Wondering how to take time off? You’re not imagining it — it has, indeed, become increasingly difficult to do. Whatever the cause (and we’ll get to that) the data suggests that the situation is dire.

On the surface, learning how to take time off isn’t mysterious or overly complicated. Yet, action and actual change remains elusive for many of us. Dive right into these 7 tips for taking more time away from work, or keep reading to learn about the tangible payoffs waiting for you when you do.

Build systems that require you to work less.
Book something.
Genuinely look forward to your time off.
Make it a routine.
Get other people involved.
Identify problem areas.
Set real(istic) boundaries

Related: 18 self-care tips to promote entrepreneur health and wellness

What kind of time off helps?

There are different manifestations of productive time off. Here are some scenarios that aren’t included on that list:

Sick days or medical leave
Family leave
Multitasking while being physically somewhere else

Rest is not simply the absence of work. It requires a replacement, and the most effective replacement is one that creates contrast. Uncomfortable as it might be in the beginning, time spent working should ultimately be replaced with something that fulfills your other needs.

 

For this conversation, let’s count any intentional break from work as time off. On the scale of micro-breaks to vacations, there are a whole host of benefits waiting for us.

But before exploring how to take time off and the real rewards that come with stepping away from work, let’s diagnose where work and non-work life balance explosively collide.

Why don’t we take more time off?

Is it our obsession with being busy? Lack of systems in place? Or are we just earnestly procrastinating taking time off?

Maybe we’re not to blame at all. After all, the work-from-home explosion of 2020 led to much longer workdays and destroyed many people’s work-life balance.

But, looking at data dating back to 2000, Forbes points out that “overwork is a longstanding problem.” And that’s never more apparent than when you look at taking vacation time. To get unaffected statistics on the U.S. workforce’s relationship with cashing in vacation days, we have to reach back to a time when the average person had never heard of a coronavirus.

The U.S. Travel Association reported in 2019 that 55% of American workers left vacation days unspent.

The ocean of statistics on entrepreneurs and their time off is much more shallow, but we don’t need Gallop to tell us that entrepreneurs struggle even more to take time off from work. There’s a chasm of opportunity for most of us to learn how to take time off. Maybe the benefits will sway us.

Related: Mindfulness for entrepreneurs — How to adopt a mindset that can improve your business and your life

Take more time off for your health

The irony here is apparent: The obsession with productivity has such a hold that we must convince ourselves that it’s productive to take more time off.

I mean, we’re already here — might as well lean into it and be blown away by the health benefits, don’t you agree?

We’ve all heard that not taking enough time off from work exasperates stress and the side effects of stress range from headaches to heart disease. Prolonged stress has detrimental effects on our mental and physical health.

That information isn’t new to most of us, but the problem with overworking is that for many people, it’s a constant state of being.

Taking an afternoon off to improve your mental health while still living in a state of overpowering stress is like using a ladle to bail out an overflowing bathtub while the tap is still running.

If it’s meant to offer any lasting health benefits, our ability to take more time off will need to be institutional in our lives, not used as a tool to simply pump the breaks right before collapsing. Instead, successful time off results in something called proactive recovery.

How to take time off: The case for proactive recovery

It’s elegantly simple: choose to fill up the tank before it runs low in the first place. We do this in many other areas of our lives. We all prefer to change the tires of our cars before running them thin and getting a flat. It would be ludicrous to wait for a cavity to brush our teeth.

About our ability to take more time off from work, proactive recovery is the process of catching ourselves right at the point where our performance drops, instead of waiting for a radical loss of productivity.

The big-picture buy-in is easy, but let’s zoom into the macro and find ways to implement taking time off today.

How to take time off in 7 ways

It won’t cost you a cent to initiate each of these actionable tips for taking more time off.

1. Build systems that require you to work less

Systems can be technical, like schedulers and automations. They can also be intangible, like pre-written emails or templates for FAQs, or hiring an assistant or virtual assistant (VA) to handle recurring tasks.

 

A few simple systems worth exploring are:

An away-from-computer bounce email (here’s how to set one up in Outlook and Google) with solutions to your most frequent requests (if applicable in your business).
You also can set up automatic replies on Instagram and Facebook if you get frequent messages there.
Use automated email sequences to nurture leads immediately.
Leverage big-picture strategies, like SEO, to bring in potential customers and leads constantly.
Explore an automatic calendar booking system, where clients and team members can book an appointment with you at any time. Add this feature to your website contact page or your automated away-from-inbox message and you’ll effortlessly maintain your appointments.

Editor’s note: If you built your business website using GoDaddy’s Websites + Marketing, you can quickly and easily adapt your website to book appointments, meetings, events, classes and training sessions online.

Finding the right tools is a massive leap towards working smarter and not harder. Milon Mia, CEO of Milsales, described how this process transformed his ability to take more time off:

“I spent 12-18 hours per day working in the beginning for my own business and that took a very big toll on my social, emotional and physical life. I recommend that others not try to figure it all out on their own.”

Instead, he only works about 2-4 hours a day now. “I was able to do this because I built a team, leveraging others’ expertise and resources to propel me forward. The funny thing is now, I can achieve a lot more by working less.”

That’s the dream, isn’t it?

Related: 12 tech shortcuts to relieve work-life stress

2. Book something

A flight, a massage, a walk around the block with a neighbor — big or small, putting time off on the calendar makes it real. It also becomes an event you can prepare for. If your time off spans days or weeks, let your team or clients know in advance.

Present this information as a courtesy notification instead of a request for their blessing.

“If no one objects, I’m going to be out of the office the first week of next month.”

Be firm and confident in your presentation.

“This won’t affect the project deliverables, but I’m letting you know that I’ll be taking time off the first week of next month. I’ve blocked out those days on the calendar, so if you need to schedule a meeting with me, feel free to do so before or after.”

If this time away from work spans multiple days and involves travel, show that you’re not playing around by leaving your laptop at home! You get bonus psychological points if you spend money while scheduling your time off. When we spend money, we’re less likely to cancel or ghost a commitment. It also (should) create an endorphin build-up, which leads right to No. 3.

3. Genuinely look forward to your time off

It’s easy to misconstrue any time off as a success, but it’s not a pass-fail checkbox. There’s a scale. On one end, there’s taking time physically away from your work but still thinking about it. On the other end is something joyful, relaxing, distancing and creativity–inducing.

Who wants to think about their inbox the entire way through an afternoon movie with a friend? That’s not success. Eating yourself nauseous on butter popcorn and having an intense, consuming debate on which Marvel superpowers are most practical for daily life is a success.

But mental multitasking might be step one for you, and that’s OK. There’s likely a lot of unconditioning to do. If your trademark reaction to taking time off work is anxiety about deadlines, productivity or lost progress, it’s really important to reroute your mental reaction. Get the endorphins flowing the moment you commit.

 

Then, rinse and repeat.

Related: How to take a vacation when you’re a solopreneur

4. Make it a routine

Guys’ night is the first Saturday of every month. Coworking sessions that morph into wine happy hour every other Friday. A standing hiking date with a friend.

These breaks from work can be big or small, but you should institutionalize them into your calendar and life.

Maybe a mix of both is ideal. A common thread of success is that this opportunity for time off involves other people, which rolls right into tip No. 5.

5. Get other people involved

When I posed the question, “what motivates you to take more time off?” to my online network, the No. 1 response was to get other people invested.

Seeing your kids, friends or partner look forward to doing something together makes you less likely to procrastinate or fall through on your commitment to take more time off.

Another take on this same tip came from Aaron Gray, co-owner and teacher at Practice Makes Perfect Music Studio, who found that building up a reliable core team was fundamental to his ability to take more time off.

“While not everyone can have a co-owner, I do encourage small business owners to appoint a ‘second in command.’ Having this small team of reliable employees not only allows business to progress when I’m not there, but it helps me relax knowing that my business is running smoothly.”

This is only effective if you know what to delegate, so you’ll need to first identify problem areas.

6. Identify problem areas

If learning how to take time off is too big of a task to tackle at once, triage your business and look for problem areas you can pivot into opportunities. Once you identify a problem area, consider which of the three -ION words to apply: automation, delegation or elimination.

 

Laurel Carpenter, the co-founder of Pearl Consulting NYC, shared her insight that led to the elimination of one of the most time-consuming business tasks: social media. “Neither of us are workaholics,” she said of herself and her partner. “We decided to stop doing social media management because it never stops.”

7. Set real(istic) boundaries

At the heart of learning how to take time off are boundaries and follow-through.

As Nadalie Bardo put it, we must “embrace the power of downtime to restore, replenish, revive and rejuvenate the body, mind and spirit.”

Fiber artist Emily McKenzie, the owner of Euca Design, finds that creating achievable boundaries and fully unplugging from work, even the creative side of work, results in more productive “on” time. “The nature of my work is creative and if I don’t nurture that, it shows. Taking breaks pays off in more ways than one.”

The American Psychological Association refers to this as not “exhausting the mental fuel.”

But what can you do if you truly can’t take much or any substantial time off right now?

3 things to do if you can’t take time off *yet*

Are you nodding along to the benefits of taking more time off, but it’s truly not in the cards for your workload right now? Here’s how to absorb some of the benefits anyway.

Combine work with taking time off. A simple manifestation of this is a working vacation, aka a workation where you work remotely from a stimulating and contrasting environment to your normal environment.

Institutionalize microbreaks. My favorite tool for this tactic is the Stretch Clock Google Chrome Extension. Every 25 minutes (or any other interval you set), a guided stretching exercise appears.

If stretching isn’t your style, the Pomodoro Technique is your next best bet. Try a Chrome extension for that as well to keep you from getting sucked into the black hole of your phone.

Turn down the volume on hustle culture. This can manifest in the form of Instagram accounts you follow, podcasts you tune into, or any digital watercooler that you frequent.

Tierra Bonds, the owner of Take Charge Credit Consulting, said that realizing she was stuck in the “boss babe, hustle hard” culture helped her enact change in her life. “I realized I wasn’t going to get a gold medal for working 16-hour days. There were more important ways that I could spend my time like healing, self-care, spending time with family, and just BEING.“

That’s a realization that can benefit us all.

Next steps

On a scale of one to 10, how important is your mental fuel?

Our busyness is not a badge of honor. We can control the amount of time that work consumes in our day.

According to one study from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 79% of private-industry American workers had access to paid vacation time (pre-pandemic). We might not have paid time off the same way as employed individuals, but entrepreneurs can learn from this. It’s time to start taking time off for personal reasons, for self-care, for vacation, and ultimately, for productivity.

Apparently, it’s to our detriment not to.

Or, as my stretching Google Chrome extension put it on one of today’s breaks: “Remember, it doesn’t help to go too far.”

I think this counts for your emotional state as much as it does for your neck muscles.

The post How to take time off: 7 tips to prioritize your health and business appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.

As GoDaddy continues to establish itself within the WordPress community, our engineering teams look for new ways to improve processes and products such as Managed WordPress and Managed WordPress Ecommerce.

One of the most anticipated developments was support for PHP 8.

WordPress developers at GoDaddy are tasked with delivering an experience that combines cutting-edge features with industry-leading value — no small task. We caught up with a few key individuals to get an insider’s look at how GoDaddy is working to build the best possible WordPress experience.

Hear it from the WordPress Engineering team at GoDaddy

From a high level, which aspects of our WordPress experience get the highest priority? We asked Jeff Uberstine, Senior Manager of WordPress Development at GoDaddy, for his thoughts.

What’s been driving PHP upgrades as a higher priority?

It’s really simple. Our customers expect to be able to use the latest modern technology and there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to deliver on that expectation!

What challenges did you face getting all Managed WordPress plans to support PHP 8?

Managed WordPress had some pretty significant technical debt that prevented us from easily launching PHP 7.4 and 8. We basically had to rebuild large chunks of the product to enable support for the packages needed to run PHP 8.0. Going forward, this will be much easier.

In the future, will new PHP versions take as long to be supported on our Managed WordPress plans?

We sincerely believe we can add support for new PHP versions within 30 days of release by PHP.net and support by WordPress core. We recently launched PHP 8.1, within 30 days of WordPress 6.0 supporting it. That said, if WordPress itself does not have proper support for those versions, we may delay enabling the new versions for our customers until they do.

Could you describe any recent failures and lessons learned with managing PHP?

It was a failure on GoDaddy’s behalf that it took us over 1 year post release to get customers PHP 7.4 and 8.0. We are here to make the commitment that it won’t happen again.

Could you describe any recent successes and how you were able to achieve them?

WordPress tends to run faster on PHP 7.4 and enabling PHP 7.4 and 8.0 has been received very positively from our customers. During this process, we revamped the system to enable speedy PHP upgrades in the future, be it a new version completely or just being able to upgrade to a later sub-version release.

The post GoDaddy Team Innerview: WordPress PHP Support appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.

Data is crucial in driving business decisions in today’s digital world. While the design is often seen as an art based on intuition, sometimes it is not easy for designers to read the thoughts of their prospects and customers. Using intuition when designing a website may often lead to a design that does not meet users’ requirements. This is where data-driven design comes into play.

A good website design is user-centric and aims at providing a better user experience. Data helps understand users’ behavior and their requirements to create a better design that is easy to use. This article elaborates on data-driven design, why it matters, and how to adopt a data-driven design in your organization.

Understanding data

Data refers to information collected and stored in a form that is efficient for processing. That said, data does not just involve numbers. It includes qualitative data relating to opinions, emotions, observations and other things that are not presented in numbers.

As such, both quantitative and qualitative data are essential for your design process. Numbers provide answers to questions like how much or how many, which represent quantitative data.

Great sources of qualitative data include website analytics, A/B testing, heatmaps, and surveys.

On the other hand, qualitative data cannot be represented in numbers. It explains why users perform specific actions — user motivation and purpose. Great sources of qualitative data include competitive analysis, usability studies, interviews, focus groups, and much more.

When used alongside intuitions, data plays a crucial role in helping designers provide a better experience to their users. Among other things, qualitative data will help you better understand your customer’s needs and what motivates them to take specific actions.

This will help inform your decisions when designing and modifying your website design.

Wait… data-driven design isn’t perfect?

Like anything else good, data-driven design is not perfect. As such, you should not overly rely on data while ignoring the bigger picture. This mistake can lead to a bad user experience and hurt your conversions in the long run.

The best approach is to take advantage of intuition and scientific data and find a balance between the two. Combining the two provides a clear picture of what you should do to have an attractive and effective website design.

In simple terms, data-driven design refers to a design process that relies largely on data about customer behavior and attitudes.

This includes how your users engage with your design, whether your CTA on your landing page gets enough clicks, whether the buying process steps are clear enough, and whether your design achieves its goal.

Not all designers like data-driven design. Some argue that scientific data interfere with their creativity. However, this is not always the case. When done right, the data-driven design will save you time and money as it will limit the number of revisions required to get your design right.

Why all this even matters

You are unlikely to have an impactful website design if you only rely on intuitions and ignore data. Ineffective designs mean wasted time and money and lost opportunities to drive traffic and generate revenue. In most cases, a bad website design will hurt your SEO and brand image.

The need to use data in your website design cannot be overstated. Effective data use will lead to a better user experience, ultimately increasing conversions and improving your business’s overall performance.

Data provides an effective way for designers to validate their intuitions with data. Qualitative data helps designers better understand their customer behavior, what they need, and how they can adjust their design to give them a better experience.

This does not mean that designers need to learn statistical analysis. Instead, they need to work with researchers who provide beneficial feedback to enhance their creative work.

The data is presented in a clear and simple way, meaning you do not need mathematical skills to understand and apply these data.

How to create data-driven designs

Like anything new, introducing a data-driven design process in your organization can be daunting. In this section, we provide tips on how to get this process started in your company.

Define clear goals

Before you do anything else, make your goals clear and realistic. After all, defining your goals clearly is crucial for this data-driven process.

Whether you are introducing a new product or creating a new iteration for your existing product, it is important to start right.

Setting your goals is not enough. You need to ensure that your goals are realistic.

If you want to apply data-centered techniques from the start, you may want to make products from scratch. Besides data, cost, time, and feasibility factors will influence your decisions. Sometimes you may realize that you need to modify your product rather than redesign it.

Ensure key people have access to data

Data-driven processes will not work if key people do not access data. Implementing a new process can be daunting if communication between departments is limited.

Typically, analytics specialists handle quantitative data while designers deal with the experience. However, to actualize data-driven design processes, designers should access quantitative data, especially on user behavior. The catch is to ensure that the data is presented in an understandable manner.

Talk to your team about the best way to share this data between the analytics team and designers in your organization. Think about the people who need access to the data and the right tools to ensure that all key team members have easy access to the data.

Ensure people understand each other

The flow of information is one thing; you need to ensure that people are on the same page. While designers do not necessarily need to understand all the technical stuff in data space, they need to be on the same page with other players.

The best approach in this is to define the basics.

Talk about quantitative and qualitative data and how they relate and the need to use both types of data in the design processes. Besides that, you need to define the terms you will use while communicating between team members.

You may also want to revisit your goals to ensure that every team member agrees to them. Remember, you cannot achieve all your goals at once, so ensure to specify what goals you will prioritize and that every team player is working towards the same goal.

Create a tentative statement

Once you have set your goals and have your team on the same page, you can create a tentative statement or hypothesis. A hypothesis is a predictive statement that proposes a possible outcome of an event.

A hypothesis contains two parts: A proposition and a prediction of expected results. The case is no different when creating a hypothesis for user experience research. Here’s an example of the hypothesis on UX experiment:

If more people are using mobile devices when stuffing the internet, then creating a mobile-responsive design will help drive more traffic because more people will access the web pages easily on mobile devices.

As you can see from the example above, a hypothesis forms a crucial part of a UX experiment. It forms the foundation to A/B test different elements to better understand what works best and what does not.

How to choose a data-driven strategy

The next step is to choose where to begin the research and select what to test. One mistake that people make is to test everything hoping to hit the target. Avoid this at all costs, as the results you get will not suggest impactful actions.

The best place to start is to gather data about your customers’ behaviors. This simplified data-driven approach forms the foundations for a more sophisticated data-driven design process. You can use the available data to apply data-driven techniques before moving to other data collecting methods.

Use data to know your customers

Using data to know your customers better is an excellent approach if you want to know your ideal customer profile (ICP). By reviewing page analytics and analyzing behavior flow, you will have a clear picture of what your customers are doing on your page.

Demographic data and audience analytics will also give a detailed view of your customers.

The information you get is beneficial in decision-making. Through interviews and customer surveys, you will get information on who buys your product or subscribes to a service and why and how they use it. Use the information you get to create ideal user personas.

Next, conduct tests with users matching your ICPs and ask for valuable feedback about what needs to be improved. This will help identify any issues in the early development stages.

Look for anomalies in data

You may want to use this approach if you have enough ICP data but no other things. The best way to spot anomalies in user behavior is to analyze quantitative data from web analytics.

Quantitative data will give insights into the average dwell time, bounce rate, and exit percentages on some subpages.

However, it is important to understand that these indications can mean different things, and numbers from quantitative data will only give insights into what is happening but will not inform you why. This is where qualitative data comes in handy.

A deep dive into qualitative data involves getting in touch with your customers and seeing things from their perspectives. Consider conducting surveys and user interviews to gather more data.

You can also observe an individual matching your ICP using your product in real-time and ask them to share feedback about their experience. Once you spot the problems, develop a few solutions, and A/B test them to determine what solution works best.

Of course, this process will cost you, but the insights you get are worth the price.

Analyze the data

Having data is only part of the equation. You have to transform raw data into valuable information and make it presentable.

Interpreting data, especially quantitative objectively, can be daunting, depending on whether you have a dedicated role or not. Either way, you may want to combine different methods to figure out how to go about it yourself.

For example, when working on your project, you may encounter many different ideas that you do not know how to prioritize. You may also have collected data from different sources, including surveys, user interviews, product analysis, etc.

As such, you need to work on the data and organize it in a presentable way.

Ideally, analyzing the data will help you understand the impact each feature has on the process and boost your confidence level. It provides a clear picture of what you should focus on next.

How to make the most out of your data

When starting on data-driven design, you want to ensure that you get it right. That said, you need to avoid mistakes that could lead to incorrect conclusions. These tips will help get the most out of data:

Collect enough data

If you want a complete view of reality, then ensure to collect enough data before making your conclusions. Drawing conclusions from insignificant data will only make your analysis less valuable and may lead to wrong conclusions.

Even better is to collect data over extended periods of time to ensure the results are statistically significant. It is also advisable to compare your data with stats from competitors in your niche.

Use quantitative and qualitative data

Whenever possible, use the two types of data to gain different insights about your users. As earlier stated, quantitative data reveals customer behavior while qualitative data shows why customers behave the way they do.

Test one feature at a time

Next, test each variable to determine which one has the greatest impact. For instance, when testing the position of your CTA button, it’s advisable not to change its contrast as you will not know which one brought the change.

Be patient

Developing a fully functional data-driven design takes time. As such, when you get the data and derive ways to analyze it, wait and watch. This is the only way to monitor the impacts your changes have on the design.

An important thing to note at this stage is that it will take time for your users to learn the new design of a website or app interface. That said, do not be quick to conclude when you see a positive or a negative change, as it might not reflect the bigger picture.

Allow your customers an adjustment period before you make conclusions and implement the new data.

Wrapping up

There you go… That is what you need to start adopting a data-driven design in your company. The data-driven design provides an excellent way to improve user experience and gives designers a competitive advantage.

A better user experience helps boost conversions and improve Return on Investment (ROI) over time. Of course, user research, analytics, and A/B testing require time but will give an edge as a design professional. The catch is to experiment with the insights you get from the data and be patient before making conclusions.

The post The professional’s guide to data-driven design  appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.

When evaluating WooCommerce chatbots, remember that increasing ecommerce demand has also brought the need for faster, round-the-clock service. Businesses that try to handle this with internal personnel and resources will quickly run into limitations.

Fortunately, ecommerce technology is growing alongside consumer demand, giving sellers new tools for helping their customers.

Chatbots are one of the most promising technologies that enable businesses to provide more customer-driven experiences. This post looks at some of the ways to use chatbots to enhance your WooCommerce store.

What are the benefits of WooCommerce chatbots?

In general, chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) to understand user queries and algorithms to then give an appropriate reply. The most advanced bots are so adept at recognizing the intent of a visitor’s text, that it is hard to distinguish from actual humans. As the technology continues to improve, there are several impactful ways ecommerce sellers can benefit from its adoption.

Faster service

When a customer interacts with a human service rep, it naturally takes some time for the person to respond to the customer’s inquiry. They may need to look up the answer to a question or manually enter an order number into their support tool in order to get their details.

The effects of these manual processes are amplified if the rep needs to juggle multiple requests at once.

Chatbots provide a quicker alternative to the traditional human-based support. A bot can find information instantly and it can handle multiple requests at once without slowing down. While NLP technology still isn’t perfect, a bot will also make fewer errors than a human.

Save money

The cost of training and employing service staff can quickly cut into your profit margins. Chatbots, however, are great for saving money and you only need to invest in the software once instead of paying a monthly salary.

Better customer experience

With human service, the quality of support will depend on the skills and often mood of the person. Some reps will have more experience than others while some may be exhausted after a long day, leading to less than stellar responses.

However, chatbots provide a consistent quality of interaction. Their responses are based on pre-programmed algorithms and are not subject to experience or mood.

24/7 availability

When you use humans to provide customer service, you must grapple with availability. People inherently need breaks and time off from work. If all your staff is local, this will leave big gaps in your support coverage during the night times.

Chatbots on the other hand are available 24/7. They can serve customers whenever they have a question, even if it is 1 AM or the middle of Christmas day. This leads to a much better support experience as your valued customers won’t have to sit around waiting for a reply.

Ways you can use WooCommerce chatbots

The automation capabilities in a bot allow you to expand on what you can do with a chat interface. In addition to having conversations with visitors, here are some of the ways you can use a WooCommerce chatbot at your online store.

Showcase products

Chatbots are just as effective for marketing your business as they are for providing customer service. You can program a bot to showcase your products to visitors or it can include a search function that enables customers to find items on their own. With a WooCommrce chatbot, you can even use your customer data to show personalized offers to each individual user.

FAQs

It’s not surprising that many customers ask the same questions. You can avoid repetitive conversations by adding a set of frequently asked questions to the bot. Customers can then click a question that matches their interests to get an immediate answer. Other users can use this feature to learn about your business instead of browsing your site and searching for details.

Integrating WooCommerce chatbot apps

There are a variety of ways to implement a chatbot into your WooCommerce store. You can choose to add a simple WordPress plugin, embed a third-party solution, or connect your store to Facebook Messenger. Let’s break down these methods to see how they can help your store.

Re:amaze

Re:amaze is a comprehensive customer service platform designed to consolidate your support channels into one robust tool. In addition to an intuitive chatbot, the platform can also be used to manage support emails and conversations from social media.

After you create your re:amaze account, you’ll need to connect your WooCommerce store. From the re:amaze dashboard go to Apps & Integrations, located in the left-hand menu. This will take you to a list of available apps where you can select WooCommerce. On the next page, click Connect a WooCommerce Store.

This will open fields for you to complete the connection. Enter your Store Name, Store URL, and WooCommerce API version. You’ll then need to add your API Credentials.

You can create a new API key from your WooCommerce dashboard by going to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > REST API and clicking add key. Add a description and set the Permissions to Read/Write before clicking Generate API key.

After the site takes a moment to generate the credentials, copy the Consumer key and Consumer secret and add them to the corresponding fields in your re:amaze account. Once you do, click Connect Store.

If the connection works properly, you’ll see a green checkmark next to the Status field.

Setting up the connection will give you access to data from your WooCommerce store in your re:amaze dashboard.

Set up chat interface

After you connect re:amaze and WooCommerce, you’ll need to configure your chat window and add it to your website. To set up the chat, go to Website Integrations > Chat Widgets and select New Chat Widget.

Next, you’ll need to choose the design for the chat interface. You can select a Shoutbox or a Modal Lightbox with a custom trigger. On the right side of the page, you’ll see a preview of the chat window so you can see what it looks like.

After you pick the chat type, click Next. You’ll then need to determine a size for the chat window and select a color.

The next step is to select your contact mode. This setting specifies what information customers need to provide when starting a new conversation. You’ll also have the option to enable bots. Make sure to leave this box checked to have your chatbots engage customers for any new messages.

After you select a contact mode, you’ll have the option to add helpful apps to the chat window. Among these are an order status app and an FAQ search that lets users search your FAQs for quick answers.

We recommend checking the box for Order Status. This will add a search feature for customers to quickly look up their current status for their orders. Below is an example of how this will look:

Click Save to finalize your changes to the chat window. The final step will be to embed the app on your site. There are two ways to do this: publish the chat automatically using Google Tag Manager or publish the chat manually by pasting the script into your site.

Here is an example of the code you will add to your site:

<script type=”text/javascript” async src=”https://cdn.reamaze.com/assets/reamaze.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _support = _support || { ‘ui’: {}, ‘user’: {} };
_support[‘account’] = ‘myaccount’;
_support[‘ui’][‘contactMode’] = ‘mixed’;
_support[‘ui’][‘enableKb’] = ‘false’;
_support[‘ui’][‘styles’] = {
widgetColor: ‘rgb(5, 5, 5)’,
gradient: true,
};
_support[‘ui’][‘shoutboxFacesMode’] = “default”;
_support[‘ui’][‘shoutboxHeaderLogo’] = true;
_support[‘apps’] = {
faq: {“enabled”:false},
recentConversations: {},
orders: {“enabled”:true}
};
</script>

If you elected lightbox with custom trigger, you’ll then need to copy and add the following code in your HTML where you want the trigger to appear.

<a href=”#” data-reamaze-lightbox=”contact”>Your Site’s Custom Trigger</a>

This code will allow the lightbox to open after a customer clicks the trigger. If needed, you can add more than one trigger to the same page.

Order Bot

The Order Bot gives you an efficient way to help customers with order-related questions. When someone asks a question related to order status, the bot will automatically detect it and begin looking for the current status.

This means that questions like Where’s my order?, Has my order shipped yet?, and When will my order ship? can be answered almost immediately to save valuable time for both you and your customers. The user simply needs to give the bot their order number.

This process can be streamlined even more by enabling the Order Status Hub App as previously shown. By doing so, customers that need assistance with their order can enter their number without having to initiate a conversation with the bot.

To activate the Order Bot, go to Automation > Chatbots. Check the box for Order Bot in the Bot Profile and click Save.

Workflow Bot

With re:amaze, you can create custom workflows to provide customers with more accurate answers to their questions. These Workflow bots are triggered when a customer asks a question that you have predefined in your workflow. This gives you more control over the support process and allows you to pre-plan responses for your most common questions.

Using the WooCommerce chatbots together

When you have multiple chatbots enabled, the sequence in which they fire depends on the order you have arranged in your settings. You can view this arrangement by going to Automation > Chatbots.

The bots will fire in descending order. Next to each one, you’ll see a three-bar icon. To rearrange the firing sequence click the icon and drag the bot to the new position.

The first bot will gather information and respond to their requests until the bot has exhausted its responses. It will then move to the next bot in the sequence.

For example, in the image above, a customer inquiry would be greeted by an attempt to gather an order number. If unable to do so, the chat would move to the Hello Bot to greet users with your defined messaging.

Woo Bot for WooCommerce

Woo Bot is a simple chat platform that you can program to automatically engage visitors who land on your site. You can set up detailed welcome messages, promote offers and coupons, or allows customers to quickly search for products via the chat.

Customizing Woo Bot is straightforward. Simply head to WooCommerce > Settings > Woo Bot, and from there, you can set the chat icon, theme, and background image. You can also create custom welcome messages, fallback messages, and the email notifications you receive for new requests.

After you enable the chat, customers will see the chat icon in the bottom right corner of your store. Clicking the chat icon will prompt the chat popup and begin a conversation. For you, the store owner, conversations appear in the backend for you to see and to add manual input if needed.

Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger is a highly effective tool for offering customer service. It allows shoppers to view and respond to conversations from their Facebook accounts, all without needing to head directly to your site.

With a little setup work, you can add a chatbot to Facebook Messenger and then connect the platform to your store to help you automate the customer service process.

A quick way to do this is to use the Facebook Messenger Chatbot for WooCommerce extension. By implementing the plugin, your Messenger profile will include a bot that will automatically interact with customers using predefined queries to suggest the best possible replies.

You can set multiple options for replies including URLs or postbacks that lead to more responses. Plus, you can set up conditional postbacks or blocks to narrow down customers’ inputs to give the best answer.

With the extension, you also have the option to add a search function to the chat. This will allows customers to search for specific products, categories, or content.

Closing thoughts on WooCommerce chatbots

WooCommerce chatbots are incredibly useful out-of-the-box but they become even more powerful over time as they are able to learn and better understand customer inquiries. Try out some of the tools in this post and see what innovative ways you come up with to use the software to enhance your ecommerce business.

 

The post WooCommerce Wednesdays: How to use WooCommerce chatbots to grow your online store appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.

What is one strategy to increase summer sales in B2B, during a time when many people are out of the office?

To help your B2B business increase summer sales, we asked business leaders and marketing professionals this question for their best ideas. From developing strategic brand partnerships to engaging customers in advance, there are several strategies that your business can implement to help bring in more B2B sales during the traditionally slow summer months.

Here are 10 B2B summer sales strategies:

Develop Strategic Brand Partnerships
Revamp Your Social Media Strategy
Opt for Pre-recorded B2B Advertising Options
Adapt To Using Online Tools for B2B Marketing
Take Advantage of The Lower Competition
Entice Your Customer With Sales Incentives
Position Your Product as Ideal for The Summer Season
Get Outside To Get Clients
Position Your Website for Better Sales
Engage Customers In Advance

Let’s get started!

Develop strategic brand partnerships

Most industries are affected by the summer slump, and the makeup and beauty industry is no exception. However, we can still maintain and even increase sales during those months with brand ambassador partnerships. These partnerships come in different forms and on different platforms, but our most successful has been through influencer marketing via social media.

By providing makeup artists and other beauty industry companies with the best products and experience, they want to recommend our products and services and amplify our brand messaging. This is why we created a brand ambassador program, where we provide beauty artists with the necessary tools and information they need and collect their feedback in a way that makes it much easier for them to share with their audience on their social media platforms.

 

Vanessa Molica, The Lash Professional

Revamp your social media strategy

Many people are out of the office (OOO) during the summer, but their time online increases. Beach pics posted to Facebook, researching local events on Instagram, showing off the fun they’re having on TikTok — less work means more time to be social.

Take advantage of that by revamping your social media strategy for both paid and organic. Post your summer company fun and highlight new deals, discounts, or technologies in a fun yet professional way.

The tone and voice of your social media can differ in the summer months compared to the rest of the year. If you want to reach those OOO folks, you have to invite them to read something that doesn’t remind them of the office.

David Patterson-Cole, Moonchaser

Editor’s note: Looking to step up your social game? Check out the templates GoDaddy Studio has to offer. You can create beautiful social posts that catch eyes as they scroll through the ‘Gram.

Opt for pre-recorded B2B advertising options

During the summer, it is common that B2B customers will be out of the office (and probably your employees, too). The way to try and avoid a dip in sales is to plan and spread your reach.

Plan the marketing material and schedule emails, social media posts, and direct mail to continue even when your team is out of the office. When planning the distribution of your media, look for alternative methods to try to stretch your visibility to reach alternative customers to those you normally target. Widening your net whilst people are on vacation will help to gain some additional sales from those that wouldn’t have normally been exposed to your advertising.

Look to test new channels such as YouTube and Podcasts — things that can be pre-recorded if needed. Try a different message, possibly a stronger sales offer, or added incentive for businesses to purchase during a down season.

Gary Warner, Joloda Hydaroll

Related: How to take time off: 7 tips to prioritize your health and business

Adapt to using online tools for B2B marketing

In times when most people are out of the office, securing summer sales in B2B requires adaptability to the online world.

Nowadays, there is almost no direct contact with salespeople, and buyers mainly conduct their research online. This is why the best way to increase your sales is to use media monitoring tools to gain insights into what buyers research and how they reach their decisions.

Using a tool that can get you in-depth data on how B2B buyers behave online when conducting their research is a great way to ensure you can provide the right solutions at the right places to reach their eyes. That way, you will stay ahead of the competition, and secure sales influence without direct contact, which is difficult to achieve when everyone works from home.

Marco Genaro Palma, PRLab

Take advantage of the lower competition

Many people are indeed out of the office but that also includes marketers, which means that there is more opportunity to stand out.

We find that summer can be a great time for B2B sales. Outside of using creative marketing, and incorporating summer holidays into your ads which can be pretty effective, another strategy is to focus on referrals.

Offering some incentives to your existing clients and partner network for them to refer you to their peers is a great way to ramp up sales since leads that come to you referred by someone they know are already much more likely to buy.

Rafael Romis, Weberous Web Design

Entice your customers with sales incentives

One strategy to increase summer sales in B2B is to offer incentives for early purchases. This could include discounts, free shipping, or other added-value items.

Many businesses also offer summer sales as a way to clear out inventory before the end of the year. Whatever the incentive, make sure it is something that will appeal to your target market and help increase summer sales.

Brian Meiggs, My Millennial Guide

Position your product as ideal for the summer season

Sales reps and decision-makers are busy with summer fun festivities, so why not play on this theme through digital marketing?

For example, a business that enables team communication, such as Zoom, could develop a social media campaign centered around how the products make working through summer easier. A video campaign sporting an employee soaking up the sun at the pool while using a virtual background to make it look like they are home offers a humorous take on work from home and flexible schedules.

If you see a decrease in sales rep numbers over the summer, invest more into digital marketing.

Amrita Saigal, Kudos

Get outside to get clients

In the investment management industry, many clients will be on vacation during the summer.

Our solution? Get outside yourself! Your clients will be able to relate.

Leave the desk and pick up the laptop. Create content and meetings on the fly that relate to those on the go. We have met some of our best clients while vacationing during the summer at the same resort. You will be able to relate to your clients more and adapt to their pace of getting work done.

Let’s say your client is based in Wisconsin but is vacationing in Florida? No problem! Leverage your company’s mobile tools to connect to them wherever they are. Position yourself as being agile and able to work across state barriers. Your clients will appreciate it.

Darin Tuttle, Tuttle Ventures LLC

Position your website for better sales

Summer, hot weather, and slumping sales. What to do about it when customers are taking a vacation and you get automatic out-of-office messages when you cold email them? And your salespeople need vacationing too so the effect on sales taking a dip is doubled. However, people love to consume content even during a vacation.

Your content and website are on around the clock working to make business for you. Make sure you have great content, especially top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content. TOFU content is easier to consume during a vacation with that margarita on the side.

Once you have published content people love to consume, start making your website a growth machine. Add converting landing pages next to your blog content and personalize your website to really maximize conversions. Suppose the customers don’t convert right away. In that case, your personalized website can highlight relevant keywords from the blog post the customer read when they come back to visit your website after the holidays.

Teemu Raitaluoto, Markettailor

Engage customers in advance

The key is to understand the ebb and flow of your business. Some business notices decrease in the winter and some in the summer season.

However, the strategy is to build your community in advance. Make sure you start engaging your current customers and draw in new customers in the winter and spring season by utilizing social media platforms and email newsletters.

 

People purchase from businesses that they trust, so stay engaged all year long.

TK Morgan, Tuesday At 1030

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

The post 10 B2B sales strategies during summer slow downs appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.