I talk about the importance of Google Reviews all the time. If you read my newsletter, you know that reviews are a huge deciding factor for prospective clients when it comes to finding the right business. By reading reviews left by other customers, you can get a sense of what a business is like before you even step foot inside. Did you know that you can actually embed Google Reviews directly onto your own website or to your social media? It’s a great way to showcase your positive reviews and encourage others to leave their own.
If you are proud of your reviews, and I hope you are all, there are several different plugins that can be connected to your website and show your reviews like this.
With the variation of these tools, you can easily showcase your positive reviews and build trust with potential customers who visit your website or social media page.
Remember to encourage your customers to leave reviews and respond to any negative ones in a professional and helpful manner. Happy reviewing!
I hear clients especially service providers and trade businesses complain about having difficulty getting clients’ reviews. So there is a trick to get more reviews easily.
Generate a QR code, and keep it on your phone as an image, or print it on a special business card, or add it to your last invoice. Scanning an image, that brings up your review page makes it easy to do it. i am sure your clients are happy with your service and would be happy to leave you a review but they are busy and forget it. So let’s make it as convenient as possible.
This is a short video on how to generate the QR code. Let me know if you have any questions or need help!
A privacy policy is an important legal document that outlines how a website collects, uses, and protects user data. While it may not be legally required for all websites, having a privacy policy in place can offer several advantages for businesses, including building trust with customers, ensuring compliance with regulations, and reducing liability.
Personal data, that most average small business collects through their website, includes names, phone number, email address, and mailing address, an e-commerce website collects payment information, billing and delivery addresses.
Advantages of Having a Privacy Policy
Build Trust
One of the key benefits of having a policy on the website is that it can build customer trust. According to a survey 91% of Americans agree that people have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by all kinds of entities. Being transparent towards users is the most essential factor. Showing your clients a clear picture of why and how you use their information.
Being transparent towards your users is possibly the most important moral reason. Providing your clients and customers with a clear picture of why and how you process their personal data makes them feel secure.
Make more Profit and Money
Making more money is a top priority for every business. One of the most effective ways to achieve that goal is by ensuring that customers feel secure and protected when they do business with you. By having an up-to-date Privacy Policy in place, you can instill this sense of security in your customers, allowing them to trust you and feel comfortable while doing business with you. Research has proven that people are more likely to take the desired steps on your website or app if they feel assured their personal information will be properly used and not shared without their consent.
Compliance with regulations
Another important advantage of having a policy is that it can ensure compliance with relevant regulations. Depending on your industry and jurisdiction, you may be required by law to have a privacy policy in place. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union mandates that all websites that collect user data must have a privacy policy that complies with the regulation’s requirements.
Additionally, having a privacy policy can demonstrate professionalism and help to reduce liability. By having a clear and comprehensive privacy policy in place, business owners can show that they take user privacy seriously and are committed to responsible data practices. This can be especially important for companies that rely on user data to provide personalized services, such as e-commerce sites or social media platforms.
When creating a privacy policy, it’s important to include key information about how user data is collected, used, and protected. This can include details about the types of information collected, how information is used, disclosure of information to third parties, security measures in place, and user rights. According to the Federal Trade Commission, a privacy policy should be “clear, conspicuous, and easy to read and understand.”
Consequences of Not Having a Privacy Policy
Not having a privacy policy in place can have serious consequences for businesses, including legal ramifications, loss of customer trust, negative impact on business reputation, and potential loss of revenue. In some cases, failure to comply with relevant regulations can result in significant fines and legal fees. For example, in 2019, the FTC fined Facebook $5 billion for violating its 2011 consent decree related to user privacy.
Creating a Privacy Policy
Creating a privacy policy, a legal agreement can be a complex and time-consuming process. While hiring a lawyer to draft a policy can be expensive, there are several resources available to businesses that can help simplify the process. These include privacy policy generators and customizable templates that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of a business.
Conclusion
In today’s digital age, user privacy is more important than ever before. Having a privacy policy in place is a crucial step in protecting user data and building trust with customers. By understanding the advantages of having a privacy policy and taking steps to create one, businesses can establish themselves as responsible and trustworthy organizations in the eyes of their customers.
Small business Hassle-free solution for Policies
If you’re looking for a hassle-free solution to creating a privacy policy for your website, Turek Design can help. I learned it from my own experience the importance of legal documents, and how difficult and expensive it can be. So I searched for a easy and affordable way to create a privacy policy that meets my client’s specific needs. And i found a solution that is good and affordable.
Is it better to Have a Contact form or to display an email address?
The entire point of having a website is for visitors to contact you and become your client. In order for them to contact you, you should provide a way to do so on your website.
Are you wondering whether you should use a contact form or display a simple email address?
Both methods can work, but here are some reasons why a contact form could be better.
It looks professional
It can send emails to several accounts
It hides your email address, so you get less spam 🙂
Visitors can contact you from your website directly
You can connect your form to an email list
It can collect valuable information
Look professional
The most common features on websites are contact forms. No matter how small the company, they likely have a contact form.
Could send emails to several accounts
Multiple email addresses can be added to the form to receive emails. This is useful for bigger teams so that the right people get notified immediately.
Hide your email address
Showing a plain email address on your website is asking for spam. Who wants to do that?
Spambots search the internet for email addresses to add to their mailing list by recognizing the @ symbol. A contact form safeguards your email address and lets you add additional spam prevention measures like Google reCaptcha. (you know, the find the traffic lights kind of things)
Visitors can reach out from your website directly
With a contact form, all a user has to do is fill out the form and click the submit button.
If you display an email address, the user has to copy it into an email software before writing a message.
You can connect your form to an email list
If a user sends you an email, they can also request to be added to your email list so it can grow. Who does not want to do that?
Collect valuable information
This is my favorite benefit of a contact form. You can have a form that asks for more than just the name and message. Some of the questions I ask prospective clients on my website’s contact form are:
How did they find my website?
How long have they been in business?
Do they have a website already?
Are they a local business?
What type of service are they interested in?
I believe that the more you learn about a prospective client before the first phone call, the better.
Recently, I created a website for a local construction company where the contact form filters prospective clients based on their location, project size, and budget, saving the owner a lot of time with clients not in his target audience.
Conclusion
Are you now convinced that you need a contact form? All website platforms—Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, or WordPress—offer contact forms nowadays to easily add to your site. WordPress provides plenty of different plugins for both simple and complicated forms.
Next time I will post about where to place the Contact forms. Stay tuned!
Did you know that I offer Website Evaluation? I take your not-money-making website apart, find the issues, and explain how to fix them DIY.
A
few months ago I had to remind myself of the
“Not Everyone is a Client” Rule and turn down someone who was interested
in working with me using both my website design and local SEO services.
A man called looking for a web designer and SEO person to help him with his new business. He found Turek Design on Google, saw the positive reviews and that motivated him to call. I spent time learning about his business and looking through his website. The site had just gone live and had good content, layout, and service pages.
Client Expectations
We met. He was a pleasant man, full of great ideas, hard-working, and ambitious. However, it was clear he was expecting too much too quickly. He was upset. His business was new and he was trying to break into a competitive, well-established market. His website was about a couple of weeks old and had not provided him with any new leads. And his site did not appear when people searched for keywords relating to the business. That was the reason he started looking for SEO help.
I looked at the site and it was okay – not perfect – but above average.
I knew I could help him. The issue was that his expectations were way too high. He wanted to get a Google ranking in a highly competitive market in a short period of time.
SEO Reality
I told him that what he was asking was not something that I could fulfill. I tried to explain but he had different ideas. The meeting ended in an odd way when he insisted that I help him while I tried to explain that his expectations were unreasonable and not achievable.
I take my job seriously and always
respect my clients. If I can make a website better I say it, but if what they
have is not doable, I tell them that too.
I told him what I could offer. He listened but kept repeating his expectations for ranking faster on Google. There are solutions to get to the first page quickly (like Google Ads) but I do not offer that service. What I could provide takes time and patience, but would achieve results.
Is it OK say NO
I like to help people.
It is my business.
But I don’t like to disappoint or promise and not fulfill.
I also don’t like to tell people that I can’t do something.
But many times hopes and reality are different.
I know what I do and I know how long it takes to see results.
This man trusted me but did not want to listen to me.
I had to tell him that I could not accept him as a client because sooner or later he would be disappointed in not seeing the fast results he had hoped for.
I felt badly refusing to work with him, but in the long run it was for the best.
Not everybody is a good fit for my business. My services do not fit every client’s needs.
Being a solopreneur has the advantage that I can choose who I want to work with and who to partner with. Working with clients who are not a good fit drains my energy because we don’t have the same priorities and – in turn – cannot work towards a common goal. I take my time to get to knowclients via personal meetings or phone calls. My clients are all hard-working, passionate people with whom I can share mutual respect.
We all have to learn from experience when to say no. It’s worth much more to focus on those few people who you can work with easily and respect. Those are the people who boost your energy, those are the people who appreciate your opinions, and you can feel happy helping them to succeed in their businesses.
Respect yourself (and your clients) by choosing the people you know you work well with.
Did you receive an email from Google saying that some of your web pages were not indexed? I get this question a lot, and most people are scared because they feel that it means that the search engine will no longer show their website. Let me explain what is behind it…
Have you ever worried about the no-index page on Google Search Console? A new client who just started using the Google Search Console emailed, asking if non-indexed pages would prevent her website’s ranking on Google. As web designers and SEO expert, I often rely on…
Massage therapy is saturated market in the MetroWest area. An established business needed a website redesign to send out and grow its online visibility
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