Socioeconomic Factors Negatively Affect the Health of Young
Women of Color
Poverty and access to care —Young women of color are disproportionately members of the working poor who often lack access to affordable, culturally sensitive, and youth-friendly health services. As a result many YWOC receive little preventive health information, including strategies that reduce their risk for HIV infection.
Heterosexual Contact —The largest category for being infected with HIV among women of color is heterosexual contact—having sex with a man who uses injection drugs, is HIV-infected, or whose HIV status is unknown to the young woman. For example, in 2002 among cumulative HIV/AIDS cases, 77 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander women, 74 percent of African American women, 72 percent of Latinas, and 62 percent of Native American women reported heterosexual contact as their risk factor.
Communication — Patterns of communication about sexuality differ by ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, and level of acculturation. Reticence in discussing sexuality occurs among minority populations as frequently as among the U.S. population as a whole. Some Asian Pacific Islander and Latino cultures prohibit or discourage open discussion of topics like condom use, disease, and sexual behaviors. African American adolescent females, on the other hand, report receiving information about and discussing HIV and sexuality at school and with family. Young African American women also report feeling comfortable in assertively asking about partners’ past sexual risks, although they are often reluctant to ask about same-sex sexual behavior or substance use—behaviors of male partners that can put the young women most at risk.
Cultural discomfort with conversations about sexuality and sexual behaviors poses difficulties for some young women of color as they attempt to negotiate safer sex practices and set limits with a sex partner. Numerous studies indicate that African American women and Latinas are concerned about HIV infection but may not use condoms. While most young women of color report a strong desire to use condoms, those who have low incomes frequently report fear, discomfort, and intimidation about negotiating condom use with their sexual partner. Some young women fear that young men will be angered or offended by questions about past risk behaviors and by requests that they use condoms.
Trust in monogamy —The safety provided by monogamy is limited by each partner’s past and current risk behaviors. Trusting a male partner who is not monogamous is a serious risk factor for any woman and may put many young Latina and African American women at risk for HIV and other STIs. Since different people define monogamy in different ways, safer sex should probably be urged for all sexual relationships.
Furthermore, serial monogamy —a series of short-lived monogamous relationships—is fairly common among adolescent women, nearly 16 percent of whom report four or more lifetime sex partners. Having multiple sexual partners (usually four or more) is frequently identified as a risk factor for HIV infection. Early onset of sexual intercourse is often associated with reports of more lifetime sex partners than are reported by young women who initiate sexual intercourse later. Compared to other teens, a higher percentage of African American and Latina young women also report initiating sexual activity at early ages, putting them at higher risk for HIV infection.
Older male partners —A quarter of sexually active men ages 22 to 26 and 19 percent of males ages 20 to 21 report sexual intercourse with a teenage partner during the last year.A significant proportion of Latina and African American adolescent females also report first sexual intercourse with older male partners. Sexual intercourse with older men can expose young women to a sexual partner who has had sex with multiple partners, varied sexual experiences, and/or a history of injection drug use. Differing age and sexual experience may also create power imbalances that limit the ability of young women, including those of color, to negotiate safer sex. Finally, young women sometimes rely on older sex partners for guidance about protection and may receive misinformation that can negatively affect the young women’s sexual health.
Cultural Barriers May Affect the Health of Young Women of Color
Cultural barriers prevent many young women of color from gaining the skills and knowledge they need to lessen their risk for HIV or other STIs. Ethnic groups may face different barriers posed by customs, religion, and history.
Among Native Americans, communication barriers complicate HIV prevention. Some terms—such as HIV and AIDS —do not translate easily or clearly in many Native American languages. Tribes may be difficult to target with HIV prevention information due to geographic dispersal, individual languages, and differing customs. For example, the Navajo believe that talking about a disease may bring it into existence in the community.
Statistics - may underestimate the rate of HIV infection among Native Americans. Some HIV
infected Native Americans may claim to be of another ethnicity to avoid shaming their communities, and HIV testing officials may misidentify Native Americans as being of some other ethnicity. In one study, nearly 90 percent of Native Americans living with AIDS were listed as Asian, Latino, or other ethnic background. Inaccurate reporting may lead to decreased funding for prevention efforts targeting Native Americans and may also lead Native Americans to deny or underestimate their HIV risk.
Finally, substance use —the number one health problem among Native Americans —is also associated with sexual risk behaviors. Many Native Americans do not realize the connections between HIV infection and substance use.
The African American community did not initially view HIV/AIDS as a threat. Early case reports indicated that high risk groups included white gay men, injection drug users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. As a result, many African American women have not recognized their own risk. Historic revelations of unethical experimentation (such as the Tuskegee syphilis study) and misinformation regarding the susceptibility of African Americans to HIV have also affected this community’s views of public health messages and practices. Today, suspicion of government agencies, worry about genocide, and continuing conspiracy theories remain current among many African Americans. These factors may result in an unwillingness to be tested or treated for HIV.
Content Marketing Vs. SEO
The concepts and techniques of content marketers are now being applied by many SEO practitioners as well. The same thing goes for strategic thinkers, they are being named now as tactical or technical website implementers.
Since Panda and Penguin updates occurred in Google’s algorithm, there were major shifts in the way SEO people work with search engines. They started to focus on content marketing and getting visitors from social media.
Content publishing is very old; it has been there since 4200 BC, when people used to carve their content on caves’ walls until nowadays, when we can easily publish our content online by a click of a button. It’s so easy for us today, because of the search and digital agencies, to reach almost anything that we are looking for.
Content Management Institute in 2011 conducted a study and they found that almost 90% of marketers work on content marketing. On the other hand, Outbrain and Econsultancy surveys report that 90% of companies believe that in the next 12 months, content marketing might be the next big thing.
What really changed are the SEO industry, the concept of content marketing, as well as the changes that occurred between links, social media and search engine results. All of these changes greatly altered the approach for content marketing.
1. Google algorithm updates (Panda and Penguin)
Google updates made lots of internet marketers rethink about the way they work and pushed them to change their strategies – focusing more on producing quality content for their websites.
The purpose of Panda update is to reduce the low quality websites and improve the rankings of websites with great content. The Penguin update, on the other hand, focused on web spam and link tactics that were used as black hat for SEO.
Google made it virtually difficult for anyone who uses black hat techniques to appear on top of the search results. This is another thing that lead most of the internet marketers to focus on content quality. Some websites were really affected by these updates – not only small but big, popular websites for big companies as well like about.com.
2. Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Advertising and publishing aren’t new, so as content marketing. There’s a debate on pitching SEO because of collecting paid, owned and earned media together. When it comes to name conventions and debates that talk about inbound and outbound techniques, it won’t matter if you look at the bigger marketing picture.
3. Connected consumer growth
If one customer is loyal to your company and started to share and like your content on several social media platforms, this can result to an increase of others’ awareness of your brand. It’s quite challenging to focus on an in demand content if your priority is producing quality content.
4. Strategies Vs. Tactics
As the Internet and websites keep growing, Google found a way to somehow force SEO professionals to re-think about their tactics (tricking and manipulating Google’s algorithm) and do the right thing. Indeed, they need to focus on new strategies that will keep them ahead.
SEO professionals should really work as content marketers, adding much effort to their strategic approach. If they really want a website that’s search engine friendly, they need to start optimizing for people by providing good quality content rather than optimizing for search engines.
Content marketing is far from SEO if you look at how search engine results changed from video, mobile and social rankings. All of these media require more focus on content marketing than SEO technical side.
Clarity
Content production can be done by anyone; people are publishing tons of content every day. But producing content alone does not instantly make you a content marketer. If your marketing strategy is just to reorganize your SEO strategy then you’re not a content marketer.
Of course this will lead to a debate about real content marketers and SEO content marketers because there are people who create content for people while others just optimize their website’s content for search engines.
If you want to do some real content marketing, then you need to create a detailed and accurate plan using all different kind of channels. If this plan doesn’t exist, you’ll probably win some at the beginning, but you’ll lose a lot and it will just lead to useless content and spam in the end.
Strategy
A high quality marketing plan is a result of high quality content; if you started your plan this way, then you’re on the right track.
Reproducing and recycling content and turning it into an infographic list isn’t content marketing. Using content marketing for the purpose of being a content bait to attract the search engine to add your link by surrounding your content with some of your keywords isn’t going to work either.
Being on top of SERPs using quality content will gain positive results in the long term compared to some short-term tactics that some people do. The more unique and quality content you create, the more chances of increasing your rankings in the SERPs.
Audit
Auditing is an just as an important process as content creation. Auditing is more than just looking at online rankings, traffic and social media insights. Auditing means focusing on certain aspects of content creation. The art of auditing and optimizing are essential to ensure a high quality of content. This is a challenging process that spans all areas in an organization.
Improve your Facebook EdgeRank in Five Steps
Branding your business isn’t just about increasing your page’s number of fans – it’s about how many of your fans will be able to see your post on your page. When the figures are high, as well as the response rates, this is when you call it a success for your social media marketing. Introducing Facebook’s news feed algorithm, the EdgeRank.
Optimizing the page content that would be shown in the news feeds for each fan will differ from brand to content and fans. Hundreds of blogs wrote tons of articles about it but we are going to sum it all up and share to you these simple five tips that you could follow to help make your page’s posts visible in the news feed.
1. Use photos
Facebook news feed seems to be calculated by the number of fans + post type. For example, a fan may see a photo post for Red bull but not get a shared link. There are six types of posts that exist on Facebook: texts (status updates), photos, links, videos, and questions or polls. The first four are the most important types of posts.
It’s obvious that users engage more with photos than links, status or videos. It’s almost better than any other type of posts by twenty times.
That’s why it’s better to post a link with a photo if you want to add a link for your website. The same thing goes for videos – you might want to submit a thumbnail from the scenes in the video and add the video URL to the photo instead of posting the video itself.
Posting whatever you want above an image will greatly help increase your page fans. In that case, anything you’ll post will appear above the image so it’s more likely to be clicked on and it’s a better way to get more clicks on the link.
2. Create Photo Albums
If your page is talking about something specific, let’s say, some sort of an activity, it’s better to create a photo album to collect and organize all that what you want to say and include about a specific topic in just one place.
If your page is talking about something specific, let’s say, some sort of an activity, it’s better to create a photo album to collect and organize all that what you want to say and include about a specific topic in just one place.
This is a screen shot from the fan page of “Jean-Claude Van Damme”. A photo album for some shots in his movie was added, and as you can see it has gained a huge number of shares and likes. Photo albums are one of the most-viewed posts on Facebook pages. Photo albums show 1 big photo and 3 smaller photos from same album placed just below the big picture. What makes the photo album unique is that it has a different look compared to any other posts in a user’s news feed. If the big photo is interesting, and the smaller one as well, users will click on the album to view the rest of the pictures. Use it and you’ll get extra fans before your competitors do. Facebook hasn’t confirmed the success of this method but creating albums will most likely have an impact to your page’s Edge Rank somehow.
3. Write Extra Text
There are some pages that depend on written, small articles instead of using a website or a blog. They do that by adding their text on the picture in the description section, and the limit is 5000 characters, which is almost 800 words. This is the very reason that you have to click on “see more” to read the rest of the post.
In the example above, the British band “Blue” added their schedule on a photo instead of adding it into a Blog post to reach their fans quickly and for the information to be shared easily. Facebook hasn’t confirmed it as a ranking factor in EdgeRank, but users may like the post when they see that you’ve put a lot of effort into it then it will lead to more shares and likes.
4. Expand your posts
It doesn’t stop at Facebook. You must expand your reach in promoting your posts or photo album through other social media platforms as LinkedIn, Twitter and any other social network where you can publish your album links.
Speaking about promotion, investing for an album to be used as a sponsored story for your page is a good idea. This will increase your album visibility and likes faster. After making the ad, just upload it for it to show on the news feeds. Upload a couple of new pictures to the album later on and it will be appear on the news feed as updates for your fans.
Photo albums will keep appearing on news feed every time they are updated with new photos. So keep updating your album. Promote it and get more engagement. If you submit on all distribution networks you’ll get the maximum reach for your post. Increasing the reach of these posts will begin once Facebook will show it on the news feed for your page fans.
5. Post Targeting
A new feature has been added for sponsored stories of the pages, which allows you to choose specific criteria you like your sponsored story to appear. Some of the criteria are age, sex, relationship status, workplace, location, and others.
Take advantage of this feature by targeting a segment of your fans who will most likely interact with you post. If a user likes a post you added, even if he doesn’t like the page, the liked post will still appear in his news feed .
Another technique that you could follow is working on the customizing of your content to suit different segments of your fans thus, increasing the engagement of your posts from other groups.
Use M-commerce techniques to increase your mobile sales
Mobile strategy means so much more than just a smartphone application or a mobile website version. M-commerce helps you to sell your product as well as teaches you more about your client’s behaviors by focusing on their shopping experiences and their marketing activities to help you increase your sales.
Position your brand in the middle of the screen to let people know that your website is a trustworthy and reputable mobile site. Also, don’t forget about the navigation menu. Keep it as simple as five to nine choices to make it easier for your visitors to navigate through your website. That includes special promotions with product images to take full advantage of the M-commerce through these 10 steps:
1. Search pay dividends
Over 50% mobile users use the search feature on a mobile site. Therefore, make sure that the search bar is available on all pages and index your pages with the catalogue. It will take time to do such a task but it’s really worth it when you find your sales number increasing.
2. Get to the point
Mobile users don’t visit mobile sites and expect them to look as they do in computers. People are viewing these sites using a mobile or handheld device so keep in mind to make the design, navigation and content easy and compatible on the mobile version.
3. Mention what you have in stock
Don’t let the customers go through the whole process to purchase a certain product and find out later at the checkout page that the product is out of stock. This will make the customer frustrated and your website will look unorganized. Either keep your stocks filled or if you’re out, mention it before hand through a notification.
4. App development
If you want to build an app for mobiles, then make it based on facts, not assumptions. Because If you depend on assumptions you’ll lose reviews and costly updates. Your app must be your eyes and should be designed to see how many people visits and shops on your website then focus on customers who pay on time and buy frequently.
5. Deliver products quickly
People don’t have time to search your entire website for what they exactly need. So make it easier for them by providing videos, banners and interactive merchandising techniques for faster product delivery.
6. Don’t underestimate
Some webmasters think that since a user is browsing through mobile phone, they won’t spend as much money as a PC user does, so they tend to lower their prices. You’ll never know what your visitors may buy and which device they’ll use, so make your prices the same and leave the choice to your customers.
7. Work with your customers
You’ll be having one shopper against sixty others in researching about your product so make it easier for them by navigating them to the nearest store that sells this product. You may place the shops’ locations through GPS feature so they can go there and explore the products themselves.
8. Minimize research headache
Users already use mobile phones to make researches about the product in store. So why not provide free Wi-Fi to help them in their research or you can provide a QR code beside the products so they can scan it and get more information about this particular product and if there are any promotions for it.
9. Compatibility
A Mobile website should work properly before you do anything else. Adjust your website to work on PDAs and tablets to increase the segment of customers. It also must be compatible with all mobile versions and mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows, and etc.
10. Improve
As technologies evolve, everything else goes as well. Therefore, make use of these opportunities and measure everything your customers do and learn from it so you can add more value to what you are providing them. Comparing between different E-commerce sites and methods will also benefit your business so you can develop methods to help your customers need.
Increase Social Media Marketing Results In 5 Steps
The role of social media marketing in the business market is increasing. It’s now considered one of the most successful strategies in inbound marketing, with just a few hours of dedicated work on social media, small businesses would notice a huge improvements. The increasing of the number of fans and followers are the most common activities but there are common mistakes that still need to be avoided.
A recent research that was published on Hubspot shows the number of internet users who own social media accounts around the globe. The report shows that 85% of the people have Facebook accounts while more than 45% internet users are using Twitter – so, you’ll be losing a lot of money if your presence isn’t there.
Here are 5 simple tips that can help you strengthen your presence on social media platforms:
1. Create a schedule: Quality and consistency matters on social media but timing is important as well. Facebook, Pintrest, and LinkedIn will be happy with one or two posts per day, while Twitter users need more than two tweets per day because Twitter is considered faster but provides less info than other social media platforms.
2. Thank users for participating: Huge part of the social media is about building good relationship with your customers. That’s why it’s very important to acknowledge or thank them if they shared your content or re-tweeted one of your tweets.
3. Avoid making sales on social media: Yes, though very tempting, it’s not good to make a sales pitch on social media. If you focus on sharing relevant content and information that’s related to what you sell, they’ll be interested to check out your product because they do have enough information about why and how to use it. For example, if you’re selling cakes, you may share some pictures for other cakes that looks funny or creative.
4. Interact with your Blog: A Blog is an important tool for your visitors and fans to get all the information they need about what you are offering in one place. Having a blog is great because you can share your blog posts on social media platforms as well so you’re driving traffic from your fans on both sides.
5. Use a common profile picture: If you created a Facebook or Twitter account, don’t leave the profile picture empty because this will make visitors doubt you as a SPAMMER. It also doesn’t provide any information whether it’s an official account or not. So changing the profile picture of the account and adding complete information give the account authority among the users.
Use these tips to correct some of the common mistakes that small businesses commit when using their social media accounts. Follow these tips and eventually you’ll be gaining leads and sales in no time.
How to run a successful Facebook Page
Thousands of websites are talking about ways on how to manage a Facebook page and starting an active, long-term online community. Unfortunately, most of these tips are known fundamental information on how to start and run a Facebook page from scratch. Although it’s not the only method available for making social media presence, Facebook undoubtedly, is still the most well-known medium to reach audience and we all care about it.
There are no fixed strategies to work on towards social media success. Strategies are created by you but doing it right is actually the one that matters even for big corporations. It is alright to stumble along the way, what really matters is that you learn from those mistakes.
Newsfeed should be accurate and informative
Updates that will be written of course will be on the wall. But unfortunately not all your fans will see it on the wall itself, unless they clicked on a link or Ad. Most Facebook users are interested to follow multiple page updates in their newsfeeds without accessing the page itself to read the very last update.
There are some pages that make a big mistake while writing an update: they write for example, “check out our latest promotions” without providing any link for the promotion itselft either on Facebook or on the website. Facebook users won’t waste their time searching for that promotion. Should they decide to search for it and if it’s not on the page, they’ll go to the website, don’t let such thing to happen and always provide a link for your audience to click if you want them to check out something.
Target your paid ad to other users aside your fans
Another mistake that most small and medium businesses commit is bothering their customers with ads. If you have lots of customers do not bombard them with ads which content they already know. Besides, what’s the point of displaying the same ad for them if they are already customers and they know a lot about the product you are advertising. Unless you have something new, they’ll be annoyed because of this repetitive ad and you may lose them.
When you do setup an ad campaign, you may target every one except those who already clicked the ‘Like’ button on your page. This way, all visitors who are coming from this ad could be fans and turned into customers. This is much better instead of wasting your money on showing a product or service ad to existing customers who already availed them.
Updating Facebook pages depends on the business
Different companies always think that updating their Facebook page more frequently is better than adding a post or two per day saying that so their fans won’t forget about them. Think as a customer: If you like a brand page, it’s hard to know if you missed a certain post in a certain page at a glance. Rather, you’ll be able to see their best post in the Newsfeed.
Updating a Facebook Page more frequently is not important as it seems because not all updates will be shown for your audiences. Facebook fans will not return every day to check your latest update that’s why frequency doesn’t matter.
Stay out of working hours
Running a Facebook page will be after working hours. Facebook experiences that the busiest time during the day is after working hours because people go home and check their accounts. Your customers won’t care about your working hours; they need someone to reply on their question and engage with while they’re at home.
A wise approach is to hire someone to follow and update the company’s Facebook page and to answer inquiries after working hours while people are at home and checking their mails and Facebook accounts.
Work on improving EdgeRank
EdgeRank is the same thing as Page rank for Google. It’s an algorithm being used by Facebook to determine which posts exactly should be on “Top News” in a user’s newsfeed. Use a Page rank checker to determine exactly when is the best time to engage with users and at what time to do it exactly in the week.
Please share with us in the comments section any techniques or ideas you’re using. We definitely would love to hear from you.
SEO check-list for professionals
Many Individuals want to succeed in SEO but find it difficult either because their budget cannot cover long periods of SEO campaigns, or the SEO work wasn’t planned nor included in the company’s budget in the first place.
The size of SEO campaigns are often huge because of many factors that are included such as SEO design factors, quality content creation, link building strategies, and etc. All these tasks may take a long time which will drive companies to throw SEO plans behind their backs.
The following six tips for SEO revisions will help increase your organic search result:
1. Check organic Click Through Rates (CTR)
Google provides click through rates on both keywords and landing pages in Google Analytics. Open Google Analytics to see the lowest ranking page with a high bounce rate and few pages then start revising them to see what drive visitors to go away as soon as they land on this page. You can apply the same thing for keywords as well.
This way, you’re enhancing your picture in front of search engines while driving traffic to your website at the same time.
2. Review Robots.txt File
Check your robots.txt file, which is located on this path: www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt . You may want to discover that lots of files, folder and images, that could drive traffic to your website, are being prevented access from the search engine crawlers.
There are some other tools that check the website for any pages that are excluded by the robots file. Fixing this issue is easy once you find the problem.
3. Domain Canonicalization
One of the major problems that webmasters commonly encounter is the duplication of content. This problem could be easily fixed though by using a simple “301 redirection”. For example, if you have both www.website.com and website.com, you need to redirect the non-www to the www domain.
Search engines do not prefer duplicate content and making such redirect is much better than changing the whole thing. Search engines won’t notice the difference and will only see one version of the URL.
4. Check your Link destinations
Review any links that you have on your website: footer links, main navigation and any other links on your website, to be sure that you don’t have any duplicate content on the website or a 404-error page.
5. Duplicate Elements
Log in to Google webmaster tools to spot and make sure that those duplicate pages, Key word repetition don’t exist. Google webmaster tools are also helpful in defining bad titles and improving other element structures.
6. Change Anchor text
Using Keywords is much better than using the repetitive words that add no value at all to your website like: ‘click here’ or ‘buy now’. Google focuses on the keywords that are linked to other websites.
If you already submitted links or made a link exchange using one of these words then ask them to be changed to one of your keywords, this will increase your website ranking in the search engine results.
Best 7 plugins for WordPress
WordPress is considered one of the best blogging systems and what makes it special is the large amount of plugins that you could add to your blog to help it work efficiently. The numbers of plugins exceed 20,000. You can choose from them what’s best for your business needs and the web development department will help you choose which ones will work efficiently with your website. Check out the top 7 plugins that every website should use.
1- Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP)
There are so many plugins for “related posts” but YARPP is the most accurate plugin that can get you the best related post to your content. This plugin includes a number of templates that will allow you to completely customize its layout and appearance.
There are so many plugins for “related posts” but YARPP is the most accurate plugin that can get you the best related post to your content. This plugin includes a number of templates that will allow you to completely customize its layout and appearance.
2 – Jetpack
Jetpack plugin includes different plugins that do different functions and were merged into a single plugin. Example is the combination of a contact form and social media sharing buttons. This plugin requires a WordPress account in order to work but it’s really worth it.
Jetpack plugin includes different plugins that do different functions and were merged into a single plugin. Example is the combination of a contact form and social media sharing buttons. This plugin requires a WordPress account in order to work but it’s really worth it.
When it comes to your contact us section, it is better to use a contact form instead of adding your email addresses to avoid anyone from copying and pasting it anywhere because you’ll end up getting tons of SPAM emails.
3 – Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the best tool to analyze your website and get all information you need about your visitors. Google Analytics code can be added into your website’s header but it’s easier to add this code using a plugin without modifying your website code to avoid any crashes.
Google Analytics is the best tool to analyze your website and get all information you need about your visitors. Google Analytics code can be added into your website’s header but it’s easier to add this code using a plugin without modifying your website code to avoid any crashes.
4 – Automated Database Backup
Automatic Database Backup was made to take a Backup from the database of your WordPress (selected tables) and send it through email. So if anything goes wrong with your web host provider don’t worry about it, you haven’t lost that much and can restore the items from the latest backup. This backup will not include the plugins and media folders that were installed on your WordPress, so you have to download them manually through FTP.
Automatic Database Backup was made to take a Backup from the database of your WordPress (selected tables) and send it through email. So if anything goes wrong with your web host provider don’t worry about it, you haven’t lost that much and can restore the items from the latest backup. This backup will not include the plugins and media folders that were installed on your WordPress, so you have to download them manually through FTP.
5 – WordPress SEO
There’re many different plugins for SEO to add to your WordPress that will optimize your website for search engines, but the best is “Yoast’s WordPress SEO” because it includes an all in one solution pack for the SEO. It allows users to modify the essential Meta tags like title, description and keywords. It gives you a screen shot for your website snippet in Google. The plugin also contain some great features like no-index for a specific category. As well as xml sitemaps, Rss links, Google webmaster tools and much more.
There’re many different plugins for SEO to add to your WordPress that will optimize your website for search engines, but the best is “Yoast’s WordPress SEO” because it includes an all in one solution pack for the SEO. It allows users to modify the essential Meta tags like title, description and keywords. It gives you a screen shot for your website snippet in Google. The plugin also contain some great features like no-index for a specific category. As well as xml sitemaps, Rss links, Google webmaster tools and much more.
6 – Maintenance Mode
If your website is going through a maintenance process or is having a technical issues, you can set a page to be displayed all over your website telling that the website is going through some maintenance activity now.
If your website is going through a maintenance process or is having a technical issues, you can set a page to be displayed all over your website telling that the website is going through some maintenance activity now.
You can leave a message for your users like giving them an estimated time to try accessing again or you can set a timer which is counting down so they can try refreshing your website after the time is up. During maintenance mode, only Administrators can access all pages of the website.
7 – Simple 301 Redirects
If your WordPress was moved to another URL or was moved to another CMS; then all your old links won’t be working. Instead of leaving them as dead links (404 page not found) you can use the 301 redirect technique and redirect your old links to the new live ones.
If your WordPress was moved to another URL or was moved to another CMS; then all your old links won’t be working. Instead of leaving them as dead links (404 page not found) you can use the 301 redirect technique and redirect your old links to the new live ones.
Three Critical Web Design Mistakes in E-Commerce Websites
Running an e-commerce store is a lot different than running any other profitable type of website like an affiliate or blog. The main purpose of the e-commerce website is to generate direct profit from making purchases, so that’s why you need to pay attention to every detail in your website design.
Lots of designers commit these three common critical webdesign mistakes and they have no idea of the damage that will affect the website later on. That’s why website design should be taken seriously and designers should be very accurate in what they are doing.
Make sure that your checkout page is accurate
Checkout process in most e-commerce websites are from 1 to 6 steps to place an order. There are some pages where users go through: shipping information, billing information and credit card information These pages vary from one website to another depending on its business needs.
Checkout process in most e-commerce websites are from 1 to 6 steps to place an order. There are some pages where users go through: shipping information, billing information and credit card information These pages vary from one website to another depending on its business needs.
On the last part of the checking-out process, designers are used to add “Order Confirmation” and this is where usually the problem occur. Clicking the Order Confirmation button will means that the user’s order will be processed along with the payment. But some users don’t click the button because they think this is just an extra useless step or it is not outright visible to the user. This will result to getting a call from the customer complaining about not receiving the order and probably you’ll lose a customer. For sure that’s the last thing anyone would want to happen.
What can be done is to add “Review information and order confirmation”. This way users will need to click on the button at the end of the page after placing his order and his personal details. Same thing should be done to the button and have it renamed to “Review and Confirm”. Renaming the button and the title of the page is to make sure users will click on the button not only to confirm orders but to verify their information that was entered.
Pagination problem
Another mistake mostly overlooked is the number of pages on your website. If you own an e-commerce website which offers lots of products, then you may display 20 items per page and that’s okay. The problem happens when you have so many pages because users don’t like to go through so many pages.
Another mistake mostly overlooked is the number of pages on your website. If you own an e-commerce website which offers lots of products, then you may display 20 items per page and that’s okay. The problem happens when you have so many pages because users don’t like to go through so many pages.
Like the new Google images search, instead of adding 20 item per page you can let your users scroll down and when they reach the end of the 20 items of your website, the page will load another 20 for them, but in this case your designer will need to ask the web development team to do this for him since it needs to be done with Ajax. You can display all your items in one page if you don’t have a dynamic website.
On-Site Search Engine
Huge numbers of e-commerce websites search engine are not working properly. Instead, they work on optimizing their website for search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and they forget about the search engine of the website itself.
Huge numbers of e-commerce websites search engine are not working properly. Instead, they work on optimizing their website for search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and they forget about the search engine of the website itself.
There are three types of visitors who access your website:
The Browsers: These types of visitors are just browsing your website looking for anything interesting that they might buy. It is preferred to offer them a deal before they leave like a hidden link for a discount or a promotional ad. These types of customers prefer to browse all your items in one place so work on your pagination to avoid losing them.
The Shopper: The Shopper is a visitor who’s looking for a product and found it through the search engine. Ideally, the best result when a user click on a link should be a landing page for your product. If it’s not, your visitor will just hit the back button to look for the next result on the search engine.
The Searcher: The Searchers are the time conservative visitors who just go straight to the search engine of your website to look out for a specific product. If your search engine cannot find what they’re looking for then you just lost another customer.
There is little to nothing you can do about the first two types of visitors but the real challenge will be for the third type of visitors. If a user typed something in the search engine of your website and it returns a response saying that the search query cannot be found, then almost an instant the visitor will leave. The same goes even though you have the item but the customer spelled it incorrectly so you should make your filters as flexible as possible.
Make sure to update the search query of your website after you acquire a big list of search queries that were made on it. Add each keyword to its related product just in case another customer types the same word onto your search engine.
Refine the mistaken search queries that were made on your website’s search engine. You can see an example of that from Google wherein you may type a wrong word and then Google makes a search suggestion. This is most likely what your website should include because many users get the spelling of the terms wrongly.
Conclusion
The bottom line is, while doing your e-commerce design; make sure that any modification you make is for your own good. This will make you more money and improve your conversion rate. You must check your analytics report to get the most useful information about how visitors act on your website.
The bottom line is, while doing your e-commerce design; make sure that any modification you make is for your own good. This will make you more money and improve your conversion rate. You must check your analytics report to get the most useful information about how visitors act on your website.
If you do have problems with your checkout steps or the on-site search engine; start working on it immediately because this will get you to lose more in the end. That’s why you need to be careful in choosing a web design company or professional designer who will take your website to the top.
- Alexaporn - XXX (+18) Search!
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