WebProNews

Category: SalesNews

SalesNews

  • What Does My Business Website Need to Succeed In 2022?

    What Does My Business Website Need to Succeed In 2022?

    It’s reckoned there are around 2 billion websites in the world today. While only 200 million of them are active, that’s still a hell of a lot of content. And if you run a business, a lot of competition! So, having a great website for your operation is paramount. You’ve often got one chance to make a good impression, and if you blow your opportunity, it’s unlikely you’ll get a second go. You might think you’ve got a great site, but it might be a turn-off for your audience in reality. Read on and discover what your business website needs to succeed in 2022.

    Goals

    Business websites are digital shop windows. If you’re not sure what the purpose of your website should be, then you can be certain your audience won’t either. You must show them who you are, what you do and what you offer. Seems an obvious thing to say, but millions of sites out there never get this right at the outset. It’s not enough just to have a site – it needs to say something! Once you know what you want, then you’re off to a solid start and you can build from there.

    Know Your Audience

    So, you’ve established what you want. But what does what your audience want? If your site doesn’t match their needs, then you’ve a recipe for poor sales. Creating a good site takes time, money and energy – so you must ensure you’re hitting and attracting the right people. If your site is already up and running, then you’ll already have some key data sitting in Google Analytics, waiting to be tapped. If you’re not using this, then do not delay – it’s packed with priceless data on who is looking at your site and their behavior while they’re with you. It’s a brilliant place to get customer insights, and it’s free. Away from Google Analytics, you should look at your competitors. Who are they attracting? What are they doing? Once you understand your audience, you can design your content to suit.

    Easy Navigation

    Now your audience is identified, the next step is to ensure your site is structured in a way that makes navigating around it easy. It’s not a time for puzzles – people are time-poor and information-hungry. Satisfy both demands with a logically constructed site, with clear page categories and sections. It is very easy to get this design element wrong – you can have the best content and the best deals, but if they aren’t easy to find, they’re useless. It’s no surprise that millions of businesses make sure they get this right by using custom web development services for their sites.

    Content

    With your design confirmed, it’s now time to populate your site with the engaging, compelling content you need to reel customers in and keep them coming back for more. Original content is a must too – it is this which will help you stand out from the crowd and build your brand. Having a blog section is a great way to deliver informative content and establish your expertise. Blogs can cover all sorts of relevant subjects. It can be a bit of news about your company, an industry development, a new product, an event or even a “guest” blog from one of your suppliers or partners!

    Use sensible fonts that are easy to read and aren’t jarring to look at. Always use the right words. Make everything clear and to the point and use a range of word lengths for your blogs and articles. Some topics need more detail than others! 

    Eye-catching imagery is a must – it has been long established that humans respond more strongly to visuals than text. Bland or poorly chosen images can make your website look amateurish. Always use visuals that reflect the brand images you want to promote. First impressions matter and your audience will see the pictures before they decide to read the text. Getting your words and images right on your site will not only satisfy your audience but will give your SEO (search engine optimisation) a boost. Vital to get your site shooting up the Google rankings!

    Speed

    We’ve all clicked through to a website that takes too long to load. And we all do the same thing – click straight back out, often never to return. Slow loading pages are a disaster for websites, and you’ve about 2-3 seconds grace before user frustration sets in. It strikes a hammer blow to your SEO efforts too. There are plenty of free online speed loading analysis tools so make sure you check regularly. Make sure you keep file sizes down (particularly images) and if you’re still encountering issues, you should think about speaking to a web development team.

    Think Mobile!

    Smartphones are used for everything now – gaming, streaming and browsing the web. While your site might look resplendent on your desktop and be packed with sticky content and great offers, it does not mean it will do so on smartphones (or tablets!). These days, more people access the internet on their phones than on desktops, so you ignore this at your peril. Make sure your site is optimized to look fantastic across mobile, desktop and tablet. You’ll simply bleed traffic otherwise.   

  • Apple Significantly Raises Starting Pay For Hourly Employees

    Apple Significantly Raises Starting Pay For Hourly Employees

    Apple is significantly raising its starting pay for hourly employees, some 45% over 2018 levels.

    Like many companies, Apple is working to retain its workforce and attract new talent amid a market that is being squeezed by rising costs, soaring inflation, and increased competition among rivals. In response, according to The Wall Street Journal, via Ars Technica, the company is raising the starting pay of hourly employees to $22, although it may be even higher in some markets.

    In addition, the company said it would move up some annual reviews by as much as several months in an effort to open the door for existing employees to get pay increases faster.

    “Supporting and retaining the best team members in the world enables us to deliver the best, most innovative, products and services for our customers,” a spokesperson told WSJ. “This year as part of our annual performance review process, we’re increasing our overall compensation budget.”

    Read more: Apple Delays Increased In-Person Work Indefinitely

    The move is not surprising, given the overall state of the market. Microsoft recently doubled its salary budget, following similar moves by Amazon.

    To complicate matters even further, Apple has been struggling more than some of its tech rivals with getting employees back to the office. After a couple of years of groundbreaking product releases and record-breaking quarters, many employees see no need to be forced back to the office an arbitrary number of days. Apple’s employees have already penned numerous letters in protest and some have quit, with the company’s AI chief being the most high-profile loss over its back-to-office policies.

    One thing is clear: Apple is pulling out the stops to keep employees happy, although it remains to be seen if it will pull out the stop most people want, and let employees continue to work remotely.

  • Salesforce Focused On ‘Driving Success From Anywhere’

    Salesforce Focused On ‘Driving Success From Anywhere’

    On the heels of a “phenomenal quarter,” Salesforce is doubling down on its hybrid work model and “driving success from anywhere.”

    Few companies have gone all in on remote and hybrid work as much as Salesforce. The company has been helping customers transition to the cloud, and has been rolling out tools aimed specifically at mobile workers. The company even purchased Slack, the poster-child of remote work, for a whopping $27.7 billion.

    According to Steve Brashear, Salesforce SVP, Global Real Estate, the company is continuing its “Success from Anywhere” approach, giving employees “the flexibility to work how, when, and where works best for them.”

    At the same time, despite being digital first, Brashear says the company is not digital only. In fact, the number one request from employees is to come in to the office for collaboration with teammates. In response, Salesforce has been reimagining its workspaces to make them more conducive to flexible work schedules and collaborative meetings.

    “Individual desks will still have a role, but we’re prioritizing more breakout and collaboration spaces,” writes Brashear. “We’re increasing our social space from 40% to 60% — adding more booths, cafes, communal tables, focus pods, and mobile audiovisual equipment to enhance the connection, camaraderie, and innovation that comes from gathering in person.

    “We are future-proofing our design with a flexible layout so we can adjust as we go.”

    Salesforce has been firing on all cylinders in its embrace of remote and flexible work, and could serve as a template for other companies looking to do the same.

  • Amazon SEO is Now More Important than Google SEO for Brands

    Amazon SEO is Now More Important than Google SEO for Brands

    Amazon has dethroned Google in product searches with over 54 percent of all product searches now happening on Amazon instead of Google. What this means is that brands must make Amazon SEO their priority in order to show up near the top of product searches for their related keywords.

    It’s predicted that an entire industry is in the midst of emerging to help companies adjust their strategies similar to what happened when Google first started to dominate search a couple decades ago.

    Walled garden research company Jumpshot released The Competitive State of eCommerce Marketplaces Data Report earlier this month which shows Amazon’s amazing eight-point rise in product searches in the last year alone.

    Recently, Deren Baker, Jumpshot CEO, revealed the latest results from their report in a Bloomberg Technology interview with Emily Chang:

    Amazon Leading Google with Product Searches

    We have seen a shift from Google to Amazon. Today over 54 percent of all the product searches that occur on the entire internet now occur on Amazon. Once you get into Amazon we’ve seen a strong growth in the number of sponsored placements that they put on their site. The product views that emanated from a sponsored click has increased from 3 percent to 7 percent in the last 18 months.

    We think that Amazon and Google are converging. We did some additional analysis at Jumpshot that shows that from the time a consumer searches on either Google or Amazon to the time that they buy was actually much shorter on Google. On Google, 35 percent of those purchases were made within 5 days, only 20 percent on Amazon.

    Amazon Becoming a Place for Product Discovery

    What you are seeing is that Amazon is becoming a place for product discovery for customers more and Google is shifting from pure product discovery to more of that considered purchase. When people are interested in understanding the price or the quality or the brand name they’re going away from Amazon back to Google now.

    Once you get to Amazon, 90 percent of the product views are actually the result of a search. So people aren’t messing around with merchandising placements or banner ads, they are typing a search for a product into Amazon and getting a search result. Once they get that search result we found that over two-thirds of the clicks are on the first page.

    Amazon SEO is Now More Important than Google SEO for Brands

    Imagine if you are a brand, you know that the majority of your customers are now searching for your product on Amazon. You know that once people get to Amazon what they are doing really doing is typing in a product search. Then once you get that search result you’ve got your competitors products, Amazon’s private label products, and you have to decide whether you are going to try and increase your organic results or pay for a sponsored placement. It’s a very confusing world for a brand today.

    I would not want to be a brand manager at a CPG company right now because I think you are between a rock and a hard place. I think what you will see in the future is the same way that an ecosystem of companies sprung up around Google search when it started to dominate peoples online behavior, you are going to see the same thing for Amazon search. What people are going to need is a non-Amazon source of information to help them understand what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to spend their advertising dollars.

  • Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel

    If you avoid these seven online marketing mistakes and you follow these tips you’re going to generate more sales, says popular digital marketing expert Neil Patel. A common theme of Neil’s tips is creating a brand. “Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands,” he says. “There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else.” Patel says that if you follow these tips you’re going to crush it!”

    Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses the seven online marketing mistakes in his latest video release:

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes

    I’m going to break down seven online marketing mistakes that you need to stop. You’re probably wondering you’re doing all these things but why aren’t you seeing results? Even if you’re doing the right things, if you’re also doing the wrong things at the same time it’s going to hurt you and it’s going avoid you from getting the results that you deserve.

    Mistake 1: Not Collecting Emails

    The first mistake you are making is not collecting emails. It doesn’t matter how good you are with SEO or marketing only a very small percentage of your visitors are ever going to convert into customers. By collecting emails not only can you get people to come back to your site but you can convince them to convert over emails.

    The moment someone gives you their email address think of that as a micro-commitment. They’re much more likely to convert into a customer because they committed, they already gave you something. That’s why you want to collect emails. You can do this through sliders or exit pop-ups. You can do this for free using tools like Hello Bar.

    Mistake 2: Not Collecting Subscribers Through Push Notifications

    The second mistake you’re making is you’re not collecting subscribers through push notifications. There are free tools like Subscribers.com that’ll make it easy. Just add in a JavaScript or a WordPress plug-in and then when people come to your website they will automatically subscribe through the browser. Then anytime you have new content or products or services that you want to sell then you can notify them through Subscribers.

    Mistake 3: Not Building a Brand

    The reason tip number one on collecting emails and tip number two on getting more push notifications subscribers are really important is because you need to build a brand. This gets you into the third mistake. Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands. Why is this? There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else. It’s not just going to be Facebook and in Google. Eventually, it’s going to be Twitter and LinkedIn and all the sites out there.

    When you get people back to your site seven times you’re much more likely to build a brand. It’s called the Rule of Seven in marketing. So with your site, you want to provide an amazing user experience. When you provide an amazing user experience, create a great product, create a great service, it’ll help you build a great brand over time.

    Mistake 4: Not Interlinking

    The fourth mistake you’re making is not interlinking. You may notice on Google I’m ranking for terms like online marketing on page one. You’re probably wondering how do I do this? A lot of it comes out to interlinking. In my sidebar, I link to my most popular pages of content. When I write blog posts related to online marketing I link back to the online marketing guide that talks about what online marketing is. By having all these links it helps me rank higher.

    Mistake 5: Just Focusing On Text-Based Content

    The fifth mistake I have for you is just focusing on text-based content. The future of digital marketing is moving to video. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing text but it means you should also be doing video. When you do video you’re going to get more traffic because everyone’s lacking it. LinkedIn wants it right now. YouTube wants more of it. Facebook wants it. Instagram even wants it.

    Why is this? They want to crush the television networks. You look at things like the Oscars or traditional movie theaters and they’re not doing as well. You look at traditional TV and they’re going to get crushed. Why? It’s because of Facebook. It’s because of Google. It’s because of Netflix. If you’re there creating that video content you can be part of it and you’re going to get extra traffic. They want as much help as possible to crush these big old-school companies.

    Mistake 6: Sticking To Just a Few Marketing Channels

    The sixth mistake that you’re making is you’re really sticking to just a few marketing channels. Marketing is competitive. People raise venture capital hundreds of millions of dollars just so they can compete in marketing and sales. You need to do more than one or two or three marketing channels. The more you do the better off you’re going to be.

    Mistake 7: Not Asking For the Sale

    The seventh mistake I have for you is not asking for the sale. Whether it’s a lead or whether it’s getting people to buy your product, there’s nothing wrong with asking people to buy from you. If you don’t you’re not going to generate any sales. Everyone’s like I get all this traffic through my online marketing but no one’s converting. Why? Because you’re not asking for a sale.

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel


  • Outreach CEO: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator

    Outreach CEO: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator

    “We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator, says Outreach CEO Manny Medina. “The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders.”

    Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, discusses the “rise of the revenue innovator” in an interview today on CNBC:

    The Rise of the Revenue Innovator

    We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator.” The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. It’s a data-driven digital-first predictable long-building trusting relationship kind of seller. What we are seeing is this influx and this growth in the type of seller that knows how to drive a digital conversation but is complemented with a hybrid approach of visiting your customer. It’s a very predictable, very data-driven kind of job description.

    The growth happening across our customer base is the growth of that kind of seller. This is a seller and a customer-facing rep who is going to be very data-driven and very innovator-led. If we are going to think of the Salesforce numbers that just came out these are incredible signs of growth for the cloud platform. That’s an incredible sign of growth for us as well because what we are seeing is the system of action is taking place on top of the system of record that Salesforce is providing.

    Second Wave of Digital Transformation

    All of the companies that used to be in the mainstream economy are accelerating into the second wave of digital transformation. The first wave of digital transformation is to move all of the data into the cloud and that is happening but it’s not what companies are talking about. Companies are talking about how do you make me smarter? How do you make my teams more efficient? How do you make my teams digital-first?

    How do I live and thrive in this new hybrid environment post-Covid in which the buyer is not ready to see sellers until post transaction until you are expanding not selling? All of these “before-laggers” are becoming early innovators and early adopters with new technology such as Outreach which is AI-driven and digital-first.

    The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. They may not have them yet but they are coming online, they are getting these jobs. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders. They are also hiring people of the same ilk that are looking to drive this innovation within their companies. That’s what you are seeing in this transformation. Transformations are always people first.

    It’s this new wave of people that are coming into traditional companies that are driving this second digital transformation. They are forward thinkers and they are data-driven.

    Outreach Doubling Headcount Again

    Outreach is doubling its headcount again. We almost doubled from the beginning of the pandemic all the way to now and we expect to hit another double in terms of hiring. We expect another 600 to 700 people to come on board. Most importantly, what we are seeing is that our customers are growing as well. We sell seats ahead of sales demand and we are seeing sales seats being bought very quickly.

    We are expecting our customers to be driving double-digit growth across the board. This is a great sign for the economy.

    Outreach CEO Manny Medina: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator
  • France May Regulate Early Smartphone Renewals

    France May Regulate Early Smartphone Renewals

    France is looking to enact legislation that would restrict wireless carriers from using commercial offers to entice users into early upgrades.

    French carriers, like many carriers around the world, use promotions to get customers to upgrade early in exchange for signing a new contract. French authorities are concerned about the environmental impact of new phones, according to Reuters, and are prepared to take action.

    The French government estimates device manufacturing accounts for up to 75% of the digital sector’s environmental impact. As a result, upgrading new devices early can pose a significant impact.

    “We’re ready to adopt new measures,” a government official said. “The aim is clearly to increase the life of terminals.”

    The government will have Arcep, the French telecoms authority, conduct a review of the contracts wireless carriers use and see what measures can be taken. The official emphasized the review is not being done frivolously, or without a definite end-game in mind.

    “We’re not commissioning this review to waste time, it’s clearly to have the means to make a decision.”

  • Shipping Scams Up 440% Amid Record Online Shopping

    Shipping Scams Up 440% Amid Record Online Shopping

    Shipping scams are up a whopping 440% as online shopping hits new records amid the pandemic.

    The coronavirus pandemic has changed how people are doing their holiday shopping, with many opting for online outlets rather than in-person options. Never too far behind any trend, scammers are seeing a potential gold mine.

    According to Check Point Software Technologies, a firm specializing in cybersecurity, scammers are trying to trick shoppers into divulging sensitive information. The scammers are impersonating shipping companies, such as Amazon, DHL and Fedex, to get people to lower their guard.

    Unlike classic phishing emails that are designed to lure people into giving personal details, credit card info or bank account credentials, these emails are specifically impersonating shipping vendors with different versions of fake messages reporting a “delivery issue” or “Track your shipment” details.

    All are trying to lure the recipients to submitting details and stealing credentials or financial data. We believe hackers have specifically chosen this vector in November, as they know that large numbers of online shoppers are waiting for their packages to arrive and are more attentive to shipping-related emails while they may be more aware of more traditional e-commerce related fraud and phishing attempts.

    Check Point recommends basic security precautions, such as never giving credentials over email, verifying that any links include the correct domain and not a lookalike, being suspicious of an email that seems overly pushy, as well as any that contain spelling and grammatical errors.

  • Slack CEO: No Intention To Make Slack Free

    Slack CEO: No Intention To Make Slack Free

    “There is definitely no intention to make Slack free,” says Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. “What we’ve seen in the last little while is the biggest telco in North America is wall-to-wall on Slack. The operator of the largest integrated health care system in the United States is on Slack. The single largest government contractor in the United States is wall-to-wall on Slack.”

    Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, says that both Slack and Salesforce have no intention of making Slack free for enterprises:

    Slack Connect Key To Value Unlock Of Salesforce Deal

    The simple version of the back story is this is a really unique combination. We believe we can accomplish in the next five years what might have taken us 20 years to do otherwise. That’s the heart of it and it’s a pretty big milestone for us. We’re excited. It wasn’t expected by the outside world but we have a lot of momentum now. We came out of this quarter and we announced our results and Salesforce announced their results. Then we announced the acquisition all at the same time.

    A little bit of this got lost but we added 12,000 new paying customers in that quarter. It’s up 140 percent from a year ago. It matches the crazy surge that we saw during the early days of the pandemic. That momentum is coming from product improvements and it’s coming from Slack Connect which allows two organizations to communicate across organizational boundaries. That’s actually going to be key to the value unlock over the next few years. Salesforce is all about CRM. It’s all about customers and Slack Connect is 95 percent customer-vendor relationships.

    Engagement Layer: Everyone Will See It Later

    This (acquisition) is 100% offense. There are some really unique aspects of this particular combination. We weren’t looking to sell the company. I have a great relationship with Brett Taylor, President, and COO of Salesforce. We’ve known each other for a couple of decades at this point. There’s a way in which we see the world that i think very few people see it today but everyone will see it later. One way to say that is to look at the engagement layer. That’s kind of a weird term but it is the place where the conversations are happening, the places where the decisions are being made, as the perfect place to bring together workflows across organizational boundaries.

    Salesforce has a really broad suite. But of course, we have 2,400 apps in the app directory for Slack. We have 700 000 custom integrations that were developed by customers. These are like unique little integrations, some of them very small, just sending notifications into Slack, and some of them are sophisticated workflows that run entire businesses. That’s something that we will see an increasing degree of sophistication in the messaging environment and an increasing degree of work getting done directly where the decisions are made.

    No Intention To Make Slack Free

    When Brett and I were talking we talked about the opportunity for something that’s one plus one equals seven. If you think back to the 90s and Cisco acquiring small hardware startups and then plugging it into their network of 20,000 salespeople and just selling a lot more of that thing. That’s not it. We will do that as well. We obviously have incredible distribution and incredible reach and incredible relationships across all industries and across all geographies. So we’ll sell more Slack.

    Salesforce recently announced their plan to get to $50 billion in revenue and we’ll play an important part in that. We’ll also be an accelerant for the adoption of Salesforce’s core products. There is definitely no intention to make Slack free. What we’ve seen in the last little while is the biggest telco in North America is wall-to-wall on Slack. The operator of the largest integrated health care system in the United States is on Slack. The single largest government contractor in the United States is wall-to-wall on Slack.

    We win in media and technology, kind of famously, but we also win in retail and apparel and industries that people don’t imagine seeing us. We have 142,000 customers right now. There’s going to be a lot of overlap with Salesforce but there’s also going to be 100,000 plus of those customers which are SMBs and kind of outside of Salesforce’s purview so far. We think there’s the opportunity to bring them into the fold and to connect them all together with Slack Connect.

    Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield: No Intention To Make Slack Free
  • Google Rolls Out Business Messaging In Google Maps

    Google Rolls Out Business Messaging In Google Maps

    Google has unveiled a significant update to Google Maps, allowing businesses to reply to customers directly within the application.

    Google Maps and Google My Business are important resources for businesses, making it easier for them to manage their online presence and engage with customers. The latest updates provide substantial improvements to those abilities.

    “Starting today, we’re rolling out the ability for verified businesses to message with customers directly from the Google Maps app,” writes Aditya Tendulkar Product Manager. “Once you turn messaging on from your Business Profile, you can start replying to customers on Google Maps from the business messages section in the “Updates” tab. And soon you’ll also be able to see your messages right from Google Search (via the Customers menu on your Business Profile) and message customers directly from your computer.”

    The company has also improved the analytics and insights businesses can gain from Google My Business.

    “Starting this month, we’re rolling out more metrics to give you a deeper understanding of how customers discover your Business Profile,” continues Tendulkar. “Soon you’ll see a more detailed list of the search queries customers used to find your business on Google. At the beginning of next year, you’ll see updates to the performance page that show whether customers saw your business via Google Maps or Search and if they saw it from a computer or mobile device. All your performance data will be available for up to six months. Dig into the numbers to see how your business is performing over time and how your Business Profile resonates with customers.”

    These are major updates that should help businesses engage with their customers and have the insights they need to optimize their marketing.

  • Are Big Physical Tech Conferences Dead?

    Are Big Physical Tech Conferences Dead?

    One of the many huge ramifications from pandemic lockdowns has been the advent of large physical conferences converted to virtual conferences. This has been especially true for enterprise software events. Box CEO Aaron Levie says that their annual conference last week held entirely virtual saw higher engagement with customers and much lower costs than last years San Francisco event held at Moscone Center.

    CEOs around the country and the world are debating whether they should abandon expensive physical conferences altogether once the pandemic restrictions are lifted.

    Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discussed this new reality, asking the question, how does this look in the future when you can actually have physical conferences? Do you still rely on a virtual first environment or do you have a bit of a hybrid conference?:

    Box Virtual Conference Last Week Was A Huge Success

    We did just have our virtual conference last week. We saw somewhere between four and five times the scale of registrations that we would normally see in one of our physical conferences. We saw higher engagement in a lot of areas than normally we would see. Overall, great levels of attendance and engagement on our keynotes and product updates. Certainly, as you can imagine, a much lower cost and much easier way to get this content out to our customers.

    There are a lot of benefits to a virtual conference. We’re able to hit demographics of our customer base who previously wouldn’t have been able to fly out to San Francisco and come to Moscone for a two or three-day conference. There are real benefits of the scale of impact of customers we can interact with and engage with. There is a difference in terms of being able to have conversations one-on-one with customers. So it’s a different experience from that standpoint. But we were able to make do with the environment of having to move to virtual.

    Now we’re really asking the question, how does this look in the future when you can actually have physical conferences? Maybe it’s next year or maybe it’s the year after. Do you still rely on a virtual first environment? Do you have a bit of a hybrid conference? These are some open questions that the industry’s going to have to ask. But overall, we were very happy with the success of the event.

    Are Big Physical Tech Conferences Dead?
  • Salesforce CEO: We Are In A New Digital World

    Salesforce CEO: We Are In A New Digital World

    “We are in a new digital world―in an ALL digital world,” says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “The past is gone and it’s not coming back. We are not in the future. We are in the present moment. We are now in this new digital future and we need to rebuild our companies and organizations. This is a moment where if we all decide that we are all going to be successful and that the past is gone, we can create the future that we want.”

    Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses how we are not living in the past or the future, we are living in the present. He says that the present is a new digital world in an all digital world:

    This Is About Helping Our Customers Thrive

    We are, of course, in an unpredictable time. There’s never been greater uncertainty in the entire world because you have a global pandemic, you have a global economic crisis, you have a racial justice crisis, you have a global leadership crisis, and you have a global environmental crisis, and they are all happening simultaneously. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world. That’s why we all really have to focus and get really clear on what we want right now and how we are going to succeed through these times.

    This is a time that you can no longer do what you were doing six months ago. You have to do something totally new and if you can do something totally new you can have tremendous success. Salesforce is now an example of that success. We delivered a 29 percent growth quarter. It was amazing. That followed a 30 percent growth quarter. We also had record margins and we had record large deals. It was amazing how many very large transactions we were able to close during that time.

    Ultimately, this is about helping our customers succeed and helping them thrive during this time. It was a 63 percent increase in seven-figure deals for our quarter. It is really because the largest most important companies in this world are all making dramatic changes and we’re there to help them connect with their customers in a whole new way.

    We Are In A New Digital World… In An All Digital World

    We are in a new digital world―in an ALL digital world. The past is gone. It’s not coming back. We are not in the future. We are in the present moment. This is a be here now moment. Everyone needs to realize that the past is gone. We are now in this new digital future and we need to rebuild our companies and organizations. Ultimately, we need to rebuild ourselves to be successful in this new digital future.

    I just had a Board meeting last week. I had a Board member and they were talking about how great Zoom is and how we participated in this great IPO and successful it is. The Board members said that Zoom is really the future. I said, look, Zoom is not the future. Zoom is the present. This is our present reality. We are in a new world. This is our reality. We need to all make changes and we need to make them now because this is not going to shift anytime soon. If we’re going to succeed through this we need to realize that the past is gone.

    We Can Create The Future That We Want

    We are never going back to how it was. All of our employees are at home. Even in countries where we are open like Japan employees don’t want to even come in to the office because they have reskilled themselves. We have a whole reskilling engine called Trailhead.com. They use our tools. We have a tremendous salesforce automation tool that lets our employees sell to our customers remotely digitally. Our Sales Cloud is why we have tremendous sales, productivity, and success. Our Service Cloud is why we are having tremendous ability to service from anywhere and market from anywhere. The reason we’re the fastest growing top five software company in the world is because we use our own products.

    This is just a minute in time where I say, wow, I didn’t see this coming. Nobody did. But now that we’re here we have to rebuild ourselves. At the same time we have to also augment for our customers what we can do. We are doing now contact tracing for thousands of companies. We run pandemic response management for 35 states. We didn’t have a pandemic response capability six months ago. Now we have to have it.

    We have to be there for our customers to help them be successful whether they are public sector organizations or whether they are the world’s most important companies. This is a moment where if we all decide that we are all going to be successful and that the past is gone, we can create the future that we want.

    Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: We Are In A New Digital World
  • CFO: End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom

    CFO: End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom

    “Zoom is now integrated into all aspects of our lives,” says Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg. “We look forward to the day that the pandemic is over and we can resume more normal activities and yet I don’t think that in itself is a threat to Zoom. People have grown accustomed to it. Working from home is not a fad. We are all really adjusting to this new way of life and are integrating Zoom into all aspects.”

    Kelly Steckelberg, CFO of Zoom Video Communications, discusses the company’s massive growth over the last quarter and says that an end to the pandemic is not a threat to Zoom:

    Working From Home Is Not A Fad

    We indicated coming into the quarter that we really expected strong growth in Q2. We saw that across all geographies and all industries. International grew over 600 percent year over year. We saw strong performance in industries like education and nonprofits. We also had our largest Zoom Phone deal to-date signed in Q2. There was really strong performance across all aspects of our business.

    What we saw from the retention perspective is that working from home is not a fad. People are really adjusting to this new way of life. They’re integrating Zoom into all aspects. We saw strong retention not only in our enterprise but in customers with fewer than ten employees as well. As we’ve continued to focus on leveraging both the public cloud as well as our own co-located data centers that’s why we saw improvement in the gross margins. We are going to continue to optimize across all of those metrics as we focus on the rest of the year.

    Hired Over 500 Employees In Q2

    We have worked very tirelessly. Our entire Zoom team is doing everything we can to continue to support not only our existing customers but to ensure that every customer who has a need for Zoom has access to it. We have focused quickly on scaling up our employee base. We have hired over 500 employees in Q2. That’s the largest growth we’ve had to date. We are also working from home like many of our customers are and really supporting our employees to ensure that we can meet the needs of the customer. We are leveraging great partners like AWS and Oracle as we need to in order to ensure that we have the capacity to continue to support our customers along the way.

    We continue to look for opportunities to invest to grow the top-line (while free cash flow rose by 2,000 percent year over year). We had record operating margins in the quarter at 41.7 percent. We expect those to come down for the rest of the year as we are focusing on investing in more salespeople to meet the demand and more engineers to continue to innovate and build our platform. Of course, we are always looking for opportunities with M&A, technology, or teams that can really augment our platform or our team to continue to drive that top-line growth.

    Video Is The Future Of Communications

    We really believe that video is the future of communications. With that, we want our Zoom customers to be able to use the Zoom platform with other best of breed products in platforms that they choose. We have integrations with many products out there and that’s great. We want our customers to be able to use the products that they know and love and have them work together seamlessly.

    What we’ve heard from our customers is that while everyone is really longing for the day that we get to go back to a more normal life before COVID that in many ways they are loving the flexibility that this has brought to them. They get to wake up with their children, have a full day of work and then have dinner with their family at the end of the day.

    End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom

    I really believe that Zoom is now integrated into all aspects of our lives. We look forward to the day that the pandemic is over and we can resume more normal activities and yet I don’t think that in itself is a threat to Zoom. We have grown accustomed to it. We have seen so many additional use cases. If you think about Formula One having these great premium experiences leveraging Zoom now in bringing clients into the paddock.

    There is a company in Singapore using it to do virtual tours. They did half of their new properties that came to sale in Q2 they showed them virtually and sold them this way. We are starting to see more and more ways that people are making more efficient and more effective. This way of communicating and working is here to stay.

    Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg: End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom
  • Airbnb CEO: Every Crisis Should Lead To A New Point Of Innovation

    Airbnb CEO: Every Crisis Should Lead To A New Point Of Innovation

    “We said every single opportunity is a moment where we have to pivot and move fast,” says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. “What actually happened was, first of all, you have to have the mindset, a mindset of hope, of optimism, and of resiliency, that we’re going to get through this. And not only are we going to get through this but every one of these crises is going to lead to a new point of innovation. Let’s look for moments and a moment happened.”

    Brian Chesky, co-founder, and CEO, Airbnb, discussed with author and podcaster Simon Sinek how the pandemic crisis motivated the company to be more innovative:

    Every Crisis Should Lead To A New Point Of Innovation

    Andy Grove, one of the founders of Intel, said that bad companies are destroyed by a crisis, good companies survive a crisis, but great companies are defined by a crisis. I wanted us to be in that third bucket. So much of it is mindset. If you think you’re going to win, if you think that this is going to define you in a positive way and you’re going to learn something from it and it’s going to make you stronger, it kind of happens. So much of your mindset as the leader becomes the psychology of the organization and that psychology really becomes a collective consciousness. It becomes real. 

    So that was the thing. We said every single opportunity is a moment where we have to pivot and move fast. What actually happened was, first of all, you have to have the mindset, a mindset of hope, of optimism, and of resiliency, that we’re going to get through this. And not only are we going to get through this but every one of these crises is going to lead to a new point of innovation. Let’s look for moments and a moment happened. 

    In Just 14 Days We Pivoted The Entire Product Line

    With social distancing, we had to shut down in-person Airbnb Experiences. Airbnb is known for homes but we also have three-hour activities that you can book with people all over the world. They got paused. Suddenly, we started doing listening sessions with our hosts. It’s important, by the way, to listen and be curious. I don’t think it’s so much in life that you have to have ideas as much as it is to be a receiver for ideas. It’s not my job to have an idea and it’s not our job for any of us to have ideas. We need to be receivers. We’re like radio antennas, we just got to get on the right signal and people will tell you things. 

    People told us they wanted to host but since they can’t do it in person, can they offer them online? At first, I thought to myself, no you can’t offer them online. We’re about connections in the real world. Then, I thought, well if that’s the case there’s not going to be a lot of connections anytime soon. So we quickly realized that we should get in on this. So within 14 days, we pivoted the entire product line to offer online experiences. Now we have 800 experiences and 200 Olympians including Jackie Joyner-Kersee. They do these activities where you can actually go online and meet them and remotely be on an Experience with them.

    Preservation Mode Is A Very Dangerous Place To Be 

    I think so much of it was turning on a dime. I never wanted to just be focused on survival. If you focus on survival that’s probably all you’re going to get. All these other companies I saw were like just shuddering their businesses and just in defensive mode and preservation mode. I think preservation mode is a very dangerous place to be. The more resources the company accumulates the more they start worrying about losing things. It’s like a parent with an overactive amygdala putting the helmet on their child before they go outside because you’re worried something’s going to happen. They can never live their life. 

    It’s the same thing with a company. You have got to be concerned but not so concerned that you protect the company from itself and you’re afraid to do anything and you’re just preserving resources. Actually, that’s the worst possible thing ironically for shareholders. Shareholders need the company to grow. This weird obsession sometimes that some people have with serving shareholders is not actually in the shareholder’s best interest. They need companies to create value and therefore they need to be focused on doing new things people love. That’s what needs to happen to create value.

    Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Every Crisis Should Lead To A New Point Of Innovation
  • Dan Lok: Most People Suck at the Conversion Mechanism

    Dan Lok: Most People Suck at the Conversion Mechanism

    Online marketing sensation Dan Lok says that when it comes to marketing online, there are only two things, conversion and traffic. That’s it. “To convert the right attention, to convert followers and likes into money, in between you a need conversion mechanism,” says Lok.

    Lok adds that if you are getting zero conversions it doesn’t matter if you increase your traffic because you cannot multiply zero.

    Dan Lok, one of the most-in-demand marketing consultants in the world, a 2 times TEDx speaker, and best-selling author, recently talked about the first rule of online marketing in a YouTube video (watch below):

    Know Who Your Audience Is

    The very first rule of online marketing is you need to know who your audience is. It’s not about making noise, it’s not about just getting your name out there. A lot of people I talk about, even entrepreneurs, marketers, and business owners, you hear this all the time, I just need to get my name out there. It’s not about getting your name out there, it’s about getting your customers into your door. It’s not getting them out there it’s getting them in here. That’s the very first rule of marketing online.

    You Need the Right Type of Attention

    You have to know it’s not just about getting attention. A lot of people they think they need a lot of followers or need a lot of fans or a big social media reach. I have a massive social media reach but fame doesn’t equal fortune. The right type of fame to the right type of people equals fortune. So it’s not just about getting attention because right now you could run around naked in the winter in Vancouver. Guess what, you will get a lot of attention but it’s not the right attention.

    You need the right type of attention at the right time from the right prospect, that’s what makes sales. If you run any kind of business, it can be a home-based business or any type, whatever you’re selling online, first, you have to define exactly who you’re selling to. Who is your ideal customer? If your answer is anyone who breathes, anyone who has a heartbeat, then you’ve got a problem.

    Who are they? Are they men or woman? What age group? What kind of professions? What did they do and what are their ping points. Once you’ve narrowed that down then you craft your offer, you craft your message specifically talking to this group of people. The amount of money you’ll make from marketing, the amount of money you make for your business, is in direct proportion to how well you understand your potential customers. Once you do that then you will know where you could get traffic.

    When Marketing There is Only Conversion and Traffic

    For example, if you know this is your demographic, this is the ideal customer profile, then yes now you can do Facebook Ads, now you can do banner ads, now you can do affiliate marketing, now you can run Google Ads, now you can do Instagram, now you know exactly who you’re talking to. Versus I need to get more followers, I just need to make some noise, I need to get more traffic. It doesn’t help. When it comes to marketing online, there are only two things, conversion and traffic. That’s it.

    If you’ve got these conversions going on, let’s say you are converting one out of every hundred visitors buying your product, a one percent conversion. That’s fine, so now you know if you get two hundred visitors that are the right type of visitors that will get you two sales and then three hundred visitors and so on and so forth. It’s a one percent conversion.

    You Need a Conversion Mechanism

    However, if you have had a few hundred visitors or even a few thousand visitors to your website, to your offer, and none of them bought, listen to me, you cannot multiply zero. If you’re not getting sells with a few thousand visitors, guess what, let me get more followers, let me get more visitors. I’ll get 20,000 visitors and then my problem will be solved. I’ll get more sales. No, it won’t.

    You cannot multiply zero and you cannot go to the bank and say hey, you know what, I don’t have a check to deposit but I’ve got a lot of Instagram followers to deposit. The bank wants cash. You cannot deposit likes, you cannot deposit followers, you cannot deposit fans, you deposit cash. To convert the right attention, to convert followers and likes into money, in between you a need conversion mechanism. Whatever that thing might be.

    Most People Suck at the Conversion Mechanism

    It could be your ecommerce site, it could be a webinar, it could be a good old telephone to convert them to a sale. Whatever that mechanism is I can tell you from my experience that when it comes to making money online most people they focus on traffic, but they all suck at this conversion mechanism. Either they don’t have one in place or the conversion mechanism they have sucks.

    Their web page sucks, it doesn’t convert, it doesn’t get people to act, it doesn’t get people to buy, it doesn’t get people to click. They thought, then just get more people viewing my page, let me get more traffic and that will solve my problem. It won’t.

    What Offer Will Get Them to Put Up Their Hand?

    The very first action that you need to figure out is who is my ideal audience? What kind of offer can I put in front of them to get them to put up their hand? Maybe it’s generating a lead, maybe it’s a making a small purchase, maybe a big purchase, it doesn’t matter. What is the right offer to put in front of them?

    Once that’s converting then you can find ways to buy traffic. There are so many ways and so many places you can buy traffic. That’s how you do it, that’s the rule of marketing online and that’s the rule of selling anything online.


  • Customer Meetings Will Change Forever, Says Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec

    Customer Meetings Will Change Forever, Says Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec

    Some things in the new world will change forever. Customer meetings will change forever. In the past, I never thought that I could do a Zoom call or a Teams call with the CEO of a company I’m trying to sell to. In the future, I don’t think my customers will want me to come and see them. There’s continued opportunity for remote access. Anything that allows you to connect with clients online or build the brand is going to be really valuable. I had an Instagram Live yesterday with Kris Jenner. She’s been selling online for years now. Every business needs to move online, especially small business.

    Robert Herjavec, mega entrepreneur and Shark Tank star, says on CNBC that the coronavirus crisis has caused the word to change forever. Meetings will never be the same and many other post-pandemic changes are in store:

    Customer Meetings Will Change Forever

    When all of this first happened we wanted to use Zoom because all our customers use Zoom. But I have got to tell you, some of the security issues are really pretty bad within Zoom. So we’ve switched over to Microsoft Teams. I think that’s one of the reasons that Microsoft stock is doing so well. The use of Teams at the corporate enterprise level is really taking off. We’re also seeing Webex usage really go up. There was also the acquisition of BlueJeans (by Verizon), another video conferencing platform.

    I have become very optimistic about the return, whenever the return is, and what the world will look like. Some things in the new world will change forever. Customer meetings will change forever. In the past, I never thought that I could do a Zoom call or a Team’s call with the CEO of a company I’m trying to sell to. In the future, I don’t think my customers will want me to come and see them. There’s continued opportunity for remote access. Anything that allows you to connect with clients online or build the brand is going to be really valuable. I had an Instagram Live yesterday with Kris Jenner. She’s been selling online for years now. Every business needs to move online, especially small business.

    We’re Into This For The Long Haul

    I used to think that we were in a light switch moment where miraculously President Trump will get on the news and say we’re all back on this date. But I think what we’re seeing now in California and in New York is that it’s going to be⎯⎯we’re into this for the long haul. Certain parts of the economy will go back quickly. But even the ones that do go back are going to be limited. 

    Restaurants will have to distance half the tables. If I have more space in my restaurant can I charge more along that line? I think it’s going to be challenging but with all those challenges there’s going to be opportunities. The key for me about going back is testing. What that means and how people get tested. There’s a great new saliva test that was approved by the FDA where people can do it at home and I think we just have to be able to do that at scale.

    Nobody Wakes Up And Says “I Want My Life To Suck”

    Shark Tank is a mirror to what’s happening in the American economy. When we started the show twelve years ago it was during the financial crisis. Nobody could get a loan. So people started a lot of businesses that you didn’t need capital for. Then we moved to online selling. This will be the same thing. If I’ve learned anything on twelve years from Shark Tank it is that the human condition is about hope. Nobody wakes up and says I want my life to suck. Every time somebody comes on Shark Tank they are full of hope and they’re full of optimism. 

    This is a challenging time but entrepreneurs will figure it out. The key though is you’ve got to have a growth plan. The stimulus plan, the protection plan, all these relief funds, are simply survival funds. They are not growth funds. If you don’t have a plan to grow, if you don’t have a plan to gain market share, getting a stimulus today is just keeping you in business. It’s not helping you to grow. You’ve got to have a game plan for that.

    I want to know what people’s plan is for survival. It makes me want to invest in two types of companies, either a company that has a very strong balance sheet or companies like an Uber or a small business that can scale back its costs. I want to invest in a company that can quickly scale its expenses to meet a decline in revenue or vice versa. So fluidity and the ability to adapt in a small business is really going to be the key. I don’t want to invest in a business with a large infrastructure, buildings, equipment, and all that kind of stuff. That stuff is very difficult to scale down.

    Customer Meetings Will Change Forever, Says Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec
  • 6 Ways to Achieve Great Employee and Customer Engagement

    6 Ways to Achieve Great Employee and Customer Engagement

    There are six things that you need to think about with employee engagement and customer engagement says Andrew McMillan, a renowned customer experience expert based in the U.K. “The most important thing is what you do for each other is actually what you do for customers.”

    Andrew McMillan, a leading customer experience expert, recently discussed customer engagement strategies at the London Business Forum:

    Customer Experience is Simple

    For me, customer experience is simple. I think the first part is to know who you are as a business and to know what your personality is going to be. Friendly, kind, thoughtful, helpful, or forward thinking? What’s the personality of your brand? Then come up with some attributes and behaviors that are going to enhance that personality. That’s what you then start to try and recruit in terms of your employees.

    How You Treat Employees is How Employees Treat Customers

    The most important thing, I think I learned from John Lewis, was actually what you do for each other is what you do for customers. Create that working environment for your employees so they find their managers are friendly, thoughtful, and kind to them. I believe then, it’s just a leap of faith but I proved a ton time again, that they will then be friendly, thoughtful, and kind to their customers.

    What is Your Companies Vision?

    The North Star, some people will call it visions and some people call it purpose. It’s just why do we exist? Why should anybody care about this? Why should anyone want to do any business with us? John Lewis’s was a bit of a strange one actually. The purpose in 1929 was to have an organization where employees were happy.

    So these can be really highly aspirational and lofty or they can be very very simple. But having something there, the idea is that people come to work inspired and having a sense of purpose.

    John Lewis Partnership – Vision

    6 Ways to Achieve Employee and Customer Engagement

    There are six things that you need to think about with employee engagement and customer engagement:

    1. The first one is to define what your personality is going to be in terms of behavior and attitude. It can be friendly, kind, thoughtful, whatever you want to be as a business.
    2. The second one is to measure that and measure it with employee surveys and customer surveys. This is inside-out. This is what you do for your employees and what you hope they’ll do for customers.
    3. The third thing is to communicate it. Communicate it at inception. Then continue to tell stories about people who’ve lived up to those behaviors and attitudes to see what it’s done for customers and what it’s done for them to bring it to life, so people can see what it looks like.
    4. The fourth thing is leadership. That’s probably one of the biggest things I see that’s lacking in organizations. There should be leaders modeling the behavior that we talked about and then actually coaching it in their team’s to encourage them to deliver that behavior for each other and for their customers.
    5. The fifth thing is HR really. It’s a Reward Recognition Appraisal to make sure those are links to not just the outcomes people achieve but the alignment with the behavior with which they achieve those outcomes. So it’s about how they do things, not just what they do.
    6. Finally, the sixth part is the recruitment. If you’ve done the first five really effectively and really built a cohesive network around those first five, you’ve got a great blueprint for exactly the sort of personality and individual you want to recruit into your business.
  • Used Car Sales Way Up – Defy Dire Expectations, Says Carvana CEO

    Used Car Sales Way Up – Defy Dire Expectations, Says Carvana CEO

    Used car sales have defied the dire COVID related expectations, says Carvana CEO Ernest Garcia. “When it first hit there was no doubt that there was a huge hit to demand,” says Garcia. “We saw car sales drop 30, 40, 50, and even 60 percent very early on. They started to recover very quickly by late April and they have continued to recover. That was definitely not the baseline expectation heading in”

    Ernest Garcia, CEO of automotive ecommerce retailer Carvana, discusses how COVID has surprisingly been a boon to the used car market over the last several months:

    Used Car Sales Up Significantly Year Over Year

    When COVID first hit there was no doubt that there was a huge hit to demand. We saw car sales drop 30, 40, 50, and even 60 percent very early on. They started to recover very quickly by late April and they have continued to recover. Many retailers including ourselves are actually up year over year, significantly in our case. It has definitely recovered very quickly and that was definitely not the baseline expectation heading in.

    The biggest change has been with the decrease in gas prices. There has been a lot of demand for SUVs and a lot of demand for trucks. But there has been a lot of demand across the board. There has been a lot of demand for off-lease vehicles right now as new production starts to spin back up. There is also a lot of demand for older cars that are a little less expensive. I think across the board we are seeing a lot of demand in all of automotive retail.

    There Is Both A Pull Toward Used And A Push Away From New

    To some degree, it is pulling from new car sales because used cars are a little less expensive. To some extent, there is a push away from new car sales because production has slowed down and incentives are being pulled back as a result. That is likely to continue for the immediately foreseeable future. There is both a pull toward used and a push away from new as well.

    Automotive retail is a very interesting market. On the used side there are 40 million transactions per year. On the new side there are 15 million give or take transactions per year. There are about 40,000 dealers out there. This has always been a market that is enormously competitive and enormously fragmented. Dealers have found a way to persevere and have pretty decent margins over the last 75 years.

    We Represent A New Kind Of Business Model

    What we represent is a new kind of business model. It’s an ecommerce-centric model where a customer goes to our website, they select a car, they go through the purchase process, and we deliver it to their door using first-party logistics. Then they get a seven-day return policy. That business model has a pretty different cost structure than the traditional automotive resale model. As a result of that, we have additional opportunities above and beyond most automotive retailers.

    Used car prices have also been an incredibly interesting and volatile place to watch over the last three and a half months. In April, we’ve had the biggest decrease we’ve ever seen in the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which is one of the measures of used car prices that are broadly used. In May and June, we saw sequentially probably one of the biggest increases we have ever seen in used car prices. They are now at the highest prices they have ever been.

    Future Demand Is Very Difficult To Forecast

    That market has spun around quite bit, just like the stock market and other gauges of economic activity. It has been very difficult to forecast and I would not want to forecast where it is going to go from here. On the new side, there are likely to be supply shortages. There is a lot of demand today. Trying to figure out what demand is going to look like over the next six months with increased unemployment (payments) potentially expiring and with less stimulus in the economy is very hard.

    Used Car Sales Way Up – Defy Dire Expectations, Says Carvana CEO Ernest Garcia
  • Salesforce Will Allow Employees to Work From Home the Rest of the Year

    Salesforce Will Allow Employees to Work From Home the Rest of the Year

    Salesforce has become the latest company to extend its work from home (WFH) policy, allowing employees to do so through the rest of the year.

    Virtually every major tech company has allowed, or even mandated, its employees to WFH during the coronavirus pandemic. In some cases, the result has been enlightening for many companies, showing how productive employees can be working from home. As a result, some companies have decided to allow employees to WFH forever, with Twitter being the most high-profile example.

    While not allowing employees to work from home forever, Salesforce has decided to allow employees to WFH for the rest of the year.

    “For us, the timing of when we bring employees back into our offices will be unique to each office—we’ll make those decisions on a city-by-city basis, in a way that’s consistent with local government guidelines and in line with the advice of our medical experts,” writes Amy Weaver, President & Chief Legal Officer.

    “Regardless of whether their local office has reopened, Salesforce employees will have the option of continuing to work from home until the end of the year.”

    While stopping short of Twitter, Salesforce’s decision is likely welcome news to its employees.

  • Google Still The King of Driving Ecommerce Sales

    Google Still The King of Driving Ecommerce Sales

    Facebook and Instagram may be the darlings of many advertisers, but data shows Google is still the king of driving ecommerce traffic.

    Analytics firm Oribi conducted an extensive study of shopping trends in 2019 and the results show that Facebook and Instagram still have a long way to go. According to the study, direct traffic in the form of mobile apps, email marketing and direct input accounts for nearly half of all traffic at 48.9%.

    Behind that, however, is Google organic search at 20.6%. Rounding out the top three is Google paid search at 14.1%, while Facebook and Instagram came in at 9.6% and 1.5% respectively.

    “Everyone seems to talk about Facebook’s shopping potential, but Google is, by far, the second traffic driver for online stores,” said Iris Shoor, Founder and CEO of Oribi. “And, despite Instagram’s rise, it’s responsible for less than 2% of traffic, even across the fashion stores we analyzed.”

    When it comes to conversions, the news doesn’t look much better for either Facebook or Instagram. Google paid search provides 2.7% conversion rates, while Google organic search results in 2.5%. Facebook and Instagram, both paid and organic, only result in 1.5% and 0.8% respectively.

    The study also showed a relatively clear distinction in the type of shopping the different platforms drive. Social media drives cheaper purchases, the digital equivalent of window shopping. In contrast, Google performs better for larger purchases where an individual is looking for, researching and buying something specific.

    One thing is clear from Oribi’s study: Facebook and Instagram will need to work hard if they have any hope of challenging Google’s dominance in the ecommerce realm.

  • Mobile Apps Reach Record Sales Amid Lockdowns

    Mobile Apps Reach Record Sales Amid Lockdowns

    As people all over the world are locked down or under stay-at-home orders, the mobile app market is booming as people look for things to do and ways to stay connected.

    According to data released by App Annie, mobile apps saw significant growth in Q1 2020, both in the time spent using them and the money being spent on them. The report found that “Google Play downloads grew 5% year over year to 22.5B, while iOS downloads grew 15% year over year to over 9B new downloads for the quarter. On Google Play non-gaming apps accounted for 55% of all downloads, while on iOS the figure was slightly higher at 65%.”

    Similarly, when it comes to purchases, customers “spent over $23.4B through the app stores, the largest quarter ever in terms of consumer spend. There were also over 31B new app downloads, a 15% increase from Q4 2019.”

    The report goes on to point out that there was a direct correlation between areas hit with the pandemic and surges in mobile app usage and purchases. The more countries required citizens to shelter-in-place, the more they turned to mobile apps.

    The report, while not necessarily surprising or unexpected, is further evidence of the fundamental shift the computing industry has experienced toward mobile apps and services.