Articles

How to optimise your e-commerce store images

by

t’s likely that your website is optimised for search engines – but are the images?

Image Credit

If the images on your website aren’t optimised, your ranking on Google won’t be as high as it could be, and this means that you could be missing out on a huge audience of people who would be interested in your products.

If you want to improve your Google ranking, here’s how to optimise your e-commerce store images.

Use text

Search engine bots are very smart, but sadly, they aren’t smart enough yet to read images, so you will need to add text to all of your images so that search engines can ‘see’ them. If you upload an image of a bike that you are selling, for example, you should also add relevant text to the image so that it can be correctly indexed.

This is especially important if you run an e-commerce website, as most of your website comprises of images.

Be careful with your keywords

Images and videos are the future of content marketing, but if you’re not using the right keywords, they won’t be seen by the right people. Remember that people use different keywords when they are searching for images instead of pictures, and tailor your keywords accordingly.

Image Credit

If you want to find a London SEO agency who can help you create useful and relevant image keywords, check out https://www.elevateuk.com/.

Strengthen your technical SEO foundations

You should also make sure that the technical SEO foundations on your website are solid, as if they are weak, you may encounter issues with your images. Start by looking at all of your image filenames, as they need to be relevant to the actual image. This is especially important for product images, so customers will be able to find them through Google search.

Create an image sitemap

An image sitemap can be used by Google search engine bots to map all of the images on your website, and this will help to boost your store images’ online ranking. Make sure you also include relevant metadata, and if you are using a CMS, make sure it will automatically update the image sitemap.

These updates may take a while to make, but they can massively boost your SEO ranking, helping to improve your outreach and engagement, so it is well worth making the changes.

What Direct Funding can do for Your Company’s Bottom Line?

by

Most businesses have a problem with capital adequacy in their operations. Recent studies done on companies both large and small indicate that many lack the money necessary to meet growth needs. Financing options such as operating leases, capital leases, and bank loans exist, but not every business either qualifies for them or is best suited to exploit them.

The best alternative to maximize available capital for businesses is through direct funding of equipment instead of outright purchases. The beauty of direct funding is that it frees up capital so you can invest it to help generate more cash for your business.

With direct financing, you can purchase equipment from leasing agents which you can then lease to other third-party users. Through this arrangement, you don’t burden your business with an inventory of equipment that holds your cash; instead, you only enter into the financing agreement once you identify a client to whom you are going to lease.

How Direct Funding Affects Your Bottom Line
Many benefits accrue to your business from direct funding. Amongst them include:

Tax Deduction
Since you are using the equipment to earn income that is accessible, the rental payments to the leasing agent will be treated as business expenses and therefore tax deductible. Thus, you should ensure that the payments are recorded well by your accountant.

Cashflow Management
With direct funding, you have immediate access to the services of equipment without making an initial capital outlay. This means the cash you could use for this purpose is saved and becomes part of your free cash flow. Since you will tailor your rental payments with your seasonal cash inflows, you will not burden your cash reserves. Often, you can use the leased equipment as the collateral. Hence, your other assets will be free and not tied to the funding.

Flexibility in Rental Options
Direct funding companies like BSB Leasing allow you to negotiate a workable lease rental payments periodicity that works for you. For instance, you may agree on a monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, semiannually, annually, or on a seasonal basis. You can often make payments through a nominated bank account agreed upon by the contracting parties.

With flexibility in payment, it means you will never have cash-strapped operations and your books will always look healthy because you are matching expenses to revenues they help generate.

Creating a Direct Funding Arrangement
To safeguard and guarantee the equipment they are giving to you; leasing agents may require some form of collateral from you. It is in no way a statement of mistrust, but rather security that their future payments will come according to schedule. However, the beauty of direct funding is that the leasing agent will take the equipment as the collateral which means failure to honor payments can make them repossess the equipment. Therefore, before committing to any direct funding agreement, ensure that your client can meet the periodic payments and that they are sufficient to cover the lease payments you are to make to the leasing agent and leave some profit for you.

How to manage charity volunteers in a safe way

by

In the UK, 90% of registered charities are completely run by volunteers and have no paid staff. Therefore, whatever the organisation, volunteers play an important role in enabling the charity to do its job. From specialised skills to fundraising, every volunteer has their role to play, so what is the process for managing these people?

Image Credit

Recruit

There are websites where you can advertise for volunteers, and these can be any age from school children to parents and family members or retired people. Volunteer vacancies are also advertised in local jobcentres. It is important that the volunteers are aware of their role and the support they can get from the organisation. A written role description can make it clear what is expected of them and what their expectations will be. Volunteers need to feel confident that the organisation has correct procedures in place and that the time they donate is well spent and valued.

 Expenses

Volunteers are not paid for their services, but are entitled to any travel expenses incurred. They are also entitled to protective clothing or any other essential equipment they need to achieve their role, plus any telephone or postal charges incurred if working from home.

Verify

Any volunteers working with children need to be checked out through a basic DBS (http://www.carecheck.co.uk/basic-dbs-checks/), where any criminal records and unsuitability are confirmed.

Image Credit

Insurance

Every volunteer should be covered by the charity’s insurance, in case of any injury or incident which may take place.

Volunteers

Volunteers are the lifeblood of our communities and without them, many charities would not be able to function. Estimates suggest that 15.2 million people volunteer in the UK at least once a month for various charities and around 23 million volunteer once a year. That is a great number of people doing great work for the sake of their communities, through fundraising, sponsored walks, cake stalls, bring and buy and hundreds of other events. Volunteering your time and expertise can be very rewarding. It gets you out and about meeting new people and trying out new experiences.

Abroad
There are also volunteer programs and projects where you can help in more than 30 countries, with projects ranging from teaching, conservation, community and health care, giving you the chance to travel and see the world whilst helping communities less fortunate than yours.

Syma Q1 Pioneer: An Impressive High-Speed RC Boat

by

RC BoatsRC BoatsRC BoatsRC BoatsRC Boats! Yes, this awesome type of radio controlled toys have been garnering many attention from hobbyists and it is for all the right reasons. A few of them being the incredible speed they have and the ease of navigation – making them one of the most exciting RC toys and also one of the best thing to pick up as a hobby. Not to mention, there are also so many different options with equally sophisticated design on the market these days – making them a great collectable item for hobbyists who would also like to collect this fun RC toy.

While its wide range of options is considered a good news for collectors, the same cannot be said for pure hobbyists who are faced with limited budget. Picking one that is not only worth purchasing, but also one that is capable of giving you the best and the most stable performance can be difficult – more so when you are a first time buyer. Fortunately for you, you have come to the right place. Here, we are going to help you choose the right radio controlled boats that is well suited to your own personal preferences. Not only that, we are also going to provide you with the ultimate recommendation for those wanting an RC boat with impressive speed and high quality built.

One of the biggest mistakes that many new boater and first time buyer often make is choose a radio controlled boat with a power combination that is not at all matched. Improper power combination is the culprit of system overheating – when this happens, you may expect other components of your RC boat to be destroyed in a short period of time. To avoid this, you must properly inspect the specification details and power combination – do not focus too much on one detail in favor of speed. The speed is the result of proper combination, not just one specific mechanic. If proper combination and steady performance is what you are after, you definitely cannot go wrong with Syma Q1. Equipped with a large professional torsion propeller and combined with an incredibly powerful motor, there is no doubt in mind that this high speed boat is suitable for speed-crazy hobbyists. Using 2.4G advanced frequency connection technology, boaters may navigate the high speed boat from a distance with ease, and bring it up to 25-km per hour. Worried about the stability and reliability? Don’t, because this incredible RC boat comes with remarkable cooling system and premium-quality built.

Key Factors of Buying

by

In this article, you will learn about additional producers’ conscious factors to make you buy a product.

Birth of the Desire

In our previous writings about customer’s behavior, we talked about marketing strategies that make you interested in a certain production. Here we will discuss main factors of buying from the other side. In this writing, you will find gathered information about steps of desire that controls your real needs and which are widely used by marketing specialists.

Opinion Leaders

A consumer is an insider of the community and directly depends on its thoughts. That is herd instinct, which forces people to buy what others have. In modern conditions, we can see this hidden advertising in writings of bloggers and social activists. It seems they write friendly posts on Facebook, Instagram just to inform people about production. However, at first, a reader is not interested in marketing of this production. Everything changes when our associations are turned on. For example, we know that our friend Kate is an attractive, smart and funny girl,who could not wish you something bad. Somewhere she was asked to present a product to her friends. Earlier you have been just thinking about buying a production of such type. But now you are ready and eager to give your money for the thing because you trust Kate’s portrait. This principle is often used in marketing.

Impulse Buying

Our congratulations if you do not buy products in supermarkets. In such a case, you wouldn’t be touched by a great amount of advertising and unconscious influence. Probably, everything starts from bright writings that young promoters give for free on the streets. As a rule, there are listed goods and products on sales, but be ready to come in this supermarket and figure out that the products are not cheap. Owners of big businesses try to do everything just to lure you in the supermarket. Next time you will go for a shopping, pay attention to products’ placement. You should understand that a stand of aromatic coffee and buns is located particularly between grocery and chemical departments to make you feel relaxed. Always make lists of products while you are going for shopping in order to avoid unnecessary and unplanned purchases influenced by marketing of them.

Enticing headings in newspapers and advertisements are what it takes for you to survive in business world. It works and if do not do it, you vanish. Textual content is important and it can be provided for example by writingpaper.org.

Unsafe Comfort

There are so many things, to which we are used, because it is comfortable. It is a credit card, which we use because we do not want to put dirty cash in our pocket. In addition, it seems safer, as a physical rubber do not know the parole. On the other side, we don’t understand that we spend a lot of money. Standing at the box office with a card, you do not hold papered money in your hands and that makes you think you do not spend a lot. However, written sum on the check may make you mad. The same story happens with large strollers in the supermarkets, as you want to fill all the space with goods. It is much better to hold all your purchases in the smallest one or even in the hands to avoid impulsive shopping. Do not get trapped in marketing nets!

Nets of Sales

The owner of the business wants to turn you into a stable buyer of his production through the marketing tricks. That is why he tries to be loyal in the financial question. There are plenty of promotion actions to reduce the price of a certain good. For example, a written amount of coffee on the card that you have to drink to get a cup for free. In supermarkets, the practice of electronic cards that propose you sales or different production from the department you visit most of all is widely spread. For example, if you regularly visit dairy division, pay attention to emails from the supermarket that probably often propose some extra production from this department.