The Executive Suite

Monday, May 11, 2015

Google Soon to Show Site Name Not Domain Name in Searches

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Say goodbye to seeing URLs when searching using your mobile phone. On April 17, Google announced its plan to replace the once-standard domain name with the real name of the website on all mobile searches. This update will give mobile searchers the ability to more quickly understand what a certain site is about before clicking to open its contents.

Although this update is US-based only, it also will include a breadcrumbs update that will roll out globally and will use schema.org structured data for its algorithms.

What are Breadcrumbs?
According to Google, “a breadcrumb is a trail of set links that can help a user understand and navigate your site’s hierarchy.”

When breadcrumbs are used in the body of your website or blog, Google can pull that information and place it into the search results, giving searchers a better understanding of what your page is about.

Two Main Changes
Again, with this new update, there are two main changes to pay attention to:

Google will now show the Website name and not the domain name
URL structure will now feature breadcrumbs worldwide

Although these are seemingly two small changes, it is time to make sure your website is prepared to rank high on a Google search.

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?
The push to have your website be mobile friendly is greater now than it ever has been – and for good reason! How many people do you see daily with their heads down and noses in their phones? Almost everyone you encounter at some point. Guess what they are doing? That’s right, reading and searching.

Regardless of the technology they are using, both Android and Apple use google as a default search browser and if your website is not mobile friendly, there is a good chance it won’t be found on a simple google search, even if your content matches exactly what they are searching for.
This is because Google now ranks mobile friendly websites higher on mobile searches, burying the non-mobile friendly sites at the bottom when they used to be higher in rank.

So what can you do to make sure your website is reaching everyone it needs to be reaching? First, you need to check to see if your site is mobile friendly. You can use Google’s mobile friendly test to see if your website is ready to go or needs some work. If you get the “Awesome, your site is mobile friendly” you have nothing to worry about and can rest assured that your site will continue to rank high on mobile devices. If the test tells you that your site is not mobile friendly, then you can follow the simple steps to make updates and changes that will it allow it to be mobile friendly. All hope is not lost.

Ok, I’m Mobile Friendly, Now What? 3 Ways To Optimize Correctly
Once you are all set to be mobile friendly there are three things to do to make sure you’re getting the best results.

Search your site. Run a simple Google search from a mobile device to see if your site is formatted correctly. If it is, there should be a mobile friendly label underneath the search results. If you see the label, you are good to go. If you don’t, it’s time to go back and do some more work!
Monitor your website. Searching one time should be enough, but let’s be realistic, with the way things change, small, seemingly insignificant changes can throw everything off. Even though your first search turned out exactly how you planned, you should search again during different times and dates, just to make sure you really are good to go. Your website rankings depend on it!
Still, remember desktops. Don’t ignore the fact that just because your site isn’t mobile friendly and won’t rank high on mobile searches until it is fixed that it won’t impact desktop searches as well. Although thought to be mutually exclusive, that is not always the case. As more and more changes roll out, website rankings that are not mobile friendly can easily drop on desktop searches as well. Google may downgrade the site across the board and you would be losing a lot of traffic, not just from the mobile crowd.

A Small Change Could Bring About A Huge Impact
What may seem like a small change to the algorithm for mobile searches and the way domain names are displayed may actually make a huge impact on your website searches. Now is the time to not only ensure your site is mobile friendly, but to make sure the name and structure are consistently updated throughout your site, reflecting exactly what you want mobile searchers to see so Google can accurately pull the information.

While it may seem minor if Google pulls the wrong name information into mobile search, it can actually significantly affect the traffic you receive. If the name of your site has nothing to do with what the searches are about, users are more likely to skip over your result because they feel there is nothing of importance to them on it. If your name reveals exactly what your website, and ultimately, your search is for, you are going to hit a home run in traffic and in mobile rankings.

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Thursday, May 7, 2015

Should Your Practice Charge Patient No-Show Fees?

Despite your staff’s best efforts to remind patients of their appointments, you’re still likely plagued by one or two no-show events every day. The MGMA has estimated that medical practices average a 5% to 7% no-show rate.

But that’s not so bad, right? After all, you can’t expect every single patient to show up as planned, can you?

Perhaps you should. If the average visit in your office yields a $25 co-pay and a $90 reimbursement, just two missed appointments per day can cost your practice nearly $60,000 per year. And that estimate excludes the administrative and payroll expenses you lose scheduling and rescheduling that appointment.

Many medical practices realize the loss of revenue missed appointments inflict on their businesses. One Midwestern practice with an 8.7% no-show rate in 2010 started requiring patients to sign appointment agreements as part of a formal plan to fix the issue. The result? By 2014, their no-show rate dropped to 1.7%.

A pediatric practice also looked at their no-show numbers. They experienced 389 no-shows appointments from 310 patients (some missed more than one). At an estimated $112 lost per appointment, their total came to $43,568 in lost revenue that year. The practice administrator estimated a $25 no-show fee would recoup $9,725, but that assumes a 100% payment rate.
Taking a cue from the hair salons and hotels of the world, some healthcare establishments charge patients no-show fees for blowing off appointments or canceling at the last-minute. But should they? Loud voices in the medical industry argue both for and against no-show charging.

IN FAVOR of a FeePatients tend to see medical practices solely as healthcare providers, not as functioning businesses. As such, they’re far more likely to skip out on a medical appointment than they would be to dodge a rental car reservation.

So there’s definitely value in a policy that makes it clear to patients that a physician’s time, effort and services cost money.

“There is a belief that the doctor will not ‘miss the patient’ or time,” says Drew Stevens, Ph.D., president of Stevens Consulting Group. “However, there are two issues here: one, another patient could have taken this appointment, and two, that is lost revenue for the doctor.”

Charging a no-show fee is the only way to earn back even a fraction of that lost revenue. A blanket $20 fee for every missed appointment may not recoup anywhere near what your practice would have earned in the actual encounter, but in today’s healthcare environment, many docs feel every extra dollar helps.

If your payer contracts allow it, you can collect a patient’s credit card information while booking his or her appointment – communicating your no-show policy as you do – and automatically collect your charges when a scheduled visit gets skipped.

Part of the point of having a policy in place, though, is hoping you don’t have to enforce it. The threat of the fee may be all it takes to get patients who would otherwise stay home to show up.
Practices often find that no-shows are committed by “repeat offenders,” so a sudden change in your office’s policy could scare patients into changing their bad habits. One practice reported moving from a 17% no-show rate to less than 1% after instituting a fee.

AGAINST a FeeOr, a sudden change in policy could spur your chronic skippers to head for your closest competing provider organization.

“I worked with one practice that realized many of the patients they were charging for missed appointments also brought in the best reimbursement,” says Elizabeth Woodcock, a practice management consultant. “By comparing chart transfer requests and no-show charges, the practice soon realized that a significant minority of these more lucrative patients transferred their care after receiving a billing statement that contained a no-show charge.”

Even if perturbed patients don’t leave your practice due to the fee policy, they may still resent being charged and could publicize their displeasure to friends, family, or in an online review.
Plus, unless you have credit card on file as discussed above, it can be difficult to get a patient to pay his no-show fee at all. The expense of mailing a bill for the missed-visit charge and the hassle of repeatedly requesting that a patient pay up may be more trouble than the fee is worth.
No-show fees can also project an image of inflexibility to your patients. After all – things come up. Patients often have legitimate, unavoidable reasons for missing appointments or canceling at the last minute. A rigid fee policy can alienate busy patients.

You could always start a more lax policy – some practices waive the fee on the first instance or in extenuating circumstances – but that can open up its own can of worms.

What counts as “extenuating?” Who decides when not to enforce the policy? Are you keeping records of which patients have already received their one waived-fee credit? It can be easy for miscommunication to occur and for someone to incur charges they thought they’d avoided.
So is a partial reimbursement on lost time and revenue worth potentially upsetting your patients over? That’s up to you to decide.

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How YouTube Cards will Transform Marketing

Since the very first video upload in 2005, YouTube has become one of the single largest marketing channels and online communities on the internet. With over 300 hours of video uploaded to the website every single minute, the widespread use of the video platform is known and loved by all and has even launched personalities such as PewDiePie to internet celebrity with over 12 million subscribers.

For any marketer or business professional, YouTube annotations have been a well-known and highly regarded YouTube tool. For those that don’t know, annotations are clickable lines of text that overlay a YouTube video. These are used to drive traffic to various other videos or websites for further marketing and conversion opportunities. YouTube is now getting ready to abolish the text and replace it with “YouTube Cards”. If you missed out on the annotation train, however, not to worry. These new cards will be far more capable and appealing than the previous model, and annotations will still be hanging around for a short while.

Here is why YouTube is swapping out annotations for YouTube cards and how this switch spells great news for business owners everywhere:

The Problem with Annotations
The internet is a wildly interactive place, and YouTube is the pinnacle when it comes to live-action video. The addition of annotations on YouTube allowed the once-passive platform to become more interactive by allowing users to click through from video to video, playlist, or to the author’s pre-approved website. This ultimately proved to be a great tactic to drive interaction, traffic, and ultimately conversions.

The issue that marketers face is that annotations cannot be seen on mobile devices. This becomes a huge problem considering that 50% of content uploaded to YouTube is mobile specific. This means that not only can 50% of the material on YouTube not be branded with this marketing text overlay, but mobile viewers across the world are therefore impossible to convert or funnel. With one quarter of the 1.9 billion mobile internet users accessing the internet strictly from a mobile device, annotations are not looking so sweet to marketers anymore. Luckily, YouTube is now taking the bull by the horns to get this situation sorted out.

YouTube Cards: The Solution to the Annotation Problem
Meet the new YouTube card. YouTube cards are essentially nothing more than annotations that have evolved to become more effective, stylish, and versatile for the marketers who use them; not to mention intriguing to the viewers who see them. As of now, cards will not be wholly replacing annotations until “[cards] can do everything annotations can do today, and more. Until then, we’re looking forward to your feedback on cards, including what you want them to do for you in the future” stated YouTube.

What makes the new YouTube cards so exciting to marketers is the various new features and abilities of the amped up annotations. First, cards will now be visible on mobile devices. This fact alone doubles the number of leads and sales that can possibly be generated from seeing any given video. Additionally, YouTube has added 6 different types of cards for various marketing techniques to be employed. The cards that are currently available for utilization are:

Merchandise: Images can be added and the creator’s merchandise can be promoted directly from the video.
Fundraising: Allows video viewers to be linked directly to programs on approved fundraising platforms.
Fan Funding: This card allows those who employ it to harness the power of the community by allowing appreciative viewers to make monetary donations to keep the page up and going.
Video / Playlist: Serves as a direct link for viewers to find related videos or playlists associated with the current video.
Associated Website: Link directly to the creator’s personal or business website. This is truly where mobile visibility plays an enormous role in increasing a business’s bottom line.

YouTube cards will now also display an information tab throughout the duration of the video making the card available at all times instead of appearing at a certain point in the video. These tabs are only able to be placed in the top-right corner as of now, but with the innovations YouTube aims to generate with cards, these will undoubtedly become movable.

YouTube cards are poised to become something much more than annotations could ever be. The previous version of the text was to be used sparingly to avoid becoming a nuisance. Cards, on the other hand, provide a stylish and retractable portal for anything from fundraising, to selling merchandise, to gaining more subscribers. This new form of annotation will take marketing on YouTube to a new level. Optimize your YouTube channel and outfit your uploads with these cards for a sleek new look that will no doubt boost leads and ultimately boost your sales.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Four Reasons Why Social Media Really Matters

Does social media really matter? Is it just there to give all those young people something to do after school? Maybe it is something that no serious business organization would ever take seriously. Right?

Wouldn’t life be much simpler if this was the case? Unfortunately, though, all of us grownups need to take a page from our local group of teens and preteens and jump on board the social media express.
Otherwise, we are going to be standing on the platform waving goodbye to all our competitors as they chug onwards towards success. Because if there is one thing that has been proven, it is that social media sells.

On that note, here are four ways that social media will make a difference for you.

Hello, Brand. One of the best uses of social media is building brand recognition. A relatively unheard of business, with a successful social media campaign, can quickly become a household name. Want proof?

Case in Point: Distractify
A month after Distractify launched, it said that it had gained 21 million unique visitors to its site according to Google Analytics. That means that a month into its operation, at least 21 million people had heard of them. In the first month they were operational, they had been shared over four million times on Facebook, where 90 percent of their traffic initiates. All this, and did I mention that when they started they were a three person team?

Without social media, it would not have been anywhere near as easy to get this kind of name recognition. While this particular company was designed with social media in mind, it is still a good example of how proper social media marketing equates to fast and successful brand recognition. (But don’t forget to back up your social media with a good product or service.)

Feelin’ Lucky Swag. If I were to tell you that people liked to get free stuff, would I surprise you? I hope not. However, as we all know, nothing in life is free. When it comes to social media, many companies hold competitions and giveaways or respond to customer complaints/compliments with free goods and services. In return, they build their reputation; since many people, when given a free sample, are so pleased that they want to continue using the product and telling friends.

Case in Point: Reconverse
With less than 200 LinkedIn followers, Reconverse decided to test out a new strategy. It created its first status update saying that everyone who liked the update would be entered in a drawing with the winner taking home a prize. Guess what? In less than an hour, they had 100 likes. Then they went viral. And then they started gaining likes and followers from all over the world, who actively engaged with the company, left and right.

Using social media is a good way to broadcast prizes and competitions to the entire world. And the ability to give swag to anyone in the world means it is much more likely that the entire world will be talking about you.

For the Love of Google. Because no discussion of social media marketing would be complete without mega-power Google, I present you with reason number three to use social media: Google likes it and so do “Google-ers.”

Go ahead and search for a company. Any company with a social media presence will do. (Though it might be a little vain to search for yourself, but I’ll leave that to you.) Did you notice anything? I did.
Case in Point: Any Company with a Social Media Presence

When I searched for McDonald’s, its home site was the first result. It’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts were two through four respectively.
When I searched for Carvel, the third result was its Facebook page, and a link to its Google + page was on the right.

Google ranks social media accounts highly, and if you want to have control over what pops up on Google for you, you are well-advised to give it social media pages to send searchers to.

People Search Social Not Google, Too. You don’t need social media because people will find you or your blog when they search Google. Right? Except what if instead they skip the middleman and search Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn instead?

Just as an example of the power of a social media search, up to 2010, Twitter handled 19 billion searches a month, which is 5x as many as Google. However, in order to be found in one of these searches, it is vital to have a profile that can turn up in a search.

It can also be a good idea to use promoted Tweets so that when people are searching Twitter for related topics, you pop up right at the top.

Case in Point: Junk Gypsy
Take Junk Gypsy for an example. It used a series of promoted Tweets, both promotional and friendly and engaging, in order to increase its Twitter presence. In so doing, it gained 1,800 followers and increased engagement by 43%. Junk Gypsy also now has its own show.

Which Platforms to Use
One thing that you will note from the above is the varying tools that each success story used to become successful. Distractify relies heavily on Facebook, Reconverse on LinkedIn, etc. What type of social media platform works for you, is determined by the people you want to attract.

Is your target audience young kids who want flash? You probably don’t want to focus your energy on LinkedIn.
Is your target audience more seasoned professionals who mostly use social media as a networking tool? Then maybe you should focus on LinkedIn.

The Point: In a Nutshell
Know your audience, research the various platforms out there, and find a system that works for you. But whatever the system is, make sure it includes social media.

So there you have it. No matter how opposed you are to social media, you still need to embrace it with open arms. And even if you are a strong proponent for these platforms, you should still make sure you are properly utilizing this important marketing tool and spending your time efficiently when you use it.

Besides, if you do a really good job with social media, people like me might talk about you when we discuss success stories. Free advertising—who doesn’t love that?

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Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Cash-Back Deals Can Drive High-Value Shoppers and More Sales to Your Website

As U.S. eCommerce sales keep making a steady climb as a percentage of overall retail sales, stores of every size are looking for new ways to attract more customers to their websites — especially lucrative, higher-spending customers. The competition for online shoppers is only going to escalate in the coming years, so maintaining and building on your core audience will be critical to your store’s ongoing survival and success.

Free shipping, of course, remains a reliable online deal closer. A growing number of stores are beginning to recognize the benefits that can accrue from customer-friendly return policies. Recently, though, another crowd-pleasing offer has emerged to provide retailers with an additional avenue for increasing both traffic to and revenue on their sites: Cash-back deals.

Cash-back deals generally fall into two categories: pre-defined amounts, which take the form of offers such as “Get $5 cash back on your first purchase at MySite.com;” and percentage offers, i.e., deals along the lines of “Get five percent cash back on your entire purchase.” Pre-defined deals are usually one-time offers designed to spur initial purchases or to move a specific product or product line.

Percentage-off deals, on the other hand, are more likely to be available on multiple purchases. They’re often found via cash-back sites and/or programs, which create cash back by passing along some or all of every retailer commission they receive to the customers making the purchases. These deals are becoming increasingly popular among retailers (and shoppers) because they can:

Increase site traffic;
Raise average order sizes; and
Close more sales.

Nevertheless, some retailers are wary or unsure of the merits of cash-back offers — and of the programs that facilitate them. Let’s, therefore, take a closer look at exactly what these deals and programs can do for your store.

Increase Site Traffic
One of the attractions of online shopping is how easy and convenient it is to hunt for bargains on practically anything you want. Unless you’re searching for a very specific item that’s only available at a single retail outlet, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to try to compare prices and find the best overall deal you possibly can.

Cash-back shoppers are no different — although they may be savvier. While half of today’s consumers want to get cash back whenever they buy something, only about four in 10 currently use cash-back sites to make all of their online purchases. Offering percentage-off deals will help put you on the radar of cash-back fans, allowing you to employ your marketing expertise on a large, diverse group of active shoppers.

For example, when a fashion retailer wanted to promote its summer line, it doubled its commission to a popular cash-back site and bought ad space on it. A beauty store took a similar approach, increasing its site commission and buying banner placements on it. Both retailers saw significant growth in traffic:

Visits to the fashion retail site went up by more than 250 percent.
The beauty site’s traffic increased by more than 470 percent.

Your results will vary, of course, depending on your campaign goals, strategy, and budget, but cash-back sites and offers can certainly drive more shoppers to your site. Once there, they’ll be exposed to your offerings and messages, and when they make purchases, you’re assured of additional points of contact through which you can continue to promote your store.

Raise Average Order Sizes
Offering percentage-off cash back on purchases can appeal to consumers on several levels. It’s a savings offer, obviously, so they know it will stretch their budgets. The gratification is delayed, which means they can’t (or, at least presumably, won’t) spend it all immediately. Instead, it gives them something to look forward to, i.e., a future reward for shopping well now. Plus, depending on how much they’re willing to spend, the savings potential can feel virtually limitless — even though they know it isn’t.

The cumulative result is that percentage-off deals often drive bigger cart sizes. In a study of a large retail network, cash-back sites achieved much higher AOV than other sites in the network. The AOV of one of the top cash-back sites was 83 percent higher than non-cash-back sites. Overall, cash-back sites’ AOV were 36 percent higher than the rest.

Cash-back offers can also drive bigger purchases across wide demographics. For instance, the study found that the AOV for menswear cash-back sites exceeded those of other menswear sites by 14 percent. Similarly, the AOV for women’s fashion sites that offered cash-back was 21 percent higher than the AOV for competitors’ sites that didn’t offer cash back. If you want attract high-value shoppers, a cash-back offer.

Close More Sales
A common concern among retailers is that the sales they receive via cash-back sites and programs might generate multiple commission claims because those customers typically interact with a variety of affiliate networks before making their purchases. The study cited above, though, looked at the click paths of various transactions and discovered that 95 percent of retail sales, 96 percent of ticketing sales, and 95 percent of travel sales in the network were single-interaction purchases. In fact, the research showed that, on average, loyalty, reward, and cash-back sites generated the fewest interactions among all of the various affiliate types.

In fact, the evidence shows that a reliable, high-value cash-back offer can increase sales and AOV. In the fashion and beauty store examples discussed earlier, the fashion site saw its sales double, and sales at the beauty site grew by 168 percent. Furthermore, when FreeShipping.com enhanced its ongoing cash-back offer in July 2014 , doubling the subscriber payout to 10 percent, the move benefited program retailers and subscribers alike. Within three months:

Subscribers who visited retailers through the program site completed orders with those retailers 45 percent more often than they did at the five percent cash-back level;
The average number of daily purchases made through the site increased 65 percent; and
The subscribers’ AOV increased 11 percent.

Done right, a cash-back offer can clearly pay dividends for online retailers of any size. It can expand your audience and send desirable, knowledgeable, active consumers to your site; increase the average order size among your customers; and help you close more sales. In your quest for a growing share of the online retail market, those are the sorts of advantages that can make a significant difference.