# Andrei David

> Positioning and narrative at one end. Software and AI at the other. I've stopped writing briefs for things I can ship myself.

## About

Andrei David is a marketer and founder based in Bucharest, Romania. He founded
[ADACITY](https://adacity.ro), a marketing and technology agency for real estate, in 2017, and
[REDATA](https://redata.ro), a Romanian real estate data portal, in 2025. Before that he was Head of
Marketing at CoinCheckup, a campaign manager for IBM across Central and Eastern Europe, and a
marketing specialist at Alpha Bank.

He works at both ends of the problem: positioning, narrative and go-to-market on one side, and the
software, data and AI that carry them on the other. Client work is delivered through ADACITY; the
projects listed here are his own.

## Work

- **[ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)** — Founder, since 2017
  - Client work lives at [adacity.ro](https://adacity.ro)
- **[CoinCheckup](https://coincheckup.com)** — Head of Marketing, 2016-17
- **IBM** — Campaign manager, CEE, 2016-17
- **Alpha Bank** — Marketing specialist, 2015

## Projects

Things he built himself, outside client work.

- **[HANDOFF](https://handoffatc.com)** (2026, live) — Browser air traffic control game
- **[REDATA](https://redata.ro)** (2025, live) — Romanian real estate data portal
- **Theatrum** (2020-23, sunset) — Every theatre show in one place, with ticket alerts
- **[Grivița 53](https://www.grivita53.ro)** (2017, live) — Supporting an independent cultural initiative

## Consulting

A few engagements a year. Execution at agency scale is [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)'s.

- **Finding the opening** — Where a market has stopped looking, and whether there is a business in it.
- **Positioning** — A category you own and a line your buyers repeat.
- **Go to market** — Offer, pricing, channel mix and the first ninety days.
- **Marketing and AI** — Where technology actually changes the funnel, and where it does not.

## Press

- [Cum să îți promovezi online proiectele imobiliare](https://www.wall-street.ro/articol/Real-Estate/266539/cum-sa-iti-promovezi-online-proiectele-imobiliare.html) — Wall-Street, 2021
- [Interesul pentru case aproape s-a dublat în pandemie față de cel pentru apartamente](https://republica.ro/interesul-pentru-case-aproape-s-a-dublat-in-pandemie-fata-de-cel-pentru-apartamente-ce-urmeaza-pe-piata) — Republica, 2020, byline
- [S-a lansat prima platformă care vine în ajutorul teatrelor din România](https://www.revistabiz.ro/s-a-lansat-prima-platforma-care-vine-in-ajutorul-teatrelor-din-romania/) — Revista Biz, 2020
- [Business-uri inovative, finaliste Changeneers](https://startupcafe.ro/finala-changeneers-zen-parking-im-fine-theatrum-htm-13647) — StartupCafe, 2020
- [Unde mergem la teatru](https://www.iqads.ro/articol/51794/unde-mergem-la-teatru) — IQads, 2020

## Elsewhere

- Email: <andrei@adacity.ro>
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreidavid
- ADACITY (agency): https://adacity.ro
- REDATA (data portal): https://redata.ro

Canonical: https://andreidavid.net/


---

# Blog — Andrei David

Long-form guides on local search, paid acquisition and conversion, written while running the campaigns they describe. The older pieces are kept as first published.

Written by Andrei David, founder of [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro).

- [Google My Business: the definitive guide](https://andreidavid.net/google-my-business/) (2018) — A full walkthrough of claiming, optimising and ranking a Google My Business listing.
- [Local SEO: the complete guide](https://andreidavid.net/local-seo-guide/) (2018) — How local ranking actually works, and the order to fix things in.
- [Eight ways to improve conversion rates from PPC](https://andreidavid.net/improve-conversion-rates-ppc/) (2018) — Where paid traffic leaks, and the changes that recover it.
- [The first seven steps in optimising online stores](https://andreidavid.net/7-steps-optimizing-online-stores/) (2018) — A running order for ecommerce conversion work.
- [Seven things that lift landing page conversions](https://andreidavid.net/7-things-boost-landing-page-conversions/) (2018) — The changes that move the number on a landing page.

Canonical: https://andreidavid.net/blog/


---

# Google My Business: the definitive guide

*A full walkthrough of claiming, optimising and ranking a Google My Business listing.*

Published 2018-08-21 by Andrei David — [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)

> Written in 2018 and kept as published. The principles hold; specific screenshots, interface names and figures will have moved on.

---

If you’ve either just started or you’re an established local business and need to increase the number of people reaching out to you, Google My Business is a great place to focus your effort.

**After all, one in two people who searched for a product or service on their mobile devices [also visited a store on the same day.](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats)**

This should be a big enough incentive for you to start working on your Google My Business listing and make it stand out above your competitors.

Lately, Google has released lots of improvements that are aimed at offering businesses the tools to reach, engage and convert potential customers directly in the Google search results.

**And you should take advantage of all of them.**

But wait… let’s take it slow.

## What is Google my Business?

Google my Business ([https://business.google.com](https://business.google.com)) is a free platform that lets you manage how your business appears in the search results. It allows you to manage your business name and hours of service, locations, answer and monitor customer reviews, add photos and videos.

At the same time, it’s very useful to use it and get insights into how people are finding and engaging with your listing on Google and promote it if needed.

> **According to HubSpot, 89% of people search for a local business on their phones at least once a week.**

**According to HubSpot, 89% of people search for a local business on their phones at least once a week.**

What does this mean if you’re a business owner trying to get your business in front of as many customers as possible?

If you’ve just heard about [local SEO](/local-seo-guide/), this is probably the first and best step you should take in order to optimize how your business appears in the Google search results.

> **You will increase your chances of getting customers to your location if your business has accurate, complete and optimized information inside Google’s search results.**

**You will increase your chances of getting customers to your location if your business has accurate, complete and optimized information inside Google’s search results.**

There are just a few steps you should take in order to set up and optimize your Google My Business listing, so we should get going.

## How to setup Google My Business

1. [Claim and verify your Google My Business listing](#claim)
2. [Fill out all the business information](#fill-information)
3. [Add photos & videos](#add-photos)
4. [Add posts and offers](#add-posts-and-offers)
5. [Carefully manage all your reviews](#manage-reviews)
6. [Answer questions being asked directly in GMB](#answer-questions)
7. [Optimize your listing when it’s needed](#optimize-google-my-business)

## 1. Claim and verify your Google My Business listing

If you haven’t created a [Google My Business](https://business.google.com) account yet, this is the first step you should take in order to claim or create a GMB listing.

### How to claim a Google My Business listing

Before getting into details about setting up a new business, you should make sure that your business is not already listed in the Google local results.

**Here’s what you need to do in order to claim your business in Google My Business:**

**Step 1.** Search your business name on Google

**Step 2.** If your business exists and hasn’t been claimed, just click the “Own this business button?” and you will be able to claim it

**Step 3.** If you’re not able to claim it, it means that someone has already done that. Make sure that if it’s someone from your business, they give you admin access to it, and if not, here are the steps Google advises you to take to [request business ownership](https://support.google.com/business/answer/4566671?hl=en).

**Step 4.** If all went well and you managed to claim your business, the last step would be to verify your location.

You can skip the next few paragraphs, as they’ll be teaching you how to set up your Google My Business location from scratch. [**Click here to jump to verification.**](#verify)

![setup google my business](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-09-at-21.38.21-1024x554.webp)

### How to setup Google My Business

**Step 1.** Go to the Google My Business and use your Gmail address to sign-in to the service.

**Step 2.**Fill in all the basic information required, such as business name, country, zip code and location (make sure the location is very accurate, you will need it later on in the verification process).

**Step 3.**If you don’t work or have customers come by in your location, rather than you go to theirs, check the box “I deliver goods and services to my customers.”.

In case you’re working from your home and you don’t want your address to be publicly available, check “Hide my address”.

**Step 4.**Choose your business category. Make sure the selection you’re making fits your business accurately because this will tell big ol’ Google in which types of searches and categories you would like to be displayed.

**Step 6.**Choose a verification option from the ones you have available.

This step is needed before your listing appears on Google My Business so make sure you complete it either now, or click the “Later” button if you’d like to skip it until you’ve filled in more information.

### How to verify your Business on Google My Business

Verification for your business listing is needed in order to manage the information you display in Search, Maps and other Google platforms.

This will help Google’s algorithm make sure the information is correct and only you as the owner or manager can access it.

**There are several ways to verify your business on Google:**

- By postcard
- By phone
- By email
- Bulf verification
- Instant verification

![Google business verification options](/writing/step-2-1-1.webp)

source: synup.com

You may see one or more types of verification depending on the type of business you have selected previously.

The most common type of verification you will see is the **Verification by postcard.**Using this, you will receive a postcard at the address you have previously listed for your business.

The envelope will contain a code, that you have to enter in your Google My Business account in 30 days, in order to finalize the verification process.

**Verification by phone, email or instant** are available only for some types of businesses. Don’t stress if you don’t see these and use the postcard verification method.

**Bulk** verification is only available for businesses with 10+ locations and you can read more about this type of verification [here](https://support.google.com/business/answer/4490296).

## 2. Fill out all the business information

Once you’ve verified your business listing, it’s time to fill out all the information about it.

Don’t skip any piece of information and give as many details as possible. Google will offer you a lot of options for details about your business and all that apply should be filled in.

### ![Google my business information dashboard](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-19.52.02-1024x811.webp)

![Google my business information dashboard](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-19.52.02-1024x811.webp)

Here’s the information you need to add to your Google My Business listing in most of the cases:

### • Categories

Including your business into an accurate category will not only help searchers find you but will also modify the options you have in your Google My Business account. For example, if you’re a restaurant, you will also get an option to add a link to a menu.

**How many categories should you choose for Google My Business?**

![google business categories](/writing/2018-08-22_2251.webp)

Even though only one primary category will be shown when people see your listing in the search results, adding several categories will help both you and Google.

![google business categories](/writing/2018-08-22_2251.webp)

Google will understand better your area of expertise and your listing might be shown to more people searching related services.

### • Hours & Special Hours

Make sure you include your operating hours correctly. Don’t list your location as OPEN 24hrs if you’re not going to answer the phone at 3 am in the morning. People will call and if you’re listed as open, make sure some answers the phone and solves their inquiries.

If there are any holidays or special days for your location in which the program will be different, include them in the **Special Hours** section.

### • Phone number

Include your primary business number here. Google uses this information to confirm your [NAP](/local-seo-guide/)(Name, Address, and Phone number) so you need to have this number match all the other listings when building citations.

### • Website

While you will be able to see the traffic that you get out of organic inside your Google Analytics account, I’d advise you to use a website tracking URL on your Google My Business listings.

> **Example:**
> 
> **/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=local& utm_campaign=google-my-business**

**Example:**

**/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=local& utm_campaign=google-my-business**

This will help you track your traffic more accurately and see how many clicks to your website you get from your Google My Business listing and not from other organic search results.

You can use this simple [Campaign URL Builder](https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/) to do it in just a few seconds.

**The appointment URL**

If you use a different booking website or a dedicated URL to take appointments or reservations, you should add that here.

### • Services

This section is one of the newly added options in Google My Business. This is only available for a limited number of business types.

Fill this in with all the services you offer, their prices and detailed information and don’t worry if they don’t show up next to your business in the search results.

It may take Google a while before it rolls our all these features for everyone, but it’s best you are prepared.

![Google My Business Services section](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-20.15.40-1024x598.webp)

### • Attributes

Depending on your industry, different attributes will be available in your GMB dashboard.

These can range from things like “wheelchair accessible entrance” or “woman-led” business to “languages spoken” or “drive-through”.

Make sure you select those that apply to your location.

But this is not everything. Google is now asking users to provide feedback on locations they’ve visited and answers questions about them.

These can lead to additional attributes being displayed in your listing, such as “Great beer location”, “Popular for lunch” or “Casual atmosphere”

![Google My Business attributes](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-20.35.54.webp)

### • Business description

A few years ago Google removed the business description from its location-based results. It’s been brought back recently and you should definitely take advantage of it and make sure your description attracts as many visitors as possible.

![google business description](/writing/2018-08-22_2234.webp)

Use it to differentiate your business from the others, give people details about it and encourage them to visit and find out more about it.

![google business description](/writing/2018-08-22_2234.webp)

### • Industry-specific information

Depending on your industry, you will have different options to fill and take advantage of. If you’re a hotel, you can add a way for people to book a room using one of the websites you’re listed on or if you are a restaurant, you will be able to add a link to your menu.

### • Opening Date

No need to get into much details about this one. Just fill in the year and month you opened your business.

### • Advanced information

![advanced google business information](/writing/2018-08-22_2246.webp)



If you manage multiple locations, you’ll have the possibility to add different “Shop codes” and “Labels” for each of them to help you manage them easier.

![advanced google business information](/writing/2018-08-22_2246.webp)

These are not information that are publicly available but will help you once you expand to multiple locations.

## 3. Add photos and videos

According to Google, [business with photos see 35% more clicks](https://support.google.com/business/answer/6335804?hl=en#Share_photos) to their website from their business listing and 42% more requests for driving directions in Google Maps.

You should take their word for it and start adding as many relevant photos and videos to your business listing.

Google’s guidelines say they should be at least 720px wide by 720px high and JPG or PNG files.

But there are a lot of sections in which you can add photos to best describe your business, here are some of them below:

**Cover photo**

Your cover photo is one of the most important images in your entire listing as it will show front and center whenever your business shows up in the search results.

![Google My Business cover photo](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-20.56.59.webp)

### **Profile photo**

The business profile photo appears when you upload new photos, videos or respond to reviews.

### Profile photo

Your profile photo is what appears when you upload new photos, videos, or review responses.

### But this is not all.

Google has updated Google My Business in recent years and it now offers a wide range of sections for you to add photos in. They will be different according to your business type.

Make sure you use them because they will help you define your business and services better and give potential clients a taste of what they will encounter in your location.

Here are the business specific photos Google advises you should add:

Google added the possibility to add videos to your listing in 2018. These are not mandatory and may not show up all the time in the search results, but if you have a video showcasing your business make sure you upload it.

A video is a great way to show people what your business is all about and what to expect when coming to your location.

Here are Google’s video requirements for your GMB listing:

- Duration: Up to 30 seconds long
- File size: Up to 100 MB
- Resolution: 720p or higher

## 4. Add posts, events, products, and offers

**What are Google My Business posts?**

Google Posts is a feature built into your GMB dashboard that allows you to publish short messages what will appear whenever your business name is searched for.

At first, they were limited to plain text, multimedia or events, but Google has expanded these types and they now also include Offers and Products.

![Google my business posts](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-21.33.22-1024x783.webp)

After you have set up your GMB account, making a post is pretty straight-forward. Simply go to the “Posts” section and start creating it.

**You should make sure your Google My Business Post follows Google’s criteria for this type of content:**

- Make it relevant to your business and audience
- Must be between 100 and 300 words
- It may feature sales, products you’re selling, events or more
- It may include a picture
- It may include a call to action
- It can link to other web pages
- It will only appear for seven days.

**Quick tips to make the most out of Google My Business posts:**

- Make sure all the details are accurate and they help the customers get more information
- Preferably, link to a landing page or product page, not your home page
- Use concise copy and add a very good call to action
- Showcase your offer or product with an attractive and high-quality featured image

## 5. Carefully manage all your reviews

According to Shopify, [90% of people searching for information online said that reviews had a direct impact](https://www.shopify.com/retail/119916611-how-online-reviews-impact-local-seo-and-why-they-matter-to-your-bottom-line) on their decisions.

It is pretty obvious that with information like that, managing your reviews is an absolute must when it comes to taking care of your business.

### Your reviews will impact the 2 most important things regarding your business listing:

1. Your sales and customer’s decisions when seeing them
2. Your rankings in the Google local pack when people search for the services or products you offer

If you have negative reviews and your score drops below 3,5, there is a chance that you will not get anywhere the local pack, and that can’t be fixed by responding to reviews, but by making sure you offer good service from now on and your customers leave good reviews.

But if you’re in a good position with reviews around 4 stars, the way you manage them can make the difference between people buying from you or from your competition.

### How to respond to a Google review?

**Step 1. Access your Google my business account**

Go to the “Reviews” section in the menu on the left side and you’ll reach the review section of your location.

**Step 2. View and reply to reviews**

Check all the reviews you haven’t answered to in the “Haven’t replied” tab and start answering them.

Answer all your reviews, be them negative or positive, because these will let customers know that their voices are heard and their feedback is being read by you.

![Google My Business manareviews](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-20-at-21.53.15-1024x344.webp)

**Here are a few tips to apply when answering Google reviews:**

- Respond fast
- Include a thank you (whether positive or negative review)
- Have a professional tone and write grammatically correct.

Responding to negative reviews might be trickier, but don’t let your emotions get the best of you.

Show your customers you are taking them seriously by responding and make sure you are extremely courteous. If you respond by attacking them back, you will just look unprofessional and make that review credible in the eyes of other readers.

Here’s an example of a response when someone gives you a negative feedback.

> Hello [name]. We would like to thank you for your feedback and we are incredibly sorry our [product/experience/employee] did not meet your expectations. [Include a change if you’ve made one]. If you would like to come back in, we would be happy to give you [product/discount/offer] on the house, because we value all our customers greatly. Thank you anyway for visiting us and we hope next time we will offer you the experience you deserve.

Hello [name]. We would like to thank you for your feedback and we are incredibly sorry our [product/experience/employee] did not meet your expectations. [Include a change if you’ve made one]. If you would like to come back in, we would be happy to give you [product/discount/offer] on the house, because we value all our customers greatly. Thank you anyway for visiting us and we hope next time we will offer you the experience you deserve.

## 6. Answer questions being asked directly in GMB

An overlooked feature of Google My Business is the questions and answers section.

Just like the reviews section, Q&As are used by people (potential customers) to ask questions and find out answers directly from the business owners.

However, many businesses aren’t aware of this Q&A feature and these questions sometimes go unanswered or random people answer them and give incorrect answers.

Check the example below, the owner still hasn’t responded after three months and even though this is not a crucial piece of information, it would really be nice to know how far a hotel is from the beach, especially in Capri, where most of them are uphill or a long way from it. 🙂

![Google My Business Q&A](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-21-at-20.34.50-1024x561.webp)

### Ask questions by yourself and answer them

A cool feature in Google’s Questions & Answers is that you can go in and pre-populate your Q&As with thinks you know past customers might have needed to know.

This means you can create your own FAQ section directly in your Google My Business listing and it would be a great idea to do so, because your clients may need those pieces of information.

## 7. Optimize your listing when it’s needed

Don’t think that once everything has been set up, you can forget about your listing.

Google is continuing to roll out more and more features for all its platforms, and Google My Business is no different.

People will suggest edits to your listing and will continue to review and leave feedback about their experience, and you should be prepared to update your it accordingly.

### Keep an eye on your insights dashboard and competitors

Every once in a while, besides answering reviews and questions try to see how you stand against your competitors. Do some research, see how high you rank in the Google local pack and if there are competitors ranking over you, try to see why.

Google offers you a lot of valuable Insights into how people interact with your business listing, how many times they have seen it and lately **even what search queries have been used that made the listing show up in the search engines.**

![google location insights](/writing/2018-08-21_2055-1024x344.webp)

### Use the Mobile App

You may also want to download the GMB app for [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.vega&hl=en) or [iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/is/app/google-my-business/id853371601?mt=8) and manage your listing on the go. If you have a high volume of people interacting with your listing, this will prove to be very useful.

![Google my business mobile app](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-08-21-at-20.45.30-1024x514.webp)

source: Google play store

## Conclusion

If you’ve reached this far, congrats! You’re really close to having one of the best businesses in your niche in Google’s search results!

If you have any questions or comments I am happy to help. Just let me know below.

### Also, if you want to know more about how to rank higher in the **Google Local Pack** you can read my previous in-depth guide about Local SEO [here](/local-seo-guide/).

Canonical: https://andreidavid.net/google-my-business/


---

# Local SEO: the complete guide

*How local ranking actually works, and the order to fix things in.*

Published 2018-07-11 by Andrei David — [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)

> Written in 2018 and kept as published. The principles hold; specific screenshots, interface names and figures will have moved on.

---

“If you want to bury a body, you put it on the second page of Google” is something we’ve all heard about. But what happens when you have a business and your primary focus is not organic page results, but appearing on top of local searches?

### What can you do to have your business location discovered by as many people as possible?

**Local SEO is most likely your answer to this question.**

A HubSpot study has shown that around [89% of people](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/local-seo-stats) search for a local business on their smartphones at least once a week and 76% of local searches result in a phone call.

These two numbers alone should give you a good picture of what you’re missing out on if you haven’t worked on the geographical component of SEO as well.

![Local SEO](/writing/localseo1-1024x315.webp)

## But what is local SEO?

Local SEO is pretty much similar to organic SEO, but in this case, the geographical component plays the most important role.

You might ask: “How different could those results be?”

Google always tries to provide searchers with the most accurate results for their query. But these results depend on the context of the query.

You could get results such as:

- **Web page results **Let’s consider queries such as “[how to get more traffic to my landing page](https://www.google.ro/search?q=how+to+get+more+traffic+to+my+landing+page)“. No matter where you’re searching from, you’ll most likely get a list of the top 10 pages that best answer your query.
- **Local business results**– Think of the times you were on a weekend city break and searched for “seafood restaurant”. The results were part of the Google local-pack, that recommends top 3 businesses that answer your query.
- **Featured Snippets** if your query can be answered quicker, by showing the results directly.
- There are other types of results as well, such as video suggestions, tweets etc. but we’ll cover these in another article.

In this article, we’ll be talking only about Local business results. Or the Google local-pack.

### What’s the Google local-pack?

The Google local pack is a collection of the top three location results that best answer your query.

### **![Google local results](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-09-at-19.29.02-1024x1021.webp)**

![Google local results](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-09-at-19.29.02-1024x1021.webp)

This is what people see when they’re looking for nearby business such as restaurants, shops, auto dealers, mechanics, electricians, clinics, real estate agencies and the list could go on.

This is where your business needs to be and where local SEO comes into play.

Let’s get to it!

## How to optimize for Local SEO? Contents:

1. [Add or Claim your business on Google My Business](#1)
2. [Optimize your website for local searches](#2)
3. [Use Schema markup](#3)
4. [Get your social media profiles ready](#4)
5. [Start building links](#5)
6. [Build citations for your business](#6)
7. [Get as many reviews as possible and manage them properly](#7)

## 1. Add or Claim your business on Google My Business

Any serious business with a physical location is eligible for a [Google My Business](/google-my-business/) listing for that location.

Make sure that before creating a location from scratch, you search for your business and see if it has already been listed. People could have added it before, or Google might have indexed it from other websites. Claim that one if it’s available and wait for the verification letter from Google.

Google My Business goes through a lot of changes lately.

More and more features are being added, and you can now even create your own mini-website directly inside the platform or you can post content, offers, and products directly in you GMB page, which will then show up in your local business listing once people click the result.

That could be your first chance of contact with potential clients and you should think of creative ways to do it.

In my opinion, Google is trying to offer you a platform to represent your local business directly inside the Google results, so users don’t feel the need to go to other websites or pages in order to make a decision.

The Google My Business platform is more complicated now than it used to be nowadays, but here are the main things you should do, the first time you launch your business.

### Fill in your primary business information

- **Name, Address, and Phone** (NAP for short).

These are the basic information for your business online, and you should make sure you always keep them accurate.

I’ve seen cases of restaurants that had a bad number added to their contact info, so I picked another one at which I was able to call directly from the Google result and make a reservation.

- **Category**

Make sure you list your business in the right category. Google can detect the category your business is in from the information available on your website or online, but you should make sure the one you pick here is the one that you’re in.

- **Website**

If you’re managing multiple locations, this can either be your company’s website or the individual pages for each of your locations.

See what fits best for the users to see and give them a better sense of your business and use that.

- **Photos and images**

These are the first things that people will see once they want to see more details about your business on Google. People will often select (or reject) a business based on its photos.

Make sure you upload some that best describe your location and most important, make sure they speak the truth about it. A client feeling deceived when seeing the actual place is worse than one that never comes to your business.

- **Hours**

Selecting your open hours is pretty straightforward. Don’t forget to modify them when holidays and special events are coming in order to keep your customers constantly informed.

You should know that Google also displays the busiest times in your location. Although this is out of your reach, it can benefit both you and your customers. You can take a look and study the busiest times and have some additional staff present and clients can use this feature to plan their visit beforehand.

![Google local busy times](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-09-at-23.03.31.webp)

## 2. Optimize your website for local searches

Google has been as secretive with the local ranking algorithms as it has been with all it’s ranking factors since forever. But that doesn’t mean you can follow best practices that have been proven to work, in order to reach the top of the SERPs.

Your website is one of the most important assets, and without proper [optimization](/7-steps-optimizing-online-stores/), it will be hard to reach the top. Good news is, it’s also the one you control the most.

Here are some of the most important things you can do to optimize your website better for local SEO:

### **Create a dedicated contact page**

Make sure you include the “NAP” of all your locations there. Customers will be looking for one of them and will get frustrated if they don’t find them with ease.

### **Sitewide display the most important contact information**

We’ve discussed before about making it easy for customers to find the information they’re interested in. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to contact you or find your address too. No matter what page they land on first.

If your current design allows it, display the address, phone number and email in the header of your page.

### **Make phone numbers and emails clickable**

The easier to reach you the better. Phone numbers and emails are a quick way for customers to get in touch, especially if they’re listed in the header. But if they’re not clickable, they’re close to useless.

Make sure you insert “mailto:” and “tel:” links to your contact information and make it dead easy for anyone to get in touch with you.

### **Add an embedded Google map**

Either add the Google map directly in your contact page, or in your footer and make sure you include all your locations. You can easily customize the map before embedding and make sure it includes all your locations.

Here’s an example from one of the top private clinics in Romania, where they’ve used a custom Google Map to display all their locations in the country.

![local seo regina maria](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-09-at-23.33.58-1024x517.webp)

### **Add Testimonials**

Make sure you include testimonials and reviews from your customers. This will increase your chances of getting a phone call or e-mail from potential customers and will act as trust signs for people just getting to know you.

Here’s a great example from [BowlerHat](https://bowlerhat.co.uk) of how an optimized local landing page should look like

![perfectly-optimized-local-landing-page](/writing/perfectly-optimized-local-landing-page.webp)

## 3. Use Schema.org markup

This point is closely related to the website optimization efforts as well, but I preferred to keep it separate because it is a more complex one.

### **What is [schema.org](http://schema.org) markup?**

> Schema.org is a joint effort, to improve the web by creating a structured data markup schema supported by major search engines. On-page markup helps search engines understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results.

Schema.org is a joint effort, to improve the web by creating a structured data markup schema supported by major search engines. On-page markup helps search engines understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results.

More specifically, Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! agreed to provide us with a framework that will help us display our website information so that search engines can understand it better and provide the best results possible.

Adding Schema markup to your HTML improves the way your website displays in SERPs by adding different snippets of information to the results.

All these snippets marked with arrows from below, as well as the information in the Apple information card can be obtained by properly adding schema markup to your website.

![schema markup local seo](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-10-at-22.27.26-1024x488.webp)

It’s not clear whether marking up your contact information in schema.org will directly improve your rankings. But what it will do for sure, is give your organic results a visual boost, increasing the changes that customers will click on your result.

There are various schemas for [LocalBusiness](http://schema.org/LocalBusiness), with more added every year, including [LegalService](http://schema.org/LegalService), [AutomotiveBusiness](http://schema.org/AutomotiveBusiness), and more.

![schema markup local seo](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-09-at-23.57.02-1024x564.webp)

Find the one that’s suited to your business and implement it on your website.

This can be tricky to do. If you’re using WordPress, use the [Schema plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/schema/) to add it to your website.

If you’re using other platforms, or a custom website built by you, make sure you read the very detailed description and examples of how to implement schema, directly on the [official website](http://schema.org).

## 4. Get your social media profiles ready

In the past, there weren’t many things that a good social media strategy could’ve done for your local ratings. Luckily for us, things have changed nowadays.

Here are some of the things you should do on social media that are more or less taken into consideration by the local SEO algorithm Google has in place:

### 1. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+

Make sure you **at** **least have a business profile/page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+**, even though you don’t intend to use all of them.

Potential customers may look for you on those platforms and those searches shouldn’t come empty-handed, or worse, return another competitor or business with a similar name.

### 2. Get good reviews on Social platforms

Facebook and other citation websites or business directories are constantly crawled by Google.

One of the latest things you might have noticed is displaying the ratings your business has on those platforms directly in the local business result it returns.

![google my business facebook reviews](/writing/Screen_Shot_2016_11_21_at_3_55_10_PM.webp)

There is still controversy around how much does Social Media affect your local rankings because with the exception of Twitter, with whom it has a direct relationship, Google doesn’t really display dedicated results from other social platforms.

![twitter cards in google results](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-10-at-18.30.09-1024x498.webp)

But there are two things you should consider before crossing social media off your list:

- most often, your social media profiles are going to be the ones that get listed first for branded searches. You wouldn’t want to have an empty or rubbish social profile listed in the top 5 results in Google.
- Social Media is used as a means to engage with your customers and distribute your content. In this case, it helps your content get more reach and extends its life. Guess what’s that helpful for…

![](/writing/subscribe2-1.webp)

## Do you like the article up to this point?

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## 5. Start building links

**Inbound links are one of the most important ranking signals in Google.** That’s how Google assesses the credibility of your website and you should think of them like the real-life recommendations a person gives you or your business.

![link building local seo](/writing/How-Long-Does-Take-SEO-Link-Building.webp)

This has long been the case and you can find information about what it is, how you can do it and different tips, tricks and techniques all around the internet.

Long story short, the more links you have pointing to your business website from other websites, the more credibility you have.

### **But that’s not all, because links can come in different shapes and sizes.**

The ideal scenario for you would be to get as many links as possible from authority websites in your own niche. These are the ones that Google considers as the most relevant.

I would highly recommend you read this *amazing* [definitive guide](https://backlinko.com/link-building) from Brian Dean at Backlinko, about link building and how you should get started with it.

You might say: ***Ok,****wait. We were talking about Local SEO, what does this have to do with ranking in the local pack?***

Well, [according to Moz](https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors), Link signals are the second most important ranking factor for local searches.

A good way to start would be to engage in conversations with as many relevant people and businesses in the area.

Don’t go to competitors for backlinking, as that will most probably have 0 impact on your efforts. Instead, think of complementary businesses or blogs that can write about your business. Here are some examples:

- Industry relevant blogs
- Other local businesses
- National Industry organizations
- Vendors (for testimonials)
- Interviews or press releases
- Partners announcing new deals with you
- Guest blogs

Link building means playing the long game. Build meaningful relationships with people in and around your niche and in time your backlink profile will start growing.

## 6. Build citations for your business

Over 10 years ago, Google’s algorithm relied heavily on the number of links pointing to a website for rankings. It was the most important factor in SEO at that point.

When Google Maps launched in 2005, there were lots of businesses listed there that didn’t yet have websites. So they had to find a proper way to rank those businesses by other signals.

### What are citations?

A citation is an online reference to your business, that includes your NAP (remember? Name, Address, Phone number). Just like links to your website, Google considers them as ranking signals for your business, but unlike inbound links, they don’t need to be pointing to your website. Plain text NAP will do just fine in the eyes of Google.

Citations are for Local SEO what links are for organic page rankings.

### Where can you get citations?

**1. Local search sites & blogs**

To keep its index updated, Google constantly crawls the web for new citations that will update the already existing information.

To increase your chances of being discovered and increase your rankings, start by listing your business on sites like Yelp or Foursquare.

![foursquare citations local seo](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-07-10-at-22.35.34-1024x542.webp)

Dedicate some time to find directories in your country and make sure your business is listed on as many of them as possible.

Local blogs are also good for building citations because mentions of your Name, Address or Phone number are just as valuable on other websites as well. Just make sure that whenever you’re mentioned, there’s enough context for Google to properly indentify that your business is the one being mentioned.

**2. Industry specific directories**

The thing with citations is that they Google judges them almost similar to inbound links.

Citations from industry-relevant directories will carry more authority over general directories. Also, these websites are very focused on keywords and topics closely related to the niche you’re in and will give Google a hint about the types of keywords your business is relevant for.

Chances are you have already navigated through some of those websites and haven’t thought of them as “directories” that you can use for improving your local SEO.

[TripAdvisor](http://tripadvisor.com) or [Booking.com](http://booking.com) for traveling, [Houzz](http://houzz.com) or [Porch](http://porch.com) for home improvements. These are all industry specific directories that you can use for citations.

You can easily put Google to work for you and find the most relevant directories and blogs for your business by using the following search queries:

- “your industry” blogs
- “your industry” directory
- “your keyword” directory
- Top “your industry” blogs
- “your industry” “your country” directory

## 7. Get as many reviews as possible and manage them properly

In the [study](https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) published by Moz, Reviews(review quantity, diversity and velocity) are listed as the 5th most important ranking factor for local SEO.

**Think of it like this, how many times, when searching for new places, have you picked something that has less than 4 start?**

Exactly, me neither.

Check your business’s ratings on Google and if you have less than four starts, you need to start working on them.

Poor ratings will not only make your business listing go to the bottom of the local-pack, but even if people ask to see more results of nearby businesses, they will be turned off by your rating.

The lack of ratings will not help you either, because your business doesn’t look too trustworthy either.

![local seo bucharest](/writing/local-seo-bucharest-1024x776.webp)

### So what can you do to improve your Google ratings?

Before we get started on what you should do to improve your reviews, you should know that there are multiple types of reviews that Google also indexes and displays, along side those on its own platform:

- **Social sites.** There goes without saying that sites like Facebook, where we spend most of our online time everyday or Yelp will be taken into consideration. If your business has the reviews section on, it may be displayed in your Google local-pack listing.
- **Industry specific reviews,** from platforms that are connected to your niche. TripAdvisor(for travel), Metacritic(for movies), [Foursquare](http://foursquare.com) (for coffee shops, restaurants and the list could go on), [Listen360](https://www.listen360.com/) (platform that specializes in customer feedback).
- **Critic reviews,** in a limited set of categories related to nightlife or restaurants. These are being displayed from known editorial sites in those niches. Not sure yet if they have an advantage in Google’s ranking factors, but your potential customers would be delighted to see a good review from a well-known critic before deciding.

**Now, about getting more and improving your reviews…**

First thing first, you should understand that getting reviews and keeping them good is an ongoing process and will never end.

This will depend more on the way you do business, on the way you treat your customers or on your products.

You will get negative reviews along the way, everyone does. What matters most in those cases, is how you react to those reviews.

Make sure you answer your reviewers, consider their opinion and do your best to fix everything. Perhaps even invite them for a second visit to show them how you’ve handled their complaint. This kind of good attitude and openness to customers will take you far away in business.

1. **Ask customers for reviews**, but only after you have checked the platforms Terms & Conditions about this. For example, Google allows you to [generate a link](https://support.google.com/business/answer/7035772?hl=en) that you can share to people in order to get reviews but forbids offering anything in return for those reviews.
2. **Offer good services & products** – Captain Obvious here, I know. But really, if you don’t, you should close shop until you have a business that people will enjoy coming to, or asking for services from.
3. **Don’t ask for more reviews all at once.** A sudden spike in your review number will look suspicios on many platforms and can lead to either eliminating them or getting your business deleted completely.

## Conclusion

Now that we’ve covered what you should do in order to improve your local rankings, you should understand that climbing the SERPs is something you do on the long term, and it can be tough at times.

Local SEO is very important for your success, especially if you’re playing in a crowded niche and don’t have the budget to play head-to-head with the big guys in spending money on ads.

Your efforts of growing the business will definitely not succeed if you only focus on doing the things I’ve listed above.

Diversify your marketing strategy and besides Local SEO, try building an audience on social media as well, or investing a small budget in [advertising](/).

These will give you a boost and you will start seeing what works and what doesn’t for you.

**Ultimately, there’s one thing I can guarantee.**

Your business will be successful and growth will come easier if you focus on building an outstanding business.

Your first and main focus should be offering great products/experiences/services to your customers and only after you made sure of that, take your time and start focusing on getting to the top of the rankings.

### Did you find this guide useful? What are the local SEO strategies and tactics that brought you the best results? Let me know in the comments!

Canonical: https://andreidavid.net/local-seo-guide/


---

# Eight ways to improve conversion rates from PPC

*Where paid traffic leaks, and the changes that recover it.*

Published 2018-06-05 by Andrei David — [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)

> Written in 2018 and kept as published. The principles hold; specific screenshots, interface names and figures will have moved on.

---

For us as marketers, it’s pretty easy to get hooked up on looking at all the data we have available, making up different scenarios on why people exit the site after a few seconds or the rankings in SERPs that don’t actually grow as we were expecting them to.

The bottom line for any company when looking at Search Engine [Marketing campaigns,](https://adacity.ro/strategie/ghid-marketing-imobiliar/) whether you’re an in-house marketer or you work on them for your clients, is the revenue it will be producing.

One of the quickest and most actionable ways to improve the ROI from search campaigns is to improve conversion rates from the traffic you are already getting.

**More conversions without increasing the ad spend? Who wouldn’t want that?**

[Conversion Rate Optimization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_rate_optimization) can be used to improve any metric on your website and that’s relevant to your business, but it is associated mostly with acquiring new customers, leads, downloads or sales.

More precisely, it increases the percentage of website visitors who enter your website with a goal in mind and turn into a valuable conversion.

## Why should you care about CRO?

Well, the most obvious reason would be that the traffic you’re getting on your website is most likely paid for, one way or another(PPC campaigns, partner websites, employees, agencies etc).

**A higher conversion rate means a better return on your investment.** It’s also more cost-effective for you to convert a higher number of the visitors you already have than to attract more new ones.

Here are the most important ways to improve conversion rates for the traffic you are getting from organic:

### 1. Increase the copy’s relevancy

Responding to a user’s need right from the ad copy can be tricky. Make sure you design multiple ads and see which one of them is performing better for which keyword groups. Improving this will lead to better CTRs for your ads and, as you’ll see below, with the right landing page copy, will also lead to more conversions.

You can also check out this great [study from WordStream](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks) and check the average Click Through Rate for your industry. Make sure you write it down and improve your ads until you beat those numbers.

Having a good and attractive ad copy should not be the only thing you improve. Depending on your ad’s copy, your users will have a preset expectation upon arrival.

It is up to you to set expectations in ad copy and then make sure you meet the expectations on the landing page, in order to reduce bounce rates.

Some simple ways to do that are:

- Make sure your H1 closely resembles the key phrase in the ad copy, used to drive traffic
- Use images to reinforce relevance because they are more likely to be the ones that catch the eye in the critical two seconds after the visitors enter your page
- Apply captions on the image that also have a relevant text

### 2. Use a good USP

You have to make the visitors understand your unique selling proposition in the most efficient way possible. And make that quick as well, while you’re at it.

Focus on these 4 points at first:

- The first text a user sees on the page should focus on framing the product/service as a need that he has, and that it will be solved once he uses it.
- **Make sure key features and benefits are easy to understand** and as close as possible to the top of the page.
- **Use mixed media to deliver your message**, text, images and even video. Be flexible enough to offer them the information they are looking for in their preferred method of consumption.
- **Understand the key pain points** and make sure you address them

Make sure that you don’t bore the users by giving them too much information, as this can have the opposite effect and can make visitors lose interest when interacting with your page and going for the Call to Action.

![](/writing/subscribe2-1.webp)

## Do you like the article up to this point?

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### 3. Add trust signs

This is one of the most overlooked factors that can have a dramatic impact on conversion rates.

Users will often search for genuine trust signals to help them judge the credibility of the page they’re currently on and to a certain extent, the product they are looking at.

A website’s ability to quickly gain their visitor’s confidence means more conversions and a shorter buy cycle.

Remember, it is unlikely that you’re the only one offering this product or service and the user has other alternatives. Don’t make them turn to comparison shopping and check out all your competitors’ pages. Try to:

- **Include reputable third-party badges**, certifications, or awards
- **Use trust-inducing language in calls to action**, such as “Checkout using secure server” or “Pay Securely” and be sure to include small privacy protection disclosures below information requests.
- **Include reputable and verifiable testimonials**. Anonymous testimonials will likely trigger alarm bells. Video content containing user testimonials can be surprisingly effective.
- **Create a design that has depth and detail**. A detail-focused landing page communicates that the brand is strong, reliable, and reputable.

Here’s an example from Unbounce, on including the logos and testimonials of some of their biggest customers.

### ![trust signs landing pages](/writing/trust-signs-landing-pages-1024x505.webp)

![trust signs landing pages](/writing/trust-signs-landing-pages-1024x505.webp)

### 4. Understand User Intent

A conversion is a two-way communication between your brand and the consumer. For non-branded search traffic, this is typically the first opportunity for a visitor to enter the sales cycle and become a potential client.

Converting this type of traffic will require a firm understanding of your brand’s sales cycle, the user’s confidence level in your offerings and the position a user has in the entire buying cycle.

Keep in mind a general rule: the more expensive/complex your offering is, the longer the sales cycle will be. During one of the last campaigns I ran for a product that was worth between $2,500 – $8,000, the full sales cycle is somewhere between 1 to 2 months.

After testing multiple landing page variations, the shortest sales cycle and the biggest conversion rates were encountered when it started with a longer landing page, describing the product and its benefits clearly and keeping the user engaged all along the way.

- **Offer a mix of soft and hard conversion types** and measure results, enabling you to connect goal values to conversion rates. This will then allow you to refine landing pages in order give primary weighting to the most profitable conversion types.
- **Be creative**. A very unique and effective call to action could be “Add this event to your Outlook/Google/iOS Calendar”.

By infiltrating a target audience’s Calendar application, a conference-based company was able to increase the event attendance rates by discouraging potential attendees from booking conflicting events and making sure that they were notified about the event in a non-intrussive way, in their own calendar application.
- **Let conversions pop-out from a design perspective**. Use colors/sizes that will draw the visitor’s attention, such as the famed BOB (big orange button).

Furthermore, don’t hesitate to test the action language used in CTA buttons.
- **Don’t waste the post-conversion “Thank You” page**. Use this as an opportunity to further engage the users with additional content and assets. These should help you increase a customer’s lifetime value or progress him through the buyer cycle if at this point he is only a prospect, not a buyer.

### 5. Remove Distractions

This is one of the, perhaps, most overlooked improvements you could bring to your website or landing page.

Distractions are anything from a design element to some extra content that prevents the user from progressing to the next step of the sales cycle.

Improve them by:

- Removing all global navigation from your landing pages
- Avoiding off-topic content that will break the visitor’s focus and give him unnecessary information
- Avoiding distracting images
- Limiting the amount of information request in conversions. Only ask the prospects for the data required to complete or move the sales forward at that exact step.
- Keep messaging on-point!

I should at this point tell you that there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of ways to design a landing page and still make it convert and just as many ways to test them.

The easiest way to minimize time and resources lost to poor [landing pages](/7-things-boost-landing-page-conversions/) is to first make a strong effort to understand what your customer’s needs and goals are.

### 6. Respond to reviews

A study published on [Search Engine Land](https://searchengineland.com/study-responding-to-reviews-can-improve-paid-search-conversion-rates-296418) states that having a higher star rating and responding to the reviews you get is another way to improve conversion rates on your campaigns.

This was backed up by 16 months of SEM data from campaigns and here are some of the stats they have discovered:

#### Conversion rates correlated with star ratings

- Businesses in the lowest grouping had an average 3.31 stars, translating into an average conversion rate of 10.42 percent.
- The best-rated segment had an average of 4.96 stars, translating into a 12.83 percent conversion rate.

#### Conversion rates correlated with number of responses to reviews

- Businesses with the highest response rate (8.13 percent) saw an average conversion rate of 13.86 percent.
- Businesses with the lowest response rate (5.73 percent) saw an average conversion rate of 10.42 percent.

### 7. Use negative keywords in your campaigns

For PPC campaigns, this is one of the key actions you should be taking.

If you waste your budget on keywords that are not converting visitors into clients and start to notice certain groups of keywords that are bringing in a lot of traffic but have the lowest conversion rates, start adding them to your negative keyword list.

This will allow your budget to be spent only on quality search terms, and ultimately will lower the cost per conversion and improve conversion rates.

This can be done by going through your search terms report and viewing the keywords that are underperforming.

![keywords report - adwords](/writing/Screen-Shot-2018-06-05-at-10.36.46-1024x663.webp)

### 8. Use Remarketing

One of the great ways to improve your CRO and still be cost-effective is convincing indecisive visitors to get back to your page.

After all, most of the conversions will not happen the first time someone’s visiting your page.

Let’s take the example of electronics or appliances online stores. A person searching for a product for the first time, will more likely search for similar products as well, compare their specifications and even go in-store for testing it. Only after that, the person will decide whether to buy or not a certain product.

Remarketing can bring people back to your website and will increase the odds that they purchase from your instead of the competition. And according to [Larry Kim](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks) (founder of WordStream and [MobileMonkey](https://mobilemonkey.com/)), conversion rates are usually higher in the case of people who have already visited your website.

![remarketing conversion rated](/writing/weird-facts-remarketing.webp)

## Conclusion

I hope that this information helped you get a good idea about how to improve conversion rates from PPC campaigns and what are the key steps you should take in order to do it.

Start analyzing your campaigns and see which of the above steps you can apply in order to get the best results out of them.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know in the comments 😁

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Canonical: https://andreidavid.net/improve-conversion-rates-ppc/


---

# The first seven steps in optimising online stores

*A running order for ecommerce conversion work.*

Published 2018-03-18 by Andrei David — [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)

> Written in 2018 and kept as published. The principles hold; specific screenshots, interface names and figures will have moved on.

---

**Over 120% increase in revenue over the past month and all with just 7 simple steps towards optimizing the online store.**

Getting a new client may seem like a lot to take in. New business model, new people and definitely new challenges. Everyone wants results and not all understand that this takes time.

For those times when you don’t know where to start, apply these 7 steps to your ecommerce client and you’ll start getting results on the spot.

## 1. Take time to know their business and their customers

Seems normal, right? Well, it is, but I’ve seen dozens of people who want to get straight to work without having an idea about what lays ahead and having a well defined strategy. This is also the most important step one can take for a new e-commerce client. Although their business model may be the same, no two online stores have the same clients, buyer journey or sales funnel.

Get to know these, make some test purchases by yourself, subscribe to the newsletters, even call the customer support service and test them to see how they react when complaining about some orders.

Every small detail will make a difference. You don’t have to tackle and solve all of them right away, but make sure you write them down.

## 2. Start small and prioritise

There’s no need to A/B test everything about the store in the first 2 weeks.

You’d be amazed what big of a difference some small tweaks can make to the entire buyer journey and the overall conversion rate.

Try looking at these small details in order to make an impact from the first moments of the optimization process and ask yourself these questions:

- are the most important details of the products located above the fold?
- does the checkout form include fields that aren’t useful either from a legal or delivery point of view
- is the website loading fast enough? Could you make small changes to the images or code that will have a big impact?
- is the user allowed to add to his cart products that are not available? — Yes, this one sounds crazy but I’ve experienced it so many times.

Start small, do changes that you can easily test and see how they affect your conversions rate.

## 3. Go mobile and test every pixel of the store and buyer journey

source: envatoelements.com

If you are like me, when running a store audit, you use your PC or laptop. I’ve bumped into this the first time I began conversion rate optimization for some of my clients, drew some conclusions and turned out to be quite wrong.

Most of the traffic, nowadays, comes from mobile. And this will only go up. So get your phone and start testing the pages, buttons and the entire checkout process.

Here are some of the things I’ve bumped into on the mobile phone that once improved showed lower drop-off rates from mobile:

**Cross-sells are above the actual cart information.**

This shouldn’t be the case in the cart page. The user is there to complete a purchase. If you instantly show them some other products, while he’s actually looking to complete the purchase, you’ll lose them.

Tip: Try showing cross sells after they have entered their billing info and before going to the payment page. And make it incredibly easy for them to add those products to their final order.

**No trust signs on mobile**

If the user is shopping on his mobile phone, that doesn’t mean his mind works completely different. Try and find a way to display trust signs even on mobile, in a non intrusive way.

**Different checkout fields for different types of products**

Are you selling physical and digital goods? Don’t make the customers fill in the same forms for both of them. If they’re buying digital, go for the shorter and simpler checkout form. You don’t need their address, zip code, country etc. Make sure that any field you remove doesn’t affect yourself from a legal point of view.

## 4. Promote it wisely

I’m pretty sure that no online store drives sales just by organic means. You’ll have paid search, programmatic, native and social campaigns.

Make sure that before you start your campaigns, you actually have a good strategy in place. Try doing these things at first, and build on them later:

- Make sure that you retarget users that have not completed any purchase
- Use e-mail marketing to drive cross and up-sales to your existing database
- When promoting on social networks or GDN, make sure your store and ads have a unified visual style.

## 5. Make sure everything actually works like it is supposed to

I shouldn’t tell you about the importance of having a functional store from one end to the other, but here I am, because this is f*cking important.

- make sure that all the links work and they point to where they are supposed to
- make sure buttons are visible and easily clickable
- make sure that the search functions works properly

## 6. Answer your customers promptly and build trust

Trust signs on websites are not enough. There will be cases when they’ll call you, they’ll e-mail or even shoot you a message on Facebook Messenger.

Make sure you solve their problems, guide them through the purchase and get to know their needs. A good customer service can take you a long way.

## 7 . Make sure you are looking at data the right way

CPCs, CTRs, Drop-offs and bounces. These can become overwhelming if you’re looking at them the wrong way.

Use Google Analytics, learn what are the metrics that you need for a specific optimization and track those at first and the others in the next stage.

Take the Google Analytics academy courses.

If you still have questions after hands-on analysing the data, google them. There’s a very, VERY small probability that you are the first one who has a specific question or problem.

These 7 steps should be enough to start making a difference in the e-commerce store you are currently trying to optimize. There are more, but let’s start small 🙂 .

This post appeared first on Medium – [The First 7 Steps in Optimizing Online Stores](https://medium.com/swlh/the-first-7-steps-in-optimizing-online-stores-c85f790ddf78)

Canonical: https://andreidavid.net/7-steps-optimizing-online-stores/


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# Seven things that lift landing page conversions

*The changes that move the number on a landing page.*

Published 2018-03-18 by Andrei David — [ADACITY](https://adacity.ro)

> Written in 2018 and kept as published. The principles hold; specific screenshots, interface names and figures will have moved on.

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Landing pages are a crucial part of all the marketing strategies out there. Companies have reported 55% growth in their number of leads and customers when they increasing the number of landing pages from 10 to 15. With this in mind, having a landing page is sometimes not enough. Making it convert is what matters the most.

“Conversion optimization” has been around for some time, and unlike “growth hacking”, which is a term not many people understand at first sight, when discussing about increasing the number of subscribers to your e-mail newsletter or the number of buyers in your online store, people seem to get what conversion optimization stands for and how it can help, but not exactly how it’s done.

Keep in mind that the most important thing about optimization is testing. But did you know that although companies that turned to conversion optimization often doubled their sales, most businesses today don’t run more than 5 tests per month on their platforms and pages?

Although no business should have as a focus testing it’s entire online presence, but building more and more things that they could later analyse and improve, they have to start small and as soon as possible, in order to build a solid foundation.

Starting can be difficult, especially if you don’t know where to do it from, but today, we’re going to highlight some of the most important tactics and tricks that companies use to optimize their conversions and boost sales along the way.

Before we get going, you should know some of the following statistics regarding the people who will visit your landing page or website:

- More than 70% of the entire traffic that reaches your landing page comes from mobile
- Adding a single second delay in your page’s loading speed can result in 7% less conversions
- You have 7 seconds at most to make a good impression to your visitors. After that point, most of them will leave
- The optimal number of form fields for most conversions is 3
- The average number of form fields for some landing pages is 11…
- Reducing the number of form fields from 11 to 4, can increase conversions by up to 120%
- Removing the navigation menu can double your conversions

This should make you interested, and if it hasn’t then you should not read any further, because I am only going to give you some easy applicable advice on how to increase the conversions on your pages.

## 1. Send people to a relevant landing page

All your efforts start here. If you’re sending your target audience to a landing page that doesn’t answer their needs, you’re done.

By relevant, I don’t mean matching the campaign name with the landing page name. What I want you to know is that rather than sending people to a page filled with info that they might or might not be interested in, make sure you adapt your message to the exact target audience you are looking for.

Don’t go dynamite fishing to see who sticks with the message and who doesn’t. If you’re selling $500,000 penthouses and targeting people in the nearby area to visit your website or landing page, your copy should not be focused around how close they are to the public transportation stations or how they can reach the closest thrift shop in under 2 minutes.

## 2. Use clear and concise calls-to-action

HubSpot published a [case study](https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31104/Extreme-Homepage-Makeover-How-to-Increase-Your-Conversion-Rate-106.aspx) in which one company improved it’s landing page conversions by 106%. This wasn’t achieved just by testing their call to action, although this one also weighed heavily on the entire conversion rate, but by applying some of the best practices in landing page design.

They took their most popular whitepaper, which was previously way down the page, close to the footer and positioned it front and center accompanied by a strong headline and a call-to-action that stood out.

## 3. Use meaningful and attractive headlines

Headlines can make or break your website or landing page. I can’t emphasise enough the importance of testing your headlines, because as I said earlier these are some of the first things the visitors see, and remember that you only have a few seconds to make a lasting impression and convince them to buy whatever you are selling.

Remember to make them unique, easy to understand and even easier to identify with the users needs. Take the example of mailchimp.

## 4. Show social proof and testimonials

Testimonials will drive validation. Especially if you are selling B2C products. If you’re in the B2B area, try doing case studies with some of your most important clients. People working for companies like to se how you’ve helped other companies that are in their same situation. Those will be the pages that will attract most of the attention on your website, so focus on converting visitors there.

## 5. Use relevant images

Content is important, but let’s not forget that your visitors are not there to read an e-book. Use images to bring out the necessary emotions that will determine your visitors to take specific actions. Remember that it is very important to have your images synced with your content to make your messages stand out.

Let’s take the example of Leadpages. They have a clean message and call to action and they take the visual part to the next level by showing a short autoplaying movie to demonstrate how easy it is to build landing pages using their service.

## 6. Tell stories that don’t bore

This part actually has two action points for you:

- The first one is to tell a story with your landing page, from beginning to end, one that takes the user on a journey through your product or service. Something I’ve discovered recently, among other copywriting techniques, is [Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.](https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/MonroeMotivatedSequence.htm) Read more about how you can take your visitors on a step by step journey to the outcome you wish.
- The second one is obvious not just for landing pages but for your daily activities as well. Don’t bore 🙂 You’ll see how far that will get you!

These are just a handful of the things you should take into consideration when building or optimizing your landing pages. I’ll make sure to make a complete list soon enough, but keep in mind that there are over 100 tips and tricks that can have a certain impact to your landing page.

You don’t need all of them at once, make sure you apply these until next time, test them multiple times until you reach the perfect fit for you and your business. 🙂

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