From Zero To Business Hero by Damir Mujic

Contents
Introduction
Foreword
About the author
Why this book?
1) Value
1.1. How to select the right business model to create a top product or service
1.2. How to position your company on the market and make it recognizable
1.3. How to choose the best pricing strategy for your product or service
1.4. How to successfully build and manage a team distributed around the world
2) Build
2.1. How to pick a web hosting partner for your website and domain
2.2. How to work with a web development company and build your website
2.3. How to develop a top-class website that stands out from the competition
2.4. How to ensure that your website is well-positioned on Google
2.5. How to make a web shop that enables worldwide selling
2.6. How to automate online billing and secure it at the same time
2.7. How to make an automated system for a website that sells 24/7
3) Scale
3.1. How to attract visitors to your website very fast
3.2. How to attract visitors to your website in a long term
3.3. How to turn your visitors into regular clients and devoted fans
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3.4. How to achieve quality online customer service
3.5. How to find freelancers for almost any job or activity
3.6. How to make the next step and create an active sales process with outsourcing
3.7. How to measure website success and maximize its efficiency
3.8. How to measure the satisfaction of your clients
3.9. How to prepare for further global scaling with complete marketing automation
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Copyright © 2018 by Damir Mujic, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY
Whilst the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no
representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this
book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for a particular
purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales
material. The advice and strategies contained herein is intended for a general audience and does
not purport to be, nor should it be construed as, specific advice tailored to any individual and may
not be suitable for your situation. There is no guarantee, express or implied, that you will earn any
money using the techniques and ideas in this book. Examples in these materials are not to be
interpreted as a promise or guarantee of earnings. Earning potential is entirely dependent on the
efforts and skills of the person applying all or part of the concepts, ideas and strategies contained
herein. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other
commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other
damages.
iii
Foreword
As a serial entrepreneur and high-level business coach, I am often asked which

books I would recommend to someone who is looking to become more successful in
their business. It’s not an easy answer to give as there are so many factors. I’ve often
thought of actually writing a book myself that would contain all of the essential
ingredients for the modern entrepreneur, as well as detailed strategies, tricks, tips
and strategic recommendations to follow. However, it turns out I’m too late. In From
Zero to Business Hero, Damir has gone and produced the definitive guide for
business owners and one that surpasses all of the benchmarks I would have set for
myself. Put simply, it is the book I wish I had read when I started out.
Why is this so important in todays world? Because right now we are experiencing a
technological disruption that has never been seen before in human history. More
jobs are set to become obsolete over the next 10 years than the last 100.
This means there has never been a better time in history to become an entrepreneur.
The costs and barriers to entry are at their lowest ever point and the entire world now
has the potential to be your customer base 24hrs a day. That is if you know what you
are doing.
The challenge many new, and even existing, business owners face is they find
themselves lost when trying to find what really works. The flip side to the on-line age
is that it has bought a huge amount of misinformation and outdated or ineffective
opinion masquerading as quality advice. This leads to a lot of confusion. It is also
precisely why you need this book. Written by someone who walks the walk. Someone
who can cut through the noise and lead you to a place where you can confidently
sing your own song and in a way that gets your message, goods or service out to the
entire world. Quickly and effectively. Not because he’s read about how to do it, but
because he’s been there and walked that path, long before Google or Facebook ever
did.
Aside from being a digital genius who has a passion for helping others, Damir himself
is the epitome of someone who has survived multiple adversities. A true battle tested
entrepreneur in every sense. His companies are a shinning example of what he
teaches.
4 From Zero to Business Hero

In short, From Zero to Business Hero will save you time, money and a lot of the
heartache of trial and error that some do not survive. It should be mandatory reading
for anyone and everyone who wants to be successful in today’s modern world of
business.
Peter Sage
Founder of the Sage Business School
International Serial Entrepreneur
Amazon Best Selling Author
www.PeterSage.com

About the author
Damir Mujic is an entrepreneur, author and investor with more than two decades of
experience in the IT industry in various markets, from local to global.
Damir was born and raised in Bosnia, and at the age of 16 he experienced the sudden
loss of his father from cancer. Immediately following that he lived without a house,
friends, family and everything that he had or knew due to war escalation in his
country. He found himself in a new country, in a refugee camp with his mother, sister
and grandmother. It was time for a new beginning from scratch.
He dreamed big, and at the age of 21 he decided to pursuit his mission to become an
entrepreneur and live the life he deserved, and his company Avalon was founded.
Avalon was one of the world's first web hosting companies and became a successful
online business even before Google, Facebook, YouTube and others came into play.
20 years later, Damir is still CEO of Avalon, which is now a global company with offices
in United States and Europe, employing people from almost all continents to support
Avalon’s more than 20,000 clients. Damir is also a founder and president of Quantum
Ventures, an international non-profit organization with a mission to enable and
support social entrepreneurs who are looking to help raise the quality of life for
others.
As a columnist for Forbes, he wrote about his

experience in scaling business across the
continents. Damir is also an active angel
investor and startup mentor, both in European
and American startup communities.
He lives in Croatia with his wife, two sons

and daughter, and enjoys travelling across
the world while working remotely.

Why this book?
More than 20 years ago I started a journey that changed my life and made a huge
impact on tens of thousands of people I worked with along the way. It was a journey
of hope, a journey of amazing wins and spectacular failures, and a journey of
learning everything in my own skin. It doesn’t have to be that way for you, and that is
the reason I wrote this book - to help you avoid pitfalls I fell in, to learn from my
mistakes and leverage my investment in time, resources and energy to get the
knowledge, insights, experience and best practices and ready to apply to your own
business journey immediately, and to get results in 2 years instead in the 20 that it
took me.
The title of that journey is Avalon, and it represents a hosting company I started from
scratch in a small southeastern country overwhelmed with corruption and
bureaucracy and a market that offered very limited growth opportunities. Avalon was
one of the world’s first web hosting companies, with today’s strong presence in a
global market. Avalon has been featured in Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes,
Reuters and was used as a case study for IBM and Lenovo titled as “Next generation
web hosting platform”. Our global operations are today headquartered in New York,
while our European office is established in Croatia where the company was originally
established.
This book offers a personal view on the entire business process, from the earliest
beginnings to global growth. The book covers 20 segments that I wish I knew 20 years
ago, the questions every entrepreneur should ask themselves in order to develop a
bulletproof online business with proven tactics, strategies and tools that the Avalon
team have learned from working with thousands of companies that have moved their
business online.
This book does not provide in-depth analysis of every tactic and tool, but it will give
you insights in all areas you should cover to make the most out of your business. For
more detailed insights, there are reading recommendations in every chapter of the
book which will take you further with all details and tips about optimization of your
online business.

This book is an attempt to sum up my twenty years of online business experience in
one hundred pages, along with what I deem to be of utmost importance in order for it
to be able to be used as a manual and as a reference for making your business a
success. It in no way represents everything you will need in your life and business
adventure, but I believe it's a very good start. There are hundreds of thousands of
blogs, articles, books, and tips that you can find yourself online, as well as read and
study. Some of them are pure gold, others are pure flaws. I have tested a good chunk
of them in person through my business, and here I bring you only verified and
confirmed methods, techniques and skills that I'm sure are efficient. So, if you're
ready for a new page of your life, let's get going.
Mindset is the set of your beliefs about yourself, as well as the world around you,
deeply embedded in your subconscious, and has the main role in what you are going
to generate in your mind, what habits you will create in your life, and what moves you
will make. If you are uncertain about yourself, with low self-esteem, with a pessimistic
view of the world - most of your thoughts will automatically emerge from that angle,
and your reaction to thoughts and actions you take (or avoid taking) will be a
reflection of your life and your (un)success.
On the other hand, if you are a positive person, full of enthusiasm and optimism,
everything will naturally go in the other direction. You have probably stumbled upon
a story of how important it is to "positively think" numerous times, and that is, in fact,
true. Not because of some sort of well-kept secret, but because of a very simple rule:
positive thoughts will create positive ideas, positive ideas will turn into positive words
and positive actions, positive actions will create positive things and effects in your life,
the positive effects in your life will bring positive experiences that will further affect
you to create other, new positive thoughts - and thus create a positive life spiral.
The negative one works the same way, but in the other direction. Some people are
positive by nature, and everything they do comes easy. Their mindset has already,
based on inheritance, education or previous experiences, been positively set, and
there are no barriers to them. But if you are not one of them, do not fall into despair!
There is an easy way to improve your mindset, to create a positive and stimulating
environment in your life, and to achieve everything you want for yourself.

I'll share this little secret with you now. There is a great book, the best starting point
for making a positive change in your life. It's a book that will change the way you start
your day, the way you approach things in life and, ultimately, the way you live. The
book is called "The Miracle Morning" and, even before you continue reading this text,
click on the link and order that book on Amazon. This will be the best investment you
can make for yourself now.
Thank you for your choice to grab this book, and thank you for the time you have set
aside to read these lines. I hope that reading it will be at least as interesting to you as
writing the book was to me, and that the information and knowledge I've shared here
can successfully be applied in your business. I wish you all the luck in the world!
To learn how to setup your morning routine for the win, please read the book The
Miracle Morning -
https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed-Transform/dp/
0979019710

01 Value
To create something that is worth doing as a business means to create value for which
someone will be willing to pay. The first section of the book is titled Value because
your whole business is only as good as the value you provide to your customers.
Regardless of whether you are creating something completely new that the world has
never seen before, or if you’re just improving existing products and services, what
differentiates you from any other company is the value you will produce - the more
unique the value, the more potential of running a successful business.
In this section of the book I will show you how to start from the idea and create a good
product or service with a sustainable business plan. We’ll go through positioning your
company in the market and creating a strong brand, choosing the right pricing
strategy for your products and services and building a team that will make all of this
happen.
Your idea, business model and team are the cornerstone of your company from
which you can build (chapter 2) and scale (chapter 3) as your business grows, while
value is the center around which your business is revolving.

1.1 How to select the right business model
to create a top product or service
Every business or company that you can think of has one thing in common – they all
started with an idea. A good idea can solve a problem or increase the current value. It
doesn't matter whether an idea is put forward to tackle an unsolved problem or
whether it simply involves applying an existing solution to a new context in order to
upgrade certain products or services. It's all about the idea that will inspire you to take
action and create value by changing your environment. When you are stricken by a
certain brilliant idea, and you experience that burst of energy and fulfillment, make
sure you utilize that energy as a motivation source, because the hardest part of the
work is just about to start.
Business model
Business model is the first guideline that will explain the whole concept of your idea
and put it in a form that will be understandable to your partners, distributors, potential
investors and every other stakeholder. The simplest explanation of business model is
“the way you will make money,” but I like to observe it from more complex view which
helps you to understand not just the source of cash flow but the whole economic
value of your business.
How to pick the right business model
Developing a business model should be a process, and not a copy-paste from the
internet. Sure, you can find a lot of "finished business models," but going through the
whole process will give you the opportunity to focus on the right details about your
business and learn more as you progress. It will also give you an insight into potential
problems and expose additional strengths. Once you are done, the final product of
your work will probably look like something you can find online, but that is not the
point - the point of doing this is to get the bigger picture of where you are and where
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you are heading. To guide you through the process of developing a business model, I will introduce
you to the Business Model Canvas, a great way to set up your business model that will be tailored to
your unique business idea.
The Business Model Canvas was developed by Alexander Osterwalder, co-founder of

strategyzer.com and author of “Business Model Generation”, a book that sold a million copies in 30
languages. His canvas consists of nine components: customer segments, value propositions,
channels, customer relationship, revenue streams, resources, activities, partnerships and costs.
The Business Model Canvas was invented after an exhaustive study on literature on business
models. There are a lot of definitions of business models and guidelines on how to conduct one, so
the Business Model Canvas came as a solution that unites the most important parts of all existing
business model guides. After the Business Model Canvas was invented, it was tested with
entrepreneurs to make sure it works. This idea was firstly used by 3M and Deloitte and later adopted
by the Lean Startup movement, and it has a lot of history in helping entrepreneurs to create unique
business models while keeping everything simple.
The learn more about how the Business Model Canvas works, visit strategyzer.com, founded by
Alexander Osterwalder himself.
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12 From zero to business hero
New product/service development process
There are several approaches to building an innovative product or starting a new service. In this
chapter we'll cover the three most common ones; firstly, the “Build it and they will come” approach,
then the less risky “Incremental planning“ approach, and lastly the “Build, test, fix” approach, which
is most frequently used by startups.
Build it and they will come
This approach can usually be seen among new businesses where the novice founders have a strong
passion for promoting a certain product or service, but lack the experience in marketing analysis.
The assumptions that they have and make are often based on their individual perception and
disregard the factual evidence of the market conditions for a certain product or service. The steps
that the founders deal with in this approach include:
1. Building a product or designing a new service based on nothing but mere assumptions about
the future customers and market conditions
2. Turning to investors for funding and getting turned down due to insufficient evidence that there
really is a need for the product or service
3. Advertising the product with a continual increase in advertising budget
4. Getting frustrated when the people do not flock to buy the product or service
However, this approach is not destined to fail each time and surely, there will always be examples of
people who used this approach and still achieved success. Some of them might have simply gotten
lucky, while others may be really good at recognizing the human needs and trends in the industry -
which ultimately gives them a small advantage when using this approach. Still, there are a lot more
people who have even invested their life savings into building a product that no one wanted to buy.
The point being is that, in the era of digital marketing, where you can measure almost everything
and where information is more accessible than ever, you shouldn’t make decisions based only on
your subjective perception. Developing a new product without a detailed market research is risky
and can be extremely expensive if it backfires.
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Incremental Planning Approach
This approach is common among people who understand the principles of good marketing and
who are trying to develop a new product whilst minimizing the risk of failure in the process of
making it. Some of the steps in the incremental approach include:
1. Spending some time to become familiar with your customers - their needs and interests,
behavioral characteristics, what drives them to buy products, or any other aspect that you find
relevant for your specific product or service
2. Developing a product that considers all the mentioned aspects and is in some way different
from the existing products in the market
3. Advertising the product to target customers for whom the product is developed
Although this approach is far less risky and would probably lead to a more successful outcome than
the previous one, it's not flawless. Errors can be made during the research, the respondents may
make false statements during interviews and surveys, and there is always a danger of
misinterpreting the collected data. However, relying on the market analysis is certainly more
favorable than working only in reference to your own assumptions.
Build, test, fix approach
The “Build, test, fix” approach takes the interaction with the potential customers a step further. While
the “Incremental planning” approach focuses primarily on the early stages of market research and
uses the gathered information for building a finished product, the “Build, test, fix” approach creates
a loop of constant interaction with customers by collecting feedback about the product at different
stages of its development. This technique is especially helpful in developing complex products or
services that require a lot of time and money to get finished. By testing the product or service at
different stages of development, you are reducing the risk of failure and consequently, protecting
your investments.
14
In this approach, the goal is to make the minimum viable product (MVP) – a product with just
enough features to satisfy the early customers and provide feedback for future development. This
term was popularized by Eric Ries in his book “The Lean Startup”, where he talks more about the
“Build-Measure-Learn” feedback loop, a strategy which consists of: building a minimum viable
product, measuring data about the product, learning from the data and eventually using it for new
ideas in further product development.
Regardless of what you call it, the “Build, test, fix“ approach or “Build-Measure-Learn“ feedback
loop, the point is the same – get the minimum viable product as soon as possible, test it with your
potential customers and use their feedback to improve your product. With each iteration, you will
learn more about what works and what doesn't, thus keeping the possible risks and expenses at
bay.
For further reading on developing your business model, I would strongly recommend the “startup
bible” by Eric Ries, The Lean Startup -
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/.
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1.2. How to position your company on
the market and make it recognizable
Usually, people tend to overlook some crucial steps that involve strategic
development, and immediately start working on the activities. Namely, developing an
effective strategy is time consuming and demands a heavy workload that includes
exploring, testing, analyzing and answering difficult questions. Not only does planning
your strategy draw a lot of energy, but also, the most frustrating part of it is that the
results are intangible - at least in the short term. On the other hand, advertising your
company or product is usually a fun and creative process which gives you an
opportunity to evaluate the results of your work. Nevertheless, people tend to skip
the first step of making plans and developing a strategy. Just to make sure - thinking
about your strategy while driving your car, while taking a shower and during long
walks, is not equal to actually sitting down, taking a pen and paper and getting to
work.
Working without a strategy is like running a race without knowing your position – you
can try as hard as you can, but you won’t know where you are in comparison to other
competitors until “the race” is over. So, before taking any action, take your time and
develop a viable strategy that is built on measurable and achievable goals. To keep
you safe from losing your money and energy, we are going to introduce you to the
following, Segmentation - Targeting - Positioning model (STP model).
In this chapter we'll show you how to divide your customer base into smaller groups,
i.e. segments (segmentation), and choose the most suitable group for your business.
Also, you will learn how to most effectively target your audience (targeting) and
lastly, how to position your company/product/service in the minds of your target
customers (positioning). The STP model represents an essential part of every
marketing strategy because it helps you to maintain consistent communication with
your customers while ensuring a high return on investment (ROI).
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Segmentation
High-growth companies’ key to success lies in their ability to identify and meet the
specific needs of their target group of customers. Numerous products that have
widespread consumption nowadays are marketed through the customer
segmentation model. For example, let's talk about shampoo products. Everyone
washes their hair, right? So, someone might argue that the best shampoo marketing
strategy would be to target the broad mass of population, which (as you can probably
predict by the direction of this chapter) is an approach that would result in a waste of
time and money. Even though presumably everyone washes their hair, we still have a
lot of differentiators to consider before the segmentation – some people need
dandruff shampoo, some want a shampoo with all-natural ingredients, there are
people who need a shampoo for oily hair, dry hair, normal hair and so on. Do you
believe that one shampoo can take care of all hair types with the same efficiency?
Probably not. That is why you need to develop a product that will cater to the needs of
a certain segment and address that same segment in your communication.
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How to segment the consumer market
The most common approach to segmentation is based on identifying the

demographic characteristics of consumers. While this approach is a great way to start
the customer segmentation, it will only give you a general overview of your
customers’ characteristics. In addition to demographic, you can obtain more
information by applying other types of segmentation such as socioeconomic,
geographic, psychographic and behavioral. Although, some of these types may
exclude the other, it is always recommended to combine them in order to get
information that is as accurate about your customer as possible. In the table below
you can find the mentioned segmentation types broken down by the characteristics
that they measure:
Targeting
Once you have separated the customer market into different segments, it is time to
decide which segment you are going to target. Some of the criteria you can use for
making this decision can be the size of the segment and its profitability. To have even
more success in targeting, it is advisable to make an analysis of your competitors’
marketing activities beforehand. Even though some segments may be large and very
profitable, targeting can lead to expensive advertising investments even only for
trying to be heard if the competition is fierce. Instead of wrestling with a lot of
competitors, search for the niches that are not in the focus of big players but are still
profitable enough to run a business.
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The beauty of running your business online is the possibility to measure everything
and make information-based decisions. The same goes for targeting and advertising -
not only will you receive all details about your users and real-time insight into the
success of your campaigns, but you can also be very precise in setting up every detail
of your adverts.
One of the best platforms for advertising is social media, especially Facebook, which
provides you with a lot of tools to make the most of your campaign. Once you
determine the most profitable segment for your company, you can divide it into even
smaller segments and target users with a unique imprint. Traditional communication
channel targeting can help you can single out users by their demographic,
socioeconomic and geographic characteristics, maybe even some psychographic
elements, but the digital tools will give you an additional dimension - an opportunity
to tap into targeting that is based on behavioral characteristics.
As I mentioned before, with Facebook ads, you can track the progress of your ads all
the time, and you can get real-time feedback on your campaigns. Your greatest
benefit from the real-time feedback is further segmentation. Namely, you will get
information about the users who had the most positive response to your campaign,
and with that knowledge you can improve your targeting and focus your money and
time on the users who are bringing you the biggest return on investment (ROI).
Positioning
In one sentence, positioning is the image that is created in the minds of target
customers. It is the distinctive feature that differentiates your product or service from
the rest and the key to running a successful business. Your position on the market
can be described by many variables that are important to the customers, such as:
price, quality, reliability, value for money ratio, etc. Furthermore, the positioning
strategy is not something that you can choose according to your personal
preferences. It is a system based on concrete business data which relies on good
segmentation and targeting. But most importantly, positioning implies a sustained
effort in order to imprint your company’s identity (i.e. brand) in your customers’
minds.
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The importance of a good positioning strategy was noticed a long time ago. It was
originally introduced in 1969 by Jack Trout in a paper published by Industrial
Marketing Magazine. Even in the 1960’s people were exposed to more than 5,000
advertising messages a day. Since then, this number has drastically increased and
reached up to 20,000 advertising messages daily. So, now you need to have a strong
market position for your brand which will be recognizable among many others more
than ever.
Elements of a good brand
1. Strong visual identity
The first thing that comes to mind when talking about brands is its visual identity –
logo, colors, fonts, mascot, visual appearance of products etc. These are some of the
standard formats that can make your brand become visually memorable. One of the
key elements of every brand is its logo - a piece of your brand’s identity that people
will be exposed to the most. Since every other element of your brand’s identity will
have to be in line with your logo, make sure that it is memorable and can create a
strong emotional response. When building your company’s visual identity, another
important thing to consider is the colors you are going to use. The right combination
of colors can boost customers’ emotional response, while thoughtfully chosen
typography can set the tone for further communication.
Another great element to make your brand more memorable is introducing a

company’s mascot. Mascots are representative symbols often created based on
people, animals or objects that eventually become company spokespersons. Mascots
enable the target audience to better recognize, remember and understand your
company and products. One of the great examples on how to effectively use a
mascot is MailChimp, an online newsletter tool that uses a chimp as a mascot at
every point of interaction with customers. Freddy the Chimp will help you learn more
about MailChimp; he makes frequent appearances on the MailChimp social media
profiles, in their videos and at local events. After all, it's really hard not to notice a
6-foot-tall chimp that is running around and handing out flyers.
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2. Brand Voice
Giving your brand a voice is another fundamental element of a good brand because
it sets a tone of communication that will help your customers to build an image
around you. With all the new trends in online communication such as emojis, stickers
and short animations (GIFs), we can see that people are trying to make their
messages and content as ‘humanlike’ as possible. They crave for more possibilities to
express their emotion and convey their feelings.
The same thing needs to be done when you are communicating through your brand.
You need to induce an emotion in your users and create and invite them to
experience a deeper feeling when they interact with your brand, because they will
remember you by it. Depending on your target users, build the emotion not only
through the visual elements but also with the tone of communication.
Every sentence can be said in more than one way; it all depends on your writing style
which includes spelling and punctuation, choice of words and sentence structure.
Your tone of communication can be used for many different things - to influence and
persuade, build trust, create a connection, but most importantly it can serve as an
opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition.
To learn more about shaping your tone of voice, I recommend you read the article
"Finding Your Brand's Voice" by Harriet Cummings. It will give you more information
about why is it important to build your brand’s voice and a lot of advice on how to do it
properly.
3. Value
Any product or service is worth only as much as the customers’ perception of its
value. As we mentioned earlier, there are many variables that can represent a
greater value when compared your product to your competitor’s – lower price,
better quality or design, greater reliability of a product, effective support service, ease
of use etc. Once you determine what is your strongest competitive advantage,
cement it in your brand and make it an inevitable part of your communication with
customers.
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Furthermore, numerous companies create slogans that help them to communicate
with their customers in the form of a short, memorable and catchy sentence that is
strategically designed to deliver a very specific message. Take a look at some of the
most successful slogans of today and see if you can understand the notion behind
them:
Walmart – Save Money. Live Better.
Adidas – Impossible is Nothing.
Disneyland – The Happiest Place on Earth.
KFC – Finger Lickin' Good.
Apple – Think Different.
PlayStation – Live in your world. Play in ours.
4. Integrated message
However, having a recognizable logo, a catchy slogan and a lovable mascot is only
the first step in building a successful brand. Other steps pertain to a structured and
consistent communication on every available communication channel and at every
point of interaction with customers. Some of these channels and interaction points
include your website, advertising materials, design of your products and even the way
your employees communicate with your customers.
To make a greater impact on your target audience, try to participate in community

events and engage in projects on social responsibility which are in accordance with
your brand’s identity or the message you are trying to send.
For further reading on branding and positioning subject, a must read is good old Seth
Godin and his book Purple Cow, available at
https://www.amazon.com/Purple-Cow-New-Transform-Remarkable/dp/1591843170/.
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1.3. How to choose the best pricing
strategy for your product or service
Deciding on the best pricing strategy for a product can be really stressful for many
inexperienced entrepreneurs. There are a lot of elements that need to be taken into
serious consideration when determining your strategy in order to prevent wrong
decisions that can gradually lead to a business’s failure. In the following chapter we
will help you avoid the common mistakes and elaborate on several different
approaches for setting a price on your product or service.
First of all, to ensure that we are all looking at the problem from the same
perspective, let’s clarify some basic pricing concepts such as the actual importance of
pricing for your business, the terms “Price ceiling”, “Price floor” and reference price.
 
Importance of pricing for your business
When deciding about the optimal price for your product, you first need to calculate
the price which will simultaneously maximize your company’s profit and be appealing
enough for the end customer to eventually buy your product. The difference
between losing and gaining a profit can be as little as 1%, where even 1% lower than
the optimal price can lead to much greater losses (up to 8%).
The optimal price for your product or service lies somewhere between the “Price
ceiling” and the “Price floor”. In other words, if you go lower than the bottom prize
you will lose money, whilst if you go above the ceiling price you will drive away and
lose your customers, and hence the overall profit as well.
“Price floor”
Price floor represents the lowest price you can set for your products, while still
making some profit. It all comes down to meticulously counting all your costs such as:
raw materials, production, utilities, office and wage costs, marketing and sales costs,
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taxes, etc. Once you have established your monthly or yearly costs, you can divide it
by the number of products and services you are able to produce in that same period.
The final number you will get represents the lowest price you need to set per product
or service to break even.
“Price ceiling”
On the other hand, “Price ceiling” represents the highest price that your customers
are willing to pay for your product, and it is based solely on its perceived value. As you
can see on the image below, the product’s perceived value consists of a) its perceived
quality and b) its perceived cost - which represents the price that the end consumer
will have to pay for your product or service.
Therefore, whenever the perceived quality is higher than the perceived cost, the
customer will consider their transaction successful and the purchase appealing. Still,
if the perceived quality is lower than perceived cost of the product, the transaction
will look like a loss and turn the customer away from making a purchase.
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The perceived quality of the product depends on the satisfactory value that it provides
the user with, or its ability to solve a certain problem. On the other hand, the
perceived cost can be compared with the so-called reference price. Reference price
refers to the starting point according to which the consumer estimates the actual
product price. it is the cost that the consumer anticipates or finds reasonable to pay
and it is usually defined either by their previous experiences or by the competitors’
offers.
Reference pricing can also be used as a competitive pricing strategy when a

company is setting their prices just below the price of its competitors. This strategy is
effective only when there are a lot of similar products on the market and when their
prices are the main difference between them. However, if you are trying to
differentiate your product based on its quality and value, setting the price lower than
your competitors might actually be interpreted as a sign of a lower quality. As an
example of reference pricing strategy we can look at telecommunication companies
- the companies that give you more data usage for the same price as competitors or
offer the same amount of data usage for lower price will be perceived as a better
deal. An important assumption to notice in this example is that there is usually no
excessive deviation in the quality of services between the telecommunications
companies.
By keeping the price floor and the price ceiling in mind, there are two pricing
strategies we can consider - cost-based pricing and value-based pricing.
Cost-based pricing
The cost-based pricing is the simplest method available because it doesn’t take into
consideration the value your product gives to customers, competitors’ prices or even
the overall worth of your brand. As the name suggests, this strategy is based on the
costs of making a product with a certain percentage added as a profit. This strategy is
very common in small companies and among trade companies because is very easy
to use and enables you to calculate how much money you can earn on a specific
product.
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There are two types of cost-based pricing:
1. Full cost pricing takes into consideration the entire cost of production - fixed costs
that you will have to pay even if you don’t produce single piece of product and
variable costs which vary depending on the production level.
2. Direct cost pricing is a type of pricing that considers only variable costs while fixed
costs are ignored and taken only into consideration in the overall break-even
calculation that the company does.
As we mentioned before, cost-based pricing is easy to use, requires little information

and it can be used to maximize profits. On the other hand, the flaw of this strategy is
that it assumes that the customer will be willing to buy the product at particular price
point which is not always the case.
Value-based pricing
Value-based pricing is a method of pricing a product based on perceived value we

discussed earlier in this chapter. Any product that gives higher value to the consumer
will have a higher selling price. For example, when buying a car, any additional
equipment will raise the price of the car because of the value that it gives the user of
this car.
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Value-based pricing can be hard and confusing to adopt due to its difficulty to
accurately predict the value that the consumption will bring to the customer. To help
you better understand how value-based pricing works, let’s take a look at some
guidelines:
• Value-based pricing only works when addressing a specific segment on the

market and if you are targeting multiple segments you need to define certain
value for every segment you have chosen. For example, if your company
produces websites with built-in web shops, for your customers it is of utmost
importance that the web shop works all the time without any bugs. If your
additional value is that your customer support works 24/7, this could be great
value to websites with large databases and a lot of daily traffic. In case any error
occurs on the website, the fact that you will fix it immediately gives additional
value to customers who will pay higher price just to have this option.
• To define a price base on value you need to understand the differentiation

potential of your products’ unique features. If you are in the food industry and
your products are made from organic ingredients, this will give you an advantage
compared to competitors who don’t use organic ingredients, and thus your
product will be worth more among consumers who are trying to eat healthy and
care for organic food.
• Another great guideline which combines the first is comparing your product with
competitors and the next best alternative. This doesn’t work for products with
disruptive innovation and that don’t have any competition. But if there is any
alternative for your product, think in which ways your product gives more benefits
for the customers and how much that works in the specific segment you are
targeting.
In addition to cost-based and value-based pricing methods, there are two more
pricing strategies that I would like to highlight and they are considering pricing of the
new products. The strategies I’m talking about are penetration pricing and price
skimming.
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Penetration pricing
Penetration pricing refers to launching a new, low-priced product with a goal of

taking the market share. The same price strategy is used by the mobile company
Huawei who is producing quality smartphones for affordable prices that are much
lower than competitors’ prices. The use of penetration pricing is justified when a
company can achieve great savings in production, the lower price won’t leave an
impression of a lower quality product and the consumers have a high degree of
reaction at lower prices.
Considering the situations we mentioned above, penetration pricing can be used at

any stage of the product life cycle. When launching a product, penetration pricing
can be used to take over market share of existing competitors and in later stages
when new competitors enter the market, the company can lower its prices to
maintain a high level of sales. Still, the most common way to use penetration pricing
is when a company is entering a market late and it needs to take over a big market
share.
Price skimming
Developing new products requires substantial investments in research &

development, an innovative approach to solving the problem and the high risk of
introducing a new product. Therefore, many companies decide to set initial prices
high in order to reduce the time needed for return on investment.
Price skimming represents a strategy where the price for a new product is set at a
relatively high level then gradually lowered over time if necessary. To successfully use
this strategy it is important that there is a large enough market segment of customers
who are willing to pay a higher price and that potential competitors don’t have the
possibility of rapid entry into the same market with a similar product at a lower price.
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Benefits of price skimming are:
• Perception of quality
Price is one of the indicators of product quality where high prices usually mean that a
product has high quality while low prices can indicate lower quality. With this in mind,
companies can use price skimming to boost the customers’ perception about the
quality of the product. By pricing the new product high, companies can create an
impression of exclusivity that tends to attract early adopters.
For further reading on the pricing subject, I highly recommend subscribing to one of
the world’s best pricing blog at Price Intelligently -
http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog as well as the free “An Enormous Guide to
Pricing Psychology” by Nick Kolenda at
https://www.nickkolenda.com/psychological-pricing-strategies/.
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1.4. How to successfully build and
manage a team distributed around the
world
No matter how educated, experienced and motivated you are and determined to run
a successful business, there is one scarce resource which will make it impossible to
do it by yourself and right now, I’m talking about time. Being an entrepreneur means
you are constantly under pressure, working with very short deadlines and you are
going to need help whether you like to admit it or not. As many investors and
successful entrepreneurs will say, business idea is nothing without a good team who
will make things happen.
Building a team can be very challenging task especially if you don’t have experience
with employing people. Finding the right people, talented people, who will help you
accomplish your business goals is hard enough as it is, and if you add management of
the team into the equation, things can become even more challenging. Assuming
you are still at the beginning of your business venture and you don’t have money to
get help from professional human resource agencies, let’s set out some guidelines
on how to approach the building and management of the team. As a small bonus, I’ll
even share some tips about running a team that is distributed around the world.
Building a team
First of all, let’s rule out some of the most common mistakes people make when
starting a business. Starting a business with your close personal friends will cause
more problems in running a business than it will help. Entrepreneurship can be a
really scary thing considering you are taking a leap of fate in the unknown and
putting everything at stake. Because of that, people tend to start a business with close
personal friends in order to find support and understanding and even to share stress
with people they trust. On the other hand, friends usually avoid giving real feedback
which leads to dealing with the wrong information and the wrong assessment of your
business situation, and this is exactly what can lead to failure.
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Another common mistake in building a team is to hire people who think just like you.
Your teammates need to share the same enthusiasm for your business, but the way
of thinking and solving a problems needs to be different to achieve progress and
overcome problems you will face in your everyday life.
Now that we ruled out the most common mistakes, let’s talk more about positive
examples and tips & tricks for building and managing a great business team:
1. Identify your needs
Depending on the industry you are doing business in, you will need different types of
team members. It is your job as a company founder to determine what types of
people and skills you need in your team and create very accurate job descriptions.
Remember that multidisciplinary leads to innovation and better business
performance, so focus your efforts on finding people who are talented in areas you
require in your team.
2. Think about your company culture
Finding a person with the right qualifications doesn’t mean that they will add the best
value to your team. I have experienced a lot of time that very talented people get
fired or leave the team because they just don’t fit company’s culture. You should
always look for people who outline the business culture you are trying to promote
and transfer it to the work with your partners, customers and other team members.
People you employ need to get on well not only with you, but with the rest of the
team. When you build a team that gets along, they will do better work and it will be
much easier to go through challenges your team will face.
3. Set clear expectations
To optimize your team’s work, you need to set a list of guidelines and procedures
your team members will follow. A set of guideline can help new employees catch up
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pretty fast on the new job and also, they will help you minimize spent time on
standardized activities.
On the other hand, too many rules can poorly affect productivity and block the
creativity. The key to finding the right balance between too many and just enough
guidelines and rules is setting clear expectations. Give your employees any
necessary resources they need and well-defined guidelines and goals so they know
what you expect from them, but leave them enough space to improvise and use their
creativity. Celebrate small victories, keep an open communication and organize
company events with all employees so they feel that they are part of the team and
understand their impact on the company’s success.
4. Value each team member
As we mentioned before, multidisciplinary is a secret ingredient behind many

successful teams. In order to gather a strong team, choose people with specific skill
sets that will help you go the extra mile. Don’t ever hire somebody if they don’t add a
unique value to your team. In addition to choosing the right employees, as a CEO,
your job is also to make sure that every person in your team is fully aware of their
unique value to the team. This will help them gain a sense of purpose and motivate
them while boosting their performance.
5. Motivate
The hardest part of building and managing a team is not the process of hiring people,
it is the process of constantly motivating employees and keeping the enthusiasm high
all the time. So, the question here is, what really motivates people.
The traditional approach is the more you pay your employees, the more motivated
and satisfied they are in their job. The truth is that money is only the first step and it
brings only short-term motivation. In order to explain this, let’s take a look at
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the picture below. Money will only cover basic needs -
psychological and safety needs. When somebody is able to afford a decent living and
cover standard expenses, they need to satisfy their psychological and self-fulfillment
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needs. You can help your employees gain a feeling of accomplishment with words of
affirmation and celebrating small victories every time your team members reach
another milestone. By setting clear expectations and leaving room for creativity, the
thing we discussed before in the second paragraph, your employees can achieve
their full potential, which reflects greatly not only on the progress of your employees
but the progress of the whole company as well.
6. Communicate
The best way to establish and carry out the first five guidelines of building and
managing a team is communication. All employees must have access to information
about the company, strategy, current situation and other team members the whole
time. Keeping a level of transparency whenever possible is very important, even if
information doesn’t directly relate to every person on your team.
To help you with communication among team members, use applications such as
Slack, Teamwork, Zoom and set up your own CRM system:
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• Slack will help you organize your team conversations in open channels. You can
make a channel for projects, topics or any relevant subject you need and
everyone participating has a transparent view of the information. You can even
create private channels whenever you feel like the information is sensitive. Learn
more about Slack: https://slack.com/
• Teamwork is a project management app, chat app and helpdesk software you can
rely on. By using Teamwork you can keep all your tasks in one place, run the
helpdesk to handle customer support queries and enable real-time
communication between your team members. Check out Teamwork at
https://www.teamwork.com/. For smaller teams that don’t need all the bells &
whistles of Project Management, a very popular solution today is Trello, available
at http://www.trello.com.
• Zoom is currently the world’s most popular video conferencing service, and it is a
god-send if you wish to have healthy communication within your distributed
organization. Although a much younger player than the famous Skype or Google
Hangout, it offers superior video and audio quality which is especially noticeable
when having a conference with more than a few people. Highly recommended,
more details at http://www.zoom.us.
• If you’re working with a lot of high-paying customers it is advisable to use

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). CRM is a strategy for managing all
your company’s interactions with customers. Good CRM will help you increase
your company’s profitability and keep your sales force up-to-date with all
important information about customers.
CRM will help you keep track of everything - calls and emails sent to customers,
held meetings and even personal information about customer. A full history of all
communications, documents and meetings is stored in one place and available to
your employees.
An example of good CRM software is Hubspot CRM, but also for online businesses
Intercom Platform is very popular, a full-service platform that helps you onboard
& retain customers, create & share content, support customers at scale and live
chat with customers. For more information visit https://www.intercom.com/ and
http://www.hubspot.com.
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7. Own your role
At the beginning, as an entrepreneur you will have many hats and be a “jack of all
trades” in your company. But as your company grow, it is very important to
understand what your role is. Your role is to work on your business, not in your
business. There are three core segments that an entrepreneur (or CEO) should focus
on:
• Developing, understanding and communicating the core company strategy;
• Taking care of company culture - as Peter Drucker famously said, “culture eats
strategy for lunch”;
• Hiring and developing talents that will drive your company.

All other decisions should eventually be delegated to your other staff.
I would like to finish this chapter with a famous quote from Richard Branson, founder
of Virgin Group and one of the most eminent entrepreneurs in the world right now. A
lot of people find inspiration in his talks and lectures and I hope you will too. The
quote I’m stating below is considering employment and building a team and I find it
to be a great abstract of all the things we discussed through this chapter.
“It's all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your
business. And giving them good work. Then getting out of their way. And trusting
them. You have to get out of the way so YOU can focus on the bigger vision. That's
important. And here's the main thing... you must make them see their work as a
MISSION.” - Richard Branson
For further reading on how to work with virtual staff to buy more time, become more
productive and build your dream business, developing your business model, I would
strongly recommend the book Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker -
https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Freedom-Become-Productive-Business/dp/193952974
3
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02 Build
In this section of the book we'll talk more about building your path to customers
through an online presence and presenting your products and service online in a
creative and effective way.
The topics that we are going to cover address every element of building online
presence that you should consider before jumping into action – from choosing the
right hosting provider and web development partner, to setting up your website and
positioning it on the search engines and ending with online sales and automatization
of the overall process.
If you’re still wondering if building an online presence is worth your while, let's clarify
some of the benefits online presence can offer to your business.
Online presence consists of two parts – your company’s website as a virtual

representative and a salesperson for your business, and your social media profiles
where you indulge in building a community and facilitate more informal
communication with your customers.
Why is having a website so important?
Regardless of your business type, nowadays you need to have an online business
identity to ensure continual growth. It doesn't matter whether you own a local barber
shop, a restaurant, a café or a company that sells products and services online.
According to Google, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online, which
gives you a great opportunity to expand your visibility. There are many available
services that can help you create a simple website at an affordable price, which
makes having a website more accessible than ever before. WordPress is one of them.

Let's talk about some of the benefits a good website can have on your business:
1. Visibility
Having a website makes your business available every day of the year. The customers
can visit your website whenever they want and find information about your products
or services. As we mentioned before, 97% of customers tend to search for local
business on search engines. Consequently, they will also use search engines to find a
solution for their problem which gives you a chance to stand out with your website
and attract new customers.
2. Convenience
The behavior of customers is constantly changing and following the development of

new technologies. Nowadays, the average client is more informed because they are
surrounded by multiple sources of information and tends to double check everything
– from prices, user reviews, additional services, etc. Having a website gives you an
opportunity to present yourself to your customers and provide the most relevant
information they need to decide to make a purchase.
3. Cost effective
While a brick-and-mortar business has a lot of fixed costs such as the monthly rent
and utilities, the cost of annual website maintenance is much cheaper, even when
you add up the costs of its initial development. There are various examples of
business owners that have a traditional store combined with a web shop, and where
their web shop generates more turnover than the brick-and-mortar store. Moreover,
If you consider the low costs of running a website, it is evident that the web shop will
have more profit on the same amount of sold products in comparison to a traditional
store.

4. Growth potential
Besides being cost effective, marketing of your website has a lot of growth potential.
With digital marketing you can measure everything - calculate the result of
marketing activities and cost or profit of every new customer. On your website, you
can also track information about your users and map their behavior. All this data
about your users can help you learn how to provide an even better service and
expand your business.
Now that you are finally convinced that you need a website, let's talk more about
building one. Keep reading even if you already have one, because there is always
some space for improvement and this section is surely going to do that.

2.1. How to pick a webhosting partner for
your website and domain
Web hosting is foundation for every website and a lot of people know they need it,
but they are not sure about how it works or the difference between many hosting
providers on the market. In this chapter I will explain how hosting works and what you
need to consider when deciding on your hosting providers. Common practice is that
a web development company will also offer you a hosting service. However, this
doesn't mean that you have to accept their offer without question. In the end, you are
the person who is going to use this service and pay for it, so ensure that you are
getting the best value for your money.
To make it more understandable, let's compare web hosting and websites with
building a house. First of all, for building a house you need a land where you can
build, right? Before buying any land, you need to consider what types of activities you
are going to have on that land. Since building a house is the main one, the land
needs to be big enough to build a house. What else? Perhaps in a couple of years
you would like to build a pool, have a garden, organize barbecue parties, or even
expand your house and build an additional room. You should also consider these
options and buy land that covers these needs before they occur.
It’s the same with hosting and websites, where hosting is your land and website is your
house. When starting a business, your website will probably be small and with fewer
features. As your business grows so will your website and services you provide – this
means more domains and subdomains, more disk space, bandwidth and email
accounts and advanced tools for running day-to-day operations. As the land for your
house needs to have enough space for a garden, pool and barbecue, your servers
need to support the growth and expansion of your business. This doesn't mean you
need to go all in and get a service that provides tons of stuff you don't need, but you
need to consider the ability to expand your service with the hosting provider.
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Types of hosting services
There are many hosting plans you can get that will cover variety of your needs. As
your business grows, so will hosting requirements, so make sure to learn more about
hosting types so you can make the right long-term decision.
Cloud Based Hosting
Cloud Based Hosting offers a great solution for small and mid-sized business and
lately it has been preferred by corporate giants too. Cloud servers are not located on
any physical hardware that is only dedicated to you, but they can still be configured to
provide performance, security and control similar to dedicated servers.
One of the biggest benefits of cloud hosting lies in flexibility – you can change your
hosting package whenever your business grows, without overpaying for hosting
services.
Price: Pay for what you use.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is a type of Internet hosting where the client uses an entire server
and doesn't share it with anyone else. This service is very flexible and allows full
control over operating system and hardware. Dedicated hosting is usually used by big
companies with a lot of traffic because it allows full customization and you don't have
to worry about other websites on servers that can slow your website down.
Price: Dedicated hosting is priced from $100 monthly and up. If your business is still
small and does not use the full service that dedicated server provides, this service is
not very efficient for your business. A dedicated server also requires a system
administrator that takes care of technical details, which generates additional cost.
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Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting is basically a wholesaler for hosting services. This is a form of web
hosting where the client has the ability to share space and bandwidth with third
parties. Reseller packages come with control panel which has advanced options and
billing software so you can create and send invoices. Some other benefits of having a
reseller package is free website templates and having white label support, which
means that a hosting company helps you fix your clients’ technical issues.
Price: Reseller packages range from $15 - $50 monthly.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is type of hosting where multiple websites are stored on a single
server. This is also the most common hosting type among hosting companies and it is
widely used by small companies who can’t afford or don't have the need for
dedicated servers. One of the biggest benefits of shared hosting is affordable price,
but if you're expecting your traffic to grow, you need to think about a more scalable
solution such as dedicated servers and cloud-based hosting.
Price: You can get hosting on shared servers for as little as $5 – 10$ per month which
makes it the cheapest type of a hosting service. Average price for this type of hosting
is $10 - $20 monthly.
Virtual Private Server hosting (VPS)
Virtual Private Server, also known as Virtual Dedicated Server, appears to the users as
a dedicated server but is actually serving multiple websites from one source. With
VPS everything is installed on a server which can have more than one hosting
software for particular user which act as independent servers. One of the biggest
advantages of virtual private hosting is unrestricted access for client and full control
to configure the VPS how they want. Another great advantage is a possibility of
hosting multiple websites and services such as File Transfer Protocol, mail server,
specialized applications and activities such as eCommerce and blog.
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Price: You can get virtual private hosting from $50 up to $200 which makes it a good
solution for small companies who want performance of dedicated servers for less
money. Still, VPS can't fully replace dedicated servers because there is always a
chance that the server which hosts all hosting software is overfilled and therefore has
less performance.
Time for a decision

With everything presented, I'm sure you are now well acquainted with types of
hosting and price levels you can expect. To make it simpler, we suggest you consider
two conditions when making a choice about hosting – website performance and
price.
Website performance is directly linked to your company's needs. If you need a small,
static website just to share information about your company, then shared hosting
could be good choice for you. As your needs go higher in terms of traffic you are
expecting and additional services such as blog, eCommerce and similar, you should
think about dedicated or virtual private servers. At this point we would like to highlight
the cloud-based solution. It may not be the cheapest solution, but it is definitely tailor
made, which means you pay for what you use while not risking quality.
As for price as a condition for making your decision, there is not much to discuss
except one piece of advice we strongly advise – never settle for bad performance just
to save a few bucks. Later in this section of the eBook we'll discuss how bad
performance can affect your users, so try to get best performance you can for your
budget.
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2.2. How to work with a web
development company and build your
website
To answer this question, we have asked our customers about their experience while
choosing web development partners. For this chapter particularly, I prepared a
summary of data gathered during the interviews and highlighted the best practice
examples as well as the things that require special attention. Similar to choosing a
hosting provider, opting for a web development company starts with your business
specifications and requirements that your website should fulfill to support it. Here is a
list of questions you should ask yourself to be prepared for the meetings with web
developers and to understand your needs better.
What is the purpose of your website and how much of your

business is conducted online?
Are you planning to launch a website just to create an online presence or is your
website the main channel for running your business? Answering this question is the
first step for determining your website's complexity.
If your company is focused on retail and providing local services offline, then you are
looking for a simple website with general information, location and contact details, a
price list of your services, etc.
On the other hand, if you are planning to use your website as the focal point for your
marketing activities and interaction with your customers, then you need a website
with additional features and tools, which naturally makes it more demanding to build.
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How much traffic do you expect?
It is challenging to estimate the number of customers at the beginning. However, the

good thing is that you don't need an exact number right away; just describe your
expectations to your web developer and they will know what to anticipate. To answer
this and help your web developer, reflect on the previous question and on the size of
your market segment (something we have already discussed in the earlier section of
the book).
Who are your target customers? Are you aiming at one region, a city, or a whole
country? Are your products and services intended for a particular audience or a
wider mass? Use this information about your market segment, combine them with the
purpose of our website and present it to your website developer to describe the
traffic you are expecting.
What additional services do you plan to provide?
To clarify, by additional services, I'm referring to blogging, eCommerce (web shop),

live chat, newsletter campaigns, etc. Blogging is an excellent way to produce quality
content. It helps you build your company's brand and attract loyal customers.
If done right, starting a web shop can boost your sales and overall profit significantly.
But first, you need to consider the volume of the web shop – i.e. how many groups of
products will be sold online, which ones specifically, but also, what are the legal
standards for selling and promoting products online? For example, selling food
products requires information about the country of origin, its nutritive value and
expiration date, meaning that your web shop might also need to provide additional
features to cover certain legal requirements.
Newsletter campaigns and live chats are another great way to communicate with
your customers, to give them additional value and boost your sales as a result of it.
Still, they also require the installation of additional tools and thus this increases the
complexity of your website.
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How great is the growth potential of your website and online
business?
How big of an increase in traffic do you expect in the following few months or years?
Are you planning on adding new products to your web shop all the time? Do you plan
to upgrade your payment methods or include any other features? Even if you don't
need something in the beginning, assume that you will need it eventually, and share
it with your potential web developer to make sure they can enable it later for
reasonable costs.
How much does your web development partner need to get

involved with your day-to-day operations?
Who is going to manage your web shop and search engine optimization (SEO),
update your website's information, add images, articles and so on? With today’s
Content Management Systems (CMS) it is easy to do it yourself. All you have to do is
take some time to learn it, and you're ready to go. Surely, you may ask your website
developer to do these things for you, but it would increase the overall website
building price, and also generate additional monthly costs.
Once you have a solid overview of your business and website needs, there is one
more thing you need to analyze – your competitors. Take a look at their websites and
online solutions, marketing activities, the tone of communication and see what elicits
a good or a bad customer reaction. The aim of competition analysis is not to copy
their practice, but to learn from their shortcomings and implement that knowledge to
provide a better service. Present this observation to your potential web developers in
addition to the previous answers and prepare yourself as much as you can, because
the more information you give to the web developers, the better outcome you can
expect from that cooperation.
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What to expect from web developers
Concluding both from our and our clients' experience there are three possible
approaches that web development companies tend to have for building your website,
which can be open source platforms such as WordPress, custom websites and
content management systems, or fully personalized websites and systems. Still, what
makes the difference between each one of them?
WordPress as the latest rage in web development
If you read anything about website development, you ought to have come across
WordPress. WordPress is an online, open-source website creation platform and the
easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (CMS)
of today. Even though any CMS requires some time to get used to and to learn how to
operate it, I would highly recommend using this platform no matter the size of your
business because WordPress is very simple, user-friendly and intuitive, and you will
learn how to use it in no time. It is also very widely used, so even if you don't know
how to do something, you can always use Google to find tutorials or even videos with
detailed instructions.
Another great thing about WordPress is a huge variety of available plugins which
make it very flexible and adaptable to almost every situation. Whether you need to
integrate a newsletter to your website, Google Maps, contact forms, calendars, social
media plugins, search engine optimization plugins or any other feature, everything is
just a few clicks away and ready to use.
Although, if you ever decide to change your web development partner, your new
partner will probably hesitate to work on someone else’s code. It is easier and also
more advisable to create a new code than to change the existing one. Since
WordPress is an open-sourced platform, it allows everyone to use it and learn how to
operate it, which means that the developers can make changes on WordPress even if
they didn't build the whole website themselves. Unless you need some significant
structural changes on your website, updating your website on WordPress usually
comes down to a simple plugin configuration.
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Custom built website and CMS
Numerous web developers create their own website templates, CMS, and
eCommerce software. When you make a deal with them, you are actually buying a
license to use their software. In such case, the web developers will adjust their
software to match your needs, and they will give you instructions how to use it. If the
custom-built system is well-made, it offers countless benefits. For example, it
provides you with more features than open source solutions and supports business
with a lot of visitors, online retail and wholesale and complex systems.
The main disadvantage of using custom-built websites and software is the possible
cancellation of a contract. Namely, if you decide to change your web developer, you
might be stuck with a piece of software you can't modify because your new web
developer probably doesn't want to work on someone else's code. Also, you might
find yourself without the permission to use the software any longer, so you’ll have to
build everything from scratch.
Another disadvantage of custom-built software is the fact of it being quite restrictive

for making personal changes on the website. You can control the content on your
website, but to make some aesthetic or structural changes, you will need to pay your
developer to do that. Still, with open source codes, some changes are easy to make,
so you can do them yourself if you have any technical background.
Fully personalized systems
Fully personalized systems are in fact very rare and reserved mainly for big
companies. Here, the web developer will create a full stack just for you - from front to
back end, and with any additional website tools and features. It is something that web
developers do when a client has unique needs, or their business requires a system so
complex that the current software can't support it. However, this rarely occurs
because web developers usually use software and open-source platforms that are
very scalable and flexible so they can fit any standard business activities.
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It is almost unnecessary to say that fully personalized systems are very expensive.
They require a team of dedicated developers who will work full time on this lengthy
project. Unless you have a lot of money or a particularly unique business, we suggest
that you stick to open source platforms or software that are in web developers’
standard offerings.
What else do I need to consider?
I've come across a detail that web developers tend to put aside as a “not so important
part” when in all reality it is a very important one to discuss. That issue regards website
maintenance, and it comes in three possible models – maintenance per intervention,
monthly maintenance or a combination of the two.
Firstly, maintenance per intervention is a model where a web developer will only
work when you need them. For instance, if some errors occur on the website, if you
have to make some changes or if you want to update plugins (which is advisable to do
every once in a while). I would recommend this model to small companies because if
you have a simple website, there is no need for continuous maintenance.
Secondly, monthly maintenance is a model that web development companies usually

recommend, and it is advisable if you own a website with a considerable traffic. Here,
you have to pay your developers a monthly or an annual fee so that they will always
keep an eye on your website and fix the unwanted bugs before you even realize you
have them.
The third model is a combination of the previous two – you pay a monthly or an
annual fee along with any additional costs if the web developers should make
interventions that are outside the initial contract. Such interventions usually include
the special request from clients or some unforeseen circumstances.
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2.3. How to develop a top-class website
that stands out from the competition
The first step in creating an outstanding website for your business is to select your
development partner and hosting provider carefully. And to do so, you can always
refer to the previous two chapters. Many people believe that the process of
developing a website ends when the web developer gives you the finished product -
a website that is ready to launch. In some cases, this may be right, but if you aim for
long-term success, you should also consider the next step that we are going to cover
in this chapter.
Creating a quality website is a time-consuming process that demands a constant

communication between you and your web developer. To stand out among the
competitors and promote your quality service, you have to adopt the combined
approach and share your unique expertise. Sharing expertise refers to an efficient
transfer of information between you and your web developer. Your web developer
has to know how to build a website, be familiar with the trends in the industry, know
what technology to use, how to optimize your website, while you present the
information about your business, environment, customers, and competitors. Web
developers are usually freelancers or independent contractors who work for
numerous clients in different sectors, so don't expect them to know what suits your
business the best. Only you, as a founder, can make such decisions and provide the
right input which the developer will utilize to create a quality website.
• To make your website truly outstanding, you need to dig in and do your
homework. Prepare a list of guidelines and examples of good practice that you
want to implement on your website, analyze your competition and create content
that your customers will appreciate. Since we already covered some of these
issues in our last chapter, right now we are going analyze in detail the three most
important cornerstones of a good website – website structure, content and
performance.
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Website structure
A coherent website structure will help you achieve two crucial matters. Firstly, a good
user experience platform will help your visitors navigate your website with ease.
Without exaggerating, nowadays users tend to have an attention span of a goldfish.
Microsoft Corporation has conducted a study on brain activity and attention spans of
their users. The research involved more than 2,000 participants and the results
showed that the average user's attention span dropped to eight seconds (goldfish
have a nine-second attention span). On the other hand, the users' multitasking ability
has increased significantly. It means that they are scanning through the content very
fast, they are using more than one source, and tend to move on if the needed
information is not found within the eight-second attention span time frame.
If you strip down your website by removing all colors, images, videos and other
materials, the only thing that is left is pure content (black and white text) and the web
structure that will help users to navigate through all this content. In reality, the only
way to deal with the short attention span of users is through engaging content and
efficient website navigation.
The second important issue that a quality web structure will yield is an improvement
in your search engine rankings. Search engines (such as Google) use crawlers to find
subpages and extract all relevant information about your website. Crawlers scan your
website and store your website content in a databank. If the web structure is solid, the
crawlers will have easier access to your content, which consequently leads to better
ranks on search engines.
Another considerable advantage of an adequate website structure in terms of search

engine rankings are the sitelinks. Sitelinks increase the visibility of your website,
navigate users toward the relevant information and generate more traffic. However,
you can't set up sitelinks on your own. This is something that the Google algorithm
automatically does, and it is a way of rewarding websites that have a commendable
web structure.
Here are some useful tips to help you structure your website the best way possible:
• Plan your website structure before you start developing a website –

remember to make it logical, keep the number of main categories lower than
eight and keep the balance of subpages within each category.
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• Create a URL structure that follows your navigation hierarchy.
• Use HTML or CSS to create website navigation.
• Stick to shallow websites – everything should be accessed in no more than three

clicks.
• Your header should list your main categories – avoid image-based navigation and
duplicate links in the footer if you are planning to have them below. 
Content
Creating content for your website is quite different than creating content for print.
The users' approach and the way they absorb information requires you to change the
way of text writing. In an online environment, users do not read the text thoroughly,
but rather scan it to find the information they want as quickly as possible. Once they
find it, they will most likely start paying more attention to your content. In most cases,
they will take the information they need and read further. This has been proven by a
lot of researchers who claim that only 16% of all users read website contents
word-for-word.
The first thing to consider when writing content for your website is your target
audience - who are your customers, what sort of information they need and what is
relevant to them. The key for effective online content writing is to provide your
audience with the most information you can within the least possible amount of text.
This is why most websites use images, videos, and infographic as a form of content.
These formats are more memorable than text, they transfer relevant information
more easily and lead to greater engagement (up to 10 times more engagement than
with plain text).
Website content should always present the most relevant information first. Journalists
usually call this “Inverted pyramid” - a scheme that starts with a conclusion while the
following text explains it. Writing in this manner will help readers make a quick
decision whether they want to continue reading the article or not. They can stop
reading before they reach the end of the article and still get the main point.
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Enabling your users to have an overview of the entire paragraph in the first sentence
is called front-loading. This technique allows you to have more control and make the
users stay longer on your website.
To do so, you need to follow several simple rules:
• Each paragraph should be limited to one idea only
• In the first one or two sentences write the main point of the entire paragraph
• Highlight the keywords that this paragraph covers
• Use short paragraphs
• Use subheadings to make scanning through the paragraph easier and allow the
readers to gain even better insight into the content
To additionally upgrade the quality of your content, use the following general tips that
are not directly related to the inverted pyramid scheme, but can be very useful for
creating great content:
• Use short sentences, not just short paragraphs
• Include call to action in your texts so people can easily decide on their next step
after they find the information they were looking for
• Optimize your website structure and navigation – enable users to move smoothly
through your website and scan content along the way
• Use bullet points, images, videos, infographic and other design elements that will
widen the visual appeal of your website. Still, remember to put functionality
before looks. If you’re using images or videos, their primary purpose should be to
provide information, not to serve as a decoration
• Use highlights, bold text, caps lock and italic to pinpoint the most relevant
keywords
• Avoid jargon, complicated words, euphemisms or any phrases that could be

insulting, discriminatory or negatively interpreted
• Make everything as simple as possible
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Writing excellent content is not an easy task, which is why outsourcing and hiring
people who will write your content is a very usual thing nowadays. Later in this book,
we'll discuss outsourcing and freelancers and explain how to find and hire them to do
your copywriting or creative work. If you're not a creative person and writing is not
your cup of tea, do not hesitate to ask for the help of professionals – there is nothing
wrong with that.
Still, use these tips & tricks if you believe that you can produce good content or just
want to learn how to do it. Writing good content is like developing any other skill –
the more you do it, the better you become at it. However, the most important thing is
to monitor your users' reaction to your content, focusing not only on their direct
comments but also on their behavior on your website to determine what goes well
with your readers and what does not. Writing is all about constant progress and
learning from your experience.
Website performance
Numerous studies show how website performance can affect the users' behavior on
the website, including their experience, traffic amount, and even conversion rates.
For instance, in 2012 Walmart researched their website performance and concluded
that for each 1-second improvement in page load time, the conversion rate increased
by 2%. Another indicator that demonstrates the importance of website performance
is the abandonment rate for shopping carts were 97% of mobile users, and 95% of PC
users will abandon your website if they struggle with poor performance.
Website performance is also directly linked to the loyalty of your customers along
with their return rate. Studies show that 46% of mobile users are unlikely to return to
your website if there are any performance issues.
Most of these studies have measured the amount of time that the users wait before
leaving your website if the page doesn't load. A couple of years ago, the average user
took 10 seconds to abandon your website. Gradually it dropped to 7 seconds, while
today, considering all the improvements in technology and Internet speed, we are
dealing with the maximum of 3 seconds for fully loading the page. Not only should
your website load fast, but it also needs to work flawlessly on various devices such as
laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Moreover, 79% of users who experience trouble
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with a website regarding speed and performance won’t return to that site, while 44%
of them will even share their bad experience with friends.
There are many online tools that you can use to check your website performance,
and it is advisable to do that every now and then. If you notice an increase in the page
load time, contact your web development partner to fix this as soon as possible. One
of the tools that can help you check your website performance is called Webpagetest,
which will analyze your website speed from multiple locations around the globe.
Simply enter your website URL, select the test location or a device, the browser you
would like to test it with and that is it! Another great tool for checking website
performance test is Pingdom. It has fewer options than Webpagetest, but it runs
much faster. Both of these tools will offer you advice on how to advance your website
by improving its performance.
Website performance is usually the thing that should concern your web developer.
Still, I would like to highlight one common mistake people make which affects website
performance – images on a website. I've seen countless times that people upload
images that are too big in size and dimensions on their website, which consequently
leads to its lower performance. The math is simple - the bigger the image in kilobytes,
the longer it takes to load the website. So, next time, before you upload an image,
take a look at its size and dimensions and make sure that it fits your website.
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Tips for choosing appropriate image size and dimensions for your website:
• Reducing image quality up to 30% will not be visible to the naked eye, but it will
make a big change in the image size
• Big images on your website should be around 100 kb and small images around 30
kb
• Keep the image width within 600 px, especially if you’re using WordPress
• .jpg format is good for photographs but it can lose details in compression
• .png is good both for photos and line art. It has better compression than .jpg, but
the image files are usually larger
The image can be compressed in two ways: by reducing image dimensions and by
image compression. Your camera and smartphone on standard settings shoot photos
of really big dimensions, much bigger than you need on your website. However, you
can change that even with MS Paint – open the image, choose “Change image size”
and change image width to 600 px, while keeping the proportions. Of course, there is
a lot of advanced tools you can use too, but if you're an absolute beginner, without
any professional tools available, or you don't know how to use them, this will do just
fine.
Image compression can also be done by a lot of professional tools and a lot of free
tools that are available on the Internet. One of those tools is TinyJPG, which lets you
compress images up to 60% without losing the quality of the image. All that it takes is
to upload the image, click compress and download the image afterward.
As you can see, the more we progress through this e-book, the more details we cover
about website enhancement. However, this is still only the tip of the iceberg. Running
a successful online business demands detail-oriented work, steady progress and a
continual implementation of new technologies. My advice is to hold weekly meetings
to check on your website. Gather your team, and analyze your website's
performance, content, traffic and any other parameters you find important. Use
statistics from your Google Analytics tool and Hotjar and compare them to your
business plan. Most importantly, never stop looking for different ways to improve your
user interface and users' overall experience.
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2.4. How to ensure that your website is
well-positioned on Google
The best way to celebrate finishing the project of building a website is by driving lots of
new users to your new online headquarters. Just imagine those numbers growing
hour-by-hour. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could see that? Of course! But, as
always, you need to keep your expectations realistic. There is a way you can enable a
steady growth of traffic, but it requires a lot of hard work and knowledge about digital
marketing. In this eBook (chapter 3.1. How best to attract visitors to your website) we'll
talk more about different strategies, methods, and tools for attracting your target
audience. Still, we won't jump right into that topic right away. The underlying rationale
for that is the necessary preparation for scaling and marketing activities on your
website. As with any part of running a business, preparation is the key to ensure a
successful outcome of your activities.
Preparation in this context means adapting your website for search engines and
boosting your Google rank. It is also a way of to ensure organic growth (unpaid
search growth) of your website, and an excellent foundation for any other
promotional activity. The details concerning website optimization for search engines
will increase the quality of your website - which is a precondition for a successful
marketing campaign. To simplify – quality content/quality website = lower advertising
costs.
The starting point is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - the direct and most widely
used method for increasing your Google rank. In continuation with SEO, we'll discuss
Content Delivery Network (CDN) and page load speed as main factors that
determine your search engine ranking. Since SEO has the main responsibility for
search engine ranking, we'll start by explaining the most important steps that can
lead you to impressive results. Before we start, just remember – SEO is a long-term
process, so don't expect to jump up the ranks immediately after applying these rules.
SEO needs time and constant work to be effective, so don't give up. Keep working on
it, follow the rules and wait patiently to see the undeniable results.
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Organic Search Vs. Paid Search
The first step in mastering SEO is learning the difference between paid and organic
search along with knowing that SEO only affects the latter. For a long time, it was easy
to distinguish organic results from paid ones by the orange background. However,
recently Google has changed this, so now the only thing that differentiates organic
and paid results is the little text box displaying “Ad”, as can be seen below.
Organic results appear based on the quality of a website. They are influenced by SEO
and considered to be the most valuable source of information and traffic on search
engines. Boosting your website ranking to the top is difficult and time consuming but
it is worth the effort, since the results on Google’s first page receive 92% off all search
traffic, while it drops by 95% for the second page results.
Numerous marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation, so
take your time to understand this process and implement it in your regular activities.
There are two ways to approach the SEO process – onsite and offsite optimization.
The onsite optimization refers to all the changes you make on your website and is
completely under your control, while the offsite optimization is less controllable and
represents the backlinks on your site that stem from other sources.
Onsite optimization
When people are discussing SEO, they usually think about onsite optimization. As we
have mentioned, the onsite optimization is solely under your command, and only you
are responsible for its appropriate arrangement. Before you jump into offsite
optimization and advertising, we strongly advise you to optimize your website for
search engines, because it will have a positive long-term impact on your traffic and
can save you a lot of money.
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There are four key elements of onsite optimization that you should consider: 
keywords, titles, URL structure and image optimization.
Keywords
Keywords are often considered to be the cornerstones of your content – they will
help your customer to find you, improve your Google rank and drive traffic to your
website. Once you assemble the list of keywords that will drive users to your website,
it’s time to incorporate them into your content. While doing that, bear in mind the
keyword density, a concept that represents how many times you used a single
keyword within your content.
A very helpful tool for getting insight to trending keywords is Google Keyword
Planner. It will show you the average monthly searches for any word or phrase, and
suggest some other keywords you could use. Even though the Google Keyword
Planner is primarily made for Google advertisements, it can help you to analyze
keywords for a better onsite optimization.
Titles
Along with keywords, search engines draw their results from the titles. Here, we are
specifically talking about the search tags that are a part of your website source code.
A good title tag should include the keyword which is mentioned in the body of the
content, and have no more than 70 characters.
By composing titles that are compelling, inviting and relevant to the content, you
create a big difference.
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URL structure
Unfortunately, when building an URL, the majority of people disregard the importance
of its structure. Bear in mind that your URL is visible to all users on search engines, so,
besides being there to help you with the ranking, it can have a great impact on users’
behavior.
A well-structured URL should contain relevant description and keywords that provide
users and search engines with more information about the page. Therefore, you
need to make them simple, short and appealing. If you manage to do so, your
potential visitors may remember them better and be more willing to click on them.
Image optimization
In SEO, image optimization focuses on Image alt text (Image alternate text), which
refers to the alternate text that will appear instead of the image in case your website
loads without the display turned on. Image alt text is another excellent place to insert
keywords and relevant description connected to your content. Not only will this
practice help you to move your website up the ranks, but also, it will rank your
pictures according to certain keywords. This can come in handy, especially when the
images serve to represent your company logo, products, services, employees, etc.
Offsite optimization
Once you have covered onsite optimization and adjusted your website according to
the examples of good practice in SEO, it’s time for the offsite optimization which is, as
many would agree, as important as onsite optimization. The importance of offsite
optimization relies on the fact that quality content spreads fast. In other words, if a lot
of sites want to be linked to your website, then your content is perceived as good.
There are two methods for offsite optimization: having links to your website on other
websites and social media marketing. While both of these methods have the same
goal – driving traffic to your website – they are not equally simple and controllable.
Nevertheless, there are some additional tricks that you can use for offsite
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optimization. First of all, start with your partners, distributors and associated websites
that are already working with you. Make sure they embed a link on their website
every time your company is mentioned. The same thing goes with bloggers,
influencers, and media in general. Although you don’t have full control over this
issue, you should still be encouraging them to insert links to your website when they
are writing about your company.
Working with bloggers and influencers goes far beyond the simple aspect of
promoting your content. Find the ones who are interesting to you and can help you
with your business, read their content regularly and comment on their sites as well.
This participation will help you introduce your company to them, strengthen business
relationships and influence a greater amount of readers.
As a long-term strategy, social media marketing is another excellent way to drive

traffic to your website. Spend some time building your community around people
who will follow you, support your ideas and share your content. The more effort you
put in this, the more you will achieve. Social media allows you to control what you are
publishing and to share links to your website. When the quality of your content is
recognized, people will start to forward your posts (again, something that is out of
your control). Now, before you start sharing your links wherever you can bear in
mind that offsite optimization can backfire. If your backlinks are not from quality
sources, you could lower your rankings or even face a penalty from Google. So, do
your homework and ensure that websites which post links to your site are eligible,
relevant to your keywords and suitable for the company image you want to achieve.
There are a lot of tools available that can make your daily operations with search
engine optimization easier and faster, and in the meantime improve your skills and
knowledge about it.
One of these tools is the Yoast SEO plugin - the most downloaded WordPress plugin
of all times, and it is available both in free and premium versions.
For more information about the tool and how to download it, visit
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/.
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Content delivery network (CDN)
While SEO is something that you can easily operate from home, CDN requires you to
contact your web developer. CDN or Content Delivery Network is a system that
delivers web content to users based on their geographical location. The biggest
benefit of using CDN is the extremely high speed of content transmission, even on
global websites with massive traffic. CDN works on the principle of copying your
website to a network of servers in different locations in the world and redirecting
users' request from originating server to the CDN server that is geographically closest
to the user. Not only does this method reduce the latency and bandwidth
consumption, but it also increases the loading speed of your website. Moreover, CDN
has been proven to have an impact on higher search engine ratings since the two
principal factors that improve Google ranking and show instant results are page load
speed and bounce rate.
Bounce rate and page load speed are directly connected, and are equally important
for search engine ranking and users' satisfaction as well. The average customer
expects from a website to load in no more than 3 seconds and CDN can help you
achieve that. For example, if your main server is located in the US and your visitors
are coming from other continents, CDN will let European users pull your website
from European servers and users from Asia from the Asian servers. With CDN you
can improve your load time from 50% to 180%, which makes a lot of difference.
Back in 2006, Google’s VP, Marissa Mayer, researched how many search results
Google users want to see. While they were doing this research, they arrived at
another conclusion about the page load speed. The results revealed that the pages
within 10 first results took 0.4 seconds to load while the other pages, close to the 30th
result, took 0.9 seconds. In other words, a second delay led to lower rankings and,
accordingly, up to 20% of lower traffic. Similar results were obtained at Amazon when
they conducted A/B tests to study the page load speed. The results showed that a
delay of as little as 100 milliseconds can create a substantial drop in revenue.
If you're still asking yourself how exactly the bounce rate connected is to the page
load speed - read on and find out. The process is straightforward and simple. If your
users are dealing with bad website performance, they will abandon your site and
search for another that has a shorter load time. If they leave your website on the first
page, this will be registered as a bounce. The more times this happens, the bigger
your bounce rate will be. Furthermore, the bounce rate is also an indicator of the
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content's quality because users can also leave a website if the content is not
satisfactory. So if you are dealing with a big bounce rate, your website's content can
be interpreted as substandard, which will eventually lead to lower Google ranks.
I'm sure that by now you understand how important it is to have a good search
engine ranking. Therefore, make sure to monitor the page load speed and work on
search engine optimization regularly. Regardless of who is writing the content for
you, your team colleague or an outsourced freelancer, take your time to develop and
communicate to them your plan on how and where would you like to position
yourself according to the keywords relevant to your business. Once you do that,
remember to measure the progress and watch out for any new trends that may
determine search engine rankings.
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2.5. How to make a web shop that
enables worldwide selling
For a long time now, eCommerce has been changing the way we run business, and it
is undeniably affecting every part of wholesale (business-to-business) and retail
(business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer). It all started back in the 1960's
when companies began to share documents over the Internet, not knowing that now,
in 2017, eCommerce would be expected to reach the value of $370 billion in online
retail alone. If we look back a couple of years, in 2011, U.S. online retail totaled $194
billion and reached $262 billion by 2013 - which is an increase of 13.4 percent. At the
same time, the business-to-business eCommerce market was worth $559 billion.
What do these numbers tell you?
The changes are happening both locally and globally, and the only question you
need to ask yourself is not "should I..", but rather “how can I use it to my advantage in
running my business?” The magnitude of changes caused by eCommerce has led to
the point where only the business companies that include eCommerce as a part of
their business will be successful, while others will have a lot of problems with running
their business.
With all that in mind, you should ask yourself three questions: “How can I make a web
shop accessible to the whole world?”, “How can I automate online billing?” and “How
can I make an automated system from a website that sells 24/7?” The first question is
also the title of this chapter, so in the following lines, I will go through all the relevant
examples, good practices, and tools which will help you set up your online business.
Especially if your current business is more of a traditional brick-and-mortar store, it is
time to start thinking about expanding your business online, reaching sustainable
competitive advantage and a growth that is unattainable in the standard, "offline"
fashion.
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What defines a good web shop?
In a lot of ways an online shop is similar to traditional stores – you are looking for
products that are scattered in one place, you are checking prices and information
about the product, looking at what is on sale and maybe buying something you didn't
plan. A successful trip to the store means that you have efficiently found everything
you need and bought these items as soon as possible. The moment you start
spending too much time searching for products is when you start to feel annoyed and
want to leave the store.
The same goes for online shops – you visit the website, look for products, read
information, buy and check out. With web shops the buyers' tolerance is at a far lower
level, which means that they are more likely to abandon a website if they cannot find
the product they are looking for, if product pages don't show enough information, or
if there is a problem with transaction and purchase. To make online shopping as
enjoyable as possible, you need to set up your web shop in a very clever way. Some
aspects you need to consider when building a web shop include:
Design of the web shop
The visual appearance of your web shop is the first point where the customer will start
to create an opinion about your business. The design has to be appealing, but also
create a strong image about your company. It should be in line with your brand and
make customers feel safe when buying on your website. One of the most common,
and the biggest obstacles preventing people from online buying is the fear of fraud
and the feeling that the transaction is not secure.
A good design leaves the impression that you care about your business and your
customers, but also that you put a lot of effort to make sure everything works as it
should. Just try to visualize a web shop with broken links, unaligned elements and a
color scheme that looks like an 80's disco party. Would you feel confident enough to
leave your personal information and credit card number on such website? Probably
not!
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Web shop navigation
Navigation through your website needs to be very logical and intuitive. If the users
are having trouble finding the desired products, they are more likely to buy less or
even cancel the transaction. Try to imagine a big store where you need to get a list of
items, but you spend a lot of time running from one aisle to another and can't figure
out where something is.
The main difference is that it takes a lot more for people to leave a classical store, so
they will probably spend some more time looking for the things they need or asking
the personnel about it. Meanwhile, in online shopping, the user can abandon a
website in just one click and go to a competitors' one simply because it has a better
structure.
The same thing goes with the web shop navigation. Choose a couple of main
categories that will be placed on the main navigation bar and keep the hierarchy as
shallow as possible. Once you have your web shop up and running, direct your
attention to user behavior on your website by using Google Analytics and Hotjar, two
great tools we'll explain later on (chapter 3.6. How to measure website success and
maximize the efficiency).
By tracking your users’ behavior on your website, you can pinpoint the places where
users usually abandon your website. Once you find them, spend some time
examining the possible reasons why the customers are leaving and what can you do
to prevent it. Most of the time, the problem lies in the user interface – customers
can't find the next step, the button for finishing the purchase, there is a broken link or
something simple as that.
Product pages
Product pages represent the part that requires the use of creativity as well as a
detailed study of legal obligations. Why creativity? Well, because this is the point
where you need to convince the customer to buy a product. Put multiple pictures of
the products, write useful information about them, embed a video, or create a small
sales pitch that will encourage buyers to make a purchase. If the customer is buying
the product for the first time, it is useful to give information about how to use the
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product (if the product isn't self-explanatory) and what benefits this purchase can
provide.
A great example of a proper product page can be found at Bellroy’s web shop.
Bellroy is a company specialized in making quality, leather, slim wallets. However,
they are not just selling wallets, they are sending a message with every part of their
product page that this product will make your life simpler. The product page shows
you how to use their wallets and explains all the benefits you will have from buying
this product. It allows the buyer to see the pictures of the wallet, select different
colors and watch the explanatory video.
The legal obligations that we mentioned refer to specific legal regulations related to a
particular industry. Although some sectors have more regulations than others, it is
always good to check what applies to your product. This part of the product page
conveys two missions – to present the information you must give to your customers
but to do it in a manner of promoting your product. On the other hand, you can use
this to distance yourself from any potential problems that are not under your control.
For example, when you are selling gadgets, you can specify that the guarantee is not
valid if the malfunction was caused by inappropriate use of the product.
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Transaction and purchase
When customers reach the shopping cart, they have already come a long way. All
that is left to do now is to select the payment method, insert delivery and billing
address and click “Buy.“ Even though it sounds simple, you wouldn't believe how
many transactions are canceled at this point. The most common underpinning
reasons for that include:
• Asking too much information from customers – if the buyers spend too much
time filling the forms, they might give up on the purchase. Request only the
information you truly need
• Payment methods – what payment methods do you offer? Some web shops offer
a lot of options including PayPal, credit cards or checks, Whenever people are
paying for something; they want to feel secure. That is why you need to enable a
variety of payment gateways so customers can opt for the method they prefer
and trust the most.
• Problems with shipping – there are two possible problems with shipment. Either
the customers think that the shipping cost is too high, or the shipping is not
available in their area. To avoid this problem, it is best to provide detailed
shipment information earlier in the process. Although it may not make a
difference if the shipping is too expensive or unavailable, it will at least make your
customer appreciate you more.
After-purchase services
After-purchase services are an excellent way to build an ongoing relationship with

your customers. Right after the customer purchases a product, send them an email
with the bill, contact numbers, information about the delivery and other information
you think that is necessary. Once you are sure that your customer has received his
product and used it (at least two weeks after purchase, but no longer than a month),
send them another email to check on their satisfaction with the overall purchase. You
can ask about their experience with the product, share some tips for better usage of
the product and you can even use this opportunity to improve sales – e.g. if you have
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some new products that your customer may find interesting, attach the
corresponding links in the email. Just don't make it gaudy, as people don't like that.
How to set up a high-quality, customized web shop for your

business
Your web shop should be as customizable as possible. If you're running an online

store with many products, you need to know how to customize as many parts of the
web shop as you can. Otherwise, you'll just have to pay your web developer to make
even the simplest changes for you, which is not very profitable in the long run.
That is why I would like to introduce you to WooCommerce - the most customizable
eCommerce platform designed for small companies. WooCommerce runs on
WordPress and it already has more than 28 million downloads, which makes it the
system that stands behind 1/3 of all online stores.
WooCommerce is a mobile-friendly platform that will help you sell anything

worldwide or within a country. This platform also gives you the ability to scale up as
your business grows while keeping your data independent and completely under
your control. WooCommerce also provides a safe experience, not just for you, but for
your customers, and includes professional customer service that will help you resolve
any problem. You can get WooCommerce with over 300 free and paid extensions
depending on the scope of your business.
To learn more about WooCommerce, visit their website at https://woocommerce.com/.
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2.6. How to automate online billing and
secure it at the same time
The beauty of eCommerce is the simplicity that it brings to the customers. It allows
them to select a product that they like, find more information about it online than
they could ever get in a traditional store, pay for the product, receive all
documentation (bill, user manual, guarantee list, etc.) on their email, and have
everything delivered to their doorstep.
Even though web shops are a very practical way of shopping, the process of building,
optimizing and running a website shop is a difficult thing to do. Since we already
covered how to build a web shop in the last chapter, in this chapter, we will talk about
automating billing, while in the next one, as the final step of the process we'll focus on
automating the whole 24/7 sales process.
When we talk about online shopping, the first term you need to familiarize yourself
with is the payment gateway. Payment gateway is a merchant service that authorizes
credit cards or direct payments for web shops, online retailers, and traditional stores
while keeping it secure at the same time. From the end customer's perspective, the
most important thing is the security of the payment method.
Online payment and sharing your credit card information requires a lot of trust, so
you have to make sure that your web shop looks trustworthy. Payment gateways are a
very secure software by default, but if your web shop looks suspicious due to some
unwanted bugs, it might be enough to drive the buyer away. The second thing that is
important to the buyers is the payment method. Over 50% of online shoppers are
willing to cancel the transaction if their preferred payment method isn't available.
Therefore, when building your web shop, choose the option that allows you to
implement a variety of payment methods.
From the business owner's perspective, more things need to be considered. The first
one is the compatibility of payment gateway and your platform – if you're using
WordPress, make sure that its website supports payment gateway. Another important
thing you need to look out for are the transaction fees which can either be charged
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as monthly fees, fixed fees per transaction or fees based on the transaction
percentage. To check how different types of fees work, visit PaymentBrain where you
can compare merchant accounts, payment gateways and card machines to find the
most suitable one for your business.
Installing a payment provider on your web shop requires signing a contract. While
some payment providers will ask you to sign a contract that lasts for two years, others
will offer monthly contracts. The issue with long contracts is the complicated process
of cancellation in case you are not satisfied with the service. Although shorter
contracts may be more flexible in that sense, they probably won't get you as good of
a deal. Before signing anything, make sure you understand the contract and
compare the advantages and disadvantages.
A good payment gateway should have a well-deserved reputation because it will

affect your customers the most. Additionally, it should come with a multi-currency
support, which will also come in handy if you plan to expand your business across
other countries and it should allow you to sell physical products and services (some
of them are intended only for products). When picking the best payment gateway for
your business, pay attention to the amount of information it requests the users to fill
up. Again, if there are a lot of redundant fields, it could drive your customers away
and lead to transaction cancellation.
To assist you out in choosing the best payment gateway, I have compiled a list of
payment gateways that are in my opinion most suitable for small business owners:
1. PayPal
PayPal is probably the most famous system for online payments that currently has
over 165 million users. Although you may insert it as a single payment solution on
your website, many companies use it as an additional gateway to other possible
options. PayPal is an excellent choice for people who don't want to use their credit or
debit cards for online transactions, and it saves a lot of time in the transaction process
as well.
PayPal does not demand that you sign a contract, but you do have to comply with
their terms and agreements. It synchronizes with all platforms, so no additional
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integration is needed because PayPal redirects the users to its own site to finish the
transaction (without leaving your website).
The standard fees are 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction and 3.9% + fixed fee for
international transaction.
2. Braintree
Braintree is an all-in-one solution that allows you to sell your products and services
both on PCs and mobile devices. It accepts credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay,
Android Pay and even Bitcoin. Some of the popular platforms that support it include
BigCommerce, Magento, Spree Commerce, WooCommerce and more. The best
thing about Braintree is that the service does not demand a contract and it saves your
user data for free.
Braintree will also allow you to get paid quickly because the money transfer happens
within two days from the transaction settlement. The standard fee for small business
owners is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, and for larger companies, the pricing
methods are specially tailored. Another great thing about Braintree is that it will start
charging fees only after you reach $50,000 of profit, which makes it a perfect solution
if you want to try the service and make sure it suits you before you commit.
To find more details about Braintree, visit their website at

https://www.braintreepayments.com/
3. Stripe
Stripe is known as a software platform that focuses on developers and provides you
with a full eCommerce toolkit needed to scale your online business. Stripe supports a
huge variety of payment methods – it accepts all major debit and credit cards, more
than 135 currencies, Bitcoins, Alipay, ACH Debits and WeChat Pay.
Just like Braintree, Stripe doesn't require you to sign a contract, but you must agree
to their Terms of Service & Privacy policy.
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After the first $1 million profit, Stripe will charge you a 2.9% + $0.30 fee per
transaction and $15 chargeback fee.
You can find more information at https://stripe.com/
There are many more payment gateways options and it is up to you to choose the
one you find most suitable for your business. The reason why I recommended PayPal,
Stripe and Braintree is because of their flexibility (no contracts), reasonable fees with
a grace period, a very high security level and large client base that gives them
credibility.
The best way to arrange payment on your website would be to choose Braintree or
Stripe as your primary payment gateway that allows your users to choose from a lot
of available payment methods and set up PayPal as a backup payment method for
users who are used to it or hesitate to leave credit card information on your website.
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2.7. How to make an automated system
for a website that sells 24/7
The last step that separates you from a web shop that will help you to scale your
business through the roof is full automation of all processes. When you are operating
with a small number of buyers and purchases, it's not a problem to keep track of
everything and do things manually. However, as the number of buyers increases,
things will start to be more complex and you will not have enough time to monitor
the sales process and capture all information about your customers.
Automatization of your web shop should be developed at the beginning when there is
still a small number of transactions, so you can make sure everything works as it
should. Not having an automated web shop or a system that can operate properly
when the volume of sales is a risk that can involve losing customers and damaging
your company's brand.
One of the first steps for establishing web shop automatization is finding the right
payment gateway and enabling the automatization of all transaction. If you read the
last chapter and learned how to do that, then you are one step closer to an
automated system. In this chapter, I'll present you some additional tips on how to
automate the rest of processes in your website; from gathering data about your users
and sending automated responses to building your CRM to keep track of your
customers.
Website subscription pop-up
The opportunity to collect data from users even before they become your customers
is priceless because it gives you the ability to learn more about your potential
audience, improve their profile and facilitate pre-purchase activities. One of the
easiest but most effective solutions is to implement pop-up windows on your website
that invite users to leave their email addresses. Collecting email addresses will help
you to expand your newsletter subscribers and build an audience with whom you can
share information about your products and services.
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More often than not, pop-up windows are annoying little things that are always
popping and never offering anything to the customer. To make them bearable and
increase the number of positive responses, keep them as simple as possible (don't
ask for too much, an email address will be enough for the beginning) and give your
users some type of value as gratitude for their contribution. A value in exchange for
user information could be a coupon for the web shop, a time-limited discount offer,
contents such as eBooks and articles which are often not publicly displayed but can
interest the customer. To achieve the best results, you can always conduct the A/B
test and check what type of reward your users prefer. Still, mix it up from time to time
– a single coupon will only get you so far.
Automated responses
There are several types of automated responses that you can use to automate your
web shop. However, the two most important ones are the post-purchase reply and
the abandoned cart emails.
The post-purchase email should be sent as soon as the transaction is done. This email
usually contains invoice and/or confirmation of the order. Since a lot of users
(especially the ones who are still learning about online shopping) have a dose of
aversion towards online transactions, they would appreciate a post-purchase email
saying that everything went well. You can also use it to return users back to your
website, to give them additional information about your products and services, a link
to an article on your page or any other information that you think might interest
them.
Abandoned cart emails are a huge oversight and a shortcoming for anyone who is
not using them. The Baymard Institute conducted a research on 37 eCommerce
websites to learn more about the abandonment rate where they concluded that
between 60% - 80% of users tend to abandon their shopping at the point when they
reach the shopping cart. The best way to fight such a huge abandonment rate is to
implement abandoned cart emails that can reduce the abandonment rate up to 15%
if it’s done in the first 24 hours. This type of autoresponder is easy to set up – you can
even do it with MailChimp. Namely, abandoned cart emails work by sending the user
an email to remind them about the purchase they started on your website. If done
right, up to 15% of users will return to your website to continue with their purchase.
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
The payment gateway is a must have if you want to run an eCommerce website, and
pop-up windows and autoresponders are great tools for automating your web shop,
but the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the thing that will help you
bring your A-game! The main advantage of having CRM is the ability to collect
valuable information about your customers and leads so you can build a lasting
relationship with them. CRM will help you to understand who your customers are,
which allows you to personalize your approach, target your sales and conduct
marketing activities even better. CRM is also a cost-effective strategy that can be fully
automated to keep track of all your interactions with users, even when there is an
abundance of traffic.
There are plenty CRM solutions you can employ to automate your selling process, but
the one that I found as most reliable is Hubspot CRM software that you can get for
free. The best thing about Hubspot CRM is that it automatically tracks your every
interaction with the customers whether it happened on email, social media or even
on a call, and keeps the data in one place. The timeline of stored information will
enable you to keep track of your production plan, quotas, and supplies, but also the
sale process for an individual customer.
To learn more about Hubspot CRM visit their website page.
Intercom.io
Another great platform that can help you improve the user experience is Intercom.
Intercom provides various solutions for better communication with your users and
increasing sales, but it can also enhance your marketing activities and customer
support. Some solutions that Intercom provides include:
Live chat - a new channel of communication with your user and opens a direct
dialogue where you can help them to decide on purchasing your products and
services. Live chat can be embedded on your website, build into your product (if the
product is an application), it can be used on mobile devices and/or integrated with
Facebook and Twitter.
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Personalized onboarding software - helps you send targeted emails, in-app and push
messages needed for achieving an upsell. All targeted emails, push and in-app
messages can be automated, optimized with A/B testing and integrated with other
tools like Salesforce and Segment.
Customer support - provides excellent customer experience while maintaining a

personal touch. Intercom allows the users to find answers to simple questions on
their own, but when it comes to difficult issues, it will help you store all conversations
in one place. That way your team can act fast and take care of all customers' queries
in time.
With this chapter, we have concluded our section about building your website to
achieve online presence and creating a distribution and communication channel that
will help you run a scalable business on a global level. Before we move on to the next
section where you will learn more about expanding your business and managing
customer experience, I would like to draw your attention to one piece of advice –
always conduct your online business as a continuous A/B test.
In other words, it means that you need to analyze your work and implement
improvements all the time. Find a solution that works best and challenge it with other
solutions to keep exponentially progressing. The only constant thing about
technology is that it changes all the time, and consequently, so do your users. The
only way to cope with this notion is to have your eyes wide open and constantly
search for a better solution than the one you are using right now.
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03 Scale
The thing that differentiates the successful companies from the not-so-successful
ones is their ability to scale their business, to maintain the growth even under the
worst circumstances and keep pace with the customers and the competitors.
The market is constantly evolving and becoming more competitive, which is

something that will never change. Due to the expansion of eCommerce, online
services, and globalization even the smallest company from the other side of the
world could now be your direct competitor.
In 20 years of work, I have managed to keep the growth of Avalon and make it the
number one hosting provider in South-East Europe. The reason why my team
managed to do that, besides hard work and commitment, is the constant
implementation of new technologies and outsourcing. Our core business is providing
premium hosting services for small companies, and this is where we keep our focus.
On the one hand, we are regularly keeping track of new technologies and using
them to improve our core business. On the other hand, by employing freelancers
and outsourcing, we managed to provide professional service outside of our core
business and move to entirely new markets where we achieved the same remarkable
success.
This section of the book is called “Scale” because it will give you valuable information
and advice on how to expand your business, make it more efficient, keep the quality
of your services at the desired level and use outsourcing to scale your business to
enter new markets.
Some of the issues that we are going to address involve: attracting new customers to
your website, turning clients into raving fans, upgrading your customer support,
hiring freelancers for projects, measuring the success of your website and the
satisfaction of your customers, and finally, preparing your business for further scaling
on the global level.
Just like the previous ones in the book, all of the methods, techniques, and strategies
have been confirmed through our own experience and by the undeniable results
achieved through twenty years of hard work.

I hope that by the time you finish this last chapter, you will become even more
inspired and use this knowledge to improve your current business or as the
foundation for starting a new one.

3.1. How to attract visitors to your
website very fast
The first step of scaling your business is attracting new visitors to your website and in
order to do that, you need to master strategies, techniques, and tools of
communication to reach wider masses in a particular target segment. Some of them
are free, some are paid, but they are all oriented towards the same goal – to increase
sales and profitability of your company.
Generating sales is a long process, and it all starts with awareness. The first step
involves sharing information about your business and presenting your products or
services. The following step is building a community of your target customers which
represents a “fertile ground” for building long-term relationships that will eventually
lead to loyal customers.
In this chapter we are going to talk about advertising, public relations, social media,
cold emailing and growth hacking with the intention of increasing awareness of your
business, building community and generating new sales.
Advertising
Advertising represents a paid form of mass communication to your potential

customers with a goal of encouraging a behavior that will lead to the purchase of
your product or services. By sending carefully formulated messages, advertisements
are influencing your users' point of view either by enhancing the positive attitudes or
soothing and fixing the negative ones.
Nowadays, the best way to advertise your business is through social media, Google
AdWords, and media buying.
Advertising on social media platforms like Facebook gives you a variety of tools and a
full control of both input and output of your advertising strategy. With social media
advertising, you can measure everything - from users' impressions and engagement
to conversions and expenses. The goals of social media advertising are plentiful, and
they can include: increasing general awareness about your business, building your
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community by encouraging users to "like" your social media profiles or directing
them towards your products and services to stimulate sales growth.
However, the success of advertising on social media depends on your creativity to

express the benefits of your products to the potential customers – the more
compelling the ad, the more engagement you will receive. The best way to approach
advertising would be to get help from professionals (agencies or freelancers) who are
specialized in advertising on social media. Still, if you don't have enough budget to
hire a professional, you can find a lot of books and free content that will assist you in
creating your own ads and instruct you on some good practices in advertising.
If you're planning to do this in-house, I strongly suggest you assign a team member
to this matter. Namely, the trends in the advertising industry are changing rapidly,
and the tools are continually improving, which means that you could always use
some help to keep up with the new technologies and maintain the high effectiveness
of advertising.
Google AdWords gives you the opportunity to create display ads – multimedia ads
that will be displayed on a public website that has a built-in option for showing ads
and search ads that will be displayed on search engines. The difference between
these forms of advertising is that the display ads are good for building awareness and
remarketing, while the search ads serve as a great way to target users who are
looking for specific services.
In my opinion, social media would be more efficient for building brand awareness
due to the lack of control you have over display ads and the higher costs that they
imply. However, display ads are a great solution for remarketing; so, if you are
planning to use them, I suggest you use them for that purpose.
Remarketing is a method of repeating information about

your business to users who already came across your
business. For example, if the user visits your website once,
remarketing will help you deliver ads to this person as a
reminder about your services and products. The repetition
is the key to successful advertising. Still, bear in mind that
too much repetition can lead to negative consequences if
users start to get annoyed by your constant ads.
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Media buying
Media buying is a process of advertising your company through all media outlets,
including the internet, printed media, radio and television. After you create your ad
which can either be a banner, an article with some sponsored content, a jingle for
radio or video for TV commercial, you need to choose the media and the time slots
that your target users prefer. There are numerous ways for charging the publication
or broadcast of your ad, and it mainly depends on the particular media outlet. The
payment method can vary from the number of impression (if your ad is a banner on
the media portal), the number of broadcasted seconds (on radio or TV) to the
physical dimensions of your ad (if you are publishing it in magazines and
newspapers).
The advantages of advertising through media is that you can promote your company
to a wider mass with little effort. On the other hand, this type of advertising doesn't
give you much control over audience you are targeting, and it is also hard to track
conversions. If your product is very specific and targeting a defined niche market,
then media advertising is not something that I would suggest, unless you can find a
media outlet that is targeting the same niche as you are. Media buying works best for
products of widespread consumption, such as hygiene or household necessities. So if
your products are similar, use different media advertisements to boost awareness
about your business and offer.
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3.2. How to attract visitors to your
website in a long term
Public relations
Ironically, personal relations (PR) is another ‘non-personal’ way of communicating

with a wider audience. The big difference is that the activities of public relations are
not paid for. This is a free form of sending messages to your target audience who are,
in terms of public relations, not just your customers but different influential personas
(such as distributors, partners, stakeholders and the wider society) that can affect
your business.
The end goal of PR is not just to sell products, but to create a well-known brand and
an overall positive image of your company. By building a brand, you will create a
community of loyal customers who will support the growth of your company in the
long-term. If your company image is good, every time you launch a new product or
expand your services, customers will easily accept it because they know that you will
provide them with top-quality products and services.
Publicity which is able to create such benefits for your company can be achieved
through media, bloggers and influencers. Every time you have quality content you
wish to share (e.g. a new innovative product, service or technology), or you are
engaged in some socially responsible activities, use this news and share it with the
media, bloggers and influencers. If the content is exceptional and unique, there is a
chance that it will be shared and continually forwarded.
The benefits of public relations are:
• Support from independent persons and organizations who share information

about your business
• Cost effectiveness in reaching your target customers
• Increased credibility
• Building loyalty among the existing customers
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• Reducing customer resistance towards new products
According to cost-benefit analysis, the best way of delivering your messages to the
media would be to hire some professional help. Writing a press release is not a
problem, and you can learn it just by watching a few tutorials online. However,
presenting your content in a form that will be interesting to media and establishing
contacts with the right people from the media can be problematic.
To summarize, whenever possible, use public relations every time you have
something new and unique to share - like the launch of a new product or a service,
new interesting technology or if you’re engaging in socially responsible activities.
Social media presence
Regardless of whether you are present on social media with your company profile or
not, on some occasions, you will surely be the subject of discussion. The only way you
can affect this is by tracking it and putting it under control with responses. If you
create a profile on a social media platform, there is a fair chance that users will
include you in their discussions. That way you can monitor it and either provide
support if you are receiving positive comments, or reduce the impact of possible
negative comments.
Your social media profile is a place where you can share information about your
company, create content that shows your experience or useful information about
your offer, and work towards building a closely connected community with your
customers.
Some of the benefits of having a social media profile for your business are:
• Learning what goes well with your customers – publishing posts on your social
media is like a test platform for your business. Users can interact and engage with
your posts and give you an insight into their individual opinions.
• Reaching new audience – with advertising or organic growth, you are notified
when people are liking, commenting and sharing your content, so you can
increase your business awareness. A lot of social media platforms such as
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Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram give you tools to construct a very precise
advertising strategy towards your target customers.
• Driving traffic to your website or web shop – by publishing links to your website
on social media you can drive your users directly to the product pages and
encourage them to buy something. This is also a good way to share your blog
posts and content that will educate customers, not only persuade them to buy
something
• Boosting your search engine ranking – if links to your website are being
constantly shared on social media, it will indicate the quality of your content. The
more backlinks your website has, the more search engines will lift it to a higher
rank
• Build relationship with customers – social media platforms are an excellent way
for users to get to know you because they allow you to be more informal than
other platforms. Share information about your business, tell your story to the
audience, and give them an opportunity to connect with and relate to your brand.
The more you do that, the stronger your brand will become and the customers’
loyalty will increase.
• Opening a new channel for communication – direct messages on social media

platforms are a great way to communicate with your customers. A lot of time
customers will send you direct messages to get more information about your
products and services. Therefore, make sure your response time is very short and
that your feedback is valuable.
If your social media profile is still new and you don't have a lot of followers, a good
way to increase them is by connecting with influencers. If you are wondering how,
Andrew Davis, the author of “Brandscaping”, suggested a method called “Social
Media 4-1-1”. His method implies that for every six posts on your social media, you
should include: 4 pieces of content from the influencer you wish to connect with, 1
original content from your blog post or website and 1 post related to your products
and services. This method will undoubtedly catch the influencer’s attention and allow
you to establish a connection more easily.
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Cold emailing
Cold email is a message sent to a potential customer with whom you still haven’t
established a relationship. If done right, cold emailing can be very effective because it
is a form of private communication that sends out a very personal and direct
impression, and it is cheap as well. This method works really well on
businesses-to-business, but it has also been done in the business-to-end-customer
market. Still, B2C very rarely uses cold emailing because the message is inevitably
less personal or it can be easily mistaken for spam, and therefore elicit a much lower
response rate.
The process of cold emailing consists of two parts: building the email database and
sending emails.
Building your database can be done in a lot of different ways. Once you start, you will
probably come across some services that sell email databases. The problem with
buying a list is that you are probably buying a stale or dated list and where the
bounce rate will be very high. So my advice is simple – don't buy email databases.
There are many other options. Even outsourcing this is a far better choice of spending
money than buying a list.
Now, the standard way of building a database would be to create a list of companies
you would like to contact and look for emails on their website, LinkedIn or Twitter. To
boost your response rates, always contact the person who is relevant to your
business. For example if you're selling analytics software for marketing, then the right
person to contact is a Marketing Director of the company or someone else from that
department at least. For that purpose, LinkedIn can, once again, be useful. Not only
to find the right person within the company but to get their emails as well. If you want
to use LinkedIn to find the right person, just visit company LinkedIn profiles.
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In the right corner you will see a link “See all xy employees on LinkedIn”. Basically,
every time somebody adds a place of work to their profile, it will be shown on the
company page under employees. Once you click on the link, a new window will
pop-up where you can see a list of all employees and their functions in the company.
With Coca-Cola you would need to do a lot of searching to find the right person,
since this is a huge company with a lot of employees. But, things become easier when
you are targeting small or medium size businesses.
To add a little more technology and automatization in this process, use tools such as
Salesloft, ProspectAce and SellHack to get contact details of the people you would
like to target. All these tools use LinkedIn to generate leads. You simply install the
browser extension which will allow you to add the desired person on the list, and all
their information will show up in a downloadable format (csv file).
For the second part – sending emails, the first step would be to write an appealing
email that will convince the contacted person to respond. The key of writing a good
email is a touch of personalization! In other words, always put the interest of the
contacted person in first place. Make a personalized statement about their interests
and provide them with a reason why you are contacting them. If you're offering a
service or a product, give them an example of the benefits that they will get from
using it. Another important notion is to present yourself in a manner that will show
them how you are the expert in the business you run and why you are important.
However, don't make an essay out of it. It would be enough just to write a short
description in approximately 2-3 sentences.
Another key to writing good emails is simplicity – keep everything short and simple.
The short emails are more likely to be read and they usually get a much higher
response rate. Write everything naturally and explain things as if you are explaining
them to a person over a cup of coffee.
Before finishing off your email, express your gratitude for them reading your email
and giving you the opportunity to present yourself. Saying thank you at the end
makes a difference and it will surely increase your response rate.
Even though I'm against using pre-designed templates for writing cold emails,
because, as I said before, personalization is the key and templates are diminishing
the personalization, I will show you a couple of guidelines to write a good email. The
best way for you would be not to strictly follow these guidelines, but use them as
inspiration to create your own style of writing. In cold emailing there is no
one-size-fits-all solution; you need to find out what goes best with your target
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customers and apply it in writing. It all depends on the industry you are working in,
the country and the cultural customs of the people who are receiving your emails.
Some of the things that you should do when writing a cold email:
• State the reason why you are contacting the person
• Highlight the problem that a person faces in business
• Give them a solution that your services and products offer
• Introduce yourself and say why you are important and expert in providing
solutions at this exact problem
• Use call for action – invite them to reply for more info, give them a link where
they can find more info etc.
• Thank them for taking the time to read your email
Once you double check the grammar and spelling, and you are happy with the email,
it's time to send it. Be prepared that a lot of people probably won’t respond, not
because they are not interested, but because they didn't have time to answer. My last
advice regarding this subject would be to send a follow-up email every couple of days
(preferably once a week). If the person doesn't respond after 2-3 follow ups, it either
means that their filter signed your email as spam, or they are just not interested
enough. Either way, give it a rest, because forcing out something that just isn't going
to happen can deliver more damage than good results.
Growth hacking
In the past few years, growth hacking has become a very popular term, yet many
people still don't know what it is. It all started with startups (hence the popularity)
where the definitions of scalability, distortion and innovation are engraved in stone,
since startups usually don't start with lot of money. Even though they can get an
investment, they still need to make sure not to spent it all too fast. Therefore, growth
hacking has become a great solution – focusing time and energy into innovative and
effective ways to attract a large number of users without the unnecessary expenses.
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The lack of marketing budget drives startups to avoid traditional marketing
techniques and turn to “out-of-the-box” solutions. As Sean Ellis, the Founder of
Qualaroo says: “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.”
Growth hacking is not reserved only for startups
If you already have an established business, you should definitely start using growth
hacking to further increase the number of customers. The first and foremost step you
take to start growth hacking is to embrace experimentation, data driven decisions,
innovative ideas and measurable communication channels, because billboards, TV
ads and flyers are not enough for growth hackers. Since growth hacking is all about
rapid experimentation and innovation, let's start with some case studies from which
you can learn and possibly use them to trigger your creativity.
Dropbox example
Dropbox is one of the growth hacking examples that is actually very simple but has
led to impressive results. The initial marketing strategy for Dropbox was investing in
digital ads, but, the problem with digital ads is that they are quite expensive. Because
of that, Dropbox designed a program that turns the users into brand ambassadors
who are recommending Dropbox to friends, family and coworkers. Namely, for every
new Dropbox client, the user who recommended it and their friend both get 250MB
of bonus disk space. The overall process was also very simple and attainable, which is
another reason why this strategy went great.
Hubspot example
Hubspot is a company that I like to recommend because of their great software. Not
only do they have an excellent product, but they are also a great example of growth
hacking. While Dropbox used a simple “trick” to increase the number of users,
Hubspot has developed a long-term strategy that focuses on increasing both the
leads and the conversion rate by building credibility. The Hubspot team was
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concentrated on two things – building quality software and creating content that will
help their target users. Some of the “tricks” that helped Hubspot to achieve their
goals were creating relevant content in the form of blog posts, offering free tools, and
holding webinars for marketing and sales professionals.
The path chosen by the Hubspot is time consuming and requires a lot of devotion and
hard work. Nevertheless, the results are evident. In 2006 Hubspot has started with 3
customers and in 2015 they reached $53.1 million revenue with the growth of 56% in
comparison to 2014.
To make more sense out of this examples, let me set out the mechanics of growth
hacking and a thing called growth hacking funnel which is based on AARRR consisting
of:
• Acquisition – gaining maximum awareness in a short period of time
• Activation – onboarding users in an easy way
• Retention – value that will turn your new users into returning ones
• Referral – encouraging word-of-mouth
• Revenue – managing cash flow and revenue
This model can also represent a list of questions you can ask yourself when
experimenting with new techniques.
There are a lot more instances of successful growth hacking, and I'm sure that many
new good examples are yet to come due to its rising popularity. If you want to learn
more about growth hacking, I would recommend you “The Definitive Guide to
Growth Hacking“ by Neil Patel & Bronson Taylor which is available for free at : 
https://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-hacking/. This guide
consists of 10 chapters that really cover the details. It is also very easy to read even for
someone unfamiliar with the concept. So, take your time and go through it – I'm sure
it will pay off.
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3.3. How to turn your visitors into regular
clients and devoted fans
At this point, you’ve already come a long way, from developing your product and
business model and pricing, to building a great website with good content and
structure, your PR, cold mailing and more. Assume that these activities have finally
kicked in and the users are starting to visit your website. The sales are increasing, you
are feeling good about all the progress you made and ready to pop a champagne
bottle. As you should! Always remember to celebrate and appreciate every small
victory. Create a list of milestones that are within reasonable expectations but still big
enough to make it count, and enjoy every time you cross one out.
Milestones are great way to motivate your team, which are proof of actual progress
and really good guidance on your way to success. They are also the beginning of the
next step because with every milestone closed, you are ready to conquer another
one. At this point, your next challenge is turning your users into ‘raving fans’. In other
words, raving fans are the customers who are so excited about your products and
services that they can't stop talking about you. Raving fan is a term popularized by
Ken Blanchard in his book “Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer
Service”. In this book you can learn simple, yet brilliant tips on how to set up your
customer service and bring your relationship with the customers to a whole new
level, so make sure to set aside some time to read the book.
In this chapter we'll talk more about the raving fans phenomenon, onboarding and
how to improve your relationship with the customers. Why is this so important? Well,
if you want to increase the profitability of your business, there are only two ways and
one does not (and should not) exclude the other. The first one is to increase the
transaction of your actual customers which basically means to encourage your
current customers to buy more or more often. This is also an easier and a cheaper
option for boosting your profits. The other way is to attract new customers as a source
of additional revenues. Ultimately, the best approach would be to create a loop of
attracting new customers and gradually making them raving fans who will buy more
and promote your brand to other people and the circle continues.
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Raving fans, onboarding, relationship with customers, quality customer service; these
are all a part of your new milestone, so let's talk more about every one of them and
discuss how they can fit the big picture and make your business more profitable.
Raving fans
Before jumping into the secrets of gaining raving fans, we need to go through the
most critical ‘points of interaction’ with your customers. It doesn't matter what is the
core of your business – selling products, providing services, doing something
tangible or intangible for end customer; there is always a certain amount of service
expected at the points of interaction with your customers. Namely, the points of
interaction are all situations where you are in contact with your customers, whether it
implies your website, social media activities, emails, telephone calls, live chats, or any
other outlet through which the customers are trying to find information about your
business. Even something simple as a customer who is visiting your website to find out
your address should be viewed as a service to your customer. How did his path to the
wanted information look? Did he find it easy or did he lose some time looking for it?
Your website, social media profiles, employees who are in direct contact with
customers - they are all a point of interaction that can impact on your brand, which is
why you must take them seriously. No matter the image you are trying to create in
the mind of your customers (professional, trustworthy, friendly, funny, informal,
accessible, etc.), every point of interaction needs to be consistent in projecting the
same message to your customers. If you manage to do so, you will not only enhance
your brand and company image, but you will also make a first step in the process of
transforming your customers into raving fans.
Still, before we proceed with the remaining steps of the aforementioned process, let's
talk about two extreme types of customers that you can have – haters and raving
fans.
Haters turn up because of the bad customer service and impetuous dealing with
negative feedback from your community. One of the most common example of
haters are the people who have experienced a poor service and decided to express
their dissatisfaction and the company made an ill-judged decision on how to handle
the problem. At that point, the worst reaction that a company can have is to not deal
with the issue at all or start an argument with the displeased customer.
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Remember, customers are always right, and an agitated customer will just look for
more reasons to push and share their negative behavior.
For example, imagine that you are running a pizza place. It doesn't matter how good
you normally are, from time to time you will experience a blooper that could possibly
create a bad raving fan. Let’s say that a member of your staff has had a bad day and
unintentionally messes up an order. Coincidentally, the ordering customer may have
also had a bad day which only means that the problem could easily escalate. If your
customer approached you and expressed his dissatisfaction (online or offline) don't
argue with him and don't ignore him. Ignoring and arguing will only serve as a
motivation to share bad recommendations about you. Instead of that, thank the
customer for his constructive critique, say that you will use it to improve your service,
politely ask him to come again and assure him that he won't have bad experience
again and so on. If he is expressing his displeasure in the restaurant, offer him a free
dessert or let that “bad pizza” be on the house. This way you can stop the creation of
bad raving fan and minimize the negative influence of that person.
On the other hand, raving fans are the ones that are worth pursuing. Raving fans are
so happy and satisfied with your service that they can't stop talking about you. They
will encourage their friends, family and acquaintances to visit you and try out your
services. They will gladly share information about their positive experience with your
company through word-of-mouth and on the Internet as well. The positive impact of
good raving fans will be visible through many indicators - increased sale profits,
overall profitability, brand awareness, your social media and website popularity, etc.
How to create a good raving fan
1. Create a strong company image
This is the thing we have discussed before. You need to develop a very clear image of
your company and instill it in all your employees and communication channels. To
help you with that, put it all on paper. Write down your vision - your idea. Describe it
in as much detail as you can and contemplate how to apply it in every aspect of your
business. In addition, invite your team members to help you with the process. Not
only will you have better results, but this will also help them to truly understand what
you are trying to achieve.
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Moreover, a systematic list of instructions and description of your image will also help
new employees to quickly adapt and properly communicate with the customers.
2. Go the extra mile
Appreciate your customers, because they have cost you a lot of time and money to
gain. Don't settle for mediocrity, because that doesn't create the “wow” effect. Go the
extra mile with every individual customer, give them more than they expect and show
them your appreciation. Surprise them with additional value and they will share their
satisfaction with friends and family, who may also eventually become your new
customers.
3. Reward your customers
As I mentioned before, the easiest and the cheapest method of increasing your
profits is to sell more to your existing customers. The best way to do that is to reward
your customers with loyalty programs. Collect information about your customers and
provide them with discounts and special offers. Make them feel special and show
them you heartily appreciate the fact that they are always returning to your business.
If you're running a business-to-business service, use special occasions such as

Christmas parties and anniversaries to send your clients greeting cards and gifts. This
will show them that you value your relationship and consider them important.
4. Collect feedback and learn from it
The best way to run a successful business is to constantly improve your service by
listening to your fans. Give them an opportunity to express their opinion through
online surveys, comments on social media, contact forms on your website, in
personal communication, etc.
Use information that they give you and always find a way to implement it in your
business. Your customers can highlight the details that you might disregarded but
that can change the overall success of the business. The bottom line is - customers
really appreciate the opportunity to give feedback and they are especially satisfied
when they see that you have respected and applied their suggestions.
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Now that we listed some tips on how to turn your customers into raving fans, I
recommend you arrange a meeting with your team and brainstorm about all the
ways you can improve your relationship with your customers.
For even more ideas and information, don't forget to read the previously mentioned
Ken Blanchard's book - Raving Fans! -
https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Fans-Revolutionary-Approach-Customer/dp/0739309
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Onboarding
While the raving fans policy refers to existing and new customers, onboarding is
primarily related to new users and the process of turning them into paying
customers. Although this is more related to services and intangible products such as
software, the whole idea can be used to improve your approach to customers no
matter the nature of your business.
The whole process of onboarding consists of two important stages: (1) the moment
when users come in contact with your product or service and (2) the moment when
your product or service solves their problem. Successful onboarding is achieved
when you can get users from the first to the second stage in a very short period and
with spending the least amount of resources, while keeping conversion rate at an
acceptable level.
The first step happens when your potential customers have a problem and are trying
to find a solution. To present your product or service successfully to them, you need
to be well aware of problems that your business solves and provide any interested
user with very simple explanation of the benefits that your product or service can
provide. You can always use a short video, image, infographic or any other media you
find efficient and direct. For example, Dropbox handles this very well – within five
images accompanied by no more than two sentences, they give you a very clear
image of what can you expect from their service.
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Source: https://www.dropbox.com/
Once the users recognize you as a potential answer to their problem, they will want
to start a trial, sign up and get more information. The process of signing up needs to
be very short and simple. Namely, many websites make the mistake of asking for too
much information at the beginning. Think about it - do you really need information
about credit card, date of birth, street address and similar right from the start? If there
are more companies that provide a similar solution to yours, your complicated and
very detailed sign-up forms will drive your potential customers away to the
competitors. Instead of asking too much information at the beginning, make a
process where customers will update more information about them along the way. To
make things even easier for your customers, you can always let them sign in with
their Facebook or Gmail account. This will help you gain more information about
users and make the signing-up process to your service fast and effortless.
The second step of the onboarding process is the moment when your product or
services gives your users the value that they expect. To make this happen you need to
fully understand precisely what the customers wish to obtain with your product or
service, and make it accessible to them. As you already know, a lot of companies offer
free trials for 30 or 60 days, and you might wonder why should one wait so long to
transform the new users into paying customers. Solving your customer’s problem is
not a matter of overall time they spent using your product but the time they started to
use your product to the moment they reached their initial expectation.
To make this shift happen as soon as possible, break things down and set clear
expectations. That is to say, you need to make every step of the process as simple as it
gets while giving your users information about what else they need to do to reach
their goal. An example of good practice is to include a skip button, so the users can
skip the steps they don't find relevant at certain point and to highlight the parts that
are usually very useful to them.
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Finally, to perfect your onboarding process, always bear in mind the importance of
building a relationship with your customers. After their first use or after reaching a
certain milestone, send them an email or a direct message and give them a virtual
‘high five’ to congratulate them on using your products. Express your appreciation
and share some useful tips on how they can increase the effectiveness of the product
or service that they’re using. This is also a good time to get some feedback from your
new users.
Remember, the key to a successful onboarding process is gaining experience and

value. So, all the rules about the company’s image, brand and points of interaction
we have covered in the ‘raving fans’ section can (and should) be applied in the
process. Now, with all this new information in mind, take another look at your
onboarding process. Think about how you can make it more simple and efficient
while keeping an eye on the value you provide to your potential customers.
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3.4. How to achieve quality online
customer service
Customer service is mainly focused on resolving problems that customers might have
with a certain product or a service. Although the majority of customer service queries
occur when a customer experiences a problem, this is not the only way you can
utilize the service to improve your business. Customer service can create a strong
support to your sales department before, during and after the purchase, regardless
of any potential problems that your customer might face.
During the process in which the customers are first getting to know your products,
show their interest, turn interest into desire and finally purchase the product, there is
a lot of room where your customer support can kick in and help your customers
make a decision. Always give them the feeling that you are available and ready to
answer all of their questions no matter what the reason might be.
It is worth mentioning that a lot of situations where customer service’s intervention is

required can be predicted and therefore resolved even before the problem occurs.
Because of that, keep track of all customer feedback and make the needed
preliminary action to avoid the problems in time. In addition, to help you improve
your customer service, here are some key elements you need to consider.
1. Don't promise something you can't deliver
Many of you might think that this is something that we don't need to highlight, but
unfortunately, we do. Usually the reason why people promise something they can't
deliver is not because they have bad intentions, but because they don't know how to
say “no”. The common misconception is that the customers will get offended and that
they will stop doing business with you if you say no to them. However, this is far from
true.
Honesty is a virtue, and your customer will appreciate it more if you openly say
everything as it is. If something can't be done, or it can't be done properly - say it.
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The situation where you had promised something but don't deliver is far worse than a
situation when you spoke honestly and explained what can or can't be done.
2. Create an FAQ page
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) is an easy option for resolving or avoiding

problems, yet very few companies use it. Simply monitor all your customers’ queries
and compare them. Since it is most likely that a lot of these queries will overlap,
pinpoint those issues and answer them in a form of an FAQ. Also, note that the
content of an FAQ doesn't need to include only the existing problems. You can also
predict some questions that the customers may have and include them in the FAQ as
well. Once you do that, put everything on your website and make it available for
download or a review.
3. Include frequently asked questions in your content
If you have spotted a pattern of users that are constantly asking questions about
some feature of your product or details about the service, then you clearly didn't
explain your product or services properly. Use the feedback you get from customer
support and use it to improve your existing content and product pages on your web
shop. Include this information in your explanatory video, infographics and any other
materials that are used to describe your products and services.
4. Make yourself available
Give your customer an opportunity to contact you and ask you whatever they need.
Put your email address on your website and make it visible, set up a contact form,
install live chat or give your customers a phone number on which they can reach you
or your customer support service.
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Always leave an impression that all questions are welcome and once the customer
contacts you, use this opportunity to ask them for feedback on your service.
5. Personalize your approach
Users will try to contact you through many different channels – email, contact forms,
telephone, live chat, social media, or any other available platform. Once they do, you
need to personalize the communication if you want to start strengthening the
relationship. Some of the personalization methods are using the customer’s full name
when you are addressing them in the responding message or referring to their
previous actions with your company (e.g. ask about the satisfaction with the
previously bought product).
Customer service can be really helpful for your business, but it can also cause a lot of
damage if it is not done professionally. Therefore, take your time to train employees
who are directly dealing with customer support. All of this is inevitably intertwined
with the profitability of new and existing customers. If you remember, the existing
customers generate more profitability and it is always easier to sell more to them
than to gain new customers. So with a properly arranged customer service, not only
will you attract new customers, but you will also increase the profitability and sales
through the existing customers, assure them in being loyal customers or even “good
raving fans”.
To learn more about how to onboard users with treasure trove of patterns, tricks, and
techniques for acquiring and retaining more users, I recommend a Samuel Hulick’s
book “The Elements of User Onboarding” - https://www.useronboard.com/training/.
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3.5. How to find freelancers for almost
any job or activity
If you you're not fully acquainted with term freelancer and freelancing, let me set it
out for you – freelancers are people who are self-employed and not committed to a
particular employer or a company. They are working for multiple clients at the same
time, thus, they are not limited with working hours or by an office place. Their work is
flexible and tailored according to the clients’ needs. Freelancers are experts in their
field and they are usually working in nearly every type of service a company could
need. Some of the freelance services that are most commonly used are social media
marketing, copywriting and writing (articles, blog posts), design, programming,
bookkeeping, consulting services and many more.
To understand freelancing even more, you need to understand what drives people to
become freelancers. Some of the reasons are:
• Flexibility
People who freelance can set their own working hours and place of work. If you ever
worked with independent contractors, you can compare that with freelancing. The
client is the one that sets deadlines and it is up to freelancers to decide how and
when they are going to do the job within the set deadlines.
• Income
Freelancers work on multiple projects, which means they have the opportunity to
earn more money. Depending on their skills and time invested on the projects,
freelancers can have a really good control over how much money they earn each
month. More than 70% of freelancers said they make the same or even more money
than if they were working for a company.
• Freedom
Not only can the freelancers arrange their working hours and office place, but also,
good freelancers have the opportunity to choose the projects they would like to work
on. This is the freedom that you don't have when employed by somebody else, where
it is easy to get stuck working on a project that doesn't quite fit your interests or your
set of skills.
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• Experience
Freelancers are usually very experienced individuals who are professionals in certain
fields of work. There are a lot of freelancers out there who were working in other
companies and at some point decided to go on their own because of reasons listed
above. With a good mechanism of rating and providing feedback (which freelance
sites usually have), it is not hard to check the previous experience of freelancers
before you decide to hire them.
How freelancers can help your small business
There are two main reasons why small businesses can benefit from using freelancers
and those reasons are reducing costs and attracting different talents. For the same
reasons, it any type of company should use freelancers, regardless of their current
size or profit. In each phase of business growth there will come a time where you
could use people with particular skill sets, but you will not be able to afford hiring a
full-time employee just for that purpose. This gap is the perfect opportunity to use
freelancers.
Reducing costs is one of the reasons why small business hire freelancers to work on
projects. If you hire somebody as your full-time employee, there are always some
benefits and insurances you will need to pay. You also must provide him with a
working place, necessary equipment for work and you need to pay them even when
their service is not needed. When working with freelancers, you can hire them
exactly when you need help and you don't need to have additional expenses. The
only thing you are paying for is the work itself.
Attracting different talents is another reason to hire freelancers for the projects.
Full-time employees don't have the same professional growth potential as
freelancers do. Freelancers are working on more than one projects and for different
clients. This gives them an opportunity to continuously improve their skills in different
working environments, so by hiring a freelancer for the project, you are hiring a
professional that is ready to work and fully dedicated to deliver the results.
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How to find freelancers?
A best way to find quality freelancers is through freelance portals. Even though there
are many of them available on the market, I'm going to select three best freelance
portals in my opinion and also explain how to decide who to hire. The main reason
why I would like to highlight the following freelance sites is because they already have
a built-in system that filters out the quality freelancers, which will give you a head
start if you didn't hire freelancers before. As I can see, a lot of Internet users share my
opinion, and agree that the best sites to find freelancers are:
1. Upwork
Upwork is by far the biggest freelance site available today. It has a base of over 9
million freelancers who offer various types of services with different approaches to
projects (long and short term, hourly or per project work). Regardless of your budget
and type of function you want to outsource, you can definitely find something that
suits you on Upwork.
2. Toptal
Toptal is not so large as Upwork but it is one of the most well-known sites to hire
freelancers. The main advantage of using Toptal is that you can be sure that
freelancers who are available at Toptal are excellent, because only 3% of all
applicants are accepted into Toptal's network. Unfortunately, Toptal accepts only
designers and developers, so it doesn't offer the variety that Upwork provides, but
freelancers who get accepted at Toptal are considered as superior because they have
passed strict evaluation exam for their skills, English language proficiency and
technical knowledge. Toptal also has no low-bid contests, so don't expect to get
top-notch freelancers at a bargain.
3. Freelancer
One of the biggest advantages of using the Freelancer portal is its ability to host a
contest between freelancers. As an employer, you can start a project and set up a
money prize and let freelancers bid on the project by showing their talent and skills.
This is especially helpful if you don't have much experience with hiring freelancers
because it makes the decision process much easier.
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Choosing the right freelancer site to find freelancers is only the first step of finding
the right person for your project. The second step is to decide which particular
freelancer to hire among the many available ones on the market. To help you make a
good selection here are some tips you should follow:
1. Write a good project brief
When starting a project, the most important thing you need to do is to write a good
project brief. This will represent the starting point of every project and it will help
anybody who is working on it to fully understand what needs to be done. A lot of
times there is a misunderstanding between the freelancers and employers just
because the employer failed to deliver a good brief in the beginning.
2. Arrange Skype or telephone meeting
It is always advisable to check how you get along with freelancer before hiring them,
especially if you are planning a long-term project. Video or telephone calls are a
good way to ask the freelancer some additional questions and go over the project
details.
3. Check references
A lot of freelance sites offer you an opportunity to check the freelancers’ previous
work and feedback they got from other employers. However, good feedback is not
the only criteria you should set. Try to find freelancers who have experience with the
type of projects similar to yours. If for some reason you don't have access to their
previous work, it is always advisable to ask them for their portfolio.
4. Short paid tests
If you are starting a long-term project and you are not sure which freelancer to pick
in the final selection process, give your ‘favorites’ a short paid test. Set out some tasks
that are relevant to your project and see how they will perform. The freelancer or
freelancers who give you the best results are the right people for the job.
In this chapter we have discussed the advantages of using freelancers, how they can
benefit your small business and where to find the right people for the job. In the next
chapter we'll go even a step further, and explain how you can set a fully automatized
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selling process by using outsourcing. Remember what we talked about in the ‘Build’
section of the book - online presence gives you the opportunity expand your
business across all borders. So, with good sales team and efficient outsourcing you
can scale your business and increase its profitability in no time.
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3.6. How to make the next step and
create an active sales process with
outsourcing
There are a lot of functions in a company that you can outsource. The most common
ones include accounting, human resources, marketing and public relations, but you
can also outsource sales and production. Some might say that sales should be kept as
an internal function because it represents the final step of all the previous joint
actions that help you make transactions to fuel the growth of your company. On the
other hand, when you're growing your company or entering a new market, you must
have a good and productive sales team.
Upon entering the new market, particularly if the new market is a country with
different culture and customs than the one you are already operating in, you
basically have two options from which you can choose: (1) to outsource sales or (2) to
establish subsidiaries and employ local workers. Both of these options have their pros
and cons which we will try to explain.
With this decision, as well as with every other decision in business, there is neither a
universal answer, nor a magical solution that will fit all of your needs. As a founder of
your company, you are the one who needs to make a decision about what is the right
step forward. Fortunately, learning all the pros and cons will significantly assist you in
making your final decision.
Outsourcing sales
Outsourcing sales means that you are hiring a third party that will represent your
company in their designated market and sell your products or services. That third
party can be a company specialized in sales, an independent contractor or a
freelancer. It all depends on your budget, the scope of the activities, or the situation
on the market itself.
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Benefits of outsourcing sales include:
1) Lower costs
Hiring a third party to run your sales activities requires lower costs than establishing
your own subsidiary. When you are doing everything on your own, you need to rent
an office, pay for utilities, buy office equipment, and pay your employees wage and
benefits even if there is no need for their constant work. With outsourcing, it is a case
similar to freelancers whom we discussed in last chapter - i.e. you only pay for the
work and the end results.
2) Hiring a professional
Your independent contractors are already professionals, and there is no need to

educate them on how to sell; you only need to inform them about your products and
services. They are working with many other clients so their level of expertise is
growing consistently. Moreover, when hiring a local sales force, you are also getting
familiar with the market. Not knowing the market, its specific cultural and social
customs could build a wrong image of your company right from the start.
3) Easier penetration on the market
When entering a new market, you need to learn the ropes, find local distributors and
partners, arrange deals and a lot more. Outsourcing a local team can open a lot of
doors for you. Since they are accustomed to this market, they will surely know who to
talk to and what to do in a certain situation.
4) Time saving
As with any other type of outsourcing, outsourcing sales saves you a lot of time and
gives you the opportunity to focus on your core business. If you set your foundations
right, all that it takes is following reports, having occasional meetings and giving
updates when there has been some sort of change in your product or service.
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However, with outsourcing sales, not everything is perfect. There are also some
disadvantages of this process that you need to accept before making any final
decisions. The first and the most common misconception about outsourcing is that
signing a contract with a third party means that you can sit back, do nothing and
expect money to start coming into your bank account. The reason behind it is the
usual unawareness that only you and your team know your products and services the
best and, consequently, how to sell them. Therefore, be ready to invest a lot of
energy into educating your outsourced sales force to make sure they are well
informed about your products and services down to every last detail. As your business
grows, you will be launching new products, building new features on the existing
products and expanding your service. So, whenever this happens, you should put in
the same effort to update your sales force.
The other problem with outsourcing is that independent contractors will usually work
with more than one client at the time, which means you can't have their full attention
all of the time. With understanding, bear in mind that this also indicates their
professionalism, because good services will never give you impression that they are
not 100% dedicated to you, even when they are overbooked with clients.
Costs of outsourcing
There are three types of compensation for your outsourced sales force – variable
compensation, fixed compensation and the mix of those two.
Variable compensation is the commission you pay for your sales representative. The
size of the commission can be determined between the company and the contractor,
but it all depends on the products, sales structure and Total Targeted Compensation
(TTC) for a certain industry and geographical area. This type of commission would be
the best choice for the client, because they only pay for the results and it helps him to
easily calculate costs. Still, this way of compensation is not preferred by the
contractors.
Fixed compensation means that you are paying for your sales representative monthly
or annually. Base salaries for sales representatives can be from $25,000 to $45,000 a
year, and even higher for particular technical fields.
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The combination of fixed and variable compensation is the most common one
because it gives stability to the sales representative and also motivates them to sell
more in order to increase the compensation.
Building your own team
Establishing a subsidiary and building your own local team represents another
entrance into a new market. The first challenge you have here is investing a lot of
money and effort into the selection process of finding the right people to employ.
Once you do that you need to go through all the bureaucracy to start a new branch
of your company, you need to find a place for your new office, buy all the equipment
and set everything in place.
Once you are done with all that, start educating your new team members about your
products and services and how to sell them. Here comes the first benefit of building
your own team – since they are fully devoted only to your company, your team
members will always know better how to sell your products than any independent
contractor.
If done right, building your own team can result in a better long-term strategy. Since
sales represent the point of interaction with customers, it has a big impact on building
your brand and the image of your company. With independent contractors you don't
have as much control over this process as you do with your own employees.
To finish this chapter off, I would like to tell you that the final decision comes down to
two factors – the type of industry you are aiming at and your long-term strategy
development. When you are faced with a service or a product that requires an
extremely high level of involvement for deciding about the purchase, stick with
building your own team to have full control and build your image the right way. On
the other hand if your products require lower level of customers involvement and
they are easier to explain, then outsourcing could be a better solution for you.
For further reading on how to work with virtual staff to buy more time, become more
productive and build your dream business, developing your business model, I would
strongly recommend the book Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker -
https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Freedom-Become-Productive-Business/dp/193952974
3
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3.7. How to measure the satisfaction of
your clients
There are many phrases that say a lot about happy customers and the impact they
have on the success of a business. Some will say that a happy customer is the one
that will come back, others will say that a satisfied customer is the best advertisement,
and everybody agrees that pleasing a customer is the best way to ensure loyalty. If
you are more of a ‘numbers kind of a guy' let's back this up with some statistics.
The cost of bad service
• 78% of customers will give up on a purchase because of a poor service

experience
• 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with you again
• 86% of customers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer
experience rating
Profitability of good service
• Loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase
• Profitability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while profitability of

selling to a new customer is 5-20%
• 7 out of 10 Americans said that they are willing to spend more if the company
provides excellent customer service
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Positive vs negative experience
• Resolve a complaint in the customer's favor and they will do business with you
again 70% of the time
• It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative

experience
• News of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears than news
about good experience
Those were some of the statistics that I'm sure will prove a point. If you're interested in
more numbers, feel free to visit Help Scout (www.helpscout.net), which we used as a
reference for these numbers, to learn more about customer loyalty and building a
customer-centered company.
Now that we highlighted the importance of user satisfaction, happiness and

experience, let's talk more about how you can measure it and turn it into information
that can be used to improve your business. This whole eBook is oriented on building
your business online and the biggest advantage of running your business online is
that you can measure everything - even your customer satisfaction.
Some of you might address this problem by creating a survey (which you can
distribute via email, phone call or in person), a focus group or an in-depth interview
with your customers. These types of research have a lot of pros and cons, but in
general they are a very good way to gather information and learn more about your
customers and other aspects of your business. However, if you are still a small
company you probably don't have enough experience and time to do it as precisely
as you should, and you probably don't have enough money to hire a professional. If
you are not experienced, do-it-yourself research can do more damage than good if
you collect or interpret the information in the wrong way. Still, there are some
methods that are very simple to use and can help you measure your customer
satisfaction for the purpose of improving your customer experience.
In Avalon we use some of those methods, and I can guarantee their usefulness and
motivate you consider using them for yourself. Their biggest advantage is that they
are easy to implement, the customers will take only a couple of seconds to provide
an answer and in the end you will get measurable data you can use to improve your
services.
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1) Net Promotor Score (NPS)
Net Promotor Score is one question index that will give you information about the
willingness of your customers to recommend your service or products to other
people. The whole point behind this index is that a happy customer will be more likely
to recommend you than customer who is not that satisfied with your service.
This method uses one question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to
recommend our product or service to a friend or a colleague?” Based on their
answers, customers are divided into three categories: Defractors, Passives and
Promoters.
Promoters are users who choose answers 9 and 10. This category represents raging
fans who will help you spread the word about your company and will eventually
become your brand ambassadors. Passives will answer question with 7-8, which
means they are satisfied with your services but they are likely to pass to your
competitors if they play it right. The worst score (0-6) falls into category of Defractors,
unhappy customers who will give negative feedback and share it with other people.
Those are the customers that can damage your business and represent the real
threat to your company.
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The Net Promotor Score is actually the number that ranges between -100 and 100
and it is calculated by subtracting the percentage of defractors from the percentage
of promoters. The more defractors you have, your score will be closer to -100 and the
more promoters you have, you will lean more to 100.
The next logical question would be, “What is a good NPS score?” If you're looking for
numbers, let's say that everything above 0 is good, from 50 to 70 is excellent and
above 70 is top of the class. But, the NPS score doesn't work that way. NPS score can
really differ from one country to another and among different industries. This is why it
is better to use a tool to measure progress through time. If you manage to keep your
score the same, or move it up, then you are doing a great job. On the other hand, if
your score drops, you need to change something and take another look at your
customer service, find problems fast and fix them as soon as possible.
2) Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction Score is the most direct method used to ask somebody how
they liked your product or service. Right after the transaction you send a question to
your customers regarding a certain topic and they need to score it from 1-5. With this
question you can measure different aspects of your business such as satisfaction from
pre-purchase and after-purchase services, price of the product/service, quality of the
product, overall satisfaction of doing business with your company and many more.
Use this question to find information about the process you feel you can improve.
Once you have collected answers from your customers, there is one simple equation
you need to determine CSAT. The number of “Good” responses is divided by the total
number of surveys received and multiplied by 100. All across the internet you can find
average scores for different industries from IT & Consultant (95%), Healthcare (94%),
Retail & Wholesale (82%), Social Media (78%) and many more. You can always use
the industry’s average to compare your service to others. Still, remember that
customer satisfaction is a very subjective matter and the score will depend on many
variables such as the number of queries per month, the number of answers per
month and the time between responses and the service itself. With all that in mind,
know that the best way to use this score is same as NPS – internal benchmark, which
means that you must use this information to improve your business.
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CSAT is used to measure short-term happiness of your clients while NPS represents
the long-term happiness and it is strongly related to measures of company growth.
Still, this doesn't mean you need to use only NPS, you can always combine them to
get more information. The same thing goes for the Customer Effort Score that we are
going to discuss next.
3) Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer Effort Score asks a question about how easy it was for a customer to handle
a problem. The philosophy behind this is that your business will benefit more if you
invest your time and money into resolving issues as easily as possible, than investing
into creating a wow factor and exceeding your customer’s expectations. Another way
you could say this is that a good service creates a wow factor, while excellent service
is transparent.
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Customer Effort Score is actually an average score of all customers’ responses, so it is
really easy to calculate. Similarly to NPS, it's hard to say which score is good and
which is not. Use this information continuously to measure your own investment into
making your services as simple as possible for your customers.
Important advice: always send this question right after the customer had their
experience. The more time it passes, the higher the chance is that the people won't
give you a precise answer. If you wait too long, the only precise answers you will get
are the answers from border cases who are either extremely good or extremely bad.
Where can you implement NPS, CSAT and CES?
There are more ways you can ask your customers to give you feedback on their
satisfaction, but I find the following methods to be the most efficient:
The first one is an In-App Survey in which you insert a feedback bar with one or two
questions onto your website. This method will deliver the highest response rate
because users will give you feedback while they are still interacting with your website.
Another method that is very successful, and also most commonly used among
numerous companies, is Post Service Survey. The key element of a post service
survey is to deliver questions right after the service - when the experience is still
“fresh”. You can send the questions via email or live chat with embedded form in
which the user only needs to click the answer and not send any emails back.
Another great way to increase the number of responses on your survey is to

personalize the approach to your customers. Not so long ago, I received a question
from a startup in San Diego. They were measuring NPS and the subject of the email
was “(Name), can you do me a favor?” The first thing that will pop into the customer’s
eye is their name, and the call for a favor gives it an additional kick to open the email.
In the email you have a single question with answers in form of a link, so customers
only need to click the answer and it is all done. Another great thing about this email is
the signature. If you take a look at the picture below, you can see that the email is
signed by the co-founder which makes it look extra important.
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Now that you are familiar with methods for measuring customer satisfaction, try to
find the best way to use them in your own business. Include this information in your
business plan and make it one of the goals. You can always compare your results with
your competition’s and the industry’s average, but it is also important to use it for
constant improvement of your service. Find out what your current customer
satisfaction is, and climb your way to the perfect score.
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3.8. How to measure the performance of
your website and maximize its efficiency
How efficient is your website? How would you rate your website in general? Many of
you will answer this with “Very good”, “Good”, “Not so good”, “Bad”, “I really need
help” and similar. But, can you support any of these answers with some numbers and
good arguments? With so many tools for measuring website performance, the sad
truth is that a lot of people don't do it for their website because of two reasons: either
they don't know how to do it, or they don't find it as important as they should. In this
chapter I'm going to show you why it is important to measure your website
performance and how to do it.
The overall success of your website performance is pretty much a subjective matter
and it really depends on the industry and the goals you set for yourself. Still, the
methods of measuring and the tools are always the same, so let's start with those first
and later we'll talk more about how you can use this for your own business.
Google Analytics – meet your new best friend
Google Analytics is the most widely used analytic method for measuring your website
performance. It is free to use and it gives you a huge scope of information you can
use for decision making. It would take another book to describe all the features that
Google Analytics has and the impact of these features on your business, so we are
going to stick to some basic concepts and terms you need to understand. For more
information I encourage you to read Google's “Google Analytics guide” to
understand the full potential of this tool. There are a lot of free guides that many
marketing agencies have published, so take your time and read more about it
because there is a lot of free information that can be useful to you.
Basically, what Google Analytics does is track the traffic on your website and provide
you with information about the number of visitors, rate of returning and new visitors,
bounce rate, country of visitors, conversions and many more. If you don't have
Google Analytics installed on your website, ask your website partner to do it as soon
as possible so you can start gathering data. Before we go into detail about how to use
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Google Analytics for your business, let me set out a list of some basic variables
usually known as Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that you can monitor of in Google
Analytics or use them to learn more about your users and the success of your
marketing activities.
Users – the number of visitors who visited your website at least once.
Ratio of Returning and New Visitors – based on cookies, Google can differentiate new
from returning visitors. New visitors are people who are visiting your website for the
first time and returning visitors are users who already visited your website at least
once.
Sessions – session is a visit to your website from new of returned visitor and refers to
all actions they took on your website. Number of sessions is always higher than
number of users because if one visitor visits your website 5 times during one month,
they will be registered as 1 user, while their behavior will be registered as 5 sessions.
Page per Session – the number of pages user will open during their visit to your
website. For example, if the user opens the homepage of your website, then clicks on
“about me” and leaves your website, this will be registered as two pages per session.
The number of pages per session represents the average of all user activities during
selected period. Your goal is to keep this number as high as you can – the more
people research your website, the more likely it is that they like the content and will
eventually decide to do business with you.
Avg Session Duration – it shows the average time a user will spend on your website –
from the second they enter your website to the second the user leaves. Similar to
Page per Session, it is in your interest to keep these numbers high, because the more
time a user spends on your website, the bigger the chance they buy your product or
service.
Bounce rate – Bounce represents the situation where users open your website and
leave it without opening any other page on your website. High bounce rate usually
means that there is something wrong with the website. That can either involve
technical difficulties (user can't open other pages) or bad content (user can't find the
information they need). There are some cases when you can have a high bounce
rate without any problems with performance and content. For example, if you're
posting a lot of articles that people read and then leave your website. The content
may be good, but this is still registered as a bounce. To avoid this, invite your users to
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take a look at some other articles on your website. If the user clicks on at least one
more article, then this visit will not be registered as a bounce.
The list of KPI's we explained above are just the basic KPI's that you need to know.
Google Analytics gives you a lot more, so you should take your time and explore all
its features.
Another, more advanced KPI I would like to highlight is conversion rate. Conversion
rate will show you the number of users who will do specific activity on your website in
relation to a number of total users in a certain period. Conversion could be the
purchase of your product, downloads of user manual, filled contact form, registration
for newsletter or any other activity you can track. Basically, when users complete this
activity, Google Analytics will register it as 1 conversion. Very low conversion rates can
signal that there are technical difficulties with your website, for example download
link for a manual does not work or the process is too complicated – maybe you are
asking for too much information for registration and users are simply leaving your
website.
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How can I improve my business using Google Analytics?
A good practice would be to check your statistics at least once a month and compare
them to the previous month, and the same month last year (if you have such data).
You can also compare it to any other time interval - it depends on the type of your
business. One reason why I suggested month-to-month comparison is so you can
see the growth of your traffic through time. The other comparison with the same
month from the previous year is due to the seasonality of a particular industry. A lot of
industries have a problem with seasonality, which means that there is an increase and
decrease of traffic in different parts of the year. For example, if you're selling
umbrellas, your traffic will increase during spring and fall when there is a lot of rain,
and it will decrease during summer. So, if you compare the results from September
with June it will look like a big jump in traffic, but if you make a comparison with
September from last year, things are going to look more realistic.
Another great practice is to include these statistics in your marketing plan. To be

more precise, with Google Analytics you can determine the success of your
marketing activities. For example, if your goal is to increase the general awareness of
your website, then the good KPI's would be the number of users, sessions and the
ratio of new to returning visitors which should lean more to the percent of new
visitors. On the other hand, if the goal is to increase sales, then you need to focus on
your conversion rate.
Besides statistics about your users, through Google Analytics you can also track the
path of users on your website – you can see on which page they start, where they go
and on where they usually leave your website. This is extra helpful to pinpoint a
potential problem and figure out what drives certain users away and stops them from
finishing transaction. To make it even more precise, we need to bring out the big guns
– Hotjar, an awesome tool that will help you track your user behavior on the
microlevel. Hotjar is also one of the best solutions I came across to optimize your user
experience and user interface in order to boost your conversions and test new
concepts.
The thing that Hotjar does best is creating heat maps of your users according to their
clicks, taps and scrolling behavior, which can show you what your users actually want
and what they find important. Hotjar will also help you see through your users’ eyes
by recording real visitor behavior on your site including their mouse movement. This
information will help you find the biggest opportunities for improvement and increase
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your conversion rates by identifying on which page and on which step your users are
leaving the most. Listed features are only a part of the service that Hotjar provides, so
feel free to scroll through their website in order to learn more.
In Avalon we have a lot of opportunities to talk to web developers and small

companies who are just starting to create their own websites, and there is one
particular issue that we see very often. When discussing website structure and user
interface, the most common argument for something is “I usually do it this way - so
let's do it like that”. One of the biggest mistakes in running a business is to make
decisions based on your personal opinion because user behavior is surprisingly hard
to predict. You can guess how the majority of users will behave, but there are always
extreme cases, borderline users who will surprise you with their behavior (and they
are usually the loudest ones). In order to minimize the risk of decision making and to
truly understand the behavior of your customers, use the statistics and all the
available data you can collect by using tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar to
support your decisions. Not only will you start to see some progress, but you will also
save yourself a lot of time, energy and stress, which is something an entrepreneur
always lacks.
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3.9. How to prepare for further global
scaling with complete marketing
automation
Nineteen chapters down, one more to go! You reached the last chapter of this eBook
and I really hope that everything you have learned by now will be more than helpful
in starting a new business or improving the existing one. The last chapter will deal
with connecting the two advantages of running an online business – data and scaling.
Namely, everything that is done online can be measured effortlessly, and with all the
advanced tools you can use nowadays, gathering data is easier than ever before. By
analyzing the collected data you can learn more about your customers and create
very detailed customer profiles that will help you predict their movement with great
precision. Once you master the customer information, you can create repetitive,
automatic systems that will increase sales and scale it as your business grows.
Before we start explaining how, let's repeat something that you have already learned
and add in some new terms. Selling more to the existing customers is much easier
and more profitable than selling to the new customers – you already know that by
now. The way in which the profit increases with additional sales to existing customers
is connected to Lifetime Value (LTV) of your customer and with Average Order Value
(AOV) per customer. Lifetime Value is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the
entire future relationship with a customer, while Average Order Value tracks the
average amount that user will spend every time they order something from your
website.
The best way to increase your customer LTV and AOV (for boosting your revenue and
overall profitability) is by using upselling and cross selling. This two terms are often
confused, so let's start by explaining them on a simple example such as buying a
bicycle.
Upselling is a sales technique that encourages the customer to spend more money
by buying a more expensive model of the same type of product. On our example with
bicycles, upselling would be convincing the customer to buy more expensive bicycle
with carbon frame instead of aluminum frame, or with disc brakes instead V brakes.
Still, note that upselling doesn't just include selling a more expensive product but also
a product with more or greater features.
121
2. Add complementary products at
checkout
Cross selling is a technique that sales
complementary parts for the product Checkout is your last opportunity to sale
that the customer has originally bought. even more to your customers, and it is
If the customer bought a bicycle, a good also the place where buyers are paying
cross sale would be to persuade them to a lot of attention on the screen in front
buy a helmet, a padlock and/or bicycle of them. If you recommend a
lights. The importance of cross selling complementary product at this point,
and upselling (which can be often seen there is a lot more chance it will receive
in the form of “recommended attention. To increase a chance of selling
products”) is very significant in total an additional product, you can include a
eCommerce – it represents around time-limiting offer.
30% of all eCommerce revenue.
3. The total price of the shopping cart
should always be visible
What upsell/cross sell It is very important that the customers

technique works the best? always see how much money they will
spend for the total purchase. The
problem usually occurs with shipping
There are a lot of techniques you can costs – the overall cost tends to be
use depending on your customers. The much higher than the users expect, and
best way would be to collect data about when they face the final amount they
your user’s behavior, see what goes best often cancel the purchase. However, if
and invest more money in that. To get you highlight the overall amount from
you in a position where you have the start, not only will you decrease the
enough data to make a decision, you abandonment rate, but you will also
can use some or all of these techniques: have more chance for an upsell or a
cross sell.
1. Create bundles
4. Reduce the number of choices
Users often buy more if you have
bundles on your website. This will give Too many choices can be confusing and
them an opportunity to buy more lead to no choice being made at all.
products for a cheaper price than Don't offer too many options for the
buying the products individually. For a same product. Instead, give them an
customer this represents a certain obviously worse option in comparison to
value, while for you it means - more a better version in order to navigate
sales. your users’ behavior.
122
Upselling and cross selling can be very profitable, but if you're doing this ‘by hand’,
you will have a lot of problems with scaling. Fortunately, there are a lot of free tools
you can use that will help you automate this whole process. One of those tools is
HubSpot, a platform that gives you three pieces of software that will help you increase
your sales and automate the process. The first software is CRM, which will assist you in
organizing your sales and keeping track of your customer. The second one is
marketing software which allows you to increase traffic, convert leads and expand
return on investment (ROI). Finally, the third software is sales software that will let
your sales team sell more with less effort.
The best thing about Hubspot is not just their software, but also their Hubspot
Academy and a lot of free tutorials that will show you how to use their products and
learn more about marketing and sales as well. If for some reason you don't prefer
Hubspot, there are other tools that can automate your sales process, such as
Conductrics, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Evergage and Blue Hornet. Choose the one
that suits you best, but keep investing into the automatization of your sales because it
will bring you substantial profit in the long run.
123
To celebrate our book launch, we have put together a huge giveaway
worth $55.335 with the help of my two companies, Avalon Hosting,
LLC and Quantum Ventures, LLC.
This giveaway is a full-fledged business treasure box which includes various
services and tools essential for every serious business to succeed and grow online.
Giveaway Bundle Pack consists of the following products and services:
1 premium custom-made A complete Email

VALUE VALUE
Automation Strategy
business website
webshop included
$ 5.000 Onboarding funnel, customer nurturing $ 5.000
funnel, Upselling Funnel, Cross selling
Funnel and Client Profiling Funnel
1 Essential Business VALUE Drip based Email VALUE

Branding Pack
logotype, business card, memo,
$ 2.000 automation integration, per winner’s
choice
$ 2.000
envelope by Quantum Ventures
1 VPS Avalon Business PER YEAR VALUE 12 months of free VALUE

Hosting Plan
The World’s Premier Web Hosting
$ 1.440 website maintenance $ 1.200
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with initial graphics for your business $ 500 e-mail business consulting with one of $ 1.000
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Visit fromZeroToBusinessHero.com/giveaway to enter
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124 TOTAL GIVEAWAY VALUE: $55.335
Thanks For Reading!
Thanks again for taking the time to read through our book. We
hope it gave you some great ideas about how to take your
business to the next level.
If you have any questions or feedback about anything I covered in this book, please
reach out to me! I’d love to hear from you. Here’s how to get in contact with me:
Damir Mujic
@damir_mujic
damir.mujic@gmail.com
www.avalon.host
www.qventures.org
125

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Contents

About the author

Why this book?

2.4. How to ensure that your website is well-positioned on Google

2.5. How to make a web shop that enables worldwide selling

3.1. How to attract visitors to your website very fast

3.2. How to attract visitors to your website in a long term

3.5. How to find freelancers for almost any job or activity

3.7. How to measure website success and maximize its eﬃciency

3.8. How to measure the satisfaction of your clients

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

As a serial entrepreneur and high-level business coach, I am often asked which

4 From Zero to Business Hero

Founder of the Sage Business School

International Serial Entrepreneur

Amazon Best Selling Author

5 From Zero to Business Hero

As a columnist for Forbes, he wrote about his

He lives in Croatia with his wife, two sons

6 From Zero to Business Hero

7 From Zero to Business Hero

8 From Zero to Business Hero

9 From Zero to Business Hero

10 From Zero to Business Hero

How to pick the right business model

The Business Model Canvas was developed by Alexander Osterwalder, co-founder of

Build it and they will come

3. Advertising the product with a continual increase in advertising budget

Build, test, fix approach

The most common approach to segmentation is based on identifying the

Elements of a good brand

1. Strong visual identity

Another great element to make your brand more memorable is introducing a

Walmart – Save Money. Live Better.

Adidas – Impossible is Nothing.

Disneyland – The Happiest Place on Earth.

KFC – Finger Lickin' Good.

Apple – Think Diﬀerent.

PlayStation – Live in your world. Play in ours.

To make a greater impact on your target audience, try to participate in community

Reference pricing can also be used as a competitive pricing strategy when a

As we mentioned before, cost-based pricing is easy to use, requires little information

Value-based pricing is a method of pricing a product based on perceived value we

• Value-based pricing only works when addressing a specific segment on the

• To define a price base on value you need to understand the diﬀerentiation

Penetration pricing refers to launching a new, low-priced product with a goal of

Considering the situations we mentioned above, penetration pricing can be used at

Developing new products requires substantial investments in research &

1. Identify your needs

2. Think about your company culture

3. Set clear expectations

4. Value each team member

As we mentioned before, multidisciplinary is a secret ingredient behind many

• If you’re working with a lot of high-paying customers it is advisable to use

• Developing, understanding and communicating the core company strategy;

• Hiring and developing talents that will drive your company.

Online presence consists of two parts – your company’s website as a virtual

Why is having a website so important?

36 From Zero to Business Hero

The behavior of customers is constantly changing and following the development of

37 From Zero to Business Hero

38 From Zero to Business Hero

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