If you’re running a business, then you need to be taking payments online. It’s as simple as that. These days, people expect to be able to buy things online with the click of a button, and if you don’t have a payment gateway or booking form on your website, you’re going to lose out on sales. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the 10 main reasons why you need to start accepting payments online.
1) E-commerce is growing at an unprecedented rate
The e-commerce industry is booming, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. In 2019, global e-commerce sales reached $3.5 trillion, and they’re expected to reach $6.54 trillion by 2022. That means that if you’re not selling online, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
2) Your competitors are probably taking payments online
If you’re not taking payments online, then your competitors probably are. And that means that you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to winning customers. People are used to being able to buy things online, so if they can’t do that from your website, they’ll go to one of your competitors who does offer that option.
3) You’ll make more sales if you take payments online
It’s simple – if you make it easy for people to buy from you, they’re more likely to do so. When people have to leave your website and go through the hassle of setting up a payment method, they’re much less likely to actually complete the purchase. But if you have a payment gateway or booking form on your site, they can complete the purchase quickly and easily, without having to leave your site.
4) You’ll save money by taking payments online
Taking payments online is actually cheaper than taking payments offline. That’s because you don’t have to worry about the cost of things like processing fees, paper invoices, or postage. And, if you’re using a payment gateway like PayPal or Stripe, you don’t even have to pay for a merchant account.
5) You’ll get paid faster when you take payments online
If you’re used to getting paid by cheque or bank transfer, then you know that it can take a long time for the money to actually reach your account. But when you take payments online, the money is transferred instantly – which means you can get your hands on it much faster.
6) You need to meet your customers where they are
These days, people are doing more and more of their shopping online. In fact, nearly 60% of millennials say they prefer to shop online rather than in brick-and-mortar stores. If you want to stay competitive, you need to meet your customers where they are – and that means taking payments online.
7) You’ll get paid in the currency of your choice
When you take payments online, you can choose to be paid in whatever currency you want. That’s because most payment processors, like PayPal and Stripe, allow you to specify which currency you want to be paid in. So, if you’re selling to an international market, this is a great way to ensure that you get paid in your preferred currency.
8) You can automate your invoicing and billing
When you take payments online, you can also automate your invoicing and billing process. That means that you don’t have to waste time sending out invoices manually – it can all be done automatically. And, if you’re using a payment gateway like PayPal or Stripe, you can even set up recurring payments, so that your customers are automatically billed on a regular basis.
9) You’ll have more time to focus on your business
When you take payments online, it frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business. Instead of having to deal with invoicing, billing, and payments, you can use that time to grow your business in other ways.
10) You can scale your business more easily
If you’re taking payments offline, then it’s much harder to scale your business. That’s because each new customer requires additional manual processing – which can be very time-consuming. But when you take payments online, it’s much easier to scale your business, because the process is automated and can be easily scaled up to accommodate more customers.
What is the process to convert your standard website into a converting e-commerce powerhouse?
If you want to convert your website into an e-commerce powerhouse, there are a few key steps you need to take:
1) Choose the right platform. There are a lot of different e-commerce platforms out there, so it’s important to choose one that’s right for your business. If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at our comparison of the top e-commerce platforms. Below is a list of some of the more popular e-commerce platforms:
2) Select a payment gateway. Once you’ve chosen your e-commerce platform, the next step is to select a payment gateway. This is what will actually process the payments made by your customers. There are many different payment gateways to choose from, so it’s important to do your research and select one that’s right for your business. Below is a list of some of the more popular payment gateways:
3) Set up your e-commerce store. The next step is to actually set up your e-commerce store. This includes adding products, setting up shipping and tax rates, and configuring your payment gateway. If you’re using a platform like Shopify, they have a handy guide that walks you through the process step-by-step.
4) Drive traffic to your e-commerce store. Once your e-commerce store is up and running, the next step is to start driving traffic to it. This can be done through a variety of marketing channels, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media, and email marketing.
5) Convert your visitors into customers. The final step is to convert your visitors into paying customers. This is where having a well-designed e-commerce store and compelling product descriptions comes in handy. If you’re not sure how to do this, we have a few articles that can help:
6 Ways to Optimize Your Ecommerce Checkout Process
10 Tips for Creating Compelling Product Descriptions
7 Psychological Triggers that Win Sales and Influence Customers
By following these steps, you can convert your standard website into an e-commerce powerhouse that generates sales and drives growth for your business.
Taking payments online is a great way to grow your business. Not only will you make more sales, but you’ll also save time and money.
So there you have it – 10 good reasons to start taking payments online. If you’re not already doing so, then now is the time to get started. Your business will thank you for it!
If you want to start taking payments or bookings online, use the ‘Get a quote’ button in the header of this page to book your free consultation. We offer web design services in Squamish, Website design Whistler, Web design Vancouver, web design Victoria and website design in Canada.
We also offer e-commerce web design and lead funnel web design. We would love to help you take your business to the next level and focus on lead conversions.
Are you looking for a reliable and experienced web design company in Vancouver, BC? Look no further than our team of experts at Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver. We offer a wide range of website design and development services, as well as search engine optimization (SEO) services that will help your business rank higher on Google and other major search engines. We have years of experience working with businesses in Vancouver and across Canada, and we are confident that we can help you create a website that not only looks great, but also generates more leads and sales for your business.
We wanted to take a moment to answer some of the more common questions when it comes to website design.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website for Google and other major search engines. The goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of a website in the search engine results pages (SERPs), with the ultimate goal of generating more traffic and leads for the business.
In addition to our web design services, we also offer SEO services that are designed to help your website rank higher on Google and other major search engines. Our team of SEO experts will work with you to identify the best keywords for your business and then help you optimize your website around those keywords.
What are some common features of a successful website?
A successful website must be designed with your target audience in mind. It should be easy to navigate, visually appealing, and contain relevant and well-written content that addresses the needs of your target customers. In addition, a successful website must be properly optimized for search engines in order to rank higher in the SERPs.
What Makes a good website design?
A good website design must take into account many factors such as the target audience, the purpose of the website, the products or services being offered, and the overall branding of the business. At Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver, we have years of experience designing and developing websites for businesses in Vancouver and across Canada. We will work with you to understand your specific needs and then create a custom website design that meets those needs.
What is UX (user experience)?
UX is short for user experience, and it refers to the overall experience that a person has when using a website or app. A good UX must take into account many factors such as ease of use, navigation, and overall design. At Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver, we focus on creating a positive UX for all of our clients.
What is responsive design?
Responsive design is an approach to web design that allows websites to be viewed on multiple devices with different screen sizes. In order to create a responsive website design, developers must use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create websites that adapt to the different screen sizes.
What is a content management system (CMS)?
A content management system (CMS) is a software application that allows users to create, edit, and publish content on the web. WordPress is one of the most popular CMS platforms, and it powers millions of websites around the world.
What are some common website design mistakes?
Some common website design mistakes include using too much text, having a cluttered layout, and using low-quality images. At Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver, we avoid these mistakes by carefully planning out each website design before we start designing.
How much does a website cost?
The cost of a website depends on many factors such as the size of the website, the number of pages, the level of customization, and the services being used.
In general, a basic website can start as low as $500, while a more complex website can cost upwards of $5,000+.
What are the benefits of having a website?
Some of the benefits of having a website include increased visibility for your business, the ability to reach new customers, and improved brand awareness. A website can also help you generate leads and sales for your business.
When it comes to website design, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The best website design for your business will depend on many factors such as your target audience, the purpose of the website, the products or services being offered, and the overall branding of the business. At Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver, we have years of experience designing and developing websites for businesses in Vancouver and across Canada. We will work with you to understand your specific needs and then create a custom website design that meets those needs.
Why Choose Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver?
There are many web design companies in Vancouver, but not all of them are created equal. When you choose Black Tusk Web Design Vancouver, you can rest assured knowing that you are working with a team of experienced and professional web designers who are dedicated to helping your business succeed online. We offer a wide range of services, including web design, web development, and SEO, and we are confident that we can help you achieve your online goals.
If you are interested in learning more about our web design services or if you would like to get started on your new website, contact us today. We would be happy to discuss your project with you and provide you with a free quote. Just click the ‘Get a Quote’ button in the header of this page to book your free consultation today.
No one can stand a slow website. Not me or any of the 90% of other internet users with attention spans shorter than that of a goldfish who are more likely to bounce if your website pages don’t load up within the first five (5) seconds. (Google)
Slow website loading speed decreases your chances of generating leads and making sales from your share of web traffic. In this post, we’ll uncover five of the common culprits responsible for the reasons why your website loads at a snail pace. We’ll also shed the light on how you can turn up the speed so it loads as fast as possible.
The problem with hosting is that it can doom your website to perpetually slow loading times even before you have an actual website.
So, before writing the first line of code, you want to make sure your website is hosted on a high-quality hosting service provider. Doing this will help you avoid slow loading, low SEO ranking chances, and the poor user experience that comes with browsing on slow websites.
2. Heavy and unclean codes
Are the source codes on your website absurdly heavy, messy, or unclear? All of these can significantly impact how fast your website loads. So, you know your website deserves better than some poorly written codes.
Any web design or development expert worth their weight will appreciate the importance of having clean and user-focused codes on a website’s speed and performance.
3. Not using good caching techniques
Caching techniques help make content readily and easily available to read for users.
The key basis of this involves storing the data on the computer that needs to read the information rather than having to read such information directly from the original source. Caching, when done right, will significantly help boost your website speed.
4. Unoptimized images and media content
Unoptimized media content can take a toll on your website speed, especially if you own an image-heavy website.
While it makes sense to complement your written content with enough images, audio, video, etc, not properly optimizing these media files as far as sizes are concerned can slow down your website loading speed.
5. Not using a content delivery network (CDN)
CDN helps cache content in multiple locations around the world.
By storing these caches closer to website users, the time it takes to render on their device is significantly cut short. While having this set up can help supercharge your website speed, not having one in place can mean slow loading times.
6. Too many plugins
Plugins help improve the functionality of websites.
But like every good thing, too much of it can impact your website speed. Along with slow website loading speeds, having too many plugins installed on your website can put your website at risk of website crashes, and security breaches, among others. So, it’s always better to stick to the few you really need.
7. Code bloated WordPress themes
One of the best things about WordPress is how easy it can be set up. There are thousands of both free and paid themes that you can consider when building your website. The problem with some of these themes, however, is that they might be poorly built. WordPress themes with bloated codes can mean slow-loading pages and poor user experience for your users, among other things.
Conclusion
There are a million and one reasons why you need to take your website loading speed more seriously. Aside from the obvious poor user experience on your website that could significantly impact your website’s lead generation and sales conversion chances, website speed is also a key SEO ranking factor that could impact your website’s visibility on search engines.
From choosing the right hosting provider to ensuring clean and clear codes, among other things, getting your website to load as fast as possible (great if it loads under 3 seconds!) can help make a world of difference on how well your website can support your business’s strategic digital goals.
And this is not just an assertion. It’s a statement backed by enough stats and evidence. According to KissMetrics, the average website visitor expects your website to load in less than two seconds. If it’s taking more than three, as much as 40% may abandon the process!
You’ve not spent all of that money on building a website to let prospective customers leave even before they’ve transacted with your business. Here are three reasons your website is loading too slowly, with recommendations for tremendous improvements;
Web hosting plan or provider may affect site speed
Everything from the type of hard drive your hosting provider offers (SSD or HDD) to the available RAM and bandwidth can impact how fast your website loads. GoDaddy website hosting, for instance, has a reputation for being slow. SiteGround, on the other hand, is believed to be much faster, as well.
The same also plays out with the type of hosting plan your website uses. Shared web hosting plans are known for their low-cost prices. But since you have to share server resources with a lot of other websites, your website may experience occasional slowdowns at times.
A dedicated server, on the other hand, gives you better control of resource allocation. If you’re committed to genuinely improving your website speed, this type of hosting plan guarantees the best balance between performance and affordability.
Image sizing and page speed
Images are a double-edged sword. They can make or break your website.
If served properly, they could help convey your idea, support your story, and even make your brand more relatable. But serving up improperly sized images may have less desirable results.
Reducing image file sizes to fit the space where the picture will be on your website can help immensely. Light images, compared to heavy image file sizes, will take up less space on your website. Consequently, this will reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred when customers visit your website.
The benefits extend beyond just making your website lighter. This guarantees better website speed performance and better user experience, all while still improving SEO.
Plugins and website loading speed
Plugins help enhance the functionality of WordPress websites.
While too many plugins might end up slowing down your website speed, some of the best plugins are well-built enough that you won’t experience any significant lag in speed. Still, there are some plugins purposely designed to help websites boost their page loading speeds.
WordPress plugins like SG optimizer, WP Rocket, and more are some of the best WordPress caching plugins you might want to consider for speed optimization.
More visitors will keep on abandoning your website if it’s taking forever before they can find what they need or do what they want. This will end up reducing the average time spent on your website while significantly increasing your bounce rate.
For Google, as well as your users, a seamless website user experience is non-negotiable. The more users leave your site, the stronger the signal this sends to Google that your website does not offer enough value and relevance to visitors. This will consequently, send your website page rankings further down the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
If you want to build a wicked fast website, your website hosting and design processes need to tick all of the boxes at the right places. And if there’s anyone you can trust to help you achieve this, the professionals here at Black Tusk Web are more than capable.
Black Tusk Web website design
Black Tusk Web offer website design services for businesses in Squamish, Whistler, Vancouver, and beyond. We use SiteGround dedicated hosting services to ensure your website has all it needs to maintain functioning at incredible speed. We also use reliable plugins from reputable outlets, such as the SG optimizer plugin, among other things.
The expert web design professionals at Black Tusk Web will help you build a high-speed, high-converting business website. With our services, you can easily avoid the pain of slow loading website pages while being sure that your website won’t constantly be crashing down.
5 Compelling Reasons You Need a Better Website Now!
A professional website gives your business instant global and local presence which can help you build social proof and boost your brand credibility. According to reliable data from Google, as much as 63% of shopping occasions now start online.
If we’re being honest, then having a business website is a non-negotiable necessity for any growth-driven business in this age. However, there are a million and one reasons why you need a better than an average website. Below are five such reasons;
1. Take advantage of the coronavirus-induced shift in shopping behaviour
Since the first identified cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the novel coronavirus has spread across different continents leaving nothing but chaos behind. Despite the huge health and economic impact of the COVID-19, the crisis has triggered a major shift in human behaviour.
Everything has changed and social distancing is now the new normal. Here a few statistics that explain the situation better.
There’s a mindset shift currently happening concerning consumer behaviour.
Countries around the world are imposing different lockdown measures to curtail the coronavirus. Therefore, Health agencies have recommended social distancing, among other measures to reduce the spread. More people are now shopping online than ever.
Having a professional website is fundamental to maintaining a solid internet presence. Businesses that want to maintain resilience and drive growth in these challenging times need to be positioned right where the audience can find them.
2. Being ‘searchable’ helps you reach your target audience more easily
Having a beautiful website is good. What’s also important is ensuring your website gets found easily by your customers and prospective customers. In our post on what makes a great website design, we emphasized the critical role of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In the same way, Proper SEO should be at the core of your website design strategy to help you get found easily by searchers. When your website is able to garner higher SERP rankings (search engine results pages), you can rest assured that your business’s credibility, visibility, and marketing will also benefit significantly.
3. Your business website reflects your brand
Are you proud of your business website?
Does it do a great job of reflecting your company’s brand identity?
These are important questions because most people are going to equate your website to your business. About 88% of B2B customers referenced high-quality information in regards to their recent purchase decisions, according to a recent Gartner survey.
So, regardless of your industry, your business website should tick the boxes in the right places. In many cases, it will be your best chance to make a first impression.
You can’t afford to lose potential customers if you want to sustain business growth.
Everything from aesthetics to layout, website colour tones, information, and more, should, therefore, be top-notch and up to date. This is important to create a positive brand perception, that builds trust with prospects, converts acquired leads, and ultimately impact your business’s bottom line.
4. Your business website must be functional
You need more than just fancy web design. Your business website should be crisp, highly functional, and fully responsive to get customers on board.
This can mean navigating UI and UX in web design to ensure optimal functionality. It could also mean incorporating website features to greatly improve functionality. These features could include sophisticated web forms to boost conversions, online payment systems for products, services, and subscriptions, as well as proper booking systems as more customers want to take care of these processes online instead of in person.
All of these and more will be needed to make it easy for current clients and prospective customers to transact with your business on your website.
5. User experience impacts sales
Are customers enjoying the experience on your website?
You need to deliver a frictionless user experience for customers on your website as this can impact sales and conversion. Things such as minimizing clicks, for instance, can help to reduce user frustration. This can help with navigation and reduce the amount of time and effort it takes the average user to find information or get things done.
There’s also the DISC personality analysis as well, which should also be factored into your web design to help you design a better website for your audience (clients) based on their different personality traits. The DISC tool helps identify differences in personality by considering your audience (clients) as one of the four possible personality profiles.
Who’s your audience?
Dominance
Clients that fall into this audience class just want results and are straight to the point. They can be quite blunt and not shy to take on challenges.
Influence
This audience class prioritizes relationships and more likely to influence others. They’re quite enthusiastic and optimistic but hate to be ignored.
Calmness
Personality traits for this audience include being calm in their approach, being more supportive, sincere, and cooperative but hates being rushed.
Conscientiousness
This audience emphasizes quality and competency above all else. They’re not scared to be wrong, prefer getting full details and reasons objectively.
You’ll have to weigh up your audience with the DISC assessment tool to discover your audience’s viability and uniqueness as well as improve your chance of success by designing a website that best suits your target audience.
Overall, a great website design strategy should have user experience as one of its major objectives. Along with DISC analysis and clicks minimization, a user-centred website should consider;
Using graphic elements, proper layout, text, and interactive elements in synergy to create memorable experiences; and
Leveraging design creativity and consistency to achieve optimal clarity and simplicity to make the website easy to use.
Finally
It’s clear that while you need a business website, a poorly-designed website won’t cut it. Not only can this be a waste of time, but it could also ruin your company’s chances when it comes to brand perception, building credibility, generating leads, and maximizing conversion.
If you’re contemplating building a website that perfectly fits and promotes your brand identity, then the experts at Black Tusk Web will be more than happy to help.
Our teams of web designers, brand design experts, content writing professionals, and SEO gurus are the right mix you need to build websites that clients will find useful, usable, and desirable. The Black Tusk Web team uses an effective project management system that helps us streamline communication, level up the performance of our web design team that effectively takes the burden of website design off our clients.
Want to build a robust online presence?
The Black Tusk web design team will help you build a professional business website that’s not just an interface between your brand and its customers, but one that will help foster the kind of interactions and experiences needed to make your business and its products or services hugely successful.
You’ve decided you need to build an online presence for your company. Congrats! It makes sense that you want to start with building a professional-looking website. You’ve realized just how much this can mean for your marketing as well as business sales & conversion. The only problem now is; your head is spinning with too many options & you just can’t decide which website builder to use. Should you stick to WordPress? Are you tempted to try what Squarespace or Wix might offer? We understand your dilemma & this guide on WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace has been compiled to help you make the best decision.
WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: Overview
These three are unarguably the biggest website builders out there. All three have a lot of similarities as well as differences that account for their unique strengths & weaknesses. We’ll briefly touch the main points below;
*Let’s start with Squarespace;
Squarespace’s target audience is basically website builders without any coding skills.
The purpose of the platform is to make website building simple stupid such that anyone can build their own website without having to write a single letter of code. While this sounds great & truly quite great to an extent, the need for this level of simplicity has led to a ‘watered down’ & ‘walled garden’ approach to ensure the quality & functionality of Squarespace’s over 3.6 million websites.
*Then, there’s Wix also;
Another cloud-based website building platform for people who want to build websites without coding.
Wix holds 2.3% of the CMS market & powers 1.3% of all websites on the web. To begin with, you’ll want to use one or two of the main ways most people use to set up a Wix Website. Either you use the ‘Wix Editor’ mode where you pick a template & then add the content or you go the ‘Wix ADI’ mode route.
The ‘Wix ADI’ is the short form for Wix Artificial Design Intelligence. This method builds your website with little to no input from you just by asking you a few questions & then using publicly-available information about your business. Both methods are aimed at people with no coding or web development skills. But there’s also a ‘Wix Corvid’ (this has nothing to do with COVID-19 lol!).
The Corvid mode offers the greatest functionality of all three methods but actually requires significant website coding skills.
*WordPress -the crowd favorite!
WordPress has got a tight grip on the website building niche of the digital industry.
This platform has the largest share (60.8%) of the CMS market, powering about 34% of all the websites in the world, including some of the biggest brands & corporations. While WordPress has two main forms, a hosted version, & another self-hosted version, the latter will be our reference for our comparison.
WordPress; much like Wix & Squarespace is aimed at users with little to no coding skills.
But unlike the others, it also allows room for users to make extensive customizations for more functionalities than either Wix or Squarespace. The WordPress platform can be used to build websites of all types from creating blogs to building ecommerce websites, portfolio websites, professional business websites, etc. There are also tons of plugins to help improve functionality, as well.
WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: Who wins?
WordPress will come out on top in this battle of WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace.
There are currently more than 55,000 plugins in the WordPress directory with loads of features & benefits for WordPress websites. These serve a wide range of purposes from Search Engine Optimization to security & more.
While you may be tempted to take on the WordPress website building process. it would most likely require a bit or in some cases, extensive knowledge of web development. Even in cases where this demand might be minimal, it could take you like forever to get a grip on how to piece the most basic parts together.
You’ll have to decide whether all of this time & commitment are really worth it for you though.
But in most cases, you’ll be better off hiring a professional website designer to handle the process, regardless of whether you eventually go for WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace.
Need to design highly-converting websites for your business?
You can leverage our expertise & experience at the Black Tusk Web to help you build a website that’s fitting for your brand. Contact us to get started today? We’ll be more than happy to help
