Steal my customer experience toolbox

Increasingly, our focus as marketeers is on the customer experience. Never before have businesses cared more about their customers than they do today. Why? Because it’s good business.

Effortless, easy, uncomplicated, and intuitive experiences — simple experiences — are in high demand.

What constitutes a “well-designed” website in 2021? A simple google search will reveal many different answers to that question - and they might all be correct. However, there are three pillars of website design that will never go out of style.

Marketing is the way in which products are advertised and sold to consumers. With each industrial revolution, we have seen shifts in how products, services, and businesses are marketed to potential customers.

In 2021, a website is one of the most important points of contact between a small business and its customers. Whether your small business customer objective is to have customers purchasing from your e-commerce site, signing up for online booking, or generating more leads - from emails, calls, or other types of customer reach-outs - every website should be optimized for conversion.

It’s 5 pm, and you have just gotten off work and are heading home. You get a text from your friend, Lisa: “Remember to bring the apple pie!” You have completely forgotten that you were in charge of dessert for the dinner party.

A customer decides in 50 milliseconds whether or not she likes a website (BBC); therefore, the website must target the customer´s needs and expectations.

Small business owners are busy. I mean, really busy. This should come as no surprise to anyone. Between being experts in their profession and having to run a business - a small business owner needs to be a jack of all trades.

Websites have come a long way since the days of static designs and one-way communication. Today, with an open mind and tech-savvy spirit, small business owners run websites that act as data hubs where visitor interactions can be measured and monetized.

We are passionate about creating websites that not only look great but also deliver value and perform well. That’s why our website templates feature all the best practices of great user experience design.

Want to know how to succeed with website migration? Here’s a tip: 

Stay agile and be open to change.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a term you may have heard in the last couple of years – and for good reason. SEO is the art and science of getting your digital content to rank higher on search engines such as Google.

No-code solutions like Airtable, Appcues, and Typeform are rapidly growing. These tools represent the dream that you don’t have to be an engineer to build something.

In the game of conversion, the landing page is an important element for those who aim to grow their business online - no matter the size of your business or industry.

Human beings are very good at simplifying complex concepts. It’s our way of processing the amount of information being thrown at us. In the best-case scenario, this technique is sufficient at allowing us to build and collaborate. In the worst-case scenario, it is an impediment.

Be honest - on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to read through a privacy policy before buying a digital service? For me, maybe 5 on a good day. Most consumers give consent without knowing how their data is going to be used.  

Most of us have happily entered the new year without looking back. At Mono, we like to make some predictions about design trends at the start of each year in order to give our partners an idea of the design opportunities that can help small businesses stand out all over the world.

2020 is history, and many things changed forever. The new normal comes with it a myriad of new trends, so which is the most important to you? And how are you going to take advantage of them? This blog post is for those who work within the realm of sales and marketing.

To succeed in 2021, product managers need to excel at 3 things: communicating a strong purpose, realizing when it’s wartime, and understanding product led growth. 

This post is the first in our new Mono Weekly initiative - where we will be publishing an original blog post every Thursday of 2021. The post topics range from web design to selling small business services and everything in between. This week, Mono's General Manager and VP of Sales, shares his insight into building the right service model for your small business customers.

57% of recently surveyed SMBs would prefer a dedicated customer service rep, yet only 36% of providers offered this service channel. In the all-new “Do What With Me” report, Mono Solutions has worked with Localogy to dig into the service model preferences of small businesses. As we head into 2021, have you considered if your service channels meet the needs and preferences of your SMB clients?

SEO has come a long way since I started in this industry back in the mid-2000’s. Almost every business owner around the world knows what SEO is and does, even if they couldn’t spell out the acronym as “Search Engine Optimization.”

It’s time to celebrate! The Mono Team is thrilled to share that we’ve won two awards for our efforts to drive business and empower small business owners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Awarded by SIINDA, a leading digital marketing and local search association in Europe, Mono has been recognized as the Gold winner in two categories.

In the second edition of our #SmallBusinessBulletin, we’ll be digging into how the second wave of COVID-19 is impacting small businesses, how the home services industry is faring - and lastly, what to expect during this year’s “digital-first” holiday season.

Last week, our General Manager Americas and VP of Sales Matt Matergia joined the virtual event CloudFest Parkside for a BarTalk Session on selling websites successfully. He shared his insights on why a do-it-with-me (DIWM) approach is the way to go for hosting providers and how they can take advantage of the evolving website building space. You can check out the full BarTalk recording or read the quick recap that we’ve put together.

With Q4 just around the corner, it’s important to take a cold, hard look at just exactly how SMBs are faring. It’s been a year like no other - a year that no one could predict - and more importantly a year that no one was prepared for.

In this final installation in our series of guest posts for the Mono Blog, the Ecwid team would like to give you resources that will help your small business clients on their road to success. By using Ecwid E-commerce on Mono Websites, you have an out-of-the-box e-commerce solution that makes you and your clients ready for the world of online and social selling.

With the new seamless integration with Ecwid, you have the added power of adding Ecwid E-commerce to your Mono Website! We’re showing off what new e-commerce features you have access to plus a few ways to help your SMB clients reach for the stars and become online selling machines.

It’s no surprise that 2020 has changed the way that people are shopping. We know it’s important for small businesses to be selling their products online right now -- but do you know exactly how important it really is?

We’re thrilled to share the addition of leading e-commerce provider, Ecwid, to the Mono Platform - giving all our partners the opportunity to help small businesses to easily sell online. 

At Mono, we strongly support equality and justice amongst all people, regardless of gender, race, religion, nationality, age and disability. As a company, we truly believe that diversity is a necessary virtue for any entity, whether it be a company or society, to thrive.

In the past few months, many small businesses were forced to temporarily close their brick-and-mortar locations due to COVID-19, and in turn - consumers moved online. This shift means that small businesses need to consider taking action to appear in- or remain at the top of local search results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for SMBs to compete online, and we’ve compiled six reasons why now is the right time to convince your SMB clients to invest in- and improve their SEO strategy.

In a world where consumers are constantly confronted with ads and promotions, it is more important than ever to capture their attention. Email campaigns are a great way to do this, as 73% of people prefer email marketing over other channels*. Help your small business customers create beautiful campaigns to connect with and grow their customer base by offering them an easy-to-use email marketing solution.

With 90% of consumers using search engines to find local businesses, SEO is one of the best business drivers for small businesses. The reality is that few SMBs are willing to undertake SEO efforts themselves, and external help is often expensive. So how can digital service providers make it more easily accessible to small businesses?

Are you thinking about changing your website technology platform? Are you wondering if you should mass migrate websites to another website platform? There may be multiple reasons that you are considering a large-scale website migration, and in this blog post, we’ll look at the most common considerations for pursuing a large-scale website migration.

In cooperation with Siinda, we’re launching a new series of video interviews of small businesses called Voice of the Customers. The series digs into what digital marketing small businesses were doing before the pandemic, what changes they’ve made and how it will impact their future.

With worldwide lockdowns changing our everyday lives, small businesses need to find new ways to provide products and services to their customers. In fact a recent survey revealed that consumers are spending more online - and as a digital service provider, now is a great time to help your small business clients take their business online and launch their own e-commerce.

COVID-19 is, without a doubt, a financial black swan. And as lockdowns persevere the financial burden is already beginning to weigh on small and local businesses. As a digital services provider, it’s important to think creatively and help your SMB clients make the most of their existing digital presence (something that’s been much discussed in our industry), and in this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive focusing on how to support SMB websites during this time.

At Mono, we pride ourselves on being partner first, but what does that really mean? For the Mono Education team, it’s all about timing. We need to make sure our partners have what they need, when they need it. And the most important entity we convey is educational content and information about the Mono Platform.

In the past week, many of us have been asked to work from home (WFH) and practice social distancing as an effort against covid-19 (corona) virus. While many of us WFH from time-to-time - doing it full-time can seem daunting when you are used to working in an office full of wonderful colleagues. Last week, the entire Mono team transitioned to WFH and we asked everyone to chip in with their best tips for effectively and successfully WFH during this COVID-19 outbreak:

As authorities are taking measures to ensure the safety and well-being, many small businesses are being forced to close or move their operations online. We’ve gathered the most important website updates to help your small business customers as COVID-19 grounds many of us at home.

In the past week, the COVID-19 (corona) virus has significantly impacted our families, our businesses and our societies. On behalf of the entire Mono Team, I want to reach out to let you know that we are taking proactive steps to ensure that Mono’s business operations continue to run as normal. 

With lots of safety precautions being taken to slow the spread of COVID-19, big and small businesses alike are feeling the effects. But as this public health crisis limits the mobility of consumers, many small businesses are at risk of losing their business. Together, we can help keep our favorite local businesses afloat - and we’ve gathered 10 ways you can support local- and small businesses until they can safely re-open to the public:

In part one of this blog post, we established the opportunity for BIY and how it can help make your sales people more successful. We left off last week talking about that despite a need to reduce cost, sales people are not obsolete. In part 2, we’ll look more at how salespeople can succeed with BIY and enable a path to do-it-with-me (DIWM).

Touchless sales, self service, product led growth, call it what you want, the way that consumers and businesses buy is changing. 86% of respondents in our recent Buy-It-Yourself (BIY) report believed that SMB owners already are, or will soon be self-purchasing. In this two-part blog post, we’ll explore how digital service providers can adapt their sales channels, and leverage BIY as a path to more service-based offerings.

This post was originally published as an article by our CEO - Louise Lachmann on LinkedIn. As we move into a new decade, it’s valuable to look back at how the website game for small businesses has evolved in the past ten years. Back in 2010, the website space was dramatically different with only a fraction of small businesses feeling the need to invest in their online presence.

37% of recently surveyed SMB SaaS experts believe that small businesses are already self-purchasing or “buy-it-yourself” (BIY) their business software. Mono has worked with Localogy (formerly the LSA) to look into the prospects for BIY and sales automation and whether companies that sell advertising and software for local and small businesses believe in its future.

Guest blog post by John Goddard, CEO at Herold & European Directories. This blog post is based on my presentation at the Siinda Local Search Summit 2019 where I was asked to present on whether legacy businesses, such as Yellow Pages and publishers, can compete with digital agencies in serving SMBs.

The fall conference season of 2019 is over and as we look back to reflect on all the knowledge that was shared across conferences in different regions, these are some of the main trends that we saw impacting the industry. What’s more, these trends are influencing how we as technology platforms and digital service providers will act upon servicing small business customers in the new year. Here are some of the top presentation trends that you need to keep an eye on:

Fantastic news! In the past few weeks, Mono has been awarded not one, not two - but three times for driving success for small- and medium-sized businesses. We’re honored to be recognized for our dedication and innovation in the SMB space, as we continue our journey to empower our partners to help small businesses succeed in the digital landscape. 

Did you know that as much as 15% of the world’s population has a disability? While this large group is generally not taken into account when building a website, the Mono Platform offers accessibility features that allow small businesses to support people of all abilities and disabilities in just a few clicks.

We’re honored to share that Mono has been recognized twice in the past month for our continued success, innovation and dedication to SMBs. The Mono team is humbled by the recognition as a leading SMB technology provider in 2019, as we empower our partners with a do-it-with-me (DIWM) approach to servicing their SMB clients.

A few weeks ago, Mono and the Local Search Association (LSA) launched the white paper “The Engagement Challenge” to better understand the challenges, preferences and expectations that small businesses have for their cloud software. In this blog post we focus on the customer journey and how to keep SMBs engaged over time with intelligent software.

Copenhagen, Hamburg, Jul 22 2019 – Leading white label small business Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform provider Mono Solutions joins Bauer Media Group. Bauer Media Group is a leading multi-business portfolio company with a strong focus on media and online services. The deal closed on Thursday, July 18th.

62% of small businesses are failing to use their cloud software to its fullest extent. Mono recently collaborated on a white paper together with the Local Search Association (LSA) to dig into where small businesses are succeeding with SaaS and where they are challenged. 

As the market demand for SaaS solutions for SMBs continues to grow, digital service providers need to offer more flexible technology solutions in order to better serve their small business clients. At Mono, we’re proud to offer Mono Scheduling Embed as a standalone solution - empowering even more SMBs to use Mono technology to accept bookings from their website, social platforms, directories and more.

Search engines are in the business of making it faster, easier and more efficient for consumers to find the information that they’re looking for. But it’s not always straightforward for small business owners to understand the benefits of investing in search engine optimization (SEO). The display of search results is rapidly evolving - and knowing how and why to optimize for these new types of search results is becoming a real competitive advantage.

Last week, we hosted a webinar with our friends at SOCi on “How Reviews, Social and Website Content Impact SEO” which are just some of the trending marketing topics that SMBs need to consider in 2019. Today’s ever-evolving digital landscape is a struggle for small business owners to successfully navigate on their own. 

For the small business owner today, it’s hard to know where to start when it comes to digital marketing. With a vast array of digital platforms – from Facebook to Jumia fighting for their attention, small business owners need to make the decision of how to prioritize their marketing efforts and spend.

A few weeks ago, we had the honor of sharing the stage with our partner, Yellow Pages Canada at the SIINDA LocalComm conference. Mono and Yellow Pages Canada have been partners since 2016, and the session focused on how Yellow Pages has succeeded through their most recent company transformation via contagious collaboration across the board, including with their select partners - namely Mono.

From search results to listings to social media profiles, the digital landscape is becoming more integrated than ever. Yet search engines still rely on primary data sources, such as the company website, to deliver relevant search results. What’s more, search engines are relying more on the prevalence of schema.org mark up on company websites to accurately identify business data, and more quickly deliver search results to users. For digital service providers servicing small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), there is a huge opportunity in helping your SMB customers leverage schema.org.

By 2020, over half the workforce population will be either Millennials or Gen Z  (or as they like to be called, Founders) and by 2025 it’s estimated this group will make up an astounding 75%. This generational shift has an enormous impact on the small business economy as Millenials are starting new businesses at twice the rate of their predecessors. To continue to succeed, digital service providers to small businesses need to understand the implications of this shift and ensure their product and service models can evolve with the new customer base.

Last week, Mono hosted a webinar where CEO and Founder of Local SEO Guide, Andrew Shotland gave an overview of the recent changes to search engine optimization (SEO). He shared some of his best practices for digital service providers to use to ensure their small businesses websites will continue to appear in local search results. We’ve put together a quick recap:

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining the first ever SIINDA LocalComm conference in Dubai, along with our CEO, Louise Lachmann. Hosted at Google’s local headquarters in the UAE, the conference provided insight into how the small businesses in the Middle East and North Africa are adopting digital marketing technologies.

Last week at the annual LSA19 conference in Dana Point, our Head of Marketing & Communication - Jillian Als, joined a panel to discuss buy-it-yourself (BIY), do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-for-me (DIFM). This session recap highlights the main points from the panelists discussion during the session.

2019 has kicked off with a podcast bang! The Mono team has had the honor to be guest speakers on two awesome, industry-leading podcasts. 

This week, the Local Search Association (LSA) released their annual predictions for the local ecosystem. With more than 70+ predictions from local marketing experts in the industry, I’m proud to share the predictions that the Mono team contributed to this year’s report. Here are our eight predictions for 2019:

In this blog post, we’ll take a deeper look at what point millennial business owners are willing to upgrade their DIY solution to an offering where digital service providers can add value through service and expertise as digital advisors.

As a digital service provider, you’re in the business of helping small business owners make the most of their digital presence. But a new wave of business owners - the millennials - are slowly changing the notion of what role they want their digital service provider to play in building and managing their digital presence.

Today’s customer experience is all about convenience. With an endless amount of choices and little time to make them, busy consumers are always looking for the local business that can accommodate their needs - and how to schedule appointments is no exception. This could explain why 70% of consumers prefer to schedule appointments online.

This week Google announced and rolled out version 5 of their PageSpeed tool. You can read the official post from Google, but the major change to note is that Google now uses its Lighthouse tool to measure and score website performance.

From Chicago to Dubrovnik to Thailand to San Francisco and everywhere in between, the fall 2018 has been a busy conference season for the Mono team. Now back at the daily grind, we’re feeling inspired, and want to share some of our key takeaways and highlights.

Recently at the Yext ONWARD18 conference our CTO, David Højelsen, and Yext’s Design Director, Erin Pfiffner, guided attendees through 10 lessons that they’ve learned from working with enterprise and small business websites.

The market for cloud-based marketing software is growing, and the service delivery model around SMB software is evolving. In cooperation with the Local Search Association (LSA) and the Tech Adoption Index (TAI), we’ve commissioned the custom research to create the report, “Meet The New Small Business SaaS Customer.” 

This week, I had the pleasure of attending the SIINDA Local Search Summit in beautiful Dubrovnik with the Mono team. All good weather aside, the conference was packed with great content and takeaways.

The Local Search Association (LSA) recently released a report: Scoring The Digital Marketing Stack, in cooperation with Boostability, focused on defining the value of different elements of the digital stack for SMBs. After surveying more than 100 digital service providers, the results showed clearly which services and technologies are the stickiest and which give the best margins.

The holiday season is fast approaching and whether you’re Amazon or a local florist - it’s time to start planning online holiday campaigns. How do you plan on helping your small business clients find their customers, or perhaps more importantly, how do you plan on ensuring potential customers find them?

From smartphones to tablets, mobile devices are increasingly dominating the time consumers spend consuming digital media. And it’s really no surprise – we all know it was already in 2015 that mobile search surpassed desktop searches. 

Websites are key to building a strong digital foundation for small businesses, still they struggle to understand the value of an online presence. According to a recent study by Visa, more than 50% of SMBs still aren’t online, but with digital presence playing a more important role than ever, SMB service providers must refine their sales tactics to position themselves as the SMBs’ trusted digital advisor.

Last month, the Local Search Association featured an article that highlighted that 74% of digital media time is now spent on mobile. An even more telling statistic from the recent presentation by Comscore and PlaceIQ is that 59% of that time was spent in mobile apps. 

Voice search is one of the latest and greatest tech trends to take consumers by storm. In fact, comScore predicts half of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. But what does it mean for SMBs and the digital service providers who serve them? What investments do SMBs need to make? And how difficult and time consuming is it?

Voice-driven interaction with businesses is on the rise, and for many consumers, it will replace traditional search in many scenarios. Consumers are increasingly using voice search to interact with businesses and a recent study by BrightLocal (2018) showed that 82% of surveyed consumers were willing to use voice search locally. 

What web design strategy do you prefer; a content-driven or a design-driven approach? These design silos are often opposites you have to choose from when deciding on your business strategy, but what if you could have both? Small Business (SMB) service providers need design solutions that make it fast, easy and affordable to build websites at great scale, while keeping the SMB’s website content at heart.

Last week, Mono hosted a webinar with CEO and Founder of Local SEO Guide, Andrew Shotland. The webinar focused on how search engine optimization (SEO) has been changing in the past couple of years, and Shotland also outlined his best practices for digital service providers on ensuring that small business customers’ websites are appearing in local search results. We’ve put together a quick recap:

There is no alternative to a small business (SMB) website, though some marketers may argue this is the case. While Google My Business and Facebook are critical to any digital presence, new tech, features and capabilities are allowing for more dynamic, customer-focused websites, central to the marketing stack.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25, 2018. And while we’ve already seen that big companies, like Google and Facebook, are under fire from data privacy advocacy groups - many small businesses are still struggling to understand how to ensure compliance.

As the digital landscape of SMBs continues to build complexity and consumer behavior drives more change to traditional engagement, it's important to evaluate the importance and role of the company website.  Mono commissioned a report by the Local Search Association (LSA) to understand the future of SMB websites, and how websites can function as local data hubs for small businesses.

Powered by machine learning and big data, the rise of mobile- and voice search is not only changing the way consumers search, but also impacting the technology that ensures websites are optimized for these new types of online search.

With the recent launch of iOS 11.3, we think it’s a great opportunity to discuss Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) which will be supported as part of the New Mono Experience we are bringing to our partners this year.

Earlier this month, the world celebrated International Women’s Day - a day dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women. At Mono Solutions, we’re all about empowering small businesses to work on their passion and last week our CEO and Co-Founder - Louise Lachmann, had the honor of hosting a group of highly-talented, young women from the Superheroes program in Estonia.

Originally posted on LSA Insider: Digital marketing is most often based on data-driven decisions. From online behavior (clicks, dwell time, etc.) to complex search algorithms, marketers view almost every online interaction as a piece or source of data. 

Originally posted on LSA Insider: Last year a survey from Capital One found that 61% of SMBs were utilizing social media for their business while only 56% had a company website.

Using personalization to drive customer engagement is a top priority for many businesses, and according to an eMarketer report, 56% of marketers believe personalized content drives higher engagement.

Last week, the Mono Team joined the SIINDA Media Tech Conference in Valencia. In this blog post, we've gathered some valuable takeaways for our industry.

SMBs are faced with an overwhelming number of choices when it comes to marketing their business in the online world and according to a recent article by Search Engine Land only 56% of SMBs surveyed had a proprietary website. 

At Mono, we believe in the hard work and passion of small businesses. That is why our business is dedicated to helping them succeed in the modern digital landscape.

Last week we attended the Street Fight Summit in New York City, and it was a hot one. 

This year, Mono Solutions celebrates ten years in business. It has been an amazing journey fueled by the vision of helping small businesses get a professional and affordable online presence.

In this post, Mono Solutions has invited the CEO & Founder of Local SEO Guide - Andrew Shotland, to discuss how "near me" search is affecting the Google rankings of small businesses and highlight what you can do to help your SMB customers succeed in optimizing their online presence for "near me" searches.

Let’s address something that is always on everyone's mind - what will the future bring for SMBs? 

How do small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) connect with their customers? How do they best manage their time?