NOTES-UNIT-1

Digital Marketing: Meaning and Types

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the in-
ternet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and
their websites to connect with current and prospective customers.

Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at the
right time. Today, that means you need to meet them where they are already spending time:
on the internet.

Enter digital marketing — in other words, any form of marketing that exists online.

Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect
with customers where they spend much of their time: online. From the website itself to a
business’s online branding assets — digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures,
and beyond — there’s a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of “digital market -
ing.”

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign sup-
ports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, mar-
keters can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.

A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads
from a new ebook the business recently created. The company’s social media marketer might
then help promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business’s social
media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who
download the ebook more information on the company.

Scope and Importance

Digital Marketing industry is booming not just in India but all parts of the world. The year
2016 took the industry by surprise with over 1.5 lakh job opportunities in the Digital Market-
ing domain.

Well, the following was a bigger surprise when only the first quarter of 2017 marked for 8
lakh job opportunities.

The surveys conducted by several forums have predicted this number to grow with Digitalisa-
tion in the nation. Our Prime Minister has been actively promoting the idea of Digital India.
PM Modi’s digital India campaign gained massive popularity. The initiative of Government
of India is aimed at providing easy services to its natives.

Now imagine when a nation’s government is promoting the digital interaction, what do you
think will be the Digital Marketing scope in that nation.
Types of Digital Marketing

We’ve arrived! It’s time to dive head first into 9 types of digital marketing. Types of online
digital marketing include:

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to the process of growing your online visibility in
non-paid (organic) search engine results. SERPs or search engine results pages appear to
users after they search for a given set of keywords using a search engine like Google or Bing.
Each user receives an individualized results page based on keywords, the user’s location at
the time of searching, and their browsing history.

Organic search results appear in a list and are ranked using the search engine’s algorithm. As
users change the way they search and engage with online content, these algorithms change.
The higher you rank on a SERP, the more traffic is directed to your site and the more chances
of making a passive visitor an active customer.

1. Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing or SEM covers the ground SEO ignores, paid traffic from search
engines. With SEM you purchase advertisement space that appears on a user’s SERP. The
most common paid search platform is Google AdWords. Next, is Bing Ads.

The search engine charges a marketer a predetermined amount to display an advertisement in

a number of places on a SERP generated from specific keywords or phrases. One example of
SEM is pay-per-click advertising or PPC. PPC refers to a digital marketing method wherein
search engines charge a company each time their advertisement is clicked.

1. Social Media Marketing

By now you know that social media is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. But do you
know the ins and outs of social media marketing? Social media marketing gives you in-
creased exposure. It allows you to connect with your consumers in a more intimate way.
From this interaction, you can gain valuable customer feedback that allows you to improve
your customer service, product, or service.

Using social media marketing you’ll gain more reach when you post quality content.
Everything you do to increase traffic or business on your social media channels is social me-
dia marketing. Whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or LinkedIn these efforts all
amount to social media marketing.

Most everyone benefits from social media marketing, but B2C companies stand to gain the
most. Pay attention to what your target audience talks about on social media. Engage in the
conversation. Use social media marketing as a way to gauge what content you put out does
well by monitoring shares and likes.
Content Marketing

Content marketing refers to the practice of delivering a quality piece of content to your users
to generate sales and leads. This content can live anywhere online. Tweets, a YouTube video,
and blogs on your website all comprise content marketing. Content Marketing works because
it melds together exceptional content with other types of digital marketing like SEO and So-
cial Media Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing refers to the process of paying for conversions. Think of it like hiring a
sales person for your product or service. That affiliate earns a commission. You determine the
rate for affiliate marketing. You only pay for conversions. This means there is no upfront
cost to affiliate marketing. Many bloggers or e-commerce websites use affiliate marketing.

When you choose to use affiliate marketing ensure that all of your terms and boundaries are
discussed beforehand. The affiliate represents your brand, so you want them to carry your
brand’s message close to them. Think about the kinds of words you want the affiliate to use.
Of course, you need to make the deal work for the affiliate, too.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is among the newer types of digital marketing. Influencer marketing
uses people with an enormous online reach considered experts by your target market to drive
traffic and sales.

Influencer marketing is popular on social media channels like Instagram and Snapchat. Com-
panies hire Instagrammers with large followings to promote their brand by posting one or
more photos with the product. Companies now engage in Instagram or Snapchat “takeovers”
where the hired influence controls the company’s social media platform for a given amount
of time, most often a day. These social media takeovers drive the influencer’s following to
your social media channels increasing your new followers and unique views.

Email Marketing

Email marketing allows you to update your email subscribers on a regular basis about your
company. This fosters a relationship unlike any of the other types of digital marketing. Your
email updates provide value to your consumer. As a result, you build brand trust and brand
loyalty.

The best email marketing campaigns involve a list of subscribers earned by your content and
company, not paid for by your company. People who opt-in to your email subscription prove
more likely to become active buyers.

Viral Marketing
Viral marketing refers to a post of some sort that is trendy, funny, or strange enough to garner
a massive amount of shares online. Viral marketing causes an enormous spike in website
traffic over a short period of time. This is hard to do but the benefits alone make the effort
worth your time.

B2C companies stand to gain the most from viral marketing. B2C companies can use social
media to reach an enormous audience across all of their active platforms.

Mobile Phone Advertising

Each of the types of digital advertising can happen on a mobile device. Some types of mar-
keting using a mobile phone do not fit the above types of digital marketing.

These include SMS advertising which could prove an asset to local marketing efforts. You
can prompt your consumers to use SMS to receive special offers, coupons, and updates from
your company.

Internet Vs. Traditional Marketing Communications

To clarify the terms, the use of print ads on newspapers and magazines is a simple example
of traditional marketing. Other examples include flyers that are put in mailboxes, commer-
cials both on TV and radio and billboards. On the other hand, when a business invests on
building a website, advertising the brand name through different social media such as Face-
book, Twitter and YouTube, this kind strategy is called digital marketing.

Benefits of Traditional Marketing

You can easily reach your target local audience. For example, a radio ad might play in one
location: your city or region. Or mailbox flyers will go to households in a select number of
suburbs.

The materials can be kept. The audience can have a hard copy of materials of which they
can read or browse through over and over again.

It’s easy to understand. It can be easily understood by most people because they are already
exposed to this kind of strategy.

Neuroscience seems to support the benefits of hard copy marketing. A study sponsored
by Canada Post and performed by Canadian neuro-marketing firm TrueImpact compared the
effects of paper marketing (direct mail pieces, in this case) with digital media (email and dis-
play ads).

The technologies used in this study were eye-tracking and high resolution EEG brain wave
measurement. The three key metrics evaluated in the study were cognitive load (ease of un -
derstanding), motivation (persuasiveness), and attention (how long subjects looked at the
content).
Direct mail was easier to process mentally and tested better for brand recall. According to
the report,

Direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media (5.15 vs. 6.37),
suggesting that it is both easier to understand and more memorable. Post-exposure memory
tests validated what the cognitive load test revealed about direct mail’s memory encoding
capabilities. When asked to cite the brand (company name) of an advertisement they had just
seen, recall was 70% higher among participants who were exposed to a direct mail piece
(75%) than a digital ad (44%).

The Downside to Traditional Marketing

There is very little interaction between the medium used and the customers. It is more of
providing information to the public that the brand exists with the hope of these people patron-
izing the brand.

Print or radio advertisements can be very costly. Printing materials can be expensive and
you need to hire people to distribute these.

Results on this marketing strategy cannot easily be measured. Was the campaign success-
ful?

Benefits of Digital Marketing

You can target a local audience, but also an international one. Further, you can tailor a
campaign to specific audience demographics, such as gender, location, age and interests. This
means your campaign will be more effective.

Your audience can choose how they want to receive your content. While one person likes
to read a blog post, another person likes to watch a YouTube video. Traditional marketing
doesn’t give the audience a choice. Most people hate receiving sales flyers in their mailbox or
phone calls at inconvenient times on stuff that they have little interest in. Online people get
the choice to opt in or out of communications and often it is relevant because they were the
ones searching for it in the first place. Don’t underestimate the power of market segmenta-
tion and tailored marketing.

Interaction with your audience is possible with the use of social media networks. In fact,
interaction is encouraged. Traditional marketing methods don’t allow for audience interac-
tion. You can encourage your prospects, clients and followers to take action, visit your web-
site, read about your products and services, rate them, buy them and provide feedback which
is visible to your market.

Digital marketing is cost-efficient. Though some invest on paid ads online; however, the
cost is still cheaper compared to traditional marketing.

Data and results are easily recorded. With Google Analytics and the insights tools offered
by most social media channels, you can check on your campaigns at any time. Unlike tradi-
tional marketing methods, you can see in real time what is or is not working for your business
online and you can adapt very quickly to improve your results.
Level playing field: Any business can compete with any competitor regardless of size with a
solid digital marketing strategy. Traditionally a smaller retailer would struggle to match the
finesse of the fixtures and fittings of its larger competitors. Online, a crisp well thought out
site with a smooth customer journey and fantastic service is king – not size.

Real time results: you don’t have to wait weeks for a boost to your business like you would
have to waiting for a fax or form to be returned. You can see the numbers of visitors to your
site and its subscribers increase, peak trading times, conversion rates and much more at the
touch of a button.

Brand Development: A well maintained website with quality content targeting the needs and
adding value to your target audience can provide significant value and lead generation oppor -
tunities. The same can be said for utilising social media channels and personalised email
marketing.

Viral: how often do your sales flyers get passed around instantly by your customers and pro-
spects? Online, using social media share buttons on your website, email and social media
channels enables your message to be shared incredibly quickly. If you consider the average
Facebook user has 190 friends of which an average of 12% see their liked posts – your one
message has actually been seen by 15 new prospects. Now imagine a number of them also
like and share your message and their friends do the same? That’s why high-quality content
is so important.

So which kind of marketing is better?

Well, we would recommend both. Obviously, we are passionate about digital marketing, be-
cause we know that it works. But we do use traditional marketing materials, too.

A 2009 study conducted by Bangor University and branding agency Millward Brown also
used fMRI to study the different effects of paper and digital media.

Some of their key conclusions were:

 Physical material is more “real” to the brain. It has a meaning, and a place. It is better
connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks.
 Physical material involves more emotional processing, which is important for mem-
ory and brand associations.
 Physical materials produced more brain responses connected with internal feelings,
suggesting greater “internalization” of the ads.

How We Use Both Digital & Traditional Marketing

Our traditional marketing methods support our digital marketing efforts. The two do not oper-
ate in exclusion from each other. But we only use hard copy marketing materials to further
strengthen a relationship with a contact, referral partner or client. We don’t invest in televi-
sion or radio ads, for example, but we will give brochures to someone who is interested in our
services.
Rather than taking an all or nothing approach, it appears that a multi-channel approach that
leverages the unique benefits of paper with the convenience and accessibility of digital will
perform best.

Digital Marketing Process

1. Developing Mission Statement

That is the Organizational Mission Statement to be matched up with Marketing

1. Situational Analysis

Identify the Problems and work on getting solutions.

In order to achieve business goals, let me just brief you about the above chart.

Identify the problem and Research

The marketer can identify the problem and research by asking people?s opinion about what
they actually need.

Here surveys come into the picture where you take suggestions from the people and delivered
the solutions(product/Services).

1. Marketing Strategy and Marketing Mix

Developing the Alternatives plan

After going through the surveys and analyzing the needs of the customers and then one can
develop the alternatives plans. Once you Developed the alternatives plans,

The next step is to carefully analyze every alternative and select the best possible alternative
plan among them.

Marketing Mix which includes product Development, Pricing, Promotion, Place and
Distribution Analyze and selects the Best alternative Plan.

1. Implementation and Control

 Implement the plan: Once you select the best plan you can start implementing the
plan.
 Review/Measure: Once you have implemented the plan and now you can start meas-
uring the success/failure.
Likewise, in Digital Marketing Strategy you can add similar methodology, gain some
momentum and turn your visitors to the customer.

Steps

1. Research

 Inthe research stage, all the necessary information related either to the product(s)/ser-
vice(s) or the target audience/market is collected, and the information collected dur-
ing the research stage is used for making decisions. This information is very helpful
in strategizing the marketing campaign. Following information are collected during
this stage:
 About the brand/business/organization.
 About the target audience/target market.
 About the product/service being promoted.
 About the market, a competition to promote product/services and to stand out among
the existing brands.

1. Create

 In this stage, the information collected in the research stage is analyzed and
strategized to create the marketing campaign. The campaign is created as per the
goals and objectives of the organization and the as per the vision of the stakehold-
ers, how they want their product to be advertised on different platforms.
 This step covers the branding strategy, content strategy, etc. The goal is to reach max-
imum customers and to generate maximum revenue at the same time.

1. Promote

Once the marketing campaign is created and strategized, the marketing team starts working
on promoting the product(s)/service(s). There are various digital platforms for promoting a
brand, product(s)/service(s) like:

 Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Etc.)

 Display Networks
 Social Media
 E-Mail and Affiliate Marketing
 E-Commerce Websites and Other Marketing Portals

1. Analyze
  Now comes the analyzing stage in which the results and outcomes of the marketing
campaign are analyzed. The results or the outcome from various promotion chan-
nels are collected and analyzed for generating the business reports in terms of sales
and revenue. This analysis helps to identify the grey areas and helps the marketing
team to improve those areas and to prepare for future marketing. Google Analytics
is one of the most popular analytics tools used for the analysis and basically it helps
to identify the target audience response, behavior of the consumers and the data
collected helps to convert the potential leads into business.

 Digital marketing is thus a very effective marketing channel used by both consumers
and marketers to deliver and to purchase the products and services. Digital market-
ing works in integration with the business strategy and it is very important to draft
the marketing campaign as per market standards and the requirement of the target
audience. The digital marketing processes have been very efficient in bridging the
gap between the customers and the companies and promotes bidirectional commu-
nication between them.
 The customer can give their opinion and feedback to the marketing companies and the
business teams which consequently helps the companies to provide better services
to the customers/consumers/buyers. Digital marketing has almost captured half of
the available market and there is no way to stop. IT has emerged as one of the
promising careers and it is still evolving. The future is digital and digital marketing
is going to be the backbone of the digital infrastructure in the coming future.

The Contemporary Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution refers to the advancement of technology from analog electronic and
mechanical devices to the digital technology available today. The era started to during the
1980s and is ongoing. The Digital Revolution also marks the beginning of the Information
Era.
  The Digital Revolution is sometimes also called the Third Industrial Revolution.
 Also called the third industrial revolution, it is the era of digital electronic equipment
that started around the 1980s and is still continuing.
 The widespread diffusion of telecommunications and computer technology that is cre-
ating entirely new ways of working and socializing as well as challenging, and even
destroying, many others.
 It is the change from analog, mechanical, and electronic technology to digital techno-
logy. Learn more in: Creation of an Instrument to Measure Website Effectiveness
Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

 An expression used to denote the extraordinary transition in media, communications,

devices (and ultimately economics and society), from an analogue form (i.e., con-
tinuous, linear signals representing information) to a form expressed in discrete di-
gits (actually: bits). This started in the early 1980s.

The development and advancement of digital technologies started with one fundamental
idea: The Internet. Here is a brief timeline of how the Digital Revolution progressed:

 1947-1979 – The transistor, which was introduced in 1947, paved the way for the de-
velopment of advanced digital computers. The government, military and other or-
ganizations made use of computer systems during the 1950s and 1960s. This re-
search eventually led to the creation of the World Wide Web.
 1980s – The computer became a familiar machine and by the end of the decade, being
able to use one became a necessity for many jobs. The first cell phone was also in -
troduced during this decade.
 1990s – By 1992, the World Wide Web had been introduced, and by 1996 the Internet
became a normal part of most business operations. By the late 1990s, the Internet
became a part of everyday life for almost half of the American population.
  2000s – By this decade, the Digital Revolution had begun to spread all over the devel-
oping world; mobile phones were commonly seen, the number of Internet users
continued to grow, and the television started to transition from using analog to di-
gital signals.
 2010 and beyond – By this decade, Internet makes up more than 25 percent of the
world’s population. Mobile communication has also become very important, as
nearly 70 percent of the world’s population owns a mobile phone. The connection
between Internet websites and mobile gadgets has become a standard in communic-
ation. It is predicted that by 2015, the innovation of tablet computers will far sur-
pass personal computers with the use of the Internet and the promise of cloud com-
puting services. This will allow users to consume media and use business applica-
tions on their mobile devices, applications that would otherwise be too much for
such devices to handle.

Digital Transformation Framework

The world is undergoing a digital transformation. For example, there will soon be over a bil-
lion smartphones, impacting all aspects of organizations’ value chains, commerce, and cus-
tomer and supplier engagement processes. This transformation will result in an explosion in
digital data and more importantly, usable insight.

And the smartphone isn’t the only digital technology driving business transformation. Other
technologies like sensors, beacons, scanners, RFID (radio frequency identification), NFC
(near field communications), GPS (global positioning systems), Bluetooth, web clicks, social
media postings, digital newsfeeds, smart watches, fitness bands, video surveillance, drones,
robotics, etc. are all contributing to the digitalization of our physical world.

Framing The Digital Business Transformation Discuss

Digital business transformation accelerates, communications, and improves coordination

across an organization’s value chain (design, procurement, inventory, manufacturing, ship-
ping, marketing, sales, support) yielding massive amounts of detailed data about individual
customer, product, and operational, usage, performance and current state data, that can be
converted into new digital intellectual assets (curated data, analytic models, real-time scores,
behavioral profiles, edge analytics).

However, the more important digital business transformation opportunities lie in the “make
money” aspects of the business transformation. Here is where organizations can have a game-
changing impact on their value creation processes through the superior insights gleaned about
the organization’s customers, products, operations, partners, channels and markets. These
game-changing impacts manifest themselves in three ways:

1. Optimize key value chain processes. Exploit superior customer, product and oper-
ational insights to not just improve existing business processes but to actually
change or re-tool the entire process.
2. Uncover new monetization opportunities. Leverage superior customer, product
and operational insights to identify “white spaces” or under-served, un-served or
un-met market that yield new monetization opportunities (e.g., new products, new
services, new partners, new channels).
3. Create a more compelling, more prescriptive customer experience. Leverage an
understanding of an individual customer’s tendencies, preferences, behaviors,
 propensities, trends, interests, passions, associations and affiliations to provide a
more rewarding customer and partner experience.

Types of websites, Keywords

Some Website Types

Business Website

A business website is a website designed to represent the identity of a business on the

Internet.

There are many reasons why a business might want to be visible on the Internet, including
public perception of its size, sophistication, modernity, connectedness, customer service and
reliability and typically to encourage enquiries from potential customers or partners.

eCommerce Website

An eCommerce website is a website where people can directly buy products. You’ve
probably used several eCommerce websites before, most big brands and plenty of smaller
ones have one. Any website that includes a shopping cart and a way for you to provide credit
card information to make a purchase falls into this category.

Brochure and Catalogue websites

A brochure website is a website designed to display a business’s products and services to

view online. It will typically include testimonials, case studies, appropriate images and video.

A brochure website is simpler than a catalogue website as it does not need to list a large
number of different products, but simply serves as an attractively-presented online
advertisement for the business, showing where it is located, how to make contact, and in
general terms what products or services it offers. A brochure website can be quite simple and
consist of a single page (though usually at least five pages), whereas a catalogue website will
tend to have dozens or hundreds of pages representing different product ranges and individual
products.

Entertainment Website

If you think about your internet browsing habits, you can probably think of a few websites
that you visit purely for entertainment purposes. They could be humor websites like The
Netflix, or just websites with fun or interesting content like Buzzfeed.

Non-profit websites
A non-profit website is one that represents a not-for-profit organisation such as a medical
research charity, an overseas aid charity, or a heritage charity.

While many other types of website are technically not for profit, including educational
websites representing public and some private schools, the term non-profit websites tends to
be used about charitable organisations other than schools and colleges.

Portfolio Website

Portfolio websites are sites devoted to showing examples of past work. Service providers who
want to show potential clients the quality of the work they provide can use a portfolio website
to collect some of the best samples of past work they’ve done. This type of website is simpler
to build than a business website and more focused on a particular task: collecting work
samples.

Educational websites

An educational website in its narrowest definition is one representing an educational

institution such as a traditional school, college or university. It may also represent a private
education provider such as a tutor, or a virtual college offering online and distance-based
courses.

Media Website

Media websites collect news stories or other reporting. There’s some overlap here with
entertainment websites, but media websites are more likely to include reported pieces in
addition to or instead of content meant purely for entertainment. This category includes sites
like the Washington Post website, Slate, and Inc.

Business directory websites

A business directory website is one that gathers together data on many different businesses in
one place. Such websites have traditionally been useful places to advertise on and have also
served as valuable sources of free links to business websites, although increasingly such
links, being free to obtain, have been downgraded in value by search engines such as Google
when it assesses the authority of a domain based on inbound links.

Some business directories are national and cover all fields of business; others are local but
still cover all fields; while still others are specific to certain areas of business, and these are
sometimes national but also sometimes international.

Keywords

Short-tail keyword

As the name suggested, short-tail keywords are short keywords (surprise!) that are made up
of three words or less. Sometimes they are also called the head keyword. Short-tail keywords
have a huge amount of search volume but are also highly competitive. For the audiences, they
use short-tail keywords when they are at the very first step of researching for stuff. That’s
why it’s very difficult to pinpoint the clear search intent for short-tail keywords. They tend to
be all around the place.

Mid-Tail Keywords

The mid-tail keywords are a compromise and try to balance between the high-ranking short-
tail keywords and the traffic-generating long-tail keywords. For example, if a short-tail
keyword is “bread” and the long-tail keyword is “buy bread in Connecticut”, the mid-tail
keyword will simply be “buy bread”. Usually, these keywords are aimed at those who are
looking for information but aren’t quite ready to follow through with the search results.

Long-tail keyword

Long-tail keywords consist of more than 3 words. They are also usually much more specific
than short-tail keywords.

They have a much lower search volume compared to a short-tail keyword. But they make it
up by being much less competitive.

The most important thing you have to know with a long-tail keyword is you can easily
pinpoint the search intent.

Long-Term Evergreen Keywords

“Evergreen” simply means something that is long-term and sustainable. Content that doesn’t
become irrelevant with time is known as evergreen content. Similarly, keywords related to
such content are known as evergreen keywords.

For example, an article on “10 DIY Ways to Make Your Own Soap” will not become
obsolete anytime in the foreseeable future. And thus, the keyword “Make DIY Soaps” will
not become obsolete either.

Short-term fresh keyword

When you think about fresh keywords, you need to think about something that is hyped
recently.

An example of fresh keywords is The Avengers: Infinity War. (When I’m writing this post
that movie just hit the theatres. But I’d imagine that that’s old news for you, so try to imagine
this with any newest blockbusters.)
Customer Defining Keywords

Every business has a target audience, and a good business always knows its customer types.
Customer defining keywords are the types of keywords that define your customers or at least
identify how your customers define themselves. For example, an art gallery would use terms
like “artist” or “art connoisseur” as a keyword as that most aptly describes people who will be
interested in their business.

SEO isn’t just about featuring in searches. It also includes defining your customers and thus
targeting the right people. Only by understanding this can one build a business that answers
the needs of the customers rather than trying to find a customer who may or may not need
your services.

Product defining keyword

These are the keywords that explain and describe your product. Searchers searching for a
product defining keyword is looking for something very specific. And you can either be
exactly what they want or not at all. When searchers go for product defining keyword they
are already at the early stage of purchasing.

Geo-Targeting Keywords

These are words that focus on a particular location. These types of keywords lead to results
that are localized, leading to local businesses and local content.

Localized searches are gaining momentum every day, and even Google is throwing more
weight at such searches. Most websites happen to have a local flavor to them. And almost all
businesses are localized to an extent geo-targeting keywords are just feeding the current need.

Competitor Keywords

As the name suggests, competitor keywords are the keywords your competing companies use
to achieve search listings. This type of keyword uncovers the words and phrases that drive
traffic to your competitor’s website. This helps you understand your audience’s true interests
and generate content accordingly.

Domain Names, Webhosting Web Browsers

A domain name is your website name. A domain name is the address where Internet users
can access your website. A domain name is used for finding and identifying computers on the
Internet. Computers use IP addresses, which are a series of number. However, it is difficult
for humans to remember strings of numbers. Because of this, domain names were developed
and used to identify entities on the Internet rather than using IP addresses.

A domain name refers to the URL people type in a web browser’s address bar to access your
site. In other words, domain names offer a convenient way for people to access websites.
Without it, they would have to use a numerical label assigned to every website and server on
the internet, also known as an IP address.

Generally, domain names are comprised of two main parts a second-level domain (SLD) and
a top-level domain (TLD). Second-level domains usually consist of words or phrases, while
top-level domains are the predetermined extensions that follow.

For example, in the case of google.com, the second-level domain is google, and .com is the
TLD.

To get a domain name for your website, you need to register it first. Domain registration is
the process of reserving a name on the internet for a certain period. Usually, you need to re-
new the license once per year, but you can pay up in advance for up to 10 years for the do -
main to be registered under your name.

A domain name can be any combination of letters and numbers, and it can be used in combin-
ation of the various domain name extensions, such as .com, .net and more.

The domain name must be registered before you can use it. Every domain name is unique. No
two websites can have the same domain name. If someone types
in http://www.theintactone.com, it will go to your website and no one else’s.

The price of a domain name typically runs between $15-25 per year.

Web Browsers

A web browser is a software program that allows a user to locate, access, and display web
pages. In common usage, a web browser is usually shortened to “browser.” Browsers are
used primarily for displaying and accessing websites on the internet, as well as other content
created using languages such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible
Markup Language (XML).

Browsers translate web pages and websites delivered using Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP) into human-readable content. They also have the ability to display other protocols
and prefixes, such as secure HTTP (HTTPS), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), email handling
(mailto:), and files (file:). In addition, most browsers also support external plug-ins required
to display active content, such as in-page video, audio and game content.

A variety of web browsers are available with different features, and are designed to run on
different operating systems. Common browsers include Internet Explorer from Microsoft,
Firefox from Mozilla, Google Chrome, Safari from Apple, and Opera. All major browsers
have mobile versions that are lightweight versions for accessing the web on mobile devices.

Web browsers date back to the late 1980s when an English scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, first
developed the ideas that led to the World Wide Web (WWW). This consisted of a series of
pages created using the HTML language and joined or linked together with pointers called
hyperlinks. Following this was the need for a program that could access and display the
HTML pages correctly the browser.

In 1993, a new browser known as Mosaic was developed, which soon gained widespread us-
age due to its graphical-interface capability. Marc Andreesen, a member of the Mosaic devel -
opment team, left in 1994 to develop his own commercial browser based on Mosaic. He
called it Netscape Navigator, and it quickly captured over 90 percent of the nascent browser
market. It soon faced stiff competition in 1995 from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which was
freely bundled with Windows 95 (and later versions of Windows). It was pointless to buy
Navigator when Internet Explorer was free, and as a result, Navigator (and Netscape) were
driven into the ground. But while Mosaic and Netscape are no longer around, the age of the
browser was launched and continues to this day, as more and more applications move to the
web.

Webhosting

The term “web hosting” usually refers to the server that host your website or the hosting com-
pany that rent that server space to you.

Web hosting services allow you to publish the website on the internet. In other words, hosting
providers will rent a portion of their web server to store your website’s files and data.

Whenever someone types in your website’s domain name, your web hosting provider will be
responsible for sending its content to the visitor.

Web hosts also provide beginner-friendly tools for all users so that you can manage the web-
site with little to no technical skills. Besides, a hosting provider usually offers customer sup-
port, server maintenance, and website builders to help users create and maintain their site.

In addition to storing website files, a web host protects the server and your website files from
malicious attacks.

Some web hosting companies, such as Hostinger, also provide domain registration to help
you create a website even quicker and more efficiently.

That said, it is essential to do thorough research before choosing a hosting company. There
are a few factors you need to consider, including:

 User-friendliness.Every web host provides a control panel to manage your web host-
ing account. Make sure the dashboard offered is easy-to-use and has extensive
functionality.
 Server speed and uptime. Choose a web hosting company that ensures fast loading
speeds and offers an excellent uptime guarantee so that your site experiences mini-
mum downtime.
 Pricing and plans. Before purchasing a hosting plan, it helps to consider the add-ons
and renewal fees that would fit your budget in the long-term.
 Customer service. Pick a hosting company with a reliable support team to give you
immediate assistance when running into a technical issue.

Hostinger utilizes LiteSpeed Web Servers to optimize users’ site performance. Moreover, we
offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee and global customer support working around the clock to
guide you if you come across any technical difficulties.
Building Website/Blog using CMS WordPress
Creating an online presence for a business or professional portfolio can be done quickly and
simply through a content management system (CMS) like WordPress. Large enterprises and
small businesses alike need ways to publish content. The key is working with a user-friendly
CMS that makes it possible for almost anyone from newbies to experts to construct web
pages. Using these templates makes it easy to create a basic web page then swap in a logo,
change the color palette, or alter the font to fit your brand and needs.

When you’re getting started with WordPress, you need to decide whether you’ll use
WordPress.com or WordPress.org. They’re both free, but WordPress.com is an all-in-one
service that generates the HTML script for the site in addition to the domain name and
hosting services. While it is a one-stop-shop for people wanting to build a webpage, there are
numerous limitations you’ll face if you want to customize many aspects of your site.
WordPress.org, on the other hand, allows you to download the script for free, then manipulate
that script as you please on your site, with your own domain name and web hosting. This is
also known as a self-hosted site.

Here, you’ll learn how easy it is to set up a WordPress self-hosted website for your home
business. This CMS can be managed from almost any computer that is connected to the
internet. Knowledge of basic HTML coding is helpful, but not necessary with WordPress.
You can learn as you go, then add more options and plugins as you grow accustomed to the
standard features.

Choose and Buy Your Domain Name

Selecting a business domain name is a vital part of the presence and marketing associated
with your business. Ideally, this should be a “.com” that includes your business name. Web
hosting services like Wix and Hostinger might offer to provide a domain (some will provide
one for free), but most experts suggest keeping your domain name and hosting services
separate to ensure you have ownership and control over your domain.

Sign up for Web Hosting

Although there are free options, your best bet is to go with a paid host to ensure quality and
control. There are many affordable web hosts to choose from. Since you want to install
WordPress, ensure that the host offers the WordPress script in its library. WordPress is a
popular service, so most include it. Whatever web hosting service you choose will likely offer
tiered options. You don’t need to feel pressured to opt for the more advanced options. You
can start with a basic plan and scale up as needed.

Connect Your Domain and Web Host Services

After you sign up for hosting, you’ll receive account login information and the address of
your host’s nameservers (two series of numbers). Copy the nameserver information, and then
head to your domain registrar and add the nameserver info to your domain name. This tells
the domain registrar where (which host) the domain should point to. Once these two aspects
of your website sync up, then you’re ready to start building.

Install WordPress

Gone are the days when you had to download the script from the WordPress site and then
upload it to your host. Most hosts offer a quick install option through their script library. Log
into your host account (i.e., cPanel) and find the WordPress script (if you’re unsure where
this is in your cPanel, ask your host). Click on “Install” and indicate where you want the
script to install.

If you want your whole site on WordPress, use your domain name, leaving the directory
option blank (i.e., http://www.theintactone.com/). If you already have a website and want to
install a blog in a different folder, write in the folder name after your domain. For example, if
you want WordPress for your blog, you can install it in www. theintactone.com/blog/. The
install will create the “blog” folder and install WordPress there. During the install, you’ll also
provide your admin name, blog name, and email, which will be included in WordPress (you
can change the blog name and email later).

When complete, you’ll be given a link to the newly created WordPress site and a password.
You’ll want to change the password.

Browse the WordPress Dashboard

The nice thing about WordPress is that, even when it’s updated, the basic functions stay the
same. Once you learn where everything is and how it works, you’re good to go. Log into your
WordPress site using your admin name and password. Once logged in, you’ll be taken to
your dashboard. On the left is a menu of all the standard options:

Posts

This is how you create and edit blog articles.

Media

This is where pictures, videos, and other kinds of media are stored. You can add media
directly to this folder as a standalone action, or while writing a post or page. If you add media
to a page, it will get stored in your Media folder.

Pages: Pages host static content such as your “About Me” information. If your home business
offers a service, you’d put your service information on a page.

Comments: This is how you manage and moderate comments left on your site.

Appearance: This is how you manage and customize your site theme, organize your sidebar
widgets, create menus (as allowed by your theme), and access the theme’s editor.
Plugins: Add, delete, and update plugins here. Some plugins add menu features directly to
the dashboard menu, while others get added as a submenu item under Tools or Settings.

Users: You can manage people who register as guests, as well as the permissions of those to
whom you give access. For example, if you have a virtual assistant, you may want to allow
them to update and make changes to the site. If your virtual assistant quits, you’ll want to
revoke those permissions.

Tools: Import and export WordPress data through the Tools menu. Some plugin settings are
also accessed here.

Settings: This is where you’ll set up how your blog is read, how comments are posted, your
permalink structure (how your blog content URLs look), and more. Many plugin settings are
accessed through Settings.

Choose a WordPress Theme

WordPress offers default themes, or you can browse and install themes from the WordPress
theme library. Click on “Appearance,” then “Theme.” If you like the default theme, you can
leave it, but choose the “Customize” option (under the “Appearance” option) to change
aspects such as color and the header. You can change the theme by clicking on a different
theme, and then clicking on “Activate.”

If you don’t like the default options, you can add a new theme. One way is to click on “Add
Theme” where you can access a theme library. If you like any of the themes in the library,
simply click “Install” and then “Activate” to apply the theme. Another option is to find
themes from other sources. To use these themes, you need to download them from the source,
then in your WordPress dashboard click “Add Themes” then “Upload Theme.” Use the
browse button to find the theme you downloaded, click on the file (it’s usually a zip file), and
then upload. Once it’s uploaded, click on “Install” and “Activate.” Note that some themes
add menu items to your left navigation. Some also have customization options such as adding
your social media links.

Set up Sidebar Widgets

Widgets are shortcut buttons that perform a function, like skipping right to the most recent
blog posts or signing up for an email list. Under “Appearance” and then “Widgets,” you’ll
see a list of widget options including “Recent Posts” and “Archives.” “Recent Posts” is likely
one of the default widgets in your sidebar, alongside “Recent Comments” and “Meta.”

The great thing about WordPress is that adding or removing widgets simply involves
dragging and dropping where you want them. While many widgets serve a specific function,
there is a “Text” widget that allows you to add whatever you want, including code. This is a
good place for adding your email list sign-up script or affiliate product codes. The standard
sidebar is on the right-hand side of your blog/site, but sometimes your theme may allow you
to choose where the sidebar is located. Other times the theme might have more than one
sidebar, for example, two on the left, and three at the bottom.

Set up Your Plugins

WordPress comes ready-made with two plugins. Askimet is the anti-spam plugin you’ll want
to activate. You’ll need an activation code, but you can get a free one by clicking on the link
in the Askimet plugin. There are millions of plugins that add cool features and functions to
your website. For example, some plugins will create a storefront on your WordPress site.

Many plugins are less noticeable. They run behind the scenes to keep the site safe and fully
functional. Basic plugins you should add include security (to keep the hackers out), cache (to
help improve speed and performance), backup, and SEO. Plugins can be added under the
“Plugin” option of the menu. Like themes, you can search for plugins within the WordPress
library, or get them from other sources and upload them to your site.

Add Content to Your Site

Start by adding your static pages such as “About Me,” “Contact,” and whatever other
information you want visitors to have (such as a media kit). If you’re running your
WordPress site like a standard website, you may want visitors to land on a specific home
page, whether it’s your “About Me” page or another section of the site. To do so, go to
“Settings,” then “Reading,” toggle “Static Page,” and then select what page or post you want
on your homepage. If you’re running a blog, you can leave the default setting, which should
be “Your Latest Posts.”

Once you have your pages, add posts related to your blog or home business topic. Both pages
and posts work the same. Click on “New Page” or “New Post” under “Page” or “Post” in the
dashboard menu. Add your title to the title box and your content below. WordPress gives you
two options to add your content, “Visual” and “text.” “Visual” allows you to work on the
content as it appears to visitors. “Text” takes away the frills to give you the basic HTML of
the page or post. If you have code you want to include (such as an affiliate link), you’ll need
to choose “Text” to add it. On the right-hand side of the page, you’ll see options to publish or
schedule your post, categorize it (including adding new categories), tag it (including adding
new tags), and add a featured image.

Using WordPress Plug-ins

After installing WordPress, the first thing every beginner needs to learn is how to install a
WordPress plugin.

A WordPress plugin is essentially a bit of code that “plugs in” to your self-hosted WordPress
site. In human terms, that means a WordPress plugin is something that adds new functionality
to your WordPress site or extends existing functionality on your site.
One of the benefits of WordPress is that enterprising developers have written tens of
thousands of WordPress plugins that you can add to your site.

In simple words, WordPress plugins are like apps for your WordPress website. They allow
you to add new features to WordPress like a contact form, slideshow, shopping cart, and
more.

There are thousands of free and paid plugins available for WordPress. In this step by step
guide, we will show you how to install a WordPress plugin.

Plugins can make everything from small tweaks to massive changes to your site. For
example, some plugins can even turn your WordPress site into a fully functioning
eCommerce store, social network, or forum.

Or, they can also add smaller features like an Instagram feed. Some WordPress plugins don’t
even have front-facing effects. For example, you can install plugins to improve your site’s
performance or help it rank better in search engines like Google.

Plugins every WordPress site needs

WordPress Security: Security is a must-have for every WordPress website. There are lots of
security issues on the internet. Wordfence and ithemes securities are examples of plugins you
can use to secure your website. You can check our WordPress tutorials on Security to help
you make a good choice.

WordPress Backup: WordPress backup is essential for every WordPress website. A backup
plugin allows you to store your database and your overall WordPress installation offsite. This
becomes particularly useful when your site crashes. Since it has all your files, you can get
back online in no time.

WordPress Contact Form: Most site owners need a way for users to contact them. These
could be customers, clients, readers, etc. There are many WordPress contact form plugins you
can select from. Some popular ones in this category include Gravity forms and WPforms.

WordPress SEO: SEO plug-ins optimizes your blog/website for search engines. Read our
beginners’ guide on WordPress SEO to learn more.

The wrong plugin could:

 Cause an error on your site

 Open an unintentional vulnerability that hurts your WordPress site’s security
 Slow down your site
 Intentionally introduce malicious code

To avoid these problems:

  Try to use plugins from reputable developers or directories (like WordPress.org or
Code Canyon)
 Read reviews and check how popular a plugin is before installing it
 Check for the last time a plugin was updated to make sure it’s still maintained

Create a Blog post for your project, Including headline, imagery, links and post, content
planning and writing
How to Write a Blog Post in Five Easy Steps [Summary]:

1. Step 1: Plan your blog post by choosing a topic, creating an outline, conducting re-
search, and checking facts.
2. Step 2: Craft a headline that is both informative and will capture readers’ attentions.
3. Step 3: Write your post, either writing a draft in a single session or gradually word
on parts of it.
4. Step 4: Use images to enhance your post, improve its flow, add humor, and explain
complex topics.
5. Step 5: Edit your blog post. Make sure to avoid repetition, read your post aloud to
check its flow, have someone else read it and provide feedback, keep sentences and
paragraphs short, don’t be a perfectionist, don’t be afraid to cut out text or adapt
your writing last minute.

Headlines

There are two main approaches you can take to writing blog post headlines. You can either
decide on your final headline before you write the rest of your post (and use your headline to
structure your outline), or you can write your blog post with a working title and see what fits
when you’re done.

Using Images Effectively

Writing for the web is an entirely different animal than writing for print. Oftentimes, people
simply don’t have the time, will, or ability to focus on lengthy blog posts without some visual
stimulation. Even a well-formatted blog post consisting solely of text is likely to send your
reader screaming back to Reddit or Twitter within minutes, which is why it’s so important to
include images in your posts.

Images Help Your Blog Post Flow More Effectively

One of the most important reasons to include images in your blog posts is to break up the
text. Many people scan blog posts rather than pore over every word, and interspersing images
throughout the copy will make your post seem less intimidating and more visually appealing.

Images Make Great Visual Punchlines

Everyone likes a good laugh, and a well-chosen image can help lighten the tone of your posts
and inject some much-needed humor into a piece. This can be particularly effective if you’re
writing about a dry (or flat-out boring) topic.

Content planning and writing

You’ve got to find out which method works best for you, but here are the items we believe
every content plan should contain:

 Delivery date/time: Remember, timing is important for content marketing, and this
will help make sure you’re writing to deadline.
 Title: You can’t start writing without a title, even if it’s just a working one. This
should outline the main premise of the piece.
 Wordcount: This will determine how much depth and detail the piece will go into.
 Quick summary: Just two or three sentences – outlining key points and your conclu-
sion. You can always add an ‘additional ideas’ section if you want some extra room
for your ideas.
 Sources: Find sources you can use for research and as inspiration for your piece. This
will save you time later and might spark some ideas. Just make sure they’re credi-
ble!

6 Tips for Top-Notch Content Planning:

So, you know what your content plan should include, but you could probably do with a few
additional pointers to get you going. We’re happy to oblige – take a look!

1. Consider your brand’s stance

Everything you say should fit with your brand’s guidelines, ethos and values. So, forget what
you know about the subject personally – what does your brand think?

Your content plan should be written from your brand’s perspective and subtly align your of-
fering as the solution. Remember that word though – ‘subtle’ – as your content should always
be more educational than promotional.

2. Know your audience

Who is your piece meant to be targeting? Which segment of your audience should it speak
to?

You need to think long and hard about this, as it will define the direction of your piece. Think
about the needs of the individual and where he or she might be in your sales funnel by using
audience personas based on existing customers.

Think about how you can structure your content specifically for your users, and give them
everything they want to know about the subject. Then you can think about getting started on
writing your content.

3. Brainstorm lots of ideas

With those two key things in your mind, start brainstorming ideas – we find mind-maps work
well!

Generate as many ideas as possible, just go crazy. Yes, some may not be as good as others,
and some may not even be realistic, but you can hone these down to create highly-targeted,
engaging content.

4. Decide which angle you’ll take

This is key to good content planning – an angle that will grab attention and help you stand out
from the crowd.

Visit competitor sites to see what they’re doing and see if you can switch it on its head. If
you’re stuck, use the four-pillar approach like this:

1. What is happening to Uber in London?

2. Where can I still get an Uber?
3. Why is TFL and Sadiq Kahn banning Uber in London?
4. How can I stop Uber leaving London?

There you go, four different approaches to the same topic. Take your pick!

5. Set a goal for each piece of content

Each piece of content should have a goal. It can either be something explicit (e.g. increasing
newsletter sign-ups, or downloading guides), or something more implicit (like educating, in-
forming or explaining a process). The latter is more suited to content marketing.

6. Choose a strong focus keyword

Pick a keyword now, so you can consider it throughout the content planning process. It will
help you stay on track and prepare your piece for SEO.

These content planning tips will help you create an effective plan that will act as a great
foundation for your content. Try our ideas out next time content planning rolls around, and
see how your content quality improves!

Publishing Blogs and Webinars, Sharing Videos/Images, Social Networks

1) It helps drive traffic to your website

Raise your hand if you want more website visitors. Yeah, me too.

Now think about the ways people find your website:

 They could type your name right in to their browser, but that’s an audience you al-
ready have. They know who you are, you’re on their radar, and that doesn’t help
you getmore traffic on top of what you’re already getting.
 You couldpay for traffic by buying an email list (don’t you dare!), blasting them, and
hoping some people open and click through on the emails. But that’s expensive
and, you know, illegal.
 You couldpay for traffic by placing tons of paid ads, which isn’t illegal, but still quite
expensive. And the second you run out of money, your traffic stops coming, too.

2) It helps convert that traffic into leads.

Now that you have traffic coming to your website through your blog, you have an opportun-
ity to convert that traffic into leads.
Just like every blog post you write is another indexed page, each post is a new opportunity to
generate new leads. The way this works is really simple: Just add a lead-generating call-to-
action to every blog post.

Often, these calls-to-action lead to things like free ebooks, free whitepapers, free fact sheets,
free webinars, free trials … basically, any content asset for which someone would be willing
to exchange their information. To be super clear for anyone unfamiliar with how traffic-to-
lead conversions work, it’s as simple as this:

3) It helps establish authority.

The best business blogs answer common questions their leads and customers have. If you’re
consistently creating content that’s helpful for your target customer, it’ll help establish you as
an authority in their eyes. This is a particularly handy tool for Sales and Service profession-
als.

Can you imagine the impact of sending an educational blog post you wrote to clear things up
for a confused customer? Or how many more deals a salesperson could close if their leads
discovered blog content written by their salesperson?

There are other reasons businesses might want to blog, but I think they’re smaller and stray
from the core benefits of blogging.

For instance, I love to use our blog to test out big campaigns on the cheap — before we invest
a lot of money and time into their creation. I also love to use our blog to help understand our
persona better. And while this shouldn’t be their primary use, blogs also become great outlets
through with marketers can communicate other PR-type important information — things like
product releases or event information. It’s certainly easier to get attention for more company-
focused initiatives if you’ve built up your own audience on your own property, as opposed to
pitching your story to journalists and hoping one of them bites.

These are all great side effects or uses of a business blog, but they’re secondary benefits to
me.

If you’re looking to start a business blog or get more investment for one you’ve already star-
ted, the reasons above are a great place to start arguing your case.

Are you already well underway when it comes to business blogging? Just starting out? Share
your thoughts on business blogging below and what you’re looking to get out of it.

Using various plugins like elimentor

Originally launched in 2016, Elementor is one of the younger page builders on this list. But
even though it got a late start, Elementor has quickly racked up over 3,000,000 active installs
at WordPress.org, which makes it the most popular page builder out there, at least by
WordPress.org numbers.

Its claim to fame is a quick, glitch-free visual interface, flexible styling options, and powerful
other features like full theme building.
Though it started as just a page editor, the premium version, Elementor Pro, now lets you do
a lot more than just page building. The two most notable features are:

 Theme Builder: Design your entire theme using the same convenient Elementor in-
terface. This includes your header, footer, archive pages, single post pages, Woo-
Commerce product/shop pages, custom post type templates, etc. You get dedicated
widgets for common elements, and you can even dynamically insert content from
custom fields.
 Popup Builder: Design flexible popups using the full Elementor interface. You can
include all the regular Elementor widgets, which lets you create email opt-in
popups, contact form popups, login popups, and more.

These two additions really help Elementor stand out from the competition. Though theme
building is becoming a popular feature, the popup builder is still quite unique.

Elementor

Elementor is available as a free plugin download, but you also have the option to pay for the
Pro version. The Pro version starts at$49 for one site and goes up to $199 for unlimited sites.
As you’ll discover with the features listed below, and with Elementor’s ease of use, this is
quite the steal.

The free Elementor download offers a simple yet powerful WordPress page builder, with one
of the fastest interfaces you can find. Everything is instant, from live edits to the instant page
loads. The standard page builder features include animations, shape dividers, gradient
backgrounds, and headline effects. There’s even a template library with stunning WordPress
templates, all of which you can pick and choose from. The free version of Elementor is also
mobile-friendly, with some handy tools for maintenance mode, under construction pages,
landing pages, and more.

GeneratePress with Sections

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme, but we like to consider it as a simplistic page

builder solution, perfect for beginner webmasters, bloggers, and developers who want an
uncomplicated, rapid visual builder. In addition, you can add the handy premium Sections
add-on to incorporate drag and drop functionality to your GeneratePress interface.

Let’s start with the theme itself. GeneratePress is a simple, lightweight, and free WordPress
theme with rave reviews and a beautiful layout for landing pages, blogs, business websites,
and sales pages. It’s hard to figure out a market where you couldn’t utilize the GeneratePress
theme since it’s so modern and clean. Needless to say, if you’re tired of clunky, slow themes,
it’s worth checking out GeneratePress. Most of the editing is done through the WordPress
live editor when working with the free theme, but you gain access to all modules (add-ons)
including Sections, when you opt for the premium version of the theme.
 NOTES-UNIT-2
Overview of search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is all about optimizing a website for
search engines. SEO is a technique for:

 Designing and developing a website to rank well in search engine results.

 Improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.
 Marketing by understanding how search algorithms work, and what human visitors
might search.

SEO is a subset of search engine marketing. SEO is also referred as SEO copyrighting, be-
cause most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines, deal with text.

If you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines
work.

How Search Engine Works?

Search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results.

 Crawling– Process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task is per-
formed by a software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, in case of
Google).
 Indexing– Process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping them
into a giant database from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of
indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and
assigning the page to particular keywords.
 Processing– When a search request comes, the search engine processes it, i.e. it com-
pares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database.
 Calculating Relevancy– It is likely that more than one page contains the search
string, so the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in
its index to the search string.
 Retrieving Results– The last step in search engine activities is retrieving the best
matched results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the
browser.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! often update their relevancy algorithm dozens of
times per month. When you see changes in your rankings it is due to an algorithmic shift or
something else outside of your control.

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differ-
ences between their relevancy algorithms lead to major changes in results relevancy.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO Copywriting is the technique of writing viewable text on a web page in such a way that
it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly
in the search engines for the targeted search terms.
Along with viewable text, SEO copywriting usually optimizes other on-page elements for the
targeted search terms. These include the Title, Description, Keywords tags, headings, and al-
ternative text.

The idea behind SEO copywriting is that search engines want genuine content pages and not
additional pages often called “doorway pages” that are created for the sole purpose of achiev-
ing high rankings.

What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword using a search engine, it displays thousands of results found in
its database. A page ranking is measured by the position of web pages displayed in the search
engine results. If a search engine is putting your web page on the first position, then your web
page rank will be number 1 and it will be assumed as the page with the highest rank.

SEO is the process of designing and developing a website to attain a high rank in search en-
gine results.

What is On-Page and Off-page SEO?

Conceptually, there are two ways of optimization:

 On-Page SEO– It includes providing good content, good keywords selection, putting
keywords on correct places, giving appropriate title to every page, etc.
 Off-Page SEO– It includes link building, increasing link popularity by submitting
open directories, search engines, link exchange, etc.

https://zapier.com/blog/best-keyword-research-tool/

On Page SEO Techniques: Indexing and Key Word Placement

On-page SEO (sometimes referred to as ‘on-site SEO’), is the process of optimizing the con-
tent of a webpage for search engines. The ultimate goal of on-page SEO is to speak the
‘search engines’ language’ and help search engine crawlers understand the meaning and con-
text of your pages.

Proper keyword placement is when keywords are placed strategically throughout the content
of your website so that the search engines can properly index your site for those relevant
keywords. Also, it entices searchers to visit your page and visitors to stay on your page.

When keyword placement is done right, you are able to rank better for your chosen keywords
in the SERPs. Choosing the right keywords and putting them in the right places is a necessary
element of SEO. This brings people with relevant search queries to your site. Remember,
though: it’s the content that makes a visitor stay.

One of the most important places for users is the title tag. This is the hyperlink which appears
on the SERPs. It is what visitors will click on to visit your site. The title tag defines what
your page will be about for both search engines and visitors. You should focus on making
your title tag optimized and compelling.

While this is not a ranking factor per se, it does help the user experience (UX) by helping vis-
itors understand what the page is about before going in. If the title tag is clear, they are more
likely to stay on your site for a longer period of time; thus reducing the bounce rate. The user
experience is crucial to your website’s SEO performance.

You should add keywords and their synonyms to your heading tags (headers). Headers and
sub-headers are the “titles” which appear in your content. Headers have a different HTML
markup than the rest of the body of your content. You ought to focus on making headers
clear, concise, and easy to read as this will help increase the UX and it will increase the craw -
lability of your site.

Your content should always include a main body section that elaborates on what’s in the
headers. You should include your keywords and keyword synonyms naturally throughout the
body. Therefore, you will rank for the keywords you’d like to rank for and similar ones. Re-
member to always build your content for people, not search engines. You can always learn
more about making content easy to scan by checking out some helpful HTML tips.

Within the content, you can also enhance UX with videos and photos. These make visitors
more engaged; a study by Quicksprout show that articles with images get 94% more views
and significantly more likes and retweets than those which do not have images. Images bring
more traffic and reduce the bounce rate. To rank for those articles with photos and videos,
make sure that you include the proper descriptions and tags. To increase the ranking probabil-
ity for that content, describe photos with ALT attributes, and embedded videos with tran-
scripts.

A good internal linking strategy is also a key point to giving keywords more substance within
the content. Using words that can easily be identified gives search engines and people a better
idea of what the page is about. For example: don’t write “click here to learn more about the
coding of an internal linking” with “here” being the anchor text, because search engines
won’t index that properly. Instead, write “internal linking has its own coding which ought to
be followed to be indexed more properly”, and make “internal linking” the anchor text.

Last on the list is the meta description. While this is not a ranking factor per se, it will help
with the human element side of SEO. A meta description tells viewers what the page is about
before they even click on the page. This will appear below your meta tag on the SERPs. You
can build your own meta description and place it under your page’s heading. You want the
meta description to be compelling and bring visitors into your site.

All on-page SEO techniques:

 Publish high-quality content

 Optimize page titles and meta descriptions

 Optimize page content

 Headings and content formatting

  SEO Images and other multimedia elements

 URL optimization

 Internal links

 External links

 Page loading speed

 Mobile-friendliness

 Comments and on-page SEO

Content Planning & Optimization

Essentially, content optimization, or SEO (search engine optimization), is the process of op-
timizing your content to make sure that it’s more visible through the web. Search engine ro-
bots will rank highly optimized content higher on a search engine page than non-optimized
content. Optimizing a website involves many nuanced details, and search engine robots are
weighing everything from content to HTML to backlinks.

It’s important to note that Google is responsible for the majority of the search engine traffic
in the world. This may vary from one industry to another, but it’s likely that Google is the
dominant player in the search results that your business or website would want to show up in,
but the best practices outlined in this guide will help you to position your site and its content
to rank in other search engines, as well.

Beginner can improve their search engine ranking by referring to the following:

Write Great Content: While content alone isn’t everything, it is a big part of the picture, and
great content can dramatically improve your chances of a great SEO ranking. When writing
content, make sure it’s relatable to the user/reader, is original, and is written for your website
and your purposes. Since you know your business better than anyone, writing content that de-
scribes your product, your services, or your business updates should buy right up your alley.

Keep New Content Coming: Another tip for optimizing your content is to be constantly
posting new content. Search engine robots love new content, and your readers will, too.

Use Headings: Another thing that search engines love is big text, so make sure you use head-
ings and subheadings in your writing and make sure you make the text larger or bolded. An-
other tip: use keywords within the heading, which will kill two birds with one stone.

Optimize the Text: You can optimize existing text simply by adding a few key content op-
timization devices. Title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords, and URLs are all a great
way to get your content noticed by search engines.

Optimize Images: People love images, and consumers often spend as much time searching
for photos as they do text. As such, make sure you’re up to speed by optimizing all images
within your content. Add alt tags, which serve as alternate text; use image tags, which are the
words that show up when a user scrolls over an image; and make sure the file size of your im-
ages has been adjusted properly to ensure that all images load and view properly.

Optimize Videos: Like images, great headings, and other graphics or bold colors, videos
grab the readers’ attention and help to keep them hooked. If you don’t have your own videos
to upload, you can use websites such as YouTube to find great clips that can be embedded
into your site. As always, use good keywords in your videos’ title, descriptions, and tags;
share videos on social media sites; and use a video as a call to action or another way to drive
sales.

Stop Writing for Search Engines: Believe it or not, most search engine robots can tell when
you’re writing content specifically for search engine optimization and not for the user, which
hurts your ranking. Instead of focusing exclusively on keywords, over-linking, or creating
content that’s low quality just for the purpose of publishing, relax, take a breath, and back-off
from over optimizing. Focusing on content that is natural sounding and useful will get you a
long way, and then optimizing after that by doing the things mentioned above is key.

Use Social Media: If you posted your blog to Facebook or Twitter once and then gave up on
it, you’re not doing your best to optimize your page. Social media is very important when it
comes to content optimization, and simply posting a link isn’t enough. Rather, build relation-
ships with relevant users and connections through social media sites, share other users’ con-
tent too, provide feedback, and use your social media site for more than just posting.

Keep it Clean: Finally, know that a search engine won’t publish anything that’s hard to find
or illegal to post. As such, make sure you keep your code clean and organized, using HTML
and CSS layouts, which help search engines, find your content efficiently. Additionally,
know that anything illegal (unlawful use of copyrighted content) won’t be published. For best
results, use your own content, and be creative to avoid raising any red flags.

Google’s algorithm is extremely complex, but at a high level:

Google is looking for pages that contain high-quality, relevant information relevant to the
searcher’s query.

Google’s algorithm determines relevance by “crawling” (or reading) your website’s content
and evaluating (algorithmically) whether that content is relevant to what the searcher is look-
ing for, based on the keywords it contains and other factors (known as “ranking signals”).

Google determines “quality” by a number of means, but a site’s link profile – the number and
quality of other websites that link to a page and site as a whole is among the most important.

Key Factor

Search Volume: The first factor to consider is how many people are actually searching for a
given keyword. The more people there are searching for a keyword, the bigger the potential
audience you stand to reach. Conversely, if no one is searching for a keyword, there is no
audience available to find your content through search.

Relevance: A term may be frequently searched for, but that does not necessarily mean that it
is relevant to your prospects. Keyword relevance, or the connection between content on a site
and the user’s search query, is a crucial ranking signal.
Competition: Keywords with higher search volume can drive significant amounts of traffic,
but competition for premium positioning in the search engine results pages can be intense.

Key element

Title Tags

While Google is working to better understand the actual meaning of a page and de-emphasiz-
ing (and even punishing) aggressive and manipulative use of keywords, including the term
(and related terms) that you want to rank for in your pages is still valuable. And the single
most impactful place you can put your keyword is your page’s title tag.

Meta Descriptions

While the title tag is effectively your search listing’s headline, the meta description (another
meta HTML element that can be updated in your site’s code, but isn’t seen on your actual
page) is effectively your site’s additional ad copy. Google takes some liberties with what they
display in search results, so your meta description may not always show, but if you have a
compelling description of your page that would make folks searching likely to click, you can
greatly increase traffic.

Body Content

The actual content of your page itself is, of course, very important. Different types of pages
will have different “jobs” your cornerstone content asset that you want lots of folks to link to
needs to be very different than your support content that you want to make sure your users
find and get an answer from quickly. That said, Google has been increasingly favoring certain
types of content, and as you build out any of the pages on your site, there are a few things to
keep in mind:

 Thick & Unique Content: There is no magic number in terms of word count, and if
you have a few pages of content on your site with a handful to a couple hundred
words you won’t be falling out of Google’s good graces, but in general recent
Panda updates in particular favor longer, unique content. If you have a large num-
ber (think thousands) of extremely short (50-200 words of content) pages or lots of
duplicated content where nothing changes but the page’s title tag and say a line of
text, that could get you in trouble. Look at the entirety of your site: are a large per-
centage of your pages thin, duplicated and low value? If so, try to identify a way to
“thicken” those pages, or check your analytics to see how much traffic they’re get-
ting, and simply exclude them (using a noindex meta tag) from search results to
keep from having it appear to Google that you’re trying to flood their index with
lots of low value pages in an attempt to have them rank.
 Engagement”: Google is increasingly weighting engagement and user experience met-
rics more heavily. You can impact this by making sure your content answers the
questions searchers are asking so that they’re likely to stay on your page and en-
gage with your content. Make sure your pages load quickly and don’t have design
elements (such as overly aggressive ads above the content) that would be likely to
turn searchers off and send them away.
 “Sharability”: Not every single piece of content on your site will be linked to and
shared hundreds of times. But in the same way you want to be careful of not rolling
out large quantities of pages that have thin content, you want to consider who
 would be likely to share and link to new pages you’re creating on your site before
you roll them out. Having large quantities of pages that aren’t likely to be shared or
linked to doesn’t position those pages to rank well in search results, and doesn’t
help to create a good picture of your site as a whole for search engines, either.

Alt Attributes

How you mark up your images can impact not only the way that search engines perceive your
page, but also how much search traffic from image search your site generates. An alt attribute
is an HTML element that allows you to provide alternative information for an image if a user
can’t view it. Your images may break over time (files get deleted, users have difficulty con-
necting to your site, etc.) so having a useful description of the image can be helpful from an
overall usability perspective. This also gives you another opportunity outside of your content
to help search engines understand what your page is about.

URL Structure

Your site’s URL structure can be important both from a tracking perspective (you can more
easily segment data in reports using a segmented, logical URL structure), and a shareability
standpoint (shorter, descriptive URLs are easier to copy and paste and tend to get mistakenly
cut off less frequently). Again: don’t work to cram in as many keywords as possible; create a
short, descriptive URL.

Schema & Markup

Finally, once you have all of the standard on-page elements taken care of, you can consider
going a step further and better helping Google (and other search engines, which also recog-
nize schema) to understand your page.

Schema markup does not make your page show up higher in search results (it’s not a ranking
factor, currently). It does give your listing some additional “real estate” in the search results,
the way ad extensions do for your AdWords ads.

Display Advertising
Digital display advertising is graphic advertising on Internet websites, apps or social media
through banners or other advertising formats made of text, images, flash, video, and audio.
The main purpose of display advertising is to deliver general advertisements and brand
messages to site visitors.

According to eMarketer, Facebook and Twitter will take 33 percent of display ad spending
market share by 2017. Google’s display campaigns reach 80 percent of global internet users.
Desktop display advertising eclipsed search ad buying in 2014, with mobile ad spending
overtaking display in 2015.

Digital display advertising is an outbound display advertising format where you target
predefined audiences with images or banners. There’s also native ads and text ads in the mix
in there. You target them on different websites, on social media platforms, and on mobile
apps.
Note that outbound advertising is a concept where the advertiser targets the audience and
sends their message out to them as opposed to something like inbound, which would be
search where the audience comes to you. So, there’s a key difference between the type of
marketing that display is. It’s an outbound advertising format.

Value

Awareness and interest

When we visualize a funnel, it’s quite clear to see where display fits in the consumer intent
journey. We begin with awareness and interest. This is where display fits in. We’re sending
our message out there to people, to audiences who may potentially be interested in the
product.

Retention

With a retention piece, the remarketing fits back in there too, because if you think about
remarketing, we’re sending ads out to pre-existing customers or people who’ve been in that
site before. So, if we want to retain these people as repeat customers, it makes sense to kind
of remarket out to them with special offers for people who have been on the site before.

Consideration and conversion

As we move down the funnel, as they get more and more aware, as they align it to their
needs, we start moving into the consideration and conversion areas. So, consideration and
conversion can be with around channels like remarketing, and shopping, as well as search as
well.

Target

In order to uniquely identify anonymous users, online advertisers today tend to make use of
cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ADs to serve to
a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything,
so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ADs from the site the user visited.

As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user’s online activity,
they can then combine this information to create a picture of the user’s interests to deliver
even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.
Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual and semantic advertising to
deliver display ADs related to the content of the web page where the ADs appear.
Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an
advertiser’s return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.

As advertising needs become more sophisticated, display ADs can also be personalized based
on a user’s geography through geotargeting. Basic information such as a user’s IP address
can indicate a user’s rough location with a limited degree of accuracy. This information can
be supplemented further through the use of a phone’s GPS or the location of nearby mobile
towers to have a clearer indication of the user’s current position for a mind boggling array of
advertising possibilities.

Programmatic, Real time bidding (RTB)

Programmatic display advertising, or real time bidding (RTB), transformed the way digital
display advertising is bought and managed in recent years. Rather than placing a booking for
advertising directly with a website, advertisers will manage their activity through a (demand
side platform), and bid to advertise to people in real time, across multiple websites, based on
targeting criteria. This method of advertising quickly gained popular, as it allows for more
control for the advertiser (or agency), including of the individual target audience, rather than
just the website. It has become a threat to website operators and generally the cost paid for
advertising in this way is less than the old method and so the earning potential for them is
reduced.

Programmatic is not without its drawbacks, as without the appropriate management adverts
can appear against unsavoury content or inappropriate news topics. This issue became front-
page news in February 2017, when advertisers on YouTube were found displayed on terror
group websites and fake news sites. As a result, a number of major advertisers paused all of
their online advertising until they could put the appropriate measures in place to prevent this
occurring again.

it is important to choose the right format because it will help to make the most of the
medium. It is also possible to add:

 Video;
 Rich Media Ads: flash files that may expand when the user interacts on mouseover
(polite), or auto- initiated (non-polite);
 Overlays: ads that appear above content and that are possible to remove by clicking
on a close button;
 Interstitials: Ads that are displayed on web pages before expected content (before the
target page is displayed on the user’s screen);
 Sponsorship: including a logo or adding a brand to the design of a website. This can
also can fall under Native advertising, which is an ad that can seem like Editorial,
or “In-Feed”, but has really been paid for by the advertiser.

Types

Banner Ads: One of the oldest and traditional forms of advertising, banner ads usually
appear at the top of websites in a “banner” format.

Interstitial Ads: These ads appear as web pages that are served to users before they are
directed to the original page they requested.

Rich Media: These ads include interactive elements, such as video, audio and clickable
elements.
Video Ads: The YouTube advertising platform, as well as social networks like Instagram and
Facebook, have opened a whole new avenue for marketers. Video ads allow you to reach
your audience and connect with them on a personal level, and are well worth investing in.

Advantages

 Diversity: Display ads come in many shapes and sizes. And as you’ve seen above,
they can be presented in a number of formats, too. This means you can choose a
style and advertising format that will help you achieve your goals.
 Reach: Thanks for the Google Display Network (GDN), you can access millions of
sites straight from your Google Ads account.
 Targeting: Because of GDN’s extensive reach, you can also target the right audience
by placing your ads on the right websites. This includes demographic and geo-tar-
geting, along with specific interests of your target audience.
 Measurable: Clicks, impressions and conversions can all be tracked from Google
Ads, as well as Google Analytics for more granular performance and engagement
tracking.

Various SEO Plug-in

AIOSEO

All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market.
Used by over 2+ million users, it is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you
improve search rankings without learning any complicated SEO jargon.

It comes with the easiest setup wizard that automatically helps you choose the best SEO
settings for your business. AIOSEO shows you TruSEO on-page analysis with an actionable
checklist to optimize your posts and pages.

The on-page SEO checklist includes a smart meta tag generator where you can use dynamic
values (current year, month, day, custom fields, author info, and much more) in your SEO
title and descriptions. This means you don’t need to update a post just to change SEO titles.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most recommended SEO tools online. It’s only second to Google when it
comes to being the largest website crawlers. SEO experts can’t get enough of Ahrefs’ Site
Audit feature as it’s the best SEO analysis tool around. The tool highlights what parts of your
website need improvements to rank better in search engines. From a competitor analysis
perspective, you’ll likely use Ahrefs to determine your competitor’s backlinks to use them as
a starting point for your own brand. You can also use this SEO tool to find the most linked to
content within your niche, check and fix broken links on your website and get an overview of
your best-performing pages.

Google Search Console

Offered for free to everyone with a website, Google Search Console lets you monitor and
report on your website’s presence in Google SERP. All you need to do is verify your website
by adding a code to your website or going through Google Analytics and you can submit your
sitemap for indexing. Although you don’t need a Search Console account to appear in
Google’s search results, you can control what gets indexed and how your website is
represented with this account. As an SEO checker tool, Search Console can help you
understand how Google and its users view your website and allow you to optimize for better
performance in Google search results. It’s especially useful for new websites as it lets site
owners submit web pages for search indexing.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your WordPress
website for search engines.

It lets you easily add SEO titles and descriptions to all posts and pages on your website. You
can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.

Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all your website content which
makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. It also helps you easily import your
SEO data if you have been using another SEO plugin.

KWFinder: SEO Keyword Tool

An SEO keyword tool like KWFinder helps you find long-tail keywords that have a lower
level of competition. The experts use this SEO tool to find the best keywords and run analysis
reports on backlinks and SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Their Rank Tracker tool helps
you easily determine your ranking while tracking your improvement based on one key metric.
Plus, if that’s not enough, you’ll get a ton of new keyword ideas to help you rank your
website even higher.

Rank Math

Rank Math is a fast-growing user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize
your website for search engines and social media. It comes with a setup wizard and allows
you to import data from other SEO plugins during the setup.

You can use it to easily add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog
posts. The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, connect Google Search
Console, and control access to plugin features based on user roles.

Off Page SEO Techniques

Off-page SEO is one of the most important parts of a successful strategy.

If you want to rank your site on Google and increase your brand’s visibility and organic
search traffic in 2020, you need to be looking beyond your own site.
Off-page SEO, in short, covers all SEO tactics that take place outside of your own website.

It is often thought to just be link building, but in reality, there are far more off-page SEO tac-
tics that you should be using if you want to gain a competitive advantage.

Tactics such as brand building, citation building, content marketing, social media, and more
all play an important part in a comprehensive SEO strategy.

But as a simple explanation of off-page SEO, this covers any tactics that you use that don’t
involve making changes to your own website or publishing content on your own site.

Off-page SEO includes those tactics that relate to activities carried out away from your own
website. Link building is often considered to be the main off-page tactic, but this also in-
cludes tactics such as content marketing, social media, appearing on podcasts, landing re-
views, building local citations, and more.

Different off-page Strategies:

 Link Building

 Brand Building

 Content Marketing

 PR

 Local SEO (GMB and Citations)

 Social Media

 Forums

 Influencer Marketing

 Events

 Guest Posting

 Podcasts

 Reviews

 Content Syndication

Email Marketing Introduction and Significance

Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel, a form of direct marketing as well as
digital marketing, that uses email to promote your business’s products or services. It can help
make your customers aware of your latest items or offers by integrating it into your
marketing automation efforts. It can also play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy with
lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships or keeping customers engaged
between purchases through different types of marketing emails.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people,
using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be
considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business,
or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or
more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually
refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant’s relationship
with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business,
acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something
immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

Significance:

Email marketing delivers your message.

If marketers have to choose between adding a subscriber to their email list, or gaining a new
Facebook fan, they should go for the email subscriber every time.

There are two key reasons why:

First, 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your
Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed. This is because Facebook limits the number
of times your posts appear in the News Feed in an attempt to drive brands towards their paid
advertising options.

Email marketing drives conversions.

Most marketers are laser focused on driving conversions. Regardless of whether they do so in
the form of leads, sales, memberships, or a metric unique to your business strategy, the
ultimate goal for marketers is to turn potential customers into paying customers.

And when it comes to conversions, there isn’t a more powerful channel than email. In fact,
the average click-through rate of an email campaign is around 3% (of total recipients),
whereas the average click-through rate from a tweet is around 0.5%.

This means you are 6x more likely to get someone to click through to your website via email
than you are from Twitter. As discussed earlier, your email subscribers have told you they
want to hear from you and this isn’t typically the case with social.

Email marketing has larger reach.

With Facebook boasting over 1 billion active users and Twitter boasting 255 million, it’s
tempting to believe that social media is the most effective way to reach the masses. These are
impressive numbers, but what isn’t so frequently shared are the statistics on email usage.
Email marketing has a higher ROI.

Given email’s unmatched ability to drive conversions, it makes sense that email is also the
most effective marketing channel to drive ROI for your company. In fact, email marketing
yields an average 3,800% return on investment for businesses and for every $1 spent on email
marketing, the average return on investment is $38.

Advantages

Email marketing is significantly cheaper and faster than traditional mail, mainly because with
email, most of the cost falls on the recipient[citation needed].

Businesses and organizations who send a high volume of emails can use an ESP (email
service provider) to gather information about the behavior of the recipients. The insights
provided by consumer response to email marketing help businesses and organizations
understand and make use of consumer behavior[citation needed].

Almost half of American Internet users check or send email on a typical day, with emails
delivered between 1 am and 5 am local time outperforming those sent at other times in open
and click rates.

Disadvantages

 As of mid-2016 email deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. Accord-

ing to the report, legitimate email servers averaged a delivery rate of 73% in the
U.S.; six percent were filtered as spam, and 22% were missing. This lags behind
other countries: Australia delivers at 90%, Canada at 89%, Britain at 88%, France
at 84%, Germany at 80% and Brazil at 79%.
 Additionally, consumers receive on average about 90 emails per day.
 Companies considering the use of an email marketing program must make sure that
their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States’ Controlling the
Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM), the
European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Inter-
net service provider’s acceptable use policy.

Types

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer’s action with a company. To
be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communications’ primary
purpose must be “to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the
recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender” along with a few other narrow
definitions of transactional messaging. Triggered transactional messages include dropped
basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status
emails, reorder emails, and email receipts.
The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action
that triggered it. But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email
newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend the email
relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer questions; or to cross-sell
or up-sell products or services.

Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which gives
companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of transactional
emails. There are also software vendors that offer specialized transactional email marketing
services, which include providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and
running specific marketing campaigns (such as customer referral programs).

Direct emails

Direct email involves sending an email solely to communicate a promotional message (for
example, a special offer or a product catalog). Companies usually collect a list of customer or
prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages to, or they rent a list of email
addresses from service companies.

Campaigns using Mail Chimp

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps you share emails, ads, and other
messages with your audience. We call these messages “campaigns.” When you create a
campaign in Mailchimp, we give you lots of flexible settings and design options, as well as
builder tools that walk you through every step of the process.

Things to know

 Before you can create a campaign in Mailchimp, you’ll need an audience.

 If you don’t have any contacts yet, create and share a signup form to build your audi-
ence.
 Connect an online store to sync products and customer data, to tailor your campaigns
to the right people and sell more stuff.
 If you need help creating and designing a certain type of campaign, you can search
this Knowledge Base for additional resources.

Definitions

Campaign

Any distributed content, that’s created and measured in Mailchimp, including regular emails,
automations, landing pages, and ads.

Audience

A place for you to collect and manage your contacts in Mailchimp.

Contact
Someone whose email is stored in your account. A contact’s email marketing status
determines what kind of content you can share with them. Statuses include subscribed,
unsubscribed, non-subscribed, cleaned, and archived.

Choose a campaign type

Email campaigns

 Regular

This is the most common type of campaign. Design and customize your content, and choose
whether to send immediately or schedule your campaign for later.

 Plain-text

The simplest form of mass email you can send. These campaigns contain only text and have
no formatting options.

 A/B testing

Send more than one version of the same campaign and see which one comes out on top. Test
subject lines, From, names, content, and send times. If you’re a Mailchimp Pro user, you’ll
have the option to test up to eight different versions with a Multivariate campaign.

 Automated

Automated emails send when triggered by a specific date, event, or contact’s activity. You
can create a custom automation from scratch, or use one of our many pre-built automation
campaigns.

Email Marketing Strategy and Monitoring

An email marketing strategy is a set of procedures that a marketer identifies and follows to
achieve desired marketing goals with email advertising. This plan of action gives the
businesses a direct channel of communication with prospects and customers for brand
promotion.

Strategies

Set email marketing goals

Marketing emails serve to fulfill the following purposes:

 increase customer engagement

 raise loyalty
 maximize ROI
 maintain relationships with your clients
Pick the necessary email marketing tools

Finding the right tools is the first step to setting up an email marketing strategy. A marketer
needs an Email Service Provider (ESP) with an automation tool, among other useful features.

SendPulse allows you to create, organize, and send emails in a breeze. With Automation 360,
marketers can follow up on their customers and send the right emails at the right time. For
instance, you can set up welcome emails for onboarding new customers, abandoned cart
emails to get customers to take action about the items they have left in the cart, and so forth.
Register right now to launch your email marketing strategy with SendPulse.

Determine the target audience

Next, the marketer needs to build their email subscriber list. To do this, you have to identify
the target audience your company serves. Case in point, if a specific business deals with baby
clothes, then its target audience primarily comprises mothers-to-be. Thus, it makes sense to
use conventional means to get the email addresses of this demographic.

Identify the appropriate list building tactics

An excellent way of building mailing lists is through subscriptions. With SendPulse, you can
add subscription forms to your site and collect quality subscribers who are ready to hear from
your brand. You can embed subscription forms on high-traffic sections of your website.

Divide your mailing list into segments

Segmenting is an effective tactic that allows you to send highly targeted email campaigns.
With SendPulse, marketers can segment their mailing lists based on location, gender,
occupation, age, behavior, etc. In turn, you can be sure that you are delivering appropriate
and customized messages that appeal to customers.

Identify the types of emails to send

There’s a great variety of different emails that marketers send. The choice of email style
depends on the aim of each specific campaign. For example, if a user has just joined your
mailing list, send them a welcome email. This is a great chance to explain the benefits of
working with you. If clients have added some items to their shopping cart and didn’t buy
them, send them an abandoned cart email to increase sales. Discover more about email
campaign types.

Create a schedule for sending emails

To ensure that subscribers read your promotional emails, find out the best time for sending
emails. It is, therefore, necessary to experiment and determine the time when subscribers are
most engaged. A/B testing proves useful.

Format the email content

For email marketing to be a success, messages in promotional emails should be presented
perfectly. Marketers should choose formats, fonts, and text sizes depending on the type of
emails that they are creating. With SendPulse, you can use a drag-and-drop editor to create
beautiful email templates that are customized to match your brand.

Optimize your emails

A 2017 study by Adestra concluded that 83.8 percent of mobile device owners open emails
with these devices. It, therefore, makes sense to optimize email content for mobile to reach
this audience. Some of the ways for assuring that email content is mobile-friendly include:

 Creating short subject lines.

 Limiting emails to a width of 600px.
 Using single-column templates.
 Displaying small images.
 Writing distinct CTAs.
 Testing on multiple mobile devices.
 Avoiding menu bars.
 Using a large font size (ideally 13-14 pixels).

Conduct split-testing

With A/B testing, marketers can determine what copy of their email works best by swapping
out different aspects of their email, such as subject lines (the most popular option), images,
CTAs, headlines, offers, and so forth.

Monitor email performance reports

Adjusting your email strategy based on reports and feedback that you have gathered is the
last step for developing an email marketing strategy. SendPulse provides users with a set of
analytics that aids in gauging the effectiveness of email campaigns. Track email open rate,
unsubscribe rate, click-through rates, email deliveries, email bounces, spam complaints, and
more.

Monitoring

Overall ROI

Overall ROI is an email metric every marketer should track. It tells you the overall return on
investment for your campaigns.

You can calculate this by taking the money you made in sales from the campaign minus the
money you spent to execute the campaign, divide that by the money invested in the
campaign, and then multiply that by 100.

Email sharing rate

The email sharing rate indicates how many times a recipient shared your email through their
social media, but has nothing to do with sharing the email through email.

This metric is calculated through the “share this” button on your email. To find this rate,
divide the amount of “share this” clicks by the number of total emails delivered, then
multiply by 100.

Engagement over time

Tracking engagement over time will give you information on the best times of day to send
messages.

You can utilize automation in your email service provider to send emails based on customer
behavior or trigger, but tracking engagement over time will tell you when you get the highest
open rates and click rates for emails that are not automated.

Forwarding rate/email sharing

Forwarding rate/email sharing measures the percentage of recipients who either shared your
post via social media or forwarded it to a friend.

Forwarding rate or sharing is a helpful metric to track because it gives you an idea of how
many brand advocates you have. It tells you what percentage of subscribers are
recommending your emails to others.

Spam complaints

It can be very discouraging for your emails to get marked as spam. You may prefer to ignore
these instances but it’s important to pay attention to spam complaints.

Email service providers want to ensure quality and track spam complaints. If this rate gets too
high, it’s possible your email service provider will take action against you and block your
account.

List growth rate

List growth rate is the metric to track the rate at which your list is growing.

You can calculate this by taking the number of new subscribers minus the number of
unsubscribes, then divide that by the total number of email addresses on your list, and then
multiply it by 100.

Number of unsubscribes

Measuring unsubscribes is very simple. Any email provider will tell you how many people
unsubscribed upon receiving an email from you. This email metric can usually be found in
your main dashboard or your metrics dashboard.
A high number of unsubscribes can be discouraging. However, email marketers prioritize this
email marketing metric and often view unsubscribes as a good thing because they indicate
that you are fine-tuning your subscriber list.

Bounce rate

When sending an email campaign, you also want to track the bounce rate. Bounce rate
measures how many subscriber email addresses didn’t receive your email. Soft bounces track
temporary problems with email addresses and hard bounces track permanent problems with
email addresses.

Measuring bounce rates against open rates will give you a more solid idea of the quality of
your subscriber lists. If you have a high percentage of hard bounces, your list may be full of
fake email addresses, old email addresses, or addresses with mistakes in them.

Conversion rate

Your click-through rate measures how many people clicked your link, while your conversion
rate will assess how many people clicked on the link and then completed a specific action.
For example, if you included a link in your email for your subscribers to participate in a
Black Friday sale, the conversion rate would tell you what percentage of the people who
clicked the link made a purchase.

Conversion rates give you unique insight into your return on investment. When you know
how much you have spent and how many subscribers are converting, it’s easier to determine
whether or not the money you are putting into your campaign is paying off.

Click-through rate (CTR)

CTR is another common metric that can help you determine how well your campaigns are
performing. CTR measures how many people clicked on the links in your email. For
example, if you included a link to redeem an offer, the CTR would measure what percentage
of subscribers clicked on your links.

When crafting an email, there are a few ways to increase click-through rates. For instance,
include links throughout the email in appropriate places and add an eye-catching and
conspicuous call-to-action button that subscribers can click on to redeem your offer.

Open rate

Open rate is the simplest email marketing KPI and is vital to understanding how well your
subscribers are receiving your messages. The open rate tracks how many subscribers opened
the email you sent.

Open rates can give you insight into the success of your subject line copy. For example,
studies show subject lines that use subscribers’ first names are 26% more likely to be opened.
Other strategies, like using emoticons in subject lines or keeping subject lines direct and
short, can increase open rates as well.

UNIT IV: Web analytics

Web analytics is reporting and analysis of data on website visitor activity. It is not only a
tool to measure web traffic but also can be used as a tool for business and market research.
Techniques used to access and improve the contribution of e-marketing to a business, such as
referrals, clickstreams, online research data, customer satisfaction surveys, leads and sales.
Thus, marketers use web analytics exploring data and reports to build their knowledge on
customers’ preference and behavior according to types of sites, which areas customers click
more often when they online. It also helps marketer understand their customers better and im-
prove their business performance. (Dykes, 2012)

These are three stages that they need to concern when setting up a web analytic tool. The ana-
lysis is the ticket for them move from Steupland to Actionland. It is the isolating of meaning -
ful and actionable insights in data and reports that when acted upon by your organization can
drive business value.

Alignment Stage:

At this early planning stage, it is necessary for marketer to gather their business objectives
and capture stakeholders’ online behavior by their online measurement strategy. Clearly un-
derstand measurement strategy and well analyze visitors is critical to success. Thus, mar-
keters have to carefully handling relevant and meaningful data which will directly affect the
business in the long-term.

Collection Stage:

At this point of stage, large companies may spend amount of time on technical implementa-
tion such as multiple web domains and online marketing initiatives. (Dykes, 2012)

Reporting Stage:

This is the last stage for companies move from Setupland to Actionland. This stage is import -
ant where you create report and distribute them to organization using a manual or preferably
automated approach.

TOOLS AND METHODS USED TO HELP MARKETER

There are two types of web analytics, on-site and off-site web analytics.

ON-SITE ANALYTICS

On-site web analytics is used for marketers to measure a visitor’s activity when he browses
on your website. This includes its drivers and conversations, for example which ads on land-
ing page encourage more people to purchase and which title of information visitors click
most. This data is used to analysis visitors’ online behavior and can be used to improve web-
site or marketing campaign’s audience response.

Simply, on-site web analytics tools are used to analysis and measure behaviors of visitors’
journey and actual visitor traffic arriving on your website. For example, which landing page
encourage visitors to make a purchase, what links visitors clicked on (from search engine to
get to the site or came there directly) to the site, and time they spent and stayed on given
page. Therefore, On-site web analytics measures of website in a commercial context.

For the business, website became more important than ever before, it handles more informa-
tion. Companies also need to know if their marketing campaigns are working on internet-
based, just like John Shumway, the global vice president of product management at Akamai
says “marketing people are increasingly driving the need for we analytics”. (Dave Chaffey,
2003)

Firms can conduct on-site web-analytics through the following ways:

Analytics Software Produced by Companies

Some companies such as WebTrends and Google Analytics produce web analytics software
that converts data by using combination of tables and graphs. It automatically monitors your
website’s traffic and highlights any significant changes, thus, managers can easily understand
and analysis the effectiveness of their campaigns. And, where visitors come from and which
pages retain visitors the longest, and also, track visitors progress s they click though the site.
It can be simply shows daily visit on your website, type on traffic and time on site by country.

Other technologies for data collection

Other technologies companies used for data collection are eye tracking system and mouse
tracking analytics. It is a key method for testing visitors’ behavior and areas they focus more
often when they on a web page, and both eye tracking and e mouse tracking analytics studies
offer businesses accurate and actionable results. Therefore, the result can be used to improve
a web site or marketing campaign’s audience response.

Eye tracking system is utilized by many top enterprises such as Google. This tracking system
uses specialist software to track internet visitors where the eyes land on a webpage.

Similar to eye tracking system, Mouse tracking analytics follows the mouse movements of in-
ternet users to simulate eye movement on a webpage. From the research, it has shown when
both methods of testing are conducted simultaneously, in the result, they find out exactly
what the visitors look at on the page which contains 84%-88% accuracy. In addition, both
method of tracking analytics deliver valuable information to managers about visitors’ in-
volvement and engagement with your website. This is vital to work out what changes you
need to make in order to benefit your visitors’ experience as well as improve the website.
(ClickTale, 2010)

OFF-SITE ANALYTICS

Off-site analytics data can be obtained for any website-including your competitors and part -
ners. Which means is analysis the internet as a whole for the websites. Thus, the key differ-
ences of off-site web analytics measures from your potential audience (opportunity), share of
voice (visibility), and buzz (comments).

Unlikely to on-site web analytics only captures what happens when visitors visit and engage
with your website, by using various technologies to help monitor and analysis website to cre-
ate meaningful actions and results. However, as social website becomes more popular and as-
cendant channel for internet users, and everything becomes more transparent on social web,
organization information are shared, spread on it, thus, through this platform, marketers are
able to measure the latest buzz about website or organization.it is important for marketers to
monitor not only what happens on the website but also outside of your website. Improving
from what other people are saying about the company and provide products and services
match customers requires. Off-site Web Analytics solutions can help businesses stay on the
leading edge of overall trends. (Monitoring Buzz With Off-Site Web Analytics, 2010)

Firms can conduct off-site web-analytics through the following available software:

Alexa and Compete

There are numbers of web analytics software provided service to measure your competitors
how much and what type of traffic are garnering to their site. Alexa and Compete are two free
services help marketers to find top-level information, including the top searches people used
to find the site, as well as traffic comparisons versus other Websites. For more comparison
capabilities and a deeper level of demographic information, marketer can just simply up-
grades their account.

Similar to Alexa and Compete system offerings monitor and aggregate a wide swath of Web
traffic, paid services from Quantcast and Nielsen NetRatings also provide analytics tools and
research related to online audiences, as well as online ad buying and selling.

As by shown example of how Alexa provide services for marketers by monitoring and ag-
gregating a wide swath of Web traffic from multiple sources to develop estimates for overall
ranking and other factors.

On the table 1 below, shows top 5 sites on the web. According to off-site web analytics is
measuring about your competitors and monitoring the internet as whole website, it is obvious
for marketers to analysis the market, so that company can generate more sales, reduce mar-
keting costs, enhance campaign performance, provide better user experience, and reach spe-
cific target segments. As well as on table, more specific shows competitor daily/monthly
search traffic and top queries from search traffic and more other details. Thus, research on
your competitors and understand their strategy, is the advantages for the company to take step
forward than others in the market.

Co Tweet and HootSuite

There are other tools like CoTweet and HootSuite are relative newcomers to the market when
they looking further out into the social web. Especially for small and medium-size business
that use tools to monitoring and engaging with social web. It started as management tools
Twitter, but they are now expanding their support for other social channels such as Facebook
and LinkedIn. It simply for an organization tracks the effectiveness of multiple marketing ef-
forts in multiple social channels, and also from platforms.
Because social web such as Twitter and Facebook, it creates more effective buzz to a com-
pany. Therefore, this platform is critical important for for small and medium-size business to
enhance awareness. CoTweet is a web-based social media management and analytics tool.
With CoTweet you can not only manage clicks on content you publish within the application,
but also integrate any web analytics platforms with campaign codes and shortened URLs. Just
like Bobowski believes “it provides closed-loop reporting and allows marketers to associate
revenue and other success metrics to social media activity”. (Peters, 2011)

As shown table below, CoTweet also provides updates and follow-up messages to be as-
signed to specific social media managers. Different knowledge of social media managers can
responses immediately to appropriate questions and comments from followers, which shows
to followers that there are person behind responding the questions. Also, from the questions
and buzz marketers will know who he is talking with if question arise for as specific tweet. It
helps marketers collected more accurate data and responded visitor’s needs.

CONCLUSION

This report has shown that Web continues to have growing importance in marketing efforts,
therefore on-site and off-site Web Analytics solutions will likely become more crucial tools
that lead to greater business success. This is supported by the number of toolset made avail-
able to businesses of all sizes to monitor and analyze web traffic on their sites in order to de-
termine what is happening not only throughout the rest of the Web ecosystem but also in so-
cial media.

Marketing Strategies For The Digital World

Many years ago, developing effective marketing strategies was a much simpler task than it is
today. With only a small number of television channels, radio stations, newspapers, and
relevant magazines pertaining to a given market, advertisers could develop fairly targeted
marketing strategies to generate sales. In the emerging digital environment, marketing
strategies have become a far more complex task. There are now vast arrays of different
marketing channels, tools, and tactics that must be unique in strategy while seamless and
integrated in application. Companies also need to connect and engage with customers, and
create memorable, lasting experiences. To develop a successful marketing campaign in
today’s digital environment, companies must focus on three strategic components. Marketers
must establish clear, strategic, and targeted objectives and ensure that they are tactical in the
rollout and implementation of new campaigns. Companies should also focus on the
development of a separate team to identify and analyze emerging marketing opportunities.
Companies that are able to clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of each digital
medium will likely be more successful in their campaigns.

With technology’s rapid evolution also come changes in consumer behavior. Here are 10
strategies to emerge into a smarter marketing era, grow as a company and strengthen the
performance of your brand.

1. Marketing: integrate your sales and marketing for optimal performance.

Yes, it is a “thing” although you probably won’t find this word in Webster’s Dictionary. It
means that you integrate sales and marketing to optimize performance of marketing efforts.

Gone are the days when a consumer peruses an ad in print media then purchases that product
later during the appointed shopping day of the week. Digital ads are portals to online sales.
Marketing and sales all happen in the same place with the tap of a finger or click of a mouse.

If a potential customer has a question about a product, that, too, happens in the same place in
cyber-world through chat window features. If your company is not marketing, it is losing
significant sales potential.

1. Experience: Reaching a digital customer, requires that you become one your-
self.

Have you walked in the shoes of your customers? Have you surfed the web to map the path
of discovery to your product’s online ad? Did you click and see where your landed in
cyberspace? What about the purchasing process? Was it a secure experience?

If you have not walked a mile in your customer’s shoes, how can you know if the process is
efficient? That’s one of the best ways to fine tune your online presence.

Learning a new language requires complete immersion. Otherwise you’ll need an interpreter
and in the case of digital marketing, that mean a savvy digital marketing agency.

1. Playing Field Dynamics: Not every digital marketing challenge is solved by

throwing more money at it.

In the olden days the playing field belonged to the company that could afford the biggest
print ad or a prime-time television/radio slot for a commercial.

Digital advertising has seriously leveled the playing field. Just look at what happens when a
YouTube video goes viral. A company doesn’t always have to outspend a competitor to solve
a marketing problem.

1. Engagement: Having a Digital Presence is not enough.

So you have a company blog and a profile with every social media platform under the Sun.
Yet you haven’t seen a significant impact on sales. What is going on?

Creating a digital presence is only the first step. Now you have to engage, engage,
engage. That means creating content that inspires a reaction. Calls to action, surveys, asking
viewers to name the new company cat rescued from the alley are all great ideas to create
intrigue and stimulate engagement.

You’ve got to do something with your digital presence: connect with people. offer value and
get them communicating with you.
 1. Who’s In The Driver’s Seat? Let data drive the decision-making.

If data is not behind every decision, then your company is flying blind. The greatest thing
about digital marketing is that every single action can be measured.

Did switching background colors result in more traffic? Good decision. But, even if it had
been a bad decision, analytics reflecting a noted drop in traffic, or less time spent by visitors
on your site, would have alerted you to the need to re-adjust accordingly. Data must captain
the ship.

1. Value: You must offer education & value.

There is more to value than getting a great product at a great price. Content is the most
valuable commodity in the digital age. The information you share needs to have value to
viewers.

Cultivate an online reputation for being the premier authority on your particular industry. It’s
easy to Google an answer to a question. But believing in the integrity of a source is the value
that will bring readers back time and again to your site for reliable information

1. Personalized Automation: So you don’t lose that personal touch.

Automated e-mails and notifications don’t seem very personal, do they? It kind of has the
flavor of SPAM. Au contraire, mon ami. That’s the lovely thing about data!

As of 2014, nearly 70% of businesses were using a marketing automation platform.

Analytics identifies so many unique characteristics of customers and viewers that marketing
automation can take on amazing personalization aspects. You can send birthday greetings or
religious holiday observances according to each individual. An anniversary of a loyal
customer’s first purchase can be noted.

A customer’s purchasing history can generate a suggestions list of other products of interest.
Marketing automation can definitely create that personal experience that online customers
still crave.

1. Get Out More: Your customers don’t spend all their time in one place, and
neither should you.

In the time of yester-year, sales executives had to get out and mingle in order to bring in more
customers. It’s the same in the digital age. Your content needs to get out more.

This is often called a multi-channel digital marketing strategy which means ads are delivered
to other online targets. For example, when Google recognizes the potential of a Facebook
user to find your brand interesting, it places your ad before their eyes as suggested content.
Voila. You just mingled online.
 1. Digital Agility is a must.

There are all sorts of technical lingo to explain concepts like “agile sales”. All you really
need to know is that things can change.

You’ve heard us say before: “your website is not an office building, so don’t treat it like
one!” In the ever-changing digital world, you must be ready to change with it– and that
includes your website.

So that website you built? Is it turning out to be lousy? Don’t despair! Be agile! Change it!
When you build something to be accessed by others through the worldwide web, it’s not set
in stone like a brick and mortar store.

If they turn out to be a bomb, tweak it. The digital age means everyone gets do-overs until
you get it right.

1. Chatter Matters: Business practices, good and bad, will catch up with you
eventually.

That old saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” does not apply to what your
company or brand is doing online. Reviews matter. Feedback matters. Social media chatter
matters.

If you get a bad review, be responsive and get things resolved. Stay focused on good
customers service because all of your digital footsteps are out there for the entire world to
see.

Online Campaign Management; Using Marketing Analytic Tools To Segment, Target

And Position
When used correctly, analytics can provide you with an immense pool of information, and
can really help you to pinpoint effective marketing strategies and target your market cor-
rectly. Today we are going to look at how marketing analytics tools can help you segment
and target new readers, how to differentiate between customers and your target audience, and
finally how to read key metrics via conversion tracking.

Target Audience

Google Analytics can really provide you with a myriad of information, as long as you know
where to find it and how to read the data. Website metrics will help you review user traffic
and define all types of information about your visitors. This, in turn, will give you the oppor-
tunity to see exactly where your visitors are coming from, and even why they are visiting
your content. Analytics should become a key part of your business objectives as they can be
used to help you develop all types of areas of your business: sales (ecommerce), lead genera-
tion, content publishing, online information, and branding. Analytics can easily be used as a
way to segment your traffic or your users and define your target audience, which will then
help you identify areas where you can target new readers.
Important aspects of Google Analytics are metrics (quantitative measurements) and dimen-
sions (characteristics). Once you have set up your dashboard you will be able to set all kinds
of metrics and dimensions which will help you segment your users into different areas: from
location and browser usage, to age, pages viewed and time spent on your website. It’s always
best to combine dimensions and metrics so that they share the same scope or view, that way
all of the information that you collect will actually tell you a story from beginning to end.
Your main goal is to get to know where your visitors come from and, from that, you will be
able to define strategies to target new visitors and readers.

Google Analytics Dashboard Know Where Visitors Come From

As an authorpreneur, or any business owner for that matter, you must be able to differentiate
between a “customer” and your “target audience”. Your customers are actually going to help
you learn all about your target audience, even if they aren’t aware of it! The more you know
about your target audience, the more you can connect with it, and the larger it will become.
You want your readers to feel like they have an affinity with you, and that affinity will lead to
loyalty as well as promotion within their circles. Basically, your goal will be to learn as much
as possible about your readers in order to target the right people, and consistently grow your
market. You can analyze your customers’ analytics; see where they come from and why. You
can also track shares and mentions via social media and see what posts are more popular than
others, or get to know your market by sending out questionnaires or surveys to those who
have subscribed to your email list. By analyzing all of these areas you will be able to create
surefire tactics to connect with and grow your target audience.

In addition to using all of the metrics available via Google Analytics, another way to define
successful marketing tactics is to use online advertising strategies, and to then use conversion
tracking to determine which campaigns are successful and which aren’t. AdWords’ Conver-
sion Tracking feature can be used to define the number of sales or leads generated from dif-
ferent campaigns, which will then help you make informed decisions on where you should
spend your money and where you shouldn’t. In a first stage you will define what a conversion
is for you: is it a book sale, or a new email subscriber? Is it a social share or a new Facebook
Fan? Once you have defined this, the second stage will be to add a small piece of code to the
page you will call your “conversion page” (this can be a “thank you” page or confirmation
page, depending on what your conversion is). Then, once a visitor arrives on that page, Ad-
words Conversion Tracking will not only record the conversion but will actually drill the con-
version down to a set of metrics that will show you exactly how the conversion took place,
from beginning to end! This way you can easily track successful ads and ones that don’t cre-
ate any traction.

Adwords Conversion Tracking

Google Analytics, AdWords, and other online analytics and advertising tools all contain a
huge pool of information that will help you create not only your own brand, but also develop
and grow your target audience and pinpoint advertising strategies that work for you. All of
this information can help you grow your business, and there are many extensive guides avail-
able online for free. You can’t go wrong with using all of this available data to your advant -
age!
ROI of Digital Strategies
Digital marketing is always changing, this has been caused by Google’s algorithm changes
and higher competition from businesses using the internet for marketing promotions.

Digital marketing includes search engine optimization (SEO) and social media to promote a
business and its website, gone are the days when a campaign could be measured by the
amount of visitors the site has produced. Whilst these are fairly easy to report on and measure
they do not entirely show the marketing contribution to the bottom line.

The marketing department is increasingly being asked what the return on investment (ROI) is
from their digital marketing campaign. How do you report that the digital marketing
campaign is working, what the return on investment (ROI) is.

To understand what the ROI is, we need to understand what the goals or aims of the company
are, what they wish to get from a digital marketing campaign and then measure these goals.
For this we need to look at the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the goals for each one.

Here are some types of key performance indicators:

 General Performance – Traffic, leads, Reach.

 Channel Based – Website, blog, social networks, search engines.
 Source based performance – Direct traffic, Organic search, referrals, email, PPC.
 Campaign based performance – Lead generation, click throughs, conversions, con-
version rates.
 Settingrealistic and measurable goals.

Once you are agreed on the KPIs, the next stage is to measure these, what style of report and
how these are presented. It may be necessary to change the KPIs over time and thus the goals
too. The report can simply be an excel spreadsheet with incoming enquiries that result in
sales.

Using Google Analytics and other social media analytics tools

Google Analytics is undoubtedly the most widely used web analytics application. Emerged
from and based upon the analytics-package developed by Urchin Software Corporation
(which was bought by Google in April 2005), the tool has become publicly available for free
under the new flagship of Google Analytics. In May 2007 the application was heavily edited,
developed and released; the design was simplified and more advanced featured were added.
Over years Google Analytics managed to gain on popularity because of its simplicity and
many advanced features for curious site owners and professional marketers.

Google Analytics can generate up to 85 different reports that will help you analyze all
possible data about your website traffic. It not only tracks visitors to your site or the number
of page views, it can be used to see which content gets the most visits, time on site per visit,
which ads are driving the most visitors to your site, it track the performances of your
marketing campaigns, including AdWords, Adsense and emails and much, much more.
GA Tracking Code

Google Analytics will only track pages that contain the Google Analytics tracking code, this
is a small Javascript snippet that needs to be added to each page of your site, either manually
or through the use of plugins or tool. You will find some tools and plugins to help you do this
near the bottom of this post.

For a static webpage or if you want to manually install the code into your pages, copy and
paste the code segment into the bottom of your content, immediately before the body tag of
each page that you wish to track.

Analytics and Flash and Flex Content

One of the most common Google Analytic implementation challenges has been tracking
Flash content. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every
implementation had to be tailored to each individual site, developers who tracked Flash had
to create their own processes to get it working.

Social media analytics

Social media analytics as the gathering of data from social media platforms to help inform us
and guide our marketing strategy. By paying close attention to social media analytics, you
can measure your performance against your social media goals.

Buffer Analyze is social media analytics tool for online brands that want to make better
decisions about their social media strategy and measure their results without feeling
overwhelmed.

Features:

 Instagram Stories analytics

 Posting strategy recommendations
 Create professional reports in as few as two clicks

Social media channels:

 Facebook
 Instagram
 Twitter

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a great combination of social media management, listening, publishing and

analytics tools. It helps you ascertain what kind of content is working for you, increase the
reach of your posts, improve the effectiveness of your ads, and get your whole social media
team working in tandem. It has in-depth analytics features that give you a clear understanding
of your performance across all social platforms.
Features:

 Customize reports by choosing from over 200 metrics and export them in PDF, Excel,
or PowerPoint formats.
 Measure your customer care team’s response and resolution time on Facebook and
Twitter.
 Track brand mentions better by integrating with specialized tools like Brandwatch and
Talkwalker.

Social media channels:

 Facebook
 Instagram
 YouTube
 LinkedIn
 Twitter
 Pinterest

Future of Marketing Gamification and Apps

The future of marketing of gamification and apps marketing is about to enter a more challen -
ging territory. Building on the vast increase in consumer power brought on by the digital age
marketing is headed towards being on demand not just always on but also always relevant re-
sponsive to the consumer desire for marketing that cuts through the noise with pin point de -
livery.

Gamification and Game Based Marketing

Gamification is emerging as a marketing trend and it vital for marketing to address the ana -
lysis of games used in gamification in terms of their structure and mechanism and their sub-
sequent transference to the area of marketing activities.

Gamification is the application of structure and mechanics of games ( points, rewards, levels,
challenges, and trophies ) to the real world in order to boost the engagement of users change
their behaviour and solve problems of various kinds.

Gamification Benefit Marketing

Companies need to understand how to add games and games mechanics to their marketing
mix how to use games to influence behaviour and reach business goals and use game based
marketing to boost revenues.

1. To play a game users ( potential consumers ) have to login first. The helps compa-
nies build a database of potential clients by collecting the email ids of players.
2. Games allow companies to attract fans in social media by also constituting an im-
portant element of competition.
3. Games allow education and integration of members of group or branch
4. Games can provide consumers with a positive fun filled and entertaining experi-
ence
5. Games permit companies to simulate real life situations that customers identify
with easily in such a way that target group gets more engaged.
The World Of Apps

Apps are adding a completely new dimension to marketing today. An app can be defined as a
software application typically developed by a product brand to allow a consumer to gain in-
formation about there by forming an opinion or completing a transaction.

Applications or apps as they are termed are optimized for the devices on which they are to be
downloaded on and accessed from. Marketing are using them for the following reasons :

1. Enhancing their reach

2. Positioning brands
3. Stimulating impulsive buying by6 increasing visual appeal
4. Stimulating consumer engagement
5. Leveraging consumer interactivity and participation
 UNIT V: Applications of E-Commerce

Increase Trends of e-commerce in India

India has an internet user base of about 475 million as of July 2019, about 40% of the popula-
tion. This number is expected to be 627 million by the end of 2019. Despite being the second-
largest user base in world, only behind China (650 million, 48% of population), the penetra-
tion of e-commerce is low compared to markets like the United States (266 million, 84%), or
France (54 M, 81%), but is growing, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. The
industry consensus is that growth is at an inflection point.

In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-
retail activities. Demand for international consumer products (including long-tail items) is
growing faster than in-country supply from authorised distributors and e-commerce offerings.
Long tail business strategy allows companies to realize significant profits by selling low
volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a
reduced number of popular items. The term was first coined in 2004 by Chris Anderson.

In 2017, the largest e-commerce companies in India were Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. In
2018, Amazon beat Flipkart and was recorded the biggest ecommerce in india in terms of
revenue.

Trends that are Driving E-Commerce in India

Indians are known for their ‘street smart’ economic mindset that enables them to find solu-
tions to impregnable challenges despite the constraints.

This is the similar ‘innovative mindset’ which is making Indian entrepreneurs embrace
analytics, digitization, and technology to develop platforms and deliver services and products
to the end customer creating a new online buying behavior.

In the context, India’s retail opportunity is substantial and affected by several factors such as
the rising standards of living, hyper-connected young population, upwardly mobile middle
class, the explosion of social media platforms, deeper internet penetration, and increased
smartphone penetration. So, significant growth of e-Commerce is expected in the next two
years.

GST to Enhance the Growth of e-Commerce

GST is expected to enforce a single comprehensive indirect tax regime that will be applicable
across on the supply of goods and services across all states. The implementation of GST is
expected to include the service tax, central excise duty, and additional customs duty at the
central level and CST, VAT, and entry tax at the state level. It will enhance operational
efficiency of the e-commerce industry in the many ways like the transparency and
simplification of taxes across the borders in India, elimination of the incidence of double-
taxation, and improvement in the efficiency of the supply chain
E-Commerce is changing the lives of millions, but there are also a number of people who
prefer offline shopping. If e-commerce is to make a huge impact in the coming years then
these trends will definitely affect the business.

Increase in the Internet Penetration

The e-commerce industry in India has been growing with the rise in internet penetration due
to major improvements in the telecom infrastructure. While the 3G and 4G services are
making a way into India along with declining data tariffs, internet data spend is growing
significantly. Even when India ranks the lowest in Asia at internet speed, the data rates in
India are 3 times cheaper than in the US and 2 times cheaper than in China. Government
schemes such as a National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) can significantly increase internet
penetration in the rural communities as well as provide a means for e-commerce companies
to tap the huge market potential there.

Growth in Smartphone Adoption

Smartphone growth has been massive over the years and is expected to exhibit more growth
in the coming years. The smartphone’s adoption in India is propelled by several factors such
as low prices due to high competition, ease of accessibility to content, and prevalence of
internet enabled services. According to a report, India has the highest share of globally 41%
of mobile-based e-commerce sales. Almost 70-75% of the online traffic of e-commerce sites
comes from mobile phones, the leading e-commerce companies stated and thus higher
revenues are coming from mobile applications like 50% for Flipkart while 70% for Quikr.

Evolution of New Payment Solutions

Cash on Delivery (CoD) has been the most popular mode of payment for Indian e-commerce
transactions. Cash transactions result in high administration cost even for the e-commerce
companies. Hence, to address these challenges, new digital payment solutions are evolving.
Further, the Indian government’s initiative has extended banking facilities through the ‘Jan
Dhan Yojana’ scheme which has added over 110 million debit cards thereby providing these
customers access to electronic payments. The electronic wallets have been launched and also
digital payment products from traditional banks for faster transactions to ease the payment
process in e-commerce.

Partnerships of Logistics Space with Hyper-local Companies and India Post

Customers are getting next-day delivery of products. Due to the challenges in terms of return
orders, higher standards of customer service, and handling huge volumes of delivery, the
industry has seen the rise of several third-party logistics service providers that handles last-
mile deliveries. There is an increasing number of partnerships of e-commerce companies with
the third-party logistics service providers in order to reach mainly in tier two and three cities.
Also leading e-commerce players to have their own logistics arms for enhanced customer
experience and for greater control on deliveries.
Gaining Momentum of Government Initiatives

The Government of India has been active in leveraging and embracing e-Commerce digital
platforms to transform and organize traditional offline markets such as those of agricultural
product. The Government has launched an e-commerce platform to link the farmers with the
vegetable markets of various states to sell the agro commodities. Also, flagship initiatives
such as Start-up India, Digital India, Skill India, and Innovation Fund are contributing to the
growth of the e-commerce industry.

Investments/ Developments

Some of the major developments in the Indian e-commerce sector are as follows:

 In November 2020, Amazon India announced collaboration with Hindustan Petroleum

Corporation Limited. Under this partnership, customers will be able to book and
pay for their LPG cylinders until the delivery.
 In November 2020, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd. (RRVL), a subsidiary of Reliance
Industries (RIL), acquired a minority stake of Urban Ladder Home Decor Solutions
Pvt. Ltd. for Rs. 182.12 crore (US$ 24.67 million).
 In November 2020, Flipkart acquired Scapic, an Augmented Reality (AR) firm, to
boost user experience.
 In November 2020, Amazon India has opened ‘Made in India’ toy store, in line with
the government’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ vision. The store will allow thousands of
manufacturers and vendors to sell toys driven by the Indian culture, folk tales and
toys that promote creative thinking and are locally crafted & manufactured.
 In October 2020, Amazon India collaborated with the Indian Railway Catering and
Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to enable users to book and reserve train tickets on
Amazon.
 In October 2020, Flipkart acquired a 140-acre land at Rs. 432 crore (US$ 58.87 mil-
lion) to establish their largest fulfilling centre in Asia, in Manesar, Gurgaon, in a
bid to scale their fulfilment infrastructure to cater to increased demand post
COVID-19.
 In October 2020, Amazon India invested over Rs. 700 crore (US$ 95.40 million) into
its payment unit, Amazon Pay.

Market size and growth

India’s e-commerce market was worth about $3.9 billion in 2009. As per “India Goes Di-
gital”, a report by Avendus Capital, the Indian e-commerce market is estimated at ₹28,500
Crore ($6.3 billion) for the year 2011. Online travel constitutes a sizable portion (87%) of this
market today. Online travel market in India had a growth rate of 22% over the next 4 years
and reach ₹54,800 crore ($12.2 billion) in size by 2015. Indian e-tailing industry is estimated
at ₹3,600 crore (US$800 million) in 2011 and estimated to grow to ₹53,000 crore ($11.8 bil -
lion) in 2015. The market went up to $12.6 billion in 2013. In 2013, the e-retail segment was
worth US$2.3 billion. About 79% of India’s e-commerce market was travel related in 2013.
According to Google India, there were 35 million online shoppers in India in 2014 Q1 and
was expected to cross 100 million mark by end of year 2016.

Government initiatives
Since 2014, the Government of India has announced various initiatives, namely Digital India,
Make in India, Start-up India, Skill India and Innovation Fund. The timely and effective im-
plementation of such programs will likely support growth of E-commerce in the country.
Some of the major initiatives taken by the Government to promote E-commerce in India are
as follows:

 Government e-Marketplace (GeM) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

with Union Bank of India to facilitate a cashless, paperless and transparent payment
system for an array of services in October 2019.

 Under the Digital India movement, Government launched various initiatives like
Umang, Start-up India Portal, Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) etc. to boost di-
gitisation.

 In October 2020, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Piyush Goyal invited start-
ups to register at public procurement portal, GeM, and offer goods and services to
government organisations and PSUs.

 In October 2020, amending the equalisation levy rules of 2016, the government man-
dated foreign companies operating e-commerce platforms in India to have perman-
ent account numbers (PAN). It imposed a 2% tax in the FY21 budget on the sale of
goods or delivery of services through a non-resident ecommerce operator.

 In order to increase the participation of foreign players in E-commerce, Indian Gov-

ernment hiked the limit of FDI in E-commerce marketplace model to up to 100%
(in B2B models).

 Heavy investment made by the Government in rolling out fibre network for 5G will
help boost E-commerce in India.

E-business Models Based on the Relationship of Transaction Parties

e-commerce has a great deal of advantages over “brick and mortar” stores and mail order
catalogs. Consumers can easily search through a large database of products and services.
They can see actual prices, build an order over several days and email it as a “wish list”
hoping that someone will pay for their selected goods. Customers can compare prices with a
click of the mouse and buy the selected product at best prices.

Online vendors, in their turn, also get distinct advantages. The web and its search engines
provide a way to be found by customers without expensive advertising campaign. Even small
online shops can reach global markets. Web technology also allows to track customer
preferences and to deliver individually-tailored marketing.

History of ecommerce is unthinkable without Amazon and Ebay which were among the first
Internet companies to allow electronic transactions. Thanks to their founders we now have a
handsome ecommerce sector and enjoy the buying and selling advantages of the Internet.
Currently there are 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers: Amazon, Dell,
Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. According to statistics, the most popular
categories of products sold in the World Wide Web are music, books, computers, office
supplies and other consumer electronics.

Amazon.com, Inc. is one of the most famous ecommerce companies and is located in Seattle,
Washington (USA). It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and was one of the first American
ecommerce companies to sell products over the Internet. After the dot-com collapse Amazon
lost its position as a successful business model, however, in 2003 the company made its first
annual profit which was the first step to the further development.

At the outset Amazon.com was considered as an online bookstore, but in time it extended a
variety of goods by adding electronics, software, DVDs, video games, music CDs, MP3s,
apparel, footwear, health products, etc. The original name of the company was Cadabra.com,
but shortly after it become popular in the Internet Bezos decided to rename his business
“Amazon” after the world’s most voluminous river. In 1999 Jeff Bezos was entitled as the
Person of the Year by Time Magazine in recognition of the company’s success. Although the
company’s main headquarters is located in the USA, WA, Amazon has set up separate
websites in other economically developed countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada,
France, Germany, Japan, and China. The company supports and operates retail web sites for
many famous businesses, including Marks & Spencer, Lacoste, the NBA, Bebe Stores,
Target, etc.

Amazon is one of the first ecommerce businesses to establish an affiliate marketing program,
and nowadays the company gets about 40% of its sales from affiliates and third party sellers
who list and sell goods on the web site. In 2008 Amazon penetrated into the cinema and is
currently sponsoring the film “The Stolen Child” with 20th Century Fox.

Evolution of E-Commerce

E-Commerce was introduced 40 years ago and, to this day, continues to grow with new
technologies, innovations, and thousands of businesses entering the on-line market each year.
The convenience, safety, and user experience of E-Commerce has improved exponentially
since its inception in the 1970’s.

1960-1982

Paving the way for electric commerce was the development of the Electronic Data
Interchange(EDI). EDI replaced traditional mailing and faxing of documents with a digital
transfer of data from one computer to another.

1982-1990

It was apparent from the beginning that B2B online shopping would be commercially
lucrative but B2C would not be successful until the later widespread use of PC’s and the
World Wide Web, also known as, the Internet. In 1982, France launched the precursor to the
Internet called, Minitel.
90’s to Present

In 1990 Tim Berners Lee, along with his friend Robert Cailliau, published a proposal to build
a “Hypertext project” called, “WorldWideWeb.

 1994

Netscape arrived. Providing users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online
transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.

Since 1995, many innovative applications, ranging from direct online sales to e-learning
experiences had been developed. Almost every organization in the world has a Web site. Two
of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched:Amazon.com and eBay.com.

 1998

DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, provides fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers
across California. This prompts people to spend more time, and money, online.

 In 1999, the emphasis of e-commerce shifted from B2C to B2B.

 In 2001, from B2B to B2E, e-government, e-learning, and m-commerce.
 In 2005, social networks started to rise and so did E-Commerce and wireless applica-
tions.

Advantages and Disadvantages of E- Commerce

ADVANTAGE OF E-COMMERCE

Today, e-Commerce has revolutionized the way companies are doing business. Now, con-
sumers can purchase almost anything online 24*7 a day and get an ultimate shopping experi-
ence.

(i) Convenience & Easiness

For many people in the world, e-Commerce becomes one of the preferred ways of shopping
as they enjoy their online because of its easiness and convenience. They are allowed to buy
products or services from their home at any time of day or night.

The best thing about it is buying options that are quick, convenient and user-friendly with the
ability to transfer funds online. Because of its convenience, consumers can save their lots of
time as well as money by searching their products easily and making purchasing online.

(ii) Offer Product Datasheets

Consumers can also get description and details from an online product catalog. For your cus-
tomers, it is very much important to get information about the product no matter whether the
time of day and day of the week. Through information, your customers and prospects are
making decision to purchase your products or not.

(iii) Attract New Customers with Search Engine Visibility

As we all know that physical retail is run by branding and relationships. But, online retail is
also driving by traffic that comes from search engines. For customers, it is not very so
common to follow a link in the search engine results and land up on an ecommerce website
that they never heard of.

(iv) Comprise Warranty Information

No matter whether you are looking to choose including warranty information with product
descriptions and datasheets or providing it from within an ecommerce shopping cart, you
need to make sure that customers must be aware of important terms and conditions that are
associated with their purchase.

(v) Decreasing cost of inventory Management

With e-commerce business, the suppliers can decrease the cost of managing their inventory of
goods that they can automate the inventory management using web-based management
system. Indirectly, they can save their operational costs.

(vi) Keep Eye on Consumers’ Buying Habit

The best thing is e-commerce retailers can easily keep a constant eye on consumers’ buying
habits and interests to tailors their offer suit to consumers’ requirements. By satisfying their
needs constantly, you can improve your ongoing relationship with them and build long-
lasting relationships.

(vii) Competence

For effective business transactions, e-commerce is an efficient and competence method.

Setting-up cost is extremely low as compare to expanding your business with more brick and
mortar locations. Very few licenses and permits are required to start-up an online business
than physical store. You can save your lots of money by using fewer employees to perform
operations like billing customers, managing inventory and more.

(viii) Allow Happy Customers to Sell Your Products

With lots of customers’ reviews and product ratings, you can easily increase your sells as new
customers find that your products are good and effective. Make sure that you mention your
clients’ testimonials, reviews and product ratings as such things can help your new customers
to purchase your products.

(ix) Selling Products across the World

If you are running a physical store, it will be limited by the geographical area that you can
service, but with an e-Commerce website, you can sell your products and services across the
world. The entire world is your playground, where you can sell your complete range of
products without any geographical limits. Moreover, the remaining limitation of geography
has dissolved by mcommerce that is also known as mobile commerce.
(x) Stay open 24*7/365

One of the most important benefits that ecommerce merchants can enjoy is store timings are
now 24/7/365 as they can run e-commerce websites all the time. By this way, they can in-
crease their sales by boosting their number of orders. However, it is also beneficial for cus-
tomers as they can purchase products whenever they want no matter whether it is early morn-
ing or mid-night.

DISADVANTAGES OF E-COMMERCE

Running an E-Commerce business is not all rainbows and unicorns. There are challenges
unique to this business model — knowing them will help you navigate the choppy waters and
avoid common pitfalls:

(i) Lack of Personal Touch

Some consumers value the personal touch they get from visiting a physical store and
interacting with sales associates. Such personal touch is particularly important for businesses
selling high-end products as customers not only want to buy the merchandise but also have a
great experience during the process.

(ii) Lack of Tactile Experience

No matter how well a video is made, consumers still can’t touch and feel a product. Not to
mention, it’s not an easy feat to deliver a brand experience, which could often include the
sense of touch, smell, taste, and sound, through the two-dimensionality of a screen.

(iii) Price and Product Comparison

With online shopping, consumers can compare many products and find the lowest price. This
forces many merchants to compete on price and reduce their profit margin.

(iv) Need for Internet Access

This is pretty obvious, but don’t forget that your customers do need Internet access before
they can purchase from you! Since many eCommerce platforms have features and
functionalities that require high-speed Internet access for an optimal customer experience,
there’s a chance you’re excluding visitors who have slow connections.

(v) Credit Card Fraud

Credit card fraud is a real and growing problem for online businesses. It can lead to
chargebacks that result in the loss of revenue, penalties, and bad reputation.

(vi) IT Security Issues

More and more businesses and organizations have fallen prey to malicious hackers who have
stolen customer information from their database. Not only could this have legal and financial
implications but also lessen the trust customers have in the company.
(vii) All the Eggs in One Basket

E-Commerce businesses rely heavily (or solely) on their websites. Even just a few minutes of
downtime or technology hiccups can cause a substantial loss of revenue and customer
dissatisfaction.

(viii) Complexity in Taxation, Regulations, and Compliance

If an online business sells to customers in different territories, they’ll have to adhere to

regulations not only in their own states/countries but also in their customers’ place of
residence. This could create a lot of complexities in accounting, compliance, and taxation.

E-Commerce in India, Transaction to E-Commerce in India

India has an internet users base of about 450 million as of July 2017, 40% of the population.
Despite being the second-largest user base in world, only behind China (650 million, 48% of
population), the penetration of e-commerce is low compared to markets like the United States
(266 million, 84%), or France (54 M, 81%), but is growing at an unprecedented rate, adding
around 6 million new entrants every month. The industry consensus is that growth is at an
inflection point.

In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-
retail activities. Demand for international consumer products (including long-tail items) is
growing much faster than in-country supply from authorized distributors and e-commerce
offerings.

In 2015, the largest e-commerce companies in India were Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon India,
and Paytm.

Government initiative

Since 2014, the Government of India has announced various initiatives namely, Digital India,
Make in India, Start-up India, Skill India and Innovation Fund. The timely and effective
implementation of such programs will likely support the e-commerce growth in the country.
Some of the major initiatives taken by the government to promote the e-commerce sector in
India are as follows:

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to allow “inter-operability” among Prepaid
Payment Instruments (PPIs) such as digital wallets, prepaid cash coupons and prepaid
telephone top-up cards.

Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley has proposed various measures to quicken India’s transition
to a cashless economy, including a ban on cash transactions over Rs 300,000 (US$ 4,655.1),
tax incentives for creation of a cashless infrastructure, promoting greater usage of non-cash
modes of payments, and making Aadhaar-based payments more widespread.
The e-commerce industry been directly impacting the micro, small & medium enterprises
(MSME) in India by providing means of financing, technology and training and has a
favourable cascading effect on other industries as well. The total size of e-Commerce
industry (only B2C e-tail) in India is expected to reach US$ 101.9 billion by 2020.

Technology enabled innovations like digital payments, hyper-local logistics, analytics driven
customer engagement and digital advertisements will likely support the growth in the sector.
With the increase in the number of electronic payment gateways and mobile wallets, it is
expected that by the year 2020, cashless transaction will constitute 55 per cent of the online
sales. The growth in e-commerce sector will also boost employment, increase revenues from
export, increase tax collection by ex-chequers, and provide better products and services to
customers in the long-term.

TRANSACTION TO E-COMMERCE IN INDIA

Much has been said about India’s accelerated digital transformation. Like the fact that we are
the world’s fastest-growing internet market, adding 40 million users per year on average. In
fact, despite the digital divide, India boasts the second highest active internet user base with 1
out of 3 people online.

The corollary to this story is the country’s red-hot ecommerce pie, which according to a new
study has the potential to become far bigger, driven by more than 500 million Indians who
will constitute the next wave of online consumers. The size of the opportunity up for grabs is
a whopping Rs 3.44 lakh crore.

The report, titled ‘Unlocking Digital for Bharat: $50 Billion Opportunity’, released by Bain
& Company, Google and Omidyar Network, claims that India has the potential to unlock over
$50 billion in online commerce in India by driving awareness, usage and transactions among
the current and next set of internet users and shoppers.

But the road to get there is far from smooth. Based on a survey of 3,400 customers, the study
puts the spotlight on some major barriers holding India back, beginning with India’s small
transacting user base. Only 40 per cent of India’s 390 million internet users transact online.
The remaining 60 per cent do their research online but complete the transaction offline.

In addition, there is the worrying number of dropouts. According to the report, 54 million
users – across the affluent socioeconomic segments that comprise 80% of the user base alone
– stop after the first online purchase due to issues with user experience.

Significantly, it takes three to four months for a typical Indian internet user to make the first
online transaction and among users who have been on the internet for two or more years, 61
percent transact online. The number of “transactors” drops to 27% among new users, who
have been online for just 4-6 months. This underscores the need for ecommerce players to
retain customers through content, experience and fostering trust.
The study points out that India can “double the current product transactor base” by retaining
the number of people who give up after a trial purchase and by beefing up its current
numbers. For the latter, one can start by focussing on the 160M content consumers who draw
the line at online transactions, which has the potential to boost ecommerce by $14-18 billion.

Then there is the massive non-user base, just waiting to be tapped. The report estimates 370
million non-internet users across India’s affluent socioeconomic strata and 620 million across
the mostly-untapped lower income segments. While the latter are out of the scope of the
survey, their sheer numbers spell a massive future opportunity.

“Digital India is at a very interesting point – a large internet user base with significant
variations across demographics, and only a small portion actually transacting online. While
online spends are still low given lower per capita incomes, there is huge potential to unlock
value by addressing user concerns at various stages of the digital curve,” said Arpan Sheth,
partner, Bain & Company, and one of the authors of the report. “However, the path won’t be
easy for businesses and they will have to innovate and be patient to monetize this user base
and generate value.”

B2C and B2B Internet Marketing

B2B stands for Business to Business marketing, which is based on same B2C (Business to
Customer) marketing practices, but it has slight modifications due to the nature and
characteristics of B2B commerce industry. Although, there certainly is some overlap between
these two marketing strategies but a few key differences are also there which can either make
or break your overall online marketing campaign. The B2B audiences are tech savvy,
accustomed to being bombarded with information and they are short on time. The
exploitation of social media marketing in case of businesses is also different from the one
used for the customers. On the other hand, digital marketing, in the case of B2C, is all about
entertainment and fun for selling products and services.

1. Past vs. Present

In the past, there were much more differences between these two types of marketing
strategies because the primary method of research and point of contact differed greatly. The
ground level basis was used by marketers to reach the customers. On the other hand,
businesses used to be more formal and restricted in their methods of reaching out.

But today, the situation is completely different; both the businesses and the consumers are
capable of working and researching their problems on the internet. A whole new expanse has
opened up the opportunity for reaching out and making contact with potential new customers.
In the realm of digital marketing, the method of reaching out and contact is nearly identical.
A few significant changes suggest that the marketers have to make use of industry jargons for
excellent effects on B2B platforms. The B2B marketing process is designed for efficiency
and expertise seeking audiences. The B2B purchase process is more rational and logical as
compared to the emotionally triggered consumer choices in case of B2C marketing.
2. B2B vs. B2C Audience

The B2B buyers are top managers or owners of their respective companies. They are more
sophisticated and gain an in-depth understanding of the service being offered by the mar-
keters from an organisational perspective. They have an interest in a particular offer with an
objective to grow their own company. Therefore, the marketers, when conveying a message
through digital media, have to define how the managers or business owners can boost profits,
save money and stay competitive in the long run using their product. In such case, the content
must have to be thoroughly researched, and the marketers are required to give the audience a
reason to utilise their product and service being marketed before it’s too late.

However, typical B2C buyers look for the best price available. They tend to purchase from
the most trusted retailer. So, in this case, the marketing content and the website have to con-
vey a feeling of confidence and security to the buyer. That is why the design of the site and
the substance matters the most. The consumers are likely to opt for trusted sources for pur-
chase. Therefore, in the case of B2C marketing, the digital marketers have to give priority to
trust, security and brand loyalty.

3. Size of the Market

The size of the market is another important consideration in the field of digital marketing.
When we talk about B2C marketing, the target market is larger and takes a major sector of
the public, i.e., millions of customers are included in this case. On the other hand, in B2B
marketing, you are targeting a particular niche, i.e., the number of clients is in thousands
only. Hence, the differences in the size of the markets for both cases suggest that the content
has to be appealing to the particular market that the company is aiming to target.

4. Marketing Material – Thought Leader or Entertainer?

B2B marketing means you must have to understand the operational activities of the organisa-
tions which you are targeting. It is also essential to know who will be looking at your content
and website. In B2B sector, there is a tremendous thrust for knowledge because the business
owners are focused on growth and expansion of their companies. Your product will get an
active appreciation if it is capable enough to contribute to their development. You have to
provide the marketing material to lay out the foundation about how your product and services
can save time, money and resources of your client. To captivate B2B customers, you must
have to provide the relevant content which the businesses are actively searching for, and re-
late it with your offerings.

Whereas, B2C marketing is all about entertainment. Your customers are not going to follow
the posts having too much of sales pitch. Only the genuinely exciting, emotional and funny
content can keep the masses happy and content. In the case of B2C marketing, the marketers
must have to utilise the social media channels with a personalized and lively touch. By just
being a mere faceless corporate entity will only make you lose a significant number of cus-
tomers in the long run.

From a client’s perspective, B2B and B2C both are just types of marketing to people like you
and me. However, being a professional doesn’t mean that you cannot have fun. Marketing to
the public does not say you cannot take advantage of B2B methods. Though both are differ-
ent, you can utilise both at the same time.
5. Social Media Matters

B2B digital marketing strategy has a slightly different perspective involving long term rela-
tionship when compared to the social media strategy in B2C digital marketing. B2C compan-
ies flock to Facebook to reach wider audiences, on the other hand, B2B companies gravitate
towards LinkedIn as a way to establish networks with active connections. In B2B digital mar-
keting, the utilization of newer and trendier social media networks like Snapchat is not suit -
able in any way because teenage consumers are the possible demographics of this type of so -
cial platform. I am not saying that B2B marketers do not or should not use Facebook for pro-
motional activities. My point is that they have to opt for the best social media marketing ap-
proach that targets the exact relevant audience for them.

6. B2B Marketing Builds Relationships

The ultimate target of B2C marketing is to ‘sell’ the products and services to target con-
sumers. On the other hand, B2B marketers tend to look for ways to establish long term ongo-
ing relationships with their customers. The main aim of B2B marketing is to focus on gener -
ating lead and keeping up the long term relationship through emails, blogging and other
strategies. B2B is all about building trust and sharing information with each other. It means
that the marketers should communicate with their contacts for building a mutually beneficial
relationship.

7. Businesses Want Facts

B2C marketing requires making use of various exciting videos and tweets to entertain the tar-
get audiences. However, in the case of B2B marketing, the sole purpose of marketers is to
spread information. The target market of corporate buyers includes industry savvy customers,
and they seek information that can help them to grow their businesses. Facts and figures drive
business customers. They want logic instead of a typical advertising strategy. If you are
building an online media campaign, then it is important to keep in mind the interests and
needs of your customers. Try to use info graphics, factual links and statistical reports to back
up your claims.

8. Sales Cycle

Capturing the attention of your audience in both cases is entirely different from each other. In
the case of B2B marketing, the marketers try to capture the attention of smaller markets over
the longer period as compared to the marketing done in the case of B2C approach. The sales
cycle in case of B2C marketing is relatively lower than the sales cycle in case of B2B. Simil -
arly, business transactions need more consideration as compared to B2C operations and re-
quire a high level of trust and bond between the customer and the supplier. The sales cycle
for B2B typically starts with driving traffic to the website for finding potential clients.
Whereas, the B2C sales cycle is based on a single step purchase. In this case, the customer
wants a brand to be perfect. So, for B2C marketing, you should give your clients a reason to
buy your product.

9. Brand Value

By providing a branded content, the organizations want to create a favourable impression on

their consumers. A little piece of an interesting content sufficiently evokes an emotional and
political responsiveness among the customers. For instance, Procter & Gamble is successfully
creating a forward thinking impression on its consumers. It markets products for entertain-
ment and opts for emotional response option from them. This behavior reflects their B2C di-
gital marketing strategy. On the other hand, in the case of B2B digital marketing, the mar-
keters tend to provide a general overview. For this purpose, e-Books, whitepapers and other
forms of downloads, such as template and documents, can be used to add more worth to your
brand. These valuable sources incredibly contribute in enhancing your brand promotions.

Moreover, to increase brand value, developing online public relations is considered as an

integral part of B2C marketing, but it is not sufficient in the case of B2B marketing. In the
case of B2C marketing, the marketers strive to get mentioned in various industry publications
and blogs for to be read by their target audiences. In this instance, applying some fruitful
strategy for media coverage can be a better option. Other than that, you can communicate via
interviews, arrange meetings and write advertorials to increase your PR. Whereas, in the case
of B2B marketing, a routine surveillance of industry related media outlets is required to
enhance public relations.

10. B2B Content is More Accurate and Industry-Driven

The content is an integral part of digital marketing. Whether it is B2B marketing or B2C mar-
keting, content plays a significant role in marketing and advertising your brand over the inter-
net. While sharing or writing the content for B2C audiences, the marketers should have to
keep it short. They need to make it as much humorous and catchy as possible to appeal a
large number of readers. On the contrary, in the case of B2B marketing, a more detailed, in -
formative and lengthy content is required because the marketers are expected to show off
their digital expertise, they have to inform and inspire their prospective buyers.

e-commerce Sales Life Cycle (ESLC) Model

E-Commerce sales life cycle includes the following stages:

Pre-sale:

Online promotions are done to create excitement about the products that are being sold
through online advertisements.

Transaction:

The customers place their order for the products. The process should be user-friendly and
secure.

Delivery:

This stage involves delivering the product to the consumer. Care should be taken in delivery
with proper packaging and speedy delivery to make the customer happy.

After sales:
This stage involves following up with the customer to let him know that the product has been
delivered or if he is satisfied. The feedbacks from the customer can be furthers used in
improving services by the company.

Stages

Stage 1: Start-up & fast growth

Most ecommerce businesses go through an initial period of fast and in some cases unexpected
growth. This is usually to do with the popularity of the product they sell or market demand
rather than the implementation of their ecommerce platforms. Many businesses will choose
platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify or Magento. It’s important that your business stays
agile and responds quickly to change.

You don’t want to get caught up in complicated systems or handcuffed by too much process.
Brands often enjoy quick impact in this honeymoon period, before growth slows down and
progression is halted by a kind of invisible ceiling. This sees businesses moving into the
second stage of the ecommerce lifecycle, which is a growth plateau.

Stage 2: Plateauing growth or consolidation

Businesses reaching this second stage of the ecommerce lifecycle tend to panic and look for
quick-fix solutions to perceived issues. You need to understand that it’s natural for there to be
a levelling off of growth after the early spike. Once your business has gained traction, brand
awareness and initial momentum, it’s time to reflect on your progress, analyse your data and
gain key insights to make measured and strategic changes to your ecommerce website and
your marketing.

It’s important for business owners to assign ample time and resources to research, to
systemise and strategise to work out the best ways to move to the next level and start
achieving renewed growth.

Stage 3: Renewed growth

Many business owners think that the solution to the issue of plateauing growth is a quick fix
or a swift change of direction, which can be an ecommerce platform move or, perhaps, the
recruitment of a new ecommerce manager.

This is not necessarily thinking strategically. A replatforming project might indeed be the
answer perhaps to a more advanced or modern ecommerce platform, like BigCommerce but
you need to make a clear business case (including extensive research and risk assessments)
before deciding to migrate platforms. Check out Space 48’s golden rules of replatforming
blog to learn more.

In this third stage of the ecommerce lifecycle, the attempts to reinvigorate your company’s
momentum and growth should always be strategic. In my experience, the solution to
plateauing growth may only require realigning your business goals with changing customer
trends, keeping up-to-date with new technology and channel strategies.

Research and analysis is required to optimise processes and improve customer experience.
This will steer your strategy. Research may reveal issues and you might find you need to
replatform, but there needs to be sound reasoning behind decisions to implement technology
and tools.

Concept of e-Money, Electronic Payment System and It’s Type

Broadly, electronic money is an electronic store of monetary value on a technical device. The
definition of electronic money is becoming more scientific and specific with developments
associated with it. The European Central Bank defines e-money in the following words. “E-
money can be defined as amount of money value represented by a claim issued on a prepaid
basis, stored in an electronic medium (card or computer) and accepted as a means of payment
by undertakings other than the issuer” (ECB).

E money is a monetary value that is stored and transferred electronically through a variety of
means a mobile phone, tablet, contactless card (or smart cards), computer hard drive or
servers. Electronic money need not necessarily involve bank accounts in transaction but acts
as a prepaid bearer instrument. They are often used to execute small value transactions.

Different Systems of Electronic Money:

Electronic Money includes three different systems namely:

 Centralized Systems,
 Decentralized Systems, and
 Offline Anonymous Systems.

Centralized Systems:

There are many centralized systems that directly sell their e–currency to end users is Web
Money, Pay Pal, Hub Culture Ven, and CashU but Liberty Reserve sells only via 3rd party
digital currency exchangers.

Decentralized Systems:

Electronic Money includes some decentralized systems. They are:

(i) Bitcoin: Bitcoin is a Peer to Peer Electronic Money system with maximized inflation
limit.

(ii) Ripple Monetary System: Ripple Monetary system is a system that is developed to
distribute electronic money system independent to local currency.

Offline Anonymous System:

Offline Anonymous System can be done ‘offline’. In this electronic money system, the
merchants do not need to have interaction with banks before receiving currency from the
users. Instead of that, the merchants can collect spent money by users and deposits the money
later to the bank. The merchant can deliver his storage media in bank for exchanging the
electronic money to cash.

Electronic Money

Scrip or money that is exchanged only through electronically is referred to as electronic

money. Electronic Money is also referred as e–money, Electronic Cash, Digital Money,
Electronic Currency, Digital Currency, e–currency, Digital Cash, and Cyber Currency.
Electronic Money uses Internet, Digital Stored Value systems, and Computer Networks.

Some of the examples of electronic money are Direct Deposit, EFT (Electronic Funds
Transfer), Virtual Currency, and Digital Gold Currency.

Types of Electronic Currencies:

There are two types of electronic currencies namely: Hard Electronic Currency and Soft
Electronic Currency:

 HardElectronic Currency does not allow reversing charges i.e. it supports only Non–
Reversible transaction. The advantage of this type is that it reduces the operating
cost of e–currency system.
  SoftElectronic Currency allows payment reversals. The payment is reversed only in
case of dispute or fraud. The payment reversible time will be 72 hrs or even more.
Some examples of this type are Credit Card and Pay Pal.

Electronic Money systems are developing day by day. Some of the developments are: it can
be used with Secured Credit Cards for wide range facilities and the bank accounts that are
linked can be used with an internet to exchange currency with Secure Micropayment system
like Pay Pal.

Electronic Payment System

An e-payment system is a way of making transactions or paying for goods and services
through an electronic medium, without the use of checks or cash. It’s also called an electronic
payment system or online payment system.

The electronic payment system has grown increasingly over the last decades due to the
growing spread of internet-based banking and shopping. As the world advances more with
technology development, we can see the rise of electronic payment systems and payment
processing devices. As these increase, improve, and provide ever more secure online payment
transactions the percentage of check and cash transactions will decrease.

Electronic payment methods

One of the most popular payment forms online are credit and debit cards. Besides them, there
are also alternative payment methods, such as bank transfers, electronic wallets, smart cards
or bitcoin wallet (bitcoin is the most popular crypto currency).

E-payment methods could be classified into two areas, credit payment systems and cash pay-
ment systems.

1. Credit Payment System

 CreditCard: A form of the e-payment system which requires the use of the card is-
sued by a financial institute to the cardholder for making payments online or
through an electronic device, without the use of cash.
 E-wallet: A form of prepaid account that stores user’s financial data, like debit and
credit card information to make an online transaction easier.
 Smart card: A plastic card with a microprocessor that can be loaded with funds to
make transactions; also known as a chip card.

1. Cash Payment System

 Direct debit: A financial transaction in which the account holder instructs the bank to
collect a specific amount of money from his account electronically to pay for goods
or services.
 E-check: A digital version of an old paper check. It’s an electronic transfer of money
from a bank account, usually checking account, without the use of the paper
 check.E-cash is a form of an electronic payment system, where a certain amount of
money is stored on a client’s device and made accessible for online transactions.
 Stored-value card: A card with a certain amount of money that can be used to perform
the transaction in the issuer store. A typical example of stored-value cards are gift
cards.

Advantages of electronic payment systems:

 Time savings: Money transfer between virtual accounts usually takes a few minutes,
while a wire transfer or a postal one may take several days. Also, you will not
waste your time waiting in lines at a bank or post office.

 Expenses control: Even if someone is eager to bring his disbursements under control,
it is necessary to be patient enough to write down all the petty expenses, which of-
ten takes a large part of the total amount of disbursements. The virtual account con-
tains the history of all transactions indicating the store and the amount you spent.
And you can check it anytime you want. This advantage of electronic payment sys-
tem is pretty important in this case.
 Reduced risk of loss and theft- You can not forget your virtual wallet somewhere and
it can not be taken away by robbers. Although in cyberspace there are many scam-
mers, in one of the previous articles we described in detail how to make your e-cur -
rency account secure.
 Low commissions: If you pay for internet service provider or a mobile account re-
plenishment through the UPT (unattended payment terminal), you will encounter
high fees. As for the electronic payment system: a fee of this kind of operations
consists of 1% of the total amount, and this is a considerable advantage.
 User-friendly: Usually every service is designed to reach the widest possible audi-
ence, so it has the intuitively understandable user interface. In addition, there is al-
ways the opportunity to submit a question to a support team, which often works
24/7. Anyway you can always get an answer using the forums on the subject.
 Convenience: All the transfers can be performed at any time, anywhere. It’s enough to
have an access to the Internet.

Disadvantages of electronic payment systems:

1. Restrictions: Each payment system has its limits regarding the maximum amount in
the account, the number of transactions per day and the amount of output.

1. The risk of being hacked: If you follow the security rules the threat is minimal, it
can be compared to the risk of something like a robbery. The worse situation when
the system of processing company has been broken, because it leads to the leak of
personal data on cards and its owners. Even if the electronic payment system does
not launch plastic cards, it can be involved in scandals regarding the Identity theft.

1. The problem of transferring money between different payment systems: Usually the
majority of electronic payment systems do not cooperate with each other. In this
case, you have to use the services of e-currency exchange, and it can be time-con-
suming if you still do not have a trusted service for this purpose. Our article on how
to choose the best e-currency exchanger greatly facilitates the search process.
 1. The lack of anonymity: The information about all the transactions, including the
amount, time and recipient are stored in the database of the payment system. And it
means the intelligence agency has an access to this information. You should decide
whether it’s bad or good.
2. The necessity of Internet access: If Internet connection fails, you can not get to
your online account.

Electronic Payment System, Types of Electronic Payment System

An e-payment system is a way of making transactions or paying for goods and services
through an electronic medium, without the use of checks or cash. It’s also called an electronic
payment system or online payment system. Read on to learn more.

The electronic payment system has grown increasingly over the last decades due to the grow-
ing spread of internet-based banking and shopping. As the world advances more with techno-
logy development, we can see the rise of electronic payment systems and payment processing
devices. As this increase, improve, and provide ever more secure online payment transactions
the percentage of check and cash transactions will decrease.

Methods of Electronic Payment System

One of the most popular payment forms online is credit and debit cards. Besides them, there
are also alternative payment methods, such as bank transfers, electronic wallets, smart cards
or bitcoin wallet (bitcoin is the most popular crypto currency). E-payment methods could be
classified into two areas, credit payment systems and cash payment systems.

1. Credit Payment System

 Credit Card: A form of the e-payment system which requires the use of the card is-
sued by a financial institute to the cardholder for making payments online or
through an electronic device, without the use of cash.
 E-wallet: A form of prepaid account that stores user’s financial data, like debit and
credit card information to make an online transaction easier.
 Smart card: A plastic card with a microprocessor that can be loaded with funds to
make transactions; also known as a chip card.

1. Cash Payment System

 Direct debit: A financial transaction in which the account holder instructs the bank to
collect a specific amount of money from his account electronically to pay for goods
or services.
 E-check: A digital version of an old paper check. It’s an electronic transfer of money
from a bank account, usually checking account, without the use of the paper check.
E-cash is a form of an electronic payment system, where a certain amount of
money is stored on a client’s device and made accessible for online transactions.
 Stored-value card: A card with a certain amount of money that can be used to per-
form the transaction in the issuer store. A typical example of stored-value cards are
gift cards.

Advantages of electronic payment systems

(i) Time savings: Money transfer between virtual accounts usually takes a few minutes,
while a wire transfer or a postal one may take several days. Also, you will not waste your
time waiting in lines at a bank or post office.

(ii) Expenses control: Even if someone is eager to bring his disbursements under control, it
is necessary to be patient enough to write down all the petty expenses, which often takes a
large part of the total amount of disbursements. The virtual account contains the history of all
transactions indicating the store and the amount you spent. And you can check it anytime you
want. This advantage of electronic payment system is pretty important in this case.

(iii) Reduced risk of loss and theft: You can not forget your virtual wallet somewhere and it
can not be taken away by robbers. Although in cyberspace there are many scammers, in one
of the previous articles we described in detail how to make your e-currency account secure.

(iv) Low commissions: If you pay for internet service provider or a mobile account
replenishment through the UPT (unattended payment terminal), you will encounter high fees.
As for the electronic payment system: a fee of this kind of operations consists of 1% of the
total amount, and this is a considerable advantage.

(v) User-friendly: Usually every service is designed to reach the widest possible audience, so
it has the intuitively understandable user interface. In addition, there is always the
opportunity to submit a question to a support team, which often works 24/7. Anyway you can
always get an answer using the forums on the subject.

(vi) Convenience: All the transfers can be performed at anytime, anywhere. It’s enough to
have an access to the Internet.

Disadvantages of electronic payment systems

(i) Restrictions: Each payment system has its limits regarding the maximum amount in the
account, the number of transactions per day and the amount of output.

(ii) The risk of being hacked: If you follow the security rules the threat is minimal, it can be
compared to the risk of something like a robbery. The worse situation when the system of
processing company has been broken, because it leads to the leak of personal data on cards
and its owners. Even if the electronic payment system does not launch plastic cards, it can be
involved in scandals regarding the Identity theft.

The problem of transferring money between different payment systems- Usually the majority
of electronic payment systems do not cooperate with each other. In this case, you have to use
the services of e-currency exchange, and it can be time-consuming if you still do not have a
trusted service for this purpose. Our article on how to choose the best e-currency exchanger
greatly facilitates the search process.

(iii) The lack of anonymity: The information about all the transactions, including the
amount, time and recipient are stored in the database of the payment system. And it means
the intelligence agency has an access to this information. You should decide whether it’s bad
or good.

(vi) The necessity of Internet access: If Internet connection fails, you can not get to your
online account.

Security Issues in E-Commerce: Need and Concept

In spite of its advantages and limitations E-commerce has got some security issues in
practical. E-commerce security is nothing but preventing loss and protecting the areas
financially and informational from unauthorized access, use or destruction. Due the rapid
developments in science and technology, risks involved in use of technology and the security
measures to avoid the organizational and individual losses are changing day to day. There
are two types of important cryptography we follow for secured E-commerce transactions.

Symmetric (private-key) cryptography: This is an encryption system in which sender and

receiver possess the same key. The key used to encrypt a message is also used to decrypt the
encrypted message from the sender.

Asymmetric (public-key) cryptography: In this method the actual message is encoded and
decoded using two different mathematically related keys, one of them is called public key
and the other is called private key.

Security is an essential part of any transaction that takes place over the internet. Customers
will lose his/her faith in e-business if its security is compromised. Following are the essential
requirements for safe e-payments/transactions:

 Confidentiality: Information should not be accessible to an unauthorized person. It

should not be intercepted during the transmission.
 Integrity: Information should not be altered during its transmission over the network.
 Availability: Information should be available wherever and whenever required within
a time limit specified.
 Authenticity: There should be a mechanism to authenticate a user before giving
him/her an access to the required information.
 Non-Repudiability: It is the protection against the denial of order or denial of pay-
ment. Once a sender sends a message, the sender should not be able to deny send-
ing the message. Similarly, the recipient of message should not be able to deny the
receipt.
 Encryption: Information should be encrypted and decrypted only by an authorized
user.
 Auditability: Data should be recorded in such a way that it can be audited for integ-
rity requirements.

e-Commerce Security can be divided into two Broad Types:

(1) Client-Server Security

Client-server securities are popular because they increase application processing efficiency
while reducing costs and gaining the maximum benefit from all resources working together.
These benefits are gained by splitting processing between the client machine/software and
server machine/software. Each process works independently but in cooperation and
compatibility with other machines and applications (or pieces of applications).

All independent processing must be performed to complete the requested service.

Cooperation of application processing produces another client-server advantage, it reduces
network traffic. Since each node (client and/or server) performs part of the processing within
itself, network communication can be kept to a minimum. For example, static processes, like
menus or edits, usually take place on the client-side. The server, on the other hand, is
responsible for processes like updating and reporting.

(2) Data and Transaction Security

Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) is a system for ensuring the security of financial
transactions on the Internet. It was supported initially by Mastercard, Visa, Microsoft,
Netscape, and others. With SET, a user is given an electronic wallet (digital certificate) and a
transaction is conducted and verified using a combination of digital certificates and digital
signatures among the purchaser, a merchant, and the purchaser’s bank in a way that ensures
privacy and confidentiality. SET makes use of Netscape’s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),
Microsoft’s Secure Transaction Technology (STT), and Terisa System’s Secure Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (S-HTTP). SET uses some but not all aspects of a public key infrastructure
(PKI).

Electronic Data Interchange And It’s components and Communication Process

ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the concept of businesses communicating electronically

certain information that was traditionally communicated on paper. The two classic examples
of such information are purchase orders and invoices. Standards for EDI exist to facilitate
parties transacting such instruments without having to make special arrangements.

EDI has existed for more than 30 years, and there are many EDI standards (including X12,
EDIFACT, ODETTE, etc.), some of which address the needs of specific industries or regions.
It also refers specifically to a family of standards.

In 1996, the National Institute of Standards and Technology defined electronic data inter-
change as “the computer-to-computer interchange of strictly formatted messages that repres-
ent documents other than monetary instruments.

EDI implies a sequence of messages between two parties, either of whom may serve as ori-
ginator or recipient. The formatted data representing the documents may be transmitted from
originator to recipient via telecommunications or physically transported on electronic storage
media.” It distinguishes mere electronic communication or data exchange, specifying that “in
EDI, the usual processing of received messages is by computer only.
Human intervention in the processing of a received message is typically intended only for er -
ror conditions, for quality review, and for special situations. For example, the transmission of
binary or textual data is not EDI as defined here unless the data are treated as one or more
data elements of an EDI message and are not normally intended for human interpretation as
part of online data processing.EDI can be formally defined as the transfer of structured data,
by agreed message standards, from one computer system to another without human interven-
tion.

COMPONENTS OF EDI

The following components and tools are necessary for performing EDI ARE-

 Trade Agreement

A legally binding trade agreement between you and your trading partner.

 Standard Document Format

The standard agreed upon format for the documentto be electronically transmitted.

 EDI Translation Management Software

Software used to convert the documentyour application’s format into the agreed upon stand-
ard format. For optimum performance the translation software should be on the same plat-
form as your business application.

 Communications Software

A programming tool that enables you to writecommunications protocols, or a separate applic-

ation. It can be a module to thetranslator or a separate software application.

 Modem

A hardware device used to transmit electronic information betweencomputer systems. The

higher the baud rate, the faster the communications will be.

 VAN

Stands for Value Added Network. A network to which you can connect totransmit data from
one computer systems to another. One network can act as agateway to another.

 Point-to-Point

A direct communication link from one computer to another. Sometrading partners offer a dir-
ect connection to their EDI computer. Trading partnersmay opt for this method of communic-
ation instead of using a VAN.

ADVANTAGES OF EDI

 Save Money
The cost of paper and paper processing is incredibly high compared to a properlyimplemen-
ted EDI program. RJR Nabisco estimates that processing a paper purchaseorder costs the
company $70. Processing an EDI purchase order reduces the cost to amere 93 cents.

 End Repetition

If your trading partner wants a copy of a document, instead of calling you they simplycheck
their mailbox. This results in a great time savings from not having to copy andfax/mail copies
of business documents.

 Save Time

EDI also saves time over paper processing since the transfer of information fromcomputer to
computer is automatic. There is no need to rekey information with EDI. Andthe chance for
error drops to near zero, with no data entry.

EDI COMMUNICATION PROCESS

By moving from a paper-based exchange of business document to one that is electronic, busi-
nesses enjoy major benefits such as reduced cost, increased processing speed, reduced errors
and improved relationships with business partners. Learn more about the benefits of EDI
here. »

Each term in the definition is significant

Computer-to-computer– EDI replaces postal mail, fax and email. While email is also an elec -
tronic approach, the documents exchanged via email must still be handled by people rather
than computers. Having people involved slows down the processing of the documents and
also introduces errors. Instead, EDI documents can flow straight through to the appropriate
application on the receiver’s computer (e.g., the Order Management System) and processing
can begin immediately. A typical manual process looks like this, with lots of paper and
people involvement:

Manual EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) Document Exchange

The EDI process looks like this — no paper, no people involved:

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) Document Exchange

Business documents – These are any of the documents that are typically exchanged between
businesses. The most common documents exchanged via EDI are purchase orders, invoices
and advance ship notices. But there are many, many others such as bill of lading, customs
documents, inventory documents, shipping status documents and payment documents.

Standard format– Because EDI documents must be processed by computers rather than hu-
mans, a standard format must be used so that the computer will be able to read and under-
stand the documents. A standard format describes what each piece of information is and in
what format (e.g., integer, decimal, mmddyy). Without a standard format, each company
would send documents using its company-specific format and, much as an English-speaking
person probably doesn’t understand Japanese, the receiver’s computer system doesn’t under-
stand the company-specific format of the sender’s format.
There are several EDI standards in use today, including ANSI, EDIFACT, TRADACOMS
and ebXML. And, for each standard there are many different versions, e.g., ANSI 5010 or
EDIFACT version D12, Release A. When two businesses decide to exchange EDI docu-
ments, they must agree on the specific EDI standard and version.

Businesses typically use an EDI translator – either as in-house software or via an EDI service
provider – to translate the EDI format so the data can be used by their internal applications
and thus enable straight through processing of documents.

Business partners – The exchange of EDI documents is typically between two different com-
panies, referred to as business partners or trading partners. For example, Company A may
buy goods from Company B. Company A sends orders to Company B. Company A and
Company B are business partners.

 Steps the Sender Must Take

Document Preparation
Information necessary to produce a business document (purchase order, invoice, etc.) is col-
lected in an electronic file.

Outbound Translation

The electronic file is converted by the sender’s translation software into the standard format
(following ASC X12 standards and Rail Industry Guidelines).

Outbound Communication

The sender’s computer connects to a VAN. Upon successful receipt, the VAN processes and
routes the transaction to the electronic mailbox of the receiver.

 Steps the Receiver Must Take

Inbound communication

The receiver’s computer connects with the VAN and receives any files waiting in its elec -
tronic “in” box.

Inbound translation

The receiver’s translation software “maps” or translates the electronic file from the ASC X12
standard message format into a format that the receiver’s internal system can understand.

Document processing

The receiver’s internal document processing system takes over and the newly received docu-
ment is handled according to normal internal procedures.