According to recent statistics, nearly 80% of the United States purchased something online in the past year. That's nearly 263 million people regularly making purchases using eCommerce solutions instead of brick-and-mortar shops to purchase products, and that number is expected to continue to climb throughout the 2020s. In addition to single purchases, though, a 2022 study has identified that the percentage of Americans who prefer online shopping over an in-person alternative is now 56.6%, about a 10% increase over 2020's numbers. 

One of the tenets of a strong website marketing strategy includes a fair amount of work in Search Engine Optimization: the process of making your website more attractive to search engines and the people using them. SEO is still the end all, be all of search engine ranking, however some seemingly recent changes have made even more apparent the need to augment strong SEO with other methods of search ranking. Some of us have noticed around the office that Search ads on specific queries are displaying in larger quantities, sometimes going as far as pushing all organic results "below the fold."

As the business landscape changes and affects things like the supply chain, consumer interest, and technology, you may find that your business has new offerings or services that no longer match the branding your company started with. When that happens strongly enough, it might become necessary to look to a rebranding or repositioning strategy to ensure your company's branding aligns with consumer expectations. In addition to tightening up company branding outside of cyberspace, aligning your business website to your new brand might be required as well. But how far can you go? We've put together a list of several things to consider before you change your website's domain.

In our previous blog we described the different types of ads and some of the ways they can be sent out to your audience. When coming up with a plan for sending out blogs, a few things are important to keep in mind: targeting, reach, and budget. Balancing the first two against the third can be troublesome, but you're not alone. The Technical Resource Solutions team is here to work with you to plan out and set up your ad campaigns to ensure that your budget is being spent as efficiently as it can be.

Advertisements on the internet have been around almost as long as the World Wide Web itself. Whether you're looking for information on your favorite search engine, pulling up a favorite music video, or corresponding with old friends on social media, it's likely the first thing you see when attempting to do any of those things is an advertisement. While your first reaction might be one of annoyance, nearly everyone has a memory of a particular ad that caught their eye, or even that led to a purchase.

Digital advertisements are one of the best ways of interacting with an audience that you may not have ever interacted with otherwise, but the road map for accessing those audiences, thanks to the ubiquity of the internet, is becoming progressively less clear. To help with that, Technical Resource Solutions has put together a short primer on digital ads, their utility, and some frequently asked questions!

Any business owner knows that data can be a powerful thing. Tracking sales can help you optimize inventory, find upselling opportunities, and companion items to increase your average order value. Research data following customers' eyes as they peruse store aisles informs on what shelf real estate is more valuable for brands. Tracking customer movement in and out of the store can help you determine what hours are best to stay open, and what hours are best to schedule additional staff.

The same can be said of your digital marketing presence. If all you do is post occasionally on a Facebook page or sending out emails to your list of clients without checking the data first, you might be leaving a huge source of potential revenue untapped. 

You may be surprised to know that making a website available to others online isn't simply a matter of "putting it up," but is instead a chain of interlocking pieces that contribute to the function of a whole. Between hosting, domain names, DNS settings, nameservers, and more, each of these pieces combine to create the larger puzzle that makes your website accessible to others on the internet. 

As an internet user, you've likely heard some of the recent discourse over web privacy, tracking, and changes regarding those topics. Last year, Safari took the first step in blocking third-party cookies, and now other internet browsers are following suit. The death of the third-party cookie is a pivotal moment in the history of internet usage and in the history of internet privacy, but their nebulous description and wide variety of usages has left some in the dark about what cookies actually are.

So, what are cookies, and what are they for?

If you bought a car but never changed the oil, rotated the tires, or completed any other maintenance, that car probably wouldn't last long, would it? Even if it still looked passable from the outside, it would be internally deteriorating and before you know it, your car would be rendered useless. The same could be said for your website if it isn't properly maintained. When it comes to your site, it's not a set it and forget it investment. Due to the ever-evolving nature of technology, updates are constantly being released and if you don't keep up, you will likely get left behind.

Video is a powerful tool that can be utilized in any industry for marketing purposes. Need to put together an explainer video? Advertise your services? Interview an employee on the subject they specialize in? Record an event? Release a how-to video? The possibilities of video marketing are endless, and those that we listed are just a few of the directions you can go in. Our society continues to gravitate towards video content now more than ever. IGTV, reels, Facebook Watch – almost every social media platform has promoted video, and consumers are liking it…