This week on Monday we learned about Google Ads. I have heard about it before and genuinely found it interesting to look into. I used it to look up different keywords I would look up frequently and it was interesting to see how some things weren’t as popular as I thought they were, and some were more popular than I had thought. For example a business idea I had thought of was a chocolate box subscription, when I looked it up the monthly clicks weren’t a ton but the competition was high. I think it’ll be really helpful down the road as I market my business and see the competition. My only concern with Google Ads is that it can easily be misused, someone could easily just go on and click a link a bunch of times just to make money.
This wasn’t this week but last week we were asked to read articles one about different business models and the other about how to come up with business ideas. These really opened my mind to all the many possibilities for new business there are out there. When it came to coming up with a business idea I had always thought of it as just finding a problem then finding a solution, but really there are so many different ways one can come up with a business idea. I found “The Market-First Model” really interesting from http://bizthoughts.mikelee.org/brainstorming-business-ideas.html because if you have a specific audience you want to target you can specificaly make your business geared to them.
Something that overwhelms me about opening up my own business is finding a wholesaler. Especially if one is searching through the internet there is just so much out there it’s almost impossible to just choose one. On the other hand quality is something very important to me so I feel like it would be a risk going through an online wholesaler.
We are figuring out what website builder we want for our websites now, and I am realizing just how many aspects and factors go into picking one. Knowing that there are so many factors as an individual we all need to rank what is most important or not when deciding. I ended up choosing Shopify because it specifically meant for ecommerce businesses, and I have learned the most about it and feel that it is very user friendly.
We talked about different types of websites and the different aspects that represent the purpose of the website. For example websites that sell higher priced and classier items won’t put a price tag up because it doesn’t look as nice. Color schemes and fonts also help portray your purpose to your customer. Another example is Nike, their website is usually black and white with little pops of color, along with a sleek font which represents class and longevity in the company. Often times super colorful websites will be geared towards a younger audience.
Placement on one’s website plays a huge role in keeping customers. Naturally people’s eyes fall from the top left to the bottom right on a screen. Knowing this, it is important to put links and information that you want your audience to see in this line of sight, and to have it stick out from the rest of your website like a different color or font. If your website is user friendly people will stay on your website for longer and are more likely to return.
Something that we did in class that has been super helpful for me is getting into groups and sharing our websites to see how others did theirs and get suggestions from other people. I always really like getting opinions from others because I can only come up with so many ideas. I was able to get feedback about my color scheme, placement of text and links, and the overall feel of my site. This has really helped my confidence in my site and understanding of how my customers will view my site.
Taxes have been something that I have been overwhelmed about in the whole business creation. We figured them out today and the website that has really made everything a lot clearer for me is the Idaho Business Wizard website that kind of tells you all the possible legal requirements you would need.
We are officially starting our google ads now and something I have learned is that trial and error is important. So when I run my ads for the first times I am going to have an excessive amount of keywords so that I can see how certain words CTR compare and delete and add keywords from what I learn. Something really cool we learned was that you can go onto google ads and see the advertisements and keywords that other companies use. I like this because I can find a website with good advertisements and base my keywords off one’s that do well for them.
When running your google ads it is important to focus on the conversion of people on your website. Conversions are important because you want people to actually do something on your website and more specifically do what you want them to do. If you are not getting any conversions then your ads aren’t working correctly.
The reason we run ads and learn more about websites and advertisements is so that we can find out what will work for our business. Ultimately we want to optimize our websites so we can make the most money and share our product the most.
This week we talked about SEO, and before I had no idea what SEO even was. Search Engine Optimization means that we need to figure out how to make the most of our website coming up first when people search for it or something similar to it. When I began my website I would search for it and have to go onto the third or fourth page on google to get to it, now it is about halfway down the first page of google. I think this has moved up because for one I took out the space between kodie and lane when I search for it, but also because I have been getting clicks and people have been visiting my website more than before. When I look at WebsiteGrader it says that I have a pretty good website but I need to work on Render Blocking, “Remove or defer JavaScript and CSS that interferes with loading above-the-fold content“. I need to figure out how to do this with Shopify, because I don’t go in and edit the code when I do. I think one of the reasons why my site does so well is because I have a very basic small site that is only 426 KB. I definitely will continue to check on my SEO through these websites as I continue to work on and update my site so that my customers will have the best experience possible.
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