WPMaven Blog

ADA Compliance for Small Business Guide for 2024

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:06:27 GMT

If you are a small business owner you probably need to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

This guide is designed for website owners eager to master web accessibility. It simplifies technical elements and legalities related to web accessibility, providing clear, easy-to-understand information. Note, this guide is informational and not legally binding.

Why Accessibility Matters for Small Businesses

Providing the best customer experience is crucial for retaining and attracting customers. Yet, many small businesses overlook the needs of the disability community, which constitutes about 25% of the adult American population. This often results in unequal buying experiences.

The Importance of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The ADA ensures that people with disabilities have equal access to goods, services, and employment opportunities. As a small business owner, you might be legally required to comply with the ADA. This guide will help you understand your responsibilities under the ADA, focusing on creating an ADA-compliant small business website and accommodating customers and employees with disabilities.

Overview of ADA Compliance

The ADA is a federal law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in public spaces, ensuring equal access to employment and consumer opportunities. Small business owners should pay attention to two key areas of the ADA:

ADA Title I: Prohibits discrimination against employees and job applicants with disabilities, ensuring they are treated equally and accommodated in all employment areas.
ADA Title III : Ensures that businesses classified as "public accommodations" (e.g., retail stores, restaurants, banks) provide accessible goods and services to customers with disabilities. This applies to both physical stores and online domains.

Exemptions from ADA Requirements

Most businesses must comply with the ADA, but there are exemptions for:

Companies operating for up to twenty weeks a year
Businesses with fewer than fifteen employees
Religious organizations
Private clubs

Steps to ADA Compliance for Small Businesses

Small business owners must ensure:

Accessible Websites: Websites must conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to accommodate people with disabilities. Compliance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA is recommended to avoid legal issues.

Provide alternate formats for content
Ensure compatibility with screen readers
Maintain sufficient color contrast
Avoid seizure-triggering content

Physical Space Accessibility: Remove physical barriers such as inaccessible restrooms, narrow aisles, and lack of accessible parking.

Install wheelchair ramps
Provide Braille signage
Modify restrooms and sales counters

Employee Education: Train employees on how to support and communicate with customers with disabilities, ensuring they provide a positive experience.
Equal Employment Opportunities: Provide reasonable accommodations during the hiring process and employment, such as accessible materials and assistive technologies.
Effective Communication: Use auxiliary aids and services to communicate with customers and employees with disabilities, ensuring all information is accessible.
Service Animal Policies: Allow access to service animals in all public areas, regardless of "no pets" policies.

Benefits of ADA Compliance

Complying with the ADA not only fulfills legal requirements but also expands your customer base and enhances your business reputation. It creates a more inclusive, accessible, and compassionate environment, ultimately leading to positive business outcomes and potential revenue growth.

Consequences of Non-Compliance

Failing to comply with the ADA can result in significant financial and legal repercussions, including fines, lawsuits, and reputational damage. Common violations include inaccessible parking, restrooms, and websites.

Tax Deductions for ADA Compliance

Small business owners may be eligible for tax deductions for ADA-related expenses, including physical accessibility improvements and website modifications.

Key Takeaways

Addressing both physical and online accessibility barriers ensures compliance with the ADA, fostering inclusivity and potentially increasing revenue. Small businesses benefit significantly from creating an accessible environment for all customers and employees.

How To Create a Fail Proof Digital Markting Plan

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 16:48:10 GMT

Would you run your business without a plan? Of course not! This is why it wouldn’t make sense to market your products without one. In this post, we’ll show you how to create a digital marketing strategy with clear, actionable strategies.

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING?

Digital marketing is a term that applies to online marketing efforts. It includes the use of online marketing channels like search engines, social media, and websites to connect with customers. Some people simply call it online marketing.

HOW TO CREATE A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY

Before you can create a digital marketing strategy, you’ll need to think about why you’re doing it. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

What results do I want?
How will I achieve these results?
How will I measure the results ?
What tools will I need ?

Now that you know have an idea of what digital marketing is, let’s talk about how to develop a plan.

SET CLEAR GOALS

One of the most important steps in your planning is goal setting.

Do you want to boost brand awareness ? Are you looking to add followers on social media ? Or do you want to grow your email list ?

One of the most popular methods of goal setting is S.M.A.R.T . This means setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Most goal-setting methods are going to encourage setting goals that meet these same criteria.

If your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might set up your goal tracking like this:

Goal: Increase website traffic

Metric: 500 new organic site visitors by the end of Q1 2020

Tactics:

Create high-quality blog content
Increase blog posting to 4 days per week
Optimize posts and pages for search engines
Use social media to engage with customers and direct them to the site
Increase guest post contributions to other high-quality publications

But, what if you want to increase your social media reach? In that case, your setup would look similar, but your wording would change. And, of course, your tactics would probably be a lot different!

Goal: Increase the number of followers on Facebook

Metric: 200 new Facebook followers by end of Q2 2020

Tactics:

Post valuable content on Facebook
Increase Facebook postings from 1 to 2 times per day
Continue responding to all non-spam questions or comments from visitors
Use Facebook Live feature at least once per month

And, for growing your email list, you may use something like this:

Goal: Increase the number of email subscribers

Metric: 750 new email subscribers by end of Q4 2020

Tactics:

Use optin tools such as an exit-intent popup
Use lead magnets on your website
Test campaigns using A/B split test

BUILD SOLID CUSTOMER AVATARS

Before you can sell anything, you need to have a clear idea of who you’re selling to.

The customer avatar, a fictional character that represents your ideal prospect, can help with this. Customer avatars, also known as buyer personas , tell us a lot about the prospect such as their demographics which includes their name, age, and occupation.

It even includes the products they’ve purchased and places they’ve visited. It answers questions like:

Who are they?
What do they like to do for fun?
Where do they like to shop?
What are their habits?

You can also dive further into a customer persona to include psychographics. This includes consumers’ attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria. Just like demographics, psychographics helps you build a customer avatar of what your ideal prospect looks like.

Check out this example of a customer avatar from Hubspot :

Here’s another example from Digital Marketer :

This information will play an important part in developing your overall digital marketing plan. The more detailed your customer avatar, the better you can customize your digital marketing strategy .

Now that you have your customers sorted out, let’s talk about your digital assets.

AUDIT AND PLAN CURRENT DIGITAL ASSETS

A digital asset has 3 main characteristics:

It’s digital
It provides value to your company
It’s searchable and discoverable

When considering your available digital assets as a part of your strategy, you’ll start by taking inventory of your current digital assets. These can be anything from your blog content to paid ads, or even the exposure earned through word-of-mouth.

Let’s take a look at each type of digital asset in more detail.

AUDIT AND PLAN OWNED DIGITAL ASSETS

Any digital property that you can control and that is unique to your brand is considered an owned digital asset. A common example is your website, but it can also be things like:

Social media profiles
Content
Original imagery
Owned channels

Even some of your off-site content like posts on Medium or content on GitHub can be considered an owned digital asset.

It’s important to track owned media so you can get a full understanding of the buzz around your brand. This also gives you an idea of how that impacts your marketing efforts.

You can track social media directly in the analytics of the social media platform you’re using. There are also amazing tools like MonsterInsights that you can use with Google Analytics to get the info you need to track the ROI of your owned media.

AUDIT AND PLAN EARNED DIGITAL ASSETS

Next, analyze your earned media assets. Earned media is the attention that you’ve earned but not paid for. You can earn media assets a number of ways including the customer service you’ve provided or through the influence of your SEO efforts.

Here are a few examples of earned digital assets:

Guest posts
PR
Customer experience
Word-of-mouth
Press mentions
Reviews

Other examples include user-generated videos and social media mentions . These can be from content writers, journalists, reporters, or even customers.

GoPro has a number of digital marketing examples that include earned digital assets. One of their more popular earned media assets includes its YouTube channel . A lot of the videos were created by customers that used the products, instead of GoPro.

By having user-generated content on its YouTube channel, GoPro encourages customers to share their talents with the world.

Check out this award-winning, spooky Halloween video created by Lukasz Lewenda. ?

Lukasz shot 100% of the video using GoPro.

Just like we mentioned about owned media, it’s also important to track your earned media. Depending on the type of earned media you’re tracking, there are different tools that can help.

Again, you really can’t go wrong with MonsterInsights and Google Analytics. But, you can also set up a simple Google Alerts or Walk Talker Alerts that can notify you anytime your brand is mentioned online.

Here’s an alert preview for “go pro” using Google Alerts:

Track and analyze your earned media so you can include it into your overall marketing plan.

AUDIT AND PLAN PAID DIGITAL ASSETS

Finally, you’ll want to look at all of your paid assets. Typically, paid media serves as a promotion method to boost your exposure. You can find this anywhere exposure is paid for like:

Google Adwords
Pay-per-click advertising
Social media ads
Native ads
Online video ads

Geico does a great job of taking one of their paid digital assets and turning it into another cool digital marketing campaign using online video advertising with their video titled “Crushed.”

In terms of tracking, a tool like SEMRush can track SEO and paid traffic (such as pay-per-click).

Now you have a solid digital marketing strategy framework for your business:

Set clear goals
Build solid customer avatars
Audit and plan your digital assets

Want to learn more about digital marketing? Here’s a list of 19 books that will level up your marketing strategy. And be sure to check out our digital marketing best practices to level up your marketing game.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for useful tips and strategies that will help you grow your business!

Keep in touch with site visitors and boost loyalty

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 11:17:39 GMT

When it comes to growing your business, building relationships with your customers is essential. Keeping in touch with site visitors and boosting loyalty can be a great way to build strong relationships that can help your business thrive.

Although it might seem daunting at first, there are a few simple ways to keep in touch with site visitors and boost loyalty. Here are a few tips that can help you create a dynamic connection with your customers.

1. Personalize the User Experience

One of the best ways to create a strong connection with your site visitors is to personalize their experience. Consider incorporating personalization tools into your website, such as customizing content based on the user’s interests or providing tailored discounts based on their buying habits. This can help customers feel that you’re offering them a tailored experience, making them more likely to remain loyal to your brand.

2. Create A Rewards Program

Creating a rewards program can also be a great way to boost customer loyalty. Not only does it motivate customers to continue using your services, but it also rewards them for their loyalty. Consider launching a loyalty program where customers get perks or discounts for repeating purchases or referring friends and family. This can incentivize customers to return to your site and keep them engaged with your brand.

3. Offer A Dedicated Support Team

Having a dedicated support team is also key to building customer loyalty. Offer customers a fast and friendly customer service experience, with a team that can answer their questions and help them with any issues they may encounter. This not only helps customers to feel that their feedback is heard, but it also helps to build trust between your brand and customers.

4. Send Personalized Emails

Finally, sending personalized emails to customers can also be a great way to keep in touch and boost loyalty. Consider segmenting customers based on their interests and sending them emails with relevant content, such as personalized discounts and deals. This can help customers feel like their feedback is being heard, and it can help your brand create a deeper connection with customers.

By keeping in touch with site visitors and boosting loyalty, you can create strong customer relationships and help your business to grow. So take the time to personalize the user experience, create a rewards program, offer a dedicated support team, and send personalized emails to keep customers engaged with your brand.

Tips for writing great posts that increase your site traffic

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:17:39 GMT

It can seem challenging to write great posts that can help increase your site traffic. However, there are several simple tips and tricks that can help you in this regard.

First and foremost, create content that is interesting and helpful to your readers.
People are always looking for great content that they can use, so make sure that your posts provide value to your readers. Additionally, ensure that your content is well-researched, up-to-date, and accurate.

Second, use SEO strategies to make your content more visible to search engines.

Incorporate keywords into your posts that are related to the content, and make sure that they’re used naturally and strategically. You should also create compelling meta descriptions that clearly describe the post and entice people to click.

Third, include plenty of visuals in your posts.
People are more likely to engage with posts that include visuals, and this can help to bring more traffic to your site. Make sure to include high-quality and relevant images, charts, and infographics that break up the text.

Fourth, share your posts on social media.
Make sure to post your content on multiple social media sites and tailor each post to the individual platform. Additionally, you should include relevant hashtags so that your posts can reach more people.

Finally, you should use link building strategies to drive more traffic to your website. You can reach out to other bloggers and websites to create backlinks to your posts, or you can create guest posts and link them to your own website.

By following these tips, you can write great posts that not only help you to engage with your readers, but also increase your site traffic.