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Words are powerful things. With the right ones on your website, you can attract search engine visits, separate yourself from your competitors, and even convince visitors to place an order or share their contact information.

Contrary to what you may have heard in the past, it isn’t impossible to create the kind of content that leads to epic sales growth. Neither does it necessarily require you to hire a high-priced copywriter. Instead, you just have to know and follow a handful of proven principles.

Want to know what they are? Here are five steps you can follow today to write hard-hitting content that drives customers to take immediate action…

#1 Write to a Person, Not a Marketplace

Do you know who your perfect customers are? If so, picture them in your head every time you sit down to write a webpage, blog post, or online ad.

Instead of thinking in terms of demographics, picture a single individual who is sitting in front of you. That will help you to avoid platitudes and focus on what matters to the kind of real person who will be making decisions to buy your products or not.

#2 Narrow in on Pain Points and Tangible Benefits

In the world of selling there is an old piece of advice that goes like this: “talk about benefits, not features.” That applies to writing great web content, too. Instead of thinking in terms of technical specs, tell your customers about the things your products and services actually do for them. Focus specifically on the headaches or worries that can be taken away.

In other words, think about why someone should buy what you have to sell and make it as pointed as possible. That will give your web content an unmistakable edge.

#3 Get Emotional with Your Language

As humans we like facts and figures but make decisions based on our emotions. That’s why we are drawn to things that make us feel younger, more energetic, and sexier instead of more rational purchases at lower prices.

You don’t need to go over the top with your web content, but you should use emotional language whenever possible. That’s what resonates with buyers and leads to epic sales growth.

#4 Create a Sense of Urgency

Buyers love to get information but often have trouble making decisions. If you can give them a little bit of a nudge – possibly through limited-quantity supplies or deadline-driven coupon codes, for example – you can dramatically increase conversions.

There’s a fine line between “nudging” and resorting to high-pressure tactics, of course, but you have to find the right balance. Otherwise, you’ll find that many of your customers will think about purchasing from you endlessly without ever taking the final step.

#5 Refine Your Content Until Conversions Rise

As long as your website keeps growing your content should keep improving. You should be open to testing new headlines, messages, and offers on a month-by-month basis.

Even creative industry professionals like us can’t predict with perfect accuracy what buyers will or won’t respond to. So, we use split testing, track our web analytics, and keep aiming for bigger and better results. It takes time and patience, but it’s the only way to guarantee we are going to squeeze as many sales as possible from every online marketing campaign.

Let Us Supercharge Your Online Marketing

At Kinetik IT, we don’t just work with interesting web design and online marketing concepts – we help our clients to grow their businesses in ways that can be measured on the bottom line. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and let us show you what we can do for your company.

More and more, clients are turning to us for web-based app creation. They are waking up to the fact that they can do more than ever with technology, particularly when it comes to automation and custom programming.

As big as the possibilities are within this realm, though, you might be wondering how you can narrow them down to solve the specific challenges you’re facing on a day-to-day basis. So, today we want to give you a quick guide to creating the web-based app your business needs now. In order to help you find the perfect concept, we would invite you to answer a handful of simple questions that can point you in the right direction…

What Do You Want to Accomplish or Automate?

You can use web apps for ecommerce, scheduling, logistics, resource management, and so much more. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination. For the moment, though, think about what it is you would actually like your website to do. What is the one task or function that would make the biggest difference in your business or organization?

When you can answer that, you have the basis for a very profitable web-based app.

Who Will Use Your App? How Will They Use it?

Getting to a core idea is great, but it’s only a first step. Next, you have to know who your base of users will be. Does your website need to be designed for customers, employees, or even associates and volunteers? Is it some combination of these groups?

Think carefully about who you need your web app to work for, and how they’ll interact with it. For instance, it’s one thing to build a web app that functions as a front-facing website (like Amazon), and another to build a native app that will live on a smart phone or tablet.

How Can You Streamline the User Interface?

In a best-case scenario, you’ll know your target audience and purpose so well that the visual and user experience aspects of your web app will take care of themselves. Still, it’s worth considering what you want your app to look and feel like.

We live in a digital world where aesthetics are a big deal. You don’t have to match Apple in terms of your attention to detail for fonts and colors, but you should strive to create a web app that is as sleek as it is powerful.

Is Your App Being Properly Tested?

We like all of our clients to remember that testing is a crucial part of web app development. Otherwise, your programming might not work the way it’s supposed to, or fail to function on certain devices and operating systems. In some cases, it could even create performance or online security issues.

Remember, this is all about designing the web app your business needs. Safety and stability are important parts of that equation.

When Will You Update Your Web App?

No website or app is ever really finished. Instead, they simply get to the point where they can be launched and then improved later. Keep that in mind and create a schedule for future feedback and additional updates.

You certainly don’t want your web app to become stale over time, or to stop working with newer forms of other software. That’s why you should be thinking about future releases before the first version ever goes live.

Learn More About Custom Web App Development

Want to learn more about custom web development, and how you can use small apps to realize huge savings or marketing gains in your business? Contact the programming team at Kinetik IT today. We’ll help you explore your ideas while showing you how we’ve become Arizona’s number one web app development resource.

Different IT professionals might not agree about everything, but we all hate ransomware. We hope you’re not too familiar with this particular type of malicious software, but you have probably heard about it or seen in on the news. It usually involves computers and workstations being locked behind encryption until a payment is made to an anonymous third-party. Hence the “ransom” part of the name.

While everyone but hackers hates ransomware, it’s clear that the trend isn’t going away anytime soon. Already in 2018 we’ve seen the SamSam attack affect thousands of organizations, including hospitals and governmental agencies.

Should you worry about something similar happening to you? How can you prevent your company from being held hostage for tens of thousands of dollars? Can you even prevent these attacks at all?

To help you get the answers you need, let’s look at four things you need to know about ransomware…

#1 The Best Cure for Ransomware is to Avoid It

This might seem obvious, but it’s important to mention. The best way to deal with a ransomware attack is to not endure one in the first place. Often, businesses are affected through suspicious attachments, unknown downloads, or employee visits to unsafe websites.

With a little bit of training and the right virus protection tools in place you can cut out the most significant risks. This will also help protect you from phishing scams, data breaches, and the other kinds of IT-related headaches that keep you up at night.

#2 It’s Not a Great Idea to Pay the Ransom

Assuming you are affected by ransomware, it's generally not that wise to pay the requested fee (which hackers will typically want in untraceable crypto currencies). After all, if you give up money now, what’s to stop a criminal for asking for more later? They already know you’ll pay.

Also, paying a ransom for access to your files just papers over the problems instead of putting better longer-term solutions in place.

#3 A Good IT Team Can Sometimes Beat Ransomware Easily

There are a lot of factors that determine how severe a ransomware infection is. These include the specific software being used, the number of devices affected, etc. It’s easy to understand why some targets (including the hospital we already mentioned) choose to spend money rather than wait for a fix.

However, if you have a good IT team working on your side they may be able to brush off a ransomware attack by using standard virus removal techniques or restoring an old backup. These are simple and cost-effective steps that might resolve the problem very quickly.

#4 Ransomware Infections Can Be a Sign of Bigger Problems

As a rule of thumb, having a ransomware infection suggests – at the very least – that a review of training procedures and web security software is in order. As we mentioned, these types of issues normally don’t come out of nowhere. Instead, they usually suggest an organization isn’t paying enough attention.

No matter what the outcome, it’s important to learn from a ransomware attack and come through the process a little bit stronger and wiser. Otherwise, the damage could be even worse the next time around.

Is Your Business or Organization Properly Protected From Ransomware?

If you worry that your company or agency doesn’t have the right kinds of data protection and cybersecurity tools and procedures in place then don’t wait for something bad to happen. Call the experts at Kinetik IT in Phoenix today so we can assess your technology and start taking steps to keep you covered.