In eCommerce, providing a sense of security to your customers is essential in creating trust and long-term relationships. Part of that mission requires us to stay up to date with possible security concerns that may impact our customers and the safety of their data. A current vulnerability that we should be aware of is OpenSSL’s recent CVE-2022-3602 & CVE- 2022-3786 vulnerabilities.

What is OpenSSL

OpenSSL is an open sources software that we can use to secure our websites. Websites that are secured tend to have “https” in their URL and a small padlock next to their web address, but what those two visual queues mean is that your site has a valid certificate.

A certificate is a way of establishing that 1) you are who you say you are, and 2) the communications that happen on your site are encrypted. While the contents and creation process of certificates involve multiple steps, they are essentially a bundle of information about your site that is signed by a trusted authority, allowing your customers to also trust your business. OpenSSL is a way to create and implement these certificates on your site.

Why should I care about Certificates?

While sites can run without certificates, web browsers and search engines are very particular about security. Not having a certificate or having an invalid certificate can lead to your site being marked as a risk. Sites deemed questionable will require customers to manually click a button to accept this risk to visit your site. This may result in potential customers leaving your site before even seeing your content.

Another downfall to not having certificates is that search engines like Google will rank your site low on their search engines, if not leave your site off of relevant searches entirely. As discussed previously in our blog on Google’s search essentials, having proper security is a bare minimum for Google to consider indexing your site. Organic traffic relies on the searchability on your business, so ensuring that your site has a proper certificate is essential to your online shop’s success.

Beyond that, having safe lines of communication with your customers, especially considering the exchange of financial information in online shops, is imperative to protect your customers and your business. Not having proper security leaves your site open to hackers and attacks, and that can affect the functionality of your site, the privacy of information, and the overall reputation of your business.

What is CVE-2022-3602 & CVE- 2022-3786?

CVE-2022-3602 & CVE- 2022-3786 are vulnerabilities that appeared on October 25^th, 2022, that were originally marked at a critical threat vulnerability to those using OpenSSL. OpenSSL’s ranking of risk follows a four-level scale, with critical being the highest. This means that these vulnerabilities affect both common usages of OpenSSL and have a high risk of being exploitable, meaning that someone with malicious intent could use these vulnerabilities to their advantage.

In this case, these vulnerabilities involve a common software weakness called buffer overflow. Buffer overflow is essentially how the internet handles large pieces of information. Just like how we can only carry so many groceries from our cars into our houses after going shopping, the internet can only take so much information at a time. When we try to carry too many bags at once, we may drop something or struggle to successfully carry everything into the house. This vulnerability targets that weakness.

CVE-2022-3602 & CVE- 2022-3786 target the process of proving the validity of a certificate, that a site is who it claims it to be and that it is safe to visit. These vulnerabilities can be acted on after an application or user has manually approved an invalid certificate or has encountered a falsely signed certificate. In turn, a malicious actor could send a bunch of information on this open channel when looking at the certificate and cause one of two things:

• Crash the service to where the user can’t access your site.
• Possibly tell the browser or site to do something, like execute code.

Now, on November 1^st, 2022, OpenSSL lowered the risk level of these threats to high, meaning that these vulnerabilities were less exploitable than originally anticipated, but still something to be aware of. This is because both of these vulnerabilities require many factors to be in place to work effectively. Your server must have adopted the specific version of OpenSSL, version 3.06, and our users would have had to accept a bad certificate OR a malicious actor would have had to convince a certificate authority to sign a bad certificate. All these factors are unlikely. With OpenSSL version 3.06 being new, adoption is low. Most users and applications are aware of the risks of accepting bad certificates, and it is not easy to forge a fake certificate that is properly signed.

Who does this effect?

These CVE vulnerabilities can affect those who:

• Interact with OpenSSL.
• Trust third party or untrusted certificates manually or automatically.

What should I do?

If you think you fall into one of those categories as a business owner, the good news is that OpenSSL released a patch that removes the threat of these vulnerabilities. All you have to do is make sure that, if you are using OpenSSL, you update to the newest version, version 3.07. In terms of maintaining future security, make sure your site has a valid certificate and that your site isn’t accepting invalid certificates.

In our previous blog, we explored some of the ways we can use content marketing to keep our customers engaged with our offerings and brand. With a variety of content types to choose from, it can be hard to get started. A good starting place for content creation is blog posts.

Blog posts are a collection of regularly posted articles that share information to your audience. Varying in length and content, blogs tend to be an informal way to keep in touch with your users. Blogs can be used to educate, promote, and push brand awareness for your company. Before we dive into how to write a blog, let’s explore some of the types of blogs we can write.

Types of Blogs

There are many types of blogs on the internet today. In order to determine what kind of content you want to create, you will need to have a good understanding of the way your audience communicates and digests content. A few types of blogs we can consider starting with are:

• Tutorial Blogs: These blogs help teach and guide readers on a topic. They can be comprehensive, step-by-step blogs or even a collection of general tips. If your customer base is interested in learning, sharing your insights through blog posts can catch their interest.
• News Blogs: These blogs aim to share recent information that may affect your audience. These updates could be directly about your company or about other important occurrences that will affect your business and customers. Keeping your audience up to date on factors that will impact them can be valuable to your readers.
• List Based Blogs: These blogs can vary in terms of topics or goals, but generally share a list of similar topics. A list of the pros and cons of hosting products, for example, would fall into this category. Informing your users of multiple solutions or things to consider through a list blog can help them make educated decisions and even better understand your offerings.

What blog type you choose to write will depend on your expertise and customer base. What information or insights do you have or want to share? What are your customers interested in? Answer these questions to better determine what kind of blog may best suit your business.

How to Start blog Post

Getting started is the hardest part of most projects and writing a blog post is no different. There are three steps we must take when determining what we are going to write:

Choose a topic

When choosing your topic, consider your ideal customer’s interests and concerns. What problems do they struggle with? Why do they purchase your products? How can you help them? By connecting your expertise to something they care about, you can define a topic that will be both interesting and valuable to your customer.

Research your topic

One thing to remember when writing blogs is that you are not expected to be an expert immediately on the topic you are writing about. Consider your knowledge when thinking about what you want to write, but also research your topic by reading similar blogs, listening to podcasts, analyzing courses, and so forth.

Note: Gaps in Knowledge can Offer Opportunities to create something Unique

An important detail to note when researching a topic is what is missing or incomplete. If there are gaps in information being shared about your topic, you may be able to fill that gap in your own writing. By providing new knowledge to the context of your topic, your blog can stand out amongst others.

Write an outline

After your have collected notes on your topic, write an outline about what you want to share and how you want to share it. Creating structure helps you both share information in an organized way, but also see visually if your ideas are connecting like you thought they would. When writing your outline, consider the structure of your blog along alongside the topic you are discussing and the solutions you are providing.

Writing your Blog

Most blogs are structured with an introduction, body, and conclusion. Following this structure can help get your started on writing a piece that is complete and easily digestible. However, there are multiple details to consider while writing your blog.

Titles & Headings

When writing a blog, you will eventually need to decide on a title for it. Titles can be determined at any time as you write your blog. Some blog titles are clear and concise, such as “How to decorate a Christmas Tree,” while others are intentionally vague, such as “10 things you shouldn’t do when decorating a Christmas Tree.” Both of these hypothetical blogs could contain the same details and insights, but they work to attract different audiences. Consider what titles would attract your specific reader base.

Beyond titles, your article may contain multiple subheadings that divide your article. Headings make your blog more palatable and easier to understand. When considering your headings, or even your title, keep in mind the keywords your audience associates with the topic you are writing about. How do they communicate about this topic? What words are they using to search information about these topics? Determining important keywords around your topic can help you not only communicate effectively with your audience, but also improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Writing Introductions

Introductions are said to be the hardest part of writing a blog. However, the main goals of an intro are to catch your reader’s interest and provide them a brief explanation of what your blog is going to be about. Your introduction could present a problem that your readers are struggling with and then explain how the following blog will provide solutions or insight into that problem. The “hook” of your intro will depend on your audience, but overall, readers should understand who this blog is for and what value it will share when reading your introduction.

Creating the Body of your Blog

The body of your blog will be where the meat of your insights reside. In the body, your audience should learn about the details or solutions your introduction said your blog would discuss. Making sure this information is easy to read and understand is key. A few factors to keep in mind to help readability are:

• Keep your sentence and paragraph length in mind:When writing the body of your text, you will want to make sure your sentences are easy to digest. Keeping your sentences short can help readers take in your topic in small bites. The size of your paragraphs at first glance can also encourage or discourage your audience from reading your blog. Use paragraphs to break up your text and keep them as small as you can, maxing them out at about three to five sentences.

• Highlight important aspects of your blog: While we want our audience to read our blogs, there are many readers who will want to quickly find the insights we are offering. Making our blogs skimmable can make them more valuable to such readers. One way we can emphasize important moments in our blogs is by bolding or highlighting them.

• Link to existing content:While reading our blogs, some readers may find themselves confused or interested in specific factors surrounding our topics. If we have other blogs or resources that can offering our audience more reading or insights, we can link those into our current blog. By linking to other content, we also add more value to the page in terms of SEO.

• Use images when needed: Images can be used in our blogs to break up text as well as provide further detail into complicated topics. For example, tutorials can be enhanced with the use of images to help guide the reader not only through words, but with visuals.

Concluding your Thoughts

At the end of your blog, not only can you finish up your thoughts, but you can also offer actions for your readers to take. If they liked this blog, what can they do next? In your conclusion, you can use Call to Actions (CTAs) to guide your reader towards a next step. These CTAs could be as simple as reading more blogs or could be a promotion for your products and services. Conclusions can also be a place to ask your users for feedback on the topic, opening a channel for communication.

Note: Consistency is Key

When writing blogs, the main thing to remember is to keep writing them! Having a regular schedule of blogs can keep your audience engaged and deepen the connection they have with your company.

Want to learn more about content creation?

Writing blogs is just one type of content we can use to connect with our customers and bring more traffic to our websites. Explore our other blogs to learn more about what you can do to improve your site! If you are interested in a more hands-on course about how to optimize your website, join the waitlist for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, she will dive into important factors that aim to increase the conversion rates of your site!

While eCommerce sites are mainly virtual stores where we can sell our products and services, having other pages on your website can aid in making us memorable and attractive. One way we can do this is by offering a variety of content themed around your customers interests and what your business has to offer.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating content for your ideal audience that will aid in driving them to become customers. This method of marketing does a few things for us. It allows us to share valuable, interesting content that can attract customers, solidify our brand, and improve the user experience which can impact our SEO Rank. We are also encouraging customer loyalty through proving through our content that we are reliable and are experts in our field.  

What Content Should I Create?

There are a variety of ways we can approach content creation, and at the end of the day, it really depends on who your customers are. Knowing your customers is key to effective content marketing. For example, a few questions to consider about your customers are:

• What are their interests?
• Where do they hang out on the internet?
• How do they like to communicate?
• What is their general education level about your field?
• What are problems are they currently struggling with?

Having answers to these questions can help you 1) figure out who your audience really is, and 2) what content are they needing right now. Some of the best content you can create will involve solving a problem or answering a question your customers may have, as well as content that helps them understand their desires and goals.

What Types of Content Should I Consider?

Once you understand your target customer, you can choose from a variety of content types that will depend on your customer’s communication preferences. Below are a few content types that you may want to consider.

Blogs

Blogs are one of the most straightforward types of content we can utilize on our sites. Writing about current content that is valuable to your users helps increase your credibility and also illustrate your brand as customer centric. Blog contents can range from news updates to advice, but overall should aid in informing the user on a topic they are interested in or that can help them in some way.

While blogs can be intimidating in terms of word length, they are quick to implement as well as the cheapest approach when compared to other types of content. However, the effectiveness of this method all depends on the quality of your blogs. Knowing what you customers want and providing them with information that can benefit them is key.

Infographics

At times, certain topics will be too complicated to explain with words alone. That’s where infographics come into play. These graphics are visual representations of information and can aid in illustrating more complex topics with a mix of words and pictures. This type of content should be easy to understand and visually compelling. An example use case of an infographic could be to put a statistic into perspective by using visuals to show the value of that stat. You can also use it to illustrate the flow or steps of a process, the visuals helping users comprehend complex processes quicker and easier.

This form of content can be eye catching and engaging, but remember that just like with our other types of content, they need to provide value to our customers. They should help customers understand a subject and ideally remember that subject with the help of recognizable visuals.  

Videos

Videos are great ways to share information quickly and in an engaging way. Company stories, product reviews, tutorials and more can be shared in the form of video, giving users the chance to get to know you, your values, and your products better. Since we can’t show customers our products physically and some products are not tangible to begin with, videos can help put them into perspective. They are also a great way to establish the voice you want your company to have.

While videos are a bit more involved than other content, they can be useful in moderation on your site and can generate great results. Afterall, videos are very popular way to consume information as seen with successful social media platforms such as YouTube or TikTok. If you are worried about length, videos don’t have to be that long, just long enough to convey some value.

Reviews

Sometimes, you will have potential customers that are interested in your products, but still uncertain about buying. The use of customer reviews and testimonials on your site can help relieve the ambiguity about your product’s credibility as well as help people under what your products and services do. While you can write up content explaining why your business is useful, hearing real stories from customers that have been helped by your business can do wonders.

Getting reviews and testimonials could take time, but once you have them, they are free, valuable content that you can share in multiple places around your site. Keep in mind which review you decide to share as they will impact how people see your brand and your products. Aligning your selected testimonials with your goals and desired brand can help create clarity on what you are offering to your customers.

Want to Learn More?

Bringing traffic to your site is a constant process and it can be hard to know where to start or what you can do. BCS Engineering is always here help if you need changes made. If you want a deeper dive into what you can do on your own to optimize your website, join the waitlist for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, she will dive into important factors that aim to increase the conversion rates of your site!

There are many ways we can work to bring traffic to our online shops and websites. Optimizing user experience, refining our searchability, and using effective email marketing are just a few of the ways we can broaden our visibility. However, to create an effective marketing plan, we must keep in mind the many channels a potential customer can discover us through. One such channel is social media.

Many of us may already use social media for marketing or on a personal basis. These online communities are great places to establish your company’s presence. While brick and mortar stores can rely on foot traffic to gain awareness and engagement, eCommerce businesses don’t have that luxury. Unlike customers who walk in a mall and are exposed to a select number of companies, online customers have a worldwide range of shops to choose from, and many online shops can drown in the sea of competitors. Due to this, it is important to use every channel we can to reach our target audiences, including social media.

Why should I use Social Media?

Beyond creating a company presence, there are many reasons why we should include social media channels into our marketing strategies.

Increase traffic and conversions

Having multiple channels where users can discover your products and services can lead to more traffic on your site, and more traffic means more potential customers. Utilizing social media can help increase our conversion rate by increasing our business’ visibility and engagement.

Establishes your brand

With any medium we use, whether it be emails, videos, blogs, and so forth, maintaining a consistent brand can do a lot to attract new customers and retain reoccurring ones. With more visibility with the help of social media, we can increase the awareness of our business’ through exposing our brand to people on a more constant basis.

Creates opportunity for customer engagement

One benefit to social media is that it can keep your users engaged with your business even when they aren’t buying your products and services. Users can interact with your posts and content with comments, reactions and shares, keeping your company in their memory for when they may decide to buy.

Provides an avenue for social proof

While you can create content to establish the quality and validity of your products and services, user reviews and stories are the best way to create social proof. User comments, tagged posts, and reviews can be created through social media channels and shared to our pages to increase the value of our business.

Cultivates an open dialogue with your customers

Social media offers a two-way street between us and our customers. Opportunities for customer feedback as well as competitor visibility can aid in our decisions on what to improve and optimize to create better user experiences.

What Social Media Platforms should I use?

With many social media platforms to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. The key to this decision is knowing where your target audience can be found. Depending on factors such as their age, demographic, occupation, location, interests, and favorite hang out sites we can narrow down which social media platforms we should put our time and effort into. Choosing a platform to establish your company on can also depend on the content you plan to produce. Let’s explore a few of the most popular platforms we could potentially use.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social media platform out there. With a structure that is based on connecting with friends and following pages, its simplicity attracts a broad range of age groups. Facebook also offers a variety of content types to share such as text, links, images, and videos, making it versatile. Ideally, your customers would follow your business page and share your content with their network of friends and family, bringing more customers to your page that can share your content to their networks, and so forth.

Note: Successful Facebook Marketing can cost money

Due to how large Facebook’s user base is, it attracts many competitors. Due to this, being visible on Facebook can be difficult without the help of Facebook itself. Many Facebook marketing plans involve a mix of paid and organic posts to work effectively.

Twitter

Twitter is popular with young to middle aged adults. The platform focuses on sharing user generated content with other users based on their interests. Entertainment and news are the most popular genres of content. Twitter is a great medium for creating a brand personality and for sharing company updates and blog posts.

Instagram

Instagram and Facebook are run by the same company but have different approaches to social media. Instagram has a more focused approached to content, allowing users to post only images and videos with small amounts of text. While Facebook is used to connect with people and businesses, Instagram mainly attracts an audience that looks for content based on their interests. It also boasts the title of being the favorite platform for Gen Z users. Posting high quality photos and videos of your products, services, and general experiences can aid in increasing the visibility of your business as well as make it more relatable to users.

YouTube

YouTube is one of the most popular places for people to visit on the internet. Currently its most popular videos concern video games, music, and reviews, but a decent chunk of watchers also dive into tutorial and “how to” videos as well. YouTube can be utilized to share product demos, tutorials, customer testimonials, and more.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a platform that is less about your customers and more about your team and business connections. The majority of users of LinkedIn are college educated professionals either looking for a job or promoting their business. It is a great platform to see what other companies are doing, hire new workers, and discover business opportunities with other companies or large clients.

How do I Create an effective Social Media Presence?

While strategies can vary per social media platform and can vary in cost, there are some basic best practices that can be followed no matter what channel you decide to pursue.

Be Consistent

Posting the same amount of posts at the same time per week can help make your business more visible. Once you know your audience, you can learn what times they are most active on social media and follow that time frame when posting your content.

Post Often

In the end, quantity outweighs quality when it comes to most social media strategies. We want our businesses to be fresh in the minds of our customers, and to do that we need to be sharing a lot of content. Posting at least twice a week is a good starting point as you get a feel for these platforms.

Note: Automation tools can streamline the process

While posting often and at specific times may sound overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be! There are both free and paid tools available that will allow you to quickly create and schedule content to multiple social media platforms at once. Some examples of such tools are MeetEdgar and Hootsuite.

Have Variety

When creating content, you want to add some variety to it to grab the attention of your various ideal customers. Some examples of content we can share are news updates, inspirational quotes, promotions, giveaways, user reviews, Q&As, product advice, and many more.

Tailor your Content to your Audience

Since each social media platform is different and attracts different kinds of users, we will want to make content suited to each platform and audience. This will vary depending on who your ideal customer is and what platform(s) you decide to utilize in your marketing strategy. Create content that your specific audience will want to see by using words they will understand and addressing their interests and pain points with your products and services.

Want to Learn more about Optimizing your Website?

Social media is just one channel that we can utilize to bring more traffic to our sites and to turn visitors into customers. Check out more of our blog to learn more tips and tricks that can help you improve your website. If you are looking for hands on learning, join the waitlist for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, she will dive into important factors that aim to increase your conversion rates through optimizing your website.

In previous articles, we have dived into many ways you can improve user experience on your website. From optimizing SEO for better rank to using Google analytics tools to understand your users better, improving user experience is a site wide endeavor. However, one aspect of your site that may need work is the first thing your users ever see: you “above the fold” content.

What does Above the Fold Mean?

Above the fold is a concept that stems from newspapers. Newspapers are chalked full of interesting content, but getting people to open them up to read that content can be a challenge. Thus, newspapers are set up in such a way that their most interesting headlines are visible from their bin. For people walking by, those headlines may pique their interest enough to buy a newspaper and read the rest of the articles inside.

The same concept can be applied to your website. In the case of the internet, your “above the fold” content is the content visitors see first without the need to scroll.

Why is Above the Fold Content Important?

Just like with our newspaper example, above the fold content is important to optimize for the sake of first impressions. If the first part of your page does not catch your user’s interest, they may leave without scrolling or clicking further. Adjusting your above the fold content is necessary to begin the process of turning visitors into customers.

How do I Improve my Above the Fold Content?

There are many ways you can start making your above the fold content more attractive and engaging.

Make sure your headline is understandable and compelling

Usually, above the fold content involves information that explains who you are and what you do. While the structure of above the fold content may vary per site, most have some sort of headline that aims to capture the attention of visitors. This headline, which will most likely be the first thing that draws the user’s eye, needs to express your purpose and expertise quickly and clearly. What is your specialty? What makes your company different from others? Answering these questions immediately will help the user determine if they are in the right place, or if they are looking for a different solution.

Note: Keep your Audience in Mind

Especially when creating your above the fold content, it helps to keep your target audience in mind. Who are you trying to sell to? What are those users looking for? What are the problems they are trying to solve? Keeping your ideal user in mind can help in creating the perfect above the fold content.

Create a Powerful Call to Action

After the user understands what your company offers, your above the fold content needs to guide them to their next step. This could be as simple as a “Shop Now” Button that will easily bring users to your products. Making sure this call to action is obvious and clear is important to making it simple for an interested user to explore your content further. After all, even if a user finds your above the fold content interesting, there is always the chance that they will not scroll further.

Keep your Imagery Simple

While we can go all out in beautifying our above the fold content, keep in mind that too much content can be distracting. Backgrounds, images, and videos are all great content to share, but having all of them at once can overwhelm your potential customer and cause them to leave. A good rule of thumb is to share a glimpse of your best media and content in your above the fold content. One quality piece of media can really help persuade your users to give your company a chance.

Note: Page Speed can be affected by large media

In previous articles, we have explored how page speed impacts user experience greatly, so it is important to keep in mind the speed of which your above the fold content loads. Make sure the media you use to create your best first impression doesn’t negatively impact your page speed. If the users can’t quickly see your content, they may not stay long enough to consume it.

Want to Learn More about Optimizing your Website?

Above the fold content is just one piece that we can improve to optimize user experience and conversion rates. What other aspects of our sites can we improve to make our website work for us? Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website,” will dive into the tools and techniques your can use optimize your website for higher conversion rates. Join the waitlist today to stay up to date on the classes release!